In honor of the late author who would have turned 93 today, Curiosity landing site has been named Bradbury Landing.

One of the insrutments in MSL's REMS weather suite has failed. This was one of two wind speed indicators mounted on Curiosity's mast. The failure is thought to be caused by debris damage during landing. The failure is thought to be permanent. It will only affect wind speed measurements from certain directions relative to the rover mast.

Curiosity deployed and tested its robotic arm without any anomaly. Next days will be spent cablibrating the arm for use in Martian gravity field.

The MSL team has completed its initial check out with only one failure. The next period consists of a commissioning intermission which will allow Curiosity drive time and surface science. Senior review board will now investigate progress before giving the go ahead to proceed with final commissioning.

Curiosity has completed its initial mobility test. Tests include steering test for all 4 steering actuators and a short drive and turn test. The rover drove 4 1/2 meters, tuned and backed up 2 1/2 meters. All mobitlity tests are normal.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that these tickets were from 1994? That's right... 18 years ago! I called the office and told them how dumb I thought that was, but they admitted that they were going back AS MUCH AS 30 YEARS, to try to collect everything they could. They said there is no statue of limitations on this, and the only choice my son had was to come into court and talk to the judge. At least they offered to continue it till next month if we wanted. (Yee haw!)

When asked about using deadly force to prevent an abortion, he replied, "I would hope that it wouldn't come to that, as with any situation where someone is in danger, but again, specifically talking about elective abortions and late-term abortions, that is an act that needs to be stopped."

Szabo has previously said he would arrest anyone involved in performing an abortion, claiming it is equivalent to murder. He told CBS News that he would only use deadly force "if there is no other choice."

The horror, the horror.

Democrats have been salivating over the chance to hit Republicans as Medicare-cutters ever since Rep. Paul Ryan turned his budget into holy writ for the House GOP. And Republicans have been deriding Obama as a Medicare-cutter ever since the Affordable Care Act derived some of its savings from rollbacks of subsidies designed to induce private insurance plans to bid for the right to cover senior citizens. Meanwhile on the elite level, a different--indeed completely contrary--debate is taking place, in which pundits argue about who'll do a better job of cutting Medicare. David Brooks says it's Ryan and Mitt Romney who are really serious about axing the program, while former Obama OMB Director Peter Orszag denounces Ryan/Romney as relying on an unworkable "private-market tooth fairy."

For my part, I think it's perverse that the substantive focus of the campaign has shifted away from the more pressing subject of mass unemployment. But as long as we're talking long-term entitlement policies, it's worth noting that on Medicare, Obama and Romney actually agree about almost everything.

SNIP

Where they disagree is on how to implement the cuts. Ryan's proposal is to turn Medicare into a voucher program where seniors would get a subsidy with which to buy an insurance package, with the value of the subsidy limited by the overall growth target. Obama's proposal is to hit the growth target the way foreign single-payer systems limit their costs, with more aggressive bureaucratic management of what Medicare is willing to pay for and how much it's willing to pay.

The difference between outsourcing (Ryan) and centralized rationing (Obama) is an important one, but from a patient's point of view they might end up looking pretty similar. Under Ryan's approach, the poor will be left with bare-bones plans and more affluent seniors will either pay higher premiums to get more deluxe plans or else pay out-of-pocket for noncovered services. Under Obama's approach, the poor will be left with bare-bones Medicare and more affluent seniors will either buy separate supplemental insurance plans or else pay out-of-pocket for noncovered services. The workability of Obama's idea, in my view, is well-validated by international experience while the Romney/Ryan alternative amounts to taking a leap of faith in the magic of the private sector. But ironically it's essentially the same leap of faith Obama is taking in his signature health care program for nonseniors--the view that an adequately regulated, subsidized system of private insurance plans can provide reasonable coverage at reasonable cost