February 12, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Today’s blacklisted American: New conservative organization at Illinois Tech blacklisted by students
They’re coming for you next: When a conservative student at the Illinois Institute of Technology proposed starting a chapter of the national conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) at the school, a slander campaign was immediately started by other students against both TPUSA and the student, forcing him to back down.
[After his proposal was put forth], classmates began to message his fraternity brothers, asking whether he was attempting to lead a “hate group” on campus. The conservative student said that this occurred on three separate occasions.
On January 27, the conservative student again presented to the student government — this time, to withdraw his proposal. The conservative student emphasized that he had no malicious intent in proposing a TPUSA chapter, but merely aimed to start a political discourse on campus. The conservative student apologized for proposing a TPUSA club and stated that he would consider forming a group under another national conservative organization.
Derek Rhea, the executive vice president of the Student Government Association commented that the “entire campus had been completely mobilized,” leading to a “huge movement on the opposing side” against the prospect of a TPUSA group at Illinois Tech. He applauded the conservative student for withdrawing his request to start a TPUSA chapter.
Senator Hannah-Lauren Moreno asked whether the conservative student was pressured into rescinding his request. The conservative student informed the student government that classmates began to wonder if he, his peers, and his fraternity brothers were “terrible people” for trying to start the club.
Following the January 27 student government meeting, the conservative student provided Campus Reform with screenshots, one of which appears to show a student rejoicing in an online message that “we managed to successfully cyber bully a student org to death.” [emphasis mine]
There is only one reason these partisan leftists (and that’s what they are) wanted to block a new TPUSA chapter. Unlike the moribund and largely uninteresting and dull Republican Party clubs, TPUSA has been very effective on campuses nationwide at countering leftwing hate and censorship while drawing to it large numbers of new students, teaching them that conservative values are about freedom and justice and equal treatment before the law, not the left’s slanderous lies of “white supremacy” and “hate.”
I highlighted the words of Rhea above because if he is telling the truth and a “huge movement” of students formed to blacklist this organization we are in very big trouble. This indicates that the next generation is truly all in with censorship and blacklisting, and will likely soon consider imprisoning anyone who disagrees as perfectly reasonable.
It is also possible that this guy is lying, and that the so-called “huge movement” was a handful of loudmouthed bullies, who have successfully learned how to use social media to intimidate everyone else. In this case Rhea is one of those bullies, and he is using his position as VP of the student government for that depraved purpose.
Either way, I guarantee that should this student return to propose a club linked to a different conservative organization, these same bullies will appear, making the same slanderous claims. They lie when they say they would accept other conservative organizations. They want them all banned, and play this game to make sure none ever appear.
February 10, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Today’s blacklisted American: Disney fires actress for noting the Nazis killed Jews
They’re coming for you next: The Disney corporation yesterday fired conservative actress Gina Carano, who was starring in a Star Wars series, simply because she wrote a tweet describing the entirely truthful fact that the Nazis were able to kill the Jews because they had taught the public to hate them and thus agree with that round-up.
Her tweet is to the right. Not surprisingly, a Twitter mob soon formed demanded her blacklisting. How dare she remind people of the evils of oppression, bigotry, and the genocide of a people merely because of their race, religion, or creed? Since she has been an outspoken conservative who supports Trump, her blacklisting by these storm-troopers seemed entirely reasonable to Disney, and so they finally fired here. The statement from the Lucasfilm division of the company indicates the company’s outright ignorance and close-mindedness.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
In other words, it is now unacceptable to retell the history of the Holocaust in order to avoid repeating it. In fact, Disney’s action here suggests the left wants another Holocaust, is using Hitler’s tactics quite openly, and thus must do whatever it can — with the help of big corporations like this — to silence and dehumanize anyone who opposes them. And isn’t this exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews, as Carano so nicely illustrated in her tweet?
If Americans don’t fight back hard soon, worse is coming, and soon. Do you subscribe to Disney’s streaming service? Do you rent its movies? Do you watch Star Wars? If after this action you still do, you are then complicit in this blacklisting, and can count yourself as a willing accessory to the coming genocide.
Possible exoplanet detected in habitable zone around Alpha Centauri A?
The uncertainty of science: Scientists have detected faint evidence that suggests the existence of a Neptune-sized exoplanet circling the sunlike star Alpha Centauri A.
After analyzing 100 hours of data gathered by NEAR in May and June of 2019, the scientists detected a thermal fingerprint in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A. The signal potentially corresponds to a roughly Neptune-size world orbiting between 1 and 2 astronomical units (AU) from the star, study team members said. (One AU, the average Earth-sun distance, is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
But that planet has not yet been confirmed, so it remains a candidate for now.
This result is very uncertain at this moment, so we should constrain our enthusiasm. If true, however, it would signal the possibility of more exoplanets circling the stars of the nearest stellar system. Alpha Centauri is actually three stars, a binary of two sunlike stars circled at great distance by the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. Scientists already think there are exoplanets circling Proxima, with one about the size of Earth.
What makes this particular interesting, if true, is that the exoplanet was detected not by the slight wobble its gravity caused in the star, or by a transit across the face of the star, but by its own light. If the detection is real, this would be I think the first time that an exoplanet has been seen directly, even if that detection comprises a few tiny pixels of light.
Saudi government considering Moon and Mars missions
The new colonial movement: The Saudi government has established a commission for developing its own space program, with missions to either the Moon or/and Mars under consideration.
According to the chairman, only a few weeks separate the Commission from launching an entire branch centered on boosting and encouraging investment in the space field.
…More so, Prince Sultan predicted that the Kingdom, in two years’ time, will finish assembling an integrated crew with international space agencies. The team is expected to mount space exploration missions to Mars and the Moon.
Their stated goal is to help diversify their economy as well as inspire their citizens. Their unstated goal is a need to compete with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which already has a successful Mars orbiter (built in partnership with the U.S.)
Europa Clipper to fly on commercial rocket, not SLS
NASA managers have now decided unequivocally to not use SLS to launch Europa Clipper, and will instead choose a commercial rocket in about a year.
During a Feb. 10 presentation at a meeting of NASA’s Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), leaders of the Europa Clipper project said the agency recently decided to consider only commercial launch vehicles for the mission, and no longer support a launch of the spacecraft on the SLS.
“We now have clarity on the launch vehicle path and launch date,” Robert Pappalardo, project scientist for Europa Clipper at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. That clarity came in the form of a Jan. 25 memo from NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office to “immediately cease efforts to maintain SLS compatibility” and move forward with a commercial launch vehicle, or CLV, he said.
Though this decision was expected following the approval of the most recent congressional budget for NASA, which contained language allowing NASA to abandon SLS if it thought it wise, this decision continues the string of recent stories that all point toward the eventually abandonment of SLS itself.
At the moment the rocket most likely to win the contract is the Falcon Heavy.
Scientists confirm distance to farthest known solar system object
Scientists have now confirmed that the large asteroid dubbed Farfarout (about 250 miles across) is presently about 132 astronomical units from the Sun (about 12 billion miles), making it the farthest known solar system object.
Its orbit however is far from circular, and it isn’t presently even at its farthest point in that orbit.
[T]he orbit of Farfarout is quite elongated, taking it 175 au from the Sun at its farthest point and around 27 au at its closest, which is inside the orbit of Neptune. Because its orbit crosses Neptune’s, Farfarout could provide insights into the history of the outer Solar System. “Farfarout was likely thrown into the outer Solar System by getting too close to Neptune in the distant past,” said Trujillo. “Farfarout will likely interact with Neptune again in the future since their orbits still intersect.”
The astronomers expect to discover more such objects in the coming years that will even eclipse this one in distance.
Inexplicable ridges in Hellas Basin on Mars
Click for full image.
Time for some more cool but mysterious Martian images! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is the first of two images today, both of which show the ridges but of a completely different nature. Both are located in Hellas Basin in Mars southern hemisphere.
This first picture was taken on September 4, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a sinuous complex that resembles to a remarkable extent a set of river tributaries, but is instead a set of raised ridges rather than a canyon system.
Scientists have found more than 10,000 miles of such ridges in the northern hemisphere in Arabia Terra, the most extensive transition zone between the southern highlands and the northern lowlands, and have dubbed them fossilized rivers. From a 2016 press release:
The inverted channels are similar to those found elsewhere on Mars and Earth. They are made of sand and gravel deposited by a river and when the river becomes dry, the channels are left upstanding as the surrounding material erodes. On Earth, inverted channels often occur in dry, desert environments like Oman, Egypt, or Utah, where erosion rates are low – in most other environments, the channels are worn away before they can become inverted. “The networks of inverted channels in Arabia Terra are about 30m high and up to 1–2km wide, so we think they are probably the remains of giant rivers that flowed billions of years ago. Arabia Terra was essentially one massive flood plain bordering the highlands and lowlands of Mars. We think the rivers were active 3.9–3.7 billion years ago, but gradually dried up before being rapidly buried and protected for billions of years, potentially preserving any ancient biological material that might have been present,” added Joel Davis.
Nor are such features on Mars limited to Hellas and Arabia Terra. For a particularly spectacular feature in the cratered highlands see this 2019 post.
The origin of these sinuous ridges in Hellas might have a similar origin as these other fossilized rivers. At present the bottom of Hellas, the deepest basin on Mars, is a place with little signs of ice. In the past there is evidence that lakes once existed here, so we cannot rule out water as a cause.
At the same time, Hellas was formed by a gigantic impact. One cannot dismiss the possibility of a volcanic origin, impact melt left over from the heat of that crash.
Today’s second ridge complex in Hellas looks far different.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Peter Pan and Dumbo
They’re coming for you next: In its never-ending effort to cleanse our culture of anything that might offend any minorities or anyone on the left, the Disney corporation has decided to block access in the accounts of any children seven or younger of several of its best and greatest children’s films, including Peter Pan, Dumbo, and Swiss Family Robinson.
Disney implemented a revised content advisory in October to flag up any issues surrounding racial stereotypes and concerns were raised in relation to Peter Pan and the other productions. The decision to ban the films from children’s accounts was made by a group of external experts who were brought in to assess if the content ‘represented global audiences’.
While the films remain available on adult accounts, they come with a disclaimer that says: ‘This programme includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. ‘Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.’
Anyone who has seen these movies knows how utterly harmless the references are. In fact, in Peter Pan for instance the European children end up allying themselves with the Indians to defeat the real villain, the pirate Captain Hook. If anything the movie taught tolerance and the need to accept all races, as long as they mean no harm to others.
This ban also seems to forget something very fundamental about these movies: They are fantasies with a very large dollop of silly nonsense. To ban them for that silliness is beyond brainless.
And the irony is that kids know this. It is a shame that so many adults no longer do.
Nonetheless, such silliness is no longer permitted. Every artist must now forever toe the party line, making obeisance to the Marxist and bigoted identity- and race-based culture that now rules. You can’t, for example, have any pirates “yellow” or “brown”, as was done in Swiss Family Robinson (which was the reason it was banned). No, the only evil people allowed in modern literature and art are white people, preferable Europeans.
Jupiter’s southern jet streams
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and reduced slightly to post here, shows the southern jet streams in Jupiter’s atmosphere. From the press release:
The storm known as the Great Red Spot is also visible on the horizon, nearly rotated out of view as Juno sped away from Jupiter at about 30 miles per second (48 kilometers per second), which is more than 100,000 mph (160,900 kilometers per hour).
Citizen scientist Tanya Oleksuik created this color-enhanced image using data from the JunoCam camera. The original image was taken on Dec. 30, 2020 as the Juno spacecraft performed its 31st close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, the spacecraft was about 31,000 miles (about 50,000 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 50 degrees South.
According to data obtained by Juno, these bands of storms extend about 1,800 miles into Jupiter’s interior, much deeper than expected.
The Great Red Spot is at about 22 degrees south latitude, so this tells us that this picture covers Jupiter’s southern hemisphere from about the equator down to about 80 degrees.
Turkey to do lunar mission, send astronaut into space
The new colonial movement: Turkey’s leader, Tayyip Erdogan, announced yesterday a new space exploration initiative that will include sending an unmanned probe to the Moon as well as flying an astronaut into space.
“The first rough landing will be made on the moon with our national and authentic hybrid rocket that shall be launched into orbit in the end of 2023 through international cooperation,” Erdogan said, detailing a two-phase mission. Erdogan did not elaborate further on the cooperation. Last month, Erdogan spoke to Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk on possible cooperation in space technologies with Turkish companies.
Speaking in an event in Ankara, Erdogan announced a programme with 10 strategic goals including sending a Turkish citizen to a scientific mission in space.
The manned mission will not be flown by Turkey, but will be purchased from someone else, either Russia or SpaceX or Boeing maybe even China.
The timing of this announcement, the same day the UAE’s Al-Amal probe entered Mars’ orbit, suggests it was prompted by that success, and is an example of keeping up with the Joneses. Whether there is any reality to these proposals however remains to be seen.