Bacterial Awesomeness

This is fascinating, though you wouldn't think so if you were doing it. Taking a population of bacteria, dividing it by twelve, and watching the populations develop for twenty years sounds like great fun, no?

Twenty years into it, Richard Lenski of Michigan State noticed that one group of bacteria were eating the other component of the feed they were given. The bacteria weren't supposed to be able to do that . . . their little bacteria species was identifiable, in part, from the fact that they couldn't eat that. It was just in there because it was part of the standard growth medium.

This is basically akin to cats . . . who cannot taste sweets according to various sources . . . developing a sweet tooth all of the sudden, snarfing down Reese's Pieces and ice cream (after batting the Pieces across the floor for awhile, of course).

Now as for me, I'm curious to know whether their sudden citrate-tooth . . . which other bacteria have . . . is something that might've involved some vestigial code from a common ancestor that was simply reactivated, or if this was a major change that occurred quite independently.

Either way, though, massive kudos for Lenski, and more pointing and laughing at young-Earth creationist loons.

Fascinating: Obama's Record

Haven't heard much on this before. It's a must-read and must-confirm and must-discuss.

Obama seems capable of sugarcoating his near-communist views most excellently (so you don't even recognize them while he's saying them . . . only later in reviewing what he said), but seeing what he actually does is rather interesting.

The article's not some harsh hit piece, so near as I can tell . . . while there's mention of his long association with Wright in a quote of someone else, the author doesn't fixate on Obama's association with black racists like Wright, terrorists like William Ayers, or his America-loathing wife.

All in all, a good and informative article, but as with all things one must check it out.

Google Making Us Stupid? Perhaps, But . . .

I'm not sure that it is the internet making us stupid. I think it's more that it allows us to exercise our existing stupidity. That, and the fact that it means our village idiots and resident hippies get to roam free, spewing their babble en masse, instead of being contained and isolated and eventually trainable as once they were.

The Coming Industrial Revolution

The RepRap is a self-replicating rapid-prototyping machine. I've seen a large rapid prototyping device before at a university, and they are magnificent devices. Building a plastic object layer by layer, you end up with a near-perfect model (or, if it was a plastic object you wanted in the first place, a near-perfect object ready for use).

Calling it "self-replicating" is a bit of a stretch at the moment. In addition to a wealth of additional parts (including steel rods and assorted electronics), it must be hand-assembled and requires a computer to operate. However, future RepRaps are intended to have the ability to do circuitry. This sort of thing is manually possible even now . . . there are special conductive-ink pens that allow one to draw working low-voltage circuits. Microprocessors are certainly a long way off for any such tabletop technology, but the germ of the idea is there.

Even with what it can do now, it would be theoretically possible for RepRap to put certain companies out of business, if the units existed in sufficient numbers. For the most low-key example, you can imagine a simple "make solid" plug-in to convert 3-D graphics models (LightWave or POV-Ray or what-have-you) into solid shapes that the RepRap software could build. This would have the effect of savagely reducing the business of certain fringe model kit and toy makers. Even for more advanced model-builders who wanted to light their models, designing little conduits (or large open spaces) for running wire or fiber optics is hardly outside the realm of possibility.

The best part of RepRap is the open-source nature of it. You can make your own right now.

The active mind can certainly see all sorts of potential for a device like that. But, I want you to imagine the future. Picture a replicator similar to RepRap capable of working with many materials. I'm not even talking about nanotechnology dreams, here, but a real assembler capable of using small quantities of metals and plastics. Even with the most basic processors, what common items couldn't be made with such a thing?

This is the coming revolution. While industry will remain a step ahead for a long while owing to quantities of scale and special needs and whatnot, home manufacturing will slowly whittle away at it as time passes.

Of course, the more things can be made simply, the greater the danger, too. If you can make a simple analog telephone at home, you can make a sealed detonator circuit just as easily. The same is true even today, to be sure, but with so severely lessened cost and thought and effort requirements I have a feeling the problem would worsen significantly.

Will we make it past a home manufacturing revolution? Will nano-tech based home replication systems come and will society survive? It remains to be seen. But we're not too terribly far away now from finding out. The world of 2100 will either be extraordinary to see, or positively horrifying.

Dear US Media: Shut Up!

What is it with the press? I mean, we know they're leftist-leaning and all, and we know they also need ratings and that scaremongering seems to generate them, but good grief.

For months now they've been trying to generate a recession out of thin air. When the real numbers have failed them by showing that all is well and the economy is growing, they report as news their own polls of a few hundred people wherein they find that a majority think we're in a recession. Or, they find some economist guy to say it's probably a recession. And from there the media goons go on talking about the recession that experts and hoi polloi believe us to be in.

"Of course they believe!" I want to scream . . . "you've been shoving the idea down their throats day in and day out!"

Such so-called "news reporting" is just so jarringly opinionated that it boggles the mind that more people don't realize what's going on.

This does demonstrate the weakness of our economy, though . . . after all, it can be significantly slowed by nothing more than rumor.

The really sick part, though, is how gleeful these bastards are when any negative number does come in. Case in point is the news today about unemployment rates, which have climbed up from historically-low figures toward more-normal-but-still-great values. I don't have more information on the released numbers themselves . . . e.g. the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts as unemployed those who are "discouraged workers" (who have supposedly given up looking, esp. due to economic conditions) and marginal workers (able-bodied folks who haven't looked recently).

(That's crap in my opinion -- if you're not looking for work, then you're not unemployed . . . you're just not a part of the labor force, slacker -- but I'd be interested to see how much of this climb is based on that sort of silliness.)

Yet you can hear the glee in the reporting, and of course you can see the attempt to convince people that it's a recession:

"the nation's unemployment rate zoomed to 5.5 percent in the biggest one-month jump in decades."

Yeah, and my neighborhood anorexic has ballooned out to 105 pounds after her three-cracker eating binge.

"Barbara Bowens, 52, of Washington, D.C., has been laid off from a janitorial job since March. The prospects of finding a new job "don't look so good," she said. "I can't pay bills off nothing." Collecting unemployment benefits helps, but "I've got to pinch pennies."

Cheryl Williams, who lives in the Tulsa, Okla., suburb of Broken Arrow, has been looking for work for two years after losing her job as a certified nurse's aide. The 37-year-old relies on $225 a month in welfare and odds-and-ends jobs to support her two kids.

"I have job searched and job searched and job searched," Williams said. "I would like to have a real job."

Just in the past several days General Motors Corp., United Airlines and others have joined the flurry of job-cut announcements.

The unemployment rate shot up from 5 percent in April, reflecting more workers losing their jobs as well as an influx of young people looking for work. It was the biggest over-the-month swing in the rate since February 1986."

For 1986, the yearly average was 7.0 percent. Indeed, through the roaring 80's the unemployment rate only dipped into the 5's in the last two years. Now it's 5.5 and you're acting like the world's ending?

"Ohhhh, but listen to Barbara and Cheryl!" Screw them. There's always a Barbara and a Cheryl who press, politicians, or other folks will use for their gain. What about the sad tales of non-leftist Americans tired of having their economy affected by the lies of the press? There are so many of them compared to Barbara and Cheryl. Oh, but that wouldn't fit the narrative of a sour economy . . . silly me.

"The increase left the jobless rate at its highest since October 2004."

2004's yearly average was 5.5 percent. A good year, overall. Better than the two post-9/11 years preceding it.

"The White House snapped into crisis-management mode. "

Yes, because it's all the president's fault, of course. Remember planetary expert Kanye West? . . . Bush hates black people.

"Employers -- and the public -- have been shaken by lots of talk about whether the economy is on the brink of or has fallen into its first recession since 2001. That determination, made by a panel of academics, is usually made well after the fact."

This is cute. Here the author reports on "lots of talk" . . . talk that came from the press, of course . . . and then suggests that a bunch of Ivory Tower folks will determine whether it happened after it passes. In other words, he's basically saying "trust us . . . we know now that we're in one." Eat my poo.

""For the average American there is not debate that the economy is in a recession," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com."

Of course not! Didn't you know that once the press starts reporting something as fact, it is fact and none may oppose it without being clearly and undeniably insane? Al Gore knows. The debate is over.

(My ass. Mark Zandi's a reject. The data says we are not receding, ergo we are not in a recession. QED, punk.)