Via KurzweilAI.net — Just what mentally marginal need, another shove off the cliff via viral marketing and faked “scientific evidence.”

I’d say the reality challenged swing the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and other once science-based cable channels are doing plenty of damage on their own.

2012 Prophecies Sparking Real Fears, Suicide Warnings

National Geographic News, Nov. 9, 2009 Amid the hype — including a viral marketing campaign for 2012, the disaster movie opening Friday, with bogus scientific organizations, press releases, and 2012 whistle-blowers –some people are developing “end times” anxiety that has experts seriously concerned. NASA’s Nibiru and Doomsday 2012: Questions and Answersand 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End? web pages seek to debunk stories about the fictionalplanet Nibiru and predictions of doomsday in December 2012. Scenes from the motion picture “2012″ (Columbia Pictures)   Read Original Article>>

Previously I’ve blogged about carbon nanotubes replacing copper wiring, and here’s news of a new manufacturing technique that gets that idea closer to the mainstream. This shift in wiring is most likely a “when” instead of an “if.”

From the second link:

A new method for assembling carbon nanotubes has been used to create fibers hundreds of meters long. Individual carbon nanotubes are strong, lightweight, and electrically conductive, and could be valuable as, among other things, electrical transmission wires. But aligning masses of the nanotubes into well-ordered materials such as fibers has proven challenging at a scale suitable for manufacturing. By processing carbon nanotubes in a solution called a superacid, researchers at Rice University have made long fibers that might be used as lightweight, efficient wires for the electrical grid or as the basis of structural materials and conductive textiles.

Others have made carbon-nanotube fibers by pulling the tubes from solid hair-like arrays or by spinning them like wool as they emerge from a chemical reactor. The problem with starting from a solid, says Rice chemical engineering professor Matteo Pasquali, is that “the alignment is not spectacular, and these methods are difficult to scale up.” The better aligned and ordered the individual nanotubes in a larger structure, the better the collective structure’s electrical and mechanical properties. Using the Rice methods, well-aligned nanotube fibers can be made on a large scale, shot out from a nozzle similar to a showerhead.

The late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley started the Rice project in 2001. Smalley knew solution-processing would be a good way to assemble nanotube fibers and films because of nanotubes’ shape. Carbon nanotubes are much longer than they are wide, so when they’re in a flowing solution, they line up like logs floating down a river. But carbon nanotubes aren’t soluble in conventional solvents. The Rice group laid the foundations for liquid processing of the nanotubes five years ago, when they discovered that sulfuric acid brings the nanotubes into solution by coating their surfaces with positively charged ions.

Nanotube fiber: This fiber, which is about 40 micrometers in diameter, is made up of carbon nanotubes.
Credit: Rice University

… are not going to go over all that great. I understand the nature of compensation in the financial industry, but sometimes image is everything, and the industry has a pretty shabby image on Main Street.

From the link:

Ask yourself, in this day and age, with officially reported unemployment at 10.2%, the highest since 1983, should a 36-year-old derivatives trader get $10 million or $15 million in bonus money on top of a $400,000 to $1 million direct salary. It’s the hot-button money issue of our time, the only visible totem of Wall Street that the public can easily understand. The public sees headlines about stocks being up 62%, the Dow over 10,000, gold at $1,100 an ounce, interest rates at zero and a handful of financiers able to buy $40 million apartments.

It’s a great time to play the market, sure, but the overall effect on the economy is pretty hollow when small and medium businesses cannot borrow money. Treasury Secretary Geithner admits to this huge vacuum, but he has no concrete or meaningful solution.

Via KurzweilAI.net — Space-based solar collection gets a lot of ink and now it looks like it might even get a test run.

apan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

AFP, Nov. 8, 2009 The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to collect solar power in space and send it to Earth by 2030 using laser beams or microwaves, and has created a consortium (the Institute for Unmanned SpaceExperiment Free Flyer) that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp. (Japan Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer)   Read Original Article>>

Kathryn-Jean Lopez is an editor-at-large for the National Review Online and is no rocket scientist. Sadly, the National Review, a once bastion of intellectual thought on the right, is now pretty much lockstep with what passes for political philosophy on the American right — that is, it doesn’t exist. Plenty of me-tooism and anger at paper tigers, but not so much on the fronts that make any difference.

Andrew Sullivan, blogger of the Daily Dish, and an actual philosophical conservative, totally nails Lopez here:

… this is National Review, a place where intellectual Catholicism once had a home, where Buckley and Muggeridge wrote, where Wills got his start … and now we’re left with a person with the intellectual heft of a college sophomore …

Final tally of 220-215 for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Now the show is off to the Senate.

… very high or just incompetent. The new conference rule fining coaches who complain about the officiating is crazy. The zebras make NBA officials look good and that’s saying something.

And this post is coming from someone who thinks college football is an almost impossible-to-watch game played by kids who’ll never make it in the NFL aside from the few hundred that end up on NFL rosters each new season.

The SEC ought to be very very embarrassed by its officiating, particularly the replay booth work.

So conference executives which is it — bribery, drug use or lack of ability?

More specifically, bubbles in emerging markets — short answer, no.

From the link, a bit more behind the short answer:

So what does all this mean for investors? ETFs probably haven’t caused a bubble, and they might even help a bit to prevent one from forming. But many will remain superconcentrated bets on very risky markets. If you invest in an ETF with most of its assets in a few stocks and think you have made a diversified bet, the real bubble is the one between your own ears.

… to the victims, family and loved ones of everyone affected by the tragic Fort Hood shooting.

Now that more sober details are coming to light it’s clear the gunman was very disturbed, and his religious beliefs were a factor in the rampage. And there were many heroes — not unexpected among our armed forces — that day, particularly Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley, a member of the SWAT team for Fort Hood’s civilian police department, who in a tactical move charged the still firing Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, taking rounds herself while ending his shooting spree.

Consumer banking has largely been about screwing the customer for a long time — at least as far as the large, national, impersonal banks (you know, the ones that advertise on television) go. Long ago, something like 15 years ago, I wrote an article for a business magazine on some of the underhanded techniques consumer banks were using to gouge customers.

Back then one of the growing trends was charging a premium for what was called a “meatspace transaction.” Although it sounds vaguely pornographic, a meatspace transaction was anything that involved a living teller, either face-to-face or through drive-up banking. Happily that bit of foolishness didn’t have any legs. One troubling practice that did, and still does, is overdraft fees and how they are processed.

They are almost unavoidable in terms of the bank will happily let you go below your balance instead of declining the transaction.

From the link:

Ever write a check thinking you had plenty in your account to cover it? Make a debit card purchase before your paycheck cleared? How about the time you withdrew $5 too much from the ATM?

Sure, your bank was happy to cover the amount. Why not? Although touted as a customer “convenience,” overdraft fees have been soaring. Last year, overdraft charges generated nearly $24 billion dollars for banks and credit unions. That’s 35% more than just two years earlier, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

Warning! No Warning

The first problem with overdraft fees is that you don’t receive any notice that the transaction you’re about to make will exceed the balance in your account. If you did, at least you’d be able to choose whether you want to continue with it or not.

In some cases you can trigger overdraft charges even if your online statement shows you have plenty in yourchecking account! That’s because your balance is “theoretical” and doesn’t reflect the fact that a recent deposit may not have been in your account long enough for the funds to “clear.”

But the really dirty part of the process is how your incoming transactions are handled:

The Re-ordering Trick

Another criticism is that financial institutions can play games with your transactions in order to trigger a cascade of overdrafts.

For instance, say you make four debit card purchases in a day. Your available balance was $90. The first three transactions were for $25, $20, and $40. The last one was for $100. If taken in chronological order, there is adequate money in your account to cover the first three purchases. Only the last one would result in an overdraft charge.

But that’s not the way your bank computer system is programmed. Instead, it will change the order of your purchases in order to deplete your account sooner by subtracting the largest transactions first.

In the above example, your $100 purchase would come out of your account ahead of the other three. Since it exceeds your balance by $10, it generates a $35 charge. Next, with your account already under water (according to the bank’s math), your other three purchases are posted. You end up paying $140 (4 x $35) for the “convenience” of overdraft protection.

Quite the trick there. Consumer banks have been playing so dirty for so long, and were on the receiving end of so much government bailout money Congress is stepping up to the plate for the consumer at long last.

We’ll see where this ends up, but I think it’s about time Main Street was given a little protection from practices that should have been illegal from the get-go. I guess we ought to be happy consumer banks didn’t go around breaking kneecaps like Vinny from the corner might have. Because really, that’s about the only difference between usury and a typical consumer bank.

Also from the link:

Kathleen Day, a spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending, calls the current state of overdraft fees “ridiculous” and an “outrage.” The Center and other consumer protection organizations place the blame squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve, which regulates most large financial institutions in this country.

“The Fed has known for years these practices are hurting customers and they’ve failed to act,” charges Day. The Senate Finance Committee has drafted the “Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act,” or the FAIR Act, which would limit overdraft fees banks can impose.

Doesn’t the leadership know information wants to be free — even at 140 Modern English alphabet characters a pop.

Jokes aside, here’s a bit from the first link:

A Chinese government watchdog plans to push Twitter-style Web sites to censor their content, the country’s latest move to block Internet users from posting certain politically sensitive information online.The government-linked Internet Society of China plans to compose “self-discipline standards” for microblogging services, a group representative said in an e-mail. The representative declined to give details, but the group has released similar guidelines for other Web sites before. A document the group released for blog providers calls for them to delete “illegal or harmful information” as it appears on their sites, or simply to cease blog service for infringing users. Chinese authorities have used the term “harmful information” to describe online content including pornography and discussion of politically sensitive topics such as Falun Gong, a spiritual group banned in the country.

Twitter and Facebook have been blocked in all of China since July, when deadly ethnic riots in the country’s western Xinjiang region led it to crack down on communication tools that could be used to gather people at a given location. Authorities also blocked all Internet service and text messaging in Xinjiang after the rioting, which state-run media say killed nearly 200 people.

Some Chinese-language Twitter rivals also went offline after the rioting. One of the bigger sites, Digu, came online again last month, but rival service Fanfou is still down.

This thing looks pretty cool …

HP DreamScreen 100 Internet Touchscreen
Think of it as a digital photo frame on steroids. The HP DreamScreen 100, available in 10- and 13-inch models, does more than merely display family snapshots. Connect this sexy display (#98 in The PC World 100: Best Products of 2009) to your home network via Wi-Fi or ethernet, and you can then use the handheld remote to stream your favorite Pandora channels or up to 10,000 Internet radio stations, view your calendar, set alarms, see a five-day weather forecast, and catch up with your peeps on Facebook. Put this beauty on your nightstand, and you can finally toss your old clock radio.

Full review | $250 to $300 | Check prices

An interesting blog post from Dan Ariely, a visiting professor at MIT’s Media Library on the “tiny irregularities” of texting while driving:

Sad story out in the New York Times describing growing concerns about texting while driving. In Britain, a woman was sentenced to a 21-month sentence after it was found that she had been texting while driving, which resulted in the death of a 24-year old design student. In many ways, texting while driving illustrates a case in which tiny, individual irrational decisions can accumulate and cause widespread suffering, not only for the individuals who are texting, but their unsuspecting victims. Unlike cases of drunk driving, in which the driver’s decision making abilities are impaired, drivers who text are at their full wits to wait until they’ve pulled over to check their texts, and yet in the process they routinely underestimate the risk they impose to themselves and others.

The professor was quite wrong, however, on one aspect of the issue:

… we can hope that cell phone companies are continuing to explore voice activation technologies that can read text messages aloud and also transcribe them from voice — thereby by-passing the problem altogether.

In researching web content I created for an insurance website, I came across this research that finds hands-free listening  to mobile devices is not much safer than hands-on cell phone use because the issue is the distraction of the usage, not merely taking eyes off the road ahead (all bold text my emphasis):

Five states currently ban the use of hand-held cell phones in favor of hands-free devices while driving. However, several studies have shown that there is little difference between the two when it comes to minding the road ahead. Both hand-held and hands-free devices involve listening. The act of listening is what distracts drivers from paying attention to the road. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University placed participants in a functional MRI scanner that allowed researchers to observe brain activity while the subjects “drove” on a computerized roadway. Without distractions, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involved in spatial perception (knowing where you are and what’s around you). When the same subjects were tasked with listening to and correctly answering a series of questions as they drove, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involving language comprehension, while activity in the spatial perception area of the brain decreased by as much as 37 percent. Multitasking places high demands on the brain.

Sounds like a useful tool in this world of massive data collection by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and many others.

The release:

A new system preserves the right to privacy in Internet searches

		IMAGE: A new system preserves the right to privacy in Internet searches. Click here for more information.

A team of Catalan researchers has developed a protocol to distort the user profile generated by Internet search engines, in such a way that they cannot save the searches undertaken by Internet users and thus preserve their privacy. The study has been published in the Computer Communications magazine.

Just imagine someone from Company X who uses the Google search engine to obtain information about a certain technology. If Company Y, a competitor of X, should discover this situation, it could infer that the abovementioned technology is going to be used in X’s new products, and with that information it could obtain a competitive edge. In the same way, a mass media enterprise that finds out the searches undertaken by the competition’s journalists could infer what news items they are working on and beat them to it. A personal report could also be drawn up on someone based on their searches.

In order to solve these types of situations, a team of researchers from three Catalan universities (the Rovira i Virgili University, the Autónoma of Barcelona and the Oberta of Catalonia) has developed a system which preserves user privacy via a new computer protocol, whose details are published in the Computer Communications magazine.

“It is a model based on cryptographic tools which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet”, explains Alexandre Viejo to SINC. He is one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the Computer Engineering Department of the Rovira i Virgili University, “in such a way that their privacy is preserved”.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live search save the profiles of their users (via an analysis of the searches they undertake) with the argument that they are more familiar with their interests and offer a more efficient response.

There currently exist types of software which provide anonymous navigation, such as the Tor network, but the new system “offers a clear improvement in response time”. Nevertheless, Alexandre Viejo acknowledges that the application of the protocol delays searches slightly, “but it can be perfectly assumed by the user”.

The tool prototype has already been tried in closed (research centre intranets) and open (internet) environments, “and the results allow us to be optimistic with the global implementation of the model”. The researchers are now working on the development of a final user version and trust that it will soon be easily integrated into the main platforms and browsers.

###

References:

Jordi Castellà-Roca, Alexandre Viejo, Jordi Herrera-Joancomartí. “Preserving user’s privacy in web search engines”. Computer Communications32 (13-14): 1541�, 2009.

… autumn is in full swing and winter isn’t far behind. If you haven’t winterized your home, now is the time. Depending on where you live this could be a quick afternoon of mild chores, or an entire operation to get your house ready for worst Jack Frost can bring. The first step should be checking out the heating portion of your HVAC system to make sure everything is working order, clean and ready for operation. Next is the roof and chimney, particularly gutters and downspouts. Take a look at your gutters or gutter protection to make sure things aren’t clogged up preventing proper drainage. Also inspect the “envelope” of your home for drafts, air leaks and missing insulation. And don’t forget your pipes — especially outdoor pipes. You don’t want a surprise water leak after a hard freeze and thaw.

One good way to minimize your winterizing chores is to cover your chimney and gutters to minimize debris accumulation. A good gutter protection system will protect your gutters, downspouts and drains year-round and end that pesky winterizing chore of making sure every spot is clear of leaves, bird and rodent nests, and areas of standing water that can lead to corrosion and mosquito problems during warm weather.

Hit any link in this post to head to Outdora.com and the GutterPiller gutter protection system. The system has been featured on “This Old House” and has won the “Retailers’ Choice Award” multiple times. Outdora offers two GutterPiller gutter protection systems — the GutterPiller Twisted Wire Gutter Protection System and the Black Magic Filter Gutter Screen Protection System. You can even find gutter brushes to help you clear out clogged — and probably unprotected — gutters, and splash guards to help disperse water under your drainspouts.

If winterizing isn’t your favorite seasonal chore, and I’m betting it isn’t, a gutter protection system takes one item right off of your list.