Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
A Vietnam veteran has been threatened with legal action for the American flag outside his home.
The space war continues: Several senators are threatening to subpoena NASA over what they perceive as the agency’s foot-dragging in building a heavy-lift rocket.
Idiots. They give NASA less money and less time to build the program-formerly-called-Constellation, and then are surprised when things don’t go well. Of course, it doesn’t help that the Obama administration is trying to sabotage the project anyway.
Other science money troubles: NASA’s climate and astronomy programs face delays due to cost overruns and rocket failures.
A new report released today says a new underground physics lab will cost the Energy Department from $1.2 to $2.2 billion.
Though I know the science is worthwhile and we should be doing it, I also can’t help ask this question: Where the hell are we going to get the money?
Archaeologists have begun uncovering an ancient Egyptian ritual ship at Giza, buried with the pharaoh Khufu as a ship to carry him to the afterlife.
From a modern Muslim cleric: “There Is A Beating Etiquette.”
Want to send a probe to another planet? Do it cheaply, as these scientists did.
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? TSA airport screeners have picked the union they want to represent them.
The Senate Republicans have pulled out of Biden’s debt limit negotiations.
This article strongly suggests to me that the Democrats, who hold a majority in this negotiating group, have refused to take seriously the Republicans’ demand to cut spending, instead focusing on tax increases as a solution. The problem is that you could raise our taxes to 100 percent and you wouldn’t solve the debt problem. The government has got to reduce its spending.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was acquitted today of hate speech for his criticisms of Islam.
Not surprisingly, the Islamic whiners who never seem to notice the tens of thousands killed by Islamic terrorists were very unhappy about the ruling.
Farid Azarkan of the SMN association of Moroccans in the Netherlands said he feared the acquittal could further split Dutch society and encourage others to repeat Wilders’s comments. “You see that people feel more and more supported in saying that minorities are good for nothing,” Azarkan said. “Wilders has said very extreme things about Muslims and Moroccans, so when will it ever stop? Some will feel this as a sort of support for what they feel and as justification.”
Minorities groups said they would now take the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, arguing the ruling meant the Netherlands had failed to protect ethnic minorities from discrimination. “The acquittal means that the right of minorities to remain free of hate speech has been breached. We are going to claim our rights at the U.N.,” said Mohamed Rabbae of the National Council for Moroccans.
Of course, the murder of innocents by Islamic radicals has nothing to do with the distrust people have of Islam. That’s totally irrelevant, and must be ignored.
Finding out what’s in it: Another error in Obamacare allows middle class retirees to get Medicaid, which is only intended for the poor.
Police thugs: A Rochester woman was arrested by police for filming them from her own property. Watch the video below and tell me if it doesn’t make your blood boil. The cops who did this should be fired.
The cost of solar energy is plummeting.
Though it can’t work in many places in the world and therefore can’t completely replace the electrical grid, this is still good news.
Texas anti-groping bill against the TSA moves forward with changes. In related news, under pressure the head of the TSA agreed yesterday that it should modify its patdowns of children.
Unfortunately, the changes being introduced to the Texas bill will make it nothing more than a symbolic act. Similarly, the TSA’s so-called modification of its policy towards children really changes nothing, as they will continue to grope and violate the rights of everyone else.
The day of reckoning looms: The Congressional Budget Office today reported that unless something drastic is done, the national debt will exceed the size of the entire U.S. economy by 2021.
An Arizona sheriff agreed today in a television interview that the Monument wildfire in Coronado National Forest was probably started by illegal trade activity.
Gale Crater now heads the list for Curiosity’s landing site on Mars.
One of the rocket engines for Orbital Science’s Taurus rocket, to be used to supply cargo to ISS, was badly damaged in a fuel fire June 9.
The results of the investigation and prognosis for the engine and the Taurus II should come together by the end of this week or early next week, Beneski says. Two other AJ26 engines have completed hot-fire acceptance testing without mishap, according to the Aerojet website. Beneski said the engine mishap potentially affects the testing planned to get the Taurus II ready for operational missions to resupply the ISS.
In negotiations over raising the debt limit Democrats are now calling for more stimulus spending.
These guys just don’t get it. We don’t have the money, the federal government is broke, and it was their out-of-control spending and complete lack of responsibility that helped create today’s economic mess.
The one thing that worries me most however is that the public might not get it yet either, and might not vote these bums out of office. If that happens, we are really screwed, in ways that most Americans today probably can’t imagine.
Cassini has directly sampled the plumes from Enceladus and discovered a salty ocean-like spray.
The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 mph (23,000 and 63,000 kilometers per hour), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.
The data suggest a layer of water between the moon’s rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.
From Clark Lindsey: Branson says Virgin Galactic will fly a suborbital flight within a year.
My heart bleeds: California legislators: No budget, no pay.
Global warming scientist James Hansen is being sued for failing to comply with ethics rules and financial disclosures regarding more than $1.2 million in compensation he earned outside his NASA job.
Better buy that ticket now if you want to see the last shuttle launch from the best spot: Online prices have soared for space shuttle Atlantis launch tickets.
Tear-drop shaped mesas on Mars suggest ancient oceans to scientists.
Tiny little hairs on the wings of bats help control their flight.
Citizen astronomers: Help pick the Kuiper Belt targets that New Horizons will visit after it flies past Pluto.
Cryosat releases its first map of the thickness of the Arctic icecap.
Busy day for travel to and from ISS: The European unmanned ATV freighter Johannes Kepler burned up in the atmosphere even as a Russian Progress freighter was launched.
In related news, the U.S. and ESA are in negotiations to merge the European unmanned ATV freighter program with NASA’s manned Orion derivative. At the same time, Europe has announced its plans to test fly a reusable space plane.
