HR Abuse in Shaun King's diary

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Monday August 17, 2015 · 1:08 PM PDT

2015/08/17 · 13:08

There is rampant HR abuse by Sanders supporters going on in Shaun King's FP diary
http://www.dailykos.com/...

Joe, don't.

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Friday August 14, 2015 · 8:30 PM PDT

2015/08/14 · 20:30

It's not happening, and you only will be miserable.

The read on Biden has changed enough in almost a matter of hours that a level of anxiety has set in among the Obama orbit, who out of personal affection for Biden are hoping he won’t run a race they feel certain he’ll lose, only to get pummeled along the way.

Maddow shows footage of Hillary from Beijing Women's Conference in 1995. Her message is unchanged.

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Thursday August 13, 2015 · 11:24 PM PDT

2015/08/13 · 23:24

"Women's rights are human rights."

Hillary's feminism is tireless, a model for women around the world!

Here it is: http://www.msnbc.com/...

Enjoy!

Stop the government from putting transgender whistleblower Chelsea Manning in indefinite solitary

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Thursday August 13, 2015 · 9:55 AM PDT

2015/08/13 · 09:55

https://www.freechelsea.com/

The Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair issue could lead to possible indefinite solitary confinement for transgender whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

This sounds like a joke, but it's not. Here are the facts:
Chelsea Manning, the Guardian columnist and whistleblower responsible for one of WikiLeaks most important releases, has been in jail for five years facing an unjust 35 year sentence for exposing some of the U.S. governments worst abuses.

Now, Chelsea is being threatened with indefinite solitary confinement, and the "charges" against her demonstrate that her basic human rights are being violated. Chelsea requested that her hearing be made open to the public, but officials refused.

Chelsea's alleged "crimes" include: sweeping some food onto the floor and then asking to speak to her lawyer when a guard confronted her, having books and magazines in her cell about politics and LGBTQ issues including the Vanity Fair issue with Caitlyn Jenner on the cover, and "improper medicine use" for having a tube of toothpaste that was past its expiration date.

It couldn't be more blatant: Chelsea is being singled out and punished for speaking out.

Chelsea is a human being. She did something brave and now the government is punishing her for it. It's not just Chelsea's basic rights that are at stake, it's all of ours. Please sign the petition, and then share it on social media. This couldn't be more urgent; the hearing is just days away. If it's not open to the public and the press, there will be no way to ensure that Chelsea isn't unfairly subjected to one of the worst forms of psychological torture.

Our friends at Fight for the Future (FFTF) have created a petition where you can sign on to a letter condemning the US Army’s treatment of Chelsea.

Here’s the list of books and magazines that were taken from Chelsea and not returned: Vanity Fair issue with Caitlyn Jenner on the cover, Advocate, OUT Magazine, Cosmopolitan issue with an interview of Chelsea, Transgender Studies Quarterly, novel about trans issues “A Safe Girl to Love,” book “Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy — The Many Faces of Anonymous,” book “I Am Malala,” 5 books by Robert Dorkin, legal documents including the Senate Torture Report, book: “Hidden Qualities that Make Us Influential.”

“Given the materials that were confiscated, it is concerning that the military and Leavenworth might be taking action for the purpose of chilling Chelsea’s speech or even with the goal of silencing her altogether by placing her in solitary,” ACLU attorney Chase Strangio wrote. “Hopefully with public scrutiny the prison will respond by dismissing these charges and ensuring that she is not unfairly targeted based on her activism, her identity, and her pending lawsuit.”

Behold the Map

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Wednesday July 08, 2015 · 5:47 PM PDT

2015/07/08 · 17:47

Pluto. LORRI image received on July 8, 2015, with lower-resolution color provided by the Ralph instrument.

A composite of four greyscale LORRI images, color supplied by the lower-resolution Ralph instrument.

The dark regions should be layers of tholin -- complex hydrocarbon molecules -- similar to the tholin deposits on the surface of Titan, but here not hidden by a thick, opaque atmosphere.

UPDATED A glitch at Pluto

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Sunday July 05, 2015 · 12:54 PM PDT

2015/07/05 · 12:54

On July 4, 2015, NASA lost contact with the New Horizons Pluto probe for over an hour. For some unknown reason, the probe shut down to Safe Mode and began to produce telemetry for NASA to reacquire contact. Contact was reestablished, and the probe appears to be in good health, but science operations are suspended.

Fortunately, the last trajectory manoeuvres before encounter have all been done, so the spacecraft is still on course for its July 14 flyby of Pluto. However, it is not taking pictures at the moment. Few pictures were planned for July 4 and 5, but with only 9 days to Pluto, getting science operations back to normal is a nail-biter.

You can monitor the real time status of communications with various NASA spacecraft at the Deep Space Network Now web page. New Horizons is the antenna labeled NHPC. Here is a screen shot.

** UPDATE**
http://www.nasa.gov/...

NASA’s New Horizons Plans July 7 Return to Normal Science Operations
NASA’s New Horizons mission is returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly and remains on track for its July 14 flyby of Pluto.

The investigation into the anomaly that caused New Horizons to enter “safe mode” on July 4 has concluded that no hardware or software fault occurred on the spacecraft. The underlying cause of the incident was a hard-to-detect timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence that occurred during an operation to prepare for the close flyby. No similar operations are planned for the remainder of the Pluto encounter.

“I’m pleased that our mission team quickly identified the problem and assured the health of the spacecraft,” said Jim Green, NASA’s Director of Planetary Science. “Now – with Pluto in our sights – we’re on the verge of returning to normal operations and going for the gold.”

(A timing bug in the recently uploaded command sequence. That sounds like a long, sleepless holiday weekend spent in the JPL cubicles...) Read More

Another pink world

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Saturday July 04, 2015 · 9:00 AM PDT

2015/07/04 · 09:00

The color code for Pluto: nitrogen ice is white. Where methane is exposed to uv and charged particles, it turns into tholins - dark red-brown hydrocarbon compounds. A little methane, peeking through the nitrogen ice, gives you pink terrain. Where there is no ice, accumulated dark tholins are what you see. Charon, which is looking dark gray, probably has a surface that is mostly old water ice.

Neptune's moon Triton is believed to be similar to Pluto and is likely a captured Kuiper Belt object:

Triton: hatched from the same region as Pluto. Voyager image.

Pluto and Charon in color: LORRI + MVIC, June 25 & 27, 2015

Pluto shows two remarkably different sides in these color images of the planet and its largest moon Charon taken by New Horizons on June 25 and June 27. The images were made from black-and-white images combined with lower-resolution color data. The left image shows the side of Pluto that will be seen at highest resolution when New Horizons makes its close approach on July 14. The hemisphere is dominated by a very dark region that extends along the equator. The right image is of the side that faces Charon; the most dramatic feature on this side of Pluto is a row of dark spots arranged along the equator. (The equator appears near the bottom of the images of both Pluto and Charon, as New Horizons' view is mostly of their northern hemispheres.) (From Emily Lakdawalla's blog).

Pluto, LORRI images, June 22 - July 1, 2015

Charon, LORRI images, June 22 - July 1, 2015

Talking to Philae is proving difficult

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Tuesday June 30, 2015 · 1:17 PM PDT

2015/06/30 · 13:17

The good news is that the Philae lander is awake for a few hours each day and is talkative. The bad news is that it is hard for the Rosetta orbiter to link with it.

The first contact with Philae since its seven month hibernation ended was on June 13. Confirmed contacts were made on June 14, 19, 20, 21, 23 and 24 but all have been too short to allow transfer of the data the lander has stored. There are two large blocks of data in storage, and each will take about 20 minutes to upload to Rosetta. The June 24 link did last 20 minutes, but was so intermittent that only 80 packets were received.

The dilemma is that Rosetta needs to be closer to the comet to communicate with Philae. But the comet, nearing perihelion (the closest it comes to the sun) is warming up and creating its coma of dust. In April, the dust confused Rosetta's navigational system, which needs to pick out bright stars but could not distinguish them from dust grains, and Rosetta went into safe mode, which shut down science operations. So the orbiter was moved away from the comet to protect it from the dust. But now that is making it hard to talk to the lander.

Moving Rosetta closer to the comet would improve communication with the lander, but would put Rosetta -- and hence the entire mission -- in jeopardy. When the lander was deployed, Rosetta was in a trajectory that flew between comet latitudes +15º and +25º. Rosetta's trajectory has been shifted to carry it over lower latitudes (-8º), which improved the signal, and is now gradually being moved northwards again, to find the optimum latitude for communication.

The ultimate hope, of course, is not only to retrieve the two blocks of data the lander has stored, but also to be able to carry out more lander operations, including sampling the comet's surface with the drill and analyzing it chemically. Comets are expected to be rich in complex organic compounds, and astrobiologists are eager to know exactly what is there. E.g., are there amino acids? If there are, are they racemic mixtures or is one enantiomer more abundant than the other?

P-15 days: Pluto's nitrogen frost ice caps and dark organics

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Sunday June 28, 2015 · 2:08 PM PDT

2015/06/28 · 14:08

With just 15 days to the flyby, New Horizon's LORRI camera has been returning images of variegated terrain on both Pluto and its largest moon Charon. There are light colored terrains which are expected to be nitrogen frost and dark colored terrains that should be organic compounds made from ices by the radiation flux. Pluto has a thin nitrogen atmosphere which develops shifting haze.

Pluto by New Horizons on June 18, 2015. Distance 31 507 424 Km.

A warning though: image deconvolution can produce artifacts. The mottled appearance of Pluto and Charon we are seeing in these images may be exaggerated. To get a better idea of what may really be there (and will be clearly visible in a couple of weeks), it is best to look at raw images, such as this one:

Raw image (not deconvolved) of Pluto and Charon, June 22, 2015. A stacked and sharpened version of four images captured on June 22 from a distance of 26.8 million kilometers. Björn Jónsson says about this image: "The dark feature very near or at Pluto's pole continues to be visible and I continue to suspect it to be a small, dark polar cap. The bright terrain continues to look mottled (which it didn't a few days ago in lower-res images) and these features are probably at least partially real. The dark spot near the right limb at ~(203,354) is definitely a real feature and the brighter spot next to it is probably real as well. Charon is now showing lots of interesting details. In particular the small, 'bright' spot near the center of Charon's disc is a real feature but its brightness relative to the darker terrain is exaggerated here." -- From Emily Lakdawalla's blog

Come below the orange tholin haze for speculations about the dark areas on Pluto.

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Friday June 26, 2015 · 5:53 PM PDT

2015/06/26 · 17:53

Donald Trump has banned Univision staff from from his Miami golf club.

Donald Trump sent a letter to Univision CEO and president Randy Falco on Friday informing him that "no Univision officer or representative" is allowed to use his Trump National Doral, the resort and golf club immediately adjacent to Univision offices in Miami, the On Media blog has learned.

Univision has canceled its telecast of the Miss USA meat show, which is partially owned by Trump, in response to Trump's remarks about Mexicans in his campaign announcement: "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists."

This guy just oozes class... or something.

Dwarf planet update: strange spots and a murky line

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Wednesday June 10, 2015 · 12:20 PM PDT

2015/06/10 · 12:20

Ceres' spots get curiouser as we get closer.

Probably ice (or maybe salt). But how did they form?

From http://www.nasa.gov/...

The region with the brightest spots is in a crater about 55 miles (90 kilometers) across. The spots consist of many individual bright points of differing sizes, with a central cluster. So far, scientists have found no obvious explanation for their observed locations or brightness levels.
"The bright spots in this configuration make Ceres unique from anything we've seen before in the solar system. The science team is working to understand their source. Reflection from ice is the leading candidate in my mind, but the team continues to consider alternate possibilities, such as salt. With closer views from the new orbit and multiple view angles, we soon will be better able to determine the nature of this enigmatic phenomenon," said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission based at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, another dwarf planet is showing a line.

http://www.planetary.org/...

New Horizons captured the four images used to make this view on June 6, 2015 from a distance of 46 million kilometers. Four images have been stacked and sharpened. The dark line running across Pluto is likely a real feature, not a processing artifact. Charon is still too small for any apparent features to be definitively discerned.

NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Björn Jónsson

Are Republicans spoofing our email addresses?

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Thursday June 04, 2015 · 1:21 PM PDT

2015/06/04 · 13:21

I received an email today from Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) which appears to be a response to "concerns" I expressed to her office about the Iran nuclear deal. "Thank you for contacting me regarding U.S.-led diplomacy with Iran. I appreciate hearing from you on this important topic, and I welcome the opportunity to respond."

The problem is, although I am a California resident and I have contacted Senator Feinstein on occasion, I've never contacted her regarding the Iran negotiations.

It occurs to my paranoid brain that somebody might enjoy fiddling with the "numbers" Senators see for "grassroots alarm" on certain topics.

Has anyone else received unsolicited "responses" from Senators?

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