Khhaaann!!! No, Not that Khan! Khan Academy -- An Amazing Place for At-Home Learning at Any Age Anywhere on Earth

Khan Academy is a free online library of over 700 learning videos that make learning easy. This marvelous intutive-learning website is a labour of love from Salman Khan, investment professional and holder of multiple advanced degrees from Harvard and MIT.

Perfect for the homeschool student who is studying for the SAT, for the budding young engineer or scientist, or for anyone wanting to get better at math, physics, management, finance, banking, probability, pre-engineering etc. Example: have you been curious about Singapore Math? Khan Academy offers a series of videos to give you a good idea of what the program is all about.

Every homeschool parent should be aware of Khan Academy, as should anyone studying for the SAT or GMAT, or anyone who needs a better understanding of math, physics, probability or finance.

A Freezing Earth Eyes Nuclear Energy

Across the globe, more nations are starting to look at nuclear energy as a way to power industrial growth and to keep warm as the Earth cools. From Eastern Europe to Arabia to South and East Asia, most of the world is starting to reject the nuclear phobia so common in most of western Europe and North America.

Better nuclear fuels will be needed, and the competition for optimal reactor fuels is just beginning. There is enough Uranium to keep the world from freezing for a hundred years or more, but there is enough Thorium to keep the world going for at least a thousand years.

The nuclear phobic attitudes that are delaying the needed innovation and new development in nuclear power in EU nations and North America will be bypassed by the new generation of nuclear entrepreneurs, and the nuclear phobics are likely to get left out in the cold -- particularly if they are also carbon hysterics and climate catastrophe orthodoxers.

Another new approach involves making small “backyard” reactors. The most aggressive proponent is Santa Fe, N.M.-based Hyperion Power, which seeks to build hot-tub-size reactors that can generate 25 megawatts of electricity, or enough juice to power 20,000 homes.

The company is already negotiating with several entities for the sale of 200 reactors, each at a cost of about $30 million. The idea is to deliver power at a cost of less than 10 cents a kilowatt-hour to locations — say remote areas of Alaska, military installations or industrial locations in Canada’s tar sands — where it’s difficult to obtain conventional power, said John Deal, Hyperion’s chief executive officer.

Hyperion is still finishing its manufacturing design and hopes to obtain federal licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other bodies within a few years. Deal expects to deliver the first units to customers in less than five years.

Much of the demand has come from overseas. The United States, where much antipathy remains toward nuclear energy despite public surveys showing falling opposition, will have to wait.

“Honestly,” Deal said, “right now, I’m not really interested in fighting American ignorance about nuclear power.” _Chron _ via _ Brian Wang

Under the new energy starvation reich of Obama / Pelosi, there will be precious little new energy development, with the threat of much old energy being shut down out of faux-environmental concerns -- carbon hysteria. A surfeit of governmental and non-governmental "environmental" lawyers will be in full control, and they intend to create a type of havoc for ordinary persons previously unknown.

How do you plan to stay warm as the planet cools?

Now This Is What I Call a .... a .... a .... Long Range Thorium Powered Vehicle

Go 100 years without having to re-fuel. Imagine how far you could go on one fill-up.

Created by Loren Kulesus, everything about the WTF has been created to last 100 years without maintenance. That's the reason for the element number ninety, thorium: to act as a nuclear fuel powering batteries that would power the car.

Elsewhere, every major system is redundant in case of a failure. And the wheels don't have individual tires - in fact, what's located at each corner is one combined unit made up of six individual wheels. That gives you 24 wheels in total, and each wheel has its own induction motor. Said Kulesus, "The vehicle would require the tires to be adjusted every five years, but no material would need to be added or subtracted." _Autoblog_via_EphemeralIsle

For the bonus round, list ten different ways to make this vehicle amphibious -- float like a boat, fly like a plane, submerge like a submarine, etc. Reminds me of the film "Repo Man." Uh, officer, I really don't think you want to look in there . . .

...But the Military is the Only Branch of the US Government that Even Half-Way Functions

Over the years, I have heard one ambassador after another say, “I had to turn to the military because they are the only people who can get anything done.” If you give the U.S. military an order, something usually happens. It may happen late, clumsily, and expensively, but still, something happens.

In contrast, with State and other agencies, most of the time nothing happens. That is true even when budgets are ample. Why? Because the internal culture of our civilian agencies is so rigid, bureaucratic, risk-averse and rule-bound that they cannot act.

Often, the people at the working level are quite talented. They want to do the assigned job. But the internal focus of their agency is so strong they cannot, at least without risking their careers. A single broken rule or bent regulation, undotted i or uncrossed t, and they quickly learn to follow the regs and forget about the product. So nothing happens. _Lind

In the coming Obamanation, we will see resources shifted from the military to various diplomatic and civilian operations on a grand scale. Much money will be spent -- in the trillions of dollars -- but very little will be accomplished.

Diplomats and lawyers are the face of the Brave New Government. These brave new bureaucrats will know how to spend money just as much as the admirals and generals do, but they will have no results to show. There will be no technological spinoffs from the diplomacy brigades, no disaster relief across the globe, no training of practical skills to supply core specialists to the civilian economy such as airline pilots, engineers, law enforcement officers, civil engineers, trauma surgeons . . . only an ever greater surfeit of lawyers -- the glommed curse of any society or economy.

The NY Times is enthusiastic about the coming reich of diplomacracy under Obama, and the apparent decline of the importance of the US military. Over at the NYT they are ready to give "soft power" a chance, the kind of soft power that has given the EU so much leverage with Putin's Russia.

In a front-page story on December 1, “A Handpicked Team for a Foreign Policy Shift” by David Sanger, the Times reported that the new administration’s key national security policy appointees

were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.

The shift, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the coming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.

Whether they can make the change…”will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisors said recently. _NYT _ via _Lind

Wonderful. As long as the wizards at the NYT are in favour of Obama's strategy, we have nothing to worry about.

A society is like a building, it must be built of strong stuff. Modern western societies are increasingly being built of "soft stuff", preferring the "soft power" approach to a world where soft power has never been effective without an indomitable strong power backing. Obama has ridden a wave of acclaim from Chicago to DC, and no one could blame him for beginning to believe his own press. Most of the western world half believes it.

But in the real world where facades crumble and apparently strong nations fail from internal, unseen rot, press releases and propaganda can only go so far. Up to this point, there has been no credible sign that Obama is made of anything stronger than a whimsical and fantastical narcissism. If there is any there, there -- anything beyond facade -- now would be a good time to start displaying it.

H/T Fabius Maximus

Stock Market Down, STD Rates in US Blacks Up, Especially Women and Babies How Can Obama Help The Lives of Millions of Blacks?

It is not enough that the illegitimacy rate among US blacks hovers around 70%, dooming millions of children to a lifetime of poverty or crime. Now black women and unborn black children are suffering from an increase in congenital sexually transmitted diseases -- including chlamydia and syphilis. Needless to say, HIV often piggybacks along with STD infections such as syphilis, and black Americans have the highest rates of new HIV infections. What can the winner of last year's US presidential election offer to these millions of Americans, seemingly doomed by life's lottery to a lifetime of congenital disability?

The syphilis rate continued to rise in 2007, as it has since 2000, with 11,466 diagnoses reported, or 3.8 cases per 100,000 people. This marks a 15% increase from 2006 (Engel, Los Angeles Times, 1/14).

Black women ages 15 to 19 have the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea. Gonorrhea rates for blacks overall were 19 times higher than for whites, according to the report. Blacks make up 12% of the U.S. population, but account for about 70% of gonorrhea cases and nearly 50% of chlamydia and syphilis cases, the report said (Reuters Health, 1/13). Minorities have been disproportionately affected by STIs in previous year reports, with American Indians Alaska Natives and Hispanics at a lesser extent, according to the Times. _Kaiser

This is not some senile researcher in Tuskegee innoculating black field workers with syphilis to follow the natural progression of the disease. Medical science already understands what happens when syphilis goes untreated: severe lifelong and potentially fatal effects, and for infants born with syphilis (60 to 80% of infants born to infected mothers), a large number of problems some of which last a lifetime or can cause an early death.

Black Americans have better economic opportunities than blacks in most parts of the world. Black Americans have an average IQ of 85 -- 15 points higher than the average IQ in Sub Saharan Africa. Consequently, achievement of Black Americans should be higher than for Blacks in Africa, and it is. But what is the source for the self-inflicted problems so abundant in the US Black community? Crime? Drugs? Single parent households? Rampant STD and HIV rates that pass on lifelong hardship to the next generation?

What is the new US President going to do to help these brand new citizens who start their lives with two strikes against them?

Probably nothing, or worse than nothing. Rather than beginning with the dysfunctional rot of learned helplessness within the Black community and attempting to teach self-efficacy, expect Obama to fall back on the tired old language of victimhood of his mentor Jeremiah Wright, and his close friend and author William Ayers. Obama will almost certainly fall into his self-appointed role as messiah, to rescue his people from "the man" and lead them to the promised land.

Expect more of the same old, same old. Except what used to be millions will be billions. What used to be billions will be trillions. Obama uses the language of progressive economics, after all.

When one needs competence, but all one has is flaming narcissism, it helps to be able to print money. Lots of money.

Living in a Modular World: The Modular University

At MIT, physics courses are abandoning the huge amphitheatre lectures, in favour of a modular, student-centered approach.

M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways, among them Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Harvard. In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.

At a growing number of universities starting with Virginia Tech, the modular approach to teaching mathematics pre-requisites for engineers has caught on.

"A typical math emporium session consists of logging into a computer, then logging into the testing system to take a quiz or exam," said Terri Bourdon, the instructor who manages both the college algebra and trigonometry course and the differential calculus course. Many students also do their course work at the emporium. They log onto the computer and click the link for their course on the emporium homepage. Students can take practice quizzes to prepare for the graded quizzes, and Bourdon said "most of the questions that the emporium staff answers come from the practice quizzes."

A modular design for course work is ideal for much of physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering -- areas where North American universities are underachieving in terms of graduates vs. need. Taking the student out of a large amphitheatre lecture environment and incorporating lesson materials into modules a student can pursue at his own pace, the brick and mortar university is slowly giving way to the de-centralised university.

Already, Harvard Extension is offering degree programs obtainable online by students anywhere in the circum-Terra environment. MIT has been placing a growing amount of course material online for years. Dozens of other top universities are likewise offering credit for courses and extension degrees over the internet and via other distance education approaches.

Theoretically, a student living on a lunar colony could obtain a Harvard degree without ever leaving the surface of the moon. Over time, the number of degrees obtainable will continue to increase. There is no reason that law schools could not offer accredited degree programs anywhere in the world, given adequate online law libraries. As lab methods are adapted for virtual reality, and realistic simulators are made more affordable for regional and local distribution, even dental and medical training will be made available to the most distant outposts of human habitation.

We need to stop thinking in terms of huge centralised institutions of education and government, and begin thinking in terms of modular, de-centralised methods of training and administration.

The US government is currently under the complete control of the obsolete hyper-centralists, the neo-Keynesian monolithologists who worship at the feet of the god of hyper-bureaucracy. The resulting decay, corruption, ruin, and hardship will be most memorable for decades, if not centuries. Government (and universities) should never have been allowed to grow so large or powerful. Time to begin the great dismantling and re-ordering, even if the early phases must fly mainly under the radar.

The above video illustrates how quickly a local or regional educational startup could build a "branch campus" which might contract with multiple universities or departments such as Yale Law, Harvard Medical, MIT, Stanford Engineering, U Dub Neuroscience, etc. A modest investment in infrastructure, telecom, VR equipment, and realistic simulation modules would allow a small investment group to finance a credible distance education center offering the best education available on any continent.

49,000 Sea Horses Will Graze the Wide Oceans

American Superconductor and Northrop Grumman have successfully tested a 49,000 hp (36.5 MW) superconducting electric motor at full power. The motor is built for naval ship propulsion, powered by a nuclear reactor capable of providing 36.5 MW of power. Don't try this at home, the cost of feed for 49,000 horses alone will bankrupt you.

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--American Superconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: AMSC), a leading energy technologies company, and Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) announced today at the Surface Navy Association’s 21st National Symposium the successful completion of full-power testing of the world’s first 36.5 megawatt (49,000 horsepower) high temperature superconductor (HTS) ship propulsion motor at the U.S. Navy’s Integrated Power System Land-Based Test Site in Philadelphia. This is the first successful full-power test of an electric propulsion motor sized for a large Navy combatant and, at 36.5 megawatts, doubled the Navy’s power rating test record.

This system was designed and built under a contract from the Office of Naval Research to demonstrate the efficacy of HTS motors as the primary propulsion technology for future Navy all-electric ships and submarines. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) funded and led the successful testing of the motor.

Incorporating coils of HTS wire that are able to carry 150 times the power of similar-sized copper wire, the motor is less than half the size of conventional motors used on the first two DDG-1000 hulls and will reduce ship weight by nearly 200 metric tons. It will help make new ships more fuel-efficient and free up space for additional warfighting capability.

“The successful load test of our HTS motor marks the beginning of a new era in ship propulsion technology,” said Dan McGahn, senior vice president and general manager of AMSC Superconductors. “This motor provides the U.S. Navy with a truly transformational capability relative to size, stealth, endurance and survivability, providing our Navy with a clear performance advantage for years to come. We are grateful for the steadfast support from the Office of Naval Research, Naval Sea Systems Command and the Naval Surface Warfare Center.” _Source _ via _ NextBigFuture

The US Navy is the source for a great deal of important new technology, spinning off applications like NASA used to do when it was still devoted to space -- before being enslaved to the counter-factual climate orthodoxy of Gore, Obama, and Pelosi. Expect a similar downfall for all branches of the US military under the narcissist - in - chief, when instated.

Superconducting motors, generators, and transmission lines will eventually impact every part of modern society.

Adapted from a posting at Al Fin Energy

Would You Pay $4 Million For Sex With Her?

22 year old Natalie Dylan is pursuing a degree in Women's Studies. She is also auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder. She got the idea from her sister, who paid for her own college degree with income from 3 weeks working as a prostitute.

She said she had had a lot of attention from a wide range of men, including "weirdos", "those who get really graphically sexual about what they want to do to me" and "lots of polite requests from rich businessmen".

Miss Dylan said she did not think it was particularly significant to be willing to sell your virginity and insisted that she was happy to undergo medical tests for any doubters.

She said: "I get some men who are obviously looking for a girlfriend but I try and make it clear that this is a one-night-only offer.

"I know that a lot of people will condemn me for this because it's so taboo but I really don't have a problem with that.

"My study is completely authentic in that I truly am auctioning my virginity but I am not being sold into this. I'm not being taken advantage of in any way.

"I think me and the person I do it with will both profit greatly from the deal."

She added: "It's shocking that men will pay so much for someone's virginity, which isn't even prized so highly anymore." _Telegraph

Speaking from personal experience, virgins take a lot of time to train properly. I recommend saving yourself time and work, by choosing someone more experienced. But if you happen to have a spare $4 million lying around, like the cut of Miss Dylan's jib, and want to help out a Woman's Studies student, go ahead. Just don't come crying to me if it ends up not being worth all the trouble.

H/T News Alert

Chinese Soot Invasion! US DOE Scientist Warn that Soot Causing Earlier Snowmelt

Scientists have long known that Chinese soot crosses the Pacific Ocean, and contributes to the melting of western North American mountain snow, glaciers, and even northern hemisphere sea ice.

Up to 75 percent of the soot hitting the Western USA is from China, potentially causing 30 percent of regional warming in the Western USA. It's also believed as sooty snowfall is deposited in the American Sierras and Rockies, the dirty snow actually causes earlier snow melts and glacier loss as a result of the increased heat absorption from soot-darkened snow and ice. _Source

A new study by the US DOE's Pacific NorthWest National Lab shows that this Chinese soot combined with local soot from diesel engines can be causing early snowmelt in the Cascades, Sierras, and Rocky Mountains, as well as reducing the snowfall amount -- with adverse consequences.

Overall, doubling the dimming of the snow did not lead to twice as high temperature changes -- it led to an approximate 50 percent increase in the snow surface temperature. The drop in snow accumulation, however, more than doubled in some areas. Snowpack over the central Rockies and southern Alberta, for example, dropped two to 50 millimeters over the mountains during late spring and early winter. The most drastic changes occurred in March, the model showed.

The team also found that soot decreased snow's brightness in two ways. About half of soot's effect came from its dark color. The other half came indirectly from reducing the size of the snowpack, exposing the underlying darker earth. _Eurekalert

This study utilised a computer model to estimate the temperature effects of soot accumulation on snowpack. Similar dynamics is at work on glaciers and sea ice.

Climatology has generally neglected the effect of soot on these phenomena, instead ascribing them to CO2 warming instead. Such errors not only expose much of the climatological mainstream as being sloppy and unscientific, they also send engineers off on wild goose chases, pursuing the wrong strategies to mitigate the effect.

Big Picture of Ocean Temperature Oscillations

This video from Bob Tisdale is an efficient introduction to his excellent guest article (part I) at Watts Up With That. If you have ever wanted to get to the bottom of "what drives global temperature patterns?", you will want to take a good look at the video, and read the article.

H/T Tom Nelson

Tisdale Part II

Feminists Prefer to Abort All Male Geniuses

At the same time that prenatal screening of genes and chromosomes is becoming more common, some parents are choosing abortion for a wider range of conditions.

Just as with Down's syndrome, cystic fibrosis or spina bifida, a mother-to-be could decide whether she can cope with the strain of bringing up a disabled child. With an autistic child, it may mean a lifetime of rejection - living with someone unlikely ever to fit into the family, who responds with blank incomprehension to affection, whose behaviour may be erratic and disturbing, whose condition is permanent. Autism, and its associated condition, Asperger's syndrome, can range from virtual incapacity at one end of the spectrum to the merely strange at the other. To bring up one autistic child is a challenge to the sanity of an entire family. To bring up two might destroy it. _Times

But there is a possibility that male genius and autism follow much the same -- if not identical -- pathway in early development. Famous geniuses from Einstein to Mozart have been posthumously diagnosed as autistic.

Some people with autism have amazed experts with their outstanding memories, mathematical skills or musical talent. Now scientists have found that the genes thought to cause autism may also confer mathematical, musical and other skills on people without the condition.

The finding has emerged from a study of autism among 378 Cambridge University students, which found the condition was up to seven times more common among mathematicians than students in other disciplines. It was also five times more common in the siblings of mathematicians.

...“It seems clear that genes play a significant role in the causes of autism and that those genes are also linked to certain intellectual skills.” _TimesOnline

For feminists, this conundrum presents an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The more widely abortion can be applied to everyday life in the name of medical necessity, the less likely that socially conservative politicians can ever make abortion illegal or difficult to obtain. In addition, the widespread abortion of males with Asperger's or borderline Asperger's, would conceivably reduce the number of male geniuses and high math functioning males. A drastic reduction of male geniuses would narrow the gender gap, long a top goal of feminist ideologues, politicians, and academics.

Under a nationalised single-payer system of healthcare financing, abortion for specific genetic, chromosomal, or other congenital conditions might even become mandatory -- as a means of controlling costs.

The origin of genius in humans, as well as the preponderance of males within the ranks of geniuses, have never been well explained scientifically. Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, Michael Fitzgerald, believes that "the genes for autism/Asperger’s, and creativity are essentially the same." That remains to be proven, but as a hypothesis it needs to be clarified and tested.

Large areas of higher education in North America have been rendered dysfunctional by militant feminist dogma in the academy. Performing overpriced academic lobotomies on the adolescents and young adults of North America is one thing. Let's make sure it doesn't go further than that.

Sun Goes on Strike! Ice Age Imminent?

Contrary to NASA predictions, the number of sunspots appearing in the year 2008 were the second lowest number since the year 1900. As solar scientists at NASA ponder where they went wrong in failing to foresee the flagging solar cycle 24, more far reaching scientists see their predictions of slowing solar cycles vindicated (PDF).

Russian solar scientists have been predicting an imminent ice age for a few years now. A recent story in Pravda provides some background:

The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years....

The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years -- evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials....

The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Because the release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth’s temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for another eight hundred years after the end of the earth’s current Interglacial warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of the world’s oceans. _Pravda

Global warming celebrities such as Gore, Hansen, Jones, Mann, etc. have ridden a tsunami of credulous political and media acclaim, giving them fame, fortune, or at least job security. These "legends in their own minds" will not take kindly to a cooling climate. So they must deny, deny, deny, for as long as they can.

From Watts Up With That, we find yet another reason for global cooling: accumulating sea ice around Antarctica. Due to its lower latitudes, Antarctic sea ice has a much greater effect on Earth's energy balance than does Arctic sea ice. Consequently, the excessive attention played to Arctic sea ice extent has distracted world attention from the much more relevant Antarctic sea ice extent.

How long can we continue to tolerate this media misdirection, a clear abdication of media's role to inform the public of the facts. As long as mainstream media -- including reporting by science journals such as Science and Nature, and science news websites such as Scientific American, Sciencedaily, and Physorg.com -- continue to function as little more than cheering squads for the climate orthodoxy, rather than as honest reporters of the best science data, intelligent searchers will be forced to go out of the mainstream. Fortunately, they can easily find honest reporters of the data such as Roger Pielke Sr., Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer, Matt Briggs, and the many others who have donated their own time and resources to provide a fuller and more objective view of the many unresolved issues in climate.

The new Obama / Pelosi reich wants to waste trillions of taxpayer dollars chasing after the global warming phantom. They want to starve the US of vital energy resources and place the US at the mercy of foreign oil suppliers, in the same way that Europe is at the mercy of Russia and Iran. These deranged dilettantes want to put the US in precisely the wrong posture to be ready for anything that an unpredictable climate sends our way.

It was moronic for American voters to place these fools in such a position of power. Forget about that now. Is it too late for enough Americans to wake out of their deep slumber of psychological neoteny, academic lobotomy, and programmed attitudinal obsolescence, in order to prevent a catastrophe of global proportions? We may soon see.

More on solar cycles here and here.

H/T Tom Nelson

The Fallout Could Cover Half the United States . . . .

A drop in global temperatures of just a few degrees may not sound catastrophic but would have far-reaching consequences. The 1883 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatau sparked a ten-year period of global crop failures. And compared to the Yellowstone super volcano, Krakatau is what a tea-warmer is to a blast furnace. _radionetherlands

Scientists are wondering whether the Yellowstone super volcano is preparing to erupt.

The super volcano in Yellowstone Park, which includes parts of the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, is making its presence felt. On New Year's Day, the situation was so alarming that geologists called for an immediate evacuation of an area within a radius of 325 kilometres around the national park. At a rate of four tremors per hour, an eruption appeared imminent. The tremors have subsided slightly since 1 January, but it would appear the beast is slowly coming awake. _radionetherlands

How bad would it be?

The eruption of pent-up energy will cover half the United States in ash, in some places up to 3 feet (1 meter) deep. Earth will be plunged into a perpetual winter that would last years. Some plant and animal species will disappear forever.

Even humans could be pushed to the edge of extinction. Anthropologists suggest it won't be the first time. Space

Video courtesy of Watts Up With That

Planes would fall from the sky, automobiles would stall, people would choke on the ash. Skies would go dark, croplands would die, and a cold chill would settle over the entire planet for years or longer. It has happened before -- the Yellowstone super volcano -- and it will happen again, someday. Even now, murmurs of future catastrophe emanate from deep under Yellowstone.

Potential for supervolcano eruptions exist at several spots around the globe. What are you doing to prepare?

As Europe Freezes, Who Will Fight Back Against Carbon Hysteria and Nuclear Phobia?

Image Source

Europe suffers from both a shortage of energy and a fear of energy. As Europeans freeze from the lack of ability to heat homes and businesses, the underlying fear that keeps them frozen has not been addressed. Until now.

The dispute between Russia and Ukraine became dramatic after Russian gas company Gazprom halted gas deliveries to Ukraine in early January as it failed to agree on new prices with the country.

As a result, several EU states have been left without gas. Countries affected by the shortage of Russian gas have been using gas from their storage tanks and are leading talks about raising gas supplies via different routes.

...The solution to Europe's energy problems is the rise of nuclear energy, President Václav Klaus said at news conference Thursday after meeting his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski. _PragueMonitor

In Slovakia, government leaders are contemplating re-starting a nuclear power reactor that had been recently shut down to comply with rules of EU membership. Imagine: In order to belong to the EU a country has to place itself at the mercy of foreign energy suppliers. Unbelievable!

Much of Europe is dependent upon natural gas for energy and heat. Italian officials are beginning to state publicly that Italy must develop nuclear energy as "the only solution" to Italy's energy import problem. Other EU nations are belatedly arriving at similar conclusions. Unfortunately, the EU itself, in Brussels, remains mired in both carbon hysteria and nuclear phobia. Fear of energy. In the US, state governments may be in for a similar fight for energy against the growing carbon hysteria and various energy phobias of the incoming Obama administration.

Cold winters have a way of exposing the absurdity of bureaucratic groupthink. Reality bites, as they say.

Serbs, traditional allies of Moscow, on burned a Russian flag in the town of Kragujevac during angry protests at heating shortages, affecting up to 170,000 homes, caused by the continuing gas crisis.

In Bulgaria, 64 schools across the country remained closed and at least 30,000 households remained without any heating.

Over 70,000 households in the snow-blanketed Bosnian capital of Sarajevo remained without heating for a fourth day due to the halt in Russian supplies. Telegraph

Nuclear power makes sense for Europe. Unlike wind and solar, nuclear is a baseline power technology. As new generations of safer and more economical reactors come on-line, the residual nuclear phobias dating back to Chernobyl and beyond, will be forgotten.

IGCC coal gasification in combined heat and power (CHP) installations that incorporate combined cycle (gas turbines and steam turbines) provide a non-polluting form of coal utilisation with high versatility. Fear of coal within the EU and the incoming Obama administration is set to cause undue hardship upon the people who fall within the jurisdictions of those misinformed and largely incompetent government entities.

As Europe and later much of the developed world freezes, who will fight back against the hysterics and phobics who have seized control? Who will speak out against these destructive and fearful fools who are supported by the news media at large? It sounds like a job for "new media."

Respected Technology Blogger / Journalist Roland Piquepaille Dies Suddenly in Paris of Gastrointestinal Virus

Roland Piquepaille was a columnist for ZD Net, and ran his own technology blog as well. His work was of the highest quality, and his contribution will be missed.

Roland passed away Monday in Paris. He was hit with a digestive virus that lead to a high fever and health complications beyond that. Suzanne said that the doctors are still trying to quantify how Roland got the virus and the exact details.

....There will be a ceremony held on Monday. Rest in peace Roland, we’ll miss you. Suzanne said that Roland had a few posts in the pipeline and wanted them published. _ZDNet _ via _NextbigFuture

Synthetic HDL Cholesterol Sponge: Nanotechnology Making Cholesterol Safer

The nano-synthesis of biologically active molecules has a huge future in biomedicine. One example of such a synthetic biomolecule is synthetic HDL cholesterol, recently synthesised by Northwestern University scientists.

The researchers successfully designed synthetic HDL and show that their nanotechnology version is capable of irreversibly binding cholesterol. The synthetic HDL, based on gold nanoparticles, is similar in size to HDL and mimics HDL’s general surface composition. The study is published online by the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

“We have designed and built a cholesterol sponge. The synthetic HDL features the basics of what a great cholesterol drug should be,” said Chad A. Mirkin, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, professor of medicine and professor of materials science and engineering. Mirkin and Shad Thaxton, M.D., assistant professor of urology in Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, led the study. _Nanowerk

A previous use of synthetic HDL cholesterol is as a tracer molecule, to identify atherosclerotic plaque inside arterial lining. Tagging the synthetic HDL with likely MRI contrast agents such as gadolinium allowed for the rapid location and size estimate of cholesterol plaques.

"It's like a smart bomb that goes directly to the plaque," says Fayad. "We were able to see plaque in high contrast."

In their images, the team also detected accumulations of macrophages--killer cells that invade areas of injury or inflammation such as plaque buildup. These macrophages secrete enzymes that Fayad says "eat up" plaque, making it unstable and more likely to rupture, which in turn could lead to heart attacks. Being able to detect these cells early on could help identify people at high risk of heart disease, as well as help develop treatments and lifestyle changes before their condition worsens. _Medgadget

More on using nano-synthetic HDL to aid in diagnostic testing for atherosclerosis here.

Not Just Your Imagination, It Really Is Getting Cold

Image from Watts Up With That

Data from the NCDC shows a downward trend in North American temperatures over the past ten years. Also see here for another decadal decline in temperatures. Reasons for this apparent decline vary from sunspot cycles to ocean oscillations to volcanic eruptions and outright denial. According to a study published in the January 8 issue of Nature, part of the reason for the recent global cooling may be too small to see without a microscope.Diatoms are microscopic oceanic plankton which every year remove billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. The history of plankton is being re-written by scientists at this very moment, and it is quite likely that the repercussions of new plankton research will be quite significant.

The evolutionary history of diatoms -- abundant oceanic plankton that remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year -- needs to be rewritten, according to a new Cornell study. The findings suggest that after a sudden rise in species numbers, diatoms abruptly declined about 33 million years ago -- trends that coincided with severe global cooling.

..."Why diatom diversity peaked for 4 to 5 million years and then dropped is a big mystery," Rabosky said. "But it corresponds with a period when the global climate swung from hothouse to icehouse. It's tempting to speculate that these tiny plankton, by taking carbon dioxide out of the air, might have helped trigger the most severe global cooling event in the past 100 million years." _CornellChronicle

The new, re-written evolutionary history of diatoms may indeed shine an important light on our present climate. But perhaps the lesson to be taken from the study is that diatoms thrive in warmer water. As climate and the oceans grow colder, diatoms are unable to thrive as well and reproduce as quickly. Correlation does not equal causation.

Diatoms are very important in the overall carbon cycle, as are a number of other carbon-fixing oceanic species. Apocalyptic predictions of future ocean acidification fail to properly take into account the oceans' enormous capacity for removing and fixing atmospheric carbon in permanent or semi-permanent form. Such basic errors in reasoning, when combined with an irrational faith in simplistic climate models, lays the foundation for an incredibly unscientific quasi-religious faith in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming -- CAGW. The religious orthodoxy of manmade warming catastrophe is in the process of destroying the economic infrastructure of Autralia and the EU, and under the narcissist-elect Obama threatens to destroy the economic infrastructure of the US.

Climate science itself has become co-opted by political influences, such as the United Nations, the European Union, various leftist political fronts for environmental causes, and deranged activists such as Al Gore. Science has very little to do with media commentary on the climate. But science is still lurking in the background, and threatens a severe backlash against the political co-opters of climatology.

So before you buy into the climate fantasies of Gore, Hansen, and Obama, consider educating yourself in the evolutionary history of the humble diatom. Particularly for Obama voters, such self-education could prevent them from making themselves "twice the fool."

Smelling Like Sex: Pheromones and Letting Go

Animals of all kinds react to pheromones -- sex attractant hormones -- so why not humans? Apparently they do. In a study at Rice University, women's brains lit up on fMRI scans when the women were allowed to sniff a sample of men's sex sweat. Sex sweat was collected from men while they were watching porn videos. Women's brains failed to react the same way when sniffing non-sex sweat -- sweat collected while men were working out.

Another study at the Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory at Monell Chemical Senses Center, determined that women who are in love tend to fixate on the smell of their lover, and lose the ability to distinguish the scents of other males.

The human sex interaction is clearly a non-rational dynamic. When a woman is swept up into a passionate state, she tends to let go of her inhibitory brain function, and passes into a state beyond good and evil, beyond rationality, beyond accountability. She lets go. How she feels the next morning, when her rational brain centers reassert themselves, may be quite different.

Men tend to wish to take control and dominate. When a dominating male interacts with a female who lets herself go, passion can reach its most profound levels. But there are always exceptions -- the dominatrix and the submissive male.

Generalisations are based upon common observations, but the diversity of natural inclinations in sexual desire is quite great. If an individual's sexual predilections lead him astray of society's traditions and mores, problems can easily arise, including criminal penalties which can be extremely harsh. Within Islam, for example, homosexuals are still stoned to death.

In the future, technology will allow for a wide range of sexual expression. Knowledge of an individual's drives and needs will allow the customisation of the full palette of sexual stimuli. There will be no reason for persons to risk potentially deadly sexual encounters when advanced methods of teledildonics, privacy screens, anonymity devices, and sexual surrogates in full sensory modes will allow sexually intense experiences adapted especially for specific individuals. Such experiences will naturally include the use of pheromones known to trigger the most desired sexual response for the client or companion.

Cross posted at Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!

Putin, Chavez, Ahmedinejad: Worried Tyrants Willing to Go to War to Drive Oil Prices Up

The oil tyrants of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc. grew popular on high energy prices -- while they lasted. Now that oil prices have grown a bit resistant to rising at every war and rumour of war, Putin, Chavez, Ahmedinejad and cronies are growing desperate! The bloody dictators had been counting on high oil prices to finance their global mischief-making.

How worried are they?

Russia fears a new ruble crisis.

Since August 2008, the Russian ruble overall has fallen 19 percent against the dollar — and not just because of the global credit crisis. The crisis coincided with two other major events: the Russo-Georgian war and plunging oil prices. Russia has seen massive amounts of investment flee because of the Russo-Georgian war. Russia also is looking at the possibility that in 2009 it could run its first budget deficit in a decade because of lower-than-expected oil prices — down 78 percent, to as low as $32 per barrel, from the July 2008 high of $147 per barrel.

Venezuela faces a troubled 2009.

Falling oil prices forced Venezuela to cut its 2009 budget and could put countries like Cuba and Nicaragua, both of which depend heavily on discounted oil from Venezuela to meet their daily energy needs, in serious peril in the months to come. Fellow beneficiary of Venezuelan benevolence Bolivia also could soon feel the ill effects of receiving less oil from Venezuelan state-run oil company PDVSA.

Iran is left high and dry by low oil prices. Ahmedinejad and the mullahs are gambling the future of Iran on bloody mischief-making and empire-building across the middle east, including financing and arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and Shia militias inside Iraq. Other Iranian funded terrorist groups inside Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf oil states are also part of Iran's thrust to become the strongest power inside Islam.

Europe is growing disgusted at Russia for its high-handed use of natural gas supplies as a weapon. But they had to have known last summer that Russia's pre-meditated invasion of Georgia had deeper motivations than just "defending Ossetians." Russia is serious about being the energy bully/dictator of Europe's winter heat supplies. Europe has no spine, no huevos. It will bend over for Putin.

If Putin is able to bully half the developed world while energy prices are low, imagine how many he will be able to bully when energy prices rise again. That is why Putin and his bloody-handed friends are so eager to drive energy prices upward -- regardless of the price in human lives and international instability.

The question on everyone's mind: Will Obama play right into Putin's hands with his plans for cutting all US domestic production of energy? In the name of carbon hysteria and global warming orthodoxy, will Obama make the US even more vulnerable to the Putins, the Chavez's, the Ahmedinejads of the world? Wait and see.

It is certain that the bloody oil tyrants are willing to do whatever it takes to restore and maintain their whip hands. The Hamas / Hezbollah war against Israel is just the beginning, if they do not get their way. The next violence may be a bit closer to your neighborhood.

150 W/cm2? Energy from Waste Heat Revolution

Image Source

Most of the energy from combustion processes such as an automobile's engine, is lost as heat. It seems a lot of waste to pump or dig fuels from the ground, only to lose most of the energy to the atmosphere as waste heat. Consequently, around the world engineers, scientists, and technologists are scrambling to find better ways to re-capture the huge mass of energy that is going missing every year.

Thermoelectrics is a growing and revolutionary method of redeeming waste heat to electricity -- analogous to photovoltaics except converting heat to electron flow rather than light. Brian Westenhaus brings us up to date on Nextreme Thermal, a company at the forefront of efficient thermoelectric conversion.

The thermoelectric field is gathering momentum and increasing efficiency. Many manufacturers are attending to this technology, as it requires no moving parts so the durability and miniaturization prospects look quite good.

For many heat producing power generation kits the excess heat is a nuisance, expensive to dispense with and money simply lost into things like rivers, the atmosphere and simply radiated away warming anything nearby which can be even more expense. From huge power installations generating electricity to automobiles thermoelectric on to microelectronics, thermoelectric conversion should find welcoming places. In the U.S. and Europe automakers from GM to BMW express enthusiasm for the technology to add to the electric output and reduce fuel requirements.

...The breakthrough product seems to be the Thermal Copper Pillar Bump (CPB) design that has applications in electronics where the technology can be used to cool and recover heat back into power. A highly desired goal is application in PC data centers where the operating costs for power to cool the electronics exceeds the power to process the data.

How good have they managed to get? A temperature difference of 60ºC has been achieved across the 60 µm (0.06 mm) high Nextreme CPB by running an electrical current through it. The Nextreme CPB demonstrated maximum power pumping capabilities exceeding 150 W/cm2. When subjected to heat the Nextreme CPB has demonstrated the capability to generate up to 10 mW of power per bump.

150 W/cm2 . . . That seems like a lot of power from a differential of 60ºC. Things are coming along faster than I had expected. _NewEnergyandFuel

Here is another look at the growing field of thermoelectrics, from Brian Wang.

More efficient retrieval and use of waste heat amounts to an energy revolution in its own right. Consider it but one more important piece in the puzzle problem to provide abundant energy to the growing needs of the future.

Cross posted at Al Fin Energy