And for you engineering and space enthusiasts, here is an article about the resurrection of the F-1 engine, used in the Saturn V from mothballs. It was and is the most powerful rocket engine in history and appears ready to ride again - bigger, better and cheaper than 50 years ago. Other interesting fallout from the story is that NASA didn't destroy the plans for it per urban legend. Things were going so fast during Apollo that these beasts were literally grown organically from a few line drawings and lots and lots of hands on welding expertise.

Published the following article in the Northern Right and Red County over the weekend. We tend to forget that when congress passes a stimulus it is not a one time deal. It jacks up congressional spending for all the following years because it increases the budgetary baseline under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. The Reid - Pelosi democrat majorities passed a stimulus upon taking over congress in 2007. They did it again in 2008. And finally they did it in 2009 with Obama's signature. Bush 43 signed the first two.

One of the things I get to do is sit in with Glen Biegel on his radio show Friday afternoons. We chat about state and national politics on KBYR 700 from 5 -6:00 PM weekly.

Last Friday, I made some disparaging remarks about Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s record and the phone lit up like a Christmas tree with outraged Ron Paul supporters - Paulians. It has been a long time since I heard that sort of passion - most rational, some not - for a presidential candidate. It reminds me a lot of H. Ross Perot in 1992.

FOIA released another 5,000 hidden e-mails from East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) this week. Along with the e-mails is a 178 meg encrypted zip file with the rest of the information. Looks like FOIA (whomever that is) retained the key and will use it at his (or her) discretion. The e-mail further confirm the fraud committed by the Hockey Stick and Manmade Global Warming IPCC crew. You can find links to the files along with a great discussion at Watts Up With That? Read and enjoy. Cheers -

Anthony Watts had a post last week on pushback against the notion of a large cometary impact 13,000 years ago (the Younger Dryas event) delaying the recovery from the last ice age by 1300 years. You can find the discussion here: Sudden Climate Death By Comet Bogus

There are a bunch of very smart people reading and posting on Watts Up With That and they had a wealth of information on the argument.

In that discussion, I found several sites that hold there was not a single cometary impact on the ice sheet, but a veritable hailstorm of comet chunks centered not only on the Michigan - Minnesota region but another larger impact site centered in Northeast Mexico, stretching into the desert southwest from Texas to California.

Published the following article in The Alaska Standard last week exploring the notion that state and national democrats are intentionally trying to shut down the Trans Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS). You can also find the article at Red County. Enjoy the read. Cheers -

“Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.” - Ian Fleming, Goldfinger, 1959.

At the risk of wandering off into black helicopter or tinfoil hat land, I would like to explore for a bit the notion that the democrats in this state and nationally are intentionally trying to shut down the Trans Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS).

The tools for the shutdown are their old favorites including environmentalists, denial of permits, lawsuits against permits, and crushing taxes. And those tools have been wielded masterfully over the last decade.

Ran across this in Hot Air Tuesday. This shows the scope of what the Japanese had to deal with when the tsunami hit. Watch the whole thing. It is terrifying. Tsunami Ravages Kenennuma Port

Erik Klemetti who blogs at Eruptions posted a list of webcams for volcanoes worldwide. Most of these are active mountains, as there is no reason for a webcam on a volcano unless it has done something recently. you can find the list here: http://bigthink.com/ideas/26619

Cheers -

- AG

Texas joined the wind energy conga line to the tune of over 10,000 MW of installed capacity by the end of 2010. This is just under 9% of total electrical generation in the state. New generation by coal and natural gas and nuclear has been limited by policy as the state has adopted "cleaner", greener, more politically acceptable "renewable" forms of electrical generation.

One of the things I have been interested in for a long time is the long-term geologic record, why ice ages happen, massive volcanic events, and extinction events. Ran across the following site via Icecap, which is a climate skeptic site.

The author of the various papers is a retired Navy nuclear weapons effects guy, and he has taken a stab at why the unexplained ice ages take place. His explanation is that they are caused by close proximity to a large number of supernovas over a short period of time. And that proximity is driven by the orbit of the solar system around the galaxy.

Most folks play with some version of the old saw "To a man with a hammer, the entire world looks like a nail." And there is a lot of truth to that observation. But it was the nuclear weapons effects guys that figured out what actually happened at Tunguska in 1908 - an airburst from an incoming object. This explanation may have some legs also.