Top 10 Highly-Desired Skills You Can Teach Yourself

Lifehacker gives us a chance to pick up some useful skills.  Check them out here.

The Crossover: Corporations & the US Government

Ok, I'm positing a link to an article that has a considerable amount of political content. The article shows 18 Venn diagrams showing how corrupted American 'democracy' really is. So many citizens appear to be concerned about separation of church and state. Maybe the most important issue is the separation of corporation and federal government. I'm not really sure how this can be fixed since it appears that the marriage of the two was set up almost from the beginning.

The Real Waste Problem

Click here for a graphic description of how much coal a typical coal plant burns per day. It is staggering. And all this coal needs to be replaced from a mine, someplace. This is not sustainable.

Forget WiFi: Connect To The Internet Through Lightbulbs

Near Death, Explained

Here is an interesting article in Salon by Mario Beauregard, Associate Professor at the Departments of Psychology and Radiology and Neuroscience Research Center at the Univ. of Montreal.  This is an excerpt from "The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of teh Mind and Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives.

Exploding Bat Lungs

Here is a perspective on wind power that certainly dimenshes it's appeal.  Massive wind farms appear to be devistating to bat and bird populations.  I don't think this is a viable alternative.

Donald Sadoway's Liquid Battery Project

Get the whole story here.  Looks promising.

Panoramic View from Mt. Everest

Would you risk your life to be able to see this view live and in person?  Over 140 climbers gave it all trying to get to the top.  It is an impressive sight.  I would be upset to make it on an overcast day.

A Brain Cell Looks to be the Same as the Universe

Scale of the Universe

Click here to zoom from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of spacetime and learn about everything in between.  This is an amazing interactive map that gives you an idea about the size of everything we can conceive.

George Cowan, Ph.D. - RIP

George Cowan of Los Alamos National Lab passed away on Friday.  He was one of the last remaining original Manhattan Project scientists.

I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Cowan at the home of my graduate school professor, Paul K. Kuroda in the fall of 1977.  Several of the department graduate students were always invited to the Kuroda home when important visitors came visiting.

He was a chemist and a graduate of Princeton University.  One thing that I did not know about him was that he kept the Santa Fe Opera from bankruptcy with the arrangement of a bank loan several years ago.

The scientific community loses another legend.

Dolby 3D TV

Dolby and Phillips have collaberated to develop a new standard, Dolby 3D television. This technology appears to be a significant breakthrough in glassless 3D technology for hand-held devices as well as large screen HD televisions.

Breakthrough in Solar Cell Efficiency

Australian and German researchers develop a 'turbo' for solar cells that could be a game changer. The technology captures lost energy that is normally lost in the conversion of photos to electrons. More improvements need to be made but researchers say the path is now clear.

George H. Miley: Lets Find Out Whats There

Ruby Carat interviewed Prof. George H. Miley at the Nuclear and Emerging Technology for Space (NETS) conference in March. He explored nuclear science and plasma research for more than three decades at the Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champagne (UIUC). Since 1989 he has experimented with unique forms of cold fusion cells and manufacturing specialty nano-particles coated with thin films to host low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR).

Death to Word

Tom Scocca over at Slate expresses his frustration with using Microsoft Word software. I'm in his camp on this one.

I've loaded OpenOffice on my MacBook and like it a lot. It is free and opens all the Microsoft Office applications. You can even save your work in the Microsoft formats, is you wish.

Off The Grid in Mendocino, CA

C++ programming pioneer Loren Amelang built a home that is off the grid. I don't think he has elaborated on why his wife is no longer with him. This life style would be an adjustment but I think this quality of life is still higher than 81% of the world's population (About 2 billion people in the world have access to electricity).

The Story Behind US Gas Price Pain

Here is an analysis from the mining industry on the reasons for the current price of oil and gasoline. It appears that the potential for blockages in the Strait of Hormuz is a key pinch point. One point that was not covered was the relative value of the U.S. dollar.

Klipsch: Keeper of the Sound

Paul W. Klipsch certainly made an impression on me as a college sophomore with his lecture on acoustic theory one spring afternoon. This company originated in the humble town of my birth, Hope, Arkansas. WW-II brought Paul Klipsch to Hope and he loved the place. He started the speaker company in the later part of the 1940s and the speak line of fine hand crafted wood cabinets and world class audio took off. There are lots of interesting stories about PWK. I always heard about how he would take apart McIntosh stereo amplifiers and re-construct them to suit his discerning ear.

One of his marketing strategies back in the mid-70s created some anxiety for a good friend of mine, John W. Simmons, Jr. of Arkadelphia. Paul Klipsch's response to the supposed superior sound quality of one of his rival's speaker systems was "Bulls$&!+." This was on the backs of Klipsch T-shirts distributed about that time. One day in July 1977 in Fayetteville, John was walking down Dickson St. and the local law took issue with his clothing style.














(Photo from the July 13, 1977 issue of "The Grapevine")

If I remember correctly, within a few days the charge was dropped. Some local DA (no, not dumb a$$, district attorney) was trying to make a name for himself. It didn't hurt that one of John's good friends was a Klipsch sales rep. I suppose the Klipsch lawyer would have loved to pounce on this opportunity, but alas, it never came to that.

Solar "Climate Change" Could Cause Rougher Space Weather

Some research presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in the UK indicates that increased solar events may have some serious implications for humans and delicate electronic systems based on recent observations by solar astronomers.

The near-Earth space radiation environment may become much more hazardous over the next 40 years.

Will LENR Go Commercial Now?

Brillouin Energy is making some headway in getting its LENR unit ready for commercialization. Robert Godes explains "What you want to do is you want control the creation of the neutrons, and you generate a neutron by causing a proton to capture an electron." This reaction gives off heat which can be used to 'fire' a boiler.

Apparently Brillouin doesn't plan to manufacture LENR boiler units, they just want to license them. It will be interesting to see if all this comes about.