Month: December 2015

SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket after launching it to space

Posted by

[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH] Date: December 22, 2015 at 06:06:05 EST

To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: Clips

<http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/21/10640306/spacex-elon-musk-rocket-landing-success&gt;

SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket after launching it to space

By Loren Grush

Dec 21 2015

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed upright on solid ground at Cape Canaveral, Florida this evening, after traveling into space and back. It’s the first time SpaceX has been able to gently touch down the Falcon 9 post-launch — something the company has been trying to do for the past year. It’s a big first step toward reusable rockets.

This launch was also the first time SpaceX has flown since June, after one of its Falcon 9 rockets exploded en route to the International Space Station. Now this return-to-flight mission has made history — no one else has ever landed a rocket that has gone as deep into space as the Falcon 9.

It’s a big first step toward reusable rockets

As big as this is for SpaceX, it’s not the first time a vertical take-off rocket has landed upright after launching into space. In November, Jeff Bezos’ private spaceflight company Blue Origin announced that it had landed its rocket New Shepard post-launch. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is more complex than New Shepard: it’s designed to go higher in space, and much faster.

Both accomplishments suggest the shape of things to come, says Charles Miller, president of NexGenSpace, a spaceflight consulting firm. “I think it’s very clear the future is reusable space, and the rest of the world is playing catch up to the innovation that’s taking place in America’s space entrepreneurs,” said Miller.

[snip]

Why America Is Moving Left

Posted by

Date: December 22, 2015 at 10:50:55 EST To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: America Is Becoming More Liberal – The Atlantic

<http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-america-is-moving-left/419112/&gt;

Why America Is Moving Left

Republicans may have a lock on Congress and the nation’s statehouses—and could well win the presidency—but the liberal era ushered in by Barack Obama is only just beginning.

By Peter Beinhart

Jan/Feb 2016

Over roughly the past 18 months, the following events have transfixed the nation.

In July 2014, Eric Garner, an African American man reportedly selling loose cigarettes illegally, was choked to death by a New York City policeman.

That August, a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed an African American teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. For close to two weeks, protesters battled police clad in military gear. Missouri’s governor said the city looked like a war zone.

In December, an African American man with a criminal record avenged Garner’s and Brown’s deaths by murdering two New York City police officers. At the officers’ funerals, hundreds of police turned their backs on New York’s liberal mayor, Bill de Blasio.

In April 2015 another young African American man, Freddie Gray, died in police custody, in Baltimore. In the chaos that followed, 200 businesses were destroyed, 113 police officers were injured, and 486 people were arrested. To avoid further violence, a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox was postponed twice, then played in an empty stadium with police sirens audible in the distance.

[snip]

The Important Education Issue Leaders Are Still Ignoring

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Date: December 22, 2015 at 10:51:53 EST To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: The Important Education Issue Leaders Are Still Ignoring

<https://ourfuture.org/20151222/the-important-education-issue-leaders-are-still-ignoring&gt;

The Important Education Issue Leaders Are Still Ignoring

By Jeff Bryant

Dec 22 2015

One of the more telling combinations of news stories from the past week found education policy insiders in Washington, D.C. rejoicing over the passage of a new law rewriting federal education policy while at the same time a new report revealed how political leadership is continuing to fail America’ public schools.

This is not to say that revising federal education policy wasn’t a worthwhile goal. For sure, the new law, dubbed the Every Student Succeeds Act, has corrected some harmful aspects of federal education policy. Many good commentaries have pointed out significant problems with the new law too. But such is the nature of legislating. You don’t always get everything you want.

However, despite all the celebration surrounding ESSA, the issue that remains mostly unaddressed in education policy is the massive under-funding that most states continue to inflict on public schools. The ugly truth about how political leaders continue to underfund local schools was exposed in a new report from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Schools Aren’t Getting The Money They Need

The new CBPP report finds, “Most states provide less support per student for elementary and secondary schools – in some cases, much less – than before the Great Recession.” This is an issue that should be front-and-center in education discussion, not something burbling in the background while education policy leaders congratulate each other over a job well done.

As the commentary from CBPP on its report explains, state funding is a key factor in any assessment of the health and well being of the nation’s public schools. K-12 schools generally rely on their respective state government to supply about 46 percent of their funding. Local governments provide another 45 percent, and the federal government chips in only 9 percent on average.

[snip]

 South China Sea

Posted by

[Note: This item comes from friend David Rosenthal. DLH] From: “David S. H. Rosenthal” <dshr@abitare.org>

Date: December 19, 2015 at 16:19:54 EST

To: dewayne@warpspeed.com

Subject: South China Sea

<http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/somewhere-beyond-sea-by-bloggersrus.html&gt;

Access to commodities and trade routes have provoked wars for centuries. Yet having staked out its claim in what it claims as its historic territory, the Middle Kingdom can be patient. As with commercial and political interests elsewhere, the game in the South China Sea is to step over accepted boundaries and dare anyone to push back. While we fix our gaze on ISIS, the GOP clown show, and the Bernie vs. Hillary contest, somewhere beyond the sea the future is waiting.

   David.

This Ominous Omnibus Bill Is a Holiday Giveaway to the Wealthy

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Date: December 18, 2015 at 00:50:34 EST To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: This Ominous Omnibus Bill Is a Holiday Giveaway to the Wealthy

<http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/17/ominous-omnibus-bill-holiday-giveaway-wealthy&gt;

This Ominous Omnibus Bill Is a Holiday Giveaway to the Wealthy

In budget compromise, we’re witnessing an orgy of predatory, omnivorous bipartisanship

By Bill Moyers, Michael Winship

Dec 17 2015

 How big is Amazon?

Posted by

From: “David S. H. Rosenthal” <dshr@abitare.org> Date: December 18, 2015 at 09:42:49 EST

To: dewayne@warpspeed.com

Subject: How big is Amazon?

<http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-compared-to-traditional-retail-in-one-chart-2015-11&gt;

Bloomberg reports that Deutsche Bank estimates that in the US Amazon will significantly outsell all department store chains combined this year and will outsell them by a factor of 2 in 2017.

<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/amazon-is-capturing-bigger-slice-of-u-s-online-holiday-spending&gt;

Amazon took in 39.3 percent of e-commerce spending from Nov. 1 through Dec. 6, up from 37.9 percent during the same period a year earlier, according to Slice Intelligence, which gathers data through e-mail receipts of 3.5 million shoppers. You’d have to combine the Web sales of the next 21 retailers, including Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy Co., Macy’s Inc. Home Depot Inc., Nordstrom Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp., to match Amazon’s share, Slice data shows.

And it dominates the cloud:

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/23/amazon_q3_2015_aws/&gt;

In the past three months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had made about as much money – $521m … – as its online shop did in the US and Canada. The public cloud has more than one million active customers in 190 countries, we’re told.

   David.

Rebuilding the middle class

Posted by

From: “David S. H. Rosenthal” <dshr@abitare.org>Date: December 18, 2015 at 09:36:56 EST

To: dewayne@warpspeed.com

Subject: Rebuilding the middle class

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/magazine/rebuilding-the-middle-class-the-army-way.html&gt;

Put simply: The disappearance of middle management is a central part of the disappearance of the middle class. Without large corporations that have a place for people at many levels of skill and ability and a reasonably clear path of promotion, tens of millions of Americans are left underemployed and underpaid.

   David.