Archives for March 2014

Long ago and far away, on November 10, 2010, the very first article I wrote about Japan was about how Domino’s Pizza was willing to pay $31,000 an hour for a pizza delivery person. If you search this blog for articles mentioning Japan you will end up with hours of reading pleasure. Or so I am told. You can just click the link if you’re lazy. Anyway, amongst the gems you will discover the joys of young girls riding giant penises down the street. That is a family activity in Japan. I tell you this in case you are looking for ways to spice up your next sushi experience. Certainly the flying knife displays at Benihana’s would become more dangerous and fun. Then again we are talking about a country that uses Kentucky Fried Chicken to sponsor Christmas, so maybe that whole “finger licking good” thing just carries over.

The world may never know.

One thing it does know is that perfectly innocent things go to Japan and come back in need of therapy. For example, there is a Disney World in Japan. When you go there you can see all the Disney princesses, just like you can at any other Disney owned park. What’s different in Japan is that after you meet the princesses you can own their underwear.

You thought I was kidding didn’t you?

Online retailer Bellemaison features the Disney Fantasy Shop, a section that sells lingerie in designs inspired by Disney’s princesses. Each pair includes a carefully crafted bra and pair of panties that are intricately lined with lace, and made more vibrant with pastel colors. In some designs, bra straps are equally decorative with hues that sometimes complement the cups.

If you read Japanese you can order online by clicking the company’s link above.

If you do please send us pics so we know what they look like on humans.

Of course now that you’re festooned in your princess panties you need to do something romantic to make the evening worthwhile. Thanks to the fact you’re in Japan now, just go with me on this, you need not buy wine, order food or even go see a movie. No, all you need to do is let your significant other drop by and have him/her lick your eyeballs.

Oh, sure, the Japanese don’t actually do that, despite the stories to the contrary, but there’s nothing preventing you from starting a trend.

After all, once they start at the eyeballs who knows where they’ll end up?

Probably by moistening your pretty princess panties.

Anyway, one thing that has been a tradition in Japan for over a thousand years (unlike eyeball licking) has been the history of the ninjas. Ninjas, in pop culture, are mostly sword wielding assassins who want to kill Batman. Mostly employed by Ra’s al Ghul. Who, oddly enough, isn’t Asian at all.

In the real world, and yes they do exist, their legacy is a touch more complicated. Yes, they killed people but they also protected them. Also, ninjas would use any means necessary to accomplish their goals. If that meant shooting you in your sleep, so be it.

But now the tradition of Ninjutsu may be passing into the setting sun. Jinichi Kawakami, the last living ninja, has decided not to train a successor.

Masters in the dark arts of espionage and silent assassination, they are rarely seen and never heard… until they strike.

Employed by samurai warlords to spy, sabotage and kill, they are relics of an ancient code that have all but died out in the modern age.

All but one. As the 21st head of the Ban clan, a dynasty of secret spies that can trace its history back some 500 years, 63-year-old engineer Jinichi Kawakami is Japan’s last ninja.

He is trained to hear a needle drop in the next room, to disappear in a cloud of smoke or to cut a victim’s throat from 20 paces with nothing more than a two-inch ‘death star’.

‘I think I’m called (the last ninja) as there is probably no other person who learned all the skills that were directly handed down from ninja masters over the last five centuries,’ he said. ‘Ninjas proper no longer exist.’

But Kawakami has decided to let the art die with him because ninjas ‘just don’t fit with modern day’, adding: ‘We can’t try out murder or poisons. Even if we can follow the instructions to make a poison, we can’t try it out.’

An engineer by trade, Kawakami started practicing the art of Ninjutsu at the age of six before he began training under the gruelling regime of Buddhist master Masazo Ishida.

To improve his concentration, he would spend hours staring into the flame of a candle until he felt he was inside it.

To hone his hearing he would practice listening to a needle being dropped onto a wooden floor in the next room.

He climbed walls, jumped from heights and learned how to mix chemicals to cause explosions and smoke.

He was also trained to withstand extreme heat and cold as well as go for days without food or water.

‘The training was all tough and painful. It wasn’t fun but I didn’t think much why I was doing it. Training was made to be part of my life,’ he said.

And at the age of 19, he inherited his master’s title along with a cache of secret scrolls and ancient tools.

But he says the art of the ninja lies in the power of surprise, never brute force or outward strength and is about exploiting weaknesses to outfox larger, more powerful opponents while distracting their attention to get the upper hand.

And, he says, the ability to hide in the most unlikely of places is a ninja’s greatest weapon.

‘If you throw a toothpick, people will look that way, giving you the chance to flee, he adds. ‘We also have a saying that it is possible to escape death by perching on your enemy’s eyelashes; it means you are so close that he cannot see you.’

Kawakami now runs the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum, in Iga, 220 miles southwest of Tokyo and recently began a research job at the state-run Mie University, where he is studying the history of ninjas.

He says he has decided not to take on an apprentice to pass on the legacy, making him the last in the line of Ban clan ninjas.

Ninjas, also known as shinobi, have been feared and revered throughout history for their talents as assassins, scouts and spies.

They are mainly noted for their use of stealth and deception but also for their amazing powers of endurance.

Ninjutsu can be translated as ‘Art of Stealth’ but also means ‘Art of Enduring’ and the ninjas themselves were noted for being able to walk long distances without stopping, jump over seven feet and dislocate their joints to escape from small spaces.

But they are not only ruthless killers as depicted in so many Hollywood movies.

In fact, ninjas considered the art of espionage far greater than that of fighting which was always a last resort – ninjas were skilled in spying and defeating foes using intelligence, while swinging a sword was deemed a lower art.

But if necessary, they had to be experts with weapons such as shuriken, a sharpened star-shaped projectile, and the fukiya blowpipe, usually filled with a poison dart.

And they were also skilled at making both poisons and medicines.

Excluding the whole killing thing those are the same skills taught to Boy & Girl Scouts the world over. Just in case you’re ever thinking of messing with a Scout.

There is no word, and God knows I looked for one, as to why he’s refusing to train a successor. I’m sure it would be an interesting reason but, no matter what it is, the decision is his and his alone.

And so, like many things the west doesn’t truly understand, another part of a colorful universe fades to black.

Unlike your pretty princess panties which will, ultimately, fade to beige.

Desperate House DJs – Back to Brooklyn from Bill McCormick on Vimeo.

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Sometimes when people hear scientific jargon they tune it out. After all, it’s usually in Latin or Greek, related to obscure concepts and presented with the enthusiasm level of lint. Scientists are, in the main, solitary figures. Social interaction is not their forte. That’s why when someone like Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson comes along they get treated like rock stars. It’s even more fitting that the latter is honoring the life’s work of the former by re-launching his legendary TV show, Cosmos. What’s interesting about the new version of the show is that it’s taking apart the arguments of creationists one at a time. From why an eyeball is easily predictable and not too complex to evolve to why selective breeding of animals (think from wolf to dog) is just a manual version of evolution. Others have been jumping on board the science bandwagon as well. From loudly debunking the anti-vac crowd, a group whom I loathe, to proving that the Earth not only revolves around the sun but that it also revolves on its own axis. Thus do we end up with seasons and time zones, respectively.

It’s not magic folks.

But this next bit might seem like it. Sarah C. P. Williams, from Science Magazine, reports that scientists may have come up with a real cure for cancer and it’s not something you order out of the back of some bullshit magazine or buy from Kevin Trudeau.

And it involves neither crystals or Vitamin C.

Survivor. When mice with human tumors received doses of anti-CD47, which sets the immune system against tumor cells, the cancers shrank and disappeared.

A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a “do not eat” signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.

A decade ago, biologist Irving Weissman of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, discovered that leukemia cells produce higher levels of a protein called CD47 than do healthy cells. CD47, he and other scientists found, is also displayed on healthy blood cells; it’s a marker that blocks the immune system from destroying them as they circulate. Cancers take advantage of this flag to trick the immune system into ignoring them. In the past few years, Weissman’s lab showed that blocking CD47 with an antibody cured some cases of lymphomas and leukemias in mice by stimulating the immune system to recognize the cancer cells as invaders. Now, he and colleagues have shown that the CD47-blocking antibody may have a far wider impact than just blood cancers.

“What we’ve shown is that CD47 isn’t just important on leukemias and lymphomas,” says Weissman. “It’s on every single human primary tumor that we tested.” Moreover, Weissman’s lab found that cancer cells always had higher levels of CD47 than did healthy cells. How much CD47 a tumor made could predict the survival odds of a patient.

To determine whether blocking CD47 was beneficial, the scientists exposed tumor cells to macrophages, a type of immune cell, and anti-CD47 molecules in petri dishes. Without the drug, the macrophages ignored the cancerous cells. But when the anti-CD47 was present, the macrophages engulfed and destroyed cancer cells from all tumor types.

Next, the team transplanted human tumors into the feet of mice, where tumors can be easily monitored. When they treated the rodents with anti-CD47, the tumors shrank and did not spread to the rest of the body. In mice given human bladder cancer tumors, for example, 10 of 10 untreated mice had cancer that spread to their lymph nodes. Only one of 10 mice treated with anti-CD47 had a lymph node with signs of cancer. Moreover, the implanted tumor often got smaller after treatment—colon cancers transplanted into the mice shrank to less than one-third of their original size, on average. And in five mice with breast cancer tumors, anti-CD47 eliminated all signs of the cancer cells, and the animals remained cancer-free 4 months after the treatment stopped.

“We showed that even after the tumor has taken hold, the antibody can either cure the tumor or slow its growth and prevent metastasis,” says Weissman.

Although macrophages also attacked blood cells expressing CD47 when mice were given the antibody, the researchers found that the decrease in blood cells was short-lived; the animals turned up production of new blood cells to replace those they lost from the treatment, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cancer researcher Tyler Jacks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge says that although the new study is promising, more research is needed to see whether the results hold true in humans. “The microenvironment of a real tumor is quite a bit more complicated than the microenvironment of a transplanted tumor,” he notes, “and it’s possible that a real tumor has additional immune suppressing effects.”

Another important question, Jacks says, is how CD47 antibodies would complement existing treatments. “In what ways might they work together and in what ways might they be antagonistic?” Using anti-CD47 in addition to chemotherapy, for example, could be counterproductive if the stress from chemotherapy causes normal cells to produce more CD47 than usual.

Weissman’s team has received a $20 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to move the findings from mouse studies to human safety tests. “We have enough data already,” says Weissman, “that I can say I’m confident that this will move to phase I human trials.”

Here’s the thing. There are several scientists who believe, but can not yet prove, that this treatment could be stand-alone. That would mean that cancer victims could show up ate their local doctor, get a shot or series of shots and be cured.

That doesn’t mean it will work but it most certainly can. And even if this isn’t a 100% cure I would bet good money that this information could be used in conjunction with other treatments.

In other words, we just got one step closer to a real cure.

Worst case scenario, according to a couple of scientists I spoke to is that cancer could be just as manageable as diabetes.

No longer a death sentence it would just be one more thing to watch out for.

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip: Get Better from Domestic Science on Vimeo.

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Way, way back on 9/28/2012 I wrote about the discovery of zombees. These are, for all intents and purposes, dead bees that keep walking around and messing up eco-systems. Kind of like the Bee Movie, but with better acting. And way, way, back on 1/2/2014 I wrote about the organisms that science believes are immortal. Neither you nor I are on that list. And maybe we shouldn’t be when we have the technology now, as in break out your wallet and grab one, to build a Killbot. Think Transformers without the moral restrictions. Oh sure, it would require you to make more than the minimum wage to afford it but what’s the point of climbing to the top of the mountain over the backs of the poor if you can’t have a Killbot or two?

Seriously, why even bother otherwise?

But as dire as all those things are they pale in comparison to the recent article written by Tom McKay for Policy Mic.

Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn’t it? Too bad it’s not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, we only have a few decades left before everything we know and hold dear collapses.

The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. And there’s not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society.

Analyzing five risk factors for societal collapse (population, climate, water, agriculture and energy), the report says that the sudden downfall of complicated societal structures can follow when these factors converge to form two important criteria. Motesharrei’s report says that all societal collapses over the past 5,000 years have involved both “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity” and “the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor].” This “Elite” population restricts the flow of resources accessible to the “Masses”, accumulating a surplus for themselves that is high enough to strain natural resources. Eventually this situation will inevitably result in the destruction of society.

Elite power, the report suggests, will buffer “detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners,” allowing the privileged to “continue ‘business as usual’ despite the impending catastrophe.”

Science will surely save us, the nay-sayers may yell. But technology, argues Motesharrei, has only damned us further:

Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.

In other words, the benefits of technology are outweighed by how much the gains reinforce the existing, over-burdened system — making collapse even more likely.

The worst-case scenarios predicted by Motesharrei are pretty dire, involving sudden collapse due to famine or a drawn-out breakdown of society due to the over-consumption of natural resources. The best-case scenario involves recognition of the looming catastrophe by Elites and a more equitable restructuring of society, but who really believes that is going to happen? Here’s what the study recommends:

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth.

These are great suggestions that will, unfortunately, almost certainly never be put into action, considering just how far down the wrong path our civilization has gone. As of last year, humans are using more resources than the Earth can replenish and the planet’s distribution of resources among its terrestrial inhabitants is massively unequal. This is what happened to Rome and the Mayans, according to the report.

… historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases).

And that’s not even counting the spectre of global climate change, which could be a looming “instant planetary emergency.” According to Canadian Wildlife Service biologist Neil Dawe:

Economic growth is the biggest destroyer of the ecology. Those people who think you can have a growing economy and a healthy environment are wrong. If we don’t reduce our numbers, nature will do it for us … Everything is worse and we’re still doing the same things. Because ecosystems are so resilient, they don’t exact immediate punishment on the stupid.

In maybe the nicest way to say the end is nigh possible, Motesharrei’s report concludes that “closely reflecting the reality of the world today … we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.”

Writes Nafeez Ahmed at The Guardian:

“Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies — by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance — have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a ‘perfect storm’ within about fifteen years. But these ‘business as usual’ forecasts could be very conservative.”

Well, at least zombies aren’t real.

Zombies? No. Zombees, however …..

Science fiction has been lamenting the possible end of all things for many years. In 1972 it took a long look at environmental issues and gave the world the classic film Silent Running. And because irony is a thing the ending of the movie made people laugh and cry at the same time.

I could cite numerous other examples but, in essence, people who paid attention to their high school science courses realized we kind of need that nature stuff to keep us alive. In the short term paving that forest or polluting that river create jobs. That’s true. But the long term effects tend to lead to films like Wizards and such.

Yes, I’m aware I’m citing fictional works. I am trying to get the point across without spending the next three hours burying you in scientific journals.

You see science, like irony, is also a thing. Something either is or isn’t true. You don’t get to say I don’t like this or that science thing therefore it is no longer valid. That’s not how the universe works.

And, right now, we’re going the way of the Dodo unless we get our shit together.

I SEE STARS “end of the world party” Directors Cut from Scott Hansen on Vimeo.

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Click on the pretty picture if you’d like to see more of the redoubtable Mr. Doherty’s work. I was going to write the most depressing blog in the history of blogs. Think the death of bees and literature all in one day kind of thing. But then someone made me smile. DAMN HER!!! And then this young lady, say 20 to 25, who boards the train where I get off answered my daily “Hello smiley” with her first words instead of flashing her usual electric smile. She said “Hello Shrek.” Well how the hell could I be in a bad mood after that? Even the train conductor was laughing and I don’t think she’s cracked a smile since Elvis died. Another thing that put me in a good mood was finding out that a group of Ohio college students went down to the Lake Como ConneXions Church in Orlando Florida. Believe it or not this is a Florida story that doesn’t involve nudity, erratic behavior or sex with animals (although there have been 2 separate instances of Floridian men having sex with dogs on their front lawns this past week). No, in this case I bear thee good news. The kids from Ohio went to that church to make caskets for infants and toddlers who die and their families can’t afford them. Florida has no health care system to speak of and this is a, sadly, common occurrence that happens around 4 times a month. And when the families can’t pay the $400 the state mandates the deceased are slated for cremation or the family’s credit is ruined with another bill they can’t pay. Since many religions prohibit cremation this has been a real problem. And now there is a real solution. I’ll leave you with the words of wisdom issued by a young lady. “Caskets are not personal,” said Liz Bowles, 21, a senior majoring in fine art. “This is like giving a piece of your soul to someone who is broken.”

Then I noticed Andrea’s blog. She’s dealing with 5 kids, one with special needs, a new home and trying to deal with public aid. I am going to share part of this with you but, if you need to cry tears of joy, go read the whole thing.

You have no clue I have cried more days than not; that I fight against bitterness taking control of my heart. You have no clue that my husband’s pride was shattered. You have no clue my kids have had the worries of an adult on their shoulders. You have no clue their innocence was snatched from them for no good reason. You know none of this.

What you do know is I tried to buy my kids some food and that the EBT machine was down so I couldn’t buy that food. I didn’t have any cash or my debit card with me. I only had my SNAP card. All you heard was me saying “No, don’t hold it for me. My kids are hungry now and I have no other way of paying for this.” You didn’t judge me. You didn’t snarl “Maybe you should have less kids.” You didn’t say “Well, get a job and learn to support yourself.” You didn’t look away in embarrassment or shame for me. You didn’t make any assumptions at all.

What you did was you paid that $17.38 grocery bill for us. You gave my kids bananas, yogurt, apple juice, cheese sticks, and a peach ice tea for me; a rare treat and splurge. You let me hug you and promise through my tears that I WILL pay this forward. I WILL pay someone’s grocery bill for them. That $17.38 may not have been a lot for you, but it was priceless to us. In the car my kids couldn’t stop gushing about you; our “angel in disguise.” They prayed for you. They prayed you would be blessed. You restored some of our lost faith. One simple and small action changed our lives. You probably have forgotten about us by now, but we haven’t forgotten about you. You will forever be a part of us even though we don’t even know your name.

Several years ago I was buying groceries and ended up about $5.00 short. I started to pull things off the belt when an elderly woman behind me handed the cashier a $10.00 and then turned to me and said “Keep the change.” I was so stunned I couldn’t reply. She just walked away smiling. Since then I’ve made it a point to watch for others who are short. It’s usually a buck or something. If I have it I help. You’d be amazed how many people a buck can make happy.

Okay, today, at 11:57 AM (CDT), the Vernal Equinox will occur. Susmita Baral shares some fun facts you probably didn’t know.

1. The vernal equinox is when the sun moves across the celestial equator and as such, there should ideally be 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.

2. The vernal equinox takes place on March 20 or 21 each year and is the indicator of the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

3. Ever wonder why the spring boasts warmer temperatures? Because the Earth’s axis is tilted towards the sun, which means longer daylight hours and warmer weather.

4. The term equinox is a derivative of the Latin word equinoxium, which literally means “equality between day and night.”

5. The holiday Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This year, Easter is on Sunday, April 20.

6. The vernal equinox may take place once a year, but there are two equinox’s each year: one in March and one in September. During the two equinox’s the sun rises east and sets west.

7. The ancient Egyptians built the Great Sphinx of Giza on the west bank of the Nile to directly face the rising sun on the vernal equinox.

8. The Mayan city Chichen Itza has been the celebratory site for “The Return of the Sun Serpent” since ancient times on the spring equinox. The sun, when it sets, creates a triangular shadow on the El Castillo pyramid which creates the image of a descending snake that’s said to be the feather serpent god Kukulkan.

I linked to Susmita since most bloggers are lazy jerks and simply post that “equinox” means “equal night” which is wrong. Since she got it right she gets honored here today.

Ann-Marie Imbornoni and Elissa Haney add in a little more fun.

Reasons for the Seasons
These brief but monumental moments owe their significance to the 23.4 degree tilt of the Earth’s axis. Because of the tilt, we receive the Sun’s rays most directly in the summer. In the winter, when we are tilted away from the Sun, the rays pass through the atmosphere at a greater slant, bringing lower temperatures. If the Earth rotated on an axis perpendicular to the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, there would be no variation in day lengths or temperatures throughout the year, and we would not have seasons.

Rituals and Traditions
Modern astronomy aside, people have recognized the vernal equinox for thousands of years. There is no shortage of rituals and traditions surrounding the coming of spring. Many early peoples celebrated for the basic reason that their food supplies would soon be restored. The date is significant in Christianity because Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

The first day of spring also marks the beginning of Nowruz, the Persian New Year. The celebration lasts 13 days and is rooted in the 3,000-year-old tradition of Zorastrianism.

Now, the big one. Every year some brain dead yahoo pretending to be a journalist toddles off to a park or restaurant or psychic parlor to videotape eggs standing up. This is always “due to the solar gravitational equality offered on the vernal equinox.” Well, no, it’s not. It’s simply due to placement and gravity. You can perform this trick, and it is a trick, 365 days a year. It depends on the properties of the egg and has nothing to do with gravity.

NOT A THING!

Okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just get frustrated by idiots.

Anyway, it seemed appropriate to put some balance back into this blog. Especially today.

In honor of that, let’s all do a little Sun Dance.

Klangkarussell – Sonnentanz (Video HD) from Prìsma BestDruide on Vimeo.

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Yesterday I shared the kind of science that prompts science fiction writers to give up because reality just got too weird. And disgusting. You can’t forget just how disgusting it got. But, today, I’ll attempt to soothe your wounded palette. Today I’m going to talk about the kind of science that does what kids growing up in my day thought that science should do. We wanted science to heal the sick, save the poor and make the world a better place to live in. And when not cloning celebrities to make food, science can actually live up to its promise. If you like naked women, roller skates, marbles and rope, you’ll click that link in the name of science. I guess my point is that not all scientific study needs to lead directly to the apocalypse or anything like that. Some of it can lead us to a better place.

And that is especially true today.

The Mind Unleashed, an online scientific journal, reports that IBM has come up with a solar collector that can do things like save the world and end drought.

Little things, I know, but still worth a mention.

A team at IBM recently developed what they call a High Concentration Photo Voltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system that is capable of concentrating the power of 2,000 suns, they are even claiming to be able to concentrate energy safely up to 5,000X, that’s huge.

The process of  trapping the sunlight produces water that can be used to produce filtered drinkable water, or used for other things like air conditioning etc. Scientists envision that the HCPVT system could provide sustainable energy and fresh water to communities all around the world.

“Each 1cmX1cm chip can convert 200-250 watts, on average, over a typical eight-hour day in a sunny region. In the HCPVT system, instead of heating a building, the 90 degree Celsius water will pass through a porous membrane distillation system where it is then vaporized and desalinated. Such a system could provide 30-40 liters of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day, while still generating electricity with a more than 25 percent yield or two kilowatts hours per day. A large installation would provide enough water for a small town.” (2)

The heat is absorbed into hundreds of tiny solar cells called photovoltaic chips. These gather the energy and are then cooled by microchannled water, which is why they are safely able to concentrate such large amounts of solar energy.

According to Greenpeace, this technology can establish itself as the third largest player in the sustainable power generation industry. A study published in 2009 predicted that solar power could supply all the world’s energy needs, with minimal space. Greenpeace estimates that it would take only two percent of the Sahara Desert’s land area to supply the entire planet’s electricity needs.

A common problem with modern-day solar collectors is that they can only take in a minimal amount of energy. This means that useful heat is wasted, cannot be harnessed and is thrown away. This technology eliminates that problem. Solar panels taking in too much energy run the risk of melting themselves due to mass amounts of heat. This is changing, as we continue to explore more efficient ways of energy generation, it’s becoming clear that it’s time to do away with the old, and usher in the new, clean, green technologies.

This project is being funded by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation. They are supplying a three-year $2.4 million grant to develop the technology. Prototypes have been developed and are being tested.

This is another great technology that could provide power to the entire planet for free! Good reasons as to why we cannot implement this technology are non existent. At the end of the day, it seems that big oil corporations will do whatever they can to prevent change from happening, but the power of the people is greater. All we have to do is come together, create, and cooperate.

Below is a video of IBM research scientist Bruno Michel giving an overview of the project:

References:

(1) http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/concentrating-solar-power-2009/

(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/22/ibm-solar-collector-hcpvt_n_3130544.html

(3)  http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/22/ibm-alliance-solar-collector-concentrates-power-of-2k-suns/

Credits: CollectiveEvolution

Look at that beast. You could fit it in a couple back yards and it could power your neighborhood as well as some surrounding communities.

And the water? Le me put it this way. If you had a container that was a meter square, a touch over 3 feet on each side, it would be over 120 feet tall to hold one day’s worth of water. That’s a 12 story building.

That’s a lot of, very clean & drinkable, water.

And this bad boy can generate that every day.

Plus, the cool thing about water is that it’s a 100% renewable resource. It gets returned to the ground once we’re done using it or it evaporates. Either way it can be reused by the collectors over and over at no cost to the planet.

No more drought and plenty of power to make things work.

Now that sounds like good science to me.

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I would like to say that this blog looks at the best that society has to offer. I would like to say that but you know it’s not true. Still, there have been tentative forays. Like the time I sis considerable research and carefully wrote about debunking ancient aliens and UFO theories. It got a good response then and I occasionally see it cited in other blogs. That’s always a thrill. Even more fun is the new Morgan Freeman show on the Science Channel called Through the Wormhole With Morgan Freeman, because Through the Wormhole with Brad Pitt would be a stupid name with Morgan hosting, which looks at the possibility of humans meeting aliens. Much of interview echoes what I wrote 2 years ago so that’s kind of fun. He also wonders if religion is necessary for a society or if we’ll grow out of it. All real adult stuff. Not that we’re going to deal with any of that today, but I thought you should know that the possibility does exist.

Nope, today, we are going to talk about advances in science. Back on November 20, 2013, giddy scientists announced that they had successfully used toe jam and belly lint to make cheese. Because, as you know, there was a huge clamor from citizens of the world to make this happen. Naturally, cheeses made from the toe jam of celebrities was the next requested step.

No, I’m not kidding. Check out CNET commentator Anna Kooser’s comments.

If you could make a cheese from any famous person’s belly-button bacteria, who would you choose? I’m thinking of a nice cave-aged George Takei called Lieutenant Blue-lu. Perhaps Patrick Stewart would allow us to make a Captain Parmesan to go on a cheese plate alongside a Commander Raclette from Jonathan Frakes.

Well, at least she’s a Star Trek fan.

As any cheese eater knows you can’t just have the cheese. No sirree Bob, you need a nice salami too. We’ll get to crackers later. Now what kind of salami goes best with toe jam cheese? Why salami cloned from human cells of course.

I bet you knew that already.

Andres Jauregui writes about a lovely young company that has the money to spend to develop test tube meats.

Ever think Jennifer Lawrence looks good enough to eat? You’re not alone.

A start-up called BiteLabs has been floating the idea of making salami out of test-tube meat grown from celebrity tissue samples, and has provided flavor profiles to whet potential supporters’ appetites.

JLaw’s proposed flavor profile is described as having “notes of honey… spiced with orange zest and ginger,” whereas James Franco’s is “smoky, sexy, and smooth.” BiteLabs suggests pairing Kanye West’s bold, spicy test-tube steak with a strong bourbon.

Om nom nom. James Franco is one of BiteLabs’ unofficial antipasto poster-boys. 

Although the market for such products doesn’t exist, the company’s website encourages visitors to tweet their support for their favorite would-be celebrity meat product. Despite the Twitter campaign’s efforts, it doesn’t look like any celebrities have signed over their tissue samples or their endorsement.

It may sound creepy and unethical, but as one representative told PSFK, the aim of the project — promoting discussion about lab-grown meat — is “100 percent serious.”

In an email to The Huffington Post, one of the fledgling company’s founders said the idea is more of a conversation starter about the viability of lab-grown meat than it is a viable product — at least for now.

“Making celebrity meat a reality will all depend on our ability to generate public enthusiasm,” the representative — who would identify himself only as Martin (“due to the controversial nature of [the] product”) — said. “We want to prompt widespread discussion about bioethics, lab-grown meats, and celebrity culture.”

BiteLabs maintains that a cornerstone of that discussion is sustainability. Its website notes:

Currently, 70 percent of the world’s farmland (almost 30 percent of the entire earth’s surface) is used for raising animals. Meat production today is simply unsustainable: unless a radical change is made, the price of meat will eventually rise out of control. Lab grown meats are the future.

Fair enough. But even if people were to get onboard with eating lab-grown meat, the acceptance threshold for human-sourced lab meat is likely to be significantly higher. While Martin admitted that the idea of consuming human-sourced tissue would seem unappetizing, he insisted it isn’t cannibalism.

“Jennifer Lawrence: A Different Type of Hunger Game” 
“The lab-grown celebrity meat in our salamis would never have been part of a human being. We do acknowledge that thus [sic] sits in something of a grey area,” Martin wrote. “We’re glad to see that people are bringing this up. It’s all part of this bio-ethics discussion that we’re interested in starting.”

Martin also pointed out that the proposed salamis would be made from a mix of “celebrity” and in-vitro meat, which already exists. He said the products would provide “a new and exciting way to connect fans with their favorite celebrities” and give BiteLabs “an edge in the lab-grown meat market.”

But if the prospect of lab-grown meat still seems unappetizing, don’t worry. You can look forward to building your diet around this nutrient-rich fungus grown from ethanol byproducts.

Or, you know, eat your vegetables instead.

You can also eat Kanye West and Ellen DeGeneres.

There are so many off color jokes I could insert there, starting with Kanye’s outing as a gay fish, that I overloaded.

This gem is from the BiteLabs’ website.

Process
We start with top-quality ingredients, and time-honored recipes for the creation of fine cured meats. We mix celebrity and animal meats, grown in house through a proprietary culturing process, into curated salami blends. Starting with biopsied myoblast cells, we grow our healthy, rich, meats in Bite Labs’ own bioreactors.

Our process yields high-quality, luxury protein, in a sustainable manner that eliminates the environmental and ethical concerns associated with traditional livestock production.

Now here’s where it could get interesting. If they sampled vegetarians there would have been no animals harmed in the process. Does that mean that vegans would be able to eat these meats? After all, their only complaint has to do with the treatment of animals. Cloned food made from vegetarian humans would eliminate that problem.

So, with our toe jam cheese and cloned salamis, what kind of cracker would go best? Soylent Green ones of course.

And that completes your high protein trifecta courtesy of science.

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