Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Lightning and the Olduvai Gorge

I found this graphic a while back:



 
Neat, huh?!!

Have you seen 2001 – A Space Odyssey? Of course you have…

  
















Is lightning the cause of the mutations that made monkeys mutate into humans or humans into monkeys? There is a tremendous flux of X and gamma radiation from lightning.

Then, there’s Oklo to consider. More natural radiation and it’s in the same latitude as the heaviest lightning.









 
Here are two old NASA lightning maps. White seems to indicate no available data.




Olduvai may have been the ‘origin of the species’ and all of this is just fun speculation.

Or is it?


Sunday, May 8, 2016

Brilliant, I tell ya...


This documentary about Rusi Taleyarkhan’s ‘research’ into sonofusion has so many of his flaws exposed that it is down-right difficult to watch. From the dates to the instrumentation, his crap was so bad as to be positively stupid. I watched all 44 minutes, 27 seconds of it and am very sorry to have wasted sooo much time. ...but then again, “Dr. Rusi Taleyarkhan was the ‘researcher.’ Yeah, I’m going to have to watch it again to be sure I’ve gotten it right...

 

Fucking egotist. Watched it again. Dug Purdue rules physicist guilty of research misconduct out of the archives. Can you believe that ‘Taleyarkhan received from September 2008 to August 2009 a $185,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate bubble fusion’ after all the years and the SHTF?
 
(snip)
A Purdue University physicist who claimed to have demonstrated a tabletop fusion process that could revolutionize energy production was guilty of research misconduct in his attempts to demonstrate independent reproduction of his findings, a university committee said Friday.
The panel did not investigate whether Rusi Taleyarkhan fabricated his widely publicized and highly controversial research, but whether he intentionally misled the scientific community in claiming that his work had been replicated independently.
It has been six years since Taleyarkhan's original publication, and no one else has been able to duplicate his work, said physicist Michael Saltmarsh, who is retired from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and had tried unsuccessfully to reproduce the work.
Taleyarkhan was using a well-known technique called sonoluminescence, in which sound waves are used to collapse bubbles in a liquid, creating very high concentrations of energy and light. The technique is used for catalyzing chemical reactions, cleaning badly contaminated surfaces and melting fat during liposuction.
In a 2002 paper touted on the cover of the prestigious journal Science, Taleyarkhan reported that he used sonoluminescence on acetone in which the hydrogen atoms had been replaced with deuterium. The high temperature and pressure, he said, produced nuclear fusion, generating neutrons and tritium.
But the article was published over the vehement objections of several reviewers and was criticized heavily by other physicists.
While researchers tried to duplicate the experiment, Taleyarkhan set his postdoctoral fellow Yiban Xu to the task.
Xu observed the critical fusion products and prepared a paper submitted to Science under his name. The paper was rejected, in part because referees concluded that one person could not have carried out the experiments alone.

According to the committee - composed of scientists from inside and outside Purdue - Taleyarkhan asked master's candidate Adam Butt to review Xu's data. Butt's name then was added to the paper, even though he had not participated in the research.

That, said the committee, was clearly scientific misconduct, because it was designed to give the appearance of a collaboration that had not occurred.

Meanwhile, Taleyarkhan made significant revisions to the paper, both in terms of grammar and scientific content, according to the panel. The paper ultimately was published in 2005 in the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design with virtually no mention of Taleyarkhan's participation.

In a 2006 paper in Physical Review Letters on his own work, Taleyarkhan asserted that his original observations reported in the Science paper "have now been independently confirmed."
The Purdue committee, however, concluded that Taleyarkhan was involved heavily in Xu and Butt's paper.

"The direct assertion of independent confirmation ... is falsification of the research record and thus is research misconduct," the committee found.

(un-snip)

As T. S. Elliot wrote:
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

Worth watching just to see how stupid ‘academics’ can be sometimes. ‘Well respected’ my ass.

An Experiment To Save The World – BBC History Documentary

Published on Jan 5, 2016

March 2002, the scientific world was rocked by some astonishing news: a distinguished US government scientist claimed he had made nuclear fusion out of sound waves in his laboratory. Rusi Taleyarkhan's breakthrough was such important news because nuclear fusion is one of the most difficult scientific processes, and also one of the most coveted. It could solve all of our energy problems for ever. In principle, sufficient fuel exists on earth to provide clean, pollution-free energy for billions of people for millions of years.

Druuuugs...

NFL Warns Players Eating Too Much Meat In Mexico, China Could Lead To Failed Drug Test

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The National Football League is warning its players from eating too much meat in China and Mexico because it could cause a failed drug test.

The NFL said in a memo that some meat produced in China and Mexico could be contaminated with anabolic agent clenbuterol, which is banned by the league’s Performance-Enhancing Substances policy.

Consuming large quantities of meat while visiting those particular countries may result in a positive test for clenbuterol in violation of the Policy,” the league said.

The memo continued, “Players are warned to be aware of this issue when traveling to Mexico and China. Please take caution if you decide to consume meat, and understand that you do so at your own risk.”

* * * * *

Wellll… About 15 or so years ago, a good neighbor of ours showed me a satellite photo of the Mexico City area and the land around it. Seems a rather vast area was used for truck farming vegetables. Stuff for salads and such. He’d done a fair amount of research on this and being highly opposed to certain farming practices, he found out why that ‘delta’ was so productive. It was watered and fertilized by untreated sewage from Mexico City itself. Since what are prescription drugs elsewhere are OTC there and all kinds of antibiotic resistant bacterial goodies are prevalent in fresh feces, enjoy your nice, fresh salad my friends! 
 
Back when Algore was running, he said the U.S. was to be a service economy with jobs such as agriculture out-sourced. Apparently we were ‘too good’ for farming.

Guess cramps, squirts, and the occasional death are such a small ‘inconvenient truth!’

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The medical mess

We had a bit of a stir at the motel last evening. Liz, Arizona, and I were just chewing the fat about life, the universe, and everything with other neighbors when a rather large gal a few rooms up from us had a major grand mal epileptic seizure. I had been trained on how to tend such a seizure back in 1956 (neat story, happy endings, they’ll keep), however under the present conditions I’d be completely useless. Good thing Liz is a CNA and knew just what to do! Still, it took her and a couple of large, good old boys to keep the poor gal from tearing herself up on the asphalt while waiting for the EMTs. During the six months I was ‘not in this world’ after my stroke, I had broken off 8 of my teeth, shed all but one of my fillings (broke that one), plus various other things that come with violent, involuntary muscle actions.

This ‘inspired’ me to revisit my observations of the financial costs of such these ‘daze.’ The last time I checked around 2001 or 2002, a local ambulance ride was $500. According to the GAO, it has gone to $2,204 as of 2012. Back in 2001-2, helicopter evac started at $25,000. No, I decided not to look for present prices. ...probably cheaper to buy your own!


 
Why have prices risen so horribly high?

Try this on:

(snip)

American consumers and the U.S. economy were hit with a nearly $1.9 trillion tax in 2015 through federal regulations, according to a free market thinktank’s new report.

 
Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) describes the thousands of ways Americans are unknowingly taxed by federal regulations in its annual report, “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.”
The federal government has become very savvy in hiding costs by expanding their reach beyond taxes into regulations,” Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., the report’s author, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, regulatory costs get little attention in policy debates, because unlike taxes, they are difficult to quantify because they are unbudgeted and often indirect.”
But the impacts of burdensome regulations are very real and increase costs for consumers and businesses, limiting productivity and a thriving free market,” he continued.
Federal regulations hide a $15,000 tax per household each year, according to the report. The costs associated with these rules often affect businesses’ prices, workers’ wages, and growth.

(un-snip)

...or this:








 

The Cumulative Cost of Regulations


The impact of regulation on economic growth has been widely studied, but most research has focused on a narrow set of regulations, industries, or both. These studies typically rely on regulatory indexes that measure subsets of all regulation, on country-to-country comparisons, on short time spans, or on surveys in which experts report how regulated they believe their country or industry is. In order to better understand the cumulative cost of regulation, a comprehensive look at all regulations across many industries over a long period of time is imperative.
A new study for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University uses an economic model that examines regulation’s effect on firms’ investment choices. Using a 22-industry dataset that covers 1977 through 2012, the study finds that regulation—by distorting the investment choices that lead to innovation—has created a considerable drag on the economy, amounting to an average reduction in the annual growth rate of the US gross domestic product (GDP) of 0.8 percent.
THE PROBLEMS WITH REGULATORY ACCUMULATION
Federal regulations have accumulated over many decades, piling up over time. When regulators add more rules to the pile, analysts often consider the likely benefits and compliance costs of the additional rules.
But regulations have a greater effect on the economy than analysis of a single rule in isolation can convey. The buildup of regulations over time leads to duplicative, obsolete, conflicting, and even contradictory rules, and the multiplicity of regulatory constraints complicates and distorts the decision-making processes of firms operating in the economy. Firms respond to both individual regulations and regulatory accumulation by altering their plans for research and development, for expansion, and for updating equipment and processes. Because of the important role innovation and productivity growth play in an economy, these distortions have consequences for the growth of the economy in the long run.

(un-snip)

Of course in our lawyer-happy, increasingly hindu ‘medical-care’ country, we’ve got this:

(snip)

Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States


Nightmare stories of nurses giving potent drugs meant for one patient to another and surgeons removing the wrong body parts have dominated recent headlines about medical care. Lest you assume those cases are the exceptions, a new study by patient safety researchers provides some context.
Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that "medical errors" in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States -- claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer's.

Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication (must speak hindi) breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another.

"It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeing care," Makary said.
The issue of patient safety has been a hot topic in recent years, but it wasn't always that way. In 1999, an Institute of Medicine report calling preventable medical errors an "epidemic" shocked the medical establishment and led to significant debate about what could be done.
The IOM, based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year. Makary's research involves a more comprehensive analysis of four large studies, including ones by the Health and Human Services Department's Office of the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that took place between 2000 to 2008. His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to nearly 700 deaths a day -- about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.




 
Makary said he and co-author Michael Daniel, also from Johns Hopkins, conducted the analysis to shed more light on a problem that many hospitals and health care facilities try to avoid talking about.
Though all providers extol patient safety and highlight the various safety committees and protocols they have in place, few provide the public with specifics on actual cases of harm due to mistakes. Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't require reporting of errors in the data it collects about deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what's going on at the national level.
The CDC should update its vital statistics reporting requirements so that physicians must report whether there was any error that led to a preventable death, Makary said.
"We all know how common it is," he said. "We also know how infrequently it’s openly discussed."
Kenneth Sands, who directs health care quality at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, said that the surprising thing about medical errors is the limited change that has taken place since the IOM report came out. Only hospital-acquired infections have shown improvement. "The overall numbers haven't changed, and that's discouraging and alarming," he said.
Sands, who was not involved in the BMJ study, said that one of the main barriers is the tremendous ‘diversity’ and ‘complexity’ in the way health care is delivered.

(un-snip)

There’s a lot more. A hell of a lot more unfortunately. Where’s good old Dr. Phillips now?

I’ve got some more linkage in need of formatting, however my left index finger is getting tired so they will have to be added later!

Monday, May 2, 2016

How gullible are we going to be?

Al Gore’s wet dream

58 years of ‘global warming’ Mr. Gore?








 





 

This artist's view depicts the different layers of the Earth and their representative temperatures: crust, upper and lower mantle (brown to red), liquid outer core (orange) and solid inner core (yellow). The pressure at the border between the liquid and the solid core (highlighted) is 3.3 million atmospheres, with a temperature now confirmed as 6000 degrees Celsius. (Photo : ESRF) 

 
Why the concern over the possible, and that’s just a possible, one degree C change in a century when there’s a 10,800 degree Hell under our feet?

Could there be another agenda?





 

Here’s something believable!


Gaaah!

(snip)


 

Who pays the scientist who wants global warming skeptics prosecuted?



Global warming profiteer Jagadish Shukla

This is quite striking. The global warming alarmist who is leading the effort to criminally prosecute those who dissent from global warming alarmism is himself a global warming profiteer, according Climate Depot.

This article from Climate Depot explains:
 
From 2012-2014, the Leader of RICO 20 climate scientists paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work.
George Mason University Professor Jagadish Shukla ( jshukla@gmu.edu) a Lead Author with the UN IPCC, reportedly made lavish profits off the global warming
industry while accusing climate skeptics of deceiving the public. Shukla is leader of 20 scientists who are demanding RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) charges be used against skeptics for disagreeing with their view on climate change.
Shukla reportedly moved his government grants through a ‘non-profit’. The group “pays Shukla and wife Anne $500,000 per year for part-time work,” Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. revealed.
The $350,000-$400,000 per year paid leader of the RICO20 from his ‘non-profit’ was presumably on top of his $250,000 per year academic salary,” Pielke wrote. “That totals to $750,000 per year to the leader of the RICO20 from public money for climate work and going after skeptics. Good work if you can get it,” Pielke Jr.added.

I think this fellow needs a RICO investigation himself, don’t you? (it’s a hindu) And if found guilty, he should be put in jail. I think in general this story shows why we need to cut taxes, shrink government spending, and generally reduce the influence that government has on private businesses and individual consumers. Global warming alarmists don’t generate anything of value, they just collect taxpayers’ money in exchange for lying. And then the lies are used by the government to take measures that raise our electricity bills and increase the national debt. What sense does it make for voters to vote for that?

Shukla would be the second Indian guy to be implicated in these sorts of global warming intrigues. The first was the U.N. IPCC sexual harrasser Rajendra Pachauri, (on the right, above), who predicted that the Himalayas would melt. He later admitted that his predictions were false. And then his career melted after the victims of his sexual harassment came forward to accuse him.

Climate change science, for a change

 
Atmospheric temperature measurements though April 2015

Interesting. In ‘98 we received more than 4 feet of rain in 2 weeks, mostly in just 2 short bursts. The following Spring/Summer we had the 1st 2 weeks in June having temps exceeding 100 degrees. That Winter it snowed in Florida.

Yup. Globull warmening.

(snip)

Audit Details Misuse of Taxpayer Funds by Climate Researcher

Congressional investigators have obtained an internal audit from George Mason University that suggests that one of its professors—a major proponent of man-made climate change—mismanaged millions of dollars in taxpayer money by “double dipping” in violation of university policy.
The professor, Jagadish Shukla, received $511,410 in combined compensation from George Mason University and his own taxpayer-funded climate change research center in 2014 alone, without receiving required permission from university officials, the audit found.

The audit looking at more than a decade of Shukla’s finances is disclosed in a letter sent this morning from Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, to the inspector general of the National Science Foundation.

The committee’s investigation has revealed serious concerns related to Dr. Shukla’s management of taxpayer money,” Smith writes in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Signal.

Since 2001, Shukla used his research center to pay himself and his wife more than $5.6 million in compensation, “an excessive amount for a nonprofit relying on taxpayer money,” Smith writes.
(un-snip)


Does it ever stop? Are we all ignorant monkeys?
 

AG Lynch Testifies: Justice Dept. Has ‘Discussed’ Civil Legal Action Against Climate Change Deniers

Mar. 9, 2016 6:00pm - Jon Street


 
Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified Wednesday that the Justice Department has “discussed” taking civil legal action against the fossil fuel industry for “denying” the “threat of carbon emissions” when it comes to climate change.

During Lynch’s testimony at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said that he believes there are similarities between the tobacco industry denying scientific studies showing the dangers of using tobacco and companies within the fossil fuel industry denying studies allegedly showing the threat of carbon emissions. 
 
He went on to point out that under President Bill Clinton, the Justice Department brought and won a civil case against the tobacco industry, while the Obama administration has “done nothing” so far with regard to the fossil fuel industry.






Saturday, April 23, 2016

Social Security income

$11,880 is the poverty line for one person.

I receive $13,284 income from SS per year. Looong story!

Maximum rent allowed to qualify at that income = $369 per month or one goes to a ‘cheap’ motel.

Locally, a 1 bedroom apartment in a shit-hole Section 8 pit goes for a minimum of $500/month and from bitter experience, a 5’ 4”, 120 pound, 66 year old, badly stroke-crippled white man can expect to be eaten alive by the absolute garbage that lives in these holes. Shear Hell. It’s truly amazing what mindless, vicious beasts crack-head black ‘people’ can be. Last time I was forced to live with such, it cost me 3 years of my life and now, constant pain. I was raised in the deep ‘souf with kids of all races and back then, there was no more animosity among us than among anyone of any group. Of course that was 50+ years ago.

For fun, the Section 8 qualifier has a 29 page form that MUST be filled out. The information is allowed to go to idiot bureaucrats in essentially EVERY miserable state and federal agency. One must remember how ‘secure’ these ‘agencies’ are. So many of the questions have absolutely NO business being on such a form that it is impossible to ascertain why they are on there to begin with.

...so I live in a hindu-run roach motel with zero chairs, 1 bed (don’t ask. Took me 2 weeks to get the original sheets changed for ones without fresh bloodstains on them), 2 drawers (again, don’t ask what was in them except the roaches), and a broken-down vanity. It costs $725/month. Oh, I can’t get the wheelchair into the pocket-sized bathroom. So far, no disasters! ;o)

$725 x 12 = $8,700

I ‘make’ way too much to qualify for food stamps.

$13,284 - $8,700 = $4,584 left over for food, transportation, clothing & laundry, ‘entertainment’, medical deductibles, good things like soap, dish washing detergent, etc. or $382 per month. That’s $12.73 per day left over for everything. You keep hearing stories about old folk eating pet food, living in dives, and taking their needed meds in partial doses to stretch them, now you know why.

As giant a change as the present accommodations and income are from my pre-stroke existence, it is pure heaven compared to my ‘life’ in an alleged ‘health care’ center. Places like that are waiting rooms to Hell. One is better off dead than the absolutely soul destroying, health destroying misery of such. You can read about my experiences with the medical ‘care’ in one of those here if you are so inclined.

There is nothing to be done about the stupidity of the present ‘system.’ Like a frog in the pan of water with the heat set on low, we were cooked so slowly that before we realized it, we were too weak to do anything about it. Those with the brains to have done something about it have dwindled to a very few and those without, have bred into being the vast majority. Vote wisely? We’re out of Eisenhowers and Reagans. We have Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and Cruz.

***sigh***

update: 

Obama budgets $17,613 for every new illegal minor, more than Social Security retirees get

President Obama has budgeted $17,613 for each of the estimated 75,000 Central American teens expected to illegally cross into the United States this year, $2,841 more than the average annual Social Security retirement benefit, according to a new report.
The total bill to taxpayers: $1.3 billion in benefits to "unaccompanied children," more than double what the federal government spent in 2010, according to an analysis of the administration's programs for illegal minors from the Center for Immigration Studies. The average Social Security retirement benefit is $14,772.
The report notes that the president's budget, facing congressional approval, includes another $2.1 billion for refugees, which can include the illegals from Central America, mostly Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

...you might want to read the rest.


update, 4 May, 2016

Illegal immigrant numbers skyrocket at Mexican border

Mike Lillis - 05/04/16 06:52 PM EDT

Child migration is surging again.

The number of families and unaccompanied children apprehended on the southern border has skyrocketed this year, according to new figures from the Obama administration.

The numbers, compiled by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), reveal that child migration is on par with 2014 levels, when a wave of kids –– thousands of them unaccompanied –– arrived at the southern border.

The surge of illegal immigration quickly swamped border authorities, immigration courts and health and humanitarian workers, while sparking a political battle on Capitol Hill over the cause and proper response to the crisis.

The new figures raise the specter of another increase this summer. That would almost certainly inflame another political showdown in a volatile presidential year in which the issues of race, immigration and border security have been pronounced — particularly due to the hard-line enforcement approach adopted by the presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

(un-clip) 

If you've got the stomach for it, read the whole article.


...now we return you to your regularly scheduled viewing of good stuff like Life, the Universe, and Everything!