Kind of a fun video of the filming of the Sail Rocket.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XzOqYTVkphc
May 31, 2013
More on the mess on the bay..
OK here are two shots from inside the mess in San Rafael...
You can see that it is just simple frames and ply, like building a house. The stress and water action will take a toll on the structure quickly. At best this thing should just sit in a back water cove and never attempt to go anywhere.
You can see that it is just simple frames and ply, like building a house. The stress and water action will take a toll on the structure quickly. At best this thing should just sit in a back water cove and never attempt to go anywhere.
Going to Mars?? Don't go man!
Measurements taken by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission as it delivered the
Curiosity rover to Mars in 2012 are providing NASA the information it needs to
design systems to protect human explorers from radiation exposure on deep-space
expeditions in the future.
Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft. The findings reduce uncertainty about the effectiveness of radiation shielding and provide vital information to space mission designers who will need to build in protection for spacecraft occupants in the future.
"As this nation strives to reach an asteroid and Mars in our lifetimes, we're
working to solve every puzzle nature poses to keep astronauts safe so they can
explore the unknown and return home," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's
associate administrator for human exploration and operations in Washington. "We
learn more about the human body's ability to adapt to space every day aboard the
International Space Station. As we build the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch
System rocket to carry and shelter us in deep space, we'll continue to make the
advances we need in life sciences to reduce risks for our explorers. Curiosity's
RAD instrument is giving us critical data we need so that we humans, like the
rover, can dare mighty things to reach the Red Planet."
The findings, which are published in the May 31 edition of the journal Science, indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA's career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.
Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space. One is galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system. The other is solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun.
Radiation exposure is measured in units of Sievert (Sv) or milliSievert (one one-thousandth Sv). Long-term population studies have shown exposure to radiation increases a person's lifetime cancer risk. Exposure to a dose of 1 Sv, accumulated over time, is associated with a five percent increase in risk for developing fatal cancer.
NASA has established a three percent increased risk of fatal cancer as an acceptable career limit for its astronauts currently operating in low-Earth orbit. The RAD data showed the Curiosity rover was exposed to an average of 1.8 milliSieverts of GCR per day on its journey to Mars. Only about three percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles because of a relatively quiet solar cycle and the shielding provided by the spacecraft.
The RAD data will help inform current discussions in the United States' medical community, which is working to establish exposure limits for deep-space explorers in the future.
Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft. The findings reduce uncertainty about the effectiveness of radiation shielding and provide vital information to space mission designers who will need to build in protection for spacecraft occupants in the future.
"As this nation strives to reach an asteroid and Mars in our lifetimes, we're
working to solve every puzzle nature poses to keep astronauts safe so they can
explore the unknown and return home," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's
associate administrator for human exploration and operations in Washington. "We
learn more about the human body's ability to adapt to space every day aboard the
International Space Station. As we build the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch
System rocket to carry and shelter us in deep space, we'll continue to make the
advances we need in life sciences to reduce risks for our explorers. Curiosity's
RAD instrument is giving us critical data we need so that we humans, like the
rover, can dare mighty things to reach the Red Planet." The findings, which are published in the May 31 edition of the journal Science, indicate radiation exposure for human explorers could exceed NASA's career limit for astronauts if current propulsion systems are used.
Two forms of radiation pose potential health risks to astronauts in deep space. One is galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), particles caused by supernova explosions and other high-energy events outside the solar system. The other is solar energetic particles (SEPs) associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun.
Radiation exposure is measured in units of Sievert (Sv) or milliSievert (one one-thousandth Sv). Long-term population studies have shown exposure to radiation increases a person's lifetime cancer risk. Exposure to a dose of 1 Sv, accumulated over time, is associated with a five percent increase in risk for developing fatal cancer.
NASA has established a three percent increased risk of fatal cancer as an acceptable career limit for its astronauts currently operating in low-Earth orbit. The RAD data showed the Curiosity rover was exposed to an average of 1.8 milliSieverts of GCR per day on its journey to Mars. Only about three percent of the radiation dose was associated with solar particles because of a relatively quiet solar cycle and the shielding provided by the spacecraft.
The RAD data will help inform current discussions in the United States' medical community, which is working to establish exposure limits for deep-space explorers in the future.
May 30, 2013
More on the mess
More pictures of the mess in San Rafael...
This guy thinks this 'boat' will sail to Hawaii...
He used just plain ply from a hardware store. no marine grade here...
Cant see to stear the thing, crazy rigging and no safety lines..
This guy thinks this 'boat' will sail to Hawaii...
Cant see to stear the thing, crazy rigging and no safety lines..
Rho Ophiuchi
A rich collection of colorful astronomical objects is revealed in this
picturesque image of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex from NASA's Wide-field
Infrared Explorer, or WISE. The Rho Ophiuchi cloud (pronounced 'oh-fee-yoo-ki'
and named after a bright star in the region) is found rising above the plane of
the Milky Way in the night sky, bordering the constellations Ophiuchus and
Scorpius. It's one of the nearest star-forming regions to Earth, allowing us to resolve much more detail than in more distant similar
regions, like the Orion nebula.
The amazing variety of colors seen in this image represents different wavelengths of infrared light. The bright white nebula in the center of the image is glowing due to heating from nearby stars, resulting in what is called an emission nebula. The same is true for most of the multi-hued gas prevalent throughout the entire image, including the bluish, bow-shaped feature near the bottom right. The bright red area in the bottom right is light from the star in the center - Sigma Scorpii - that is reflected off of the dust surrounding it, creating what is called a reflection nebula. And the much darker areas scattered throughout the image are pockets of cool, dense gas that block out the background light, resulting in absorption (or 'dark') nebulae. WISE's longer wavelength detectors can typically see through dark nebulae, but these are exceptionally opaque.
The bright pink objects just left of center are young stellar objects (YSOs).
These baby stars are just now forming; many of them are still enveloped in their
own tiny compact nebulae. In visible light, these YSOs are completely hidden in
the dark nebula that surrounds them, which is sometimes referred to as their
baby blanket. We can also see some of the oldest stars in our Milky Way galaxy
in this image, found in two separate (and much more distant) globular clusters.
The first cluster, M80, is on the far right edge of the image towards the top.
The second, NGC 6144, is found close to the bottom edge near the center. They both
appear as small densely compacted groups of blue stars. Globular clusters such
as these typically harbor some of the oldest stars known, some as old as 13
billion years, born soon after the universe formed.
There are two other items of interest in this image as well. At the 3 o'clock position, relative to the bright central region, and about two-thirds of the way from the center to the edge, there is a small faint red dot (more visible in the larger downloadable image files). That dot is an entire galaxy far far away known as PGC 090239. And, at the bottom left of the image, there are two lines emerging from the edge. These were not created by foreground satellites; they are diffraction spikes (optical artifacts from the space telescope) from the bright star Antares that is just out of the field of view.
The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.
The amazing variety of colors seen in this image represents different wavelengths of infrared light. The bright white nebula in the center of the image is glowing due to heating from nearby stars, resulting in what is called an emission nebula. The same is true for most of the multi-hued gas prevalent throughout the entire image, including the bluish, bow-shaped feature near the bottom right. The bright red area in the bottom right is light from the star in the center - Sigma Scorpii - that is reflected off of the dust surrounding it, creating what is called a reflection nebula. And the much darker areas scattered throughout the image are pockets of cool, dense gas that block out the background light, resulting in absorption (or 'dark') nebulae. WISE's longer wavelength detectors can typically see through dark nebulae, but these are exceptionally opaque.
There are two other items of interest in this image as well. At the 3 o'clock position, relative to the bright central region, and about two-thirds of the way from the center to the edge, there is a small faint red dot (more visible in the larger downloadable image files). That dot is an entire galaxy far far away known as PGC 090239. And, at the bottom left of the image, there are two lines emerging from the edge. These were not created by foreground satellites; they are diffraction spikes (optical artifacts from the space telescope) from the bright star Antares that is just out of the field of view.
The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.
Wreath nebula
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission presents the "Wreath
nebula." Though this isn't the nebula's official name (it's actually called
Barnard 3, or IRAS Ring G159.6-18.5), one might picture a wreath in these bright
green and red dust clouds -- a ring of evergreens donned with a festive red bow,
a jaunty sprig of holly, and silver bells throughout. Interstellar clouds like
these are stellar nurseries, places where baby stars are being born.
The green ring (evergreen) is made of tiny particles of warm dust whose composition is very similar to smog found here on Earth. The red cloud (bow) in the middle is probably made of dust that is more metallic and cooler than the surrounding regions. The bright star in the middle of the red cloud, called HD 278942, is so luminous that it is likely what is causing most of the surrounding ring to glow. In fact its powerful stellar winds are what cleared out the surrounding warm dust and created the ring-shaped feature in the first place. The bright greenish-yellow region left of center (holly) is similar to the ring, though more dense. The bluish-white stars (silver bells) scattered throughout are stars located both in front of, and behind, the nebula.
Regions similar to this nebula are found near the band of the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky. The "wreath" is slightly off this band, near the boundary between the constellations of Perseus and Taurus, but at a relatively close distance of only about 1,000 light-years, the cloud is a still part of our Milky Way.
The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.
The green ring (evergreen) is made of tiny particles of warm dust whose composition is very similar to smog found here on Earth. The red cloud (bow) in the middle is probably made of dust that is more metallic and cooler than the surrounding regions. The bright star in the middle of the red cloud, called HD 278942, is so luminous that it is likely what is causing most of the surrounding ring to glow. In fact its powerful stellar winds are what cleared out the surrounding warm dust and created the ring-shaped feature in the first place. The bright greenish-yellow region left of center (holly) is similar to the ring, though more dense. The bluish-white stars (silver bells) scattered throughout are stars located both in front of, and behind, the nebula.
Regions similar to this nebula are found near the band of the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky. The "wreath" is slightly off this band, near the boundary between the constellations of Perseus and Taurus, but at a relatively close distance of only about 1,000 light-years, the cloud is a still part of our Milky Way.
The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.
May 29, 2013
Disaster on the water...
I wrote about this sometime ago. Over the weekend this 'boat' was launched in the north San Francisco bay, near San Rafael. It was built by a guy who poured his life's saving into a boat he designed and built with material from a local hardware store. He never built a bout, just houses, didn't have it designed, just built it. It is all plywood and 2x4 wood, not much fiberglass. Very unrealistic ideas of sailing and building. You will notice there are no windows in the main cabin, can't see from the back to the front.
 |
| on the water |
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| Inside... |
Lyra's Ring
I would look at this one hundred times a night when I was studying a star in the constellation Lyra, never looked like this in a scope.The Ring Nebula's distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist.
"The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle," said C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He leads a research team that used Hubble and several ground-based telescopes to obtain the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula.
"With Hubble's detail, we see a completely different shape than what's been thought about historically for this classic nebula," O'Dell said. "The new Hubble observations show the nebula in much clearer detail, and we see things are not as simple as we previously thought."
The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the constellation Lyra, the nebula is a popular target for amateur astronomers.
Previous observations by several telescopes had detected the gaseous material in the ring's central region. But the new view by Hubble's sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 shows the nebula's structure in more detail. O'Dell's team suggests the ring wraps around a blue, football-shaped structure. Each end of the structure protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring.
The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. In the Hubble image, the blue structure is the glow of helium. Radiation from the white dwarf star, the white dot in the center of the ring, is exciting the helium to glow. The white dwarf is the stellar remnant of a sun-like star that has exhausted its hydrogen fuel and has shed its outer layers of gas to gravitationally collapse to a compact object.
O'Dell's team was surprised at the detailed Hubble views of the dark, irregular knots of dense gas embedded along the inner rim of the ring, which look like spokes in a bicycle wheel. These gaseous tentacles formed when expanding hot gas pushed into cool gas ejected previously by the doomed star. The knots are more resistant to erosion by the wave of ultraviolet light unleashed by the star. The Hubble images have allowed the team to match up the knots with the spikes of light around the bright, main ring, which are a shadow effect. Astronomers have found similar knots in other planetary nebulae.
All of this gas was expelled by the central star about 4,000 years ago. The original star was several times more massive than our sun. After billions of years converting hydrogen to helium in its core, the star began to run out of fuel. It then ballooned in size, becoming a red giant. During this phase, the star shed its outer gaseous layers into space and began to collapse as fusion reactions began to die out. A gusher of ultraviolet light from the dying star energized the gas, making it glow.
The outer rings were formed when faster-moving gas slammed into slower-moving material. The nebula is expanding at more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the center is moving faster than the expansion of the main ring. O'Dell's team measured the nebula's expansion by comparing the new Hubble observations with Hubble studies made in 1998.
The Ring Nebula will continue to expand for another 10,000 years, a short phase in the lifetime of the star. The nebula will become fainter and fainter until it merges with the interstellar medium.
Studying the Ring Nebula's fate will provide insight into the sun's demise in another 6 billion years. The sun is less massive than the Ring Nebula's progenitor star, so it will not have an opulent ending.
"When the sun becomes a white dwarf, it will heat more slowly after it ejects its outer gaseous layers," O'Dell said. "The material will be farther away once it becomes hot enough to illuminate the gas. This larger distance means the sun's nebula will be fainter because it is more extended."
May 28, 2013
Post 800
Weekend sailing trips are always a lot of fun. This last weekend I spent the three days in the Bay Area sailing on my brothers boat. Was nice for a couple of days but the wind was up there. As normal this time of year, the wind can blow in the 20 to 25 knot range and we went out in a good 18 knots, trouble was the wind was coming from the north and it made sailing a little harder.
On the first afternoon we went out for a short sail and enjoyed the sun and had good air all day. We headed over towards Red Rock and the San Rafael bridge. As always a lot of ferry boats and ships were working the water but we had no problems. In the evening a 'beer can' race was starting so we decided to head for home and get supplies for the rest of the weekend.
After dropping our stuff we headed tot he store for supplies and stopped at a local taquiria in San Rafael. Really good food and cheep. Way more food than I could eat and good authentic salsa.
The next day we were going to sail so we grabbed our stuff and headed to the boat. It was already blowing in the am and we kind of decided to wait to see what happened with the wind. Off to the store for the last supplies. Well the wind just kept going up and at 20 knots we said no way and headed home.
We grabbed our things and headed west into Marin for a day of relaxation. My brothers girlfriend was along and we all headed out to have a few drinks and just relax. Later in the day we headed to the 'cabin' and made some great food and drinks. A few friends came by and the night lasted till the morning.
The next day we all were going to meet at the Tomalas Bay Oyster company. We knew it would be crowed but it was a total zoo. We never hear that they reserved tables, it was so crowded we just grabbed a bag of 50 and a bag of 20 oysters and headed to a small park at a beach close by.
More people came and the party started, big picnic on the sand and we cleaned all to oysters and broke out wine, beer and more food. Sunny and no crowd, plus good food, a nice Sunday afternoon.
Later after we got back to the cabin, we decided to make Pialla on the BBQ and my brother the chef cooked up a massive pan. So good!!! We ate at 9:30 and were up past midnight.
Monday brought the drive to town and back to the boat. No wind... So we headed to the horse races to kill time till I had to fly home. Not bad of a holiday weekend.
 |
| Sailing near Red Rock |
After dropping our stuff we headed tot he store for supplies and stopped at a local taquiria in San Rafael. Really good food and cheep. Way more food than I could eat and good authentic salsa.
The next day we were going to sail so we grabbed our stuff and headed to the boat. It was already blowing in the am and we kind of decided to wait to see what happened with the wind. Off to the store for the last supplies. Well the wind just kept going up and at 20 knots we said no way and headed home.
We grabbed our things and headed west into Marin for a day of relaxation. My brothers girlfriend was along and we all headed out to have a few drinks and just relax. Later in the day we headed to the 'cabin' and made some great food and drinks. A few friends came by and the night lasted till the morning.The next day we all were going to meet at the Tomalas Bay Oyster company. We knew it would be crowed but it was a total zoo. We never hear that they reserved tables, it was so crowded we just grabbed a bag of 50 and a bag of 20 oysters and headed to a small park at a beach close by.
More people came and the party started, big picnic on the sand and we cleaned all to oysters and broke out wine, beer and more food. Sunny and no crowd, plus good food, a nice Sunday afternoon.Later after we got back to the cabin, we decided to make Pialla on the BBQ and my brother the chef cooked up a massive pan. So good!!! We ate at 9:30 and were up past midnight.
Monday brought the drive to town and back to the boat. No wind... So we headed to the horse races to kill time till I had to fly home. Not bad of a holiday weekend.
May 21, 2013
No post today....
To much to do today, no time to post..
I hurt someone today with words, words that I spoke and thought I could never say. I hurt someone I cared for, I hurt myself in doing it. What a very few sounds from your mouth can do, what terrible hurt it can bring. I thought I was right, but I wasn't, I hurt my best friend today because I hurt inside, a crushing pain, a broken heart, a loss of trust.
I hurt my friend today, and I have to try to fix it.......
I hurt someone today with words, words that I spoke and thought I could never say. I hurt someone I cared for, I hurt myself in doing it. What a very few sounds from your mouth can do, what terrible hurt it can bring. I thought I was right, but I wasn't, I hurt my best friend today because I hurt inside, a crushing pain, a broken heart, a loss of trust.
I hurt my friend today, and I have to try to fix it.......
May 20, 2013
Richat Structure
Follow up to Rossa
Follow up:
In a press conference in Alameda Friday, Patrizio Bertelli, president of the Luna Rossa Challenge America's Cup syndicate, made it abundantly clear that he has serious concerns about the safety of AC72 racing in this summer's America's Cup and Louis Vuitton challenger series. However, his team is not pulling out.
Referring to the May 9 breakup of the Artemis cat dubbed 'Big Red', which took the life of crewman Bart Simpson, Bertelli said, "The America's Cup has always had ups and downs, but this is much more serious." Although the AC72 class was supposedly designed to sail in as much as 30 knots of true wind, Bertelli insists, "We want to have wind limits." He seeks an agreement by all teams that they would not race if wind strength was higher than a specified velocity — probably around 25 knots.
But limits would seem to compromise a fundamental goal of Larry Ellison's AC34 vision. The America's Cup Event Authority CEO Stephan Barclay was forthright in an article last week in Bloomberg Businessweek about how the current format evolved: "In recent years, we’ve wanted to put the Cup on a sounder financial footing and make it accessible to people other than the very, very wealthy." One step in fulfilling that goal was placing the race venue right next to the San Francisco Cityfront where any and all could observe the races. Another step — and perhaps the most important one — was negotiating extensive television coverage, and facilitating the development of the LiveLine computer graphics that will help both sailors and non-sailors understand who is ahead, where the wind's coming from, where the course boundaries are, and much more.
"For the sake of television," continued Barclay, "the races had to start on time. You can’t have this huge buildup to a race and then have the television saying, 'delayed due to lack of wind,' which is a huge problem in sailing.
"The answer to these issues was to use a catamaran instead of the monohull boats we’ve traditionally used in the Cup. Catamarans are very fast, can sail in very light or strong winds, and get so close to the shore that fans can hear the sailors talking."
But Luna Rossa's Bertelli made his priorities clear: "We are not here to produce a (TV) show," he said flatly. When asked how wind limits might affect TV scheduling, he said, "You should direct your questions to Mr. Ellison."
Also notable is that Luna Rossa chose to ignore the suggestion by the America's Cup Review Committee (empaneled to scrutinize Big Red's breakup), that all teams should observe a moratorium on sailing until late next week. The Italian team's one and only AC72 was seen foiling across the Bay Saturday in moderate winds — and she was certainly lookin' good.
Referring to the May 9 breakup of the Artemis cat dubbed 'Big Red', which took the life of crewman Bart Simpson, Bertelli said, "The America's Cup has always had ups and downs, but this is much more serious." Although the AC72 class was supposedly designed to sail in as much as 30 knots of true wind, Bertelli insists, "We want to have wind limits." He seeks an agreement by all teams that they would not race if wind strength was higher than a specified velocity — probably around 25 knots.
But limits would seem to compromise a fundamental goal of Larry Ellison's AC34 vision. The America's Cup Event Authority CEO Stephan Barclay was forthright in an article last week in Bloomberg Businessweek about how the current format evolved: "In recent years, we’ve wanted to put the Cup on a sounder financial footing and make it accessible to people other than the very, very wealthy." One step in fulfilling that goal was placing the race venue right next to the San Francisco Cityfront where any and all could observe the races. Another step — and perhaps the most important one — was negotiating extensive television coverage, and facilitating the development of the LiveLine computer graphics that will help both sailors and non-sailors understand who is ahead, where the wind's coming from, where the course boundaries are, and much more.
"For the sake of television," continued Barclay, "the races had to start on time. You can’t have this huge buildup to a race and then have the television saying, 'delayed due to lack of wind,' which is a huge problem in sailing.
"The answer to these issues was to use a catamaran instead of the monohull boats we’ve traditionally used in the Cup. Catamarans are very fast, can sail in very light or strong winds, and get so close to the shore that fans can hear the sailors talking."
But Luna Rossa's Bertelli made his priorities clear: "We are not here to produce a (TV) show," he said flatly. When asked how wind limits might affect TV scheduling, he said, "You should direct your questions to Mr. Ellison."
Also notable is that Luna Rossa chose to ignore the suggestion by the America's Cup Review Committee (empaneled to scrutinize Big Red's breakup), that all teams should observe a moratorium on sailing until late next week. The Italian team's one and only AC72 was seen foiling across the Bay Saturday in moderate winds — and she was certainly lookin' good.
B2B
"I don't do it for the serious runners since I don't want to distract them, but I turn it on right after they go by," said David Minor, who's been sprinkling sweaty runners for nine years. "It cools everyone down as they're climbing this big hill."
The party atmosphere prevailed under clear skies for the 102nd Bay to Breakers, despite the watchful eyes of an expanded police presence.
From elite Ethiopian distance runners to people dressed as hot dogs, nearly 30,000 registered participants and many other unofficial entrants took off from Howard and Main streets, heading 7.46 miles to a fog-free Ocean Beach.
The first to cross the finish line was 23-year-old Tolossa Gedefa Fufi of Ethiopia, who did it in 35:01 - the slowest winning time since 2003. Ryan Hall, 30, who was trying to be the first American to win since 1986, finished second in 35:40.
The number of registered runners was down slightly from last year, yet a seemingly endless flow of racers poured through city streets.
Miles to the west, temperatures hovered in the 60s, and the beach was packed. Naked runners further communed with nature by dipping their feet in the surf.
Along the Great Highway, people stood in line for bathrooms and T-shirts. But the longest wait was for a 21-and-over wristband, a pass to drink beer in the middle of the road beside decorative shrubs and potted palms.
The place was packed by midmorning - but quickly thinned as the party moved to the Panhandle, or back home for a hot bath.
Luna Rossa
Luna Rossa quickly and effectively demonstrated the toothlessness of the AC
Safety Review Panel on Saturday, flipping Iain Murray the bird by launching and
sailing their AC72 for the first time on SF Bay despite a
clear request from the panel for all teams to suspend sailing until the
22nd. You can tell ACRM are pissed; they won’t
even report on Luna Rossa’s first sail themselves…meanwhile, Dalton and
Bertelli continue
to try to head off any potential rule changes
that might disadvantage their
designs…the politics are getting nastier as the AC draws closer…
May 17, 2013
MOD70
The MOD70 trimaran Orion, hull #2, owned by Thomas Siebel was shipped from Europe to Banderas Bay for training a little more than a month ago. She's expected to head north to San Francisco in the next few weeks.
The MOD70 is a one-design class that was created to replace the fast but fragile ORMA 60 trimarans. Last year seven of them raced across the Atlantic, and during the first 24 hours they all covered over 650 miles. It's our understanding that the top speed has been just under 40 knots. There was also a MOD70 inshore circuit in Europe.
The MOD70s, or something similar, are what should be used for the America's Cup. Unlike the AC72s, they are one-design and therefore much less expensive to build and maintain. Unlike the AC72s, they use soft sails instead of wings, and their masts are 100 feet rather than 131 feet. While nobody is going to claim that you can't flip a MOD70, unlike the AC72s, they are ocean-proven and much less edgy. Indeed, even though they are 10 feet longer than the ORMA 60s, the sail area was reduced by 5% for greater safety. Thanks to the soft sails, it's much easier for average sailors to identify with MOD70s.
True, MOD70s might be a couple of knots slower at max speed than the AC72s on the Bay, and they don't foil. But at around 40 knots of maximum boat speed, is anyone going to notice?
The MOD70s were designed by Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost, who have designed countless racing and cruising multihulls. Indeed, the America's Cup has called Prévost to be part of the team investigating the destruction of the Artemis AC72 and the death of Bart Simpson.
The MOD70 is a one-design class that was created to replace the fast but fragile ORMA 60 trimarans. Last year seven of them raced across the Atlantic, and during the first 24 hours they all covered over 650 miles. It's our understanding that the top speed has been just under 40 knots. There was also a MOD70 inshore circuit in Europe.The MOD70s, or something similar, are what should be used for the America's Cup. Unlike the AC72s, they are one-design and therefore much less expensive to build and maintain. Unlike the AC72s, they use soft sails instead of wings, and their masts are 100 feet rather than 131 feet. While nobody is going to claim that you can't flip a MOD70, unlike the AC72s, they are ocean-proven and much less edgy. Indeed, even though they are 10 feet longer than the ORMA 60s, the sail area was reduced by 5% for greater safety. Thanks to the soft sails, it's much easier for average sailors to identify with MOD70s.
True, MOD70s might be a couple of knots slower at max speed than the AC72s on the Bay, and they don't foil. But at around 40 knots of maximum boat speed, is anyone going to notice?
The MOD70s were designed by Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost, who have designed countless racing and cruising multihulls. Indeed, the America's Cup has called Prévost to be part of the team investigating the destruction of the Artemis AC72 and the death of Bart Simpson.
Sample an asteroid
NASA's first mission to sample an asteroid is moving ahead into development and
testing in preparation for its launch in 2016.
The Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) passed a confirmation review Wednesday called Key Decision Point (KDP)-C. NASA officials reviewed a series of detailed project assessments and authorized the spacecraft's continuation into the development phase.
OSIRIS-REx will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2018 and return a sample of it to Earth in 2023.
"Successfully passing KDP-C is a major milestone for the project," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This means NASA believes we have an executable plan to return a sample from Bennu. It now falls on the project and its development team members to execute that plan."
Bennu could hold clues to the origin of the solar system. OSIRIS-REx will map the asteroid's global properties, measure non-gravitational forces and provide observations that can be compared with data obtained by telescope observations from Earth. OSIRIS-REx will collect a minimum of 2 ounces (60 grams) of surface material.
"The entire OSIRIS-REx team has worked very hard to get to this point," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "We have a long way to go before we arrive at Bennu, but I have every confidence when we do, we will have built a supremely capable system to return a sample of this primitive asteroid."
The mission will be a vital part of NASA's plans to find, study, capture and relocate an asteroid for exploration by astronauts. NASA recently announced an asteroid initiative proposing a strategy to leverage human and robotic activities for the first human mission to an asteroid while also accelerating efforts to improve detection and characterization of asteroids.
The Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) passed a confirmation review Wednesday called Key Decision Point (KDP)-C. NASA officials reviewed a series of detailed project assessments and authorized the spacecraft's continuation into the development phase.
OSIRIS-REx will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2018 and return a sample of it to Earth in 2023.
"Successfully passing KDP-C is a major milestone for the project," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This means NASA believes we have an executable plan to return a sample from Bennu. It now falls on the project and its development team members to execute that plan."
Bennu could hold clues to the origin of the solar system. OSIRIS-REx will map the asteroid's global properties, measure non-gravitational forces and provide observations that can be compared with data obtained by telescope observations from Earth. OSIRIS-REx will collect a minimum of 2 ounces (60 grams) of surface material.
"The entire OSIRIS-REx team has worked very hard to get to this point," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "We have a long way to go before we arrive at Bennu, but I have every confidence when we do, we will have built a supremely capable system to return a sample of this primitive asteroid."
The mission will be a vital part of NASA's plans to find, study, capture and relocate an asteroid for exploration by astronauts. NASA recently announced an asteroid initiative proposing a strategy to leverage human and robotic activities for the first human mission to an asteroid while also accelerating efforts to improve detection and characterization of asteroids.
May 16, 2013
Black Hole-Powered Jets Plow Into Galaxy
This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the NSF’s Very Large Array (pink).
This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The estimated mass of the black hole is about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. The ends of the jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy.
The X-ray data show a different aspect of this galaxy, tracing the location of hot gas. The bright X-rays in the center of the image mark a pool of million-degree gas around the black hole. Some of this material may eventually be consumed by the black hole, and the magnetized, whirlpool of gas near the black hole could in turn, trigger more output to the radio jet.
Most of the low-energy X-rays from the vicinity of the black hole are absorbed by dust and gas, probably in the shape of a giant doughnut around the black hole. This doughnut, or torus blocks all the optical light produced near the black hole, so astronomers refer to this type of source as a hidden or buried black hole. The optical light seen in the image is from the stars in the galaxy.
North Atlantic and Francis Joyon
Francis Joyon is in North Cove
Marina in New York taking care of his maxi trimaran IDEC. On Thursday 16th May,
the official stand-by began as he awaits a weather opportunity to tackle the
North Atlantic record between Ambrose Light and the Lizard. A legendary
record.
Francis Joyon is in the thick of it. From Thursday 16th May, in association with his faithful router, Jean-Yves Bernot, the helmsman of the maxi-trimaran IDEC has been watching the weather closely. The goal is to find the right low-pressure area – or preferably one which strengthens off the Gulf of Saint Lawrence – to be able to sail straignt across the North Atlantic in under 5 days 19 hours and 29 minutes. Or in other words keeping up an average speed of 21 knots… These figures may appear beyond belief and out of reach of ordinary sailors. But Francis Joyon is not just anyone and the maxi-trimaran IDEC is not just any old boat.
Fortunately, as when sailing solo, the task is truly reserved for an elite. We can remember how Ellen MacArthur just missed out on it, and indeed only five solo sailors have managed to improve on the record launched by Bruno Peyron back in 1987. A time beaten by Florence Arthaud, before Bruno Peyron grabbed the record back. Then, there was Laurent Bourgnon and yes, already up there, Francis Joyon. It was in 2005 aboard the first IDEC trimaran (6 days and 4 hours). In 2008, Thomas Coville bettered that time with the record that is still his today after completing the voyage in 5 days 19 hours and 29 minutes.
Francis Joyon is in the thick of it. From Thursday 16th May, in association with his faithful router, Jean-Yves Bernot, the helmsman of the maxi-trimaran IDEC has been watching the weather closely. The goal is to find the right low-pressure area – or preferably one which strengthens off the Gulf of Saint Lawrence – to be able to sail straignt across the North Atlantic in under 5 days 19 hours and 29 minutes. Or in other words keeping up an average speed of 21 knots… These figures may appear beyond belief and out of reach of ordinary sailors. But Francis Joyon is not just anyone and the maxi-trimaran IDEC is not just any old boat.
Fortunately, as when sailing solo, the task is truly reserved for an elite. We can remember how Ellen MacArthur just missed out on it, and indeed only five solo sailors have managed to improve on the record launched by Bruno Peyron back in 1987. A time beaten by Florence Arthaud, before Bruno Peyron grabbed the record back. Then, there was Laurent Bourgnon and yes, already up there, Francis Joyon. It was in 2005 aboard the first IDEC trimaran (6 days and 4 hours). In 2008, Thomas Coville bettered that time with the record that is still his today after completing the voyage in 5 days 19 hours and 29 minutes.
IRS bombshell
by Theresa Riley:
Friday’s IRS bombshell — the revelation that a Cincinnati field office (and perhaps others) was targeting conservative social welfare groups for special scrutiny — has generated more outrage over the past few days than even the IRS is used to receiving.
The president and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are falling over themselves to express their shock and indignation over the scandal. President Obama said it was “outrageous.” Rep. Darrell Issa of California told just about anyone who would listen how upset he was, saying in a statement that “the fact that Americans were targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs is unconscionable.” And House Speaker John Boehner was blunt: “My question is who’s going to jail over this scandal?”
There’s no doubt that what the IRS did was wrong. Officials claim that the targeting wasn’t politically motivated, but a misguided attempt to more efficiently weed out political groups posing as social welfare nonprofits. In 2010, the year some IRS functionaries started searching for key words like “patriot” and “tea party” in tax forms, the number of groups registered as 501(c)4s and campaigning on behalf of candidates started trending, mostly on the Republican side, and were outspending super PACs by a margin of 3-2.
There are distinct advantages to having 501(c)4 status. As Jeffrey Toobin points out at NewYorker.com, thanks to Citizens United, there are no limits on the amount of money you can accept from corporations and private donors, and no limits on what you can spend. You don’t have to pay taxes or disclose donors. The catch is that electioneering cannot be your primary activity. But as Toobin observes, “leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work.”
Campaign reformer Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 tells The Washington Post‘s Dylan Matthews that the IRS made two mistakes.
“They got it wrong in targeting conservative groups for review based on their names and their identified interests, and they got it wrong in not investigating and acting against groups that in our view were blatantly abusing the tax laws by improperly claiming to be 501(c)(4) groups so they could keep the donors paying for their campaign activities secret from the American people.”
Over the past two years, Wertheimer and others filed more than a dozen complaints with the IRS seeking an investigation of larger social welfare groups founded by political operatives like Karl Rove and former Obama administration aides. They received no response. Instead, the IRS focused on small somewhat insignificant groups in what their inspector general’s report called a confused and mismanaged approach to the problem.
Although many are worried that the backlash will discourage the IRS from pursuing political groups posing as social welfare groups in the future, Sheila Krumholz, the director of Center for Responsive Politics and this week’s guest on Moyers & Company, told The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein that she thinks the affair is “crystallizing the problem.”
“On the one hand we want the IRS to fulfill its oversight duties. On the other hand there’s so much uncertainty about what the rules are and what they should be. What are those duties? What should they have been doing? They’re saying they made mistakes. They’ll be held to account for those. But the larger problem still is present.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) proposed a bill yesterday that would prevent the IRS from targeting tax-exempt organizations based on their names or ideologies. Last year’s DISCLOSE Act is being updated for reintroduction and a new bipartisan bill, The Follow the Money Act, proposed by Senators Wyden (D-Ore.) and Murkowski (R-Alaska) was introduced last month. But ultimately the IRS (or Congress) needs to decide whether these organizations should be allowed to continue engaging in political activities, and if so, produce clear guidelines on the percentage of money that can be used for that purpose. Until that happens, dark money will continue to pollute our political process.
Friday’s IRS bombshell — the revelation that a Cincinnati field office (and perhaps others) was targeting conservative social welfare groups for special scrutiny — has generated more outrage over the past few days than even the IRS is used to receiving.
The president and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are falling over themselves to express their shock and indignation over the scandal. President Obama said it was “outrageous.” Rep. Darrell Issa of California told just about anyone who would listen how upset he was, saying in a statement that “the fact that Americans were targeted by the IRS because of their political beliefs is unconscionable.” And House Speaker John Boehner was blunt: “My question is who’s going to jail over this scandal?”
There’s no doubt that what the IRS did was wrong. Officials claim that the targeting wasn’t politically motivated, but a misguided attempt to more efficiently weed out political groups posing as social welfare nonprofits. In 2010, the year some IRS functionaries started searching for key words like “patriot” and “tea party” in tax forms, the number of groups registered as 501(c)4s and campaigning on behalf of candidates started trending, mostly on the Republican side, and were outspending super PACs by a margin of 3-2.
There are distinct advantages to having 501(c)4 status. As Jeffrey Toobin points out at NewYorker.com, thanks to Citizens United, there are no limits on the amount of money you can accept from corporations and private donors, and no limits on what you can spend. You don’t have to pay taxes or disclose donors. The catch is that electioneering cannot be your primary activity. But as Toobin observes, “leading up to the 2012 elections, many conservative organizations, nominally 501(c)(4)s, were all but explicitly political in their work.”
Campaign reformer Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 tells The Washington Post‘s Dylan Matthews that the IRS made two mistakes.
“They got it wrong in targeting conservative groups for review based on their names and their identified interests, and they got it wrong in not investigating and acting against groups that in our view were blatantly abusing the tax laws by improperly claiming to be 501(c)(4) groups so they could keep the donors paying for their campaign activities secret from the American people.”
Over the past two years, Wertheimer and others filed more than a dozen complaints with the IRS seeking an investigation of larger social welfare groups founded by political operatives like Karl Rove and former Obama administration aides. They received no response. Instead, the IRS focused on small somewhat insignificant groups in what their inspector general’s report called a confused and mismanaged approach to the problem.
Although many are worried that the backlash will discourage the IRS from pursuing political groups posing as social welfare groups in the future, Sheila Krumholz, the director of Center for Responsive Politics and this week’s guest on Moyers & Company, told The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein that she thinks the affair is “crystallizing the problem.”
“On the one hand we want the IRS to fulfill its oversight duties. On the other hand there’s so much uncertainty about what the rules are and what they should be. What are those duties? What should they have been doing? They’re saying they made mistakes. They’ll be held to account for those. But the larger problem still is present.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) proposed a bill yesterday that would prevent the IRS from targeting tax-exempt organizations based on their names or ideologies. Last year’s DISCLOSE Act is being updated for reintroduction and a new bipartisan bill, The Follow the Money Act, proposed by Senators Wyden (D-Ore.) and Murkowski (R-Alaska) was introduced last month. But ultimately the IRS (or Congress) needs to decide whether these organizations should be allowed to continue engaging in political activities, and if so, produce clear guidelines on the percentage of money that can be used for that purpose. Until that happens, dark money will continue to pollute our political process.
Kepler Mission Manager Update
Kepler is doing extreme measurements of stars looking for planets:
We attempted to return to reaction wheel control as the spacecraft rotated into communication, and commanded a stop rotation. Initially, it appeared that all three wheels responded and that rotation had been successfully stopped, but reaction wheel 4 remained at full torque while the spin rate dropped to zero. This is a clear indication that there has been an internal failure within the reaction wheel, likely a structural failure of the wheel bearing. The spacecraft was then transitioned back to Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode.
An Anomaly Review Board concurred that the data appear to unambiguously indicate a wheel 4 failure, and that the team’s priority is to complete preparations to enter Point Rest State. Point Rest State is a loosely-pointed, thruster-controlled state that minimizes fuels usage while providing a continuous X-band communication downlink. The software to execute that state was loaded to the spacecraft last week, and last night the team completed the upload of the parameters the software will use.
The spacecraft is stable and safe, if still burning fuel. Our fuel budget is sufficient that we can take due caution while we finish our planning. In its current mode, our fuel will last for several months. Point Rest State would extend that period to years.
We have requested and received additional NASA Deep Space Network communication coverage, and this morning the Anomaly Review Board approved the transition to Point Rest State later today. Because this is a new operating mode of the spacecraft, the team will closely monitor the spacecraft, but no other immediate actions are planned. We will take the next several days and weeks to assess our options and develop new command products. These options are likely to include steps to attempt to recover wheel functionality and to investigate the utility of a hybrid mode, using both wheels and thrusters.
With the failure of a second reaction wheel, it's unlikely that the spacecraft will be able to return to the high pointing accuracy that enables its high-precision photometry. However, no decision has been made to end data collection.
Kepler had successfully completed its primary three-and-a-half year mission and entered an extended mission phase in November 2012.
Even if data collection were to end, the mission has substantial quantities of data on the ground yet to be fully analyzed, and the string of scientific discoveries is expected to continue for years to come.
Dream Chaser flight vehicle
Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems Dream Chaser flight vehicle
arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., Wednesday to
begin tests of its flight and runway landing systems. The tests are part of pre-negotiated, paid-for-performance milestones with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which is facilitating U.S.-led companies' development of spacecraft and rockets that can launch from American soil. The overall goal of CCP is to achieve safe, reliable and cost-effective U.S. human access to and from the International Space Station and low-Earth orbit.
Tests at Dryden will include tow, captive-carry and free-flight tests of the Dream Chaser. A truck will tow the craft down a runway to validate performance of the nose strut, brakes and tires. The captive-carry flights will further examine the loads it will encounter during flight as it is carried by an Erickson Skycrane helicopter. The free flight later this year will test Dream Chaser's aerodynamics through landing.
Meanwhile, on the east coast, several NASA astronauts will be at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., this week to fly simulations of a Dream Chaser approach and landing to help evaluate the spacecraft's subsonic handling. The test will measure how well the spacecraft would handle in a number of different atmospheric conditions and assess its guidance and navigation performance.
"Unique public-private partnerships like the one between NASA and Sierra Nevada Corporation are creating an industry capable of building the next generation of rockets and spacecraft that will carry U.S. astronauts to the scientific proving ground of low-Earth orbit," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations in Washington. "NASA centers around the country paved the way for 50 years of American human spaceflight, and they're actively working with our partners to test innovative commercial space systems that will continue to ensure American leadership in exploration and discovery."
The Dream Chaser Space System is based on Langley's Horizontal Lander HL-20 lifting body design concept. The design builds on years of analysis and wind tunnel testing by Langley engineers during the 1980s and 1990s. Langley and SNC joined forces six years ago to update the HL-20 design in the Dream Chaser orbital crew vehicle. In those years SNC has worked to refine the spacecraft design. SNC will continue to test models in Langley wind tunnels. Langley researchers also helped develop a cockpit simulator at SNC's facility in Louisville, Colo., and the flight simulations being assessed at the center.
NASA is partnered with SNC, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and The Boeing Company to meet CCP milestones for integrated crew transportation systems under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative. Advances made by these companies under their funded Space Act Agreements ultimately are intended to lead to the availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and commercial companies.
While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in the solar system.
May 15, 2013
What has the world come too?????
By: Mark Morford:
Two Chechen-American idiots watch too much Internet and flagellate themselves into detonating a couple homemade bombs in Boston, and suddenly it’s an epic domestic terror attack that floods the nation with fear and panic, shuts down an entire major city and triggers the President of the United States to call Vladimir Putin directly, as an ever-whiny Congress re-debates immigration reform and “pressure cooker” shifts meaning in the American lexicon forevermore.
Meanwhile, Mother’s Day. A parade celebrating same courses through some rough neighborhoods of New Orleans. Suddenly, a 19-year-old thug (at least one, maybe more) of no greater or lesser quality than the idiot Tsarnaevs whips out his NRA-adored handgun and shoot 19 people, three of them children, for no reason whatsoever save that he, too, wished to lash out at his perceived enemies, the cops, the world.
The reaction? A numb shrug. A tragic sigh. Just another case of urban street violence that barely registers in the American consciousness because, hey, gun attacks are just the American way, aren’t they? And we’re powerless to stop them, right? Because guns are awesome? Because violence is just who we are? Right.
Besides, poor black people shooting each other in the mean streets of New Orleans? Who cares about that? It’s not like that teenager was shooting white children in Connecticut or something. Now that would be terrible.
Such a dicey and delusional species are we. Such masters of self-deception, of bizarre equivocation, cherry picking our tragedies and our collective neurosis as we are told by the warped media, nasty politicos, hate-radio pundits and marketers of all kinds just which thugs and demons we should fear most, and which merely exist somewhere in blighted, faraway neighborhood you need not care about.
What’s your tremor du jour, citizen? Hooligans with guns? A twitchy NRA with even more guns? Chechen morons with unregistered cookware? The IRS?
Ah, the IRS, doing what the IRS does best: being sort of hateful, targeting various groups it doesn’t like, adding pressure to groups it feels are some sort of threat, nailing little people from whom it feels it can suck some extra dollars. Nothing new there.
Except now, now the IRS overstepped even its own ignoble rules in targeting some dumber-than-thou conservative groups, right around the last election. How utterly stupid. How utterly embarrassing. How utterly pointless.
Then again, who doesn’t know the IRS targets specific demographics all the time? Who doesn’t know that this is essentially what the IRS does? Do you know how many (liberal, wonderful, not the slightest bit rich or threatening) friends I have who run small businesses that the IRS has decided to audit, for no other reason than it’s far easier to scrape a few bucks from 10,000 little guys than it is to go after one heavily armored, tax-exempt megacorp? Lots, that’s how many.
Do you know who’s laughing hardest about the current IRS microscandal? Exxon. Apple. Microsoft. Monsanto. Genentech. All those giants of industry that escape billions in taxes by way of various loopholes, exemptions, armies of expensive tax attorneys. Carry on, rich people – go get richer. It’s OK, no one’s looking.
The worst part of this little IRS scandal? Nope, not that Obama is having another Worst Week Ever. It’s that the Tea Party is suddenly back in the national spotlight, all righteous and spittle-flecked, full of its usual inbred nonsense, when it was all but dead a week ago. Worse still: If the GOP has its way, we’ll be hearing the Tea Party’s nasally shriek through the 2016 elections. Thanks, IRS.
Obama and Benghazi? Obama and the IRS? Obama’s Justice Department going after the AP and secretly nabbing months’ worth of phone records of its reporters and editors in an “unprecedented overreach?” Jesus. Ugly all around. As Jon Stewart so perfectly put it, “Congratulations, President Obama — conspiracy theorists who generally can survive in anaerobic environments have just had an algae bloom dropped on their f–king heads, thus removing the last arrow in your pro-governance quiver: Skepticism about your opponents.”
Not mentioned in this ungodly hellstorm of GOP-empowering gassiness? The lesser but still feisty tale of the federal judge who’s been unloading all sorts of awesome sass all over Obama’s FDA, Kathleen Sibelius in particular.
I speak of the sort of amazing Judge Edward Korman, of course, a 70-year-old Reagan appointee who’s been just falling just short of calling Sibelius a lying, two-faced dingleberry for her duplicitous and completely impossible-to-defend attempts to block the over-the-counter sale of Plan B to girls of all ages, which Korman recently ordered via a landmark decision.
Have you followed this delightful tale? It’s a personal favorite for a variety of reasons, one of which is, while I hate to add more ammo to those attacking the Obama administration right now, there simply are no right-wingers championing Plan B, or Korman’s position. He’s acting alone. He’s acting brilliantly. He’s empowering all young girls to get access to safe birth control. The GOP hates that.
What’s more, he’s speaking truth to power like you almost never hear at this level. The fact that the power in question is part of the Obama administration makes this story sort of backwards and bittersweet, to say the least. But what the hell; you take what you can get.
Which is why it’s safe to say, all is not lost on this odd and bleak news cycle. While it’s true Obama is having a terrible week (despite a surprisingly healthy economic outlook and a record-high Dow), we can always find the gems among the grime, the rainbow amidst the ugly political thunderstorm.
Look, there’s another one right now, beaming bright over Minnesota, which just became the 12th state in the union to approve gay marriage. Can you believe it? Is it not a thing?
Wait, you must look closer. For Minnesota is not just another state that defied expectations and changed direction sort of radically from just last November, when a referendum banning gay marriage forevermore almost made it into the state constitution.
Minnesota is, of course, also home to the Tea Party’s twitchiest nutball, its most flagrantly insane hood ornament, one Rep. Michele Bachmann, a goofy homophobe of epic proportions who once dragged a squadron of conservative “prayer warriors” into senate chambers to ask God to help smite the evil gays.
And lo, it would appear God has finally responded to Michele Bachmann, and the nation’s right-wing homophobes in general. Can you see it? Why, it looks like a very large, very bright, very unmistakable… middle finger.
Two Chechen-American idiots watch too much Internet and flagellate themselves into detonating a couple homemade bombs in Boston, and suddenly it’s an epic domestic terror attack that floods the nation with fear and panic, shuts down an entire major city and triggers the President of the United States to call Vladimir Putin directly, as an ever-whiny Congress re-debates immigration reform and “pressure cooker” shifts meaning in the American lexicon forevermore.
Meanwhile, Mother’s Day. A parade celebrating same courses through some rough neighborhoods of New Orleans. Suddenly, a 19-year-old thug (at least one, maybe more) of no greater or lesser quality than the idiot Tsarnaevs whips out his NRA-adored handgun and shoot 19 people, three of them children, for no reason whatsoever save that he, too, wished to lash out at his perceived enemies, the cops, the world.
The reaction? A numb shrug. A tragic sigh. Just another case of urban street violence that barely registers in the American consciousness because, hey, gun attacks are just the American way, aren’t they? And we’re powerless to stop them, right? Because guns are awesome? Because violence is just who we are? Right.
Besides, poor black people shooting each other in the mean streets of New Orleans? Who cares about that? It’s not like that teenager was shooting white children in Connecticut or something. Now that would be terrible.
Such a dicey and delusional species are we. Such masters of self-deception, of bizarre equivocation, cherry picking our tragedies and our collective neurosis as we are told by the warped media, nasty politicos, hate-radio pundits and marketers of all kinds just which thugs and demons we should fear most, and which merely exist somewhere in blighted, faraway neighborhood you need not care about.
What’s your tremor du jour, citizen? Hooligans with guns? A twitchy NRA with even more guns? Chechen morons with unregistered cookware? The IRS?
Ah, the IRS, doing what the IRS does best: being sort of hateful, targeting various groups it doesn’t like, adding pressure to groups it feels are some sort of threat, nailing little people from whom it feels it can suck some extra dollars. Nothing new there.
Except now, now the IRS overstepped even its own ignoble rules in targeting some dumber-than-thou conservative groups, right around the last election. How utterly stupid. How utterly embarrassing. How utterly pointless.
Then again, who doesn’t know the IRS targets specific demographics all the time? Who doesn’t know that this is essentially what the IRS does? Do you know how many (liberal, wonderful, not the slightest bit rich or threatening) friends I have who run small businesses that the IRS has decided to audit, for no other reason than it’s far easier to scrape a few bucks from 10,000 little guys than it is to go after one heavily armored, tax-exempt megacorp? Lots, that’s how many.
Do you know who’s laughing hardest about the current IRS microscandal? Exxon. Apple. Microsoft. Monsanto. Genentech. All those giants of industry that escape billions in taxes by way of various loopholes, exemptions, armies of expensive tax attorneys. Carry on, rich people – go get richer. It’s OK, no one’s looking.
The worst part of this little IRS scandal? Nope, not that Obama is having another Worst Week Ever. It’s that the Tea Party is suddenly back in the national spotlight, all righteous and spittle-flecked, full of its usual inbred nonsense, when it was all but dead a week ago. Worse still: If the GOP has its way, we’ll be hearing the Tea Party’s nasally shriek through the 2016 elections. Thanks, IRS.
Obama and Benghazi? Obama and the IRS? Obama’s Justice Department going after the AP and secretly nabbing months’ worth of phone records of its reporters and editors in an “unprecedented overreach?” Jesus. Ugly all around. As Jon Stewart so perfectly put it, “Congratulations, President Obama — conspiracy theorists who generally can survive in anaerobic environments have just had an algae bloom dropped on their f–king heads, thus removing the last arrow in your pro-governance quiver: Skepticism about your opponents.”
Not mentioned in this ungodly hellstorm of GOP-empowering gassiness? The lesser but still feisty tale of the federal judge who’s been unloading all sorts of awesome sass all over Obama’s FDA, Kathleen Sibelius in particular.
I speak of the sort of amazing Judge Edward Korman, of course, a 70-year-old Reagan appointee who’s been just falling just short of calling Sibelius a lying, two-faced dingleberry for her duplicitous and completely impossible-to-defend attempts to block the over-the-counter sale of Plan B to girls of all ages, which Korman recently ordered via a landmark decision.
Have you followed this delightful tale? It’s a personal favorite for a variety of reasons, one of which is, while I hate to add more ammo to those attacking the Obama administration right now, there simply are no right-wingers championing Plan B, or Korman’s position. He’s acting alone. He’s acting brilliantly. He’s empowering all young girls to get access to safe birth control. The GOP hates that.
What’s more, he’s speaking truth to power like you almost never hear at this level. The fact that the power in question is part of the Obama administration makes this story sort of backwards and bittersweet, to say the least. But what the hell; you take what you can get.
Which is why it’s safe to say, all is not lost on this odd and bleak news cycle. While it’s true Obama is having a terrible week (despite a surprisingly healthy economic outlook and a record-high Dow), we can always find the gems among the grime, the rainbow amidst the ugly political thunderstorm.
Look, there’s another one right now, beaming bright over Minnesota, which just became the 12th state in the union to approve gay marriage. Can you believe it? Is it not a thing?
Wait, you must look closer. For Minnesota is not just another state that defied expectations and changed direction sort of radically from just last November, when a referendum banning gay marriage forevermore almost made it into the state constitution.
Minnesota is, of course, also home to the Tea Party’s twitchiest nutball, its most flagrantly insane hood ornament, one Rep. Michele Bachmann, a goofy homophobe of epic proportions who once dragged a squadron of conservative “prayer warriors” into senate chambers to ask God to help smite the evil gays.
And lo, it would appear God has finally responded to Michele Bachmann, and the nation’s right-wing homophobes in general. Can you see it? Why, it looks like a very large, very bright, very unmistakable… middle finger.
Artemis’s crash Press Conference yesterday
Despite the public’s clamoring for information about Artemis’s crash and Bart’s
death there were no real answers given at ACRM’s somewhat
fluffy Press Conference, and neither Iain Murray nor Tom Ehman offered a
timeline for when they can be expected. While the newly
appointed Investigation Panel includes a list of people that no one can
accuse of being whitewashers, it’s a bit troubling for someone as invested in
the event as Murray to lead it as Chairman – though without him, the process of
investigating and solving the safety issues would likely take way too long.
Meanwhile, Artemis continues to treat any information about the incident as ‘top secret’, and Kiwi reporter Amanda Gilles found that crews of every other team have been given gag orders as she reported in an excellent piece after flying all the way across the Pacific to cover the story. At the same time, AC head boss Stephen Barclay continues to bitch about speculation from the media and public, claiming that it’s ‘disrespectful’, and that ‘no one…knows what happened.’ Others say the public has no ‘right to know’ anything about the incident; Artemis is a private team practicing for a privately owned regatta, and they can stay as quiet as they want, crying and moaning about those irresponsible reporters disrespecting the memory of a sailor who didn’t make it. The public may have no right to know. But here are some rights they do have?
If this were any past America’s Cup, no one would be the least bit surprised
at the silent treatment from a team or the event in tragic circumstances. The
AC has always been about secrecy, and the sailing was always miles away from the
public eye. But this one was supposed to be different; “to bring the fastest
boats and the best sailors together” in a format that brought the excitement and
the drama right to your computer or TV screen. It was meant to be transparent,
and young, and to dispel the perception of yacht racing as a sport for the
Thurston Howell IIIs of the world. It was meant to stand with Formula 1, and
the World Cup, and NASCAR, and the other tier 1 sports.
But if its leaders immediately turn into epaulette-gilded yachties, pulling their heads in to hide amongst committees and panels at the first sign of difficulty, they will lose all those fans they gained by advertising themselves as ‘extreme’ and ‘modern’ and ‘the F1 of sailing’ and so on. Vulgar or not, the AC gained an absolute shit ton of exposure from Simpson’s death – most of you know our own site got blown out for a few hours, with traffic peaking more than 1000% over our average and millions of pageviews in minutes – but silence from all parties will not create an air of mystery – just one of incompetence. The made-for-youtube series was called AC Uncovered – not AC Covered Up…
Because while Barclay says “no one knows what happened,” we all know better. Artemis’ RIB saw the whole thing, and their crew included a videographer and photographer along with half a dozen other coaches and watchers. Oracle’s RIB watched some portion of it too. The sailors – at least those not grinding – saw most of what happened. There were a dozen waterproof cameras on and around the boat, filming the whole thing. Perhaps no one really saw what happened to Bart, but that doesn’t excuse the silence on everything leading up to it. Perhaps they don’t know exactly what led to the failure, but they know what broke and where.
The public may not have a right to know, but they deserve to know, and the PR arm of any other major sport would be way out ahead of this story, not covering up. Simpson’s thousands of fans back in the UK and around the world, and everyone who has invested their time and money on following the AC over the past year has earned that bit of respect.
Meanwhile, Artemis continues to treat any information about the incident as ‘top secret’, and Kiwi reporter Amanda Gilles found that crews of every other team have been given gag orders as she reported in an excellent piece after flying all the way across the Pacific to cover the story. At the same time, AC head boss Stephen Barclay continues to bitch about speculation from the media and public, claiming that it’s ‘disrespectful’, and that ‘no one…knows what happened.’ Others say the public has no ‘right to know’ anything about the incident; Artemis is a private team practicing for a privately owned regatta, and they can stay as quiet as they want, crying and moaning about those irresponsible reporters disrespecting the memory of a sailor who didn’t make it. The public may have no right to know. But here are some rights they do have?
- -They have the right to ask questions. And as our exploding forum traffic has shown, they are doing just that.
- -They have the right to speculate.
- -They have the right to attack silence
- -They have the right to fire up others who also want to know
- -They have the right to make the silent look like the guilty.
If this were any past America’s Cup, no one would be the least bit surprised
at the silent treatment from a team or the event in tragic circumstances. The
AC has always been about secrecy, and the sailing was always miles away from the
public eye. But this one was supposed to be different; “to bring the fastest
boats and the best sailors together” in a format that brought the excitement and
the drama right to your computer or TV screen. It was meant to be transparent,
and young, and to dispel the perception of yacht racing as a sport for the
Thurston Howell IIIs of the world. It was meant to stand with Formula 1, and
the World Cup, and NASCAR, and the other tier 1 sports.But if its leaders immediately turn into epaulette-gilded yachties, pulling their heads in to hide amongst committees and panels at the first sign of difficulty, they will lose all those fans they gained by advertising themselves as ‘extreme’ and ‘modern’ and ‘the F1 of sailing’ and so on. Vulgar or not, the AC gained an absolute shit ton of exposure from Simpson’s death – most of you know our own site got blown out for a few hours, with traffic peaking more than 1000% over our average and millions of pageviews in minutes – but silence from all parties will not create an air of mystery – just one of incompetence. The made-for-youtube series was called AC Uncovered – not AC Covered Up…
Because while Barclay says “no one knows what happened,” we all know better. Artemis’ RIB saw the whole thing, and their crew included a videographer and photographer along with half a dozen other coaches and watchers. Oracle’s RIB watched some portion of it too. The sailors – at least those not grinding – saw most of what happened. There were a dozen waterproof cameras on and around the boat, filming the whole thing. Perhaps no one really saw what happened to Bart, but that doesn’t excuse the silence on everything leading up to it. Perhaps they don’t know exactly what led to the failure, but they know what broke and where.
The public may not have a right to know, but they deserve to know, and the PR arm of any other major sport would be way out ahead of this story, not covering up. Simpson’s thousands of fans back in the UK and around the world, and everyone who has invested their time and money on following the AC over the past year has earned that bit of respect.
Atlantic Cup Race
Bodacious Dream captures the first leg of the Atlantic Cup Race
1st across the finish line in New York City at 21:06:15 EDT. Total Elapsed Time to Finish … 79 hrs. I min. 15 secs. Braving all manner of obstacles, the guys managed to hold onto the lead position all the way from around Cape Hatteras, NC! Way to dream it and live it … Dave Rearick & Matt Scharl … and the whole Bodacious Dream Family!
#121- Lecoq Cuisine – 2nd across the finish line at 21:14:43 – (That’s an
insanely skimpy 8.5 minutes behind Matt & Dave in a 3 day and 4 hour
contest! Respect!) #90 – 40 Degrees finishes in 3rd position arriving at
22:01:12. An AMAZING finish to an amazing race! Congrats ALL around!
1st across the finish line in New York City at 21:06:15 EDT. Total Elapsed Time to Finish … 79 hrs. I min. 15 secs. Braving all manner of obstacles, the guys managed to hold onto the lead position all the way from around Cape Hatteras, NC! Way to dream it and live it … Dave Rearick & Matt Scharl … and the whole Bodacious Dream Family!
May 14, 2013
Whistleblower’s catch-22
What do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, the devil is in the details. Robert MacLean is a former air marshal fired for an act of whistleblowing. He has continued to fight over seven long years for what once would have passed as simple justice: getting his job back. His is an all-too-twenty-first-century story of the extraordinary lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go to thwart whistleblowers.
First, the government retroactively classified a previously unclassified text message to justify firing MacLean. Then it invoked arcane civil service procedures, including an “interlocutory appeal” to thwart him and, in the process, enjoyed the approval of various courts and bureaucratic boards apparently willing to stamp as “legal” anything the government could make up in its own interest.
And yet here’s the miracle at the heart of this tale: MacLean refused to quit, when ordinary mortals would have thrown in the towel. Now, with a recent semi-victory, he may not only have given himself a shot at getting his old job back, but also create a precedent for future federal whistleblowers. In the post-9/11 world, people like Robert MacLean show us how deep the Washington rabbit hole really goes.
MacLean joined the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) in 2001 after stints with the Air Force and the Border Patrol. In July 2003, all marshals received a briefing about a possible hijacking plot. Soon after, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), which oversees FAMS, sent an unencrypted, open-air text message to the cell phones of the marshals cancelling several months of missions for cost-cutting reasons. MacLean became concerned that cancelling missions during a hijacking alert might create a dangerous situation for the flying public. He complained to his supervisor and to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, but each responded that nothing could be done.
It was then that he decided to blow the whistle, hoping that public pressure might force the TSA to reinstate the marshals’ flights. So MacLean talked to a reporter, who broadcast a story criticizing the TSA’s decision and, after 11 members of Congress joined in the criticism, it reversed itself. At this point, MacLean had not been identified as the source of the leak and so carried on with his job.
A year later, he appeared on TV in disguise, criticizing the TSA dress code and its special boarding policies, which he believed allowed marshals to be easily identified by other passengers. This time, the TSA recognized his voice and began an investigation that revealed he had also released the 2003 text message. He was fired in April 2006. Although the agency had not labeled that message as “sensitive security information” (SSI) when it was sent in 2003, in August 2006, months after MacLean’s firing, it issued a retroactive order stating that the text’s content was indeed SSI.
That disclosing the contents of an unclassified message could get someone fired for disclosing classified information is the sort of topsy-turvy situation which could only exist in the post-9/11 world of the American national security state.
Under the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), a disclosure prohibited by law negates whistleblower protections. That, of course, makes it in the government’s interest to define disclosure as broadly as possible and to classify as much of its internal communications for as long as it possibly can. No wonder that in recent years the classification of government documents has soared, reaching a record total of 92,064,862 in 2011.
Officially, the U.S. government recognizes only three basic levels of classification: confidential, secret, and top secret. Since 9/11, however, various government agencies have created multiple freestyle categories of secrecy like “SSI,” “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” “Sensitive But Unclassified,” and the more colorful “Eyes Only.” All of these are outside the normal codification system; all are hybrids that casually seek to incorporate the full weight of the formal law. There are currently 107 designations just for “sensitive” information. In addition to those labels, there exist more than 130 sets of extra “handling requirements” that only deepen the world of government secrecy.
At issue for MacLean was not only the retroactive classification of a text message already in the public domain, but what classified could possibly mean in an era when everything related to the national security state was slipping into the shadows. Such questions are hardly semantic or academic. MacLean’s case hinges on how they are answered.
The case against Army Private Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks is, for example, intimately tied up in them. The military hides behind classification to block access to Manning’s “public” trial. With WikiLeaks, despite more than 100,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables being available to anyone anywhere on the web, the government continues to insist that they remain “classified” and cannot even be rereleased in response to requests. Potential federal employees were warned to stay away from the cables online, and the State Department even blocked TomDispatch from its staff to shield them from alleged WikiLeaks content (some of which was linked to and discussed, but none of which was actually posted at the site).
With author Tony Shaffer, the government retroactively classified its own account of why he was given the Bronze Star and his standard deployment orders to Afghanistan after he published an uncomplimentary book about American actions there. The messy case of alleged “hacktivist” Barrett Brown includes prosecution for “disclosing” classified material simply by linking to it at places where it had already been posted online; and, while still at the State Department, I was once accused of the same thing by the government.
In MacLean’s case, over a period of seven years, the legality of the TSA firing him for using an only-later-classified text was upheld. Legal actions included hearings before administrative judges, the Merit Systems Protections Board twice, that interlocutory appeal, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The sum of these decisions amid a labyrinth of judicial bureaucracies demands the use of the term Kafkaesque. MacLean, so the general judgment went, should have known that the text message he planned to leak was a classified document, even when it wasn’t (yet). As a result, he should also have understood that his act would not be that of a whistleblower alerting the public to possible danger, but of a criminal risking public safety by exposing government secrets. If that isn’t the definition of a whistleblower’s catch-22, what is?
First, the government retroactively classified a previously unclassified text message to justify firing MacLean. Then it invoked arcane civil service procedures, including an “interlocutory appeal” to thwart him and, in the process, enjoyed the approval of various courts and bureaucratic boards apparently willing to stamp as “legal” anything the government could make up in its own interest.
And yet here’s the miracle at the heart of this tale: MacLean refused to quit, when ordinary mortals would have thrown in the towel. Now, with a recent semi-victory, he may not only have given himself a shot at getting his old job back, but also create a precedent for future federal whistleblowers. In the post-9/11 world, people like Robert MacLean show us how deep the Washington rabbit hole really goes.
MacLean joined the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) in 2001 after stints with the Air Force and the Border Patrol. In July 2003, all marshals received a briefing about a possible hijacking plot. Soon after, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), which oversees FAMS, sent an unencrypted, open-air text message to the cell phones of the marshals cancelling several months of missions for cost-cutting reasons. MacLean became concerned that cancelling missions during a hijacking alert might create a dangerous situation for the flying public. He complained to his supervisor and to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, but each responded that nothing could be done.
It was then that he decided to blow the whistle, hoping that public pressure might force the TSA to reinstate the marshals’ flights. So MacLean talked to a reporter, who broadcast a story criticizing the TSA’s decision and, after 11 members of Congress joined in the criticism, it reversed itself. At this point, MacLean had not been identified as the source of the leak and so carried on with his job.
A year later, he appeared on TV in disguise, criticizing the TSA dress code and its special boarding policies, which he believed allowed marshals to be easily identified by other passengers. This time, the TSA recognized his voice and began an investigation that revealed he had also released the 2003 text message. He was fired in April 2006. Although the agency had not labeled that message as “sensitive security information” (SSI) when it was sent in 2003, in August 2006, months after MacLean’s firing, it issued a retroactive order stating that the text’s content was indeed SSI.
That disclosing the contents of an unclassified message could get someone fired for disclosing classified information is the sort of topsy-turvy situation which could only exist in the post-9/11 world of the American national security state.
Under the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), a disclosure prohibited by law negates whistleblower protections. That, of course, makes it in the government’s interest to define disclosure as broadly as possible and to classify as much of its internal communications for as long as it possibly can. No wonder that in recent years the classification of government documents has soared, reaching a record total of 92,064,862 in 2011.
Officially, the U.S. government recognizes only three basic levels of classification: confidential, secret, and top secret. Since 9/11, however, various government agencies have created multiple freestyle categories of secrecy like “SSI,” “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” “Sensitive But Unclassified,” and the more colorful “Eyes Only.” All of these are outside the normal codification system; all are hybrids that casually seek to incorporate the full weight of the formal law. There are currently 107 designations just for “sensitive” information. In addition to those labels, there exist more than 130 sets of extra “handling requirements” that only deepen the world of government secrecy.
At issue for MacLean was not only the retroactive classification of a text message already in the public domain, but what classified could possibly mean in an era when everything related to the national security state was slipping into the shadows. Such questions are hardly semantic or academic. MacLean’s case hinges on how they are answered.
The case against Army Private Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks is, for example, intimately tied up in them. The military hides behind classification to block access to Manning’s “public” trial. With WikiLeaks, despite more than 100,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables being available to anyone anywhere on the web, the government continues to insist that they remain “classified” and cannot even be rereleased in response to requests. Potential federal employees were warned to stay away from the cables online, and the State Department even blocked TomDispatch from its staff to shield them from alleged WikiLeaks content (some of which was linked to and discussed, but none of which was actually posted at the site).
With author Tony Shaffer, the government retroactively classified its own account of why he was given the Bronze Star and his standard deployment orders to Afghanistan after he published an uncomplimentary book about American actions there. The messy case of alleged “hacktivist” Barrett Brown includes prosecution for “disclosing” classified material simply by linking to it at places where it had already been posted online; and, while still at the State Department, I was once accused of the same thing by the government.
In MacLean’s case, over a period of seven years, the legality of the TSA firing him for using an only-later-classified text was upheld. Legal actions included hearings before administrative judges, the Merit Systems Protections Board twice, that interlocutory appeal, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The sum of these decisions amid a labyrinth of judicial bureaucracies demands the use of the term Kafkaesque. MacLean, so the general judgment went, should have known that the text message he planned to leak was a classified document, even when it wasn’t (yet). As a result, he should also have understood that his act would not be that of a whistleblower alerting the public to possible danger, but of a criminal risking public safety by exposing government secrets. If that isn’t the definition of a whistleblower’s catch-22, what is?
Distressing milestone
It’s a distressing milestone that you likely read about: On Friday, the average daily level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere passed 400 parts per million — about 50 ppm over what scientists said was the “safe upper limit.” The gas, of course, is a byproduct of our fossil fuel economy, and is the key driver of climate change.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased dramatically since 1958, when the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii — the gold standard for measuring the gas — first began tracking levels. That year, the daily average was 316 ppm — since then, the level has increased by 26.5 percent.
And yet, Washington is doing very little to rein in CO2 emissions and slow the climate change that’s already underway.
The Sunlight Foundation provides a glimpse into one possible reason for D.C.’s inaction. In a new chart, Sunlight graphed CO2 levels alongside campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, and the mining industry, both of which make money on fossil fuels. As the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased, so too has the flow of cash from these industries to politicians.
The donations reached an all-time high in 2010, the same year that senators came close but ultimately failed to pass a bipartisan climate bill that would have cut emissions. Their successors in the 112th Congress were much less ambitious. For the first time since 2003, when Senators McCain and Lieberman proposed the greenhouse gas cap-and-trade bill
, not a single piece of cap-and-trade legislation was introduced. In fact, there were nearly as many bills seeking to bar legislators from regulating carbon dioxide as there were seeking to regulate it.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased dramatically since 1958, when the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii — the gold standard for measuring the gas — first began tracking levels. That year, the daily average was 316 ppm — since then, the level has increased by 26.5 percent.
And yet, Washington is doing very little to rein in CO2 emissions and slow the climate change that’s already underway.
The Sunlight Foundation provides a glimpse into one possible reason for D.C.’s inaction. In a new chart, Sunlight graphed CO2 levels alongside campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, and the mining industry, both of which make money on fossil fuels. As the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased, so too has the flow of cash from these industries to politicians.The donations reached an all-time high in 2010, the same year that senators came close but ultimately failed to pass a bipartisan climate bill that would have cut emissions. Their successors in the 112th Congress were much less ambitious. For the first time since 2003, when Senators McCain and Lieberman proposed the greenhouse gas cap-and-trade bill
, not a single piece of cap-and-trade legislation was introduced. In fact, there were nearly as many bills seeking to bar legislators from regulating carbon dioxide as there were seeking to regulate it.
Whistleblowers Charged Under the Espionage Act
Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the NSA who was charged under the Espionage Act for the unauthorized “willful retention” of classified documents. Drake’s problems with the agency started when he found himself on the minority side of a debate about two new tools for collecting intelligence from digital sources. One program, called Trailblazer, was being built by an outside contractor for $1.2 billion; the other, known as ThinThread, was created in-house by a legendary crypto-mathematician named Bill Binney for about $3 million.
Then, in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11 2001, the NSA, with the approval of the Bush administration, began the illegal warrantless surveillance of American citizens. This did not sit well with Drake, who says that during his time in the Air Force, where he also did surveillance work, the imperative to protect American’s privacy was drilled into him. “If you accidentally intercepted U.S. persons, there were special procedures to expunge it.”
“I was faced with a crisis of conscience,” Drake told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. “What do I do — remain silent, and complicit, or go to the press?” As a father of five, one of whom has serious health problems, Drake concluded that he’d go to the press with his complaints about the NSA — but he’d only share unclassified information, thinking perhaps he’d lose he’s job but at least not end up in jail. So he leaked the story of ThinThread vs. Trailblazer — a simple story of government waste — to the Baltimore Sun. A few months later, the FBI appeared at his door. Drake at one point faced up to 35 years in prison for various charges, most of which were dropped. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for exceeding authorized use of a computer.
In 2010, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor for the State Department, pleaded not guilty to charges of leaking information about North Korea to Fox News. He was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, but the case has not yet been brought to trial.
Fox journalist James Rosen, with whom Kim had been in touch in the past, reported in 2009 that North Korea would likely test another nuclear missile in reaction to a pending United Nations Security Council resolution condemning its nuclear tests. The Justice Department said Kim was Fox’s source.
Kim, who immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea when he was nine years old, told Bloomberg News that “to be accused of doing something against or harmful to U.S. national interest is something I can’t comprehend.” Kim’s lawyers said that Kim was being charged for participating in the type of exchange between experts and the press “that happen hundreds of times a day in Washington.”
“In its obsession to clamp down on perfectly appropriate conversations between government employees and the press, the Obama Administration has forgotten that wise foreign policy must be founded on a two-way conversation between government and the public,” his lawyers said.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for giving journalists the names of two former colleagues who interrogated detainees using harsh practices including waterboarding. Kiriakou became central to the debate surrounding interrogation tactics in 2007 with an interview on ABC News. By then, he had left the CIA and was working at the auditing firm Deloitte. “Like a lot of Americans, I’m involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique, and I struggle with it,” he said in his ABC interview. He suggested that our country should abandon the technique because “we’re Americans and we’re better than this.”
After the interview, Kiriakou was asked to leave Deloitte but became a source for other journalists investigating torture. Over the course of the next year he gave the name of one former colleague to a freelance reporter and gave the name of another former colleague to a reporter for The New York Times. He pleaded guilty in October 2012 to the leak made to the freelancer; the charge related to The New York Times was dropped.
Then, in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11 2001, the NSA, with the approval of the Bush administration, began the illegal warrantless surveillance of American citizens. This did not sit well with Drake, who says that during his time in the Air Force, where he also did surveillance work, the imperative to protect American’s privacy was drilled into him. “If you accidentally intercepted U.S. persons, there were special procedures to expunge it.”
“I was faced with a crisis of conscience,” Drake told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. “What do I do — remain silent, and complicit, or go to the press?” As a father of five, one of whom has serious health problems, Drake concluded that he’d go to the press with his complaints about the NSA — but he’d only share unclassified information, thinking perhaps he’d lose he’s job but at least not end up in jail. So he leaked the story of ThinThread vs. Trailblazer — a simple story of government waste — to the Baltimore Sun. A few months later, the FBI appeared at his door. Drake at one point faced up to 35 years in prison for various charges, most of which were dropped. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for exceeding authorized use of a computer.
In 2010, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor for the State Department, pleaded not guilty to charges of leaking information about North Korea to Fox News. He was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, but the case has not yet been brought to trial.
Fox journalist James Rosen, with whom Kim had been in touch in the past, reported in 2009 that North Korea would likely test another nuclear missile in reaction to a pending United Nations Security Council resolution condemning its nuclear tests. The Justice Department said Kim was Fox’s source.
Kim, who immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea when he was nine years old, told Bloomberg News that “to be accused of doing something against or harmful to U.S. national interest is something I can’t comprehend.” Kim’s lawyers said that Kim was being charged for participating in the type of exchange between experts and the press “that happen hundreds of times a day in Washington.”
“In its obsession to clamp down on perfectly appropriate conversations between government employees and the press, the Obama Administration has forgotten that wise foreign policy must be founded on a two-way conversation between government and the public,” his lawyers said.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for giving journalists the names of two former colleagues who interrogated detainees using harsh practices including waterboarding. Kiriakou became central to the debate surrounding interrogation tactics in 2007 with an interview on ABC News. By then, he had left the CIA and was working at the auditing firm Deloitte. “Like a lot of Americans, I’m involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique, and I struggle with it,” he said in his ABC interview. He suggested that our country should abandon the technique because “we’re Americans and we’re better than this.”
After the interview, Kiriakou was asked to leave Deloitte but became a source for other journalists investigating torture. Over the course of the next year he gave the name of one former colleague to a freelance reporter and gave the name of another former colleague to a reporter for The New York Times. He pleaded guilty in October 2012 to the leak made to the freelancer; the charge related to The New York Times was dropped.
End to the Constitution??
The Justice Department’s secret seizure of months’ worth of Associated Press reporters’ private telephone records is a slap in the face to a free press — and a free people.
But it’s part of both a larger assault on the traditional function of the media by the Obama administration, as well as a broader government intrusion into the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Under Obama, the government has pursued six cases against individuals suspected of handing over classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined, as the Associated Press pointed out. Meanwhile, disturbing news about the government’s ability and willingness to use electronic surveillance on Americans has continued to mount.
It adds up to a chilling effect on citizens, journalists and potential whistleblowers, who rightly now must think twice about offering information concerning government misdeeds or secrets. That comes at an incredibly high cost for society.
Whatever you think of the modern press — and I’ve got plenty of problems with it myself — it serves a critical function in bringing government wrongdoing out into the open. It holds officials, police and the military accountable for their actions in a way that nothing else can.
It’s in our national interest to protect the media’s use of confidential sources, because too often people can only be honest and open about such matters under the cloak of anonymity.
The Justice Department hasn’t provided details about its investigation that ensnared the Associated Press, but it appears to be related to a story the news wire published in May 2012 revealing the Central Intelligence Agency successfully thwarted an al-Qaida plot to blow up a United States-bound airliner.
Even if you’re not outraged by the government’s latest intrusion into the privacy of the press, consider its ongoing intrusions into your own.
In the years since the terrorist attack of 9/11, the United States has edged ever closer to a surveillance state, as the National Security Agency engaged in warrantless wiretapping and eavesdropped in secret rooms at the switching centers of AT&T and others.
Using open records requests, the ACLU last year found that police departments routinely track personal cell phones, often without warrants. A subsequent congressional inquiry found that cellular carriers responded to at least 1.3 million such requests for subscriber records last year, a notable increase based on carriers that provided figures from earlier years.
Also in 2012, Wired reported that the NSA is building a massive, $2 billion data center in Utah to mine and analyze vast amounts of personal data and communications crisscrossing the Internet.
“Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private e-mails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter,’ ” the magazine reported. “It is, in some measure, the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration — an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”
A former FBI counterterrorism agent divulged even more shocking information earlier this month.
Tim Clemente was asked in a CNN interview whether the government could review earlier telephone conversations between the late Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his widow, Katherine Russell, to determine if she had any involvement in the crime.
“There is a way,” he said. “We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation.”
“All of that stuff,” he continued after the next question, “is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
That seems to suggest that the government can record or access recordings all of our phone calls. It sounds far-fetched; it sounds downright Orwellian.
But I, for one, would certainly like to know if it’s true. That strikes me as a far bigger crime — and something much more worthy of an aggressive investigation — than a phone call between a government staffer and a reporter.
But it’s part of both a larger assault on the traditional function of the media by the Obama administration, as well as a broader government intrusion into the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Under Obama, the government has pursued six cases against individuals suspected of handing over classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined, as the Associated Press pointed out. Meanwhile, disturbing news about the government’s ability and willingness to use electronic surveillance on Americans has continued to mount.
It adds up to a chilling effect on citizens, journalists and potential whistleblowers, who rightly now must think twice about offering information concerning government misdeeds or secrets. That comes at an incredibly high cost for society.
Whatever you think of the modern press — and I’ve got plenty of problems with it myself — it serves a critical function in bringing government wrongdoing out into the open. It holds officials, police and the military accountable for their actions in a way that nothing else can.
It’s in our national interest to protect the media’s use of confidential sources, because too often people can only be honest and open about such matters under the cloak of anonymity.
The Justice Department hasn’t provided details about its investigation that ensnared the Associated Press, but it appears to be related to a story the news wire published in May 2012 revealing the Central Intelligence Agency successfully thwarted an al-Qaida plot to blow up a United States-bound airliner.
The Justice Department seems to have obtained records of outgoing calls for the work, personal and cell phone numbers of a handful of Associated Press reporters, including the ones involved in that story. The records also included calls coming from the general AP office numbers in several cities. So far, it doesn’t seem the conversations themselves were monitored.
The Justice Department’s own rules require that subpoenas for the telephone records of journalists be as narrowly drawn as possible, and sought only after all other possibilities for finding the information it’s seeking are exhausted. The first clearly didn’t happen; the details concerning the second part are still unclear.
“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” wrote Associated Press Chief Executive Gary Pruitt in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by the A.P. during a two-month period, provide a road map to A.P.’s news gathering operations, and disclose information about A.P.’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”
In the years since the terrorist attack of 9/11, the United States has edged ever closer to a surveillance state, as the National Security Agency engaged in warrantless wiretapping and eavesdropped in secret rooms at the switching centers of AT&T and others.
Using open records requests, the ACLU last year found that police departments routinely track personal cell phones, often without warrants. A subsequent congressional inquiry found that cellular carriers responded to at least 1.3 million such requests for subscriber records last year, a notable increase based on carriers that provided figures from earlier years.
Also in 2012, Wired reported that the NSA is building a massive, $2 billion data center in Utah to mine and analyze vast amounts of personal data and communications crisscrossing the Internet.
“Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private e-mails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter,’ ” the magazine reported. “It is, in some measure, the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration — an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”
A former FBI counterterrorism agent divulged even more shocking information earlier this month.
Tim Clemente was asked in a CNN interview whether the government could review earlier telephone conversations between the late Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his widow, Katherine Russell, to determine if she had any involvement in the crime.
“There is a way,” he said. “We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation.”
“All of that stuff,” he continued after the next question, “is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
That seems to suggest that the government can record or access recordings all of our phone calls. It sounds far-fetched; it sounds downright Orwellian.
But I, for one, would certainly like to know if it’s true. That strikes me as a far bigger crime — and something much more worthy of an aggressive investigation — than a phone call between a government staffer and a reporter.
$10 million solution
A broken anchor rod rises up next to still-tensioned rods on a shear key on the new Bay Bridge on Friday, May 3, 2013.
Caltrans deputy director Will Shuck holds a section of bolt removed from the new Bay Bridge in preparation for testing at Caltrans TransLab in Sacramento, California, May 9, 2013. Caltrans is testing the so-called "2010 rods", following the failure of 32 three-inch steel rods that broke during construction.
Rather than replace the now-inaccessible rods, Caltrans wants to construct a saddle that would be strapped onto the seismic structures using high-strength steel strands. The saddle fix would cost $10 million, the state says. On a larger scale, the Federal Highway Administration wants to know how the 32 rods and more than 2,300 others came to be installed on the span in the first place.
A number of outside experts have said Caltrans took an unacceptable risk by ordering excessively hard rods that were vulnerable to hydrogen invasion, either when they were galvanized or when they were exposed to the elements, that could cause them to become brittle and crack.
Caltrans deputy director Will Shuck holds a section of bolt removed from the new Bay Bridge in preparation for testing at Caltrans TransLab in Sacramento, California, May 9, 2013. Caltrans is testing the so-called "2010 rods", following the failure of 32 three-inch steel rods that broke during construction.
Rather than replace the now-inaccessible rods, Caltrans wants to construct a saddle that would be strapped onto the seismic structures using high-strength steel strands. The saddle fix would cost $10 million, the state says. On a larger scale, the Federal Highway Administration wants to know how the 32 rods and more than 2,300 others came to be installed on the span in the first place. A number of outside experts have said Caltrans took an unacceptable risk by ordering excessively hard rods that were vulnerable to hydrogen invasion, either when they were galvanized or when they were exposed to the elements, that could cause them to become brittle and crack.
Expedition 34 landing
Alegre 3
Perhaps the cleanest mini maxi yet, but with some very interesting hull
shapes ,
here’s the Mark Mills designed Alegre 3.
May 13, 2013
Beach
Yesterday I really needed to head to the beach. I didn't care about the weather, I just needed to put my feet in the ocean and feel the water and the sand between my toes.
The weather wasn't great but it wasn't raining at least. Gassed up the car and headed west, the drive is not to long and my mind was at other places so the time past quick. Pulled up the the beach and got a parking spot right at the beach, took of my shoes and onto the sand I went. Walked out to the water and walked slowly with my feet in the cold water, looking at the waves and hearing the crunch of broken shells under foot. I stopped and looked out over the ocean with the dark clouds, light wind, and a little fog. The ocean would always make me feel better, I could sit and look at the ocean and smell the salt, hear the waves. But this time it didn't help. The ocean only made me feel more alone.....
I came to this beach in the past, some wonderful moments on this sand, running, walking, and talking in low tones with someone special. I was happy to come before, now I am so sad, life has turned on me and I no longer feel the joy that the beach, this beach gave me. I wish that life could be simple and other people say what is in their heart, not lies or deceptions. Cheating on others hurts everyone involved, but the one cheated on hurts the most. I feel like the broken shells I stood on, on a beach I once loved, because of a person I thought loved me...
I came to this beach in the past, some wonderful moments on this sand, running, walking, and talking in low tones with someone special. I was happy to come before, now I am so sad, life has turned on me and I no longer feel the joy that the beach, this beach gave me. I wish that life could be simple and other people say what is in their heart, not lies or deceptions. Cheating on others hurts everyone involved, but the one cheated on hurts the most. I feel like the broken shells I stood on, on a beach I once loved, because of a person I thought loved me...
How I feel today...
So why do I say how do I feel?? Well I am feeling simular to the star that made this. If you know the cycle of star life, you will know what I mean.
Something else to think of...
MAKS Racing Team introduces four Aussie girls from
the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, who will compete in St Quay, France for round one of the
WIMRA Match Racing Circuit 2013. With our oldest member at 19 years old and
our youngest at just 16, we’re the youngest team at the regatta – by far! Our
team is made up of (from left to right): Milly Bennett (19), Seldon Coventry
(16), Alice Tarnawski (19) and Kajsa Doyle (19). We believe that hard work and
dedication is the only way to get to the top and plan on giving some of the
older more experienced teams a run for their money…
Artemis AC72 continues to generate talk...
Following the Artemis AC72 capsize there has been a lot of talk about the “Death Zone” or “Zone of Death” by a lot of people who don’t seem to have a clue what it’s all about. The death zone is the transition during the bear away from going upwind to downwind on an ultra-high performance boat like a beach cat, skiff, or AC72. The reason this is known as the death zone is because when a really fast boat bears away, the apparent wind speed increases a huge amount, putting a large load on the sails and foils as the boat accelerates like a mofo. The sail plan also tries to push the bow down during the bear away, hence the reason why skiffs and multis tend to pitch pole during the bear away. The key to a good bear away is getting through the death zone as quickly as possible, but the driver and trimmers need to be on the same page. It’s not like a keel boat or even a dinghy where you just ease the sheets and turn. The death zone is also very hard (nearly impossible) to sail in on a skiff. They do not like to jib reach, plain and simple. You either get to go upwind or downwind, otherwise there is too much apparent windspeed and not enough stability (mostly speaking from Aussie 18s), ending in either a pitch pole or digging a rack and cartwheeling.
Long story short, anyone who thinks that a bear away in 25 knots on a high performance boat should be as simple as just turning doesn’t have a clue.
where’s the leader?
Apparently not. Rather, yet another “release” (below), this one essentially warning people like us not to “speculate.” Really, the handling of this tragedy so far is nothing short of an embarrassing PR debacle, especially given the gravity of the situation. They are clearly in damage control, and this front is surely a calculated one. We are speculating, alright. Speculating about where the leadership is….
Artemis Racing is in the process of conducting a thorough review and analysis of this week’s accident. As a part of this review, Artemis Racing is sharing and exchanging data and information with concurrent work being performed by America’s Cup and the San Francisco Police Department. Until this process is complete, any conclusions being made about the events that led to the boat’s capsizing and its tragic outcome are pure speculation. Out of respect for Bart’s memory and his family, we ask that the broader sailing community and others reserve judgment until all the facts are known, and not persist in unnecessary rumor. We again thank everyone for their continued support and thoughts during this difficult time.
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