Jul 18 2009

Selling vacuum cleaners on Mars?

Category: science,space — harmonicminer @ 2:30 pm

Particle-size dependent bipolar charging of Martian regolith simulant

The intense dust devils and dust storms on Mars are believed to generate large electrostatic fields that significantly alter geophysical and geochemical processes on the planet. The existence of such fields must be related to a mechanism by which charged dust separates by polarity; it has been widely hypothesized that this separation originates from a particle-size dependence of the charge polarity, but this effect has never been demonstrated. To address this issue, we carry out experiments on the triboelectric charging of Martian regolith simulant (JSC-1 Mars), using a fluid flow apparatus wherein only particle-particle interactions occur, as is the case in Martian dust events. Our experiments show direct evidence that smaller particles tend to charge negatively and larger particles tend to charge positively, which provides a mechanism for the charge separation that creates electric fields in Martian dust events.

Translation: Mars dust sticks to stuff and it’s a mess. When you go there, better bring a vacuum cleaner.

In the meantime, the next time you’re in a dirty house, you can say that the occupants have suffered a “dust event.”

Jul 18 2009

Obama vs. Pelosi on the “public option”

Category: government,healthcare — harmonicminer @ 11:59 am

President Obama insists that if you like the health care you have now, you can keep it under the nationalized health insurance system the Democrat Congress is pushing. What he isn’t admitting is that he’s talking to employers, not employees. He’s really saying that employers can keep the health plans they currently offer if they want to. He certainly is not saying that employees will be able to keep any healthcare plan that their employers don’t want to continue to fund. Now comes word that the Switch to Public Option attracts Pelosi-backed businesses

Three companies in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her husband are heavily invested say they might switch their employees to a government-run Public Option plan if President Obama’s health care reform passes Congress.

The Public Option is a proposed government-run insurance company that Obama, Pelosi, and most Democrats want to create as part of health care reform. It would receive a large start-up investment from taxpayers and likely pay low Medicare rates to doctors and hospitals, allowing it to undercut private insurers with low premiums. A Lewin Group study found that as many as 131 million Americans would move or be shifted involuntarily into such a plan if it is offered, possibly killing off the private health insurance industry.

Obama has promised repeatedly that Americans will be able keep their present health insurance if they want to, and a Pew poll found that 89 percent of insured Americans are happy with their existing coverage. But most health insurance plans are selected by employers, not employees, so the latter will have very little say if Obama’s plan prompts employers to change it.

The Examiner contacted three businesses in which the Pelosis are heavily invested, according to her congressional disclosure forms. All three said that they would certainly consider switching employees to the Public Option plan, and in some cases would probably do so, provided that it is cheaper and offers roughly comparable coverage on paper.

Obama and Pelosi really need to talk more. He’s probably unhappy with her for letting the cat out of the bag before the closing seam is sewed shut.

Jul 18 2009

Killing for honor

Category: Islam,liberty — harmonicminer @ 8:45 am

In Saudi Arabia, the police appear to be complicit in so-called “honor killings,” arresting women for the “crime” of been seen in the company of men to whom they are not related, and then releasing them into the hands of murderous male relatives.

Saudi Arabia’s religious police are being blamed for the death of two sisters who were murdered in what is known as an ‘honor killing’ by their brother after the sisters were arrested for allegedly mixing with unrelated men.
Saudi King Abdullah.

The Society for Defending Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia said the religious police arrested the two sisters, aged 19 and 21, thus putting their lives in danger.

Their brother shot them to death in front of their father when they left a women’s shelter in Riyadh on July 5, according to Saudi news reports.

The practice known as honor killing is a daily occurrence in Saudi Arabia. The incidents are staged to look like a suicide or an accident, Wajeha Huweidar, a Saudi women’s rights activist told The Media Line.

In the meantime, Human Rights Watch seems to think it’s just fine to seek donations from wealthy Saudis for their organization’s campaign against Israel, by highlighting to rich Saudis how much reporting Human Rights Watch has done on “Israeli atrocities.”   That’s probably an easy sell in Saudi Arabia.  One suspects that the Saudi donors must not be feeling very much pressure from Human Rights Watch for their own transgressions, which make Israels’ look like a snide remark at a pre-school.

Jul 17 2009

Have you seen this?

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 12:09 pm

Jul 17 2009

The Next Great Awakening, Part 8: Respecting our national origins

Category: church,constitution,freedom,government,history,legislation,liberty,religion,theology — harmonicminer @ 8:30 am

Is the USA a “Christian nation”? Depends on what you mean by that, I suppose. But its origin in Judeo-Christian principles is clear, based on founding documents, acts of congress and presidents, and the writings of the founders.  The recognition and celebration of that heritage has been nearly universal among US national leaders until very recent times.  You can decide if that was a good thing, or a bad thing, but you can’t pretend it is a non-thing.

Jul 16 2009

Racialist Boxer bombs again

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:41 pm

California, when will this woman humiliate you enough to get rid of her?

Jul 16 2009

Hondurans standing for freedom *against* the USA?!? Yes.

Category: appeasement,freedom,government,liberty,media,Obama — harmonicminer @ 8:32 am

It is bizarre that the official US position about Honduras’ current political situation is to condemn the people who resisted an illegal takeover of Honduras by a wanna-be dictator for life.

The way in which nearly all the world’s media portray the legal, Supreme Court-ordered ouster of President Manuel (Mel) Zelaya is one major reason for the universal opprobrium. Because military men took part in the deportation of the sitting president, it has been portrayed as a classic Latin American “military coup,” and who can support a military coup?

The lack of context in which this ouster took place has prevented the vast majority of the world’s news watchers and readers from understanding what has happened.

I wonder how many people who bother to read the news — as opposed to only listen to or watch news reports — know:

— Zelaya was plotting a long-term, possibly lifetime, takeover of the Honduran government through illegally changing the Honduran Constitution.

— Zelaya had personally led a mob attack on a military facility to steal phony “referendum” ballots that had been printed by the Venezuelan government.

— Weeks earlier, in an attempt to intimidate the Honduran attorney general — as reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, one of the only journalists in the world who regularly reports the whole story about Honduras — “some 100 agitators, wielding machetes, descended on the attorney general’s office. ‘We have come to defend this country’s second founding,’ the group’s leader reportedly said. ‘If we are denied it, we will resort to national insurrection.'”

— No member of the military has assumed a position of power as a result of the “military coup.”

— Zelaya’s own party, the Liberal Party, supported his removal from office and deportation from Honduras.

— The Liberal Party still governs Honduras.

So, Dennis Prager has asked you, did you know those things? If you didn’t, and you’ve been watching/reading the news, you’ll have to ask yourself why didn’t you know them.  Hopefully you’ll come to the correct conclusion about the slant of US major media, which never saw a left-socialist South American dictator it didn’t like.

As we’ve commented here before, the actions of the Honduran military were legal, and supported by the Honduran Supreme Court AND by the political party of the Zelaya himself. 

I have absolutely no idea what’s behind Obama’s support of Zelaya…  except that maybe he recognizes a fellow traveler.

Jul 15 2009

The wrong kind of people

Category: abortion,left — harmonicminer @ 8:57 am

In a wide-ranging interview of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we get this damning admission.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.  So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.

Are you a not-so-wealthy person of color?  Judge Ginsburg thinks we just don’t want to have too many of your kind.  Clear?

In fact, you should abort more often, so there won’t be so many of you.  Apparently some of you agree.  Quite a lot of you, based on abortion statistics for African-Americans.  Black babies are five times more likely to be aborted than white ones.  Are you trying to beat the racial percentages in the NBA, or what?  I think you won the race already.  But you sure aren’t winning FOR your race, if you’re aborting your babies, or encouraging easy availability of abortion, or voting for candidates who support that.  All you’re doing is making it easier for massa to make a buck controlling the population that he doesn’t want too much of.

That would be you.

Thankfully, and to the dismay of the White Left, some of you are fighting back.  Not enough of you yet, but the numbers may be gradually growing.  Some of you are getting positively uppity about the whole thing, for which I applaud you.

Here’s a new movie you’ll want to see:

Because it’s hard to get movies on topics that threaten the Left into the theaters, you’ll probably have to buy the DVD.

Massa is hoping you won’t bother.  Massa wants you to just shut up and chill.  Do what massa wants, OK?  Massa knows best.

UPDATE:  Ken Blackwell has some comments on the matter here.

Jul 14 2009

Tidelocked vacation spot

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 8:58 pm

Welcome to the Lunar International Park.  Please do not litter.  Don’t disturb the regolith.  And keep your hands off the LEM.

Jul 14 2009

How the mighty fall

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 9:16 am

A friend of mine clued me in to this particular video.  In it, a train, a seemingly unstoppable object, is derailed by a tornado.  It’s quite dramatic.

There are forces that can overpower the mightiest institution, driving it right off the tracks.  If history teaches anything, it teaches that.

It is the sin of pride to think that your particular institution is invulnerable to those forces.

Failing to pay attention to the weather report is dangerous.  Unfortunately, when the company picnic has already been scheduled, it can be difficult to be the one who has to inform the company social director that the barometric pressure is falling….  fast.

« Previous Page — Next Page »