Epic monuments and power

8:10 pm

More Mexico City traffic

Being in Mexico on a sightseeing trip, it is of course necessary to visit some famous churches as well as some Aztec ruins. On Thursday we headed out to do both, though we first had to slowly work our way through Mexico City’s never-ending bumper-to-bumper traffic to get where we were going.

When we got there what struck me the most about the two different tourist sites we visited was how much they resembled each other, despite being separated by almost 1500 years and completely different cultures and religious beliefs.

The old Basilica

Our first stop was to see the Basilica of the Guadalupe, located in northern Mexico City. To understand the significance of this site it is important to know the background. According to the story, which is not documented in any writings by clergy at that time, in 1531 native Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin had a series of visions of the Virgin Mary, speaking to him in his native Aztec tongue. In those visions she told him that a church should be built at a specific spot in her honor. Initially his vision was rejected by the clergy when he told them about it. When the Virgin Mary began to work miracles, however, including having her vision miraculously appear on the front of Diego’s cloak, they came to accept the visions and proceeded to build that church as requested. The result was the Basilica, where Diego’s cloak is still housed and is on display for all to see. Juan Diego himself was canonized as a saint in 2002, the Catholic Church’s first indigenous saint from the New World.

The significance of these events for the Catholic Church in Latin America is hard to measure.
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Two Mauna Kea protesters convicted but get minor sentences

8:29 am

Two protesters who blocked a road leading to the summit of Mauna Kea to block construction vehicles for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) have been convicted of misdeamenors and given very minor sentences.

The state requested six months’ probation, and that they stay off Mauna Kea Access Road for the period of probation. Prosecutors also requested 72 hours of community service in lieu of a $500 fine. Fujiyoshi [one of the protesters] asked for a jail sentence instead of community service, and was sentenced to five days. He will serve one day in jail, with credit for time served; six months’ probation; and was ordered to remain off the access road. Lindsey-Kaapuni [the other protester] argued against probation, and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

The state here has no easy solution. If it demands severe punishment the press will make the protesters martyrs. If it lets them off then the protesters will know they can protest as much as they want and face no consequences.

Right now I do not see TMT ever getting built on Mauna Kea. I also see the slow removal of the telescopes already there to be certain, given time. The protesters are in control, and they oppose this search for knowledge about the universe.

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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 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 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

Yale students demand two administrators be fired for defending free speech

8:13 am

The coming dark age: Students at Yale University on Thursday demanded that two university administrators be fired because they refused to ban certain Halloween costumes that might offend some students.

On Thursday, the students surrounded Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway—a black man—in an outdoor space and chided him for failing to take action against a fraternity that had allegedly prevented black women from attending its party. (It’s not at all clear the allegation is true, according to The Daily Beast)

After giving Holloway his comeuppance, they moved on to Nicholas Christakis, master of Silliman College. What was Christakis’s crime? His wife, an early childhood educator, had responded to a campus-wide email about offensive Halloween costumes by opining that it was inappropriate for the college to tell students how to dress.

There are videos also showing the students attacking Christakis. Watch them, and then weep for the fall of western civilization. Key quote, by one of the students:

It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that.

In other words, going to Yale is not about going to a place where intellectual ideas of all kinds can be expressed. You go to Yale to feel safe and unbothered.

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Noteworthy – Amazing Grace

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Normally I do not post music videos where the singers are lip-syncing so that they can stage some clever visuals, as is done in this video. However, the singing is so good, and the singers and song is filled with such joy, that it is worth listening and watching regardless. A good way to end the week.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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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.

More Mexico commentary to come

10:24 pm

It is late here in Mexico City and we are leaving early tomorrow to visit what I have been told is the first library ever established in the New World. So, a post on today’s visit to the Basilica of Guadalupe and the Teotihuacan pyramids near Mexico City will have to wait. Both are significant religious sites with bigger than life monuments, though from different time periods and of very different religions. The contrast and similarities were revealing. More in a couple of days when I have more time.

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Competition for ISS cargo contract reduced to three

9:50 pm

The competition heats up: With NASA once again delaying its decision on the next contract round for supplying cargo to ISS — this time to January — Boeing also revealed that NASA had eliminated the company from the competition, leaving only SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada in the running for the two contracts.

Earlier I had said that if the decision had been up to me, which of course it isn’t, I would pick Orbital and Sierra Nevada, since SpaceX and Boeing already have contracts to ferry crews to ISS. If you add Orbital’s Cygnus and Sierra Nevada’s reusable Dream Chaser, you then have four different spacecraft designs capable of bring payloads into orbit, a robust amount of redundancy that can’t be beat. When I wrote that I also noted that I thought it wouldn’t happen because Boeing’s clout with Congress and NASA would make it a winner.

With Boeing now out of the picture, it seems to me that the reason NASA has delayed its final decision again is that it wants to see what happens with the return to flight launches of Dragon and Cygnus in the next three months. A SpaceX Dragon success will cement that company’s position in the manned contract area, while an Orbital ATK Cygnus succuss will make picking them for a second contract seem less risky. In addition, maybe NASA wants Sierra Nevada to fly another glide test of its Dream Chaser test vehicle, and is now giving it the time to do so.

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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

No sign of alien civilization at distant star

9:09 pm

The uncertainty of science: Two weeks of targeted observations by the Allen Telescope Array in California have detected no clear signal of an alien civilization at the star KIC 8462852 where Kepler observations have seen variations that could possibly be caused by giant alien structures.

Two different types of radio signals were sought: (1) Narrow-band signals, of order 1 Hz in width, such as would be generated as a “hailing signal” for societies wishing to announce their presence. This is the type of signal most frequently looked for by radio SETI experiments.  (2) Broad-band signals that might be due to beamed propulsion within this star system.  If astroengineering projects are really underway in the vicinity of KIC 8462852, one might reasonably expect the presence of spacecraft to service this activity.  If these craft are propelled by intense microwave beams, some of that energy might manifest itself as broad-band radio leakage. “This is the first time we’ve used the Allen Telescope Array to look for relatively wide-band signals, a type of emission that is generally not considered in SETI searches,” said SETI Institute scientist Gerry Harp.

Analysis of the Array data show no clear evidence for either type of signal between the frequencies of 1 and 10 GHz.  This rules out omnidirectional transmitters of approximately 100 times today’s total terrestrial energy usage in the case of the narrow-band signals, and ten million times that usage for broad band emissions.

The data shows no sign of alien civilization, but it also does not eliminate the possibility. More detailed observations are required to do that.

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A closer look at the fake sea level data

7:22 am

On Saturday I had posted a link to a very detailed article that strongly suggested that the alterations to the sea level rise data that scientists at the Colorado Sea Level Research Group were doing were either fraudalent or very very poorly thought out. One of the regular readers of Behind the Black, Edward, posted such a detailed and well-researched analysis of this story that I thought it worthwhile to promote it to the main page. Edward has given me permission to do so and so here it is:

It is reasonable for us to consider the possibility that a fraud is being perpetrated upon us.

1) Explaining data and the differences between the data taken and the data used is basic science; more basic than Science 101, it is middle school science. It is the first thing taught about data reporting in the first science class in which a student is required to collect data. Thus for the Colorado Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado to ignore the data discrepancy is a violation of basic science.
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Recreating the changing giant starspots on a distant star

11:46 pm

Astronomers have recreated what they think is the evolution of the giant sunspots on a distant star, covering the period from 2006 to 2012.

More importantly, Künstler’s team measured the time it takes for starspots to decay and used that information to estimate properties of the star’s magnetic field. For example, the star’s activity cycle appears to last about 26 years, more than double the Sun’s 11-year cycle.

You can see a video of this recreation at the link.

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Crowded Mexico City and colonization of space

11:15 pm

This week Diane and I are in Mexico with friends doing some sightseeing. As is my habit, I can’t just enjoy the sights I have to ask a lot of questions while trying to get an impression of the place, its culture, its environment, its atmosphere, and its politics. Not surprisingly, the answers to some of those questions pointed me upward beyond the surface of the Earth. To understand why, read on.

Today we toured the inner parts of Mexico City, both on foot and by bus and subway (or the Metro as they call it here). I have spent considerable time in many of the world’s major cities, growing up in New York and visiting at length Moscow, Kiev, Prague, London, Chicago, Los Angeles and others. Mexico City has many of the same features you’d expect for this kind of big city, lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of buildings packed tight together, and lots of wealth and poverty sitting side-by-side.

Mexico City traffic

Mexico City however to me seemed to be most crowded and the most packed of any city I have ever visited or lived in. Its size and population probably rivals that of the entire New York metropolitan area, but somehow the traffic and crowds and architecture seemed more piled on top of each other with far less breathing room.

First was the traffic. Everywhere we went it was wall to wall vehicles. The major highways were never quiet, even at night. Nor could I see much difference between midday and rush hours. The picture on the right shows us heading from in from an outer neighborhood where we were staying to take the subway into the center of the city. Not only was it bumper-to-bumper, but if you look out in the distance the road is bumper-to-bumper as far as the eye can see. My host Alfonso added at one point that in order to avoid this traffic many people routinely leave for work before 5 am and come home after 8 pm. Schools have multiple shifts, including ones at night.

A side note: The tall rectangular structures in the foreground are not buildings. This is a work of art, five several hundred foot tall cinderblock structures supposedly forming a hand pointing up, with the thicker yellow tower in the front representing the thumb.
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Tomato harvesting

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Another video suggested by Phill Oltmann illustrating how engineering has revolutionized the agricultural field. In this case its tomatoes, which I think illustrates quite well why mass produced tomatoes are simply not as good as vine grown tomatoes from your garden. Assuming the tomatoes in this video are not intended for canning, they have to be tough to withstand the harvesting process so that they remain whole for the fruit stand.

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Update to commercial space law stalled in Senate

6:26 am

Surprise, surprise! It appears that several Senate Democrats and the trial lawyer organizations that back them are objecting to passage of an update to the 2004 Commercial Space Act that would extend the period that companies would be exempt from liability while they experiment with new spacecraft.

Some Democratic members of the House Science Committee opposed those provisions when the committee marked up a version of the bill in May. “This really is quite an indefensible provision,” said Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) during discussion then regarding the federal jurisdiction clause of the House bill, arguing that the bill is “basically providing the launch industry with complete immunity from any civil action.”

The American Association for Justice, a legal organization formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, also spoke out against those sections of the bill in May. “Industries that lobby for immunity from accountability might as well hang up a sign saying they don’t trust themselves to be safe,” Linda Lipsen, chief executive of the association, said in a May 13 statement.

I really hate saying “I told you so!” but more than a decade ago, when the 2004 Commercial Space Act was passed, I opposed it because it gave the federal government far too much regulatory control over this very new and very experimental industry. Many industry people attacked me for doing so, saying that they needed this regulatory framework to raise capital.

Now the industry finds those regulations burdensome and is trying to get them eased, or waived temporarily. Not unexpectedly, there are vested interests in and out of Congress who don’t want those regulations eased. So, instead of focusing their energies on developing new technologies, the industry must instead spend money on lobbying and political dealmaking, which might get them some of what they want but will certainly also come with some political price that will be even more burdensome.

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Experimental Air Force rocket launch fails

6:09 am

An experimental Air Force rocket, dubbed Super Strypi, failed seconds after launch today.

The rocket is launched from a rail track rather thabn vertically on a launchpad, and is intended to lower the cost significantly. From the video at the link, it appears that the rail track portion of the flight worked fine, but shortly thereafter the rocket lost control.

Posted from Mexico City.

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Kingston Trio – They’re rioting in Africa

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The amazing thing about this song is that it was written in the 1960s and does a good job of describing the insanity today. In the 60s it was actually exaggerating the chaos a bit. Today, it probably understates it. The only thing about the song that I objected to then, and now, is its eventual pessimistic view of humanity. We ain’t perfect, but we ain’t all bad either. In fact, I think there is probably more good than evil in most of us. We just need to listen, think, and choose. Chaos happens when we don’t, and instead act like mindless instinct-driven animals.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Grizzly bear no longer endangered in Yellowstone

4:57 pm

Good news! Federal wildlife officials have determined that the grizzly bear population in and around Yellowstone has recovered so well that they have the option of removing the species from the endangered species list.

The latest count of grizzlies in the Yellowstone region puts the estimated population of the hump-shouldered bruins at just over 750, well exceeding the government’s recovery goal of 500 animals, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That compares with just 136 believed left in the Yellowstone ecosystem – encompassing parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho – when grizzlies were formally listed as threatened throughout the Lower 48 states in 1975, after they were hunted, trapped and poisoned to near extinction.

Not surprisingly, the article notes how environmental and American Indian groups oppose changing the bear’s status. Want to bet that they win the day and the bear remains endangered? Science really has very little to do with the endangered species act these days. It is all politics.

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A hybrid coyote/wolf prospers in the eastern U.S.

4:45 pm

A new hybrid species, two-thirds coyote and one-third wolf with a little bit of dog, has spread throughout the eastern United States in the past century.

The animal’s range has encompassed America’s entire north-east, urban areas included, for at least a decade, and is continuing to expand in the south-east following coywolves’ arrival there half a century ago. This is astonishing. Purebred coyotes never managed to establish themselves east of the prairies. Wolves were killed off in eastern forests long ago. But by combining their DNA, the two have given rise to an animal that is able to spread into a vast and otherwise uninhabitable territory.

Called either the eastern coyote or the coywolf, it is estimated that their population could now be as high as a million.

Posted from Mexico City.

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China unveils model of planned 2020 Martian probe

7:58 am

The competition heats up: China today unveiled a one-third scale model of its planned Martian lander/rover, scheduled for launch in 2020.

If they succeed in putting a lander and rover on Mars, China will have clearly demonstrated the capability to do almost anything in space that the United States can do. The competition in the coming decades should thus be most interesting.

Posted from Tucson International Airport.

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Richard Branson makes another prediction!

7:49 am

Promises, promises! Richard Branson today predicted that Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane will begin flight tests in February 2016.

Forgive me if I am extremely skeptical. Branson has been making these kinds of promises now for more than a decade, none of which has come even close to coming true. I note this new prediction here merely to point out how bad his past predictions have been. Nowadays, I only believe Virgin Galactic is going to fly after they have do so.

Posted from Tucson International Airport, on the way to Mexico City for a week of sightseeing.

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Excommunication scene from Becket

6:01 pm

An evening pause: On the eve of this year’s election day, this scene from Becket (1964) expresses well what I wish the American voters would do to both the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership in Congress. They all need to go, for the health of the country and because of their repeated malfeasance in office.

Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of the new edition of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.

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Cruz demands Justice Dept preserve IRS scandal documents

1:46 pm

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today put the Justice Department on notice that he wants all their documents relating to the IRS scandal preserved so that future administrations have the ability to complete their own investigation.

“It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter,” Mr. Cruz said in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “Given this Administration’s refusal to conduct itself appropriately, or take the issue of the potential illegal conduct of IRS employees seriously, any subsequent administration should reserve the right to reopen the matter, conduct its own investigation, or appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation.”

I would not be surprised at all if the Justice Department, now working full time for the Democratic Party, decides to destroy these documents at first opportunity. They know that they will face no criminal charges, even though this would be a blatant act of obstruction of justice, because the Democratic Party in Congress will stonewall any investigation. And unless the next Republican President has the courage to fire the lot of them, they themselves will be able to stonewall the next President as well.

In fact, which Republican candidates running for President would have the courage to fire the lot of them? Cruz for sure. Trump probably. Anyone else? I don’t think so.

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French television weatherman fired for doubting global warming

10:16 am

The coming dark age: A leading French television weatherman has been fired because he published a book expressing skepticism about global warming.

He said he was inspired to write the book after France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met with TV meteorologists and asked them to highlight climate change issues in their broadcasts. “I was horrified by this speech,” Verdier told French magazine Les Inrockuptibles last month. In his book, Verdier accuses state-funded climate change scientists of having been “manipulated” and “politicised”, even accusing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of publishing deliberately misleading data

In other words, he dared to expose the political roots of global warming that has nothing to do with science, and was thus immediately fired.

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British spaceplane concept gets infusion of cash

9:38 am

The competition heats up: Reaction Engines, the British company developing a hybrid air-breathing rocket engine, today received obtained a significant funding boost from a new private partner as well as the British government.

The government has committed $60 million, while BAE has purchased 20% of the company with a commitment of an additional $20 million.

The craft Reaction Engines intends to eventually produce, known as Skylon, depends on the ability to cool an incoming airstream from 1,000 degrees C to minus 150 C almost instantly, at close to 1/100th of a second. That process doubles the technical limits of a jet engine, and would enable the craft to reach extremely fast speeds in Earth’s atmosphere, up to give times the speed of sound, before switching to a rocket engine to reach orbit.

Don’t start buying tickets however. They don’t expect to begin manned test flights for at least a decade

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Rosetta special science issue

9:23 am

For those who want to read some interesting science papers, on Friday the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics published a special issue devoted to the results from Rosetta and Philae.

The issue includes 46 papers, many of which are open access and thus available at no cost to the general public. Many were published previously and include their press releases. These earlier results have already been posted here at BtB, but now they the results are gathered together in one place.

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2016 Obamacare premiums to skyrocket 20%

12:38 am

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance premiums in 2016 will rise more than 20%, three times more than predicted by Obama officials.

The discrepancy is because the government excluded price data for three of the four Obamacare health insurance plans when the officials issued their recent forecast claiming enrollees would face only a 7.5 percent average rate increase in 2016. When data for all four plans are included, premium costs will actually rise on average 20.3 percent next year.

In other words, Obama administration officials purposely manipulated the numbers to hide the actual rate increase. Then, not surprisingly, “The mainstream media was quick to embrace the 7.5 percent number, claiming it reflected the real-world experience of most Obamacare customers,” when it truth the number was a lie.

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Another Obamacare co-op, the largest, collapses

8:45 am

Finding out what’s in it: New York’s Obamacare co-op, the country’s largest and the one that took the most government loans to get established, is now facing bankruptcy and collapse.

It is unclear if the co-op deliberately misled state regulators in its original filings, or if regulators found evidence of financial wrongdoing while they tried to close down the defunct non-profit. The co-op’s insolvency was announced September 25.

The New York Department of Financial Services, which regulates insurers in the Empire State, also revised its earlier announcement to the co-op’s 215,000 policyholders that they had until Dec. 30 to find new insurance coverage. Regulators now advise the co-op’s enrollees, many who are poor, that they have to secure new coverage within the next two weeks. DFS said in a statement late Friday that consumers “must take action to choose a new plan for the remainder of 2015 on or before November 15, 2015.”

It also appears that the co-op has been understating its bad financial condition to government officials. Other than that, things remain peachy-keen!

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