Month: January 2010

Space Ports reports the opening of an IEC Fusion Research facility to develop fusion for spacecraft propulsion. AVRC has been awarded a contract by Wise County’s Industrial Development Authority to manage a $7 million energy research center now under construction in the Lonesome Pine Business and Technology Park [PDF] in Wise, VA focused on the…

When I visited Amsterdam a few years ago, I took an obligatory self-tour through the notorious “red light district” that has had so many people have been up in arms for so many years. It didn’t alarm me at all to see women wearing lingerie dancing in windows, although I soon learned that these were…

I was reading a review of a recent US Grant biography, U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, that had this interesting description of Grant During his presidency, to be sure, the Democratic press condemned Grant as at once feeble, conniving, and imperious–attacks similar to those that the Democrats had made on Lincoln. Or George…

Here is part of a press release on OLPC’s work in Haiti We are doing what we can for the 60 schools that we have been working with in Haiti – primarily planning for the spring after the first phase of rebuilding is underway. We will be sending a group of OLPCorps volunteers to Haiti…

Am I a political blogger? Honestly, I don’t mean to be, as I have hated politics for years. The more tired I get of it, the more I hate it. It doesn’t help much to read about stuff like this: WASHINGTON–President Barack Obama intends to use Wednesday’s State of the Union address to put a…

I have just sent this out to a group of physicists and scientists to see if it has any merit. Here is the cover letter I sent: George Miley of U Illinois, Champaign is involved. I am passing this on after a cursory review. It was published yesterday. Please give it 5 minutes before you…

Frank J. Fleming has an interesting (if somewhat controversial) idea for solving the problems in the Mideast: simply convert the Muslims to Christianity. After all, Christianity is a more peaceful religion, and as Frank points out, when was the last time anyone saw a Christian suicide bomber? …I think if we could convert many in…

When Glenn Reynolds linked Allahpundit’s post about Mike Huckabee doing better against Barack Obama than any Republican candidate, I was shocked. But here’s what the quoted poll said: Mike Huckabee has a 45-44 advantage over Obama, aided largely by a 44-38 lead with independents. There continues to be no evidence of any negative fallout for…

It strikes me that unless a patron were intoxicated, clowning around, or pushed (or maybe having a seizure), it would be very unlikely to fall through a priceless painting hanging on a wall at an art museum as is being widely reported. “How do you do that?” asked one news commentator incredulously. Beats me. Normal…

One of the memes frequently tossed about — especially by promoters of the various “caveman” diets — is how “we” (meaning all human beings) have not evolved since Upper Paleolithic times, and that illness results from our failure to limit our diet to what our Cro Magnon ancestors ate. The premise is that thousands of…

The UN’s IPCC has just taken a few more torpedoes below the water line. Well it turns out that the WWF is cited all over the IPCC AR4 report, and as you know, WWF does not produce peer reviewed science, they produce opinion papers in line with their vision. Yet IPCC’s rules are such that…

I dunno… have you considered flavonoids? I also hear good things about resveratrol. But don’t believe it my blennies. Incidentally, i [sic] DO demand that you bend, but i [sic] do NOT expect you to obey. But buy [non-sic] god [sic] i [enough] DO expect you to try. The rest Is up to You not…

It seems a lot of folks are upset by the recent Supreme Court decision on corporate free speech. Let me reprise a discussion at Talk Polywell on some aspects of health care that have a bearing on why corporate free speech is important. The discussion was about life extension and how cooling the body in…

Like a lot of readers here, I was not happy when I saw the excerpt that M. Simon posted from Scott Brown’s post-election press conference in which Brown (after pausing to observe that it was “post election”) apparently endorsed national health care. Ugh! I am vehemently opposed to nationalized health care in any way shape…

Trilogy: a nude awakening is a sort of play/happening that has a stage full of naked dancing girls. Hundreds of different ones all together. In the all together. Trilogy is about many things: body dissatisfaction, dominant masculine hegemony, Germaine Greer. Well, well, well. If male hegemony can get hundreds of women to dance nude on…

In my post The Glaciers Are Melting I looked at an an error in the IPCC report that was taken straight out of a popular science magazine, New Scientist. New Scientist did a retraction and the head of the IPCC, railroad engineer Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, defended the “data” despite the retraction. He finally gave in…

I put up a video of Scott Brown in a short discussion with a voter about health care reform. My first personal complaint about what he said was at the beginning of the video when he says: “We’re past campaign mode” i.e. I no longer have to lie to win. I guess now that he…

Who is Ellie Light? She’s…simply…amazing! She appears everywhere, and writes, anywhere! In plenty of papers! Penning powerful paeans in praise of the President! “42 papers in eighteen states with dozens of different hometowns listed at last count“! Naturally, a lot of people want to know, and some have spent a great deal of time looking…

No, I didn’t invent that God-awful phrase, but thanks to Sean Kinsell, I found it — used in a deprecating manner by a commenter to Sarah Hoyt’s discussion of her writing and Robert Heinlein. Heinlein isn’t helped by the fact that he seems to be a favorite of libertarianesque geeks who spout sexist nonsense. It’s…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I just learned that the best diet might be to cut out carbohydrates and eat like a cougar. But not long ago, I also read about about a book postulating that eating lots of carbs is the way to be thin. Might that work for cougars? Has anyone tried caging them and…