The Largest Minority

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).

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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.

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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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March 8th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

A UN expert has said that the world’s population will starve before it dies of climate change. These sentiments have been expressed before, notably by former Cuban President Fidel Castro when he harshly criticized targets set by President Bush to increase the production of ethanol. Castro claimed biofuel could eventually cause the “hunger and thirst of more than 3bn people of the world.” Of course, we actually would have enough food if we cared more about feeding people than making a profit from it (aside from turning it into fuel, destroying surplus food the old-fashioned way also comes to mind).

Food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the “elephant in the room” that politicians must face up to quickly, according to the government’s new chief scientific adviser.

In his first major speech since taking over, Professor John Beddington said the global rush to grow biofuels was compounding the problem, and cutting down rainforest to produce biofuel crops was “profoundly stupid”.

He told the Govnet Sustainable Development UK Conference in Westminster: “There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty.”

He predicted that price rises in staples such as rice, maize and wheat would continue because of increased demand caused by population growth and increasing wealth in developing nations. He also said that climate change would lead to pressure on food supplies because of decreased rainfall in many areas and crop failures related to climate. “The agriculture industry needs to double its food production, using less water than today,” he said. The food crisis would bite more quickly than climate change, he added.

But he reserved some of his most scathing comments for the biofuel industry, which he said had delivered a “major shock” to world food prices. “In terms of biofuels there has been, quite properly, a reaction against it,” he said. “There are real problems with unsustainability.”

Biofuel production is due to increase hugely in the next 15 years. The US plans to produce 30bn gallons of biofuels by 2022 - which will mean trebling maize production. The EU has a target for biofuels to make up 5.75% of transport fuels by 2010.

But Beddington said it was vital that biofuels were grown sustainably. “Some of the biofuels are hopeless. The idea that you cut down rainforest to actually grow biofuels seems profoundly stupid.”

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February 23rd, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Abengoa Solar, a Spanish power company, is planning to use 3 square miles of Arizona desert for one of the largest solar power plants in the world. Construction on the 280-megawatt plant is expected to begin as early as next year and could be producing solar energy by 2011.

In the location of the proposed plant, it can get as hot as 120 degrees in the summer. Unlike most solar energy plants, however, Solana will use thousands of giant mirrors to harness the sun’s heat, not light, for power by heating up liquids which will spin turbines. This method is essentially the same as that used in a coal power plant, but without the pollution. “We receive the heat from the sun, and we use a fluid that becomes very hot. And we can keep it hot for a long time and release that heat for a long time,” said Abengoa CEO Santiago Seage.

Up to 70,000 homes will be supplied by the Solana Generating Station at full capacity. Arizona Public Service, the largest electric utility in Arizona, currently produces 1½ percent of its energy from renewable sources. The new plant will bring APS to around 5 percent in 2011, which is important since Arizona regulators are requiring utilities to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. “There is no reason that Arizona should not be the Persian Gulf of solar energy,” remarked Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

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February 11th, 2008 by Calypso

Work has begun on Masdar City; the first eco-friendly, car-free, waste-free, and carbon-free city. The Abu Dhabi metropolis will cost about £11.3bn ($22bn) to build and is expected to house 50,000 inhabitants and 1,500 businesses after its completion in 2016.

Masdar will only need a quarter of the energy used by other cities its size, and even that will be solar energy. Current green architecture plans, including rotating towers, will be implemented and the city will rely on emission–free public transport in the form of pods on magnetic tracks. Natural air conditioning will be provided from wind towers, water will be provided through a solar-powered desalination plant, and Abu Dhabi will become home to the world’s largest hydrogen power plant.

The project will be funded by the Masdar Initiative and other sources. It is hoped that the project will encourage joint ventures and promote greener cities. While Masdar City is supported by the WWF and many look forward to its outcomes, some remain skeptical about the motives behind the project.

Source

February 10th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Democracy Now! looks at the slight differences between Clinton and Obama on domestic issues such as the economy, the housing crisis, social security, health care, and nuclear power. Discussing their stances are Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect, Max Fraser of The Nation, and Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear.

Notice the disgusting grin on Clinton’s face when she acknowledges that single-payer health care is a system “a lot of people favor, but for many reasons, is difficult to achieve.” Um, the only ones making it difficult is fuckers like you. Out of all the Democratic candidates, it’s simply disgusting that Dennis Kucinich was the only one who endorsed a universal single-payer not-for-profit system.

Parts 2 and 3 and available below the fold
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February 7th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Update: The original video was taken down by the BBC for some reason, but here’s one with even more footage of the incident

The Australian government has captured footage of a Japanese whaling fleet killing a mother minke whale and her calf. Hopefully these images can pressure the Japanese government into following international law.

Sign this Greenpeace petition for whales to be shot with Canons, not harpoons.

On a completely unrelated note: Romney dropped out of the race today, but let’s not pretend like that makes any difference by wasting an entire post on it.

February 5th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

The Navy must follow environmental laws placing strict limits on sonar training that may harm whales, despite President Bush’s decision to exempt it, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The Navy is not “exempted from compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act” and a court injunction creating a 12 nautical-mile no-sonar zone off Southern California, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote in a 36-page decision.

“We disagree with the judge’s decision,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. “We believe the orders are legal and appropriate.”

The president signed a waiver Jan. 15 exempting the Navy and its anti-submarine warfare exercises from a preliminary injunction creating the no-sonar zone. The Navy’s attorneys argued in court last week that he was within his legal rights.

Environmentalists have fought the use of sonar in court, saying it harms whales and other marine mammals.

“It’s an excellent decision,” said Joel Reynolds, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is spearheading the legal fight. “It reinstates the proper balance between national security and environmental protection.”

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