Trump's Threat

"Therefore, it seems to me there is only one logical response to the president’s threat — or promise. For non-sanctuary cities and states, it would be: “Thank you, President Trump, for not saddling us with the costs of this crisis.” For sanctuary cities and states, it would be: “Welcome to all illegal immigrants. And thank you, President Trump, for rewarding us with all the benefits they bring.”"

Read the whole thing:

Sending immigrants to sanctuary cities has consequences — and that's a good thing

Illegal Immigration

"The other day I noticed for the first time that I have a lot more fear of an oncoming car in rural California than I had of intersections in Libya; a lot more worries about a wild stray dog wandering into my yard than I did while living in Greece; a lot more anxiety of being shot or robbed than I did when visiting the current Middle East; and a lot less hope of being treated promptly in extremis at the local emergency room than I would have expected in Eastern Europe."

Read the whole thing:

Are There Any Limits to Illegal Immigration?

An End to Mueller

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

Getting Back on the Horse

These are some hardy men.

"NASA astronaut Nick Hague and his Russian colleague Alexey Ovchinin, who both survived a dramatically aborted Soyuz launch last year, were joined on the smoothly-executed trip by NASA astronaut Christina Koch.

The rocket blasted off without incident from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and docked at the ISS less than six hours later, more than 400 kilometers (249 miles) above the Earth at 01:01 GMT, a few minutes ahead of schedule.

During a live broadcast via high-definition cameras aboard the ISS, the mission commander Ovchinin reported that the mooring mechanism was engaged. A NASA commentator then confirmed the "capture."

The liftoff was closely watched after the two men's space journey was cut short in October when a technical problem with their Soyuz rocket triggered a launch abort two minutes into the flight."

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/astronauts-aborted-soyuz-launch-blast-off-again-iss-131638235.html

https://www.9news.com.au/2018/10/12/11/35/soyuz-ms10-spacecraft-russian-alexey-ovchinin-american-nick-hague

Here is the failed MS10 launch:

https://newiberian.blogspot.com/2018/10/adventures-in-manned-spaceflight.html

Quantum Monism

I have always been a bit disturbed by the many worlds view of parallel universes.  I could not make any sense of it and it offended my reasoning as to how the universe operates.  Upon reading an article in "Scientific American", a missing piece of information fell into place and suddenly the universe was whole again.

"Both quantum monism and Everett’s many worlds are predictions of quantum mechanics taken seriously. What distinguishes these views is only the perspective: What looks like "many worlds" from the perspective of a local observer is indeed a single, unique universe from a global perspective (such as that of someone who would be able to look from outside onto the entire universe).

In other words: many worlds is how quantum monism looks like for an observer who has only limited information about the universe. In fact, Everett’s original motivation was to develop a quantum description of the entire universe in terms of a "universal wave function.” It is as if you look out through a muntin window: Nature looks divided into separate pieces but this is an artifact of your perspective."

You can read the entire article here:

Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

America's Mandarins

Imperial China was run by bureaucratic scholars.  They studied and strived for credentials in order to climb the ladder of achievement in the Chinese bureaucracies.  Driven by Progressive policies, the United States has been moving steadily toward this model for some time now.  The result is a ponderous federal bureaucracy that is unanswerable to the People of the United States.   These policies are anathema to the founding principles of the Unites States.

The pendulum of change is beginning to swing back in reaction to this historical crime.  There is and will be much strife as the modern-day mandarins fight to keep the power they have taken.  Hopefully, we will avoid an all out civil war and economic ruin.

Below is an article that exemplifies these American mandarins and their mindset.

"I know you’re working on that book about the new socialism, and I think it will be timely. It seems to me that totalitarianism is not arriving in the U.S. via the stern face of Big Brother staring down from the screen. It’s coming from the college student who says we shouldn’t view a photo of pure, untrammeled joy. And the thing is that they can’t see that joy, not just because they’re puritans, but because they have no historical consciousness. They have no sense of what so many Americans sacrificed in the years leading up to that famous kiss because they never really learned it. I’m not a gung-ho America First guy—I’d be an expat in a second if I could get my wife on board—but the K-12 textbooks have gotten insane. They really do stress the failures of the country, the bad angle of every story, the endless aggressions-in-hindsight that form the modern wokescold.
Look, I get it: this country has done terrible things. We continue to do terrible things. But there are no pure good guys and pure bad guys. We are crazy if we don’t think for one second that the things we consider good and just today will be denounced as oppressive in 30 years. To say that we shouldn’t look at an image that shows the joy of having just defeated the f’ing Nazis is just insanity."

Click here for the article: Life Among The Wokescolds

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

Does a Beresheet on the Moon?

The SpaceIL team with the lunar lander.

 Photo: SpaceIL

I looks like we will find out in a week or so.  "The $100 million joint venture between SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. was financed mostly by Jewish philanthropists including Morris Kahn, SpaceIL’s president and a founder of Amdocs Ltd., and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The probe ended its “ride share” on SpaceX after 38 minutes and, if all goes according to plan, will land in the Sea of Tranquility on April 11, the project’s leaders said several days before the launch."(https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/one-giant-step-for-israel-as-probe-set-to-lift-off-for-the-moon#gs.QaWsfBK3)

It will land on the moon between where Apollos 15 and 17 missions remain.  I do not know if they will be pointing a camera to look for the Apollo sites but if they do and we see the images I would consider that to be awesome in itself.

You can watch SpaceX launch and rocket recovery in the video below.

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/one-giant-step-for-israel-as-probe-set-to-lift-off-for-the-moon#gs.uQinS05g
Copyright © BloombergQuint

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/one-giant-step-for-israel-as-probe-set-to-lift-off-for-the-moon#gs.uQinS05g
Copyright © BloombergQuint

Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/one-giant-step-for-israel-as-probe-set-to-lift-off-for-the-moon#gs.uQinS05g
Copyright © BloombergQuint"

Ludwig van Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata ( 3rd Movement ) Tina S Cover

Wonderful

Watershed Cartography is Fascinating

I have always been fascinated by maps.  From the road maps I used until GPS navigation became common to the topographic maps we used for land navigation in the service.

These maps by Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs are works of art.

Spread-eagled across the central part of the United States, the Mississippi's drainage basin covers all or parts of 32 U.S. states (and two Canadian provinces). The easternmost point of Ol' Man River's catchment area is really far east: Cobb Hill in northern Pennsylvania. Here rises the Allegheny, tributary of the Ohio, which in turn flows into the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. Image: Grasshopper Geography

See more: The world's watersheds, mapped in gorgeous detail

Mmmm, Coffee!

I usually drink a pint of espresso every morning.  Seeing articles such as this one is always heartening.

"Coffee, it seems, prevents or somehow leads to the repair of damaged DNA, at least according to the findings of some researchers from Bratislava. Their paper, published in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, reported that drinking 500 ml of freshly brewed, dark roast coffee every day for 4 weeks resulted in a 23% reduction in DNA "strand breaks" (1).

Their study involved 100 healthy men and women recruited from a general Central European population. The subjects were randomized into a coffee group and a water group. (No double-blind placebo design was necessary because we're all going with the assumption that DNA isn't susceptible to the placebo effect.)

The scientists concluded that "...the regular consumption of a dark roast blend has a beneficial protective effect on human DNA integrity in both men and women.""

Tip: Drink This Much Coffee to Repair DNA

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

Shutdown Silver Lining

Aside from watching President Trump humiliate Nancy Pelosi et al., there are many useless government drones re-evaluating their career choice.  I came across this interesting take on the shutdown from a federal official still on the job, without pay.

"The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade."

(...)

"The president’s instincts are right. Most Americans will not miss non-essential government functions. A referendum to end government plunder must happen. Wasteful government agencies are fighting for relevance but they will lose. Now is the time to deliver historic change by cutting them down forever."

Read the whole article: I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance

Hate Speech

"What is again odd about these examples of open progressive racist, cultural, and class contempt for the American interior, is not just how ubiquitously politicians and journalists voiced them, but also how candidly and indeed confidently they repeated notions of smelly, toothless, ape-like, lazy “garbage people.” In that sense, who hated Trump and what he represented also explains precisely why so many went to the polls to elect him, and perhaps also why Trump’s own uncouthness was in its own manner contextualized by his supporters as a long overdue pushback to the elite disdain and indeed hatred shown them.

What does all this hate speech signify?"
Read it all here: A License To Hate

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

BMF into ARA

I realize this is a re-post but sometimes I just feel the awesomeness and that is that.  I watched C-5 Galaxies flyover me for months and even rode in on one.  This, however is simply something more bigger.  I recorded this aircraft coming into Acadiana Regional Airport one day.   Oh, turn your sound up.
You can see more here: https://www.youtube.com/user/chipanderson

The Farside of the Moon

You may wonder why the Chinese chose the farside of the moon for their "explorations".  Wonder no more.  They are there in order to counter the planned American presence at L2 in 2021.


Here is a link to the NASA 'site: https://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html

Build that Wall

NBPC Vice President Art Del Cueto on border security: “It has nothing to do with political parties. You all have to ask yourselves this question, ‘If I come to your home, do you want me to knock on your front door or do you want me to climb through that window?’”

Click on image for the video.

AvEx and FedEx

In New Iberia, Louisiana Aviation Exteriors(AvEx) paints aircraft at Acadiana Regional Airport. Here is an example of the work that they do for FedEx. https://about.van.fedex.com/blog/every-plane-bears-a-name/

R.I.P. Daryl Dragon

Merry Christmas!

A Song From Miriam

For Rebecca

Fascinating GDP Animation

I ran across this during my afternoon perusals of the WWW.

Here is a link to the animation:

https://twitter.com/Ian_Fraser/status/1073357036283420672

HT: https://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/

Merry Libertarian Christmas

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

Goliath Introduction Music

I have discovered Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton.  The intro is visually appealing and the song by "The Silent Comedy" is catchy.  Here is the intro song, crank it up.

Thomas Sowell

The desired end result is achieved but many have lost their way and are still stumbling around in the darkness where they are taken advantage of by the unscrupulous.

"If you don't get a good education, whatever else you get is not going to make a major difference, economically or socially. That's why I'm so much in favor of the successful charter schools. This happens too often in the history of ideas. Segregation was made the reason the black kids weren't doing well, so people attack that factor. But now you have black kids doing well in predominantly black schools, and people are against them because they haven't been integrated. Integration was a means to an end, and when you achieve the end, you don't condemn the end because you didn't get there by the means you thought you were going to get there by."
http://reason.com/archives/2018/11/26/thomas-sowell-returns

Space and Rockets

I incorrectly stated hat it was a Falcon 9 but it turns out that it was a Progress MS-10.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/9zgyim/heres_what_a_rocket_launch_looks_like_from_the/

Update with Youtube Video.

They Should Have Worn Their Brown Pants

Click Here: https://twitter.com/WorldOfSporf/status/1065552368740245504

HT: David Thompson

Word of the Day

I see unfamiliar words every now and again. I read one just a moment ago and was compelled to look it up. That word is "struthious".  As in, "“The opinion correctly held, as we believed, that the defendants could not be so struthious as to ignore the overwhelming evidence in front of them that Mrs. Pichardo was in fact female,” said lawyer Ryan Marks."

Here is a link to the original article:

Grandma mistakenly booked into a Miami jail as a man. Court ruling details who was to blame.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article222363520.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article222363520.html#storylink=cpy

Draining the Swamp

This agency is a good candidate for dissolution.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — Mark Robbins gets to work at 8:15 each morning and unlocks the door to his office suite. He switches on the lights and the TV news, brews a pot of coffee and pulls out the first files of the day to review.

For the next eight hours or so, he reads through federal workplace disputes, analyzes the cases, marks them with notes and logs his legal opinions. When he’s finished, he slips the files into a cardboard box and carries them into an empty room where they will sit and wait. For nobody.
He’s at 1,520 files and counting."

Memos to Nobody: Inside the work of a neglected fed agency

Cold Civil War

"Political scientists sometimes distinguish between normal politics and regime politics. Normal politics takes place within a political and constitutional order and concerns means, not ends. In other words, the ends or principles are agreed upon; debate is simply over means. By contrast, regime politics is about who rules and for what ends or principles. It questions the nature of the political system itself. Who has rights? Who gets to vote? What do we honor or revere together as a people? I fear America may be leaving the world of normal politics and entering the dangerous world of regime politics—a politics in which our political loyalties diverge more and more, as they did in the 1850s, between two contrary visions of the country.

One vision is based on the original Constitution as amended. This is the Constitution grounded in the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. It has been transmitted to us with significant Amendments—some improvements and some not—but it is recognizable still as the original Constitution. To simplify matters we may call this “the conservative Constitution”—with the caveat that conservatives have never agreed perfectly on its meaning and that many non-conservatives remain loyal to it.


The other vision is based on what Progressives and liberals, for 100 years now, have called “the living Constitution.” This term implies that the original Constitution is dead—or at least on life support—and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. To cite an important example, new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original Constitution imposed on government."

Read the whole thing:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/americas-cold-civil-war/

A Cold Winter is Coming

"Sept. 27, 2018: The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018, and the sun’s ultraviolet output has sharply dropped. New research shows that Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding.

“We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”"

Above: An historical record of the Thermosphere Climate Index. Mlynczak and colleagues recently published a paper on the TCI showing that the state of the thermosphere can be discussed using a set of five plain language terms: Cold, Cool, Neutral, Warm, and Hot.

The Chill of Solar Minimum

The Sound of the End of World War I

"One of the astonishing things about World War I is that for generations to come we will be able to hear it end. It was the greatest slaughter the world had ever seen. Something close to 20 million soldiers and civilians on both sides perished. Under the Armistice in which the Central Powers finally capitulated a century ago, the time for the end of the conflict was set at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Until that moment, the thunder of battle engulfed the front. The machine guns crackled constantly, and the howitzers kept reporting. The sound was God-omnipresent. We know that because of recordings, including ones made near the Moselle River. Yanks were there as part of a broad push that had been ordered by the Allied commander, Marshal Foch."

Read and hear it here:
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/birdsong-of-peace/90460/

War on Christians

"I want to stand by my comments on last Wednesday when I said that my God is a God that loves. No matter how I'm treated, no matter how my community is treated, we want to be able to love unconditionally in a Christlike manner and to respond in a Christlike manner," she added.

Chow told Campus Reform that she has no intention of resigning, citing the importance of representing her Christian constituents.  “There's a Christian community and campus that has been praying for me and encouraging me throughout all this. And if I don't represent their views, who else will?"

EXCLUSIVE: Berkeley student senator disavowed over Christian beliefs responds to calls to RESIGN

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

Defenestrating

Out the window you go, and don't come back.

Fun With iPhones

MEMS Resonator

"“Exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near evaporating liquified gasses such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality. … If your device has been affected and shows signs of not powering on, the device can typically be recovered.  Leave the unit unconnected from a charging cable and let it air out for approximately one week. The helium must fully dissipate from the device, and the device battery should fully discharge in the process.  After a week, plug your device directly into a power adapter and let it charge for up to one hour.  Then the device can be turned on again.” (Emphasis added.)"

Why a Helium Leak Disabled Every iPhone in a Medical Facility

Rockets are Risky

SpaceX refuels their rockets on the launch pad.  As you can see here, things can go sideways.  Keep that in mind when a crewed rocket goes up in 2019.


https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22660/possible-spacex-falcon-9-explosion-on-the-launch-pad/

Immigration Without Assimilation is Invasion

"Our immigration laws were designed for lawful immigration, with some carve-outs for genuine refugees and asylum-seekers. What they were not designed to do is absorb a calculated onslaught of lawbreakers with no beneficent intent; instead, these people are very clear about their purpose: to manipulate the loopholes of the laws, force entry, earn money, and send it back home to their “countries” of origin—three of which are among the most savage and violent places on earth. America has no domestic need for these people, and no moral obligation to admit them, especially under these circumstances. There is no war ongoing in their homelands (the violence is entirely of their own making, and cultural history) and economic “refugees” can apply through proper channels like everybody else. America is a sovereign nation, not an international charity."
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/31/hello-honduras-goodbye-columbus/

House Negros

Every time a black man or woman tries to leave the Democrat plantation, they must be attacked and denigrated.

"Whether they know it or not, CNN is borrowing from the playbook of the worst racists in American history. During the tragic and ugly history of slavery in the pre-Civil War era, white slave owners ruthlessly and violently punished any black man or woman who sought to educate themselves or think for themselves. It was all about controlling them and maintaining power over them.

During the post-Civil War era (after Republicans freed the slaves from Democrat plantations), white Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan as a terrorist arm of the Democrat party in order to intimidate, suppress, and destroy the political activities of the newly freed black population who were active and elected Republicans. Using murder, torture, and terror, white-hooded Democrats punished and made a public example of any black man or woman who dared think for themselves, who threatened the Democrat power structure.

During the era of Jim Crow, white Democrats codified these tactics into law, again, to suppress any black political activity that threatened the white Democrat power structure. Laws written and passed by Democrats legalized racism and segregation and made it nearly impossible for black Americans to vote.


Other than the tactics, nothing has changed with the modern-day Democrat Party. To protect their power, to ensure some 95% of black people continue to vote for them, white Democrats, primarily through establishment media outlets like CNN, are still trying to control black Americans."
https://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2018/10/11/why-cnn-must-destroy-kanye-west/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+breitbart+%28Breitbart+News%29

Adventures in Manned Spaceflight

Today, a two man crew heading for the International Space Station(ISS), experienced a launch vehicle failure near 30 miles altitude.  In watching the launch video, you can see there is a problem and the disconnect between the American sounding narrator and the launch commentator carries on for a few moments.

I am glad I am not stuck on the ISS.  The Soyuz escape capsule expires in around the end of this year and the crew would have to use it by January or remain on station.  The next available capsule is in mid-2019, maybe.

"On Thursday morning, Ovchinin and Hague stuffed themselves into a tiny space capsule atop a 150-foot-tall (45 metre) rocket.
The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft system, as the rocket and capsule is called, lifted off from a launch pad in Kazakhstan around 8:40 am UTC and zoomed toward space.
But about two minutes after liftoff, when the rocket was mostly out of sight from the ground, a second-stage booster on the rocket failed as four large side boosters were jettisoned.

This is the moment of today's Soyuz rocket failure. It happened as the 4 side boosters were being jettisoned. That's where the investigators will be looking. pic.twitter.com/97mVV6xhi3

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) October 11, 2018

That's when an "ABORT" light appeared in the cabin and, about a second later, the system automatically ejected the capsule, Kenny Todd, the space station's Mission Operations Integration Manager, said during a press briefing on Thursday.
Todd couldn't say whether the second-stage rocket exploded or simply lost thrust, but estimated the crew ejected some 30 miles (48 km) above Earth, which is halfway to the edge of space."
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-s-rocket-failure-leaves-them-grounded-and-the-iss-crew-marooned-on-the-edge-of-space?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

From the previously linked article, an epic photo:


"German astronaut Alexander Gerst was photographing the launch from aboard the ISS when the Soyuz failure occurred. He managed to capture a view of the capsule as it ejected from the rocket."

Here is the launch video: