Space Cadets

Ok, to be honest, I don't think I have ever watched reality Tv, as they call it. But this one has me interested. The idea is this. Convince 9 people that they are really taking a trip to space and see if they catch on. It is a british show, but I hope they will bring it over here.

The article to read is in the Independent Online.

Tinfoil Hats - the REAL conspiracy

It seems that some engineers at MIT experimented with tinfoil hats just to see how effective they actually were.

Oddly, for certain gov't. control frequencies, it amplified the signal.

The paper is a must read.

Fishy Influenza

Something funky is going on with this bird flu and it isn't making me laugh. All of the sudden, we are warned, threatened, and sacred that this particular virus will jump to humans and become this ultra-deadly killer, that must be stopped at all costs.

Why?

Why should I expect this particular flu to be a threat, more so than others? Suddenly, the flu is a huge public health hazard. What about years past? Why is it suddenly a health hazard? Is it just pharmacutical companies selling vaccines? or is it government planning something? I have to confess, I think it odd, that we suddenly need a flu pandemic plan. There have been plans worked out before for national medical emergencies, for small pox for instance. But now they are preparing us to get used to travel restrictions, and other things 'necessary' to stop the flu, "for our good".

If it wasn't essential for real pandemics in the past, ie. the 1918 flu pandemic, why now? Simple, because now they can get away with it. Is it that simple? We shall see.

The problem with random guesses

The problem is that it is soooo easy to be wrong. I have never played with the guess the future game. I may have to try that again. But if you have read predictions from 60 years ago, you would see that the present is nothing like what they guessed.

Here is the NOAA hurricane tracking and prediction center; enjoy.

Hurricanes

Ok, I have not posted in over a month.... awful isn't it? I have had 'scandal fatigue'. Well, I still have it, but I wanted to post my prediction on Hurricane Wilma. I will talk about scandal fatigue later.

The few mega-storms we have had this year have been odd. They don't seem to be behaving like normal hurricanes. Wilma is almost what a class 6, would be, if such a classification existed. I don't want to jump on the weather-control bandwagon yet, but I am suspicious.

My prediction is that Wilma will strengthen, and go north instead, or at least not along the simple path they have predicted so far, weakening and heading for the Florida Keys. I think we will see something significantly different. This is just a random guess, but I thought I would "get it on paper", so to speak, so I could say, "I told you so!".

Let's give it a few days.

Build Your Own PVR :: Why Tivo When you can Freevo?

Great site I found here. I need to build myself one of these... at least if there were more television I wanted to watch, I would. What is a PVR? It is a recording device that records shows for you, often without the commercials, from the TV, so you can watch them at your leisure. The commercial versions are getting more expensive and are restricting features in order to please media companies. But it can be done on your computer.... if you are willing...

Solar can't do it all

I got this from EnergyBulletin.net. It seems that getting solar to replace conventional levels of power looks problematic. One bright point though, was the relative importance of firewood. I can do that.

Tremors may mean 'Big One' on its way

While I think that the inhabitants of New Orleans were living in a precarious situation, it seems that the west coast in not immune to trouble either. The east coast may have hurricanes every year, but we have earthquakes and volcanos.

Not that we have had one yet. They are very hard to predict, if not impossible. It is not at all like watching a hurricane approach. Even a red-neck can point out the co-rotating cloud bands as one comes closer.

But we do have this. A major slip event around Vancouver and a growing bulge next to Bend, Oregon. The first news story I read on this mentioned it was close to Bend an then said, it was just a good thing it wasn't close to any population centers. I remember when I thought Bend was the big city.

Pulled from Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country

A temporary flight restriction has been issued by the FAA for a major North Pacific air corridor, covering air routes R-222, R-580 and A-590. The restriction covers the dates September 10-15. The cloture of these major routes is highly unusual, is said to be due to a Department of Defense Strategic Defense Initiative, but the nature of that initiative has not been revealed.

Dang, it makes me wish we got the full story from the news. Shoot, I wish the news would have talked about it at all.

More later... it has been busy.

Quirks and creativity may go hand-in-hand: report

There is no genius without a touch of madness.

regrowing limbs

Just a quick post:
Appearently regrowing entire limbs is not just the providence of lesser lifeforms. Reptiles and amphibians can do it, but the first recorded example of a mammal doing it just happened. In a mouse. Of course getting this to work in humans is a ways off yet. But jumping the hurdle from reptile to mammal is in many ways larger than mouse to man. This could really be great.

seeing (infra) red

This is fascinating. If I only knew how to do it myself. I would love to see in infrared. I shamelessly pulled this from MindHacks.

It's an experiment done by the army and cited by Rubin, M. L., and Walls, G. L. (1969). Fundamentals of visual science. Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, p. 546, which is in turn cited Sekuler, R., and Blake, R. (1994). Perception (3rd ed.). Springfield, Ill.: Thomas, pp. 62-63:

The following story dramatizes how photopigments determine what one can see. During World War II, the United States Navy wanted its sailors to be able to see infrared signal lights that would be invisible to the enemy. Normally, it is impossible to see infrared radiation because, as pointed out earlier, the wavelengths are too long for human photopigments. In order for humans to see infrared, the spectral sensitivity of some human photopigment would have to be changed. Vision scientists knew that retinal, the derivative of vitamin A, was part of every photopigment molecule and that various forms of vitamin A existed. If the retina could be encouraged to use some alternative form of vitamin A in its manufacture of photopigments, the spectral sensitivity of those photopigments would be abnormal, perhaps extending into infrared radiation. Human volunteers were fed diets rich in an alternative form of vitamin A but deficient in the usual form. Over several months, the volunteers' vision changed, giving them greater sensitivity to light of longer wavelengths. Though the experiment seemed to be working, it was aborted. The development of the "snooperscope," an electronic device for seeing infrared radiation, made continuation of the experiment unnecessary (Rubin and Walls, 1969). Still, the experiment demonstrates that photopigments select what one can see; changing those photopigments would change one's vision.

FREE Bullshit Deflector!

What more can I say? A 73-year-old veteran, Bill Moyer, wore these over his ears at Bush's speech in Idaho yesterday. What a great guy. Here is a link to some DIY protecters.

East is East and West is West

It appears that Easterners and Westerners really do see things differently, literally, according to psychologists at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, US. These psychologists examined the eye movements of Chinese and American students as they looked at a photograph. The western group, looked at the central object in the photo, while the eastern group looked all over the photo, seeing the context.

This is interesting because, it has been noted for a long time that we look at things differently. Chinese philosophy tends to emphasize harmony, and how things work together, while the West tends to be very analytical, and look at things a part at a time. Curious.

Homeland Security: your tax dollars at work

Homeland Security is even more inept than the sum of its components. It seems that HS is investigating a renowned puppeteers group in San Francisco. That have frozen their finances and generally made life hell for them, because they suspect them. Nothing they can do about it either. For cryin out loud... a puppeteers group some kind of threat? The same group where Jim Henson met Frank Oz and Jerry Juhl? THis country is in Bad shape.

Hydrogen result causes controversy

It always makes me marvel when I disregard a particular fringe idea, and then it comes back and bites me. I never considered the hydrino hypothesis very much, never enough to decide yea or nay. But it appears to have some new life breathed into it.

The idea is this: when electrons in atoms drop an energy level, they give off energy. The suggestion was that perhaps, you could get the electron in hydrogen, the simplist atom, to drop a level below ground state, its lowest state. That should be impossible.... shouldn't it? Scientists are generally agreed it is just silly... but reasons so far are a bit weak. Time for me to pull my Quantum text out.

Experimental Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 Mpg - Yahoo! News

What do I say here? I am at a loss. Sheer stupidity, or conspiracy? Here we have a case of ordinary people making cars that are highly efficient, yet the automakers can not do it. Granted, it comes at the expence of electricity, but still.... what is up?

In Defense of Common Sense - New York Times

It is gratifying, to see in print, an opinion that one has long held, even if it is merely an editorial, namely that the common mans common sense is worthwile, not only in day-to-day life, but in science as well. The unfortunate effect of denigrating common sense, has been to denigrate common people's opinions and observations. Only scientists are qualified to pass judgements on such things, they would tell you. Of course, there are many things that run contrary to common sense, but that is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Groups Slam FCC on Internet Phone Tap Rule

I saw this on Wired yesterday but I am glad to see that the indignation is spreading. The FCC declared that internet telephony services must include low-security backdoors for law-enforcement. Doing this would both be onerous, and completely cripple security. And those aren't even the additional liberties it compromises.

There is an excellent discussion over at Slashdot. Here is one comment: "And it gets worse yet. Essentially, all 'anti-terrorism,' 'anti-drug,' etc. laws are useless for the purpose for which they're supposedly enacted. Terrorists, drug dealers, and other criminals are, by their very nature, breaking the law. Making their tangential activities (like communicating, meeting, transferring funds...) illegal isn't going to stop them!

In short, attempts to legislate terrorism out of existance are doomed from the start and should be suspect. You can damned well bet that lawmakers are smart enough to know that these laws aren't going to do anything to stop the Bogeyman of the day. They're being passed as 'feel good' measures at best, and as attempts to control the law-abiding population at worse.
"

Colliding stars

It seems that one mystery of astronomy may have been cracked. For years, no one has been able to explain the source of some mysterious gamma-ray bursts. Some were determined to have come from especially violent supernovae, but the shorter ones, were an enigma. Now is seems that we may have a better answer. From a recent observation, it was determined that the source was colliding neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole. This is great news for many astronomers, but it may be a problem for others.

For years, Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO, operated by Cal-Tech, has been either under construction, or fine-tuning its instrument to detect. As of May 2005, it was within a factor of 2, of its designed sensitivity. And yet, and yet.... nothing has been detected. It was built to detect the gravitational waves from events exactly like this. Now, in all fairness, it may well be that the ones we have had lately have been too far and we need to give them some time. It may be that some errors were made in the calcuation of what to expect.

This is the kind of thing that physicist both love and dread. They dread it because it tears up old theory and says, 'You were wrong, wrong, wrong.". But they love it also, because it lights the way for newer and more complete theories - for deeper understanding. And modern physics has been poised for just the kind of change and chaos that started off the last century... and ushered in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.