Randi does Big Think | Bad Astronomy

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James Randi — conjourer, critical thinker, skeptic, and friend — did a series of great interviews on Big Think. Here’s one where he talks about spending his life attacking antiscience and its purveyors, specifically Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne.

The interviews are all short, just a few minutes long, and you can access all of them on the Big Think site. It’s well worth your time to hear from this giant of skepticism.

Bonus: the James Randi Educational Foundation just announced they have education grants available! If you’re an educator developing or disseminating critical thinking materials, take a look.


Living in Bat City: Millions of Mothers, Millions of Pups | Visual Science

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These are mother Mexican free-tailed bats emerging from a limestone cave in Texas. They fly as far as 60 miles from the cave, and sometimes a mile or two high, to catch insects. Several million pups (one per mother) are left behind in the cave, where they are packed at densities up to several thousand per square yard. Remarkably, mothers are able to find their pups to nurse them in these dark, noisy caverns. They do so by learning a mental map of the cave geometry, and using a combination of vocal and scent recognition to locate and identify their own pups. As the pups get older they participate more actively in these reunions.

Author of Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, Jonathan Balcombe, on his recent book: “We need a complete overhaul in our relationship with (other) animals. The core reason for this is that they are, like us, highly sentient—intelligent, aware, emotional, perceptive, etc. I studied this species of bat for my PhD. Their excellent memories, individual recognition skills, and their capacity to make fine sensory discriminations (spatial, acoustic and olfactory) to identify their babies are a good illustration of the inner lives of animals.”

Photo by Jonathan Balcombe, courtesy Palgrave Macmillan

Dueling Videos: Is Iranian Nuclear Scientist a Defector or Kidnap Victim? | 80beats

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AmiriHave you seen this man? If so, please ask him to make up his mind.

Shahram Amiri, a 32-year-old Iranian nuclear scientist, is at the center of an episode of United States-Iran intrigue that just got weirder, thanks to YouTube. Amiri disappeared during his pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last year, and anonymous U.S. officials confirmed that he defected, presumably bringing information about Iran’s nuclear program. Now he—or someone purporting to be him—appears in two contradictory videos that claim he was either abducted and tortured by the United States or is living happily here and going about his studies.

The first video:

The dark-haired man, appearing unshaven and disheveled, said he was being held against his will in Tucson. “I was kidnapped in a joint operation by the American intelligence, CIA terror and kidnap teams, and Saudi Arabia’s Istikhbarat” spy service, the man said in a grainy video aired in Iran on Monday night. He said he had been drugged before being smuggled out of Saudi Arabia, adding that he had been subjected to “severe torture” and “psychological pressures” [Washington Post].

A very different Amiri showed up in a second video today. He, or someone like him, appears in a professionally shot video sitting in front of some parlor with a globe and a chess board, as if he wants to have a few minutes of our time to talk about life insurance.

In it, the man claiming to be Amiri contradicts many of the claims made in the earlier video, noting he is safely and happily residing in the U.S., though experts say it appears he is reading from a script. “I am free here, and I assure everyone I am safe,” he says in Farsi [Huffington Post].

So is it really him? Iran, of course, has the political motive to make it look like Amiri was a kidnapping victim and not a defector. And it makes no sense at all to think someone held against his will would be handed a Webcam and Internet access to beam his plight back to Iran. So maybe it’s an Iranian fake.

But there are more intriguing possibilities:

“Assuming there is some truth to the fact that he cooperated with CIA, he is either having mental issues or he is just trying to make the Iranians go easier on friends and family of his still inside by pushing the story he left against his will,” said Charles “Sam” Faddis, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence. He added: “Nobody kidnaps Iranian scientists and drags them against their will to the United States” [Washington Post].

Frankly, the bent and diction of both talks sound like they were written by government propagandists from one side or the other. The weird jockeying and doubletalk will probably continue because political tensions between Iran and the U.S. seem to be escalating: The U.S. just pushed through more diplomatic sanctions against Iran for its nuclear activities, and Iran quashed rumors that it would trade the three American hikers still held there for Amiri. Pressing the case that Amiri was kidnapped, Iran filed a formal complaint with the Swiss. (Switzerland’s envoys handle our business there since official relations with Iran were cut off long ago.)

Related Content:
80beats: Iran Blocks Gmail; Will Offer Surveillance-Friendly National Email Instead
80beats: The Tweets Heard Round the World: Twitter Spreads Word of Iranian Protests
80beats: Iran Gets Its Sputnik Moment with First Successful Satellite Launch
Discoblog: Update: Iran’s Numbers Even Fishier Than Previously Reported


Pocket science – bursting bubbles make more bubbles, and snakes on the wane | Not Exactly Rocket Science

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Not Exactly Pocket Science is a set of shorter write-ups on new stories with links to more detailed takes by the world’s best journalists and bloggers. It is meant to complement the usual fare of detailed pieces that are typical for this blog.

Bursting bubbles create rings of daughter bubbles

Popping a bubble on a body of water seems like an unspectacular event, but there’s real beauty in what happens if you look at it carefully. For James Bird at Harvard University, that meant filming the exploding bubbles with a high-speed camera. His beautiful videos reveal that contrary to popular belief, a popped bubble doesn’t just vanish. Instead, it gives birth to a ring of smaller daughter bubbles, each of which can produce an even smaller ring when it bursts.

The bubble’s curved nature means that the air inside it is at a higher pressure than air outside it. When a hole forms in the bubble, this pressure difference disappears and the film starts to recedes away. The film experiences an inward force along its surface, but an outward force at its rim – as a result, it folds outwards back onto itself, trapping a donut of air. The donut, however, is unstable and it soon breaks up into several smaller bubbles. The whole process takes place in a few thousandths of a second and it can only happen twice before the daughter bubbles get too small.

This process is surprisingly common. It applies to liquids from water to oil, regardless of their viscosity, and it happens in soapy sinks and foamy oceans alike. Bird also found that the bursting of each daughter bubble released tiny liquid droplets into the atmosphere. These aerosols may be miniscule but they have a few important repercussions. They’ve been implicated in the spread of infectious diseases in swimming pools and hot tubs and they contribute to the cycling of chemicals from the oceans into the atmosphere.

Reference: Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09069

More from Geoff Brumfiel at Nature

Image and video by C.Bird

Bursting_bubbles

Snakes on the wane (credit to Sciencepunk for the headline)

Snakes

A depressing number of important animal groups are facing massive population crashes, including amphibians, corals and most recently lizards. Now snakes are the latest faction to join this pessimistic list. An international team of scientists led by CJ Reading did a survey of 17 snake populations, covering 8 species from the European grass snake to the African gaboon viper. They found that 11 of the populations have declined at an alarming rate since the mid 1990s, while 5 have remained relatively stable. The crashing populations all showed a “tipping point” trend, where their numbers suddenly and steeply fell over four years, after a lengthy period of stability. They’ve all levelled off since but one decade on, their numbers show no sign of recovering.

The trends are worrying especially because we still have no idea what’s behind them. It’s telling that all of the five stable populations lived in protected areas, while the crashing species hailed from regions troubled by human activity. Their fates could be driven by falling habitat quality and a lack of prey. It’s also notable that all but one of the stable five are wide-ranging and active foragers, while the declining species are typically ambush predators that stay in the same restricted range. These “sit-and-wait” hunters are more vulnerable to human activity that disrupts the habitats they need to hide in, and they usually grow and breed slowly.

Whatever the cause, it seems to be universal. Reading’s team found that tropical species like Nigeria’s rhinoceros viper are experiencing similar population crashes as temperate ones like the British smooth snake, and all within the same period of time. To Reading, this suggests that the declines share a common and widespread cause – climate change would be an obvious candidate but that needs to be tested.

Snake_populations

Reference: Biology Letters http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0373

More from the Guardian

Photos by Fafner and Tim Vickers


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Lady Humpback Whales Make Friends & Meet up for Summer Reunions | 80beats

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humpbackScientists have long thought humpbacks loners. New research shows this isn’t so: Researchers have observed some female whale form friendships that last for years. The behavior has only been observed in lady humpbacks of similar age, with the whales going their separate ways during the breeding season, but reuniting in the open ocean each summer. These bonds can be quite strong: the longest association endured for six years.

The study appears in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, and it also found that the whales with the longest-lasting associations gave birth to the most calves–another animal kingdom example that friendship is beneficial. The whales are probably improving their feeding efficiency, suggests lead author Christian Ramp.

“Staying together for a prolonged period of time requires a constant effort. That means that they feed together, but likely also rest together…. So an individual is adapting its behaviour to another one.” [BBC]

When categorizing fraternal sea animals, scientists used to make a dental distinction: tooth-sporting sperm whales, dolphins, and orcas make friends, but baleen whales like the humpback–those whales that use stringy baleen to strain their food out of the water–were thought less social. Says Ramp:

“I was very surprised by the prolonged duration…. I was expecting stable associations within one season, not beyond. I was particularly surprised by the fact that only females form these bonds, especially females of similar age.” [LiveScience]

Snapping pictures of yearly whale visits to the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Canada’s coast since 1997, scientists including Ramp recorded the familiar groupings. As for where the summering whales meet up and how they recognize their old friends, those things are still mysterious.

Ramp wonders whether whaling has made humpbacks’ social pairings increasingly rare since traveling together might make them easier targets, though he says he would need more research to make this conclusion.

Related content:
80beats: Whales vs. Navy: NOAA May Limit Sonar Tests, but Another Case Heads to Court
80beats: Primitive Proto-Whales May Have Clambered Ashore to Give Birth
80beats: Is the Whaling Ban Really the Best Way to Save the Whales?
Discoblog: Should Dolphins and Whales Have “Human Rights”?

Image: flickr / NOAA’s National Ocean Service


My Five Dollar Bills Are Crazier Than Your Five Dollar Bills | Cosmic Variance

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Exhibit A: Still fighting the Civil War, one Lincoln five dollar bill at a time.

five dollar bill confederate

(FYI, “Deo Vindice” is from the Great Seal of the Confederacy, and is loosely translated by our good friends at Wikipedia as “With God our Vindicator”)

Exhibit B: Showing that crazy deep emotion is not restricted to one end of the political spectrum.

fivedollar_obama001

Poor Hillary, getting robed like that.

Kidding aside, I’m fairly moved by the thought that there are people who have such a depth of frustration that scrawling on currency feels like the only voice they have — one may find the source of that frustration repellent or deranged, but that feeling of impotence in the face of what seems like the end of the world is something most of us have felt at one time or another (Gulf oil spill, anyone?).

(FYI, These two examples are just the ones that happened to pass through my hands during the past few months, but many more examples have been cataloged here and here, the latter being a compendium maintained by a burrito restaurant, of all things.)


Actually, if you’re a comet, it *is* easy being green | Bad Astronomy

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Yesterday, I wrote about the comet 2009 R1 McNaught which is currently in the extreme northern sky in the early morning. By coincidence, just hours after posting it, I got an email from the amateur astronomer Anthony Ayiomamitis (the same guy who took the very cool picture of the ISS and Jupiter in the daytime), who sent me this picture of the comet he took in Greece at just around the same time that post went live:

ayiomamitis_mcnaught2009r1

Wow, very pretty! The solid part of the comet, called the nucleus, is far smaller than a single pixel in this image, since the comet was more than 175 million km (110 million miles) away when he took this shot. The nucleus of even a huge comet is only a few dozen km across, so at that great distance is just a tiny dot. Anthony has details on his observations on his McNaught page.

The comet looks huge — and the fuzzy part can be bigger than planets! — because what you’re seeing is gas expanding away from the nucleus. Far from the Sun that gas is frozen, and the comet is solid. But heat it up, and that ice turns into a gas, creating the comet’s coma (Latin for hair). In that gas methane, water, ammonia, and lots of other things, many of which are pretty nasty.

But why is it green?

Ah, that’s a good question (I’m glad I asked it!) and takes just a little bit of background.

When the gas suffusing out from the nucleus gets hit by ultraviolet light it becomes ionized; one or more electrons get stripped off the atoms. That’s important because the Sun is blowing a wind of subatomic particles called the solar wind, and as it moves out from the Sun it carries a magnetic field with it. This field interacts with the comet’s ions in the coma, shearing them away (this process is pretty complicated, and not completely understood). The solar wind is moving far, far faster than the comet (many hundreds of km/sec, versus maybe just a few dozen), so the ion tail points straight away from the Sun. As far as the solar wind cares, the comet is just standing still.

And that brings us to the comet’s verdant glow. That green color is real, and not just from the way the picture was made! And it’s the same reason a neon sign glows. When you have an ionized atom or molecule (or just an excited one, with an electron bumped into a higher energy state so that it can fall back down), the electron can recombine with its parent. When it does, it gives off light. The color of the light depends very strongly on the type of atom or molecule. Excited hydrogen glows red, for example, which is why so many gas clouds in deep space glow that color.

In a comet, the molecule cyanogen (CN)2 and diatomic carbon (C2) both glow characteristically green, which is why some comets, like McNaught, are green. And I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that these comets must be mostly made of those two molecules since the comet is so green. But, like everything in science, there’s more going on…

Some atoms and molecules emit more strongly than others. Under the same circumstances, a kilo of cyanogen would glow much more fiercely than a kilo of, say, hydrogen. It depends on some relatively complicated quantum physics — forgive me if I leave off the details — but you can think of it as one person who can yell louder than a bunch of other people combined. That one person dominates the emitted sound, even though there are lots of people in the room. It’s the same in the comet: (CN)2 and C2 are strong emitters, so their presence dominates the color we see. That’s not the case for every comet (some may be deficient in those compounds), but it’s certainly true for McNaught; lots of observers are reporting its strongly blue-green color.

I’ve seen quite a few green comets in my time, and while it’s a little odd to see something glowing a ghostly hue like that in the sky, it’s always lovely. This comet promises to be a good one, so if you get a chance, go out and hunt it down.


Guest Post: Eugene Lim on Education in Haiti | Cosmic Variance

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Eugene LimEugene Lim was one of my first graduate students at the University of Chicago. We violated Lorentz invariance together (it’s not as dirty as it sounds), and he’s since gone on to think about bubble collisions and eternal inflation at prestigious places like Yale, Columbia, and Cambridge.

But Eugene always cared about other things in addition to physics, and today he’s bringing us a guest post about a heart-wrenching topic: education in Haiti in the aftermath of their devastating earthquake. Not content to agitate for support from the comfort of his computer, Eugene is actually hopping on a plane this weekend to spend a month teaching math at a poor rural university. Here’s his introduction, and we hope to have a follow-up post after he returns from his travels.

———-

On Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 4:53pm, a massive quake hit Haiti, killing an approximate quarter of a million people, injuring another quarter of a million, and causing massive infrastructure damage. Today, more than five months later, as the news cycle has moved on, Haitians are still pulling themselves out of the disaster, with 1.5 million people still homeless.

Fondwa is the 10th Communal Section of Leogane situated about 60 km south of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, near the epicenter of the quake. It is a rural community with big dreams, the peasants banded together in 1988 to form the APF (Association of Peasants of Fondwa) to create a model community, not just with the aim of providing basic services but to empower the people of Haiti by providing them with the education and knowledge to improve their own lives.

One of their amazing achievement is the founding of a university, the University of Fondwa (UNIF) in 2004 in the mountains of Haiti, offering majors in Management, Agricultural Engineering and Veterinary Science — skills necessary for a rural community to survive and thrive — with about 40 students from all over Haiti. They graduated their first class last year.

University of Fondwa

The quake destroyed all the buildings of UNIF : the main building, the dorms and the lecture halls. Remarkably, classes continued after the quake, first in tents, and hopefully soon in temporary shelters. Final exams were given and graded, and the new semester began on schedule, May 5.

Fondwa destroyed

I met the founder of the University, Fr. Joseph Phillipe in New York a few weeks ago (he also founded Haiti’s biggest microfinance bank, FONKOZE, but that’s another story) — a series of hopeful email inquiries inspired by the watching a documentary about Fondwa led to having coffee with him in uptown New York City. Despite the challenges that his community is facing, he was full of energy, focusing on what to do for the future. I was impressed. I told him I want to help out.

I told him I wanted to volunteer to teach in UNIF, but I was not sure what I need to do. He said “We are waiting for you in Fondwa.”

This week, I am headed down to Fondwa to teach math for a month. I was told to be prepared to be caught unprepared. Internet permitting, I hope to post a follow-up to this when I get to Fondwa with more pictures from the ground.

A month is not exactly a long time. But I hope that any help is better than no help at all — they are short on teaching staff after the quake. Personally, I have been inspired by humanitarian groups like Doctors without Borders and Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health. I can’t save lives as a doctor, but I can teach! A long term hope is to be able to build ties in Fondwa, and perhaps do this on a yearly basis. I believe that academics have a lot to contribute in making this world a better place beyond hanging out in our ivory towers.

I asked Fr. Joseph what else I can do to help, he said “Tell your friends about us, and ask your friends to come too”.

Sean has kindly allowed me to use this blog to publicize the plight of the community at Fondwa. They are still trying to get basic services in. Their main needs are monetary donations, temporary housing, clean water and volunteers! They are especially looking for long term volunteers for six months of longer. They are also looking for a President for UNIF — I am serious — if you are interested or know anybody who might be interested, email APF below.

If you like want to volunteer, the best way is to contact APF directly at apf222@aol.com or go to the APF homepage. If you like to donate directly to APF click on the link to my blog for the bank information. If you want help out Haitians to help themselves : support Fonkoze’s microfinancing efforts by helping out here.


Are Snakes Really Disappearing Around the Globe? | 80beats

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smoothsnakeThe turn of the millennium was not kind to the snakes.

Herpetologist Chris Reading and his team have been counting snakes through their own surveys and looking at population data going back to 1987 to see what’s happening to snake populations. The alarming findings, to be published soon in Biology Letters, indicate that most of the species studied saw a great decrease in population, with the greatest loss between 1998 and 2002.

Reading’s team monitored 17 different species in different climates—including snakes from Europe, Africa, and Australia—to try to get a global picture. Eleven of the 17 declined sharply over the study’s two-decade-plus period, with some declining as much as 90 percent. Five remained more or less stable. Only one saw a population increase, and a very slight one at that.

“All the declines occurred during the same relatively short period of time and over a wide geographical area that included temperate, Mediterranean and tropical climates,” write the authors. “We suggest that, for these reasons alone, there is likely to be a common cause at the root of the declines and that this indicates a more widespread phenomenon” [Guardian].

Last month, we saw other scientists point the finger at climate change as a reason for lizard declines; with the snakes Reading and his colleagues are being more cautious, simply ringing the alarm bells that snakes could be in danger around the world. The proximate cause is likely to be less abundant prey or a changing habitat, such as less available cover in which snakes can hide. Given the widespread nature and the timeline, however, climate patterns can’t be ruled out.

The year when many of the snake declines began – 1998 – raises the question of whether climatic factors might be involved, as very strong El Nino conditions contributed to making it the hottest year recorded in modern times [BBC News].

The real trouble is going to come in sorting out just how many snakes, or which ones, are in great danger. Because, frankly, they’re hard to count.

More data may or may not bear out the pattern, says ecologist Rick Shine of the University of Sydney, who was not part of the study. “The jury is still out on whether or not there is a general crisis here, but the reports are alarming” [Science News].

Related Content:
80beats: Lizards Can’t Take the Heat, But Are They Really Going Extinct?
80beats: Weird Blind Snakes Drifted With Continents And Rafted Across Oceans
80beats: Uncle Sam: No More Snakes on Planes, Already
Discoblog: When Animals Invade, Part II: Pythons Taking Over South Florida

Image: Wikimedia Commons


The Sun Is Hot | The Intersection

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Do you remember when They Might Be Giants famously covered a 1959 children's song called 'Why Does The Sun Shine?' It begins like this:
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
I thought I'd start the morning with a bit more detail 50 years after the original... At temperatures over 13 million K, the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium produces much of the sun's power. Every second, ~ 4.4 Mt of matter is converted to energy by way of thermonuclear reactions in this star's core, and (following Einstein's mass-energy equation) that's a rate about 30 trillion times higher than our yearly use of all primary electricity and fuels on planet Earth. (And no, I haven't come up with a new tune yet...)


Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men (and Cats) | Discoblog

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ck-catOne musky Calvin Klein fragrance isn’t just making humans go Rawr. When sprayed on rocks by zookeepers and field researchers, the cologne Obsession for Men draws big cats like cheetahs and jaguars. They cuddle against it; they take long sniffs, savoring it longer than they do their meals; they may even track it down from half a mile away.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, spraying perfume on zoo exhibits is something of a trade secret among zookeepers–sniffing out the foreign scents keeps the cats curious and active in captivity. In 2003, Pat Thomas, general curator at the Bronx Zoo in New York, conducted a smell test with his jaguars. The cats certainly didn’t turn up their noses at Estée Lauder, Revlon, or Nina Ricci, but Calvin Klein’s Obsession kept them sniffing the longest, keeping them engaged for about eleven minutes.

During the seven years after Thomas’ test, the scent’s secret feline attraction has helped big cat researchers to observe the animals’ behaviors in the wild and conduct conservation population studies. In one jaguar survey in Guatemala, scientists sprayed the cologne on rags placed in front of their motion-sensitive video cameras. Researchers’ biggest difficulty is getting their hands on the stuff, which runs for about $60 per bottle and is hard to come by in the rain forest. The Bronx Zoo keeps its supplies up by taking donations of the smelly stuff.

Fragrance-designer Ann Gottlieb, who worked on Obsession for Men, described the scent to The Wall Street Journal:

“It’s a combination of this lickable vanilla heart married to this fresh green top note—it creates tension,” she says. The cologne also has synthetic “animal” notes like civet, a musky substance secreted by the cat of the same name, giving it particular sex appeal, she adds. “It sparks curiosity with humans and, apparently, animals.”

Me-ow.

Related content:
Discoblog: Love Potion Number 10: Oxytocin Spray Said to Increase Attraction
80beats: A Gory Aphrodisiac: Spiders Feast on Blood to Get Their Sexy On
Science Not Fiction: Eleventh Hour: Funky Pheromones
Cosmic Variance: Eau de Stilton

Image: flickr / Cinz / 03ahmed


Welcome Home, Expedition 22!

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As many of you know, TJ Creamer, Soichi Noguchi, and Oleg Kotov, the Expedition 22 crew, returned home just over a week ago, after a 5.5 month stay onboard the ISS. We’ve all had an amazing time following the training and on-board experiences that they were all gracious enough to share with us through interviews, tweets, and pictures.

Upon the return of each crew (both ISS and Shuttle), the training teams traditionally decorate the hallway of the crewmembers’ building with pictures, quotes, and other decorations, to welcome each crew back home.

Since a good majority of the Expedition 22 crew were avid Tweeters, the training team thought it would be a neat idea to gather well wishes & welcome home greetings from the crew’s followers to include on the wall.

So, here’s your chance to send a quick personalized message to @Astro_TJ, @Astro_Soichi, & Oleg Kotov. Please @reply me (@msengupta) with your thoughts. If you do not have a Twitter account, you may also leave comments on this blog…BUT, please keep them short – only the first line of your comment will be used on the wall. Deadline is Friday, 6/11, 12p CDT.

Space Station Freedom Deja Vu All Over Again

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Bolden Talks About The Constellation Team, earlier post

"If you go to 55:18 in this video, I ask Charlie Bolden how he is going to get people to make the transition from flying government-operated spacecraft to commercially- operated spacecraft - and the emotion that goes with making the transition from one way of thinking to another. Bolden's reply gets deep into the emotions and mindsets that underly the changes that the Constellation workforce is now going through - and how he is going to work through that process with them."

Keith's note: Yes, it really sucks that it has come to this. I have seen this movie before: I am a survivor of Space Station Freedom "reorganization". Friends who worked very hard were simply fired for no fault of their own. I turned down several positions and quit NASA civil service in disgust (ever wonder what prompted me to start NASA (RIF) Watch?). And now we are seeing this happen again like a bad sequel. Every CxP job lost belongs to a real human being with a family and bills to pay - and dreams that will now be dashed.

As such, I honestly cannot fault anyone in or around CxP for wanting to fight back. My teammates at SS Freedom did not like what was happening at all. Yet we worked on our version of the "Program of Record" until we were told to stop working - and move on to other things - or be fired. To this day I am proud of the folks I worked with and how they conducted themselves. Pieces of what we worked on orbit overhead right now. We did not mount insurgent movements as much as we might have wanted to. There comes a time when badly-managed and chronically under-funded programs run out of resources. That is what has happened to Constellation. Of course, in the end, the little guy always gets the shaft.

NASA, White House, Congress, and the contractors should never have let things come to this point. They should have been honest with the numbers and what they committed to do. The money to keep everything going is not there - it never was and it never will be. The powers that be did not exercise responsibility and now thousands of hard working people get the shaft as a result of bad management - bad management that runs all the way up to NASA HQ and the previous Administrator and his staff, some of whom are still inexplicably in their jobs at NASA.

What newly-minted graduate in their right mind is going to want to pursue a career at NASA when the agency runs itself like this?

ODIN supports iPads?

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Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed, Valleywag

"In government, affected accounts included a GMail user who appears to be Rahm Emanuel and staffers in the Senate, House of Representatives, Department of Justice, NASA, Department of Homeland Security, FAA, FCC, and National Institute of Health, among others. Dozens of employees of the federal court system also appeared on the list."

Keith's note: Wow. ODIN supports iPads? Who knew.

NASA Invokes Anti-Deficiency Act – Will CxP Grind To a Halt?

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NASA order may force shutdown of Constellation moon-rocket program, Orlando Sentinel

"In a surprise move, NASA has told the major contractors working on its troubled Constellation moon rocket program that they are in violation of federal spending rules -- and must immediately cut back work by nearly $1 billion to get into compliance. As many as 5,000 jobs from Utah to Florida are expected to be lost over the next month. The effect of the directive, which went out to contractors earlier this week and which Congress was told about on Wednesday, may accomplish something that President Barack Obama has sought since February: killing Constellation's system of rockets, capsules and lunar landers that has already cost at least $9 billion to date. .. At issue is the federal Anti-Deficiency Act that requires all federal contractors to set aside a portion of their payments to cover costs in case the project is ever cancelled."

Bolden: Funding Shortfall Requires Slowdown on Constellation, Space News

"In a June 9 letter to key U.S. lawmakers, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the work slowdown could result in "contractor workforce reductions estimated at 30-60 percent of the current population, or 2,500-5,000, for the balance of the year."

First NASA IT Summit

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First NASA IT Summit to Gather Industry Leaders and Explore Tech Innovations

"NASA's first Information Technology (IT) Summit will bring together government and industry leaders to explore the outer reaches of information technology. The summit, which takes place August 16-18 at the Gaylord National Harbor in Maryland, will gather 750 participants and more than 100 expert presenters with themes on collaboration, social networking, innovation, infrastructure, operations and IT security and privacy."

The Rebellion Continues at JSC

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JSC's future relies on moon program compromise, Houston Chronicle

"The political potshots have subsided and the serious horse-trading lies ahead as the White House and Congress grind toward a compromise to salvage parts of the NASA moon program crucial to Houston's Johnson Space Center. ... Obama critics have gained momentum by seizing on NASA's sacking of outspoken Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley, rumors of NASA attempting to cancel existing contracts in violation of congressional language, and the administration's targeted workforce transition assistance for the electoral battleground of Florida rather than all states potentially affected by NASA layoffs."

Keith's note: Dale Thomas has simply picked up where Jeff Hanley left off and has told his staff that this is what he is doing. Nothing has changed and JSC still operates in open defiance of NASA Headquarters - starting with its center director.

Keith's update: If you go to the comments section and scroll to the bottom you will see comments by Jim Muncy. Jim explains things far better than I can with regard to following the "Law" vs following Congressional direction.

Post-Falcon Feedback

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In Space, Everyone Can Hear You Cheer, Motley Fool

"It's a big dream, but SpaceX founder Elon Musk has never been one to shy away from a challenge. In the market for moving dollars from Point A to Point B, he built PayPal into a viable contender to Western Union before he sold off the company to eBay for a small fortune. He's taken said fortune and used it to found both SpaceX and electric car maker Tesla Motors."

SpaceX profitable despite CEO's cash problems -- but is an IPO needed?, VentureBeat

"But now SpaceX has responded to this question: Board member Luke Nosek of Founders Fund, a major investor in the company, told PEHub that SpaceX has been profitable for the last several years, and that it will be again in 2010, with or without federal funding. The company successfully sent its Falcon 9 rocket 155 miles up into orbit last week, and has more than 24 orders (totaling $2.5 billion in revenue) to deliver satellites into space over the next five years. The plan is to reinvest this cash in the company."

Columbia Accident Investigator Speaks Out Against NASA Commercial Crew Plan, Space News

"Fellow CAIB member John Logsdon, now professor emeritus at the George Washington University's Space Policy Institute here, said Tetrault is repeating the mantra of many commercial crew opponents by singling out "new entrepreneurial" and ignoring the fact that large, well-established companies including Boeing and United Launch Alliance are poised to compete for the $6 billion NASA intends to spend over the next five years on the commercial crew initiative."

KSC Job Losses Addressed at White House – But Not JSC or MSFC

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Space Coast task force gathers at White House, Orlando Sentinel

"Top administration officials met at the White House on Tuesday as part of a months-long effort to save the Space Coast economy, which expected to crater once NASA flies it final space shuttle mission this year from Cape Canaveral. No decisions were made, but NASA chief Charlie Bolden and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said they were in the process in trying to decide how to spend $40 million in federal dollars to help thousands of Kennedy Space Center workers set to lose their jobs after the shuttle's retirement."