Kickstarter: Low Cost, Open Source, 1KW Stirling Engine
November 15th, 2011For several years, I’ve wondered why there aren’t any affordable Stirling engines available that are capable of producing meaningful amounts of electricity.
I have no idea if Volo Designs will manage to pull it off, but I’m happy to help them try.
Via: Kickstarter:
More: Volo Designs
Occupy Wall Street: Cops Have Cleared Protesters from Zuccotti Park
November 15th, 2011Live video streams: Livestream, Ustream.
NYPD Manhattan Precincts 1-23 and Citywide 1-3 Live Audio Feed.
Via: AP:
Occupy Wall Street protesters have been ordered to leave Zuccotti Park, their longtime encampment in Lower Manhattan, but they’ve been told they can return once it has been cleaned.
At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, police handed out notices from the park’s owner, Brookfield Office Properties, and the city saying that the park had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous. Protesters were told they could return in several hours, but without sleeping bags, tarps or tents.
Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, says most people began filing out of the park once they received the notices; one person was arrested for disorderly conduct. Brown says the park was not heavily populated Tuesday morning.
Rabbi Chaim Gruber, an Occupy Wall Street member, said police officers were clearing the streets near Zuccotti Park.
“The police are forming a human shield, and are pushing everyone away,” he said.
Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy Dead; Possible Suicide
November 15th, 2011Via: Z6Mag:
The 22 year old co-founder of social network Diaspora died over the weekend in San Francisco. It’s been reported that Ilya Zhitomirskiy may have committed suicide, but it will take a couple of weeks to confirm the cause of death according to the medical examiner’s office.
In-Vitro Meat
November 14th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Scientists are cooking up new ways of satisfying the world’s ever-growing hunger for meat.
“Cultured meat” — burgers or sausages grown in laboratory Petri dishes rather than made from slaughtered livestock — could be the answer that feeds the world, saves the environment and spares the lives of millions of animals, they say.
Granted, it may take a while to catch on. And it won’t be cheap.
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Using stem cells harvested from leftover animal material from slaughterhouses, Post nurtures them with a feed concocted of sugars, amino acids, lipids, minerals and all other nutrients they need to grow in the right way.
So far he has produced whitish pale muscle-like strips, each of them around 2.5 cm (1 inch) long, less than a centimeter wide and so thin as to be almost see-through.
Pack enough of these together — probably around 3,000 of them in layers — throw in a few strips of lab-grown fat, and you have the world’s first “cultured meat” burger, he says.
“This first one will be grown in an academic lab, by highly trained academic staff,” he said. “It’s hand-made and it’s time and labor-intensive, that’s why it’s so expensive to produce.”
Not to mention a little unappetizing. Since Post’s in-vitro meat contains no blood, it lacks color. At the moment, it looks a bit like the flesh of scallops, he says.
Like all muscle, these lab-grown strips also need to be exercised so they can grow and strengthen rather than waste away. To do this Post exploits the muscles’ natural tendency to contract and stretches them between Velcro tabs in the Petri dish to provide resistance and help them build up strength.
Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors
November 14th, 2011Via: Vimeo:
Lower Manhattan’s 60 Hudson Street is one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity. This short documentary peeks inside, offering a glimpse of the massive material infrastructure that makes the Internet possible.
Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?
November 14th, 2011Via: Gizmodo:
New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?
More: Wired: More Mammoth (and Mysterious) Structures Found in China’s Desert
Ustream Mobile Package
November 14th, 2011The cops are about to swarm Occupy Oakland. I was just watching the Occupy Oakland live stream and it’s a really clear stream. As I was wondering how the person was pulling it off, he started to talk about it. He’s using a system called the Ustream Mobile Package. It load balances the stream over six mobile broadband modems on three carriers.
It’s too bad that the police can have the mobile networks shut down at their whim.
Congress: Trading Stock on Inside Information
November 14th, 2011Via: CBS:
Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information – but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate.
Chairman of the European Branch of the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Member Becomes Leader of Italy
November 14th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Mario Monti, the economist who will head an emergency Italian government following the departure of Silvio Berlusconi, brings credentials earned in a decade of battles as a European Commissioner from the 1990s.
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He is chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission, a body that brings together the power elites of the United States, Europe and Japan and is also a member of the secretive Bilderberg Group of business leaders and other “leading citizens”.
$433-Million Bogus Smallpox Drug Deal for Large Democratic Party Contributor
November 13th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.
Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.
When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.
When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.
Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a “sole-source” procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation’s biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government’s specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.
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Siga’s drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans.
The government’s pursuit of Siga’s product raises the question: Should the U.S. buy an unproven drug for such a nebulous threat?
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Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga’s drug “a waste of time and a waste of money.”
