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Archive for 2024
January 26, 2024
THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: A newly identified ‘Hell chicken’ species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit. “Our work focusing on the life stage of our specimen demonstrates that dinosaur diversity may not have been declining before the asteroid hit, but rather that there are more species from this time period yet to be discovered – potentially even through reclassification of fossils already in museum collections.”
MAYBE THEY SHOULD START WITH COLORADO, HUH? A Freedom House report focuses on Nicaragua, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and Venezuela, saying all six countries experienced considerable democratic backsliding over the past two decades.
VOA reports that:
“Around the world, there are a lot of anti-democratic leaders in increasingly authoritarian settings who are using a really expansive toolkit of oppressive tactics in order to silence critics and opponents,” Amy Slipowitz, the report’s co-author, told VOA. One of the primary tools is political imprisonment, which is “an attempt to remove the most vocal critics from society,” she said.”
It’s always in the last place you look.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: ‘Europeans Will Succumb to Islam,’ Says Former Intelligence Chief.
RACISM IS EVERYWHERE: Alcoholics Anonymous more likely to benefit White Americans.
ROCKET REPORT: Chinese firm tests vertical landing.
Chinese launch startup Landspace executed a first vertical takeoff and vertical landing with a test article Friday at a launch and recovery site at Jiuquan spaceport, Space News reports. The methane-liquid oxygen test article reached an altitude of around 350 meters during its roughly 60-second flight before setting down in a designated landing area. The landing had an accuracy of about 2.4 meters and a landing speed of less than 1 meter per second, the company said.
Part Starship, part Falcon 9 … The test is part of the development of the stainless-steel Zhuque-3 rocket first announced in November 2023. The company is aiming for the first flight of Zhuque-3 next year. It is an ambitious project: The rocket is intended to have a payload capacity of 21 tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode, and 18.3 tons when the rocket is recovered downrange. If Zhuque-3 comes to pass—and these are promising early results—this would be the closest thing to a Falcon 9 rocket anyone has yet developed.
Over to you, New Glenn.
As they continue with their game of Civilizational Jenga, the ruling class seems excessively convinced that the populace will just go along.
GOOD QUESTION: Can anything save Boeing from its management?
One of the big lessons of recent years is how much damage bad management can do, and how fast it can do it. And that even basic competence cannot be taken for granted, even (especially?) among people with accepted credentials.
IN THE MAIL: Fighting Back: Stan Andrews and the Birth of the Israeli Air Force. #CommissionEarned
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jon Stewart’s Return a ‘Bad Omen’ for Late Night TV. “Stewart’s hard-left shtick alienates half the country and every late-night competitor not named Gutfeld will be sniping at the same targets.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.
On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium.
Once the deal is finalized, the buyer — which will likely be the highest bidder, the industrial gas company Messer — will claim some 425 miles of pipelines spanning Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, plus about 1 billion cubic feet of the only element on Earth cold enough to make an MRI machine work.
Regulatory and logistical issues with the facility threaten a temporary shutdown as it passes from public to private ownership, and hospital supply chain experts worry the sale could have serious consequences for health care down the road — especially when it comes to MRIs.
To be sure, a Federal Helium Reserve shutdown wouldn’t mean that MRIs would suddenly power down across the country, said Soumi Saha, senior vice president of government affairs at Premier Inc., which contracts with helium suppliers on behalf of 4,400 hospitals in the United States. “But we are stressing about this shortage. From a health care perspective, MRI machines are the No. 1 concern.”
Plus: “The sale of the government’s stockpile of the nonrenewable element could exacerbate an existing supply shortage.”
UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS AS COMMODUS. “It is as if the university has become a strange and alien place, home to the sinister and brutish and driven by paranoia, hate, and conspiracy.” Probably could have left off the first 4 words of that…
We really, really deserve a better class of “elites.”
WHY IS HIGHER ED SUCH A CESSPIT OF HYPOCRISY AND HATE? Harvard prof who signed letter accusing Israel of running ‘regime of apartheid’ appointed to anti-Semitism task force.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Navigating the Collapse of Credentialism: No wonder people don’t trust the experts.
Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.
THE SMOKING GUN: New Documents Largely Confirm That Covid Was Created in Wuhan Lab. Nicholas Wade, the veteran science journalist who forced the mainstream media to stop pretending that a Covid lab leak was a crazy conspiracy theory, describes newly unearthed documents that are being called definitive evidence the virus was created in a lab. In 2022, researchers noted an unusual symmetric structure in the virus that was highly unlikely to be natural, and theorized the procedure for creating this structure in the lab. The new documents show that in 2018 other researchers, including one from the Wuhan lab, had submitted a proposal to use this exact procedure to synthesize a virus.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE: After Three Years on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends. “Originally designed as a technology demonstration to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, the first aircraft on another world operated from the Martian surface for almost three years, performed 72 flights, and flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.”
Inguinity could have flown more but rotor damage during its last landing has grounded it.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Israel Still Uninterested in the Opinions of World’s Pro-Hamas Leftists. “Foreign policy in this administration is essentially being influenced by loud, ignorant college kids.”
EMAILS REVEAL WHY CDC ISSUED NO ALERT ON MYOCARDITIS: The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber obtained emails and other documents that show CDC leaders chose not to warn Americans about a frequently fatal side effect of the Coronavirus vaccines.
This is a HUGE story and one that reveals more about why the “Public Health” establishment has about as much credibility with Americans as used car salesmen and Bitcoin scam artists. That said, the story will be all but totally ignored by the Mainstream Media, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats (more than a few Republicans on the Hill as well).
The good news is there are still senators like Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who told Stieber that the “CDC’s apparent decision to not immediately issue a formal alert to clinicians warning them about the increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccinated individuals is not only inexcusable, it’s malpractice,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Johnson is currently the Ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. If the GOP regains the Senate majority in November, Johnson will be in a position to do something serious about CDC malpractice.
BILL ACKMAN WEIGHS IN ON THE BORDER:
Please read the below letter. I find the @FBI agents’ message irrefutable and extremely concerning.
It is shocking that @POTUS is fighting Texas’ attempt to protect our southern border.
Why aren’t Federal agents protecting our border rather than fighting to keep the border… https://t.co/y2flahOqA6
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 26, 2024