Microbial fuel cell and Bacillus stratosphericus

Superbugs: Efficient Generator of Electricity
http://www.medindia.net/news/superbugs-efficient-generator-of-electricity-98049-1.htm

I had heard about the idea of the microbial fuel cell before and if I could somehow motivate myself to work in my lab again it might be something I would pursue, but when I read the name Bacillus stratosphericus I thought it must be an April Fools joke or something. It seems that B. stratosphericus isn’t a joke (though I found it difficult to find web pages that weren’t related to this basic premise) so there might be something interesting there. However, the reported output of “200 Watts per cubic metre” makes me want to grin again. From a purely scientific point of view it is interesting, but from any other point of view it seems totally useless. Sure, if we ignore every other bit of reality, bacteria doubling every 30 minutes quickly coat the universe in goo in just a few days. The reality, though, is that level of output is unsustainable and real systems collapse. So, to talk about a cubic meter putting out 200 watts is almost silly. I am sure I can build something biological based that occupies a cubic meter and will produce more than 200 watts and I bet it will cost orders of magnitude less than whatever silly thing they are talking about and of course solar panels can easily capture that much energy per square meter.

Still, from a scientific point of view, this is interesting as if we can convert biological fuel directly into electricity and avoid the need to boil water and spin up turbines we can handle a lot of inefficiency. At this point, though, it seems like nothing more than a curiosity. Bump up the output by an order of magnitude or twain and ensure the cost/watt is very low and now you are on to something!

Giving home schooling a bad name

Rick Santorum’s home-school hokum
America’s most famous home-schooler spent three years soaking Pennsylvania taxpayers for his kids’ education
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/26/rick_santorums_home_school_hokum/singleton/

I don’t need other reasons to not like Santorum and almost didn’t bother to read this article (I had already heard about his highly ethically questionable behavior) but decided to take a look just for the heck of it. I found it surprising in the article’s focus on home schooling and since I am interested in education in general and have studied homes schooling quite a bit (I had intended to home school our boy) I felt I had something to say, hence this post…

I had a massive dislike of my public school educational time. I am sure that a great deal of that was due to my dad being in the Navy and us moving every couple of years (I attended quite a few schools and lemme tell you, that scars you for life!). However, I also found the pace, particularly in high school, to be abysmally slow (keep in mind, this was 30 years ago, I can’t imagine things have improved) and could, even in advanced ‘AP’ classes, pass (I was, and likely will always remain, a ‘C’ student (in graduate school ‘B’ is the new ‘C’ and that is all I achieved)) simply by being in class and exposed to lecture (I was able to, for the most part, drift through my bachelors degree the same way, but things changed dramatically in graduate school where I likely studied for each class as much as I had in my entire career up to that point). Though I am sure some will consider this a form of bragging, I consider it a clear sign that our educational expectations of a society are so poor that someone like me can lazily drift through school without having to apply himself. If (as I like to believe; who doesn’t think they are the smartest (and best looking!) thing around?) I am pretty smart, oughtn’t the educational system have the obligation to recognize that and put me in the situation (which finally happened in graduate school) where I had to actually apply myself in order to succeed? I am quite sure that if my classes were 10x more challenging I would have exerted 10x more effort (perhaps I would finally been inspired and put in 20x more) and been able to learn so much more. As I often comment, I have become a scientist and a lover of learning in spite of my education, not because of it.

Back to home schooling… I thought a lot about how I would try to educate any children I might have, even before I ever had any (despite my wife’s convictions from time to time, I have always had an interest in being a dad, just not a strong enough interest to be the prime motivator to make it happen). Those thoughts happened much more often after I did become a dad (hard to believe it was 7 years ago; I swear I was able to hold the little bologna loaf in my arm just a few weeks ago) and I had pretty much settled on doing the home school thing. One thing I hadn’t considered until it was time to put rubber to road was the rather acute lack of social experiences that one gets when one is home schooled. Yes, people talk about their kids being so much better able to interact with adults, but you know what? Learning to deal with peer pressure and the nasty, mean things that other children do, is important in life because there are always adults (in stature and chronological age) that have the mentality of these spiteful, nasty, cliquish children one almost inevitably meets in school.

A couple of things that drove that point home to me happened when we would take our boy to the playground (he has always been a big boy (consistently at the 99% percentile height and weight) and we try to encourage him to exercise regularly (sadly without a lot of positive results)). One time he met another boy about his age (3 or 4 I guess) and the other boy had basically no knowledge or experience with other kids and was very hesitant to play. He worked his way out of that shell, but I was interested in looking at his care giver (looked like a grandma) and how cautious she looked. I tend to play pretty rough with my boy (he doesn’t seem to feel pain unless something unexpected happens, indeed he seems to enjoy getting beaten up (and beating up) and I am sure will be recruited into football as soon as some coach finds this out about him) and he has picked some of that up (most of his cousins play pretty rough as well, so I am not the only culprit). Another time we were at a playground and he was playing with another boy (older at this point, perhaps they were 4 or 5) and that boy was hesitating climbing over something or other and my boy gave him a swat to the butt to get him moving. To all of our surprise the boy immediately started to cry, ran to his mother who then hustled him off the playground and away. Our boy was quite confused, he hadn’t even manhandled the other kid and I wasn’t able to offer much in the way of explanation (well, didn’t choose to). I was thinking as I observed this event that the parents probably were keeping the boy so protected from the world that he would probably grow up totally incapable of interactions as an adult.

These events (and plenty of others) started me thinking that as much as I felt home schooling was a better educational approach, it was incomplete. So incomplete that homeschooling at a young age might lead to a lifetime of scaring just like my education process did, though with totally different sets of scars. I read this article a while ago:

A home-schooler goes to college
It wasn’t the schoolwork or social life that threw me. It’s that I never realized how dull a classroom could be
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/12/a_home_schooler_goes_to_college/singleton/

and it also had me thinking. As much as I disliked high school it did prepare me (in a sad way) for college. Since there is no current way to get an advanced degree without having achieved the earlier milestones, perhaps some organized school is a necessary preparation for the ‘rigors’ of college. In any case, due to money issues we had to put our boy into preschool so my wife could go back to work full-time so our window to home school pretty much snapped shut in my face (my wife was far from convinced she (the responsibilities would have fallen mostly on her shoulders) could manage anyway). I found that in the preschools he was attending (some at the YMCA, others at a Catholic school) he was actually learning quite well. For kindergarten we opted to go with public school (largely because that is what the boy wanted, he had had some speech classes (he was a very slow talker, but was walking at around 6 months) at the local elementary school and he remembered those times with fondness (though after he actually started school he said he wanted to go back to the Catholic school, though I am sure their kindergarten would have been much more rigorous than their preschool)) and because of the head start he got in the preschool he was actually promoted to first grade halfway through kindergarten. His progress in second grade doesn’t seem to be going as well and it is hard for me to judge where the problems might lie. However, he is still making overall progress and appears to be doing satisfactorily, but his 6 month older cousin is much more advanced, at least so it seems to me (but then again girls supposedly take to education better than boys).

So I still can’t make up my mind about home schooling. Perhaps when he gets older we can discuss as a family the idea of his learning from home. At the tender age of 7 he doesn’t seem to have what it takes to progress without heavy handed direction and I am generally way too tired to provide that when I get home. Maybe if he picks up some personal discipline (he has been making good progress as a Taekwondo student the last year) we can contemplate that route. He has got lots of social exposure at this point and my understanding it is increasingly common for home schooled students to be allowed to play organized school sports (he seems to love sports, though they have been mostly ‘disorganized’ up to this point) so he might be able to have his cake and eat it also.

The hypnotic spell of apocalypse

America’s endless apocalypse
Over the last decade, we’ve become obsessed with the end of the world — and it’s hurting us all
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/26/americas_endless_apocalypse/singleton/

OK, I freely admit that I engage in apocalyptic talk from time to time (sometimes way more often) and as a student of history I should be more open to the unlikelihood of apocalypse and be thinking more along these lines:

When we free ourselves from the hypnotic spell of apocalypse, when we let go of our desire to see how things will turn out, we are free to answer a more important question. Not, are my beliefs correct? But, how do I live in accord with my values right now? Our insistence that a new world is coming later is a delusion; it is already here. We have met many who say that they will go start an organic farm when things come undone. We have met others who are already farming and say that they are doing it to prepare for the Great Unraveling. Why not choose to farm, as one example, because you value independence, self-sufficiency, and the environment and want to live in accordance with your values, rather than framing your life through the prism of the apocalypse, hoping to be proven right and others proven wrong? The answer as to how to live into our values is different for each of us — it may be about traveling the world as much as manning the ramparts. But the right public policy prescriptions and personal decisions will come only when we abandon our expectations that some future cataclysmic moment will eventually prove us right.

However (you knew there had to be a however, didn’t you ;-)), when I babble about apocalypse I am not talking the end of the world, the rising of the dead, celestial trumpets, etc. I am talking about a decade (or longer!) of privation as we as a society have to adapt to a dramatic loss of infrastructure, a government acting exactly contrary to the interests of the greatest number (whoa, that is already happening!), an economy that is so ruined that one takes several bags of ‘money’ to the store to return with one bag of groceries (one needn’t look far in our history to find several occurrences of such) and the total inability to make meaningful plans more than a season or so. That is the apocalypse I dread, the one that makes it impossible for me to maintain even my fantasies of building space stations and taking the first stepping stones to explore the universe.

Much like I tend to poo poo the hysterical babble about the nuclear destruction of the world (the average hurricane expends more energy than the entire world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, so while it would really suck to be at ground zero, it isn’t even necessary to entertain notions that evolution would be pushed to restart with cockroaches, there would be more than enough humans to continue down our path of destruction of an entire biosphere) I generally tend to poo poo any talk of exceptional broad-scale events having world-wide impact on society. That doesn’t mean, though, that, much like Greece today, the US can be abruptly thrown into sub-third world status through a highly probable series of events and because that would largely mean the end of the world as I choose to know it (much like I am sure that a lot of people considered Hitler’s invasion into France to be an apocalyptic change of the world, though in the fullness of time it was just a blip). Only by considering the potential for such society altering events, assigning probabilities and making preparatory decisions based this analysis can we possibly hope to minimize the personal effects of apocalypse. Yes, during the short period of societal breakdown the preparations of the survivalists will look quite prescient, but anarchy is unstable and it quickly devolves into some form of collective governing action (warlordism is most common in the immediate aftermath) and barricading yourself in your bomb shelter (I wonder, how trivial would it be to simply block them in there and cut off their air?) is probably not the ideal response.

Anyway, I liked the author and found the topic interesting so thought I would let my dear reader(s) know about it.

I guess I am a “smart idiot”

The ugly delusions of the educated conservative
Better-educated Republicans are more likely to doubt global warming and believe Obama’s a Muslim. Here’s why
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/24/the_ugly_delusions_of_the_educated_conservative/singleton/

I have talked about my ‘skeptical’ thoughts on global warming before (and talked many other times on the subject as well). I have followed the subject of ‘global warming’ for nigh on 20 years and long before it became controversial. It is undeniable that levels of CO2 are rising. There is also very compelling evidence that we are experiencing a relative rise in global temps (where you pick your start date has a huge impact on how significant our current temps are). I think there is very undeniable evidence that the human species has had a dramatic and often drastic impact on the biosphere through deforestation and harvests from the sea. However to say that because of the observed rise in CO2 our failure to drastically cut back the use of fossil fuels is the only solution is a leap I think has no scientific merit. There are lines of research that indicate that the rise in levels of CO2 are actually not due to burning fossil fuels at all, but are due to converting land into agriculture. There are also lines of research that indicate the transoceanic movements of ships has put enough sulfur in our atmosphere that the subsequent reflection of sunlight has ameliorated heating we might otherwise have experienced (ditto with airplane contrails), so reducing the use of fossil fuels could exacerbate the warming. To me these uncertainties are so great that it is impossible for me to lend any credence to people who insist the _only_ ‘solution’ to global warming is to destroy the global economy by eliminating the use of fossil fuels. Yes, we will eventually run out and yes we will eventually need replacements of some sort and yes the adaptation is likely to be painful and better if started sooner rather than later, but those are not reasons to prematurely kick ourselves back to the stone age. Perhaps that is where we are destined to wind up (though I have lots of faith in the power of nuclear fission, though unfortunately that provides no solution for the needs of airplanes, the loss of which would make our planet so much larger), but we should not hurry the situation.

I was a bit skeptical that the author claimed that liberals are more opened minded about nuclear energy than conservatives are about global warming, I find a huge amount of resistance to the idea of nuclear energy and based on my rather extensive experience working with it in the lab coupled with my decades of research on the topic (I was going to do a term paper on how to build a nuclear bomb back in high school, but the teacher told me she didn’t have the knowledge to grade it if I did) I know that it can be done at least as safe as the alternatives (there are HUGE problems associated with ALL other forms of energy (fossil or otherwise) that are often totally ignored) and has the capacity to supply us with nearly all of our (non-transportation, its big weakness) needs.

By this author’s measures I must be the smart idiot, though I can’t stand Fox News, Rush or any of those other blowhards. I am not terribly fond of MSNBC and over the last couple of years have lost respect for CNN. I actually go to Salon to get a lot of news (am a big fan of their Glenn Greenwald), but in the case of global warming and in particular the case of the ‘only’ solution being destroying our economy, I am very much the smart idiot.

A follow-up

A follow up to Life as we don’t know it:

‘Nomad planets’ could carry bacterial life
http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/61668-nomad-planets-could-carry-bacterial-life

According to the article there might be as many as 100,000x ‘nomad’ planets for each visible star which, if true, would almost require that a number of them harbor some sort of life.

As mentioned in my earlier post, in an infinite universe even events with very low probability must have happened an infinite number of times. According to our current understanding of astrophysics our universe is ‘only’ 13.5 billion years (and our solar system 4.5 billion years old) so quite a far bit from infinite, but still a really long time. If life is as common and ordinary as I believe (meaning just about anywhere there is water, thermal gradients and a certain minimum variety of chemical compounds results in some sort of life and from thence to evolutionary development) then we aren’t talking about any sort of vanishingly small probability that would require an infinite universe, we are talking about something that might happen dozens, if not thousands, of times in each solar system. Now, if life is indeed common, but the probability of intelligent life (giving us the benefit of the doubt ;-)) is very low, as the incidence of life increases so must the incidence of intelligent life. I was watching a show on whales and dolphins last night discussing their intelligence (or rather our ability to measure their intelligence as in my mind there is no question regarding their intelligence) and it seems clear to me that just our planet alone has evolved several intelligent life forms. As I mentioned a bit earlier if octopi and cuttlefish lived longer I figure there is a very high probability that they would have been the technologically advanced race on this planet and probably millions of years ago. Thus, to me it would seem that the paltry single example we have to evaluate has produced several (wildly different) life forms all capable of (or already exhibiting) sentience and intelligence. With our planet as an example I would have to say that intelligence is not rare and while the number of planets that can support multicellular life and have the evolutionary pressures that might produce intelligence could be relatively rare, I would have to say that as the probable incidence of life increases the probable incidence of intelligence increases such that we really have to question why we are not seeing any evidence of such intelligence.

Now, again using our planet as an example, we have at least two intelligent groups (whales and dolphins) that lack the ability to produce any sort of technology that would allow them to communicate off planet. If we were to posit intelligent octopi or cuttlefish, given their very soft bodies and requirement for immersion in water it is easy to imagine a technological society that fails to make any sort of radiation that could be detected off planet and lacks the technological skills to go to space (it is hard to imagine it would be easy to smelt metals under water) might be too much of a challenge for sea creatures. Thus there may be huge numbers of intelligent organisms in our universe that simply lack the ability to communicate past their planet. I am amused by Larry Niven’s Bandersnatch, a species created as both a food and a spy that resorted to selling hunting licenses on itself in exchange for technological tools. What if we monkey tool users ever develop the ability to explore the galaxy? Perhaps we can sell our technology to other species in exchange for knowledge.

Of course it would seem highly probable that if life is almost inevitable and intelligence is therefore fairly common it would seem that there should still be a number of species technologically advanced enough to communicate solar system to solar system. Why haven’t we heard from them? Perhaps there is some benign Federation that blocks access to undeveloped systems until some technological hurdle has been overcome. Perhaps the energy necessary to communicate and the lag between messages is such that very few species with the skills bother (most of our attempts to communicate outside our solar system are almost laughable).

Then again, perhaps there is no solution to faster-than-light (FTL) travel (all Star Trek wishes to the contrary) and there is no way to visit with other solar systems in a meaningful amount of time, which might be just the sort of disincentive that would keep any species from undertaking the organized effort communicate.

On the other, other hand (or on the gripping hand) perhaps we are being observed and the observers don’t want to communicate. I can easily imagine that if we had very long life spans (or develop that ability as I believe is feasible in the next 50 years or so) we could tolerate sending out probes that would report back after making the long sub-light speed journey to adjacent solar systems. With enough pre-programming I don’t see the requirement for two-way communication with the probes, they might only report back, so we might be being monitored by a plethora of different technological species even as I write this. If FTL travel really is impossible then there isn’t much concern with alien species attacking us as the effort necessary to travel between stars has to be so huge that it is probably more economical to just invest that energy in becoming self sufficient where they are. As I describe in my Trillions paper, by making use of a Dyson sphere we could support 440 quintillion people simply using the Sun’s energy. Surely any species technologically advanced enough to build craft capable of traveling between solar systems would also be advanced enough to maximize their utilization of their own system, so it seems to me that without FTL we have nothing to worry about. By taking advantage of objects in the Kuiper belt or even the Oort cloud it should be possible, presuming enough nuclear fuel is available (and if we ever sort out economic fusion that is a certainty) to completely populate a given solar system to the point that the measurements will be in millions or even billions of quintillions.

I would think, though, that with the energy situation resolved and such a huge population scattered throughout a solar system, that enough individuals would be interested enough in communication attempts that we would still see some signs. Perhaps there is some ‘Macroscope-esque‘ technology we are lacking that keeps us from communicating.

Exercise and get smarter!

How Exercise Fuels the Brain
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/how-exercise-fuels-the-brain/

As if we needed more reasons to exercise, now it makes us smarter! The article didn’t make it clear if you had to bust your ass exercise or if walking for an hour would be good enough. Of course this might not apply to humans, but somehow I doubt they will get permission to microwave the brains of humans just to test this.

I have found that I tend to be more creative when I am moving about, though I find running tends to take just enough thought to pay enough attention that I don’t run into something that I am more creative walking. I have got out of the habit of bike riding, unfortunately, and give that it is nigh on a decade now since I was a regular biker I can’t recall whether biking allowed for more creative thoughts than walking. I try to walk briskly (though I tend to jog slowly, doing pretty good to maintain 6.5 mph), I wonder if that is good enough to trigger the observed results.

A light note for a serious situation

Georgia Democrats propose limitations on vasectomies for men
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/21/georgia-democrats-to-propose-limitations-on-vasectomies-for-men/?hpt=hp_bn1

This would be hilarious if it weren’t in reaction to basically the exact same response, but in reverse, to women:

“It is patently unfair that men avoid the rewards of unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly … It is the purpose of the General Assembly to assert an invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men in this state and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men.”

“any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”

required men to have a rectal exam and cardiac stress tests before they could receive prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication like Viagra

Lets all go back to the reproductive stone age. Oh, wait, we are already there! We don’t want any sort of sex education, wouldn’t want our little darlings to learn from _our_ mistakes!

The anti-abortion people are being revealed with their real intent now. They have been hiding behind the smoke screen of saving the life of an unborn child all these years when in reality they want to prohibit any form of contraceptive because they absolutely insist that women have no value in existence unless they are producing and caring for children. Personally I find women vastly more valuable than merely as a sperm receptacle for subsequent child bearing and rearing, yet it seems these (mostly) white males feel women have no other purpose. It staggers me that they are able to find women to impose their world view on, I guess there are women out there that figure the same thing also.

Why do these people think that it is a horror for the government to regulate firearms, issue taxes, etc. but think it is the governments duty to prohibit any sort of sexual act outside of a marriage and for the exclusive purpose of producing children? How the hell do they keep those two thoughts inside their heads without their heads exploding? Maybe that is why they are so stupid, they have no room for any other thoughts.

More New York Police State

NYPD spying program aimed at Muslims
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/nypd_spying_program_aimed_at_muslims/singleton/

I talked about the NYPD police state before, but felt it would be worth reinforcing with Glenn’s interesting post. Just like the article I feel the need to re-quote Bloomberg in his response on why this sort of invasion is necessary:

“The police department goes where there are allegations. And they look to see whether those allegations are true,” said the Mayor. “That’s what you’d expect them to do. That’s what you’d want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight.”

The stunning lack of understanding of the Constitution and the concepts of privacy are amazing. This is a guy who has been touted as a President for our country (of course, currently we have a ‘Constitutional Scholar’ as President and have a vastly more eroded Constitution than when Cheney was doing his best to shred it). But hey, why bitch and moan about things? Just join the 1% and become immune from all this!

Tea Party Morons

Republicans rebel against an oily transportation bill
Instead of fixing roads, the House leadership proposes a bonanza for the oil industry. Many Republicans are balking
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/21/republicans_rebel_against_an_oily_transportation_bill/singleton/

I am far from a fan of Obama and would like to see a change of guard at the top, but the GOP candidates are all, as difficult as it is to believe sometimes, worse than what we have now (Romney is the closest to not being much worse, but you can be sure that he will want to out Obama Obama (who has been busy working to out Cheney Cheney) so things can’t possibly get better and while I like a lot of what Paul represents, I also vehemently detest a lot of what he stands for and don’t get me started on Gingrich or Santorum!). Having said that, it seems that the House GOP ‘leadership’ is even worse as it seems they are totally incapable of doing what it takes to run a country. The above mentioned jackassed stunt is just the most recent of several (remember, it wasn’t that long ago that they were shutting down our government and threatening to default on our debt!). I have an increasing suspicion that we will see the same sort of ‘revolution’ that brought the Tea Party into power in the House, except in reverse. The Democrats had 2 years where they controlled the House, Senate AND White House, yet the idiots couldn’t pass any laws either. They got collectively tossed on their asses, but were replaced with the new Tea Party morons instead. I haven’t seen much about it in the news, but I am starting to think that even if somehow Obama loses the election this fall (and if the economy stays the way it is or improves, I find it very hard to believe he could lose it) I doubt that will be enough to save the Tea Party idiots from being tossed back out on the street. If, as I expect, Obama gets reelected, I also expect a lot of Democrats will ride his coat tails into office at the expense of the Tea Partiers.

What a bunch of morons!

Too bad they don’t live very long

Cuttlefish have high definition polarization vision, researchers discover
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-cuttlefish-high-definition-polarization-vision.html

If they lived longer they probably would have evolved enough intelligence to ensure some smart-assed monkeys never got the chance to destroy the environment.

Octopi are also highly intelligent but also suffer from very short lifespans. Their lifespan appears to be the same as their sex life, meaning that they die shortly after having sex and long before they might be able to pass on information to their children. Given their amazing ability to not only change the color of their skin, but the texture as well, I have to assume they have the capacity to produce a language as least as complex as ours and unlike dolphins and whales, they have manipulative appendages, meaning they can directly impact their environment much like we do with our opposable thumb (it is easy for me to imagine they can be vastly more successful with their 8+ arms).