harmonicminer

Trips to Mars in 39 Days

Using traditional chemical rockets, a trip to Mars, at quickest, lasts 6 months. But a new rocket tested successfully last week could potentially cut down travel time to the Red Planet to just 39 days. The Ad Astra Rocket Company tested a plasma rocket called the VASIMR VX-200 engine, which ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. “It’s the most powerful plasma rocket in the world right now,” says Franklin Chang-Diaz, former NASA astronaut and CEO of Ad Astra. The company has also signed an agreement with NASA to test a 200-kilowatt VASIMR engine on the International Space Station in 2013.

I know where I’m going on my next vacation.

Here are the top ten reasons why I am beyond delighted that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize

(thanks Blog and Mablog and Melody)

10. Because this means that the Vatican must have verified that reports of the president floating around the top of the Washington monument were reports of a genuine miracle, and were not a deceitful trick by the devil.

9. Because the prize was funded and named after the inventor of dynamite, and it has ever been the destiny of this prize to be wreathed in ironies, the same way a smoking tank is after it runs over one of Nobel’s inventions. So this just continues a long and honored legacy.

8. Because there is no apparent reason for the prize, this must mean that the committee is inviting all of us to assign our own meanings to it — and so I would submit that Obama got it for continuing the Bush policies of rendition, roving wiretaps, indefinite detention of accused terrorists, urging continuation of the Patriot Act, and so forth.

7. Because the prize did not go to David Letterman, it shows that the Nobel committee does in fact have its limits. But on the down side, it also shows they are willing to go right up to those limits.

6. Because it means that intelligent liberals won’t know which way to look for at least a couple months.

5. Because this shows that our secular civilization’s great awards now have about the same value as the Montessori preschool participant ribbons in a block-stacking contest.

4. Because this is yet further testimony to the deep affinity that necessarily exists between awards and their recipients, kind of like rich little old ladies and their poodles. In this case that affinity is the shared characteristic of being as hollow and as shiny as one of those over-sized vases at Pottery Barn.

3. Because this is a boon to American conservatism almost as great as if Obama won People’s Sexiest Man Alive award. This morning, as the news spread across red state America, that noise you heard was howls of delight, happy applause, bloggers typing, cheerful sharing, and gladsome whoops.

2. Because American narcissism is never fulfilled until Euro-weenies join in the applause, which means we might be almost done now.

1. Because soft tyranny can always be effectively fought with the horse laugh. And soft tyrannies never understand this. And on they go, as solemn as a judge. You know, provoking us.

So it’s official:  the Nobel prize committee has decided it’s time to practice affirmative action, and award the Peace Prize to someone who hasn’t done anything yet, but might…  maybe.

Here’s the list of former Nobel Laureates.

Generally, it seems to me that in order to get a Nobel Peace Prize, you must either do something good, or do something bad, or do something very loudly, even if it is neither good nor bad.  As far as I can tell, President Obama is being awarded the Peace Prize for the signal achievement of not being George W. Bush.  It’s a new category…  a prize awarded for not being someone else.

He’s in good company…  Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev…  great luminaries all, full of grace and truth.  Or maybe just gin and vermouth.  All those cocktail parties are hard work.

I wonder if any scientist has ever gotten a Nobel Prize for hoping and wanting to do some new science.

It is the ultimate paean to hope and change…  with emphasis on the hope, since it’s obvious the Leftist agenda behind the Nobel committee has not changed.

Mammoth black holes push universe to its doom

THE mammoth black holes at the centre of most galaxies may be pushing the universe closer to its final fade-out. And it is all down to the raging disorder within those dark powerhouses.

Disorder is measured by a quantity called entropy, something which has been on the rise ever since the big bang. Chas Egan and Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University in Canberra used the latest astrophysical data to calculate the total entropy of everything in the universe, from gas to gravitons. It turns out that supermassive black holes are by far the biggest contributors to the universe’s entropy. Entropy reflects the number of possible arrangements of matter and energy in an object. The number of different configurations of matter a black hole could contain is staggering because its internal state is completely mysterious.

There is a certain parallel with the current US government, which promises to be such a black hole for money that the entire economic future of the nation is going down another hole… down the drain, down a rabbit hole, pick your metaphor, ladies and gents.

It’s very clear that “the number of possible arrangements” of money and power in a federal bureaucracy is essentially infinite. 

“Raging disorder within those dark powerhouses” indeed.  Who knew that the Hubble telescope was pointed at the Federal Reserve?

Is the ‘U.S. furious over Israeli incitement against Obama’?

The U.S. administration is furious over Israeli incitement against President Barack Obama, Democratic congressmen close to Obama told an Israeli source who returned from a visit to Washington this week.

The congressmen even hinted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been personally involved.

The source, who met in Washington with administration officials and members of Congress, told Haaretz he was stunned by the level of anger there over attempts to portray Obama to the American public as an enemy of Israel because of his efforts to restart peace talks and freeze settlement construction.
 
“There are people here who are playing with fire by damaging our relationship with the U.S.,” the source said.

Last month’s summit in New York between Obama, Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also reduced Washington’s expectations of a speedy resumption of final-status talks between Israel and the PA. While U.S. envoy George Mitchell will meet Netanyahu again Friday, the meeting is not expected to resolve the crisis in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

gosh… d’ya think?

I don’t think it’s “the U.S.” that is angry at “Israeli incitement against Obama”…. it’s just Obama who’s angry. Yet more people immune to his charm…  so sad.

It must be hard to know that everyone doesn’t love you, and won’t do what you want just because you want it, without regard to what they think is in their own best interest.

First the IOC doesn’t award the Olympics to Chicago, and now this….  who do those Zionists think they are, anyway?  How DARE they publicly disagree with the man who is single handedly revolutionizing the US role in world politics?

I think the peace process is in pieces.

In the meantime, Iran’s hudna goes on, fooling the gullible in the US government, the UN and NYTimes.