1. The August 2 deadline will continue to approach, with no end in sight to the debt ceiling fight. In fact, Republicans will make increasingly outrageous demands, making it seem even more likely that the United States might default on part of its debt.
2. With the huge amount of uncertainty and fears of a default by the United States government, the stock market will plummet drastically near the August 2 deadline.
3. Goldman Sachs will make a killing with all the shorts it would have made. Right before the deadline, they will also buy up a whole lot of stock at rock bottom prices.
4. In a dramatic vote immediately before the deadline, Congress will agree to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans may or may not be trying to deliberately cripple the American economy for working class people for their own political benefit, but they would never be allowed to actually block the raising of the debt ceiling. Goldman Sachs might like destroying parts of the economy to gather wealth from shorts, but even they might balk from a default which could threaten the wealth of even the incredibly rich.

But what do I know? I'm just a poor, cynical guy with no first-hand experience with the inner workings of any political or financial system, who probably has no idea what he is talking about.

It won't matter if no moderate Muslim ever speaks up condemning this vile act, this is one case where the "moderate Muslims stay quiet" criticism would just earn a bop on the head from me, since it was precisely because he was a moderate Muslim speaking out that got Salman Taseer killed by an intolerant extremist. I may not have agreed with his beliefs, but I respect him enormously for standing up against intolerance. He should not have had to pay the ultimate price for it.

I love the show, so I support it. If you're interested in science and have never been a listener of NPR Science Friday, then you might want to give it a listen.

Somewhere near the end of the year 2012 world governments are on the precipice of all out war. The United States has become a socialist state — a part of a "One World Order". The global economies are falling apart and there is an effort to correct a pseudo-scientific theory that the world is suffering from global warming brought on by the industrial countries. The politicians have attempted to create a significant revenue source by correlating the warming theory to the burning of carbon-based fuels. A carbon tax is invented and those in power are pleased. This adds further injury to the failing world economies. As this cataclysmic series of events further destroys the once vigorous monetary systems of the world, healthcare in the United States becomes state run. ...

And this is only half of the blurb! It might actually good if it were a satire, but it doesn't appear to be one. With the entire blurb basically a litany of extreme ideology (and quite a bit of delusional ideology at that), along with the complete absence of any indication of a plot, I have to wonder what the blurb writer was thinking. Did he (or she) really think anyone would want to read the book after that blurb?

If you happen to have idle CPU cycles left over on your computer, consider contributing them to the cause of finding gravitational waves or potential sources of gravitational waves at Einstein@Home.

VSS Enterprise

VSS Enterprise, aka WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo attached together, succeeded in completing its first flight. The test flight only checked out that the mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, can fly properly while carrying the spaceship, SpaceShipTwo. It did not test if SpaceShipTwo will detach properly from WhiteKnightTwo during actual flight. Neither did it test out the rocket engine on SpaceShipTwo that will blast it into space. And even if all the tests succeed without a glitch, SpaceShipTwo will only achieve suborbital flight, being unable to accelerate to a high enough speed to achieve orbit. So the news is only interesting rather than exciting.

Still, it is a great first step towards suborbital space tourism, where reaching the boundaries of space would be a very expensive dream instead of a complete pipe dream to an ordinary person like myself.

Happy π Day!

View from the cupola

The view must be so impressive that even astronauts were gawking outside during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Tranquility module and its cupola:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO45KoVPsxk

AMS-2 in Switzerland

The International Space Station has been an enormously expensive structure in orbit that took over a decade to construct. Despite the enormous expense, however, its scientific capabilities are somewhat lackluster. So it's exciting to hear that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a superconducting detector which can study cosmic rays, is heading to the ISS in July. It will be a three-year experiment that could contribute greatly to the study of dark matter and antimatter in the universe. And to think that it almost got cancelled due to the lack of a shuttle flight ...

Donating blood

Only in Akihabara, Japan, the mecca for otaku who are crazy about all things anime and manga, could you see a heavily anime-themed blood donation facility. If I lived around a facility like that, I'd almost be tempted to give blood all the time (which is obviously the point).

This reminds me: I should be donating blood, anyway. Not only as a good deed, but I need to be contributing more than enough blood in case I ever need some blood myself. Now if I can just find the time to donate blood without having to worry about the lack of energy for the rest of the day ...