Photo, above: Life on Europa? This moon of Jupiter might have life in a subsurface ocean. Water from a subsurface ocean on Jupiter's moon, Europa, could reach the surface through seeps or erupt from hot water vents. This water would reveal the chemistry of the subsurface ocean and may contain microbes that live below. Artist's concept image by NASA / JPL.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW  

Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio

Hour One

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block A:  Larry Kudlow, in re: Paul Ryan managed to do a deal with the Democrats; Dem strategy in preparing to lose the Senate?  . . .

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block B:  Phil Izzo, WSJ lead editor, Real Time Economics blog, in re: hawks circling Manhattan in the snow, and out in force in Washington as the market looks stable and the job market looks OK.    Might hold on to stimulus because the inflation numbers are picking  up a bit.  Retail sales, mfrg, employment, all looking a little better.   . . .  Hydrofracking going on in Culver City, LA; also dry fracking with no water in the Southwest.

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Avik Roy, Manhattan Institute, in re: Obamacare and website. Insurance cost will be much higher than govt said; companies won’t pay so may drop insurance all together, esp industries such as foodservice – throwing people into Medicaid.  Big bz, such as Walgreen and GM, will give employees a budget with which to buy their own insurance.   "Fifty million Americans don’t have health insurance because they have pre-existing conditions" – not true! Very few in such a predicament; rather, 49 million have no insurance because they can’t afford it.  LK: what I'd do is simply pay for insurance for the few who truly can’t [acquire] it, and I'd do so in a transparent manner. 

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block D: Jim Huffman, Defining Ideas (Hoover Institution); dean Emeritus, Lewis and Clark Law School, in re:  The Problem with 'Job Creation'  Hydrofracking: govt was going to withhold legislation through 2014. Need more successful businesses rather than simply jobs, which will disappear. In Oregon, the governor has passed a bill allowing Nike to expand its employment to offer a broader range of healthcare incentives to workers.

Hour Two

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  Joseph Sternberg, WSJ Asia editorial board, in re: A Japanese businessman is in a classic case of hope over experience: Shinzo Abe still generates optimism. BoJ survey finds most Japanese surprisingly cheerful. If you look at current data, they’re more mixed.  One of the bright sports in the last months has been domestic spending, but Abe is not encouraging that much.  Recovery from the nontransparent nuclear catastrophe. May have to deregulate utilities. Worked for Margaret Thatcher; probably will work for Japan if it gets done.  JB:  "Tepco is the disaster."  Senkakus: Will Abe back up his aggression in response to Chinese territorial theft with a military build-up?  . . .  Japanese population is ageing (i.e., shrinking): I saw a graphic looking like an odd-shaped pyramid. Strikingly, China's looks the same way!  Japan's challenge will be how to you continue at a relatively slow rate; China's is: how do you develop at all?

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block B: Joseph Sternberg, WSJ Asia editorial board, in re:

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block C:  Charles Pellegrino, author and explorer, in re: Great Hubble revelation about Europa - a geyser of snow erupting just over 100 km into space.  Europa surface estimated to be 40-90milion years old, which is quite new.    Something similar to tectonic activity on the surface. Might be Ganymede that had life developing.  Venting: wouldn’t be much of any atmosphere over the ice, itself; but self-sealing icy shelf protects the planet from asteroids, and oceans underneath - very high possibility of life there.  Were we coming from elsewhere and probing Earth, we'd dig to see what was underneath. Europa has geysers; does it have fish?

Stoff (my co-author on Darwin's Universe - which along with Time Gate became the book that got me thrown out of New Zealand in the early 1980s, because these were called "madman" ideas) - Stoff was only 17 when he produced the original mathematical models that predicted the persistence of warm wet zones inside certain moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and then I became obsessed with surface areas and volumes and heat loss stability - and we were the ones who wrote to Ballard when the hydrothermal vents were discovered and published in 1978, more or less screaming to him that he had just opened up a window on the universe... which is how I ended up accidentally involved in the Titanic and the origin of the fields of forensic archaeology and deep ocean archaeology - all just another interesting thing happening on the way to Jupiter.

. . . One of Voyager 2's last glimpses of Europa now provides a strong case for a geologically active world beneath the ice. Taken three days after the robot's 1979 encounter with Jupiter (and not studied until 3 years later), closing shots reveal a faint plume rising 120 kilometers (75 miles) above the crescent moon. Looking back over its shoulder, Voyager might have made us witness to an eruption of volcanic water. The case for Europan geysers is further strengthened by Voyager data showing that sunlight reflected from the surface at different angles behaves as though it were illuminating a relatively fresh layer of frost...

 On the reference to "Fox Holes" - these are what Stoff and I had named the warm wet regions inside parent body asteroids (whence came the Murchinson and Orgeil carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, both with micro-geodes of pyrrhotite and salt veins and other indications of warm, wet regions that lasted about 500 million years or less - we named them in honor of a mentor, Sidney W. Fox, and when we realized that still-living Goldilocks zones might exist in Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus and Titan, we extended the name 'Fox Holes" to them.  

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block D: Sid Perkins, Science magazine, in re:  Early warning of supernovas in the Milky Way.  . . . neutrino detector being blt in a mountain in Japan, may be able to detect a supernova in advance. Outer layers of stars stay intact for a day or so because of the layers of gas collapsing;  at minimum, have a few hours to identify the direction and star. Supernovas usu happen every 35 years in the Milky Way.

ScienceShot: Armageddon 2  Satellite images can help determine whether objects that slam into Earth have a friend following close behind

SPACE  ScienceShot: Almost Certain Chance of Catching Next Supernova  With new instrument, astronomers get early warning of exploding stars in the Milky Way

Hour Three

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block A:   Gene Countryman, KNSS Wichita, in re: A Kansas Man Who Dreamed of Jihad - Terry Lee Loewen was just a laid-back, warmhearted avionics technician—or so his family thought.... [more] E While I don’t know Terry Lee Loewen personally, there are hundreds just like him here – except that somewhere along the line, with no notice to any neighbor, friends, family, via the Internet he became involved in jihad to kill the maximum number of people. Being an avionics expert, he knew the electrical part but didn’t have the explosives; the experts he enlisted provided him with highly sophisticated explosives (putatively; they were in fact FBI agents).  The local Muslim community has never heard of him let alone seen him in their mosque. His goal was to explode himself. He recruited himself. Left a note: I will have been martyred for Allah.   . . . I believe in jihad for the sake of Allah and for the sake of my Muslim brothers and sisters."   He was arrested in 2009 for having a switchblade in his checked luggage; paid a $66 fine.  Has a tattoo with the word "Jesus" on his back.  Extremely puzzling and a little scary. He'd beat every possible profiling. He crossed to the dark side by himself.

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block B:  Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management, in re: A Response to Thomas L. Friedman's 'Letter' to President Xi    Global Times said that Thomas L. Friedman was out of touch with China's security concerns. “China can't cede agenda-setting to Western . . . "  "Maybe your system is frailer than I thought" Tom Friedman has hailed China's leadership, compared it to our own, has been a cheerleader for China and fears that the Times will be closed down in  China. Maybe its starting to dawn on him that the way Chinese leaders do things is more problematic than he thought.  He points out problems in such an obsequious way.  China's sudden air defense identification zone. US VP arrives Beiijng on 4 Dec to express concern about Chinese mil aggression in the region; on 5 Dec, the USS Cowpens, following along after the Liaoning, was stopped abruptly in a Chinese manoeuver that could normally lead to a military clash.  Xi Jinping was hailed as China's Gorbachov; has turned out to be China's Putin. Bloomberg did a piece on Xi's family's fortune., wrote of Xi's own misbehavior.  China's harassment and brutality in Tibet, Xinjiang, along the Indian border, etc.  While I don't think he actually wants a full war, China will probe again and again to see where there's weakness, where the US will abandon its commitment to free navigation. The stakes are high, not merely a few rocks in the ocean.

USS Cowpens Incident Reveals Strategic Mistrust Between US and China   The potential remains for mishaps involving naval vessels and military aircraft in the South China Sea.  On November 26, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning left its homeport of Qindao, Shandong province for its first deployment to the South China Sea. The Liaoning was accompanied by two destroyers, the Shenyang and Shijiazhuang, and two missile frigates, Yantai and Weifang. The Chinese navy website reported that the carrier group would carry out “scientific research, tests and military drills.” The Liaoning’s deployment was closely monitored in international waters by the USS Cowpens (CG-63), a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser.

On December 5, a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ship made radio contact with the Cowpens and asked it to leave the area. The USS Cowpens replied that it was in international waters and declined to change course. The Cowpens was then shouldered by a PLAN Amphibious Dock Ship that suddenly crossed its bow at a distance of less than 500 meters and stopped in the water. The USS Cowpens was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision. The two ships made bridge-to-bridge contact to ensure safety of navigation. There were no further incidents.

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: NASA engineers have decided to go ahead with a series of spacewalks to repair the ISS cooling system, thereby delaying the Cygnus cargo mission until January.   The EVAs will take place on December 21, 23 and 25 followed by a Russian Spacewalk on the 27th and a Beta-Angle Cut-out beginning on December 29. That means that the earliest launch opportunity for Cygnus is January 9, 2014 (local time) – pending the successful execution of the contingency EVAs.    Update: The Orbital Sciences press announcement says their launch can happen no earlier than January 13.

December 17, 2013  At NASA's direction we have postponed the launch of our commercial cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station that was scheduled to occur on December 19, 2013 while the space agency proceeds with a series of spacewalks to replace a faulty pump module on the space station. The Antares rocket that is currently on the launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia will be returned to a horizontal position and transported back to the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF). At the HIF, the Antares payload fairing will be removed to allow the Cygnus team to open the payload module hatch and remove time-critical payloads for safekeeping until the next launch attempt, which will occur no earlier than January 13, 2014

China outlines its plans for its next two unmanned lunar probes, with the second targeted as a 2017 sample return mission. The new mission planned for 2017 would mark the third and final phase of China’s robotic lunar exploration program and pave the way for possibly landing an astronaut on the moon after 2020.  The soft landing on Saturday demonstrated they're developing the technology to land a manned vehicle safely on the Moon. To return samples safely would demonstrate they're developing the technology to return that manned vehicle safely as well.  Update: Yutu did not land anywhere near its planned landing location.  China had originally publicized a location in the Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows) — a level area thoroughly surveyed by a previous Chinese mission — as the landing spot. Local media even stated that Chang’e 3 landed there. But Chinese scientists have since confirmed that the spacecraft landed slightly to the east, in the northern part of Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains).  It's unclear if this was a late change or the result of a technical problem.

Arianespace has ordered the construction of an additional 18 Ariane 5 rockets. This construction order, if it reflects actual launch contracts, gives Arianespace some margin while it works to find ways to compete in the launch business, as expressed by the last sentence of the above article: “Astrium managers recently called for a thorough overhaul of the Ariane contractor mix with a view to reducing prices to stay viable in the competitive world commercial launch market.”

Aerojet has successfully completed engine tests for the launch abort system on Boeing’s CST-100 manned capsule. “In the past several weeks, the Aerojet Rocketdyne team conducted a series of eight tests on two Launch Abort Engines meeting or exceeding all test parameters,” said Aerojet Rocketdyne Program Manager, Terry Lorier. “The tests demonstrated engine performance for multiple mission duty cycles and proved operation and durability under extreme operating conditions. The success of this most recent test series clears the way for our team to proceed into qualification and production of the engine in the next phase of the program.”

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block D: Poonam Goyal, Bloomberg, in re: GIFTING GOES FRUGAL. Wealthy Go Frugal This Holiday Amid Uneven U.S. Recovery – It’s not just low-income shoppers who are pulling back on spending for loved ones and themselves this holiday season. Wealthy folks are watching their dollars, too.  Last holiday season, the literary agent Linda Chester bought herself a sheared sable fur coat and red evening gown, both from Ralph Rucci, and designer suede leggings. This season, the bicoastal fashion lover settled for costume jewelry earrings from SoHo designer Iradj Moini.  “I am definitely tightening my belt this year,” said Chester, who cited an uneven economic rebound and concerns over a possible stock-market bubble, as well as a desire to spend more on charity. “I really am not looking.”

It’s not just low-income shoppers who are pulling back on spending for loved ones and themselves this holiday season. Rich folks are watching their dollars, too.  While the best-heeled shoppers still think nothing of dropping $4,600 on an Hermes tote, cracks have appeared in the $94 billion U.S. luxury market, especially for companies that cater to “Henrys” -- High Earners Not Rich Yet. Coach Inc. has said customers plan to spend . . .

Hour Four

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block A: Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C Guelzo, Part I.  (1 of 4)

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block B: Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C Guelzo, Part I.  (2 of 4)

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block C: Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C Guelzo, Part I.  (3 of 4)

Tuesday  17 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block D: Gettysburg: The Last Invasion by Allen C Guelzo, Part I.  (4 of 4)

..  ..  ..

Music

Hour 1: Three Musketeers. Pirates of the Caribbean.

Hour 2: Avatar. Prometheus.

Hour 3: Anonymous. The Thing.

Hour 4: All the King's Men. Babylon AD.