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Archive for December, 2009

A Framework for Impunity

Posted in Politics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 11. December 2009 by jamesherrera1960

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

Since 2003, the ACLU and other U.S. human rights organizations have filed dozens of cases relating to the abuse and torture of prisoners. Some of these cases seek to enforce requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Others seek to impose civil liability on those who authorized or perpetrated the abuse.

Since 2005, the ACLU has also advocated for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to examine issues of criminal responsibility. Since a prosecutor was appointed in August, we have advocated for an expansion of the prosecutor's mandate.

These efforts have been intended to serve several ends: To create a public record of the Bush administration's policies and their consequences; to obtain recognition and compensation for torture victims; to ensure that government officials who violated the law are held to account; and to reduce the likelihood that the abuses of the last administration are repeated by the current administration, or by a future one.

We had hoped, and expected, that the Obama administration would share our commitment to most if not all of these ends. The administration promised accountability, and initially it seemed ready to deliver. Immediately after taking office, President Obama disavowed torture and shuttered the CIA's black sites. Two months later, he agreed to release the Justice Department legal memos that sought to authorize torture.

But notwithstanding those early decisions, the administration has not made good on its promise of accountability. Now the administration is suppressing the evidence rather than disclosing it, and protecting torturers instead of investigating them. It is shielding Bush administration officials from civil liability, criminal investigation, and even public scrutiny.

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  • In FOIA suits, the administration is withholding key documents relating to the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program. And it affirmatively supported new legislation to suppress photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners in defense Department custody.
  • In civil damages suits, the administration has urged courts not to allow torture victims to bring claims under the Constitution. It has argued that officials should be immune from suit because it was not “clearly established” between 2002 and 2004 that torturing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal. And in cases relating to the CIA, it has invoked the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits at the very outset.
  • With respect to the criminal investigation initiated in August, the administration has offered a kind of immunity to interrogators who relied on the torture memos while also declining, at least so far, to investigate those who wrote the memos or authorized torture.

The Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture, but the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity.

The issue of accountability will come to the fore once again over the next few weeks. On December 15th, the ACLU will argue before an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit in Mohamed, et al. v. Jeppesen, a case concerning the CIA's rendition program. On December 16th and 23rd, the CIA is due to hand over to the ACLU documents relating to secret prisons overseas. And the Justice Department is expected imminently to release a report, written by the Office of Professional Responsibility, that examines the conduct of the lawyers who wrote the torture memos.

It's not too late for the Obama administration to reconsider the positions it has taken in court. And it's not too late for the Justice Department to expand the scope of the criminal investigation it initiated in August. But if the administration doesn't change course, it will accomplish something that the Bush administration never managed: It will institutionalize a sweeping immunity doctrine for torturers.

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Scientists have high hopes

Posted in Space with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 8. December 2009 by jamesherrera1960

Discovery of Intelligent Life in the Milky Way: “It's Only a Matter of Time…”

Rising_redgiant Time! In the search for life in the universe, time and the sheer scale of the cosmos are enemies of our all too brief human-life span. A few basic facts provide a startling and eye-opening perspective on both our mortality and the obstacles confronting our search for life beyond the Solar System.

A prime target for our early efforts to find a twin Earth is our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, 4.4 million light years away, which means that light (or an extraterrestrial message) takes 4.4 years to reach us.

It’s been the destination of interstellar travelers in science fiction writing for so long now that one would almost be forgiven for thinking we’d already colonized it. But Alpha Centauri, the three-star system closest to our own Sun, is now the center of some very exciting science.

Javiera Guedes who headed up a NASA-funded project to analyze the possibility of detecting an Earthlike planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, has shown that terrestrial planets are likely to have formed around Alpha Centauri B, and that these planets should be orbiting in the “habitable zone.”

“It's so close to us, and the position of the other stars is such that it should be very possible to find a small planet,” she explained. She also found that, based on astronomers' current understanding of how solar systems form, the existence of a planet the size of our own is very likely, and that there's also a chance that it would lie in the habitable zone.

Now, the planet-hunting team is using a telescope in Chile to keep an eye on the star for the next three years, in order to collect enough data to determine whether or not the next Earthlike planet lies next door.

“If they exist, we can observe them,” said Guedes also showed that such planets would be observable if a telescope was dedicated to their search.

Guedes used a series of planet formation computer simulations to determine that terrestrial planets have probably formed around the star. The team ran repeated computer simulations which ran on a time frame of 200 million years each time. They varied the beginning conditions each time, and thus created a different result each time. However, each time a system of multiple planets evolved with at least one planet – approximately the size of Earth – forming. In many of these simulations, this planet was often found to be orbiting within the habitable zone of the star.

Its brightness and its position in the sky are both positive factors that make the Alpha Centauri search plausible; the latter giving the team a long period of observability each year from the Southern Hemisphere.

But the profound implication of the iron-clad law of astronomical time is that we see Alpha Centauri only as it was 4.4 years ago.In other words any message from inhabitants of Alpa Cenauri saying “Our planet is dying!” and our reply would consume a total of almost nine years.

The effect becomes even more starkly dramatic at greater distances. If we look at the awesome beauty of the Orion Nebula, we see it as the inhabitants of the Roman Empire saw it 1500 light years ago. A radio message we sent to a planet in the region would take some 3000 years for us to get their reply.

An even more extreme example  would a message sent to us from the extreme outer edge of the Milky Way, which is 100,000 light years in diameter. Earth is located about 28,000 light years from the galactic center. A message reaching us now would have been sent 70,000 years ago.

To put astronomical time in an even more awesome perspective, scientists have located a giant 13-billion year old galaxy at the edge of the observable universe. The galaxy, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as does our Sun. A message received from a planet that existed in this ancient would have to have been sent some eight billion years before the Earth was formed when the universe was only one-sixteenth of its present age. And, would that planet, indeed, that galaxy, still exist?

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Feel like you're living in a cardboard box? Does the idea of being packed in like sardines actually sound like an improvement to your living conditions? Lots of people live in similar situations.

In today's real estate world of astronomical prices, many people simply can't afford a home or apartment that has large enough bedrooms to accommodate themselves, their family, their pets, and all of their precious stuff.

Take a sigh of relief, (if you have room). This article will help you find ways to create more space in your cramped bedroom. There are some tricks to living comfortably in a small space.

First off, look up. Tenants often fail to realize all of the wasted space on their bedroom walls. Of course, nice little decorative shelves are a great way to display trophies, plaques, photos, and collectibles. Use lots of them if you collect things such as this and want to display them. This frees up valuable space on tables, counters, and nightstands.

The next way to create more space in your bedroom is looking around doorways. Sometimes a bedroom doorway is located in such a way that there is about two feet of space on one side that is just a useless waste. Build a bookcase that will fit in this wasted space all the way to the top of the doorframe. But don't stop there. Make a bookcase that extends over the top of the doorframe and has a matching bookcase on the other side of the doorway. So, you have effectively “built in” your bedroom door with custom bookcases.

This is an excellent solution for book lovers. I know how quickly books can take up space. Before a person knows it, books are scattered everywhere- on countertops, nightstands, in the car, even on the kitchen table. This looks very decorative with books of different colors, bookends, and a few whimsical accessories.

Even if you don't have many books, this still is a good idea for your bedroom as you can put lots of items that take up space in other places and use them on the bookshelves for a very unique effect. These bookcases also work well as a way to display small plants, as long as the light requirements work.

Another easy way to use bedroom space at higher altitudes is to build a very simple bookshelf about two feet from your bedroom ceiling. Just a length of basic 1×4 lumber works. It can run the length of one wall or all the way around the entire bedroom. Attach with L-brackets to studs in the walls. All that are needed are simple tools. Paint or varnish the wood however you like. This creates an unbelievable amount of space. This is an excellent solution to a kid's bedroom that is littered with stuffed toys. They can still display their toys while being kept out of reach of pets and younger siblings and are out of the way.

An easy way to create more space in your bedroom that many people miss is the wasted space under your bed. There are great storage containers made just for this purpose. Get the clear ones so that you can see the contents at a glance. They are also available with wheels, so that they can be accessed quickly and easily. If you don't want to spend the money on storage containers, just use standard cardboard boxes. That's what I do. They work fine.

To gain even more space under your bed, there are plastic casters available that slip under the legs of your bed. They raise the height of your mattress and bedsprings about four inches. This gives you a lot more room to store things under your bed.

To create even more space in the bedroom, buy nightstands that actually have drawers. The best kind are the ones that look like miniature chests. They have multiple drawers. These are so much better than a simple table by your bed. They let you store medications, books, writing supplies, flashlight, purses, or anything else that you want out of the way in your bedroom. You will really appreciate these when you wake up in the middle of the night with a headache and all you have to do is grab a vaporizer out of your drawer without leaving your bed. They also help keep your bedroom from looking so cluttered.

Of course, the obvious choice to help create more space in your bedroom and entire home is to get rid of the clutter. Do you really need twelve jackets or all of your golf magazines from the last five years? Pick a room at a time and try to be ruthless. Cull everything that has duplicates, doesn't work, is outdated, or that you simply don't use. Don't forget to donate the good stuff to charity.

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Written by Nicholos Wethington

NASA is getting WISE to the Universe this Friday. That is, they're launching the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a new infrared space telescope that will survey objects in our Solar System and beyond, looking for asteroids and brown dwarfs close to home, and protoplanetary disks and newborn stars far off.

The WISE mission is another in a series of all-sky surveys that have become so very effective for research. The satellite will spend six months mapping the entire sky in the infrared, after which it will make a second, three-month pass to further refine the mapping. Rather than looking at any specific objects, the satellite will survey everything it can see with its infrared eyes, providing a detailed catalog of infrared-emitting objects for followup with telescopes like the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Herschel Space Observatory and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Infrared instruments detect heat, so the instrument must be cooled to a chilly 17 Kelvin (-265 degrees Celsius/ -445 degrees Fahrenheit). Otherwise, it would detect its own heat signature. This is accomplished by packing it in a cryostat, which is basically a large thermos filled with solid hydrogen. The cryostat is expected to keep the instrument cool enough for about 10 months of observation after the launch.

WISE is all ready to go, with the chilled instrument stowed safely in the nosecone that will fit atop a Delta II rocket. WISE will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Friday, Dec. 11, between 9:09 a.m. and 9:23 a.m. EST. NASA will have live coverage of the launch available on NASA TV.

Objects that the WISE telescope will pick up include asteroids in our own Solar System that remain undetected because they are invisible in visible light. By doing an all-sky survey, WISE is expected to see hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our Solar System that haven't been discovered, hundreds of them lying in the path of the Earth's orbit. By cataloging these Earth orbit-crossing objects, astronomers can get a better idea of what threats from asteroid impact are lurking in the dark.

WISE will also be sensitive enough to pick up brown dwarfs, objects that straddle the line between planet and star. Though they are massive, they don't quite make the cut for igniting nuclear fusion in their cores, but are warm enough to emit infrared light. It's thought that there are quite a few of these objects in our own back yard waiting to be discovered, and WISE may double or triple the amount of star-like objects that are within 25 light-years of the Earth.

In addition to these smaller, closer finds, WISE will be able to see ultra-luminous infrared galaxies out in the distant regions of the Universe. These galaxies are bright in the infrared, but are invisible to telescopes that can only see in the visible light spectrum. The catalog may be a boon to extrasolar planet hunters, as the protoplanetary disks from which these planets form will be another object visible to the instrument.

The WISE telescope will have polar orbit with an altitude of 525 km (326 miles), and will circle the Earth 15 times each day. Snapshots of the sky will be taken every eleven seconds, allowing the instrument to image each position on the sky in the telescope's field of view a minimum of eight times.

Be sure to check back with us for further coverage of the WISE launch on Friday!

Source: NASA press release, WISE mission site

Filed under: Missions, NASA

Tags: Infrared Astronomy, WISE

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Washington, Dec 8 (DPA) NASA’s newest “eye” to be launched Wednesday is a satellite equipped with unprecedented infrared sensitivity to scope out cosmic objects unseen by other cameras.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is to be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Over the next nine months in orbit around the north and south poles, the satellite is to scan the entire sky one and a half times seeking out the “coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies,” NASA said.

What sets this “eye” apart from other space cameras such as the Hubble telescope and deep-space probes is its ability to read four infrared wavelengths “with sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors,” NASA’s Pasadena- based Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.

The resulting pictures will serve as navigation charts for the big space cameras like the Hubble, NASA’s Spitzer space telescope, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory and NASA’s upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope.

“With infrared, we can find the dark asteroids other surveys have missed and learn about the whole population. Are they mostly big, small, fluffy or hard?” asked Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

To keep WISE sensitive to infrared light, it cannot give out any infrared rays of its own, so its detectors are to be chilled to ultra-cold temperatures – below 8 degrees Kelvin, or minus 445 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Wise is chilled out,” project manager William Irace said.

Science: For two years, our space agency has refused Freedom of Information requests on why it has repeatedly corrected its climate figures. A leading researcher threatens to sue to find more inconvenient truths.


What's become known as “Climate-Gate” may be about to explode on this side of the pond as well. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has threatened a lawsuit against NASA if by year-end the agency doesn't honor his FOI requests for information on how and why its climate numbers have been consistently adjusted for errors.


“I assume that what is there is highly damaging,” says Horner, who suspects, based on the public record, the same type of data fudging, manipulation and suppression that has occurred at Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit. “These guys (NASA) are quite clearly determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this.”


They may have good reason. NASA was caught with its thermometers down when James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced that 1998 was the country's hottest year on record, with 2006 the third hottest.


NASA and Goddard were forced to correct the record in 2007 to show that 1934, decades before the advent of the SUV, was in fact the warmest. In fact, the new numbers showed that four of the country's 10 warmest years were in the 1930s.


Hansen, who began the climate scare some two decades ago, was caught fudging the numbers again in declaring October 2008 the warmest on record. This despite the fact that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.


Scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on that October's readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running. Was Hansen, like his CRU counterpart Michael Mann, trying to “hide the decline” in temperatures?


Goddard now says it got the data from another body and didn't have the resources to verify them. There's a phrase for this: garbage in, garbage out. Goddard's figures are one of the four data sets used by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to come up with its doomsday scenarios. Britain's CRU is another.


Hansen has said in the past that “heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” What penalties would he recommend for himself and his CRU colleagues?


We recall the unguarded admission of climate alarmist Steven Schneider of Stanford, printed in Discover in 1989: “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”


The warm-mongers at CRU and NASA may be neither. Let's open their books to find how well they may have been cooked.

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“I used the silhouette of the orbiter because it is such an iconic shape, recognizable to people all over the world. The crescent Earth depicts a similarly iconic view from orbit, while the sun can be interpreted both as setting at the end of the successful shuttle program and rising on the new programs in NASA's future.”


“The five stars centered on the orbiter represent the five orbiters that have flown in space over the history of the program,” her description continued. “These are located over the payload bay to also represent the hundreds of payloads and missions that the shuttle has supported, from experiments to satellites to space station dockings.”


“Finally, the stars in the background represent the thousands of people who have supported the space shuttle program over the past 29 years,” she concluded.


Some of those thousands will soon have their chance to identify which of the proposed patches is their favorite.


“The will now be reviewed and judged by a team of space shuttle program managers from various centers, who will provide recommendations for the patch,” Byerly wrote to collectSPACE.


All of the entries will then be posted to a NASA internal site in January where “employees will be able to choose their favorite from among the finalists for a People's Choice Award. The number of votes received will be one of the factors in the judges' final decision,” said Byerly.


The winning design will be flown on an upcoming shuttle mission, and the winner will be presented with their flown artwork as an award. NASA will also produce the patch to be shared with the public.


“I'm hoping I'll win and NASA will make them available!” exclaimed Scheer in a Twitter reply to a fan asking for her patch. “If I don't , we'll see what we can do.”


collectSPACE is working to soon host a public gallery of all the patch designs entered in NASA's contest.

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