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Zorro's JournalNASA finds 'fundamental' software problems in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft
Source: Washington Post
Investigators probing the botched flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in December have found widespread and “fundamental” problems with the company’s software that could have led to a disastrous outcome more grievous than previously known, the agency said Friday.
Boeing is now reviewing all 1 million lines of code in the capsule’s computer systems, officials said. How long that review will take is uncertain, Boeing officials said.
The discovery of widespread software problems in the Starliner spacecraft is reminiscent of the issues that surfaced in the aftermath of the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max airplanes that killed 346 people and led to the plane’s grounding since early last year. Doug Loverro, the head of human exploration for NASA, said he could not speak to what, if any, connection there might be between the Starliner’s software problems and the issues with the 737 Max.
But he said the discovery of widespread issues with the Starliner software indicated “we have a real breakdown of the software process.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/07/boeing-starliner-software-problems/
This vulgar man has squandered our decency
“Character is the only secure foundation of the state.”
— President Calvin Coolidge, addressing the National Republican Club in New York, 1924.
“It was all bullshit.”
— President Trump, addressing Republicans in the White House and a national television audience on Thursday after his acquittal.
From the birth of the Republic — indeed, from the birth of Athenian democracy — it has been an article of faith that self-governance cannot survive without leaders of character.
“Not much probity is needed for maintaining or sustaining a monarchical government or a despotic government,” wrote the Baron de Montesquieu, whose philosophy inspired the Framers. “But in a popular state, one more recourse is necessary, which is virtue.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/this-vulgar-man-has-squandered-our-decency/
Nancy Pelosi: McConnell and the GOP Senate are accomplices to Trump's wrongdoing
For more than 200 years, our republic has endured, not only because of the wisdom of our Founders and the brilliance of our Constitution, but because of the generations of patriotic Americans who have had the courage to risk their lives to defend it.
But, tragically, the American people have watched President Trump and Republicans in Congress dismantle the Constitution that we cherish.
The House impeachment managers, led by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), presented to the Senate and the public an incontrovertible truth that the president himself has admitted: President Trump abused the power of his office to pressure a foreign power to help him cheat in an American election. And when he was caught, the president launched an unprecedented coverup to block Congress from holding him accountable. The president’s actions undermined our national security, jeopardized the integrity of our elections and violated the Constitution.
Pundits and reporters who lament this erosion in decorum are wildly missing the point, says Post opinion writer Greg Sargent. (Video: Joy Sharon Yi/Photo: Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Trump impeachment live updates
The Democrats in the Senate under the leadership of Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) patriotically voted unanimously to honor the oath to support and defend the Constitution. They, along with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), deserve our gratitude for their moral courage.
The president’s lawyers all but concede his misconduct. Their argument was only that Congress and the American people have no right to stop him from using his power to cheat in our elections. With their vote, Senate Republicans embraced this darkest vision of power: that if the president believes his reelection is good for the country, he can then use any means necessary to win, with no accountability or consequences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/nancy-pelosi-mcconnell-and-the-gop-senate-are-accomplices-to-trumps-wrongdoing/2020/02/07/d06582be-49e4-11ea-9164-d3154ad8a5cd_story.html
'He's Got The Mulan Virus!' Yells Don Jr. Attempting To Quarantine Eric
WASHINGTON—Kicking and punching his brother in an effort to fight the “Germans” [sic] that were swarming all over his sibling’s body, Donald Trump Jr. reportedly yelled, “He’s got the Mulan virus!” Thursday while attempting to quarantine Eric Trump by duct taping a garbage bag over his brother’s head.
“Oh my God, ew, ew, ew! Eric, do you have the Mulan Virus?” said a horrified Don Jr., who, after sticking his hand into his brother’s mouth to take his temperature, screamed and immediately sprayed an “antelope” [sic] of Lysol down Eric’s throat.
“If you don’t fight the Mulan virus soon, you could invest [sic] everyone and start a worldwide academic [sic]. Seriously! Okay, now just stay still while I put a bag over my own head.”
At press time, Don Jr. was attempting to create some air holes for his younger brother by repeatedly stabbing the garbage bag with a compass.
https://politics.theonion.com/he-s-got-the-mulan-virus-yells-don-jr-attempting-to-1841516704
Mike Bloomberg won the Iowa caucuses
The Democratic candidate who gained the most from the unmitigated debacle in Iowa is not Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, though both have claimed victory there. The biggest winner was Mike Bloomberg.
The billionaire former New York mayor entered the race with a novel strategy of skipping the first four states, hoping the results were a discouraging muddle, and using television ads and paid campaign staff to put himself in contention on Super Tuesday. This approach was, and remains, a real long shot. But the morning after the Iowa fiasco, Bloomberg announced he would double his spending on television ads, which had already approached saturation levels. He does not have a reputation for knowingly throwing good money after bad. The impossible now looks merely improbable.
From Bloomberg’s point of view, the campaign thus far has gone better than he had a right to hope. His stated thesis for his campaign is that President Trump must be defeated at all costs and that none of the other candidates is likely to beat him. He hopes to sell himself as the genuine article to Trump’s fakery: an actual billionaire with the management skills to turn the country around. If one of the candidates who competed in Iowa were emerging as a strong front-runner, Bloomberg could look more like a self-indulgent ego-tripper than a potential savior. But that hasn’t happened. And the chaos in the Democratic Party and Trump’s White House are making Bloomberg’s argument for him.
In a misguided attempt to make the caucus process more transparent and efficient, Democratic Party officials in Iowa inadvertently made it into an embarrassing display of dysfunction. They altered procedures that Iowa voters were accustomed to, and not everybody understood the new rules. They made it unclear how victory would ultimately be measured. Most fatefully, they threw an untested cellphone app into the mix. What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mike-bloomberg-won-the-iowa-caucuses/2020/02/06/aa110f1e-4928-11ea-b4d9-29cc419287eb_story.html
Bloomberg seizes on chaos in Democratic presidential race to escalate his campaign
On the morning after the Iowa caucuses, as the nation awoke to news of another electoral debacle, Mike Bloomberg stood on a stage in an old warehouse here, feigning little concern.
“I hear something happened in Iowa — or didn’t happen, I don’t know which,” the billionaire and former New York City mayor told the crowd, adding that he had been asleep on a plane to Michigan as the results were supposed to be coming in.
When he awoke, Bloomberg recalled, he asked someone the outcome, “and the guy said, ‘Nothing.’ I still can’t figure it out.”
While the rest of the Democratic field tries to recover from Iowa and pivot to New Hampshire, Bloomberg is seizing the moment to gain an advantage — doubling his television spending in key states, expanding his staff to more than 2,000, and traveling the country to introduce himself as a competent and accomplished manager.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bloomberg-seizes-on-chaos-in-democratic-presidential-race-to-escalate-his-campaign/2020/02/05/a79949d0-4758-11ea-bc78-8a18f7afcee7_story.html
Florida police made a traffic stop and found a bag full of drugs labeled 'Bag Full Of Drugs'
A Florida traffic stop turned into a surprise narcotics bust after police found what looked to be a bag full of drugs in the car.
The clue?
It was labeled "Bag Full Of Drugs."
A Florida Highway Patrol trooper made the stop after observing a car going 25 miles per hour over the limit Saturday, the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office said.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/us/florida-bag-full-of-drugs-trnd/index.html
Now that's a polite and novel way to help the police.
Michael Bloomberg ramps up California campaign as rivals finish race in Iowa
The huge sums that billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg is dumping into ads for his presidential campaign have impressed Leslie Chiles of Sacramento. It’s not just that she agrees with him. It’s also that the money he’s devoting to oust President Trump seems limitless.
“Otherwise, he would be a nobody,” said Chiles, a retired social services worker who went to see the former New York City mayor speak Monday at a coffeehouse near the state Capitol. “Like every other Democrat, I’m looking for someone who can win.”
With Californians starting to vote by mail this week in the March 3 presidential primary, Bloomberg has already plowed $35 million of his personal wealth into television, radio and digital ads in the state, according to Advertising Analytics, an ad-tracking firm. It eclipses those of all of his opponents combined.
As much as his stands on climate change and other touchstone issues for Democrats, the extravagant spending itself is starting to convince some that Bloomberg, one of the richest people in America, might have the best shot at unseating Trump.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-03/bloomberg-california-democratic-presidential-campaign
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Ends 16-Year Mission of Discovery
On Thursday, NASA’s Spitzer space telescope signed off and went silent. But even during its final week of operation, the spacecraft was making one-of-a-kind observations.
The telescope, the size of a family sedan, follows Earth in its orbit around the sun, but trails 158 million miles behind. Lately, it has gazed out with its infrared eyes, taking sensitive measurements of fine cosmic dust that pervades the space between planets in the solar system. The resulting imagery will enable researchers to better understand our local celestial neighborhood, while informing models of worlds circling other stars and giving insight into the early universe.
Since it launched on Aug. 25, 2003, Spitzer has provided unique contributions to science. It gave us new views of distant galaxies, newborn stars and nearby exoplanets, as well as of asteroids, comets and other objects in our solar system. Its infrared cameras have observed the universe in a light imperceptible to human senses, providing otherwise unattainable visions of the sky.
“There is no field of investigation that has not been touched by Spitzer,” said Daniela Calzetti, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has used the telescope to study galactic evolution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/science/nasa-spitzer-space-telescope.html
The Money Behind Trump's Money
One Day in early 2017, Mike Offit went to the Yale Club in Manhattan for a lunch hosted by a group called Business Executives for National Security. Offit, who has a craggy face and shoulder-length hair, had spent much of his career in banking, but that had ended nearly two decades earlier. Since then, he had puttered around the outskirts of finance, dabbled in journalism and even published a novel about a pair of murders at a fictional German-owned Wall Street bank that bore a striking resemblance to the one that he worked for until 1998: Deutsche Bank.
These days, Offit had time on his hands, which is how he found himself at the Yale Club that afternoon. Slanting winter sunlight illuminated the white-columned walls of the club’s dining room. Offit was chatting with an American military officer about weaponry when his iPhone buzzed. He saw an email from the White House Executive Office of the President. How strange, Offit thought.
The message contained a PDF file: a scanned printout of an email he had sent Donald Trump several months earlier, in the waning days of the presidential campaign. Offit had known Trump for decades. At Deutsche Bank, he had lined up huge loans to finance Trump’s construction and renovation of landmark Manhattan skyscrapers, at a time when the default-prone real estate developer and casino magnate was no longer able to get loans from most mainstream financial institutions. The two men stayed in touch afterward. Offit’s 2014 book, “Nothing Personal,” even featured a blurb from Trump: “Michael Offit offers a colorful insight into how the big money is made — and/or taken — on Wall Street.”
In October 2016, Offit tried to return the favor. Democrats were pillorying Trump’s shaky — not to mention murky — personal finances, including his companies’ chronic bankruptcies. Offit thought he might dispense a little advice to his erstwhile client. On a Friday evening, he emailed Trump a lengthy message, explaining that the defense Trump was offering at the time — that he was simply using the bankruptcy law in an advantageous way — wasn’t resonating with voters. “I believe there is a much better answer, that may help defuse this issue, and am just arrogant enough to suggest it,” Offit wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/magazine/deutsche-bank-trump.html
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