Tag: policy

Midnight repost: Buy dumb!

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: The failures of modern technology (shaped sadly by a lot of government regulation) often illustrates well the coming dark age. Tonight’s repost from September 15, 2019 gives one good example, and what you can do to counter this trend.

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Buy dumb!

The dumb washing machine we hunted for and got
The used “dumb” machine we
paid $285 for that actually
cleans our clothes.

The smart washing machine we threw out
The “smart” machine that we
paid $923 for and sold for $40.

Two years ago our old Kenmore Series 80 washing machine broke down. The repair guy said it would be so expensive to fix that he recommended it was time to buy something new.

So off we went to Sears, where we ended up buying one of today’s modern “smart” machines for a mere $923. As the LG website proudly exclaims,

A Smarter Way to Wash: 6Motion™ Technology uses up to 6 different wash motions to provide a smart cleaning experience that is gentle on clothes and maximizes washing performance.

The problem was the machine never got any of our clothes clean. It also refused to provide enough water. The way it worked was to sense the weight of the clothes you put inside, and determine the needed amount based on this. Routinely, it wasn’t enough, so Diane did web searches to discover numerous owners faking out the machine’s brains by pouring several buckets of water on top of the clothes before turning on the machine, making them weigh more.

The machine also did not have an agitator, the new in-thing among washing machine manufacturers two years ago, probably forced on them by new federal regulations. And though the tub itself did shake, it did it so gently that the clothes hardly moved.

There were also other issues with the machine’s smart technology that frustrated Diane. The machine was boss, and would not allow for any flexibility to its predetermined wash and rinse cycles, even when they made no sense.

Last week Diane had had enough. » Read more

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China admits Three Gorges Dam deformed under flood pressure

10:38 pm

Not good: Earlier this week the Chinese government finally admitted what a number of independent writers have noted, that the gigantic Three Gorges Dam has deformed from the record flood waters that are pressing against it this year.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the operator of the the world’s largest hydroelectric gravity dam as saying that some nonstructural, peripheral parts of the dam had buckled.

The dam was a pet project of the late Premier Li Peng and a monumental pride of the nation when it blocked and diverted Asia’s largest river in 1997.

The deformation occurred last Saturday when the flood from western provinces including Sichuan and Chongqing along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River peaked at a record-setting 61,000 cubic meters per second, according to China Three Gorges Corporation, a state-owned enterprise that manages the dam and the sprawling power plant underneath it.

The company noted that parts of the dam had “deformed slightly,” displacing some external structures, and seepage into the main outlet walls had also been reported throughout the 18 hours on Saturday and Sunday when water was discharged though its outlets.

Not surprisingly the Chinese government also insisted that the dam is really okay and there is nothing to worry about. And we trust them implicitly, don’t we?

Now for the punchline: If the dam does not hold the city most threatened by it is Wuhan, home to the COVID-19 virus that has panicked the globe.

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Midnight repost: Freedom dying

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: Last night’s midnight repost tried to predict what would happen politically following the big Republican victories in the 2010 midterm election. I was not sure, but worried that the Republicans would not have the courage to do what they promised (cut the budget and repeal Obamacare) and would fold like a house of cards when pressured with government shutdowns by Obama and the Democrats.

They did fold, and the result was that the Democrats were further emboldened, and the Republicans weakened in the long run. Tonight’s repost, written on November 7, 2018, illustrates the consequences of this by taking a look at the just completed 2018 midterm elections. There, the American people had rewarded the Democrats for their endless slander campaigns and power grabs. Times had changed, but not for the better.

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Freedom dying

The results of yesterday’s election, when taken in the context of the stories below, confirm for me the sad belief that freedom in the United States is steadily dying. Freedom might return, but for the next few decades I think we are headed for oppressive times. Be prepared.

The stories are only a sampling, and are cited because of what they show: In every case they describe attacks against individuals defending freedom of speech and diversity of thought, and all the attacks come from the students, the future of our society.
» Read more

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Another university researcher arrested for spying for China

2:18 pm

The FBI yesterday arrested a researcher who had been working at the University of California-Davis and had lied about here contacts with the Chinese communist party and its military.

Juan Tang, 37, who had been a visiting cancer researcher at UC Davis for several months, left her Davis apartment in June after FBI agents questioned her about evidence that she lied concerning whether she was a member of the Chinese military or Communist Party when she applied for a visa, according to federal court papers.

…U.S. authorities have no authority to enter the consulate without permission, and it was not immediately clear Friday whether she had voluntarily surrendered. Jail records show the FBI arrested her overnight and booking was still in progress Friday morning.

She is one of four Chinese researchers charged by the Justice Department this week for spying. The other three have already been arrested.

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Today’s fake news in space

1:58 pm

In the past day we have had two space-related stories that sadly illustrate the shallowness of our modern press. Modern mainstream reporters literally know nothing of the subject they are reporting on, and expend zero effort to improve their knowledge.

First we have the story making the rounds about a Russian anti-satellite test. This BBC story,
“UK and US say Russia fired a satellite weapon in space“, is typical. It takes at face value the claims of the military bureaucracies in the United States and the United Kingdom, and makes it sound as if the Russians were doing something new and unique that no one has ever done before.
» Read more

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Penn Republicans surrendering to mail-in voting

12:23 pm

The stupid party: Republicans in Pennsylvania are joining Democrats to call for mail-in voting in the coming November election.

“Now is a time for all Americans to stand up and put their country over their party,” said former congressman Patrick Murphy, a Bucks County Democrat. “From the elderly grandmother to young people, everyone needs to understand that the process of mail-in voting is trustworthy, and if they want to vote in person they need to know how to do that safely.”

Murphy, who also once served as acting secretary of the U.S. Army, has joined forces with former Pennsylvania House Republican majority leader Dave Reed to chair VoteSafe Pennsylvania. The group launched its statewide information campaign on Tuesday. “With everything going on here in 2020 and it happening to be a presidential election year as well, I think it’s fair to say we have a really polarized nation right now politically,” Reed said in an interview. “This project is just focused on making sure people feel safe and secure in voting with the mail-in ballots. And for folks who want to go to an in-person ballot precinct, making sure those places are safe and that folks are comfortable in doing so.”

“The bottom line is just very simple,” Reed added. “We just want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to participate this year.” [emphasis mine]

The article then goes on to related the numerous problems experienced in Pennsylvania with tabulating its mail-in votes in the most recent primary. It took some counties weeks to count the vote, and there were innumerable problems.

The one bright light in this darkness is that both of these idiots are former state legislators, and have clearly teamed up to push elected officials to buy their scheme. We can only pray they don’t get what they really want, a way to rig elections easily for their own benefit.

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NASA’s safety panel expresses concerns about Starliner

11:02 am

My heart be still: During a teleconference yesterday, members of NASA’s safety panel expressed concerns about Boeing’s Starliner capsule while cautiously and very tentatively endorsing SpaceX’s intention to launch future manned missions with reused Falcon 9 first stages and reused Dragon capsules.

I consider this safety panel worse than useless. For example, based on this news report, they appear to have had little involvement in the NASA/Boeing investigation into the issues that caused the premature de-orbit of first unmanned orbital test flight of Starliner. Instead, it appears they have simply reviewed that investigation, and are now just kibbitzing from the sidelines.

Of course NASA should be concerned about the 80 issues it found, mostly involving software. No one needs this safety panel to tell the agency this.

Meanwhile, the panel’s tentative support for reusing Falcon 9 boosters and Dragon capsules is merely a rubberstamp of already decided NASA policy, and also illustrates the panel’s uselessness. This safety panel spent the last five years blasting everything SpaceX was doing (causing many delays), while literally missing the real elephant in the room, Boeing’s own quality control issues.

It appears to me that NASA is very gently and quietly making the safety panel irrelevant to its operations. Even better would be to disband it entirely. It serves no purpose other than to delay and block future exploration, sometimes foolishly.

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Dragon update for the ongoing and next mission

10:34 am

Two stories today provide an update of the overall schedule and status of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule, both now and into the future.

First, they are preparing for the return of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley from ISS on August 2nd. Prior to return they will use the station’s robot arm to inspect the capsule’s heat shield to make sure it did not sustain any damage during its two months in space. Such inspections will be standard procedure on future flights, something NASA did not do on shuttle flights until after the Columbia failure.

It is unlikely there is any damage, but making this inspection is plain common sense. If the heat shield has been damaged, the astronauts can stay on board ISS until the next Dragon arrives, which can then bring them home.

Second, NASA and SpaceX have worked out a tentative schedule for that next Dragon manned launch, now set for sometime in late September. The agency wants a bit of time to review the full results of the first demo mission before flying a second.

Based on all that has happened so far, it now appears unlikely that the agency will find anything that prevents that late September flight.

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Midnight repost: Squeal like a pig

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: Tonight’s repost was written just prior to the 2010 mid-term elections. I correctly predicted that the Democrats would get creamed in that election. I then tried to predict what would happen next politically due to that Republican victory. I leave it to my readers to determine how good my analysis was, and how well it applies to what is happening right now.

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Squeal like a pig

Let’s take a trip into the future, looking past Tuesday’s midterm election.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that, come Tuesday, the Republicans take both houses, in a stunning landslide not seen in more than a century. Let’s also assume that the changes in Congress are going to point decidedly away from the recent liberal policies of large government (by both parties). Instead, every indication suggests that the new Congress will lean heavily towards a return to the principles of small government, low taxes, and less regulation.

These assumptions are not unreasonable. Not only do the polls indicate that one or both of the houses of Congress will switch from Democratic to Republican control, the numerous and unexpected primary upsets of established incumbents from both parties — as well the many protests over the past year by large numbers of ordinary citizens — make it clear that the public is not interested in half measures. Come January, the tone and direction of Congress is going to undergo a shocking change.

Anyway, based on these assumptions, we should then expect next year’s Congress to propose unprecedented cuts to the federal budget, including the elimination of many hallowed programs. The recent calls to defund NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcastings are only one example.

When Congress attempts this, however, the vested interests that have depended on this funding for decades are not going to take the cuts lightly. Or to put it more bluntly, they are going to squeal like pigs, throwing temper tantrums so loud and insane that they will make the complaints of a typical three-year-old seem truly statesman-like. And they will do so in the hope that they will garner sympathy and support from the general voting public, thereby making the cuts difficult to carry out.

The real question then is not whether the new Congress will propose the cuts required to bring the federal government under control, but whether they, as well as the public, will have the courage to follow through, to defy the howls from these spoiled brats, and do what must be done.
» Read more

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Tianwen-1 successfully launched, on its way to Mars

9:27 pm

UPDATE: According to news reports, China tonight successfully launched Tianwen-1 towards Mars, with arrival expected in February 2021.

Below the fold is a live stream of the launch of the Long March 5 rocket. It is not in English, and since it was not linked to China’s mission control, it only covers the first two minutes or so, after which the rocket went out of sight.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

17 China
11 SpaceX
7 Russia
3 ULA
3 Japan

The U.S. still leads China 18 to 17 in the national rankings.
» Read more

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Denying Americans the simple pursuit of happiness

12:59 pm

The Declaration of Independence

The last four months in the United States have probably been the ugliest seen in generations. Not only were Americans summarily put under house arrest, with churches shut and free speech muzzled, in major urban Democratically-controlled cities elected officials played favorites, allowing free speech and free movement to the leftist political activists whom these Democrats preferred, while using their police power to aggressively oppress conservatives and anyone who might be considered an opponent.

On top of this ugliness, we had our first experience of an American Kristallnacht. Not only were those leftist protesters free to protest while other Americans were on lockdown, these leftist radicals were allowed by these Democratic politicians to use violence and looting to terrorize the general population.

The nation we have today is no longer a land of liberty. Many things we only four months ago took for granted are now denied us.
» Read more

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Midnight repost: Shut down fascism in the Smoky Mountains

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: In 2013 Diane and I made a trip back east to visit the Smokey Mountains and do some hiking. Coincidentally, our trip took place at the end of September, when the budget battle between Obama and the Republicans in Congress was about to cause a government shutdown. This essay, the first of three, describes the extra effort and money being exerted by Obama’s administration to make that shutdown as unpleasant and as inconvenient to the American public as possible. The later two essays, linked to as an update at the top of the essay, outline what happened next.

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Shut down fascism in the Smoky Mountains

See my October 2, 2013 update here.

Today, October 1, 2013, my wife Diane and I went hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We did this despite the news from Washington that the federal government had shut down due to the lack of a funding from Congress and that all the national parks were closed.

The news reports had said that the National Park Service would close all roads into the park except for New Found Gap Road, the one road that crossed over the mountains from Tennessee to North Carolina. They couldn’t close this road because it was a main thoroughfare used by the public for basic transportation. Moreover, my research into the hikes we wished to do told me that several of those hikes originated on trailheads along this road. In traveling the road the day before, we had seen that these trailheads would not only be difficult to close, it would be dangerous and stupid to close them. For one, the road was windy and narrow. If there was a car accident or someone had car problems, any one of these parking areas might be essential for the use of the driver as well as local police and ambulances. For another, there are people still backpacking in the mountains who will at some point need to either exit with their cars or be picked up at these trailheads. Closing the trailheads will strand these hikers in the park, with dangerous consequences.

So, despite the shutdown, off we went to hike the Appalachian Trail, going to a well known lookout called the Jump Off, an easy 6.5 mile hike that leaves from the parking area at New Found Gap, the highest point on New Found Gap Road that is also on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. It is also probably one of the most popular stopping points along the road, visited by practically every tourist as they drive across.
Smokies from the Appalachian trail

The hike itself was beautiful, if a bit foggy and damp. The picture above shows one of the clearest views we had all day. Nor were we alone on this hike. We probably saw one to two dozen other hikers, heading out to either the Jump Off or Charles Bunion (another well known day hike destination along this section of trail).
» Read more

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Tianwen-1 launch set for July 23rd

3:09 pm

China has rolled out its Long March 5 rocket and is now preparing to launch its Tianwen-1 orbiter/lander/rover to Mars this coming Thursday, July 23rd, some time between 12 am and 3 am (Eastern).

A Long March 5 rocket is set for liftoff with China’s Tianwen 1 mission some time between 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. EDT (0400-0700 GMT) Thursday, according to public notices warning ships to steer clear of downrange drop zones along the launcher’s flight path.

Chinese officials have not officially publicized the launch date. Chinese state media outlets have only reported the launch is scheduled for late July or early August, and officials have not confirmed whether the launch will be broadcast live on state television.

This will be the first operational launch of the Long March 5, which has had three previous test launches, with the first two failing. The success of the December launch, as well as the May success of the related Long March 5B, made this Mars mission possible.

After achieving orbit in February 2021 and spending two months scouting the landing site, the lander will descend to the surface, bringing the rover with it. The prime landing site is Utopia Planitia, in the northern lowland plains.

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Utopia Planitia, the prime landing site for China’s Tianwen-1 Mars rover

1:18 pm

More blobs in Utopia Planitia
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is not only cool, it gives a nice feel for the likely shallow ice table that is probably found close to the surface throughout the lowland northern plains of Utopia Planitia, which is also the prime landing site for China’s Taenwen-1 Mars lander/rover, scheduled for launch sometime in the next four days. [Update: there are now indications the launch will not occur until early August.]

The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 9, 2020 and shows a nice collection of strange land forms on the western edge of Utopia Planitia. In this one picture we can see large mounds that might be evidence of cryovolcanic activity (mud volcanoes), strings of small mounds that might be the same but that also suggest underground faults and voids, and distorted and eroded craters that could have buried glacial material in the interiors.

The largest crater in the upper left looks like it is actually filled with ice that has also spilled over to fill the adjacent and linked depression.

This location is quite typical of Utopia Planitia. See for example this post from May 13, 2020: The blobby wettish flows of Mars. In the mid-latitudes here we find ample evidence that buried very close to the surface is an ice table that when hit by an impact melts to form these strangely shaped craters.

China’s actual target landing area is far to the east of today’s cool image, in an area that is appears far less rough. » Read more

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Midnight repost: A flag in the dust

10:00 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: This essay was posted originally on July 20, 2010, then reposted on July 20, 2011, to celebrate the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. It seems fitting to post it again, on this, the 51st anniversary of that landing.

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A flag in the dust

Today, July 20th, is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the first time ever that a human being arrived on another planet. Americans love to celebrate this event, as it symbolizes one of the finest moments in our history, when we set out to achieve something truly great and noble and succeeded far better than we could have imagined. Not only did we get to the Moon as promised, over the next three and a half years we sent another five missions, each with increasingly sophisticated equipment, each sent to explore some increasingly alien terrain. Forty-plus years later, no one has come close to matching this achievement, a fact that emphasizes how difficult it was for the United States to accomplish it.

There is one small but very important detail about the Apollo 11 mission, however, that most Americans are unaware of. » Read more

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St. Louis couple charged for defending their home from trespassers

4:22 pm

They’re coming for you next: The Democrat prosecutor in St. Louis, circuit attorney Kim Gardner, who would eagerly ban you from owning guns and would also gladly defund the police, has issued criminal charges against the St. Louis couple for using their guns to protect their home from trespassing and threatening Antifa/BLM protesters.

The charge relates to them “flourishing” the guns while standing on their own property in order to ward off trespassers who were verbally and physically threatening them.

This is the Democratic Party today. Not only should you be denied the right to own guns, if you do own them you will not be allowed to defend your life with them. Moreover, there must not be any police available to enforce the law. These Democrats will also give carte blanche to any protesters they agree with, allowing them to trespass on your property and do what they will with you, in the name of free speech.

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Texas Republican Party ousts leader to give Allen West the job

1:24 pm

The Texas Republican Party yesterday ousted its chairman to give former congressman and hard-nosed conservative Allen West the job.

Conservative firebrand and former Florida congressman Allen West will lead the Texas Republican Party into the 2020 election, after ousting the current chairman early Monday during a convention marred by technical difficulties. He vowed to use his post to push back against Democrats’ “progressive socialism.”

“I am sick and tired of Republicans being on their heels, being on the defense, always being reactionary with a party that as we see right now– they don’t stand up for the rule of law, they stand for rule of the mob,” he said during a victory lap on conservative media.

If anything, this decision indicates the continuing shift in the Republican Party from the milquetoast go-along-to-get-along types to those willing to fight the Democrats on all fronts. One of the reasons West lost his seat in Congress is because past Republican leadership looked at him with distaste, refusing to give him the kind of support he needed. That is now changing.

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Why the UAE’s Hope Mars Orbiter is really a US mission for UAE’s students

11:10 am

Today there were many many news stories touting the successful launch of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first interplanetary probe, Hope, (al-Amal in Arabic), successfully launched yesterday from Japan. This story at collectSpace is typical, describing the mission in detail and noting its overall goals not only to study the Martian atmosphere but to inspire the young people in the UAE to pursue futures in the fields of science and engineering.

What most of these reports gloss over is how little of Hope was really built by the UAE. The UAE paid the bills, but during design and construction almost everything was done by American universities as part of their education programs, though arranged so that it was UAE’s students and engineers who were getting the education.
» Read more

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Midnight repost: The absolute uncertainty of climate science

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: Tonight’s repost adds more weight to yesterday’s about the uncertainty of any model predicting global warming. Rather than look at the giant gaps in our knowledge, this essay, posted on January 28, 2019, looked at the data tampering that government scientists are doing to their global temperature databases in order to make the past appear cooler and the present appear warmer.

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The absolute uncertainty of climate science

Even as the United States is being plunged right now into an epic cold spell (something that has been happening repeatedly for almost all the winters of the past decade), and politicians continue to rant about the coming doom due to global warming, none of the data allows anyone the right to make any claims about the future global climate, in any direction.

Why do I feel so certain I can make this claim of uncertainty? Because the data simply isn’t there. And where we do have it, it has been tampered with so badly it is no longer very trustworthy. This very well documented post by Tony Heller proves this reality, quite thoroughly.

First, until the late 20th century, we simply do not have good reliable climate data for the southern hemisphere. Any statement by anyone claiming to know with certainty what the global temperature was prior to 1978 (when the first Nimbus climate satellite was launched) should be treated with some skepticism. Take a look at all the graphs Heller posts, all from reputable science sources, all confirming my own essay on this subject from 2015. The only regions where temperatures were thoroughly measured prior to satellite data was in the United States, Europe, and Japan. There are scattered data points elsewhere, but not many, with none in the southern oceans. And while we do have a great deal of proxy data that provides some guidance as to the global temperature prior to the space age, strongly suggesting there was a global warm period around the year 1000 AD, and a global cold period around 1600 AD, this data also has a lot of uncertainty, so it is entirely reasonable to express some skepticism about it.

Second, the data in those well-covered regions have been tampered with extensively, and always in a manner that reinforces the theory of global warming. Actual temperature readings have been adjusted everywhere, always to cool the past and warm the present. As Heller notes,
» Read more

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More COVID-19 good news

10:38 pm

A close look at the infection rate based on the increased number of tests in the past two months suggests that by election day the entire country will be close to herd immunity, and that quite possibly 40% of the population is already immune.

As of July 17, 44.2 million people have been tested, with 3.63 million positives (8.2%). Those folks who tested negative either never contracted COVID-19 or had it (with or without symptoms) and recovered.

…One eighth of the country [44.2 million] already tested is a very large sample, statistically. Applying the 8% baseline infection rate to the entire population, this means that every week after the beginning of April, another 2.67% of the people in the U.S. had recovered from COVID-19, were immune and non-contagious, and were not a threat to anybody. These numbers are additive. By July 17 (15 weeks), 40% of the country is now immune to the coronavirus, whether or not these people know it, and they cannot infect anybody else (for as long as the period of immunity lasts, likely well into the fall).

We can use the trajectory of the “hot spots” in March and April (which peaked about mid-April) to estimate the future trajectory of the percent of nationwide positive COVD-19 test results — which are now less than 2% in the former hot-spot areas — as the current set of “hot spots,” which are currently at peak, subside. I roughly estimate the following: for August, 5.4%; September, 4.0%; October, 2.1%. On the day you go to the polls to vote for either Orange Man or Senator Senex, by my estimate, 62% of the country will be immune to COVID-19, which is close to herd immunity.

And yes, there is uncertainty here, but the analysis appears reasonable, based on the number so far tested and the numbers found to test positive. It also matches what a reasonable person should expect from this respiratory disease.

Of course, because it suggests we have a lot to be optimistic about the Wuhan virus, this analysis must be dismissed immediately, out of hand. It just can’t be right. We are all gonna die from COVID-19 and that’s it.

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No TMT construction until 2021, according to its builders

9:19 pm

According to the university consortium building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), they will make no attempt to begin construction until the end of winter in 2021.

According to the official spokesman, the consortium remains committed to building the telescope in Hawaii on Mauna Kea, but I do not see how it will ever happen. The present Democratic government supports the protesters, and there is no chance that government will ever be voted out of power.

Based on this information, I do not think TMT will ever be built, anywhere.

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UAE’s Hope Mars Orbiter successfully launched

9:12 pm

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates first interplanetary probe, its Hope Mars Orbiter, was successfully launched by a Mitsubishi H-2A rocket today from Japan, and is now on its way to Mars.

It will arrive in February 2021, when it will attempt to inject itself into orbit, where it will then be used to study the Martian weather.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

16 China
10 SpaceX
7 Russia
3 ULA
3 Japan

The U.S. still leads China in the national rankings, 17 to 16.

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Midnight repost: The uncertainty of climate science

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: Tonight’s repost, from 2015, can be considered a follow-up to yesterday’s. While many global warming activists are absolutely certain the climate is warming — to the point of considering murder of their opponents a reasonable option — the actual available data is so far from certain as to be almost ludicrous.

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The uncertainty of climate science

For the past five years, I have been noting on this webpage the large uncertainties that still exist in the field of climate science. Though we have solid evidence of an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we also have no idea what the consequences of that increase are going to be. It might cause the atmosphere to warm, or it might not. It might harm the environment, or it might instead spur plant life growth that will invigorate it instead. The data remains inconclusive. We really don’t even know if the climate is truly warming, and even if it is, whether CO2 is causing that warming.

While government scientists at NASA and NOAA are firmly in the camp that claims increasing carbon dioxide will cause worldwide disastrous global warming, their own data, when looked at coldly, reveals that they themselves don’t have sufficient information to make that claim. In fact, they don’t even have sufficient information to claim they know whether the climate is warming or cooling! My proof? Look at the graph below, produced by NOAA’s own National Centers for Environmental Information.
» Read more

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Obama misused intelligence agencies for years to spy on political opponents

4:56 pm

We now have substantial evidence going back years — well before its illegal misuse of the FISA court — that the Obama administration and officials in its FBI and Justice Department misused National Security Agency (NSA) databases to illegally spy on its political opponents.

The article at the link is very long and detailed, but this is necessary to unpack the history that not only documents that spying before 2016, but why Justice and FBI high officials felt compelled then to use a fake dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign to get a warrant from the FISA court. Once they lost access to the NSA databases that year, they needed something that would allow them to continue that spying.

During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches. On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware. Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted. On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization.

In other words, the NSA database of phonecalls between Americans, an illegal database in its own right (the Constitution forbids such indiscriminate spying on Americans without a warrant), was being used by unauthorized individuals to gain information on Americans. From the article it becomes clear that those individuals were Obama administration operatives, and the Americans they were digging dirt on were their political opponents.

When Rogers shut down access to this keyhole, it was then necessary to instigate an unjustified warrant from the FISA court to allow these same Obama officials the right to continue their spying. At the same time they also instigated an effort to get Rogers fired.

What infuriates me about this is that even now, years later, no one has been indicted for any of these clearly illegal acts, despite substantive and documented evidence. We get reports, we get leaks, we get outraged Congressman on cable networks, and we get Trump tweets ranting about how terrible it is. What we don’t get is anyone behind bars.

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Midnight repost: Murder for the sake of climate idealogy

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: Tonight’s repost follows directly from yesterday’s, though it was written seven years earlier in 2010. Mindless hate always begets mindless violence, and Americans could have seen the mindless violence of today’s leftists a decade ago, if they had only being willing to look.

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Murder for the sake of climate idealogy

This video has been making the rounds on the web. Though I warn you that is somewhat graphic, it is essential that you watch it.

When I first saw this about a week ago, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was so vile and offensive I could not believe that it was legitimate. It obviously wants to pay some homage to Monty Python, but even Monty Python never went this far. How could anyone possibly think that killing small children in the name of environmentalism was in any way funny? And how could anyone ever believe that this video would persuade anyone to go along with the 1010 environmental campaign? If anything, the video does an excellent job of discrediting this organization and everyone involved with it.

Thus, despite what some bloggers were saying, I held back commenting, just to make sure the video was real and not a terrible prank meant to sabotage.

There is now no reason to hold back. Late last week, the 1010 organization itself issued an apology, admitting that this video was their handiwork. Before I continue, I think it is worthwhile for you to also read their apology, in all its venal glory. In many ways, it condemns them and their allies far more than the video did:
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8 comments

Actual data: COVID-19 is only a threat to the old AND sick

12:24 pm

Link here. The author does a nice job of summarizing the data we now have detailing the mortality demographics of the Wuhan virus. What that data tells us is that almost no one in the general population is threatened by this disease, at all, and thus all the extreme society-wide measures so far taken (lock downs, masks) are completely absurd.

First, the average age of those who have died is 78 years old, which also happens to be the normal average life expectancy of Americans. That means the virus has done nothing to change that overall life expectancy.

Second, of those who did die from the Wuhan virus, 75% already had underlying medical conditions. Like the flu and pneumonia, if you were old and sick, the virus acted to put the final nail in the coffin. For everyone else, it was not an issue at all.

Third, of those aged and elderly who died, 42% lived in nursing homes, many of whom were victims of bad state policies that exposed them unnecessarily to infected individuals while being confined to these facilities.

Let’s recap what the available data have shown us so far. Those dying of COVID-19 are overwhelmingly very old and most often very unhealthy, and nearly half of them lived in nursing homes, where less than one-half of one percent of our country’s population lives. Though the media seem uninterested in reporting any of that, we know well, and as near to precision as we might expect in a viral pandemic, whom COVID-19 actually kills.

Nor is this all. Of those in the healthy younger population, the data now tells us that COVID-19 is one third less deadly than the flu or pneumonia. When compared to these other diseases, fewer young people get the Wuhan virus, or even show symptoms if they do, and of those who do show symptoms one third fewer people die from the disease.

In other words, society has no reason to be afraid of this virus. We should have continued life as normal, with the exception of taking some extra care to protect the elderly sick.

Instead, we are becoming a society of fear and ignorance, covering our faces for no reason, isolating ourselves from our fellow man, and fearful to even go outside and enjoy life, out of fear not only of the Wuhan flu but in terror that others will ostracize us to being normal and unafraid.

It is time for this idiocy to stop. Sadly, I do not expect it to. We have fallen in love with this fear, and want to embrace it instead.

16 comments

Victory in NY for socialist/communist

11:17 am

Long time moderately leftwing Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) yesterday conceded defeat in his Democratic primary to Jamaal Bowman, an ally of communist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).

Engel’s loss, which came despite the support of Democratic Party leaders, shows that the traditional incumbent advantages ― cash, name recognition and high-profile endorsements ― don’t inoculate party veterans against the challenge of a left insurgency.

That’s particularly true in New York City, which was also the site of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s landmark primary win in 2018. That Bowman, an unabashedly left-wing Black candidate, was able to prevail in a district that includes predominantly white, affluent suburbs is, in some ways, even more remarkable.

…In his announcement video, which captured Bowman walking through the subway, he described his vision for a brighter future ― one with “Medicare for All,” tuition-free public college, a Green New Deal and racial equity ― from the vantage point of someone who grew up in poverty and remains on the front lines of the fight against it. “As educators, we work with children and families who suffer from poverty, asthma from pollution, homelessness, lack of health care,” he said.

Venezuela here we come!

3 comments

Launch update on Mars missions

9:24 am

The launch status of the three missions to Mars:

First, the launch of UAE’s Hope orbiter by Mitsubishi’s H-2A rocket has been pushed back to July 20th due to bad weather. Their launch window extends to August 3rd, so they still have two weeks before it closes.

Second, China has rolled to the launchpad the Long March 5 rocket, with the Tienwen-1 orbiter/lander/rover. Though they have only said that the launch will occur between July 20th and July 25th, based on past operations, they usually launch six days after roll-out, putting the launch date as July 23.

China has also provided some clarity as to Tienwen-1’s landing site on Mars. According to this Nature Astronomy paper [pdf], published on July 13th, their primary landing site is in the northern lowland plains of Utopia Planitia. The Tienwen-1 science team has also considered [pdf] the northern lowland plains in Chryse Planitia, on the other side of Mars.

Since they will spend two to three months in Mars orbit before sending the lander and rover to the surface, it could very well be that they won’t make a final decision until they get into orbit.

Finally, on July 7th Perseverance was mounted on top of its Atlas-5 rocket for its July 30th launch. Its launch window closes on August 15.

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