Having completed more than 3,000 orbits around Mercury, Messenger’s orbit is now being lowered to just under 125 miles from the surface.
A bill introduced in Congress would require numerous government agencies to study the role of telecommunications in the encouragement of hate crimes.
The bills require a report within one year by the NTIA (The National Telecommunications and Information Administration) with the assistance of the DOJ, the Commission, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to be submitted to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate on the role of telecommunications in hate crimes. … The report, according to the bill, “shall analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate, as described in the Hate Crime Statistics Act.”
The bill leaves the definition of “hate” entirely up to the government, and would produce a report that would be a great tool in the hands of politicians to squelch speech they don’t like.
Finding out what’s in it: To avoid the cost of Obamacare ski resorts are being forced to shorten their seasons.
The uncertainty of science: A new study claims that biofuels made from corn produce more greenhouse gases than ordinary gasoline.
The EPA disagrees. If you read the article you will see that the EPA might be right, but either way it appears to be a case of scientists arguing about statistical details. The bottom line is that the corn biofuels aren’t significantly different than ordinary gasoline, and in fact this whole debate forgets the original reason for backing biofuels, which had nothing to do with global warming. Biofuels can be harvested here in the U.S., and were thought an excellent way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Whether that is true, however, also remains very much uncertain.
One quote in the article, however, demonstrated to me once again the foolishness of using legislation to mandate sales in a market.
Last year, for the fifth time, the EPA proposed reducing the amount [being produced as] required by law. It set a target of 17 million gallons for 2014. The law envisioned 1.75 billion gallons being produced this year.
The law demanded that manufacturers ramp up production to billions, regardless of economics or demand. Such mandates are the stuff of fantasy, and never work.
Posted from Tucson, Arizona.
Red tape appears to be preventing the U.S. military from releasing meteorite data obtained by its nuclear test monitoring system.
Details of atmospheric meteor explosions, as recorded by U.S. military spacecraft sensors, were posted on a publicly accessible NASA website run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. In fact, the military-civil cooperation was spurred by the details of the February 2013 fireball explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia — termed a “superbolide” event. The website postings are designed to assist the scientific community’s investigation of bolides, or exceptionally bright fireballs.
However, multiple scientists noted that the JPL website had not been updated recently. That presumably meant that there was some sort of delay, as some fairly big events were detected by infrasound in the last year. “Because of budget and personnel reductions on our military partner, they ran into workforce issues to accomplish this task,” said Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive within the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
In other words, it looks like everyone in the military is saying “Ain’t my job, man!” so it doesn’t get done. They need to assign someone the job and be done with it.
The competition heats up: Data now suggests that SpaceX successfully achieved a controlled landing of its Falcon 9 first stage on Friday.
The stage itself has not yet been recovered due to heavy seas, but all evidence points to a soft splashdown in the ocean. While I expect them to continue to do this over the ocean, until they get good footage of the landing as well as recover the stage, the next real step is to land the thing over land. The link above also has video of the vertical take-off/landing of Falcon 9R on Friday, which proves they are beginning to prove this capability as well.
In related news, Dragon was successfully berthed to ISS today.
Posted from Boulder, Colorado.
The shot heard around the world: The American Revolution began today at Concord and Lexington in 1775.
At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.
The history is very well known to anyone who has done the slightest reading about American history. Nonetheless, considering the events in Nevada this past week this paragraph struck me as especially profound:
When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker’s militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.
At some point, when our federal government becomes as oppressive and as arrogant as the British government was in the 1770s, emotions will spill over and we will see the same thing happen again. And events will be similar, because Americans are armed and are becoming increasingly armed. They will defend their freedoms, their property, and their families, should the government in Washington continue attacking them. This is what happened in Nevada this past week. I expect it to happen more in the coming years.
I do not write this with joy. It would be much better if cooler heads prevailed and our government returned to serving the people instead of putting its boot on their head. I just don’t expect that to happen.
Crying wolf! A history of global warming “Tipping Points” where it was declared that doomsday was certain in only a few years if we didn’t act now.
The article is quite hilarious. Again and again and again and again the climate fear-mongers have announced with absolute certainty that, unless we pass draconian government regulations, the climate was going to go crazy and we were all going to die. Sometimes they declared we only had hours, sometimes months, sometimes years, sometimes even decades, but every time they were certain they knew what was going to happen and thus we had better obey them. And anyone who dared question their certainty was worse than a fool and should be imprisoned!
Of course, none of these predictions have proven true. The climate might yet warm and even go wild, but none of these doom-sayers have done any of us any good. If things do start going bad in future years, it is now going to be very difficult to convince anyone of this fact.
Posted from Tucson International Airport. I am on the way to Denver to tape two television interviews with George Noory of Coast to Coast for his television show, Beyond Belief. Should be fun.
Fascists: A SWAT team in Florida decided to test their new military equipment by breaking into someone’s home on Friday.
After conducting surveillance and gathering information for a judge to sign a search warrant, LPD called in its SWAT team to execute the warrant at a house on Empress Way in the neighborhood near Kelly Recreation Center, Sgt. Mike Lewis said. “We did not know if anyone was inside and we had information that the persons involved were armed,” Lewis said. “It was a safety issue.”
It was an opportunity for police to see how well their newly acquired Lenco BearCat armored vehicle would perform. City commissioners last year approved the purchase of the 22,000-pound bullet-resistant vehicle to replace a 1967 armored vehicle. The BearCat features new technologies, air-conditioning, cameras and seating for 12 officers instead of six.
On Friday, the SWAT team drove the BearCat down Lakeland streets and onto the front lawn of the house. The officers crouched behind and inside the vehicle, unsure of what was inside the house. The officers used tactical maneuvers to blow out the front windows, leaving curtains lying in the yard, and they gained entry into the attached garage.
From the story, it is very unclear whether they found any incriminating evidence at all. Mostly, it sounds like a bunch of stormtroopers getting a chance to play with their toys at the expense of an innocent private citizen.
The Forest Service has seized the property and cattle of a New Mexico rancher.
Read the story. It will remind you of the Bundy fight in Nevada, with the same elements of government overreach to destroy a rancher. The Forest Service might have the law on its side, but it sure sounds like the law is quite unjust in this case.
Some additional details about SpaceX’s effort Friday to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth gently.
They have not yet released a full report, but it appears that the company has made progress. They were able to control the stage’s spinning as it descended, and it apparently was still functioning after it hit the water.
Orbital Sciences is considering three different bids to provide the company new engines for its Antares rocket.
The engine presently used is from a stock of refurbished Russian engines first built in the late 1960s for the Soviet Union’s N1 rocket, designed to send humans to the Moon.
Dragon has successfully reached orbit.
No word on the attempt to bring the first stage down to the water under controlled conditions. One announcement during launch said the video was good and that the stage’s first burn was successful.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully completed the first vertical flight of the Falcon 9R landing test rocket.
Reports have been confirmed that SpaceX’s Falcon 9-R development vehicle made its first free flight today at McGregor — taking off, hovering, moving sideways and landing.
Falcon 9R is the successor to Grasshopper, carrying more engines to more accurately simulate a Falcon 9 first stage.
Meanwhile, today’s launch of Dragon and the second attempt to bring the first stage back to Earth in a controlled manner remains iffy because of weather.
We have consensus! When asked if Arizona’s gun laws need changing, 86% chose the answer “We have too many laws, and most of them should be eliminated.”
Only 5% of those polled thought stronger gun laws were necessary.
The irony here is that the story at which this newspaper poll is being taken is about a protest by a Tucson gun control group. They might be noisy, but these gun control protestors are very much in the minority, despite any claims they might make.
What happens to you if you decide you want to control the education your children get in a public school.
In addition to the repeated refusal of school officials to obey your commands, you get approached by police officers who tell you that you are trespassing on school property, even though you are there as per a pre-arranged appointment with the school principal.
The crashes that changed aviation and plane designs forever.
Like the 1964 Alaska earthquake, sometimes bad things have to happen to force humans to face a problem and fix it.
How the 1964 Alaska Earthquake shook up geology.
Sometimes the shake-up isn’t physical it is mental. In this case, the 1964 Alaska quake forced geologists to finally take serious the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics.
Worlds without end: The existence of a Kepler-found earth-sized planet in the habitable zone has been confirmed.
The newfound planet, called Kepler-186f, was first spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star about 490 light-years from Earth. While the host star is dimmer than Earth’s sun and the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, the positioning of the alien world coupled with its size suggests that Kepler-186f could have water on its surface, scientists say.
In this new work, the Keck and Gemini ground-based telescopes confirmed Kepler’s discovery.
The new more sinister IRS scandal.
Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison.
Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet.
Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center, was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that they are not engaged in political speech. Lerner talked about setting up meetings with Justice Department election lawyers who wanted to talk about making Noble’s dreams a reality — this after Senator Sheldon Whitehouse raised the idea of criminal charges for conservatives who are not sufficiently quiet, charges that they falsely completed an IRS tax exemption form. [emphasis mine]
It might be illegal to claim tax exemption for non-political activities and then use that tax exemption to do politics, but it has to be emphasized that this law was only going to be used against those who disagreed with Obama and the Democrats. In other words, the IRS and the Obama administration weren’t really enforcing the law, they were thinking of using the law to put their opponents in prison.
Finding out what’s in it: Over two dozen widows in Alabama were dropped from their health care plans due to Obamacare.
Hey, no big deal. It’s only some southerners from a red state, and just a handful when you think about it. Moreover, we all know that the Democrats and Obama care about women, while the Republicans are evil haters who want women enslaved and helpless.
Then there’s this: No dentists available under Obamacare for children in California.
And we all know how much the Democrats care about children. It’s always for the children, y’know.
The competition heats up: Russia is accelerating construction of its new spaceport in Vostochny.
The schedule doesn’t appear to have been pushed up, with the first launch still set for 2015, but they are going to initiate a second shift, and will have monthly meeting with the government to monitor progress. Under the top-down Russian way of doing things, this is how they make sure their high priority projects get finished on time and successfully.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada is planning additional glide tests in the fall. using its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.
This is the same test vehicle that crashed last October during its first glide test when one landing gear failed to deploy properly. The glide test itself was a success however, as the vehicle did a controlled unmanned glide perfectly to the runway, and the failed landing gear was one that the spacecraft will not use once completed.
Note also that these announced flight tests will occur after NASA eliminates one of the companies competing for the final crew ferrying contract to ISS. This suggests that Sierra Nevada plans to continue development of Dream Chaser, regardless of whether they get the contract or not.
The Obama administration’s culture of intimidation.
Sending scores of armed agents along with helicopters and dogs to confront an elderly Nevada rancher over grazing fees may seem like overkill, but critics say it’s not inconsistent with the federal government’s recent approach to environmental enforcement.
The simmering truce between the Bundys and the Bureau of Land Management comes after high-profile raids last year by armed federal agents on small-time gold miners in tiny Chicken, Alaska, and guitar makers at the Gibson Guitar facilities in Tennessee.
I should also note that this behavior is not exclusive to the Obama administration. Under Bush the federal government was playing these same games, though somewhat less aggressively.
Alaska is going to sue the Obama administration for blocking the construction of a 10 mile long road necessary to give people in a remote village access to emergency medical care.
The lack of a road has led to the deaths of 19 people. And why is the Obama administration allowing these people to die? Let me quote Interior Secretary Sally Jewell:
During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital. But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge. “She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” Democratic state Rep. Bob Herron told a local television station. “You could have heard a pin drop in that gymnasium.” [emphasis mine]
A trail of wreckage left behind by the BLM in Nevada.
The article describes how the BLM went out of its way to destroy property, well in excess to what was allowed by its court order. Such behavior does not serve to recommend this government agency, and helps to put them even more in the wrong morally.
This article does an excellent job of connecting the dots, both in terms of who and when, based on what we now know, from solid evidence. The author’s conclusion:
We now have a sitting Democrat congressman, Elijah Cummings, a sitting Democrat senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Federal Elections Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Internal Revenue Service all implicated in the scandal. Flax’s involvement puts the abuse squarely into the IRS commissioner’s office. But it takes an entity above all of those agencies to coordinate their actions. That entity can only be the White House.
Flax worked for the head of the IRS at the time, proving once again that this harassment was not instigated by “low-level employees in Cincinnati”, as claimed by Lois Lerner.
If only more liberals were this open-minded: What I learned as a liberal talking head on Fox.
Read it all. Her essay gives me hope. The key quote:
But if I want that viewpoint – and those who share it – to get more powerful, so that we can fix these systemic problems once and for all, then demonizing people who disagree with me won’t help. In fact, I need to persuade them. And no one will even listen to your argument, let alone agree with you, if they think you don’t like them.
If only the teachers at Brandeis and the fascists that got the CEO of Mozilla fired understood this.
