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You are here: Home / 2015 / Archives for August 2015

Archives for August 2015

Apocalyptic Be-Bop

August 27, 2015 by

And when the end comes we'll all be wearing duct tape.
And when the end comes we’ll all be wearing duct tape.
It should give you pause for thought that, approximately, the percentage of Americans who think that Donald Trump would be a good president is the same as the number of people who think that the sun revolves around the Earth. It does not, in case you slept through class that day. Also, if you are on any social media site you’ve probably seen, as in been fucking inundated with, claims that you and all God’s chilluns can walk out tonight and see both Mars and the moon with the naked eye and that both will appear about the same size. In scientific terms, this is horseshit. Were Mars to get that close to us the gravitational effects would be terrifying. West coast of the US? Kiss it goodbye. You’ll be surfing in Reno. East coast? Welcome to deep sea fishing in West Virginia. Japan? We’ll miss you. United Kingdom? It was fun while it lasted. And so on around the world. This may also be a good moment to point out that the world is round. Who knows what other classes you slept through?

Okay, so the good news is that we still have seasons because we still orbit the sun and we’re not all going to die tonight.

Now the bad news.

Joe Fletcher reports that there are oil & tar sand pipelines under the Great Lakes that are aging rapidly and could cause the largest man-made disaster this side of Trump.

Beneath the Great Lakes, there is a ticking time bomb that threatens one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water. That time bomb comes in the form of a pipeline owned by the Canadian company Enbridge.

The pipeline known as “Line 5” is the subject of a new documentary produced by Motherboard/Vice. The documentary uncovers what led to the creation of what could turn out to be one of the world’s worst man-made environmental disasters.

Motherboard reports:

Motherboard correspondent Spencer Chumbley went to Michigan to investigate the situation, and the research is alarming. If just one of the pipelines ruptured, it would result in a spill of 1.5 million gallons of oil—and that’s if Enbridge, the company that owns them, is able to fix the pipeline immediately. UMich research scientist Dave Schwab says, “I can’t imagine another place in the Great Lakes where it’d be more devastating to have an oil spill.”

Enbridge, the company that runs the pipelines, insists they are safe. But Enbridge does not have a particularly inspiring record, with more than 800 spills between 1999 and 2010, totalling 6.8 million gallons of spilled oil. In 2010, its pipeline 6B ruptured in the Kalamazoo River. The nation’s focus was pulled by Deepwater Horizon at the time, but the Kalamazoo River spill became the nation’s biggest inland oil spill.

Just in case you’re curious, the odds of Enbridge being able to get to the rupture and fix it immediately, as surmised above, are pretty near zero. Also, here’s a fun fact, the pipeline was originally predicted to be safe for a maximum of fifty years ….. back in 1953. You can do the arithmetic.

Keep in mind that there aren’t 24/7 repair crews hovering in the Great Lakes just in case something happens. Enbridge would have to learn about the leak, find it, get equipment sent to the location and then pray like hell that the problem is no worse than a leak. Something like a cascading rupture (it starts in one place and keeps growing) could increase the damage by an order of magnitude.

Here’s the thing, if that bad boy blows the entire Midwest, that includes you Chicago, could be without drinking water for an extended period of time. The local aqua-culture, things like the fish we eat, would certainly be damaged beyond any immediate way to repair. None of that considers the effects that the toxins will have on shores and plant life.

Of course, in some parts of the U.S. God is going to kill everyone first before humans get the chance. Yeah, I’m talking to you Seattle. Kathryn Shulz, at the New Yorker, shares the happy thought that both Starbucks and Microsoft could be wiped out on the same day.

In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover* some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America. Roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. “This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.

Okay fine, tremors happen all the time. What’s so special about this beast? Well, in 1700 it shot a six mile wide wave that crossed five thousand miles of ocean in one day and wiped out a chunk of Japan. It also exterminated an entire Native population, say goodbye to Vancouver Island’s Pachena Bay people. As in all of them. The island they lived on sunk in minutes killing every man, woman and child.

So what will happen when this beast does its thing again. Possibly this year? Read on.

The first sign that the Cascadia earthquake has begun will be a compressional wave, radiating outward from the fault line. Compressional waves are fast-moving, high-frequency waves, audible to dogs and certain other animals but experienced by humans only as a sudden jolt. They are not very harmful, but they are potentially very useful, since they travel fast enough to be detected by sensors thirty to ninety seconds ahead of other seismic waves. That is enough time for earthquake early-warning systems, such as those in use throughout Japan, to automatically perform a variety of lifesaving functions: shutting down railways and power plants, opening elevators and firehouse doors, alerting hospitals to halt surgeries, and triggering alarms so that the general public can take cover. The Pacific Northwest has no early-warning system. When the Cascadia earthquake begins, there will be, instead, a cacophony of barking dogs and a long, suspended, what-was-that moment before the surface waves arrive. Surface waves are slower, lower-frequency waves that move the ground both up and down and side to side: the shaking, starting in earnest.

Soon after that shaking begins, the electrical grid will fail, likely everywhere west of the Cascades and possibly well beyond. If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness. In theory, those who are at home when it hits should be safest; it is easy and relatively inexpensive to seismically safeguard a private dwelling. But, lulled into nonchalance by their seemingly benign environment, most people in the Pacific Northwest have not done so. That nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass. Anything indoors and unsecured will lurch across the floor or come crashing down: bookshelves, lamps, computers, cannisters of flour in the pantry. Refrigerators will walk out of kitchens, unplugging themselves and toppling over. Water heaters will fall and smash interior gas lines. Houses that are not bolted to their foundations will slide off—or, rather, they will stay put, obeying inertia, while the foundations, together with the rest of the Northwest, jolt westward. Unmoored on the undulating ground, the homes will begin to collapse.

Across the region, other, larger structures will also start to fail. Until 1974, the state of Oregon had no seismic code, and few places in the Pacific Northwest had one appropriate to a magnitude-9.0 earthquake until 1994. The vast majority of buildings in the region were constructed before then. Ian Madin, who directs the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), estimates that seventy-five per cent of all structures in the state are not designed to withstand a major Cascadia quake. FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings—more than three thousand of them schools—will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake. So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers, and two-thirds of railways and airports; also, one-third of all fire stations, half of all police stations, and two-thirds of all hospitals.

Certain disasters stem from many small problems conspiring to cause one very large problem. For want of a nail, the war was lost; for fifteen independently insignificant errors, the jetliner was lost. Subduction-zone earthquakes operate on the opposite principle: one enormous problem causes many other enormous problems. The shaking from the Cascadia quake will set off landslides throughout the region—up to thirty thousand of them in Seattle alone, the city’s emergency-management office estimates. It will also induce a process called liquefaction, whereby seemingly solid ground starts behaving like a liquid, to the detriment of anything on top of it. Fifteen per cent of Seattle is built on liquefiable land, including seventeen day-care centers and the homes of some thirty-four thousand five hundred people. So is Oregon’s critical energy-infrastructure hub, a six-mile stretch of Portland through which flows ninety per cent of the state’s liquid fuel and which houses everything from electrical substations to natural-gas terminals. Together, the sloshing, sliding, and shaking will trigger fires, flooding, pipe failures, dam breaches, and hazardous-material spills. Any one of these second-order disasters could swamp the original earthquake in terms of cost, damage, or casualties—and one of them definitely will. Four to six minutes after the dogs start barking, the shaking will subside. For another few minutes, the region, upended, will continue to fall apart on its own. Then the wave will arrive, and the real destruction will begin.

Well, doesn’t that sound like fun?

Some predictions have the water reaching the Rockies but most stop the destruction at Route 5. That would kill almost half the state’s population and wipe out a third of it’s land.

Maybe not as much fun as you thought.

Keep in mind that, as Kathryn noted above, Oregon has no early warning system for earthquakes unlike Asia and the Hawaiian Islands. For all the overpriced coffee and annoying tech they may as well be living in thatch huts.

Speaking of which, according to the fun folks at NASA, sea levels around the world are rising so fast that we might want to think about moving entire populations.

Goodbye Miami.

A new NASA model is showing just how fast sea levels are rising around the world as a result of climate change, NBC News reported.

At a news conference Wednesday, NASA officials described a new computer visualization of sea level change incorporating data collected by satellites since 1992. The data reveals sea levels overall are rising faster than they were 50 years ago — more quickly than expected — and that the speed will likely increase in the future, primarily because of melting ice sheets.

“Sea level rise is one of the most visible signatures of our changing climate, and rising seas have profound impacts on our nation, our economy and all of humanity,” said Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division.

See, we don’t need Mars to lose its orbit to kill us all. We’re doing that just fine on our own.

Please keep in mind that Mr. Freilich isn’t talking about melting ice bergs or stuff like that. The theory of displacement would prevent anything from happening to us were that the case. But when the ice previously on land melts into the water then the water will rise, and that is exactly what is happening.

And if you don’t believe that just do what Trump did and load up on beachfront properties.


Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Let’s Make a Better World

August 20, 2015 by

Frolicking is fun!
Frolicking is fun!

Before we get started here today I thought I’d take a moment to point out how important communication is. The people who create The Flash comic book were so impressed by the success of the TV series that, as an homage, they changed the character’s costume to reflect the one on the show. Simultaneously, as it turns out, the creators of the TV show were so impressed with the direction the comic book was taking that they changed the costume of their character to match the comic book. Since both are well into production that state of affairs is going to remain for a bit. I’m sure that, sooner rather than later, someone will buy someone else a beer and they’ll pick one. But, for now, that’s kind of funny.

Since we’re on the subject of communication and since books provide an oasis in a desert of ignorance and conformity, let’s talk about a book you can drink.

No, I’m not drunk.

Thomas Mukoya has the story.

Teri Dankovich, from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, who has been leading the research on what she calls “the drinkable book” said in one trial, they tested a ditch contaminated with sewage that contained millions of bacteria. “Even with highly contaminated water sources like that one, we can achieve 99.9% purity with our silver-and copper-nanoparticle paper, bringing bacteria levels comparable to those of US drinking water,” she said.

Each page is embedded with silver and copper nano-particles. The pages contain instructions in English and the local language; water is poured and filtered through the pages themselves. One page can purify up to 100 liters (about 26 gallons) of water and one book can supply one person’s drinking water needs for about four years, the researchers said.

That is also good news for drought ravaged areas (HI CALIFORNIA!) and for areas where infrastructure is a rumor (HI MISSISSIPPI!). You may think I’m kidding but I’m not. There are growing sections of the United States which, for a variety of intertwined religious and political reasons, are drifting back into the Middle Ages. In Kentucky, for example, roads and access to medical care are so scant that supplies have to be regularly airlifted in to some villages or people will die.

Ironically, the reasons cited by the residents of these blighted areas for refusing to accept access to modern conveniences are EXACTLY the same as the ones spouted by ISIS and their ilk. Well, it’s ironic to us. I’m not sure they know what the word means.

And part of that growing ignorance is a return to hex signs and herbalists. Emma Smith, over at I Fucking Love Science, takes a look at the proven risks.

Many treatments for cancer and other diseases were originally derived from naturally-occurring substances. The chemotherapy drug Taxol, created from a compound found in yew leaves, is a prime example.

Conversely, some of the most poisonous substances in the world – ricin, cyanide, arsenic, hemlock, snake venoms and mercury to name but a few – are all entirely natural.

Furthermore, alternative ‘natural’ therapies are not guaranteed to be safe. Examples include a serious risk of cyanide poisoning from laetrile, permanent scarring or disfigurement from cancer salves, and bowel damage, blood salt imbalances or even life-threatening septicaemia caused by coffee enemas.

– A N D –

Cancer is a complex disease, and without access to detailed medical records – which are confidential – it is impossible to paint a fully accurate picture of an individual’s cancer journey and whether alternative therapies played any role in their recovery.

More worryingly, there are some cases where evidence points towards a murkier interpretation of ‘truth’ and fact.

For example, Australian blogger Belle Gibson built a large media profile and business around the story of having apparently ‘healed herself’ of a brain tumour through diet and lifestyle changes, but has now admitted that she never actually had cancer at all.

People pushing alternative therapies frequently wheel out stories from ‘survivors’ who are apparently alive due to their treatments, yet without providing solid evidence to prove it is true. This raises false hope and unrealistic expectations that there is a hidden miracle cure that can be unlocked for the right price, or by eating exactly the right foods.

Steve Jobs believed cancer could be cured using the methods above. Had he simply gotten traditional treatments the odds are greatly in favor of him still being alive. Instead he’s very dead and never going to get better.

This is not to say that all natural remedies are bad. They most certainly are not. This is to say they need to be rigorously tested before being foisted on the general public. One such wonderful example is a mixture of cow puke and garlic that can cure styes and severe skin infections.

Clare Wilson, over at New Scientist, fills us in.

The project was born when Freya Harrison, a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham, UK, got talking to Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon scholar. They decided to test a recipe from an Old English medical compendium called Bald’s Leechbook, housed in the British Library.

Some of the ingredients, such as copper from the brass vessel, kill bacteria grown in a dish – but it was unknown if they would work on a real infection or how they would combine.

Sourcing authentic ingredients was a major challenge, says Harrison. They had to hope for the best with the leeks and garlic because modern crop varieties are likely to be quite different to ancient ones – even those branded as heritage. For the wine they used an organic vintage from a historic English vineyard.

As “brass vessels” would be hard to sterilise – and expensive – they used glass bottles with squares of brass sheet immersed in the mixture. Bullocks gall was easy, though, as cow’s bile salts are sold as a supplement for people who have had their gall bladders removed.

After nine days of stewing, the potion had killed all the soil bacteria introduced by the leek and garlic. “It was self-sterilising,” says Harrison. “That was the first inkling that this crazy idea just might have some use.”

A side effect was that it made the lab smell of garlic. “It was not unpleasant,” says Harrison. “It’s all edible stuff. Everyone thought we were making lunch.”

The potion was tested on scraps of skin taken from mice infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is an antibiotic-resistant version of the bacteria that causes styes, more commonly known as the hospital superbug MRSA. The potion killed 90 per cent of the bacteria. Vancomycin, the antibiotic generally used for MRSA, killed about the same proportion when it was added to the skin scraps.

You’ll note that she mentions “sourcing the ingredients.” That’s because foods that existed 100 or 200 years ago are now almost all gone forever. As Megan Kelly reported, a variety of economic and aesthetic reasons have led to the demise of thousands of fruits and vegetables.

Some were too big or small for commercial sale so farmers stopped growing them.

Still, back in May of this year, I wrote about a tree that can grow 40 or more types of fruit at once. And it can do so with just a single sapling from a forgotten plant. There are many people who keep one form or another on their home properties (actual heirloom fruits) and scientists have been hunting them down. It’s not Frankenfood, it’s organic splicing and it’s saving many fruits you otherwise would have never been allowed to taste.

And because it’s organic – really, all you need is a sharp knife, tape, access to a variety of saplings and a lot of patience – this technique can be used to diversify the fruit supply in blighted regions. Also, as a bonus, different fruits bloom at different times so the tree produces year round. Extra bonus? One tree uses far less water than an orchard and can still feed quite a few people.

Okay, I’m boring you. You need your share of excitement or you’ll wander off to the midget porn carnival on Vimeo. Okay, I understand.

So here’s an article from Caroline Reid about a robot drone that shoots trees into the ground.

BioCarbon Engineering, the brainchild of former NASA engineer Lauren Fletcher, has proposed a solution: Industrial reforestation with robot drones. Could reforestation get any more awesome?

The drones would plant an estimated 1 billion trees a year, saving people from having to do it by hand. This would make reforestation quicker and cheaper. However, Fletcher doesn’t say that this new method of reforestation is necessarily better than planting trees by hand, just cheaper. If put into full effect, the drone method of planting trees could cut the price of traditional practices down to 15% of the original cost.

The drones won’t indiscriminately fire seeds anywhere they happen to fly over. Instead, the machines will first gather terrain data and information on the local fauna, reporting back on the region’s “restoration potential.”

When the restoration potential is approved, and the region is ready to support new seeds, a planting route is mapped for the drones to follow. The drones then fire the ground with germinated seed pellets at a rate of 10 seeds per minute.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that deforestation is so bad on our planet that we need a method to plant a billion trees a year quickly. Another problem is that old growth trees, like Oak and Redwood, take too long to grow so they are being eliminated in favor of faster growing trees like birch and pine.

Another problem facing us, as noted above, is drought. One solution – that works but creates mountains fo dry salt which pollutes the ground – is desalination. Tony Perry, from the LA Times, says those worries may be a thing of the past.

Thousands of desalination and water recycling plants have been built around the world, with some of the biggest in the Middle East, North Africa and the Caribbean. The Carlsbad plant, set to begin operation by Thanksgiving, is making its debut just as drought has become a crisis across California and the West.

For Poseidon Water, the Boston company building the plant — and for the international desalination industry — it presents an opportunity to try to disprove the criticism that dogs such projects: that they are exorbitantly expensive, hog energy and damage the environment.

“Carlsbad is going to change the way we see water in California for decades,” said Peter MacLaggan, a Poseidon Water vice president. “It’s not a silver bullet to solve all our water problems, but it’s going to be another tool in the toolbox.”

Though it might be lost on some of this summer’s convention-goers, San Diego has a long history with desalination.

The region took it as a clarion call when, in 1961, President Kennedy declared: “If we could ever, competitively, at a cheap rate, get fresh water from saltwater that would be in the long-range interests of humanity [and] really dwarf any other scientific accomplishments.”

The federal government built a plant for the Navy on Point Loma. (It was dismantled in 1964 and taken to the Guantanamo Bay naval base when Fidel Castro threatened to cut off its water supply. It operated well into the 1980s.)

General Atomics in La Jolla did pioneering work on developing the membrane technology that cleans salt and other impurities from seawater through a process called reverse osmosis. One of the pioneers, Don Bray, spun off his own company.

It was the beginning of making San Diego County what industry veteran Doug Eisberg calls “the Silicon Valley of desalination.” Dozens of companies employ 3,000 workers to provide the delicate, complex membranes needed for the world’s plants that specialize in desalination and water reuse.

Of course if the water’s too polluted in the first place none of this matters. Which is why Renee Lewis over at Al Jazeera is so excited to tell about a new way to clean up, literally, oceans’ worth of trash.

The world’s first system designed to rid the oceans of plastic pollution will be deployed near Japan in 2016, with the aim of eventually capturing half of the plastic found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a large concentration of marine debris located between Hawaii and California.

Boyan Slat, the 20-year-old Dutch CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, an organization dedicated to cleaning the world’s oceans, designed the system dubbed The Ocean Cleanup Array.

“I’ve always been interested in technology, and I was launching rockets at 12 years old,” Slat said. “Eventually I started studying aerospace engineering, but I dropped out to try to develop this ocean clean up idea.”

He said his inspiration for the organization came after a diving holiday in Greece where he realized he was coming across more plastic bags than fish.

“I wondered, ‘Why can’t we clean this up?’” Slat said.

Plastic debris, most of it in the form of tiny beads known as microplastics, can be found on up to 88 percent of the surface of all five oceans, according to a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Because of swirling ocean currents, known as gyres, this plastic pollution has become concentrated in certain areas.

In other cases, ocean currents send plastic pollution toward certain islands or coastal areas in greater concentration than others. One such area is the Japanese island of Tsushima.

“The reason we picked that location is because the current and wave conditions are very favorable for our tests, and there really is a lot of plastic,” Slat said. “The island where we performed the test sees 30,000 cubic meters of trash wash ashore per year.”

30,000 cubic meters is over 1,000,000 cubic feet. Or, to simplify, over 333,333 feet wide (i.e., 3,333 or so football fields) and the same amount long and high.

That’s a lot of fucking trash and that’s just one island. Where does all that shit come from? Cruise ships, airliners, and you.

All is not lost. 3D printers are being modified to use natural materials like dirt and trash to create modern living facilities. I mean the kind wherein you can have electric and plumbing, not just some glorified Adobe structure. Wind farms are moving to using turbine styled systems instead of blades so they take up less space, can create more power, and don’t kill birds. Several wind collectors also can collect water from the air and save it into cisterns which people can easily access. In impoverished parts of South America these are already in use. Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) trains and vehicles are now faster, safer, and cheaper to operate than the traditional rail system we have here. That means that commerce and travel are both cheaper in areas where infrastructure has been updated.

In other words it can be done, it can be beneficial and it doesn’t require hex signs.

If you want to help take a moment to talk quietly, and without recrimination, to those who eschew progress and explain to them that the world is progressing anyway. And it is doing so for the better. All of this means that people can be healthier, live longer and more productive lives and not be a drain on others. Those are all good things.

It all starts with roads and doctors but it does have to get started soon or this country will be no better than a third world country of 20 years ago. I specify since there are now countries in Africa and Asia that are surpassing us in many ways.

NATURE ZONES NUDIST MUSIC VIDEO from TON DOU on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Stuff You Should Know

August 20, 2015 by

Don't be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Science Party!
Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and join the Science Party!

There are some things many of us take for granted. Using the internet comes to mind. Yet, for a shocking number of people this simple task eludes them. What happens mostly is that they get duped into believing something that is patently false or they see their hard earned money go somewhere other than where they need it to be. So, in an effort to help folks out a little bit here today, I’m going to share some facts. I covered some of this back in January, but it bears repeating and a little elucidation probably wouldn’t hurt. Back in November of 2011 I tried to explain the difference between a hunch and a fact. Based on some of the emails I’ve been getting it’s worth popping an updated version of that little bon mot up here again.

Here’s how science works, for those of you who are new to this.

First, you have a hunch. That’s just an idea, nothing more. It could be something you noticed or something that came to you in a dream. No matter where it comes from it’s vague.

Second, you have a hypothesis, this is your hunch backed up by enough data to make it interesting. You now have enough examples of your hunch to allow others to examine and measure it to see if it holds true.

Third you have a theory. This is a hypothesis that now has enough facts to verify it that scientists can use it as a template for further research. The running average is around 95% of observed facts fit your hypothesis. That does not mean that it is writ in stone. Evolution, for example, is a theory. It allows for science to learn more while providing a solid, verified, framework for others to work from.

If, after a long time and tons of research, the theory no longer needs to change, it becomes a fact.

First, let’s start with some safe internet tips.

If the subject or the headline ends in a question mark, it’s click bait and the content will range from useless to harmful.
i.e., Did Obama Have Sex with a Lizard? Has Your Credit Card Been Hacked? Is your Grandma a Porn Star?
Anything “they” don’t want you to see.
The American Medical Association Doesn’t Want you to see this Foolproof Diet! These are always scare tactics designed to get you to sign up for even scarier, fact deprived, newsletters. They also promote “cures” that can harm or kill you or investment scams that prey on your fears (e.g., Save Your Guns by Sending us Money!).
Anything that promises a “gift card” or claims that “your gift card” is about to expire.
The former are just links to surveys that can cost you a fuck ton of money (that’s a lot) and the latter are just a way to get your personal info.
Anything from Dr. Oz or Fox News.
The former is medically specious and can harm or kill you and the latter doesn’t send out unsolicited emails.
Anything that promises you sex with a “hot, young” anyone is a scam.
I’m sorry to have to tell you that.

Start there, and mix in some common sense, and the internet can be a safe and enjoyable experience.

Another thing that seems to be popular (again – sigh) are flying cars.

THEY’RE AVAILABLE NOW!!!

No they’re not. Back in 2013 I wrote about Moller International and their flying cars. They have three. None are in production. There are seven other companies that also have some version of a flying car at some stage of development. None have been approved, in any country, for commercial sale or use. The latest, the TFX, is the first to claim that you don’t need to know how to fly since a computer will do that part for you. You don’t need to be a scientist to see all the red flags that raises. Something that can top 200 mph and travel up to 500 miles without guidance could be great. It could also be a nightmare should anything happen and the “pilot” has no idea how to deal with it.

I wrote a humorous Sci-Fi story about that years ago but no one would be laughing if one of those bad boys came screaming out of the sky into a school or shopping mall.

Now, let’s have some fun with facts.

  1. Bigfoot doesn’t exist. I covered this extensively back in 2012 but I’ll give you a simple question to use on anyone who thinks otherwise; “Where is the shit?” An animal that big eats, eating creates feces, feces is detectable. Since you’d need at least 1,000 of them to keep the species alive that’s a lot of missing shit. If you want a bunch more reasons why it doesn’t exist just click the link.
  2. Atlantis has been found. Quit searching for it. It’s in Spain and there are no aliens.
  3. Yetis have been found. You can keep searching for them. They have DNA evidence of a species of ancient bear that survived in the remote mountains of the Himalayas. Now they need a body. Hey, it’ll give you something to do.
  4. Vaccines don’t cause autism. They never have and never will. People who don’t believe that are either ignorant or frightened. Although the former state usually leads to the latter so they could be both.
  5. UFOs don’t exist. Now, let’s be VERY clear here; I am not saying that there isn’t non-human life in the universe. I strongly believe there is. But one quick look at a map of our galaxy shows that we’re in the boondocks. Not exactly a high point of any excursion. Furthermore, the common reasons given for coming here, grab our precious resources is the most popular, fall apart if you know anything about space. Our solar system alone has plenty of water and minerals. Anyone visiting could take what they need without ever coming near us. It appears that this is common in most systems we’ve discovered so there’s no need to travel beyond research. And if they wanted to get to know us they could do much better than eviscerating cows. For a boat load of more reasons click here and have fun.
  6. Sexbots are real! Hey, I had to give you some good news. With the integration of Siri-like technology you should soon see interactive Sexbots in a market near you. As anyone who’s seen the Stepford Wives can attest, absolutely nothing can go wrong there.

Of course, all this may become moot as other animals appear to be evolving and may be primed to replace us. No, this isn’t some weird, late night, bit of bad TV. It’s that evolution thingie you may have heard about.

Carolyn Gregorie reports that apes appear to be able to develop human-like speech.

Koko’s (ED Note: the gorilla who learned sign language) behavior was voluntary, and appears to be the result of living with humans throughout her life.

This was surprising, since scientists had generally believed apes were incapable of controlling their vocalizations or their breathing. Documented gorilla vocalizations were limited to a set of calls related to relaying information about the environment (such as the presence of food or predators) or the apes’ emotional states.

While Koko’s behavior clearly transcends these simple calls, that doesn’t mean that other gorillas aren’t also capable of what she’s achieved.

“Presumably, she is no more gifted than other gorillas,” Perlman said in a statement. “The difference is just her environmental circumstances. You obviously don’t see things like this in wild populations.”

The Beginning Of Language

The findings have some fascinating implications for our understanding of the evolution of language.

Most theories of language evolution have held that spoken language is unique to humans, developing as the human line evolved after splitting off from chimpanzees roughly 7 million years ago. But the whole picture may be more complicated than that, and it’s distinctly possible that the seeds of spoken language go much further back than we’ve thought.

The foundation for human speech may have been in place at least 10 million years ago, the time of our last common ancestor with gorillas, according to researchers.

Many simians already know how to use basic tools and one species has been known to domesticate wolves. That would be the same evolutionary route your ancestors took to wipe out Neanderthals and all other proto-humans.

If you click on the “evolution thingie” link above you’ll also find out that squirrels have learned how to kill the power grids for entire cities and polar bears are developing rudimentary refrigeration for storing food.

Look, evolution is continuing to happen all around us no matter what you believe. You can either learn to adapt and live with that fact or end up in a museum just like the Neanderthals.

The choice is yours.

Or, you can get a jump on things and just dump your mind into a computer and hope that it’s not running Windows 98.

George Dvorsky at iO9 tells you how.

We are not just our brains. Conscious awareness arises from more than just raw calculations. As physical creatures who emerged from a material world, it’s our brains that allow us to survey and navigate through it; bodies are the fundamental medium for perception and action. Without an environment — along with the ability to perceive and work within it — there can be no subjective awareness. Brains need bodies, whether that brain resides in a vertebrate, a robot, or in future, an uploaded mind.

In the case of an uploaded mind, however, the body doesn’t have to be real. It just needs to be an emulation of one. Or more specifically, it needs to be a virtual body that confers all the critical functions of a corporeal body such that an uploaded or emulated mind can function optimally within its given virtual environment. It’s an open question as to whether or not uploading is possible, but if it is, the potential benefits are many.

The late Frederick Pohl postulated that organic life was only a stepping stone to a higher state of being. Specifically, digital.

In other words, go ahead, grab a sexbot, upload your mind and let the fucking monkeys have the planet.

SciFiDreamgirls Fembot Movie Teaser: The Interview from Sssh.com Original Films on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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We Still Need to Talk

August 6, 2015 by

Really, it’s true, we don’t have to yell.
This post appeared on January 12, 2013, a month after Sandy Hook happened. I would later find out that a very good friend lost a niece that day. The pictures from her funeral, her family had a private wake with an open casket, were horrifying and sad. The Friday after this came out I did my regular radio show and this was the topic. It was still the topic everywhere as both sides tried to spin this tragedy into their own personal and political gain. I mentioned then that I had been on a right wing blog and, once extremists from both sides (anyone who called anyone else a Libtard or a Teabagger) were removed, the exchange was interesting. The conversation was private and the admins, both NRA members, kept a tight reign on things. While we clearly did not see eye to eye on many topics we did agree on some.

  • Guns should be subject to similar licensing limitations as cars, etc.
  • Background checks for criminal and mental health issues should be mandatory but conducted within a limited time frame (we settled on a week as a rough start).
  • Gun owners should carry liability insurance for every gun they own. Bulk plans for hoarders should be made available to keep prices reasonable.

That’s it. The entire six hour conversation came up with those three points. Still it was, and is, a hell of a lot more than any other discussion I’ve seen or heard.

A couple of weeks later I was able to meet the admins and some others in a bar and we continued our conversation. No new ground was discovered but I enjoyed their company. Still do when I get the chance.

Now, to be open about all of this, I am not anti-gun. I hunted as a kid and even got an eight point buck when I was ten. Yes, I got lucky as hell and, yes, we ate it. When I was a kid in the 60’s the NRA was all about gun safety. My grandfather made me attend meetings and learn how to handle and care for rifles. Outside of legitimate law enforcement no one other than bank robbers and crazy people wanted hand guns back then.

Guns were not toys or penis substitutes. They were there to protect your home and provide food. Not always in that order.

I spoke to one of the gentlemen from the blog last night and he bemoaned the fact that the inmates had taken over the asylum. That the idiots made things horrid for honest, careful, gun owners such as himself. I would add that that assessment should include idiots from both sides of the debate. Name calling and fear based bloviating have no place in this discussion. People are dying at an astounding pace and something needs to be done.

Screaming “Neener! Neener! Neener!” really isn’t working.

The vast majority of Americans, polls average between 50% and 70% depending on the questions and phrasing, think some limitations should be put on gun ownership.

While I have no idea if anyone is willing to really try and fix this problem, I figured re-posting this was worth a shot. If nothing else it will give everyone an accurate history of the problem.

Stay safe out there.

*************************

I think it’s time we stop ignoring the 800lb angry transvestite in the room. And I use that analogy purposefully. There is a lot of unnecessary drama going on here right now. But if we’re going to talk, then we must talk honestly and openly. And if we are going to accomplish anything with gun control, we must also talk rationally. And if we’re going to talk rationally we will need some history. Nothing erupts wholly new upon us. It came from somewhere. Popular opinions on guns are just another example. So, let’s bust out our propeller beanies and take a trip in our time machine back to 1871. That was the year that writer and editor William Conant Church and General George Wood Wingate founded the National Rifle Association. The express purpose of the association was to teach U.S. troops proper firearm safety and accuracy. Considering that during the Civil War the average soldier expended about 100 rounds per targeted hit this was a good idea. Proving that it worked the U.S. Rifle team won the Anglo-American championship (white folks only ya’ll) in 1874 and showed how much progress had been made in a very short amount of time. Although completely unintentional, the exclusionary nature of that event foreshadowed what would become a theme for the NRA.

While the NRA was still developing, cities and towns across the U.S. enacted strict gun control laws. Tombstone Arizona? Mecca of the wild wild west? You had to turn your guns in when you hit the border. The same was true all over the country. No one cared too much if you came to town, got hammered and into a fight. They just saw no reason to be picking up dead bodies all the time.

Flash forward to 1934. The U.S. Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the National Firearms Act. It outlawed the sale or possession of fully automatic weapons, short barreled rifles (a/k/a sawed off shot guns) and was heavily supported by the NRA. The idea behind the law was to stop, or at least slow, the gang wars that were plaguing our cities.

Sound familiar?

At the time NRA president Karl Frederick said “(I do) not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

All the way through the 60’s the NRA was the voice of reason when it came to firearms. They promoted shooting matches, they taught gun safety and they supported laws that kept military grade firepower off the streets. When I was a kid my grandfather dragged me to one of those classes before I could even touch a BB gun. I thought it is was totally lame when I got there and thought it was the coolest thing in the world when I was done. It was all about safety and fun. As a 6 year old I could certainly understand the latter. The fact that the former was required for the latter bothered me not one whit. There were rules to everything, even hop-scotch.

As late as 1968 the NRA actively supported, and helped draft, the Gun Control Act of 1968.

So what happened?

Black people happened.

In the 1970’s an organization called The Black Panthers advocated arming everyone. Tired of what they saw as police oppression in poor neighborhoods and the lack of protection of their basic rights, they decided to arm themselves under the 2nd Amendment.

Gosh, that dystopian view seems vaguely familiar.

The NRA, already almost exclusively white, reacted badly. At a time when calm discussions and rational behavior were needed they threw up their hands and ran around the country screaming “Negroes! Negroes! Oh sweet lawzy save us from the scary Negroes!”

This was not as helpful as it might have seemed.

To be fair change scares the hell of of almost everyone and the country was changing. Rapidly. President Kennedy, Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X had all been assassinated. The civil rights movement had made tremendous strides and many whites felt as though their futures had been compromised. Add in the anti-war movement, the free love movement and something had to give.

Unfortunately that “something” was civil discourse.

It was easy enough for the NRA to skew to the right. Most of their members were rural residents in the first place. By the late-70’s, thanks to the efforts of a man named Harlon Carter (a former border guard who had murdered a teenage Latino), the NRA we know today was in full swing. By 1980 it tossed off any semblance of impartiality and actively endorsed Ronald Reagan for president.

Ironically Reagan had voted for the Mulford Act, which was designed to disarm the Black Panthers and to prevent average citizens from carrying weapons in public. By the time he ran for president, however, he was a staunch advocate for gun freedoms.

I’m sure it was a decision he came to based on long hours of self reflection and had nothing to do with the new-found source of giant bags of campaign cash.

Anyway, the stage was set for what we have today. The NRA has backed itself into a corner. Any logical look at gun control or public safety is contrary to their stated goals of helping manufacturers sell as many guns as possible. The fact that people are more likely to kill themselves than any alleged burglar is background noise to them. The fact that they have helped create a society with the highest firearm related murder rate in the world is just noise that must be ignored.

And, just so we are all clear here when the modern NRA blames video games, the number one video game since 1998 has been Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

You can almost hear the blood can’t you?

Oy.

And, another video game related note, last year saw the release of some of the most violent video games in history and sales were down across the board. In other words, people ain’t buying it and they haven’t been for a while.

Of course, finding that out required research and patience, two more things the modern NRA is against.

Lastly, the modern NRA, realizing it has a problem, has resorted to faking quotes and attributing them to Hitler.

There is an old law on the internet. It was coined by Mike Godwin in 1990:

In short, in a heated argument, eventually someone will bring up the Nazi’s, Hitler, etc, and the moment they do, the argument is over because the side that does it has just lost it. This is because, no matter how bad the other side is, nothing can compare to the systematic, methodical and calculated genocide perpetrated by the Nazi’s in their goals for racial purity.
Absolutely nothing.
******************
(edited for space)
******************
This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!

This is of course complete bunk. Hitler never said such a thing. Germany had enacted tough gun control laws in 1928, years before the Nazi rise to power. Instead of banning guns, Hitler instead expanded gun ownership for German citizens (he’d stripped the citizenship of undesirables already) to levels which one cannot even get inside of the United States. The 1938 German Weapons Act actually relaxed all gun ownership restrictions save on pistols. A German citizen could own a fully automatic weapon complete with grenade launcher, legally, under Nazi control.

I know, facts suck. They’re no fun at all when you’re trying to terrify people.

But they must be addressed. Facts are not rumors or hunches or debatable. They simply are and, as such, must be respected.

So let’s start with these facts and then use our indoor voices.

Normally I put a cool video here. I’m not sure that’s appropriate today.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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