Hughesair (Inflection Point)

The autopsy claims, hit by blunt trauma and signs of internal bleeding. It will be interesting to hear what scientists conclude about the red winged blackbird deaths. We have few enough birds anymore. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40885546/ns/us_news-environment/

Roling Blackouts don't cut it. Power leaks from the high cables largely due to low voltage, old misconnected, scattered and un-coordinated networks. Engineers plan a super grid with more efficient high energy. Connecting disparent local networks and delivering from the energy rich Southwest to the energy starved Northeast will go a long way to decrease cost and increase available energy. For greater efficiency and for greater distances engineers even propose DC. Our economy runs on cheap energy; let's face it. Why not burry the cable under a new Inter State highway system. Lay the cables in the center of the lane. Cars can track the cable as a steering device, and charge the car's batteries by induction as the car races along. Such an efficient high speed pathway might serve to reduce commutiter air travel frustration, build out the grid and speed up ground travel.

SCIENCE EDUCATION: New Texas Standards Question Evolution, Fossil Record -- Bhattacharjee 324 (5923): 25a -- Science Don McLeroy , a dentist, chair of the Texas Board of Education, leads a 13:2 vote establishing new standards for education in the Texas class room, including talking points from the intelligent design literature -- creationism once again. Proponents of this dogmatism say, "the next step will be to press publishers to modify biology text books." CREDIT: HARRY CABLUCK/AP PHOTO Dentists and pharmacists, pretending to be doctors have always seemed a bit suspect. It would be interesting to see how this dentist would explain the evolution of human teeth, or the dating of human teeth way earlier than creationists suggest. You don't hear any rabies claiming creationism, and it's their ancient literature. It's as if there is a subset of human brains that cannot fathom allegory or metaphor . What would an alien make...

Many are unaware of the role CO2 plays in human and, in fact, all animal physiology. We all recognise CO2 as a metabolic by product, but CO2 plays a far more critical role as the primary regulator of acid base balance. This critical acid-base balance is our most closely guarded homeostatic mechanism. We regulate the acid-base balance by our breathing. If we breath a little faster or deeper we reduce the CO2 concentration in our blood and thus move the balance to the -base side of the equation. CO2 diffuses as carbonic acid in the blood, and by breathing off CO2 from our lungs we reduce the acid content of our body. Not good, if we thus increase the pH -- that is lowering the H+ ion concentration -- we change the K+ ion, the Ca++ ion and others that are critical to life. The reverse is true from holding our breath or otherwise retain more CO2.Environmental changes in CO2 has the same effect. Up to a point we can compensate for increased environmental CO2 by breathing faster, additionall...

Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really) While our "Daddy Warbucks" politicians pore billions into the ITER fusion project over decades without evident success, the DOE persuades the Navy to withdraw funding from Robert W. Bussard's laboratory. (Aug 11,1928--Oct 6 2007) Robert quit DOE to build a small fusion reactor based on an intense focal point of static electric charge generated by a magnetic cage. Protons released into the field accelerate to the focal point of negative charge with sufficient energy and density to react. This was not a dream but a working laboratory model. Bussard died before he was able to regain the funding that he lost and that is a long sad story. The DOE's 12 billion dollar boondoggle supports a mammoth thermonuclear plasma machine called the TOKAMAK. Bussard says the Russians gave it to us because they knew it would never work. My cynical interpretation runs a bit different in that I would guess that Big Oil lobb...

Hot fusion, safely contained, deserves a closer look . Apparently the DOE will not support because the technology runs counter to DOE's funded, international and gargantuan fusion project. DARPA and the Navy were involved. The project is now up for grabs. (More to come) This one (concept) clearly deserves more research. Check Robert W. Bussard (PHD Princeton) and a company, E=MC2. This live video was Bussard's presentation in the Google auditorium, Nov 9th 2006. From a reality check viewpoint, E=MC2 apparently demonstrated, briefly, a magnetically contained small scale hot fusion reaction in the laboratory with a high net energy yield. This fascinating presentation runs 90 minutes and should be viewed by anyone contemplating Energy policy or CO2 emissions. Bussard says, the physics is well developed, the engineering needs work. If I understand him correctly, the engineers with this kind of expertise are in their 70s as was Bussard. Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nucle...