Read it.

WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! Women and minorities hardest hit. Film at 11.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Members should login to the Members’ Area and visit the Download Amon Hen and Download Mallorn pages.

From the Financial Post.

This story has all the elements of a fiction novel. Unfortunately it’s real. Piece by meticulously researched piece, B.C.-based independent researcher Vivian Krause spent almost 10 years exposing the story. Every detail has been corroborated, including with American and Canadian tax records, together with documents and statements from the perpetrators themselves.

Read it.

In a study published in Science, the team reports that each of the last three major ice ages were preceded by tropical “arc-continent collisions” — tectonic pileups that occurred near the Earth’s equator, in which oceanic plates rode up over continental plates, exposing tens of thousands of kilometers of oceanic rock to a tropical environment.

The scientists say that the heat and humidity of the tropics likely triggered a chemical reaction between the rocks and the atmosphere. Specifically, the rocks’ calcium and magnesium reacted with atmospheric carbon dioxide, pulling the gas out of the atmosphere and permanently sequestering it in the form of carbonates such as limestone.

So it wasn’t AlGore after all? I’m disappointed.

Read it.

Poland’s push to house a major permanent US military base dubbed last year by Polish President Andrzej Duda as “Fort Trump” is a big step closer to becoming a reality this week after top US defense officials met with Polish counterparts in Warsaw to negotiate an offer. US Defense Undersecretary for Policy John Rood led a delegation to the former Soviet satellite country and longtime east European defense ally on Wednesday to discuss the US “robust offer” to establish a permanent facility on Polish soil.

Read it.

Perhaps they might want to reconsider making a black hole the symbol of British currency….

Read it.

Bad news for Trump.

Read it.

The new helmet, manufactured by Ceradyne Inc., utilizes advanced thermoplastic aramid and glass fabric composites, which provides better protection against a 7.62 Russian rifle round than legacy helmets and increases the amount of protection against high impact or trauma to a soldier’s head, according to Alex DeGroot, lead engineer for head protection.

I don’t see as much protection of the back of the head and neck as I would like.

Read it.

Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.

UPDATE: Greenpeace Co-Founder Explains Why He Called AOC A ‘Pompous Little Twit’

Read it.

In the Navy they taught us how to make water-wings with our dungaree pants (hence the bell-bottoms).

Read it.

More than you ever really wanted to know about primitive navigation.

Read it.

Trump keeps dominating the agenda, despite Democrat attempts to jerk everybody’s attention over to what they want to talk about. He’s very good at that. Occasional-Cortex is good at it, too, but she keeps wasting it on unicorn farts like the ‘Green New Deal’ that won’t go anywhere.

Read it.

Chickens, coming home to roost: flap flap flap….

Read it.

On Friday Rep. Doug Collins released the transcript of Bruce Ohr’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee this past August. I have embedded the 268-page transcript below via Scribd. Ohr appeared before the committee voluntarily, not under subpoena, in connection with its investigation of bias within the Department of Justice and the FBI. He is a key participant in the Obama administration activities that, taken together, amount to one helluva political scandal.

Read it.

A team of researchers at Technion and the University of Haifa have developed a new computer vision approach for solving archaeological puzzles. In their paper, pre-published on arXiv, they introduce a general algorithm that can automatically reassemble fragments of archaeological artifacts.

Read it.

Golden Rice which has been genetically engineered to have higher levels of the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene is finally about be to approved for planting by poor farmers in Bangladesh. This a big step toward improving the health of some of the poorest people on the planet. Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness in between 250,000 and 500,000 children each year, half of whom die within 12 months, according to the World Health Organization. A study by German researchers in 2014 estimated that activist opposition to the deployment of Golden Rice has resulted in the loss of 1.4 million life-years in just India alone.

Environmentalist ideologues have fought fiercely for two decades to prevent this crop from being offered to poor farmers in developing countries. Among other things, they hired thugs to rip up test fields of the grain at the International Rice Research Institute in the Phillippines.

Read it.

Just in case you were pining for news of the latest Hate Hoax. It’s not as if the ‘mainstream media’ are covering it.

Read it.

Since lobbyists were able to get passed the Defend Mickey Mouse Copyright Act, many works that would otherwise have gone into the public domain have remained under copyright.

Since the Usual Suspects appeared to have dropped the ball this time around, copyrights are beginning to expire again.

If you haven’t read Leave It to Psmith, you ought to. It’s Wodehouse at his best.

Read it.

Returning to designs abandoned in the 1970s, start-ups are developing a new kind of reactor that promises to be much safer and cleaner than current ones.

Our future depends on nuclear power. These guys are trying to help.

Read it.

Think how much more material would be reused if plastic recycling didn’t entail washing, sorting and individual processing. Now, IBM researchers have developed a new chemical process called VolatileCatalyst that eliminates these steps. VolCat recycling grinds up plastics, adds a chemical catalyst and cooks them at temperatures above 200 degrees Celsius. The chemicals eat through polymer strands, producing a fine white powder ready to be made into new containers.

Read it.

Kind of like a Democrat Congressman.

Read it.

Time is up for European Union-mandated daylight savings time. The European Commission and European Parliament have agreed on that. All the relevant committees in Parliament are for the change, according to Germany’s conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) MEP Peter Liese, who has devoted a lot of time to the issue.
Now that the lead committee on transport and tourism has given its blessing, by a large majority, EU lawmakers could vote on the change by the end of March. After that, all 28 member states will need to rubberstamp the ruling.

Ace of Spades blows the whistle.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

Sounds like a self-correcting problem.

Apparently, judging by the headline, having a license is proof against that kind of error. Who knew?

Read it.

The coalition of the fringes is starting to unravel.

Read it.

And who could blame her?

The elephant in the room is the suspicion that it also gets her away from Congresswoman Occasional-Corrtex.

Read it.

I always like to include good news even when there isn’t a lot of it.

This technique, if economical to use, ought to reduce the use of adhesives and make artifacturing more ‘sustainable’.

Read it.

Don’t get excited — by ‘alien species’ they mean species from another area of the planet, not outer space.

Read it,

The TransNationalist ‘Invite the World’ program suffers a setback.

Read it.

Tax refunds are up from where they were this time last year by 1.3 percent following the fourth week of the 2019 filing season, according to new Internal Revenue Service data.

To be more specific, the average tax refund has increased to $3,143 from $3,103 last February, according to cumulative statistics comparing the 2018 and 2019 filing seasons.

Oddly enough, certain newsrooms have responded to this development with total silence. I say “odd,” because it was just a few weeks ago that these same newsrooms rushed to report that tax refunds were smaller this year, suggesting either implicitly or explicitly that the decrease was tied to the Republican Party’s tax reform bill.

Read it.

“I wanted clarity about laws and regulations. Most other companies that make prop money are actually producing illegal prop money, and that can get a show shut down and someone fined and jailed.”

Read it.

Bad news for pigs wanting to sneak through an airport without being recognized.

Read it.

This points out a perennial source of friction regarding big ‘socially conscious’ activities. ‘Progressive’ state governments often mandate things that local inhabitants don’t want, so there is a constant fight between the two levels of government. Typically this is resolved by the upper level of government stepping on the lower level — state steps on city or county, federal steps on state — and that leads to a lot of spilled ink (or pixels) about ‘democracy’ and its discontents.

Read it.

If, that is, the politicians and the eco-Nazis will allow them to be built.

I’m glad to see a mention of ‘pebble bed’ reactors, if only in passing.

Read it.

Didn’t know that was illegal in Australia.

You learn something new every day….

Read it.

As the novelty of meal kits wears off, companies like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh are seemingly faced with a choice: pivot or die.

Read it.

My question is whether or not it is sufficiently efficient to be practical. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Read it.

Cancer stem cells, also known as “tumour-initiating cells”, are the only cells in the tumour that can make a new tumour. New therapies that specifically target and eradicate these cancer stem cells are needed to prevent tumours growing and spreading, but for that there needs to be more clarity around the targe.

Read it.

Aha! She’s a Toon. I always knew it.

Read it.

(Cue Twilight Zone theme….)

No doubt Trump is to blame.

Read it.

But you have to bear in mind that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his term in office.

Just remember that.

Absolutely nothing.

(How many Americans held prisoner overseas did Obama manage to free?)

Read it.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

Read it.

If you ever find yourself in the Middle Ages, these babies could save your life.

Read it.

Socialism always comes apart, sooner or later. Let’s hope it’s sooner.

Venezuela will be at least a generation, perhaps two, recovering from this obscene episode.

Read it.

Benner’s team, which includes researchers from various US companies and institutions, created the synthetic letters by tweaking the molecular structure of the regular bases. The letters of DNA pair up because they form hydrogen bonds: each contains hydrogen atoms, which are attracted to nitrogen or oxygen atoms in their partner. Benner explains that it’s a bit like Lego bricks that snap together when the holes and prongs line up.

By adjusting these holes and prongs, the team has come up with several new pairs of bases, including a pair named S and B, and another called P and Z. In the latest paper, they describe how they combine these four synthetic bases with the natural ones. The researchers call the resulting eight-letter language ‘hachimoji’ after the Japanese words for ‘eight’ and ‘letter’. The additional bases are each similar in shape to one of the natural four, but have variations in their bonding patterns.

Read it.

Jose Reyes, a nuclear engineer and cofounder of NuScale Power, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, says he and his colleagues can revive nuclear by thinking small. Reyes and NuScale’s 350 employees have designed a small modular reactor (SMR) that would take up 1% of the space of a conventional reactor. Whereas a typical commercial reactor cranks out a gigawatt of power, each NuScale SMR would generate just 60 megawatts. For about $3 billion, NuScale would stack up to 12 SMRs side by side, like beer cans in a six-pack, to form a power plant.

Read it.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday that work has started on replacing 14 miles of a steel-mesh fence along the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego, The Associated Press reported. The fence is being replaced with 30-foot high steel bollards. It is actually the second layer of barrier to be put up in the area, with the first layer nearly complete.

This is not new wall, but replacing old wall. Still, its a thumb in the eye for the ‘invite the world’ crowd.

Read it.

By putting black-and-white coats on horses, a new study shows that the pattern discourages biting flies from landing.