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http://market-ticker.org/archives/1964-Now-The-Games-Afoot-Greece-and-Goldman.html

Heh. Looks like Goldman Sachs left some DNA evidence up in the crime scene that is Greece.

Edit: Well, a surprise nicety: the deal was legal and has been known for a while. Greece is still screwed, though; not to mention the others.
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"The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight."

"The silicon wire arrays created by Atwater and his colleagues are able to convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons—in technical terms, the wires have a near-perfect internal quantum efficiency."

"flexible thin films can be manufactured in a roll-to-roll process, an inherently lower-cost process than one that involves brittle wafers, like those used to make conventional solar cells."

Dead sexy.
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Hm. Watching a handful of other For the Records, I appreciate the research that he puts in, and like the visuals, but at the end of pretty much every video he seems to stamp down a viewpoint which makes me go :\ for serious.

Except, amusingly, for this one, where all of the stuff up front makes me go :\ but the end is something I can agree with.

Trustworthy
Decent
Wholesome
Well armed
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Big Pharma researcher admits to faking dozens of research studies for Pfizer, Merck

Heh heh. Fuck science, yo. Ain't no betta process than dolla dolla billz.
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Heh. Reminds me of this here thing related to Cuba (the nation), and a government-backed false flag plan: "The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after"

One of those stories that I'd feel reluctant linking if it came from some alt site, but by gosh this is from ABC. Nice to know that America has a precedent for this sort of thing. Ahem.
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Ooooh. I am so hopeful right now.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/the-bloom-box-a-power-plant-for-the-home-video/

This came out of left field for me, interestingly enough. Former NASA scientist makes breakthrough fuel cell, receives funding from one of the most renowned VCs in the valley, has Colin Powell on its board of directors, and has already made customers of google, ebay, fedex, among others. Kept on the DL the whole time; now making big public presentation.

Considering the pedigree every step along the way, and no teasing with 'free energy' or 'fusion' or anything... this could be for reals. I hope it's for reals.

Doesn't solve the actual fuel source problem, but it's an important stepping stone.
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Yeah, that could be. I'm thinking from now on I ought to just ignore the issue until something more entertaining important happens.


Oh hay, did I mention peak phosphorus yet? That actually makes me more uncomfortable than the depletion of oil.
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I'm pretty sure that old chap didn't see it as a problem large enough to matter.

It's interesting, I think, that the more advanced a culture becomes, the fewer children they tend to have anyway. Cultures with precedent for producing many children often have to deal with high child mortality, lots of disease, famine, jobs which are inhumanely demanding in manual labor, and no support for the elderly. As you progressively remove those issues, people seem to automatically reduce family size.

Japan is in negative population growth; America's middle and upper classes are in negative population growth. Of course, you could also (perhaps quite rightly) say that the capitalistic lifestyle and employment structure has optimized itself such that we make it economically punitive to have lots of kids. I've heard of plenty of families who'd love to have lots of kids, but can't afford it (either financially, or for the impact on their career status).

Blah blah blah.
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India's subsidy on fertilizer is damaging their soil

Thankfully, it would seem that they're slowly phasing out the subsidy. I wonder how long it will take for America to start cutting back on its subsidies for corn and such, which are damaging American soil as well.
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Do we really want to turn the current events thread into a discussion about the ethics of babymaking? I don't, for one. Feel free to resurrect the population thread; I won't complain.
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Well it wasn't just you or anything. Commentary in news thread = good; debate = considerably less good.

And now, in the alt energy news:
http://www.thestar.com/business/cleanbreak/article/769233--hamilton-albertan-oil-veteran-pumping-up-nitrogen-grid

An oil vet is thinking about using pressurized tubes to move compressed nitrogen through nationwide networks. This is potentially brilliant, depending on how much loss is incurred in transit. It would be a hearkening back to antiquity, what with the Parisian Pneumatique networks from the 1800s...

"Parisians were fond of compressed-air technology. It was how the postal service delivered mail from one office to another in small brass shuttles propelled along a network of tubes. It was also used to keep the clocks ticking on the streets of the city and, by subscription, in private apartments." (link)

This nitrogen grid wouldn't be going to homes, but to generators closer to homes. It's a neat idea, regardless of what happens with it. I know that somebody tried to work with Sandia to do a solar steam experiment, but their tubing wouldn't contain the pressurized steam. Maybe guys from the oil industry would be able to do more; especially since nitrogen is rather inert compared to H2O.
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Not exactly current events, but likely still politically influential to this day: What it's like to have above-top-secret intel.
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The ongoing goings-on in The District... of COLUMBIAAAAAAAA:
Female condoms will be given out to the shawties all for free like, in hopes of reducing STDzes

This is probably a good idea. Almost just like giving condoms away in Africa, but this might actually work, kinda. Maybe.
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Yay, methane may be leaking from the polar caps more than we thought. What's best to me is: "This type of source has never been predicted by anyone and has not been included in climate models."

I'm not sure how true that is, but it sure is true that All I hear all day on the news is how poor carbon is at this, or how awful carbon did that. CARBON CARBON CARBON!
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It's got the sexy stylin'. Prettier to look at than the gapminder thinger that Google has been working with: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/statistics-for-changing-world-google.html

Big difference being that I was able to access the google stuff right there in the page, while Pivot is going to take some install and reboot action. It's fantastic that big movers and big shakers are running with this, though. I think once we figure out how to assemble and visualize the myriad data types effectively, ergonomically, and beautifully, it will take off with the public. It's all of that 'semantic web' stuff that people have been making vague hand wavings about for years now — and it hasn't been happening because we still haven't found the best ways to collect and curate the shit.

The rise of tagging and crowdsourcing has set a good foundation, though. The ball is already rolling.

Here's another quickie TED speech that's fairly inspirational: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide.html The way they visualize the edits over time is stirring to watch. Kinda makes you want to join in, in some way.

Which reminds me of Google's Building Maker: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwh/buildingmaker.html

Make it easy to the point of being kinda fun. Give beautiful feedback. See if you can get a feeling of communal contribution.

I wonder if there's old stuff to learn from, here; like old fashioned Barn Raising parties, and so on.
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Ah yes, because setting a nationwide standard will adequately address all children. One size fits all indeed.

Here's more on it: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/education/11educ.html

"The standards, posted on the panel’s web site, lay out the panel’s vision of what American public school students should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation."

( ﾟДﾟ) EVERYBODY IS THE SAME. EVERYBODY IS THE SAME. IF YOU ARE [X] YEARS OLD YOU SHOULD KNOW BE ABLE TO PASS A TEST ON [Y] INFORMATION. EVERYBODY IS THE SAME.

"And adoption of the new standards would set off a vast new effort to rewrite textbooks and standardized tests."

( ﾟДﾟ) LOBBYISTS.

"In keeping his state out of the movement, Gov. Rick Perry argued that only Texans should decide what children there learn."

( ﾟДﾟ) THAT'S COOL. WE NEEDED MORE USELESS PARTISANSHIP WHICH DOESN'T ACTUALLY FIX ANYTHING.

"Under the Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money"

( ﾟДﾟ) I HAVE A NICKEL. A SHINY, SHINY NICKEL. WHO WANTS IT?

"Another improvement over current state benchmarks is that the proposed standards are what educators call vertically aligned, meaning that what students are expected to learn in early years builds a foundation for what they are to learn in the next grade."

( ﾟДﾟ) HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT WE ARE SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS IN, AND SAYING NOTHING ABOUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF A STUDENT FALLS BEHIND IN THE VERTICALLY ALIGNED RACE TO THE TOP? NO? GOOD. DON'T THINK ABOUT IT. EVER.

“We tried to clean house a bit, keeping only what is most important and most critical,”

( ﾟДﾟ) WE HAVE CHOSEN THE MOST IMPORTANT TREE IN THE FOREST. LET IT BE A MODEL FOR OTHER TREES THAT HAVE GROWN AND WILL GROW HENCEFORTH.
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"Amazon.com's 1-Click patent confirmed following re-exam"

Tch.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/16/beck-uk/

UK is not amused by Glen Beck.

How often does something like this happen?
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Came across an article about how a number of nature conservationist organizations have fallen into codependency with their pollution-heavy big industry counterparts. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hari/single I found it eye-rollingly biased at times, and it sports a fair number of [citation needed] moments, but it's still an interesting perspective to be aware of. Much as governments begin to grow dependent on tax revenues from bad things, we've got 'green' organizations willing to make moral compromises rather than simple concessions.

I'm still not sure about this whole notion of the temperature raising 2~4 degrees and killing us allllll. That's where he just acts like IT'S BEEN PROVEN FOR LIKE TWENTY YEARS AND HERE IS A QUOTE FROM A GUY YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF. I mean, I get the notion of what's talked about, insofar as loss of moisture leading to more brush fires, and so on, but I'm just not seeing the hard evidence to convince me that it's really going to happen en masse.
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A two-part article from a professor at Stanford, on the biological investigation of willpower: Part 1, Part 2.

Gist of it:
Willpower is not "all in the mind."
Using willpower consumes body glucose, just as physical exertion does.
If you expend too much effort on one act of will, other acts suffer later.
Diet affects willpower, just as it affects physical power.
You can condition will, much as you can condition muscle.
Strength of will is more general than task-specific.
You can 'strength train' on simple tasks and the gains will carry over into future tasks.

I'm sure that it's subtler and more sophisticated once you get into the neurology, but this is still a neat perspective. It's one thing to wave hands and talk about 'discipline'; it's another thing to explain that modern Science has determined various biological correlations and causations which we can act on.


Edit: Recap of work from another Stanford professor, interestingly enough, on the topic of happiness. I know a lot of this already, but it's a good reminder: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188644
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Reading these pieces, I am distinctly and quite curiously reminded of how it feels to look at very old Popular Science articles.

Colorado doctors skirt FDA jurisdiction to provide human stem cell therapies

Robotic scientist makes first autonomous discovery

Scientists demonstrate mammalian regeneration through single gene deletion

Oh my. So close, so far. Would that we live to see it all reach fruition.

Edit: Commentaries on those three links: The human stem cell deal is very cool, and I love that people working close to the project joined in the comment section. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Robotic scientist is a great deal, since it cuts down a lot of the human bottlenecking. Less error, more efficiency. Seems like a physical extension of the idea of 'invention machines' — of which there are a couple so far.

Mammalian regeneration is so nascent a concept right now that we don't know quite what it's capable of. Ostensibly, we have not evolved for this process to work with mature humans, and so there's no autonomic system in place to prevent cancerous growth. So it might be good for simple wound healing, but not good for whole limbs, etc.
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A video from the guys who invented that spray-on nanoglass:



Looking forward to it. Even if it's a quarter as useful as they're making it sound, it's going to have a huge impact on society.
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http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/cEpXtg50EF4/universal-to-cut-all-cd-prices-to-below-10

I'm thinking of that moment when a mouse, wrapped tightly by a snake, loses its will to struggle.

A $20 CD in 1990 money would be worth over $30 in today money. Oh, how they used to be fuckin' the world.
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Oh, good news!
"Dartz claim to have learned from their past mistakes (the disastrous armored car with whale penis leather interiors) and are offering a solution in the form of this new material they call, Whale.Skin.Vinyl. Said to be artificial, the unique whale skin vinyl is said to be an authentic copy of the whale penis skin surface."

For those who were too busy being sane to keep up with this (and if you have a good mental model of Crazy Russian People Speaking, then please switch into that gear while reading their posts and press releases. Failing that, I suppose the sound of Borat would be a fully suitable replacement):

One month ago DARTZ presented uberluxury armored car with whale penis interior – PROMBRON’ (ex.RussoBaltique), lot of people name this car as DARTZ.KOMBAT. As the world’s resonance was very huge and DARTZ got lot of angry e-mails from Greenpeace, WWF and also Pamela Anderson, DARTZ make strong decision to stop their plans regarding such interior.

We have no any ideas to kill the whale or something like that. All we want – to make just luxury car. Real luxury car which will be world number one car. Our brand was started at 1869 when in Riga was opened Coach Factory or Russo Baltiysky Vagonnij Zavod – PBVZ, and first products was luxury train coaches. At 1907 was made a decision to open Car Department, and at 1909 first car left factory – the name of this car was RussoBalt. This was luxury and sport cars. At 1911 specially for Monaco Rally car got french style name – RussoBaltique. At 1912 factory made world first 4 x 4 wheel drive car, and at 1914 – armored car. All we want to unite luxury and armoring traditions of RussoBalt factory in one car, which brand celebrated 100 years now. At 1922 RussoBalt was renamed to PROMBRON’ (ex.RussoBalt).

We just looking for most expensive products for this car – and that’s why we choosed whale penis leathure when we checked it is most of most. After wave of protest we realised our mistake and make a decision not to use natural leathure at all. We will focus on world most advanced nanotechnologies to achieve interior highest quality using artificial materials which also was never used for cars. We want to tell our hello to all whales: “Our Sea Brothers! We all know that earth are stand on three whales - we will keep You live! We don’t Earth fall down to Ocean!”

Also we make a decision to pay more attention to glass and on our new car model we will use glass which will be made by special technology - from artificial grown chrystals, which will be gold sputerred to cut IR and UV rays, which make driving inconvinient when sun shine.

Best regards,
Leonard F. Yankelovich
DARTZ.EU

http://dartz.eu/en/dartz_site_bankz/vip-armored-car

http://dartz.eu/en/dartz_site_bankz/vip-armored-car/tree253_unnamed_alias

http://dartz.eu/en/dartz_site_bankz/vip-armored-car/tree252_unnamed_alias
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Oh my. I wish them the best of luck.

"We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don't think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks."

Dangerously famous-last-words-ish. They should be fine, though.
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http://www.physorg.com/news188458077.html So, if I understand this article rightly, it looks like people have discovered how to make magnets stronger than the strongest rare earth magnets, and they've done this with just iron and nitrogen.

One of the commenters there says that it can't be used for superconduction, but really I'm alright with that.
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Oh hay, speaking of Borat a couple days ago: here is what's REALLY going on in Kazakhstan:



Save the global problem of the humanity!

"the most efficient way to clean the air, with a spectacular 99,95% result, using only 1% of energy and returning 100 times more."

I'd have to see some cost:value ratios for its installation and operation, but that's really heartening anyway. Kinda afraid that there won't be an adequate uptake of the technology even if it is indeed all that and a bag of carbon credits, just because first worlders will say HA HA FUCK YOU on principle. Hopefully a groundless fear.
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