Maybe we can get cheap power from water

Just watch the video. This has legs so I wonder how long it’ll be before the oil companies quash it.

Los Alamos – On the block

Los Alamos, of Manhattan Project fame is looking at some tought times. In the article they go on to list some of the things that have come out of research performed at Los Alamos. Things like environment friendly solvents, superconduting tape that would revolutionize electricity transmission, among many other things.

But under its new management I can see a performance issue coming. The U.S. will be losing one of its remaining pure research labs if the new corporate management of Los Alamos doesn’t recognize the importance of pure research.

They also have one hellishly nice and coveted computer center upon which all sorts of simulations have been done, from simulating radioactive decay of plutonium detonators, to tracing pollution, disease, protein folding sequences, etc. Friend of mine is in charge of a 150 node super-cluster that simulates the oceans of the planet. That’s one I covet but use that example to imagine what Los Alamos has.

Sadly the best and brightest are bailing out of Los Alamos. This is what happens when corporate entities take control. The only other pure research lab in recent memory was Bell Labs. Ma Bell was a bitch to be sure, but she knew that pure research could have far reaching ramifications.

I’m afraid those days are gone. The United States is sliding from a first world nation to a third world nation. But what more could we expect from an administration firmly in the pocket of big oil, and and one that thinks science is a dirty word.

A prime example of why we need to divorce corporations from the 14th amendment

I get regular Truthout mailings. Truthout seems to be a fair source as they paint a not so rosy picture about the finances of both Democrats and Republicans. This is precisely why the 14th Amendment should be changed.

I only want to change Section 1 of the Amendment. It currently reads: “Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The change I wish to make is in the second sentence. Just add one word so that the second clause reads “nor shall any State deprive any human person of life, liberty or property…”

That would eliminate Corporations thinking they have rights equivalent to humans. Were that the case, they couldn’t claim first amendment rights when it come to campaign finance. Imagine what a different world it would be if this were the case.

Maybe then our so-called Representatives in Congress would have the motivation to listen to we the citizens as opposed to corporations waving around ready cash.

Shirley Phelps Roper is Really Off Her Rocker

As evidenced by this video. I stumbled across it when I visited the Good As You Blog .

Previously you’ve seen the video where Hannity and Colmes shred her on national television. But here we have Christian against Christian. Hey, who needs lions.

And yes, we’re all doomed to Hell. Should be an interesting place. All my friends will be there. We’re takin’ over Satan.

Support the EFF – And Watch The Corruptibles

I’m an EFF member. You should be one too because the only thing that stands between the industry and us is the EFF.

Just watch this short video and tell me why you shouldn’t shell out your cash.

Karl "Porky" Rove gets a dressing down

A spokesman for John Kerry gave Karl Rove a little verbal drubbing. All because Rove tried to give Kerry a drubbing regarding Kerry’s stance on a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The reason I called Rove “Porky” is because he was referred to in the blurb as porcine.

For those who don’t recognize the word ‘pork’ in there I’ll define it for you:
Main Entry: por·cine
Pronunciation: 'por-"sIn
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin porcinus, from porcus pig — more at FARROW
: of, relating to, or suggesting swine

Yes, Rove is a swine, both literally and figuratively. Why nobody has bloodied this bastard up is beyond me. He needs a good beating.

That’s right – we should never have gone into Iraq. Had Bush simply parity tied the U.S. dollar with the Euro we’d be sitting pretty. Now we’re mired in debt and the U.S. economy is in the shitter. Yet they just spent another $66 billion, that’s Billion with a ‘B’. At my current salary level it’d take me just about 108,000 years to make that kind of money. Yikes!

Stephen Hawking says Humans Must go Into Space

Oh the glory of it. The human race has to keep reaching out, else the race will extinguish itself. It has been the story of human evolution. First out of Africa, into Europe and Asia, then North and South America. I’ve oversimplified because there were major stops along the way. But you get the general idea.

I believe the latin phrase is Terra Espuet Nos or The Earth Spits us Up and Out. (Someone correct me as my Latin is mostly based on my knowledge of Spanish.) But in essence we have to keep going. After all, according to environmentalists if everyone lived like me we’d need 2.9 earths. Curiously they didn’t average it out because I bet with all respondents we’d need 7 or 8 earths.

But Hawking sees the chances of a disaster as moving towards one. That means if the human race is to survive, we must branch off planet. This is why I think the space program is worth it. I only wish we hadn’t wasted so much money on the shuttle.

Seth MacFarlane gives Harvard Class Day Speech

Only he does it in four parts which can be seen here. For those of you who don’t know who Seth MacFarlane is, he’s the creator and one of the voice actors for Family Guy.

He does the voices of Peter and Stewie Griffin, and Glenn Quagmire. All of them are used in his speech.

You all now I’m a Family Guy fan having seen clips from the show posted elsewhere in this blog. And now I know the true connection of Family Guy to Rhode Island. MacFarlane was born in CT, not far from the RI border. He attended RISD here in Providence so that explains the RI skyline and references in the show.

If you don’t have cable, or you don’t get either Fox or Cartoon Network, you can buy the DVD’s. Hell, I watch the show regularly and still have the DVD’s.

Get over it already!

Seems the KKK is now comfy with white supremacist and neo-nazi groups. I was at least happy to read that the KKK traces its roots back to the Confederacy, because now we know what sore losers they are.

To them I say, enough already! Get over yourselves. You lost the civil war (Not the War of Northern Agression), move on with life.

But now they’re protesting at national parks – like Antietam. Don’t they understand that their mission is like shoveling shit against the tide? Are they really that incapable of forming an original thought?

I also don’t suppose they’re in favor of equal rights for gay people either. And last I recall they don’t have a particular liking of Catholics and Jews. But then the Catholic church seems to be siddling right up to the nut jobs, what with it’s regular pronouncements and Pope Benny the 16th making a regular ass of himself.

What we need to do is cut off their voice. I’ve oft advocated DDOS and other attacks against hate web sites but we also need to stop the media from fanning the flames. Push the white (or Aryan) supremacists back into the woods.

A La Carte Cable TV

A bad idea from the start, but there’s one little glimmer that makes me almost WANT a la carte. Scroll to the bottom to see why.

You see I’d love to not have to pay for the umpteen shopping channels, foreign channels, Xtian channels, etc. But I understand the ecomomics behind cable television. You see, what we pay is a comparitively small amount because the costs are spread among ALL subscribers.

Now lets say we go to a la carte. All of a sudden that whole system subsidy goes away. What used to be part of a package with its cost invisible to you will suddenly become visible. And you won’t like what you see.

Here is a theoretical example:

Lets say that right now there are 100,000 subscribers that have MTV/VH1/MTV2 in their package. Suppose the carrier pays $20,000 a month to get that package, the average cost to subscribers is 20 cents.

Now all of a sudden everything is a la carte. Lets say that only 1000 customers want the above mentioned package. Your cable carrier isn’t getting a break from the producers of the package so that $20,000 now gets spread among a much smaller group. Instead of 20 cents per subscriber it’d be $20 per subscriber.

You see what I’m getting at here. The only ones that will really lose if this horrible scenario is put into place is you and I, Joe Consumer. We’ve have been duped if we let this happen.

But there number one reason I like a la carte is because it scares the shit out of religious broadcasters. Good, they need to be scared because all they’ve done thus far is spread a message of fear and hatred, not a message of love and compassion. Someone needs to buy all those asses a WWJD tee. Of course they’re clueless enough that they wouldn’t know what that means.

I know, I know, it sounds awfully Christian of me, an avowed atheist. Thing is, I think Christ was a philosopher, not a deity. There’s a big difference there.