The leftwing feminist professor who thought she had the right to use violent force to steal a anti-abortion protestor’s sign and destroy it has now been charged with vandalism, battery, and robbery.

10:43 pm

Leftwing civility: The leftwing feminist professor who thought she had the right to use violent force to steal a anti-abortion protestor’s sign and destroy it has now been charged with vandalism, battery, and robbery.

Video below the fold. The teacher even admits on camera that she is a “thief.” Somehow, she thinks that because she disagrees with these protestors it gives her the right to do anything she wants.
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According to the former CEO of Arianespace, now head of the French space agency, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 costs significantly less to launch than the Ariane 5

10:29 pm

According to the former CEO of Arianespace, now head of the French space agency, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 costs significantly less to launch than the Ariane 5.

How big is the difference? Jean-Yves Le Gall, who until mid-2013 was chief executive of Evry, France-based Arianespace and is now president of the French space agency, CNES, addressed the point in Feb. 25 testimony to the French Senate. According to Le Gall, launching a satellite on an Ariane 5 costs around 100 million euros ($137 million). After subtracting the amount of European Space Agency subsidies to Arianespace, the per-satellite cost drops to about $100 million, he said.

Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, he said, would charge $60 million to $70 million to launch the same satellite aboard the Falcon 9. In fact SpaceX has charged even less than that to its first few commercial customers.

It is for this reason that Arianespace is struggling to decide how to build its next generation rocket. They have find a way to do it cheaper, something that is very difficult for this multi-headed European conglomerate to do.

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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

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.

“There’s no compassion in the Affordable Care Act.”

9:20 am

“There’s no compassion in the Affordable Care Act.”

From a pastor who has discovered at the last moment that the insurance under Obamacare did not cover his life-saving chemo treatments, putting him $50,000 in debt.

But since we know that this pastor is lying, according to Harry Reid, he must be ignored.

And then there’s this liar: Obamacare leaves Las Vegas man owing $407,000 in doctor bills.

What is Harry Reid going to do with all these liars hanging around making up stories about Obamacare?

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Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

9:14 am

Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

The spacecraft, ISEE-3, was intended to study the solar wind and the connection between the Sun and the Earth. In 1986 it was diverted instead to take a look at Halley’s Comet. Now there is an opportunity to return it to its original task, assuming engineers can wake it up after three decades.

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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

Scientists think they have detected active volcanoes on Venus.

3:12 pm

Scientists think they have detected active volcanoes on Venus.

We should hear more about this story in the next couple of days, after the scientists give their presentation at a science conference today. Note too that this result would only confirm other data, such as the fluctuating levels of sulfur in Venus’s atmosphere, that have suggested active volcanoes hidden under that planet’s thick cloud cover.

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The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.

8:50 am

The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.

The supposed reason is to allow a military launch to get the best launch opportunity first. I find this excuse to be quite lame, and instead suspect that the NASA program needed more time but did not want to admit this publicly.

The delay moves the launch until after the November elections. Watch the political pressure continue to build to end this expensive, bloated, and not-very-useful boondoggle.

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Comments again

1:10 pm

Just want to let my readers know that I will be out of town, caving in the mountains southeast of Tucson this weekend, out of range of the internet.

Because the comments presently need to be manually approved by me because the spam filter is still not working, no comments further will be approved until Sunday evening. If you post, be patient, your comment will appear then.

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One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

11:51 am

One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

Here’s a heretical idea. Rather than parsing the individual elements of the law, and trying to persuade voters on an à la carte basis, what about raising the stakes and defending the reform in its entirety as a historic effort to provide affordable health-care coverage to tens of millions of hard-working Americans who otherwise couldn’t afford it? Instead of shying away from the populist and redistributionist essence of the reform, which the White House and many Democrats in Congress have been doing since the start, it’s time to embrace it.

I hope they do it. For one thing, it would be refreshing to see Democrats actually campaigning honestly for once on what they actually believe in! For another, they would get creamed, because their fantasies about how wonderful Obamacare is have nothing to do with the horrible reality being experienced right now by millions of Americans.

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Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.

9:26 am

The competition heats up: Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.

Arianespace wants to sell its launch services to the U.S. government, something it is not allowed to do right now because of U.S. restrictions. These are the same kinds of restrictions that has prevented SpaceX from launching military satellites and which that company is now contesting.

Russia meanwhile wants to use Sea Launch for its own payloads, but because Sea Launch’s platform is based in California, the Russian government won’t allow their payloads on it because of security reasons. They want the platform moved to Russia so that they can use their own company to launch their own satellites.

The article also describes how Japan is trying to reduce the cost of its H-2A rocket by 50% so that it can become more competitive.

All in all, I would say that the arrival of SpaceX has done exactly what was predicted, shaken the industry out of its doldrums. How else to explain this sudden interest in open competition and lowering costs? These companies could have done this decades ago. They did not. Suddenly a new player arrives on the scene, offering to beat them at their own game. It is not surprising that they are fighting back.

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The next Dragon launch to ISS has been delayed for two weeks because of the detection of contamination that could affect some of its research cargo.

11:26 pm

The next Dragon launch to ISS has been delayed for two weeks because of the detection of contamination that could affect some of its research cargo.

[T]he launch was put on hold, sources said, when engineers noticed contamination of some sort on the Dragon’s lower unpressurized trunk section. Two of six electrically powered payloads aboard the Dragon are mounted in the trunk section — a first for this mission — and engineers were concerned the contamination might “outgas” in orbit and cause problems for the station-bound hardware.

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A Health and Human Services official has resigned in disgust from his job monitoring research misconduct because of his frustration with the federal bureaucracy.

5:23 pm

A Health and Human Services (HHS) official has resigned in disgust from his job monitoring research misconduct because of his frustration with the federal bureaucracy.

His resignation letter is brutal.

“[M]y role as ORI Director has been the very worst job I have ever had and it occupies up to 65% of my time,” he wrote. ”That part of the job is spent navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy to secure resources and, yes, get permission for ORI to serve the research community. I knew coming into this job about the bureaucratic limitations of the federal government, but I had no idea how stifling it would be.” According to Wright, activities that in his capacity as an academic administrator that took a day or two, took weeks and months in the federal government.

He then recounts some examples, such the inability to get approval to spend $35 and the inability to hire someone because there was “a secret priority list.”

But hey, don’t worry, we know that HHS will do so much better running the healthcare industry.

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A dishonest “Cosmos”.

4:44 pm

A dishonest “Cosmos”.

A educated religious scholar looks at one piece from the Tyson television series and discovers that its portrayal of religion is wrong and no better than blatant propaganda.

This morning, I watched the cartoon in question and took some notes. Let’s walk through what it gets right and what it gets wrong.

I’m actually not going to draw from any exotic sources for this post. I’m going to try confine what I include here only to things that can be found on the first page of a Google search for Giordano Bruno. This will illustrate more clearly the rank intellectual dishonesty involved in this segment. The truth of the story was never more than five minutes away from host Neil DeGrasse Tyson and his writers, producers, and animators. They opted to tell half-truths and outright lies instead. [emphasis mine]

I am not surprised. I said that we should expect this. Tyson’s job is to be front man for the modern shibboleths of the leftwing academic society, and this series is going to pound them home, regardless of the facts.

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Why conservatives should have no regrets dumping Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader in the Senate.

12:06 pm

Why conservatives should have no regrets dumping Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader in the Senate.

I have had very mixed feelings about McConnell, and was unsure about whether the campaign to get rid of him made sense, until I read this article. The author is devastating, very effectively noting that even though McConnell has generally been very conservative in his votes as a senator, as a leader he has routinely supported the election of RINOs over conservatives.

As the man who helps steer lobbyist dollars to get candidates elected, you all think McConnell is a solid conservative. [Then] why is he steering dollars and support to men like Charlie Crist, Arlen Specter, Trey Grayson, David Dewhurst, and Bob Bennett? McConnell may be voting the way you all want on the votes that matter to you, but he is clearly and indisputably working to get other men elected whose votes you’d despise in states where more conservative challengers could easily win and have won.

Fortunately, all of McConnell’s candidates above eventually lost, and we got instead Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, names that have very effectively changed the political landscape by tilting it in a conservative direction. In other cases, however, McConnell’s candidates won, and thus we have guys like Jeff Flake, a Republican in name only, producing a profound lack of unity in the Republican party.

Getting rid of McConnell would tilt that landscape even more so in a conservative direction, and might finally give the Republicans the balls to really fight this fight instead of squabbling among themselves.

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An asteroid will eclipse the bright naked eye star Regulus for 14 seconds on March 19-20, and everyone in the New York City metropolitan area will be able to watch.

10:58 am

An asteroid will eclipse the bright naked eye star Regulus for 14 seconds on March 19-20, and everyone in the New York City metropolitan area will be able to watch.

Late on the night of March 19–20, the faint asteroid Erigone (eh-RIG-uh-nee) will briefly eclipse the bright naked-eye star Regulus for more than 20 million people in the New York metropolitan area and parts of Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, upstate New York, and Ontario. The star will vanish from sight for up to 14 seconds around 2:06 a.m. EDT on the morning of the 20th for New Yorkers, and a minute or two later farther north.

If the sky is clear, Regulus will be a cinch for anyone to spot — no astronomy experience required! Around 2 a.m. or a bit before, go out and face the Moon. Extend your arms straight out to your sides. Regulus will be straight above your right hand, roughly as high as the Moon is. It’s the brightest star in that area.

Scientists are also asking ordinary citizens to help gather data, which if sufficient will allow them to recreate a reasonably accurate silhouette of the asteroid, thus determining its size and shape.

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The House committee investigating the IRS’s political harassment of Obama’s opponents has now unveiled evidence showing that former IRS official Lois Lerner committed perjury in Congressional testimony at least four times.

10:46 pm

The House committee investigating the IRS’s political harassment of Obama’s opponents has now unveiled evidence showing that former IRS official Lois Lerner committed perjury in Congressional testimony at least four times.

The evidence also shows that she was aggressively working for the Democratic Party, using her power as an important IRS official to bend the tax laws to attack that party’s political opponents.

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The Obama administration budget proposal for NASA includes shutting down Opportunity in 2015.

8:16 pm

Penny wise pound foolish: The Obama administration budget proposal for NASA included shutting down Opportunity in 2015.

This is very stupid. It costs about a billion dollars to build a rover and get it to Mars. And that’s assuming everything works. Opportunity is already there and functioning flawlessly at a fraction of that cost. Rather than cutting Opportunity, NASA should consider cutting the new rover mission so that the money could be used for other planetary exploration, such as a mission to Titan.

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The faculty at Rutgers have voted to demand the university rescind its speaker invitation to Condoleezza Rice.

3:22 pm

The bigotry of modern academics: The faculty at Rutgers have voted to demand the university rescind its speaker invitation to Condoleezza Rice.

They aren’t bigoted against blacks, they are bigoted against Republicans and conservatives. As I’ve said before, they want to stand there with their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears chanting, “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-LA!” so they don’t have to hear any alternative perspectives.

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The evil polices of that evil Republican Scott Walker has now produced a $1 billion budget surplus in Wisconsin.

10:16 am

The evil polices of that evil Republican Scott Walker has now produced a $1 billion budget surplus in Wisconsin.

Senate Republicans Tuesday narrowly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s $541 million tax cut proposal in a vote that guaranteed the cuts will become law.

The tax decreases — the third round of cuts by Republicans in less than a year — passed 17-15 with GOP Sen. Dale Schultz of Richland Center joining all Democrats in voting against the proposal. The proposal now goes to the Assembly, which passed a different version of the tax cuts last month with two Democrats joining all Republicans in supporting it.

With growing tax collections now expected to give the state a $1billion budget surplus in June 2015, Walker’s bill will cut property and income taxes for families and businesses, and zero out all income taxes for manufacturers in the state. [emphasis mine]

Why is it that even with gigantic and yearly surpluses Democrats still oppose tax cuts? Or do we already know the answer?

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