Category: Science & Technology

Parts Wholes and Quantum Mechanics

A colleague of mine passed away yesterday.  My relationship with him began while he was at Interval Research circa 1996.  This link is to a paper of his written shortly after we met on the basis of my interest in relational over functional description.

Posted by James Bowery on Tuesday, April 2, 2013 at 02:45 PM in Obituaries,  Science & Technology,  The Ontology Project
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Wholesight and the Ontology of Frederick Parker-Rhodes

I came upon the work of Frederick Parker-Rhodes in my quest for the ideal computer language, which I have elsewhere on MR discussed in relation to Heidegger’s “as” structure and GW’s ontology project.  Recent work in theoretical physics has provided empirical validation to his “wildly eccentric” views—which managed to provide a priori derivations of the dimensionless scaling constants of physics from his ontology detailed in his book “The Theory of Indistinguishables”.  To be brief, there is his “combinatorial hierarchy” that derives from FRP’s attempt to find the underlying mathematical structure of what he called “wholesight”.

Below the fold is an excerpt from “Wholesight: The Spirit Quest” by Frederick Parker-Rodes…

Continued...

Posted by James Bowery on Monday, February 4, 2013 at 01:08 AM in Art & Design,  Christianity,  Economics & Finance,  Environmentalism & Global Warming,  Global Elitism,  Globalisation,  Science & Technology,  Social Sciences,  The Ontology Project
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Physics challenge

A wave of 16 bombings ripped across Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 22, 2011.  Here’s a scene from one of these.  The question is what kind of car bomb causes this damage?

See a close-up of the scene.

The answer for those who haven’t figured it out: http://www.majorityrights.com/uploads/crater.avi

Posted by R-news on Friday, December 23, 2011 at 01:50 AM in Science & Technology,  War on Terror,  World Affairs
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Who’s to blame for the pathetic state of African science?

Foreigners, of course.  From the comedy section of Nature News:

World-class laboratories are not common in Africa, but they are becoming less of an exception. There is a whiff of a scientific renaissance in the air, with new labs mushrooming in the capitals of Kenya and Uganda and local researchers taking the helm of formerly Western-run institutions.

The improved conditions carry a cost: continued dependence on foreigners, who foot most of the bills. “If you look at any of the researchers who carry out any significant research in Africa, 99.9% of their funding comes from outside,” says Tom Egwang, a Ugandan immunologist and founding director of Uganda’s Med Biotech Laboratories, headquartered in Kampala. “I really think that all these programmes are killing African science.”

Others agree that the millions flowing from philanthropists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), aid agencies and traditional research funders into African science are undermining efforts to convince African governments to spend money on research. “Governments don’t assume their responsibilities in this area, simply because the NGOs spend money in their place,” says Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye, vice-president of the National Academy of Science and Technology of Senegal.

Dependence on international aid causes big problems for African scientists. Projects can be interrupted when grants run out, and the research agendas are set by donors rather than by African researchers and policy-makers. “Donors have their own priorities, and I don’t think they would be able to provide all the resources that Africa needs,” says Aida Opoku-Mensah, director of the information technology, science and technology division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. “There needs to be a mind shift in African countries.”

Several new efforts are under way to tackle the problem. This March, African science ministers resolved that 2011 would be the start of an African decade for science, promising increased research budgets and attempts to use science and technology to drive development. A small, continent-wide research-grant programme, modelled on the European Union’s framework programmes, is in the works, as is a pan-African training network for researchers undertaking PhDs. And donors and governments alike are talking up the need for more home-grown funding for research and development.

What, you expected Nature to print something honest about the dismal intellectual record of black Africans?  Well, at least they provide an accurate forecast of what we can expect Africans to contribute in today’s world:

Moreover, most African governments have more pressing priorities than funding science, says Malcolm Molyneux, a professor of tropical medicine at the University of Liverpool, UK, who headed the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, based in Blantyre, for 13 years. “When a country is manifestly inadequate in every compartment of its responsibilities in education, health and agriculture, it’s difficult to pontificate that more should be spent on research when there is a possibility of this being acquired from outside,” he says.

Posted by Dasein on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 03:18 PM in Science & Technology
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True Science is Barbaric

A recent conversation with what might be thought of as an American Brahmin, (which seem to be coming back into vogue) included the following exchange (paraphrased):

Me: The problem with central planning is the problem with all the social sciences—the failure to respect experimentation over argumentation.  That’s why I support greater State autonomy. 

Me: No, I’m saying that the philosophy of science is the proper basis for Polity…

And so forth…

The thing that struck me about this conversation is the attitude of the American Brahmin toward experimentation—as though Polity—or to cast another light on it, Politeness—rendered experimentation somehow less than Civil.

That’s when it struck me that true science is in fact Barbaric and will always be treated thus by ruling elites of any Polity because Polity depends on faith in a set of—usually unstated—hypotheses in human ecology adopted by religious faith as pragmatic enforcement of elite powers.

Posted by James Bowery on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 04:14 PM in Science & Technology
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The Specter of Genetic Communism

Racial cohesion is a result of different factors, important ones being similar physical appearance and behavioural patterns (whose aggregate phenotype is a ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’).  The difference in physical appearance between races is obvious and results in implicit negative attitudes towards racial others.  Aggregate behavioural differences can also be stark and are a major cause of the displacement of native Whites via ‘White Flight’.

One of the main weapons in the elite arsenal to weaken criticism of race-replacement has been the PC mythology on race:  that it doesn’t exist, that differences are only skin deep, that differences are the legacy of White racism, and corrective social programs can equalize achievement.  Although researchers have long ago taken the hammer to many of these idols, their worship in the popular press and political class continues.  The torrent of data coming from projects like HapMap, however, now portends a coming twilight.  Heretical musings bubble up in establishment organs like Slate and the NYT (though orthodoxy still prevails overwhelmingly).  Social programs, like No Child Left Behind, continue to fail.  The general avoidance or dismissal of heritable differences between human groups by the left (who do the elite’s ideological programming) is becoming less viable as a strategy for suppressing dissident views on race.

The crumbling of the dominant racial mythology and increasing racial tension undermine the legitimacy of Western elites who impose, or fail to prevent, race-replacement.  As Whites become increasingly displaced and dispossessed, their discontent weakens the foundations of the current political structure.

What is to be done?

Continued...

Posted by Dasein on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 02:35 PM in Genetics & Human Bio-Diversity,  Science & Technology
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CHEM Trust reports on male feminisation

CHEM Trust, a charity “with a mission to protect humans and wildlife from harmful chemicals” has issued its well-trailed report on the effects of man-made endocrine-disrupting, or “gender bending”, chemicals in the environment.

These are:-

... chemicals which block the male hormone androgen, the so-called anti-androgenic chemicals, can cause un-descended testes and can feminise males. Similarly, some sex hormone disrupting chemicals can mimic oestrogen, the female hormone, and also feminise males. Many man-made chemicals can block androgen action, and these include several pesticides and some phthalates, used in consumer products to make plastics flexible. Worryingly, a study of effluents from UK sewage works has found that around three-quarters of these discharges have considerable anti-androgenic activity, and investigations are underway to identify the chemicals to blame.

The four-part report is not confined or focussed upon the known effects of pollutants upon human males.  It reviews effects upon the males of all vertebrate life.  Nonetheless, the underlying concern is for our male offspring:-

Taken together, the effects seen in wildlife should raise concerns for contaminant induced genital disruption in human male infants. Indeed a condition called testicular dysgenesis syndrome, including birth defects of the penis of baby boys, cryptorchidism (undescended testes), reduced sperm production and testicular cancer, has been suggested, because there is evidence to indicate that these effects may be interlinked in causation (Skakkebaek et al.,2001; 2007; Sharpe and Skakkebaek,2008). Moreover, in many studies these disorders or demasculinization effects have been associated with exposure to certain contaminants or sex hormone.

All of the chemicals associated with these effects are to be found in the developed world.  They are generally less evident in the developing world.  Male children born to Third World migrants in the West are as at risk as those born to settled populations here.

In two days time the British government will oppose proposed new European controls on pesticides, many of which have been found to have “gender-bending” effects.  In total, there have been over 100,000 new chemicals introduced in recent years.  Ninety-nine per cent of them are not properly regulated, and eight-five per cent are devoid of accompanying safety information.

The full report, which follows studies in Italy and America, can be downloaded in pdf form here.

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, December 8, 2008 at 09:36 AM in Science & Technology
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Nature on sociobiology and god

The leading weekly science journal Nature has taken it upon itself to publish a series of articles on what science has to say about being human.  The first contribution, published this week, is on religion, and I am going to quote a little from it.

First, though, here is a quote from the editorial that announced the series.  It talks about the difficulties for evolutionary scientists of:-

... being objective about a topic as philosophically, politically and ethically charged as human nature. Take the sociobiology wars of the 1970s and 1980s. Left-wing scholars rejected biological explanations for phenomena such as gender roles, religion, homosexuality and xenophobia, largely because they feared such explanations would be used to justify a continuation of existing inequalities on genetic grounds. The resulting debates became hugely political.

The combustibility of the interface between science and society is one major reason for the extraordinary fragmentation of research that tackles human behaviour. In part because of the sociobiology battle, most social scientists still steer clear of using evolutionary hypotheses. And even researchers who do work under the unifying framework of evolution tend to fall into distinct camps such as gene–culture co-evolution or human behavioural ecology — their practitioners divided by differences of opinion on, say, the relative importance of culture versus genes.

Alright, this guy - obviously an eminent science writer - can’t say that the “sociobiology wars” were really an ethnically-motivated attack on good science by Jewish race warriors.  We understand that he has to have a job to go to tomorrow morning.

But I was quite amazed that, in this genomic age, it is still necessary to call those monsters “scholars” and to portray their motives as “fear” of justifying inequalities.  Why so?  Gould and Co agitated for anti-science.  If, on the contrary, sociobiology had demonstrated some aspect of human nature in a way favourable to Jewish ethnic interests, they would have been praising it from the rooftops.  They were liars.  They were wrong.  They were divisive.  They were destructive to careers.

Can’t the editor of Nature plainly state that anti-science is not what is expected of supposed men of science?  In the very next paragraph he regrets the damage done by these creatures.  He could call for an end to fear, an end to division.  But he doesn’t.

Anyway, to move on to the piece on evolution and religion, by the memory specialist Pascal Boyer.  He has this to say:-

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 06:39 PM in Science & Technology
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Conscious decision belated. Anti-racism belied. But as with these, so with you and me.

A study by Professor John-Dylan Haynes, who is the Bernstein Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute, has cast fresh doubt upon the existence of free will.

Unconscious decisions in the brain

Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. This is shown by a study of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Charité University Hospital and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin. The researchers from the group of Professor John-Dylan Haynes used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. “Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings.”

... In the study participants could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their left or right hand. They were free to make this decision whenever they wanted, but had to remember at which time they felt they had made up their mind. The aim of the experiment was to find out what happens in the brain in the period just before person felt the decision was made. The researchers found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option participants would take already seven seconds before they consciously made their decision. Normally researchers look what happens when the decision is made, but not what happens several seconds before. The fact that decisions can be predicted so long before they are made is a striking finding.

This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.

... Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: “Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. Especially we still need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed.”

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 08:27 AM in Science & Technology
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Water on the brain

I am indebted to onlooker for the following story, which is also the story of European Man’s questing mind.  On another thread onlooker posted a link to an innovation blog where the tale - perhaps tall, perhaps not - was told of John Kanzius and his radio frequency transmitter.

In an important sense it does not matter whether Kanzius’ little idea has at a single stroke cured every cancer and solved the energy crisis.  He is demonstrating the daring of the Western intellect.  Tens of thousands of men like Kanzius - not necessarily geniuses or giants of the scientific world - have set their eyes beyond the known horizon, and started walking.  Enough of them have found something new and useful to make our civilisation what it is, and set it far above all its forebears.  Half the world would rejoice in its destruction, such an affront to their self-respect is our ascendency.

The creativity of a Kanzius defines us.  We are not as spiritual as the Indian or as given to faith and hope as the Arab.  We are not as ethnocentric as the Jew, or as rooted in tradition.  We are not as bound to instinct as the African.  We are innovative.  We are restless.  We are takers of risks, albeit ones calculated to free us from sorrow, and raise this extraordinary European life still higher.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 08:00 PM in Science & Technology
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Misology in America Part 3:Scientific Fraud - Homosexuality

By Robert E. Reis

Misology is the hatred of objective knowledge gained by the scrupulous use of the scientific method when it contradicts the political goals, ideology or religious faith of the misologists.

Misologists dominate the discussion of public policies in several areas in the modern world.

In the United States misologists predominate in the media, the universities, the schools, and among the elected politicians and the clergy.

In Part 1 I presented evidence that misologists dominate the public discussion of the distribution of the general mental ability factor or IQ in various identifiable human genetic clusterings.

In Part 2 I presented evidence that misologists dominate the public discussion of the health hazards of smoking tobacco.

This essay will document the stranglehold misologists hold on the public discussion of homosexuality.

Continued...

Posted by Robert Reis on Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 01:33 AM in Science & Technology
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“Hey Popopoyotl, about your job ...”

The Japanese are an ageing people with the low-birthrate typical today of a prosperous first-world economy.  The Japanese are also fiercely ethnocentric, and really, really don’t intend to import millions of black and brown gaijin.  The Japanese are also crazy about horizon technology, especially electronic gadgetry.

The result?

It’s on display at the 2007 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, a 1,000-booth show that ends tomorrow.  The greater part of the floor area is devoted to manufacturing robots, since that’s where the money is today.  But the buzz is coming from the non-manufacturing robot sector, which is still in its initial research phase.  The vision shared in the big Japanese corporations, universities and public research institutes involved in this effort is of a future in which, if robots don’t do everything (human contact work, for example), they will certainly share in the execution of the more utilitarian tasks.

The main categories where development is proceeding now are: maintenance (inspection, repair); home automation (cleaning, security); life assistance (for medical and welfare use); entertainment; hobbies.

The Guardian ran a piece on the exhibition today:-

In Japan, robots can already be found working as home helps, office receptionists and security guards, as well as on the factory floor. There were more than 370,000 industrial robots in use in Japan in 2005, according to a report by Macquarie bank, 40% of the world total, with 32 robots for every 1,000 manufacturing workers. The economy ministry calculates that the Japanese robot market will be worth more than £26bn by 2025.

There are compelling economic reasons for Japan’s obsession with robots. The population recently went into long-term decline and a reduced workforce is expected to struggle to fill jobs in the health and welfare sectors. As long as Japanese leaders remain cautious about relaxing immigration laws, robots will be seen as at least part of the solution.

Here are a very few of the Tokyo machines I’ve been able to identify:-

Hitachi’s EMIEW2 is an office worker.  Of course.  What else?

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, November 30, 2007 at 07:08 PM in Science & Technology
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Cultural Instauration: A history of government interest in Subliminal Audio Programming

The following essay by “John Boisdarc” provides some background and support to the intriguing concept of Alexander Thiele, as presented by him to this month’s Ateney (Athenaeum) in Moscow.  Much of his presentation I reproduce at the end of John’s piece.  It announces itself as “a Successful Group Evolutionary Strategy using Subliminal Audio Programming”.

GW

Let me first of all attempt to dispel any preconceived notions that subliminal programming is bunk.  It is a curious aspect of subliminal programming that people do not wish to recognize its effectiveness, even while it is being worked upon them successfully, non-stop, 24/7, via television, radio, and almost every other form of electronic entertainment (including, since the 80’s, subliminal messages embedded in screen savers used on personal computers).

The question must be asked: why do the victims of this precision technology refuse to recognize its efficacy, despite the fact that it is being constantly, successfully used against them?  In order to answer the question, we must examine the relatively recent origins of subliminal programming as it is perceived by the public.  I will strive to be as mercifully brief as possible.

In 1957, a journalist named Vance Packard produced a book, The Hidden Persuaders.  It was a huge hit.  Among other things addressed in his book, he examined the use of subliminal advertising techniques. (Subliminal means “below the limen”, a term psychologists use to describe the threshold of consciousness.)  Mr Packard also critiqued the use of subliminal methodology in swaying the body politic in its choice of elected politicians - a practice he had studied and documented in depth.

As I have said, the book was immensely popular, and the public outcry of indignation, at having been abused in such a sinister manner caused US Representatives Frank Boykin (AL) and Craig Hosmer (CA), in 1958, to introduce into Congress two bills proposing to outlaw the use of subliminal advertising and projection by radio and television, and prescribing penalties for the same.  Both bills died on the vine, quite probably because the politicians, having witnessed in recent elections the powerful effects of subliminal persuasion upon the body politic, were disinclined to discard this powerful weapon.  Therefore, subliminal projection, not having been outlawed, continued to be used and refined.

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 06:06 PM in Science & Technology
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Another chemical weapon in the war against babies

From yesterday’s Telegraph:-

Coming soon, a pill that stops periods forever

A contraceptive pill that aims to halt indefinitely a woman’s period is expected to receive full approval from US health officials this week, a move that could end discomfort and pain for many women.

The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to give the green light to Lybrel tomorrow. Wyeth, the drug’s manufacturer, has requested approval from British officials for the drug, which will be marketed here as Anya, but it is unlikely the pill will be available until next year.

... Lybrel, however, is taken for at least a year at a time. Like the majority of oral contraceptives it is a combined pill, containing both oestrogen and progestogen, but the doses of hormone have been lowered to allow for it being taken without a break.

Supporters of Lybrel claim there is no need for women to menstruate and the pill is an easy and safe way to eliminate what many consider to be a monthly ordeal.

Gynaecologists say they have been seeing a slow but steady increase in women asking how to limit and even stop monthly bleeding.

Surveys have found up to half of women would prefer not to have any periods and most would prefer them less often.

... Rebecca Findlay, of the Family Planning Association, said yesterday: “It’s a good lifestyle option for some women, and gives them extra choice, though clearly will not be welcomed by all women.”

Some experts believe that blocking periods could be unsafe. Paula Derry, a health psychologist in Baltimore, wrote in the British Medical Journal two weeks ago that “menstrual suppression itself is unnatural”, and that there was not enough data to determine if it was safe long-term.

Her stance is supported by research in the US which has found many women view their periods as symbols of fertility and health. Christine Hitchcock, of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, told The New York Times: “My concern is that the menstrual cycle is an outward sign of something that’s going on hormonally in the body. [I worry about] the idea that you can turn your body on and off like a tap.”

The same hormones that control the menstrual cycle act on the brain, bones and skin and the long-term effects of suppressing them were unknown, she said. “You need to think whether there are consequences for the whole body that we don’t know about,” she added.

Of course, we can’t have any of this going on, can we?

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 06:51 PM in Science & Technology
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Study Challenges Theories On Species

Cooler climates may produce more species than warmer ones
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17630802/

More species develop in warm, tropical climates or cooler, temperate areas? It turns out the longtime answer — the tropics — may be wrong.

True, more different types of animals exist there than in places farther from the equator.

New research suggests that is because tropical species do not die out as readily. Cooler regions have a higher turnover rate, with more species developing but also more becoming extinct.

By analyzing the DNA of 618 mammal and bird species that lived in the past several million years, they were able to determine that new species develop more readily farther away from the tropics.

“It would take one species in the tropics 3 to 4 million years to evolve into two distinct species, whereas at 60 degrees latitude (two-thirds of the way toward either pole), it could take as little as 1 million years,” Weir said.

“In other words, there’s a higher turnover of species in places like Canada, making it a hotbed of speciation, not the Amazon,” said Schluter.

That, however, is balanced by a higher extinction rate in colder climates, so the tropics still have more diversity.

It also raises the question of whether a more variable climate causes more rapid evolution.

“That’s our belief, but we can’t prove it yet,” Weir said.

The upshot seems to be the obvious, that cold climates impose far greater selection pressure than warm ones.  I rely mostly on the Web for my evolutionary and genetic news so this is a first for me.  Until now I had no concrete evidence for the commonsense idea that Europids and NE Asians developed higher IQ because they evolved in more selective environments.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Friday, March 16, 2007 at 10:00 PM in Science & Technology
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Of rough riders and Roughback Mountains

The Economist ‘World in 2007’ anthology has kvetched a little about internet media (that’s us, folks) and the damage sustained by the stodgy, old TV stations, and especially the advertisers that profit from them, from these new Huns at the gates of Rome. Here’s what it had to say:

Indeed, the only thing keeping TV programmers off the sills of their skyscrapers is the fact that the source of their income, marketers, have not embraced web video as quickly as have the viewers. Each year advertisers collectively pay more and more for a smaller and smaller audience. This phenomenon has defied economic gravity for so many years now that few even comment on the absurdity of the whole thing (to say nothing of the risible model of interruption-based TV advertising itself: annoying 90% of the audience for the sake of reaching 10% who might care about your product makes sense only when you’ve got a captive audience, which is no longer true).

Of course, the recent plaints about the adman’s slightly too intrusive hold on the latest James Bond film are all examples of the last point made. The reason we resent adverts is that they are ultimately nothing beyond commercial propaganda, an attempt to make us believe, via psychological tricks rather than rational arguments, that we need some fadish gimmick or other. The principle is the same as election posters or grandiose military rallies.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 11:27 AM in Popular Culture,  Science & Technology
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A bit of what’s good about America

I don’t care to nurse my politics all day long.  Nope, once or twice in my day some opportunity comes along that lifts the spirit a little.  Here’s a prime example, courtesy of NASA and Nature.com.  Not that NASA isn’t political, you understand.  Sending minority equal-people into space is nothing if not political.

But none of that Shuttle stuff comes into play with the pure research goals of the Mars Rover programme ...

What’s the Opportunity rover up to now?

Opportunity has just finished an epic voyage to the edge of Victoria crater and is taking a good look over the side.

It has taken 21 months to make the 9-kilometre journey – breakneck speed, according to project scientist Bruce Banerdt at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

What’s the Opportunity rover up to now?

Opportunity has just finished an epic voyage to the edge of Victoria crater and is taking a good look over the side.

It has taken 21 months to make the 9-kilometre journey – breakneck speed, according to project scientist Bruce Banerdt at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“It was a gamble to go to Victoria,” he says. It was so far away that Opportunity was quite likely to run out of steam before it got there. “We decided to drive as fast as we could.”

Why is this crater worth such a dash?

It’s big. It’s deep (70 metres). It’s wide (800 metres). Other craters investigated by Opportunity have been small fry in comparison. The depth of the cliffs means that more layers of rock are exposed and so a longer geological history can be probed than before. The bottom is at least a billion years old, say researchers.

The rover has ventured out on to a rocky point on the crater’s rim and now has a panoramic view of the nearest cliff face.

What is Opportunity looking for, specifically?

The rover has a number of instruments on board: a thermal emission spectrometer will probe the rock layers to discover their composition, an alpha-particle spectrometer will give information about the elements, and a Mössbauer spectrometer will work out the abundance and composition of any iron-bearing minerals. Opportunity doesn’t have a way to age the rock, although the deeper it gets the older it will be.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 07:38 AM in Science & Technology
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Babelcast-zoetrope

http://www.flexatone.net/consumable.html#babelMosaic

Christopher Ariza’s weekly videonewsmosaic is algorithmically generated. Recommended.

Posted by Søren Renner on Sunday, April 9, 2006 at 03:00 PM in Science & Technology
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Ocean Frontier Fertility: The Global Prospects

The prospects are great for ecologically imposed patriarchy enhancing the fertility of whites via oceanic frontiers.  The majority of the earth’s surface remains not only uncultivated, but not biologically productive despite the presence of adequate sunlight and near-adequate nutrients. If recent experiments in iron fertilization of high nitrogen low chlorophyll oceanic surface regions are any indication, the primary ingredient lacking is the pioneering spirit that led to the cultivation and increased carrying capacity of the Anglosphere’s frontier territories: The United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.  It is reasonable to expect that the Anglosphere alone could increase its numbers by a factor of 10, relatively unmolested by multicultural supremacists, during this pioneering renaissance and maintain if not improve the quality of their populations.  Other, less sea-faring European peoples could enjoy smaller but nevertheless profound population and territorial relief.  Moreover this population increase could be very rapid if the fertility rates of the United States frontier is any guide.  This is a prospect that seems plausible in no other way short of world war.

Continued...

Posted by James Bowery on Thursday, March 9, 2006 at 11:19 PM in Demographics,  European Nationalism,  Globalisation,  Libertarianism,  Science & Technology,  White Nationalism
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A mysterious carriage of the body adopted to cover up a defect of the mind.

MOND has a rival. For those of you who were always attracted to alternative theories of gravitation (besides the standard one which uses “dark matter” to explain gravity rotation curves) but were disappointed that MOND seemed not to explain the Pioneer anomaly, this story is for you. STVG!

Is it possible to post and receive a negative number of comments?

Posted by Søren Renner on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 at 12:22 PM in Science & Technology
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Tech Tip: Save Streaming Media

A recent exchange here sent me looking (again) for a reliable way to save streaming media (dialup will do that to you).  I may have finally found one:

http://www.streamingstar.org/

Continued...

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Thursday, January 5, 2006 at 03:39 PM in Science & Technology
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Danger in mind

Today’s Telegraph alerted me to a survey of leading scientific thinkers conducted by The Edge website.

John Brockman, the New York-based literary agent and publisher of The Edge website posed the question: what is your dangerous idea? in reference to a controversial book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett that argued that Darwinism was a universal acid that ate through virtually all traditional beliefs.

Brockman received 116 responses to his challenge from Nobel laureates, futurists and creative thinkers. These were among them

This one from Craig Venter, Genomics Researcher and Founder & President, J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, is a real breath of fresh air:-

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, January 3, 2006 at 08:12 AM in Science & Technology
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Pioneer Greatness:  Burt Rutan

A little good news is needed now and then. The pioneer spirit is still alive. As a person somewhat responsible for the resurgence in technology prize awards, I have a few things to say about Burt Rutan’s capture of the Ansari X-Prize by being the first to fly a man to space in a reusable craft twice within a week. He follows the great technology pioneers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both of whom came to prominence during similar fair contests: The Guggenheim Trophy and Orteig Prize respectively. (From these exemplars some might now see a reason the powers that be shy away from fair contests—contests where they can’t really control who wins the prizes—and it was left to an Iranian family, the Ansaris, to fully fund the X-Prize.)

A speech by Burt Rutan before the National Space Society is worth a view (requires QuickTime ). He repeatedly and angrily declares his embarrassment at the risk averse culture that has strangled the pioneer spirit since the feats of the 1960s—nearly 40 years ago. I’ve got my issues with his speech but we clearly agree that something went horribly wrong with the pioneer spirit subsequent to the 1960s. The turning inward of the human potential has resulted in the halting of human progress upward and outward with aerospace technology being bureaucratically and monotonously scaled up for jumbo jet transportation. The result is the sort of danger warned of by Charles Lindbergh in his 1939 Reader’s Digest article “Aviation, Geography, and Race”: a sea of humanity threatening our race which is, after all, a global minority. Indeed the technological exemplar of this era has been driven by the rise of finance to preeminence—the inward-turning microelectronic revolution. The unintended side-effect of this revolution you see before you now as a website, but it is small consolation for the damage to our pioneer spirit.  As we were warned by Henry Ford the great struggle of the 20th century was creative industry vs global finance.  Global finance has dominated the past 30 years or more. Perhaps men like Burt Rutan can lead us out of our malaise and realize the human potential.  If so it may be due to prize awards like the Ansari X-Prize that give men even younger than Burt Rutan a chance to make a name for themselves purely via their own grit and gifts.

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Posted by James Bowery on Wednesday, November 16, 2005 at 11:27 PM in European Nationalism,  Globalisation,  Immigration,  Science & Technology,  U.S. Politics
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Nick Griffin on Peak Oil

Griffin’s article is one the best I have read on this subject. A must read

Dealing with peak oil criticisms
23rd September 2005
 
As with any unusual, new and discomforting theory, Peak Oil is ignored by many, ridiculed by others and attacked by some. None of which proves that it is wrong, but obviously it is essential to keep an open mind, and to examine all positions.

Anti-Peak Oil arguments fall into six main categories, several of which are related. With the whole question of rising fuel prices and energy shortages back at the centre of British political and economic life, it is useful to examine these arguments and try to assess whether the present difficulties are caused by a one-off combination of greedy oil producers, Gordon Brown’s tax rip-off, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. Or are the Peak Oil theorists right and are price hikes, fuel protesters and panic buying queues just a glimpse of far worse problems to come?

Here then, in bold, are the main points made by Peak Oil sceptics, and the responses of a Peak Oil convert:

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Posted by Phil Peterson on Saturday, October 1, 2005 at 12:47 PM in Science & Technology
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The Ithaca of Odysseus discovered

A fascinating story that complements Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of Troy in 1871 has appeared in the press today.  To quote from Nasa’s pre-press announcement:-

The location of Greek hero Odysseus’ homeland - the island of Ithaca described in the poet Homer’s Odyssey - is a mystery that has baffled scholars for nearly 3,000 years. Now this ancient enigma has been solved with the help of World Wind, NASA’s 3D planetary visualisation tool.

The site of Homer’s Ithaca has been identified by Robert Bittlestone, Chairman of the UK management consultancy Metapraxis, whose quest was motivated by combining his company’s experience in the visualisation of complex data with a lifelong interest in Greece and the classics. He has solved the problem with the help of James Diggle, Professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, and John Underhill , Professor of Geology at Edinburgh University.

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Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, September 30, 2005 at 04:17 AM in Science & Technology
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