Honoring the end of a holiday weekend, here’s the NYC fireworks display from this year.

If that’s not enough to satisfy that fireworks itch, here’s a link to a YouTube search for “fireworks display.”

Wishing all a safe and enjoyable 4th.

From KurzweilAI.net — the US government comes to its senses on the solar moratorium, breakthroughs in nanowire memory, and computer chips heading toward smaller than 10 nanometers.

U.S. Lifts Moratorium on New Solar Projects

New York Times, July 3, 2008 Under increasing public pressure over its decision to temporarily halt all new solar development on public land, the Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday that it was lifting the freeze, barely a month after it was put into effect. See also: Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects   Read Original Article>>

New Nanowire-Based Memory Could Beef Up Information Storage

PhysOrg.com, July 2, 2008 University of Pennsylvania researchers have created a type of nanowire-based information storage device that is capable of storing three bit values rather than the usual two. This ability could lead to a new generation of high-capacity information storage for electronic devices. The phase changes are achieved by subjecting the nanowires to pulsed electric fields. This process heats the nanowires, altering the core and shell structure from crystalline (ordered) to amorphous (disordered). These two states correspond to two different electrical resistances. The third value corresponds to the case where the core is amorphous while the shell is crystalline (or visa versa), resulting in an intermediate resistance. Creating information storage from nanowires can be done via “bottom-up” approaches, using the natural tendency of tiny structures to self-assemble into larger structures, so they may be able to break free of the limitations faced by traditional “top-down” methods, such as patterning a circuit onto a silicon wafer by depositing a nanowire thin film.   Read Original Article>>

Intel’s Gelsinger Sees Clear Path To 10nm Chips

ChannelWeb, June 30, 2008 Intel sees a “clear way” to manufacturing chips under 10 nanometers, according to Pat Gelsinger, VP of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group. The next die shrink milestone will be the 32nm process, set to kick off next year, followed by 14nm a few years after that and then sub-10nm, he said.   Read Original Article>>

And the New Republic calls them on it.

From the link:

And it’s hardly just the conservatives on the Journal editorial page noticing these moves. Witness the ever-excitable Glenn Greenwald throwing hissy-fits. Markos Moulitsas announces that he’s holding off on giving money. Arianna Huffington huffs ‘n puffs. By rejecting these people and their radicalism, Barack Obama isn’t just showing that he wants to win, but that he wants to govern the country responsibly.

Not sure which of these three tiny rants is the most embarrassing, but Markos came off as particularly whiny. I don’t think the far left understands that any candidate who meets all their criteria would be basically unelectable. And after the Bush 43 years, the same goes for the far right. My guess is the electorate is going to be very wary of any candidates with extreme ideas on either fringe.

You’re going to be hostage to the whims of Brett Favre all summer.

Never a good sign to completely rethink strategy, and doubly bad when you consider McCain had an extended Democratic primary to kick ideas like this around. This year might be a landslide for the Democrats.

From the link:

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign has gone through its second shake-up in a year as Mr. McCain, responding to Republican concerns that his candidacy was faltering, put Steve Schmidt in charge of day-to-day operations and abandoned an effort to have the campaign run by 11 regional managers, the senator’s aides said Wednesday.

If anyone wants to start pointing fingers at the broken GOP, Karl Rove isn’t a bad place to start. He pretty much took a fragile three-legged stool and busted it apart. His fifty percent-plus one strategy guaranteed the Republican brand means nothing. The religious right branch received just enough lip service to scare away the libertarian wing, and Rove’s attempt to embrace the Latino vote only served to unleash a virulent backlash within the party that ensures that vote is solidly Democratic for at least one generation.

Here’s a quick interview with Paul Alexander, a biographer of Rove.

From the link:

Republican leaders have described the Bush brand as “toxic.” Party insiders view Rove harshly. “I think the legacy,” Ed Rollins told me for my book, “is that Karl Rove will be a name that’ll be used for a long, long time as an example of how not to do it, as opposed to an example of how to do it….I think, at the end of this, the party will be weaker in numbers in the Congress, numbers of governors, numbers of state legislatures, and numbers of Republicans. He did little to attract young people to become Republicans. Anybody who’s a Republican today became a Republican during the Reagan era. Nobody who’s come of age during the Bush era will stand up and say, ‘I’m a Bush Republican. I’m going to spend the rest of my life being a Bush Republican.’” What’s more, John McCain, an otherwise attractive candidate, will have to distance himself from Bush significantly if not completely in the fall in order to have a chance of winning.

Vermont hopes to become the home of choice for virtual corporations.

From the link:

A bill signed into law earlier this month positions it as a leader in incorporating so-called virtual firms — those without a physical headquarters, actual paper filings, and directors’ meetings (they’re all online.) If it succeeds, it could emerge with the nation’s first virtual tech corridor.

The bid to attract companies with infrastructures as diaphanous as Vermont’s moonlight aims to offer far-flung groups working on collaborative projects the benefits of working with a corporation — without the costs that come with commuting and using centralized office space. Officials hope the law will replicate the success that Vermont has had as an “offshore” haven for captive insurance arrangements. That effort has drawn more than 500 companies to set up entities in the state.

“Like with captive insurance, we’re changing with the times,” Mike Quinn, commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Economic Development, tells CFO.com. “We expect to see some activity from this.”

… is almost down to a constituency of one. I have no idea why McCain lets him linger around the fringes of his campaign. Joe-mentum provides zero bipartisan bona fides and sounds crazier with each new sound bite.

From the link:

In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans’ presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats’ to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

“Our enemies will test the new president early,” Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. “Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration.”

Here’s the latest election projections from FiveThirtyEight.com.

From KurzweilAI.net, micromachine stiction, Stephen Hawking tackles the universe’s inflation and defining humor.

How a quantum effect is gumming up nanomachines

New Scientist news service, June 28, 2008 Researchers are making progress in overcoming static friction, or or “stiction,” which sticks together the parts of micromachines on scales of between 10 and 300 nanometers and limits progress in reducing their size, affecting computer hard drives and other devices with small moving parts. Stiction is due to the Casimir effect, a quantum-mechanics phenomenon that causes surfaces to be attracted. Methods to reduce its effect include use of patterned surfaces, suspending the components in a liquid, and use of metamaterials.   Read Original Article>>

Hawking ‘close’ to explaining universe’s inflation

New Scientist (article preview), June 28, 2008 Starting with current observations of the universe and working back to narrow down the initial set of possibilities and by treating the early cosmos as a quantum object with a multitude of alternative universes that gradually blend into ours, Stephen Hawking and colleagues think they are close to perfecting an answer to explain why the infant universe expanded so rapidly. (Subscription required)   Read Original Article>>

Mechanism and function of humor identified by new evolutionary theory

PhysOrg.com, June 27, 2008 Humor occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, suggests Alastair Clarke in the forthcoming book, Humour. “Now that we understand the mechanism of humour, the possibility of creating an artificial intelligence being that could develop its own sense of humour becomes very real,” he says. “This would, for the first time, create an AI capable of exhibiting one of the defining characteristics that make us human, making it seem significantly less robotic as a result.”   Read Original Article>>

This is just one more bit of governing overreach from the failed Bush 43 regime.

Two excerpts from the link:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

And:

While proponents of solar energy agree on the need for a sweeping environmental study, many believe that the freeze is unwarranted. Some, like Ms. Gordon, whose company has two pending proposals for solar plants on public land, say small solar energy businesses could suffer if they are forced to turn to more expensive private land for development.

The industry is already concerned over the fate of federal solar investment tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews them. The moratorium, combined with an end to tax credits, would deal a double blow to an industry that, solar advocates say, has experienced significant growth without major environmental problems.

“The problem is that this is a very young industry, and the majority of us that are involved are young, struggling, hungry companies,” said Lee Wallach of Solel, a solar power company based in California that has filed numerous applications to build on public land and was considering filing more in the next two years. “This is a setback.”

I’m not going to tell you how to vote, but I would heavily suggest hitting this link and voting for POPaganda.

I’m sure the other two films are wonderful, but my loyalties lie with Ron and his amazing artwork.

From the link:

	POPaganda: The Art & Subversion
	Director: Pedro Carvajal A profile of the artist and activist Ron English who dares to hijack corporate advertising by using familiar words and images to create confrontational art with a message.

I’d love to get my hands on one of these devices. Or maybe just track down some plans and build one.

Via KurzweilAI.net:

Want to Enhance Your Brain Power?

Technology Review, June 26, 2008 Researchers at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke are studying how applying gentle electrical current to the scalp can improve learning. The transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) deviceuses a simple nine-volt battery, which passes about 2 to 2.5 milliamps of electrical current directly to the brain through the scalp and skull. Researchers found that direct current stimulation could improve memory in participants asked to learn and then recall a list of 12 words.   Read Original Article>>

From KurzweilAI.net, the House passed a bill to begin tracking potential Earth-strike asteroids, and a new low-cost, high-volume method of integrating nanowires onto silicon has been developed.

House passes bill mandating a plan for asteroid warning and deflection

KurzweilAI.net, June 27, 2008 In recently passed H.R.6063, The U.S. House of Representatives would direct the NASA Administrator to develop plans for a low-cost spacemission to rendezvous with the Apophis asteroid and attach a tracking device (subject to Senate approval). The Apophis is expected to pass at a distance from Earth that is closer than geostationary satellites in 2029. The bill would also require the Director of the White House’s Office of Science and TechnologyPolicy (OSTP) to develop a policy within two years for notifying Federal agencies and relevant emergency response institutions of an impending near-Earth objectthreat. And the OSTP would be required to recommend a Federal agency (or agencies) to be responsible for protecting the Nation from any near-Earth object anticipated to collide with Earth, and for implementing a deflection campaign.

 

Researchers develop new technique for fabricating nanowire circuits

Nanowerk News, June 26, 2008 Scientists at Harvard University and German universities of Jena, Gottingen, and Bremen have developed a reproducible, high-volume, low-cost fabrication methodfor integrating nanowire devices directly onto silicon. The method incorporates spin-on glass technology, used in silicon integrated circuits manufacturing, and photolithography, transferring a circuit pattern onto a substrate with light. These devices can then function as light-emitting diodes, with the color of light determined by the type of semiconductor nanowire used. Because nanowires can be made of materials commonly used in electronics and photonics, they hold great promise for integrating efficient light emitters, and could lead to the development of a completely new class of integrated circuits, such as large arrays of ultra-small nanoscale lasers that could be designed as high-density optical interconnects or used for on-chip chemical sensing.   Read Original Article>>