Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Cool image time! The two images on the right, taken on June 18 and June 15 respectively, — cropped from a larger collection — show Pluto’s two hemispheres, as best as New Horizons can at the moment resolve them.
While still as fuzzy as pre-space age planetary images, the pictures when compared with earlier images of the same hemispheres now clearly show several consistent features.
Things can only get better. Stay tuned!
Today is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision permitting the town of New London, Connecticut to take land from one private owner so that they can sell it to another private owner.
And what do we have in New London ten years later? An empty field. The town essentially stole the homes of local residences, supposedly a “blighted” neighborhood, so they could tear the homes down and replace them with an empty abandoned lot.
Government marches on!
In an op-ed Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has outlined why he will now vote against giving President Obama fast track trade authority.
Why does Republican Leadership always give in to the Democrats? Why does Leadership always disregard the promises made to the conservative grassroots?
Enough is enough. I cannot vote for TPA unless McConnell and Boehner both commit publicly to allow the Ex-Im Bank to expire—and stay expired. And, Congress must also pass the Cruz-Sessions amendments to TPA to ensure that no trade agreement can try to back-door changes to our immigration laws. Otherwise, I will have no choice but to vote no.
Combine this with the increased public dissatisfaction by House conservatives of their leadership suggests to me that unless the leadership changes its political methods, one of two things could soon happen: Either the Republican Party will oust its leaders in the Senate and House and install people more allied with the party’s conservative base, or the Republican Party will split, with its more moderate members moving to the Democratic Party (which God knows needs some moderation) while the rest form a real conservative party.
Meanwhile, the revised fast track trade bill that the House passed last week was approved today by the Senate 60-37 and will now go to Obama for signature.
The competition heats up: Hindustan Aeronautics has completed construction and handed over to ISRO the orbiter structure of India’s next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2.
The mission will include an orbiter, lander, and rover, and is aiming for launch sometime after 2017.
The competition heats up: Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully completed its fifth launch on Tuesday, placing a European Earth resources satellite into orbit.
The European Space Agency has accepted the proposal of the Rosetta science team to extend the mission until September 2016, when they will then consider attempting a landing on the surface of Comet 67P/C-G.
Rather than fly a different tourist on the September ISS flight that Sarah Brightman has backed out of, Russia has instead given the seat to an astronaut from Kazakhstan.
The article suggests that Russia might be doing a barter deal with Kazakhstan, saving money on its lease for Baikonur in exchange for the astronaut flight.
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 today that a 66 year old program that allowed the federal government to confiscate the crops of farmers in order to manage the supply and demand was unconstitutional.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the government must pay “just compensation” when it takes personal goods just as when it takes land away. He rejected the government’s argument that the Hornes voluntarily chose to participate in the raisin market and have the option of selling different crops if they don’t like it. “‘Let them sell wine’ is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history,” Roberts said. “Property rights cannot be so easily manipulated.”
The Constitution on property rights is very clear. The government has to pay for any property it takes. That it required a Supreme Court decision to enforce this plain language should distress us all.
Link here.
This is a beautifully written and thoughtful analysis of the state of climate science, and why intelligent and educated citizens should continue to remain skeptical of the claims coming from the global warming activist community (which now includes the Pope).
He gives a dozen different reasons for remaining skeptical of the claims of the global warming community, based both on the science as well as how they sell their position. Number 10 — “When [the claimed consensus] it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies” — is probably the most important:
Imagine hundreds of world leaders and nongovernmental organizations, science groups, and United Nations functionaries gathered for a meeting heralded as the most important conference since World War II, in which “the future of the world is being decided.” These officials seem to agree that institutions of “global governance” need to be established to reorder the world economy and massively restrict energy resources. Large numbers of them applaud wildly when socialist dictators denounce capitalism. Strange philosophical and metaphysical activism surrounds the gathering. And we are told by our president that all of this is based, not on fiction, but on science — that is, a scientific consensus that human activities, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, are leading to catastrophic climate change.
We don’t have to imagine that scenario, of course. It happened in Copenhagen, in December 2009. It will happen again in Paris, in December 2015.
Now, none of this disproves the hypothesis of catastrophic, human induced climate change. But it does describe an atmosphere that would be highly conducive to misrepresentation. And at the very least, when policy consequences, which claim to be based on science, are so profound, the evidence ought to be rock solid. “Extraordinary claims,” the late Carl Sagan often said, “require extraordinary evidence.” When the megaphones of consensus insist that there’s no time, that we have to move, MOVE, MOVE!, you have a right to be suspicious.
Cool image time! In a new press release, the Dawn science team has unveiled a new close-up of Ceres’ double bright spot, shown on the right.
At least eight spots can be seen next to the largest bright area, which scientists think is approximately 6 miles (9 kilometers) wide. A highly reflective material is responsible for these spots — ice and salt are leading possibilities, but scientists are considering other options, too.
In other words, they still have not confirmed through spectroscopy, that these bright spots are ice.
Note also that they have reduced the image’s brightness so that the bright spots do not over expose as much as in past images. This not only allows more details to come out, but it portrays Ceres’ very dark surface more accurately. Even so, the image still shows that surface as brighter than it actually is.
The press release also described a second image, showing a single lonely mountain on the planet’s horizon, rising up three miles from the planet’s surface, shown in the cropped image to the left. Overall this image, as well as the others, suggest that the surface of Ceres is generally far less rough than we should expect.
Another science mystery to unravel!
Fascists: Another Christian business forced to close because the owners refused to host a homosexual wedding.
If the trend continues as it has, expect the homosexual community to soon demand the imprisonment of some Christians for their beliefs, and expect some to go to prison as a result. And expect this to happen even though no one is preventing any homosexuals from having homosexual relations.
And we all know that the gay agenda has everything to do with tolerance, don’t we?
The managers of the Thirty Meter Telescope project have announced that they will resume construction of the telescope on Wednesday.
Since the state of Hawaii has refused to remove the protesters, who have been camping illegally on the road up to the mountaintop, expect some conflict come Wednesday when the first construction vehicle tries to drive past.
Using the first color images sent from New Horizons, scientists have assembled a short movie of the orbital dance between Pluto and its largest moon Charon.
The federal court of appeals today ruled in favor of the pro-Israel organization Z Street in its lawsuit against the IRS for specifically harassing them because their positions disagreed with the Obama administration.
To review:
Z STREET filed its lawsuit against the IRS in August, 2010, on the basis of statements made to its counsel by the IRS agent reviewing Z STREET’s application for 501(c)(3) charitable tax exempt status, filed in 2009. That agent revealed that the IRS has an “Israel Special Policy” which gave differential treatment to tax exemption applications from organizations holding views about Israel inconsistent with those espoused by the Obama administration, scrutinizing such applications differently and at greater length, than those made by organizations which did not hold such views. [emphasis mine]
As I like to say, the IRS, rather than doing tax enforcement, has been instead very specifically working as a lobbying agent for the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. The Z Street case documents it, and is now going to document it far more thoroughly than any Democrat or Obama can imagine.
The organization says it looks forward to the discovery phase of litigation in which it will seek to learn the nature and origin of the “Israel Special Policy” which the IRS applied to Z Street’s tax exemption application. Z Street will seek to learn how such a policy was created, who created it, who approved it, to whom it was applied, as well as all other information regarding this policy.
What Z Street learns will be directly useful to the conservative organizations that the IRS also harassed illegally. It might also do great political harm to a number of prominent Democratic Party elected officials.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has replaced one of its automated first stage landing barges with an upgraded version.
With dimensions virtually identical to Marmac 300, she carries some new features, including a steel blast wall erected between the rear containers and the landing deck, in addition to the steel bow wall as previously seen on Marmac 300. Ongoing work visible on deck suggests that a second blast wall may be installed at the forward end of the landing deck as well.
The article also provides us a nice contrast between the government and the private sector. While a private company is now willing to buy a flight with a recovered first stage, even before a successful landing, the government is far more cautious:
According to Mr. Musk, officials have asked for “repeated, successful” demonstrations of a first stage landing on the drone ship before a landing attempt will be allowed at the Cape.
That the company has already demonstrated twice that the first stage can return very precisely to its target should have already satisfied these officials. Moreover, the landing site would be well secured and maintained by SpaceX, and they appear quite willing to bear any repair costs should the stage crash on that landing site.
Philae today sent another 2 minutes worth of information to Rosetta.
The downlink was stable; the two contacts received by Rosetta lasted two minutes each. Both delivered numerous packets of lander housekeeping and status data, 185 in total, which are still being analysed at the time of this writing. No science data were anticipated or received.
The competition heats up: Commercial satellite company SES has requested SpaceX that one of its satellites be the first to be launched with a recovered Falcon 9 first stage.
SES has seven satellites under construction, five of which are contracted for SpaceX launches, starting with SES-9. SES said it has been given a guarantee by SpaceX that the launch will occur no later than September. SES has agreed to allow SES-9 to be the first launch using an upgraded Falcon 9 main-stage Merlin 1D engine, whose performance is being increased to allow SpaceX to attempt first-stage recovery even on launches to geostationary transfer orbit, the destination of most telecommunications satellites.
Just as it secured an attractive SpaceX price for the SES-8 by being one of the first established customers, SES now wants a cut-rate price on a Falcon 9 with a previously used first stage. “Our launch vehicle for SES-9 will be a recoverable vehicle,” Halliwell said. “We believe they will be able to recover it on this mission. We actually asked them: If we do recover it, can we use it again and get a good price discount? We’re still in discussions.”
In other words, if SpaceX is successful in landing the first stage after it puts SES-9 into orbit in September, they want first dibs, at a good price, of using that stage on a future SES launch.
SES’s willingness to do this changes my estimated time frame for the first successful reuse of a first stage. I had assumed that the commercial satellite companies would all be reluctant to put one of their payloads on a rocket using a recovered first stage, until they had seen at least one test flight of such a stage. SES proves this assumption wrong, to my delight.
Some good news: In a 9-0 ruling the Supreme Court struck down a local Arizona town’s ordiance that restricted a church’s right to post signs about its upcoming events.
What is most encouraging about this ruling is that all nine justices agreed to it. This suggests that there is a strong majority on the court that supports freedom of speech, and will not look kindly at the Obama administration’s effort to impose its will on the speech and activity of religious and conservative organizations.
The House today passed a revised fast track authority bill for any trade bills that President Obama might negotiate.
This bill did not include the job training section that was defeated last week and that the Senate included in its version of fast track. Thus, the Senate must now vote again on fast track, this time on the House-passed version. It is unclear whether the Senate will agree, as Democrats have opposed fast track without the jobs aid.
Overall this whole incident illustrates how misguided our elected leaders are. Right now we have much bigger problems than negotiating a new trade agreement, especially considering the secrecy in which Obama wishes to complete that negotiation.
Trying to avoid what’s in it: Faced with the possibility that the Supreme Court could declare that the Obamacare subsidies are illegal in most states, House Republicans have come up with a new bill to revise the law.
In the tentative responses discussed in separate closed-door meetings Wednesday, House GOP leaders said they would continue the subsidies for a year. Then, states could receive federal block grants for the following two years that they could structure into any kind of health care aid they wish. All of the health law’s regulations would end for those states, including popular ones like assuring coverage of children until age 26. In 2017 — when Republicans hope to control the White House — the entire health law would be eliminated.
The law would also immediately repeal the Obamacare tax on medical devices as well as the Obamacare advisory board designed to ration care to save money.
We know already that Obama will veto this plan, which to my mind is a good thing. The only solution that will work to fix Obamacare is to repeal it in toto. Partial fixes, even ones that last only a few years, can only cause more harm and will increase the chances that legislators will chicken out of full repeal when it is finally time to kick in.
