Is Industrial Civilization a Pyramid Scheme?

In my view, the only way out of this trap is a ‘Manhattan Project’ to develop and implement new types of energy generation systems that don’t rely on combustion.

“The fossil fuels of the planet are a capital stock: they represent past solar income the planet received in its 4 billion year history, which wasn’t consumed at the time, but was locked away as fossil energy. (Some geologists believe that the vast quantities of oil and coal that we received as our endowment was made from sunlight that was turned into biomass before herbivores evolved to eat it.) We’re drawing down our capital stock and treating the inflow of money as income. Does this make our economy a pyramid scheme? Consider: anyone who offers you interest in exchange for a loan of money is betting that the economy will grow. (I borrow the price of a gallon of milk today, and promise to pay you a gallon and a pint next year. Multiply by billions: the economy has got to grow, has got to produce a gallon-and-a-pint next year for every gallon it produced this year, or someone is going to be left holding worthless claims.) We’ve built a system that has to grow or it will crash; and like Ponzi’s pyramid scheme, we’ve built a system that cannot grow forever, and so it must crash.” – Source

B.C. herbalist makes hair-raising discovery

Two folks sent me the patent for this but they are on another machine so I’ll update this when I transfer the information.

“Dirk Stass, who concocts herbal teas and remedies from native plants, is preparing for clinical trials on what many consider the cosmetic industry’s Holy Grail. In a recent interview with CBC News, the Cherryville man said a friend had been ribbing him about his bald spot. As a joke, Stass said, he rubbed a herbal healing tea into his scalp. “A month and a half, maybe two months later, my then fiancée told me, ‘Uh, honey, your shiny spot isn’t so shiny anymore,’ ” Stass said. Since then, Stass has tried out the formula on balding friends and family members. The results have been so impressive, he’s applied for a patent. “I stumbled across a recipe that rejuvenates the epidermis, and therefore cleanses the hair follicles, and therefore regrows hair – to a degree,” Stass said. The tonic won’t turn a bald man into a human Chia Pet, Stass said. Testing with friends and family has shown some hair growth, but the tonic seems more effective at stopping hair loss.” – Source

Contraceptive Pill Also Used to Help Women Conceive

Amazing, this should help a lot of couples who try to synchronize their schedules for baby making.

“Researchers have found that using birth control pills, for 10-14 days after a period, allows the treatment to be adjusted without compromising the “ovarian response to stimulation.” This way, egg-harvesting can fall on a date mutually convenient to both the clinician and patient. “With a proven and safe method for timing when a woman can undergo therapy, there is a lot less stress placed on the physicians’ shoulders too,” Dr. Pinkas said.” – Source

Hypnotist thief on video

Wonder how many other people out there use such techniques but don’t get caught?

A famous Russian PSI researcher robbed a bank in a controlled test, by imposing his will to make the cashier think the check he was cashing was valid and he also won a funded research institute from Stalin by showing up in Stalin’s quarters despite layers of security guards.

Stalin asked him how did he get past all these guards and he said he willed them to see the face of Stalin’s closest advisor so he could pass at will.

“Italian police released video of a thief who allegedly hypnotizes clerks at supermarket registers. From the BBC News: In every case, the last thing staff reportedly remember is the thief leaning over and saying: “Look into my eyes”, before finding the till empty… The cashier who was shown the video footage has no memory of the incident, according to Italian media, and only realised what had happened when she saw the money missing.” – Source

Despite the assurances by hypnotists, it is a simple matter to substitute one thing for another to cause a subject to do things they would not do normally. An example is a suggested threat against your child or loved one where the attacker is killed or maimed thinking the threat is real.

$200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer are intimately linked

Wonder if this will ever hit the major news media so it can be investigated?

“The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked. While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an “escort” $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators. Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer. Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied. How? Follow the money. / (Thanks to Paul for sharing this. – JWD)” – Source

Major food source threatened by climate change

A food staple at risk for so many billions.

“Rice is arguably the world’s most important food source and helps feed about half the globe’s people. But yields in many areas will drop as the globe warms in future years, a review of studies on rice and climate change suggests. The poorest parts of the world, including Africa, will probably be hardest hit, the study says. Rice harvests already need to increase by about a third just to keep up with global population growth. In regions where the average daily temperatures are expected to rise above 30ºC, rice yields will start to fall off, and the impact will get worse as the temperature increases. Harvests will also be reduced by rising ground-level ozone concentrations. They are caused by nitrogen oxides (NOX) from power stations that catalyse the formation of ozone in warm and sunny conditions.” – Source

Clean Energy: It’s Getting Affordable

The costs still remain very high to install renewable energy generation systems and the payback over 20-30 years doesn’t make sense, but as time goes on and research makes them cheaper, we won’t be able to stick with old, cheaper energy sources as an excuse.

“Clean-energy critics are fixated on cost. To them, the use and deployment of renewable sources of energy simply doesn’t make financial sense. That’s why we’ve got to continue doing things the old-fashioned way, by employing coal, oil, and natural gas. Those excuses are wearing thin. To see why, one need look no further than the growth in the markets for solar, wind, biofuels, and fuel cells, and how the cost of such renewable energy sources is approaching parity with carbon-emitting energy sources. The cost for solar and wind have both dropped significantly over the past 30 years, bringing the cost of both sources within striking distance of, and in some cases lower than that of conventional energy sources. Consider the costs of geothermal, wind, and solar power compared with nuclear power, often lauded as one of the cheapest sources of energy. The average up-front capital cost for a new 1-gigawatt nuclear plant, sufficient power for about 1 million U.S. homes, is $2 billion to $6 billion. The cost of 1 gigawatt of geothermal and wind power is less than $2 billion; the same amount of solar power cost $5 billion to $10 billion.” – Source

$50 Slaves

Hard to believe this still exists in modern times.

“With $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti, one can buy a slave. This was just one of the difficult lessons writer Benjamin Skinner learned while researching his book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. Skinner met with slaves and traffickers in 12 different countries, filling in the substance around a startling fact: there are more slaves on the planet today than at any time in human history. How much? After adjusting for inflation, Skinner found that, “In 1850, a slave would cost roughly $30,000 to $40,000 – in other words it was like investing in a Mercedes. Today you can go to Haiti and buy a 9-year-old girl to use as a sexual and domestic slave for $50. The devaluation of human life is incredibly pronounced.” / (I’m keen on the idea of robot servants/assistants so this news item really sickened me. Imagine your life bought for another to use as they will. – JWD)” – Source

A Super-Efficient Light Bulb

They just keep getting brighter and cheaper to operate, excellent.

“A Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates at temperatures up to 6000K and produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours. There’s no mention of mercury or other heavy metals, which pose a problem for compact fluorescents.” – Source

40% boost in Thermoelectric efficiencies

Interesting how the tinier these junctions get, the more efficient and the higher the energy output when used in arrays.

“A major boost in the effectiveness of a material that transforms waste heat into electricity could significantly boost energy efficiency in anything from air conditioners to car engines. It is the first major improvement in such “thermoelectric” materials in 50 years, say researchers. Thermoelectric materials can also work in reverse to convert electricity into differences in temperature, allowing cooling without pipes, pumps or coolants. The dramatic 40% boost is relatively simple to achieve. Grinding bismuth antimony telluride into fine particles and then pressing it back together again using heat transforms its thermoelectric properties, according to researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston College, both Boston, US. Sticking the nanoscale particles back together increased the alloy’s peak figure of merit, a term used to measure metals’ relative thermodynamic performance, by 40% from 1.0 to 1.4. The researchers say the jump happens because the reincarnated alloy has a finer-grained crystalline structure. The new structure offers greater resistance to the quantum vibrations called phonons that transport heat within solids, making it a better thermal insulator.” – Source