A total of 25,880 text messages will be broadcast into space, transmitted 20.3 light-years to Gliese 581d. . . .
Great. So if there is an advanced civilization on Gliese 581d, the very first communication it’ll get from us will be a two-hour long text spam attack....
The story says that the messages will take about twenty years to arrive. That gives us all about forty years before Earth is destroyed by a planet-annihilating death ray from Gliese 581d in 2049. Like the Cats said, “You have no chance to survive make your time.”
Posted by: Mike ||
08/29/2009 13:10 ||
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#1
Wasn't this a very poor 60's science fiction film?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/29/2009 13:42 Comments ||
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#2
Sorry, Charlie Tuna. If the world doesn't end in 2012 because the ancient Mayans said so, that is it. No more EOW stuff until 8661*, which is when J.R. "Bob" Dobbs of the Church of the SubGenius says he's coming back. Maybe.
*Originally it was in 1998, but then they figured out they were holding the cocktail napkin upside down.
#3
Fact overrides fiction, any beam from that far away would only be barely detectable, they'd need to use their entire sun's output for a year or more to even be noticed.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/29/2009 13:53 Comments ||
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#4
If I'm an advanced alien culture, and I get tweets from Meghan McCain, I'd feel like I wasn't killing intelligent life, so no moral dilemma
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/29/2009 13:58 Comments ||
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#5
I admit, a message from me is going on that signal. I apologized to them that we gave such an awful sounding name to their planet.
But every message was essentially limited to Twitter length, so it was hardly going to be War and Peace.
#11
I'm not so sure about them killing us. Maybe they'll want to, um, increase the size of their intraspecies pleasure tentacles instead....or assist a temporarily impoverished son of a former Nigerian president. Or connect with sizzling hot singles! (After all, aren't Earth girls supposed to be easy?)
South African President Jacob Zuma, on a state visit to Zimbabwe which includes mediation of differences in its unity government, said Friday that while Harare is doing well in certain areas, full implementation of the Global Political Agreement is needed to quicken recovery. Mr. Zuma has been engaging unity government principals though sources in Pretoria and Harare said he did not propose to resolve the issues long troubling the "inclusive" government.
Zuma a peacemaker? Boggle ...
Mr. Zuma met separately Thursday evening with President Robert Mugabe of the long-ruling ZANU-PF party, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change's main formation, and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, head of a rival MDC branch.
The South African president met with all three Friday at Harare's Rainbow Towers Hotel.
The MDC handed Mr. Zuma a dossier detailing what it calls ZANU-PF breaches of the Global Political Agreement, among them allegedly arbitrary arrests of MDC members and President Mugabe's unilateral 2008 appointments of the Reserve Bank chief and attorney general.
Political sources said President Mugabe told Mr. Zuma all is well in the government, saying the major stumbling block at this point is continuing Western sanctions.
Mr. Zuma asked the principals to meet without him Monday to finally resolve their disputes as to the Reserve Bank and the Office of the Attorney General, as well as the swearing in of provincial governors and other senior officials including Tsvangirai MDC Treasurer Roy Bennett named deputy agriculture minister in February but not yet sworn in.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/29/2009 00:00 ||
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To "Settle" the unrest, you'd need a 3/4 inch hemp rope (What's bob's neck size anyway?) and a stout branch or telephone pole, Until you do that, nothing will be accomplished.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/29/2009 0:21 Comments ||
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I'd suspect a bullet would be just as effective as the 'KKK solution'.
But the only way that'll happen is if an even worse African despot does it.
#3
You think there are no worse? error, error, error.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/29/2009 13:54 Comments ||
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Problem is severe gun (And Bullet) control.
But rope is widely available, it's NOT a KKK only remedy.
By the way Pappy, your prejudice just sneaked out.
Have you forgotten that Hanging was the official execution method here in the USA for about 300 years. And before that in our Mother Country Britian?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/29/2009 14:02 Comments ||
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#5
1. There will always be worse.
2. I'm not the one who suggested hanging as a mode of execution. Especially using a stout branch.
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - U.S. State Department staff have recommended that the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya be declared a "military coup," a U.S. official said on Thursday, a step that could cut off tens of millions of dollars in U.S. funding to the impoverished Central American nation.
The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said State Department staff had made such a recommendation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was expected to make a decision on the matter soon. Washington already suspended about $18 million in aid to Honduras after the June 28 coup and that would be formally cut if the determination is made because of a U.S. law barring aid "to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree."
Zelaya's foreign minister, Patricia Rodas, said after the talks that the push in Washington to employ the term "military coup" meant the coup leaders "have lost their patrons."
The State Department official said $215 million in grant funding from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation to Honduras would also have to end should Clinton make the determination a military coup took place. According to the MCC, just over $80 million of that has already been disbursed. A second U.S. official said this implied the remaining roughly $135 million could not be given to Honduras should the determination be made. MCC officials could not immediately say exactly how much of the MCC funds for Honduras, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, were in jeopardy.
Diplomats said the United States had held off making the formal determination to give diplomacy a chance to yield a negotiated compromise that might allow for Zelaya's return. Such efforts appear, however, to have failed for now and the United States is taking steps -- including a decision to stop issuing some visas at its embassy in Tegucigalpa -- to raise pressure on the de facto government.
The U.S. official said State Department staff were recommending Clinton sign the military coup determination. He said that was a response to the de facto government's rejection of proposals put forward by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, whose mediation effort has stalled over the government's refusal to allow Zelaya to return. The San Jose accord proposed by the Nobel Peace Prize winner would have let Zelaya back into power before the November election.
The president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, called for Honduras to be suspended from the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States as a means of putting pressure on the de facto government. CAFTA offers its members preferential commercial terms. "I can propose an infallible formula for returning President Zelaya to power -- suspending Honduras from CAFTA," the Dominican Republic's Fernandez said at an event late on Wednesday in Santo Domingo. "Just do that and I'm telling you Zelaya will be back in two or three weeks," Fernandez said.
Central American foreign ministers meeting in Costa Rica on Thursday agreed not to recognize the result of a presidential election set for November unless Zelaya is first restored to power.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/29/2009 00:00 ||
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TOPIX/WORLD NEWS > SOUTH AMERICAN LEADERS CRITICIZE US BASES PLAN.
Red Cross envoys from North and South Korea agree to hold reunions for separated families. Thousands of Koreans have been divided from loved ones since the Korean War in the early 1950s. After three days of talks, Red Cross officials from South and North Korea agree to resume reunions for separated families. The reunions will take place from Sept. 28 until Oct. 1, just ahead of the Korean thanksgiving holiday of Chuseok. They'll be held at the Mt. Kumgang Resort in North Korea.
Millions of families were separated following the division of the Korean peninsula in 1945 and the 1950-53 Korean War. A landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000 paved the way Koreans to reunite with relatives in temporary reunions. The reunions were held annually but suspended in 2008 when the South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak took office with a hardline policy toward Pyongyang.
While today's agreement marks a milestone in inter-Korean relations, the South Korean delegation admits that it didn't get everything it wanted in the negotiations. Kim Young-chol, head of Seoul's delegation says they will bring up the issue of South Korean prisoners of war and citizens kidnapped by North Korea during future talks on family reunions. Seoul had originally hoped to include these people in the upcoming round of reunions.
North Korea had proposed to resume the family gatherings earlier this month. Pyongyang also wants to restart joint tourism ventures to Mt. Kumgang and to the historic city of Kaesong, which were both shut down last year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/29/2009 00:00 ||
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Whirlpool Corp. announced Friday that it will close its refrigerator factory in Evansville, Ind., by next year and cut 1,100 jobs as it continues a push to trim excess capacity.
Whirlpool said it will move the production of refrigerators with freezers on top to a company location in Mexico, where they are cheaper to produce. Ice makers produced in Evansville will be moved to a yet-to-be-decided location.
The jobs will be eliminated in mid-2010. The Benton Harbor, Mich.-based appliance maker has aggressively cut costs as demand for big-ticket items has shrunk in the recession.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/29/2009 00:00 ||
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Whew, darn good thing we had that stimulus package. Unemployment is at 16%, but at least the number of government jobs are growing. I'm sure the newly unemployed in Evansville will be comforted to know that there are more bureaucrats working in DC.
#2
Sad day for many reasons. That old plant next to the airport has a lot of history in it.
The first P-47Ds were actually the same as P-47Cs. Republic could not produce Thunderbolts fast enough at its Farmingdale plant on Long Island, so a new plant was built at Evansville, Indiana. The Evansville plant built a total of 110 P-47Ds, which were completely identical to P-47C-2s. Farmingdale aircraft were identified by the "-RE" suffix after the block number, while Evansville aircraft were given the "-RA" suffix.
The German government's decision to scrap its car-scrapping scheme may save it some cash in the short term, but a new study indicates that it could do serious damage to the country's automobile industry.
The report, compiled by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants says the end of the scheme will sound the death knell along the entire automobile industry value chain.
And it is the sales end of the sector that stands to take the hardest blows.
"Once the scrappage bonuses run out, the risk of bankruptcy for German car dealerships is somewhere in the region of 30 to 40 percent," the company said in a press release posted on its Web site.
It says as many as 30,000 jobs in automotive sales alone could disappear with the car scrapping scheme which has proved to be hugely popular with German consumers.
It stresses that although traders will sell more cars in 2009 than in the previous year, the current demand is artificial and will quickly come back to haunt the industry. It says 2010 could see as much as a 25 percent slump in demand.
The report adds that it is mainly the "wrong" dealers that are being hit. "The big dealer groups in particular, those whose investments in the past are suffering under the burden of falling returns."
Under the terms of the car scrapping scheme, the government has offered up to two million subsidies of 2,500 euros ($3,570) for anyone willing to send their old car to the junk yard and buy a new one to replace it.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/29/2009 00:00 ||
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US home equity lines of credit paid for a lot of BMW and Mercedes Benz cars. Those are gone now. My guess is that BMW and Mercedes US sales are being hammered.
#2
The German manufacturers didn't do well in the latest Obama bankruptcy sweepstakes. Cash for Clunker ranking:
Toyota - 19.4%
General Motors - 17.6%
Ford - 14.4%
Honda - 13.0%
Nissan - 8.7%
Hyundai - 7.2%
Chrysler - 6.6%
Kia - 4.3%
Subaru - 2.5%
Mazda - 2.4% Volkswagen - 2.0%
Suzuki - 0.6%
Mitsubishi - 0.5%
MINI - 0.4% (BMW, UK Made) Smart - 0.2%
Volvo - 0.1%
All Other - <0.1%
Posted by: ed ||
08/29/2009 8:13 Comments ||
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There are no conditions under which a government-subsidised school can be closed down. An extremely poor quality of education or the brainwashing of children are not criteria that make closure legally possible, according to Education State Secretary Sharon Dijksma.
In TV talk show Knevel & Van der Brink, the Labour (PvdA) state secretary responded to criticism that her 'rigorous measures' against an ultra-orthodox Islamic school went no further than a five percent subsidy cut. Islamic primary school As Siddieq in Amsterdam faces this reduction in subsidy until 1 March. In the meantime, the Education Inspectorate will check to see if things improve. If not, subsidy will be squeezed further.
According to the Inspectorate, the education offered by the school falls short in 'essential areas'. Dijksma confirmed that the school teaches 6 and 7 year olds that only Muslims can be good people. "The school actively thwarts integration". As Siddieq has around 900 pupils.
A Christian woman who briefly worked at the school for idealistic reasons recently stated in newspaper Het Parool that she was not allowed to be greeted with 'Salam' (peace) like the other teachers because non-Muslims cannot know peace. She also had to eat her meals separately.
When Knevel & Van der Brink asked Dijksma why she does not simply close the school down she replied that there is nothing in Dutch law that makes this possible . The only measure she can take is to raise the pressure by threatening with increasing subsidy cuts, she said. The 4.5 million euro subsidy is being cut by only 5 percent "because the sanction needs to be proportional".
Amsterdam municipality also subsidised the school but has now discontinued the subsidies entirely. Alderman for education Lodewijk Asscher (PvdA) has requested the board to step down, but to no avail. "They will not accept criticism of any kind. They blame everything on everybody else", as the frustrated alderman stated after a meeting with the school. Incidentally, the chairman of the board of As Siddieq was not present at this talk; he has been staying in Egypt for weeks.
BANGALORE: Project Director M Annadurai on Saturday said that Chandrayaan-1 moon mission is over.
Earlier in the day, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft lost contact with ISRO's ground station, putting a question mark on the fate of country's maiden moon mission launched in October last year.
"The contact was lost at 01.30 IST as the deep space network (DSN) at Byalalu, about 40 km from Bangalore, received the data from the lunarcraft during the previous orbit up to 00.25 IST," according to an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) statement.
The space scientists were reviewing the telemetry data to analyse the health of the spacecraft's sub-systems.
Chandrayaan was launched Oct 22, 2008 from India's only spaceport Sriharikota, about 90 km from northeast of Chennai, on board the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV).
"The spacecraft has completed 312 days in orbit, making over 3,400 orbits around the moon and providing large volume of data from sophisticated sensors like terrain mapping camera, hyper-spectral imager, moon mineralogy mapper and so on, meeting most of the scientific objectives of the mission," the statement added.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/29/2009 12:12 ||
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The ISRO spent 86 million dollars (including the ground facilities and launch vehicle) on this first attempt.
Not bad at all.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/29/2009 12:46 Comments ||
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And got NASA to contribute a 100 million dollar SAR instrument payload....
Posted by: john frum ||
08/29/2009 12:48 Comments ||
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India has the neatest little space program you never hear much about. Amazing what a bunch of science nerds from New Delhi can do with a couple slide rules and a few cocktail napkins.
Well done, guys.
Posted by: Mike ||
08/29/2009 13:30 Comments ||
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A five-day joint exercise involving the Indian Air Force and the United States Air Force, Cope India-09, will be held at Agra from October 19, 2009.
The participating IAF aircraft include IL-76, AN-32 and Mi-17 helicopters, while USAF will participate with C-17 Globemaster, C-130J (Super Herclues) and C-130H transport aircraft.
The exercise is aimed at evaluating the efficacy of joint operations in the realm of tactics, aero medical aspects and Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) missions involving medium and heavy lift transport aircraft.
Nearly 160 USAF personnel and about 200 IAF air warriors will participate in the exercise, said IAF spokesperson.
The Indian Army and the US Army will also simultaneously conduct their largest joint exercise in October, featuring variety of armoured vehicles, medium and heavy lift aircraft and helicopters.
The Indo-US Army exercise will be conducted at Babina in Uttar Pradesh.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/29/2009 08:38 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The German government's decision to scrap its car-scrapping scheme may save it some cash in the short term, but a new study indicates that it could do serious damage to the country's automobile industry. 
