Data: it's what's for breakfast...

Data: it's what's for breakfast...  The next time some low information numbskull tries to tell you how horrible the wars around the world are these days, and how we're all going to die – show them the graph at right.

Humans have never been this safe before.  Ever.

When you show this to someone who believes, deep in their low information heart, that the Iraq war killed more Americans than all other wars combined ... you can tell from their face that their brain is frying right in front of you.

Source.  More...

Amelia Earhart: mystery solved?

Amelia Earhart: mystery solved?  Well, not yet –

– but now there is a very credible piece of evidence that says she and Fred Noonan (her navigator) made an emergency landing on the remote Nikumaroro atoll, and perished there before anyone could rescue them.  The piece of metal at right – found on Nikumaroro – has been positively identified as being part of Earhart's plane.  Sonar studies have found an object, 600' underwater, that could be the wreckage of her plane.  Much more here.

Comet 67P, close up and personal...

Comet 67P, close up and personal...  Rosetta is getting down close to Comet 67P's surface (just 6 km!) to prepare for the launch of the Philae lander in just a couple weeks...

Antares explosion...

Antares explosion...  Doug S. passed along this Fox News story on the Antares rocket explosion.  Most of the coverage I've read has been dominated by ignorant reporters breathlessly leaping on this single failure as if it were some sort of world-class disaster, proving the inability of American industry to successfully launch rockets into space.

Orbital Sciences (the builders of Antares) chose to use refurbished Russian engines for Antares because at the time of their choice it looked like the best combination of cost, speed, and reliability.  Years of NASA mismanagement (which continues unabated) had practically destroyed anything resembling innovation or advancement in American rocket technology.  The Russians had a solid, reliable – even though old – rocket engine technology, and it was available cheaply because of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Russian desperation for hard dollars.  American companies – especially those in bed with NASA – were forecasting decades and multiple tens of billions of dollars in development costs.  Did Orbital Sciences make a bad choice?  I don't know any reason at all to believe that.

A rocket blowing up is not exactly a new phenomenon.  We've had our own share of that with American rockets, and so have the Russians, Europeans, and Chinese.  Rockets, especially the larger ones, are marvels of complex technology straining at the very edge of what's possible.  It's amazing to me that any of those rockets don't explode!  Someday we might advance rocket technology to the point where launches can be thought of as routine and safe, but today is clearly not that day.

Here's some additional coverage, some of it a bit more objective than the Fox News report: here, here, and especially here...

If you find maggot infestations extremely disgusting...

If you find maggot infestations extremely disgusting ... then your political inclinations are most likely conservative.  Or so says this study.  It also makes the claim that a tendency toward progressivism or conservatism is closely correlated with how strongly you react to something disgusting – and that both of these are primarily heritable traits.  That last bit – that political tendencies are heritable – is particularly scary, as that means demographics favor the progressives (mainly because minorities vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, and they have more children than any other voting group).

This reminds me, though, of an odd factoid I read years ago: a ranking of voting preference by profession.  Sanitation workers and septic tank cleaners were top of the list for progressives.  Hmmmm...

European language tree...

European language tree...  Beautiful!

Obama says: “Please don’t vote Democrat...”

Obama says: “Please don’t vote Democrat...” ScrappleFace...

Earth-moon system...

Earth-moon system...  As seen by the Chinese Chang'e 5 spacecraft as it zoomed around the far side of the moon.

When I was a young lad in the early '60s, I remember eagerly watching the news as it showed the grainy black-and-white photos returned by early NASA robotic missions to the moon.  We've come a long way since then, but the Chinese have progressed even more.  In the early '60s, while we were shooting for the moon, Mao was firmly in control and his crazy policies were killing millions and had the country retreating rapidly toward the Stone Age.  Now China is successfully developing and launching robotic explorers on their own, and seem on pace to rival NASA's capabilities...

Election fraud?

Election fraud?  A few days ago I posted about reports of voting machines in Illinois registering votes for Democrats when the voter tried to select Republican candidates.  The election officials called that a “calibration error” and said it was limited to a single machine.  Since then, many more cases have been reported, in Maryland as well as Illinois.  Both states are notorious for their past history of election fraud.  For some reason, that made me suspicious :)

Now there's video (from Moline, Illinois) of this “calibration error” in action.  You decide: fraud or calibration error?

Wow...

Wow...  It's impossible for a white male like me to accurately imagine what it's like to be a minority in a predominantly white country, but I've tried hard.  It's helped that over the years I've had good friends who are non-white, and who would talk with me openly.  Despite my best attempts to understand, one thing that has always puzzled me is why minorities overwhelmingly vote Democratic – the observable track record of the Democrats in America's large cities is abysmal, especially with respect to minorities.  Mind you, I'm not at all sure the Republicans would have done any better, but for decades now they've had almost no chance to even try administering our big cities.  While we've had the occasional Republican mayor (e.g., Rudy Giuliani in New York, Pete Wilson in San Diego), and the occasional Republican city council member, by and large America's largest cities have been controlled and run by Democrats.  The biggest reason for this is that minorities (especially blacks and Hispanics) vote for Democrats in percentages routinely exceeding 80%.  Why?

The speakers in the video at right are leaders in the black community, well-known and well-respected.  I speculate that the scales have (finally!) fallen from their eyes because of Obama's overt failure to deliver – despite his being black himself.  Whether I'm right about that is irrelevant, though.  I'm hoping that their disillusionment is the beginning of a trend – not to have minority voters vote Republican, but rather to have them think about who they're voting for, rather than voting reflexively for any one party...