Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Another violation of the Constitution: The DC subway police are about to begin random searches of passengers.
More polticially correct madness: The Red Cross in the United Kingdom has told all its offices to remove all Christmas decorations in order to avoid offending Muslims. Key quote:
“We have been instructed that we can’t say anything about Christmas and we certainly can’t have a Christmas tree. . . . We are not supposed to show any sign of Christianity at all.”
This story should give everyone the willies: One of the developers of the OpenBSD operating system (an open source OS comparable but different than Linux) has admitted that ten years ago, in exchange for cash, he and others helped the FBI place “surveillance-friendly holes” in the operating system.
I wonder what part of this sentence the FBI does not know how to read: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Virgin Galactic has confirmed the story from Space News that it is part of the crew/cargo proposal that Orbital Sciences submitted to NASA this week.
Two Danish citizens are on trial for criticizing Islam. Worse, “under Danish jurisprudence it is immaterial whether a statement is true or untrue. All that is needed for a conviction is that somebody feels offended.”
Feel the love! The Chicago Tea Party’s Christmas party was shut down by a bomb scare. So no one has any doubt about the goals of the arsonists, the written message that accompanied the incendiary devices was “F*CK THE TEA PARTY”.
Don’t slam the door on your way out! Check out this list of senators and the number of earmarks they placed in $1.27 trillion omnibus spending bill put together by the lame-duck Congress.
Freedom of speech alert: The FCC commissioner has made it clear in a recent appearance on the BBC that he strongly supports having the FCC regulate in some manner the news coverage of radios and television. You can see the video here. Key quote from the article above:
In practice, Copps’s recommendations — however well intended — necessarily entail expanding the power of bureaucrats to monitor media content, power which can then be used for objectionable and politicized goals.
After a string of failures going back to 2004, the Indian space agency is set to try to launch its most powerful rocket again, this time with its heaviest cargo.
This might be the best news I’ve heard in years! The government may shut down on Saturday due to the stalemate in Congress over the $1.27 trillion pork-filled spending bill.
Dead alien life arrives on Earth! Not really but still exciting anyway: Scientists have found the remains of space-born amino acids — essential to life — in the meteorite that crashed in the Sudan in 2008. Key quote:
“This meteorite formed when two asteroids collided,” said Daniel Glavin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The shock of the collision heated it to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit [1,093 degrees Celsius], hot enough that all complex organic molecules like amino acids should have been destroyed, but we found them anyway.”
The discovery is further evidence that the basic elements of life can form in even the most hostile of environments.
NASA’s inspecter general has found fraud, waste, and abuse in NASA’s small business research program. Nor is this new news:
Problems with NASA’s SBIR program have been repeatedly criticized in recent years by the agency’s inspector general. Of some 46 investigations related to the SBIR program over the past decade, 17 percent resulted in criminal convictions, civil judgments, or administrative action, the inspector general told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last year.
The Air Force has agreed to share the meteorite data its surveillance satellites detect.
Though the article above makes it sound like this data includes a lot of Earth-destroying asteriods, almost all of these detections are of smaller rocks burning up in the atmosphere, information researchers need to produce a more complete census of the solar system.
A software glitch prevented Kepler from making science observations for 13 hours this week.
At least the Russians can still do this: At 2:09 pm (Eastern) today a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off, carrying the next crew to the International Space Station.
A cyclone on Saturn has now lasted more than five years, since scientists started tracking it closely in 2004 with the arrival of Cassini in orbit around Saturn.
Opt out! Doctors say that, for health reasons, you should avoid the TSA’s full body scanners.
Maybe this might stop the spending: Republican Senator Jim DeMint wants the Senate to read the entire 1900-plus omnibus budget bill before anyone votes on it. Key quote
The reading could take 40 hours, some news outlets estimate. Last year, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., forced the reading of an 800-page amendment on the Senate floor. The reading ended when Sanders, who had proposed the amendment, came to the floor to withdraw it.
The Japanese Venus probe Akatsuka might have failed, but its partner, the solar sail Ikaros, continues to function, and remains in contact with its ground controlers, even at a distance of 45 million miles. (The google translation of the daily blog is sometimes spotty (” I will go home 入Rita bath. It will fit your feet smell.”) but still worth reading,)
The largest commercial antenna reflector ever flown in space has successfully deployed in orbit.
The first inspection of Hayabusa’s inner chamber revealed no visible asteroid particles. A microscopic search will follow however, as was done for the outer chamber, where 1500 asteroid particles were found.
This is how tyrants respond to democracy: Violence erupts in Rome after the head of Italy’s center-right government survived a no-confidence vote. Though the article does not tell us much about the political views of the protesters, this quote gives a strong hint that they might be leftwing:
The protesters were mostly students but also included workers and immigrants.
Scientists have used data from Cassini to identify what they think are ice volcanoes on Titan. The two volcanoes, each about 3000 feet high, are located near the equator and appear to resemble the volcanoes on Earth, with a central crater on top of cone-like peak and finger-like flows coming down the sides from the crater. The lava here, however, is not molten rock, but water.
Science discovers the obvious! Researchers at the University of Colorado have found that the post-9/11 security efforts — such as the TSA — do little to increase security and much to turn society into a police state.
The Library of Congress has posted a collection of over 700 Civil War portraits to Flickr.
Why Arkansas? Since September 20, the small town of Guy, Arkansa, has experienced a swarm of 487 measurable earthquakes.
The TSA makes us all feel safer! “He said there was something suspicious hanging from between my legs.”
In competition with the Orbital/Virgin Galactic proposal I mentioned yesterday, Boeing has submitted its own proposal to provide crew and cargo ferrying service to ISS.
Considering the federal budget debt and the political winds for reducing that debt, I have great doubts the subsidies for these proposals will ever arrive. Nonetheless, with the end of the shuttle program and nothing to replace it, the United States has a serious need for a system to get crew and cargo into space. And in a free society, fulfilling that need means profits, which is why these proposals are beginning to appear, and will get built, regardless of whether Congress funds them up front or later buys the services.
