The competition heats up: 2014 saw the highest number of rocket launches in two decades.
Russia led the way with the most launches, as has been typical.
Early Wednesday morning I will be undergoing eye surgery for a detached retina in my right eye. The doctors are very confident all will go well, but because of this I do not know if I will be able to post for the rest of the next few days. All will depend on my recovery proceeds. Stay tuned.
Regardless, I would like to once again extend my thanks to all my readers for their support this past year. It is deeply appreciated.
Update: the surgery went well, though whether it was a success or not will not be known for several days.
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.
"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
Link here.
It is frightening that 6 of the 8 resolutions begin with the words “Stop lying…” while the other two begin “Stop tampering…” and “Stop making up…” In fact, the last is probably the most disgusting, as the data shown at the link demonstrates the fraud in the climate field in as clear-cut a manner as possible.
Link here.
The most absurd is probably #3, where a kindergarten program was cancelled to give the kids more time for college prep.
Read it all. It will help convince you to home school your kids.
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.
An evening pause: I like how they had recorded it over a period of months, and had an element of silliness in how they taped different sections. And the music is grand as well!
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Link here.
Despite these events, the Sun’s activity in 2014, right in the middle of the high second peak of its solar maximum, continues to be relatively mild when compared with almost all previous solar maximums going back to the early 1700s.
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
Comet Lovejoy has brightened faster and more quickly than expected, and has now become just visible to the naked eye.
The webpage gives good instructions for finding it, visible each evening now below the constellation of Orion.
In a virtual work stoppage, New York cops have ceased issuing citations for traffic offenses, parking, and other low level drug offenses.
Angry union leaders have ordered drastic measures for their members since the Dec. 20 assassination of two NYPD cops in a patrol car, including that two units respond to every call. It has helped contribute to a nose dive in low-level policing, with overall arrests down 66 percent for the week starting Dec. 22 compared with the same period in 2013, stats show. Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame. Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent — from 4,831 to 300. Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241. Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau — which are part of the overall number — dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.
I see this as a true improvement to the quality of life for the average New Yorker. It isn’t the murders by police that make life hell in New York, but the constant harassment by police for doing the most minor things wrong. In fact, it is these kinds of offenses that probably cause the most friction between citizens and the police.
Serving the taxpayer: Federal employees given charge cards that allow them to buy things freely wasted millions of dollars in unauthorized or improper purchases, according to an inspector general report.
Government purchase cards are intended to be used only for purchases of approved merchandise under $3,000. Southern Command employees used the cards improperly nearly 6,000 times at a cost of $5.1 million, according to a Department of Defense inspector general report. Another $160,000 was spent on an estimated 3,500 unnecessary gifts in the years since 2010, often just days before the government’s fiscal years ended. The items remained in storage at least three years. “The wasteful expenditures could have been put to use in other operational areas and are considered abusive use of the [purchase cards],” the IG said.
Not surprisingly, government officials disagreed with the report, even as they admitted there was nothing factually wrong with it.
Despite the clear misuse of taxpayer dollars, DOD officials disagreed with the IG’s recommendations for tighter management. Southern Command’s chief of staff told the IG “he was unaware of unnecessary gifts in the gift locker.”
The federal government is entirely out of control, and needs to be reined in aggressively. Many people who work there need to be fired. Some need to go to prison for theft. Until that happens, it will continue to suffocate our society with its crippling overspending and increased debt.
Finding out what’s in it: Based on how the law was written, the Obamacare penalties for not having insurance will jump significantly in the next two years, going from trivial to serious.
The fines for the 2014 year were relatively modest — $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold for filing taxes), whichever is more. But insurance scofflaws face a sharp increase if they don’t get covered soon. The fine will jump in 2015 to $325 or 2 percent of income, whichever is higher. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures.
But don’t worry, that’s not all. The law is also going to impact small businesses badly in 2015.
So, explain to me again why you voted for the Democrats who created this law?
After more than ten years of operation, the Mars rover Opportunity has been suffering increasing flash memory problems with its computer.
Engineers have pinpointed the issue to one of the rover’s seven memory banks, and hope to upload software that will force Opportunity to stop using that particular bank. If so, the rover shall live on.
With its arrival set for March, the space probe Dawn has now officially begun its approach to Ceres, the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt.
The competition heats up: In an interview today Russia’s deputy prime minister said that the construction of Vostochny is back on schedule and should be completed as planned in July.
The Proton rocket which had its launch delayed several weeks in order to repair a faulty gyroscope successfully placed a commercial satellite in orbit today.
Earlier this week there were also two successful Soyuz rockets. For Russia’s aerospace industry, 2014 has definitely ended the year on an up note.
An evening pause: Performed live November 13, 2010 in Springfield, Virginia. The aria might be one of Bach’s most beautiful, but the playing here is astonishing. Watch his fingers.
I also like the deeper meaning of the title: It is what we all should strive for: allowing people to live their lives in peace and joy.
Link here.
I dare my liberal readers to come up with a comparable list of conservative intolerance this past year. If they do, I will gladly highlight such behavior also, as fascism from either camp is unacceptable.
However, I have serious doubts liberals can find as many examples of the right squelching freedom of speech in 2014 with the same gusto as shown by the left this past year.
Pigs fly: Vermont’s very leftwing Democratic Governor actually canceled his attempt to take over the state’s healthcare system when his experts told him how expensive it was.
Mr. Shumlin ran in 2010 on an explicit single-payer platform in the most liberal state east of California, and the plan was conceived as a model for other states. … Under the Vermont plan, all 625,000 state residents were to be automatically enrolled in the government plan, with the same benefits for all. As with Medicare, employers would be subject to a payroll tax that would reduce wages, and workers would pay a premium based on a sliding income scale.
… The state accountants estimated that his plan required an 11.5% tax on worker payroll, with no exceptions. Individuals, meanwhile, would have paid as much as 9.5% of earnings, which would have applied to everyone making more than four times the poverty level, or $102,220 for a family of four—hardly the 1%. The full $2.59 billion in necessary funding would roughly double current state revenues (about $2.85 billion today).
…His ideological comrades are rarely dissuaded by the prospect of economic damage, as ObamaCare proves. But Mr. Shumlin has succeeded in making Vermont a national model: By admitting that single payer will make health care both more expensive and less efficient, he has shown other states what not to do. [emphasis mine]
As the highlighted text notes, Democrats routinely ignore what experts tell them about the cost of their proposals, being gladly willing to bankrupt everyone else in order to impose their ideological fantasies on us. (I exclude them because the costs of their proposals are never born by them but by others.)
Governor Shumlin’s decision to abandon his plan thus makes him a rare exception that proves the rule. If only more Democrats had this much contact with reality.
More climate fraud: NOAA scientists deliberately excluded huge swathes of the ocean acid dataset going back 100 years in order to create the false impression that there has been an increase in ocean acid due to increased CO2. More details here.
How did they do it? They cherry-picked when their dataset would begin, in 1988, rather than using the full dataset beginning in 1920. In addition, they also only used computer models that showed this correlation.
Below the fold I have posted the 2004 graph, produced by these so-called scientists, above a graph using the full dataset of real data. You will see that that the 2004 graph is utter crap.
» Read more
Finding out what’s in it: Required by Obamacare to convert all health records into electronic files, those records are now very vulnerable and experts expect hackers to target them in the coming years.
Electronic records have their advantages, no doubt, but the way this conversion was shoved down the throat of both doctors and patients, by Obamacare, has left everyone exposed. Rather than give the professionals in the field the time to make the conversion when practical, convenient, and affordable, Obamacare demanded it be done now, even though many health organizations and doctors were simply not prepared to make the change.
Government marches on! As many as a dozen scientists might have been mistakenly exposed to ebola at an Atlanta CDC lab.
The potential exposure took place Monday when scientists conducting research on the virus at a high-security lab mistakenly put a sample containing the potentially infectious virus in a place where it was transferred for processing to another CDC lab, also in Atlanta on the CDC campus.
The CDC statement is remarkably uninformative. From what little they say, it appears as if the sample was left out uncovered in the lab as people came in and out. It also suggests that this unsecured sample was also transferred improperly to another lab.
No need to worry however. Just like its previous investigation of errors in the handling of anthrax, CDC officials are on the case, doing investigations and writing press releases, just so us ordinary citizens won’t get worried and cut their funds.
The competition heats up: Russia is negotiating a partnership with Brazil to operate Sea Launch.
The Sea Launch rocket is built by Ukraine, which presently has hostile relations with Russia, to say the least. The platform, built with Boeing money, is presently docked on the the U.S. west coast, which is also not what Russia wants. Moving it to Brazil and adapting it for use with a Brazilian rocket solves both problems, though the usability of Brazil’s rocket is at this moment quite questionable.
After three months in orbit around Mars, India’s Mangalyaan spacecraft continues to function as designed, and is expected to operate beyond its planned six month mission.
In the last three months, Mangalyaan has captured nearly 300 pictures. On an average the spacecraft takes four pictures in three days. Besides capturing the images of dust storm activities, it has also taken images of comet Siding Spring.
Because of Mangalyaan’s orbit and the wide-angle nature of its camera the pictures are generally global. This output also is not spectacular compared to other probes. Nonetheless, this is an achievement for which India should be proud.
Europe’s Gaia telescope, designed to precisely measure the motions of a billion stars in the Milky Way, will have its accuracy cut in half because of the presence of loose fibers on the telescope’s sun shield that are allowing too much stray light in.
These fibres were spotted on Gaia before launch, but cutting them off was considered too risky, because that could allow small particles to enter the spacecraft. Another option, taping them down, was also ruled out because the increased stiffness could prevent the sunshield from unfolding.
The stray light shouldn’t affect measurements of the galaxy’s brightest stars, says Gaia science team member Anthony Brown at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, but it will double the expected errors on most of the stars in the Milky Way, which are much fainter.
For astronomers this is a great tragedy. Gaia will still teach us much, just not as much as they had hoped.
In a largely symbolic act, Nicaragua broke ground on Monday on the Chinese-backed construction of a new canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The project is being pushed by Nicaraguan President (and former Marxist guerrilla leader) Daniel Ortega and financed by Wang Jing, “a little-known Chinese telecom mogul well connected to China’s political elite.” And as much as normally support any ambitious effort to create business opportunities for people in poor countries, this quote from the article raised some red flags about the project I hadn’t thought of previously:
The proposed canal is set to intersect Lake Nicaragua, known locally as Lake Cocibolca, sending cargo ships and tankers straight through the largest source of freshwater in Central America. Further, the canal is expected to displace tens of thousands of mostly rural and indigenous landholders and would likely devastate over 400,000 acres of rainforests and wetlands, which scientists say are critical to local and regional biodiversity conservation efforts.
I am usually very skeptical of environmental protests since their motives are almost always to promote socialism or communism and not to protect the environment. Here however the protests are against a project being promoted by a Marxist ruler and the communist Chinese. Moreover, it does seem a reasonable question to worry about the possible introduction of ocean saltwater into “the largest source of freshwater in Central America.”
Does this make you feel safer? A Delta employee was arrested today for smuggling guns on several commercial flights.
Henry allegedly brought the firearms in his carry-on luggage on at least five flights from Atlanta to New York between May 1 and December 10. During that time frame, Henry supplied a total of 129 handguns and two assault rifles to co-conspirators in New York, the affidavit states. One of those co-conspirators ended up selling the firearms to an undercover New York police officer.
Henry was arrested in New York on December 10 after landing at JFK airport with 18 handguns in his bag — seven of which were loaded, the affidavit says.
He apparently used his security clearance to bypass the TSA, thus avoiding getting sexually abused while also bringing loads of weapons on board numerous flights.
But the TSA works! The government tells us so!
Link here. The quote below illustrates nicely the madness of asking the government to run healthcare, or any other complicated aspect of life:
With the state-run exchanges coming down the pike I realized that, at least in the first year, I would be able to purchase health insurance at a reasonable price. So I left my employer in July 2013 and launched my consulting firm. In November 2013, I duly filled out my application to purchase insurance on the D.C. health exchange. After that, nothing happened: The only further communication I received from the exchange was a flurry of letters and emails informing me I had the right to have my communications from the D.C. exchange sent to me in any of 20 different languages, including Irish and Navajo.
After a number of ignored emails and phone calls, I contacted a health insurance “facilitator” to see if she could help me. No dice. She did manage to make the D.C. government verify that the information I had sent them—copies of passports, utility bills, and tax statements—showed that my family did exist and resided in the District, but we still weren’t able to buy insurance going into 2014.
The D.C. exchange assured me that they would straighten things out by mid-January and allow me to buy insurance retroactive to January 1. But it wasn’t until mid-March that we managed to buy insurance. And actually paying for insurance did not end our travails: The exchange mistakenly applied my payments for March and April to January and February instead, which led to our insurance being canceled on April 1, necessitating another flurry of calls and letters. A few months later we received a letter again threatening us with immediate cancellation unless I delivered copies of our passports. Resolving this one was trickier because, upon calling the exchange, the people there denied such a notice was sent until I forwarded a copy to them.
One statistic from my enrollment efforts: In four consecutive months, I spent over 500 minutes on the phone with either the D.C. health exchange or the health insurance company we selected.
Recently, with premium increases for 2015 presumably about to be announced, I thought it might make sense to go on the exchange’s website and see if they had updated prices for competing plans. After 20 minutes of trying to log in without success, I gave up, vowing never to get on the site again.
Even if he could have logged on, he would have had problems finding out the prices for the 2015 plans. Obama did not want those prices revealed prior to the election. While a private business’s only concern would be providing service to its customers so they were willing to buy its product, a government-run operation always has to deal with the political concerns of politicians, which warps its ability to serve its customers.
