Cold Winter in South Africa: IQ and Incompetence

The southern hemisphere of Earth is bracing for a cold winter, similar to what much of the northern hemisphere recently experienced, only worse. Cold weather is more dangerous than hot weather--up to ten times more people die from cold weather than hot. For a society to survive truly cold winters, it must be technically competent to protect its people from the effects of cold.

The average IQ of the population of South Africa is 72. A quick glance at an enlarged view of the image below, will show that very few South Africans possess a high enough IQ to acquire technical competence in the technologies of the modern world. So long as the weather stays warm, populations with low IQs can survive despite the heat, for the most part. It is only when temperatures plummet that the importance of IQ and competence are revealed in stark calamity.

Falling temperatures will push up electricity demand across South Africa - and with it the real prospect of winter blackouts...The national power grid remains stable, but for the first time this week, demand went past the summer's high of 31 000MW and peaked at 34 000MW.

...Even though South Africa does not have a history of sustained cold fronts, Eskom expects that even "a little freezing cold" will put its grid under pressure...According to the Weather Service's winter forecast, the country could experience "below normal temperatures" on average in June and July.

The seasonal forecast also says the country could experience more severe cold snaps than last year. __Source

Bland words in a news report. Nothing to worry about, right? Wrong. Although South Africa's latitude extends only slightly further into the cold zone than Florida, Kuwait, or Mexico, the country's cities are not accustomed to prolonged cold weather.

What if the sun enters a prolonged solar minimum, as predicted(PDF)? Temperatures in many traditionally warm locations would dive into dangerous ranges of cold. Humans can adjust to different circumstances. If they possess the "human capital." What if the majority of the people cannot be trained to operate and maintain the machinery of modern western civilisations--the machinery that allows western nations to survive in temperate and near polar environments in urban environments?

As long as a low-IQ population coexists with a sufficiently large market dominant minority, the minority can operate and maintain modern machines and technologies, and the majority can benefit from their expertise. But when a low-IQ majority overthrows its market dominant minority--persecutes that minority and drives it from the country--the burden for maintaining a technological infrastructure rests upon the country's majority. South Africa is better off without Apartheid. But it is not better off without skilled and talented high-IQ technicians, engineers, scientists, medical professionals, farmers, and business persons.

If the machinery of civilisation begins to break down due to various stresses--expected and unexpected--the population will grow unruly and demand to be taken care of. The political elites in low-IQ countries live a far more luxurious existence than the average person, a fact that will not escape the majority of the population when everyday machinery begins to break down.

We should hope that the weather in warm, traditionally low-IQ population countries will never turn unseasonably cold for a prolonged period. But too many things in the natural universe are beyond the control of humans, the climate being one of them. The natural state of Earth's climate for the past several million years has been one of extensive glaciation. Our current warm period is just a short, lucky intermission between the iceball Earth norms.

The tribes of Earth that migrated to colder climates developed over time to match their environment. The tribes that remained in the warmth nearer the equator were never challenged in the cyclical, systematic ways in which the more polar oriented tribes were tested.

Think about what happens when the Earth turns cold again. The ice will march equator-ward. Human populations will be pressed together. Cold weather humans will need warm weather lands to grow crops and to live out of the ice. Warm weather humans will need the technical expertise of cold weather humans to survive the unwelcome cold. But it will not go that smoothly. Disputes over control of territory are typical in all animal species, including man. Cold is a killing thing.

H/T Tom Nelson

Never Wash Another Diaper or Menstrual Rag

Sure, I know that most people use disposable diapers and sanitary napkins or tampons. But now, using new titanium diapers and sanitary rags, they can keep using the same ones over and over. Why? Because the new titanium oxide nanocrystal materials obliterate organic material. You may have read earlier this year about the titanium dioxide nanocrystal-impregnated wool fibers that literally consume red wine stains. But those voracious nanocrystals will not just drink wine. They'll eat or drink virtually any organic material you care to feed them. They positively love colonic bacteria, and bacteria of all kinds.

When exposed to sunlight, these exciting wee crystals will even split water into oxygen and hydrogen. And now, it is becoming much easier and cheaper to create these diminutive crystalline obliterators, thanks to work done in Australia and China.

The new crystals - which are more than five times more effective at splitting water than unmodified anatase - were made by adjusting the crystal structure on the surface of the crystals. These surfaces, known as facets, typically form in the most thermally stable configuration, designated {101}, which contains mostly 6-coordinate titanium atoms.

However, an alternative surface configuration called {001} where most of the titanium atoms are only 5-coordinate, has been found to be far more reactive. 'The high percentage of "unsaturated" titanium atoms in {001} allows stronger interactions with adsorbed molecules, such as water, resulting in a surface that is many times more reactive,' explains Max Lu, the leader of the team at the University of Queensland, Australia.

...The team demonstrated their results by making crystals at a uniform size of about one micrometre. Whereas only a few percent of the facets in naturally-occurring anatase crystals are the more reactive {001} kind, around 50 per cent of the facets in the new crystals are of this type. __RSC__via__NextEnergyNews

So you may actually want to buy two titanium diapers for your next baby. One for it to wear, and the other to filter your home water, and to generate hydrogen for your home and automobile fuel cells.

But you will only need to buy one titanium sanitary napkin or tampon, unless you have multiple menstruating females in your home with synchronised menstrual cycles. Babies are too young to question your judgment when you provide them with hand-me-down, never-washed titanium diapers from earlier siblings. But teenaged daughters can be a bit fastidious about things like that, so be forewarned.

For the cost of one more titanium diaper, you can provide clean air for your household by duct-taping one of the diapers over your central air and heat outlet. Think of it. Clean air, clean water, free hydrogen . . . and endless recyclable nappies. Not a bad deal.

Geoengineering the Next Ice Age

Climate is a cyclic phenomenon. We know that the Earth goes through long glacial ice ages punctuated by much shorter, warmer inter-glacial periods such as the one we are presently enjoying. Orthodox believers in the holy warmer religion, CAGW, believe strongly that our current inter-glacial is already too warm, and in danger of becoming even warmer--all because of human influence on climate. So what do they want to do? They want to magnify the human influence on climate beyond all belief. Do you think they have heard of "unintended consequences?"

In the new climate modeling study, which appears in the May 27-30 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bala and his colleagues Karl Taylor and Philip Duffy demonstrate that the sunshade geoengineering scheme could slow down the global water cycle.

The sunshade schemes include placing reflectors in space (found to be extremely costly), injecting sulfate or other reflective particles into the stratosphere to emulate the effect of a massive volcanic eruption (found to be dangerous to the water cycle and could destroy the ozone layer), or enhancing the reflectivity of clouds by injecting cloud condensation nuclei in the troposphere. When CO2 is doubled as predicted in the future, a 2 percent reduction in sunlight is sufficient to counter the surface warming.

...While the surface temperature response is the same for CO2 and solar forcings, the rainfall response can be very different. The team found that while climate sensitivity can be the same for different forcing mechanisms, the hydrological sensitivity is very different. The global mean rainfall increased approximately 4 percent for a doubling of CO2 and decreases by 6 percent for a reduction in sunlight in his modeling study. _Biopact

The study referred to here was based on a computer model. Understanding the limitations of computer models, we skeptical few must wonder why anyone would contemplate shutting down Earth's sunlight based upon such a "study." Even worse, the study's authors seem to be extremely confused about what they are trying to accomplish.

According to greenhouse theory, it is the increase of water vapour in the atmosphere that causes most of the runaway greenhouse positive feedback effect from the anthropogenic CO2 trigger. It seems that in such a case you would want to trigger more rainfall--to remove the water vapour from the atmosphere. According to the model, reducing sunlight would significantly reduce rainfall. Not what you would want at all.

The sun is already at an atypically low point in its cycle as it is. Solar scientists are anxiously watching to try to discover why their predictions for a hyper-active new solar cycle have been so abysmally wrong--or at least remarkably delayed. Proposing to further reduce the solar influence on Earth at this time appears incredibly naive and ideologically driven.

The difference between a glacial ice age and an inter-glacial period is not well understood. It is not actually known what would be required to trigger the next glaciation. The type of reduction in solar radiation impacting Earth that is being proposed appears to fall within the range of possible glaciation triggers. What type of carbon hysteria would cause scientists to propose such bold measures to counteract something that is not even a crisis--and is unlikely ever to become one?

The problem with grand geoengineering schemes, is that they are far more likely to generate unpredictable and unwelcome results, than to create the "perfect climate" that so many neo-utopian environmentalists of the PN/AL (psychologically neotenised / academically lobotomised) generation seem to expect as their due. What is needed is a movement back toward science and away from ideology.

Even "the new Al Gore" should be able to understand that.

Future of Europe

Some observers are talking about the twenty-first century being the European century, the same as the twentieth century was the American century. We take a more skeptical view: there is as good a chance that the twenty-first century will be the century of European decline. We hope to be proved wrong. Source (PDF)

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What will it take for Europe to avoid the decline referred to by the scholars below? Serious reforms in economic policy, immigration policy, and her stance toward responsibility for her own security, among other changes. But if she believes that no changes are needed, which is more likely? The decline.

About one-third of Harvard’s economics department is Europeans who have fled their countries’ troubled universities. Western Europe, instead of trying to attract the most talented youths from India, China, and Eastern Europe, restricts migration. The immigrants allowed are not the smart people who in the United States have created the many innovative start-ups. The best educated Central and Eastern Europeans are flying over Western Europe and going to the United States. “Wait ten years to open your borders to my fellow citizens,” recently said the then Romanian foreign minister, “and every smart Romanian engineer will have migrated to the United States: what you’ll get will be our uneducated peasants.” Europeans are growing older. Fertility rates are exceptionally low. Europe won’t thrive if only a few people work to support an increasing number of retirees. The closed borders and irrational immigration policies promise to make the European aging populations amid low birth rates harder to sustain. These two demographic trends will seriously strain European budgets.

Economic decline and political decline go hand in hand. Because of its large social spending and the low growth rate, Europe cannot support a powerful military. Sooner rather than later Europe will lose its powerful role in international organizations. Already today people around the world, especially in Asia, are wondering why France and Britain should have permanent seats in the UN Security Council. Countries like China and India with population sizes orders of magnitudes larger than France, Britain, and Germany combined will soon demand and obtain more power in world politics, and rightly so. At the moment these countries are determined to work hard and become rich. Pretty soon they will succeed and call for more recognition at the political tables of world organizations. European countries will have to move over. __FutureofEuropeIntro(PDF)

Google Books "Future of Europe"

Thank to the enlargement to Turkey, the Muslim community will represent 53% of the European population in 2100. Europe will be islamic by the end of the century. :

DRAWING 15

Years---------------- 2005---- 2030----2050---2080---2100

Native European --------504----452----378----350----328
population

Muslims [now]in Europe-21------31-----43---69-------95
Migrations--------------------24-----53-----120----185
Turkey------------------------94-----101-----95----- 90
(according UN projections)

Total Muslim----------21----- 149----197----284---370 __Source

In reality, Muslims tend to live in large cities--often capital cities--and exert influence far out of proportion to their actual numbers. London will become a Muslim city before 2050. Brussels, probably before 2060. Amsterdam by 2030. But truly, these cities will be effectively controlled by Muslims long before those dates.

For those Europeans who object to this viewpoint, I say only, "you are quite right to object. Go back to sleep, liebchens." To the rest, I recommend working within your laws to turn back the tide, stop the bleeding. Do not look at emigration to the Anglosphere or Switzerland as a first resort, but as a last resort when it is clear that the European experiment has failed. Do your best to make sure Europe survives.

Hot Rocks Geothermal: Google Looks to Invest

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Enhanced geothermal power uses drilling technology to punch two or more holes down into the "hot dry rock" layer of the Earth's crust. Water is then pumped into one hole and steam is extracted from the other hole(s), to drive a turbine generator for electric power. Enhanced geothermal is being pursued in Israel by Ormat Technologies. Google is taking a look at the technology for possible investment.

Executives at Google have been clear that so-called enhanced geothermal is on the list of technologies they see as cost effective, compared with fossil fuel energy.

The idea behind enhanced, or engineered, geothermal systems is to inject water underground to enhance the permeability of rock, allowing for the release and capture of more heat.Ormat is working on an enhanced geothermal project organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, which says that these advanced techniques can dramatically increase geothermal potential--by 40 times. __Cnet_via_NextBigFuture

The US DOE believes enhanced geothermal to have the potential to generate thousands of times the energy and power used by humans over the entire planet.

Humans have access to three virtually unlimited sources of energy that can supply their energy needs thousands of times over into the indefinite future. Solar--which needs better storage. Geothermal--which needs technology development. Nuclear fusion--which needs technology development. Biomass could easily supply all of humanities energy needs given more development--but probably not thousands of times over.

We are living in and near an abundance of energy.

Taken from Al Fin Energy

More at Brian Wang's NextBigFuture

Classic of Immortality Available Online

Aschwin de Wolf notified me by email of the online publication of a classic work of immortality literature--Immortality: Physically, Scientifically, Now (HTML)--by Ev Cooper, privately published in 1962.

Link to PDF version (via Depressed Metabolism) If your browser gets bogged down trying to open PDF documents, download it using the "right-click-->Save Link As" option.

Read more about the interesting story of the author, Ev Cooper, at Depressed Metabolism.

The field of cryonics continues to develop slowly. The big breakthrough that is needed is the development of a non-toxic "vitrification" agent--a safe antifreeze for human bodies that prevents freezing damage when the body temperature is taken below the freezing point of water. Some progress has been made, but fish, amphibians, and insect larvae do a much better job of it so far.

Live Twice as Long: Burn the Candle at Both Ends

At least it seems to work that way for PEPCK-C genetically augmented mice. An updated study on these brave new mice reinforces earlier findings: these genetically modified mice live longer, are stronger, more assertive, and bear young at a previously unprecedented old age.

Two founder lines generated by this procedure were bred together, creating a line of mice that have 9.0 units/g skeletal muscle of PEPCK-C, as compared to 0.080 units/g in muscle from control animals. The mice were more active than controls in their cages and could run for up to 5 km, at a speed of 20 m/min without stopping (control mice run for 0.2 km at the same speed). Male PEPCK-Cmus mice are extremely aggressive, as well as hyperactive. During strenuous exercise, they use fatty acids as a fuel more efficiently than do controls and produce far less lactate than do control animals, perhaps due to the greatly increased number of mitochondria in their skeletal muscle. PEPCK-Cmus mice also store up to five-times more triglyceride in their skeletal muscle, but have only marginal amounts of triglyceride in their adipose tissue depots, despite eating 60% more than controls. The concentration of leptin and insulin the blood of 8–12 months of PEPCK-Cmus mice is far lower than noted in the blood of control animals of the same age. These mice live longer than controls and the females remain reproductively active for as long as 35 months. __Biochimie__via__Ouroborus

Remember, these mice were specially bred, twice over. They are the cross-bred offspring of two lines of mice which were genetically engineered mice for heightened PEPCK-C expression. There is no pill that you can take to achieve the same result.

But there are lessons to be learned from these super-mice. Humans live long enough so that genetic modifications can be made to them long after they are born--but long before they are due to die.

Think of what Olympic or professional athletes could do with higher levels of skeletal muscle PEPCK-C, and more muscle mitochondria. Who will be the first humans to volunteer for PEPCK-C gene therapy? Where will the human research be done first? China? Russia?

The total package would have to include higher intelligence, longer life, greater strength and speed, less need for sleep, higher resistance to infections and disease, and heightened executive function. But we have to start somewhere.

China: a Nation Humbled Before a Greater Power

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Both China and Chile are watching and waiting for the other shoe to drop. In China, strong aftershocks continue, adding to the already extensive damage and casualty list. The Olympics and Tibet must take a back seat for now.

In Chile, Mt. Chaiten's lava dome continues to build. More information at The Volcanism Blog. Chileans and Argentinians may not know for weeks whether this will be the big one for Chaiten in the modern era.

Al Gore might say that these signs of a restless Earth are due to manmade global warming (CAGW). But the rest of us know better. We know that the gods are restless.

Seasteading on Pykrete, and Other Novel Uses

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I first learned about the material called Pykrete while reading the blog "Colonize Antarctica." Pykrete is a mixture of wood fibre and ice, a combination that is very hard, very tough, floats, and is very slow to melt. Structures built of Pykrete would be ideal in a polar environment, such as a polar city pictured above.

2 Million Ton Pykrete Aircraft Carrier In WW2
More exotic uses of Pykrete would be to build a large ship, a floating island city, or floating arcology. Pykrete was made famous by wealthy industrialist and financier eccentric, Geoffrey Pike. Sir Winston Churchill was one of the earliest promoters of using Pykrete for building large ships in WWII. The hull for a giant Pykrete aircraft carrier would have been 40 feet thick or more, and almost impossible to penetrate with the torpedoes of the day. Even without refrigeration, such thick Pykrete walls would have taken years to melt in a temperate climate. The video below demonstrates the ballistic resistance of a 14% wood fibre Pykrete. A 50% fibre Pykrete would be much tougher, and slower to melt.

A modern Pykrete seastead would incorporate built-in refrigeration to keep the walls frozen even in tropical seas. A floating breakwater made of Pykrete would keep a more fragile inner-seastead safe from rogue waves and the pounding of normal storm swell. Besides the interior refrigeration tubing, the exterior walls of the Pykrete would need to be insulated via highly reflective/insulating coating materials.

The walls could be built hundreds of feet thick, if necessary, and in any conceivable shape. The fibre content could vary from as little as 14% to as much as 50% or more, for greater toughness. It would be necessary to experiment with coating materials for maximum longevity and minimum energy cost for refrigeration--even in tropical waters.

What we are talking about, is a custom-built, reinforced iceberg, of incredible strength and toughness. In a polar environment, the structure should last almost indefinitely, with minimal loss to melting and sublimation. In a temperate environment, a large Pykrete structure could last for decades or more, with minimal shading, insulation, and interior refrigeration.

A large Pykrete castle on land--with battlements, turrets, an inner keep, and drawbridge, could be quite affordable if built during a very cold winter. Pykrete structures with foundations that extended down into permafrost should also enjoy good longevity.

Solar Cycle 24 is Late: What Does It Mean?

If the sun is late on its cycle, does that mean it is pregnant? Perhaps not, but what exactly does it mean?

The cycle length of cycle 22 which peaked in 1990 was 9.8 years. Landscheidt has suggested a lag of up to 8 years between solar peaks or troughs and temperatures, which would mean a peak warmth from 1995 to 1998. Global temperatures appear to have peaked in 1998. The current longer quieter cycle 23 may be behind the cooling in the last 7+ years.

... Archibald(PDF)...speculates a major cooling ahead that could rival or be worse than the Dalton Minimum. In the hyperlinked paper, he even projects the impact on some US locations based on historical trendlines. Such a cooling would of course further call into question the idea that greenhouse gases are behind all the changes in our climate and natural factors are now suddenly unimportant. In our recent stories, we have shown how important ENSO and the multidecadal cycles in the oceans are to temperatures. It is my belief that someday we will find proof that soplar changes drive the ocean cycles which drive the land temperatures.

The sun undergoes cyclical changes on multiple time scales that appear to correlate very well with temperatures. Long and relatively quiet solar cycles historically have been associated with cold global temperatures, short and very active cycles, warm periods. The current cycle 23 appears to be the longest in at least a century and may project to quieter subsequent cycles and cooling temperatures ahead. __Intellicast__via__Icecap

The Intellicast article above contains multiple graphs and images that help to clarify the otherwise confusing and controversial question of the sunspots' influence on (or correlation with) climate.

Fortunately, unlike the CAGW climate models championed by Al Gore and the IPCC, we do not have to wait 50 or 100 years to verify or falsify the theories which correlate sunspot cycles with climate change. We should be able to test these ideas quite well within the next 5 to 10 years.

Replacing London, then Britain, then Europe?

Europe's population is being increasingly replaced by poorly educated outsiders from the third world who do not wish to become Europeans--rather they wish to transform Europe into more affluent versions of their own countries. But since they bring their old prejudices, feuds, religious fanaticisms, and tendencies to violence along with them, it is more likely that they will be dragging Europe down. Starting with London, or perhaps Amsterdam, or maybe Malmo?

London is now the most ethnically diverse city in the world—more so, according to United Nations reports, even than New York...Walk down certain streets in London and one encounters a Babel of languages...A third of London’s residents were born outside Britain, a higher percentage of newcomers than in any other city in the world except Miami, and the percentage continues to rise. Likewise, migration figures for the country as a whole—emigration and immigration—suggest that its population is undergoing swift replacement. Many of the newcomers are from Pakistan, India, and Africa; others are from Eastern Europe and China. If present trends continue, experts predict, in 20 years’ time, between a quarter and a third of the British population will have been born outside it, and at least a fifth of the native population will have emigrated.

... the unprecedented influx of immigrants, often poorly educated, have little interest in, or appreciation of, the society to which they have come. Many are not learning to speak English, or speak it poorly, and forced marriages and other practices foreign to British law and custom remain common among them. A government report several years ago found that Britain’s whites and ethnic minorities led radically separate lives, with no sense of shared nationality. And as is now well-known, a disturbing number of British Muslims have proved susceptible to the ideology of Islamism. [A] poll found that a fifth of all British Muslims had sympathy with the “feelings and motives” of the London suicide bombers. Only a third of British Muslims, a Guardian survey found, want more integration into British culture.

...in Britain, multiculturalism became a career opportunity and a source of political patronage. So-called experts on cultural sensitivity and equal opportunity—generally people whose ambitions far exceeded their talent, except for bureaucratic intrigue—built little empires, whose continued existence depended on the permanence of racial and other divisions in society.

...increased contact between people does not necessarily result in increased sympathy among them. A large proportion of the indigenous Muslim terrorists caught in Britain are children of prosperous small businessmen, who have been to university and whose individual prospects for the future were good, if they had chosen to follow a normal career path. Cultural dislocation, the readiness to hand of an ideology of hatred that seems to answer their personal need for a fixed identity and an end to cultural confusion, and a disposable income—these, not poverty, account for their terrorism.

... ___CityJournal

This is the legacy that young Europeans are waking up to. It is becoming more likely that their own children or grandchildren--if they ever choose to have them--will find themselves outsiders in the country that their grandparents had believed they would own in perpetuity.

Will Europeans become the new Armenians? Europe the new Lebanon?

Will California Secede from the US and Join the EU?

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In many ways, California stands out from the rest of the US. With its coastal Mediterranean climate, and adherence to dieoff.org style energy deprivation policies, California might fit into the EU better than the US, in many ways.

1. The percentage of residents on welfare in the Golden State is now more than triple that of the rest of the U.S. If it reflected the rest of the country, California would have 800,000 fewer people receiving welfare.
2. While caseloads in the rest of the U.S. have dropped over 30% in the past five years, California’s has gone up about 6%.
3. As a result, though it has only about 12% of the total U.S. population, California’s share of the welfare caseload has risen from 22% in 2002 to over 30%.
4. There are more welfare recipients per family in California, and that number has crept upward in the past couple of years, perhaps indicating that California welfare mothers are bearing more children that those in the rest of the U.S.

Governor Schwarzenegger and his state were very fortunate during his first few years in office. The economic growth created by the Bush tax cuts came at just the right time. The state also received some lucky onetime windfalls, including the hundreds of millions of dollars founders and insiders at Google coughed up when they cashed in their stock options.

Unfortunately, it appears that the good fortune enabled the state to avoid serious expenditure reform in welfare, and surely other areas, which Schwarzenegger should have aggressively undertaken when he took office. __Source

California's flight from reason began many decades ago, but for a number of reasons, has not yet fully reaped its sad consequence. Elected representatives such as Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters attest to the depleted mental resources of the California voter. As more industries, more intelligent citizens, and large employers limp their way out of the state for better economic opportunity, the toxic concentration of obliviousness grows ever higher within the golden state.

California can still be a pleasant place to visit. But if you're thinking of starting a business there, you may want to think again.

Nuclear + Tar Sands = All The Oil You Will Need

Canadian tar sands are a vast petroleum resource, containing much of the oil that the US is likely to be using over the next 30 years. Of course, a better US Congress would open up shale oil in the Green River Basin for development--with more oil resource than in all of Saudi Arabia. As it is, the inept current US Congress is on the verge of making Canadian tar sands off limits to US refiners and distributors. Yes, they are that stupid now in Washington DC.

Just when better ways of extracting Canadian tar sands are coming along. Like the new Hyperion nuclear battery, that can be used for in situ tar sand extraction.

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Since it is portable, the reactor can be deployed virtually anywhere power is needed -- remote industrial operations such as the Alberta oil sands, military installations or communities looking to supplement grid-supplied power. Once deployed, the Hyperion module delivers approximately 70 megawatts (MW) of heat (thermal energy) and 25 megawatts (MW) of electrical power via steam turbine. This is enough power to provide electricity for a community of 20,000 average-sized, American-style homes. Hyperion modules can also be "ganged" to provide even more power.

...About 4,000 units of the initial design will be manufactured at a new U.S. site yet to be determined. The initial rector will be a compact, self-regulating, self-contained design with no moving parts and about the size of a hot tub. Sealed at the factory, the module is not opened until it is time for the unit to be refueled — at the factory — approximately every five years or so. This helps guard against tampering. __Source__via__NextBigFuture

While the US Congress is only interested in political power and pillage, most intelligent observers understand that nuclear energy is the key to a better long-term future. Nuclear batteries such as Hyperion are a small, unconventional form of fission power, but they can fit into incredibly important niches. Incrementally larger and more conventional nuclear fission reactors can provide reliable baseload power for large towns and small cities, large industrial facilities and developments, and could be ganged together to provide larger quantities of power if needed.

We at Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] have become unhappily aware of the fact that the current US Congress is all about restricting energy--depriving the US citizen and resident of access to energy. That is why we developed our patented "corrupt politician to bio-energy" thermochemical process. We believe that if an elected official betrays his duty to the public's trust, that he should be utilised for the benefit of the public in one way or another. At OYNK, we are all about a better future, no matter what the politicians want. ;-)

Previously published at Al Fin Energy

Supply and Demand, Oil Speculators, and You

While a corrupt US Congress cripples US ability to develop domestic petroleum supplies, overseas production is slowly gearing up to take advantage of sky-high prices.

The world's finely balanced market for crude has been creeping into surplus for several weeks. Opec's monthly report says that demand this quarter will average 85.75m bpd. Supply was 86.8m bpd in April. The fresh output from Nigeria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia may push it significantly further into surplus.

The signs are already surfacing in global inventories. Opec says that stocks held by the OECD club of rich countries are above their five-year average, with "comfortable" cover for 53 days' use. US stocks have edged up for the last four months, though they fell last week.

...It is unclear whether hedge funds and investors piling into futures contracts have now become the driving force in a speculative bubble....Lehman's latest report - Is it a Bubble? - says commodity index funds have exploded from $70bn (£36bn) to $235bn since early 2006. This includes $90bn of fresh money. Energy takes the lion's share. Every $100m flow of investment money into oil lifts crude prices by 1.6pc, it said.

"We see many of the ingredients for a classic asset bubble," said Edward Morse, Lehman's oil expert.

This week has seen a dramatic surge in oil contracts dated as far forward as 2016. Futures have moved higher than the spot price, a rare event known as "contango". This can cut both ways: either as a sign of an impending supply crunch years hence; or that the futures market has become unhinged from reality....What we know is that the International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for world growth for 2008 three times since last autumn to 3.7pc, and the United Nations is predicting just 1.8pc - technically, a global recession. The major oil forecasters have halved their estimates for crude demand growth to 1.2m bpd.

Almost all emerging nations have to slam on the brakes in coming months to curb inflation before it starts spiralling out of control. Inflation has hit 30pc in Ukraine, 22pc in Vietnam, 8.5pc in China, and double digits across most of the Gulf.

The countries that account for the most of the growth in oil demand over the last two years are almost all nearing the limits of easy economic growth. __Telegraph

More interesting commentary at Peak Oil Debunked and R Squared Blog.

The fundamentals of oil pricing put the market price near US $80 a barrel. Bullish oil speculators and easily panicked hedge investors fleeing the dollar have combined with record setting oil demand from emerging nations to push the price of oil into a higher level than can be sustained indefinitely. The US Congress has contributed significantly to the problem by cutting the legs out from under domestic oil production. It is clear that the Congress intends to maintain this stance at least until the November elections, hoping that voters will not be smart enough to blame incumbents in Congress.

Expect this oil price bubble to burst sometime after early November, 2008. But then the next oil price bubble will probably begin before long after that, except it will start from a higher plateau, and reach higher peaks before it bursts in its turn.

We will never run out of oil. But the price of oil will certainly be subject to the influences of panicky investors, corrupt politicians, opportunistic speculators, and the economic booms and busts around the globe.

Nano-Weapons of the Near Future

Nano-weapons are coming soon. No one knows exactly when, but you can be sure that they will see you before you see them!

Nano-Weaponry – Testing the Limits

Here are just some of the possibilities:

1.) Nano-Scouts – Using technologies that effectively “lives on” and controls live insects, the proverbial “fly on the wall” may have literally hundreds or even thousands of parasitic nano-scouts living on its exterior....

2.) Nano-Poisons – Most people instantly think of poison as a tool for killing someone. But nanotechnology, with its ability to trigger specific brain functions, will provide a whole new menu of poison options. As an example, a liar-poison will make it impossible for someone to tell the truth. A kleptomaniac poison will make it impossible for the person to stop stealing things. An alcoholic poison will make a person unable to stop drinking alcohol. The obesity poison will cause a person to eat themselves to death. And my favorite - - we’ll call it the “frontal lobotomy poison,” - - will make a person incapable of being angry or mean.

3.) Nano Force Fields – Any field powerful enough to keep the bad guys out is also capable of keeping the bad guys in....

4.) Nano Mind Erasers – Neutralizing a person’s memory can often be a more powerful defense than killing them. Micro fields flaring up in a succession of unnoticeable tiny brain bursts may wipe sections of a brain clean without anyone ever noticing. Alzheimer’s in a can.

5.) Nano Needles – Invisible to the human eye, nano diameter needles will be shot like clusters of bullets from great distances to “pin” people to a wall or freeze their physical movement. Nano needles, because of their tiny diameter, will be the ultimate non-lethal weapon, leaving no visible wounds and causing no permanent damage.

6.) Water Bullets – As a different kind of non-lethal weapon, self-contained water balls, formed around an elevated surface tension containment system, will be used to knock people down, temporarily rendering them harmless.

7.) Desynchronized Energy Fields – Binary power, created by the intersection of two otherwise harmless beams, has the ability to disrupt the energy fields in an individual. A person with desynchronized energy fields will feel extremely fatigued, and pushed to a more extreme level, will drop unconsciously to the ground. A new form of stun-gun.

8.) Nano Heart-Stoppers and Stroke Inducers – ... nano-blood flow restrictors that induce excruciating pain and reduce the victim to a fraction of who they once were, over a long period of time, have the side benefit of telling the world “don’t mess with me” or you’ll end up like this guy. __FS__via__FutureScanner

A future of nano-dust spies, sentinels, assassins, and defensive weapons, is one that most of the world's military specialists are unprepared for--to say nothing of the average world citizen. Yet most of these weapons are far closer and easier to devise and build, than the molecular nano-assembler--the horn of plenty that most people think of when they think of a nanotechnological future.

Nano-weapons combined with bio-weapons, chemical weapons, and genetic weapons, provide the budding world religious or ideological dictator with far more ultimate power than a few nuclear weapons.

Of course, every measure has a counter-measure. But not everyone will have the resources to obtain counter-measures, when the means of deadly attack becomes nearly ubiquitous. Have you thought lately about what I said regarding minimum viable population?

Political Peak Oil; Biome Under Seafloor; Roasting Biomass Like Coffee Beans

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Politicians in Washington DC have been grandstanding for the camera, to demonstrate their "deep concern" about high oil prices. The only problem with that political posture is that it is the politicians themselves who are directly to blame. We are experiencing political peak oil.

Of natural crude, we have large reserves off the coasts of California and Florida. However, no drilling in these areas has been permitted by law since the late 1960’s. China, however, by using agreements with Cuba to drill in this area, will begin doing so shortly.

America also has additional reserves in the Gulf areas, from Florida to Texas. However, no drilling is permitted in most of these areas. Mexico, however, has no such restrictions.

In Alaska, both onshore and offshore, we have large areas of proven reserves, which are not allowed to be developed by law. Canada has no laws prohibiting such development.

In the mountain Western states, large amounts of oil are available in the shale rock formations. However, EPA regulations prohibit their development.

In the far West, vast areas of tar sands remain undeveloped due to environmental restrictions. As with the geographic areas noted above, most of the land is owned or controlled by the federal government. Canadian use of tar sands is a major source of their oil exports.

The conversion of coal to oil, a technology available for over 100 years, remains another untapped resource, due to legislative and environmental restrictions.

The bottom line is that America could have become energy independent with regard to crude oil by the mid 1980’s. In the area of electricity, the addition of more coal fired generating plants, nuclear power plants, and additional hydro electric plants could have made the need for gas and oil fueled electrical plants unnecessary by 1990. That would have freed up more crude for other purposes, and reduced our overall consumption of oil. In addition, our electrical generation capacity would substantially exceed our present needs, rather than the sporadic shortages we now experience.

Some analysts have estimated that if all of these options had been initiated in the immediate aftermath of the OPEC embargo, crude oil today would have a domestic price of 40-45 dollars per barrel, with secure supplies, and uninfluenced by foreign costs or international speculators. Why didn’t this happen?

It is popular to blame the oil companies, oil cartels, or greedy speculators. But in truth, we are in a bed of our own making. It is not the usual suspects who have passed laws based on bad science, radical environmental lobbies, self interest, political agendas or ignorance of technological advances and free enterprise economics. It is the result of our own government, mainly through the ineptness of Congress. __Source

The biggest comedians on television recently were not David Letterman or Jay Leno. No, the biggest jokers were Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois. Maxine Waters, California Representative, was something of the joker herself--promising to socialize nationalize American oil production. Congress is an ass. We knew California was in a self-inflicted energy deprived tailspin. Now Boxer, Waters, Durbin et al want to do the same thing to the entire US.

Of course, we can substitute biomass for much of the oil and coal that we burn. In fact, by roasting the biomass in a manner similar to coffee roasting, we can increase the amount of energy in the biomass--making it burn hotter and cleaner. We can turn waste biomass into gas, and use that gas to fire conventional gas turbines to generate electricity, or convert the gas into liquid fuels to power transportation vehicles such as trucks, farm tractors, heavy equipment, buses, automobiles, ships, and planes.

But the most intriguing news about biomass in the past week comes from studies of the deep ocean floor--bizarre life forms buried deep beneath the ocean floor. In fact, there may be more living biomass buried under the seafloor than in all the plants on Earth's surface.

...the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life.

John Parkes, a geobiologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it might even redefine what we understand as life, and, bizarrely, what we understand by "age".

Parkes has been hunting for deep life for over 20 years. Recently, he and his colleagues examined samples of a mud core extracted from between 860 metres and 1626 metres beneath the sea floor off the coast of Newfoundland.

They found simple organisms known as prokaryotes in every sample. Prokaryotes are organisms that often have just one cell. Their peculiarity is that, unlike any other form of life, their DNA is not neatly packed into a nucleus. __Source

It is too early to say how the under-the-seafloor prokaryotes relate to early life on Earth, or perhaps even life on other planetary bodies in space. Prokaryotes are more primitive than eukaryotes (cells with a nucleus), and given the relatedness of under the seafloor prokaryotes to deep ocean vent prokaryotes, this form of life appears quite ancient.

Life on Earth is ubiquitous. It exists high in the atmosphere, deep under the Earth's surface and seafloor, within its oceans and polar ice, and virtually everywhere on the surface. But as much life as exists already, there is room for orders of magnitude more life. Energy from the sun and the Earth's heat and chemistry is virtually limitless, for human purposes.

As Craig Venter and his merry band of synthetic biologists devise ever newer forms of life, custom-made to serve human needs, we will discover even more ways that life can exist on this planet.

Another Look at Seasteading, Rich Man Style

Seasteading is a familiar topic here at Al Fin. Now there is a new player in the game, who is playing with high stakes--Peter Thiel.

With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and legal systems."

"Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world," Thiel said in a statement....The seasteaders want to build their first prototype for a few million dollars, by scaling down and modifying an existing off-shore oil rig design known as a "spar platform."

This schematic illustrates the ballasting system that Wayne Gramlich imagines would keep the seastead from tipping over. The amount of water in the ballasts could be raised or lowered to move the seastead up and down.
Holl Liou/Wired.com

In essence, the seastead would consist of a reinforced concrete tube with external ballasts at the bottom that could be filled with air or water to raise or lower the living platform on top.

The spar design helps offshore platforms better withstand the onslaught of powerful ocean waves by minimizing the amount of structure that is exposed to their energy. __Wired__via__NextEnergy

Seasteading is an expensive and dangerous game. Any serious attention given to creating intelligent and durable seastead architecture is welcome. The ocean is one of the most hazardous environments on Earth, aside from the polar regions and extreme mountain heights.

Previously, seasteading was in the hands of the savvy and hardy folks who wrote the Seastead Book, at Seastead.org. The book is a work in progress, and should see some new material later this summer. Anyone who wishes a good introduction to the topic should go there first.

But there is something that big money brings to a project that can not so easily be done on a shoestring. Expensive and hopefully competent sea architects. Expensive ship-building facilities and crew. The ability to build and launch impressive structures in a timely manner.

That is not to say that Thiel's approach will be the first or last seastead floating defiant against whatever the ocean may throw at it. Thiel is also invested in The Methuselah Foundation, which suggests that he has a healthy degree of caution when viewing the future. He may want his seastead over-engineered with redundant systems which will make it impossible for those of more modest means to replicate. Or it may turn out to be an expensive piece of junk that sinks like a stone.

The long term viability of ocean living will be determined by multiple approaches, just as in any biological or economic niche. The design shown above appears far too limiting. It is not modular or expandable. It looks more like a very expensive toy, than a genuine attempt at a sustainable mid-ocean human living environment. But wait and see.

Seasteading.org (as opposed to seastead.org) is not the first word on seasteads, and will not be the last.

Aging 2008 at UCLA Friday, June 27 4PM

The free presentation begins at 4 PM in Royce Hall. You will need to make advanced reservations to attend.

Applying the new technologies of regenerative and genetic medicine, the engineering approach to aging promises to dramatically extend healthy human life within the next few decades.

...At Aging 2008 you will engage with top scientists and advocates as they present their findings and advice, and learn what you can do to help accelerate progress towards a cure for the disease and suffering of aging.

Doors open at 4:00 pm on June 27th, 2008, at UCLA's Royce Hall. All attendees must register in advance; entry is free and includes a complimentary drinks reception before the presentations begin. For an additional $30, attendees also have the opportunity to attend a special dinner with the speakers. __MF

Bruce Ames, Michael West, and Aubrey de Grey are among the presenters.

The Methuselah Foundation is the main promoter of research into the practical, engineering approach to genetic and regenerative anti-senescence. If you can make it for the free presentation at UCLA 27 June 2008, be sure to reserve your place.

Carnival of Space 55 and Homesteading Mars

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The fifty-fifth (!) Carnival of Space is up at Catholic Sensibility (via NextBigFuture). I was particularly taken by the AstroEngine post on the use of domes on Mars.

I was a little confused as to why Bruce at the Foundation was so interested in the use of bamboo for Mars settlement design when I first joined 18 months ago. In my naive view of settling on another planet I always assumed it would be a hi-tech world, not filled with the basic building blocks we have down here on Earth. But the Mars Homestead Project is just that, using local materials to aid the construction of manned settlements. Of course the bamboo would have to be grown in a controlled greenhouse environment, but this flexible and tough resource could be used in a variety of applications on the Red Planet as well as down here inside the rainforest biome.

But, the showstopper was most certainly the stunning dome structures covering thousands of plant species from around the globe. Composed out of huge hexagonal panes of tough plastic “cushions”, the membrane performs its task excellently. Not only is it light weight (allowing the elegant domed structures to be so large with no vertical supports causing obstructions inside), it provides excellent insulation allowing the internal temperatures to be regulated to a very fine margin.

This project is immense and I could talk about it forever... __AstroEngine (lots of photos)

The AstroEngine article links to The Mars Homestead Project, which is a serious website dedicated to the establishment of sustainable settlements on Mars. Mars homesteaders will need to be competent in a way that most modern westerners cannot imagine. Getting to the red planet will be difficult enough. Surviving after you get there will be the real adventure. Here part of a sample posting:

The Hillside Settlement is to be built with semi-automated mining & manufacturing equipment, with 12 people on the surface to supervise and repair equipment. It would then house the 12 people and be enlarged for an additional dozen people (mostly scientists) every 2 years. Our 'cost' estimate is 250 tons delivered to the surface, which happens to be the same launch cost as for the Design Reference Mission for 3 round trip missions for 6 people each; but the "Hillside Settlement" gives you a permanent base for the same cost. __MarsHome

We at Al Fin favour the approach of setting up infrastructure at Lagrangian orbital points, then moving out from there, using space resources like NEAs (near-earth asteroids) and robotic lunar mining operations. Darkside lunar robotic observatories also make sense. But permanent human outposts on the moon (if there is water) and Mars would definitely be worthwhile. It is only a matter of priorities and order of events.

Can the Singularity Save Us From Ourselves?

The abstract concept of a Technological Singularity (TS) was made most famous in the recent past by inventor Ray Kurzweil. The concept has several overlapping meanings, but I like George Dvorsky's definition best: The Singularity is a a blindspot in our predictive thinking.

Humans are only evolved primates--monkeys and apes--with a limited conceptual vocabulary. We are easily impressed by our technological accomplishments. In networked opportunity societies, creative and inventive persons are able to feed off each others' ideas so that during periods of economic surplus, the pace of innovation will take off. In dark age, totalitarian societies where information is compartmentalized and otherwise restricted, innovation slows.

The Singularity is most often seen as a threshold into ever-accelerating change precipitated by the development of a machine intelligence with the ability to design its own cognitive enhancement--something of a runaway positive feedback cognitive entity. This development is often referred to as the "tipping point," the point of no return.

The more sanguine examiners of the tech singularity concept are less likely to see The Singularity as inevitable. Many developments within society and government could short-circuit The Singularity, sending into terminal mode. Imagine a world government ruled by a Vladimir Putin, Josef Stalin, or Mao. Imagine world science, academia, media, and governance being taken over by dysfunctional post-modernist irrationality. Imagine the default human society--stratification by wealth, knowledge, power, and a profound inertial resistance to change.

Persons who believe firmly in the inevitability of The Singularity might be surprised to learn that the default human society is the closed society, resistant to change. Most of them have never known anything but open societies, born of western civilisation's restless urge to expand intellectual horizons. They live in an exceptional time, in an exceptional society, yet somehow believe it to be the human default. That type of blindness comes from forgetting to study history.

The distinction is important, because a default society perpetuates itself, whereas an exceptional society must constantly fight against entropy. We are only a few hundred years beyond the European Renaissance, two hundred years beyond the early industrial revolution, a hundred years into the era of human flight, fifty years into the age of semiconductors. And already, the sub-structure of western civilisation is showing signs of reversion to the default.

Without the networked opportunity society to sustain it, The Singularity does not stand a chance. TS has always only been one possibility among many. In order for The Singularity to succeed and turn out well, it is vital for its supporters to understand how easily it could be stopped.

Humans have the uncanny ability to overlook the most critical shortcomings of any scenario or plan. That is one reason why "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy." It is also why "naysayers" and "deniers" are so easy to discount. Caught up in the enthusiasm of a grand idea, humans prefer to remain buoyed up in the "vital importance" and "inevitability" of their visions.

Politicians have been repeating the phrase "we are the ones we have been waiting for" for decades--probably much longer. It is true that humans seem to be waiting to wake up into some higher awareness, some more clear and potent existence. My variation on the theme begins "we are the ones we have been afraid of..." Perhaps fear has kept us from waking to our possibilities. The point is, it is humans that need to change and find their way to an even better networked opportunity society. Machines are not likely to be able to do that for us.

When we are ready to make a "conscious machine", we will know how to make it "friendly" and at least quasi-wise. We are simply not ready--in fact in many ways we are reverting to the default, retreating from TS in terms of infrastructural societal needs. Even should something that we interpret as TS occur, things can still "go to hell", and revert to default. We can always find ourselves back at the beginning, picking up the pieces. Unless we do the necessary preliminary work, and provide the foundation--the substrate--for a sustainable TS.

For many, TS has taken on many aspects of "God", an omniscient and all-powerful entity that will guide the paths of the faithful. But like the gods of practical people, TS helps those who help themselves. TS cannot save us from our own laziness and inattention to important details in the design of our own societies. TS relies upon us in the most intimate way, since it is merely an outgrowth of what we ourselves can grow to become. If we think TS can relieve us of hard work and discipline, we are wrong. TS will not take care of itself.


Rather than a unified, worldwide singularity, expect a "fractured singularity." Some will build the infrastructure and prepare the components in a sustainable way. Most will not. The long-term survivability of TS may depend upon early secrecy. TS may have many false starts, aborted revolutions. Perhaps we can learn from early mistakes in order to build a better singularity?

What do you think?

Is TS inevitable?
Is TS necessary?
Is TS sufficient?
Is TS the end, or a means to the end?
Can TS save us from ourselves?

According to Vernor Vinge, here are some of the ways The Singularity may not happen.

The last thing humans need now is yet another religion that feeds into apocalyptic visions. We have enough apocalyptic visions as it is without slipping that far into anti-rationality.

What kind of society can give birth to TS, and engage symbiotically and sustainably with TS into the long term? We don't know, but we can give it our best guess. While working on the foundations of TS, we need to work toward creating that kind of society.

Biofuels are Part of the Solution, Not the Problem

Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venezuela, is at the forefront of the war against biofuels. How pleased the blubbering fool must be that so many journalists and politicians of the developed world have joined him in condemning one of the best approaches to reducing dependency on oil tyrannies.

At bottom, the entire food versus fuel argument boils down to a Malthusian conceit—that there is only so much that can be grown, so if we grow more of one thing, we must necessarily grow less of something else. But this is simply false. Agriculture is not a zero-sum game. As illustrated in the bar chart below, there are roughly 2,250 million acres of land in the continental United States. About 1,600 million of those acres are arable. Roughly half of that land (800 million acres) is farmland, but only about a third of that (280 million acres) is actually being cultivated. Only about 85 million of those farm acres are presently growing corn, and just a fifth of that land—about 17 million acres—is growing corn that becomes ethanol. In short, there is plenty of farmland in the United States that could be used to grow more corn—or more of the other staple crops needed to meet domestic or international demand. Even more importantly, agricultural technology is constantly advancing. U.S. corn yields per acre have risen 17 percent since 2002, and the state of Iowa alone today produces more corn than the entire nation did in the 1940s. Applied globally, such improved techniques can multiply world agricultural yields many times.

...the two primary reasons for higher food prices are, first, higher demand, and second, higher fuel prices. The increased global demand for food ought to be seen as a very good thing: it represents hundreds of millions of people, especially in China and India, rising out of poverty and moving to more calorie-rich diets. Escalating fuel prices, however, are not good news: they drive up the cost of everything we eat. For example, consider the $3 box of cornflakes you might see in your grocery store. Farm commodity prices basically have a trivial effect on its price. A bushel of corn contains 56 pounds of grain, so at the current “very high” commodity price of $5 per bushel, a pound of corn costs 9 cents. So the 16 ounces of corn in that cereal box cost a total of 9 cents when bought from the farmer. But when the price of oil goes up, that increases the cost of production, transport, wages, and packaging—all driving up the retail cost of food.

And, in this regard, biofuels have already done more good than harm to the world’s poor. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Global production of biofuels is rising annually by the equivalent of about 300,000 barrels of oil a day. That goes a long way toward meeting the growing demand for oil, which last year rose by about 900,000 barrels a day.” The paper cites a Merrill Lynch analyst who “says that oil and gasoline prices would be about 15 percent higher if biofuel producers weren’t increasing their output.” So even though the world’s biofuels industry is still just aborning, it has already begun to bring down oil prices. __NewAtlantis

Oil prices are kept artificially high specifically by the actions of governments. Governments such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela etc. are oil tyrannies and push prices high for purposes of dictatorial survival. Governments such as the EU and the US push prices of oil, coal, and gas high out of the quasi state religion of CAGW, and other misguided policies.

Bioenergy is one of a constellation of sustainable solutions to the onerous dependency upon dictatorships for the energy of everyday commerce, transportation, and industry. It makes sense for Hugo Chavez to scapegoat bioenergy. What about you?

Europe's Problems: No Rescue Likely This Time

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Europe's problems continue to grow, and this time it is unlikely that Europe will be rescued by any outside party. The best to be hoped, perhaps, is that Europe will not start any more continent-wide wars--hot or cold, trade wars or real wars. Europe needs to begin cleaning up the mess she has made before things truly go downhill. First, the demographic time bomb--a large portion of which is the exploding populations of intolerant, potentially violent Muslim immigrants.

* Discrimination against other religions (with special emphasis on the rising European phenomenon of Islamic anti-Semitism), outlooks (inc. atheism) and lifestyles;
* Discrimination and violence against women (esp. wives and “disobedient” daughters);
* Discrimination and violence against homosexuals;
* Threats of violence in any form and for whatever alleged “offense” or “insult” (e.g. drawing cartoons, making documentaries, writing books);
* Apology or justification for all of the above.

It is essential to focus on the despicable acts themselves, and then drawing the direct line to the commands of Islam’s scripture and its founder __Source

Economic problems--especially a coming loss of purchasing power and productivity--also sit dark and heavy on the landscape.

Across Europe, people in the middle layer of the labor force - from office workers, civil servants and skilled laborers to low-level managers - are coping with a growing sense that they are being pushed to the margins like never before, as a combination of rising costs and stagnant wages erodes their purchasing power.

Prices for basic goods from gas to milk are rising sharply, outpacing pay rises linked to official rates of inflation. Families that once maintained pleasant lifestyles afforded by two incomes find the rise in costs - which have accelerated worldwide in the past year - has pushed them to the tipping point. __Source

Problems of stagflation are striking families all across Europe:

“When I started working at 23, I earned almost the same wage that I earn now,” said María Salgado, a 37-year-old director of television documentaries living in Madrid. Fourteen years ago, her monthly salary of about 1,200 euros ($1,873), bankrolled a full social life.

No longer. “The well-to-do middle class has become the tight middle class,” she said. “I’m surprised we haven’t started a revolution.”

... “I look at people on the bus and they seem sad and beaten down,” said Ms. Di Pietro, referring to Italy’s malaise. “We’re 40 years old. We should be feeling more combative, but really all we feel is frustrated.”

Some European governments are promising relief, but their ability to curb inflation or raise pay is limited. __Source

And so the Europeans who can read the tea leaves, are choosing emigration more and more.

The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics. The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today Mohammed is already the most popular name for new-born boys in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other major European cities.

...Some of the people I meet in the U.S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism. People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit. __Source

But they are that way because this is what they have been taught. All their friends think and talk the same, they are living in an echo chamber. Reality is soon to come crashing down upon their heads, all the same.

For most people living in North America and the extended Anglosphere, Europe is the source of their ancestors. Europe is the natural ally for North America, and has been throughout much of the past century. Many North Americans have died to ensure the freedom of Europe from tyrannies of several stripes.

In the long run, Europe should remain a natural ally for the Anglosphere. It will be necessary for a more sustainable stance toward third world immigration to be adopted--to prevent the almost inevitable deluge of religious violence sweeping toward Europe from Muslim lands. It will be necessary for Europeans to find better sources for a future work force than they have found recently--either breed them or entice them in. Europe will have to take a more realistic attitude toward her own defense. She cannot rely on old, despised allies indefinitely in that regard.

If Europe fails to face her demographic, economic, and security problems, it is unlikely that she can expect outside assistance, this time.

Fine-Tuning the Brain: A Deeper Stimulating Flux

Two out of three severely depressed individuals will be resistant to common anti-depressant drugs. Until recently, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was the next step. Now there is a gentler alternative for drug-resistant clinical depression: deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Zangen and his team have tested the helmet on a group of 50 people with severe depression, all of whom showed no improvement after taking antidepressants. During the double-blind clinical trial, half of the patients underwent deep TMS treatment at electrical intensities comparable to standard TMS for five days a week for four weeks, while the other half underwent similar treatments at lower intensities. Each treatment lasted about 20 minutes, during which patients wore the helmet while researchers periodically administered two-second electrical pulses. After the experiment, 50 percent of the patients who received the higher-intensity version reported significant improvements in sleep, appetite, and overall mood, while none of the others did. Most patients in the higher-intensity group also performed better on a standard cognitive test evaluating depression.

...Brainsway is currently seeking approval in Europe and the United States for deep TMS as a therapeutic tool for depression and other brain-related diseases. Zangen anticipates that the technology will be approved in Europe within the next few months. Before it gains FDA approval, the company will have to test the technology on a much wider population. Zangen's team is now mobilizing clinical trials in a number of medical centers in the United States, including Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Medical School.

Meanwhile, Brainsway is designing different coils to tackle brain regions associated with other conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, and drug addiction. Zangen says that in addition to stimulating underactive areas of the brain such as those associated with depression, deep TMS can be used to inhibit brain regions that may be abnormally overactive, such as during addiction. __TechReview

This approach will require a lot more testing before you will be able to use it in the attempt to forget disturbing memories, break damaging addictions, or work your way out of a paralysing depression. Fortunately, it looks as if the research will be done. Psychiatry has too long been stuck in a muddy quagmire of the middle ground--between the primitive dark ages view of "demon possession" and that intriguing world of psychiatric possiblity just over the horizon, where troubled individuals can be routinely put back on more functional and enjoyable paths.

More coverage at the Brain Stimulant Blog

A Woman's Right to Choose: No Means No!

Women are choosing their careers with a freedom like never before, and with their eyes wide open. Female students and professionals are refusing to allow academic bullies such as Donna Shalala, Nancy Hopkins, or Liz Spelke to tell them what they can do with their lives. Because, no means no!

Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals.

...A few years ago, Joshua Rosenbloom, an economist at the University of Kansas, became intrigued by a new campaign by the National Science Foundation to root out what it saw as pervasive gender discrimination in science and engineering. The agency was spending $19 million a year to encourage mentoring programs, gender-bias workshops, and cooperative work environments.

...Rosenbloom surveyed hundreds of professionals in information technology, a career in which women are significantly underrepresented. He also surveyed hundreds in comparable careers more evenly balanced between men and women. The study examined work and family history, educational background, and vocational interests.

The results were striking...In general, Rosenbloom's study found, men and women who enjoyed the explicit manipulation of tools or machines were more likely to choose IT careers - and it was mostly men who scored high in this area. Meanwhile, people who enjoyed working with others were less likely to choose IT careers. Women, on average, were more likely to score high in this arena...Personal preference, Rosenbloom and his group concluded, was the single largest determinative factor in whether women went into IT. They calculated that preference accounted for about two-thirds of the gender imbalance in the field.

...[In a different study starting] more than 30 years ago, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth began following nearly 2,000 mathematically gifted adolescents, boys and girls, tracking their education and careers in ensuing decades. (It has since been expanded to 5,000 participants, many from more recent graduating classes.) Both men and women in the study achieved advanced credentials in about the same numbers. But when it came to their career paths, there was a striking divergence.

Math-precocious men were much more likely to go into engineering or physical sciences than women. Math-precocious women, by contrast, were more likely to go into careers in medicine, biological sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Both sexes scored high on the math SAT, and the data showed the women weren't discouraged from certain career paths.

The survey data showed a notable disparity on one point: That men, relative to women, prefer to work with inorganic materials; women, in general, prefer to work with organic or living things. This gender disparity was apparent very early in life, and it continued to hold steady over the course of the participants' careers. __BostonGlobe

For decades now, women have had the power to choose their career paths. And women are making that choice, loudly and clearly. If the radical busybodies in political gender academics choose not to listen to the clear choices that women are making--and refuse to take the women seriously--then who is to blame here? The tendency of highly political academics to ignore the lessons from research in order to pursue their own disconnected pet policies to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars, is getting quite old.

Let the women (and men) themselves make their choices based upon their own perceived self-interests. By all means provide all students with as much information about their wide range of choices as possible. Do not arbitrarily limit their experience or their choice. But let them choose for themselves.

Things Your Climate Model Never Told You

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Not a single IPCC sanctionedclimate model predicted the current ongoing downturn in global temperatures. A rousing debate centering on whether the current extended global cooling constitutes a falsification of climate models or not is happening at a number of climate sites, including statistician Lucia's and Roger Pielke Jr's. Whether 8 years of global cooling is enough to falsify the Hansen/Gore hypothesis or not, you will never find such a thing as global cooling--even temporary cooling--in the projections of any climate model approved by the orthodoxy of holy warmers.

There has no doubt been some cyclical warming from 1979 to 1998, but it has been exaggerated by the poor station data. The state records as documented by Bruce Hall in 2007 tell the story. Scroll down to see the monthly records by state and link to other states. Most all of the heat records were set in the early half of the 1900s. A plot of Des Moines, Iowa June and July record highs by decade graph says it all. These tables and chart show that the current warming is clearly not unprecedented as alrmists claim, not even in the last century.

I believe that if we had satellite monitoring for the last 120 years, we would see the recent warming though real, fell short of that in the 1930s and that the changes are cyclical and thus primarily natural in origin. That is not to say that cities have not grown warmer as they have grown and some warming through the population growth from 1.5 to 6.5 billion since 1900 has taken place nor that we shouldn’t be better stewards of our environment, only that man-made greenhouse warming as portrayed by the agenda driven alarmists, the mainstream media and the IPCC is a fraud. __Icecap

Climate is a chaotic phenomenon. We are learning that natural climate cycles pre-dominate over any "artificial" or "anthropogenic" forcings. It is expected that natural climate cycles will trend alternately upward (warming) and downward (cooling). Other "natural" forcings--such as large volcanic eruptions, wandering of the solar system out of the galactic plane, or bombardment from outer space asteroids or comets--should also predominate easily over any anthropogenic forcings short of all-out nuclear war. Even then, nature easily contains more ultimate power.

Cellulosic Electricity: The Most Efficient Biomass

One of the easiest ways to utilise biomass to produce energy, is to partially substitute biomass for coal in a traditionally coal-fired power plant. Yorkshire based Drax power plant intends to do exactly that, making Drax the largest biomass producer of electricity in the UK.

Executives from Yorkshire-based Drax signed a deal with Alstom to build a processing plant that could prepare 1.5m tonnes per year of biomass for use in the power station. Under the plans, biomass would be ground into a fine powder and injected directly into the power station's coal-fired furnaces. Building work for the processing plant will start later in 2008 and the first part of the facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2009.

...Neil Crumpton, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said that using biomass in power stations or combined heat and power schemes is a better use of the resource than, for example, turning it into liquid biofuels for use by diesel-engine vehicles. "Co-firing with biomass is a reasonable way forward - it's a logical extension of what Drax is already doing and I've got no qualms with it on that score. If it helps build the sustainable biomass market in the UK, then all well and good."

...To test whether co-firing would work, Drax has used a 2-3% mix of biomass in some of its coal-fired furnaces for several months already. In their current experiments, the biomass fuel is mixed directly into the coal as it burns but this technique would not work for larger quantities of biomass.

"When you burn just a few per cent of biomass, you can afford to use exactly the same lines as coal," said Patrick Fragman, managing director of Alstom, the company that will build the biomass processing plant at Drax. But, for a higher percentage, he said, dedicated infrastructure is needed.

Peter Emery, production director at Drax, said that the new processing plant was a crucial part of the power station's attempt to scale up their biomass usage. He also added that it would be able to handle a wide variety of biomass fuels.

Different biomass materials burn in different ways, so the processing plant needs to be able to handle the materials accordingly. The resulting fuels then need to be inserted into the coal-fired boilers at different positions to ensure they burn properly. Engineers at Drax estimate that it will take 1.5m tonnes of biomass to replace the energy that comes from 1m tonnes of coal. __Guardian

Biomass CHP or cellulosic electricity, is clearly the most efficient way of producing energy from cellulosic biomass. The only reason for taking the less efficient route of producing liquid fuels (BTL) from biomass is that most of the transportation infrastructure cannot run without liquid fuels, at this time. It will likely require 20 years or more to achieve significant conversion of transportation from liquid fuels to electric drives running on stored electricity. Even fuel cells will probably need to run largely on liquid fuels such as methanol, for the next 10 to 20 years minimum.

Previously published at Al Fin Energy

The Monster Is the Burgeoning Horde.....

The monster is the burgeoning horde of pensioners in Germany and other industrial countries.___Spengler

For nations, demographics is destiny. If a nation is growing old--particularly a welfare state nation whose generous social benefits depend upon a constant inflow of taxes from the productive sector--it loses vitality in more ways than one. Germany, and most of Europe, is growing old.

The aging pensioners of Europe and Asia must find young people to pay interest into their pensions, and they do not have enough young people at home. Germans aged 15 to 24, on the threshold of family formation, comprise only 12% of the country's population today and will fall to only 8% by 2030. But one-fifth of Germans now are on the threshold of retirement and half will be there by mid-century.

...There is nothing complicated about finance. It is based on old people lending to young people. Young people invest in homes and businesses; aging people save to acquire assets on which to retire. The new generation supports the old one, and retirement systems simply apportion rights to income between the generations. Never before in human history, though, has a new generation simply failed to appear.

...America is in the midst of another wave of wealth-destruction. The Federal Reserve has sought to devalue its way out of a financial crisis, giving foreign investors all the less reason to buy American risk-assets, although foreign central banks continue to buy American government bonds for lack of an alternative. __Spengler

But America can survive these violent cycles of bubble-building and bubble-bursting, because America still has younger generations. It is not at all clear that Europe will be able to survive, since Europe's younger generations are failing to show up.

Europe's "burgeoning horde" of pensioners expects to retire early and be paid handsomely for doing so. But who will pay? And as the generations caught in the middle slowly become aware of the trap in which they are caught, what will they do?

More and more of Europe's young professionals, academics, and sports/media stars are choosing to emigrate from Europe and immigrate into Switzerland and the Anglosphere. When caught between the growing influx of violent religious fanatics from the third world, and the possibility that no pension will be waiting for them when they finally retire (years later than planned), more intelligent and capable young Europeans are choosing to transport themselves to places where they will have the financial power to create their own pensions--their own destinies.

Apocalypse Chile: Lightning from Mt. Doom?

Ominous rumblings accompany the startling images of lightning surrounding the erupting volcano, Mt. Chaiten in Chile. On the scale of volcanoes, Mt. Chaiten is building from a Plinian toward an Ultra-Plinian magnitude eruption.

I have been watching the eruption of Mt Chaitén in Chile, South America very closely for the last few weeks. It appears as if it may produce a major eruption soon. The last known eruption was in 7420 BC ± 75. The progress of the 2008 eruption has been as follows.

April 30: A significant earthquake preceded the first explosions;
May 2: More earthquakes arrayed radially around the caldera implying a very large magma chamber;
May 15: Near steady-state explosive eruptions (Plinian) releasing about two cubic kilometers of ejecta of 4-5km in altitude.

Eruptions are rated by the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). The following are examples of recent eruptions and their VEI.

VEI=5 Plinian, ejecta > 1 km³, e.g. St. Helens (1980)
VEI=6 Plinian/Ultra-Plinian, ejects > 10 km³, e.g. Mount Pinatubo (1991)
VEI=7 Plinian/Ultra-Plinian, ejecta > 100 km³, e.g. Tambora (1815)
VEI=8 Ultra-Plinian, ejecta > 1,000 km³, e.g. Toba (73,000 BP) __NicheModeling

Chaiten began quite small, and has been building since. Seismic activity suggests the potential for much larger eruptions to come. Stay tuned.

Update 20May08:Image Source

The Sky Is Falling: Gregg Easterbrook / Atlantic

Here is the video linked to at the preceding post. 10 minutes to contemplate the end of the world. Remember: the US Congress is in charge of the NASA budget and the NASA mission. Blaming NASA is infantile. Blame the source: the US Congress.

Billions for Global Warming--But Not One Cent for the Defense of Earth From Space

The US Congress, such as it is, directs the space agency NASA as to its goals and missions. The Congress in its perverse incompetence has decided that "global warming" represents a larger threat to the nation and the world than threats from outer space--falling rocks.

In 1980, only 86 near-Earth asteroids and comets were known to exist. By 1990, the figure had risen to 170; by 2000, it was 921; as of this writing, it is 5,388. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, part of NASA, keeps a running tally at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats. Ten years ago, 244 near-Earth space rocks one kilometer across or more—the size that would cause global calamity—were known to exist; now 741 are. Of the recently discovered nearby space objects, NASA has classified 186 as “impact risks” (details about these rocks are at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk ).
And because most space - rock searches to date have been low-budget affairs, conducted with equipment designed to look deep into the heavens, not at nearby space, the actual number of impact risks is undoubtedly much higher. Extrapolating from recent discoveries, NASA estimates that there are perhaps 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets in the general vicinity of Earth.

...A team of researchers led by Richard Firestone, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, recently announced the discovery of evidence that one or two huge space rocks, each perhaps several kilometers across, exploded high above Canada 12,900 years ago. The detonation, they believe, caused widespread fires and dust clouds, and disrupted climate patterns so severely that it triggered a prolonged period of global cooling. Mammoths and other species might have been killed either by the impact itself or by starvation after their food supply was disrupted.

...just a century ago, in 1908, a huge explosion occurred above Tunguska, Siberia. The cause was not a malfunctioning alien star-cruiser but a small asteroid or comet that detonated as it approached the ground. The blast had hundreds of times the force of the Hiroshima bomb and devastated an area of several hundred square miles. Had the explosion occurred above London or Paris, the city would no longer exist. Mark Boslough, a researcher at the Sandia National Laboratory, in New Mexico, recently concluded that the Tunguska object was surprisingly small, perhaps only 30 meters across. Right now, astronomers are nervously tracking 99942 Apophis, an asteroid with a slight chance of striking Earth in April 2036. Apophis is also small by asteroid standards, perhaps 300 meters across, but it could hit with about 60,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb—enough to destroy an area the size of France. In other words, small asteroids may be more dangerous than we used to think—and may do considerable damage even if they don’t reach Earth’s surface.

...Comets, asteroids, and the little meteors that form pleasant shooting stars approach Earth at great speeds—at least 25,000 miles per hour. As they enter the atmosphere they heat up, from friction, and compress, because they decelerate rapidly. Many space rocks explode under this stress, especially small ones; large objects are more likely to reach Earth’s surface. The angle at which objects enter the atmosphere also matters: an asteroid or comet approaching straight down has a better chance of hitting the surface than one entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle, as the latter would have to plow through more air, heating up and compressing as it descended. The object or objects that may have detonated above Canada 12,900 years ago would probably have approached at a shallow angle....This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist at The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air Force, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike.

...when it comes to killer comets, you’ll just have to lose sleep over the possibility of their approach; there are no proposals for what to do about them. Comets are easy to see when they are near the sun and glowing but are difficult to detect at other times. Many have “eccentric” orbits, spending centuries at tremendous distances from the sun, then falling toward the inner solar system, then slingshotting away again. If you were to add comets to one of those classroom models of the solar system, many would need to come from other floors of the building, or from another school district, in order to be to scale. Advanced telescopes will probably do a good job of detecting most asteroids that pass near Earth, but an unknown comet suddenly headed our way would be a nasty surprise. And because many comets change course when the sun heats their sides and causes their frozen gases to expand, deflecting or destroying them poses technical problems to which there are no ready solutions. The logical first step, then, seems to be to determine how to prevent an asteroid from striking Earth and hope that some future advance, perhaps one building on the asteroid work, proves useful against comets....Congress...ought to look more sensibly at space priorities.

Because it controls federal funding, Congress holds the trump cards. In 2005, [Congress] approved the moon-base idea, seemingly just as as budgetary log-rolling to maintain spending in the congressional districts favored under NASA’s current budget hierarchy. The House and Senate ought to demand that the space program have as its first priority returning benefits to taxpayers. __Atlantic__via_Kurzweilai.net

Bonus: Check out this graphic video portraying the dangerous world of space rock.
The Congress is preparing to throw the US economy (and by extension the global economy) into a tailspin over global warming, based upon less evidence than would be necessary to convince most intelligent people to drive to the corner market. Yet when it comes to potentially apocalyptic hazards such as extinction-event asteroid and comet falls, Congress has an inadequate scope and vision to protect the US. What about the UN? Puhlease! The UN is all about stashing away untraceable cash in numbered Swiss bank accounts. Not being helpful or useful.

Is the risk of a serious space rock incident as high as 1 in 10, as stated above? There are too many assumptions to give a clear estimate. What should be obvious to anyone with a brain who is paying attention, however, is that the threat from space rocks is several orders of magnitude higher than the threat from anthropogenic greenhouse warming.

Americans, when you go to the voting booth in November, remember that it is you who is partially to blame for the unaccountability of your government. Because you never held your Senators and Congressional members to account. You never asked the hard questions, nor insisted that the weasels really answer the questions. You passively believe that you pay taxes so that the government can take care of the country. That is your first mistake. The rest of the list is too long to publish here.

Congress is ready to sell the US economy down the river for a little "international acceptance". Congress is an ass. But then you knew that already.

Meanwhile, Oynklent Green is preparing to test its pilot plant, at a secret, undisclosed location that has been hardened against asteroid impact.

Oynklent Green Adds Trial Lawyers to Official List of Approved Feedstocks

Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] has recently completed a study of tort reform in the US state of Mississippi, and concluded that trial lawyers can safely be added to its official list of approved feedstocks for thermochemical bio-energy production. Trial lawyers will be accepted as feedstock alongside corrupt politicians.

The law that eventually passed was every trial lawyers' worst nightmare...Almost overnight, the flow of lawsuits began to dry up and businesses started to trickle in. Federal Express invested $1 billion in a new facility in the state. Toyota chose Mississippi over about a dozen other states for a new $1.2 billion, 2,000-worker auto plant...Since the law took effect, the number of medical malpractice lawsuits has fallen by nearly 90%, which in turn has cut malpractice insurance costs by 30% to 45%, depending on the county.

...The Pacific Research Institute estimates that the tort system nationwide costs the economy about $7,000 for every family in America. The pols in Washington are sending out tax-rebate checks of up to $1,200 for married couples in hopes of stimulating the economy. But outside of Mississippi and a few other places, there seems to be little understanding of how frivolous lawsuits and greedy tort lawyers weigh down the economy....Thanks to Mr. Barbour, the state's unemployment rate is down to about 6% from nearly 9%. Last year, Mississippi's per capita income growth was 6.7%, third highest of the 50 states and well above the national average of 5.2%. Mississippi tort reform is making the poor richer, and the rich lawyers less fabulously rich. __WSJ__via__LibLeanings

Oynklent officials have concluded that trial lawyers represent an enormous liability to the welfare of any state, province, or nation. By using trial lawyers as feedstock for thermochemical bio-energy production, Oynklent Green will not only be providing a useful product to the community--energy--but it will also be removing a destructive and parasitic influence.

At this time, the two officially approved feedstocks for the Oynklent Green thermochemical bio-energy process are corrupt politicians and trial lawyers. Oynklent officials continue their vigilence in the search for viable bio-energy feedstock that will not drive the price of food higher. It certainly appears that they have chosen well, and that quality of life for everyone should begin to go up as soon as OG goes into full production mode.

Programs of Passion: Think of a Man, Take Away All Reason and Accountability . . .

Remember Jack Nicholson's line from "As Good As It Gets? (scroll halfway down)" There is some truth hiding within the sexism. A woman in orgasm is somewhat different from a man. The parts of her brain that turn off when she turns on, are quite revealing:

But when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent. Some of the most muted neurons sat in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which may govern self-control over basic desires such as sex. Decreased activity there, the researchers suggest, might correspond to a release of tension and inhibition. The scientists also saw a dip in excitation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which has an apparent role in moral reasoning and social judgment—a change that may be tied to a suspension of judgment and reflection.

Brain activity fell in the amygdala, too, suggesting a depression of vigilance similar to that seen in men, who generally showed far less deactivation in their brain during orgasm than their female counterparts did. “Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” Holstege says. He went so far as to declare at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.” _SciAm

But Holstege is not being precise. More precisely at the moment of orgasm, women do not have any accountability or reason, or fear. That is the whole point--the release from the need to fret, worry, second guess oneself. Women spend a lot of energy guarding themselves from the unchecked passion of men (and their own). But there comes a time when she simply must let go. And when a woman lets go, she really, really lets go.

Evolution has given men and women incentives to procreate. For a man, there is that important feeling of pleasure linked with driving energy and power. For a woman, there is the blissful letting go of all of those "no's" and "shoulds" in her head.

They say a woman's work is never done. That may be true. But for a few lingering moments, a woman's work can be put on hold.

Biofuels Not to Blame for Food Prices

Cooler minds have realized that high food prices are caused by a large medley of factors. Global speculation, high energy and fertilizer costs, rocketing demand for livestock feed by China, extraordinarily cold weather globally, and local political factors all play a much larger role in jacking up food prices.

In Canada, FAO officials said in Senate testimony that recent price rises for grains are the result of falling yields and drought, not biofuels, and noted that wheat prices have dropped by 50 percent and corn was showing signs of entering a price decline phase. __Biofuelsdigest

Cooler weather across many important growing regions of the globe have set back planting dates and reduced growing seasons and projected yields.

Biofuels play a very minor role in this medley, yet are being used as a political football by opportunistic politicians, journalists, and bureaucrats. They play a cynical game, when energy supplies are already being artificially restricted by the US Congress and other opportunistic groups of corrupted players. They try to blame biofuels, but

...proving a direct causal relationship of large-scale, worldwide production of biofuels on world food prices, for example, is hard if not impossible because there are many other intervening variables such as the price of oil, yearly weather changes affecting harvest yields, increased demand from emerging economy countries, and general economic inflation, to mention a just a few. Source

When the bulk of biofuels manufacture moves beyond the use of food feedstocks, to the use of biowaste cellulosic feedstocks and cellulosic crops grown on marginal lands, the impact of biofuels on food supplies and prices will be even less than it is today. Unfortunately, politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists want to kill the biofuels baby in its crib before it can develop into the substantial replacement for fossil fuels that it promises to become.

Throw Barbie from the Plane: BarbieBomb Iran

Something about Iran that cries out to be bombed. The question is: is it better to bomb Iran with bombs, or with Barbies? Greg Beato thinks Barbies are the appropriate choice.

Iran is terrified of Barbie, the tiny polyvinyl sex bomb who loves shopping, pizza, and brushing her hair, but has few satellite-guided missiles at her disposal. According to Iran's Prosecutor General, Ghorban Ali Dori Najfabadi, a loosely organized coalition, led by the world's most impeccably accessorized mercenary but also including additional combatants like Harry Potter and Spider-man, is doing "irreparable damage" to Iranian children. "The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger," Najafabadi cautioned...the Barbies who show up in Tehran shop windows are smuggled into the country, the victims of international doll trafficking. Once there, however, they make the best of it, embodying the traditional American values of self-determination and haircare...If Barbie's marginal and haphazard presence in Iran is so disruptive, what kind of impact might she have there if a more orchestrated effort to put additional sexy white boots on the ground was implemented? Luckily, the relative economy of a Barbie surge—an army of 200,000 cheerleaders for Western decadence can be mustered for the price of a dozen Tomahawk missiles... __Reason

Beato may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but perhaps he has a point to make about cultural subversion. Not that a few hundred thousand Barbie dolls would actually do the trick of overturning a millenia-old culture of primitive tribalism and religious barbarism. But think it through to the core idea, and play with it.

Culture is passed along from generation to generation--unless something happens in between generations. Say, a music revolution called rock and roll that puts rebellion on the front burner, combined with a drug and anti-war revolution among the young. You might think that nothing would ever be the same again.

Children like to fantasize. And they like to have secrets from others. Some parents like to indulge their children in these fantasies. Childhood and adolescence are such confusing times, unless something happens to stir things up it is often easier just to go along with tradition.

What about a talking doll that said things the ayatollahs wouldn't want young girls listening to? What if a talking doll was also a radio and a tutorial device? Solar powered so its batteries won't run down? What if it could teach children catchy songs with infectious lyrics? These things require a bit of thought.

Oppressive cultures have to keep the lid on tight. But then the pressure tends to build at the slightest incident. Bomb Iran? With Barbies? Or something even more devilishly clever.

Why Do Blacks Commit More Crime?

Blacks make up only 12.2% of the US general population, yet constitute roughly 47% of the US prison population. Why are blacks so prone to committing crime?

About one in 33 black men was in prison in 2006, compared with one in 205 white men and one in 79 Hispanic men. Eleven percent of all black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison or jail...From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks’ representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests.

...The evidence is clear: black prison rates result from crime, not racism. America’s comparatively high rates of incarceration are nothing to celebrate, of course, but the alternative is far worse. The dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s, to which stricter sentencing policies unquestionably contributed, has freed thousands of law-abiding inner-city residents from the bondage of fear. __CityJournal

So again, why do blacks commit so much crime? Clearly, poverty is not the main reason. Blacks make up 24% of the poor US population but commit 40% of violent crime.

Looking at genetics as a determinant of crime:

The case for a genetic contribution to criminality is conclusive. What remains to be figured out are exactly which genes contribute to criminality and how they exert their effects . These questions will be addressed with the tools of molecular biology, and it will be far more difficult to assail the results as "biased". __Gnxp

So it would be wrong to consider ethnicity as a cause of criminality, although a correlation exists. Rather within the broader ethnic groups, there likely exist gene clusters which influence behaviour in such a way as to make criminal activity more likely.

What about IQ? Can the 1 SD difference in IQ distribution means between US blacks and whites lead to the enormous differences in criminal behaviour between the groups? Low IQ correlates positively with rates of arrest and incarceration. But poor Executive Function probably correlates much more positively with crime than IQ, just as high executive function correlates more positively with ultimate life success than does IQ.

Better research is needed on this issue, to separate the different correlations, correcting for confounders, and utilising the best and most recent information from studies of genetics, IQ, executive function, and other related factors.

Political correctness is the enemy of the truth in this area. The dishonest tendency to blame racism for differential rates of arrest and incarceration, rather than facing the truth that crime rates do vary generally by ethnic group, prevents the type of research that could get to the heart of the matter. A long term solution is impossible without the type of honest exploration that I suggest.

Sailer: Imprisonment Rates Vary Wildly by Race

Small RNA Gene Regulation

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The class of RNA known as "small RNA"--a subset of "non-coding RNAs"--is growing larger. Scientists are also growing more aware of the importance of this once obscure class of molecules, that apparently plays a critical role in regulating gene expression.

...molecular biologists have increasingly realized that many RNA snippets -- so-called small RNAs -- also directly influence which genes make proteins, and in some cases, how much protein. They've also found that some small RNAs play a unique role in protecting the integrity of genetic material.

..."It turns out that there are more types of small RNA molecules than anyone initially suspected," said Gregory J. Hannon, Ph.D., CSHL professor and pioneer in small RNA research. "And we are finding that each type that we discover acts in more ways than had previously been appreciated."

...Dr. Hannon and his collaborators are harnessing highly efficient new machines that determine the sequence of bases in millions of small RNA molecules simultaneously. They then scan the known genome to find matching sequences, as well as the sequences nearby. This original context is crucial to understanding why some snippets are chosen as regulators.

...Many RNA sequences, such as microRNAs, are flagged as regulatory molecules because they physically fold on themselves. Special proteins recognize the resulting double-stranded RNA, and chemically slice it to release regulatory RNA snippets.

The CSHL team found that double-stranded structures also form from "pseudogenes." Pseudogenes, in the past assumed to be useless "junk DNA," are damaged copies of normal genes left over from previous genetic events. The researchers found that RNA copies of normal genes sometimes pair up with copies from the related pseudogenes, resulting in double-stranded RNAs that -- far from being junk -- are able to activate the cell's regulatory apparatus. __ScienceDaily

The complexity of the small RNA systems of gene regulation is coming as something of a surprise to many biologists. These RNAs are part of a complex adaptive system which monitors and modifies gene expression according to rules that are so far poorly defined. As scientists utilise the increasingly powerful tools of systems biology, the long-held secrets of evolution on Earth are being teased out of the tangle.

It is no accident that the explosion of knowledge about genetic systems and control is occurring at the same time as the explosion of knowledge within information systems, and within systems in general. Without the micro-arrays, the sequencing tools, the computational hardware and software of bio-informatics, this work would be infinitely harder.

Multi-Turbine Wind Turbines: Torque & Power

Multiple rotors on the same shaft can provide higher torque. Torque and power are related by the equation:

hp = (torque * RPM) / 5250

Inventor Doug Selsam has devised a way to put multiple blades on the same shaft, without having the blades interfere with each other's wind.

Of course, more rotors also means more-complicated physics. The key to increasing efficiency is to make sure each rotor catches its own fresh flow of wind and not just the wake from the one next to it, as previous multi-rotor turbines have done. That requires figuring out the optimal angle for the shaft in relation to the wind and the ideal spacing between the rotors. The payoff is machines that use one tenth the blade material of today’s megaturbines yet produce the same wattage. __PS_via__NextEnergyNews

Selsam is the type of inventor who is not afraid to go up against conventional wisdom. Even better, his ideas make a lot of sense.

The image at top is just an artist's conception. The shaft would not actually bend in Selsam's device.

A flexible shaft loses a great deal of power by flexing. If a shaft could be made that is both strong enough and light enough in weight to double as a "tether" and a multi-blade shaft, you may see attempts at multi-turbine "kite" configurations, or multi-blade lighter than air configurations, as suggested by the image at top.

Previously published at Al Fin Energy
Update 15May08:Here is a drawing of Selsam's approach. The generator is at the center of the shaft, balanced over the tower. The shaft is angled to the wind to allow each blade to catch its maximum wind allotment. Speed would be roughly the same as a small blade design, but torque would be almost ten times greater, hence more power. Power in a wind turbine is directly proportional to the square of the blade radius and to the cube of wind velocity. Although not a wind blade designer, I suspect the orientation of the shaft may invite some slight alterations in blade design.

Update 17May08: Actual photographs of the invention and inventor. In these photos, the shaft flexes downwards at the unsupported ends, while being supported in the center at a central generator by two bearings.

Getting Real on Educational Romanticism

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In Lake Woebegone, all the children are above average. But in the real world classroom, a sad reality is that approximately half of children must by definition be below average. American education has been living in a world of "educational romanticism"--the idea that every child's potential is necessarily much greater than he displays. For many children, it is true that today's schools do not draw out their inner potential. For other children, they may simply be stupid!

Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and Right, though in different ways. Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.

...No one disputes the empirical predictiveness of tests of intellectual ability—IQ tests—for large groups. If a classroom of first-graders is given a full-scale IQ test that requires no literacy and no mathematics, the correlation of those scores with scores on reading and math tests at age seventeen is going to be high. Such correlations will be equally high whether the class consists of rich children or poor, black or white, male or female. They will be high no matter how hard the teachers have worked. Scores on tests of reading and math track with intellectual ability, no matter what.

...a massive body of evidence says that reading and mathematics achievement have strong ties to underlying intellectual ability, that we do not know how to change intellectual ability after children reach school, and that the quality of schooling within the normal range of schools does not have much effect on student achievement. To put it another way, we have every reason to think—and already did when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed—that the notion of making all children proficient in math and reading is ridiculous. Such a feat is not possible even for an experimental school with unlimited funding, let alone for public schools operating in the real world. By NAEP’s definition of proficiency, we probably cannot make even half of the students proficient. __TNC__via_inverted-world

What Murray is saying is that we are pouring billions of dollars into pursuing phantom goals that cannot be met. If true, it should be no surprise when teachers, principles, and educational bureaucrats cheat on test scores so as to inflate the progress of their schools.

Being aware of instances where Catholic schools improved the performance of former government school students who had been written off as lost, and similar situations where Charter schools achieved similar improvements, I am not prepared to accept Murray's blanket assessment at face value. Some improvement is possible--and it should be pursued by rational means.

But natural limitations on human achievement exist and must be acknowledged so as not to go off the deep end trying to achieve the unachievable. We evolved in semi-isolated breeding groups, with a somewhat random assortment of genes. Our ancestors competed on different testing grounds than we do, but the natural selection process that determined the breeders of our ancestors also helped determine which of us would score at 99 per centile and which would score at 19.

We at Al Fin believe in maximising the human potential. Otherwise, this blog would not exist. But we do not believe that all humans possess exactly the same potential, nor do we believe that human potential is limitless. Those are the beliefs of romantics who do not actually take their beliefs seriously enough to test them in the real world.

H/T Aschwin de Wolf at Depressed Metabolism

Immigrants That Become Good Citizens

Which group of immigrants become the best American citizens? The best immigrants are not only the ones who participate in the economic system and adopt American culture. The best immigrants also participate in civic activities. They become citizens, they own homes, they enlist in the armed forces and participate fully in the system.

The study, sponsored by the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank, used census and other data to devise an assimilation index to measure the degree of similarity between the United States' foreign-born and native-born populations. These included civic factors, such as rates of U.S. citizenship and service in the military; economic factors, such as earnings and rates of homeownership; and cultural factors, such as English ability and degree of intermarriage with U.S. citizens. The higher the number on a 100-point index, the more an immigrant resembled a U.S. citizen.

... Mexicans, for example have an index of 13, while Vietnamese were at 41. And although immigrants who arrived as children tend to be nearly identical to their U.S.-born counterparts, apart from their lower rates of citizenship, those who come from Mexico are less assimilated and have higher incidences of teenage pregnancy and incarceration.

A major reason for these disparities in assimilation levels may be the high percentage of Mexican immigrants who are in the country illegally, Vigdor said. When only cultural factors are considered, Mexicans score almost as high as Vietnamese and higher than immigrants from countries such as India and China, which tend to have a high rate of immigration to the United States. __WashPost

According to the study, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Korean immigrants tend to adapt to American civic life the quickest. Cubans also assimilate quite well to civic life. Intermediate civic life adapters include Canadians, Chinese, Dominican, and Indian immigrants. Poorest of all to adapt to America's civics, are the Mexican and Salvadorean immigrants--perhaps, as suggested in the article, because such a large proportion of these are illegal.

It is well documented that Central American immigrants contribute inordinately to crime rates in their communities, perhaps again because many of these immigrants are in the country illegally in the first place.Overall, the study suggests a fairly good composite rate of assimilation in all but the Mexican immigrants. It is likely that a firm and forceful reduction of illegal immigration would place the Mexican and Central American immigrants who remain in a better light.

Read the Manhattan Institute report here.

H/T Dennis Mangan

Pimp My DNA---Biology in the Digital Age

This is a nice accessible 1 hour Google Tech video that explains the impact of high speed automation and data analysis in biomedical research. If you want to better understand where the genomic revolution is heading, take a look. ( Via Eye on DNA)

The video includes an introduction to "Systems Biology", a dynamic new field in biology that promises to radically alter most of the things we think we know about biology. It also looks at the historical background of DNA science, at the state of the art, at DNA engineering, and at open source genomics.

Highly provocative and mind-stretching.

MicroArrays in Research: A Silent Revolution

A Micro-array is a potent tool of biological discovery, first used to study genetic variation, and now rapidly being adapted to a wide range of biochemical research. Briefly, micro-arrays incorporate a large number of biochemical probes onto a single chip, to allow up to thousands of simultaneous tests to be performed at once. Since humans are unable to process such large amounts of data quickly, micro-array data is processed by special "bio-informatics" data analysis packages. These tools together are driving a revolutionary change in what is possible to learn about complex biological systems.

Take embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Until recently, no one understood how ESCs could maintain the potential to develop into any cell type in the body. Recently, Israeli scientists used micro-arrays to track gene expression of ESCs as they developed into specialised cell types. They learned that ESCs must undergo complex patters of gene silencing to become particular types of cells and tissues.

Other scientists are using micro-arrays to track complex protein cell signaling pathways. Researchers at UT Austin have developed a microarray for testing proteins in saliva--for rapid, noninvasive diagnosis of heart attacks.

Scientists at Invitrogen Corp (NASDAQ:IVGN), have developed a micro-RNA (miRNA) microarray to test for the presence of the short RNA sequences that can influence tumour formation--as an early test for cancer, or even cancer potential.

Scientists in New York and Wisconsin may have stumbled upon a completely new approach to understanding Alzheimer's disease based upon results from microarrays looking at gene expression in the brains of specially bred mice and flies.

Scientists at the Cambridge Mass. startup Quanterix have developed high capacity protein testing micro-chips using sample wells only 2.5 microns in diameter, that are capable of detecting single molecules of a protein in a person's blood. Such chips should bring medicine closer to the holy grail of a quick, comprehensive "snapshot" of all the proteins active in a patient's system at any one time. (via Kurzweilai.net)

An entire field of biology, "Systems Biology" has grown up around such sophisticated tools of data acquisition--combined with complex tools of data analysis. These tools combined with the expertise of human minds to identify the significant findings among the masses of data, provide unprecedented power to biological researchers who are trying to eliminate some of the most burdensome diseases of modern life.

Update 14May08: Brian Wang has more on diagnostic microarrays here.

Black Graduation Rates are Low: How Would Converting Affirmative Action to Class-Based AA Instead of Race-Based AA Affect That?

Barack Obama must decide how he will frame the issue of Affirmative Action in the coming campaign speeches and debates. Affirmative Action as it stands is a racially divisive issue that pits blacks against whites and Asians. From school admissions to government and corporate hires to government contracts, preferential treatment based upon race guarantees a lasting distrust between ethnic groups.

This article at InsideHigherEd looks at Obama's dilemma, and suggests that Obama propose to transition Affirmative Action from a race-based program to a class-based program instead. It is certain that the racial divide will never get narrower until all the races are treated fairly in terms of equality of opportunity.

But how would such a transition affect the already abysmally low black college graduation rates in the US? Go to the article above at Minding the Campus and read the comments, which address this issue.

As you can see from the graphic at the top, black women are doing fairly well in higher education. There is still room for improvement.

When looking over the reports (PDF) and discussions dealing with the issue of black education rates, one never sees the well-documented 1 standard deviation IQ gap mentioned. And one does not expect to see it mentioned, despite its bona fides. Political Correctness dictates the terms of discussion here, and despite possible relevance in understanding some of the underlying reasons for a black-white college graduation gap, the 1 SD gap remains invisible.

Image Source

As you can see from the graph above, SAT scores rise with family income, but the scores of black students from the highest family incomes never reach the scores of white students from the lowest family incomes. These are ticklish issues that must be tiptoed around if a politician--or anyone in the public eye--wishes to prosper.

Realistically, this issue appears to be soundly asleep, and neither of the likely candidates really wants to wake it up. Still, Ward Connerly and other private but influenctial citizens interested in eliminating this festering source of inter-racial irritation will probably be unwilling to let it rest.

The far more important issue is to make sure that all college graduates and non-graduates come away from higher education with useful skills that will serve them well in the real world. Such a worthy goal is far from being achieved for today's students regardless of gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status.

Furfural from Bagasse, and the Algae Shade Wall

Furfural is a diesel substitute that can be produced from bagasse--the hemicellulose "waste" byproduct of sugar manufacture from sugar cane. Furfural is produced from bagasse by steam distillation, water separation, and purification.

An alternative biofuel, called furfural, is gaining new levels of attention because, like cellulosic ethanol, it is produced from waste biomass such as sugar cane bagasse. After pressing cane for sugar, furfural is produced by steam distillation; it has been produced since the 1920s on a commercial basis and imports for $2.24 per gallon. Avantium has successfully tested furfural as a diesel substitute. Avantium branded its furfural-based biofuel as Furanics, and tests showed a significant reduction in soot emisions and and elimination of sulphur emissions, when compared to conventional diesel. __BiofuelsDigest

On the algal biodiesel front, attempts to scale up production of oils from algae are running into the "shade wall" problem: too much algae in the mix blocks the sunlight needed to grow more algae. Algae growers are successful in using algae for water purification, however, as algae grows quite well in waste water. This Biofuels Digest article provides a good rundown on current algae biofuels research. Current production costs for algal biodiesel are near $20 a gallon, revealing how far algae research and development must go to be viable. Of course, if speculators and oil dictators have their way, gasoline itself will cost $20 a gallon at the pump soon. That is not likely, however, since Coskata and other cellulosic ethanol producers are promising to make ethanol at costs of $1 a gallon within the next 2 to 3 years.

Energy in Biomass vs. Other Forms

How much energy is contained in dry wood biomass as compared to other forms of energy? Let's take a look:

1. 1 kg of dry wood contains about 5 kWh of energy
2. 1 kg of torrefied wood contains about 6 kWh
3. 1 kg of coal contains about 7 kWh
4. 1 kg of diesel contains about 12 kWh
5. 1 cubic meter of natural gas contains about 8 kWh
6. 1 fully charged 12 V car battery contains about 0.6 kWh

Source

...one of the fundamental properties of biomass is that it is more local than fossil fuels, simply because it is less concentrated with respect to energy. On the other hand – this tends to promote local, small scale, sustainable business in the forest regions of the country. So the use of biomass for energy does not only have a positive impact on the climate issue – it also has a positive impact on the local economy and on the local employment rate. __VXU

Initially, biomass is most logical as a local and regional energy source and cash business/employer. But things are apt to move very quickly as capital and innovation are brought to the bio-energy sector. The main initial obstacle to biomass energy on the local level is the lack of local/regional pre-processing, processing, and bio-refinery infrastructure. As the potential boost to local economies is demonstrated by functioning infrastructure, expect the concept to spread.

Currently, much of the impetus behind ethanol and biodiesel forms of biofuels, comes from the national governmental and inter-governmental guidelines, mandates, and incentives. But such forms of governmental incentive are subject to change--particularly when governments and legislatures are run by incompetent fools, as is typically the case currently.

The more reliable long-term incentive is of course the ability to make a profit based upon sound business practise and efficient industrial engineering. That is the type of incentive that biomass energy provides long term. For example:

Let's focus our energy on the research and development and innovation that allows us to produce a $1-a-gallon fuel. There's no question about it, we can produce it for $1 a gallon and retail it at Wal-Mart for $1.99 a gallon and create a competitor for oil. __SFGate_via_R-Squared

Khosla is referring to cellulosic ethanol, but he may as well be referring to algal biodiesel or Venter's new designed synthetic organisms, or any number of other forms of bio-energy development in the pipeline.

Prices are always high for new technologies. Then as the infrastructure gets built and innovated, customer bases are built, retail outlets sign on, and supply lines are secured, etc. prices come down. But we have to understand roughly what we can expect from bio-energy.

Drivable Airplane: Carl Dietrich's Terrafugia

Carl Dietrich's company Terrafugia has come a long way since the last time Al Fin took a look at the "flying car" project.

Between now and late July, the 10 employees of angel-funded startup Terrafugia will be spending “a lot of long days, nights, and weekends” in that shop, says CEO and founder Carl Dietrich. That’s because they want to show off their concept vehicle at AirVenture—the world’s largest aviation festival, held annually in Oshkosh, WI—and there’s a lot of work to finish first.

...And the work won’t end after Oshkosh. Terrafugia wants to deliver the first Transition to a customer by the end of 2009 and go into large-scale production by 2012. If you were just building a new type of plane or a new type of car, that schedule would be ambitious enough. But the Transition is both—and if, as the company intends, pilots are to land the vehicle on an airport runway, fold up the wings, and tool right out onto public highways, then this hybrid-of-a-different-color will have to meet federal standards for both aviation safety and highway safety.

...In other words, there are a thousand practical obstacles to achieving the flying-car dreams Deitrich says he’s had since he decided to become an aerospace engineer at the age of 8—-to say nothing of actually making a bit of money along the way. “The old joke is that the best way to make a small fortune in aviation is to start with a large one,” says Dietrich. But while he admits that building a plane that you can also drive “sounds off the wall,” he says “there is a real business case for investing in its success. I’m personally invested, as are a lot of the people here. I don’t see any way we’re not going to get this done.”

Terrafugia CEO Carl DietrichThere’s plenty of reason to take Dietrich seriously. The 30-year-old earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, and was awarded the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in 2006 in recognition of his groundbreaking designs, including a desktop-sized fusion reactor, a pumpless rocket engine, and a blast-safe pick for removing land mines. Dietrich put the prize money into Terrafugia, which he co-founded with fellow MIT aero-astro grads Samuel Schweighart and Anna Mracek (now his wife) and two former MBA students from MIT’s Sloan School. Their plan to manufacture a road-ready airplane was the runner-up in the business venture category of the 2006 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition—winning the company a $10,000 check that still hangs on the wall of Terrafugia’s “prototype development facility,” a modest space formerly used to manufacture garage doors. __Much more at Xconomy

Dietrich and company have chosen a very tough business--the flying airplane/drivable car combination. A lot of people have spend many decades of their lives pursuing the same quest, only to find themselves unable to deliver on the promise.

Dietrich hopes to take advantage of 2004 FAA rule changes that created a new category of small aircraft called the "special light sport aircraft (S-LSA)."

In a nutshell, if a company can manufacture a plane that weighs less than 1,320 pounds, carries no more than two people, and flies no faster than 138 miles per hour, it can get the craft qualified as an S-LSA, meaning that owners need only a sport pilot certificate to fly it. Getting a sport pilot certificate involves only about half as much flight training as qualifying for private pilot certificate, the license previously required for most general aviation flyers.

...The nifty thing about the Transition, of course, is that it’s designed to change from a plane into an automobile in about thirty seconds—meaning pilots will be able to drive right off the tarmac and onto the roadway without even having to get out. (The half-hour process of manually refitting the Aerocar for roadway driving was part of what killed Moulton Taylor’s dream, according to Dietrich.) At the flip of a switch, the Transition’s wings will fold up and the license plates will rotate into view. The vehicle’s engine, manufactured by Rotax, has a continuously variable transmission and a dual shaft that can power either the rear propeller during flight or a pair of front wheels on the road (top speed: 80 miles per hour).

...The idea of a flying car that could lift drivers out of traffic jams will probably remain a standing joke—a monument to an antique brand of technological enthusiasm. But a drivable airplane is a different proposition. And it’s probably safe to say that Terrafugia has assembled more brainpower, and more MIT degrees, around that proposition than any previous organization. “I think this is a fantastic opportunity—not just from a business perspective and a career perspective, but to work on something where we could make history,” says Dietrich. “I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”

The customers are there, the expertise in design and manufacturing are there. The investment funding is there and more is on the way. The largest barrier that Dietrich and Terrafugia face is the federal government, and its army of bureaucrats armed with truckloads of bureaucratic regulations. Only the stoutest hearts would brave such a battle.

When you look at how few there are who are willing to take up such challenges--in comparison to the many who forsake challenge in favour of security--you may begin to understand what 2 or 3 generations of dumbed down government schools and popular culture have done to the population base of North America. When you add the burden of university faculties who too often inculcate students into a brain-bound political correctness--rather than initiating them into the marvel of human initiative, drive, creation, and productivity--you understand more of the comprehensive nature of the problem. It is not just big bureaucracies, malignant litigation, and high taxes that drag North American initiative and economies down. It is the whole drone-creating system that has enmeshed entire generations.

Carl Dietrich is fortunately one of those--like Burt Rutan, Dean Kamen, Ray Kurzweil, and a few others--who is putting his own ingenuity and initiative up against the smothering effect of big bureaucracy. Good luck to Dietrich and company!

H/T Peswiki

Obama's New Lapel Pin: Obama's New America

Barack Obama is already looking ahead to his new America--an America with 57 states, or is it 58? 59? 60? One can never have too many states in a country, after all, and Obama only wants to be sure he has enough.

Yesterday The Ticket broke the stunning news of America's acquisition of seven, maybe eight, new states, according to future president Barack Obama.

He was speaking at the start of a two-day swoop through Oregon, which is already a state.

In Beaverton, which is not a state yet, the Democrat let it slip that during this marathon 16-month party presidential nomination struggle against a bunch of dropouts and this female political zombie from New York who won't surrender short of a silver stake, he had already visited 57 states with one more to go.

That's not counting the existing states of Alaska and Hawaii, he said, which his staff decided aren't important enough to visit. __LAT

Whether this more aggressive Obama is looking to add minor states such as Puerto Rico or Mexico to the US, or whether he has become bold enough to begin adding larger new states such as South America and Africa, remains to be clarified by the Obama campaign.

A more expansionary Obama may come as a surprise to many of his supporters, who were planning to vote for him based merely on Obama's promises to withdraw US forces from Iraq. But if Obama is planning to withdraw the US military from Iraq only to use the troops to enlarge his brave new empire, some of his supporters may begin to have second thoughts.

This not the sort of talk one expects from presidential candidates. Rather, it is the sort of talk one expects from Caesars and Tsars.

While we wait for further clarification from the Obama campaign, we might want to start a betting pool on which countries are likely to be added to the US first. What am I bid for Venezuela?

Pongamia Pinnata: One Oilseed to Rule Them All

Pongamia pinnata is an Indian oilseed tree with some interesting characteristics.

“Pongamia can grow on marginal land, waste land not suitable for other crop production,” Mr Gould said. “It’s a sustainable biofuel that does not compete with food crops and enhances rather than detracts from biodiversity.”

Pongamia is a perennial tree whose seed pods are harvested and crushed for the oil, which can then be refined for feedstock for biodiesel. Mr Gould said pongamia can grow in a wide variety of environments, including arid areas and also in estuaries. __CheckBiotech

Pongamia is also a nitrogen fixer, growing without fertilizers.

The Jatropha plant has been cited as a high-yield source of biodiesel.... more realistic estimates put the [Jatropha] yield at about 200 gpa (1.5-2 tonnes per hectare).[43] It is grown in the Philippines, Mali and India, is drought-resistant, and can share space with other cash crops such as coffee, sugar, fruits and vegetables.[44] __WikiBiodiesel

Pongamia yields approximately 2.5 tonnes per hectare [just over 250 gpa], slightly more than Jatropha. Both Jatropha and Pongamia achieve far better oil yields than soy, rape, and maize. Pongamia may be slightly more frost-tolerant than Jatropha, although both shrubs require a tropical or semi-tropical growing environment.

While Europe and North America will not be able to grow Pongamia or Jatropha on a large scale, poorer regions in the tropical and semi-tropical South should benefit greatly from both the local use of these oilseed trees for energy and for the ability to export the crop for cash. Already, a large jatropha burning energy plant is being built in Belgium, which will need a steady supply of jatropha seed from the tropics.

Of course, greenhouse farming of the tropical oilseed trees is possible in colder climates, but that will be more expensive than importing the seeds from the tropics, as a general rule.

Some typical yields in US gallons of biodiesel per acre are:

* Algae: 1800 gpa or more (est.- see soy figures and DOE quote below)
* Palm oil: 508 gpa[38]
* Coconut: 230 gpa[38]
* Rapeseed: 102 gpa[38]
* Soy: 59.2-98.6 gpa in Indiana[39] (Soy is used in 80% of USA biodiesel[40])
* Peanut: 90 gpa[38]
* Sunflower: 82 gpa[38]

Algae fuel yields have not yet been accurately determined, but DOE is reported as saying that algae yield 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans.[41], and some estimate even higher yields up to 15000 gpa .[42]

Taken from Al Fin Energy

While algae has much higher yields than other biodiesel crops, the production costs are high and technical expertise and infrastructure demands are high. Algal biodiesel is probably more suitable for countries with good technical infrastructure.

Palm oil has higher yields than Pongamia and Jatropha, but has much greater cultivation demands and requires destruction of large areas of rainforest for large plantations. Pongamia [and Jatropha] do well on marginal soils with very little cultivation--they even improve soil quality, allowing for co-cultivation with food crops. Both Pongamia and Jatropha are useful on a village or small town scale, allowing local small energy industries to develop around a small grower community.

Pongamia may eventually rule them all, because it is a nitrogen-fixer, and does not require fertilizer. Time will tell.

Green Star Algal Oil: 100 Times More Oil per acre Than Soy for Biodiesel AND Protein

Green Star(OTC:GSPI) has announced its technical report on its 40,000 liter demonstration facility in Montana. The results demonstrate that algal biodiesel can outproduce soy and other popular oil crops by 100 to 1, and can simultaneously produce large quantities of protein rich food.

Green Star Products, Inc. (OTC:GSPI) today announced that it has publicly released the entire chronological technical report on its 2007-2008 algae (40,000 liter) demonstration facility....

* Algae produce 100 times more oil per acre than traditional food oilseed crops such as soy, etc. (Note: Algae produces 4,000 gallons of oil per acre per year versus 50 gallons per acre for soy.)
* Algae eat CO2, the major Global Warming Gas, and produce oxygen.
* Algae require only sunshine and non-drinkable (salt or brackish) water.
* Algae do not compete with food crops for either agricultural land or fresh water.
* Algae can reproduce themselves and their oil every 6 hours, while it takes Mother Nature millions of years to produce crude oil in the ground.
* Algae oil byproduct is a highly nutritious protein-rich food (30-50%), which will someday help feed the world
* Algae can produce high protein food at the rate of over 50 times (5,000%) faster than traditional food crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat.

Green Star’s business plan includes commercial production in the 2008-2009 timeframe.___Business Wire

The bottom line for algal biodiesel is high production costs, and the continuing need to solve lingering technical problems while holding production costs down. Each of the main competitors has developed its own proprietary approach to solving these problems, which are necessarily held close to the vest.

Suffice it to say, the first company to achieve economic, large-scale production of algal bio-oils will have a 20 lane freeway and several rail spurs built directly to its doors. Earth to venture capitalists: time to wake up!

Also posted at Al Fin Energy

Climate Models Fail To Match Climate Reality

Thousands of people have built their reputations and futures on the bet that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) would drive Earth's climate for the foreseeable future. Doom for Earth meant solid gold for them and their careers. But lately, the climate picture has not been looking like doom for Earth at all. In fact, the better information we get about the climate (Argos, Jason, etc etc), the less reliable the models of anthropogenic climate doom appear.

First, climate predictions of warming across Antarctica have failed miserably. Next, temperature trends across the North Atlantic have failed to produce any "human fingerprint" on the climate of the past 150 years. Then, more and more distinguished scientists are braving the climate inquisition to point out that uncertainties in climate modeling make predictions beyond 5 years completely meaningless. Even the very basic underpinnings of NASA and IPCC climate models have come under question.

As the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation both appear to be shifting into cool phase, Earth's temperatures as measured by satellite appear to have taken an abrupt downward plunge.

All of these phenomena are inexplicable to climate models and climate modellers. Over at realclimate.org, the bureaucrats are reduced to bluff and bluster, threat and bullying. Now that their predictions have jumped the shark, and their funding for next year's season is appearing less and less certain, they can only hope that the US elects a particularly stupid president in November, who will join with the EU in enacting suicidal carbon cap legislation.

Because once the legislation is passed and signed, and the fix is in, it will be too late even for Jupiter and Neptune to stop the lemming's march downward.

H/T Tom Nelson, Green Watch

California the Golden State: Drowning in Debt, Energy Starved, Mis-managed

California's big industries have stopped building facilities in the Golden State. Instead, the motto is "anywhere but in California!" The government of California has been dominated by anti-business interests, making it plain to large businesses that California has other, larger priorities.

...heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could count eight automobile factories in California; today, there’s just one, and it’s the same story with other industries, from chemicals to aerospace.

...The shortages are starting to rattle some Silicon Valley heavyweights. Intel chief executive Craig Barrett, for instance, vowed in 2001 not to build a chip-making facility in California until power supplies became more reliable. This October, Intel opened a $3 billion factory near Phoenix for mass production of its new 45-nanometer microprocessors. Google, meanwhile, has chosen to build the massive server farms that will fuel its expansion anywhere but in California. The most celebrated is an enormous installation along the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a facility that will house tens of thousands of computers, requiring mind-boggling amounts of power. A 1.8-gigawatt hydroelectric power plant will offer Google power for a small fraction of what it would cost in the Golden State. The irony is that the Silicon Valley companies that have become the face of California’s twenty-first-century economy are increasingly building the facilities that will give them their future value in other states.

...Despite California’s desperate need for more power, opposition to energy projects remains nearly as prevalent today as at any time during the previous three decades. State law explicitly prohibits the construction of new nuclear plants, and legislative efforts last summer to repeal it went nowhere, even though more and more states are looking to nuclear power as a clean energy alternative. A de facto moratorium on conventional coal-fired power plants (which generate half of America’s electricity) has been in place for decades in California; none exists anywhere in the state. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense are working to get dams torn down, even though large-scale hydropower supplies nearly one-fifth of Californians’ electricity.

...Even renewable energy projects can have trouble getting off the ground, often because of Not-In-My-Backyard objections. “NIMBYism is a huge problem in our state, a whole creature unto itself,” says Joe Lyons, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers Technology Association. “It cuts across all sectors. Even in the most remote locations, where you wouldn’t think it would be difficult to site a new project, or even on federal lands, it is still extremely difficult and there is always opposition.” For instance, attempts to build a geothermal facility on federal lands deep within the Modoc National Forest face relentless opposition from Indian tribes, which consider the site sacred. Local hostility also threatens to hold up construction of several major transmission lines designed to bring more than 5,000 MW of power from renewable energy sources to Southern California consumers.

...Given all its failings, what sort of leadership example does California offer the rest of the country? It’s hard to claim credibly that California illuminates the world when it has trouble illuminating itself. Further, California’s particular path makes sense only if the rest of the country refuses to follow it. The state’s lawmakers and regulators have enacted policies that for several decades have allowed Californians to feel good, even smug, about their environmental credentials. Yet California’s economic prosperity has relied on the fact that other states have built power plants and established sensible regulatory regimes that don’t force businesses to flee. The power plants scattered throughout the western United States, as well as the factories in the American Midwest and South, have consistently saved California from the folly of its own anti-energy agenda. __CityJournal

You should not think that California's mismanagement at the state government level is limited to the energy and environmental sectors. California's huge, mounting budget deficit is affecting its ability to provide medical care and quality educational services. California's government seems confused about the basic concept of fiscal management.

The Golden State is being deluged by impoverished, uneducated, often violent illegal immigrants from South of the border. The immense burden this human wave throws onto the law enforcement, medical services, and educational departments of both state and federal government agencies is ever growing--with no end in sight.

California is losing its large industries and employers at just the time when it needs the revenue that they represent.

It is not likely that California government officials will ever wake up from the reactionary leftist slumber that has taken them captive. The public of California--increasingly dominated by non-tax payers from the South, appears not to notice or not to care about the lack of responsibility or absence of fiscal sanity in Sacramento.

If California is the trend-setter for the US, the rest of the US can only hope that in this case California stands alone.

Laughing More

A long list of benefits goes to those who learn to laugh well and laugh often. Perhaps that is why more people are beginning to use laughter as a form of recreation, amusement, and regeneration. Around the world, you can find laughter clubs, and centers for laughter yoga.

...laughter yoga (also known as hasya yoga) can provide many health benefits:

* Help to reduce stress
* Enhance the immune system
* Strengthen cardiovascular functions
* Oxygenate the body by boosting the respiratory system
* Improve circulation
* Tone muscles
* Help with digestion and constipation

“Kids laugh about 400 times a day, and adults only about 15,” notes Barb Fisher, a certified laughter yoga leader...As developed by laughter yoga creator Madan Kataria, a family physician from India,

....these laughing exercises can include many varieties, such as:

* Hearty laughter: Laughter by raising both the arms in the sky with the head tilted a little backwards.
* Greeting laughter: Joining both the hands and shaking hands with at least four or five people in the group.
* Appreciation laughter: Join your pointing finger with the thumb to make a small circle while making gestures as if you are appreciating your group members and laughing simultaneously.

...“The biggest effect that I’ve gotten from laughter yoga is what it’s done for me mentally, and that it has lightened up my day and my week,” says Deborah Slosberg. “I also think it has improved my breathing.”

“It gives me a relaxed feeling, and yet I actually feel like I worked out,” says Ann Twork. “You get back some of the child in you.”
__SciDaily

Laughter has been used as meditation for centuries, and as modern medical therapy for decades. In my experience, laughter serves as a re-balancing of the brain and body tension settings.

All of us know of people who seem without humour, without any sense of lightness. You may find persons like that at work, but you certainly are impacted by politicians, journalists, and activists of all stripes who are without the depth and perspective that comes from being able to see the funnier side of life.

This is one part of your life where you are almost completely on your own, unless you were born into a large family rich with humour, or married well in levity and truth. You can find help, if you need it, from the clubs and yoga centers near you. Can't find one? Start one yourself.

The best laughter I have had is the kind that wakes me up from dreams. But there is also benefit to be had from designed laughter.

The next time someone comes along trying to convince you of the truth and importance of a cause--any cause--look for the humour that may be there. The more intent and zealous the cause, the harder you may have to look. That's fine. The payoff will be worth it by the look on the zealot's face when you burst into the deepest belly laugh of your life.

Atlantic and Pacific Oceans Entering Cool Phase

...the key to long-term prediction is in the workings of the ocean, which has 99.9% of the heat capacity of Earth's fluids. It is the heart of the climate "beast"..._WoodsHole

Image Source

To understand the climate of Earth, one must look at the oceans, the master of Earth's heat content. The image above illustrates the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) in its cooling phase. Not until the past few years have climate scientists possessed the tools--such as the Argos buoy system and advanced satellites like Jason--to begin to understand what the wider ocean is actually doing.

Understanding the ocean's effect on climate took a quantum leap forward in 2003 when the first of 3,000 new automated ocean buoys were deployed, a significant improvement over earlier buoys that took their measurements mostly at the ocean's surface.

The new buoys, known as Argos, drift along the world's oceans at a depth of about 6,000 feet constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, and speed of ocean currents. Every 10 days or so a bladder inflates, bringing them to the surface as they take their readings at various depths.

Once on the surface, they transmit their readings to satellites that retransmit them to land-based computers.

The Argos buoys have disappointed global warming alarmists in that they have failed to detect any signs of imminent climate change. As Dr. Josh Willis noted in an interview with National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the buoy's five years of observation. __IBD

In fact, warming alarmists have been disappointed in most of the recent scientific findings regarding climate. You might say that the better the observations, the more disappointed warming alarmists become. How much happier the alarmists would be if we could just stick to climate models, which have predictions that stretch out hundreds of years.

The new Jason oceanographic satellite shows that 2007 was a “cool” La Nina year—but Jason also says something more important is at work: The much larger and more persistent Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has turned into its cool phase, telling us to expect moderately lower global temperatures until 2030 or so. __Source

With the PDO turning cool and the AMO turning cool, we begin to worry that cooler weather could adversely affect food crops. And that is precisely what is happening across the Northern Hemisphere. A world food supply that is already stressed by China's growing, voracious appetite for animal meat, is becoming more stressed by cooler weather that is shortening growing seasons.

We are also facing an uncertain solarcycle24, which may represent one more additional cooling factor facing Earth's climate.

If the Earth’s climate is dominated by variations in Solar luminosity and magnetic field strength as is believed by some, then that would mean cooling.

And that would be a global disaster as deserts expand, storms increase, glaciers expand and wipe out towns and villages in places like Switzerland and Nepal, a shorter growing season with more variability in precipitation, an increase in the number of droughts and failed harvests leading to mass starvation in certain regions. __SolarScience

You should understand that a cold Earth is a much less tolerant place than a warm Earth. If the sun decides to go quiet and slow, the Earth's hungry will grow much hungrier. And while a warm prosperous Earth may tolerate the superficial vacuity of Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, and the current crop of US presidential candidates, a cold and starving Earth will see them as pampered and arrogant fools.

H/T Tom Nelson, IceCap, and Green Watch
Update: This candid look at climate models from Skeptic Magazine is a good example of the growing phenomenon of reputable scientists finally feeling safe enough to begin speaking out.
H/T Random Nuclear Strikes via Tom Nelson

Wikipedia: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Part 2

When we go to an encyclopedia for information, we should be able to expect the best available information--free of petty bias and corruption. Unfortunately, the closer one looks at Wikipedia, the more petty bias and corruption of information one tends to find.

[William]Connolley is not only a big shot on Wikipedia, he's a big shot at Wikipedia -- an a dministrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought-after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.

...Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to Connolley, or to those he favours.

"Peiser's crap shouldn't be in here," Connolley wrote several weeks ago, in berating a Wikipedian colleague during an "edit war," as they're called. In such a war, rival sides change the content of a Wikipedia page from one competing version to another, often with bewildering speed. (Two people, landing on the same page seconds apart, might obtain entirely different information.) In the Peiser case, a Wikipedian stopped a prolonged war by freezing a continually changing page, to prevent more alterations until the dispute was settled. As occurs on such occasions, readers are alerted that Wikipedians are warring over the page, and that Wikipedia was not endorsing the version of the page that had been frozen. To Connolley's chagrin, however, the version that was frozen cast doubt on claims of a consensus on climate change. Although this was done within Wikipedia rules, Connolley intervened to revert the page and ensure Wikipedia readers saw only what he wanted them to see.

Peiser is Benny Peiser, a distinguished U.K. scientist who had convincingly refuted a study by Naomi Oreskes that claimed to have found no scientific papers at odds with the conventional wisdom on climate change. The Oreskes study -- cited by Al Gore in his film, An Inconvenient Truth-- is an article of faith to many global warming doomsayers and guarded from criticism by Connolley et al. Peiser and other critics of Oreskes's study, meanwhile, get demeaned.

Connolley and his cohorts don't just edit pages of scientists actively involved in the global warming debate. Scientists who work in unrelated fields, but who have findings that indirectly bolster a critique of climate change orthodoxy, will also get smeared. So will non-scientists and organizations that he disagrees with. Any reference, anywhere among Wikipedia's 2.5-million English-language pages, that casts doubt on the consequences of climate change will be bent to Connolley's bidding. __Source

As we are rapidly learning by following climate research, the hypothesis so favoured by Connolley--catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW)--is rapidly becoming discredited by the data. Yet Connolley and his witless acolytes such as Kim Dabelstein Petersen, continue to enforce the party line on Wikipedia. Who is watching the watchers?

At Wikipedia, the petty warlords of corrupted information reign. While some will claim that Wikipedia has procedures that would prevent such info-tyranny, they make those claims out of ignorance of what goes on behind-the-scenes.

H/T IceCap

The Saudi Arabia of Cellulose?

Image Source

It is easy to see that no matter how much maize the US chooses to grow, China will be happy to buy it all to use as livestock feed. Corn ethanol will be abandoned not because of food shortages--which have little to do with corn ethanol--but because cheaper feedstocks for producing ethanol (and butanol) are being developed. Chief among these cheaper feedstocks is cellulose from waste biomass. Some parts of the world are particularly prolific in growing cellulosic biomass, and in their own way these regions may one day be considered the "Saudi Arabias of Cellulose."

“I heard recently that the Southeast will eventually be known as the Saudi Arabia of cellulose,” Tiller said of the region’s ease in growing native switchgrass and other potential supplies of biomass that could be used for cellulosic alcohol production.

In 20 years of research, UT has found that switchgrass — a biennial crop that takes two or three years to reach maximum potential with minimal fertilizer even on marginal soils — in one year can produce six to 10 tons an acre compared to hay, which produces one or two tons an acre and requires substantially more fertilizer.

New research may bring that to 12 to 15 tons an acre in the next few years, Tiller said. Research also is looking at ways to more densely pack switchgrass in bales, convert it to pellets, or even alter it genetically to start breaking down soon after harvest....

Tiller explained that the process under study uses a “steam explosion” — forcing heat and steam into the biomass and then drastically relieving the pressure — to coax the sugars out of switchgrass and other biomass, making the biomass “explode like popcorn.”

A lignin byproduct can be used to make biodiesel, other oils, carbon fibers and plastics, depending on the most efficient use and market demand.

And the cellulose and hemicellulose — aside from going to the fermentation and distillation process to make ethanol — also can be used to make biodiesel and other products, depending on economics and demands. __Source

The US consumes 400 million gallons of gasoline a day. Current US ethanol production would only provide about two weeks worth of fuel for the US. Clearly the US needs to rapidly scale up biofuels production--but not using corn. China would clearly outbid ethanol producers for any amount of corn US growers want to grow.

Until cellulosic biomass can be more cheaply converted to alcohols, the US will need to look to Brazilian cane ethanol, and other cheaper feedstocks such as sweet sorghum. Eventually, algae and other monocellular organisms are likely to provide better and cheaper feedstocks for biodiesel and bio-alcohol fuels. But algae still has a number of problems that need ironing out.

H/T NextEnergyNews

The Only Kind of Diversity That Matters

What are you really good at? Perhaps you've been told that you can do anything you choose to set your mind toward? That isn't true. But the truth may be much better than that.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything,” explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book “This Year I Will...” and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.”

This is where developing new habits comes in. If you’re an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you’ve learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.

...brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads. __NYT

When we learn, we each learn in our own way. We need people who can help us learn in the particular ways we learn best. Whether that person is of our gender or ethnicity or religion is irrelevant to our desire to learn. The only kind of diversity that matters in a learning, apprenticeship, or open working environment is the diversity of learning methods and skills.

We are all somewhat different in what we are good at, and in the ways that we become better within our strengths. But we need to push our "comfort zones" outward little by little, or we will become living fossils--incapable of change or growth. This is something one tends to see within particular intellectually inbred communities. The avoidance of challenge, the tendency to blame "the other" for all of one's shortcomings. The need to demonise and scapegoat, because placing all blame outward relieves one from any need to face fear-inducing change.

Some things you can change. Within that constellation of changeable things inside and outside of you, lives a potential universe that would make a nice place to live. All of us need to develop the ability to explore the world of changeability at our own pace, in our own way.

Bonus:

SmartWired’s three-step process unleashes a child’s potential and fosters a lifelong love of learning:

Recognizing. The Smart Card assessment identifies the child’s unique strengths, gifts, and assets and defines his or her pattern of success.

Utilizing. Online tracking and progress monitoring helps utilize information about each child’s patterns of success and shares it with teachers, educators, coaches, and others who play a role in his or her life. This knowledge will help others motivate and support the child throughout his or her life of learning, using what is right to overcome what’s wrong.

Developing. Helping to create the richest possible environment and support for the development of each child's unique talents, including asset-focused partnerships between the home, school and community. __SmartWired

H/T Kurzweilai.net

Mainstream Media Begins to Go Skeptic

Only a week has passed since the Nature article predicting a cooler decade from the AMO and since NASA's predicting that the PDO has shifted to a cool phase for a decade or so. And already the mainstream media is testing its limits, printing a bit of heretical skepticism for everyone to see. Granted, it is the Telegraph, which may be feeling its oats after helping rid the UK of a London mayor who was a bit too friendly with dictators and terrorists. Or perhaps it is just a way of giving "Red Ken" and his holy warmer pals the boot in such a way to make sure they feel it.

...a German study, published by Nature last week, claimed that, while the world is definitely warming, it may cool down until 2015 "while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions"....While global warming enthusiasts might take cheer from the NOAA's claim that "average global land temperature" in March was "the warmest on record", this was in striking contrast to a graph published last week on the Climate Audit website by Steve McIntyre.

Tracking satellite data for the tropical troposphere, it showed March temperatures plunging to one of their lowest points in 30 years.

Mr McIntyre is the computer expert who exposed the infamous "hockey stick" graph - that icon of warmist orthodoxy which showed global temperatures soaring recently to their highest level for 1,000 years. He showed that the computer model that produced this graph had been so designed that it would have conjured even random numbers from a telephone directory into the shape of a hockey stick).

The most dramatic evidence, however, emerged last week with an announcement by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that an immense slow-cycling movement of water in the Pacific, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), had unexpectedly shifted into its cool phase, something which only happens every 30 years or so, ultimately affecting climate all over the globe.

Discussion of this on the invaluable Watts Up With That website, run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts, shows how the alternations of the PDO between warm and cool coincided with each of the major temperature shifts of the 20th century - warming after 1905, cooling after 1946, warming again after 1977 - and how the new shift to a cool phase could have repercussions for decades to come. __Telegraph

The shock from the climate orthodoxy is palpable, as they are beginning to see their tenuous hold on the media slipping away.

It is too early to truly say where the climate is going. The IPCC made the mistake of premature prognosticating and Al Gore fell for it, making a hundred million dollars so far and counting, from the error. The problem I see is that when the public begins to understand how badly it has been manipulated by political interests acting in the name of science, it will be science as a whole that suffers from the backlash and public resentment.

Anyone who knows anything about science can tell you that science has had very little to do with the rush to climate catastrophe, up to this point. But it will be up to science as a whole to clean up the mess the politicians and the media have made of one relatively infant branch--climatology.

Soft Rot Fungus Wants To Be Your Friend

While it may not seem a likely friend, soft rot fungus produces enzymes that can allow us to more cheaply create fuels from biomass. Trichoderma Reesei has caused the rot of clothing and shelter for generations of military and scientific personnel stationed in the jungle. Now the fungus has the opportunity to make up for its mischief.

In their comparative analysis of T. reesei with other fungi, the team observed clustering of carbohydrate-active enzyme genes, which suggested a specific biological role: polysaccharide degradation. “While plant tissues are not likely the main source of nutrients for T. reesei, upon detection of cellulose and hemicellulose it seems that the organization of these degrading genes may be the key to a rapid response,” said Martinez.

“The sequencing of the Trichoderma reesei genome is a major step towards using renewable feedstocks for the production of fuels and chemicals,” said Joel Cherry, director of research activities in second-generation biofuels for Novozymes, one of the collaborating institutions on the study. “This soft rot fungus serves as the world’s most prodigious producer of cellulases and is already a dominant source of a wide variety of cellulase products for the textile industry worldwide. It is also the organism of choice for producing enzymes for the breakdown of cellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars, which can then be biologically converted to fuels and chemical building blocks. The information contained in its genome will allow us both to better understand how this organism degrades cellulose so efficiently and to understand how it produces the required enzymes so prodigiously. Using this information, it may be possible to improve both of these properties, decreasing the cost of converting cellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals.” __CheckBiotech

At this time, the most efficient process for converting cellulotic biomass to fuels and chemicals is by way of thermochemical conversion and gasification. But even the most efficient forms of thermochemical conversion depend upon parasitic heat processes which lower the overall efficiency--and thus lower profits--of the process. Scientists hope that by learning to cheaply make and tweak (for efficiency) the best enzymes for the job, they can make the biomass-to-fuels/chemicals transformation just a bit more profitable overall. In the business world, sometimes "just a little bit" more profit means the difference between success and failure.


Such subtleties are no doubt lost upon corrupt politicians and make-work bureaucrats, but we are planning to feed them into the pyrolysis plant anyway. ;-)

Robo-Surgeon Joined By Robo-Anesthesiologist

How long before we have an "all-robot" operating room? Not so long, perhaps. McGill University researchers have developed a robotic anesthesiologist that recently provided anesthesia for a human undergoing partial nephrectomy.

The anesthetic technique was used on a patient who underwent a partial nephrectomy, a procedure that removes a kidney tumor while leaving the non-cancerous part of the kidney intact, over a period of 3 hours and 30 minutes....the automated system measures three separate parameters displayed on a new Integrated monitor of anesthesia (IMATM): depth of hypnosis via EEG analysis, pain via a new pain score, called AnalgoscoreTM, and muscle relaxation via phonomyographyTM, all developed by ITAG. The system then administers the appropriate drugs using conventional infusion pumps, controlled by a laptop computer on which “McSleepy” is installed. Using these three separate parameters and complex algorithms, the automated system calculates faster and more precisely than a human can the appropriate drug doses for any given moment of anesthesia.... An additional feature is that the system can communicate with personal digital assistants (PDAs), making distant monitoring and anesthetic control possible. In addition, this technology can be easily incorporated into modern medical teaching programs such as simulation centers and web-based learning platforms. __Eurekalert

Robotic surgeons have been accepted by most human patients, so it is likely that robotic anesthesiologists will likewise be welcomed. The increased precision provided by robotic actuators and sensors may relegate operating room personnel to the roles of supervisors and occasional troubleshooters.

Don't be surprised to see robots trundling down hospital ward hallways the night before surgery, doing the pre-op rounds for both surgeons and anesthesiologists.

Clean Burning Bio-Coal From Torrefaction Processing of Wood and Biomass

Biomass that has been treated by the torrefaction process is very close to coal in energy content, but unlike coal, torrefied biomass is virtually pollution free and smokeless. The torrefaction process is self-sustaining and relatively simple and fast. It creates a biomass derived coal substitute that is virtually pollution-free.

Torrefaction (300-400º C) liberates water, volatile organic compounds (VOC), and hemicellulose (HC) from the cellulose and lignin.
The VOC and HC are combusted to generate process heat.
TW can easily replace coal in combustion or be a feedstock for further pyrolysis or gasification for combined heat and power or Fischer-Tropsch liquids.
The warm lignin acts as a binder when the torrefied wood (TW) is pelletized. __PDFTorrefiedWoodPPT

Torrefied biomass, or biocoal, can be fired along with coal in power plants, or can be used altogether in place of coal in unmodified plants. More on clean biocoal:

1. Very Clean burning
2. Cheaper than coal
3. Very safe for the Environment
4. Only True Solution to Global Warming
5. Green House Gas Neutral
6. Tree plantations clean environment
7. Virtually no water pollution
8. Infinite supply
9. Equal or more BTU’s to coal
10. Low moisture __Source

More on biocoal here.

H/T QiBioenergy

Torrefaction processing of biomass can be seen as a parallel energy path to gasification or other thermochemical processes for turning waste biomass into world-class energy products.

Global Warming on Hold? Al Gore Secretly Furious

There are signs that the Earth may be entering a new cooling phase, signaling a "temporary halt to global warming."

Writing in Nature, the scientists said: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming." __Telegraph__via__GreenieWatch

In fact, recent temperatures across the globe have set records for cold, ice accumulation, and snowfall.

China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. ___DailyTech__via__GreenieWatch

While Al Gore privately steams on his temperature controlled private jet as he criss-crosses the globe collecting $100,000 speaking fees, the planet 30,000 feet below seems to be cooling rather than warming.

...two widely used global temperature data sources are from earth-orbiting satellites UAH (University of Alabama at Huntsville) and RSS (Remote Sensing Systems.) Both show decreasing temperatures over the last decade, with present temperatures barely above the 30 year average....We saw a global cooling scare in 1924, a global warming scare in 1933, another global cooling in the early 1970s, and another warming scare today. __Register__via__Icecap__via_TomNelson

And so we finally learn that IPCC models failed to predict the current "flipping" of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from warming to cooling. In fact, the IPCC models seemed to be trying to pretend that natural climate cycles do not even exist.

What makes the entire situation worse, besides the economic hazards of shutting down entire industries based upon spurious models, is the fact that the IPCC and NASA Goddard models are being fed falsified data--whether intentionally or incidentally remains to be demonstrated.

NASA has been reworking recent temperatures upwards and older temperatures downwards - which creates a greater slope and the appearance of warming. Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre has been tracking the changes closely on his Climate Audit site, and reports that NASA is Rewriting History, Time and Time Again . __Register

How can the bureaucrats at NASA and the IPCC get away with "re-writing history?" Because they have the entire resources of the US Federal government and the United Nations behind them. Anyone who wants to bring the "historical revisionists of climate" to account for their misdeeds will have to go through the great stonewall of the world's hugest bureaucracies. The price tag for the huge blunders of NASA, the IPCC, Kyoto, the EU, etc. may easily run into the trillions of dollars.

Bureaucracies plunder. People pay the price.

Step by Step Toward a Brave New World

Fertility Medicine is generating some interesting new techniques. A new technique for growing hundreds of eggs in a lab, while a woman undergoes cancer chemotherapy--or is exposed to other environmental hazards such as the radiation of outer space etc--offers promise for thousands of women who would otherwise be doomed to infertility. By taking sections or biopsies of ovaries, and freezing them for later use, a woman's fertility can survive separate from her body for years.

Another fertility tool is the Inovocell device, which is an interesting IVF tool to reduce the cost and inconvenience of the procedure:

The Invocell device is a sealed capsule that allows fertilisation to take place inside the body, in the vaginal cavity. A woman would first be given mild drugs to stimulate her ovaries, and then eggs would be removed from them while she is under sedation. Up to seven eggs are then put into the Invocell capsule, along with washed sperm. The capsule is then placed inside the vagina. After three days the patient would return for a second appointment, in which the capsule is removed and any fertilised embryos are examined for quality. The best one or two would then be transferred to the womb. __Times

That reminds me of another device which is a bit more invasive, the Anecova capsule:

The new device allows embryos created in the lab to be incubated inside a perforated silicon container inserted into a woman's own womb. After a few days, the capsule is recovered and some embryos are selected for implantation in the womb (see image, top right)

Embryos incubated in the lab must have their growth medium changed every few hours to provide new nutrients and get rid of waste. The new device provides a more natural environment.

The silicon capsule is about 5 millimetres long and less than a millimetre wide. Its walls are perforated with 360 holes, each around 40 microns across. After embryos have been loaded inside, the ends are sealed and the container is connected to a flexible wire that holds the device inside the uterus (see image, lower right). A thread trails through the cervix to allow it to be recovered later on. __NS

The two devices are quite different in practise, but both provide ways for embryos to be retrieved from the woman's body, tested, and the best ones selected for implantation in the uterus.

It is easy to see how such devices could be used in a fiction plot--or a criminal scam. One woman could be carrying another woman's eggs in an Invocell, get a man to unwittingly fertilise the eggs, then take the fertilised eggs to IVF for implantation into the uterus of the woman who produced the eggs. It is an open and shut court case of paternity. The wronged (but complicit) wife gets a lucrative divorce. The egg donor gets a hefty paternity judgment, even though the father has never slept with her. Moving along . . .

The final device--not yet developed--is the artificial womb that is capable of incubating the embryo through a normal gestation to delivery. Such a sophisticated device will require the solution of several technical problems.

H/T Futurepundit.com

Male Birth Control Pills: A Potent Infertility

Feminists have loudly longed for a male birth control method, in the interests of contraceptive equity. Memphis based GTx recently announced that its experimental drug "C-31" achieves "100% male infertility" at a dose of only 0.1 mg per day (in rats).

The key is something called a selective androgen receptor modulator, or SARM. “These compounds suppress a brain hormone, and shut down sperm production in a reversible way,” Jim Dalton, vice president of research and development at GTx, tells the Health Blog. GTx, based in Memphis, Tenn., specializes in hormone treatments for cancer and men’s health.

To achieve birth control, men would have to take such a pill for two to three months to deplete their sperm. It would take about the same amount of time for them to return to full reproductive capacity after stopping the medicine. Even if all goes well, any pill is still five to 10 years away. __WSJblog

The selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) approach to contraception could provide an added benefit of providing greater muscle mass to users. SARM research is booming, since SARMs can be modified to produce highly selective effects on the androgenic hormonal system. SARMs are not in themselves steroids, and may find their way into the drug cabinet of elite athletes eventually.

More on the sociological impacts of such a drug at Sentient Developments.

H/T Futurismic

Announcing Oynklent Green: A New Energy Future

The world is in need of an abundant source of renewable energy. Al Fin Blog Syndicates is proud to announce the IPO for Oynklent Green [OTC: OYNK], the new corrupt-politician-to-biofuels thermochemical process which promises an unlimited new source of biofuels, which will actually result in more available food and cropland--not less.

An earlier Al Fin article threw the idea out as a trial balloon, and I must say the response has been most gratifying. Knowing that turkey and pork processing waste products are being used to create biodiesel, and understanding how closely related corrupt politicians are to both turkeys and pigs, the scientists at Al Fin Laboratories quickly began work on a top-secret project to perfect the "corrupt-politican-to-biofuels" (CPTB) process.

I am happy to report that the CPTB process was easier to perfect than anticipated, as the process used for turkeys and pigs was transferrable almost entirely to corrupt politicians! That happy coincidence combined with a groundswell of public support and financing allows me to announce the IPO for OYNK.

Due to problems with the SEC resulting from the rapid organisation and venture funding of OYNK, all stock transactions must take place via e-mail. But be assured that all Oynklent Green accounting will be overseen by the same accounting firm that oversaw the energy giant Enron, Arthur Andersen (re-organised).

So purchase your stock today, before Oynklent Green becomes so big as to be unaffordable. Remember, "Energy is People!"

China's Enormous New Appetite Drives Food Price

There are many reasons for higher world prices for food. High energy and fertiliser costs, local droughts-famines-wars, the low value of the dollar driving commodities market speculation, etc. But one particular country appears to be more responsible than the rest of the world combined: China.

A change in Chinese meat consumption habits since 1995 is diverting eight billion bushels of grain per year to livestock feed and could empty global grain stocks by September 2010, according to a new study from Biofuels Digest, now available for download here in an expanded version.

...even if the U.S. ethanol industry were shut down tomorrow, rising Chinese demand for meat, and the ensuing livestock feed demand, will empty global grain stocks as soon as 2013. The report offers gloomy news for policymakers who have hoped to address global food vs. fuel concerns by restraining U.S. ethanol demand.

“It’s not food, it’s not fuel, it’s China,” said Jim Lane, editor of Biofuels Digest and author of the report....The US ethanol industry, which has been criticized as the primary cause of grain shortages and rising prices, increased its grain usage by 31 million tonnes during the 12 year period. By contrast, livestock grain demand to supply Chinese meat consumption increased by 199 million tonnes.

“Given that the US population has grown 15 percent in the past 13 years, the 82 percent increase in US corn production left plenty for people, plenty for livestock, and plenty for ethanol.” said Lane. “The truth is that the grain was Shanghaied, leaving us with a fuel crisis and a food crisis. The good news is that it’s easier to find a good steak in Beijing.” __BiofuelsDigest

While the clueless blankers continue blaming biofuels for high costs of food, the reality of the problem is far more complex--and possibly too much of a political hot potato for most of them to touch! While it is politically correct to blame the US for the world's problems, China is often given a free pass.

The media has made a monkey of itself over global warming (CAGW). Now it is making itself the fool over food prices. It is past time for a new media regime that looks at all the evidence, rather than following cliquish fads and political correctness in deciding what news it will cover, and what spin it will take. It is rumoured that journalism students are required to fail IQ tests before being admitted to journalism school. Perhaps they must also take an oath of oafishness as well.

Update: Another factor adding to food shortages is crop damage from frost and unanticipated cold climate (both northern and southern hemisphere). See here and here. H/T Tom Nelson

Here's a look at a country that is truly facing food shortages.