Monday, February 20th, 2017
Danielle Kurtzleben , - npr
Stephan: Winston Churchill once described the U.S. and the U.K. as two nations separated by a common language. Based on the conversations I have been having -- and compare mine with ones you are having -- I think that can be rephrased to say, that the Blue value world and the Red value world, are two realities separated by a common language.
Friday night, President Trump took to Twitter to deliver one of his favorite insults to journalists: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” he wrote.
It’s a phrase President Trump has now tweeted 15 times this month (10 times in all caps). He used the phrase seven times in his Thursday news conference.
Anyone who has followed the news knows this isn’t what “fake news” meant just a few months ago. Back then, it meant lies posing as news, made up by people from Macedonian teenagers to a dad in the Los Angeles suburbs. The stories impacted the election to some unmeasurable degree, and they also presented a tangible threat when a gunman inspired by false stories fired shots inside Washington pizza restaurant Comet Ping Pong.
Now, Trump casts all unfavorable news coverage as fake news. In one tweet, he even went […]
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Sunday, February 19th, 2017
JOSH HRALA , - science alert
Stephan: Donald Trump says explicitly he seeks to lock America into carbon energy, and climate change denial. Meanwhile other nations, run by more conscious wellness oriented individuals, are taking another path. Here is some excellent news.
Aapo Haapanen/WikiMedia Commons
Ireland is close to becoming the first country in the world to completely divest from fossil fuels, thanks to a new bill recently passed by the Irish Parliament. (emphasis added)
If set into law after review, the vote – which passed with 90 to 53 votes last Thursday – would halt public funding of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas from the €8 billion (US$8.6 billion) Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.
“This principle of ethical financing is a symbol to these global corporations that their continual manipulation of climate science, denial of the existence of climate change, and their controversial lobbying practices of politicians around the world is no longer tolerated,” Deputy Thomas Pringle, who introduced the bill, told the media.
“We cannot accept their actions while millions of poor people in underdeveloped nations bear the brunt of climate change forces as they experience famine, mass emigration, and civil unrest as a result.”
At this stage, the bill still has to be signed into law after review. If it passes, the Ireland Strategic […]
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Sunday, February 19th, 2017
Josh Eells, - Men's Journal
Stephan: Welcome to American law enforcement. One step in the Fascist playbook, is to militarize the police, and then train them into a fear fugue -- us vs them. It is an utterly predictable pattern.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
Credit: John Midgley
One morning in October 2016, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman was in a Red Lion Hotel conference room in Sacramento, California, preparing to speak to a group of state troopers about what it’s like to kill.
Grossman, 60, is a former West Point psychology professor who’s spent much of his career studying killology — his term for the psychology of taking a life. Among the military and law enforcement, he’s a revered figure. His first book, On Killing, is part of the curriculum at the FBI academy and on the Marine Corps Commandant’s Professional Reading List. Its follow-up, On Combat, is probably best known for his assertion that people can be divided into three groups — sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs — and it’s the sheepdogs, “blessed with the gift of aggression,” who are responsible for protecting the sheep from the wolves. The analogy has been adopted by various military and gun-rights groups; in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, the father of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle […]
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Sunday, February 19th, 2017
DAVID W. DUNLAP , - The New York Times
Stephan: In Republican Trump world climate change is a hoax. In the real world, people who have really valuable real estate like sky scrapers take it very seriously and are making accommodations. Here's some information on what that is looking like.
The American Copper Buildings, just right of the Empire State Building, were designed so that tenants could live in their apartments for at least a week if the area floods.
Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
There is a breathtaking view of the mid-Manhattan skyline, pierced by the Empire State Building, from the 48th floor of the taller of two new copper-clad apartment towers along the East River, just south of the United Nations.
No plutocrat will enjoy it, however. This impressive penthouse aerie is hogged by five emergency generators. The window is already blocked by a bank of electrical switchgear. For the developers, giving up premium space to machinery is insurance against an ominous future: They want tenants in the towers’ 760 apartments to be able to live in their apartments for at least a week, no matter how high floodwaters may reach nor how long the power is out.
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Sunday, February 19th, 2017
Stephan: In spite of everything the carbon industry does to stop the transition creative genius will not be stopped. Here is some more good news.
University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. "Printable solar cells just got a little closer: Research removes a key barrier to large-scale manufacture of low-cost, printable perovskite solar cells." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 February 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170216142800.htm>.
The new perovskite solar cells have achieved an efficiency of 20.1 per cent and can be manufactured at low temperatures, which reduces the cost and expands the number of possible applications.
Credit: Kevin Soobrian
A U of T Engineering innovation could make printing solar cells as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. Dr. Hairen Tan and his team have cleared a critical manufacturing hurdle in the development of a relatively new class of solar devices called perovskite solar cells. This alternative solar technology could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.
“Economies of scale have greatly reduced the cost of silicon manufacturing,” said Professor Ted Sargent, an expert in emerging solar technologies and the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. “Perovskite solar cells can enable us to use techniques already established in the printing industry to produce solar cells at very low cost. Potentially, perovskites and silicon cells can be married to improve efficiency further, but only with advances in low-temperature processes.”
Today, virtually […]
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