Tag: freedom

The flight of gifted engineers from NASA

5:43 pm

Rather than work in NASA, the best young engineers today are increasingly heading to get jobs at private companies like SpaceX and XCOR.

It is a long article, worth reading in its entirety, but this quote will give the essence:

As a NASA engineering co-op student at Johnson Space Center, Hoffman trained in various divisions of the federal space agency to sign on eventually as a civil servant. She graduated from college this year after receiving a generous offer from NASA, doubly prestigious considering the substantial reductions in force hitting Johnson Space Center in recent months. She did have every intention of joining that force — had actually accepted the offer, in fact — when she received an invitation to visit a friend at his new job with rising commercial launch company SpaceX.

Hoffman took him up on the offer, flying out to Los Angeles in the spring for a private tour. Driving up to the SpaceX headquarters, she was struck by how unassuming it was, how small compared to NASA, how plain on the outside and rather like a warehouse.

As she walked through the complex, she was also surprised to find open work areas where NASA would have had endless hallways, offices and desks. Hoffman described SpaceX as resembling a giant workshop, a hive of activity in which employees stood working on nitty-gritty mechanical and electrical engineering. Everything in the shop was bound for space or was related to space. No one sat around talking to friends in the morning, “another level from what you see at NASA,” she said. “They’re very purpose-driven. It looked like every project was getting the attention it deserved.”

Seeing SpaceX in production forced Hoffman to acknowledge NASA might not be the best fit for her. The tour reminded her of the many mentors who had gone into the commercial sector of the space industry in search of better pay and more say in the direction their employers take. She thought back to the attrition she saw firsthand at Johnson Space Center and how understaffed divisions struggled to maintain operations.

At NASA young engineers find that they spend a lot of time with bureaucracy, the pace is slow, their projects often get canceled or delayed, and the creative job satisfaction is poor. At private companies like SpaceX, things are getting built now. With that choice, no wonder the decision to go private is increasingly easy.

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Iraqi Muslims celebrate persecution of Christians

9:31 am

The bigoted religion of peace: An Christian Iraqi refugee describes how the Muslims in Mosel celebrated the arrival of ISIS and the expulsion of Christians.

An Iraqi Christian who fled for his life from Mosul says that his Muslim neighbors welcomed the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) and told him “this land belongs to Islam.”

“We left Mosul because ISIS came to the city. The (Sunni) people of Mosul embraced ISIS, and drove the Christians out of the city,” the unnamed Christian refugee, who reportedly fled from Mosul to Lebanon, told Lebanese LBC/LDC TV in a July 30 interview translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

And then there’s this: A mob of Muslims on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem force the closure of that site to Jews.

Watch the video below the fold and tell me who you think is bigoted and expressing hatred. As one of the Jews notes with humor near the beginnin of the video, “Look, three Jews, how many Arabs; they are calling to G-d, they are praying to G-d because of us, it’s wonderful. You see what we did?”

Things get more and more heated, beginning around 9:00, as they begin to approach the Temple Mount itself. Note that all these guys are doing is trying to take a tour of the site.
» Read more

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The count now more than 20

11:43 pm

Corruption: More than twenty Obama officials have lost or destroyed emails after learning that Congress wanted to see them.

[I]n each case, the loss wasn’t disclosed to the National Archives or Congress for months or years, in violation of federal law,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) said of [the] lost e-mails. “It defies logic that so many senior Administration officials were found to have ignored federal record-keeping requirements only after Congress asked to see their e-mails.”

Actually, it doesn’t defy logic. It is perfectly logical. This administration is corrupt, has broken the law numerous times, and is now aggressively destroying evidence to cover-up its corruption.

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Christians flee Islamic jihadists in northern Iraq

10:46 am

The religion of peace strikes again! Hundreds of thousands of Christians flee northern Iraq as Islamic State take over the region and jihadists tear down churches and destroy Christian manuscripts.

This analysis of the situation now in northern Iraq asks some pointed questions of President Barack Obama, who withdraw American troops from that country far sooner than any military or local expert advised.

This analysis explains why President Barack Obama seems so unconcerned about the fate of these Christian refugees. To use his words, this kind of violence and terrorism and genocide is just an example of these groups acting with “extraordinarily irresponsibly”.

I ask: When are the American people going to finally get tired of electing children to office and have the courage to elect an adult?

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China to build a new canal in Central America

10:49 pm

The competition heats up: With approval from Nicaragua, China has inched closer to beginning construction of a new canal that would connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

A month ago, a Nicaraguan committee approved Chinese billionaire Wang Jing’s project to create The Nicaraguan Canal. With a planned capacity to accommodate ships with loaded displacement of 400,000 tons (notably bigger than The Panama Canal), the proposed 278-kilometer-long canal that will run across the Nicaragua isthmus would probably change the landscape of the world’s maritime trade.

“The project is the largest infrastructure project ever in the history of man in terms of engineering difficulty, investment scale, workload and its global impact,” Wang told reporters, adding that with regard the project’s financing, which is around $50 billion, Wang seems quite confident, “If you can deliver, you will find all the world’s money at your disposal.”

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Video of the Falcon 9 first stage doing a soft splashdown

9:08 am

Video taken from a chase plane during the July 14 Falcon 9 launch shows the first stage appearing from out of the low clouds, engines firing, vertical and ready for landing. The video, below the fold, also shows the stage slowing just before it hits the water, much like the test vehicles Grasshopper and Falcon 9R do.

Though SpaceX has already claimed their first stage had done this during the July 14 launch, this video proves it. All they need to do now to recover their first stage is to direct it to a land-based landing site.

Hat tip to Doug Messier and Parabolic Arc for this story.
» Read more

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Hamas propaganda becomes Israeli comedy

6:07 pm

At the start of the Gaza war four weeks ago Hamas released a propaganda music video calling for the destruction of Israel and for Palestinians to “exterminate the roaches.”

The problem was that the video was in Hebrew, not Arabic, and Israelis have found it hilarious and have made it a summer music sensation!

Surprisingly, though, Israelis found the tune of “Attack! Carry Out Terror Strikes” extremely catchy. Making it even more fun was the flowery Hebrew, dotted with nonexistent words sung in a heavy Arab accent, all of which led to the song’s becoming a summer hit. It has since spawned numerous covers and tributes.

Videos at the link. I especially like the Smurf version.

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The library that tried to ban conservative news researchers backs down.

10:33 am

Victory for free speech: The University of Arkansas has backed down from its attempt to ban a news research team because it was using that research to publish articles critical of Hillary Clinton.

The University of Arkansas library has backed down from its decision to block the Washington Free Beacon from accessing its special collections archives following a month-long public uproar. The library suspended the Free Beacon’s research privileges in June after the outlet published a story based on audiotapes from university archives that included Hillary Clinton discussing her 1975 defense of a child rapist.

The article clearly documents that the university was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, trying to impose the ban for political reasons.

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Ebola patient arrives in U.S.

12:11 am

Doctors in charge of the specialized isolation unit for treating dangerous infectious diseases are confident that they will be able to treat the infected patients safely without the disease escaping.

I have complete confidence that a well run facility like this, with modern technology, could keep the disease isolated. The key words, however, are “well run.” I pray that this description still applies to Emory University Hospital.

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Netanyahu tells off the Obama administration

8:09 pm

In a phone conversation with the U.S. Israeli ambassador, Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told the Obama administration to never “second-guess me again.”

The sources also say that Netanyahu said something quite similar to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had tried and failed to broker a ceasefire that would have given Hamas everything it wanted.

See also this article, which notes how the Obama administration has not only antagonized Israel by its bumbling, it has also pissed off the moderate Arab world, which apparently does not support Hamas and has been backing Israel in its effort to neuter it.

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