Category: Behind The Black

A Dallas cop arrests a motorcyclist on a false made-up charge in order to confiscate his helmet camera.

10:23 am

A Dallas cop arrests a motorcyclist on a false made-up charge in order to confiscate his helmet camera. Video below the fold. The action starts at 2:45 and the arrest occurs at 6:30.

The sheriff’s department has begun an internal investigation. What investigation is needed? One look at this video should settle everything: This cop should be fired. As noted by a former Dallas prosecutor,

“Well, I think in this particular case, you did need a warrant to get that piece of evidence,” Toby Shook, a former Dallas prosecutor, told the station. He added later, “The Constitution wins out over frustration every time.”

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A human-powered helicopter was successfully flown for 50 seconds on June 21, setting a new world record.

9:31 am

A human-powered helicopter was successfully flown for 50 seconds on June 21, setting a new world record. Video below the fold.

This effort is an attempt to win the $250,000 AHS Sikorsky Prize, which requires a human-powered helicopter to fly for one minute at a height of three meters. The prize was first announced in 1980, and has remained unclaimed for the past 32 years.
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The second phase of NASA’s robotic refueling demo on ISS has successfully proven that a robot can remove a satellite fuel cap not designed for refueling.

9:19 am

The second phase of NASA’s robotic refueling demo on ISS has successfully proven that a robot can remove a satellite fuel cap not designed for refueling.

The fuel cap design is a duplicate of that used by several climate research satellites presently in orbit. These satellites were not designed to be refueled, but if they could be refueled, their usefulness in orbit could be doubled, even tripled. This test is intended to demonstrate that a robot could refuel them.

The last phase of this robotic demo will take place in August, when the robots will attempt to pump a simulated fuel into the demo satellite.

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Charting the relative economic strength of the world’s most powerful countries over the past 2000 years.

2:04 pm

Charting the relative economic strength of the world’s most powerful countries over the past 2000 years.

The article cites 1800 and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution as a key moment in this history. I would also note that 1800 is about the time that freedom and Adam Smith’s ideas of economic liberty took hold in both North American and Europe.

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NBC News struggles with significant ratings decline.

11:22 am

NBC News struggles with a significant ratings decline.

Beyond “Today,” which is down about 4 percent in total viewers and about 9 percent in that 25-54 age group, “NBC Nightly News” has declined about 11 percent among those 25-54. Its main rival, ABC’s “World News,” also is down about 8 percent. (CBS’s newscast is up 1 percent.) On Sundays, “Meet the Press” is still the most watched show, but its lead over the second place “Face the Nation” on CBS has shrunk to just 2 percent in total viewers, while “Nation” is now ahead in the 25-54 group. And NBC’s effort to start a newsmagazine, “Rock Center,” led by its chief anchor, Brian Williams, has been greeted with some of the lowest ratings in prime time.

The article cites “talent transitions, weakness in prime time and late night programming, and changes in consumer behaviors” as reasons for this decline. I suggest it might be a loss of creditability. When you fake the news, get caught, and then refuse to clean house, the audience will desert you for more trustworthy sources.

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The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

10:11 am

The Dodd-Frank downgrade.

What comes through in the Moody’s assessment [the credit-rating downgrade of 15 banks] and in any review of their returns on equity is that banks have lost significant ability to generate earnings to offset the inevitable losses. The lost earnings power is surely due in part to reduced leverage, which helps protects taxpayers.

But 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank and countless other federal efforts to put sand in the financial gears are also taking their toll. The Obama tax and regulatory frenzy, of which Dodd-Frank is a part, weighs on economic growth. Those are our words, not Moody’s, but the rating agency does note that the abysmal economic environment is a drag on ratings for everyone.

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NASA has delayed the first test flight of Orion’s launch abort system by two years to 2017.

9:08 am

NASA has delayed the first test flight of Orion’s launch abort system by two years to 2017.

NASA officials have been warning since last year that work on Orion would be slowed to keep pace with the development of SLS and its launch infrastructure. The agency has proposed trimming Orion’s $1.2 billion budget back to $1 billion for 2013. With the high-altitude abort test facing at least a budget-driven delay, the Langley team has proposed conducting one or more less-expensive tests in its place. Ortiz said conducting a hot-fire test in 2015 or 2016 would “keep the [launch abort system] project moving forward and help alleviate risk.”

I predict that Dragon will not only test its launch abort system first, it will have humans flying on it before Orion. And Dragon will do this for a fraction of the total cost that Orion and SLS spend per year. I also predict that when Dragon does this, Congress will finally begin noticing this disparity, and SLS will die unlaunched.

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Forbidden by the Forest Service from using powered equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.

7:30 pm

Forbidden by the Forest Service from using heavy equipment, a shovel brigade of 60 people last weekend made temporary repairs to Tombstone’s water line.

“It took 60 people two days to complete a work project that could have been done in two hours with the appropriate equipment,” Barnes said. “We have a lot more work that needs to be done up there, but we don’t have the permits from the forest service to go back.”

For reasons that only bureaucrats understand, the Forest Service decided that the use of heavy equipment like a bulldozer is more harmful to nature than 60 people with shovels, even though in the end the work done is exactly the same, and that this same work was done repeatedly in the past by heavy equipment.

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The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report.

3:37 pm

The IPCC has decided that it is too difficult to purge non-peer-reviewed envionmental activist press releases from its next report. Instead,

[A]ny information they choose to use will be considered peer reviewed just by being posted on the Internet by the IPCC.

In addition, the IPCC has decided “to impose gender and geographical quotas on IPCC membership,” rather than simple pick the best scientists.

And climate scientists wonder why the public no longer believes anything they say.

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The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013.

3:19 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The Social Security Trust Fund will start losing value in 2013, not 2020 as claimed.

In 2010, Social Security’s Office of the Chief Actuary projected that this interest income would keep the trust fund growing in real value through 2020. The 2011 projections moved this date to 2018, and the recently released 2012 projections pushed the date to 2012, meaning that the trust fund will start declining in real value next year. After 2013, the trust fund is projected to decline by greater amounts each year until becoming exhausted in 2033.

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An asteroid that was discovered only four days before it flew by the Earth on June 14 has turned out to be much bigger than first thought.

8:34 am

An asteroid that was discovered only four days before it flew by the Earth on June 14 has turned out to be much bigger than first thought.

This particular asteroid may not have been a danger, but much of the concern was rooted in the late warning of its detection — 2012 LZ1 was spotted only four days before closest approach. One of the reasons for its late discovery is because it was detected in Southern Hemisphere skies, part of the world were we have few asteroid-watching programs. If it had been on a collision course with Earth, a few days notice is no time at all.

So, in the aftermath of the flyby, astronomers at the famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used radar to image the interplanetary interloper (pictured top). What they uncovered was a surprise: Asteroid 2012 LZ1 is actually bigger than thought… in fact, it is quite a lot bigger. 2012 LZ1 is one kilometer wide (0.62 miles), double the initial estimate.

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A walk across the Brooklyn Bridge

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This is something every visitor to New York should try to do. The first time I did it was back in the mid-1970s during my college days. It was around 2 am in the morning when we started from Brooklyn. We crossed to Manhattan, had a meal at a 24 hour Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, then walked back, watching the sunrise over Brooklyn.

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New data from Antarctica suggests that the south pole icecap is not warming, as predicted by climate models.

12:53 pm

New data from Antarctica suggests that the south pole icecap is not melting, as predicted by climate models.

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass. The model results were in contrast to the available data from satellite observations, which are supported by the new measurements.

The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted, which means that the Fimbul Ice Shelf is melting at a slower rate. Perhaps indicating that the shelf is neither losing nor gaining mass at the moment because ice buildup from snowfall has kept up with the rate of mass loss, Hattermann said.

In other words, the climate models were wrong. When actual data was obtained, first by satellites and now from the water under the ice shelf itself, the new data found that the ice shelf is stable, not melting as predicted.

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Two exoplanets in a tight orbital dance.

12:31 pm

Two exoplanets in a tight orbital dance.

“These are the closest two planets to one another that have ever been found,” Agol said. “The bigger planet is pushing the smaller planet around more, so the smaller planet was harder to find.”

Orbiting a star in the Cygnus constellation referred to as Kepler-36a, the planets are designated Kepler-36b and Kepler-36c. Planet b is a rocky planet like Earth, though 4.5 times more massive and with a radius 1.5 times greater. Kepler-36c, which could be either gaseous like Jupiter or watery, is 8.1 times more massive than Earth and has a radius 3.7 times greater.

But wait, there’s more!

The fact that the two planets are so close to each other and exhibit specific orbital patterns allowed the scientists to make fairly precise estimates of each planet’s characteristics, based on their gravitational effects on each other and the resulting variations in the orbits. To date, this is the best-characterized system with small planets, the researchers said.

They believe the smaller planet is 30 percent iron, less than 1 percent atmospheric hydrogen and helium and probably no more than 15 percent water. The larger planet, on the other hand, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial amount of atmospheric hydrogen and helium.

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