Chaos Manor View, Friday, November 06, 2015
Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship. Politico
“I never once saw Ben Carson at West Point when I was Chairman of Brain Surgery & Grain Pyramids there from 1954-1985.” Rob Delaney
It is inconceivable that in 1960 a black high school graduate with the academic credentials enabling him to get into Yale, and also graduating from high school ROTC at the top of his class would not have been courted by many including Army generals to apply for West Point, or that he would not have received an appointment had he applied. The benefits would be free tuition and room and board: sort of a full expenses scholarship and it’s not unlikely that one or another of those trying to recruit him would have used the phrase “like a scholarship.” Dr. Carson chose to go to pre-med and medical school and the rest of the training to become a neuro surgeon rather than to join the Army; but it is not a surprise that he is proud of having been asked to go to West Point. It is also not a surprise that certain people calling themselves journalists use this pride to malign him because he may have said he was offered a scholarship.
And see http://www.dailywire.com/news/960/no-ben-carson-didnt-lie-about-west-point-its-ben-shapiro
It’s late and I’ve been busy.
When a 127-Year-Old U.S. Industry Collapses Under China’s Weight.
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Roland Dobbins
Physics Mystery
NASA conducts MORE secret tests of its ‘impossible engine’: Study reveals fuel-free thrusters do work, but no one knows why
Solar Storms Strip Air From Mars, NASA Says
By KENNETH CHANG, NOV. 5, 2015
The air on Mars — what there is of it — is leaking away, about half a pound a second sputtering into space, scientists announced on Thursday.
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The planet’s early atmosphere is thought to have been as thick as or thicker than Earth’s today, and even over the 4.5-billion-year history of the solar system, that slow leak would not explain how it atrophied to its current wisps.
But new readings from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission — Maven, for short — show that when Mars is hit by a solar storm, the ferocious bombardment of particles from the sun strips away the upper atmosphere much more quickly.
That could help explain the disappearance of the atmosphere. The sun during its youth was more unsettled, with many more solar storm eruptions, and it shone brighter in the ultraviolet wavelengths that also help knock atoms out of Mars’ atmosphere.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
From left: Europa, the moon of Jupiter; Titan, the moon of Saturn; a composite image of the Valles Marineris across Mars; a mosaic of Venus’s surface.
NASA’s Next Horizon in SpaceAUG. 28, 2015
An illustration of the Maven spacecraft approaching Mars on a mission to study its upper atmosphere.
NASA Craft Is Orbiting Mars, to Study Its AirSEPT. 21, 2014
A painting of early Mars, showing shallow seas across the northern lowlands and weather systems drifting in a denser atmosphere than today’s.
Looking to Mars to Help Understand Changing ClimatesDEC. 8, 2014
“What this tells us is loss through space has been an important process,†said Bruce M. Jakosky, a scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado and the principal investigator for the Maven mission.
[We do this so you don’t have to, dear Jerry!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/space/mars-atmosphere-stripped-away-by-solar-storms-nasa-says.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Army Research Lab 2050 Report
The US Army Research Laboratory report Visualizing the Tactical Ground Battlefield in the Year 2050 is worth taking a few minutes.
http://www.arl.army.mil/arlreports/2015/ARL-SR-0327.pdf
Section headings include:
Ubiquitous Robots
Swarms and Teams
Dynamic Hacking and Spoofing
Super Humans
Directed Energy Weapons
Force Fields
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Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Climate Change Weather Attribution
I ran across this article the day after the note I sent wishing that there was a blog for looking at the numbers of Climate Change and discerning the impact of that change. The group, World Weather Attribution (WWA) started in 2014 “aims to deliver timely information on how patterns of extreme weather may be affected by climate change”:
http://www.climatecentral.org/wwa
Whether humans are or are not at fault is moot. Clearly patterns are changing in our human time frame of several generations and we need to deal with it. And taking a really long view, at some point it time it was natural for a 1 mile thick ice sheet over the state of Michigan, which is still rebounding from it’s disappearance.
This group seems to be trying to make sense of all the information and models in a way that we can maybe use it in a shorter time frame of our children and children’s children. Bravo for the attempt. I look forward to following them.
Bob P
TPP Nightmare
The TPP is worse than we expected, which was to be expected. To make matters even worse, the cries against it are about “repealing fast track authority”. Apparently, whatever Congress did that allowed the Iran Debacle — excuse me the Iran Nuclear Agreement — to pass as fitting policy also allows the same process for TPP. So, the Senate will not have to ratify this treaty, they’ll have to get an impossible number of votes to deny the treaty’s automatic ratification.
Apparently, now, it’s called “Trade Promotion Authority”.
And what Senator Sessions has to say about this is beyond unsettling.
We’re looking at a synarchy, much like EU synarchy. We will be ruled by unelected bureaucrats in a regulatory framework that looks more communist than capitalist and we’ll have lose certain rights under TPP since we’ll all be under some commission that will dictate our rules to us without consent of our congress and without regard for out Constitution — according to Senator Sessions.
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Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
And dependent for energy on imports. It’s part of the design.
No RF from KIC 8462852.
<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.01606v1.pdf>
This doesn’t preclude artificiality, though. They could’ve died out before the epoch in which the light reaching us from KIC 8462852 – and, therefore, any possible RF emissions – can be observed.
In other words, the time window for the persistence of megastructures is potentially much larger than that of a civilization which produced such megastructures.
There’s probably a natural explanation for what we’re seeing – including something much closer headed our way from KIC 8462852 and running silent, which nobody has mentioned, AFAIK.
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Roland Dobbins
Time Warner and 1600 to 1615
Could it be they are downloading the evening’s (or the next 24 hours’) new commercials and/or commercial broadcast schedule for their cable head end?
Just wondering. The consultancy leads me to think they are.
Charles Brumbelow=
I doubt it, but I do not know,
return of the nitpicker II
Dr. Pournelle,
Minor errata: I believe that you meant 1960. I find a black high school graduate is indeed inconceivable in 1060!
..and I had considerable trouble typing that line correctly despite not having a brain injury: don’t be so hard on yourself! I have considerable trouble hitting the qwerty number row at all, intentionally, yet alone correctly; in spite of years of practice. Patience.
There is also some strange text between a couple of the e-mails in the Nov 7 post. I paste:
sc:bubbles]
…I fear may be a missed segment of someone else’s PII.
Anxiously awaiting news from Avalon, and from Tran,
-d
Fixed, and thanks. The Sc bubbles are a script to save loading times and dis space; it produces an image.
I’m anxiously awaiting Mamelukes and the colony novel too; and experimenting with ways to type faster. I suspect it’ll take a new machine and some negotiations about using autocorrect. And Live Writer doesn’t even have AutoCorrect. You’d be amazed at how many words I had to correct in these sentences.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
