Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

“How I Went from Trump Curious to Anti-Trump.”

2:59 pm

Link here. The essay describes how the author started out somewhat supportive and intrigued positively by Trump, and has ended up opposing him. Key quote:

You can read Trump in two different ways. You can see his bluster and lack of any policy knowledge as refreshing. You can see his hyperpersonal style and enormous ego as somehow “authentic.”

On the other hand, you can see a guy who’s entire life is devoted to persuading people to get into business with him. A salesman, trying to make a sale. And you can start to see that the salesman really has no interest in his actual product, and no real intent to abide by the terms of the contract. A salesman who is just willing to say whatever he needs you to say to sign the dotted line — and who will decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to abide by those contract terms, should they become inconvenient later.

The thing is, while I can’t make anyone see this way, I can tell you I went from being a Type 1 person to a Type 2 person. I would waver between these views of Trump, but then eventually I was won to the Type 2 way of seeing things, and now that I see it, I can’t not see it. [emphasis in original]

The essay describes exactly what I expect a majority of Americans will go through should Donald Trump get the Republican nomination for president. In the end, a majority will become anti-Trump, and he will lose.

16 comments

Multicultural Student Government approved at Kansas University

12:01 pm

The coming dark age: The student senate at Kansas University has voted to create a “Multicultural Student Government” operating in parallel to the already existing student government.

The KU Student Senate voted on allocating a list of required student fees for the upcoming school year, including a $2 fee increase to fund the newly created Multicultural Student Government. The fee would generate about $90,000 annually and be disseminated through KU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs.

While many senators agreed with the concept of the new governing body, others expressed concern that more detailed logistics had yet to be established and shared because the group was so new.

The last sentence refers to the big question that these genius students did not address: How will the elected officials of this racially-based multicultural government be chosen? Will there be racial quotas? Will whites be denied the right to run?

In the end, this is really just a power play by the bigots in the minority community. They not only have gotten themselves their own legislature (which can force the general legislature to do as it bids), those elected to it will get a stipend of $6,000 per year.

In related news, freshmen enrollment is down 20% at the University of Missouri, home of racial protests last year that got the head of the university fired. Also, existing students are fleeing the school in large numbers. The result: a budget shortfall of $32 million.

Leave a comment

Violence against reporter and protesters at Trump events

11:45 am

Link here. The article is focused on a protester getting punched at a rally yesterday but it also includes details of other similar events, as well as the story of Trump’s campaign manager physically manhandling a reporter for asking a question.

I realize that people are angry, both the Trump supporters and the protesters at his rallies. Nonetheless, the worst thing we can do is become violent over these disagreements, as that violence will do nothing to solve our problems. Instead, it will likely make them worse.

One more point however: So far it appears that this violence has only occurred at Trump events. Worse, Trump himself has sometimes encouraged his supporters to treat protesters roughly. From my perspective, it is exactly this behavior by him that will work against Trump in the general election. Americans will not take kindly to it, and he will be damaged by it.

9 comments

XCOR wins Vulcan engine design contract

10:05 am

The competition heats up: ULA has awarded XCOR a design contract for building an upper stage rocket engine for the Vulcan rocket.

This is good news for XCOR, though there is one important caveat: A close reading of the press release at the link shows that the contract does not guarantee that ULA will use this engine in Vulcan. XCOR must deliver, and ULA must be satisfied with what they produce.

Leave a comment

More details about China’s space station, planned for launch in 2020

10:00 am

The competition heats up: The chief designer of China’s human space program revealed more details today about their planned space station in talking with reporters at China’s on-going parliamentary sessions.

Zhou Jianping, speaking to state media on the sidelines of China’s ongoing parliamentary sessions, explained that the project will include three modules, two 30m solar panel ‘wings’, two robotic arms and a telescope dubbed ‘China’s Hubble’. Zhou, who is a member of China’s top consultative body currently in session in Beijing, said the space station will comprise of a core module and two labs forming a T-shape, each weighing about 20 tons.

The core module is scheduled to be launched in 2018, by the new heavy lift Long March 5 rocket, which will make its maiden flight in September and be capable of lifting 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit.

“China’s Hubble” will be a module flying near the station so that if it needs maintenance the station astronauts will be able to do the work.

Leave a comment

India launches sixth GPS satellite

9:51 am

The competition heats up: India has successfully launched the sixth satellite in its own GPS constellation. using its PSLV rocket.

They will complete the GPS constellation with a seventh satellite launch in April. The system however is already functioning, as it only needs a minimum of four satellites to work. Unlike the U.S. 24 satellite system, which is designed to be global, India’s system is regional with its focus centered over India itself. This is why they do not need as many satellites for it to function effectively.

Leave a comment

Another Falcon Heavy customer switches to different rocket

2:15 am

The competition heats up: Afraid of more delays in SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, Inmarsat has booked a Russian Proton rocket for a 2017 commercial satellite launch.

London-based Inmarsat is the second Falcon Heavy commercial customer to have sought a Plan B given the continued uncertainties in the launch schedule of Falcon Heavy, whose inaugural flight has been repeatedly delayed. Carlsbad, California-based ViaSat Inc. in February moved its ViaSat-2 consumer broadband satellite from the Falcon Heavy to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket for an April 2017 launch, securing what may be launch-service provider Arianespace’s last 2017 slot for a heavy satellite.

3 comments

ExoMars ready for launch

2:07 am

The European ExoMars Mars orbiter and lander mission, set for launch on March 14, is assembled on its Proton rocket and is ready for launch.

This European project was originally going to be in partnership with NASA, but the Obama administration pulled out of the deal. The Russians then offered to come in and provide a rocket for the mission.

One comment

Iran tests ballistic missiles

1:00 pm

Does this make you feel safer? Iran today completed two more ballistic missile tests, with rockets capable of reaching Isreal that were supposedly marked in Hebrew with the phrase, “Israel must be wiped off the Earth.”

The firings took place on the second and final day of a large-scale military drill, which marked the first time Tehran has fired ballistic missiles since signing a deal with world powers on its nuclear program in July.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the tests did not violate the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but were very likely in breach of a U.N. resolution calling on Iran not to undertake ballistic missile activity. U.S. officials threatened Tuesday to raise the issue at the Security Council.

Well, I am so glad these tests didn’t violate the Obama Iran deal. That makes me feel so much better.

4 comments

College student faces charges for expressing conservative opinions

9:35 am

The coming dark age: A student senator at the University of Southern California (USC) faces removal from office merely because he is a conservative.

The complaint against him cites three charges, all absurd. The best however is this one:

The third violation Ellenhorn is accused of also concerns a Campus Reform article, but in this case, he is charged with failing to secure permission before filming the “Consent Carnival” that was held on campus in January by several student groups. The complaint specifies that university rules require approval “for any filming required as part of an event (including footage for use on YouTube, Facebook, and other online platforms).”

In other words, according to the fascist making the charges, no one is allowed to film anything on this so-called college campus without first obtaining permission first from school authorities. Such a charge demonstrates that this fascist has a complete lack of understanding of the concept of freedom, or the first amendment.

6 comments

Want to discover gravitational waves? You can!

9:04 am

The citizen science project, Einstein@home, will begin providing its participants data from the upgraded LIGO gravitational wave detector beginning March 9.

Rather than looking for dramatic sources of gravitational waves, such as the black-hole merger that LIGO detected on 14 September, Einstein@home looks for quieter, slow-burn signals that might be emitted by fast-spinning objects such as some neutron stars. These remnants of supernova explosions are some of the least well understood objects in astrophysics: such searches could help to reveal their nature.

Because they produce a weaker signal than mergers, rotating sources require more computational power to detect. This makes them well-suited to a distributed search. “Einstein@home is used for the deepest searches, the ones that are computationally most demanding,” Papa says. The hope is to extract the weak signals from the background noise by observing for long stretches of time. “The beauty of a continuous signal is that the signal is always there,” she says.

To participate all you have to do is let their software become your screensaver, doing its work whenever you walk away from your computer.

Leave a comment

Jeff Bezos gives a tour of Blue Origin

8:56 am

The competition heats up: Jeff Bezos gave his first tour of Blue Origin’s facilities for eleven journalists on Tuesday.

The article is chock full of interesting details about the company’s plans. To me these details about their New Shepard test program are the most interesting:

“We’re going to fly it until we lose it,” he said. The plan is to test the spaceship many, many times without humans aboard. At some point, Blue Origin will run a test in which the crew capsule will have to blast itself clear from the propulsion module at maximum dynamic pressure – a scenario during which the propulsion module will almost certainly be destroyed.

Not to worry, though: More crew capsules and propulsion modules are already under construction at the factory. “By the time anybody gets on, I think you should be willing to bring your mom,” Bezos said.

They also hope that this test program will proceed to launching humans by 2017.

7 comments

Second solo Ariane 5 launch in 2016

8:46 am

The competition heats up: In successfully placing a commercial communications satellite in orbit last night, Arianespace also did its second consecutive single satellite launch.

The Ariane 5 rocket is designed to carry two satellites, and normally does so in order to maximize its profit per launch. That they have done two straight commercial launches without a second satellite suggests to me that the competition from SpaceX is taking customers from them. The scheduling of the secondary payload usually suffers because priority is given to the primary satellite. Those customers thus might be switching to SpaceX in the hope they can gain better control over their own launch schedule, while also paying far less for their launch.

Then again, considering how unreliable SpaceX’s own launch schedule has been, it is unlikely these customers will have yet gained any scheduling advantages.

One comment

NASA reschedules rather than cancels InSight

8:29 am

Forced to delay its launch because its primary instrument, built by the French, would not be ready for its 2016 launch, NASA has decided to go on with the InSight Mars mission, rescheduling it for a May 2018 launch, rather than cancelling it outright.

The seismometer, built by the French space agency CNES, will be repaired in time to make the 2018 launch window, said Jim Green, the head of NASA’s planetary sciences division in Washington DC. “That’s terrific news,” he told a planetary sciences advisory panel on 9 March. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will assume responsibility for building a new vacuum enclosure for the seismometer.

The last sentence above suggests that NASA has decided to take certain responsibilities from the French to make sure they get done right. It also means that the cost will be born by the NASA’s planetary program, cutting into other possible future missions.

Leave a comment

Ceres’s big mountain

10:26 pm

Ahuna Mons on Ceres

The Dawn science team has released an oblique angle image of Ceres’s big mountain, Ahuna Mons. I have cropped and reduced it above to show it here.

Despite looking almost toylike in this image, the mountain is quite monstrous, especially considering Ceres’s relatively small size.

This mountain is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) high on its steepest side. Its average overall height is 2.5 miles (4 kilometers). These figures are slightly lower than what scientists estimated from Dawn’s higher orbits because researchers now have a better sense of Ceres’ topography.

Consider: Mount Everest is not quite six miles high, on a planet with a diameter about 7926 miles across. Ceres however is only about 600 miles across at its widest, which means a 3 mile high mountain is 0.5% of Ceres’s entire width! Such a thing could only occur on such a small body, whose gravity is not quite great enough to force things into a completely spherical shape. It is for this reason it could be argued that Ceres doesn’t qualify as a dwarf planet, but would be better labeled a giant asteroid.

3 comments

On the road

10:04 pm

Sorry for the lack of posting today, or tomorrow. I am on a research trip in California and won’t be back home until late on Tuesday. Normally I would post along the way but cannot as I am doing all the driving, and when I am in the National Archives research room in California there is no time.

2 comments

Dawn’s chief engineer reviews the mission

8:45 am

In a long and very detailed post, the chief engineer and mission director of Dawn gives us a very detailed update on the successful state of the spacecraft’s mission.

Not only does he describe what has been gathered at Ceres since the spacecraft arrived a year ago, he gives us this crucial information about the state of this paradigm-shattering ion engine spacecraft, the first to travel to two different objects in the solar system:

Dawn has faced many challenges in its unique voyage in the forbidding depths of space, but it has surmounted all of them. It has even overcome the dire threat posed by the loss of two reaction wheels (the second failure occurring in orbit around Vesta 3.5 years and 1.3 billion miles, or 2.0 billion kilometers, ago). With only two operable reaction wheels (and those no longer trustworthy), the ship’s remaining lifetime is very limited.

A year ago, the team couldn’t count on Dawn even having enough hydrazine to last beyond next month. But the creative methods of conserving that precious resource have proved to be quite efficacious, and the reliable explorer still has enough hydrazine to continue to return bonus data for a while longer. Now it seems highly likely that the spacecraft will keep functioning through the scheduled end of its primary mission on June 30, 2016.

NASA may choose to continue the mission even after that. Such decisions are difficult, as there is literally an entire universe full of interesting subjects to study, but resources are more limited. In any case, even if NASA extended the mission, and even if the two wheels operated without faltering, and even if the intensive campaign of investigating Ceres executed flawlessly, losing not an ounce (or even a gram) of hydrazine to the kinds of glitches that can occur in such a complex undertaking, the hydrazine would be exhausted early in 2017. Clearly an earlier termination remains quite possible.

Dawn has proven the value of ion engines. I would expect to see them used many more times in the future, especially missions heading to low gravity environments.

5 comments

A Ted Cruz surge tonight

10:09 pm

As predicted a few days ago, Ted Cruz surged against Donald Trump in tonight’s four closed primaries.

Though each won two primaries, the numbers gave Cruz the win over Trump in delegates, 69 to 44 (the numbers now adjusted after all the votes have been tallied). Moreover, as noted at the link, Trump’s voting totals remain flat or have declined, while Cruz’s have been rising steadily. It appears that among Republicans either the love affair with Trump is fading, or there never was one and that his support in the previous open primaries came from cross-over Democrats..

In addition, the numbers for both Kasich and Rubio are going nowhere, which means voting for them in future primaries will essentially give Trump an undeserved win. Thus, expect the movement from them to Cruz to increase.

More here, confirming my analysis above.

99 comments

Clouds on Pluto?

8:05 pm

A report from New Scientist today claims that the New Horizons science team has possibly seen individual clouds in some images.

Grundy had spotted features in the haze on the edge – or “limb” – of Pluto that seemed to stand out from the distinct layers. But more intriguingly, he had also seen a bright feature crossing different parts of the landscape, suggesting it was hovering above. The email kicked off a discussion as to whether the clouds were real, because it was difficult to see whether they cast shadows on the ground. The team also deliberated over the exact distinction between clouds and hazes. “One way to think of it is that clouds are discrete features, hazes widespread,” wrote Alan Stern, who heads up the New Horizons mission.

There has been no public mention of the clouds, suggesting that the team isn’t sure about the detection.

Leave a comment

Roscosmos approves space tourism project

8:01 pm

The competition heats up? Russia’s giant aerospace monopoly Roscosmos has given formal permission for the development of a suborbital space tourism project, proposed by the formally independent company, KosmoKurs.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos has admitted the private space company KosmoKurs to working out a project for the development of a reusable system for space tourism flights, KosmoKurs Director General Pavel Pushkin said on Friday. “Our technical design specification was approved by Roscosmos two days ago. The system’s preliminary design will be created with this document,” Pushkin said at the InSpace forum.

According to him, the technical design specification has also been approved by the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash) and the Keldysh Research Center. In addition, Pushkin said, Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov has already approved the project. “Igor Anatolyevich has taken the project with enthusiasm and gave orders to promote this project”, Pushkin said.

So, if I understand this right, this private company had to get approvals from Roscosmos’s bureaucracy, two other competitive groups within Roscosmos, plus the head of Roscosmos itself, before it would be allowed to proceed with building its independent suborbital operation. I wonder how many bribes KosmosKurs had to pay along the way. I also wonder what kind of quid pro quo deals that had to make in order get those other institutes to give their okay.

With Russia’s aerospace industry function under this kind of set-up, I doubt they are going to get much done in the coming decades.

17 comments

Trump begins to “evolve”

9:37 am

The betrayal begins: At the debate last night Donald Trump noted that he is already beginning to consider easing his hardline immigration stance.

In Detroit, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly pointed out that Trump’s campaign website has a strong statement against increasing the number of H-1Bs, saying it would “decimate American workers,” and yet in one debate Trump spoke favorably of the program. “So, which is it?” Kelly asked.

“I’m changing,” Trump said. “I’m changing. We need highly skilled people in this country, and if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in. But, and we do need in Silicon Valley, we absolutely have to have. So, we do need highly skilled,” Trump continued, “and one of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges. They’ll go to Harvard, they’ll go to Stanford, they’ll go to Wharton, as soon as they’re finished they’ll get shoved out. They want to stay in this country. They want to stay here desperately, they’re not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country.

“So you are abandoning the position on your website?” asked Kelly.

“I’m changing it,” Trump said, “and I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country.”

I’ve said from the beginning that Trump is not a reliable conservative, that his roots are liberal, even if they aren’t radical leftwing, and that once he gets in power he will be no different than either George Bush or even Bill Clinton.

Thus, I am not surprised that he “softening the position”. What surprises me is that he is revealing this now, even before he has gotten the Republican nomination. I wonder if anyone will really notice.

39 comments

Businessman found innocent of all charges after years of persecution by the Justice Department.

9:22 am

Our fascist government: A medical company and its head was pursued and persecuted for five years by the Department of Justice, based on a false accusation by a former employee, only to lose its case when it finally presented its case to a jury.

It all started when one of our salesmen became upset he didn’t receive a promotion. So he quit and filed a baseless complaint with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Antonio, alleging a multitude of offenses to try to justify a $20 million claim. Simply by hiring a lawyer and making wild accusations, this former employee with an ax to grind became entitled under the law to receive 20 percent of whatever money the government could “recover” from Vascular Solutions.

The government lawyers reviewed his allegations and chose to pursue just one. I offered to meet with them to correct their misinformation, but two days before that scheduled meeting, they called my lawyer and canceled it. And they never would reschedule. So before deciding to bring criminal charges, these prosecutors never heard my side of the story.

Instead, they subpoenaed over 2 million pages of our documents and interviewed over 60 customers and employees. In the process, they received evidence that conflicted with the story told by that money-motivated former employee. But instead of changing their conclusions to fit the evidence, these prosecutors engaged in obscene tactics to try to change the evidence.

In conversation with our lawyers, they called conflicting statements by witnesses “a line of sh*t.” They referred to one employee as “a poor f***er” who needed to return “on bended knee” to “fix” his testimony. They told a female employee to think about what would happen to her firstborn son if she were indicted because she refused to “cooperate.” And by “fix” and “cooperate,” I mean retract their prior testimony and support the government’s case.

Granted, this is written by the man whom the government was trying to prosecute. Still, I believe him, especially because of one key fact he outlines once they went to trial:

In the end, after I endured four weeks sitting in a San Antonio courtroom while still running Vascular Solutions in Minnesota, the jury rejected each and every allegation. And that was without hearing from any of our 20 witnesses, since we made the decision to rest immediately after the government finished its case. So the government’s own witnesses proved our innocence — simply stunning.

The company says it spent $25 million defending itself. It is now calling for an investigation and a firing of these Justice Department lawyers. How many of you expect the Obama administration to follow through with this? I don’t.

3 comments

Getting higher on Mount Sharp

9:03 am

Looking across Gale Crater

Cool image time! The above image, cropped and reduced slightly for presentation here, was taken by one of Curiosity’s navigation cameras on March 2. Though the science team has not captioned it, I think it is looking down from the heights that Curiosity has climbed and across the plains of Gale Crater to its rim in the far distance. The image itself appears to have been taken after the rover spent several days climbing up to what they have dubbed Naukluft Plateau.

Be sure to check out the full resolution image that can be found here.

Leave a comment

Methane ice on Pluto’s mountain peaks

8:34 am

New images from New Horizons of the dark Cthulhu region have revealed white-capped mountain peaks, thought to be methane ice.

Scientists think this bright material could be predominantly methane that has condensed as ice onto the peaks from Pluto’s atmosphere. “That this material coats only the upper slopes of the peaks suggests methane ice may act like water in Earth’s atmosphere, condensing as frost at high altitude,” said John Stansberry, a New Horizons science team member from Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland.

We as humans are attracted to features on other worlds that remind us of Earth, mainly because this allows us to quickly understand what we are seeing. It is important however to remind ourselves continually that Pluto is not Earth, and is in fact a very alien place. Many things we think we recognize are really very different than what we assume. For example, the methane ice here is coating mountains made of water ice that is as stable as granite in Pluto’s super cold environment.

One more thing: It appears that at this point, seven months after New Horizons flew past Pluto, they have still only downloaded less than half the data obtained. This is not a problem, as this is how things were planned, but it does mean that there are likely many more discoveries yet for us to see.

2 comments

Building a log cabin, alone

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This is the first part of a longer work. To quote the youtube webpage,

“Alone in the Wilderness” is the story of Dick Proenneke living in the Alaska wilderness. Dick filmed his adventures so he could show his relatives in the lower 48 states what life was like in Alaska, building his cabin, hunting for food and exploring the area. Bob Swerer has taken the best footage from Dick’s films and he has created 3 videos about Dick, “Alone in the Wilderness”, “Alaska, Silence and Solitude” and “The Frozen North”

I like this because it gives a good hint at what life was really like for the original mountain men who first explored the American west. They were resourceful, clever, strong-willed, and technologically very sophisticated. Dick Proenneke shows us how to do it again.

Hat tip Rocco.

2 comments
1 … 533 534 535 536 537 … 914