Eric Logan

Detroit in January isn't an exotic destination, with wind chills in the teens and snowplows scraping streets in their annual battle with winter. But more than 5,000 journalists, many from overseas, will flock there next week for the preview of the 103rd annual auto show. When the North American International Auto Show opens Jan. 16 an expected 700,000 visitors will see more than 700 new cars on display, including more than 30 global debuts. They'll also see an industry transformed. The stakes at this year's auto show are enormous because the focus won't be only on the cars but also on the companies themselves. Since last year's show, General Motors and Chrysler have gone in and out of bankruptcy. GM is mostly owned by the government, and Chrysler is being run by Fiat. Toyota has announced its first loss in nearly 60 years and the largest car recall ever. GM's once-venerable Pontiac, Saturn and Saab brands will be absent from this year's show. Pontiac and Saturn are dead, victims of... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

Two years ago, in his book “Rocketeers,” Michael Belfiore celebrated the pioneers of the budding private space industry. Now he has returned to explore a frontier closer to home. The heroes of his new book, “The Department of Mad Scientists,” work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as Darpa, a secretive arm of the United States government. And the revolution they’re leading is a merger of humans with machines. The revolution is happening before our eyes, but we don’t recognize it, because it’s incremental. It starts with driving. Cruise control transfers regulation of your car’s speed to a computer. In some models, you can upgrade to adaptive cruise control, which monitors the surrounding traffic by radar and adjusts your speed accordingly. If you drift out of your lane, an option called lane keeping assistance gently steers you back. For extra safety, you can get extended brake assistance, which monitors traffic ahead of you, alerts you to collision... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

Millennium Assessment of Human Behaviors - Eric Logan

This essay first appeared in Harper's Weekly, September 15, 1883. It was republished in the collection On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner. ----------------------------------------------------- The progress in material comfort which has been made during the last hundred years has not produced content. Quite the contrary — the men of today are not nearly so contented with life on earth as their ancestors were. This observation is easily explainable by familiar facts in human nature. If satisfaction does not reach to the pitch of satiety, it does not produce content, but discontent; it is therefore a stimulus to more effort, and is essential to growth. If, however, we confine our study of the observation which we have made to its sociological aspects, we perceive that all which we call "progress" is limited by the countermovements it creates, and we also see the true meaning of the phenomena which have led some to the crude and silly... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie "Avatar," a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to "the link," a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer. This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing. Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la "The Matrix." Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. "We don't know what the limits are yet," says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University's BrainLab. Adds Emory University neuroscience... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

A New Year’s celebration turned into a fatal stabbing shortly after midnight when two residents got into an argument at a party Joshua Jay Sands, 35, became the city’s first homicide victim of 2010 after he was stabbed several times by Reginald Etienne, 31. At 12:31 a.m., Cape Coral Police responded to a 911 call at 1140 SW 47th Terrace reporting a stabbing. Sands and Etienne had been arguing at a party at the residence, and Etienne left the party and went home next door to get a knife. Etienne then returned to the party where he and Sands continued the argument. The argument moved away from the home and to the roadway, where some pushing and shoving occurred. Etienne took the knife and stabbed Sands numerous times. Sands was transported to Lee Memorial Hospital where he died from the injuries. Etienne was arrested and charged with murder. He was booked and transferred to Lee County Jail. - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

So sorry to hear that. What a tragic end to what should be a night of celebration. Oh beautiful world, why do you have to be so ugly at times? - Chris Heath

Macroscopic decoherence - the idea that the known quantum laws that govern microscopic events, might simply govern at all levels without alteration - also known as "many-worlds" - was first proposed in a 1957 paper by Hugh Everett III. The paper was ignored. John Wheeler told Everett to see Niels Bohr. Bohr didn't take him seriously. Crushed, Everett left academic physics, invented the general use of Lagrange multipliers in optimization problems, and became a multimillionaire. It wasn't until 1970, when Bryce DeWitt (who coined the term "many-worlds") wrote an article for Physics Today, that the general field was first informed of Everett's ideas. Macroscopic decoherence has been gaining advocates ever since, and may now be the majority viewpoint (or not). But suppose that decoherence and macroscopic decoherence had been realized immediately following the discovery of entanglement, in the 1920s. And suppose that no one had proposed collapse theories until 1957. Would decoherence now... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

""This is the world where my good friend Ernest formulates his Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment, and in this world, the thought experiment goes: 'Hey, suppose we have a radioactive particle that enters a superposition of decaying and not decaying. Then the particle interacts with a sensor, and the sensor goes into a superposition of going off and not going off. The sensor interacts... more... - Jason Wehmhoener

Happy new year! - Rochelle

Happy New Year, Eric! - Eivind

Responses to "Climategate"--the leaked e-mails from Britain's University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit--remind me of the line "Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That's because you're in denial." Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN's Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it's only a few intemperate scientists; there's no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let's persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python "nothing to see here, move along" routine is Prof. David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate. Unfortunately for Reid, old saws won't work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites. Even environmentalist and writer George Monbiot has recognized that the public's perception of climate science will be damaged extensively, calling for one of the Climategate ringleaders to resign. What's... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

Thanks for playing come back next year and try again. Tactic has apparently worked for the last two decades on you. ;-) - Eric Logan

Race to replace gas with green batteries - Eric Logan

Three SEC forms filed over the last two weeks show former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and former Senator and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham have joined the board of C3, a mysterious startup founded by Thomas Siebel, former CEO of Siebel Systems which was bought by Siebel’s previous employer Oracle for $5.7 billion in 2005. The filings also reveal $26 million of investment. In addition to the two politicians, Siebel has brought on Jay Dweck, a Managing Director and Global Head of Strategies and Technology for the Institutional Securities Group at Morgan Stanley. Dan Levine points out that Dweck could be helpful in the creation of a market for carbon securities. Rounding out the team are former Siebel Systems and Oracles executives Patricia House and Edward Abbo, which suggests the company is developing enterprise software. On the company’s sparse website C3 describes itself as an “Energy and Emissions Management” company. Add the high-profile politicians (who were... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

For nearly 20 years, a government laboratory built a living, respiring library of carefully collected organisms in search of something that could grow quickly while producing something precious: oil. But now that collection has largely been lost. National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists found and isolated around 3,000 species algae from construction ditches, seasonal desert ponds and briny mashes across the country in a major bioprospecting effort to find the best organisms to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into fuel for cars. Despite meager funding, the Aquatic Species Program (.pdf), initiated under President Jimmy Carter, laid the scientific foundation for making diesel-like fuel from the fat that microscopic algae accumulate in their cells. Fifty-one varieties were carefully characterized as potential high-value strains, but fewer than half of those remain. “Just when they started to succeed is when the plug got pulled,” said phycologist Jeff Johansen of John Carroll... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

A well authored article with merit; agreed certain members of Congress would love to see the administration open another front on Al Qaeda, but I earnestly feel the President, without over reacting, had to do something in light of events that occurred on Christmas, hence the enhancing of getting the CIA involved . However, I also feel the President and Sectary Gates are smart enough not to open any more battle fronts on foreign soil. - Tom Awtry

It all started with the sound of static. In May 1964, two astronomers at Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were using a radio telescope in suburban New Jersey to search the far reaches of space. Their aim was to make a detailed survey of radiation in the Milky Way, which would allow them to map those vast tracts of the universe devoid of bright stars. This meant that Penzias and Wilson needed a receiver that was exquisitely sensitive, able to eavesdrop on all the emptiness. And so they had retrofitted an old radio telescope, installing amplifiers and a calibration system to make the signals coming from space just a little bit louder. But they made the scope too sensitive. Whenever Penzias and Wilson aimed their dish at the sky, they picked up a persistent background noise, a static that interfered with all of their observations. It was an incredibly annoying technical problem, like listening to a radio station that keeps cutting out. At first, they assumed the noise was... more... - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet

From the businessmen who clothed and fed us, to the politicians who led us, to the questioners who made us reconsider our own conscience - we recognized their loss by remembering what they gave us - Eric Logan from Bookmarklet