Prions might actually have a survival characteristic

Yeast find use for misfolded proteins
Clumps might help single-celled organisms adapt to hardship
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338486/title/Yeast_find_use_for_misfolded_proteins

I have talked about prions before and until I had read the article above I thought they were an evolutionary dead end since they only seemed to kill their ‘host’. Interestingly, they do appear to provide some evolutionary benefit, at least for yeast, which makes me wonder if is conceivable that prions secretly harbor some evolutionary benefit for humans as well. As an excellent example look into sickle cell anemia, it actually provides resistance to malaria if you are heterozygous (meaning you have one normal gene and one abnormal gene). It would be interesting to learn how mad cow disease can confer some sort of survival benefit (it certainly doesn’t for all those poor cows killed and burned in ditches), but that is the weird stuff I love about science.

It ain’t the cows or the termites!

Natural gas wells leakier than believed
Measurements at Colorado site show methane release higher than previous estimates
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338505/title/Natural_gas_wells_leakier_than_believed

I wonder if they will stop blaming cows and termites for the methane that might be the more proximal cause for the increase in global average temps? For those regular readers you no doubt understand that I figure that the more proximal cause for the observed increases in global temps blamed on the rise in CO2 is due to agriculture as opposed to burning of fossil fuels. However, this would seem a more rational explanation if you want to insist anthropogenic causes due to extraction of fossil fuels since methane is much more of a greenhouse gas than CO2 and is likely to persist in the atmosphere much longer as well.

While I am not advocating we turn away from fossil fuel use (actually, we can’t, see http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/) and I am an advocate for using so-called renewable fuels (so-called fossil fuels are, indeed, renewable, just not at the rate that we are extracting them), I am a firm believer in doing things economically and currently there are no economical alternatives to fossil fuels. I have engaged in a lot of research into bio-based alternatives (and nuclear-based ones as well) and pretty much exclusively I find that I can make at least 10x more money selling any bio- product I produce for other purposes (such as animal feed, for instance). As long as that is the case, there is no real incentive to bother with any alternative even if it can be made incrementally profitable (meaning it can itself produce a profit once tax incentives, etc. are removed). If I figure some way to make algae at the cost and scale needed to make fuel profitably, why the hell am I going to be stupid enough to sell it for fuel when I can sell it for animal food and go from just barely profitable to making millions? Until fuel costs reach the point where I can make the same (or better) profit than selling my product as food (keep in mind that there are plenty of better ways to make money off of algae (for instance) than food!) we are pretty much ‘stuck’ with fossil fuels. I suspect that in order for alternatives to finally become economic fossil fuels will need to approach about 25x their current prices (or a gallon of gas would have to cost $80-90). In order for our society to survive with those prices we are going to have to make some very serious changes to our behavior. Indeed if we want to keep the cost of transportation at the same proportion of the economy as it is today we will have to find some way to reduce fuel usage by 25 fold, or cut our current utilization by 96%. Think about that for a while and let it sink in. Since there is no way to make a vehicle 25 times more fuel efficient (the practical maximum is probably around 100 miles/gallon, or a whopping 3 fold improvement; only 22 more to go!) what that basically means is we car pool everywhere (or bus pool since we need to get probably about 40 people in the same vehicle).

This isn’t to say that it isn’t possible to produce enough bio-based fuel to meet our needs. Indeed I just redid some earlier numbers using duckweed and figure that with some theoretical yields based on my aquaponics research and subsequently extracting the oil for biodiesel and the starches for ethanol I could produce some 30K gallons of fuel per acre, per year. With the US currently using around 200 billion gallons of fuel for transportation (diesel and gasoline), we could produce the fuel we need (presuming my numbers are correct) with around 6 million acres. That sounds like a lot until you realize that Vermont is about that size. Having said that, if you have a choice of selling your product at $3 a gallon after extensive post processing (which loses around 70% of the raw material) or at 35 cents/pound for the raw material (which translates to around $12 for the equivalent amount) which would you do?

Still more we didn’t know about DNA

All genes aren’t indispensable
Even with about 20 that are utterly inactivated, individuals can do just fine
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/338526/title/All_genes_arent_indispensable

I have talked a time or twain about DNA before, how the relatively simple theory I learned back in school (more than 20 years ago! man am I getting old!) turns out to be a very crude picture. Unlike Newtonian physics that explain everything except at the very small (where quantum mechanics takes over) or very large (where Einsteinian physics takes over (but note that there is, as yet, no theory that explains everything!)), the earlier DNA theory I learned was really just the bare brush strokes of how things are turning out to work. This article provides even more grist for the mill in that regard, perfectly healthy people are missing genes heretofore considered necessary for health.

More FBI insanity to placate the sheeple

How the FBI Invents Terrorists Like the U.S. Capitol ‘Suicide Bomber’
Even the authorities admit the alleged suicide bomber apprehended near the U.S. Capitol posed no threat. Mansfield Frazier on how the feds create ‘terrorists’ so they can arrest them.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/19/how-the-fbi-invents-terrorists-like-the-u-s-capitol-suicide-bomber.html

When I heard about this I started to rant and my wife told me to shut it so I decided to turn here to express my outrage (at least it is quieter this way). The article explains the situation very nicely: these people are not terrorists, they are just dummies that the FBI cajoles along (via the use of paid informants! how is that for unbiased efforts?) just so they (the FBI) can have headlines exactly like this. It is _exactly_ like the moronic idiocy we have to go through to get on a plane. All show and not the least bit of substance. The _only_ thing this does is provide the sheeple with a false sense of security, it does nothing to thwart ‘real’ bad guys. Indeed, I suspect it might even embolden the bad guys because they can see laughably inept the FBI is at doing their actual job.

Isn’t it amazing, these reports tend to come out about once a quarter. I wonder if it is motivated by the idea of keeping or beefing up the FBI’s budget and any effect on the sheeple might actually be besides the point. What a fucked up world we live in!

The best description I have yet read

Hypnotized into an endless dirty war
America has decided it has the right to kill whoever it wants, whenever it wants.
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/20/hypnotized_into_an_endless_dirty_war/singleton/

This is a topic I have felt strongly about for a long while. We are acting in a totally counter productive way in our war on terror (which keeps on expanding, has already taken out US citizens abroad and some day soon will start to take out US citizens right here at home, you can count on it!) creating 10 new terrorists for everyone we kill (and we have killed a lot of them). Instead of doing something useful in Afghanistan, like, say, building up infrastructure, putting in roads, electricity, etc. which might actually have motivated the population to view us as anything besides an invading army, instead we blow up random people from the sky, motivating them instead into a deep hatred of everything US.

We are already sliding down the slippery slope, gathering momentum by the instant, and it really isn’t going to be long now before we start to replicate the shockingly insane concentration camps we created for the Japanese at the start of WWII, this time for Muslims. Then, when anyone (non-Muslim) objects, they will be tossed in the same camps. Maybe that will be reversed after a few decades but imagine how many generations it will take for the ill will to ebb away. For just the smallest idea of what we have in store, check out Ireland’s long bloody war between the Protestants and the Catholics and they were of the exact same religion!

Shocking, our military lies to us also!

The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to Read
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-afghanistan-report-the-pentagon-doesnt-want-you-to-read-20120210

Once again something I meant to publish got lost in limbo as a draft…

Very interesting reading. I am about a third through the report now. I won’t link to it here in case it become classified at some point (yes, our government has withdrawn clearances for doing just that!). I urge my readers to at least take in the Rolling Stone article linked above.

There is huge diversity in the military (perhaps greater than our society in general because, for the most part, the military promotes based on capability rather than personal connections or birth parents) and you can find someone at any level to agree with any statement you care to utter (recall that Timothy McVeigh was a member of our military). Thus, if our government either encourages the military to lie or tacitly approves by not investigating lies, then, naturally, those people who are either pathological liars or see there is success in lying will bubble right to the top. Since the information the military acts on results in literally lives being on the line I would like to think that the core of the military is still honest with itself (my military career, such that it was (Marine reserves and Va Army Natl Guard infantry), was far from stellar and I left with less rank than I had achieved so I have no personal information either way). At least I hope that is the case, though I recall reading about a war game some years ago where a retired US military general took control over the opposing forces and basically wiped out the command/control structure of the ‘good guys’ (note this was all simulated) within hours of a week long exercise. Rather than acknowledge their weaknesses they restarted the exercise but told the retired general he couldn’t use those techniques; he quit the exercise, to his credit (if I weren’t so damn lazy I might research to find that article).

Anyway, I doubt reading this paper will be an eye opener to any of my reader(s) because I doubt people without doubt would bother to investigate what is going on, preferring ignorance instead.

“Any country that squawks when we threaten to bomb it is a threat that needs to be wiped out.”

Another March to War?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/another-march-to-war-20120217

Bla bla bla war with Iran bla bla bla.

This is getting so boring, just like that police state thing I babble about all the time. Can’t I talk about anything else?

I was speaking with a good friend just this week and mentioned the ‘inevitable’ war with Iran and she didn’t even know what I was talking about. Of course, she is not the newsie that I am so perhaps she can be forgiven about being clueless about the fourth (fifth, sixth? All depends on how you count, I guess) war in a Muslim nation we will be involved in since 911. To me the drumbeat is so obviously manufactured it is almost comical, but the consequences are substantial (I have read that _conservative_ estimates of the number of Iraq civilians killed since we ‘liberated’ them run north of 100,000) so it is hard to smile. The American Sheeple either ignore the drumbeat all together or join in the insane dance around the fire, shaking their fists at the sky. The few naysayers are totally ignored so when our next totally illegal war is begun (the invasion of Iraq was a totally unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, thus every event that occurred was a war crime, like anyone here gives a damn) and the inevitable fiasco ensues the sheeple will remark in astounded cluelessness “Who could have ever predicted this?”

Vote Republican! Reelect Obama!

Obama’s War on Pot
In a shocking about-face, the administration has launched a government-wide crackdown on medical marijuana
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216

As a general rule I am not in favor of Democrats but I liked a lot of Obama’s rhetoric during his campaign (I expected he would back off of some of it (he is a politician, after all, thus by definition a pathological liar only interested in corrupt power), but didn’t expect him to out Cheney Cheney). Personally I think making any law that is impossible to enforce (or where society refuses to supply the resources to enforce) is a stupid law as all that does is make for inconsistent enforcement (meaning individual cops and prosecutors get to pick what they want to enforce and what they choose to ignore). What we have now is a situation where we (as a society) pointlessly pissing away _billions_ of dollars in a vain attempt to block illegal drugs, thus providing organized criminals with profit margins so huge that they can corrupt our entire justice system and have people driving under the influence and killing people, addicts transmitting disease, families destroyed, etc. It seems to me the _only_ rational solution (which, naturally, means it is out of the question in our highly defective society) is to make the drugs all legal, thus subject to regulation. We would still have addicts, destroyed families (alcohol does that, shall we go back to prohibition?) and assholes driving under the influence (it blows my mind that not only are these people NOT in jail, but they can still drive!), etc. but instead of pissing away billions of bucks in a pointless exercise we would instead _get_ billions in tax revenue. I also suspect that by having cheaper drugs available easily we would probably have a lot less petty crime as fewer addicts would need to steal to support their habit.

In any case, here we (as a nation, I don’t give a damn if you didn’t vote for the guy) elected a dewd who promised so many liberal things only to walk back on essentially all of them (note that the ‘Obamacare’ we wound up with is _exactly_ what Bush Jr tried to foist off on us). He deserves to be thrown out on his ear by the liberals who got him elected, yet because the morons in the GOP have gone so far into the woods on the right (I can’t believe that Santorum actually has a chance to win the nomination; how many women will vote for this moron? Last time I checked, women accounted for half our population) Obama can not only leave the liberals out in the cold, he can step to the right of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and even the two Bushs. If I were conspiratorially minded (and I am on certain days of the week (when the drugs ‘they’ give us in the water wear off, I guess)) I would have to dip back to my thoughts that Obama is actually the Antichrist and all this is a plot to start the end of times.