SpaceX sets launch date for world's most powerful rocket

SpaceX, the American space transport company founded by PayPal and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk that is responsible for the Dragon space capsule and Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, has announced a late 2013 or 2014 launch date for the world’s most powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy. Overshadowed by only the Saturn V moon rocket that was decommissioned after the Apollo program, the Falcon Heavy will be able to carry payloads of 53 metric tons (117,000 pounds or 53,070 kg) into orbit, which is more than the maximum take-off weight of a Boeing 737-200 loaded with 136 passengers, luggage and fuel.

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Richard Branson's extreme submarine

CNN interview here.

Their submersible, designed by Graham Hawkes, is one of the more interesting parts of the journey. Shaped more like a dolphin than a traditional submarine, the Virgin Oceanic craft has an operating depth of 37,000 feet--about seven miles--which means it has to be able to withstand outrageous pressure, 1,500 times that of an airplane. Constructed of carbon fiber and titanium (with a quartz dome), the craft is currently undergoing tests--at that depth, the smallest crack would result in certain death for the pilots, both due to the immense pressure (13 million pounds) and the simple fact that there exist no other vehicles capable of a rescue mission. The sub travels at a maximum of three knots, and can dive at 350 feet per minute, so a dive to the bottom of the Mariana trench and back would take around five hours.

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Americans of all political stripes are in the throes of a “radical democratic awakening,”

GRITtv: Dennis Kucinich: What Is Economic Democracy?

After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet

Earth won’t always be fit for occupation. We know that in two billion years or so, an expanding sun will boil away our oceans, leaving our home in the universe uninhabitable—unless, that is, we haven’t already been wiped out by the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a multibillion-year collision course with our Milky Way. Moreover, at least a third of the thousand mile-wide asteroids that hurtle across our orbital path will eventually crash into us, at a rate of about one every 300,000 years.

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Kucinich introduces resolution to end war

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Representatives Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC) and eight others today introduced a bipartisan, privileged resolution which, if enacted, would require President Barack Obama to withdraw all U.S. Armed Forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2011.

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A post shows how corporate media lies to Americans

Via Crooks and Liars

Jack Cafferty Calls Social Security a 'Social Welfare Program'

You know, I used to have some respect for Jack Cafferty even though I knew back then that we were on primarily opposite ends of the political spectrum because he spoke out against the Bush administration when that wasn't necessarily the most popular thing for a conservative to be doing, but he just lost me completely here. Calling Social Security a "welfare program" is just shameless.

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My comment

Whether you call Social Security welfare or entitlements, as always the Corporate Monopoly Media treats Americans like idiots. It's time to evolve out of a primitive representative republic and into a real Citizen's Democracy with real time Internet based democratic Controls.

Solidarity from coast to coast

IN DOZENS of state capitals and cities across the country, workers from both the private and public sector, political activists, students and community members organized rallies to demonstrate their support for the struggle against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his union-busting attack.

The outpourings of support--from Los Angeles to New York City, and from Boise, Idaho, to Miami--showed how fed up people are around the country with the politicians' pro-corporate, anti-worker agenda, and how much they sense the importance of the fight in Wisconsin.

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U.S. needs its own democracy movement

The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

Read full piece here

Egypt, Jordan, and the Arab world's 'watershed' moment

(CNN) -- The protests that have spread through parts of the Arab world led to dramatic change in another country Tuesday, as Jordan's king dismissed his government.

King Abdullah II made the decision following protests in recent weeks in which several thousand people demanded economic and political reforms.

Experts on the region said Tuesday Abdullah's decision was aimed at warding off larger-scale demonstrations in the wake of the huge protests in Tunisia and Egypt. The Tunisia protests, which began the movement, toppled that country's government. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak has fired his Cabinet, but protesters in massive demonstrations continue to call for his ouster.

The protests -- which have also caught on to various extents in Algeria, Yemen, and Sudan -- have proved to be "a real watershed event for the Arab world," said Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. "It's really unprecedented."

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Sci-Fi To Fact: Planet Hunters Find Worlds Like Earth

As recently as 20 years ago, no one knew if planets outside our solar system existed. But now we know of more than 500. The biggest astronomy headlines in 2010 came from the quest for planets far outside our solar system that are similar to Earth.

Here

Archive Gallery: PopSci's Most Fantastic Space Colonies

Let's face it, sometime within the next century or so, overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources, an alien invasion -- or perhaps the optimistic spirit of adventure -- will force us to leave Earth in search of a new habitat. Earlier this week, NASA and DARPA announced a preliminary "Hundred-Year Starship" program for sending pioneers on permanent missions to Mars. To many, relocation from Earth sounds like a glorified exile, but some retro-futuristic eye candy from the Popular Science archives will surely change their minds.

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So called "Progressives" don't get it

The idiots at Crooks and Liars claim to hate republicans and conservatives, yet day after day they refer to the rethugs as the GOP! I could scream, this is beltway talk and it goes against everything they claim to stand for as a beltway critics. I will never use this offensive term because I don't kiss anyone's ass and do not believe they are the grand ole party, to say that as a left leaning person is stupid, always was, always will be. Will people wisen up? I don't have much hope for this ass kissing nation brainwashed by an omnipresent, greedy, relentless corporate media that represents the rich over everyone else. If a site, any site, that claims to be for the people, unbiased, and independent uses the Village line g.o.p., that instantly sends up a red flag that it is lying and is indeed speaking by and for the D.C. beltway village in concern troll fashion.

Democracy has been perverted by capitalism.

Democracy in practice only benefits the upper class, the lower class is not ignorant to their status and knowingly participates in their own subjugation. It's really quite remarkable, and even with this knowledge the middle and working classes don't seek a better life alternative. History will show how the idea of being fair, democracy, was intentionally used by the rich unfairly for decades until a point of enlightenment for society. Unfortunately we are still in the murky age of deception, enlightenment is within reach as the stinking rich reach with ever more greed which will no doubt backfire on them altering democracy, society, and equality for the better. Democracy needs to work for everyone, for this to work right capitalism must be phased out.

92% of Americans prefer Swedish style Democracy

The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth. Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they'd rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution.

As the new Forbes billionaires list, released Wednesday, testifies, the richest Americans are getting richer, even as the country as a whole gets poorer. After 2005 income inequality continued to balloon.

READ the study:

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The Progressive Politics of Happiness

Here of some examples of the kind of policies we should promote:

Paid family leave. Only the United States, Swaziland, Liberia and Papua New Guinea don’t guarantee at least paid maternity leave. Most wealthy countries also offer paid leave for fathers.

Paid sick days. Only a handful of desperately poor countries and the United States, don’t guaranteed paid leave when you’re sick. 86 percent of food service workers get no paid sick days and they come to work sick and get you sick—they can be fired if they don’t.

Paid vacation time. Only the United States, Guyana, Suriname, Nepal and Burma don’t guarantee at least some paid vacation time. Every European gets at least four weeks off with pay a year. We should support the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, sponsored in Congress by a true progressive, Representative Alan Grayson of Florida. It’s a very modest proposal, but a step in the right direction.

Here’s another idea: the choice of shorter work-time. In the Netherlands and some other European countries, workers have a legal right to reduce their hours without losing their jobs. They keep the same hourly pay, pro-rated benefits and full health care. This is an enormous expansion of personal freedom—the right to choose time over money, to select shorter hours of work without losing one’s livelihood.

Each of these policy reforms is essential to good health. Indeed, our lack of these rights is part of the reason Americans have the worst health in the industrial world, despite paying twice as much as everyone else does for healthcare. We are almost twice as likely to suffer chronic illness in old age as Europeans are, for example. Workplace stress in America is a killer, the “new tobacco” in the words of one cardiologist.

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Fake Mars Mission: 'Real World' Meets Space Travel

A fake mission to Mars is getting under way at a research institute in Moscow, where six men will spend the next year and a half inside a mock spaceship.

The international "crew" includes two men from Europe, one from China and three from Russia. They'll spend the next 520 days living inside just a few bus-sized modules at Russia's Institute for Biomedical Problems.

The team will have to put up with endless astronaut food, the grind of exercise and maintenance work, science experiments, fake emergencies — plus extreme isolation from the outside world.

"We get to see what happens to them over the course of an awful long time, and that's not been done before," says Nick Kanas, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco who worked on a 105-day pilot study leading up to this new Mars simulation.

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No Longer a fan of Rachel Maddow!

Tonight I tuned into her show, which I rarely do anymore since she became a mouthpiece for republican jerks using her to spread their talking points. Tonight was the last straw. There is a ridiculously stupid saying in liberal blog land, iokiyr, which mean these weak kneed "liberals" and "progressives" believe the thugs can do as they please with impunity. Retarded, that's putting it mildly. How can you be an opposition party and believe such a counterproductive thing? To add insult to injury Maddow said, "iokiyr always and forever" I was boiling mad, and refuse to watch her show again. It's never okay, forever we must fight them, prove them wrong. Always. Sadly the transformation to corporate drone is now complete. Only Keith Olbermann still defends progressive values, although that is will no doubt change if MSNBC happens to read this post. Americans better wake up to the media monopolies who now brainwash them on all stations at all times, radio and the printed press are not better and sometimes much worse. God bless America and the independent thinkers that made her great.

War Is Making You Poor Act

Today, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation called the “War Is Making You Poor Act,” which aims to call attention to a) how much money is being spent to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and b) how budget gimmicks are used to pay for them. Grayson’s legislation would slash the $159 billion request for supplemental war funding and use that money to deliver a tax break for all Americans. Grayson demands the Pentagon use its currently existing $549 billion defense budget to fight the wars. Speaking on the House floor today, Grayson underscored that the point of his legislation is to highlight the costs of the wars:

http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=1098067

Future of the Car: The Electric-Car Cheat Sheet

In the past three years, the thought of companies like Chevrolet and Nissan selling lithium-ion-powered cars has gone from laughable to old news. Late this year, the plug-in Chevy Volt and pure-electric Nissan Leaf arrive. Carmakers from Ford to Toyota will follow in 2011 and 2012 with new electrified models of their own. In the beginning, the electric-car revolution probably won’t seem so revolutionary: a few thousand cars here and there. As long as automakers and battery companies keep pushing technology forward, however—by scaling up production and developing more-powerful ways to store electricity and power a car with it—the future for cars that plug into the wall will continue to brighten. Here’s where this emerging industry stands today.

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ParEcon Questions & Answers

If not capitalism, if not socialism, if not anarchism, if not Green economics, if not Solidarity economics, then what?

Our answer is participatory economics or, for short, parecon.

We mean for participatory economics or parecon to transcend capitalism, to implement the best socialist values, to transcend what have been socialist institutions, to achieve anarchist aspirations, to be green, to promote solidarity, and to accomplish production, consumption, and allocation in a truly classless way.

We do not mean participatory economics to be a blueprint. It is not and could not be and should not be a detailed map of a better economy.

We mean for participatory economics to be a description of a new economy's institutions. We mean for participatory economics to be a description of the central features a desirable new economy will need to have to be both viable and worthy.

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96-0: Fed Audit Passes Senate

Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the Federal Reserve's most outspoken defender, came out in support of an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to force transparency on the Federal Reserve. Gregg's surprising support gives the amendment a major boost.

The Sanders amendment began as a reflection of language passed by the House and cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) that would authorize a broad audit of the Fed. In negotiations with Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and officials from the Fed, Sanders scaled back his audit and restricted it to a one-time look at lending activity from December 1, 2007 until the present -- information that the Fed has so far fought to keep from disclosing. It goes further in some respects than the Paul-Grayson measure, in that it mandates the disclosure of recipients of Fed largesse. (Background on the compromise here.)

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New Software Can Hire, Evaluate, and Pay Workers, Making Human Bosses Obsolete

Anyone looking for work these days knows how hard it is to get your resume into the hands of a human. Fortunately, perhaps, it may soon be possible to get hired without that step.

Freelancer.com, an Australian jobs site, is using software algorithms that allow computers to automatically recruit, hire and pay workers to do a wide range of tasks, New Scientist reports.

"Software can now simply post a job and hire one, three, or 500 humans; software can now literally assemble an army overnight to solve complex problems," says Matt Barrie, Freelancer.com's CEO, in a press release.

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Graphene is Next

The Substance Found in Pencils will Speed Up our Computers One Thousand Fold

Graphene. If you’ve never heard about it, don’t worry, a lot of people haven’t, because it’s really only been “discovered” relatively recently, and most of the truly interesting news about it has been in the last year. The amazing thing is that we’ve actually been using it for centuries, in the form of the common pencil. Graphene is a form of carbon, much like carbon nanotubes and other fullerenes, with one major difference. While fullerenes are 3D structures of carbon atoms, graphene is a flat sheet. It’s a 2D lattice of carbon with bonds as strong as diamond. It’s this sheetlike nature that makes it so useful in a pencil. As you write, individual planes of graphite are sheared off the end and deposited on the paper. Those individual planes are pure graphene.

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Obama Seeks To Stabilize A Risky Business

Obama's insistence on addressing derivatives — and the sense shared by lobbyists on all sides of the issue that derivatives will inevitably fall under greater scrutiny of some kind — represents a remarkable turnaround.

A dozen years ago, President Bill Clinton, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Congress all opposed government oversight of derivatives. A law enacted in 2000 made it clear that most derivatives could not be regulated. Derivatives serve a legitimate purpose in hedging risks and there was concern at the time that imposing too much regulation would put the U.S. out of line in what is truly a globalized market.

Some of those worries remain valid. Still, the former consensus against regulation has flipped around almost entirely. Derivatives are widely viewed as a key contributor to the near-collapse of the financial markets in 2008. It's clear that any financial overhaul bill that clears Congress this year will impose new restrictions on derivatives trading.

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