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Being reported in several places, Jerry Pournelle has passed away. Noted Science Fiction author, strategic analyst, early popularizer of personal computers, one of the original bloggers. In his own way he was one of the more influential Americans of the 20th century. As per Instapundit in a comment to his own post, "I just talked to Alex. Basically, Jerry just laid down for a nap and passed in his sleep this afternoon. It was nice that he, Alex, and Larry Niven got to hang out and have such a good time at DragonCon. It's as easy a death as one...

At least five people died in a historically massive earthquake that struck the southern coast of Mexico early Friday, toppling hotels and houses and prompting tsunami waves and power outages. The United States Geological Survey said that a magnitude 8.1 quake hit about 73 miles off Tres Picos, Mexico, along Mexico's southern coast. Its epicenter was 102 miles west of Tapachula in southern Chiapas state and had a depth of about 21 miles. The quake was so powerful, it sent people fleeing from buildings 650 miles away in Mexico City.

Was Hurricane Harvey, the Mother of All Hurricanes, weaponized by man-made, rapid evaporation techniques of global weather manipulators to decimate the densely populated Houston region of Texas? Mike Adams, Health Ranger, is asking that very question and is directing his viewers to satellite imagery of Harvey, a hurricane which refueled three times and stayed in a holding pattern over the Houston-Rockport area instead of moving inland to disperse naturally. As seen from outer space, the deep black center reveals an ominous circulating and rotating in place. On Saturday and Sunday (8-26, 8-27, 2017), this long lasting weather event increased both...

Video: A man in Michigan decided he wanted to uncover some of the ancient secrets techniques used to lift heavy stone blocks. After a lot of trial and error, he finally came up with a system he could use to lift any size rock and move it practically anywhere.

The next head of NASA is likely to be an ex-Navy fighter pilot turned Republican congressman who believes strongly in space exploration but is skeptical about man-made climate change. What’s not to like about about Trump’s nomination of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) for the job of NASA’s administrator? Everything, if you’re a liberal. According to New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi, Trump just blew the perfect chance to change his “presidency from the chaotic mess of threats, bitterness and bilious paranoia to one of rationality and reasonableness.” Apparently, the job should have gone to a fully-fledged climate alarmist.

One in every two babies born in the USA will be affected by autism in just 15 years if the current statistical curve continues unabated, according to a seven part docu-series! (go2.thetruthaboutvaccines.com) Our rates of autism currently are at one in 45 children per year being written in on the autism spectrum nightmare. Even though we are the most vaccinated, we have the worst infant mortality rate, at rank #34 in world statistics for infant deaths. "The US gets the most vaccinations in the world," continues the series, narrated by Ty Bollinger. Our infants receive 26 "vaxxs" up to their...

There are times I would like to make the effort of throwing dinner for friends or family and cook everything from scratch. But the labor of love just takes so long. In spite of all the inspiration from Rachael Ray, the 30-minute meal is actually more myth than fact. Thawing your food alone may take almost an hour. Then there’s the diligence of slow cooking the meat to your desired tenderness. Not to mention the many times you will have to change pots and pans, as the vegetables, which cook faster, have to be cooked much later than the meat—you...

The 4th International Conference on Quantum Technologies held in Moscow last month was supposed to put the spotlight on Google, who were preparing to give a lecture on a 49-qubit quantum computer they have in the works. A morning talk presented by Harvard University’s Mikhail Lukin, however, upstaged that evening’s event with a small announcement of his own – his team of American and Russian researchers had successfully tested a 51-qubit device, setting a landmark in the race for quantum supremacy. Quantum computers are considered to be part of the next generation in revolutionary technology; devices that make use of...

A group of high school and college teachers and students has transmitted sound pulses faster than light travels—at least according to one understanding of the speed of light. The results conform to Einstein's theory of relativity, so don't expect this research to lead to sound-propelled spaceships that fly faster than light. Still, the work could help spur research that boosts the speed of electrical and other signals higher than before. The standard metric for the speed of light is that of light traveling in vacuum. This constant, known as c, is roughly 186,000 miles per second, or roughly one million...

HIXTON, Wis. (WKBT) - Nestled in the small town of Hixton, Wisconsin, sits a one-of-a-kind farm. Superior Fresh is the first of its kind indoor Atlantic Salmon farm in the country and it's one of the largest aquaponics facilities in the world. The facility combines aquaculture and hydroponics, where waste from fish will be used to supply nutrients for plants grown in water. The 720-acre-farm uses recirculating technologies that collect water and reuse it to grow plants. That water is collected from the aquaculture systems which carry 120,000 pounds of Atlantic salmon. Nutrient-rich water from the fish is then used...

All of this raises critical questions for climate change law and policy. Here, the team of lawyers at the Sabin Center offers a brief primer on eleven key climate law issues highlighted by and likely to arise due to Hurricane Harvey: 1. Disaster Recovery Legislation... 2. Flood Insurance Reform... 3. Flood Maps 4. Flood Protection for Federal Projects 5. Controlling Air Emissions from Damaged Facilities 6. Handling Toxic Pollutants and Discharges of Toxic Water Pollution 7. Chemical Safety 8. Damage to Superfund Sites 9. Zoning and Building Codes 10. Public utilities 11. Climate Change Attribution and Hurricanes: Numerous scientists have...

A white man killed Robinson and wounded Kennedy after they kidnapped him, robbed him, and threatened to rape and kill his wife. The Marshal project claims to be non-partisan. It admits that it is not neutral. In a recent report, it shows that more justifiable homicides are committed by whites against black attackers than the national average. The report implies that this is because of institutionalized racism. Three things stand out from the report. It is obsessed with racial disparities, with the strong implication that they are caused by institutionalized racism, particularly white racism. It ignores previous research showing...

Russian scientists and local oil field services companies claim to have created a technology for thermochemical gas fracturing that could be an alternative to hydraulic fracturing and could increase oil production by between 1.7 and 6 times, Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing the University of Tyumen’s press service. In hydraulic fracturing, rocks are fractured with high-pressure injection of fluids, while the new breakthrough technology, as claimed by Russian scientists and media, is creating chemical reactions in the strata that contain oil. The chemicals react and emit heat and gas, which makes extraction easier and lifts well productivity, according...

Markforged, a 3D printer manufacturer based in Boston, has just announced two new models — the X3 and the X5. Both of these printers are designed to create carbon fiber-infused objects using a standard filament printing system and both can produce items that can replace or are stronger than steel objects. Both printers have auto-leveling and scanning systems to ensure each printed object is exactly like every other. Further, the printers use Markforged’s special thermoplastic fiber filament, while the X5 can add a “strand of continuous fiberglass” to create objects “19X stronger and 10X stiffer than traditional plastics.” This means...

Whaddyathink? Any insights?

Researchers from the University of Texas have discovered what they say is a powerful painkiller that acts on a previously unknown pain pathway. The synthetic compound, known as UKH-1114, effectively relieves neuropathic pain in injured mice, but it works at a much lower dose, with a longer duration of action. If the researchers can demonstrate that the drug is safe, effective and nonaddictive in humans – a process that can take years – the discovery could address one of today’s biggest public health challenges: the opioid crisis. Opioids are addictive and users quickly develop a tolerance for the drugs, requiring...

While all sound-minded Americans await the start of college football season and the NFL, to tide us over, we are soon to have the awesome American pleasure of the Little League World Series (LLWS) to enjoy. The U.S. regionals—which determine the eight American teams (in addition to the eight international teams) in the LLWS—are complete. Today, August 17, the tournament to determine the 71st LLWS champion begins. Noticeably absent again this year: girls. Someone should write a memo. In 1974—of course, thanks to a ruling from a female judge—the Little League Federal Charter was amended to allow girls to play...

A giant star near the center of our galaxy hints, once again, that Albert Einstein was correct about gravity. A group of astronomers in Germany and the Czech Republic observed three stars in a cluster near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Using data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, among others, the researchers tracked how the stars moved as they went around the monster black hole. One of the stars, called S2, showed slight deviations in its orbit that might indicate relativistic effects, scientists said. If the observations are confirmed, then it...

When the sun came up on May 28 in the year 585 BCE, the Medes and Lydians were still at war. They had been at each other’s throats for years, and it looked like there was no end in sight for their conflict. But something extraordinary happened on the battlefield that day, which changed everything. This episode also features an interview with Dr. Fred Espenak, an astrophysicist, and scientist emeritus at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

After decades of searches by archeologists in the upper Jordan Valley, the lost Roman city of Julias, believed to be the birthplace of Jesus’s apostles Andrew, Peter and Philip, may have recently been unearthed. The discovery was made during excavations at Beit Habek, located in Bethsaida, by archeologist Dr. Mordechai Aviam, head of the Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archeology at Kinneret Academic College. Bethsaida was once a fishermen’s village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and is mentioned in several New Testament books as the home of at least three of Jesus’s most important apostles, reports the...