March 14, 2011

• Spring Ahead - But why?
• One Deep Water Oil Well Ok’d in Gulf
• Obama Twitches, Then NATO - Now What?
• Japanese Quake By The Numbers
• Santa Barbara’s 1812 Tsunami
• Few Think Muslims Treated Unfairly
• 3^rd Year In Row Kaiser Is Top Health Plan
• Sen. Inhofe: Obama Trying To Kill U. S. Oil and Gas.
• King: America ‘Failing’ to Confront Radical Islam.
• Iraqi Oil Pipeline Blown Up.
• Syria - Iran Back Ghaddafi Supply Pilots and Arms
• Obama Fiddles While Libya Burns
• Giant Star Cluster Dates To Early Universe
• Norhthrup-Grumman Shows UAV To UAV Refueling

Fred Hertler, the hardest working guy I hjave ever known, ran his Dad’s dairy farm whiole in High school milking, pasteurizing, homogenizing, sterilizing, bottling, and delivering milk to customers every morning. He worked on shares, and by 1961 had enough to buy a sparkling new 1962 fuel injected Corvette that we promptly blew off the Triadelp[hia, West Viginia speed trap on U. S. 40.

He wakened at 4:30 AM to milk the morning's cow and process last night's milk. He hated daylight savings time saying it cost him 50 pounds of milk from his confused cows.

At any rate we "sprange ahead" an hour Sunday Morning to no particular reason or benefit.

The result of the Federal Reserve printing too much money is a loss of purchasing power of the dollar: something that cost $1.00 in 1950 cost about $8.78 today. As for gas prices, in 1950 the price of gas was approximately 30 cents per gallon. Adjusted for inflation, a gallon of gas today should cost right at $2.64, assuming taxes are the same.

But taxes have not stayed the same. The tax per gallon of gas in 1950 was roughly 1.5% of the price. Today, federal, state, and local taxes account for approximately 20% of gas's posted price. Taking inflation and the increase in taxes into account (assuming no change in supply or demand), the same gallon of gas that cost 30 cents in 1950 should today cost about $3.13.

The U.S. government is allowing deepwater drilling to resume on another Gulf of Mexico well as the region recovers from BP's devastating oil spill 11 months ago.

BHP Billiton PLC says the clearance will allow it to get back to work in its Shenzi field, located about 120 miles off of Louisiana's coast. The oil and natural gas well is located about 4,300 feet below the surface.

It's the second permit that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has issued within the past two weeks. They're the first to be granted in the Gulf since the agency imposed a moratorium on exploration in waters deeper than 500 feet after an April 2010 blowout of a BP PLC well caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

India's airline authorities caught 57 pilots over the alcohol limit about to take to the cabin of passenger-carrying jets over the past two years, but most were cleared to fly again,

The Arab League on Saturday called on the UN Security Council to impose a no-fly zone on Libya, Egyptian state television reported, a decision that would give a regional seal of approval that NATO has said is needed for any military action. But, in an unusual step NATO said it cannot act without a U. N. resolution.

The state television also said the Arab League had decided to open channels of communication with a Libyan rebel council based in Benghazi. The League said the council represented the Libyan people, the channel reported.

Looming over the Libyan situation is the presence of Syrian pilots flying Russian supplied and maintained MIG warplanes. The fear, of course, is of direct combat between 3^rd party combatants that could result in open fighting that could escalate into a wider,  regional conflict.

Disappointment in Obama's lack of leadership in favor of more lecturing has weakened  the U. S. diminishing America's respect and regard in the region and elsewhere strengthening our enemires and discouraging allies.

The so-called "Day of Rage" fizzled again in Saudi Arabia. The Saud's  sternly warned that protest would not be tolerated and protestors severely dealt with. So they did not show up.

Japans 8.8 Earthquake released 2,000 times as much energy as the mightiest nuclear warhead ever detonated.

Last week's Japanese Quake was about 1,000 times more powerful1994 6.7 Northridge Earthquake. It is the fifth most powerful recorded anywhere in the world over more than a century. 

 The Richter scale calculates the shaking seismic force of an earthquake. An earthquake registering 2.0 on the Richter scale is 10 times stronger than a quake registering 1.0. A quake registering 3.0 is 10 X 10 or 100 times stronger than a quake registering 1.0 A 4.0 is 10 X 10 X 10 or 1,000 times greater than 1.0 and so on and so forth.

9.0 - Causes complete devastation and large-scale loss of life and is the highest possible rating.-.

8.0 - Very few buildings stay up. Bridges fall down. Underground pipes burst. Railroad rails bend. Large rocks move. Smaller objects are tossed into the air. Some objects are swallowed up by the earth. One such earthquake occurs an eveage of once each year somewhere on Earth.

7.0 - It is hard to keep your balance. The ground cracks. Roads shake. Weak buildings fall down. Other buildings are badly damaged.

6.0 - Pictures can fall off walls. Furniture moves. In some buildings, walls may crack.

5.0 - If you are in a car, it may rock. Glasses and dishes may rattle. Windows may break.

4.0 - Buildings shake a little. It feels like a truck is passing by your house.

3.0 - You may notice this quake if you are sitting still, or upstairs in a house. A hanging object, like a model airplane, may swing.

2.0 - Trees sway. Small ponds ripple. Doors swing slowly. But you can't tell an earthquake is to blame.

1.0 - Earthquakes this small happen below ground. You can't feel them.

Seismic waves are the vibrations from earthquakes that travel through the Earth; they are recorded on instruments called seismographs. Seismographs record a zig-zag trace that shows the varying amplitude of ground oscillations beneath the instrument. Sensitive seismographs, which greatly magnify these ground motions, can detect strong earthquakes from sources anywhere in the world. The time, locations, and magnitude of an earthquake can be determined from the data recorded by seismograph stations.

The Richter magnitude scale was developed  in 1935 by Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology as a mathematical device to compare the size of earthquakes. The magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs. Adjustments are included for the variation in the distance between the various seismographs and the epicenter of the earthquakes. On the Richter Scale, magnitude is expressed in whole numbers and decimal fractions. For example, a magnitude 5.3 might be computed for a moderate earthquake, and a strong earthquake might be rated as magnitude 6.3. Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; as an estimate of energy, each whole number step in the magnitude scale corresponds to the release of about 31 times more energy than the amount associated with the preceding whole number value.

The Office of State Printing has a virtual monopoly on printing for the State of Caifornia. Why grant such a monopoly rather than put printing contracts out to bid to get the lowest price possible for taxpayers is an important question for taxpayers to demand of elected officials. Taxpayers  will soon be asked ro keep higher taxes. My bias is that if you can find it in the yellow pages government should not do it.

At the time [of the 1812 earthquakes] a Boston ship, the Thomas Newland, known before as the Charon, commanded by Capt. Isaac Whittemore, was lying off anchorage [at Refugio Bay], not far from the Gaviota Pass, Santa Barbara County, engaged in smuggling, with the old Padres, for otter skins, tallow and hard dollars–a nice little business in 1812–when the sea was seen to retire all at once and return in an immense wave, which came roaring and plunging back, tearing over the beach fit to crack everything to pieces. This wave penetrated the low lands of the gulches a mile from the shore, forming one of the most terrific sights possible to conceive. That old ship, then under the name Charon, afterward took 1,800 otter skins to the Sandwich Islands [Hawaiian Islands], and landed them, too; but a few days afterwards she was captured by the English man-o-war Cherub and taken as a prize to London.”

-from the San Francisco Bulletin, March 16, 1864

Refugio Canyon is located at the northwestern end of the Santa Barbara Channel. A state campground is now located at the site mentioned in this article. At the time of the 1812 earthquakes, the coast along the northwestern shore of the Santa Barbara Channel was part of the Rancho del Refugio, a tract of ranch land that had been given to the first commandante of the Santa Barbara Presidio, upon the commandante’s retirement. It was a favorite place for American smugglers to trade their goods for otter pelts. These American smuggling ships traveled between the Spanish-controlled coast of southern and central California, the Russian-controlled coasts of Alaska and northern California, and the Hawaiian Islands (then known as the Sandwich Islands).

Thousands of Christian Copts in Cairo protested outside the offices of the Egyptian state broadcaster, witnesses said on Friday.It was the seventh day of protests over what they’re calling the “marginalization and lack of representation” of their concerns in state media. Scores of Christians have been kiled and wounded in attacks by Muslims.

 

Most voters don’t believe their fellow citizens are unfair to Muslim Americans. They also think Muslims in this country should be louder in their criticism of potential domestic terrorist attacks.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that most Muslims in America are treated unfairly because of their religion and ethnicity. Sixty-three percent (63%) disagree and say they are not treated unfairly while 20% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

A plurality (49%) of liberal voters, however,  says there is bias against Muslim Americans. Eighty-one percent (81%) of conservatives and 57% of moderates disagree. 

But only 10% of all voters think American Muslims are speaking out enough against potential terrorist attacks in the United States. Fifty-seven percent (57%) disagree and say they are not speaking out enough. One-in-three voters (34%) are not sure.

Pop singer Lady Gaga has threatened to sue a specialist ice cream parlour in London for naming its breast milk ice cream “Baby Gaga,” the shop’s owner said on Wednesday.

For a third straight year, Kaiser Permanente is the only health plan in California to earn a maximum four-star rating for overall quality of care, based on meeting national standards. Both Kaiser’s Northern California and Southern California HMOs received four stars, designating “excellent.”

Six other HMOs received three stars, designating “good.” They are Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, CIGNA, Health Net of California, PacifiCare of California and Western Health Advantage.

Aetna Health of California Inc. received two stars, designating “fair.”

However, results were decidedly mixed in specific segments.

For example, Kaiser Permanente Northern California received only one star, or “poor,” in plan service, based on member ratings compared with plans nationwide.

Aetna, in contrast, received three stars in the plan service segment.

Independent voters, who will be crucial to President Barack Obama’s re-election effort, are abandoning him now, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. The president’s approval rating among independents dropped to 37 percent in March from 47 percent in February,

Sen. Jim Inhofe ( R) OK tells Newsmax that Obama is “trying to kill oil and gas” by refusing to allow the United States to exploit its abundant natural resources in an effort to drive the country toward green energy.

The Oklahoma Republican also says that calls for tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are a “copout” to divert attention from that refusal. And he asserts that there is “no doubt in anyone’s mind” that Republicans will take control of the Senate in 2012.

Sen. Inhofe is the Ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a steadfast critic of manmade global warming alarmists. His new book “The Hoax” is due out in August.

Despite the soaring price of gasoline resulting, in part from Middle East unrest, the Obama administration remains resolved to curtail new offshore oil drilling.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Inhofe was asked about the administration’s policy.

“This administration admittedly is trying to kill oil and gas. It’s just mind-boggling,” Inhofe declares.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, “speaking on behalf of the president, said somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe -$7.80 a gallon - so we won’t buy as much and then all this wonderful green energy is going to come in.

“We have more recoverable reserves in oil, gas and coal than any nation in the world. We have enough natural gas to run our country for 110 years. The problem is, the liberals, the Democrats won’t allow us to exploit our own resources. They are intentionally stopping us from doing it.

“This administration is admittedly trying to raise the price of gas so they can accomplish their green goals.

“What really bugs me is when I hear the John Kerrys or the Barbara Boxers saying we’ve got to develop green energy so we can stop our dependence on the Middle East. We could stop our dependence on the Middle East for our energy if we just develop our own resources here.

“To have them admit that they’re trying to raise the price of gas - this is no time for them to be doing that. And I hope people don’t forget that.”

Some in Washington are saying the United States should release some of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help stabilize gasoline prices.

Asked whether he favors the release, Inhofe responds: “No. People who are not willing to open up our own exploration and our own production, they can say that. But the number of barrels that would be released would be a fraction of what it would be if we could open up our exploration in the Gulf, as well as in Alaska and the western part of the United States. So that’s a copout.

“It’s something you could do and it would have a short surge but it would be minuscule compared to our recoverable reserves and wouldn’t have any effect on prices.”

Inhofe discussed legislation he has introduced along with Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from imposing climate change regulations.

“They tried to pass the law for cap and trade,” he tells Newsmax.
“It would cost the average family in Oklahoma who files a tax return over $3,000 a year.

“And you don’t get anything for it because by their own admission if we were to stop all CO2 emissions in the United States, it wouldn’t reduce overall worldwide emissions because it would just chase our jobs to foreign countries.

“But we were successful. We stopped it. Now the Obama administration, along with the majority in the Senate, are trying to do with regulation what they could not do with legislation.

“What Fred Upton and I are trying to do would be to take from the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency their ability to regulate greenhouse gases. If we’re successful, that would be stopping them from passing what would be comparable to the largest tax increase in history.”

Inhofe says he supports Republican efforts to strip funding from the EPA.

“In the House they want to do that. In the Senate we’re not quite there yet.
“But they have a majority of only three. Here’s where they’re in trouble.

“There are 23 Democratic senators up for re-election in the coming election. Of those I call 11 endangered species. Already several have retired because they know they’re not going to be able to win.

“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Republican are going to take control of the United States Senate in the next election. Therefore, a lot of these Democrats who would normally vote the Democratic line are going to be coming over and supporting me.”

Inhofe has been outspoken in his calls for the United States to keep the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay open. President Obama has now reversed course and says he will keep Gitmo open and resume terrorist trials there.

“It’s nice to win one now and then,” Inhofe says.

“What the president was going to do is find some 17 places in the United States to incarcerate these terrorists. The reason you don’t want to do that is that they are not criminals. They are the ones whose job it is to train people to become terrorists. And we didn’t want those cells in the United States.

“Secondly, they should not be entitled to the privileges that the citizens of the United States are entitled to.”

Inhofe says he supports enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya, but only if our allies join the effort because the American military is “strained.”

“I’m all for it if the other countries would join in,” he adds. “But we can’t afford to use up all of our assets in that matter.”

Inhofe’s book “The Hoax,” due for publication in August, focuses on what he calls the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people - that catastrophic global warming is the result of manmade gases.

Pedigree (PED-i-gree) noun:1. Lineage or ancestry. 2. A distinguished ancestry. 3. The origin or history of a person or thing. Etymology From Anglo-Norman pé de grue (crane’s foot), from p´ (foot) + de (of) + grue (crane), from the resemblance of a crane’s foot to the succession lines in a genealogical chart. Earliest documented use: 1425.

Witnesses at a high-profile congressional hearing on Islamic radicalization said Thursday that America is “failing” to confront the threat posed by homegrown extremism, as lawmakers traded accusations over whether the inquiry unfairly singled out Muslims. 

Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said “paralysis” over the issue has seized the nation’s leaders and he urged the Muslim community to confront what he called an “exponential increase” in the number of Muslim radicals in the United States. 

“The U.S. has a significant problem with Muslim radicalization,” said Jasser, who is Muslim. “It is a problem that we can only solve.” 

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, clashed early with other lawmakers over the decision to hold the hearing, with one Democrat accusing King of “scapegoating” and King accusing his critics of spreading “rage and hysteria.” The hearing aired a divergent set of views on the scope of the threat posed by radical Islam in the United States and the pertinence of holding a hearing focusing solely on that topic. 

One lawmaker, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is Muslim, cried at the end of his testimony as he described the actions of a Muslim-American paramedic who lost his life in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. 

As the hearing got underway, King vowed to press ahead and said this would be just the first in a series of hearings on homegrown terror. The New York Republican, in his opening statement, cited recent terror plots against the United States in defending his decision. He suggested the hearings could help fulfill the committee’s duty to “protect America from a terrorist attack” by examining the root of recent plots. 

A study by the Center for Security Policy, headed by Frank Gaffney, found that three-quarters of the mosques in the U.S. actively seek to teach Shariah Law with its mandate to militant action and jihad.  While the other quarter merely provides places of worship, they are in the minority.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll asked whether mainstream Islam “encourages violence.” Among all respondents, 31 percent said yes, slightly less than the recent high of 34 percent in 2003. Clearly the issue is a boil that need to be lanced not ignored.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, fell to 75.4, the lowest level measured since September 2010. Consumer confidence is down two points from last week and is down 14 and a half points from a month ago.

 

A bomb planted under an oil pipeline exploded in northern Iraq preventing the flow of thousands of barrels of oil, an Oil Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

 

The pipeline in Ninevah province pumps about 500,000 barrels of crude oil every day to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, said spokesman Asim Jihad. It will take a few days to make repairs to the pipeline and resume pumping oil.

 

Last month, gunmen attacked Iraq’s largest oil refinery, killing four workers and planting 10 bombs around a production unit. Authorities said it will take years to get the facility north of Baghdad up and running again.

 

Lawmakers in Minnesota are moving to ban abortions after 20 weeks, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported Tuesday. A proposed bill introduced in the state House and Senate Monday would overturn current laws in the state. The measure is modeled after a law passed last year in Nebraska.

 

Syrian Air Force officers were flying some of the Russia build, supplied and maintained MiG-23 and MiG-25 fighter-jets ordered to attack rebel-held towns in Libya. They said at least one Syrian Air Force officer was killed and identified after his plane was downed.

 

Despite sanctions and a tepid weapons embago Syria- an Iranian client– has sent weapons and other military equipment to the Libyan regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

 

President Bashar Assad has approved the deployment of hundreds of fighters to Libya as well as air and anti-tank munitions to Gadhafi. They said Syrians have also served as pilots for Gadhafi’s fleet of MiG fighter-jets.

Syria was relaying weapons to Al Qaida-aligned elements in Libya. They said Iran and Syria were believed to be cooperating in seeking to extend their influence over Libya’s giant energy reserves.

“Assad of Syria is sending arms to Gadhafi of Libya to kill his people with,” the Reform Party of Syria said.

News of the damnig revelation have apparently been embargoed by main streat U. S.media to avoid exposing Obrama’s utter incompetence or worse.

Over 80% of Americans school get an “F” and are failing.

Absent U. S. leadership NATO and the U. N. are backing and filling on the idea of a no-fly zone over Libya. Now that Syria is serving as Iran’s proxy to combat anti-Quaddafi forces the prospect of any meaningful actionis almost nonexistent.

Obama has resorted to lecturing rather than any leadership whatsoever.

VP Biden in in Russia kissing Putin’s butt while Obama lecturs Americans on child bullying whbile the world waits for anything substantive.

“Assad is reasoning Gadhafi must win to discourage the Syrians from any reckless behavior such as seeking freedom, democracy, and accountability,” Washington based RPS intelligence says.

On que U. S. Intelligence Director Clapper told Congress he expects Gadaffi to win causing the White House a Depends moment as it pretended to be surprised nd alarmed.

Astronomers have used an armada of telescopes on the ground and in space, including the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile to discover and measure the distance to the most remote mature cluster of galaxies yet found. Although this cluster is seen when the Universe was less than one quarter of its current age it looks surprisingly similar to galaxy clusters in the current Universe.

“We have measured the distance to the most distant mature cluster of galaxies ever found”, says the lead author of the study in which the observations from ESO’s VLT have been used, Raphael Gobat (CEA, Paris). “The surprising thing is that when we look closely at this galaxy cluster it doesn’t look young - many of the galaxies have settled down and don’t resemble the usual star-forming galaxies seen in the early Universe.”

Donald Trump denies that he’s pretending to run for president to gain publicity for his TV show. He says that anyone that says is this is clearly an “apprentice,” and they deserve to be fired on Thursday at 9:00. — Conan

Clusters of galaxies are the largest structures in the Universe that are held together by gravity. Astronomers expect these clusters to grow through time and hence that massive clusters would be rare in the early Universe. Although even more distant clusters have been seen, they appear to be young clusters in the process of formation and are not settled mature systems.

The international team of astronomers used the powerful VIMOS and FORS2 instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to measure the distances to some of the blobs in a curious patch of very faint red objects first observed with the Spitzer space telescope. This grouping, named CL J1449+0856 [1], had all the hallmarks of being a very remote cluster of galaxies.

The results showed that we are indeed seeing a galaxy cluster as it was when the Universe was about three billion years old - less than one quarter of its current age.

Once the team knew the distance to this very rare object they looked carefully at the component galaxies using both the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes, including the VLT. They found evidence suggesting that most of the galaxies in the cluster were not forming stars, but were composed of stars that were already about one billion years old. This makes the cluster a mature object, similar in mass to the Virgo Cluster, the nearest rich galaxy cluster to the Milky Way.

Further evidence that this is a mature cluster comes from observations of X-rays coming from CL J1449+0856 made with ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory.

The cluster is giving off X-rays that must be coming from a very hot cloud of tenuous gas filling the space between the galaxies and concentrated towards the centre of the cluster. This is another sign of a mature galaxy cluster, held firmly together by its own gravity, as very young clusters have not had time to trap hot gas in this way.

As Gobat concludes: “These new results support the idea that mature clusters existed when the Universe was less than one quarter of its current age. Such clusters are expected to be very rare according to current theory, and we have been very lucky to spot one. But if further observations find many more then this may mean that our understanding of the early Universe needs to be revised.”

France’s government on Thursday ruled out any cut in fuel taxes to alleviate the cost of soaring petrol prices, telling motorists they should inflate their tyres and drive more slowly to save fuel, Course the tires will wear out faster and since synthetic rubber is petroleum based more oil will have to be used tomreplace them-geniuses.

On Jan. 21, Northrop Grumman, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center took a major step toward demonstrating autonomous aerial refueling between two unmanned, high altitude aircraft, an operation never before performed.

In a key risk reduction flight test, Northrop Grumman’s Proteus test aircraft and a NASA Global Hawk flew as close as 40 feet apart at an altitude of 45,000 feet, an industry-setting record.

The flight test was conducted in the challenging high altitude environment required for refueling of high altitude long endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). Wake turbulence between the two aircraft as well as engine performance and flight control responsiveness in the stratosphere were evaluated.

Simulated breakaway maneuvers were also conducted. The January flight was key to reducing risks as the program prepares for autonomous aerial refueling of two Global Hawks in the spring of 2012.

“Demonstrating close formation flight of two high altitude aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, is a notable accomplishment,” said Geoffrey Sommer, KQ-X program manager at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems sector.

“When you add autonomous flight of both aircraft into the mix, as we will do later in the KQ-X program, you gain a capability that has mission applications far beyond just aerial refueling.”

The $33 million DARPA KQ-X program will demonstrate autonomous fuel transfer between two Global Hawks, enabling flights of up to one week endurance.

KQ-X is a follow-on to a 2006 DARPA Autonomous Aerial Refueling Demonstration (AARD), in joint effort with NASA Dryden, which used an F-18 fighter jet as a surrogate unmanned aircraft to autonomously refuel through a probe and drogue from a 707 tanker.

Northrop Grumman supports the operation of the two Global Hawks used in the KQ-X program under the terms of a Space Act Agreement with its NASA Dryden partner and is responsible for all engineering design, as well as modification of both aircraft.