In this case an unsuccessful parachute test.
Needless to say, I’m seriously considering seeing if NASA needs a department of finding their own ass with both hands.
I’m not sure what NASA had in the 1960s, and lost some time in the 1970s, but it’s clear that they have not yet gotten it back.
The dividing line is 100 KW, and it looks like we will be seeing this in the next year or so.
Basically, they are focusing together multiple “strings of solid state lasers in order to boost the power of the beam.
This is far more useful, and much less expensive, than the chemical lasers that have been tested by the military previously, which typically involve the use of exotic, expensive, and highly toxic chemicals to achieve the necessary results.
Northrop-Grumman is claiming that they achieved 30 KW for 5 minutes continuously recently.
One other technology that might benefit from this is advanced capacitor technology, as to get the desired 100 KW, you are looking at putting in at least 500 KW (about 670 hp), and when one considers the power required for cooling and other issues, you could see the total power requirements during firing be in the 1000 KW range, which is a big generator, but storing the energy in capacitors would eliminate much of that problem.
I would expect the the first military application to be something like a laser to intercept things like mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets.
It appears that the US Navy will be shifting strategy away from littoral (coastal) operations.
The article makes some grandiose statements about how a new networked battlespace will require naval ships to operate further offshore, but I think that this is bunk. Rather there are two imperatives driving this decision:
It looks like the Iraqi Army and Kurdish peshmerga are on the verge of facing off in Kurdistan too.
Heck of a job, Davey.
I’ve got a lot of hatches to batten down, even as far inland as the Baltimore area.
That’s the truth and Washington Post reporter Shankar Vedantam manages to ignore the fact that there is no correlation between vaccines and conditions on the autism spectrum.*
The author mentions that the new study contradicts a 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, but ignores the fact that he was accused of, “suppressing and falsifying data”, that his co-authors of this study have disavowed his reasearch, and at this time is under investigation for serious professional and financial misconduct.
He faces removal of his medical license as a result.
If there is any justice in the world, he will end up in to jail too.
*There is some dispute as to whether Aspergers is mild Autism, or a different condition on the Autism spectrum, a distinction which I would generally expect a reporter to miss.
The Pentagon is recommending steady troop levels in Iraq, but Bush is looking at pulling troops from Iraq anyway, because, though it is left unsaid in the articles, it’s good for the elections.
Yep, they are saying that they are very, very, disappointed.
Sorry, but Lieberman jumped the shark when he refused to investigate failures during Katrina; in which he clearly showed that he was aggressively covering up for Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, and you did not do anything then.
And we are supposed to expect that you will do something now?
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, we won’t get fooled again.
Well, it turns out that right wing pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan got caught in an unguarded moment with an open microphone, and suddenly, when they though that no one was listening, they stopped pretending that John Seymour McCain III was a man of honor.
Chuck Todd is part of the conversation, but he is not guilty of journalistic malpractice here. Journalists have opinions, and their job is to keep them off the air.
Murphy and Noonan, however, are lauding McCain and his alleged “honor” when the red light is on, and calling him an incompetent doddering hack when the light is off.
That is journalistic malpractice.
Transcript:
Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.
(cut away)
Peggy Noonan: Yeah.
Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —
PN: It’s over.
MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.
CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.
PN: Saw Kay this morning.
CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —
MM: They’re all bummed out.
CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —
CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.
MM: I totally agree.
PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.
MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.
CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.
MM: Yeah.
He apologizes for the behavior of the media on the matter of Sarah Palin.
Actually he doesn’t, he explains just what Republicans find unacceptable about media coverage, and his use of the famous Lily Tomlin quote, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up,” is a nice use of quote.
Go read.
I’m not sure if it means much, except that perhaps the “elite media” that McCain is now complaining about, the media that literally heckled Mitt Romney, and did everything it could to get McCain the nomination, is beginning to realize that McCain isn’t another pundit.
It’s only taken them about 26 years that McCain is all hat and no cattle.
See, I’m no bigot, Congressman Lynn Westmorland of Georgia, now there’s a bigot:
“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.
Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”
Needless to say, if he had said this just two weeks earlier, he’d be the vice presidential nominee right now.
I guess we should be grateful that he didn’t use the term n*gg*r.
Campaigning in Florida for Obama, so the folks who are whining, about what she is doing about Palin, please STFU.
She is doing what needs to be done, OK?
Vanity Fair, who gets such thing right, took a look at the outfits worn by Cindy McCain and Laura Bush at the convention, and generated price tag:
Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100
I know that then I comment on women’s fashion, I am way out of my comfort zone, but honestly, I find nothing wrong with ODL’s beige dress, but what Cindy McCain is wearing is fugly, and you can be fugly for a lot less than 300 grand.
If someone could help me out though….There is clearly a MasterCard “Priceless” ad in this somewhere.
It appears that the US U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a tiny error on the new Migratory Bird Conservation and Hunting Stamp (Duck Stamp), which is must be carried for all duck and waterfowl hunters. It costs $15.00, and proceeds go to acquiring and protecting wetlands for said waterfowl.
That would be fine, except for the fact that the most recent version of the self adhesive version of the stamp contains a serious misprint
The correct number, 1-800-STAMP24 (1-800-782-6724), is for people wishing to order additional duck stamps. Levin said two digits of the phone number are transposed on the card that holds the self-adhesive version of the stamp. That incorrect number, 1-800-872-6724, translates to 1-800-TRAMP24. Callers to ‘Intimate Connections’ [a phone sex service] are warned that they must be 18 years or older before proceeding.
This gives the phrase F@#$ a duck a whole new meaning.
Justice Lucy A. Billings of State Supreme Court in the Bronx has ruled that Governor Paterson’s executive order stands.
This is all going the way of Loving v, Virgina, and it appears to be moving quite a bit more quickly.
Cool.
We have the former head of the Alaska State Police calling Sarah Palin a liar over “troopergate”.
It should be interesting to see how this plays out, as a former Alaska Attorney General has categorized her legal defense strategy on the matter, that only the state Personnel Board (whose members she has appointed) has exclusive authority to investigate the matter as bogus.
We also have Palin’s own handwriting showing that she was lying over her opposition to earmarks, where we have margin notes in her own handwriting saying that, “We Did Well!!!,” in securing earmarks, and that John Sidney McCain III criticized the very earmarks that she had hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington, DC to get.
Meanwhile, her story of bravely persevering in her speech in the face of the dangers of a broken teleprompter is also a lie. Jonathan Martin of the right-winger funded Politico notes that he was standing where he could read the teleprompter, and it was working as intended, and he confirmed this with a convention organizer.
Of course, this goes along with the Anchorage Daily News’ analysis of her speech, where she is described as stretching the truth.
It seems like we have Alaska’s own Dick Cheney here, only she appears to be a better shot then “Deadeye Dick”.
Meanwhile focus groups of Hillary supporters in Michigan and Nevada were significantly more tepid on her speech than the crowd of mouth breathing Neanderthals* in the convention center, with a number of fairly brutal complaints about her.
Bummer of a birth mark, Hal.
*No offense intended to Neanderthals, or those Geico guys.
Of course, next week we could find out that Palin’s a criminal or a bat-sh#t crazy religious fanatic — or both. In that case, she’d disappear or become a pundit.
Rocca owes me a screen cleaner.
Things have seemed pretty hectic today.
Normally I don’t mention this, I think that it is just noise, but all three major stock indices are down 3%+, so while it’s not yet raining Katz and Lehmans, it’s pretty ugly.
Note that this is my economic update post, so I’m not going to claim that a certain VP pick’s speech caused anything, and instead point at jobless claims spiking unexpectedly by 15,000, though truth be told, it should not cause that sort of reaction: the weekly data is simply too noisy for any rational investor to act upon the basis of those numbers.
But this isn’t “rational investors” this be Wall Street, so it could have been the Lehman CEO’s choice of shoes today.
The rest of the financial news is no where near as definitive, and even Federal Reserve officials are publicly disagreeing on whether the concern is recession or inflation.
Meanwhile, even though the Bank of England and the ECB kept rates steady, the cost of money in Europe went up, because the ECB has significantly tightened requirements to lend to banks.
In any case, the lack of rate hikes strengthened the dollar.
Mortgage rates are down this week, which would ordinarily be good news, but I think that “the markets” (and I) see this as a sign of a weakening economy, just as “the markets” (and I) see declining oil prices and declining gas prices as signs of a weakening economy.
Even so, the numbers for the service sector were good, so the blood on the street today is a bit odd.
Of course, it sucks to be a bank right now, with Community National Bank of Sarasota looking to be on the FDIC’s Friday afternoon press releases, and Lehman floating the idea of creating a “bad bank” to shift bad assets to.
Someone needs to explain the concept to me, because it seems to suffer from the, “We’ve run out of gullible idiots,” problem.
In any case, it appears that insurance giant AIG is considering something similar.
I’m not sure how piling crap in a separate pile really helps anything.
