(old found draft post) Energy News

Dec 16, 2008 @ 8:35
This was just going to an energy links roundup.
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Wireless Power Transmission test have been successful. Yeah for Tesla!
Suck it Al Gore: “Greenhouse Gas Comes from Solar Panels“
“Bjorn Lomborg Says Cool It!: Getting our priorities right on climate change and the world’s top problems“

West Allis (Milwaukee news): “Mini wind turbine proposal blows [...]

(old found draft post) biz ideas X 2

From Sep 26, 2008 @ 14:29
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What was I thinking?
asisted Living Robotics
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/09/a_billion_elders_by_2050in_chi.html
bio-discovery driven engineering
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/09/another_county_heard_from_on_a.html

Thinking About Apollo 11

I was too young to remember it, but I was inspired by it and the subsequent missions. I didn’t want them to stop. I wanted the Orbital stations, the moon colony, and the mars mission. I wanted my Science fiction future. I don’t want humans stuck on Terra Firma waiting for a natural or self-created [...]

“…scientists in Australia have found a way to stop the body from attacking organ transplants…”

This is awesome news if it works out.
Now we just need to allow folks or estates to be compensated for Organ Donation to increase the supply/availability.

Out-of-the-Box thinking on Pension and Social Security reform

From that Instapundit guy:

But even much more modest progress–extending healthy middle age from 60 to, say, 80–would permit significant shifts in retirement ages and allow for a longevity dividend that could go a long way toward preventing the looming pension meltdown. Greater progress might make the problem go away entirely. So perhaps it would make [...]

“Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce”

I have been running through all of the old Ted Talks via my iPod. It was a joy to hear this one again: “Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce”.
Here is the video version from youtube:

The US case for radical energy use efficiency and for switching to alternative energy sources

I have been looking to blog on this for sometime, but it came out in a comment at TDAXP:
The best case for the US to move to radical energy use efficiency and to switch a lot more to alternative energy (while sharing or selling the techniques and technology to the rest of the world to [...]

The “I am too Lazy/Busy to post” Open Thread & Linkspasm

I have been both too busy at work to post or read much and also too tired/lazy in the evenings to post, so here are a bunch of issues that might interesting. I will make updates in the comments.
I will engage in comments here and elsewhere, but I most likely won’t post much if anything [...]

Bonobos news

At Corrupt.org “Make Love, Make War”:

Bonobos are apes famous mainly for their sex lives. Because females are dominant in bonobo society and everyone engages in plenty of very casual sex, bonobos are much admired by feminists, hippies and pacifists as “the peaceful apes”. For years we’ve heard that unlike their chimpanzee cousins, they do not [...]

Robot News: “Robotic Surgery On a Beating Heart “

The exciting news is at SlashDot!

Kludge: The Science?

My blog’s tag line is “The Future will be kludged”. Life is full of good kludges and bad kludges.
Here is an academic take on it:
Is there reason to believe that our brains have evolved to make efficient decisions so that the details of the internal process by which these decisions get made are irrelevant? Or [...]

Future Closer: Space Solar Power

Solar Power generated from orbital satelites and then beamed down to earth is one of the 2 great future energy sources (the other being fusion) – and the most likely.
It is one step closer:
A former NASA scientist has used radio waves to transmit solar power a distance of 92 miles (148 km) between two Hawaiian [...]

Nifty Weather Tracking Site: www.stormpulse.com

I like it – http://www.stormpulse.com/
It has google-maps like functionality, and Ican track how bad weather is going to hit my remote sites.

US News: “Generation We’s Apollo Project”, Me: “What a dumb idea”

I saw this in the online version of US News:
…he’s urging both presidential campaigns to focus on one mega-idea the kids endorsed: an Apollo-style approach to the energy crisis. His plan is to create a department of new energy and give it $30 billion to $40 billion a year to invent the next best energy [...]

Green “Scientist” Exposed

At the Guardian:
James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between [...]

This rules out Jindal in my mind for VP or future President

From HotAir:
Qualified by the usual caveat, of course. He [Jindal] won’t say which theory he favors (beyond acknowledging some unknown role of the creator), but clearly he’s sufficiently sold on ID that he thinks it merits being laid in front of kids as an alternative to evolution. Which is a dodge, really, in the same [...]

Youtube: Sexpelled: No Intercourse Allowed (Expelled parody)

I found this via http://counterknowledge.com/?p=100 . It is good satire/ridicule.

Link: Space Shuttle Processing PhotoGallery

Here.

Scientist Think That Alzheimer’s Might be a Type 3 Diabetes

Found via Slashdot:
Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling — crucial for memory formation — would stop working in Alzheimer’s disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to [...]

The Futurist Covers “The Top Ten Transhumanist Technologies”

It is worth reading.

Link to Photos – “25 Worlds Weirdest Animals”

Here is the link.

Oops – The Biofuel Problem

In the New Scientist:
It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to
compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions
between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling
cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.
They recommend governments steer away from biofuel [...]

Photo of Floods and Tornados in Wisconsin

Amicable Collisions has a link to a University of Wisconsin – Madison hosted web site with historical weather damages of Wisconsin and elsewhere that are fun to look at.

I Wonder About Every Once in Awhile: Can Dogs be Autistic?

I can’t find anything on-line.

Bio-Augmentation: What Power Would You Like?

From the Reason Blog:
Last year, reporter Quinn Norton had a magnet installed in the tip of one of her fingers. This allowed her to sense magnetic fields in appliances, computers, store security systems and the like.
That would be an interesting power.
I wouldn’t mind any of the following:

An enhanced Sense of Smell
Infravision or Night Vision
Echolocation
Telekinesis
Phermone sensing/generation

What [...]