Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Though they can’t get the votes yet to approve it, the co-chairmen of Obama’s deficit commission today did release their own draft report.
I wonder what he’s afraid of: Citizen journalists forcibly removed from Van Jones “Open To The Public” event.
Victory for gun rights: Amtrak has lifted its ban on guns.
Sadly, the pigs are winning! Obama’s deficit commission apparently does not have the votes to release a report today. Key quote:
The New York Times reports that there is unanimous opposition from the six Democrat and six Republican members of Congress who sit on the president’s debt-reduction commission to issuing a final report today. . . . In order to issue a report, the commission must win support for its recommendations from 14 of the 18 members; but that is looking unlikely at the moment, even though the commission has extended its deadline to Friday. Predictably, Democrats don’t want to endorse many of the spending cuts, while Republicans are averse to tax increases.
These guys are really idiots: The House may block approval of the Senate’s so-called “Food Safety Modernization Act,” because it includes various new taxes, and such bills are required by the Constitution to originate in the House, not the Senate. Key quote:
By pre-empting the House’s tax-writing authority, Senate Democrats appear to have touched off a power struggle with members of their own party in the House. The Senate passed the bill Tuesday, sending it to the House, but House Democrats are expected to use a procedure known as “blue slipping” to block the bill, according to House and Senate GOP aides.
Apropos of the desire of IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri to re-engineer the climate to battle global warming, including spraying “sulphate particles high in the atmosphere to scatter the sun’s rays back into space,” planetary scientists have pinpointed the source of Venus’s sulphuric acid clouds, and from this believe that the IPCC scheme might backfire badly, doing more harm than good.
Just a note to say that I have fixed the number of bad links posted earlier in the day. Sorry about that!
This is almost too good to be true: Google Earth reveals a Star of David on the roof of the Iran Air Headquaters, possibly put there by the Israeli engineers that helped build it back before the Islamic revolution.
The space war over NASA continues. NASA’s human spaceflight program is “adrift,” according to John Karas, the general manager of Lockheed Martin’s human space flight division. Key quote:
“Everybody’s arguing, debating. We are in this giant storm with no direction, and more than likely we’re gonna get hit with more waves of money cuts. So we have to have some future plan here; some future direction — or we’re just going to get capsized,” he said.
The use of the word “adrift” is ironic, as this was the very word that President Obama used to describe NASA’s state shortly after taking office. It seems to me, however, that under Obama things are far more confused and chaotic then they ever were under Bush.
Cassini pinpoints the hot spots in the cracks on Enceladus.
Is this finally going to happen? Richard Branson says Virgin Galactic could be flying tourists within a year.
It’s now official: the second test launch of the Falcon 9, with the Dragon capsule, is set for December 7, with a static test firing of the rocket’s engines on December 3.
The military reports that the X-37B’s mission is complete and it will be returning to Earth as early as Friday.
What could go wrong? Railroad engineer and head of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri announced at the Cancun climate summit today that he has decided that the threat of global warming is so great that the IPCC is going to recommend in its next report (AR5) that actions be taken to re-engineer the climate. Key quote:
“The AR5 has been expanded and will in future focus on subjects like clouds and aerosols, geo-engineering and sustainability issues,” [Pachauri] said.
Later this year IPCC “expert groups” will meet in Peru to discuss geo-engineering. Options include putting mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or covering Greenland in a massive blanket so it does not melt. Sprinkling iron filings in the ocean “fertilises” algae so that it sucks up CO2 and “seeding clouds” means that less sunlight can get in. Other options include artificial “trees” that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, painting roofs white to reflect sunlight and man-made volcanoes that spray sulphate particles high in the atmosphere to scatter the sun’s rays back into space.
Progress! The University of Colorado and the Goddard Space Flight Center are forming a collaborative research center to study the Sun’s effect on the Earth’s Climate.
Lockheed Martin is moving ahead with its plan to launch the first Orion capsule on a Delta 4 Heavy rocket, notwithstanding the desire of NASA that Lockheed instead focus on using NASA’s own as yet unbuilt rocket system.
NASA engineers continue to struggle to analyze the cause of the cracks in Discovery’s external tank. Key quote:
Forty-three tanks have been constructed with the lighter alloy, requiring just more than 4,600 stringers. So far, 31 cracks have been found, including those on Discovery.
“All of those have been known assembly issues,” Shannon said of the previous cracks, which were traced to misalignments of the stringers as they were fastened to the tank or to mishandling in which the fragile stringers struck or were struck by other hardware. Discovery’s cracks were the first found and repaired at the launch pad using techniques previously employed only at the production plant.
The ongoing detective work is immune to schedule and budget pressure, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.
Will the squealing never stop? The National Space Society has called on Congress to fully fund NASA, as per the authorization bill passed in September, even though the money doesn’t exist, and even if it did exist the amount authorized is insufficient anyway to accomplish what it is intended.
It appears the squealing is working: Obama’s deficit commission on balancing the U.S. budget appears gridlocked, and is not expected to approve any budget-cutting plan when it votes on Wednesday.
A dark Jupiter may haunt the edge of the solar system.
A New Jersey man is serving a seven year sentence for posessing guns he owned legally.
How one astronomer became the unofficial exoplanet record keeper.
This bill is going to dog Democrats for years: The Obama healthcare bill is forcing a New York union to drop insurance coverage for the children of its members.
I feel so much safer! Wheelchair-bound nun searched by TSA. With a picture!
The hurricane season is about to end, and though it appears that the predictions for this season were just about right, no hurricanes touched down in North America for the second year in a row. Key quote:
“There was only a 2% or 3% chance of getting this many hurricanes and not having one hit the U.S.”
The squealing ain’t just coming from cheese-eating social program advocates: The Defense Department is gearing up to protest proposed cuts in the military budget as outlined by the deficit commission.
Jeff Foust has noticed that the Obama’s deficit commission has rewritten its recommendation that the NASA subsidies to commercial space be cut. The rewrite doesn’t really change the recommendation. Instead, it merely corrects the language to more accurately describe the subsidy program.
The radiation risks from the TSA scanners.
Japanese scientists have determined that a programming error was the reason why Hayabusa failed to fire its projectile at the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.
It seems I’m not the only one avoiding the airport security madness. A poll finds that travelers are shifting to charter jets and rental cars to avoid airport security.
