Your place for useless information that just might possibly be interesting.
Space Junk Crisis: Time to Bring in the Lasers
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/space-junk-laser/?hpt=hp_bn11
I agree that politically this is a tough sell as it really is nothing more than a civilian application of Reagan’s famous Star Wars technology. However, this is a very real problem that needs some sort of real solution and this appears to be a quite viable one, though not trivial.
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
I thought you might like this change of pace from the usual stuff I send…
Plants draw bats by harnessing sound
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-bats-leaves-20110730,0,4459906.story
Can Physics Explain Mysteries of Crop Circles?
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/01/physics-crop-circles/
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
The best way to fight the two-party monopoly
Envisioning a new movement that’s actually capable of repairing our broken economic and political structures
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/09/lind_two_party/index.html
In a way, the predictions the author is making is much like predicting tsunamis: the are inevitable and absolute in the long run, but actual timing is real tricky and decades can go by (indeed, centuries) without anything happening. At least the good thing is the author has a very plausible road map for our country’s return to sanity (or, at least, a dramatic reduction in insanity, which is a worthy goal for today), though how much longer life needs to suck before it starts getting better is very hard to predict.
I still feel that the likelihood of things getting much worse before they get better is much higher than things getting better…
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
How much longer until the middle class gets caught up in the dragnet as well?
How America turned poverty into a crime
The poor aren’t just struggling during the recession; they’re being actively hounded by urban officials
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/09/america_crime_poverty/index.html
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
Heat pops pipes nationwide; brace for higher bills
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/13/water.infrastructure/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
I knew our infrastructure was in trouble, but I didn’t realize that heat could also cause serious problems as well. So, now, after a long drought that has dried up the countryside to tinder, a spark will set off a wild fire which we will be unable to put out because we either lack water all together or lack any means of getting it where it is needed. This, of course, isn’t factoring in the inevitable out-and-out vandalism and of course the idiots trying to tap into a 36 inch high pressure main to get water to their houses.
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
A prime aim of the growing Surveillance State
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/19/surveillance/index.html
I think the riots that happened in London are a sneak peak at what we are likely to begin enduring in the US shortly (where I figure ‘shortly’ can be measured in days to weeks, certainly within months) and if we get a crackdown like is being seen in England and the early parallels already here in the US we might finally have reached the point where the sheep will look up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_Look_Up).
I am now thinking we can have Japan’s decade of zero growth AND food riots all together. The US is so huge we can easily accommodate the spectrum and if you happen to be where a bit of the apocalypse happens, it is irrelevant that just a few counties away people are continuing their middle class existence with no more impact than having to see it on the evening news.
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
It is this kind of stuff which I expect to see less and less of going forward:
Team produces weird optical phenomena – and rewrites the rules of refraction
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/58245-team-produces-weird-optical-phenomena-and-rewrites-the-rules-of-refr
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
I had inklings that things were being distorted, but it seems the truth (as is so often the case in our ‘great’ society) is far worse:
Destroying the Postal Service in Order to Save It?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Destroying-the-Postal-Serv-by-Chuck-Zlatkin-110905-492.html
Not that I personally give a damn about the postal service, but it seems quite clear that the ‘problems’ it is having are all political in nature and seems clear to be part of a deliberate effort to destroy it. Not unlike the efforts to destroy social security and medicare.
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
But it seems to me it is mostly wishful thinking:
Supercomputer predicts revolution
Feeding a supercomputer with news stories could help predict major world events, according to US research.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14841018
Looking at their graph of the events surrounding Mubarak’s fall I would be hard pressed to make any sort of decision since the data is so noisy and it is clear that there have been dramatic dips when nothing was associated with Mubarak being driven from office before. If you assume that analysts are looking for reasons on whether we should back Mubarak or not, that decision should have been made decades earlier because he was a despotic dictator.
I found some emails in my outbox that I guess didn’t generate any responses, but I still think they are interesting so will post them here…
The hourglass economy
New poverty figures show a big jump in the number of poorest Americans. Meanwhile, the middle class is disappearing
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/09/13/the_hourglass_economy/index.html
It is quite likely that this trend will accelerate, in my mind. I have a lot of trouble conceiving of ways that this trend can reverse even if best-case assumptions are made (like we get an entire crop of new politicians in federal, state and local offices that actually truly were interested in the greatest good for the greatest number).
Third world are great places to live if you are rich and powerful (or are plugged in with those people), but to nearly everyone else it sucks. Vertical mobility is nearly non existent and even paths to change that include bloody revolution are just as likely to result in more of the same, just with fresh faced despots. When ‘real’ revolution happens (like in China), the result is often decades (or longer) of misery as the country now has to learn the difference between ‘evil’ educated elites and ‘beneficial’ educated elites. Basically, they get rid of the educated and upper class entirely and tend to scrape off most of the middle class at the same time leaving just the uneducated lower class, which tends to be quite ignorant and incapable of managing anything complex.