The Largest Minority

May 12th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

It’s fairly common knowledge by now that ethanol increases global warming, is worse to your health than gasoline, and inflates food prices, but what about second generation ethanol that uses cellulose rather than the edible portion of food crops?

On the surface, it may seem resourceful to convert that corn cob into energy, but our hunger for fuel goes far beyond what inedible food scraps can provide. In fact, second generation ethanol is perhaps even more dangerous than first generation ethanol under the simple understanding that if all plant matter is a potential fuel then all forests are potential gold mines for the fuel industry.

US incentives for ethanol production have already contributed to massive deforestation in places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Amazon, where rainforests are being cleared to grow biofuel crops. Cellulose ethanol would further promote this destruction by using the forest itself for fuel.

Americans love the idea that they won’t need to sacrifice. There is no incentive to curb your consumption if science will save you by replacing that fuel in your inefficient internal combustion engine with another. Turning CO₂-absorbing trees into gasoline is not progress. It’s just as insane as burning food to run a car. The only clean energies have always been wind, solar, and water. Eyes back on the prize folks. The goal should be to get off of all fuels entirely.

May 8th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

While many studies have shown that GM foods pose serious health and contamination risks, a new study carried out for three years at the University of Kansas has shown that genetically modified crops also produce less food. This dispels the great corporate myth, perpetuated by the Department of Agriculture, that GM technology is necessary to solve world hunger.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, began the study when farmers who had switched over to the GM crop had noticed that even under optimal conditions their yields were not as high as expected. The yields of GM soybean were 10 percent less than those of an almost identical conventional variety grown in the same field.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

The Kansas study suggested that genetic modification hindered the soya’s ability to absorb manganese from the soil. However, even when additional manganese was added, the GM soya yield was only able to equal that of the conventional crop, failing to surpass it as promised.

Low yields have also been seen with other GM plants, such as cotton, where the total US crop declined as GM technology took over the industry. To counter the embarrassing results, Monsanto falsely claimed that the GM soybeans used in the study were not modified to increase yields, but said it was now developing one that would. Last week, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger.

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April 28th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Thank Jah there are still black leaders like Reverend Jeremiah Wright who have the courage to speak loud and truthfully. On the internet, I’ve already had the unfortunate opportunity to see Tucker Carlson, probably the most detached white person on the planet, denounce Wright as a bigot. Irony anyone?

Video of the entire speech available below the fold.
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April 21st, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Robots with sensing and mapping technology compete in the RoboCup Rescue competition in Germany.

April 10th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

A thought-provoking and well-edited video from Goodman Green via Brasscheck TV for your Thursday night.

From Sci-Fi Horrors to Real-Life Horrors, vaccine programs that affect our health, our food supply, and even our reproductive systems are being implemented. Whether it is with reckless abandon or a malevolence of purpose, I will leave that for you to decide. However, with vaccine-caused outbreaks, viruses leaving laboratories on their own accord, and companies willing to overstate the need for their questionable vaccines, Sci-Fi Horror is getting a little too real.

March 31st, 2008 by J. Milton

The MPAA, RIAA, and Big 4 (Sony, EMI, Warner, Universal) music cartel have declared open-season on all file-sharing. In a whirlwind of lawsuits, press releases, proposed legislation, and frothing at the mouth demands, the entertainment industry has attacked every single head of the file-sharing hydra. For starters, the Big 4 have just filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against P2P icon, The Pirate Bay. This brings the total pending legal actions against my favorite Swedish pirates to a whopping *four*, all of them multi-million dollar! As usual, The Pirate Bay has flipped everyone the bird and is continuing on with their business as usual. Methinks things will heat up for them in the near future, though.

Next, in the wake of the Comcast ISP Throttle-Gate, the MPAA has come down from the mountain and announced that ISP’s should begin filtering their customers’ internet connections, and looking for copyrighted materials. “Much of the Internet is being clogged up with stolen goods. Basically you have a bunch of free riders who are hogging the bandwidth (and taking) it away from legitimate consumers,” says Jim Williams, the MPAA’s chief technology officer and senior vice president. Riiiight. As a consummate file-sharer (Now, I didn’t tell you *what* I actually share), I can assure you that based on my $165/month cable bill, no one in *this* house is free-riding! Although the big ISP’s (notably Verizon) have generally opposed this measure due to the costs involved, several like Comcast have already begun experimenting with throttling designed to thwart or slow P2P file-sharing. And now, most recently, UK ISP Virgin Media looks set to cave in to the entertainment industry’s demands and actually begin to disconnect file-sharers!

First, let’s deal with a couple of misconceptions. Not all file-sharing involves copyrighted material. In fact, the majority of open source software is distributed via bittorrent, the most popular file-sharing protocol. So in asking ISP’s to inspect their customer’s internet traffic for “unauthorized” media, the entertainment industry has collectively positioned us at the very top of the proverbial slippery slope. Where does the inspection end? Who gets scrutinized? What constitutes unauthorized material? Folks, we are close to a tipping point…

So what’s a netizen who’s concerned about their privacy supposed to do? Well, if you’re a power file-sharer or just a casual web-surfer who doesn’t want someone else reading your email, there are some privacy services that have evolved to address the threat. You simply need to “rent a VPN“. Yes, it’s more money (up to $10 or $20 per month), but your entire internet connection is encrypted and tunneled right past your ISP’s prying eyes. I reviewed a bunch of these services a few months ago, and since then even more have sprung up. Check out Perfect-Privacy, Strong VPN, or VPN boy. Or just google for a VPN-for-hire. Just bear in mind that as our online privacy becomes more restricted, we will need to make a choice or one will be imposed upon us. Protect yourself before you wreck yourself.

March 28th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

A 10 second voice recording which predates Edison’s phonograph by 17 years has been discovered by US audio historians. The recording is part of a French folk song called “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit”. It was made on April 9, 1860, by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on a device called the phonautograph that scratched sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.

While Edison may be the first person to have recorded sound and played it back, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville is now credited with being the first to simply record sound. “What Scott was trying to do was to write down some sort of image of the sound so that he could study it visually. That was his only intent,” audio historian David Giovannoni said. By making high resolution scans of the phonautograph recordings, US experts were able to convert the scans into digital sound (below).

source

March 18th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

Born in Somerset, he came to fame in 1968 when a short story The Sentinel was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by director Stanley Kubrick.

Once called “the first dweller in the electronic cottage”, his vision of future space travel and computing captured the popular imagination.

An aide said he died at 0130 local time after a cardio-respiratory attack.

read more…

To commemorate Clarke, I’ve posted one of my favorite episodes of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. Parts 2 and 3 can be found below the fold.

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