It will now embark on a mission of at least two years to look for evidence that Mars may once have supported life.
A signal confirming the rover was on the ground safely was relayed to Earth via Nasa's Odyssey satellite, which is in orbit around the Red Planet.
The success was greeted with a roar of approval here at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The first pictures from Mars began to be fed back immediately; high-resolution images will come later
Within minutes, the robot was returning its first low-resolution images - showing us its wheels and views to the horizon. A first colour image of Curiosity's surroundings should be returned in the next couple of days.
Engineers and scientists who have worked on this project for the best part of 10 years punched the air and hugged each other.
The rover's Twitter feed announced: "I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!!"
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Tue, 08/07/2012 - 19:14.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama‘s campaign aides mounted an all-hands, all-day defense of the administration’s potentially politically toxic rewrite of popular federal welfare-to-work rules.
Officials argued that Obama is really aiding welfare reform, that GOP governors support their revamp and that GOP governors —- including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — wanted to gut the welfare law in 2005.
The campaign’s push was quickly countered by Romney’s staffers, who argued that Romney vetoed a Democratic effort to relax welfare-to-work rules in Massachusetts.
The Obama campaign’s move was also hurt by the appearance of new recordings showing Obama’s late-1990s opposition to the successful reform.
A 1998 video showed Obama — then an Illinois state senator — declaring that “I was not a huge supporter of the federal plan.” Also, a 1998 audio recording features Obama saying, “the 1996 legislation I did not entirely agree with, and probably would have voted against it at the federal level.”
The Obama campaign jumped into action shortly after Romney’s campaign announced it would criticize the administration’s rewrite this week as an “insult” to hard-working taxpayers.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Tue, 08/07/2012 - 19:11.
By Diana Reese
CLEVELAND, Mo—Sarah Palin did not disappoint.
The crowd cheered and applauded repeatedly during her speech here Friday night, from her opening remarks about “mama grizzlies” on the Missouri state flag to her promise to stop at the local Chick-fil-A for a midnight snack.
It was the first time I’d ever seen Palin in person, and it was well worth the 19-mile drive from my suburban Kansas City home to The Berry Patch, a you-pick blueberry farm near Cleveland, Mo., population 665, in rural Cass County.
Not because I’m a fan or even agree with her ideology, but to see what all the fuss has been about.
Palin was in the Kansas City area to campaign for Sarah Steelman (For The Washington Post - Diana Reese)
Palin was in the Kansas City area to campaign for Sarah Steelman, who’s in a tight three-way race in Tuesday’s Republican primary for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat. The winner will face Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in November.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Tue, 08/07/2012 - 14:02.
HOUSTON CHRONICLE) — At the corner of Milby and Navigation in Houston’s East End, business at Randy’s Fine Foods is booming.
Never heard of them?
Then you’re not a Lone Star Card user, the food stamp-enabled debit card that has soared in use over the past two years, with a million more Texans added since 2008. As of July, more than 3.6 million had Lone Star Cards.
For about 20 years, Randy’s mobile food trucks have traveled under the radar of the privileged, circulating in neighborhoods and delivering food here and across the state. Randy’s and a handful of companies like it – Boxes and Bags Mobile Grocery and Bag Lady on Wheels – go to areas where people are without a car and a local grocery store or both
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 08/05/2012 - 22:03.
Senate Republicans recently blocked cybersecurity legislation, but the issue might not be dead after all.
The White House hasn't ruled out issuing an executive order to strengthen the nation's defenses against cyber attacks if Congress refuses to act.
“In the wake of Congressional inaction and Republican stall tactics, unfortunately, we will continue to be hamstrung by outdated and inadequate statutory authorities that the legislation would have fixed," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in an emailed response to whether the president is considering a cybersecurity order.
"Moving forward, the President is determined to do absolutely everything we can to better protect our nation against today’s cyber threats and we will do that," Carney said.
The White House has emphasized that better protecting vital computer systems is a top priority.
The administration proposed its own legislation package in 2011, sent officials to testify at 17 congressional hearings and presented more than 100 briefings on the issue. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, President Obama warned that a successful cyber attack on a bank, water system, electrical grid or hospital could have devastating consequences.
The president urged Congress to pass the Cybersecurity Act, which was offered by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill would have encouraged private companies and the government to share information about cyber threats and would have required critical infrastructure operators to meet minimum cybersecurity standards.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 08/05/2012 - 19:38.
In my hometown, everyone is required to have a landline telephone so local officials can reach us with a reverse 911 call.
It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t work. In my family, we never use the landline. We talk on cellphones. Occasionally, telemarketers call. So do people looking for someone named “Danny,” but we no longer answer. So, if a call came from our local government, we’d never hear their message. But when you’re building a house and need to pass inspection, it’s easier to put in the phone than fight city hall.
Overall, 68 percent of Americans believe there are too many unnecessary laws in the United States today. A majority of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters all recognize the problem.
Most excess laws are just a nuisance and not a real problem. But there are plenty of horror stories where individual lives are ruined for technical violations of unknown and unnecessary laws. Sometimes the harassment is aimed at a particular citizen; sometimes it’s just bureaucracy gone wild.
In his 2009 book, “Three Felonies a Day,” civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate shows that “prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior.”
That’s one reason 51 percent now believe that the government is more of a threat to individual rights than a protector of them. It’s why people react so negatively to nanny-state proposals like banning the sale of large sugary drinks. Just 24 percent support that idea.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 08/05/2012 - 12:27.
Are we alone? Or was there life on another planet? NASA's $2.5 billion dream machine, the Mars Science Laboratory, aims to take the first steps toward finding out when it nears Mars's surface on Monday.
Scientists have found signs of water on Red Planet, which is Earth's neighbor, hinting that some form of life was once likely even though Mars is now a dry place with a thin atmosphere, extreme winters and dust storms.
NASA said it will find out whether its Mars Science Laboratory and rover, Curiosity -- designed to hunt for soil-based signatures of life and send back data to prepare for a future human mission -- landed safely at 1:31 am Eastern time (0531 GMT) on Monday.
That will be about 14 minutes after the touchdown actually happens due to the time it takes for spacecraft signals to travel from Mars to Earth.
As of late Saturday, the laboratory was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at around 8,000 miles per hour.
"Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected," NASA said in a statement.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 08/05/2012 - 12:25.
Say this about U.S. Sen. Harry Reid: He really believes in renewable energy.
Reid has beat up NV Energy pretty good in recent years. In the closing days of the George W. Bush administration, Reid blocked plans to build coal-fired power plants in Nevada. He said in April on the "Nevada Newsmakers" show, "I don't think NV Energy has done enough to allow renewable energy to thrive."
But that same month, NV Energy reported it had exceeded its state-imposed green-energy requirement of 15 percent by purchasing 16.7 percent of its power from renewable sources. And that was in spite of the Public Utilities Commission rejecting a handful of renewable contracts in July 2011, saying the company hadn't justified the purchases were necessary to meet its quota.
Now Reid is pushing for a Chinese company he played a key role in recruiting to Nevada, ENN Mojave Energy LLC. The company plans a billion-dollar solar energy manufacturing and generating plant near Laughlin, but an ambitious development schedule is being threatened by a lack of green power customers.
Steve Tetreault quoted Reid in Tuesday's Review-Journal saying the project "would start tomorrow if NV Energy would purchase the power," but the company "has not been willing to work on this and that's such a shame."
Reid added: "NV Energy is a regulated monopoly. They control 95 percent of all the electricity that is produced in Nevada and they should go along with this."
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Thu, 08/02/2012 - 01:38.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce released a reportTuesday which details some of the ways in which the Obama White House has side-stepped its promise to be transparent in the way it conducts business. This means it's a good time to review some of the many ways the Obama administration avoids transparency even after promising to be the most transparent administration in history:
Fighting FOIA - In early 2009 the White House refuses to respond to FOIA requests for visitor logs leading Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to file a lawsuit to obtain the logs. CREW's legal council tells the Washington Post "I don't see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency."
Transparency begins...sort of - In early September 2009 the White House agrees to fulfill the FOIA requests and begins making White House visitor logs available online in return for CREW dropping its lawsuit. This settlement exempts all visitor logs prior to September 15, 2009. The House Committee report says that "less than one percent of the approximately 500,000 meetings from President Obama’s first eight months in office...have been released."
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 08/01/2012 - 14:12.
WASHINGTON — In a long-shot victory that could help define the conservative tilt of the Senate, tea-party-backed Ted Cruz defeated an establishment Republican on Tuesday in the hard-fought GOP primary runoff in Texas.Tea-party-backed Ted Cruz beats establishment candidate David Dewhurst in Texas' costly Republican Senate primary runoff. The victory could bolster the conservative movement's influence in Washington
The outcome is not expected to tip the balance of power in the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats; the Texas seat being vacated is already held by a Republican.
But Cruz's win over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst provides another example of the tea party movement's influence on voters and turnout — even for a candidate who has never held elected office.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Wed, 08/01/2012 - 00:36.
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
First President to violate the War Powers Act. .
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico .
First President to defy a Federal Judge's court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on 'shovel-ready' jobs when there was no such thing as 'shovel-ready' jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. , including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to terminate America 's ability to put a man in space.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Tue, 07/31/2012 - 21:30.
Richard (Rick) Mills
Ahead of the Herd
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best informationBecause of the worst drought since 1988 the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared a federal disaster area in almost one-third of all the counties in the United States - more than 1,300 counties covering 29 states, the largest disaster declaration ever made by the USDA. Only in the 1930s and 1950s has a drought covered more land.
The United States Drought Monitor shows 88 percent of corn, and 87 percent of soybean crops are in drought-stricken regions.
This map show the counties affected:
“We just had a crop report today, which indicated a significant reduction in corn production as well as bean production, lower forecast for wheat, soybean, soybean oil, soybean meal, and corn, lower forecast for milk, beef, pork, broilers, and turkey. And it's obvious that weather is having an impact on the estimates of crops. Despite the fact that we have more acreage planted this year, we still are looking at significant reductions, and despite the fact that we may even with the corn estimates, as they have been reduced, would still have the third largest crop of corn in our history, nearly 13 billion bushels, and a very large soybean crop. We need to be cognizant of the fact that drought and weather conditions have really impacted and affected producers around the country.” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 23:06.
And so Obama is supporting the advent of yet another Sharia state.
Meanwhile, note that Britain's newest export is jihad. "Foreign Office investigates reports of Britons among Islamist kidnappers of journalists in Syria," by Colin Freeman in the Telegraph, July 28 (thanks to Banafsheh Zand):
The Foreign Office is investigating reports that British citizens are among Islamist fighters who kidnapped a British photographer and his Dutch colleague in northern Syria.
John Cantlie and Dutchman Jeroen Oerlemans were held by the group for a week after they accidentally came across their camp while crossing the border from south east Turkey to report on the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
During their time in captivity they were threatened with death unless they converted to Islam, and both were shot and slightly wounded when they attempted to flee barefoot. They were freed on Thursday night after a group of Free Syrian Army soldiers turned up the camp and angrily demanded that they be released.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 23:06.
And so Obama is supporting the advent of yet another Sharia state.
Meanwhile, note that Britain's newest export is jihad. "Foreign Office investigates reports of Britons among Islamist kidnappers of journalists in Syria," by Colin Freeman in the Telegraph, July 28 (thanks to Banafsheh Zand):
The Foreign Office is investigating reports that British citizens are among Islamist fighters who kidnapped a British photographer and his Dutch colleague in northern Syria.
John Cantlie and Dutchman Jeroen Oerlemans were held by the group for a week after they accidentally came across their camp while crossing the border from south east Turkey to report on the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
During their time in captivity they were threatened with death unless they converted to Islam, and both were shot and slightly wounded when they attempted to flee barefoot. They were freed on Thursday night after a group of Free Syrian Army soldiers turned up the camp and angrily demanded that they be released.
Mr Cantlie has not yet spoken of his ordeal, but Mr Oerlemans told Dutch media that some of the gang, which is reported to have been between 30 and 100 strong, had "Birmingham accents".
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 21:33.
Imagine a coil of rope lies at your feet. Think of this rope as your personality, your history – the DNA of your life. Everything about you is imprinted on this rope.
Reach down and take hold of the end of this rope. This end is coded with the initial stuff people learn about you when you first meet. If your name is Chuck, you could tape a sign to this end that reads: To know Chuck, begin here.
At the beginning of your rope are usually ‘safe’ things such as smiles, comments, the initiations of feedback loops. But as you move down this rope, further away from the end, you find increasingly personal ideas and details.
Imagine a stranger next to you. They reach out and take the end of your rope from you. They begin reeling it into their arms. So long as you allow it, the rope passes from the floor around your feet, through your hands and collects in the arms of this other person.
This is the beginning of someone getting to know you. The details they learn about you in the first few minutes may be give-aways such as your taste in high-fidelity stereo speakers and the fact that your mouth goes crooked when you smile. But soon they could be exposed to a slice of your dead-kitten sense of humor. Then later it could be your feeling toward relationships. Eventually it could be your sexual preferences. And on and on.
Through this process of information transfer, you stop feeling like a stranger to the other person. You begin to feel like a friend or potential lover.
I think that’s a helpful metaphor for thinking of the process of someone getting to know you.
So let’s encourage people to pull out our life-ropes.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 21:20.
The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), deliberately wants the city compete to become the nation’s largest sanctuary city.
Baltimore’s unemployment rate is at 10 percent. For blacks in Baltimore, the unemployment rate is over 20 percent. People are fleeing Maryland -- and its major cities like Baltimore -- to states like Virginia and North Carolina that have better conditions for economic growth. But none of that seems to matter to Rawlings-Blake, who thinks opening up Baltimore to illegal immigrants (her goal is to attract at least 10,000 immigrants to Baltimore) will solve -- and will not exacerbate -- the city’s economic woes and counteract population decline.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 21:14.
Political commentators have taken issue with the fact that the design 'cost more than the average American family makes in a month'
The U.S. First Lady wore an embroidered cap-sleeved jacket from U.S. label J Mendel's resort 2013 collection
Political commentators have expressed their fury over the fact that Michelle Obama wore a jacket worth $6,800 to the pre-Olympics Opening Ceremony reception at Buckingham Palace on Friday.
Though the dazzling J Mendel jacket and skirt won critical acclaim from the style set, some pundits are furious that she elected to spend so much money on a garment while so many in the U.S. are suffering financially.
A post on theGateway Punditblog read that the design 'cost more than the average American family makes in a month ($4,284)'.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Mon, 07/30/2012 - 20:58.
Progressive organizations behind White House policy have crafted specific, second-term plans for President Obama to transform the U.S. Armed Forces into a social work-style organization designed to combat “global warming,” fight global poverty, remedy “injustice,” bolster the United Nations and increase “peacekeeping” forces worldwide.
The groups, already instrumental in influencing Obama’s first-term defense agenda, call for massive, second-term slashes to the military budget. The savings are to be used to invest in “sustainable energy” and in fighting worldwide climate change.
The book, by New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, uncovers the template for Obama’s next four years – the actual, extensive plans created by Obama’s own top advisers and progressive strategists.
Who needs a standing army?
“Fool Me Twice” documents how the major leagues of progressive groups with deep ties to the Obama administration got together to produce a comprehensive, 96-page report with specific recommendations for how Obama should reform the U.S. military during his second term in office.
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 07/29/2012 - 22:28.
German yacht company Lürssen is building the largest yacht in the world for a Middle Eastern billionaire they will not name. It will be around 590 feet long!
Yet photos taken by SuperyachtTimes.com show the boat to be at least six stories tall, with sweeping windows on the rear deck and several upper decks dedicated to staterooms. The vessel is expected to cost more than $500 million. It is still under construction at a shipyard in Bremen, Germany and is scheduled to be delivered in 2013.
Industry executives and marine engineers say Azzam’s most unusual feature — other than its size — is its propulsion system. Rather than being powered by propellers like most yachts, it will have four giant water jets that will be able to push the ship to speeds of more than 27 to 28 knots
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 07/29/2012 - 22:13.
I love cars. That doesn't mean that I'm a good driver, that I could talk to you about the state of the automotive industry or that I could do anything to help you fix literally anything in any sort of meaningful fashion -- but I love the damn things nonetheless. This love actually extends beyond cars, to motorcycles, trucks, airplanes and basically any other marvel of engineering that, in a fair and just world, my incompetent fingers would never be allowed to touch. But as a dude who digs whirly things that go places, I find that most people either share that exact same love with me or else cannot understand the appeal in the slightest. So on behalf of all of us fans of controlled explosions with wheels on them, I figured I'd give a go at explaining this baffling affection, and maybe shed some light on what makes the box that occasionally takes you to the store something more special to us.
#5. It's Meditation for the Unenlightened Man
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Two out of five douchebags will describe their hobbies to disinterested women as "a zen thing, you know?" They will go on to clarify that "It's like I'm really at peace when I'm windsurfing/quilting/strangling hobos on the F train. So like, do you do butt stuff or what?"
Submitted by snake-plisskin on Sun, 07/29/2012 - 22:03.
The Olympics represent the pinnacle of human athletic achievement and harmony among nations. But they’re also a depraved, randy, all-out f**kfest! While the eyes of the world are on sprinters, gymnasts and swimmers rewriting the history books, behind the scenes these hard-bodied athletes are screwing each other — and anything that moves — like rabbits. They’re swapping partners like most of us change our socks, and their world-class conditioning gives them the stamina of porn stars. Basically, the Olympic village is home to a giant international orgy. Don’t believe it? Consider these fun facts about sex
and the 2012 Olympics.
1.The Olympics maxed out a gay sex iPhone app.
Grindr, a gay-sex hookup app for smartphones, nearly crashed with over 350,000 London users trying to log in to get some action. East London, which is hosting a majority of the events for the next two weeks, has had little to no service with the site. With a simple account and log in, Grindr offers gay men access to nearby partners for sex. Punch in your preferences for race, build, and the size of their you-know-what and you’re halfway to orgasm.
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