Google Map View - Large Hadron Collider

This is a Google link with resizable, rotatable photo images of the inside of the CERN Large hadron Collider [LHC] in Switzerland.   All kinds of mega-sized hi-tech hardware in cavernous spaces.

This place is the center of the Earth for experimental physicists.

Here is a very cool link to the LHC images...  https://www.google.com/maps/views/streetview/cern?gl=us

Sled Dog

This is a hoot.  A toboggan stealing bulldog, who loves sledding in the snow!

Here's the link...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9syb7o9wI

Vindskip

Lade A S, a Norwegian ship design firm, has come up with a refinement on the sailing ship concept. Like the tall ships the plied the seas before the 20th century, vindskip is propelled primarily by the wind, using a hull design that works like a rigid sail. 

Lade A S Vindskip

Using this design, a vindskip can achieve a 60% reduction in fuel consumption and an 80% reduction in exhaust pollution.  That sounds pretty compelling to me.

Here is a link to a promotional video on the vindskip design...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZo33MQeFN4

Lucky

A video to warm the heart.  In Fresno, California, firefighter, Cory Kalanick enters a smoke filled house with a GoPro video camera mounted on his helmet. Searching for survivors, he finds a kitten lying unconscious. Enough said.  Check out the video.  The kitten, who survived,  was given the name, 'Lucky'.

Here is the video of  'Lucky' being rescued and bought back form the brink...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjB_oVeq8Lo

Messerschmidt ME109

The ME109 was the principle fighter aircraft in the Nazi Luftwaffe in WWII.   It was light, fast, and maneuverable,  a deadly match for allied fighter aircraft until the British Spitfire and the American P-38 Lightning, P47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang's entered the war.

Messerschmidt  ME109

Here is a link to a beautiful flying video of a 75 year old, restored  ME109....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzUUlO6ihwE

Deep Flight Super Falcon

The sub-aquatic terrain from ocean's surface down to about 100 feet is where most marine life forms hang out. The best place by far to experience fish and other sea life is in the shallow areas where the sea meets the land.  I've been lucky enough to have a few experiences like that.

In recent years, there's been a lot of technical innovation with submersibles designed for personal exploration of the marine environment.  Almost all of these personal submersible craft depend on filling ballast tanks with water to operate beneath the water's surface. Getting back to the surface safely requires a system to purge the water ballast with compressed air, thus returning buoyancy to the submersible.  While margins of safety are built into this kind of submersible, there is always a risk.

A new submersible design  developed by Graham Hawkes does away with the need for ballast. Called the Deep Flight Super Falcon,  this new submersible works on the same principles as an aircraft.  It remains positively buoyant at all times, providing a high margin of safety. In essence, it 'flies' underwater. It's electric propulsion system provides the forward thrust required to submerge and keep the craft beneath the water's surface.  Like an aircraft, the submersible Falcon has steerable 'wings' that allow it to be controlled.  Most important,  if power is lost, this submersible will return to the surface on its own.

The things I've read about this technology don't give an indication of the cost. I'm guessing the Falcon is too expensive to be anything more than a research tool for well funded institutions or a new kind of 'toy' for the super rich. 

Still, it is a very worthwhile innovation and offers the possibility of making underwater exploration safe and accessible to more people than ever before. 

Deep Flight Super Falcon

Here is a link to Hawkes Ocean Technology   http://www.deepflight.com/

Here is a You Tube link of the Deep Flight Super Falcon flying beneath the sea... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRsV_eUovKw#t=22

Vestenskov - World's First Hydrogen Community

There is a village on the island of Lolland in Denmark called Vestenskov. It is poised to become the world's  first hydrogen powered and heated community.

Vestenskov

I have invested a lot of my own time and sweat equity into encouraging a pollution-free energy future that employs hydrogen as a clean, non-toxic storage medium for the wind, sun, and other renewable sources.  In Denmark there is a small community that will soon be a model for how that can work.  It's an example of how the European Union is moving aggressively toward clean renewables as a response to climate change.

There are many renewable hydrogen demonstration projects around the world. Vestenskov is the first that shows hydrogen at work on a community level.

In Vestenskov,  electricity from wind turbines located close by will be converted to storable hydrogen for use on demand in the community's residences and businesses.    Europe intends to replace coal and oil with clean energy systems that will not harm the environment.    We should be doing the same thing here in North America.   That makes a lot more sense than extracting dirty oil from Canadian tar sands.

Here is a link to a website that reports on the renewable hydrogen vision for Vestenskov. .    http://www.dac.dk/en/dac-cities/sustainable-cities/all-cases/energy/vestenskov-the-worlds-first-hydrogen-community/?bbredirect=true#!

POV - - Eagle Over The Alps

This is a totally cool video.  A small camera and transmitter were attached to the back of an eagle, which then took off and flew over the French Alps. Remarkable. Exciting...An Eagle's POV. How cool is that.

Here is the video of flying over the Alps from an eagle's point of view...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QrhdfLCO8#t=60

Playing in a Pile of Leaves

When I was about six years old, jumping around in a pile of leaves was the best part of the autumn season.  This You Tube video popped up a few days ago. It's a pooch having a really good time playing in a huge pile of leaves.  Fun!!!

Here's the link to the pooch playing in the leaves...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xEX-48RHCY

Ramez Naam

Until about six weeks ago, I had never heard of Ramez Naam. He's not a celebrity. At least not yet. He is an author, who at one time was a senior software development executive at Microsoft.

Ramez Naam

After I read a review of Naam's book, The Infinite Resource, I decided to  read it myself.  I've read a fair number of what I would call the 'Earth is in deep trouble and here's how we make it right' books. As these things go, Naam's book is designed to reassure.

After I started reading The Infinite Resource, I learned that Naam also had two new science fiction novels recently published. The first is Nexus, and the second, a sequel, is called Crux. Anyway, I felt compelled to read both. These two novels are balls to the wall; exciting, and thoroughly engaging.  I've already published blog entries reviewing each of Naam's three books. Clicking on the titles earlier in this paragraph will take the reader to those reviews.

So, now with a little time having passed since I read Ramez Naam's books, I've been able to reflect on what motivates him. Money is not likely what he's after.  I'm guessing he has a snoot full socked away from when he was at Microsoft.  His wealth is probably what allows him to pursue a public life as a successful and influential author.  I think he wants to be influential.  I think he wants to be a change agent of the highest order.   Without question, Ramez Naam is exceedingly well informed. His choices as a writer suggest that he wants to get his readers thinking about the dysfunctional world we know. He wants to reassure them that as unsettling as things look at the moment, there is plenty of reason for hope. He wants his readers to see things through optimistic eyes, just as he does. He believes progress starts with an informed and motivated citizenry.

Naam's two novels, Nexus and Crux are very entertaining. They are also grounded very effectively in a revelatory scenario that may foreshadow a conflict that could emerge before we are halfway through the 21st century. The dark human dynamics at work in Nexus and Crux are also very much in evidence in the sociology and politics of our own time.

Ramez Naam is on his way to becoming a literary force. That will be a very good thing.  If I had his ear, I would urge him to give much of his attention to writing fiction. He's very good at it. Moreover, I would encourage him vigorously to focus his writing on stories about the times we live in now. If he does that; if he engages his readers on the vexing challenges that are impacting our world right at this moment, he can become one of the world's great champions for a life-affirming, sustainable future;  a future that reveres the natural world, while putting the welfare of the many over that of a privileged few.

Here is a link to Ramez Naam's website...  http://rameznaam.com/

Empathy First

I was raised in the Methodist Church. As a young adult, I came to view religion as a force for both good and evil. I call myself an agnostic now. I like to think there is a higher force at work in the universe.  It's hard to imagine an entirely spontaneous beginning to life as we know it. But, I don't think any of the organized religions at play on Earth have a clue about how things really are.   They are almost entirely built on spiritual dogma that evolved thousands of years ago in times entirely different from our own.  It's amazing to me how intolerant some religious people are of those who don't share their views. Jesus preached tolerance, love, and forgiveness. So did Mohammad and the Buddha.  These days, there is a brand of religious leader that spouts an ugly gospel that has little connection with honorable faith.

The way I see it, if there is a supreme being, it surely manifests itself in the beauty and resilience of nature.  To me, the way to show respect for whatever it was that created us is to revere and defend the natural world. 

I believe the graphic below came from Tumblr. Somebody deserves credit for presenting this noble sentiment so effectively, but I don't know where it originated.  Anyway,  I'm happy to provide another forum where people can be touched by this eloquently stated idea.

 

 

 

Inequality For All

Robert Reich is an economist. He was Secretary of Labor under the Clinton Administration. He is now a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Robert Reich isn't the tallest of men, but he towers as a warrior for the fallen middle class in America. His view of what's wrong with America and what is required to make things right fits very much with my own view of things.

Robert Reich is now at the center of a new, feature length theatrical advocacy film titled,  Inequality for all. 

Here is a link to the movie trailer  for Inequality for all...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9REdcxfie3M&feature=player_embedded

Here is a link to the movie webpage...    http://inequalityforall.com/

Juggling Otter

Otters are fun. One of my favorite animals. When I was young, I used to tell my parents I wanted have an otter farm.  Silly, Huh? Actually, I got the idea from an article I read about a real otter farm down in Louisiana.  No, it was not about raising otters to make fur coats. The purpose was noble. They were raising them for reintroduction to areas where they had been trapped out in darker times, when otter skin coats were a fashion statement. Anyway, I thought being an otter farmer would be a really cool thing to do.  I actually acted on that impulse later in my life. That's story I'll tell in another blog.

Earlier today, I came across a video of an otter in a zoo amusing itself, juggling two rocks at the same time.  With the exception perhaps of a few particularly gifted primates, you don't often see small animals demonstrating manual dexterity. Now I know. Otters can juggle. In this case, not just one, but two rocks.  Fun.  Impressive.  A hoot to watch.

Moreover, as I was preparing this blog entry, I found out that juggling otters are not at all uncommon.  See another one below.  Type in  'juggling otter' on your search engine. You'll be surprised at how many links are there.

Here is a very amusing video link to a juggling otter... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0r6Qvz3Eoo

Rocket Scares Cows

This is a very cool video.  It's a Space X  'Grasshopper'  rocket lifting off from a rural test pad, going up a couple hundred feet, then reversing itself and riding its thrust back to the launch pad. I remember seeing pretend stuff like this in space movies that predate the Star Trek era, but I never thought this kind of thing could actually work.  The proof is in this video.  Obviously, it was unnerving for a herd of cows grazing in a pasture adjacent to the rocket test pad.

SpaceX   'Grasshopper' Rocket

Here is the link to the Space X rocket scaring the cows... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXdjxPY2j_0

Wisdom from an Atomic Icon

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a very smart human person.  He is known mostly for his physical theories of how the world works. We have  atomic bombs and nuclear power because of Einstein, though neither of these things were part of any intention he had for his work.

Einstein was also known for his wisdom, which often revealed his kind and compassionate nature.  I found the Einstein quote below in Threshold, a book by Thom Hartmann,  who, like Einstein, is a man of great wisdom.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
                                                                                                     Albert Einstein

The Infinite Resource

So, I read a blurb about this book on the net, and I decided to read it. The Infinite Resource by Ramez Naam is non-fiction.   Naam is a very smart guy, who likely made a fortune when he was a top software developer at Microsoft. 

Ramez Naam is also the author of two science fiction novels,  Nexus and Crux,  both of which I have read and reported on in this blog.  The way this happened is, I got a copy of The Infinite Resource, started to read it, then learned about Nexus and Crux.  So, I set aside The Infinite Resource while I read both of Naam's science fiction offerings.  All that happened in the last few weeks because Naam's writing is very engaging.  I've already reviewed the two science fiction novels in earlier blogs. This one is focused on The Infinite Resource.

What one is struck by first is the intellectual rigor of The Infinite Resource. I've read a lot of non-fiction focused on the science, economics, and politics of the greatest challenges we face as a global  civilization in the 21st millennium. Many of these books paint a very gloomy picture of the mess we humans have made of things. 

Ramez Naam's assessment of the current state of humanity and the Earth does not pull any punches. He presents climate change, resource depletion, our dangerous dependence on fossil forms of energy, and other global scale challenges in very sobering terms. Overall, however, the tone of The Infinite Resource is optimistic. Naam is definitely a guy who sees the glass half full.

Using clear and credible examples of civilization scale challenges that we've already confronted successfully, Naam effectively makes the case that the resources,  the ability, and the will to develop worthy answers to our problems already exist.  I don't agree with everything he says, but on most things, we're on the same page. Naam's arguments about nuclear power and genetically modified foods were persuasive enough to moderate my previously held views, particularly in the area of food security.  I'm still a serious skeptic on nuclear power, but my mind is a bit more open. Naam makes a compelling case for a continuing role for nuclear power, particularly for new forms of fission power that can digest radioactive waste materials generated by older nuclear plants and turn them into a form that is far less deadly over the long term.

In the last chapter of The Infinite Resource,  Ramez Naam offers four takeaways for action we, as global citizens, must pursue if we are going to solve our greatest challenges. 

1. Fix our markets to properly account for the value of the commons
2. Invest in R&D to fund long-range innovation
3. Embrace the technologies that stand poised to improve lives while bettering our planet, even when these ideas seem alien
4. Empower each of the billions of minds on this planet, to turn them into assets that can produce new ideas that benefit all of us

I like Naam's takeaways. If we followed his prescription, things would surely start to look a whole lot better.

The Infinite Resource is engagingly written and, by all appearances, impeccably researched.  It's an unambiguous warning, punctuated with hope and reassurance. I do wish the book had gone a bit further in identifying a course of action.  But I understand why it didn't.  Naam's target audience is not people like me, who are already with him. This book was written for the persuadable 40% of Americans who remain on the fence but are aware enough to know that humanity is in need of a serious course adjustment.

 Five Stars for Ramez Naam's book, The Infinite Resource.



 

Aerial Adrenalin Rush

I can't get enough of these wingsuit crazies, leaping off cliffs and plunging thousands of feet, brushing perilously close to jagged vertical terrain.  The fun is in imagining myself young and crazy enough to go for it myself.  This is really controlled free fall. It looks totally exhilarating  for the thrill seekers up for the risk.

Here is the link to 'Sense of Flying'... http://vimeo.com/32875422

Badass Neuro Shit - Part Deux

A few days ago,  I wrote a blog entry about a novel I just read titled, Nexus. It is the first novel written by a very gifted writer named, Ramez Naam.  I found that story so compelling that I went out and got a copy of the recently published sequel to Nexus, which is titled Crux.   This morning (three days later), I finished reading Crux. At 500 pages, Crux is a daunting read. But, having been drawn into the world Ramez Naam has created, I found myself unable to put the book down.

Nexus and Crux are set in the near future, the year 2040. The world Ramez Naam creates is based on real science, seriously advanced from where we are at the moment, but eminently plausible given what we already know.

If anything, Crux is even more of a wild ride than Nexus.  At the core of this relentless action adventure is a struggle between humanity as we know it, and the emergence of a new augmented reality; post-humans with strength, intelligence, resilience, capabilities far beyond the mortal limitations of the homo sapiens species that has dominated the Earth and the biosphere for the last 250,000 years.

In the future Ramez Naam as created, the ascendance of post-human intelligence is taken as a mortal threat to the cultural status quo. The established powers that be are determined to strictly limit access to advanced neural, nano, and human augmentation technologies,  except where they can use these technologies to stifle descent and manipulate history for their own benefit.

If anything, Crux is even better that it's predecessor, Nexus. The writing is crisp, lean, thoroughly engaging.   The action is gripping. The characters terrific. The abuse of power is like a dark spector driving the plot forward in both of these stories.  As with Nexus, there is much in Crux that one can see at work beneath the everyday headlines of our current era.

Crux is much more than just an entertaining read.  For that reason, like Ramez Naam's first novel, Nexus, the sequel Crux, gets five stars from this reader.  If you like science fiction, Crux is  a must read.

Animals Snoring

Ever wonder what an elephant sounds like when it's snoring?

Here's a link...  http://now.msn.com/hummingbird-elephant-and-more-in-animals-snoring-supercut

Badass Neuro Shit

So, I just finished reading Nexus,  a new (2013)  sci-fi novel, the first by former Microsoft executive Ramez Naam.

Here is the tease from the back cover flap...

In the near future, the experimental nano-drug nexus can cause humans to link together, mind to mind.  There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who want to exploit it.

When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he's thrust way over his head into a world of danger and international espionage, for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.

Crisp, intelligent writing, delivered in highly engaging fashion.  Nexus is the badass neuro shit the story is built around. If you believe what futurists like Ray Kurzweil say,  the kind of neural connectivity fostered by Naam's fictional nano-drug, Nexus could become a reality, perhaps around the year 2040 as postulated in this story. The ramifications are mindboggling. That is precisely the point presented very effectively in this entertaining yarn.

Nexus is  Ramez Naam's first novel.  It's a very auspicious beginning.  While the story takes place about 25 years in the future,   the morality questions at play are not new. In fact, the good versus evil ambiguity at work in Nexus is very much at play on the global political stage we know today.  The most obvious similarity is in the feckless 'War on Drugs' that has devastated American society since Richard Nixon was President.

The fictional scenario Ramez Naam presents in Nexus could become a very unsettling part of the cultural landscape within a few decades. If so, will this brand of augmented reality become accessible exclusively to a privileged few or be something available openly for the benefit of society as a whole?  Will it make the world better or worse? Ramez Naam's Nexus offers useful insight into those questions, while holding the reader's attention with a relentless succession of twists and turns, punctuated by lots of pulse-pounding action.

Five stars for Nexus by Ramez Naam.

Final Countdown Dogfight Scene

My all time favorite aviation movie is,  The Final Countdown.   It was produced in 1980, and starred Kirk Douglass and the US Navy supercarrier Nimitz. Simple premise: what if a modern era US Navy carrier taskforce found itself in a time warp and ended up poised to resist the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that triggered World War Two?

The scene that never fails to thrill involves World War Two era Japanese zero fighter aircraft attacking a defenseless cabin cruising yacht. 

The propeller driven zeros are then confronted by two modern era F-14 Tomcat fighter jet aircraft.  The Tomcat is now retired from duty, but 33 years ago, when The Final Countdown was made, it was the Navy's 'Top Gun' airborne, lethal weapon.
 
The thing I like about this aerial combat sequence is the morality dance at play  The zeros cravenly attack an unarmed civilian vessel and blow it up.  Enter the US Navy jets with vastly superior performance and the moral high ground to boot.  The overmatched, bad boy Zeros get what's coming to them. Not complicated; stirring music, good versus evil, designed to elicit cheering and emotion.

Japanese Zero Fighter

F-14 Tomcat Navy Fighter Jet

Here is a link to this very exciting movie example of aerial combat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyjNInIH4Hw