Foot and Mouth Outbreak Linked to Foot and Mouth Lab
August 5th, 2007Via: Sky:
The foot and mouth outbreak at a farm in Surrey may have been caused by a leak from a nearby animal research laboratory.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)said the virus is the same as one being used at Pirbright Laboratory, just a few miles from the farm.
Defra could not say definitely if the laboratory was the source of the disease, but immediately increased the size of the protection zones covering farms in the area.
Experts said the strain was not one recently found in animals, but was similar to ones used in diagnostic laboratories and vaccine production.
In a statement, Defra said: “The present indications are that this strain is a 01 BFS67-like virus, isolated in the 1967 foot and mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain.”
The strain is present at the Pirbright site’s Institute of Animal Health and was used in a vaccine batch manufactured last month, Defra said.
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “If there is evidence that this outbreak has come out of Pirbright Laboratory, a full inquiry into the laboratory’s bio-security must be carried out urgently and immediately.”
Surge: Afghanistan Now Responsible for 95% of Global Opium Production
August 5th, 2007The people behind this represent the real Plunge Protection Team.
Via: Yahoo / AP:
Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world’s near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.
…
U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan’s poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world’s crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.
Enemy Collaborator U.S. Congress Passes Bush Domestic Surveillance Bill
August 5th, 2007Imagine my shock.
Via: Reuters:
The Congress yielded to President George W. Bush on Saturday and approved legislation to temporarily expand the government’s power to conduct electronic surveillance without a court order in tracking foreign suspects.
Civil liberties groups charged the measure would create a broad net that would sweep up law-abiding U.S. citizens. But the House of Representatives gave its concurrence to the bill, 227-183, a day after it won Senate approval, 60-28.
“After months of prodding by House Republicans, Congress has finally closed the terrorist loophole in our surveillance law — and America will be the safer for it,” declared House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.
“We think it is not the bill that ought to pass,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. But Hoyer conceded he and fellow Democrats were unable to stop the measure after a showdown with the White House amid warnings of possible attacks on the United States.
German Physicists on the Carbon Theory Behind Global Warming
August 5th, 2007Comments on this post are open only to university physics professors. If you are a university physics professor and would like to comment on this paper, send me a private email from your university email account and I will be happy to post your comment. These will be on-the-record comments. Your name will be included.
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
The Chinese “Miracle” Will End Soon [sic]
August 4th, 2007Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough.
Via: Spiegel:
The world has been dazzled in recent years by the economic strides being made by China. But it has come at a huge cost to the country’s environment. Pollution is a serious and costly problem. Pan Yue of the ministry of the environment says these problems will soon overwhelm the country and will create millions of “environmental refugees.”
Industry is booming in China at the moment, but so too is pollution.
Industry is booming in China at the moment, but so too is pollution.
SPIEGEL: China is dazzling the world with its booming economy, which grew by 9.5 percent. Aren’t you pleased with this speed of growth?
Pan: Of course I am pleased with the success of China’s economy. But at the same time I am worried. We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth. To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India. Things can’t, nor should they be allowed to go on like that.
The Coming Water Wars
August 4th, 2007Low Power HHO Fuel Generator for Off Grid Energy Needs
August 4th, 2007Electricity costs in New Zealand are absurd. A criminal cartel just bends us all over a barrel here. Wolves are in charge of watching the chicken coop. Take your pick of descriptive metaphors. Oh well. But that’s not the point of this post.
I started looking at ways of dealing with the situation myself by expanding on my creed of turning my back on the bastards to the extent of my ability. I quit thinking about viable solutions for society, because society has an uncontrollable death urge, and people, in general, doesn’t want to live in a sane manner.
There are a couple of reasons why we haven’t gone with wind/solar/hydro power solutions here:
1) We can’t afford them, even though our power needs are very meager
2) We refuse to use a massive lead acid battery bank
The battery bank is the main discouraging factor, actually.
I started looking at other “battery” options. The water battery is a great concept. With a water battery, you simply pump water up a hill when you have excess power. When you need power, the water flows back down and turns a turbine. Nothing weird here. Implementing that, however, would cost a mint.
But then I found the HHO crowd on Youtube. Did you know that you can generate a nice trickle of HHO gas with as little as a few dozen watts?
That is, with one medium sized solar panel, one of these HHO cells, some water and few conventional propane tanks (in series), one could store up, how much gas? I don’t know. Easily enough to cook with, at a minimum.
I don’t know if storing HHO presents the same problems as storing hydrogen. Pure hydrogen, as you may or may not know, would simply escape through conventional metal gas cylinders after some period of time. Would this happen with the HHO gas? I don’t know. The beauty of this is that you wouldn’t have to store too much of it. You could simply make more when the sun shines.
See the fascinating work of John Aarons. He has a cell called the Widow Maker which he demonstrates running on as little as 30 watts. It’s all open source. Anyone can build this:
I wonder if anyone out there is using an HHO stove???
If you want to see more HHO videos, there are dozens of people working on this. Just search Youtube for HHO.
Look at the gas this guy is getting from a double helix design. It uses more power, about 100 watts. Easily doable with one larger solar panel.
How about getting electricity and hot water from the HHO “battery”? Burn the stuff in a stirling engine like the Whispergen. Dean Kamen is also working on a stirling engine system.
I don’t even like talking about this stuff, because an army of trolls and finger waggers likes to push nonsense straw man theories and change the subject to how there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do to save themselves. Doom. Doom. Blah. Blah. (Note for comments on this post: Strawman/off topic comments will not appear. Hmm. What a concept. I might apply these criteria to all comments in the future.) If you have anything constructive to add, go for it. I won’t allow trolls to shout you down.
Jim Cramer Goes Nuts Live on TV, Talks About Armageddon
August 4th, 2007This is funny, unless you plan on relying on fixed income securities for something besides toilet paper.
Cramer is like a smack addict, locked in a padded room, who will do anything for another hit: MORE CREDIT!!! MORE CREDIT!!! MOOOOOOOOORE CREDDDDDDDIT! Pulling out the last strands of hair on his head, clawing out his eyeballs…
I thought that tarted-up cohost was going to have to hose him down with pepper spray. Maybe someone was standing by with a taser, just off camera.
Oh yeah, how about that gold? HA And that U.S. Dollar? Just over 80, again.
U.S. Robots Deployed for Ground Combat in Iraq
August 3rd, 2007It’s not quite up to ED-209 standards (from Robocop), but it’s getting there.
Also see, Deal of the Century. HAHA
Via: Wired:
Robots have been roaming the streets of Iraq, since shortly after the war began. Now, for the first time — the first time in any warzone — the machines are carrying guns.
After years of development, three “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system” (SWORDS) robots have deployed to Iraq, armed with M249 machine guns. The ‘bots “haven’t fired their weapons yet,” Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, tells DANGER ROOM. “But that’ll be happening soon.”
The SWORDS — modified versions of bomb-disposal robots used throughout Iraq — were first declared ready for duty back in 2004. But concerns about safety kept the robots from being sent over the the battlefield. The machines had a tendency to spin out of control from time to time. That was an annoyance during ordnance-handling missions; no one wanted to contemplate the consequences during a firefight.
So the radio-controlled robots were retooled, for greater safety. In the past, weak signals would keep the robots from getting orders for as much as eight seconds — a significant lag during combat. Now, the SWORDS won’t act on a command, unless it’s received right away. A three-part arming process — with both physical and electronic safeties — is required before firing. Most importantly, the machines now come with kill switches, in case there’s any odd behavior. “So now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy,” Zecca says.
U.S. ‘Loses’ 190,000 Weapons in Iraq
August 3rd, 2007Wait a minute, remember Pentagon arms its enemy’s enemies in Iraq:
The US military has embarked on a new and risky strategy in Iraq by arming Sunni insurgents in the hope that they will tackle al-Qaida operatives in Iraq.
The US high command this month gave permission to its officers on the ground to negotiate arms deals with tribal elders and other local leaders. Arms, ammunition, body armour and other equipment, as well as cash, pickup trucks and fuel, have already been handed over in return for promises to turn on al-Qaida and not attack US troops.
So… Hmm. Yeah.
Via: AFP:
THE US Government cannot account for 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, says the Government Accountability Office.
According to its July 31 report, the military “cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forcesâ€.
The weapons disappeared from records between June 2004 and September 2005, as the military struggled to rebuild the disbanded Iraqi forces from scratch amid increasing attacks from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
Related: Two British SAS Soldiers Dressed as Arabs, Shoot at Iraqi Police
