XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Sunday 13 February 2011

NASA Considers Space Station Family Portrait - will play host to Five new visitors from space agencies all over the world -

NASA Considers Space Station Family Portrait - will play host to Five new visitors from space agencies all over the world - 




NASA is considering a plan to snap a photo of the International Space Station at its most crowded. The agency hasn’t made a decision yet — but maybe enough public support can convince them to take the most mind-blowing space photo of the Space Shuttle era.
During the final flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery, planned for late February or early March, theInternational Space Station will play host to a record number of spacecraft. Five new visitors from space agencies all over the world will be docked at the ISS, making the space station the heaviest and largest it has ever been.
This flight will the the one and only chance to capture this cosmic conference on film, before the shuttle is retired for good.
NASA officials are investigating a scheme in which one of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft would undock from the ISS to take the family portrait.
This historic photo op may require an in-flight game of musical chairs. The most reasonable plan, NASA officials decided in a meeting at Johnson Spaceflight Center, is for the Soyuz to undock, swing around the ISS so that the crew within can snap a photo, and then redock, requiring a dual-docking procedure to fit both the Soyuz and Discovery. Several different flight plans are being considered, and each one would give a slightly different view of the ISS.
The spacecraft that would gather to say cheese would hail from all over the world, including Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle-2, Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle-2 (named Johannes Kepler), the Italian-builtPermanent Multipurpose Module (named Leonardo), the ExPrESS Logistics Carrier-4 and the Shuttle Discovery.
The procedure would be inconvenient, taking a total of 15 hours and possibly removing crew members from their posts at important moments. But the resulting photo would be one for the ages, and a fitting farewell to the Shuttle.
This wouldn’t be the first time a Soyuz has played photographer for a space station. In 1995, a Soyuz undocked from the Mir space station to photograph the undocking of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (above).

Hillary Clinton said that the United States cannot legalize drugs because "there is just too much money in it." -

Hillary Clinton said that the United States cannot legalize drugs because "there is just too much money in it." - 






In what will likely be seen as something of a Freudian slip by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said recently in a Mexican news interview that the United States cannot legalize drugs as a means of fighting the black market because "there is just too much money in it."
Asked by Denise Maerker of Televisa what she thought of drug legalization, Clinton said it was unlikely to work.
"There is just too much money in it," Clinton said. "You can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped. They can’t be given an even easier road to take, because they will then find it in their interest to addict even more young people."
The comments drew criticism from legalization advocates who argued her position was a misunderstanding of the situation.
"Clinton's response illustrates not only the intellectual bankruptcy of the prohibitionist position but the economic ignorance of a woman who would be president," Jacob Sullum argued at Reason.com.
Clinton evidently does not understand that there is so much money to be made by selling illegal drugs precisely because they are illegal. Prohibition not only enables traffickers to earn a "risk premium" that makes drug prices much higher than they would otherwise be; it delivers this highly lucrative business into the hands of criminals who, having no legal recourse, resolve disputes by spilling blood.
At the Drug War Chronicle, Scott Morgan called Clinton's argument "perfectly incoherent" and argued it flew in the face of economic theory.


I can't help but wonder what everyone on the left would say if this preposterous analysis came from Sarah Palin, rather than Hillary Clinton. It's the sort of profound nonsense that ought to get you skewered by Jon Stewart, yet our Secretary of State will almost certainly get a free pass on misunderstanding literally everything about the escalating violence below our border.
Clinton's interview focused mainly on Mexico's drug war, which was launched in 2006 by President Felipe Calderon and has cost an estimated 34,000 lives, including more than 1,000 minors.
The toll's severity prompted former Mexican President Vicente Fox to come out in favor of legalizing drugs as a way of taking the steam out of organized crime.
President Calderon has not gone as far himself, but did approve legislation decriminalizing possession of small amounts of most recreational drugs, and has called for a debate on new approaches to dealing with drugs.

Legionnaires' disease outbreak at Playboy Mansion? - after more than 80 guests at a conference and party there became sick -

Legionnaires' disease outbreak at Playboy Mansion? - after more than 80 guests at a conference and party there became sick - 


Can the Playboy Mansion make you ill? Hugh Hefner's iconic bachelor pad is under investigation after more than 80 guests at a conference and party there became sick with a suspected strain of Legionnaires' disease.
Scores of attendees at the Domainfest conference in Santa Monica, held Feb. 1 to 3, came down with symptoms including fever, respiratory infections and violent headaches. Four Swedish guests were diagnosed with Legionellosis or pontiac fever -- a milder form of Legionnaires' caused by bacteria that thrives in warm air-conditioning systems.

Now some victims are blaming a fog machine which steamed up the conference finale party on Feb. 3. DNJournal.com editor Ron Jackson, whose wife, Diana, was stricken, said, "So far, the number [of victims] is around 80. Everybody says they became ill around 24 hours after the party.
Jackson said, "Four guys from Sweden were diagnosed with [Legionellosis], and they have the same symptoms as everyone else. I don't want to point the finger at the Playboy Mansion, but the disease lives in warm water, and people were engulfed in mist at that party." He's filed a report with the CDC.
New Yorker Elliot J. Silver, who runs Silver Internet Ventures, also fell prey to the bug. He said, "It is scary everyone came down with the same thing at the same time. It knocked me on my ass. A lot of people are blaming the Playboy Mansion on the blogs, but you can't be sure."
A rep for Domainfest said it was working with the LA County Health Department to investigate: "There were events every night, and we are giving them a list of all the venues. We have no idea what this is or where it came from. The mansion being to blame is, at the moment, pure speculation."
A Playboy rep claimed, "There is no truth in the rumor that anyone caught anything at the Playboy Mansion. Nor is there any evidence. None of the Playboy staff became ill, the deejay was in the middle of the fog and she didn't get ill. We have been contacted by the Health Department and the Playboy Mansion is cooperating fully with the investigation."


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/outbreak_at_playboy_mansion_0I8zi6kVnvCbDHE1F33TEJ#ixzz1DrSnOQnx

Federal bailout of FMae and FMac will be most expensive government rescue of the financial crisis 153 B and counting -

Federal bailout of FMae and FMac will be most expensive government rescue of the financial crisis 153 B and counting - 




When the dust settles, the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be the most expensive government rescue of the financial crisis -- it already stands at $153 billion and counting.
Even as the Obama administration unveiled its plan for reforming the firms, experts agree taxpayer losses are going to continue to climb, no matter what Congress eventually decides to do with them.


The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government body that oversees the two mortgage giants, has estimated that losses through 2013 will require Treasury to pour another $68 billion to $210 billion into the firms on top of the money already used to prop-up the firms and the housing market.
"Regardless of what they do, even if they were to change their status tomorrow, none of that will change the losses that will be coming due on their existing book of business," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry trade publication.
The two firms have already made many improvements in underwriting standards over the last two years, making most new loans they finance and guarantee more profitable and less risky, Cecala said.
"But that new business only goes so far, because it's still dwarfed by the loans made five to 10 years ago," he said.
Cecala thinks the losses may end up coming in a bit below FHFA's estimates, but other experts believe those estimates may be too conservative.
"The losses depend very much on housing prices, and I don't see the situation in the housing market getting very much better," said Peter Wallison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
"As long as home prices continue to decline or even stay the same, the losses to Fannie and Freddie, and to the taxpayers, will continue to climb."


Congress essentially approved a blank check in July 2008 to back losses at the two firms, and in September of that year the government stepped in and took them over after finding that losses on the mortgages they bought during the the housing bubble had overwhelmed their net worth.
But while the government has kept the firms alive by pumping money into them since then, there has been no plan on reforming their operations going forward.
Friday the Obama administration unveiled its plan to slowly wind down Fannie and Freddie and have banks and the private sector provide the financing for home loans. But the administration plans call for some continued role for the government in promoting mortgage lending and home ownership.
Critics of the plan would like to see the government removed from the mortgage finance market altogether. But even advocates of that position say it will take a period of years to phase in that change.
And no one expects the legislative battle between the administration and Republicans in Congress over the future of the firms to be an easy one.
"The politics suggests to me there will be a standoff until the issue is settled following the election of 2012," said Wallison.
And working through all the bad loans could take even longer.
"You have to take your time and go through those loans and suffer the losses," said Cecala. He estimated that will take at least two or three years, maybe many more.
Ironically, many of the losses that Fannie and Freddie are expected to post in the next few years will go to pay Treasury a 10% dividend on the preferred stock it received in exchange for the bailouts.
Both firms are essentially borrowing money from Treasury to have the cash they need to repay Treasury. The dividend payments Treasury receives limits the losses to taxpayers.
FHFA estimates that between 40% to 90% of those additional bailout costs will simply be used to pay that dividend.
The National Association of Realtors is lobbying to end what it calls a "punitive dividend" and Jaret Seiberg, analyst at Concept Capital's Washington Research Group, said that structure is unworkable.
"The problem is it's impossible for them to tackle their current problem if they can't rebuild the capital base, and they can't do that paying that dividend level," he said