Al Fin Potpourri

New Adventures in Zombie-Proofed Homes: The Oil Silo

2012-02-17T10:18:00.000-08:00

The Oil Silo Home, designed by pinkcloud.dk in Berlin, recycles oil silos by transforming them into affordable [zombie-proof -- ed.] houses!

An oil silo is a storage container for compressed liquefied petroleum gas. There are approximately 49,000 oil silos in over 660 oil refineries worldwide! As the [zombie - ed.] population increases at an exponential rate, oil discovery decreases at an exponential rate. Soon all existing oil silos will be [needed for zombie-proof housing -- ed.].

The Oil Silo Home is a 100% self-supporting housing solution for the [zombie infested - ed.] world. It’s highly structurally stable, waterproof, efficient to assemble and disassemble, and has the capacity for prefabrication and mass production. __Pinkcloud.dk

The oil silo home is supported above ground by strong steel pillars. It is acessible by a stairway which can be retracted in case of zombie sightings.

This cutaway view reveals internal space options. One can also see the rooftop defensive position, which allows household snipers optimal views of the surrounding free-fire zones.

Depending upon the climate zone, a variety of modular external sheathings are available, in a wide array of bullet-proofing and fire resistance. While zombies are not able to use firearms or sophisticated weaponry, untransformed humans certainly can. Zombies may be the greatest concern for survival, but human rivalries will still remain, occasionally turning violent.

This image demonstrates one possible means of re-constructing an oil silo into a relatively zombie-proofed house (click for full size). It is recommended that homeowners allow Al Fin zombie-proofers to customise the final residence, for optimal safety.

Oil silos can be converted into multiple unit housing, for extended families and for cooperative, non-family alliances. It is recommended that the most expendable and least trustworthy members of the group be housed in the lower-most unit.

Oil silos can be converted in such a way as to allow optimal natural lighting, as pictured above. Likewise, they can be converted for hilltop placement with partial or complete earth coverage -- for both disguise and weather protection in severe climate locations.

In the age of zombies, the need for secure shelter has never been more acute. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Elevating Japanese Villages to Safeguard from Zombie Attack

2012-02-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

Japan suffered a massive devastation from recent earthquakes and tsunamis. These natural disasters highlight some of the dangers of living at ground level. Even worse than these disasters, however, is the threat of zombie attack -- which can occur far from shorelines.

Tōhoku Sky Village is not just an architect's flight of fancy: one municipality in the affected region is making moves towards building one in its locality and others could follow.
Most islands will be used for residential purposes, with between 100 and 500 houses and apartments. Fuel stations, waste disposal and storage facilities, and car parks are on lower floors. Commercial islands, meanwhile, will house factories and processing facilities for industries such as fisheries and agriculture. As well as lifting residents high above the destructive power of [zombies - ed.], the design comes with a number of safety features. A reinforced gate at the back of each island automatically closes after a tsunami warning, while steps up the sides let people climb to safety. _New Scientist

The best power source for these fortress villages would be off-grid small modular reactors, in deep underground vaults, reinforced by concrete and re-bar.

Each three-storey island would offer 90,000 square metres of usable space and be bolted deep into the bedrock via vast steel pillars. The exterior walls are made of 50-centimetre-thick reinforced concrete, while utility spaces on the bottom floor are compartmentalised in a radial formation for even stress distribution - rather like the spokes in a bicycle wheel. _NS

High voltage conductors will be used to line the steep, high outer walls of the anti-zombie fortresses, capable of frying any zombie invaders to a deep black crisp. When zombies are crisped in this manner, other zombies lose their natural aversion to eating them. Oddly enough, when zombies consume other zombies as a zombie crisp, they tend to sleep for hours or days on end, allowing for safe & easy dispatch and disposal by special squads of villagers known as zlayer squads.

Assassination Micro-Bots Mass--Produced at Harvard

2012-02-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

Devised by engineers at Harvard, an ingenious method for rapid fabrication of micro-bots heralds in a brave new day in mass produced micro assassins.

In prototypes, 18 layers of carbon fiber, Kapton (a plastic film), titanium, brass, ceramic, and adhesive sheets have been laminated together in a complex, laser-cut design. The structure incorporates flexible hinges that allow the three-dimensional product—just 2.4 millimeters tall—to assemble in one movement, like a pop-up book.

The entire product is approximately the size of a U.S. quarter, and dozens of these microrobots could be fabricated in parallel on a single sheet. _Physorg

Sreetharan, Whitney, and their colleagues in the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory at SEAS have been working for years to build bio-inspired, bee-sized robots that can fly and behave autonomously as a colony. Appropriate materials, hardware, control systems, and fabrication techniques did not exist prior to the RoboBees project, so each must be invented, developed, and integrated by a diverse team of researchers. _Physorg

Thanks to the new mass-production techniques devised by Harvard engineers, millions of micro-assassin bots can be produced in one production run. Programming the bot for its specific mission requires only a few minutes, and can be performed over a wireless network, using appropriate security protocols.

Harvard engineers say that they will soon be able to reduce the size of the killer bots to the point that they are no longer visible via the naked eye. Of course, invisibility of a sort is already achievable using other stealth tools recently devised across town at MIT.

MIT and Harvard have reportedly allied themselves in a microbot assassin war against Yale and Stanford. But before risking it all in total micro-war, the engineers are rumoured to be testing their killer bots via covert operations in Iran and North Korea.

According to one of the lead engineers on the project, the bots are almost indistinguishable from an insect or arthropod. Some of the bots have been designed to mimic small minnows and worms.

There is some speculation that the minnow bots and worm bots are meant to work their way up through the fish food chain until they have taken over the brains of sharks and barracuda. These borg-controlled fast swimming fish can then be used to carry high explosives into enemy naval installations, for either coordinated or stand-alone attacks.

It is clear that the intrepid engineers of Harvard have taken the concept of stealth assassins to an entirely new level. It will be interesting to watch and see how this concept develops.

All images via Concept Art

A Dynamic View of Continental Movements, and the Birth and Death of Oceans and Seas

2012-02-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

500 Million Years of Continental Rearrangement
Oil and gas are generally formed under seabeds, when organic matter is covered with sediment, deprived of oxygen, and exposed to heat and pressure over long time periods. The video above presents one scientific theory of how continents move about, forming new seas and destroying others.

Confined seas that are fed a rich diet of sediments and nutrients are the best oil formers -- in other words, those that are fed by large, seasonably variable rivers. Of course, rivers will necessarily be birthed, change their courses, and die over geologic timespans -- just like seas.

That is why mental prospectors of ancient oil-forming seabeds must visualise the movement of the continents, the mountains, the rivers, the seas, over time.

Supercontinent Formation

In a paper published Feb. 9 in the journal Nature, Yale researchers introduce a process called orthoversion, in which each succeeding supercontinent forms 90 degrees from the geographic center of its ancient predecessor. Under the theory, the present-day Arctic Ocean and Caribbean Sea will vanish as North and South America fuse during a mutual northward migration that leads to a collision with Europe and Asia.

“After those water bodies close, we’re on our way to the next supercontinent,” said Ross N. Mitchell, the Yale doctoral student who is the paper’s first author. “You’d have the Americas meeting Eurasia practically at the North Pole.” _Physorg

Oil & gas are renewable resources -- but on a long timescale. Humans have barely begun to discover all the hydrocarbon resources which they will ultimately be able to economically exploit.

Plan ahead so as to ride out the waves and chop that are certain to come along the way.

Riot Control: Shock, Awe, and Ow! at 100 Yards

2012-02-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

One special SRT projectile under development called ShockRounds™ contains a liquefied compressed gas and activates a high-powered “shock wave” that expands rapidly upon impact and attacks three of the five human senses, disabling the assailant The general rule is that one unit volume of liquefied compressed gas will expand to approximately 800 unit volumes of gas at standard temperature and pressure.

...These MMS (micro-mechanical system) controlled devices act as accelerometers and sense when the round is fired and when it makes contact with its target. It then activates the payload in a millisecond before the round can penetrate the body. _SmartRounds

Wired

Nearly instantly, the munition deploys its payload: a liquified, compressed gas that delivers, in Verini’s words, “a shockwave to the system.” For one thing, the compressed gas makes a jarring noise as it exits the bullet. Plus, it’s been formulated to flash brightly and obscure a target’s vision. And, of course, the bullet itself is designed to hurt.

Ouch, yes. But there is some good news for potential targets of the ShockRound’s scourge. Because the munitions can detect when they reach their target, and then shift gears to quickly deploy their payload, there’s significantly less risk of skin penetration — no matter the range. So if the tech works, it’d be a major step toward turning less-lethal weapons into legitimately non-lethal ones.

Now that the Verini’s company has debuted ShockRounds, it’s planning to develop several more munitions with different kinds of debilitating payload combinations. Ideas, of which they’ve already got “around 10,” include combos of chemical irritants, expanding foam, gel and even explosives. _Wired

You can see that these non-lethal rounds would be less than worthless when faced with a massed zombie attack. But ordinary humans can behave much like crazed zombies under certain circumstances, and in general it is easier to deal with the aftermath of a massed civilian human attack if you minimise the death and serious injury count.

More on non-lethal weapons of DARPA:

The U.S. Army is deploying an all-in-one package of nonlethal devices that covers everything from checkpoint control to riot control.
The four modules include: the checkpoint module, crowd control and detainee ops module, convoy module, and dismounted module that includes various non-lethal items troops can use during dismounted patrols.
The kits are put into large, weatherproof containers, and include everything from high-intensity lights to loud speakers. The checkpoint tools, for example, includes "equipment to establish and operate hasty and deliberate checkpoints." That means tire spikes and capture nets.

Other nonlethal sets have been fielded in the past, but the NLCS "includes items not found in the previous sets, such as tasers, Phraselators, Vehicle Lightweight Arresting Devices and Ex-Spray, which allows soldiers to detect explosive residue." _Wired

But the ultimate in non-lethal weaponry is mind control. The ability to either shut down the brains of your target, to overwhelm the autonomy of the target's thinking processes, or to totally take over the target's thinking -- those are the goals. Here is an example of one such approach, "The Voice of God:"

Among those discussed are weapons that could disrupt the brain, as well as my longtime obsession, the "Voice of God" device, which creates voices in people’s heads. As the report notes, "Application of the microwave hearing technology could facilitate a private message transmission. It may be useful to provide a disruptive condition to a person not aware of the technology. Not only might it be disruptive to the sense of hearing, it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard ‘voices within one’s head.’" _Wired

This is just the beginning.

Probability for large scale civil disorder in the near to medium future is quite high in nations from Russia to China to Iran to France to the US. If regimes resort to lethal force against large crowds, the blowback can be severe enough to knock those regimes out of power. Non-lethal suppression is much safer for everyone concerned -- as long as zombies are not involved.

And what nascent dictator could deny the secret wish to be able to control the thoughts and actions of targeted individuals or groups? No, the temptation is too great to resist, even for leaders as pure and selfless as US President Obama.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. And don't forget your Faraday cage head wear.

Oil of Ancient and Future Seas: Mental Prospecting of Rich, Forgotten Oil Deposits

2012-02-08T05:16:00.000-08:00

River Basins
Most crude oil comes from ancient marine organisms which bloomed, died, sank, and were covered by sediment to transform under conditions of heat and pressure into petroleum. The organisms required sunshine, CO2, and nutrients -- plus sedimentary cover. These conditions were best met in tropical and semi-tropical seas which received nutrient-rich outflows from either rivers or rich sea currents and upwellings.

But rivers supply both nutrients and sediment, so it makes sense to look to areas which were offshore from ancient river deltas. Above, you can see the main rivers of the modern world.

Pangaea
But the continents of the Earth were not always in their current relationship to each other. 250 mya the continents were situated close together in a formation now referred to as Pangaea. The geology of the landmasses of that time were somewhat different, meaning that different rivers flowed into different seas.

500 mya the continents were in a somewhat different configuration, providing optimal oil-forming conditions over a different area of the world's crust. And so on, back through the eons...

This movement of the continents in relation to each other is caused by plate tectonics, a dynamic phenomenon which is largely controlled by actions at the bottom of the seas.

The graphic above is meant to illustrate possible sites for "abiotic oil" deposits, but if you look carefully at the oceans, you can find seafloor ridges which are ground zero for the motion of the continents. New seafloor -- as molten lava which cools and solidifies in contact with seawater -- is pushed upward from beneath the ocean crust, causing a spreading of the ocean crust outward. Eventually the ocean crust is pushed into contact with thicker continental crust, where it subducts -- dives downward into the mantle. This subduction is associated with volcano formation, and other geologic changes, such as slow movement of the continental plates.

ImageSource
This "dance of the continents" is likely to bring the land masses together again in the future, over and over again in different formations. This is important in relation to where very old oil deposits are likely to be found, and where large future deposits of oil are likely to be formed in their turn.

For example, why is oil often found in deserts and arctic wastes?

Oil and gas result mostly from the rapid burial of dead microorganisms in environments where oxygen is so scarce that they do not decompose. This lack of oxygen enables them to maintain their hydrogen-carbon bonds, a necessary ingredient for the production of oil and gas. Newly developing ocean basins, formed by plate tectonics and continental rifting, provide just the right conditions for rapid burial in anoxic waters. Rivers rapidly fill these basins with sediments carrying abundant organic remains. Because the basins have constricted water circulation, they also have lower oxygen levels than the open ocean. For instance, the Gulf of California, an ocean basin in development, is making new oil and gas in real time today. The Gulf of Mexico is also a great example of new oil and gas formation in a restricted circulation environment (see image at right above).

The same plate tectonics that provides the locations and conditions for anoxic burial is also responsible for the geologic paths that these sedimentary basins subsequently take. Continental drift, subduction and collision with other continents provide the movement from swamps, river deltas and mild climates--where most organics are deposited--to the poles and deserts, where they have ended up today by coincidence. In fact, the Libyan Sahara Desert contains unmistakable glacial scars and Antarctica has extensive coal deposits--and very likely abundant oil and gas--that establish that their plates were once at the other ends of the earth (see image at right). _SciAm

Similar detective work may lead prospectors to rich petroleum deposits lying between Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. By the same logic applied to more recent timelines, oil and gas in the South China Sea is likely to be discovered.

As the SciAm article above explains, when a river flows into a limited basin -- such as the Gulf of Mexico -- oil and gas formation are most likely to occur due to rapid sedimentation. But thanks to plate tectonics and shifting continents and river-beds, many areas where rivers once flowed into limited basins have become something completely different, today.

It is no challenge to find oil where crude is already seeping to the surface. That was the case in the early days of oil discovery in the US, the Persian Gulf, and Central Asia. But to find the oil of ancient seas -- that is a challenge. Particularly since that is where most of the world's oil awaits.

Previously published on Al Fin, the Next Level

How to Trigger a Global Ice Age, and Kill Billions and Billions of People

2012-02-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

The secret to killing billions and billions of people without being too obvious about it, is to make it difficult or impossible to grow enough food to feed them. Geological history demonstrates that the best way of doing this -- short of a global thermonuclear war -- is by triggering a global ice age. If winters are too long and summers are too short and cold, crops cannot be grown, and livestock will starve. Without enough food, billions of people will die, until there are only enough people to match the dwindling food supplies.

Who would want to do such a thing? Well, no one will actually come out and admit to planning a great global human dieoff. But there are some people who are playing with the idea of significantly cutting back on Earth's solar allotment, in the name of mitigating "climate change." But since Earth's climate is always changing no matter what humans do, why would a warmer planet -- with longer growing seasons and more food -- be worse than a cooling planet, with less food and shorter growing seasons?

One of the backers of the new "geoengineers" is Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame. Mr. Gates feels strongly about "climate change," strongly enough to help finance a planetary geoengineering scheme to reduce solar input to the planet.

As well as Gates, other wealthy individuals including Sir Richard Branson, tar sands magnate Murray Edwards and the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, have funded a series of official reports into future use of the technology. Branson, who has frequently called for geoengineering to combat climate change, helped fund the Royal Society's inquiry into solar radiation management last year through his Carbon War Room charity. It is not known how much he contributed.

Professors David Keith, of Harvard University, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford, are the world's two leading advocates of major research into geoengineering the upper atmosphere to provide earth with a reflective shield. They have so far received over $4.6m from Gates to run the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (Ficer). Nearly half Ficer's money, which comes directly from Gates's personal funds, has so far been used for their own research, but the rest is disbursed by them to fund the work of other advocates of large-scale interventions.

According to statements of financial interests, Keith receives an undisclosed sum from Bill Gates each year, and is the president and majority owner of the geoengineering company Carbon Engineering, in which both Gates and Edwards have major stakes – believed to be together worth over $10m. _Guardian

Another Geoengineering Scheme
Big money backers of geoengineering schemes hide behind the IPCC and the "scientific consensus" which supposedly backs the theories and computer models of "climate change." But after ClimageGate, and some other huge public embarassments hitting the orthodoxy of climate hysteria, it rather looks as if these wealthy climate barons are either not keeping up with the evidence, or they have other hidden motives behind their actions.

Bill Gates is already involved with a super-wealthy cabal of individuals working to limit overpopulation. When combined with his interest in altering the global climate, his concerns over the level of human populations of Earth could well be seen in something other than a completely innocent light.

Do Al Fin analysts think that Gates is intentionally setting the planet Earth onto a path toward a great human dieoff? Of course not. Most of the recipients of Mr. and Mrs. Gates' charities are entirely uncontroversial and untainted by any quasi-genocidal stain. But a person of Mr. Gates' stature should be very clear about the causes which he supports, without having to hide behind a faux consensus of phony fantasists such as certain IPCC controlling climate grifters.

It would take a very small ongoing reduction of incoming solar radiation to spin the planet's climate in a cooling direction. When combined with natural feedbacks and other pertinent factors which climatologists refuse to consider in their expensive models, the downward spin of temperatures could quickly reach the point where growing seasons and food supplies are adversely affected.

A human dieoff from lack of food is probably not something that Mr. Gates or Mr. Branson want to be associated with, after the fact. Because while either gentleman could certainly afford to live anywhere on the planet they wished, after the onset of a global ice age, it is unlikely that they could live in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, in the absence of any other people. And for people who are even partially guilty of such a massive crime against humanity as the triggering of a great human dieoff by ice age, living among strangers is never entirely safe.

Emerging Idiocracy on Planet Earth: Engage Anti-Zombie Precautions

2012-02-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

Decades of genetics research have shown...that people are born with different hereditary potentials for intelligence and that these genetic endowments are responsible for much of the variation in mental ability among individuals. Last spring an international team of scientists headed by Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in London announced the discovery of the first gene linked to intelligence. Of course, genes have their effects only in interaction with environments, partly by enhancing an individual's exposure or sensitivity to formative experiences. Differences in general intelligence, whether measured as IQ or, more accurately, as g are both genetic and environmental in origin--just as are all other psychological traits and attitudes studied so far, including personality, vocational interests and societal attitudes. This is old news among the experts. The experts have, however, been startled by more recent discoveries.

One is that the heritability of IQ rises with age--that is to say, the extent to which genetics accounts for differences in IQ among individuals increases as people get older. Studies comparing identical and fraternal twins, published in the past decade by a group led by Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., of the University of Minnesota and other scholars, show that about 40 percent of IQ differences among preschoolers stems from genetic differences but that heritability rises to 60 percent by adolescence and to 80 percent by late adulthood. With age, differences among individuals in their developed intelligence come to mirror more closely their genetic differences. It appears that the effects of environment on intelligence fade rather than grow with time. In hindsight, perhaps this should have come as no surprise. Young children have the circumstances of their lives imposed on them by parents, schools and other agents of society, but as people get older they become more independent and tend to seek out the life niches that are most congenial to their genetic proclivities.

A second big surprise for intelligence experts was the discovery that environments shared by siblings have little to do with IQ. Many people still mistakenly believe that social, psychological and economic differences among families create lasting and marked differences in IQ. Behavioral geneticists refer to such environmental effects as "shared" because they are common to siblings who grow up together. Research has shown that although shared environments do have a modest influence on IQ in childhood, their effects dissipate by adolescence. The IQs of adopted children, for example, lose all resemblance to those of their adoptive family members and become more like the IQs of the biological parents they have never known. Such findings suggest that siblings either do not share influential aspects of the rearing environment or do not experience them in the same way. Much behavioral genetics research currently focuses on the still mysterious processes by which environments make members of a household less alike. _Linda Gottfredson

The general finding after over 100 years of studying intelligence and genetics, is that IQ is heritable over the lifetime to between 50% and 80%. Heritability of IQ tends to be lower in low socioeconomic groups and in very young children. As a person ages, the genes tend to influence intelligence more.

The table below is a guessing game, where you are to fill in the "country" which matches the continent and the IQ score. The table of national IQs below, should assist you in this task. Notice that African nations are not included in the game, since the national IQ scores in the game do not go below 92.

Continent/Region	Country	Average IQ
Asia		108
Asia		106
Asia		105
Europe		102
Europe		101
Asia		101
Europe		101
Europe		100
Asia		100
Europe		100
Europe		100
Europe		100
Europe		100
Europe		99
North America		99
Europe		99
Europe		99
Europe		99
Oceania		99
Europe		99
Europe		99
Europe		98
Oceania		98
Europe		98
Europe		98

Continent/Region	Country	Average IQ
Europe		98
Europe		98
Europe		98
Europe		98
North America		98
Europe		97
Europe		97
Europe		97
Europe		97
Europe		96
Europe		96
Europe		96
South America		96
Middle East		95
Europe		95
Middle East		94
Middle East		94
Asia		94
Europe		94
Asia		94
South America		93
Europe		93
Europe		92
Europe		92
Asia		92

Name the Country

A more complete table of national IQ scores from Lynn and Vanhanen summarized by Steve Sailer

This graphic displays a simplified bell curve distribution overlap for 4 generalised human population groupings.

This graphic provides a general idea as to realistic occupational expectations for individuals whose valid IQ scores fall within a particular range of values.

FourmilabThis simplified time projection from the Fourmilab website: Global IQ 1950-2050, looks at the change in average "global IQ" over time, due to differential birthrates among distinct breeding groups, possessing different IQ.

Total fertility rates by country (via the EvoandProud anthropology site). By comparing the TFRs and national IQs, one can estimate the general trend for global IQ, as a falsifiable hypothesis.

What about the "Flynn Effect?" Unfortunately, the multiple and poorly defined underlying mechanisms behind the "Flynn Effect" are not strong enough to overcome the compounding magic of differential birthrates combined with heritability of IQ.

This graphic allows you to visually compare homicide rates with both total fertility rates and national IQ. Keeping in mind the heritability of IQ, this triple juxtaposition allows for some simple falsifiable predictions as to the future of both particular nations, and of the nations which are emigration targets for the excess from low IQ, high crime, high fertility populations.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

More: Here is an extremely optimistic look at the future of commodities, energy resources, and food. The human ingenuity of "the smart fraction" has been pushing back against the forces of depletion -- just as Julian Simon said they would do.

It is crucial to look at as many sides to the story as one can. Nothing in real life is as simple as it seems.

Previously published on Al Fin blog

Persons of low IQ have a tendency to commit crimes of both violent and non-violent nature, and to become dependent upon the public purse. As the numbers of low IQ persons grow, the quality of elected officials will tend to decline sharply (the Idiocracy). As more and more cities of the first world come to resemble Detroit, Port-au-Prince, and Ciudad Juarez, the violence and poverty will drive more intelligent persons into gated enclaves and other more protected areas.

Eventually, shadow governments will emerge, with alternative law enforcement and defense forces, and alternative economies. Civil wars are inevitable, if only as a means of last resort self-preservation.

Choose your location and your neighbors wisely, and always have an escape plan prepared. Escaping a zombie horde is similar in many ways to escaping an Idiocracy. Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Navy Railgun Weapon Promises Quite a Barrage

2012-01-31T15:35:00.000-08:00

It could take up to a decade to find its way into shipboard systems - and the budget for the final weapon is now in some doubt.

The energy level has jumped from 0.5 megajoules to 1.5 megajoules. Even at one megajoule, the projectiles hit with the force of a one-ton car striking a wall at 100mph. _DailyMail

DailyMail

The Navy began pursuing the railgun in 2005, and for now, there are only lab prototypes of the weapon. But already the Navy has set a world record (see video below) for muzzle energy used in a weapon--33 megajoules. According to Defense Market, a shot of that magnitude could potentially reach "extended ranges with Mach 5 velocity."

Ellis said, the Navy has awarded contracts to BAE and General Atomics to build prototypes that "are more tactical in nature."...when the railgun is finally deployed, it is likely to be used--or at least be ready for action--in several different kinds of missions. First, Ellis explained, it could be used from a ship to fire inland in support of marines as they come ashore.

At the same time, because the weapon's range is so long, it could allow a Naval ship that features the railgun to defend itself from sea-borne threats long before it can itself be attacked, or from missiles fired from land or sea.

Now it's on to the next phase of the project. According to Ellis, that phase includes demonstrating that it's possible to fire a railgun at a rate of 10 rounds per minute _CBS

9 Second Clip of Record Setting Naval Rail Gun Shot

To supply it, Raytheon’s building a “Pulse Forming Network” or PFN. That's a large power system that stores up electrical power and then converts it to a pulse that is directed into the gun's barrel, John Cochran, the railgun program manager in Raytheon's Advanced Technology Group, told CNET’s News.com. _FoxNews

The US Navy desperately wants to put this gun onboard its attack ships, but it is not clear whether the railgun will be used by land forces or sea forces, if it ever does make it through all the levels of financing and final approval.

This electromagnetic catapult weapon may be a glimpse into the future of medium distance ballistic weaponry, particularly if it can achieve pinpoint accuracy over hundreds of miles distance. Providing the massive amounts of electricity required over a sustained attack might well require a nuclear reactor, along with Raytheon's pulse-forming network.

How to Turn Every Brain into Spock's Brain

2012-01-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

A machine which stimulates your brain with tiny electric shocks can improve memory, problem-solving and mathematical abilities, psychologists have found.

Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, a neuroscientist, uses a high-tech system called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to stimulate precise regions of the brain with a tiny buzz of electric current.

When he stimulates the parietal lobes, which are responsible for our skills in reading, writing and numeracy, he can boost mathematical skills...When Dr Cohen Kadosh’s subjects had their parietal lobes stimulated for 30 minutes every day for a week, they were able to pick up maths skills through conventional lessons far more quickly and effectively than they could before.

‘It’s completely safe. The electric current is one thousand times lower than anything that could cause damage,’ he says.

Tests have shown that the subjects’ maths abilities remain boosted six months after the treatment. _DailyMail

Telegraph

Devices which administer the electric pulses required for the treatment can be bought for as little as £500 and are portable, making them affordable and convenient to use. However, this and the fact that there are no rules governing their use, means that they are not restricted to use by professionals in labs and clinics.

... _Telegraph

Daily MailOf course any effective means of improving performance could give certain people an advantage over others. Those who could afford the brain-boosting technology, for example, might be thought to have an unfair advantage over those who had to wait for the price of the technology to fall, before they could gain access.

This might represent a threat to our modern leftist-egalitarian zeitgeist, where it is felt that if anyone advances, then everyone should advance in lock-step. But that is not how nature works, and it is not the way that any meaningful type of abundant future for humanity will be achieved. The sooner that self-improvement technologies escape the grip of the politically correct drone-minded politicians and academics, the better.

"This research cuts to core of humanity: the capacity to learn," says Professor Julian Savulescu. "The capacity to learn varies across people, across ages and with illness. This kind of technology enables people to get more out of the work they put into learning something."

He adds: "This is a first step down the path of maximizing human potential. It is a very exciting development but we need to control the release of the genie. Although this looks like a simple external device, it acts by affecting the brain. That could have very good effects, but unpredictable side effects."

One of the most obvious uses of brain stimulation techniques is in children as an educational or learning aid. The researchers believe that their use in children would be warranted, and that we should begin research to understand how TDCS might be used in children.

Roi notes that: "Parents will often send their child to piano lessons or to football lessons, wanting them to do well." He considers that providing people with ways of fulfilling their potential is not a bad thing. _Medicalxpress

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a technique that has been intensively investigated in the past decade as this method offers a non-invasive and safe alternative to change cortical excitability2. The effects of one session of tDCS can last for several minutes, and its effects depend on polarity of stimulation, such as that cathodal stimulation induces a decrease in cortical excitability, and anodal stimulation induces an increase in cortical excitability that may last beyond the duration of stimulation6. These effects have been explored in cognitive neuroscience and also clinically in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders – especially when applied over several consecutive sessions4. One area that has been attracting attention of neuroscientists and clinicians is the use of tDCS for modulation of pain-related neural networks3,5. Modulation of two main cortical areas in pain research has been explored: primary motor cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex7. Due to the critical role of electrode montage, in this article, we show different alternatives for electrode placement for tDCS clinical trials on pain; discussing advantages and disadvantages of each method of stimulation. _Jove

Basic Primer on Brain Memory

2012-01-26T13:27:00.000-08:00

The prefrontal cortex is the chief executive of our brain. It plans complex actions, helps us make decisions, predicts what’s about to happen and applies breaks to bad behavior. Part of this region is in charge of working memory, a kind of mental sketchpad.

The dorsolateral section is thought to be the engine of memory suppression, a type of willful forgetting.

The left inferior prefrontal cortex processes information deeply and helps make emotional memories stick in your mind.

The parietal cortex covers the parietal lobe, a large section of the brain. Parts of it map the position of the body in space and the whereabouts of nearby objects. Other sections help us remember. A brain wave detected over this area shrinks when a person forgets.

Sensory information—sights and sounds—form the raw material for memory.

The visual cortex handles basic information about the orientation and color of objects. It also helps us perceive depth, lighting and texture. When someone shuts a memory out of consciousness, the visual cortex quiets down, as if the brain is trying to rid itself of recollected imagery.

The auditory cortex handles basic sound information: pitch and volume. It also quiets down when the mind is blocking a recollection.

The hippocampus is memory central. When memories form, it is abuzz with neural chatter. It calms down when a recollection is suppressed.

The amygdala comes to life when feelings are involved. It works with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex to create emotional memories. _SCIAMmind

Of course there is a lot more involved to brain memory than what you find in the brief primer above. Human memory is incredibly dynamic, and involves most of the same parts of the brain in recall as were involved in the original laying down of memory. Even more interesting, is the fact that the memory deals not just with the past, but with the future!

It is proposed that the human brain is proactive in that it continuously generates predictions that anticipate the relevant future. In this proposal, analogies are derived from elementary information that is extracted rapidly from the input, to link that input with the representations that exist in memory. Finding an analogical link results in the generation of focused predictions via associative activation of representations that are relevant to this analogy, in the given context. Predictions in complex circumstances, such as social interactions, combine multiple analogies. Such predictions need not be created afresh in new situations, but rather rely on existing scripts in memory, which are the result of real as well as of previously imagined experiences. This cognitive neuroscience framework provides a new hypothesis with which to consider the purpose of memory, and can help explain a variety of phenomena, ranging from recognition to first impressions, and from the brain's ‘default mode’ to a host of mental disorders. _Abstract...Royal Society

Read the full article at the Royal Society link above.

Once we learn that the brain works much the same during perception, cognition, and memory -- and when reliving the past or predicting the future -- a wide range of opportunities for shaping our experience suddenly opens up to us.

But as always, it is best to view these things in a circular manner, and to begin at the center and work our way outward in a spiral. When beginning at the center, it is best to breathe deeply, and let go a huge belly laugh. After that, things seem to become easier.

For although life is full of surprises, chance favours the prepared mind. Which means that a great deal of laughter is likely to be needed along the way, to build mental resilience and receptivity.

Contingencies: Keeping Your Options Open

2012-01-25T10:11:00.000-08:00

We would like to think that things can continue on as they have done, generation after generation. Through good and bad, humans have muddled through and survived -- even prospered in more advanced parts of the world. But there is always a niggling of a doubt in the back of the mind: "What if this happens, or that? How would we survive the ultimate catastrophe?"

Abandoned Missile Silo Home
Certainly a nuclear war, a worldwide fatal contagion, or a global zombie apocalypse would all be difficult trials to endure. An ice age might push civilisation to the very brink. But Earth abides, and humans could too. In the near future, the only catastrophe that might require the complete abandonment of the planet, would be an extraterrestrial strike -- a comet, asteroid, or equivalent large scale impact.

Space Station Fallback Option
Should such a planetary catastrophe occur, one would wish to have a convenient launch pad for an orbital craft capable of carrying one's self and significant others. One would also need a destination in orbit, where one could "freshen up" and restore one's natural vigour and vitality.

A missile silo home such as the one pictured at the top of this entry, provides both a rocket launching platform and a convenient aerocraft runway for quick access, if one is caught away from home base when news of the unthinkable arrives.

Contour Crafting a Lunar HabitatBut others will likely be thinking along the same lines, and before long the space station would begin to look and smell like a regular refugee camp. Humans are much more comfortable on planetary surfaces anyway, so you would probably want to re-locate to Luna or Mars fairly quickly.

Fortunately, robotic habitat-building apparatuses are being developed which will allow you to construct your Lunar or Martian habitat over a 24 hour period, using a robotic contour crafting robot.

Parenthetically, the same robotic contour crafter could also be used to build an underground missile silo home & retreat, if none were available. International treaties are causing such valuable properties to become scarce.

Regardless, try to keep all of your options open. Most types of apocalypse will allow you to continue to reside on the most beautiful and life-loving planet in the solar system. But some types of doom will not permit that.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

A Cornucopia of Doom from Wired.com

2012-01-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

Presented here, for your discriminating perusal, is a veritable cornucopia of doom from the prolific producers of Wired.com. Contemplate at your leisure.

Supervolcano

The chances of an earthquake unzipping the world’s fault system are negligible, says seismologist Thorne Lay of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This is because the energy released by a quake is related to the length of the fault that is ruptured during the event. For example, the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatra quake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami and killed nearly 300,000 people, ruptured around 900 miles of a subduction zone fault, the longest ever recorded for a single quake. But the major fault zones that mark boundaries between tectonic plates are not continuous, and irregularities like changes in the type of faulting and the existence of smaller plates with shorter boundaries stop ruptures short of apocalyptic lengths.

But other geologic hazards may have more potential for doom.

“It’s more plausible that you have a truly mammoth eruption,” like an eruption of the supervolcano that lies beneath the Yellowstone National Park area, Lay said. Yellowstone has experienced colossal volcanic explosions in the past, most recently 2 million and 640,000 years ago. Another such mega eruption would be devastating for much of North America, he says.

Giant eruptions have contributed to mass extinctions, including the one that killed off the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago. At that time, volcanoes spewed out a roughly 2,000-foot-deep layer of lava to form part of the 10,000-foot-thick Deccan Traps of India, the world’s largest lava beds, geophysicist Anne-Lise Chenet of the Paris Geophysical Institute wrote in an email. And scientists have also shown that a Siberian volcano may have precipitated the largest extinction on record about 250 million years ago. These blazing behemoths belched out so much sulfur, carbon dioxide and ash that they may have altered the climate enough to collapse the food chain, Lay says.

Yellowstone's giant volcanic crater has risen about 10 inches in the last decade, suggesting molten rock may be building up underneath. During its lifetime, the megavolcano has probably experienced more than a dozen giant eruptions, Lay says. Lately, it’s been blowing off steam through little vents, but it’s unclear whether it’s gearing up for another Earth-shattering blast.

Image courtesy of NOAA / USGS

Asteroid Accident

Asteroids typically top the list of extraterrestrial objects that could hit Earth. A 9-mile wide asteroid that crashed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula was partly responsible for the dinosaurs' extinction about 65 million years ago.

The 2004 announcement that 900-foot long Apophis had more than a 2 percent chance of colliding with Earth in 2029 revved up research on asteroid detection and defense, when scientists recalculated the odds down to 1 in 250,000.

Luckily, nothing of that size is in Earth’s path currently, so “we may be safe for at least a few million years,” said planetary scientist Jay Melosh of Purdue University.

But smaller threats may be looming.

NASA expects that roughly every 100 years, an asteroid larger than 55 yards wide will strike. The impact could cause local catastrophes like massive floods, destruction of entire cities and agricultural collapse. Around once every few 100,000 years, chunks of rock more than three-fifths of a mile wide — the equivalent of about 12 New York City blocks — could come tumbling through the atmosphere causing much more serious problems, on a global scale. Acid rain would kill crops, debris would shield Earth from sunlight, and firestorms would ensue, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program.

To understand our cosmic risks, scientists are inspecting the solar system to find asteroids that may be heading our way, said UCSC planetary scientist Erik Asphaug. They’ve discovered about 900 of an estimated 1,000 asteroids wider than three-fifths of a mile thought to have an Earth-crossing orbit. None appears to have Earth as its target.

“The plain vanilla odds are very low” that anything already discovered of that size will strike in the near future, Asphaug said. But that doesn’t mean Earth is 100 percent safe.

It’s close to impossible to find every asteroid that could be a threat to Earth.

“There’s always some uncertainty that we’re going to have to live with,” he said. “Or die with.”

Image courtesy of Don Davis / NASA

Comet Collision

Some of that uncertainty comes from asteroids’ sometimes forgotten cousins, comets. (Comets are made up of ice and dust, while asteroids are made up of rock and metals.)

Hartley 2 came within 11 million miles of Earth on Oct. 20, which was among one of the closest times a comet has gotten to Earth in centuries.

“Comets are especially dangerous because they are coming from farther distances, at higher velocities,” Asphaug said.

Comets zoom through space at almost 100,000 mph and pick up speed due to Earth's gravitational pull, he said. The faster an object moves, the bigger the force it exerts on whatever it happens to hit and the more energy it deposits. For Earth, that means more damage. For humans, it may spell out R.I.P.

To add insult to potential injury, finding comets in the outer solar system is very difficult because these dirty snowballs are extremely dark.

But when comet gets within about 390 million miles from Earth, the sun heats comets' dark surface and starts to warm its icy interior, making it spew out the dust and gas that form its distinctively bright tails.

Assuming astronomers developed the technology to discover Earth-bound comets farther away than Jupiter, scientists might have about 10 years before a comet hit Earth in a worst case scenario, Asphaug said.

But “if there’s a 10-kilometer (6-mile) hunk of ice and rock that’s heading straight toward the Earth," he added, "there aren’t very many options there, except to do the Bruce Willis thing,” and nuke it.

Image courtesy of National Science Foundation

Algal Apocalypse

Another big problem for Earth could come from a tiny source, according to Caltech geobiologist Joe Kirschvink. He raises the possibility that diatoms — a type of microscopic algae that inhabit moist surfaces, lakes, rivers, oceans and soil — could alter Earth’s atmosphere in a fatal way.

These microbes live off fuel produced through photosynthesis, a process that converts light energy (photons) from the sun into energy a cell can use to function (sugar). As they photosynthesize, diatoms break up water into hydrogen and oxygen other organisms can then use to breathe.

But if mutant diatoms couldn’t use water — or other substances in their environment, like iron or hydrogen — they might be tempted to pick salt (sodium chloride) off Earth’s menu of molecules. These diatoms would release poisonous chlorine gas. Assuming the chlorine didn’t kill them and nothing else limited their growth, the diatoms would grow exponentially, setting off a death-by-inhalation doomsday.

“The damn thing could take the world over in a couple of million years,” Kirschvink said.

If his diatomical predictions pan out, it would be the second time biology issued a molecular death sentence for most living organisms on Earth. A similar scenario played out about 2.35 billion years ago when cyanobacteria, a type of blue-green bacteria, learned how to photosynthesize. The bacteria dumped oxygen molecules into the atmosphere — which until then was mostly carbon dioxide — and killed off species that couldn’t tolerate oxygen, Kirschvink says.

“Oxygen molecules at the time were unheard of in the environment,” he said. Once diatoms set in motion the “oxygen apocalypse,” there was no stopping them. They had an advantage over creatures that didn’t like oxygen.

Fortunately for Earth's inhabitants today, the water microbes need to photosynthesize abounds, so it’s unlikely they’ll set off a chlorine apocalypse any time soon, Kirschvink said.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons / Wipeter

Killer Contagion

Lately, there's been a lot of movie-fueled worry surrounding the possibility of a devastating global pandemic. Currently science is contributing to these fears in the form of a highly contagious lab-made variant of the H5N1 virus.

In case you missed it, American and Dutch scientists studying the virus in ferrets made the already deadly virus that much more dangerous by mutating some of its genes. Before the genetic changes were made, the virus could only spread through touch, but the mutations let it survive in the air, allowing it to pass between ferrets without the need for contact. The results sparked panic that the pathogen could leak out of the lab and trigger a pandemic.

But could a virus bring about the end of days?

Probably not, said Peter Katona, whose research at UCLA focuses on biological terrorism preparedness, though it would "wreak havoc."

A single virus is unlikely to wipe out all humans or animals on Earth because there's enough diversity that at least some would be resistant, agreed Caltech virologist Alice Huang.

Even the new lab strain of H5N1 virus, which only has five mutations, is similar enough to other versions of the flu virus that people would have some protection against it and it wouldn't wipe out all life, Huang said.

"For a virus to kill all humans on Earth, it would have to kill rapidly, like a week or less," Huang said. If it took any longer, the immune system would have time to attack it.

And the virus would have to infect most of the world's population simultaneously.

Picture thousands of drones disseminating a killer virus with aerosols "to every nook and cranny" of the planet at once, she said.

Or "you would have to imagine some new (highly virulent) pathogen that lived and reproduced in some unlikely place, like under ice caps or in deep sea water near hydrothermal vents," she said. Then, the tiny predators would have to be spread far and wide, say by some huge natural disaster.

Because this is highly unlikely, Huang added, even science fiction usually imports apocalyptic pathogens from outer space.

Image courtesy of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Suicidal Supernova

Supernovas are among the most powerful explosions in the universe and can rival the strength of a few octillion nuclear warheads, according to NASA.

These super-booms come in two varieties: core-collapse supernovas, which happen when a giant star’s core collapses after 5 million to 20 million years of life; and type-1a supernovas which occur when a white dwarf star detonates after its core gets too dense.

In our galaxy, core-collapse supernovas occur two to four times more frequently than type-1a supernovas, says astronomer Todd Thompson of Ohio State University. And in the Milky Way, a core collapse tends to happen every 100 years or so, he says. Luckily, most will happen at a safe distance of 5 to 10 parsecs, or 16.5 to 33 light-years — too far away to do any real damage.

If supernovas occurred randomly throughout the Milky Way, Earth could expect one every 5 billion years. But because they congregate near the Milky Way’s spiral arms, “we would in fact expect to come within 10 parsecs of a supernova nearly every time we pass through a spiral arm, which is about every 100 million years,” Thompson said.

These stellar fireworks produce x-rays, cosmic rays — electrons, protons and nuclei zooming through space at nearly the speed of light, and gamma rays -- light waves so powerful they’re capable of killing cells.

A supernova’s radiation would destroy the ozone in the atmosphere, increasing the amount of ultraviolet light that gets through. The UV flash could increase skin cancer rates; set off mass die-offs of bacteria and plankton; and precipitate another ice age, Thompson said.

Image courtesy of NASA / JPL

Orbital Obliteration

Changes in how the planets circle the sun could also knock out Earth.

Jupiter is the most massive planet in the sun’s posse. As such, it tugs at the orbits of the other planets. Over millions of years, the gaseous giant could bully tiny Mercury’s elliptical orbit so much that the farthest distance it travels away from the sun increases, and the closest point gets closer.

As Mercury’s orbit stretches, the swift planet could crash into the sun, according to a 2008 study in the Astrophysical Journal. Alternatively, Mercury could cross Venus’ orbit and then “there’s a very short time until there’s a real disaster,” said UCSC astronomer Greg Laughlin, one of the study’s authors. Venus and Mercury’s kiss of death, he said, “could eject Mars from the solar system.”

But in the worst-case scenario, Mercury and Earth could collide. The impact would destroy Earth even though our planet has about 20 times the mass of Mercury.

Thinking about “orbits going unstable adds a little spice of danger” to planetary science, Laughlin said. But there’s only about a 1 percent chance any of these situations will pan out in the next 5 billion years.

mage courtesy of Lynette Cook for the Gemini Observatory/AURA

Solar Slaughter

Even if the Earth dodges Mercury, the blue planet eventually will be turned into an oven by the sun, says NASA planetologist Chris McKay.

As the sun burns, the hydrogen in its core converts to helium by fusion, a process through which the nuclei of atoms meld together. Fusion produces a tremendous amount of heat. So as time passes, the 5 billion-year-old star gets hotter and brighter.

In about 1 billion years, scientists predict the sun will shine about 10 percent brighter than it does now. The extra energy will heat Earth to well over 200 F. The oceans will boil off, the climate will collapse and “any kind of real estate won’t be worth anything anymore,” said astrophysicist Klaus-Peter Schrœder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.

“We’ll have to look for a new planet."

Those who don’t want to leave home will have to hope that Schrœder’s colleague, astronomer Robert Smith of the University of Sussex, is right. Smith suggests scientists may be able to enlarge Earth’s orbit by manipulating asteroids visiting our solar system.

Shifting the path of these rocky passers-by so that they move in front of Earth should create a slight pull on the planet and help to speed it up. Earth’s quicker pace would make its orbit slightly larger. If done enough times over millions of years, Earth’s orbit could swell by about 5 percent, which would translate into about 10 percent less solar energy reaching our planet, Schrœder said.

That may only buy the planet time, however. In about 7 billion years, Schrœder says, the sun will bloat into a red giant, a much brighter and voluminous version of its current self.

“It will be so big that the Earth will be inside the sun,” McKay said.

In the meantime, unless Smith’s orbital expansion works out, Earth will almost certainly cook and steam under the sun’s powerful rays.

“Not that I’m a great believer, but credit needs to be given sometimes,” Schrœder quipped. “The Bible’s predictions that we’ll end up in an eternal fire are somewhat accurate.”

Image courtesy of American Museum of Natural History's space show "Journey to the Stars"

Full article at Wired.com

The Story of Data

2012-01-15T12:52:00.000-08:00

via

Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. Mankind created approximately 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. In 2010 it created 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits tåhat might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life. It has great potential for good—as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices about when to restrict the flow of data, and when to encourage it. _Big Data

Modern societies are desperately dependent upon their data processing infrastructure. Should something happen to bring down that infrastructure -- such as a massive EMP that knocked out power grids for a year or so -- people might find it difficult to adapt quickly to the change.

The Easy Path to Apocalypse: High Altitude EMP

2012-01-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

...what do you think would happen to society without power, water, food, and fuel? It’s not a pretty picture. People will begin dying off by the end of the first week, those without a minimal storage of water or those who live in regions where water is not immediately available to them. Desperation will result in a rampage of crime with hoards searching for food and water. Within several weeks, a complete civil breakdown will be underway as mass migration out of the major cities creates extremely dangerous conditions while people search for food, water, and supplies. _ModernSurvivalBlog

In addition to causing the immediate damage and failure of transformers, there is also evidence that GIC may be responsible for the onset of long-term damage to transformers and other key power grid assets. Damaged transformers require repair or replacement with new units. Currently most large transformers are manufactured in foreign countries and replacements would likely involve long production lead times in excess of a year. _EENews.net PDF

In excess of a year? After a year, it is estimated that as many of 90% of the residents of a high tech society would have lost their lives to the wide range of complications and repercussions of a long-term power outage.

EMP Commission Report 7MB PDF Download

An EMP attack is different since it only requires but one nuclear weapon, detonated 300 miles above the middle of the United States. One bomb. The launch could even be done from a container ship somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico and in that instant, the war is already over and won.

...The first few million deaths are tragically obvious. Those aboard commercial flights, and even most private flights, those in nursing homes, hospices, and hospitals. The next few million are obvious as well. Those with severe aliments requiring careful daily medication or treatment, such as those awaiting transplants, people undergoing dialysis, those with severe heart ailments both known and not yet realized.

...Our interstate highways will become nightmare paths of exile as our largely urban population tries to fan out to find food that once was shipped in. Millions could and will die on that road. Where do they get safe water? The nearby stream or river is now a dump for raw sewage since purification plants are off line.

...Within a month the next level of die off will be in full development. Those who survive the initial onset of illnesses from polluted water and food, and survive, will nevertheless be weakened, knock down a level...At what point do we begin to kill each other for food, water, shelter? At what point does a small town mobilize, barricade itself in and make clear that any who enter will be shot because there is not enough food to share

...By sixty days true starvation will be killing off millions and by 120 days mass starvation will be the norm. Those lucky enough to be in rich farm producing areas, with the knowledge of how to gather food by hand, and then preserve it, will have a temporary surplus, but even then, if they do not ration it out wisely, as did our colonial forefathers, they too will starve before the next crop is in the ground come spring... _Forstchen

Over 250 million North Americans are likely to die of various causes over the first 6 to 9 months, unless massive assistance arrives from the outside. But since the outside is likely to be at war with itself, how likely is North America to receive foreign aid? After all, it is usually North America that is the source of most foreign aid to the outside.

EENews.Net PDFDuring an overnight power blackout one hot July night in 1977 in New York City, dozens of city blocks were destroyed by fire, almost 2,000 stores were looted and vandalised, and most of the tragedy that occurred that short summer night will never be known. That is from one night without power in a modern city. Imagine 6 months to a year without power over most of an entire continent.

The map above focuses upon the most vulnerable areas in the US grid. But if advocates of the highly vulnerable smart grid have their way, the entire map will be the vulnerable area.

One reason that Al Fin Energy blog often focuses on decentralised production of power and fuels, is because of the enormous vulnerability of a massively interconnected system which has inadequate backups and a rapidly depleting supply of human capital which would be capable of instituting needed immediate repairs and workarounds.

You might think that having a lot of big solar electric plants and wind farms hooked to the grid would be helpful at such times. But no, they would make the situation even worse. Think about it a bit, and if you have any knowledge of the systems involved, you will see what I mean.

Where would the fatal strike arise? Most EMP activists are concerned about an attack from rogue states such as Iran or North Korea -- perhaps via an intermediary such as Venezuela, Cuba, or a ship-launched missile offshore. Al Fin analysts suspect that a more likely scenario involves a dual function space launch by the space services of an established space power such as China or Russia. With the simultaneous orbital placement of multiple satellites, a small yield nuclear device or two might wander off into the night to await subsequent orders to detonate in a particular orbital location. Or such a device might exist in conjunction with a conventional satellite that "fails", and is accepted as "space junk" until needed to fulfill its primary mission.

There a number of possible scenarios which would leave the target of the attack defenseless to stop the initiating event, the high altitude orbital EMP.

As the US falls more deeply into entitlement debt, makes itself more vulnerable to uneducable and unassimilable illegal immigrants, makes war on its own private sector business and commerce, cuts its defenses against foreign threat, shuts down its energy infrastructure due to faux environmental concerns, and moves closer to a catastrophic energy infrastructure of vulnerable "smart" grids paired with unreliable big wind and solar -- you may begin to see a society rotting from within. Such a society is not resilient to the type of attack and damage which is described in the links above.

Make your plans accordingly.

China's Super-Skylines of Doom?

2012-01-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

In a recent blog post, Brian Wang described a new mass-production method for building skyscrapers more quickly and efficiently that has been developed in China. China was already rapidly boosting the number of high-rises in its cities, even before this development. Now it seems likely that skyscrapers will be rising above Chinese cities more rapidly than ever. Is this a good thing for China, or does it portend the approach of an economic collapse for the celestial kingdom?

Amid the ongoing bubble watch in China’s real-estate sector, new research Wednesday showed the mainland is home to more than half of the world’s skyscrapers currently under construction.

Barclays Capital said that China is now flashing some of the telltale signs of a bubble on its Skyscraper Index, which is designed to track the correlation between tall buildings and an impending financial crisis.

Slightly over half of the 124 skyscrapers due to be completed in the next six years are in China, according to Barclays, which cited its own in-house research and website Skyscrapernews.

The construction binge will increase the number of skyscrapers in Chinese cities by 87% the report said, noting that the average height of buildings under construction is also increasing.

Barclays analysts said the frenzied activity in these lesser-known cities amounted to “evidence of the expanding building bubble,” adding that its Skyscraper index has acted as barometer of widespread misallocation of capital that can see instances of excesses dating back to before the Great Depression. _Marketwatch

Barclay's suggests that an economic collapse could occur in China as early as 5 years from now, if the past performance of "the skyscraper index" is any guide.

Here is more on the skyscraper index of doom from an article published on Al Fin almost one year ago:

Chinese government officials believe high-rises "show their progress in terms of urbanization and modernism," spur wider development by boosting investor confidence, and symbolize "a city's desire to become modern and international," says Chiow, a Chinese-American based in China for the past 15 years. _USAToday_via_ImpactLab

Lawrence showed that in almost all cases the initiation of construction of a new record-breaking skyscraper preceded major financial corrections and turmoil in economic institutions. Generally, the skyscraper project is announced and construction is begun during the late phase of the boom in the business cycle; when the economy is growing and unemployment is low. This is then followed by a sharp downturn in financial markets, economic recession or depression, and significant increases in unemployment. The skyscraper is then completed during the early phase of the economic correction, unless that correction was revealed early enough to delay or scrap plans for construction. For example, the Chrysler Building in New York was conceived and designed in 1928 and the groundbreaking ceremony was conducted on September 19, 1928. "Black Tuesday" occurred on October 29, 1929, marking the beginning of the Great Depression. Opening ceremonies for the Chrysler Building occurred on May 28, 1930, making it the tallest building in the world. _Mises

Table 1: World's Tallest Buildings

Completed	Building	Location	Height	Stories	Economic Crisis
1908	Singer	New York	612 ft.	48	Panic of 1907
1909	Metropolitan Life	New York	700 ft.	50	Panic of 1907
1912	Woolworth	New York	792 ft.	57	——
1929	40 Wall Street	New York	927 ft.	71	Great Depression
1930	Chrysler	New York	1,046 ft.	77	Great Depression
1931	Empire State	New York	1,250 ft.	102	Great Depression
1972/73	World Trade Center	New York	1,368 ft.	110	1970s stagflation
1974	Sears Tower	Chicago	1,450 ft.	110	1970s stagflation
1997	Petronas Tower	Kuala Lumpur	1,483 ft.	88	East Asian
2012	Shanghai	Shanghai	1,509 ft.	94	China?

If large buildings are constructed due to high utilisation and strong demand for space, they can be very profitable over their lifetimes. But if a skyscraper is constructed as a symbol or monument to the "greatness of a nation's political structure," the building may remain the empty prayer of a cargo cult.
China is building 44% of the 50 skyscrapers to be completed worldwide in the next six years, increasing the number of skyscrapers in Chinese cities by over 50%, says Andrew Lawrence, an Asian property analyst at investment bank Barclays Capital.

China is already host to six of the 15 tallest, completed buildings in the world, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

..."The appetite in China for high-rises, in the last five years and the next five, is bigger than ever before in the history of building," says Silas Chiow, China director for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the U.S. architectural firm, founded in Chicago, responsible for the Burj Khalifa.

The firm is currently engaged in 50 China projects, including the tallest buildings in eight separate cities.

Chinese government officials believe high-rises "show their progress in terms of urbanization and modernism," spur wider development by boosting investor confidence, and symbolize "a city's desire to become modern and international," says Chiow, a Chinese-American based in China for the past 15 years. _USAToday_via_ImpactLab

China is already full of "ghost cities," "ghost housing projects," "ghost office complexes," and "ghost shopping malls."

There is no denying the huge number of people living in China -- many of whom could use better and larger living and working space. But the economic structure of Communist Chinese society is rife with the mal-allocation of resources and enterprise. Corruption permeates the culture, driving much of the "road to nowhere" construction frenzy. Too much of the GDP-inflating construction is of a shoddy nature -- certain to collapse far sooner than projected lifetimes suggest.

Will the "Skyscraper Index" prove prophetic for Potemkin China of the cargo cult, or will the middle kingdom defy the curse of the world's tallest buildings?

More on skyscraper index:
From Mises.org
From CNN here and here

China's empty skyscrapers and office buildings

Amazing satellite images of some of China's ghost cities

World's loneliest shopping mall

More: And just in case you are still thinking that China may be ready to lead the world, perhaps you should think again:

We hear constantly how China's economy has "leapfrogged" other nations and now ranks third in the world — still behind the U.S. — with a total GDP of $3.3 trillion. The truth is more complex.

China has 1.3 billion people. So you're spreading that economy among one-sixth of the world's humanity. As the chart shows, China's economy on a per-person basis — the real measure of success — doesn't even come close to ours. The average American produces over $42,000 a year in goods and services; the average Chinese produces $2,800. That's an enormous gap in productivity.

Moreover, in its recent rankings of economic freedom, the Heritage Foundation put China 135th out of 179 countries. The U.S., even with all its current problems, ranks ninth. Who's the leader?

Citizens in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai live a privileged existence, well-documented by the Western media. Deep inside rural China, however, hundreds of millions live in near-absolute poverty. This isn't a country ready for global economic leadership.

China's economic success has been driven by mercantilist policy of beggaring its own people in the interest of building up massive trade surpluses. Its foreign currency holdings now total $2.9 trillion, and most of that is in U.S. Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets. That's China's hole-card in talks with the U.S. _IBD

End of Al Fin article from Jan 2011

China's ongoing construction boom may be evidence of an economic bubble getting ready to burst. Or it may be possible that China is wealthy enough to be able to afford this massive misallocation of resources into an "infrastructure to nowhere," and not pay a significant price. Time will tell.

Guerilla Grafting: Turning Ordinary Trees into Fruit Bearing Trees

2012-01-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

There is no reason for anyone living in a temperate or tropical climate to go hungry. Life is ubiquitous on the planet's surface. And it is getting easier to program non-food bio-life into food. This story is about something more ordinary and less futuristic than genetic programming, although in the near future it will be possible to program plants to make just about anything you might want, in the way of food or chemistry.

In San Francisco, a group of renegade agriculturalists called Guerrilla Grafters are...grafting fruit-bearing branches onto public trees that otherwise don’t bear fruit. The group has created a web app to help locals find trees that might be good candidates for a new, fruit-bearing branches and provides tips on how to pull off a successful grafting. They also have a Facebook page where they report on upcoming events and track the progress of their cherry and pear grafts.

...What makes them guerrillas is the fact that this grafting is illegal. As the group’s Tara Hui explains, “people think of fruit trees as kind of a nuisance.” That’s both because of the mess they might create in the form of rotten fruit and the vermin they might attract in the form of rats. Depending on the species you’re using, grafting might also run afoul of patent law. The Guerrilla Grafters address the first two problems by making sure each grafted tree has a “steward” who can monitor and take care of it.

Guerrilla grafting might be seen as another branch (ahem) of a diverse and burgeoning movement to bring nature--and its bounty--into the urban environment. The practice of guerrilla gardening (first popularized, perhaps, by a certain John “Appleseed” Chapman in Ohio in the late 18th and early 19th centuries) has attracted a lot of media attention in the last five years, and local organizations have proliferated. The related ideas of urban gleaning, urban agriculture, urban aquaculture, and vertical farming also seem to be gaining momentum. _Fast Coexist

Here is a useful tutorial on fruit tree grafting from the University of Minnesota extension

Guerilla grafting is just a variation on guerilla permaculture. Permaculture is the process of converting ordinary environments into ubiquitous, aesthetically pleasing gardens. With healthy food always at our fingertips, why go hungry?

Bathed in the Glow of Bacterial Light

2011-12-29T12:18:00.001-08:00

Scientists are becoming more clever at manipulating microbes to perform basic tasks. In this story, bacteria were taught to glow in synchrony, with the aim of creating microbial sensors to detect toxic gases. Similar technologies will soon be used to tweak microbes into producing valuable chemicals and fuels, and much more.

UCSD scientists have trained E. Coli bacteria to glow in synchrony, like a light chorus. The synchrony arises when colonies of bacteria on microfluidic chips communicate via gas channels. More:Their achievement, detailed in this week’s advance online issue of the journal Nature, involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of the bacteria, synchronizing the clocks of the thousands of bacteria within a colony, then synchronizing thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison.

...Using the same method to create the flashing signs, the researchers engineered a simple bacterial sensor capable of detecting low levels of arsenic. In this biological sensor, decreases in the frequency of the oscillations of the cells’ blinking pattern indicate the presence and amount of the arsenic poison.

Because bacteria are sensitive to many kinds of environmental pollutants and organisms, the scientists believe this approach could be also used to design low cost bacterial biosensors capable of detecting an array of heavy metal pollutants and disease-causing organisms. And because the senor is composed of living organisms, it can respond to changes in the presence or amount of the toxins over time unlike many chemical sensors.

...Hasty said he believes that within five years, a small hand-held sensor could be developed that would take readings of the oscillations from the bacteria on disposable microfluidic chips to determine the presence and concentrations of various toxic substances and disease-causing organisms in the field. _UCSD
"This development illustrates how basic, quantitative knowledge of cellular circuitry can be applied to the new discipline of synthetic biology," said James Anderson at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, in a university statement.

The new chips can be used for the production of biochemicals, tissue engineering, and biosensors that continually monitor the environment, rather than offer a one-off test that must be replaced every time new readings are needed. Besides the obvious practical uses, the sensors offer good aesthetics: The new "biopixels" come in beautiful shades of blue. _FastCoexist
Imagine if all the microbes in the world were to glow in the dark. Should that happen, humans might begin to comprehend the real inhabitants of Earth, in terms of number and mass. At that point, these slightly advanced apes might begin to understand the promise of bio-technologies.

First published at Al Fin Energy

Lighter than Air Craft for Orbital and Sub-Orbital Duty

2011-12-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

The above vision for lighter than air-to-orbit, from JP Aerospace, has been circulating for 7 or 8 years now.

So far, the closest that JPAerospace has come to slipping the surly bonds of Earth, was with its Tandem balloon aircraft, which reached an altitude of 18 miles recently. Not so bad for a $30,000 project.

This is the JPAerospace Tandem launch, seen from multiple camera angles. The view from space is tacked on to the end of the video.

To become a reality, JPAerospace's "city in space" and lighter than air orbital launch, will need some big money backing. The US defense establishment is developing lighter than air observation platforms to be based at the edge of space, but there is no indication that the Pentagon wants to achieve orbit using lighter-than-air craft.

Spanish company Zero2Infinity is developing a lighter-than-air sub-orbital tourism concept, called inbloon. The goal is to take tourists to the edge of space inside a pressurised capsule, and allow them to stay there for almost 2 hours, appreciating the splendour of the planet below.
Zero2Infinity, based in Barcelona, Spain, hopes to start taking people up to near-space as early as 2013. Balloons cannot go as high as rockets, but in theory at least they should be far safer, since passengers won't be sitting on tonnes of explosives. Their environmental impact is also far lower than that of smoke-belching rockets.

López-Urdiales was inspired by his father, an atmospheric physicist who was involved in sending probes to Titan and Mars. "I've always seen him working, seen all the excitement of years of work going into a flight. That's what got me excited about space in general," he says. Then, in 2000, his father told him about how the Huygens probe that explored Titan was tested by dropping a prototype from a balloon around 40 kilometres up. "After our conversation, I thought if there's going to be space tourism, then let's try this way," he says.

There is no doubt that it is possible, because it has been done many times before. In the 1950s and 1960s, more than a dozen crewed balloons journeyed to near-space. In 1957, for instance, Joe Kittinger of the US air force ascended to a height of 29 kilometres in a capsule attached to a helium balloon. He enjoyed the ride so much that when ordered to descend, he replied: "Come and get me."

Zero2Infinity hopes to spread that joy to the civilian population. The company has carried out several test flights of uncrewed balloons, and earlier this year got the funding needed to carry out its first flight carrying people.

The plan is to use a massive helium "bloon", as the company likes to call it, to carry a pressurised capsule with space for two pilots and two passengers up to 34 kilometres above the Earth. You can book now - but at €110,000 per ticket, you'll need a little spare cash. _NewScientist

The video below juxtaposes the plans of Richard Branson's suborbital space tourism flights via rocket, beside the "inbloon" lighter than air suborbital tourism concept.

Bali Corals Shocked Back to Life After Cyanide Poisoning

2011-12-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

"I was devastated. Basically, all the corals were dead. It was gravel and sand," Rani recalled.

But when German architect and marine scientist Wolf Hilbertz told her about a discovery he had made in the 1970s, the diver's ears pricked up. _Discovery

Discovery
The story talks about how corals were killed by cyanide poisoning and dynamite fishing. It also claims that warming oceans were just as bad as cyanide and dynamite! Anything for a holy cause, even deceitful reporting?
Hilbertz had sought to "grow" construction materials in the sea, and had done so by submerging a metallic structure and connecting it to an electric current with a weak and thus harmless voltage.

...When he tested out his invention in Louisiana in the United States, Hilbertz saw that after a few months oysters progressively covered the whole structure, and colonized the collected limestone.

More experiments were carried out and the same phenomenon was confirmed for corals.

"Corals grow 2-6 times faster. We are able to grow back reefs in a few years," Thomas J. Goreau, a Jamaican marine biologist and biogeochemist, told AFP.

Goreau began working with Hilbertz in the mid-1980s to develop Biorock technology, and he has continued their work since Hilbertz's death four years ago.

When Rani saw the discovery, it gave her an idea for how she might save "her" bay.

She decided to expand the project to 22 structures using her own money with the help of Taman Sari, the holiday resort in front of the coral restoration project.

...Today there are around sixty of these "cages" in Pemuteran bay, across a surface of two hectares, and the reef has not only been saved from near-death, it is flourishing better than ever before.

"Now we've got a better coral garden than we used to have," said Rani.

Biorock not only revives the corals but it makes them more resistant... _Discovery
Of course, cyanide and dynamite -- not to mention storms and tourists -- are quite hard on a reef. It is wonderful to find a mild remedy for a harsh problem.

But for reporters to claim that the fluctuating ocean temperatures are killing reefs -- reefs which evolved to survive in a wide range of temperatures and dissolved CO2 levels -- is pure dishonesty and political activism.

It is time for science reporters to come clean, and to report science news honestly and in a balanced fashion. The current crop of science journalists too often come across as just plain incompetent.

Two of the Last Rough Men: Videos of Proenneke and Korth

2011-12-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

Dick Proenneke http://www.talkingcircletv.com/flash/videos/DickProenecke.swf (via Evenfall Woodworks)

Dick Proenneke learned many practical skills during his childhood in Idaho, his time in the Navy, his schooling as a diesel mechanic, his work on a sheep ranch in Oregon, and his life as a skilled mechanic and salmon fisherman in Kodiak and King Salmon, Alaska. He put those practical skills to good use in the 30 years he lived alone in the Twin Lakes, Alaska, wilderness.

Dick Proenneke Alone in the Wilderness

Dick Proenneke Alone in the Wilderness Part II

Dick Proenneke The Frozen North

This video documents a week in the life of Heimo and Edna Korth. Heimo Korth is "The Final Frontiersman." He and his wife Edna are the last legal full time residents of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They move between three cabins every year, so as not to deplete the game as they trap and hunt for a living. (more here)

It is interesting to draw parallels between the lives of Richard Proenneke and Heimo Korth. Both moved far away from civilisation, deep into the Alaskan Wilderness. Both men thrived in the wild, despite the many hardships and challenges.

While Proenneke chose the solitary life, and Korth chose to raise a family in the far North, both men chose to challenge themselves to the utmost.

Previously published at Al Fin, the Next Level

Live Out the Zombie Apocalypse in Remote Survival Pod

2011-12-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

Image Source
This unique mountain survival retreat is made by the Leap Factory, and was placed in the French Alps by helicopter. It is almost impossible for zombies to access this retreat, and any who survive to reach your altitude can be easily dispatched by a dull axe or rusty sword.

Image Source
LEAPfactory’s Gervasutti refuge represents the pinnacle of the Italian firm’s achievement. LEAP refers to Living, Ecological, Alpine Pods, their speciality, and their latest pod is also one of their greatest. It has 6 contact points with the ground and weighs 5,500 pounds, while the elongated shape creates nearly 100 square feet of hi-comfort interior space that sleeps up to 12 people.

Everything – from the exterior shell to the interior fittings – is modular so that when the time comes, the refuge can be relocated elsewhere. The solar panels installed on the roof produce 2.5 Kwh of solar energy – making it completely self-sufficient – and it only took two days to install. This truly is a remarkable achievement in modular design… now we just have to get there! _Inhabitat
But the whole reason for this remote survival retreat is that it is difficult to reach -- for normal humans as well as zombies.

You see, if you find yourself among a group of humans that is confronted by a hungry polar bear, you do not have to be faster than the bear -- you merely need to be faster than at least one of the humans.

The same principle applies to zombies. Choose your perch wisely.

Stage Your Own Rapid Beach Invasion With the Iguana 29

2011-12-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

...the Iguana 29 is suited more for the water. It’s a 29-foot speed boat with a 35-knot top speed over water and seating capacity for up to ten. But closer to land it can deploy retractable caterpillar tracks that can carry it across dry ground at up to five miles per hour. _PopSci

PopSci
Now there is no need to call in the marines when planning a limited beach invasion. The Iguana 29 is an amphibious vehicle that seats up to 10 weekend commandos for quick and easy in and out raids on your favourite beach locations. Retractable tracks are always at the ready for all terrain landings -- just like the marines.
It’s cool because, at least by all appearances (and you can see it make the water/land transition in the video below) its tank-style treads are actually decent at negotiating off-road terrain. In the kinds of environments where an amphibious vehicle actually makes sense--a beach during low tide, a sandbar in shallow water, etc.--the Iguana looks right at home. It lacks the complexity of something like a hovercraft (remember that brief period where we all thought we were going to own hovercraft?) and the bulky slowness of one of those duck boats you see driving around Boston or Key West or wherever tourists go on those amphibious tours.
In other words, it’s less an “amphibious vehicle” and more a decent watercraft that can effectively handle dry land conditions when necessary--ostensibly a pretty good thing to have around if you’re living in an area with wildly varying tidal conditions or doing a lot of island hopping or cross-bay traversing. And all you need is $290,000 to get on board. _PopSci

Korea to Adopt Robotic Prison Guards

2011-11-26T14:26:00.000-08:00

In a break from tradition, the Korean Ministry of Justice intends to replace some of its human prison guards with robot guardians. The robots are designed to patrol up and down prison corridors, to monitor conditions and alert authorities of any violent activity among inmates.

The robots are designed to patrol the corridors of corrective institutions, monitoring conditions inside the cells. If they detect sudden or unusual activity such as violent behavior they alert human guards.

“Unlike CCTV that just monitors cells through screens, the robots are programmed to analyze various activities of those in prison and identify abnormal behavior,” Prof. Lee Baik-chul of Kyonggi University...

...According to Mr. Lee, prison officers have welcomed the idea because the robots can potentially reduce their workload, particularly at night.

And how about the reaction of inmates?

“That’s a concern. _WSJ
Professor Lee denies that the robots are to be seen "terminators," and insists that his team plans to give the robots a humane appearance so as to increase trust on the part of inmates.

It is at least hoped that the ~~terminator~~ robotic guards will be less prone to being corrupted by bribes and payoffs from prisoners, which is a real problem in some locales -- particularly in women's prisons, where sex is often offered for special favours and for the passage of certain contraband items and messages in and out of the prison.

One Tool for Both Hunting and Fishing -- The Gun Rod

2011-11-21T19:58:00.000-08:00

Dvice
Never leave home without it. A fishing rod that converts into a rifle, or a rifle that converts into a fishing rod. Either way, you should be able to supply the protein needs for yourself and perhaps a small band of fellow survivalists.
Survivalists around the country are rejoicing at the release of the carbon fiber and aluminum rifle fishing rod combined into one handy device. We know. Why didn't anyone think of this useful combination before?

This new lightweight .22 caliber single-shot bolt-action rifle comes has a grip that doubles as a fishing rod when you screw in its reel. Add the telescoping rod and you are in business.

Completely waterproof, the rifle breaks down into two pieces, which can easily be stowed...

...Mountain View Machine and Welding sells the rifle fishing rod for $425... _Dvice

Pack-Rifle website

Women: This Is Your Brain On Sex!

2011-11-17T09:49:00.000-08:00

Video Credit: The Visual MD via Guardian

As the animation plays, activity first builds up in the genital area of the sensory cortex, a response to being touched in that region. Activity then spreads to the limbic system, a collection of brain structures involved in emotions and long-term memory.

As the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up in two parts of the brain called the cerebellum and the frontal cortex, perhaps because of greater muscle tension. During orgasm, activity reaches a peak in the hypothalamus, which releases a chemical called oxytocin that causes pleasurable sensations and stimulates the uterus to contract. Activity also peaks in the nucleus accumbens, an area linked to reward and pleasure.

After orgasm, the activity in all these regions gradually calms down.

...In a new technique being developed by Komisaruk, people inside the scanner can see their own brain activity on a screen almost instantaneously. Through this "neurobiofeedback", Komisaruk speculates that people might be able to learn how to change their brain activity, a feat that could perhaps help treat a broad range of conditions, such as anxiety, depression and pain. _Guardian

An interesting form of neurofeedback indeed. We must all wish Komisaruk good luck in reaching his research goals.

Of course not everyone can take an MRI scanner to bed with them for purposes of intensifying their orgasms, via neurofeedback. Fortunately, new applications for Apple's iPad device will allow persons to use the handheld as an EEG neurofeedback system. Although the neurofeedback app is still in the lab, other biofeedback apps are available from itunes. For those who want to learn more about neurofeedback, here is a podcast on real time EEG neurofeedback.

Of course it is the sexual partner who actually needs reliable feedback on the state of his partner's pleasure. But we do not want to become slaves to "the standard orgasm." There are all kinds of orgasms, after all. There is no need for some psychologist or other self-proclaimed expert to tell us what we should be doing.

Just help us open the doors of perception and we will do the rest.

Cross-posted from Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!

China's Version of Disneyland: Ghost Amusement Park

2011-11-15T11:10:00.000-08:00

All Images via Atlantic
China is full of ghost shopping malls, ghost office buildings -- even entire ghost cities in the middle of nowhere. But perhaps the spookiest Chinese ghost property of all, is the ghost "Disneyland," begun in 1998, and crumbling away ever since in a wasteland.

Construction on Wonderland began in 1998 with the intention of building the largest amusement park in Asia. The project was scrapped after funding was withdrawn and the developers and the local farmers could not come to terms over ownership of the land. This past year, UK-based photographer Catherine Hyland braved the harsh land to capture the crumbling park, which has been reclaimed by nearby villagers who regularly tend to the grounds.

Hyland’s images reveal a strange landscape of half-built structures amid corn fields and cracked pavement. The park is strewn with fragments of anachronistic landmarks, anchored by an unfinished fairytale castle whose inchoate construction dissolves into the smog. Had it all been completed, Wonderland may have rivaled Disneyland, with undoubtedly larger crowds and plenty of in the way of spectacle but few genuinely new experiences. In its ruinous state, however, it offers something much more rare but infinitely more interesting. _Atlantic

Interesting? In a morbid way, perhaps. Certainly an excellent example of top-down planning and central command economics.

Wonderland from catherine Hyland on Vimeo.

Burt Rutan Is Up to Something Again

2011-11-13T07:27:00.000-08:00

Burt Rutan is one of the few winners of the coveted "Al Fin Portrait of Competence Award." When such a person retires from his day job, he is not likely to sit around twiddling his thumbs. There are rumours that Burt Rutan is working on a new design for a flying boat.

There’s been plenty of speculation within the aviation world about whether Rutan would stop designing airplanes now that he’s retired from Scaled Composites. Imaginative and prolific, Rutan has been at the leading edge of aerospace design since the 1970s, and few thought he would simply play golf all the time. True to form, Rutan is working on a new aircraft design.

Rutan is famously secretive about designs that have yet to fly, though now that he is “retired” he is letting out a few more details than usual. The engineer told the Experimental Aviation Association he is tinkering with a design influenced to some extent by the lakes and rivers of Idaho, where he now lives after spending more than 40 years in the Mojave Desert. He also mentioned being influenced by the unusual Russian air/watercraft, like the MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan, he saw shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.

...What Rutan did say is he hopes to design a very efficient winged boat that could be used on a major body of water like Lake Coeur d’Alene and converted into a seaplane to navigate the small lakes and rivers nearby. There are a few other designs out there that use ground effect to “fly” just above the surface of the water, but no one’s seen anything like the design — known simply as 372-3 — Rutan is hinting at. _Wired

Coeur d'Alene is certainly a beautiful lake, but Al Fin prefers Pend d'Oreille, and points north. Regardless, if one has a flying boat, his selection of lakes, rivers, bays, coves, inlets, estuaries, and lagoons becomes quite enlarged.

Rutan is not likely to be wasting his time. Whether he emerges from his present project with a salable product or not, he is likely to be learning a great deal. What a pity that it could not be easier to transfer lessons learned -- and the motivation to learn them -- from one person to another.

Cross-posted to Al Fin blog

Image Source

Reinventing the Wheel

2011-11-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

The Omni-Crawler takes the tracked crawler in any direction. Watch the video above to get some new ideas for all terrain vehicles. More here.

The following images come from the LA Auto Show's Design Challenge. It is easier to detect the unique wheel / tire design for some models than for others.

This Honda has been dubbed "the intelligent horse." With the right gearing, shock absorbers, and wheel extensions, you might go almost anywhere a horse could go.

This Benz design features an omni-directional wheel design that we have previously seen on current model fork lift machines. It is still quite clever.

This non-pneumatic tire design appears to incorporate hundreds of miniature shock absorbing devices, to achieve firm support and grip on the road.

The ideal all-terrain craft would combine useful and imaginative wheel or track designs with hovercraft features, and the ability to float at rest on a liquid surface.

Faster than a $20 Hooker and Twice as Much Fun?

2011-11-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

The X2 is an experimental helicopter being developed by Sikorsky, an American company, at a test-flight centre in Florida. It recently flew at more than 430kph (267mph), according to a report in Spectrum, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. _Economist

ImageSource

Sikorsky's X2 experimental prototype is being developed in order to bring speed to the commercial helicopter industry. The X2 has already flown faster than the official speed record for helicopters, but not officially.
To make an official attempt on the record, Sikorsky will need to have the flight monitored by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which compiles airspeed records. But that is unlikely to happen until the X2 is going even faster. Later this year, Sikorsky hopes it will be zipping along at more than 460kph. The company, however, is interested in more than just breaking speed records. It plans to use the technology developed for the X2 in commercial helicopters.

...it uses two counter-rotating rotors that spin around the same axis, one positioned above the other. So in forward flight each rotor can produce an equal amount of lift on each side, thus providing balance. The idea has been around for some time, but it proved difficult to make it work properly.

What has changed are technological advances in aircraft engineering and control systems. Now, vibrations can be reduced using “active control”, which involves placing sensors around the helicopter to detect the onset of vibration and then using force generators on various parts of the frame to vibrate in such a way that they cancel out the original tremors. Advanced computer modelling has also made it possible to design more efficient rotors. A pusher propeller has been fitted at the rear of the X2 to provide extra oomph. According to the engineers, this propeller can also be used to slow the helicopter snappily. And computerised “fly-by-wire” controls allow the X2 to be flown relatively easily.

Sikorsky reckons that future helicopters built using the X2 technology would be extremely versatile machines. They would dash to and from a medical emergency a lot faster. They would also be very agile in flight, which would increase their capabilities in combat. Sikorsky has already produced a simulator so that potential customers can experience what these fast helicopters will be like to fly. Plenty of whirlybird pilots will be keen to get their hands on the real thing. _Economist

The Sikorsky X2 is competing against the Eurocopter for bragging rights:The X3 has so far only flown once, in a 35-minute flight that tested its hovering behaviour and Billig says it performed as designed. It won't be going for any high speed attempts until late 2011, but they are initially aiming to bust 400 km/h.

Sikorsky is already well on the way to achieving its speed aim of over 500 km/h. In a test flight in September, the X2 unofficially broke the previous record of 400 km/h, which was set by the Westland Lynx in 1986. The X2 achieved 463 km/h, but due to its propellers, it is unclear if the craft will be recognised in the same category by the FAI, the world's air sports federation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, that oversees aviation records. _BrianWang

EurocopterX3

Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft provide crucial functionality for both military and civilian applications. The race for more speed and maneuverability is likely to continue for some time.

And then there is the race to build a flying car for military use.

DangerRoom

DARPA aims to power its flying humvee with a diesel engine, giving it extra range.
According to a company statement, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne are going to model the Transformer engine on their EnduroCORE, a diesel engine that generates a “high power-to-weight ratio comparable to gas turbines.” It’ll need to. Darpa’s specifications for the flying Humvee require the Transformer to stay in the air carrying up to 1000 pounds for up to 250 miles without refueling. Diesel’s energy efficiency apparently satisfied Darpa’s suggestion that the Transformer be at least somewhat green. _DangerRoom
Combining land travel with VTOL capability in the same vehicle makes sense for military and expedition-type enterprises. Land travel uses much less fuel, and allows you to take advantage of land-based fuel caches which may not be accessible directly by air. Being able to hop over rivers, canyons, and other obstacles expedites progress toward an objective.

The advantage of a craft that combines the ability to fly, to travel over the surface of water, and to travel over all terrain land surfaces should also be obvious to any would-be Galtist or survivalist.

H/T Bruce Hall

Cheap Thrills: Journey to 95,000 feet by Airship

2011-11-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

If you had to fly to an elevation of 95,000 feet, how would you go? One of the least expensive methods would have to be via two-balloon airship, as demonstrated by this team from California:Remotely controlled from the ground, the all-volunteer group's Tandem twin-balloon airship reportedly ascended to an altitude of 95,085 feet (28,982 meters). That's almost four miles (6.4 km) higher than any airship has gone before. _Gizmag

The aircraft used in last month's flight weighed 80 pounds (36.3 kg), including its balloons. As is the plan for all Tandems, it gained altitude using the lift of its balloons only. After making its way through turbulence from 40,000 to 60,000 feet (12,192 to 18,288 meters), the airship eventually reached its cruising altitude, at which point its motors were remotely turned on. A pilot on the ground then guided it through a series of maneuvers until eventually one balloon burst, at which point the other balloon was intentionally released, and the airship drifted back to the ground with the help of five parachutes.

"The big aerospace firms have been trying to do this for decades, spending hundreds of millions of dollars," said John Powell, President of JP Aerospace. "We've spent about $30,000 and the past five years developing Tandem." _Gizmag

The Tandem is intended to function as a workhorse aircraft. It could serve as a launch platform for small research rockets, and perform various duties for JP's proposed Airship to Orbit program, in which large V-shaped airships would travel from Earth's upper atmosphere into space. _Gizmag

All images via gizmag

The Evolution of New Human Species: Upward and Outward

2011-10-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

...one of [Enriquez'] most revolutionary ideas, which he discuses in the book New Human Species, is the expected evolution of a new hominid species in near future. The homo evolutis, which he said he speculates will be the most adapted hominid, endowed with tremendous mental capabilities, he said, “Twenty thousand species have gone around and become extinct,” Enriquez said. “I believe that we’re going to move into a homo evolutis, and our grandchildren will begin to live it.”

What will set apart this hominid from us, he said, is what he labeled “the ultimate reboot.”

“This hominid could take direct control of his species, this species and other species, and that of course, would be the ultimate reboot,” he said. _globalist

Evolution of Man
Juan Enriquez is an author visionary of life technologies, and a venture capitalist. He founded Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project, and has worked with Craig Venter on a number of projects. So when Juan Enriquez says that humans are evolving a new species, he is likely to have good reason for saying so.
What does it take to make a new species?

We're beginning to see that it's an accumulation of small changes. Scientists have recently been able to compare the genomes of Neandertals and modern humans, which reveals just a .004 percent difference. Most of those changes lie in genes involved in sperm, testes, smell, and skin.

Engineering microbes alone might speciate us. When you apply sequencing technology to the microbes inhabiting the human body, it turns out to be fascinating. All of us are symbionts; we have 1,000 times more microbial cells in our bodies than human cells. You couldn't possible digest or live without the microbial cells inside your stomach. Some people have microbes that are better at absorbing calories. Diabetics have a slightly sweeter skin, which changes the microbial fauna and makes it harder for them to cauterize wounds.

One concern about human enhancement is that only some people will have access, creating an even greater economic divide. Do you think this will be the case?

In the industrial revolution, it took a lifetime to build enough industry to double the wealth of a country. In the knowledge revolution, you can build billion-dollar companies with 20 people very quickly. The implication is that you can double the wealth of a country very quickly. In Korea in 1975, people had one-fifth of the income of Mexicans, and today they have five times more. Even the poorest places can generate wealth quickly. You see this in Bangalore, China. On the flip side, you can also become irrelevant very quickly.

Scientists are on the verge of sequencing 10,000 human genomes. You point out this might highlight significant variation among our species, and that this requires some ethical consideration. Why?

The issue of [genetic variation] is a really uncomfortable question, one that for good reason, we have been avoiding since the 1930s and '40s. A lot of the research behind the eugenics movement came out of elite universities in the U.S. It was disastrously misapplied. But you do have to ask, if there are fundamental differences in species like dogs and horses and birds, is it true that there are no significant differences between humans? We are going to have an answer to that question very quickly. If we do, we need to think through an ethical, moral framework to think about questions that go way beyond science. _TechnologyReview_Juan Enriquez

The video above gives you an idea of how Enriquez expresses his ideas to the public, and reveals some of the things that he thinks about.

His ideas about the evolution of a new human species -- and the great need for humans to face the important genetic differences between different populations of humans -- sets him apart from ivory tower academics, politicians, and media skanks. In his day job, he has to think clearly and make good decisions -- unlike academics, politicians, and journalists, who rarely have to pay for their own mistaken thought processes.

When a venture capitalist makes decisions involving large sums of money, he cannot afford to wallow in political correctness, affirmative action, groupthink, or other modern dysfunctional aberrations of thought. He must be honest with himself and with his backers. In this case, it is likely that Enriquez is being honest with the public, based upon his intimate association with advanced biotechnological projects.

But something that not even Enriquez may be willing to say publicly, is that not all humans population groups will evolve in what is seen as a favourable direction. New genes are evolving and affecting the human brain, but not all population groups are sharing equally in the benefits of these changes.

The evolutionary history of Ashkenazi Jews is a useful, small-scale illustration of what is happening. These Jews of European descent possess the highest average IQ of any distinct population group known. This difference can be seen in terms of accomplishment at the highest levels of science, math, and other areas of scholarship and life achievement. This group has paid a price for this advantage, in terms of inherited disease. But for the group as a whole, the tradeoff appears to have been worth it.

As humans get better at tweaking the genome and epigenome, they should learn better how to acquire more of the advantages of superior adaptation without too many of the disadvantages. Then slowly, but surely, perhaps over dozens, or even hundreds of years, new human species will diverge from older human species.

To many people, this idea of diverging coexisting human species is a new one. To others, not so much. Anyone who has deliberated over the difference between the accomplishments of Australian aboriginals and the descendants of the English transportees to Australia, must have considered the possibility of divergent evolution.

As Enriquez points out, it is critical for humans at this juncture in time to be honest about our broad genetic heritage -- and what this breadth means in terms of aptitudes and behaviours. And what it means for our future selves.

Previously published on Al Fin blog

Bringing Down the Cost of Space Launch w/ Reusable Spacecraft

2011-10-26T20:25:00.001-07:00

SpaceX Reusable Rocket (TechnologyReview)
Imagine how much it would cost to fly from San Francisco to London if the airlines had to destroy every airliner after each use. But that is the same basic logic that is used for space launch, where spacecraft typically do not survive the journey, requiring a new craft to be built for each trip. But what if you could re-use all parts of your craft, with rapid turnover between launches. Shouldn't that bring down the cost of space exploration and development?
NASA's space shuttle is the only orbital reusable launch vehicle that's flown to date, and it was retired this summer after falling far short of its original goals to launch frequently and inexpensively—the agency projected it would fly up to 50 missions per year at an operating cost of $10.5 million per flight. It turned out that the shuttles flew less than five times per year at an operating cost 20 times that.

SpaceX's approach is to convert the two stages of the Falcon 9 rocket into independent vehicles capable of making return landings at their launch site. The first stage, after separating from the rest of the rocket, would fire its engines to guide itself back to the launch site, extending a set of legs from its base to land vertically. The upper stage, outfitted with the heat shield that SpaceX developed for its Dragon spacecraft, which was designed to transport cargo and eventually crews to and from the space station, would reenter after deploying its payload in space. It would also use its engine for a powered vertical landing.

Musk is backing up his speech with development work. SpaceX has been quietly building an experimental vehicle called Grasshopper to test the vertical landing technology. Grasshopper is a Falcon 9 first stage outfitted with a single engine and landing legs to allow it to take off and land vertically.

...SpaceX is not the only company actively working on an orbital reusable launch vehicle. Blue Origin, the secretive aerospace company founded by Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, has NASA funding to mature the design of a space vehicle that could be launched on existing expendable rockets, such as the Atlas V. Eventually, though, Blue Origin plans to replace the Atlas with its own reusable orbital launch vehicle, and is using part of the $22 million Commercial Crew Development award it received from NASA earlier this year to work on an engine for that rocket.

"We intend to fly our own Blue Origin reusable launch vehicles that will take [our] space vehicle up and make that system much more affordable," said Rob Meyerson, program manager at Blue Origin, at AIAA Space 2011. The company has not disclosed development schedules or other technical details about its planned vehicle. However, the support the company has from NASA, coupled with the financial backing provided by Bezos, makes the company's effort worth watching.

This is not the first time companies have shown an interest in building reusable launch vehicles. In the late 1990s, several companies, including Kistler Aerospace and Rotary Rocket Company, had ambitious plans for orbital reusable launch vehicles, but their projects never materialized.

What's the difference this time around? Charles Lurio, a space industry consultant and publisher of The Lurio Report newsletter, says current companies have made more progress than earlier firms, including building and flying hardware. "They have a fair shot at making it work," he says, "but nothing's guaranteed." _TechnologyReview
Originally published on Al Fin, the Next Level

Escaping the Zombie Zone by Air

2011-10-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

Zombie Safe House Contest
The above entry in the "Zombie Safe House Contest" presents a way of being above it all, sustainably. The project even utilises zombies as an energy and fuel source.

In the image above, you can see a mass airborne exodus from the zombie zone, enabled by the massive 3,000 passenger nuclear mother-ship. The advantage of the nuclear mothership is its ability to stay airborne for years at a time, acting as a shuttle between zombie-safe zones. Lesser aircraft are able to land on the deck of the mothership, dropping off and picking up passengers to and from safe landing zones.

Here you see a large airship arriving at a safe zone, far from the zombie infested cities. It is ready to discharge freight and passengers, in preparation for another rescue mission to the danger zone.

Here you see a smaller escape vehicle, meant for both personal and family escape. It can also be used as a short and intermediate range scouting craft, to provide advance warning to the safe zones, in case of possible zombie incursions.

Here you see the Eurocopter flying car, currently only available to upper level EU officials, for rapid zombie escape. The EU hopes to be able to make the escape vehicle available to ordinary Europeans before it is too late.

Mapping the Human Layer of the Planet

2011-10-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

These maps are meant to visualize the "human layer" of the planet: The roads, power lines, pipelines, undersea cables, shipping lanes, air travel lanes, etc. Here's more:This concept illustrates and groups together the main agents that shape our planet, who literally engrave its surface—it is the anthroposphere, the human layer that grows inside the biosphere. This page is dedicated to the impressionist mapping of the artifacts from this singular moment in Earth's history. Impressionist because these maps are unlabelled and silent, giving free rein to contemplation and imagination; impressionist also because they do not follow the canons of cartography, where scales and legend are mandatory.

By locating the structures and hotspots of human activity, by acknowledging the extent of our footprints and our facilities, perhaps we will glimpse the limits of our world and the importance of redefining what it means to live in and on it. _Globaiavia_inhabitat

Anthropocene Mapping from Globaïa on Vimeo.

Is Your Home Secure from Zombies, Collapse, and Natural Disaster?

2011-10-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

Practical Tactical: Home Fortress - Episode 102

Aired: August 13, 2010
| Views: 0 | Comment

Go behind the walls of what is considered to be one of the safest houses in the world. S.A.F.E. Founder and President, Al Corbi gives us a look at the safety measures in place in this domestic fortress. Later, join Corbi and his team... (19:00)

We have looked at homes that are fairly secure against zombie attack, and others that are secure against most natural disasters. We have also looked at ways that you can prepare for extended economic collapse, civil disorder, and loss of basic services.

But what we really want is a way to protect against all the likely and somewhat possible occurrences. Here we look at some of the state of the art technology involved in securing a home against intruders, attackers, and natural disasters.

The home featured in the video above is located in the Hollywood Hills, above Los Angeles. Los Angeles tends to erupt periodically in mass occurrences of civil disorder, so installing features such as these is a logical precaution for any homeowner in the LA area.

To make such a home even more secure, one would go underground to provide multiple secure storage areas for food etc., a secure water supply, safe backup power supplies, and escape tunnels when flying out by helicopter is not feasible.

Ideally, you would want to locate a fallback home with similar security features ina more remote location, surrounded by a wide assortment of measures which would make it difficult for a large force to approach your "fortress" in an organised and deliberate manner.

The city home described above is located inside a gated fence -- presumably with a range of anti-vehicular defences incorporated to prevent the approach of a large car bomb.

Notice that the builders incorporated a means of rapid evacuation by air, for when the excrement truly contacts the rotating blades. For your city home, you would want some type of VTOL aircraft to be on site and ready to go any time that you or your family are on site. Particularly if located in a city such as LA, Chicago, London, etc.

Home security doesn't have to cost as much as the home shown above. But it will require a good deal of thought.

Everybody Talks about Low IQ in Africans, But Nobody Does Anything About It

2011-10-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

IQ of Nations (Wikipedia)
By almost any measure imaginable, Subsaharan Africa is the most backward collection of nations on Earth. When taking measures of literacy, productivity, education, rule of law, corruption, crime, poverty, innovation in terms of patents, Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals, health care, quality of life, etc., SS Africa falls at or near the bottom.

IQ testing has consistently placed average population IQs of most Subsaharan African nations well below 80, with only the Australian aboriginal population (and closely related populations) scoring consistently lower. In other words, the actual performance of the SS African nations by almost any measure is perfectly consistent with the average population IQs which are generally obtained via testing.

If SS Africans consistently outperformed their putative population IQ scores, there would be excellent reason to doubt the validity of those scores. In that case, there would be ample justification to perform much more rigorous IQ testing across the nations of SS Africa. But even with the general agreement between national and regional performance and tested IQ scores, any honest scientist would insist that a program of careful and thorough cognitive testing be carried out in the region.

The reason for this is that there are many possible reasons for the low IQ scores in the region, some of which may well be amenable to intervention -- either now or in the foreseeable future. Valid baseline testing is crucial before any broad scale intervention, in order to assess its effectiveness.

Examples of interventions which might conceivably result in increased IQ scores across parts of SS Africa include eradicating or reducing many of the parasitic and infectious diseases in the region, improving general levels of maternal and childhood nutrition, improving early childhood intellectual stimuli and education, providing greater access to books and the internet, reducing local levels of violence and warfare, and so on . . .

Other viable interventions should suggest themselves as we learn more about the nature of intelligence. Two intriguing candidates for improving IQ which are available now include neurofeedback and working memory training.

Why is IQ important?The results from a series of follow-up studies indicate that the IQ score at age 13 could be viewed as a relatively good indicator for future life outcomes, defined in terms of attained education, occupational status, and material well being. Dramatic differences in this attainment between the groups of respondents with high and low IQ scores attest to this conclusion. Smaller, yet still significant, differences between talented teenagers and their counterparts from the two control groups who apparently did not have the high IQ advantage also support the thesis that IQ matters much for life success. _Source

Intelligence is a life-long trait that exerts powerful influences on educational success, occupational status, use of health services, life style and recreational choices. _ScienceDirect

Specifically, adults with higher intelligence show attenuated cortical thinning and more pronounced cortical thickening over time than do subjects with average or below average IQ. Genes influencing variability in both intelligence and brain plasticity partly drive these associations. Thus, not only does the brain continue to change well into adulthood, these changes are functionally relevant because they are related to intelligence. _J.Neurosci
Relationships between brain volumes and IQ is being solidly established using MRI and DTI studies, and the relationship between cognitive aptitude - brain volume - and genetic complement is likewise being clearly elaborated bit by bit.

A lot of research will be needed to tease apart the portion of cognitive aptitude attributable to particular constellations of genes, from what is due to various factors in the environment. Throughout this very important process, valid and thorough cognitive testing across SS Africa -- and any other regions where interventions are contemplated -- is absolutely necessary.

Morbidity, mortality, life accomplishment and quality of life are all at stake. Leftist academics, politicians, and pundits attempt to cover up the problem, which only creates greater hardship and misery in the future. Much better to clearly define the problem, then discover what can be done about it -- and political correctness be damned.

More: Interesting website with an interesting assortment of articles on IQ

Finally, look over the charts below and consider what kind of society you could put together with a population whose mean IQ is 70, with a standard deviation of 15.

Taken from an earlier posting at Al Fin

Highly Maneuverable Watertoy for Relaxed Fun

2011-10-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

Gizmag
The WaterBuggy is the creation of Turkey-based Bodrum Marine Group, a watersports specialist. It’s part tender, part PWC, capable of carrying three people and operated via a simple joystick. E&E’s WaterBuggy is powered by a 10-hp Honda outboard, concealed within the body of the toy. Bodrum Marine Group also offers 9.8- and 9.9-hp outboards from Tohatsu and Mercury.

Regardless of outboard choice, the WaterBuggy maneuvers smoothly and quickly, and you can even spin it in place. It can run in pretty skinny water, too: as shallow as about three feet (one meter). Novice watertoy enthusiasts and families with small children need not be worried, as the WaterBuggy tops out at just 6 mph (10 kph).

Pricing for the Honda-powered WaterBuggy is 8,000 euros ($10,550 approximately as of this writing); with the Tohatsu engine, 7,500 euros ($9,900 approximately). Both prices are exclusive of tax and transportation.

This video gives you a better sense of what the WaterBuggy is all about. _Megayacht_via_Gizmag

Think of it as a combination of a PWC and a paddle boat, or a kind of floating bumper car. Operated by a couple of buttons to start/stop the boat and a simple joystick enabling right-left-forward commands, the Waterbuggy can float on shallow waters of up to one meter (3.28 ft) in depth. Its turbine system allows a torsion of 360 degrees. _Gizmag

The Waterbuggy will likely be fitted with an electric motor soon, and will serve a similar purpose on the water as the "golf cart" all-purpose electric utility vehicle serves on land. Solar powered Waterbuggies should hit the beach quite soon.

The Zombie-Proofed House

2011-09-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

All Images from All-that-is-interesting
Above you can see the zombie-proof house with all shutters fully closed. In this setting, the only access into the house is via a drawbridge, which must be lowered for entry.

Now you can see the shutters as they begin opening. Notice the large front heavy steel shutter which is electrically controlled.

Concrete shutters are now fully opened, revealing the side windows and front entrance and windows.

Here you can see the lowering of the drawbridge -- the only access to the house when all shutters are closed in full zombie-proof mode.

This is the house as it would normally be seen, with no zombies in the vicinity. Regular patrols by ground and from the air are mandatory, to assure the absence of zombies. A constant seismic surveillance is likewise necessary, to guard against the dreaded tunneling zombies.

After the sun goes down, the house would normally be fully closed in, due to the increased threat of nocturnal zombie attack. Immediately after this photograph was taken, a zombie spotting was reported two houses down, requiring an immediate shuttering-in. Eternal vigilance becomes second nature inside the zombie zone.

First published at Al Fin, the Next Level

Penetrating the Chinese Mountain

2011-09-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

Full story in Daily Mail

Peak Oil: Meet Sophisticated Coal-Biomass to Liquids CBTL

2011-09-25T02:28:00.000-07:00

There is more than 250 billion tons of recoverable U.S. coal reserves – equivalent to an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, compared to Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves of 260 billion barrels

_National Mining Association_via_Accelergy.com

EERC PDF
Accelergy's Coal Biomass to Liquids (CBTL) process utilises direct liquifaction of coal (using hydrogen from gasification of algal biomass and coal), combined with advanced catalytic processing of hydrotreated coal and hydrotreated algal lipids, to produce advanced hydrocarbon liquid fuels at high yields.

Accelergy is developing its coal biomass to liquids technology in several locations across the US, in China, and for the US military.
In the United States, Accelergy is working on demonstration facilities in Pennsylvania, Montana, and North Dakota. Accelergy's process can be tuned to utilize a wide range of feedstocks, and the company is currently exploring the use of both coal and natural gas in the U.S, along with biomass.

The company is also targeting its efforts in China since the country already has a small number of synthetic fuels plants where coal is converted to a liquid, he said. China is also the world's largest producer and consumer of coal. _Energy.AOL.com

Consider these facts about CBTL [Coal Biomass to Liquids]:

Abundant Supply: There is more than 250 billion tons of recoverable U.S. coal reserves – equivalent to an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, compared to Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves of 260 billion barrels. (Source: National Mining Association)

Environmental Benefits: Combining the Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) and Biomass-to-Liquids (BTL) processes, Accelergy removes 20% of the CO₂ emissions associated with standard refining methods, resulting in cleaner fuels that reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions and enabling use of higher efficiency engines.

Reliable Sources: Coal currently provides more than half of the nation’s electricity and is the largest single source of overall domestic energy production at more than 31% of the total, according to the National Mining Association. Additionally, our feedstocks can be grown domestically an land deemed unsuitable for food crop cultivation. _Accelergy

More on direct coal liquefaction:

• Direct liquefaction processes add hydrogen to the hydrogen deficient organic structure of the coal, breaking it down only as far as is necessary to produce distillable liquids.
• Coal dissolution is accomplished under high temperature (~400 0 C) and pressure (~1500-3000 psi) with hydrogen and a coal-derived solvent.
• The coal fragments are further hydrocracked to produce a synthetic crude oil.
• This synthetic crude must then undergo refinery upgrading and hydrotreating to produce acceptable transportation fuels. _Direct Liquefaction of Coal PDF

More on Accelergy's licensing of Exxon Mobil technologies

Accelergy patent dealing with a related but variant process

More on Accelergy's potentially lucrative move into the Chinese market

Accelergy's approach to CBTL is rather sophisticated, involving some advanced Exxon Mobil technology along with other imaginative innovations. The fact that Accelergy is working with the US military, with civilian US entities, and inside China, indicates that the company is following an aggressive path of expansion and development.

Taken from a previous posting at Al Fin Energy

With its vast resources of coal, natural gas, bitumens, kerogens, oil, uranium, thorium, and more, North America is well situated to transition from the fossil fuel age to the advanced fission / fusion age.

Bad government is a far greater threat to North America and Europe than resource depletion, climate catastrophe, or overpopulation doom. Fear only bad government and the accompanying twin demons of debt and demographic decline.

Billionaire Peter Thiel, Sponsor of Seasteading, Hates Boats

2011-09-24T14:36:00.001-07:00

SeaDragon
The website "Details.com" provides an interesting profile of the billionaire backer of the Seasteading Institute, Peter Thiel. One of the things you learn is that Thiel doesn't particularly like boats, and doesn't plan to be an early adapter of seasteading. Another thing you will learn is that Thiel is something of a maverick provocateur.
If the seasteading movement goes forward as planned, Thiel won't be one of its early citizens. For one thing, he's not overly fond of boats, although maybe, as Friedman says, "he just needs to be on a large enough structure." Thiel characterizes his interest as "theoretical." But whether Thiel himself heads offshore or not, there's a whole lot of passion underlying that theoretical interest. Thiel put forth his views on the subject in a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, in which he flatly declared, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." He went on: "The great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms," with the critical question being "how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country."

Until a libertarian colony can be established in outer space—Thiel is bullish on that idea, too, though he thinks the technology needs at least a half-century to develop—seasteading will have to suffice. "[It's] not just possible, or desirable," he said in an address at the 2009 Seasteading Institute Conference, "but actually necessary." _Details

Also check out this Cato-at-Liberty article on seasteads from the perspective of tax havens. It includes a 9 minute video on the economic benefits of tax havens.

This short article on Peter Thiel and seasteading at The Week.com, includes a number of criticisms of seasteading from a small number of web personalities.

The near-term vision of seasteading as promoted by The Seasteading Institute is not particularly inspiring. Front man Patri Friedman does alright in public speaking, media appearances, and writing articles. But he does not have the type of maritime heavy industry background that would inspire confidence in truly serious investors.

Seasteading is desperately in need of a "killer app," and it is not clear that offshore gambling, banking, and tax havens will be good enough -- particularly if the legal question of sovereignty is not settled.

In a global boom economy, seasteading might have better prospects, and a lot more millionaire and billionaire investors. But there is a need for more "heavy hitters" with backgrounds in large marine structures and financing, and in the various offshore industries which might bring quick profits to such a speculative venture.

The challenge of building a robust seastead able to stand up to anything the ocean might throw at it, is not as great a challenge as building a robust space elevator to geosynchronous orbit. But it is still a significant challenge.

The challenge of raising new generations of young people with practical real world competencies, plus a sense of adventure, is likewise a significant challenge -- given the state of today's perpetual adolescent incompetents, psychological neotenates, and academic lobotomates. But challenges tend to bring out the greatness in innovators.

Stay tuned.

Taken from an earlier article at Al Fin, the Next Level

Peak Oil: Meet Primus' Competitive Biomass to Gasoline $1.95/Gal

2011-09-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

More information on Primus
GCC article about Primus' plans
Primus’s process is based on a proprietary variant of the ExxonMobil Methanol-to-Gasoline process, simplified to produce standard gasoline without need for separation or further treatment, the company says. The Primus process consists of three main steps:
Gasification of biomass (feedstock flexible) to produce a syngas;
CO2 separation and scrubbing of the syngas;
catalytic liquid fuel synthesis using a four-stage catalytic system (the MTG variant).
Primus says that its gasoline is cost-competitive with fossil fuels without subsidies, utilizing carbon-efficient and high fuel-yielding non-agricultural biomass that does not compete with foodstocks.

A February 2011 report from the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conclude that gasoline produced via the methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) route (earlier post) using syngas from a 2,000 dry metric tonne/day (2,205 US ton/day) biomass-fed facility could have a plant gate price (PGP) of $1.95/gallon US ($0.52/liter). _GCC

The biomass is pelletised, then gasified. The syngas is converted to methanol, and the methanol is converted directly to gasoline, via Exxon Mobil's highly efficient MTG process -- as modified by Primus. More on MTG:In the MTG process, dimethylether (DME), the dehydrated derivative of methanol, is reacted over a ZSM-5 zeolite catalyst, on which the chain growth of molecules is sterically hindered, thus allowing only production of gasoline and lighter material. The gasoline product from the MTG process has more than 51 compounds, similar to straight-run gasoline in a petroleum refinery.

This mixture is then separated using a process similar to that used in a gasoline refinery. The design utilized in the NREL model utilizes five distillation columns to separate the remaining gas, LPG, light gasoline, and heavy gasoline. The remaining gas is sent to the fuel combustor. The light gasoline continues without further treatment. The heavy gasoline could proceed through a durene isomerizer in order to eliminate the presence of the 1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzenes by converting them to 1,2,3,5-tetramethylbenzenes. This stream would then be merged with the light gasoline. The two product streams are LPG and gasoline. _GCC

This is an entirely renewable biomass to gasoline process which is likely to impact the fossil fuels markets in good time. Perhaps the main obstacle to a large scale adoption of biomass to liquid fuels, is the current very cheap price of natural gas.

Welcome to Utopia!

2011-09-21T06:37:00.001-07:00

Images via Gizmag
Project Utopia has more in common with an oil rig than it does with a yacht, and in the word's of the consultancy, "breaks the traditional naval architectural mould which the market has come to expect and offers a truly unique outlook free from any conventional design constraints."

...Yacht Island Design's Project Utopia measures some 330 ft (100 m) in length and breadth, spans 11 decks and has the equivalent floorspace of a present-day cruise liner - indeed, and I'm sure this will be a draw-card to any aspiring wealthy megalomaniacs, there is enough space to create an entire micro-nation.

First and foremost, the island's design is stable, being based on a four legged platform and designed for minimum motion in the most extreme sea conditions. Each leg supports a fully azimuthing thruster and with four such units, the design can redeploy between desired locations at slow speed. _Gizmag

The Project Utopia seastead design is clearly oriented toward the luxury-loving wastrel segment of the population. And yet, even the idle rich are human, and deserve their moments of pleasurable idylls. If a billionaire wishes to finance the experimental movement of the land-lubbing race of humans out onto the open sea, who am I to object?

As always, naked girls sold separately. ;-)

Is The Missing Carbon Being Turned Into Diamonds?

2011-09-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

Scientists have speculated for some time that the Earth's carbon cycle extends deep into the planet's interior, but until now there has been no direct evidence. The mantle–Earth's thickest layer –is largely inaccessible...Analysis [of lower mantle diamonds] shows compositions consistent with the mineralogy of oceanic crust. This finding is the first direct evidence that slabs of oceanic crust sank or subducted into the lower mantle and that material, including carbon, is cycled between Earth's surface and depths of hundreds of miles.

The research is published in the September 15, 2011, online Science Express.__Physorg

Physorg
Climate models have been unable to account for all the "missing carbon," the carbon being released into the atmosphere that seems to "disappear," from view in unaccountable fashion. But is it possible that the oceans are taking this carbon and turning it into carbonaceous rock which is being transformed by Earth's mantle into diamond?

The oceans are voracious consumers of atmospheric carbon. Dissolved CO2 immediately turns into bicarbonate ion almost in entirety. Oceanic sea life rapidly turns this bicarbonate into both biomass and calcium carbonate shells. This organic and inorganic carbon sinks to the seafloor, which over time is subducted into the Earth's mantle.

After the heat and pressure of the mantle have transformed carbons within the subducted oceanic crust into other forms -- including diamond -- some of the transformed carbon is returned to the crust in upwelling mantle plumes.

The lesson for scientists, in all of this, is not to jump to conclusions before all the facts are in. When it comes to the carbon cycle and global climate, the facts have just begun to come in. But we are nowhere close to being justified in coming to conclusions. Stop treating computer models as if they were the actual physical phenomenon being studied! Models are not reality. Stop treating them as such.

German Designed MTO Sport Gyrocopter Comes to Tomball PD

2011-09-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Wired
Tomball, Texas, is a small community near Houston. Its police budget is too small to afford its own helicopter, so the town is looking for ways to monitor itself from the air without busting its budget. Tomball has turned to the autogyro, lowly cousin to the costly helicopter, and is likely to come out ahead for having done so.
The MTOsport needs roughly the length of a football field to take off, climbs at 13 feet per second and can hit 115 mph. It’ll hover at a relatively low speed, allowing it to mimic a helicopter circling an area under observation.

...the unpowered rotor makes the aircraft safer than a helicopter because you’re already in auto-rotation. In a helicopter, the pilot has to nose the craft down and hope autorotation starts before the chopper hits the ground. If we lost power now we’d simply glide down.

...The big advantage is, of course, cost. A modern police helicopter ready for service can run anywhere from $1.5 million to $4 million. They’re also expensive to operate, averaging around $1,000 per hour with a two-pilot crew.

The Auto-Gyro MTOsport loaded up with radios and painted costs about $75,000 and about $50 an hour to operate, due in part to the fact that it burns regular pump gas. That’s roughly the cost of buying and operating two top-of-the-line squad cars.

...Tomball can’t justify the cost of a helicopter program, so it has to rely upon Houston or Harris County when it needs one. Coordinating the flight and lining everything up can take an hour or more, if a chopper is available at all. But an officer on standby can have the MTOsport airborne in about 10 minutes, including the pre-flight check. That can make a big difference in a metropolitan county with about 4.1 million people.

“By putting a trained pilot and a trained tactical flight officer in this aircraft up over the city of Tomball and the surrounding area, we’re able to essentially deploy the equivalent of 20 police officers,” Haulk says. _Wired

The autogyro will be grounded at night and during inclement weather. But on the whole, the cost savings from this unconventional aircraft should allow Tomball to foil and solve a wide range of criminal activities, as well as aiding in search and rescue tasks.

Pumping Water and Aerosols to the Stratosphere

2011-09-02T14:22:00.000-07:00

Guardian
Geoengineers like to think big. They are drawn to projects which are geared to a planetary scale. Such a project is this British Royal Society project to pump water 1km into the sky, using a helium balloon tethered water hose.

If that test run is successful, they will be aiming to repeat the experiment at an elevation of 20km.
... a team of British academics will next month formally announce the first step towards creating an artificial volcano by going ahead with the world's first major "geo-engineering" field-test in the next few months. The ultimate aim is to mimic the cooling effect that volcanoes have when they inject particles into the stratosphere that bounce some of the Sun's energy back into space, so preventing it from warming the Earth and mitigating the effects of man-made climate change.

Before the full-sized system can be deployed, the research team will test a scaled-down version of the balloon-and-hose design. Backed by a £1.6m government grant and the Royal Society, the team will send a balloon to a height of 1km over an undisclosed location. It will pump nothing more than water into the air, but it will allow climate scientists and engineers to gauge the engineering feasibility of the plan. Ultimately, they aim to test the impact of sulphates and other aerosol particles if they are sprayed directly into the stratosphere.

If the technical problems posed by controlling a massive balloon at more than twice the cruising height of a commercial airliner are resolved, then the team from Cambridge, Oxford, Reading and Bristol universities expect to move to full-scale solar radiation tests.

The principal investigator, Matthew Watson, a former UK government scientific adviser on emergencies and now a Bristol University lecturer, says the experiment is inspired by volcanoes and the way they can affect the climate after eruptions.

"We will test pure water only, in sufficient quantity to test the engineering. Much more research is required," he said, in answer the question of what effect a planetary-scale deployment of the technology could have.

Other leaders of the government-funded Stratospheric particle injection for climate engineering (Spice) project have investigated using missiles, planes, tall chimneys and other ways to send thousands of tonnes of particles into the air but have concluded that a simple balloon and hosepipe system is the cheapest. The research is paid for by the government-funded Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

"The whole weight of this thing is going to be a few hundred tonnes. That's the weight of several double-decker buses. So imagine how big a helium balloon do you need to hold several double-decker buses – a big balloon. We're looking at a balloon which is possibly 100-200m in diameter. It's about the same size as Wembley stadium," said the Oxford engineering lecturer Hugh Hunt in an interview earlier this year.

"This hose would be just like a garden hose, 20km long and we pump stuff up the pipe. The nice thing about it is that we can really have a knob, if you like, which we can control to adjust the rate at which we inject these particles."

While the October experiment is expected to have no impact on the atmosphere, it could also be used to try out "low-level cloud whitening", a geo-engineering proposal backed financially by Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates.

In this case, fine sea salt crystals would be pumped up and sprayed into the air to increase the number of droplets and the reflectivity in clouds. Together, many droplets are expected to diffuse sunlight and make a cloud whiter. _Guardian
There are quite a few other types of crystals and compounds which could be sprayed into the stratosphere besides sea salt crystals or pure water. But to go far beyond those simple compounds, the experimenters would likely have to jump a large number of environmental hurdles.

At this stage, no one seems to be worried that such experiments might block too much sunlight, but that should be a concern for any geoengineering project of this type.

Modern climate science is still in its infant stages of understanding of the atmosphere. Climate models are pathetic trash compactors -- parsimonious garbage in / garbage out number crunchers. If grant-hungry climatologists get the answers they want, they publish them. If not, they go back and tweak the models until they do get the answers they want. A terrific scam if you can get it.

Eventually, climate science will stumble upon the scientific method, and claim to have invented it from scratch. That would be alright, if only climatologists would indeed take the scientific method seriously for once.

In the meantime, all of you geoengineers tread softly on this planet. Recent climate trends have been very nice. If you botch it up, a lot of us will not be happy.

Seasteads: Full Speed Ahead, and Damn the World Government!

2011-08-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Shimizu Seastead Tower
The seasteading idea has been in the news lately, largely due to a Details.com expose of billionaire Peter Thiel, and his quirks. At Next Big Future, David Brin provides his opinion about Seasteading, suggesting that wide scale seasteading may only occur in the context of a world government!

Here is an outline of Brin's thinking on seasteads, which largely come from the writing of his most recent SF book:1- The core aim is to escape meddling by any modern states...

2- This business plan has to compete with an older and more reliable one: when you want an “offshore” country of your own, simply buy one that already exists...

3- Now, in fairness, this may not only be an option for the rich! ...

4- The ocean is a harsh and dangerous environment. Corrosive to metal and other parts....

5- A related matter. When you are at sea, facing nature’s full brunt, including typhoons and corrosion and threats of all kinds, the daily details of running the place will be neither anarchic nor democratic. There will be a captaincy…...

6- Clearly there is a shortcut through all the red tape and other dangers. I portray it in EXISTENCE. That trick is to forge alliances with already-existing small, island states....

7- ...If you reject the democracies, then will you call them for help, when an armed gang comes to simply take over your sovereign land, by right of conquest?...

8- ... Instead of emphasizing the tax-avoidance aspect (a meme which I predict will bite its promoters back, very hard, in the near future), I’d rather see the emphasis be on freedom to do social experiments. Feminist enclaves? Polygamous or polyamorous paradise? A haven for drug experimentation? For genetic self-mod or for bureaucracy-minimized space launch? A place of self-exile for sex-offenders? A MYOB festival? ...

...Because of the way that WG [ed: World Government] is forming on Planet Earth… with the judiciary and bureaucracy first and the legislature last… the chief effect is to ensure that individual humans have no legal standing before international agencies. Only sovereign nations have standing, can file suit, negotiate treaties, assert rights and privileges.

... If they can establish a dozen or so new, sea-based national entities, to stand alongside the 200 or so that already exist, then the SeaSteaders will be in the same position as the original founders of the New York or London Stock Exchanges.

They will have inheritable or negotiable “seats” — a grandfathered position of “standing” allowing them to step up before WG bodies representing the interests of millions of clients. Large and small.

Think this is about autonomy? Or feudal privilege? Or social experimentation? Naw. These guys are smarter than that.

It’s about getting in on the ground floor of the 21st century’s great new business frontier.* _Brin
Brin may honestly believe that his imagination is an accurate reflection of the outside world. In fact, some of his very strong, but questionable, views on many other topics suggests that this is the case. The anti-solipsistic solipsist. Isn't that always the way?

Brin has a degree in (astro?) physics, and may see himself as a poly-expert of sorts. Certainly writers in general often consider themselves knowledgeable on the topics which they research for reports, articles, stories, and books. Of course, what they are is semi-exposed dilettantes, not experts. But try telling them that! ;-)

What about this world government idea? The concept works fairly well within a number of science fictional plots, but is a world government likely for the near future of planet Earth? Only in the sense that Imperial Rome was a world government, or Alexander's Greece. A government over the "known world," a fudged world government, by name, if not in reality, is always possible.

Far more likely than an orderly world government is a "Coming Anarchy," as described by Robert D Kaplan. World demographic trends projected to the middle of this century predict a diminishment of Europe, North America, and the advanced nations of East Asia -- with an explosive growth in the populations of low IQ tribal areas in Africa and Asia. Multicultural areas within Europe, North America, and Oceania are likely to grow at the expense of the core host populations.

These trends do not paint a picture of a coming, all-powerful world government. So where does Brin likely go wrong? Brin's problem here -- as in other areas of his thinking, apparently -- lies in his assumptions and biases. Unexamined biases are a common curse of intelligent and successful people who feel that "they have arrived." Why mess with success? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. etc etc.

In this case, Brin's bugaboos are the "oligarchs." The concept is presumably borrowed from the Russian experience of the 1990s and 2000s, and extended to all other world societies and cultures. Is this a logical extrapolation?

Regardless, these oligarchs are the puppet-masters and string pullers behind the curtains, and if they decide they want a world government, Brin believes they have the power to create one.

Reality check: All of this [Brin's book plot] takes place within a futuristic setting, in the context of advanced technologies which can extend the power of individuals and cabals significantly. Anything can happen. We willingly suspend judgment just to see what is coming next. But it is not reality.

Al Fin sociologists and futurists believe that Brin is overlooking the most salient dynamic trends occurring on the planet. He does this because they are hiding behind his blind spots, his unexamined assumptions. This means that Brin is in for some significant surprises in the not so distant future.

Lucky Brin.

Personal Beer Maker Makes Gallons of Beer in 1 Week

2011-08-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery from WilliamsWarn on Vimeo.

WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery
The series of images below illustrate the steps taken when brewing your personal beer with the WW Personal Brewery.

On Day 1, the home brewmaster must first make sure his equipment is sparkling clean. Then he adds the water, malt extract, yeast, and hops to the beer maker. The thermostat is set to 70 degrees F.

Day 2-5:When yeast turns malt sugars into ethanol, one by-product is carbon dioxide. The gas is trapped in the tank, and as the pressure builds, CO2 is forced into the beer. A valve allows brewers to regulate the amount of carbonation _PopSci

Day 6:
Once the beer is chilled to 42ºF, brewers add a clarifying agent, which causes the yeast to drop into a collection jar at the base of the tank. Once the beer is clarified, brewers simply close the tank’s lower valve, detach the jar, and dump the yeast down the sink. _PopSci

Day 7:
The CO2 captured in the tank forces the beer through a tube to the tap. A supplementary CO2 canister maintains internal pressure as the beer level drops. _PopSci
The current line of brew kits are restricted to light ales, but ultimately the ocmpany plans to provide the ability to brew as much as 50 pints of ales, lagers, stouts, and more.

These high tech beermakers sell for roughly $5,000. Alternatively, beer lovers can acquire lower tech beermaking equipment using malt extract, for under $200, and buy the makings for 5 gallons of home brew for anywhere between $30 and $50, depending on the type of beer. Or, if you are resourceful you can scrape together brewing equipment for next to nothing, and the ingredients for whole grain brewing for less than the cost of malt extract. And in fact, you can grow your own hops and your own yeast strains.

Beer making is one of the many necessary competencies required for all members of the Society for Creative Apocalyptology, a subsidiary of the Al Fin Syndicate. Beer is a survival drink as well as a social lubricant, a useful item of trade, and a satisfying, nutritious food.

If you have more money than you can spend, consider experimenting with the WW Personal Brewery. You will have to obtain the machine in New Zealand and have it shipped out to your location yourself. If it makes beer with an acceptable quality, you may get some good use of it, and save some time. But more likely you will find that you either love home brewing or hate it. If you love it, you will probably move quickly to other equipment that makes it easier for you to customise your batches.

A Pandemic of Malthusian Illiteracy

2011-08-10T08:23:00.000-07:00

Global economy optimists however say that "Malthusian illiteracy" lurks behind remaining adherents of Peak Oil theory - which basically says conventional oil production will stagnate and fall but demand will go on growing. _MarketOracle

As knowledgeable analysts come to understand that oil demand, rather than oil supply, is currently in the driver's seat, some of the impetus behind the peak oil panic has subsided. And yet the "Malthusian Impulse" continues to drive many observers, against their more rational proclivities. Still, global hydrocarban reserves continue to grow, year after year, and oil demand is slated to decrease in time.

New sources for transport fuels are likely to come from many directions, including new gas-to-liquids (GTL) technologies. Oxford Catalyst's microchannel GTL technology is very much in demand, as are other new varieties of GTL technologies. The market for GTL fuels may be more than 20 million barrels per day! Imagine the impact of that huge new supply on the global oil market. (Note that approximately between 5 and 10 million barrels per day could be produced via GTL from currently flared gas alone. Stranded gas could double that number.) More information at this PDF white paper download from Velocys, creator of the Oxford Catalysts microchannel technology.

A more conventional source for GTL transport fuels is the large scale technology championed by Shell.
In 2011, Shell began shipments from its Pearl GTL project in Qatar...The project is able to produce 140,000 b/d of fuel and 120,000 b/d of ethane and condensates... _Petroleum Economist

And that is just the beginning. As long as the huge price spread between the cost of natural gas and the cost of crude oil remains, more and more GTL projects will kick in to take advantage of this "easy money."

Second and third generation biofuels from biomass technologies are beginning to come on line, slowly (consult Al Fin Energy blog for updated news on this topic). Advanced biofuels technologies are not likely to take an appreciable bite out of crude oil demand for another 5 or 10 years. As long as natural gas prices stay this low, only the most efficient biofuels projects will be able to compete in the liquid fuels markets without government subsidies. But by the year 2030 if the technology continues to develop, the writing will be on the wall. This is a biological world, after all.

Advanced nuclear power technologies are likely to aid the development of new fuels technologies of all kinds, supplying safe and abundant power and heat for a multitude of energy development projects from oil sands to oil shales to biomass and aquaculture projects in cold climates, irrigation and desalination of saltwater in arid climates etc etc.

Other factors leading to a decreased demand for crude oil includes the increasing use of both natural gas and biomass as feedstock for the vast chemicals industry -- an industrial sector previously dependent upon petroleum for feedstock. (see Al Fin Energy blog for much more)

The ongoing global economic downturn and demand destruction extends from Europe to Japan to the US, and is beginning to put stress on the Chinese and Indian economies -- despite all the rah! rah! hype about the coming age of the Chindian global economy. Many nations which have maintained hefty consumer subsidies for transport fuels are being forced to reduce the subisidies. More downward pressure on demand.

Malthusian theories are appealing for their simplicity. And yet the never-ending and never-fulfilled Malthusian predictions of doom ignore the most salient and disruptive human technology of all -- the goal-oriented innovativeness of the human mind.

Despite the best efforts of energy-starvationists in the Obama administration, in the EU bureaucracy, in national bureaucracies of EU nations and advanced nations around the globe -- the prospects for abundant energy and fuels in the future are quite good, as long as the clowns in power do not destroy the economies they oversee.

If you have abundant clean energy and fuels, everything else is doable.

Previously published at Al Fin Energy and Al Fin Central

Bringing Europea and Africa Together, Making More Lebensraum

2011-08-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

Atlantropa
The Atlantropa project involves building a hydroelectric dam across the Gibraltar Strait, lowering the level of the Mediterranean Sea by 200 metres, and capturing the enormous energy from the resulting sea level differential between the Atlantic and the Med. At the same time, significant amounts of new real estate would emerge as if by magic, ready for occupation and development.

Building a bridge between Africa and Europe would then become child's play, allowing the massive migratory movement of populations between continents.

Modern MechanixThis imaginative scheme involves the creation of ice dams / dikes around shallow seafloor, which enable the building of more permanent concrete dams / dikes. The consequent reclaimed lands would allow for further occupation and development of land for multiple uses, including agriculture, energy production, commercial developments, and even residential lands for the daring.

Seriously, such projects for the creation of new European lebensraum belong in the past. Modern Europe cannot occupy and develop all the land it currently has, with the shrinking demographics of Europe's core populations.

But the building of bridges from Europe to Africa could certainly speed the multiculturalisation of Europe, and provide a much needed pressure relief valve for Africa's burgeoning populations.

Throw Another Virgin in the Volcano, Would You Mate?

2011-07-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Seasteading's Missing Link?

Images from Gizmag
Humans are accustomed to living on land. Getting large numbers of people to consent to living offshore on seasteads may require some skilled salesmanship. For example, making at least part of the seastead resemble a landscape, rather than a ship.
The main deck is a beach "cove" of cabanas surrounding a massive ocean view swimming pool, with a waterfall falling nearby from the volcano. _Gizmag

You can throw as many virgins into the volcano as you like, by the way. They will only slide down the waterslide and gentle waterfalls, to land unharmed in the pool below. What mad adventurers as you may find at Al Fin Potpourri are as protective of their virgins as anyone alive.

Terrafugia -- Not Exactly a Flying Car -- Gets US NHTSA Approval

2011-07-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

...the Terrefugia Transition has gotten regulatory approval to fly and drive in the US. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration really calls this a "roadable aircraft" meaning it's more a plane that taxis really really well than a great car that can fly above traffic jams. But "flying car" sounds so much more James Bond, doesn't it? _itworld

Terrafugia Gets US Approval to Drive On RoadsCarl Dietrich's Terrafugia team has worked hard for several years to develop, build, and test a vehicle that is both road-worthy and air-worthy. The Terrafugia appears to be both -- in skillful hands -- and generally inexpensive to fly and drive. The $200,000 purchase price is more than your typical compact economy car requires, but if you are going to spend that much money for a vehicle, you are more likely to give it the type of care that it will demand.

Meanwhile, the EU is taking a different approach toward uplifting the daily commute:The intent of myCopter is to set up a framework in which even the most idiotic drivers will be able to take advantage of personal air vehicles (PAVs). The key, of course, is making sure that the aforementioned idiots have as minimal a role in the operation of their vehicles as possible, which is why the EU wants PAVs to be mostly (or fully) autonomous. Initially, they'll stay out of controlled airspace (i.e. areas around airports where they risk tangling with a 747), but eventually the idea is to have them completely integrated into our existing infrastructure. _Dvice

The US DARPA wants to develop something similar to the EU's concept of an "idiot-proof" flier, and has the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Dept. to help develop their version.
...the U.S. government is also pursuing the idea of a flying car. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded a 17-month, $988,000 contract to Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute to develop an autonomous flight system for the Transformer (TX) Program.

The TX program aims to develop a robust ground vehicle that can transform into an air vehicle with vertical take-off and landing capability, while offering significant operational flexibility with the ability to travel 250 nautical miles on land and in the air, or a combination, while carrying up to 1,000 pounds.

The Pentagon's DARPA has selected six vendors. AAI Corporation and Lockheed Martin Company are the prime system integrators. Carnegie Mellon University and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne are developers of critical enabling technology. Aurora Flight Sciences partnered with ThinGap, and Metis Design Corp, two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) recipients to participate in this 12-month effort. _IBT
The DARPA version is far more robust and multi-purpose than the EU version, but then the US Defense Department personnel often see much rougher duty than the fat-bottomed bureaucrats of the EU. ;-)

Small Fusion Reactors: An Alternative to Fission?

2011-07-06T14:27:00.001-07:00

General Fusion
General Fusion is a small startup headquartered near Vancouver, BC. The compression of plasma to achieve fusion is accomplished by a coordinated spherical plasma compression, using pneumatics and advanced switching.

Helion
Helion Energy is located in Redmond, Washington. It is based on a principle of "colliding plasmas," and like all the rest of the small fusion approaches, it is a long shot.

Bussard IEC Fusion
Bussard inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (EMC2 Fusion) involves an electrostatic plasma confinement to achieve fusion. The history and development of the concept is explained in a video reached via the link above. The Bussard IEC has been financed almost entirely by the US Navy. EMC2 is based near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Dense Plasma Focus Fusion
Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is based in New Jersey. The dense plasma focus approach uses a special pulsing "spark plug" to ionise a gas, and to form a plasmoid "pinch," with the emission of high energy photons, ions, and fusion neutrons.

HyperV
Hyper V Technologies utilises a spherical array of mini railguns to accelerate plasma beams into a central target of deuterium or deuterium-tritium, to achieve fusion (hopefully).

TriAlpha
TriAlpha is an Irvine, California venture, which has been fairly successful in the venture capital game. TriAlpha is a bit secretive with non-investors, but you can read their patent for yourselves. The concept seems to involve the highly sophisticated evolution of an earlier colliding beam fusion approach.

Fusion reactors can be prolific neutron generators, and could be utilised for the transmutation of nuclear wastes into harmless compounds. They could also generate a number of differen highly energetic particles and high energy photons, and used for a number of purposes -- including as space propulsion. Another potential product of fusion reactions is heat. But what is most desired from fusion reactors is abundant, cheap, clean electrical power.

The energy from fusion is higher than the energy from fission, so that less fuel is required to generate equivalent energies. Fusion is generally safer, with less radioactive waste remaining to be disposed of.

Many billions of dollars have been spent by governments in a vain attempt to master the power of the stars on a more human scale. If one of the small startups manages to achieve with $millions what huge government budgets of $billions could not achieve, a revolution would have been ignited which would likely not stop with just cheap, clean, abundant energy.

How to Survive an Apocalypse in the Suburbs

2011-07-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

The suburbs may not seem to be the best place to survive an apocalypse, but some people think it can be done.
Who knows how everything will shake out when the world goes to hell, but the suburbs may be well positioned to thrive with fewer resources, as Brown points out. Suburbs are close enough to the city to be convenient and encourage community building, yet spread out enough to offer yards and substantial garden space. (Suburban soil is also usually less contaminated than urban soil.) The houses are large enough to accommodate multigenerational households and cottage industries, which some demographers predict as coming trends. _CityPaper

Popsci
But you and I know that to well and truly survive an apocalypse in the suburbs, you are going to need a lot of juice -- in more senses than one. You will need plenty of fluids, true. You will also need plenty of heat and electrical power to survive the winters and power air conditioners through the summer. In a third sense of the word "juice", you will need plenty of clout and respect. And what better way to gain the respect of one's extended neighbors, than to have your own functioning nuclear power plant in your backyard?

Consider the thorium molten salt reactor, pictured above:The MSR design has two primary safety advantages. Its liquid fuel remains at much lower pressures than the solid fuel in light-water plants. This greatly decreases the likelihood of an accident, such as the hydrogen explosions that occurred at Fukushima. Further, in the event of a power outage, a frozen salt plug within the reactor melts and the liquid fuel passively drains into tanks where it solidifes, stopping the fission reaction. “The molten-salt reactor is walk-away safe,” Kutsch says. “If you just abandoned it, it had no power, and the end of the world came--a comet hit Earth--it would cool down and solidify by itself.”

Although an MSR could also run on uranium or plutonium, using the less-radioactive element thorium, with a little plutonium or uranium as a catalyst, has both economic and safety advantages. Thorium is four times as abundant as uranium and is easier to mine, in part because of its lower radioactivity. The domestic supply could serve the U.S.’s electricity needs for centuries. Thorium is also exponentially more efficient than uranium. “In a traditional reactor, you’re burning up only a half a percent to maybe 3 percent of the uranium,” Kutsch says. “In a molten-salt reactor, you’re burning 99 percent of the thorium.” The result: One pound of thorium yields as much power as 300 pounds of uranium--or 3.5 million pounds of coal.

Because of this efficiency, a thorium MSR would produce far less waste than today’s plants. Uranium-based waste will remain hazardous for tens of thousands of years. With thorium, it’s more like a few hundred. As well, raw thorium is not fissile in and of itself, so it is not easily weaponized. “It can’t be used as a bomb,” Kutsch says. “You could have 1,000 pounds in your basement, and nothing would happen.”

Without the need for large cooling towers, MSRs can be much smaller than typical light-water plants, both physically and in power capacity. _PS
And the advantages of the thorium molten salt reactor go on and on. Even many greenies are on board for thorium MSRs.

It is likely to be touch and go to get Obama's nuclear regulatory commission to license the safer, newer, cheaper nuclear plants, but nuclear engineer Kirk Sorensen has founded a company named Flibe, to build and market the devices. Even if he has to go to China to build the reactors, you can always have one smuggled into your country of choice and installed in your back yard under a small carnival tent -- to hide it from annoying satellites.

Remember, if you have a reactor like this, you will have all the juice you could possibly need. You could even build a giant dome over your entire neighborhood and give it the climate of Tahiti year-round, if you like. Tropical fruits taste quite good, particularly in the middle of typical apocalyptic mass food shortages.

But don't get cocky. Once residents of surrounding suburbs and neighboring cities catch on to the fact that you had the foresight to prepare for the apocalypse, they will want a large piece of what you have. That is where juice -- and knowing how to use it -- truly comes in handy.

More on this topic in a future posting.

Fuel-Electric Hybrid Flying Car from Trek Aerospace

2011-07-04T06:21:00.000-07:00

This ducted fan beauty aims to utilise a fuel-electric hybrid power system, the first flying car to do so.

Gizmag
Michael Moshier and Robert Bulaga of Trek Aerospace are forming a new company to develop the hybrid Air Car, which will combine recent technological advances in materials and electronics with the kind of duct-fan technology that was used in the now-retired Springtail single person vertical take-off-and-landing (VTOL) vehicle.

Moshier and Bulaga are currently on the lookout for funding partners to help the multi-person transport project take off (sorry!) and a number of real world scenarios for its use have been suggested - from being useful for emergency services such as search and rescue, police patrol and medical support, to providing vital lifelines for those areas of the world where established transportation systems are lacking.

Given the probable cost of the first vehicles to roll off the production line, it's more likely that thrill-seekers with bottomless bank accounts will be amongst the very first to power up the four fans and take to the skies. _Gizmag
But who are they kidding? The only ones with bottomless bank accounts are governments who can print their own money. Military organisations are likely to see such vehicles first after production.

Contrast the Trek hybrid above with the Euro- "MyCopter" pictured below:

Gizmag
EU bureaucrats have mulled over ways to keep their cities free of automobile traffic, and may have settled on one possible solution: the flying car taxi and commuter.
A European Union project known as myCopter has set aside funds of €4.2 million (US$6.2m) to investigate the possibility of introducing Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs) into the skyways of many congested European cities. This coming age of the "flying car" where vehicles leave the roads and launch into the skies promises to solve problems like dramatically rising urban traffic congestion...

..."We aim to develop technologies that could be used to form a new transportation system for personal travel that uses the third dimension, and which takes into account questions surrounding the expectations of potential users and how the public would react to and interact with such a system," Prof Heinrich Bülthoff of the Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, told Gizmag.

The myCopter project envisions that the PAVs and PATS (personal air transport systems) would initially be used to fly at low altitudes for domestic travel between homes and working places. By flying below 2000 feet, the new traffic system hopes to operate outside of controlled airspace, without ground-based traffic control and without impacting on existing air traffic. _Gizmag

Another approach, from Australia, is tailored to the flying motorcyclist.

Climate Hockey Stick From a Distance: Where to From Here?

2011-07-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Prolific and innovative thinker and scientist J Storrs Hall takes a look at where the climate has been, compares current climate with similar climate curves in the past, and slyly invites readers to guess where the climate is likely to be heading.

First -- Where the climate has been over the past 10,000 years or so... :

Images from WUWT
Next -- Comparing our current climate curve with similar climate curves from the past, to get an idea of a possible trajectory... :

Here I’ve plotted the 400 years following each minimum in the record that leads to a sustained sharp rise. There were 10 of them; the first five are plotted in cyan and the more recent 5 in blue. You can see that in the latter part of the Holocene the traces settle down from the wilder swings of the earlier period. Even so, every curve, even the early ones, seems to have an inflection — at least a change in slope — somewhere between 200 and 250 years after the minimum.

The hatched black line is the average of the 5 recent (blue) spikes. The red dots are the uptick at the end of GISP2 and HadSST, spliced at 1850. Note that ALL the minima dates are from GISP2. _WUWT

Then Josh invites readers to guess what will happen next, if history is any guide.

For some parts of the northern hemisphere, it may be time to get out the summer parkas.

Climate simpletons who believe that the global climate is controlled by one trace gas which constitutes less than 0.04% of the planetary atmosphere, have controlled the microphones, printing presses, funding agencies, and public stage for far too long. It is time for science to displace the politically convenient (and economically lucrative) climate hysteria, so that ordinary people can make rational plans.

Thorium Can Fuel the Next Millenium

2011-06-30T10:07:00.001-07:00

For humans to enjoy a clean and abundant energy future, they will need to move to energy from nuclear reactions -- which means nuclear fission, for now. Thorium is the main alternative to uranium as a large-scale nuclear fuel. Here are some basic facts about thorium:

Thorium is a naturally-occurring, slightly radioactive metal discovered in 1828 by a Swedish chemist, Jons Jakob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. The silvery white metal is found in small amounts in most rocks and soils, where it is about three times more abundant than uranium. Typical garden variety soil commonly contains an average of around 6 parts per million (ppm) of thorium.

Applications
Thorium oxide, also called thoria, has one of the highest melting points of all oxides at 3300°C. When this oxide is heated in air, thorium metal turnings ignite and burn brilliantly with a white light. Because of these properties, thorium has found applications in welding electrodes, heat-resistant ceramics, light bulb elements, lantern mantles and arc-light lamps. Glass containing thorium oxide has a high refractive index and dispersion and is used in high quality lenses for cameras and scientific instruments.
Sources and geographical distribution

The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite, which may contain up to about 12 percent thorium phosphate; however, the average is closer to a 6-7 percent range. Monazite is found in igneous and other rocks but the richest concentrations are in placer deposits, concentrated by wave and current action with other heavy minerals. World monazite resources are estimated to be about 12 million tonnes, two-thirds of which are in heavy mineral sands deposits on the south and east coasts of India. Australia is estimated by the USGS to host approximately 24 percent of the world’s thorium reserves. A large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals have been discovered in the Lemhi Pass region of Idaho and Montana.

Going nuclear
Although not fissile itself, thorium has started to reemerge as a tempting prospect to employ as fuel in nuclear power reactors. Thorium 232 will absorb slow neutrons to produce uranium 233, which is fissile (and long-lived). The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the uranium 233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle. Alternatively, uranium 233 can be bred from thorium in a blanket, the uranium 233 separated, and then fed into the core.

The use of thorium-based fuel cycles has been studied for about 40 years, but on a much smaller scale than uranium or uranium/plutonium cycles. Basic research and development has been conducted in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA. China and India have been among primary catalysts in research efforts to use it. Test reactor irradiation of thorium fuel to high burn-ups has also been conducted and several test reactors have either been partially or completely loaded with thorium-based fuel.
Thorium can be used in Generation IV and other advanced nuclear fuel cycle systems.

China has been working on developing the technology for sodium cooled fast reactors which are a type of liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs). The advanced breeder concept features a molten salt as the coolant, usually a fluoride salt mixture. This is hot, but not under pressure, and does not boil below about 1400°C. Much research has focused on lithium and beryllium additions to the salt mixture. In mid-2009, AECL signed agreements with three Chinese entities to develop and demonstrate the use of thorium fuel in the Candu reactors at Qinshan in China. _UraniumInvesting

The best ongoing source for information on thorium energy is Kirk Sorensen's blog "Energy from Thorium".

Kirk is featured in the introductory video below. You can click on the YouTube icon on the video below to watch the vid at YouTube, and to find links to several related videos -- some of them well over an hour in length.

Another blog dedicated to the molten salt reactor is the Nuclear Green blog.

Here's more on thorium, from a piece in Popsci from last summer:

An abundant metal with vast energy potential could quickly wean the world off oil, if only Western political leaders would muster the will to do it, a UK newspaper says today. The Telegraph makes the case for thorium reactors as the key to a fossil-fuel-free world within five years, and puts the ball firmly in President Barack Obama's court.

Thorium, named for the Norse god of thunder, is much more abundant than uranium and has 200 times that metal's energy potential. Thorium is also a more efficient fuel source -- unlike natural uranium, which must be highly refined before it can be used in nuclear reactors, all thorium is potentially usable as fuel. _Popsci

Another basic overview on thorium

Yet another overview from Wired

Taken from an earlier article published at Al Fin Energy

Small Cities as Seeds to Help Feed Knowledge Economy

2011-06-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

The US is a dynamic mixture of large and small. While in most nations it is the large central cities which feed knowledge and culture to the rest of the society, in the US knowledge and culture flows in both directions.

Images from Wired
Livable cities draw creative people, and creative people spawn jobs. Some places you’d never expect—small cities not dominated by a university—are learning how to lure knowledge workers, entrepreneurs, and other imaginative types at levels that track or even exceed the US average (30 percent of workers). Here are some surprising destinations from the data of the Martin Prosperity Institute, directed by Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. _Wired

Most conventional analysts of societal growth and knowledge dynamics will assume that knowledge flows out of large universities and university towns into society at large. But in a free society with a market economy, knowledge is apt to originate most anywhere the market operates. And that knowledge is apt to flow anywhere the market can reach.

Above: How Omaha Nebraska was transformed into one of the US Midwest's most vibrant cultural hubs, starting in the 1990s and proceeding into the 2000s (see case study).

$74,000 for a Tiny Piece of God's Country

2011-06-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

Rio Grande River Valley Near Taos

Images via Zillow
Somewhere within 20 miles of Taos, New Mexico, sits a tiny 320 sq ft dome with a lovely view of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Also nearby is the scenic Rio Grande River Gorge. Skies over the dome are almost always clear -- deep blue in the daytime and incredibly starry at night. The dome sits on 10 acres of land, all for $74,000. But you will need to get used to living off the grid.

“There’s quite a few people who are interested in building dome homes,” explained listing agent John Kejr of Dreamcatcher Real Estate. “There are a probably a couple of dozen different companies that have [the kits].”

Dennis Johnson of Natural Space Domes in Minnesota sells kits for building a dome home — either the entire pre-fabricated kit with framework and sheeting and interior panels or a basic kit, which just includes the metal connection brackets.

While a small dome home kit, like the one in Taos, costs somewhere under $5,000, three, four and five-bedroom plus homes can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000, and Johnson claims they’re relatively easy to build and someone without a lot of construction experience can build one.

“The dome is a connect-the-dots kind of thing, a very easy system,” he said. “It’s like a giant Tinkertoy set.”

...The home is near the Rio Grande river and has “spectacular views” of the mountains, Kejr said, but be prepared to use an all-wheel drive vehicle to access the property during heavy rainstorms due to muddy conditions. _Zillow

Hmmm. Remote location, off-grid, difficult to access in wet or wintry weather? Generally fine weather. Beautiful view of the Sangre de Cristos and relatively near access to the river gorge and to prime winter skiing?

Who could ask for a better location for surviving the next apocalypse?

Japan, Switzerland, Norway: Most Expensive Cities in World

2011-06-13T08:18:00.000-07:00

Where do you go when you need to get rid of a lot of money quickly, merely by living a normal life? According to the World's Most Expensive Cities List from KPMG, Japan, Switzerland, and Norway are likely to have a town for you.

No. 1: Tokyo

Quick lunch: $20.80
Beer at a bar: $10.56
Kilogram of rice: $9.80
Dozen eggs: $4.50
Movie theater ticket: $23.80

Although the consumer price index in the Tokyo area has been falling since 2009, according to data from Japan's statistics bureau, the city remains the world's most expensive. While housing costs are not included in this survey, ECA International estimates that the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Tokyo stood at $4,352 in September.

No. 2: Oslo

Quick lunch: $45.20
Beer at a bar: $13.18
Kilogram of rice: $6.10
Dozen eggs: $8.50
Movie theater ticket: $18.80

Norway's capital is a major hub for trade, shipping, and finance and is home to the Oslo Stock Exchange. Oslo has ranked among the world's most expensive cities for years, which is not surprising when a quick lunch costs about $45 and a dozen eggs, $8.50.

No. 3: Nagoya, Japan

Quick lunch: $19
Beer at a bar: $11.37
Kilogram of rice: $8.50
Dozen eggs: $3.60
Movie theater ticket: $21.80

Nagoya is one of Japan's premier industrial and technological centers and is well known for its high quality of life and competitive business costs, according to the U.S. Commercial Service. Unlike Japan's other major cities, Nagoya was not significantly harmed by the global economic downturn and has maintained its growth.

No. 4: Stavanger, Norway

Quick lunch: $32.30
Beer at a bar: $12.83
Kilogram of rice: $5.70
Dozen eggs: $6.80
Movie theater ticket: $17.30

Stavanger was mainly a fishing community until oil was found in the North Sea in the 1960s, transforming it into a major Norwegian city. Today, Norway is a leading oil exporter, with Statoil as the largest oil company in the Stavanger region. The industry has become central to the local economy and has attracted many residents from other countries.

No. 5: Yokohama, Japan

Quick lunch: $16.90
Beer at a bar: $6.59
Kilogram of rice: $4.20
Dozen eggs: $2.50
Movie theater ticket: $21.70

Japan's second-largest city after Tokyo, Yokohama is easily reached from Tokyo by train. The port city is home to over 300 IT firms and has a growing biotechnology base, according to the city. Yokohama has nine main business districts and exports many cars and auto parts.

No. 6: Zurich

Quick lunch: $32.90
Beer at a bar: $10.54
Kilogram of rice: $3.70
Dozen eggs: $7.90
Movie theater ticket: $19.60

The financial sector is an important part of Zurich's economy and the city is home to the Swiss Stock Exchange and companies such as Credit Suisse and Swiss Re. Zurich is also a major transportation hub. Mercer ranked the city second in the world for quality of life in 2010, but such a high standard of living does not come cheap: Zurich jumped to No. 6, from being the 10th most expensive city last year.

No. 7: Luanda, Angola

Quick lunch: $52.40
Beer at a bar: $6.62
Kilogram of rice: $4.60
Dozen eggs: $5.20
Movie theater ticket: $13.90

Luanda was the most expensive city in the world in ECA International's 2009 ranking. Last year it slipped to third place, due to the depreciation of the kwanza, and this year it fell again, to No. 7. While the city has a high poverty rate, it remains one of the most expensive places for expatriates to maintain standards of living comparable to those in their home countries.

No. 8: Geneva

Quick lunch: $33.70
Beer at a bar: $9.12
Kilogram of rice: $4.70
Dozen eggs: $8.60
Movie theater ticket: $19.20

Truly a global city, Geneva is home to such international organizations as the United Nations (which has an office in the city) and the International Committee of the Red Cross. An important center for banking, government, and technology, Geneva attracts many professional visitors, as well as tourists. It ranked as the third-best city in the world for quality of life in Mercer's 2010 report.

No. 9: Kobe, Japan

Quick lunch: $15.60
Beer at a bar: $8.69
Kilogram of rice: $9.30
Dozen eggs: $3.10
Movie theater ticket: $20.80

Kobe is one of Japan's busiest ports and a manufacturing center for appliances, food, and transportation equipment. The city offers many types of cuisine, though it's known best for high grade and pricey Kobe beef.

No. 10: Bern, Switzerland

Quick lunch: $28.80
Beer at a bar: $7.46
Kilogram of rice: $4.70
Dozen eggs: $8.40
Movie theater ticket: $19.10

Switzerland's capital, Bern is the center of Swiss government, the engineering industry, and the precision industry, as well as a manufacturing center for watches and other technology used in the medical, IT, and automotive sectors, according to the Bern Economic Development Agency. Branded watches such as Rolex, Longines, Swatch, and Rado are manufactured in the Canton of Bern.

_Yahoo h/t ImpactLab

Personally, I prefer more out of the way locations with more modest costs of living. And to be honest, my own home brewed beer tastes as good or better than most of the best crafted beers one will find. For the cost of a quick lunch in some of the cities above, one could employ a skilled cook to prepare all of one's meals, in many locales.

Of course, when one travels on a business expense account, time, taste, and convenience (and what one can justify) tend to trump everything else.

Why Couldn't Sub-Saharan Africans Invent the Wheel?

2011-06-05T11:34:00.001-07:00

IQ Map of World
Before relatively recent contact with outside cultures, Subsaharan Africans did not invent the wheel, did not invent writing, developed minimal art, or agriculture, lacked musical instruments beyond simple percussion, and came up virtually empty in terms of math, science, and technology. Why the absence of invention and development?

The map of world IQ at top provides a tentative answer to the question, but the map raises a more central question: Why do SubSaharan African populations test so low, on average, on tests of IQ, executive function, and impulse control? Is it possible that a significant part of the development of the human "superbrain" -- which makes modern advanced civilisation possible -- developed after humans left the African birthplace?The dispersal of modern humans from Africa to Europe some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago provides a “minimum date” for the development of language, Hoffecker speculated. “Since all languages have basically the same structure, it is inconceivable to me that they could have evolved independently at different times and places.”

A 2007 study led by Hoffecker and colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences pinpointed the earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe dating back 45,000 years ago. Located on the Don River 250 miles south of Moscow, the multiple sites, collectively known as Kostenki, also yielded ancient bone and ivory needles complete with eyelets, showing the inhabitants tailored furs to survive the harsh winters.

The team also discovered a carved piece of mammoth ivory that appears to be the head of a small figurine dating to more than 40,000 years ago. “If that turns out to be the case, it would be the oldest piece of figurative art ever discovered,” said Hoffecker, whose research at Kostenki is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

The finds from Kostenki illustrate the impact of the creative mind of modern humans as they spread out of Africa into places that were sometimes cold and lean in resources, Hoffecker said. “Fresh from the tropics, they adapted to ice age environments in the central plain of Russia through creative innovations in technology.”

Ancient musical instruments and figurative art discovered in caves in France and Germany date to before 30,000 years ago, he said. “Humans have the ability to imagine something in the brain that doesn’t exist and then create it,” he said. “Whether it’s a hand axe, a flute or a Chevrolet, humans are continually recombining bits of information into novel forms, and the variations are potentially infinite.” _SB

The absence of sophisticated invention or innovation prior to the human diaspora out of Africa, or in SubSaharan Africa since that diaspora, suggests a potentially deep distinction in the way that humans inside SS Africa think in comparison to how Eurasian humans learned to think.

It would be good to be able to research this puzzle, but unfortunately, the straitjacket of Political Correctness prevents the raising of such questions -- even for purposes of objective scientific research. Which means that those of us who are curious will have to conduct our investigations under the table, so to speak.

Is that not always how it is, when intelligent and curious humans are faced with oppressive and authoritarian culture-reichs, such as the modern quasi-left postmodern PC culture?

Ancient Inventions

Inventions of Ancient China

Top 10 Ancient Inventions

Previously published at abu al-fin

More Ways to Halt the Mosquito Apocalypse

2011-06-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

Scientists at UC Riverside have made some discoveries which put them in something of a race with scientists at Vanderbilt University, to produce the best chemical mosquito repellent and/or neutraliser.
To find human hosts to bite and spread disease, these mosquitoes use exhaled carbon dioxide as a vital cue. A disruption of the vital carbon dioxide detection machinery of mosquitoes, which would help control the spread of diseases they transmit, has therefore been a long sought-after goal.

Anandasankar Ray, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues report in the June 2 issue of Nature (cover story) that they have identified in the lab and in semi-field trials in Africa three classes of volatile odor molecules that can severely impair, if not completely disrupt, the mosquitoes' carbon dioxide detection machinery.

...The three classes of the odor molecules are:
Inhibitors: Odor molecules, like hexanol and butanal, that inhibit the carbon dioxide receptor in mosquitoes and flies.

Imitators: Odor molecules, like 2-butanone, that mimic carbon dioxide and could be used as lures for traps to attract mosquitoes away from humans.

Blinders: Odors molecules, like 2,3-butanedione, that cause ultra-prolonged activation of the carbon dioxide sensing neurons, effectively "blinding" the mosquitoes and disabling their carbon dioxide detection machinery for several minutes.

"These chemicals offer powerful advantages as potential tools for reducing mosquito-human contact, and can lead to the development of new generations of insect repellents and lures," said Ray, who led the study. "The identification of such odor molecules – which can work even at low concentrations, and are therefore economical – could be enormously effective in compromising the ability of mosquitoes to seek humans, thus helping control the spread of mosquito-borne diseases." _PO
Mosquito borne diseases take a severe toll in human life and cause untold disability every year. Learning to distract mosquitoes from seeking out human victims would improve living conditions across much of the world.

China to Russia: Who's the Bitch Now?

2011-05-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

Mirnaya was once a thriving garrison town with a movie theater, a kindergarten and a park. The Soviet army maintained a base here to keep an eye on neighboring China. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the military left. To survive, those who stayed behind gradually dismantled and sold off what was left, piece by piece. First they removed the windows from the prefabricated buildings where the officers had once lived and sold them in Chita. Then they ripped radiators and pipes from the walls and sold them to scrap dealers, who then sold the metal in China. The buildings now stand like skeletons in the steppes, evidence of a ruined country. _Spiegel

Spiegel
China's border gate is to the left, above, and Russia's is to the right. A load of Russian lumber is moving into China. A lot of raw materials and natural resources have been moving from Russia into China, recently, where the Chinese turn the materials into finished products to sell at a significant markup.

The main thing going into Russia from China is Chinese settlers and investors, building Chinese colonies and outposts inside the very heart of Russia's source of wealth and economic power.
The border between the fallen superpower Russia and the People's Republic, which is gradually becoming a superpower, measures 3,645 kilometers, one of the longest borders in the world. And perhaps this border, where Europe's last offshoots encounter 1.3 billion Chinese, and where Christianity collides with Buddhism and Confucianism, is also one of the most important in the power struggles of the new century.

...Siberia, which covers three-quarters of the landmass of Russia, is home to only a quarter of the country's population: 38 million people. This is the equivalent of the population of Poland, except that Siberia is 40 times the size. It is a situation that many fear could once again spark the eternal rivalry between Russia and China, a rivalry that last produced military clashes in the 1960s.

Chinese investors have already bought a former tank factory in Chita, where they are now producing trucks. They already control the markets in Russian border towns, where they are the richest private business owners. "China invests more in the Russian Far East than our own government does," writes the Moscow newspaper Niezawisimaja Gazieta.

...Years ago Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's eloquent NATO ambassador, said half-jokingly that the Chinese would soon be "crossing the border in small groups of five million." And Vladimir Putin, shortly after being elected president, warned: "Unless we make a serious effort, the Russians in the border regions will have to speak Chinese, Japanese and Korean in a few decades." This hardly seems an exaggeration, given that there are six million Russians living in Eastern Siberia, compared with the 90 million living in China's northern provinces.

...Russian tourists heading to China to buy inexpensive goods are forced to wait up to 12 hours in their cars. These people, who work for distributors and are popularly known as "silk worms" or "camels," travel to China several times a month to bring goods to Russia: jeans and blouses, electric shavers and children's toys, athletic shoes made by a low-wage manufacturer called "Adidos" and chainsaws labeled "Stihl." They are pirated products, and are manufactured in southern China.

... the Chinese aren't just interested in Russian lumber. They also want Russian oil. Some 1,300 kilometers farther to the east, past empty steppes where a driver is likely to encounter no more than three cars an hour, is the small city of Skovorodino. It is the terminal point of the most expensive infrastructure project in the new Russia, a "pipeline with geopolitical significance," as Prime Minister Putin raves.

... _Spiegel

Making the Wildlands Safer for Modern Humans

2011-05-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

Imagine an insect repellant that not only is thousands of times more effective than DEET – the active ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellants – but also works against all types of insects, including flies, moths and ants.

That possibility has been created by the discovery of a new class of insect repellant made in the laboratory of Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences and Pharmacology Laurence Zwiebel and reported this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. _Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt via Photo Researchers Inc 2011
Vanderbilt researchers have made some startling discoveries regarding insects' sense of smell which has led to the creation of super-powerful new insect repellants. If the discoveries prove to be as meaningful as they now appear, a trip to the wilderness or to the tropics has just gotten a lot safer and more pleasant.
In preliminary tests with mosquitoes, the researchers found the new class of repellant, called Vanderbilt University Allosteric Agonist or VUAA1, to be thousands of times more effective than DEET. The compound works by affecting insects’ sense of smell through a newly discovered molecular channel.

“If a compound like VUAA1 can activate every mosquito odorant receptor at once, then it could overwhelm the insect’s sense of smell, creating a repellant effect akin to stepping onto an elevator with someone wearing too much perfume, except this would be far worse for the mosquito,” said Patrick Jones, a post-doctoral fellow who conducted the study with graduate students David Rinker and Gregory Pask.

The researchers have just begun behavioral studies with the compound.

“It’s too soon to determine whether this specific compound can act as the basis of a commercial product,” Zwiebel cautioned. “But it is the first of its kind and, as such, can be used to develop other similar compounds that have characteristics appropriate for commercialization.” _Vanderbilt
This is a very basic type of discovery, which perhaps should have been made decades ago. But the fact is, out of the legions of researchers in labs around the world, only a relative few of them have the necessary cognitive and creative complement to make original discoveries -- and have the confidence to persist long enough to prove them to the sceptical outside world.

But imagine a trip up the Amazon, the Mekong, or the Congo without mosquitos or flies nipping at your head and body wherever you turn, night or day, at the risk of malaria, dengue, yellow fever, encephalitis and worse? Imagine a campout in a boreal forest during the summertime, without the black flies and the mosquitos, which rapidly drink your blood until you are only a shriveled husk of your former self?

Or just imagine a normal weekend outdoor cookout without the buzzing and biting pests of summer. How would your world change?

Peaceful? Yes, But Death is Always Just Moments Away

2011-04-20T12:11:00.000-07:00

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

High adventure awaits you, in many places and forms. Whether high in the atmosphere, deep beneath the sea, at extreme mountain elevations or in far polar regions -- excitement always walks hand in hand with death. Even more so as humans step out into space environments such as orbital stations and colonies, or lunar outposts.

One augenblick of inattention, and you are gone.

Yes, I know it looks peaceful, and even easy. But focus, intelligence, and competence are only starting points to survival. If a person or society is unwilling to put in the work, it will die in Idiocracy.

Video credit: Gizmodo

70 kg Seaplane Designed in Finland

2011-04-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

PO
This one-seater carbon fibre plane lands and takes off on water, and weighs but 70 kg. It was designed by a Finnish aerospace engineer, has a topspeed of around 140 kph, and a wingspan of 5m. It will come in multiple models, with prices starting at US$ 39k. The company plans to start taking orders in 3 months.
The first version, one electric only, and two fuel based versions. The electric-only version has a 20kW engine. The two petrol-based engined run on 24 bhp and 35 bhp, respectively. The top speed on these planes is roughly 140 km/h, with a minimum speed of 70 km/h . The FlyNano has a wingspan of five meters. The plan can support a take off weight of 200 kg, as well as a take off speed of about 70km/h. In theory, the plane can travel about up to 70 kilometers in a single fueling, or charging, depending on the model that you have chosen to fly. _PO

The plane would be mainly for sport and recreation. For lake hopping, island hopping, or seastead hopping, the plane might be practical as a light mail carrier or courier craft. Future STOL (short takeoff or landing) versions of such planes might be convenient for getting out of a populated area quickly. Just be sure to have plenty of fuel caches pre-placed.

If You Can Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, You Can Survive Almost Anything

2011-04-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Riverboat Zombie Survival Compound
The imaginative survival scheme pictured above should provide a creative boost to your survival planning efforts. Here are a number of things to keep in mind when planning for your apocalypse of choice:

Basic Considerations for Planning Survival Compounds

100 Items that Disappear from the Shelves First In a Panic

Homemade Fuels: PDF Handbook for Downdraft Gasifiers

FEMA PDF Plans for Homemade Stratified Downdraft Gasifier

PDF Ideas for making your own propane from bio-feedstocks PDF

More on biopropane from MIT Technology Review

You can run a gasoline generator, tractor, or automobile with gasifier-produced syngas, from wood chips etc.

Use your imagination to discover ways to provide the items most in demand in a crisis. You may have the kernel for a profitable business to see you through the apocalypse of choice. Accept only gold, silver, or high grade ammunition as payment.

Can Bernard Way Kickstart "Arc Island" and Beat Seasteading.org?

2011-04-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Patri Friedman's Seasteading.org has been the primary website for seasteaders for a number of years now. Certainly Patri has worked the PR circuit and appeared on a number of TV shows and in some prestigious publications. He is currently in The Bahamas, giving a talk on seasteading at the Association of Private Enterprise Education.

The only way for Bernard Way to push Patri out of the limelight would be to deliver on a promise which Patri has so far been unable to keep: to build an actual working seastead.
Arc Island will be the largest civil engineering project in history, to build an entire floating structure the size of Manhattan that can be moved to different locations in the world, can be built upon and using a completely modular approach expanded as it grows.

We are creating a new civilisation from scratch, the scientific, economic, social and technological implications are huge; this is not an extension of another country, this will be its own country, with its own economic, political and legal structure. We want to take all the cutting edge ideas from all disciplines and apply them to this idea, and we want you to be part of it. _Kickstarter
Kickstarter is a fundraising site, and Mr. Way is working the site in order to get a start on necessary fundraising -- in order to start the new civilisation.

We’ve seen some great projects come out of Kickstarter, but nothing can top this. UK-born, SF-living Benjamin Peter Bernard Way wants to make an island. Oh, but not just any island. His Arc Island concept would be movable. Ah yes, and it would also be the size of Manhattan.

You see, Mr. Way has some big ideas. With big ideas come big projects, and this one is no exception. He’s had a number of ideas over the years, raising £25 million for a venture known as Pulsar while still in his teens. Though he was diluted out of the business, Way wasn’t to be kept down.

In the years that have followed his departure from Pulsar, Way has been involved with no fewer than 10 different companies. In fact, if his last name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the brother of Hermione Way, the founder of Newspepper and our hostess with the mostess for TNW Video. _TheNextWeb_via_ImpactLab
The proof is in the pudding, not in the PR or the fundraising. But when it comes to competition for achieving world-changing enterprises, the more the merrier. Certainly Mr. Way's "Manhattan sized floating island" concept is somewhat more ambitious than Patri Friedman's mini-stead concept he is floating currently.

May the best seastead win, and actually provide meaningful societal and civilisational choices, in a world that is growing ideologically and Idiocratically hidebound.

Artificial Intelligence in Dire Need of Better Brain Architectures?

2011-03-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

Randal Koene - Whole Brain Emulation from Raj Dye on Vimeo.

The above is a video from a conference on artificial general intelligence (AGI) held in Switzerland, last year. The speaker is a neuroscientist -- an outsider to the typical AI person who attends AI conferences. His appearance at the AGI conference indicates that the entire approach to AI is in a state of flux.

The attitude up until recently has been that intelligence does not rely upon any particular substrate, eg, a brain. AI researchers have boldly believed for several decades that intelligence could be built algorithmically inside machine architectures over a relatively short time span. "Sometime within 10 years . . ."

They have been saying the same thing -- "within 10 years" -- since the 1950s. Clearly not very much has happened in the way of significant breakthroughs since the 1950s. In fact, contemporary AI researchers themselves may well be growing less impressive, over time, than the pioneers of the field.

Hence the perceived need for possibly re-thinking the whole "substrate" approach. Another video in the series deals with the requirements of "cognitive architecture." An impressive phrase, although the reality is likely to prove far less impressive.

Surface Detail Fractal World

2011-03-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

Another intriguing fractal video. Amazingly complex transformations take place according to very simple rule sets. Change occurs at all scales, and the end result -- if any -- is not predictable. It sounds like the basis of a gambling game. I know! We can call it "life."

Video h/t

US Cities De-Populating

2011-03-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

WSJ_via_NewsAlert
First, US cities saw "white flight" -- where white Americans fled cities in the face of dropping property values and rising crime rates and tax rates. Now we are seeing "black flight" from US cities for some of the same reasons. Detroit is the worst example of this de-population phenomenon, but not the only one, according to the 2010 US census.
In all, the city [Detroit] lost more than 237,000 residents, including 185,000 blacks and about 41,000 whites. The Hispanic population ticked up by 1,500. Meanwhile, the black population in neighboring Macomb County more than tripled to 72,723, constituting 8.6% of the county's population in 2010, compared with 2.7% a decade earlier. Oakland County's African-American population rose 36% to 164,078.

...In 1950, Detroit was the fifth-largest city in America, behind New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and it was in the top 10 as recently as the 1990 Census. Now, Detroit is likely to fall to 19th, behind Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

...Some pockets of Detroit are seeing growth, led by immigrants, young professionals and artisans, which Mayor Bing sees as an important trend. "We are getting a lot of that 21-to-30 population moving back to the city," he said. "I think that bodes very well for us."

...Detroit's largely Hispanic southwest neighborhood remains stable, helped by new immigration, cheap housing and low barriers of entry, said Angela Reyes, executive director of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corp., a community organization. _WSJ

WSJThe movement of populations out of crumbling, crime-ridden cities to safer and better-maintained outlying areas is just a foretaste of a larger and wider migration. Americans are in fact moving out of states that are dominated by machine politics, government unions, and high-crime cities. They are moving to states with lower taxes, more business-friendly policies, fewer compulsory unionisation policies, and generally less crime.

Relative newcomer governors of New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states are fighting to save their states from the fate of Detroit, Michigan, Illinois, and California -- states that had been particularly burdened by debt caused by government unions and machine politics. But success is not guaranteed.

In order for western nations such as the US, Canada, the UK, and several European nations to survive, they will need to adopt an entirely new psychology of resourcefulness, toughness, and responsibility. The current paths of hyper-indebtedness, high taxes, over-sized governments and government unions etc. cannot be sustained.

An Arch of Towering Dimensions

2011-03-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

Inhabitat
Think of it as a skyscraper laid on its side, shaped into a dome with large holes in it. There is a lot of living and working room implied, depending upon the thickness of the dome itself, and its diameter.
This proposed arched building is a unique solution to the question of how to create density without dominating a skyline or swallowing green space. Proposed for the city of Rennes, France, the gargantuan inhabited dome placed second in this year’s eVolo skyscraper competition. Designed by Yoann Mescam, Paul-Eric Schirr-Bonnans, and Xavier Schirr-Bonnans, Flat Tower envelops a vast green space, has the ability to collect sun and rainwater and is also a sustainable solution to developing appropriately large scale developments. _Inhabitat

Inhabitat
It is easy to imagine a seastead dome of this type, arching over a floating base of sufficient buoyancy. The lower, semi-submerged portion may be a mirror-image inverted dome, or another shape more conducive to cross-water directional travel.

The most important consideration is often to nudge oneself out of conventional, rutted ways of thinking, into a workspace for envisioning novel structures, mechanisms, and devices.

A New Approach to "Cliff Dwelling"

2011-02-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

All images via Inhabitat

This return to cave-like cliff dwellings is inspired by Brazil's teeming populations of shanty towns, or favelas. As the current wave of tall and ultra-tall buildings rises and subsides, humans in depressed economies will find it too expensive to afford the maintenance required to keep the buildings functioning. But they may have a use -- providing neo-cavemen rooms with a view.

Inspired by favelas or Brazilian shanty towns, the structures are box-like homes that can be attached onto the facades of other buildings. Reyes’ concept is unique in that it actually enlists able-bodied survivors to assist with the implementation of the shelters – a cool idea, since it empowers them to take action instead of simply sitting around, waiting for help. Reyes envisions that the pre-constructed structures could be airlifted by helicopter to sites where they are needed and then guided into place with the help of survivors. They “clip” onto building facades using leverage.

Each shelter would contain beds, lighting, storage and a skylight and be made of recycled materials from local construction sites. There would also be attachments for solar energy, water purification and organic farming. Finding muse in the famous favela paintings of Rio de Janeiro, Reyes also hopes that survivors will be able to use the walls of their shelters as canvases once they are settled in, using painting as a creative outlet as they begin the process of healing. _Inhabitat

Like cliffside cavemen in the past, the neo-cavemen may find living high above the teeming masses and ground-level predators, to be safer.

Nations with average population IQs below 90 -- and without a market dominant high-IQ minority to run things -- will lose the ability to sustain advanced technologies with the coming anarchy. The high tech infrastructure still remaining after such societies collapse will be scavenged and parasitised as needed, as pockets of humanity across the third world revert to the caves.

Images via Inhabitat

Cross-posted at Al Fin

Seasteading: Getting Beyond The Celebrity-Seeking Dilettante Phase

2011-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

More Designs Here
Up to this point, seasteading seems to be more about appearances and fads than about actually building a seastead as an ongoing concern -- as a real alternative to government monopoly. The Seasteading Institute has promoted a number of conferences and a good deal of media coverage, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty of making a life on the ocean, most of the ideas one finds on the site lack heft. The bottom line is that a seastead will have to pay for itself.

It is clear that aesthetics is playing far too great a role -- and economics far too small a role -- in many of the themes and schemes thrown around in popular seasteading circles. After all, there is no need to reinvent the wheel in terms of basic marine structure. Actual commercial enterprises such as the oil & gas industry and marine mining concerns, have made significant engineering advances and continue to do so, in terms of habitable ocean-going vessels which are also commercial platforms.

One exciting material prospect for building working seasteads, is pre-stressed concrete:

Through innovation with precast and prestressed concrete, some latest trends are now focused toward the development and construction of floating ocean platforms used to extract minerals, energy, and other natural resources.

Precast and prestressed concrete platforms have been constructed to support phosphate processing plants, floating liquefied propane gas (LPG) processing and storage facilities, and oil exploration platforms that are transported afloat and grounded for drilling.

For ocean platforms, the size and weight of prestressed and precast concrete construction will provide the greatest dynamic stability due to its large inertial advantage. Long-term durability of concrete construction in an ocean environment has been proven by actual service of existing prestressed precast concrete platforms over the last several decades. _civil-online

By taking advantage of the lessons already learned and earned by offshore industries, seasteaders who are serious about pulling their own weight can find starting opportunities and niches. Just as in a successful marriage, the means of supporting the group comes first, then the details of housing, recreation, etc.

The World's Largest Family

2011-02-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

All Images from DailyMail

This is Ziona Chana and his family. They live comfortably and happily in a multi-story home with 100 rooms. It is said by his sons that Chana marries the poorest women of the village, in order to provide them with a better life.

These are Chana's 39 wives. His youngest wives occupy the rooms closest to his own. His wives provide companionship one by one, according to an orderly scheduled rotation.

The 100 room household is a busy place, with constant cooking, cleaning, childcare, and other typical concerns. Chana is pleased to be the husband of the world's largest family.

The family lives in India, Mizoram state.

Cross-posted to Al Fin

More at DailyMail

Plenty of Room in the Fractalverse

2011-02-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

Think of it as a fractal condensation of matter, energy, and space, out of the void. The fractalverse can expand itself as needed, sometimes taking advantage of multiple overlapping dimensions as needs arise.

In the fractalverse, you can make all the real estate you could ever want, as long as you understand the rules.

So if you are concerned that asteroid Apophis may destroy the Earth in the year 2036, consider reserving your own expanding accomodation in the fractalverse. Reservations for trans-dimensional departures are being accepted now.

International Beauty Contestants of Blended Photographs

2011-02-10T15:55:00.000-08:00

Image Source (via iSteve)
What if they gave an international beauty contest and the only ones showing up were blended photographs from each country? Who would win?Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment. But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese. More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features.

The photos were carefully laid over each-other using a computer program to create an individual image for each area - and the biggest surprise is that the 'common' faces are all quite beautiful. There are, of course, regional differences in face shapes, colours and features.
Peruvians and Iranians have bigger mouths, Ethiopians and Samoans have curlier hair, and fringes seem to be big in Latvia and Poland.

South African Photographer Mike Mike - who inspired the images with a web project called The Face of Tomorrow compiling the faces of various cities - explains: 'Blonde hair gets lost pretty quickly when you start averaging. 'You'd need a population 75 per cent blonde to get it visibly remaining. You'd probably have to go to Iceland for that result.' Mike, who lives in Istanbul, travels the world taking photos of the first 100 people he can persuade to pose in each place - noting their nationality every time. _DailyMail
He got the idea for his website while studying at Goldsmiths College, London.

"Sitting on the Underground train, I was intrigued by the sheer diversity of the place - Somalis, Indians, Americans, Zimbabweans, Scandinavians...," he said.

"I thought 'What is this place? What is a Londoner?' The patterns I see are an underlying connectedness between all people," Mike added. _BritainNews

Al Fin is most drawn to the Polish, Puerto Rican, and Peruvian faces, although several of the other blends are startlingly attractive as well. Obviously these blended-photos are not actually representative of most of the countries represented, just as beauty contestants in a beauty meet are not representative of their own home populations.

A lot of lessons on statistics and epidemiology could be taught, using these blended photos. In fact, most male students would prefer such an approach, I believe.

Super Wi-Fi Broadband Covers 50 Mile Radius and More

2011-02-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Super WiFi
A WiFi technology capable of covering an area with a 50 mile radius is likely to revolutionise broadband internet for rural and semi-rural areas. One of the early adopters of the technology is the Yurok American Indian reservation in Northern California, near the Oregon border.
For a glimpse of the wireless future, take a look at the Yurok Indian reservation, an out-of-the-way spot just south of the California-Oregon border at the mouth of the Klamath River. There, among the giant redwoods, stand three new towers built to create a new type of wireless network, known as "super Wi-Fi." If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission gets its way, super Wi-Fi will become a key part of rural America's digital infrastructure.

Most people living on the Yurok's 63,000-acre reservation lack phone service. Almost none have high-speed Internet. The new towers aim to fix both problems. Unlike regular Wi-Fi networks, which are generally limited to beaming high-speed Internet around a house, super Wi-Fi promises to blanket entire neighborhoods with high-speed access.

A Yurok tribal spokesman says the new signals will reach even into the steep-walled valleys that play havoc with most wireless signals.

...Unlike most wireless advances, super Wi-Fi's much-improved range has little to do with better technology. Instead, the dramatic jump comes from the FCC's decision to free up airwaves that have long been reserved exclusively for local TV broadcasts. Those TV airwaves are lower in frequency than standard cellular and Wi-Fi airwaves and thus better able to penetrate buildings and other objects.

...Since rural America has fewer local TV stations, it will have far more of these empty "white spaces" to fill with new wireless signals, points out Alex Besen, who runs an industry consultancy, the Besen Group. In many rural areas, super Wi-Fi will have access to well over 200 megahertz of spectrum, he estimates—more capacity than Verizon and AT&T combined. That huge injection of spectrum could revolutionize the digital infrastructure of rural America, Besen says. _TechnologyReview
Google thinks that Super WiFi will be revolutionary in impact. When you consider what go-anywhere broadband internet could do for global communications, it is hard to disagree.

In other consumer electronics technology news, the tablet computer field will receive some new entries at the 14 Feb 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The stage is set for a battle among new tablet PCs at the Mobile World Congress which will kick off in Barcelona on Feb. 14. Major companies including Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC are expected to show off their new devices running on the Honeycomb version of Google's Android OS at the show. Honeycomb is better suited to the larger screens of tablets rather than smartphones and supports 3D Google maps and video chat.

...While the iPad will likely stick with its 9.7-inch screen, Samsung is trying to reach a more broad spectrum of customers by targeting different segments with products of different sizes, industry experts say. Samsung's new tablets are equipped with two CPUs and include a high-definition 8-megapixel camera.

LG Electronics is set to release its 8.9-inch Optimus Pad that it revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, while Motorola Mobility is launching its flagship 10-inch Xoom tablet, which was highly acclaimed at CES.

Meanwhile, Apple is expected to unveil the successor to the iPad in March or April in San Francisco._Chosun