Recent Reading

 

This is a pyramid of debating tactics. It came from a post on "scienecblogs" asking why it was so difficult to get real intellectual debate online.
It is a reasonable question and leads me to the conclusion that moderation of blogs to keep out the bottom 3 classes there may often be a public benefit.
The site author got his question answered when no "scienceblogs" regular proved capable of answering me on any but the bottom 3 levels and proved the genuineness of his commitment to real debate by having not a word to say against such tactics when used by warming alarmists that site supports.
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Next Big Future on areas where we may expect serious improvement over the next few years
1. Pro-growth Policies
2. Energy Efficiency - superconductors, thermoelectrics, improved grid
3. Energy Revolution - Mass produced fission, fusion, and maybe cold fusion
4. Additive manufacturing
5. Not so mundane - neuromorphic chips, quantum computers, photonics
6. Automated transportation (leading to robotic cars and planes)
7. Urbanization MegaCities
8. Urbanization Broad Group skyscrapers, Tata flat packed buildings
9. Robotics
10. Hyperbroadband
11. Supermaterials
12. Improve medicine and public health
13. Space
14. Synthetic biology and recombineering
15. Sensors everywhere
16. Education transformed and accelerated innovation
17. Supersmartphones, exoskeletons and wearable systems
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Technologies we were promised but never delivered - less serious
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Model planes potential as terrorist weapons - the flip side of military UAV's changing war
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Windmills simply cannot compete with shale gas in a free market society - good article by GWPF member
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Incredibly a sensible article on radiation has slipped by the BBC censors:
The standard measure of the biological effect of radiation is the sievert. One sievert is a heck of a big dose, but one tenth of a millionth of a sievert, or 0.1 micro sieverts, is roughly the dose from eating one banana.
So we can use one banana as our basic unit and convert other radiation exposures to so many bananas.
Radiation Dose Chart
But why bother converting this to bananas? Partly because it's hoped BED is friendlier than sieverts and grays and rads and rems, and all the other paraphernalia. I'd agree. Though not everyone likes the BED because of problems counting changing level of exposure from the radiation in a banana as it passes through the body.
But I reckon the BED is useful for several reasons. First, it reminds us that radiation is commonplace. You can't get much more ordinary than a banana.
Second, we know eating one banana won't kill us. Not even nearly. Not without extreme violence. This affirms an age-old point about toxicity - that danger is in the dose. In other words most things, radiation included, are only dangerous in sufficient quantities. The distinction between toxic and safe is not really a distinction of kind, but of quantity. That goes for just about everything from water and vitamins to arsenic
Radiation dose at the boundary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station on March 16: 1.9 millisieverts (mSv) per hour (note this is the boundary of the power station not of the exclusion zones 10 and 20 km away)


Maximum allowable exposure for U.S. radiation workers: 50 mSv per year
That is 1.9 bananas an hour and 50 bananas eaten in a year respectively.
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Green Party controlled Brighton Council buys a new fleet of gritters to combat the snow children born in recent years have, if government ecofascist claims are in any way truthful, never seen.
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Another scientist elected to mem,bership of the Union of Concerned Scientists - Kenji Watts
Kenjii has a family relatio9nship to Anthony Watts - he is his pet cat.
Undoubtedly every honest alarmist who denounced the Oregon Petition because alarmists had managed to sneak Dr Geri Halliwell onto their roles (temporarily) will now denounce the UCS. Yep every last one of them who is honest - ie zero.
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Larger scale here
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If we are concerned with the inadequate rate of economic growth, we must recognize that the single greatest impediment to economic growth is the size and scope of the Federal government. Unless we can reduce the extent of regulation and introduce some economic rationality to important regulations, we cannot hope to see incomes rise to provide a better future for our children and future generations.

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2011/10/recent-reading.html