The great Federal Way, WA ice storm of January 2012 has been a bit wild.  Lots of branches snapping off trees without warning.  Here are some pictures:

Hey Warren Buffett don’t just limit your United States of America debt Reduction payments to the members of the U.S. Congress, but also match 99%’ers who want to keep their country strong. That would be a significant contribution.

I’m probably a 5%’er.  I’ll will pay $1000 for United States of America debt reduction if you match my contribution.

I was thinking about how humans may have hunted the giant mammals 250,000 years ago and thought that possibly, organized behavior resulted in a highly effective way of killing a large animal on demand.   I would think the combination of spears, rocks, the ability to walk a very long distance, and organized intent is a technium.  That technium resulted in the extinction of those large mammals and the extinction of those tribes and societies.  Then the thought occurred to me, the greater technium, the greater the extinction.  Our great technology could easily extinct us all just by producing tremendous amounts of dust and smoke.

Evidence of the moving shadow:

Totality through the clouds:

The executive summary is free AIB, whereas the 700 page report costs both money and attention-or-guilt.

Thank you Mr. Kelly for the excellent discussion.  It was quite enjoyable.

Baloney Research has scored a Google+ Hangout with Author Kevin Kelly to discuss “What Technology Wants” on 2011-11-25 19:00 PST for 90 minutes.  Mr. Kelly will discuss his book and answer questions.  We should probably create a list of questions in advance to make sure we cover what we want:

Agenda:

What does technology want?

“…engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it — a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology….”The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared,”…”No one else has achieved this milestone yet.”…” Full Slice

“…”The result is thrilling,”…”It might be an indicator that the universe is different from what we thought it to be.” [scientist] says he’s open to the idea that fundamental constants might actually change over time and position, as scientists don’t have a decent explanation for why the fundamental constants have their particular values anyway. Still, the huge claim that a constant changes demands weighty evidence—which the new data are not…They say the chances that random statistical fluctuations in the data could produce a fake signal as big are less than 1 in 15,000…” Full Slice

Agenda Items:

• Poverty in Africa, North America
• Judith Curry
• Does ridicule in science inhibit discovery?
• What invention haven’t you told us about?
• What is the story of Kim?
• Hanging out with Kevin Kelly

“…In this technique, antibodies anchored to gold electrodes on a piece of quartz crystal act like the “hooks” on the sticky side of a Velcro strap, grabbing molecules of interest as they pass by. The more molecule-sensing antibodies on the surface of the sensor, the more sensitive the QCM device’s detection capabilities….” Full Slice

“An international team of researchers…has shed light on the inner workings of the endocycle, a common cell cycle that fuels growth in plants, animals and some human tissues and is responsible for generating up to half of the Earth’s biomass. This discovery…leads to a new understanding of how cells grow and how rates of cell growth might be increased or decreased, which has important implications in both agriculture and medicine….” Full Slice

For the Mysterious Blonde.  This article claims an increase in allergy sufferers from 10% to 30% of the population.  ” Allergies have become a widespread in developed countries: hay fever, eczema, hives and asthma are all increasingly prevalent. The reason? Excessive cleanliness is to blame according to Dr. Guy Delespesse, a professor at the Université de Montréal Faculty of Medicine” - Full Slice

“…The researchers analyzed 18 canned tomato products from various markets with NMR and found that the instrument could estimate most of the tastes assessed by the human taste testers. But the NMR instrument went even farther. By determining the chemical composition, it showed which compound is related to which sensory descriptor….” Full Slice