Tag: government

Video of a successful test firing of Liberator, the first working 3D printed gun.

8:37 am

Video of a successful test firing of Liberator, the first working 3D printed gun.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats in Congress are rushing to outlaw this weapon, as is their typical approach to anything they don’t like: outlaw it, ban it, prohibit it, control it, restrict it.

In other related news, a news paper editor in Colorado has decided that the only fair way to debate the NRA is to send every member of the organization to prison.

No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism. When the facts are so clearly before all Americans, for the whole world to see, why bother with this country’s odious and cumbersome system of justice? Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in their own mental squalor.

No, no, no. Not the wannabe sick kid who blew up the Boston marathon or the freak that’s mailing ricin-laced letters to the president. I’m talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association. [emphasis mine]

Our modern liberal community: Restrict freedom, dump due process, imprison your opponents.

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The Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that carrying a firearm in an open-carry state does not create reasonable suspicion of a crime.

8:29 am

The Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that merely carrying a firearm in an open-carry state does not create reasonable suspicion of a crime.

Nathaniel Black was part of a group of men in Charlotte, North Carolina who local police officers suspected might be engaged in criminal activity. In particular, Officers suspected that after seeing one of the men openly carrying a firearm – which was legal in North Carolina – that there was most likely another firearm present. When police began frisking the men one by one, Mr. Black wished to leave, but was told he was not free to leave. Officers chased Mr. Black and discovered that he possessed a firearm; it was later discovered that he was a previously convicted felon. Mr. Black was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Before the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Mr. Black moved to suppress the evidence against him. His suppression motion was denied, he entered a guilty plea preserving a right to appeal the denial of the suppression motion, and he was sentenced to fifteen (15) years imprisonment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, however, determined that the officers had improperly seized Mr. Black, suppressed the evidence against him, and vacated his sentence.

Read the whole article. Black had visibly been doing nothing wrong, merely standing on the sidewalk talking to friends. And because it is perfectly legal to openly carry a firearm in North Carolina, the court ruled that the police had not been given cause to detain him or search him. In other words, it though it might be illegal for you to be carrying the gun (as it was with Black), the mere presence of the gun does not give the police the right to suspect him of a crime.

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Private space is winning

11:50 pm

Today I attended an space industry conference here in Orange County, California, sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Unlike the Space Hackers conference which also occurred today and to which I was also invited, this was not a New Space get-together, but a standard aerospace event which included a lot of old time engineers from the big old-time companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Most of the talks today were engineering related. For example, one described in detail the engineering advantages of building ion engines and solar sails at the molecular level, nanotechnology to the max. Another talk, which I found astonishing and exciting, was an analysis of the orbital mechanics of getting to Mars. This analysis found that using constant acceleration as low as .01 G it would be possible to get to Mars in weeks, not years, and without the necessity of waiting for the perfect launch window. You could launch almost anytime. Though we don’t have engines that as yet can provide this much constant low acceleration, these numbers are not so high as to make it impossible. With some clever refinements, it might be possible to come up with propulsion systems capable of these constant Gs, and to do it in the near future. If so, it will open up the entire solar system to manned exploration very quickly. Not only will we be able to travel to the planets in a reasonable time, the constant Gs would overcome the medical problems caused by prolonged weightlessness.

It wasn’t these interesting engineering presentations that got my juices flowing however. Instead, it was presentation on public policy issues that completely surprised me and made me think the future of the American aerospace industry is really going in the right direction. This significant take-away was further reinforced by the audience’s reaction to my lecture in the evening.
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The high peak in tornado in 2011, the most in fifty years, was quickly attributed to global warming. Eric Berger asks: How does this explain this year’s low number, the fewest in fifty years?

10:27 am

The uncertainty of science: The high peak in tornado in 2011, the most in fifty years, was quickly attributed to global warming. Eric Berger asks: How does this explain this year’s low number, the fewest in fifty years?

If you click on the first link, you will see that the global warming scientists quoted, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, and Gavin Schmidt, were all involved in the climategate emails, where they came off very badly. Moreover, there have been significant questions about the work of Michael Mann himself. I also wonder if these guys will have anything to say about the dearth of tornadoes today.

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The story of the youngest survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp to be liberated by the Americans.

11:55 pm

The story of the youngest survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp to be liberated by the Americans.

At age seven, he was separated from his mother when she thrust him over to the men’s side during deportation. “Tulek, take Lulek,” she said, entrusting him to Naftali in the hope that the men were more likely to survive. Naftali smuggled him into the Buchenwald labor camp since a child his age would have been exterminated on the spot if discovered. Rabbi Lau thus became the youngest and smallest inmate in the camp. His survival over the next year was largely due to Naftali’s constant self sacrifice and protection.

You don’t have to be Jewish or even believe in God to agree with this man that miracles do happen every day.

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The Chinese national who had been arrested at Dulles airport as he left for China with a NASA laptop has been released after pleading guilty to one charge, having porn on the laptop.

11:01 pm

The Chinese national who had been arrested at Dulles airport as he left for China with a NASA laptop has been released after pleading guilty to one charge, having porn on the laptop.

Investigators found no classified information on the computer. As part of the release agreement, however, the man must leave the U.S.

Though the man, Bo Jiang, was very careful to bring nothing secret with him when he tried to flee to China in March, the circumstantial evidence suggests that he should not have had access to this information in the first place, and that in the past he might have illegally funneled classified information to China.

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Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) says the federal government isn’t spending enough to implement Obamacare.

4:23 pm

Gee what a surprise: Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) says the federal government isn’t spending enough to implement Obamacare.

Even if the federal government was not spending money it doesn’t have and was in the black, there will never be enough money to fund this monstrosity. Too bad Reid and the rest of the Democrats couldn’t figure that out. (Or maybe they did and simply wanted the country to go bankrupt. I wonder.)

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In a NASA contest, a nine-year-old has named asteroid 1999 RQ36 after the Egyptian god Bennu.

10:44 am

A rose by any other name: In a NASA contest, a nine-year-old has named asteroid 1999 RQ36 after the Egyptian god Bennu.

1999 RQ36, or Bennu, is an important asteroid for two reasons. First, NASA is sending an unmanned sample return mission to it in 2016. Second, some calculations suggest the asteroid has a 1 in a 1000 chance of hitting the Earth in 2182.

In other naming news, the private space company Uwingu has launched its “Adopt-a-Planet” campaign.

This open-ended campaign gives anyone in the public—worldwide—the opportunity to adopt exoplanets in astronomical databases via Uwingu’s web site at www.uwingu.com. Proceeds from the naming and voting will continue to help fuel new Uwingu grants to fund space exploration, research, and education.

As noted earlier, they are ignoring the IAU’s stuffy insistence that only the IAU can name things in space.

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Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries

4:50 pm

Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries.

While the poll included many encouraging things, I found this to be its most disturbing statistic:

Suicide bombing was mostly rejected in the study by the Washington-based Pew Forum, but it won 40 percent support in the Palestinian territories, 39 percent in Afghanistan, 29 percent in Egypt and 26 percent in Bangladesh.

Name for me any other culture or religion in the world today where more than a quarter of the population thinks suicide bombings are a good thing.

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Congress is considering exempting itself and its staffers from Obamacare.

11:13 am

Now Congress has found out what’s in it: Lawmakers are considering exempting themselves and their staffers from Obamacare.

If they think the law is too onerous for themselves, then maybe they might finally realize that it is too onerous for everyone, and repeal the damn thing. Unfortunately, such common sense is not likely to appear in Washington.

Update: The story above suggested the exemption was being pushed by both parties. This apparently is not entirely true. There does appear to be some common sense in Washington, at least among some on the Republican side, as indicated by Republican statements from both the House and Senate. As noted by Speaker John Boehner’s office,
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America the fallen: Twenty-four signs that our once proud cities are turning into poverty-stricken hellholes.

10:18 pm

The day of reckoning looms: America the fallen: Twenty-four signs that our once proud cities are turning into poverty-stricken hellholes.

It is important to note that every single one of the cities cited in this article has been under Democratic Party rule for decades. While the decline is not entirely their fault, their tax-and-spend policies combined with a passion for heavy regulation certainly share much of the blame.

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A rocket reveals a fundamental truth about America

12:29 pm

Yesterday, Orbital Sciences successfully completed the first test launch of its Antares rocket, developed, designed, and built in less than five years under a commercial contract with NASA to provide cargo to the International Space Station. The launch went like clockwork, perfectly, with no hitches at all, something that is quite remarkable for a new rocket on its first launch. Kudos to the engineers at Orbital Sciences for a job well done!

Besides demonstrating the skill of Orbital Science’s engineers, however, this successful launch illustrated in stark reality a fundamental fact about the culture of the United States that continues to allow it to stand out from the rest of the world, even as a large percentage of the present generation of Americans are doing their darndest to try to destroy that culture. Moreover, that fundamental cultural fact is basic to human nature, not just the United States, and if we recognize it, it will provide us all the right framework for what to do and not to do in trying to maintain human societies, both here on Earth as well as in the future in space.

In order to understand the true significance of Orbital Sciences’s success yesterday with Antares, however, we must first review the capabilities of the world’s launch industry. I am not going to list all the rockets capable of putting payloads into orbit, only those that are successfully competing for business in the open commercial market.
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“This nation of sheep is indeed begetting a government of wolves, and as a result we are all witnessing the death of liberty.”

9:15 am

“This nation of sheep is indeed begetting a government of wolves, and as a result we are all witnessing the death of liberty.”

And then there’s this: “Why does evil make liberals stupid?” Key quote:

This piece in The Atlantic is a good exemplar of the mushy liberal commentary that has proliferated in recent days. Authored by one Megan Garber, it is titled: “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?” Before taking a close look at Ms. Garber’s article, let’s advise The Atlantic not to put away that headline. It could come in handy so often. “The Cole Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Embassy Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The First World Trade Center Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The September 11 Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Madrid Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The London Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Shoebomber Was Muslim: So?” The Underwear Bomber Was Muslim: So?” “The Fort Hood Shooter Was Muslim: So?” “The Beslan Child-Murderers Were Muslim: So?” “The Times Square Bomber Was Muslim: So?”

We could keep this up for a very long time, but let’s move on to Ms. Garber’s soulful meanderings.

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Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday he fears a “train wreck” as the Obama administration implements Obamacare

11:30 am

Idiot: Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday he fears a “train wreck” as the Obama administration implements Obamacare.

Baucus was one of the key architects of Obamacare and voted for it, along with every other Democrat in Congress. That he is only now discovering what a bad law it is is just further proof that he should fired.

The real question is whether the voters will fire him. After the last election I have my doubts.

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A union is calling for the repeal of Obamacare.

3:18 pm

The house of cards begins to fall: A union is calling for the repeal of Obamacare.

Our Union and its members have supported President Obama and his Administration for both of his terms in office.

But regrettably, our concerns over certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some instances, totally ignored. In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the Act’s provisions were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer sponsored coverage could keep it.

These provisions jeopardize our multi-employer health plans, have the potential to cause a loss of work for our members, create an unfair bidding advantage for those contractors who do not provide health coverage to their workers, and in the worst case, may cause our members and their families to lose the benefits they currently enjoy as participants in multi-employer health plans.

But don’t worry, come the next election this same union will continue to support the same Democratic politicians that gave us Obamacare, because party partisanship is far more important than common sense and rational leadership.

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A decorated war veteran on a Boy Scout hike with his 15-year-old son was arrested by police in Texas because he was “rudely displaying” a firearm.

9:39 am

Does this make you feel safer? A decorated war veteran on a Boy Scout hike with his 15-year-old son was arrested by police in Texas because he was “rudely displaying” a firearm.

Army Master Sgt. C.J. Grisham told Fox News he was illegally disarmed by members of the Temple Police Dept. – even though he held the proper permits to carry his weapons. Grisham and his son were on a 10-mile hike in a rural area populated by wild boars and cougars. He was carrying an AR-15 rifle and a .45 caliber pistol. He was charged with resisting arrest – even though video his son filmed of the incident clearly showed that Grisham did not resist arrest. Police later reduced the charges to interfering with a peace officer while performing a duty – a class B misdemeanor.

Update: several commenters have pointed out facts about Grisham, including this very detailed report from Michael Yon, that raise serious questions about the reliability of this story. Worth reading.

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A private company tells the IAU to bug off!

8:53 am

A private company tells the IAU to bug off about who has the power to name things in space!

Uwingu affirms the IAU’s right to create naming systems for astronomers But we know that the IAU has no purview—informal or official—to control popular naming of bodies in the sky or features on them, just as geographers have no purview to control people’s naming of features along hiking trails. People clearly enjoy connecting to the sky and having an input to common-use naming. We will continue to stand up for the public’s rights in this regard, and look forward to raising more grant funds for space researchers and educators this way.

The company also pointed out that even astronomers name things without the IAU’s approval.

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The International Astronomical Union has issued a press release condemning the commercial efforts of private companies to issue names for exoplanets.

11:51 am

Turf war! The International Astronomical Union has issued a press release condemning the commercial efforts of private companies to issue names for exoplanets.

Recently, an organisation has invited the public to purchase both nomination proposals for exoplanets, and rights to vote for the suggested names. In return, the purchaser receives a certificate commemorating the validity and credibility of the nomination. Such certificates are misleading, as these campaigns have no bearing on the official naming process — they will not lead to an officially-recognised exoplanet name, despite the price paid or the number of votes accrued.
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To make this possible, the IAU acts as a single arbiter of the naming process, and is advised and supported by astronomers within different fields. As an international scientific organisation, it dissociates itself entirely from the commercial practice of selling names of planets, stars or or even “real estate” on other planets or moons. These practices will not be recognised by the IAU and their alternative naming schemes cannot be adopted.

Well la-dee-da, how dare anyone else name anything ever in space!

The truth is, the IAU was originally given this function by astronomers to coordinate the naming of obscure astronomical objects, not to provide the official names for every object and feature that will ever be discovered in space. And though the IAU does tend to favor the choices of discoverers, it has in the past also ignored their wishes. (See for example my book Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, where the IAU rejected the names chosen by the Apollo 8 astronauts, even though those astronauts were the first to actually go and see these features.)

In the end, the names of important features in space will be chosen by those who live there.

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