* 22 entries including: America's Constitution (series), COVID-19 & evidence (series), history of locks (series), hypersonic missiles & cruise missiles, ammonia for shipping, new Moon missions, super mRNA vaccines, fading vaccines, and bitcoin implosion.
* HYPERSONIC MISSILES: As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("US Hypersonic Missile Upgrade Concepts Are Now Advancing" by Steve Trimble, 16 July 21), the US Army and Navy are now working on the next phase of a joint hypersonic missile program, with the improved system to be fielded from 2025. The intent is to make hardened and mobile targets to the second-tier development of the Army's land-based "Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW)", and the first tier of the Navy's submarine- and surface-launched "Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike (IRCPS)" missiles.
They are similar weapons, using a canister-stored "all-up round" using a two-stage booster with a diameter of 88 centimeters (34.5 inches) and a Common Hypersonic Glide Body (CHGB) warhead. The Army had initially focused on a booster with a larger diameter, but agreed to cut it down so the weapon could fit into Navy shipboard vertical-launch cells. The Army phase-one LRHW will be fielded from 2023, but will be restricted to fixed targets, such as radar and communications dishes. The phase-two system will introduce an inflight retargeting capability and a terminal seeker, with the Navy getting on board at that time.
The terminal seeker presents challenges. Robert Strider, deputy director of the Army Hypersonic Project Office, says: "That's not going to be an easy one." The re-entry speed of a CHGB launched by an LRHW / IRCPS missile may be as high as Mach 15. At those speeds, friction causes the airflow around the CHGB to ionize, sheathing it in a plasma that interferes with communications and radio-wave sensors. The current approach is to ensure the vehicle is provided with command updates as long as it can be, and can continue on course with an inertial guidance system when updates aren't available. Strider says: "We think we've got the pieces. We've got to see how it all fits together."
An even harder problem is integrating a terminal seeker within the compact hypersonic glider. Strider says: "Getting something that will be able to go after moving or relocated targets, you know, that's a different story right now based on the maturity of some of the technologies. We've got a lot of big brains that are looking into this."
Navy Captain Gregory Zettler, the IRCPS program manager, says the two services are also interested in alternative warheads. The USAF's first hypersonic weapon -- the Lockheed Martin AGM-183A -- is equipped with a tungsten fragmentation warhead. With such a warhead, the LRHW-IRCPS would be limited to attacking soft targets. Alternative warheads might include penetrators for hardened targets bunkers and cluster submunitions.
As per US DoD policy, the LRHW and IRCPS missiles will not carry nuclear warheads. However, some defense officials believe that the destructive capability of a large number of precision-guided hypersonic missiles for which there is no useful defense will still make them an effective strategic deterrent. In a recent exercise named the "Joint Warfighting Assessment 2021", the presence of an LRHW battery was enough to de-escalate a simulated conflict. Strider says: "They didn't even shoot [the LRHW] because they didn't have to. When it shows up, it does what it's supposed to do, which is deter any kind of conflict and let them know how serious we really are."
The LRHW program is entering a critical period of flight testing. Earlier versions of the CHGB were tested three times between 2011 and 2017, with one failure in 2014. The first test of the operational version of the CHGB followed successfully in March 2019. Strider says the Army is now close to the next milestone Joint Flight Campaign (JFC) 1, which will be the first "all-up" test of the CHGB and the two-stage missile stack. The JFC-1 shot will be from a launchpad, with a JFC-2 test to follow in 2022 in which the launch will be from a transporter-erector launcher (TEL) vehicle.
Lockheed Martin has delivered all four TELs to support the first LRHW battery. A follow-on JFC-3 test later in 2022 will be the first to be directed by an operational unit. Strider says: "When you think about normal programs of record -- at the pace that they normally work and the milestones they go through -- this is lightspeed."
* CRUISE MISSILES AGAIN: As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Cruise Missiles Rise To Top Of US Weapons Agenda" by Steve Trimble, 9 February 2021), the cruise missile is a significant element of America's military arsenal -- but the USA has only fielded one new cruise missile over the last three decades.
The Pentagon is now working to introduce new cruise missiles. Two new candidates for a hypersonic cruise missile are now in testing, while a third has entered the design phase. A subsonic replacement for a nuclear version of the Boeing AGM-86 air-launched cruise missile is in development, while a replacement for the Navy's RGM/UGM-109 Tomahawk is on the drawing board, and also be adapted to the nuclear strike role. In addition, new versions of the Tomahawk and the Lockheed Martin AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) are entering production.
The Navy is working towards a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) -- a variant of the conventionally-armed "Next-Generation Land Attack Weapon (NGLAW), which is intended to replace the ship- and surface-launched Tomahawk. As a bridge to the fielding of the NGLAW, the Tomahawk itself re-entered production in 2020 to support the improved Block V variant, with the "Maritime Strike Tomahawk" providing a long-range antiship capability using a new seeker. Introduction to service is expected in 2023.
The US Army retired its ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCM) decades ago, but thanks to the hostile relationship with Russia, the GLCM is being revived. The Army has selected BGM-109 Tomahawk to form half of a new "Mid-Range Capability", along with a ground-launched version of the Raytheon SM-6 missile, in 2023.
Lockheed's AGM-158 JASSM has provided the Air Force a stealthy option to strike targets at ranges of up to 925 kilometers (515 miles / 500 NMI). That's well short of the range of the now-retired AGM-86C conventional air-launched cruise missile, but the USAF is looking forward to fielding an "AGM-158D" in 2024 that will have twice the range.
The Air Force, over the longer run, wants to field the nuclear-armed "Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO)" missile. That program is years out, but in the shorter term, there's considerable work on scramjet-powered cruise missiles are seen as a more affordable and versatile option than the bigger and more expensive hypersonic glide vehicles. Scramjet propulsion has been seen as immature, but it has been rapidly evolving.
In 2020, Aerojet Rocketdyne demonstrated in a wind tunnel 5.5-meter (18-foot) long scramjet engine that could produce 57.8 kN (5,900 kgp / 13,000 lbf) thrust; Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems had demonstrated a comparable scramjet engine the year before. Both engines are now going into flight testing under DARPA's "Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC)" program -- with Aerojet partnering with Lockheed, and Northrop with Raytheon. Work towards an operational system is in the wings, under the "Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM)" program, with air-launched, sea-launched, and ground-launched versions under consideration.
Along a parallel track, in November 2020 the Pentagon awarded Boeing a contract to generate a preliminary design and perform component-level testing of the Mach 5-plus "HyFly 2" -- which envisions a dual-combustion, ramjet-to-scramjet powered cruise missile optimized for the Navy's carrier decks. The original "HyFly 1" program was a failure, but Boeing learned from it. With this level of ferment in cruise missile development, it is not entirely clear what will new weapon systems will actually be fielded. Expect changes.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* COVID-19 & EVIDENCE (1): As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("How COVID Broke The Evidence Pipeline" by Helen Pearson, 12 May 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic put the entire world under a "stress test", with the stress heavily focused on the biomedical community.
In early 2020, Simon Carley -- an emergency-medicine doctor in Manchester UK -- was confronted with the emergence of COVID-19 in Britain. Covey is also a specialist in "evidence-based medicine (EBM)", the hardly radical idea that treatments should be based on solid scientific evidence, particularly clinical trials. Alas, most doctors are not in any way scientists, and do not think like them. Covey saw clinicians reaching for treatments simply because they were plausible, with most early studies lacking controls, or having too few subjects to yield persuasive results. He says: "We were starting to treat patients with these drugs initially just on what seemed like a good idea."
Yes, it was true that the threat of the pandemic demanded a quick response, and good studies would take a lot of time and effort to put together. However, Carley understood that it made no sense to chase after treatments that were often ineffective, or sometimes even harmful. Carley and his colleagues wrote: "The COVID-19 pandemic has arguably been one of the greatest challenges to evidence-based medicine since the term was coined in the last century."
There have been more than 2,900 clinical trials related to COVID-19, but most of them were trash, being too small, too poorly designed. There was also considerable duplication of work, with Huseyin Naci --- who studies health policy at the London School of Economics -- saying there has been "research waste at an unprecedented scale."
However, the news has not been all bad, with medical advances based on rigorous evidence helping to find a way out of the pandemic. Vaccine trials were well-run, compensating for their speed with large numbers of subjects and good planning. Similarly, high-quality trials of possible treatments showed that, for instance, some steroid drugs could help patients survive COVID-19, while the over-promoted drug hydroxychloroquine (HQC) did nothing for them. The UK's RECOVERY trial, which ended up promoting steroids while dismissing HCQ, was seen as a particularly impressive example of how to conduct a good study under pressure of events. In addition, researchers have implemented "living" systematic reviews that are constantly updated as research emerges, as dictated by a fast-moving disease outbreak. Conferences have been conducted or are in planning that will assess the conduct of trials, and proposed improvements.
* Evidence-based medicine is surprisingly a fairly new idea, at least in the mainstream of medical practice. Medical schools weren't inclined to discuss clinical trials, and doctors normally offered advice largely on the basis of opinion and experience. That, in practice, usually meant deferring to the most senior physician in the room -- a custom now mocked as "eminence-based medicine".
In 1969, a young physician named Iain Chalmers, working in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, found out the hard way that blindly following custom was the wrong approach. Chalmers had been taught in medical school that young children with measles should not be treated with antibiotics, unless it was clear they had a secondary bacterial infection. Chalmers obediently withheld the drugs -- only to find out later that six controlled clinical trials had shown that antibiotics given early to children with measles were effective at preventing serious bacterial infections. He realized that he'd lost some children he didn't have to lose, and resolved to set things right.
In the 1970s, Chalmers and a research team set about systematically scouring the medical literature for controlled clinical trials relating to care in pregnancy and childbirth -- to find them a mess. In the 1980s, they published what they'd been able to find in a database and two thick books with hundreds of systematic reviews. Their work concluded that many normal procedures, such as shaving the pubic hair of women in labor, were superstition, being either useless or flatly harmful. However, they also found that some procedures, such as administration of steroids for premature births, did save lives. It was a landmark study, and in 1993 Chalmers was a key player in the establishment of the "Cochrane Collaboration", which aimed to establish the same approach in other medical specialties. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMMONIA FOR SHIPPING: The possible use of ammonia as a transport fuel has been discussed here in the past -- the last mention being earlier in 2021, in the context of an aircraft fuel. As discussed in an article from BBC.com ("The Foul-Smelling Fuel That Could Power Big Ships" by Adrienne Murray, 6 November 2020), it seems to have particular promise for shipping.
Around 90% of all goods traded globally are transported by sea, but marine transport produces around 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) wants to halve emissions by 2050, from 2008 levels, which means shifting to green technologies. Brian Soerensen -- a research and development chief at MAN Energy Solutions, a German-based multinational with a marine engine branch in Copenhagen -- says a number of different fuels are being explored: "One of the options we believe will be ammonia. Methanol could be another one, biofuel could be a third."
By early 2024, Man Energy Solutions plans to install an ammonia-ready engine on a ship. The first models will be dual-fuel, able to run on traditional marine gas oil as well. While ammonia has lower energy density than current marine fuels, it has zero emissions in principle, and is more energy-dense than hydrogen.
In fact, it's effectively a way of storing hydrogen, since in use it is catalytically broken down into nitrogen and hydrogen. Hydrogen is harder to handle than ammonia, since it has to be stored at -253 degrees Celsius (-415 degrees Fahrenheit). Ammonia becomes liquid below -34C (-30F), at higher temperatures under pressure. There's actually 50% more hydrogen in a liter of ammonia than there is in a liter of liquid hydrogen. Ammonia can be reformed without too much trouble into N2 and H2 for burning; it can be burned, if not readily, and can also be used to drive fuel cells designed to deal with it. Dr. Tristan Smith, who performs research on decarbonized shipping at University College London. "Ammonia sits very nicely in the middle. It's not too expensive to store and not too expensive to produce."
Ammonia does pose challenges: it's toxic, and using it can generate toxic nitrous oxides. However, it is heavily produced for fertilizer, with over $50 billion USD of it turned out each year, and port infrastructure is well-established, Soerensen saying: "It's being transported seaborne today. We know how to handle ammonia on board a ship, not as a fuel, but as a cargo."
Norwegian shipping company Eidesvik is planning to install ammonia fuel cells on a vessel by late 2023, the fuel cells providing electricity to drive a motor. Project partner Prototech has already begun developing a test prototype. The supply ship, named VIKING ENERGY, will sail round-trips of 555 kilometers (345 miles). The hybrid vessel will also be able to use liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Vermund Hjelland, vice president of technology and development at Eidesvik, says fuel cells are more efficient and cost-effective for such short, predictable routes: "You can have smaller tanks and get more kilowatt-hours out of the same amount of fuel. The picture is different compared to a super-tanker. It very much depends whether weight is an issue."
One difficulty with producing ammonia is that it has a big environmental footprint, accounting for 1.8% of global emissions. While it can be synthesized using air and water as a feedstock, it is often extracted from natural gas, which is not at all a green process. In any case, the process is a power hog. The trick is to make ammonia out of air, water, and renewable electricity, for use as fuel or fertilizer.
In rural Jutland, western Denmark, research is underway at a brand-new pilot plant in Foulum. Haldor Topsoe, which makes catalysts used in the production of ammonia, working with scientists from Aarhus University, aims to establish "green ammonia" as a practical industrial process. Pat Han, Haldor Topsoe's director of research, says: "Instead of utilizing fossil energy ... we simply take wind and solar energy, and within minutes, we have a liquid fuel at the other end."
The company's demonstrator consists of a transparent box, the size of a shipping container, containing a maze of pressure gauges and insulated silver pipes. Renewable energy electrolyzes water to produce hydrogen, to then be combined with nitrogen from the air to produce the ammonia. A "solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC)" streamlines the process, by combining the nitrogen purification system with hydrogen production. Similar projects are being pursued elsewhere. Haldor Topsoe expects green ammonia to be commercially available as early as 2022 or 2023.
However, a Global Maritime Forum report suggests that meeting the IMO's 2050 goal, by shifting primarily to green ammonia fuel, would need more than $1 trillion USD of investment. Dr. Tristan Smith, one of the report authors, says that is actually achievable, thanks to declining prices of renewable energy: "By the late-2020s, maybe mid-2030s, we will have some relatively low prices. But that could still be more expensive than oil."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The Thompson Committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot tends to its work and only occasionally drops bombs in public. This last week, the committee dropped a bomb, issuing subpoenas to four Donald Trump aides: former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino; former adviser Steve Bannon; and Kash Patel, a former chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, who had also served as an aide to Republican Representative Devin Nunes. They are being asked for private depositions and records.
Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of two Republicans serving on the committee, tweeted after the subpoenas were sent out that he is looking "forward to getting a full accounting of everything that happened in the Trump White House on, before, and after January 6th. And we're just getting started."
All four of the former Trump staffers were part of a larger records request the committee had sent to government agencies last month when it requested the records of hundreds of former Trump staffers, campaign employees, and supporters who were connected to Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Defiance of the subpoenas is contempt of Congress, which has a maximum jail sentence of a year and a maximum fine of $100,000 USD. Contempt can be established by a simple majority of vote of either branch of Congress. Enforcement is by the Department of Justice, or the Washington DC district attorney's office.
There is a complication that Donald Trump can invoke privacy through executive privilege, but the Biden White House can override it. That is likely to lead to some court action, but it is unlikely that the courts will block the White House. Adam Schiff, who as an ex-Federal prosecutor is clearly leading the investigation, told CNN's Chris Cuomo:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We are going to determine what went wrong in the lead-up to January 6. We're going to find out who was involved, who was knowledgeable, what roles they played in the planning, what expectation they had of violence, what the former President was doing. Among the biggest unknowns was what was going on within the White House, on January 5th and 6th, at that critical time when our democracy was being threatened with violent insurrection. So we are not wasting time.
END QUOTE
In somewhat related news of the 2020 election agitation, the "Cyber Ninjas" who were conducting a bootleg audit of the election in Maricopa County, Arizona, reported on their effort -- to reveal that there had indeed been an error in the vote, but it was that Biden had won by over 300 more votes than had been counted. There was great mockery in response. Trump is in decline, though he's not out of business yet.
* Last week, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the USA met at the White House as the "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue" or "Quad" for short. The alignment is not really anything new, it's just got a public face now. The foursome -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and US President Joe Biden -- announced in a joint statement after the talks:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We stand for the rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, democratic values, and territorial integrity of states. Together, we recommit to promoting the free, open, rules-based order, rooted in international law and undaunted by coercion, to bolster security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
END QUOTE
The leaders also voiced support for small island states, with a focus on their economies and environmental efforts; asked North Korea for restraint of its nuclear program; and pushed for global distribution of vaccines. Several agreements were announced, including one to bolster supply chain security for semiconductors, and to combat illegal fishing and boost maritime domain awareness. They also declared a 5G partnership and joint efforts on climate change.
The word "China" was not used, but anybody with sense knew what references to "coercion" meant. The Chinese foreign ministry was not fooled, announcing: "A closed, exclusive clique targeting other countries runs counter to the trend of the times and the aspirations of regional countries. It will find no support and is doomed to fail."
It is an interesting question of if Joe Biden wants the US to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade alliance. Donald Trump shot down US membership, and Biden has been cautious about signing up with trade groups -- but his caution appears to be mostly driven by public image, not any fundamental disagreement with trade pacts.
Incidentally, after Biden had an apologetic phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, French indignation over Australia's cancellation of a French submarine in favor of acquiring eight nuclear attack submarines under the AUKUS agreement has blown over. The Biden Administration was clearly caught flat-footed by the dispute -- possibly because the Australians didn't suggest the French submarines were any big deal.
* As discussed in an editorial by David Andelman on CNN.com ("A COVID Pass Takes France By Storm", 20 September 2021), in July French President Emmanuel Macron implemented tough measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in his country. While there has been some resistance -- the French are not noted for reverence of authority -- on the whole, the French seem relieved to have Macron take charge, Andelman writing:
BEGIN QUOTE:
At our first meal in Paris, at a charming outdoor table on the Boulevard Saint-Germain the waiter immediately asked for our "pass sanitaire," or health pass, an app showing proof of either vaccination, a negative COVID-19 test or of past infection. Using a tablet, he scanned the QR codes on our iPhones, verified we were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and promptly delivered the food we'd ordered at the counter inside, where everyone -- guests and staff -- was masked.
END QUOTE
The law passed in July requires every adult in France to present a "pass sanitaire" before entering places like restaurants, cafes, museums, theaters, and sports stadiums. Now, all French health workers must have received at least the first dose of the vaccine in order to continue to work, with antivaxxers facing suspension without pay. Similarly, members of the military and firefighters must be vaccinated or be "assessed as unfit for their mission." Over 80% of French people over the age of 12 have had at least one vaccine dose, and the number continues to ramp up.
BEGIN QUOTE:
... everyone I've seen has on the street has complied with the mask mandates that came into effect in Paris nearly three weeks ago. Every bus or subway passenger, every rider on the high-speed TGV train we took to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps down in what is known as "deep France," every Uber and taxi driver, every shopper or indeed virtually anyone inside any building, has been diligently wearing their masks.
END QUOTE
Schools are open -- they were never fully closed -- and business activity is lively. Tourists are welcome if they have been vaccinated. Late in 2020, polls showed that France had the lowest percentage of people willing to get vaccinated, with only 40% saying they planned to get vaccinated. However, antivaxxer sentiment was not deeply felt, a French official telling Andelman: "The anti-vax movement is not that representative of the French population. It's a small portion of the population, and we have more and more people that are now vaccinated."
Macron successfully took control of the narrative, driving a plan that works. The pandemic in the USA has been discouraging -- not so much because of the hardship, though that is undeniable, but because of the noisy efforts to undermine the fight against it. The experience of the French suggests that the resistance exists on the fringes of society; and it is weak, easily defeated. There is basis for confidence that, a year from now, we'll have the pandemic behind us.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (169): With the end of THE APPRENTICE, Donald Trump found himself at loose ends. He was as much in debt as ever, and getting loans was difficult. Although he liked to boast about his skill at stalling creditors, the end result was unsurprisingly that few liked to lend him money. His number-one lender was Deutsche Bank.
Trump clearly needed a new hustle. He had repeatedly publicly toyed with running for president and often sniped at Obama, particularly using the tale that Obama had really been born in Kenya. He decided to run for the presidency in 2016, clearly as a promotional stunt. He charged into the Republican primaries in 2016, operating on the slogan of "Make America Great Again (MAGA)" -- claiming that America was being victimized in international trade because of bad trade deals, and in particular that widespread illegal immigration was destroying America. He proposed a giant wall across America's southern border to stop the flow, even going so far as to say Mexico would be forced to pay for it.
Trump got a surge of grassroots support, and to everyone's surprise completely overwhelmed the Republican primaries. To appeal to evangelicals, he took on pious Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. Trump then focused on taking down his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. She seemed to hold a comfortable lead at first, but Trump wore her down with endless smears -- greatly amplified by a "trolling" campaign online spreading "fake news" of Hillary's evil deeds. The trolling got intense, in large part due to the work of hackers and trolls connected to the Russian government. The hackers leaked damaging stolen information to a website named Wikileaks that broadcast them to the world, doing much to tear down the Clinton campaign.
The most damaging attack on Clinton was from the fact that she had set up a private email server at her residence, and conducted official business on it. It hardly seemed like massive corruption, but Trump's rallies played it up, setting up chants of: "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!" During the presidential debates, Trump threatened to have Clinton arrested. An FBI investigation cleared Clinton of wrongdoing -- but then, in an attempt to remain neutral, FBI Director James Comey publicly criticized her bad judgement. That was a departure from tradition, particularly objectionable because Clinton was condemned without recourse to a defense, and it proved damaging to her campaign.
At the very last moment before the election, the FBI announced further investigation of the Clinton campaign. It amounted to little, but it was enough to ensure that Trump won the election, though he lost the popular vote by a strong margin. By all indications, Trump was not expecting to win; it appears his intent was that he wanted to establish a Trump Channel, along the lines of Fox News, to make money attacking the Clinton Administration. It is said he was shocked to find out that he was POTUS.
If so, his natural egotism quickly asserted itself -- but his normal bluster barely concealed his insecurity. At his inaugural speech, he spoke of the Sun shining down on him, even though it was raining, with a comical video of George W. Bush in the audience struggling to stay dry. He also insisted that the turnout for his inauguration broke records, though aerial shots of the National Mall showed the crowd to be distinctly smaller than for Obama's inaugurations.
That fed into Trump's claims that there had been widespread cheating in the election, even though he had won. His primary claim to that end was that large numbers of illegal aliens had voted for Clinton, though very cases of election fraud were discovered. Trump went so far as to set up a commission to investigate fraud in the 2016 election -- though it would be disbanded in less than a year, primarily because most of the states refused to cooperate with it, and it became an embarrassment.
Trump soon started to follow through on his campaign promises, quickly pulling the USA out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, gradually ramping up trade wars with China and Europe, working to shut down immigration from Muslim countries, and pushing for his giant border wall. The border wall was highly problematic, however. There were already extensive walls along the border, but focused on places where cross-border traffic was high. Trump proposed to put walls along stretches of the border where they physically or politically impractical. The idea that Mexico was going to fund the wall was a fantasy, angrily rejected by the Mexican government, and Congress showed little enthusiasm for funding the massive project.
As president, Trump brought a chaotic style to the White House. He only slept about five hours a night, spending much of his day watching TV, particularly Fox News and CNN, and sending out tweets on Twitter, boasting and attacking his enemies. He was inclined to hire on sycophants, playing them off against each other -- much the same way as he had on THE APPRENTICE -- and, in general, managing by chaos. Turnover at the White House would be very high.
Trump did not drink alcohol, but he also did not exercise, saying he believed he had a finite supply of energy, and didn't want to use it up too quickly. He had a short attention span for briefings, sometimes making it clear he believed himself smarter than those giving the briefings. He disliked the White House, calling it a "dump", and often went to Mar-A-Lago. It is estimated that he spent one out of every five days of his presidency on his golf courses. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: The concept of drone combat aircraft that can operated as "loyal wingmen" to piloted fighters has been discussed here in the past, with the previous mention concerning British efforts towards that end under Project Mosquito. As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("The United Kingdom Has Chosen Who Will Build Its First Prototype Loyal Wingman Combat Drone" by Thomas Newdick, 25 January 2021), Britain's Royal Air Force has awarded a contract to Spirit Aerosystems, of Northern Ireland, to develop and fly a prototype of an "uncrewed fighter aircraft (UFA)" by 2023. The program is expected to last three years; if the program is successful, it may lead to development of an operational machine.
According to the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD), the drones will "fly at high speed alongside fighter jets" and will carry "missiles, surveillance, and electronic warfare technology." The aircraft will be able to target and shoot down enemy aircraft, as well as "survive against surface-to-air missiles." Artwork of a Mosquito concept shows an aircraft with swept wings, featuring downward-canted wingtips, and a v-tail, along with an engine intake on the back and a serrated engine exhaust.
Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, Chief of the Air Staff, said: "We're taking a revolutionary approach, looking at a game-changing mix of swarming drones and uncrewed fighter aircraft like Mosquito, alongside piloted fighters like Tempest, that will transform the combat battlespace in a way not seen since the advent of the jet age."
The plan is to start flight testing of a full-scale Project Mosquito vehicle by the end of 2023. That's an accelerated schedule, with the UK defense ministry saying the project will use "the latest software development techniques and civilian aerospace engineering and manufacturing expertise."
Spirit AeroSystems emerged to lead the Project Mosquito design and prototyping effort, after the transfer of Bombardier's Northern Ireland division to US-based Spirit AeroSystems was sealed last October. Project Mosquito is a part of the RAF's "Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA)" concept. LANCA -- which is focused on innovative air combat technologies with lower cost and shorter development cycles -- was launched in 2015 by the MOD's Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) agency, with the RAF Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) managing it. LANCA falls under a wider project, the "Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI)", which also includes the Tempest future piloted fighter.
* As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("New RFI Revives DARPA Interest In Wing-In-Ground-Effect Vehicles" by Steve Trimble, 18 August 2021), from the 1960s the USSR worked on "ekranoplanes" or "wing in ground-effect (WIG)" -- which were something like aircraft that flew low over the waves, obtaining efficient lift by skimming over the cushion of air created by the "ground effect". Although the Soviets built some very ambitious "sea skimmer" vehicles, today most of those that have been built have been small, the technology remaining in a niche.
The US has considered ambitious sea skimmers as well, but not done much with the concept to date. Now the US Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's "blue sky" technology development office, has issued a "request for information (RFI)". According to the RFI, the skimmer should be able to haul 91 tonnes (100 tons) or more, and operate safely in wave heights of 1.2 meters (4 feet).
A flying boat is an aircraft that plays at being a ship; a sea skimmer is a ship that plays at being an aircraft. A skimmer is built somewhat more like a ship than an aircraft, reducing costs; it is much faster than a ship, slower than an aircraft, and highly fuel-efficient. It will be interesting to see if anything happens this time around.
[ED: I would really enjoy renting a little sea skimmer to play around with for a time. It would be like flying, without having to go through the time and difficulty of learning how to fly an aircraft -- which would be fun, but I don't have the need for it.]
* In related news, Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) revealed a design for a twin-turbofan cargolift aircraft, with a strong resemblance to the modern Japanese Kawasaki C-2. The concept aircraft was not named, nor is there any evidence of a requirement for it. However, KAI had clearly invested considerable thought into the machine, suggesting a range of uses, along with cargolift / paradropping:
Currently, the Republic of Korea Air Force's primary airlift capabilities are provided by 16 Lockheed Martin C-130H/J Hercules aircraft and four Airbus A330 Multi Role Tanker Transports. KAI may be looking for foreign interest. The concept aircraft would be, in implementation, much bigger than any aircraft built by KAI to date.
BACK_TO_TOP* A HISTORY OF LOCKS (3): Traditional lock technology, particularly the Yale lock, remains alive and well in the 21st century, but mechanical locks have been increasingly augmented by digital technologies. In previous centuries, locks and cryptosystems were related, but distinct; in the 21st century, they were increasingly integrated.
A prominent example is the "remote key entry (RKE)" system, sometimes also known as the "remote keyless entry" system. RKE systems have been around for decades in the form of garage-door openers, but the technology has been refined and is now in more widespread use, particularly in the form of RKE systems for cars. In modern RKE systems, a car will automatically lock if the driver, carrying RKE key fob, walks away from it, and automatically unlocks if the driver with the key fob opens a door. There is no need to stick a key into the ignition, either.
The old garage-door openers provided convenience, not security. The remote and receiver units could be set to unique 8-bit codes using mechanical switches, but that was mainly to eliminate interference between neighbors who both had remotes. Modern automotive RKE systems use a much longer code sequence that changes between uses. If a key fob RKE unit always sent the same or a predictable access code, a potential intruder could simply record its transmission using a radio scanner and play it back later to gain access.
Cheap integrated circuits are now available that provide improved security by generating binary code sequences of 40 bits or so. The simplest such security scheme is the "rolling code" algorithm, basically a form of pseudo-random number generator, which is used with one-way RKE units that can send a code but cannot pick up an acknowledgement from the receiver.
In the rolling code scheme, both the RKE unit the receiver are set to an initial code seed and "rolling algorithm". Every time the key sends an access code to the receiver, both update the code identically according to the rolling algorithm. The initial code seed ensures that the rolling code sequences are effectively unique to a particular RKE system, and the sequences are designed so that it is difficult to backtrack through the values and find the seed. Since the receiver will not always pick up the RKE unit's radio signal, the receiver can "look ahead" 256 codes, and still unlock the automobile.
That leads to a problem if the number of unreceived RKE transactions exceeds 256, or somewhat more plausibly the RKE unit is lost or broken. For this reason, automobiles with RKE systems have a "reset" capability. The owner gets in the car using the old-fashioned mechanical key, follows the reset initialization procedure -- say, turning the ignition on and off eight times in less than ten seconds -- and then pushes the button on the RKE unit. The receiver then syncs up to the RKE unit.
Two-way systems offer better security at higher cost. The RKE unit transmits an access code; the receiver reads the code and replies; the RKE unit acknowledges in turn; and the receiver then unlocks the doors. This means that both the RKE unit and the receiver can increment their rolling codes in step, eliminating the need for look-ahead. Incidentally, many RKE units can perform multiple functions, such as unlocking the doors or the trunk. This is done by sending a function code along with the security code.
* The humble door lock has been updated as well. Gym lockers and such often use simple digital locks; in a typical configuration, a user puts stuff in the locker, closes it, then punches in a four-digit combination twice, securing the locker. To take stuff out of the locker, the user punches in the combination again, opens the locker door, and removes the stuff. Facility staff will have an 8-digit code they can use to override and open the locker if a user forgets the combination -- or use a physical key, if it comes to that. They're not very secure, but the application doesn't demand high security.
"Key card" locks have been used in hotels from the 1980s. Key cards were originally magstrip cards that could be programmed with an access code to a room at check-in, along with the room number code and times for stay. There had actually been an earlier "punchcard" scheme, but it hadn't caught on as widely. A guest would push the card into a card reader for access to the room, or access through a hotel side door.
Magstrip cards were eventually largely replaced by "near-field" wireless card, with a guest simply holding the card up to a reader surface for access. As originally defined, key cards were not all that secure; not only could they, in principle, be copied, hotel staff also had "universal" key cards that allowed them access to any room. If anyone were to get hold of a universal key card or make a copy of it, that would give access to all the rooms. Today, most key cards have authentication schemes, meaning they can't be duplicated; increasingly, guests are using smartphones with near-field interfaces (NFI) and authentication to get into hotel rooms.
Digital technology is also catching on at home, thanks to the "smart doorbell", most popularly identified with the Amazon.com Ring smart doorbell. A Ring is effectively a doorbell with a security camera, a speaker and microphone, plus wireless communications. Somebody rings the doorbell, an alert is sent out over wireless that make its way to the resident's smartphone, with the resident able to chat with whoever's at the door.
If coupled to a "smart lock", the resident can unlock the door via the smartphone if desired. The smart lock will also accept a key, or typically a passcode punched in via the lock's number pad. In addition, the Ring can perform continuous surveillance with its wide-angle camera, recording when it detects motion, and sending out alarms as programmed to. Smart doorbells have proven to be too easy to crack into, but such are problems that can be addressed. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* MOON RACE REDUX: The US and the Soviet Union engaged in a race to the Moon in the 1960s, which culminated in the US Apollo missions to the Moon. Since Apollo, interest in lunar exploration has had its ups and downs. Currently, it seems to be on an up.
On 23 November 2020, a Chinese Long March 5 booster sent the "Chang'e 5" lunar sample-return probe to the Moon. This was the first lunar sample-return mission since 1976. The Chang'e 5 lander touched down on 1 December in the Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms) region in the northern hemisphere of the near side of the Moon. It took samples, drilling as deep as 2 meters (6.6 feet). The samples were launched back up to the Chang'e 5 return vehicle in lunar orbit on 3 December. The return vehicle left lunar orbit on 13 December, to drop its sample-return capsule on 16 December.
Before Chang'e 5, China had successfully send four robot explorers to the Moon, beginning with the Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 orbiters in 2007 and 2010. In 2013, China landed the Chang'e 3 mission on the moon with a mobile rover that drove across the lunar surface.
China's most challenging lunar mission previous to Chang'e 5 was Chang'e 4, which accomplished the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon in January 2019. Chang'e 4's rover was at last notice still operating, sending back data and imagery through a dedicated relay satellite China placed in a position beyond the far side of the Moon to transmit signals between Earth and the Chang'e 4 spacecraft.
India has sent "Chandrayaan" probes to the Moon in parallel with the Chinese Chang'e probes. Chandrayaan 1 was launched in 2008, and consisted of an orbiter and impactor. Chandrayaan 2 was launched in 2019, and consisted of an orbiter and lander, with a rover; the lander crashed. Chandrayaan 3 will be launched in 2022 to send a lander and rover, but no orbiter, to the Moon.
* Under the Google Lunar X Prize contest, from 2007 internet search giant Google promoted commercial lunar exploration projects. It didn't work out well, finally being canceled in 2018 without flying hardware. However, it did help set up an international network of commercial space companies focused on lunar exploration.
The first commercial Moon probe was the Israeli "SpaceIL Lunar Lander" or "Beresheet", launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster as a secondary payload on 22 February 2019. SpaceIL was one of the commercial operations set up in response to the Lunar X-Prize. The name "Beresheet" meant "Genesis", in reference to the Book of Genesis: "In the beginning ..."
The lander was built by Israel Aerospace Industries and had a launch mass of 600 kilograms (1,320 pounds), about 75% of that being propellant. Its payload suite included a magnetometer, cameras, and a laser retroreflector. It also carried a time capsule with the Israeli flag, and digital copies of the Israeli national anthem, the Bible, and other national and cultural artifacts. The lander was battery-operated, and was to only function for two days. As a secondary payload, it was put into Earth orbit, and had to use its propulsion system to get it gradually to the Moon. It finally reached Moon orbit on 4 April 2019, to attempt a landing a week later. It crashed.
In the meantime, NASA decided to encourage startups working on Moon probes by setting up the "Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)" program to fund their activities. As of 2021, six CLPS lander missions are in the works:
CLPS also involves a number of contracts to startups for development of advanced compact instruments for space probes. The CLPS is seen as complementary to the "Artemis" program, a crewed lunar exploration program built around the Orion capsule. Artemis envisions flying a "Lunar Gateway" space station in orbit around the Moon, and a crewed landing on the Moon by 2024. The Artemis effort seems a bit fantastical at present; no development contract has been awarded for a crewed Moon lander yet, and it seems hard to believe one could be flight-worthy by 2024. Give the program a year or so; it should stabilize.
Along another track, the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) is working in collaboration with NASA on South Korea's first Moon mission, the "Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter", to be launched in 2022. It will carry five payloads, including a high-resolution and a wide-angle imager, a magnetometer, a gamma-ray spectrometer, and space internet link. KARI plans to follow up that flight with an orbiter-lander mission.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The major excitement this last week was an election in California to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. The recall didn't seem likely to work because California is a solidly Blue state -- but Newsom has some image problems, and there were concerns that Democrats might not turn out to vote to keep him in office. What amplified that concern was the peculiar nature of California's recall procedure: there's no follow-up election, whoever gets the most votes becomes governor instead. That might mean a governor who was elected on, say, 25% of the vote.
Fortunately for Newsom, his primary opponent was Larry Elder, a black Rightist talking head, who focused criticizing Newsom's attempts to control the COVID-19 pandemic in California. Newsom, instead of lamely remaining on the defensive, took the offensive, declaring his commitment to getting Californians to vaccinate and fight the pandemic. It worked, with the NO vote not so far under 2:1. STAR TREK alumnus George Takei, a popular Twitter poster, commented:
George Takei / @GeorgeTakei / Overheard: The vote was so lopsided, it's basically Elder abuse.
Elder talked before the vote about challenging it, which also did him no favors; giving the lopsided nature of the vote, not surprisingly he's shown little inclination so far to follow up on his threat. Transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner got 1% of the vote, petulantly complaining about the injustice of it all, to widespread mockery on Twitter.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in a similar situation, having called an election on the basis of getting a stronger majority in Parliament. It may have backfired on him, since the opposition is proving more formidable than expected -- but it's also ended up being a plebiscite on COVID-19, and it may indeed strengthen his hand. We'll see.
* Elder claims the experience should give him a leg up on the national political scene. Possibly, but not a good bet: like author and Senate hopeful JD Vance, he's jumped on the Trump Train just as it's headed for BRIDGE OUT.
It is strange that, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rightists believe that opposing efforts to control it, particularly vaccinations, is a path to political success. That antagonizes, even frightens, well more people than it pleases -- and it's strongest only at the outset, with enthusiasm fading over time.
One of the current trends in the pandemic is that it is killing off loud COVIDiots, many of them who had run local Rightist radio shows. One of the latest was Bob Enyart, who had once read obits of AIDS victims on the air while playing Queen's ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST! While gloating over the deaths is unseemly, there wasn't much restraint from Twitter:
Rick Wilson / @TheRickWilson [face of the LINCOLN PROJECT]: "Hey, Bob... first-time caller, long time listener...did you know there's a vaccine for COVID?"
Forrest Hinton / @BirminghamBear: "Bob? Are you there, Bob?"
GoSportsGo! / @ukJONky: "Well, I guess we lost Bob. Next caller, please?"
Paul Tergeist / @tergeist_paul: Gives a whole other meaning to "off the air"
Ben Weiner / @bweiner59: Poster boy for the WHY SHOULD I HAVE EMPATHY crowd.
Steve Bottoms / @readbot42: "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
sugondeez.nft / @P_MackD: Is anyone keeping a running martyr count? I see one of these almost daily. Would be a handy resource.
Blue Dot in Red Sea / @raddatz_mw: I'm seeing a pattern.
Rebecca Root, PhD / @rebeccaroot: Telling that anti-vax radio hosts are dropping, while Fox's supposed "anti-vaxxers" are doing just fine. They should do a story on what their secret is.
The secret is, of course, that Fox has a vaccine mandate, and they're all vaccinated. It's not at all a secret. Of course, many of the tweets referenced ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!
On another front in the vaccine wars, pop singer Nicki Minaj relayed a story about a cousin in Trinidad -- where Minaj was born -- who had got a COVID-19 vaccine, and suffered swollen testicles. The health minister of Trinidad replied that the story wasn't true, and the White House suggested that Minaj could speak to one of their doctors to set the record straight. This went viral as "#TesticleGate".
So far, Minaj hasn't replied. It appears that the White House is starting to selectively target high-profile loudmouthed anti-vaxxers. The White House is taking a more indirect approach to dealing with the misinformation from FOX, since FOX would like nothing better than a barking contest with the White House. FOX, not incidentally, has been backing up Minaj.
* Other minor news ... a week ago, ex-presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined President Biden in a solemn commemoration of the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York City, with ex-president George W. Bush doing the honors at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked jetliners crashed. Donald Trump, in contrast, visited a fire station and police precinct in New York City, pumping himself up and bad-mouthing his enemies. He also found time to join in a commemoration of the late Reverend Myung-Sung Moon's Unification Church, praising the notorious cult operation.
A week later, on 18 September, there was a rally in support of those who had been arrested in the 1 January Capitol riot. There were fears that there could be trouble, so the police were out in force -- but there were more police than there were demonstrators, possibly even more journalists. The rally passed without incident. BRIDGE OUT. How much longer will we be able to see the Incredible Shrinking Donald Trump?
* In more serious news, the US has signed a defense pact with Australia and Britain -- named "AUKUS" after the signatories -- the centerpiece being a new fleet of eight Australian nuclear-powered attack submarines, built with US and British assistance in a technology-sharing exercise. The Australians made it clear they had no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. The Chinese reacted angrily, declaring that the three countries were "severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts."
That was rich, considering the Chinese have been demonstrating considerable belligerence in the South China Sea. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the pact was not meant to be adversarial -- which was rich as well -- and said it would reduce the costs of Britain's next generation of nuclear submarines. Johnson told Parliament that the submarines were only a first step: "Now that we have created AUKUS we expect to accelerate the development of other advanced defense systems including in cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and undersea capabilities." It would seem the Chinese were less distressed by the submarines than by the emergence of a clearly anti-Chinese Anglophone defense pact that is just getting warmed up.
The French were also very upset, since it meant the abrogation of a 2016 deal with Australia to build a new fleet of conventional submarines. The US government did what it could to placate them -- though Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was not contrite, saying the French submarine deal had been in trouble for a while, and the Aussies had made it clear they weren't happy with it. In any case, this is clearly only an opening round in an anti-Chinese military buildup in the East Pacific -- with a particular focus on missile tech, to neutralize Chinese local air and naval superiority.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION: Donald John Trump was born on 14 June 1946 in Queens, New York, being the fourth child of Fred Trump, a New York City real-estate developer, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump. He went to a private school in Queens; when he was a teenager, he got into a bit of trouble with the law, with Fred Trump placing him in the New York Military Academy from 1959 to 1964. After military school, he went to Fordham University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in economics. Although he was eligible for the draft, he obtained medical deferments and never served.
On graduating, he went to work full time for his father's real-estate company, Trump Management, which owned middle-class rental housing in New York City's outer boroughs. He became president of the company in 1971, rebranding it as "The Trump Organization", with the firm becoming a corporation in 1981. He put his own stamp on the company, seeking the public spotlight through loud grandstanding and promotionalism, along with a high level of glitz and conspicuous consumption. In 1977, Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova, who bore him three children: Donald JR (born 1977), Ivanka (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984).
Trump began to attract wider public attention in 1978 with the launch of the first Trump venture in Manhattan, the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, next to Grand Central Terminal. The financing for the deal was heavily backed by Fred Trump. The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel, with Trump then going on to develop the "Trump Tower" skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. It would become his residence and base of operations.
In 1984, Trump opened Harrah's at Trump Plaza, a hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It didn't do well, and he sold out his interest in it. He also acquired a second hotel-casino in Atlantic City, naming it the Trump Castle, with Ivana managing it. In 1988, he acquired a third hotel-casino in Atlantic City, the Trump Taj Mahal, with over a billion dollars sunk into it when it went bust in 1989. He had to sell off a money-losing airline, the Trump Shuttle, and his mega-yacht, the Trump Princess. In 1985, Trump acquired the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, turning it into an expensive private club.
In 1987, Trump published THE ART OF THE DEAL, which made the best-seller lists. It had been ghost-written by Tony Schwartz, who based it on public knowledge of Trump's business deals and a lot of "winging it". Schwartz tried to conduct interviews with Trump, but found he didn't have the attention span to say very much of interest, and never spoke for long.
In 1988, Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan with a loan of $425 million USD from a consortium of banks. The hotel went bankrupt in 1990, with Trump losing control of it in 1995. Further adventures in hotel development had generally the same results. Trump's tax returns from 1985 to 1994 show net losses totaling $1.17 billion USD.
After Trump had an affair with actress Marla Maples, Ivana divorced him in 1992, though Trump would remain on good terms with Ivana. He marred Maples in 1993, the same year she bore him a daughter, Tiffany; they divorced in 1999, with Tiffany growing up with her mother in California.
In 1995, Trump founded Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (THCR), which took ownership of Trump Plaza, Trump Castle, and the Trump Casino in Gary, Indiana. It would undergo a series of bankruptcies, with Trump eventually leaving the group. From 1999, the Trump Organization began to obtain golf courses around the world.
By 2004, Trump was deeply in debt. He had acquired the habit of refusing to pay creditors, stalling them with endless litigation. His salvation was the creation of the "reality-TV" show THE APPRENTICE, where he was the boss of a fictionalized business operation, with contestants on the show competing to rise in the organization. They would be weeded out to the end of the TV season, with Trump telling them: "You're fired!" -- when they outlived their usefulness. The show proved successful, and kept Trump afloat. It ran to 2018. He married Slovenian model Melania Knauss in 2005; she bore him a son, Barron, in 2006. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for August included:
-- [03 AUG 21] CHINA SMALLSATS (FAILURE) -- A commercial Hyperbola 1 light booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0739 UTC (local time - 8) on its third flight, to put a set of small payloads into orbit, the largest being the "Jilin 1 Mofang 01A" Earth observation satellite. The booster did not make orbit. The booster was built by Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology LTD, better known as "iSpace". The Hyperbola 1 is about 24 meters (78 feet) tall, and has a liftoff thrust of about 412 kN (43,000 kgp / 92,500 lbf). It can place a 300-kilogram (660-pound) payload into low polar orbit.
-- [04 AUG 21] KL-BETA x 2 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6 booster was launched from Taiyuan at 1101 UTC (local time - 8) to put two "KL-Beta" satellites into orbit as demonstrators for what appeared to be an "internet in the sky" constellation. The satellites were developed by the Shanghai Institute of Microsatellite Innovation, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
They followed two "KL-Alpha" payloads launched in 2019 for KLEO Connect, a Munich-based company which seeks to develop a fleet of 300 small satellites to provide industrial asset tracking and data relay services. The Chinese Academy of Sciences said the satellites were equipped with laser and Ka-band radio communications payloads, Hall electric thrusters, and inter-satellite links. This was the sixth flight of a Long March 6 booster, since first launch in 2015. The Long March 6 is sized to haul a payload of up to 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) to a Sun-synchronous low-Earth polar orbit.
The Long March 6's first stage is powered by a kerosene-fueled YF-100 main engine, a staged combustion powerplant . The engine generates approximately 118 kN (120,000 kgp / 264,000 lbf) of thrust. A YF-115 engine provides propulsion for the Long March 6 second stage. The YF-100 and YF-115 engines are the same new-generation powerplants used on China's larger Long March 5 and Long March 7 rockets.
-- [05 AUG 19] CHINASAT 2E -- A Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1630 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Chinasat 2E" AKA "Zhongxing 2E" geostationary comsat into space. The satellite was built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and based on the DFH 4 bus.
-- [10 AUG 21] CYGNUS 16 (NG 16) -- An Orbital Sciences Antares booster was launched from Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia at 2201 UTC (local time + 4) to put the 16th operational "Cygnus" supply capsule, designated "NG 16", into space on an International Space Station support mission, carrying 3,810 kilograms (8,400 pounds) of cargo. It docked with the ISS two days later.
-- [12 AUG 21] EOS 3 (FAILURE) -- An ISRO Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 2 booster was launched from Sriharikota at 0013 UTC (local time - 5:30) to put India's first GEO Imaging Satellite, named EOS 3, into orbit. EOS 3 spacecraft, previously known as GISAT 1, provided continuous remote sensing observations over the Indian subcontinent from geostationary orbit. The upper stage failed and the booster did not make orbit.
-- [16 AUG 21] PLEIADES NEO 4 -- A Vega booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 0147 UTC (local time + 3) to put the "Pleiades Neo 4" Earth observation satellite for Airbus. Pleiades Neo 1 was the first of four Pleiades Neo high-resolution Earth observation satellites built, owned, and operated by Airbus. It had a launch mass of 922 kilograms (2,033 pounds).
The Vega booster also launched several rideshare payloads, including three satellites for the European Space Agency and one for Unseenlabs. The ESA payloads included LEDSAT, an optical tracking experiment, RadCube for magnetic field and space radiation monitoring, and Sunstorm for solar X-ray flux monitoring. The Unseenlabs' BRO-4 satellite was for air and marine traffic surveillance.
The Pleiades-Neo series of satellites is a follow-on to the first two Pleiades satellites launched early in the 2010s, which were themselves successors to the SPOT series of Earth observation satellites, the first of which was launched in 1986 by the last Ariane 1 booster. The Pleiades-Neo satellites are identical to each another and can provide up to 30 centimeter (1 foot) resolution of targets on Earth. The prior Pleiades series had a maximum resolution of 50 centimeters (20 inches), while the SPOT series started with a maximum resolution of 10 meters (33 feet). The Neo series supports seven bands: blue, deep blue, green, red, red edge, near infrared, and panchromatic, with the panchromatic band having 30 centimeter resolution while the others have a maximum resolution of 1.2 meters (4 feet).
-- [18 AUG 21] TIANHUI 2-02 x 2 -- A Chinese Long March 4B booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2232 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put two "Tianhui" radar mapping satellites into near-polar low-Earth orbit. The set of satellites was designated "Tianhui 2-02". Each carried an interferometric synthetic aperture radar, working together to gather stereo data for 3D topographic maps. They had a resolution of about 3 meters (10 feet).
-- [21 AUG 21] ONEWEB 9 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Baikonur at 2213 UTC (next day local time - 5) to put 34 "OneWeb" low-orbit comsats into space. OneWeb plans to put a constellation of hundreds of comsats into near-polar low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).
-- [24 AUG 21] RSW x 2 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 1115 UTC (local time - 8) to put two "RSW" test satellites into orbit. They were precursors to an "internet in the sky" constellation. A third, unidentified, comsat was also flown.
-- [24 AUG 21] TJSW 7 -- A Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1541 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "TJSW 7" satellite into geostationary orbit. It was suspected to be an intelligence-gathering satellite.
-- [29 AUG 21] SPACEX DRAGON CRS 23 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0714 UTC (local time + 4), carrying the 23rd operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS). It docked with the ISS a day later. This was the second flight of this particular capsule. At least three Cubesats were also flown, including "CAPSat", "PR-CuNaR2", and "SPACE HUAC".
* OTHER SPACE NEWS: The US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) has now initiated a set of five Earth remote sensing satellite missions over the next decade, part of a $2.5 billion USD program named the "Earth System Observatory (ESO)" to collect climate and geological data, identified as priorities in a 2018 decadal survey.
Development of the first ESO project -- the joint US-Indian "NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR)" mission -- was initiated in 2014, with launch scheduled for January 2023. NISAR will feature a payload of L-band and S-band radars that will measure changes on Earth's surface smaller than a centimeter. The NISAR mission will observe the flow rates of glaciers, the collapse of ice sheets, and the dynamics of earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides.
NASA is supplying the NISAR's L-band radar, a high-rate communications system, and data storage systems; India will supply the S-band radar, the spacecraft bus, and the launch vehicle for NISAR. According to NASA, areas of focus for the EOS include:
Two other missions currently being considered, but without the go-ahead for development yet, are informally referred to as the "Aerosol, Cloud, Convection, & Precipitation (ACCP)" program, and include the "Surface Biology and Geology (SBG)" and "Mass Change" missions.
The ACCP satellites, with a total cost of up to $1.6 billion, would replace CloudSat and CALIPSO -- which were launched in 2006 to examine how clouds and aerosols affect climate. CloudSat, which was able to spot previously invisible light rain and snowfall, provided the first global picture of total precipitation.
CloudSat and CALIPSO are now decrepit and in need of replacement. The three or more satellites of the ACCP missions will follow them with more precise measurements that can more closely examine the planet's surface to quantify the response of low clouds to warming. They will carry two primary instruments: an advanced laser capable of identifying individual aerosol types, such as smoke from a volcanic eruption or dust blown off the Sahara; and a multiband radar system, including a Doppler instrument that can detect the vertical convective motions that drive major storms.
SBG, the chemistry and temperature mission, which would cost up to $650 million, will include a satellite with a high-resolution hyperspectral imaging spectrometer with 400 channels from the infrared through the visible range. It will pick up the spectral signatures of different gases in the air column below, or compounds at the surface. A second satellite in SBG would carry a thermal radiometer to map Earth's heat.
Mass Change is not as well defined yet. It is envisioned as a successor to the "Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO)" mission, which calculates tiny shifts in Earth's gravity from the fluctuating distance between two satellites flying in tandem. GRACE-FO has allowed scientists to measure ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as monitor water loss in soil and underground aquifers due to drought. Mass Change will include a tandem of satellites similar to GRACE-FO, which flies in an orbit around the poles. Researchers also hope the mission will fly a second set in a different orbit to reduce distortions in the gravity signal it collects. NASA is likely to seek collaboration with the ESA.
* NASA is now moving forward on a new space observatory, the "Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer", blessedly compacted to "SPHEREx", with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in charge of the program. It will launch no earlier than 2024 and will perform four all-sky spectroscopic surveys in the near-infrared spectrum. The mission has three objectives:
Elements of SPHEREx are now being put together:
SPHEREx is managed by JPL for NASA's Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission's principal investigator, James Bock, has a joint position between Caltech and JPL. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located in 10 institutions across the USA, and in South Korea.
* As reported by an article from BBC.com ("Satellite Network To Find Carbon Super-Emitters" by Jonathan Amos, 15 March 2021), a constellation of satellites is in planning that will map emissions of "greenhouse gases" over the Earth. The effort is being led by a US non-profit organization named "Carbon Mapper", with the satellites to be built and flown by Planet of San Francisco, which already operates a constellation of "Dove" Earth-observation satellites.
The Carbon Mapper constellation will consist of about 20 satellites, carrying sensors with a resolution of 30 centimeters (1 foot), with the constellation having a revisit time to every location on Earth of a day or less. Their target is "super-emitters", or prominent sources of greenhouse-gas emissions -- such as oil and gas infrastructure, or possibly poorly managed landfills and large dairy factory facilities. Some of the super-emitters don't know they really have a problem, or are in denial about it; data is needed to press for action. The data will be made publicly available.
The project is being supported in large part by philanthropy, with donors including the High Tide Foundation and Bloomberg, along with support from the State of California, which needs the data to achieve its environmental goals. The satellites will carry a compact imaging spectrometer developed by NASA, originally developed for aircraft use. The spectrometer will be able to observe almost 500 channels; the data could have a great range of uses, but the focus will be on atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane.
Planet of San Francisco will launch two prototypes in 2023, with the satellites to be in the size range of 150 to 300 kilograms (330 to 440 pounds). The rest of the constellation will be flown from 2025.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* A HISTORY OF LOCKS (2): Lock technologies began to evolve rapidly with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, with refined lock designs emerging from late in the 18th century. In 1843, Linus Yale SR patented his "pin and tumbler" lock, now known as the "Yale lock".
The Yale lock features a rotating cylindrical plug in a fixed casing, with a series of holes -- typically five or six -- in the casing and the plug. Each hole contains a spring-loaded pin, each pin being split into a "driver pin" and a "key pin". Each pin assembly is the same length, but the split between the driver and key pins is different for each one. Only when a key raises the pins to the proper height so that the split aligns with the interface between the casing and the plug will the plug be able to turn, pulling the door bolt and opening the door. Linus Yale JR improved upon the design in 1861, adding the now-universal flat, grooved key design.
The origins of the modern multiple-dial combination lock are obscure, because, as mentioned, the idea goes back at least to Roman times. These days, multiple-dial combination locks persist as bicycle chain locks, briefcase locks, and padlocks. The basic idea is simple, with the lock consisting of a number of disks, typically four, each numbered from 0 to 9 on the rim, rotating around a bolt and spaced along it. The bolt has tabs spaced between the disks; each disk has a slot in it, keyed to a number on its rim. When all four disks are rotated to their proper positions, the bolt is free to move.
A modern combination padlock elaborates on this scheme by having the disks replaced by drums that have teeth on one level of the drum, the teeth meshing with a numbered ring. When the padlock is open, pressing down on the hasp disengages the teeth; the "floating" numbered rings then can be set to a new combination, with the teeth re-engaging when the hasp is released. As a rule, multiple-dial combination locks are easy to crack -- since with the right handling, it is possible to "feel" when a disk engages a tab. Since padlocks, bicycle locks, and briefcase locks are easily defeated by brute force, that isn't really a problem.
The Yale lock and multi-dial combination locks remain in widespread use today. The single-dial combination lock, which emerged late in the 19th century, also continues in some use, notably on safes, though it's not so common -- this lock using a dial to spin around three (sometimes four) disks with a slot on the edge, with the lock opening when the slots on the disks all line up. Each disk has a tab sticking out of the side, with the dial driving a cam with a tab on the front at the rear of the "wheel pack" that catches the first disk when spun around; then the second disk when spun around again; and the third disk when spun around again.
Once all the disks are moving together in the same direction, the user positions the dial to the first number in the combination; then spins the dial around backwards twice, leaving the front disk in place, and then selects the second number in the combination; and finally spins the dial around once, leaving the middle disk in place, to select the third number in the combination, with the rear disk then lined up, to open the safe. The combination can be changed while the safe is opened, using a special tool to "float" the disks to new positions, relative to a new combination.
It was apparently once possible to crack a safe by using a stethoscope to listen for the engagement of the slot on the disks -- it was a meme in old movies -- but that was easily defeated by adding a "clicker" to make a whirring noise as the dial was spun. There were also purely mechanical pushbutton locks, but they're also not so common, and the people who make them are tight-lipped about how they work. One obvious approach is to have two-position mechanical toggles, where one position can be "programmed" to OPEN, and the other to CLOSED. Pushing the right set of buttons would result in all OPEN positions, resulting in an unlock. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SUPER MRNA VACCINES: As reported by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("The Overlooked Superpower Of mRNA Vaccines" by Meredith Wadman, 28 July 2021), a range of approaches has been taken in developing vaccines to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Those from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are based on genetically-modified cold viruses, and have performed well; Novavax has developed a protein-based vaccine that is still to be assessed. However, new studies show that the vaccines from a Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration and Moderna -- based on messenger RNA (mRNA) -- have proven outstanding. Eric Topol, a physician-scientist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute, says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
All COVID-19 vaccines are not created equal. It's clear that the two mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing infection -- and that others wouldn't be expected to break the chain as well.
END QUOTE
The big clinical trials that led to the approvals of the vaccines mostly focused on their ability to ward off severe disease that could lead to hospitalization or death. Adeel Butt -- an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System -- says that blocking infections was a "neglected", if not irrelevant, consideration, but adds: "It's very, very important ... to break the transmission of infection."
Butt and his colleagues have now published a major study showing that the mRNA are doing that job very well. The researchers compared more than 54,000 veterans who obtained SARS-CoV-2 testing and tested positive with an equal number who tested negative, matching each positive and negative case by age, sex, and comorbidities. Using the vaccination status of each participant, they calculated that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were, respectively, 96% and 98% effective in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Another study, from Qatar and using a similar design, showed that two Moderna shots proved 92.5% effective in preventing infection with any SARS-CoV-2 variant circulating at the time. They were even more effective against later variants.
Still another US study used a different test design, checking nearly 4000 front-line workers every week, whether they had symptoms or not. Full vaccination with either Pfizer or Moderna vaccines was 90% effective against any infection. Similarly, a study of more than 23,000 UK health care workers tested every 2 weeks, most of them vaccinated with the Pfizer jab, showed vaccination was 85% effective against infection. None of these studies examined the effectiveness of the vaccines against the newer Delta variant, but preliminary studies suggest they will be highly effective against it as well, and it's not a show-stopper from the vaccine point of view.
In all known cases, the mRNA vaccines greatly reduced the incidence of serious illness among those infected. Researchers the mRNA vaccines outperform others at preventing infection because of the high levels of virus-blocking antibodies, called "neutralizing antibodies (nAbs)", that they generate. Studies show there is a close correlation between the levels of nAbs generated by each of seven major vaccines and their ability to protect against disease in clinical trials -- with the mRNA vaccines and the two-dose shot by Novavax topping the charts.
Larry Corey, a vaccinologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, says: "The mRNA vaccines are arming the immune system in a way that seems to be better and at higher magnitude than some of the other approaches," though he adds that no one is sure why. Poorer countries have, so far, relied on AstraZeneca and Russian and Chinese vaccines; Corey suggests that governments make an effort to get these "most potent vaccines ... to low- and middle-income countries."
Angela Rasmussen -- a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan -- is concerned that the costly mRNA vaccine solution is not the best fit for poorer countries, and that more traditional vaccines remain effective: "An adenovirus vaccine that works very well is still much better than an mRNA vaccine you will never get access to."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: US President Joe Biden seems to be regrouping for the moment, recharging his presidency after the inevitable gloom over the Afghanistan exit. Efforts towards a massive dual spending bill appear to be on track. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has called for scaling it way down, in particular trimming parts intended to deal with climate change -- but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seems undeterred, saying it's full speed ahead.
Schumer talks a lot with Manchin, so it seems likely that the bill will make some minor concessions to him, indeed possibly to its benefit, with Manchin voting for the bill. He will do so "reluctantly" of course; he's got to pretend he's more conservative than he really is to keep West Virginia voters happy with him. If the Woke Left in Congress attack him for his reluctance, so much the better, since that will give him cover with his voters.
Biden has also been making loud noises about raising the corporate tax rate. The Republicans have said that's unacceptable, but it's very likely to happen. That battle may be deferred; it's not clear what Congress will do next after the spending bills are out the door, but signs are that a voter rights act will be next. A reproductive rights act may be coming as well, though the Biden Administration appears to want to defer that if possible, while a judiciary bill -- for term limits on SCOTUS -- is lurking in the wings. A tax bill sounds well down the road, to be done after the other troublesome bills are passed.
In any case, the lingering issue of what to do about the Senate filibuster, in which most bills require 60 votes to pass, may be coming to a head. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar has called for killing it off, suggesting a debate is approaching. Exactly how hard Joe Manchin will push back on it is unclear. We'll see what happens.
* The biggest item this week was Biden announcing a "get tough" approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, calling it a "pandemic of the unvaccinated", and telling them: "We've been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us." He told the public:
BEGIN QUOTE:
... we must increase vaccinations among the unvaccinated with new vaccination requirements. ... nearly 80 million elderly Americans ... have not gotten vaccinated; many said they were waiting for approval from the Food and Drug Administration ... last month, the FDA granted that approval, so the time for waiting is over.
This summer, we made progress through the combination of vaccine requirements and incentives, as well as the FDA approval -- four million more people got their first shot in August than they did in July -- but we need to do more. This is not about freedom or personal choice, it's about protecting yourself and those around you, the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love.
My job as President is to protect all Americans, so tonight I'm announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees -- that together employ over 80 million workers -- to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week. Some of the biggest companies are already requiring this: United Air Lines, Disney, Tyson's Foods, and even Fox News, The bottom line: we're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. We're going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.
My plan will extend the vaccination requirements that I previously issued in the health care field already. I've announced we'll be requiring vaccinations [for] all nursing home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid, because I have that Federal authority. Tonight I'm using that same authority to expand [coverage to] those who work in hospitals, home health care facilities, or other medical facilities -- a total of 17 million health care workers. If you're seeking care at a health facility, you should be able to know that the people treating you are vaccinated -- simple, straightforward, period.
Next I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch Federal employees to be vaccinated -- all! I've signed another executive order that will require Federal contractors to do the same. If you want to work with the Federal government, do business with us, get vaccinated. ... and tonight I'm removing one of the last remaining obstacles that make it difficult for you to get vaccinated: the Department of Labor will require employers with 100 or more workers to give those workers paid time off to get vaccinated.
END QUOTE
The workforce measures will be implemented by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), with fines of nearly $14,000 USD per violation. In addition, the Biden administration is calling on entertainment venues to require tests or shots, and for states to adopt mandates for school employees. It is also increasing the fines charged to people who fail to wear masks on airplanes, trains and buses. Biden will use authority under the Defense Production Act to accelerate production of COVID-19 tests, and big retailers including Walmart, Amazon.com, and Kroger intend to sell them at cost.
The Republicans in Congress blasted back at this declaration, calling it "authoritarian". It was quickly noted that all of them were vaccinated. They've been screaming about court challenges, but the courts have a long tradition of backing vaccination mandates. Biden later said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities. This isn't a game.
END QUOTE
As for lawsuits, Biden said: "Have at it." COVIDiocy is not a winning political strategy. Like 62% of Americans are fully vaccinated, like 75% have had at least one shot. Culling out the 5% who are totally zoned out suggests the GOP is playing to 20% of the population. "Does this make sense?" It doesn't make sense.
Left unsaid was what to do about vaccine disinformation circulating on Fox News and social media. One suspects the White House is exerting quiet pressure to throttle back the flow. The lingering puzzle is: where is all the disinformation coming from? It looks like somebody is driving it. Is it being bankrolled by peddlers of quack cures? The Kremlin? Do most of the people posting the disinformation have any idea who's pulling their strings?
Incidentally, after signing a bill that effectively outlawed abortion in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott then signed an executive order banning vaccine mandates. His commentary blew out irony meters across the country: "I issued an executive order protecting Texans' right to choose ... "
* The loud howling about the Afghanistan pullout continues, though it is getting tiresome. The over-the-top nature of the complaints was underlined by demands that the Biden Administration fire the State Department's Afghanistan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. Fire him? Why? He was handed a hopeless task, and did what he could with it.
The protests will likely bore themselves to death eventually, but it's hard to say when. In the meantime, the situation in Afghanistan remains murky. Reports from Kabul suggest the people of the city are not too happy with the Taliban occupation, the citizens having little liking for being bullied by ignorant, heavily-armed, violent-minded hill people. It is becoming ever clearer that the end of the US occupation does not mean a return to the status of the previous Taliban regime: it's like they were a dog chasing a car, but having caught it, they don't really know how to drive.
As discussed by one Mohammad Ali Shabani, the regional political landscape is much changed from that of 20 years past. During the first reign of the Taliban, the Iranians were eager to get rid of them -- the Taliban had murdered Iranian diplomats in 1998, and the Shia Iranian regime had little use for a militant Sunni movement. Indeed, when the US charged into Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks, the Iranians tacitly collaborated with them to defeat the Taliban. However, from that time Iranian hostility to the "Great Satan" USA pushed Iran closer to the Taliban, and now the Iranians speak highly of them. With the Taliban ascendant, however, the Iranians may switch course again and help the resistance; it is weak right now, but may well not remain so with foreign assistance.
The Taliban's relations with the Arabian Peninsula countries have also shifted considerably. Before 9-11, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were two of only three countries in the world to recognize Taliban rule, the third being Pakistan. Saudi Wahabinist Sunni preachers found Afghanistan a fertile ground for their extreme doctrines. However, 9-11 forced the Saudis and the UAE to cut ties with the Taliban, and the current Saudi regime is trimming back the power of the Wahabinists. The Saudis were not involved with the evacuations from Kabul, though the UAE did provide some assistance.
Although Qatar did not recognize the Taliban regime in its existence from 1996 to 2001, for the last 11 years Qatar has hosted dialogue with the Afghan group and, with the blessing of three US administrations, has also allowed Taliban representatives to operate a political office in Doha since 2013. The 2020 US-Taliban agreement was signed there. Qatar has been a hub of practical and diplomatic activity relative to Afghanistan since the US withdrawal.
Qatar, it seems, is now positioning itself as a venue for international mediation. Squabbling with its neighbors on the Arabian Peninsula hit a high level after Qatar backed popular uprisings during the Arab Spring -- but now, in part thanks to American impatience with the squabbling, Qatar has generally mended fences. Kristin Diwan, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Given its population size, substantial military projection is a tough proposition -- but Qatar can bring real value through the relationships it maintains, especially across both Western and Islamic parties, and especially those the US is loath to approach directly.
END QUOTE
It's clearly working, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying during a recent visit: "As we carry forward, our diplomacy here, we know that Qatar will be our partner, because this is not the first time that Qatar has stepped up to help in Afghanistan."
James Dorsey, a senior fellow at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, observed that Qatar, by making itself indispensable, is working to protect its security:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It's much an issue about influence as it is an issue about being relevant to the international community in ways in which the international community, if you are under threat, will step in for you.
END QUOTE
So what next in Afghanistan? Simple answer: the Great Game continues.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (167): Barack Obama ran for a second term in 2012, his Republican opponent being Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. Obama won by a clear margin, 51.1% versus 47.2% of the popular vote. The Democrats retained control of the Senate and gained in the House, though did not retake it.
Up into his first term, Obama had gone on record as being against gay marriage. On announcing his re-election campaign, he endorsed it as part of his platform. In his second inaugural address, Obama said: "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law -- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."
Although Obama had renewed the Patriot Act in 2011, following the mass release of NSA data by Edward Snowden -- an NSA contractor who had stolen a mass dump of NSA files, and then fled to Russia -- in 2013, Obama did implement a set of restrictions on NSA surveillance. They were generally seen as "modest".
In the spring of 2014, the Islamic State (IS) insurgency made major advances in Iraqi, capturing the city of Mosul in June. In response to IS massacres of religious minorities, the US led an extended campaign of bombing against IS and threw in US ground forces, with 4,400 troops in country by 2015.
The 2014 midterms were disastrous for the Obama Administration, with the Republicans taking complete control of Congress, and making clear their intent to obstruct Obama at every opportunity.
In 2015, Obama unveiled the "Clean Power Plan", which set targets for clean energy generation for the states, leaving them to determine implementation. He also Obama vetoed a bill approving the controversial Keystone oil pipeline, and signed on to the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit climate change. However, the Obama Administration was supportive of the efforts of US companies to use new "fracking" oil-drilling schemes to obtain increased US energy independence. On the other hand, Obama created 25 new national monuments while he was in office, expanding more land and waters to Federal protection than any other president.
The Middle East remained a problem. In 2015, Syria performed chemical weapons attacks on rebels. Obama had said that would be crossing a line, but all advice suggested that military escalation in the Syrian Civil War would be a mistake. He instead approved a Russian-brokered deal in which the government would give up its chemical weapons -- but it did not. Also in 2015, Obama declared that the US forces were providing support to Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen.
From the start of his presidency, Obama supported the war in Afghanistan, ramping up forces, though by 2013 he was reducing them again. In 2015, in the faced of a "deteriorating security situation", he stated that there was no intent to withdraw US forces from the country -- though the doubts about the intervention were beginning to grow. In any case, the US was busy at war, with the Obama Administration being particularly fond of precision drone attacks.
More positively, from late 2013, the US began negotiations with Iran to restrain that country's nuclear weapons program. The result was the "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action", announced on 14 July 2015, which relaxed sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran halting its nuclear weapons program, under strict UN inspection supervision. The Israeli government and Republicans bitterly opposed the deal. The Republicans were particularly angry over a transfer of $1.7 billion USD in cash to Iran -- though it was actually money obtained from the US selling undelivered Iranian weapons, and keeping the proceeds in escrow. Ronald Reagan had given Iran back much more money.
From the spring of 2013, the US and Cuba held secret discussions in Canada and Vatican City towards normalization of relations. In December 2014, the US government announced that the USA and Cuba had negotiated an agreement to restore relations. Obama visited Havana for two days in March 2016 to underline the thawing of relations.
Late in 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died abruptly, with Obama proposing Judge Merrick Garland as his replacement. The Republicans in the Senate blocked the appointment, much to the anger of the Democrats.
One of the most significant SCOTUS cases during Obama's second term was the 2015 decision in OBERGEFELL V. HODGES. James Obergefell and John Arthur were a gay couple from Ohio who had been married in Maryland. Arthur was chronically ill and wanted Obergefell listed on his death certificate, but Ohio law would not allow it. The couple joined with three other couples to challenge the law, saying their marriages should be recognized as per the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. SCOTUS judged 5:4 that the Constitution guaranteed the right to marry, and had no provision excluding same-sex marriages. They were now legal all through the USA; to that time, 13 states still had a ban on gay marriage.
The Obama Administration wanted to support free trade, urging Congress to ratify a 12-nation free trade pact named the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He left office without the pact being signed. He was, however, a popular figure, with a very high 60% public-approval rating. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Paper-Folding Art Reduced To The Nanoscale In Engineering Breakthrough" by Nick Lavars, 22 December 2020), everyone's familiar with the Japanese craft of "origami" -- the word translating to "fold-paper" or paper-folding, with figurines and trinkets fabricated by folding sheets of paper. There is a variation called "kirigami" -- meaning "cut-paper" -- in which the paper to be folded is cut in a pattern first.
A team of researchers has now implemented nanoscale kirigami. The team began with ultrathin films, making carefully placed kirigami cuts throughout them. Inherent stresses in the films then caused them to bend around the cuts into a desired 3D structure. According to the researchers, these shapes could find use in all kinds of areas, including tiny robotic grippers; spatial light modulators for optical applications; or controlling airflow on airplane wings. The team are continuing their work, one avenue of investigation being to add actuators that could "motorize" their nanoscale 3D structures.
Horacio Espinosa, who led the research, says: "By combining nanomanufacturing, in-situ microscopy experimentation, and computational modeling, we unraveled the rich behavior of kirigami structures and identified conditions for their use in practical applications."
* The US Kroger supermarket chain -- represented here in Colorado by King Soopers stores -- is now tinkering with drone delivery, using hexcopters that can carry up to 2.25 kilos (5 pounds). The hexcopters feature long landing legs to give clearance for the payload. Kroger plans to trial the service in the US Midwest; it will be interesting to see the drones flying around, once Kroger starts the service in Colorado.
Ironically, although Amazon.com was the big pioneer in drone delivery schemes, the company has given up the effort. It appears that it was poorly organized, and that it didn't really have a consistent business model. Delivering medical supplies to remote locations is one thing; replacing regular parcel delivery in urban areas was another. It will be interesting to see how Kroger replies to the challenge.
* Ivory has long been used to produce art objects -- but not any more, since the ivory trade was banned internationally in 1989. Black-market trade in ivory still persists, and there's also a lot of old art objects in need of restoration that use ivory. That suggests a need for a convincing, low-cost ivory substitute.
Researchers at TU Wien (Vienna) and the Austrian 3D printing company Cubicure GMBH, a spin-off of the university, have now created such a substitute, which they call "digory". It consists of a polymer resin mixed with calcium phosphate -- which has various forms, one of the simpler being Ca3(PO4)2 -- that is 3D printed, being cured with ultraviolet. Once printed in the desired shape, the item is polished and color-adjusted to create a deceptively authentic-looking ivory substitute. Professor Juergen Stampfl, from the Institute of Materials Science & Technology at TU Wien, said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The research project began with a valuable 17th-century state casket in the parish church of Mauerbach. It is decorated with small ivory ornaments, some of which have been lost over time. The question was whether they could be replaced with 3D printing technology.
END QUOTE
The team already had experience with similar materials, for example having investigated ceramic materials for dental technology. The digory composite features calcium phosphate particles with an average diameter of about 7 micrometers, mixed in a special resin, along with extremely fine silicon oxide powder. The mixture is then processed at high heat in Cubicure's 3D printers using the "hot lithography process" -- laying down a layer, which is cured with a UV laser, and then laying down another layer. Ivory is translucent, so the concentration of calcium phosphate is critical: too much, and the end product is opaque. They tweaked the color of the casket items with, of all things, black tea.
[ED: It should seem straightforward to print elephant tusks in this way, and then give them suitable weathering. If it could be done cheaply, then the black market trade in ivory would dry up; the black marketeers would find it more profitable to sell fake tusks as the real thing, and the suckers wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It's not like they could complain to the law about being cheated if they did.]
* According to an article from PCGAMER.com ("This AI-Controlled Lego Sorter Is What My Childhood Dreams Were Made Of" by Katie Wickens, 20 January 2021), one Daniel West has created a "universal Lego sorter" system based on AI technology. It features a set of subsystems:
The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi processor board, with a laptop computer running the neural network software. It's clever, if not a leading-edge application of AI technology. However, West definitely gets points for making the sorter system itself out of Legos.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* A HISTORY OF LOCKS (1): [ED: I tried to write a short book titled INTRODUCTION TO DATA SECURITY, but it went off the rails and had to be rethought. One component that was dropped in the process was a history of locks; it seems of enough interest to gather it up and release it here.]
For much of their history, humans lived in hunter-gatherer tribes, which were often nomadic, people not staying in any one place indefinitely. With the rise of farming, very roughly in about 10,000 BCE, they started to become more settled, living in villages from generation to generation. The rise of farming meant everyone could stay fed without having to grow or gather or hunt food on their own. Villages led to cities and nations from very roughly about 3,000 BCE.
When humans lived in tribes, they had little concept of privacy. Everybody in a tribe knew everyone else, and there was no keeping secrets. Once humans settled in cities, however, this familiarity broke down, with people having a need for privacy and security, to protect themselves and their belongings from strangers who might assault or rob them.
The most basic security technology is, of course, the wall; people could build houses or other structures to keep strangers out. Walls inevitably meant doors, and means of securing doors against unwelcome visitors. Doors could be bolted from the inside for protection, but not when nobody was home to pull the bolt and let others in. That led the invention of locks and keys.
The oldest known lock was found in Iraq, being dated to about 4000 BCE. The device was a "pin lock", in which a key raised a set of pins to a given height, releasing a bolt. The ancient Egyptians improved slightly on the design and made much more use of it. They also made some of their locks partly out of brass instead of wood, but of course the brass locks were much more expensive.
The simple key-&-pin lock spread from Egypt to Greece and thence to Rome. The Romans were able to build smaller locks that could be used on chests and drawers. Apparently, wealthy Romans like to wear keys as decorations, to show they were rich, with possessions that needed protection. They were very crude locks, easily picked, a defense only against casual intrusion. The Romans also had padlocks and simple combination locks.
* In the Middle Ages, locks moved up from the feeble key-&-pin lock through the introduction of the "warded lock". It wasn't a completely new idea, the basic concept going back to Roman times, but it wasn't fully developed until medieval times.
The key for a warded lock explains it all: it's something one might see in historical movies, with a long shaft and a patterned metal tab at the end. The key was inserted into the keyhole, to enter a cylinder at the end, which contained a bolt release mechanism that could be turned by the key. However, the cylinder had barriers or "wards" that prevented the key from turning, if the tab ran into the wards.
The warded lock was an improvement over the key-&-pin lock, but it was still easy to pick. All that was required was a key with a narrow tab on the end, meaning it evaded all the wards. Such a "skeleton key" could, in principle, open any warded lock. It allowed, say, the lord of the manor to get into any room, while guests could only get into their assigned rooms. Presumably, the authorities took a dim view of anyone found carrying a skeleton key who wasn't authorized to do so. Warded locks still linger today, in cheap padlocks and lockboxes. Again, they're easily picked, but it's easy to defeat padlocks and such anyway with the right tools, for example bolt-cutters. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WANING PROTECTION? As reported by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Do Delta Breakthroughs Really Mean Vaccine Protection Is Waning, And Are Boosters The Answer?" by Gretchen Vogel, 20 August 2021), the "Delta" variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has thrown considerable confusion into the effort to contain the pandemic. The biggest problem is that it is much more contagious than earlier variants, and spreads much more rapidly -- but it also seems to lead to "breakthrough" infections in people who have been vaccinated, suggesting the effectiveness of the vaccines is fading.
The vaccines still seem very effective at heading off severe illness, but hopes that they would block transmission of the disease have evaporated. The questions are now whether the trends demonstrate a possible decline in vaccine-induced immunity or are due to the highly infectious nature of the Delta variant, and whether widespread use of boosters is now justified.
There is no doubt that vaccines are less effective against Delta. Leif Erik Sander, an infectious disease expert at the Charite University Hospital in Berlin, says: "[Vaccine] efficacy drops with Delta. That is indisputable." A recent study on nursing home residents across the USA showed that the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna had an efficacy against all infections that went from 75% before Delta to 53% after it took over. Delta now accounts for more than 90% of US cases.
A major study from the UK Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey -- which regularly tests more than 300,000 randomly selected people across the United Kingdom -- study compared the numbers of fully vaccinated and unvaccinated survey participants who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 during two time periods: December 2020 until mid-May, when the Alpha variant dominated, and mid-May to 1 August, when Delta was dominant. The study found that the two main vaccines in use in the UK -- the Pfizer mRNA vaccine and the adenovirus-based shot developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca -- noticeably declined, to 84% for Pfizer and 71% for AstraZeneca.
A third study, based on patient health records in New York told a similar story: the efficacy of the three US-authorized vaccines against all SARS-CoV-2 infections dropped from 91.7% to 79.8% between May and July, as Delta took over in the region. Studies also found that, in breakthrough cases, subjects had much higher viral loads with Delta than with other variants, meaning they could still spread the disease readily.
Okay, again, the question remains: is Delta just more aggressive than the other variants, or is vaccine immunity really fading? The US nursing home residents who were studied are older and frail, and their response to the vaccine might drop faster than other populations. They were also among the first to get the vaccine, some back in December 2020.
The UK study attempted to deal with this question by matching infections with the time since subjects had been vaccinated. The researchers found that breakthroughs did increase slightly with more time. People who received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine had 68% protection against infection 2 weeks after their second shot, which dropped to 61% after 90 days. The drop-off was sharper in those who received the Pfizer mRNA vaccine: fourteen days after the second dose, it seemed to provide 85% protection against all Delta infections, symptomatic or not, but that fell to 75% after 90 days.
Sarah Walker, an epidemiologist at Oxford who led the UK study, says: "It could be that Pfizer's protection drops from its initially very high levels and then stabilizes, or it could be that people who have had two doses of Pfizer will need a third." In Israel, which used only the Pfizer vaccines, researchers also found that people fully immunized in January had twice the risk of being infected with SARS-CoV-2 during June and July as people who had been vaccinated in April.
However, David Dowdy -- an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland -- suggests that the apparent decline in protection might have other causes, such as changes in individual behavior and the rate of transmission in the community. Dowdy notes that in the New York study, the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines dropped most in the 18- to 49-year-olds, and least in those older than 65. If the vaccines themselves were at fault, that's the reverse of what would be expected. Dowdy suggests that the drop in effectiveness is due to more risky behavior -- visits to restaurants, bars, and concerts -- with less concern for masking and no fewer worries about mass gatherings.
However, all evidence still shows the vaccines are still good at preventing severe disease. Leif-Erik Sander says: "Protection against hospitalization looks quite stable," Sander says. In the New York study, for example, vaccine efficacy against hospitalization for COVID-19 stayed close to 95%. Data from the UK and Israel shows much the same thing.
So are boosters needed? Governments have started to push them, against protests that the shots are more needed in the undeveloped world. Boosters do seem justifiable for people with weak immune systems, due to age or infirmity. Sander says: "There's a proportion of the population for whom two shots is not sufficient. For certain groups of people, a three-dose regimen is required."
He has advised the German government to offer boosters to everyone over age 60. He adds that boosters for health care workers and close contacts of people with weaker immune systems are also important, to prevent transmission to vulnerable groups and to keep health care workers on the job when hospitals are stretched thin. As far as the general public goes, he's more ambivalent -- though he wouldn't mind getting a third shot himself.
There's just not that much data yet on how well a third shot works. A vaccination study release in June reported that organ transplant recipients who had responded poorly to two mRNA doses, likely because of the immune suppressant they rely on, responded better to a third dose. Iwasaki Aikiko, an immunologist at Yale University, says: "A third dose is a good idea." She believes that the higher level of immunity should reduce transmission of the virus, and that the threat of hospitalization justifies the effort: "Even if it's just 1% of infections, enough people are potentially at risk that I think we need to do everything we can to prevent that from happening."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: At the end of August, the US intelligence services issued a report on the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with absolutely no surprises in it. The report stated that the virus might have been natural in origin, or might have come from a lab, though it concluded that it certainly hadn't been weaponized. The bottom line was that the Chinese government was not being helpful in tracking down the origins of the virus. Having gone through the motions, the White House is likely to say little more about the matter.
The US completed its airlift out of Afghanistan at midnight local time on 30 August, with over 123,000 people hauled out of the country. It was an impressive logistical feat, conducted under difficult conditions, including some terrorist attacks. America's war in Afghanistan is over ... or is it? A force under Tajik leader Ahmad Masoud has been holding out against Taliban fighters in the rugged Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. If Masoud can hold out for another week, he'll have so much covert aid being flown in at night that the Taliban will never root him out.
Masoud presents a dire threat to the Taliban. It is based on the Pashtun tribe, which is Afghanistan's biggest, about 42% of the population -- which still means that the Taliban is trying to impose control on a country where it is outnumbered. If they don't stamp out resistance immediately, it seems likely it will spread -- all the more so because it also seems likely that the Afghan Army didn't turn over all its weapons to the Taliban. Hoarding weapons, apparently, is an ancient Afghan tradition. The Taliban has won the war, but can they win the peace?
Obviously, the purpose of the resistance is not to defeat the Taliban, instead being to press for a moderate, inclusive, and internationally-recognized central government. That is entirely in line with what the US wants. Of course, since there are still foreigners in Afghanistan who are vulnerable, any aid the US gives Masoud will be totally black and untraceable. There will only be a handful of CIA on the ground in Afghanistan, and it's very plausible they will be Afghan-born. The US will fly air support with long-range drones, and along with weapons will give the Afghans satellite phones and solar power rechargers.
* The USA is already moving on from Afghanistan, headlines being dominated by an anti-abortion "heartbeat" bill passed by Texas, which limited abortions to six weeks -- at a time when many women don't know they're pregnant. The US Supreme Court refused to consider blocking the law -- which in effect booted it over to Congress to address, which might have been the objective. SCOTUS may be getting tired of having to fight over dodgy anti-abortion bills. Now we get to see what Congress will do with the ball. The Democrats didn't need this fight right now, but there was never a good time for it.
One facet of the law allowed Texas to press lawsuits for violations of the act, to be rewarded a minimum of $10,000 USD. This was a puzzling notion, since it was hard to see how anyone attempting to press a lawsuit could show they had standing to do it, and impossible to see how they could claim damages. Backers of the bill, with an excess of enthusiasm and deficit of sense, put up a website that allowed people to submit anonymous tips of violations of the law. To no surprise, it promptly went viral and was hit with a flood of prank reports. They pulled the plug on it in less than a day. This didn't work out the way we thought it would, did it?
My own attitude towards the fighting over abortion is that I can't stand it. The no-choice gang will lose in the end, but it's wearying to put up with it in the meantime. I wish for the day when it's over and done with, so I don't have to listen to it any more.
* It was somewhat more entertaining to find out that the Thompson Committee, investigating the 6 January Capitol riot, asked phone service providers for call data relative to Republican members of Congress whose conduct on that day was suspicious. The committee is not taking prisoners. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy reacted loudly, sending out a tweet:
If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States. If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.
Actually, they would be violating the law if they didn't comply with the congressional order; Congress has a very high level of authority in conducting investigations. Commentaries on Twitter suggested that McCarthy's rant sounded suspiciously like obstruction of justice. Did you run that past a lawyer before you posted it? I was wondering what acid thing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have to say about it, but she didn't bother to notice. The MAGAbots are good at obstruction -- but when they actually have to take on a challenge, they're helpless.
Along roughly parallel lines, a prominent Right-wing troll named Candace Owens went to a COVID-19 testing office in Aspen, Colorado. They'd heard of her, and Suzanna Lee, the owner, replied:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I've just learned of this testing request, and as the owner of this office am going to refuse the booking and deny service. We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations.
The only other local testing option is the free kiosk by city hall. They mail their tests to Texas and have inconsistent result times, do not take appointments, so it's walk-in only midday weekdays in their back alley.
My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure that our community remains protected. It would be unfair to them and to the sacrifices we have all made this year to serve you.
END QUOTE
Of course, America's COVIDiots are not wising up, the latest folly being use of an anti-worming agent named ivermectin as a cure for COVID-19. A number of studies showed that it was effective to that end, but they all flunked out on review, and no reputable medical authority encourages the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. It can be taken by humans -- sometimes humans get worms, too -- but it appears that it is most readily available for horses. There can be nasty side-effects normally, worse than the COVID-19 vaccines, and humans don't do too well with horse-scaled doses, with the result of people having to go through a detox.
In any case, THE DAILY SHOW's Michael Kosta came up with a brilliant idea:
Hey anti-vaxxers -- want to stop COVID AND still take medicine meant for horses? Try HORSEYVAX!
Are you a red-blooded Hannity-watching unvaccinated American? Are you taking the horse drug ivermectin to treat COVID? What if I told you there was even more effective horse medicine that would prevent you from getting COVID-19 altogether?! Introducing HORSEYVAX, the only COVID vaccine designed specifically for horses that humans can also receive!
If you're taking horse dewormer, you gotta get the horse vaccine. Say no to Pfizer and say neighhhhh to HORSEYVAX. Well, look at all these satisfied customers. [Thundering herd of horses.] Look at 'em go!
You know who doesn't want you to take this vaccine? Dr. FAUCI! That's why he's standing on your front lawn right now. I'm serious. Go look. He's standing there right now. He is.
[Okay, now that the anti-vaxxers aren't watching ... HORSEYVAX, it's just the Pfizer vaccine, but we put a picture of a horse on the box. So this could work, right? Okay, just go with it. Just keep going with it.]
Oh, you just missed him. If Dr. Fauci comes back, you tell him he can take his human vaccine and shove it right up his Benghazi! So gallop on in to your local feed store or the CVS and get HORSEYVAX injected into your haunches today. "NEIGHHHHHHH!"
HORSEYVAX! Hell, why not? Please? Maybe? Just please get the vaccine.
Kosta does a perfect job of imitating Right-wing MAGAbots -- he does a very good Mike "MyPillowGuy" Lindell. Incidentally, some of the comments on Youtube were good:
It seems the only cure for COVIDiocy will be vaccine mandates, lots of them, everywhere. It's coming; more organizations are laying down the law every week. The COVIDiots will complain, and then comply. They talk big. It is, however, exasperating to watch them try to tear down efforts to keep the pandemic under control, as the bodies pile up -- and then hear them bash President Joe for not getting the pandemic under control.
* As a minor revelation this week, I finally gave up on my last MP3 player. The weak link with them is the wired earphones; the plug contact tends to become intermittent, and the wire connections tend to break. The wired earphones on my MP3 player finally went south. I contemplated buying a new set, I can get decent ones for less than $20 USD -- but then I got to thinking about the old smartphones I have that I never use. Might it make more sense to use one of them, with bluetooth earphones?
So I'm using an old Samsung smartphone as my household dedicated MP3 player right now. I'm using an old spare set of wired earphones right now, but I've got some wire-behind-the-head bluetooth earphones on order from Amazon -- also less than $20 USD, incidentally. The only problem is recharging them, but I recharge my gadgets as per custom once a week; it's no bother. There is also no contact to become intermittent, and less problems with broken wiring.
Geez, how long have I been using MP3 players? They were fun while they lasted. Given old smartphones around the house gathering dust, they just didn't make sense any more.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (166): In 2010, Obama trimmed back the Bush II Administration's space ambitions, halting an effort to send astronauts back to the Moon, while funding Earth science projects, ongoing missions to the International Space Station, and work towards future deep-space missions. In late 2010, Obama signed a repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act", allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the US military. Six years later, the Pentagon also dropped bars against transgenders.
The 2010 mid-terms did not go well for Obama. Although the Republicans gain seats in the Senate, they didn't obtain a majority; however, the GOP won 63 seats in the House, the biggest shift in seats since 1948. The criticisms of the Obama Administration from the Right went to a shrill pitch, Obama being denounced as a "socialist" -- using a definition that would have included Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.
One of the consequences of the shift to the Right was that the Obama Administration pushed a compromise tax Act that froze tax cuts in place, even as the deficit climbed. He signed the $858 billion USD Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act into law in late 2010.
In the summer of 2010, the CIA obtained information on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, finding out that he was living in a compound on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. A SOCOM raid on the compound on 1 May 2011 resulted in the killing of ObL and the seizure of intelligence information. It was one of the high points of the Obama Administration.
With the recession and stimulus spending, the budget deficit continued to climb. After wrangling with Congress, in 2011, Obama signed into law the bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2011. It enforced limits on discretionary spending and established procedures to increase the debt limit.
In early 2011, as part of the "Arab Spring" uprising, protests in Libya began against long-standing dictator Muammar Qaddafi. The protests led to violence and a growing civil war. In late March, as Qaddafi showed no signs of giving up his battle against the rebellion, the US participated in a series of NATO airstrikes, named Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR, that broke government resistance. Obama later said he regretted the Libyan intervention, saying it simply assisted the destabilization of the country.
After the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Obama called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. In 2012, Obama authorized several programs to be run by the CIA and the Pentagon to train anti-Assad rebels. They didn't go well, and were abandoned a few years later. Obama warned the Syrian government that use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would provoke retaliation.
Republican opposition to ObamaCare, particularly the individual mandate, was intense. In 2012, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 in the case of NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS V. SEBELIUS that the mandate was constitutional under the taxing authority of the US Congress. SCOTUS also upheld provisions of ObamaCare that withheld funds for states which did not expand the program. However, the court later ruled that the provisions of ObamaCare requiring that companies pay for insurance for certain contraceptives was a violation of religious freedom.
On 14 December 2012, a lunatic named Adam Lanza gunned down 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, including 20 children. Lanza had killed his mother before going to the school, and killed himself when the authorities arrived. Obama issued a set of executive orders for gun control, asking Congress to take more comprehensive action. The Republicans rejected any considerations of gun control, and the effort went nowhere.
During his first term, Obama appointed two women to the Supreme Court:
The most significant SCOTUS decision during Obama's first term was the judgment in the case of CITIZENS UNITED V. FEC in 2010. A non-profit organization named "Citizens United" made a movie slamming Hillary Clinton, and they wanted to run an ad for it during the 2008 election. However, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1972 banned corporations and unions from spending money to advocate during elections. Citizens United claimed the ban was unconstitutional.
SCOTUS judged 5:4 that, as per the 1st Amendment, corporations and unions could spend as much as they wanted to support or attack political candidates, as long as the spending was not linked to the candidates' campaigns. This was a heavily criticized decision, the perception being that it led to a surge of corporate money into elections. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("This Eagle Shark Once Soared Through Ancient Seas Near Mexico" by Gretchen Vogel, 18 March 2021), sharks and rays are universally regarded as "fish" -- but they don't have skeletons, instead girdles of cartilage, and so a trout is more closely related to us than to them. There's also a failure to appreciate just how ancient they are, and how diverse. As a demonstration of that diversity, a previously unknown shark species, the "eagle shark" -- discovered in a limestone quarry in northeastern Mexico in 2012 -- looks like a hybrid of sharks and rays.
Aquilolamna milarcae, to use its formal name, was a plankton eater that lived toward the end of the era of the dinosaurs, some 90 million years ago. The eagle shark specimen is 1.66 meters (5.4 feet) long -- but its pectoral fins span 1.9 meters (6.2 feet). Does that make it ancestral to modern manta rays? Probably not; its tail fin, and the rest of its body plan, more closely resembles modern tiger sharks. That suggests, the researchers believe, that such "wings" for underwater flight evolved several times independently.
The eagle shark was, it seems, a slow swimmer that used its tail fin to propel itself and its pectoral fins to maneuver, and possibly for bursts of speed. The specimen doesn't have teeth, but maybe the teeth were tiny -- like those of plankton-eating whale sharks and basking sharks -- and decayed before they could fossilize. The animal presumably went extinct when the oceans acidified after the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous era, the researchers say, overturning the marine ecosystem and killing off its plankton food source.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.com ("A Study Of Earth's Crust Hints That Supernovas Aren't Gold Mines" by Emily Conover, 13 May 2021), the refinement of astrophysics in the second half of the 20th century outlined the history of the creation of elements. The Universe after the Big Bang was nothing but hydrogen, some helium, and traces of lithium. Short-lived giant stars then performed fusion reactions to produce the elements up to iron; since fusion reactions above that point absorb energy instead of released it, once a giant star acquired an iron core, it collapsed in a supernova, spewing its heavy elements out into the cosmos.
What has not been clearly understood was the origin of elements heavier than iron, like gold. There was long speculation that they were by-products of supernova explosions, due to cramming atoms full of neutrons -- under the "rapid neutron capture" process, or "r-process". More recent thinking has suggested they were made by collisions of neutron-star pairs, driving the r-process. However, the problem with that scenario is that heavy elements show up in some very old stars, which were born before neutron stars had been around long enough to collide.
A study from a team led by physicist Anton Wallner of the Australian National University in Canberra has thrown more fuel onto the fire. The researchers decided to see if they could find evidence for heavy elements created in the r-process in the Earth's crust and picked up by the Earth. They started with a 410-gram sample of Pacific Ocean crust and sorted it out with a mass spectrometer system, hunting for plutonium-244, a marker for the r-process. They found about 180 plutonium-244 atoms, deposited into the Earth's crust within the last 9 million years.
Since iron-60 is created by fusion processes, not the r-process, they then hunted in the same for iron-60 atoms, finding about 415. Plutonium-244 is radioactive, decaying with a half-life of 80.6 million years, while iron-60 has an even shorter half-life of 2.6 million years. That means they haven't been on Earth for a long time, geologically speaking. When the researchers tallied iron-60 atoms to their depth in the crust, which suggests how long ago they had been deposited, the researchers saw two peaks at about 2.5 million years ago and at about 6.5 million years ago, suggesting two or more supernovas had occurred in the recent past.
If the plutonium-244 had been created in those two supernovas, the supernovas didn't make enough of it to account for the abundance of heavy elements in our neighborhood of the Galaxy. Right now, astrophysicists are diverging from a solution, instead of converging on one.
* As discussed in an article from LIVESCIENCE.com ("Earth's Crust Is Way, Way Older Than We Thought" by Brandon Specktor, 27 March 2021), it is commonly known that the Earth is billions of years old, and that it has had a continental crust for most of its history -- though only a small percentage of it dates back to its origin. There has been some question as to how long the crust has been around.
To calculate the age of continents, researchers study the radioactive decay of ancient chemicals trapped in rocks -- most often in carbonate minerals recovered from the ocean. But those minerals are not easy to find, and it is not easy to find samples that are convenient to analyze. Now, a team of European researchers have, by analyzing a mineral called "barite" -- a combination of ocean salts and barium released by volcanic ocean vents -- determined that the crust dates back to at least 3.7 billion years ago. Study lead Desiree Roerdink, a geochemist at University of Bergen in Norway, describes that as "huge" jump back in time, about a half-billion years older than earlier estimates.
Barite minerals form deep underwater, where hot, nutrient-rich water seethes out of hydrothermal vents in the seafloor. Roerdink says: "The composition of a piece of barite ... that has been on Earth for three and a half billion years is exactly the same as it was when it actually precipitated. It is a great recorder to look at processes on the early Earth."
What barite records is the weathering of continents. As continents are worn down by erosion over time, they drain minerals into neighboring seas, these minerals incidentally promoting the growth of life in the seas. One of the elements leaked into the sea was strontium, which has radioactive isotopes that can be used for long-range dating. The research team used strontium dating to determine their samples were from 3.2 billion to 3.5 billion years old, but the story doesn't end there. However, they were also able to determine when the strontium started leaking into the seas, which turned out to be 3.7 billion years ago. This discovery is a major boost to understand the early history of the Earth.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* BITCOIN IMPLOSION? As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Disaster Scenario: What If Bitcoin Went To Zero?", 2 August 2021), bitcoin and other digital currencies have always seemed at least a little dodgy, with governments not sure if they should be legal or not. However, they seem to be on a roll. A year ago, about 6,000 currencies listed on CoinMarketCap, a website; now there are 11,145. In the same timeframe, their total market capitalization exploded from $330 billion USD to $1.6 trillion USD, about the same as the GDP of Canada.
There are more than 100 million unique digital wallets storing cryptocurrencies now, about three times the number in 2018. Institutions have got into the game, at present accounting for 63% of trading by value, up from 10% in 2017. Automatic traders do a lot of the buying and selling, operating under rules such as "sell when bitcoin drops below a given level."
Cryptocurrency advocates cheer about how bitcoin and its competitors are not under control of central banks -- which more than merely implies their value is under little control. Wild changes in price are normal: bitcoin sank from $64,000 USD in April 2021 to $30,000 USD in May. Speculators like the volatility, but there's a big potential downside: what happens if the value goes to $0? It could happen. A crash might be caused by a big trading system glitch, a hack of a leading exchange, a clampdown by regulators, or even central banks raising interest rates.
Mohamed El-Erian of Allianz, an insurer and asset manager, says there are three types of crypto investors:
Although a crash would greatly distress fundamentalists, they are the least likely to sell out, while the speculators will flee the instant things go south. The tacticians will consider their options, but are likely to get out if bitcoin goes to zero.
A crash would take down the crypto economy. Bitcoin miners would have less incentive to carry on, with the production of bitcoin coming to a halt. As far as other cryptocurrencies go, they almost always follow bitcoin. The result of the crash would be the destruction of a massive amount of wealth. Long-term bitcoin investors, having bought in when bitcoin was cheap, would have the least to lose -- but those who bought in more recently would suffer. Those include institutions that have waded into cryptocurrencies, including most institutions exposed to crypto, including hedge funds, university endowments, mutual funds and some companies.
Of course, crypto exchanges and crypto firms would be effectively wiped out, with losses of tens of billions of dollars. Payments firms like PayPal, Revolut and Visa would lose a piece of a growing, profitable business, which would dent their valuations. Other companies trying ride the boom, such as Nvidia, a microchip-maker, would also take a hit. Possibly a total of $2 trillion USD might evaporate from the crash, a little more than the market capitalization of Amazon.
There would be shockwaves outside of the crypto domain as well. Traders using leverage, most often on unregulated exchanges such as FTX and Binance, would find themselves saddled with big debts, and dump conventional assets to get cash.
Another difficulty would come from "stablecoins", which are digital currencies pegged to the dollar, the euro, and often other mainstream assets -- the biggest players being Tether and USD Coin, together worth about $100 billion USD. Since changing dollars and bitcoins is slow and troublesome, traders often prefer to switch between stablecoins and bitcoins instead. Stablecoins are not necessarily or even mostly backed by cash, however, also being backed by commercial notes, secured loads, corporate bonds, funds, and precious metals. A crypto crash might mean a run on stablecoins, with an impacted spread widely through the financial system.
It is not clear how much impact a crypto crash would have -- losses would be widespread but shallow across the financial system. Few big entities have staked their fortunes on bitcoin, and banks are reluctant to acquire it. However, a crypto crash might well sour high-risk investment across the board, leading to a general slump. A lot of unlikely things would need to happen for a crypto crash to lead to a recession; but they're not impossible, and crypto is becoming more intertwined with the financial system all the time, with hazard increasing in pace.
* A related article from ECONOMST.com ("Unstablecoins", 7 August 2021), suggested that probing into cryptocurrency markets was like kicking over a rock to see what's underneath. Recently Gary Gensler, head of the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) that cryptocurrency markets were "rife with fraud, scams and abuse", and asked Congress for new regulatory powers. Gensler compares the scene to a "Wild West".
As noted above, along with the criminal element, there is also the potential threat posed by cryptocurrencies to the financial system. Stablecoins represent a subtler threat than bitcoin -- since though they seem stable, they tend to be based on assets that may be risky. If there were a run on stablecoins that couldn't be backed up, the scheme would implode and drag down the financial system.
Stablecoin firms like Tether are not very transparent about their operations. Regulators have a strong motive to impose bank-like rules for transparency, liquidity and capital on them. There may be a temptation to ban stablecoins, particularly if central banks launch their own digital currencies. That may be too severe; regulated stablecoins might serve some useful functions, such as making cross-border payments easier, or enabling self-executing "smart contracts".
There is, however, the issue that much of the point of creating cryptocurrencies was to evade government control -- or put more crudely, evade the law. Laws were not made to be evaded, certainly not in such a blatant way. If governments put a leash on cryptocurrencies, will there be much interest any more? Certainly, if the cryptocurrency system survives, it will not look so much like it once did.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE