President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department — a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.

The president issued a little-noticed “presidential determination” Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. …

The presidential notice alters a key provision of the 1999 Defense Authorization Act that required that the president notify Congress whether a transfer of missile and space technology to China would harm the U.S. space-launch industry or help China’s missile programs. …

Section 1512 of the 1999 law requires the president to certify to Congress in advance of any missile equipment or technology exports to China that the export will not harm the U.S. space-launch industry and that “missile equipment or technology, including any indirect technical benefit that could be derived from such export, will not measurably improve the missile or space launch capabilities of the People’s Republic of China.”

Why was this law necessary? Because Bill Clinton was so far in bed with the Chicoms, he probably snores in Chinese. As a result, technology was passed along to them that may be used to vaporize American cities. But laws don’t apply to The Anointed One, who rules by fiat while his media enablers look the other way.

Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said restoring Commerce Department control over the sensitive exports is a “step backward.”

“It’s as though Commerce’s mishandling of missile-tech transfers to China in the 1990s never happened,” said Mr. Sokolski, a former Pentagon proliferation specialist. “But it did. As a result, we are now facing much more accurate, reliable missiles from China.”

Mr. Sokolski said he expects the U.S. government under the new policy to again boost Chinese military modernization through “whatever renewed ‘benign’ missile technology” is approved.

“It was foolish for us to do this in the 1990s and is even more dangerous for us to do now,” he said.

The director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Gary Milhollin, isn’t happy either:

It is shocking that it would be delegated to the secretary of commerce, whose job it is to promote trade, rather than to the secretary of state or the secretary of defense, who have far more knowledge and responsibility within their organizations for missile technology. … In fact, the delegation turns the present law upside down because Congress passed it after finding that the Commerce Department had improperly helped China import U.S. missile technology in the 1990s.

They needn’t worry. Comrade Obama believes in nuclear disarmament — at least for the USA, which liberals inform us is the source of all evil in the world.

On a tip from Conan. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is proposing that the agency apply tougher open-Internet rules broadly, raising concerns of cable and phone companies and some lawmakers that the government could try to control efforts to offer products such as digital cable or premium business services.

Mr. Genachowski’s proposal suggests everything in the Internet pipe is covered by rules prohibiting discrimination against any legal Internet traffic, known as net neutrality, unless the agency says otherwise, according to FCC officials familiar with a draft circulating in the agency.

Hmm, anyone thinking campaign donations, influence peddling, and political payback? Not too mention more control of a private industry?

Internet providers could seek exemptions for so-called premium managed services, like private corporate data networks or pay-TV services, which require guaranteed levels of data speed.

Phone and cable companies worry Mr. Genachowski is trying to turn their broadband lines into “dumb pipes” of Internet data, instead of highly segmented and managed lines that allow them to offer different sorts of services — at different prices — to customers.

There are lots of back and forth arguments regarding net neutrality, but, the biggest two are that it will stifle innovation and actually restrict bandwith. The ever growing wireless Internet will potentially take a huge hit, as will prioritization for the markets, such as ‘Net meetings and gaming. It’s up to you to decide, but, remember, once regulated, good luck getting the federal government out.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Meg Whitman has had some bad days lately. After recently proclaiming herself a “darned good” conservative Republican, Senator Barbara Boxer’s staff revealed that Whitman was a Boxer supporter in 2003. Dangerously for Whitman, Senator Boxer is one of the most liberal members of the Senate.

According to Boxer aide Rose Kapolczynski, Whitman supported Boxer’s “Technology Leaders for Boxer” effort in April of 2003. A letter from Boxer’s office from 2003 features a quote from Whitman stating that she felt Boxer was a “courageous leader and friend of California’s technology industry.” (see image below)

This is just one more troublesome issue on top of her voting record — or lack thereof.

Her past voter registration and voting history has been a major faux pa for her candidacy. At one point Whitman said she never registered to vote in California until 2002 and didn’t declare as a Republican until 2007, then put out a statement that she “misspoke.”

Since then Whitman has continued to portray herself as a long-time Republican.

A closer look at why Whitman endorsed Boxer proves that her support was sensible, of course. Boxer was the incumbent Senator that was a good legislative friend of the technology sector and Whitman was CEO of ebay, one of the biggest tech companies in California. As Whitman spokesman Sarah Pompei pointed out, Boxer was also an opponent of the Internet tax. And with Whitman’s ebay empire poised to be hit hard by such a tax, one can see why Boxer would be appealing to a CEO of a technology company such as ebay in that case.

But as a member of the business community Whitman’s former, and logical, support of Boxer in 2003 — good sense in a business context — is a major political albatross. It’s a whole sleeping with the enemy meme that will certainly dog her campaign.

After all, elections are built on a fair amount of emotion and this latest revelation will add to the suspicion with which party loyalists will view Whitman’s candidacy. First was the lack of voting and now her support of one of the right’s worst enemies, Boxer? This is an emotional wrecking ball for her campaign.

The only real solution for this past record would have been for Whitman to come out at the outset and say she was somewhat non-committal on politics before 2007 but then saw the light of conservatism. Instead she tried to act as if she was always Reagan redux. clearly this is not the case despite her protests to the opposite.

Granted, Poizner has done the same thing with his I-have-always-been-Republican claim even though he had an early history of donating to Democrats and supporting big tax hikes.

Again, I understand why Whitman did what she did in the past. Business is business. But this is politics.

Boxer’s “Technology Leaders for Boxer” letter:

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

KTH is an abbreviation of Swedish words meaning “Royal Institute of Technology”. It is one of Sweden’s largest and oldest universities

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world. “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth’s crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas. According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

He adds that there is no chance that fossil oils, with the help of gravity or other forces, would have been able to seep down to a depth of 10.5 kilometres in, for example the US state of Texas, which is rich in oil deposits. This is, according to Vladimir Kutcherov, in addition to his own research results, further evidence that this energy sources can occur other than via fossils – something which will cause a lively discussion among researchers for a considerable period of time.

“There is no doubt that our research has shown that raw oil and natural gas occur without the inclusion of fossils. All types of rock formations can act as hosts for oil deposits,” asserts Vladimir and adds that this applies to areas of land that have previously remained unexplored as possible sources of this type of energy.

This discovery has several positive aspects. Rate of success as concerns finding oil increases dramatically – from 20 till 70 percent. As drilling for oil and natural gas is an extremely expensive process, costs levels will be radically changed for the petroleum companies and eventually also for the end user. “This means savings of many billions of kronor,” says Vladimir.

In order to identify where it is worth drilling for natural gas and oil, Professor Kutcherov has, via his research, developed a new method. The world is divided into a fine-meshed grid. This grid is the equivalent of cracks, known as migration channels, through strata underlying the earth’s crust. Good places to drill are where these cracks meet.

According to Professor Kutcherov, these research results are extremely important not least as 61 percent of the world’s energy consumption is currently based on raw oil and natural gas. The next stage in this research is more experiments, especially to refine the method that makes it easier to locate drilling points for oil and natural gas.

The research results produced by Vladimir Kutcherov, Anton Kolesnikov and Alexander Goncharov were recently published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, Volume 2, August.

SOURCE

Journal abstract follows:

Methane-derived hydrocarbons produced under upper-mantle conditions

By Anton Kolesnikov et al.

There is widespread evidence that petroleum originates from biological processes1, 2, 3. Whether hydrocarbons can also be produced from abiogenic precursor molecules under the high-pressure, high-temperature conditions characteristic of the upper mantle remains an open question. It has been proposed that hydrocarbons generated in the upper mantle could be transported through deep faults to shallower regions in the Earth’s crust, and contribute to petroleum reserves4, 5. Here we use in situ Raman spectroscopy in laser-heated diamond anvil cells to monitor the chemical reactivity of methane and ethane under upper-mantle conditions. We show that when methane is exposed to pressures higher than 2 GPa, and to temperatures in the range of 1,000-1,500 K, it partially reacts to form saturated hydrocarbons containing 2-4 carbons (ethane, propane and butane) and molecular hydrogen and graphite. Conversely, exposure of ethane to similar conditions results in the production of methane, suggesting that the synthesis of saturated hydrocarbons is reversible. Our results support the suggestion that hydrocarbons heavier than methane can be produced by abiogenic processes in the upper mantle.

Nature Geoscience 2, 566 – 570 (2009), 26 July 2009

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Osiris Therapeutics Inc, which is developing a drug to treat a rare condition that affects bone marrow transplant patients, is poised to unveil results from a late-stage trial that could pave the way for the first approved drug in that indication and instill investor confidence in the company.

GvHD is a potentially fatal disease in which immune cells from a transplanted bone marrow recognize the recipient’s body as foreign and attack it.

Osiris’ drug, Prochymal, is designed to work by interacting with the immune cells in the body, reducing inflammation and assisting in tissue repair.

In theory, it could also help patients with diseases such as diabetes and Crohn’s disease.

Do you know what is not mentioned anywhere in this story, which comes from the Science section of Reuters news? If you guess “what type of stem cells are being used?,” give yourself a shot of tequila. Osiris tends to use Mesenchymal stem cells, a form of adult stem cells found in bone marrow, in all their research. So, once again, adult stem cells are showing promise.

This kind of muddle headed story is what causes those who do not follow the whole stem cell debate to not understand that there are other forms than embryonic stem cells, allowing partisan Democrats to demagogue and paint Republicans to be “anti-science for being against stem cell research,” when, in fact, we are all for stem cell research, as long as it leaves using federal funds for embryonic research out of the mix. Some are against the use because embryos have to be destroyed. Others, like myself, are against using federal funds for research that has so far proven completely worthless in real world applications. Not to mention, Democrats pretty much support ESC research in order to provide a rational for abortions.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Vitro Diagnostics, Inc. (OTCBB: VODG), dba Vitro Biopharma, announced advances in its adult stem cell products and technology with application to cell-based therapy of cancer. With the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy from brain cancer, we are reminded of such aggressive cancers without effective treatment.

Cancer stem cells are thought to generate cancerous tumors, and while some of these tumor cells are destroyed by chemotherapy and radiation, cancer stem cells resist these treatments causing recurrences and metastasis of cancer following standard therapy. For example, glioblastoma tumors underlying Senator Kennedy’s brain cancer may arise from cancer stem cells that resist conventional treatments. Additional research shows that certain adult stem cells migrate to cancer stem cells and may be used to carry toxic agents to selectively eradicate cancer stem cells thereby providing novel cellular therapy specifically targeted to cancer-causing cells. Further development of stem cell therapy may allow treatment of presently untreatable cancer and also have more widespread applications to prevention and treatment of cancer.

It’s rather sleazy to use Ted Kennedy’s name in this, but, hey, if it is good enough for the Democrats….. well, anyhow, this is definitely good news, if it pans out.

Meanwhile

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s postponement of a human trial using embryonic stem cells resulted from the development of cysts in animals undergoing tests.

Shocker! That seems to be the result of the vast majority of ESC tests. Cancerous tumors.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters. …

It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.

The machine was hailed as the ‘future of weather prediction’ with the ability to produce more accurate forecasts and produce climate change modeling.

However the Met Office’s HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution – responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country’s least green machines.

The carbon-spewing energy hog does not even predict the weather accurately.

It is the second time the Met Office has been criticised this year – after the machine famously helped predict a “BBQ summer” which turned out to be another wash-out.

Apparently the “garbage in, garbage out” axiom applies to computer models no matter how many calculations are done per second.

Here’s an idea that would spare the polar bears from all that harmless carbon and taxpayers from massive waste: why not hire a psychic to do climate change predictions with a ouija board?

On tips from mega and BURNING HOT. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

The funny thing is that Joe Public has to be mandated by arrogant politicians into buying the next best thing to sliced bread. Why is this so? Because in the eyes of his intellectual and moral superiors in the media and politics he is just too dumb to know a good thing when he sees it. Therefore his betters must intervene to save him from his ignorant short-sightedness.

Irrespective of what smart-aleck journalists and pompous politicians think, Joe Public is being perfectly rational in choosing the incandescent bulb over the new wonder light, despite the fact that calculations showing the technical superiority of the new product are correct. The principal problem is that politicians and journalists are economic illiterates. If it were otherwise they would never have confused technical efficiency with economic efficiency.

If technical efficiency was the sole determinant then consistency would demand that these advocates should also promote silver, gold and platinum as alternatives to copper wiring because they are superior conductors. But, as they would argue, these metals are too expensive for the job and that’s why we need copper.

The same goes for solar panels. If these were 100 per cent efficient they would still be grossly inefficient economically because they involve massive diseconomies of scale where as centralised power generation gives us economies of scale. When it is realised that what really matters is economic efficiency the case for mandating fluorescent lighting and other alternatives falls to the ground.

Philips’ figures show that the running costs of a $6 11 watt energy globe (the equivalent of a 60 watt incandescent globe) over a three year period would be $6.60 while the $1.0 alternative would cost 36 dollars for the same period. A “slam dunk deal”, as Americans say. Only it ain’t. Let us return to our hapless consumer, the one who is too stupid to know how he should spend his money.

In a free market he would have the choice of both products and he would choose on the basis of which one gave him the greatest satisfaction. In this case let us make it the destructive incandescent bulb. Running this light for one year will cost him $12 while the other one will cost $2.20. What is being overlooked, however, that he is not calculating costs in this mechanical way. He is comparing $1.0 for the incandescent bulb with the $6 for the so-called eco-friendly alternative.

By spending $1 he finds himself with $5 to spend on other goods. What we have here is an example of opportunity cost. It is very clear, therefore, that he values the additional goods more than he values the ‘eco-friendly’ light. But what about future savings? This question brings us to time preference, the preference for present goods over future goods. In other words, we value present goods more highly than those in the future.

If one were to ask these journalists if they would prefer to have a $100 today or $100 in a year’s time, they would choose to have $100 today. By making this choice they reveal that they value $100 today more highly than $100 in the future. This means that these sums of money are being correctly treated as two different goods, with time making the difference. (Incidentally, this is why we have interest). If they were being treated as identical goods it would then be a matter of complete indifference to our journalists whether they chose $100 today or vice versa. The same goes for buying lights or any other goods.

Future cost savings are just that — in the future. If the consumer chooses the incandescent light then he is clearly stating that the cost of the alternative exceeds the value of its future benefits. In general, the lower the consumer’s income the higher his time preference is likely to be. From this we conclude that mandating these lamps reduces the welfare of the less well off, as does the absurd tax on plastic bags. (Plastic bags v. greenie bigotry). However, this fact didn’t faze [Australian politician] Malcolm Turnbull, one of the economic illiterates responsible for the policy of banning incandescent light bulbs.

This leaves our activists with the externality argument. According to them the humble light bulb is a case of market failure that is ‘polluting’ the environment and as this cost is not built into their price they must phased out in favour of an alternative that produces very little in the way of externalities. Two free market economists nailed this argument when they pointed out:

Taxes do not result from a market process, nor do they reflect allocation decisions of resource owners . . . In other words, taxation is a method of intervening, not an alternative to intervention or nonmarket allocation. (O’Driscoll and Rizzo, cited in Efficiency and Externalities in an Open-Ended Universe, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007, p. 13).

(For those who might be a little confused on this point, there is no fundamental difference between mandating incandescent bulbs out of the market or putting a prohibitive tax on them. As for pollution, Co2 is a nutrient and not a pollutant. Moreover, thousands of scientists are now challenging the phony science of man-made global warming. In addition, there has been no global warming for ten years. These scientists know that the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is a mere 0.38 per cent while the Martian atmosphere is 95 per cent carbon dioxide. These are facts that you will not find in our scaremongering rags)

We must now examine the greens’ hypocrisy. Back in the late ’60s or early ’70s green fanatics whipped up hysteria about traces of mercury being found in tuna and how it would poison us. Research later found that the amount of mercury found in tuna was perfectly normal and had nothing to do with industry. I raised this case because mercury is a necessary component of the greens’ new wonder lamp. So the same fanatics who railed against traces of mercury in tuna are perfectly happy to bully us into installing mercury-laden lamps in every room in the house. (This raises the question of who should be sued if someone is harmed by mercury from one of these ‘eco-saving’ lamps).

If I break an ordinary bulb I merely have to sweep up the bits and put them into a bin. Not so with ‘green lights’. When they break they need to be disposed of in a responsible manner. Philips, one of the companies manufacturing these lights, states:

All mercury-containing products must be disposed of responsibly. As more of us adopt CFLs to help save energy and contribute to a better environment, it becomes more important that our community has a recycling programme for mercury and other environmentally unsafe materials. (Make the switch to energy efficient lighting).

Will the policy of phasing out the incandescent raise the demand for electricity?

Minimising energy in an effort to lower production costs is self-evidently good business practice — but it also has the ironic effect of raising the demand for electricity. This is because reducing the use of electrical energy per unit of output in production processes is similar to reducing its price. What matters is not the ratio of energy to output but the ratio of the value of the output to the value of the inputs, of which the energy source is one. Therefore it does not matter for demand whether the fall in the cost of energy as an input is caused by a reduction in price or by an innovation, the result is the same. Economic history has numbers of examples of this process and only economic rationalism (market economics journalists) can explain it.

The steam engine is an excellent example of this process. Before Watt’s innovations the steam engine was horrendously wasteful. The introduction of Watt’s separate condenser alone improved ‘energy conservation’ by a factor of four. This not only increased the demand for coal but also for more steam engines which in turn led to more innovations which in turn…. This very early example of ‘energy conservation’ was brought about by market forces, not meddling politicians or ignorant ‘journalists’, and its reverberations were quickly felt throughout the economy by stimulating economic growth and raising the demand for labour.

Those who may think that the steam engine is only isolated example should look at the findings by Herbert Inhaber and Harry Saunders in a 1994 study, Road to Nowhere; Energy Conservation Often Backfires published by the New York Academy of sciences. The authors gave historical examples to support their case that as the amount of energy per unit of output falls the demand for electricity RISES.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

McClatchy has an interesting article that warns that the vaunted “electronic medical record” is no panacea for efficiency in the healthcare field and warns that a headlong rush to digitize patient’s records is a bad move unless some far-reaching plans are made before digitizing begins.

The paper chain uses the example of the three largest hospitals in “tech-savvy Seattle” where it just so happens that none of the electronic records systems that each hospital installed can communicate with one another. The systems are proprietary and cannot be made to link up and this means that patient’s records are no more portable than they ever were. Despite all the “tech-savvy” in Seattle, these computer systems are basically a failure.

Worse, the piece warns that so-called stimulus money being sent willy-nilly into hospitals nationwide to digitize records will be wasted unless some way to assure compatibility is thought out before the money is thrown away on ill-conceived programs of digitization.

So, once again, the left throws around buzz words like “electronic medical records” and creates little thought out programs to pursue the subject and then throws fistfuls of money down a rat hole to fund them.

There are some great points in this piece that should be considered when the subject of digitizing medical records is raised.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

[T]he carbon meter would fit on your hand and glows a particular color – green, yellow, orange or red – depending on how well you’re using your public transportation allowance. Are you saving more carbon by hopping onto a train for a short ride, or would the hybrid bus have actually had the smaller footprint? The meter would let you know.

Not only does the meter help you track your ecosins, it could help Big Brother track them too:

All the information about how many passengers are taking advantage of the various kinds of transportation would be uploaded to a government database where the data could be analysed and the transportation system greened up ever more.

This technology would also assist our rulers in keeping tabs on what everyone is up to, so that they won’t have to rely so much on volunteers turning people in at Obama’s Snitch Line. Who says Obamunism squelches innovation?

Hat tip: motorcitytimes.com. On tips from The Blogprof and BURNING HOT. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post