The Twitter comment of the day: “More people have applied to live on Mars than have signed up for Obamacare.”
I almost never look at Twitter comments, but this one was too good to pass up.
Five stupid movie deaths that should have been really easy to avoid.
These examples are why I find most modern movies either boring, annoying, or stupid. They too often follow the same predictable action formula developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they too often require their main characters to act stupid, and they too often are based on ridiculous concepts that are so silly that even after typing randomly for one million years one million monkeys would find them unworthy.
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 or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
"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
The uncertainty of science: A recently discovered 1.8 million year old skull suggests that the multiple human species theorized by paleontologists were actually just one. More details here.
It is one of five early human skulls — four of which have jaws — found so far at the site, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the capital Tbilisi, along with stone tools that hint at butchery and the bones of big, saber-toothed cats. Lead researcher David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, described the group as “the richest and most complete collection of indisputable early Homo remains from any one site.”
The skulls vary so much in appearance that under other circumstances, they might have been considered different species, said co-author Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich. “Yet we know that these individuals came from the same location and the same geological time, so they could, in principle, represent a single population of a single species,” he said. The researchers compared the variation in characteristics of the skulls and found that while their jaw, brow and skull shapes were distinct, their traits were all within the range of what could be expected among members of the same species.
I have always thought that paleontologists were too quick to name each new major find as a new species. Among all species there is always a wide variety of features. One person is tall. Another has a big forehead or head. This discovery reinforces this idea. The five skulls were all found in the same place, from the same group. Yet they were very different from each other.
Finding out what’s in it: Some comments from people trying to use the Obamacare website.
Note this important point by the author of the post:
As with our last visit to the HealthCare.gov Facebook page, I’ve tried to avoid all ideological objectors and instead present only comments from people who seem to be genuinely trying to purchase insurance from the website.
As tea party and conservatives noted in 2009, Obamacare was putting the equivalent of the DMV in charge of the health insurance business. It appears that this prediction was right on the money. The comments are horrifying. No private business would dare operate a website this poorly designed.
I repeat: Obamacare was what the government shutdown was all about. The Republicans wanted to revise or repeal it, the Democrats refused to consider any changes at all. Which do you think was the better policy position for the American people?
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.
“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.
Working for the Democratic Party: The major news networks blamed the shutdown on Republicans 41 times, Democrats 0 times.
In Congress the shutdown was a team effort, involving both parties. To pin the blame on one party is to reveal your partisanship.
But then, this really isn’t news. The major news networks have been unabashed Democratic Party operatives for years. This detail just provides another one of thousands of illustrations that prove it.
Leftwing tolerance: A Moveon.org petition calls for the arrest of the House Republican leadership.
At the moment the petition has over 21,000 signers. Isn’t it gratifying how tolerant the left is to the idea of dissent, when that dissent happens to disagree with them?
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.
"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
Working for the Democratic Party: A House hearings yesterday, the partisan tactics of the director of the National Park Service were clearly illustrated by comparing what this government official did during the Occupy Wall Street protests versus his actions during the government shutdown. Watch:
The man should be fired. But he won’t be. Obama’s outrage over such activities is pure theater. He actually likes what Jarvis did, as it wholly supports the agenda of the Democratic Party.
Obamacare might well be imploding.
In other words, the elites in Washington might have signed a corrupt budget deal, but meanwhile the cause of the shutdown, Obamacare, continues to show itself to be an abject failure, justifying the efforts of the more honest Republicans to try to stop it.
The Democrats endorsed this law again during the budget standoff. Had they be willing to even consider minor changes the shutdown could have been averted. Instead, they stood firm as a party, supporting this unworkable law, as it stands.
Cassini has taken a spectacular full color image of Saturn’s hexagon-shaped storm that surrounds its north pole.
The next test flight of a version of SpaceX’s Grasshopper could occur in New Mexico in December.
The story says this test will be with Grasshopper, but I think that is a mistake. Unless SpaceX is using this name for all its vertical landing test vehicles, the company had said the test vehicle to fly in New Mexico would be a full scale Falcon 9 first stage, with nine Merlin engines, not one as has Grasshopper.
Cygnus will be de-orbited one day early, on October 23.
At the same time, preparations move forward for the second Cygnus flight in December, which will be the first operational flight. This quote is interesting:
Neither Orbital nor the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority got locked out of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport as a result of the shutdown, meaning that preparations for the tentative December launch continued while more than 95 percent of NASA’s roughly 18,000 civil servants were on furlough.
Suggests again how unessential a good percentage of NASA’s employees really are. They might be great engineers, but they are apparently wasting their talents at NASA doing unnecessary make-work.
Divers working at a Russian lake have recovered a half-ton piece of the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk on February 15.
The Senate budget deal that the House will vote on today includes some really nice pork.
The bill includes extra funds to fix flooded roads in Colorado, a $3 million appropriation for a civil liberties oversight board and a one-time payment to the widow of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who died over the summer. It also includes a more than $2 billion increase in funding for construction on the lower Ohio River in Illinois and Kentucky. Current law authorizes $775 million in spending for related projects, and the bill increases it to $2.918 billion.
The last appears to be a kickback to Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to get him to buy into this crap.
The bill also has this crap:
The legislation broadly re-opens the government through Jan. 15, and extends the ability of the government to borrow money through Feb. 7. It does so by allowing President Obama to waive the debt ceiling, a move that can be overridden by a resolution of disapproval by Congress that Obama could still veto. [emphasis mine]
In other words, Congress is now ceding this budgetary responsibility and power to the President, who will then rule by decree.
Update: The bill passed both houses of Congress and has now been signed by the President. Note that the only opposition came from Republicans, but even here the opposition was a minority. The Democrats strongly endorsed this bill, and for good reason. It gives them (and the Republicans who supported it) lots of pork and greater power for Obama. Americans meanwhile are screwed. The day of reckoning still looms.
WTF? Chase Bank has told its business customers that they are placing a limit on the amount that can be withdrawn from an account, while also banning all international wire transfers.
If I had a Chase account, I would close it today, immediately, before these restrictions go into place.
The true global warming crisis: The lies underlying the theory.
Read it. He details nicely the lies in the most recent IPCC report.
A Democratic Congresswoman speaks her mind: “Let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts.”
But don’t worry: I guarantee she will be re-elected forever. She is a black representative, in a black district. What matter that she appears to be as stupid as a brick, she’s black!
When your only criteria for voting for someone is their race, then you are the bigot. And sadly, this description appears to apply to too many blacks voters today.
The director of the National Park Service now claims that the barricades around memorials in DC were put there to protect them from terrorists during the shutdown.
What kind of fools do they take us for? This is downright insulting.
An Obama supporter finds out what’s in it: “I wanted the Affordable Health Care Act. The problem is, is it’s not affordable.”
I would laugh except that I am crying. Moreover, the article is from a San Francisco media outlet, which is as surprised as this Obama supporter at the cost of Obamacare. Too bad these liberals all considered conservatives and tea party people terrorists, murderers, and hate-filled killers of small children and therefore not worth listening to back in 2009. Had they listened, they would have found out about the unworkable nature of this law then, instead of now, and the law would never have been passed.
They should maybe consider this reality and recognize that this is why there are Republicans putting up a fight now to delay or defund the law.
Well hallelujah and amen! No budget deal: The Democrats continue to refuse to give in at all, and the Republicans have shown some spine and refused to cave.
This deadlock has been a team effort, from both sides. To say it is entirely the fault of one party or the other is to reveal your partisanship.
Nonetheless, legislation requires negotiation, and the only ones refusing to negotiate at all have been the Democrats. In the real world outside of government, such pig-headedness always results in no deal at all.
Right now it looks like 17% of the government will remain shut for quite awhile. And with the debt ceiling kicking in, the federal government will find its hands tied even more. The American people are about to find out that life will go on quite successfully without their big daddy to boss them around.
Tennessee and North Carolina have agreed to reopen Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Like other states, they will pay the operating costs of the National Park Service, then get reimbursed when the government shutdown ends.
I wish they weren’t paying anything. They could have made sure the parks were open and available to all using state resources, and let the National Park Service throw a temper tantrum when it discovered it couldn’t control the parks.
