Copenhagen Suborbitals
August 22nd, 2010Homebrew submarine: Check
Homebrew rocket: Check
Homebrew sealaunch platform: Check
The countdown is running on the test flight:
The micro spacecraft (MSC) Tycho Brahe-1 is the payload of the HEAT booster. It is a pressurized volume providing support for one upright standing/half-sitting person, with a full view through a polymer plexiglas-dome to experience the entire ballistic ride. Based on the expected flight data and future test-flights, g-force loads and rocket orientation, we will determine the seating construction and necessary support to ensure a safe human travel.
No matter what happens:
Via: Copenhagen Suborbitals:
Our mission is very simple. We are working towards launching a human being into space. This is a non-profit suborbital space endeavor lead by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, based entirely on sponsors and volunteers.
Related: Something Awful Thread with Posts by Copenhagen Suborbitals Team Members
U.S. Scientist Retracts Assurances Over Success of Gulf of Mexico Cleanup
August 21st, 2010Via: Guardian:
White House claims that the worst of the BP oil spill was over were undermined yesterday when a senior government scientist said three-quarters of the oil was still in the Gulf environment and a research study detected a 22-mile plume of oil in the ocean depths.
Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) departed from an official report from two weeks ago which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down.
“I would say most of that is still in the environment,” Lehr, the lead author of the report, told the house energy and commerce committee.
The growing evidence that the White House painted an overly optimistic picture when officials claimed two weeks ago the remaining oil in the Gulf was rapidly breaking down fuelled a sense of outrage in the scientific community that government agencies are hiding data and spinning the science of the oil spill. No new oil has entered the Gulf since 15 July, but officials said yesterday the well is unlikely to be sealed for good until mid-September.
Related: Gulf of Mexico: Continuous Oil Plume Over 35KM in Length, at Approximately 1100M Depth
The Julian Assange Allegations
August 21st, 2010Update: Warrant Canceled
Mmm hmm.
Via: BBC:
Swedish authorities have cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on accusations of rape and molestation.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said the chief prosecutor had come to the decision that Mr Assange was not suspected of rape.
The warrant was issued late on Friday.
Wikileaks, which has been criticised for leaking Afghan war documents, had quoted Mr Assange as saying the charges were “without basis”.
That message, which appeared on Twitter and was attributed directly to Mr Assange, said the appearance of the allegations “at this moment is deeply disturbing”.
In a series of other messages posted on the Wikileaks Twitter feed, the whistle-blowing website said: “No-one here has been contacted by Swedish police”, and that it had been warned to expect “dirty tricks”.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said chief prosecutor Eva Finne had come to the decision that Julian Assange was not suspected of rape and so was not subject to arrest. It said Eva Finne would make no further immediate comment.
—End Update—
The fact that I’m reading about this damn near everywhere, and that so many people are submitting it, is giving me a really bad feeling. The hive mind of Reddit is upvoting “character assassination” type comments to the top. Be extremely careful when coming to the same conclusion as the zombie herd on Reddit.
I’m coming out with a solid: I don’t know what the f*&@ is happening here.
Via: AP:
The founder of WikiLeaks was accused of rape in a Swedish arrest warrant Saturday that turned the spotlight onto the former hacker who’s infuriated governments with his self-proclaimed mission to make secrets public.
The accusation was labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents from the Afghan war.
Swedish prosecutors urged Assange — a nomadic 39-year-old Australian whose whereabouts were unclear — to turn himself in to police to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.
They issued a warrant for his arrest, a move that doesn’t necessarily mean that criminal charges will be filed. Investigators want him in custody because they believe there is a risk he will obstruct the probe by destroying evidence, said Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority.
“The next step is that we interrogate him,” she said. “Then we’ll see what happens.”
Assange has no permanent address and travels frequently — jumping from one friend’s place to the next. He disappears from public view for months at a time, only to reappear in the full glare of the cameras at packed news conferences to discuss his site’s latest disclosure.
He was in Sweden last week seeking legal protection for the whistle-blower website, which angered the Obama administration for publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange dismissed the rape allegations in a statement on WikiLeaks’ Twitter page, saying “the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.”
Keep in Mind: WikiLeaks Founder, “Constantly Annoyed that People Are Distracted by False Conspiracies Such as 9/11?
SEC Charges New Jersey with Securities Fraud
August 21st, 2010You’ll love the penalty: “The state was not required to pay any civil fines or penalties, but ordered to cease and desist from future violations.”
Via: Reuters:
U.S. regulators said on Wednesday they charged New Jersey with securities fraud for not disclosing to municipal bond investors that it was underfunding its pensions.
New Jersey, the first state ever hit with securities fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agreed to settle the case without admitting or denying the findings, the SEC said. The state was not required to pay any civil fines or penalties, but ordered to cease and desist from future violations.
New Jersey offered and sold more than $26 billion of municipal bonds in 79 deals between August, 2001 and April, 2007, according to the SEC.
The offering documents “created the false impression that the Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund (TPAF) and the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) were being adequately funded, masking the fact that New Jersey was unable to make contributions to TPAF and PERS without raising taxes, cutting other services or otherwise affecting its budget,” the SEC said.
“The state of New Jersey didn’t give its municipal investors a fair shake, withholding and misrepresenting pertinent information about its financial situation,” Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement.
Scientists Simulate Terror Attack on Boston Subway
August 20th, 2010Test results will be used to craft ways to quickly detect an attack so authorities can shut down subways to limit the spread of contaminants.
Or, the test results will be used to plan the attack.
Via: Globe and Mail / AP:
Scientists are releasing gases and fluorescent particles into Boston’s subway tunnels on Friday to study how toxic chemicals and lethal biological agents could spread through the nation’s oldest subway system in a terrorist attack.
It’s part of a weeklong study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to figure out ways to quickly minimize the impact of an airborne assault on the nation’s 15 subway systems and protect the nation’s infrastructure. U.S. subway systems include 810 miles of track in tunnels and accounted for about 3.45 billion trips taken last year, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
The scientists are monitoring concentration of the gases — which are invisible to the naked eye and nontoxic — and particles as they move throughout the system and then up into the streets above, pushed by turbulence created by trains thundering through the tunnels. Researchers use electronic devices to take air samples at more than 20 Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority stations and in subway cars.
Test results will be used to craft ways to quickly detect an attack so authorities can shut down subways to limit the spread of contaminants.
Nearly 50 Percent Leave Obama Mortgage-Aid Program
August 20th, 2010Oh man, what a cluster f*@#.
Via: AP:
Nearly half of the homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.
A new report issued Friday by the Treasury Department said that approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the effort have been cut loose through July. That’s about 48 percent of the 1.3 million homeowners who had enrolled since March 2009. That is up from more than 40 percent through June.
The report suggests foreclosures could rise in the second half of the year and weaken the ailing housing market, analysts say.
Another 421,804, or 32.3 percent of those who started the program, have received permanent loan modifications and are making their payments on time.
Many borrowers have complained that program is a bureaucratic nightmare. They say banks often lose their documents and then claim borrowers did not send back the necessary paperwork.
Gerald Celente on Goldseek Radio
August 20th, 2010Gulf of Mexico: Continuous Oil Plume Over 35KM in Length, at Approximately 1100M Depth
August 20th, 2010See Scientific proof that the Deepwater oil plume is over 20 miles long, for an image of the water column at various depths.
Via: Science:
The Deepwater Horizon blowout is the largest offshore oil spill in history. We present results from a subsurface hydrocarbon survey using an autonomous underwater vehicle and a ship-cabled sampler. Our findings indicate the presence of a continuous plume over 35 km in length, at approximately 1100 m depth that persisted for months without substantial biodegradation. Samples collected from within the plume reveal monoaromatic petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations in excess of 50 µg L–1. These data indicate that monoaromatic input to this plume was at least 5500 kg day–1, which is more than double the total source rate of all natural seeps of the monoaromatic petroleum hydrocarbons in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Dissolved oxygen concentrations suggest that microbial respiration rates within the plume were not appreciably more than 1 µM O2 day–1.
More: New York Times: Oil Plume Is Not Breaking Down Fast, Study Says
The Event
August 20th, 2010Via: NBC:
Saudi Judge Considers Severing Spine of Attacker Who Paralyzed Man
August 20th, 2010Dr. Mengele, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Via: USA Today:
In a variation of the ancient eye-for-an-eye punishment, a judge in Saudi Arabia has asked hospitals whether doctors would sever the spinal cord of an attacker convicted of paralyzing a man with a cleaver.
The Arabic-language newspaper Okaz reported that one hospital in the northwestern province of Tabuk said it could perform the operation, while a prominent hospital in Riyadh refused, on apparent ethical grounds, saying “inflicting such harm is not possible.”
Abdul-Aziz al-Mutairi, 22, was left paralyzed and subsequently lost a foot after a fight more than two years ago, his older brother, Khaled al-Mutairi, told the Associated Press. He said the assailant, whom he and the paper did not identify, was sentenced to 14 months in prison, released after seven months in an amnesty and now teaches at a university.
Under Islamic (sharia) law in Saudi Arabia, victims can ask that criminals receive punishments similar to the harm they inflicted. It is not uncommon for thieves to have their hands cut off.
“We are asking for our legal right under Islamic law,” Khaled al-Mutairi said. “There is no better word than God’s word — an eye for an eye.”
Judge Saoud bin Suleiman al-Youssef sent letters to several hospitals in and outside the region, Emirates 24/7 says. A verdict is pending.
Related: U.S. to Sell $30 Billion Worth of Fighter Jets to Saudi Arabia
