Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Did The US Sabotage The Russian Mars Probe?

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Ummmmmm…no:

Rogozin, at least, admitted that a far more plausible cause was a failure on the spacecraft itself. “Practially all disruptions are due to flaws in the technologies manufactured 12 to 13 years ago,” he said. And a new and highly plausible report issued today further supports the leading theory: that the craft’s autopilot software had never been adequately debugged. The probe’s chief scientist, Alexander Zakharov, also denounced the interference theory as “exotic” and “disingenuous.”

The Russians have space tracking blind spots around the world because they scrapped their sea-going tracking ships years ago, and closed down other ground sites. The space program’s tracking ability is so limited that shortly before the launch of Fobos-Grunt, a program scientist emailed amateur astronomers in South America, asking them to go outside when the probe was passing overhead and report whether its rocket was firing on time. (It wasn’t, as it turned out.)

And as for Kwajalein, scientists familiar with worldwide radar tracking of asteroids assure me they’ve never heard of any participation by radars based there. If asked, they would have told Kommersant the same thing.

Sadly, this knee-jerk blame shifting in the space industry has ramped up in recent years. The real danger in the Russian nonsense about finding the United States at fault for the crash isn’t just the blow to diplomacy and public attitudes. Also important is how such claims prevent a proper investigation and get in the way of implementing a reliable “fix.”

Phantom “causes” lead to delusional, even damaging, responses. That raises the level of danger to which everybody whose lives depend on Russian spacecraft—and that now includes U.S. and other astronauts—is exposed.

Yup. And it’s looking more and more like it was a software problem.

General Science, Science And Society

A Predator That Ruled Before The Dinosaurs

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This is interesting:

the find is important for two reasons: First, Pampaphoneus is the first Paleozoic terrestrial carnivore discovered in South America. Combining this find with earlier discoveries of plant-eaters from the same time frame will help paleontologists “picture a more complete ecosystem during the Permian period,” the statement said.

Second, the skull suggests that this South American species was a close relative to similar dinocephalians previously found in Russia and South Africa. That supports the idea that therapsids were able to disperse easily from one part of the Pangaea supercontinent to the other, during an age when most of Earth’s modern-day land masses were linked together.

Emphasis mine. South America’s a big place, and this is the first time they’ve seen this. It just shows how rare fossils are, and how ridiculous it is for the creationists to demand to see all “transitional species” (a notion that demonstrates nothing except the demander’s ignorance of evolution, because every species is a “transitional” species).

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Newtering Obama’s Election Strategy

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Did Gingrich’s and Perry’s failure to hurt Romney with their class-warfare rhetoric bode ill for Obama in the fall?

President Obama should be very worried by the backlash against these attacks, real or perceived, on free-market capitalism. The White House’s divisive class-warfare strategy of running against free enterprise, against the “1 percent,” was given a test run by Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry, and it failed miserably. Not only was Mr. Romney given the opportunity to preview that line of attack and prepare accordingly but, more importantly, the voters soundly rejected it.

Democrats will claim that these Republican primary results do not necessarily reflect the sentiments of general election voters, but not so fast. New Hampshire has an open primary, and 45 percent of its primary voters were “undeclared” as to political party. Independent voters are unquestionably rejecting the ahttp://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-what-make-obamas-approval-bounce_617121.htmlssault on free enterprise. What’s more, Mr. Romney received a higher percentage of voters, despite the large GOP field, than either Mr. Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton did in 2008.

I don’t think it will slow them down. It’s all they have, really. They’ll go ahead, and rationalize that Newt and Rick just didn’t do it right. They knew the words, but Obama sings the music.

[Afternoon update]

How to explain Obama’s approval bounce?

As we can see, Ronald Reagan blew Jimmy Carter out of the water in 1980 (then Walter Mondale in 1984) because he won substantial support among Democrats. However, the party more or less consolidated its base vote starting with Michael Dukakis in 1988, and this is pretty much all Obama has managed to do in the last two months. His relentless, partisan campaign of this winter has only moved him into Dukakis territory.

Good luck with that.

Political Commentary, Weird

Please Don’t Sell Them Down The River

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Just when you think it can’t get more absurd: DC exterminators aren’t allowed to break up rat families:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says he is worried that a new District of Columbia law that governs how pest control operators must handle rats may result in entire rodent “families” being relocated across the Potomac River into Virginia by D.C. pest control personnel.

Lately, there have been reports of growing rat infestations around the Occupy DC protests at Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square.

Cuccinelli said D.C.’s new rat law–the Wildlife Protection Act of 2010 (Wildlife Protection Act of 2010.pdf) –is “crazier than fiction” because it requires that rats and other vermin not be killed but captured, preferably in families; no glue or snap traps can be utilized; the rodents must be relocated from where they are captured; and some of these animals may need to be transferred to a “wildlife rehabilitator” as part of their relocation process.

The law does not allow pest control professionals “to kill the dang rats,” Cuccinelli told CNSNews.com. “They have to capture them–then capture them in families. [Not sure] how you’re going to figure that out with rats. And then you have to relocate them. That brings us to Virginia. Now, if you don’t relocate them about 25 miles away, according to experts, rodents will find their way back. Well, an easy way to solve that problem is to cross a river, and what’s on the other side of the river? Virginia.”

“So we have real concerns about this ridiculous–ridiculous!–law and we’ve been pretty genial about dealing with D.C. on it,” said Cuccinelli. “But when you see an article like the ‘Rats Occupy Occupy DC,’ it points up the problem that we’re going to have in Virginia because of that–and because D.C’s really outrageous–outrageous!–treatment of these varmints who, for those who don’t remember their history, carried things like bubonic plague. I mean, these are true vermin.”

The easiest thing to do would be to leave the rats and move out the occupiers. It would improve sanitation, too.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!