Friday, September 23rd, 2011
Stephan: Here is a truly fascinating breakthrough that challenges our understanding of how the world works.
Defense giant Lockheed Martin is applying Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ to a far-out concept for a ‘quantum radar’ that would be a (forgive the pun) quantum leap over current radar technology. The company filed a patent on the idea in Europe, according to this article in the U.K. Guardian:
Radar
The company has designed and patented a scanner based on the principle of quantum entanglement – a far out concept, even by the weird standards of the quantum world. It says the device could penetrate any type of defence, to identify hidden weapons and roadside bombs from hundreds of miles away.
Quantum entanglement says that two particles can be joined so that whatever happens to one must also happen to its partner, however far apart they are.
Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance’. Lockheed Martin prefers: ‘Quantum radar is capable of providing information about targets that cannot be provided using classical radar systems.’
European patent number EP1750145 describes ‘radar systems and methods using entangled quantum particles’. It says such a device could ‘visualise useful target details through background and/or camouflaging clutter, through plasma […]
No Comments
Friday, September 23rd, 2011
LISA GIRION, SCOTT GLOVER and DOUG SMITH, - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: Here one can see clearly the utter insanity of drug policies in the U.S. We hardly talk about this, but Big Pharma manufactures products that kill with abandon, because they are known to be addictive -- sometimes fatally addictive. Meanwhile marijunana kills zero people. So tell me, which are the dangerous drugs?
LOS ANGELES — Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found.
Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety.
Public health experts have used the comparison to draw attention to the nation’s growing prescription drug problem, which they characterize as an epidemic. This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.
Fueling the surge in deaths are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol. Among the most commonly abused are OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma. One relative newcomer to the scene is Fentanyl, a painkiller that […]
No Comments
Friday, September 23rd, 2011
ADAM WEINSTEIN, National Security Reporter - Mother Jones
Stephan: I have held this story for over a week, waiting to see if an effective refutation emerged. One has not, so we must assume it is correct. As you read this remember the $8 billion $100 bills on pallets that disappeared into the sandstorm of Iraq. Then think also about this bomb material floating around somewhere in the world.
The United States cannot fully account for more than 16,000 kilograms tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that it has shipped to 27 ‘friendly’ countries in recent decades, and it lacks any coherent policy to track down the materials, a Government Accountability Office report concluded late last week. In fact, according to auditors, the country’s atomic accounting is so shoddy that the International Atomic Energy Agency-the same agency sent to search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction-could potentially find the United States in violation of its international anti-proliferation treaty obligations. Even as it has fretted about Iranian nuclear proliferation and alleged Iraqi purchases of yellowcake uranium from Africa, the United States has lost track of enough fissile material to make hundreds of nuclear warhead cores.
At issue are bilateral agreements the US holds with 27 nations, from France to Taiwan, for the transfer of American nuclear materials-fuel, reactors, and reactor components-for ‘peaceful civilian purposes.’ (It’s even conceivable, though not easily determined, that US material may have been present at the Marcoule nuclear plant in France where an explosion killed one worker Monday.) Although the United States has a database, the Nuclear Materials Management and Safeguard System, to track the transfers, […]
No Comments
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Stephan: The trend of government and corporations -- often one and the same -- seeking complete surveillance of every aspect of your life just keeps advancing. I find it very creepy.
If you’re the owner of a fairly new General Motors product, you may want to take a close look at the most recent OnStar terms and conditions. As it turns out, the company has altered the parameters under which it can legally collect GPS data on your vehicle.
Originally, the terms and conditions stated that OnStar could only collect information on your vehicle’s location during a theft recovery or in the midst of sending emergency services your way. That has apparently changed. Now, OnStar says that it has the right to collect and sell personal, yet supposedly anonymous information on your vehicle, including speed, location, seat belt usage and other information.
Who would be interested in that data, you ask? Law enforcement agencies, for starters, as well as insurance companies. Perhaps the most startling news to come out of the latest OnStar terms and conditions is the fact that the company can continue to collect the information even after you disconnect the service. If you want the info to be cut off all together, you’ll have to specifically shut down the vehicle’s data connection. If that sounds scary, you should check out a full breakdown of the new policies here. (Click through […]
No Comments
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Stephan: This tells us a lot about ourselves in an area that many people find it uncomfortable to talk about. If you are like me you will find that your ideas about porn usage on the net are largely wrong and out of date. What I found particularly interesting is the information in the last question about Republican states having higher porn subscription rates than Democratic states. Reading this I thought about the research data showing that in Republican states, where a Theocratic political vision obtains, there is more violence, more divorce, more physical spousal abuse, a higher incidence of teen pregnancies, a higher rate of STDs, and more usage of psychiatric drugs.
Starting September 7, .XXX domains are for sale. (That is, if you own a porn site or a trademark to protect – the rest of us have to wait till December 6 and hope nobody scoops our name first).
It’s like the internet is growing up a bit. There’s certainly enough porn to justify .XXX, if .biz gets its own extension.
But the arrival of .XXX begs the question:
How much of the internet is actually for porn?
Plug the question into Google and you reach an abandoned corner of the net: an article from 2005, a mess of answers from 37-80% and the Avenue Q Wikipedia page.
Surely there must be a better way.
So I asked Ogi Ogas, one of the amazingly nerdy neuroscientists behind A Billion Wicked Thoughts, who says he and co-author Sai Gaddam are sitting on what they think is ‘the most comprehensive collection of porn-use stats on the web.
No Comments
