Chris Christie to Barack Obama: “What the hell are we paying you for?”
This is so good, so honest and to the point, that it deserves to be embedded everywhere.
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.
"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
Two stories today from the Climategate 2 archives:
The first describes how Andrew Revkin, the Times’ primary environmental reporter, was entirely in the global warming camp, and worked with these corrupt scientists to push their agenda. It also quotes, from the climategate emails, Revkin’s contempt for anyone who expressed skepticism about the IPCC process and global warming.
The second describes how the BBC teamed up with these same corrupt scientists to keep any skepticism of global warming from being aired at any time.
» Read more
Leftwing oppression: Two weeks after the Richmond Tea Party complained about the city government’s double standard about protests — requiring the tea party to pay $8,500 in order to demonstrate but letting Occupy Richmond demonstrate for free while trespassing — they received a letter from the city announcing that they are being audited.
What amazes me is how tone deaf the Democratic Party officials running Richmond are, somehow thinking this is going to help them politically.
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.
Madness: A Senate bill, to be voted on today, would allow the military to arrest and hold US citizens indefinitely, both at home and abroad.
Termed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and drafted behind closed doors by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) the NDAA would:
1) Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;
(2) Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and
(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.
For any elected official to consider this kind of legislation acceptable is only clear evidence that they should be put out of office immediately. Fire them all!
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
The tolerance of Islam: An airport worker has been fired because she complained about the abuse and harassment committed against her by other Muslim employees.
Why Climategate 2 is important: a close look at one entire email thread, and how it proves these global warming scientists were trying to suppress knowledge.
The international development agency Oxfam is screaming disaster..
This year’s food shortages and famine are a sign of what’s to come if the world doesn’t get climate change under control, Oxfam is warning. The international development agency made a call for action the day before the UN kicks off its annual climate change conference in Durban, South Africa. . . .
» Read more
How Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic.
“In ’79, when Joan, my fiancee and I were on a holiday in the British Virgin Islands, we were trying to catch a flight to Puerto Rico; but the local Puerto Rican scheduled flight was cancelled. The airport terminal was full of stranded passengers. I made a few calls to charter companies and agreed to charter a plane for $2000 to Puerto Rico. Cheekily leaving out Joan’s and my name, I divided the price by the remaining number of passengers, borrowed a blackboard and wrote: VIRGIN AIRWAYS: $39 for a single flight to Puerto Rico. I walked around the airport terminal and soon filled every seat on the charter plane.
An evening pause: This is how I feel right now, after more than a month of searching for a new home in Tucson.
I had just posted, as a comment, a link to a searchable database of the climategate emails, including both the 2009 as well as the just released emails. However, I think it makes sense to post this separately, on the main page of Behind the Black, to make sure all my readers will see it and thus have access to it. The link is here.
Leftwing hate: An Occupy Wall Street sympathizer has been arrested for threatening to kill the Republican governor of South Carolina.
‘Jet Man’ Yves Rossy flew his custom-built jet suit over the Swiss Alps in formation with two aircraft this week. Video here.
The gravy train might finally be ending: The Obama administration is blocking a UN $100 billion climate fund.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has raised the idea of criminal prosecution for those responsible for his country’s recent space failures.
An evening pause: David Lanz and Paul Speer performing live at the National Auditorium, Mexico City, 1993, with Neal Speer (drums) and Janet Foos (keyboards.
Some history: Before Thanksgiving, the big holiday Americans used to celebrate this week was Evacuation Day.
Memo to the Occupy protesters: Ten things we evil capitalists really think.
I especially like #8:
8. Capitalism, with all its imperfections, is the fairest scheme yet tried. In a system based on property rights and free contract, people succeed by providing an honest service to others. Bill Gates became rich by enriching hundreds of millions of us: I am typing these words using one of his programmes. He gained from the exchange (adding fractionally to his net worth), and so did I (adding to my convenience). In a state-run system, by contrast, third parties get to hand out the goodies.
Another way to say this is to call it freedom.
Read the whole thing.
The ozone hole, today, recently, and in context over the past three decades.
Note that this data shows the ozone hole over Antarctica. There has never been a very significant ozone hole over the North Pole.
“Perpetuating rubbish”: a detailed analysis of one part of the new climategate emails.
I think the first comment sums up the tragedy of this situation very clearly:
So privately they said the series had a “dubious relationship to temperature”, but publicly they said it was “well calibrated”? I am just about to the point of never trusting any scientists at all.
The willingness of the climate field to whitewash the fraud and corruption revealed by the first set of climategate emails is now haunting this field badly. Why should anyone believe anything any global warming scientist ever says? It is very clear that too many of them put politics above science in their work.
More commercial space news; SpaceX is expanding its Florida operations in anticipation of a increased launch rate of Falcon 9 and Dragon capsules in the coming years.
Building Boeing’s CST-100 manned capsule, the smart way.
From pressure seals used on the international space station to rendezvous and docking sensors developed for the Pentagon’s Orbital Express experiment, Boeing is drawing heavily on heritage space and aviation programs for its proposed CST-100 commercial human spacecraft.
Cheaper also.
The uncertainty of science: New data suggests the global climate is not as sensitive to changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as predicted by past climate models.
