The Republican leadership expresses contempt for any opposition to its budget deal that abandons the cuts imposed by sequestration

11:11 am

The Republican leadership expresses contempt for any opposition to its budget deal that abandons the cuts imposed by sequestration.

The Republican leadership are fools. If anything, this is the moment to push harder, to not only demand that the sequestration cuts stay in place, but to demand a repeal of Obamacare.

Leave a comment

After two months, Obamacare has only enrolled less than 400,000 people, even as it has caused millions to lose their health insurance policies.

9:31 am

Fail! After two months, Obamacare has only enrolled less than 400,000 people, even as it has caused millions to lose their health insurance policies.

To get even these numbers the Obama administration is defining “enroll” as someone who went through the process of picking a plan, but hasn’t yet signed on and actually enrolled in it.

Though these low numbers are partly because of the inability of the Obamacare webpage to function, the real reason is sticker shock. Obamacare has raised the cost of health insurance so much that people simply can’t afford it.

Update: It appears that only 5 to 20% of these so-called enrollees have actually purchased Obamacare insurance.

5 comments

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

India’s Mangalyaan Mars probe successfully completed its first midcourse correction maneuver today.

9:09 am

India’s Mangalyaan Mars probe successfully completed its first midcourse correction maneuver today.

As with the images the probe took of Earth, the success of this maneuver demonstrates the ability of the probe’s engineers to control, operate, and precisely point the spacecraft’s engine. It also proves that engine works as designed.

Here’s an interesting cultural tidbit: Of the 200,000 people who have applied to Mars One (see my previous post below) to go on its proposed one-way mission to Mars, India has the second most applicants after the U.S.

Mars One applicants come from over 140 countries; the largest numbers are from the US (24 per cent), India (10 per cent), China (6 per cent), Brazil (5 per cent), UK, Canada, Russia and Mexico (4 per cent), Philippines, Spain, Colombia and Argentina (2 per cent), and Australia, France, Turkey, Chile, Ukraine, Peru, Germany, Italy and Poland (1 per cent).

Leave a comment

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.

A private unmanned mission to Mars by 2018?

9:04 am

A private unmanned mission to Mars by 2018?

Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, Mars One founder and CEO, told reporters the foundation has signed contracts with two major aerospace firms, Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology, to develop mission concept studies, a first step toward eventual construction and launch.

The lander will be based on the design of the 2007 Phoenix Mars lander that Lockheed Martin developed for NASA. The communications satellite — the first such “geostationary” comsat in orbit around the red planet — will incorporate technologies developed by Surrey and used in a variety of operational spacecraft.

Mission concept studies are of course essential before you begin construction, but they are also a far cry from actual construction. I’ve seen literally hundreds of similar concept studies about someone’s big space plans with no subsequent follow up. Thus, I will only begin to take Mars One serious when they actually start cutting metal.

Leave a comment

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

Why Republicans should reject the surrender budget deal rumors say Paul Ryan is negotiating with Democrats.

9:54 am

Why Republicans should reject the surrender budget deal rumors say Paul Ryan is negotiating with Democrats.

Expect more articles like this. There are a lot of conservatives in the Republican House caucus who are no longer willing to lick the feet of Democrats, even if the Republican leadership is. And any deal that gives up sequestration is going to face their wrath.

Also, these kinds of articles serve to pressure Ryan so that he does not agree to a surrender.

5 comments

The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.

9:39 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS is now harassing the insurance broker who has helped people losing their insurance under Obamacare.

The man received a visit from a Treasury Department Inspector General who demanded personal information about the cancer patient the broker was helping. When this information was refused, the official instructed the broker

to resolve the issue with the IRS immediately, and that if he did not, “you may be visited again by other IRS representatives in your home and we do reserve the right to garnish your wages and lien your assets.”

How nice. Obey the orders of the Obama administration or they will use the IRS to destroy you.

Note also that this harassment is going on right now, six months after the scandal was revealed and Obama claimed he was outraged by it and would put a stop to it. He lied. As he revealed recently in his interview on MSNBC, he sees nothing wrong with this harassment.

I just realized that my post above left out one important detail: The cancer patient had appeared on Fox to describe how he had lost his health insurance because of Obamacare. Almost immediately thereafter both he and his broker received audit notices from the IRS.

2 comments

One scientist’s modeling of the early universe suggests to him that intelligent life could have evolved as early as 15 million years after the Big Bang.

9:23 am

Theories! One scientist’s modeling of the early universe suggests to him that intelligent life could have evolved as early as 15 million years after the Big Bang.

This is fun stuff, but entirely theoretical and not to be taken very seriously. We know with certainty as much about the early universe as a mouse understands Shakespeare. To predict accurately the nature or even existence of life at that time is stretching our knowledge considerably.

2 comments

Data from Messenger now shows that as Mercury cooled it shrunk far more than earlier data had indicated.

9:17 am

Data from Messenger now shows that as Mercury cooled it shrunk far more than earlier data had indicated.

A new census of these ridges, called lobate scarps, has found more of them, with steeper faces, than ever before. The discovery suggests that Mercury shrank by far more than the previous estimate of 2-3 kilometres, says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. He presented the results today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California.

The finding helps explain how Mercury’s huge metallic core cooled off over time. It may also finally reconcile theoretical scientists, who had predicted a lot of shrinkage, with observers who had not found evidence of that — until now. “We are resolving a four-decades-old conflict here,” Byrne told the meeting.

Leave a comment

An upbeat wimpy maximum holds on

8:00 pm

Today NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in November. As I do every month, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations.

As in October, the Sun was more active than it has been for this entire solar maximum. November’s numbers dropped slightly from October, but still remained high, though as has been typical for this solar maximum they remained below prediction.
» Read more

One comment

Curiosity has succeeded in dating the age of one of its rock samples, the first time this has ever been done remotely on another planet.

12:33 pm

Curiosity has succeeded in dating the age of one of its rock samples, the first time this has ever been done remotely on another planet.

The second rock Curiosity drilled for a sample on Mars, which scientists nicknamed “Cumberland,” is the first ever to be dated from an analysis of its mineral ingredients while it sits on another planet. A report by Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and co-authors, estimates the age of Cumberland at 3.86 billion to 4.56 billion years old. This is in the range of earlier estimates for rocks in Gale Crater, where Curiosity is working.

This is significant engineering and scientific news. In the past the only way to date the rocks on another world was to bring them back to Earth. This was how the moon’s geology was dated. On Mars, dating has only been done by crater counting, comparing those counts with those on the Moon, and then making a vague guess. To have the ability to date rocks remotely means that geologists can begin to sort out the timeline of Mars’s geology without having to bring back samples.

One comment

Another news report suggests that Republicans are preparing to surrender in budget talks.

10:02 am

Another news report suggests that Republicans are preparing to surrender in budget talks.

Senior aides familiar with the talks say the emerging agreement aims to partially repeal the sequester and raise agency spending to roughly $1.015 trillion in fiscal 2014 and 2015. That would bring agency budgets up to the target already in place for fiscal 2016. To cover the cost, Ryan and Murray are haggling over roughly $65 billion in alternative policies, including cuts to federal worker pensions and higher security fees for the nation’s airline passengers.

Republican leaders are also seeking additional savings to knock a small dent in deficits projected to exceed $6 trillion over the next decade. But the deal would do nothing to trim the debt, which is now larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any point in U.S. history except during World War II. [emphasis mine]

To me, the biggest disappointment of this surrender is that Paul Ryan is negotiating it, proof that he too is no fiscal conservative and worse is far more stupid than I had thought.

One comment

No, you can’t keep your medicines either under Obamacare.

9:42 am

No, you can’t keep your medicines either under Obamacare.

The article is long and detailed. It seems a lot of expensive but life-saving drugs might be excluded from many plans because of cost. Worse,

The biggest problem in all of this is that consumers will have a very hard time figuring out where they stand. In many cases, the health plans being offered in the Obamacare exchanges don’t make information about their drug formularies readily available. In some cases, it doesn’t seem to be published anywhere.

The government was supposed to mandate that plans made this information easily accessible. But that never happened.

In fact, state and federal regulators must have approved the health plans without reviewing final drug formularies. Many plans are also not publishing information about their networks of doctors, or when they do; the information is unreliable (listing, for example, doctors who argue that they aren’t part of the plans).

Aren’t you glad those brave Democrats and President Obama shut the government down in October to prevent those evil Republicans from making any changes to Obamacare?

4 comments

Using Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), scientists have finally identified the Sun’s predicted giant jet streams.

9:17 am

Using Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), scientists have finally identified the Sun’s predicted giant jet streams.

These large flows, bigger than any flow structures previously identified, might help explain the Sun’s rotation (which is faster at the equator than at the poles), its magnetic field, and its production of sunspots. Not surprisingly, however, the models and data do not match exactly:

Mark Miesch, a physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says the new study confirms modelling work he and others have done on giant convective cells4. There are, however, some differences between what the models suggest and what Hathaway’s team observed. For instance, the models indicate that giant cells should align themselves from north to south near the Sun’s equator, an arrangement that isn’t seen in the new data. In fact, points out solar physicist Junwei Zhao of Stanford University in California, most of the giant cells were seen at high latitudes, and they need to be spotted at lower latitudes as well. “Whether it will convince the community remains to be seen,” says Zhao.

Leave a comment

The latest IRS power grab.

12:38 am

The latest IRS power grab.

Why is the IRS regulating political activity at all?

The answer is that many Democratic politicians and progressive activists think new rules limiting political speech by nonprofits will benefit Democrats politically. Stymied by judicial decisions restricting direct government regulation of political speech, and by a Federal Election Commission whose bipartisan makeup prevents Democratic commissioners from forcing through partisan rules on a party-line vote, these politicians and activists have decided to dragoon the IRS into doing their work.

More precise terms to describe this kind of behavior are fascists and jack-booted thugs.

One comment

Obamacare insurance plans are routinely excluding the world’s top hospitals.

8:16 pm

Finding out what’s not in it: Obamacare insurance plans are routinely excluding the world’s top hospitals.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

You pay more for the plan, pay higher co-pays and deductibles, and for these higher expenses you get fewer benefits and excess to fewer good doctors. Why is anyone complaining? Aren’t we all glad the Democrats and Obama are standing firm to defend this law?

One comment
1 … 809 810 811 812 813 … 1,125