Nothing interesting to say...

Except that science sucks.

I'm going to Germany in 7 days.

I'm not done with my Christmas presents yet, one involves a resin that you're supposed to have lots of ventilation for because of fumes, and I think I inhaled too much of it because my lungs feel sort of weird, but maybe thats just all in my head.

I figured out that I shouldnt drink coffee when under stress, it just makes things worse.

We are having a Christmas party tonight, I made a jingle horse costume that is pretty sweet. I hotglued on the bells instead of sewing them and it saved tons of time and they still jingle, so who cares?! I'm supposed to bring egg nog and brandy. Just realized that I don't know if anyone's bringing Christmas cookies!!

Having someone on the instrument I need isnt really that upsetting because I have no time to hang around here in lab anyway, and this purification I'm working on has probably already failed, so it would just be a waste. I managed to run my samples all off the gel I was running yesterday; either that, or they leaked out a crack in the glass somehow...? In any case, if I were a good scientist, I would probably be running another gel right now, but that takes up too much time.

I need to figure out which train pass to get in Germany, I'm going to the Czech Republic and Austria also, at least thats the plan... It seems that getting a two country pass and then a separate country pass costs the same as a three country pass, except that you get more days. I don't even know how much train travel I will be doing in any of these countries!!! Or say, I have a pass in Czech Republic, but not in Germany, and I'm going from Munich to Prague... Would the Czech pass count?!?!!? Probably not...

And that, my friends, is a small sampling of the mental noise in my head on this Sunday morning.

ARGH TINY MACHINES RIPPING INTO ME!!!

HOLY FREAKING HELL. Some crazy MFers have decided to make a little magnet-controlled gripper guy that closes its FIST of DEATH on cells or other things when the temp or other chemical conditions change. Be sure to watch the video on the above linked site where the gripper MERCILESSLY RIPS a chunk of some suspiciously-BLOODY-looking substance off. GRUESOME.

A Word of Warning from Endangered Species

This article from the National Geographic Magazine is definitely worth the read. It is a sad (to me) story about the Endangered Species Act, the challenges it has faced in the past and must overcome in the future.

And definitely make sure to check out the stunning photo gallery that accompanies the article, which includes pictures of the ocelot, the extinct dusky seaside sparrow, and the yellowfin madtom, among others. I don't say 'stunning' lightly, and maybe you might not experience the same feeling, but the diversity on earth is mind-blowing to me (and sad when threatened, which is all the time now).

I would also like to mention that the article says that the building of the Kennedy Space Center overtook critical habitat of the now-extinct dusky seaside sparrow. For shame, Science.

Poor Loris! :(

I have just learned from a youtube video and its comments that people are capturing live lorises, which are endangered, to be sold as pets. Apparently they often kill the mothers, and the babies are unable to groom themselves. Slow lorises have poisonous glands; the poison of which they mix with their saliva to deliver upon biting an attacker. As a result, the teeth are knocked out before they are sold, leaving the animals unable to properly eat. A lot of them die from disease. The slow loris in this video is obviously scared shitless. I don't really know how we are going to be able to stop horrible stuff like this from happening. :( :( :(



The most sickening part of this video are the comments by people who want to know how to find one in their country to buy. Disgusting.

... Revolution?

Gerald Celente has predicted the there would be a revolution in America within the next four years punctuated by tax and job marches and food riots. Also lots of homeless people. He is supported by the British Ministry of Defense, which says that the middle class will take back their government as the disparity between the super rich and the rest of us grows. This person has supposedly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, the 1987 Stock Market Crash, the 1997 Asian currency crisis, the sub prime mortage problem and devaluation of the dollar, and supposedly said this year would be known as "The Panic of 2008." The above linked article also lists a bunch of quotes from news sources attesting to his accuracy.

As we all know, Americans are generally an optimistic bunch, I think. Just ask someone how their day is, and even if its crappy, they'll say "good," right? So, as an American, I don't know how much of this I would like to believe, considering it is unpleasant. But, perhaps I will just stay in grad school and not make any risky job moves. I think colleges are generally pretty stable places to be in times of crisis. At least, that's what I would like to believe. I certainly don't want to become a squatter. What would I do with my cats?

All in all, this is not really the sort of revolution I would like, although I admit it is probably necessary. The food issue is especially poignant, and luckily, Obama has expressed interest in Michael Pollen's Resolarizing the Food System article. I guess everyone should rip up their sod and plant vegetables as soon as possible to become more self reliant. I doubt my landlord would go for that, though.

Truths of War

Warning: Very disturbing image

DOOM N GLOOM: Updated

Images are world population density and energy use & sources. Notice the population density and energy use are not very well correlated. My blog has been updated with dreary colors. I was going to make a doom n gloom themed banner, but we will see.

I'm sorry, folks. Life as we know it is unsustainable. We are all screwed. There will be a crash and there is nothing we can do about it.

Fortunately, we can somewhat soften the blow. We in America will probably not be as affected as those in poorer countries. Why? Because we are an affluent bunch of sons-o'-bitches. WE have 5% of the world's population. WE consume 25% of the world's energy. If India and China decide to adopt our reckless "standard" of living, we will supposedly need the natural resources of 6 earths. So there.

As I said, there will be a crash. Exponential growth of ANYTHING cannot be maintained. There is a crash and a stabilization. Millions (read billions) of people will die of thirst or starve. People are estimating that the holding capacity of the Earth is roughly 4 billion people. We will probably crash to below that level initially before stabling out.

There are some trends that lead us up to this that have compounded our problems. As the population grew, technology grew, our energy needs grew, carbon emissions grew, the earth's temperature grew. The current great extinction event began and will accelerate. The seas will rise. The coastal cities will need to be TRANSPLANTED. There will be a mass exodus north as all of our arable lands will dry up. We are basically releasing millions of years of accumulated solar energy into our atmosphere by burning oil, of course it's going to heat up around here.

I learned all this from a seminar speaker, Jonathan Trent, who works at Ames at NASA right now and is being funded by a couple Google grants. He said it was up to the young people, who are just forming their lives and deciding what to do with them, to ultimately fix this problem. He says we need to be inspired, motivated, to enter science and engineering to fix this problem. A Second Apollo, as they (the old people) like to call it. I say, good luck, because young people these days are SOOOOO self-absorbed. Look at me, for instance. I think I'm special enough where someone would actually want to listen to what I have to say. Nothing more self-glorifying than a blog. You're never going to be able to convince young people to take up a challenge when they can take the easy way out and do what the generations have done before them. Apparently challenges were alluring in the 60s. I say, the sheer magnitude of this problem is a deterrent in itself.

There is more I will talk about later, so check back for updates. It's not all so gloomy, there's some cool science.

OK, COOL SCIENCE:
Let me start out by saying that this was a very knowledgeable man, Jonathan Trent. He was trying to inspire us. And the science was inspiring. The impending doom that makes it necessary was too much for my nihilistic worldview that day. He talked about a 17-year-old student of his who had very interesting things to say and I will make a small effort to discover her.

Transportation: Personal rapid transit. This would be used in addition to the current road/car system for people doing regular travel, like commuting. It involves ultralight personal "pods" that would seat 1-4 people, and they would run on a magnetic track elevated above the road. You would go to a station, get in one, tell it where to go, and it would take you there without slowing down the other pods. This is better than trains or buses because you don't have to stop when other people want to get off. It would use longish on and off ramps to achieve this. A swedish version has the pods descend from the magnetic track to become electric cars. That seems like a more expensive alternative for the consumer. There are apparently lots of people interested in developing it, but no one wants to be the first one, so Ames is going to be building a test track so they can "kick the tires." Apparently this idea has been floating around for a while, but there are a lot of companies now, here and internationally, that are developing the technology. Seems like a good idea to me. Like a rollercoaster!

Biofuels: Nanotech & Algae approach for aviation fuels (No more organic fuels for cars, sorry)
Nanotech! He's talking about using cellulose, cuz theres tons of waste cellulose from our current industries. The problem is breaking down the cellulose into something useful. He suggest that we start viewing biomolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids, as building materials, much like engineers view trees. Engineers don't care about studying trees, they just want to build shit out of them. He is currently, in his lab, developing a sort of protein swiss army knife approach where a bunch of different enzymes from a cellulose-chewing anaerobic bacteria are combined onto a larger protein scaffold. The efficiency of the process greatly improves in this sort of configuration rather than all of the enzymes freely diffusing in solution. And then we would grow up tons of this shit and use it to make ethanol? I think.

Algae: Algae makes 10,000 gal of oil/ acre. Most of the oil reserves we are drilling for are really giant seas of dead ancient algae. Water treatment plants alone make lots of algae. He is trying to grow freshwater algae in giant bags in the ocean, tethered to windmills in wind fields (If the bags break, the algae die and no cleanup problem!). The windmills power lights, whatever, for the algae. He's trying to set up a deal with people in Denmark right now where they have these massive offshore windfarms. Apparently Denmark has made windmills feasible by selling a share of the windmill to people who are willing to let them be on their land. So instead of being ugly and annoying, the people hear "cha-ching!" everytime the windmill goes around. I think this sounds like a really cool project. Go Algae!

And then he talked about how we need to see going green not as a chore, but as a mindset, a way of life. That we need to tackle this because it's hard. How decentralized energy is the way to go, and people from all sides of the political spectrum (except the energy companies) have come to this conclusion for different reasons. He talked about how some people think we should have been going nuclear this whole time, because nuclear waste is a better problem than a major city being without electricity for any length of time. Stone age, man. People don't want to invest in this sort of thing now because they think it's too expensive, but how expensive is it going to be to have to physically relocate a major coastal city?

Anyway, the point of all this isn't to save the world. It's to soften the blow, and to assure that whatever population survives, they can have a sort of enjoyable lifestyle instead of returning to the stone age. Anyone who knows my penchant for the post-apocalyptic movies knows that I don't really think that would be so bad.

Holy Shit, Nuclear Apocalypse

So. I was discussing the sad state of the world with someone, and he said he thought the sad state of the world would elevate to just below a catastrophic level, we would save ourselves, repeat. UNLESS... People start bombing each other. The first thing you wonder is if your area is relatively safe from being bombed. Colorado is sort of ok, but we do have military bases here. Madison would get radiation if Chicago is bombed. I say, to the North Woods!

ANYWAY. So I wondered how far away you have to be and found this website. There is a lot of very useful, but also scary information here. Just to summarize, I think you won't die of heat or burns if you are 10 mi out of a 1 MT bomb. HOWEVER, you will get significant radiation exposure. There is a chart of symptoms varying on the level of radiation you receive. The most IMPORTANT thing learned here is that the radiation travels downwind. If you are 50 mi out of ground zero, you can leave immediately, traveling perpendicular to the wind, to sustain the smallest amount of radiation. If you're 200 mi out, the radiation reaches you at about 14 hr. This is all with a 15 mph wind. I assume that if there is no wind, the people around ground zero are even more screwed and the rest of us will be better off. Also, if its raining on you, you are basically screwed and should hide. For a bigger bomb, you would have to run away quicker. Apparently when they dropped a 15 MT bomb, it traveled 320 mi but was only 40 mi wide because of the wind. A knowledge of the wind patterns in the US is useful. ANYWAY. A pleasant thought: Most of the US is contaminated already because of the tests from back in the day. Sigh.

He also says that if a bomb drops in the Middle East, we can expect our food and plants to all be contaminated over here. All I have to say is I am definitely bringing home a dust mask tonight. Also, it occurs to me that having a relatively full tank of gas at all times may be a good idea. Shit. Another thing that occurs to me is that my grandpa was a paranoid schizophrenic and maybe I should be concerned about going down the same road. Personally, I think these are just dangerous times in a sad state of the world and we need to be prepared! I'll probably be over it tomorrow, but for today, I am FREAKED OUT.