An evening pause: In honor of Rand Paul’s filibuster today, let’s watch Jimmy Stewart perform a movie filibuster from the (1939) movie, Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
As Mr. Smith says, “Somebody will listen to me.”
Rand Paul has begun a filibuster today in response to the suggestion by both Attorney General Eric Holder and CIA nominee John Brennan that the White House has the right to kill Americans on American soil.
As much as I and many others feel it is important to question, challenge, and be suspicious of government power, we mustn’t let those fears cloud our judgement. This article outlines some truths about the government’s purchase of ammo that will dissipate some of those fears.
A sunstone, used by mariners to judge the position of the Sun when it is cloudy, has been found at a 16th century shipwreck.
A previous study showed that calcite crystals reveal the patterns of polarized light around the sun and, therefore, could have been used to determine its position in the sky even on cloudy days. That led researchers to believe these crystals, which are commonly found in Iceland and other parts of Scandinavia, might have been the powerful “sunstones” referred to in Norse legends, but they had no archaeological evidence to support their hypothesis—until now.
For the past two years NASA and JPL have been under heavy hacker attack from China, according to NASA’s inspector general.
An evening pause: Man, can these people play and sing. Vocals: Michelle Wright, Iris DeMent, Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh. Fiddles: Jay Ungar, Aly Bain. Mandolin: Russ Barenberg. Bouzouki: Donal Lunny. Accordion: Phil Cunningham. Guitar: Molly Mason.
Irresponsible: An email from the Obama administration confirms their effort to make the sequester cuts as painful as possible, even if it isn’t necessary.
The competition heats up: Scaled Composites has done its first test firing of SpaceShipTwo’s engine.
No word yet on the test result, unfortunately.
Touching the underground ocean of Europa, from Earth.
The search to find and understand the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
Finding out what’s in it: The CEO of a major health insurance company warned that rates will likely go up 20% to 100% next year because of Obamacare.
Someone’s lying: One week before the sequester cuts took effect, the TSA issued a $50 million contract for new uniforms.
I find these quotes from the article most interesting:
The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA employee over the course of the year.
…
The TSA provides uniforms to new employees, but requires its employees to buy their own replacements. “You will be measured for your new uniforms at your first orientation session,” the fact sheet says. “TSA will provide your initial uniform issue consisting of 3 long sleeve shirts, 3 short sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of trousers, 2 ties, and one belt, sweater, socks, and jacket.”
$1,000 per uniform? And only for first time employees? At a time Janet Napolitano is claiming they will be forced to lay off workers because of sequestration? As I said, someone is lying. Or they are so incompetent words fail me.
Curiosity is easing out of safe mode as engineers switch computers.
Stating the obvious to the press: “Investigate them.”
It is that time again! Today, March 4, NOAA released its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle, covering the period of February 2013. As I do every month, I am posting this latest graph, with annotations to give it context, below the fold.
Once again, the Sun has shown a complete inability to produce sunspots, at the very moment it had been predicted to be rising towards its maximum in the sunspot cycle. The numbers in February plunged from the tepid rise we saw in January to below the crash we saw in December. Right now, when the Sun is supposed to peaking, it is instead producing sunspots in numbers as low as seen in 2011, at the very end of the last solar minimum.
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Finding out what’s in it: A new poll finds that support for Obamacare continues to drop.
The day of reckoning looms: The true national debt.
Depending on what you include, the number could be as high as $31 trillion, twice what is normally mentioned. Worse, I’ve read other reports that suggest that even this number is low.
But don’t worry! Homeland Security has got us covered with its new fleet of armored vehicles!
With friends like this, who needs enemies? Republican John Boehner, Speaker of the House, agrees to consider any gun control bill passed by the Senate.
Why do they need them? Homeland Security has purchased almost 3000 armored vehicles and has had them retrofitted for use on the American streets.
New research concludes that it was a static electric spark that set fire to the Hindenberg in 1937.
A newly discovered asteroid will pass within the Moon’s orbit on Wednesday.
2013EC, as the asteroid has been named, is estimated to be between 30 to 60 feet in diameter.
Another chance at killing Obamacare in the Supreme Court?
More reporters admit to being threatened by the White House.
What is shameful about this is how willing these reporters — some of whom are quite powerful — to tolerate this abusive, intolerant, and even oppressive behavior from this White House. Imagine if an official in the Bush White House had done the same? Would these same reporters have simply shrugged their shoulders and made believe it didn’t matter? Not on your life.
In other words, these mainstream reporters are nothing more than boot-licking lackeys for Obama and the Democratic Party. They will tolerate any abuse in order to support their liberal policies and to remain their friends.
An evening pause: Though I posted this as an evening pause back in September 2011, when I heard it again on the radio last week I thought, man, that song is good. Absolutely worthwhile seeing it again, performed live.
We are doomed, but not because of the sequester, but because of how meaningless it is compared to the scale of the debt.
Pushback: A major manufacturer of gun magazines says it will leave Colorado if the state legislature passes a law banning high capacity magazines.
This same stupid law, pushed by the Democrats, would also outlaw the most popular form of shotgun used by hunters. I wonder what those citizens might say about it.
The censoring of Google maps, by Google and governments.
This is a complex issue, described in great detail by the article. Very much worth reading.
Dragon has successfully berthed with ISS.
The naysayers will focus on the thruster problems on Friday. The yaysayers will focus on the fix and berthing today. The bottom line, however, is that this mission once again proves that SpaceX is a real player in the space business. Every other company has to match its achievements, most especially in price. The result will be the eventually lowering in the cost to low Earth orbit, which will then make all things possible.
And in fact, we are already seeing this, with the appearance of many new private companies or organizations, proposing all sorts of new space efforts, such as mining asteroids or sending people to Mars. The lower cost allows dreamers to consider their wild new ideas more doable. And they then go ahead and try to do it.
The competition heats up: After reviewing the results from the Antares hot fire on February 22, Orbital Sciences is now planning the first launch of the Antares rocket in April.
