Oceans Hungrily Soaking Up CO2, SeaLife Thriving

Despite the growing emissions of CO2 from human activities, the actual airborne fraction of CO2 in the air stays relatively constant!  The ocean's voracious appetite for CO2 appears to be keeping up with everything humans can do to blow it out the tailpipes and smokestacks.  And no wonder!  A recent Dutch study shows that sea sponges live almost exclusively from dissolved ocean CO2.   The sponges consume half their own weight each day in dissolved CO2 without gaining weight!!!  It seems that the sea sponges turn the dissolved CO2 into nutritious waste that it then makes available to the rest of the reef inhabitants for consumption.  In other words, CO2 is the life of the reef.

The graph above (via Anthony Watts) comes from a study by the University of Bristol, which proves using actual data -- not computer models -- that the oceans and biosphere are soaking up CO2 as quickly as humans can emit it.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.


...this data suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.


The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol, UK, found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero. _Hindu

The infant science of climatology became hopelessly entangled in politics in the 1990s. Computer models with faulty assumptions, and proxy studies using bad statistical methodology and cherry-picked data were pushed to the forefront. Actual scientific observations and a dispassionate analysis of findings were forsaken for the addicting and corrupting influence of political and popular fame associated with the "carbon climate catastrophe".

An entire generation of "climate scientists" has been indoctrinated into this faux science of crisis seeking. Like the ambulance chasers of the legal profession, the doom seekers of climate are chasing the prize of quick grants, fame, and the warm cliquish comfort of an empty consensus.

Unfortunately for that "lost generation", true science is proceeding to pass them by.

Here is the full text PDF of Knorr's U Bristol paper, courtesy of Anthony Watts

Here is a physicist's take on the Knorr paper from Lubos Motl. More (14 Nov 09): According to Lubos' calculations, the Earth system is trying to return to a CO2 atmospheric concentration of 280 ppm -- a colder and far less life-friendly level of the vital nutrient [CO2] that plants, sea sponges, and many microbes of land and sea crave.

United States Has More Fossil Fuels

Image via Robert RapierAccording to this Congressional Research Service PDF report (via Robert Rapier), the US has more total fossil fuels resources proved reserves than any other nation. Russia is a close second, China is a distant third, and Saudi Arabia and Iran are an even more distant fourth and fifth, respectively.

Because proved reserves are, by definition, economically recoverable, the proportion of the oil inthe ground that qualifies as proved reserves grows when prices are high, and shrinks when prices are low. That is, even without new discoveries, oil that may be sub-economic at $30 per barrel becomes economic at $60 per barrel and so the total proved reserves increase simply because price increases. In addition to the volumes of proved reserves are deposits of oil and gas that have not yet been discovered, and those are called undiscovered resources.2 _PDFCongResServreport

Robert Rapier remarks how eventual oil production can be several times as high as "proved reserves" for any given oil field.

In 1982, U.S. reserves were 27.9 billion barrels. In 2005, U.S. reserves were 21.8 billion barrels. But over the course of that 24-year period we produced 57 billion barrels of oil and pulled our reserves down by only 6 billion barrels. _RobertRapier

Over a period of time, proved reserves can actually grow despite pumping large volumes of oil from a field -- due to new discoveries, new technologies for recovery, and natural repletion of fields mistakenly believed to be near exhaustion.

As noted in the report, the price of energy also helps determine recoverable reserves, since the higher the price, the farther energy companies are willing to drill, dig, and explore to find new resources.  Peak oil doomsters are not intelligent enough to comprehend the complexity of the energy picture.  They often mistake increases in the price of oil that are due to a collapsing dollar, for shortages of oil from global depletion.  They are not a meaningful threat to a smooth transition into a post-fossil energy age.

The really good news? The report essentially ignores the trillions of barrels of shale oil and heavy oils known to exist in the western US. It also underestimates the quantity of oil, coal, and gas reserves known to exist in large new finds. In other words, the US is tops in fossil reserves without even trying. The really bad news? Obama is president, Pelosi is Speaker of the House, and both of them intend to starve the US into economic coma, for reasons and agendas of their own.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Why You Do the Things You Do

Do you ever stop to wonder why you are the way you are? Why you do the things you do, just the way you do them? Here's a hint: it has a great deal to do with the mysterious stew of chemicals roiling about inside your brain. One particularly interesting chemical is dopamine, which plays an incredibly important role in most person's choices and manners.

For a long time, dopamine has been misunderstood and misconstrued as a "pleasure" chemical. Al Fin neuroscientists have known that this was nonsense for a long time. But other neuroscientists are beginning to pick up the slack in order to clarify dopamine's role for the masses:

Enhancing the effects of the brain chemical dopamine influences how people make life choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to the new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology.

The study, published in Current Biology, confirms an important role for dopamine in how human expectations are formed and how people make complex decisions. It also contributes to an understanding of how pleasure expectation can go awry, for example in drug addiction.

...Lead author Dr Tali Sharot, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, said: "Humans make much more complex decisions than other animals -- such as which job to take, where to go on holiday, whether to start a family -- and we wanted to understand the role of dopamine in making these types of decisions. Our results indicate that when we consider alternative options when making real-life decisions, dopamine has a role in signalling the expected pleasure from those possible future events. We then use that signal to make our choices." _SD

Dopamine influences the "expectation of pleasure", rather than the pleasure itself -- a crucial difference. The health of the dopamine system determines the likelihood that a person will possess the persistent self-discipline for making long term plans which involve delaying present gratification for future success.

Gamblers, crack whores, petty criminals, and schizophrenics have a difficult time making detailed future plans and sticking to them. Similarly, persons who are depressed cannot hold the "emotional image" of a future reward in the mind, in order to create sufficient drive today to chip away at their long term projects.

This jigsaw piece is but one in the entire puzzle, but it is central, and connects to a lot of other important pieces. Intentionality and motivation are central to who a human being is, and what he will become.

If the dopamine centers and pathways are misused, abused, and stunted by unwise habits and poor educational and child-raising practices, a person may be disabled for much of his life. Genetic differences in functioning of dopamine centers and pathways can likewise handicap an individual over most of his productive years.

We are still in the dark ages of neuroscience, when sledge hammers are mistaken for fine shaping tools in neurology and psychiatry. Yet from the cloistered labs we see the glimmer of understanding that should bode well for the future minds of humanity.

Mind Uploads, Emulations, and Machine Intelligence

For some very interesting speculations concerning the uploading of human consciousness, development of human level machine intelligence, and the emulation of human minds in machines, check out the Singularity Summit 2009 videos that are now online. A wide variety of ideas and viewpoints will help to spur your imagination and perhaps open a few mental pathways.

Al Fin has very low expectations for these technologies in the near term. They are very hard problems -- much harder than the "gee whiz" futurists comprehend. Worse than that, the underlying society is rotting quickly, and may be unable to sustain the effort long enough for success to occur.

If the underlying societal substrate breaks down, large portions of nascent science will tend to break down as well. Some will be exported to other continents or countries. Some will be lost, at least for a time.

If these technologies are developed in a time of war or great instability, under a dictatorial regime hungry for conquest or hegemony, they can contribute to massive hardship. Unfortunately, all of the important decisions currently being made by the leaders of the western world will have the ultimate effect of weakening the west.

The west will eventually recover, somewhat.  But during the recovery period the world will be extremely vulnerable to falling into a scenario described by Neal Stephenson in "The Diamond Age".

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be ready to exploit any opportunity that may arise.

Feeding Stress: Sweet-Cycling the Amygdala

The central amygdala is involved in fear, stress, and anxiety responses. Researchers at Scripps have discovered that the central amygdala's stress response is elevated 5X when a dieter accustomed to sweet foods is switched to normal chow.

"We found that rats cycled in this way between palatable food and less tasty, but otherwise acceptable, food, begin to binge on the sweet food, stop eating their regular food, and show withdrawal-like behaviors often associated with drug addiction. As in addiction to drugs or ethanol, the brain's stress system is involved in each of these changes."


...the researchers looked at the involvement of the brain's stress system -- which had been shown to contribute to patterns of drug and alcohol binging and withdrawal -- in underpinning these behaviors.


To do this, the team measured levels of stress-related corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) mRNA and peptide in an area of the brain known as the central amygdala, which is involved in fear, anxiety, and stress responses. Indeed, the researchers found that the diet-cycled group on normal chow displayed five times the control group's levels of CRF. Only when the diet-cycled group was fed sweet food did CRF levels return to normal.


"CRF is a key stress neuropeptide," said Cottone. "In observing the activation of the amygdaloid CRF system during abstinence from sweet foods, we understood the causes of recurrent dieting failures."


...To confirm these results and to see whether blocking CRF could reverse some of the effects of diet cycling, the researchers turned to a compound called R121919 (a small molecule CRF1 receptor antagonist).


When administered to the diet-cycled rats, the compound blunted the bingeing on sweet chow, as well as the lackluster pursuit of regular chow and the anxiety-associated behaviors during this part of the diet cycle. As in similar studies modeling alcoholism, on a molecular level diet-cycled rats showed greater sensitivity to the ability of the CRF1 receptor antagonist to reduce central amygdala synaptic transmission of the neurotransmitter GABA, which plays an important role in regulating neuronal excitability. _SD

Very interesting.   High levels of stress underlie many addictions.  Of course, these are rats, not people.  It looks as if the same sort of CRF receptor blocker can blunt addictive behaviours in humans -- to foods, drugs, and other dysfunctional behaviours. We might soon see 13 step anti-addiction programs opening up.  The 13th step would be the use of CRF receptor bloockers.

Do you think they could put those blockers in ice cream?

Stem Cells Restore Lost Cognitive Powers in Rats

Irradiated rats experience a 50% drop in cognitive function. But if the irradiated rats are transplanted with embryonic stem cells, they regain normal cognitive function within 4 months after radiation.

Radiotherapy for brain tumors is limited by how well the surrounding tissue tolerates the treatment. In receiving radiation at levels needed to treat tumors, patients suffer varying degrees of learning and memory impairment that can affect their quality of life.

"It's a progressive, debilitating side effect of cranial irradiation," Limoli said. "Any treatments showing promise at reversing this are worthy of pursuit."

In the UCI study, stem cells were transplanted into the heads of rats that had undergone radiation treatment. They migrated to a brain region known to support the growth of neurons, scientists observed, and developed into new brain cells.

Work is under way to determine how the transplanted stem cells improved cognition: Did they integrate into healthy tissue or did they help repair and support existing brain cells? _SD

The embryonic stem cells (ESCs) used for the UC Irvine study were derived from human embryos. They used basically the same ESC transplant technique for restoring brain function as they used to restore limb function in rats with transected cervical spines. Apparently the rats did not mind receiving ESCs from a different species.

Forget Universal Health Care: Eat Your Ice Cream!

Ice cream researchers are converting the cold treat into a Trojan Horse for long life and vitality. They are learning to supplement the frozen delight with ingredients known to bolster the health of the cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, and immune systems. And they are just getting started . . . .

Adding nutrients such as pro-biotics, which are already found in some dairy products, and fiber to ice cream can improve digestive health. Many diseases are caused by inflammation that starts in the intestines, Gruen said. Improving digestive health with functional foods might reduce that inflammation. Although functional foods have health benefits, there are many challenges to adding nutrients to ice cream.

"Our major challenges are texture, flavor and psychological acceptance," Gruen said. "The nutrients we add often have bitter tastes and affect the texture of ice cream that we have to mask. Flavors like chocolate are easier to work with because the flavor is so strong that it can overcome other flavors from the nutrients. Another challenge is determining whether people would be upset that we're 'tampering' with a comfort food. We need to know if they would be more willing to pay for ice cream with added nutritional benefits."

Gruen and his research team are looking at using the açai berry and remnants from grapes in wine-making to add nutrients to ice cream. They hope to have a prototype ready for tasting in the next six months. _SD

Al Fin nutritionists are unanimous in their support for this approach to good health. Whereas the health care bills before the US Congress threaten to destroy everything that is innovative and generative in the US biomedical system, health-promoting ice cream is merely food.

It is understandable why persons prone to premature senility and aging -- such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi -- might be obsessed with matters of health, to the point of losing all sense of reason and proportion. But that is no reason to destroy the most innovative biomedical system in the world. Don't be such a jerk, Nancy! ;-)

But seriously, folks, the concept of using ordinary foods and beverages as vectors for evolutionary and revolutionary health improvements, is an idea long overdue. Mainstream food scientists think very small. Al Fin nutritionists think very big. Stay tuned.

Hopeful Stem Cell News Stories

Any adult cell can become a stem cell. This is a striking finding from the Cambridge, Mass. researchers.

“Essentially, all cells have the potential to become pluripotent. It is something that seems to happen to the cells under these conditions stochastically — that is, in a continuous, but probabilistic fashion,” Jaenisch explains. _Softpedia

Stem cell treatment restores limb function in rats with cervical spine injuries. The UCI team used human embryonic stem cells (pre-oligodendrocytes) that "rebuilt myelin, stopped tissue death and triggered nerve fiber regrowth".

Patients with advanced leukemia successfully treated with stem cells. Of the 58 patients, 35% survived 3 years -- an exceptionally good result for patients at such an advanced stage.

New technique developed to separate "safe" from "unsafe" stem cells before therapy. Stem cells vary in their likelihood to grow out of control and cause malignancies. "Undifferentiated" stem cells are more likely to lose control of growth.

Scientists from Invitrogen and the Buck Institute for Age Research, located in Novato, California, collaborated in developing this innovative solution that depletes greater than 99% of undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells from differentiated populations. They are presenting data on this new technology at the International Society for Cellular Therapy Meeting in San Diego. __LabmateOnline

Stem cells provide the bricks and mortar for constructing human tissues and organs. We are just beginning to learn how to create them, and to use them safely and efficaciously. In ten years -- if the US biomedical system has not been completely destroyed by government intervention -- we will look back to the present, amazed that human medicine was ever so primitive and hopelessly ineffective.

Cross-posted at Al Fin Longevity

Nanotech to Grow from $147 Billion to $3.1 Trillion

Image via AreaDevelopmentThe nanotechnology industry is due to grow from a $147 billion a year business to a $3.1 trillion a year business by the year 2015. The nano industry will insert itself into virtually all areas of economic activity from medicine to energy to construction to space travel.

Nanotechnology has allowed the transformation of aerospace, agriculture, biotech, national defense, energy, medicine, and transportation, and it is currently being used in everything from batteries and solar panels to eyeglasses, baseball bats, tennis rackets and cameras. By altering the states of the elements and materials, nanotechnology can help make products stronger, lighter, and more durable.

A recent report by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) highlighted more than 1,200 companies, universities, government laboratories, and other organizations involved in nanotech research, development, and commercialization. The number is up 50 percent from the 800 organizations identified just two years ago. The report also identified the top three sectors for companies working in nanotech as materials, tools, and medicine. “There is now not a single state without organizations involved in this cutting-edge field., “says David Rejeski, PEN director.

...“Nanotech tends to develop around metropolitan areas with world-class research facilities,” says Murdock. “A lot of it has to do with the changed structure of innovation and corporate investment in R&D and we anticipate rapid growth [in many of the clusters].” The map of nanotech activity created by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies shows development centered around major universities Massachusetts and California, have traditionally served as the centers of nanotech, but new technologies are developing in other states.

North Carolina: The Research Triangle near Raleigh, North Carolina, has been recognized as a burgeoning spot for nanotech and recently moved up into the top five locations, displacing Oakland, California. Not long after the National Nanotech Initiative started in 2005, the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology (NCBST), an organization that identifies and helps develop important technologies for the state, began tracking the development of nanotech and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of nanotech in North Carolina. It identified 69 companies working in nanotechnology that spanned industries from biotechnology to chemicals, coatings and materials. _areadevelopment

The largest threat to the nanotechnology industry will come from government, naturally. If government decides it wishes to help the nanotech industry, then nano is doomed. Otherwise, nanotech could be one bright spot in a very dim-looking tech future. It is the bad luck of the energy, biomedical, banking, and transportation industries, that Mr. Obama decided to lay his Magical Hands upon them so early in his presidency.

It's Not Far From Afghanistan to Russia

The Russian population is disappearing at both ends of the life spectrum -- high death rates and low birth rates. Spiraling drug addiction in Russia is not helping.

Russia's drugs crisis is real enough: between 2000-05 the number of drug users grew by 400%. Even official figures reckon the number of addicts as between 2-2.5 million, some 2% of the population, while independent estimates put the figure at closer to 3-5 million. Unlike the rest of the world, in Russia, the HIV epidemic shows no signs of slowing down.

Drug addiction has become a significant factor in Russia's demographic crisis. According to the head of the Federal Drug Control Agency (FDCS), Viktor Ivanov, the average life expectancy of addicts is 5-7 years, and two thirds of addicts are under 30. A report last month by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) estimates that 30,000 people a year are dying from drugs, more than the overall number of soldiers killed in the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. If present trends continue the country's population will shrink by 18 million by 2025.

...The extent of the problem has clearly caught Russian officialdom unprepared. Though the influx of opiates is widely regarded as one of the many social ills which has entered the country since the fall of communism, it has its origins in Russia's disastrous military campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s. A generation of traumatised young conscripts returned home having acquired the heroin habit and today the country is now the world's top consumer of heroin.

...Prof Vladimir Mendelevich of Kazan State Medical University maintains that ‘the most serious barrier to tackling the problem is the incompetence of officials.' Monaghan agrees. ‘I'm mesmerised by the lack of knowledge in this field. They keep telling us "we've conducted our own research." But no research exists that has been internationally peer reviewed! "‘Russian addicts are different," they say. But how can they be? To some extent, I can stomach their indifference and their lack of knowledge, but the crass stupidity is much harder to digest.

...Recent Russian pronouncements suggest that it regards attempts by the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime to set up harm reduction programmes in the CIS countries as a part of the larger battle for control by the West of the post-Soviet space. ‘All CIS countries are today actively introducing harm reduction and substitution programs,' Minister of Health Tatiana Golikova reported to Russia's Security Council last month. ‘This is of course accompanied by programmes for the legalization of drugs prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.' Having lost its battle to persuade Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia to drop such programmes, Russia is now putting pressure on Kazakhstan. Earlier this year Uzbekistan did pull the plug on its OST programme having ‘conducted research' - research which Uzbek officials have refused to make public.

It is this kind of politicisation of the issue, which is condemning young addicts in Russia to death and exacerbating the HIV epidemic that makes Geoffrey Monaghan despair: ‘I say to them ‘Look, if we really wanted to damage Russia we would be saying "Don't set up OST programmes, stop NSPs and whatever you, don't promote harm reduction..!" _OpenDemocracy_via_laRussophobe

Russia is dying a slow and painful death, and shows no signs of being reborn. The fault lies deep within the Russian people themselves -- their inbred complacency to living under tyranny. The Russian people have never known freedom, having gone from living under a Tsar to living under brutal communist dictatorship.

20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia is traveling the reverse path back toward belligerent dictatorship. It can only end badly.

For a Preview of Obama's US, Watch Detroit

Detroit, Michigan, is a city on the edge of bankruptcy. Detroit no longer collects enough taxes to support all of its obligations. The city of Detroit is sinking under a load of unionised city employees and employees' pensions, and even the well-intentioned new mayor -- Dave Bing -- seems helpless to do anything to save motor city.

To make ends meet, Mr. Bing is planning to issue "tax anticipation" notes to lenders to raise $94 million against expected tax revenues. This money, along with the biannual property taxes that the city collected in August, might keep Detroit running through the end of the fiscal year next June.

But that won't address the underlying fiscal imbalances. For that problem, Mr. Bing wants to squeeze $5 million in savings every month by asking the city's roughly 13,000 workers to take a 10% pay cut, a 10% benefit cut, and a 10% staff cut. He also wants to privatize or outsource many city services and consolidate various departments. "Our people [city workers] need to understand that entitlement is gone," Mr. Bing told the Detroit News in August. "There are people who think we are job providers. We're service providers."

Mr. Bing is going to have a very hard time making the city's entrenched unions play ball. John Reihl, president of the American Federation of State, Council and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 207, regards Mr. Bing's talk of cuts as a personal insult. "It is just a way to mess with the unions," he told the Detroit News in July. "It's not our role to give anymore concessions."

So far Mr. Bing has shown little indication that he'll stand up to the unions. For the third time on Friday, Mr. Bing backed off on his threat to lay off more workers if unions don't accept a wage cut. Yet a recent study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy found that if state and local government employee benefit packages in Michigan were limited to what is typical for Midwestern private sector workers—including those in unions—taxpayers would save as much as $5.7 billion annually.

The fiscal mess puts Mr. Bing in a Catch-22. He can't cut the city's taxes because the short-term hit to cash flow would leave the city unable to pay its bills. But without tax reform the city can't lure businesses back. _WSJ

Mayor Bing is independently wealthy, and is paying his salary to the Detroit police department. He apparently means well. But he cannot stand up to the partnership between unions, public employees, and organised crime that controls the city now.

US President Obama is putting himself in a similar position as Mayor Bing finds himself. Mr. Obama is enthralled to labour unions already, and is setting the stage for the unions to establish deeper and broader roots throughout all sectors of the US economy. Behind the unions, you can almost always find organised crime outfits -- such as the one that helps control Obama's Chicago.

Once that monstrous coalition gains control, voters (and even politicians) have little to say in the matter. Look at California, for an example of the same phenomenon at the state level. Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York are little better.

If a person wanted the US to become a nation-sized Detroit, he could not have chosen a better president than Mr. Obama. His connections to the coalition of organised crime and labour unions go back 20 years or more.

But it is more likely that voters chose Mr. Obama for either iconic or ideological reasons. Too bad they didn't look behind the curtains, to see where the real power behind the icon lies.

The "Smart Grid" is an Invitation to Cyber-Sabotage

Obama's much-lauded "smart grid" is one of the most idiotic policy plans of an administration that has launched almost nothing but idiotic policy plans. The smart grid would involve putting virtually every aspect of the US power grid under central computer control -- exactly the type of computer control that could be hacked by Chinese and Russian saboteurs working out of government offices in Beijing and Moscow. CBS' 60 Minutes presented a feature on the vulnerability of the US to cyber-attack by overseas saboteurs on Sunday night. From the financial system to the power grid to oil refineries and water treatment plants, anything that is controlled over the network can be sabotaged the same way.

A group of scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy facility wanted to see if they could physically blow up and permanently disable a 27-ton power generator using the Internet.

"If you can hack into that control system, you can instruct the machine to tear itself apart. And that's what the Aurora test was. And if you've seen the video, it's kind of interesting, 'cause the machine starts to shudder. You know, it's clearly shaking. And smoke starts to come out. It destroys itself," Jim Lewis explained.

Asked what the real-world consequences of this would be, Lewis said, "The big generators that we depend on for electrical power are one, expensive, two, no longer made in the U.S., and three, require a lead time of three or four months to order them. So, it's not like if we break one, we can go down to the hardware store and get a replacement. If somebody really thought about this, they could knock a generator out, they could knock a power plant out for months. And that's the real consequence." __60 Minutes

Al Fin has looked at what would happen if the power grid went down after an EMP attack. But it is plain that it isn't necessary to conduct an EMP attack to shut down the grid. If Obama is successful in implementing his "smart grid" plan on the US grid, clever hackers could do the job as well.

If you knock large sections of the US power grid out for several months, the devastation that would follow would be far worse than the damage the US has suffered from any war -- including the US Civil War.

The "smart grid" only makes the US far more vulnerable to attack. But then, that is not the only Obama policy that makes the US more vulnerable to outside attack, is it? If you look at the entirety of the Obama proposals and policies, domestic and foreign, it should be obvious that the end result of almost every one of them, is increased debt and vulnerability with virtually no benefit to the US.

When did the US become such a masochistic nation?

Are Robots With Breasts More Interesting?

...the Femisapien ... comes in a curvy body that gives us a glimpse of a future where mechanical female companions become a reality. Besides having a more attractive form, the Femisapien has many more features than its macho predecessor.

In addition to the included remote control, she has three modes which can be activated based on how the head is positioned. The Attentive mode makes her perform various poses, act as backup singer, dancer and even someone blowing kisses. The Learning mode lets the user teach Femisapien a routine (up to 80 steps long), which can then be replicated on demand. The Responsive mode allows her to move around and react to objects and sounds. She can even act out comedy routines. __Source

Image via New Atlantis
If it seems that breasts on a robot can serve no purpose, perhaps one is not looking deeply enough into the human psyche. Breasts can slip behind a human's defenses, and cause him to lower his guard -- to relax. Most human males, at least, never seem to get enough of the human breast. Even most human females are likely to be more relaxed, more willing to talk freely, with a breasty android.

Robotic caretakers of children and the elderly, may find their jobs made easier with a little something up top. The breast is symbolic for nurturing, and tenderness, but the sexual connotation is always there, as well. Robotic prostitutes will need not only tender breasts, but other soft curves of the human female form.

After decades of attacks against the feminine by fascist feminasties, and a further hyper-sluttenization of young women by popular culture and media, you might think that the feminine form would have lost its magical ability to dissolve outer psychic defenses -- but no. In this case, as in many others, genes win out.

What do you think about robots with breasts and estrogen curves? Superfluous, or interesting?

Where Is All the Carbon Coming From?

Image via Watts Up With That!?Global climate treaties are increasingly aimed at the heart of developed nations in Europe, North America, and Oceania. The leaders of the US, the UK, Australia, and the EU are falling over each other in the attempt to submit their nations to most crippling regime of energy starvation conceivable. Yet it is clear from the chart above, that the US and Europe can not control the rest of the world's carbon emissions.

So the rest of the world accelerates its CO2 spew unhindered by the international climate gestapo. In fact, under proposed new Copenhagen rules, the North America and Europe would have to pay the third world reparations into the $trillions -- while at the same time reducing their own energy output to starvation levels. Why are western leaders so driven to place their nations under such draconian and self-destructive international energy regulations and reparations?

Call it energy anorexia -- the Obama - Pelosi - Brown - Rudd disease. Like anorexia nervosa, energy anorexia is a deadly pathological response to an imagined problem. Energy anorexia threatens the life of the body -- in this case the nation.

There is no greater threat to an industrial economy than the restriction and destruction of its energy base. This tragicomic self-destructive impulse is made all the more pointless by the obvious fact that it will not change anything, in terms of global carbon balances.

Obama Loves 12% of American Workers

The other 88% can go to hell. As US unemployment surges well into double digits, even Obama's economic advisors are wondering what the green rookie president is going to do about the unemployment problem.

Barack Obama has been the "bad luck charm" president for the US economy and US employment. As the US heads into the holiday season, fewer families will be feeling gratitude or goodwill toward the elected incompetents in DC.

But 12% of US workers have good reason to thank the green rookie Obama, for looking out for them. The 12% who belong to labour unions -- the unions that are destroying America's schools and eating the heart out of the economic health of US cities, counties, states, and eventually the federal government.

With US commerce, industry, and small business employment so badly devastated, why does Obama push ahead with his bloated and highly politicised wrecking balls to the economy such as Obamacabre fascist healthcare, Carbon Cap and Stab (energy starvation), Union Card Check, government takeover of the private economy, an exploding bureaucracy, and a killing "stimulus" that rewards his biggest campaign backers but fails the economy?

Either Obama is trying to destroy the US economy, or he is too lost in la-la land to understand what is happening in the real world. Either way, responsible US citizens are screwed.  Things are getting a bit tricky.  But then, you knew that already.  

What are you going to do?

All Cyborgs Now: SmartHand Wired to Nerve Ends

Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU's Department of Engineering, working with a team of European Union scientists, has successfully wired a state-of-the-art artificial hand to existing nerve endings in the stump of a severed arm. The device, called "SmartHand," resembles -- in function, sensitivity and appearance -- a real hand.

Robin af Ekenstam of Sweden, the project's first human subject, has not only been able to complete extremely complicated tasks like eating and writing, he reports he is also able to "feel" his fingers once again.

The state of the art for advanced prosthetic hands has just jumped a level -- thanks to the EU built SmartHand, and its neurally wired interface developed at Tel Aviv University.

[Hand recipient] Ekenstam told a television interviewer, "I am using muscles which I haven't used for years. I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don't have them anymore. It's amazing."

This particular multi-million dollar project focused on hands, but the TAU/EU team could also have built bionic legs to be wired to the brain. The team first chose to build a hand, however, because of its unique challenges. "The fingers in the hand are the most complex appendages we have," Prof. Shacham-Diamand observes. "The brain needs to synchronise the movement of each digit in a very complicated way."

With the help of the TAU team, the SmartHand project was able to integrate recent advances in today's "intelligent" prosthetic hands with all the basic features of a flesh-and-blood hand. Four electric motors and 40 sensors are activated when the SmartHand touches an object, not only replicating the movement of a human hand, but also providing the wearer with a sensation of feeling and touch. _SD

The researchers eventually intend to cover the machine SmartHand with a "skin" covering, to match the recipient's own skin tone, to create a more natural appearance. There will always be those who would rather maintain the artificial, robotic appearance for various reasons of their own, of course.

The SmartHand interface apparently utilises flexible implanted electrodes for transferring information to and from nerve endings remaining in the distal stump.  It appears to provide distinctly improved motion control and sensation both.

It should be obvious that the same technology could be used to provide non-amputees with the ability to operate and feel distant avatars and all types of remote prostheses.   If you do not mind a number of implanted electrodes in rather sensitive parts of your body, you may even pioneer the new science of "teledildonics", or sex at a distance. 

Or you may want to wait until transcranial brain implants are perfected, which can bypass lower body-interfaces altogether.

Today, you do not have that choice.  Soon, you may.

We Are All Cyborgs Now: NeuralWisp Chip w/ remote RF Power

University of Washington researchers have developed a neural sensing chip that is powered by a remote radio frequency source up to 1 meter away. The NeuralWisp chip is currently being used to "tap into" the neural activity of moths, in order to understand the insect's locomotion. UW researchers are gradually incorporating a number of innovative size-reducing and energy-saving modifications into the NeuralWisp.

The device contains a microprocessor powered by a commercial radio-frequency reader that doubles as a data-collection device. The same equipment is used to power and read information from radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. In experiments, the researchers used the new device to sense central nervous system activity in a moth in order to study its locomotion.


There have been some advances in reducing the size of neural implants recently, but the majority of implantable devices are still relatively cumbersome. These devices typically require multiple components--such as a clock for timing operations and an antenna for communication and power-harvesting--that are quite large compared to the transistors on the microcontroller, says Brian Otis, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington and lead researcher on NeuralWISP.


"You can have millions of transistors on a chip less that's less than a cubic millimeter in volume, but the problem is with the extra parts," says Otis. "Our goal is to shrink everything onto a single chip and reduce the power consumption of these components so that the chip can be wirelessly powered."


The NeuralWISP is a collection of smaller, more low-power components, such as a specialized signal amplifier, on a circuit board just over two centimeters long. A future version will integrate all components onto a single chip that's one millimeter by two millimeters in size. The circuitry converts usable power from the reader--roughly 430 microwatts--to a voltage that can turn on the microcontroller. This microcontroller, in turn, controls the sensor and its timer, and runs instructions that allow data to be sent back to the reader. _TechnologyReview

Anyone who has read John Scalzi's SF novel Old Man's War, may be reminded of the powerful brain reading devices that permitted the transplantation of 75 year old minds into the freshly grown super-bodies in which they would go to war. The old 75 year old bodies were discarded, but the memories, experiences, personalities, and seasoned characters lived on.

Clearly the technology requires a lot of development before it will be able to monitor and record the activity of human minds at that level of dynamic precision.

Long before this brain reading technology allows for transplanting minds to new bodies, it will be used to provide seamless functioning of advanced prosthetic devices and remote operation of proxy devices and avatars. They may also provide baseline healthy readings in case of later brain damage from stroke, trauma, toxicity, infection, malignancy, or gradual neurodegeneration.

Information gained from future generations of such devices on the nano-scale, may even pave the way for human level machine intelligences.

More: This approach to biodegradable implantable neurocircuits should soon allow for some very clever experiments in the art of the cyborg.

Toshiba 4S 10 MW Reactor Ideal for Survival Retreat

Until the Hyperion backyard reactor clears all the technological and regulatory hurdles, persons wishing to provide multi-decadal baseload power to large isolated facilities, will be looking to Japanese company Toshiba. Whether you wish to power a remote town, a military base, a large mid-ocean seastead, a robust polar colony, or a good-sized survival colony meant to provide a "minimum viable population" for post-apocalyptic civilisational "reset", Toshiba's 10 MW reactor appears capable of providing the initial power boost.

The Toshiba 4S reactor is designed to provide 10 MW of power, with 30 years between refuelings. And Toshiba fully intends to pursue US licensing immediately -- with much deeper pockets for dealing with the US NRC, than startup Hyperion.

The technical specifications for the 4S reactor are unique in the nuclear industry. The actual reactor would be located in a sealed, cylindrical vault 30 m (98 ft) installed underground, while the building above ground would be only 22 x 16 x 11 m (72 × 52.5 x 36 ft) in size. This power plant is designed to provide 10 MW of electrical power. It’s not a big reactor when sized up to those 1800 MG proposals.

The 4S is a fast neutron reactor using neutron reflector panels around the perimeter to maintain neutron density. The reflector panels replace complicated control rods, while still keeping the ability to shut down the nuclear reaction in case of an emergency. Toshiba’s 4S utilizes liquid sodium as a coolant, allowing the reactor to operate 200 degrees hotter than by using water. Using sodium allows the reactor to be unpressurized, even though water at such temperatures would run at thousands of pounds per square inch.

The 4S reactor is expected to provide electric energy for between 5 and 13 cents/kWh, factoring in only the operating costs, to which unknown decommissioning and fuel waste processing and safe disposal costs need to be added. On paper, it has been determined that the reactor could run for 30 years without being refueled.

The Toshiba 4S Nuclear Battery is already being proposed as the power source for the remote Galena Nuclear Power Plant in Galena, Alaska.

Toshiba is the parent company for Westinghouse whose AP1000 is working through its revisions needed to get the original certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission back in force. Thus Toshiba has some expertise for an application attempt employed now. News is expected any day for the formal application to be submitted. Toshiba’s staff had at last report met with the NRC back on August 8, 2008, at which time the NRC’s staff met for a pre-application presentation of a Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table (PIRT) for the 4S reactor. _NewEnergyandFuel

Smaller, safer, modular, factory-built nuclear reactors can only be licensed if they are backed by big money. In the US, the regulatory deck is stacked against safe new nuclear designs. But demand for reliable baseload power in the US is significant, and will only grow larger as more emphasis is placed on developing a large new electric vehicle ground fleet. Toshiba and other large reactor companies are determined to cash in on this growing demand.

How's That Lobotomy Working Out, Gallup?

Results are based on aggregated telephone and face-to-face interviews with 259,542 adults, aged 15 and older, in 135 countries from 2007 to 2009. The 135 countries surveyed represent 93% of the world's adult population. _Gallup

Image Source:Let A Thousand Nations Bloom
Gallup conducted surveys in 135 countries, and condensed the findings into the above map. But if they collected data from 135 countries, why does the map only show 5 result categories? Can you see how in this map Gallup has managed to destroy most of the meaningful information it obtained from its multi-national surveys?

This is typical of how large news and information sources distort, skew, and make invisible the information that humans need for making informed decisions. These mega corps are in bed with national governments and international inter-governmental organisations to keep you in the dark.

Grassroots movements such as the US Tea Party movement are admirable in their goals to return their nation to its revolutionary, anti-statist origins. But there was a reason the US was founded on a relatively virgin continent, rather than in the middle of Europe. All of the vast inter-connecting webs of information, power, wealth, education, and influence tend to work together to maintain the current power structures.

Hyper-statism has finally grabbed virtual total control of the US, in the Obama - Pelosi reich. We should expect our news to consist of cartoon cutouts that convey no information, such as the Gallup map above.

Ayn Rand portrayed a similar hyper-statism in Atlas Shrugged. Orwell has his 1984, and Bradbury his Fahrenheit 451. The map above is just another reminder that we are living in a dystopian idiocracy, which is only likely to get worse unless an anti-statist revolution can be successfully carried out.

The internet and other new media is the biggest thorn in the side of our hyper-statist reich. China and North Korea have found ways to neuter most of the effects of new media. The US reich would like to do the same -- if it were not for that pesky constitution and a matter of inconvenient elections that never seem to stop. Obama - Pelosi believe they have ways of dealing with those problems, however.

Russia Turns Its Back on Greatest Dangers

the preoccupation with America has blinded large sections of the Russian elite to other threats facing their country....Foremost among these is demographic decline: the shrinking of Russia. _Blogs.law.harvard/mesh

The city of Moscow contains 2 million muslim residents. By 2015, muslims will make up the majority of the Russian army, and by 2020 they will be one fifth the population of the country. How? By immigration and by differential birthrate. Muslim birth rates remain consistently higher than birth rates of ethnic Russians -- in Moscow and throughout the countryside.

As we have seen in London, Oslo, and Amsterdam, muslims are capable of transforming the life of a large European city with much less than a majority of the population. Anything above 10% muslim population in an important city -- particularly a capital city -- can change the way of life for everyone.

The situation is particularly ominous in Russia, since the indigenous Russian population is dropping so quickly due to high death rates combined with low birth rates. Moscow is apt to be majority muslim within a few decades. Imagine the transformation of once-proud Moscovites into dhimmis -- it may not be long now.

And yet Russians cling to their rabid anti-Americanism, and proceed to encourage nuclear proliferation in Iran, Venezuela, and any other Russia-friendly dictatorship it can form a relationship with. In this case, Russia-friendly necessarily tends to equate with anti-American.

In other words, Russia is forsaking the one reformation that could possibly save it from its almost certain demographic fate. Without human rights and economic reforms combined with stronger relations with the US and/or Europe, Russia is doomed to lose almost all of its country to its neighbors over the next several decades.

Such reforms and such a US or European alliance would require Russia to give up its bully-boy stance in its local neighborhood. But it would inject important investment and technological development into Russia's decrepit energy and industrial sectors. More importantly, it would give indigenous Russians the sense of a real future -- something to live and breed for. Without that, Russia simply evaporates.