TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation

10:25 pm

Does this make you feel safer? The TSA is going to retest the radiation levels of all its airport body scanners after maintenance records on some showed levels 10 times higher than expected. Also this:

The TSA is responsible for the safety of its own X-ray devices. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it does not routinely inspect airport X-ray machines because they are not considered medical devices. The TSA’s airport scanners are exempt from state radiation inspections because they belong to a federal agency.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

David Horowitz Takes on Muslim Students at Brooklyn College

5:06 pm

So who are the real hate-mongers here? David Horowitz speaks at Brooklyn College while under heavy security. To me, the key quote is this:

Mr. Horowitz began by ruefully observing, “When I went to college you didn’t need all of this security on campus, but things have changed and that’s the reason we now need checkpoints on campuses. Checkpoints are essential to defend against terrorists and Jew haters.” Adding that he has been verbally and physically assaulted on campuses around the country for his forthright views, he said, “Our campuses are controlled by liberal fascists and it is a movement to suppress the free speech rights of conservatives.”

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Random variations are still too large for climate models

3:00 pm

The uncertainty of science: a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters has concluded that the the long term random variations of the climate, sometimes lasting as long as three or four decades, are large enough to hide any actual changes to the climate. In the quote from the abstract below, the term “random walk” is jargon for a long term random fluctuation having nothing to do with climate change.

This result indicates that the shorter records may not totally capture the random variability of climate relevant on the time scale of civilizations, for which the random walk length is likely to be about 30 years. For this random walk length, the observed standard deviations of maximum temperature and minimum temperature yield respective expected maximum excursions on land of 1.4 and 2.3°C and over the ocean of 0.5 and 0.7°C, which are substantial fractions of the global warming signal.

In other words, it might simply be too soon to be making predictions about the climate, based upon the presently available data.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Putting ISS to use

8:50 pm

Putting ISS to use. Key quote:

Under consideration is using the entire station and its six-person crew as an analog for a deep-space human exploration vehicle en route to Mars. An internal team is studying the feasibility and value of such an exercise in the summer of 2012. “We might start with a small window, like a 30-day window, with actual time delays with what we’d expect with a Martian communications system,” Gerstenmaier says. “We may freeze our consumables on station, in the sense of saying that we’ve started our voyage to Mars, and see how well we do in our predictions.”

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Bill would set aside $60 million to develop in-vehicle alcohol detectors

5:15 pm

There are so many ways this is wrong and illegal I can’t begin to count them: Senators Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) and Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) want to set aside $60 million to develop in-vehicle alcohol detectors that could be installed in all cars. You would have to use it before your car would start.

Putting aside the constitutional issues, isn’t there that federal debt to worry about?

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Why public sector unions are losing – and can’t stop it if they tried

2:31 pm

Why public sector unions are losing – and can’t stop it if they tried. Key quote:

This is why the Wisconsin Democratic Senators were in the minority in the first place. There is no reason for ninety percent of the population to rally for benefits that accrue to only ten percent of the workforce when they themselves are cut out of those benefits. So Wisconsin Democrats found themselves a powerless minority, whose only recourse was to run and…hope that tomorrow a new world would dawn. Such hopes are foolishness. And the Wisconsin Republican Senators showed them exactly why that is so. [emphasis in original]

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