A U.S.-Canadian partnership to re-establish migrating cranes has been halted by the FAA because it doesn’t meet its regulations.

3:05 pm

We’re here to help you! A U.S.-Canadian partnership to re-establish migrating cranes using human-powered ultralights has been halted by the FAA because it doesn’t meet its regulations.

FAA regulations say only pilots with commercial pilot licenses can fly for hire. The pilots of Operation Migration’s plane are instead licensed to fly sport aircraft because that’s the category of aircraft that the group’s small, open plane with its rear propeller and bird-like wings falls under. FAA regulations also prohibit sport aircraft – which are sometimes of exotic design – from being flown to benefit a business or charity. The rules are aimed, in part, at preventing businesses or charities from taking passengers for joyrides in sometimes risky planes.

What goddamn business is it of the FAA to “prohibit sport aircraft … from being flown to benefit a business or charity”? Isn’t that exactly how the aviation industry got started, taking passengers on short flights during the barnstorming era?

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Tucson school system loses $5 million in funding because it has refused to dump ethnic studies

12:57 pm

The Tucson school system has lost $5 million in funding because it refuses to close its Mexican studies program.

“The assertion that TUSD’s Mexican American Studies Program was designed and implemented only to promote cultural diversity and a greater understanding of the role of Mexican Americans in this nation is inaccurate and incomplete,” Huppenthal stated today. “Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program courses, curriculum and classroom materials have been found to (1) promote resentment toward a race or class of people; (2) be designed primarily for the pupils of a particular ethnic group; and (3) advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

In other words, this leftwing program was designed to promote hatred of whites and America within the immigrant Hispanic community, all good reasons for the local liberal, blue-state Democratic politicians of Tucson to want to support it, no matter the consequences.

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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, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

Studying the Moon by starlight

10:34 am

The Moon's south pole by starlight

In a paper published today in the Journal for Geophysical Research, Planets, the science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter describe how they have used starlight to peer into the permanently shadowed craters of the Moon’s north and south poles. Looking only during the lunar night, they measured the dim albedo of the Moon from reflected starlight. From this very weak signal they were able to cull two interesting facts about these very cold and very dark places.

  • The ground at the bottom of these craters is more porous than the surrounding unshadowed terrain.
  • There is evidence in the spectroscopy of 1 to 2% water frost in these craters.

» Read more

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Why the Doctor Won’t See You

9:26 am

Why the doctor won’t see you.

Estimates are that ObamaCare will succeed in insuring 32 million otherwise uninsured people. If economic studies are correct, once these folks are insured, they will try to double their consumption of health care. On top of that, ObamaCare does something that Massachusetts did not do. It will force the vast majority of people who already have insurance to switch to more generous coverage. For example, everyone will have to be covered for a long list of preventive care and diagnostic screenings, with no copay and no deductible. Once people have this extra coverage, they will be inclined to take advantage of it.

Get prepared, then, for a huge increase in the demand for care. The result will be growing waiting lines — at the doctors’ offices, at hospital emergency rooms, at the health clinics, etc.

The pattern here has been the same worldwide, in every country that has tried it: Let the government interfere with the “invisible hand” of the market and the market gets distorted in ways that no one predicted that are also counterproductive.

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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.

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

Underground again today

7:30 am

glass plate

Posting will be light today, as I am joining University of Arizona PhD student Sarah Trube and several other Arizona cavers on a cave trip to collect water samples in a southern Arizona cave. This is in connection with research Sarah is doing to analyze the chemistry of cave dripwater and how it leads to the formation of cave speleothems. Moreover, she is tracking water flow and attempting to link it to climate and weather variations over time.

I noticed Sarah’s water collection equipment on my first Tucson-area cave trip back last January. In one case she had attached a tube to the bottom of a stalactite which fed the dripwater into a bottle. In another case she placed glass plates on top of stalagmites to allow the dripwater to drip onto the plate and then evaporate. Last month I joined her on one of her collection trips, where she gathered glass plates for later analysis in the lab. Though the plates had not been in cave more than a few months, you could easily see a thin layer of calcite deposit on their surface.

Below the fold is an image of Sarah gathering dripwater during an earlier trip.
» Read more

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Playing Politics with the Constitution and the Law

6:07 pm

Playing politics with the Constitution and the law.

All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution. And, in addition, as too little noted by the media, his appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is legally futile. Under the plain language of the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, Cordray will have no authority whatsoever.

The Dodd-Frank act explicitly requires Cordray’s confirmation by the Senate in order for his authority to go into effect. Prior to that confirmation he has no authority.

Once again, the issue here is what Obama’s actions tell us about him as an elected official, suggesting that he an arrogant man who is willing to trash the Constitution and create legal hell for business and the government all for the sake of election-year politics. Not a good recommendation at all.

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Nine of the top ten worst nations for religious persecution are Islamic, with North Korea being the only exception.

5:11 pm

The religion of peace: Nine of the top ten worst nations for religious persecution are Islamic.

North Korea tops a list of the world’s worst religious persecutors for the tenth consecutive year, but Islamic states dominate the rankings, accounting for nine of the top ten and 38 of the full 50-country list released Wednesday.

There is a pattern here, I think, though hard as I try it is hard to see it. Maybe it’s related to Islamophobia somehow?

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A fitting memorial

3:13 pm

Greeley Haven

Opportunity has settled into its winter haven.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity will spend the next few months during the coldest part of Martian winter at Greeley Haven, an outcrop of rock on Mars recently named informally to honor Ronald Greeley, Arizona State University Regents’ professor of planetary geology, who died October 27, 2011.

I met and interviewed Greeley a number of times in writing articles for magazines like Sky & Telescope and Astronomy. For years he was a central figure in the field of planetary geology, and his life effort is one of the prime reasons the United States has dominated this field for most of the past half century, with a fleet of planetary missions presently at Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, with many more to come.

The article notes that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has the job of naming objects in space, and could take years to honor Greeley. I say that if these scientists, the true explorers of Mars, want to name something for him, then they should go ahead, and future generations should honor that choice, regardless of what the IAU says.

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Contempt for Congress

2:18 pm

This editorial in the Wall Street Journal summarizes very well the facts of Obama’s attempt to circumvent the Constitution yesterday: Contempt for Congress.

A President has the power to make a recess appointment, and we’ve supported Mr. Obama’s right to do so. The Constitutional catch is that Congress must be in recess.

The last clause of Section 5 of Article 1 of the Constitution says that “Neither House” of Congress can adjourn for more than three days “without the Consent of the other” house. In this case, the House of Representatives had not formally consented to Senate adjournment. It’s true the House did this to block the President from making recess appointments, but it is following the Constitution in doing so. Let’s hear Mr. Obama’s legal justification.

Democrats had used a similar process to try to thwart Mr. Bush’s recess appointments late in his term when they controlled both the House and the Senate. Prodded by West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who has since died, Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma session. Some advisers urged Mr. Bush to ignore the Senate and make recess appointments anyway, but he declined. Now Mr. Reid is supporting Mr. Obama’s decision to make an end run around a Senate practice that he pioneered. [emphasis in original]

In other words, the Constitution is plain and Obama is consciously ignoring it, unlike Bush or any previous President. You can make excuses for this arrogant and unprecedented abuse of power, but an abuse of power it is, nonetheless.

As for sitting back and waiting for the courts to settle this, that’s a cop-out. The courts will almost certainly bow out, noting that this is a political battle between two other branches of government. The article above does note who will sue:

Private parties will have standing to sue if they are affected by one of Mr. Cordray’s rule-makings, and that’s when the courts may get a say on Mr. Obama’s contempt for Congress.

Thus, Obama’s actions will make any actions by his appointee legally suspect. It will create chaos in government and business, while simultaneously eroding the rule of law.

Is this the kind of government representation we want?

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New research suggests that a body-snatching parasitic fly might be the culbrit in the decline of the honeybee population in the U.S.

1:21 pm

Alien on Earth: New research suggests that a body-snatching parasitic fly might be the culprit in the decline of the honeybee population in the U.S.

The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee’s abdomen. Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives—often at night—on a solo mission to nowhere. These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee’s neck. The bees’ behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized—and then decapitated from within—by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus.

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ArianeSpace will make a profit in 2011, the first time in three years

1:15 pm

ArianeSpace will make a profit in 2011, the first time in three years.

Helped by the two Soyuz campaigns, which occurred in October and December, Arianespace in 2011 apparently averted a third consecutive year of losses. Its financial accounts are not finalized until June, but Le Gall said the company expects to report a slight profit on about 985 million euros in revenue.

In other words, it was the addition of the Russian low-cost Soyuz rocket to their fleet that helped avoid another year’s loss. This doesn’t reflect well on the profitability of the Ariane 5 rocket.

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Is the Senate in recess? The Constitution says no.

4:37 pm

Is the Senate in recess? The Constitution says no.

Article One, section Five of the Constitution states: “Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days.”

The House has refused to adjourn. The Congress is therefore in session. This kind of gamesmanship has been done many times in the past, but never until now has a President made believe he could simply ignore the plain words of the Constitution.

I know my liberal readers like to make excuses for Democrats when they ignore the law, but the law remains the law. Just because you happen to like what Obama is doing is a bad reason to let this pass. Just remember that if we ignore the law when you’ve got your guy in office, the other side will then have a free pass to ignore the law when they are in office. Sooner or later, we will all pay for that evil.

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A NASA inquiry into the ownership of a variety of space artifacts, including Jim Lovell’s Apollo 13 checklist, has halted their sale at auction.

10:56 am

Power grab: A NASA inquiry into the ownership of a variety of space artifacts, including Jim Lovell’s Apollo 13 checklist, has halted their sale at auction.

In other words, it appears that NASA management has decided that everything ever built by NASA belongs to NASA, forever, even if NASA would have thrown it away at some point.

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The Sun calms down in December

10:42 am

It’s that time again! As I do every month, it’s time to post Space Weather Prediction Center’s monthly updated graph showing the Sun’s solar cycle sunspot activity. The graph itself can be seen below the fold.

After five months of quickly increasing sunspot activity, the Sun in December finally took a rest, with the sunspot numbers dropping down to almost exactly the solar activity scientists had expected at this time, according to their May 2009 prediction. Interestingly, this might be the first time since I began tracking the solar cycle in 2008 that the prediction actually matched that month’s activity.
» Read more

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Democrats regulating the dead

1:35 am

Democrats regulating the dead.

Democrats believe their personal preferences are so noteworthy and have such a significant bearing on the future of society that it’s only fair these indispensible preferences be imposed on the public by force of law.

Which brings us to Democrat Alvin Tillman, a third–term member of the council in Terrebonne Parish, LA, who evidently does not have enough to occupy his time. Tillman is personally offended by the chroma culprits who paint their family tombs anything but white, which is Tillman’s preferred color. “We want to stop this before it gets out of hand,” Tillman was quoted by the Associated Press. “Before you know it you’ll go out there and the cemetery will look like Mardi Gras.”

Since this is Louisiana — where being dead is no bar to exercising the franchise in favor of Democrats on election day — it could be that Tillman is simply responding to the wishes of his electoral base.

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