FASTER? PLEASE. Amid SR-72 Rumors, Skunk Works Ramps Up Hypersonics.

“Although I can’t go into specifics, let us just say the Skunk Works team in Palmdale, California, is doubling down on our commitment to speed,” says Orlando Carvalho, executive vice president of aeronautics at Lockheed Martin, speaking at the SAE International Aerotech Congress and Exhibition here.

“Simply put, I believe the United States is on the verge of a hypersonics revolution,” he says.

Referencing ongoing development of the Darpa/U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Tactical Boost Glide weapon and Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept research program, the latter in competition with Raytheon, Carvalho says, “Over the last decade progress has been moving quickly, and hypersonic technology is clearly becoming apparent to everyone as a game changer. We continue to advance and test technology which will benefit hypersonic flight and are working on multiple programs, including two Darpa efforts. Speed matters, especially when it comes to national security.”

While making no specific mention of the SR-72, which the company is proposing as a hypersonic replacement for the long-retired high-supersonic SR-71 Blackbird, Carvalho’s positive remarks echo recent comments by Rob Weiss, executive vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs organization. Speaking to Aviation Week in June, Weiss hinted that progress towards an optionally piloted SR-72 precursor flight research vehicle (FRV) was proceeding on schedule.

What’s better than stealth? Flying at five to ten times the speed of sound.

BUT THE GOVERNMENT-APPROVED SCIENCE! Emails Show How An Ivy League Prof Tried To Do Damage Control For His Bogus Food Science.

The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, a $22 million federally funded program that pushes healthy-eating strategies in almost 30,000 schools, is partly based on studies that contained flawed — or even missing — data.

The main scientist behind the work, Cornell University professor Brian Wansink, has made headlines for his research into the psychology of eating. His experiments have found, for example, that women who put cereal on their kitchen counters weigh more than those who don’t, and that people will pour more wine if they’re holding the glass than if it’s sitting on a table. Over the past two decades he’s written two popular books and more than 100 research papers, and enjoyed widespread media coverage (including on BuzzFeed).

Yet over the past year, Wansink and his “Food and Brand Lab” have come under fire from scientists and statisticians who’ve spotted all sorts of red flags — including data inconsistencies, mathematical impossibilities, errors, duplications, exaggerations, eyebrow-raising interpretations, and instances of self-plagiarism — in 50 of his studies.

Read the whole thing — and don’t forget to say, “Thanks, (Michelle) Obama.”

JESSE VENTURA: If Border Wall Goes Up, Statue of Liberty Must Come Down.

DIGITAL TURF WARS: Google pulls YouTube off the Amazon Echo Show.

The Echo Show, if you’re not familiar, is the Alexa-enabled smart speaker that has a screen on it so you can do stuff like… watch video. And YouTube is the internet’s largest source of said video. One of the core use cases of the Echo Show for some people might be watching cooking lessons or music videos — on YouTube.

Amazon’s strident statement makes clear that it doesn’t believe this is a technical mistake, but a conscious choice by Google. Google, however, very much begs to differ on the reason it blocked YouTube on the Echo Show:

We’ve been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time, working towards an agreement that provides great experiences for customers on both platforms. Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon.

Reading between the lines, I’d guess Google very much wants features that it thinks are essential for YouTube’s future growth included, stuff like subscriptions, next video recommendations, autoplay, and so on. But who knows! Only the negotiators at the table.

The features Google believes are “essential for YouTube’s future growth” are the annoyances which keep my own use of the platform to a bare minimum.

THE PRICE IS NOT RIGHT: Trump fuming over Price’s charter flights.

Trump rebuked Price in sharp terms Wednesday but declined to bat down speculation that the HHS chief could be fired for his lavish spending of taxpayer dollars.

“We’ll see,” the president told reporters when asked whether Price would stay in his job.

“I was looking into it, and I will look into it. And I will tell you personally, I’m not happy about it,” Trump said. “I am not happy about it. I’m going to look at it. I am not happy about it, and I let him know it.”

POLITICO has revealed that Price has flown 26 times on private aircraft since last May at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, a break with the practice of his predecessors, who generally took commercial flights.

Meanwhile, Washington is expected to run a non-recession budget deficit of $674 billion on record tax receipts.

UPDATE: Sorry about the silly typo — fixed.

FUNNY, I’M NOT LAUGHING: This Video About The Navy’s Decaying Shipyards Makes Its 355 Ship Goal Seem Laughable.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the Navy’s fleet dreams far outmatch their investments in the critical but unglamorous infrastructure needed to support them.

Just a few highlights from the short video:

• At one time the Navy had 13 shipyards, but now it has just four.
• None of these facilities were built to sustain a modern Navy.
• There is nearly a $5B maintenance backlog alone and this estimate is likely far less than the actual cost.
• Uses old inadequate equipment on high-tech vessels.
• Drydocks are on average 89 years old and are in poor condition.
• Due to the lack of dry dock capacity, the Navy won’t be able to perform a third of its scheduled aircraft carrier and submarine maintenance projects over the next two decades.
• Rising sea levels pose a threat to old dry docks.
• The Navy says it will take nearly two decades to address these issues, but GAO says it will take longer. By that time the fleet will have ballooned putting more pressure on these tired facilities.
• As of now the Navy is only funding roughly half the cost just to keep up maintenance on their own naval shipyards.

Welcome to the “woke” Navy.

YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Comics Artist Tweets Death to All GOP.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION THAT IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM WAS STRICTLY FOR PEACEFUL PURPOSES: Iran Is Building Nuclear Submarines.

The commander of the Iranian navy told the country’s semiofficial news agency, Fars, Tuesday that Iran’s nuclear agency was under orders to start producing nuclear reactors for fueling and propulsion systems that could be used on ships and submarines.

Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said the new destroyer would be more advanced than its two predecessors, Jamaran and Damavand. “I think that we will manage to accomplish this task in the current year,” he added.

You can be almost certain that there’s less to this story than there seems. Because although Newsweek reports Sayyari’s claims with a straight face, the Islamic Republic has a long history of announcing amazing new weapons which somehow never materialize.

SO NOW THE NEW YORK TIMES NOTICES DEFICITS: With Tax Cuts on the Table, Once-Mighty Deficit Hawks Hardly Chirp.

FLASHBACK:

There’s nothing wrong with debt when Democrats rack it up.

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: Who Leaked the Fake News Story That Obama Lectured Mark Zuckerberg About Russia: Susan Rice or … Ben Rhodes?

FALLOUT: Restaurants Are Turning Their TVs OFF To The NFL.

AND: DirecTV is offering an unprecedented refund of its ‘NFL Sunday ticket’ package over national anthem protests.

Either DirecTV thinks that few customers will take advantage, or that the NFL has become so toxic that they’re willing to issue a lot of refunds in exchange for good PR. The restaurant move makes me think it might be the latter.

Related (From Ed): CEO of the Dish Network Says That It’s No Longer Unthinkable to Simply Drop ESPN from Cable Networks.

BOOM: Trump Waives Jones Act for Puerto Rico.

NO, THEY AREN’T — NOT REALLY: Venezuela Prepares for War with US with ‘Rifles, Missiles, and Well-Oiled Tanks at the Ready.’

This is merely one more way for Maduro to deflect blame for the many failures of his government’s socialism, faithfully implemented.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Tax Reform, RUSSIAN Facebook Ads and Much, Much More.

WELL, GOOD: The FDA Has Created an Approval “Fast-Track” for Apple, Samsung, and Fitbit.

Called the “Pre-Cert for Software Pilot,” the move is meant to allow companies to develop technologies more rapidly, while still maintaining some government oversight over those projects. The affected companies will be able to get their products pre-cleared going forward, rather than going through the FDA’s standard application and approval process.

The hope with the program is that new health technologies could become available to the public much faster, while reducing the cost and time involved in developing them.

That’s a big step towards encouraging manufacturers to turn simple fitness trackers into actual health monitors.

21ST CENTURY HERETIC: Ohio State Student Refuses To State Preferred Pronouns: ‘If It Looks Like A Duck…”

THAT’S BILLION WITH A B: Illegal aliens are costing the American taxpayer $135 billion a year.

THINKING OUTSIDE THE SHIPPING CONTAINER:

Brilliant.

FED STUDY: Most Americans Still Worse Off Than Before Recession.

Newly released income and wealth data from the Federal Reserve Board’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances show that America’s richest families enjoyed gains in income and net worth over the last decade. Not part of the top 10 percent? Then your income probably fell. The data show that families ranked in the highest percentile saw an income gain of $16,300 from 2007 to 2016. Those below are still making less money.

When it comes to wealth, the gap is even bigger. In 2007, half of families had a net worth of $139,700 or more and half fell below this level. By 2016, the midpoint dropped to $97,300 — a decline of $42,600. Families ranked in the top tenth of net worth have enjoyed a sizable gain since 2007: a $132,100 rise in net worth to reach almost $1.2 million.

Thanks, Obama.

SPENGLER: Washington’s despicable hypocrisy towards the Kurds.

Since September 11, 2001, we’ve been told that America has to ally with moderate Muslims against “extremism.” There are in fact moderate Muslims in the world. The Kurds are “moderate Muslims.” The Kurds do not persecute nonbelievers. They don’t hate Jews and Christians. They don’t forbid women to leave the house without a male relative; in fact, their militias are the only effective fighting force in the world that includes women in front-line combat units. They protect Iraqi Christians against ISIS, and Iraq’s Christians in turn support Kurdish independence. They have excellent and long-standing relations with the State of Israel. Jewish life is flourishing in the Kurdish Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq.

Most of all, Kurdish fighters are the spearhead of American-backed ground forces fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. They do not only act the way we say we want Muslims to act, protecting Christians and Jews and promoting the equality of women. They shed blood for what they believe in.

The Kurds are everything that George W. Bush and Barack Obama told us we should find in the Islamic world, and more. They want nothing but friendship with the United States of America. And we have thrown them under the bus. There isn’t an Appalachian outhouse that stinks worse than our foreign policy Establishment.

It’s difficult to decide which our foreign policy establishment lacks most: Backbone or imagination.

And do read the whole thing.

THE WOODERSON EFFECT: As Tom Cruise gets older, his on-screen love interests stay the same age.

It’s a well-known fact that Hollywood likes to pair older men with younger women. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with an age gap between two consenting adults. According to the 2013 US Census, 4.8 percent of heterosexual married couples included a husband 10-15 years his wife’s senior.

The problem, rather, is that Hollywood doesn’t really care about showcasing the stories of that 4.8 percent so much as normalizing the expectation that women are only romance material when they’re in their mid-20s/early-30s, whereas men are free to age and remain conceivably f—able.

Of the leading men frequently cited in critiques of the age gap, Tom Cruise is the highest-paid. Consequently, the way he’s represented on screen matters. He is worth the deep dive. And deep dive I did. I crunched the numbers for every single Tom Cruise movie, comparing his age relative to that of the actresses playing his love interests over time.

All told, Cruise’s age gap mirrors, and indeed confirms, the larger critique of Hollywood’s bias against older actresses. This isn’t just anecdotally-sourced rhetoric, by the way. There’s more and more statistical evidence showing how women age out of Hollywood. Time and The Pudding, for instance, do a great job at visualizing how more roles and dialogue are available to men as they age, where the opposite is true for women.

Why is Hollywood such a cesspit of misogyny and ageism?

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Porn Harmful?

FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIRMAN: ‘Very Aggressive Timeframe’ on Tax Reform a Challenge.

Is it time to bring back the old “Do-Nothing Congress” label?

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: What’s Responsible for Dwarf Planet’s Giant Ice Blades.

FINALLY: Feds Spend $429,220 Tracking Eye Movements of Latinos at Grocery Stores to Fight Obesity.

Would you pay enough in federal income tax in 25 years to pay for this single study? Thirty years? Longer?