Gasification: Turning Any Carbon Into Any Fuel

High temperature, oxygen-free gasification turns carbon sources such as coal or biomass mostly into gaseous H2 and CO (syngas). These two gases can be converted via either chemical or biological means into a wide range of fuels--including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol, methanol, etc etc. These carbon-to-fuel processes can be made very clean, with virtually no toxic byproducts remaining after the conversion process. Brian Westenhaus reports on progress coming directly from the long work of the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) in Illinois.

The GTI has been researching gasification for over 50 years and now has extensive experience in designing, constructing and operating gasification systems. Two systems are patented, and licensed now. One is coal gasification and the other is biomass gasification. Multifuel plants that combine the two are now commercialized and built and building in Finland and China for a world total of 4 industrial sized gasification units. These actually work with tens of millions of dollars behind the projects and serious production coming to consumer markets..... _NewEnergyandFuel

Brian goes on to describe several gasification ventures, and their various ongoing commercial projects. A very nice summary update.

Canadian company Nexterra is a subcontractor for a gasification plant at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in the US.

The Nexterra system will replace ORNL's existing natural gas steam plant by converting locally sourced woody biomass into clean burning syngas. The syngas will produce 60,000 lbs/hr of saturated steam to displace 75 MMBtu/hr of fossil fuel traditionally used to heat the campus. Once operational, the system will reduce campus fossil fuel consumption by 80 per cent.

Nexterra is supplying the complete gasification system from fuel handling and storage through to the exhaust stack. Engineering design is underway and the system will be delivered in late 2009. _Biotech

As Brian relates above, gasification projects are being built around the world, at accelerating rates. Coal gasification to liquid fuel provides the option of producing the full range of liquid fuels.

Small gasification and refining plants located at the coal mines themselves, provide a much more economical and clean way of turning low-grade coal into cleaner, more versatile fuels. It will take time to build the infrastructure, but expect significant (around 5%) displacement of petroleum by gasification within 5 years. As experience builds and technology improves, the growth rate should accelerate.

Coal deposits exist to provide hundreds of years of production. Biomass production is essentially limitless, when taking into account marginal lands and coastal onshore and offshore biomass production.

Fission Reactor for Permanent Lunar Base

Solar energy works well while the sun is shining. But on the moon, the sun shines roughly 14 and a half days on and 14 and a half days off. During those dark days, the moon base will still need power. Nuclear fission can provide consistent baseload power, day in and day out--even if your day is 28 Earth days long.

The first design concept by Sunpower Inc., of Athens, Ohio, uses two opposed piston engines coupled to alternators that produce 6 kilowatts each, or a total of 12 kilowatts of power. The second contract with Barber Nichols Inc. of Arvada, Colo., is for development of a closed Brayton cycle engine that uses a high speed turbine and compressor coupled to a rotary alternator that also generates 12 kilowatts of power.

"Development and testing of the power conversion unit will be a key factor in demonstrating the readiness of fission surface power technology and provide NASA with viable and cost-effective options for nuclear power on the moon and Mars," said Don Palac, manager for Glenn's Fission Surface Power Project.

After a one year design and analysis phase, a single contractor will be selected to build and test a prototype power conversion unit. When complete, the power conversion unit will be integrated with the other technology demonstration unit's major components....

....A nuclear reactor used in space is much different than Earth-based systems. There are no large concrete cooling towers, and the reactor is about the size of an office trash can. The energy produced from a space reactor is also much smaller but more than adequate for the projected power needs of a lunar outpost.

Testing of the non-nuclear system is expected to take place at Glenn in 2012 or 2013. These tests will help verify system performance projections, develop safe and reliable control methods, gain valuable operating experience, and reduce technology and programmatic risks. This technology demonstration is being conducted as part of NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program. _SD

Nuclear reactors for extreme Earth colonies--such as the polar regions, permanent open ocean colonies, and undersea colonies--would be easier to design and build, and so more economical. Reactors such as Hyperion's, or other small modular reactors, are either already developed or well along the development path.

Mass Producing Buildings By Robot

The house-building robot has built itself a much firmer foundation in the business world than when Al Fin first covered the topic of robot-built homes. The University of Southern California engineer who developed the ingenious device is ready to spin off a company to begin building the quick and economical homes.

Behrokh Khoshnevis is the brainchild behind this building machine after looking into methods of rapid construction as a way to reconstruct areas devestated by natural disasters such as earthquakes which have plagued his native Iran.

Not only a labour saver of note but the machine is environmentally sound too as reports claim up to seven tonnes of waste are produced by convential house building and the machine would also negate the need for heavy vehicle usage too.

Khoshnevis has also had interest from NASA in his machine as a potential builder of a lunar habitat. _ElectricPig_via_GizmoWatch_via_ImpactLab

Robots to build lunar habitats? Good idea. Using this type of robot to build a lunar base is not as imaginative as bombarding the lunar surface with self-assembling, self-reproducing base-building nano-bots, but if it can be made to work in the lunar environment, why not?

This machine resembles a rapid prototyping machine, using concrete as the material. For now, presumably, it constructs just the building's shell. But quickly putting up a structurally sound building shell provides a save and dry environment for finishing construction inside the building. Later, ways of robotic construction of all layers of the building structure, including plumbing, electrical and communications wiring, heating/AC/ventilation ducting, etc. should be built into such devices.

Remember that Gender Gap That Wasn't Supposed to Be There? It's Bigger and More Real Than Ever

When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, nurturing, cautious and emotionally responsive. Men tend to be more competitive, assertive, reckless and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear.

What do you call people who refuse to admit the obvious? They are called "reality disadvantaged." That describes the legions of leftists in academia, media, and government who continue to deny important differences between men and women.

...a series of research teams have repeatedly analyzed personality tests taken by men and women in more than 60 countries around the world. For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the variation is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India’s or Zimbabwe’s than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.

....When Dr. Deaner looks at, say, the top 40 finishers of each sex in a race, he typically finds two to four times as many relatively fast male runners as relatively fast female runners.

This large gender gap has persisted for two decades in all kinds of races — high school and college meets, elite and nonelite road races — and it jibes with other studies reporting that male runners train harder and are more motivated by competition, Dr. Deaner says. This enduring “sex difference in competitiveness,” he concludes, “must be considered a genuine failure for the sociocultural conditions hypothesis” that the personality gap will shrink as new roles open for women. _NYT_via_Impactlab

While it is clear that men make up the vast majority of high achievers in math-intensive fields such as physics, rigorous engineering fields, mathematics, theoretical computer science, and the more math-intensive subfields in chemistry and other sciences, it is also clear that greater male competitiveness explains much of the relatively high achievement by males in fields that accept as many women as men at the entry level.

Testosterone makes a difference in the trajectory of a person's life, from the intrauterine environment to the neural development at critical developmental periods, to mature adult interests and personality quirks. In modern societies, both men and women are freer to be who they want to be. And guess what? They choose to be different from each other in overwhelming numbers.

But why do they make these divergent choices? Testosterone is far more of an explanatory factor than social programming. From conception to death, that one steroid hormone drives men to be who they are, while the much lower concentrations of vitamin T in women has a huge influence in who a woman chooses to become.

A Brief Statement on New Comments Policy

I have been forced to go to comment moderation for one specific reason: too many people who have not demonstrated intellectual competence on this blog have resorted to uninformed ranting. Ranting comments from people that I am not familiar with are not published. Likewise, people who have only been posting comments for a short time, but who uniformly publish ranting and unsupportable opinions, are not published unless they are able to support their views or provide useful insights into a topic.

It is important to understand that each Al Fin posting is only part of the whole. One often needs to be familiar with previous postings, to understand the evidence supporting current postings. While it may seem unfair to expect commenters to be familiar with previous postings on a topic before they post a ranting comment, nevertheless, that is exactly what I expect.

Of course, if a comment is reasoned and well-supported by objective evidence, it will be published, regardless of the author. And if long-established readers and commenters on the blog happen to post a rant or two, well, they have paid their dues many times over. They are entitled.

The US Spending That's Breaking the Bank

US federal government spending is spiraling upward. Which part of federal expenditures are taking the heaviest toll in terms of hurting the economy?

The federal deficit is expected to hit $407 billion for fiscal 2008 (which ends at the end of this month) and $438 billion next year. Still, the deficit is expected to be only 3% of GDP, which is in line with the average of the last 30 years. We hope Congress and the Presidential candidates don't obsess over the deficit per se, because the real fiscal drag from government comes from how much it spends, not how much it borrows.

The Bush tax cuts also aren't the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion. This year revenues have declined by 0.8%, but a major reason is the $150 billion bipartisan tax rebate that has hit the Treasury without spurring the economy. Without these nonstimulating rebates, federal tax payments would have climbed another 2.5%, according to CBO. Revenue is expected to be a healthy 18.5% of GDP next year without any tax increase.

Another myth is that the war on terror has busted the budget. While operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are expensive, defense spending is $605 billion this year, or about 4.5% of GDP. That only seems large by comparison to the holiday from history of the 1990s, when defense fell to 3% of GDP. As recently as 1986, defense spending was 6.2% of GDP.

The real runaway train is what CBO calls a "substantial increase in spending" that is "on an unsustainable path." That's for sure. The nearby chart shows how much some federal accounts have expanded since 2001, and in inflation-adjusted dollars. This year alone, federal agencies have lifted their spending by 8.1%, with another 7% raise expected for 2009. There's certainly no recession in Washington. The CBO says that, merely in the two years that Democrats have run Congress, federal expenditures are up $429 billion -- to $3.158 trillion.

....Meanwhile, remember that "pay as you go" spending promise that Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2006? We called it a ruse at the time, and the last two years have proved it. Senator Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) has tallied up at least $398 billion in "paygo" violations so far. Earmarks were also supposed to be cut in half by this Congress. In 2008 there were some 11,000 at a cost of $17 billion, the second most ever, and far more than half the peak of 14,000 in 2006.

The point to keep in mind is that this big spending blitz is coming even before a new President and Congress arrive next year with far more spending promises in tow. As they contemplate their choice for President, voters might want to consider which of the candidates is likely to be a check on Congressional appetites, rather than a facilitator. _WSJ

And that is actually the point, isn't it? While Obama has promised $1 trillion in new spending (!), McCain is not the stingiest of spenders in Congress, either. Biden's record offers little hope for fiscal restraint. Only Governor Palin of Alaska has shown the fiscal discipline that this building budgetary catastrophe demands.

Politicians in Washington DC do not answer to the voters, they answer to the special interests who financed their elections. There is a big difference. Perhaps no one is deeper in hoc to corrupt political machines than Senator Obama. Certainly no one has shown more eagerness to hobnob with truly despicable characters.

Voters need to be extremely careful this year, and every election year thereafter. Much of the fiscal disaster that is building, is enshrined in future promises and mandates. It will be imperative that many of the "social contracts" that have been legislated into government be re-negotiated. The current trajectory is unsustainable over the next couple of decades.

Either face the music now, or face it later when it's too late to mitigate disaster for over half the population.

Scientists Creating New Life? Why Not?

High school kids do it all the time in the back seats of automobiles. It may finally be time for over-educated researchers to start doing something that remarkable, for a change?

...a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.

While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the Origin of Life in Florence, Italy, last week. The replication isn't wholly autonomous, so it's not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.

"We've made more progress on how the membrane of a protocell could grow and divide," Szostak said in a phone interview. "What we can do now is copy a limited set of simple [genetic] sequences, but we need to be able to copy arbitrary sequences so that sequences could evolve that do something useful."

By doing "something useful" for the cell, these genes would launch the new form of life down the Darwinian evolutionary path similar to the one that our oldest living ancestors must have traveled. Though where selective pressure will lead the new form of life is impossible to know. _Wired

Everyone will be wanting to ask, "Yes, but what does it actually do?" Just creating a living cell from spare parts would certainly be a first, but what do these particular scientists plan to do as an encore?

We understand what Craig Venter and his merry band of biochemists, geneticists, and microbiologists are trying to do: they are trying to overturn the entire balance of energy on the human planet of Earth. Venter and his crew plan to create organisms that create fuel--and to become the world's first trillionaires in the process. That is the type of over-riding ambition and hubris that I can respect.

Creating artificial cellular life in the lab will be incredibly useful for bio-science and biotech, of course. Each artificial cell is a powerful bio-model platform, for testing every little function of the cell--and perhaps inventing new ones. It is a profound area of study, in itself. But Venter plans--once again--to do an "end around", bypassing the masses of scientists huddling in the center of the field. He intends to go all the way to the endzone via one Hail Mary pass.

Exciting and most interesting times for the biologically trained.

Obama Backers Becoming Uncomfortable With the Messiah's Reflexive Phoniness

I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development...

Instead, the Obama-messiah's backers want him to be phony in a way that is more convincing to his target audience. Some even suggest that Obama just "be himself", as if the Obama-onion when peeled away layer by layer, actually has an actual self. Sorry, folks. There's no there, there.

Which may be why Obama's poll numbers are abit shaky right now, and why an inexperienced "former mayor" from Alaska has the messiah shaking in his boots.

...Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

... I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.

Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother's generation -- agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.

Here's one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, "Stop her!" as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, "Men!"

Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem...

...Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership. _Sal-on

Yes, if Sarah Palin's reputation survives the surreal and absurdist attacks being heaped indiscriminately on her and her family by "plausibly deniable" Democratic Party attack dogs, and a national media largely subservient to the DNC.

This is full contact politics, and as in any no-holds-barred full contact event, blowback can be a bitch [media take note]. Hold on, it only gets more intense when the Democratic attack dogs of war are let slipped.

Democratic Dirty Tricksters Hate This Woman

They hate the woman, her family, her baby, and everything else connected with hurricane Sarah. That's why the dirtiest legions of dirty tricksters from the abyss of the US Democratic Party have descended on the pristine state of Alaska--to do whatever it takes to rip up and destroy her chances for victory in November. The US national media and leftist websites have gone berserk trying to find a Palin scandal--any Palin scandal!!!!!--that will hold up to scrutiny. So far, no dice. But we remember the fake National Guard memoes that Democratic dirty tricksters dug up and tried to feed the public via "Courage!" Dan Rather. Fake but accurate is the motto for Dan and the Dem Dirties.

Democrats have airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage, the state capital Juneau and Mrs. Palin's hometown of Wasilla to dig into her record and background. My sources report the first wave arrived in Anchorage less than 24 hours after John McCain selected her on August 29.

The main area of interest to the Democratic SWAT team is Mrs. Palin's dismissal in July of her public safety commissioner. Mrs. Palin says he was fired for cause. Her critics claim he was fired because he wouldn't bend to pressure to get rid of a state trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a bitter divorce battle with Mrs. Palin's sister. Mr. Wooten is certainly a colorful character. He served a five-day suspension after the Palin family filed a complaint against him alleging he had threatened Mrs. Palin's father. They also accused him of using a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson, drinking in his patrol car and illegally shooting a moose. _WSJ

So far, everything the enraged dem-entors have attempted has backfired--either on them or on their media/blogger proxies. The same is likely to happen in connection with loser Wooten.

But you can't blame power-hungry dirty trickster operatives for trying. Especially when they see the numbers swinging Mr McCain's way, big time, among women with IQs above 90, and among independent voters of all IQ levels.

You still see the morons at Kos and Huffpo bleeding out of all orifices in a desperate attempt to sink the Alaska fisherwoman and her crew. But looking at the American voting population realistically, at this point they'd have to find something much bigger than Obama's close relationship with terrorists and America hating race baiters to knock this lady out of the race. Because from my vantage point she looks tougher than all three of the men in this contest put together.

How Obama Blew It by Democratic Commentator Kirsten Powers

White Women Flock to McCain/Palin

Independents moving to McCain/Palin: Gallup

On Stupidity 1 and 2

The excerpts below from On Stupidity 1, and On Stupidity 2, from successive issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education, illustrate some of the points concerning education that have been made here at Al Fin over the past few years.

It is my job, as I see it, to combat ignorance and foster the skills and knowledge needed to produce intelligent, ethical, and productive citizens. I see too many students who are:

*Primarily focused on their own emotions — on the primacy of their "feelings" — rather than on analysis supported by evidence.

*Uncertain what constitutes reliable evidence, thus tending to use the most easily found sources uncritically.

*Convinced that no opinion is worth more than another: All views are equal.

*Uncertain about academic honesty and what constitutes plagiarism. (I recently had a student defend herself by claiming that her paper was more than 50 percent original, so she should receive that much credit, at least.)

*Unable to follow or make a sustained argument.

*Uncertain about spelling and punctuation (and skeptical that such skills matter).

*Hostile to anything that is not directly relevant to their career goals, which are vaguely understood.

*Increasingly interested in the social and athletic above the academic, while "needing" to receive very high grades.

*Not really embarrassed at their lack of knowledge and skills.

*Certain that any academic failure is the fault of the professor rather than the student.
_OS1

An interesting list of common and sometimes surprising deficits of modern students, faced by concerned professors today. In "On Stupidity 2" the author goes on:

...today's students must also learn — just as we all did — how to adapt to generations that came before them, since, except in school, there are usually more people outside of one's generation than in it. Age differences may be the most underrated form of diversity in education.

One of the consequences of K-12 schooling (and of college, to a lesser extent) is the creation of a narrow peer group. That segregation by age impairs the ability of young people to relate to anyone outside their cohort, as anyone with teenage children or first-year college students knows all too well. _OS2

The author of the two essays is concerned about the possible adverse effects of converging computing/communications technologies on the ability of students to reason and learn. Given the unprecedented nature of many of these technologies, that is not surprising. No one knows what to expect, long term.

But it is clear that today's fossilised institutions of education are innately ill-prepared to adjust to changing technologies. The author of the 2 pieces above is a tenured professor and thus entrenched in the institutional structure which itself is part of the problem. On would not expect him to see beyond the limitations of his training, just as one does not expect an ocean dwelling fish to be familiar with navigating city streets.

Education is supposed to be preparing students for the future they will have to live in. How is it doing?

The Wealth of Nations

Why are some nations rich and some poor? From Adam Smith to Jared Diamond, authors have tried to explain the discrepancy. Now Gregory Clark takes his turn--with a new book, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, to explain the difference that makes a difference in the wealth and poverty of nations. The following excerpts of a review of Clark's book provide a small glimpse into the ambitious work:

In this quantitative, long-term economic history, Clark seemingly rejects the ‘institutional development theory.’ ‘Despite the dominant role that institutions and institutional analysis have played in economics and economic history since the time of Adam Smith,’ he writes, ‘institutions play at best a minor role in the story of the Industrial Revolution told here, and in the account of economic performance since then’ (10). He tells us that ‘economists, and the institutions they inhabit, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have adopted a false picture of preindustrial societies, and of the eventual causes of modern growth’ (ix). (2)

Clark writes that institutions alone are not sufficient to trigger a takeoff into economic growth. Indeed, do-gooders such as the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, the World Bank, and UN peacekeepers all too easily cause only misery.....Clark attacks the authors of various widely accepted theories about the Industrial Revolution, and indirectly confronts many economic develop-ment theories, including institutional ones. He dismisses theories as varied as Gary Becker’s (that fewer children were being endowed with better human capital), Douglas North’s (that property rights and free markets after the Glorious Revo-lution got modern capitalism going), and Kenneth Pomeranz’s (that scale economies in a big, compact population facilitated modernisation).

....We must acknowledge that not all people are the same when it comes to fulfilling the requirements of modern economic prowess. Many societies around the world today are far behind where western Europeans were in their basic cultural attitudes in the sixteenth century (or the Chinese and Japanese in the early nineteenth). The slapdash work ethic of Indian textile workers is still a hindrance to competitiveness, and complex modern production processes require a more disciplined workforce and social climate than can be found in many parts of the third world. Recently, we were again reminded of the importance of fundamental internal institutions when the Kenyan flower export industry, once extolled as an outstanding African success, collapsed and quickly shifted elsewhere after the outbreak of tribal strife. We must therefore guard against the illusions that all third-world societies will now find it easy to transit from the Malthusian fraternity into the world’s expanding growth league, and that outside aid can do much to produce the all-important cultural changes.

...Clark has taken the magnifying glass to contemporary ‘institutional development theories,’ which have proven fruitful and influential. He shows to my satisfaction that it is naive merely to ‘export’ formal institutions such as property rights legislation, transparency compacts, and democracy to underdeveloped societies. To do so now is almost as unsophisticated as it was fifty years ago to simply send capital goods to ports in less developed countries. What really matters is the populace’s receptiveness to freedom, which is based on deep-seated cultural institutions and attitudes, and which does not grow overnight. By overlooking the cultural foundations of prosperity, development optimists and freedom apostles in Washington and Canberra are wasting resources. Do-gooders who simply offer alms may indeed cause harm if they entrench dependency and a claimant mentality among people trapped in the ‘Malthusian mindset.’ _Source

The last paragraph of the excerpt sums up the basic take-home message from the reviewer's reading of Clark's book. Quite provocative, in the light of conventional wisdom on the topic.

There seems to be at least a grain of truth in most of the "wealth and poverty of nations" hypotheses. Certainly division of labour in modern societies allows a greater productivity. But we must keep in mind that while legal and economic freedoms are important to prosperity, if the underlying society is not "prepared" to use those freedoms constructively and cooperatively, the same political and economic liberalisation that has so helped the Anglosphere to prosper, may be a deadly curse to other societies.

Finally, it is very important to understand that culture and genetics are intimately tied together. For a society to evolve from a "Malthusian" to a "Prosperity" culture, it must have the genetic wherewithal to do so. I suspect that such potential limitations to societal evolution may be more than just a step beyond what today's politically correct, post-modern, faux multi-cultural academics and think tankers are willing to brave.

"Number Sense": As Common as Common Sense?

A simple test administered to children via computer graphic may be a better predictor of his subsequent performance in mathematics than his SAT. The Johns Hopkins University researchers who devised the test believe that most mammals also have an inherent "number sense" that allows them to estimate relative numbers in groups. It is a matter of degree, for humans, as to whose number sense will allow them to excel in mathematics.

Good "number sense" at age 14 correlates with higher scores on standardized math tests throughout a child's life up to that point and weaker "number sense" at 14 predicts lower scores on those standardized tests, said Justin Halberda, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

"We discovered that a child's ability to quickly estimate how many things are in a group significantly correlates with that child's performance in school math for every single year, reaching all the way back to when he or she was in kindergarten..."

..."What this seems to mean is that the very basic number sense that we humans share with animals is related to the formal mathematics that we learn in school," Halberda concludes. "The number sense we share with the animals and the formal math we learn in school may interact and inform each other throughout our lives."
_SD

The researchers ad the obligatory PC disclaimer that "nothing in this research suggests that math ability is innate or genetic." As if at this stage in understanding of human biodiversity there is still anyone with an IQ above 100 who still believes in "The Blank Slate" hypothesis.

What is obvious is that it is possible to devise fairly simple tests to distinguish between children with higher and lower aptitudes at various cognitive skills. The fact that these tests have high predictive power for the future of the respective children, is something that should not be ignored, covered up, or euphemised.

China's Economic Prospects Dimming

Higher shipping costs from China to the developed world is making the "outsourcing model" developed a decade ago obsolete. Manufacturers are discovering that those high long-distance shipping costs are stripping away their profits.

With fuel prices at record highs, the cost of sending a standard 40-foot container of goods has gone from $3,000 in 2000 to about $8,000 today, squeezing profit.

So this summer Kazazian, chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a Los Angeles-based maker of recreational equipment, did something radical: He moved the manufacturing back to Haleyville, Ala.

Soaring energy costs, the falling dollar and inflation are cutting into what U.S. manufacturers call the "China price"-- the 40 to 50 percent cost advantage once offered by Chinese producers.

The export model that has powered China and other Asian countries for three decades will be compromised if fuel prices continue to rise, said Stephen Jen, a managing director for Morgan Stanley.

"Globalization has gone a little bit too far. It has overshot," Jen said. "We're not saying Asia is going to crumble, but we are saying Asia enjoyed extraordinary conditions in the past. Now the conditions are changing very quickly because of the energy shock, and Asia is coming under pressure."

The ripple effects have been far-reaching. The trade imbalance between the United States and China -- a source of political tension for years -- is beginning to right itself as Chinese exports fall and U.S. exports rise. Global trade routes are being transformed, suggesting a possible return to a less integrated world economy.

The model of outsourcing to China emerged at a time when oil was going for $20 a barrel. In the past few months, oil has been trading at about $110, and many experts say it will eventually hit $200.

This has led some companies to move production from China to northern Mexico, next door to the U.S. market. But others have chosen to relocate inside the United States.

Midwestern steelmakers are doing booming business as steel exports from China to the United States slowed down by 38 percent in the first seven months of the year while U.S. steel production rose 10 percent. Manufacturers of furniture, electronic appliances and textiles are also among those shifting production back.

The most prominent company in the group might be Thomasville Furniture, which was criticized a few years ago for sending several thousand American jobs overseas. It announced in June that it was returning production of an entire line of upholstered and wood furniture to the United States. The company says it will add 100 jobs in North Carolina.

_WaPo

A lot of factors in the economic equation are bound to change between now and 2020. Looking back, we will understand why China's stratospheric dreams collapsed.

Media Aims to Shoot Sarah Palin Like Rabid Dog

The news media has aligned itself with extreme leftist websites in the attempt to destroy Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and her family if needs be. Three high-powered reporters on terrorism have been deflected from covering the nation's enemies, to digging up dirt on Sarah Palin.

Editors in the print media are shifting terrorism experts on their staffs towards investigations of political candidates. At least three such reporters at three major papers are now chasing Sarah Palin stories... _Counter-Terrorism

Even the "queen of American media", Oprah Winfrey, has taken a stand against Palin--refusing to bring Palin on her show. It seems she has already committed her resources and reputation to getting Barak Obama elected. Sorry, sister Sarah. You're just not "the one" in Opra's eye.

It is disingenuous to now pretend Oprah is not a big story this campaign season. Oprah has a perfect right to act in a partisan way, but please stop with the whining when that is pointed out. Oprah injected herself into the political campaign. And now she has to take her lumps for it, as would any other media figure who did what Oprah has done. _TalkLeft

Roughly 90% of American journalists and media personalities support the Democratic Party candidate, so one naturally expects their bias to shine through--as it so frequently does. But there is more than a little outright sexism and blatant double standard in how the media is looking at the second woman candidate for US Vice President. And this undeniable and outspoken bias by the media is just about ready to turn around and bite---the media itself!

Rasmussen has a new poll out that suggests that piling on Mrs. Palin may do more to harm the media's own image than hers.

According to Rasmussen, fully 68% of voters believe that "most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win." And -- no surprise -- 49% of those surveyed believe reporters are backing Barack Obama, while just 14% think the media is in the tank for Sen. McCain. _WSJ

Even feminists--long die-hard supporters of the party--are starting to notice that the Democratic Party / Media Industrial Complex has jumped the shark, into the tank for Obama--and against women.

The party has moved from taking the female vote for granted to outright contempt for women. That's why Palin represents the most serious conservative threat ever to the modern liberal claim on issues of cultural and social superiority. Why? Because men and women who never before would have considered voting for a Republican have either decided, or are seriously considering, doing so. _SFGate

Until now, there has always been at least a thin veil of deniability protecting the media from full-out exposure as partisan, biased mouthpieces for the DP, DNC, and George Soros. Now that veil has been dropped by both the news media and the popular media.

We are soon to see something the media never dreamed could happen--a full-fledged backlash against know-nothing partisan "journalists." Because now, there are millions of news outlets where before there were only 3 or 4 for broadcast and 2 or 3 of record, for print. Old media interests are beginning to lose advertising revenue and readers/viewers to the new media. This is a new age for media, and the blood-letting in the old media has just begun.

More on Sarah Palin and the media here and here and here

Update: Cyber-vermin are busy vandalising Palin's Wikipedia page

Leftist media "is disgusted" at little Piper Palin's loving care of her baby brother

The Washington Post uses propaganda tactics in an attempt to turn a non-story into a scandal about Palin

And even Steve Sailer--who early on took gratuitous potshots at Palin's fertility--has begun to notice the ultra left bias of media coverage of Palin

Is Palin a form of "locoweed" for the media--driving them viscerally insane? Or does the media still have time to recover from its quasi-suicidal anti-Palin insanity, and attempt to portray itself as objective again?

Can Exercise Grow More Brain Cells?

Jack LaLanne will be 94 years old September 26. His life has been a tribute to the benefits of lifelong exercise. Science is slowly substantiating the essential truths behind LaLanne's long crusade.

Exercise is essential to building new muscle cells in a damaged heart, or in skeletal muscles. Exercise kicks stem cells into the circulation, where they can migrate to where they are needed.

Researchers at the University of Gothenberg have recently shown that exercise stimulates the growth of new brain cells from neural stem cells, aiding recovery from brain damage.

Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg show for the first time that exercise helps restore stem cell growth and improves behavior in young mice that suffered damage to the brain induced by a clinically relevant dose of radiation.

The researchers believe that these results are also applicable to children that have suffered damage due to radiotherapy of brain tumors.....The results from the study demonstrated that irradiated mice showed increased motor activity and altered movement patterns that were normalized if they were allowed to exercise. In addition, the mouse brains contained 50% more stem cells than their non-exercising counterparts. _SD

Children are much better able to produce stem cells to replace damaged body tissue than are adults. But the capacity to regenerate damaged tissue never goes away completely. It is quite possible that individuals who exercise regularly throughout life, are maintaining their bodies and brains in a much higher state of function, due to continued stem cell rejuvenation.

The long-term ramifications of natural stem cell stimulation--exercise, sleep, diet, herbs, meditation, etc etc--remain to be studied.

Peak Oil Stumbles, Soon to Bite the Dust

Brian Wang presents convincing reasons for the significant and sustained uptick in natural gas production in the US and Canada. Peak oil pundits are stumbling over themselves--in the face of falling oil prices and rising natural gas supplies.

Natural Gas production is going up by a lot in the United States. This was noted at Peak Oil Debunked about a month ago.

The peak oil people such as Mike Ruppert and Matt Simmons were saying in 2003 and since then that natural gas production was heading for a sharp decline.

Now even some peak oil people are changing their tune. Gail at the oildrum has agreed that natural gas production will increase in the USA.

....
The U.S. has enough natural gas resources to last up to 118 years, or 2,247 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), according to the study by Navigant Consulting for the American Clean Skies Foundation based on a mid-2008 estimates.

...In Canada, The Horn River basin as 500 trillion cubic feet in place....B.C.'s Horn River Basin, near the Northwest Territories, has generated early estimates upwards of 28 tcf (trillion cubic feet) in potential shale gas reserves. To the south lies the Montney sand, shale and siltstone tight gas play, which the B.C. government pegs at 80 tcf of tight gas in place.

In the Saint Lawrence Lowlands of Quebec, Forest Oil Corp. compares its Utica shale gas discovery (estimated four tcf potential) to the legendary Barnett shale in Texas. On the East Coast, wildcatters are testing the potential of the Frederick Brook shale formation of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

In a February report, Raymond James Ltd. calculated that a move from vertical wells to horizontal improved Montney economics from break-even to a 27% expected internal rate of return.

....In the Mackenzie Delta, three natural gas discoveries total 5.8 tcf. Further north in the Arctic islands, 16 gas discoveries amount to a further 17 tcf. Benoit Beauchamp, executive director of the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America and a former Geological Survey of Canada field geologist in the Far North, estimates the remote region's potential at 117 tcf of gas plus nearly four billion barrels of oil.

Canada's oilsands motherlode - Alberta estimates that its buried treasure totals 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen in place......

FURTHER READING
Shale Gas at wikipedia _NextBigFuture

This supports information provided earlier at this blog and at Al Fin Energy. And since gas can be burned in transportation vehicles--or converted to liquid fuels--it really is a big deal. The problem with peak oil junkies is that they are addicted to doom, and are willing to cut corners to remain convinced that doom is coming. Reality is not in it, as far as they are concerned.

Planet Earth has barely been explored, up until tomorrow, for fosssil fuel reserves and other strategic materials. Even the rich Persian Gulf area (including Saudi Arabia) has had less than 1% the number of exploratory wells drilled than has North America. The reason for that is that there is so much oil flowing now--more than they want to supply actually, that they do not want to undergo the expense of drilling new exploration wells when there is no current need.

Reality bites, when you believe something so strongly as peak oil or climate catastrophe, but without evidence.

Update: Be sure to read this intriguing National Post article on how Canada's oil sands can counter Russia's belligerent neo-imperialist international trouble-making. Europeans in particular should pay attention to developments in energy resources, since it is their fat in the fire.

Homeschooling as a Viable Option

Despite California's attempt to outlaw homeschooling not long ago, most states in the US are quite accomodating to homeschooling families. And the homeschooling experience for children can be just as full and varied--with a far superior type of "socialisation"--than traditional schooling.

.....The secret of home-schooling, however, is that you don’t have to be a master teacher to do it well. Energy, dedication, and good materials are what you need. Your competition, meanwhile, is a system that by design and necessity seeks the median. Public (and many private) school students have to move along in all subjects at a similar pace, and in the same order. Outliers — the talkative, the energetic, the gifted, the struggling — are labeled and interventions (counseling, special classrooms, tutoring, medication) prescribed. The goal is not a full realization of the child’s potential, but rather the system’s smooth functioning.

Saying that we home-school sometimes elicits troubled responses. Though conditions have improved since the 1970s, when public school officials routinely sicced child welfare officers on parents teaching their children at home, home-schooling is still odd to most people. That’s just the price we radicals pay. Thanks to organizations like the [1] Home School Legal Defense Association, though state authorities and teacher’s unions don’t like what we’re up to, they mostly leave us alone. Power to the people, baby.

While it’s nice to imagine ourselves living a counter-cultural lifestyle, the reality is that in Wichita, Kansas, home-schooling is widespread. Home-schoolers have baseball teams and soccer leagues. Teaching support groups. There’s even a Boy-Scout troop. Local private schools, meanwhile, offer science and other equipment-intensive courses. Churches provide facilities for home-school association meetings, and even study halls so home-school parents can join Bible studies. If a home-schooling mother falls ill or dies, there is often another home-schooling family who takes on responsibility for teaching her children. _Source

Not for everybody, no, of course not. But a lot of the reasons people have for not considering homeschooling may not actually apply.

Assembly-line factory style teaching is absurd. We only consider it the norm because we have been drowning in it for so long. It really is long past time for the whole concept of education to be re-thought and more intelligently implemented.

Biology Singularity

Important discoveries in fundamental biology are occurring almost daily. Building discovery on discovery--using revolutionary new tools of research--bio-researchers are opening brave new worlds of knowledge.

Brian Wang presents an array of progress in transgenic animal research

Multiple groups of researchers are closing in on the genetics of cancer

Distinctive patterns of micro-RNA in cells may provide important clues about disease states, for diagnosing pathological conditions.

Small interfering RNA can be sculpted into drugs quickly, and may soon be therapeutically injected into cells via a hollowed-out virus.

Vanderbilt University researchers have developed a nanotech device for detecting cell signaling between different cells of the immune system.

A scientist at UCSD is looking at the basic 68 molecules of life, and how a more intensive study of these molecules might provide basic insights into strategic intervention in disease states.

And so on. We live in a biological world. It is long past time that we understood what that meant.

Russia's Impending Meltdown

Russia's new Tsar, Putin, has accelerated the downfall of Russia by writing huge new checks that the country cannot cash.

Russia will be weaker in 10 years. Its population is falling by a million people a year. From a Slavic Russian-chauvinist point of view (i.e., that held by many senior officials), even that dismal statistic is too optimistic. Russia's Muslim minority, currently around a fifth of the population, is growing fast, just as "ethnic Russians" are shrinking in number.

Russia will be weaker militarily, partly because it will lack the numbers of young men it needs to sustain a conscript army, but also because of corruption. Like all others engaged in public procurement in Russia, the military finds it almost impossible to spend large sums of money honestly and effectively.

That is a symptom of a wider problem: the failure of the Putin experiment to modernize Russia's archaic system of public administration. Putin's successor, Medvedev, talks a lot about anticorruption efforts. But it is hard to see those starting where they need to start: at the very top. It is there that tens of billions of dollars have been diverted into the "pocket companies" of the elite, such as RosUkrEnergo, Gunvor, and the like. Without a free press or a real opposition to ask embarrassing questions, such criminally cozy arrangements will persist.

The slide into a fascist kleptocracy is corrosive to Russia's chances of joining the rest of the developed world, where — by virtue of its education level and aspirations — it certainly belongs. That decline endangers even Russia's survival as a unified country. __Lucas

The unstable conditions that are stoking Russia's current economic boom may soon bring about a crisis similar to the financial meltdown of 1998, when, as a result of the decline in world commodity prices, Russia, which is heavily dependent on the export of raw materials, lost most of its income. Widespread corruption at every level of private and state bureaucracy, coupled with the fact that the government invests little of its oil money in fostering areas like technological innovation, corporate responsibility, and social and political reform, could spin the economic balance out of control. Rampant inflation might bring the Putin-Medvedev Kremlin down.

Even if Russia withstands that scenario, global forces will ultimately burst its economic bubble. ---Kruscheva

Its population shrinks by at least 700,000 people a year; that makes it hard to sustain a work force and an army. More, Russia has to worry about China, which has a growing population and an economy and military force that continue to expand. Some Russians are also concerned that their country's petroleum reserves will not be able to sustain production at the present level, and that its oil output may already be declining. Russia has little else to rely on. Oil exports generate two-thirds of the country's export revenue. If that revenue shrinks, so would Russia's prosperity and political influence. Putin and Medvedev have a lot to worry about.___Goldman

....the Russian military, which has modernized elements of its armed forces, remains weak. And though Russia's brazen invasion of Georgia demonstrated a willingness and ability to use its military for tactical gains and to send strategic messages, Moscow risks overplaying its hand. Russia's economic gains depend heavily on European energy consumers. That fact gives Moscow leverage with Europe, but also requires it to moderate its behavior towards its neighbors, so not to risk pushing the West toward a more assertive response.___Kay

_Chronicle_via_ALDaily

Russia's shrinking population is its biggest long-term problem, and is essentially insurmountable. Russian women leave the country whenever they can, and the ones who stay do not have babies. Russian men die in their fifties of complications from drug and alcohol abuse.

Russia's over-reliance on exports of one natural resource--fossil fuels--makes its economy vulnerable to price fluctuations, and substitutions of fuels from other sources by its customers.

The Russian people's apparently innate, centuries-old subservience to strong-man dictators leaves them without the inner strength to assert their own interests against the interests of Putin and his ex-KGB cronies.

The ongoing stripping of Russia's wealth by corrupt rulers at the top, with much of it fleeing to Swiss accounts, makes Putin's promises of a stronger, more technologically advanced Russia empty and cynical.

Russia's neighbors hate Russia, and will gladly move in on Russia's resources as the population of Russia declines. They see Russia as a rich soon-to-be corpse, almost ready to be looted, once the stench subsides.

Glasgow Scientists Aim to Make Fuel from Sunlight

The Solar and Bioenergy Research Centre at the University of Glasgow is targetting research in biofuel crops and various biological processes that could see sunlight and atmospheric carbon dioxide turned into liquid biofuels.....

Scientists at the University of Glasgow are researching several different approaches to turning sunlight into liquid fuels. From artificial photosynthesis, to sun-energised conversion of CO2 to fuel, to the development of microbes and crops for converting solar energy to liquid fuel--Glasgow researchers are on the job.

The four main areas of the new centre's research will be:

*Biofuel Crops - Development of BioFuel crops for high biomass production on marginal land.
*Biomimetic Systems - Application of biological principles to designing efficient artificial systems for converting sunlight into liquid biofuels.
*Catalysis - Development of catalysts for generating liquid biofuels from carbon dioxide and complex biopolymers such as lignocellulose.
*Microbial Fuel Cells - Development of microbial fuel cells for generating electricity, and liquid and gaseous biofuels from organic waste and sunlight.

... _NewEnergyFocus_via_Bioenergy

The one potential problem for all solar energy approaches including bioenergy, is that the sun seems to be slowing down temporarily. Less intensity of sunlight, more cloud cover and rain, shorter growing seasons, and cooler temperatures are all expected from the quieter sun. Sunspot activity is the lowest in 100 years.

If the Earth's current cooling trend accelerates due to less solar energy reaching Earth, Luddites such as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Ken Salazar etc. who try to block access to life-saving fuels such as coal and oil shale and vital electric power from nuclear energy, will be treated most unkindly.

Much more coverage of energy topics at Al Fin Energy

Brain Stimulation Preserves Brain Cells, Zen Training Restores Distracted Attention

In Parkinson's disease, certain dopamine secreting cells in the substantia nigra die off, leading to the loss of fine control of motion. But deep brain stimulation with implanted electrodes in the brains of rats preserves dopamine cells by causing increased levels of BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor), suggesting a similar therapy in humans may halt progression of Parkinson's. Remember that BDNF can also stimulate the differentiation of neural stem cells into mature neurons.

During the DBS study, researchers implanted high-frequency stimulating electrodes in the subthalamic nucleus, an area of the brain associated with movement, in rats and then induced dopamine neuron loss. When the rats had experienced a 50 percent loss of dopamine neurons, the researchers initiated brain stimulation in half of the group. Measurements of surviving, functioning dopamine neurons in rats implanted with active stimulators were then compared to a control group implanted with inactive stimulators. While the control group’s loss of dopamine neurons increased to 75 percent after two weeks, the rats implanted with active stimulators experienced no further loss of cells during that time.

Subsequent tissue analysis revealed that in rats implanted with active stimulators the trophic factor BDNF had tripled in the striatum, a part of the brain that houses dopamine terminals and “receives” the dopamine neurotransmitters that are produced in the substantia nigra. _SD

In other research, it was found that persons with Zen training are able to refocus their attention more quickly after being distracted, than persons without such training.

The study compared 12 people from the Atlanta area with more than three years of daily practice in Zen meditation with 12 others who had never practiced meditation...While having their brains scanned, the subjects were asked to focus on their breathing. Every once in a while, they had to distinguish a real word from a nonsense word presented at random intervals on a computer screen and, having done that, promptly "let go" of the just processed stimulus by refocusing on their breath....

After interruption, experienced meditators were able to bring activity in most regions of the default network back to baseline faster than non-meditators. This effect was especially prominent in the angular gyrus, a region important for processing language. _SD

Scientists have also created an animal model of chronic stress by boosting levels of corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) in a specific part of an animal's brain. Drugs to modify the effect of CRF in humans have been in the pipeline for some time. Perhaps eventually a non-addictive treatement for chronic anxiety and over-stress will be developed. Meditation, exercise, and avoiding bad habits can also do wonders.

Remember the wonder drug Dimebon, being studied as a treatment for Alzheimer's? Pfizer has acquired the rights for the drug from Medivation. Scientists are also beginning to zero in on the specific protein-protein interactions that lead to damaging neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, etc.

Here's a report of more research into stimulating replacement neurons in the brain for treating neurodegenerative disorders.

Remember: All of this research is made possible by the excess wealth generated by market economics. The more of that excess wealth (profit) that government sucks up through taxation, or prevents by excess regulation or counter-productive tort laws, the less research that can be done. Government and foundation funding through NIH etc. is only possible when there is excess wealth available to begin with. Have you ever wondered why most of the research is being done in non-socialist countries?

Take That Democrat Pussies!

Even funnier than O Hail the Messiah, Lord Obama!

H/T Ann Althouse via Instapundit.

Abundant Arctic Ice Closes in on Inept Expedition

There is no shortage of true believers in CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming). To demonstrate their faith in the dogma, these naifs continue engaging in epoch quests in harsh polar conditions, to prove that humans are changing cold to hot and ice to water. Too bad they miscalculated--again!

“We’re stuck”
I have slept poorly. The floating ice, while thin, is so prevalent that, throughout the night, it grinds noisily against the side of the boat in a slightly alarming fashion - imagine someone scraping their nails across an old-fashioned blackboard.The then begins earlier than normal and, unusually, I am not woken by Robbie bounding into my room. Instead the ship’s engine roars to life earlier than normal - at around 5.30 - and the MV ‘Havsel’ begins to judder ominously. I clamber out of bed and scramble up to the bridge - all the ship’s crew are there, and they look serious. I look outside and I can see why. The sea is almost entirely congested with ice floes - I would estimate 80% plus of the sea is covered by them. There is a real risk that we could get stuck up here. We have drifted in the night into a much icier area than where we stopped last night. I wake up the team, and everyone groggily makes their way to the bridge. There’s a mixed reaction in the team to the prospect of getting stuck up here.

Google Maps, 80.52397, 12.21224

After awaking to find their vessel frozen in ice the team are steaming around looking for a path that's navigable by kayak.
No paddling today. _TomNelson

This seems to happen at least once a year. Another inept zealot will decide he or she is going to prove that their quasi-religion is the one true faith, and risks his life on the proposition--only to necessitate rescue by professionals, who might prefer these amateurs stay home.

Natural climate cycles and weather patterns are responsible for the ebb and flow of arctic ice, glaciers, and air/ocean temperatures. Humans have very little to do with it. But I suppose there is very little that will stop true believers from competing for the Darwin awards.

Coal to Liquids: Smart Coal

Coal can be converted to liquids profitably as long as the oil price remains over 80$ a barrel. Brian Westenhaus has an article today on coal-to-liquids (CTL) that looks at some of the details.

The developed world can solve its oil and gas problems with F-T. All the facts and sources are enough to make an oil exporter very nervous, indeed....

...even today with oil coming back to near $100 a barrel the F-T processes can be highly competitive. It’s the carbon and hydrogen available in the feedstocks that make pricing work or not. Coal at $50 a ton, as shown by Sasol can yield 1.25 barrels of oil equivalent, can be worth twice the feedstock price. South Africa found that Sasol profits got so high that excess profit taxes were levied.

In the U.S. several companies have started coal to liquid process experiments that range from pilot plants to commercial installations. The big oil firms like Shell, Exxon and StatoilHydro are already running in South Africa, Malaysia and New Zealand closing in on 60,000 barrels a day of production.

The little guys like American Clean Coal Fuels who is developing a 30,000-barrel per day combined biomass and coal plant in Oakland Illinois uses carbon capture and sequestration to keep the unused CO2 from the atmosphere.

Baard Energy is building a 53,000-barrel per day combined biomass and coal plant in Wellsville Ohio with a market for the excess CO2 headed to oil field enhanced recovery. _NewEnergyandFuel

The CO2 produced can be piped to an algae oil operation conveniently located next to the CTL plant. Biomass can be easily integrated into the gasification and F-T process as well, providing a multi-feedstock, multi-product operation.

Who Is Sarah Palin, and What is all the Fuss?

McCain's selection of Palin for the VP slot has thrown the US political world into a turmoil. People who should actually know better are making quasi-pompous pronouncements about the choice without having done their homework. Such leaping before looking betrays a lazy mental complacency that does not do them credit. Who is Sarah Palin? Here is one close up viewpoint:

A very good friend, who is a lifelong Alaskan and one of the smartest people I know, offers this word of caution to those (yes, like me) inclined to take Sarah Palin lightly:

At the end of 2005, a close friend called to say that he begun writing speeches and talking points for a certain gubernatorial candidate.

"Remind me," I asked. "Who is Sarah Palin?"

I was dismayed at my friend’s choice of political entree. Why was he wasting his time on a relative nobody, trying to beat an incumbent governor (and former three term senator) in the Republican primary? It was utter folly. "Wait until the big money starts coming in for Murkowski," I said. "Wait until the party machinery goes to work on Palin. They will eat her for lunch."

Murkowski, for his part, expressed a similar view. "If I decide to," he said, "I will run and I will win. It's that simple."

The folly, of course, turned out to be my own (and Murkowski's), as Palin slaughtered the incumbent in the primary--posting a 30 point margin of victory--and went on to win the general (over a former Democratic governor) without seeming to break a sweat. She then quickly fulfilled an implicit campaign promise by slapping down ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips in negotiations over a proposed Alaska natural gas pipeline, even though they, too, by all accounts, were well prepared to dine on her tender little frame. Not bad for a lightweight.

Listening to the Democratic leadership respond to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, one hears echoes of the Alaska Republican leadership from just a few years ago. Barack Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, put it this way: "Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." Former mayor? If you're going to skip over her job as governor and, before that, her job heading the commission that oversees production of the largest petroleum reserves in America, why not "former high school student"? Bah, what does it matter: She's just a small town mayor, just a hockey mom, just a beauty pageant queen. Palin has never shunned these belittling monikers, in part, I imagine, because the camouflage has served her so well. Soothed by the litany, her opponents tend to sleep too late, sneer too much, and forget who it is that hires them.

Watching Palin operate over the past few years has been like witnessing a dramatic reading of All the King’s Men. In 2002, Murkowski had interviewed but passed over Palin in selecting a replacement for the senate seat he vacated to become governor. In a grand act of nepotism, he chose his own daughter instead. Palin was tossed a bone: She chaired the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees the production of petroleum in Alaska. When she reported conflicts of interest and other ethical violations by another commissioner, she was ignored by Murkowski’s chief of staff and ultimately resigned in frustration. One can imagine how the quick double dose of corruption--insiders having their way with the polity and its resources--sickened the young Palin. It also fired a savage competitiveness that is not, perhaps, apparent at first glance.

What the Republicans missed about Sarah Palin then--and what the Democrats seem poised to miss now--is that she is a true political savant; a candidate with a knack for identifying the key gripes of the populace and packaging herself as the solution. That keen political nose has enabled her to routinely outperform her resume. Nearly two years into her administration, she still racks up approval ratings of 80 per cent or better. _Source

And much more at the link above. The sheer volume of uninformed pontification about Palin would fill the libraries of dozens of pseudo-intellectuals.

Pundits pontificate. They cannot help themselves. But investigators investigate before they opine. This would be a good time for investigation, for the wiser ones.

Does Sarah Palin have the "X" factor?

Why are leftists so afraid of Palin that they will violate their principles to attack her in the most sexist manner?

Can a mere facade like Obama close the sale?



"Lord Barry heal the bitter ones
Still clinging to their faith and guns
Hope for the change for the hope, of the change"
O Hail the Messiah, Lord Obama

Obama Supporter Promises Race War if Obama Loses, While Democratic Party Observers Worry About Obama's Judgment

You may have heard whispers about civil disorder occurring in case of an Obama loss (or victory for that matter). But now Obama supporters in the media are coming out in the open with promises of race war if Obama is defeated.

If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!...But when Obama wins the White House, we may just see a revolution that can turn the tide and improve this nation for everyone, not just a select few _Source_via_Drudge

If one was well connected in the "community" he would likely have heard a lot more on that topic by now. Should we truly expect a race war if Obama wins or loses? There are certainly riots when sports teams win or lose national championships. Why not when a celebrity candidate such as Obama wins or loses a national political "championship?"

Some close political observers suspect that Obama has lost whatever magic it was that has gotten him this far. They feel his incredibly bad vice presidential pick may be just the beginning of a disintegration of what until now has been a masterful campaign by the baby senator from Illinois.

....rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

Biden, who won 3% of the popular vote in the Democratic presidential primary in his home state of Delaware, and 1% or less in every other contest he entered, is ballot-box poison. Obama evidently chose him to assuage critics who point to his lack of foreign policy credentials. That was a deadly error, for by appearing to concede the critics' claim that he knows little about foreign policy, Obama raised questions about whether he is qualified to be president in the first place. _Spengler

No one was more surprised at Obama's incredibly bad pick than this blogger. And no one was more shocked at McCain's masterstroke than I. I would have never suspected it of either of the men, given their past actions. If this is an example of the jousting we can expect between the two in the future, we must hope that McCain does not take undue advantage and make Obama look totally clownish.

Because if Obama is made to look like a total fool by the end of this campaign, his devout worshippers will not take the loss kindly. Yet, after the almost supernatural buildup given to Obama's campaign throughout the winter/spring/summer, where is there to go but down?

Should widespread civil disorder break out across several parts of the US urban landscape after an Obama loss, many of today's psychologically neotenous youth will no doubt feel a thrill of adrenaline--a break in the boredom of their pampered lives. That is, unless the disorder reaches out and touches them personally. Should that happen, there is some question whether most of them would be capable of responding appropriately at the time, or after the fact.

Much better for such things not to happen. Unthinkable things. We will simply not think of them. Forget I mentioned it.

Missiles for Infantrymen: An Army of One

Individual infantrymen of the US military are being provided with progressively upgraded technologically sophisticated equipment. Soon an infantryman will be able to control 15 or more mini-cruise missiles to targets up to 25 miles away.

Enter the newest piece of Army gear: the Non–Line of Sight Launch System, already nicknamed “missiles in a box.” With NLOS-LS, soldiers at the platoon level will be able to fire up to 15 tiny precision-guided missiles from a Port-O-Potty-size crate and guide them to strike moving targets up to 25 miles away. These remote-control missile launchers can be brought to isolated areas by helicopter or truck, or dropped by parachute.

The Department of Defense recently announced that select high-tech infantry gear from the $200 billion Future Combat Systems program, including NLOS-LS, will be sent to combat troops in 2011, three years earler than planned. FCS has lost about $1 billion in funding over the last four years, with many skeptics claiming the program doesn’t help soldiers fight guerrillas. Focusing on infantry—and delaying FCS’s new armored vehicles—could mollify these critics. _PopMech

Just add UAV recon capability and every infantryman can also provide his own air cover and artillery. That makes for a very potent infantry. Give a squad a contingent of armed and battle-tough robots, and they can multiply their force-factor even more.

Of course, none of that technology makes the world a better place, unless the military is disciplined, highly selective, and has a commander in chief who knows when it is appropriate and necessary to use it. Vladimir Putin would like to have such a military. But he is stuck with rusting relics of his own making. Over-centralisation of decision making is a real impaler, Vlad. And you're the one who's sitting on it.

American Feminism Out of Touch w/ Women & Men

As one Iraqi women's advocate, Haifa Abdul Rahman, told her, "We see feminism in America as dividing women from men, separating women from the family. This is bad for everyone." _Source

This is not the time to be attacking the family, or family-oriented women. But that is exactly what feminism and the left is doing, in an increasingly crude and frantic manner.

Today's feminist establishment in the United States is dominated by the radical wing of the egalitarian tradition. Not only do its members not cooperate with their conservative sisters, but they also often denigrate and vilify them; indeed they have all but eliminated them from the history of American feminism. Revisionist history is never a pretty sight. But feminist revisionists are destructive in special ways. They seek to obliterate not only feminist history but the femininity that made it a success.

Feminists do not speak for the majority of women. They speak for leftist radical women, who consider all other women as "fair game" to be exploited systematically in a way the patriarchy never considered doing.

The candidacy of Alaska governor Sarah Palin should present an interesting spectacle for the women of America. It also presents an increasingly difficult dilemma for the radical feminists who have pressed so hard for a Democratic Party majority in the US Congress. If radical feminists adopt their standard attack tactics against Palin, they risk revealing more about themselves than they care to do. But if they hold back, they risk allowing entire new generations of young women to be exposed a powerful new female role model that could reverse decades of feminist indoctrination.

Should the harpy hos of feminism ignore Palin, or should they loudly protest her as "anti woman?"

McCain's maverick choice has certainly stirred the pot.

Leftists Arrayed Against Evolution: Shame On You!

You might think that the religious right is the greatest enemy to evolutionary science, but you would be wrong. In reality, the left stands squarely in the path of the widespread dissemination of the startling findings of evolutionary science. And since the left has control and occupation of the University, it is the left's censorship of science that has the greater impact on society.

Consider the most striking case, the question of whether there are differences between men and women with regard to the distribution of intellectual abilities or behavioral patterns. That no such differences exist, or if that if they exist they are insignificant, is a matter of faith for many on the left. The faith is so strongly held that when the president of Harvard, himself a prominent academic, merely raised the possibility that one reason why there were fewer women than men in certain fields might be such differences, he was ferociously attacked and eventually driven to resign....

...Males and females play quite different roles in reproduction. It would be a striking coincidence if the distribution of abilities and behavioral patterns that was optimal for one sex turned out to also be optimal for the other, rather like two entirely different math problems just happening to have the same answer.

The denial of male/female differences is the most striking example of left wing hostility to the implications of Darwinian evolution, but not the only one. The reasons to expect differences among racial groups as conventionally defined are weaker, since males of all races play the same role in reproduction, as do females of all races. But we know that members of such groups differ in the distribution of observable physical characteristics--that, after all, is the main way we recognize them. That is pretty strong evidence that their ancestors adapted to at least somewhat different environments. _DavidFriedman_via_Instapundit

And leftist superstition and censorship spreads out from the university to the media in turn. From there, pseudo-intellectuals lap it up like the dog-level mentals they tend to be, then pass it on.

Religious rightists are wrong about evolution. But to many non-scientists, evolution does indeed take on many aspects of a religion, since non-scientists for the most part do not actually understand what it is they "believe" about evolution. In fact, many people trained in biology do not truly understand the mechanisms behind the origin of species. And certainly, no one on Earth knows where life originated in the first place. So a lot of the "superiority" felt by people who "believe" in evolution--with respect to creationists--is certainly misplaced.

It is the leftists who should be ashamed of their willingness to subvert and pervert science in the name of ideology. They are the ones who are the greater threat by far.

Aschwin de Wolf expands on this issue in the context of transhumanism.