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The religion of peace: Egyptians protest outside the Israeli embassy with swastika sign that says “The gas chambers are ready.”
In a new paper published yesterday, climate scientists described a newly discovered deep, cold current flowing off Iceland’s coast that appears to make the ocean conveyor belt that warms the northern Atlantic less sensitive to climate change than previously thought.
In other words, another one of Al Gore’s doomsday predictions has proven false.
More significantly, scientists now have no understanding why the ocean conveyor belt shut down during past ice ages, as their most favored theory now appears insufficient.
» Read more
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 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.
Just remember, it is never his fault: The federal debt increased $4 trillion under Obama, the most by any president.
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.
"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
There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).
To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!
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
Below the fold are two images released today, one from Dawn at Vesta and the other from Messenger at Mercury. What makes them interesting to me is that, though the surfaces of both Vesta and Mercury are crater-packed, there are definitely distinct differences between them that one can spot if you look closely, all highlighting the fundamentally different environments of both worlds.
First, the Vesta photograph. The image looks out past the asteroid’s horizon, showing clearly that this dwarf planet is not spherical, with the south pole depression that puzzles scientists just on the planet’s limb. The parallel long deep grooves that are associated with this depression can be seen on the right. Notice also that the inside walls of all the craters slope downward in a very shallow manner. This gives the impression that the impacts that formed these craters smashed into an almost beachlike sandy surface. Note too the that the center of some craters have what appear to be flat small “ponds,” a phenomenon seen by the spacecraft NEAR when it orbited the asteroid Eros. These ponds are not liquid, but are actually made up of fine-grained particles that settle in the hollows of the asteroid.
» Read more
Feeling the pinch: A Florida university has shuttered its manned submersible research program after forty years of operation due to lack of funds.
NASA has announced three awards for technology demonstration space missions, all set to fly within four years. More details here.
The three missions are:
I especially like the solar sail mission because of its long range possibilities, though the other technologies would probably be put to practical use more quickly.
Early hints that scientists had found the Higgs boson at CERN have faded with fresh data.
New data presented today at the Lepton Photon conference in Mumbai, India, show the signal fading. It means that “this excess is probably just a statistical fluctuation”, says Adam Falkowski, a theorist at the University of Paris-South in Orsay, France.
Rocket shortage: NASA is reconsidering the Delta 2 rocket as a vehicle to launch its unmanned science satellites.
One man’s response to Obama’s demand that taxes on the rich be raised.
I deeply resent that President Obama has decided that I don’t need all the money I’ve not paid in taxes over the years, or that I should leave less for my children and grandchildren and give more to him to spend as he thinks fit.
and
Governments have an obligation to spend our tax money on programs that work. They fail at this fundamental task. Do we really need dozens of retraining programs with no measure of performance or results? Do we really need to spend money on solar panels, windmills and battery-operated cars when we have ample energy supplies in this country? Do we really need all the regulations that put an estimated $2 trillion burden on our economy by raising the price of things we buy? Do we really need subsidies for domestic sugar farmers and ethanol producers?
Read the whole thing.
The new commercial space companies are challenging NASA’s new contracting policy.
The article covers the conflict that I described in this post, whereby NASA is abandoning the more flexible contracting approach used for the commercial cargo contracts of SpaceX and Orbital Sciences and going instead with the contracting system it used for all past NASA subcontracts.
The article is errs badly when it calls the new contracting approach that NASA wants to use “non-traditional.” It is instead the way NASA has been doing things for decades, whereby the agency takes full control of everything and requires contractors to fill out so much paperwork that the costs double and triple.
Researchers have found what could be the oldest microbial fossils yet, discovered in 3.4-billion-year-old Australian rocks
Europe and Russia talk of joint manned mission to Mars.
I’m not sure how seriously to take this story, though its implications are intriguing regardless. More than any other country, Russia knows how to build the kind of spaceship necessary for the journey. What Europe will contribute more than anything else would be money.
An evening pause: In honor of the 100th anniversary of the sending of the first round-the-world telegram on August 20, 1911, here is the story of the real inventor of the telegraph. And it ain’t what you think.
By the spring of 2010, private sector job growth turned positive. In April job growth increased to 230,000 net private-sector jobs. The economy appeared on track for a normal recovery from an awful recession. The administration began confidently predicting a “Recovery Summer.” But Recovery Summer fizzled instead of sizzled. In May private sector job growth dropped sharply to less than 50,000 net jobs. Thereafter, monthly improvement in private job growth averaged just 6,500 jobs.
What else happened in the spring of 2010? Despite obstacles that many believed would kill the bill, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. Within two months, the trend in job growth dropped sharply. Monthly job creation had been on pace to top out in the hundreds of thousands. Post-Affordable Care Act, it has barely kept pace with population growth. [emphasis mine]
and
The health-care measure raises business costs and makes planning for the future more difficult. It should be expected to slow hiring.
Federal Reserve officials report that the law has had exactly this effect. Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Fed, reports that “prominent among these (factors businesses explain are impeding hiring) is the lack of clarity about the cost implications of the recent health care legislation. We’ve frequently heard strong comments to the effect of ‘my company won’t hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.'” Surveys bear out these warnings. In a recent poll one-third of small business owners identified the healthcare bill as one of their top two obstacles to hiring. [emphasis mine]
Justice: The Chicago police department as well as the officers themselves must pay $330k for killing a dog in a home raid.
A reindeer herder in Russia’s Arctic has stumbled on the pre-historic remains of a baby woolly mammoth.
Two-thirds of the country’s CEOs plan to freeze or downsize their workforce over the next year, according to a new survey.
“As I approach my 44th year in business, the last 20 as CEO, I can never remember a time when I felt so disenfranchised from our leadership in Washington. They seem determined to continue their ongoing anti-business attitude and to frustrate small and mid-sized businesses by uncertainty on taxes, government regulations, and simply too many bureaucratic restrictions. We desperately need a change in Washington.”
I guarantee that much of this reluctance to hire stems from uncertainty and fear of Obamacare and the regulations it brings.
Opportunity begins exploring the rim of Endeavour Crater, taking a bunch of new images . I especially like this one, of which I’ve posted a cropped scaled-down version below. The image looks across the 13-mile-wide Endeavour Crater to its far rim on the horizon. Note the haze. Mars very clearly has an atmosphere, even though it is far thinner than Earth’s. In the foreground are scattered rocks, ejecta produced from the impact that formed a smaller nearby crater now named Opportunity Crater.
“Freedom dies with each paper cut.”
Recently, the USDA inspectors show up and pull our workers out of the fields for hours of questions (while we still are paying them). They inspect our houses. Several items just not up to code say these inspectors in an accusatory and snide tone. Threw a stack of regulations literally 8 inches high, small type, saying we are responsible to know and to account for each and every one.
Now we treat our workers very well, but we treat them like men, not children. The house was “messy.” My goodness, we need to hire a maid! The screen door was not exactly square with the frame by an 1/8th of an inch. Well many folks around here live in older homes that have settled. The list goes on, but no item was such that our workers thought there was a problem. The worst part is we were treated like criminals. We are awaiting our fine for our failing to memorize every federal regulation applicable to us.
My dad is 67 and told the feds that he was out of farming due to this ridiculous bureaucracy and storm trooper treatment. Their arrogant reply, “well the law lets us inspect your land and homes one year after you have left farming, so you can’t keep us off your land next year either.”
Barack and Michelle Obama took separate government planes to their vacation on Martha’s Vineyard,
This is just one clear example of why I have no faith in Obama’s sincerity when he claims he wants to rein in spending. To him, tax dollars and the government they fund are his little playthings, to do with as he likes.
Some results from the HTV-2 hypersonic flight: the glider flew successfully for about three minutes at 20 times the speed of sound.
Fixed the stupid error. The speed of SOUND is of course correct. Sorry for the lapse in thought.
