Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
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.
The first Soyuz launch from French Guiana has now been scheduled for October 20, 2011.
Conservative lawmakers are coalescing behind a pledge to cut spending across the board while requiring a balanced budget amendment.
This story once again suggests to me that the political winds are definitely favoring big cuts in government spending. Woe to the politician of either party who ignores these winds.
President Barack Obama’s complete list of historic firsts.
Take some time to look at the list closely, including the links that back up each “first.” You might remain skeptical of some of the stories, but the weight of numbers is surely suggestive of the kind of president Obama really is.
Big Brother rules! King County, Washington, has voted to require life vests for swimmers.
[The law] applies to people intertubing, rafting, using a surfboard, canoe or kayak. Swimmers or people wading more than 5 feet from shore or in water more than 4 feet deep would also have to wear life vests. The new ordinance does not apply to people at designated public beaches or for people who are skin diving.
Talk about intolerance: Atheists demand the removal of a sign honoring seven firefighters who died on 9/11 because it includes the word “heaven.”
According to the chief of the Russian space agency, it presently does not have the capacity to produce additional Soyuz capsule for tourist flights.
The failed predictions of global warming activists.
In 2005 “the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations University declared that 50 million people could become environmental refugees by 2010, fleeing the effects of climate change.” Three years later . . . Srgjan Kerim, president of the UN General Assembly, said it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010. A UNEP web page showed a map of regions where people were likely to be displaced by the ravages of global warming. It has recently been taken offline but is still visible in a Google cache.
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Theft by TSA employees of passenger valuables has become a nationwide problem.
According to TSA records, press reports, and court documents . . . some 500 TSA officers . . . have been fired or suspended for stealing from passenger luggage since the agency’s creation in November of 2001. The airports servicing New York City—John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty—harbor the most flagrant offenders, but virtually no city in the nation is safe from the TSA’s sticky fingers.
In 2009, a half dozen TSA agents at Miami International Airport were charged with grand theft after boosting an iPod, bottles of perfume, cameras, a GPS system, a Coach purse, and a Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook from passengers’ luggage. Travelers passing through the airport’s checkpoints reported as many as 1,500 items stolen, the majority of which were never recovered.
In May of this year alone, TSA agents were arrested on the suspicion of theft at airports in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
Another state moves to limit union power: The New Jersey Senate has passed a public employee benefits bill that suspends union bargaining over healthcare while increasing the costs to union members.
Note that the vote was not partisan, 24-15 with 8 Democrats voting in favor.
A gladiator’s tombstone reveals a tale of death and bad refereeing.
