Escalating Tribal Violence....,

In this morning's Guardian; Russian bombers and artillery yesterday widened their attack against Georgian forces with strikes against towns and military bases across the country in a dangerous escalation of the two-day-old war. Moscow appeared determined to dismantle Georgia's military capability in punishment for its rival's brutal attempt to regain control of the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia.

Russia's Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, last night insisted that its actions were 'legitimate' and called on Georgia to end its 'aggression' against the separatist province.

As the civilian casualties escalated on both sides, Georgia's military adventure seemed to be unravelling. President Mikheil Saakashvili demanded a ceasefire from Russia and implored the West to intervene to help him. Georgia's difficulties deepened further as separatists in a second pro-Russian breakaway Georgian republic - Abkhazia - joined the conflict, attacking Georgian forces in the contested upper Kodori Gorge.

Despite Saakashvili's call for a ceasefire - and the announcement that a combined EU, UN and US delegation was flying to Georgia to broker a cessation of hostilities - Russia insisted there would be no ceasefire until all Georgian troops had withdrawn from South Ossetia, which declared its independence from Georgia after a war in 1992.

'The first thing needed is to ... make the Georgians return to their positions and re-establish the status quo we had before,' Russia's Nato ambassador, Dmitry Rogozin, said in Brussels. He said that there could be 'no consultations' until that precondition had been met.

Rogozin said Russian troops had entered South Ossetia to protect Russian peacekeepers and civilians. He added - unconvincingly given the air raids - that Russia was not conducting any military operation against Georgia outside the conflict zone in South Ossetia.

The latest moves come amid concern over the civilian death toll on both sides, which appeared to have reached 2,000 yesterday. The first horrific images began emerging from the Georgian town of Gori, bombed yesterday by Russian jets, where up to 60 civilians died when bombs landed on two apartment blocks in a town that Georgia has been using as a military staging post for its assault on South Ossetia.

Wait, wait, wait!!!! I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it!

In Time online...,

Whether or not the effect was intended, Moscow now appears to be using Saakashvili's strategic overreach to teach a brutal lesson not only to the Georgians, but also to other neighbors seeking to align themselves with the West against Russia. Saakashvili is appealing for Western support, based on international recognition of South Ossetia as sovereign Georgian territory. "A full-scale aggression has been launched against Georgia," he said, calling for Western intervention. But given NATO's previous warnings, its commitments elsewhere and the reluctance of many of its member states to antagonize Russia, it remains unlikely that Georgia will get more than verbal support from its desired Western protectors. Saakashvili appears to have both underestimated the scale of the Russian backlash, and overestimated the extent of support he could count on from the U.S. and its allies. The Georgian leader may have expected Washington to step up to his defense, particularly given his country's centrality to the geopolitics of energy — Georgia is the only alternative to Russia as the route for a pipeline carrying oil westward from Azerbaijan. But Russia is not threatening to overrun Georgia. Moscow claims to be simply using its military to restore the secessionist boundary, which in the process would deal Saakashvili a humiliating defeat.

Although its outcome is yet to be decided, there's no win-win outcome to the offensive launched by Georgia with the goal of recovering South Ossetia. Either Saakashvili wins, or Moscow does. Unless the U.S. and its allies demonstrate an unlikely appetite for confrontation with an angry and resurgent Russia in its own backyard, the smart money would be on Moscow.

Pawns never seem to realize their expendable status until it's waaaaaay too late. Then, no amount of wait, wait, wait, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! type begging will save their proverbial bacon.

The Pawn Shop.....,

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said it was time for Russia to rebuild links with former Cold War ally Cuba, news agencies reported.

The Kremlin is angry at U.S. plans for a missile defence system in Eastern Europe, and last month a news report suggested Russia might use Cuba, a thorn in America's side for half a century, as a refueling stop for nuclear-capable bombers.

The Russian Defence Ministry denied the report and said it had no plans to open any military bases abroad, but a top U.S. general was drawn to say such a move would cross a "red line".

Moscow was the Caribbean island's key oil, arms and grain supplier for 30 years, until subsidies propping up the economy of Fidel Castro's revolutionary government fell to a trickle and then dried up entirely after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"We need to reestablish positions on Cuba and in other countries," news agency Interfax quoted Putin as saying at the weekly presidium meeting of key government ministers.

Putin's remarks came after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin reported on a recent three-day visit to Cuba, where he discussed a raft of trade and investment issues and met with Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and now the island's leader.

"We agreed on a priority direction for cooperation, this being energy, the mining industry, agriculture, transport, health care and communications," news agency RIA quoted Sechin as saying.

More Opening Play.....?

From europebusiness blogspot;

Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago. This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force".

The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagon (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan.

They are joining two existing USN battle groups in the Gulf area: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) with its Carrier Strike Group Nine (CCSG-9); and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5) with its expeditionary strike group.

Likely also under way towards the Persian Gulf is the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) and its expeditionary strike group, the UK Royal Navy HMS Ark Royal (R07) carrier battle group, assorted French naval assets including the nuclear hunter-killer submarine Amethyste and French Naval Rafale fighter jets on-board the USS Theodore Roosevelt. These ships took part in the just completed Operation Brimstone.

The build up of naval forces in the Gulf will be one of the largest multi-national naval armadas since the First and Second Gulf Wars. The intent is to create a US/EU naval blockade (which is an Act of War under international law) around Iran (with supporting air and land elements) to prevent the shipment of benzene and certain other refined oil products headed to Iranian ports. Iran has limited domestic oil refining capacity and imports 40% of its benzene. Cutting off benzene and other key products would cripple the Iranian economy. The neo-cons are counting on such a blockade launching a war with Iran.

Check out the right honorable Earl's update note to this blogpost; A strategic diversion has been created for Russia. The Republic of Georgia, with US backing, is actively preparing for war on South Ossetia. The South Ossetia capital has been shelled and a large Georgian tank force has been heading towards the border. Russia has stated that it will not sit by and allow the Georgians to attack South Ossetia. The Russians are great chess players and this game may not turn out so well for the neo-cons. UPDATE 8 August 2008 ~ War has broken out between Georgia and South Ossetia. At least 10 Russian troops have been killed and 30 wounded and 2 Russian fighter jets downed. American Marines, a thousand of them, have recently been in Georgia training the Georgian military forces. Several European nations stopped Bush and others from allowing Georgia into NATO. Russia is moving a large military force with armor towards the area. This could get bad, and remember it is just a strategic diversion....but one that could have horrific effects. Link to story "Russia sends forces into Georgia rebel conflict". FURTHER UPDATE ~ Russian military forces in active combat; now total of four Russian fighter jets reported downed. ADDITIONAL UPDATE ~ Georgia calls for US help; Russian Air Force bombs Georgian air bases. DEBKA, the Israeli strategy and military site, states that Israeli military officers are advising the Georgian armed forces in combat operations and that 1,000 Israelis are in-combat on the side of Georgia at this time.

Russia and Georgia Clash Over Separatist Region

NYTimes coverage this morning; Analysts said that either Georgia or Russia could be trying to seize an opportune moment — with world leaders focused on the start of the 2008 Olympics this week — to reclaim the territory, and to settle the dispute before a new American presidential administration comes to office.

Richard C. Holbrooke, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, said that Russia’s aims were clear. “They have two goals,” he said. “To do a creeping annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and, secondly, to overthrow Saakashvili, who is a tremendous thorn in their side.”[...]

There are over 2,000 American citizens in Georgia, Pentagon officials said. Among them are about 130 trainers — mostly American military personnel but with about 30 Defense Department civilians —assisting the Georgian military with preparations for deployments to Iraq.

The American military was taking no actions regarding the outbreak of violence, according to Pentagon and military officials. While there has been some contact with the Georgian authorities, the Defense Department had received no requests for assistance, the officials said.

Limits to Growth II

Click on image to hear the presentation.

A Fascinating Prepared Variation

In today's DEBKAfile;

Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, Aug. 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin threatened a “military response.”

Former Soviet Georgia called up its military reserves after Russian warplanes bombed its new positions in the renegade province.

In Moscow’s first response to the fall of Tskhinvali, president Dimitry Medvedev ordered the Russian army to prepare for a national emergency after calling the UN Security Council into emergency session early Friday.

Reinforcements were rushed to the Russian “peacekeeping force” present in the region to support the separatists.

Georgian tanks entered the capital after heavy overnight heavy aerial strikes, in which dozens of people were killed.

Lado Gurgenidze, Georgia's prime minister, said on Friday that Georgia will continue its military operation in South Ossetia until a "durable peace" is reached. "As soon as a durable peace takes hold we need to move forward with dialogue and peaceful negotiations."

Is this the beginning?

"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power."- (p. xiii)

"... But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book.” (p. xiv)

"In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)

“Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization." (p.35) Zbigniew Brzezinski - The Grand Chessboard

America's Fastest-Dying Cities

The turmoil of the mortgage market granted a temporary reprieve from hearing about the woes of America's Rust Belt. That doesn't mean things are better. Despite a decade of national prosperity, the former manufacturing backbone of the U.S. is in rougher shape than ever, still searching for some way to replace its long-stilled smokestacks.

Where's it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities--Detroit and Flint--making the ranking.

The Economy - Forbes.com

In pictures, America's fastest dying cities.

Chase and Payton Shot!!! WTF???

Months ago I posted about these senseless and brutal paramilitary police raids in the so-called War on Drugs. Now, an erroneous Maryland pot raid results in the tragic assassination of Berwin mayor's black labradors, Chase and Payton;

The mayor of a small town outside Washington says he's asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate a county police raid on his home during which his dogs were killed.

Cheye Calvo says it's too early to talk about seeking monetary damages.

Authorities raided Calvo's home after intercepting a package shipped to his wife that was filled with 32 pounds of marijuana last week. During the raid, law enforcement officers broke down Calvo's door and shot and killed the family's two dogs.

Sheriff's office spokesman Sgt. Mario Ellis says deputies "apparently felt threatened" when they shot the dogs.

Calvo said officers entered about 7:30 p.m., first shooting 7-year-old Payton. They then pursued 4-year-old Chase, who ran away and was shot by police from behind, he said.

Calvo said he doesn't have any idea how the package ended up at his house. He called the raid "the most traumatic experience" of his life.

Calvo, who called his town "Mayberry inside the Capital Beltway," gets a small stipend as mayor and works at the SEED Foundation, a nonprofit that runs public boarding schools for at-risk students. His wife works as a state finance officer.

"These were two beautiful black Labradors who were well-known in the community. We walked them twice a day; little kids knew their names and would come up to them and pet them," he said.

Move Along Now, Nothing to See Over Here....,

POSNER: I'm certainly not sold on the theory of the lone mad scientist. I'm not even sold right now on the fact he was involved. I'll tell you why. All we are hearing is one side of the evidence. We're getting it leaked out, as it always is by the government, bit by bit about what happened. And as you said, it's absolutely at best a circumstantial case.

The big thing they're hanging their hat on right now is the fact that they have a new DNA type of evidence for bacteria that can isolate this form of anthrax back to a flask that was in the laboratory that he handled, as did at least ten other people and possibly dozens. They have them in New Jersey, supposedly, a time when mail was sent out with anthrax spores from places in Princeton. And they have him holding a P.O. Box at a postal office inside of Frederick, Maryland, where some of the envelopes were bought they think they can trace back to this.

It's a case where any good defense attorney, a Mark Geragos, an F. Lee Bailey in his heyday a Roy Black, they would relish this type of case. They could knock it out of the ballpark. I have to say one thing, we cannot allow—I really believe this, on a case this important on the anthrax investigation, for a rush to judgment in a matter in which the prime suspect is dead of an apparent suicide.

U.S. Attorney Defends Delays In Anthrax Investigation

It's an extremely tiny *universe* of people he's referring to....,

No Level I Love After All......,

So, as it turns out, the Nocera electrolysis breakthrough is 1 part breakthrough to 50 parts hype. The kinetics (meaning efficiency) of Nocera's oxygen-evolving electrode isn't really that good compared to what has been developed over the last 20-30 years of research. An anode with a thin film containing cobalt isn't new either. The *breakthrough* (if you can call it that) is the simplicity with which it is made, period. It remains to be seen whether this will spawn new avenues of fruitful electrochemical research. Which takes us squarely back to reality and to the increasingly pressing need for responsible folks to prepare themselves and their loved ones for the INEVITABILITY of the formal economy's declining ability to feed and house us.

With no level one deus ex machina in sight, it's time to roll up the old sleeves and take full advantage of the wealth of knowledge right here at our fingertips. Some years ago, my wife and I spent a wonderful couple of weeks at my father-in-law's former homestead on Bermuda. It was a masterpiece of environmental and economic efficiency - and a model for how we need to set about remaking routine aspects of our way of life. On Bermuda, his was not a re-engineered green exception, rather, it was the standard procedure for how folks lived. As for this remaking, nothing between it and us but initiative, air, and opportunity.

We're in luck in the opportunity dimension. Right here in our midst we have an invaluable knowledge resource in the person of RC who has 30 years of experience implementing the powered-down, highly economical and efficient modus operandi required to thrive in an energy, commodity, and resource constrained island setting. We're not talking survivalism and reactionary earth-marine type measures, rather, we're talking about the type of sustainable and doable measures implemented throughout the Carribean by folks who live well but vastly more efficiently and less wastefully than we do here.

In the meanwhile, for those not right in a downtown somewhere, I recommend a few small boat/marine type prop generators, a few solar panels, a small, but high quality invertor and a small marine gel battery bank combined with a super efficient, home made deep freeze/fridge and maybe a small gas generator for once a week use to run the washing machine.

Store all your water from runoff and reuse all the gray water from the sinks and showers for plants. We have these places running now and they are highly successful off the grid operations that I have been setting up since the mid seventies. Many of them start out with just the propellers and gradually add on until they leave the grid. Others are in remote areas and have to have all the components at the beginning. Others use a liquid propane gas input to run the refrigeration. Whatever we will be using in 2020 I bet no one has an idea right now. Meanwhile these setups have been in use, do work, work well, are proven and have been in place for more than thirty years.

For the homeowners among us, I believe that folks like RC can help us make incremental changes in how our houses are configured for power, lighting, water usage, gardening and overall efficiency suggestions rooted in first-hand practical experience. Doing some of the things that RC knows how to do will put folks on a path leading first to reduced costs, a smaller environmental footprint, and ultimately, if fully implemented and embraced, moving the homestead partially or even entirely off-grid - right there in the city where you live.

I need to figure out a way to permanently showcase solutions, and, to keep the valuable solutions dialogue top-of-blog so that it can serve as a useful reference and resource for folks who are serious about taking matters into their own hands.

Praying for Health?

In the Economist which speculates that religious diversity may be caused by disease. This funny little article skirts sooooo close to the truth, but then misses it by a country mile. Tell me if you can see the underlying biology of the matter, focus not on people as the unit of selection, rather, focus on what drives a composite organism to do what it do.

Mr Fincher is not arguing that disease-protection is religion’s main function. Biologists have different hypotheses for that. Not all follow Dr Dawkins in thinking it pathological. Some see it either as a way of promoting group solidarity in a hostile world, or as an accidental consequence of the predisposition to such solidarity. This solidarity-promotion is one of Mr Fincher’s starting points. The other is that bacteria, viruses and other parasites are powerful drivers of evolution. Many biologists think that sex, for example, is a response to parasitism. The continual mixing of genes that it promotes means that at least some offspring of any pair of parents are likely to be immune to a given disease.

Mr Fincher and his colleague Randy Thornhill wondered if disease might be driving important aspects of human social behaviour, too. Their hypothesis is that in places where disease is rampant, it behoves groups not to mix with one another more than is strictly necessary, in order to reduce the risk of contagion. They therefore predict that patterns of behaviour which promote group exclusivity will be stronger in disease-ridden areas. Since religious differences are certainly in that category, they specifically predict that the number of different religions in a place will vary with the disease load. Which is, as they report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the case.

Always and everywhere clarity is lost - and truth distorted beyond recognition - by the lens of foolish and hubristic anthropocentric solipsism....,

AWAKEN

“There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods of mass madness, often coinciding with geological cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very great quantity of the matter of knowledge. This, in its turn, necessitates the work of collecting this matter of knowledge which would otherwise be lost. Thus the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge frequently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of cultures and civilizations.”

“This aspect of the question is clear. The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear. It is even difficult to imagine all the horror of this slavery. We do not understand what people are losing. But in order to understand the cause of this slavery it is enough to see how people live, what constitutes the aim of their existence, the object of their desires, passions, and aspirations, of what they think, of what they talk, what they serve and what they worship.”

G.I. Gurdjieff:
The Herald of Coming Good
The Struggle of the Magicians
Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson
Meetings with Remarkable Men
Life is Real Only Then, When "I am"
48 Exercises (handwritten)
Wartime Meetings
Gurdjieff 40's

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - 1931 Manuscript Copy
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - 1949 Prepared Text
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson - 1950 Published Edition

P.D. Ouspensky:
A New Model of the Universe
Tertium Organum
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution
In Search of the Miraculous
Talks with a Devil
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin
The Fourth Way
A Record of Some of the Meetings
A Further Record
The Symbolism of the Tarot
Letters from Russia 1919

Rodney Collin:
The Theory of Celestial Influence
The Theory of Eternal Life
The Theory of Conscious Harmony
Hellas
Lessons in Religion for a Skeptical World
The Christian Mystery
The Herald of Harmony
The Mirror of Light
The Mysteries of the Seed

Wind won’t solve energy crisis

No it won't - but in conjunction with novel storage and state of the art transmission infrastructure - it would certainly help.

The disadvantage of wind-generated electricity is poor reliability because the weather doesn’t always cooperate. The most demanding need for energy is in the afternoons and during air-conditioned summers, but wind works best at night and during the other seasons, though intermittently. Even when the wind is blowing, it takes a 13 mph wind to power a large turbine.

Kansas has 364 megawatts of wind energy. But most of the year the wind is not blowing nearly hard enough to make 364 megawatts.

Last year wind generators nationally produced only 30 percent as much energy in a year as they would if they ran at full tilt, every hour of the year, a measure called “capacity factor.” Unlike nuclear power plants such as Wolf Creek, which achieve capacity factors of 90 percent or more, the wind operator cannot decide when the wind generator will run.

Texas has more wind energy than any other state, and bigger problems as a result. Last year the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said that wind power could be counted on as being reliable only 8.7 percent of the time during periods of peak demand. The rest of the time electric utilities were forced to use backup power generation, usually high-priced natural gas.

During a summer heat spell two years ago in California, another state with a lot of wind energy, wind generators operated at only 5 percent of capacity or less, setting off a Level 1 emergency in which people were asked to conserve power by using less air conditioning. Blackouts were barely averted when utilities decided to use gas turbines to provide emergency power.

Another problem with wind farms is their location. Where the wind is best is often hundreds of miles from cities that most need the power, so high-cost transmission lines must be built to transmit the electricity.

Instead of fantasizing about homes outfitted with Nocera electrolysis systems, the effort should be directed toward deployment of industrial scale hydrox plants that can safely handle the hydrogen, compress it, liquify it, and burn it as a useful clean energy transport and storage medium during non-peak production periods from equally clean solar and wind based energy production sources.

BioTerror "Efforts" Increased U.S. Risk

So here's the fearful bioterror narrative;

“Across the spectrum of biothreats we have expanded our capacity significantly,” said Craig Vanderwagen, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services who oversees the biodefense effort. Systems to detect an attack, investigate it and respond with drugs, vaccines and cleanup are all hugely improved, Dr. Vanderwagen said. “We can get pills in the mouth,” he said.

Supporters of the spending increase cite studies that project apocalyptic tolls from a large-scale biological attack. One 2003 study led by a Stanford scholar, for instance, found that just two pounds of anthrax spores dropped over an American city could kill more than 100,000 people, even if antibiotic distribution began quickly.

and here are the relevant bioterror facts;

Until the anthrax attacks of 2001, Bruce E. Ivins was one of just a few dozen American bioterrorism researchers working with the most lethal biological pathogens, almost all at high-security military laboratories.

Today, there are hundreds of such researchers in scores of laboratories at universities and other institutions around the United States, preparing for the next bioattack.

But the revelation that F.B.I. investigators believe that the anthrax attacks were carried out by Dr. Ivins, an Army biodefense scientist who committed suicide last week after he learned that he was about to be indicted for murder, has already re-ignited a debate: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs?

In today's NYTimes. And so it goes. Only those folks prepared to opportunistically and exploitatively jump on the homegrown, paranoid delusional bandwagon managed to profit from the fear that was instigated by Ivins (the Bush administration) with his here-to-now *unsolvable* involvement with this murderous elite hustle.

Level I After All?

'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution - scientists mimic essence of plants' energy storage system.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.

Interestingly, this article first came to my attention late thursday courtesy my man BD. Homeboy must be harboring a flickering sentimental little urge to see the overshot species of talking monkeys make it through their Great Filter and out into the solar system after all....., click on the image of Nocera to see his little speech about the innovation on video.

Da LHC is Superduper Fly.....,

Particle physics meets hiphop in the Guardian - there may be hope for some of you humans after all....,

Pure New Age Silliness....,

Here comes another chunk of undigested op-ed granola, this time from the LATimes - Toward a Type 1 Civilization.

Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium.

We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization. Let me explain.

In a 1964 article on searching for extraterrestrial civilizations, the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev suggested using radio telescopes to detect energy signals from other solar systems in which there might be civilizations of three levels of advancement: Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy.

Based on our energy efficiency at the time, in 1973 the astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that Earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization on a Type 0 to Type 1 scale. (More current assessments put us at 0.72.) As the Kardashevian scale is logarithmic -- where any increase in power consumption requires a huge leap in power production -- we have a ways before 1.0.

Pure comedy gold..., a little later during the 1970's - the U.S. had a SINGULAR opportunity under the leadership of James Earl Carter to ATTEMPT this transition. Unfortunately for the species, that was the road not taken. Instead, *we* replaced Carter with old triple 6 - and stayed on the imperial path of ruination that has dominated human affairs for 6000 years.

Fossil fuels won't get us there. Renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal are a good start, and coupled to nuclear power could eventually get us to Type 1.

Yet the hurdles are not solely -- or even primarily -- technological ones. We have a proven track record of achieving remarkable scientific solutions to survival problems -- as long as there is the political will and economic opportunities that allow the solutions to flourish. In other words, we need a Type 1 polity and economy, along with the technology, in order to become a Type 1 civilization.

He's right as far as he goes, the problem is that he doesn't go nearly far enough. It's not merely a question of political will and economic opportunity that will bring about the end of this species in the 3rd terrestrial species die-off, rather, it's the total lack of psychological evolution that has maintained an objectively evil status quo baseline in the dominant systems of human governance. Unevolved creatures don't spontaneously generate or sustain evolved systems of governance and evolved social orders, no more than turnips generate blood. Is common sense THAT sorely lacking?

For thousands of years, we have existed in a zero-sum tribal world in which a gain for one tribe, state or nation meant a loss for another tribe, state or nation -- and our political and economic systems have been designed for use in that win-lose world. But we have the opportunity to live in a win-win world and become a Type 1 civilization by spreading liberal democracy and free trade, in which the scientific and technological benefits will flourish. I am optimistic because in the evolutionist's deep time and the historian's long view, the trend lines toward achieving Type 1 status tick inexorably upward.

That is change we can believe in.

This part he gets right, except for the ridiculously optimistic conclusion. We have existed in and have been utterly and completely conditioned by a zero-sum tribal world. We will as a species die-off because of that de-evolutionary psychosocial condition. The problem as stated by this new-age wishful thinker is merely political. I cut him off at the knees for his superficiality, others wouldn't have even given this silly and ill-informed screed the time of day, to wit;

In the past few centuries the elites have gained a new method of growth conquest. The lever of Science/technology has been used to further their power. Through the creation of industrialism, we now live in a manufactured environment. We civilized people have created machines and been conditioned by the machine world until we begin to act in a machine-like manner. Powerless, we are thoroughly dependent upon the machine for our food and shelter survival. Alienated and atomized, we move around trying to fit into a niche in order to obtain survival. The pressure to move to a job breaks nuclear families apart and certainly precludes the existence of extended families. We have become interchangeable ciphers in the industrial machine. We have been culturally conditioned from birth to have great regard for non-living manufactured items and have been alienated from living things. We have more regard for the dead wood of a church! than for a living forest.

Today, when we look at the numbers and look back at those millions of acres of exhausted and eroded soils, common sense tells us that this is the end. The Patriarchs of empire have committed us to a fundamental biological error. Any organism that wantonly kills that which feeds it will not endure very long. The culture of empire does not have a political problem; it has a biological problem. It lives in a bubble of self-created definitions and has a dysfunctional relationship with the life of the earth. One might say that if the humans can't keep the planet alive, they certainly can't live here.

From where I sit, that's what looks really real. Be hopeful all you want, hopeful but fully informed. Otherwise, from a simple information awareness perspective, your situation is indeed entirely hopeless.

Unidentified Flying Threats?

The folks must be growing increasingly restive about the Obama candidacy. The NYTimes had this crunchy little morsel in this past week's op-eds.

The United States is no less vulnerable than Britain and France to threats to security and air safety. The United States Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should reopen investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s out there.

A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States.

The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.

I love these articles. To me, they're like tchotchkys of the collective unconscious. I expect we'll be seeing lots more such bon mots in the weeks and months to come as the perfect storm afflicting the economy and the American body politic gathers strength. The American political theater will prove jarringly impotent in dealing with the encompassing reality corrections - so it's time once again to inject a little mystery and awe into the otherwise steady diet of bread and circuses....,