Best Healthcare in the World, Baby

February 16th, 2010

California may be a bellwether for the rest of nation, but apparently it doesn’t take long for the rest of the nation to catch up these days:

Consumers in at least four states who buy their own health insurance are getting hit with premium increases of 15 percent or more — and people in other states could see the same thing.

….The Anthem Blue Cross plan in Maine is asking for increases of about 23 percent this year for some individual policyholders. Last year, they raised rates up to 32 percent. And in Oregon, multiple insurers were granted rate hikes of 15 percent or more this year after increases of around 25 percent last year for customers who purchase individual health insurance, rather than getting it through their employer.

….”You’re going to see rate increases of 20, 25, 30 percent” for individual health policies in the near term, Sandy Praeger, chairwoman of the health insurance and managed care committee for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, predicted Friday.

More… ➡

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Nature’s hot green quantum computers revealed

February 15th, 2010

– I’ve been watching this story for a year or more since I saw the first reference to this new work.

– Fascinating stuff.  If something as simple as Chlorophyll can employ quantum computing to search multiple paths at simultaneously, then is it so far out to imagine that the mechanisms employed by an thinking brain may do the same?

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WHILE physicists struggle to get quantum computers to function at cryogenic temperatures, other researchers are saying that humble algae and bacteria may have been performing quantum calculations at life-friendly temperatures for billions of years.

The evidence comes from a study of how energy travels across the light-harvesting molecules involved in photosynthesis. The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss. Physicists had previously ruled out quantum processes, arguing that they could not persist for long enough at such temperatures to achieve anything useful.

Photosynthesis starts when large light-harvesting structures called antennas capture photons. In the alga called Chroomonas CCMP270, these antennas have eight pigment molecules woven into a larger protein structure, with different pigments absorbing light from different parts of the spectrum. The energy of the photons then travels across the antenna to a part of the cell where it is used to make chemical fuel.

The route the energy takes as it jumps across these large molecules is important because longer journeys could lead to losses. In classical physics, the energy can only work its way across the molecules randomly. “Normal energy transfer theory tells us that energy hops from molecule to molecule in a random walk, like the path taken home from the bar by a drunken sailor,” says Gregory Scholes at the University of Toronto, Canada, one of the co-authors of the paper published in Nature this week (DOI: 10.1038/nature08811).

But Scholes and his colleagues have found that the energy-routeing mechanism may actually be highly efficient. The evidence comes from the behaviour of pigment molecules at the centre of the Chroomonas antenna. The team first excited two of these molecules with a brief laser pulse, causing electrons in the pigment molecules to jump into a quantum superposition of excited states. When this superposition collapses, it emits photons of slightly different wavelengths which combine to form an interference pattern. By studying this pattern in the emitted light, the team can work out the details of the quantum superposition that created it.

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The world according to ExxonMobil

February 15th, 2010

– The big insurance companies like Lloyd’s of London have a vested interest in getting their analyses right as they have big money riding on their predictive skills.

– One might argue that a company like Exxon might have a greater interest in ‘spinning’ their analyses.  But, they have to get it right with the version they’re using behind closed doors.   Here’s what they are publicly saying.   Makes for interesting reading.

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ExxonMobil – known as the world’s largest, most efficient, and most profitable oil company – has its own distinctive way of looking at the world. In its starkly realistic annual “Outlook for Energy”, it concludes that until 2030: CO2 emissions will continue to grow, fossil fuels will continue to dominate energy supply, and solar power, electric cars and carbon capture & storage will not become cost-competitive. But the company is not without idealism: it believes in the power of efficiency, dreams of turning algae into oil and favours a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade policy.

Todd Onderdonk, Senior Energy Adviser at ExxonMobil

Every year, energy giant ExxonMobil presents its own “Outlook for Energy”, its view of the world’s energy future until 2030. Although ExxonMobil’s outlook is based on essentially the same historical data as similar “outlook” reports from the International Energy Agency in Paris and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in Washington, it offers in many ways a different – and fascinating – perspective on the world. It may well be – although this is something no one can say for sure – a more realistic, anticipatory vision than the one offered by the “official” energy institutions.

Todd W. Onderdonk, Senior Energy Adviser in ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Planning Department, and one of the main authors of the “Outlook for Energy”, explains the uniqueness of ExxonMobil’s report as follows: ‘The energy outlooks of some key government institutions typically reflect a set of certain policy assumptions, which help provide a wide bracket of possible outcomes rather than a forecast of what is likely to happen by 2030. For example, they often provide a baseline outlook that assumes no changes in energy policy. By comparison, in developing an outlook to guide our long-term investment decisions, we have to take a view on how policies, energy markets and technology are likely to evolve through 2030 to address economic, energy and environmental challenges worldwide.

More… ➡

– Research thanks to Mike D.

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Turkish girl ‘buried alive for talking to boys’

February 12th, 2010

– Turkey wants into the European Union, Right?  Yeah, sure.

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A 16-year-old Turkish girl was buried alive by relatives as a punishment for talking to boys, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Thursday.

Police discovered the body of the girl, identified only as M.M., in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-meter-deep hole dug under a chicken pen outside her house in Kahta in the southeastern province of Adiyaman, the Turkish daily reported on its website.

The body was found in December, around 40 days after M.M. went missing. Police have arrested and charged the girl’s father and grandfather over the murder. The father reportedly said in his testimony that the family was unhappy his daughter had male friends. Her mother was also arrested but later released.

A postmortem examination revealed a significant amount of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she was buried alive and conscious, forensic experts told the Anatolia news agency.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, The Perfect Storm, Women's Rights | No Comments »

Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included

February 11th, 2010

– Our hubris will be the ruin of us yet.   And we wonder why the SETI folks haven’t picked up any signals from other civilizations out among the stars.

– I think it is because in almost all cases, when animals evolve to the point where we are, with generalized intelligence, they  shoot themselves in the head by messing with stuff they shouldn’t have.  Stuff that then gets away from them and kills them.

– A year or two ago, I Blogged about Craig Venter’s attempts to create a bacteria from scratch.

– Then, more recently, I’ve posted several times about the risks of nanotechnology.  See these: ➡ ➡ ➡ ➡ ➡ and ➡

– Now today, I see that the U.S.’s Pentagon is going to breed immortal lifeforms but that no one should worry – because they’re going to put a ‘kill switch’ in also.

– Has no one read Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and his prescient story about Ice-9?

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The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.

– More… ➡

– Hat tip to Cryptogon for this story.

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Python Predation: Big snakes poised to change U.S. ecosystems

February 11th, 2010

Brought to the U.S. as pets, Burmese pythons have made headlines with their uncontrolled spread in the Florida Everglades and willingness to challenge alligators for the position of top predator. A report released by the U.S. Geological Survey last fall delivered more bad news: two other constrictor species, also former pets, are thriving in the area, and six others could pose similar threats. Researchers fear that reproductive populations could spread and eat native animals into extinction.

The new interlopers—northern and southern African pythons, reticulated pythons, boa constrictors and four species of anacondas—have “ecological similarities,” explains Robert Reed, a USGS biologist and one of the authors of the report. “They are large invasive predators that native birds and mammals aren’t adapted to, and they are highly fecund, capable of producing up to 100 hatchlings in one nest.” They’re also big; some grow up to 20 feet and 200 pounds. They seize prey with their teeth and then wrap around the prey’s body, squeezing it to death.

More… ➡

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Personal – 10 Feb 2010

February 9th, 2010

– For those of you following my personal life, you should probably just tune back to Oprah for another few weeks.   This post isn’t that kind of post.  Things are still churning but nothing’s been decided and until it all is, I’m going to be quiet about it. My wife told me once that she really hates to get up in the morning and have to read my Blog to find out what’s happening between us.

– Point well taken.

– This post is for the purpose of putting up some digital photos I want to share with various folks here and there.   A few weeks ago, I went up to Golden Bay to visit with my friends, Robert and Cynthia and their two beautiful little girls.   Here’s are a few photos from my time with them:

Bob, Cynthia and the girls

Cruise Ship at Pohara

Sampsons at Pohara

Bob and I at Pohara

When I was with Robert and Cynthia, we attended the fair being held in Takaka and at the fair, there was a great collection of old time cars that folks had restored.   Some of my Starbucks buddies in Monroe Washington are into things like this so I thought I’d put these photos up here for them to see:

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Endgame

February 4th, 2010

– From over on The Archdruid Report comes this.  Another report of the impending changes to the U.S.’s lifestyle and economy.   Things are gathering steam.

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I’ve mentioned more than once in these essays the foreshortening effect that textbook history can have on our understanding of the historical events going on around us. The stark chronologies most of us get fed in school can make it hard to remember that even the most drastic social changes happen over time, amid the fabric of everyday life and a flurry of events that can seem more important at the time.

This becomes especially problematic in times like the present, when apocalyptic prophecy is a central trope in the popular culture that frames a people’s hopes and fears for the future. When the collective imagination becomes obsessed with the dream of a sudden cataclysm that sweeps away the old world overnight and ushers in the new, even relatively rapid social changes can pass by unnoticed. The twilight years of Rome offer a good object lesson; so many people were convinced that the Second Coming might occur at any moment that the collapse of classical civilization went almost unnoticed; only a tiny handful of writers from those years show any recognition that something out of the ordinary was happening at all.

Reflections of this sort have been much on my mind lately, and there’s a reason for that. Scattered among the statistical noise that makes up most of today’s news are data points that suggest to me that business as usual is quietly coming to an end around us, launching us into a new world for which very few of us have made any preparations at all.

More… ➡

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We’re having the wrong conversations

February 3rd, 2010

– I’m not the only one who’s on about Corporations and their power over American politics.  This is from over on The Automatic Earth Blog.

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I’ve said it before and I know I’ll have to say it a million more times, and you still won’t get it, because you just don’t want it to be true. But it’s time.

We’re having the wrong conversations.

We speak the language of the world of finance, a language that doesn’t contain any words or expressions to describe the final stages of the world of finance itself. And I’m not saying that world is about to end, just that it lacks the terms to tell of its own demise. Modeled after other holy writings.

And it’s not all that farfetched either. If we, the taxpayer, hadn’t bought off their debts, none or close to none of the major financial institutions in America would still be alive. That includes Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and all the rest too busy with paying bonuses to answer our phone calls. Still, despicable as all that may seem to you, they’re not really the masterminds or main culprits, are they, the bankers?

They operate in an environment allowed and legislated for them by the very same people that you all voted for, from the President to your local Congressman. Anger directed at bankers is anger misdirected and misunderstood. How about you? Bankers can only act within the law. And who makes the laws?

Obama could have come in on January 21, 2009 with a proposal to kill any and all bankers’ influence in American politics. He did not do that. He did a 180 and chose to invite Wall Street to run American finance policy.

That’s a choice, it’s not some sort of accident, as some prefer to believe. Thinking anything else equals selling Obama short as some sort of douche. And then the president has left all these people in place one year later.So here we are. And that’s no accident either.

Tall tales keep on emerging on Obama’s confidantes, and even if every single one were a lie, he couldn’t keep all of them at a safe distance from the presidency, neither the stories nor the people. Geithner, Summers, Rubin, Romer, Goolsbee and Volcker, by now they’re all entangled in the same web, as is the nation. And there’s no way out using the same kind of thinking, nor the same people. Some may be helpful in defining new laws, new measures, new ways to limit Wall Street influence in Washington. But those limits will necessarily be limited. That’s how Washington works. Got a newborn? Lemme break its shinbones, just in case.

If the US ever wishes to get out of its present predicament, it needs to force its representatives to do two things. Which they will never do, because having that as a platform will be so sure of a losing bet that no bookie will take your spread. Here goes, and no, I can’t believe either I’m posting this for free:

First thing that has to happen on Capitol Hill if we want to prevent the US as a country, a society, and an idea for that matter, to live on and G-d help us prosper, is this:

  1. Get business out of politics
    Joe Blow you and me will never have any say, or regain it, as long as Goldman, Cargill and GE can buy theirs. That is really all that needs to be said. The Supreme Court decision to increase corporate influence just was the icing on the cake that makes one think, in the words of Bugs: “Each people gets what they desoive”. It’s a death blow to anyone not in the inner circle having even a faint and remote say in where we’re heading, though, and that’s not what the Constitution meant to convey. But then again , once you get away with re-interpreting both Darwin and the Bible, what does the Constitution have on you?

    Humbug! Politics! Let’s get to number 2, something strangely missing from all Obama, his elves and his reindeer have said so far.

  2. Come up with a plan B
    It’s not just us having the wrong conversations either, it’s all over the planet, where people who have nice jobs, especially the government ones, refuse to take a pay cut and insist they have a right to what’s theirs even if that means others will lose their jobs. Smart. Not.

More… ➡

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Humor – The Stimulus Payment

February 3rd, 2010

Q.  What is an Economic Stimulus payment?

A.  It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.

Q.  Where will the government get this money?

A.  From taxpayers.

Q.  So the government is giving me back my own money?

A.  Only a smidgen.

Q.  What is the purpose of this payment?

A.  The plan is for you to use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q.  But isn’t that stimulating the economy of Asia ?

A.  Shut up – or you don’t get your check.

Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:

1.  If you spend the stimulus money at Wal-Mart, your money will go to China.

2.  If you spend it on gasoline, your money will go to Saudi Arabia.

3.  If you purchase a computer, it will go to India.

4.  If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to Mexico, Honduras or Guatemala.

5.  If you buy a car, it will go to Korea or Japan.

6.  If you purchase useless plastic stuff, it will go to Taiwan.

7.  If you use it to pay off your credit cards, or buy stock, it will go to pay management bonuses and be hidden in offshore accounts.

Or, you can keep the money in America by:

1.   Spending it at yard sales or flea markets, or

2.   Going to baseball or football games, or

3.   Hiring prostitutes, or

4.   Buying cheap beer or

5.   Getting tattoos.

These are the only wholly-American- owned businesses still operating in the US .

Conclusion:
The best way to stimulate the economy is to go to a ball game with a prostitute that you met at a yard sale and drink beer all day until you’re drunk enough to go get tattooed.

– Research thanks to Charles P.

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different | No Comments »

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