Escape from High School Hell? A Hogwarts for Brainiacs

Davidson Academy looks a lot like a typical high school. It’s only when the students open their mouths that you realize that this is an exceptional place, a sort of Hogwarts for brainiacs. As these math whizzes, musical prodigies and chess masters pass in the hallway, the banter flies in witty bursts. Inside humanities classes, discussions spin into intellectual duels. _PS

It does not take a brainiac to understand that something has gone very wrong with US public education. But no one seems to know what to do to remedy a broken down and corrupt system of mis-education and fraudulent misuse of public funds.

Like interchangeable parts in an industrial machine, students [are] treated alike, regardless of their individual characteristics and needs. Square peg, meet round hole.

Putting kids together and sorting by age [creates] that dysfunctional creature, the “teenager.” Once [long ago,] teen-agers weren’t so much a demographic as adults-in-training. They worked, did farm chores, watched children and generally functioned in the real world. They got status and recognition for doing these things well, and they got shame and disapproval for doing them badly.

But once they were segregated by age in public schools, teens looked to their peers for status and recognition instead of to society at large. As Thomas Hine writes in The American Heritage, “Young people became teenagers because we had nothing better for them to do. We began seeing them not as productive but as gullible consumers.” _NYP

What we got from shutting away students by age was what is called by greedy corporate marketers, "the youth culture" or "the youth demographic." Thanks to public schools, the teen years are a breeding ground for delinquency, crime, bullying, drug abuse, shallowness, dark nihilistic sub-cultures -- almost anything except a healthy transition into adulthood.

So what about this mysterious "Hogwarts for Brainiacs?" And are there other similar places for youth to escape high school holding cells for more productive endeavours?

A rational society would know what to do with a kid like Taylor Wilson, especially now that America’s technical leadership is slipping and scientific talent increasingly has to be imported. But by the time Taylor was 12, both he and his brother, Joey, who is three years younger and gifted in mathematics, had moved far beyond their school’s (and parents’) ability to meaningfully teach them. Both boys were spending most of their school days on autopilot, their minds wandering away from course work they’d long outgrown.

...only 10 individuals had managed to build working fusion reactors. Taylor contacted one of them, Carl Willis, then a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate living in Albuquerque, and the two hit it off. But Willis, like the other successful fusioneers, had an advanced degree and access to a high-tech lab and precision equipment. How could a middle-school kid living on the Texas/Arkansas border ever hope to make his own star?

...The Davidson Academy is a subsidized public school for the nation’s smartest and most motivated students, those who score in the top 99.9th percentile on standardized tests. The school, which allows students to pursue advanced research at the adjacent University of Nevada–Reno, was founded in 2006 by software entrepreneurs Janice and Robert Davidson. Since then, the Davidsons have championed the idea that the most underserved students in the country are those at the top.

On the family’s first trip to Reno, even before Taylor and Joey were accepted to the academy, Taylor made an appointment with Friedwardt Winterberg, a celebrated physicist at the University of Nevada who had studied under the Nobel Prize–winning quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg. When Taylor told Winterberg that he wanted to build a fusion reactor, also called a fusor, the notoriously cranky professor erupted: “You’re 13 years old! And you want to play with tens of thousands of electron volts and deadly x-rays?” Such a project would be far too technically challenging and hazardous, Winterberg insisted, even for most doctoral candidates. “First you must master calculus, the language of science,” he boomed. “After that,” Tiffany said, “we didn’t think it would go anywhere. Kenneth and I were a bit relieved.” _PS

And so it began for young brainiac Taylor, at The Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada. Read more about Taylor's adventures in nuclear fusion at the Brainiac Hogwarts, in the story linked above.

As the founders of The Davidson Academy point out, "the most underserved students in the country are those at the top." This is particularly true if those at the top happen to be boys.

Every society (except for intentionally stagnant dictatorships like North Korea) needs its most talented young minds. But under a regime of political correctness, the bright and the exceptional are typically neglected or even stunted and abused by an overly regimented system.

It might even surprise you to know that billionaire Bill Gates has joined Barack Obama to become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Ratcheting up regimentation and central control over school systems is the last thing one would expect from someone commonly seen as a benevolent philanthropist. And yet instead of creating mind-stretching alternatives to the government's concentration camp approach to education, Bill Gates appears to be in league with uber-ideologue Barack Obama in priming all US schools for future programs in mass indoctrination.

It is a sad thing to see, indeed.

But it is unlikely that the underground trend toward alternative schooling is ready to lay down and die, simply because dumbed down US voters allowed the re-selection of a narcissistic national administrator of fanatical tendencies toward central control of everything.

In the race to the development of powerful decentralised tools of disruptive technologies, the greater the number of approaches and the larger the number of centres of innovation, the better.

When small groups of individuals are capable of providing for themselves virtually all of the goods and services which their governments claim to provide for them, the need for those governments becomes much less clear.

Why the US Engine of Economic Prosperity is Grinding to a Halt

...last year, 1 out of 2 bachelor's degree holders under 25 were jobless or unemployed. Since the recession, we've lost millions of high- and mid-wage jobs -- and replaced a handful of those with lower-wage ones. No wonder some young people are giving up entirely -- a 16.8 percent unemployment rate plus soaring student loan debt is more than a little discouraging. Yet old-guard academic leaders are still clinging to the status quo... _Atlantic

US economic growth has been almost flat for the past several years. Economists in governments, academia, think tanks, and non-governmental / inter-governmental agencies have debated the reasons for for economic slowdowns in the US, Europe, and other advanced nations -- without reaching a firm consensus.

But for the US, the reason for economic stagnation seems more than clear: In general, Americans have forgotten how to be innovative entrepreneurs, and rather than facilitating private sector entrepreneurship and innovation, the US government has become the greatest obstacle to private business and markets. Even the schools in the US have largely turned away from teaching entrepreneurial skills, choosing to enact policies of politically correct, collectivist indoctrination instead.

But there are exceptions:

Look no further than institutions like Babson College, consistently ranked #1 for entrepreneurship. Since current president Len Schlesigner signed on -- in the midst of the Great Recession, no less -- Babson's faculty has pioneered its own teaching method, applying entrepreneurial thinking and hands-on learning to every aspect of campus life. Unlike other collegiate leaders, Schlesinger saw the recession as an opportunity to expand. With Babson faculty on board, he ambitiously coordinated stakeholders on and off campus, and formed departmental task forces to review curricula.

Today, every freshman who walks into Babson goes immediately to work with a team to create, develop, launch and manage a new business (and they donate their profits to nonprofits). Students spend just 14 hours a week in class -- the other 154 are spent elsewhere, in special interest housing or working on student-led initiatives. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle, not a course.

Programs like Babson's are worth emulating not merely because they create the next generation of business owners and freelancers (independent workers are an especially fast-growing category). These programs enable students to think entrepreneurially -- to seize opportunity, take risks and create wealth. Simply put, entrepreneurship education gives young people a toolkit to apply their field of study to the real world.

It also makes them more employable. A recent report from Junior Achievement Innovation Initiative and Gallup found that both employers and employees believe America's workforce must become more entrepreneurial if the U.S. is to remain competitive -- 95 and 96 percent, respectively. Only one in 10 believed entrepreneurship was an innate skill. _Atlantic

Entrepreneurship and innovation need to be taught from the earliest ages, in order to make them second nature. Once, that was true for large cross sections of American youth. It is no longer the case.

Part of The Dangerous Child approach to education, is teaching the child at least three ways of supporting himself economically by the age of 18. Entrepreneurial skills come in handy for just about any occupation, from the sciences & professions all the way to vocational occupations and manual labour jobs. Many people have become millionaires by running janitorial companies, for a mundane example . . . . But the same principle applies from the top to the bottom of occupations.

Many of the world's richest and most powerful people dropped out of high school or college, using knowledge and skills obtained and developed in the real world.

And who can blame them, when so many schools are failing students so badly these days?

Ultimate Resource -- Why innovation is so important

Economic prosperity comes from human energy, human innovation, and the human ability to create networks of exchange and trade.

But according to modern media, academia, and politicians, such practical skills should be secondary to enlightened political leadership -- as personified by Obama, for example.

It is okay for the dull segment of society to hold such beliefs, but if everyone feels that way, the society is on the fast road to third world status. Perhaps that is the intent of the leaders of modern government, media, and academia.

But that is their problem. Our problem is how to generate prosperity in spite of government, popular culture and media, and academia.

A Revolution Made of Wood?

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), which is produced by processing wood pulp, is being hailed as the latest wonder material. Japan-based Pioneer Electronics is applying it to the next generation of flexible electronic displays. IBM is using it to create components for computers. Even the US army is getting in on the act, using it to make lightweight body armour and ballistic glass.

To ramp up production, the US opened its first NCC factory in Madison, Wisconsin, on 26 July, marking the rise of what the US National Science Foundation predicts will become a $600 billion industry by 2020.

...NCC will replace metal and plastic car parts and could make nonorganic plastics obsolete in the not-too-distant future, says Phil Jones, director of new ventures and disruptive technologies at the French mineral processing company IMERYS. "Anyone who makes a car or a plastic bag will want to get in on this," he says. _NS

A new "miracle material," nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), offers incredible commercial and technological opportunity, yet it can be made out of waste sawdust, twigs, and tree branches. It is a true "garbage to gold" story.

[Nanocrystalline cellulose is] transparent but it also has eight times the tensile strength of stainless steel due to its tightly packed array of microscopic needle-like crystals. Even better, it's incredibly cheap.

"It is the natural, renewable version of a carbon nanotube at a fraction of the price," says Jeff Youngblood of Purdue University's NanoForestry Institute in West Lafayette, Indiana. _New Scientist

By replacing more expensive materials such as plastics, steel, ballistic glass, body armour, etc.... NCC will impact economies in unanticipated ways.

But this is exactly the kind of substitution of cheap and abundant materials in place of more expensive and rare materials, which Julian Simon discusses in his free online book: Ultimate Resource II.

And it is this type of innovation and substitution which makes most prophecies of resource scarcity doom obsolete.

Production of NCC starts with "purified" wood, which has had compounds such as lignin and hemicellulose removed. It is then milled into a pulp and hydrolysed in acid to remove impurities before being separated and concentrated as crystals into a thick paste that can be applied to surfaces as a laminate or processed into strands, forming nanofibrils. These are hard, dense and tough, and can be forced into different shapes and sizes. When freeze-dried, the material is lightweight, absorbent and good at insulating.

"The beauty of this material is that it is so abundant we don't have to make it," says Youngblood. "We don't even have to use entire trees; nanocellulose is only 2 nanometres long. If we wanted we could use twigs and branches or even sawdust. We are turning waste into gold." _NewScientist

Look Ma: No Water! Non-Hydraulic Fracking Extends Energy Revolution

More:

Brian Westenhaus takes a closer look at waterless GASFRAC of Calgary

Brian Wang also takes a look at water-free fracking

New methods of fracturing deep source rock promise to change the face of the tight oil & gas energy revolution. Eliminating the need to use water should minimise concerns about earthquakes and water contamination.

Originally developed for shale oil extraction in geographic areas that were far too cold to use water due to freezing, Non-Hydraulic Extraction has recently emerged to be asserted as a cheaper and more effective extraction method that does not affect groundwater at all.

Chimera Energy Corp has put in place their procedure for engineering this new method for mass production, patenting, licensing and sales. For a description of how Non-Hydraulic Extraction works, high-speed broadband users may visit
www.zerowaterfracking.com.

All other Internet speed connections may visit www.chimeraenergyusa.com/investors.html. _FP

More from Russ Steele:

A planned shale gas drilling project in New York state has drawn global attention for its aim to make use of a waterless form of hydraulic fracking – a new technique designed to reduce the pollution associated with controversial natural gas drilling processes.

According to an industry report, the project is focused on using a technology that pumps a thick gel made from propane into the ground as opposed to using traditional methods of hydraulic fracking that make use of a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to extract natural gas reserves from deep shale formations. Unlike traditional technologies, the gel from the new liquefied propane gas (LPG) fracking method reverts to vapor while still underground, and as a result returns to the surface in a recoverable form. _Russ Steele

As technological innovation discovers better ways to discover and recover new energy supplies, we will always be confronted with new problems and new objections.

But the answer to obstacles is not to lie down and whine, as faux environmentalists are wont to do. Rather the answer is to get busy and devise solutions and viable work-arounds.

"Have You Always Wanted to Change the World?"

The world has produced a handful of truly disruptive individuals for the current generation of change. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Burt Rutan, and Ray Kurzweil immediately come to mind. Many others who belong in that category prefer to remain out of the limelight. Others, such as Craig Venter and Dean Kamen, are on the brink of membership.

But one who is often overlooked -- but shouldn't be -- is Peter Diamandis, of X Prize fame. Here are excerpts from an interview with Diamandis, published in Wired.com:

Ted Greenwald: Have you always wanted to change the world?

Peter Diamandis: No. My first ambition was to get off the world. My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species. I believe we have a moral obligation to back up the biosphere, take it off-planet, and give ourselves the safety of ubiquity. Ultimately it’s what we do. We have the exploration gene.

...A child of the Apollo era, Diamandis grew up expecting the US government to colonize outer space. But decades of NASA timidity eventually convinced him that the only way to get off the planet was to build a private space industry. His breakthrough idea was to resurrect a brilliant notion from the early 20th century: Offer substantial cash prizes for achieving milestones of flight. Civilian aerospace would grow contest by contest, innovation by innovation.

It worked. The $10 million Ansari X Prize resulted in the first repeatable private flight to the edge of space and became the first in a slew of aerospace competitions. Diamandis then applied the same method to other issues like fuel efficiency, oil spill remediation, and health care costs. The upshot was a series of breakthroughs and a mini-boom in innovation-spurring competitions.

Greenwald: When did you give up on the government’s ability to open the space frontier?

Diamandis: I can pinpoint the moment. The 500th anniversary of Columbus was in 1992. The first Bush administration was supposed to start a massive effort to go back to the Moon and on to Mars. It fizzled. That’s when I got it: This was never going to happen. Any time a new Congress came in, it would cut NASA’s budget. Commercial industry was the only way to generate long-term funding for bold, risky projects. I thought, how can I create the economic engine that will open space regardless of the government’s ups and downs? That’s when I cofounded Zero Gravity, which let customers experience weightlessness on parabolic airplane flights.

Greenwald: How does experiencing weightlessness drive space exploration?

Diamandis: Two forces have opened most frontiers: tourism and resources. People go for the experience or for the gold, spices, and tobacco. I had tried to get on NASA’s zero-g plane and couldn’t. I thought there must be a market for this, so in May 1993 I partnered with NASA engineer Ray Cronise and Byron Lichtenberg, a friend who had flown two Space Shuttle missions, and we raised $500,000. We walked into Federal Aviation Administration’s office and pitched the idea. They said the regulations wouldn’t allow an airplane to do parabolic flight and with passengers whose seat belts were unstrapped. I said that’s bullshit. I proceeded on an 11-year effort to get permission from the Federal Aviation Administration. We finally became operational in October 2004, and today we’ve flown 300 flights for 12,000 customers, most famously Stephen Hawking.

Greenwald: Where did the idea of incentive prizes come from?

Diamandis: It came from Charles Lindbergh’s memoir, The Spirit of St. Louis. In 1919 a hotel owner named Raymond Orteig put up a $25,000 prize for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Nine teams spent $400,000 to try to win. Lindbergh had the least experience. He was called the flying fool. But he won, and within three years there was a 30-fold increase in passenger air traffic. Aviation didn’t get easier, but his flight changed people’s belief in what was possible. I thought, this is how I’m going to get my butt into space! How many things don’t happen because people don’t believe they can? Getting the public to change its beliefs is the underpinning of an X Prize: demonstration leading to paradigm change.

Greenwald: What contests do you now have in development?

Diamandis: Perhaps the most audacious and important one is the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. It’s a $10 million challenge aimed at developing version 0.9 of the Star Trek tricorder, the medical device that allowed Dr. McCoy to assess someone’s health status. By 2020 the US will be short 91,000 doctors. There’s no way we can educate enough doctors to make up that shortfall, and other countries are far worse off. You’ll talk to this device, cough on it or do a skin prick, and it’ll diagnose 15 disease states more accurately than a board-certified doctor.

Greenwald: What persuaded you that the world is headed toward an era of unprecedented abundance?

Diamandis: As I watched what small teams could accomplish with powerful, change-the-world technology, it struck me that the world’s biggest challenges are also its biggest market opportunities. Multi-hundred-billion-dollar industries will form at the leading edge of exponentially developing technologies. Think about AI and robotics. Each one of these fields will displace and reinvent existing billion-dollar industries. We’re on the verge of reinventing life. In the next five years, people will program living systems the way we program computers today. I became utterly convinced that abundance is where we’re going to end up. That’s the direction we’ve been heading for 100 or 200 years. A Maasai tribesman in Kenya today has better mobile communications than President Reagan had 25 years ago. If they’re on a smartphone, they have access to more information than President Clinton did 15 years ago. Their Google is as good as Larry Page’s.

Greenwald: Could anything derail us from this path?

Diamandis: Yes: the risk aversion we’ve developed as a society. Lawyers have ubiquitous power. If someone is always to blame, if every time something goes wrong someone has to be punished, people quickly stop taking risks. Without risks, there can’t be breakthroughs. I got this from Internet law expert Jonathan Zittrain: We’ve gone from a society where if something wasn’t prohibited then it was legal to a society where if something isn’t explicitly permitted it’s illegal. In the early days of aviation, you could do anything you wanted as long as it wasn’t illegal. Now the laws are so extensive that they say, “Show me where it’s allowed.” _Peter Diamandis in Wired

Read the entire interview at the link above.

Disruptive individuals are generally driven to bring important change to the world. This drive is not necessarily something that they have ever thought through, nor have they necessarily come to understand it clearly. And without that drive, it is unlikely that they would have accomplished even a fraction of what they have done.

The intelligence was always there, as was the executive function and future orientation. The persistence and grit was there. But the importance of a focused drive cannot be overstated.

Diamandis has functioned more as a facilitator than as an inventor or discoverer. In this complex age, truly skilled facilitators are extremely valuable -- and are well compensated in the corporate arena.

Freelance facilitators can have a tough go of it at times, but if the grit and drive are there, they are likely to find their way into a generative -- if not outright disruptive -- niche.

Private Space Launch: Enter the Virgin

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has decided to enter the orbital satellite launch field, using air-launch technology already developed for its sub-orbital space tourism project. Interestingly, asteroid-mining venture Planetary Resources is one of the investors in the Virgin project (more).

Virgin Galactic Orbital Air Launch

The announcement isn’t a huge surprise, as it’s long been assumed the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft would serve as a launch platform for other space-bound vehicles beyond SpaceShipTwo. Keeping the naming of its space vehicles relatively simple, LauncherOne is capable of carrying up to 500 pounds (225 kilograms) to low earth orbit for less than $10 million.

“Virgin Galactic’s goal is to revolutionize the way we get to space,” Branson said at Farnborough. “Now, LauncherOne is bringing the price of satellite launch into the realm of affordability for innovators everywhere, from start-ups and schools to established companies and national space agencies. It will be a critical new tool for the global research community, enabling us all to learn about our home planet more quickly and affordably.” _Wired

Also, see Brian Wang's take on the Virgin Galactic - Planetary Resources teamup

The Stratolaunch air launch system pictured above is a much larger version of an air-launch to orbit system, allowing for heavier payloads. Like the Virgin system, Stratolaunch allows for a very versatile approach to orbital insertions. The huge carrier craft serves as the "first stage" of the launch system, carrying the launch craft to altitude and providing a wider range of opportunistic launch attitudes than is conveniently possible for fixed launch sites.

In other recent space-related news:

The US Defense Department's DARPA is resuming efforts to develop a hypersonic "X-plane (HX). DARPA's plans are ambitious, and will require very rapid innovation and development in order to meet its schedule -- achieving a rocket launched hypersonic craft by the year 2016.

Wired

The hypersonic X-plane (HX) will launch using a disposable rocket stack, unlike previous models which have used space launch rockets, then begin its hypersonic glide. The plan is for the "highly manoeuvrable" vehicle to be recoverable, meaning it will either return to Earth with the help of a parachute, or possibly land on a runway.

Darpa is reigniting the hypersonic flight research with the intention of launching future missions ranging from "space access to survivable, time-critical transport [troop deployment] to conventional prompt global strike." _Wired

Wired

Development of the Skylon spaceplane has passed a critical milestone following tests on the key component for its Sabre engine.

The engine, being developed by Reaction Engines Ltd, looks set to revolutionise not only space travel but also air transport around the world.

It promises to allow a new generation of aircraft to fly from one side of the Earth to the other, e.g. the UK to Australia, in just four hours instead of the 22 or so needed nowadays.

But it will also provide sufficient boost to send the Skylon spaceplane into orbit where it could deliver satellites or link up with the International Space Station.

What makes Sabre different from other aircraft engines is a revolutionary ability to switch from an air-breathing mode to that of a rocket engine.

This hybrid function will allow it to power aircraft at up to five times the speed of sound within the atmosphere or directly into Earth orbit at 25 times the speed of sound. _Wired

Brian Wang has more on this development.

Hybrid engines of this type may provide a crucial weight savings in the early stages of the development of workable hypersonic craft. Engineers need to be cautious in avoiding excessive complexity in this new type of engine. KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) is the key, as far as it is possible.

The type of craft pictured above has been discussed by Brian Wang in multiple articles. It is powered in multiple ways: by chemical rocket, air-breathing propulsion, by MHD, and by dense plasma focus fusion -- all of which should combine to allow it to travel at very high velocities. It will require significant development of several components, including the focus fusion module, before it becomes practical.

Parts of the above posting were excerpted and adapted from an earlier article published on Al Fin Potpourri

Ideally, all components of the system would be reusable, to save on costs. There are several tradeoffs to be made in terms of launch platforms, launch attitudes, propulsion strategies: pure vs. hybrid vs multiple etc., numbers of propulsion stages, orbital vs sub-orbital flight, method of terrestrial return, and so on.

Hypersonic flight inside the Earth's atmosphere is very punishing, physically. Better types of outer covering materials are needed to provide greater durability for multiple flights. Alternatively, inexpensive spray-on outer skins may be applied prior to each flight, which will naturally ablate in the course of the flight.

An earlier Al Fin article on this topic

Peter Thiel Aims to Misbehave

This article is cross-posted from Al Fin, the Next Level

Peter Thiel is a successful entrepreneur, visionary, and venture capitalist. But according to many tenured ivory tower professors, Peter Thiel has become "the enemy." One of Thiel's recent "investments" involves sponsoring youth under the age of 20 years old, in the starting of their own entrepreneurial enterprises. The young people must forego a college education during the time that they are engaged in their intensive entrepreneurial training and startup experience.

Interestingly, one of Thiel's young hopefuls -- 19 year old Dale J. Stephens -- has embarked on an entrepreneurial campaign in opposition to an excessive dependency on a college education. The excerpt below is taken from Stephens' article in CNN: College is a waste of time:

I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution. For me, that's not an issue; I believe higher education is broken.

I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.

...College is expensive. The College Board Policy Center found that the cost of public university tuition is about 3.6 times higher today than it was 30 years ago, adjusted for inflation. In the book "Academically Adrift," sociology professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa say that 36% of college graduates showed no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning or writing after four years of college. Student loan debt in the United States, unforgivable in the case of bankruptcy, outpaced credit card debt in 2010 and will top $1 trillion in 2011.

... Learning by doing -- in life, not classrooms -- is the best way to turn constant iteration into true innovation. We can be productive members of society without submitting to academic or corporate institutions.

... We who take our education outside and beyond the classroom understand how actions build a better world. We will change the world regardless of the letters after our names. _College is a waste of time

Brave words, which will need to be backed up by braver actions. Stephens will receive $100,000 and access to expert advice and assistance in reaching his entrepreneurial goals. Stephens has already been signed by Penguin Press to write his first book, "Hacking Your Education."

What is most interesting about this phenomenon is that Thiel's initial investment is spurring a downstream expansion in interest in entrepreneurial alternatives to mainstream college education. And this downstream expansion is likely to spawn further downstream expansion, and so on etc. . . .

Wise people understand that school is not the education. Life is the education. The efforts of modern society to place emphasis on the educational effect of schools at the expense of the educational effect of life, has led to a society of Peter Pans and Cinderellas, perpetual incompetent adolescents of the psychologically neotenate variety.

Peter Thiel aims to change that emphasis back, in an effort to help save at least a few youth from wasting their time and lives. Peter Thiel aims to misbehave. And he is hoping that the attitude will be catching.

A Fear That There Is Enough Oil Left for Centuries More

This article was first published on Al Fin Energy

Rather than running out of oil and/or gas any time soon, I think the bigger danger is that we have more than enough oil and other fossil fuel energy resources to sustain us for quite a few decades if not centuries. Any efficiency and/or conservation of energy, combined with some replacement of fossil fuel energy with renewables than these finite resources, will extend hydrocarbon resources quite a few additional decades. _George Wuerthner, Ecologist

When M. King Hubbert offered his simplistic analysis of regional and global oil depletion back in the 1950s and 1960s, most people didn't know any better. Bestselling books such as "Silent Spring" and "The Population Bomb" were predicting the near-term collapse of the global ecosystem and global civilisation. According to those now-or-soon-to-be decomposing prophets of doom, we shouldn't even be here discussing the topic of our future. And yet, here we are.

The modern doom-equivalents of Rachel Carson and King Hubbert are warning of global collapse of civilisation and the ecosystem, due to peak oil and / or carbon hysteria / climate change. Some things never change, particularly the attraction of humans to doom and predictions of doom.

But why was Hubbert wrong, and why are his modern-day disciples just as wrong?

The problem for anyone trying to predict future resource availability is discerning the initial starting amount of a resource such as oil when one cannot readily see or gauge accurately the resource. This lack of transparency presents huge opportunities for error, in particular, erring on the side of under estimation of the total resource. And time has consistently shown that under estimation of total resource is the most common error, and as we shall see this is exactly the error that Hubbert made with regards to his estimates of our remaining oil and gas reserves. Hubbert can be forgiven because new technology can make previously unavailable resources accessible, even less expensive to exploit. In fact, he even anticipated this to a degree in his paper, another point that Hubbert’s admirers today tend to overlook.

...Hubbert grossly underestimated total oil supplies, and thus his predicted high point of the bell curve deviates significantly from reality. Indeed, there is good evidence we haven’t even reached the top of the bell curve, much less past it in 1970.

...Predicting future oil and gas supplies is fraught with dangers. Many factors influence oil extraction other than geological limits. A rapid shift to renewable energy, a decline in global economies, new technological innovation, energy conservation, a high oil price that dampens consumer demand, political instability and wars all significantly affects energy production, thus when and how “peak” is achieved. Many believe a more realistic model rather than a bell curve is a rapid run up in production to a spike or series of spikes followed by a long drawn out plateau and production decline with ultimately more oil production occurring after the apparent peak, but less rapidly than prior to the “peak” which of course wouldn’t really be a peak in the traditional sense of the word.

...Hubbert estimated that the “ultimate potential reserve of 150 billion barrels of crude oil for both the land and offshore areas of the United States.” Hubbert’s estimate was based on the crude oil “initially present which are producible by methods now in use.” Using the 150 billion barrel estimate he predicted US Peak Oil occurring in 1965. But to be cautious, he also used a slightly higher figure of 200 billion barrels which produced a peak in oil production around 1970—the figure that Hubbert advocates like to use to demonstrate that Hubbert was prophetic in his predictions. However, by 2006 the Department of Energy estimated that domestic oil resources still in the ground (in-place) total 1,124 billion barrels. Of this large in-place resource, 400 billon barrels is estimated to be technically recoverable with current technology.

...Obviously if Hubbert were correct, and we had reached Peak Oil in 1970 (point where we had consumed half of our oil) and we started out with only 200 billion, we could not have nearly 200-400 billion still left to extract—and total resources are likely even higher than this figure.

It’s also important to keep in mind that “technologically recoverable” resources are not the “total” amount of oil thought to exist in the US, so the total in-place reserves are much, much larger. It does not take a lot of imagination to predict that many of these oil resources will eventually be unlocked with new technological innovation thus added to the total “proven reserves.” _Counterpunch

Read the entire piece, for a better understanding of the author's claims that planet Earth has at least several decades of oil remaining. [Note: The author of the piece suffers from carbon hysteria, and is quite worried that there may indeed be enough oil left for centuries of use.]

Everything in the piece above has been discussed on Al Fin Energy at one time or another. But the Counterpunch article is an interesting refresher piece, counter-acting much of the daily drone of doom coming from peak oil cathedrals and seminaries.

What attracts otherwise normal people to these religions of doom and catastrophe? You may as well ask what attracts otherwise normal people to smoking, excess drinking, drug abuse, or overeating. Humans are just barely advanced apes. They are apable of language and rudimentary reasoning but are often not capable of overcoming innate weaknesses and counterproductive instincts.

Doomers will feed relentlessly on doom, at the cost of problems that might have been solved, and essentials that might have been produced. The rest of us have work to do.

Micro-Brewed Explosives: The Renewable Choice in Demolition

The techniques that make synthetic biology such a powerful tool for positive innovation may be also used for destruction. The military’s new search for biologically brewed explosives threatens to reopen an avenue of research that has been closed for 37 years: biotechnology developed for use in war...Because explosives-producing microbes in themselves would not be weapons, they would not appear to violate the convention [Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention]. _Slate

It is nice to see that under President Obama, even state sponsored violence is becoming greener and more natural. But already, President Obama's enemies are questioning his wisdom by conjuring up the wicked spirit of proliferation:

The quality that makes microbes so powerful will also make them difficult to contain: A single microscopic cell, acquired by a criminal or enemy, could in principle multiply to fill a vat within a few days. _Slate

Microbial genes can be programmed to produce a wide range of products that are useful to humans. From antiquity, humans have used microbes in the production of foods and beverages. More recently, microbes are being programmed for a wider array of synthetic products.

In 2000, when Weiss gave talks in MIT's biology department, the weirdness of this biology/engineering synthesis was apparent. “When I spoke of circuits that could turn genes on and off, some probably thought I had fallen out of space,” he says. “Those days, we did not speak the same language. Now we have developed a hybrid vocabulary.”

... Weiss's goal was to build a plasmid, a custom-made DNA sequence that can be replicated easily. Knight, an electrical engineer, aimed to pare down the genome and repurpose the cell to produce things it was not originally designed to make -- plastics, say, or fuels. _Science

Weiss and Knight developed a Registry of Standard Biological Parts to assist researchers in designing programmable genetic circuits, for the custom designing of microbes. The idea is to take synthetic biology, and "put it on steroids."

Most people like the idea of using microbes to produce insulin and other life-saving drugs. Few people object to the idea of using microbes to produce fuels, plastics, and high value chemicals for industry. But die-hard enemies of President Obama cannot seem to accept his ingenious ideas for micro-brewing explosives with convenient and prolific microbes!

Picture, if you will, bombs and cruise missiles which when they reach their targets do not explode. Instead, they release a fine mist of microbes in nutrient suspension, which coat the surfaces of everything in the vicinity of the target. These microbes can then proceed to proliferate wildly, in exponential fashion. They grow. And grow. And grow.

What do these "weaponised" microbes become? Whatever you want! They could become food -- cheese or wine, for example. Or they could become biofuels if you'd rather. New age weapons designers would have their pick of a wide array of breeds of microbe.

Very wicked weapons designers might send microbial colonies capable of assembling and detonating a nuclear weapon out of soil, rock, and junk parts. Such micro-weapon nukes may very well violate a treaty or convention. But what about microbe colonies that first disperse and grow to cover an entire city, then synthesise enough conventional explosives to destroy the entire metropolis in one fell swoosh? Military lawyers may wish to burn the midnight oil before signing off on those plans.

Regardless of eventual application, micro-brewed weapons certainly represent a new dawn in renewable military applications. Mr. Obama can be forgiven many of his more questionable decisions in the light of his enlightened choice for the Pentagon to go renewable.

A World With a Human Population Average IQ of 200 Points?

For simplicity, imagine that instead of our current mean IQ score of 100, humans had an average score of 200. (Experts say this isn't a true "doubling" of intelligence because the IQ scale doesn't start at zero — and furthermore, the test isn't actually designed to yield a score as high as 200 — but we will set aside these qualifications for the purpose of argument.)...there's a very good chance that higher-functioning brains would help us invent technologies to fix some of our bigger problems. Haier explained that just as a team of 100 engineers is more likely to come up with a remarkable innovation than a team of 10 engineers (because there's more total brainpower working on the job), having 7 billion "geniuses" on Earth would likely lead to solutions to some currently intractable issues. _Twice as Intelligent

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Considering the reality of modern demographic change, indulging in the fantasy of a world of smarter people seems dangerously close to escapism. But if we can picture enough important benefits of having a smarter population, perhaps we can motivate ourselves enough to make it happen?

"When the brain mechanisms that underlie intelligence are understood, it is theoretically possible that those mechanisms can be tweaked to increase IQ," said Richard Haier, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at the University of California at Irvine who studies intelligence. For the first time in human history, he said, "the concept that intelligence can be increased is reasonable."

...Haier believes greater intelligence, which he defines as the ability to learn faster and remember more, would be highly advantageous on an individual scale.
"Experiencing the world with a higher IQ might be more interesting for most people. They might enjoy reading more, might have a greater depth of appreciation for certain things and more insight into life," he told Life's Little Mysteries.

Furthermore, IQs of 200 would allow us to pursue activities and careers that most interest us, not just those we're mentally capable of, Haier said. We could master new languages in a few weeks, for example, or become brain surgeons.

Smarter humans would also be healthier and longer-living, the scientists said, because they'd have a better grasp of what behavior leads to these attributes.

...Even when scientists finally do discover the mechanism for ramping up intelligence, it is highly improbable that everyone would be given an immediate IQ boost. The "haves" would surely benefit from the neuroscience research more than the "have-nots," and this invites a further line of inquiry. As Hunt put it, "Suppose that in some future society, part of the population, say 10 percent, became hugely intelligent, while the rest stayed where we are now or even dropped behind a bit. What would that do to society?" _Twice as Intelligent

That is the most likely future, assuming that genuine intelligence boosting technology is perfected. Once highly intelligent people -- assuming they are emotionally balanced -- learn to cooperate in solving problems, most of them are not likely to want to baby-sit the Idiocracy. It could turn into quite a problem, but not an insoluble one.

Brain Imaging and IQ Video with Richard Haier, UC Irvine A nice overview.

Haier and Jung's Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory of Intelligence PDF

Haier and Jung et al Neuroanatomy of Creativity Abstract

When Everyone is Thinking the Same Thing, Someone is Not Thinking

He, who has learned to doubt and to ask questions where the norms forbid it, can never stop the habit. As such, every creative person is building bridges to those masses of people who are tied up helplessly by the pressures of peers and society. His is a step out and above the group. And however strong the creative person is enchained by conventions, he has unshackled himself on his way as a free and autonomous personality. As such, he may have cleared a new path for his group, his society and perhaps humankind in order to transform culture and to create space for other free personalities who want to set new goals.--Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943)
_Tahoe is Walking On

The established order is always threatened by innovation and creative ideas. That is why the persons who display a great deal of creative talent and potential for disruptive thought are generally either co-opted, marginalised, or disposed of in some way.

The lopsided ideological nature of modern media and the modern professoriate and intellectual celebrities, suggests that almost everyone is thinking the same thing. Which means that almost no one is actually thinking.

A lot of people are emoting, and intuiting. But few are thinking.

And that is a huge problem, when modern societies are faced with the huge problems of debt and demography, among others.

If you are wondering what people and societies can do to get themselves out of this groupthink conundrum, this would be a good place to start.