Recently in science Category

There's an inverse relationship between technology, modern society and  return to a time that exists in Disney movies. Happy serfs one and all:)   What is it that drives those with the  least practical skills to want to go back to a lifestyle were they would be necessary for survival?    They planning on taking up the yoke as it were? Anyway  nearly all attempts to take a massively complex system and put an apparently "common sense" reading on it  doesn't quite  work.    Yes transit does use up resources but if you take the examples in this piece it's ofter less than  forcing the local climate to support it. E.g if you could only eat that which  grows native to your locale it would totally suck. Suck as  in the malnutrition , scurvy and other fun  atavistic maladies sense. The Food Miles Mistake: Saving the planet by eating New Zealand apples - Reason Magazine

Food miles are supposed to be a simple way to gauge food's impact on climate change. ...Local food production does not always produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions. For example, the 2005 DEFRA study found that British tomato growers emit 2.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of tomatoes grown compared to 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of Spanish tomatoes....

One of the greatest  losses of moving to the USA was that of the BBC Radio services. Sadly the BBC is funded by a tax  not for using their services but for the  gall of operating a TV  , Radio or Satellite receiver. Licensing electronic media  which is the ONLY practical location were people of limited means could  find out what's up in their society,  you know get informed which is what we're told is crucial to playing the  game that is democracy , is a pretty horrible way to behave. 

You must pay the $200+ a year to the BBC  even if you never use their service. Yet for free I can  access this programming over the net. ( odd that but I'm grateful anyway)

I listened to a short series about the placebo effect ,BBC - Radio 4 - Placebo, which  goes  into depths on just how much " it's all in the mind"   goes towards   reducing the perception of pain,  recovery time and  general mental well being.  Yep  sugar pills work , their analogs work  ( reiki, reflexology or anything that has a  believable story that your culture buys into )

In short

We feel what we expect to find  as long as we're committed to that belief.
Reality can be changed by symbols , yep symbols really are for the symbol minded.
 
And advertising.. well :) that's another story.

 

Came across this item on the  Clean Technica blog which has a practical  view of energy that's sadly lacking on those that oppose it. Hell in the UK when Torness , a nuclear power station, was being built many locals had a sticker that said "nuclear power? No thanks. Atop an image of the sun.  I laughed, I still laugh and to this day usually ascribe such glorious ignorance to those that   want to save the planet but ONLY  within their ideological boundaries on what's comfy technology wise.  In most cases their comfort level is  fire , then you have the raw foodies who've not even gotten that far but more abuse on that natural crowd later.  Natural does not equal good in all, hell most cases. That people post these online rather than using a "natural" rock to stand and engage passers by with leads me to question their commitment to the atavistic tendencies that seem to serve them so well with the diet.   

Anyway.  Let's get back to the portable nuclear generators and how fricking handy these will be if we can  avoid the people that work at Jiffy Lube ever getting these in for service.. :D

Answer to an Amory Lovins Disciple Who Believes in Conservation, Solar, Wind and Micropower : CleanTechnica

Hyperion Power Generation, for example, is focusing on a heating unit that is small enough to fit on the back of an over-the-road truck that can produce 70 MW of thermal energy constantly for several years. I spoke to the company founder for The Atomic Show Podcast and he explained how his company is establishing the supply chain needed to build 4,000 units that will be able to provide heat for about $3 per million BTU. By comparison, liquified natural gas sold in Japan last week for $20 per million BTU.

Invertebrate Astronauts Make Space History | Wired Science from Wired.com

 Erin was telling me that the "hardest" animal in existence could survive ,exposed, in the vacuum of space.  Bullshit I said, the hardest animal  is a pig with a flick knife and everybody knows that.  Looks like I was wrong. 

You'd never guess from looking at these clips that the millimeter-long tardigrade is the world's toughest animal, found from deep ocean to Himalayan mountaintops, able to survive at a single degree above absolute zero.

Tardigrade (Water Bear)

These things are so cute that there needs to be a plushie made in their honour.  I look forward to sharing their DNA soon. :D

Erin with Teller. ( I love his voice, his writing’s rather good too) I've been a fan of Penn and Teller since being exposed to them in the mid 80's and one of the life goals, as far as I have plans, was to see them perform live. That's another collective 40 years experience up on stage and if they were great in the 80's they are now fucking amazing. During the intervening time I didn't turn out to be an atheist as I always was one, as are all newborns it's only the prevailing culture that tells a three year old that he's a Christian child and sadly he's doomed to burn in hell unless he thanks the zombie jew for his gift of ever lasting life, feeling sick yet?

Seemingly I was not the only one with a misspent childhood.  With access to guns, a scrapyard , welding gear and about any dangerous farmyard tool that have caught the unwary  over the years I still wanted to make my toys more , well, interesting.  So it's with great joy that I  find that there's a book coming out devoted to the art of the plastic projectile launcher.    I managed to get an  2  x 12  to stick into drywall using rubber bands x 3 and a massively and in retrospect  a wasteful  design that was more likely to me having a face full of bricks than forward motion.  How long till the TSA bans blocks;)

 
Boing Boing: Forbidden Lego: dangerous Lego projects!

Forbidden Lego, a new book from No Starch Press, is a compendium of recipes for building anti-social Lego projects -- looks like good, eye-removing fun.

All we do is subject our official to is public ridicule and a cozy life in the private sector after a quiet period. China seem to take corruption just a tad more seriously.  Oddly enough it's better here, more democratic, e.g you bribe more people;)

China executes former food and drug safety chief

BEIJING - China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.

The law of unintended consequences has better representation  presently than we do as a race. It's nice that we have a myriad of ways  to attempt to keep living in the manner to which a certain part of the world has been accustomed but where the real work seems to be lacking in removing the need for the need to  try to maintain a status quo that's so brief a time in our history  is weird.
 How much energy we waste just to have people show up  same time, same place to interact remotely with those they never see face to face based on what?  a fear your employees will "steal" and goof off your time?   Some will, and already do,   because as long as we still keep seeing most things as  jobs ,  things you -have- to be paid to do and ends up with us treating  people with the level of contempt that causes.

Seriously, adults  checking up on  the bowel movements  of those with a different job title   leads to what benefit to the customer?  Bad enough  you have to suffer the "piss police" and their shoddy  inaccurate tests ,that can't tell a cold medicine from a drug , but grown people  having to account for the time they took to shit?   Until that mindset alters I'm not sure how much we gain by making the transport to and from the workplace archipelago more efficient.

Well that was a nice digression.  New Scientist has an article that asks what next? Prior to us even getting into the  efficient non polluting technologies ( least in then conventional sense) we're basing most of this tech on rare and pretty much unknown  reserves materials  like  platinum, tantalum and gallium  the latter two rather useful in semi conductors and solar panel construction.

Earth's natural wealth: an audit - earth - 23 May 2007 - New Scientist Environment

This could prove lucrative, but Prichard is motivated by something far more significant than the chance of a quick buck. Platinum is a vital component not only of catalytic converters but also of fuel cells - and supplies are running out. It has been estimated that if all the 500 million vehicles in use today were re-equipped with fuel cells, operating losses would mean that all the world's sources of platinum would be exhausted within 15 years. Unlike with oil or diamonds, there is no synthetic alternative: platinum is a chemical element, and once we have used it all there is no way on earth of getting any more. What price then pollution-free cities?

Nikon | Universcale Nikon's total perspective flash,"Universescale" is missing the fairy cake but can take you all the way from femto meters to light years with interesting stops along the way. I still think HHGTTG put it best.

"Space," it says, "is big. Really really big. You just wont believe how vastly, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you think it's a long way down the street to the chemist but that's just peanuts to space,"

Holy shit,  has hell frozen over?  Er no it doesn't exist and besides it would need to exist first.  Anyway it was the inaugaral  meeting of the first non theist "church" , there's still debate over using that part as a word, I mean  from the Greek,"house of the lord" it seems to have an insurmountable issues.  That being said I totally arsed up the recording  due to unfamiliarity with the recorder (which I own so I am in the dumbass club tonight)   It's very early days yet I probably am going to assist with the web community and recording / podcasting the  sermons and trying to get more people involved that way.

Come on in , we have no sin:)  More on this soon but I don't have the time tonight.