Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Are your indoor tomato plants probable cause for an armed raid?
Yes, if it was up to most police departments and governments today.
Astronomers searching the WISE infrared data archive think they might find a Jupiter-sized planet lurking near the Oort Cloud.
Posting this weekend is light because I am attending a class here in Tucson on cave rescue. Today, Saturday, was a mostly in class session going over the basics, most of which I am very familiar with from many years of experience. We did spend ninety minutes learning how to carry people around in a sked or sled, two different types of equipment used to carry a patient through difficult cave passage. In this case the terrain was simulated by going up, over, under, and around scaffolding and vehicles inside a garage. Lots of fun.
On Sunday we will be doing a mock rescue, whereby we will arrive at a cave entrance where we will have to locate the patient in the cave and get that person out of the cave safely. Should be most interesting.
Pushback: A boycott of Colorado because of its new gun restrictions appears to building among hunters.
Coming to America: What it feels like to have your life savings stolen by the global elite.
The collapse of household income since 2009.
A comparison of the graph in the article above with the changing federal debt (both graphs below the fold) is quite revealing. The steep drop in household income in 2009 lines up precisely with the steep rise in federal deficits beginning in 2009. I wonder if they have anything to do with each other? The article also notes the possible negative impact of Obamacare. How could they think such a thing?
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Canada to the UN environmental movement: “We’re just not interested in continuing to support bureaucracies and talkfests.”
The country has pulled out of a UN program supposedly aimed at “combating desertification,” noting that
only 18% of the roughly CAD$350,000 per year that Canada contributed to the U.N. initiative is “actually spent on programming,” [Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper] told Parliament this week during question period. “The rest goes to various bureaucratic measures. … It’s not an effective way to spend taxpayers’ money.”
As is their normal approach to debate, there is a lot of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and name-calling among the environmentalists, but no substantive response to counter Harper’s point above.
One very good sign that North Korea’s recent warlike threats are merely posturing.
[W]e do have one pretty good metric with which to judge the country’s intentions: the Kaesong Industrial Complex. The Kaesong Industrial Complex, located just across the northern side of the border, is staffed by South and North Koreans. It can’t function without Pyongyang’s daily okay. If the North suddenly shuts down Kaesong at some point, watch out. But as long as it’s still running, as it has been throughout the provocations and tensions of the last few weeks, we can probably – probably — assume that North Korea is not actually planning to launch a war.
And the complex is still in operation.
The uncertainty of science: “The fact that global surface temperatures have not followed the expected global warming pattern is now widely accepted.”
This quote above refers to scientists in the climate field, who are now admitting that for the past 20 years the climate has shown no warming, despite the continuing increase in CO2 in the atmosphere and their computer models that all predicted increased temperatures because of that CO2.
The competition heats up: India has successfully tested a homebuilt engine to be used in its more powerful geosynchronous launch rocket, set for launch in July. More here.
Previous launches of the GSLV rocket used a Russian-built engine on a second stage. They also ended in failure, not because of the Russian equipment but because of other problems.
After a fast four orbit/six hour flight a Soyuz capsule carrying there astronauts has successfully docked with ISS.
Three astronauts were successfully launched today from Russia and are expected to dock with ISS later tonight.
They are the first crew to use the fast route to ISS, only six hours, rather than the more traditional two day rendezvous path.
The competition heats up: Elon Musk confirms that on future Falcon 9 launches they will do tests of a powered return of the first stage.
For the upcoming flight, after stage separation the first stage booster will do a burn to slow it down and then a second burn just before it reaches the water. In subsequent flights they will continue these over-water tests. He repeatedly emphasized that he expects several failures before they learn how to do it right. If all goes well with the over-water tests, they will fly back to launch site and land propulsively. He expects this could happen by mid-2014.
These tests are an extension of the Grasshopper tests, only this time they will take place during an actual launch.
The competition heats up: A Proton rocket has successfully launched a Mexican communications satellite today.
ILS, the company that launches the commercial Proton rocket, needed this success badly, considering the recent problems they have had with the Proton’s Briz-M upper stage.
Tonight I am on The Space Show with David Livingston, so if you have any questions you’d like to ask me, you can do it tonight live, starting now (7 pm Pacific).
We don’t need no stinking sequester: The Obamas have taken more than a vacation per month in 2013.
I don’t mind them taking the weekend off. It is the apparently unlimited travel expenses on the taxpayer’s dime that gall.
Pushback: To show support for the New Jersey family that had been threatened by the government for posting a picture of their son holding a rifle, hundreds of parents post pictures of their own gun-toting kids.
Note also that if you look at the posed pictures, none of the kids have their hands on the trigger. Unlike Michael Bloomberg’s actor in his anti-gun ads, these kids have been taught the safe way to handle a gun.
The illegal view from the top of the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
Dragon has unberthed from ISS and is on its way back to Earth.
A Democratic voter discovers he’s actually a tea party racist.
Today was a bad day. After meeting with my tax accountant, I am now cutting a very large check to the State of California, all of which resulted from Proposition 30 and the “retroactive tax” that was levied on my 2012 income. This despite the fact that I already paid my 2012 taxes back in September.
While the law stipulates that I must surrender this money, I refuse to acknowledge this as a tax at all. This is not a tax. This is an asset seizure plain and simple. The term “retroactive tax” is a despicable euphemism. It is no different than when Hugo Chavez used the benign-sounding “nationalize” to describe his seizure of private property in Venezuela.
He then notes that he is not a tea party member or even a Republican and that he voted for Obama twice.
Wanna bet that in the next election he’ll still vote Democratic? Based on the history of the past three decades, I expect that even after this experience, he will still refuse to abandon the faction he has adopted (the Democratic Party) and change his vote.
After a day delay due to bad weather, Dragon’s return from space has been scheduled for Tuesday.
Comet ISON is not brightening as much as expected, suggesting it will not be as spectacular as some had hoped.
The day of reckoning looms: Cyprus has agreed to confiscate a percentage of the savings of large depositors in order to satisfy demands from its European Union creditors..
This is only a hint of what’s coming for us here in the U.S. Like the European Union, eventually the federal government is going to go bankrupt, and when that happens it (being the politicians in charge) will then decide that the savings and pensions of private citizens will have to save them somehow.
The strange polar vortexes of Venus.
The large-scale cyclone extends vertically in Venus’ atmosphere over more than 20 kilometers, through a region of highly turbulent, permanent clouds. However, the centers of rotation at two different altitude levels (42 and 62 km above the surface) are not aligned and both wander around the south pole of the planet with no established pattern at velocities of up to 55km/h. The study also finds that even when averaged cross-winds are roughly the same at both altitudes, there is still a strong vertical gradient, with winds increasing by as much as 3km/h for every kilometer of height and leading to possible atmospheric instabilities.
Today’s modern politician: “I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.”
Prepare for a fascist future, as it appears that this kind of politician is popular with far too many of the American people.
Curiosity marks the return to full science operations by producing a new panorama.
The competition heats up: Virgin Galactic reports that the recent tests of the engine for SpaceShipTwo have been a complete success.
It appears that they are getting very close to putting the engine on the spaceship for the first powered flights. Things should get very exciting when they do.
British scientists have located the underwater remains of one of the man-made Mulberry harbours built by the British to support the D-Day Normandy invasion.
