An evening pause: Though it really doesn’t make sense to spend the money for electronic road signs, this public relations video from Corning still gives one a hint of some of the cool technology coming down the pike.
As Arthur Clarke once said, “Any science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.”
The day of reckoning looms: Several of China’s biggest borrowers have been given permission to delay loan payments.
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
Ron Paul as seen by a former staffer.
The statement is fair, detailed, and to me, devastating to Paul. Consider this, for example:
He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
In other words, Paul is blind to the hate and violence coming out of the Arab world, and is willing to sacrifice a democracy to it. Worse, it appears he is blind to other kinds of hate as well.
Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. . . . For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
Russia has scrubbed the launch of a Proton rocket today due to “technical problems.”
After the launch failure on Saturday of a Soyuz rocket, I suspect that top management got gun shy about doing another launch so soon thereafter.
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.
Why the establishment fears Newt Gingrich.
When Newt became speaker, he was focused, disciplined and tough. He insisted on moving the Contract With America intact. He abolished committees and denied “old bulls” chairmanships. He insisted on using the majority to win conservative victories such as balancing budgets, achieving welfare reform and producing 11 million new jobs with tax cuts that spurred economic growth. He made some people unhappy when he pursued legislation that could win instead of pet bills that would have divided Republicans rather than uniting them. And he negotiated with a Democratic president to get the conservative legislation being passed signed into law. Some Republicans were left unhappy in the wake of all of that activity — some of them are still complaining today.
The leaning towers from around the world. With pictures.
And the Tower of Pisa is not number one in tilt!
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
Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) looks weak against a Tea Party challenge in the Republican primary.
2010 was a trend,not a fluke.
Satire? Santa Claus arrested following a joint investigation by the IRS, INS, and FWS.
The United States Department of Immigration and the Internal Revenue Service have also had their eyes on Mr. Claus. An immigration official who also attended the raid said that they were able to obtain several dozen passports. He said, “It seems that this Santa Claus character has a different name in every country–his EU passport says, ‘Father Christmas’ and his Canadian passport says, ‘Père Noël’. We have, however, determined with certainty that Santa Claus is a United States citizen.”
Apparently Claus worked in Hollywood during the 1940s and 50s making autobiographical films, such as Miracle on 34th Street. During that time he applied for and received U.S. citizenship.
Read the whole thing. The scandal is shocking!
Update: In related news, the Occupied Wall Street movement is now targeting Santa as well.
Montanans have launched a recall campaign against their senators for voting for unlimited military detention.
Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86 – 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.
Junk science: Scientists last week published a paper claiming that the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown caused 14,000 U.S. deaths. You can download the paper here [pdf].
I expect the mainstream television press to push this story in the coming days. The story however is crap. I’ve read the paper, and all it shows is a small statistical increase in deaths in the fourteen weeks after the earthquake/meltdown, compared to the previous year. The scientists provided no context with other years, nor did they factor in changes in total population or a host of innumerable other variables that would influence these numbers. Worse, they presented no direct evidence linking the fallout from the meltdown with the deaths.
In other words, this is agenda-driven science, designed mainly to attack nuclear energy. We should not give it much credence.
One more point: the lead author of the paper is the executive director of Radiation and Public Health Project, an organization whose only purpose appears to be to prove that low level radiation has a negative effect on human health. From a science perspective, this is not a good way to do science. The only way the scientists in this organization can justify their fund-raising and research is to find evidence to prove their theory.
Israel to send medical aid to help Nigeria after the Islamic terrorist attacks there against Christians attending church on Christmas day.
Once again, the contrast between Islam and the western world is striking.
The story of the men and women who built of the spy satellites dubbed Hexagon, and never told a soul.
It was dubbed “Big Bird” and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth’s atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks. The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.
So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves.
The contrast couldn’t be more striking: As the Pope called for peace today on Christmas, Islamist terrorists murdered Catholics in Nigeria.
A Scottish couple have unearthed a mysterious stone head in their garden that is a spitting image of Homer Simpson.
The Obama campaign does math: “$40 a month adds up to roughly $1000 a year.”
And yes, I am not making that up. That is exactly what the Obama campaign said.
Doing the reporting American journalists won’t do: “Why did I have to go to Pravda to get my op-ed about TSA rape published?”
A TSA agent confiscated a cupcake on Wednesday, saying that the frosting was enough like a gel to violate their rules.
I think this comment describes what actually happened: “These ‘rules’ allow TSA agents to steal from travelers.”
Push-back: A man dressed up as a Christmas tree yesterday to protest the Christmas decoration ban at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.
No posting today, as I am leaving home at 6:30 am with several cavers for a day trip to a cave in the Chiricahua Mountains in southeast Arizona. The drive one way is about three and a half hours, so doing this as a day trip will likely break what I like to call Zimmerman’s law: “The cave time must exceed the drive time.”
However, when I first visited Tucson last winter and mentioned I might move here, the local cavers asked if I’d be interested in being the cartographer of this particular cave and help them get a project started to survey it. Three previous attempts to survey it were never completed, so no good map exists. And since I have recently completed two significant cave maps of two important West Virginia caves (see monographs 3 and 4 on this page) and am without a map project at the moment, how could I say no? Tomorrow’s trip is my first visit to the cave in preparation for getting the survey project off the ground in January.
Anyway, I will be back late, and will return to the computer on Saturday. For everyone, have a Merry Christmas weekend!
