Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech

Stephan:  The Holy Grail of one branch of physics has for decades been fusion that could become a sustaining technology. We are always almost there, but not quite. That may be changing.

“We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century,” says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected.

HB11 Energy is a spin-out company that originated at the University of New South Wales, and it announced today a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation.

Fusion, of course, is the long-awaited clean, safe theoretical solution to humanity’s energy needs. It’s how the Sun itself makes the vast amounts of energy that have powered life on our planet up until now. Where nuclear fission – the splitting of atoms to release energy – has proven incredibly powerful but insanely destructive when things go wrong, fusion promises reliable, safe, low cost, green energy generation with no chance of radioactive meltdown.

It’s just always been 20 years away from being 20 years away. A number of multi-billion dollar projects are pushing slowly forward, from the 

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Donald Trump sues New York Times for libel

Stephan:  This lawsuit which isn't drawing a lot of attention yet may turn out to be a small wedge opening big doors. It will allow the Times in defending itself to do a discovery process revealing a number of things about criminal Trump's campaign for the 2016 election.  Things Trump has gone to great lengths to keep hidden.

President Donald Trump is launching a lawsuit against the New York Times, according to his campaign website.

According to Trump: The Times “knowingly published false & defamatory statements of and concerning plaintiff…claiming it had an ‘overarching deal’ with ‘Putin’s oligarchy’ to ‘help in the campaign against Hillary Clinton.’”

“Today the President’s re-election campaign filed suit against the New York Times for falsely stating the Campaign had an ‘overarching deal’ with ‘Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy’ to ‘help the campaign against Hillary Clinton’ in exchange for ‘a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from … economic sanctions,’” said Jenna Ellis, senior legal to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.

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Americans Just Don’t Want To Have Babies Anymore

Stephan:  Here is the latest on a trend we have been following in SR for the last decade, the declining below sustainable  birthrate in both developing and developed countries. Sustainable birth rate means, the average number of children sufficient to replace both parents in the coming generation. In the U.S. anything below 2.1 children per female, over her lifetime, is not a replacement level of birth. There are many reasons this is occurring, and this essay touches on some of them.  But most importantly it presents solid data upon which to make an assessment. My own view is that birthrates are declining both for reasons that are obvious,  lifestyle, gender equality, and wealth inequality but, also for reasons not obvious. I think both precognitive unconscious and rationally conscious concerns about climate change are in play. Also that declining birth rates and migration may not seem to be inter-connected but I believe they are.  

Over the last few decades, birth rates have decreased across the globe.

The United States is no exception. Aside from a few years in the mid-2000s, the number of births in the United States have been falling for the last three decades and have now reached their lowest number in 32 years.

The country is now below population replacement rates as a nation. This means that the population will start to shrink in numbers, generation by generation.

As a specialist in infertility, I see women who live this trend on a daily basis as they struggle with their decisions regarding childbearing and fertility.

1. Why are birth rates declining?

There can be many reasons, and not all of them are bad. Certainly the reduction in teenage birth rates – from 41.5 per 1,000 women in 2007 to 17.4 per 1,000 women in 2018 – should be welcome news.

Age plays a role as well. While birth rates declined for nearly all age […]

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Education and Men without Work

Stephan:  Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute" would normally be described as a conservative. But not of the Trumpian kind. He uses social outcome data, as I do, to assess trends, and to discern what works from what does not, on the basis of facts. I must point out though that I think his interpretation of the role of government benefit programs is wacko. Like all conservatives, Eberstadt does not yet understand why policies that support well being are the way out of the current economic and social breakdown resulting from the implementation of conservative policies. But, as I have said many times, I care about data not the usual partisan philosophies, and that is why I am publishing this research. Eberstadt's data is correct. It is his interpretation with which I do not agree. To me, it is very simple. Wellbeing must be the first priority in any policy. Does this foster wellbeing at every level? is the question that should be asked. Finally, although this essay does not make the linkage I see men without work as also related to the Incel Trend, and the end of the Abrahamic values of male dominance, and the creation of a gender and racially neutral society.    

America today is in the grip of a gradually building crisis that, despite its manifest importance, somehow managed to remain more or less invisible for decades — at least, until the political earthquake of 2016. That crisis is the collapse of work for adult men, and the retreat from the world of work of growing numbers of men of conventional working age. (emphasis added)

According to the latest monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “work rates” for American men in October 2019 stood very close to their 1939 levels, as reported in the 1940 U.S. Census. Despite some improvement since the end of the Great Recession, Great Depression-style work rates are still characteristic today for the American male, both for those of “prime working age” (defined as ages 25 to 54) and for the broader 20 to 64 group.

Unlike the Great Depression, however, today’s work crisis is not an unemployment crisis. Only a tiny fraction of workless American men nowadays are actually looking for employment. Instead we have witnessed a mass exodus of men from the workforce altogether. At this writing, nearly 7 million civilian non-institutionalized men between the ages of […]

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‘Historic, unprecedented’ flooding swamps southern USA; Mississippi and Tennessee hardest hit

Stephan:  Between the criminality of Trump and the Democratic primaries, all sorts of important stories are just getting lost because corporate media programs are structured to do three story packages and a superficial collection of other news. Unfortunately, disastrous flooding just isn't making that list. But that doesn't mean it isn't happening. SR deals with facts not commentator bloviation, and here are some facts.

Flooding Map as of 17 February 2020 Credit: ESRI, NOAA

JACKSON, Miss. – Weeks of heavy rain have inundated a large portion of the southern U.S., bringing near-record flooding to portions of Mississippi and Tennessee.

In Jackson, Mississippi, hundreds of residents either watched their homes flood over the weekend or worried their residence would soon be drenched as the Pearl River crested Monday at 36.8 feet, its third-highest level ever recorded – behind only 1979 and 1983.

Calling the Jackson floods “historic” and “unprecedented,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a Sunday press conference that “we do not anticipate this situation to end anytime soon. It will be days before we are out of the woods and the waters recede.”

Reeves said at a news conference Monday that there were no reports of flood-related injuries and thanked the people of Mississippi for heeding evacuation orders. Only 16 search and rescue missions were necessary, he said, even though as many as 1,000 homes were flooded.

The governor also warned the hundreds of evacuees in the Jackson […]

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