Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Stephan: I have no illusions that either man is likely to be arrested. To me the importance of this story lies in what it tells us about how the U.S., and its junior partner, the U.K. is viewed in the Islamic world. When one remembers that these cultures, particularly in the Middle East, are still talking about 13th century battles it is easy to see why this sort of action by a recognized court, although it will barely be mentioned by U.S. media, will reverberate throughout Islam, and be remembered for decades, if not generations.
This is yet another unintended consequence of the insane wars perpetrated by the neocons when Bush/Cheney were in power. Obama's continuation of these conflicts taints him as well. But it is the effect on the view of America as a whole which should elicit our concern.
A tribunal in Malaysia, spearheaded by that nation’s former Prime Minister, yesterday found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of ‘crimes against peace
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Sunday, November 27th, 2011
FIONA HARVEY, Environment Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Once again we are being warned, yet nothing will happen I predict. The Republicans in the Congress are pledged to make sure of that. Therefore it is up to each of us to make our own arrangements, and work to see that our communities also awaken to what is coming. The only way to get through this with any kind of decent quality of life is by communal cooperation.
The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be ‘lost for ever’, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this ‘lock-in’ effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world’s foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.
‘The door is closing,’ Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. ‘I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.’
If the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the […]
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Sunday, November 27th, 2011
STEPHEN HARRIS, - The Engineer
Stephan: The latest in the trend for completely mobile total information access with almost organic integration.
Thanks to Sam Crespi.
Contact lenses that display information to the wearer’s eyes have moved a step closer thanks to a recent research project.
Engineers from the US and Finland have tested a wireless contact lens featuring a working LED light on a living eye for the first time.
Although the proof-of-concept device only contained a single pixel, it could pave the way for lenses that display emails and text messages directly to the wearer’s eyes or provide real-time health monitoring information such as glucose levels.
click here
The lens - developed by researchers at the University of Washington and Aalto University - consists of an antenna that receives power in the form of radio waves, an integrated circuit to store the energy and a transparent sapphire chip containing a single blue LED.
One of the key challenges in developing the lens was finding a way to allow the eye to focus on a display so close to it. The human eye cannot resolve images closer than a few centimetres so a contact lens display would normally appear blurry.
University of Washington researcher Prof Babak Praviz told The Engineer that this problem was overcome using Fresnel lenses - very thin lenses that effectively consist of a series of prisms […]
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Sunday, November 27th, 2011
CHRIS ANDERS, - ACLU - Washington Legislative Office
Stephan: If you want to know what Fascist control looks like, here it is. Read this carefully. Does this sound like the America you grew up in?
I urge you to click through to the primary site and vote as they suggest at the end of this report.
While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield – even people in the United States itself.
Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a ‘battlefield
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Saturday, November 26th, 2011
Stephan: I found this report fascinating. However, given the complete denial of data in the formulation of most of our policies I think this account is a bit over enthusiastic as to its impact.
Economics is at the start of a revolution that is traceable to an unexpected source: medical schools and their research facilities. Neuroscience-the science of how the brain, that physical organ inside one’s head, really works-is beginning to change the way we think about how people make decisions. These findings will inevitably change the way we think about how economies function. In short, we are at the dawn of ‘neuroeconomics.
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