Improving on Garbology in an Idiocracy

Remember the "Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505?" If modern garbology tycoon David Stoller has his way, there will never be a great garbage avalanche. Stoller aims to shrink-wrap garbage in a clean and efficient manner, so that the garbage can later be used to generate energy through plasmas or fuel cells.

TransLoad's equipment compresses tons of garbage into dense cylindrical bales and seals them hermetically in several layers of plastic film. The company intends to load those bales into boxcars, and ship them to its landfills.

TransLoad claims that the combination of compaction, shrink-wrapping and rail-based shipping makes the system cost-effective and eco-friendly.

....Compressing the garbage at a rate of 1,400 to 1,600 pounds per cubic yard prevents liquid from pooling in the bales, which in turn prevents putrefaction and foul odors.

Sealing the waste in impermeable plastic prevents the escape of groundwater-polluting leachate associated with standard landfill storage.

And shipping by rail eliminates the need for greenhouse gas-emitting trucks, a point the company's PR firm is quick to emphasize in the wake of Al Gore's Oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth.

....A variety of conversion technologies, including ones that use landfill gas to generate electricity, are being explored by garbologists in Europe and the United States.

Thompson notes that several bioreactors are already in operation across the country. And a company called Geoplasma plans to build a facility in St. Lucie County, Florida, that will use plasma arc technology to convert waste into gas that can be used to generate electricity.

Stoller looks forward to the day when TransLoad's bale-stuffed landfills will function as enormous trash-powered fuel cells.

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Rather than a health hazard, garbage may come to represent a rich new source of "renewable" energy. One small step toward sustainability, when combined with optimal recycling technologies.

Lighting Your Future Life

Interactive lighting. More lumens for less power cost. A brighter world that costs less to light.

Below is a look at the magic crystal ball.

Hat tips to Impact Lab and Gizmodo.

Islam Means Never Having to Say You Are Sorry

While decadent westerners are expected to apologise for slavery hundreds of years back, muslims never need to apologise. Not for modern day slavery in Sudan, Chad, Mauritania, etc. Not for brave suicide bombers who target women and children. And especially not for 9/11! Allah forbid it!

No, 9/11 is to be celebrated first, then denied. Behind doors and off-camera it is celebrated still. On camera, it is denied.

Watch the video and note how similar the conspiracy theories of islamic terror apologists are to those of western left-academics and right wing-nut jobs. Of course GW Bush personally placed each of 4,000 explosive devices to precisely demolish the twin towers. What a pity he could not time them to come down simultaneously? Perhaps next time?

Taking Science Off Centre Stage--Mike Hulme

Strict conformity to the climate orthodoxy--catastrophic anthropogenic global warming--among scientific accolytes and priests, is necessary to prevent a runaway heresy among the ignorant rabble of the public.

We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Mike Hulme for stating the issue in a way that even the less intelligent of the proles can understand.

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.

It has been labelled "post-normal" science. ... The danger of a "normal" reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow. ... If only climate change were such a phenomenon and if only science held such an ascendancy over our personal, social and political life and decisions. In fact, in order to make progress about how we manage climate change we have to take science off centre stage. ...

What matters about climate change is not whether we can predict the future with some desired level of certainty and accuracy; it is whether we have sufficient foresight, supported by wisdom, to allow our perspective about the future, and our responsibility for it, to be altered. All of us alive today have a stake in the future, and so we should all play a role in generating sufficient, inclusive and imposing knowledge about the future. Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.

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Of course we cannot trust normal scientists to deal with this most important issue of our day. Normal scientists believe that science leads to truth. We know there is no such thing as truth--there is only what we know to be correct. Those of us who know, must guard the controlling power jealously, to prevent heresy--even well-meaning heresy.

Richard Dawkins' recent bestseller, "The Global Warming Delusion", is a good example of what happens when the wrong sort of person begins to expound on orthodoxy. It simply cannot be allowed any longer.

To end this official orthodox bull, I give you this link to a video by Sally Baliunas, a well meaning accolyte, but one who must soon be disciplined by the orthodoxy. You are forbidden to watch the video. It is enough to understand that such heresies exist.

Apologies to wikipedia and Richard Dawkins. Hat tip to Greenie Watch.

The Global Warming Delusion, by Richard Dawkins

The Global Warming Delusion
From AlFinipedia, the free encyclopedia


The Global Warming Delusion is a non-fiction book by British ethologist Richard Dawkins, Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

In the book, Dawkins argues that belief in anthropogenic global warming qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's observation that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called global warming."[1]

The Global Warming Delusion was ranked #2 on the Amazon.com bestsellers' list in November 2006.[2][3][4] In early December 2006, it reached #4 in the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list.[5] As of February 14, 2007, it is listed at #8, after 20 weeks on the list.[6]

Dawkins writes that The Global Warming Delusion contains four liberating messages:

* Global Warming Heretics can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
* scientific theories are superior to a "Global Warming hypothesis" — the illusion of anthropogenic warming — in explaining the world climate.
* Children should not be indoctrinated by their teacher's political and climate delusions.
* Climate Heretics and Independent Thinkers should be proud, not apologetic, because demanding valid evidence is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.[1]

It seems that even non-religious people feel compelled to invent new religions--a compulsive delusionogenesis that lies hidden in the genetic subconscious. It is amusing that those who ridicule others for their religious delusions, find themselves enmeshed within delusions of their own. Oblivious within their personal web of deceit, they see themselves above such things.

Apologies to Wikipedia and Richard Dawkins.

Bacteria are Shifty, But Humans have Brains and May Learn to Use Them Eventually

Drug resistant bacteria may kill over 100,000 North Americans each year. Particularly worrisome at this time are drug resistant staph and TB. The traditional pharmacological approach to the problem has been to develop new classes of antibiotic drugs, or to modify existing drugs to combat bacterial resistance. That approach is both expensive and not clever--more the brute force approach. Occasionally the rare innovative thinker comes up with an alternative, more lateral approach.

A new antimicrobial approach can kill bacteria in laboratory experiments and eliminate life-threatening infections in mice by interfering with a key bacterial nutrient, according to research led by a University of Washington scientist. The joint project, conducted at the UW, the University of Iowa, and the University of Cincinnati, will be featured in the April 2 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Bacteria are increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and existing drugs work poorly against chronic infections like those that occur in wounds, on medical devices and in the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis. For these reasons, a great deal of research is focused on finding new antibiotic compounds.

In this study, researchers took a different approach. Rather than trying to find agents that best killed bacteria in test tubes, they sought to intensify the stress imposed on microbes by one of the body's own defense mechanisms.

"The competition for iron is critical in the struggle between bacteria and host," explained the study's senior author, Pradeep Singh, associate professor of medicine and microbiology at the UW. "The body has potent defense mechanisms to keep iron away from infecting organisms, and invaders must steal some if they are to survive."

Iron is critical for the growth of bacteria and for their ability to form biofilms, slime-encased colonies of microbes that cause many chronic infections. "Because iron is so important in infection, we thought infecting bacteria might be vulnerable to interventions that target iron," explained Yukihiro Kaneko, senior fellow in microbiology at the UW and the study's lead author.

To accomplish this, the researchers used gallium, a metal very similar to iron.

"Gallium acts as a Trojan horse to iron-seeking bacteria," said Singh. "Because gallium looks like iron, invading bacteria are tricked, in a way, into taking it up. Unfortunately for the bacteria, gallium can't function like iron once it's inside bacterial cells."

Source

Other approaches include locating bacterial signaling proteins that are vital to the normal development of bacterial resistance--and paralysing them. Weakening the bacteria in this way should make otherwise virulent organisms more vulnerable to the body's immune attack, and conventional antibiotics. As one researcher put it: "Evolution is not an unstoppable force," says [Floyd] Romesberg. "There is a biochemistry underlying it and it is subject to intervention."

Other innovative approaches may yet free medical practice from the treadmill of bacterial resistance. Using viruses to fight bacteria would be one way to get evolution to work for us.

Then again, we might get lucky from time to time. Common drugs used to fight fungal infections are being looked at as potentially powerful weapons against multiple drug resistant TB--a modern scourge. Finding drugs that have already passed through the grueling testing process, which are effective against one of the worst infections known, would be fortuitous.

Stabbed In the Back By Its Own Knife?

Russia has been selling large quantities of sophisticated military equipment, machines, and armament to its neighbor China. A lot of Russian functionaries have made a lot of money from this weapons trade. So what has gone wrong?

Russian sales to China of advanced weapon systems, including ships, fighters, radar and communications gear, have left many in Washington and in the region nervous. But now that relationship appears to heading into an autumn.
Andrei Chang, editor of the Hong Kong-based Kanwa Defense Review, said China is cutting the umbilical cord to Russia.
“As far as Russia-China military aviation cooperation is concerned,” he said, “the spring is already over, and naval cooperation between the two countries is also over.”
Chang said Beijing is moving toward indigenous production of many of the systems it originally bought in mass from Moscow, thanks to reverse engineering.
“Russia has been quite discontented with China’s persistent practice of importing a very small fraction of Russian intact naval systems and then making imitation versions of the equipment,” he said. “Many of the subsystems, like radars and the naval gun for the 054A FFG frigate, have been copied from Russian products, which indicates that the Chinese will simply copy Russian technology to build more domestic vessels.”
Reuben Johnson, a Ukraine-based aerospace and technology analyst and consultant, views Moscow’s open arms policy toward Beijing as a comic tragedy.
“China has sent legions of its own specialists to Russia and Ukraine to study the entire design process of all manner of weapon systems,” he said. “In several cases, Russian design bureaus have developed a piece of kit that is an analog — an analog and not a copy — of an existing Russian system, and presented the blueprints, design documentation and a handful of working models to their Chinese customer.

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So the Chinese buy a few models, then copy or imitate them? Where have we heard this story before?



Russia is learning the same lesson about China that the US and the rest of the western world will also have to learn. The Chinese intend to take whatever knowledge and technology it must from the barbarians. Then China will learn to make whatever it needs itself, without dependence on inferiors. Finally, China can take its rightful place in the world.

China intends to grow. First, China intends to re-possess all the lands that were ever considered part of "China." Taiwan, large parts of mineral-rich Siberia, and more. The details of the grand plan may not be fully worked out, but the end is fully in mind.

China is in a race with its own rigidly incompetent style of government. Strong forces are working toward a massive collapse of the Chinese infrastructure. As long as outside investors and "business partners" decide not to notice what the Chinese government plans for the long term, China's expansionists may succeed in their plans.

No More Global Warming???US Transportation Fuel Needs Can Be Met by New Biofuel Process

A new process of making renewable biofuel from plant and crop waste promises to displace fossil fuels from the gas tanks of trains, planes, and automobiles--and other forms of transportation.

The process, which would make possible the dawning of a "hydrogen-carbon economy," is detailed in a research paper appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper was written by Agrawal, chemical engineering doctoral student Navneet R. Singh, and chemical engineering professors Fabio H. Ribeiro and W. Nicholas Delgass.

...In the H2CAR concept, hydrogen would be harvested by splitting water molecules, possibly with a well-known method called electrolysis. Then the hydrogen would be added during the gasification step, making the process more efficient by suppressing the formation of carbon dioxide and converting all of the carbon atoms to fuel.

When conventional methods are used to convert biomass or coal to liquid fuels, 60 percent to 70 percent of the carbon atoms in the starting materials are lost in the process as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, whereas no carbon atoms would be lost using H2CAR, Agrawal said.

"This waste is due to the fact that you are using energy contained in the biomass to drive the entire process," he said. "I'm saying, treat biomass predominantly as a supplier of carbon atoms, not as an energy source."

Power for the electrolysis would be provided by carbon-free energy sources, such as solar, wind or nuclear power. And, unlike conventional methods of producing liquid fuels from plant matter and coal, H2CAR would not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Source

The planet Earth is indeed a large spaceship, with its own global life support system. It is time that humans learned to use renewable sources of fuel and chemical feedstock.

Although more informed persons understand that the "crisis" of CO2 driven global warming is vastly overblown, using readily available biowaste for fuel would be a strong move toward domestic renewable sources of energy. Sustainability in the form of renewable and recyclable resources makes sense above and beyond any concocted "scare stories" about a climate apocalypse.

Scalding Hot Ice from the Z Machine

The Z Machine at Sandia is a multipurpose machine whose main purpose is to maintain the reliability of the US nuclear deterrent. But the machine can do many things, including testing methods of nuclear fusion, and using strong magnetic fields to super-compress matter.

Sandia’s huge Z machine, which generates termperatures hotter than the sun, has turned water to ice in nanoseconds.

However, don’t expect anything commercial just yet: the ice is hotter than the boiling point of water.

“The three phases of water as we know them — cold ice, room temperature liquid, and hot vapor — are actually only a small part of water’s repertory of states,” says Sandia researcher Daniel Dolan. “Compressing water customarily heats it. But under extreme compression, it is easier for dense water to enter its solid phase [ice] than maintain the more energetic liquid phase [water].”
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.

In the Z experiment, the volume of water shrank abruptly and discontinuously, consistent with the formation of almost every known form of ice except the ordinary kind, which expands. (One might wonder why this ice shrank instead of expanding, given the common experience of frozen water expanding to wreck garden hoses left out over winter. The answer is that only “ordinary” ice expands when water freezes. There are at least 11 other known forms of ice occurring at a variety of temperatures and pressures.)

“This work,” says Dolan, “is a basic science study that helps us understand materials at extreme conditions.”

But it has potential practical value. The work, which appears online March 11 in Nature Physics, was undertaken partly because phase diagrams that predict water’s state at different temperatures and pressures are not always correct — a fact worrisome to experimentalists working at extreme conditions, as well as those having to work at distances where direct measurement is impractical.

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The multifunctional Z machine never fails to amaze me. This type of basic research produces information that can be very useful in the future.

Contemplating Life Without the Sun

The ancients worshiped the sun--for good reason. Without the sun, this planet would be a pitch dark ball of ice doomed to wander the void of space without life or purpose. The upcoming motion picture "Sunshine" presents one scenario--based loosely on science--that would see our sun going out within fifty years.

Well, it's true that the Sun is expected to die, but not for five billion years or so. That, says Cox, is too far in the future for audiences to be able to relate to. By setting the action just 50 years in the future, when for example we see the roof of Australia's Sydney Opera House poking from a huge ice sheet, it gives us something we can worry about.

Cox and his CERN colleagues had to come up with an explanation for how the Sun could be failing so far ahead of time. “It was like: 'the Sun is going to die in 50 years, think of something, will you?'” says Cox. The “something” involves a "Q ball", the nucleus of a supersymmetric particle, getting itself lodged in the Sun. The hypothetical Q ball eats through normal matter, ripping apart the Sun's neutrons and protons and converting them into supersymmetric particles.

Do such Q balls exist? We don't know, but CERN are planning to search for them, says Cox.

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Global Warming Threatens to Drown the Planet Mars Under 36 Feet of Water

New radar measurements of the Martian South Pole Ice Cap indicates that enough ice exists there to cover the entire Martian surface under 36 feet of water, were the ice to melt.

This new estimate comes from mapping the thickness of the ice. The Mars Express orbiter's radar instrument has made more than 300 virtual slices through layered deposits covering the pole to map the ice. The radar sees through icy layers to the lower boundary, which is as deep as 2.3 miles below the surface.

"The south polar layered deposits of Mars cover an area bigger than Texas. The amount of water they contain has been estimated before, but never with the level of confidence this radar makes possible," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena Calif. Plaut is co-principal investigator for the radar and lead author of a new report on these findings published in the March 15 online edition of the journal Science.

The instrument, named the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS), also is mapping the thickness of similar layered deposits at the north pole of Mars.

"Our radar is doing its job extremely well," said Giovanni Picardi, a professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," and principal investigator for the instrument.

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Those who follow the work of Robert Zubrin will immediately see the significance of this finding. If these latest measurements are accurate, the prospects for people like Zubrin, the Mars Foundation, the Mars Society, and other groups who aspire to settle the red planet, have gotten measurably better.

Beginning with that amount of water, settlers could build ambitious colonies and industrial plants--and establish Mars as a springboard to the asteroids and the outer solar system. Given the additional capabilities of molecular manufacturing, such space-going pioneers, adventurers, and swashbuckling entrepreneurs could easily reach the moons of Jupiter, then Saturn, within as little as a single generation after establishing a permanent Mars outpost.

Of course, better space launch and propulsion technologies would catapult humans farther and deeper into space, much more quickly. Regardless, the massive quantities of water on Mars cannot help but act as a powerful magnet for humans with the ambition and adventurous spirit to reach further.

The End of Schools!

The futurist Da Vinci Institute has been working on a detailed report on the future of education for the past 18 months, using several thousand man hours, expert interviews, and various intensive techniques.

“We have identified 12 critical dimensions of the future learning system. However, only the first two need to be in place for the revolution to begin,” says [Thomas] Frey.

The conclusions have been expanded into a 20-page report that will be presented in detail ...[it] will explain the following:

1. * The dramatic shift will happen outside our existing education systems sometime within the next two years
2. * It will be greeted by many with open arms, welcomed by most inside our existing education system, but will eventually cause new systems to develop, and schools as we know them today will cease to exist within ten years. Their replacement will be far better
3. * This new system will be able to unlock the hidden potential within us, creating a new grade of human beings - human beings 2.0.
4. * It has the potential to increase the speed of learning ten-fold, and many will be able to complete the entire K-12 curriculum within one year.
5. * People graduating from the equivalent of high school or college in the future will be a factor of ten times smarter than graduates today

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Those are extremely optimistic predictions, given the dismal trends in education in the US generally. I cannot help but agree that any improvements that occur will have to come from outside the current system.

Da Vinci's Thomas Frey is generally optimistic about the future--not just the future of education. But he does not expect everything to change immediately.

Typically, Frey says, it takes time—a quarter-century or so—for new technology to take hold and be accepted. So it’s likely that the next big thing, whether in medicine, transportation or some other arena, already has been invented.

He notes patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office have reached record numbers in recent years. “Knowing that a certain percentage of those filings are cutting-edge technology, and knowing that it takes an entire generation for this to take off, we’re in for one hell of a ride,” he says.

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The new report on Education will be unveiled March 27th in Denver. Contact the Da Vinci Institute for information on attending.

Alternative educational curricula such as the Montessori Method or the Garcia Curriculum, focus on teaching of procedural knowledge--sometimes in preference to didactic knowledge. Such an emphasis is important in creating a sense of competence and self-efficacy in children. Only by doing that, will children build a healthy sense of self-esteem and comfidence in meeting the world on their own terms.

Global Warming Heretics--The Death Penalty?

Being a global warming (CAGW) heretic can be risky.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.

...Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - who also appeared on the documentary - recently claimed: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges.

...Dr Myles Allen, from Oxford University, agreed. He said: "The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change. It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do."

Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, said: "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system."

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And while Hollywood fantasy hounds worship at the feet of Al Gore and his apocalyptic visions, real scientists are becoming increasingly uneasy with Gore's lack of truthfulness:

... part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

....Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president’s work may hold “imperfections” and “technical flaws.” He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.

....“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria.

“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”

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Solar Tower In Perspective--Great Video!

While there is no doubt that human civilisation will require more nuclear plants in order to transition away from fossil fuel dependency, large scale renewables offer more sustainable energy paths for the long run.

The solar tower--particularly one of the designs that generates power both day and night--is one of the most promising ideas for large scale renewable power. Personally, I like the idea of combining the solar tower with an arcology tower dwelling--like the Ultima Tower.Originally published at Al Fin Energy blog.

Sex and Violence--Beware the Teenaged Girl

Teenagers are typically impulsive. But many teens are also quite volatile in mood--cycling from seductive to violent in very short order. Researchers at SUNY Downstate have followed up on earlier research to show in a female mouse model that adolescent brains (CA1 region of hippocampus) react paradoxically to a hormone that is soothing in adults and children.

The team reports in Nature Neuroscience that allopregnanolone (THP), a chemical that normally helps soothe the activity of brain cells in adults and children by binding to receptors that inhibit accelerating electrical activity, actually becomes an antagonist during puberty.

...."Puberty is certainly a time when there are huge changes in hormones," senior study author Sheryl Smith says. "When we looked at the time of puberty, we found that the steroid THP completely flipped to the opposite effect."

THP is a steroid created in the body when progesterone, the female sex hormone, is metabolized. Typically, THP is released in the brain in response to stress, and quiets the neural system within 30 minutes of escalation. THP works by binding to so-called GABA receptors on the surfaces of neurons, or nerve cells. Smith notes that GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, and that "any sedative like tranquilizers, anesthetics and alcohol all act on the GABA receptor."

...To determine if the special receptors were linked to behavioral differences, the researchers stressed out young, pubescent and adult mice by trapping them in a plastic tube for 45 minutes. They then removed them and gave them 20 minutes to settle down before placing them in another stressful situation—a maze that is known to make the animals anxious. The 20 minutes of downtime was enough time for the young and adult mice to relax but the adolescents remained hyped up.

The team later determined in vitro that the alpha4-beta2-delta receptors in the CA1 behave differently than normal GABA receptors, absorbing a current of chloride ions, rather than expelling them. "Normally, chloride is flowing out," Smith explains, "and THP enhances the GABA receptors which enhance [the] inhibition" of out-of-control neural activity. During puberty, THP instead slows desensitizes GABA receptors, allowing spiking brain activity to carry on unchecked.

Source

In other words, instead of promoting normal GABA-ergic inhibition post-stress, the DHT in adolescent females allowed the brain to remain in the excited, or stressed state.

Tetrahydroprogesterone (THP or allopregnanolone) has been known for years to be an anxiolytic neurosteroid. THP is also important in mediating the sexual behaviour of female animals. The connection between sex and violence seen in some young women may very well be mediated by this hormone (or precursors/metabolites).

Certainly inexplicable violence and rage attacks sometimes seen in adolescence and young adulthood may in some instances be related to altered receptor activity to these neuro-steroids.

When one combines the delayed development of pre-frontal cortical centers (and pathways) with altered stress and possibly sex receptor activity, one may be able to begin to make more sense of adolescent proclivities.

However, one can not truly understand current behaviours of adolescents and university aged students without taking into account the cultural pressures toward psychological neoteny in most western young people. The absence of meaningful life responsibility until well into the twenties, for many youth, quite possibly alters the gene expression controlling behaviour.


The old saw that states: " if you are not a leftist at twenty, you have no heart; but if you are still a leftist at thirty, you have no brain"--takes on new significance when contemplating some of the important neuro-physiologic differences between adolescents and mature adults.

Much of the anger seen in protest movements--that sometimes ignites into violence--can certainly be explained by increased volatility and reduced judgment present in the immature brain.

Some of these young brains may very well become "frozen" in an immature state if the proper maturational triggers are not pulled during the appropriate critical period of development.

A Wilderness Retirement--Living Well Through Personal Competence

You may remember an earlier posting about Richard Proenneke--Portrait of Competence.

This video presents nine minutes from a one hour video of Richard Proenneke's early days in the wilderness. Proenneke lets us into his world, and reveals many small tricks including his methods of building his cabin, using very simple tools to achieve a precise, quality fit. It was his attention to quality in his work, and his natural thriftiness, that allowed him to retire at age 50 working as a mechanic, and then to thrive in a wilderness that would have killed most people.

Fortunately, Proenneke preserved many of his experiences on film, and in journals. His appreciation of nature's beauty, along with his basic underlying individual competence, show through clearly in this video.

Is the Internet Getting Dumber? Provocative Letter From A Reader

Dear Al Fin,

When I started on the internet in Jan 1992, its average IQ in my
estimation was at least 130.

I arrive at this estimate by noting that 130 is the average IQ
among computer programmers. Programmers and system
administrators, a job that is approximately as intellectually
demanding as programmer, probably contributed >40% of the
content (mainly Usenet and ftp documents; the web was not an
important source of content for me till late 1993) I consumed
during those early years. College professors and grad students
contributed much of the rest.

Moreover, The content authored by people of diverse occupations
who were neither academics or IT professionals seemed to me at
least as intelligent as that from the IT pros and academics.

Undergrads were a big part of the internet in 1992, but I tended
to avoid forums, .e.g., IRC and MUDs, populated mostly by
undergrads.

The IQ of the author of the average piece of content picked at
random from the net in 2007 is still above the average worldwide
IQ because smart people spend more time on the net than dumber
people, but the mere size of the net ensures its average IQ is
significantly lower than in 1992.

The difference between 1992 and 2007 has provided me a very vivid
and detailed illustration of your point about the importance of
keeping the IQ of a population high. If the evolution of the net
is any illustration, a community with high IQ functions much more
efficiently than one of lower IQ.

On the mailing lists (and newsgroups, which are very similar) I
read in 1992, when someone asked a question he often would
instruct his reader to reply to him personally. He would
summarize the replies he received and post the summary to the
list (or newsgroup).

The purpose of asking a question this way, for those who cannot
guess, is to keep the volume of traffic as low as possible while
exchanging as much useful information as possible.

In the lingo of the net of 1992, this was referred to as keeping
the list's "signal-to-noise ratio" high.

In the net of 2007, most participants of mailing lists do not
show any signs of being aware that keeping the signal-to-noise
ratio high might be a desirable thing.

And many list owners and moderators speak of their list as if
more traffic is always a good thing, with no sign that they are
aware that traffic imposes a cost on the reader (namely, it
consumes the reader's time and attention).

It has been at least five years if I recall correctly since
I saw a question-asker offer to summarize the responses
he receives to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high.

Moreover, regularly I see evidence that a participant cannot
figure out how to send a personal email to the author of a post:

"Please excuse me for posting this to the entire list but I'm not
very computer sauve. I would like to contact Isis back-channel
but don't know how to do this. When I hit reply button it seems
to go to entire list. If Isis would be so kind as to send me a
personal message with her email address I would much appreciate
it. Thank You."

Think about this for a second: all the person needed to do is to
find the email address of "Isis" (copying the address to paper if
she cannot figure out cut and paste) then to send an email to
that email address.

On the group in question the email address is almost always
valid and not mangled against spammers (because Yahoo Groups
verifies address validity when you subscribe) and is always to be
found in the From: field of the header.

And what sort of internet user cannot send an email to
an address written down on paper in front of her?

Actually, the person quoted above is a better mailing-list
participant than many in 2007 in that she articulates her
inability, apologizes for it and is aware that it is less than
ideal.

I could go on with this comparison for a long time, but it is
probably more illuminating for the reader whose interest has been
piqued to sample a newsgroup thread from 1992 for himself.
For example, one might read the famous "LINUX is obsolete"
thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/c25870d7a41696d2/f447530d082cd95d?tvc=2

Now since Google Groups' web site might contain a lot of code to
clean up the messages and thereby show the messages posted to
1992 Usenet newsgroups in an unfairly positive light relative to
2007 newsgroups and 2007 mailing lists, it behooves the reader to
view the original versions of the messages, which (on Google
Groups) are available at the top of every message via a link
titled "Show original" though one has to click "More options" to
reveal that link. Here for example is the original version of
the first message in the thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/f447530d082cd95d?dmode=source

Al Fin Note: I feel that the reader is quite correct--the internet has not only gotten less intelligent over the past 15 years, it has gotten much ruder. Rather than using the remarkable resources of the internet to enlarge their horizons, more people seem to be using it as a gossip forum, or a political (even terrorist) attack platform.

Fortunately the internet allows for "enclaves" of intelligent discourse and instruction. Those who wish to use the internet for personal growth and learning are completely free to do so. You could look at the divergent uses of the Internet as a form of "Balkanization." But that is the nature of any enabling technology. It can only enable us to do what we are predisposed to do.

Here by Popular Demand: The Great Global Warming Swindle

Here for its Al Fin premiere is Martin Durkin's documentary on the Global Warming movement.

This film was recently shown on Britain's Channel Four. As expected, video savvy internet users wasted no time posting the video on Google Video. Containing interviews with dozens of expert and informed climate heretics, this documentary does what Al Gore could not bring himself to do--tell the truth.

Hat tip to Greenie Watch.

Room Enough, And Time

Respected futurist and Science Fiction author Vernor Vinge gave a talk recently titled "What if the Singularity Does NOT Happen?" Vinge goes on to suggest a number of scenarios where the Singularity might fail to occur:

A Return to Madness: Nuclear proliferation leads to an accelerated nuclear arms race, and eventual widespread nuclear destruction.

The Golden Age: Humans overcome the major problems of religious and ideological conflict. Most causes of premature death are controlled. People learn to be happy with what they have and stop striving for the unreachable.

The Wheel of Time: The odds are that every civilisation will fall. Disasters may happen that will throw humans back to subsistence level. The return of the cave man, with superstition replacing science.

In the end, Vinge joins Stephen Hawking, Gerard O'Neill, Carl Sagan, and other intelligent students of the human condition in suggesting that off-planet colonies, outposts, and generation ships may be the best long-term chance for humanity's survival.

Why not solve the problems of humanity on earth, before setting out through more hostile territory for "castles in the sky?" The sad truth is that humans must work both ends of the problem, to maximise the chances for long-term success.

Human beings have an average IQ of 90 at the current time, with a strong likelihood that the average IQ will drop to 84 by the latter half of this century. Some countries are fortunate enough to possess concentrations of individuals with higher intelligence, along with good intentions toward the rest of humanity. This fortuitous situation will not last forever. We had best use the good minds while they last--to create better chances for survival both on earth and in space.

I will leave you with five graphic disaster scenarios to ponder. Remember, these are not the worst that can happen. Enjoy.

Salamander Robots, Headless Chickens, Aimless People

Have you ever wondered how a chicken can continue to run around without its head? An animal's spinal cord is capable of much more control than most people realize. By understanding how the spinal cord controls rhythmic muscle movements, scientists are learning how to teach salamander robots to walk.

....choreographing robots designed to walk, swim, or run is a tougher task [ed.: compared to robots on wheels].

"Every time a foot hits or leaves the ground, the dynamics change," says Anthony Lewis, president of a company called Iguana Robotics in Illinois, US. "The standard methods that engineers use have a really hard time with this," because the calculations rapidly become very complex.

So some robotics researchers are starting to mimic biology. In animals, the mechanics of walking, swimming, running, and crawling are all coordinated by clusters of neurons in the spinal cord, called central pattern generators. These CPGs produce neural pulses that drive different muscles so that they contract rhythmically in a manner that produces running or walking motion, depending on the pattern of pulses.
Franken-salamander

This basic coordination does not require the brain, which is why a chicken can run around even after its head has been removed. However, simple signals from the brain can instruct the CPG to switch between different modes, from standing still to swimming or walking.

While roboticists would like to emulate this smooth transition between movements, biologists are starting to decipher the way it works. By removing most of a salamander's brain and stimulating the spinal cord with electricity, researchers have been able to make the amphibian's body wriggle as though swimming. If they decrease the intensity of pulsing slightly, the animal suddenly transitions to a walking motion.

Source

The salamander robot's "spinal cord" is just a hardware mimic of the biological salamander's spinal cord.

Central pattern generators control much of our day to day activity: walking, running, scratching, breathing . . . This activity takes place below the level of consciousness--although we can consciously switch from one pattern to another.

A trained athlete, dancer, or musician will spend years developing central pattern generators with exquisite precision, and superb responsiveness to higher control and feedback. Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan did not suddenly wake up one day and discover that they could play basketball. Tiger Woods was not born with his superb control of a golf club. Roger Federer did not become the undisputed best in the world at tennis by being a couch potato.

More intriguing to me are the central pattern generators that are not involved in motor control, but are rather involved in associative cognitive function. These are habits of mind, strange attractors of thought--conscious and subconscious. This is automaticity--the cortical counter-point to spinal pattern generators.

If the pattern generators of the brain and the spinal cord are superbly and intelligently trained over the years, people can accomplish incredible feats.

First of all, these generators have to be prompted at the appropriate times--the critical periods of development. Without the prompting, the child will never develop the motor skills, language skills, mathematical skills, and general cognitive skills that are needed in the modern technological world. That is a waste of human talent which is unfortunately widespread, both in the developed and undeveloped worlds.