When Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! "In the past, discovery for its own sake provided academic motivation, but today’s universities function more like corporate research laboratories. Rather than freely sharing techniques and results, researchers increasingly keep new findings under wraps to maintain a competitive edge. What used to be peer-reviewed is now proprietary. “Share and share alike” has devolved into “every laboratory for itself.”In trying to power the innovation economy, we have turned America’s universities into cutthroat business competitors, zealously guarding the very innovations we so desperately want behind a hopelessly tangled web of patents and royalty licenses." So the Trouble With Physics Continues, as the Standard Model Idles and humanity marches down the road to nuclear hell for Profit's Sake.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



NYT September 7, 2008
Unboxed
When Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder
By JANET RAE-DUPREE
“It is the policy and objective of the Congress to use the patent system to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development” and “to promote collaboration between commercial concerns and nonprofit organizations, including universities.”
— The Bayh-Dole Act, a k a the University Small Business Patent Procedures Act
THE law of unintended consequences is perhaps less a “law” than a simple statement of fact: We cannot accurately predict all the results of our actions. We may do something with the best of intentions, and sometimes even accomplish the good toward which we aim. Yet, at the same time, we are all too often surprised by results that didn’t occur to us beforehand.
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 started out with the best of intentions. By clearing away the thicket of conflicting rules and regulations at various federal agencies, it set out to encourage universities to patent and license results of federally financed research. For the first time, academicians were able to profit personally from the market transfer of their work. For the first time, academia could be powered as much by a profit motive as by the psychic reward of new discovery.
University “tech transfer” offices have boomed from a couple dozen before the law’s passage to nearly 300 today. University patents have leapt a hundredfold. Professors are stepping away from the lab and lecture hall to navigate the thicket of venture capital, business regulations and commercial competition.
None of these are necessarily negative outcomes. But more than a quarter-century after President Jimmy Carter signed it into law, the Bayh-Dole Act, sponsored by the former Senators Birch Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, and Robert Dole, Republican of Kansas, is under increasing scrutiny by swelling ranks of critics. The primary concern is that its original intent — to infuse the American marketplace with the fruits of academic innovation — has also distorted the fundamental mission of universities.
In the past, discovery for its own sake provided academic motivation, but today’s universities function more like corporate research laboratories. Rather than freely sharing techniques and results, researchers increasingly keep new findings under wraps to maintain a competitive edge. What used to be peer-reviewed is now proprietary. “Share and share alike” has devolved into “every laboratory for itself.”
In trying to power the innovation economy, we have turned America’s universities into cutthroat business competitors, zealously guarding the very innovations we so desperately want behind a hopelessly tangled web of patents and royalty licenses.
Of course, there is precedent for scientific secrecy, notes Daniel S. Greenberg , author of “Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism” (University of Chicago Press, 2007). When James Watson and Francis Crick were homing in on DNA’s double-helix structure in the 1950s, they zealously guarded their work from prying eyes until they could publish their findings, to be certain that they would get the credit for making the discovery.
“They didn’t try to patent it,” Mr. Greenberg notes, “but somebody doing the same work today would certainly take a crack at patenting the double helix.”
In fact, it was the life sciences — in particular, biotechnology — that started universities down the slippery commercial slope in the first place. Even before the Bayh-Dole Act, pharmaceutical companies were eagerly trolling campuses, looking for projects to finance. After the law was passed, they stepped up their efforts, but now with renewed zeal for keeping potential trade secrets from competitors.
While patients have benefited from the growing supply of new medications, the universities have obtained patents not only for the actual substances but also for the processes and methods used to make them, potentially hampering discovery of even more beneficial treatments.
“Bayh-Dole tore down the taboos that existed against universities engaging in overtly commercial activity. Universities really thought that they were going to make it rich,” said Jennifer Washburn, author of “University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education” (Basic Books, 2005). “Each school was convinced that if they came up with that one blockbuster invention, they could solve all their financial problems.”
Ms. Washburn says that was “extremely wrong-headed.” Initially reacting to the law by slapping patents on every possible innovation, universities quickly discovered that patents were an expensive proposition. The fees and legal costs involved in obtaining a single patent can run upward of $15,000, and that doesn’t count the salaries of administrative staff members. Instead of bringing home the bacon, university tech transfer offices were throwing money into the void with little hope of returns.
To date, Ms. Washburn says, data gathered by the Association of University Technology Managers, a trade group, show that fewer than half of the 300 research universities actively seeking patents have managed to break even from technology transfer efforts. Instead, two-thirds of the revenue tracked by the association has gone to only 13 institutions.
Part of the problem has been a lingering misunderstanding about where the value lies in innovation. Patenting a new basic science technique, or platform technology, puts it out of the reach of graduate students who might have made tremendous progress using it.
Similarly, exclusive licensing of a discovery to a single company thwarts that innovation’s use in any number of other fields. R. Stanley Williams, a nanotechnologist from Hewlett-Packard, testified to Congress in 2002 that much of the academic research to which H.P. has had difficulty gaining access could be licensed to several companies without eroding its intellectual property value.
“Severe disagreements have arisen over conflicting interpretations of the Bayh-Dole Act,” he said. “Large U.S.-based corporations have become so disheartened and disgusted with the situation, they are now working with foreign universities, especially the elite institutions in France, Russia and China.”
THE issue is further clouded by “reach through” licenses, complex arrangements used by many tech transfer offices. A reach-through lets the patent holder claim a share of any profits that result from using, say, an enabling technology, even if those profits come several steps down the market transfer line. Several universities are already embroiled in messy lawsuits trying to sort out who is entitled to what.
Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of campus commercialization is that research decisions are now being based on possible profits, not on the inherent value of knowledge. “Blue sky” research — the kind of basic experimentation that leads to a greater understanding of how the world works — has largely been set aside in favor of projects considered to have more immediate market potential.
In academia’s continuing pursuit of profit, the wonder of simple serendipitous discovery has been left on the curb.
Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley

Russian Prez Puts West On Notice

Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies - control and protection of the oil regions, wherever they may be, at all costs.....
"President Dmitry Medvedev declared Saturday that "Russia is a nation to be reckoned with" following its war with Georgia, again putting the West on notice that Moscow is prepared to use it military and economic might. Medvedev's comments were another reminder that the Kremlin views last month's war as the start of a new era in Russian assertiveness. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, said "the truth is on our side" and likened the situation in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia with Srebrenica - the Bosnian town that was the site of Europe's worst mass carnage since World War II. Putin has suggested the United States was to blame for the war for helping the Georgian military rebuild"

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension would eliminate the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity


Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Russian Prez Puts West On Notice
MOSCOW, Sept. 6, 2008
(CBS/ AP) President Dmitry Medvedev declared Saturday that "Russia is a nation to be reckoned with" following its war with Georgia, again putting the West on notice that Moscow is prepared to use it military and economic might. With a U.S. Navy ship unloading aid off Georgia's Black Sea coast within shooting distance of Russian troops, Medvedev's comments were another reminder that the Kremlin views last month's war as the start of a new era in Russian assertiveness. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, said "the truth is on our side" and likened the situation in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia with Srebrenica - the Bosnian town that was the site of Europe's worst mass carnage since World War II. In France, the European Union's 27 foreign ministers were reluctant to provoke Moscow, with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner saying the EU did not plan to impose sanctions against Russia. "Russia must remain a partner, it's our neighbor, it's a large country and there is no question to go back to a Cold War situation, that would be a big mistake," Kouchner said. In the weeks since Russian forces routed the Georgian army and seized the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, Russian officials have used bellicose language toward the West. Putin has suggested the United States was to blame for the war for helping the Georgian military rebuild. At a meeting Saturday of the State Council, Medvedev said the world had changed since the beginning of fighting in Georgia last month. "We have reached a moment of truth. It became a different world after Aug. 8," he said. "Russia will never allow anyone to infringe upon the lives and dignity of its citizens. Russia is a nation to be reckoned with from now on," Medvedev told the council, a government consultative body of largely regional governors. Medvedev criticized the United States and other Western nations, though not by name, for challenging Russia's intervention. "Millions of people supported us, but we've heard no words of support and understanding from those who in the same circumstances pontificate about free elections and national dignity and the need to use force to punish an aggressor," he said. The United States has moved to counter Russia, both lambasting Moscow for what it called a disproportionate military response and providing humanitarian and economic aid to Georgia. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, at an economic meeting Saturday in Italy, blasted Russian actions in the war as an "affront to civilized standards" and said Moscow has given "no satisfactory justification" for invading Georgia. During a visit to North Africa, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that "the time isn't right" for the U.S. to move forward on a once-celebrated deal for civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday. Her comment increased speculation that President Bush is planning to punish Moscow for invading Georgia, a former Soviet republic, by canceling the agreement. Such a move is being planned, according to senior Bush administration officials, but is not yet final. U.S. warships have delivered much of the aid and Russian officials have questioned whether the aid is a cover for weapons shipments. At Georgia's Black Sea port of Poti, Russian forces watched closely Saturday as the U.S. naval ship USS Mount Whitney delivered 17 tons of aid for Georgians displaced by the fighting. U.S. naval officers said a Russian warship had trailed the Mount Whitney - the flagship of the U.S. Navy's Mediterranean fleet - across the Black Sea. Russian forces onshore were also scrutinizing the ship from a position just 3 miles away from its anchorage off Poti. "They're clearly watching us very, very closely, and I think they'll be very happy when we leave," the ship's commanding officer, Capt. Owen Honors, told The Associated Press. Capt. John Moore, the commander of the task force that has brought some 450 tons of aid to Georgia on three U.S. ships and numerous planes, said the Russian frigate Ladnyy had trailed the Whitney about 4,000 yards away for the entire Black Sea trip. The Russian boat remained in international waters after the U.S. ship crossed Friday into Georgian waters 12 miles from Poti, he said. In an echo of the cat-and-mouse games that Soviet and American forces played in the Cold War, Moore said the two countries' naval forces had had little contact except for a brief exchange between the Ladnyy and another U.S. ship, the USS McFaul. "I think it was on the 24th August, when the Ladnyy contacted the bridge and very courteously said 'Hey, welcome to the Black Sea', and we responded in kind 'thank you very much'," he told AP. At one Russian position on the shore near Poti, several light tanks and armored personnel carriers bearing peacekeeping insignias could be seen Saturday behind a high earthen berm and a razor-wire fence. An excavator dug new holes nearby. These dug-in Russian troops were still on Georgian territory weeks after an EU peace deal required them to leave. Soldiers refused to let an Associated Press reporter enter the post and said the commander was not there, but an officer acknowledged the Russians had seen the ship. Georgia, a South Caucasus nation long dominated by Russia, sits astride a strategic corridor for Caspian Sea and Central Asian oil and gas. Georgia's desire to join NATO and move closer to the West has angered Russia. Since the war, Russia has recognized South Ossetia and another separatist province, Abkhazia, as independent nations despite protests from the European Union, the United States and Georgia. Putin, who often appears to taunt the West, insisted in an interview broadcast late Saturday, that Russia was justified in its intervention in South Ossetia. He said there would be no cooling of ties with the West because the West is dependent Russia's oil, gas and mineral wealth. "We are convinced that the truth is on our side," he said in the interview with state-run TV. He also drew parallels between South Ossetia and Srebrenica, the town where Serb troops in 1995 killed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys. He said the European peacekeepers there at the time - mainly Dutch soldiers, operating under a U.N. mandate - stood aside as the massacre took place. In the French city of Avignon, EU foreign ministers met to figure out how the bloc can mediate a long-term solution to the standoff. Kouchner insisted the EU's aim was also to improve relations with Russia, despite current disagreements. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was heading to Russia on Monday to meet with Medvedev and clarify parts of the EU peace deal, especially the terms for withdrawing troops.
MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc.

Russia Warns West Against Backing Georgia

Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies.

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Russia Warns West Against Backing Georgia
MOSCOW, Sept. 1, 2008
(CBS/AP) Russia warned the West on Monday against supporting Georgia's leadership and called for an arms embargo against the nation until a different government is in place in the ex-Soviet republic. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks are likely to anger the United States and Europe and enrage Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. He made it clear Moscow wants Saakashvili out of power in Georgia. "If the United States and its allies in the end choose not their own national interests, not the interests of the Georgian people, but rather choose the Saakashvili regime, it will be a mistake of historic proportions," Lavrov said. "For a start it would be right to impose an embargo on weapons to this regime, until different authorities turn Georgia a normal state," he said in an address at Russia's top foreign policy graduate school. Later Monday, Russia suggested U.S. ships that brought humanitarian aid to Georgia may have also carried weapons. Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said such suspicions were among the motives for Russia's call for an arms embargo against Georgia. Nesterenko told a news conference there were "suppositions" that the cargo of U.S. military ships that have brought aid for war-battered Georgia may also have included "military components." Nesterenko also said that Russia would welcome an international police presence and more Western military observers in what is now a Russian-controlled zone around South Ossetia, the focus of the war earlier this month. But he indicated it will be a long time before Russia is ready to reduce its military presence. The foreign ministry officials spoke as the European Union prepared for a summit Monday to discuss the Georgia crisis and further relations with Russia. Russia's ties to the West have been driven to their lowest point since the Soviet collapse of 1991 by the war last month in Georgia, where Saakashvili angered Moscow by courting the West and seeking NATO membership. Russia repelled a Georgian offensive against the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia and sent troops, tanks and bombers deep into undisputed Georgian territory, where some still maintain positions. Moscow last week recognized South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent countries. Russia says it was provoked. The United States and Europe have accused Russia of using disproportionate force and of violating the terms of a cease-fire that called for the sides to withdrawal their forces to pre-conflict positions. They have also denounced Russia's recognition of the separatist regions, saying Georgia's borders must remain intact.

At Conference on the Risks to Earth, Few Are Optimistic

Perpetual Freedumb Toward a Devastatingly Lethal Climax - or a Return to Freedom, Life, Liberty, Health, with Limitless, Unbounded Potential for all, in a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires?

IS THERE HOPE? IS THERE COURAGE AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR FREEDOM TO SUPPORT: "Dr. Zichichi's goal is to foster what he calls “a science without secrets and without borders,” mixing disciplines and cultures, and to laud veterans and emerging talents in hopes of propelling breakthroughs"?


Science & Technology had the capacity to promise us the latter back in the late 1940's- Life, Liberty, Health, Unbounded Potential for all - with the revolutionary advanced definitions of Space, Time, Mass, Matter, Energy, Gravity (StarSteps) springing forth from an extended view of E=MC2 embracing the Radius of Curvature of All Natural Law.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



NYT August 24, 2008
At Conference on the Risks to Earth, Few Are Optimistic
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
ERICE, Sicily — This ancient hilltop town, rife with Roman, Greek, Norman and other influences, is hosting a very modern gathering: a conference on global risks like cyberterrorism, climate change, nuclear weapons and the world’s lagging energy supply.
More than 120 scientists, engineers, analysts and economists from 30 countries were hunkered down here for the 40th annual conference on “planetary emergencies.” The term was coined by Dr. Antonino Zichichi, a native son and a theoretical physicist who has made Erice a hub for experts to discuss persistent, and potentially catastrophic, global challenges.
The participants were not particularly optimistic. They presented data showing that the boom in biofuels was depleting Southeast Asian rain forests, that “bot herders” — computer hackers for hire — were hijacking millions of computers, and that the lack of progress over handling nuclear waste was both hampering the revival of nuclear energy and adding to terrorism risks.
The meetings, which end Sunday, were sponsored by the Erice-based Ettore Majorana Foundation and Center for Scientific Culture and by the World Federation of Scientists in Geneva. Both organizations are led by Dr. Zichichi with what the physicist Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a longtime Erice conference participant and expert on nuclear weapons, affectionately called “imperious” zeal.
Dr. Zichichi, 78, controls every aspect of the sessions, including the seating in the seminars and the wine selections at the nightly dinners.
His goal is to foster what he calls “a science without secrets and without borders,” mixing disciplines and cultures, and to laud veterans and emerging talents in hopes of propelling breakthroughs.
He said past successes included focusing attention on the need to reduce nuclear stockpiles and developing the first detailed analysis of flood risks along the Yellow River in China.
The threat of cyberattacks was also a focus of this year’s meeting. In a session on information security, Hamadoun I. Touré, the secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, warned that pervasive computer use, while offering the prospect of a global “knowledge society,” also made billions of individuals into potential superpowers.
“Every single brain on earth is equal and can trigger an attack,” he said.
Jody R. Westby, the chief executive of Global Cyber Risk, a Washington-based consulting company, warned that governments were not doing enough to anticipate attacks. She said that the United States, while investing heavily in classified work on communications networks, had only one small program doing advanced research on the vulnerabilities in the private networks that handle the brunt of government communications and information management.
In a workshop on the northward spread of mosquito-borne ailments, participants discussed the growing gap between wealthier and poorer nations in dealing with health risks.
After presentations on recent outbreaks of the tropical chikungunya virus in Italy, Baldwyn Torto of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya, suggested that too much of the discussion was focused on girding Europe against further outbreaks. A better approach, he said, would be to attack such diseases in the tropical spots where they originate.
At a final gathering on Saturday, Bill Fulkerson of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said that meetings in the next several years would likely concentrate on the technological and scientific needs of developing countries that are trying to expand their economies without diminishing resources.
The daunting nature of the problems did not seem to blunt the experts’ determination to look for answers.
“What option do I have?” said Richard Wilson, 82, a Harvard physicist and an expert on nuclear power and environmental risk. “I could go down to Hilton Head and take a little club and knock a ball around the course, but I don’t find that a very attractive thought.”

Coming Soon: A Post-American World

US World Image Projection Continues to Fade. What else can be expected with a deliberate design flaw in the Economic & Judicial systems of rule and law which ignore Reality, lopsidedly benefiting corporate greedy guts? Where science and facts play second fiddle to the power of the Mouth backed by money? Is the current status quo in energy science the best 21st Century Intelligence has to offer?

There is not an intelligent being alive that could not understand Natural Capitalism with justice and economics based on natural laws, facts and unfettered science; where human life comes first and foremost, the primary factor upon which justice and profit is gaged: the greater the health and prosperity of all, the greater the justice and profits for all (simple numbers game). So who CHOKED THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM, where trickle down became waterfall up - an economic system topped with scientific suppression of advanced energy systems from the late 1940's ? (we are speaking of Advanced Energy Systems without which Human Life Cannot Continue to Evolve and Survive)

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

Coming Soon: A Post-American World
Aug. 17, 2008
(CBS) Millions of us have been swept up in the color and drama of the Olympic Games. But the Beijing Stadium isn't the only arena for global competition. Now, after decades of dominance, will the U.S. soon be "passing the torch"? Here's Martha Teichner:
Consider the Olympic Games a giant exclamation point … a fanfare announcing a message from the Chinese. They're putting the world on notice, that they are players playing to win, and not just Olympic gold. They want you to know that China is a power to be reckoned with, and proud of it, that it's bearing down on the United States … fast. "The implications are that China will be the commercial leader of the world," Albert Keidel, an expert on China's economy, told Teichner. "It will also deserve and demand leadership in global institutions." Keidel is the author of a startling new study for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "China's Economic Rise: Fact And Fiction." "We can model the economy and show that by 2035, it will be as big, if not bigger than the United States' economy will be at that time, and by the middle of the century it will be twice the size of the U.S. economy at that time," Keidel said. "That's staggering," Teichner said. "That's conservative," Keidel said. In cased you missed that - within the next 50 years China's economy will double the size of the United States' economy. So where will that leave the United States? Are we slipping? Are we reaching some inevitable tipping point that will change the world as we know it? Is the golden age of America coming to an end? Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, said, "What's happening right now is, the world is moving beyond America. The future is, in many ways, being shaped in distant places by foreign people." Zakaria is author of "The Post-American World," which is a bestseller. "That's a big shift from a world in which America was at the center economically, financially, culturally, militarily, politically, to a world in which there are more centers and many forces, from India to China to Brazil to South Africa that have to be taken into account," Zakaria said. The meltdown in the U.S. economy at the moment isn't helping: The price of gas, the mortgage crisis, the weak dollar, the cost (both monetary and political) of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the shift, according to Zakaria, is more fundamental. "This is not happening because America is failing or declining," Zakaria said. "It's happening because the rest are rising, and it's happening because the natives have gotten good at capitalism." And it's happening right under our noses. America's beverage, Budweiser beer, is now owned by Belgians. The government of Abu Dhabi last month bought a 90% stake in New York City's iconic Chrysler Building. And isn't the United States supposed to be the place with the biggest and best of everything? The tallest building in the world isn't in New York or Chicago anymore. It's in Taipei. The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, once the world's largest, isn't even in the top ten now. The biggest one's in - surprise, surprise - China. Alan Wolff, an international trade lawyer and former U.S. trade negotiator who specializes in china, said we're not used to foreign competition. Coming out of World War II, we had a lot of breathing space; the rest of the world's economies were devastated, "but they're catching up," Wolff said. "Worldwide, 179 countries are growing faster than we are. As our manufacturing jobs have moved offshore, the United States has counted on innovation to keep its edge, but how much longer will that be possible?" Take the iPhone. The idea, the genius, was American. But the phones themselves are made in China, where the government is determined that the next generation of geniuses will be Chinese. "Actually, that's a stated national policy," Wolff said. "They have a medium- and long-term science and technology policy, 2006-2020, and in that policy one of the statements, one of the parts is to establish global brands, with indigenous technology, with Chinese technology behind those brands." Think Japanese cars. When they arrived here in a big way in the 1970s, Detroit didn't see what was coming. Today Toyota, not GM, is the number one-selling car company in the U.S. And find an American community that wouldn't like a Toyota plant putting people to work. China wants to be next. Michael Jemal is president and CEO of Haier America, told Teicher that innovation and having its own patents is the "life blood" for Haier. "Haier applies for two patents every single day, every day of the year. In fact, it's more than that." Never heard of Haier America? Just wait. Right now, Chinese-owned Haier is trying to buy GE's appliance division When it entered the U.S. market nine years ago, the company sold three products. Now it sells 3,000. You name it, Haier makes it, everything from little dorm refrigerators to air conditioners, washing machines to flat screen TVs. "Haier is the number one brand in China," Jemal said. "In asia, we're in the top ten. The objective here in the U.S. is also to build a market share, to be in the top three in the U.S." Haier is a pioneer, the first big Chinese manufacturer to build a plant in the United States, a $40 million dollar refrigerator factory outside Camden, South Carolina. There the Chinese flag hangs alongside the Stars and Stripes. "This is an American plant," said Joe Sexton, president of Haier America Refrigerators. "It's run by Americans, and it is staffed by Americans. It is owned by the Chinese." They employ 125 hourly employees, and 30 salaried employees at Camden. Half these people used to work in the textile industry. They lost their old jobs to lower-paid workers in Asia. In other words, this is globalization in reverse. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said, "We've been, I mean, really whacked in textile job loss. We lost about 95,000 direct textile jobs in that process." Sanford said that thanks to foreign investment, the state has made up those losses and then some. The 600-plus foreign companies operating in South Carolina account for 1 out of 5 manufacturing jobs. They employ nearly two hundred thousand workers. "Capital goes to where it's loved, and we try to be very inviting on that front, and not just in terms of tax policy and regulatory policy and other things, but also in terms of direct relationship," Sanford said. "That's happening at the local level in the United States," Wolff said, "but the federal government is oblivious to it." Wolff said the president and Congress must face the new reality of global competition. "We need to change our tax policies, change our immigration policy. We made the U.S. a magnet, an attractive place for the best and the brightest in the world, and we frustrate that by saying, 'You get a Ph.D. here and that doesn't matter. Right now, we're throwing you out.' That's very self-destructive behavior." "We save too little, we consume too much, we borrow too much from the rest of the world, we use energy in a profligate and wasteful fashion," said Zakaria. He says the U.S. must change its ways, and soon, if we want to hang on to the wealth and influence we have. "I think that our window for policy change is very short," he said. "I think if we don't, in the next few years, four, five years, make the necessary adjustments, what you'll see is something that looks a little like the trajectory of the British empire in the 20th century. It's not that Britain collapsed, it's that it just slowly faded away in significance, in power and wealth." Halfway through the Olympics, the enormity of China's ambition is a wonder for all to see - and for Americans, a sobering wake-up call. "At one level a post-American world is a sign of American failure, and at another it's a sign of glorious success," said Zakaria. "Why is this happening? Because countries around the world are doing what we've been telling them to do for the last 60 years: open yourself up to capitalism, to free trade, to technology." But Zakaria worries that one day historians will write about how the United States globalized the world, but forgot to globalize itself.

Windy City: Tornadoes Rip Through Chicago

"There's still a lot of skepticism about whether global warming is man made," Stahl remarked. "I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off," Gore said."
Freedumb: an extremely precise & efficient self killing tool on a massive scale
The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




Windy City: Tornadoes Rip Through Chicago
CHICAGO, Aug. 5, 2008
(CBS/AP) Severe thunderstorms plowed across the Midwest during the night, ripping roofs from buildings, chasing people to shelter and blacking out thousands of homes and businesses. One death was blamed on the storms. At least three tornadoes struck the Chicago area, reports CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds. One of those hit Griffith, Ind. with a force that left homeowner Jeff Jelensick in disbelief. "This was my son's room, no roof there either," Jelensick said. "It hit everywhere on this house. It's amazing." Gusts over 90 miles an hour - stronger than winds generated by tropical storm Edouard - tore into a nearby shopping center, lifting off roofs and turning businesses inside out, Reynolds reports. One fatality was reported in northwest Indiana from a falling tree. The storm, with abundant thunder and lightning, reached Chicago just as the Cubs were playing Houston at Wrigley field -- where instead of take me out to the ballgame it was "get me out of the ballpark." By Tuesday afternoon, showers and thunderstorms were scattered over several hundred miles from central Illinois into West Virginia. The National Weather Service said tornadoes touched down in the Chicago suburbs of Bloomingdale and Bolingbrook, where about 24 homes were damaged, and at Griffith, Indiana, where roofs were torn off several homes and businesses. Travelers at Chicago O'Hare, one of the busiest U.S. airports, were evacuated into the lower levels of the complex's buildings. All flights were temporarily halted, and travelers who had already boarded airplanes were taken off and also were sent to the lower levels as a precaution. "It was pretty cramped down there, the whole terminal was down there," said George Wickens, 50, of London, who was trying to travel to Florida with his family. The storm tore roofs and siding from homes Monday night at the northern Indiana town of Griffith. Near Michigan City, Indiana, a tree fell on a car and killed the 23-year-old driver, LaPorte County Deputy Coroner John Sullivan said. Thousands of people were without electricity in the region.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc

China becomes physics powerhouse

US World Image Projection Continues to Fade. What else can be expected with a deliberate design flaw in the Economic & Judicial systems of rule and law which ignore Reality, lopsidedly benefiting corporate greedy guts? Where science and facts play second fiddle to the power of the Mouth backed by money? Is the current status quo in energy science the best 21st Century Intelligence has to offer?

There is not an intelligent being alive that could not understand Natural Capitalism with justice and economics based on natural laws, facts and unfettered science; where human life comes first and foremost, the primary factor upon which justice and profit is gaged: the greater the health and prosperity of all, the greater the justice and profits for all (simple numbers game). So who CHOKED THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM, where trickle down became waterfall up - an economic system topped with scientific suppression of advanced energy systems from the late 1940's (we are speaking of Advanced Energy Systems without which Human Life Cannot Continue to Evolve and Survive) ?

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

11:28, August 02, 2008
Magazine: China becomes physics powerhouse
There can be little doubt that China is finding its place as one of the world's physics power houses judged by the astonishing increase in papers written by scientists in China, said Physics World, an international monthly magazine, in a report published on Friday. Nanoscience, quantum computing and high-temperature superconductivity are three of the cutting-edge areas of physics that have seen particularly large increases. Published journal articles in nanoscience, for example, with at least one co-author based in China, have seen a 10-fold increase since the beginning of the millennium, rising to more than 10,500 in 2007, according to the report. China has already overtaken the United Kingdom and Germany in the number of physics papers published and is beginning to nip at the heels of the United States. If China's output continues to increase at its current pace, the country will be publishing more articles in physics - and indeed all of science - than the United States by 2012, said Physics World. Quantity alone however is not enough. The number of times a journal paper is cited by other academics in their own journal papers is often used as a guide to journal papers' quality. Unfortunately for China, they are currently a long way from the national citation top spot, ranked in 65th for physics, just ahead of Kuwait, with an average of 4.12 citations for each of the papers published. As China has only just started to publish large volumes of work, it is not a fair reflection. Werner Marx, an information scientist, who carried out a study for the Physics World article, said, "The figure is still quite impressive, and I estimate this will rise substantially in the next few years." All indications suggest that China's propensity for world-leading research is growing. In March this year scientists in Japan first reported a new class of iron-based superconducting material that can conduct electricity without resistance when cooled to below 26 Kelvin (K). Researchers in China quickly picked up the baton and, within a month of the initial Japanese discovery, had boosted the transition temperature at which the material loses all its electrical resistance to 52 K. "China has become a notable factor in the scientific landscape. Usually scientific development in nations does not show such a strong acceleration as we have seen in China, so it will be interesting to see how it responds and develops in the future," said Marx.
Source: Xinhua , People's Daily Online