Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Lois Lerner, who is at the center of the IRS scandal, is now retiring from the IRS.
It is good she is out of the IRS, but she better not think this will get her off the hook.
The strange and alien plant life of Socotra Island.
The global warming scientists at the IPCC struggle to explain the lack of warming.
Though scientists don’t have any firm answers, they do have multiple theories. Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.
The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn’t enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said. [emphasis mine]
This theory, that the oceans are absorbing all the heat, is one of the new favorite explanations for the lack of warming by advocates of global warming. However, as this article correctly notes, we have no good data to support it, and even fewer theories to explain it.
The truth is really summed up by the article’s last paragraph:
“This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don’t understand things as well as we thought,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder and vocal critic of the climate change establishment. “Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It’s in spin management mode.”
Finding out what’s in it: Obamacare will increase health costs by an average of $7,450 per year for a typical family of four.
But don’t worry. President Obama and the Democratic Party are quite willing to shut down the federal government in order to guarantee that this law is funded and goes into effect!
Leftwing civility: A medical school official urges denial of all medical care for all “Obamacare nonbelievers”.
The article also describes the growing list of other recent and vicious rants by leftists, including the communications director of the Democratic Party in Sacramento, all wishing harm on those who disagree with them. As the author rightly notes, now that the incivility is aimed at conservatives, Obama’s “pious talk about civility in the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is down the memory hole.”
Some good advice for the Republican Party: “In life and as in the game of football, you can never win the victory if you choose to punt every time you touch the ball.”
More good advice here: 2013 is not 1995.
Because of the scheduled arrival of a Soyuz manned capsule to ISS on Wednesday, NASA and Orbital Sciences have decided to delay Cygnus’s rendezvous and berthing until Saturday.
As far as I can tell, the software glitch and the delay are relatively minor issues, being handled with due care and caution, and will not prevent the eventual docking. More important, they are not serious enough to require any major design changes to Cygnus, which means the freighter will be able to begin operational flights soon after this demo flight is completed.
A software conflict today forced Orbital Sciences to delay the rendezvous of Cygnus with ISS to Tuesday.
Which has been the same scandal in Newtown, in Aurora, in Ft. Hood, and in practically every recent mass shooting.
And it has nothing to do with guns.
Not finding out what’s in it: Only two weeks before Obamacare goes into effect, the law’s health exchanges can’t figure out what people will have to pay for coverage.
It appears the software for determining premiums doesn’t work. But don’t worry, the Democrats voted to fund this turkey today!
The Republican battle plan for defunding Obamacare while keeping the government operating.
What makes me skeptical is their fear of having the government shut down, a fear that somehow does not worry the Democrats. While Obama and the Democrats are quite willing to shut everything down to save Obamacare, the Republicans don’t seem to have the same courage. Under these circumstances, they will likely lose the battle.
And why is it that everyone assumes the Republicans will be blamed for the shutdown when they seem to be the ones most interested in avoiding it?
Update: The House has now voted to defund Obamacare but fund the goverment.
Note that the Democrats in the House have once again voted in support of Obamacare, a law that is very clearly destroying the health insurance business.
SpaceX will delay its planned December launch of Dragon to ISS in order to complete upgrades to the capsule.
It was already expected that this December launch would be delayed anyway because NASA wants SpaceX to complete two launches of the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket before using it to launch Dragon to ISS.
The competition heats up: The Russians have now rescheduled for September 30 the next Proton rocket launch.
The Russian Proton rocket’s return to flight following its spectacular July 2 failure has been rescheduled for Sept. 30 following a review of a first-stage valve issue and discussions between the Russian and Kazakh governments over launch safety issues.
They claim the main reason for the delay was the issues of clean-up following the July 2 launch crash, but that “first-stage valve issue” intrigues me. They have been very closed-mouth about it, yet it very clearly existed.
The Senate has passed a bill to allow the continued sale of the government’s stockpile of helium, but this time at market prices.
The House has already passed a similar bill. The two sides of Congress now have to come to agreement. If they don’t, come October sales cease and the supplies dry up.
A lot of famous people have bought tickets to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo but not William Shatner: He’s apparently afraid of flying!
That’s according to Richard Branson. Shatner says instead that it’s the price of the ticket. “He wanted me to go up and pay for it and I said, ‘Hey, you pay me and I’ll go. I’ll risk my life for a large sum of money’. But he didn’t pick me up on my offer.”
Flying in formation: Engineers have pushed the four orbiting Cluster satellites into their closest configuration yet.
In an orbital reconfiguration that will help to maintain the mission’s life span, two of the four satellites achieved their closest-ever separation on 19 September, closing to within just 4 km of each other as they orbited at up to 23 000 km/h high above Earth. “We’re optimising the Cluster formation so that the separation between Cluster 1 and the duo of Cluster 3 and 4 – which are on almost identical orbits – is kept below 100 km when the formation crosses Earth’s magnetic equator,” says Detlef Sieg, working on Cluster flight dynamics at ESA’s ESOC operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
This close formation will provide scientists better data, as they are finding that the Earth’s magnetosphere is far more complex than expected.
The competition heats up: Boeing has successfully completed a series of thruster tests for its CST-100 manned capsule.
Check out this detailed overview of the upcoming launch of SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9, including yesterday’s static fire test.
Orbital Sciences has now posted a detailed outline of Cygnus’s flight schedule for the next few days.
It appears the spacecraft continues to do well as it continues its tests prior to approaching ISS.
NASA has officially ended the Deep Impact mission.
