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Japanese Nuclear Reactor Future: Another High Tech Sarcophagus?

Japanese Nuclear Reactor Future: Another High Tech Sarcophagus?

Mar 11 2012 | comment(s)

Even one year after the disaster at the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, it is still unfolding. It was locally surpassing the severity of Chernobyl relatively soon in the first few weeks. Four out of the six facilities were already no more than a pile of radioactive trash just like Chernobyl and it was clear since then that the future will be also similar to that of Chernobyl: A radioactive monument, still for our grand children’s grandchildren to be concerned about.

A funny (?) story about Elsevier's Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

A funny (?) story about Elsevier's Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

Mar 11 2012 | comment(s)

The story begins with my own submitting a communication to over there. In a really short time I have obtained a response !!! O-h-o-o-o !!! Now they’re working with a speed !!! My God !!! Let’s read their answer together: Its header:

BBRC-12-1466: Final Decision …

Its text: Ms. No.: BBRC-12-1466 Title: Entropy-Enthalpy Compensation as a Fundamental Concept and Analysis Tool for Systematical Experimental Data Corresponding Author: Dr. Evgeni B. Starikov Authors: Bengt Nordén, Prof. Dr.
Unscientific America -- Denying Science At Our Peril

Unscientific America -- Denying Science At Our Peril

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

Increasingly, science is failing to influence public policy. Facts, statistics and data appear insufficient to change highly politicized minds...
Requiem for Humanity — Biological Weapons

Requiem for Humanity — Biological Weapons

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
How will human nature steer our nations over the coming decades? What are we evolved to do? The fundamental purpose of a living thing is to gather resources and reproduce. Some animals develop societies where the fundamental survival instinct of the individual is subsumed into the goal of protecting the social group. Human development of cities and defensive warfare addresses group survival under external threat. Our offensive warfare fundamentally addresses accumulation of resources required for survival. If you peel away all the layers of social rationalizations, at the base you will find this essential: human societies will react to future social threats attempting to insure survival of their nation states.

… Hermes’ Dirty Little Trick

… Hermes’ Dirty Little Trick

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

Hermes is the son of Zeus. He is the messenger. He wears winged sandals, a winged hat,and a magic wand. He is the fastest of the gods. He is the god of thieves and he is the god of commerce. Even when he steals, he does it so gracefully. He is the guide for the dead to go to the underworld. He invented, the pipes, the musical scale, astronomy, weights and measures, boxing, gymnastics and the care of olive trees (*).

Requiem for Humanity — Disease

Requiem for Humanity — Disease

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

DISEASE
In an October 17, 2005 New York Times Op-Ed article titled Recipe for Destruction, Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy collaborated on the following article:
AFTER a decade of painstaking research, federal and university scientists have reconstructed the 1918 influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide. Like the flu viruses now raising alarm bells in Asia, the 1918 virus was a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, the scientists reported. To shed light on how the virus evolved, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published the full genome of the 1918 influenza virus on the Internet in the GenBank database.
Organ Donation Versus The Freedom Of Informed Consent

Organ Donation Versus The Freedom Of Informed Consent

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

What is a guaranteed way to make organ donation, the chance to help someone who needs a transplant, into a dirty idea?

Deny you and your family any rights at all on what happens to you, that's what. 
Harold Camping Apologizes For Doomsday Predictions

Harold Camping Apologizes For Doomsday Predictions

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

Harold Camping has apologized to his followers for being wrong on the Rapture - twice - and essentially costing them a lot of money. "Come now, let us reason together," said the Lord in Isaiah 1:18 and so we cannot be too harsh on him for doing the flawed, worldview-focused math I dissected in So The Rapture Is Saturday - Luckily The Grey's Anatomy Season Finale Was Last Night.  Paul Krugman does the same thing every week in the New York Times and still hasn't repented and he bilks Americans out of a lot more money than Camping did.
Exploring The Divine Sound Of 'OM' (scientifically)

Exploring The Divine Sound Of 'OM' (scientifically)

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

Our attentiveness and our concentration are pilfered from us by the proceedings [which] take place around us in the world in recent times.

According to research from Sipna’s College of Engineering&Technology, Amravati University, Maharashtra, India, this pilfering might be reduced, if not entirely eliminated, by regularly chanting ‘OM’.
Professors Ajay Anil Gurjar and Siddharth A. Ladhake point out that :

In The Land Of Oil, Villagers Carry Natural Gas Bombs

In The Land Of Oil, Villagers Carry Natural Gas Bombs

Mar 10 2012 | comment(s)

If you are sitting on giant oil fields, it seems like a bad idea to have villagers carrying around giant plastic bags full of natural gas.  Welcome to rural China, where the distance between poor and rich is so dramatic they would rather have old people carrying around bombs than let them use some fuel to heat their homes.

Anybody along the Keystone XL pipeline want to complain now?
Who Wouldn't Want To Go Someplace Called

Who Wouldn't Want To Go Someplace Called "the Challenger Deep"?

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

Is the Age of Exploration long dead? At The Last Word on Nothing, Richard Panek made the point that there's no longer anywhere on Earth people haven't been. Even the South Pole, which many would consider the most remote spot on the planet, is a regular tourist destination.

Ah! But what about the deep sea? Humans obviously haven't seen every inch of it--not even close. And the deepest spot in the ocean, the Challenger Deep, is much harder to visit than the South Pole. In fact, only one manned expedition has ever touched bottom, making it more like the moon than the pole.
GOCE Maps The Moho

GOCE Maps The Moho

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

ESA’s GOCE gravity satellite has provided us with the first high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle – the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho.

Earth’s crust, as you know, is the outermost solid shell of our planet. Even though it makes up less than 1% of the volume of the planet, the crust is exceptionally important not just because we live on it, but because is the place where all our geological resources like natural gas, oil and minerals come from. The crust and upper mantle is also the place where most geological processes of great importance occur, such as earthquakes, volcanism and orogeny.
Assuage Your Liberal Guilt With An Eco-Friendly SuperYacht

Assuage Your Liberal Guilt With An Eco-Friendly SuperYacht

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

Let's be honest, if you are a Republican, you don't care about the environment because you received your own oil well when you registered to vote.  And you like vampire babies. So you do not care about the emissions of your yacht.

But if you are a rich Democrat, things are a little dicier.  Buying pretend carbon offsets for a 29,000 square foot house can only get you so far. If you want to own a superyacht too, that's a lot of liberal guilt to agonize over. What to do?
Requiem for Humanity — Anarchy and Evolution

Requiem for Humanity — Anarchy and Evolution

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

ANARCHY AND EVOLUTION
Competition of life forms (bio-human, android, nanobots, robot) is critical for them to evolve into robust species capable of dealing with all the diversity in the universe. Early earth life had millions of years for this competition. Science has demonstrated that co-evolutionary interactions with other species are the primary cause for rapid evolution. During the singularity, we humans will be diverging into competing life forms.

Friday Fossil

Friday Fossil

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

I couldn't possibly call myself a paleontology blogger and not post the fossil below as an article. Happily, I notice that it is friday today and so this can come under the banner of my oft forgotten feature of friday fossil.


How To Be Emotionally Stable Without Getting Bored - The Musical!

How To Be Emotionally Stable Without Getting Bored - The Musical!

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

Max Lugavere, founding producer and host for Current TV, the Emmy winning cable network started by Al Gore, started a column on Psychology Today and came up with this gem.(1)

He writes that he saw a piece by Nick Cox, a writer living in Cambridge, MA, called How To Be Emotionally Stable Without Getting Bored and liked it so much he...put it to music.
It's Always Raining Links - But Do We Ever Have Droughts?

It's Always Raining Links - But Do We Ever Have Droughts?

Mar 09 2012 | comment(s)

Not a day goes by where rain doesn't fall on the Earth.  Our weather patterns have changed through the eons and there have been wetter periods and dryer periods but so far as I know the rain keeps falling and will continue to keep falling until Earth can no longer sustain a liquid water environment.

The World Wide Web works much the same way.  As we add content to the Web we "hook it up" and link to something, and something often links back to us.  Even on the dark Web there are a lot of links.  But do links burst into existence at a continuous rate?  Is there a predictability to how much linkage we create with our new content?  I'm sure a few people have tried to estimate stuff like this.  But there's always a catch.
Cosmic Ray Detecting Thermometer

Cosmic Ray Detecting Thermometer

Mar 08 2012 | comment(s)

CMOS Imaging sensors are the sensor of choice for most consumer digital cameras. They tend to be cheap, low power, compatible with the fabrication equipment that much of modern digital electronics is manufactured on, and other than the very early generations fairly high quality.
Canon EOS cameras became the defacto standard for astrophotography due to low noise and direct access to uncompressed RAW image formats.
Hygiene Hypothesis And Why Amish Kids Have Less Asthma

Hygiene Hypothesis And Why Amish Kids Have Less Asthma

Mar 08 2012 | comment(s)

If you do not have your 11-year-old child in a car seat while driving and in a bicycle helmet while playing, you are putting them at severe risk.  We have to protect them.  Or not. While we expose kids to all kinds of harmful cultural stuff at earlier and earlier ages (sex, violence, political debates) we don't trust their physical competence or their judgment.

Heck, the people behind the government health care plan think 25 should be the earliest age for adulthood.