Vast Variety

Here is the video of the Presidents speech at the party last night.

I’m not sure how convinced I am that this little party means that Obama is going to start moving on the equality front any more than he currently is. I have a feeling it’s mostly lip service.

Head nod: Joe.My.God.

In a narrow victory late Friday, the House passed, H.R. 2454:American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, otherwise known as the Waxman/Markey Bill. The bill passed 219/212 vote.

The bill now moves on to the senate where it will hopefully pass as well.

Many of the GOP would have you believe that this bill is a “Cap and Tax” bill instead of being “Cap and Trade” bill. The are using scare tactics, telling everyone that their energy costs are going to go way up. Factcheck looked into their $3100.00 claim and found it to be full of holes.

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Ever since Obama was elected Michele Bachmann (R- MN) has been pushing the boundaries of sanity and common sense to the breaking point. If she isn’t suggesting that FEMA is building hidden concentration camps around the US, or suggesting that the swine flu is some sort of Democratic crisis tool, she is claiming that Obama and the Democrats are plotting with ACORN, in order to usurp the will of the Real Republican loving American people.

Politifact adds not one but two more “Pants on Fire” awards to Bachmann’s record.

The first one comes from a Washington Times interview that she did  on June 17th. She said…

Now ACORN has been named one of the national partners, which will be a recipient again of federal money

…

And they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public. This is very concerning because the motherload of all data information will be from the census. And, of course, we think of the census as just counting how many people live in your home. Unfortunately, the census data has become very intricate, very personal (with) a lot of the questions that are asked.

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Jackson fans have been gathering all over the world, like at the Apollo Theater in New York and on the web.  I was never a huge fan of Michael, and the controversies of the last 10 years or so really soured my view of him. But his music was some of the best and helped define the 80’s in which I was a teenager.

The I-Jobs program that was recently signed into law by Governor Chet Culver is all ready starting to hand out money.

According to WHO-TV the first seven applications have been approved. All of them appear to be in the Cedar Rapids area, which was hit very hard by the 2008 flooding.

The projects would receive $45 million in I-JOBS funding. Some of the money will be pumped into Cedar Rapids’ public library, Paramount Theater, Public Works Building as well as the National Czech and Slovak Museum.

This morning Farrah Fawcett, age 62, lost her battle with cancer. 

Iowa is know as a place where the weather can change rapidly and unpredictably. That became very evident today. Most of the day it was sunny, almost unbearably hot, and very humid. At about 4:40pm that all changed and in time span of about 10 minuets.

After the break some pictures of what we got.

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I’ve always believed that the key to Humanities continued existence is the colonization of space. As long as we are tied solely to this wonderful blue marble we call Earth, our existence as a species is finite. It wouldn’t really take much to wipe us out and bring to reality a Life after People. A single asteroid impact, or a pandemic and Homo Sapiens would join their Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon cousins in extinction.

Soon the Space Shuttle fleet will be heading into retirement, the International Space Station is fully constructed, and while the Orion project will not be ready for flight for a few more years, the next step in America’s exploration of space has just began.

On June 18th Nasa launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on an Atlas V rocket. It will arrive at the moon on June 23rd where it will take up an low polar orbit, that will allow it to begin scouting out areas and conditions of locations where future astronauts may conduct long-duration lunar missions.

There are 7 main instrument packages abord the LRO.

• Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation
  The Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) will characterize the lunar radiation environment, allowing scientists to determine potential hazards to astronauts.
• Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment
  The Diviner Lunar Radiometer (DLRE) will identify cold traps – areas cold enough to preserve ice for billions of years — and potential ice deposits as well as rough terrain, rock abundance, and other landing hazards.
• Lyman Alpha Mapping Project
  The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) will search for surface ice and frost in the polar regions and provide images of permanently shadowed regions illuminated only by starlight and the glow of interplanetary hydrogen emission, the Lyman Alpha line. The bottoms of deep craters at the lunar poles might be permanently shadowed. These areas will be very cold and might hold water ice.
• Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector
  The Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND) will create high-resolution maps of hydrogen distribu¬tion and gather information about the neutron compo¬nent of the lunar radiation environment. LEND data will be analyzed to search for evidence of water ice near the moon’s surface.
• Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter
  The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) will mea¬sure landing site slopes, lunar surface roughness, and generate a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the moon. LOLA also will measure and analyze the lunar topography to identify the permanently illuminated and permanently shadowed areas. Certain mountain peaks at the lunar poles might be permanently illuminated. These regions may be good places for a solar power station.
• Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera
  Two narrow-angle cameras (NACs) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) will make high-resolution, black-and-white images of the surface, cap¬turing images of the poles with resolutions down to 1 meter (about 3.3 feet). A third, wide-angle camera (WAC), will take color and ultraviolet images over the com¬plete lunar surface at 100-meter (almost 330-foot) resolution. These images will show polar lighting conditions, identify potential resources and hazards, and aid selection of safe landing sites.
• Mini-RF
  The Miniature Radio Frequency (Mini-RF) is an advanced radar that will be used to image the polar regions and search for water ice. In addition, it will be used to demonstrate the ability to communicate with an Earth-based ground station.

For more details on the mission check out Nasa’s LRO Project website.

Photo credit: United Launch Alliance/Pat Corkery