297 our of 300 views and the Spatans at Thermopylae 480 BC

Thanks for stopping by in the first 20 days of this blog.
One of you stopping by will be the 300th viewer of the blog.///////

Here are two entries on a famous 300, the Spartans that made up a small group of 7,000 soldiers that foughts and stood off an army estimated to be about 25,000 to 200,000 Persians.

300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae

Map showing Thermopylae as a choke point to enter Greece.

Archeology: A place in Turkey called Eden from 12000 to 1300 years ago

A fascinating archeological site, built by nomads, then buried. Why? and why?

Three articles on this amazing place with some great photographs.

Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization

The World's First Temple: Turkey's 12,000-year-old stone circles were the spiritual center of a nomadic people

The oldest man-made place of worship yet discovered, Göbekli Tepe is "one of the most important monuments in the world," says Hassan Karabulut, associate curator of the nearby Urfa Museum. He and archaeologist Zerrin Ekdogan of the Turkish Ministry of Culture guide me around the site. Their enthusiasm for the ancient temple is palpable.

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

Around 8,000 BC, the creators of Gobekli turned on their achievement and entombed their glorious temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which that Kurdish shepherd walked in 1994.
No one knows why Gobekli was buried. Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke.

Transportation: The Age of Steam

Recently built "Tornado" A1 Steam Engine

A BBC news story Steam train's snow rescue 'glory' from December 2009.

To get some idea of the power of the Tornado steam engine watch:



UK Rail Tours with Steam Dreams and nformation on UK Railway Preservation and steam tours

Who are you: Some background on a political movement

I try to avoid politics on this blog, but want to cover how the media reports about politics, rarely. As this is a recent and realatively large movement.read about the Seattle woman credited with being the first Tea Party protester, she held a rally before the Tea Party started forming up.

Refreshing to read some background on the news instead of some sort of personalized projected reality. I have seen Tea Parties and many media accounts do not accurately characterize the tone, makeup, and attitudes of those attending.

I saw one Tea Party rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin and it as made up of all sorts of people, farmers, small business owners, men and women. And people seemed to be ripping equally on both parties for spending too much money.My best explanation is that those in the Tea Party want to reign in waste, pork barrel spending, and make the public sector more productive.

It is ironic that while businesses to survive have cut staff and maintained or increased productivity over the past 30 years I do not know of any governments that have not grown in size while  reducing their services. Maybe we are past the point of no return when a cap or reduction in public sector spending and an increase in services and productivity is not expected or demanded. 

Chart - 50 years of government spending

The computer and network have allowed most businesses to carve out many mid-level management positions and entire careers, typists and secretaries for example are mostly gone in the private sector. What has the public sector done to control costs, eliminate or re-purpose  redundant staff and increase value?

Unlikely Activist Who Got to the Tea Party Early

“I basically thought to myself: ‘I have two courses. I can give up, go home, crawl into bed and be really depressed and let it happen,’ ” she said this month while driving home from a protest at the State Capitol in Olympia. “Or I can do something different, and I can find a new avenue to have my voice get out.”

This weekend, as Tea Party members observe the anniversary of the first mass protests nationwide, Ms. Carender’s path to activism offers a lens into how the movement has grown, taking many people who were not politically active — it is not uncommon to meet Tea Party advocates who say they have never voted — and turning them into a force that is rattling both parties as they look toward the midterm elections in the fall.

Reader Email on the 80s

Update:
Nick chats with Susannah Gora about her book You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, And Their Impact on a Generation.      Sat-Sun show 02/27/10

Book about the 80s teen movies -

You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried: The Brat Pack, John Hughes, and Their Impact on a Generation

She's on the radio right now. Book includes stories about the movies / behind the scenes. When Ally Sheedy went for audition she had 2 black eyes. She was in a play and a board had fallen on her head. When Hughes was casting for Breakfast Club he remembered her look at the audition so hired her for the role. Hughes had seen Molly Ringwald in something. He had her picture above his desk when he wrote the screenplay. (Needless to say she didn't have to audition for the role.) Jon Cryer was supposed to end up with Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. But when they screened it the audience booed when he got the girl. So they re-shot and Andrew McCarthy got MR. (I realize I never saw that movie.)

Guy on the radio knew John Cusack back then. Says his character in 'Say Anything' IS John Cusack. That's what he was like at that age. Book sounds interesting (but she's only 32).

Haven't heard anything about this book  - released last fall by Stewart Copelandmusic, video
Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies

Since we're looking back. Let Suzuki blow your mind.
http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/sellebration/view.php?id=154

Weird Science: men prefer a curvier figure.

Looking at curvy women 'gives men the same high as alcohol or drugs'

Paris: Kilometer Zero

Paris in June 2008
All distances in France are measured from Notre Dame otherwise known as Kilometer Zero
and this is what you will see

 

France's Kilometer Zero: Notre Dame

Street flower shop in the rain

 Eating in a calm and civilized way

 

Romantic symbols are everywhere

Spys like us: Israel and the Mossad

Whomever killed al-Mabhouh, whom Hamas admits was involved in the killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989,it was a large operation. Some accuse Mossad and the reaction inside Israel?

Israelis rush to join Mossad after Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killing

Would you be prepared to cross-dress? And kill a guest in an adjacent hotel room? If the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”, and you can also act, enjoy luxury international travel with a twist and can carry off a convincing Irish or Australian accent, then the job could be yours.

The Israeli spy agency Mossad may be the target of international reproach since it allegedly killed the Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel this month, but at home emerging details of the operation have generated Mossad mania.

German speed skater crashes, still wins

German skater swims across finish line. I watched it live she was struggling and then fell and slid across the line. She was distraught  thinking she had blown the finish and she won by a small fraction.

Climate:City mouse and country mouse

Two interesting charts of the data that hint that urban and rural temperature data is being poorly combined.

Rural and Urban Temperature data

The adjusted data seems to overstate rural temperature increases
much more then urban adjustments for the heat islad effect.

Dr. Long suggests that NCDC’s adjustments eradicated the difference between rural and urban environments, thus hiding urban heating. The consequence:

“…is a five-fold increase in the rural temperature rate of increase and a slight decrease in the rate of increase of the urban temperature.”

The analysis concludes that NCDC “…has taken liberty to alter the actual rural measured values”.

A specfic example of data that looks to be poorly adjusted and seems to hint that the urban heat island effect has unfairly adjusted the "massaged" rural "data instead of eliminating localized heating in urban data.

Chile: 8.8 earthquake and aftershocks

Update: Millions affected as toll rises to 300 and ‘State of Catastrophe’...the city shook for about 90 seconds.

- I was in the Bay Area Morgan Hill earthquake in April 1984 and it was "just"a 6.2 that lasted about 20 to 30 seconds and as it built you went from the sense that a truck was passing nearby to fear or the building ripping apart.
An earthquake 100 times stronger and three to our times longer must be terrifying.

Update: Huge earthquake batters Chile, 78 dead

Local reports of the 8.8 eartquake
and the USGS reports at least two large aftershocks:

1 hour ago 5.4 Offshore Maule, Chile
2 hours ago 6.2 Offshore Maule, Chile
2 hours ago 8.8 Offshore Maule, Chile

I have been in many smaller quakes and one about 6.2 and would not like to know at all what an 8.8 would feel like.

The greatest recorded quake, 9.5 was in Chile in 1960.

Music: Goldfrapp

Alison Goldfrapp's shakeup at the disco

Hugh Laurie finds happiness in LA

When is a House at home?

After six years in the US, the actor is feeling at home

Canadian Women hockey players party party party

The party is switched to the "on" position after they win a gold metal and

the International Olympic Committee will investigate.

I have seen other athletes drinking champagne, so maybe it is the beer they were drinking. Or the cigars. Or ...

Update: Canada's reaction: This is no big deal and some great photos of an innocent looking celebration.

Music: Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

Samples of original software created music.

David Cope’s software creates beautiful, original music.

Fuel Cells: Current and projected costs

A home fuel cell costing $3,000 and providing electricity at 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour would be huge. it would take load off of the utilities and avoid power lost during transmission, so it would be about 60% more efficient.


Bloom Energy Currently Costs 12,8 cents

Military: World Wide Aircraft Carriers

All of the United States Navy's small aircraft carriers equals all of the other navies carriers combined. That leaves the United States with 12 super carriers that are not matched by any other navy.

The link below shows graphically the large amount of carriers that the United Staes navy has and how much larger the US carriers are.

The scope of American military power relative to that of the rest of the world

O see how well our good ship sails!

For some time I have search for an attribution to this old phrase,
because it captures the delight you feel when a sail boat moves.
I had heard it was from Chaucer. Thanks to Project Gutenberg I see that this is at least 600 years old.

Here are a few verses from the oldest genuine English sea-song known.
They were written down in the fifteenth century, before the discovery
of America, and were probably touched up a little by the scribe. The
original manuscript is now in Trinity College, Cambridge. It is a true
nautical composition--a very rare thing indeed; for genuine sea-songs
didn't often get into print and weren't enjoyed by landsmen when they
did. The setting is that of a merchantman carrying passengers whose
discomforts rather amuse the 'schippemenne.'

Anon the master commandeth fast
To his ship-men in all the hast[e],
To dresse them [line up] soon about the mast
Their takeling to make.

With _Howe! Hissa!_ then they cry,
'What howe! mate thou standest too nigh,
Thy fellow may not haul thee by:'
Thus they begin to crake [shout].

A boy or twain anon up-steyn [go aloft]
And overthwart the sayle-yerde leyn [lie]
_Y-how! taylia!_ the remnant cryen [cry]
And pull with all their might.

Bestow the boat, boat-swain, anon,
That our pylgrymms may play thereon;
For some are like to cough and groan
Ere it be full midnight.

Haul the bowline! Now veer the sheet[sail];
Cook, make ready anon our meat!
Our pylgrymms have no lust to eat:
I pray God give them rest.

Go to the helm! What ho! no neare[r]!
Steward, fellow! a pot of beer!
Ye shall have, Sir, with good cheer,
Anon all of the best.

_Y-howe! Trussa!_ Haul in the brailes[ropes]!
Thou haulest not! By God, thou failes[t]
O see how well our good ship sails!

veer - Nautical. To change the course of a ship by turning the stern to the wind while advancing to windward; wear ship.
brail - Nautical.One of several small ropes attached to the leech of a sail for drawing the sail in or up.

- ELIZABETHAN SEA-DOGS: A CHRONICLE OF DRAKE AND HIS COMPANIONS

BBC signals an end to era of expansion

ABC News announced a 20% plus layoff this week, budget and some other issues seem to be behind the

BBC cutting spending.

Lower-cost hospital care not always lower in quality

From FuturePundit: Lower Cost Hospitals Achieve Equivalent Quality come this

Lower-cost hospital care is not always lower in quality

"Fortunately, there are interventions that show promise in decreasing hospital costs without harming quality. For example, decreasing length of stay for certain conditions can safely decrease costs. Indeed, Chen and colleagues found that lengths of stay were significantly longer at high-cost hospitals for both congestive heart failure and pneumonia."

"To increase progress on lowering hospital costs without harming quality, we need more comparative effectiveness studies—specifically, studies that show that two interventions of different costs are of equal value," Dr. Katz concludes. "This research is critical to increasing quality of care at the same time as we decrease cost, so that we can afford to expand health care coverage for the uninsured."

Internet: Flash Mobs and Performance Art

Larry Niven wrote about Flash Crowd based
on teleportation. The Internet has allowed people to do performance art in public and record for all of us the warping of innocent bystanders as to what is reality.

To me flash crowd = flash mob , so I credit Larry Niven with predicting an accurate social trend, people do this sort of thing, because the technology allows them to do it and derive pleasure for the "art" they created, temporary in real time, but stored on a web server for a long time.

Here we have the Antwerp Central Station being turned into a performance space.

200 views passed today, 205 at the moment of this post

Thanks and please keep coming back, it is new and still forming, so please email me with ideas or suggestions. I am trying to mix things up enough to make it worth visiting every now and then. Want to emphasize science and technology.

Will need people to refer my site, Last Ditch Efforts, until I can get some links to me from other sites, that is one way you show up in search engine results.

This is a nice little hobby and I would like to see how it grows and changes over time.

Update: 214 views at 1pm Central time, that is 14% of the way to 300 since about 4 hours earlier.
.
A few of my favorite old posts here are: Ancients(very long ago) had boats?, Apollo 11 moon landing, and new safety materials. You can also do searches on the blog or click on a label at the end of a post, for things like posts on "history."

Aerospace: Museum and Largest Airplane Graveyard

I would recommend a visit to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona as they also offer exclusive bus tours of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), also known as the "Boneyard." The facility is located adjacent to the Museum at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

The museum and optional boneyard tour make for a unique day looking at air and space history. World's Largest Airplane Graveyard Hi Res Photo

History: Hadrian's Wall Light Project

1,000 people to light the length of Hadrian's Wall

I was able to drive along Hadrian's Wall on rainy day and visit so of the excavated Roman buildings along a stretch.

Olympics: Rochette's quest continues tonight

Rochette is the former silver medal winner who had her mother pass away suddenly on Sunday and is competing tonight for a medal in figure skating.

Rochette's quest continues

Just two days after the sudden death of her mother, the 24-year-old Rochette delivered an emotional and technically sound skate on Tuesday, earning a personal-best score of 71.36 points in the short program at the Vancouver Olympics. She's in third place heading into Thursday's free skate (5 p.m. PT, 8 p.m. ET).

Video of her performance Tuesday with understandable emotion when she finishes.

Lost The Musical: Is There Something I Should Know ?

Duran Duran - Is There Something I Should Know? - Duran Duran

Lost has the H-Bomb, a golf course, ghosts, and an undersea cable.
Gilligan's Island had an old shipping mine instead of the nuclear device.

And in both new and unusual people show up from time to time,
mad scientists, people with boats and submarines.
They take refuge in caves and end up in cages from time to time.

And the shaking in the bushes?
Gilligan's Island = gorilla
Lost = Smokey

What keeps them on an island?
Gilligan's Island = Gilligan
Lost = The Mysterious Island and an ancient job or game

Baby Names: Then and Now

More diversity over time. Looking at the
most popular baby names in history

Lingerie model heads an all-women drug cartel

Runaway lingerie model

A lingerie model is believed to be the mastermind behind an all-women drug gang that smuggles cocaine into Britain.

An international arrest warrant has been issued for Angie Sanselmente Valencia, 30, who is said to only hire glamour models to transport the drugs from South America to Europe.

It's believed that Colombian-born Valencia had been seeing a Mexican drug lord known as 'The Monster' but split with him at the end of last year to form her own cocaine-smuggling gang.

Bloom Energy Launch: "Like The Google IPO"

Fuel cells in the home about the size of a milk carton in the next ten years.
Sounds like an interesting future. Bloom Energy Web site

Bloom Energy Fuel Cells News

Doerr was referring to the fact that, like Google, Bloom has kept its business close to its vest until it actually could show some progress in terms of customers and products. Five Bloom energy boxes about the size of a parking space each now provide 15 percent of the power at eBay's campus. Walmart is testing the boxes in two locations where it is carrying 60 to 80 percent of the energy load of an entire store. Google co-founder Larry Page calls the technology a "very big deal" and looks forward to the day that it can expand the number of Bloom boxes Google uses to the point where it can power one of its data centers

Finding love in the World of Warcraft

The face of gaming nowadays is feisty, foxy and female.

Former Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Felicia Day is the world’s most famous female gamer. She became a cult heroine on the web through her sitcom, The Guild, which she writes, stars in and shows free on YouTube. The first episode has been watched 3.7 million times and Microsoft sponsors the show, allowing episodes to be downloaded and watched on Xbox LIVE. The Guild follows a motley crew of gamers’ real-life adventures. It’s brought online role-playing to a new audience. “I hear from people that it makes them less ashamed to say that they game as a hobby, and I’ve had a lot of women say it’s made them start playing on their own, or with their boyfriend or husband. I love hearing that,” she says.

Olympics: Bronze medal leads to more happiness

Bronze medal leads to more happiness than silver

Research by three U.S. academics, who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their finishes than silver medalists. Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss. Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether.

Music: XTC "Respectable Street" live

I aw XTC open for The Police on November 20, 1980 at the Oscar Meyer Theater (Madison Civic Center)in Madison, WI. the played a great set and The Police seemed determined to show the audience who was the better band.

Climate: The data and the science is not settled.

Met Office: we must check 150 years of climate data

More than 150 years of global temperature records are to be re-examined by scientists in an attempt to regain public trust in climate science after revelations about errors and suppression of data.

Music: Heaven 17 Let Me Go

Heaven 17 was another artist featured on MTV and USA's "Night Flight," back before The USA Network had shows like "Monk," "Psych," and "Burn Notice."

Heaven 17 Let Me Go 2006 digital remaster

Music: Siouxsie And The Banshees

An 80s band with a hit in the 90s.

Moscow has record snow: 25 inches

The BBC reports on
Moscow's record snow

Thousands of snow-clearing machines have been working to dig the Russian capital Moscow out of a record-breaking fall of 63cm (nearly 25 inches).

After a weekend of heavy snow showers, the regional weather centre announced that the previous record of 62cm, set in 1966, had been broken.

Buried Treasure, and Uncrackable Code

Tale of a Would-Be Spy

History: Archeology News

A 2,300-year-old golden coin engraved with the profile of Alexander the Great.

6,225-carat emerald in Zambia

Gemfields discovers 6,225-carat 'elephant' emerald in Zambia

Music: 8mm - trip hop

Following several years engineering and mixing for Nine Inch Nails, Sean Beavan formed trip-hop act 8mm along with wife Juliette. He had spent time in the studio in New Orleans with NIN's Trent Reznor, working on such NIN recordings as The Downward Spiral. Through Reznor, Sean had also worked on Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals. While in New Orleans, he met his future wife and the two relocated to Los Angeles.

Music: Annie Clark AKA St. Vincent

An interesting 42 minutes of an interview and performances: Annie Clark AKA St Vincent on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic. A very interesting and unique style. Seems as original as Kate Bush and Split Enz.

KCRW
is based in Santa Monica and is a great radio station to listen to in LA and though the Internet all over the world. I first heard, "The sneaker Pimps" on KCRW while driving along the Pacisif Coast Highway towars Topanga Canyon.

Energy: Wind and Solar

Futurepundit covers the potential of wind power in the United States and all the costs associated with solar cell use.

New Wind Power Maps For United States and Cheap Solar Cells Alone Do Not Make Cheap Solar Power

Books: Tulipomania in Holland in the 1630's

"Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" was written by Charles Mackay and first published in 1848 and is in the public domain. . This excerpt, Chapter 3 - The Tulipomania ,explains much about temporary madness in markets and is often used as an example of a market bubble, a trend that expands until a collapse.

Source: The Library of Economics and Liberty

Climate: Scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

UK newspapers continue to report on climate science more then US media.

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels

Music: Rupert Hine - "Surface Tension"

Rupert Hine has produced over 100 (!?) albums. A few that stand out in the 80s are:
Anthony Phillips - Wise After the Event (album) (1977)
Anthony Phillips - Sides (album) (1978)
The Fixx - Reach the Beach (album) (1983)

He has also recorded and this video was a cult hit that had a lot of play on USA's Night Flight"

Music: Steve Lillywhite and Interviews

Steve Lillywhite is worth reading about, interviews especially, as he was responsible for getting a hard sound out of many artists in the 80s.

A few of the many records he has worked on are:

Crowded House — Time on Earth
Peter Gabriel — Peter Gabriel (aka Peter Gabriel III or Melt)
Steve Lillywhite On Peter Gabriel's Third Album

In an interview with host David Dye, Lillywhite recalls laughing off the idea of recording an album with Gabriel, but both quickly found common ground in its musical direction. Music technology was moving quickly by 1980, and both men wanted to implement the new keyboard and sampling devices. While Gabriel would go on to make even better-selling albums, Peter Gabriel remains his finest moment.

The Psychedelic Furs — The Psychedelic Furs, Talk Talk Talk
U2 — Boy, October, War, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, some songs on The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, All That You Can't Leave Behind, No Line on the Horizon
Steve Lillywhite on Producing U2's 'War'
XTC — Drums and Wires, Black Sea

Lost the Musical: ABC - When Smokey Sings

ABC always had lush audio production and many of their songs are worth listening to decades later. ABC's Discography

This video ends abruptly and sounds like it could be live or a very good synch.




And maybe the television show "Lost" will end up as a musical this year or in the future.

Music: Alison Moyet - Getting Into Something

News and tour information at Alison Moyet

It has been announced today that Jools Holland will tour the length and breadth of the UK throughout 2010 with his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra and will be joined throughout by Alison Moyet as his very special guest.

Moyet was in Yazoo and had a hit with "Don't Go" before her long and successful solo career.

Mullah’s arrest is ‘own goal’ for US

Things are never as they first appear in intelligence and the recent wave of arrests is analyzed here:

Analysis of Pakistan arrest

“The timing of this arrest was very peculiar,” said Barmak Pazhwak, a senior official for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank. “The fact he was one of the key Taliban leaders advocating talks suggests the Pakistanis either want more control or to sabotage the process altogether.”

WWII: The Long Way Home-The Pacific Clipper

A civilian airliner, cut off from home by the outbreak of World War II, makes a dash for freedom...

DEC 14, 1941: Do not return to Hawaii. Do not return to US west coast...Strip aircraft of all markings and identification...proceed west...maintain radio silence...deliver aircraft to Marine Terminal, LaGuardia, NY. Good luck,

The Cheese Shop sketch, Monty Python

Video: Low Cost HD video

HP's $109 HD cameras

There are many low cost HD video camera, the Flip and others are driving down the price for high quality consumer video.

Olympics coverage on Yahoo and Unwise after the event

The Yahoo Olympics is a very nice way to catchup on the stories and results.

Julia Mancuso talks about her exuberance after winning the silver medal in the super combined.

Watching the Olympics on DVR helps. I prefer the coverage in other countries, EuroSport shows the entire competition and avoids the personal stories. My recommendation is to record the events and read up on them and watch the following day.

Update: Metal squabble highlights how everything is now personal for the athletes, what it means to them, their sacrifices. Maybe it is part of the trend to un-nationalize the games, but it sounds to me more like privileged people whining, as opposed to classy heroes. My guess is it has always been this way, but in the past people at least pretended to be humble. Better to watch and marvel at the performances and read and see less of the reactions and media spin after the event.

Maybe we need a little more wisdom these days. A public scolding of this me-ism trend may be needed.

Music: Scritti Politti - Hypnotize

A very distinctive song from this 1985 release. The video was played enough to attract some attention. My memory says it was part of USA's "Night Flight" videos which featured many hard to discover artists.

Music and Movies: The Coca Cola Kid

Tim Finn wrote and performed this song from the eclectic film, "The Coca Cola Kid."
Some of the musical performers included Paul Hester and Neil Finn, who were also band members with Tim in Split Enz and Crowded House.

This catchy song is a jingle that is created in this comedy about marketing.

The UFO files: UK releases more files

Formerly secret files released by the UK Ministry of Defence

But perhaps the most telling aspect of the records
is their suggestion that the shapes of UFOs spotted in the skies over Britain have changed markedly over the past 50 years, suggesting people's sightings are influenced by what they see in television shows and films.

and

More on released files

A letter from senior MoD official Ralph Noyes in which he describes seeing a film of UFOs captured by RAF fighter pilots in 1956. Mr Noyes claims the footage was shown at a secret underground screening arranged for Air Defence staff at the MoD Main Building in 1970.

"Intertextual mixing" AKA plagiarism in the Internet age.

What is plagiarism in the age of the Internet? Is this plagiarism? Does it really matter? How to distract attention away from yourself.

In an artful attempt to steal their critics' thunder Ms Hegemann and her publishers have gone on the offensive. They have managed, in part, to turn what at face value appeared to be a clearcut case of stealing somebody else's words into a wide-ranging debate about the meaning of plagiarism in the online era. They argue that Axolotl Roadkill is merely an example of modern " intertextual mixing".

Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: A Pajamas Media Exclusive

People defending the CRU, Climate Research Unit, in the UK, Climategate, state that it is not a big deal and even if the CRU climate data is bad (and they have lost the original data anyway), that others like NASA have produced flawless data that shows global warming rate increases. The CRU fed what many now think was bad data to the UN's IPCC, which pruved climate reports, like the 2007 one, that now is under scrutiny for undocumented claims and mistakes.

Every agrees that we are coming out of a glacial age many thousands of years ago.
What is being discussed and needs better data for proof is how much warming is due to natural cycles, the Earth's orbit, moisture, geology, the Sun, ocean currents, and many made causes. The data may help make some sense out of the trends and help rule in or out causes.

So how NASA approaches the data and presents the subject in general is important. Is NASA unbiased in approaching this subject?

At Pajamas Media "Chris Horner filed the FOIA request that NASA didn't comply with for two years. Now we know what took so long."

In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).

I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.

U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part One)

U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part Two)

Not only was data maintenance not all that great a concern — despite NASA’s pronouncements of certainty and integrity, historical and otherwise — Hansen and NASA spent a good portion of August 2007 attempting to completely rewrite history. Particularly their own.

Ruedy emailed a NASA PR person named Leslie McCarthy, copying Hansen, on August 10, 2007. Ruedy advised McCarthy of the spin they would use to combat Steve McIntyre:

[McIntyre] concentrates on US time series which US covering less than 2% of the world is so noisy and has such a large margin of error that no conclusions can be drawn from it at this point.

The error Ruedy refers to is 0.5 Celsius, per Ruedy himself in his August 10, 2007, email to Kris French of National Geographic. In that email, Ruedy slurs McIntyre as a “global warming denier.”

Hansen emailed Dr. Donald E. Anderson, program manager at Earth Science Enterprise NASA Headquarters, on August 14, 2007:

If one wished to be scientific, instead of trying to confuse the public … one should note that single year temperatures for an area as small as the US (2% of the globe) are extremely noisy.

By this Hansen implicitly assesses NASA’s longstanding practice of touting temperature anomalies, U.S.-only and smaller than this, as being unscientific and designed to confuse the public. NASA had for years made great hay of U.S.-only temperatures as being somehow meaningful when a warming was claimed, even when that warming was less than the amount they now dismiss as meaningless. He pitched a directly contrarian perspective when U.S.-only temps threatened warming claims.

and

The efforts in August 2007 to reduce interest in NASA being caught making unsupportable claims about increasing U.S. temperatures were ad hoc tactics, used at the time because the U.S.-only and single-year measurements were the means in which Hansen and NASA were exposed as having sexed-up the temperature claims.

The Times’ Revkin diplomatically deferred responsibility for this focus, which NASA shared with a passion bordering on obsession, by writing to Hansen on August 10, 2007:

Given that quite a few folks (gore and some enviros particularly) have often used the US temp trends in arguments for action (string of record years) it’s hard for me to ignore the reanalysis of those annual temps — even though my own focus remains global temp. Essentially, should people always have paid less attention to US (48 state) trend as a meaningful signal of AGW? (now that all those earlier warm years intrude, it certainly makes the case that regional data can be a red herring).

“Regional data” has, of course, long been a mainstay of alarmist reporting on climate even though computer models are well-known as being simply incapable of making regional climate projections vs. global, due to the presence of oceans and mountains. “Regional climate” is a way to find localized trends and claim they are meaningful to the global, when all they are is politically useful anecdotes (when they are or at least can be portrayed as of the right sort: warming, very dry/very wet, etc.). Note also the recognized inconvenience of being caught, and the “intrusion” of “all those earlier warm years.” Given that Revkin had in the past transcribed NASA claims of the sort he here attributes to Gore, this is possibly little more than a bit of kissing up to Hansen, with an invitation for him to help massage and redirect the embarrassment.

3D Design and Printing Service

Ponoko, "The world's easiest making system" an interesting concept, make and sell deigns.

Dr. Who are you? Who is David Tennant.

As Tennat started as Dr. Who.

These concerns about fame are a far cry from his humble beginnings in acting. He was christened David McDonald but told to change his name by Equity to avoid confusion with another actor of the same name. He happened to read an article about the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant, and thought that name would do.

Some general David Tennant background

Although such an aspiration might have been common for any British child of the 1970s, Tennant says he was "absurdly single-minded" in pursuing his goal. He adopted the professional name "Tennant" — inspired by Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, after reading a copy of Smash Hits magazine[10] — because there was another David McDonald already on the books of the Equity union. His first choice for a stage name was David Brandon (but that name was also disallowed), his second choice was David Tennant, and his third choice was Chris McDonald.

Ask James Dyson: The engineer and inventor answers questions

Ask James Dyson

Materials: Cement is the key ingredient of concrete.

Concrete is not a modern material. Now it is better understood and engineered.

A history of cement covers many interesting facts like the Roamans were capable of building harbors and piers with cement that could harden underwater.

The secret of Roman success in making cement was traced to the mixing of slaked lime with pozzolana, a volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius. This process produced a cement capable of hardening under water. During the Middle Ages this art was lost and it was not until the scientific spirit of inquiry revived that we rediscovered the secret of hydraulic cement -- cement that will harden under water.

Portland Cement accounts for almost all cement made in the US.

Portland cement today, as in Aspdin's day, is a predetermined and carefully proportioned chemical combination of calcium, silicon, iron, and aluminum.

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

Sounds pretty scary

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home

Update: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre Student In Question Was Disciplined For Eating Candy

Great Lakes information site

Great Lakes



The Great Lakes are the largest surface freshwater system on the Earth.

They contain about 84 percent of North America's surface fresh water and about 21 percent of the world's supply. Only the polar ice caps contain more fresh water

Americans are 'most attractive' people in the world, poll finds

Most attractive poll

What might a cyber attack look like?

In a doomsday cyber attack scenario, answers are unsettling

Ancients had boats? "...finding an iPod in King Tut's tomb"

Prehistoric axes found on a Greek island show that seafaring existed in the Mediterranean long before the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe.

Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest

If ancient humans were crossing the Mediterranean, Runnels said, then they certainly could have crossed other water barriers, such as the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. "And that means that the assumptions that we have had—that the peopling of Eurasia was done by early hominins moving overland through the Near East, into India and down—will have to be revisited." Hominins, or hominids, are members of humankind's ancestral lineage.

and

But the new discoveries hint that these human ancestors were capable of much more sophisticated planning, cooperation, and construction—in this case, boatbuilding—than their simple stone tools would suggest.
"I was flabbergasted," Runnels said. "The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut's tomb."

Lost the Musical: Jacob's Ladder - HUEY LEWIS & THE NEWS

For fans of "Lost", this song came to mind recently.



Some background on Jacob's Ladder, which dates back to "The Book of Genesis."

Egyptian hieroglyphs used in Lost

Climate: More errors found in IPCC report

There are now several known errors in the IPCC report, bogus glacier's melting claim and the amount of land under sea level in the Netherlands. The prediction that the would drop looks to now be wrong, but some are arguing that it did not need to be a peer reviled source, that is splitting hairs. Some sites are reporting the retreat of the Sahara and now that seems to be credited to "global warming."

The latest development is that the report ignored the fact that the Antaric ice was growing and that the report understated the

Antarctic Sea Ice Increase by 50%

While all the press is about the observed declines in Arctic sea ice extent in recent decades, little attention at all is paid to the fact that the sea ice extent in the Antarctic has been on the increase. No doubt the dearth of press coverage stems from the IPCC treatment of this topic.

and

So, the peer reviewed literature, both extant at the time of the AR4 as well as published since the release of the AR4, shows that there has been a significant increase in the extent of sea ice around Antarctica since the time of the first satellite observations observed in the late 1970s. And yet the AR4 somehow “assessed” the evidence and determined not only that the increase was only half the rate established in the peer-reviewed literature, but also that it was statistically insignificant as well. And thus, the increase in sea ice in the Antarctic was downplayed in preference to highlighting the observed decline in sea ice in the Arctic.

Television: Episode recaps and discussion fourms

A great way to follow and catch up on shows is
Television without pity

The episode recaps are often better then the actual shows.

Caltech Scientists Hit New Solar Conversion Efficiency

Caltech scientists used thin silicon wires to achieve a previous unheard of level of efficiency in converting photons into electrical flow.

The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight

from Caltech researchers create highly absorbing, flexible solar cells with silicon wire arrays

Update: IBM Uses Cheap Materials For Solar Cells

The thin film makers are managing to find ways to cut their costs without switching to cheaper elements. Some CIGS PV makers expect to get their costs down to 50 cents per watt in 2010 versus current low cost leader First Solar's 85 cents a watt in 2009.

- from Futurepundit and Eurekalert

Candy is proof that "The Wisconsin triangle" exists

Growing up with Serrogy's, Beerntsen's on Broadway in Green Bay, and Kaap's all very near, in biking distance, I thought these stores were plentiful and spread throughout the land. The world can now mine this vein of chocolate via the web

This article from 2008, NY Times tour of Wisconsin's candy "delta" shows that there is a certain shape in Wisconsin to many great candy stores. A weekend trip or ordering online might be a great idea.

Check out page two of the NY Times Wisconsin candy land article for a listing of all the candy establishments locations and their web site that were mentioned in the article.

Video: The 80s music videos and archeology

Twenty and thirty years after the event some of us can still remember how cutting edge videos were in promoting music. CDs were new and displacing vinyl records and now CDs may go away replaced entirely by music downloads.

We live close enough to music videos to know why they showed up and have mostly gone away. To look back at physical structures in archeology and wonder what the use was we only have to look at some of our fads to see why they came and went
23 skidoo

This video has it all, scenery, crane shots, helicopter shots, and fighting to complete the shoot as the sun goes down.

Just becasue Shakespeare said it

135 Phrases coined by William Shakespeare

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is a nice public domain



To be or not to be

Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases That 'Aren't Even Imaginable'

This can't be good,

What the Nation's Budget Woes Mean for You.

"The American people today are not remotely prepared for the changes that are necessary," said former Congressional Budget Office director Rudolph Penner.

He says Americans who have been accustomed to buying on credit and living beyond their means at home may soon face a painful reality as the government tightens its belt further.

"They aren't hearing about the drastic changes needed, and they certainly didn't hear about it in the President's budget," Penner said.

Internet killed the video star.

You may need to look at CNN's web traffic to see if they are "driving" viewers online, the fact is that some web news and comment sites, blogs, are getting more viewers then some cable news shows in prime time.

I think people like the idea of a news paper or magazine in theory and online the updates and linkages offer so many options...

Very low CNN ratings

And while all the cable news channels saw reduced viewing levels due to the massive audience that flocked to NBC -- only CNN saw its audience cut in half from Thursday night in both younger viewers and Total Viewers.

Science: Both Light and Dark

Home lighting accounts for 18% of electrical energy consumption in the US. So things like Glowing walls could kill off the light bulb could help with energy conservation, demand, and prices. Saving on electrical consumption is a key idea as half the energy used to make electricity is lost in transmission to residences. So every bit saved at a house is double savings at a distant source. Decentralized production, made at a home by solar or fuel cells, is another way to avoid feeding the "transmission energy loss beast."

Dark Matter is just as interesting on a cosmic level.

Tantalising hints of dark matter — the mysterious substance thought to make up a quarter of the Universe — have been picked up for the first time, in an American laboratory buried half a mile underground.

Invisible forces out in space used to be considered before Einstein to try to help explain the universe and now dark matter and dark energy have been proposed.

Is there such a concept as "dark time" or "dark gravity?"

The standard explanation for dark matter is that it is composed of particles that barely interact with normal matter, effectively passing straight through the Earth while leaving no trace. This quality — which explains the WIMP acronym — also makes the particles exceptionally difficult to observe.

Climate: Phil Jones doth protest too much

Why not
shoot the messenger?

Jones said he might submit a correction to Nature. But he nonetheless attacked bloggers and other critics for "hijacking the peer-review process... Why don't they do their own [temperature] reconstructions? If they want to criticise, they should write their own papers," he said.

Jones and Climategate exposed manipulation of the peer review process and highlighted bad data collection, storage, and manipulation.

So Jones insisting bloggers come up with data and get peer reviewed papers published would be very funny, if doing that in an unbiased way was not his job and that trillions of dollars worldwide were not being considered in taxes or control mechanisms.

My guess is many bloggers will concentrate more on Jones' troubling 1990 China paper that has problems with it's data. Jones may correct his errors 19 years late.

Shouldn't the climate data be held in a open public place? The era of secret data storage and data manipulation is over.

Top 30 Science Blogs and 3D printing

Top 30 Science Blogs is a mixed bag, a few look to wordy to me, but there are two such as Boing Bong and Watts up with that that I do use and like.
See if something you like to follow is on this list.

From Boing Boing: 3D Printing with ceramics and Turn Your Drawings Into Objects 3D printing, for art and design has been a fascinating development over the past 20 years. Moving from expensive exotic units to home owned and home built is a trend that will still play out.

Lake Erie now frozen over, first time in 14 years

first time in 14 years, the lake is virtually frozen over must be another sign of global warming.

Feed the Blog

Just passed 100 page views overnight, so this place is just now crawling.
If you have any ideas on sites to link to to interesting stories, please
email them to me and I will link to or feature as many as I can.

I try to find interesting things to post here several times a day and
as I am trying to avoid directly anything political, as I think it is over covered elsewhere, sometimes I have difficulty in staying topical to events and balancing it with really cool older posts on some sites.

I am looking for wonderful things, thoughts, or ways of looking at people, places and things. Vague, but you may get the picture.

Law enforcement: A new idea how to have less crime with less punishment

A basic synopsis of the audio at the link:

With short term quick punishments, 1-2 days in a local jail,
have more value in reducing crime then long term prison terms,
because the consequences are immediate.

This can stop 80% of highest drug offenders. Only 10% of the criminals
do 50% of the crime. Sometimes by just telling people what you will do,
you do not have to do it.

Shrink drug demand, focus drug dealer enforcement on those most violent

When brute force fails.

This is applying marketing principles, the heavy half, where part of a population is responsible for most of the activity and psychology and economics, people care more about events now rather then things that will happen in several years. This is a new way to prioritize and get the most results from limited resources.

Comment: Monty Python and cleverness is no more.

Clarkson tries to make sense over why people do not appreciate Monty Python anymore.
I can sympathize, but we are talking about things 20 and 30 years ago. Times change.
Someone else pointed out that many of the Python's have become the television presenters that they once mocked so much.

They are funny, but they are getting stuck into a different era.

Jeremy Clarkson on

Video: Truck accident in Taiwan

Falling asleep when you are driving a truck is not a good thing.
Some violent collisions from several angels.

Lightning in Slow Motion

Lightning with high-speed video cameras

Climate: Oh, what a tangled web we weave

Deceiving is always bad, but it is always the cover up that gets you in trouble.
A great listing of the many issues, "gates", surrounding one side of the climate debate. It is an impressive list of issues.

It has been tough to keep up with all the bad news for global warming alarmists. We're on the edge of our chair, waiting for the next shoe to drop. This has been an Imelda Marcos kind of season for shoe-dropping about global warming.

Economics: Europe and a single currenc y

Spreading a single currency over multiple geographies and cultures always seemed like a good idea in good times. When things turn rough fault lines begin to show.

EU leaders split over crisis

The European single currency is facing an 'inevitable break-up' a leading French bank claimed yesterday.

Update: More optimism today as Greece has 30 days to show more restraint in spending. The devil will be in the details, the euro and many European banks stand to lose if Greece cannot be propped up, then Spain and Portugal need to be addressed.

Update: The pain in Spain... The Making of a Euromess even Krugman can see:

It’s an ugly picture. But it’s important to understand the nature of Europe’s fatal flaw. Yes, some governments were irresponsible; but the fundamental problem was hubris, the arrogant belief that Europe could make a single currency work despite strong reasons to believe that it wasn’t ready.

Strange maps

Stange Maps is an interesting site.
Looking through some of the older posts you can find something amusing or interesting.

What might extraterrestrials be watching?

Where did West Virginia come from?

Pop vs, Soda Map

Uniforms: Olympics

What was the inspiration for the US ski team's uniforms at the Olympics, pre-school kids' snowsuits, table cloths, curtains, snuggies? The best I can say is they are not flattering or memorable.

What to watch after the Olympics? A new Canadian television show.

In Canada, Brent Butt, the creator of "Corner Gas" will have his new show "Hiccups" air March 1. Brent Butt's vlog new show announcement linked through from Brent Butt's web site.

US distribution to be announced in the near future.

The Offical Olympics Web Site

The Olympics Web Site
and the Schedule and Results page.

Video:The Lightning Seeds - Pure

The Lightning Seeds was a started as a solo project of noted producer Ian Broudie, who has also produced Echo & the Bunnymen, The Fall, and others.

I have always loved the pure simplicity of this song from the synth pop era of the 80s.

Olympics: Luge and safety and blamecasting

On the death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili and the reactions to that death and all that may have caused it.

If I built a luge track that was not as safe as other ones, restricted the training runs, then had the design changed (more protection for the athletes), and had the starting point lowered lowered, which would reduce the speed and difficulty, then I would stay away from blaming an athlete that died.

Seems more like a disgusting attempt to blamecast and protect the team and designers. I do not know much about the history, but the questions I would are are: How was training access to the track given to the Canadian tram and to other teams, by date and total duration? Who designed the track? Why were the safety elements that were put in after this death not put in before? Did they know they could add these elements and did not do them? Or were they ignorant of this design flaw? Did they know there was a flaw and wanted to avoid the work due to economics or for ascetics?

If I were a Canadian I would be shamed by this coaches remarks and vow to investigate what happened. Will any journalists look into this?

Finger pointing by Canadian coach

The International Luge Federation and organisers made alterations to the 16th corner where Kumaritashvili crashed and lowered the start for the men’s competition which begins on Saturday.

The start switch means competitors no longer have to negotiate two corners and the steepest part. The start section is also flatter and sliders will build up speed more gradually.

Update: A hint of Canadian bias, James Lawton: Vancouver’s quick descent from high ground. into the investigation and reports of how dangerous the track was. Blaming an athlete that had about nine times less training, when other Canadian athletes had issues with the same corner seems to border on callousness.That curve where some half safety measures had already been tried with the wall height, but that some posts were left uncovered. A very good piece by James Lawton from "The Independent."

There is also the problem that while the investigating British Columbia Coroners Service, the Royal Mounted Police and officials of the International Luge Federation agreed that the cause of the tragedy was not the dangers of the track but the errors and inexperience of its victim, it was still swiftly decided to change utterly the conditions of the competition. This included the building up of the wall, and the changing of the "ice profile" at the fatal curve and moving the start line to the women's mark, nearly 200 yards down the track.

The inconsistency of the ruling screamed at the mourners of the luger who had just 26 practice runs down the course – as opposed to the 200 enjoyed by the Canadians.

and

Adding to the force of Rossi's complaints is his belief that a member of his team, Meg Sweeney, could so easily have shared Kumaritashvili's fate. The day before the Georgian died, Sweeney had a near identical crash after "double-looping" the 16th curve. "It was almost the exact same crash," said Rossi, "but she didn't go so high."

Update: Georgian luger told dad `I will either win or die'

"They tested that track on my son," the elder Kumaritashvili, 46, said bitterly.

"My son was training since he was 14. He ran tracks in France, Austria and Canada, and he never suffered an injury," he said. "He has passed through all stages of the World Cup and made it to the Olympics. He couldn't have done that if he were an inexperienced athlete. Anyone can make mistake and break a leg or suffer some other injury. But to die!"

Update: Luge death track backlash shows how low the wall was and the start of fixing the design issues on the fatal part of the track

Smack Me On The Head With A Shovel!

A material that absorbs impact.

Military to use new gel, d3o, that stops bullets

The gel, called d3O locks instantly into a solidified form when it is hit at high impact.

"When moved slowly, the molecules will slip past each other, but in a high-energy impact they will snag and lock together, becoming solid," said Richard Palmer, who invented the gel. "In doing so they absorb energy."

Video: The Orangutan and the Hound

From the National Geographic channel on Youtube,
how an orangutan and a dog became friends.

Aerial Photo Panorama - Olympic Village, Vancouver

Aerial Photo Panorama - Olympic Village, Vancouver

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer...

For common plot elements and devices used in stories and comments and sicussions about them.

TV Tropes

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite". In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them.

Climategate: Several more shoes drop

* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

Professor Jones also conceded the poshttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2142923729102078512&postID=6578793569973399834sibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

Update: Climategate: What Did Phil Jones Actually Admit? Was He Correct?

Update: A comment from African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC from the Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker. "One more alarming claim in the IPCC's 2007 report is disintegrating under closer examination..."

Worth a read as it follows some of the money in that reports generation.

and SOme reaction to the 2007 IPCC report before many of the recent simple questions on the sources and Climategate have shown that some of the statements it made should be questioned.

In 2001, it placed the probability that human activity caused most of the warming of the previous half century at 66 percent to 90 percent — a “likely” rating.

Our world may be a giant hologram

If you want to read something that may make you question what reality is.

Our world may be a giant hologram

More importantly, confirming the holographic principle would be a big help to researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity. Today the most popular approach to quantum gravity is string theory, which researchers hope could describe happenings in the universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only show in town. "Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising gravity that have a strong connection to string theory," says Cramer. "Consequently, some quantum gravity theories might be falsified and others reinforced."

Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would be a boost for those that do - including some derived from string theory and something called matrix theory. "Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time emerges out of quantum theory." As serendipitous discoveries go, it's hard to get more ground-breaking than that

How to Purchase Books Online for Less

How to Purchase Books Online for Less

Economics: Are we running out of materials?

In which some scientists predict we are all doomed and point out some economists say no to this.

Smart futurists predict doom to come long after they are gone.

Julian Simon was called the " doomslayer". I recommend his books.

Science fiction often concerns the end of Earth into chaos and despair, "the fools have destroyed ourselves," or into perfection, "technology has solved all our problems."

Utopia versus destruction.
I tend to prefer a mix of the two states, but the debate will rage on.


Are we running out of materials.

The economists have history on their side, they point to innumerable instances of commodity prices going through the roof, causing short-term economic shocks, such as the oil crisis of the 1970s. But they say human ingenuity, technology and the economic markets that fund them, have always come to the rescue.

World may not be warming, say scientists

Some analysis of the historical data and some conclusions.

World may not be warming, say scientists

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night! Goldfrapp- Utopia (live)

My guess is there is some vocal processing at the start of this, as Allison looks back to be in synch with someone as she starts. Maybe it is processed with a Korg?
Electronic Musician on Goldfrapp and their use of syths

Innovation, Dont, start me talking, I could talk all night...

Innovation happens or is possible all the time, how to recognize, cultivate, and make something from it is the a key management issue.

Innovation - Getting Beyond the Breakthrough

Hagel contends that U.S. companies' innovation efforts tend to focus on home runs — big, honking inventions that can, out of the gate, produce hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and transform entire industries. In other words, products such as Apple's iPod.

But Hagel is fond of pointing out that even the iPod wasn't exactly an overnight breakthrough for Apple. Rather, he notes, the device has its roots in a company called PortalPlayer, which had been developing an operating system for digital music players for several years before it ultimately teamed with Apple on the iPod.

Transportation Destinations - UK National Tramway Museum

Trams on display a working tram line, a restored period village and museum. Plenty to see in and around this interesting place.

Crich Tramway Village, home of the National Tramway Museum

Crich is conveniently situated close to many of the main routes running through the Midlands. This makes it readily accessible from Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham and beyond.

check out the Tramway Links Page for more on the environs and for some Tram related links.

Software - User directed development

A 70% royalty at the Apple App store or for an author with an ebook for the Kindle at Amazon is a revolutionary business model. There will some time needed for adoption of these pricing models as well as reactions to them, i.e. publishers wanting to push amazon's maximum price for their ebooks past $9.99, to allow the publishers to make and take a cut of this revenue.

Users direct features in this software, results in a big hit

Book value of the day - Weapons and Hope by Freeman Dyson

Any of Freeman Dyson's books is worth a read from a library or by buying a undervalued copy. This book, "Weapons and Hope", is considered dated by some because it frames the arms control issues that faced the United states and Western Europe and The Soviet Union. This book offers great insight into the actual history of the time before World War II in Great Britain and a small insight into some of the operational analysis during the war.

Dyson can explain very well things as he sees them and find an approach to complex issues that is very interesting to follow.

Many people have lived long enough to see and learn that the actual history as it is reported after the fact sometimes fails to report the actual "feeling" of the times as it happened. That is a complex point to illuminate, so I will let Dyson do that work, if you can find the time to track down and read this book.

Apple - where to start to look at what it does or may do

Apple has started a number of interesting trends, the move to consumer technology products and other revenue sources, their app store, so seeing what one person thinks and then looking into those views is a great way to study and learn form what Apple has done, may do, and may not bother with.

One man's opinion of the top ten issues Apple faces


see This Week in Technology for a good start to catch up on Apple and what it may do next

President's Day - "Abe Lincoln Laughing" and other books

I have visited the Lincoln family home in Springfield, Illinois and would recommend a visit there or to any presidents home or museum. The amazing way that we take humans and have them lead us for four years and to see where they came from and how they succeed or fail on many levels is breathtaking to think about.

President's are only human and seeing their homes drives home the interesting backgrounds they had and the lives that they have and had.

Lincoln and the times he came from and went through is worth some consideration and study as we come to President's Day.

On National Review's - Corner I saw a reference to Lincoln and starting clicking on though to...

John J. Miller and a list of top five Licoln books

If the list had been mine, it would have included Abe Lincoln Laughing, a compendium of jokes and anecdotes that Lincoln is known to have told during his life.

Miller makes reference to this list:
Books on Abraham Lincoln by Michael Burlingame at the Wall street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is a rare newspaper and one that is growing in circulation.
Amazing how consumers move towards information instead of "filtering of information." That discussion is for another time and post.

Blogs, Why, oh why? - Corner Gas' Hank talkin'

Why do people blog? Sometimes it is just to communicate with their friends. Because of the Olympics starting in Vancouver, Canada, here is one Canadian reason why I am motivated to blog. From the great television series, "Corner Gas"

Warning: this video contains references to Blogs and Blogging.



If you do not have time to watch the entire clip or show the pinch like starts near 7:28 to 8:20, a mirthful minute of blogging and blogatude.

Corner Gas is an amazing show, chock full of jokes. To me this series seems to answer the question, What if "Seinfeld" were set in a small rural Canadian town or in Mayberry, North Carolina "The Andy Griffth Show?" Crazy kids, neighbors, parents, silly police

I would highly recommend buying or renting any one of the seasons of this show, here is Series One...



Update: Corner Gas also used, maybe coined, the term "staycation", a vacation that is spent at home, which is a great word and concept.