This is an “overflow” page from prior Tips pages as they had gotten so large it was taking a long time to load. Same idea, just a new set of space to put pointers to things of interest. The most immediately preceding page is: https://chiefio.wordpress.com/t10/.
I’ve added a generic “T” parent page where older copies of the various “Tips” pages can be found archived.
While I’m mostly interested in things having to do with:
Making money, usually via trading
Weather and climate
Quakes, Volcanoes, and other Earth Sciences
Current economic and political events
(often as those last three have impact on the first one…)
And just about any ‘way cool’ interesting science or technology
If something else is interesting you put a “tip” here.
You can also look at the list of “Categories” on the right hand side and get an idea of any other broad area of interest.
This ought not to be seen as a “limit” on what is “interesting”, more as a “focus list” with other things that are interesting being fair game as well.
Musings from the Chiefio 
E.M.
English in action
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/rupert-wyndham-takes-on-paul-nurse-and-the-royal-society/
THE SATURDAY ESSAY: Why the eurozone’s capital incontinence is the beginning of the end
The eurozone ‘is haemorrhaging investment’ – Brussels source
“Capital outflow from eurozone especially pernicious” – UBS analysts
“In trying to calm nerves, the ECB’s denial of Cyprus Template Syndrome is acting as a confirmation of what unofficial but well-informed sources already know: the investment seeds the eurozone so desperately needs for recovery have been blown far, far away by the hurricane of mistrust following the EC’s Cyprus energy grab. Not only is this going to get worse, it has ensured that the first domino of disaster is about to hit the second. The timescale remains, as ever, uncertain: but its duration just got decimated. The Slog analyses the ‘unforeseen consequences’ of depositor theft.”
This is just the heading of a very good synthesis of the financial news from the EuroZone and assessment of likely outcome
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/the-saturday-essay-why-the-eurozones-capital-incontinence-is-the-beginning-of-the-end/
Iceland quake swarm: http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=3591
E.M.
FYI latest QH
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/former-ibm-executive-terry-burns-denies-wrongdoing-for-role-in-queensland-health-payroll-contract/story-e6freoof-1226615739085
Dellingpole has a nice eulogy to Lady Thatcher: Lady Thatcher was a statesman. Blair and Cameron are mere politicians and trashes David Cameron: Margaret Thatcher dies; Dave basks in the limelight
Quake rocks Iran’s nuclear plant: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/09/uk-iran-quake-idUKBRE9380GF20130409
An announcement for those members of The Church Of The Sacred Carbon:
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/im-official-exam-passed/
E.M.
In the spirit of “What happens next”
QH 10/04/13
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-health-payroll-system-a-hard-nut-to-crack-inquiry-told/story-e6freoof-1226617342334
E.M.
QH 11/04/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/former-ibm-executive-terry-burns-cannot-remember-details-given-as-evidence-before-queensland-health-payroll-inquiry/story-e6freoof-1226618071307
On Bitcoin:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/bitcoin-crashes-losing-nearly-half-of-its-value-in-six-hours/
Hiccup or growing pains on this virtual currency. It appears to me that this was an experiment for a digital currency system that has taken on a life of its’ own. Might be worth watching just for the learning experience. pg
PG, arstechnica is wrong as usual. There have been denial of service attacks on Mt Gox and other bitcoin exchanges; making users panic, selling at any price; after the price collapsed the DOS attacks stopped and the hackers collected the bicoins on the cheap. This was repeated several times.
Hi DirkH; The instruction is in the cause and effect. The article also contains information that point to others that were involved in the startup. Hackers and scan artists are involved in all systems that appear to promise “profits unearned”. Wall Street is based on this, except they work the legal side of the line, Generally. pg
I did not see how to register for the Church of the Sacred Carbon. I would like to make a wave offering of bubbly champagne by firelight as a member of good standing this very evening.
@Zeke:
It’s in the intro article there, I think. Short form: Just choose to be a member, and you are…
Maybe it needs to be added to the “about” box…
Yes, see:
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/welcome-to-the-church-of-the-sacred-carbon/
Though it’s a bit less clear on ‘just members’ as opposed to others desiring to be clergy.
For “just members” simply put a comment there that “I’m in” or “I have joined” or similar.
E.M. If you want to sell your house or some one else’s house, you can make 10.000 usd each!!??
Is this yet another scam? http://www2.onlinemeetingnow.com/register/?id=c3a8a3185b
R. de Haan says:
….. Is this yet another scam?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If it is real I wonder if it is a front for the Chinese trying to turn USD into hard assets (land) before the dollar tanks.
By the way, I watched a documentary yesterday about the fracking revolution in North Dakota. It’s booming and they need people to run the projects, do logistics, drive truck, mechanics, everything you can imagine. They pay a truck driver 100.000 USD a year, a crew chief 500.000 USD a year. An manager (engineer 1.000.000 USD a year. They interviewed one guy who drove 1600 km to work there on a 2 month contract and who showed his talents in a totally different job (logitics) and they hired him on a fixed contract. He was on the job now for two years working 18 hours a day but he said he was able to retire and pay off the mortgage of his home. Another guy invested 200.000 USD in a few second hand water rigs to supply the fracking installations and he made a few million in a fort night. driving one of the trucks himself. I know Dakota is some kind of last frontier, the weather is shit, the winters are hard and the cost of living high but it all sounds and looks adventurous. I really love those kind of stories. The shale oil they pump out is an excellent quality (they burn off the gas) and they are convinced it will change the world completely. The USA will become a major energy exporter if we manage to get rid of the environmentalists and the current administration. Today I talked with my Kuwaiti friend who works for a petrochemical company and he told me they are really worried about the shale revolution. They are in the process of building a 15 billion USD refinery plant in Kuwait to increase their revenues by exporting petrochemical end products but the shale oil revolution makes them really shaky. Especially because neighboring countries in the region have found big shale reserves as well but their biggest worry is about China where they found the biggest shale formation in the world. This looks promising for future. If this all plays out as I think it will fossil fuels will become much cheaper again. the US no longer needs the military to protect their foreign interest and no more wars will be fought over energy. With the unlimited availability of cheap energy we no longer have a sweet water problem (think about your filter). In a few decades from know they will look back at our times and laugh about about us, about the scare mongering the worries, the rediculous predictions of peak oil, water wars and climate scares causing thermogeddon and melting ice caps. Hell, what a crazy lot was that. Anyway it won’t be your heritage if you conserve your blog and finally write that book. This world (from an ecomonomic point of view) is going down the drain anyway, hopefully the next one will be even better.
Those Iranians really managed to build a nuclear plant in the epicenter of a quake zone: http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ No wonder one of them invented a time machine.
Here is the link of the Iranian time machine: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2307406/Iranian-scientist-claims-invented-time-machine-predict-future–years-ahead.html
The Iranian machine is able to look 8 years into the future and he clams it is 98% correct. Obama has a similar machine. It looks back from the day he started his Presidency and when he controls it himself it is 10% correct.
Syria recently found 37 billion tons of shale oil http://www.syria-oil.com/en/?p=827
If Assad had spend the money he now has thrown out of the window fighting this war and killing his fellow citizens he would have brought his country wealth and energy independence. Or maybe this is the cause of the war? Yep, Aleppo is the town that hit the jackpot. It’s now flattened
@R. de Haan:
Project managment, you say? I’m a project manager… who knows a little bit about oil and hydrocarbons… And doesn’t mind cold… And is used to ‘living out of a suitcase’ when working “on the road”…
Guess I need to figure out how to apply for jobs in North Dakota…
E.M.Smith says:
Guess I need to figure out how to apply for jobs in North Dakota…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I was thinking the same thing. I have a degree in chemistry, was a QC lab manager and have a CDL and an old peterbilt…..
If the skuttlebutt from the church up the road is correct my farm is sitting on a big shale formation. Unfortunately fracking is illegal in NC -go figure.
This is current the status: Domestic Energy Jobs Act.
E.M, you can watch the Dutch documentary The Shale revolution at: http://brandpunt.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/07-04-2013/fragmenten/de_schalierevolutie You need to log in using a dutch proxy otherwise you are not aloud to see the content. Use for example TOR Browser and select a Dutch Proxy in Videla to enter the website or use a program like Hot Spot Shield. Otherwise I watch the documentary again and write down some names of the people hiring staff so you can google them. One of the guys was a kind of mayer who had all the contacts.
Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqrh_Er2Y7Y
For job selection and online applications google Marathon Oil North Dakota jobs
http://www.indeed.com/q-Marathon-Oil-l-North-Dakota-jobs.html
Housing is the problem in North Dakota: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324883604578396491794558304.html Lot’s of people interviewed in the documentary were living in big campers parked near the job.
@R. de Haan:
I like camping, and always wanted a camper… I lived on a 27 foot sail boat for a couple of years, like a narrow camper with the door in the roof, that bobs and wobbles a lot, and doesn’t have a heater… If I like that, just think how I’d like a camper with a wide floor, a heater, and a door in the side! ;-) Oh, and it sits still at night, too! 8-)
The connection of the God of Moses, to ancient Egypt and earlier conceptions of “One God” and “Lord of Lords”. How “The Three Great Religions” have an Egyptian taproot… that eventually connects back to a naturalist cosmology of a kind of “Big Bang”.
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/the-unseen-god-of-air-amen/
Air is the conjugial partner of Aether. I think you are going in the right direction.
@ E.M. “I like camping, and always wanted a camper… I lived on a 27 foot sail boat for a couple of years, like a narrow camper with the door in the roof, that bobs and wobbles a lot, and doesn’t have a heater… ”
Build a “triloboat” http://www.triloboats.com/ Maybe the 24 foot long by 8 foot wide version and put it on a flatbed trailer. Triloboats are designed with square cross sections so you have much more usable room inside compared to a conventional hull design. Leave it on the trailer for a camper, or launch it into the water and sail away.
There is a lot to be said for low tech — and low cost!
OMG the antarctic is melting faster than we thought and we’re all gonna die http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-antarctic-ice-melting-faster-064418343.html#
Idiots. They don’t even bother to do a simple fact check before they write this tripe.
Notable reference to Agenda 21:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/14/my-response-to-delingpole-over-invoking-godwins-law/#comment-1275863
E.M. Thoughts on this?
Originally penned and posted on December 15, AD 2011, seven weeks after MF Global.
3. Finally, a very simplistic explanation of how the cash commodity markets are soon going to decouple from the futures markets. This is a little complex, but stay with me. I think this is important to understand because none of us who have lived our whole lives in the U.S. have ever seen a market disintegrate.
The threat (or promise) of delivery upon expiration is what keeps the futures markets tethered to the cash markets. Up until now, if an unreasonably wide spread between the futures price and the underlying physical commodity market got too out of whack, a process called “arbitrage” would kick in. Arbitrage is when a party simultaneously buys and sells on two separate but related markets in order to capture an inefficient spread between those two markets.
I’m going to use precious metals as my example commodity because there are alot of metals guys reading this, and because the metals markets will be the big tell in term of when decoupling and thus total futures market disintegration is upon us. But these examples apply to all of the physical commodities.
Let’s say that the physical silver market is trading far lower than the silver futures price. This is what is called a WEAK BASIS. The BASIS is the relationship between the cash market and the futures market and is very simply defined as (CASH minus FUTURES). If cash silver can be bought at $25.00 per ounce and the futures are at $30.00 per ounce, the cash is $5.00 under the futures. When cash is under the futures, this is called a WEAK basis.
Up until now, what would a metals trader do? In very simple terms, he would buy the cash silver at $25.00 per ounce and then simultaneously sell the futures at $30.00. Because he has short-sold the futures, he could hold the contract to expiry and then deliver the $25.00 cash silver he bought to make good on the contract and receive his $30.00 price. So his simple net profit would be $5.00 per ounce. As many traders saw this spread and simultaneously executed this same strategy of buying the cash and selling the futures, what effect would this have? Right. It would cause the cash-futures spread to move back in toward convergence by pushing the futures price down (lots of sellers) and propping the cash market up (lots of buyers).
Now the opposite scenario: a STRONG basis. Let’s say cash silver is trading at $32.00 and the futures are trading at $28.00. A trader might take physical silver that he has in inventory and sell it in the cash market, and then immediately take those proceeds and buy back and equal number of ounces in the futures market and take delivery. Since the same number of ounces in the futures market cost $4.00 per ounce LESS, he would end up with the same number of ounces in his inventory PLUS $4.00 per ounce in CASH in his pocket. If he and many other traders saw this condition and they all sold cash silver and bought the futures, this would, again, converge the spread between the cash market and the futures market.
The lynchpin that is holding this dynamic together and keeping the futures markets tied to the underlying cash market is the fact that the futures contracts are deliverable, and a trader can either deliver or take delivery of actual physical silver via his futures position.
Are we seeing a problem yet? The futures markets have lost their viability and trustworthiness because of the MF collapse and theft. At some point in the not-too-distant future, people everywhere are going to realize that the delivery mechanism is not reliable. Heck, just holding cash and/or positions in a futures account is no longer reliable. The the market itself is not reliable, traders will no longer attempt to arbitrage these basis spreads because the risk to the trader that the rug will be pulled out from underneath them is simply too great.
And in the metals markets, the delivery process itself is . . . um . . . shall we say, easily corrupted? When you “take delivery” of physical metals, it doesn’t get sent to your house. All you get is a certificate saying that X number of ounces are being held in a certified vault somewhere with your name on them. After the MF collapse, that sounds like a joke, right? A CERTIFICATE with my NAME ON IT? Yeah. That really is how it works.
When the arbitrageurs finally lose all confidence in the markets, the cash market will decouple from the futures because no one will be willing to take the risk of having their money, positions and/or physical metals stolen/confiscated. If no arbitrageurs are willing to trade these spreads – no matter how wide they may become – and thus there is no force causing the cash and futures to converge, we will see the basis spreads become extremely wide. As people flee the futures markets, the futures prices will drop, while the cash markets hold steady or even diverge and actually rise as all of the former paper players realize that physicals are the only remaining game to be played.
Watch for this. Watch for the gold and silver futures to sell off as people walk away from paper while the online cash dealers, seeing that market demand for their physical inventory is robust, begin to ignore the futures prices and hold their prices steady or even raise them. When you see this basis decoupling and absence of arbitrage, lo, the end is nigh. A parabolic spike is coming.
Is this valid?
LG, I love James Delingpole, he one of the last true journalist left. As far as I am concerned Anthony Watts was off base and just handed a weapon to the enemy.
@Zeke & E.M.: Watch this one:
[ Reply: Adolfo, you want me to watch 1 hour 10 minutes plus of some stuff about “galactic councils” and interstellar governance without more than a ‘watch this’ as to why? Sorry, I’ve got other stuff to do. Maybe IFF I had a good reason to consume 8% of my ‘usable time’ today… but with only “watch this”, well, I’ve got a garden calling my name and the sun is out… (Go Ra! Ra Ra Ra! Suuuuunn God RA! ;-)
EM: I was making a wave offering of Champagne last night so my remark on your link was flippant and off topic. I am now almost finished with your article which attempts to trace the origins of monotheism to one Egyptian Pharaoh. It is well written so far and has interesting research regarding the Hyksos and the traditional use of the word “Amen.”
But I did not get to the conclusion or how this relates to our reverence for the carbon molecule and the cycle of life, so looking forward to that.
The assumption that monotheism is a recent evolution or abnormality from an exclusively pagan and polytheistic ancient world is just that: an assumption. Scholars have worked hard at this paradigm, but it is not above critical examination. Many ancient cultures, and even recent new world cultures, have themes which do not fit this construct at all. However, I do admit that scholarship holds a consensus that all ancients were polytheist idolaters and monotheism is recent.
@Jon, great commodities post and question.
@Jon:
My “take” on it is that it was nearly 2 years ago and hasn’t happened. It’s a nice “Story” though…
“There’s always a Story. -E.M.Smith”
Never NEVER EVER believe a story. Trade it, yes, believe it, no.
The biggest problem has nothing to do with futures vs cash markets decoupling (there are $Billion players dedicated to making that not happen); the risk is all the folks who believed “The Story” that 1) Gold is safe. 2) Gold & Silver are “safe havens”. 3) It is better to hold gold than currency. etc. etc. etc.
Currencies are just a commodity, but one we use for ‘keeping score’ and with little intrinsic value.
Metals, any metals, are just a commodity, so are volatile and subject to demand swings.
Markets, left to themselves, clear and establish a fair clearing price. They often do this with wider price swings than some folks like, so they claim it is somehow wrong. It isn’t. It simply reflects human emotional range (which, IMHO, is too high also…).
So it’s really very simple: Do not expect at a market. It will disappoint you. Watch charts, see what they report about the aggregate behaviour of the market participants and make your decision based on the assessment of that emotional state of the others and what they are doing. Not the “Story”. Not you. Not what you want, think, feel, expect. “It’s not about you. -E.M.Smith” and I would add “It’s not about me. -E.M.Smith”. and “It’s all about THEM. – E.M.Smith”.
@Zeke:
The “connection” is a bit subtle, and I didn’t emphasize it ( I’ll re-read and see ‘should I?’).
Simply put: Amun is the hidden unseen aspect of Amun-Ra (composite sun-god) and is traditionally the “god of the atmosphere and winds”. That is, the solar energy embodied into the invisible gasses of our world. So oxygen and carbon dioxide in the carbon cycle dance. After the Ra daytime sun goes below the horizon, that life energy becomes Amun, the hidden sun god and god of the air. That is, the solar energy is now embodied into the carbon of plants, and oxygen in air, and CO2 traveling between animals and plants. Amun and Ra become joined into Amun-Ra in later years, recognizing their being opposite sides of the same source. Then Aten is the “Solar Disk”, and there is that whole “which One God” was the one picked up by the Israeli as they dumped Baal. Was it Aten? Amun-Ra? And since they are both “The Sun God”, are they really different? IMHO, no. They are a political / packaging fight between two sects of ancient Egyptian priests. Then Israel gets ‘spat out’ as Ahkenaten “has issues” and we pick up the story with Moses and The Exodus.
The “net net” being that the God of Moses (and, therefore, of Christendom and Muslims) IS the god of Egypt as seen in their “Monotheistic Fusions” (where a given god-ness is seen as various personified ‘aspects’ but recognized as really ‘just one’ – Amun-Ra as “God of Gods” or Aten as the alternative interpretation of the same Sun God.) Since the Greeks (and through them the Romans) picked up their pantheons as a ‘match’ of the Egyptian one, it also means that THEY map as well. So, IIRC, Zeus was the Amun-Ra analog / match. This means you can “map and match” all of the Greek & Roman Pagans, the Egyptians and the God of Islam, Christians, and Jews as “The ONE God”. It, then has two “aspects” in the sun itself (source of power of life) and “hidden” Ra-power in the winds and gasses as Amun. Which we still pronounce as Amen at the ends of our prayers.
And at this point I’m starting to recapitulate that posting here, which is doubling my workload… Perhaps future comments could be on the articles there? (Hint hint ;-)
Your theory is certainly falsifiable, I will grant you that. But another time and another place, as you mentioned. (:
2 explosions at the Boston Marathon.
Going to be an interesting week, I think… So now wondering if this is a “Muslim Thing”, or folks fed up with the Tax System on tax day… As it wasn’t a Government Office, but a “public having fun” thing, I’ll take “Muslim Terrorist” for $400 please… And the question is “What is Home Grown?”
2 dead, 23 injured, some very significant so likely more deaths to come. So far.
Drop your guns!
@Adolfo:
Sorry, but that makes no sense what so ever. Guns are not involved. There are none to drop.
(Though, personally, I’d be more inclined to pick one up than drop it, and I’d be even more inclined to put in ear plugs, put on eye protection, and find a Kevlar Coat and Kevlar Pants… )
Hindenburg Omen today: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-15/we-have-hindenburg-omen-sighting
EM: Thanks for the quick response and clear thoughts. I agree that the story by the author was flawed and a bit of an overreaction to the MF Global theft. However, I think the concept has validity. How many more Cyprus type situations will it take before the public stops believing that the evil bastards have any semblance of respect for the rule of law. I think that the commodities market will be the canary in the coal mine for a rapid decline into “everyone for themselves” chaos. Hope I’m wrong.
@Jon:
Commodities are always more volatile and react first. (That’s why I track them and use GLD and JJC as indicators… one of “mood” the other of gross economic activity.)
They are always “the canary”…
You are also shifting the question from “decouple physical from futures markets” to “Government actions”. The latter is much more likely to be broken and cause harm. But not via a collapse of futures trading. By a direct destruction of societies and currencies and confiscation of assets. (There’s a long history of it…)
FWIW, there are players in the options markets that keep them coupled to the ‘real’ market as “market makers”. They will not be subject to your “too risky to trade” issue since they are doing it to mitigate risk. Look up how a ‘conversion’ or ‘reversal’ works.
Say I buy a ‘put’ under some stock or ETF. The selling broker doesn’t want to be ‘on the hook’ for that risk of a falling ticker, so they do a ‘reversal’ (and since their commission costs are near nothing…) They sell me the “put” (are ‘short a put’), but at the same time buy a call and short the underlying. Now, if the “stuff” goes down and they have to pay off the put, the short covers that cost. If the “stuff” goes up and my put is worthless, their short is losing, but they have a call that covers that. In essence, they turn my put into a short and collect the commission risk free.
http://www.theoptionsguide.com/reversal.aspx
In the case of the originating broker, they are doing the ‘reversal’ to capture your trade volume in a riskless commission way, so don’t need to wait for a mis-priced option time to make money.
Flip side is the conversion:
http://www.theoptionsguide.com/conversion.aspx
In the case of a broker in options selling you a call (going ‘short a call’) they then buy the underlying and buy a put. Again, a risk free commission from you (and as they have zero commissions to themselves and massive ability to buy on margin… not much actual cost to them.)
So the base case of “folks stop doing the arbitrage” just doesn’t exist. Folks will use “riskless” arbitrage strategies like these when prices are out of alignment between options and underlying.
But again, all of that is orthogonal to the question of “What happens if Greece folds?”. (For example…)
Someone starts to liquidate a few $Billion of gold, the gold price tanks. (Part of why it dropped under $300 /oz a few years back was Spain liquidating gold that wasn’t needed since they were in the Euro…) So could gold hit $300 again? Sure. That would even be incredibly disruptive to all sorts of things. But the “story” of a decouple between futures, options, and / or underlying is just that. A Story.
Forget the Stories. Worry about the politicians and governments…
So in this case, the Govt. of India decided to put more taxes on gold. The Indians just stopped buying it. Not only does India not get the tax income, the value of all the nations gold just took a 10% haircut. Idiots.
FWIW, I think we hit about $1100 then level off. (Likely a bounce off of $1000 on a day or two long time period as a ‘test’). That’s the point where many mines become unproductive and production volume drops… Until that point, the mines make money mining. After that point, they lose money, so shut in production. Then it can start going back up again…
E.M.
QH 16/04/13
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/references-not-checked-on-terry-burns-key-player-in-outsourcing-of-health-payroll-contract-inquiry-told/story-e6freoof-1226621670339
Sitting in my office…then feel a pretty good shake. Just checked the http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ 7.8 in Pakistan.
Yes I am not too far from there
7.8 in Pakistan ? After a terrorist bomb took out the innocent at the Boston Marathon? Perhaps Amun-Re is sending a message.
You have GOT to be kidding! Or how to lie with Statistics:
For first time in six years, half of Americans say U.S. running well
From Rasmussen you get an entirely different story.
April 05, 2013: Just 19% Think Stock Market Will Be Higher in a Year
New Low: 39% Expect Stronger Economy Five Years From Now
Gun Debate Highlights Voter Distrust of Government
…Americans are almost evenly divided when asked if the United States has a free market economy or a crony capitalist one…
68% Believe Government and Big Business Work Together Against the Rest of Us
Fewer voters than ever now think the U.S. economy is fair to the middle class
Only 41% View Economy As Fair to Those Willing to Work Hard
69% Now Describe Themselves as Middle Class:
Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Index show some recovery from the lows of 2008: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/indexes/rasmussen_consumer_index/rasmussen_consumer_index
If Rasmussen surveys are close to what people actually think, my fellow citizens are not as dumb or as brainwashed as I thought.
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The mention of pressure cookers in conjunction with the Boston events led me to connect a completely different thought. Something like this might greatly reduce fuel consumption for your little stoves:
http://www.amazon.com/Prestige-Deluxe-Stainless-Pressure-2-Liter/dp/B004RLWLFK
E.M.
QH 17/04/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/ibm-survived-payroll-bid-breach-after-sensitive-email-leaked-inquiry-hears/story-e6freoof-1226621994210
More on my above comment ….(Reuters) – A national poll released on Friday found 50 percent of Americans believe the United States is running well…..
Seems Pascal Lamy, ultra globalist and WTO Director General is s on the board of trustees of Thomson Reuters. Crispin Tickell, offspring of the infamous Huxley aristocracy is still a trustee of Thomson Reuters too. Julian Huxley was a eugenicist and internationalist, the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund. The Huxley family were intertwined with Eugenics and Fabian Socialism link
According to Friends of the Earth
Trustees and Directors of Reuters
http://thomsonreuters.com/about/trust_principles/trustee_directors/
Ain’t the internet great!
Zero Hedge is mulling over whether or not the Boston strike was a FALSE FLAG
And in other news…
Vice President Joe Biden told a former congressional aide Tuesday during a visit to the Capitol building that the Senate was just two votes short of reaching the 60-vote threshold needed to pass a gun reform bill through the chamber…. “We are working to get to 60, and it’s fluid,” Biden said. “I think we’re there, but it’s not unusual as you all know for people to make up their minds at the last minute.”
@Crosspatch:
Looks like a nice one… but I bought a pressure cooker years ago and it still works ;-)
Besides, with the current news being that the Boston event used a pressure cooker as the container for the boom stuff, it’s not a good time to be ordering pressure cookers 8-(
@Gail:
Highly unlikely to be a false flag. (A pretty bad one if it is, and it just makes the government look bad). But pretty much by definition a good ‘false flag’ is hard to distinguish. I think the highest probability is just one lone nut job. FWIW, I’d be willing to accept as possible that the Gov’t just let the nut jobs in, knowing they would eventually do what was useful to them… Need a name for that… “Proxy Flag”?
On other things: It will all come down to the House…
Surveys and statistics come down to who wrote the questions and how they were phrased.
“Are you in favor of politicians deciding who can defend themselves?” vs
“Are you in favor of letting insane people buy guns?”
@Another Ian:
That just keeps on giving, doesn’t it…
Well, I tend to do quite a bit of my camping at altitudes higher than 4000 feet with quite a lot of people involved, some done at 7000 feet or better. Imagine doing corned beef and cabbage. In a pressure cooker it’s 90 minutes. 3 hours in a regular pot. Point is that it cuts the cooking time in half to do things like cook meat or boil potatoes, etc.
I’ve just finished reading Thomas Gold’s two books about abiogenic hydrocarbon sourcing. In both books he makes a case for significant CO2 sourcing from within the crust. If he is right, all the noise about man made CO2 is very insignificant noise. If anyone else has any thoughts about this, I’d be most interested to read them.
Tom Bakewell
@Tom Bakewell:
Carbonate rocks make up about 15% of all sedimentary rocks. There are massive tonnages of “gut rocks” and other biogenic materials (such as corals and mollusc shells) deposited all over the ocean bottoms of the world. Those bottom materials get subducted at the plate edges.
So take the area from about Virginia down to the end of Florida. Lots of “Karst Topography”. That’s limestone with water leaching. We’re talking hundreds of feet thick layers of the stuff. Those “sink holes” that periodically swallow houses are where a house sized chunk of carbonate dissolved and went back into the air and oceans.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/ocean-carbonate-from-rocks/
So it’s not just subduction making oil as a hypothetical, it’s also subduction making volcanic CO2 and erosion making CO2 as carbonate decomposes.
The relative tonnages of natural rock sourced CO2 vs human made are as a giant to a gnat.
A trivial change in volcanic activity swamps anything we do. Oh, and we have no idea how active most of the volcanoes of the world are at any one time as they are under water at the bottom of the oceans. But we have seen liquid CO2 seeping from their perimeters…
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/liquid-co2-on-the-ocean-bottom/
There are also a variety of other CO2 sources and sinks. Like “hard pan” and caliche formations:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/caliche-co2-feldspar-and-climate-dust/
The idea that what people do with fuels makes any difference at all is broken. The numbers and sizes are just wrong.
Need a name for that… “Proxy Flag”?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes I think that is what actually is happening given how Napolitano has been sending out written invitations to cross the border. link (I love the picture of the Jeep Cherokee on TOP OF the border fence… I wish I could afford that vehicle.)
Oh, and on the nut jobs, remember the Progressives cleaned out the state mental institutions shutting the doors for good in the 1970s and then made it illegal to put someone who is mentally ill in an institution without jumping through hoops. We had a surge of street people and the US incarceration rate went through the roof.
I know the family of a woman whose boy friend tried to kill her. The judge said he wasn’t sane so the sent him to an institution. A couple years later the doctors pronounced him ‘cured’ let him loose, DID NOT tell the woman they had done so and he promptly killed her. (Andover MA) She and her family were under the impression he was locked up for good and had made no attempt to ‘disappear’ thinking the government would ‘protect them’
However you slice it the root cause for the Boston bombing can be laid at the feet of the progressives but they will use it to tighten controls on general citizens which of course is the idea.
E.M. a while ago you posted a piece about UEFI Secure Boot installation on PCs. So you may be interested in what J.A. Watson has been experimenting with on zdnet. He’s tried Linux only, dual boot Linux and dual boot Windows/Linux on an HP UEFI system. UEFI compatible Linux distros appear to be good but issues are still there with dual boot Windows systems.
Personally I will be keeping away from it until the dust has settled (or until I have to use it) but others may be interested in the outcomes.
http://www.zdnet.com/more-experiments-with-linux-only-uefi-secure-boot-installation-7000014095/
@Gail Combs: Reallly, that Jeep Cherokee has a 3,7 liters engine, its local price, here in Peru, SA, is $33,900 for the std.version and $39,900 for the limited version. However with gasoline prices about $7.-per US gal. it´s too expensive. I have recently bought a 4×4 Jeep Patriot which has a 2.4 liters engine (Std.version:$30,150, limited at: $35.900) .I suppose both are cheaper at the US. Is it so?
I suppose both are cheaper at the US. Is it so?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..
I wouldn’t know. My mechanic wants to know when I am going to buy something made this century. I told him NEVER. I hate having a computer in a vehicle and now all USA vehicles will have to have a Black Box
I have 2 dodge trucks with Cummins diesels and a pete with a cat. I drive hauling trailers so much I now can’t back up unhitched without thinking about it carefully. We also have some gas Pickups but no cars. Gave up on cars they are useless on a farm.
Here is another little tidbit from Big Brother Blogging About the Paleo Diet Can Get You Shut Down in North Carolina So I guess ChiefIO will have to be careful that the Calif. equivalent of the “Board of Dietetics and Nutrition” doesn’t come after him.
Stonehenge occupied 5000 years earlier than previously thought 7500BC now thought as the first occupation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10004598/Stonehenge-occupied-5000-years-earlier-than-previously-thought.html
@Ian W:
Nice one!
What’s broken is the idea that we are special. What is correct is that ancient folks were as smart as we are, and knew a great deal about their physical world. So yes, 5000 year or even 7500 years ago some very smart folks were living in the area and observing the stars, sun, and moon; and connecting them to changes in the weather. If only our current crop of “climate scientists” were 1/2 as smart….
Hopefully people have followed the Delingpole/Anthony Watts discussion about Delingpole’s original remark:
Anthony thinks ‘James invoked Nuremberg comparisons’ with this last remark in his piece in The Australian “Deluged with Flannery and covered in Viner” (Heck James is even plays with words in the title.)
Delingpole’s follow-ups are:
An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists and Apologise to Michael Mann, Anthony? I’d rather eat worms
Delingpole does clarify that he is using metaphor in his ‘English Class’ (not that Mann ‘gets it’ as the screen capture of his hilarious tweets shown at WUWT )
Well it seems that the Politicians may have taken Delingpole’s metaphor to heart.
This closing is an absolute classic.
Hey Paul how about applying that to CLIMATE SCIENCE!
No wonder Phil Jones just about had a nervous breakdown when the Climategat e-mails were released. He was worried about the ‘Good Laboratory Practice Regulations of 1999’ (snicker)
E.M.Smith says: @ 19 April 2013 at 3:04 am
….. So yes, 5000 year or even 7500 years ago some very smart folks were living in the area and observing the stars, sun, and moon; and connecting them to changes in the weather. If only our current crop of “climate scientists” were 1/2 as smart….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually since stupidity was punishable by death 5000 years ago but now we reward stupidity with public office, stardom or at the very least with a welfare tit telling the stupid to breed like flies, I expect they were smarter as a whole then we are.
I love this comment on human intelligence I found by William McClenney
So Mother Nature may be getting ready to clean out the Zombies of the Gene Pool or was that the Bimbos of the Death Sun?
@Gail:
Unfortunately, both the Neanderthals and the prototypical Cro-Magnon had larger brain case size than the average of modern humans. The advent of “civilization” has enabled the shrinking of the average brain. (Nature doesn’t like wasting all the power it takes to keep a large brain operating. About 1/4 of all calories you eat… so conserves power when possible by shrinking brains to ‘just big enough’… an interesting commentary on the value of “energy conservation” comes to mind ….)
So since we became “civilized” we have been in a long slow slide into more stupid. Still happening today. Same thing happens with farm animals. The farmed turkey, for example, is incredibly stupid, the wild turkey is very very smart and hard to catch. Pretty much the case for all domestic animals compared to their wild counterparts. Part of why I like bunnies. Only 200 years of domestication so most of them are still close to ‘wild type’ and fairly smart. Some cats, too (though some have clearly degraded – the Florida Friend had a cat named Einstein as a /sarc; since he was so dumb… would die without someone handing him food… unlike my cat who lived a few years ‘in the wild’ on his own… A very smart cat.) So as people became “farmed” we too have had a slide to stupid and smaller brain sizes. But some of us still live a bit ‘in the wild’ from time to time and keep the skills up ;-)
So that zoom up in size under duress has had a ‘roll off’ at the tail end in the last 30,000 years or so. (Wonder if one could date the onset of “civilization” by exactly when the braincase size peaked? Don’t know if there are enough samples to date that…)
We have likely accelerated that trend with the modern “full life style support for all” welfare state. The spouse has, as part of her ‘case load’, 2nd and 3rd generation “special needs” kids where the parents are also ‘special needs’ and usually on support programs. Some on the “kid a year” plan. Others stopping at 4 or 5… While the average in the area is “below replacement rate”, so the average is drifting toward “special needs” at a decent clip. Oh, and they all get to vote…
(No, I’m not advocating for any position on that. Just stating facts. For some reason folks often like to read “intention” into things that are just reporting the data… I try to always strictly isolate the evaluation from the observation. I have no idea what would be “right” to “fix it”, if anything. Like the observation that the quickest path to low birth rate is to give women a college education, as they have the lowest birth rate. Has, as a necessary consequence, that the population of those unable to do college work will increase the fastest and those most able to learn will decrease as a percentage of the gene pool. Just a fact of genetics. So promoting a universal college education program WILL result in a more stupid population over time. No idea how to fix that, though, and it is essentially ignored.)
E.M.Smith says:
19 April 2013 at 5:12 pm
@Gail:
Unfortunately, both the Neanderthals and the prototypical Cro-Magnon had larger brain case size than the average of modern humans…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not surprised. I agree we are breeding for ‘stupid’ in the human race and seem to be doing a fine job of it too.
Brain size is not a measure of intelligence. The largest brain in modern times was something like 4 and a half pounds, and the man had no higher intelligence quotient than anyone else. It is just an illustration for you to consider – an anecdote, not an ultimate refutation.
There are instances of a larger brain being discovered upon autopsies of highly intelligent individuals; I know this was the case with Georges Cuvier, who possessed one of the finest minds in history. However, this may also mean that the brain size or neuropile density is increased through extensive use and protracted periods of intense and deep attention. In other words, neuropile increases with use, like musculature. This is not difficult to affirm, as tests have shown increased brain tissue in certain areas of the cortex when a new skill is learned – such as playing piano.
There are also studies which have very misleading results regarding neuropile density. If rats in a lonely cage with very little stimulation or novelty in its environment are compared with rats in a full cage with other rats, and plenty of new toys, the rats in the full cage have larger brains. However, this leaves many questions unanswered. This would seem to argue that children should be placed in crowded and busy social learning environments, and would seem also to argue for early education. And yet what is found in reality is that children who start school do not test any differently than children who started school at 5 or 6 by the time they reach 3rd grade.
Brain size is also different between male and female; her brain is usually smaller than his, the difference being usually about the size of a lemon. This is also true taking into account for body size to brain size ratios.
Brain organization and increased ability are more the result of use, and I further believe that efficient brain organization comes only through healthy bonds of love at a young age; this gives the child the necessary feedback needed to self-regulate and to assimilate new information and experiences. Children in full classrooms may have the appearance of a denser neurology but this could be the result of having to deal with so much anti-social behavior. It is also true in later life that bonds are linked with intelligence, and that sudden losses are linked with sudden drops in intelligence.
Zeke says:
19 April 2013 at 7:04 pm
Brain size is not a measure of intelligence….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I was thinking that the larger brains in the Neanderthals and the prototypical Cro-Magnon may be due to better hearing and sight among other things having to do with hunting.
inre: larger brains
The brain responds to the way it is used. It is plastic. And we find, if we work under your evolutionary paradigm together, that the frontal lobe development was sudden, and occurred within the last 200,000 years. The frontal lobe and the orbitofrontal cortex is the seat of higher mental function, the ability to plan ahead, and the ability to inhibit raw limbic responses. This underlines the importance of brain organization as the determining factor in intelligence and raises the question of what kind of environmental factors could have recently accelerated the growth of the human brain in the evolutionary paradigm.
@Zeke:
One of the observations on Einstein’s brain was that the individual neuron cells were smaller, so more in the same package. It’s also the case that for most animals, a lot of the brain size is proportional to the number of sensors and motor neurons of larger body. It seems that what we think of as ‘intelligence’ is a small part of the brain mass…
Yes, “use” matters a great deal! In folks with, for example, a missing digit on the hand, the brain areas dedicated to that missing digit get gradually redeployed into the function of adjacent areas. It’s also been found that if, for example, you do a lot of math, the “math area” of the brain will start using neurons from adjacent areas that are less used. What you think about changes what parts of your brain “do what”.
Per sexual dimorphism, there is some evidence that women use both sides of the brain together more than males. It may be that the size difference is due to men needing to duplicate functions on each side that women just use in parallel. The spouse clearly ‘parallel processes’ better than I can. All the parts seem better able to run at the same time; where for me, I’m more ‘task focused’ and doing multi-thread is disruptive. (And I like to think I’m good at multitasking!) So it’s almost a running joke in the house that if I’m using a knife it’s a bad idea to talk to me… A few too many times that I’ve cut something that ought not (ow!) or if washing dishes dropped something that ought not be dropped upon conversation start… I often repeated “Talk or Do, not both” after such events. In short, I think more of her brain is “on” at any one time, while mine is more “off in standby” and parts get turned on for intense bursts as needed; and turning on one idle part can cause an already ‘on’ part to lose focus… (though with some ‘warm up time’ I can do both at once… it just takes some time to get the right parts queue up and cooperating.) Clearly structural and functional activity is different. I do math without effort, she uses a calculator to figure what 10% of something might be… I struggle with some social circumstances, she handles them without even noticing. Different parts doing different things. (She and her twin will both talk to each other at the same time with full interleave of two, or sometimes more, topics. Full duplex. I can handle Simplex… )
“Per sexual dimorphism, there is some evidence that women use both sides of the brain together more than males.”
Someone I know rather well, who had three babies, thinks that during pregnancy everything goes to the baby and perhaps a smaller brain helps to manage under those conditions.
The corpus callosum which connects the two hemispheres has been found to be larger in men also in some studies. Ref: Joe Dispenza, iirc
These conversations between twins, and what it is like to be an mz twin, is a wonderful subject. Any time She would like to do a guest post, that is one of my favorite subjects….:) :D
Twins Days in Twinsburg Oh photoalbum
http://charles.robinsontwins.org/photos/2012/twins_days/index_2.html
Zeke, do you have any links?
“…the frontal lobe development was sudden….”
The first thing to cross my mind is sudden increase in mutations possibly caused by cosmic-ray-fluxand The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection and there is also the bobing up and down through the galaxtic plane. It might be why McClenney noticed the connection between major climate changes and brain development.
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/163-new-discovery-nasa-study-proves-carbon-dioxide-cools-atmosphere.html#.UVYwRz4bXF4.facebook
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
Right, switch from Anthropogenic Global Warming to Anthropogenic Global Cooling and let the AGC bandwagon continue. Fat chance, even the most hardy AGW proponents in my local pub have given up. Last winter (still temps around 3 degrees below average this month) has made them back off on the subject despite my remark that weather isn’t climate. Anyhow, the subject is dead and people no longer listen to any argument. They have drawn their own conclusions. Government sucks.
@Gail Inre: sudden development of frontal lobes
Thank you for asking me for a reference regarding sudden developments in brain size and structures. The only sources I can offer are passages from books, which do not have search features and so I have to locate the passages myself. I still love books and find that an author pours most effort and depth of thought into a book manuscript, rather than an online column blog. I have located one passage and will transcribe it later today.
(I have gotten fairly consistent at creating pdfs from papers online, but they are all over the computer’s desktop and files so that is a real challenge to find a pdf later, or to even remember that I archived it.) (Ah!)
E.M.
QH 22/04/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/former-premier-anna-bligh-will-be-called-to-give-evidence-at-queensland-health-payroll-inquiry/story-e6freoof-1226625738822
C0uld get even more interesting IMO
Zeke says (19 April at 7:04 pm}
“Brain size is not a measure of intelligence.”
That’s true. I can’t recall his name, but some years (10-20) ago there was a report of an Oxford graduate (in Mathematics, IIRC) who had been found to be hydrocephalic. The fact of his brain being not much more than a lining to his skull seemed to make no difference at all, either to his intelligence or other functions.
@EM “Full duplex. I can handle Simplex… ” Know what you mean. My mind still goes into overload when I read of those early landline telegraphists who routinely carried on two simultaneous exchanges, one with the left ear and hand, one with the right. I enjoy a good chat in Morse code as much as the next man, but please, not two at the same time!
@Zeke … Sounds like you use the same “filing system” as me. It’s amazing how long it can take to realise that “Z479J335-2010.pdf” is the one you never got round to renaming “Solar Influences on Global Weather.pdf” (or whatever) and filing somewhere sensible. ;-)
Thought you guys might like this…
http://www.boatingaccidentnews.com/boating-accident-news-guns-ammo-and-pm-store/
An interesting blog post on gold and the background machinations – looks like paper and ‘solid’ may not be the same thing.
http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gold-silver-the-metal-v-paper-discrepancy-now-lacks-any-credibility/
@Ian W:
“There’s always a story. -E.M.Smith”
So they love the “story” that there’s a hidden shortage of gold and that bankers manipulate the market. Yet the miners and sellers of gold provide the supply… and how does a bank with no gold drive the price down by selling excessive quantities of gold?…
It’s just a story.
Real prices are set by the folks with gold selling it, and the folks who want gold buying it; and “retail” is a trivial part of the market that only happens after the whales buy it by the ton and turn it into rounds and coins… like trying to judge the ‘right’ price of sugar by checking the price of a Coke at Burger King…
Have him call up a mine as ask for price and availability of 10 tons, then he will get a real idea what the market is doing.
Ian W says:
22 April 2013 at 6:16 pm
An interesting blog post on gold and the background machinations – looks like paper and ‘solid’ may not be the same thing….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is the game the goldsmiths started playing centuries ago that metastasized into Fractional Reserve Banking. It is based on the same thing. Hope the chumps you are defrauding don’t ask for their gold/wealth all at the same time so you don’t get caught embezzling.
E.M.
QH 23/04/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/health-payroll-inquiry-finds-former-queensland-labor-government-took-two-years-to-issue-breach-of-contract-notice-to-ibm/story-e6freoof-1226627147838
@Another Ian:
Well, it looks like someone in the media has discovered the gift that keeps on giving… story material, that is… ;-)
Now if only they would get inspired to dig into the Climate Catastrophe Business…
Goldman Sachs forecasts low Copper prices….mmmmmmm, so they are planning to buy and then, in a couple of years they will sell at “N” dollars a pound…Nice!
Thought this might interest you:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/04/23/ancient-europeans-mysteriously-vanished-4500-years-ago-660620043/?intcmp=features
My speculation? Same thing that caused a significant demise of the population of the Americas when Europeans first showed up: exposure to diseases they had no resistance to brought in by the new migrants. Measles and smallpox are both apparently diseases that mutated from animal diseases (distemper and rinderpest) that came into humans after domestication of animals. It is likely that “farmers” moving into areas inhabited by hunter/gatherers might have introduced these diseases. It is estimated that as much as 90% of the pre-european population of the Americas was wiped out by disease in some ares before Europeans even started moving inland from the coasts.
“A mystery of human brain evolution has long puzzled many biologists and paleontologists. As animal species evolved, their brain mass enlarged in the same ratio as the lungs, liver, stomach, and the rest of the body’s physical structures. About 250,000 years ago, most mammals reached the height of their evolution in brain complexity and mass. Just in the last 250,000 to 300,000 years, as the mammalian brain reached its zenith in size and efficiency, the evolution of our human species diverged from other mammals in several quite unpredictable ways. For one thing, early humans should have reached a plateau in brain development, as other mammals did during the same period. Instead, the human neocortex underwent an enormous leap in overall mass and complexity within a short amount of time.”
~Dr. Joe Dispenza, neuroscientist and survivor of extensive spinal cord injuries w/out surgery
There is more, but this is really interesting because Gail brought up (inre Nir Shaviv link) possible effects of our space environment on biological systems.
There are plenty of people theorizing in this direction; perhaps solar activity effects international relations, or markets? Perhaps we can reach a global coherence of minds if we just all tune in to earth? Perhaps alterations in earth’s space environment led to extinctions and appearances of smaller creatures?
My difficulty with many of these theories is that it is easy to selectively apply space events to confirm the theorist’s particular ideology, and claim scientific support. That is a very big disappointment for me, because it is so prevalent. I see no independence of thought or rigor in looking at these fashionable new theories. Any way, that aside, this particular passage shows that man experienced a unique development and that the same leap in development did not apply to other mammals. So this provides a way of testing those who claim that a space event is responsible for brain development, or some war. Does it apply to other living systems? Why not?
My old history books place the most recent changes to 20,000 years ago.
ref: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Two-Million-Years/dp/B000JV56FE/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366746014&sr=1-2&keywords=the+last+two+million+years
Dispenza passage continues:
“The Quandry of Brain Growth
Recent findings show that when the human midbrain reached its present-day level of evolutionary complexity (250,000 to 300,000 years ago), our ancestors at that time experienced a 20 percent increase in actual mass of the neocortex, the thinking, reasoning area of the human brain. This sudden acceleration in the volume and density of brain mass appears to have occurred spontaneously and unexplainably, as opposed to the normal, linear course of evolution. Our rapid 20 percent outgrowth of grey matter is responsible for the superiority of the human brain. What caused this explosive brain development which gave us a neocortex so much larger and denser than that of any other species, remains a mystery.
Also unlike other mammals, when the density of the human neocortex enlarged by 20 percent, the size of the human body increased only by 16 percent. To put this another way, the human body’s size increased only 80 percent in proportion to the expansion in mass of the brain, which is quite a deviation from the mammalian body-brain ratio.
Another interesting question comes to mind. Why did the brain expand to such a great degree, while the size of the head, both generally and in relation to the growth of the rest of the body, did not keep pace? The overall volume of the human skull did enlarge to some degree but not proportionally…”
Nice video of a meteorite over Argentina last Sunday turning night into day over a brief moment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biSBnGNqh0Y
Steve C says:
22 April 2013 at 10:36 am
“…some years (10-20) ago there was a report of an Oxford graduate (in Mathematics, IIRC) who had been found to be hydrocephalic. The fact of his brain being not much more than a lining to his skull seemed to make no difference at all, either to his intelligence or other functions.”
I remember that case! Now that is making the most of what you have. (:
There is a guy whose hippocampus actually vanished in utero – he cannot navigate back home each day and follows written directions to manage. He is on Youtube.
E.M.
QH 24/04/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/ibm-executives-threat-to-drop-queensland-health-payroll-in-2009/story-e6freon6-1226627368115
Some thoughts on Babylon and ‘symbols’:
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/et-tu-utu-marduk-amar-utu/
@E.M and @Gail Combs
Agenda 21 a satire that is uncomfortably close to the truth.
http://bogpaper.com/2013/04/22/marx-on-monday-agenda-21/
E.M.
QH 24/04/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/payroll-director-janette-jones-tells-health-payroll-inquiry-system-had-a-chance-of-success-but-for-internal-politics/story-e6freoof-1226628551895
And now for something completely different – an interesting find in the Atacama desert of Chile.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2313828/Is-really-human-DNA-tests-inch-skeleton-alien-looking-creature-sized-head-prove-actually-human-claim-scientists-new-documentary.html
Its human captain – but not as we know it….
Zeke,
More Cosmic Rays are only a possible method of causing a higher rate of mutations. Then those mutations have to give the animals an advantage. For a naked ape without speed, sharp teeth or claws, a larger brain and thinking ability that allows the making of tools, use of fire and speech that allows complex hunting methods gives a huge advantage. We know chimps use simple tools and once they learned sign language they can pass it on to their offspring. link However chimps are a lot stronger than humans and have tree climbing abilities we do not.
McClenney noted that it was the environmental pressure from major changes in climate that caused leaps in human brain evolution. I think you have to have both, environmental pressure and a high mutation rate to see these major leaps.
Ian W,
That satire is well worth printing out copying and handing around to all the churches in your community.
So what has happened in the ten years since the gasoline (Energy) prices were boosted into the stratosphere?
In wandering around the internet, I found and article by John Galt. He had up a nice chart from the St Louis Fed on the velocity of money. graph
If I am correct the velocity of money is a measure of economic activity (how many times a dollar bill changes hands) I find it laughable that the FED has the gray strip meaning ‘Recession’ at ~2002 and 2008 instead of across the entire decade as the velocity of money has fallen off the cliff. That the last few years at least are not considered a ‘Recession’ just shows how much the Banksters LIED to keep Obummer in the White House. US Economic Recovery??? You have to be joking.
An independent check on the data is the fact U.S. Meets Kyoto Emissions Targets Without Trying: Emissions from energy consumption at lowest level since 1994. Energy consumption is another measure of economic activity.
From WIKI
From The FED
The rest of the John Galt article deals with governments response to this decrease in money velocity. Remember government takes a cut every time a dollar bill changes hands. If you use credit cards for all your purchases, the bankers get their cut too. If the money does not change hands then the government and banksters don’t get their cut. This means governments are getting creative in their methods of wringing the last drop of wealth out of the domestic economy by using unethical means of Looting Safety Deposit Boxes and Raiding Inactive Bank Accounts. Everyone here is already aware of the Cyprus bank account raids.
This information should scare the Hades out of any intelligent person but the Politicians just keep dragging us straight for the cliff.
Oh and Zero Hedge has more data backing up a sluggish economy: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-04-23/worldwide-economy-fine-sales-reps-are-lazy-or-something
It is being perfectly choreographed internationally. See this article on Francois Hollande of France – do the policies sound familiar?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2313775/Frances-meltdown-stark-warning-wants-Red-Ed-Miliband-PM.html
Read this is interesting, also think about PPIs Proton Pump inhibitors and the bicarb treatments for heart burn…
http://www.livescience.com/26124-coca-cola-stomach-blockages.html?cid=dlvr.it
Ok, so this is how it works.
You get reflux, because your sphincter that opens between the stomach and small intestine is not opening properly. Why, because your stomach for some reason is not producing enough acid. (I think maybe stress for eg, has used up all the acid because you’ve been activating it too much so when the meal arrives there is not enough acid)
It may seem like there is too much acid, this is because it starts going up your esophagus, which is not used to even weak acid in the stomach and you get the reflux pain. It might seem really acidic, but actually its not acidic enough for your stomach and that’s the big problem.
So the solution really is, increase the stomach acid, to make the sphincter open in time, so that your stomach doesn’t overflow.
So what does everyone do, make the stomach more alkaline, either with bicarb soda with chewable tablets or proton pump inhibitors (PPI) or H2 inhibitors. Sure it gives you quick relief, but it doesn’t solve the problem and get you stuck in a cycle that is hard to get out of, unless you need healing for some damage somewhere, but sometimes the reflux is the damage and that’s what needs to be stopped.
So what happens when you use PPI, you make your stomach more basic, by stopping all the acid producing cells, then your esophagus feels better because its not getting burnt all day long with an overflowing stomach.
This is ok for someone who drinks beer and coke all day long and eats rubbish food (which is very acidic) they need this drug because they are probably actually making their stomach too acid as well as overflowing it with acid food.
But for people that have a bit of mild reflux, PP2 messes you up, as you get a short term cure, but then its hard to get off, as if you stop it, your stomach cells are not really working, so you get reflux rebound as some activate, as the stomach isn’t opening into the small intestine properly yet so you start to get reflux again.
So, when I stopped my PPI, since I eat really good food, I found I was getting terrible reflux, a lot worse then before, and also the food wouldn’t go down, it took hours for the stomach to open and release the food it was terrible.
The way I actually fixed it, was to drink Coke! pH of approx 3.4? The way I though it up, was it was 5 hours since lunch and I couldn’t even drink water as my stomach wouldn’t go down with reflux. I drank slowly 600ml of coke, and my stomach emptied. So next dinner, I drank some coke before hand, then drank coke with the meal and then some after and the reflux and the stomach emptying problem began to stop.
So the coke made the stomach more acidic, and this prompts the spincter in the small intestine to open faster as it thinks digestion is complete, this releases the stomach contents into the small intestine, which in turn, stops the stomach overflowing into the esophagus, causing the burn and pain. After drinking the coke and meal, I took a spoon full of Manuka Honey to help the healing process of the Esophagus.
So I think, I’m going to do some experiments now, when eating a really rich meal, my theory is that you get reflux, because it takes too much acid to digest the food, so you run out of acid, and then the stomach doesn’t empty and then you get reflux because its overflows into the esophagus. So maybe a drink of coke can help prevent a heart burn at night time later?
Everyone’s situation inside could be different, and coke might not be good for some people, but I’m just saying what worked for me, as it was really really hard to get off the PPI, but the crazy thing is Coke saved me. So to me all those Bicarb tablets and PPI are stupid as they don’t fix the problem, unless you have a massive erosion somewhere which needs healing, that’s why I’m saying maybe this is not your problem so you should seek pro advice, as I probably have no idea what I’m talking about…
I guess you can use HCL tablets, but that seemed really risky to me, so I tried Coke as I knew how bad it was for you due to the high pH. Funny since I think my problem was that I was too healthy, and got a bit stressed. And eating too healthy just made it worse and worse as my foods were too alkaline and this made my stomach not open and made the reflux worse and worse.
Ian W says:
24 April 2013 at 10:13 pm
It is being perfectly choreographed internationally…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of Course it is. The whole plan hinges on taking down the entire world’s economy so it can be rebuilt under ‘Global Governance’ You are not going to get the general population to ‘Buy-In’ to the need for an international bureaucracy ruling your every move from cradle to grave if the present system works just fine and dandy. See Pascal Lamy. head of the World Trade Organizations blatherings on Global Governance.
You really can not get much more blunt than that.
What scares me is the fact that TPTB are now coming right out and saying that is their goal. This means they feel they are past the point of no return. Just like Grope-n-Fly is being used to condition Americans to having the government literally stick a hand up your arse and fondle your genitals, TPTB are conditioning us to the idea of a Global Government.
http://www.dailytech.com/TSA+Patdown+Leaves+6Year+Old+in+Tears+Govt+Defends+Actions/article21375.htm
Compilation of TSA incidents: http://www.akdart.com/airline3.html
This story is especially interesting Ego-Death on Concourse C
On top of that consider this little exercise being practiced at airports: TSA Lies About Bizarre “Freeze” Drill
And this SLAP in the face to Americans U.S. Grants Saudis ‘Trusted Traveler’ Privileges to Help Them Through Airport Security
WTF!!!!
Speaking of trusted travelers, etc.. After months of the loud and daily concern about American firearms and ammunition, the press has suddenly lost its obsession. I am seeing little questioning of what kind of firearms were used by the Boston terroroist during his shoot out with police. It is just crickets and tumbleweeds. Where did he get these weapons?
And how is it that someone who was previously on a terrorist watch list, whom the Russians flagged, and who was buying firearms and posting about Islam and terrorism on Youtube, was in the process of gaining citizenship?
And why is it that the Administration is working so hard to deport the German home schooling Romeike family who has applied for asylum, while the Boston bombers were getting terrorist training and receiving citizenship?
BBT
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2013/04/24/the-big-bang-theory-meets-its-maker/
sabretoothed says:
25 April 2013 at 11:58 am
Read this is interesting, also think about PPIs Proton Pump inhibitors and the bicarb treatments for heart burn…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For me it is wheat/carbs especially at night. One slice of bread is a real killer. I also noticed my reflux was accompanied by a lot of gas. A low carb/no sugar diet => no reflux and no gas. In my case I think the bacteria go nuts with carbs and produce too much gas increasing the pressure => reflux.
If I cheat and eat too many carbs and have reflux, a Simethicone gas relief product works very quickly.
What is interesting is Dreamfields lo-carb pasta and rice do not bother me very much if at all if the portions are small. (Under 5 carbs per meal is fine)
M2.8 quake in Georgia, USA
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usb000gfzc.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
For whatever it’s worth: Breakthrough Nuclear FUSION: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/one-giant-leap-for-mankind-13bn-iter-project-makes-breakthrough-in-quest-for-nuclear-fusion-a-solution-to-climate-change-and-an-age-of-clean-unlimited-energy-8590480.html
Kicking the can on pensions, through a tranportation bill, “ya gota read em, to know whats in em.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/04/moving-ahead-with-pension-progress.html
@R. de Haan:
Didn’t see much ‘breakthrough’ in that news release. Mostly just looked like a PR blurb saying “we are building now… don’t cut off funding, as in about 30 years we’ll be making power!”…
@Zeke:
For centuries the English Crown has mixed antagonistic populations together so that the Crown would be needed to ‘keep the peace’. All that is happening is that same thing on a global scale. Everywhere has to be disorganized and in conflict with their neighbors so they don’t realize government in the Big Leach…
@George B:
Is that notable? I can’t even feel anything under about a 4…
@Sabertoothed:
CO2 is well known for opening the pyloric valve at the base of the stomach. Alcohol causes it to become sluggish and hard alcohol stops the opening.
So that’s why “Whiskey on beer, never fear. Beer on whiskey, very risky!” works. It’s also why the small Russian Female Spy could drink the Big American Businessman under the table. She was drinking strait vodka shooters that stay in the stomach for hours. He’s drinking beer that opens the stomach and heads strait to the blood then brain…
BTW, most beer is not “junk food”. Load of B vitamins and mineral in it. (Not in the American Pisswater Beer. Real Beer, man, real beer…) The carbonation in it also helps with digestion and getting the stomach to move things along. Rather like soda in that regard…
At any rate, you ought to find that most anything carbonated “fixes it”. For me, anytime I’ve had heartburn / reflux, a good fizzy mineral water works wonders. Stops the burn (thanks to the minerals) and moves the dinner along (thanks to the fizz…) So Gail, try some Calistoga Water with that bread… or the Dasani made by Pepsi. Both are on my “go to” list when traveling and “the burn” hits from whatever I’ve been eating… Doesn’t happen often, but when I ‘need something’ I’ve found most hotels, restaurants, gas stations, bars, grocery stores, etc. have mineral water even if they don’t have medications…
We are all captains of our own moral ship:
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/atomic-presbyters/
Rather than coca cola a better acid to use is a table spoon of apple cider vinegar (mix with some honey if you wish) in water. Make sure you use the unfiltered type that is described as ‘with the mother’. Look it up it is a long time remedy for many things.
@Gail Combs says:
25 April 2013 at 2:18 pm
The TSA do not provide security. I have the ‘good fortune’ to use the grope’n fly around twice a week. They do not even supply even the appearance of security apart from the gullible; a group in which the TSA and its management are members.
JoNova brings attention to this paper:
Click to access cp-9-447-2013.pdf
Here is another goodie I just stumbled across:
Your Comments On: NYC public elementary school 1st to adopt all-vegetarian menu, offers kids beans, tofu wraps
Celebrate May Day with a bit of liberation of Carbon:
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/beltane/
Great Article on Back pain http://www.subdude-site.com/WebPages_Local/RefInfo/StretchExerciseEtc/BackPainSolutions/LowBack_MorningPain/lowBack_morningPain.htm
@E.M.: Last night I was watching a TV talk show which dealt about the evolution of personal communications from mail with written letters, the way we expressed then our feelings and emotions, the pen-pal era and nowadays when we all use computers, email, social media…Well, one girl in the show, after the anchor of the program referred to these electronic media as “artificial” and kind of robotic like, said that on the contrary she felt computers as being profoundly biological, you know computers work with binary language: ONE and ZERO, say ONE; ONE; ZERO, ONE, ONE…as ON, ON, OFF, ON, like connecting and disconnecting, the same as systole and diastole, vowels and consonants .
It seemed to me quite a remarkable observation! and I would like to know your opinion as an expert.
This issue could lead us , for example, to matters like the hebrew alphabet where vowels are not written, etc…..an its possible decoding as binary.
@E.M. Please check one of my comments LOST in a T11 Black Hole
And just in time for Beltane, Mother Nature is going to celebrate with real fireworks.
Hekla volcano (Iceland): strong inflation suggest volcano could be close to erupting and 5.8 magnitude earthquake on Himachal-Kashmir border rattles northern India
Meanwhile as comments at WUWT show the Northern Hemisphere, especially the USA is in the grip of Global
WarmingCooling with corn not planted or in the case of Texas, damaged by frost.World Temperature Map Dark Blue is -12.0C (10.4F) and Darkred/near black is +12.0C (53.6 F) from: http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html?group=67
H/T to Bill Illis
As a double check:
Irkutsk, Russia is 41 °F (one of the largest cities in Siberia, Lat/Lon: 52.3° N, 104.3° E)
Novosibirsk, Russia is 48 °F (Lat/Lon: 55.1° N 82.9° E)
Moscow, Russia is 67F (warmer than it is in NC, – Lat/Lon: 55.8° N 37.6° E)
Dudinka, Russia is 21 °F ( 69.4° N 86.2° E)
Current Northern Hemisphere Jet Steam map: http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_norhem_00.gif
@Adolfo:
I have no idea why, every so often, one of your comments goes to the SPAM queue. I’ve looked at it. Not a single word nor phrase looks “suspect”. And your comment right after it is “up” so “it’s not about you”. Sigh. Sometimes WordPress is strange and mysterious….
OK, per your question:
It’s a bit complex. There are several implied questions. “Are computers ‘biological’ in some way?” and “Is binary a function of biology?” and even “Is the V vs C alternation binary?”.
So much turf from one (very interesting!) observation…
So lets take it in parts…
Vowel vs Consonant. as binary:
No. Sorry, just isn’t. Take “bill” vis “boll” vs “bull”. It’s three different things. One is either something you pay with, or something you pay. (Dollar bill, power bill) An object caused by an infection of an oak tree, or a large harry animal with horns. There’s more than two, and not related.
In Semitic / Hamitic languages, the vowels have a slightly different function, but it is still not ‘binary’ but a function of the number of vowels in the language and number of vowels in the word. (Typically 3 consonants with 2 vowels, but there are also ‘semi-vowels’ and some 4 letter words).
So it just does not map to ‘binary’ at all. The consonants pick the ‘meaning family’, then the vowels fine tune it. So the same three consonants code for things (HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE!) like library, book, magazine, and newspaper. Then the specific vowels sort out which. To quote my Arabic book “An experienced speaker will have no trouble assigning the vowels.”… Which is great unless one is not so experienced or the sentence is ambiguous… “Get me the XXX” so was that newspaper, magazine, or what?
(A major part of why I’ve not ever learned a Hamitic / Semitic language was just that problem. I’ve learned about them, but not gotten to the speaking level… though Coptic calls to me…)
The ancient Egyptian used a “determinative” hieroglyph to sort that out, so would use a picture of (HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE!) a building to sort out library and a picture of pages to show it was a book or…
As per me being an “expert”… I have to decline that honorific… I’ve gone out of my way to be an extraordinarily broad ranging generalist. So much so, I fear, that I’m not so much an expert on anything (though I can do pretty well on a lot of things…)
But to the core, are computers “biological”? Mu! I think the better question is “Are biological entities computers?” which, I fear, is answered best in the affirmative….
FWIW, the more “mystical” connection, IMHO, is that both genetics and Semitic languages use a ‘3 letter codon” to carry meaning. I have a ‘suspicion’ that we will find something hidden in our DNA as 3 letter codings… somewhere in the “junk”… but that gets a bit ‘fringy’ and best for some other topic…
I’m fairly sure that in less than 100 years mineral based (i.e. non-biologic) computers will be as intelligent as we are at present. It will be an interesting time…
@Gail:
Oh Dear!
I’ve tried to keep a “positive spin” on things while still being honest to the facts; but nature sure seems bent on giving a “negative spin”…
It’s a ‘fear vs reason’ thing for me. I’d really hate to learn “the hard way” that volcanoes really do move in the same direction as solar changes (even though I have seen evidence that they do… I’d like it to be the other way…) so I cling to the “reason” side of things. Even as the world “does what it will do” that tends to confirm the “past as prologue”…
If Hekla or Katla blows, Europe is screwed and the rest of us are gut punched…
Off to read your links…
To quote in full the first article:
How is that phrased again? “Oh Dear!”?
Oh God! The comments don’t offer a lot of solace either…
Well the next OH SHIT! just occurred:
Next Asian crisis arrives: Chinese soldiers make military incursion into India- India considers response
This is the same army that Clinton armed with US technology.
sabretoothed says:
2 May 2013 at 8:34 am
Great Article on Back pain…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, stretches definitely help. I got a whole set of them from my doctor. Another suggestion from my chiropractor was to sleep on my side with the upper knee resting on pillows to keep the back correctly aligned, as well as using the correct height pillow for my head. Having your back cranked into a corkscrew all night certainly isn’t going to help the morning back pain situation.
Resting the upper arm on a set of pillows can help the upper back/shoulder and neck pain. If you don’t sleep through the night, doing stretches and a bit of a walk in the middle of the night will make you more limber in the morning too.
@Gail:
Oh Dear….
One of my ‘worry points’ is that I expect a nuclear war somewhere on a line from Israel / Iran through China / India and into Korea… Just not clear who is going to “win” that race…
Were I India, I’d just quietly start moving a load of troops in behind the Chinese contingent. Announce that it is ‘training’ and ‘border security’ (and quote the Chinese saying there’s nobody there and that they respect the line…). I’d do a semi-obvious ‘build up’ from one side toward the other, letting them have an easy exit “in the night”…
Essentially, quietly chase them out without a belligerent posture… Like hollering “Hey Bear!” and banging a pot at the back door before going into a barn with an open front door in Alaska…
The “risk” is that China is looking to start a war for the purpose of getting the land “back”, and nothing you do will stop that. (And I’d not put it past the Chinese to have ‘cut a deal’ with Pakistan to start a 2 front war and split Kashmir between them…)
Wonder if anyone has a “China vs India” nuclear / missile capability comparison… both are pretty darned good, I think…
China might welcome a china India ‘incident’, as that would essentially be a test of Chinese hardware against Russian hardware, the Russians having supplied India with the latest jet fighters.
Clearly the Chinese are up to no good and India has to respond. I think your suggestion is the way to go. Though if China just leaves it’s troops in place, they might then claim that an Indian incursion into China had kidnapped the Chinese.
Perhaps comedy might work. India could make it known to the Chinese press and the World press that the Chinese sat nav technology is so bad that some Chinese troops are completely lost and can’t find their way home again and so the generous Indian army will assist their poor neighbours to find their way back to China. They could then go and ‘assist’ the lost Chinese troops along with hordes of news reporters and TV cameras, preferably from as many foreign countries as possible.
My Cache of Volcano/Sun info:
“… a system possessing threshold instability…” That is not what I really wanted to hear.
@Gail:
You know, there’s work (papers I’ve seen as titles somewhere…) that shows the rate of nuclear decay varies based on solar changes. Volcanic heat comes from nuclear decay. So there ought to be a causal link (size? significance?) between solar state and volcanic dumping of heat…
Hmmmm…..
Since China is pulling a “Who me?” MY troops are not there.” If I were India I would say “Oh, then they must be Renegade Pirates and we will wipe them out as a favor to China and the rest of the world. Can’t have armed renegades running around the place now can we?”
After all if China does not claim them then China can not complain if India takes them out since they were never China’s in the first place.
Interesting take on gold and other markets.
As Trust Evaporates…
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
After scandals involving libor and, perhaps, ISDAfix, the question that should have everyone freaked out is this: What other markets out there carry the same potential for manipulation? The answer to that question is far from reassuring, because the potential is almost everywhere. From gold to gas to swaps to interest rates, prices all over the world are dependent upon little private cabals of cigar-chomping insiders we’re forced to trust.
“In all the over-the-counter markets, you don’t really have pricing except by a bunch of guys getting together,” Masters notes glumly.
That includes the markets for gold (where prices are set by five banks in a Libor-ish teleconferencing process that, ironically, was created in part by N M Rothschild & Sons) and silver (whose price is set by just three banks), as well as benchmark rates in numerous other commodities – jet fuel, diesel, electric power, coal, you name it. The problem in each of these markets is the same: We all have to rely upon the honesty of companies like Barclays (already caught and fined $453 million for rigging Libor) or JPMorgan Chase (paid a $228 million settlement for rigging municipal-bond auctions) or UBS (fined a collective $1.66 billion for both muni-bond rigging and Libor manipulation) to faithfully report the real prices of things like interest rates, swaps, currencies and commodities…..
The only reason this problem has not received the attention it deserves is because the scale of it is so enormous that ordinary people simply cannot see it. It’s not just stealing by reaching a hand into your pocket and taking out money, but stealing in which banks can hit a few keystrokes and magically make whatever’s in your pocket worth less. This is corruption at the molecular level of the economy, Space Age stealing – and it’s only just coming into view….
I don’t find this at all surprising.
More on the China India border play:
I would not trust China…..
This strong association between eruption timing and the solar minimum is statistically significant to a confidence level of 96.7%.
We have a solar high that isn’t very high and is perhaps low enough that these volcano things are beginning to warm up, so perhaps no Hekla or Katla just now, but round about 2020 ?
But, dated 29th April 2013,
from http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/countdown-to-hekla/
If the inflation continues at the current rate Hekla will erupt. When? Well I am not going to make any bets, but any time from 1 hour from when you read this to 4 weeks. Remember that 4 weeks into the future the combined uplift in 2 months will have exceeded 50mm at many GPS stations.
~
What will the eruption be like? Here I will be guessing since Hekla has changed her behavior compared to the last eruptions. I would say that Hekla has remobilized old evolved magma during all that moving of magma, and this latest inflation phase seems to fill up a lot of old magma chambers. This causes me to fear a rather explosive start of the eruption. I would also say that there is quite a high likelihood of there being more lava erupted then was seen during the last 3 eruptions. I will hedge my bet by saying that I would expect it to be anything between a VEI2 and a VEI4 on the volcanic explosivity index, and that Hekla will effuse between 0.1 to 2 cubic kilometers of lava.
Why Sunglasses are bad for you, and LED lights as well
http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/09/led-lights-health-hazard/ Blue light is different: As soon as it hits our pineal gland, our melatonin levels fade and our biological clocks are reset to wake-up time. That’s all fine if you’re only exposed to blue light shortly before sunrise.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2012/May/blue-light-has-a-dark-side/ Study after study has linked working the night shift and exposure to light at night to several types of cancer (breast, prostate), diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. It’s not exactly clear why nighttime light exposure seems to be so bad for us. But we do know that exposure to light suppresses the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that influences circadian rhythms, and there’s some experimental evidence (it’s very preliminary) that lower melatonin levels might explain the association with cancer.
This is an interesting read from Matt Taibbi Too-Big-to-Fail Takes Another Body Blow
curious, any thoughts…
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/mystinstalledobjectsea.php
Pingback: Hekla-ing Egypt | Musings from the Chiefio
an interesting perspective on China – structural problems are maybe starting to bite their economy
http://www.cityunslicker.com/2013/05/china-politics-and-slowdown.html
A bit more on China China building mega cities but they remain empty ghost towns and In China, a Real Estate Bust Threatens Investment Trusts
I ran across this when we were talking about engines. I can imagine how the ground shakes when this thing is running! Apparently, it is designed to maintain a minimum RPM, above which it does not fire.
And here’s a nice little genset for emergencies around the house.
@Jim2: A little something to put in the back yard and fire up when the neighbors run the stereo too loud? ;-)
E.M
You may be interested in what tallbloke has –
Basically an investigative paper on what kind of rudimentary requirements that are needed for a earth-like planet out in the universe. In doing the basic research on the planets, the sticky question of atmosphere came up and some very interesting work proceeded that throws out the CO2 hypothesis controlling planetary temperature.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/greenhouse-panic-over-new-model-demonstrates-dependence-of-planetary-surface-temperature-on-atmospheric-pressure/comment-page-1/#comment-52345
It appears that USGS has “fixed” their web site. I can’t find anything useful as of yet and the old is now now no longer working. YUCK! Southern California is about ready for a big one, the new moon is tomorrow and the quake numbers are way up already. pg
@P.G.Sharrow:
Looks like they finally got around to deleting all the “old” maps and content. For a long time they just nagged that it was not being maintained.
This also effectively kills all my old posting that had links to those live maps in them as well.
You are now stuck with their one “live interactive map” and “hunt and peck” in it. Damn near useless, IMHO.
Guess I’ll need to see if I can find some alternative. (The old map method was really useful…)
I agree. after nearly an hour of hunting on their new site, I could find nothing useful in it. :-(
A lot of Eye Candy only. What a waste of my tax money.pg
If you are looking for an earthquake map there is one here: http://gimquakesmap3.com/
And here: http://www.emsc-csem.org/#2
For Iceland: http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/
Map of Russian Arctic Volcanoes: http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/volcanoes/holocene/main/map/holocene.jpg
Alaska + Russia volcano alerts: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/avoreport.php?view=kaminfo
Global Volcanoes: http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_eruptions.cfm
And yeah the USGS is ‘Eye Candy’ but not very useful. I like the Iceland site a lot better.
Here’s a real time radiation map. If you have connectivity, you can check it after the big one and determine which way to run.
Oh yeah … http://radiationnetwork.com/index.htm
Crabapple Trees:
Thomas Jefferson’s favorite crabapple was the Hewes (or Hughes’) I bought one from Edible Landscaping when I still lived in Taxechusetts and it bloomed and fruited in about two years. Another link
Now Edible Landscaping sells Centennial Apple Malus spp
Crabs are nice because they are a lot less work than normal apples, hardy and some are decent eating.
Another ancient breed of small apple is LADY (Christmas Apple, Api) France 1600 it is an excellent ‘keeper’ and stores well.
Looky at this http://www.solostove.com/solo-stove/ – It’s too expensive for my taste, but I don’t see any reason why I can’t build one of these in a couple of hours out of junk found in the garage. I do like the fact that it doesn’t require ‘fuel’ other than sticks and scrub. And I am turning my aluminum breadbox into an ‘camping oven’ by way of rocket stove- maybe even utilizing the stove above.
Been a long time since the last ‘Carping Comments’. Everyone being nice?
@Sera:
Partly it’s because the ones most prone to “carping” learned it didn’t feel as good and decided to be nice, or leave. (Which was sort of the purpose, to train folks to be nicer…) and partly it was just a move to less emotional topics. The AGW Drones are not interested in things like camp stoves and Egypt so much. Since I’d pretty much done all that I could see that mattered on GIStemp and USHCN / GHCN, they didn’t have as much fodder to choke on…
The “Global Warming Food Fight” has moved on to more political turf anyway, with a very cold planet causing them to push selling the “Cold weather is Climate Change” as “Global Warming Extender Food Product” idea… and that doesn’t involve me so much…
I’ve also pretty much run the course on the Nazi / Fascism as a kind of Socialism and on the philosophical roots of the Progressive Movement in some broken ideas. So not many postings on that lately.
Basically, I’m a high speed bulldozer that runs through a topic and turns up most of the interesting big bits, then moves on. Not a “One trick pony”. So I don’t “fixate and fume” so much as a “Dig Here!” learn and move on to the next dig. That means that the “Fixated Fumers” find things uninteresting and move on…
But don’t worry… I’ll cycle back around to some of those things again soon enough, and I’m sure come Carpers will show up again… ;-)
Yes, the solo is interesting, but I, too, could not justify the cost for a glorified steel can…
FWIW, using a charcoal starter can (big Webber) I get “prodigious” heat out the top. I suspect that just filling one with sticks would give a heck of a stove… It’s got all the right vents…
@Jim2:
Nice! But after the Big One the way to run is down… into a below ground shelter… (though for me, a quick shot up wind is likely a winner too. Due west the air comes in off of 3000 miles of empty ocean…)
@Sabertoothed:
Then I’m doomed.. as I’m a hard core night owl…
@Gail:
Thanks for the map pointers…
I need about 10 acres to plant all the trees I’d like to try… and I’ve got more like 1/8 acre…
EM, I found two to five acres are about right if you do not have animals. I had a big garden and fruit trees on 2 ac up north now I have a hundred acres, lots of animals and not much time to think about much less plant a garden. Sort of a beware what you wish for…
Goats and sheep run about 5 per acre in the east (500 lbs of livestock per acre carrying capacity) sort of a beware what you wish for…
EM thought you migh be intetrested in this site. It has soil temperatures link
Here is another ‘volunteer’ seen in the southeast http://ediblelandscaping.com/products/vines/Flowers/PassionFlowerVine.php
And here I have been trying to kill the stuff! (I should have look that flower up earlier but spring is a busy time)
@EMSmith; I second Gail! “Be careful about what you wish for.” I tend about 2 acres of garden and vineyard in the middle of 20 acres of woods. Always something that NEEDs to be done. I have farmed garden plot on city lot and 100 acre fields on thousand acre ranch. One piece of advice, Don’t get married to livestock! A farm is a nice place to live and the work can make you live longer BUT a damn poor place to make money. Best to make your money elsewhere and farm for fun. And as Gail has observed, modern American bureaucrats are working hard to eradicate all small farms. pg
@P.G. modern American bureaucrats are working hard to eradicate all small farms. What they need is dependent of them people, grab all land from independent people, take you to a very small flat where you will live constantly in fear of not receiving your pay check to survive: You will be a “happy” Gamma, through entertainment and Pharm. drugs (“Soma”) provided by them….if you behave as they wish.
adolfogiurfa, P.G. you have it correct.
Nicole Johnson did a very nice, well documented essay on the deliberate wiping out of US farmers. link She starts just after WWII but the deliberate distruction of US farms started earlier than that.
‘ The Socialist Revolution in the US cannot take place because there are too many small independent farmers there. Those people are the stability factor. We here in Russia must hurry while our government is stupid enough to not encourage and support the independent farmership.’ V. Lenin, the founder of the Russian revolution
Quote provided by Anna Fisher
These are some of the high points I have found in the demise of the US farmer. (Links are old)
1932 to 1937 “The Collective Farm Policy was a terrible struggle, Ten million died. It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary.” Joseph Stalin http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/quotes.html
1934, “[Our] future is becoming visible in Russia.” Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell http://www.archive.org/stream/rednetworkwhoswh00dillrich/rednetworkwhoswh00dillrich_djvu.txt
1960’s HACCP(Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point system) is developed by Pillsbury.
Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems rule, on July 25, 1996 Under the HACCP rule, industry is responsible for assessing potential food safety hazards and systematically preventing and controlling those hazards. FSIS is responsible for verifying that establishments’ HACCP systems are working ..www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Evolution_of_RBI_022007.pdf
1961 PVP is the Plant Variety Protection: The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants: Gave seed companies a monopoly on only the commercial multiplication and the marketing of seeds. Farmers remained free to save seed from their own harvest to plant in the following year, and other breeders could freely use any variety, protected or not, to develop a new one. http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/KeyOrgs/1236/428.html
1980 the Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarthy, 447 U.S. 303 enabled living organisms to be patented http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Wisconsin_Lawyer&template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&contentid=49620
1991 PVP monopoly has applied to seed multiplication and also to the harvest and sometimes the final product as well. Previously unlimited right of farmers to save seed for the following year’s planting has been changed into an optional exception. Only if national government allows, can farm-saved seed still be used, and a royalty has to be paid to the seed company even for seeds grown on-farm. http://www.grain.org/seedling_files/smar2002.pdf
If you look at the Federal Reserve and the “Farm Depression” which was the lead into the great depression you can see it was ‘encouraged”
Now this is where things get really interesting in the story of bankers, farmers the USDA and “The farm bloc” led by the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The question to ask is WHO was behind the American Farm Bureau Federation?
In other words the American Farm Bureau Federation is and always has been ‘Control Opposition’ just like the Organic Consumers Assoc. and Food and Water Watch are. (Also funded and therefore controlled by the Rockefellers and friends.)
http://stereopsis.com/flux/
Changing colour of your screen to make you sleep better
http://chriskresser.com/how-artificial-light-is-wrecking-your-sleep-and-what-to-do-about-it
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9892792/Lack-of-sleep-switches-off-genes.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783
http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Daylight-saving-linked-to-wacky-behavior-4341113.php
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/tower-of-light-when-electricity-was-new-people-used-it-to-mimic-the-moon/273445/
Busy interactive volcano map: http://www.volcano-news.com/erupting_volcanoes.html
Here is another listing with more information link
This is the weekly report: link
It does look rather busy.
Yes, it looks busy. What I liked was the interactive volcano map and the possibility to put in on your website. I think E.M should have a look at it and put it on the opening page. There is also a global earthquake map just to keep us up to date.
http://churchofsacredcarbon.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/soy-marinade-chicken/
@Gail:
Nice map of N.C…. wonder if there’s one for California…
Passionfruit, eh? Beats Kudzu ;-)
Per amount of land: Well, I’m more into “experimenting” than “production farming” and in particular I like to test ability to naturalize and how well things can do with things like wild weed cover left in place. So having, for example, a 20 acre orchard of “4 each” of several dozens of different kinds of trees doesn’t mean I’d necessarily be doing things like spraying each one on the expected schedule for each with all the usual sprays… more like I’d be sitting back and just cataloging “Worms in apples, walnut kills out nearby peaches, …” and such. Then just run a disk through it after noting what weeds did to productivity of each… I’d also likely run the animals as a zoo rather than a farm ;-) so not a lot of docking and culling and all… (So any young billy goat that liked to follow me around and into the house would likely get a nice private fenced area out back of the barn rather than put into the freezer… ) Yes, a “Toy Farm” ;-)
Besides, if I ever got bored with it, I’d just rent the land to a real farmer for a share of the product…
@P.G.:
Where did I ever say I thought it would be anything but a cost center? Make money farming? What, you think I’m crazy? ;-)
@R. de Haan & Gail:
Yes, lots of volcanoes. A bit more than prior times, but there’s usually a dozen or so blowing off somewhere at any time. Just doesn’t make the news. “Volcano erupting in Hawaii” has been true for about 1/4 century now.
@Sabertoothed:
Likely that 540 nm blue color that causes a reset of the biological clock. They have started “pushing” LED street lights based on that 540 range as a ‘feature’ as it is more visible and sensed by the B&W senors of the eyes. (Essentially pitching that fewer lumens are needed for the same vision) all while carefully avoiding the fact that it will be busy bringing insomnia to anyone in the place…
I’ve been thinking I needed to change my screen color, so thanks for the links to ‘what to do’…
Passion Fruit! That stuff is as bad Kudzu. Once planted, very hard to get rid of and for some people, the plant sap is neatly as bad as poison oak. I planted Passion fruit in my garden 15 years ago, what a pest. I still haven’t eradicated it! pg
PG, sounds like EM should be farming Kudzu, dandelions. Passion fruit and blackberries/raspberies with a herd of goats to help keep them in check….
And if he is a real gambler there is honeysuckle and ragweed as a grain.
EM, on what apples are leave and eat, I would try late northern spy. We had five acres my NYC bred and raised parents bought and never bothered to do any with except mow a couple times a year. Never sprayed the trees at all. The bloom late and one year when we had a killing late frost the local cider company cam in and picked our trees because we and our neighbors (who owned the rest of the old orchard) were the only ones in the area with apples that year.
More recently we had one Bosc pear in our apple orchard that did well but a widespread bacterial disease called fire blight is now a problem. For peaches it is the peach tree borer. It is a most destructive insect pest of peach, cherry, plum and other stone fruits and kills the tree. It also kills wild cherry and you have a reservoir of the d@*m pests if you have any wild cherry in the neighborhood.
For apples the big pest is plum curculio. It also goes after plums, peaches, cherry, pears, and other stone fruits. The bad news is you have a 24-48 hour window in which to spray for the plum curculio. The good news is at least they do not kill the tree. They just leave fruit scarred photo, and riddled with brown mush. photo
So What’s that worm in my apple?
If you want care free fruit go with berries like raspberry, blackberry, blueberries, strawberries and bush cherries and a good hunting cat, or two or three.
I planted wild and domestic strawberries under my blueberry bushes as a ground cover. My cat would hide under the strawberry leaves and ambush any bird who came along to pick the fruit. She controlled the squirrels/chipmunks/mice that were eating my lettuce too. As a half grown kitten I watched my tom take down a rabbit that was bigger than he was.
FWIW the old method for controlling bugs in orchards was chickens and pigs run through the orchard periodically to eat the fallen immature fruit that were full of larva.
I am sure that is now ‘Illegal’ and against ‘Best Practices’
I have a Dancy Tangelo that is completely care free. Love it. A friend has a fig tree that is also pest free (so I now have a little tiny fig tree in a pot that I need to “place” somewhere…)
I have 2 apple trees (dwarf) and a Japanese Pear Apple. The bunnies get a lot of the fruit as my family can’t be bothered to reach up and grab if from the tree… so I didn’t mind much when some years it got worms in some of them. (Golden Delicious and a redish / green one who’s type I’ve forgotten…) They mostly act as shade trees for the west facing side of the house now… and bunny treats….
I’m likely to try some blueberries, but we’ll see. I’ve got a large “fruitless pear” in the back yard with fireblight in it., so before too long I’ll need a replacement for it. I’ve planted an avocado just a little bit inside the drip line of it, that’s starting to get up into the canopy, so I can start cutting back one as the other takes over. Near as I can tell, avocados here are also pest free (and the squirrels don’t seem to know what they are ;-)
FWIW, I’m happy to let the squirrels have their fill of apples (and the occasional tangelo). I figure it just means if there ever really is a disaster Aw Shit I’ve got them trained to come to my yard and pose about an “easy 20 foot shot” away ;-) Besides, they are cute and tend to clean up the stuff that the family can’t be bothered to pick… But having something they didn’t eat, like avocados, would be nice… Don’t know what they do with figs… Maybe I’ll ask the friend with the fig tree…
Can you eat honeysuckle? I’ll skip the ragweed… being prone to allergies it’s not worth the risk ;-)
Believe it or not, I tried gardening some dandelions in the open areas. “Special” imported Italian cultivar too. The bunnies just LOVE them. The dandelions were rapidly extirpated by the bunnies… I also had a block of Jerusalem Artichokes (that are ‘pest free and perpetual’) that would pop up every spring and block the east wall of the house from sun. Took them 2 years, but the bunnies wiped them out too. They also managed to beat back a square of horseradish that otherwise needs no care.
All were interesting experiments that showed that there ARE some essentially ‘care free’ garden crops, but that they need fences around them to keep the grazers and browsers out who just love them to death… The bunnies did NOT do in the mustards, that also naturalize nicely. Unfortunately, they are a bit too hot for my tastes as salad greens too! (Though cooked they are pretty good.)
The J.Artichokes are a pretty easy way to get a fairly large supply of edible roots for near zero effort. Just water them as they grow and mow once they dry off. Dig when hungry. Don’t worry, they WILL grow back from what gets left in the dirt. (Just don’t let bunnies nibble off all growth until the root is exhausted ;-)
Horseradish is like that too, and I like the taste of the leaves… Only pest on it, so far, has been snails. The French imported snails here and turned them loose to be a gathered “crop” of escargot. I was upset at them for doing that until I found out that they displace the native slugs. I’d rather have snails than slugs… We occasionally get possums that clean out the snails anyway. (For a middle of urban area lot, there’s a wide variety of wild life that goes through the back yard….)
So my “system” has slowly evolved to be largely one of naturalized or nearly naturalized hardy perennials or plurianuals, selected for minimal care and pests, but surrounded by fencing during early growth / production, then opened to be ‘grazed off’… Though there are still a few “duds” in the garden. (Like having too many apples that are not pest resistant enough).
Yesterday I set out a horseradish into a fenced square. I’m now down to one bunny (working toward none) and I’m going to reestablish the horseradish and J.Artichoke plots. I’m looking at maybe getting some contract work “on the road” a lot, and having no “livestock” makes that easier. Also having squares that nobody needs to tend when I’m gone is a feature too.
We’ll see how it all works out.
Worst case is that we end up with roast squab and escargot ;-) (I have doves that have nested under the patio awning for about 20 years now. There are dozens of them for miles around that originate here. Love their song… They now will get to within about 6 feet of me sometimes. Often flying up and sitting on the fence to wait for me to “move over” so they can get to the nest… )
I’m basically taking the things I’ve worked out over the last decade and planning to put some of them back into practice and see how it goes.
Can you eat honeysuckle?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Depends on the honeysuckle. Check the link.
Yeah with that f.lux make sure you put in your location so that the cycle is good. What do you think of the 3000K LED lights http://www.masters.com.au/product/100456689/mort-bay-5w-edison-screw-cap-r63-led-globe better than the CFC which are too blue?
I have never seen a squirrel eat figs. Figs sometimes get two crops in one season, and the jam can taste like anything you like – just a few frozen strawberries transforms the jam into strawberry jam, or a little apple pie spice. They are messy on the ground in fall. Remember, a lot of people list fruit from their trees on craigslist, free to a good home.
Basin and Range report: Much less snow than there was 2 years ago. Peaks had more snow in July of 2011 than they have in May of 2013. I basically went across the entire state of Nevada, both the southern and northern parts of the state. Only good signs I saw was that range of mountains east of US 6 between Benton and Bishop were absolutely LOADED with snow. This drains into the Owens Valley, I think, and Los Angeles gets all that water.
Random trivia: Gas station in northern Nevada had two very large tanks of “off road diesel”. Price is 50 cents/gal less than road diesel at the pump.
I guess that range would be the White Mountains.
@George B:
I expect that California (and likely Nevada) get a drought when it gets darned cold elsewhere. Probably ought to look up the history on it though… but watching snow packs ought to be “interesting” in the next decade or two…
Saw this article and thought it was important and that I would share:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/13/climaphobe-german-scientist-insists-climate-scientists-need-to-take-over-global-policy-making/
http://www.westonaprice.org/metabolic-disorders/copper-zinc-imbalance Eating too much plant food can give you copper-zinc imbalance
Lightning produced by Cosmic rays http://phys.org/news/2013-05-russian-evidence-notion-lightning-cosmic.html
For the middle of North Carolina yesterday we set a record low. I watched the temperatures closely on wunderground.com because I knew we were going to set a record and I wanted to see how it would be handled.
The Forecast was for a low of 55°F.
The nearby rural station was 35.2 °F ~ 6:40 AM
The county airport reported 36 °F yesterday at 6:40 AM
The record was 41 °F set in 1895
And today the reported low for the Airport is now reported as 39 °F. How come it is 3°F HIGHER than the actual recorded temperature yesterday? It was not the Raleigh-Durham Airport reading because it too was 36°F yesterday when I checked. (Today the county airport reports 88 °F while the Raleigh-Durham Airport reading is 84 °F at 6:40 PM. We FINALLY have spring weather.)
…………….
Think about this:
If the numbers are being fudged 2-3°F higher, and I have caught this fudge on several occasions, then we are actually not at 16 to 17 years of not change but are cooling. Even with the number fudging we are getting: Cold and snow wave grips the USA, nearly 10,000 cold and snow records set in the last six weeks April 23, 2013 by Anthony Watts
Greg Goodman at WUWT did a comparison I have been wondering about lately. We know CO2 dissolves more in cold water and out-gasses in warm water. He looked at the Arctic Osillation Index vs d/dt of CO2 and graphed it. Sort of sticks a pointy finger at the ocean as the CO2 outgassing culprit instead of coal.
E.M.
Computer has been down so I’ve probably missed a few
QH16/05/2013
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/mater-hospital-could-have-saved-the-state-one-billion-dollars-by-taking-over-queensland-healths-payroll-system/story-e6freoof-1226644407527
EM
It looks like PG&E would like to change how they set rates:
2014 GENERAL RATE CASE PHASE II
PREPARED TESTIMONY
EXHIBIT (PG&E-1)
VOLUME 1
REVENUE ALLOCATION AND RATE DESIGN
Click to access GRC2014-Ph-II_Test_PGE_20130418_272001.pdf
“2. Overview 1 of PG&E’s Residential Rate Proposal
2 PG&E’s proposals in this proceeding to (a) reduce baseline quantities,
3 (b) increase the CARE Tier 3 rate and, (c) re-design Schedules E-7, E-8 and
4 E-9 to be revenue-neutral, will provide additional revenues that can be used
5 to somewhat mitigate high upper-tier rates for non-CARE customers.13
6 While these proposals are not a panacea for solving the high upper-tier rate
7 problem, they at least provide some downward pressure on these rates,
8 and, in combination with a reduced revenue allocation to Schedule E-1, help
9 reduce the non-CARE Tier 4 rate by about five cents per kWh.
10 PG&E’s proposals for changes to its optional, or voluntary, rate
11 schedules, where the Commission has rate-setting flexibility,14 have a
12 number of positive features. First, the introduction of basic service fees will
13 make PG&E’s residential TOU rates consistent with all its other, non14
residential, TOU rates which already have such fees. These basic service
15 fees more closely align TOU rates with PG&E’s cost of service, and take a
16 step toward sending more accurate price signals to customers regarding the
17 fixed and variable costs of electric service. Second, PG&E’s proposal to
18 reduce the number of tiers on these voluntary schedules from four to two is………………………”
PG&E has 4.65 million residential accounts by the way as noted in table- 3-1.
It looks like PG&E is getting ready to take advantage of ‘Smart Meters’
To translate
That means that PG&E can not only charge for installing the ‘government required’ smart meter, they can also charge for the equipment that allows them to shut off your electricity during rolling blackout or shut off your water heater instead of your freezer.
The other half of that story:
GOVERNMENT:
INVESTORS:
This is Bastiat’s Broken-Window Fallacy on steroids. (A hooligan break a shop’s window and provides work for the glazier.)
Robert P. Murphy ( Ludwig von Mises Institute) explains why the Broken-Window approach to economic stimulus is very bad for the community as a whole.
Having a bit of a ‘lazy day’, so no new posting yet… trying to find my inspiration ;-)
Along the way, downloaded GHCN and GIStemp to the Raspberry Pi (and installed gfortran FORTRAN compiler). Don’t think I’ll do anything with it for a while, but thought I ought to at least put the parts on a chip where I can play with them and find out how broken it is on an ARM chip / new port of Linux… “someday”…
Along the way, I also took a look at “Union File System” and aufs… (one wonders where the Confederate File System is to be found, perhaps someone in Georgia is working on it ;-) preparatory to making a ‘read only’ locked SD chip version of Raspbian (Debian Linux on the R.Pi) for even more secure computing… which lead to a rather remarkable web page.
It is the “etiquette” page of the Arch Linux Forum. There is much in it with which I agree. Not just “rules” but the whole “philosophy” of life and all that it portrays. I recommend reading it.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum_Etiquette
No, I’m not going to adopt it ‘in full’ as my “rules”, but there’s much in it with which I agree; and only a little that I think is a bit too restrictive. Yet even that gives useful philosophical background for why it “makes sense”…
With that, I’m going back to what I was doing… putting in the Tech Mode for a bit longer while I look for inspiration for a non-tech posting. (There’s just soooo much crap going on in the world right now it’s hard to pick one bit that stands out! 1/2 ;-) So Syria? Where the world is starting it’s road to hell? Or Iran, who is furnishing the Giant Bus for all to ride down that road? Or the “Wall of Money” from {The Fed, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, …} that is forcing stock markets up, but otherwise doing “not very much” since you can’t fix fiscal problems with monetary policy (though the drug feels good for a while…)?
@Gale:
Since I have no “smart appliances” (and whenever forced to have them, will put data chokes on the power feeds…) at most it becomes a ‘load leveling’ problem for me. Since I’m already moving my major power consumption to fuels, and off of electricity, one could say I’ve “already written them off”… About 6 months I’ll either have a battery box / inverter “load leveler” in place for the misc loads; or I’ll be living in a different non-PG&E place.
Making electricity is easy. They make the cost too high, even (or especially!) at certain times of day, I’ll just “roll my own”. (And that can include sucking down “low cost night time” power at 20 ¢ and charging batteries to then power things myself when they want 50 ¢ /kW-hr for power. Even with a 20% loss, that would be less than 25 ¢ / kW-hr to me. A 1/2 discount? I’ll make a battery box with timer on the charger for that…
On “the value of money”: Perhaps I’ll find my muse there… currency (i.e. not a store of value just a medium of exchange) has no inherent “value”, so the fact that someone might bugger it isn’t really very surprising. It is essentially “self buggering”. See the Pascal quote on paper money…. I have hardly any of it anyway. Frankly, I think that’s why most folks are not concerned. Having a mountain of debt, and no cash, you want inflation…. what “worth” I have is almost entirely in “stuff” (house, cars, etc.) and not in dollar bills.
Oh, well, time to check on downloads of GHCN data and then look for inspiration on the daily news…
EM Smith says,
“https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum_Etiquette”
“Personal Topics/Rants
Rants and complaints are frowned on and may be closed as they are discovered. Posts of this type are much better suited for a blog or other personal web space and are unwanted on the Arch forums. Public posts should be open, productive and inviting to all members. Discussions among a select group of users should take place in private message.”
Thank you EM, it is really nice to have a thread discussion that stays on topic. I will be more than happy to copy and paste my exchange with Adolfo to another blog and let you remove the comments entirely, if you like. The book he advertised (Not in His Image Lash) was off topic and I should not have allowed myself to become provoked by cultic, historic revisionist, anti-Americanism on a thread that was about Microsoft Access Point Sharing.
Volocano map coloring red? Or do I need a new pair of glasses: http://www.volcano-news.com/erupting_volcanoes.html
@Zeke:
I think you are taking things far too personally… It was just an off hand remark that that particular set of etiquette rules was rather well done. Not directed at anyone at all, and certainly not at you. More about me having a “slow day” and finding it interesting (largely as it does a nice job of defining things like “Trolls” ;-)
Heck, I even went out of my way to say some of it was “too restrictive” (even if much of it is good).
So no, I’m not going to be deleting any “exchanges” between folks, and no, I don’t find them a bother at all. ( In fact, one of the bits that is, IMHO, too restrictive in their “rules” is enforced “on topic” and restrictions on personal expression. ) Frankly, I like the “chewing the fat around the fire” ambiance of folks who comment here. So please, don’t change! And certainly don’t take my comment on some other folks rules as meaning I want folks here to follow them. I might pick out one or two (IFF they don’t change the ambiance and ‘culture’ here) to copy (like the one on trolling..) but most likely won’t change anything.
I just found it remarkably well done as a list, especially for a narrow topic technical board.
@R. de Haan:
The list does look a bit longer, and the map a bit redder, than the last time I looked.
Mexico has Popocatépetl kicking up a fuss (enough that it made the general news…) and Iceland is “on the edge”. Africa had something starting to rift, IIRC, and from Indonesia to Russia to Alaska is being grumpy…
I’m expecting a “big one” sometime in the next couple of years, but it could be today, or could be a half decade from now… but as long as it’s not Yellowstone scale, I’ll be reasonably happy ;-)
EU loses oversight. Stress test banks postponed until 2014, after they have established the Bank Union = Federal Europe. The sub header states that postponing the stress test will provide them with the opportunity to perform some quiet bank bailouts and make a smooth repair when they have seized control over the German savings deposits. What we see here is the biggest theft in history because they are going to steal the money before the bank with the biggest exposure in the world in regard to derivatives is going to blow. We’re talking German Bank here and their exposure is 100 times the total amount of German savings deposits and 22 times the German BNP. Now if I were a German citizen with money in the bank I would make a run for it and buy gold asap. The aparatchiks have decided to go for broke. http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2013/05/17/ezb-verliert-den-ueberblick-stress-tests-fuer-banken-verschoben/
Fortunately we can’t look into the future but the volcano casino is open. Maybe you should take a look at the quake map of the icelandic Reykjane Ridge http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=3659
By the way, fresh snow has fallen in Spain and Barachas measured only 3 degrees Celsius. The last time I was in Madrid was at the end of Januari and people were complaining about the cold. It was 18 degrees Celsius. Spain was doomed a few years ago, an extension of the Sahara desert. Now all the water depots are full and there is still plenty of rain underway. We now have to go to Africa for a little sunshine.
Making electricity is easy. They make the cost too high, even (or especially!) at certain times of day, I’ll just “roll my own”. (And that can include sucking down “low cost night time” power at 20 ¢ and charging batteries to then power things myself when they want 50 ¢ /kW-hr for power. Even with a 20% loss, that would be less than 25 ¢ / kW-hr to me. A 1/2 discount? I’ll make a battery box with timer on the charger for that…
Charge up overnight on off peak electricity and sell it back to them at a profit during the day. But then there are batteries involved and efficiency losses and costs of batteries… might work ?
@R.de Haan:
Pardon,you Dutch is showing. ;-)
http://mymemory.translated.net/t/Dutch/English/gemiddelde%20groei%20bnp
BNP = GDP…
“The reaction of investors would be a possible withdrawal from the government bond market and rising interest costs for countries such as Spain, Italy and France. That and the economic difficulties could accelerate the need for a bailout for these countries in turn. But Spain, Italy and France are too large to be adequately supplied with funds from the ESM”
That, IMHO, is the real root of it. “Too big to fail” is an apt description of those countries. If any ONE of them hits the wall, it’s over. And they WILL hit the wall. On one of the news programs (D.W.?) they had a story about how folks in Spain were looking for new careers with a future… so were re-training to be sheep herders… They showed a 1/2 dozen folks in the ‘6 month class’. One was a veterinarian, but most were “prime working years” males with backgrounds like “Electrical Engineer”… (One suspects prior employment installing / designing solar power systems… or building houses…) With unemployment on a structural basis headed for 30% Spain is in huge trouble.
So Socialism is doing what it always does. “The solution to pollution is dilution” so it’s looking to dilute the ‘problem’ of central planned economic failures in The Green Dream via “averaging” it in with other countries.
The big problem is the only one of size that isn’t crap is Germany, and even that isn’t solid. So average Spain with Italy and France and Greece and Cyprus and… what do you get?
I do hope they don’t go for a banking takeover (take under?) and more asset confiscation. If they do, it will be riots in the streets and economic chaos for months (years?)…
@J. Martin:
It will work at some of the pricing schedules being presently used in California. In the Central Valley in summer cooling months PG&E has a rate tariff of 97 ¢ or so. Just shy of $1. Off peak is something like 19 ¢ / kW-hr. So about 5 : 1 ratio. You could have only 50% efficiency and each $10 sold back cost you only $4 to buy, so you have $6 available for capital costs and operations. 10 kW-hrs can be stored in a pretty small appliance… approximately 1000 Amp-hrs at 10 VDC (lead acid RV battery under load and partial discharge with line losses). That’s 2 or 4 batteries depending on how pessimistic you want to get. Call it $400 (way high). 400 / $5 (presuming you want $1 for profit) is 80. So in 80 “cycles” you are making a profit. If you only discharge the batteries 1/2 way, that’s 160 days. One “heating season”.
Now realize that there’s a load of pessimistic assumptions in there…. and real break even is likely to be sooner than that.
Heck, as I pointed out elsewhere, I can make electricity with my gasoline standby generator at about 65 ¢ / kW-hr. With a $1 tariff, that’s a 35% profit just by putting my A/C on a gasoline generator mid-day… (or putting my neighbors on one via selling that power to PG&E through a feed in meter… you really think it can tell generator electrons from solar panel electrons?..)
The whole rate structure is based on the fantasy that people won’t do resource substitution nor generate their own power nor just say “screw you” and pull the plug. That’s just wrong.
Heck, I’m already doing my cooking on a kerosene stove as it is significantly cheaper, and that isn’t even with the crazy high punitive Time Of Day rates structure (as I’m not in the Central Valley…) So folks figure this stuff out…
Were I on a farm somewhere, I’d be looking at my big old tractor with power take off and a generator head. At a bare minimum I’d be running “stand alone” during peaks of price. Odds are I’d be looking at a flat out “cut the wire” (or planting solar panels and a transfer switch to the generator such that I could keep on making power even with the sun blocked and selling it to the power company…)
Since we are covering a multitude of sins, er, ideas, here, this seems an appropriate place:
M5.9 off the coast of Fukushima, Japan
http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/00000000092.html
An explanation of the schizophrenic gold market – paper gold crash – solid gold climb
http://therealasset.co.uk/gold-market-unveiled/
E.M. Try
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/a-modern-climatologist/#more-3891
Brilliant IMO
And FYI
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/#more-3900
@Punmaster:
What a HOOT!
@Another Ian:
Ok, off to do my reading ;-)
@Punmaster:
I just realized that’s about 40? years old? Yet it’s almost an exact fit to now… Golly…
That’s why I chose it. Nothing in it needs to be changed.
As far as I can tell, Sheldon Harnick wrote the song in 1958, so 55 years. Quite the prophet, wasn’t he?
India Summer snow…….http://iceagenow.info/2013/05/india-summer-snowfall-thrills-tourists/
Also from Ice Age Now: Snowfall data from NOAA Rutger’s Snow Lab for April is in. It ranked high enough to make the cold season (November 2012 to April 2013) average the HIGHEST in the record
Can’t say I am surprised.
Fenbeagle cartoons latest:
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/the-arrogantauts/
Do you know Prof.Eric Dollard?
@Zeke:
Thanks for the link. I hate fruitcake, even free.
That’s just the thing. The density and hardness of a fruitcake normally would not allow it to float like that.
So it is a HOLLOW FRUITCAKE, Gaia is not quite the dish she used to be in the old days, and the free green battery…hasn’t quite been invented yet. (: Cheers to Fenbeagle, lol.
Rossi’s ECAT gets a new paper
Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device containing hydrogen loaded nickel powder.
Giuseppe Levi
Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
Evelyn Foschi
Bologna, Italy
Click to access Indication-of-anomalous-heat-energy-production-in-a-reactor-device.pdf
In case you missed it on the Rasberry Pi post – there is another article on Beowolf R-Pi cluster here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/32_way_raspebrry_pi_cluster/ with a link to the pdf of the thesis
Forbes has this new article:
Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Best President?
He did not address what I said but when another person brought up the broken unemployment statisitics:
The reply:
So because the baby boomers are being forced out of the market and can not find decent jobs “WE DON”T COUNT” Ain’t government logic great?
@E.M. This is a present (I´m sure) for you:
Click to access General%20Theory%20of%20Telluric%20Electric%20Wave%20Transmission%20and%20Reception%20-%20N6KPH_Hertz_Tesla.pdf
@All:
I’m a bit “rushed” right now with some personal events. (Kid visiting from out of State, getting a car fixed, and some ‘other stuff’ I’ll cover later).
So please don’t be surprised if I’m a bit slow on the ‘comment catch up’. I’ll try to keep the postings happening at a reasonable rate, but right now I’m just a bit “slammed”… so y’all keep each other company for a while, ok? ;-)
Wednesday, 22 May 2013 10:28
World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve
“A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts.”
Thanks for the PDF “Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device
containing hydrogen loaded nickel powder,” Gail. Pay backs (:
Thanks Zeke, here is the link for everyone else
World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/15473-world-bank-insider-blows-whistle-on-corruption-federal-reserve
Yes, I wonder how long she will live. ‘They’ killed Presidents and Congressmen for bucking the system.
She also mentions at the end
Why does none of this surprise me?
The White House has already crossed all of its t’s regarding declaring its powers during a “state of emergency” by updating old laws. For example, there is one 2012 executive order which declares power to take over all industry in the event of a national emergency (ref).
That is why I think it is serious that the AP accidently posted that the WH had been … and the Pres. had been …. There also was a link posted here that warned of a faked crisis that would allow the Pres. to declare a national emergency, and target tea party members and Christians.
Perhaps some prefer to eliminate Christians, so let me simply allow you to look before you leap. Countries which have decided to engage in violence to destroy the Christian minorities include Communist China, Iran, Russia, and pre-wwII Germany (ref). Of course, Rome made a sporting pass time of killing Christians and it continued with the Roman Church (see Fox’s Book of Martyrs) Whenever a country falls to an Islamic power structure, minorities always vanish. As much as anyone may hate my liberty, my Creator, and my Book, it’s no reason to get so urgent. In a way, I say that for others’ sakes, more than mine, because of the misery that people bring on themselves, as history shows.
ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8rT76vNmxc&feature=youtu.be
ref: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness
The Youtube video is entitled “Elke’s Warning.” Duration 8 min 19 sec.
@Zeke: Kind of crazy!…but for me this still looks a pathetic childish behavior: Bad kids left without control end breaking apart the school, the books and even their teachers. Is there a cure for this?
E.M.
Your back yard?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/23/just-had-an-earthquake-in-california/
Finally some upbeat news breaking the Green Wall: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323975004578501100161015818.html#
Andy Vidak wins 16th State Senate district special election
Democratic rival Leticia Perez concedes defeat
Ms. Perez raised twice as much money as Mr. Vidak, but 90% of her contributions came from outside the district. So for once money was not the deciding factor in the election.
Congradulations to Andy Vidak.
E.M.
A handy summary
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/global_warming_the_quiz/
And in the msm too!
Saw a rather healthy coyote this evening between Aptos and Watsonville, CA tonight. Not the least bit scrawny, probably the biggest coyote I have ever seen in my life. Maybe someone’s been feeding it. Was just standing there in the middle of a field.
crosspatch, my husband saw a ‘black panther’ ( melanistic jaguar ) cross the road in a single bound without touching the pavement. Sightings are pretty common around here but the “officials” deny they released mating pairs. (One guy saw them in a cage at a burger joint just before release in the North Carolina Appalachians.) A guy I was just talking to this weekend caught an ear tagged coyote in a trap. Seems the university was releasing them. He was told to forget he saw the tag.
It is all part of Rewilding North America and Pleistocene Rewilding one of Ted Turner’s brain farts. Unfortunately he has the money and influence to make it happen.
I think the elite want the unwashed masses caged in Mayor bloomberg’s micro-mini-apartments so they can make North America their giant hunting preserve.
origins of the WWF It is all part of the US Man and the Biosphere Strategic Plan, UN/US Heritage
Corridor Program, “The Wildlands Project” or what ever other name they want to call it. link
Remember the comment about China invading India? well here is an update about ‘unrest’ in India:
On the same page is “Greece’s tentative recovery? ”
[Reply: Don’t know if that’s the link you had in mind. The link was empty so I went fishing and that’s what I found. They also have a Greek Link, though a bit different: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/05/27/green-shoots-in-greece/ so if those are not what you had, post an update / correction. -E.M.Smith ]
Well, there have always been coyotes here in California, you just don’t usually see them that healthy as the one I saw but maybe there are a lot of gophers in its territory.
Saw this. More evidence that Mammoths were “flash frozen”?
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/29/wooly-mammoth-blood-recovered-from-frozen-carcass-russian-scientists-say/?intcmp=features
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/53574 Based on these results, major contributions of the sulfur budget in the stratosphere can be analyzed directly. Among others, carbonyl sulfide (COS) gas produced by organisms ascends from the oceans, disintegrates at altitudes higher than 25 km, and provides for a basic concentration of sulfur dioxide. The increase in the stratospheric aerosol concentration observed in the past years is caused mainly by sulfur dioxide from a number of volcano eruptions. “Variation of the concentration is mainly due to volcanoes,” Höpfner explains. Devastating volcano eruptions, such as those of the Pinatubo in 1991 and Tambora in 1815, had big a big effect on the climate. The present study also shows that smaller eruptions in the past ten years produced a measurable effect on sulfur dioxide concentration at altitudes between 20 and 30 km. “We can now exclude that anthropogenic sources, e.g. power plants in Asia, make a relevant contribution at this height,” Höpfner says.
Things we don’t know.
Some videos of scientist thinking and doing things outside the dogmatism of scientism.
https://www.youtube.com/user/ThunderboltsProject?feature=watch
I was just thinking about the whole “CO2 doubling” thing. Suppose (hypothetically) that doubling of atmospheric CO2 produces a one degree Celsius global temperature rise. OK, then halving the CO2 produces a one degree drop. And halving it again produces another 1 degree drop — and so on. Obviously, this logarithmic decrease has to turn linear at some point. I mean, take the extreme end point of one molecule of CO2 in the entire atmosphere; doubling that to two molecules is not going to make a one degree jump in temperature. Where is the point at which the logarithmic relationship becomes roughly accurate? If I had to guess, I would think it is about the point at which the average radiated photon path becomes more likely to end at another CO2 molecule than it is to zip on through the atmosphere. Have any of you put thought into the mechanism of what happens at extremely low CO2 concentrations?
@ E.M.,
Presuming that you’d be doing some more contemplation of thunder storm formations while on assignment in FL, it occurred to me the first 3-4 minutes of this video of Gerald Pollack might be food for thoughts in your observations while consuming adults beverages in the pool .
One more video on the behavior of water in the presence of High voltage Electric field.
Here is the newest morphing of Global Warming: Global warming caused by chlorofluorocarbons, not carbon dioxide, new study says
Wiggle matching of CFCs so warmists can claim Mankind is STILL to blame.
Al Gore is getting even richer … check this out!
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/wastelandia-andrew-weaver-et-als-big-green-choru-and-ymphony-in-the-key-of-gore/
@E.M.: This is what you were looking for!: A way for transmitting information at the frequency you want, without any hindrance at all! : TESLA´S SCALAR WAVES
Though Tesla created himself real trouble, because by using this way of transmitting energy it was going to be for free, and it meant the end of J.P.Morgan´s funding, NOW THIS SYSTEM COULD BE APPLIED FOR INTERNET, AS INTERNET IS INDIRECTLY FUNDED. This kind of waves cannot be stopped by a Faraday Cage or anything:
Click to access tesla_scalar.pdf
This is demonstrated here:Superluminal Scalar Waves for Communications
And reproduced here by Prof.Eric Dollard, using Tesla´s same configuration:
@E.M.: Be the first one to do it!
I dragged a different issue of Quaternary Research into the loo and happened across this paper that relates to a recent subject here. The subject of the paper is evidence of an extreme drought that corresponds to the Greek Dark Ages and lasted from about 1200BC to around 800BC. This drought was then immediately broken by the wettest period in over 1000 years. The period around 800BC would have been particularly wet. You can see pollen counts from cultivated species explode after this event.
Click to access Kaniewski_et_al_ACC_East_Med_2010_QR.pdf
@E.M. If you check this thing of “scalar waves” next time you won´t need to go to Florida, you would be already there: A circuit delimits space.
@Adolfo:
OK… just lets do a little test… you send me a couple of kg of gold, and since it will already be where you are, and where I am, you won’t be out anything and I’ll not have to work… ;-)
http://pesn.com/2011/03/26/9501797_Teslas_Scalar_Waves_Replicated_by_Steve_Jackson/
seems to indicate some foundation for “scalar waves”… IEEE is not known for being wild eyed…
Hmmm….
@Crosspatch:
Gee… looks like it was followed by the Iron Age cold period…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age_Cold_Epoch
@L.G.:
Yes, I’ll be “studying” LOTS of water ;-)
Join Verizon today!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order
Lake Lots available- New Construction!
http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/
E.M.
FYI
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/wastelandia-andrew-weaver-et-als-big-green-choru-and-ymphony-in-the-key-of-gore/
And
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/lewandowsky-and-cook-and-the-barack-obama-tweet-that-wasnt/
E.M.
More moon
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/can-the-moon-change-our-climate-can-tides-in-the-atmosphere-solve-the-mystery-of-enso/
Ian Wilson said in that Jo Nova thread on the moon
Now THAT should be some really interesting reading!
GOOD NEWS!
Climate NGO Quits Australia As Green Politics Turn Sour
Now What was that about a piece of paper called a Constitution ?
NSA whistleblowers say agency casts wide net
NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program
Anger swells after NSA phone records court order revelations: Senior politicians reveal that US counter-terrorism efforts have swept up personal data from American citizens for years
Obama staunchly defends US surveillance programmes: …The possibility of a third secret program letting the NSA tap into credit card transaction records emerged late Thursday in a report in The Wall Street Journal….
Is Annoying a Police Officer Is Still Legal in New York?
Dept. of Homeland Security: Laptops, Phones Can Be Searched Based on Hunches
I can not find the quote (Opera burped and there went my documentation) But the architect of the Patriot Act was moaning about this intrusion into the privacy of the individual was not what he had in mind when he wrote the bill. Just a bit of CYA so he continues to get elected in my opinion.
Gail Combs says:
The Climate Group said it would continue to work with the (Labor) government of South Australia, which Kenber said had provided “clear evidence of the low carbon opportunity that is within Australia’s grasp and that can be realized when the right political leadership and policy frameworks are in place.”
Well, the S.A. State elections are in March 2014. Somehow I don’t think the Labor Government will be campaigning on bringing the highest electricity prices in Australia (and much of the World) and racking up an enormous debt burden.
And May here was overcast with little wind, so neither solar nor wind farms produced much power. The State only kept running because of brown coal fired power brought in from Victoria, at considerable cost. SEE http://papundits.wordpress.com/author/tonyoz/
Is South Australia’s Wind Power Cheap? Well, No
my last two comments got booted into the ether @ The True Sign of Water Vapor Feedback is Negative
I am trying to see if this posts.
From the suggestions page on Tallblokes Blog
Michele Casati said on June 9, 2013 at 9:40 pm
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3913
They measured the heat input and out put of a cold fusion device with and without any reactive components and were thus confident of the validity of their results, namely that the device produces anomalous amounts of heat an order of magnitude greater than could be explained chemically.
The paper can be downloaded and is not behind a pay wall.
Perhaps I may one day have to change my mind about cold fusion.
Scandals, scandals and more scandals.
I have said several times that the MSM is a propaganda outlet not real news. Seems the washington Post agrees
So on to Mark Steyn and the national review link
I do not often get angry about things I read or see online. Concerned? Yes. Amused? Often. Informed? Certainly. But angry? Not so much. I am angry right now. I just read a comment posted on Tom Nelson’s blog by someone with the initials J.R. http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/06/wael-hmaidan-director-of-climate-action.html?showComment=1371183200597#c1733560038675186939
Here is an excerpt:
“We are irrevocably committed to 8C warming and the extinction of all life on Earth (except for some very low life forms which will manage this temperature increase). This is a provable FACT now. Humanity has less than 100 years of survival left. In that time, billions will die. The effects of climate change are already clearly evident, taking the lives of thousands and it is accelerating. By 2050, the annual death toll will be in the millions per year. There is very little time left. ~J.R.~ ”
Note that I am NOT angry at J.R. I suspect that he is being extraordinarily honest in expressing what he believes. I can only imagine what sort of personal hell it must be to truly believe what he believes. I am angry at the people who have convinced him of this propaganda. I am especially angry at the so-called scientists who have pushed this catastrophic meme for their own profit and funding. I am angry about the lost lives and the lost opportunities that were given up so that funds could go to well connected anti-CO2 opportunists. I am angry that they have damaged the good name of science in their own self interest. Shame on them. Curse them. May either God or fate save poor people like J.R. from the lies of such evil men and women.
E.M.
FYI
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/6/14/kevin-trenberth-is-a-very-naughty-boy.html
and
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/6/14/on-the-meaning-of-ensemble-means.html
VENIAMINOF VOLCANO eruption: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/
E.M.
You may well be interested in this new archaeological find in Germany. It’s a Celtic grave with very interesting items.
As the article says –
It’s at – http://www.dw.de/archeologists-revise-image-of-ancient-celts/a-16528844
@Tkcev : It was a great culture…until the Annunaki originated cult, from Sumeria through Melchisedek and Abraham, and lately the christians, propagated a “salvationist” cult where we all are born guilty and must thank oppressors for making us suffer. Clearly they had to destroy such a joyful, independent and attuned with nature life of the Celts, such PAGAN existence to replace it by the lives we live today.
I beg to differ on this. First, the claims to know what the “Celts” believed is not substantiated with any actual texts. The “Celts” like all other victims of PAGAN Rome, were reduced to nothing but funerary inscriptions, and Roman characterizations (more like mischaracterizations).
Next, answer the simple question and tell me what the “Celts” called themselves. You will not be able to, because this is a Greek term. And it is very likely that those various people who are termed “Celts” by the Greeks and Romans were many different tribes.
Next, lacking any texts from these people, Western scholars confirm Roman historians and conjecture their own biases into the evidence. Look at the article. The so-called “Celts” were traders and merchants, with the people that Rome later brutalized and destroyed. The one thing I have been able to determine in this horrifying Roman mess, is that the “Celts” built cities with good drainage, and preferred to build with impermanent materials. Notably, these cities lack any enormous palaces and the homes are for the most part the same size. The Chief apparently provided military protection and security which enabled the rich commerce, travel, and trading, evident in the young lady’s burial.
Please, honestly, once Rome had crushed all of these people and destroyed their cultures, so that no trace of their writings even exist, all of this is conjecture, and a lot of work needs to be done to retrieve the past.
Even using the Roman and Greek names for these ancient people is the equivalent of using racial epithets. It’s that bad.
“and lately the christians, propagated a “salvationist” cult where we all are born guilty and must thank oppressors for making us suffer.”
The weasely Western scholars have worked long and hard at their paradigms, but the fact is that many ancient people believed in an after life that is based on the life that we lead here on earth.
Believing in an afterlife is not a cult, unless you are prepared to call all of the people who had hope of life after death cultists. Perhaps you prefer to confirm Roman paganism and decree that all people inconvenient to the World Empire were cultists. But most of our greatest works of art are inspired by the belief in life after death. The weasely Western scholars have always hated those who believe that each of us has free will to chose between good and truth, or evil and falsehood, and that every individual, upon dying, remains the same in nature as he was on earth – and so his loves, affections, and decisions whether good or evil remain his true nature in the next life.
Zoroaster taught the world of this perhaps as early as 1700 BC, but even the Yashts say that they are repeating what was even more ancients said.
Zeke,
Thank you so much for your comments above. I last read Herodotus fifty years ago but well remember that his humility was enchanting. He was less likely to lead the reader astray; less authoritative.
I particularly liked his discussion of the causes of the annual rise and fall of the Nile. He notes three theories for it which were extant at the time he visited Egypt. One was snow-melt in the South. He chose one of the others as more likely, but the other two were also reported.
@E.M.:Perhaps you are interested in this, as goes along your preoccupation of internet interference:
@E.M. About that “interference”. As a member of the third world I am beginning to believe that up there you are becoming increasingly intoxicated by too much chewing gum. Really. Why not start living like decent people?
jferguson says, ” I last read Herodotus fifty years ago but well remember that his humility was enchanting. He was less likely to lead the reader astray; less authoritative.”
You are right. In this case, I am entertaining the idea that just as there were over 2000 Native American languages, and there were hundreds of Aboriginal languages, there may have been many hundreds of tribes on the European continent, and all that is written is coming through this Classical filter. There seems to be nothing left but digging up their graves, but if this is done, one would certainly wish that the scholars would at least get it right. Otherwise, you add insult to injury – you remove their urns lovingly buried and then say, “Oh, it was just an urn field culture.”
Yet even so, I do wish to hear from these people themselves. I think it may be possible in some cases, but first it must be recognized that there is an enormous void and lack of evidence. I do not idealize all ancient cultures other than Greeks and Romans, but I do really think some of them were truly advanced and wonderful people, and it would be nice to at least know who they were in their own words. It is a real grief to see these palaces built for Nero’s cousins and relatives sitting on top of the places where once there was a town and small farms.
It seems even the Greek writings were largely translated into Latin by a single man, a lover of Empire, Cicero.
~Archived Comment~
This is an oldie but goodie (:
EM Smith says:
Due to the Roman Empire essentially obliterating everything around it, our “history” tends to start with them, and they describe it all from a Roman POV.
Lately we’ve found more ‘stuff in the ground’ that pushes history back a lot before the Romans. So we have Germans and Celts in Bavaria / Czech making beer and having a big party together… about 3000 BC IIRC. We have a red-head with R1b haplogroup as a sitting Pharaoh in ancient Egypt AND they have records of hiring Celtic armies as mercenaries. I’m pretty sure their Druids were around at the time… ( which might explain some of the interesting parallels of beliefs and technologies in what few cases we can identify… )
Near as I can work it out, Germans and Celts (and possibly Slavs) all originated from near Anatolia about 9000 to 16,000 years ago as one group/ tribe and started to spread out. Later the Romans came along and scribbled over most of it, and the Greeks got the label of first culture of merit, and the rest was rampant fabrication.
o for about 5,000 to 12,000 years we have Germans and Celts running around Europe and even down into Egypt. But NONE of that history is thought real enough to care about it…
That, BTW, is part of why I ‘dig at’ bits of ancient history and archaeology from before the Roman / Greek empires… Celts were making advanced metal works and soap long before the Romans learned to pipe water (and started eating lead…)
FWIW, I think the German root reaches back to the Hittites (or very near them) and the Slavs reach back to Thrace and the Celts are between them in N. Italy / Switzerland. Prior to that there was a more ‘single group’ character as they came from Scythia and Anatolia as individual tribes that were not yet differentiated into their modern forms enough to call them different.
That we find 12,000 year old monumental architecture in Anatolia is not an accident. That we find an ‘unknown culture’ with a kind of writing in Bulgaria and related about 1/2 way from then to now is also not an accident. It’s one long span of migration and slow drift. Now we’re in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Argentina, etc. etc…. but speaking different languages…
(Still seem to have a fascination for metals, weapons, technology, and beer, though. Some things never change ;-) And now that the USA has approved women in combat, the Celtic Warrior Women are making a return. Babes with Guns, what could be better? ;-)
The increased introduction of sophisticated electronics into modern automobiles has made them safer and more efficient. Here is a paper which studies how they have become more open to malicious attack.
Click to access cars-oakland2010.pdf
Zeke,
is there any writing extant from the pre-Roman Europeans? There are written pieces from the early Egyptians which has not been processed by the Romans, or maybe anyone else. One of the most amazing is a note written by Imhotep, doctor and architect whose work included the step pyramid tomb of Djoser, an early Pharoh. I wish I could find it, but my books are in storage.
Imhotep was complaining in the note that the stone cutters weren’t keeping up with his construction schedule for a project. He said this was a persistent problem.
This was something like 5,000 years ago.
How about notes about getting those menhirs to the site on time?
Well today is the Summer Solstice and here in NC we have had only two days over 90F (32C) compared to thirty three days over 90F (32C) ten years ago.
Meanwhile WUWT has
Say What? Oh and my ponies have not finished shedding their winter coats and my Buck (goat) has just come into rut! Goats come into rut in September just like deer do WUWT???
Sunlight is supposed to be the trigger for both. Is this showing animals respond to solar minimums in weird ways?
(Cornell has the best goat vet in the USA. I have talked to her by phone)
j ferguson says:
21 June 2013 at 10:30 pm “Imhotep was complaining in the note that the stone cutters weren’t keeping up with his construction schedule for a project.”
Yes, I have heard the Egyptians had a hard time holding on to decent slaves. lol (:
inre: writing before the Roman Empire
What I am always harping about are the cultures that do not have any written record of their own, or a very fragmentary one recorded in bits – by their conquerors.
This would include all of these people who seem to have lived in or migrated away from Anatolia.
For example, the Lydians, Phrygians, “Celts,” (although there are runes which may be based on a Latin alphabet),Thracians, Etruscans, all these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_languages
And the Indus Valley people, the civilizations of the Sangam Age, Myceneans, Minoans, etc. If you remove the Greco Roman sources, you have only bits of graffitti, coins, furnerary inscriptions for hundreds and thousands of cultures. That to me is the real story.
@ j ferguson “Imhotep was complaining in the note that the stone cutters weren’t keeping up with his construction schedule for a project. He said this was a persistent problem.”
Sounds like proof of the Masonic conspiracy!
:)
There’s a more recent construction story that supports the idea that things don’t change much over years, or centuries.
Thomas Jefferson kept a diary when he was architect doing the University of Virginia – actually something that all competent architects do the better to reconstruct (term of art) the truth after something goes wrong. The diary and his correspondence have been preserved and published. Fascinating reading for anyone with construction experience.
He had ordered a clock for the tower from an outfit in Boston. It arrived by ship, was installed and could not be made to work. The usual letters were written back and forth (also preserved) and the decision was made to ship it (truly) back to Boston.
You guessed it. The next letter from Boston said that there was nothing wrong with the clock and they couldn’t understand what the problem was.
Jefferson wrote them to ship it back. (There is no indication in the correspondence about who is paying for all this shipping, but my guess is that it was the University).
It arrived, was re-installed and again failed to work – more correspondence.
Finally Jefferson agreed to pay for the travel expenses for a technician to come down to Virginia from Boston to make it work. He was apparently successful because there is no more correspondence. It could have been something simple and Jefferson was too embarrassed to write it up.
I am sure that many of you who read here will have had similar experiences. I certainly have.
The CLUB OF ROME and the destruction of the US:
Encryption technology:
This comment over at WUWT is just too good not to repost to make sure EM does not miss it.
I had to clean the tea off my keyboard especially after just reading Jai’s latest rant and Anthony’s rebuttal.
Thanks Gail!
Speaking of the destruction of the USA…. Here is an interesting article.
Doesn’t look good. Fortunately it is a Newsmax affiliate so it needs a large bucket of salt to go with it.
The Big Bang Never Happened,
Documentary.in 9 parts on Youtube.
The Semmelweis reflex or “Semmelweis effect” “…. is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.”
The story of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 – August 13, 1865) is a precautionary tale of what happens to scientists who are way out in front of the pack.
We see the moves in the ClimAstrology community as they seek to follow in the footsteps of the 1865 medical profession. WUWT covers most of the main attempts. This is a sampling:
2008
NASA’s Jim Hansen calls for energy company execs to be put on trial
2010
Morano on Fox News on the 10:10 exploding children film
2012
Beyond bizarre: University of Graz music professor calls for skeptic death sentences
University of Graz Responds to Parncutt’s calls for death penalty for “deniers”
2013
‘Lewd’ behavior: The pathologising of climate scepticism
WUWT Articles on John Cook’s ‘Peer-reviewed’ Toilet Paper and marketing the consensus before it’s ’97% Cooked’
Monckton completely ripping the Cook paper to shreds:
‘Quantifying the consensus on global warming in the literature’: a comment
The Original 97% Consensus Lie
PBS Frontline climate change special cites bogus ‘consensus’
Climatologists consensus on global warming: poll sample size 79
Consensus Argument Proves Climate Science Is Political
About that overwhelming 97-98% number of scientists that say there is a climate consensus…
Scientific consensus revisited
Thanks LG.
” A Plasma Universe ? ”
@L.G. That´s true: Now it seems that the only way left for Fred Flintstones´pebbles universe to be accepted in peoples´minds is by destroying them first by constantly irradiating them with soap operas, CNN news and pouring into them big volumes of discovery science episodes.
adolfogiurfa says:
27 June 2013 at 8:26 pm
….. Now it seems that the only way left for Fred Flintstones´pebbles universe to be accepted in peoples´minds is by destroying them first by constantly irradiating them with soap operas…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So THATS my problem! I hate soap operas and quit watching TV in 1974 (It’s been that long?!?) No wonder I didn’t turn into a mindless Obummer worshiper.
Gail Combs
Add another who basically doesn’t watch tv. Don’t inflict this on others.
Gail and Ian – Well, that’s three of us then. I usually tell people “I don’t waste my time watching television. I have much more interesting ways of wasting my time!” and let the conversation go from there.
I actually called by to mention that there’s a new paper out about the Voynich manuscript – still untranslated, if indeed translatable. About the only (fairly) certain thing known about it is that it does appear to be a genuine 15th century artifact, although even its history is patchy. From the paper, it looks as if the text also passes some standard linguistic statistical texts, so the tantalising possibility of an ultimate translation remains.
The paper is here.
A Wikimedia copy of the manuscript (therefore downloadable, if you don’t mind d/l’ing and organising over a hundred pictures!) is here. (Many thanks to Yale, current owners of this strange and wonderful document, for putting it there.)
Speaking of 2% of the people, I have never had a TV either (: I have raised my children without it, but of course they have sought out whole seasons of old shows on Youtube.
I am reading the Electric Sky by Donald Scott again. It is a magnificent book.
Steve C,
I haven’t tracked the Voynich decryption (if that is what they are) efforts recently but remember that a woman in California had suggested that the language was disguised Italian. She had apparently done a lot of work and written a paper describing her approach and its results.
j ferguson – Yes, I’ve come across her, Dr. Edith Sherwood (if this is the same woman). However, the translation / decryption on her site is, well, less than convincing to me. OTOH, her inspiration that the base language might be 15th century Italian sounds very plausible, so the answer remains, still, tantalisingly out of sight.
I wonder whether, a few centuries from now, people will be having similar thoughts and discussions about the Codex Serafiniani. It’s enigmatic, it looks as if it all makes some sort of sense …
@Zeke,
Thunderbolts.info has a good overview of plasma Physics:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2011/08/18/10609/
As this one was getting slow, there’s a new T12 page:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/t12/