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This from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7329992.stm

As so often, I learned of it from Stephan Schwartz’ Schwartzreport. My conclusion is that in this, as in so many areas, America must be the new Egypt, because we live in a state dependent upon denial. (Okay, so it’s a weak pun; it’s memorable, anyway.) “America is Number One,” right! In everything, right? Automatically, right?

Uh — well, not exactly. And the very social traits that brought us to this pass are continuing to bring us down, at an accelerated rate.

US kept in slow broadband lane

By Ian Hardy
Click’s North America technology correspondent

We all know that America is the technology hub of the universe. It is home to Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Google, YouTube, Yahoo, MIT - the list is endless. So why, when it comes to the basics, like delivering the internet to its citizens, has it fallen way behind many other nations?

In Manhattan people pay about $30 (£15) a month for a download speed of three megabits per second (Mbps) via a DSL line. Many people are very happy with that, until they realise what is going on elsewhere in the world.

US broadband speeds are much slower than in many countries

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Via the Schwartzreport, this from Science Daily. Editor Stephan Schwartz added this comment:

This is an extremely important report because it addresses the central charge of the climate change deniers, to whit, the models scientists use are so imperfect that they mean little or nothing prospectively. This settles that issue, and shuts the door on such criticism because the more data the more accurate the models will become, so the trend is clear.

Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change

ScienceDaily

The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

In the study, co-authors Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kim from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah investigate how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. To this end, they compare the output of the models against observations for present climate. The authors apply this method to about 50 different national and international models that were developed over the past two decades at major climate research centers in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Korea, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Of course, also included is the very latest model generation that was used for the very recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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Police State Tactics: Tasering Pregnant Women and the Elderly

By John W. Whitehead
April 7, 2008

In George Lucas’ film THX 1138 (1970), the police in a futuristic state make citizens compliant by shocking them with “pain prods.” After seeing the movie, I remember thinking that if the police were ever allowed to use implements such as these, we would rapidly move into a police state. This has now happened with tasers.

Tasers are electro-shock weapons that are currently used by more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Designed to cause instant incapacitation by delivering a 50,000-volt shock, tasers are hand-held electronic stun guns that fire two barbed darts. The darts, which usually remain attached to the gun by wires, deliver a high voltage shock and can penetrate up to two inches of clothing or skin. The darts can strike the subject from a distance of up to 35 feet, or the taser can be applied directly to the skin. Although a taser shot is capable of jamming the central nervous system for up to 30 seconds, it can disable the subject for even longer. And because tasers can be aimed anywhere on the body, they can immobilize someone more easily than pepper spray, which must be sprayed in the face.

Taser manufacturers and police agencies insist that tasers are a safer alternative to many conventional weapons typically used to restrain dangerous individuals. This may be true in situations where tasers are used as an alternative to other impact weapons that can cause serious injury, such as batons or lethal force. However, research shows that in many police departments, officers routinely use tasers primarily as a substitute for low-level force weapons such as pepper spray or chemical spray. Tasers have become a prevalent force tool, often used against individuals who pose no serious danger to themselves, the officers or others.

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From the London Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3689881.ece via the Schwartzreport. It’s worth remembering, when pondering the signs of social decay, that signs of social recreation also abound. The future is likely to be as unpredictable as the past was. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

Coming soon: superfast internet

From The Sunday Times
April 6, 2008
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

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From http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/mailstory-clickthru/232024.php via a friend.

Patients teach doc lesson in spirit life
By Carla McClain
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.30.2008

He is a doctor in love with his patients.
It is to them he gives thanks for the unexpected, life-changing journey that took him beyond this world of scientific fact to the otherworldly realm of the spirit and the soul.
Never in his wildest dreams did Dr. Allan J. Hamilton — a renowned University of Arizona neurosurgeon devoted to the super-technology of his specialty — expect to go there.
Most doctors don’t. Some have called their colleague “a nut” for admitting he did.
Hamilton shrugs. He gets that.
“If you had told me 20 or 30 years ago that I would go through this kind of change in my thinking about what medicine — and life — is really all about, I’d have said you’re nuts,” said the Harvard-trained brain surgeon, now 58.
“When I started as a surgeon, I was really focused on surgical, technical skills. It’s a very mechanistic view — you go in and fix things. You are so focused on that, you tend to blow by anything you see that suggests the spiritual.

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Not only could, but will, and is. And it has been going on all our lives, at an accelerating rate since Lyndon Johnson. An opinion piece from the Detroit News http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080404/OPINION01/804040313/1008

Fed’s interest rate games could destroy the dollar

Tim O’Brien

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has reduced the key federal funds rate six times in as many months — reducing the cost for major borrowers significantly. This combines with providing $270 million in funding, plus $30 billion in additional guarantees, for JP Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns Cos.

“Helicopter Ben” is living up to the nickname he earned after he remarked in a 2002 speech that he would stave off a recession even if he had to drop money from helicopters to do it.

The results of these policies have been destructive. The dollar is collapsing not only against foreign currencies — we’re now at par with the Canadian dollar and rocketing toward a 2-1 deficit against the Euro — but also against commodities. Gold was passing the $1,000-an-ounce landmark, silver $20. Even industrial metals like copper and zinc are fetching record prices.

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It’s getting interesting. What the price of oil and the deterioration of the dollar will do to these plans, no one knows, but — it’s getting interesting. From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/29/AR2008032901830.html

Another Firm Joins the Commercial Space Race

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 30, 2008; Page A03

The race to become the first private company capable of launching paying customers into space got more crowded last week as a small but well-respected California firm announced plans to have a two-seat spacecraft ready within two years.

The mini-ship, built by Mojave-based Xcor Aerospace and designed to fly to the edge of space, is expected to be ready for test flights by 2010, around the time Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic hopes to send its much larger spaceship on its maiden voyage.

More than half a dozen other companies — most, unlike Xcor, bankrolled by wealthy businessmen, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal — are building rockets and spacecraft that they hope will capture the imagination of space travelers. Most plan to finish testing their rockets and rocket planes in the next few years, and the Federal Aviation Administration has estimated the market for space tourism to be more than $1 billion a year by 2021.

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Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer

Sunday, March 30, 2008

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Why is there not worldwide outrage at the reckless arrogance being displayed here? Does anybody think this will be kept within limits? But if it’s done in the name of “science” it’s okay, right? That was certainly the Nazi viewpoint.

Notice the explanations that amount to saying, “it won’t be carried beyond certain carefully restricted bounds.” Sure. That’s what they said about cloning, too, and you may remember how well that worked. This is the ghastly end-result — or rather, it leads to the end-result, for unfortunately we’ve a long way to go in the wrong direction before we come to the end-result — of turning “science” into a god, and worshipping it with money and power.

From the Times, April 2, 2008: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3663033.ece

We have created human-animal embryos already, say British team

Mark Henderson, Science Editor

Embryos containing human and animal material have been created in Britain for the first time, a month before the House of Commons votes on new laws to regulate the research.

A team at Newcastle University announced yesterday that it had successfully generated “admixed embryos” by adding human DNA to empty cow eggs in the first experiment of its kind in Britain.

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How very cool!

‘Magical’ song from 1860 knocks Edison off the chart

AUDIO RESEARCHERS CONFIRM FRENCHMAN’S RECORDING FEAT

By Patrick May
Mercury News
Article Launched: 03/29/2008 01:31:15 AM PDT

Her voice, sweet and smoky after 147 years, floats through the air, as if the young woman is walking out of a fog to serenade her listeners.

“Au clair de la lune,” she sings, stealing through the second verse of the classic French folk song by the same name. “Pierrot répondit.”

Ten seconds, 11 notes. Then she’s gone, her ghostly voice swallowed up again into the ether.

In what they say is the earliest recording ever made of a human voice, researchers at a Stanford University conference on Friday revealed to the world a sound clip with an extraordinary pedigree. Created in 1860 by an obscure French typesetter - nearly two decades before Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph - the snippet was re-created thanks to the international sleuthing by audio historians, algorithmic alchemy by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists who turned squiggles on paper into sounds, and the passionate push of a collaborative of audiophiles in search of the world’s oldest sounds.

“Her voice is ghostly and it’s magical, as if she were trying to come into the 21st century to sing for us,” said David Giovannoni, the audio historian behind the research. He helped crack the case by unearthing the “phonautogram” that Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville originally made for visual, not audio, playback.

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