1.9 Millimeters Rise Of Global Sea Levels Per Year

Posted: 8/29/2015

Trigger

Just read the scary sounding article “Rising Sea Levels More Dangerous Than Thought Consequences of global sea level rise could be even scarier than the worst-case scenarios predicted by the dominant climate models” reporting about NASA’s latest research.

In the first paragraph we read “The consequences of global sea level rise could be even scarier than the worst-case scenarios predicted by the dominant climate models, which don't fully account for the fast breakup of ice sheets and glaciers, NASA scientists said today (Aug. 26) at a press briefing.”

This appears to be the original NASA press release related to above article.

A Scarecrow Called NASA

Does NASA have anything better to do with our taxpayer money? Why is NASA involved in weather or climate research, because they have satellites?

Further down in the article we read that “This increase translates to a global sea level rise of about 1.9 millimeters (0.07 inches) per year, [Steve] Nerem [Associate Professor at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder] said”. Absolutely laughable! The article does not even mention the margin of error although the margin of error could well be significantly larger than 1.9 millimeters. That is just under 20 centimeters in 100 years.

The above article and press release also point out that global sea levels rose by 3 inches since 1992. The above press release states in the first sentence “Seas around the world have risen an average of nearly 3 inches since 1992 … according to the latest satellite measurements from NASA and its partners.”. Well, again that translates only to 33 centimeters in 100 years using linear extrapolation.

Hot Recent Science & Technology Articles (15)

Posted: 8/29/2015

1. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/08/colloid-nanoparticles-store-information-wet-computing
2. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/08/drug-treatment-alcoholism-shows-promise-rat-primate-studies
3. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/08/synthetic-stomach-membrane-minimise-animal-tests
4. New drug protects against the deadly effects of nuclear radiation 24 hours after exposure ("a single injection of the investigative peptide drug TP508 given 24 hours after a potentially-lethal exposure to radiation appears to significantly increase survival and delay mortality in mice by counteracting damage to the gastrointestinal system.")
5. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540151/bitcoins-dark-side-could-get-darker/#
6. Startup Aims to Beat Google to Market with Self-Driving Golf Cart The startup Auro says its self-driving golf cart will lead to autonomous shuttles for theme parks, vacation resorts, and retirement communities.
7. The Coming Wave of Bionic Hearing Gadgets Startups like Doppler Labs are building earbuds that will let you turn down the volume on crying babies and pump up the bass on live music.
8. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-08-metabolic-master-underlying-human-obesity.html
9. http://phys.org/news/2015-08-spaceliner-europe-australia-minutes-europe-us-hour.html
10. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/physicists-built-wormhole-magnets-180956345/
11. http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/08/gut-microbes-linked-eye-disease
12. http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/08/powerful-painkillers-can-now-be-made-genetically-modified-yeast-are-illegal-drugs
13. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/gaming/4d-light-field-displays-are-exactly-what-virtual-reality-needs
14. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/08/chemists-wax-capsule-reagent-preservation-end-glovebox
15. Company in Canada gets U.S. patent for space elevator (“Now a Canadian company, Thoth Technology in Ontario, has a patent for a space elevator to access space. It would reach 20km (12 miles) above the planet. Its engineers said the technology could save more than 30 percent of the fuel of a conventional rocket— spacecraft and people could be lifted to a level in the atmosphere requiring less force to launch. As GCR (Global Construction Review) News described it, this is a freestanding space tower concept, held rigid by pressurized gas. In Fast Company, Charlie Sorrel had some thoughts on this: " The patent does say that the elevator could be scaled to reach 200km ...”)
16. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/08/impurities-origin-life-defective-reagents
17. Octopus Genome Reveals Secrets to Complex Intelligence The largest invertebrate genetic code unleashes clues to camouflage, suckers, evolution
18. Research team creates a superfluid in a record-high magnetic field (Hopefully, this will lead to better energy generation. “The magnetic field is a synthetic magnetic field, generated using laser beams, and is 100 times stronger than that of the world's strongest magnets. Within this magnetic field, the researchers could keep a gas superfluid for a tenth of a second ...”)
19. Hacked Molecular Machine Could Pump Out Custom Chemicals Bioengineers have successfully engineered the ribosome, paving the way for synthetic cells (“The researchers used a strand of RNA to tether the large and the small subunit together, toiling for months to get the length and location of the link just right so that the machine could still function. … The team screened its tethered ribosomes in Escherichia coli cells that lacked functioning RNA, and eventually found engineered ribosomes that worked well enough to support some growth, albeit slow.”)
20. Robotic insect mimics nature’s extreme moves  Research team from Seoul National University and Harvard looked to water striders to develop robots that jump off water’s surface
21. Team Makes Strides in Therapy Preventing Addiction Relapse by Erasing Drug-Associated Memories (“Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have made a discovery that brings them closer to a new therapy based on selectively erasing these dangerous and tenacious drug-associated memories. … The new study, published this week online ahead of print by the journal Molecular Psychiatry, demonstrates the effectiveness of a single injection of an early drug candidate called blebbistatin in preventing relapse in animal models of methamphetamine addiction.
    The new study builds on previous work in Miller’s lab. In 2013, the team made the surprising discovery that drug-associated memories could be selectively erased by targeting actin, the protein that provides the structural scaffold supporting memories in the brain. However, the therapeutic potential of the finding seemed limited by the problem that actin is critically important throughout the body—taking a pill that generally inhibits actin, even once, would likely be fatal.
    In the new study, Miller and her colleagues report a major advance—the discovery of a safe route to selectively targeting brain actin through nonmuscle myosin II (NMII), a molecular motor that supports memory formation.”)
22. Horses capable of humanlike facial expressions (“Using these data, they then created a coding system for each individual facial movement—just as other researchers have done for humans and several other species. Horses, it turns out, can make 17 discrete facial movements, whereas cats make 21, dogs make 16, and chimpanzees 13. With the arch of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip, humans can convey some 27 emotions”)
23. Severe stress creates more healthy fat (“Extreme stress—like the kind that accompanies large third-degree burns—can make the body turn ordinary fat cells into super–calorie-burning brown fat, scientists report. Their observation is the first to confirm that the human body can convert white fat into “healthy” brown fat, and it may eventually lead to drugs that can accomplish the conversion.  … Most fat in mammals is a type called white adipose (fat) tissue, yet small animals and newborn humans have large amounts of brown fat, which is loaded with energy-burning mitochondria that cause it to use more calories and produce more heat than white fat. Until recently, scientists believed that in people, this brown fat disappeared after infancy. But in 2009, researchers showed that adult humans also have brown fat at the base of their necks, raising the possibility that drugs could help people produce more of it to combat obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol. … Although the white-fat-turned-brown-fat cells weren’t as efficient as regular brown fat, there were enough of them to burn an average of 263 extra calories each day in burn patients, without any change in exercise or diet. ”)
24. Tapeworms may be good for your brain (“In fact, one type [of tapeworm] appears to protect against memory loss in rats.”)
25. Frequent spicy food consumption linked with longer life (“Fresh and dried chili peppers were the most commonly used spices reported by the Chinese study population. Capsaicin and other bioactive ingredients in chili peppers have been found in previous studies to have anti-obesity, antioxidant, anti-inflammation, and anticancer properties, but the authors caution that more research is needed to determine if there is a direct link between these ingredients and lowered risk of death.”)
26. “CARBON SINK” DETECTED UNDERNEATH WORLD’S DESERTS (Global warming is a hoax! “Massive aquifers underneath deserts could hold more carbon than all the plants on land, according to the new research. … The new study suggests some of this carbon may be disappearing underneath the world’s deserts – a process exacerbated by irrigation. Scientists examining the flow of water through a Chinese desert found that carbon from the atmosphere is being absorbed by crops, released into the soil and transported underground in groundwater—a process that picked up when farming entered the region 2,000 years ago. Underground aquifers store the dissolved carbon deep below the desert where it can’t escape back to the atmosphere, according to the new study. The new study estimates that because of agriculture roughly 14 times more carbon than previously thought could be entering these underground desert aquifers every year. ”
27. Gravitational constant appears universally constant, pulsar study suggests
28. Building a Single-molecule Transistor from Scratch (“An international team of researchers has demonstrated for the first time that a single molecule can operate as a field-effect transistor when surrounded by charged atoms that operate as the gate.”)

American Experience: Coney Island

Posted: 8/22/2015

Trigger

Just watched American Experience Coney Island (originally released 1991 by Ric Burns). Unfortunately, a few days later Youtube blocked this video with the message “"Coney Island: A Docu..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by WGBH Educational Foundation.” According to Wikipedia WGBH Educational Foundation is “The WGBH Educational Foundation (est. 1951) of Boston, Massachusetts is a nonprofit organization that oversees WGBH-TV public television, WGBH (FM) public radio, and other productions.”

Why would this educational foundation prevent this video from being shown?

Here is another link on Youtube. Hope this one will not be blocked!

This is an amazing story about Coney Island. I had no idea! My wife and I visited Coney Island a few times in the late 1990, early 2000s, but then Coney Island was a shadow of its former self.

Some Takeaways

Some of my takeaways are also mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the above documentary.

1. Coney Island was famous all over the world as a theme park or amusement park for everyone. It was called a Nickel Empire or the Riviera for the Poor.
2. First roller coasters and mechanical steeplechase
3. Hot dogs became famous
4. Ladies’ skirts were blown up by wind from below like the famous scene with Marilyn Monroe only decades earlier
5. Luna Park offered a trip to the moon in the early 20th century
6. It was called an Electric Eden for its over 250,000 light bulbs, which were a novelty at the time
7. Dream Land featured some 300 midgets from all over the world
8. Dr. Marin A. Couney permanently installed incubators with premature babies on display for 25 cents “to view the children so parents would not have to pay for the child's medical care. His exhibition at Luna Park opened in 1903.”. Supposedly, this introduced the widespread use of incubators in neonatal care of babies. What a great idea!
9. The infamous electrocution of Topsy the elephant in 1903, who killed a human and where Thomas Alva Edison shot the original footage of the event, happened on Coney Island. By the way, the elephant was also poisoned with cyanide.
10. At the height of its popularity around 1947, Coney Island had 1.3 million visitors on the beach alone.
11. There were many more interesting and astonishing things to see in this documentary!

Smithsonian Documentary On Palmistry

Posted: 8/22/2015

Trigger

Just watched  TRULY STRANGE »HIDDEN IN THE HAND. Very recommendable to learn what kind of medical information or diagnosis can result from studying a person’s hand. I was really surprised that Smithsonian was featuring such a film since I thought those body shape type of medical diagnosis (like phrenology) has long been abandoned as being unscientific or pseudoscience, but …

Of particular interest was how traditional Indian medicine relies on hand reading.

Takeaways

1. President Barack Obama’s digit ratios (his 4d or ring finger is much longer than normal) indicates he is a risk taker. That is an understatement and one wishes Smithsonian had released this documentary before his election in 2008.
2. The Indian professor was able to tell by looking at hands or even only photos of hands whether a person is prone to tooth caries or to predict whether a child will have frequent cavities. She was also very capable to read all kinds of medical diagnosis from photos of hands.
3. Perhaps, the digit ratios (2d to 4d, or index to ring finger) may indicate a person’s gender identity. A woman’s typical 2d to 4d ratio is different from a man’s, but what about e.g. transgender people?
4. The documentary explained how the hands and fingerprints formed during pregnancy and how they might be related to the development of the brain
5. The documentary debunked the myth that the life line has anything to do with longevity
6. Do not ignore significant changes affecting your hands or feet. In this documentary, you will learn that a particular cancer in the brain typically causes the fingers and feet to grow bigger, but someone might dismiss this as normal change coming with age.
7. I am sure, I forgot something ...

Schock Propaganda Videos Of Brutality Against Animals

Posted: 8/20/2015

Trigger

Someone just posted this Youtube video “8 Horrorszenarien, die sich in Europa täglich ereignen.” (8 horror scenes which occur on a daily basis in Europe. Viewer discretion advised!) on a social media website. It contains several short clips showing humans committing brutal acts against various farm animals. The publisher asks viewers to share this video to spread the truth.

This video is published by a registered non-profit, private society Animal Equality Germany located in Stuttgart, Germany. According to their website, this group also engages to free animals kept in captivity. Their motto: “We work for a better world for all animals” and “Animals are living creatures and not foodstuff”.

Notes On The Video

1. None of the scenes shown in the above video has any kind of sourcing or attribution. Were these scenes actually shot in Europe or do they really occur on a daily basis as claimed?
2. The video does not tell where, when or under what circumstances these clips were shot
3. Where these clips doctored?
4. The video suggests that these acts of brutality occurred on farms or in the meat industry, but is this true?
5. I posted questions about this video on the social media website like is this movie doctored or how much of this video is representative of the industry. Someone answered this was not doctored, he had seen other, similar movies.

Shock Propaganda By Animal Rights Activists

This would not be the first time that a doctored shock video has been distributed by animal rights activists.

It should be left to prosecutors to indict perpetrators of crimes against animals.

Propaganda videos like that are as bad as any enemy propaganda videos distributed by totalitarian dictators in the past. I would compare such propaganda videos to e.g. the infamous German Nazi film “Ewiger Jude” (Eternal Jew movie of 1940).

Dictator Fidel Castro

Posted: 8/16/2015

Trigger

Just watched American Experience Fidel Castro Part 1 PBS Documentary and  American Experience Fidel Castro Part 2. I can highly recommend these two videos. I am sure President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry did not watch it.

A Few Takeaways

Here are a few takeaways as I remember them from the above documentary:

1. Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union apparently abandoned Ernesto (Che) Guevara in Bolivia while he was struggling for his life pursued in the Jungle by Bolivian and U.S. forces. Fidel Castro would not contact Che Guevara anymore in the weeks or months before his demise. I certainly had forgotten about this fact or never heard about it before. This is certainly a fact that the leftists of the world do not want to be known, I bet
2. The documentary is quite mum about the brutality and violence committed by Che Guevara
3. The first wife of Fidel Castro was told before the marriage that Fidel Castro was a psychopath, but she said she loved him anyway. Fidel Castro had apparently from early childhood displayed strange behavior like showing little empathy etc.
4. Young Fidel Castro is reported to have threatened his parents to burn his family home if he was not allowed to go to a certain school.
5. Fidel Castro is reported that he expropriated his mother’s farm first. What a character!
6. What struck me seeing all the footage of Fidel Castro’s public oratory to mass audiences that he resembles Adolf Hitler in the way he talks and gesticulates (or is it Benito Mussolini …)
7. Fidel Castro has been a very incompetent manager of the Cuban economy until the Soviet Union stepped in in the 1970s or so. Most of his many socialist experiments were a disaster
8. We learn that Cuba has had over 10,000 to 50,000 political prisoners of which many were tortured or killed. That is about 0.1-0.5% of the entire population.
9. Cuba exported guerilla warfare to overthrow regimes in Latin America (e.g. Nicaragua) and Africa (e.g. Namibia) to install socialist dictatorships
10. Fidel Castro has been a cunning liar for decades. His interviews in english Language often did not match his rhetoric and actions at home. Worse his english Interviews in this documentary show a deceptive, naive talking, smiling guy as if he could not do harm to anyone. In the beginning after the so called revolution, he lied about his socialist intentions.
11. This documentary features a good summary on how the Cuban missile crisis came about when Fidel Castro became a close ally of the Soviet Union.

It is absolutely unfathomable why so many people have admired and still admire Fidel Castro for such a long time! People who fail to recognize a hardcore, murderous, professional criminal for what he is are dubious at best.