Oil, surviving disatsers, table top fusion and other stuff

here we go again......

Bush offers another take on energy solutions.... this time he is hyping new refineries and new nuclear power plants. He admits (hey, some unhyped truth) that there is no quick fix. Personally I do not know that his plan is as wrong as some would like to make it out to be. We need alternatives. Right now we need to do away with the coal fired power plants, and we have nothing that can take its place except maybe nuclear.... just that nuclear waste issue that keeps coming back to bite us.... oh well, i will think on it.

Speaking of energy alternatives: FREE ENERGY FOR EVERYONE, NEXT WEEK! or not. actually, definitely not. But it is a breakthrough in tabletop fusion (not fission). If this turns out to be something that can be scaled up.... it might just become an answer to our global energy problems... or the start of a new war... who knows. Here is the new scientist article.

hmmm.... seems the white house security staff is a wee mite nervous..... I wonder what they think is out there?

20% of american children under the age of 2 are not properly immunized.

How would you react? I bet your wrong, I bet you would react very differently then you think you would. It seems that 45% of people freeze for 30 seconds or longer, unable to move or even speak. Here is a quick quote
"In the hours just before the Tenerife crash, Paul Heck did something highly unusual. While waiting for takeoff, he studied the 747's safety diagram. He looked for the closest exit, and he pointed it out to his wife. He had been in a theater fire as a boy, and ever since, he always checked for the exits in an unfamiliar environment. When the planes collided, Heck's brain had the data it needed. He could work on automatic, whereas other people's brains plodded through the storm of new information. "Humans behave much more appropriately when they know what to expect--as do rats," says Cynthia Corbett, a human-factors specialist with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)."
Every time I go to a hotel I check the location of the fire exit on my floor, and I don't mean read the sign on my door. I walk to it, I count the number of doors between me and it, I figure out which way the hallway bends. All of this takes about 2 minutes. Its important. It has been shown that most of the people who die in hotel fires, die from smoke inhalation because they got lost in the hallway looking for the exit. I have not yet been in an actual disaster, but I intend to survive the should I find myself in one. A little bit of knowledge can be very useful in the right circumstance.

A very cool article on a little known avionics maneuver that could greatly reduce our reliance on helicopters for dropping off and picking up heavy loads in tight spaces. Basically the maneuver constitutes twirling a rope. So the top end of the rope makes a very large circle and the bottom end simply revolves or almost stands still. Its very neat.

Those bunker busters that Bush wants, the nuclear ones.... turns out they are as bad for the civy population as a nuke dropped right on them. who knew?

Damnit why couldn't I be a mutant? It seems that a gene mutation (at least in fruit flies) slashes need for sleep by 30%. That would mean a human could get by on 5.5 hours and be as alert as some one getting 8 hours sleep. Better yet, because most of us are sleep deprived by about 30% already, it would mean that such a person could get by on 3.85 hours sleep and be as productive (or un-productive) as the rest of us.

NEED TO LEARN THIS TRICK! I have terrible allergies and if a little self hypnosis can reduce my suffering, I am all for it.

Speaking of altered behavior, it seems that there is some proof that chemicals leaching into natural environments are altering the behavior of wild and domesticated animals and begs the question: what are they doing to us?

Neat little poo powered fuel cell.

The first step in moving away fro silicon has been taken.

An article touting the beginning of the space tourism industry, saying its taking shape nicely.

Interesting take on shopping an privacy.

Based on numbers from this article, we the consumers of the world have nothing and no one but ourselves to blame for making big oil into the very powerful (and greedy and not really nice) industry it is. Ick.

thats all for now, tune in later for more yammering