...The actual solvency of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is relatively indecipherable due to the fact that their treasury management processes (and the risks of their own investment strategies) are not uniformly disclosed with sufficient transparency. The FDIC was set up for isolated problems with a few bad banks but is NOT prepared to “insure” the system in an industry-wide crisis. The actual liquidity reserve of the “insurance” that Americans view as their safety net is 1/100th the actual exposure of outstanding deposits. The actual coverage ratio for the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF) fell below 1.25% in 2002, the same year that less stable credit practices were adopted by America’s leading banks.

The funny part is that the Federal Government will be on holiday when all of this happens. There will be no one to put freeze actions and moratoria on actions. The only way you stop the cataclysm is to put together civil actions on deposit withdrawals.

As I discussed previously, the Chinese currency wild-card may become relevant far sooner than expected. An effort by China to convert its $1.4 trillion U.S. Treasury holdings into euros is not viable for many reasons – not the least of which is the European Central Bank’s inability to absorb such an event. As China continues its rush away from supporting U.S. Treasuries and as Middle Eastern investors are buying them up in more diversified holdings, a new “currency exchange” is unfolding. Realizing that they cannot liquidate their holdings, it appears that the Chinese are currently using their U.S. Treasury holdings as collateral for euro denominated purchases and long term infrastructure transactions. In other words, they may be “liquidating” their holdings as collateral and, in so doing, effectively migrating to non-dollar value without ever having to officially dump their current Treasury holdings. ...   more »

Anastasia by Vladimir Megre
Published in the USA by Ringing Cedars Press
www.ringingcedars.com

In 1977 I lived nearly the whole year in ...

   more »

August 18, 2007

Herein: a plan to save the life of the earth and the human species. ...   more »

I strongly recommend reading this and the other articles posted by SCIY's new guest Editor: William H. Kötke. Even though I've been intellectually aware of many of the facts he presents, his trenchant writing style is bringing them home to me with a new emotional urgency.  ~ ronjon

---

The journey of the human species: hero to cosmic being ...   more »

Representatives from the world's leading governments began Monday to unveil the potentially conflicting agendas they will seek to advance during an international climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia. -- Leaders from the European Union kicked off the UN-led conference Monday by declaring that they will seek ambitious international emissions reduction targets of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

EU member states have already committed to reducing emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and a spokeswoman for the European Commission told SPIEGEL ONLINE last week that they would seek a 30-percent international decrease in the new contract. -- Officials from over 180 nations have gathered in Bali to start drafting a new international treaty to govern greenhouse gas emission reductions. ...   more »

The project was based on a 'dream' of The Mother, spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, an Indian freedom fighter and philosopher who continues to inspire millions the world over. A few years earlier, she had written: "There should be somewhere on earth a place...where all human beings of goodwill who have a sincere aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world; a place of peace, concord..." Forty years later, one may ask: what has happened to her dream?

The first pioneers had their job cut out, to prevent further erosion. They did not have an easy life but their enthusiasm matched the tremendous difficulties. Their 'environmentally-friendly' actions (they planted millions of trees) were not moved by an ideology, nobody talked about 'ecology' in the 60s, but simply to get shade and prevent the sand storms.

Eventually they acquired some expertise; the world over, Auroville - The Mother called it the City of Dawn - is today synonymous with sustainable development, alternative energies and architecture. Ditto for those who began the first cottage industries, most of them had no prior skills in the field of handicrafts, they just needed to generate some income to build this "city the earth needs". It was much later that 'Auroville crafts' became a brand name. ...   more »

Thanks to RY Deshpande for suggesting this article.

---

Perched on the shore of Lake Michigan, the Chicago Spire’s seven-sided corkscrew design will be more than just an audacious architectural whim. The twist—a clockwise shift at each of its 150 floors—will reduce umbrella-busting gusts of wind at street level by directing most of the wind upward along the channels. Rounded skyscrapers also sway less than rectangular buildings because wind pushes evenly on all sides. Contractors broke ground on the building in June; at 2,000 feet and with 1,193 condos, it will be the tallest residential building in the world (tall enough to see the curvature of the planet from the top floors!) when it’s completed in 2011. ...   more »

Berkeley -- When University of California, Berkeley, astrophysicist George Smoot received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics a year ago, his dreams for spending his $700,000 share of the prize ran far beyond purchasing a sporty car or a new home.

Instead, he wanted to create a lasting center where he and other scientists - in particular, young postdoctoral researchers - could tackle cosmic questions whose solutions would be worthy of future Nobel Prizes.

That dream, the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics (http://bccp.lbl.gov/), has now become reality, with a $500,000 endowment gift from Smoot and additional gifts totaling $8.1 million. These gifts include $1.5 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $5.5 million in private gifts and other support for endowed chairs at the center and for postdoctoral and graduate student support. UC Berkeley physics professor Saul Perlmutter, who, like Smoot, is also a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has also contributed to the center, using a portion of his 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize to seed a fund for future research that, with the addition of other funds, will total approximately $600,000. ...

Smoot, the center's director, and UC Berkeley plan to raise at least $4 or 5 million in endowment on top of this $8.1 million to ensure an ongoing center with resident postdoctoral fellows and scholars at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, an active visitors program, educational outreach to K-12 science teachers and several collaborative international workshops on cosmology each year. ...   more »

You're taking a couple of prescription medications and you develop a cold -- so you head to the nearest pharmacy to get something for your headache, cough and stuffy nose.

Not so fast, experts advise. Mixing medications can be dangerous-- even deadly, a fact highlighted by the death in November of popular R&B singer Gerald Levert. An autopsy determined that Levert, 40 -- who reportedly had been suffering from a shoulder problem, pneumonia and the effects of surgery in 2005 to repair a severed Achilles tendon -- died of accidental acute intoxication caused by a mixture of the pain medications Darvocet, Percocet and Vicodin, the anxiety medicine Xanax and two over-the-counter antihistamines.

A report this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that deaths from accidental drug interactions rose 68 percent between 1999 and 2004, continuing a steady climb since the early 1990s. Unintentional drug poisonings accounted for nearly 20,000 deaths in 2004, said the CDC, making the problem now the second-leading cause of accidental death in the United States, after automobile accidents. "Prescription drugs, especially prescription painkillers, are driving the prolonged increase," the report stated. ...   more »

"An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone," writes today's Technology Review. "Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears (emphasis added) to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade..."

The article goes onto to share the response of Christof Koch from Caltech who calls the 10 year target of modeling the human brain "ridiculous." Despite the fantastic progress to date I agree with Christof on this. ...   more »

Thanks to RY Deshpande for referring this article.

---

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term "doubting Thomas" well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do? ...   more »

SCIY's page views totaled 1,220,564 hits through the end of Nov.07. We had 22,027 Distinct Readers during the month of November 2007, an 18% increase over October 2007, and our third highest monthly number of readers. Our page views increased in November to a new record of 118,767, a dramatic increase of 42% over October. November also set a new record of 8,403 Total Megabytes Transferred, a substantial increase of 24% over October. These stats indicate a continuing increase in the number of articles read and the time spent on SCIY by our average reader. ...   more »

Though I find Lynds' arguments unconvincing, his ideas are getting sufficient exposure that I think It's appropriate to post them here on SCIY. ~ ronjon
_____________________
...physicist Peter Lynds ... says that his model not only solves Kant's infinite versus finite universe paradox, but also resolves the mystery of the origin of the universe itself. Lynds' model predicts that the universe will contract toward a big crunch, but instead of a singularity ever being reached, events will reverse and the universe will again expand from a subsequent big bang. Unlike previous cyclic models, Lynds' does not breach any physical laws, as his model has entropy continuing to increase as a result of events being reversed.

If he's correct, then we live in a universe where there is no past or present, and one that is deterministic, even if it is impossible for us to recognize it as such. But there are a number of pressing questions in regard to Lynds' model. How does it fit in with current research that claims that the universe will expand forever? Does Lynds' model imply that the universe somehow "knows" to play events over and over? And will we all have to relive our lives backward? ...   more »

#1.Steve Jobs
Chairman and CEO, Apple

During the first two decades of his remarkable 30-year career, the Apple Inc. founder twice altered the direction of the computer industry. In 1977 the Apple II kicked off the PC era, and the graphical user interface launched by Macintosh in 1984 has been aped by every other computer since. Along the way Jobs conceived of "desktop publishing," gave the world the laser printer, and pioneered personal computer networks. As a side gig he bankrolled Pixar, which fostered the development of the technology and a brand-new business model for creating computer-animated feature films.

Since returning to Apple in 1997, he has changed the dynamics of consumer electronics with the iPod, and persuaded the music industry, the television networks, and Hollywood to distribute their wares with the iTunes Music Store. With his hugely successful Apple Stores, he gave the big-box boys a lesson in high-margin, high-touch retailing. And this year, at the height of his creative and promotional powers, Jobs orchestrated Apple's entry into the cellular telephone business with the iPhone. ...   more »

Auroville's development is inextricably intertwined with the surrounding villages, which are classified as part of a "most backward area in need of development" by the Tamil Nadu Government. There are 13 villages in the immediate area of Auroville, comprising about 40,000 people, and altogether 40 villages in the bioregional area. Some 350 people from the surrounding villages have joined or been born in Auroville.

Almost 5,000 local people are employed by Auroville, from sweepers to engineers; most of them have been trained in Auroville to improve their qualifications and skills. Most important is that Auroville provides for the young of this rural area a real and viable alternative to the migration to the cities and urban centers, which is so often the only option for those seeking self improvement and employment. ...   more »

Optimism exists on a continuum in between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.

I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve within twenty years the problems that now preoccupy us. -- Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years.

Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences (such as global warming) fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment but also by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding.

Consider health. As of just recently, we have the tools to reprogram biology. This is also at an early stage but is progressing through the same exponential growth of information technology, which we see in every aspect of biological progress. The amount of genetic data we have sequenced has doubled every year, and the price per base pair has come down commensurately. The first genome cost a billion dollars. The National Institutes of Health is now starting a project to collect a million genomes at $1,000 apiece. We can turn genes off with RNA interference, add new genes (to adults) with new reliable forms of gene therapy, and turn on and off proteins and enzymes at critical stages of disease progression. We are gaining the means to model, simulate, and reprogram disease and aging processes as information processes. In ten years, these technologies will be 1,000 times more powerful than they are today, and it will be a very different world, in terms of our ability to turn off disease and aging. ...   more »

VALENCIA, Spain -- The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet" and called on the United States and China _ the world's two biggest polluters _ to do more to fight it.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says. ...   more »

Educators and psychologists have long feared that children entering school with behavior problems were doomed to fall behind in the upper grades. But two new studies suggest that those fears are exaggerated.

One concluded that kindergartners who are identified as troubled do as well academically as their peers in elementary school. The other found that children with attention deficit disorders suffer primarily from a delay in brain development, not from a deficit or flaw.

Experts say the findings of the two studies, being published today in separate journals, could change the way scientists, teachers and parents understand and manage children who are disruptive or emotionally withdrawn in the early years of school. The studies might even prompt a reassessment of the possible causes of disruptive behavior in some children...   more »

Prapanna Smith,  MAED

Principal, Integral Elementary School

Rainbow Kids Integral Preschool

http://www.IntegralElementary.com

http://www.RainbowKidsSchool.com

Office: 858-450-4321

Cell: 858-204-2096

---

I recommend viewing this short 30-second video about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) "Give One Get One" project. See the previous article posted to SCIY for more details about this very worthy project.  ~ ronjon

---

One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time.

Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. ...

Kim and I just placed our order for this. Not only is $200 of it tax deductible, but T-Mobile is also giving you one year of complimentary HotSpot WiFi access with your order, more than a $350 value! I highly recommend this amazing, state of the art computer.  ~ ronjon   more »

China will become the world’s biggest carbon polluter this year, overtaking the United States, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a bleak forecast of soaring global demand for fossil fuels. The rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies will raise global energy demand by 50 per cent by 2030, the agency said in its annual World Energy Outlook. India and China alone will account for almost half of the increase.

The agency pointed a finger at soaring coal demand, which threatens to upset carbon reduction targets, as it painted an alarming picture of a future of energy insecurity, soaring oil prices and a massive increase in carbon emissions. The dash towards prosperity in Asia will be fuelled by hydrocarbons - and mainly by increased burning of coal – with an inexorable rise in carbon emissions, hastening climate change.

Accelerating demand for oil, which will reach 116 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030, up 32 per cent, will require huge investments to keep pace, the IEA said, and the sums are increasing. Inflation has taken its toll, and the agency reckons that $5.4 trillion (£2.6 trillion) must be spent to raise capacity, up a quarter from the estimate last year. It gives warning that plans to raise output from new projects may not compensate for the decline in existing fields.

“A supply-side crunch in the period to 2014, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices, cannot be ruled out,” the IEA said in its report. ...    more »

SMALLER than an atom, they arrive with the energy of a tennis ball served by a champion. When they hit the atmosphere they create showers of daughter particles that zap mountaineers and people in aeroplanes. And no one knows where they come from—nor how, in apparent defiance of the laws of physics, they get to this planet in the first place.

Actually, that last sentence is no longer true. The super-particles in question are a particular type of high-energy cosmic ray and fittingly, given their extreme properties, their origin has now been worked out by a team of 444 researchers from 17 countries, using the biggest piece of scientific apparatus on Earth—the Pierre Auger observatory, which occupies 3,000 square kilometres of western Argentina.

Ordinary cosmic rays are puny things. Indeed, they are not really “cosmic” at all. They originate from various events (supernovae and so on) within the Milky Way galaxy that is home to the Earth. A few, however, are real whoppers—the products of events far more powerful than occur in the Milky Way. These are the tennis-ball equivalents and their existence is a puzzle. ...   more »

...In physics, too, there is a Central Dogma, which I have dubbed ‘the evolutionary paradigm’. It is the notion that physics can be neatly divided into a kinematical part, which concerns the description of a physical system at an instant of time, and a dynamical part, which concerns the evolution of a physical system from earlier to later times.

The laws of physics are correlation laws. In classical physics, states are correlated deterministically, so earlier states can be used to predict later states (and later states can be used to retrodict earlier states). Quantum physics correlates measurement outcomes statistically, so earlier measurement outcomes can be used to predict the probabilities of the possible outcomes of later measurements (and later measurement outcomes can be used to retrodict the probabilities of the possible outcomes of earlier measurements). Because the quantum-mechanical correlation laws are genuinely probabilistic, they may not conform to the evolutionary paradigm.

And they don’t. For one thing, the time-symmetry of the laws of physics is at odds with the unidirectionality of the evolutionary paradigm, which has its roots in a physically unwarranted projection into the world of the way we perceive the world. (This casts doubt on the appropriateness of the evolutionary paradigm even for classical physics.) For another thing, the interpretation of a quantum state as an evolving physical state (rather than as a mere computational device) gives rise to no end of pseudo-questions (and gratuitous answers), such as the notorious questions of where and when and how (and with respect to which basis) the wave function collapses ...   more »