Ron Paul gained the attention of millions of Americans and set records for fund raising. He says we need to dismantle this insolvent corrupt mess of our government, and revitalize ourselves back to a Republic of, by, and for We, the People. We know that, but for many reasons Ron Paul won’t take us there. He’s been deleted.

As Orwell rolls over in his grave, we’ve forgotten how to make what we believe. Whether leaders such as Ron Paul or 1,000s of others try to remind us, we’ve forgotten how to make our world.

Yes, there are leaders outside of Washington and outside of major media that point to better culture and greater choices, but we’ve forgotten how to join together, how to define our needs, and how to insist.

Another election will take us to a few more years. I’d prefer we jump to an entirely new era.

It’s Time for Progressives to Grow Up

It’s painfully clear,

“we do not lack brilliant voices, great stories, or mounting evidence of illicit forces run wild. What we do lack is a coherent vision of what we face and ways to quickly communicate it to the public with galvanizing power.

Our challenges are ignorance, fear, censorship, propaganda and an increasingly lethal merger of authoritarian corporate values and repressive military force.

Despite our unprecedented array of talents, truths and new tech resources, conditions continue to worsen at a truly surreal rate. Many say our democracy will not survive the decade. Others have difficulty recognizing it right now.

We only know it’s time for the best & brightest working against this coup to come together now and urgently explore what can and must be done.”

Connie Madden, former journalist and programmer at KSAN Radio, attended the 40th Anniversary Reunion of the Summer of Love:

Other writers take other tacks on Summer of Love. Joel Selvin in the San Francisco Chron seemed to think it was about music and nostalgia, checking each other out and trying to be 20 something again.

I thought it was remarkable how little many had aged, though there was that weight -gain thing; some said it was Summer of Lovehandles!

For me, it was a grand gathering of so many tribes I couldn’t name them, so diverse and yet all familiar.

“Marxists of the Groucho variety“

Connie reminds us of Scoop Niskar who signed off with KSAN’s famous last words, “Remember, if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.”

The head of the world’s biggest food and beverage company warns:

“If as predicted we look to use biofuels to satisfy 20 percent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat,” Nestle’s chairman and chief executive Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said.

“To grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible.”

From the New York Times, What Created This Monster?

The investment community has morphed into something beyond banks and something beyond regulation.

We call it the shadow banking system.

It is the private trading of complex instruments that lurk in the financial shadows that worries regulators and Wall Street and that have created stresses in the broader economy.

…
In the past decade, there has been an explosion in complex derivative instruments, such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, which were intended primarily to transfer risk.

These products are virtually hidden from investors, analysts and regulators, even though they have emerged as one of Wall Street’s most outsized profit engines. They don’t trade openly on public exchanges, and financial services firms disclose few details about them.

Phillip Blond comments at the Independent on today’s “asset insolvency crisis brought about by massive debt leverage.”

The Western world is in an economic crisis similar in scale to the oil shock of 1973. What we are seeing is nothing less than the unravelling of neo-liberalism – the dominant economic and ideological model of the last 30 years. [I think he's saying deregulation and laissez-faire government has flaws!]

The disintegration of Anglo-Saxon-inspired markets has come about largely because of the confluence of two tendencies of the “free market”: speculation and monopoly capitalism.

Contrary to received opinion, free markets – unless subject to civil regulation, asset distribution and persistent intervention – always tend to monopoly.

Similarly, there is nothing inherently efficient about free markets – they do not of themselves promote sound investment or wise management.

Rather, when markets are conceived wholly in terms of price and return, and when asset wealth and the leverage that this provides becomes as concentrated as it was in the 19th century (which is a scenario we are approaching), then markets encourage nothing other than gambling masking itself as sound investment.

…
This incalculable level of speculation is abetted by the huge concentration of wealth that has occurred since 1973. Why?

Because if markets tend to monopoly then smaller groups of people control larger amounts of assets. The latest figures demonstrate this admirably: the richest 10 per cent of the UK population increased their share of the nation’s marketable wealth (excluding housing) from 57 per cent in 1976 to 71 per cent in 2003. Over the same period, the speculative capital that could be deployed or invested by the bottom 50 per cent of the British population fell from 12 per cent to just 1 per cent. Indeed, the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population, on current government figures, now control more than a third of all the marketable wealth – and this ignores the vast sums held in offshore tax havens.

The New Economics Foundation has shown that global growth has not aided the poor. In the 1980s, for every $100 of world growth, the poorest 20 per cent received $2.20; by 2001, they received only 60 cents. Clearly neo-liberal growth disproportionately benefits the rich and further impoverishes the poor.

Real wage increases in the top 13 countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have been below the rate of inflation since about 1970 – a situation compounded in Britain as the measure of inflation massively underestimates the real cost of living.

A weakness of a standing army is it will acculturate itself to conflict, framing humanity as the dominant or the defeated, a militian’s choice.

Vietnam Inc.

To expect foreigners to be able to tune into this complexly structured existence, even when afforded every encouragement, is to be highly optimistic, especially in the case of the Americans whose alienation as a group from the Vietnamese is extreme; but, when the society as a whole is actively using every means possible to prevent its happening, the expectation is wildly unrealistic.

So, what the previous American administration should have asked itself is, whether or not to become involved in revolutionising (and simultaneously being exploited by) a people with whom it could not communicate: whether or not Americans should attempt to win the hearts and minds of a people who never reveal their desires or aspirations: whether or not it would be feasible to co-operate with a people who have a language that is impossible to speak and difficult to read even with the aid of a dictionary or phrase book . . . To put it another way, was it fair to send American boys to a country where they have twenty-five different ways of pronouncing the word “Ma”?

Damn donkey’d criminals that have lifted rage on us. Find them. Kill them if it saves our children. But see humanity as greater, cultivate our aspirations, or become too weak to defend us.

The OilDrum blog summarized the mess of shortsighted and pork barrel fuel policies and calls it a vicious circle of rising prices:

“…surging energy prices are a big component of surging inflation, but with the ethanol mandates we are throwing jet fuel on an already raging fire.”

Who’s hurting?

1. The ethanol producer
2. The rancher and farmer
3. The farmland buyer
4. The environment
5. Anyone who eats

From the comments at Science blog: Do Attractive Women Want It All?

Men, if you thought dating was complicated before, I think the good people at the University of Texas have just raised the bar.

Researchers have identified four categories of characteristics women seek in a partner:

1. good genes, reflected in desirable physical traits,
2. resources,
3. the desire to have children and good parenting skills, and
4. loyalty and devotion.

And they found that “women gauge what they can get based on what they got”; that attractive women usually are going for the whole package of looks, bucks, skills and faithfulness.

The team developed a new term for women wanting it all. They call it the “mate value calibration adaptation”. Woot!

Judicial Watch is suing Bush to learn why top officials were placed on antibiotics the day of the September 11 attacks.

In October 2001, press reports revealed that White House staff had been on a regimen of the powerful antibiotic Cipro since the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Judicial Watch is aggressively pursuing the disclosure of the facts and the decision for White House staff, and President Bush as well, to begin taking Cipro nearly a month before anthrax was detected on Capitol Hill.

The American people deserve a full accounting from the Bush administration, the FBI , and other agencies concerning the anthrax attacks.

Seth Godin says, “You can’t have a bad table.”

He’s talking about being shuffled to a cramped and noisy table at a restaurant.

He says, “…you need to figure out how to improve your lesser offerings. Maybe the table in the worst location comes with a special menu or a special wine list or even a visit from the chef. Maybe the worst table, for some people, becomes the best table because of the way you treat people when they sit there…

Treat different people differently. But don’t treat anyone worse.”

He’s talking about paying attention to fairness.

Here’s a link to science pic awards, equinox synapse yoga, y’know, brain food:

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/wia/gallery.html

Frank Paynter asks, “Who is best qualified to take a 3AM phone call?” He answers, “No one is.”

Frank points to Ronni Bennett’s clear list of issues the candidates must address. I agree these are credible, simple demands any citizen will be proud to insist from every candidate and all our government.

• the Constitution has been trashed and must be restored

• the U.S. has supported and committed torture and it must end
• the economy has been wrecked by the power elite in both government and corporate America and that greed will stop, regulations will be enforced
• the Iraq War has been a disaster and we need a way out while acknowledging that we bear responsibility for bombing that country back to Ur
• universal healthcare is a human right and we’ll find a way to provide it
• our infrastructure – bridges, roads, water, sewer systems – will be fixed
• No Child Left Behind will be canceled and we’ll figure out how to improve our schools
• unwarranted searches and surveillance of citizens will stop
• there will be no more fooling around about the environment
• a fair solution will be found for immigration
• government ethics legislation will have real teeth
• separation of church and state will be restored
• every last political hack (thousands of them) appointed by the Bush administration to government agencies will be fired, replaced with non-partisan competents
• earmarks will disappear entirely from legislation – let them be properly legislated
• the wealthy elite have had it their way long enough, reaping collective trillions of dollars on the backs of the middle and lower classes and now it is their turn to pay it back

Bravo!

In a sea of challenges and proposals about energy, why do we seem to neglect the hot earth under our feet?

For instance, the geothermal energy potential in western Canada exceeds all of Canada’s oil and gas reserves.

You can say Canada’s geothermal potential has never been developed.

An event at the University of Calgary March 28th, 2008 will discuss hydro-geological power plants. Organizers are hoping this meeting might restart policies that have been asleep since the 1980s.

In the 1970s, the DoD looked at special steels for use in drill bits that could endure more than 400°C for geothermal wells as ‘shallow’ as 35-40,000 feet where temperatures exceed 260°C.

Sandia Labs and other hi-tech researchers are serious about deep drilling. In a proposal from Harvard, down-hole lasers might melt rock in pulses of “subsurface explosive boiling”.

The deepest hole ever created lies beneath this tower on a thinly-crusted sub-Arctic shelf near Finland.

From 1962 until 1994, Russia drilled Kolskaya SG-3, the Kola Peninsula Superdeep Borehole [wiki] to 12km / 7.6miles, but after 30 years they didn’t reach the hot magma at 30 miles deep. The softer heated rock could not be penetrated by a rotating steel drill bit because the plastic rock flowed closed before it could be chilled with refrigerants!

Incidentally, maybe the Bible correctly states that water can indeed come from rock because the Russians found water-filled crystalline rocks on their way down.

Since this was too deep for free water to reach, researchers think they were formed when incredible pressure squeezed hydrogen and oxygen atoms out of rocks due to the incredible pressure – trapped by layers of impermeable rocks above it.

And of course the Soviet government were using nuclear bombs for possible access to deep resources, but this abstract from 1984 only indicates bombs were used to spread a seismic signal as far as 3,000 miles!

“A large geophysical program of exploration that uses deep seismic sounding has been under way in the Soviet Union for decades. Underground nuclear explosives have been used as strong seismic sources since 1971. By Soviet account, deep seismic sounding has been instrumental in confirming the existence of numerous sedimentary structures containing oil and gas fields in western and eastern Siberia.”

Generally, only mega-corporations such as Petrobras, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch/Shell, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco are investing in ultra-deep research and development, almost entirely for oil and gas under 10,000 feet of water. Energy ‘interests’ spent $388 million lobbying Congress in 2003, the year Tom DeLay (R-Texas) arranged for zero royalties if wells are started under water that’s merely 700 feet deep!!

A 1989 article at BusinessNet offers several pages of synopsis about our unexplored “inner space” and the progress beyond 7 miles in Russia and Germany. China, Singapore, Norway, among a long list of nations expanding their economic zones into deep waters, are establishing dozens of drilling operations beyond a depth of 30,000 feet – including the ocean above the hole – almost entirely to bring oil or gas to the surface.

Germany used this sophisticated bit to drill 5 miles deep at the 1995 KBT borehole [pdf].

Most of our efforts and funds are directed only at pockets of oil or gas.

The US has a robust but effectively unsupported scientific drilling community. DOSECC (Drilling, Observation and Sampling of the Earths Continental Crust) is a non-profit corporation providing support for subsurface research.

Collaborating in Iceland, some USA researchers are collecting data about the chemistry of corrosive deep waters.

Larger energy firms are also looking at frozen methane deposits deep under oceans, gas hydrates, but many are worried about another industrial cycle releasing huge volumes of carbon gases.

If not already, Iceland’s geothermal investments might soon help it become the most energy efficient nation on earth.

A 2007 Iceland Deep Drilling Project is looking to produce energy from “supercritical geothermal systems” at depths to 5km at 400 to 600°C. Current wells are 2.5 km and generate about 4 to 7 megawatts, but deeper wells with temperatures above 450°C might each generate 40 to 50 MW.

Deep holes that liberate the earth’s heat are attractive options. Why build a nuclear plant to merely produce steam for a turbine? But today’s geothermal power plants use half their capital for well drilling to depths that offer meager power capacity. And no matter how strong the steel, what can drill through flowing plastic rock?

Harvard’s laser might boil enough rock to be effective. MIT is thinking about ‘thermal spallation‘ by supersonic flaking of rock that’s rapidly heated to a high temperature (2300C) using a flame-jet drill. By drilling with “rocket exhaust”, MIT’s Jefferson Tester expects to penetrate granite at 100 feet per hour, ten times greater than conventional drilling.

By now, we should be able to disintegrate rock:

abrasive jet drills; cavitating jet drills; electric arc and plasma drills; electron beam drills; electric disintegration drills; explosive drills; flame jet drills; high pressure jet drills; implosion drills; rocket exhaust drills; spark drills; and thermal-mechanical drills.

Hot water and steam from boreholes can be used to run turbines for electricity. Why not?

Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star says, “At a time when we’re scratching our heads on ways to fight climate change, and talking about elaborate plans to build CO2 pipelines and sequester greenhouse gases, you’d think we
‘d go for some low-lying fruit first.”

We can’t clean the air in western USA period, because “any reduction in our emissions may be offset by the pollution” from Asia.

“China, the world’s most populated country, has experienced rapid industrial growth, massive human migrations to urban areas, and considerable expansion in automobile use over the last two decades. As a result, the country has doubled its emissions of man-made pollutants to become the world’s largest emitter of tiny particles called pollution aerosols that are transported across the Pacific Ocean by rapid airstreams emanating from East Asia.”

Almost 40 billion pounds of pollution is exported over the ocean each year with nearly 10 billion pounds deposited on North America….

But not all imported aerosol pollution can be blamed on China and Asia. Satellites also show that pollution in western USA originates as far away as Europe. Delivered around the earth, even small particles from our eastern states pollute the air of the west coast!