El Predicto strikes again

Reading the Wired news this morning I spotted a story on manufacturing meat in a laboratory. Three years ago I wrote about this and now I guess some Dutch guys are working on it for real. There will be no steak for a while, but manufactured ground meat may not be too far off.

Double blogginess

Once apon at time some friends of mine announced to me they had started a blog. I was pretty curious about blogs - I'd heard of them but hadn't actually become a regular blog reader, actually mostly I was interested in becoming a blog writer. Fresh into my anti-coporate personhood jag I think I thought I had something to tell the world. Anyway, suffice to say that The Long Dark Tea-Time was born shortly afterwards.

Although this blog is barely sipping at the tea these days its still ticking along after three years. I think I even have a few regular subscribers out there - although writing about the stuff I do I get a ton of hits purely from search engines. For a while my Iraqi Flag image was the number one Iraqi Flag image on Google.

Then one day because Blogger doesn't have post categories and because I was trying to remain mostly anonymous but wanted to blog about mainstream tech stuff, I started another tech focused blog. For obvious reasons I wont give its name or a link here, but it wouldn't be hard to guess, so now I had two blogs. For a while I was even contributing to a group blog called Johnnytheo (either Johnny Theo or Johnny The O, I can't remember which).

But today I'd like to give special mention to the blogopshere's newest recruit, someone who I've said always should be blogging about her day to day experiences. Yes my partner and packing and shipping savant (also refered to as "Agent J") has finally got her own blog. Unfortunately I'm not going to give you the link here since being in retail if all my friends end up knowing about it someday soon so will some of her customers. Then one day someone will come along and notice that their bad behavior at the store has been publicised and will bring a big fat lawyer to the party. So if you happen to know "Agent J" in person I'll let you bug her in person for the link, or wish that her blog will become so famous that you will get to read it anyway. Until then good luck finding it and welcome to the Blogosphere Agent J!

The History of Oil

Thanks to Tree Hugger I came across a great potted history of oil by comic Robert Newman. A video of his performance is available for free from Google Video. When he started talking about the coincide of Iraq and Iran switching to trading oil in Euros and its impact on US deficit spending I could have wept since I blogged about this theory way back in 2003 before the US even stepped foot in Iraq. I believe this theory then and I still believe it now. I don't think it was the only reason the USA went in, but I think it was definitely contributing factor. Believe me, with China alone holding 1 trillion in US dollars imagine what would happen if everyone stopped needing greenbacks to buy oil. It would be like switching from gold to leaves as the backing for currencies - good bye bullion hello deforestation!

9/11 Conspiracy doing the rounds again

I just received an email from someone who doesn't normally circulate me anything spam or urban myth flavored. However this one was about the #1 movie on Google Video - apparently its 911 Loose Change which is yet another 9/11 conspiracy theory. Actually when I checked now its only at #13, with the number one spot held firmly by a Japanese commercial for a seemingly translucent bra (followed closely by a promotional spot for The Naked News).

Anyway, I did watch "Loose Change" and I have to say my mind has not changed since I last dug through all the conjecture at sites like 911review.com and its ilk. Basically I think Bush and Cheney could only dream of pulling off such an elaborate stunt but they simply couldn't. And if they really did need and want to risk such a major hoax and an excuse for empire building they could and I believe would have choosen a much simpler plan - just fly one or two planes into buildings, or simply blow them up and blame the terrorists.

When "Loose Change" starts delving into notions that it was all done to claim a few billion in insurance and gold, well its just beyond belief. There are far easier and legitimate was to cream off a few billion from the economy. The bigger deal here is that Bush actually got away with all the crap he did and got himself (re)elected in 2004. That required no conspiracy, no drone planes, no pre-planted charges - just a ready and will nation of dumb and dumber voters who think happiness can be delivered by killing terrorists.

Clownification

Right on the heels of my "Bread and circuses" post comes an Alternet story on the Clownification of America. Listen up bozos!

"Bread and Circuses"

I'm guilty of many of the circus distractions Tony Long lists in his rant What If They Gave a War...? but I know how he feels. I marched my ass off protesting Bush's calls to war, didn't make a damn bit of difference, now I'm feeling pretty apathetic about the whole shebang - they didn't have to ignore me for long to grind down my spirit. I expect many people are far easier victory.

My theory has always been most people will take pizza, cheap beer and Monday night football without so much of a thought before having to make much a sacrifice to keep it. Now most of the people out there making sacrifices never really had much of a choice about it - pretty much like those drafted for Vietnam - as is witnessed by the ever more frantic efforts to get people to sign up voluntarily for service (which recently included free iPods, messages on pizza boxes and more).

I gave up trying to read all the responses (mostly negative) responses it caused but clearly an awful lot of people have fallen for the circus act hook line and sinker.

Transhuman Olympics

Today I heard someone on the radio concuring with my idea that there should be a completely drug free olympics and then a separate event for those that have "augmented" their capabilities. In particualr the radio guest was talking about "trashuman" athletes which might include those with not just drug based therapies but also genetic or even physical (think "bionic") ones too.

While I doubt I was the first person to suggest such a thing it was good to hear it come out of someone elses mouth. However, as I heard it I realised there was a big problem... If sports people were given free run at drug or physical augmentation that event would quickly fragment into many factions depending on which particular line of augmentation they had persued. Would genetically engineered athelets then want to compete with steroid or other drug enhanced ones? Should "bionic" atheletes (think Tour-de-France type "blood boosting" and mechanically reinforced bones and muscles) be allowed to compete together? Or is it just a free-for-all of anything goes?

Ultimately I would say the only thing that is meaninful is an athelete that has been drug and therapy free from day one. Anything else will quickly go to the lowest common denominator and become just a showcase for the drug companies.

The Real World - Star Wars

Couldn't resist posting this Robot Chicken episode - reality based Star Wars if George Lucas had a sense of humor.

The Florida no-go zone

With AllState and other insurance companies cancelling insurance policies up and down the Atlantic Coast and refusing to write new ones in other states I wonder what effect this will have on Florida and others who are due to get whacked by hurricanes with increasing frequency. Is there a chance that people will start to leave those areas for safer places? But where can you go in the US that isn't subject to hurricanes, tornados, winter storms or earthquakes?

If nothing else this just goes to show that insurance companies never write a policy they think they might actually lose money on. It brings to mind the idea of communities self insuring - a policy (no pun intended) that might actually encourage greater honesty in claims. It could also avoid the problem of greedy insurance companies that dump their filty lucure into investments that loose when the economy crashes and then pass back to their customers.

I think it is only a matter of time before someone figures out how to use the Internet to collectively write insurance policies for the lowest possible premium. The big problem would seem to be who polices the claims?

GPS is Darwin's friend

This article of people driving over bridges that aren't there just goes to show that in the absence of natural foes, technology can steep right in to be Darwin's friend. I can see the bumper sticker now - "When you drive with GPS you ride with Darwin". I don't suppose this would be a good time to suggest if someone really wanted to do some damage to the US all it would have to do would be to hack all the GPS network and start sending more than cars off bridges.

All quiet on the tea-time front

Yes I know its been over a month since I last posted here - I'm not entirely sure why - partly apathy and partly an overload of things to post led me to the conclusion there just wasn't time to post any of them. Beside's I'm way behind on a million little tasks, and just rescued a cat that had been hit by a car. All I can say is thank goodness for tax filing extensions...

Do androids dream of.... electric carp???

Is it just me, or has the world suddenly developed and unhealthy obsession with electric animals? Be it robo-dogs from Sony that go "wrrr, wrrr, wrrrr", robot sharks that keeps aquarium visitors enthralled, or now, robot carp. I thought it was bad enough to work in an office where they don't even have real plants - there's something decidedly creepy about recycling dead trees, in the form of oil, back into plastic trees. But now I have to contemplate the true reality that the fantasy portrayed in Phil K. Dick's novel "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" might actualy come to pass.

Be cool, be very cool!

So I read this article on how air conditioned seats could result in a 7.5% saving in car air condition fuel usage which is 522 million gallons of gas a year. Say what! Five hundred and fify-two million gallons? That means Americans are wasting almost 7 billion gallons of gas a year just air conditioning their ride, let alone actually driving it. How about we all just crack the window open instead of cranking the A/C ???

Fungibility of Oil

A while back I found an article about how hybrid car buying consumers were delluding themselves about what impact their purchase was making on the world. The argument went something like "when you buy a hybrid the associated drop in oil demand has no real effect on the world's oil buying habits because the cheapest gas always sells first so the oil you don't buy will just get bought by someone somewhere else". So, the argument goes, just because you personally have bought one less gallon of gas from, say Saudi Arabia (insert your evil oil selling empire here), just means there will one more gallon of oil for them to sell (cheaply) to, say, China. In effect you have increased the availability of cheap gas to the rest of the world.

To further compound the problem, because countries like Saudia Arabi produce the cheapest gas - as I've pointed out before, so cheap that it's still pint for pint cheaper than buying clean water - you've effectively prolonged the amount of time those countries will be in business making money from selling oil cheaper than the good guys like Canada and Venezuela.

That was, how shall I say it, a bit of a blow to my Hybrid lusting ego. It turns out it was basically a restatement of the fact that oil is a fungible commoditiy - one barrel of oil is pretty much (except for issues of "sweetness" and "lightness") the same as any other and can be traded on the open market as such. Of course it overlooks the fact that regardless of reduce oil consumption's impact on short term oil sales by the likes of Saudi Arabi, it does mean that, in the long run oil supplies will last longer, that there will be fewer carbon emissions and that the US, as a whole, can, in theory, reduce its consumption of oil. I say "in theory" because following the above argument, one could argue that it will just help keep gas prices low and as we should all know, low prices fuel increased demand demand and consumption.

Interestingly the article I read suggested that what environmentalists should be doing is promoting, buying and driving the most gas guzzling behemoths they can afford. In so doing they would help decrease the supply of cheap gas, drive up prices and hasten the switch to more fuel efficient cars and energy generation globally. If you want to wean the world off cheap gas just put your money where your mouth is burn it up, burn it all up!

I never got around to writing about that article until today - in fact I even lost the original reference so I can supply a link to it. The reason I decided to write about it today was that not only did The Economist have an article on the issue of fungibility of oil, but also today's Dilbert cartoon was also about it, specifically the futility of buying a hybrid.

Personally I don't care, I'll still lust after a hybrid or the cleanest, leanest fuel burning car I can buy next time I'm putting dollars down for a car. My purchase will just be a personal investment in encouraging car manufacturers to build more fuel efficient technology - technology that can be used the world over. If Americans can help Toyota get the bugs out of systems to use 50% less gas then that same technology can be sold to countries like China where their reduced consumption will have an even greated effect.

So my next car could be a hybrid, it could be an electric car, or it could be just a clean diesel using all that cleaner low-sulphur fuel that will be coming out in 2007. Yes did you know that in 2007 the US will switch the European standard for diesel fuel which has much less sulphur in it and hence can run with much lower emissions. Lower emissions means less emission control equipment which means higher efficiency. It also means that suddenly there will be a flood of small efficient European diesel cars available for sale in the USA. The only fly in that ointment is that the dollar is globally weak especially in Europe so importing anything from the Euro-zone wont be a cheap proposition and I don't see anything changing by 2007.

New bumper sticker

After today's news about Cheney's little hunting accident I can see the new bumper sticker already:

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, VICE PRESIDENTS DO

Except of course the guy didn't actually die, but having been shot in the face he might easily have done, especially if there hadn't been secret service all around and an ambulance on call.

I'm sure that the gun control lobby is having a field day right now, given that the Vice President just handed some of the sweetest ammunition they ever got. After all if a gun accident can happen to the second most protected man in the world it can happen to anyone, and its not just drunk-off-your-ass hunters that do dumb things like this. Unless of course he was... in which case you might be telling yourself "too bad he wasn't out hunting with Bush"

Hmmm, maybe Cheney is actually a sleeper agent and was just practicing for "accidentally" shooting #1. Anyone want to bet that Bushie just cancelled all his hunting trips with Cheney?

Cheaper, stronger, longer

Shocker, Americans are being short changed yet again. Angry Bear deals the dirt on healthcare in countres that have a single payer system (read, "socialized healthcare") compared to the USA. While not all countries have lower costs, have better results, and shorter waiting times - not all do. In fact quite a few countries have nationalize health care, spend less per capitra, have lower infant mortality rates, have citizens who on average live longer, and spend less of their lives in poor health and they have no significant wait for treatments.

On Filibuster

So some Kerry and Kennedy hasve pledged to filibuster against Alito's Supreme Court nomination. Not being an American and having only recently become at all interested in politics I thought I should look up exactly what a filibuster is. It turns out that the Senate website has a nice background article on it, and the related "Cloture", a two-thirds majority vote that can cut off a filibuster debate.

It doesn't ellude the record for number of times various parties have used the filibuster which is unfortunate, because I have a feeling that Republicans, fond that they are for threatening to "go nuclear" and pass rules to outlaw filibuster completely, are actually those most likely to use it. If I come across such statistics I'll let you know. However the Senate article does highlight the record holder for the longest filibuster in the house:

The record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Way to go Strom, I bet he must have been proud of that record to his dying day.

Gore on Bush

No, this time not Al Gore, but Gore Vidal. Here is his article on how Bush is like Jonah, bringing bad luck on our good ship USA, and needs to be tossed to the whale so we can remove the hex. My favourite part is his tirade against Bush's penchant for faith based nationhood. Quoting Morris Berman:

"If a nation is unable to perceive reality correctly, and persists in operating on the basis of faith-based delusions, its ability to hold its own in the world is pretty much foreclosed."

He also includes a handy summary of increasing American ignorance of anything that happened more than five minutes ago, or going on in reality - that world right outside their TV window, if they'd only care to take a glance:

Meanwhile, millions of adult Americans, presumably undrugged, have no idea who our enemies were in World War II. Many college graduates don't know the difference between an argument and an assertion (did their teachers also fail to solve this knotty question?). A travel agent in Arizona is often asked whether or not it is cheaper to take the train rather than fly to Hawaii. Only 12% of Americans own a passport. At the time of the 2004 presidential election 42% of voters believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. One high school boy, when asked who won the Civil War, replied wearily, "I don't know and I don't care," echoing a busy neocon who confessed proudly: "The American Civil War is as remote to me as the War of the Roses."

Finally on the dimishing role of freedom in Bush's America, Vidal cites the "State of the First Amendment Survey" conducted by the University of Connecticut in 2003:

Meanwhile, the indoctrination of the people merrily continues. "In a 'State of the First Amendment Survey' conducted by the University of Connecticut in 2003, 34 percent of Americans polled said the First Amendment 'goes too far'; 46 percent said there was too much freedom of the press; 28 percent felt that newspapers should not be able to publish articles without prior approval of the government; 31 percent wanted public protest of a war to be outlawed during that war; and 50 percent thought the government should have the right to infringe on the religious freedom of 'certain religious groups' in the name of the war on terror."

Which nicely shows that people really are succefully being indoctrinated to the belief that "freedom" in America really means you're free to do anything you want, just so long as its support by the whims of the government d'jour. As one reader of LDTT points out "This country is so brainwashed and poised for dictatorship, it just seems inevitable. Hang on that British passport!! Wish I had one meself."

However I have to say that even my British passport may not be quite the get out of jail free card it looks like. At a party of the New Years I was harangued by a fellow countryman her on vacation, who bemoaned my lost English accent and implored that for the new year I resolve to return to Britain "because she needs you". The poor chap, sozzled though he was seem quite put out by the state of the United Kingdom and its continued butt-sniffing attitude to everything American. Which reminds me that I am actually also a member of that set of people known as "Europeans" and my British passport give me free reign to reside, work and play in any one of its 25 nation states.

Lunch is up!

Lets just say having watched this video collage (oh it sounds so arty!) aptly dubbed "birth control" I'm filled with shock and awe. Clearly George Bush has figured we don't need an army to defend ourselves against terrorists, we just need more projectile vomiting babies on the front line.

Another brick in the wall for peak oil theory

Apparently Petroleum Intelligence Weekly has said that Kuwait is about to halve its estimate of remaining oil reserves, thus knocking 5% off world oil reserves remaining.