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8/10/2009
  The future of telepresence, cognobots, avatars and virtual reality  The upcoming new Bruce Willis movie called Surrogates postulates a 2054 world where no one ever leaves home and all human interact takes place through android telepresence remotes. The movie's trailer can be found here. Jim Cameron also has a telepresence movie in the works call Avatar (a misuse of this term, which normally only refers to virtual representations of ourselves, not telepresence real world remotes). Already, it is possible to extend the capabilities of your mind by using cognobots to do research and communication across the Mesh. By 2054, a typical human will probably be in command of a small army of remote and virtual cognobots, each with sufficient intelligence to operate semi-autonomously. We will do most of what we do through the use of cognobots, but virtual avatars are a much more likely tool for direct interaction than android remotes. Since why would we confine ourselves to telepresence in a physical reality, when we can interact more easily and cheaply in intricate and fascinating world's of our own design?
8/09/2009
What would America's Founding Fathers do today to protect their individual liberties? Regardless of whether the ruling political party calls itself liberal or conservative, in western nations since World War II the trend has consistently been transferring more money and power formerly held by citizens into the hands of political elites. Might 20,000 floating nations above the sea offer a way to preserve freedom for individual citizens? North America and Europe are rapidly becoming Africa-lite, following in the footsteps of the countries of Africa, the poster-continent for massive political corruption and systems that massively under-deliver on the potential of the people and societies.  Are smallish city states of 100,000-200,000 people on islands or floating seasteads the only way to maintain an acceptable level of individual liberties? Are larger nations states just inevitably fated to be ruled by a corrupt political elite and sink into a sea of inefficiency, massive government debt, money debasement, crony capitalism, outright corruption, and eventually, inevitably, massive exploitation of their citizens? With each passing year it looks more likely, those who value individual liberty are going to be required to find a better alternative for the preservation of those liberties than the failed nation state model. See also: Seasteading Institute announces winners of this year's design contest
8/08/2009
Rating the performance of the world's nation states The path to a brighter future is to spend less than you take in and save or invest your surplus. The way to have no future at all is to spend more than you make and run up debt to cover you deficit. The CIA's World Fact Book has just rated how each of the world's nations performed on this in 2008. The #1 performer in 2008 was China. Dead last was the USA. Labels: Next
8/08/2009
Does World of Warcraft represent the next phase in human social evolution? Those people who spend their (virtual) lives dressed up like trolls are creating the new sovereignty, establishing a nation-state that transcends borders, that challenges traditional ideas of governance, that threatens economic structures and upsets power hierarchies. People, the future is in the hands of a bunch of trolls. Labels: Next
8/06/2009
First 3D printing in stainless steel offered  There have been a sites around the Mesh offering 3D printing for any design in plastic for some time, but now Shapeways.com is offering 3D printing in stainless steel. That Trek-like nanofab in your home, which can fabricate most anything you desire, has come another step closer. Labels: Next
8/05/2009
One moribund nation or hundreds of dynamic city-states? How can a struggling country break free of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. Could Guantanamo Bay become the next Hong Kong? Only if ways can be found to get around the stifling rules of nation-states to allow wealth creation. Romer proposes a radical new model of growth and governance, which calls for the establishment of city-scale special administrative zones. I'll go one step beyond Romer and suggest that we would all be better off if governance throughout the world were right-sized into city-scale zones. Nation-scale governance will always devolve over time into regulation that is grossly inefficient, ineffective and indeed harmful to those under its control. One size can never fit all situations across a large region. A hundred city states tied together with an open trade agreement will always be able to produce more prosperity than if those same cities are forced to labor under the thumb of a nation-state's armies of politicos and bureaucrats.
8/05/2009
Taser's Shockwave is latest WOMO (Weapon Of Mass Oppression)  In the latest example of WOMO at its finest, the TASER company and the military are working together on a TASER Shockwave Weapon of Mass Oppression, which combines a lot of TASER stun devices together so a whole crowd of restive citizens fed up with their corrupt, incompetent elites can be shocked into submission at once. Note to engineers: building stuff like this is evil. Labels: Next
8/02/2009
100 free cutting-edge courses that didn't exist when you were in school A lot has happened since you left college. Fortunately, we now live in a meshed world where top universities are making their courses available for free. Labels: Next
8/02/2009
The coming merger of the physical world with the virtual world A game changing technology called haptics is removing the traditional barrier between the physical and virtual worlds. It is a way of giving virtual objects the illusion of substance in the real world. Labels: Next
7/24/2009
A faster, vertical takeoff replacement for Predator aerial attack bot  Recently we told you about the Air Force's new WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) system that can rain pain from sky using a microwave pain infliction system. Now Aurora Flight Sciences Excalibur experimental vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft may offer the perfect bot to carry that system to keep restive urban populations under control. The 13ft-long UAV is powered by a tilting jet engine and three battery-powered lift fans. The aircraft made its first hover flight at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in June.
7/24/2009
So where is this crazy economy going next?  If you troll around a few economics sites and take in all the charts like the one above. You are struck by the unprecedented massiveness of the government's efforts to inflate another bubble and the unprecedented meagerness of the results of those efforts. After the tremendous shock to the world's economy of the 9/11 attacks, a stimulus of only a few percent of this current round was sufficient to inflate another large Keynesian inflation/credit expansion bubble, but this time around nothing quite seems to be enough to do it. America's politicos have done their usual Keynesian stimulus thing to the max, injecting a simply mindbogglingly amount of money, credit and government guarantees. And all it appears to have achieved is a modest bubble in the stock market and a slight decline in the downward slope of unemployment increase and home price declines. Some negative metrics, like commercial real estate price declines, appear to have ignored the stimulus completely and continued getting worse throughout the entire stimulus. Austrian school economists have speculated that the Keynesian inflation/credit bubble economy would finally run out of steam some day, when government and consumer debt loads became unsustainable. And the way the metrics are responding to the efforts of our politicos to inflate a new bubble make it seem likely we have reached some sort of inflection point. So what happens after a bubble economy runs out of steam? Will we face years of stagnation working off our tremendous debt loads before growth can finally resume or will the current massive monetary expansion send us into hyperinflation? Either could happen. Labels: Next
7/23/2009
Is Google's new open source Wave bot destine to put the final nail in Microsoft's coffin?  Wave, demonstrated by Google at its I/O developer conference in May of this year, allows customers to create a customizable communications and collaboration tool without any software other than an Internet browser. As such, Google's Wave poses a significant threat to the business models of Microsoft and other applications vendors.
7/23/2009
Air Force's new WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) can rain pain from sky The Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control Weapons of Mass Oppression (WOMO) appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft. The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears. Labels: Next
7/22/2009
Could a 100km high nano-pier reaching from earth into space make space-based solar power practical? To make space travel truly practical we need to stop relying on expensive ground to space rockets. Nano-tech be used to build a 100km high pier that allows a spacecraft to take off and land from above our atmosphere, much as boat piers reach from the shore out into water deep enough to float a boat. Labels: Next
7/22/2009
This article will self-destruct after you have read it  Until now, computers have made it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview. A lost cell phone can expose personal photos or text messages. A legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating, inconvenient or just embarrassing details from the past. The University of Washington has developed a way to make cloud information expire after a set time period. Not even the sender can retrieve them. "If you care about privacy, the Internet today is a very scary place," said UW computer scientist Tadayoshi Kohno. The team of UW computer scientists developed a prototype system called Vanish that can place a time limit on text uploaded to any Web service through a Web browser. After a set time text written using Vanish will, in essence, self-destruct.
7/21/2009
Suppressing the "suicide mechanism" of cells hit by radiation and enabling their recovery Our species will go extinct with millions of generations still unborn, unless we develop the capabilities to spread our kind to other star systems. To achieve this migration we must learn how to survive radiation exposure. Dr. Andrei Gudkov has now developed medication that suppresses the "suicide mechanism" of cells hit by radiation, while enabling them to recover from the radiation-induced damages that prompted them to activate the suicide mechanism in the first place.
7/20/2009
Low-cost video cameras capable of doing remote "intimate" body-searches New terahertz detecting technology could make "intimate" body-search-at-a-distance cameras as cheap and easy as ordinary surveillance video. Terahertz radiation fits into the electromagnetic spectrum between the infrared and microwaves and passes through most types of clothing allowing "intimate" body searches at a distance. THis technology could also have some legitimate uses, such as more easily spotting tumors beneath the skin. Labels: Next
7/16/2009
There are now over 100 million electric bikes in China  Electric bikes are huge in China, the number on the streets just passed the 100 million mark. They are so popular because, unlike the electric bikes sold here that can set you back $5,000 to $10,000, China's typical electric bike cost an astonishingly low 2000 RMB (only about US$290). And what you get for that is pretty good, a 100 km range on a full charge at a speed of 12mph to 30 mph. In 2006 there were 2,700 licensed manufacturers, and countless additional smaller shops. The top manufacturer, Xinri, makes about 1.6 million of the over 23 million electric bikes sold worldwide in 2008. By the way, the Chinese bought about 90% of the world's e-bike output last year. Shown in the image is a KLD scooter with a 100 mile range and a 40mph top speed.
7/15/2009
BulletFlight sniper assistant bot for the iPhone figures perfect kill shot settings  An iPhone mounted inside of a protective case on an M110 semiautomatic sniper rifle running the BulletFlight bot can make detailed ballistic calculations that include the effects of windage, distance, air pressure, humidity and temperature, for perfect kill shot settings every time. Obviously a temporary technology, who needs a human to fire a rifle? The Terminator movies are looking more prescient with each new military gear press release.
7/14/2009
Why are our trusted institutions proving to be so corrupt? "The very fabric of society is breaking down around us," said Charlie Brooker in a recent piece in a British newspaper. "What the hell is there left to believe in?" Charlie went on to observe: It's all gone wrong," Our belief in everything has been shattered by a series of shock revelations that have shaken our core to its core. You can't move for toppling institutions. Television, the economy, the police, the House of Commons, and, most recently, the press ... all revealed to be jam-packed with liars and bastards and graspers and bullies and turds. And we knew. We knew. But we were deep in denial, like a cuckolded partner who knows the sorry truth but tries their best to ignore it. Over the last 18 months the spotlight of truth has swung this way and that, and one institution after another was suddenly exposed as being precisely as rotten as we always thought it was.Indeed, all the old religious, political and economic institutions are looking profoundly ineffective and corrupt these days. Because the meme-sets on which they rely are fatally flawed in fundamental ways that hold back human intellectual growth and progress. For thousands of years, ministers of religions that provide the belief system for most of the world's population have been assuring their flocks that the world will end very soon. About half of the world's Christians believe that it will end in their lifetimes. So why would they ever give a seconds thought to protecting the future of humanity? None of us have ever seen religious beliefs move the mountains they claim to be able to move, but we most assuredly have seen those beliefs bring down our skyscrapers and spawn wars that have taken uncountable number of innocent lives. And millions more lives have been lost by the postponed introduction of lifesaving technologies like blood transfusion, which Christians once opposed by claiming that something called a soul circulates around the body in your bloodstream, so transfusions would mix together souls. And their flawed meme-set keeps them from ever growing any wiser, so they are repeating the same deadly insanity today with their opposition to stem cell research. What we need is a new open source meme-set. A new worldview that can inspire us and guide us in the building of a new set of coordination mechanisms that really can help to make our lives more comfortable and not become the cause of our own extinction. And the stakes are really that high, avoiding extinction for our species, because if we allow religious bigotry to mix with today's powerful new bio-engineering technologies. We will find ourselves facing a 100% fatal, incredibly contagious engineered plague unleashed by the fundamentalist followers of some religious or idealogical death dogmas. The Cloud can allow us to design cooperative mechanism that are effective and resilient enough to actually solve today's complex problems. Mechanisms that access reputation and skill set databases and channel the toughest challenges to ad hoc groups of those with the skills and experience best suited to finding a solution. We either fix this or humanity will inevitably follow our old, failed institutions into extinction.
7/13/2009
The public's anti-nuclear mind-set has us headed for catastrophe By whipping the public up into a mindless fright about nuclear power, environmentalists have directly caused a massive expansion in fossil fuel use for power generation. An expansion that is potentially large enough to cause a catastrophic melting of ice caps that would put most of the world's coastal cities, home to well over a billion people, under 50 meters of sea water. Thinking people have been trying to turn these folks around before they bring about the unthinkable catastrophe of a billion displaced people. Gradually, perhaps not fast enough to avoid disaster, prominent environmentalists like Steward Brand are seeing the error of their ways. Those that talk about getting rid of human influence on the climate, so things will return to the natural order, are idiots. They think the natural order is how the climate was in the first half of the 20th century. In reality, for the last billion years our planet's climate has been swinging back and forth from ice ages to periods when there is no summer ice on the planet at all. One of these states will destroy nearly all our coast cities, while the other will put many of our interior cities under hundreds of feet of ice. The only way an eventual catastrophe can be avoided is for humans to take active control over our planet's climate. Fortunately, as Steward Brand points out, done thoughtfully, this need not be an expensive project.
7/13/2009
World's economy so bad even bots are getting the boot "A robot will work every day and night without complaining," said Fuji spokesman, Kenta Matsumoto. "You can even save on lights and heating, because robots don't need any of that." Yet the global downturn has become so severe that in Japan even robots, the world's most efficient workers, are being idled as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets plunging the country into its deep recession in generations.
7/12/2009
Bruce Sterling talks about what the next decade will be like Bruce Sterling talks about what it will feel like to live through the next decade in his closing talk at the reboot 11 conference. Highlights: Crisis capitalism for aging, broke baby boomers. Bad weather. Globalization without development. The Gen X reboot - dark euphoria. Gothic high tech. Dressing up like dead people. Politicians with no ideologies or alternatives positioning themselves in the narrative, rather than building anything, cheerleaders, not leaders. No money, no career, living in a slum, but still really big on Facebook. Emergent structures. Action is cheaper than control. The wreckage of the unsustainable is your heritage. Cell phone uprisings led by conservatives. Stop acting dead. Hair-shirt green is not going to fulfil you or solve the world's problems. What touches you most is most important. Buy the best possible common everyday stuff. You spend a third of your life in your bed -- get the best mattress you can afford. Get the best chair you can afford. Get the best tools you actually use. Constantly reassess your material clutter and if you don't use it, lose it. Labels: Next
7/10/2009
Could NanoFET provide the thrust for bot-controlled asteroid belt mining trawlers? We can either let our species go extinct millions of generations earlier than necessary or we can spread our kind out into space. Rouge black holes, gamma ray bursts, atmosphere stripping cosmic dust clouds, planet scorching mega-solar flares, impacts from comets or asteroids, ice world causing super volcanoes, not to mention our own craziness. There is a long list of potential extinction level events for a species foolish enough to inhabit just a single world. We must spread outward, first to the mineral bonanza of the asteroid belt, and then onward to other stars systems. The only alternative is premature species extinction. Up until now, there have been three possiblities for powering the ships necessary for that effort. A space sail, Nuclear Pulse Fusion or the ion thruster are possibilities, but all have drawbacks. Now nano engineers may have found a fourth possibility that is far more efficient than any of the others. It is called the NanoFET (Nano-particle Field Extraction Thruster).
7/09/2009
Scientists mod plants to be able to grow in salty water  Increasing salinity (salt) in ground water in many parts of the world is putting farmers at risk of ruin and putting the populations they feed at risk of starvation. Now an international team of scientists has found a way to genetically modify crops so that they can grow in salty water. The research team from the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus in Australia has used a new GM technique to shift salt into parts of the plant where it does less damage. In the image shown, non-GM plants can be seen struggling to survive the saline conditions in the top rows, while in the bottom rows GM plants thriving in exactly the same conditions. Labels: Next
7/04/2009
Optical transistor brings ultrafast light-based computers closer An optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another could form the heart of a future generation of ultrafast light-based computers, say Swiss researchers. Conventional computers are based on transistors, which allow one electrode to control the current moving through the device and are combined to form logic gates and processors. The new component achieves the same thing, but for laser beams, not electric currents. Labels: Next
7/04/2009
Stephen Hawking talks about our humods future  Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking recently outlined his personal philosophy, which turns out to include most of the humods memes. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations." But now, says Hawking, we are entering a new phase of "self designed evolution" in which we will extensively modify our own DNA. "At first, these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects controlled by single genes." Then humans will move on to modding more complex combinations . "I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence and instincts like aggression," says Hawking. Hawking also points out the importance of another key part of the humods worldview, the vital importance of advancing our species by developing and spreading the most effective memes. "Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes."
7/02/2009
Breakthrough open source computer interface device  The open source AcceleGlove reinvents the concept of a computer input device, replacing the need for gamepad, joystick, trackball or mouse. As a Controller, AcceleGlove can use hand or finger movement to act as commands for controlling video games, robots, simulators, virtual reality environments, or any other application you might imagine. Labels: Next
6/24/2009
Lasers can lengthen quantum bit memory by 1,000 times Physicists have found a way to drastically prolong the shelf life of quantum bits, the 0s and 1s of quantum computers. Perturbation caused by magnetic field fluctuations from the nuclei of the atoms creating the quantum dot can cause it to forget the piece of information it was tasked with storing. A quantum dot is a semiconductor nanostructure that is one candidate for creating quantum bits. University of Michigan's Duncan Steel and colleagues used lasers to elicit a previously undiscovered natural feedback reaction that stabilizes the quantum dot's magnetic field, lengthening the stable existence of the quantum bit by several orders of magnitude, or more than 1,000 times.
6/23/2009
China testing two Maglev Systems for transporting freight  Maglev systems could potentially transport freight for 1/3 the cost of truck or rail transport. Magplane Technology designs and fabricates pipeline transport systems using the linear synchronous motor technology developed for the Magplane system. Typical applications for pipeline transport range from priority mail packages to ore transport. A typical ore application would have an underground pair of 60 cm diameter pipes for outbound and returning capsules, and typically carry 10 millions tons per year over a distance of 50 km. Maglev has the potential to drastically reduce the transportation costs and petroleum dependency of civilization 2.0. Labels: Next
6/22/2009
Inflation or deflation, which is ahead for America? I just read a blog post on Mish's economics blog, the last line of which is: Fears of massive inflation are at this point ridiculous.Normally, I tend to find Mish's analysis persuasive and have linked to his comments many times in the past, but I fear that by going with a purely credit-based analysis of the situation, he has put himself at risk of a major failure with this prediction. What worries me is that it fails to take into account the requirement that foreign investors maintain their semi-religious faith in dollars. Since there is no practical way all America's debts can ever be paid back, other than in drastically depreciated dollars. For 40 years the Fed has been able to create far more money annually than Americans have been force to actually experience in inflation. This has only been possible because of the American dollar's unique status as the world's reserve currency. Due to that unique status, foreign investors & central banks were willing to immediately take many of the dollars the Fed created each year out of circulation, storing them in vaults and mattresses. A thousand dollars stuck in a mattress in India isn't causing any inflation in America. A trillion dollars in a foreign bank vault causes no inflation in America. No inflation, that is, until someone decides to spend those dollars. Then all that pent up inflation can come roaring back. After 40 years of dollars as fiat money, with no restraint on America's ability to create them, foreigners are sitting on dollars equal to hundreds of percent points of pent-up inflation, which will all manifest itself at once, if the holders of those dollars ever lose their faith that they represent a good value. Take away foreign investor confidence in the dollar and suddenly trillions of foreign dollars will start simultaneously chasing whatever commodities and other goods are available for dollars. This could cause massive inflation to occur, even if as Mish rightly points out, American banks remain completely unwilling to lend money to anyone. Chinese actions lately make it me think that they are wisely trying to get out in front of the eroding faith problem of the dollar. If China were able to be perceived by the world's investors as having avoided losses when the dollar crash acceleration occurs. Then their fiat currency might be able to survive the dollar collapse and become the new oil trading unit of exchange, since it is doubtful either the Yen or Euro could survive a dollar collapse. That and China's control of so much of the world's manufacturing plant, could serve to transform China into the world's new dominant economic power, almost overnight. America became the world's new economic power when, after World War II, we were left with the world's only undamaged manufacturing plant, a strong currency, and a thriving internal market. Now, told by our elite that we can thrive as a "service economy" we have dismantled our manufacturing plant, allowing China to step in. Today, China is the only country in the world with an undamaged manufacturing plant, a potentially strong currency and a potentially thriving internal market. The monumental stupidity of America's elite has put China in the perfect position to pull the rug out from under America and take over the role of global economic superpower. Winning the war for world leadership, without ever firing a shot. We could be about to witness a brilliantly executed coup d'etat on the world stage that cuts the legs from under the western world by destroying their severely weakened fiat currencies and leaves China in the world reserve currency driver's seat. Labels: Next
6/19/2009
Keynesian bubble economics is destroying our lives John Maynard Keynes did more damage to our civilization than any other pseudo-scientist. Prior to the adoption of Keynes ruinous ideas, many nations had money with the more stable, intrinsic value of being backed by precious metals and market forces, not politicos running central banks, controlled interest rates. In those days, the value of your money did not erode away and interest tended to give you a reasonable return on your capital. Up until the end of the 1960's in the USA, you could still work hard, put your money in the bank or Government Savings Bonds, and be assured of a comfortable retirement. Then Keynes' fiat money system was imposed on America by politicos who wanted to buy votes by handing out freebies at home, while simultaneously taking on the costly role of creating an American world economic empire. This caused the buying power of the dollar to plunge. For fifty years the price of a Hershey bar at the neighborhood store where I grew up was 5 cents. Then when America replaced our gold-backed money with Keynesian fiat money, the price of that Hershey bar skyrocketed: [1969] 10 cents, [1974] 15 cents, [1977] 20 cents, [1978] 25 cents, [1982] 30 cents, [1983] 35 cents, [1986] 40 cents, [1991] 45 cents, [2002] 59 cents, [2009] 89 cents. Along with the price of nearly everything else we all buy regularly. You could no longer simply work hard, save your money and be assured of a comfortable retirement. Because politicos were inflating away the value of your savings at a rapid clip, and keeping interest rates so artificially low that you couldn't keep up. Low interest rates, easy credit, massive creation of money through the printing press and fractional reserve lending had to be put into place to keep all the negative effects of Keynes ideas from being seen, to keep an economic system being slowly strangled to death, walking. But like any Frankenstein, our undead economy was unable to walk smoothly, but instead had to lurch from one hastily inflated economic bubble to the next, with each new bubble seeming to take more monetary stimulus to inflate than the last one. Without your knowledge, you had been robbed of the ability to save your money for a comfortable retirement. This was no longer an option, since fiat money inflation would destroy the buying power of your savings to quickly and interest rates on savings had to be kept artificially low, to keep our dying economy walking. In order to protect the buying power of our savings, we were all forced into becoming speculators. We had to keep taking on more and more risky investments keep our dreams of retirement from being stolen by the politicos pushing the new Keynesian bubble economic system that gave them far more power at your expense. Wall Street's big firms profited as never before from selling investors more speculative investments and joined with Washington to keep the destructive Keynesian delusion alive. Eventually, things got to the point that what I have called the king has no clothes recognition avoidance mechanism began to take effect. We in the west knew that our portfolios would be utterly wiped out if any of us said anything about the fact that Lord Keynes was prancing around the kingdom not wearing any clothes. So we all tightly closed our eyes to avoid seeing what had become obvious to any thinking person, that all the Keynesian clowns running our Treasury Department and Central Banks were running around stark naked. The work of Lord Keynes supports the empowerment of economic and political elites at the expense of ordinary workers and investors, who's ability to save and retire is severely impaired. Economists are richly rewarded by these political and economic elites for supporting Keynes and that insidious feedback loop is the only reason Keynes ruinous economic ideas persist. Now though, the voices of reason, pointing our that Lord Keynes' followers are wearing no clothes are growing stronger. Recently, Dr Xu, who has a doctorate from the University of California and was formerly managing director of the China's biggest investment bank began calling western leaders to account for remaining stuck in the failed Keynesian bubble economy mind set, saying: "It's time to announce Keynesianism's failure, time to announce the emperor Lord Keynes has no clothes." He went on to accuse the west many Keynesian politicos of "casting a moral verdict without seeming to care about truth or logic". At least in Asia, reason seems to be returning. In the west, I fear we have more pain to endure before we again begin to see the light.
6/16/2009
How to keep the Earth habitable for an extra 1.3 billion years (65 million more human generations)  Scientists at Caltech have figured out how to counteract the changes in our sun to keep the Earth habitable for humans for another 1.3 billion years. That is long enough to give another 65 million generations of humans the opportunity to be born on humanity's home world. As the sun has matured over the past 4.5 billion years, it has become both brighter and hotter, increasing the amount of solar radiation received by Earth, along with surface temperatures. Earth has coped by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thus reducing the warming effect. The pressure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has dropped some 2,000-fold over the past 3.5 billion years. The problem, says Caltech Professor Joseph L. Kirschvink is that "we're nearing the point where there's not enough carbon dioxide left" in the atmosphere to regulate temperatures by lowering it. Essentially, even taking atmospheric CO2 to zero will not be enough to overcome the Sun's increased heat generation. The solution for preventing Earth from becoming uninhabitable due to our Sun's increasing energy output, say Kirschvink and his collaborators, is to reduce substantially the total pressure of the atmosphere itself, by removing massive amounts of molecular nitrogen, the largely nonreactive gas that makes up about 78 percent of the atmosphere. This would regulate the surface temperatures and allow carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere, to support life, and could tack an additional 1.3 billion years onto Earth's expected human habitability lifespan. All the world's politico's quibbling over carbon taxes won't even make a dent in the needed offset to the Sun's increased output. Scientists are going to have to figure out how to engineer a much more robust thermostat for our planet, if we want that 65 million generations of human to get that opportunity to be born on our home world.
6/15/2009
Can an inflatable dock reach all the way into space?  Inflatable pneumatic modules already used in some spacecraft could be assembled into a 15-kilometer-high tower. Brendan Quine, Raj Seth and George Zhu at York University in Toronto, Canada, wrote in Acta Astronautica (DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2009.02.018) "A free-standing space elevator structure: A practical alternative to the space tether". If built from a suitable mountain top it could reach an altitude of around 20 kilometers, where it could be used for atmospheric research, tourism, telecoms or launching spacecraft. They calculate the tower could be extended up to low Earth orbit at 200 kilometers. Shown in the image is a 7 meter proof of concept model. Labels: Next
6/11/2009
Pay teachers more, grades stay poor, but pay kids to score and off they soar Paying kids to learn boosts math and English performance test scores by far more than raising teacher's pay. At PS 188 on the Lower East Side, 76 percent of fourth-graders met or exceeded state benchmarks in English -- 39.6 percentage points higher than last year, when the kids were in third grade. While efforts by some school districts a few years back to see if, as teacher's unions claimed, paying teachers more would greatly improve scores boomed utterly, with results continuing down hill after the raises. If you put a school with the latest learning software bots combined with automated financial incentives to students for good performance up against a school run in the traditional way. Odds are that the bots and incentives would produce dramatically better results, while costing taxpayers considerably less. Of course, such a test is unlikely to ever take place in an environment where our educational decision making is so heavily influenced by teachers associations entirely focused on their own narrow self interests at the expense of the futures of our kids and our nation. Labels: Next
6/09/2009
Getting a handle on what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan  David Kilcullen is a contemporary practitioner and theorist of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. A former Australian Army officer, he left that army as a lieutenant colonel in 2005, and now works as a counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency adviser to NATO, the United States, British and Australian governments. During 2007 he served in Iraq as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser on the personal staff of U.S. Army General David Howell Petraeus, responsible for planning and executing the 2007-8 Joint Campaign Plan. To really get a handle on the mistakes that were made in Iraq and Afghanistan and the efforts to fix them, watch this Google talk.
6/09/2009
Breakthrough in manipulating light on a chip for quantum computers  In a major advance towards super-powerful quantum computers and ultra-precise measuring devices, a team of physicists and engineers at Bristol University has demonstrated precise control of four photons using a microscopic metal electrode lithographically patterned onto a silicon chip. The photons propagate in silica waveguides, much like in optical fibers, patterned on a silicon chip, and are manipulated with the electrode, resulting in a high-performance miniaturized device. "We have been able to generate and manipulate entangled states of photons on a silicon chip" said PhD student Jonathan Matthews, who together with Alberto Politi performed the experiments. "These entangled states are responsible for famously 'weird' behaviour arising in quantum mechanics, but are also at the heart of powerful quantum technologies."
6/08/2009
A new dark ages is ahead, unless we design a new enlightenment In a brief TED talk, Pete Alcorn shares one vision of what our future might be like, if we make it happen. Labels: Next
6/05/2009
Space elevator competition to be held July 14-16, 2009  On July 14-16 at Edward Air Force Base in Mojave, California, six teams with race to see who can ascend the 1 km vertical raceway in the fastest time with a $2 million prize at stake. The Space Elevator is a proposed space-access system that will completely transform the way we access space, replacing rockets with electrical vehicles that scale a stationary cable from Earth to Space. Labels: Next
6/05/2009
Batteries do better than expected in long term tests of electric cars  Over the past two and a half years, Southern California Edison has been testing a lithium-ion battery sub-pack for electric cars, and the results are far better than expected. The lithium-ion battery has displayed remarkable longevity, surviving 180, 000 miles with no significant deterioration. With the average family vehicle traveling less than 15,000 miles per year, this test seems to show practical electric vehicles have arrived.
6/03/2009
Physicists demonstrate quantum entanglement in mechanical system Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated entanglement—a phenomenon peculiar to the atomic-scale quantum world—in a mechanical system similar to those in the macroscopic everyday world. The work extends the boundaries of the arena where quantum behavior can be observed and shows how laboratory technology might be scaled up to build a functional quantum computer. Labels: Next
6/02/2009
The Coming Urban Terror - systems disruption, networked gangs, and bio-weapons 2009 is the year, researchers estimate, that humanity crossed over, with more of us now living in cities than in rural areas. Unfortunately, living in cities may prove to be incompatible with the super-empowerment of individuals and small groups offered by new technologies like smart machines, networks and genetic manipulation. Some comments worth thinking about: Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.Most bio-terror experts seem to believe that a single clever microbiologist could probably already mod a virus to wipe out much of the population of a city and the technology for doing mods of this kind improves with each passing day. As we have seen recently in a number of cities, such concentrations of people, make attractive terror targets. Until we learn more about the shape of the threat matrix created by the amazing wave of smart bot, nano, bio, and cloud technologies sweeping in on us today, choosing to live outside the large cities might prove to be a wise decision.
6/02/2009
We don't want your stinking McMansions  Our politicos claim to work for all of us, but the laws they pass and the planning and building bureaucracies that they have put in place, seem designed to work for only some of us. If you are a developer that funds your local politicos' campaigns and gives their kids and wives cushy jobs. Then you can develop that complex of poorly constructed, overpriced apartments, or that new subdivision of 5,000 sq foot McMansions on 5 acre lots or that big box store in the retail district, a long car drive from where people are actually allowed to live. Your projects will fly through the bureaucracies approval process carried on wings of money. But what happens when a group of friends get tired of overpaying for poorly constructed, energy inefficient houses or apartments. What of those that eschew the mess the old order has made of our world, and would rather live in a development that is just like a traditional village of small, comfortable, little cottages. Homes made even more comfortable and affordable by using the latest in innovative energy-efficient building techniques and materials. A community where people can live simpler, fuller lives without all the stress that comes from dealing with huge mortgages and high property tax bills, long drives to the nearest shopping district and mind bending commutes to the commercial district where the politicos required your employer to locate. Your local politico may talk a good game, but most like the system where only those able to afford pay off a gaggle of politicos are permitted to do much of anything, regardless of which of the two major political parties is in control. After all, it is the system that keeps their campaigns funded, gives them their power, and gets their wives and kids into all those cushy jobs. Looking for a better way of living that eschews the tired old order dogmas? Labels: Next
6/01/2009
A brilliant idea for today from an old sci-fi story  Way back in the August 1942 issue of Astounding Magazine, Robert A. Heinlein published under the pseudonym Anson MacDonald, a brilliant short story called simply Waldo. The story was about a disabled boy named Waldo, who's limbs and body were so weak that he was unable even to lift his head up to drink or to hold a spoon. But like today's real life physicist Stephen Hawking, Waldo didn't let this stop his intellect. He developed and patented a device that allowed you to stick your handing into a control glove and control another mechanical hand that could be much larger and more powerful than your own or much smaller and able to do extremely delicate work. By using the small hand to build one still smaller or the large hand to build one still larger, all things became possible to Waldo, and he became a wealthy man. A few years after Heinlein's story, engineers actually began building Waldos, but only in recent years have the computer control technologies existed to fully realize Heinlein's brilliant idea of scaling the hands upwards and downwards with just the right amount of feedback to make working with them intuitive. It will be interesting to see where this idea goes in the years ahead, now that the technology exists to fully realize Heinlein's vision. Here is a clip of a giant Waldo hand in action from the 2009 Maker Faire.
6/01/2009
Laser data development could make smart bots smarter 2007 Nobel physics prize winning physicists Albert Fert and Peter Gruenberg report using new ultra-fast lasers to accelerate storage and retrieval of data on hard discs by up to 100,000 times. A development that could let tomorrow's smart bots behave a lot smarter in real time.
5/31/2009
OLED screens that last for a lifetime  DuPont Displays today announced it has developed a new organic light emitting diode (OLED) materials technology, which has led to substantial performance gains for printable OLED light-emitting materials. A DuPont Gen 3 green OLED material achieved a record lifetime of over 1,000,000 hours -- 114 years in continuous use.
5/31/2009
The Astounding World of the Future The Astounding World of the Future Best Short Film Award from the New York Comedy Film Festival. Labels: Next
5/29/2009
Isaac Asimov on building a better belief system  From Isaac Asimov's The Roving Mind (1997), page 43: "Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? - in ancient astronauts? - in the Bermuda triangle? - in life after death?"The first step towards creating a better civilization 2.0, which can let us escape the ignorance, war, persecution, deprivation, disease and suffering of our current civilization, is to adopt a better belief system.
5/29/2009
Breakthrough in the quantum control of light  Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have demonstrated a breakthrough in the quantum control of photons, the energy quanta of light, that represents a significant advance in quantum computing and other applications. UCSB physics researchers Max Hofheinz, John Martinis, and Andrew Cleland used a superconducting electronic circuit known as a Josephson phase qubit to prepare highly unusual quantum states using microwave-frequency photons. The image shows a "quantum state with zero, three and six photons simultaneously (theory on left, experiment on right)." A quantum computer based on this breakthrough might be able to quickly break any normal encryption scheme, like those used to protect bank transactions. In the experiments, photons were stored in a microwave cavity, a "light trap" in which the light bounces back and forth as if between two mirrors. The research shows that states can be created in which a light trap simultaneously has different numbers of photons stored in it. Measuring the quantum state by counting how many photons are stored forces the trap to "decide" how many there are; but prior to counting, the light trap exists in a quantum superposition, with all three outcomes possible. Labels: Next
5/29/2009
New fast, portable, ultra-sensitive virus detector Imagine being able to detect in just a few minutes whether someone is infected with a virus. This has now become a reality, thanks to a new ultra-sensitive virus detector that has been developed by Ostendum, a spin-off company of the University of Twente. The company has just completed the first prototype and expects to be able to introduce the first version of the detector onto the market in late 2010. Not only does the detector carry out measurements many times faster than do standard techniques, it is also portable, so it can be used anywhere. Labels: Next
5/28/2009
Scientists demonstrate all-fiber quantum logic  A team of physicists and engineers have demonstrated all-fiber quantum logic. The only quantum technology in practical use today is quantum cryptography and is currently limited in the distance over which secure communication may occur. Image is of a photonic crystal fiber. Labels: Next
5/28/2009
Earth impact point of space storms can be predicted from magnetic blast waves  Using data from NASA's THEMIS mission, a team of University of Alberta researchers has pinpointed the impact epicenter of an earthbound space storm as it crashes into the atmosphere, and given an advance warning of its arrival. The team's study reveals that magnetic blast waves can be used to pinpoint and predict the location where space storms dissipate their massive amounts of energy. These storms can dump the equivalent of 50 gigawatts of power, or the output of 10 of the world's largest power stations, into Earth's atmosphere. Labels: Next
5/28/2009
Global Catastrophic Risks Conference talks now available free in cloud Clips of many of the talks given at the recent Future of Humanity Institute's Global Catastrophic Risks Conference are now freely available in the cloud.
5/28/2009
Bright future from lab advances or catastrophe from politicos spendthrift ways?  The White House and Congressional Budget Office projections of the future Federal deficits (see chart above) are completely insane to start with, but when you add in off budget items like the trillions the Federal Reserve is spending on bailouts, the mind rebels at the magnitude of the fiscal irresponsibility. All in, the clowns in Washington will spend approximately $4 for every $1 they collect in taxes this fiscal year, and they will have to print most of the excess, because they can't afford to let interest rates rise enough to allow them to borrow that much legitimately. Such a rise in interest rates would drive up our nation's debt service costs beyond our capacity to ever pay. BEST CASE scenario: the $5 Subway special becomes the $50 Subway special over the next five or six years. WORST CASE scenario: a much faster and more complete collapse of the dollar's buying power, similar to the one Germany experienced shown in the image below of a family getting ready for a trip to the grocery store.  Labels: Next
5/27/2009
As globalization connects us more, natural selection will favor more virulent and dangerous pathogens  Our connected, globalized world is giving viruses and other human parasites the edge over us, new research led by Geoff Wild of the University of Western Ontario concludes. "As human activity makes the world more connected," warns Professor Wild, "natural selection will favor more virulent and dangerous parasites." The old order's globalization strategy makes humanity far more vulnerable to an extinction level biological event, either natural or man made. Talk to any bio-weapon expert, and they will inevitably tell you that the unleashing of an incredibly virulent new bio-engineered bug is only a matter of time. New technology is just making it so easy to produce such things that it is bound to happen. The only way to survive such a virus engineered to be especially deadly and contagious, would be to isolate your community completely for months. However, with the old order's infrastructure, designed to deliver us food from 2,000 miles away using fuel obtained from 12,000 miles away, even if we avoided the bug, we'd all starve. Civilization 2.0 infrastructure should be multi-nucleated and Cloud based. Sharing design data with the Cloud, globally, while produce goods from that design data, locally, gives a civilization the resilience to survive that is completely lacking in our current, obsolete old order.
5/26/2009
Why two billion people around the world are learning English  Answer: Opportunity. English has become the world's second language. The language of the Cloud, with which we can all communicate to find solutions to our common challenges. So many people have learned English in China, that this year China will become the world's largest English speaking country. Watch a TED talk by Jay Walker exploring the extraordinary power of the English phenomena, where good English teachers can draw stadium-sized classes.
5/26/2009
Pentagon seeks to close growing 'hacker gap' with China and Russia High school and college hackers, Uncle Sam wants you and is willing to teach you how to steal data from the Cloud. The Pentagon's Cyber Challenge initiative creates new national competitions for high school and college students designed to create better cyber-warrior skills. These skills include things like mounting denial of service attacks, defending databases, stealing databases, and tracing down others that have stolen databases. The Pentagon sees the program as necessary to close the 'hacker gap' that has developed in America as compared to Russia and China, both of which have mounted cloud attacks against organizations and countries that have displeasing their leaders. Of course, as has happened often in the past, this program could well come back to bite us. Like when the CIA former program to train many future members of Al-Qaeda in terror tactics to help them fight the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, came home to roost at the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11/2001. Or when the F.B.I. discovered that the anthrax used to attack prominent members of the media and prominent Democrat members of Congress came from the Pentagon's own top bioweapon lab. So now all the world's most powerful nation states appear to be competing to see who can train the most database stealing hackers. I wonder how much damage this will do to our civilization in the years ahead. Military initiatives of this kind come back to harm and kill the citizens of the nation that created them so routinely, that nation state military/security apparatchiks even have a name for this effect. They call it blowback. Having already helped to destroy the World Trade Center, blowback has proven itself to be a formidable force. Perhaps the training these kids are being given in stealing financial databases, might finish off what is left of the world's financial system and put the final nail in the coffin of the corrupt old order and its elites.
5/26/2009
The engines of extinction - massive bot armies really are on the way  The US military's use of bots to turn the tide in Iraq's urban warfare theater has opened eyes all around the world to the possibilities of military bots. Now with Japan about to drop its restrictions on arms exports, an army of some of the best bot engineers on the planet is gearing up to cover the world with low-cost bot warriors. Companies in China and Korea are also moving to take advantage of the massive opportunity for profit that converting the world's militaries over from human to bot warriors represents. As American military research makes bot warriors ever more autonomous and formidable, Asian manufacturers will flood the world with low-cost warrior bots that improve on those cutting-edge but overly expensive designs. The burning question is can we organize a sufficiently resilient cloud-based Civilization 2.0, before the nation states and other engines of extinction of the old order bring about the demise of our species?
5/26/2009
Free cloud course on creating iPhone apps is downloaded by over a million students  In a stunning example of how broadly and cheaply knowledge can be disseminated by offering courses in the cloud. Free videos of Stanford University's wildly popular course on creating applications for the iPhone and iPod touch have now been downloaded over a million times. All of the million downloads have come in just seven weeks, since the course began on April 1. Cloud, not campus, represents the future of education. See also: Is the campus obsolete - students learn better from podcast lectures than live ones
5/23/2009
New York Times article: The Coming Superbrain Today, artificial intelligence, once the preserve of science fiction writers and eccentric computer prodigies, is back in fashion and getting serious attention from NASA and from Silicon Valley companies like Google as well as a new round of start-ups that are designing everything from next-generation search engines to machines that listen or that are capable of walking around in the world. A.I.'s new respectability is turning the spotlight back on the question of where the technology might be heading and, more ominously, perhaps, whether computer intelligence will surpass our own, and how quickly. (Warning: link is to clueless old media site requiring registration.)
5/23/2009
Climate activists talk about keeping human hands off, but really seek scientifically controlled climate  Many climate activists seem to think that if human influences could just be eliminated from the Earth's climate, it would naturally remain as moderate as the 20th century's climate. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. From studies of ice core samples and sediments, climate scientists and geologists know that during most of the last billion years (see chart), the Earth was far warmer than it is today. So warmer that often no permanent ice existed anywhere on the planet. Only during four unusually cool periods, labeled ice ages, has summer ice existed at our planet's polls. Ice ages have occurred between about 800 and 600 million years ago, between about 460 and 430 million years ago, between about 350 and 250 million years ago, and from 4 million years ago right up until today. We are currently living in an ice age that has had at least 60 glacial advances and retreats during the last 2 million years. While the glaciers are currently in retreat, scientists say we are still living in an ice age period with temperatures that are well below the average for the last billion years. Earth's natural climate swings between much warmer periods when all the polar ice melts, which will flood all our coastal cities. And ice age periods when glaciers expand and retreat, which will bury interior cities like Chicago, Berlin and Moscow, under thousands of feet of ice. The climate we think of as normal, is actually a rare state that has only been in place for a tiny percentage of the last billion years. And unless we develop sufficient scientific understanding to effectively regulate our planet's climate, it won't stay that way.  The picture above is of an ice sheet in Antarctica that shows how Chicago, Berlin and Moscow will one day look, unless humans develop the tools necessary to actively regulate our climate.
5/22/2009
Big brother to track citizens by cell phone GPS to 'prevent pandemic'  Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will soon begin testing a mobile phone-based GPS tracking system that constantly monitors each individual's location and sends text alerts to participants if they cross paths with anyone who is later identified as a flu victim. The proposed system relies on mobile phone providers to constantly track the subjects' geographical locations and keep chronological records of their movements in a database. It comes into the open. This capability exists, so don't be surprised to one day learn that your government has been secretly capturing and storing all the GPS location data from your cell phone.
5/22/2009
Can a space elevator climb into space using only centrifugal force?  Theoretical physicist Leonardo Golubovic and his graduate student Steven Knudsen at West Virginia University have written a paper showing that it is theoretically possible for a space elevator to climb into space without any internal power source. The physicists say that a rotating hoop could propel the space elevator upward using only centrifugal force. Labels: Next
5/21/2009
Harnessing genetics to create super-soldiers?  Battalions of super-soldiers could be selected for specific duties on the basis of their genetic make-up and then constantly monitored for signs of weakness. So says a report by the US National Academies of Science. "A growing understanding of neuroscience offers huge scope for improving soldiers' performance and effectiveness on the battlefield," says the report. Genetic testing might also enable recruitment officers to determine which soldiers are best for specialist jobs. See also: Will war in 2030 be anything like the generals think?
5/20/2009
Face protection 98% effective in preventing spread of flu  N95 respirators and surgical masks are effective in preventing the flu, keeping out the virus 98 percent of the time, according to research by Lawrence M. Wein, Ph.D., and Michael P. Atkinson of Stanford University. Labels: Next
5/20/2009
Computer models of bank runs are identical to those of contagious diseases  An analysis of social networks and minute-by-minute customer transactions during a run on an Indian bank has found that computer models of bank runs spreading through a community are identical to those showing the spread of contagious diseases.  Duke University finance professor Manju Puri and co-author Rajkamal Iyer of the University of Amsterdam assembled a unique data set on the bank run and then employed epidemiological techniques to determine connections between bank depositors The researchers used Google Earth to map the locations of depositor's home addresses. Following the failure of a larger, neighboring bank, the customers of the bank studied, which was fundamentally sound, were withdrawing funds out of a fear that they might not be able to access their money in the future.
5/19/2009
Prepare to survive hyperinflation  There are two schools of economics, Austrian, which is scientifically based, and Keynesian, which is pseudo-science with a single purpose -- justifying the existence of large and powerful nation states. Needless to say, nearly every one of our politicos, regardless party affiliation, has a Keynesian economic adviser. This is why our politicos are about to try to inflate us out of the current economic mess. No frugality is in the offing, indeed, even with the huge revenue drain of the downturn, the cost of two wars, the enormous cost of the bailout and the baby boomer retirement. Congress is working on a new health care plan that independent economist say will add $2 to $3 trillion more to the deficit over the next ten years. There is simply no way this much debt can be managed, other than by inflating it away, and that is what their Keynesian advisers are recommending. This will hit you as a hidden tax that will steal the value of everything you own through hyper-inflation. Prepare for it now, because the difference between projected government income and outflow over the next ten years is simply too large for our politicos to handle by any other means. To learn more read: Will The Dollar Standard Collapse? by John Carney and Brace For Hyper-Inflation by Henry Blodget.
5/19/2009
Take a magnificent glimpse at the future of our kind The Milky Way galaxy is out there for our kind to inhabit. Trillions in easy to mine minerals in the asteroid belt can give our civilization wealth enough to spread beyond our planetary system. We must accomplish this. Because the only alternative is species extinction. Our Cosmos functions as an intelligence creation engine, with many mechanisms for destroying any species that fails to develop sufficient intelligence to spread across multiple star systems.  Watch the magnificence of the Milky Way's galactic core as it rolls across the night sky in this amazing HD time-lapse clip, and afterward, you will have no doubt where we must go. We will move outward to inhabit that majestic vision. We will not fail the millions of generations of our progeny that will be deprived of existence, if we do not quickly enough claim our place in the Cosmos.
5/19/2009
Cloud-based consultations can reduce doctor referrals to specialists by 20% An experiment that gave 46 general practitioners easy cloud access to specialists regarding patients with skin conditions reduced referrals to dermatologists by 20.7 percent. Using the cloud in every possible way in the medical field is the only way to make our health care system affordable again, while simultaneously offering improved patient care.
5/14/2009
The king has no clothes recognition avoidance mechanism Politicos and government economists love the concept of fiat money. It gives them more power. But fiat money is only the latest in a long line of currency debasement scheme sovereigns have practiced since money was invented. All such schemes have ended badly and so will the fiat money/credit bubble expansion economic model of today. Fiat money prosperity is just an illusion of prosperity. Only money with a stable intrinsic value can foster a healthy enough savings rate for the formation of a resilient prosperity. So when will the piper have to be paid? The dollar is unique in that normally a king's enemies can win by the collapse of a king's currency debasement scheme. But with the dollar, a collapse would see no winners anywhere in the world, since all nations have followed the dollar into the fiat currency model. When the dollar does, their fiat money goes too, creating a financial catastrophe unprecedented in its scope. The magnitude of the catastrophe and the universality of the risk creates a unique economic support mechanism like the one between courtiers and king in the children's tale. The king has no clothes recognition aversion factor creates in all who have their livelihoods staked on the continuation of a particular system. An extremely powerful psychological aversion blocking their ability to perceive that the system on which they are so utterly dependent is fundamentally and fatally flawed.A corollary to the king has no clothes recognition aversion factor is that when reality finally forces an end to the collective delusion, the collapse will be unprecedented in its magnitude. Any financial instrument denominated in any fiat currency is likely to become worthless as markets seize up and fail to settle worldwide. Real estate not usable for affordable housing or agriculture is also likely to have negligible value. Only items like food that people have an immediate need for can be relied on to hold their value in trading power.
5/12/2009
First analysis confirms worries about swine flu pandemic justified  H1N1 swine flu is spreading fast enough to justify the preparations for a pandemic, say epidemiologists who've analyzed the pattern of spread so far. "The message is that the epidemic is spreading very much as expected based on past flu epidemics," says Christophe Fraser of Imperial College London, and co-leader of the analysis team. The results suggest that the H1N1 virus is showing "sustained human-to-human transmission", thereby justifying the WHO's pandemic phase 5 rating, one short of the most severe. Labels: Next
5/11/2009
Washington ups ante in their find-the-dollar-collapse-point game of chicken  The White House just announced that they will need to borrow fully half of what the government spends this year, $1.8 trillion. According to the AP, this is about four times the previous record deficit. The king's pockets aren't just empty, he isn't wearing any clothes, and the world's economic system is completely dependent on the collective ability of investors to continue to ignore that fact. Else, the dollar begins a death-spiral into a collapse in buying power that will leave any financial asset denominated in dollars essentially worthless. Industries heavily dependent on government like health care, universities, legal, road builders and military contractors will be utterly decimated by a dollar collapse. If you work in one of these industries, it is time to think about moving into another industry that is less government dependent. It is time to start putting together the supplies and skills you will need to survive the initial chaos after a dollar collapse. Lately, the Chinese have been shunning long-term American debt, forcing the Fed to buy it up with printed money, and taking other steps to put the Yuan in a position to become the world's new reserve currency after a dollar collapse. They are hoping to take advantage of the dollar's fall to pull of the greatest shift in economic and political power ever achieved without firing a single shot. But they may also fail, because the collapse of the dollar is likely to precipitate a global loss of confidence in all of the world's fiat, including the Yuan. The failure of the fiat money system may leave no winners. Risking our civilization on a wild experiment to see if prosperity can be sustained by instituting a fiat money/credit expansion economic system, which relies on the frugality of politicos for its sustainability, was the second stupidest socioeconomic experiment of the 20th century, nearly equal in insanity with the communist experiment. We are now seeing the failure of this experiment. When money has no intrinsic value, saving becomes an irrational act. And without sufficient savings, it is impossible to sustain a prosperous and resilient socioeconomic system.
5/11/2009
Why fully electric vehicles are better than hybrids  Watch Tesla CEO Elon Musk explains why fully electric cars are superior to plug-in hybrids, or if you have the time, watch the full 1 hour and 29 minute interview that also covers his important efforts to help mitigate humanity's high vulnerability to extinction by colonizing Mars in the next two decades. A smarter move would be the colonization of the asteroid belt where a civilization boosting fortune in minerals are waiting to be recovered.
5/10/2009
Is the singularity drawing nigh?  Some skeptics dismiss the technological singularity concept as rapture for geeks. While I'd bet in favor of a smartbot passing the Turing test by 2030. I have serious doubts about the claims of some singularitarians that trillions of nanobots will be able to fab things so cheaply by then, that prices will fall to zero and create an end to scarcity. While it does appear that nano/bio/cloud (NBC) technologies each may feature their own version of Moore's Law, everything being free by 2030 will, I think, prove to be wildly optimistic. Consider that prior to the mechanization of agriculture, it took 95 farmers working dawn to dusk to generate enough surplus food to allow just 5 people to do something other than framing. While today, a single farmer can feed 100. Yet even with this enormous improvement in agricultural productivity, on the scale of what NBC tech might do, the cost of food is nowhere near free. Also consider that back in 1980, Robotics Age Magazine: The Intelligent Machines Journal asked top experts in artificial intelligence and robotics: "How long until there are reasonably priced robots that can be quickly programmed verbally to do any factory assembly line job a human can do?" The average expert answer back in 1980 was 11 years and the experts were nearly as optimistic about home bots. Here we are 29 years later with nothing like such versatile assembly line bot in sight and the only bots in our homes the very simple minded little Roombas. So don't plan your life around getting a vast outpouring of freebies from a singularitarian horn of plenty. Because all that is likely to pour from that horn any time soon are lots of debates about the exact nature of our singularity savior and the exact moment that it will come down to us from above.
5/10/2009
The shape of things to come: Jack Rabbit by Isaac Espriu Jack Rabbit is a work of flash fiction (stories under 1,000 words) that has an interesting take on the future that I found well worth the few minutes it took to READ.
5/09/2009
Will war in 2030 be anything like the generals think? Here what the US Army's NATICK Soldier Research Development & Engineering Center thinks war will be like in 2030. The future is always uncertain. However, by applying logic and imagination to current situations and technologies, the Future Soldier concept was developed to identify capabilities a Soldier might carry into battle. This concept is not U.S. Army doctrine, nor is it intended to answer every question raised about warfare in 2030. Our intent is to stir imaginations, and start a dialogue about how best to equip the Soldier.... READ (why-o-why do people use PDF?)Note to Pentagon's generals: War in 2030 won't be decided on a battlefield and to the extent there are such battles, bots will be doing the fighting. Why would anyone ever attack a country using guys in exoskeletons, when they could just send in a modded virus or a billion tiny but totally lethal bots? Warfare in 2030 will be about engineering a virus, bacteria, fungus or prion to be fast spreading but feature mild or no symptoms at first. Before switching into a new phase of infection that is 100% lethal. Infect 150 million with what seems like a mild case of allergies causing an occasion sneeze. Then after a time, the virus switch into a new lethal phase. Roll in your bots to decontaminate and sweep up all the corpses, then take over all of your now vanquished enemy's infrastructure and wealth. Soldiers on a battlefield may have no relevance to war in 2030. Indeed, the technology exists already to allow an enemy to create a highly contagious, untreatable virus, 100% lethal virus, it just hasn't been used against us yet. The old riff on generals is that they always go into each new war perfectly prepared for the last war. Causing much unnecessary loss of life for them to get their gear and strategies up to speed on the modern reality. In a viral war however, there will be no turning things around. If you haven't been putting your defense money into developing the technologies necessary to quickly identify and neutralize any viral, bacterial, fungal or prional pathogens in advance. Then your enemy's triumph will be complete. Your own family, your own troops and the American population you are paid to protect will all have been left completely defenseless against the most devastating attack in our history. Because you failed to fully comprehend the 21st century's threat matrix. Labels: Next
5/08/2009
Physicists detect entanglement of one photon shared among four locations Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed an efficient method to detect entanglement shared among multiple parts of an optical system. They show how entanglement, in the form of beams of light simultaneously propagating along four distinct paths, can be detected with a surprisingly small number of measurements. Entanglement is an essential resource in quantum information science, which is the study of advanced computation and communication based on the laws of quantum mechanics.... READ Labels: Next
5/08/2009
Why all the world's financial experts get it so wrong This morning I watched on YouTube, Peter Schiff speaking at Google about his new book .... WATCH Schiff correctly perceives the reality of the situation up to a point, but misses two vital factors that are absolutely essential to surviving the years ahead. Please watch Schiff's talk before reading the balance of this post. The two factors that Schiff misses are these: 1. Because it is the world's reserve currency and the linchpin of the global monetary system under which all the world's nations agreed to switch over from monies with intrinsic value to fiat monies backed only by the promises of politicos and nothing else. A collapse of the dollar is very likely to trigger a failure of confidence in most of the world's other fiat currencies. Making all of the world's currencies likely to fail together and spreading the problems Schiff correctly points out America is likely to suffer in the years ahead, to the rest of the planet. 2. As their currencies fail, most if not all of the world's governments will confiscate privately owned gold. There is precedent for this in the last major financial upheaval - the Great Depression - and since gold will be the only money left standing after a dollar collapse, politicos will have to seize it in order to avoid losing all of their power and legitimacy. The world's financial experts can't let themselves see what is unfolding for the same reason that religious fundamentalists can't let themselves see the logic and evidence for evolution. Because it would collapse the worldview they have relied upon to make all their life's choices. The entire world of investing is predicated upon the worldview that you can hedge against risk. But there is no investment hedge vehicle that can protect against a systemic collapse of all the world's fiat currencies, followed by the confiscation of gold by the world's governments. This represents a total, systemic failure of the basic premise of every investor. Their god would be proven dead, and that is why they won't be able to see this, until unfolding circumstances force them to do so. When a situation exists where a tribe's worldview fails so utterly that they are forced to perceive that failure, that tribe's civilization inevitably disintegrates into chaos. And that is what will happen to the world's investment community, after a dollar collapse. Investing in a political fiat money/credit expansion economy is purely about faith. Faith that politicos won't debase the money to an extent that collapses the value of all the assets denominated in it. Putting savings into any investment denominated in a fiat currency is the kind of gambling where, perhaps by counting the cards, you can get a little bit of an edge and add to your pile of chips, but where at any moment the casino could fail, making all your chips completely worthless. The only way to safely store wealth in a political fiat money/credit expansion economy is by using it to obtain a skill or objects that you can both use and will always be able to trade for something else that you may need. The only permanent way out of this mess is to build a civilization 2.0, based on a more resilient worldview.
5/08/2009
Graphene on copper promises much faster, power sipping computers  The creation of large-area graphene using copper may enable the manufacture of new graphene-based devices that meet the scaling requirements of the semiconductor industry, leading to faster computers and electronics, according to a team of scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.... READ
5/07/2009
Solid state DNA sequencing promises to personalized medicine  NABsys and Brown University scientists are building solid state, electrically addressable nanopore arrays that can sequence DNA without amplification or labeling. Their Hybridization-Assisted Nanopore Sequencing method combines nanopore sequencing with sequencing-by-hybridization (SBH) to create whole-genome sequencing technology that is fast and cheap enough to move into clinics to make personalized medicine a reality.... READ .... WATCH .... WATCH
5/06/2009
Wearware, bot skin, aircraft skin -- the many apps of smart polymers  A new type of polymers containing mechanically active molecules called mechanophores "offers a new way to build function directly into synthetic materials," said Nancy Sottos, a Professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois. "And it opens the door to creating mechanophores that can perform different responsive functions, including self-sensing and self-reinforcing, when stressed." When pushed or pulled with a certain force, specific chemical reactions are triggered in the mechanophores, analogous to the responsive behavior of biological systems, and researchers are working to harness this capability for many applications.... READ Labels: Next
5/06/2009
At last one politician is not being fooled by unscientific pseudo-economics We have to come to the realization that there is a sea change in what's happening. This is an end of an era and that we can't re-inflate the bubble, just as we devised a new system of Bretton Woods in '44 which was doomed to fail. It failed in '71 and then we came up with the dollar reserve standard which was a paper standard; it was doomed to fail and we have to recognize that it has failed. And if we think we can re-inflate the bubble by artificially creating credit out of thin air and calling it capital; believe me, we don't have a prayer of solving these problems.... WATCHThe idea that the credit collapse is a failure of "free markets" is government propaganda. How can credit be regarded as a "free market" when the basic interest rates have for years been set by the Federal Reserve at a rate far below historical norms. The artificially low rates have caused a collapse in the savings rate and inflated asset bubble after bubble. We won't have a truly healthy economy again until money with an actual intrinsic value is restored and saving/loan interest rates are truly allowed to be set by the free market once again, instead of being set by a committee of politicos at the Fed.
5/05/2009
Wars follow consistent mathematical equations By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war. Insurgencies have an equilibrium point, push them off it to destroy them... WATCH Labels: Next
5/04/2009
The threat matrix has changed but our institutions have not It continues to amazing me how inept all our governmental institutions appear to have become at dealing with the rapidly evolving threat matrix facing our civilization. On the one hand, you have the people at Treasury and the Fed trying to fix our broken economy by inflating yet another bubble, using the same old monetary expansion and easy credit policies that got us into this mess in the first place. It should be obvious to any thoughtful person by now, that the fiat money/credit expansion economic model is fatally flawed and will not produce sustainable economic growth. Only individual savings encouraged through the use of money that has intrinsic value can do that. Similarly, those charged with protecting America from pandemics still seem to be living in a past age before the giant leap forward in genetic engineering. With it now so easy for a microbiologist to tweak a virus to be much worse than its natural form. We need to approach any outbreak with far more caution and suspicion than in the past. We need to go into the situation knowing that we could be under attack. It used to be safe to tell the public that animal viruses don't pass through meat to humans, so even during a swine flu outbreak, feel free to pig out. But now we know viruses can be tweaked to spread through an animal's meat, and we need to safeguard against this in any outbreak, until we are sure it isn't there. Failure to do so could cause a doomsday scenario for America. A designer virus set loose in pig or chicken farms in Mexico, engineered to be transmitted both by the animal's meat and human-to-human. Our now globalized agriculture system would quickly transport the death from Mexican farms to store shelves in every city in America. Careful, proper cooking would kill the virus in many homes, but enough Americans don't take sufficient care in food preparation, that the virus would soon be in enough people that the human-to-human spread designed into it could be catastrophic. Better genetic engineering has forever changed the threat matrix. Today, at any hint some new virus might spreading, a "don't eat this type meat until further notice" announcement should be routine. Otherwise, we leave ourselves wide open to an attack that the government's own experts have estimated could kill over 100 million Americans. Unfortunately, fear of costing agri-biz a few bucks is keeping America vulnerable to a devastating attack. Civilizations often could survive having ossified protection institutions in the past, but in the era of designer viruses, they won't.
5/02/2009
CDC releases first images of H1N1 swine flu virus Photos of the newly identified H1N1 influenza virus have been taken by the CDC Influenza Laboratory.... 5 ways to protect yourself : TRACK OUTBREAK Labels: Next
4/30/2009
Social separation stops flu spread, but must be started quickly Studies show that staying at home, closing schools and isolating infected people within the home reduce flu infection, but only if they are used in combination, activated without delay and maintained for a relatively long period.... READ Labels: Next
4/30/2009
Scanning the cloud for early warning of in-coming threats Veratect scans the cloud to build an accurate threat matrix that allows the company to give advanced warning of events like the swine flu outbreak to clients. Ihsan Azzam, the State Epidemiologist of Nevada, noted that Veratect's tracking services provided "The very first alerts I received regarding this Swine Flu Epidemic, as well as the most detailed, accurate, timely and comprehensive.".... READ
4/30/2009
A pandemic could be like multiple Katrinas at once Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague," gave this information-packed talk to a TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are vital to your planning an effective personal response to new ones.... WATCH Labels: Next
4/29/2009
Visible light cloaking device can conceal small objects Two independent teams are claiming to have built invisibility cloaks that work over a wide range of optical wavelengths by channeling light around a small object to fool an observer who sees nothing but the background view. The bump is hidden by a pattern of tiny silicon nanopillars on the mirror surface that steers reflected light in a way that makes any bump look flat. So anything can be hidden beneath the bump without an observer realising it is there, like hiding a small object under a thick carpet.... READ Labels: Next
4/28/2009
Is there any such thing as a practical quantum computer? Creating a practical solid-state quantum computer is seriously hard. Getting such a computer to operate at room temperature is even more challenging. Is such a quantum computer possible at all? If so, which schemes might have a chance of success? .... READ .... READ Labels: Next
4/28/2009
Accumulate real wealth not evaporative wealth Evaporative wealth is wealth that is dependent on some outside factor, which can change in ways that would vaporize the wealth associated with it. Examples of evaporative wealth include things like large houses in the more remote urban suburbs. If the economy is healthy and vehicle fuel is cheap, such a house can have considerable value. However, in a faltering economy with high vehicle fuel prices, the value of such a house can quickly evaporate. See Extreme home makeover -- depression edition. Avoid investing in evaporative wealth. Having to much wealth keyed to the same exernal factor can not only bankrupt an individual, it can bankrupt a nation or even an entire civilization. America is the king of evaporative wealth with far too much of its wealth keyed to the same external factor -- the price of vehicle fuel. Houses in the suburbs, factory farms, food distributors, aviation firms, fertilizer makers, the vacation industry, retailers, restaurants -- the percentage of the American economy tied to the price of oil is immense. And when nations switch from money backed by something that has intrinsic wealth, like gold or silver, to fiat money that is backed only by the promises of politicos. Then all the assets associated with that country's currency, are converted to evaporative wealth, even the ones that would otherwise be more solid.
4/28/2009
Extreme home makeover -- depression edition Just when you think the old order has become as insanely inflexible and over regulated as it is possible to be, they take yet another step down the rabbit hole. Now banks that had to repossessed brand new houses 95% complete from builders that went bust are being forced by heavy fines from California towns to tear them down. What a ridiculous waste of resources. It is just plain madness.... WATCH Labels: Next
4/27/2009
Cloud swine flu tracking bot available What a weird little bug this one is. Apparently, it has pig genetic material that has only been seen in swine flu strains in Asia, and pig genetic material that has only been seen in flu strains in the Americas, and bird genetic material, and some human genetic material all combining in a way that appears to make it transmit easily between humans. With the recent improvements in the state of the art, hacking together a bug like this one would probably not be difficult. Unless I am mistaken, Homeland Security is still operating under a Bush administration order that nothing is to be called an attack, unless the experts are 100% sure. This standard is likely to be impossible to achieve for a virus of this type. The best that experts could probably do is give their bosses a percentage. And under Bush's rule even if that assessment was 5% natural vs 95% engineered, the public would still be told natural. If this policy is still in effect it ought to be changed immediately. Because knowing the US gov is likely to call an attack a natural outbreak, seems like it would embolden potential adversaries to do just this kind of a low level pandemic attack. It is probably natural, but the first major flu pandemic in 40 years that hits at the worst possible moment for the reeling US economy. If things shut down here like they have in Mexico City, our economy is likely to be toast. It does just get you wondering a bit about the origins of this organism. Especially since our government has previously told us that they might lie to us about an event like this. Politicos may routinely deceive us, but at least the cloud can be counted on to come up with an effective swine flu tracking bot.... TRACK BOT
4/27/2009
The end of history Back in the 1990's, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay and book called "The End of History?" Suggesting that with western capitalistic democracy having soundly beaten its only rival, communism. There would be only good news and smooth sailing ahead. The only remaining superpower would enforce a Pax American of peace and prosperity worldwide. Now, as we approach the end of the first decade of the new millennium, we can see that the old order is in fact fatally flawed. Its power is anything but super. Its failed ideas have bogged us down in not one but two land wars in Asia. The terrorist responsible for the only large scale attack on the American homeland has never been punished, because America's centralized power systems have become too decrepit to catch him. The America economy seems to be folding up like the "house of cards" President Bush once called it. The old American political system can stay afloat, only by borrowing trillions from foreign nations. And with a pandemic possibly spreading towards us, we recall in horror the systemic failure of Katrina. All the old order's rigid, arthritic and over centralized institutions seem completely unable to cope with the fast pace world of the new millennium. Allowing our financial system to become overly centralized and complex, allowed a small group of financial shysters to loot it of trillions, leaving the world banks stuck with an enormous pile of toxic assets. While the over centralization of our food distribution system, moving away from local farms towards giant centralized food processors, makes it easy for any foreign power or even a single gene-hacking miscreant, to kill tens of millions of Americans with a bio-engineered pathogen. The old order has so highly centralized everything, that pulling out one piece of the puzzle from one system can bring down all their highly centralized systems, leaving us ripe for catastrophic failure. Were, for example, the long fuel deliver line from the volatile middle east ever to fail, not only would our cars grind to a halt, but so also would the trucks needed to deliver the necessities of life from far off factories, and so too would the tractors necessary to grow that food. Unless enough of us start living by and spreading the more resilient, decentralized, multi-nucleated and cloud-coordinated paradigm of the Humods Memes to build Civilization 2.0 as fast as we can. We could well experience an 'end of history.' Not due to the Fukuyama dream of an idyllic superpower-ruled centralized world, but due to a systemic failure so extreme, that there is no one left alive to record any history after that failure.... READ
4/26/2009
Homeland Security declares public health emergency for swine flu A public health emergency has been declared in the U.S. to deal with the swine flu, Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said at a White House briefing today.... READ .... READ Labels: Next
4/26/2009
The economic effects of a pandemic In Singapore, where only 33 infected people died, gross domestic product shrank 11.4 percent in the second quarter of 2003 during a pandemic there. If the Mexican swine flu becomes a pandemic in America, it can be expected to significantly lengthen and deepen the already serious economic downturn.... READ Labels: Next
4/24/2009
How long before an engineered virus is unleashed? Reports about the nature of the virus hitting Mexico are troubling. From the AP: "The worrisome new virus -- which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before." READExperts on warfare in the 21st century regard a biological attack using a virus engineered using genetic material from multiple organisms to be their worst case scenario. A Homeland Security study put the potential death toll from a well engineered viral pathogen of this kind at 100 million Americans. Due to the extremely fragile nature of America's economy right now, even releasing a less deadly engineered virus could collapse the American economy and eliminate America as a player on the global stage. Consider the many advantages to one of our adversaries of an attack vectored through Mexico using an engineering swine flu virus exactly like the Mexico City strain. 1. Such a virus could be natural and wouldn't kill millions, so the risk of American retaliation would be low. 2. Hitting in Mexico rather than directly at America first, would also serve to make the virus less suspect, while still spreading it through travelers headed north. Mexican farmers might also ship meat from sick hogs and chickens to stores all across America. Properly handled meat should be safe, but unfortunately many home cooks do not handle meat properly. Putting cooked meat back onto surfaces where uncooked meat has been is a common mistake. 3. The fear of infection would keep people home for weeks, quite possibly sending our already seriously weak economy into a death spiral. Replacing tens of thousands of small family farms and small local banks with a few mega financial and agricultural corporations, may have created more efficiency, but only at the cost of making our civilization extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic failure due to attack or other malfeasance. Labels: Next
4/24/2009
Is global unrest about to collapse the old order? Food scarcity and the resulting higher food prices are rapidly pushing poor countries into chaos and turning them into hollow states.... READ Labels: Next
4/24/2009
First "serious candidate" for ocean planet Astronomers have unveiled the lightest exoplanet ever detected and, in the same distant solar system, the first "serious candidate" for a world with abundant liquid water, both conditions thought important for supporting life. "I would put the two discoveries on an equal footing," said Thierry Forveille, an astronomer at the Grenoble Observatory in France and co-author of the study.... READ .... READ Labels: Next
4/24/2009
China will be world's largest economy in only a decade, says Deutsche Bank  China will overtake the U.S. in terms of economic output within a decade, according to estimates released Thursday by Deutsche Bank, which said it had to accelerate its forecast for China due to the favorable growth dynamics in emerging markets.... READ In recent weeks, China has begun diversifying away from the U.S. dollar and moving toward the establishment of an alternative world reserve currency.... READ Labels: Next Send comments to: humods [at] gmail [dot] com |