Government Workers Get Paid Even When No One Else Does

Image via Economist

...many are disturbed by the expansion of government that followed the crash. Voters particularly dislike the way the state is using their money to reward deadbeats, says Mr Brooks. They themselves work hard and live within their means. They see their neighbour, who borrowed more than he could afford to buy a fancy house, getting a bail-out to save him from the consequences of his own poor judgment. They see reckless bankers getting bailed out too, and the ill-managed carmakers of Detroit likewise. And they resent it.

...they can see that one group of Americans has been practically unaffected by the recession: government employees. Their hours have not been cut, their benefits are gold-plated and they are almost impossible to sack. In good times, few Americans notice these things, but in bad times, the disparity grates. Cops and firefighters can retire in their 40s and draw defined-benefit pensions for life. With overtime, one tenth of the police in Massachusetts made more than the governor’s annual salary in 2006, according to the Boston Globe. Including benefits, the average employee of New York City makes more than $100,000, according to Forbes, while some Californian prison guards “sock away $300,000 a year”.

And what do taxpayers get for their generosity?... Union contracts force the postal service to pay thousands of unneeded workers to do nothing. In New York, public-school teachers who can’t be trusted to teach but can’t be sacked either are paid to sit and do crosswords.

.....Most Americans admire firemen, teachers and cops. They like receiving government benefits, too. And roughly half of them will pay no federal income tax at all this year. The problem is that this is not sustainable. During his election campaign, Mr Obama promised not to raise taxes on anyone except the rich, but with the deficit so vast, the question is not whether he will break this promise but when.__Economist

The bankrupt US media has actively ignored the simmering discontent of the American taxpayers and unemployed, during the continuing Obama depression. But there is a limit to how long the skank media can keep the lid on this pressure cooker. When hundreds of thousands of protestors stormed Washington DC September 12, 2009, to protest government spending and taxation -- the media could not be bothered to cover the story. When last weekend a few thousand gay and lesbian protestors walked around the US capital, it was headlined in all the media as a "huge protest."

It is becoming a race between the US government and the US media to see which can self-destruct the soonest.

Dollar, Dollar, Who Wants the Dollar?

Image via Dennis ManganObama Dollar falling in value worldwide__President Barack Obama’s effort to lead the world economic recovery by spending the U.S. out of its recession is undermining the dollar, triggering record commodities rallies as investors scour the globe for hard assets.

World banks running from Obama dollar__Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.

The Obama dollar gets political__The aftershocks of the global financial crisis may now be propelling the dollar back to the political forefront. The greenback’s continuing slide makes it a handy metric that neatly encapsulates America’s current economic troubles and possible long-term decline. House Republicans for instance, have been using the weaker dollar as a weapon in their attacks on the Bernanke-led Federal Reserve.

Jim Rogers predicts Obama Dollar to lose reserve status__Rogers' confidence gold will continue to rally stems from a view the U.S. dollar is on its way to losing status as the world's reserve currency.

"Is it going to happen? Yes," Rogers says. "I don't like saying it [and] I'm extremely worried about it but we have to deal with the facts. America is not getting better [and] the dollar is going to be replaced just like pound sterling [was]."

Brain Research Findings

Using functional connectivity MRI brain scanning, scientists at Washington University and the University of Chieti, have discovered an alteration in the brain's spontaneous background activity after it has learned a new task.

"Recent studies have shown that in the absence of any overt behaviour, and even during sleep or anaesthesia, the brain's spontaneous activity is not random, but organized in patterns of correlated activity that occur in anatomically and functionally connected regions," says senior author Dr. Maurizio Corbetta.

"The reasons behind the spontaneous activity patterns remain mysterious, but we have now shown that learning causes small changes in those patterns, and that these changes are behaviourally important," he added. _More at medindia

The researchers may have stumbled upon a crude neurological correlate of "automaticity", an adaptation of the brain to training, that allows conscious learning to become unconscious knowledge.

Using diffusion tensor imaging, UK researchers have demonstrated changes in white matter brain connectivity after subjects learned to juggle.

Johansen-Berg and colleagues scanned the brains of 48 volunteers who undertook to learn and practise juggling. None of the volunteers could juggle when they started their training which comprised one weekly training session and 30 minutes of daily practice for 6 weeks.

...At the end of the training period, the volunteers reached varying levels of juggling skill, but all those who trained and practised showed changes in white matter, suggesting it wasn't skill attainment that mattered but the time spent training and practising. _MNT

These findings should be studied by anyone connected with the education of children, adolescents, and adults.

Using mice and cell cultures, Stanford University researchers discovered an important mechanism for the formation of new synapses in the brain -- particularly in developing brains.

Stanford University researchers examined the interaction between neurons and brain cells called astrocytes. Previous studies showed that a protein that astrocytes secrete, thrombospondin, is critical to the formation of the brain's circuitry. In the study, researchers found that thrombospondin binds to a receptor, called alpha2delta-1, on the outer membrane of neurons. In a study in mice, they showed that the neurons that lacked alpha2delta-1 could not form synapses in response to the presence of thrombospondin.

Alpha2delta-1 is the receptor for gabapentin. That has been known, although scientists did not understand how gabapentin worked. But the new research revealed that when gabapentin was given to mice, it prevented thrombospondin from binding to the receptor, thus stopping the synapse formation.

While gabapentin, which is sold under the trade name Neurontin, does not dissolve pre-existing synapses, it prevents the formation of new ones. That's why the medication may be dangerous if given to pregnant women or young children, the authors said. The majority of the brain's synapses are formed in utero and early childhood. _LAT

Potentially an extremely important finding for neurologists and all those who care for pregnant women and fetuses.

Perhaps researchers can study the effects of drugs and other chemicals on the developing brain using microfluidic chips, "labs on a chip", being developed by labs around the world: ...Johns Hopkins University, where a lab on chip has been designed to mimic the chemical complexities of the brain; _newelectronics

Computer simulations are simply not up to the chemical and other complexities of the brain -- at any stage of development. It is likely that dynamic models in silicon, however, will eventually approach -- or exceed -- the reliability of animal models for brain research.

Obama Denied Nobel Prize in Economics

In a decision as shocking as Friday's surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday. _Marketwatch

US President Barack Obama had hoped to win two more Nobel prizes this year -- in economics and in literature.The prize for literature, alas, went to German Herta Muller ("I never heard of her", said Obama). The economics prize went to Americans Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson.

Ostrom, a political-science professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the first woman to win the prize in economics, which was established in 1968.

Her work "has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be completely privatized or regulated by central authorities," the academy said.

Williamson, professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, has developed a theory where business firms serve as structures for conflict resolution.

Their work over the last three decades has "advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention," the academy said. _Marketwatch

So far, the Nobel Prize Committee has refused to explain itself. Of course Obama and most of his close followers (O.Z. s) believe that a single Nobel Prize does not adequately represent Obama's achievements -- let alone his potential.

It is possible that this apparent misstep by the committee was actually intentional. Perhaps the committee intends to award Mr. Obama a single Nobel prize for each year he is in the White House. This approach would make more sense politically, since every active US President needs extra support this time of year -- just before elections. Such a more conservative year by year parceling of prizes to Obama may actually work in his political favour.

You may wonder what other prizes Obama might qualify for besides Peace, Literature, and Economics? Relax. It's not exactly clear that Mr. Obama qualifies for those three, let alone any of the others. When it comes to politics, qualifications simply do not signify.

BBC Wakes Up and Says: The Debate Is On!

The BBC is finally admitting what the rest of us have known all along: The science is not settled, the debate is not closed. Earth's climate is far more complex than even the most sophisticated climate models, and is making a laughing stock out of climatologists who can't comprehend that THE MODEL IS NOT THE CLIMATE!

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

... Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting...claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

...Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

...Sceptics...insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up. _BBC

Why is the BBC suddenly willing to step away from the "consensus chorus of climate change catastrophe?" Would it have something to do with Steve McIntyre's treatment of Briffa's [cherry picked] Yamal Peninsula series? Or perhaps they are thinking of recent confirmation of Svensmark's cosmic ray theory? Perhaps they have discovered Anthony Watts' analysis of surface station temperature biases?

I am going out on a very long limb, but perhaps they are even sophisticated enough to have noticed that the oceans' heat content is dropping? Or are they just now realising that global temperatures have indeed not risen in lockstep with rising atmospheric CO2 levels? Certainly there have been enough rational voices objecting to the mindless climate blitzkrieg of the IPCC, NASA, Gore, the EU, BBC, the Royal Society, etc etc?

Perhaps we will begin to see an epidemic of sanity where once we saw only fanatical adherence to the talking points. I will observe this curious phenomenon, but I will not hold my breath.

H/T Instapundit and Tom Nelson

Celebrate Doomsday in NYC October 23-25

Humans are obsessed with the apocalypse. So it is fitting that they celebrate the idea of doomsday in NYC only a few weeks after the Singularity Summit.

From raptures, plagues, meteorites, nuclear holocausts, aliens, zombie attacks, ecological catastrophe, and cybernetic revolt to the 2012 doomsday predictions, the Festival will touch upon all possible permutations of our collective demise.

We'll be screening films from across the board, with works ranging from premieres to established classics to rediscovered gems. On the schedule for the 2009 Festival are nuclear fallout cartoons, early '60s atomic parables, '80s zombie punk, award-winning independent shorts, and much more.

The event will incorporate a panel-based symposium featuring authors, artists, and all manner of experts on the End of Days. We plan to tackle the Apocalypse in all its forms, and hope you'll join us for the ride! _NYCDoomsdayFilmFestival_via_SurvivalBlog

Humans should not take comfort from their relatively easy survival of the Y2K catastrophe. Although the global warming catastrophe is beginning to look like a giant hoax, they still must worry about Peak Oil Doom -- which will occur no later than 2500. An economic doom is certainly not out of the question. For example, "What if Obama held an economic collapse and pronounced it world peace?"

And there is always doom from a catastrophic epidemic. Not necessarily an epidemic of zombies -- as suggested by the NYC Filmfest above. Just a simple bacterial or viral illness out of control in a few large population centers would be enough to trigger the media and governmental panic buttons.

So what's a prudent person to do, at a time when the world policeman is unilaterally disarming? When the previously robust private sector of the US is being dismantled, and replaced by rickety, corrupt, and incompetent bureaucracies that will be incapable of responding effectively to even the slightest catastrophe?

Take a look below, and you may get an idea of what you will need to do in order to survive an apocalypse in the age of Obama. (via Wired, H/T Instapundit)It would be most logical to acquire the missile silo via government surplus, rather than to build it yourself on a vacant lot. That would save you time and money. You will need to invite plenty of tool-handy friends over for the re-modeling -- and don't spare the beer!

Once made livable, such a shelter could accomodate a large quantity of doomsday supplies and equipment. Don't forget to install heavy-duty air filtration and water treatment. Positive pressure ventilation combined with a multiple airlock entry system might also be appropriate, depending upon the nature of your doomsday. Stock plenty of food, water, medical supplies, distilled beverages, coffee, teas, and beer-making supplies.

Finally, you will not be able to save enough people to re-populate the Earth, inside a single refurbished and doomsday-hardened missile silo. You will need to form a coalition of like-minded survival oriented renaissance men and women, dedicated to building the minimum viable population numbers necessary to replenish Earth with a more enlightened population -- a population worthy of going to the stars.

I regret that the Society for Creative Apocalyptology is currently closed to new chapter memberships. But if you can locate a chapter near you, and convince the membership committee that you fit the SCA profile -- and are not an Obama zombie -- all will be considered on a case by case basis.

Happy Doomsday, everyone!

2009 Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy

Honolulu will host the upcoming 2009 Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy from Nov 8-11. One of the most important topics of discussion will be algal biofuels, with detailed reports on algal R&D progress from producers.

Brent Erickson, executive vice president of BIO’s Industrial and Environmental Section, said, “Algae is seen as a promising source of raw material for biofuels, but it also could become a workhorse for producing ethanol, chemical, protein and food ingredients. As companies work to achieve the full potential of algae for fuels and chemicals, they’ll face the same challenges and opportunities as other biotechnology companies. The Pacific Rim Summit provides an opportunity for startup companies to present the state of their research and development, share their experiences and network with one another and with other biotechnology companies.” _EarthTimes

With a world oil market trade amounting to trillions of dollars yearly, algal biofuels companies have a long way to go to compete with the well established liquid fuels industry. The challenge is immense, but worth rising to.

The promise of ultimately replacing a large proportion of petroleum fuels with algal biofuels is seen as a threat by certain economic interests. Any corporation that is heavily invested in biodiesel from soy, maize, rape, palm, or other conventional oil crop must feel significant threat from the long term promise of microbial energy -- including algal fuels. Promoters of electric vehicles are likewise worried that an abundant liquid fuel seen as "clean and green" would slow the momentum toward an "all electric" highway fleet.

Last of all, promoters of environmental doom -- the dieoff.orgiast believers in catastrophic climate doom and peak oil doom -- must feel enormous threat from any source of energy that might allow modern societies to continue a life of prosperous consumption.

Still, the economic argument of a potential multi-trillion dollar market is inescapable. Enemies of algal fuels will use every trick in the book to stop the perceived threat. After they lose the fight, they will be forgotten.

Algae In the News

A new "Algae Fuel X Prize" of $10 million has been announced in San Diego. The prize is meant to stimulate research and development of a commercially viable biofuel from algae.

NSF funding genomic research on algae. The $2 million grant to North Carolina State University is meant to assist in the genetic modification of natural algae into modified algae better suited to biofuels production.

The ambitious algal fuel plans of Sapphire Energy Inc. Chief Executive Jason Pyle. With such highly determined executives behind the algal fuels movement, never count them out.

Some people are foolish enough to believe that algae is all about "climate change" and reducing CO2 footprints. No. Algae is about producing liquid fuels cheaply, plentifully, and sustainably into the indefinite future. False fantasies of carbon catastrophe have always been an expensive distraction from the real problems we face.

Mother Jones wants you to disregard algal fuels. She wants that very badly. Of course, she has never really been a good mother, so it is doubtful that she has your best interests at heart.

Big oil, big chemistry, and big-big are all investing in algal fuels. What do they know that the skanks at Mother Jones don't?

Investments in algae-based biofuels, on the other hand, are booming. Corporations like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical are partnering with biofuel companies on algae projects, and one company, Solazyme, will soon begin producing commercial quantities of algal fuel for the U.S. Navy. Algae’s photosynthetic cells produce an oily goo, including various oils and ethanol, that can be converted into advanced biofuels…. Algae have several key traits that make them a desirable energy source. They can be grown on non-agricultural land in a fraction of the area required by conventional oil crops such as maize (corn), soybean and palm. In addition, algae capture carbon dioxide and can thrive in domestic waste water or salt water [Nature News]. The big hurdle companies now face is scaling up their operations, and finding out whether processes that work in the lab also function on massive, commercial level. _Discover

Cross posted at Al Fin Energy

"Algal biofuels" is an energy revolution in the making. There are a lot of problems going from any idea to its successful consummation. The same will obviously be true for algal fuels.

The $10 million "X Prize" will help, but if you know that Exxon Mobil is already investing up to $600 million in the game, you will begin to comprehend the true size of the prize.

What Kind of Fool Am I?

Everyone plays the fool sometime. Some people are not just playing.

...there are essentially three kinds of fools: Real Fools, Professional Fools, and Unsuspecting Fools. Real Fools are the innocents, the simpletons, the idiot savants and “naturals” who react to situations and people with an Aspergian lack of restraint or decorum. They speak their unmediated minds, and great truths sometimes emerge, as “out of the mouths of babes.” Any of them might have blurted, “The emperor has no clothes.” Forrest Gump is our great modern examplar of this kind of fool. Heaven looks out for such as these.

Professional Fools include court jesters, clowns, toadies, con artists, and a whole range of yes-men. By pretending to be stupid or servile, the Professional Fool coolly aims to reinforce his client’s conviction of his own obvious superiority. In fact, these performance artistes always quip and caper with a purpose: a salary, behind-the-throne power, a scam. In literature one of the most memorable of these professional fools is Rameau’s Nephew, who in Diderot’s famous dialogue of that name toadies to the rich and powerful in return for a snug berth and regular meals. In the film The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey is a more complex example: Hunched and crippled (as were many professional court jesters), he’s slightly pitied by the tough and obviously much smarter people all around him. But Verbal Kint is far more than the “talkative child” that his name suggests.

As for Unsuspecting Fools, they are essentially everyone else in the world, starting with you and me. Everybody plays the fool sometimes; there’s no exception to the rule. More particularly, the Unsuspecting Fool is the supposedly wise figure — a sovereign, a pedantic scholar, a pillar of the establishment — who is blind to his own vanity and self-importance, ignorant of what’s really going on, puffed up with hubris. Pride goeth before a fall. In tragic vein, Oedipus and Lear are Unsuspecting Fools. _incharacter

Consider the person who slogs through life like most poor fools. Sometimes succeeding, often failing, he sees enough of both sides of life to understand something of his own failings. Then consider the fool who is carefully prepped, pandered, and free-passed through life. He imagines that his successes arise out of his own brilliance, his worthiness, his destiny to greatness. Those who paved his way upward are thrown under the bus in succession, when no longer needed.

Everyone plays the fool at times, but not everyone is aware of that fact. Which kind of fool are you, am I, is Obama?

US Small Business Choked for Growth

Normally, small business startups and hiring would already be leading the economy back to a cycle of growth and increasing employment. In the current prolonged recession, several factors are inhibiting the normal healthy rebound of small business.

In a speech [Monday], William Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, identified financial constraints for small businesses as a restraint on the pace of economic recovery. Specifically, he said:

"For small business borrowers, there are three problems. First, the fundamentals of their businesses have often deteriorated because of the length and severity of the recession—making many less creditworthy. Second, some sources of funding for small businesses—credit card borrowing and home equity loans—have dried up as banks have responded to rising credit losses in these areas by tightening credit standards. Third, small businesses have few alternative sources of funds. They are too small to borrow in the capital markets and the Small Business Administration programs are not large enough to accommodate more than a small fraction of the demand from this sector."

President Dudley's comments are even more relevant in the current recession if one considers the disproportionate effect the recession has had on very small businesses. _FinancialArmageddon

You must add the impact of minimum wage increases to the above constrictive forces. In addition, uncertainty over the nature of upcoming Obamacabre health care regulations, taxes, fines, etc. on top of a host of other uncertainties relating to Obama's indifferent attitudes toward small businesses and startups must give entrepreneurs and would-be businesspersons pause. The vague but ominous Obama energy policies are another large source of uncertainty thrown over the business and startup communities.

The economy needs the dynamism of small business and startups. Unfortunately, the Pimps and Skanks of government and media are doing almost everything in their power to remove all positive incentives for starting small businesses, while laying on the negative incentives with a super-sized trowel.

Singularity Summit Postscript: Reason

Ronald Bailey is a Reason magazine writer who is often called upon to bring reality to the madding crowds. Here is his postscript on the 2009 Singularity Summit:

Convened by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) for the first time on the East Coast, this fourth annual meeting attracted about 900 participants. The SIAI was created to address the urgent problem of how to create super-smart AIs that are friendly to human beings. The worry is that, unless we are very careful, AIs might evolve value systems that treat us as annoying organic matter that should be more usefully turned into computronium. As the Singularity Institute's Anna Salamon explained in her opening presentation at the summit, smarter intelligences might choose to get rid of us because our matter is not optimally arranged to achieve their goals.

One way to wind up with human-friendly AIs is to build them on top of uploaded human brains. Anders Sandberg, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, offered a technical roadmap for whole brain emulation. "If artificial intelligence does not get here first, we're going to end up with uploaded humans," maintained Sandberg. He argued that it is possible to foresee how developments in neuroscience, and software and hardware development are leading to emulating specific people's brains. Sandberg believes that emulating a human brain is only 20 years away. Sandberg did observe that we do not know if a one-to-one emulation would produce a mind or not. A huge advantage of an uploaded mind is that it would no longer be constrained by the speed at which organic brains can process information. He offhandedly noted that he would not be the first volunteer for an emulation experiment.

Randal Koene, the director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Fatronik-Tecnalia Foundation in Spain, argued that the time is now to go after mind uploading. Koene argued that radically increasing human longevity solves a few problems, but doesn't deal with our dependence on changeable environments and scarce resources. Nor does it deal with our intellectual limitations, death by traumatic accidents, or disease. Koene's "inescapable conclusion" was that we must free the mind from its single fragile substrate. How might you copy a brain? Perhaps one could use a more advanced version of the knife edge scanning microscope that currently enables the reconstruction of mouse brain architecture. This is what is known among uploading cognoscenti as destructive scanning. It had better work because the old organic brain is all sliced up in order to produce the emulation. To solve the problem of maintaining a sense of continuity, Koene suggested that one pathway might be to use molecular nanotechnology to replace parts of the brain bit by bit over time.

Philosopher David Chalmers, who directs the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University, argued that personal identity would be maintained if the functional organization of the upload was the same as the original. In addition, gradual uploading might also be a way to maintain personal identity. Chalmers also speculated about reconstructive uploading in which a super-smart AI would scour the world for information about a person, say articles, video, audio, blog posts, restaurant receipts, whatever. The AI would then instantiate that information in the appropriate substrate. "Is it me?," asked Chalmers. Maybe. On the optimistic view, being reconstructed from the informational debris you left behind would be like waking up from a long nap.

Inventor Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, envisions an intimate integration between humans and their neural prosthetics. Over time, more and more of the neural processing that makes us who we are will be located outside our bodies and brains so that "uploading" will take place gradually. Our uploaded minds will function much faster and more precisely than our "meat" minds do today. In a sense, we will become the singularity as the artificial parts of our intelligences become ascendant.

If the AIs aren't made of people, though, guaranteeing that they will be human-friendly is much more difficult. Chalmers suggested that perhaps we could launch a super-smart self-improving AI inside a leak-proof computing environment and see how it evolves. If it turns out to be nice, then we let it out and the singularity takes off and we're all happy. Kurzweil objected that a leak-proof singularity is impossible. In order to determine whether or not the AI was friendly we would have to look inside its computing environment and, since it is so much smarter than we are, it would necessarily become aware of us and then manipulate us into letting it out. In other words, it could pretend to be friendly and then zap us once it's present in our world. _Reason

Bailey worries that smart machines may slip their restraints and pursue goals hurtful to humanity. That is one danger that the Singularity Institute was founded to help prevent, of course. But there is no off switch on a nuclear explosion, as SI fellow Anna Salamon argued during the Summit.

The singularity is only the latest of names for an idea that has been around for centuries -- if not longer. Efforts to create thinking machines have also been around for over a century, but realistic efforts can be traced back only decades.

Of course, ideas of exchanging a mortal body for an immortal one, or exchanging a limited mind for a virtually unlimited one, have been around for long millenia -- in the form of religions. Thinking broadly, the singularity movement can be seen as a religious faith.

That is not to dismiss the movement, since religions can have momentous consequences for an underlying society. The combination of religious faith and goal orientation with scientific and engineering rigour, can lead to some truly amazing accomplishments.

Singularity Summit Postscript: The New Atlantis

Ari N. Schulman liveblogged last weekend's Singularity Summit in NYC for The New Atlantis. His point of view has often been a useful counterpoint to the "gee whiz futurism" that often permeates subcultures such as the singularity movement. Here is his upbeat summing up of the conference:

...for a movement that aspires to such revolutionary things, the summit was in fact rather conventional: dry talks, PowerPoint slides, and lectures in rapid succession. (I should note that the organizers kept the whole thing impeccably on schedule, except for allowing Kurzweil to go well over his time at the end of the first day.) It seemed that many of the attendees were most excited during the breaks between presentations. They huddled around the superstar presenters. I heard more than a few conferencegoers ask each other, "Have you seen Ray? Where is he? I want to talk to him." Many were excited just to be in the presence of fellow-travelers (since, as some of them told me, many of the attendees only knew of the Singularitarian movement through the Internet).

And this was where the organizers oddly seemed both to understand why people were really there and to fail to structure the event to reflect that. The proceedings rang of celebrity worship. The M.C. revved up the excitement before the big-name speakers. The final panel discussion was, unfortunately, about nothing substantive, just a sort of "behind the scenes with the boys of the Singularity," an interview focusing on personalities instead of ideas. And Kurzweil didn't deign to give a coherent presentation. For the first day, he literally came up on stage with a pad of paper and offered his ad hoc thoughts and pronouncements on the previous speakers. On the second day, he gave what one Twitterer described as his "stump speech" — a laundry list of responses to critics, mostly taken verbatim from his book on the Singularity. His talks just seemed to serve the purpose of assuring the crowd that the coach was still in control of the game and there was no need to worry (as another blogger has suggested).

But my impression was that there wasn't nearly enough discussion and interaction to really suit most conferencegoers (myself included). And I heard attendees again and again expressing their wish to interact more with the presenters, and many expressing frustration at not having been able to ask questions.

I don't really fault the organizers for this. Putting together a large conference is a demanding task, and this one was impressively smooth in its operation. Perhaps on some level it made sense to stick to the tried-and-true format of a professional, academic, or scientific conference. But that's the problem: this is not a business, it is not an academic discipline, and it is not a science. It is a movement, one with goals it seeks to accomplish. I have the sense that the attendees were interested less in simply hearing facts — many of which are better conveyed in print and online anyway — than in discussing what it is they are all engaged in. Perhaps in the future, these conferences might be run more like seminars instead of lectures, or might find other ways of incorporating give-and-take conversations. _Futurisms

Singularitarians go to conferences to be inspired. Organisers might learn something from political rallies and revival meetings. The Obama campaign rallies were an example of the merging of the two events -- rally and revival. Perhaps the Summit organisers might have planned one final event along those lines, as an acknowledgment of the emotional needs of attendees?

Clouds and Climate: Confirmation and Uncertainty

Researchers of the National Space Institute in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have confirmed earlier research, finding an inverse relationship between solar activity and cloud formation in Earth's atmosphere. The finding adds to current controversy over the trustworthiness of modern climate models -- models which fail to take this very important physical phenomenon into account.

"A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale," the report concludes. This research, to which Torsten Bondo and Jacob Svensmark contributed, validates 13 years of discoveries that point to a key role for cosmic rays in climate change. In particular, it connects observable variations in the world's cloudiness to laboratory experiments in Copenhagen showing how cosmic rays help to make the all-important aerosols. _SD

An ongoing climate uncertainty relating to clouds, involves the action of dust particles in the atmosphere: Do dust particles increase cloud formation -- thus contributing to reduced insolation and increased cooling?

A knowledge gap exists in the area of climate research: for decades, scientists have been asking themselves whether, and to what extent man-made aerosols, that is, dust particles suspended in the atmosphere, enlarge the cloud cover and thus curb climate warming. Research has made little or no progress on this issue. Two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) and the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report in the journal Nature that the interaction between aerosols, clouds and precipitation is strongly dependent on factors that have not been adequately researched up to now. They urge the adoption of a research concept that will close this gap in the knowledge. (Nature, October 1st, 2009) _WUWT

Another interesting recent finding on how clouds could be affecting climate, comes from the University of Leeds:

Scientists at the University of Leeds have proved that acid in the atmosphere breaks down large particles of iron found in dust into small and extremely soluble iron nanoparticles, which are more readily used by plankton.

This is an important finding because lack of iron can be a limiting factor for plankton growth in the ocean - especially in the southern oceans and parts of the eastern Pacific. Addition of such iron nanoparticles would trigger increased absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. _SD

So here are three different ways in which clouds and cloud associated aerosols may be significantly affecting the climate -- but climate models do not accurately incorporate these important factors when making their $trillion predictions. And yet, Obama and the United Nations are willing to throw the economies of the industrialised world on the rubbish heap in order to placate computer models which are almost certainly wrong in their predictions.

When are climatologists going to stop pretending that they understand the climate? When are they going to admit that their knowledge is far too limited to base the economic future of the developed world upon them? Do not hold your breath. These climatologists have based their reputations and livelihoods upon the soundness and reliability of their methods and projections. For them to do the right thing now would require a level of character and integrity that is simply beyond them, at this point in the process.

Which means that it is up to you to put political pressure on the funding agencies that pay these pretenders -- to bring them to heel. Make them honest for once. Only pressure from the people who pay the piper can possibly slow down this train wreck to a manageable speed.

Halophytes -- a Limitless World of Biomass

* True halophytes are plants that thrive when given water having greater than 0.5% NaCl. A small number of plant lineages have evolved structural, phenological, physiological, and biochemical mechanisms for salt resistance, and true halophytes have evolved convergently in numerous, related families.
* Xerohalophytes are the desert species of halophytes. Desert and coastal halophytes possess the same mechanisms for dealing with salt toxicity and salt stress. Species living in both saline habitats commonly belong to the same phylogenetic lineages.
* There are marine phanerogams (seed-bearing plants) that live completely submerged in seawater. _UCLABotany

Most people have the wrong idea about biofuels and bioenergy. Biofuels do not have to be produced from food, and there are essentially no limits to the surface area that can be devoted to growing biomass for fuels. Biofuels are not a threat to food supplies nor will they encroach upon rich, vital croplands. Biomass can be grown in the desert using salt water for irrigation -- they can even be grown in the ocean itself!

Today, Boeing and UOP announced an initiative, with the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group consortium and the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, to examine the overall potential for sustainable, large-scale production of biofuels made from salicornia bigelovii and saltwater mangroves – plants known as halophytes.

The halophyte study will evaluate aquaculture management and practices, land use and energy requirements and identify any potential adverse ecological or social impacts associated with using halophytes for energy development, specifically for aviation biofuel development. _BiofuelsDigest

The UAE appear to be taking a long-term view of energy needs in the Gulf area. While the UAE is quickly ratcheting up plans to build a fleet of nuclear reactors, they are also looking a other alternatives to dependency on oil -- such as solar and biofuels. Biofuels in a desert, you ask? Why, yes.

The growing of crops, plants, and biomass depends upon water, of course. Part of the UAE biofuels effort will utilise desalinated fresh water. But another large part will be oriented toward halophytes and algae. Salt water and brackish water are much cheaper than desalinated fresh water.

I am not surprised to see Boeing involved in the venture, since there are very few alternatives to liquid hydrocarbon fuels for large airliners and other aircraft of similar size. In the quest for energy from biology, Boeing joins Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, Statoil, Dow, DuPont, Petrobras, Bill Gates, and a score of big corporations and investors.

The Persian Gulf area has much more oil yet to be discovered. The region has not been explored for oil nearly to the extent that North America has been explored. But there will come a time when even "easy oil" will find it difficult to compete with alternative forms of energy. That is when Peak Oil will finally occur in a meaningful sense. Peak Oil due to lack of demand.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Not What We Were Told to Expect

America's new president is beginning to lose his lustre. A consummate campaigner on the stump, Obama is beginning to stumble when it comes to performing in his first real job. We were told that Mr. Obama was the most intelligent president ever, so articulate and bright. But how much of that brilliance was Obama, and how much was his speechwriters -- combined with a canny sense of rehearsed delivery?

Re-evaluating Barack Obama's IQ is an interesting second look at the man that presidential historians assured us was the most intelligent president of all.

While Obama may not be stupid, he does appear to be lazy. And he very much wants to be the "big man." One must wonder how kindly he will take to being ushered off the stage when his time comes. Will he be as gracious as Bill Clinton, or more like Robert Mugabe?

And honestly, if Obama is that great, where are all of his old girlfriends? Speaking honestly, Michelle is just not that great a catch. She is neither attractive nor intelligent, and appears to be a hell of a beech as well.

Bad domestic policy decisions tend to become institutionalised into huge bureaucracies that simply never go away. The Obama additions to the US debt between now and the mid 2010s will hobble the country's productive classes for decades following.

Certainly the US middle class is already reeling, and the entrepreneurial class is stunned with uncertainty by Obama's abrupt attempts to overhaul so many large parts of the US economy at such an abysmally poor choice of times.

While Obama's domestic policy has driven the US economy into its deepest hole since the 1930s, his foreign policy is absolutely insane.

Somewhere in North Carolina, Mutant Mice Are Growing Brains With 3 Times the Brain Cells

Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill have engineered a strain of mice whose brain stem cells don't know when to stop dividing, differentiate, and mature. The brains do not stop growing, because they never receive the signal. The GSK-3 gene -- glycogen synthase kinase 3 -- has been "knocked out" of the mouse genome, and cannot supply the GSK3 protein.

“It was really quite striking,” said Snider. “Without GSK-3, these neural stem cells just keep dividing and dividing and dividing. The entire developing brain fills up with these neural stem cells that never turn into mature neurons.”

GSK-3 is known to coordinate signals for proliferation and differentiation within nerve cells through multiple “signaling pathways.” Thus, the researchers looked to see what effect deleting the molecule had on some of these pathways. They found that every one of the pathways that they studied went awry.

Snider and his colleagues now want to see if adding GSK-3 back to their genetically engineered mice can convert the proliferating stem cells into neurons, possibly resulting in three to four times as many neurons in the mutants as normal.

“I find that quite interesting because I can’t think of any other manipulation that potentially would enable you to simply dial up and down the number of neurons that are generated in the brain,” said Snider. _SD

Why would scientists want to know how to "simply dial up and down the number of neurons that are generated in the brain?" An interesting question. Let me ask you another one: Why would scientists want to engineer mice that could dance all night and never get tired? I tell you, friends, scientists are very strange when it comes to their mice.

There is a direct correlation between brain size and intelligence, for healthy animals within the same species. Perhaps one could grow a more intelligent animal, if it could design healthy animals with more functioning brain neurons?

Polywell Fusion Reactor News

M. Simon announces that the EMC2 Polywell project has received an award of $10 million for continuing experiments on Polywell fusion. Simon feels that this award indicates that more progress than was expected has been achieved by the team. More information about the justification and award in this PDF document. (via M. Simon)

Compilation of links to Polywell fusion

Talk Polywell forum

IEC Fusion Technology blog

A good rundown of ongoing fusion projects from ECN

A Living Earth of Incredible Resilience

Life on Earth is so incredibly resilient, that even the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact 65 million years ago couldn't suppress the vast life of the oceans for long. New research suggests that it took less than a century for the teeming "primary producers" of oceanic algae and cyanobacteria to replenish themselves following the Chicxulub impact off the Yucatan Peninsula.

Immediately after the impact, certain areas of the ocean were devoid of oxygen and hostile to most algae, but close to the continent, microbial life was inhibited for only a relatively short period: in probably less than 100 years, algal productivity showed the first signs of recovery. In the open ocean, however, this recovery took much longer: previous studies have estimated that the global ocean ecosystem did not return to its former state until 1 to 3 million years following the impact.

Because of the rebound of primary producers, Sepúlveda says "very soon after the impact, the food supply was not likely a limitation" for other organisms, and yet "the whole ecology of the system remained disrupted" and took much longer to recover.

The findings provide observational evidence supporting models suggesting that global darkness after the impact was rather short. "Primary productivity came back quickly, at least in the environment we were studying," says Summons, referring to the near-shore environment represented by the Danish sediments.

"The atmosphere must have cleared up rapidly," he says. "People will have to rethink the recovery of the ecosystems. It can't be just the lack of food supply" that made it take so long to recover. __MIT

The devastation of such a cosmic collision would be far worse than virtually any nuclear war scenario currently conceivable, yet even after such a cataclysm life bounced back quickly. Needless to say, this remarkably resilient comeback contradicts much current "environmentalist" thought -- in academia, political culture, and popular culture.

When political activists moan about the environmental effects of a 0.6 degree C rise in global temperature over a century, knowledgable observors are forced to suppress wry smiles at the ecological ignorance unwittingly revealed.

Earth life has not survived this long through unimaginable disasters and catastrophes, by being unable to deal with variation in climate and physical conditions. Certainly the impact of humans upon the Earth to this point has been extremely benign in comparison to the natural extreme variability that life has suffered under -- and still thrives.

And just think -- if algae can survive Chicxulub, it can survive just about anything. Maybe algae can even help us learn to survive Peak Oil Doom?

VASIMR Plasma Rocket Puts Solar System In Reach

Once we have this capability, Mars isn’t really the only place that we can go. With a megawatt-class VASIMR, basically we will have access to the entire solar system. Mars is an interesting place, but so are Europa and Ganymede and Enceladus and Titan. _NextBigFuture

The plasma source cell involves the main injection of neutral gas (typically hydrogen, or other light gases) to be turned into plasma and the ionization subsystem. The RF booster cell acts as an amplifier to further energize the plasma to the desired temperature using electromagnetic waves. The magnetic nozzle cell converts the energy of the plasma into directed motion and ultimately useful thrust._NASA
As long as humans are limited to chemical rocket propulsion with specific impulse around 500, we are stuck in this small part of the solar system. But with new rockets that have specific impulses in the tens of thousands, suddenly humans can think about exploring Jupiter's moons, and beyond. The VASIMR plasma rocket is an example of a high specific impulse rocket engine, with very good prospects, particularly when paired with a small nuclear reactor power source.

Seed: Working with plasma sounds difficult. Why would you ever want to use it in a rocket?
FCD: There is a term in rocketry, “specific impulse,” which measures how efficiently a rocket obtains thrust from its propellant. The higher the specific impulse, the more efficient the rocket, and the less fuel it requires. In general, specific impulse increases as a rocket’s exhaust gets hotter. A good chemical rocket’s specific impulse is on the order of about 500. And the specific impulse of the VASIMR and most other plasma-based rockets is in the thousands, even the tens of thousands. So we’re talking about an orders-of-magnitude performance improvement of the rocket. That’s why we go to all the trouble of working with plasma, because there’s a huge payoff in terms of how much fuel you use to get any given payload from point A to point B in outer space.

Seed: Aren’t there other kinds of plasma engines already? How are they different from VASIMR?
FCD: There are other kinds, yes. In all plasma rockets, you have to produce thrust by accelerating the plasma. Other plasma rockets do this with electric current from metallic grids that are immersed in the plasma. Too much plasma flowing past these grids will make them essentially melt, so you can’t go to extremely high power. You can somewhat get around this by making the grids very large, or making arrays of them, but you’re still limited by grid erosion and damage. This means most plasma rockets are inherently low-power devices.

In VASIMR, however, there are no grids. Its plasma is contained by magnetic fields and heated and accelerated by electromagnetic waves. Since no parts of the rocket are immersed in the plasma flow, you can make the plasma very dense and hot and get much better performance.

Seed: How did you come up with this idea?
FCD: VASIMR is an example of the need for cross-pollination between disciplines to spark new ideas and new technologies. It came from research in controlled thermonuclear fusion, and in particular from a device called a “magnetic diverter,” which was the subject of my PhD thesis when I was at MIT in 1977. I’d always been interested in propulsion, and realized that this technology was suited for rocketry, but there wasn’t much work being done anywhere else. Back then I was always surprised to find that people who were working on fusion and plasma physics weren’t paying attention to what was going on in propulsion research, and vice-versa. It almost looked to me like time had stood still for these folks. They were pursuing old ideas, they weren’t communicating. Things have changed now, of course.

Seed: Have they? We’ve been sending people and machines into space for more than half a century, but we’re still mostly using chemical rockets.
FCD: Well, part of the problem with electric propulsion back then, and to a lesser degree today, is that it’s hard to get enough electricity to power the rocket. Typically, electricity in space comes from sunlight, solar power. That works okay in Earth orbit and other places close to the Sun. But people have to realize sooner or later that, if we’re ever going to explore Mars and beyond, we have to make a commitment to developing high-power electricity sources for space. What we really need is nuclear power to generate electricity in space. If we don’t develop it, we might as well quit, because we’re not going to go very far. Nuclear power is central to any robust and realistic human exploration of space. People don’t really talk about this at NASA. Everybody is still avoiding facing this because of widespread anti-nuclear sentiment.

Seed: What has to happen to make that change?
FCD: In 1958, the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was able to actually navigate under the north polar cap and surface on the other side. No other submarine had ever been able to do that before. It was an eye-opener, a game-changer, a paradigm shift. The idea was that nuclear power enabled a completely different class of missions for these types of ships. Now, nuclear submarines are common. Something similar has to happen in space.

In fact, with the power close to what a nuclear submarine generates, you could use VASIMR to fly humans to Mars in 39 days. A chemical rocket makes the trip in eight months. That’s eight months of exposing your astronauts to debilitating cosmic radiation and weightlessness. By the time they get to where they’re supposed to work, they’re gonna be in bad shape—almost invalids! They’ll have to spend a big chunk of their time just recovering from the trip. That’s simply not a smart way to conduct an exploration program. By not addressing the key problems of limited power and propulsion, NASA is forced to work with extremely complicated and expensive mission architectures that are very limited in capability.

Seed: So you believe that in the long run it would be more cost-effective to develop nuclear-electric capabilities in space, even given potential regulatory difficulties?
FCD: Absolutely. People have fears of nuclear power in space, but it’s a fear that isn’t really based on any organized and clear assessment of the true risks and costs. When you send these missions based on chemical propulsion to Mars, they aren’t only going to be extremely expensive, but also extremely fragile. Imagine being on Earth, watching astronauts on an eight-month death trip from which there is no return, all because they made a small mistake or something failed. It would be an agonizing process, and there would be a lot of questions asked if you lost a crew. Well, in space, power is life. You can plan against a lot of contingencies by simply having more power available for a crew to use. _SEED_via_BrianWang

Hyperion Plans for Factory Produced Reactors

Hyperion is planning to start building small cheap modular nuclear reactors in a new factory in the UK sometime within the next two years.

For the first time, the advantages of nuclear power – efficient, cheaper, non-polluting with no greenhouse gas emissions – are available for remote locations without designing and building individual, massive, and costly conventional power plants that are built to serve large areas.__NEI

The Hyperion reactor was invented at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the USA. Through the US government’s technology transfer initiative, the exclusive licence to develop and commercialise the invention was granted to New Mexico-based Hyperion Power Generation, Inc. (HPG). The company has now retained the nation’s top nuclear power design and engineering teams, including staff from US federal laboratories, to further develop the reactor. It will continue to partner with industrial leaders for the reactor’s production, operation, and maintenance.

There are four main applications for the Hyperion reactor:

• Military bases (independent, baseload power).

• Oil & gas recovery and refining, including in oil sands and shale recovery.

• Remote communities lacking accessibility to a source of electrical generation.

• Quickly installed back-up and emergency power for disaster areas. _NEI

According to material published at Next Big Future, Hyperion has customer commitments for over a hundred units, to date. The company expects to go to market in 2013 to 2014, but is already committed to deliveries as far back as 2020!

Hyperion is doing something very clever: They plan to get their design licensed in the UK, to allow UK production and international delivery. This bypasses the exorbitant US licensing fees for new reactor designs.

The key to the success of Hyperion will be its fuel – uranium hydride powder, which allows the hydrogen moderator to easily move in and out of the core. The physical characteristics of uranium hydride, a combined fuel and neutron energy moderator, are ideal for the generation of safe nuclear power. The reactor operates at an optimum temperature of 550°C, selected as the goal for the so-called Generation IV reactors by the US Department of Energy (DoE). At 550°C, the dissociation pressure for the hydrogen above the hydride is approximately eight atmospheres, which permits easy transportation of the gas without presenting significant high-pressure risk. The temperature-driven mobility of the hydrogen contained in the hydride can change the moderation, and therefore the reactor criticality, making the reactor self-regulating.

The hydrogen forced out of the core during any over-temperature excursion reduces the neutron energy moderation necessary for nuclear criticality. The Hyperion Power Module is inherently fail-safe, since any temperature increase from excess activity immediately reduces the criticality parameters and thus the power production. The consequent power reduction causes the temperature to decrease and that temperature decrease eventually reverses the process, resulting in relaxation oscillations that quickly damp out to steady-state operation. __NEI

The US Obama administration has thrown a wide ring of strangulation around US baseload energy sources and fuel supplies. Rather than fighting a battle against Obama czars and zombies, Hyperion has chosen to take its safe, inexpensive approach to abundant energy somewhere that is more likely to appreciate it.

Singularity Summit In NYC Online from hPlus Blog

The editor's blog of futuristic magazine hPlus, is providing a liveblog of the Singularity Summit in NYC this weekend.

This year's Singularity Summit line-up features many familiar faces, but with some new twists on the usual AI, AGI, Longevity, Nanotech, Robotics and Biotech themes.

This year, we get two presentations by Ray Kurzweil. On Saturday, Ray will present updated versions of his now infamous exponential growth charts and graphs, while providing examples of real world technologies that are already beginning to demonstrate these information technology trends in action.

On Sunday, Ray's "Critics of the Singularity" talk will address some fo the arguments against the possibility of creating a superintelligence, such as "Moore’s Law will not go on forever," "the brain is too complicated to understand or replicate," and "software is not capable of thinking or of consciousness."

...Aubrey de Grey will be explaining the difference between the Singularity and what he calls "the Methuselarity," a threshold in the development of anti-aging technologies at which their rate of improvement reaches "longevity escape velocity", a rate of progress sufficeint to postpone age-related ill-health indefinitely... __hPlusEditor'sblog

Much more conference preview at the link above. H/T Instapundit

Michael Anissimov will also provide some online coverage of the Summit.

Humans need to find ways to help themselves to grow smarter, wiser, and to live longer, healthier lives. Technological discoveries will assist the reaching of those goals. But the focus should be on human enhancement and improvement.

Average population IQ in the developed world is 100. The average population IQ of Earth is just under 90. World average IQ is steadily decreasing, via demographic trends that appear unstoppable.

Nations with a population average IQ under 90 cannot maintain a modern university for training indigenous students for the professions, sciences, and technologies -- without immense outside help and imported professors. Nations whose population average IQ is under 85 cannot sustain modern technologies of electric power, transportation, health care, and modern finance, without an outside help and an intelligent minority capable of building and maintaining the technology.

The average population IQ of sub-saharan Africa is under 80. As long as that is true, SS Africa will always need outside help and/or an intelligent market dominant minority such as East Asians (Chinese in much of modern Africa), South Asians (in parts of East Africa and South Africa), and Europeans (driven out of Zimbabwe, but still helping keep South Africa barely above water).

Popular delusional beliefs such as the innate equality of intellect of all human populations, do immense harm to all the people of the world. Intelligence augmentation is a vital need for all humans -- not just those populations who lag the others. Absolute equality is impossible to achieve, although a rough equivalence may be achievable with advanced genetic tools.

Other delusional beliefs such as belief in imminent carbon climate catastrophe lead to the wasteful diversion of trillions of dollars of scarce resources toward corrupt and non-productive entities. These wasted resources are then no longer available for solving those human problems which are real, and desperately in need of work.

Longer lifespan for humans seems a worthy goal. Unfortunately, if humans continue to grow stupider (as they are), helping them live longer will eventually seem pointless.

Bad governance is one of the most critical problems of the human Earth. Since governments allocate most of the resources of the planet, bad governance means an immense waste of resources. And since the popular media and public education will often tend to toady up to bad government -- or be shackled and controlled by bad government as we see in Russia, China, the Muslim world, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea etc -- minds of most persons never truly learn to think or to understand.

The Singularity movement has much to recommend it. But as long as the focus is on technology development rather than human development, it risks becoming something of a religion of technology, or "rapture of the nerds."

I will be interested to see what comes of the Summit this weekend.

Update: Brian Wang provides a list of websites liveblogging the Summit here

Sanity, and the Religious / Non-religious Brain

Sam Harris is the successful author of The End of Faith, a book that accuses religion of being the enemy of reason.

Sam Harris is also pursuing a PhD in neuroscience at UCLA. A recent paper in PLoS ONE, The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief, uses fMRI to look at differences in brain activity between "belief" and "disbelief."

Once inside the scanner, subjects were presented with a series of short statements through a video-goggle display (Resonance Technology, Inc). After reading each statement, they were asked to evaluate its truth content with the press of a button, indicating “true” (belief), “false” (disbelief), and “undecidable” (uncertainty). The presentation of stimuli was self-paced. Stimuli were drawn from two categories, religious and nonreligious. All statements were designed to be judged easily as “true” or “false” (the response of “undecidable,” while available to subjects, was not expected).

Within each category, we attempted to balance the stimuli with respect to semantic structure and content. Strict balancing across categories was not possible, however, as the two categories differ with respect to content, in principle. For the purposes of stimulus design (not presentation) we generated our statements in groups of four (true and false; religious and nonreligious):

The Biblical God really exists. (Christian true/nonbeliever false)

The Biblical God is a myth. (Christian false/nonbeliever true)

Santa Claus is a myth. (Both groups true)

Santa Claus really exists. (Both groups false) __PLoSOne

The results indicate that questions of belief are primarily handled by parts of the brain that are involved with self-representation, emotional associations, reward, and goal-driven behaviour. This was true for both the 15 religious subjects and the 15 non-religious subjects

But when questions of religious beliefs were analysed exclusively, areas of the brain recruited are also involved in pain perception in oneself and others, disgust, reward, response conflict, and cognitive planning.

Interestingly, both religious and non-religious subjects apparently possessed a "sense of blasphemy" in rejecting statements about religion with which they disagreed.

Finally, among our religious stimuli, the subset of statements that ran counter to Christian doctrine yielded greater signal for both groups in several brain regions, including the ventral striatum, paracingulate cortex, middle frontal gyrus, the frontal poles, and inferior parietal cortex (see Fig 3, Table 5). These regions showed greater signal both when Christians rejected stimuli contrary to their doctrine (e.g. “The Biblical god is a myth”) and when nonbelievers affirmed the truth of those same statements. In other words, these brain areas responded preferentially to “blasphemous” statements in both subject groups.

...Despite the fact that religious believers and nonbelievers accepted and rejected diametrically opposite statements in half of our experimental trials, the same neural systems were engaged in both groups throughout. __PLosOne

The entire study is worth reading. Sam Harris -- in both his highly polemical bestseller and in his neuroscientific publication -- adopts a certain "God's eye view" when looking at religious believers. Yet the study itself seems to suggest that both "believers and non-believers" use the same parts of their brains when exercising belief and disbelief.

In other words, there really is no such thing as a believer vs. non-believer. All are both believers and disbelievers. They simply believe and disbelieve different things.

Harris appears to be trying to find a neurological basis to support the subtext of all of his polemical writing: that religious belief is a psychopathology. In the above paper, he clearly failed to achieve that goal. Still, there is a lot of time, there are a lot of fMRI machines, and there are still quite a lot of believers out there to test.

I have stated before that as an atheo-agnostic who was once a believer, I fail to understand the quasi-fanatical anti-religious zealotry of Harris, Hitchens, Dennet, Dawkins, and others who have cashed in on a current academic and social fashion.

The question of importance regarding religion is: Do the religious beliefs lead to fanaticism, disruptive intolerance, and violence? If not, then it is the person who is attacking a peaceful religion who has the problem, not the religious believer.

For Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins etc. not to understand this simple and basic distinction suggests they may be on a quasi-religious crusade of their own.

Regardless, the single belief that threatens the future of humanity more than any other, in my opinion, is the anti-scientific belief in carbon climate catastrophe. Under Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, and a parade of czars, directors, and popular hero-frauds, the quasi-religious belief in climate catastrophe threatens to cut the legs out from under the genuine movement toward a clean and abundant sustainability.

H/T Kurzweilai.net

For any readers who are curious to follow the reasoning of Al Fin in moving from religious belief to atheo-agnosticism, Walter Kaufman's Critique of Religion and Philosophy was pivotol in that transformation.

Mama! He's Driving a Stake Through Global Warming!

Image via Climate Depot
Blogger Neil Craig paints an intriguing portrait of Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit. McIntyre is one of the most gentlemanly, intelligent, and articulate persons to blog on topics of climate. Yet he is the recipient of more hatred and bile than almost anyone on the internet. The reason he is hated by so many people involved in the climate-industrial complex is simple: McIntyre exposes the truth behind the data.

Once again Steve McIntyre has proven a crucial part of the global warming swindle to be without factual merit. In this case he has proven statistically that Michael Mann [actually Keith Briffa in this case __AF], in producing his Hockey Stick theory has deliberately faked his most basic evidence.

After 10 years of data being withheld that would allow true scientific replication, and after dozens of requests for that data, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit finally was given access to the data from Yamal Peninsula, Russia. He discovered that only 12 trees had been used out of a much larger dataset of tree ring data. When the larger data set was plotted, there is no “hockey stick” of temperature, in fact it goes in the opposite direction. Get your primer here.

Since all 12 trees were very much at variance with the average readings from that group it is just statistically impossible that Mann [Briffa _AF] selected all 12 at random. Therefore it is fraud. These particular tree rings were the evidence on which the entire Hockey Stick theory, that we had flat temperatures for the previous, originally, 1,500 years & an unprecedented sharp rise this century. This is effectively the entire "global warming"/""climate change"/"dangerous climate change" case. _APlaceToStand

Neil goes on to recount a long list of instances where McIntyre stood alone against powerful government financed institutions and scientists to expose mishandled data, faulty statistics, and erroneous conclusions. No wonder they hate McIntyre! If not for that amateur, they would be home-free and in the clear. But thanks to the climate auditor, instead of a long future of fame and adulation, they look forward to prospects of infamy and discarded laurels. In a wiser world, being shamed would be the best they should expect....

....Oh, mama! How can they let that man drive a stake through global warming? Will Al Gore have to give back his Nobel Prize? Will I have to stop believing what I saw in "An Inconvenient Truth?" Will I have to learn to love coal?

Here is a neutral look at this issue from The Register

Update 2 October2009: More on the downfall of Mann and Briffa from Ross McKitrick via climatedepot

More fallout from Briffa's Yamal contretemps

Note: McIntyre earlier demolished Michael Mann's methodology used in creating Mann's famous hockey stick -- upon which much of the early political momentum toward international carbon controls was built. Needing a new hockey stick, Keith Briffa came along with his own hockey stick built upon a carefully selected series of unrepresentative tree rings in the Yamal Peninsula of Russia. The current controversy in the climate world is over McIntyre's demolishing of Briffa's hockey stick. __ AF (in answer to commenter "taylor's" complaint)

Never a Shortage of Crises Under this Administration

Foreclosures rise 17% -- WaPo

Jobless rate climbs abruptly -- Economic Times

Worst shipping crisis to date -- Bloomberg

Baltic Dry Index plunges -- Purchasing.com

Inflation rate higher than government is reporting -- Jim Rogers

Why the government fails to maintain anything -- Freeman


The official motto of the Obama administration is "Never let any crisis go to waste." In keeping with that motto, the Obama administration is proceeding in its attempts to nationalise banking, automobiles, health care, energy, and anything else it can think of. By taking this approach, Obama and his czars ensure that there will never be a shortage of crises.

17 Healthy Young Men Spent the Night in the Lab . . .

.... In the morning when they awoke, they were "smarter". The young men were experimental subjects in a University of Lubeck experiment to test the effects of interleukin 6 (IL-6) on memory.

In a research report featured as the cover story of the October 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, these scientists show that a molecule from the body's immune system (interleukin-6) when administered through the nose helps the brain retain emotional and procedural memories during REM sleep.

"Sleep to remember, a dream or reality?" said Lisa Marshall, co-author of the study, from the Department of Neuroendocrinology at the University of Lubeck in Germany. "Here, we provide the first evidence that the immunoregulatory signal interleukin-6 plays a beneficial role in sleep-dependent formation of long-term memory in humans."

To make this discovery, Marshall and colleagues had 17 healthy young men spend two nights in the laboratory. On each night after reading either an emotional or neutral short story, they sprayed a fluid into their nostrils which contained either interleukin-6 or a placebo fluid. The subsequent sleep and brain electric activity was monitored throughout the night. The next morning subjects wrote down as many words as they could remember from each of the two stories. Those who received the dose of IL-6 could remember more words. __MachinesLikeUs

Augmented reality means a lot more than electronic gadgetry. True reality augmentation goes to the heart of how we invent the world.

If the US Drug Enforcement Administration thinks it has its hands full controlling the marketing of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth, just wait until true smart drugs hit the black market. That will be the beginning of an all-pervading revolution.

Believers in Kurzweil's Singularity expect the world to change once machines become smart enough. A much better approach is to help humans to become smarter and wiser simultaneously. Then you can worry about machines.