SpaceX Falcon 9 destroyed on ISS cargo launch, imperiling commercial space

NBC News reported Sunday that SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship laden with supplies bound for the International Space Station. Unfortunately, the Falcon broke up in the clear skies over Florida, resulting in total loss of the vehicle. Despite the fact that this was the first failure of the Falcon 9 in almost 20 launches, the failure bodes ill for the future of commercial space. As the Houston Chronicle’s Eric Berger tweeted, “SpaceX will learn from this, no doubt, but it opens a huge door for doubters in Congress to return and bash the company.”

SpaceX: Making Commercial Spaceflight a Reality (Springer Praxis Books)

Anti-Mormon rapper Bree Newsome hauls down the Confederate battle flag

Saturday the Associated Press reported that a woman named Bree Newsome climbed up the flagpole at Soldier’s Memorial on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse and hauled down the Confederate battle flag. She and a friend named James Ian Tyson were promptly arrested and were subsequently released on $3,000 bond. The two are being treated as folk heroes who engaged in a bit of civil disobedience. However, as Gateway Pundit pointed out, Newsome has a dark past that somewhat undercuts her hero status.

The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem

Two new developments hold out hope for effective treatment of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly forms of the disease, with just between three and seven percent of sufferers surviving after five years. But, a couple of developments suggest that the disease may not be as fatal as it has been in the near future. The Health Site reported on Saturday that a new compound, called MM41 has shown some promise in mouse studies. In the meantime, the Houston Chronicle reports on a new test that detects pancreatic cancer earlier than ever before, holding out promise for better treatment of the disease.

Johns Hopkins Patients' Guide To Pancreatic Cancer (Johns Hopkins Medicine)

Sarah Palin weighs in on the 'Appeal to Heaven' flag controversy

With the frenzy against the Confederate battle flag proceeding apace and even the American flag under attack by people like Louis Farrakhan, just as Rush Limbaugh predicted, Sarah Palin has weighed in on a more obscure flag controversy in a piece published on Breitbart News on Saturday. The controversy concerns the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a Revolutionary War-era banner, which flew over a courthouse in Warren, Arkansas before it was taken down in response to demands by a militant atheist group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

3x5 Polyester An Appeal to Heaven Flag

The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (Dover Thrift Editions)

Ted Cruz proposes retention elections for Supreme Court justices

Whenever the Supreme Court renders a decision that seems constitutionally dubious, especially for conservatives, some propose that the checks on the power of the court be strengthened. The decision to uphold federal subsidies of Obamacare and, to a lesser extent, expand same-sex marriage to all 50 states has inspired Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to suggest just such a solution. Cruz would like to enact a new constitutional amendment allowing for judicial retention elections of Supreme Court justices, as he set out in a Friday article in National Review.

A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America

The Supreme Court

Read Echoes of Apollo. Trust me on this. It is the best thing I've read since The Martian: A Novel.

'Echoes of Apollo' is an action packed technothriller about the first space war

“Echoes of Apollo” by George Thompson is the sort of space faring technothriller that Tom Clancy would have been proud to have placed his name on if he was still alive. The novel is a near future story of what amounts to the first space war between China and the United States. “Echoes of Apollo” not only involve the sort of cutting edge technological toys inherent in the genre, but also makes clever use of the technology of the past. The story also casts a new light on the ongoing debate as to whether or not to return to the moon.

Last Days Forever is the latest by Vanessa Knipe, an author living in England and an old friend. Consider downloading the book to your Kindle as I think you'll like the story a lot.

Audi partners with Part Time Scientists to land a rover on the moon

According to a Friday story in Engadget, Part Time Scientists, the German team that is going after the Google Lunar X Prize, has formed a partnership with the Audi AG to build the final version of the rover that it proposes to land on the lunar surface. The German car company will provide the rover’s “four-wheel drive tech, as well as expertise in lightweight construction and piloted driving.” In return, the company will get an advertising bonanza as the rover will now be called the Audi Lunar Quattro Moon Rover.

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

The Last Moonwalker and Other Stories

Why the Famous Zamora UFO Sighting Remains Unsolved

Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states

The United States Supreme Court handed down a five to four decision that invoked the 14th Amendment equal protection clause to the Constitution that has made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states of the United States, according to a Friday story in the Associated Press. Moreover, every state has to recognize same-sex marriages consummated in every other state. While the decision may not end the controversy as a political issue, it will end it as a legal issue.

Same-Sex Marriage in the United States: The Road to the Supreme Court and Beyond

The Bible's Yes to Same-Sex Marriage: An Evangelical's Change of Heart

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts

In the wake of the Emanuel AME Church Massacre, time to ban the series 'Firefly'

In the wake of the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church, America seems to be bent on eradicating even the hint of any symbol regarding the Confederacy, from removing the Confederate battle flag from public spaces to even deleting Civil War computer games. Serious people have proposed banning “Gone With the Wind” and sanitizing “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Others have advocated blowing up the Jefferson Memorial and other monuments to famous Southerners whether they had anything to do with the Civil War or not.

Firefly: The Complete Series

Funko Legacy Action: Firefly - Malcolm Reynolds Action Figure

97 percent of scientists believe in global warming? Try 36 percent

The statement “97 percent of scientists believe global warming is real” has become a media cliché used to beat down climate change skeptics with the illusion of consensus. However, as Forbes pointed out, the method that was used to arrive at that figure was so dubious that it might as well have been grabbed out of thin air. Forbes also looked at a peered reviewed study of geoscientists and found that the actual figure of scientists who believe that human-caused global warming is real and that it is of serious concern is 36 percent. That is hardly something to base upending the entire economic order of the planet on.

The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists

Global Warming: Alarmists, Skeptics & Deniers; A Geoscientist looks at the Science of Climate Change

With a tip of the bowler and a swish of the umbrella, Patrick Macnee departs

Patrick Macnee, the British actor best known for his role as John Steed on the 1960s spy show “The Avengers,” has died at the age of 93, the BBC reported on Thursday. He was a Second World War Navy veteran and appeared on stage and the big and small screen for close to 60 years. He died of what is termed “natural causes.”

The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset

The Avengers & Me (TV Series) by McNee, Patrick, Macnee, Patrick, Rogers, Dave (2002) Paperback

The Avengers: The Inside Story

As Bernie Sanders surges, the Hillary Clinton Campaign goes on the attack

According to Thursday story in Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, the only socialist in the United States Senate who admits to being one, is continuing to give the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign fits. He is starting to gain on Ms. Clinton in the important early states of Iowa and New Hampshire among Democratic voters. According to the Daily Caller, the Clinton camp is starting to take notice and fight back. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Clinton supporter, let Sanders have it on Morning Joe on MSNBC. McCaskill suggested that the fiery senator from Vermont is “extreme.” She also implied that Sanders being a socialist is a bad thing.

The S Word: A Short History of an American Tradition...Socialism

DARPA is already working on designer organisms to terraform Mars

Space visionaries dream of a time when human beings will not only settle Mars, but will terraform the Red Planet into something more Earth-like, with a breathable atmosphere, running water, and a functioning biosphere. Evidence exists that Mars was more or less Earth-like billions of years ago before the atmosphere leached away into space and the water became frozen under the ground and at the poles. Terraforming Mars is decades away from the beginning and probably centuries away from the end. But DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is already genetically engineering organisms that will help turn the Red Planet blue, according to a Wednesday story in Motherboard.

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)

Green Mars (Mars Trilogy)

Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy)

Using rhetorical gymnastics, the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare subsidies

According to a Thursday story in the Associated Press, the Supreme Court has upheld subsidies for Obamacare insurance exchanges in states where the federal government rather than the states have set up the exchanges. This decision was taken by a six to three margin even though the plain language of the law states that subsidies only be available with exchanges, "established by the state." The court decided that the phrase was “ambiguous” and that in the full context of the law, the phrase could also mean that subsidies would be available on federal exchanges as well.

Surviving the Medical Meltdown: Your Guide to Living Through the Disaster of Obamacare

'Gone with the Wind,' 'The Dukes of Hazzard,' and the Jefferson Memorial must go

Having succeeded in getting rid of the Confederate battle flag, the left is now casting about for other cultural symbols that are an offense to their eyes to get rid of. Some of the symbols, such as the film “Gone with the Wind” and “The Dukes of Hazzard” are rather silly. Wednesday, according to the Huffington Post, someone on CNN implied that blowing up the Jefferson Memorial would be desirable because, after all, the author of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves.

Gone with the Wind, 75th Anniversary Edition

The Dukes of Hazzard: The Complete TV Series

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

How Noam Chomsky and Lawrence Krauss got space exploration wrong

According to a Tuesday piece in Motherboard, Noam Chomsky, a philosopher and political commentator, and Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and cosmologist, had a public dialogue about space exploration. Being both men of the far left, they concluded that space travel should be best left to robots and conducted by governments. The conclusions are the exact opposite of what the prevailing trends are in space policy.

Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Would sending people to Mars bring Americans together?

In an op-ed published in Florida Today on Wednesday, Jeff Kottkamp, a former lieutenant governor of Florida, and Rich Ramos, a Florida businessman, proposed a new justification for sending humans to Mars. A Mars program would serve, in their view, as a means to foster national unity of the sort that is rarely achieved outside times of war. Some recent polling data suggests that they may be on to something.

The Martian

The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration

The Man from Mars: The Asteroid Mining Caper

Is Rush Limbaugh right about the American flag being slated for destruction?

As the Confederate battle flag begins to be lowered across the South, being expunged from retail outlets, being made, to paraphrase a term from George Orwell, an “unflag,” Rush Limbaugh, the fiery conservative radio talk show host, wondered, is the American flag next. Politico reported Tuesday that Limbaugh accused the left of harboring ill-feelings toward Old Glory, and that it is just itching to expunge the Stars and Stripes from flagpoles across the country. The long-term conservative commentator may be indulging in his tendency to exaggerate to make a larger point. But it is a point worth exploring.

Flag Burning and Free Speech: The Case of Texas v. Johnson

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