Chinese Space Station Lands in Hawaiʻi

We received an emergency alert text message on our phones early AM that said space station debris over the island of Oʻahu were possible. This is the first Chinese space station Tiangong-1 falling out of orbit. This was followed 20 minutes later by another message saying this was not a test and this time the possibility was real (as opposed to the message in January about an incoming ballistic missile that turned out to be false). There were some streaks of light in the sky although this is not unusual for Honolulu, which regularly has a fireworks show for tourists. Then some images from around the island started coming in.

Prince Kūhiō Day

Today is a state holiday in Hawaiʻi. Of course I forgot about it and went to work and wondered where everyone was.

It is named after Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole. He is the only royalty that has also been a delegate to the US Congress.

Here is a link to his Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_K%C5%ABhi%C5%8D_Kalaniana%CA%BBole

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch

Congratulations to SpaceX with the Falcon Heavy launch!

I've been waiting to see this for a long time and V and I watched the live feed this morning (I let everyone at work know ahead of time and the launch kept getting delayed by wind but there was no way I was missing this).  Seeing the 27 engine core and two boosters rise up to the sky, after all the worry about vibrations and forces pulling the ship apart on launch, the simultaneous double landing of the two boosters, and "starman" casually (one arm on the wheel) flying in the Tesla above Earth was simply amazing.

It sounds like the gliches were that two of the engines failed to ignite on the central core during landing so it smashed into the ocean at 300 mph and damaged two of the drone ship engines. And, they overshot the Hohmann transfer to Mars orbit.  The latest I saw, a few minutes ago, is that it is headed to the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Juniper!

I call this a huge win! A company, not a country, put something into a heliocentric orbit that will make it out to the Asteroid Belt and back. With all the negative things happening in the news both in the US and around the world it is wonderful to have something positive, exciting (a risk and an achievement), and simply fun for a change.

That is all for now.  I am going to try to add some screen captures I took while watching the live stream (it is unreal to see the car with Earth in the background) and a graph of the predicted orbit. One last comment however, in the followup news conference when Elon Musk was answering questions he said something to the effect that this was just a start, he could easily imagine scaling up the frequency of launches, with simultaneous recoveries and returns, and that they needed to be thinking even bigger.

testing

testing

facebook

I am torn about facebook.  On one hand I don't like it.  One company with effectively a monopoly having that much control over people's communications, being able to experiment on people, and collect all of that information and sell it or provide it to law enforcement, should not have as much freedom as it does.  Many years ago I set up a profile on facebook but then I quickly closed it back down because of my concerns.  However, over the years more and more people I know rely on facebook for communication.  This has led to me being left out.  My family shares pictures and communicates there.  Friends I know share information.  Also professionally, I am left not knowing about important information related to my job.  I hate being left out of "common knowledge" information at work because my coworkers share it on facebook.  I have tried setting up accounts with alternative social networking sites but my family, friends, and colleagues don't use them so it ends up being pointless.  Finally, now you can't access the functionality of some websites without a facebook account to log into. 

I read a few weeks ago that most people get their news via facebook than news websites.  Not being on facebook this surprised me.  As an exploratory experiment I set up a fake account on facebook not using my real name, image, or any personal information.  A lot of the videos and games are a waste of time (although I did make 6 million rather quickly playing a few online poker games---too bad it was fake money) but wow, there really is a lot of information I've been missing out on.  I was able to get updates from NASA on the SLS project, follow politics, and there was a huge amount of information about the Free Palestine movement that I had not seen before.  I also liked and followed some random things just to throw a wrench in the works so it wasn't too real and close to my interests. 

But then the other side of facebook came up.  I received advertising and friend suggestions targeted at people in the military and places on the west coast.  Facebook sent me advertisements to "meet my Muslim life partner."  I tried out a profiling tool that uses facebook information and it predicted that I was single, conservative, and had an art education.  People that know me in real life know this is not exactly accurate, but I can see how facebook used the information I was connected to, and the negatives that I was not connected to, in order to come up with these guesses.

What is the social effect of dividing people up so that they only see subsets of information from certain perspectives?  I can guess that it might lead to more extremism.  This new ways of providing news does not allow for shared dialogues over a common frame of reference---like reading the Washington Post each day when it cannot be tailored for individual interests but has to be written for all readers.  That being said, in the past the common dialogue has been from a very biased perspective on certain issues---often influenced by the government and liability. 

We have laws in the US about monopolies, especially monopolies over news information, for very good reasons.  I think it is time we started applying them to companies like facebook.  It is too dangerous for one company to be able to categorize people, link them in networks, and provide tailored information to them unchecked.  At the same time, I also see a value in being able to bring people together with common interests so that they can share information and organize.  However, these two aspects are not mutually exclusive.

While I like the old western movies about the lone holdout that wins the day in the face of long odds, I will probably have to start using facebook again.  I don't like being forced into this.  However, being out of the loop is having increasing costs both at home and at work.  I just want to encourage people to push for bringing facebook under news reporting monopoly regulation so I can feel better about this. 

Hurricanes all around us!

We are surrounded by hurricanes.  There are three going on in our part of the Pacific right now.  The map above shows Hawai'i in the middle (from WunderMap). 

The Pacific ocean is unusually warm.  It has been very warm and humid here with more rain than normal.  Ridges in the distance like diamond head are turning green and they are usually brown this time of year.  It is also hard to sleep at night because of the heat (we don't have air conditioning).  The heat index last night at midnight was 90 degrees F. 

"Patriot" act still not dead

A federal appeals court reversed a lower court ruling that the NSA eavesdropping on the telephones of hundreds of millions of Americans (link).  Also, have a look at this article (Patriot Act is counter to the ideals of this nation)

Here it is again people; the fourth amendment. 

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Of course over time various governments have tried to engineer loopholes such as the "third-party exception," the "silver platter doctrine" and even the "Barny Fife loophole."  However, how can these be valid without a constitutional amendment---if the constitution is the supreme law of the United States?  The fourth amendment was written to stand on its own; there is no phrase in it that says "except as determined by government loopholes."

How about we all start adding the fourth amendment to our email signatures?  Just to remind the people who are reading our email how illegal that is.  That is both a fourth amendment and first amendment issue.

Below is a draft I put together for people to use:

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Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The fourth amendment means whoever is eavesdropping on this email without permission is violating federal law. Email is a document and is the modern equivalent of "papers and effects" in the wording of the constitution. This includes federal employees working for federal agencies. No legal loopholes are allowed according to the constitution (the supreme law of the United States of America) and there is no indemnification by your employer; you are personally responsible and accountable. If you have read this I have to advise you to turn yourself in to the local law authorities for prosecution---I will be pressing charges---in order to avoid possible obstruction of justice charges being added to your case.

First Amendment to the United States Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Email is a form of speech and a form of press in the sense of the wording of the first amendment. This means that I am within my rights to give the notice above about fourth amendment violations.

Geography Quiz Answers

What is the capital of Canada?  Ottowa (not Toronto)

What is the capital of Australia?  Canberra (not Sydney)

By land, what is the minimum number of countries you have to cross to get from Norway to North Korea?  One, Russia borders both. 

What is the third largest country by population?  The United States

Which country has the largest Christian population in the world?  The United States

What country has most of the world's Muslims? Indonesia

How many countries in Scandinavia are not in the EU?  Depending on your definition of Scandinavia: The most narrow definition is continental Norway, Denmark and Sweden.  Norway is not part of the EU---so one.  However, Iceland is also sometimes considered part of Scandinavia and is not in the EU---two.  Greenland is politically a part of Denmark and was part of the EEC (European Economic Community, which was a forerunner to the EU) but voted to withdraw in 1982---so perhaps the answer is three.  Svalbard is a semi-international area that is administered as a part of Norway, but it is complicated (see the Svalbard treaty and the Politics of Svalbard), for example, US citizens can live and work there without a visa---so maybe the answer climbs to three and a half.  I am actually quite proud of knowing about this.  One time while living in Europe a French citizen accused me of not knowing about geography because I was an American.  Then a few sentences later he couldn't remember the name of "the country in Scandinavia that was not part of the EU" and I got to rake him over the coals with my response (he was thinking of Norway, but I didn't let him get off so easily).  It is a stretch but we could try to push the number up even higher; the Kola Norwegians live in what is today a part of Russia, which is not in the EU; it is not clear to me that the Kola Peninsula and the area around Murmansk should not be considered part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, especially given the cultural and historical ties to Norway---three and three quarters.  Another complicated answer is how many nations in Scandinavia are part of the EU?  Read about Åland, the Faroe Islands, and Sápmi, for a start. 

 Apart from Mexico and Canada, which the US shares borders with, what is the closest country to the US geographically? Let's jump to one of the most extreme stretches.  It could be argued that the US also shares a land border with Chile and New Zealand...to be continued. 

51 Eridani b

The Gemeni Planet Imager snapped a photo of a planet 96 light years away, 51 Eridani b. 

The planet is hot and glowing in the infrared.  It is the dot next to the "b" in the image above.  The GPI uses optical tricks to mask most of the light from the star it orbits (resulting in the circular mottled artifacts in the image), which at this distance would otherwise swamp out the light coming from the planet.  It is orbiting 51 Eridani at about the distance of Saturn from the sun. 

It is easy to be underwhelmed with all the news coming out about planets outside of our solar system in recent years.  Just dwell on this for a moment.  If someone had asked you, would you think it was possible to see the light, from a planet, 9.08 × 10¹⁵ kilometers (5.64 × 10¹⁴ miles) away? 

Using nuclear exhaust and traveling at 10% of the speed of light it would take a probe about 1,000 years to travel that distance (although less time would occur on the probe because of relativistic time dilation) to get its own close up picture. 

over polarized political news

I found a nice CNN op-ed by Julian Zelizer that spells out many things about modern "news" that bother me but I have not been able to articulate as well.  Here is a link to the original and I have quoted some passages that stand out to me in particular below:

"The insistence on dividing politics into clear categories of "liberal" versus "conservative" ... has remained so through our current age, when everything must be red or blue. ... public opinion is often all over the place on key policy issues, news coverage, like politicians, tends to play into a more polarized vision of politics."

"The problem is that this kind of news coverage actually plays a big role in polarizing the electorate. Rather than presenting nuance and areas of agreement, television news has tended to offer politics that stress one position or the other. The divisions are further amplified by the fact that more Americans now tune in to networks, and websites, that present the news from a partisan perspective. The cycle never ends. "

"... the fight between them was more important than the substance of what they said. While humans love to watch confrontation and conflict, there were many people like ...Walter Cronkite in this formative era of news who didn't believe that it was the job of their industry to satisfy those demands. Rather it was to provide the best information and reporting about the big stories of the day. The rest was for the entertainment shows."

"Too much of television news is now about the fight between the panelists, not the issues. ... For decades, there has been a premium on panelists who can light up the airwaves with dramatic and contentious arguments. ..., viewers often tune in to see the panelists go after one another rather than try to rationally work through the problems of the day. The incentives for television hosts and panelists is to be confrontational and to be shocking. That draws the ratings."

"The medium has changed even more dramatically since the 1990s. Rather than having left and right on one show, we have now divided left and right on different networks. Media personalities ... argue about the people who are no longer in the room, ..."

"One of the worst effects of these trends has been that the public has decreasing trust in the news as an institution. A recent study by the Newseum Institute found that only 24% polled believed the news is unbiased. Last year, Gallup found that trust in the news media has reached an all-time low."

A Few Geography Questions

I have a few questions about geography that I like to ask people.  A good one to ask people in the US is "what is the capital of Canada, a country on our own border."  It is surprising how many people cannot answer that.  The capital of Australia is another one.

This one is fun: By land, what is the minimum number of countries you have to cross to get from Norway to North Korea.

Some questions do not have a single answer and depend on definitions that are not always clear.  Like, how many countries in Scandinavia are not in the EU.  Also, apart from Mexico and Canada, which the US shares borders with, what is the closest country to the US geographically.

Most people can tell you right away what the two largest countries are by population, China and India.  However, people often have a hard time saying what the third and fourth largest countries are by population.  Think about it for a moment.

Okay, I'll give away one of the answers.  Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world by population.  A surprising number of people (and not just Americans) cannot even point to Indonesia on a map.  The common language, Indonesian, is one of the easiest languages to learn.  How many people do you know that have studied Indonesian?  Can you take this as a class in schools in the US?  I suspect Indonesia will become a larger international player in the future, definitely in an economic sense.  We should plan ahead to capitalize on this.

Bonus questions: Which country has the largest Christian population in the world? What country has most of the world's Muslims? 

Trump leading the Republicans

I was really surprised to see the results of a Washington Post poll showing support for various republican candidates for the 2016 election.  Trump is leading with almost 25% support (blue upper left).  Trump, Walker, and Bush are the three front runners with almost half of all the support (blue, orange and yellow, left). 

If I were a member of the republican party I would be very embarrassed about this.  As a US citizen that cares about my country I am embarrassed that this is the best that one of the two major parties can come up with.  Again, maybe this just goes to show that we need to get rid of the party system in elections to keep it from becoming a farce of media clowns.

Here is how the democratic candidates are breaking down.

Clinton has a major lead.  I didn't used to have a problem with her until her support of the "patriot" act and Iraq war.  At this point I am either voting for Sanders or a third party candidate (which is also Sanders, he is not a declared democrat) in order to not throw my vote away showing false support for one of the two ruling parties.  The current green party candidates are Darryl Cherney, JillStein, Kent Mesplay, Bill Kreml and SKCM Curry.  The libertarian party candidates are Marc Feldman, Cecil Ince, Steve Kerbel, Darryl Perry, Derrick Michael Reid, and Joy Waymire. 

It seems self evident that no one person, or one political party, should be in control of the government pushing their agenda over other people.  Imagine if the representation of people better reflected the diversity of people in the United States. This would encourage working together to achieve common goals. 

V is graduating!

Okay, I've really dropped off with the posts over the last year, especially ones about family.  The reason is that things have really intensified at work and I have had to shift practically all of my focus to that.  However, there is something happening today that needs to be mentioned.

V has been taking CNA classes on the weekends (it can't be during the week because of my job and the little kids).  Today is the graduation.  V passed with honors and was selected as one of the three students in the program to speak today at the graduation.  Usually I drop her off in the mornings (Saturday and Sunday) for classes and pick her up in the afternoon when she is finished (so that I have a car during the day to get around).  However, today we are doing things differently.  M and T went with her in the car to see her graduate and I am staying home with the little kids.  

Rental prices in Honolulu

Here is an excerpt from an article posted a few days ago on Hawai'i News Now "Honolulu home rents go through the roof":

 "... a 3 bedroom home rental in Honolulu is now nearly $2,675 per month.    That's about $700 a month more than California and twice as much as the national average.   That's more than a 14-percent increase from last year...a trend far ahead of anywhere else."

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/29602319/honolulu-home-rents-go-through-the-roof

Bernie Sanders

I like what I am hearing and reading about Bernie Sanders for the next president.  He is an independent that was dead set against the US-Iraq war.  He is also interested in controlling the rising cost of education, creating jobs for people, and helping to build back up the decaying infrastructure in the US.  Look at some of these links for more about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#Political_positions

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liam-miller/bernie-sanders-president-2016-campaign_b_7557714.html

https://berniesanders.com/issues/

Kepler-452b

Check this out: http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723 

NASA is announcing an earth-like planet today.  It is larger and warmer than Earth, but not that much larger and warmer.  It's star is in the same class as our sun.  It is on the edge but within the conservative habital zone and well within the optimistic habital zone.   Interestingly, it is 1.5 billion years older than Earth so there has been much more time for life to evolve.  The only problem is it is 1,400 light years away.  However, "Earths" are out there; it's only a matter of time until we find one a lot closer.  I calculated in 2011 that the nearest one may only be 155 light years away: http://ploener.blogspot.com/2011/11/fermi-paradox-and-flightless-birds.html

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update: I noticed this posting had 100's of views seconds after posting it.  I ran a search for "Kepler-452b" in google and this post came up on the top page!

Government Mass Surveillance Petition

https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/content/surveillance-interstitial/

I urge you to try the link above to take a short quiz and sign a petition to stop the US government from collecting data on us without any transparency or accountability.

Here is a link directly to the petition

https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/s/section-215-petition

By the way, this is an unconstitutional violation of the fourth amendment:

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Again, the government feels that it can just ignore the constitution and it is our fault for letting them get away with it.  

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Update May 7th

Court Rules NSA Bulk Data Collection Was Never Authorized By Congress

Some more fun music discoveries, thepianoguys

EM Drive Buzz

The controversial EM drive has created some new results lately. 

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/ 

Several groups have worked on versions of this.  In the UK, China, and the US.  NASA tested it in a vacuum for the first time and is reporting evidence of thrust---that's thrust without propellant! 

IF this pans out it will be huge.  Not having to carry propellant with you can change everything about how we currently do space travel.  It only depends on energy, which can be collected from the sun or generated in reactors... 

Our solar system in more and more detail, the year of dwarf planets

Two unexplored corners of our solar system are coming into focus this year, which seems to be the year of the dwarf planet.  New Horizons is approaching the dwarf planet Pluto, currently about 90 days out from its nearest flyby, and has just started sending back the first fuzzy color images with orbiting Charon (actually Pluto and Charon orbit each other in space as a double dwarf planet) clearly visible.

Expect to see more and more detail into July. I wonder if there will also be good images of the moons, Hydra, Kerberos, Nix, and Styx. 

Dawn is mapping Ceres in amazing detail, seeing the surface in the image below it is hard to imagine the best we had a few months ago was a fuzzy image of the entire dwarf planet.

NASA has also released a software download to let people explore the surface of the asteroid Vesta, south pole imaged below.