Under the Radar: April 2008

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Here come the food shortages

Because of bad harvests in grain exporting countries, because stupid people are turning grain into ethanol, because fertilizer (made from oil) has tripled in price, and because grain exporting countries are panicking about inflation and have suddenly stopped exporting food so as to head off potential food riots in their own country, suddenly, there is very little grain to buy on the world market. This has now come to the US...

http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world

And the fungal wheat disease has not even entered Pakistan and India yet...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90201538

Before you start your vegetable garden this summer, dig in some charcoal

This means hardwood charcoal, not charcoal made of coal and not charcoal briquettes or formed charcoal.

Small pieces about the size of fine gravel or grains of corn would be the right size... and the dust would be good too. See if you can find a local charcoal maker. You may also be able to find agricultural or horticultural charcoal in bulk at agricultural supply stores.

You do this once and need never do it again. The soil should improve with each season.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

Happy Birthday, Gene Shoemaker!

Eugene Merle Shoemaker 1928-1997

The only person whose ashes are scattered on the Moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Shoemaker

Most ashamed

If he were my son, I would kill myself.

Wait, wait, don't shoot! I'm a Brazillian electrician!

Sir Ian Blair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

When gas was cheap, people drove until they could afford the houses

My cousin, who is really smart about these things, used to buy houses progressively farther from the city. The price would go up, she would sell, and move a little farther out....
But now that pattern is reversing. The outer suburbs may be abandoned unless telecommuting takes hold.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89803663

Monday, April 21, 2008

It is not a good idea to heat teflon to high temperatures

You should never heat up an empty teflon-coated frying pan or pot, no matter what the chefs tell you.

The teflon can release a gas that will cause birds to drop over dead, a la canary in a coal mine.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200779,00.html

Actually, if possible, you should not raise the temperature of food above the boiling point of water... but that is another story.

千手観音　Senju Kannon, the Thousand-Armed Goddess of Mercy

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The 101 most useful websites

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/03/31/the-101-most-useful-websites/

Satyagraha

A second pair of glasses really cheap

Here is another example of how the internet can really force the price of stuff way down. If you know the exact prescription for your eyeglasses, including the distance apart of your pupils, you might be able to get them online for about 90 percent off. Dont know how well this will work if you have complicated prescriptions due to, for example, astigmatism, but certainly if you get fitted for a new pair, and you are satisfied with the prescription, you might be able to get a second pair online for a lot less.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89576384

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

ki kin

飢饉

Famine

Until the end of their lives (100 and 89), my grandmother's sister and my grandmother were growing purple Okinawan sweet potatoes.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN0830529220080415?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

We're saved! Hallelujah!

Brazil finds (maybe) huge oil field! We are saved! 33 billion barrels!

Wait a minute...

The world uses, as a rule of thumb, 100 million barrels of oil per day, and the equivalent of 200 million barrels of oil in the form of oil, coal, nuclear, etc., per day.

Let's see...

33,000,000,000 barrels of oil
divided by
200,000,000...
is 165 days! 6 months!
Whoopee... the find will run the world for 6 months...

If we divide the find by 100 million barrels, that would provide oil for the world for a year...

So, if we discover one like this every year, our peak oil problem will be postponed. Unfortunately, the last time one like this was discovered was like... 1976...

So always keep in mind that the world uses about 100 million barrels of oil per day...

Whoever wrote this is really ignorant or lying since they are confusing the possible discovery of one year's worth of oil with "our problems are over".

"However, it does cast new doubt on peak oil theory, which postulates that world oil demand will soon outpace supply. "

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/14/world/main4013564.shtml

"No matter how cynical I become, it is just never enough."

Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people

About a 50% chance that California will experience a major quake in the next 30 years.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-quake15apr15,0,2905421.story

For want of a rivet... the souls were lost

Further evidence that what doomed the Titanic was substandard rivets. When the ship hit the iceberg, the rivets failed and the plates separated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15titanic.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Pandora's Box

Excellent series, available on youtube... and perhaps a glimpse at what is in store in our economic future.

Skip the first weird minute... it is quirky like that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aDT_8zsRIc

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Canterell

If you live in the US, you should know the Canterell oil field. It is the second largest oil field ever discovered and supplies us with 10% of our imported oil.

For years the government and the owners of the field lied. There was no problem at all. When you get to the denial stage, you know it can go on for a long time, but the really scary thing is when it ends.

Cantarell used to supply 2.1 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2003, but this was by injecting huge amounts of nitrogen to push the oil out. When you do that, the drop in production can be steep. After years of lying, they finally admit that Cantarell output will drop by 90% by 2021. Ha, ha. And even that is a lie. It is going to drop by 90% much sooner, perhaps within a year or two.

There goes the second largest oilfield. ever discovered..

The government of Mexico relies for more than half of its revenue on the oil exports. Without the current high price of oil, there would already have been a huge fiscal crisis. Without huge new production, Mexico will be using all of what oil it produces and will be unable to export.

http://www.bnamericas.com/news/oilandgas/Minister:_Output_to_fall_1,8Mb_d_at_existing_fields_by_2021

Walmart

Walmart employee seriously injured and needs round the clock care. Her son died in Iraq. Walmart sued her and took the case to the Supreme Court to get all of the insurance settlement money she had. Walmart was legally right...

WALMART CONCEDES TO THE SHANK FAMILY AND KEITH OLBERMANN

Minority Report interface

If you haven't seen Minority Report, it has the most amazing computer interface. I want, I want!

MRSA is something you really need to know about

MRSA is a kind of bacterium that is resistant to many common antibiotics.

An MRSA infection is therefore very difficult to treat, can require amputation, and can be fatal.

Last year, about 300,000 people were infected in the US, with about 20,000 deaths. That would mean, since about 3,000,000 people are born in the US each year, your lifetime risk of getting an MRSA infection would be around 10%. It will almost certainly happen to someone you know.

It can start looking like a boil or pimple.

Many people have the bacterium living in their noses and on their skin. It is usually harmless, but can get into the skin in a small cut, and once an infection starts, it can be very difficult to treat, depending on the strain (type) of the bacterium.

This is why you should not share towels, razors, and other personal items. Soap in a bar can carry the bacteria, so gel soap is better. (Soap does not kill bacteria and viruses; it helps pull bacteria and viruses off the skin so you can rinse them away.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrsa

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Aloha, Aloha Airlines

Mesa Air Group and go!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Airlines
Hmm, looks like your stock is down 90% from 1994.
Update April 15, 2008: Your stock is down from $22 to 65 cents!
Way to go!

Your pilots quit in droves.

go! pilots! fall! asleep?
Hmm, this is the kind of situation where cheap is expensive.

Mesa pilots quit.

http://www.dontflygo.com/2008/03/19/spotlight-on-go-airlines-and-mesa-airlines-over-worked-pilots/

Here is the VP of Aloha explaining what happened.
http://kgmb9.com/main/content/view/5222/196/

How to delete "porn" and evidence at the same time... from three different computers... and get an 80 million dollar fine...

Here is porn meister, George "Peter" Murnane III. (Hmm, your name is "George", but you call yourself "Peter"... you sure are one) (And by the way, just call me cynical, but I don't believe him...)

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/mesa_airlines_d.html

ISBN-13: 978-0295985350

みなしご元禄津波
The Orphan Tsunami of 1700

One winter's night in the year 1700, a mysterious tsunami flooded fields and washed away houses in Japan. It arrived without the warning that a nearby earthquake usually provides. Samurai, merchants, and villagers recorded the event, but nearly three centuries would pass before discoveries in North America revealed the tsunami's source.

The Orphan Tsunami of 1700 tells this scientific detective story through clues from both sides of the Pacific. The evidence uncovered tells of a [magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of the Pacific Northwest] a century before Lewis and Clark...

You can see a summary at
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/

http://www.amazon.com/Orphan-Tsunami-1700-Japanese-Earthquake/dp/0295985356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204357404&sr=1-1

Video simulation of the megaquake.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=72698052150208427&q=pacific+northwest+megaquake&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Map of simulation of the megaquake.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/supercomputer/02-08Virtual90Megaquake.asp

A tsunami is unlike any "wave" you have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jixyBvjJZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8giZ66j7o

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)

Liberal, optimistic, exhilarating. The most spectacular lectures you will ever see.

www.ted.com

Try these to start

The best presentation ever... legendary... your view of the world will change in many ways... and there will be hope...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

The World Now Eats (and Dies) Like Americans
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/10

Extremely graphic... even made me queasy... but you cannot understand the light without knowing the darkness...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/142

The Law of ACCELERTING Returns

You have probably heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns: more effort gets you only marginal increase in reward (for example, if you exercise for half an hour a day, you get most of the health benefits; if you exercise for an hour a day, you get almost all of the health benefits; and exercising for two, three, or four hours a day will give very little added health benefits).

However, there are situations in which reward does not diminish (at least for a long while) and actually speeds up over time. People tend to see progress in technology as proceeding in a linear fashion, so they expect the 21st century (barring something truly unfortunate) to progress something like the way the 20th century did. But according to Ray Kurzweil, the technical progress in the 21st century will be more like 1,000 times that of the 20th century.

Here is an example. Cost to read the DNA of one person
in 1990: 3 billion dollars
in 2005: 2 million dollars
in 2006: 200,000 dollars
target for 2010-2015: 1,000 dollars

Being able to read your DNA will allow medical treatments to be tailored specifically for you, vastly improving outcomes.

This BBC Horizon program is, granted, sensational infotainment, but it is probably the most efficient introduction to this topic.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3882715179234602208&q=human+v2.0&hl=en

The article below is very long, and there may be parts that are difficult to follow, but look over the entire article because it is a map of the world we are already living in, and it shows what looms up the road.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

Step 1: Slow the ageing process

Something that humans have seen only once is about to happen again: functional lifespan will vastly increase.

This happened the first time in the 20th century with improvements in public health, sanitation, nutrition, vaccination, and pharmaceuticals. Someone from the 19th century would not believe how low our risk of death is, how free of disability and pain we are, and how long we live now. Things are hardly perfect, but to all humans who lived before the early 1900s, the world we live in now would be an unbelievable paradise.

In the next leap, we will not only live even longer, but disease and disability will often be delayed by years if not decades. If we can just make it through the next 15 years or so, the interventions will be unbelievable. It is quite possible that many of us, even those in middle age, will live to see the dawn of the 22nd century, looking and feeling like 40. I am not joking.

So, how do we improve our chances of getting there? Doing basic things to take care of your health is obvious, but there are other things that can be done.

We have known for 70 years how to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of the diseases of old age: eat less. Or more exactly, reduce the number of calories while maintaining adequate amounts of protein, fats, vitamins, and other nutrients. The difference is shocking, and it has been shown in animals from ameba to monkeys without exception. Basically, when calories are low, cells turn on genes that fix damage, so you age more slowly. Fasting at least once a month seems to produce most of the desired effect.

If you have not seen this New York Times article, take a look at the monkeys.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/nutrition/31agin.html?ex=1163480400&en=193a4a4fe169ec69&ei=5070

The monkeys are both about 25 years old. The one on the right ate a normal diet and is old, frail, gray, scruffy, and has the shrunken skull of an old monkey (like a 90 year old human). The one on the left ate a diet with the same nutrients, but with about 30 percent fewer calories. The contrast is shocking. The monkey that ate fewer calories still looks young and healthy (like a 60 year old human).

So, step one is avoid excess calories, especially from sugar, white bread, white rice, and white potatoes.

But the amount by which you have to reduce calories is quite difficult for most people to maintain. Is there another way we can turn on the damage repair genes? The answer seems to be yes.

Throughout human evolution, we have always eaten plants that were far from perfect. They were drought stressed, attacked by fungi, and attacked by insects. Ironically, this seems to have been good for us. When plants are attacked or do not receive enough water, they produce huge numbers of chemicals to defend themselves. In seasons when there were a lot of these chemicals in plants, animals eating the plants used that as a signal that hard times may be coming, so their cells turned on the damage control genes to protect what the cells already had. We also did not have steady supplies of food, so whenever we didn't eat for a day, again the damage control genes turned on. Specifically, unnecessary molecular tags are removed from the DNA, returning gene expression to the way it was when we were younger. In modern life, all the plants we eat are completely protected from fungi and insects and are watered carefully. All the stress response chemicals that they would normally produce are not there. We never go for a day without eating. Therefore, our damage control genes are never turned on, so the molecular tags on our DNA become more and more different from the way they were when we were young, our gene expression becomes more abnormal, and we age at a high rate.

If we consume chemicals that plants make in response to stress, it turns on the damage control genes, and voila, the effect is the same as caloric restriction, although it is unclear what dose is necessary. One chemical that has been shown to turn on damage control genes is resveratrol, which is found in the skin of grapes, especially when the grape plants are stressed by drought or fungus infection, and is found in many other plants as well. Since people who drink red wine made from grapes harvested and processed in the French way seemed to have extremely low levels of heart disease, researchers tried screening red wines from France to find out if there were compounds which produced the effect. Resveratrol is the most potent found so far. When given to laboratory animals, it slows ageing by 20% and even much more, and it decreases risk of cancer by up to 70%. Further evidence comes from numerous studies showing that consumption of 3 glasses of red wine per week is associated with 70% reduction in colon cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and other cancers.

I have been taking resveratrol for two years now, and I think the effects are apparent. When I stopped for 6 months because I ran out, the skin started to look old and wrinkled. Resveratrol is easily destroyed by exposure to air, heat, and light. I take the one from Longevinex at
http://www.longevinex.com
because it seems to be the most biologically active. It costs about a dollar a day, which is much cheaper than a glass of wine, though much less fun, so I do both.

These results are not obscure, but you may not have heard about them. Do a Google search for any of these topics and you will find thousands of hits.

So, step 1, let's at least do simple basic things to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of serious diseases of old age. You may be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. 万歳！

Under the Radar