2022-07-18

The Governments Hidden Plan To Raise Gas Prices | Not About Oil

About 2/3 of the points made by Mark Moss about the current energy crisis are things I have heard before.  However, his other points contain a great deal of good information on how government regulation is messing up the energy sector.

He gets a little conspiratorial by suggesting that the government wants to nationalize the oil industry, without definitely coming to this conclusion.  However, his support for this idea is extremely weak, and I have little reason to believe it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY46elZFKmc

2022-07-15

Knights Are Worth More Than Bishops - I Will Prove it! (Which is better, the knight or the bishop)

My friend Al in Bangkok Thailand made this video.  He and I used to practice long games against each other in Utah.  About five years ago he visited his brother in Indianapolis and we got to play again.

The video is very well made.  I had to ask him questions about how he put it together.  He used iMovie and Photoshop, the chess.com feature that lets you draw arrows on the chess board and some free stock photos on the Internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7nXVhr3130

2022-07-14

Climate activists step up tire-slashing operation

https://youtu.be/V08tNp5PNI4

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Spinal cord repair

Eventually, this may be very useful.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Larry 

A drug under investigation as a cancer treatment has shown exciting promise in a rather different branch of medical research, with scientists demonstrating how it can promote nerve repair following spinal injury. The breakthrough shows how the drug acts on a DNA damage response mechanism at play in both these unrelated conditions, and triggers a "remarkable" recovery in mice with injured spinal cords.


2022-07-07

What the BA.5 Subvariant Could Mean for the United States - The New York Times

The most transmissible variant yet of the coronavirus is threatening a fresh wave of infections in the United States, even among those who have recovered from the virus fairly recently.

The subvariant of Omicron known as BA.5 is now dominant, according to federal estimates released Tuesday, and together with BA.4, another subvariant, it is fueling an outbreak of cases and hospitalizations.

"I think there's an underappreciation of what it's going to do to the country, and it already is exerting its effect," said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, who has written about the subvariant.

BA.5 and BA.4, both subvariants of the Omicron variant that swept the world during the winter, are the most capable versions of the virus yet at evading immunity from previous infections and vaccines. Both variants have mutations in their spike proteins that are different enough from earlier versions of the virus that they are able to dodge some antibodies.

Waves of infection — and the subsequent immunity that comes with them — vary across countries and make for imperfect comparisons. Vaccination rates also vary. But in places where BA.4 and BA.5 have been dominant for weeks or months, the subvariants have caused increases in cases and hospitalizations, despite some population immunity from previous waves

BA.5 causes more severe disease

Jim Belushi, cannabis farmer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uWmQU2BbA0

I am personally against using intoxicating substances.  I am for freedom. 

Science and human progress

There is very little that we don't currently understand about the laws of physics.  The so-called "Standard Model" can explain almost everything.  I have to admire the brilliance of the people who figured this stuff out because to understand anything more than in general terms requires very many pages of high-level mathematics.

It is not perfect.  Both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics are incomplete theories.  They don't agree perfectly with each other and they can't explain what happened during the first nanosecond of the Big Bang.  We would need a Quantum Theory of Gravity that we don't have yet.  We don't know yet what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are, although we have some theories.

Some things we might never know.  Subatomic particles behave like waves on a vast ocean.  We may never know what the ocean is made of because it sits beneath our reality.  It is likely beyond our reach.  

But in terms of what makes spaceships travel the path they do, how computers compute, and why socks stick to your clothes when you take them out of the dryer, we understand all that stuff perfectly.  

So besides cosmology and particle physics, what is left to discover?   

1.  We will never have faster than light travel.  It would be a miracle and a monumental and dangerous undertaking if we could reach 10% the speed of light.   Even 1% of the speed of light would be amazing.

2. Our computing technology will soon run into physical limitations where we just can't make the circuits any smaller.  The next step would be light-based circuitry, but the technology is not yet even close.  People make pie-in-the-sky claims about Quantum computers that are a very long way off.  So it seems likely that the advancement in computer technology will slow down in about a decade.  Maybe the next big breakthrough would come from software.

3.  For seventy years people have been predicting that nuclear fusion power is just 30 years away.  They said the same thing 30 years ago.  It turns out that nuclear fusion power is very hard to do and only remotely possible on a massive scale requiring at least billions of dollars to build.  We should have it by the year 2100, which is a good thing because we are going to start running out of some fossil fuels long before then.  We need more nuclear fission plans, and we are predicted to get more in about a decade, but it would be difficult to build enough to power the world.

4.  Renewables are going to be somewhat of a bust.  They are useful on a limited scale, but they require too much land and too much raw material and resources to power the world.

5.  We are seeing advances in nanomaterials that could change the world.  The first graphene batteries are being developed.  This could have a major impact on electric vehicles.

6.  I think that we will see huge advances in biotechnology, not only in our understanding of biology and medicine but in the ability to manipulate genetic code for useful purposes.  We could program microbes to make medicines and materials that we need.  We might be able to cure diseases, improve our health, and increase our lifespans.  Biotechnology could be the next big thing.

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2022-07-06

Are You Proud To Be An American?

Ewan McGregor Replaced with Alec Guinness in the Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi Series

Ewan McGregor was chosen to play the young Obi-Wan Kenobi because he looked a little bit like Alec Guinness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocL1Q0aPdOg

Great Reset - Wikipedia

three core components of the Great Reset: the first involves creating conditions for a "stakeholder economy"; the second component includes building in a more "resilient, equitable, and sustainable" way—based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics which would incorporate more green public infrastructure projects; the third component is to "harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution" for public good.[2][3] In her keynote speech opening the dialogues, International Monetary Fund director Kristalina Georgieva listed three key aspects of the sustainable response: green growth, smarter growth, and fairer growth.[4][1]

At the launch event for the Great Reset, Prince Charles listed key areas for action, similar to those listed in his Sustainable Markets Initiative, introduced in January 2020. These included the re-invigoration of science, technology and innovation, a move towards net zero emissions globally, the introduction of carbon pricing, re-inventing longstanding incentive structures, rebalancing investments to include more (though not all) green investments, and encouraging green public infrastructure projects

Roger Scruton: Why Intellectuals are Mostly Left