Category: interesting

I can see it all now. A future medical device hung on our hip like an iPod that filters our blood and body fluids using precision nano-tech to obliterate dangers and fill our tank with wondrous benefits.

Replacing traditional blood filters, which appear to be from Frankenstein’s lab in this photo, the ‘med-iPod’ of the future will trickle our circulation to zap unwanted cholesterol, HIV and AIDS virus, the flu, spores and bacteria.

On the way back to our body, we’ll add oxygen and enriched gases, cell nutrients, DNA-derived disease markers and updated stem cells for age related organ, bone marrow and muscle repair. And why not tweak our memory and wit?

How far fetched is a ‘medical filter pod’?

Michael King at Rochester University is proud to show a quick animation of blood cells that seem more like boulders rolling along as he filters out cancer cells and ‘harvests’ stem cells.

Canadians take a spoonful of a patient’s blood, add oxygen, zap it with ultraviolet light, warm it up and and put it back to impressively improve the outcome of chronic heart failure.

A John-Hopkins team uses a low-power laser beam with a pulse lasting just fractions of a second to rid blood of dangerous pathogens, including the viruses hepatitis C and HIV. Lasers penetrate the water surrounding the pathogen and will vibrate a virus into oblivion.

See the blimp?
See the height of the blimp?
See the wing foils on the blimp?
See the cable around the wheel on the blimp?

This blimp spins where the wind blows.
The cable spins a power generator on the ground.

And the wind just keeps blowing and blowing and blowing.

If this seems silly, why is one of the top energy executives in the world quitting his day job to help bring Wind Power Anywhere™ to market?

“You have the opportunity here to electrify 2.1 billion people without electricity. If you have electricity at the village level, you can have vaccinations, refrigeration, water pumps driving water out of wells, an Internet connection, cellular power sites — you can link it up to these $100 laptops that children could find in these developing regions of the world. All that’s missing is electricity.”

“I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments.

“Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Historically among the most violent of all peoples, there are those in Britain that like to say they’d all be dead had they not learned to argue for the living.

A headline we will not see in the United States says General Sir Mike Jackson condemns the ‘war on terror’.

He’s the recently retired head of the British Army.
[profile at BBC, at wiki, at UK Army]

He’s in the news around the world, with some controversy.

So ‘the global war on terrorism’ equates to a war on means, which makes little or no sense. Our objective – our end – must be the physical and intellectual defeat of Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to us.

To this end, the means certainly include the use of armed force, but also, very importantly, engagement in the battle of ideas. It is here that the US approach is inadequate: it focuses far too much on the single military means. Nation-building and diplomacy are fundamental to demonstrate the advantages of political and economic progress.

He’s a soldier revealing success and error in global military policy.

Washington’s planners seemed not to have learned from British experiences in Kosovo and Bosnia. The waste of our accumulated knowledge of how to manage post-conflict situations is a tragedy.

We had a very good man inside the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq after the collapse of Saddam’s regime until an elected Iraqi government was ready to take over: Major General Tim Cross, who had run our logistics in Kosovo. Tim’s reports were alarming: “This is a madhouse,” he was saying, “the situation is terrible.” Tim had been with the Pentagon planners before the war and he had been saying then that they hadn’t got their act together.

There’s so much criticism excerpted from his new autobiography.

The American administration that had come to power in 2000 under President George W Bush took a very different approach to foreign policy from its predecessors. Bush surrounded himself with neoconservative thinkers, who viewed the world in more aggressively ideological terms. Among these was his powerful Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

The ”neocons” took the view that victory in the Cold War had demonstrated the superiority of American-style democracy, and that with American encouragement this model could spread across the world.

Unlike the Clinton administration, they were ready to intervene in other countries when they believed that US interests were at stake. The Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and especially his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, pursued radical neoconservative policies aimed at reshaping the world in the American image.

He’s blaming Donald Rumsfeld for the political and military errors that led to a sectarian bloodbath in Iraq.

There was great tension between Rumsfeld and his senior generals, particularly the army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, who had been fighting a rearguard action against Rumsfeld’s desire to slim down the army. Rumsfeld felt that the army was too cautious, too resistant to change and too unwilling to take risks. I believe events have shown him to be wrong.

In my view, Rumsfeld is one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq. He rejected the advice given by his generals, while at the same time discarding the detailed post-conflict plans prepared by the State Department.

[The Telegraph story]

I do the best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. – Anonymous?

Little brother Jeb Bush, pictured here stumping Baptists with his big brother, may run for President some day but I cannot imagine the name will help.

Currently he’s part of a new push that’s quadrupled their lobbying from $1.4million to more than $5.5million to lure favors in Washington.

Taking time out to hone his skills, Jeb’s activities promote the buyout sector which takes companies private, avoiding shareholder and securities rules, and thus operating further from public scrutiny.

[link] “Lehman Brothers has appointed Jeb Bush to its ‘private equity advisory board’ in the latest attempt by a buyout group to influence Capitol Hill. A less tarnished name from the Bush legacy, cousin George Walker is an operator in bank assets and hedge funds.

Over 254 contributions from partners at private equity firms have been made during the presidential campaign including Apollo Management, The Blackstone Group and The Carlyle Group, and Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital.

The article reports that Mitt Romney is the most popular candidate among buyout houses.

Adding my comment:
Far from conscientious – and drawing down far more cash and credit than the recent sub-prime mortgage blip – purchasing public companies is another fashionable excess where our public capital is concentrated in too few hands with too little restraint.

I don’t like muckraking about political or business elites. It sours my spirit; steers my sensibilities too near spongy land. A stronger effort is always to post news and events that build ideas and assist learning. But we live in an era of populist journalism where annoying dirt about a candidate or a global player is seldom published as if it may blemish an author’s witty style, a pundit’s noisy theme or threaten corporate media sales rates.

As if a pioneer trapping on the vast internet, I’ll post a story that is ignored but pertinent or hidden but important. It’s good to learn about the activities of owners, candidates, executives, consultants, staff, and the ‘whisperers’ of policy that luxuriate too easily behind the scenes. One day I hope we will learn to challenge their motives as well as their deeds.

On the way to smell-enhanced films and software, MindHacks points to olfactory manipulation in the retail store.

“Men don’t like to stick around when it smells feminine, and women don’t linger in a store if it smells masculine,” says Spangenberg, who led the research and has been studying the impact of ambient scents on consumers for more than a decade. Spangenberg says this most recent study underscores the importance of matching gender-preferred scents to the product.

“Both men and women browsed for longer and spent more money when a fragrance specific to their gender was used to scent the store atmosphere.

“Scent marketing is a viable strategy that retailers should consider,” says Spangenberg. “But they really need to tailor the scent to the consumer.”

The PURE Management Group is one of several firms that paid Paris Hilton perhaps $200,000 to party at a nightclub. A private jet is standard in these contracts, a luxury suite, a sumptuous dinner and free booze.

An upcoming nightclub opening has booked Britney Spears. A table next to Spears can cost $50,000. Tickets through the door will sell for $250.

For nightclub operators, it has become the standard way of getting their establishments known. Athletes see payments from $5,000 to $30,000 and models from $2,500 to $25,000. [story]

Something noteworthy from New Zealand.

A burglar broke into a house twice.
The second time he left a note to apologize.

AP Story:
“The burglar smashed a window to gain entry and made off with a laptop computer, a camera, and Glass’s wallet with an American Express credit card.

“The thief returned the goods later in the day, along with a new basketball and two pairs of gloves bought on the stolen credit card.

“Glass and his wife, Shirley, discovered the loot piled on their kitchen table with a neat, handwritten full-page note from the burglar saying he was sorry for “violating the safety and security of your home.””

The burglar wrote, “I have never written truer words when I say that I wish that I had never done this to you and your family. From the bottom of my heart I am sorry.”

Only 3 out of 18 benchmarks for Iraq have been met.

The GAO contradicts claims that security has improved. There are fewer attacks against US forces but attacks on Iraqi civilians remain unchanged. [link]

“AT 107 she is probably the world’s oldest blogger. Cyber-granny Olive Riley may also lay claim to being the oldest YouTube user.”, reports Australia’s Daily Telegraph.

Her blog tells stories, more than a century of stories.

When she became old enough to be interested in boys, her Dad sent her across the road to apologize to the “poor lads” she had taunted and scorned.

She tells a story of a postmistress hoping to keep her job between the world wars by sending herself three letters per week to keep her post office funded.

Her friend Mike types the blog actually. Nevertheless Granny Ollie’s blog is an important chronology, simple and heartfelt and human.

In one year, at least 26,000 people are killed or injured by at least 100 million undiscovered landmines.

Dogs, flails and carefully probing on hands and knees are tedious and dangerous methods of mine detection.

Now a common weed has been re-engineered to turn purple if explosives are nearby.

The leaves of a DNA-modified Thale Cress, long used in research because it matures in as little as three weeks, changes color in contact with nitrogen dioxide evaporating from explosives in the soil.

Among many worries about releasing man-made DNA, a major charity with 5,500 deminers and 120 heavy machines worries that the plantings may be unreliable. [BBC]

Reporter System In Plants
The Danish biotech company Aresa has been granted patents on the system behind the landmine detecting plant called RedDetect™.

A trial has been approved in Serbia to test the technology behind the landmine detecting plant.

RedDetect’s color changing ability is remarkable. As importantly, this underscores advances in using plants as tools in the field.

Farmers may soon detect pests as quickly as plants! [previous link]

Inevitable worry begins to appear in press commentary about lame duck Bush.

“Beseiged by events, cast down by the opinion polls, isolated by the loss of his closest advisers, it would not be surprising if this particular US President was now losing it.
…

“When you bring in Iran you enter even more fertile territory for a President trying to paint himself as a lone Ranger and paint his opponents into a corner.
…

“Keep calling Iran names and keep threatening it openly with military attack and all you will do is to strengthen the hands of those who feel Iran must develop nuclear weapons, should stoke up trouble in Iraq and Palestine and clamp down on internal dissent in response.
…

“Bush’s latest outpourings [are] becoming more divorced from reality and more confrontational with each week. [via Adrian Hamilton at IHT: Bush’s increasingly tenuous hold on reality]

There’s the journey of our Earth and its magnificent shields against high-energy particles. And there’s the journey of the cells in our body with the risks we encounter from speeding particle energy.

While thinking of conversations with Dr. John Gofman, remembering, after he’s left us at the age of 88, the grand realm of the invisible is lifted to the top my day.

It’s a stunning exercise to teach my brain that mass is not what I perceive. Thoughts are marvelous, thinking is tremendous, living is fantastic and exploring the vast infinities of form and energy is pure fun. The moment is eternity.

After posting about John Gofman in Sunburn and Bowling Balls, I found this article at Counterpunch where Russel D. Hoffman writes in ‘My Favorite Scientists’:

“He was the best, and so naturally, the nuclear industry hated him, denounced him, tried to discredit him, and, whenever possible, ignored him.

“They hated him because they could not disprove his theory that low level radiation was a lot more harmful than officially recognized, and potentially deadly down to the last radioactive atom.

“Gofman never was discredited, and his research stands. Radiation is dangerous down to the last decay, and Gofman is our hero. His work on the Manhattan Project should have made him a hero to the rest of society, as well, but America doesn’t like anyone who questions the standard dogma of the nuclear age, so he was never recognized for his contributions to our understanding, or his vital contributions to the war effort.”

Are we listening?
Biopact reports that 250 new nuclear power plants have been approved in our rush to offset fossil fuels.

“Because of the serious price increases for oil and gas and growing awareness of the need to mitigate climate change, nuclear has become an attractive option. Several countries are investing heavily in the technology.

“According to the World Nuclear Association, 28 new plants are currently under construction, construction plans for 64 others have been approved and another 158 are planned for the near future. The bulk of these projects can be found in China, Russia and India.

“In total some 250 new plants are in the pipeline, against the 440 that currently dot the planet.

We must make every effort to diligently restrain and control radiation in our environment.

The impact of radiation is complex physical, chemical, and biological events. In seconds, there’s damage to DNA, proteins and more. In minutes, the cell changes genes and proteins.

“Time has proven Gofman correct about low-level radiation. Over the years the accepted standards have become more stringent, not less. On three separate occasions the International Commission for Radiation Protection (ICRP), which draws up the rules for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has tightened up the standards.

“In 2005 Gofman was finally vindicated in full when the National Academy of Sciences, after a five-year comprehensive investigation, released a 700-page report that endorsed what he and a few other brave scientists have been saying for many years, namely, that all radiation exposure is cumulative and adds to the risk of cancer.

“The notion of a safe dose is an oxymoron.”

To manage radioactive discards from power plants, medical devices and weapons for tens of thousands of years is a challenge I do not believe humanity can easily achieve.

But much is achieved every day as choices become increasingly clear while we transit from an industrial revolution toward our sustainable frontier.

This is a roundabout post in memory of Dr. John Gofman, the ‘father of the anti-nuclear movement’.

A nanosecond is one billionth of a second.

In a billionth of a second, light travels one foot.

A picosecond is a trillionth of a second.
One millionth of one millionth of a second.
A billion times faster than a second. [wiki]

That’s the time taken for light to move one millimeter.

Our cells can be damaged in a trillionth of a second.
By scanning DNA molecules, by looking over the molecules using equipment that can “see” the position of the parts of us that are rapidly vibrating at these incredible speeds, scientists have seen DNA get ‘sunburned’.

The damage happens with astounding speed — in less than one picosecond, or one millionth of one millionth of a second. The journal Science, reported that the damage depends greatly on the position of the DNA at the moment the UV strikes the molecule.

Striking a molecule?
That’s what Dr. John Gofman was warning us about.

A pioneer at Lawrence Livermore and the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a pioneer on the health effects of radiation, a co-discoverer of uranium-233, and an articulate and effective critic of the safety aspects of the U.S. atomic energy programs, Dr. Gofman traveled the world with this warning,

“Most particles go right through us. But we truly need to worry about the occasional ‘bowling ball’ that can wreak havoc as it collides with one of the molecules in our body.”

Dr. Gofman passed away this week at the age of 88.

His obituary in the LATimes says that John Gofman was “Often called the father of the antinuclear movement, Gofman and his colleague at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Arthur R. Tamplin, developed data in 1969 showing that the risk from low doses of radiation was 20 times higher than stated by the government.

“Most of their conclusions have subsequently been validated, but critics say the risks have been ignored by an electric power industry that sees nuclear energy as a pollution-free alternative to fossil fuels and by a medical industry that continues to use much larger amounts of radiation for medical tests than are required.”

Dr. John Gofman (second from left), the first Associate Director for the Biomedical Program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is shown discussing an abnormal chromosome pattern in malignant cells.

“He always stood up for the integrity of science,” said Charles Weiner, professor emeritus of the history of science at MIT.

“He was really an original voice” in the debate over the risks of nuclear power, Weiner said, “someone who was an insider in nuclear weapons production who was very highly regarded by leaders in the field . . . and who brought credential, credibility and authority.”

Until his death, Gofman’s position continued to be that there is no safe level of exposure to ionizing radiation.

“Licensing a nuclear power plant is, in my view, licensing random premeditated murder.”

Dr. Gofman was familiar with atomic radiation. He created some of the first plutonium, the raw material used by Robert Oppenheimer for the atomic bomb under the Manhattan Project
.

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John Gofman was a strong and gregarious man that I very much enjoyed as a friend. I distinctly recall our conversation about random particle ‘bowling balls’ that can destroy a cell or propel it into accelerated growth as cancer.

As a craft builder in the early 70s, I spent much of a year creating interior trim and custom furnishings for his San Francisco home. The extensive interior was hand built of almost 100% coastal heart redwood which ironically ended my construction career because of sequoiosis, a pulmonary disease caused by long term exposure to particles of redwood dust.

The space inside an atom
Here’s more about atoms and particles. It’s true that most cosmic particles and atomic radiation will pass through us, as well as natural background radiation from the earth.

Proportionately, there is more empty space between an atom’s nucleus and its first electron than between the Sun and Pluto!

When you figure out how to use this awkward page at Phrenopolis, you’ll see an atom from the inside. You’ll gain an elementary sense of the space inside an atom. The author says,

“I used to think that things like rocks and buildings and my own skeleton were fairly solid. But they’re made up of atoms, and atoms, as you can see here, contain so little actual material that they can barely be said to exist. We are all phantoms.“

Update:
Here’s a YouTube exploration of the space inside an atom and why particles go through us, most often.

This video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey uses models, vivid descriptions, and analogies to explain the structural integrity of matter at the atomic level.

Oh, it gets worse in this witty diatribe:

Hell, as any good Christian will tell you, the Net is packed like a perky Vegas whorehouse with godless heathens, too: perverts and nonbelievers and hyper-intelligent Buddhists and smart-ass Wiccans, yoga lovers and kinky reformed Catholics and delightful “spiritual cowgirls” who would no more kneel at the altar of wholesome Christian values than they’d eat a stack of greasy McDonald’s Filet-O-Fishes and eight pounds of deep-fried Snickers bars and move to Alabama and get diabetes and call themselves a patriot.

Profound satellite image of fires in Greece.

27 August 2007
Hot spots across Europe.

Detected with ESA satellites which have been continuously surveying fires burning across the Earth’s surface for a decade.

The replacement of Karl Rove as chief political adviser to George W. Bush is Ed Gillespie, a veteran Republican operative and a high-profile lobbyist.

Gillespie will determine “where and how often Bush appears and what he says”. He will “handle political strategy and message management”.

Texas Governor Bush tapped Gillespie. To help steer the the Bush nomination, Gillespie coordinated the 2000 Republican Convention. He operated in GOP policy during the Florida vote and chad-counting. He moved to Austin, Texas to join with Karl Rove as Bush readied for Washington. Gillespie then helped set up the White House commerce policy.

Canada’s online newspaper The Tyee provides a consolidated report on his background.

Gillespie is the architect of the ‘Contract with America’ [wiki] which became the Republican Party’s signature stump with Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich at the helm.

The Tyee reminds us that the Contract with America promised lower taxes and smaller government and propelled Republican control of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades.

Ed Gillespie has been an influential strategist in the private sector too. His recent clients have made him rich as he lobbies votes from members of Congress to benefit a long list of the corporate needy. Verizon. Viacom. Cisco. SBC. Hughes. PriceWaterhouse. American Hospital. Health Insurance of America. Canada’s softwood lumber exporters. Steel and uranium groups. Microsoft. General Electric. Sony. Bristol-Myers Squibb. Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Atlantic Richfield. Bank of America. Recording Industry Association. Enron.

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From a previous post:

If we had known Karl Rove would direct America’s leadership, would we have voted his client into the White House?

The Village Voice says we should learn about the people that take over our government.

The people we elect bring their very own ‘Candidate Whisperer’.

In 1506 a miraculous light was seen on one of the crucifixes in a Dominican monastery in Portugal. Crowds gathered to marvel at it, but when one man suggested it looked a bit as if a candle had been placed behind the image of Christ he was dragged into the street by his hair, beaten, kicked and burnt by an angry mob.

Toby Green explains in his powerful study of intolerance.

Professor Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba says, “The greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.” Bob Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians

And then of course there’s these irksome jihad!

Patrick Donovan says, “The ecological issue of the future is not between extraction and ‘protection’. It is between bare soil and covered.” Allan Savory noted that the problem of climate change, and that of desertification, were two sides of the same coin: ecosystem malfunction.

Suppose we cut fossil fuel emissions to zero by dawn tomorrow.
Could we put a stop to global warming?
No.

Then what’s a solution to global warming?

“When we’re in the pasture, the field, or the garden, we’re standing on it”, says Donovan.

“Even in its presently depleted state, the soil holds more carbon than the atmosphere plus all the world’s vegetation combined. Soil organic matter (which is mostly carbon) can last for centuries—barring exposure to the elements, tillage, harsh chemical applications, or significant warming.

“Unlike carbon dioxide burial, organic carbon in the soil enhances every aspect of our life-support system: water-holding capacity and drought resistance, water quality, biodiversity including underground and marine, human health, true fertility, viable rural communities, and the stability of the soil itself.”

“Soil erosion and degradation are so severe world-wide, that it threatens our agricultural base.”, says Dr J Floor Anthoni in New Zealand.

“Because soil degradation and erosion happen so slowly, they seldom give rise to immediate action. In fact, it is hardly noticed….

“Soil appears to be here forever. It is nearly impossible to imagine that this unnoticeable rate of loss is many times that of natural formation.

“Had artificial fertilizers not been available, soil degradation would have been noticed much earlier, but these miracle cures appear to be able to compensate for declining fertility.

“Only by looking at the larger picture, does the severity of soil loss become clear.”

See this exploration of an Earth Without Dirt.

The nephew of Sigmund Freud used his uncle’s ideas on the unconscious to transform advertising into its current form.

Read all about it at MindHacks

Who is in the limo, walking down the hall into the private office and behind the stage with the candidates for the presidency of the United States?

If we had known Karl Rove would direct America’s leadership, would we have voted his client into the White House?

The Village Voice says we should learn about the people that will take over our government because who we elect will also bring their very own ‘candidate whisperer’.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world. – Bill Gates

Just published in the Internal Medicine Journal:

“…living for a prolonged period near high-voltage power lines may increase the risk of leukemia, lymphoma and related conditions later in life.

“Those who lived within 328 yards of a power line up to age 5 were five times more likely to develop cancer, while those who lived that close to a power line at any point during their first 15 years were three times more likely to develop cancer as an adult.”

The researchers at the University of Tasmania and Britain’s Bristol University point out that their review of a database of 850 patients is far from conclusive, but the usual studies have examined only short term exposure. [UP story]