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Elon Musk✓@elonmusk Yeah, it’s mostly fake Peter St Onge, Ph.D.✓@profstonge Tax-funded astroturf. Meaning for any country all you have to do is get a populist in one time, DOGE that sucker, and the entire left simply vanishes 🤯

Police are urging drivers to be on their guardMotorists are being warned by police about a scam that sees con artists try to fleece drivers out of cash. The rouse sees drivers duped into handing over cash for 'damage' that hasn't been caused by them. The warning comes from North Wales Police after an incident in Conwy on Monday. A man driving a Range Rover became a target for the quick cash con. Police for the area said that fraudsters will pretend that their target has damaged their vehicle's wing mirror. They will then demand that the driver pays for...

It’s coming together! Engineers for the James Webb Space Telescope have now completed two more phases of the seven-step, three-month-long mirror alignment process. This week, the team made more adjustments to the mirror segments along with updating the alignment of its secondary mirror. These refinements allowed for all 18 mirror segments to work together — for the first time — to produce one unified image. As you can see in the image above, this view of the star HD 84406 shows one image instead of the 18 views – one from each segment – that we saw earlier this week....

When a huge silver monolith was spotted in a very remote section of the desert in southeastern Utah, it immediately created a media sensation. But then it disappeared. A similar monolith had also been discovered in Romania, but now it is gone too. Then on Wednesday, everyone was buzzing about a third monolith that had been spotted in California. They are being called “alien monoliths”, but nobody knows who created them or if the three monoliths are even from the same source. But after being bombarded by the science fiction movies that Hollywood has been creating for decades, the world...

**SNIP** Like many of his fellow Democratic presidential candidates, Yang has proposed using a wide range of tools to ramp up renewable energy, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, establish new standards on emissions for buildings, cars and the entire electric grid and boost nuclear energy capacity. However, his 20-year, $4.87 trillion climate plan differs in one way and that’s in terms of geoengineering - the notion that humans should take deliberate and large-scale action concerning climate in order to stop or slow down the planet’s warming. Yang’s plan would provide $800 million to NASA, the Department of Defense and the...

Using carbon nanotubes, the Goddard team – which is led by Dr. Theodor Kostiuk of NASA’s Planetary Systems Laboratory and Solar System Exploration Division – have created a revolutionary new type of telescope mirror. These mirrors will be deployed as part of a CubeSat, one which may represent a new breed of low-cost, highly effective space-based telescopes. This latest innovation also takes advantage of another field that has seen a lot of development of late. CubeSats, like other small satellites, have been playing an increasingly important role in recent years. Unlike the larger, bulkier satellites of yesteryear, miniature satellites are...

The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same. Barack Obama, the candidate, has changed to Barack Obama, the President, but his style remains the same. We now have Obama's government of smoke and mirrors.

Mathematician Andrew Hicks was in his Drexel University office, puzzling over some problem he can no longer recall, when colleague Ron Perline walked in with a challenge. Fresh from his morning bicycle ride from Germantown, Perline was unhappy with the rearview mirror mounted on his handlebars. Its tiny surface was curved, reflecting a wide-angle view of the road behind him, but the image was badly distorted. Could math provide the path to better reflection? Perline asked. Indeed it could. Eight years and numerous calculations later, Hicks is now testing a prototype mirror - for a car, not a bike -...

For the bubbleheaded young Narcissus of myth, the mirror spun a fatal fantasy, and the beautiful boy chose to die by the side of a reflecting pond rather than leave his “beloved” behind. For the aging narcissist of Shakespeare’s 62nd sonnet, the mirror delivered a much-needed whack to his vanity, the sight of a face “beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity” underscoring the limits of self-love. Whether made of highly polished metal or of glass with a coating of metal on the back,... --snip-- To scientists, the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of mirrors make them powerful tools for exploring questions...

In Case We Can't Give Up the Cars -- Try 16 Trillion Mirrors What if we wait too long to act on global warming? What if nothing we do is enough? Already, scientists are working up plans of last resort: stratospheric sprays of sulfur, trillions of orbiting mirrors and thousands of huge off-shore saltwater fountains. Each is designed to counteract global warming by deliberately deflecting sunlight, rather than by retooling the world's economy to eliminate carbon-rich oil, coal and natural gas. More at link (a must read) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118246650280644111.html Another related article from February 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6298507.stm

Congressman Peter King (R-NY), now Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has reintroduced his National Language Act (H.R. 4408) in the 109th Congress. Congressman King's bill is a strong (???), self-executing ( got that right! ) official English bill in its own right. Look at Section 163: Sec. 163. Preserving and enhancing the role of the official language `The Government of the United States shall preserve and enhance the role of English as the official language of the United States of America. Unless specifically stated in applicable law, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Assembly Republicans rejected a $116.6 billion budget proposed Wednesday by majority Democrats despite its similarity to one proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the Legislature failed to pass a spending plan on time for the 19th consecutive year. Voting along party lines, the budget plan failed on a vote of 45 to 32, seven votes short of the two-thirds needed. In hopes of winning support, Democrats dropped plans to increase education spending by $3 billion next year and left in place Schwarzenegger's hard line against new taxes and borrowing while providing money he wanted for transportation. While...

SULLIVAN, N.Y. (AP) - Car owners around town are covering their mirrors in an attempt to outsmart a woodpecker who apparently thinks his reflection is an enemy. Tim Taylor, who owns Thruway Auto Glass, said he replaced 30 smashed mirrors last year and 18 this year because of the bird, which has claimed this area east of Syracuse as his territory. "People come in pretty mad. One guy's been in here three times already because he keeps forgetting to cover up the mirrors," Taylor said. During breeding season, male woodpeckers aggressively defend their turf, even against imaginary foes, said bird-watcher...

Police: 48-Year-Old Used Wire, Electrical Tape To Build Periscope-Like Device CHULUOTA, Fla. -- A 48-year-old man was arrested and charged with voyeurism for allegedly using a cell phone and a mirror attached to sticks to spy on women showering at a campground in Seminole County, according to Local 6 News. Police said a woman was bathing at a shower facility at Lake Mills Park Tuesday night when an insect landed on her causing her to scream for help. Her husband ran to the shower area and noticed Kevin Lambrechts standing outside the building with a machete, Local 6 News reported....

A new generation of ground-based telescopes could be up to 10 times the size of existing instruments and have vision 40 times as sharp as the Hubble space telescope.Astronomers have been hailing the plans, as a European project to build an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) enters a design testing phase. An ELT is vital if the pace of astronomical breakthroughs is to continue, say experts. The plans were outlined at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Birmingham. Concepts for ELTs include the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) being considered by the US and Canada; and the Euro50 and Overwhelmingly Large Telescope...

Sun-starved Alpine villagers 'see the light' with the help of solar mirrors By Clare Chapman in Innsbruck (Filed: 16/01/2005) Residents of an Austrian mountain village deprived of sunshine for four months of the year have found a way to beat the winter gloom. Mirrors will be installed in a sunnier spot across the valley, to reflect sunlight back to Rattenberg and eliminate the shadows that make its inhabitants feel so depressed. Franz Wurzenrainer, the mayor, said: "When weather forecasters predict a bright winter's day with plenty of sunshine, we have to take their word for it. From November to February,...

The press and media are pulling for John Kerry and John Edwards. This is so obviously true it is almost mundane – like calling a press conference to proclaim the sun rises in the East. But the press and media vociferously deny any bias and become indignant at the mere suggestion of partiality. Don’t take my word for it. The Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, Evan Thomas, recently said, “Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards … as being young and dynamic...

Same old game, just new players. Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised during last fall's recall election to end the smoke and mirror state budgeting game, the plan he released last week includes many of the gimmicks he vehemently criticized. He described former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' recent budgets as "shell games" that depended on borrowing and shaky financial assumptions. Guess what? So does Schwarzenegger's $99 billion budget. The largest chunk of proposed borrowing will come in March, when voters will be asked to approve a $15 billion bond measure to keep California from toppling over the brink of bankruptcy. Like...

WASHINGTON - Mirrors are as common as paint on the walls of health clubs, but what is so inspiring about watching yourself gasping and drenched in sweat? For exercise novices, not much, according to one study, which found that women who exercised in front of a mirror felt worse than women who exercised without them. "Placing mirrors in exercise centers may need to be reconsidered, especially in centers that are trying to attract exercise initiates," said the study in the American Psychological Association journal Health Psychology. The researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, looked at 58 sedentary women with...