Category: Points of Information

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

An Obamacare official deleted her emails in violation of federal law

1:50 pm

Ever get a feeling of deja-vu? The official in charge of the rollout of the failed Obamacare website regularly deleted her emails and will thus not be able to comply completely with House investigation subpoenas.

First, this is a lie. Just because she deleted them on her computer does not destroy the emails. Every IT guy in the world is probably laughing his head off at the blatant dishonesty being illustrated here. Second, isn’t it interesting how these Democratic Party politicos think it is their right to ignore the law. Third, isn’t this also typical of the Obama administration itself, the supposedly most transparent administration in history that has probably produced more scandals and coverups per man hour than any administration since Emperor Nero.

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Christians flee Islamic jihadists in northern Iraq

10:46 am

The religion of peace strikes again! Hundreds of thousands of Christians flee northern Iraq as Islamic State take over the region and jihadists tear down churches and destroy Christian manuscripts.

This analysis of the situation now in northern Iraq asks some pointed questions of President Barack Obama, who withdraw American troops from that country far sooner than any military or local expert advised.

This analysis explains why President Barack Obama seems so unconcerned about the fate of these Christian refugees. To use his words, this kind of violence and terrorism and genocide is just an example of these groups acting with “extraordinarily irresponsibly”.

I ask: When are the American people going to finally get tired of electing children to office and have the courage to elect an adult?

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Free gym memberships for Homeland Security desk jockeys

9:25 am

It’s good work if you can get it: Homeland Security is spending almost a half a million dollars to provide free gym memberships to bureaucrats in Washington.

TSA also announced more gym memberships for its employees in Phoenix.

What this tells us is that the Washington elite still consider the federal budget a blank check designed to make their lives wonderful, even as the rest of the general public struggles to make ends meet and federal government and the general economy goes bankrupt.

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Congress applies pressure to ULA and the Air Force

8:58 am

Two congressional committees are holding up approval of a budget revision for the Air Force’s launch program because of concerns about cost overruns and the program’s dependency on a Russian rocket engine.

Such requests must be approved by each of the four congressional defense committees, and so far, the EELV proposal has won the support of only two. The Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee and the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee have green-lighted the plan, while the House and Senate Armed Services committees have deferred approval, according to budget documents dated July 25 and July 31, obtained by Defense News.

[The Senate Armed Services Committee] (SASC) asked the Air Force to draw up a plan, by Sept. 30, “that leads to the production of a liquid rocket engine by 2019,” according to one of the documents, sent to Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord by SASC Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Meanwhile, others legislators are questioning the program’s cost overruns. Though only hinted at in the article, this hold up is also related to SpaceX’s demand that the bidding for Air Force launches be opened up to competition.

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Comet 67P on the day of rendezvous

8:39 am

67P/C-G on August 6

The image above was taken at a distance of 60 miles by Rosetta’s navigation camera on August 6, the day the spacecraft rendezvoused and began flying in tandem with it. It looks at the “backside” of the comet, the side where the distinction between its two components is less pronounced. Once again, no obvious craters, and the surface is pockmarked and corroded.

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China to build a new canal in Central America

10:49 pm

The competition heats up: With approval from Nicaragua, China has inched closer to beginning construction of a new canal that would connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

A month ago, a Nicaraguan committee approved Chinese billionaire Wang Jing’s project to create The Nicaraguan Canal. With a planned capacity to accommodate ships with loaded displacement of 400,000 tons (notably bigger than The Panama Canal), the proposed 278-kilometer-long canal that will run across the Nicaragua isthmus would probably change the landscape of the world’s maritime trade.

“The project is the largest infrastructure project ever in the history of man in terms of engineering difficulty, investment scale, workload and its global impact,” Wang told reporters, adding that with regard the project’s financing, which is around $50 billion, Wang seems quite confident, “If you can deliver, you will find all the world’s money at your disposal.”

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The VA pattern of lies

9:37 pm

Let me count the ways: VA officials have lied to Congress repeatedly in connection with multiple different investigations in a variety of different states and administrations.

The most egregious example for was the last item of the story above, where VA officials repeatedly told Congress that the employees who had falsified records to cover up long patient wait times had been fired, when in truth no one had been fired at all.

As I like to say, the VA is a perfect example of what government healthcare will be like. And it is coming soon to a hospital and doctor near you!

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An Hamas officer, captured by Israel, admits he led the kidnapping and murder operation of three Israeli teenagers

7:35 pm

Israel has captured the man who was in charge of the operation that kidnapped and then murdered three Israeli teenagers, who also admits that (surprise!) he is a squad commander for Hamas in Gaza.

So, let’s get this straight. Hamas organizes the killing of Israeli children. Hamas launches rockets from schools so that Arab children are endangered. Hamas also prevents Gaza citizens and their families from seeking safety during war. And Hamas also calls for the genocide of all Jews, women and children included.

But Israel is the one condemned for committing war crimes? As Thomas Sowell recently noted, “In an age when scientists are creating artificial intelligence, too many of our educational institutions seem to be creating artificial stupidity.”

Even the most superficial but honest observer of the Gaza War would have conclude that Hamas is just one step removed from a child abuser. And since when do we as civilized people lend aid and comfort to child abusers?

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Obamacare poll numbers crash

9:56 am

Finding out what’s in it: New polls show that the more the public becomes familiar with Obamacare, the more they hate it.

Hey, what’s not to like? Obamacare gives you higher premiums, less availability of doctors, less insurance coverage, more bureaucracy, more paperwork, and — best of all! — increased government interference in your life.

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Eta Carinae’s next big show

9:22 am

Astronomers are gearing up to observe the next binary fly-by of Eta Carinae’s companion star over the next few weeks.

A binary system, η Carinae has two stars that swing past one another every 5.5 years. The bigger star — some 90 times the mass of the Sun — is incredibly unstable, always seemingly on the verge of blowing up. When the smaller companion star makes its closest approach to the primary star, as is happening now, the interaction between the two triggers violent changes in the high-energy radiation pouring out of the system.

Astronomers are watching the show in the hope of learning what drives this enigmatic system. In the 1840s, η Carinae had a mysterious eruption; in recent decades, it has again brightened unexpectedly. “The star is in an awfully deranged state, and no one knows why,” says Kris Davidson, an astronomer at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Eta Carinae is also famous because it was one of the first objects imaged by Hubble after its repair in 1993, and was thus the first stellar explosion ever caught on camera in a visually sharp and clear manner. (See my book The Universe in a Mirror for that fascinating story.)

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Comet 67P/C-G at 126 miles

8:57 am

Comet 67P/C-G at 126 miles

The image above was taken by Rosetta on August 4 from only 126 miles (234 kilometers). Unlike earlier images, this image is raw, uncropped and unprocessed. All I have done is rescale it to fit on my webpage. As they explain at the link,

As you can see, the comet is not centred in the full-frame image. This is a result of the rendezvous burn conducted the previous day, which adjusted Rosetta’s trajectory towards the comet. This effect is corrected for in the commands sent to the spacecraft after the new orbit has been determined.

The science team also notes that beginning tomorrow, the comet will be close enough that they will no longer have to provide a cropped close-up using the navigation camera and that this uncropped raw version will be sufficient.

Rendezvous and orbital insertion on Wednesday!

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An exoplanet that was once like a star

8:43 am

Astronomers, using WISE data, have discovered a strange exoplanet that is now as cool as a rocky planet, but was once as hot as a red dwarf star.

The current temperature of the object is 100-150 degrees Celsius, intermediate between that of the Earth and Venus. But the object shows evidence of a possible ancient origin, implying that a large change in temperature has taken place. In the past this object would have been as hot as a star for many millions of years.

Called WISE J0304-2705, the object is a member of the recently established “Y dwarf” class – the coolest stellar temperature class yet defined, added to the end of the sequence OBAFGKMLT (for historical reasons this is not in alphabetical order but follows a decline in temperature from O to T). Although its temperature is not far off that of our own world, the object is not like the rocky Earth-like planets and instead is a giant ball of gas like Jupiter.

As cool as this discovery is (no pun intended), I am most enlightened by the information in the second paragraph above. I had not realized that astronomers had added L, T, and Y classes to the low temperature end of their stellar classification system. For those new to astronomy, you remember the sequence of the first seven classes with the phrase “O Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me”. I wonder what how we can amend this phrase to include the L, T, Y, classes?

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U.S./Russian owned launch company ILS cuts workforce by 25%

7:44 pm

The competition heats up: Business loses because of its recent Proton launch failures, combined with strong market competition from SpaceX, today forced International Launch Services (ILS) to cut its work force by 25%.

The company is anticipating a launch rate drop from an average of 7 to 8 missions a year down to 3 to 4. The article also noted one more additional detail that will affect the future market value of Proton:

So far in 2014, the commercial satellites ordered have been mainly at the lighter end of the market for geostationary-orbiting telecommunications spacecraft. This follows a couple of years in which heavier satellites dominated.

Commercial Proton rockets are typically used to launch heavier satellites one at a time. The market’s move to lighter spacecraft has benefited Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of Hawthorne, California, whose Falcon 9 rocket has accumulated commercial orders; and also benefited Arianespace, whose Ariane 5 heavy-lift vehicle’s lower position is reserved for smaller satellites.

The weight of commercial satellites is almost certainly going to continue to drop in the coming years as technology improves and satellite companies work to reduce the cost to launch. In that climate, the Proton’s ability to put big commercial payloads into orbit will become a liability, not an asset. Ariane 5 has the same problem, in that it still needs a big payload for its upper position in order to make a launch cost effective.

Both Falcon 9, with its very low launch costs, and Russia’s new Angara rocket, with its modular design to handle all kinds of payload sizes, are better suited to this new competitive market.

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An Amtrak train abandons all of its passengers

6:18 pm

Government-run transportation: An Amtrak high-speed train left New York City this weekend without its passengers, who were instead waiting to board on a different platform where railroad employees had sent them.

“They literally sent us to the wrong platform, and the conductor took off without any passengers,” Damien Miano, a stranded passenger told The Daily News. “The right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. It’s just so bizarre.”

Amtrak might make believe that it is a private company, but it has been a government entity for decades. Like the post office, it has no real incentive to make a profit and operate efficiently since all losses get covered by the federal government.

Coming soon to a hospital near you!

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Hamas propaganda becomes Israeli comedy

6:07 pm

At the start of the Gaza war four weeks ago Hamas released a propaganda music video calling for the destruction of Israel and for Palestinians to “exterminate the roaches.”

The problem was that the video was in Hebrew, not Arabic, and Israelis have found it hilarious and have made it a summer music sensation!

Surprisingly, though, Israelis found the tune of “Attack! Carry Out Terror Strikes” extremely catchy. Making it even more fun was the flowery Hebrew, dotted with nonexistent words sung in a heavy Arab accent, all of which led to the song’s becoming a summer hit. It has since spawned numerous covers and tributes.

Videos at the link. I especially like the Smurf version.

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The library that tried to ban conservative news researchers backs down.

10:33 am

Victory for free speech: The University of Arkansas has backed down from its attempt to ban a news research team because it was using that research to publish articles critical of Hillary Clinton.

The University of Arkansas library has backed down from its decision to block the Washington Free Beacon from accessing its special collections archives following a month-long public uproar. The library suspended the Free Beacon’s research privileges in June after the outlet published a story based on audiotapes from university archives that included Hillary Clinton discussing her 1975 defense of a child rapist.

The article clearly documents that the university was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, trying to impose the ban for political reasons.

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Scientists struggle with earthquake data in the Pacific northwest

10:08 am

The uncertainty of science: A second look at cores drilled in the Pacific northwest has raised doubts about the previous conclusions that the region faces the threat of megaquakes every few centuries.

The bottom line is that though geologists are very confident the northwest faces the threat of future quakes, they can’t yet predict with any confidence their rate or intensity.

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