I can concentrate on one topic at a time (sort of):
energy
Linkpost, 11/16/10 to 11/19/10
- Airports Can Opt-Out of TSA Screening in Favor of Private Companies.
- Surfaces that Keep the Ice Away. Or, de-icing through nanotechnology.
- Sea Life Flourishes in the Gulf.
- A Techno-Agrarian Manifesto. Or, what the heck are we going to do with all that empty space in Detroit?
- Surprise Link Between Weird Quantum Phenomena: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle Sets Limits on Einstein’s ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’. Yeah, this one’s as brain-melty as the title implies. It’s worth a read just for the mind-expanding experience.
Linkpost, 12/6/10 to 12/9/10
- An FBI informant tries to infiltrate a mosque, and they turn him in to the FBI. I wish there were more headlines like this.
- 10 Failures of the US Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat.
- Taliban Murders Afghan Elder, Thanks Wikileaks for Revealing “Spies”. I really wish we were prosecuting Julian Assange for his hand in Khalifa Abdullah’s death rather than the trumped-up rape charges.
- The Booming Business of Bootlegging.
- North America: The new energy kingdom. Ah, think of what could be if we could get the idjits out of the way.
- A live-blog of the Space X launch. (In case you were under a rock and missed it.)
- New species of rust-eating bacteria destroying Titanic. There’s some debate about whether these bugs are actually “new”, but they’re still cool.
Labor Day Science Links
While I’m doing the eight-hour brisket barbecue …
- Hot Water Around Giant Carbon Star Creates Interstellar Mystery
- Think of this as a psychology link: Israel Identifies The Perfect Terrorist
- Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research
- Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?
- The Frozen Zoo aiming to bring endangered species back from the brink
- The Great Teaching Blind Spot
- Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium
- Chinese General Declares Democracy The Ultimate Weapon
- Gas-and-Brake Pedal Gets New Look After Recalls
- Triceratops ‘never really existed but was just a young version of another dinosaur’
- Donated Computer Time Discovers New Star
- Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s
- In a Video Game, Tackling the Complexities of Protein Folding
- Men in a sexually competitive environment die sooner
- Earth’s Inner Core Might Be on the Move
Linkpost: 8/30/2010
- Generating Power from Electricity in the Air
- Young Mars Crater Contains Water Ice, Photo Shows
- Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he’s from the future
- A Quadrillion, To Scale
- Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
- New solar system looks much like home
- Can you identify what this image portrays?
- Self-cleaning technology from Mars can keep terrestrial solar panels dust free
- Mind-Controlling Parasites Date Back Millions of Years
BP Vent
I had mentioned that I was going to gripe about British Petroleum a bit more. It turns out that I did, but as a comment on another blog:
Keep in mind that BP is the proverbial Bad Example. Theirs was the refinery in Texas City that burned down in 2005. Theirs was the pipeline in Alaska that leaked because they pushed back the maintenance cycle. (Suspiciously, it’s leaking again.) They were even (believe it or not) involved with the Exxon Valdez.
They’re the company that drives us nuts. With the regulatory agencies accepting settlements where no one admits wrongdoing, there’s no legal history to ratchet up the pressure on the bad company.
In fact, their investors don’t agree with your statement of “best economic sense”, either. Not only are they suing over the current mess, they sued over some of the previous ones, too. This is a pointed example of how screwed up the investor laws are.
Really, there is no Free Market in the United States — there’s some serious crony capitalism going on, bordering on hard-core corporatism.
Science Links for 26 May 2010
Eric Berman’s got a post about observations that contradict the Big Bang theory: Investigating an enigma at the edge of the universe
Ars Technica details research that suggests we’ll see Faster-Than-Light communication before we see FTL travel: Quantum teleportation achieved over ten miles of free space
Germans plan to make ‘synthetic natural’ gas from CO2 — which, off-hand, sounds like a goofy idea for a “green” energy solution. Until you realize that they’re talking about using the natural gas to store excess electricity generated during peak periods of windmill operation.
Amazingly, this is my first link about BP: Today’s Louisiana hearing: Argument on rig (updated). (Tom Fowler is the Houston Chronicle‘s energy blogger, and he’s been keeping up on the oil spill.) At some point, I’ll get around posting about British Petroleum. Until then, I’ll just insinuate that the problem isn’t oil drilling, it’s the company involved.
For those of you Borg wannabes: Man Infects Himself with Computer Virus.
Slate‘s started a series about False Memories. I’m pleased that I didn’t fall for the trick in their test, but not really surprised that so many people did.