Posts Tagged ‘fires’
Israeli Settlers desecrate West Bank mosque
An overnight attack on the West Bank village of Huwwara is believed to be the work of Israeli settlers, the Israeli army said Wednesday.
More than 300 olive trees were uprooted, two cars were set afire and a mosque in the town was spray painted with racist slogans, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports.
Tensions between Palestinian residents of Huwwara and Jewish residents in the nearby Israeli settlements of Yitzhar flared up in recent weeks after two settlers were wounded in a stone-throwing incident.
Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon, commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, called the vandalism to Huwwara “unacceptable” and ordered an immediate investigation, The Jerusalem Post reports.
Uh-Huh.
T minus 20 comes and goes – Stage 1 test fires like a champ
T-minus 20 seconds came and went, then right on time the rocket motor fired. A cloud of exhaust pushed high into the sky over the Alliant Techsystems testing facility just west of Brigham City.
Two weeks ago, with 20 seconds left until ignition, the planned test of the first-stage rocket motor designed for NASA’s new Ares 1 space flight vehicle was scrubbed due to an equipment malfunction.
On Thursday, though, the test went off without a hitch as ATK and NASA took one more step toward the development of a manned space-flight vehicle that they are hoping will replace the space shuttle with its initial flight in 2015.
The rocket motor was test-fired horizontally. It was similar to the shuttle’s two four-segment solid-fuel booster motors. But the addition of a fifth segment allowed it to burn longer and generate more power.
It burned for 123 seconds with the sound of the massive 154-foot engine roaring over the land. The motor generated more than 3.5 million pounds of thrust, or enough to propel the Ares 1 rocket 36 miles above the earth, where a liquid-fueled second stage would take over.
Between some of the excess paid help at NASA and Buck Rogers True Believers there is a growing whine that it’s too bad, “this will never be allowed to fly!” Cripes!
I had to think back to when I first worked on programs dependent on Congressional whim to fly or not fly. Incidentally, rarely did decisions come down to whether or not a project made sense. You’re discussing this with a guy who worked on the Davy Crockett Rocket. One of the most dangerous pieces of crap ever built to Pentagon spec.
When the coffers are flush, we can afford to spend the world. When times are tough, I have no problem cutting everything but education, healthcare and public works. A growing economy requires a fit and competent citizenry. It doesn’t require memorials to Robert Heinlein – as much as I enjoyed his writing.
We can always get back to it. Maybe if we stay out of other peoples’ backyards for a decade, we might could afford a lot of wonderful stargazing.
Shock revelation of sources of South Asia’s Brown Cloud
Daylife/AP Photo by Sucheta Das
A gigantic brownish haze from various burning and combustion processes is blanketing India and surrounding land and oceans during the winter season. This soot-laden Brown Cloud is affecting South Asian climate as much or more than carbon dioxide and cause premature deaths of 100 000s annually, yet its sources have been poorly understood.
Uh, if there’s anyone who doesn’t have a clue about the origins of this Brown Cloud they must work either in newspaper publishing or for one or another government of half-wits.
In the journal Science Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues at Stockholm University and in India use a novel carbon-14 method to determine that two-thirds of the soot particles are from biomass combustion such as in household cooking and in slash-and-burn agriculture.
Brown Clouds, covering large parts of South and East Asia, originate from burning of wood, dung and crop residue as well as from industrial processes and traffic.
These findings provide a direction for actions to curb emissions of Brown Clouds. Örjan Gustafsson…leader of the study, says that the clear message is that efforts should not be limited to car traffic and coal-fired power plants but calls on fighting poverty and spreading India-appropriate green technology to limit emissions from small-scale biomass burning. “More households in South Asia need to be given the possibility to cook food and get heating without using open fires of wood and dung” says Gustafsson.
South Asia has to deal with the worldwide whine – based in Wall Street and Washington, DC – which uses the Brown Cloud as an excuse for reactionary nationalist politics.
Some of us recall exactly the same brown cloud over Glasgow and London when they still were urban centers of cesspool-level air quality – because half the population cooked and heated in their homes with open coal fires [as does China, today]. It took decades but the “Auld Reekie” syndrome eventually dissipated with access to sufficient electricity and gas for cooking and heating.
No doubt Asian nations will achieve the same.
Aftermath of a fire: Oakridge mobile home park
Daylife/Getty Images
Estimates are that there were 600-800 homes in this park. Mostly occupied by senior citizens.
