Archive for June, 2009
How Close Is Real Nanotechnology?
How close are we to real nanotechnology? A science writer ask four nano pioneers, including K. Eric Dexler (”progress is accelerating”) and Ralph Merkle (”the exponential trends continue to be exponential”). Both men are acknowledged in Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age,” but we’re now seeing real progress with large-scale 3D DNA integrated with diamond nanorods.
Though we don’t have Star Trek replicators yet, the article lists some surprising recent nano developments (including artificial tissue and nanoparticle sheets). And the four scientists are ultimately envisioning nano-miracles including targeteted cancer therapies, super-efficient solar cells, high-density computer memory chips and even responsive “smart” materials.”
“The exponential trends continue to be exponential…”
Giant Star Betelgeuse Shrinks Mysteriously
SPACE.com: A massive red star in the constellation Orion has shrunk in the past 15 years and astronomers don’t know why. Called Betelgeuse, the star is considered a red supergiant. Such massive stars are nearing the ends of their lives and can swell to 100 times their original size before exploding as supernovae, or possibly just collapsing to form black holes without violent explosions (as one study suggested).
Betelgeuse, one of the top 10 brightest stars in our skyis a popular target among backyard skywatchers and was the first star ever to have its size measured, and even today is one of only a handful of stars that appears through the Hubble Space Telescope as a disk rather than a point of light. It was the first star (besides our sun) to have its surface photographed (by Hubble).
The new finding, presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena,…
Seven Failed Virtual Reality Technologies
Stephen Goldmeier, io9.com: There was a time when people were calling home virtual reality the wave of the future. Now most people just call it goofy and expensive. Here are 7 virtual reality technologies that didn’t work, and never will.
The Virtual Reality Glove: It seemed every time Nintendo dug into the virtual reality market, they miscalculated. You may remember the Power Glove from such cinema classics as The Wizard. The Power Glove recreated the motions of a user wearing it on screen, but the motion tracking was imprecise and the glove was clunky. The company sold about 100,000 of the gloves in the U.S. Compare that with a more successful technology descended from the Power Glove, the Wii; Nintendo has sold over 13 million of those so far.
That didn’t stop other companies from trying to market similar technologies, though. The P5 glove for PC gaming required specially designed games and therefore never…
Twitter’s Transatlantic Homeless Love Match
Homeless Tales: They say truth is stranger than fiction. We have already seen some remarkable events unfold on Twitter including international breaking news stories such as the Hudson river plane crash and a revolution in Moldova. Romance is nothing new either, there have already been a number of marriage proposals taking place in full public view on the social network. There are even twitter dating sites springing up such as MyTweetheart.com and Twitterbirds.com. You name it, it has happened on Twitter. This story is a little different, however.
So inaccurate is the public perception of homelessness that the world cries foul when a homeless person is seen with a mobile phone or an iPod or heaven forbid; a laptop. Homeless people don’t use the internet, they don’t write blogs, they’re not webmasters and they don’t use Twitter. They are alcoholics, they are substance abusers, they are illiterate. They don’t work. They…
Terrorism Is Auto-Immune War: The ‘War on Terror’ Does The Terrorists’ Job for Them
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing (via Futurismic): The Yorkshire Ranter recasts terrorism as an “auto-immune war” — a war intended to inflict maximum damage by getting the host’s defense mechanisms to overfire, damaging the host well beyond than the actual terrorist attacks:
“Specifically, auto-immune war is a strategy, but its tactical implementation is the creation of false positive responses. Security obsession gums up the economy with inefficiencies. Terrorism terrorises the public; security theatre keeps them that way. As Kilcullen points out, every day, millions of travellers are systematically reminded of terrorism by government security precautions. Profiling measures subject entire communities to indignity and waste endless hours of police time. Vast sums of money are spent on counterproductive equipment programs and unlikely techno-fixes. National identity cards and monster databases are the specific symptoms of this pathology in the UK, just as idiotic militarism is in the US.”
Coal Consumption Grows For the Sixth Year in a Row
Terry Macalister, Guardian: Coal consumption is continuing to grow more quickly than other traditional sources despite high prices and the dangerous impact it will have on carbon emissions, new statistics released by oil giant BP show.
China, which has been trumpeting its new wind and solar goals in recent days, led the way with a near 7% increase in the amount of coal it burned during 2008 despite average prices rising 73% to $150 (£129) per tonne. This accounts for 43% of global coal use.
Worldwide coal consumption rose by 3.1% to 3.3bn tonnes of oil equivalent last year while gas use rose by 2.5% and oil use fell very slightly, according to the BP statistical review of world energy. “For a sixth consecutive year, coal was the fastest-growing fuel – with obvious implications for global carbon dioxide emissions,” said Tony Hayward, the BP chief executive.
Crude consumption dropped 0.6% to 81.8m barrels…
Throwin A Fix: Hoodoo and the American Spirit
For better or for worse, Freemasonic and Rosicrucian orders have boasted members at all echelons of political power since the birth of the nation, and Illuminist ideology forms the invisible backbone of our countries most fundamental principles. But despite its pervasiveness, these influences remain a part of the secret history of America, as historians continue to idly ponder whether we were conceived as a christian nation or a republic of secular humanism.
America’s High: The Case For and Against Pot
CNN: Starting on Monday we’ll be taking a close look at marijuana and its use in the United States. Is there a case for legalization? We traveled around the country, met with people on all sides of the issue, walked through medical marijuana dispensaries and got a clear idea of the different kinds of marijuana out there.
And what about using marijuana for medical purposes? Hear Melissa Etheridge’s take on the issue. She says it helped her through her battle with cancer. But there’s the other side too. We will speak to a 34-year-old teacher who is bi-polar who used marijuana for treatment but says it ruined her life. She tells Randi Kaye why she thinks marijuana is addictive and how she says the drug nearly killed her.
Randi Kaye visits a marijuana garden where 7,000 plants were taken down that day — that’s a street value of about $500,000.
Check out the…
Human Brains Make Their Own ‘Marijuana’
Science Daily: U.S. and Brazilian scientists have discovered that the brain manufactures proteins that act like marijuana at specific receptors in the brain itself. This discovery may lead to new marijuana-like drugs for managing pain, stimulating appetite, and preventing marijuana abuse.
“Ideally, this development will lead to drugs that bind to and activate the THC receptor, but are devoid of the side effects that limit the usefulness of marijuana,” said Lakshmi A. Devi of the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one of the senior researchers involved in the study. “It would be helpful to have a drug that activated or blocked the THC receptor, and our findings raise the possibility that this will lead to effective drugs with fewer side effects.”
Scientists made their discovery by first extracting several small proteins, called peptides, from the brains of mice and determining their…
It’ll Be Years Before Jobs Return To Much of U.S.
McClatchy: WASHINGTON — Unlike the labor market collapse that killed millions of U.S. jobs in a matter of months, the nation’s return to peak employment will not be nearly as uniform nor as swift. While signs indicate that the worst of the recession may be over, only six metropolitan areas across the country are expected to regain their pre-recession employment levels by the end of 2009, according to projections from IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster.
The areas poised for a jobs rebound later this year are: Anchorage, Alaska; Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Columbia, Mo.; Laredo, Texas; and the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux areas of Louisiana. Only five areas are expected to see a similar jobs recovery in 2010: Las Cruces, N.M. and El Paso, San Antonio and the McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr and Austin-Round Rock areas of Texas. Most of the country — 286 of 325 metro areas covered in the IHS analysis_ aren’t…
Sitting Now Podcast Interviews Douglas Rushkoff, Richard Metzger and R.U. Sirius
In this weeks bumper episode, we talk to three ‘fringe-savants’: Douglas Rushkoff, Richard Metzger and R.U. Sirius, to find out what happened to the Counterculture. Discussed: Pre-millennium tension, Countercultural-personalities, Made culture, defining counterculture and loads more.
SittingNow (Podcast) What happened to the Counterculture w/ Rushkoff, Metzger and Sirius
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In this weeks bumper episode, we talk to three ‘fringe-savants’, Douglas Rushkoff,Richard Metzger and R.U.Sirius, to find out what happened to the Counterculture. Discussed: Pre-millennium tension, Countercultural-personalities, Made culture, defining Counterculture and loads more.
Iran Updates: Live-Blogging The Uprising
Nico Pitney, HuffPost: I’m liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, and please Digg this post if you feel so inclined.
2:58 PM ET — BBC Persia hit by “heavy electronic jamming.” Via emailer Sven, AFP confirms several foreign outlets being banned from reporting, and adds:
The British Broadcasting Corporation said the satellites it uses for its Persian television and radio services had been affected since Friday by “heavy electronic jamming” which had become “progressively worse.”Satellite technicians had traced the interference to Iran.
2:55 PM ET — More video of violence. Whoever posted this YouTube says the man in the video was beaten to death by the police. It’s unclear if that’s the case, but he is certainly beaten by several officers and is left, unmoving, on the ground:
Orwell’s ‘1984′: Sixty Years Later
Robert Harris, Daily Mail: Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in London on Wednesday, June 8, 1949, and in New York five days later. The world was eager for it. Within 12 months, it had sold around 50,000 hardbacks in the UK; in the U.S. sales were more than one-third of a million. It became a phenomenon.
Sixty years later, no one can say how many millions of copies are in print, both in legitimate editions and samizdat versions. It has been adapted for radio, stage, television and cinema, has been studied, copied and parodied and, above all, ransacked for its ideas and images.
As I write, the Mail is reporting that ‘town halls are routinely using controversial Big Brother surveillance laws to spy on their own employees’; the Los Angeles Times is describing a Republican Party consultant as ‘a master of the black art of political newspeak’; the Village Voice is citing ‘a ripe example of doublethink’;…
Mousavi Seeks To Overturn Iran Election Result
Parisa Hafezi and Fredrik Dahl (Reuters): Defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi demanded on Sunday that Iran’s presidential election be annulled and urged more protests, while tens of thousands of people hailed the victory of the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Mousavi’s supporters again took to the streets after violence on Saturday, clashing with police in protests that have underscored political rifts exposed by Friday’s disputed vote.
In a statement on his website, Mousavi said he had formally asked the Guardian Council, a legislative body, to cancel the election result. “I urge you, Iranian nation, to continue your nationwide protests in a peaceful and legal way,” he added.
The unrest that has rocked Tehran and other cities since results were declared on Saturday is the sharpest expression of discontent against the Islamic Republic’s leadership for years.
The election result has disconcerted Western powers trying to induce the world’s fifth biggest oil exporter to curb its nuclear programme. U.S.…
The Truth About Roswell?
UFO watchers believe that in 1947 a flying saucer with aliens on board landed outside the New Mexico town of Roswell and that an elaborate cover-up by the authorities followed. The BBC’s Kevin Connolly went to Roswell in pursuit of the truth about the Roswell incident.
There is a lunar quality to the landscape of New Mexico which seems somehow appropriate for a state which is our portal to the heavens.
It is here on a dried-up lake bed high above sea level that the radio telescopes of the US government’s Very Large Array (VLA) send signals to the outer edges of our expanding universe, chasing the very moment of the Big Bang through the trackless void of time and space.
And of course it is also here – perhaps – that 62 years ago a flying-saucer crashed to earth on a ranch outside the town of Roswell, killing its alien crew and…
Resignation of David Walker, the Most Important Economic Indicator of Things to Come: Fall of Rome
There have been a few major economic events in the last few years, but I consider the resignation, in March 2008, of David M. Walker from his commission of Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office to be the harbinger of what is to come.
Walker resigned 5 years before the end of his 15-year term expired. His reasons for resigning were that he was limited to what he could do and that the United States was in danger of collapsing in much the same manner as the Roman Empire…
For months before his resignation he traveled the country educating Americans about the financial crisis and the pending bankruptcy of the United States.
Do Facebook Vanity URLs Equals Kill Twitter Vol. 2?
This past Friday, Facebook started issuing vanity URLs to its 200 million plus community. It was a big change for the social networking company that has so far used unique numerical identifications to identify its members.
Not any more — now you can go to Facebook.com/OmMalik and friend me. (I am It was such a major event that even on the weekend it was talk of the Twitter, Facebook’s rival social network.
Some have viewed this move towards vanity URLs as a way for Facebook to get more search engine juice. In reality it might be Facebook’s next attack on Twitter. Facebook earlier this year launched the status updates. With vanity URL, they are now getting into the name space business, something Twitter really excels at.
Michael Moore’s New Trailer Hits Theaters
Never one to follow standard procedure, Michael Moore tried a new concept with a teaser trailer for his still untitled movie about the financial crisis — viewer interaction.
Select theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. screened a message from Moore before The Taking of Pelham 123, promoting the movie and asking audience members to donate money for victims of the economic crisis — the banks and their CEOs.
After the trailer, ushers representing Moore’s satirical organization “Save our CEOs” collected the donations, which will go to local food banks.
