Ten time capsules lost and then rediscovered
Link here.
To me the amazing thing about these stories is how easily these capsules became forgotten. History is a fragile thing. If you don’t record it properly it will be forgotten very quickly.
Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Judeo-Christian tolerance vs Islamic tolerance
French Jesuits have published a collection of Charlie Hebdo anti-Catholic cartoons on their own website.
We have decided to put online [on our site] a few cartoons of Charlie Hebdo that relate to Catholicism. It is a sign of strength to be able to laugh at some traits of the institution to which we belong, because it is a way of saying that what we value is beyond always transient and imperfect forms. Humour regarding faith is a good antidote to fanaticism and a spirit of seriousness which tends to take everything literally.
We express our solidarity with our murdered brothers , the other victims, their families and friends.
writing
The link above is a translation of the actual site where the cartoons are available.
Georgia police declare war on okra
We’re here to help you: Heavily armed police raided the home of a retired Atlanta citizen because a helicopter inspection — without a warrant — spotted some plants in his backyard that they thought were marijuana.
The plants were okra, a classic southern side dish.
And police wonder why many people today are suspicious of them. What the hell are they doing, flying over people’s homes and snooping into their backyards?
Muslim students refuse to honor murdered victims of terrorism
The religion of peace marches on: French Muslim students refuse to stand in honor of those killed by the recent terrorist attacks. They also attacked those Muslims who did stand.
A close look at Russia’s next generation space station modules
The competiton heats up: Anthony Zak’s a detailed report of the design and development of the next generation space station modules Russia intends to dock at ISS has this interesting tidbit:
In addition to expanding the ISS, Russian developers viewed the NEM module as the basis for future Russian efforts to send humans beyond the Earth orbit. Thanks to its multi-function design, life support and power-supply capability, one or a whole cluster of such vehicles could provide habitation quarters and laboratories for a station at the so-called Lagrange points, which were considered as a staging ground for the exploration of the Moon, asteroids and Mars.
In case of an international agreement on the construction of a manned outpost in the Lagrange point, the NEM-based laboratory could constitute the Russian contribution into the effort. The NEM-based outpost could be serviced and staffed by the crews of US-European Orion spacecraft and by Russia’s next-generation spacecraft, PTK NP. Simularly, the NEM module, possibly in combination with other hardware, could serve as an outpost in the orbit around the Moon. Also in 2014, plans were hatched to make the NEM-based laboratory a part of the post-ISS Russian space station, VShOS, in the high-inclination orbit.
The Russians have always understood that a space station is nothing more than a prototype of an interplanetary spaceship. They are therefore simply carrying through with the same engineering research they did on their earlier Salyut and Mir stations, developing a vessel that can keep humans alive on long trips to other planets.
This approach makes a lot more sense that NASA’s SLS/Orion project, which does not give us what we need to make long interplanetary voyages, and costs a lot more.
Sarah Brightman to begin training for space flight
The competition heats up: Sarah Brightman is scheduled to arrive in Russia on Thursday to begin her training for her tourist flight to ISS later this year.
Dragon arrives at ISS
Dragon has berthed successfully at ISS, much earlier than originally planned.
Photos of SpaceX’s floating landing barge
The landing barge on which the first stage of the Falcon 9 attempted to land has returned to port.
Photos of the barge show signs of blast and burn damage to cargo containers and possible wreckage from the rocket covered by tarps on the platform’s deck. The rest of the vessel appeared undamaged.
These photos do not show as much wreckage as I would have expected, though my expectations here aren’t based on much knowledge. I would have thought that the first stage remains would have been more substantial.
Cruz and Rubio to chair important space and science subcommittees
We are about to find out how conservative and pro-private enterprise senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) really are. Both have been assigned as chairmen of important subcommittees managing NASA and NOAA.
Cruz will chair the subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, which handles NASA, while Rubio will chair the subcommittee that handles NOAA.
For Cruz especially this position will challenge him to prove his tea party credentials. If he is in favor of private space as much as he claims, we will see him work to trim SLS, a pork project with no hope of achieving anything in space, and favor the commercial space effort, even though SLS brings much more pork into his state.
“The freedom to write history without intimidation was no longer something that I took for granted.”
The religion of peace strikes again! A scholar on Roman history and his family were threatened with death threats when he wrote a book, followed by a television documentary, about the fall of Rome in the Middle East and how his research raised questions about the life of Mohammed.
Just a few minutes into the broadcast, my Twitter stream was going up in smoke. By the time the show ended, the death threats were coming in thick and fast—and not just against me but against my family as well. Channel 4 was also deluged with protests. A private screening scheduled for assorted movers and shakers had to be canceled after the police warned that they couldn’t guarantee the security of those attending the event. Because many of the invitees had been journalists, this naturally gave the controversy a new lease of life.
Two weeks later, I was still fielding death threats from Muslims convinced that the only plausible explanation for my having made the film was that I was in the pay of Mossad or the CIA or both. The most chilling moment of all came when Press TV, a propaganda arm of the Iranian government, aired a documentary leveling pretty much that accusation. It was the one time that I seriously imagined I might end up as the new Salman Rushdie.
As I said, hate and violence appears to be a feature of Islam, not a bug.
The madness of IRS Obamacare paperwork
Finding out what’s in it: Tax preparers discover that Obamacare adds so much paperwork to their work it isn’t worth it to do it.
About two-thirds of the way through the morning I questioned the whole process. I stated that if someone walked into to my office who was receiving the [Obamacare subsidy] that I would not accept them as a client. The cost of preparing the paperwork to get them properly qualified to receive the benefit would exceed anything I could reasonably charge them. The instructor, a fine fellow from Iowa, stated he unfortunately had to agree with me. So now tax preparers will have to decide whether to accept clients based on our health care system — just like doctors.
There’s lot more. Read the whole thing.
But you voted for Obama and the Democrats because they care. Aren’t you proud?!
Political prosecution of conservative in South Dakota
A South Dakota tea party conservative who ran and lost in the Republican primary for Senate is now threatened with 24 years in prison for mistakenly signing six petition sheets in error.
The details are worth reading. It looks to me that the only reason she has been indicted is because she is a threat to the powers-that-be, and they want her out of the way.
Jihadists kill thousands
The religion of peace marches on! Thousands dead in another Boko Haram massacre in Nigeria.
District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents. “The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous,” Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for poorly armed civilians in a defence group that fights Boko Haram, told the Associated Press. He said the civilian fighters gave up on trying to count all the bodies. “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now,” Gava said.
The key word above is “another”. Killings like this are not a bug in Islam, they are a feature.
Elon Musk’s twitter explanation of the 1st stage landing attempt
Link here.
He says there were only “10% off”. I suspect that number is off the top of his head, but it does represent how close they came. They hit the barge, and the rocket was attempting to get into position for touchdown when fuel ran out. That is an amazing success for a first attempt of something that no one has ever tried before.
The world’s biggest ship arrives in Great Britain on its maiden voyage
Link here, with photos and diagrams illustrating its gigantic size.
And it will only be the world’s biggest ship for another few weeks. A bigger ship is about to be launched.
“Dear France, wrap their bodies in the carcasses of pigs.”
Erick Erickson asks the good question: If the terrorists are not real Muslims, why is it that our intellectual elites object to burying their bodies with the pigs of carcasses?
To do this would be to exacerbate the situation and cause further strife and outrage among muslims. And we could not have that, could we? So either they are the muslims the media has claimed they were not or . . .
I ask: why should any Muslim object? If these murderers do not represent Islam or are not real Muslims, why would any real Muslim want to protect them in any way?
Unless the real Muslims sympathize with these murderers and what they stood for, deep down.
Islamophobia is a myth created by the bigotry of the elites
Link here.
Islamophobia is a code word for mainstream European elites’ fear of their own populations, of their native hordes, whom they imagine to be unenlightened, prejudiced, easily led by the tabloid media, and given to outbursts of spite and violence. The thing that keeps the Islamophobia panic alive is not actual violence against Muslims but the right-on politicos’ ill-founded yet deeply held view of ordinary Europeans, especially those of a working-class variety, as racist and stupid. This is the terrible irony of the Islamophobia panic: The fearers of anti-Muslim violence claim to be challenging prejudice but actually they reveal their own prejudices, their distrust of and disdain for those who come from the other side of the tracks, read different newspapers, hold different beliefs, live different lives. They accuse stupid white communities of viewing Muslims as an indistinguishable mob who threaten the fabric of European society, which is exactly what they think of stupid white communities.
I would only suggest that this elite bigotry is not limited to European elites, but applies as well to the leftwing elites throughout the entire first world, including the Unites States. They hate conservatives and the general population that is not part of their upper class intellectual community, and express it repeatedly by their expectation of Islamic bigotry that never happens.
Meanwhile, a landmark synagogue in Paris was forced closed on the Sabbath this weekend, for the first time since World War II, because of Islamic antisemitism.
Opportunity reaches high point on crater rim
The Mars rover Opportunity has climbed to its highest Martian altitude yet, a point on the rim of Endeavour Crater 440 feet above the crater floor below.
This despite the rover’s continuing memory problems.
Dragon reaches orbit
Another successful Falcon 9 launch for SpaceX this morning, placing a Dragon capsule in the correct orbit for rendezvous and berthing with ISS.
We still await word on the attempt to land the first stage of the rocket on a barge in the Atlantic. From the link above: “SpaceX founder Elon Musk has tweeted an update: ‘Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho.'” More details here.
Based on what they have released, SpaceX has achieved something pretty incredible for its first attempt, actually hitting the floating ship at landing. That the landing itself was not soft or gently is literally only a detail. They will have the opportunity on future launches to get it right.
Senate Republicans call for gas tax hike
Lying slime: A number of Senate Republicans have joined with Democrats to call for an increase in the gas tax.
Though the last time the gas tax was increased was during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the only reason the highway fund is short of money is that they don’t spend it wisely, wasting a lot on stupid projects. (Sounds a lot like almost everything the federal government does, doesn’t it?) Rather than increase the tax, Congress should take a close look at how the money is being spent, and clamp down.
I should note that House Republicans have already said that they will oppose this increase. Whether they stay that course however remains to be seen.