Monday, October 30, 2017

Hi Gentle People:

It has been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. Loss of support for my XP is one of the reasons and the fact I am on a tight budget and can only window shop is another. Years ago my marvelous computer did everything but walk and dance and I used it to fight for human rights and for protecting the natural environment. Everything worked fine until it happened! A combination micro-computer and telephone arrived on the scene to steal the glory from larger machines. Today computers have become small and light-weight plastic slabs capable of live streaming around the world and with Telephones no longer needing wires and are small enough to fit in pant pockets, millions of signals are bouncing off satellites presently circling the planet. That is all fine and good but who can produce decent blogs using only Two Thumbs or a Toothpick?!

On top of that somebody red banded me a while back and did not let up until I shut down completely. Something akin to Flies bugging a Horse! Here is what is presently on the top of this Blog page.
"Warning: Google prevented a suspicious attempt to sign in to your account using your password. Review activity now! The last three words are in red and are linked supposedly to Google but I doubt it because One, I changed my password and Two, Google is providing me with this international peace Blog so why would they attempt to stop me from writing? Could the Russians be hacking me Blog? If so, GREAT! It gives me a chance to push peace on Earth on PUTIN. The same goes for that other character...TRUMP! The one I cannot contact or communicate with is the most dangerous of all. The North Korean dictator.

Pressing on the review activity now will send me around the world because to avoid the constant bombardment and harassment from both unsolicited advertising and warnings like these I decided to use the Tor Browser.
Years ago we blocked spam from infiltrating our emails but today, the spam blockers have become the spam. There is money to be found in fear mongering warnings! I invite anybody who wants to push the Red button and "Review activity now."

Warning: GooglReview activity now

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Bernie Sanders is coming to Toronto.

Rick Smith, Broadbent Institute via nationsend1.com

11:23 AM (10 hours ago)

to me

Dear Joseph,
Last month Bernie Sanders was all over the news when he unveiled his “Medicare for All” bill. I am delighted to announce that he will be bringing his vision for healthcare to Toronto.

On Sunday, Oct. 29th, the Broadbent Institute along with our partners the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the North American Observatory on Health Systems & Policies, the Wellesley Institute and Women's College Hospital, is hosting Senator Bernie Sanders at a public talk on "What the U.S. Can Learn from Canadian Health Care."
Join us to hear him share his thoughts on "Medicare for All” and for a discussion with Dr. Danielle Martin (Women’s College Hospital and the University of Toronto) on what the U.S. can learn from Canada's single-payer health care system.

Tickets:
Tickets are free but registration is required. Registration begins, Friday, October 20th at 10am.
Click here to register for tickets.
Event details:
Sunday, October 29th, 2017,
11 a.m.
Convocation Hall,
31 King’s College Circle
University of Toronto
If you can't join us at Convocation Hall, stay tuned for details about our livestream!
Rick
--
Rick Smith
Executive Director
Broadbent Institute

Broadbent Institute · Canada
This email was sent to human4usbillions@gmail.com. To stop receiving emails, click here.
You can also keep up with Broadbent Institute on Twitter or Facebook.

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Thursday, October 12, 2017

From a genius kid...an exponential growth warning!

Does Our Survival Depend on Relentless Exponential Growth?

Thomas Hornigold

Oct 11, 2017

Malthus had a fever dream in the 1790s. While the world was marveling in the first manifestations of modern science and technology and the industrial revolution that was just beginning, he was concerned. He saw the exponential growth in the human population as a terrible problem for the species—an existential threat. He was afraid the human population would overshoot the availability of resources, and then things would really hit the fan.

“Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.”

So Malthus wrote in his famous text, an essay on the principles of population.

But Malthus was wrong. Not just in his proposed solution, which was to stop giving aid and food to the poor so that they wouldn’t explode in population. His prediction was also wrong: there was no great, overwhelming famine that caused the population to stay at the levels of the 1790s. Instead, the world population—with a few dips—has continued to grow exponentially ever since. And it’s still growing.

There have concurrently been developments in agriculture and medicine and, in the 20th century, the Green Revolution, in which Norman Borlaugensured that countries adopted high-yield varieties of crops—the first precursors to modern ideas of genetically engineering food to produce better crops and more growth. The world was able to produce an astonishing amount of food—enough, in the modern era, for ten billion people. It is only a grave injustice in the way that food is distributed that means 12 percent of the world goes hungry, and we still have starvation. But, aside from that, we were saved by the majesty of another kind of exponential growth; the population grew, but the ability to produce food grew faster.

In so much of the world around us today, there’s the same old story. Take exploitation of fossil fuels: here, there is another exponential race. The exponential growth of our ability to mine coal, extract natural gas, refine oil from ever more complex hydrocarbons: this is pitted against our growing appetite. The stock market is built on exponential growth; you cannot provide compound interest unless the economy grows by a certain percentage a year.

“This relentless and ruthless expectation—that technology will continue to improve in ways we can’t foresee—is not just baked into share prices, but into the very survival of our species.”

When the economy fails to grow exponentially, it’s considered a crisis: a financial catastrophe. This expectation penetrates down to individual investors. In the cryptocurrency markets—hardly immune from bubbles, the bull-and-bear cycle of economics—the traders’ saying is “Buy the hype, sell the news.” Before an announcement is made, the expectation of growth, of a boost—the psychological shift—is almost invariably worth more than whatever the major announcement turns out to be. The idea of growth is baked into the share price, to the extent that even good news can often cause the price to dip when it’s delivered.

In the same way, this relentless and ruthless expectation—that technology will continue to improve in ways we can’t foresee—is not just baked into share prices, but into the very survival of our species. A third of Earth’s soil has been acutely degraded due to agriculture; we are looming on the brink of a topsoil crisis. In less relentless times, we may have tried to solve the problem by letting the fields lie fallow for a few years. But that’s no longer an option: if we do so, people will starve. Instead, we look to a second Green Revolution—genetically modified crops, or hydroponics—to save us.

Climate change is considered by many to be an existential threat. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has already put their faith in the exponential growth of technology. Many of the scenarios where they can successfully imagine the human race dealing with the climate crisis involve the development and widespread deployment of carbon capture and storage technology. Our hope for the future already has built-in expectations of exponential growth in our technology in this field. Alongside this, to reduce carbon emissions to zero on the timescales we need to, we will surely require new technologies in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and electrification of the transport system.

Without exponential growth in technology continuing, then, we are doomed. Humanity finds itself on a treadmill that’s rapidly accelerating, with the risk of plunging into the abyss if we can’t keep up the pace. Yet this very acceleration could also pose an existential threat. As our global system becomes more interconnected and complex, chaos theory takes over: the economics of a town in Macedonia can influence a US presidential election; critical infrastructure can be brought down by cybercriminals.

New threats, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, or a generalized artificial intelligence, could put incredible power—power over the entire species—into the hands of a small number of people. We are faced with a paradox: the continued existence of our system depends on the exponential growth of our capacities outpacing the exponential growth of our needs and desires. Yet this very growth will create threats that are unimaginably larger than any humans have faced before in history.

“It is necessary that we understand the consequences and prospects for exponential growth: that we understand the nature of the race that we’re in.”

Neo-Luddites may find satisfaction in rejecting the ill-effects of technology, but they will still live in a society where technology is the lifeblood that keeps the whole system pumping. Now, more than ever, it is necessary that we understand the consequences and prospects for exponential growth: that we understand the nature of the race that we’re in.

If we decide that limitless exponential growth on a finite planet is unsustainable, we need to plan for the transition to a new way of living before our ability to accelerate runs out. If we require new technologies or fields of study to enable this growth to continue, we must focus our efforts on these before anything else. If we want to survive the 21st century without major catastrophe, we don’t have a choice but to understand it. Almost by default, we’re all accelerationists now.

Image Credit: focal point / Shutterstock.com

Monday, October 9, 2017

The Proterra Bus.1100 miles on single charge.

, partners with Van Hool for electric coaches

Fred Lambert

- Oct. 9th 2017 3:10 pm ET

@FredericLambert

American electric bus maker Proterra made two important announcements today. The company unveiled its new dual motor all-electric drivetrain and it confirmed that it has been selected to make the electric powertrains for Van Hool’s first all-electric coach.

The bus maker confirmed that their recent 1,100 miles on a single charge record was achieved with the new system, which they introduced at the American Public Transit Association (APTA) Annual Meeting today:

“Designed for durability, Proterra’s DuoPower drivetrain features two electric motors that deliver an impressive 510 horsepower, accelerating a Catalyst bus from 0-20 mph in 4.5 seconds, while also achieving an industry-leading 26.1 MPGe. In addition, it can propel a bus up a 26 percent grade, which is more than twice the performance of the average 35- or 40-foot diesel bus, and 72 percent better than competing electric transit vehicles, making it an ideal option for transit agencies with steep hills.”

Here’s the impact of the new system on their 40-ft bus and in comparison to the competition:

Proterra unveils new dual motor all-electric drivetrain for buses, partners with Van Hool for electric coaches

Ryan Popple, CEO, Proterra, commented on the significance of the addition to their lineup:

“When Proterra originally introduced EV technology to the transit industry, we proved that EVs could compete with fossil fuel vehicles, and replace diesel buses in most cities. But we didn’t stop there. We continued to innovate, and today we’re announcing a drivetrain that completely outperforms an internal combustion diesel or CNG engine in every major performance category – efficiency, reliability, acceleration, hill climb and passenger-carrying power. In transit, state-of-the-art vehicle performance is now defined by EV technology like our new DuoPower driveline. For fleet customers that want the very best speed, power, energy efficiency and reliability – EV is the answer.”

Proterra’s solutions were mainly used for city transit, but the more powerful powertrain will enable them to venture into the coach business.
They are partnering with major Belgium-based bus manufacturer Van Hool to release new CX45E and CX35E coach models, based on their existing diesel buses, using Proterra’s new powertrain technology.
Filip Van Hool, CEO of Van Hool, commented

“Van Hool is truly excited and proud to partner up with Proterra, a pioneering company in the development and production of battery technology. The diesel CX45 coach has a proven track record and has become a benchmark coach in its own right in the industry. Integrating Proterra’s proven battery technology in the CX will take this coach to the next level. It is a clear statement as to Van Hool’s long-term commitment to the North American coach market and a testament to Van Hool’s responsiveness to the overall demand for zero-emission vehicles at large and over-the-road coaches in particular.”

They expect the first buses to be ready for deliveries in 2019.

About the Author

Fred Lambert

@FredericLambert

Fred is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at Electrek.
You can send tips on Twitter (DMs open) or via email: fred@9to5mac.com

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Sunday, October 8, 2017

From Nasa. Mercury blasted by meteors

Small Collisions Make Big Impact on Mercury’s Thin Atmosphere

Mercury, our smallest planetary neighbor, has very little to call an atmosphere, but it does have a strange weather pattern: morning micro-meteor showers.
Recent modeling along with previously published results from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft — short for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging, a mission that observed Mercury from 2011 to 2015 — has shed new light on how certain types of comets influence the lopsided bombardment of Mercury’s surface by tiny dust particles called micrometeoroids. This study also gave new insight into how these micrometeoroid showers can shape Mercury’s very thin atmosphere, called an exosphere.
The research, led by Petr Pokorný, Menelaos Sarantos and Diego Janches of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, simulated the variations in meteoroid impacts, revealing surprising patterns in the time of day impacts occur. These findings were reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 19, 2017.
“Observations by MESSENGER indicated that dust must predominantly arrive at Mercury from specific directions, so we set out to prove this with models,” Pokorný said. This is the first such simulation of meteoroid impacts on Mercury. “We simulated meteoroids in the solar system, particularly those originating from comets, and let them evolve over time.”
Earlier findings based on data from MESSENGER’s Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer revealed the effect of meteoroid impacts on Mercury’s surface throughout the planet’s day. The presence of magnesium and calcium in the exosphere is higher at Mercury’s dawn — indicating that meteoroid impacts are more frequent on whatever part of the planet is experiencing dawn at a given time.

Scientists used models along with earlier findings from the MESSENGER mission to shed light on how certain types of comets influence the micrometeoroids that preferentially impact Mercury on the dawn side of the planet. Here, data from the Mercury Atmosphere and Surface Composition Spectrometer, or MASCS, instrument is overlain on the mosaic from the Mercury Dual Imaging System, or MDIS.

Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This dawn-dusk asymmetry is created by a combination of Mercury’s long day, in comparison to its year, and the fact that many meteroids in the solar system travel around the Sun in the direction opposite the planets. Because Mercury rotates so slowly — once every 58 Earth days, compared to a Mercury year, a complete trip around the Sun, lasting only 88 Earth days — the part of the planet at dawn spends a disproportionately long time in the path of one of the solar system’s primary populations of micrometeoroids. This population, called retrograde meteoroids, orbits the Sun in the direction opposite the planets and comprises pieces from disintegrated long-period comets. These retrograde meteroids are traveling against the flow of planetary traffic in our solar system, so their collisions with planets — Mercury, in this case — hit much harder than if they were traveling in the same direction.
These harder collisions helped the team further key in on the source of the micrometeoroids pummeling Mercury’s surface. Meteroids that originally came from asteroids wouldn’t be moving fast enough to create the observed impacts. Only meteoroids created from two certain types of comets — Jupiter-family and Halley-type — had the speed necessary to match the obseravations.
“The velocity of cometary meteoroids, like Halley-type, can exceed 224,000 miles per hour,” Pokorný said. “Meteoroids from asteroids only impact Mercury at a fraction of that speed.”
Jupiter-family comets, which are primarly influenced by our largest planet’s gravity, have a relatively short orbit of less than 20 years. These comets are thought to be small pieces of objects originating in the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto orbits. The other contributor, Halley-type comets, have a longer orbit lasting upwards of 200 years. They come from the Oort Cloud, the most distant objects of our solar system — more than a thousand times farther from the Sun than Earth.
The orbital distributions of both types of comets make them ideal candidates to produce the tiny meteoroids that influence Mercury’s exosphere.
Pokorný and his team hope that their initial findings will improve our understanding of the rate at which comet-based micrometeoroids impact Mercury, further improving the accuracy of models of Mercury and its exosphere.
Related:

NASA’s MESSENGER mission
More information about Mercury

By Kathryn DuFresne
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Last Updated: Sept. 29, 2017

Editor: Rob Garner

Tags: Goddard Space Flight Center, Mercury (Planet), MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), Solar System

Parker Solar Probe

Parker Solar Probe Gets Visit From Namesake

Eugene N. Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, today visited the spacecraft that bears his name: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. This is the first NASA mission that has been named for a living researcher, and is humanity’s first mission to the Sun.
Parker proposed the existence of the constant outflow of solar material from the sun, which is now called the solar wind, and theorized other fundamental stellar science processes. On Oct. 3, 2017, he viewed the spacecraft in a clean room at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where the probe was designed and is being built. He discussed the revolutionary heat shield and instruments with the Parker Solar Probe team and learned how the spacecraft will answer some of the crucial questions Parker identified about how stars work.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is scheduled for launch on July 31, 2018, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The spacecraft will explore the Sun’s outer atmosphere and make critical observations that will answer decades-old questions about the physics of stars. The resulting data will also improve forecasts of major eruptions on the sun and subsequent space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.

Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, visiting the spacecraft that bears his name, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, on Oct. 3, 2017. Engineers in the clean room at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where the probe was designed and is being built point out the instruments that will collect data as the mission travels directly through the Sun’s atmosphere.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL

Eugene Parker (center), professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, visits the spacecraft that bears his name: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. Thomas Zurbuchen (bottom right), the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and Ralph Semmel (behind Parker), the director for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where the probe was designed and is being built, joined the tour.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL

Nicola Fox (bottom left), project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, describes the mission to the scientist for whom it’s named: Eugene Parker (middle). Eugene Parker first proposed the existence of the constant outflow of solar material from the sun — now called the solar wind — through which the spacecraft will travel. The red frame on the end of the spacecraft is a stand-in for the mission’s thermal protection system, which will reach temperatures of 2,500 degrees F during its journey.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL

Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, visits the spacecraft that bears his name, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where the probe was designed and is being built. The spacecraft is humanity’s first mission to a star — it will travel directly through the Sun’s atmosphere.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL

By Karen C. Fox
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Last Updated: Oct. 3, 2017

Editor: Rob Garner