liberal N proud

liberal N proud's Journal

April 11, 2012

Watch NASA Video: Riding the Booster

This is pretty cool, ride a solid rocket booster from launch to space and back to splash down.

NASA Video: Riding the Booster with enhanced sound
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid75927536001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAEau6doE~,ONNhozg4vbDzH_Zx2R2TCPzyRuf6S-Jx&bctid=1548935984001

April 11, 2012

War on Women toon...

April 10, 2012

Free bras

April 6, 2012

Europe Is Baffled by the U.S. Supreme Court

Europe is scratching its head over possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down President Obama's signature legislative achievement. As the judiciary and the Obama administration trade legal barbs over the high court's authority, the idea that health care coverage, largely considered a universal right in Europe, could be deemed an affront to liberty is baffling.

"The Supreme Court can legitimately return Obamacare?" asks a headline on the French news site 9 POK . The article slowly walks through the legal rationale behind the court's right to wipe away Congress's legislation. "Sans précédent, extraordinaires" reads the article. In the German edition of The Financial Times, Sabine Muscat is astonished at Justice Antonin Scalia's argument that if the government can mandate insurance, it can also require people to eat broccoli. "Absurder Vergleich" reads the article's kicker, which in English translates to, "Absurd Comparison." In trying to defeat the bill, Muscat writes, Scalia is making a "strange analogy [to] vegetables."

Over in Britain, the opposition is more direct. The Guardian's Kevin Powell called the debate "surreal" in his Monday column. "Wasn't the point to make sure the richest and most powerful nation on the planet could protect its own people, as other nations do?" he wrote. "If Americans are promised not just liberty but life and happiness, is there not a constitutional right to affordable healthcare?"

http://news.yahoo.com/europe-baffled-u-supreme-court-220944850.html

April 2, 2012

1964 just called Romney a clown.

Mad Men episode just called Romney a clown.

The show set in the mid-sixties where the New York governor's aid just called Romney a clown.

I am sure the character was referring to Mittens daddy who would have been governor of Michigan, but nevertheless, the reference was there and couldn't have been coincidental.

April 2, 2012

Mitt Romney - Quantum Politician

is a Quantum Politician?

NY Times Opinion...
A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney

THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.

The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.

But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense. To be honest, even people like Mr. Fehrnstrom who are experts in Mitt Romney’s reality, or “Romneality,” seem bewildered by its implications; and any person who tells you he or she truly “understands” Mitt Romney is either lying or a corporation.

Nevertheless, close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.

So this is how they are going to play off etch-a-sketch.

March 29, 2012

Thank you for the spell check!!!!!!!

March 27, 2012

America’s Most Corrupt States

The Center for Public Integrity released a report detailing the risk of corruption and lack of accountability in all 50 states last week. The findings of the report should worry anyone who believes state governments are transparent and free of corruption. Of course, no state is without flaws. Unfortunately, nearly every state received a grade that would give residents cause for concern.

The Center for Public Integrity’s report examined issues concerning accountability and ethics in each state government. States were graded on 330 separate metrics, which were grouped into 14 major categories. Overall grades are based on the average grades in the major categories, which included lobbying disclosure, political financing, internal auditing, ethics enforcement agencies and redistricting.

These are America’s most corrupt states.

1. Georgia

2. South Dakota

3. Wyoming

4. Virginia

5. Maine

6. South Carolina

7. North Dakota

8. Michigan

http://247wallst.com/2012/03/22/americas-most-corrupt-states/

March 27, 2012

This is why you keep your seatbelts at all times while flying

Is Boeing’s 737 an Airplane Prone to Problems?

The plane is America’s most popular model. But aviation experts worry that America’s most popular airplane is prone to cracks in its skin. An investigative report.

At 10:56 p.m. on April 1, last year, Southwest Airlines Flight 812, en route from Phoenix to Sacramento with 118 passengers aboard, was completing its climb to its cruise altitude of 36,000 feet, above the small town of Blythe, Calif. An air-traffic controller at Los Angeles Center had just acknowledged a routine call from the pilot. But within a minute or so of that exchange, the controller became aware that Flight 812 was in some kind of trouble. The messages were garbled until, finally, he heard the pilot clearly: “declaring an emergency we lost the cabin.”

Over the years, the Boeing 737 has been the world’s most popular airliner for intercity routes. One takes off or lands every 2.5 seconds. Its accident rate, compared with other aircraft, is relatively low: one for every 2.5 million hours flown. Even 45 years after the first 737 flew, airlines are so hungry for the latest model 737s that Boeing can barely meet the demand.

The trouble is, if the skin of the airplane is weakened, the pressurized air in the cabin will always find that weak point and attempt to escape. (When smoking was allowed on airplanes, inspectors looking for nascent failures in the skin could spot them as rings of nicotine deposits left as air leaked out). There are two consequences of skin failure: either a rapid decompression, as in the case of the two Southwest flights, during which the crew are able to retain control and make a rapid descent to a safe landing, or an explosive decompression, where the structural failure is extensive, instantaneous, and fatal.

There are two important safeguards that stand between safety and disaster: technology on the one hand and airline safety checks on the other. And the problem is that as the technology of fuselage design has evolved over several decades, the 737’s has not. As a result, the final responsibility for our safety has moved from Boeing to the maintenance and safety checks carried out by the airlines and supervised by the FAA. So far this final safety net has mostly worked—the flaws have been caught before they caused a fatal crash. But that’s no cause for complacency: an aging design with chronic problems remains our most frequently flown plane today.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/03/19/is-boeing-s-737-an-airplane-prone-to-problems.html

March 27, 2012

How to control a nation

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