Secret Undersea Alien Base Discovered by Satellite!

Map Source

We have no way of knowing how long the top-secret undersea alien base has existed off the coast of South America. In the top image, you can see a standard map of South America, which does not indicate the location of the base.

Below, you can see a regular night-time satellite image of the night lights of South America. There is likewise no indication of anything amiss. No unusual illumination or energy source whatsoever.

Geology.com

Classified Image -- Need to Know Only

But when you take a time-lapse night-time image with special anti-cloak filtering, the unearthly energy emissions from the undersea alien base seem to jump right off the screen! Look just off the Atlantic coast of Argentina -- on the seafloor between Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

The emissions are characteristic of mixed energies from fusion, anti-matter, micro-singularity, and trans-dimensional wormhole radiation sources. In amplitude, the emissions easily eclipse the illumination of Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paolo combined! But without special optics, radiation detectors, and classified filters, it would have been impossible to detect this gigantic undersea base.

Theoretically, it would be up to Argentina (and perhaps the UK) to deal with this unknown threat, but after several years of catastrophic mismanagement under the Kirchner family of autocrats, Argentina is in no condition to defend itself against an invasion of Emperor Penguins, much less a highly advanced civilisation from another galaxy.

It will take the mainstream media considerable time to catch up to us on this story. As soon as they find out about it they will no doubt be under a severe global security blackout from the UN World Government -- which is the only earthly power able to meet this threat head-on.

Cross your fingers, Earth citizens, and trust that your betters know exactly what to do to guarantee your safety, and that of your posterity.

Elena Kuletskaya - Paris Fashion Week

She is working for MTV Russia
A look like a mix between Jean Seberg and Brigitte Bardot
with a touch of Michelle Pfeiffer. Beautiful !

Model - Paris Fashion Week

Obama's Policy of Energy Starvation Hurts US, Benefits Canada

While Obama's inept moratorium on oil drilling along the US Gulf Coast heaps misery upon millions of Americans, Alberta's economy is being rejuvenated by the shift of resources northward to the oil sands. If Obama's political agenda prevents oil companies from investing in the United States, they will naturally turn to the vast hydrocarbon resources of other nations such as Canada -- while Mexico, Cuba, Russia, China, and Brasil move to take advantage of deep sea oil resources that the US government eschews.

In a research note this week, investment bank Peters & Co. said as much as $30 billion will be spent from 2011 to 2015 on mining and in situ oilsands projects to boost production by almost one million barrels per day.

"Most new sizable projects are controlled by majors with less financing risk and lower costs of capital than juniors of previous cycles," wrote research analyst Todd Garman.

"Based on our assessment of currently planned oilsands mining and in situ projects, including phase expansions, we forecast total potential production additions of about 900,000 bpd, with mining and in situ production of 300,000 bpd and 600,000 bpd, respectively."

..."Specifically, we anticipate that ConocoPhillips' Surmont, Husky's Sunrise, Imperial's Kearl, MEG's Christina Lake and Suncor's Firebag 4 projects provide potential oilsands construction growth opportunities for Flint, with these projects expected to be awarded by 2010 year-end," Garman wrote.

He said the biggest risk for development is related to oil prices -- the projects are projected to break even at between $55 and $65 US per barrel. _CalgaryHerald

As long as oil is priced in terms of the weak Obama Dollar, the price of oil is likely to be above $55 per barrel.

As peak oil drifts ever further into the distance, the more relevant and proximal causes of energy shortages derive from "political peak oil", and the disastrous decisions being made daily by incompetent clowns in public office.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

Selfish Reasons for Immigration

This may have replaced drug legalization as my issue of most interest. You've heard the moral, historic, and economic reasons for and the honest concerns against increasing US immigration. Now here are some selfish reasons for it:

Immigrants will solve our housing crisis. One major reason why housing prices remain in the doldrums and sales remain slack is that there are simply too many houses for sale. The National Association of Realtors reported that in July, there were 3.98 million existing homes on the market, representing a 12.5-month supply at the current pace of sales.

Here's another:

Immigrants are needed to replenish the American workforce. While the American labor force continues to grow, the rate at which it grows has been slowing down for decades. The Bureau of Labor Services projects that by 2020, the growth rate will be just 0.4 percent per year, and by 2030 just 0.3 percent per year. Some of this is attributable to baby boomers moving into retirement homes, and some is attributable to declining birth rates.

And one more:

Immigrants make the economy better. Not only does the San Francisco Fed paper—written, appropriately, by an Italian economist, Giovanni Peri—argue that immigrants don't hurt the economy, it actually makes the case that immigrants are putting money in the pockets of native-born workers. Specifically, it says that "total immigration to the United States from 1990 to 2007 was associated with a 6.6 percent to 9.9 percent increase in real income per worker."

All of those talking about the need for a second stimulus should take my intro economics class. The best way to increase demand is to increase the number of demanders.

Related: In France at least, an increase in immigrants does not mean an increase in crime.

Paris Fashion Legs

Holy Michael the Archangel

Saint Michael, prince of the heavenly hosts, conqueror of the infernal dragon, you received from God the strength and power to destroy through humility the pride of the powers of darkness. We implore you help us to true humility of heart, to unshakable fidelity, to fulfill the Will of God and to fortitude in sufferings and trials. Help us to stand before the judgment seat of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Third Form Participle List

"Catalan Guitarist" Joan Miro, 1924




Text of Three Verbs, Page One
Text of Three Verbs, Page Two
Text of Three Verbs, Page Three

Model - Paris Fashion Week

The lady on the Bridge - Paris FW

This pic was taken on Alexandre III Bridge
after Guy Laroche Show

Mickey Lunettes - Paris Fashion Week

Cool !

Would the World End if We Became More Optimistic?

We are living in an apocalyptic age. We have been living in the apocalyptic age for many decades -- even centuries and more. Humans are strangely attracted to the apocalyptic mindset. Perhaps the doomer mentality is an intentional but subconscious talisman, meant to protect against genuine doom. But what would happen if the media, academia, politicians, big environmental lobbies, NGOs, and the rest of the doom industry were to take a break every now and then? At least on topics such as carbon hysteria, peak oil doom, overpopulation apocalypse, and the other faux dooms that line so many pocketbooks?

Indur M. Goklany has taken a look at the state of the world, and has come to the conclusion that, overall, things are improving.

**Key points from the book** * The rates at which hunger and malnutrition have been decreasing in India since 1950 and in China since 1961 are striking. By 2002 China’s food supply had gone up 80%, and India’s increased by 50%.

Overall, these types of increases in the food supply have reduced chronic undernourishment in developing countries from 37 to 17%, despite an overall 83% growth in their populations. * Economic freedom has increased in 102 of the 113 countries for which data is available for both 1990 and 2000. * Disability in the older population of such developed countries as the U.S., Canada, France, are in decline. In the U.S. for example, the disability rate dropped 1.3 % each year between 1982 and 1994 for persons aged 65 and over. * Between 1970 and the early 2000s, the global illiteracy rated dropped from 46 to 18 percent. * Much of the improvements in the United States for the air and water quality indicators preceded the enactment of stringent national environmental laws as the Clean Air Act of 1970, Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. * Between 1897-1902 and 1992-1994, the U.S. retail prices of flour, bacon and potatoes relative to per capita income, dropped by 92, 85, and 82 percent respectively. And, the real global price of food commodities has declined 75% since 1950. _WUWT

Matt Ridley's recent book, The Rational Optimist, dares to contradict most of the modern "dooms du jour" of modern media, academia, faux environmentalism, and popular culture.

Julian Simon was the ultimate optimist, and his most famous book -- Ultimate Resource II -- is available to read free online.

Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, was far too optimistic for the taste of faux environmentalists and the corrupt scientific : faux environmental industrial complex. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the popular and mythical dooms favoured by the media, academia, and politicians, Lomborg calmly and rationally looked at the real problems of the environment -- and finds them soluble.

Stewart Brand is the grand old man of 60s environmentalism, whose basic wisdom and honesty have led him to reject the doomerism of the faux environmentalists and the modern media. Brand has not escaped the dogmas of faux environmentalism entirely -- he lives in the San Francisco bay area -- but he promotes nuclear energy and other scientific and technological solutions to the problems that do exist.

Full disclosure: Genuine dooms exist. The Earth has suffered through several extinction episodes where life was nearly wiped out -- and perhaps events where life actually was wiped out and had to re-start from scratch.

But we need to focus on the real problems which need solutions, and do it in a systematic and dispassionate manner.

Doomers, with their constant full-volume blare of apocalypse, do not deserve to monopolize our time.

Electric Blue Lady - Paris FW

Outside Pierre Cardin Fashion Show

Takeaways from Predictably Irrational, Part II

I recently finished Dan Ariely's behavioral economics book, Predictably Irrational. You can read Dan's current writing at his blog. Here is part one in a multi-part series of my takeaways from the book. Here is the next part, focusing mostly on the different kinds of exchanges:

There are two worlds of interaction, the world of social norms and the world of market norms. An example of social norm is a friend helping a friend move a couch. Market norm would be hiring a professional mover.

There can be unexpected problems s in the world of market norms. It was the famous efficiency expert Frederick Taylor who said there is "hardly a competent workman can be found who does not devote a considerable amount of time to studying just how slowly he can work and still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace."

In fact, social norms can actually be more productive. There's a famous story (couldn't find a link) about an attempt to increase the amount of blood donation by paying givers. Surprisingly, less blood was donated. The good feelings that came with donating were replaced by a payment too low to compensate for the lost feelings.

The market and social worlds have a hard time existing together, because when combined the normal pattern of interaction become unclear. Remember my earlier post on loaning friends money? The example in the book was a story about a day care that charged a fine for parents for late pickups and actually got more late pickups (because people didn't feel guilty anymore). After they removed the charge, the late pickups increased even more (because people still didn't feel guilty and now didn't have to pay). Here's my earlier post on moral math.

However, gifts (not cash) can be a way to use market incentives within a social norm would. That's why blood donors get t-shirts and cookies. But be sure not to mention how much the goodies cost.

Another problem with market norms is they make you feel more self-reliant. Think about how helpful you are at home without pay, but how favors at work are bothersome. You assume other people are just as self-reliant as you making you less willing to help others.

This helps explain why businesses want to harness the power of social norms. It's why State Farm is a "good neighbor" and Johnson & Johnson is "the family company". It also helps explain why companies originally gave sick days, health insurance, and other employee perks. They are trying to make you loyal to them. The only problem is they expect you to treat them with the same loyalty. If you nickel and dime employees/customers after you've made them feel like family they treat you not like a greedy corporation, but a like a deceptive uncle.

These social norms are also important for the most valued members of our society. It would be expensive to pay people to run into burning buildings. Or to take down and armed mugger. Or to go to war. Yet firefighters, policemen, and soldiers are plentiful. It's not just because we pay them with money, but because we pay them with respect. They get parades, discounts, and drinks bought for them at bars.

I've always been skeptical of what Dan Ariely calls social norms in the marketplace, but this book showed me their value.

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IQ and HBD Deniers Being Backed Into a Corner

The project is novel in its size; most brain-imaging studies have looked at tens to hundreds of brains. Scanning so many people will shed light on the normal variability within the brain structure of healthy adults, which will in turn provide a basis for examining how neural "wiring" differs in such disorders as autism and schizophrenia.

The researchers also plan to collect genetic and behavioral data, testing participants' sensory and motor skills, memory, and other cognitive functions, and deposit this information along with brain scans in a public database (although the patients' personal information will be stripped out). Scientists around the world can then use the database to search for the genetic and environmental factors that influence the structure of the brain. _TR

Technology Review provides more information on the Human Connectome Project, sponsored by NIH. The ambitious project aims to do far more than to build more accurate maps of the human brain connectome. This project aims to do some genuine cognitive science. And that is likely to make a lot of HBD (human biodiversity) deniers very nervous.

"We want to learn as much as we can, not only about the typical patterns of brain connectivity, but also about the differences in wiring that make each of us a unique individual," says David Van Essen, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, who is one of the project leaders. "If you're good at math, and I'm better at certain types of memory, can we identify some of the wiring characteristics that account for those differences?"

The most detailed studies to date of the neural circuits that connect one brain cell to another have focused on animal brains, because scientists can examine the animals' living tissue cells and their networks under a microscope. "We don't know how our species specifically is wired up," says Michael Huerta, associate director of the Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Science at the National Institute of Mental Health, and director of the Connectome project. "There is an entire class of data that is missing from neuroscience that is fundamentally important for how the brain works and how it breaks down in different disorders." And because researchers will be scanning only identical and fraternal twins and their siblings, the scientists can get a sense of the role that genetics and environment play in shaping brain structure. Structures of the brain that are highly dictated by genes will be more similar in identical twins than in fraternal twins, for example. _TR

There are more technical details at the link above. It promises to be a fascinating project on many levels.

Perhaps the scientists involved in the huge project have not yet taken the pledge of strict political correctness. Perhaps they have not gotten the memo directing them to avoid any research which might be used to explain cognitive or behavioural differences on the basis of genetics.

All issues of political correctness aside, the modern tools of science and computation are giving us the potential to finally understand many aspects of ourselves which had been closed to us. Some of these things may prove unsavoury, but in order to wisely move into the future we must be honest about our past and present.

Preference Bidding

In any relationship there is always give and take. Some more than others. To form a lasting friendship you must be willing to do things you don't want to because it pleases the person you care about. Whether it's washing dishes or forfeiting your vote for a movie choice, resolving conflict is important for intimacy. However, when sacrifice is needed, who should make it? If we care about efficiency, which we do, then costs should be minimized. My brother-in-law, who recently wrote a guest post, once told me he and his wife would rank, one to ten, how much cared about the decision. The person with the larger number got their way. The only problem with this system is that the incentive to strategically inflate my preference, even unknowingly, is too strong. Instead, I suggest something more technical, a preference bid.

In a preference bid (my terminology) each side will make an offer of a favor to the other in exchange for getting their way. I'll let you pick the movie, if you buy the popcorn. I'll wash dishes, if you take out the trash. And so on. This will ensure they are backing up what they say. This is done all the time. Unless of course, you combine the two ideas I've mentioned. Instead of letting your friend rank how much they care with a unprovable number, offer them a favor exchange. Be sure to offer something that would signal they care more than you. If they accept, then go with their preference. Now here's the twist. Don't actually make them do what they agreed to. It wasn't about exchanging favors, it was about determining how much they cared. Now you know, so there is no reason to go any further.

In repeated games there may be an incentive to cheat, now knowing they won't actually have to do what they offered. To prevent this you could randomly make them do the favor offered. By say calling a coin flip or rolling a die and seeing if it lands on the month they were born. That should be enough for them to bid properly, but not actually have to do you favors (which like money exchanges could ruin friendships). The other obvious option is to always sacrifice your own preferences for those you care about. My concern is that passion fatigue may actually ruin a relationships more than not getting your way. Perhaps a balance of the two is ideal.

A rainbow over the mountain town

A gorgeous double rainbow appeared over Mt. Pleasant this evening.
It stretched virtually horizon to horizon. Where was the end of the rainbow?
One Tweet from czach1r: The double rainbow ends at Kelly/Shorts stadium. How FREAKING epic.
Nah - it ended at the state police post. You see that in the photo.
But that's not what Kissy Missy informed me: "The rainbow ends at the sewage treatment plant."

Micro-Electronic Brain Implant Supervises Brain Re-Wiring

When the human brain is damaged from trauma, stroke, infection, or tumour etc., the damaged tissue does not re-grow itself spontaneously. Instead, the person must learn to compensate for the loss of function. Some brain plasticity may occur, as undamaged parts of the brain take responsibility for some of the functions which the destroyed parts previously carried out. But damaged brain does not heal.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University intend to change that, by using implanted electronics devices which can help teach the brain how to re-wire itself to allow disconnected parts of the brain to become connected -- and functional -- again.

Pedram Mohseni, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve University, and Randolph J. Nudo, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at Kansas University Medical Center, believe repeated communications between distant neurons in the weeks after injury may spark long-reaching axons to form and connect.

Their work is inspired by the traumatic brain injuries suffered by ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

...Mohseni has been building a multichannel microelectronic device to bypass the gap left by injury. The device, which he calls a brain-machine-brain interface, includes a microchip on a circuit board smaller than a quarter. The microchip amplifies signals, called neural action potentials, produced by the neurons in one part of the brain and uses an algorithm to separate these signals – brain spike activity - from noise and other artifacts. Upon spike discrimination, the microchip sends a current pulse to stimulate neurons in another part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions.

...During the next four years, they expect to understand the ability to rewire the brain in a rat model and to determine whether the technology is safe enough to test in non-human primates. If tests show the treatment is successful in helping recovery from traumatic brain injury, the researchers foresee the possibility of using the approach in patients 10 years from now. _Eurekalert

Here is an abstract of a paper published by Mohseni in an IEEE publication from 2008:

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and performance characterization of a high-output-impedance current microstimulator fabricated using the TSMC 0.35 mum 2P/4M n-well CMOS process as part of a fully integrated neural implant for reshaping long-range intracortical connectivity patterns in an injured brain. It can deliver a maximum current of 94.5 muA to the target cortical tissue with current efficiency of 86% and voltage compliance of 4.7 V with a 5-V power supply. The stimulus current can be programmed via a 6-bit DAC with an accuracy better than 0.47 LSB. Stimulator functionality is also verified with in vitro experiments in saline using a silicon microelectrode with iridium oxide (IrO) stimulation sites. _IEEEXplore

The technology for such interventions is in the early stages. The researchers are also working on devices which can be used for a broad range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, and in conjunction with neurosurgery and standard post-surgical rehabilitation.

Eventually such devices will probably be implanted into a damaged area of brain, along with an artificial matrix seeded with a person's own stem cells and growth factors. The devices will be wired to "bridge" from healthy brain on one side of the lesion to healthy brain on other sides of the lesion (corresponding to interrupted pathways). The electronic signals will not only help guide a re-wiring of the brain, but they should also guide the re-growth of new replacement brain tissue of specific replacement types.

Anyone who has read the science fiction novel "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, should recognise some of the intent behind the early stage, rudimentary devices being developed at Case Western -- and to see where the technology may be heading.

More on a related topic from Brian Wang

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