Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Finding out what’s not in it: “I can’t imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen.”
I can.
An analysis of the rotation of the peanut-shaped asteroid 25143 Itokawa suggests that its smaller end is actually far denser than its bigger end.
Previously, some researchers have proposed that Itokawa is actually two asteroids in contact with one another, a scenario strongly supported by the new results, the team contends. It’s not clear whether the odd configuration results from the merger of a two-asteroid system or merely clumps of material that fell back together after a larger asteroid was blasted apart by an immense collision.
The researchers also found that the asteroid’s rotation is actually increasing by 45 milliseconds per year.
Scientists have found that bumblebees have the capability of flying at altitudes higher than the top of Mount Everest.
In a study published today in Biology Letters, two zoologists, Michael Dillon, now at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and Robert Dudley of the University of California, Berkeley, tested whether bumblebees’ vertical range was limited by aerodynamics and physiology. Working in the mountains of Sichuan, China, the duo caught five male bumblebees (Bombus impetuosus) foraging at 3,250 meters and placed them in a plexiglas chamber. Once the bees began to fly upwards, the pressure inside the chamber was reduced using a hand pump to simulate altitude increases in 500-meter intervals. All five bees could hover at air pressures equivalent to elevations of 7,400 meters; three could fly above 8,000 meters; and two got to above 9,000 meters.
If you read the entire article, you will notice that it completely ignores the false urban legend that bumblebees are aerodynamically unsound and shouldn’t be able to fly. Scientists have known for decades that it is false, but for some reason it keeps getting repeated.
Archeologists excavate a 4,600 year old pyramid in Egypt.
Though its existence have been known, the pyramid has remained buried until now.
A close look at the spending bills introduced in Congress shows that of the 70 members who sponsored the largest number of spending bills, 65 were Democrats, four were Republicans and one an independent.
This puts the lie to the claim that there is no difference between the two parties.
Will Piers Morgan apologize for spreading a racist hoax?
I doubt it, but even if he does apologize (as has happened a lot at NBC recently), he won’t really mean it. When you are a hate-filled bigot, working at a hate-filled television network, apologizes don’t mean you’ve mended your ways, only that you are looking for cover so you can spread more hate.
Note also that Deval Patrick, Democratic governor of Massachusetts, also joined Morgan in spreading this lie.
Finding out what’s in it: A new report from the Congressional Budget Office has found that Obamacare will increase the deficit and slow the economy far more than originally predicted.
The non-partisan agency’s report found that the healthcare law’s negative effects on the economy will be “substantially larger” than what it had previously anticipated. The CBO is now estimating that the law will reduce labor force compensation by 1 percent from 2017 to 2024, twice the reduction it previously had projected. This will decrease the number of full-time equivalent jobs in 2021 by 2.3 million, CBO said. It had previously estimated the decrease would be 800,000.
Aren’t you glad the Democrats shut the government down in October to prevent any delay or changes to their law?
College students eagerly sign a petition to repeal the second amendment, confiscate all guns, and imprison all registered gun owners.
Video below the fold. Mark Dice even suggests a few times that we should execute all gun owners and these students hardly blink an eye.
» Read more
Jupiter’s shrinking Great Red Spot.
In the 1880s the GRS resembled a huge blimp gliding high above white crystalline clouds of ammonia and spanned 40,000 km (25, 000 miles) across. You couldn’t miss it even in those small brass refractors that were the standard amateur observing gear back in the day. Nearly one hundred years later in 1979, the Spot’s north-south extent has remained virtually unchanged, but it’s girth had shrunk to 25,000 km (15,535 miles) or just shy of two Earth diameters. Recent work done by expert astrophotographer Damian Peach using the WINJUPOS program to precisely measure the GRS in high resolution photos over the past 10 years indicates a continued steady shrinkage.
Lots more fascinating information at the link. Read it all.
The public battle between Virgin Galactic and the author of a new biography of Richard Branson that raises serious doubts about the company.
Bottom line: The facts still suggest strongly that the company is having serious problems with SpaceShipTwo’s engines.
Bolden and Mikulski hold a press conference to lobby for continuing funding for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Before JWST entered development, around the turn of the century, program officials projected it would cost $1 billion to $3.5 billion and launch between 2007 to 2011, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Jan. 8. Now, after lengthy delays [seven years] and billions in added costs [a real budget of $8.8 billion], JWST is entering its peak development years, in which major subsystems will be put together, tested, integrated with one another, and tested again. It will be, according to Bolden, one of the most difficult parts of JWST’s construction.
“This is our tough budget year,” Bolden said. It is also the most expensive, according to projections the White House released last April with its 2014 budget proposal. Bolden spoke to the press here after he and Mikulski, JWST’s biggest ally in Congress, held a town hall meeting at Goddard, the center in charge of building the massive infrared observatory. Both NASA employees and executives from some of JWST’s major industry contractors attended.
Mikulski told reporters that automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, which reduced NASA’s 2013 appropriation to about $16.9 billion, “resulted in furloughs, shutdowns, slowdowns [and] slamdown politics [which] are exactly what could derail or cause enormous cost overruns to the James Webb.”
I am especially entertained by the disasters Mikulski lists in the last paragraph, all of which she blames on sequestration. They are identical to the lies Democratic politicians like her told before sequestration took effect, none of which happened. That she now makes believe as if these disasters did happen and expects us to believe her new lies about the future illustrates how much in contempt she holds the general public. Does she really believe people are that stupid?
A fact to remember when Democrats make believe they oppose Obama in the coming election: Every Democratic senator up for re-election in 2014 voted with the president at least 90 percent of the time in 2013.
It also appears that Democrat support for Obama was higher when they controlled both houses of Congress, “prevailing on almost 97 percent of the votes in the two chambers on which [Obama] took a position in 2009 and almost 86 percent in 2010, when Democrats controlled both House and Senate.”
That was also when the Democrats shoved Obamacare down our throats.
A member of modern academia finally speaks truth: “We prefer to pretend that bad students don’t exist.”
He also admitted, in what I consider to be the understatement of the century, that “We think we’re too progressive.”
Finding out what’s in it: An Obama supporter discovers she was betrayed by Obama and Obamacare.
My plan was canceled last fall. According to the regulators behind ObamaCare, it was a subpar plan that should no longer be sold to consumers. Another 16,000 Tennesseans on the same plan were similarly dumped. Many, like me, liked their plans and wanted to keep them. This wasn’t my insurer’s fault at all. CoverTN actually fought for me to keep my health care. After I received my cancellation notice, the folks at CoverTN requested that the federal government give them a waiver, which would let them grandfather my plan into ObamaCare. Their request was rejected.
This left me with no health plan and only one choice: Buy a plan through the ObamaCare exchanges.
After weighing my options, I settled on a “platinum” plan. This was the best plan that I could choose. A “bronze,” “silver” or “gold” plan all would leave me paying exorbitant amounts of money on my frequent, and expensive, trips to doctors and specialists. But the platinum plan was the lesser of two expensive evils. My new plan costs me $373 a month, even after a small subsidy. By comparison, my old plan only cost me $57 a month. And I now pay 25 percent co-insurance on all doctor visits until I reach my out-of-pocket maximum of $1,500. This is much higher than under CoverTN.
All told, I’m likely going to pay more than $6,000 more each year for my medical care.
Just remember: Even as the insurance cancellation notices were going out last fall, the Democrats and Obama were refusing to negotiate any changes to Obamacare, even vowing to shut the government down rather than negotiate. They must really love this law and the things it is doing to innocent people like this woman.
The legs for Falcon 9’s first stage.
They might make their first flight on the next supply mission to ISS, now scheduled for no earlier than March 1.
It strikes me that, in addition to (if reports are true) grotesque ambition, Ms. Streep reflects a certain warped mindset that is all too prominent in the fashionable circles of our time. I am talking about a predisposition to believe that anything iconically American is corrupt.
The full essay is here.
I should also add that Ms. Streep’s coments also illustrate nicely the typical know-it-all ignorance of modern leftwing elite culture. She knows that Walt Disney was bigoted, without knowing a goddamn thing about him.
After resuming drilling in Seattle — and only going four feet — Bertha has been stopped again.
High temperatures near the machine’s cutting face prompted contractors to stop mining after the drill advanced a total of 4 feet in test runs Tuesday and Wednesday. And that ended Bertha’s attempt to resume mining after an eight-week layoff.
The earlier stoppage remains unexplained. They found some concrete chunks and steel pipe sections in the way, but nothing that could have explained why the drill was blocked. Now the high temperatures pose a more significant problem, as they suggest there is something technical wrong with the giant drill.
The Gibson Guitar Company gives the federal government the finger.
A couple of years ago, the Feds raided the Gibson factory here in Music City, SWAT-team style, and shut the whole company down, allegedly for possessing illegally imported wood. From what I gather, it had mostly to do with how the shipping containers were labeled. Anyway, it didn’t merit a commando operation.
It was a disproportionate action on dubious grounds. Gibson later settled for $300,000. But not until after it had already lost far more than that by virtue of being forced to shut down operations.
This week Gibson has announced the “Government Series” of guitars, to celebrate the end of its tussle with the eager enforcers of the U.S. Customs Department. It’s a series of guitars made, purportedly, with the very same wood that was seized by the United States government, which was later returned at the end of the fiasco.
Curiosity snaps a picture of its planned upcoming travel route.
A new harvest of vegetables in space!
Notice that this research is a partnership of the Russians and an American university. NASA is not included. When I wrote about this subject for Air & Space a few years ago, the American researcher explained that there was too much bureaucracy working with NASA. Moreover, the Russians were much more knowledgeable about crop research in space, as they had been doing it for decades already on their Salyut and Mir stations.
Obamacare marches on: Sick children in Washington state denied insurance coverage for specialty treatment at a children’s hospital.
And then there’s this: A woman with a brain tumor finds she can’t afford treatment any longer, partly because her fees are higher and partly because her employer has cut her hours to avoid Obamacare.
In many cases, people will begin to negotiate directly with their doctors and hospitals. In the long run, this is actually a good thing, as it gets rid of the middle-man insurance company, which shouldn’t really be involved for most routine treatments.
In the short run it is a disaster, however. And just because Obamacare is causing this shift is not a reason to think Obamacare is good. The law was specifically touted by Obama and the Democrats as a way to reduce costs and get everyone health insurance. We now know that was an outright lie, as the law is doing the exact opposite.
What life has been like for one engineer who works at SpaceX.
Key quote:
According to Pearce, the best and the worst things about working for Musk are actually the same. “He doesn’t feel the need to make reasonable requests,” Pearce says. “The whole idea of SpaceX is not reasonable. The idea that a dot-com millionaire could take [US] $100 million and start a rocket company that within 13 years would be taking supplies to the International Space Station, that’s on track to take crew to the International Space Station — that’s not reasonable.”
But SpaceX did it.
To reduce wheel damage engineers are considering sending Curiosity on an smoother route up Mount Sharp.
In addition, they are inspecting the wheels more often and are planning operations whereby not all six wheels are operating at the same time.
Finding out what’s in it: One in five enrollees in Obamacare are likely to have their policy canceled for not paying their premium.
And why have they not paid their premiums? “We figure either those people had a change of heart or thought it was too expensive.”
Wait until later this year, when the cancellation notices go out from small businesses. People will then be so happy the Democrats and Obama were willing to shut the government down in October to keep their law in place.
The competition heats up: The head of Russia’s space agency is in Vostochny to review the construction of Russia’s new spaceport there.
Finding out what’s in it: The dislike of Obamacare has risen, among the uninsured.
Weren’t the uninsured the group of people Obamacare was designed to specifically help? If their rejection of the law has risen, it provides more evidence of the law’s failure.
Which is no surprise to anyone willing to listen to any analysis of the law by any conservatives these past four years.
One NASA lunar orbiter snags an image of another NASA lunar orbiter.
No wonder they all vote Democrat: New Yorkers react to Obama’s State of the Union speech, before it happens.
The best question: “So, what did you think about Obama’s faking a heart attack at the end?” And the answer? Watch.
And yes, it is almost certain that every single one of the individuals in that video voted Democrat, as about 80 percent of Manhattan’s population voted for Obama in 2012.
McCarthyism of the left: A Christian song has been stripped of its Oscar nomination as a result of protests within the Hollywood community.
