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Cue ecoNazi hysteria.

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Sucks to be a mouse.

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An economics professor has filed a lawsuit against Citigroup accusing the bank of using an unusual federal tax break during the financial crisis to avoid paying $800 million in New York State taxes.

In a lawsuit transferred to Federal District Court in Manhattan on Oct. 2, Eric B. Rasmusen, a professor of business economics and public policy at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, challenged the validity of the unusual federal tax break for the bank’s New York State returns. His claim, originally filed under seal in New York State Supreme Court in 2013, seeks treble damages, or $2.4 billion, under the False Claims Act.

Eric and I were at Yale together, and (certainly coincidentally) I have an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at I.U. (Which was just the Graduate School of Business at the time, but money will get you name.) He was a nerdy little weed when I knew him, but it’s good to see that he’s made a success of himself. The world is indeed a small place.

Nokero Solar Light Bulbs.

Palm Pistol.

Sandflex Sanding Block.

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The Japanese seem to devote a lot of attention to toilets.

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An electric wheelchair that can climb most stairs, including spiral staircases, has been developed by Zurich-based students.

The Scalevo Wheelchair can mount one stair per second and was designed by 10 students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and the Zurich University of the Arts.

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The material, sulphur-limonene polysulphide, is very cheap to produce, and the pair now hope it could one day be used in environmental cleanups, or even to coat water pipes.

Mercury pollution, due to the extreme toxicity of the chemical, is a big problem. Half of the world’s mercury emissions come from volcanoes, but the other half comes from human activity like the burning of fossil fuels and mining.

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Bonirob, developed by Bosch’s Deepfield Robotics, is billed to eliminate some of the most tedious tasks in modern farming, plant breeding, and weeding. The autonomous robot is built to be a mobile plant lab, able to decide which strains of plant are most apt to survive insects and viruses and how much fertilizer they would need, and then smash any weeds with a ramming rod.

How does it know? Bonirob employs a type of machine learning (a stab at artificial intelligence) called decision tree learning. Researchers show Bonirob lots of pictures of healthy leaves that are tagged to be good, and pictures of weeds that are tagged to be bad, and the machine makes a series of choices based on observed in new data to judge whether a plant in the field is good or bad. Those algorithms are tweaked as the machine collects its own new images.

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Now scientists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences their success in manipulating the genome in 3D. The human genome that’s squeezed into every microscopic cell in the body measures more than two meters long. To stuff it into a space just a few microns wide (the human hair, by comparison, is 40 to 50 microns in diameter) requires some masterful origami-like transformation.

Breville FastSlow Pro cooker.

Kinkajou Bottle Cutter.

VSSL Survival Kit and Flashlight.

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Ah, but does it contain GMOs?

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At least some government employees are still committed to doing their jobs properly.

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By attaching malaria proteins to cancer cells, tumours could be burrowed into and then destroyed — and it seems to be effective on 90 per cent of types of cancers

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KickStarter has suspended funding for the Skarp Laser Razor, a crowdfunded effort to replace conventional razors with a laser-powered shaving implement.

That’s a disappointment.

In other words, the Skarp crew doesn’t have a working prototype. This video from the project’s KickStarter page suggests there is a prototype in existence, but not a very effective one: the device does knock off a few hairs, but is a long way short of the experience of pulling a conventional razor down one’s skin and having the majority of hairs beneath the blade cleft.

Hm. Maybe they have a point.

Caffeinated Peanut Butter.

UpRight Posture Trainer. You know who you are.

Gi FlyBike.

Nap Desks.

Wall Cleat. Belay every inch of that!

Laser Razor. You know you want one.

Iron Man MiniFridge.

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One of the Obama administration’s many instances of administrative overreach was the EPA’s “Clean Water rule,” which expanded the definition of “waters of the United States” as used in the Clean Water Act. Some say that the definition is so expansive as to give the federal agency jurisdiction over your back yard. Eighteen states sued to enjoin enforcement of the EPA’s rule, and today, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed enforcement of the rule pending a fuller hearing on the merits.

…

The explosive growth of the undemocratic, unaccountable administrative state is perhaps the greatest danger to our freedom. The EPA is perhaps the worst malefactor. While this litigation is not over, the 6th Circuit’s action is a welcome check on this particular effort to expand federal power.

The E.P.A. is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will rot in Hell for all eternity.

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A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.

He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly.

He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.

It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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The world’s oldest person is living proof of the awesome power of bacon, having achieved supercentenarian status on a daily dose of sliced pork goodness.

Susannah Mushatt Jones, 116, reportedly tucks into a few breakfast rashers every day along with scrambled eggs and grits. Speaking at Jones’s Brooklyn apartment, the Alabama native’s niece, Lois Judge, insisted the old girl would “eat bacon all day long” given the chance.

According to USA Today, a sign in her kitchen reads: “Bacon makes everything better”.

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In both studies, the researchers turned to elephant genes. They analyzed the DNA of African and Asian elephants and discovered that both species had 20 copies of P53, a gene known to have tumor-suppressing qualities. The team from the University of Utah School of Medicine looked at the DNA of 60 smaller organisms, including humans, and found that most have only one copy of P53. The authors of the other study, led by researchers from the University of Chicago, analyzed the genes of elephants’ smaller ancestors, discovering that they contained fewer copies of P53. That implies that, as elephants evolved to be larger, their genetic code developed more copies of P53. When cancerous mutations occur, the genetic mutation causes them to quickly die, making them less likely to proliferate and form tumors.

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By hand, not just loading a dishwasher.

Pushing a manual printing press is much the same way.

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Research by cancer experts in Australia found that 90% of all cancer deaths were caused by just five high-risk factors – smoking, exposure to the sun, body weight, bad diet and alcohol.

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South Korean researchers have solved a longstanding problem that stopped them from creating ultra-strong, lightweight aluminum-steel alloys.

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That’s all the luck you get for this life, my friend.

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I am not making this up.

Zoodle Slicer.

CitrusZinger.

PhotonGrill.

The Micropig.

Random Fashion Buzzword Generator.

TeleBouncer. ‘…it intercepts all incoming calls and tells callers to press 1 (or 2 or 3) to reach you. Only after the caller presses 1 does your phone ring. This immediately shuts out robocallers and all recorded messages.’

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When the man looking after her phone accidentally dropped it in the ocean, Ms Cee likely thought she’d never see it again.

But the dancer was amazed when a dolphin named Cacique “retrieved” the phone and handed it back to her friend.

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Maybe this time next century.

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AMD affects central vision which is what you see when focus straight ahead, according to NHS Choices. In AMD this vision becomes increasingly blurred, which means that reading becomes difficult, colours appear less vibrant and people’s face are difficult to recognise. By 2020, it’s predicted almost 700,000 people will have late-stage AMD in the UK.

However, after performing surgery on the 60-year patient, who was classified as legally blind, surgeons are optimistic of a breakthrough, although the full impact on her sight is known. She is one of 10 people to take part in the trial. After taking a single stem cell from an embryo and growing a patch of cells in a laboratory, these were then transplanted into the patient’s eye. The cells were taken unused embryos created during IVF treatment that went unused.

Steve Sailer apparently likes Australians as much as I do.

We are constantly told that it is impossible for a country to police its borders, but Australia doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. First, it stopped cold its boat-borne Camp of the Saints; and now there’s this exercise in national dignity. [Chris Brown denied visa on character grounds]

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This week, scientists set a new record for quantum teleportation distance, instantaneously sending a message from one particle of light to another particle at the end of an optical fiber more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) long. The quantum memo moves from one particle to the other without actually traveling through the space between them.

Desk-Bed.

Nendo Flexible-Nest Shelf.

Caffeinated Shaving Products.

MSR Sweetwater Purifier System.

Solidwool.

Butter Grater. And they said it couldn’t be done….

In-home Butter Churn.

Chain Mail Scrubber.

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“When people analyze samples from people who are ill, they have some idea in mind. This is probably an enterovirus, or maybe it’s a herpesvirues. They then do a specific assay for that particular agent. They don’t usually have the capacity to look broadly.”

The new system, known as VirCapSeq-VERT, barrels past this limitation. Lipkin, together with fellow Columbia professors Thomas Briese and Amit Kapoor, designed it to detect all known human viruses, quickly, efficiently, and  sensitively. By searching for thousands, perhaps millions, of viruses at once, it should take a lot of the (educated) guesswork  out of viral diagnosis.

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Beer, that favorite beverage of football fans, frat boys, and other macho stereotypes—at least according to the advertisers—actually has a very long, distinguished heritage. It’s older, in fact, than wine, older than whiskey, older perhaps even than bread (or so some scholars have thought). As soon as humans settled down and learned to cultivate grains, some 13,000 years ago, the possibility for fermentation—a naturally occurring phenomenon—presented itself. But it isn’t until the 5th century, B.C. that we have sources documenting the deliberate production of ale in ancient Sumeria. Nonetheless, beer has been described as the “midwife of civilization” due to its central role in agriculture, trade, urbanization, and medicine.

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In addition to designing Zipf Chancery (duh), he also did two of my favorite fonts, Palatino and Optima. I’ve always considered Palatino the most beautifully readable font ever; whenever a program offers me the chance to use it, I do.

Chair That Unfolds Into a Bed. Best one of these I’ve seen.

K-Pod Soup.

Finger Cookies.

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Did you ever wonder what you would cook in 16th century England? The new book The Tudor Kitchen, What the Tudors Ate and Drank, by Terry Breverton, has over 500 sumptuous – and more everyday recipes, enjoyed by the rich and the poor, all taken from authentic contemporary sources.

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One of the world’s most firmly global-warmist scientists says that even if humanity deliberately sets out to burn all the fossil fuels it can find, as fast as it can, there will be no troublesome sea level rise due to melting Antarctic ice this century.

Dr Ken Caldeira’s credentials as a global warmist are impeccable. He is not a true green hardliner – he has signed a plea to his fellow greens to get over their objections to nuclear power, for instance, and he doesn’t totally rule out geoengineering as a possible global-warming solution. But that’s as far as he’ll go: in Dr Caldeira’s view, it is plain and simple unethical to release greenhouse gases into the air. There’s no middle ground on that as far as he’s concerned – he’s not OK with gas power as an alternative to coal, for instance.

But he’s a scientist, and like all proper scientists he’s willing to admit inconvenient truths. In this case, the truth in question is his own prediction that no matter what humans do in the way of carbon emissions, sea levels are not going to rise by more than 8cm this century due to melting Antarctic ice. For context, the seas have been rising faster than that for thousands of years. They rose 17cm just during the 20th century, and the Antarctic cap is far and away the biggest body of ice on the planet.

So all those natives worried about their islands being swamped by the ocean can STFU.

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Abstract: This thesis will examine how the Middle Ages are historically interpreted and portrayed in the United States. In order to keep this study within reasonable bounds, the research will exclude films, television, novels, and other forms of media that rely on the Pre-Modern period of European history for entertainment purposes. This thesis will narrow its focus on museums, non-profit organizations, and other institutions, examining their methods of research and interpretation, the levels of historical accuracy or authenticity they hold themselves to, and their levels of success. This thesis ultimately hopes to prove that the medieval period offers the same level of public interest as popular periods of American history.

The link is to a PDF and of course the SCA figures prominently.

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If, of course, the environazis will let us have them.

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And here I thought ‘Big Mountain Jesus’ was a brand of marijuana. Shows how much I know.

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Quick, send some to Washington.

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Very clever.

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New research into the way viruses invade human cells through their outer membrane has thrown up the possibility of blocking many kinds of viral infections before they become dangerous, scientists said.

Researchers have found a key human gene that plays a central role in determining whether a virus is able to penetrate a cell. The finding could be used to develop drugs that work against viral infections as diverse as yellow fever, dengue and flu, they said.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

How would it work? On top of the usual credit check, banks might ask you a series of questions testing applicants’ sense of integrity, honesty and their general beliefs about society.

Applicants would be asked how much they agree with statements like ‘I believe others try to do the right thing’, ‘I pay attention to small details’ or ‘ I find it hard to make change’. Lenders could then score each answer and feed it into software that would predict how likely the person is to miss payment. It would then be up to them to decide whether the borrower is trustworthy or not.

Anybody who can’t game that system is too stupid to be a good lending risk, I suspect.

BedBot.

UN-SKRU.

Furoshiki Wrap Shoes.

‘Werewolf’ Dog Muzzle.

FireSleeve.

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The researchers had been studying squids’ ring teeth, which are uniquely strong and can change phase from liquid to solid in the presence of water. After testing ring teeth samples from several species of squid found all over the world, the researchers uncovered the genetic code for the proteins that allow the teeth to heal themselves when broken. They then engineered bacteria to produce the proteins so they could conduct more tests.

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“Cancer therapies that attack the lipid composition of the cell membrane would be an entirely new class of anticancer drugs,” says co-senior study author Paul Beales, of the University of Leeds in the UK. “This could be useful in developing new combination therapies, where multiple drugs are used simultaneously to treat a cancer by attacking different parts of the cancer cells at the same time.”

MP1 acts against microbial pathogens by disrupting the bacterial cell membrane. Serendipitously, the antimicrobial peptide shows promise for protecting humans from cancer; it can inhibit the growth of prostate and bladder cancer cells, as well as multi-drug resistant leukemic cells. However, until now, it was not clear how MP1 selectively destroys cancer cells without harming normal cells.

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Can an Obama administration subsidy be far behind?

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So all of you people who shop a Whole Foods STFU about it.

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For some reason I don’t associate ‘Middle East’ and ‘beer’.