There’s an interesting pair of articles that might interest you. In the first from Wired David Hambling reports on an apparently successful test by NASA of an impossible space drive:

The Nasa team based at the Johnson Space Centre gave its paper the title “Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF [radio frequency] Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum”. The five researchers spent six days setting up test equipment followed by two days of experiments with various configurations. These tests included using a “null drive” similar to the live version but modified so it would not work, and using a device which would produce the same load on the apparatus to establish whether the effect might be produced by some effect unrelated to the actual drive. They also turned the drive around the other way to check whether that had any effect.

Back in the 90s, Nasa tested what was claimed to be an antigravity device based on spinning superconducting discs. That was reported to give good test results, until researchers realised that interference from the device was affecting their measuring instruments. They have probably learned a lot since then.

The torsion balance they used to test the thrust was sensitive enough to detect a thrust of less than ten micronewtons, but the drive actually produced 30 to 50 micronewtons — less than a thousandth of the Chinese results, but emphatically a positive result, in spite of the law of conservation of momentum:

“Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.”

Not so fast says Steven Novella of NeuroLogica:

The bottom line is that I just don’t believe it. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I don’t necessarily think the results of NASA’s test are untrue, just that I don’t think they have “validated” that the propellantless drive is what proponents say it is.

My reaction is identical to the claim made in 2011 that a team of researchers found that neutrinos travel faster than light. I didn’t believe those results either. The researchers were very careful, they rigorously reviewed every aspect of their experiment, and only announced the results when they were confident they ruled out all error. The physics community didn’t believe it, but they did their due diligence. After further analysis, it was found that the results were an error – an artifact introduced in the experimental setup. Initial skepticism was vindicated.

The claims made for a machine that can provide thrust without propellant is as unlikely and at variance with the laws of physics as neutrinos traveling faster than light or free energy machines. Sure, it’s always possible that our understanding of the universe is incomplete in a way that allows for one of these phenomena to be true, but our current understanding calls for extreme initial skepticism. Such a stance has a very good history to support it.

I find the whole thing a very fun idea. If it’s true and this impossible drive actually works, not only will it revolutionize satellite and space station design, it could have a major impact on deep space exploration with ripples into our basic understanding of the universe. If it isn’t true and it doesn’t work, it will certainly impel some re-thinking of how we go about designing experiments.

Amazing as it may be there are still primaries for Senate seats yet to be held: Kansas, Tennessee, Hawaii, and Alaska. RealClearPolitics handicaps the outcomes.

When I saw the slug on this historical article, “Did First Lady Kill President Harding?”, my immediate reaction was the follow-up question: “And if not why not?” If she didn’t have a hand in his death, it certainly showed remarkable restraint on her part. An interesting story about our worst president.

Speaking of a sour mood, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn shouldn’t take much solace from that of Illinois voters:

Republican challenger Bruce Rauner has edged further ahead in his battle with Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn for the governorship of Illinois.

The latest Rasmussen Report telephone survey of Likely Illinois Voters finds Rauner with a five-point lead – 44% to 39% – over Quinn. Seven percent (7%) like some other candidate in the race, and 10% are undecided.

I don’t think that reflects the popularity of newcomer Bruce Rauner so much as a general “anybody but Quinn” sentiment.

Sadly, Pat Quinn isn’t the problem or, at least, isn’t the only problem. The real problem is the Illinois state legislature and, absent some great anti-incumbent wave, we will have the same old legislature with the same old leaders next as we have had this year. So many state legislators run unopposed that it would take a write-in movement and Illinois’s restrictions on write-ins are so severe that would be an extreme longshot. Illinois’s incumbents don’t take any chances.

Jeff Greenfield outlines the headwinds that Democrats face in November:

If you’re looking for a truism that remains true, then reach out and grasp this one: the “six year curse.” With one (highly instructive) exception, the party that holds the White House will lose Congressional seats in the six-year midterms. It happened to Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt; it happened to Ike and LBJ and Reagan. It will almost surely happen to Barack Obama this November.

In summary:

• It’s been a long time since George W. Bush was president. Blaming current events on him is less compelling than it was four years ago.
• Barack Obama isn’t on the ballot (and might not help much even if he were).
• A poor public mood hurts the sitting president’s party.
• The party of the sitting president has lost seats in the House in the midterm elections of his second term for the last century except in 1998, “The Great Exception”.
• Economic conditions are not as buoying to the public mood as were those of 1998.

I find the public mood is as sour today as at any time of my recollection. If the primaries are any gauge, turnout for the general election will be very low and, frankly, anything can happen. Much depends on who turns out and whether those who are very disaffected with conditions are more likely to show up than those who support the status quo.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal have come out in favor of the House’s suit against President Obama:

Liberals claim that Mr. Obama’s pose as law giver is necessary because Republicans are obstructionist, and, anyhow, the Constitution’s limits are the dusty artifacts of the 18th century unsuited to modern times. One irony is that they dismiss the House suit even as they claim to be troubled by national security surveillance that has always been grounded in both statute and the Constitution, with no evidence of abuse.

Yet Mr. Obama’s claim that he can pick and choose which laws to enforce is far more offensive to the American tradition than anything the government has done in the name of antiterrorism. The House challenge is an opportunity to vindicate the genius of the Framers to prevent the exercise of arbitrary and centralized power.

while David Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley, the architects of the argument in favor of the validity of such suits, explains their rationale:

A president who unilaterally rewrites a bad or unworkable law, however, prevents the American people from knowing whether Congress should be praised or condemned for passing it. Such unconstitutional actions can be used to avert electoral pain for the president and his allies.

If Mr. Obama can get away with this, his successors will be tempted to follow suit. A Republican president, for example, might unilaterally get the Internal Revenue Service to waive collection of the capital-gains tax. Congress will be bypassed, rendering it increasingly irrelevant, and disfranchising the American people.

Over time, the Supreme Court has come to recognize that preserving the constitutional separation of powers between the branches of government at the federal level, and between the states and the federal government, is among the judiciary’s highest duties.

My guess is that the suit will not prevail. The Court will seize the nearest figleaf and, since the suit is only being brought by one house of Congress, dismiss it for lack of standing.

The reality, I think, is that not taking sides is taking sides and such a decision will reasonably be seen as the Court siding with the president and the Senate. If the Republicans take the Senate in November, stay tuned for the next chapter in January.

I don’t dwell on it but my fundamental beef with the Republican Party is with its acceptance of mostly Southern social conservative Democrats, the Wallace Democrats, Dixiecrats literal and figurative, in the late 1960s and early 70s. For me it’s a sort of Original Sin whose taint can fade but can never be washed away. However tentative my relationship to the Democratic Party might be I could never consider myself a Republican for that reason. Consequently, I can be a Democrat or an independent which for someone who lives in Chicago means a Democrat.

That is not to say that I have the dewy-eyed naïveté about the party that so many Democrats seem to have or, at least, express these days. Chided as I might be for suggesting from time to time that “they all do it”, the reality is that they all do it.

In the midst of the furor over some Republicans (and Democrats!) suggesting that the president is courting impeachment, Katherine Miller of Buzzfeed has picked up a fine example illustrating that both parties are in fact chockful of crazies. Rail as they might against prospective impeachment of President Obama by a Republican House, a bill to impeach President Bush was apparently introduced in the Democratically-controlled House of 2008. Its sponsor was Dennis Kucinich and its eleven co-sponsors included Sheila Jackson-Lee, Keith Ellison, and Jim McDermott.

When you condemn government by impeachment, you might at least be even-handed about it.

The physical and emotional turmoil of the last several weeks are taking a toll on me. Having long had a problem sleeping, last night I woke at 1:00am, worked for an hour or so, watched a little television, and finally drifted back to sleep to rise at 6:00am, slightly behind my normal schedule but not disastrously so. Five or six hours of sleep all told.

I hope the managers of public pension funds and, even more importantly, the politicians who construct the plans they administer, take Bill Gross of bond giant PIMCO’s advice:

The U.S. for sure is near the top of the “more certain” list, but 2% real growth since the Great Recession is nothing to brag about. It would have been a bare minimum expectation back in 2010. Elsewhere, an investor not only has to wonder, but perhaps retreat from the lack of growth sunshine. South America is in virtual recession with its big three – Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela – approaching lockjaw conditions of one sort or another. Euroland is above water, but floating on water wings with peripheral country unemployment (Spain, Portugal, Italy) averaging close to 20% – unprecedented except for the 1930s. Russia is retreating for geopolitical reasons. And Japan/China are supported only by credit creation of a magnitude that reminds one of Minsky, or Ponzi, or Potemkin with his mythical villages of growth due to paper, not productivity. Where is the growth? The world as McCulley correctly analyzes it, is demand deficient and supply rich.

Asset price growth therefore – capital gains in market speak – will be harder to come by. Without the tailwind of declining interest rates which have increased profit margins as well as decreased cap rates, they will instead face structural headwinds. Let me be clearer though – clearer than I was to my Vietnamese friend. PIMCO is not saying that asset prices will go down – they just won’t go up as much as many expect. And income – not capital gains – will be the dominant driver of future returns. “Good evening,” capital gains. “Good morning,” more dependable income – even in this age of artificially low interest rates.

These funds frequently assume returns of 7% or even 8% annually. That’s significantly above inflation and significantly above the real rate of growth. Where is such growth to come from?

The only possibility open to them is investing in increasingly risky assets which inevitably means that some of them will lose which in turn means either that legislators will need to make up the difference or promises to public employees cannot be honored. State and local budgets are already seriously pressed by healthcare costs and increases in tax rates are not yielding proportional increases in revenues.

We need to start questioning the assumptions.