New Horizons waves bye-bye to Pluto, 15 minutes after encounter. There's enough science in that one shot to keep a 100 astronomy grad students cracking away on their dissertations.
There have from time to time been strange reports of top-secret "stealth blimps." Purportedly experimental lighter than air objects with mysterious instruments aboard, equipped with radar avoidance technology of some sort. This is probably not one of those:
A blimp associated with NORAD's surveillance of the East Coast that became untethered from its mooring in Maryland has landed in Pennsylvania, WBAL-TV reported. ... JLENS, which is short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, is a system of two aerostats, or tethered airships, that float 10,000 feet in the air. The helium-filled aerostats, each nearly as long as a football field, carry powerful radars that can protect a territory roughly the size of Texas from airborne threats.
If this was part of some top-secret super blimp program, it's not top-secret anymore. What was hilarious is it ended up being mentioned in the GOP clown show Wednesday night as an example of government incompetence. At the risk of preserving the program, let me say here and now that if the tea party caucus wants to cut billion-dollar cold-war relics from the DoD's bloated budget, you have allies on my side of the aisle ...
Speaking of the clown car, there wasn't much to applaud or condemn science-wise. On the mediocre upside, at least Huckabeee correctly identified the actual top threats to US lives in the form of heart disease and other top killers. If only he could have slid in that ISIS is less dangerous than falling furniture, or we didn't have to worry it was part of some insidious scheme to cut Medicare benefits. Christie was alone in tacitly agreeing with what millions of thermometers worldwide have been reading for decades and correctly identified clean energy as one way to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, he also weakened and turned on the very government programs he was touting.
Speaking of climate change, the driest place on the planet, the Atacama Desert in Chile—home to the world's most dazzling, rapidly growing astronomical array due to its usually arid, ideal viewing conditions—is blooming with flowers like a florist exhibit in the midst of a monsoon, thanks to record rainfall and flooding.
Thanks to decades of research into heart disease, and no small thanks to health insurance, yesterday I went into a cath lab at lunch, they found a relatively small blockage, fixed it, and I was home for dinner feeling like a million bucks. Just 30 years ago I would have had my sternum cracked open and the artery by-passed, 50 years ago that would have been a near experimental procedure and I would have been lucky to survive five more years, 60 years ago they might have been able to keep me alive as a cardiac invalid for a year or two on drugs: 100 years ago that small blockage would have been a death sentence. Science is a wonderful thing.
So, I implore you fellow science lovers and actual scientists, if you know anyone in your home or workplace who needs encouragement, now is the time to get them registered, make a date to drive to the polls together and vote against these GOP clowns. They have gone from farcical to annoying to dangerous meddling to the beginnings of a political mafia. No scientist is safe from it:
But with Benghazi, the only threat is to the reputation of Hillary Clinton, who has the resources to defend herself. With the science committee, it is working scientists being intimidated, who often do not have the resources to defend themselves, and the threat is to the integrity of the scientific process in the US.
On a lighter note, thank God, Syfy has accepted the challenge of creating a miniseries based on Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End beginning on Dec 14. I'll have more tomorrow on Sunday Kos including a plot spoiler: you have been warned. The cool thing is, when I contacted Syfy, they immediately responded with enthusiasm and indicated we may be able to get someone involved with the series here for an exclusive behind the scenes Q & A as the date draws near.
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