Category: Points of Information

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

Police yesterday shut the Jefferson Memorial to clear out a crowd challenging a ban on dancing inside the monument.

9:16 am

Police yesterday shut the Jefferson Memorial to clear out a crowd protesting the arrest of five people last week for dancing inside the monument.

One man took to the microphone to demand that all intrusive government policies be overturned, specifically mentioning the need to repeal “Obamacare.” Medea Benjamin [of Code Pink] clarified that some participants also wanted a single-payer system, but that all agreed on the right to dance at the memorial.

On some issues we all agree.

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All new cars starting in June will have a mandatory black box

7:50 pm

Big brother arrives: Starting in June all new cars will have a mandatory black box.

The installation and use of these black boxes can have infinite possibilities for local, state, and federal governments to monitor and record data for a number of other revenue programs that are currently under consideration. In March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a proposal to institute a tax on mileage to help pay for the federal budget deficit. Additionally, local cities and counties can download information from these black boxes, and they can be used to issue driving citations after the fact in the case of speeding or not wearing a seat belt.

I think the value of my old used Subaru Forester has just gone up!

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House Trims Homeland Security Science Spending

7:29 pm

It’s a start: The House has trimmed the budget for the Homeland Security Agency by $1.1 billion, including a cut of about 75% from the Obama administration’s request for the agency’s science budget, ($398 million versus $1.2 billion requested). And of course, we don’t have to wait long to hear the pigs squeal:

DHS officials say the decrease in the directorate’s budget will wipe out dozens of programs, stalling the development of technologies for border protection, detection of bio-hazards, and cargo screening.

My heart bleeds.

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Social Sciences Face Uphill Battle Proving Their Worth to Congress

11:59 am

Some squealing from the journal Science: NSF faces uphill budget battle in Congress.

When he asked the witnesses for ideas on shrinking the government’s $1.6 trillion deficit, Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) [chairman of the research panel of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee] made it clear he was talking about possible cuts to NSF’s entire $7 billion budget, not simply its SBE directorate.

Note that in 2008 the NSF budget was a $6.1 billion. Cutting it back to that number would hardly destroy social science research in this country.

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Mars 500 mission passes one year

9:03 am

The Russian/ESA Mars 500 mission has completed a year of its 520-day simulated flight to Mars.

The crew, who spent 250 days working on maintenance and scientific experiments before a 30-day stint performing tasks on a simulated Martian surface, are currently on their “return trip” to Earth.

This simulated all-male flight is going better than the last:

In 1999, an experiment in the same Moscow warehouse fell to pieces after a Russian team captain forced a kiss on a Canadian woman, and two Russian crewmembers had a bloody fistfight.

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Why the Endangered Species act doesn’t work

3:18 pm

Why the Endangered Species Act doesn’t work.

[R]adical green groups . . . [are] engaged in an industry whose waste products are fish and wildlife. You and I are a major source of revenue for that industry. The Interior Department must respond within 90 days to petitions to list species under the Endangered Species Act. Otherwise, petitioners like the Center for Biological Diversity get to sue and collect attorney fees from the Justice Department.

And this:

Amos Eno runs the hugely successful Yarmouth, Maine-based Resources First Foundation, an outfit that, among other things, assists ranchers who want to restore native ecosystems. Earlier, he worked at Interior’s Endangered Species Office, crafting amendments to strengthen the law, then went on to direct the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Eno figures the feds could “recover and delist three dozen species” with the resources they spend responding to the Center for Biological Diversity’s litigation.

“The amount of money [Center for Biological Diversity] makes suing is just obscene,” he told me. “They’re one of the reasons the Endangered Species Act has become so dysfunctional. They deserve the designation of eco-criminals.”

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A bureaucratic fight stalls oil drilling in Alaska

10:44 am

Government in action: A bureaucratic fight stalls an oil drill project in Alaska.

The project has put two federal agencies at odds. The Environmental Protection Agency has maintained that a roadless alternative, which would route the pipeline under the Nigliq Channel and use an airstrip instead of a road and bridge, would be less damaging to the reserve’s environment. The Interior Department backs Conoco’s proposal as environmentally preferable.

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Student prohibited from graduation for Facebook comments

10:40 am

Freedom dies: A student was banned from graduation for criticizing his school on Facebook.

In a letter to [the student], [Vice President for Student Development and Services Eric W.] Jackson explained that the reason for his prohibition was the Facebook comments, adding that “[a]ll students enrolled at Saint Augustine’s College are responsible for protecting the reputation of the college and supporting its mission.”

In other words, the students at this hack of a school are required to promote the school at all times. What idiocy.

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