You have a point, Jonathan Gruber

Jonathan Gruber is catching a lot of flak for saying that American voters are stupid. 

What did Gruber really say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI 

"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

Does he have a point?

I'm not an economist and health care is not my field. Engineering is. Montgomery County's public statements, and lack thereof, and the news media's (print, TV, radio, internet) failure to report the Silver Spring Transit Center debacle "in depth", and to ask "probing questions", are definitely lack of transparency on Montgomery County's and the news media's parts.

In May 2014 Montgomery County MD councilman Phil Andrews said:

"'This project has been a monumental debacle', Andrews stated. 'There's no comparison between the Silver Spring Transit Center and any other construction project in the county's history.' 

In 1993, county leaders estimated a transit center would cost $26 million to build. That figure more than tripled to $93 million in 2008. In 2013 it spiked again to $120 million. Following the newest round of planned repairs, Silver Spring's fiscal eyesore should top-out at around $131 million.

'It is tens-of-millions-of-dollars over budget, it's got major safety issues, major durability issues, it can't work as intended at this point,' Andrews said. 'It's just way overdue.'"

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/05/silver-spring-transit-center-delayed-will-cost-taxpayers-even-more-money-102945.html 

This is taken from a presentation that Ed Blansitt, Montgomery County Inspector General, gave on 

September 3, 2014 to the annual conference of the Federal Audit Executive Committee (FAEC), Council 
of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria VA.

There's more.

The Silver Spring Transit Center is publicly funded: 53% federal, 11% state (MD) and 36% county (Montgomery). 

In March 2013 Montgomery County made public a structural investigation and report for the over-budget, overdue SSTC. The report documents severe structural flaws, including widespread cracking, deck slabs more than an inch thinner than what they're supposed to be, under strength and over stressed concrete, exposed reinforcement, missing reinforcement, a complete lack of expansion joints, under designed beams, etc. The report blames the numerous flaws on "errors and omissions" by the SSTC's builder/contractor Foulger Pratt, design engineer Parsons Brinkerhoff and concrete inspector/tester and special quality inspector Balter Co. Montgomery County chose these private companies, non-competitively, via public-private partnership, to design, build and inspect the SSTC. Why didn't Montgomery County use the normal competitive practices for selecting a builder/contractor, design engineer and concrete testing and inspection firm for a public works project? Crony capitalism? The mainline news media isn't asking; and, Montgomery County isn't talking.

Look whose tongues that the cat's got! 
Montgomery County's and the news media!

"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

Crony Capitalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism

Currently, publicly funded "repairs" are being made to the yet-to-be-opened SSTC. However, without expansion joints, the lemon SSTC can be expected to continue to crack in the future. 

Montgomery County failed to hold public meetings to inform the paying public as to what they are doing and why they are doing it, and to answer the public's questions and to take their comments on the public record BEFORE the County began "repairing" the yet-to-be-opened, supposed-to-be-brand-new, LEMON SSTC. The mainline news media failed to report this blatant lack of transparency.

"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

Former Montgomery County councilwoman Valerie Ervin spoke about Montgomery County's lack of transparency in an interview:
http://www.mymcmedia.org/valerie-ervin-on-silver-spring-transit-center-video/ 
"... there's a lot of the story still underneath the surface (translation: we haven't been told the whole truth) ... it's going to cost taxpayers a lot of money until it's resolved (contrary to what we've been told) ... people have many reasons not to believe what they've been told (translation: we've been lied to)".  

You have a point, Jonathan Gruber.  
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

BTW, the incumbent County Executive and County Council were re-elected.
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

One thing that is transparent: The Silver Spring Transit Center is a $130+ million, money pit, LEMON that will be wasting public funds (US, MD & Montgomery County) for DECADES.

Silver Spring Transit Center

Silver Spring Transit Center

Putin plans to leave G20 early after West blasts Russia over Ukraine

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/15/us-g20-summit-idUSKCN0IZ03C20141115

Don't let the doorknob hit you in the butt, Putin.

Former Tar Heel, NFL player donates thousands of pounds of sweet potatoes

http://www.wncn.com/story/27333550/former-tar-heel-nfl-player-donates-thousands-of-pounds-of-sweet-potatoes

VERY good!

Pulling together the early solar system

https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/strong-magnetic-field-early-solar-system-1113

The spectral signature of olivine has been seen in the dust disks around young stars. The tails of comets (which formed from the dust disk around the young Sun) often have the spectral signature of olivine, and the presence of olivine has recently been verified in samples of a comet from the Stardust spacecraft.[16] Comet-like (magnesium-rich) olivine has also been detected in the planetesimal belt around the star Beta Pictoris.[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine

The way that things used to be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUXuV7XbZvU

At the end of his speech President Kennedy told Congress that it wasn't easy for him to decide to recommend to Congress that they commit the $ to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade. He told Congress that it was up them to decide. He further told them that whatever they decided that he was sure that they would make their decision in the best interests of the American people. ... Congress then gave him a "standing o". ... Things sure were different then.

Try this

OK, here’s the deal. 

Put a pile of rocks at the bottom of the Washington Monument. Drop a super ball from the top of the Monument onto the rock pile. Make it stick--without bouncing. 

This is like dropping a probe onto 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, with gravity “several hundred thousand times weaker than that on Earth”, and making it stick.

Winner reports immediately to the European Space Agency.

Personally, I like the idea of a net of some sort that would be deployed upon contact. Hopefully, it would snag and grab on to something... The key here is slowing the probe down as much as possible before it makes contact. Since gravity is so weak, I look at this more like docking one spacecraft to another in space. It seems to me that the "mother ship" could get pretty close, in distance and in speed, to the comet before the probe is released. Placing the probe on the comet's surface would be better than it hitting the surface at a relatively high speed.

I also see a problem with orienting the probe properly--top is up; bottom is down. It seems to me that this is another step after the probe has landed (and stopped bouncing). The first thing that occurs to me is to try to design the probe without a top or bottom--so that it would operate however it was oriented when it settled down. If that isn't possible, then perhaps a series of small motors could be used to orient it and to level and plumb it correctly, e.g. making it "right-side-up" if it lands "upside-down".

My hat's off to the ESA. They've accomplished a remarkable feat just getting to the speeding comet, much less landing a probe on it. 

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!

Bad & Ugly

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pakistan-arrests-44-burning-christians-alive-kiln-n242501

another "poor choices" Election Day

Democrat? 

Republican? 

I'm neither. 

I'm closer to Libertarian; but, on some issues, I reject the Libertarian view. For example, I believe that gun rights are trumping more basic rights, e.g., Newtown CT. Also, why waste my time voting for someone(s) who can't win? Worse yet, why would I waste my time voting for a candidate who is running as one major party's strategy to take away votes from the other major party's candidate. That's the worst kind of wasted vote.

I'm sitting out another Election Day.

Paths to Destruction