Thrusters a go at NASA

Despite a dismissive look from many for NASA these days, NASA is continuing to work on.

Today, they have been testing out the new J-2X rockets.

NASA:

Testing of the next-generation J-2X rocket engine continues to set standards. Last fall, the engine attained 100 percent power in just its fourth test and became the fastest U.S. rocket engine to achieve a full-flight duration test, hitting that 500-second mark in its eighth test. On, May 25, NASA recorded another first during a 40-second test of the engine on the A-2 Test Stand at John C. Stennis Space Center. For the first time, test conductors fired the J-2X in both the secondary and primary modes of operation, 20 seconds in each. Previous tests were run in one mode only; combining the two allowed operators to collect critical data on engine performance.  

The data will be used in continued development of the engine, which is being built to help carry humans deeper into space than ever before. ...

NASA still is working hard. It may not be the priority we'd like, for the time being. But it still has it's function. And like all of us, it still has it's dreamers and innovators.

It's Lego Development

Ragnell (at @Ragnell on Twitter) linked to a funny image that's been making the rounds.

The great comedy Arrested Development, in Lego.

Bluth Company, Legoland Development Project


And, no...I am not building various settings out of LEGO in my loft amateurishly...I'm not.

Mitt Romney: Job Creator

Truly, it is rare that you see a candidate who so well and so often inadvertently reflects his true self and his true interests.


Thanks Mitt.

Sexism and Misogyny should never be political.

It's true. I have never wanted to see the issues with these issues as such, but what we have found is that some parties are more entrenched in old views and attitudes then others. That is not to say Democrats are immune, we have our own "old boys" that deserve the same slap up side the head for being assholes.

Now, as I have said in other posts, I am a fan of all sorts of comedy. Light fare to darker macabre humor. Self deprecating jokes to those that are pointed and aimed at certain people. But it is a matter of degrees. And we each decide how far is far enough with jokes. We rationalize the lines we stop at (just like with religion). For instance I feel you don't punch down, hitting or mocking those without power.

Also I don't generally care for jokes that dehumanize another person. I think most people feel this way. And you actually can one up that when you do this to someone you have a social or political argument with. You see chasing this humor means you don't have to actually address real issues. And it allows you to rob them of their humanity. The dialogue just stops. You don't win, you don't show the value of your position, you just humiliate.

How empty is that?

So, obviously, when Hustler, the Hustler of porn magazines, decided to go for some photoshop humiliation of a rather annoying and wrongheaded conservative pundit, S. E. Cupp, liberals came out to support her and denounce the pornographic treatment. Good. Her treatment is something that is insulting, and it's worth calling out as such.

S.E. Cupp, as I said, is not someone whose politics I care for. Her arguments for her ideology, candidates, or social norms in many cases hold no water for me. But that is my beef with her. I want to see persons like her argued and debated on that stuff. Photoshopping a crappy picture of her that degrades and hurts her does NOTHING to prove or show her the flaws in her positions. It just provokes. It is cheap.

This country has many problems in how we communicate and work through our social/political/economic issues. This doesn't improve things, it advances nothing (except sell some magazines), and only can coarsen the dialogue. We all deserve better.




And that should be where the story goes. We all agree, conservatives and liberals, that this was wrong and we will all learn and change...


That's not what happen.

Instead conservatives decided it was a good time to flip out and start cursing out the liberals who were agreeing with them and criticizing the sort of treatment Cupp got. Not surprising, like the story of the scorpion you could see it coming.

NC Fantasy Camps of Terror

Pastor Worley from North Carolina managed to nicely represent the constipated view and understanding of so many religiously faithful in regards to the LGBT community.

On the one hand he doesn't want to force convert them to not be gay. Nor does he want to stone them all to death (Is there any other stoning policy?). No, he just wants to round them up, put them in a small isolated area behind electric fences. Oh, don't worry he also wants to feed them while they die off inside. Christ's love! LynnSanity (at Illiter8 on Twitter) pointed me to the Human Rights Campaign page on this (w/ video).

And it's been learned that in past decades he actually longingly looked back on the days when they would just out and murder gay people, so I guess he's actually moderated. Death camps all around. Add to this one pastor saying this garbage, the fact that he has been defended by his parishioners.

The idea is dumb. It is also kind of half-ass. I mean, it isn't well thought out, but it feels like he's put some thought into how to make it "fair."

But it is plain weak. If you want someone to pull this plan together and make it really work, you go to someone with a real imagination and genuine creativity. Enjoy.

If you want to see the issues with Mormonism. *UPDATED*

As I said in an earlier post, I don't think generic attacks on Romney for ostensibly being different are a thing I deeply dislike. It is the same, to me, as attacking Obama for being black, having the name Barack, or having a father from another country. Trying to alienate a person is not a good thing, particularly when they have actual aspects worth derision. And Romney does, from policy to personal actions.

However, that is not to say his religion, and his part in it is out of bounds. Religion is NEVER out of bounds. It's just magic underpants are the same thing as a Sikh turban or a Jewish kippah. You can mock them, but why? It is all ridiculous. Other aspects of every religion are more worthy of our concern.

There are a number of sites that detail the experiences of current and former Mormons. Feel free to learn about these issues. One is, Recovery from Mormonism.

But to listen to a discussion about life inside the church, Reasonable Doubts podcast did a couple of good episodes talking to former Mormons.

Episode 99: Formons

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints remains largely mysterious to those of us on the outside. With the help of three former Mormons, we explore the history, rituals and beliefs of the LDS including proxy baptisms for the dead, racial issues, mission trips, and a theology more uncomfortable than any “magical underwear.”

RD Extra: The Ties That Bind - Sophie's Story

Former Mormon, skeptic blogger, writer and sexual rights activist Sophie Hirschfeld discusses her past in the Church of Latter Day Saints, an abusive marriage and how she got out of both.

And if you would like a more humorous view of the LDS, you have Mr. Deity.



This is a fun web series. And be sure to check out other episodes, and see all the other faiths get tweaked as well, along with the Deity himself.




ADDENDUM TO POST:

Apologizes. I forgot to add a link to Part 2 of Sophie's Story, which was done as an online exclusive episode of WPRR's Reality Check show.

The Ties That Bind: Sophie's Story Part 2

In this online exclusive episode skeptic blogger and sexual rights activist Sophie Hirschfeld continues her story of leaving the Mormon church, an abusive marriage and how she became a professional dominatrix and an activist for sex workers rights.

To note, they do get into her sexual experience and work. But it is interesting to hear how unaware and uneducated she was, even after marrying, about sex. It speaks to how girls, women, and sexuality get treated. In part it is what we find in Mormon community, but in a larger sense it is what we find in the conservative Christian world view. Leave women blissfully ignorant of what will be asked and demanded of them once they are passed from father to husband.

Booker, Bain, Obama

Heh. You know, I was going to partially focus this post on Corey Booker...but you problably have, or should be keyed into enough to politics to hear about that business. Let's leave it at this. He was wrong. It puts him in a bad light to my eyes.

But fuck it, that was Sunday. We are crawling towards the election and their are more serious issues, like why he was wrong to initially give Bain and Romney a pass.

So let's get to that.

Let's talk about BAIN.

We need to focus in on Bain, at least until people in this country understand just what it has done, and what, in turn Romney has done. Romney has made Bain a centerpiece of his campaign, he wants to try and take any good numbers that can be taken from it and take credit for them, while it noting those heavy costs to businesses and the workforce. He wants it to be a symbol of how he's the Great Rich Businessman here to fix the world we simpletons have broken. So let's understand him, so we can tell him just why he's not needed, and he can move onto the next door, put his foot in the door, and try selling his bullshit there.

Let's acknowledge the positive numbers he likes to wave around as the cable news folks jump up on his knees yapping. They can look like nice numbers. Trouble is groups like FactCheck.Org aren't so impressed. Seems his job creator mantle is in question. Even old compatriots from Bain balk at being thought of as job creators.

“The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Nothing wrong with that. Profit isn't evil. Trouble is how you gain that wealth. Do you do any harm?

Seems even some Republicans don't buy the claims either, like all the other candidates he shared debate space with. Think Progress cobbled together 10 of the better critiques on Romney and Bain:

... 

1. “The idea that you’ve got private equity companies that come in and take companies apart so they can make profits and have people lose their jobs, that’s not what the Republican Party’s about.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/12/12] 

2. “The Bain model is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I’ll let you decide if that’s really good capitalism. I think that’s exploitation.” — Newt Gingrich [New York Times, 1/17/12]  

... 

9. “If you’re a victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it’s the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/8/12] 

10. “They’re vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick and then they swoop in, they eat the carcass. They leave with that and they leave the skeleton” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12] 

... 

Obviously no fan of Gingrich or Perry, but nothing like seeing how disgusted they were with Romney and Bain's business.

But finance can be difficult. And what Romney and Bain did can get obfuscated in jargon. If you want a nice explanation of what Bain is doing, Andrew Sullivan had a reader explain it well.

... You take the Cash Cow, paying, say, 30% in taxes, and use various strategies to drive the tax rate to near-zero without killing the cash flow. Then you pocket the 30%, and the investors pay lower capital gains and "carried interest" tax rates on those extracted "tax savings." 

For roughly half of the companies receiving this "operation" will die because of the high debt and other obligations brought on by the Tax Arbitrage strategy. But you, the equity capital firm, get your investment out early. Half of the companies will prosper under this treatment (though not for existing employees who are outsourced or downsized), and you flip those to new owners for huge profits, taxed at capital gains rates. 

This is NOT "Capitalism." This is manipulation of the tax code for profit for some, at the expense of others. Millions of Americans work for years for Cash Cow companies. Slow growth is not a sin; it is a reality in many businesses, and a good Cash Cow can provide employment and community stability to generations of workers and their families.

So businesses were reconfigured, so as to offer big payout to investors while destroying or crippling many of the businesses. This is not good business, for those that Bain comes to. It can be doom. Which is what has been seen is the to the point Obama ad.




And President Obama nicely further explained why ads like this are needed. From AMERICAblog:

... 

“The reason why this is relevant to the campaign is that my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. 

He's not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He's saying, I'm a business guy, and I know how to fix it, and this is his business. And when you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits.  

Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.  

Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off, and how are we paying for their retraining.  

...  

And so if your main argument for how to grow the economy is "I knew how to make a lot of money for investors then you're missing what this job is about." It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity. But that's not what my job is as president. 

My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. ...

And that is what Bain shows us. To put it politely, the lessons and skills that Romney brings out of Bain are distinctly ill-suited to lead a nation.

Randomly Scientific

Irin Carmon (at @irincarmon on Twitter) and Yahel Carmon (at @yahelc on Twitter) both pointed to this image that reminds us of the importance and sad state of science in this country today.

First, to get it out of the way, the EPA and bank regulators intrude? ...You mean those meanies who try to keep your neighborhoods from going Mr. Yuk on you, and the people trying to insure your money doesn't go bye-bye? (Sorry, thought I'd should dump it down for conservatives so angry at a safer physical and financial environment.)

But the main point, "...this is not a scientific survey. It's a random survey." ...Sigh. Do you know how many members of Congress are college graduates? Still, with the people and organizations they rely on for their opinion, no doubt proper scientific processes may well be an inconvenience to be avoided. And I can't help feeling that in his next breath he probably denounced science in and of itself.

But that is a problem right now, and has been for awhile, with conservatives. They have worked with various groups to blur scientific discourse, they have chastised scientist for supporting results that don't fit their needs, and attacked science teaching, and education in general. All of this is troubling.

Their have been many bills coming to state legislatures that range from poorly written half-thought attacks on science facts, branches of science, and science education, and then their are more precise ALEC and Discovery Institute style bills. Academic Freedom is a popular buzz word now (replacing Creation, Creation Science, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Teach the Controversy). Where the earlier ideas pressed a particular beliefs, now the idea is everyone can be right, and deserves credit for having an alternate opinion. (Yes, this is ironic from people who once denounced the idea of every kid in a competition getting a reward.) What's more it wants to protect teachers that want to bring religion and flat earth thinking into science class. It sounds nice, it is a preexisting term, and makes of joke of American education.

But education and science are not real concerns. A proper voting base that understands the world the way the party does seems more important. Major funders having scientific government studies and results that allow them to do as they want are more important. This is unhealthy for science and the country.


We need people in office that have, at least, a respect for science, knowledge, and intellectual pursuits. 


We need an electorate that respect these things to.

Birtherism...Why?

WARNING: Reading this post may cause you to learn 3 Latin words.

Honestly, the whole Birtherism argument has seldom, even from nutters, made sense.

The only way it works is if the person is question has no ties to the United States: If they are not born here, If they do not have a parent that is a citizen. You see there are three ways to look at citizenship: naturalization, jus soli, and jus sanguinis.

• Naturalization means that you have no right to citizenship and go through a process to obtain citizenship.
• Jus soli (Right of the Soil) means that you are born in a given place and are a citizen.
• Jus sanguinis (Right of Blood) means you have at least one parent that is a citizen.

Under US law, being jus soli or jus sanguinis are acknowledged as acceptable forms of citizenship for running for president. If the president was naturalized (or undocumented), it would be a problem.

So we get to the president's mother. From all I've seen, most of the birthers do not question her nationality, or her legitimacy as a parent (There is a nutty of nuts subset of birthers who believe the president was born in the Soviet Union, or a Soviet allied country to operatives and...read one of hundreds of the crappy old Cold War novels in dime bins for more.). So they focused in on Kenya (Mysterious Kenya. Magical Kenya. Foreign Kenya. Booga! Booga! Booga!) and become myopic. Nothing else matters.

"If his dad is from there, maybe he is to. Prove us wrong! ...That birth announcement doesn't count! Show us government proof of his birth! ...Not good enough!!! ..."

If they are being at all rational, they are really focused on something extralegal, "He is in some way foreign, and that is wrong. He is wrong." It bares no connection to the real world. He has some aspect they can cling on to and hate. If Romney was the Democratic nominee, the story would be about Mormonism, or his family Mexican ties (We'll get to that in a minute.).

So there is the problem. If you accept his mom as an American the rest is bullshit. Why would it matter where he was born then? Why would it matter to people to go to such trouble to hide his birth then? It makes no sense, unless you are irrationally obsessed, or plain ignorant.

Hell, it does make the secret Soviet Plan people look a little more clear thinking. At least their bullshit is consistent on why Obama shouldn't be president. It's batshit crazy, but consistent in that. The only way they can regain a sense of consistency is to come out and just say, "He has foreign ties, and where bigoted xenophobes."
\
But this persists, defying common sense and logic. Why all conversations with a birther on a cable show doesn't start on jus sanguinis, and stop there until the birther explains it away is beyond me. There only choice is to ignore the point, or try to go full nutter on us. Either way they show themselves as fools or madmen. But maybe I'm wrong and they will see their error and desist (Trying optimism out. Seeing if it fits.).

So, PLEASE, anytime you meet a birther, remind them of jus sanguinis, the right of blood. Then you can see what you are really dealing with, or, maybe, reveal to them how foolish the media instigators.

And thanks to Don Millard (at @OTOOLEFAN on Twitter) I finally got answer to why George Romney (Mitt Romney's pater) was able to run for president back in 1967-8. He was born in Mexico, as was his own father. What happen was, when George Romey's grandfather fled the US, he did not renounce his citizenship. And then his own father never renounced his, gotten via jus sanguinis. So when George came back to the US, he was acknowledged as an American citizen, who went on to run a car company, be a governor, and run for president. There were questions, there were concerns, and there were complaints. But he was deemed to be legitimately a full citizen. He just didn't get the nomination.


So, please, remember these points. Under right of blood, Obama is legit, just as people like George Romney were, and just as the US Constitution intends.

Now let's get back to real issues.

Is that a rock exploding in your pocket or are you...Oh.

You may have heard an interesting story last week of the lady who picked up some rocks on the beach, placed them in her pants pocket, and later found that they exploded...even if you didn't, that's the story, and it happen.

It does sound quite bizarre and funny, but the woman suffered burns when it happen, leading her to being placed in a hospital. What has been determined is that it is the result of the rock being coated in phosphorus.

... By Friday, California environmental health officials had an answer, or at least part of one: two of the rocks were covered in phosphorus, an element that’s known for igniting into a fierce white flame when it’s exposed to air. Near as they can tell, as long as the rocks were wet with seawater, the phosphorus didn’t ignite, but after they’d dried out in the woman’s pockets over the course of the day, the phosphorus reacted explosively. 

...

So...that can happen... Still, glad that was cleared up so as to prevent other wild stories of the exploding rocks of California...granted rocks can be caused to blow apart in other ways so it isn't the strangest of stories.

What isn't clear yet is where the phosphorus came from.

The most common way more reactive phosphorus is found is within the military, where it is used quite often in flares, though it has also been made use of as a deadly weapon. So there is so interest now about if some flares washed up on the beach, or if there is another, possibly natural, answer.

If this does come from old or more recent ordinance, it would be a wise thing to try and clean this stuff up to prevent further injuries.

4 Comics Walk Into A Bar

Or, 4 comics walk into a Salon.

Salon has a new page called, I Read The News Today, oy vey!...I'm sure the name is the result of an improvisational committee meeting...But it fits well the onw...the dread the morning news often brings.

But what is it? It's short videos dreamt up by comic minds on events of the day, from today's look at the Bush endorsement to the earlier look at Bristol Palin's political parental analysis.

Currently, David Feldman, Merrill Markoe, Frank Coniff, and Judy Gold are offering up their barbed thoughts. And it is worth checking out.

Here is one: