Stephan: I can think of nothing comparable within the last 50 years to Tesla sharing its patents. Patents are a corporation's DNA, and companies usually will go to any length spending millions, sometimes, billions of dollars to protect their patents. Just do a Google on the war between Samsung and Apple to see what I mean. Yet Elon Musk the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Motors feels it is more important to get more electric cars on the road than it is for him and his company to profit from exclusive use of its patents. Quite amazing really, and I take this as possibly very good news. I also think it could turn out to be a smart move financially. The Tesla is a unique vehicle and by making his patents available hopefully other companies will embrace electronic vehicles. That said, I'm not sure they will do so. It will require massive expensive retooling, and will impact profit in the short term. I think that as usual in America immediate profit will trump long term climate change remediation in the form of phasing out carbon energy technology. But I am an optimist, and hope I am wrong.
Tesla Motors Inc. is offering the proprietary technology at the heart of its Model S electric car to any company that wants to build vehicles, and its chief suggested BMW AG already is interested in sharing certain patents.
Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an interview on Thursday the offer is intended to help spur wider development of electric vehicles. Mr. Musk said one topic discussed with BMW executives was sharing Tesla’s technology for rapidly recharging batteries, part of the company’s “supercharger” stations.
The Palo Alto, Calif., maker of $71,000 and up luxury electric cars decided to offer open access to Tesla patents out of frustration that electric vehicles remain less than 1% of new cars and light trucks sold each year.
BMW couldn’t be reached for immediate comment.
Mr. Musk also hinted at another reason for the offer: achieving greater economies of scale. For example, Tesla’s patents for its vehicle Supercharging stations could be shared with other auto makers, which could help Tesla spread costs and more quickly make more stations available.
More manufacturers should use small battery cells, as Tesla does, Mr. Musk said. “That would be one thing I would recommend.” He has outlined plans to build a large battery factory, which […]
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DAVID EDWARDS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The presence of a nasty moron like Louie Gohmert in the U.S. Congress is one of the reasons I believe the real problem with America is Americans. People in Texas voted for this man, and they have done it over and over. That's why the Congress is filled with corrupt ignorant embarrassments like Gohmert. We get the government we vote for.
Watch the video from the House Judiciary Committee, broadcast June 10, 2014.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Tuesday grilled a pastor who supports the separation of church and state, asking him why he did not share the ‘good news” that non-Christians were going to Hell.
At a House Judiciary Committee hearing about religious freedom on Tuesday, Gohmert told the Rev. Barry Lynn, who serves as the executive director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, that the Founders of the country – and Franklin Roosevelt – had often mentioned religion in their writings.
Lynn pointed out that he had received the Medal of Freedom from the Roosevelt Institute for his work supporting the freedom to worship.
‘But that wasn’t awarded by Roosevelt himself?” Gohmert interrupted, before asking if the pastor understood that the ‘meaning” of being a Christian was to evangelize.
‘Do you believe in sharing the good news that will keep people from going to Hell, consistent with Christian beliefs?” the Texas Republican wondered.
Lynn, however, disagreed with the congressman’s ‘construction of what Hell is like or why one gets there.”
‘So, you do not believe somebody would go to Hell if they do not believe Jesus is the way, the truth, the life?” Gohmert pressed.
The pastor argued that people would not got to […]
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MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This story broke almost a week ago, but it was so inflammatory that I decided not to run it immediately. I wanted to be sure it was accurate. Nearly 800 dead babies found in a septic tank on the grounds of a Roman Catholic home for "unwed mothers" was just too damning. As time as gone on however the story just gets worse. Here is the current state of the situation. This is part of the trend of the imploding Catholic Church. And I suspect there will be more revelations to come.
It gets worse. One week after revelations of how over the span of 35 years, a County Galway home for unwed mothers cavalierly disposed of the bodies of nearly 800 babies and toddlers [3] on a site that held a septic tank, new reports are leveling a whole different set of charges about what happened to the children of those Irish homes.
In harrowing new information revealed this weekend, the Daily Mail has uncovered medical records that suggest 2,051 children across several Irish care homes were given a diphtheria vaccine from pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome in a suspected illegal drug trial that ran from 1930 to 1936. As the Mail reports, ‘Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.”
There is no evidence yet-and there may never be-that any family consent was ever offered, or about how many children had adverse effects or died as a result of the vaccinations. Dwyer told the Mail, ‘The fact that no record of these trials […]
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Thursday, June 12th, 2014
ERIC LACH, - Talking Points Memo
Stephan: Having listened to pundits from every political group all day, my sense is that most of the beltway commentators have it wrong. I think Eric Cantor lost because he was an unpleasant man who projected a persona of arrogant superiority, traveled around in his district like a nabob, and that did not sit well with a deeply conservative district in which many people were having a hard time and felt no one was listening to them. So they threw him out.
That said it seemed to me the real question ought to be who is Dave Brat and what does he believe? It appears he is an example of a Rightist academic funded and working for the Corporatist Theocratic Right. We are beginning to see these kinds of academics sprouting up all over the country as the uber-rich realize that one way to protect themselves is to fund university programs that teach youth to value priorities that advance the funder's interest.
Dave Brat, who stunned Washington, D.C. by upsetting House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a primary Tuesday, is a college professor. At Randolph-Macon College, a small Virginia liberal arts school, Brat chairs the economics and business department.
But he does more than that.
Brat is also the director of the school’s BB&T Moral Foundations of Capitalism Program, a bank-branded program intended to give “free-market principles” — and Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism in particular — a leg up in the classroom.
The program was started by the Branch Banking and Trust Company (BB&T), a North Carolina-based financial services company which currently boasts $184.7 billion in assets. The ideas behind the program were laid out in 2012 in an essay written by former BB&T CEO John Allison.
“About twelve years ago we re-examined our charitable giving and realized that our contributions to universities were not typically being used in our shareholders’ best interest,” Allison wrote in the essay, which was published online by The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. “At the same time, we were studying the question of why the United States had moved from the land of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ to the ‘redistributive state.’ We […]
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Thursday, June 12th, 2014
JEFFREY STRAIN, - SavingAdvice.com
Stephan: Over many years I have found fasting very useful. This may explain why.
Would you be willing to go without food for a few days to keep your immune system in tip-top shape? That is exactly what may happen if you’re willing to fast twice a year according to a new University of Southern California study featured in the June 5 edition of Cell Stem Cell. The study is the first to find that someone, through natural intervention by the person, can help trigger stem cells to regenerate. In other words, it appears fasting can help your immune system recycle itself to become stronger than it had been before you began to fast.
The fasting works in the following way. By not eating for two to four days in a row, the body significantly lowers the number of white blood cells. Those cells that die off tend to be those which are weak or have damage. When a person begins to eat again, new stem cells are created which end up being much healthier than the ones that died off. In other words, by fasting, a person can regenerate a completely new and healthy immune system.
The study could have huge implications for a variety of groups, especially in the area of healthier aging. As […]
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