How the US Can Compete With China

China's economic juggernaut appears unstoppable, to the average eye. The US must work under far more stringent rules and regulations in doing business, than the Chinese. Perhaps the answer for the US is to export some of its ideological idiocracy to China, to even the scale.

There was good news in the April 1 New York Times Magazine, in an article by Ann Hulbert entitled “Re-education.” Hulbert describes the enthusiasm among Chinese for American-style education. She opens with the story of Harvard freshman Tang Meijie, an exceptional young woman from Shanghai who earned her way into Harvard by bucking the usual academic grind in China and focusing instead on extracurrriculars. Meijie is on our side: “There is something in the American educational system that helps America hold its position in the world.” Meijie’s goal is to bring American-style liberal education to China.

....Our master plan for dumbing-down Chinese education, however, is not just about atmospherics or theatrics. Let’s not forget: this is American educationism. And that means theory.

...Assured that the Long March of the Revolution will inexorably reach the Great Frivolity of American-style educationism, I can worry a little less about the coming Chinese hegemony.

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Along with US-style government education, the US should export its system of tort law along with a generous supply of trial lawyers to China. That would help even the score. Exporting a huge portion of feminist style affirmative action and political correctness would likewise cut the Chinese down to size. They would not know what had hit them! Sexual harassment lawsuits alone would destroy 90% of China's economic growth.

Clearly, the US has some secret weapons that would be very deadly to virtually any other economy in the world. If only the CIA could learn how to implant some of these "memes" into other economies and cultures, the US would have no competition at all for the next century or two!

On Mothers Day: To Mother, or not to Mother--That is the Question

Like most of the western world, Canada is facing a serious decline of motherhood. There are many reasons for this problem

How did it come to this? In Canada, one answer is infertility. This affects one in every 15 Canadian couples (in Britain one in six are affected), who spend some $30 million a year on in-vitro fertilization alone. Defined as failure to conceive after one year of trying, infertility can result from many factors affecting both males and females, but according to the government of Canada's Biobasics website, the two biggest factors are delayed childbearing and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Today, mothers giving birth average 29.5 years of age. Since women are born with a given number of eggs that decline in quality and quantity from the age of 30, it is no surprise that for the growing proportion of 30-plus women attempting pregnancy, it is much more difficult to conceive and carry a child.

Compounding the problem, earlier and increased sexual activity means a greater likelihood for contracting gonorrhea or chlamydia. In women, pelvic inflammatory disease and, in turn, blocked fallopian tubes or ectopic pregnancy may result. In men, sterility is possible. According to healthyontario.com, rates of STD infection are up 60 per cent since 1997, with girls between the ages of 15 and 19 incurring the highest rates. In 2003, 20,000 new cases of chlamydia were reported in Canada.

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The decline of motherhood suggests a future decline in working taxpayers to support Canada's massive system of social programs. Because Canada has a reasonably healthy economy, compared to most of the world, immigrants will arrive to try to take advantage of the opportunities Canada offers. Canada will receive both economic opportunity immigrants and welfare-seeking immigrants.

Unfortunately, of the nations with the highest birthrates providing the most potential immigrants, the average population IQ is significantly below the Canadian average.


If the IQ of the immigrants is low, they may start as economic opportunity immigrants, and regrettably transform into welfare-seeking immigrants. Dysgenic immigration is the last thing a welfare state like Canada needs--just as it is the last thing the European welfare states need.

France is in a similar downward spiral. Although France has elected a hard-working and intelligent new President, it is still in doubt whether France has the will to do what must be done to reverse its decline.

Delayed childbirth combined with early sexuality, leads to infertility. The only long-term solution--given the dominant culture of western countries--is the artificial womb.

The Solar Conveyor Belt, Sunspots, and Climate

NASA has found that the "solar conveyor belt", which is intimately connected with future sunspot cycles, has slowed significantly. This slowing points to a long and weak sunspot cycle, peaking in the early 2020s.

The Sun's Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a record-low crawl, according to research by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "It's off the bottom of the charts," he says. "This has important repercussions for future solar activity."

see captionThe Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle, and that's why the slowdown is important.

...."Normally, the conveyor belt moves about 1 meter per second—walking pace," says Hathaway. "That's how it has been since the late 19th century." In recent years, however, the belt has decelerated to 0.75 m/s in the north and 0.35 m/s in the south. "We've never seen speeds so low."

According to theory and observation, the speed of the belt foretells the intensity of sunspot activity ~20 years in the future. A slow belt means lower solar activity; a fast belt means stronger activity. The reasons for this are explained in the Science@NASA story Solar Storm Warning.

"The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries," says Hathaway.

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The relationship between cycle length and Earth temperatures is not well understood. Lower-than normal temperatures tend to occur in years when the sunspot cycle is longest, as confirmed by records of the annual duration of sea-ice around Iceland. The cycle will be longest again in the early 2020's.

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We know that the IPCC approach to climate is ludicrously myopic and inadequate. We know this because the metric most commonly referenced by IPCC reports--surface temperatures--is logically the wrong metric to use for measuring Terran heat content.

The IPCC SPM conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” is wrong as it ignores the lack of such warming in recent years by these other metrics of climate system heat changes. Their focus on the global average near surface temperature trends neglects to report that there are major issues with the robustness of this climate metric of global warming as reported in the papers cited in

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res. in press,

many of which were available to the writers of the IPCC SPM but conveniently ignored. At the very least, the lack of recent tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling in the RSS data and the warming claimed for the near surface air temperatures conflicts with the multi-decadal global climate models in terms of how these temperatures are predicted to change.

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Hat tip Cuanas and M. Simon


One of my favorite bloggers recently asked for me to prove that human released CO2 is not responsible for "global warming." Such a demand is prima facie evidence of lack of training in causation and epistemology. Yet the blogger in question is undeniably talented, intelligent, and broad in outlook.

Of course, youth and inexperience may account for much of the inability of the public to sort through evidence and reasoning that deals with such issues as CAGW. But what about the masses of older people who are easily swayed by the media, and by special-interest science? What excuse do they have? Public school education? Post modernist scrambled brains?

Anyway, recent research suggests a link between solar magnetic activity and cosmic ray penetration into earth's atmosphere. Further, this research suggests that increased cosmic ray penetration leads to increased cloud cover, and decreasing solar heating effect.

A curious phenomenon, which I have been rather slow to take seriously--yet it certainly bears watching. Certainly if cosmic ray penetration can affect speciation and extinction of life forms on earth, it is not a great stretch to think they could also affect cloud formation and climate. We shall see.

The Odds of Asteroid 2004 QQ47 Hitting Earth in 2014 Are One in 909,000

If an asteroid 460 feet in diameter hit Earth, it would produce problems on a regional level, according to NASA. An asteroid 1,000 feet in diameter could harm countries, and one 3,280 feet in diameter -- or one kilometer -- could produce global problems.

If an asteroid that is 32,808 feet in diameter -- or 10 kilometers -- hit Earth, it could cause life forms to become extinct, similar to the asteroid that many scientists believe caused dinosaurs to become extinct.

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Asteroid 2004 MN4 has a higher likelihood of striking the Earth in 2029--greater than 1%. Asteroid MN4 has achieved a threat level of 2 out of 10 on the Torino scale.

An asteroid strike is a real problem, not an ideological hobgoblin like CAGW. The consequences of an asteroid strike would not be subject to revisionist history, post-modernist deconstructualism, or simple human denial.

At the present time, there are no good or available means to divert a large, civilisation-ending asteroid or comet from its course. And to be honest, we will probably have insufficient time to prepare for it, if we wait until we have solid warning.

NASA maintains a list of near-earth objects, for those who enjoy keeping track of such things. And amateur and professional astronomers around the world are watching the night sky carefully for new and previously undiscovered space objects heading our way.

Throughout the world, asteroids have caused about 330 known craters on Earth, but there are probably many more that people haven't discovered yet or are hidden under the oceans, Ryan said.

"It's truly a problem," she said. "We have to worry about these things because we don't know. We have to prepare for any outcome."

....Possibilities for deflecting an asteroid include using a large mirror to focus solar energy on an asteroid and boiling off material, or positioning a spacecraft near an asteroid and using a laser to boil off material, according to the report.

The government could also use a spacecraft to attach mining material to an asteroid and eject material from the asteroid at a high velocity, the report says, or use a spacecraft to literally push it out of the Earth's path.

To dismantle an asteroid, NASA says using a nuclear-armed missile would be more effective than a conventional explosive. The study team looked at conventional explosives but found they would be ineffective in most situations.

The best way to minimise the threat of an asteroid impact is to already have a permanent large-scale space infrastructure in place, before any large asteroids or comets enter final approach to earth impact. If we wait until we are certain a large object will hit us, it will probably be too late.

Odds for QQ47 impact are from Daily Astronomy.

Graphic image is from Saturation.org

Nano-Membrane Mass Spectrometry?

Biological materials are capable of performing many tricks that nanotechnologists have yet to master. Brazilian and American scientists have collaborated in research that shows that lipid bi-layers are capable of serving as nano-scale mass detectors.

In a paper appearing next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,* the team proves for the first time that a single nanometer-scale pore in a thin membrane can be used to accurately detect and sort different-sized polymer chains (a model for biomolecules) that pass through or block the channel.

Traditionally, unknown molecules are measured and identified using mass spectrometry, a process that involves ionizing and disintegrating large numbers of a target molecule, then analyzing the masses of the resulting molecules to produce a "molecular fingerprint" for the original sample. This equipment can cover a good-sized desk. By contrast, the "single-molecule mass spectrometry" system described in the PNAS paper is a non-destructive technique that in principle can measure one molecule at a time in a space small enough to fit on a single microchip device.

The technique involves creating a lipid bilayer membrane similar to those in living cells, and "drilling" a pore in it with a protein (alpha-hemolysin) produced by the Staphyloccoccus aureus bacteria specifically to penetrate cell membranes. Charged molecules (such as single-stranded DNA) are forced one-at-a-time into the nanopore, which is only 1.5 nanometers (the diameter of a human hair is about 10,000 nanometers) at its smallest point, by an applied electric current. As the molecules pass through the channel, the current flow is reduced in proportion to the size of each individual chain, allowing its mass to be easily derived.

In this experiment, various-sized chains in solution of the uncharged polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) were substituted for biomolecules. Each type of PEG molecule reduced the nanopore's electrical conductance differently as it moved through, allowing the researchers to distinguish one size of PEG chain from another.

As a control, a solution of a highly purified PEG of a specific size was characterized with the nanopore. The resulting "fingerprint" closely matched the one identifying samples of the same size polymer in the mixed chain solution.

Further enhancement of the data from both the experimental and control tests yielded mass measurements and identifications of the different PEG chains that correlate with those made by traditional mass spectrometry.

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Nanotechnologists have yet to solve many problems relating to molecular assembly. One of the problems is how to collect information about molecules, on a nano-scale. Identifying molecules by size and function is absolutely necessary for molecular assembly.

Molecular machines must have their own ways of processing information and performing energetic actions appropriate to their location within the larger assembly process. By mimicking biology, and utilising biological materials in creative ways, nanotechnologist will begin to bridge the huge gap that currently exists between biological molecular assembly, and the dreams of diamondoid assembly and other molecular assembly processes and systems.

Sperm Donor No More

Some men gain a certain satisfaction beyond the minimal monetary reward, for donating sperm to a couple who desire children. But some lesbian parents want to make the sperm donor pay for his generosity--and pay--and pay--and pay . . . .

In what legal experts are calling a precedent, a three-judge panel of the state Superior Court has ruled that a York County man must pay child support for two children of a lesbian couple for whom he acted as a sperm donor.

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No, the photo above is not of the proud parents. The actual proud and self-satisfied parents are pictured below.

The US and the Global Commons

Here is a thoughtful post from Belmont Club about the underpinnings of the modern world--the Global Commons--and what the US does behind the scenes to keep the whole ball of wax spinning along.

The U.S. military currently possesses command of the global commons. Command of the commons is analogous to command of the sea, or in Paul Kennedy’s words, it is analogous to “naval mastery.” The “commons,” in the case of the sea and space, are areas that belong to no one state and that provide access to much of the globe. Airspace does technically belong to the countries below it, but there are few countries that can deny their airspace above 15,000 feet to U.S. warplanes. Command does not mean that other states cannot use the commons in peacetime. Nor does it mean that others cannot acquire military assets that can move through or even exploit them when unhindered by the United States. Command means that the United States gets vastly more military use out of the sea, space, and air than do others; that it can credibly threaten to deny their use to others; and that others would lose a military contest for the commons if they attempted to deny them to the United States. Having lost such a contest, they could not mount another effort for a very long time, and the United States would preserve, restore, and consolidate its hold after such a fight. ...

The United States enjoys the same command of the sea that Britain once did, and it can also move large and heavy forces around the globe. But command of space allows the United States to see across the surface of the world’s landmasses and to gather vast amounts of information. At least on the matter of medium-to-large-scale military developments, the United States can locate and identify military targets with considerable fidelity and communicate this information to offensive forces in a timely fashion. Air power, ashore and afloat, can reach targets deep inland; and with modern precision-guided weaponry, it can often hit and destroy those targets.

Much more, including links, at the source.

Most people who comment on the state of the world lack even a basic understanding of the firmer layers of reality beneath the media facade.

Peacetime Army vs. Wartime Army

When you look beneath the media view of what has happened to the coalition militaries, you find something far different than the broken and breaking institutions the analysts want you to see.

In distinct contrast to what happened to the the US military in Vietnam, the US military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other battlefields against imperialist Islamist jihadist world conquest is the sharpest and best disciplined military force the world currently knows. Many commenters clearly want to relive Vietnam for reasons of their own. But that fantasy will not come true unless the know-nothings in the US Congress bring it about themselves.


There is a feature film called "American Soldiers" on cable television, dealing with the conflict between US troops and fedayeen in Iraq sometime in the past few years. Watching the film is stupefying to anyone with any knowledge of modern infantry tactics. How could the film have gotten the action so wrong? It is as if the producers hired writers with no military knowledge and experience, and with a general knowledge of the way the world works compatible with a very sheltered three year-old.

Yet even such an incompetent film portrayal is more informed than the image the mainstream media portrays of the coalition militaries. It is no wonder that people who have not served in the military, have not studied the military, and know no one close to them with accurate knowledge of the military, spout such uninformed nonsense in the media and blogs when they attempt to focus on military issues.

Second Carnival of Space!

The second Carnival of Space is now up!

More great links to recent outer space postings from the best space and futurist blogs. Check it out.

Mining Space--A Gold Rush that Never Ends

Cheaper space launch opens the door to the mining of space objects for useful materials.

In 2004, the world production of iron ore exceeded 1,000 million metric tons[1]. In comparison, a comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than 2,000 million metric tons of iron-nickel ore[2], or two to three times the annual production for 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of iron-nickel, which could supply the 2004 world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also contain precious metals....

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Most people think in a small and limited scope. This leaves them completely unprepared for the changes that are coming.

Who will benefit from the exploitation of space? Information on this area has made plain that the costs of initial start-up and initial maintenance are beyond the capability of the non industrialized nations and can only be undertaken by nations with large developed economic infrastructures, specifically the European Union, The U.S., possibly Russia and Japan. Each of these has positive and negative factors which will determine how large a share of space industry and mining they will control. The U.S. has several advantages. First of all the previously mentioned public and private commitment to space research. Secondly a great deal of governmental research has gone into space "Space ventures require investments beyond the capacity of the private sector. Already the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has spent more then $200 billion (in current dollars), much of it to create the infrastructure needed to exploit space." (Osborne 45) Like any momentous undertaking a planning stage is required, thanks to some far-sighted policy makers a fair amount of planning has already been accomplished.

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Because of the huge potential payoff from any invention that makes the riches of space more accessible to human developers, there is no shortage of people who make extraordinary claims for their inventions. But even if such inventions do not pan out, a more sober analysis suggests that no more than a few decades will pass before the space revolution will be fully in play.

Modern news media is far too short-sighted and unintelligent/uninspired to alert their clients to these immensely important possibilities. Media controllers are far too interested in trying to swing the next political elections to take the time to understand the huge and powerful forces that are likely to throw them and their antiquated industry on the junkheap of history.

There is no need for the rest of us to be so myopic.

Making Space Launch More Affordable

Brian Wang at Advanced Nanotechnology Blog has posted a thoughtful entry on the prospects for cheap space launch within 10 years--via laser and magnetic launch technologies.

The $10,000/kg cost of getting things into space has been crippling what is possible in space. Any low cost system will also need to have a high volume purpose. I discuss the best system that would still involve chemical propulsion and laser and magnetic launch systems. The focus is on laser launch array systems (and mirror reflecting enhancement). I believe there is no technical roadblock for the laser array launch system being developed within 10 years. As with any significant project it would take a coordinated effort and funding.

....Laser photonic mirror system could launch things into orbit and could enhance the laser array launch system with mirrors to multiply efficiency by 1000 up to 100,000 times.

High volume magnetic launch (4000g) acceleration with ion propulsion at the top could bring launch costs down to $10/kg. High volume systems which have operational costs which are only the cost of electricity tend to converge to the $10/kg price. The laser launch and laser launch mirror systems also converge to those prices at high volume.

Go here for the original article, with excellent links and graphics.

Brian is talking about revolutionary changes in the cost of space launch--a reduction from $10,000 per kg to $10 per kg. There is no earthly way of describing to the uninitiated what this would mean for the future of humans on and near earth.

But throwing caution aside, I shall go cautiously insane for a moment in looking at the market value of near earth asteroid 3554 Amun. This asteroid is 2 km in diameter, and assuming typical nickel-iron meteorite composition, Amun is worth $8,000 billion in iron and nickel, $6,000 billion in Cobalt, with a total worth on the Earth metals market in the late '90s of $20,000 billion. Its worth to spacegoing enterprise, given it would already be in orbit and not need to be launched, would be in the vicinity of $300,000,000 billion, at current launch rates. At Brian's reduced rates it would be worth only $300,000 billion--a significant discount indeed.

Consider how much wealth $300,000 billion would be: roughly equivalent to the gross global product of Earth for the next thirty years or more. Source: Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis, Addison Wesley Press.

Think of it as a minor motivation for the few humans who value wealth--particularly in a rapidly expanding human universe.

A space rush would be similar to the many gold and silver rushes of previous centuries, and the oil rushes that continue even in an environment of so-called peak oil. The huge influx of wealth to the countries able to capitalise on this explosion of pioneering exploitation of space resources would sponsor accelerated research into biotechnology, nanotechnology, cognitive science--not to mention any number of new and decadent amusements.

This would not be the next level, but it would certainly be a good bypass around the economic implosion in the west being brought about by demographic aging and shrinkage combined with a worrying dysgenic population trend. With a new and rapidly expanding frontier full of near-instant billionaires and trillionaires, a lot of very interesting possibilities will inevitably come about.

Elevator? No Thanks. I'm Dizzy for Slides

Who needs stairs? They're so last century. If I had my druthers, going up a floor in a building would be done via escalator, and going down would be done via slide. Giant tube slides, to be exact.

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More Adventures in Memory: CamKII

Calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CamKII), is necessary for induction of long-term potentiation (LTP), or synaptic learning. Brandeis researchers have demonstrated how CamKII can form memories, and how removing CamKII can "erase" memories, making room for formation of new memories with new CamKII.

In an important study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, Brandeis University researchers report for the first time that memory storage can be induced and then biochemically erased in slices of rat hippocampus by manipulating a so-called "memory molecule," a protein kinase known as CaMKII.

"The core problem in memory research has been understanding what the storage molecule actually is. Identifying this molecule is essential to understanding memory itself as well as any disease of memory, " explained lead author John Lisman. "With this study, we have confirmed CaMKII as a memory molecule."

The research involved electrically stimulating neuronal synapses to strengthen them, a process known as long-term potentiation (LTP). This process has served as a model system for studying memory. CaMKII has been a leading candidate as a memory molecule because it is persistently activated after LTP induction and can enhance synaptic transmission, properties that are necessary for a memory molecule.

Like a computer whose electronics change with the addition of new information, molecular activity in the hippocampus, where memory is stored in the brain, changes as memory is being stored. In this study, Lisman and his colleagues showed that they could saturate the memory stores. However, when CaMKII was chemically attacked and previous memory erased, it then became possible to insert new memories in the synapses.

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By influencing the process of memory formation, scientists hope to devise new approaches to treating Alzheimer's Disease, Epilepsy, and many other disorders that involve the LTP/learning process.

The ability to selectively "erase" memories may bring in a "Brave New World" of treatment for PTSD, phobias, OCD, and other mental disorders involving sterotyped memories.

More on CamKII
Memories are made of this

Is The Third Splice the Charm?

Neuropsin is a serine protease that plays an important role in memory formation in the mammalian hippocampus. Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered that type II Neuropsin, a longer form of the enzyme, exists in human brains but not in the brains of great apes, lesser apes, or monkeys.

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society. The journal is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/humanmutation.

....Gene sequencing revealed a mutation specific to humans that triggers a change in the splicing pattern of the neuropsin gene, creating a new splicing site and a longer protein. Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin. "Hence, the human-specific mutation is not only necessary but also sufficient in creating the novel splice form," the authors state.

The results also showed a weakening effect of a different, type I-specific splicing site and a significant reduction in type I neuropsin expression in human and chimpanzee when compared with the rhesus macaque, an Old World monkey. This pattern suggests that before the emergence of the type II splice form in human, the weakening of the type I splicing site already existed in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, implying a multi-step process that led to the dramatic change of splicing pattern in humans, the authors note.

...They note that further studies should probe the biological function of type II neuropsin in humans, as the extra 45 amino acids in this form may cause protein structural and functional changes. They note that in order to understand the genetic basis that underlies the traits that set humans apart from nonhuman primates, recent studies have focused on identifying genes that have been positively selected during human evolution. They conclude, "The present results underscore the potential importance of the creation of novel splicing forms in the central nervous system in the emergence of human cognition."

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Neuropsin protease modifies the extracellular matrix in its interaction with synaptic membranes, in LTP and learning. The interaction is complex, and relies upon the activation and de-activation of Neuropsin at the proper times in proper concentrations. Read this study by Tamura et al for more information.

The progressive changes in Neuropsin splicing from monkeys to chimpanzees to humans, suggests that relatively simple epigenetic changes leading to the longer Neuropsin II protease in humans may be partially responsible for the much greater ability of human brains to learn complex systems of knowledge, including language.

You may be wondering the same thing that I am wondering. If the first change in splicing to Neuropsin I led to the CNS of Chimp/Human precursors, and the second change in splicing that created Neuropsin II led to uniquely human brain changes, what will the next splicing change in the Neuropsin gene lead to? Will the third splice be the charm?

Saving France

The recent French election suggests that the French themselves suspect that something has gone wrong in France. Sarkozy's "tough love" approach to saving France was not expected to win out--given the lack of "fighting spirit" that the French have displayed for so long. But can even tough-minded Sarkozy save France, with all her problems?

Agriculture, industrialized and now EU-sponsored, still plays a sizable role in the French economy, but farmers have virtually vanished as a class (constituting only 3 percent of the working population), and whole sections of the countryside have reverted to fallow land and untended forests. The industrial working class is shrinking as well: from 38.5 percent of all jobs in 1974 to about 20 percent in 2005. Workers are deserting both the unions and the left-wing political parties. Thanks to the depredations of urban-renewal projects, historic Paris has been emptied of its traditional working- and middle-class population and turned into a yuppie theme park: much of its unique vibrancy is gone, and other French cities have so far not been able to replace it or to compete with the so-called Eurocities of London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Milan, Barcelona.

The French middle class, Chauvel sums up, is haunted by “a sense of impending doom.” Salaries have not kept pace since the 1980’s; meritocracy no longer seems to work as a vehicle of social promotion; unemployment is climbing, devastating the lives of people already deprived of a functioning family; property has become unaffordable unless one inherits; prospects of a secure retirement grow dimmer every year. The parents of today’s middle class, Chauvel writes, “dramatically improved their own standards of living,” but the children “know they will not enjoy a similar fate. In fact they fear they will be downgraded to an impoverished condition.”

Finally, as if all this were not bad enough, there is crime. Until the 1960’s, France was largely a safe country: people like my parents would slip their keys under the doormat or just leave the door unlocked. It is now an extremely unsafe country, rife with violent assault, arson, armed robbery, and murder, often savage. According to the Institute of National Statistics, the overall crime rate—the ratio of reported criminal activity to population—grew from 12 percent in 1960, to over 60 percent in 1980, to about 70 percent in 2000. The rise may be related to all sorts of circumstances, including economic ones. But it is incontrovertibly related to immigration. According to police sources, over 60 percent of the criminals and over 90 percent of the crime bosses operating on French soil are either foreigners, immigrants, or the children of immigrants.

...Whereas most big French companies have been profitable for years, the French GDP has been growing very slowly or not at all. What this means is that French industry and services derive the bulk of their revenue from activities overseas rather than from the domestic economy. In fact, some companies have already drawn the logical conclusion and moved out: a flagship French company like Renault is now registered in the Netherlands.

As for those remaining at home, they are not able to provide enough jobs for the present working population of approximately 30 million. And so about 9 percent of French residents are unemployed—roughly twice the rate in Britain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Japan, or the United States. Among able-bodied persons under the age of twenty-four, the unemployment rate jumps to 22 percent. To top it off, over 50 percent of today’s jobs are thought to be more “virtual” than “actual,” i.e., they fail the test of rational business management. According to an index compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average number of hours “effectively” devoted to work is only 617 yearly for France, as against 801 in Britain and 865 in the United States.

How do the French cope with this? Simple: they rely on an ever-expanding welfare state that takes care of the unemployed, the poor who are beyond any prospect of a viable job, the uneconomical state-run companies, and the supernumerary petty civil servants or “public-convenience” workers. And this does not count the various handouts and incentives, usually in the form of tax rebates, bestowed by the government on companies that agree not to shut down and move elsewhere.

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And eventually, everyone who works will work for the welfare state, and everyone who does not work will be paid by the welfare state and cared for by the welfare state. It makes for a nice tautological closed loop, nice and tidy. And if you believe that, may I offer some lovely lunar real estate at a bargain basement price?

The logic of socialism eventually leads to collapse, regardless of the lofty starting point of the wishful populace. France will be no different, and will perhaps crash more quickly due to its absolute need for more immigrants to support all the indigent indigenes on welfare.

Sarkozy cannot save France, because France lacks the will to be saved. If you are an investor, consider the reasons for Renault pulling out.

Do you dare deny China’s success story, her social stability, economic growth, cultural renaissance, and international restraint?

China has shown remarkable economic growth over the past decades, and promises much the same for the near future. Still, a thoughtful person cannot help but wonder: what is being left out of this success story?

200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China’s economic “miracle” is rotting from within.

The Party’s primary concern is not improving the lives of the downtrodden; it seeks power more than it seeks social development. It expends extraordinary energy in suppressing Chinese freedoms—the media operate under suffocating censorship, and political opposition can result in expulsion or prison—even as it tries to seduce the West, which has conferred greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves.

....Since 1967, I have visited the country regularly, and I spent all of 2005 and part of 2006 traveling through her teeming cities as well as her innermost recesses, where few Westerners go. I make no claim to know China fully, an impossibly ambitious task. I merely want to record the words and impressions of some exceptional Chinese men and women, who mostly suffer in silence, raising when they can the demand for a free nation—a “normal” nation.

....The village had a dilapidated school, without heating, chalk, or teacher. In principle, schooling is compulsory and free, but the Party secretary, the village kingpin, made parents pay for the heating and chalk. Then a teacher came from the city. He held that his government wages weren’t commensurate with his status and demanded extra money from the parents. Half of the parents, members of the most prosperous clan, agreed to pay; the other half, belonging to the poorer clan, refused. A skirmish erupted between the two clans, and the teacher fled. The Party secretary tried to intervene and was lynched, the Party office plundered. Then the police roared in with batons and guns. The school has reopened, the teacher replaced with a villager who knows how to read and write but “nothing more than that,” he admits.

The government puts the number of what it calls these “illegal” or “mass” incidents—and they’re occurring in the industrial suburbs, too—at 60,000 a year, doubtless underreporting them. Some experts think that the true figure is upward of 150,000 a year, and increasing.

...The lack of medical facilities is another common cause of peasant complaint. The district hospital is five hours away by bus, and admission requires a payment of 600 yuans, a small fortune for a farmer—and that’s before the doctor’s fees and medicine costs. “When we are sick, we don’t bother about treatment,” my hostess says. “Yet we would like to relieve the suffering of our elders.”

Villagers often told me that it wasn’t the local Party secretary whom they most hated but rather the family-planning agents. To ensure the proper implementation of China’s single-child policy (in some provinces, the limit is two children, if the first is a girl), the agents keep close watch on childbearing women, often subjecting them to horrific violence. In 2005, a family-planning squad targeted the city of Linyi and its surrounding rural area, in the Shandong Province, because the population had far exceeded the Party’s child quota. The agents kidnapped 17,000 women, forcing abortions on those who were pregnant—in some cases, immersing seven- to eight-month-old fetuses in boiling water—and sterilizing those who weren’t. The agents tortured the Linyi men until they revealed the hiding places of their daughters and wives.

....The current growth rate isn’t sustainable, he believes: natural bottlenecks—scarcity of energy, raw materials, water—will get in the way. China can import energy and raw materials, true, but water, which isn’t readily importable, could soon become a massive problem. The Chinese government doesn’t view purification plants as useful investments; already, hundreds of millions of Chinese lack access to drinking water, with many dying as a result.

Many goods that China produces are worthless, Mao Yushi reminds me—especially those made by public companies. About 100,000 such Chinese enterprises continue to run in the old Maoist style, churning out substandard products because they’ve got to hit the targets that the Party sets and provide employment to those the Party cannot dismiss, not because they’re responding to any market demand. Most public-sector firms don’t even have real accounting procedures, so there’s no way of ascertaining profitability. “China is not a market economy,” Mao says bluntly.

The Party gives the banks lists of people to whom loans should go, and the rationale is frequently political or personal, not economic. Indeed, in many cases, banks are not to ask for repayment. That investment decisions obey political considerations and not the law of the market is the Chinese economy’s central flaw, responsible at least in part, Mao Yushi believes, for the large number of empty office buildings and infrequently used new airports and an unemployment rate likely closer to 20 percent than to the officially acknowledged 3.5 percent.

....

Much More at the Source

People who harbour wide-eyed fantasies of a futuristic China, poised to lead the world into the 22nd century, may find themselves badly disabused of such notions, should they ever take the trouble to look behind the facade.

Reading Between the Lines: Beer Maker to Create Renewable Energy

Beer maker Foster's plans to begin creating renewable energy at its breweries, using a microbial fuel cell.

The fuel cell is essentially a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble brewing waste such as sugar, starch and alcohol.

The battery produces electricity plus clean water, said Prof. Jurg Keller, the university's wastewater expert.

The complex technology harnesses the chemical energy that the bacteria releases from the organic material, converting it into electrical energy.

The 660-gallon fuel cell will be 250 times bigger than a prototype that has been operating at the university laboratory for three months, Keller said.

"Brewery waste water is a particularly good source because it is very biodegradable ... and is highly concentrated, which does help in improving the performance of the cell," Keller said.

He expected the brewery cell would produce 2 kilowatts of power - enough to power a household - and the technology would eventually be applied in other breweries and wineries owned by Foster's. The cell should be operating at the brewery by September.

Source

But what does this actually mean? Obviously, since the brewery cell produces only 2 kw of power--enough to power a household--every household will need its own brewery! The video above will provide an introduction to the topic of beer-making, but each household will need to scale up the technology in order to take full advantage of the microbial fuel cell technology. Beer making is a skill that every household should possess, and pass down through the generations.

Readers of this blog are familiar with Al Fin's emphasis on personal competence in practical skills--something that government schools do not typically teach to their students. The folly of that approach is made plain every time a natural or man-made disaster occurs, and the general incompetence of the masses is revealed time and again.

Beer-making is one of those indispensable skills that has the potential of bringing humanity out of a new dark age, should such an inconvenient fate befall the world. This is what we should take from news items such as this--we need to add beer making to the curriculum of our high schools, so that this important skill does not die out. We may run out of oil, but we should never run out of beer.

Hat tip Energy Blog.

Passionate Environmentalism---Sign Up, If You Care

It's pretty easy to use emotional cues to convince someone to take a stand on an issue. That is what propaganda like "An Inconvenient Truth" is all about. Sucking you into the "feel" of doing good.

Humans are irrational. They do not understand most of the things they do, or believe. If this is true among highly intelligent, university trained people, how about people who are drowned in superstitions their whole lives, starting life with less than average intelligence and going downward from there?

The world is not what you think it is.

Once, Even Islam Had A Golden Age . . . . .

This Saudi author is attempting to revive the golden age of Islam, in her own brave and unique way. Under more liberal leadership, even Islam experienced a time of remarkable productivity in science, mathematics, literature, art, philosophy, medicine, and engineering. Located between East and West, Islamic countries inherited much of the knowledge from ancient Greece and Rome to the west, as well as knowledge from China and India to the east. Scholars in Islamic countries took that knowledge and applied it, furthered it, and preserved it.

Modern Islam is better known for its violence, its backwardness, its utter lack of intellectual output, its commitment to destroying other cultures with which it comes into contact. Is it even possible to envision a moderate Islam today? Very difficult, which is why it is important to acknowledge it when it appears.

There are brave muslim intellectuals such as the woman in the video above, who risk a great deal to swing Islam's momentum back to a more moderate course. This woman is remarkable for her extraordinary courage. She appears to be a devout muslim who does not want to hurt Islam in any way. She would merely like to see an Islam that is more enlightened, kinder to its people, less misogynistic. At this time she lives in the UK, so that she can life a freer life than back home in KSA.

One can only hope that the UK will remain a country in which she may feel free, for a long time. There are signs that the UK is taking the cowardly path of appeasement to Islamic religious tyranny. That would be unfortunate not only for the indigenous people of the UK, but for the many immigrants who fled environments of tyranny in their home countries.

Partial Genetic Basis of Depression and Schizophrenia?

It is not enough to link a gene with a disease, statistically. One must also demonstrate how alterations in the gene can affect disease symptoms.

Steven Clapcote, David Porteous, John Roder, and colleagues reported their findings in the May 3, 2007 issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.

In their experiments, the researchers sought to explore the consequences of mutating a gene called "Disrupted in schizophrenia 1" (DISC1), which had been found in one family to be associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

The researchers' theory was that different mutant variations of DISC1 might have different pathological effects. To test this theory, the researchers screened a large population of mouse mutants to isolate two with different mutations in DISC1.

They found that, indeed, one of the mutant mouse strains exhibited behavioral abnormalities and memory deficiencies resembling the symptoms of schizophrenia in humans. Additionally, these symptoms could be alleviated in the mice by antipsychotic drugs.

Similarly, the other mutant mouse strain showed behaviors that reflected depressive symptoms. These symptoms could be alleviated by an antidepressant, found the researchers.

Source

The DISC-1 gene has been studied by schizophrenia researchers for years. Many other genes have likewise been looked at due to associations with schizophrenia.

The task of explaining the developmental and physiological effects of the altered gene products in humans, and why these changes lead to schizophrenic symptoms, remains to be done.

It goes without saying that pharmacologic agents are often developed and marketed for a disease, long before a complete understanding of that disease is arrived at. Humans are impatient creatures, and "solve" many problems without understanding them. If you were bold, you might even call humans irrational.