...And a Child With High Genetic Potential Plus Good Training Does Even Better Still . . . .

..."So a child who has a good home learning environment, good preschool and good primary school will do better than a child with only two who will do better than a child who has one who will do better than a child who has none of these.... _Telegraph

Everyone wants superior children, but no one seems to be willing to do anything to help bring them about. Bright mothers with good educations tend to have bright and capable children, relatively speaking. Sadly, society increasingly tries to shunt bright women away from motherhood, as if mothers cannot also succeed in other areas. Anyway, a University of London project looking at the effect of quality pre-school education suggests that the formative pre-school years of a child are very important to his future cognitive capacity.

Ten-year-olds who have attended "high quality" preschool tend to score higher on mathematics tests than those who haven't, reports Prof Edward Melhuish of Birkbeck, University of London, and colleagues from the Effective provision of Preschool and Primary Education (EPPE) project.

He said they were surprised by the degree to which early experience both in the preschool and home were so influential later in the child's life.

"For the average child who went to a particularly effective or high quality preschool their maths scores would be boosted by around 27 per cent," says Prof Melhuish.

However, the project revealed that the education of the parents - particularly the mother- still has the greatest influence, having twice the effect and thus boosting maths scores even more.

What parents did at home mattered too. "The effects of the early home learning environment were very strong, much stronger than people had anticipated."

"An ideal home learning environment would be rich in stimulation and very responsive to the child's communications and activities," says Prof Melhuish.

"Parents would talk to their children frequently, read to them, maybe visit library to increase range of books for child, provide opportunities to draw, paint, learn songs and rhymes, dance and physical activities, play with numbers and shapes.

Parents make the difference in the child's future life. From the genes, to the intrauterine environment, to early childhood and beyond, parents lay the foundation. Then parents hand children to schools, which may or may not care what happens to the child from then on.

As is seen in population groups where up to 70% of children are born out of wedlock, the results of a childhood without caring and resourceful parents can be stark indeed.

China Wins Gold Medal in Poisoning Competition

This time, scores of Japanese were poisoned by Chinese dumplings in what may be an intentional poisoning.

The Chinese regime officially admitted for the first time the Chinese exported dumplings that has sicken many Japanese could have been deliberately poisoned inside the factory in China, according to Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) report on August 30....This January, the frozen dumplings from China’s Tian Yang Food Corp sickened dozens in Japan. Lab testing showed those dumplings contained traces of pesticide contamination. _Epoch

The latest China poisoning event joins a long list of other poisonings from China that have been labeled "the chinese poison train." It is the Chinese people themselves who suffer the most from unenforced standards within China, and if not for the poisoned products that are inadvertently exported, the outside world would know little of the problem.

Sadly for the Chinese people, the environment within China is growing so toxic that the poisons are beginning to taint habitats of humans and wildlife alike. And sadly for people outside China, the corrupt country's environmental toxins are spilling out to pollute large portions of the world at large. It is difficult to celebrate China's amazing (although certainly exaggerated in real terms) economic growth when such a huge price is being paid by the ordinary people of China and the world.

Why Do Antidepressants Take 6 Weeks to Work?

Until fairly recently, psychiatrists and neuropharmacologists have been puzzled by the several-week delay in onset of antidepressant efficacy of commonly prescribed mood elevators. It shouldn't take that long to boost neurotransmitter levels. But straight from central casting, the neural stem cell made its appearance in the science annals, and it was found that some antidepressants stimulate the differentiation of neural stem cells to mature nerve cells. Voila! New neurons--a feat once thought impossible!--from neural stem cells, with a little help from pharmacology. Recent work from the University of Texas supports that hypothesis.

...Antidepressants act very quickly to increase levels of natural compounds, called neurotransmitters, which nerve cells use to communicate. It takes several weeks to several months, however, for the patients who respond to such treatments to feel less depressed. Dr. Parada said this implies that some other long-term mechanism is also at work.

...Matching the timeframe for medicated patients to feel less depressed, it takes several weeks for new nerve cells to grow, Dr. Parada said. This parallel effect, he said, may mean that antidepressants need to stimulate growth of new cells in the dentate gyrus in order to achieve their full effect. _Sciencedaily

Antidepressants stimulate the production of new nerve cells in the hippocampus, and appear to protect nerve cells from apoptosis, at least in animal studies. The time delay for the mood elevation from antidepressants appears to be caused by the time to differentiation and integration of new neurons.

All this time, psychiatrists have been engaging in regenerative neuromedicine, and did not even realise it. Now that we have a better idea of what we are doing, perhaps we can learn to do it better?

Two Hurricanes, Two Governors

US Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP running mate seems to have energized the US Republican Party base. If Barak Obama had named former Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco as his VP running mate, would that have energized the Democratic Party base? Certainly, when Mr. Obama failed to select Hillary Clinton as his running mate, the letdown felt by many US women was palpable.

But about Ms. Blanco, former governor of Louisiana? Would her selection by Obama as VP candidate for the USDP energize the Democratic Party base? Why not? In one word, Katrina. The infamous hurricane Katrina of August 2005 devastated New Orleans and ruined Blanco's chances for political advancement. Although the press neglected to emphasize the point, Blanco was far more responsible for the failure of state and local relief agencies to perform in a timely manner to the disaster than anyone in the US federal government. Blanco's failure to prepare and respond to Katrina marked her for life.

Blanco was not very smart, but she was smart enough not to run again for governor. She had proven herself as totally incompetent in the face of crisis, and would not be given another chance. Louisiana elected a different governor, Bobby Jindal, giving Louisiana's famously corrupt Democratic Party political machine a huge loss.

In the face of hurricane Gustav, Jindal has mobilized state and local agencies, law enforcement, etc. well in advance, and has maintained clear communications with all levels of federal government. Jindal is prepared as far as possible. Jindal is a hands-on governor with a meritocratic system--as opposed to the incredibly nepotistic and corrupt Democratic Party machine that Blanco operated within.

Louisiana (except perhaps New Orleans?) has never been better prepared for a hurricane than now. The city of New Orleans is still under Mayor Nagin's control, although it is a much smaller city now. And the more intelligent people of New Orleans will never take Nagin seriously again. They will take responsibility for themselves. For Nagin is part of the famously corrupt Democratic Party political machine. Like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, etc., Nagin is incompetent because the machine he is part of is incompetent.

Alaska's Sarah Palin is a hands-on governor like Bobby Jindal. She inspires confidence as Jindal does, and currently has an 80% approval rating in her state. There is no question as to the energizing effect her presence on the ticket has already had on the base of her national political party.

Governors matter. Their decisions matter. In routine operations and planning, and in crises. Governors are executives, they run things. Legislators such as senators can easily skate by for decades without needing to demonstrate real world competence. Governors have to have something going for them, or they are apt to be found out--like Blanco.

Gustav is building for impact with Cuba, then on to the Gulf of Mexico. Every hurricane, every natural disaster, every designed disaster is a test of the competence of government officials. In most countries (and previously in Louisiana) elected office was a corrupt sinecure, meant mainly as a base to distribute favours to campaign contributors, friends, and relatives. But in the Anglosphere, officials are expected to behave honorably and with distinction in the face of a crisis. Kathleen Blanco failed. She was replaced. She is now a political embarassment, and Obama certainly never considered her as his running mate.

Bobby Jindal was considered as a running mate for McCain, but Jindal was not ready to jump a crippled ship for higher office. Palin was asked, and she accepted. Both Palin and Jindal have demonstrated records of achievement and competence.

Senators are hard put to match the achievements of a governor. That is why US Senators are so rarely elected US President. Baby senators such as Obama, who has barely "served" half a term--spending most of the time running for president--would never have a chance without "magical" circumstances aiding them. But Obama chose another US Senator as his running mate--not someone with executive decision-making experience. That was a mistake.

Gustav, like time, global jihad, and the Russian Army, will not stop for incompetents.

Military Plans to Create Artificial Cat Brain in Silico

Image Source

By way of Brain Stimulant Blog, this story reveals a complex effort by the US military to recreate a cat's cortical brain in silico. What will the military do with a silicon cat's brain?

Darpa, the Defense Department's way-out research arm, recently tapped is in late-stage negotiations with Malibu's HRL Laboratories to spearhead its Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics ("SyNAPSE") program. The goal: Build a chip with a "neuroscience-inspired architecture that can address a wide range of cognitive abilities -- perception, planning, decision making, and motor control," a company release notes. [UPDATE: An HRL spokesperson says the deal, in fact, "has not been finalized yet." The press release "should not have been sent out."]

The first nine-month phase of the program will focus on designing, fabricating, and characterizing synaptic and neural elements and combining them into a high-density, interconnecting microelectronic "fabric," which will be incorporated into a more complex system-level fabric design...

In the following 15-month phase, HRL [a joint venture between Boeing and General Motors] will combine the synaptic and neural elements to fabricate and demonstrate "cortical microcircuits" that can model various lower-level brain functions and actually "learn" by interacting with the environment.

"The follow-on phases of the project will create a technology that functions like the brain of a cat, which comprises 10^8 neurons and 10^12 synapses," Dr. Narayan Srinivasa, SyNAPSE Program Manager and Senior Scientist, said. "The human brain has roughly 10^11 neurons and 10^15 synapses."

The gray area between circuitry and gray matter has become one of the hotter topics in military research. The Army is funding a study into "synthetic telepathy" that would translate the brain's electrical activity into computer code. Darpa-funded researchers have taught monkeys how to control robotic limbs with their thoughts. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman is building binoculars that tap the unconscious mind. Honeywell has built a system that monitors pre-conscious neural firings, to help pick out targets in satellite imagery. The JASONs, the Pentagon's premiere scientific advisory board, has warned of the dangers of enemies implanted with brain-computer interfaces. And the Defense Intelligence Agency just released a report, saying the military needs to spend more on neuroscience - up to and including "mak[ing] the enemy obey our commands." _Wired

Other similar projects include the Blue Brain project, the Utah Brain Project, the China Brain Project (PDF), among others.

Interesting, but we are not at all close to the age of brain downloads. The critical component is timing. Brains are asynchronous, and timing is crucial for functional integration of information across different brain centers. We should learn something from all this.

Science Is Evolving, But People: Not So Much

Human nature resists change, despite the best efforts of social engineers and would-be utopians. All the soaring rhetoric in the world will not raise the average IQ or EF of the vast herds of short-lived human grazers. Very few humans are directly involved in magnificent scientific and technological efforts such as this or this. The Earth-shaking consequences of nanotechnology and convergence owe nothing to the 99% of humans whose lives will eventually be transformed by the advances.

Modern education and child-raising creates lazy human minds. This laziness is reflected in politics, the media, popular amusements, and general attitudes. Even within academia, laziness occupies center stage. No other area of academia is lazier than the "social sciences."

One effect of the impressive progress in the physical sciences is that it conferred credibility to the “social sciences” as well. Knowing that a person is a scientist has become meaningless. The first question one needs to ask is what this person studies and how. The philosopher David Hume said it best when he said:

“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school of metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” David Hume ‑ An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding,1748, Section XII, Part I
_DepressedMetabolism

As lazily fraudulent as the social sciences frequently are, you see the same type of laziness creeping into more mainstream sciences via politicisation--particularly in climate science, and in gender-driven "reforms" to science education, hiring, funding, and publication. It is human nature for zealots within an organisation to attempt to strengthen their faction. It is also human nature for non-zealots to eventually become too weary to continually fight them off.

Parasitical politics is ubiquitous in human organisations. It is simply a manifestation of human nature within a particular niche. The masses are lazy. Politically oriented people tend to greediness and power-hunger. They make a perfect match, since laziness and greed/power hunger are basic human traits that are present in the proper ratio for a hungry few to control the complacent many.

And so the liberal experiment tentatively begun in ancient times, smoldering undetected throughout the dark ages, flaming up in the renaissance - reformation - industrial revolution - American Constitution and Experiment, can easily collapse under the weight of the brain dead and top-heavy mass of the political tumour that ultimately starves the body politic to death. It is simple human nature.

Revolutionary science is done by a vanishingly small number of people. In order for the good work being done in labs to provide good results for humans in general, the natural human parasitic politics threatening to smother human transformative initiative must itself be smothered in its feathered bed. But gently, as in a dream.

I Got My Mind Right Boss

Fetish of Innocence, Hung Tightly Round the Neck

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
fet·ish /ˈfɛtɪʃ, ˈfitɪʃ/ [fet-ish, fee-tish] noun

• 1. an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency.
• 2. any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion: to make a fetish of high grades.
• 3. Psychology. any object or nongenital part of the body that causes a habitual erotic response or fixation.

Increasingly, couples are having only one child (if any) and devoting most of their energies to pampering and maintaining the extended innocence of this "pet child." Children are born "innocent" to be sure, but the perverse intent of modern society to maintain this innocence--far beyond infancy, beyond childhood, into adulthood--is spawning a multitude of problems that society has yet to comprehend, much less ascribe to its own counter-productive habits and modern customs.

Children pass through a number of "critical developmental periods" between conception and the ages of 25 or 30. Those who are deprived of the nutrients, basic needs, and experiences necessary to develop the particular capacity of that developmental window will fail to develop. They may maintain their innocence. But if so, innocence becomes a perversion--a fetish--not a virtue. Imagine a society that intentionally prevented infants and toddlers from hearing human language. The children would grow up "innocent of language", but helpless to participate meaningfully in human society.

Child abuse, you say? Yes, but hardly worse than much of what goes on in the name of proper child-raising and educating using methods developed by the "very best" of educators and child psychologists, and administered under threat of deadly force by governments. Child abuse, yes.

What happens to a society that restricts the access of its children to the experiences which would allow them to develop as independent, self-sufficient, clear thinking and decisively acting adults? It grows very specialised, very brittle, very divided, and increasingly helpless to deal with threats from within and without. It grows charismatic leaders who promise to relieve voters of the burden of thinking for themselves. And we all know what comes next.

Why Is This Best-Selling Author and Public School Teacher Homeschooling His Kids?

Best selling author of the excellent novel "Snow Falling on Cedars", David Guterson, happens to teach English at a public high school in the Pacific Northwest. So why does he homeschool his own kids? For that matter, why do a high percentage of public school teachers send their own kids to private schools? But I digress. Guterson has recently written a comprehensive book on the topic of homeschooling, which appears worth a look for anyone who has considered that option.

...In Chapter Two: What About Democracy, Guterson addresses the concerns that home-schooling somehow undermines democracy, pointing out that "your average classroom is more like a little Kremlin than a little congress [ . . . ] more like totalitarianism than democracy. There are bells and PA systems and student cards and hall passes and classrooms where you listen day in and day out to authoritarian voices" (p. 42).

...Chapter Three: Homeschoolers Among Others capably addresses the concern about socialization -- that homeschooled won't get socialized properly if they are not with their peers. Guterson points out that "Schoolchildren may be openly and consciously obsessed with their peers, but their unconscious desperation for meaningful relationships with adults can be plainly seen in their eye" (p 65). In addition, a child not tied to the school clock has the opportunity to live "as an integral part of a community, among the elderly, store clerks, gardeners, carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, and electricians in their world, [ . . . ] are apt to develop a sensitive social understanding and a sophisticated feeling for the lives of others as they are lived on a daily basis" (p. 64).

....And what does the federal Constitution say? Nothing. Why not? " [ . . . ] the Constitution doesn't mention homeschooling in part because its writers didn't have the word in their vocabulary. Learning outside of schools, back then, was pretty common. [ . . . ] In the past, governments didn't take it upon themselves to see to education. They didn't think of it as their proper role as governments do today." So in 200 years we've gone from one end of the spectrum (families are responsible for educating their off-spring) to the other (families can barely be trusted to educate their young, and even then must be supervised by a state employee and submit reports and show results lest they lose their grudgingly-granted privilege). Indeed, "Every child is entitled to a public education," as Texas Governor Rick Perry asserts, then adds, "but public education is not entitled to every child." _ADL

And so on. A nice synopsis of Guterson's book. But if you are truly interested in the homeschool option you will want to look for a copy yourself.

There are many intelligent and conscientious school teachers and administrators working in the government school system. Unfortunately, they cannot make up for what policies derived from a century and a half of poor decision making and bureaucracy building are inflicting upon today's children.

Time to wake up.

How to Make Your Own Milk Even If You're a Man

No, I'm not suggesting taking hormones. I'm suggesting you look into buying a pet animal the size of a German Shepherd dog, that can give you 16 pints of milk a day and will also crop your lawn without costing a cent for gasoline. How? What? No need to stay in suspense, my friends. The answer is the mini-cow, a family pet that will provide milk, companionship, and free lawn care for many years--then when it dies you can put it in your freezer as fresh beef.

For between £200 and £2,000, people can buy a cow that stands no taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day that can be drunk unpasteurised, keeps the grass “mown” and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer.

The Dexter, a mountain breed from Ireland, is perfect for cattle-keeping on a small scale, but other breeds are being artificially created to compete with it, including the Mini-Hereford and the Lowline Angus, which has been developed by the Australian government to stand no more than 39in high but produce 70% of the steak of a cow twice its size.....

“With high food prices, they are actually quite an attractive option if you like producing your own food,” said Sue Farrant. “Both my husband and I have full-time jobs so we’re keeping them on the side as an interest. They do largely look after themselves and they’ve been hugely popular with the children.” Her husband said: “They have a phenomenal reputation for the quality of the beef. I think they are proving very attractive to families who have a bit of land and are interested in organic produce. From an economic point of view, we get to eat as much meat as we want and we roughly break-even, but you can sell what you don’t eat.

“As long as you’ve got plenty of grass they will be fine. You don’t really have to feed them.” _TimesOnline

By considering all the aspects of keeping a mini-cow, the economics can be quite favourable. This is what Swamp Woman was trying to tell me a few weeks ago, but I was too busy to listen. I suspect that a person would need a couple of acres of grass to provide feed for the critter. You'd best tell the kids not to give it treats without clearing them with the Vet first.

3% of Earth's Oceans Can Replace All Fossil Fuels

Image Source

Ricardo Radulovich has a plan to replace fossil fuels with energy from seaweed. He claims that only 3% of the oceans can grow enough biomass for energy conversion to replace the more polluting fuels. It sounds like an idea that should be looked into.

...where are the best areas to grow seaweed? “There are many places already identified where seaweeds can be properly farmed such as on the Pacific Coasts of North and South America, and in the Caribbean where there are currently several seaweed farms,” Radulovich says. In those places, the seaweed is grown primarily for food and fertilizers. “Actually, any place where seaweeds grow naturally may be good for farming. In fact, since farming implies using ropes and other means for seaweed attachment, many seas where seaweeds don’t grow naturally could also be good places for farming.” Radulovich emphasizes that if the seaweed can be tied for floatation or drifting, farming could be an option. “I think even the Sargasso Sea, with its extensive calm waters, could be used for this,” he says. In the future, he would like to explore the Sargasso Sea further, as it may provide a low-cost basis for large-scale seaweed cultivation.

...Radulovich says his experiments involve obtaining 2 percent recoverable oil content on a dry-weight basis. “This produced about 1,000 liters (264 gallons) of oil per hectare per year,” he says. The oil yield can be increased by selecting or developing seaweed strains that produce more oil.

After the oil is extracted, the seaweed biomass may be used for alcohol production. “Ethanol yield is expected at about 40 percent of the biomass yield on a dry weight basis,” Radulovich says. “Thus more than 20,000 liters (52,843 gallons) of ethanol per hectare per year can be obtained.”

After ethanol production, a considerable amount of residue is left, which can be burned to generate electricity. _BiomassMag

His conversion of litres to gallons appears to be a mistake, but you can get the general idea of his preliminary estimates.

Take wastewater that currently pollutes coastal areas. Divert it to ocean algal farms where it will promote algal growth. Turn the algae first into oil. Then turn what is left to ethanol, methanol or butanol. Then take the biomass residue, torrefy and compress it, and use it in place of coal in a combined cycle electrical generating plant. Be resourceful. Love your planet.

Global Cooling Descending: Will We All Be Forced to Live in a Giant Pyramid Arcology in Dubai?

Following up on observations from the Armagh Observatory, observations at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson add weight to predictions that solar activity may be dropping to levels lower than seen in over 100 years. An increasing number of solar scientists are contemplating the possibility of a "mini ice age" resulting from reduced solar activity.

The number of sunspots visible on the Sun normally shows an 11-year periodicity, and the current sunspot cycle (cycle 23) had a maximum in 2001, and is entering a minimum phase with few sunspots currently visible. Our data show that there are additional changes occurring in sunspots, independent of the sunspot cycle, and these trends suggest that sunspots will disappear completely. Such an event would not be unprecedented, since during a famous episode from 1645-1715, known as the Maunder Minimum, the normal 11-year periodicity vanished and there were virtually no sunspots visible on the solar surface (Eddy 1976). Recent studies of the appearance rate and latitudinal drift of sunspots (Hathaway et al., 2004) and of the solar magnetic field (Svalgard etal, 2005) predict that the number of sunspots visible in future cycles will be significantly reduced......the occurrence of prolonged periods with no sunspots is important to climate studies, since the Maunder Minimum was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the Earth (Foukal et al., 1990). _Icecap

During the "Little Ice Age", temperatures plunged, crops failed, and large areas of high latitude lands became uninhabitable. Should the same thing happen again in the first half of this century, the human toll would likely be far worse--given the much greater population of Earth currently. If climate grows much cooler, crops in the breadbasket regions of North America, Europe, Australia, Argentina, and parts of Europe will certainly either fail or be severely curtailed in yields. We had better hope the sun does not choose this time to take an extended vacation. More here.

Of course, more affluent people may choose to take refuge in huge self-contained "cities within single buildings", otherwise known as "Arcologies," located near the tropical zones. One such arcology--the Dubai Pyramid City--will stand 4000 feet high and contain a full time population of 1 million people.

The solar-powered pyramid project – dubbed Ziggurat after the ancient Mayan pyramids – was announced this week by Timelinks, an eco-design firm that plans to unveil the engineering wonder at Cityscape Dubai later this year.

If completed, it’s expected to be the largest man-made residential structure on the planet, with its foundation covering more than two square kilometres.

"The pyramid will be more than a kilometre tall and will house one million people inside," "It will be completely self-sustainable."

Using solar and wind power, the mega structure will create its internal weather. Steam generated from solar power and collected through photovoltaic cell panels on the pyramid’s exterior might well be piped from the ground level to the uppermost heights of the pyramid’s interior and then released, instantly turning into rain, which may then fall on the lush garden communities inside the pyramid.

An eco system, full of vegetation, mild temperatures and regular rainfall, may make this a highly marketable city for people living in dry desert conditions.

...Matonis said the pyramid project requires 90 per cent less land than a traditional city. "Cities can be accommodated in complexes that take up less than 10 per cent of the original land surface. Public and private landscaping will be used for leisure pursuits or irrigated as agricultural land." _NextEnergyNews

Besides generating its own energy and weather, an arcology might be largely self-sufficient in food production. Whether a pyramid is the best shape for such a structure is up for debate. Certainly the pyramids of Egypt and Central America have rather ghoulish histories, that might be better overlooked, should the energy economics of huge pyramids support arcologies.

Brian Wang has more on the Dubai building spree.

Only a Coward is Totally Innocent

Innocence is vastly over-rated. Besides being virtually impossible to attain, who would want to be a member of the cowardly, mediocre innocent? We live by various overlapping systems of ethics. Our society is divided along the lines of different ethical systems. We are taught that innocence is good, so we want to be "innocent", but if we act in the real world--which we must--we necessarily break ethical rules of one system or another.

For example, to many ideologues it is impossible for a person of European extraction not to be a racist. The accused may protest the charge, asserting that they are not racists, that they have close friends among the minorities, work amicably alongside persons of colour, and may even be married to a non-European. It does not matter. They are racists by the very definition of some ethical system. And since in this society, persons guilty of "racism" cannot be members of polite company, the guilty must be driven out. That is merely one example of the assortment of "original sins" bestowed on large groups by the dominant ethical system in modern academia, media, and much of society at large (post-modern faux-multicultural monoculturalism).

Everyone who exists, acts, more or less. It is not possible that anyone is truly 'innocent.' That is just how oppressive police states like it, since "having something on everyone" is the best way of staying in control. It is also how political activists like it, because they do not have to actually prove someone's malfeasance to have that person fired, disgraced, or driven from public life.

The pretense of innocence is necessary if one is to make a life of loud and pompous judgments against others. And the best way of maintaining a pretense of innocence is not to act, overtly, other than performing acts of loud, clangorous judgment. Such loud ceremonial or demonstrative acts of judgment are best done in groups--as in protest marches, echo chambers, or political rallies. The strength of numbers in pronouncing judgment should never be underestimated by anyone susceptible to a lynching.

When susceptible to attack, a feeling of safety may be found within anonymity inside a group--as in a school of fish or a herd of grazing animals. An even stronger feeling of safety is anonymity within the group that is doing the attacking. A member of a lynch mob who stays back a bit from the front can be safe from the mob, yet still claim innocence.

Politicians exhibit this sort of "leading from behind" behaviour as often as possible. Particularly legislators, who are far less restricted in the claims they can make during campaigns, if their records are somewhat "undistinguished." A clear record of overt action can be somewhat inconvenient when conjuring up conveniently changeable images of oneself--depending upon the audience of the day.

When claiming the role of innocent judge of the guilty, it is best for one's prior actions to be few and mild, somewhat obscured, or conveniently deniable.

These innocent judges are not of any use to anyone whatsoever, but it is possible for them to acquire loud and powerful public voices, and to rise to positions of significant power in government, academia, media, and society. Particularly in a strongly divided political environment, the more chameleon-like a person can make himself, the better his prospects--up to a point.

What kind of society would grow such cowardly innocents to prominence? Dangerously brittle societies. Probably the society in which you live.

Post is subject to editing for clarity.

One of Many Reasons for the Emasculated Nature of the European Union and People

Under the defense umbrella of the US military, NATO and Europe long ago gave up any credible pretense of providing for their own defense. Instead, Europe spent its defense budgets on social programs, and began to pretend that the US--its defender--was the primary enemy that it must fight. Europe's primary weapons against the evil US empire were the concocted words and images of its incredibly biased news media. Generations have been raised under this propaganda campaign--this feint, if you will, distracting the people of Europe from the abject failure of their leaders to provide a credible defense from enemies foreign and domestic.

Understanding the "Catch-22" that their leaders have placed them under, European military forces are increasingly refusing to fight. Even when given direct orders to engage the enemy, European commanders and their troops are refusing to raise their weapons against deadly threats.

Over a decade of shrinking budgets has meant less money for realistic training. There are also equipment shortages. The net result is several layers of leadership that are really not well prepared for a shooting war....several Czech helicopter pilots, when told they were going to Afghanistan, basically said no. Not unless they got more training, and helicopters that could handle that kind of tricky flying. The crew of an Italian helicopter gunship was recently sent home because they refused to fire in combat. No one will say exactly what happened there, but that sort of thing is usually the result of poor preparation, and leadership. And then there's the recent ambush of a French patrol, which resulted in ten French paratroopers killed. Most of the casualties occurred because the troops had not practiced dealing with ambushes, and the way the Taliban operate. Worse, the French troops were trapped under fire for many hours, long past the time when air cover or ground reinforcements should have arrived. Again, this has all the marks of bad leadership and poor training.

... _StrategyPage

It is not just the post-cold war euphoria that led to cutting of defense budgets in Europe. As stated earlier, European governments had already decided to let the US taxpayer carry the load of defending Europe. Europe decided that it had grown beyond the conflict stage of human evolution. Given such a high level of evolution, homo Euro would simply allow a despised ally to take care of the dirty work of dealing with the more unsavoury aspects of existing on this planet.

If a group of people exists for along enough time in this protected limbo state, their sense of reality regarding foreign relations does tend to suffer a bit. The EU, after all, has no divisions. NATO has divisions. But without the US, NATO is a laughing stock. Since the member nations of NATO (other than new members from Eastern Europe) scorn the US as a Neanderthal, and the greatest threat to planet Earth, you can imagine the solidity of the alliance--and part of the reason why Russia has begun a new phase of expansionist neo-imperialism.

Self-emasculated homo Euro. The new androgynous reality of an old, shrinking subcontinent. Let's all hold a group shriek over Abu Ghraib, shall we? Or how about a round of condemnations over Guantanamo. Show those war-monger colonials who the civilised people are, shall we?

Saving the World, One Tree at a Time

Moringa is a miracle tree. It grows in most any climate, and it provides nutrition, medicines, and fuel for all. God bless the children, and cause the Moringa to grow.

Beyond its sheer endurance--the plant is drought-resistant, though it does not flourish in the most arid of rain-fed lands--Moringa's wide-ranging attributes have earned it quasi-superstar status in parts of the developing world and among nutritional experts in the West.

"Moringa leaves contain seven times the Vitamin C you find in the equivalent weight of oranges or orange juice, four times the amount of Vitamin A you'll find in the equivalent weight of carrots, four times the calcium you'll find in milk, three times the potassium you'll find in bananas," said Lowell Fuglie, the former West African regional head of Church World Service, who has worked assiduously in promoting Moringa in Senegal and elsewhere. "The plant satisfies many of the nutritional needs of an individual," he added in a recent interview in Dakar.

.... "Before, there was a lot of child malnutrition, but now it's really diminished," she said. "Because now women know Moringa is important. They plant Moringa in their homes." _Source

Here is more on Moringa:

Malunggay [moringa] is a source of moringa edible oil and biodiesel, but its vitamin A content which battles anemia, iron, calcium that was infused with the bread was found to have energized the sixty-four malnourished Grades 1 and 2 pupils from public schools in Mandaluyong City. The wonder bread is produced by PowerNut pastry shop.

Results of the 30-day feeding program and a research on the effects of malunggay on children showed that students who were diagnosed as anemic prior to the feeding program were discovered to have normal blood count, and the malady was gone. _Source

Moringa oilseeds produce a fine oil suitable for biodiesel, at a yield comparable to jatropha and pangomia. It is one more argument against the delusion of the "food vs. fuels crisis."

Moringa is not a product of bioengineering--unless you consider evolution by natural selection as a great bioengineering project on a larger than human scale. But it gives a small glimpse of what a bioengineered "Santa Claus Tree" might be able to toss off to children everywhere.

Russia's Obsolete Technology Infrastructure Defies All Attempts to Modernise

China has learned an important lesson in economics that Putin's Russia cannot seem to comprehend: sustainable wealth comes from allowing enough economic freedom for distributed decision making. Top-heavy, centrally dictated economies cannot maintain sustainable affluence. And without sustainable affluence, a nation cannot maintain a cutting-edge technological infrastructure.

Russia's mineral wealth--particularly in oil and gas--is substantial, and could form the nucleus for a healthy, diverse economy. But Putin and his ex-KGB cronies have grabbed all control of Russia's energy sector, creating a hyper-centralisation of both economics and political power in Russia. Such centralised decision-making prevents a healthy economy from growing, whatever you choose to call it. Without that broad-based economic infrastructure and a free flow of ideas, a healthy technological R&D infrastructure cannot grow.

A nation's military does not stand apart from that nation's technological base. So despite Russia's stated plans to spend large sums of money on updating the nation's technological infrastructure, without the infrastructure of human freedom and distributed decision-making, such plans are merely verbal Potemkin villages. Of course, no matter how much Russia claims to spend on "technology", the bulk of the money will end up in the Swiss bank account of one of Putin's friends. Corruption and cold winters have been Russia's most enduring characteristics over the past 500 years.

Americans can blithely discuss the development of weapons such as the following, which Russians can only hope to be able to steal eventually.

- Autonomous Weapons

....These Automatic Robotic vehicles can strike in air or on the ground without causing any damage to the friendly troops. These are equipped with sensors that can sense between enemy and the friendly troops and ask for a conformation from the ground forces to begin an attack....

- High Energy Lasers

High Energy lasers travel at the speed of light and can destroy an approaching missile in minutes and can also strike targets over thousands of kilometers...

- Space-Based Weapons

...A weapon in orbit will be able to see and destroy anything on the planet....

- Hypersonic Aircrafts (Scram Jet)

These are the aircrafts that can fly at a speed of Mach 5 that means five times the speed of sound. These aircrafts can reach any target on the planet within two hours. ...

- Active Denial System (Millimeter-Wave Weapon)

...A 2-meter long antenna and a generator produces and aims a 95 GHz wave on a group of people which causes them intense pain in the skin making them to flee....

- Nuclear Missiles

....

- Stun Guns

....

- High-Power Microwave Bombs (e-bombs)

These are known as e-bombs because they can totally damage computers, electronics and electric power. The technology uses high power microwave pulses that can burn the electrical equipment and particularly the semiconductor chips....


- Layered Missile Defense

This technology offers the best chance to shoot a missile before it reaches its target. Multiple systems are targeted on to the missile during different stages of its flight....

- Information Warfare

The technology interferes with the flow of information in the enemy channels totally disrupting it..... _Weaponsblog

Of course, these are the weapons publicly discussed, many of which are in use or quickly being made obsolete by the next generation of not so public weapons. Many of these weapons will never be used, and will probably be destroyed eventually without the public ever knowing of their existence--if their use is never required.

America's allies will be given some of these weapons to defend themselves against enemies of the free world such as Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc. Others will be reserved at the most secret levels, being deployable to any point on Earth or near space within an hour's time or less. This level of technology is only available to affluent, broad-based economies--which leaves Russia out.

Here are some other "game changers" which will only be available to broad-based technological infrastructures:

Solid-State Fiber Laser. Defined by ONR as: “A laser in which the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth elements such as erbium, ytterbium, neodymium, dysprosium, praseodymium and thulium”....

Free Electron Laser. A shipboard point defense weapon, the laser will fight off swarms of both high end anti-ship cruise missiles and low-tech, explosive laden small boats.......

High-Power Microwave Directed Energy Weapons. A focused microwave beam transmits high levels of energy via concentrated radio waves that will knock out computers, sensors, most anything electronic.......

The Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long Range Strike (RATTLRS) Program. An ONR, DARPA, Air Force and NASA collaboration, started in 2004, to build a faster than Mach 3 air-breathing cruise missile. .....

Next Generation Integrated Power Systems. .....

Electromagnetic Railgun. A rail gun uses magnetic rails instead of an explosive charge to accelerate a solid projectile to super high velocities, around Mach 7, promising accurate strikes on targets out to 230 miles with damage inflicted by the projectile’s kinetic impact. ....

...New rocket motors using solid propulsion technologies, low erosion nozzles, pulse motors and advanced radomes designed for ultra-high speeds.

_DODBuzz

Nanotechnology and biotechnology are the real game changers, of course. That is why Putin has made so much noise about his intention to develop a strong nanotech infrastructure in Russia. That initiative, like so many Potemkin plans Russia has made, will no doubt send many billions more into Swiss bank accounts.

Corruption, thug psychology, laziness, predisposition to drunkenness....these are salient aspects to the character of the Russian male, at least. This primitive psychology is reflected in Russia's decrepit infrastructure, as it has been since the days of the Tsar. In Russia, very little changes for the better. With the demographic collapse of Russia approaching, time is running out.

New Study Revolutionises Atmospheric Science

All of those billion dollar atmospheric circulation models financed by NASA, the IPCC, and other big money funding agencies are now as good as garbage. A new study from Imperial College London is forcing a complete re-thinking of atmospheric science and the entire infant science of climatology.

New research suggests that scientists may have to radically rethink their understanding of how air circulates in the atmosphere. The study, published in the journal Science, reveals that warm, moist air rising in the mid latitudes plays an important role in the circulation of air around the globe....

'With more attention than ever before being focused on understanding our planet's climate, weather systems and atmosphere, it's important that scientists challenge their own assumptions and current theories of how these complex processes work,' commented Dr Arnaud Czaja of Imperial College London in the UK, one of the authors of the paper.....

Previously, scientists thought there were two major air circulation 'cells' in the atmosphere: one in the northern hemisphere, the other in the southern hemisphere....According to Dr Czaja, previous theories failed to take into account the important role water vapour plays in mid-latitude weather systems. By allowing for this factor, the scientists found that much more air rises in the mid-latitudes than was previously thought, and as much as half of the air rising into the upper reaches of the atmosphere comes from the mid-latitudes...

The findings have important implications for our understanding of climate change. 'As Earth's temperature rises, the amount of water vapour present in the atmosphere is extremely likely to increase as well,' the article concludes. 'Understanding how changes in temperature and humidity affect the dynamics of [...] circulation is a critical issue for better predicting mid-latitude climate in a warmer world.'

_Cordis

Of course, informed persons already understood that the huge gaps in understanding of atmospheric processes made current climate models worse than worthless. It is only those who stood to profit from climate alarmism--along with the supremely gullible and academically lobotomised--who carried the alarmist banner so belligerently.

As the infant science of climatology slowly becomes a bona fide science, a better understanding of the authentic processes of climate will emerge.

Also covered in PO

Educating to Avoid Psychological Neoteny

Children and teenagers are capable of far more responsibility and productive exposure to the adult world than modern societies allow. The over-protective pampering of children and teens creates incompetent lifelong psychological neotenates--due to the missing of critical developmental stages. Better methods of child-raising and educating must learn to supply the missing pieces--particularly for children at risk. At Cristo Rey Catholic schools, kids are expected to work in the real world one day a week for tuition.

Placing high demands on kids reminds them that they are expected to do things with their lives. But talk to students at Cristo Rey schools, and they tell you that, for all their hours spent graphing algebraic equations, it is their jobs that get them thinking most about the future. In their gleaming office buildings, they see men and women who earn enough to afford nice, safe homes. They see how people set priorities and deadlines and execute projects. It’s easy to mock corporate America, but compared with the chaos of inner-city life, a cubicle with your name on it can seem like heaven.

“I like my job a lot, since when I grow up I want to be a defense attorney,” says Andrew Emanuel, a Christ the King freshman who works at the Newark branch of the law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, Nicholson, Graham. “I really enjoy socializing and conversing with most of the attorneys at my job. I ask them what’s their motivation in life, and what keeps them going.” They in turn tell him to stay in school and do his homework. It’s standard advice, but it means more coming from people in his intended profession.

Cristo Rey students feel needed by their employers. When Christ the King Prep board chairman Neal Jasey goes around recruiting businesses to hire student teams, he mentions the P.R. and employee morale benefits of having young people around, but adds “I do argue that this is an economically sensible thing to do: $25,000 for a team of four kids—if you have that kind of [clerical] work—is a pretty reasonable cost.” It’s a win-win proposition; at full enrollment, earned income (which includes temp stipends and tuition) is supposed to account for 85 percent of a Cristo Rey school’s operating budget. That’s sustainable in a way that depending on church fund raising is not.

The kids are fully accountable for their performance at work. Christ the King Prep asked several students to leave this year because of difficulties with their employers. “They weren’t getting the job done at work,” says Principal Kevin Cuddihy. “And if you can’t work, you can’t pay the tuition, so you can’t come back. It’s that simple. Economic realities are harsh when applied to 14-year-olds, but that’s the market forces at work here.”

Largely because of these expectations, Cristo Rey kids are more polished and polite than even well-to-do teenagers. Each school holds a training camp in the summer to teach incoming freshmen how to behave in a professional environment. These young people shake hands. They look you in the eye. They know how to file and fax, and which fork to use if the boss offers to take them out to lunch. _Reason_via_JJ

The exposure to real world responsibilities and possibilities gives the kids something that 6 or 7 hours of sitting in classrooms every day never could. It also gives them a confidence based upon demonstrated competence in the real world. Until you witness the results of such ongoing experiments in teaching responsibility, it is easy to be lulled into complacency about current failed education and child-raising methods.

Gun-Shy European Troops Help Lose Afghanistan

The emasculated nature of Europe has never been so clear as in present-day Afghanistan. The fear of European commanders to involve their troops in combat is leaving their troops far more vulnerable than if they would only function like proper soldiers.

The Taliban are taking advantage of the unwillingness of many NATO contingents to fight. Groups of Taliban gunmen are being sent to the vicinity of Kabul, where many of these less warlike NATO operate, and have launched attacks. They got lucky and killed ten French troops in one of these operations, in an action that highlighted the degree to which these troops, and their leaders, were unprepared for combat. By attacking, and inflicting losses, on these troops, the Taliban stir up political controversy back in Europe, leading, the Taliban hope, to withdrawal of the NATO troops from Afghanistan. _StrategyPage

As we saw in Spain after the Madrid train terror attacks, Europeans are afraid of conflict, and are unwilling to stand up for themselves or their allies if it involves any risk. Paradoxically, this quasi-cowardly stance creates far more risk to Europeans in the long run than if they had merely utilised the basic "tit for tat" strategy suggested by game theory.

The people of Afghanistan don’t realize that NATO has no overarching counterinsurgency strategy, or that many of the 70,000 troops cannot fire their weapons except in self defense. All they see is a degrading security situation, and since America is capable of anything if it can land a man on the moon, then there must be an ulterior motive, or so the Afghan people think. _CT

Combining the Euro tendency to retreat at the sign of any danger with the Afghan impressions that the US is responsible for all the troops in Afghanistan--whether or not they perform up to US standards--the PR battle is being lost in the primitive tribal country.

Pakistan's intelligence services continue to assist the Taliban and al-qaida in the border areas, which keeps the Taliban supplied with weapons and a safe haven. Of Iraq and Afghanistan, Afghanistan is the one that most strongly resembles the 60's war in Vietnam.

Biomass Is a Versatile Energy Suite

Biomass can be turned into gasoline, into a renewable natural gas, into bio-coal, into ethanol, or directly into electricity. Combined cycle biomass to electricity plants can be 45% efficient generating electricity. Even more efficiency can be achieved by using the waste heat productively.

What is biomass? It is waste wood from forestry, waste stover/straw/bagasse etc. from crops, waste cardboard and paper products, byproducts of paper manufacture etc. Or biomass can be grown specifically for energy production--miscanthus, switchgrass, fast-growing poplar, bamboo, etc. are all being tested for the ability to create a prolific bio-feedstock for conversion to energy.

Biomass energy makes far more sense currently than wind energy schemes. It is suitable as a local or regional enterprise--which means that thousands of small biorefineries and biomass processors and pre-processors will be set up across North America. Biomass is far less dense than most other forms of energy, and must be converted to other forms (pellets, cubes, bales, torrefied, gasified, liquified, etc) for transport or use.

As economies of scale are achieved by the most efficient producers, a significant shakeout of less efficient biorefineries and cellulosic electricity producers will occur over time.

The replacing of fossil fuels by bioenergy will be a gradual process that takes decades, at least. You do not replace a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure overnight. Over the next 40 years, current energy infrastructure will be largely replaced by bioenergy, by new generation nuclear energy, by solar and geothermal heat-to-power, by photovoltaics, possibly by orbiting solar power sats, and not so much by wind.

Al Fin Energy has many other articles and links on this topic and other energy topics.

Poland Moves Closer to US and NATO

Besides Georgia, other areas threatened by Russian invasion--Ukraine, Poland, etc--people are moving closer to the US and NATO for protection. To these new democracies, Russia represent an oppressive, stifling past that they want no further part of.

On newsstands, the cover of the mainstream, right-leaning weekly magazine Wprost features an illustration of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, with an instantly recognizable little mustache and sweep of hair across the forehead that make the headline, “Adolf Putin,” redundant. The Polish edition of Newsweek shows the outspoken and at times impolitic Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, in the pilot’s seat of an airplane cockpit under the headline, “You have to be tough with Russia.”

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and the government’s point man on missile defense, said in an interview this week, “Parchments and treaties are all very well, but we have a history in Poland of fighting alone and being left to our own devices by our allies.”

It is not a cold war mindset that drives Poland, Mr. Sikorski said, but one that harks all the way back to World War II, when, despite alliances with Britain and France, Poland fought Nazi Germany alone, and lost.

It was “the defining moment for us in the 20th century,” Mr. Sikorski said. “Then we were stabbed in the back by the Soviet Union, and that determined our fate for 50 years.”

As a result, Poland’s foreign policy is stamped by mistrust not only for Russia’s ambitions but also for hollow assurances from its own allies. Georgia’s lonely fight against an overwhelming Russian military served as an object lesson — a refresher that people here said no one needed — on the limits of waiting for help from friends.

“We’re determined this time around to have alliances backed by realities, backed by capabilities,” said Mr. Sikorski, pointing out that all Poland has now in terms of NATO infrastructure is one unfinished conference center. _NYT

Russia has no friends. No wonder. If Putin has command of the US military, what he could do! It is not likely that President Obama would be nearly as weak an appeaser as he seems to be. Is it?

Russians Trying to Starve Georgians Out of Homes: Escalation of Violence Possible

In the face of a Russian default on its signed ceasefire agreement, ordinary Georgians are contemplating an extended insurgency campaign. Many are without food and basic supplies, due to Russian chokepoints throughout the country.

The Russian armored fighting vehicles that are blocking routes in and out of Gori are slowing the flow of humanitarian aid and stifling trade, he said...Travel is controlled by Russian soldiers; a McClatchy Newspapers reporter was turned back at checkpoints and had to slip in via a footbridge.

"If they stay, we won't get enough supplies and the war will start again," said Taturashvili, who works for the local power company. "People will take their guns and go to the forests."

While there are no signs of insurgency, it's clear that tempers are rising and nerves are fraying in Gori, an important waypoint on the country's main east-west corridor. The city sits near a route to South Ossetia, the breakaway region that Georgia tried to take earlier this month before being thrashed by Russian tanks and jets. The way to South Ossetia - where the Red Cross was allowed access only on Wednesday - is guarded by Russian armored vehicles and machine gun bunkers fashioned from concrete blocks.

On Thursday, Gori's streets were mostly empty of cars; at the sound of an approaching engine, people turned their heads quickly to see whether it was a Russian truck. Dozens of people at a downtown square shouted and pushed their way to the window of an aid-distribution station.

"We're all running out of food," said Nana Nazadze, who was watching two old women scream at each other. "I ran out yesterday; my neighbor gave me some sausage."

Lamara Tinikashvili motioned in the direction of a Russian checkpoint down the road: "They're allowing aid in, but it's not being given to us."

After speaking, Nazadze implored a reporter, "Please be careful about where you use my name or the Russians will get me." _Source

Small amounts of food are getting past Russian checkpoints, but no one knows how long that will last.

Russian-sponsored Ossetian terrorists and paramilitaries continue seizing ground and driving Georgians off their land.

Here in the town of Akhalgori, only a 45-minute drive from the capital Tbilisi, the red, white and yellow flag of Ossetian separatists flew Thursday over a police station and local administration building seized by the rebels....Russian forces were camped on the main road into town, with at least four armoured personnel carriers and a dozen troops stationed at two checkpoints. _Source

Russia is tightening control of large parts of occupied Georgia.

The continuing Russian presence in Gori appears to be hampering humanitarian aid efforts. The International Committee of the Red Cross describes the situation in and around Gori as difficult. "There have been more people outside today … mostly old people. They’ve been asking for food and medicine," said Jessica Barry, the ICRC spokeswoman in Tbilisi...The dangers around Gori are not limited to food shortages. Human Rights Watch on August 21 charged that Russia used cluster bombs to the north of Gori during the fighting with Georgia. Many submunitions, or clusters, did not explode, thus leaving large areas strewn with "hundreds" of unexploded ordnance. _Source

Russians Really Know How to Occupy a Country

Image Source

Unlike weak Americans, whose idea of an occupation of a country is to rebuild schools, soccer fields, and civil infrastructure, Russians have always known how to rape, pillage, and terrorise a population. Occupations should be mindlessly brutal and cruel, and such is the Russian occupation of Georgia.

It is a military zone sealed off by Russian military checkpoints, a land broken by roaming bands of looters that operated behind the Russian Army and made eerily empty by depopulation caused by flight. The Kremlin has allowed only official tours for journalists, accompanied by government minders, of the region, which Georgia has claimed endured organized intimidation and ethnic cleansing.

The tens of thousands of refugees who staggered out to Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, took with them accounts of mass looting, of arson and, on what thus far seems a smaller scale, of killing on ethnic lines....In Variani, further up the road, the scene was bleaker. The Rev. Tadeoz Kebadze, the priest at a small Georgian Orthodox church, said that after the rocket attacks had come rounds of what he called “lawless marauders.” More than 1,200 of the village’s roughly 1,500 people had fled, he said.

...Almost all the people interviewed asked that their names be withheld, out of fear of reprisal while they lived in the lawless zone. Three were so reflexively jumpy by the experiences of the past week that they dashed into the remains of a store at the sound of an approaching car....Some Georgian residents said they had been robbed in repeated cycles of home invasion: Three or four armed men would show up with a truck or car, rush through the house and cart off whatever they desired, and then go away. Later, another car would arrive with a different gang.

This went on for days, and apparently was committed by a legion of criminals. But assessing the origins of each individual offense was difficult. Victims spoke of looters from Ossetia, Russia, and, in one case, Chechnya. _NYT

Reminiscent of the nightmare that was Bosnia under the Serbian genocide, Russian soldiers have clearly fallen back on old habits of looting, burning, and drunken assault on civilians. When Russian soldiers are not committing the crimes, they are standing by to protect Ossetians and Chechnyans who perform the acts of pillage and rape.

On Tuesday, a photographer on a Russian tour of the northern area saw what appeared to be a concerted effort to raze some of the villages.....Homes were ripped apart. Sections of courtyard walls lay crushed next to the road. Dozens of men dressed in mismatched fatigues stood on the main road, watching an orange backhoe tear the facade off of a burned stone house.

Timur Kiguradze, a 22-year-old journalist who was wounded by Ossetian soldiers on Aug. 8 outside Tskhinvali, said he felt nervous in the hospital there when wounded Ossetian soldiers discovered that he was Georgian....“They said, why are you being treated?” Mr. Kiguradze recalled. “They should take you out and shoot you.” _NYT

And of course they did take large numbers of Georgians out and shot them. They merely slit the throats of others.

Putin has decided to test the rubbery will of the EU and NATO. How far will they go to protect a small democracy that is not an actual member of the alliance? The effeminate EU has no divisions. But NATO is backed by the only credible worldwide military force in existence. NATO has only to decide whether to hold Russia to its signed ceasefire agreement.

In the meantime, Russian troops are happy where they are. They are enjoying the traditional Russian spoils of war.

Underpopulation Sucking Europe to Nothing

Europe's largest, most pressing problem for the next century is underpopulation. Europe is an emasculated continent unable to stand up to Serbia, much less Russia. But unless European women start having babies soon, Europe is likely to be conquered by a ragtag, high-breeding group of third world illiterates and untrainables. European welfare systems are quite generous, but if they are not funded by productive workers' wages and corporate profits, Europe may become the next Darfur or Gaza.

The magic figure for demographers is 2.1 births per couple. That, allowing for the fact that some girls die before they reach child-bearing age, is the figure at which a population replaces itself. In Europe the last time that fertility was above replacement level was in the mid-1960s. But now, for the first time on record, birthrates in southern and eastern Europe have dropped below 1.3 – well below the 1.5 which the United Nations has marked as the crisis point. If things continue the population there will be cut in half in just 45 years. In Italy, one recent survey put it at 1.2. Cities such as Milan and Bologna recorded less than 1, the lowest birthrates anywhere.

Things are as bleak in Japan. There the total fertility rate declined by nearly a third between 1975 and 2001, from 1.91 to 1.33. The average family size has remained the same, but there are fewer families. Half of Japanese women have not married by the age of 30, and 20 per cent of them are not marrying ever.

But it is not just the developed world. The birthrate is plummeting in east Asia, too, in countries which were, until three decades ago, considered poor. Overall in Asia the fertility rate fell from 2.4 in 1970 to 1.5 today. China's rate is down from 6.06 to 1.8 and declining. Thailand is now 1.5. Singapore, Taiwan and Burma are similar. The lowest is South Korea with only 1.1 children per couple.

"South East Asia has plummeted to levels it took Europe 150 years to reach in just 30 years," says Dr Jane Falkingham, Professor of Demography and International Social Policy at the University of Southampton. Alarmed by this extremely low fertility, South Korea has slashed government spending on birth control. Singapore is now offering tax rebates to couples with more than two children. Japan is piling money into nurseries and childcare.

...Populations may be expected to shrink in Italy, Spain, Greece and Germany (which is losing 100,000 people a year) and decline even more rapidly further east in Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, which is set to plunge by almost half....Childlessness is now a fashionable lifestyle choice, as it is in Germany where 27.8 per cent of women born in 1960 are childless, far more than any other European country.... _Independent

Russia is losing half its population every 40 years or so. Spain, Italy, and Greece are almost as bad. Who will defend Russia's vast empire when there are not enough young men to field an army? Who will work to pay for Europe's generous welfare benefits to the voluntarily unemployed, and to polygamous emigrants with many wives and children?

It has always been the way of the proliferating tribe to push the non-proliferating tribes out of the best land. History has not been canceled in that regard. Europe's tribes from Russia to Spain to Sweden to the UK are due to be displaced and forgotten. Uneducated, quasi-untrainables from the third world who have not forgotten how to procreate will take their places.

The singularity is not the answer, unless you enjoy living in an empty fantasy. Migrating to Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the US will only speed the overrunning of those you leave behind. Besides, the same basic underlying dynamic is at work in all of the developed countries, just running at different rates.

The first step would be waking up.

Further reading:

The Global Baby Bust
Europe's Baby Bust
America Alone (Google Books excerpt)
America Alone (Amazon page)
A Return to Pastoral Europe?
Birth of an Empire
Fiscal Policy and Fertility in the US
Transition of Europe and Japan to labour shortage economies
Fascinating Philip Longman PDF presentation on depopulation
Russian plans to reverse population decline
No Easy Answers

....And That is the Reason That My Skin is Blue

It isn't easy to live longer than a century. A human being requires some help to avoid cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and other maladies that cut a life short of its useful span. Methylene Blue, a simple heterocyclic aromatic, can be of some benefit in that regard.

A new study conducted by researchers at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland shows that a century-old drug, methylene blue, may be able to slow or even cure Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Used at a very low concentration – about the equivalent of a few raindrops in four Olympic-sized swimming pools of water – the drug slows cellular aging and enhances mitochondrial function, potentially allowing those with the diseases to live longer, healthier lives.

A paper on the methylene blue study, conducted by Hani Atamna, PhD, and a his team at Children's, was published in the March 2008 issue of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal. Dr. Atamna's research found that methylene blue can prevent or slow the decline of mitochondrial function, specifically an important enzyme called complex IV. Because mitochondria are the principal suppliers of energy to all animal and human cells, their healthy function is critical. _SD

First the urine turns blue, then the lymph, and finally the skin. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but growing old must be more bitter still.

Russians Sponsoring Ethnic Cleansing in Georgia: US Media Remains Silent

Russia shows no sign of withdrawing from Georgian territory. Instead, Russian troops are overseeing a murderous round of ethnic cleansing in the Georgian city of Gori and surrounding areas. US media appear to be boycotting much of the Russian misconduct, for curiously unstated reasons. Can any readers think of why the US media would focus on a dud of a tropical storm Fay, rather than cover an ongoing war?

...the Times Online informs us that Russians have been forcing the people of Gori - an extremely important rail and road junction that is the lifeline for the capitol Tblisi - to leave. And they are killing them if they stay:

"We didn't have any guns, so he shot Georgi in front of me without saying a word," she said. "A neighbour helped me to bury him in our garden and then I just fled."

Manana Galigashvili, 53, whose husband Andrei stared vacantly from a bed behind her, said that Ossetian soldiers had returned later and torched the house. They, too, had left after a soldier threatened to slit their throats.

Frightened refugees told similar stories all over the city of Gori yesterday as the Russian army extended its reach deep into Georgian territory despite a ceasefire agreement signed by President Medvedev that requires them to withdraw.

Back in Gori, the forcible depopulation of a city under threat of death represents an escalation in Russian brutality. So where's the American media? All we are getting from the New York Times is story after story that this is our fault, or Georgia's fault, or NATO's fault - anything but face the fact that Russia is raping and pillaging a tiny neighbor. _AT

Russia has suffered significant problems in the course of its barbaric treatment of a non-threatening neighbor:

As hundreds of battered Russian armored vehicles wound through the mountain passes toward Tskhinvali, an AP reporter saw a number of tanks broken down in the road, blocking traffic; or being repaired, with soldiers working underneath them with wrenches; or even being towed by other vehicles....Russia said 74 soldiers died and more than 170 were wounded in fighting, but Georgian officials claimed Russian losses were much higher....While Russia would have to expect to lose some low-flying ground attack jets, former Russian air force chief Anatoly Kornukov said the loss of the heavy bomber - which the military said was on a "reconnaissance mission" - should have been avoided... _PostIntelligencer

A half dozen other Russian planes were shot down, and a handful of Russian boats were sunk by the Georgian navy. Russia's decrepit military could barely handle the feeble defense of tiny Georgia! I wonder how it intends to maintain its hold on Georgia after pressure from the international community led by the US and UK forces them to pull back at least to Ossetia and Abkhazia? Oh, right. They are ethnically cleansing huge swathes of Georgia and arming Ossetian and Abkhazian rebels--using them as cats' paws--as well as leaving Spetnatz commandoes embedded with the terrorist rebels. Very clever, although brutal beyond what Serbia's fascists did in Kosovo. I wonder if the world court will indict Putin?

So why is the US media boycotting coverage of an ongoing ethnic cleansing in a country friendly to the west? Because revealing the true extent of Russian brutality and blatant dishonesty in perpetuating an ongoing genocide in Georgia would reveal how wrong their analyses have been, and would also make their boy Obama look bad. As simple as that. Obama really and truly dropped the ball here, and no one in the media wants to put that brutal reality front and center in front of voters just before the DNC Denver festivities begin.

Everyone who wants to relax and take a complete "hands off" approach--just let Russia do whatever it wants within its "sphere of influence," must not play strategy games very well. Because Putin thinks Russia's sphere of influence encompasses all of Europe, all of Central Asia, and most of the Arctic. Bad boy Putin is on a collision course with reality, but how many will he take with him when he goes? The longer he is allowed to crash through newly democratic neighborhoods, the freer he will feel to reach out further and further--sound like any other hyper-ambitious lebensraum seeking dictator you may have read about somewhere?

Russia Becomes International Pariah

As NATO deliberates the measures it will take to support the democratically elected government of Georgia against a Russian invasion and ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign, the international community is slowly beginning to understand that Vladimir Putin is deadly serious about becoming the "Mr. Big" of all Europe and Central Asia. Hoping to use the weapon of energy blackmail in combination with threats of more violent interventions, Putin hopes to terrorize all of Europe into being part of Russia's "sphere of influence."

Putin sees the west as weak, and unprepared to stand up to any level of intimidation and brutality. Russia will continue to stall in meeting the terms of any cease-fire, continuing with an Obama-like shuck and jive, while grinning and winking for the camera. Meanwhile, pundits in the media, academia, and government bureaucracies will continue to run flack for the Russian neo-imperialists.

But among European and western leaders who are not quite ready to drop their pants and bend over for Putin, discussions will continue for the indefinite future, over the best ways to counter Russian belligerence and criminal actions.

Russia inherited a lot of international ill will from the days of the USSR. It is not helping its shaky future by creating more.

Clumsy Bully Russia Isolates Itself Internationally

Russia's blundering invasion of Georgia has exposed Moscow's leadership for neo-imperialists and thugs. The good thing about Putin's miscalculation is how well it exposed the EU's "soft diplomacy" for the idiocy that it is. Putin respects the EU's soft diplomace as much as he respects doormats and toilet paper. But he would have been much more clever to make the EU think otherwise for a while longer.

The price that Russia is paying for the invasion of Georgia is increased isolation. The major regional powers of the modern world are the US, China, the EU, Russia, India and Japan. Since the Georgian invasion, Russia has had strained relations with the US and Europe, and no major friends. Russia is a large Asian power, stretching to the Pacific Ocean, but the three most important Asian powers, China, India and Japan, do not have close or trusting relations with it.

Of the six world powers, or groups of powers, Russia is seen as the least reliable, the least friendly.....Russia is increasingly isolated from its “near abroad”. To Georgians, Ukrainians or citizens of the Baltic states, Mr Putin's Russia appears to be following a “bad neighbour policy”. For the Russian voter, Putinism may appear to be reasserting Russia's position in the world; to its neighbours, Russia is now an ugly threat....

Russia has essential interests in common with the West. Global trade, a stable European market for oil and gas, resistance to Islamic terrorism, avoidance of military conflict, investment in modernisation. It was hoped that Russia and the West could build on these interests to cement good relations and strengthen the global economy.

The first European reactions to the invasion of Georgia showed that Europe hoped to protect this co-operative policy. Had Russia limited the Georgian operation to the protection of South Ossetian refugees, but kept troops out of Georgia proper, a co-operative policy might have been maintained. Instead, there has been broad Russian aggression against Georgian territory.

The delay in the ceasefire and the extension of the invasion far beyond the boundary of South Ossetia has created a very different climate, made worse by threats to target nuclear weapons against Poland and, it appears, Ukraine as well.

In a world of global trade, Russia cannot afford to be isolated. No doubt the Kremlin hawks are riding high now. Yet as Sir Robert Walpole said of a mid 18th-century war: “They now ring the bells, but they will soon wring their hands.” _Timesonline

Of course Putin is slicing off his own nose to spite his face. He is adding miscalculation to miscalculation. Is anyone in a position of leadership within Russia capable of recognising the increasingly suicidal course that Putin has set for the country? If so, they are afraid for their lives, so they remain silent.

Russia is underpopulated for the size of its territory as it is, but considering Putin's ambitions--on top of the crashing demographic decrease of ethnic Russians--and Russia will simply be unable to defend its borders within a few decades.

If Russia were a friend to anyone in the world, perhaps it could rely on its neighbors for mutual aid and protection, like Canada does with the US. But almost all of Russia's neighbors have been turned into enemies, except perhaps China. And China is only biding its time until it can seize Russia's immense Siberian mineral wealth.

And so we see the mindlessly self-defeating nature of Putin's macho gesture against the Georgians. The fallout is just beginning.

Previously published at abu al-fin

2nd Generation Biofuels

Popular Mechanics boils 2nd generation biofuels down to the basic essentials. There is a lot more involved, which will determine the big winners and losers in the biofuels jackpot. But it is looking more and more like it will be a matter of years, rather than decades, before biofuels will begin to make a difference in the global energy picture.

celluosic ethanol biological method
Process*: Raw biomass is typically ground up and pretreated in an acid steam bath before soaking in a massive hot tub for several days. Enzymes break down rigid cellulose into simple sugars like xylose, similar to the sweetener in toothpaste, which can be fermented by yeast or bacteria; it is then distilled into fuel-grade ethanol.
Bottom Line: Fermenting cellulose currently involves a lot of water and several time-consuming steps, adding to expense. The first commercial facility is expected to open in Iowa by late 2011.
Innovators: Iogen (backed by Shell), POET, SunEthanol, Verenium
Freshwater Usage:** 3 gallons
Energy Yield***: 66%


celluosic ethanol [chemical ] method
Process*: Cornstalks, garbage and even old tires are blasted with several-thousand-degree heat in an anaerobic chamber. With no oxygen, biomass can’t combust. Instead, feedstocks break down into carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. This synthesis gas, or syngas, is cleaned, cooled and either ingested by bacteria or mixed with catalysts to produce ethanol and other alcohols.
Bottom Line: This method uses substantially less water and provides greater yields, but it has yet to be scaled to levels that compete with the ethanol fermentation industry. Plants are set to open in Pennsylvania and Georgia in late 2009.
Innovators: Coskata (backed by GM), Range Fuels
Freshwater Usage:** 1 gallon
Energy Yield***: 66%


algal biodiesel
Process*: Specially selected or genetically modified strains of algae are grown in enclosed bioreactors—tubes or plastic bags filled with water—and fed waste CO2 from heavy emitters like coal-fired power plants, cement kilns or breweries. The algae are then separated from water by centrifuge, and the oil is extracted with a solvent. It is then processed in
Bottom Line: Algae produce thousands of gallons more oil per acre than crops such as soy or palm, but growing and processing them at scale still present challenges. A number of U.S. facilities are slated to come on line by 2012.
Innovators: GreenFuel, HR Biopetroleum (backed by Shell), Solazyme, Solix
Freshwater Usage:** None
Energy Yield***: 103%


green gasoline
Process*: Simple sugars—either derived from breaking down tough, cellulosic feedstocks or from sources such as sugarcane—are reacted over solid catalysts to remove the oxygen locked inside their molecules and form high-energy hydrocarbons. Like crude run through traditional refineries, raw sugar feedstocks are separated to create the range of molecules in the fuels we know as gasoline, diesel and jet.
Bottom Line: Green incarnations of today’s fuels are the holy grail, but until cellulose can be cheaply converted to simple sugars, domestic potential will be limited. Virent hopes to have its gas in car tanks by 2012.
Innovators: Virent (backed by Shell and Honda)
Freshwater Usage:** None
Energy Yield***: 100%


biobutanol
Process*: Like ethanol, biobutanol is fermented by microorganisms from sugars, which are broken down from raw feedstocks and mixed with water. But for this process, the microbes have been genetically modified to produce an alcohol with a longer chain of hydrocarbons. Since butanol doesn’t mix with water at high concentrations, the finished fuel can be stored easily and transported within existing gasoline pipelines.
Bottom Line: Butanol is the rocket fuel of alcohols, but it has traditionally been derived from petroleum. Plants to produce it cheaply from renewable sources by 2012 are in the works in the U.S. and U.K.
Innovators: Cobalt Biofuels, Dupont (backed by BP), Gevo, Tetravitae Bioscience
Freshwater Usage:** N/A
Energy Yield***: 90%


designer hydrocarbons
Process*: By swapping out natural genes for synthetic ones, scientists trick microorganisms such as E. coli and yeast into converting simple sugars to diesel, gasoline and jet fuel instead of into fats or alcohols. As in traditional ethanol production, microbes ferment the sugars (in this case, from sugar cane) in a slurry, but since finished fuels don’t mix with water, the hydrocarbons are easily separated by centrifuge without expensive distillation.
Bottom Line: Designer fuels are ready to drop into engines, but unless they’re made in a closed-loop system, they’re water-intensive. The first commercial plant will be located in Brazil and is expected to start producing diesel in 2010.
Innovators: LS9, Amyris
Freshwater Usage:** 3 gallons
Energy Yield***: 106%


fourth gen fuels
Process*: Scientists have genetically engineered algae not just to turn CO2 into oil, but to continuously excrete that oil directly into the surrounding water. Since oil floats, harvesting it becomes simple work compared with the energy-intensive drying and extraction traditionally used for typical algae, which store oil within their cell walls. As with second-generation methods, the oil can then be processed into biodiesel.
Bottom Line: If they can perform at scale, these mutant algae may well be game changers. Synthetic Genomics hopes to have commercial amounts of biodiesel on the market within five years, though no plants have been built yet.
Innovators: Synthetic Genomics
Freshwater Usage:** None
Energy Yield***: 103% _PopMech

These are not the only approaches to next generation biofuels out there. Finland's Neste Oil has a hydrogenation process it applies to plant oils that creates a better diesel than anything that comes from an oil well. Germany's Choren creates hydrocarbons from biomass using gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. And there is constant jockeying for the best ethanol feedstock between maize, wheat, cane, sorghum, cassava, beets, and other plants including cattail! Likewise the competition between oilseed crops for biodiesel is a strong race between soy, rape, palm, and latecomers jatropha, moringa, and pongamia.

Longshot biofuel sources include the "diesel tree" from Brazil, and a scattering of natural hydrocarbon excretors including euphorbias and other latex producers.

Genetic engineers all over the world are working on ways to create more feedstock for the scores of biofuels processes being developed. The huge brouhaha earlier in the year over "fuels vs. foods" was fueled by uninformed hysteria similar to the climate hysteria that Al Gore leads. It is to be expected at any time when a centuries old infrastructure is to be replaced by something new. It was no surprise, though, that it was Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and several Saudis from OPEC who were loudest in condemning biofuels.

Bioenergy is ready for local and regional production at this time. Within ten years, bioenergy will grow to the national and international scale. If you want to get in on the ground floor, this is the time to make your move.

Much more on bioenergy and other energy topics at Al Fin Energy

Russia Takes the Path of Violence

Russia's attack on Georgia has sparked fears across the young democracies of Eastern Europe that Moscow is once again hungry for conquest — and they are scrambling to protect themselves by tightening security alliances with Western powers. _AP

The Russian invasion and occupation of Georgia continues. It is not just the Eastern Europeans who are beginning to be concerned about the loose cannon running Moscow. Western European leaders are also beginning to wonder how they leased their energy future to a reincarnation of one of the mad imperialists of Europe's past.

Anxiety in the Baltic states runs deep in part because, like Ukraine, they have large Russian minorities.

There is fear that Moscow could repeat there what it did in South Ossetia, the breakaway republic where fighting began: Hand out passports to ethnic Russians. Moscow justified its attack on Georgia as necessary to protect its citizens.

Looking at the map, one can see two vast northern hemisphere nations, rich in mineral wealth and bordering a large area of the Arctic: Canada and Russia. Both nations are sparsely populated in relation to land area and the richness of the land. One nation is deathly afraid of having its land and wealth taken away, the other is not concerned in the least. Why the difference?

Canada could not defend its territories from a determined attack by stronger militaries from Russia, China, UK, France, Germany. Even Iran could likely conquer Canada. Why is Canada so unconcerned, where mighty Russia with its huge army, navy, and nuclear arsenal is so unhinged by fear that it is willing to undo the difficult diplomatic work of almost two decades?

Think about it. Clint Eastwood always says, "a man's got to know his limitations." The same is true for a nation. Already on a one way superhighway to oblivion, Russia is in the process of destroying its bridges behind it.

Russia has now shown itself to be a bully. Russia has been trying to annex two parts of Georgia that border Russia, and this war was all about showing Georgians that Russia would rather fight than give up this land grab. The UN was created to deal with this sort of thing, but Russia is doing well, so far, intimidating the UN into inactivity.

It's not a clear win for the Russians, but, short-term, many things appear to be going their way. Long term, things are rather more murky. Europeans have been reminded that the Russian bully they have feared and despised, for so many centuries, is back in town. That could have interesting consequences down the road. _StrategyPage

Russia Steps More Deeply Into Its Quagmire

Russian troops are digging into positions deep inside Georgian territory--despite signing a cease-fire committing them to honour Georgia's territorial integrity. To Putin, it is something personal. He wants Saakashvili's head on a platter. Georgia's president failed to give Putin the respect Putin demands. So Putin orchestrated a premeditated invasion of Georgia--timed to coincide with the Beijing Olympics.

Putin's gambit has clearly failed, but Putin is too stupid to realise it. By immersing his armed forces and national prestige in a border conflict with a tiny and inconsequential country, Putin has set the stage for an extended quagmire-like debacle for Russia's entire autocratic, but fragile government.

It took a decade for Russia to incompletely pacify tiny Chechnya, an enclave with little international support. Georgia is a completely different story. Georgia represents a lot of things to Europe and the west, but the most practical thing it represents is a means of sidestepping Putin's chokehold on Europe's energy supplies. Europe really needs the energy that would flow through the Georgian pipelines. If Russia closes the energy supply route to Europe by force of arms, the precedent Putin sets will be almost impossible for him to outlive.

Look at the map of Russia. Look at the size of that country! Russia is immense, and full of natural resources. A country that large requires a strong, vigorous, forward-looking population to develop and defend it. It requires a strong and broadly based economy, with a scientific and technological infrastructure at the cutting edge of human discovery. But what is the reality? The Russian people are dying off. Almost a million ethnic people drop off the face of the Earth every year, without being replaced. Russian men die in their 50s of complications of drug and alcohol use. Russian women advertise themselves as mail order brides in the desperate hope of a new and better life in the west. They certainly do not want to bring new babies into the hollow dying world of today's Russia.

The vast energy wealth of Russia is concentrated in the hands of a few, and flows constantly out of the country into the banks of Switzerland and other financial havens. Russia's wealth and infrastructure is being dismantled under the noses of the people, converted into hard currency, and shipped to safer places than Russia has become. Who can object? They would only end up dead.

Putin's personal vendetta against Saakashvili has landed the faltering giant in a particularly deep mess. Russia has no friends, and is quickly turning neutrals into its enemies. Putin uses Russia's oil wealth like a weapon. But oil is only wealth so long as it is scarce and in demand. Those days are numbered.

Putin throws the Russian army around as if he were in command of the Soviet Union at its height. Most of the world knows better. The Russian military is in rapid decay, just like the Russian population at large. The equipment is old and breaking down, the infrastructure for improving and maintaining the military machine is crumbling. Even the vast nuclear stockpile that Russia inherited from the USSR is deteriorating.

But as long as Putin can maintain the illusion of military might for the undiscerning analysts in western media, academia, and government, he will have a few more turns in this game. But his time is running out.

The wise move for Putin would be to withdraw from Georgia, begin making genuine alliances with neighbors and rivals, and act as a responsible world power. But then, that would not be the Putin we have come to know. Such a more friendly Putin would have to give up his dreams of Bonapartist empire, and godfather thuggishness, and become a cooperative player in the larger game. That is most unlikely.

Russia is dying. A huge land mass loaded with wealth, Russia is surrounded by peoples that it has bullied for hundreds of years. Soon Russia will be too de-populated to defend itself, too empty of workers to man the oilfields, too lacking in manpower to maintain basic infrastructure. Long before that time, Russia's neighbors will begin moving in, like scavengers feeding on a large animal that is still alive, but barely.

Putin believes it is better to be feared than liked. So Putin has made Russia the enemy of the entire world--except perhaps for Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and a dying Fidel's Cuba. China is merely waiting for the chance to grab Siberia away from the bear. The rapidly growing populations of the muslim nations surrounding Russia have no love for the bear. Russia's time for making meaningful alliances is running out, and Putin is wasting that precious time getting bogged down in Georgia!

Are Today's Kids "The Dumbest Generation"?

Mark Beurlein's book "The Dumbest Generation" points to a generation so self-absorbed and lacking in intellectual curiosity that they cannot be trusted to do much beyond cell texting and Facebook scanning.

Like many others, I share their concerns: a vacuous popular culture, a lost interest in reading for pleasure and, of course, the Internet, which makes information and disinformation easy to access but harder than ever to distinguish.

Critics often point to the loss of required survey courses and a core curriculum as evidence of the "dumbing down" of our colleges and universities. But one place where the finger of blame should probably not be pointed is at America' s colleges and universities.

...The real problem is that these young men and women, through no fault of their own, are showing up on campuses undereducated and unprepared for college-level work. They should have received a good general education before they arrived on campus.

That was the view of pre-college education adopted in the great 1893 "Committee of Ten" report on pre-college education. The report said that all American children should have a sound general education that prepares them for college--whether they go or not. That policy is even more important today when the very general knowledge that prepares students for college-level work is also the knowledge that is needed for competence in the information-age workplace.

...They need remedial courses--including "core curriculum" courses in science, history, the arts and civics--at the time in their lives when they want to launch out on their own, exploring, discovering and pursuing interests at a high level. A required core curriculum in college is not something to be devoutly wished for, but rather a concession to the consequences of a third-rate preparation for first-rate colleges and universities.

...The cost of their poor preparation is staggering. Colleges and universities spend an estimated $1 to $2 billion annually on remedial classes for undergraduates. More than 60% of freshmen in California's public university system require at least one remedial course, typically in math or English. Even if you don't like to view education in purely economic terms, the billions spent on remediation is clearly money that shouldn't have to be spent--critical dollars at a time when states are hard-pressed to fund their public school systems. If education is the gift that keeps on giving, the lack of education is a curse that keeps on taking.

...To be full participants in our cultural life and democratic institutions, every citizen needs a sound and broad education. But we are pushing this problem in exactly the wrong direction. It is not the job of our colleges and universities to make up for the shoddy education offered by K-12 schools. It is the job of those schools to ensure they produce future undergraduates who are fully prepared to do college-level work.

There is a real danger that in making colleges the academic safety net of last resort, we'll absolve the public schools of their obligation to provide students with a sound, well-rounded education. It's damaging to our students, to our country and to our higher education system, which is the lone bright star in our educational firmament. Everyone loses. _Forbes_via_CoreKnowledge_via_JoanneJacobs

Al Fin readers may recognise the problem of "psychological neoteny" hiding within the problem described in the Forbes piece. Kids steeped in self-esteem, but lacking in competence or a sense of responsibility. Kids who have been sheltered from the real world for so long that they may never find a way to connect with the world they might have created for themselves--if adults had only helped them to genuine competence and self-reliance when the kids were open to those possibilities.

Not only is it too late by the time they get to college, but with the post-modern faux-multicultural, victimist indoctrination they will encounter at university, many of them will sink even deeper into an incompetent inability to meet their realities responsibly.

So who is to blame for the dumbing down of successive generations? Parents? K-12 schools? Universities? Popular culture and media? All of the above, of course. If ever a generation were in need of the next level, it is the one due to be raised by "the dumbest generation." Because that next generation will be the dumbest--and on and on and on--unless a better integration of rationality with emotionality and wisdom arrives soon.

Animal Proteins: Which is Most Efficient?

We all know that it takes a lot more crop area to produce beef steak and ham for human food, than it would to produce crops for humans directly. How do different animal protein foods compare in terms of efficiency?

Among major commercial species, poultry is the most efficient, with two kilograms of food making one kilogram of chicken, followed by three to five kilograms for hogs and then seven for sheep and seven to eight for cattle.

Among lesser species, rabbits are similar to poultry, as are fish with one to two kilograms of grain needed, which is more efficient than any land species, potentially making them a very attractive commodity investment. _source

If fish is the most efficient animal protein for human food, what would be a good high protein food to feed the fish? Neptune Industries Inc. believes that insect protein can become a most economical fish feed, easily produced using residual algae cake left over from biodiesel production. Neptune coincidentally raises fish in a unique, clean environment called an "Aqua-Sphere", and uses fish waste to grow algae for biodiesel. You can see the fascinating circle of resourcefulness: Insect protein to feed the fish --> Fish waste to feed the algae for biodiesel --> algae cake residue to feed the insects --> and so on.

Of course, you might ask why humans have to eat meat in the first place? Here is an interesting study relating to that question:

In the study led by Dr. Cheskin, and funded by the Mushroom Council, study participants were randomly chosen to receive either beef or mushroom lunch entrées over four days – lasagna, napoleon, sloppy Joe and chili. Subjects then switched entrées to consume the other ingredient (mushroom or beef) the following week.1

Energy (calorie) intakes were significantly higher during meat meals than mushroom meals, a difference that averaged 420 more calories and 30 more fat grams per day over the four-day test period. Subjects' ratings for palatability (meal appeal), appetite, satiation (after meal fullness) and satiety (general fullness) did not differ between groups.

"The most intriguing finding was that subjects seemed to accept mushrooms as a palatable and suitable culinary substitute for meat," said Dr. Cheskin. "They didn't compensate for the lower calorie mushroom meal by eating more food later in the day."

The preliminary findings of Cheskin's team follow findings from other initial data that suggested if men substituted a 4-ounce Portabella mushroom for a 4-ounce grilled hamburger every time they ate a grilled hamburger over the course of a year, and didn't change anything else, they could save more than 18,000 calories and nearly 3,000 grams of fat.3 That's the equivalent of 5.3 pounds or 30 sticks of butter. More research is needed to further understand mushrooms' role in weight management as a low-energy density food. _Eurekalert

Losing weight by eating well? Sounds good to me.

Update 15 August 08: The Speculist is throwing Kangaroo into the running for best protein, based upon environmental factors. Free range kangaroo may be a bit tough and gamey, but it should put a spring in your step! ;-)

Recovering Arctic Ice

Image Source

Be sure to check out this article from the mainstream, and Anthony Watts' take on the issue.

Spotless Sun, Armagh Observatory: Freeze Watch

After all the hype over catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) doom, it may come as a shock to many readers that scientists do not understand the Earth's climate very well. Forget Al Gore, forget James Hansen, forget Michael Mann. Pay attention to what the sun is telling us, by its quietness.

The observatory [Armagh] notes that solar cycles 21 and 22, which were characterized by being short and intense in their activity, led to the natural global warming observed in the 80’s and 90’s.

“Cycle 23, which hasn’t finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak,” writes one observatory scientist.

“Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C — that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years….“Temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern,” concludes David Watt. _PrisonPlanet_via_TomNelson

Natural climate variation is driven by multiple overlapping solar cycles, by the ocean multidecadal oscillations, by volcanic activity, by chaotic biological cycles on land and in the sea, all influencing and being influenced by ice and snow cover. None of these factors are well understood. Yet the wholly warmer climate orthodoxy claims to be able to simplify climate to one parameter: anthropogenic greenhouse gases! These high priests of the orthodoxy exhibit a sad combination of laziness and arrogance.

They are like the lazy and incompetent physician who jumps at the first diagnosis that enters his mind, and refuses to consider any other factors. But having jumped onto the political and media bandwagon of climate doom, these alarmist orthodoxers have set their course, regardless of how the reality may develop.

Surprise! Pelosi Promotes Political Peak Oil

Washington has become paralyzed by dysfunctional government. France and China can build nuclear electric plants in just years; in the U.S. it takes a decade. Brazil will bring offshore oil online in 24 months, while for U.S. companies it takes 10 years. New refineries are virtually illegal to build. New electricity-generating plants using coal are now unable to obtain financing because of environment constraints.

This is destroying the value of the dollar and wrecking our balance of trade, making oil prohibitively expensive, and sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign lands—many of whom are no friends of America. No wonder 80 percent of Americans think their nation is on the wrong track. Washington needs to declare a national emergency program to produce energy. The reasons we don't are political, not technical.

Political peak oil is the only kind of peak oil hardship the world will experience. Americans can thank Nancy Pelosi and her comrades in congress--plus their friends the trial lawyers--for that. Think of them every time you fill your gas tank.

......the world oil shortage is political, not geological. In the U.S., the government prohibits drilling offshore. In Nigeria, civil strife has shut down major production. In Libya and Iran, Washington effectively blockaded and isolated the nations for years to inhibit new production. In Iraq, of course, the U.S. destroyed much of the infrastructure since the first Gulf war in 1991 and then blockaded reconstruction. In nations such as Russia and Mexico nationalism and corruption curtail increased production.

Outside of developed Western countries, the single largest reason for oil "shortages" is government incompetence and ownership of the subsoil rights so that landowners don't benefit from oil discoveries. In Patagonia, Argentina (a nation with abundant oil), I was told how it was common for landowners to try to hide any evidence of oil seepages from underground, lest the government oil company come in and ruin their lands with no benefit to themselves. Private mineral rights ownership is the reason some 90 percent of all oil wells drilled have been in the U.S. Scientific advances and innovative engineers keep coming up with ways to both discover new fields and keep old ones in production almost indefinitely.

ANWR could become the fastest way to generate hundreds of billions of dollars of new oil. But laws need to be changed to fast track the leasing (there are 11 litigation choke points) and to create special courts to expedite environmental issues, as recently proposed by Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.). Under current laws, it could indeed take 10 years to produce oil, compared to two or three years for the actual drilling and pumping. Additionally, leasing is done slowly, thanks to laws written when oil was plentiful. Such laws were designed to gain maximum upfront money for the government, not for speed. For example, BP recently paid $1.2 billion for a new offshore lease, some 400 miles East of Canada's Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. The cost and distance gives some idea of industry expectations as to the extent of oil reserves. _Reason

Russia Loses Planes to Own Missile Systems

The basic ineptness of the Russian military is further exposed by its inability to protect its planes against missile systems designed in Russia. This is not surprising, since the Russian military sits atop an inept science and technology infrastructure. When the Ukraine joins NATO, Russia will begin feeling the pinch.

The Russians have admitted to losing four aircraft (three Su-25 ground attack bombers and a Tu-22 bomber flying a reconnaissance mission.) Most, or all, appear to have been brought down by the SA-11 BukM1 surface-to-air missile systems...Georgia claims to have downed ten Russian aircraft as of August 11th, and the true air losses won't be known until photos appear of all the aircraft wreckage. It is interesting that Russia was unable to come up with effective countermeasures against missile systems they had designed. _strategypage_via_Instapundit

Russia is losing half its population every 40 years, due to high death rates and low birth rates. Meanwhile, Russia's Muslim population is exploding rapidly, as are the Muslim populations of Russia's central Asian neighbors. And don't forget China, who desperately needs Siberian mineral assets.

Russia Running on Fumes

For all its big-power bluster, Russia is weak and vulnerable. Russian tanks and aircraft may have smashed the fledgeling Georgian Army with ease, but most of the weaponry was Cold War-era and many of the troops conscripts. Anyone who has seen the Russian Army operating in the Caucasus knows that the military will need a generation to modernise. Meanwhile America, and its main Nato allies, are decades ahead in military technology and combat experience.

Russia is also facing a severe demographic crisis. Its population is shrinking by 700,000 people a year. The UN estimates the population will fall below 100 million by 2050, down from around 146 million today.

As for the economy, it is booming thanks to natural resources that account for 70 per cent of the country's wealth. But the oil price is in a state of flux. Russia has failed to diversify. Should energy prices fall sharply, the economy could collapse, as it did a decade ago. _TimesOnline

Russia has been building up to its invasion of Georgia for several months. It managed to scrape together enough tanks, planes, and elite troops to subdue one tiny neighboring country. Putin hopes that this act will send a message to Europeans and the rest of the west, that the Russian bear still has a mean bite. But is that the message that comes across?

Western powers may not do much immediately about his squeeze on Georgia, but over time he will find he has created conditions for the emergence of a coalition to contain Russian energy power. His immediate neighbors, with fresh memories of Soviet domination, will be even more eager to align themselves with the West and NATO. Possibly even the myopic Germans will discern they've gone too far in putting themselves in energy hock to Moscow. _WSJ

Russia's weapons are old technology. Most of its ships, submarines, and large transports are poorly maintained. Its men are mostly draftees, lacking basic equipment and almost entirely unmotivated to fight for a country in decay.

Russia depends upon its energy resources for most of its wealth. But Russia lacks the technical expertise to develop its own resources. It must contract with outside corporations to develop oil and gas fields--then inevitably Russia nationalises (steals) the assets from the multinationals. Eventually, Russia will find it hard to get business partners, and the flow of oil and gas will drop rapidly.

Russia's rapidly shrinking population can no longer supply the manpower needed in defense, technology, energy, and other vital fields. As related here before:

The share of high-tech products in Russia’s exports is only 0.6%, “a shameful rate” according to Vladimir Fortov, a member of the Russian Academy of Science. Over the past 15 years, he says, Russia has not brought to the market a single significant drug. The average age of Russia’s scientists is well over 50. One of the main commercial activities of Russian research institutes is leasing or selling their property and land.

Scientific inventions tend to be developed abroad. The chain that turns a scientific innovation into a marketable product simply does not exist, says Mr Fortov. And the key to creating it, he argues, is not setting up state corporations, but unshackling the system from bureaucracy and letting private companies operate freely. “We have tried everything else and we know it does not work,” he concludes. _Economist

But Russia under Putin will never allow private companies to operate freely. Free enterprise creates wealthy individuals, who could develop their own powerful networks of people and resources. Putin would never stand for rivals of any kind.

So Russia is a doomed country, with not much time left for this strutting and posturing. Even the invasion of tiny Georgia required almost a year's buildup, and severely stressed Russia's logistical capacity. When Russia falls from overreach, its neighbors will rush in to loot the country. But Putin and his cronies will be gone, living on billions in Swiss bank accounts. The Russians still alive inside Russia will pay once again for allowing corrupt leaders to sell them phony national greatness for their sheeplike complicity.

The Obamanation of Energy Obstructionism

If humans are to transition from a fossil fuel economy to an electric and renewable economy, they will absolutely have to maintain the flow of energy in all available forms--that means offshore oil, arctic oil, shale oil, coal to liquids, etc. If we allow energy supplies to drop enough to destroy our economies, the ability to develop alternatives will slip through our fingers. Why does Obama pretend not to realise this?

Contemporary 4-D surveying adds the dimension of time. Satellites help find and quantify sub sea deposits, track their flows, and predict their next steps. Some 70 percent of 4-D wells hit oil.

Obama's Don't Ask, Don't Drill policy spurns these marvels and embraces outdated information gathered with obsolete instruments. This is the audacity of ignorance.

Adults should not make decisions in willful oblivion. Democrats like Obama prefer not to know what riches rest off America's coasts. They resemble kindergartners who cover their ears and hum loudly to muffle their parents' unwelcome words.

Meanwhile, Americans struggle to fuel planes, trains, and automobiles. Despite this national nightmare, congressional Democrats fled on a five-week summer vacation, rather than vote on Republican amendments to extend offshore drilling. Democrats chose suntan oil over oil production.

Instead of voting on Republican energy proposals, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., dispatched her colleagues to build sandcastles. Nevertheless, GOP representatives unofficially are pleading their case to tourists inside the House chamber. _Source

Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Reid, and the rest of the Luddites apparently want to destroy the current economy--in hopes that a grand and glorious utopian energy economy will rise from the ashes, by magic. Al Fin has devoted a lot of effort to promote biomass, biofuels, solar energy of all forms, nuclear energy, and a number of other alternatives to fossil fuels--as well as some innovative ways to exploit unconventional fossil fuels. We have to have all of these forms of energy in order to make the transition!

By 2006, after major advances in seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion barrels. In short, there could be much more oil under the sea than previously known. The demand for energy is going up, not down. And for a long time, even as alternative sources of energy are developed, more oil will be needed. _WaPo

Congressional Democrats are living in a fantasy world, believing that they can mould reality to fit their distorted beliefs and impressions. The entire country suffers as a result of their mismanagement. If congressional Democrats can get one of their own into the White House, the Obamanation of magical utopianism will unfold. Let me know how you like it.

Doing More with Less -- No Limits

There are two dominant themes in the western world today: the limited world view that wants to slash energy use, slash human populations, and release most of the human world back into the wild -- and there is the theme of upward evolving, and growing into a peaceful world of abundance, without limits. Julian Simon represented the latter view, par excellence.

The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.

Buckminster Fuller was another person who believed that human ingenuity would allow humans to continue to do more -- with less.

Doing "more with less" was Fuller's credo. He described himself as a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable.

The key to humanity evolving (as opposed to devolving into a collectivist lifelong larval colony) is in learning to do more with less. Recent spikes in commodities prices convinced many superficial students of resource economics that Simon would finally be proven wrong. But scientists and engineers are beginning to catch the spirit of Fuller and Simon in their work. We may yet escape the collectivist larval farm.

Brian Westenhaus at New Energy and Fuel describes an Australian innovation that will allow the substitution of a cheap Teflon compound in place of ultra-expensive Platinum in fuel cell catalytic membranes. The cost savings will be immense, and should rapidly speed the transition to fuel cell applications for automobiles and stationary installations. It will also greatly extend the world's supply of platinum.

Brian Wang at Next Big Future presents several innovations that will make automobiles lighter and more fuel efficient. These include several new uses of carbon nano-fibers, ways of making titanium cheaper for use in cars, and the use of graphene enhanced plastics.

The ability to substitute cheaper, smaller gasoline engines for larger more expensive diesel engines, should introduce cost savings into many industrial applications.

Of course, the holy grail of "more with less" is molecular nano-assemblers that can manufacture an almost limitless array of products quickly, precisely, and relatively cheaply. Brian Wang presents an update on carbon nano-assemblers.

When confronted with a challenge, humans can either try to find workable solutions, or they can hide behind "limits." Whether "peak oil doom", "climate catastrophe", "overpopulation", the challenge of militant Islam to secular western ideals--a dominant refrain from modern left-limitists is "cut back!"

Instead of cutting back, however, ingenious and resourceful humans will substitute and innovate, and do more with less. The limits are in the mind. Think laterally, as well as logically.

Infrastructure Breakdown? I'll Show You An Entire Continent w/ Infrastructure Breakdown

Power failures are sweeping across post-colonial Africa, from South Africa to Zambia to Zimbabwe and beyond. The entire power grid of the Central African Republic has gone down from lack of maintenance.

Over half a century of poor maintenance and neglect, the power grid of the Central African Republic has collapsed. The capital has gone dark. Two nearby hydroelectric power stations, which provide most of the nation's electricity, have failed from years of neglect. The government is calling on foreign aid donors to fly in generators for hospitals and other essential services. Generators that have been brought in previously have not been maintained, and wear out quickly. This is not an exceptional event, for colonial era infrastructure, from roads to power plants, are collapsing from decades of post-independence neglect. This causes more unrest, as factions battle for a dwindling supply of resources.

This is an unfortunate but commonplace situation for much of Africa. Through corruption, poor planning, and non-existent maintenance, power grids across Africa are overloading and failing.

Sub-Saharan Africa is suited to a more decentralised approach to power. With small, decentralised power plants, infrastructure breakdowns only affect limited areas--not the entire country. Maintenance of a high technology infrastructure is beyond large portions of the third world--including most of Subsaharan Africa. The same problem crops up in tribal areas of Asia and South America, but is not quite as bad. Unfortunately, urbanisation is sweeping across most parts of the world, bringing the need for central power generation stations and power grids. It may be an insoluble problem.

Maintenance technicians and supervisors for the repair and upkeep of sophisticated power systems, need to be both intelligent and experienced. In much of the third world, such jobs are often given out as political rewards to cronies of powerful government officials. Maintenance is regarded in the third world with much the same disdain that many college educated persons in the west regard skilled manual labour. Maintenance funds are either not allocated, or are skimmed away by government bureaucrats. In the third world, maintenance just doesn't get done. And systems inevitably fail.

It would be bad enough just dealing with corruption, poor planning, lack of maintenance, and general neglect. But the third world often has to deal with rampant violence created by "youth bulge demographics." This is the fatal blow to infrastructure and national integrity.

Why is so much of the third world going backwards, so long after de-colonisation? Something similar happened in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, during the Dark Ages. But Europe was actually re-organising and re-tooling for a more complex world. A lot of things that happened during the European "Dark Ages" were not so dark at all. Africa seems to be doing the opposite.

Foreign aid projects, NGO projects, UN projects, etc. seem to do as much good in Africa as they do in Gaza and the West Bank. The resources simply get swallowed up and disappear.

It is said that a high technology infrastructure is impossible to maintain when the average IQ of a population is below 85 (in the absence of a significant market dominant minority). The average IQ of SubSaharan Africa consistently measures close to 70, or 75 at most. IQ is not enough, of course. In China, where corruption is rampant, infrastructure collapse can happen too. In Detroit, where city government corruption is a way of life, maintaining the infrastructure is a daily battle.

But if you have both low IQ and corruption--with no market dominant minority--forget about it. It is not going to happen. Build as much as you want, it will surely crumble without maintenance.

Perhaps improved nutrition and education will shift the IQ curve upward by as much as 10 points. After 2 or 3 more generations. Should the intervention be done? Of course! Grandchildren and great-granchildren of today's Africans may benefit.

But understand that technologies should be matched to the population being served. Anything else on the part of aid providers is criminal.

Russian Corruption and Authoritarianism Holding Russia Back in Nano Technology Race

A year ago, Russia placed US $5.5 billion into a state corporation that was meant to boost Russian nanotechnology R&D into competition with the west. Most veteran Russian observers were skeptical of the gesture, and they are being proven correct in their skepticism.

..... in 2007 Russia put 130 billion roubles ($5.5 billion) into a state corporation for nanotechnologies that is being likened to the Manhattan Project. Even China, which quit Dubna after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, has been lured back to the nuclear institute.

But the big problem for high technology in Russia is neither money nor ideas. It is the country’s all-pervasive bureaucracy, weak legal system and culture of corruption. This may explain why the nanotechnology corporation has so far found only one project to invest in (and that is registered in the Netherlands). The share of high-tech products in Russia’s exports is only 0.6%, “a shameful rate” according to Vladimir Fortov, a member of the Russian Academy of Science. Over the past 15 years, he says, Russia has not brought to the market a single significant drug. The average age of Russia’s scientists is well over 50. One of the main commercial activities of Russian research institutes is leasing or selling their property and land.

Scientific inventions tend to be developed abroad. The chain that turns a scientific innovation into a marketable product simply does not exist, says Mr Fortov. And the key to creating it, he argues, is not setting up state corporations, but unshackling the system from bureaucracy and letting private companies operate freely. “We have tried everything else and we know it does not work,” he concludes. _Economist_via_Nanodot_via_Instapundit

Many of the same impediments preventing Russians from developing new technology, also exist within the state-owned companies and research institutes in CCP-controlled China. A culture of collectivism promoted by Mao's communists, combined with a self-effacing Eastern culture millenia old, stifles individual initiative. Chinese scientists who move to western labs are often able to adapt to a more individualistic culture, and thrive.

In fact, scientists from virtually every authoritarian culture--whether Islamic, Communist, Fascist, etc--frequently thrive in a freer western atmosphere, once they are able to adapt to being under less restraint. Collectivism and invention are poor partners. Throw in the corruption that is always present in collectivist cultures, and you can see why in a world of accelerated technological advancement, collectivist and authoritarian cultures have a hard time keeping up.

Remind me again, why anyone in the US would want to bring in an Obama collectivism? What type of perverse security-craving culture-in-devolution would breed such a death wish? Psychological neoteny, academic lobotomy, legalised nepotism (affirmative action), and faux multi-cultural monoculturalism.

Algae Has Never Believed in Peak Oil

Algae doesn't think in terms of limits. A single-celled algae, gazing out across the Pacific Ocean, has only one thought: "That looks like a good place to spread out and grow!" In fact, algae thinks exactly the same thing about a wastewater pond, a brackish estuary, or a large freshwater lake. Algae was meant to grow fast, needing only sunlight, CO2, and a few nutrients from water--wastewater will do. Algae has never believed in peak anything.

• Algae can thrive in fresh, brackish, or seawater — and very little of that is required.

• There is no need for any soil, much less good soil, as algae grow hydroponically.

• With more than 20,000 known varieties of algae, species can be chosen for high lipid content (e.g., for diesel fuel) or high sugar content for distillation purposes.

• In desert climes it can be harvested on a day-by-day basis because it grows so quickly.

All it takes is sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to provide the energy for arguably the most complex process we see in nature: photosynthesis. _Source

What about cellulosic biofuels? Is there a conflict between cellulosic fuels and algae biofuels?

.....the market for transportation fuels is big enough for cellulose and algae; they compete with petroleum, not with each other......extraction of fuel from algae depended on flat land, abundant water, sun and injections of CO2. _EcoWorld

At this time, algae biodiesel costs between $15 and $20 a gallon to produce. Dozens of research efforts are aimed at bringing the cost of production for algal biodiesel into the competitive range. The University of Virginia, University of Arkansas, Cal Poly, and other research institutions are rushing to make breakthroughs in the economic production of algal fuels. One particularly innovative approach to algal fuels is the use of algae as part of a three-pronged bio-energy-food eco-industry, combining a fish farm, algae production, and feed production.

Instead of having a waste stream [from the fish farm] that contaminates the environment or needs costly disposal, combining the Aqua-Sphere with algae production creates a second income stream by producing feedstock for biodiesel. Papadoyianis also sees benefits to the biodiesel industry as aquaculturists move into algae production. “The way I see it, buying a piece of land and constructing an algae facility and having a whole staff just to produce the algae will make your cost of production go way up,” he says. “We are looking at this as a secondary crop that doesn’t take a huge secondary investment. For a medium-sized operation you can basically use the same staff as you have for the fish operation.

The process could be diversified even further as the company develops a third product, an insect-based fish food it calls Ento-Protein. The product would replace food currently made from fish meal, which has more than doubled in price since 2006, and is made from insects grown on agricultural waste and industrial coproducts, including distillers dried grains from ethanol plants. Papadoyianis foresees using the algae cake remaining after the oil is extracted as another feedstock for the Ento-Protein operation. _Biodiesel

A two day conference dealing with algae as "the new oil" is coming up October 23-24 at the Woodlands, in Texas. More from the National Algae Association

More energy and bioenergy news at Al Fin Energy blog.

Attention Chris Matthews: This Will Really and Truly Send a Tingle Up Your Leg!

Chris Matthews will never outlive his gushing tribute to Barak Obama: "he makes a tingle go up my leg!" Well, Chris, here is a device you can keep with you at all times, and it really does send a tingle up your leg.

The device stimulates the nerves sending gentle pulses up the woman’s leg for between 10 and 30 minutes leaving women on the verge of climax....

“It gently stimulates the sexual nerve pathways taking the woman to a pre-orgasmic plateau where she dangles on the edge of orgasm for as long as she wants.

“From there, gentle stimulation can then effect the orgasm.” _ImpactLab

If it works for women, no doubt it will work for Obama supporters of either sex. Particularly if their legs are quite susceptible to tingles anyway.

This is not exactly a robotic sexual device, but one can easily imagine a robotic companion that incorporates such a "tingler" as part of its basic repertoire.

Also posted at Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!

"Southwest Airlines" of Space Suffers Setback--But Venture Capitalists Rush to Invest

SpaceX is on the verge of a huge commercial breakthrough. Dubbed "the Southwest Airlines of Space," the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk is just a launch or two away from putting itself in a position to profitably underbid all other space launch providers. The cause for SpaceX's third launch failure on 2 August 08 has been explained, and is said to be easily fixed. That is all venture capitalists wanted to hear.

Musk, who's invested more than $100 million in the company, was disappointed but not deterred. "On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect," he wrote in a message to employees. "Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward."

Indeed, just two days later, SpaceX announced that it had received a $20 million investment from the Founders Fund, a venture capital firm that is partially managed by other PayPal co-founders. Less than two months ago, one prominent VC partner insisted to PM that quick business reactions to the private space industry was "one of the big advantages" of investing in companies like SpaceX;

....the injection of cash comes at a crucial time for the company. SpaceX's original goal was to create the world's lowest cost space launcher..... SpaceX is developing more ambitious rockets such as the Falcon 9, a medium- to heavy-lift rocket whose mission will be to re-supply the International Space Station—if it beats out competitor Orbital Sciences for a NASA contract. _PopMech_via_Instapundit

Getting to heaven has never been particularly easy, but the potential profit up there is almost incalculable. A single asteroid could be worth trillions of dollars, at current mineral prices. And if you ever want to build large orbital structures, you have to get in a position where you can harness space resources and process them into building materials.

SpaceX's approach is not exactly frugal, but neither is it extravagant. The company has taken a methodical, step by step approach to developing and perfecting each component of its launch system. Neither Musk nore his backers appear to be deterred by the latest setback. In the long run, it may be better to be good than lucky.

Peak Oil Bulls Out of Their Elements

Oil and commodities have officially slipped into a bear market. Speculators, hedge funders, pension fund managers, and peak oil/peak commodities bulls bet the bank that this would be the year for peak oil to manifest. This would be their year to strike it rich.

Global supply is now creeping back into surplus.

The Saudis are adding 500,000 bpd. Deepwater projects are coming on stream off the US, Mexico, China, and Africa. The Caspian is cranking up a gear. Non-Opec will add 2.2m bpd over this year and next, says the International Energy Agency.

"Demand destruction" has reached tipping point. Americans drove 3.7pc fewer miles in May, year-on-year. Thirteen hybrid car models went on sale in the US last year, exploiting the new lithium ion battery technology.

China, India, and rising Asia - the chief victims of the oil spike, with energy use per unit of GDP four times Western levels - have begun to cut fuel subsidies. The IEA said this alone would trim demand by 100,000 bpd.

Above all, the economic sick list is lengthening. Japan's industrial output fell 2pc in June; petrol sales slumped 8.9pc. China's purchasing managers' index (CLSA) fell below 50 in July.

If this turns out to be accurate, manufacturing output is now contracting in China. The closure of Beijing's smokestacks before the Olympics may have contributed, but slumping export orders led the slide.

Mingchun Sun, Lehman Bros' China expert, says the country is at risk of a "vicious circle" as crumbling asset prices combine with tight credit, a strong yuan, and the global downturn.

As of May, property prices had fallen by 19pc from their peaks in Guangzhou, 9.5pc in Beijing, and 9.4pc in Shenzen. They are still falling. Indeed, China's house price upset may soon match the Anglo-Saxon, Baltic, and Club Med debacles.

The entire economic system of the North Atlantic is now in or near recession. European Central Bank insiders are saying the eurozone may have contracted in the second quarter. Europe's credit crunch is getting worse, not better. _Source_via_POD

It is one thing to lose all of your own money on a foolish peak oil bet. But to lose the money of pensioners who trusted your fundamental investment soundness, is the mark of an irresponsible neotenate. Remember: all those things you think you know? They just aren't so.

Make Every Meal Fit for Royalty

There is a reason that fortunes were made and wars were fought throughout history over spice routes and salt deposits. We in modern countries have an abundance of spices and seasonings to suit our every whim. But are we taking best advantage of them?

“Because herbs and spices have a very low calorie content and are relatively inexpensive, they’re a great way to get a lot of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power into your diet,” said study co-author James Hargrove, associate professor of foods and nutrition in the UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences....

...The researchers found a strong and direct correlation between the phenol content of common herbs and spices and their ability to inhibit the formation of AGE compounds. Spices such as cloves and cinnamon had phenol levels that were 30 percent and 18 percent of dry weight, respectively, while herbs such as oregano and sage were eight and six percent phenol by dry weight, respectively. For comparison, blueberries – which are widely touted for their antioxidant capabilities – contain roughly five percent phenol by dry weight.

Study co-author Diane Hartle, associate professor in the UGA College of Pharmacy, said various phenols are absorbed differently by the body and have different mechanisms of action, so it’s likely that a variety of spices will provide maximum benefit.

“If you set up a good herb and spice cabinet and season your food liberally, you could double or even triple the medicinal value of your meal without increasing the caloric content,” she said.

She added that controlling blood sugar and the formation of AGE compounds can also decrease the risk of cardiovascular damage associated with diabetes and aging. She explained that high blood sugar accelerates heart disease partly because AGE compounds form in the blood and in the walls of blood vessels. The AGE compounds aggravate atherosclerosis, which produces cholesterol plaques. _PO

While you are adding healthy spices to your foods, you can also gain significant benefit by substituting potassium salts for sodium salt in routine food seasoning. The taste is quite similar to table salt, and persons of all ages and states of health (except kidney failure with high serum potassium) can safely take extra potassium.

Throughout most of human history, only a few lucky persons were able to enjoy most of the spices, beverages, and foods that are available to even the poorest person in the modern world. We are living in an epicurean age. Are we to blame if eating and drinking well can also be good for us?

Even the National Science Foundation Couldn't Care Less About Real Science

American culture and American schools are not preparing American students for a world of science and technology. Even the National Science Foundation is more concerned about what is between the legs of scientists than what their heads are producing. The 21st century will not be kind to cultures with such misplaced priorities.

In the United States, students are insulated from the commercial market's demand for their knowledge and skills. That market lies a long way off — often too far to see. But they are not insulated one bit from the worldview promoted by their teachers, textbooks, and entertainment. From those sources, students pick up attitudes, motivations, and a lively sense of what life is about. School has always been as much about learning the ropes as it is about learning the rotes. We do, however, have some new ropes, and they aren't very science-friendly. Rather, they lead students who look upon the difficulties of pursuing science to ask, "Why bother?"

Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study. A century ago, Max Weber wrote of "Science as a Vocation," and, indeed, students need to feel something like a calling for science to surmount the numerous obstacles on the way to an advanced degree.

At least on the emotional level, contemporary American education sides with the obstacles. It begins by treating children as psychologically fragile beings who will fail to learn — and worse, fail to develop as "whole persons" — if not constantly praised. The self-esteem movement may have its merits, but preparing students for arduous intellectual ascents aren't among them. What the movement most commonly yields is a surfeit of college freshmen who "feel good" about themselves for no discernible reason and who grossly overrate their meager attainments.

The intellectual lassitude we breed in students, their unearned and inflated self-confidence, undercuts both the self-discipline and the intellectual modesty that is needed for the apprentice years in the sciences. Modesty? Yes, for while talented scientists are often proud of their talent and accomplishments, they universally subscribe to the humbling need to prove themselves against the most-unyielding standards of inquiry. That willingness to play by nature's rules runs in contrast to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along insouciance that characterizes so many variants of postmodernism and that flatters itself as being a higher form of pragmatism.

The aversion to long-term and deeply committed study of science among American students also stems from other cultural imperatives. We rank the manufacture of "self-esteem" above hard-won achievement, but we also have immersed a generation in wall-to-wall promotion of diversity and multiculturalism as being the worthiest form of educational endeavor; we have foregrounded the redistributional dreams of "social justice" over heroic aspirations to discover, invent, and thereby create new wealth; and we have endlessly extolled the virtue of "sustainability" against the ravages of "progress." Do all that, and you create an educational system that is essentially hostile to advanced achievement in the sciences and technology. Moreover, those threads have a certainty and unity that make them not just a collection of educational conceits but also part of a compelling worldview.

The antiscience agenda is visible as early as kindergarten, with its infantile versions of the diversity agenda and its early budding of self-esteem lessons. But it complicates and propagates all the way up through grade school and high school. In college it often drops the mask of diffuse benevolence and hardens into a fascination with "identity."

That could be a good thing if the introspections were enriched by professors who could show students where Plato or Shakespeare had touched such depths, or who could startle them by showing where Hobbes or Tocqueville had seen them coming. But in a curriculum dissolved in the sea of minutiae and professorial enthusiasms, the opportunity to pass through moody introspection and back into the sturdy world of real people grows rare.

The science "problems" we now ask students to think about aren't really science problems at all. Instead we have the National Science Foundation vexed about the need for more women and minorities in the sciences. President Lawrence H. Summers was pushed out of Harvard University for speculating (in league with a great deal of neurological evidence) that innate difference might have something to do with the disparity in numbers of men and women at the highest levels of those fields. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." Officials of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education are looking to use Title IX to force science graduate programs to admit more women. The big problem? As of 2001, 80 percent of engineering degrees and 72 percent of computer-science degrees have gone to men.

A society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn't a society that takes science education seriously. In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert famously drew up a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics; 18 have now been solved. Hilbert has also bequeathed us a way of thinking about mathematics and the sciences as a to-do list of intellectual challenges. Notably, Hilbert didn't write down problem No. 24: "Make sure half the preceding 23 problems are solved by female mathematicians."

Obsession with the sex and race of scientists is just one more indication of how American higher education has swung into orbit around the neutron star of identity politics. _Commentary

It should no longer be such a mystery how science can be so easily corrupted and perverted to pimp political movements such as climate catastrophe. The deeper spirit of science as the pursuit of insight into the deep and dynamic state of the universe has been bred out of students along the way. Some of these new breeds are now tenured professors, and will be training grad students to see science as social construct like themselves.

Is It the Teachers Stupid?

Image Source

The problems with government education in the US are almost too numerous to mention. Donna Foote spent time observing the efforts of Teach For America teachers in a Los Angeles inner city school. She thinks that improving the teacher corps will fix the schools:

It's the teachers, stupid! The single most important factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher. And yet, we have no effective system to attract, train, retain and promote high-caliber candidates for our schools. Today's teachers score in the lowest quartile of college grads and too many of the schools that train them are diploma mills. By making its program highly selective and attaching status to the job, Teach For America has proved that it is possible to get the best and the brightest into our classrooms. But no one—not TFA, not the districts, not the unions—has figured out how to keep them there. TFA's most recent alumni survey indicates that one third of former corps members are still teaching K–12. Critics charge that the recruits' short forays into the classroom exacerbate the critical issue of staff churning in our neediest schools and gibe that TFA really stands for Teach For Awhile. But the truth is, up to half of all the country's 3.5 million teachers bail within five years. Low pay, low status and low satisfaction undoubtedly drive many out. The transformation of teaching into a financially rewarding profession with high standards of admission—and accountability—would go a long way toward establishing staff stability.

.....In Washington, D.C., the reforming schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, is a 1992 TFA alum. The founders of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), the wildly successful chain of 57 charter schools, are 1992 TFA alums, too. Nationwide, there are now 360 school leaders and 16 elected officials who got their start in public service with Teach For America. By 2010, the ranks of America's next generation of leaders will be seeded with 20,000 high-achieving alums who will have seen the crisis in our classrooms firsthand. _ Newsweek_via_JoanneJacobs

As long as schools of education are dominated by ideologues rather than educators, and as long as teachers' unions protect teachers who cannot teach, and as long as teachers' unions apply political pressure to restrict school choice, the problems with most government schools will remain intractable.

Teachers' unions and their enablers among the US Democratic Party, think that throwing money at the problem will do the trick. Just pay teachers a professional wage and give them a professional's respect, and things will be fine. Certainly unions would collect more dues that way. Bad teachers would be paid more just like good teachers. The unions and their enablers in the US Democratic Party would simply ratchet expenditures on schools into the stratosphere, without requiring better outcomes. Government education: an oxymoron? No, the education is there. An education in drugs, delinquency, drinking, lifelong psychological neoteny. It's the system, stupid!

The Promise of the Intelligent Child

Common wisdom regarding the education of particularly gifted children is sometimes not very wise. Consider this article in the recent issue of Scientific American Mind.

IQ is just one ingredient among many in the recipe for success. Children thrive or struggle in school for a host of reasons apart from IQ, according to psychologist Franz Mönks of the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. These include motivation and persistence, social competence, and the support of family, educators and friends. Emphasizing the importance of persistence and hard work, for example, will help a child avoid the laziness trap. Gifted children also need intellectual challenges—to teach them how to work hard.

So far, so good. Of course highly intelligent children need to be trained in persistence and motivation. That is called executive function (EF), and in fact all children should be trained in EF by the time they are 6 or 7 years old. Failure to emphasize such training is educational malpractice. Yet it is rarely provided by government schools.

Highly gifted children solve the most varied thought problems faster and more thoroughly than those with more average aptitudes do. Because these children speed through the regular curriculum for their grade, they need additional intellectual stimulation while they wait for the rest of the kids to learn the basics. Two central approaches are used to satisfy the educational needs of such children: acceleration and enrichment. Acceleration means studying material that is part of the standard curriculum for older students. Enrichment involves learning information that falls outside the usual curriculum—say, investigating a topic in greater depth or finding out about new topics....

... mixed-age classes such as those found at Montessori schools prevent precocious students from leaving their regular class completely and yet may enable some acceleration for younger students. In some cases, gifted kids might be given the opportunity to, say, take an accelerated class in a subject that interests them while remaining in their regular classroom for other ­subjects.

When acceleration is not an option, or not a good one, enrichment can be. After all, school is not a race but an adventure in learning....Thus, providing opportunities for a child to study topics outside the regular curriculum can be at least as valuable as pushing him or her through the required material faster. Gifted kids might get the stimulation they require by, say, joining a chess club, a math or debate team, or another enrichment activity that engages their intellect. Another common technique is to enable a child to embark on an independent project or experiment under the guidance of a mentor.

...In the “revolving door” model developed by educational psychologists Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis of the University of Connecticut, a broad swath of above-average elementary school students—those who score in the top 15 to 25 percent on standardized tests—leave their regular classrooms for several hours to work individually on projects of their own choosing.

_SciAmMind

Unfortunately, few schools even bother to identify the top 10 or 15% of students, much less provide opportunities for them to pursue special projects or interests. In fact, schools cringe at the thought of identifying and assisting gifted children out of fear of being accused of political bias of various types. Gifted children are not distributed equally among various population groups.

Modern government schools are too often a project in dumbing all children down to the same level, which can be extremely dumb. What a waste, when society truly needs all the intelligence, imagination, innovation, and invention from its best and brightest.

Obstacles to better developing the human capital of our children includes

1. teachers' unions that enforce counter-productive contracts and restrict access to alternative educations,
2. corruption and nepotism in government school hiring and contracts,
3. overt indoctrination of teachers that emphasizes ideologically and politically biased curricula at the expense of basic preparation for the student's future life
4. and a long list of other corrupt complexities and parasitic processes .

[edited since initial publication for clarity]

If Barak Obama is Elected US President, Will Black Males Automatically Do Better In School?

There is a sense of optimism among many US blacks regarding the so-far successful candidacy of Barak Obama. This ecstatic burst of utopianism extends well beyond the US black community into Europe--even to Islamic terror organisations--but it is US blacks whose hopes are elevated to the most rapturous levels.

If Obama could do anything to help black males in the US, perhaps it would be worth it to elect him president just for that. What are the challenges?

In examining graduation rates, the report finds a national graduation rate for black males (47 percent) that is 28 percentage points lower than the graduation rate for white males (75 percent). In ten states, the difference in graduation rates for black males and white males is 30 percentage points or more...In addition to low graduation rates, black males also have "consistently low educational attainment levels, are more chronically unemployed and underemployed, are less healthy and have access to fewer health care resources, die much younger, and are many times more likely to be sent to jail for periods significantly longer than males of other racial/ethnic groups," according to the report. _Source_via_JoanneJacobs

As a group, black males are the chronic statistical laggards of US society. Can Barak Obama do anything at all to help them? The problem is vast and begins at a very early age.

In the country as a whole, the number of Black students in Special Education classes is disproportionately high and the number in Gifted/Talented programs is disproportionately low. The number of Black students, particularly Black male students, who receive out-of-school suspensions and are expelled is also disproportionately high. _Source_via_JoanneJacobs

A quick look at the chart above shows that as bad as young black males are doing in school, their sisters--born of the same parents, raised in the same homes, and eating the same foods--are actually doing fairly well.

Why are black girls doing reasonably well by comparison? Black girls, in contrast to the boys, get pretty good grades, go to college at decent rates and graduate from college at very good rates, earning degrees as twice the rate of men. _Source_via_JoanneJacobs

Black males are staggeringly over-represented in the prison population--44% of prisoners, and only 5% or so of the population (black males of prison age). The overall IQ average for American blacks is 85. That is 1 standard deviation below the overall mean of roughly 100. It very possible that the black male average IQ is even less than the overall US black average IQ, looking at comparative life success.

We know that executive function (EF) is more important than IQ for life success, although EF lacks a comparably accepted metric to IQ, so it is more difficult to compare EF statistics. EF can be improved by training (Posner, Rothbart), which should be done not much later than age 6. Even so, EF--like IQ--is highly heritable, so that there are limits to what training can do. Still, better trained than not.

Finally, if Barak Obama becomes US President next January, will the IQ's and EF's of black males magically and instantly normalise? Will we see abrupt drops in criminal and delinquent behaviour from black males? Will black males suddenly begin succeeding in school--from kindergarten through college? Will the exaggerated strut of young black males suddenly have a full complement of efficacy and competence backing it up?

Probably not. Not immediately, and not for a very long time. Then what will become of all of the magical expectations floating around the messianic candidacy of Barak Obama?

Obama has no substantive achievements, no particular experience or accomplishments to prepare him for the challenges he would face as chief executive of the world's only superpower. But never mind all that. Born of a white mother, raised largely by a white family, and only absorbing the victimist culture of black America secondhand--what has prepared Obama to pull black males out of the incredibly deep hole they are in?

EF vs. IQ? Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

People are always trying to pit EF against IQ, but given the choice wouldn't it be better to be strong in both areas? EF is executive function, which can be divided into two parts:

(1) ‘‘metacognitive executive functions”: problem solving, planning, concept formation, strategy development and implementation, controlling attention, working memory, and the like; that is, executive functions as they are usually understood in contemporary neuroscience; and (2) ‘‘emotional/ motivational executive functions”: coordinating cognition and emotion/motivation (that is, fulfilling biological needs according to some existing conditions). The first one depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal areas, whereas the second one is associated with orbitofrontal and medial frontal areas. _abstract_via_KevinMcGrew

Executive functions are frontal lobe controlled and highly heritable, although recent special curricula to train EF--using dramatic play and games--has been developed.

...kids in both traditional and experimental classrooms were given a battery of EF tests following two years of preschool. The tests were very difficult cognitive challenges that require kids to inhibit their automatic responses. The EF-trained children outperformed the traditionally educated kids on every single test. In fact, the differences were so dramatic after one year that some school officials opted out of the experiment to give all the kids the benefit of EF training.

But there's more. Psychologist Clancy Blair of Pennsylvania State University has shown that preschoolers with sharper executive capability also outperform their more traditional peers in basic skills, especially mathematics, when they hit kindergarten. In other words, as counterintuitive as it seems, early exposure to dramatic play and cognitive games better prepares kids for mastery of traditional academics. _Newsweek_via_GeniusBlog

The difference between the more heritable part of EF and the more trainable part of EF may lie in the difference between the two types of EF: 1. metacognitive, and 2. emotional/motivational. The metacognitive EF is located in the dorsolateral pre-frontal lobes and is perhaps less trainable than the emotional/motivational EF located in different parts of the frontal lobe (orbitofrontal and medial frontal).

IQ is also extremely important to high performance, but IQ without EF is not nearly so potent as the two combined.

...the parts of the brain's so-called executive function, which is linked to math ability in preschoolers, are "working memory" and "inhibitory control." Working memory is the ability to keep information or rules in mind while performing mental tasks. For instance, when children first learn arithmetic, they have to keep the rules of addition in mind when they add numbers together....Researchers found that a child whose IQ and executive functioning were both above average was three times more likely to succeed in math than a kid who simply had a high IQ.

...some tests of executive function can be used as training tools. A "backward digit span" test is a case in point: Person A recites a string of numbers, like 3, 6, 10, and person B has to respond with the same string, only in reverse order: 10, 6, 3. This task requires one to restrain his or her automatic inclination to mimic person A (inhibitory control), but also requires keeping the actual numbers in mind (working memory).

"Preschool curricula that focus on development of these skills and self-regulation are needed in a big way," [Clancy] Blair says. "There is a federal push to learn our numbers, our letters and our words, but a focus on the content, without a focus on the skills required to use that content, will end up with children being left behind." _SciAm

All of which brings us to the conclusions from a recent SciAm Mind article looking at "the roots of genius."

University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman examined final grades of 164 eighth-grade students, along with their admission to (or rejection from) a prestigious high school. By such measures, the researchers determined that scholarly success was more than twice as dependent on assessments of self-discipline as on IQ. What is more, they reported in 2005, students with more self-discipline—a willingness to sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain—were more likely than those lacking this skill to improve their grades during the school year. A high IQ, on the other hand, did not predict a climb in grades.

A 2007 study by Neubauer’s team of 90 adult tournament chess players similarly shows that practice and experience are more important to expertise than general intelligence is, although the latter is related to chess-playing ability. _SciAmMind

Executive Function is closely related to "Emotional Intelligence" in its emotional/motivational component, and is closely related to IQ in its metacognitive component. Kevin McGrew points out that that temporal processing/mental time-keeping (related to IQ) is related to the dorsolateral pre-frontal brain--just like the metacognitive EF!

Short term memory is also linked to both IQ and EF. Recent training to improve short term memory also had the effect of raising IQ scores!

Given all that information, one can easily understand the critical importance of early childhood training and environment. A high IQ can be very helpful in many fields, but a strong EF will always be very helpful, and will augment a high IQ if both are present. The focus for the early education of children should be on developing a strong EF, while allowing the child to explore in an active, hands-on manner. Development of emotions, motivations, cognitive skills, social skills, and a sense of efficacy and competence should be carried out simultaneously.

Update: For those who believe that all young children have ADD/ADHD and despair of ever teaching their child to pay attention, there is hope in research:

Inspired by skills training of monkeys, Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart at the University of Oregon have developed a five-day computer-based attention-training program for young children. After the training, six-year-olds show a pattern of activity in the anterior cingulate — a banana-shaped brain region that is ground zero for executive attention — similar to that of adults, along with a slight IQ boost and a marked gain in executive attention. _Source_and_Abstract

Take home message:

Strong improvement in executive attention and intelligence was found from ages 4 to 6 years. Both 4- and 6-year-olds showed more mature performance after the training than did the control groups....Overall, our data suggest that the executive attention network appears to develop under strong genetic control, but that it is subject to educational interventions during development. _Posner, Rothbart

In other words, the critical window for teaching EF to children is very close to the age 4 to 6 time period.

H/T Joanne Jacobs

Climate Models Struggling for Credibility

Barak Obama and John McCain want to bet the future of the US economy on the credibility of climate models. How stupid is that? Pretty stupid.

A recent paper in the Journal of Hydrological Sciences examines the reliability and validity of current climate models, and finds them deficient.

An update of the predictions of climate alarmist and Al Gore mentor, James Hansen, reveals that Hansen is batting 0 for 3 in his long term climate model predictions (see graphic above).

Just how badly are climate modelers missing the mark?

The IPCC and the models on which it premises its version of reality are wrong on rainfall. They are wrong on GHG concentrations and behavior. Models are wrong on Antarctica, on Andean snowpack, on Bangladesh, on ocean temperatures, and wrong on the Northwest Passage. Roy Spencer�s research appears to have affirmed that models are demonstrably and fatally wrong on the threshold question of climate sensitivity. _PGNROvia_Icecap

It makes you wonder why Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and the rest of the Democratic Party led US Congress are willing to force the US to walk the plank wrapped in anchor chains, based upon faulty climate models? The policies of the Pelosi/Boxer insure the US will be forced to depend upon OPEC oil imports for the foreseeable future.

Why do Americans put up with this garbage from their politicians? Who elected those fools?

H/T Tom Nelson and Icecap