Libertarian Party of Texas rates Legislators 2009: Republicans score far more Pro-Liberty than Dems

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From Eric Dondero:

From an LPT release:

AUSTIN, TEXAS - October 11, 2010 --
The Libertarian Party of Texas has released its ratings of state legislators for the 2009 session.
"Our scorecard helps identify those legislators that are closer or further away from our principles" says state chair Pat Dixon. "As we approach election day, it is important for our membership and voters to understand where legislators rate on personal and economic liberty."

The scorecard rates legislators on a scale of 0% to 100% for both Personal Liberty and Economic Liberty and the results are indicated on a Nolan Chart.

This scoring is not a perfect indicator of whether a legislator is aligned with Libertarian philosophy, but does provide a relative ranking to help distinguish between legislators further or closer to the principles of the Libertarian Party.

Dixon adds "Very soon voters will have an opportunity to determine who will occupy these seats in the next session. The only way to ensure that your legislator will work for personal and economic liberty is to vote Libertarian."

On the scoring chart Republicans on the House side, almost to the man (and woman) score much higher on the Libertarian scale than the Democrats. On the Senate side there's much more variety, with a few sprinkled low Republican scorers. However, all the top scorers were Republicans.

2009 Texas Senate Legislative Ratings

The senate members with the 5 worst total score ratings were:
1. Royce West, Democrat, district 23, total score 10
2. Rodney Ellis, Democrat, district 13, total score 15
3. Eddie Lucio, Democrat, district 27, total score 15
4. Eliot Shapleigh, Democrat, district 29, total score 15
5. Judith Zaffarini, Democrat district 21, total score 15

The senate members with the 4 best total score ratings were:
1. Mike Jackson, Republican district 11, total score 66
2. Thomas Williams, Republican district 4, total score 61
3. Dan Patrick, Republican district 7, total score 51
4. Troy Fraser, Republican district 24, total score 51

2009 Texas House Legislative Ratings

The house members with the 3 worst total score ratings were:
1. Carol Alvarado, Democrat district 145, total score 5
2. Rafael Anchia, Democrat district 103, total score 8
3. Elliott Naishtat, Democrat district 49, total score 8

The house members with the 3 best total score ratings were:
1. Ken Paxton, Republican district 70, total score 93
2. Jodie Laubengerg, Republican district 89, total score 90
3. Debbie Riddle, Republican district 150, total score 90

The full scorecard can be found at lptexas.org

Note - Senator Mike Jackson represents Galveston and the Texas Gulf Coast, approximately the same area as Congressman Ron Paul - Lake Jackson.

Personal Note - Senator Jackson happens to be my Senator for Brazoria County.

Libertarian Solutions for Indiana and the Nation

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The Libertarian Party of Indiana is committed to showing voters that Libertarianism is not an abstract ideal. It is a workable philosophy for modern politics. Several months ago, our staff put together two documents for our candidates to identify problems and solutions in not only Indiana politics, but national politics as well. We are releasing [...]

Volunteer Opportunities This Weekend

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Campaigns will be working hard to reach out to voters over this weekend, and need your help to make a difference. We will update with new information through the weekend. Check out the LPIN resources page for canvassing tips: How to Canvass for Votes The State party will receive 30,000 World’s Smallest Political Quiz door [...]

BP Rehearsed Oil Spill in 2000 Confidential Experiment Exposed

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This video exposes a confidential report of an experiment done in Norway in 2000 by a consortium of oil companies including BP and the US government showing how a deep water blowout would create clouds of super toxic oil which could not be recovered. Was it a surprise that most of the oil from the BP well stayed in the Gulf of Mexico, at depth, in clouds of small particles? To the public maybe, but not to BP.

Vesta Movie by Hubble

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Astronomers used 146 images of the Dwarf Planet Vesta taken by the Wide Field Camera 3 aboard Hubble to get a look at its 5.34 hour rotation. The imaging was done in preparation for the encounter between the DAWN spacecraft and Vesta in July 2011.

The images were taken in the near-ultraviolet and blue light. Hubble can see features about 25 miles (40km) across.

From the press release (more info and image sizes in the link):

The asteroid is somewhat like our moon, with ancient lava beds (the dark patches) and powdery debris, the pulverized remains of impacts (the orange-colored areas). A flattened area on one end of Vesta is a giant impact crater formed by a collision billions of years ago. The crater is 460 kilometers (285 miles) across, close to Vesta’s roughly 530-kilometer (330-mile) diameter. The asteroid is about the size of Arizona.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/UMd

BLAST!

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Click here to view the embedded video.

I know, another video.  Sorry, but this does look good and a do like balloon based missions – a simple concept that is deceptively complex.

This is coming on November 4th.  Check out the film website too.  I have high hopes for this!!

Here’s the PBS press release:

New York, NY October 14, 2010 – Welcome to Astrophysics, Indiana Jones style!
Five-time Emmy winner Paul Devlin brings his newest film BLAST! to PBS WNET NY on Thursday, November 4th at 8pm, offering an exciting, enlightening ride around the world and across the Universe.

The Devlin brothers make good and get their adventure science movie all the way to Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report – http://bit.ly/aNsUy6 – one’s an astrophysicist and one’s a filmmaker, and their collaboration, BLAST! brings exciting discovery to mainstream audiences.  BLAST! also broadcast on BBC World News reaching over one-hundred million viewers in August 2010!

BLAST! is a spectacular and suspenseful story of space exploration. Paul Devlin (SlamNation, Power Trip) follows his brother, Mark Devlin, PhD, as he leads a tenacious team of scientists on the journey of a lifetime from Arctic Sweden to the desolate ice of Antarctica. By launching a revolutionary new telescope on a NASA high-altitude balloon, they hope to reveal a hidden Universe of never-before-seen star-burst galaxies, providing clues to the Evolution of Everything.  From catastrophic failure to transcendent triumph, their adventure reveals the surprising real life of scientists.

As in director Paul Devlin’s award winning film Power Trip, BLAST! de-emphasizes talking head interviews and dispenses with anonymous narration in favor of capturing the action as it happens. Dynamic storytelling and unique access provide the rare opportunity to reveal the personal and family sacrifices, the obsessions, and even the philosophical questioning of scientists.

“My intention is to expose a much larger audience to the fascinating lives of scientists by breaking with some of the conventional approaches to science material,” comments Director Paul Devlin.  “This story had all the elements I needed.  The extreme events provide the structure for a classically suspenseful narrative, with a built-in twist at the end.”

BLAST! was filmed on location in 7 countries on 5 continents, and has broadcast and screened nationally and internationally at film festivals, theaters, universities, science centers, and planetariums in conjunction with the International Year of Astronomy in 2009.  BLAST! has been seen by over a million viewers via broadcasts on BBC, Discovery Canada, SVT Sweden, YLE Finland, VPRO Netherlands, DR Denmark, and NHK Japan. In the summer of 2009, BLAST! enjoyed a theatrical run in New York City and Chicago.

Duck! Incoming Asteroid

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We have an asteroid named 2010 TD54 coming so close we could almost have to duck.  Probably by the time you read this the asteroid will be beyond Earth and departing.

Right,  thankfully that means this object isn’t going to hit us.  2010 TD54 is only 6 to 7 meters (19 to 22 feet +/-) but it IS going to pass by at a very close 46,000 km (yes that’s just 28.580 miles!). Hey that’s not much further than our geosynchronous satellites!

The pass is supposed be at 1050 UTC , that’s 6:50 EDT.  They don’t really have the time nailed down super good, so that’s plus or minus 10 minutes.

Hopefully there will be some images of this asteroid and I’ll post links when they become available.   The asteroid is right on the ragged edge for my being able to spot it with my 10 inch Meade, I might give it a go all the same.

Pretty good though, a six to seven meter sized object spotted two days, well three before the flyby.  Way to go MT Lemmon Survey.

Here are some links:

JPL Small Object Database

NEODyS 2010TD54 Close Approaches

A Blue Streak on Mimas

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The blue streak on Mimas. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI/LPI

From the Cassini site:

This enhanced-color view of Saturn’s moon Mimas was made from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. It highlights the bluish band around the icy moon’s equator. The view shows the hemisphere that faces forward in Mimas’ orbit around Saturn. The large round gouge on the surface is Herschel Crater.
This composite image was made by processing raw images obtained by Cassini’s imaging cameras from 2004 to 2009. Scientists analyzed frames shot through visible-light, ultraviolet and infrared filters. The processing enhanced our views of these moons beyond what could be seen by the human eye.
The dark, bluish band around Mimas matches patterns one might expect if the surface were being irradiated by high-energy electrons that drift in a direction opposite to the flow of plasma in the magnetic bubble around Saturn. Scientists are still figuring out exactly what is happening, but the electrons appear to be zapping the Mimas surface in a way that matches the Pac-Man thermal pattern detected by Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer early in 2010.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

In other stuff:
I went out last night to look for comet Hartley 2 with binoculars. The comet should have been near the constellation Perseus, the sky was lovely but no comet even though it should be visible.  I went back out this morning at about 4:30 and looked just off Gemini, again no luck but it was fun just the same. The Bee Hive Cluster was very nice naked eye object. The comet doesn’t place itself well for my telescope.

NCBI ROFL: Detection and management of pornography-seeking in an online clinical dermatology atlas. | Discoblog

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computer“BACKGROUND: Increased use of an online educational archive of photographic dermatology case materials (DermAtlas) indicated unexpected pornography-seeking behavior and misuse.

OBJECTIVE: We sought to assess the extent of archive misuse.

METHODS: Web usage/request patterns were examined over a 6-month period for requests by anatomic site, diagnosis, and age group plus anatomic site. Free-text queries and referrals from external Web sites were reviewed.

RESULTS: Of 7800 images, 5.5% contain genital sites. Of all requests, 11% were for anatomic sites (37% genital sites); 62% were specified for diagnoses (12% genital sites). When age group and anatomic site were specified, the relative risk of a child being requested (vs adult) was 1.48 (95% confidence interval 1.44-1.53). Of 10000 free text queries, 12% retrieved images containing genital sites. Of all referrals, 14.3% originated from nonmedical (pornography/fetish) Web sites.

LIMITATIONS: Requests are mixed with legitimate queries.

CONCLUSION: Online photographic dermatology archives are vulnerable to misuse. Monitoring and intervention are necessary to preserve their availability and integrity.”

dermatology

Photo: flickr/Johan.V.

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High-Tech Society Drive Demand for China’s Rare Earth Metals | 80beats

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rare-earthRare earth metals are a hot commodity in today’s high-tech world. Until recently these elements were fairly obscure members of the periodic table; now, their usefulness in everything from hybrid cars to solar panels has boosted their profile.

The 17 rare earth metals, some with exotic names like lanthanum and europium, form unusually strong lightweight magnetic materials. Lanthanum is used in the batteries of hybrid cars, neodymium is used in magnets in the electric generators of wind turbines and europium is used in colored phosphors for energy-efficient lighting. [Reuters]

Their new necessity has also provided a boost to China, where the vast majority of these elements are currently mined. China’s dominance has been brought into sharp focus over the past three weeks, when China blocked all shipments of rare earth metals to Japan in response to a diplomatic incident concerning a Chinese fishing boat in territorially disputed waters.

Beijing has denied the embargo, yet the lack of supply may soon disrupt manufacturing in Japan, trade and industry minister Akihiro Ohata told reporters Tuesday. [Technology Review]

Despite the name, rare earth elements are actually fairly common in the Earth’s crust. But they’re often difficult to extract profitably without making an environmental mess, and in recent years production has largely shifted to China. The extraction of the metals can be plenty dirty in China too, but environmental regulations aren’t yet stringent there.

In response to the abrupt halt in the export of rare earth metals to Japan, trade officials from the United States and Japan are discussing whether to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, Technology Review reports that companies are scrambling to find ways to reduce their reliance on these elements: some car companies are developing motors that don’t use rare earth elements at all, while the U.S. Energy Department is funding research on making powerful magnets out of more prosaic materials.

And there’s one final option for avoiding China’s monopoly: Mine more rare earths here at home.

In California, Molycorp Minerals is looking to reopen rare-earth mines that closed in 2002, amidst low pricing and environmental concerns. In recent weeks, bills have been floated in the U.S. House and Senate aimed at reviving the rare-earth supply chain in the U.S., including mining, refining, and manufacturing. A third bill, in the House, is narrower, focusing on offering loan guarantees to restart mining. [Technology Review]

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Image: Wikimedia Commons


Get Your Steampunk On: This Guy’s Building a Computer From 1837 | Discoblog

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Analytical-EngineWhat would you do with a spare $640,000? John Graham-Cunning would build a steam-powered computer invented in the 1830s.

And instead of waiting around for this mysterious spare money to show up, he’s started soliciting donations. The plan: Raise the money by January 2011, build the analytical engine from Charles Babbage’s original design, then donate the machine to a museum. Graham-Cunning knows this idea sounds crazy, but it won’t deter him, as he wrote in an article for the O’Reilly Radar:

It might seem a folly to want to build a gigantic, relatively puny computer at great expense 170 years after its invention. But the message of a completed Analytical Engine is very clear: it’s possible to be 100 years ahead of your own time.

If the analytical engine had been built when Babbage thought it up, it would have satisfied all the requirements for a computer, Graham-Cunning told The Telegraph:

“What you realize when you read Babbage’s papers is that this was the first real computer. It had expandable memory, a CPU, microcode, a printer, a plotter and was programmable with punch cards. It was the size of a small lorry and powered by steam but it was recognizable as a computer.”

But the designs were never built, and the world had to wait more than 100 years for the invention of mechanical computers in the 1940s. The analytic engine was designed to replace “computers”–people who wrote out mathematical tables–which would also have been the first example of a person’s job being replaced by a computer. Graham-Cumming explained the machine to The Independent:

“The big difference between it and machines which came 100 years later was that the programme was stored externally, in punch cards,” explained Mr Graham-Cumming. “It is basically a giant number-crunching machine–which is effectively what modern computers are today, it’s just that those numbers appear to us as words or images on a screen.”

And while it sounds like it shouldn’t be that hard to recreate something from the 1800s, there are plenty of confounding factors complicating this project, including the fact that a working model has never been built, says Gizmodo:

Babbage may’ve passed away in 1871, but more than a hundred years later and his computer (which would have run on punched cards containing the programs) still hasn’t ever been fully built. In 1910 his son built part of it, which was able to calculate an incorrect list of pi multiples—but it wasn’t programmable. And who needs a computer than calculates false numbers?

Oh, also, there are no firm set of plans with which to build one from, so they are going to have to go through all of Babbage’s documents to figure out a working design. The plan is to test the designs on a (modern) computer before going through the building process.

When it is fully built, the machine will be about the size of a small steam locomotive, and will be powered by steam. If the project hadn’t been scrapped, imagine how Victorian society would have changed, and how much more evolved technology would be today. We might even have had flying cars by now! Frig!

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Image: Flickr/Gastev


A Global Success Story: Deadly Cattle Disease Is Wiped Off the Planet | 80beats

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rinderpestGoodbye and good riddance, rinderpest.

For only the second time in history, humans have eradicated a disease through a long, slogging campaign of vaccinations and global alertness.

Rinderpest, which means “cattle plague” in German, does not affect humans, though it belongs to the same virus family as measles. But for millenniums in Asia, Europe and Africa it wiped out cattle, water buffalo, yaks and other animals needed for meat, milk, plowing and cart-pulling. Its mortality rate is about 80 percent — higher even than smallpox, the only other disease ever eliminated. [The New York Times]

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has been scanning the world for outbreaks, but the agency hasn’t seen a case since 2001, when one popped up in Kenya. Now that nine years have passed without a murmur of rinderpest, the agency says it’s confident that the virus has been wiped out. In the wild, at least. There are still some vials of virus in veterinary labs:

Still to be decided is how much virus to keep frozen in various countries’ laboratories, along with tissue from infected animals and stocks of vaccine, which is made from live virus. Virologists like to have samples handy for research, but public health experts, fearing laboratory accidents or acts of terrorism, usually press to destroy as much as possible. [The New York Times]

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Image: flickr / ILRI


Photos: Caribbean Coral Reefs Took a Beating This Summer | 80beats

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In the western Caribbean, some coral reefs have turned into eerie white ghost towns.

Scientists with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute have documented a major bleaching event in the reefs near Panama and the island of Curaçao. Such bleaching occurs when a reef loses the tiny photosynthetic algae that typically live in the coral, providing it with food (and color). Bleaching occurs when coral is under stress, most typically due to higher ocean temperatures. And this was a hot summer.

Abnormally warm water since June appears to have dealt a blow to shallow and deep-sea corals that is likely to top the devastation of 2005, when 80% of corals were bleached and as many as 40% died in areas on the eastern side of the Caribbean. [ScienceNOW]

The rise in water temperature doesn’t have to be dramatic, just steady. In 2005, the water near the Virgin Islands was about 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average from August to November, and coral reefs in the eastern Caribbean suffered. This year, slightly higher ocean temperatures spread over a much broader area in the western and southern Caribbean. Near Panama, researchers reported that water temperatures reached a high of 7 degrees Fahrenheit above average in mid-September.

Hurricane season may be enhancing the current problem, resulting in low water circulation in the southwestern Caribbean and thus creating a “warm pocket” of water along the coasts of Panama and Costa Rica, the researchers speculate. [MSNBC]

Coral reefs can recover from bleaching, but there’s not guarantee–and as long as the reefs are pale shadows of their former selves, they’re in trouble. Bleaching impairs the coral’s ability to grow and reproduce, and the reefs can die altogether.

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