Luke.stirling

There are a few billion men and women around the world who need to watch this video.

What did you have for breakfast? Eggs? Scrambled? Were they good? Of course! Everyone loves scrambled eggs and any variation of it is edible. But there are very easy ways to make scrambled eggs more luxurious and pillowy and delicious. America’s Test Kitchen says to add extra yolks, add dairy, whisk with a fork so you don’t over whisk, and to first cook the eggs on medium-high heat and then on low.

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New submitter insitus writes: On 10 December, Germany's new Wendelstein 7-X stellarator was fired up for the first time, rounding off a construction effort that took nearly 2 decades and cost €1 billion. Initially and for the first couple of months, the reactor will be filled with helium—an unreactive gas—so that operators can make sure that they can control and heat the gas effectively. At the end of January, experiments will begin with hydrogen in an effort to show that fusing hydrogen isotopes can be a viable source of clean and virtually limitless energy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hovertext: GOD why are 8 year olds always talking about quantum mechanics?

New comic!
Today's News:

nprfreshair:

A 1,400 year old Gingko biloba tree at the Gu Guanyin Buddhist Temple in the Zhongnan Mountains of China is seen shedding its golden leaves this past Autumn, bathing the temple garden in a sea of golden yellow.

via Twisted Swifter 

I do sometimes get annoyed with arrogant physicists (I will continue to snarl at Paul Davies, Templeton scholar and cancer quack), but I have to give credit where credit is due, and a group of physicists wrote an excellent letter to the Supreme Court, on the patent biases the judges expressed in the Abigail Fisher case.

Letter to SCOTUS from professional physicists

Dear Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,

We are writing to you today as professional physicists and astrophysicists to respond to comments made by Justices in the course of oral arguments of Fisher vs. University of Texas which occurred on Wednesday, December 9, 2015. First, we strongly repudiate the line of questioning from Justice Antonin Scalia based on the discredited Mismatch Theory [1]. Secondly, we are particularly called to address the question from Chief Justice John Roberts about the value of promoting equity and inclusion in our own field, physics.

We share the outrage and dismay already expressed by many other groups and individual scientists over the comments of Justice Scalia, which appear to endorse the claim made in the amicus curiae brief of Heriot and Kirsanow, that affirmative action prevents black people from becoming scientists. We take this opportunity to strongly rebuke this claim and offer a rebuttal.

We object to the use of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields as a paper tiger in the debate over affirmative action. We as professional scientists are in strong support of affirmative action policies. As we work continuously to educate ourselves about the obstacles facing students of color, we see, now more than ever, a need for action.

We are working very hard to solve the ongoing problem of the lack of underrepresented minorities in the professional community of physicists and astronomers. In spite of the misguided claims of Heriot and Kirsanow, that “gaps in academic credentials are imposing serious educational disadvantages on… minority students, especially in the areas of science and engineering,” science is not an endeavor which should depend on the credentials of the scientist. Rather, a good scientist is one who does good science. We hope to push our community towards equity and inclusion so that the community of scientists more closely matches the makeup of humankind, because the process of scientific discovery is a human endeavor that benefits from removing prejudice against any race, ethnicity, or gender. Indeed, science relies heavily on consensus about acceptable results as well as future research directions, making diversity among scientists a crucial aspect of objective, bias-free science [2, 3]. Affirmative action programs that aim to bring the numbers of minority students to more proportional levels are an important ingredient in our ongoing work. Blaming affirmative action for our community’s lack of progress in this regard is not only wrong, it is plainly ignorant of what we as scientists have determined must be done to reform our pedagogical and social structures to achieve the long-delayed goal of desegregation.

Affirmative action is just one part of a larger set of actions needed to achieve social justice within our STEM and education fields. In their brief, Heriot and Kirsanow claim that affirmative action causes fewer minority students to enter technical fields because their completion rates are low. Unlike Heriot and Kirsanow, we are scientists and science educators who are keenly aware that merely adding students to a pipeline is not enough to correct for the imbalance of power. The experience of a minority student in STEM is often much different from that of a white student in STEM [4]. Minority students attending primarily white institutions commonly face racism, biases, and a lack of mentoring. Meanwhile, white students unfairly benefit psychologically from being overrepresented [5]. We argue that it is the social experience of minority students that is more likely to make them drop out, rather than a lack of ability.

Before Justice’s Scalia’s remarks on black scientists, Justice Roberts asked, “what unique perspective does a minority student bring to physics class?” and “What [are] the benefits of diversity… in that situation?” Before addressing these questions directly, we note that is important to call attention to questions that weren’t asked by the justices, such as, “What unique perspectives do white students bring to a physics class?” and “What are the benefits of homogeneity in that situation?” We reject the premise that the presence of minority students and the existence of diversity need to be justified, but meanwhile segregation in physics is tacitly accepted as normal or good. Instead, we embrace the assumption that minority physics students are brilliant [6] and ask, “Why does physics education routinely fail brilliant minority students?”

This is what we see when we look at a minority student in a majority-white physics class: determination and an ability to overcome obstacles and work hard in stressful environments. We see this because we know that many students from minority backgrounds are subjected to social and political stress from institutionalized racism (past and present), a history of economic oppression, and societal abuse from both micro-aggressions and subtle racism. We believe that it is these qualities that make minority students able to succeed as physics researchers.

The implication that physics or “hard sciences” are somehow divorced from the social realities of racism in our society is completely fallacious. The exclusion of people from physics solely on the basis of the color of their skin is an outrageous outcome that ought to be a top priority for rectification. The rhetorical pretense that including everyone in physics class is somehow irrelevant to the practice of physics ignores the fact that we have learned and discovered all the amazing facts about the universe through working together in a community. The benefits of inclusivity and equity are the same for physics as they are for every other aspect of our world.

The purpose of seeking out talented and otherwise overlooked minority students to fill physics classrooms is to offset the institutionalized imbalance of power and preference that has traditionally gone and continues to go towards white students. Minority students in a classroom are not there to be at the service of enhancing the experience of white students.

We ask that you take these considerations seriously in your deliberations and join us physicists and astrophysicists in the work of achieving full integration and removing the pernicious vestiges of racism and white supremacy from our world.

References

[1] Harris, Cheryl I., and William C. Kidder. “The Black student mismatch myth in legal education: The systemic flaws in Richard Sander’s affirmative action study.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (2004): 102-105.

[2] Bug, Amy. “Has Feminism Changed Physics?” Signs: Gender and Science: New Issues 28.3 (2003): 881-899.

[3] Whitten, Barbara.”(Baby) Steps Towards Feminist Physics.” Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 18.2 (2012): 115-134.

[4] McGee, Ebony O., and Danny B. Martin. ““You Would Not Believe What I Have to Go Through to Prove My Intellectual Value!” Stereotype Management Among Academically Successful Black Mathematics and Engineering Students.” American Educational Research Journal 48.6 (2011): 1347-1389.

[5] Bandura, Albert. “Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning.” Educational psychologist 28.2 (1993): 117-148.

[6] Leonard, Jacquelyn, and Martin, Danny B. (Eds.). The Brilliance of Black Children in Mathematics: Beyond the Numbers and Toward New Discourse. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers. (2013)

Running list of signatures:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dc16llaM_TFNu1cNWmgWwcfYWySNgUa5DBgCHQ0COkM/edit?usp=sharing

Notice to all the apologists for racists who were babbling away in my thread on the case: real rocket scientists think you are obviously full of shit.

Harvard Business School's Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky created 20 identical Airbnb profiles, ten of which had names meant to sound African-American, ten of which were meant to sound white and undertook thousands of attempted Airbnb bookings in Baltimore, Dallas, LA, St Louis and DC. They found that black-seeming Airbnb users were 16% more likely to have their requests declined than white-seeming users. (more…)

jhameia:

driftingfocus:

anogoodrabblerouser:

disquietingtruths:

universalequalityisinevitable:

Robert Sapolsky about his study of the Keekorok baboon troop from National Geographic’s Stress: Portrait of a Killer.

Thiiiiiiis, people, thiiiis!

1. Kill alpha male types
2. Achieve world peace

Got it.

I’ve actually read a lot of Sapolsky’s work.  He’s one of my favorite scientists in the neuro/socio world.

I just watched the documentary and there is so much more about the troop that isn’t in this photoset—not only does the troop have a culture of little aggression and greater cooperation, but any incoming jerk baboons learned within a few months that their shitty behaviour was in no way acceptable, that the troop only rewarded sociability, and they changed accordingly. 

Beard + Plant = Santa Claus Venus Fly Trap. https://t.co/So5vV1qcST pic.twitter.com/Oxlsg5Flwj

— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) November 14, 2015

[via]

The procrastination penguins have arrived! I know many of you are procrastinators just like I am. If you still have Christmas gifts to buy, check out this huge list of bird gifts that I spent forever compiling. There are also a ton of awesome handmade bird gifts on Etsy like the ever-popular bird wing scarves by Shovava and lots of cool stuff on Amazon like the adorable Audubon bird plushes. 🐦 Reblog to save a life 🐦

Katrina's family ordered two cakes, and asked the bakery to write "Happy Birthday Katrina" on the smaller one.

Guess what happened next:

 

Little Ryan's cake is a little more confusing... until you take a look at the order form:

Ahhh, I think we've cracked the code!

 

But my favorite belongs to Kate and Lilly, who were celebrating their victories in a local Spelling Bee.

Their parents asked the bakery to add some little flying bees around the cake for decoration... and OH YES THIS HAPPENED:

Spelling B's?

Well, at least they're consistent.

 

Thanks to Katrina S., Rebecca M., & Amy E. for all the latest buzz.

*****

Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.

When it’s released on December 15, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is likely to become one of the most popular sci-fi films of all time. Even for non-fans, the anticipation can be felt around the entire web.

No surprise then that Disney and Lucasfilm, the two main companies behind the behemoth, are gearing up for an aggressive anti-piracy campaign should, heaven forbid, the movie leak onto the Internet.

While that is completely understandable, over the past 48 hours the companies have been taking action to aggressively protect their rights in a way that is probably not supported by the law.

The problems began earlier this week when fansite Star Wars Action News posted an update to its Facebook page. An excited Justin revealed that he’d just purchased an action figure of ‘Rey‘ from America’s favorite store.

“Have we known this figure was coming? I just found her at Walmart – no other new figures,” he reported.

Crucially, Justin also posted up a couple of pictures of the boxed figure, which he had legally purchased – not stolen – from the store. However, it didn’t remain up for long.

“These pictures were removed from the post,” Justin wrote in an update. “Facebook notified us they deleted the photos after someone reported them for copyright infringement.”

But this is the Internet and things travel – quickly. Jeremy Conrad at Star Wars Unity subsequently reposted the pictures and he too felt the heat, in a much bigger way.

“This morning I woke up to numerous DMCA takedown notices on the @starwarsunity Twitter account, the Facebook account, the Google+ Page, and my personal Twitter for posting the image of an action figure that was legally purchased at Walmart,” Conrad explains.

“My webhost also received a takedown email from them with a threat of a lawsuit of the image wasn’t removed.”

A lawsuit. For displaying an entirely legal photograph. The copyright to which is presumably owned by Justin at Star Wars Action News. But it didn’t stop there.

Acting on behalf of Lucasfilms, anti-piracy outfit Irdeto has been hitting Twitter, not only filing DMCA notices (below, edited) against people who posted the image, but those who dared to RE-TWEET those tweets.

DMCA Takedown Notice

Copyright owner: Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC.
Name: David Gamble
Company: Irdeto
Job title: Operations Manager
Email address: iiprod_ops@irdeto.com

Description of original work: Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Rey (Resistance Outfit) Figurine

Links to original work: n/a

Reported Tweet URL: https://twitter.com/supersorrell/status/674483899871928321

Description of infringement: A screen shot of an unreleased figurine for Star Wars: Force Awakens

Description of infringement: A screen shot of an unreleased figurine for Star Wars: Force Awakens

While taking down an image that they don’t own the copyrights to is certainly taking things too far, Lucasfilm appear to have their reasons for doing so.

We’re not Star Wars experts here at TF but from what we understand there is an item printed on the Rey toy packaging that fans of the series will not want to see. That’s why we’re not publishing that picture in all its glory.

That being said, this story would not be complete without referencing the image that has caused all the fuss. With a double-helping of SPOILER WARNINGS and a DON’T BLAME US on top, those who wish to see the image can do so here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

New comic!

In all of my workspaces I have been gendered as a woman, and all of these things have happened to me. . I find the more ‘technical’ or corporate the teams are, the more likely that the responsibility of ‘non essential labour’ in the office falls on women and femmefolk (my current office is actually very good in this respect, which is really refreshing).

For more information on this phenomenon, read through this excellent metafilter thread on emotional labour. 

What is this comic about? Well, generally things like keeping the office tidy day to day, setting up for and cleaning up after meetings, organizing gifts and social events, fundraising, congratulations and condolences ‘from the office’, and administrative work like minutes-taking… pretty much everything that is ‘volunteer’ is likely to fall to women.

Sometimes when people argue that this work is non-essential, and that women only do it because they want to do it (and that, by extension, these just aren’t things that men care about). The thing is, community building is essential work. People who talk about having great work environments talk about things like hanging out with colleagues after work, having summer sport leagues, lottery groups, that time everyone pitched in vacation time during a family illness, that gift card that appeared on your desk on your birthday…that’s all stuff someone thinks about and plans and organizes, and it’s non-billable work, so they often do it for free, and that person is more often than not a woman. And that’s important, vital work, it makes people feel like they can come to work every day and at least not hate it all the time.

It’s completely devalued labour, and it falls in the laps of women to maintain. Sometimes guys think they’re participating by having the idea of the work: “Jim’s mother passed away – maybe we should get a card to pass around for him” – but the idea is as far as that participation goes. The organizing and execution of that ‘nice idea’ falls on someone else entirely.

Stuff like this totally undercuts women at work. For example, any time it’s assumed that I’ll take meeting minutes, my ability to participate fully in that meeting is compromised because I’m taking notes instead of concentrating on my own contributions.

And not doing this work has consequences too. There was a workspace where I was totally watching this happen, so I resolved to act like the men on my team did. I left rooms when they left them (in the condition they left them in), I used the kitchen in the same way, I left my desk in the same condition, but guess who got called out on failing to contribute to the office environment? It wasn’t the guys.

If you’re a guytype and you want to be a good ally in your worplace, be the person who volunteers. I mean it. Look around, see who’s doing the work that isn’t in their job descriptions, and pitch in. Take notes, buy cards, organize drinks, and for goodness sake, tidy the kitchen.  And it’s ok if this social stuff really isn’t important to you, but don’t you dare be the person who says that it’s not important work, and then feels slighted when no one remembers their birthday.

If you’re already doing this, awesome. Keep up the good work.

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The court is hearing the absurd case of Abigail Fisher, a white student who claims she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because of affirmative action. It’s a case that should have been dismissed for pure patent ridiculousness, but now we know why it’s been allowed before the highest court in the land: because Antonin Scalia is a fucking racist. He wants to argue that maybe black students are just a little slower and less intelligent than the white students. Send them to lesser schools, instead.

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African­-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less ­advanced school, a less ­­ a slower­ track school where they do well. One of, ­one of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas… They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them…I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have too fewer. Maybe it ought to have too fewer. And maybe some, you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less. I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.

The American Supreme Court, ladies and gentlemen.

Where the heck is Matt?

View

NASA just released this beautiful composite infrared view of Saturn's moon Titan. The Cassini spacecraft captured the image last month during its flyby about 6,200 miles above the moon's surface. From NASA:

The view looks toward terrain that is mostly on the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan. The scene features the parallel, dark, dune-filled regions named Fensal (to the north) and Aztlan (to the south), which form the shape of a sideways letter "H."

Several places on the image show the surface at higher resolution than elsewhere. These areas, called subframes, show more detail because they were acquired near closest approach. They have finer resolution, but cover smaller areas than data obtained when Cassini was farther away from Titan.

Meghan writes, "You've probably never been kept awake at night worrying about a European Commission communication. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be. Today the Commission published its roadmap for EU copyright reform, and despite the fanfare around portability of Netflix, it's clear that the bad idea known as 'ancillary copyright' has come back -- from the dead! -- to haunt us." (more…)

Japanese ingenuity, particularly when it comes to creating delicious snacks and about five million ways to eat chocolate, never fails to amaze me. Yet I am amazed anew by this latest release from the Bourbon chocolate company (which does, in fact, have a 1.3% alcoholic content making it even more scrumptious).

You know that old commercial with the dog smelling bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon? That’s me and chocolate — like an obsessed pooch.

So what’s the greatest thing since sliced bread? Sliced chocolate.

Yeah, it's just like American cheese but it's separate slices of CHOCOLATE. Where's my marshmallow fluff and two pieces of bread? I want this NOW NOW NOW.

You can melt it over pancakes, and probably certain parts of the human body they can’t show in the article.

Source: Rocket News

After coming to our senses about our dream of a Friendsgiving dinner party last month versus the reality of life with two kids, two full-time jobs, a small oven and a worrisomely low inventory of forks (seriously, where do they go?) we decided instead to have a Taco Dinner Party last weekend. Among our friends, in a tacos vs. turkey throwdown, tacos will always win. This might be why we get along so well.

... Read the rest of tres leches cake + a taco party on smittenkitchen.com

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to tres leches cake + a taco party | 146 comments to date | see more: Cake, Celebration Cakes, Everyday Cakes, Photo, Tex-Mex

So I’m wandering through Fallout 4 [official site], and I come across this old diner, sitting there, neon still lit, almost jaunty in a destroyed land. There’s a guy outside called Wolfgang, a leathered drug dealer, who explains that a mother and son have set up a shop in this diner, and that he wants paying for goods he’s sold to the son.

I go inside, aiming to resolve the problem between the dealer and the son, and get into conversation with the mother. But, looking down, I notice that, despite trading from this place, she hasn’t thought to remove a skeleton from one of the booths. Because why would you remove a skeleton from your shop? Or any of the filth that’s accumulated on the floor?

It’s just one of the weird little things about the world of Fallout 4 that I find confusing and alienating. Little things that nudge me out out my suspension of disbelief that this is a place. Instead of enveloping myself in all its detail, it just gets me wondering, absently, is this how it would be?

… [visit site to read more]

It’s ugly, and I blame the Republicans, especially the Tea Party and Trump fans, the latest incarnation of our nativist know-nothings. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has run a personal account of an encounter with one of those assholes.

It was my first Minnesota Vikings game and my first NFL game. I am not new to football, though. As an undergrad at Boston College, I went to many Eagles games, and I played junior varsity football. I knew what to expect on the field. I was excited, and, as I found my seat, I thought about bringing my family to a game in the new stadium.

What I didn’t expect was for a man to push aside other people and point his finger in my face, demanding to know if I was a refugee. He needed to make sure I wasn’t a refugee, he said. There was anger in his face and vehemence in his accusation.

I was stunned. He didn’t know anything about me. We were complete strangers. But somewhere in his mind, all he saw was a terrorist, based on nothing more than the color of my skin. He was white, and I wasn’t. He didn’t see anything else.

He didn’t know that I have lived in Minnesota for the past four years, that I was born and raised in New York and that the words “Never Forget” may mean more to me than to him. He didn’t know that when I went home and my children jumped on top of me and asked “How was the game?” that I’d be holding back tears as I told them about racism instead of touchdowns. He didn’t know that I am an attorney and the director of the Refugee and Immigrant Program at the Advocates for Human Rights.

Let’s not whitewash this any more. I used to think islamophobia was a silly concept, that thinking Islam was a wretched, stupid belief was entirely rational. But what I’m seeing over and over is that rejection of a false belief is largely a pretense for many of these people, and really they’re just looking for an excuse to rage against people of Middle Eastern descent.

But here’s an antidote: a British soldier who lost a leg in Iraq writes about Muslim people as complicated human beings. We need to prioritize those voices over those of resentful bigots at football games and Trump rallies.

The results of the X-factor script writing competition will be announced next week. There were over 100 entries!

Don’t forget, there’s a new J&M book out just in time for Xmas: “Wrong again, God boy“.

Hovertext: This is exactly how it works. No questions.

New comic!
Today's News:

Crafty and eccentric YouTube musician Andrew Huang enjoys performing classical compositions on weird objects.

(more…)

Last week a small company in Dublin called Steorn started taking orders for their USB phone charger. It's on the large side, and is only good for two or three smartphone charges per day, or one tablet charge. So then, why are they asking 1200 euros (about $1275) each for them? Well, for one thing, you don't have to plug them in. But there are other, much cheaper chargers that draw their power from sunlight or some other source and never need to be plugged in. With Steorn's OCube charger you're not paying for convenience, you're paying to be one of the first to own a device that does the impossible -- and that might be on the verge of revolutionizing science and technology.

Or at least, that's what Steorn would have us believe.

The OCube is the latest iteration of Steorn's Orbo technology. According to Steorn's CEO Shaun McCarthy, engineers there were working up a design for a wind-driven generator to power ATM security cameras back in 2003, when they stumbled upon a strange effect: the generators were putting out more power than they were taking in. Steorn spent the next few years ruling out potential sources of experimental error, and then trying to understand the theoretical basis of the anomaly. Finally they convinced themselves that there was no getting around the conclusion that they'd invented a perpetual motion machine. They'd found a loophole in the way that magnetic fields interact that allowed the law of conservation of energy to be broken, and caused so-called "free energy" to be generated: energy from nothing.

A technology that generates free energy would of course be enormously valuable for an endless range of applications, from eliminating the need to burn fossil fuels, to making clean water and electricity cheaper and more accessible to billions of people. It's no wonder then that history is littered with claims of perpetual motion machines, many of them outright hoaxes, and none of them ever having resulted in a practical device. In this context, Steorn found that no academic scientists were willing to endorse their technology, and without scientific backing, no manufacturers were interested in licensing it. So, they decided to reach out directly to the public.

In 2006 Steorn ran a full page ad in The Economist, flaunting the impossibility of their claim with the George Bernard Shaw quote, "All great truths begin as blasphemies." The ad offered "a world with an infinite supply of pure energy" and asked for scientists and engineers to apply to be part of a "jury" of experts Steorn was assembling, who would test their technology and go on the record with the results. This was the highest profile free energy claim in recent memory, and it drew a lot of attention -- even Michio Kaku took the time to come out against it. "It's a fraud," he told ABC News, "It's not possible. You can't sue me for quoting the rules of physics."

In 2007 Steorn set up a highly polished weekend-long public demonstration of their technology, now dubbed Orbo, at the Kinetica Museum in London. Press releases showed an elegant device, a simple wheel with four magnets set into its edges, mounted in a plexiglass frame and surrounded by an array of magnets fixed at angles along its perimeter. The big day arrived and the demo was... delayed. Then delayed again. And finally cancelled. The device failed, and Steorn blamed it on the hot lights beating down on the museum installation. Then in 2009, Steorn's hand-picked jury of experts came out with their verdict: they had been shown no evidence that Orbo generated excess energy. Finally at the end of 2009 Steorn held another public demo, this time in Dublin. They showed off a new version of their Orbo technology. This one replaced the outer set of permanent magnets with electromagnets, and it was claimed to produce some three times the energy it consumed. However, it was connected to a battery that drove those electromagnets (which it was said to continuously recharge, but which could just as well have been providing all the power itself) and its claims of excess energy production were supported only by cryptic and inconclusive calorimetry tests and oscilloscope readings. This last demo failed to impress, and in the wake of their previous failures, it was widely believed that the world had heard the last of Steorn.

But that was not to be. Over the years since, Steorn has managed to convince enough of the right people of the credibility of their technology to gather themselves 20 million euros of investment. They've spun off a separate company, called HephaHeat, to focus on water heating applications of the Orbo technology (HephaHeat is said to have contracts with major water heater manufacturers, but as of yet no products have been announced). And just recently, in a series of online videos, Steorn has unveiled yet another version of Orbo, a "Never-Die Battery" that directly produces electricity without the need to be recharged, ever. Shaun McCarthy has demonstrated the basics of how this new Orbo is put together: it's made of layers of dissimilar conductive metals, with layers of a non-conductive "electret" material sandwiched between them (an electret is a material with an electric field frozen in place, similar to how a permanent magnet has a magnetic field frozen in place). According to McCarthy, this new Orbo works on the same underlying principle as each previous iteration, though you wouldn't know by looking at it; there are no permanent magnets, no electromagnets, no moving parts or control circuitry.

What makes this episode different from each of Steorn's previous adventures is that for the first time they are making Orbo-powered products available to the public, to be put to long-term use, tested, and torn apart. Their first products are clunky, impractical and overpriced: the 1200 euros phone charger is to be followed in early 2016 by a 480 euros retro-style non-smart cell phone that never needs charging. Later offerings will include an e-cigarette and a wireless game controller. But the impracticality of this motley collection of devices is beside the point: Steorn wants to get Orbo into as many people's hands as possible, so they won't need the blessing of academic science. People will find out for themselves that Orbo works, and proclaim it over and over on the internet, until the rumble is loud enough that scientists have to take it seriously, and manufacturers want to license it. Then Steorn can leave product development to others, while they focus on lowering the cost and improving the energy density of their core technology. Eventually, Orbo will power every phone, every car, maybe even everything. That seems to be Steorn's hope, anyway.

To pull this off, they just have one final hurdle to prove they can overcome: the law of conservation of energy, one of the most basic building blocks of modern physics. Conservation isn't just a pattern that's been seen experimentally again and again; it's the mathematical foundation from which much of physics is derived. For example, conservation has caused physicists to hypothesize the necessity of new, never-before-seen subatomic particles, and the existence of these particles was later confirmed experimentally. Some would say that violation of the law of conservation of energy is unthinkable, because if it didn't work, then all of the electronics and other technology we've built on the back of our understanding of physics wouldn't work either. Then again, paradigms do change in science, and classical Newtonian mechanics fit nearly all the experimental data and formed the basis of a lot of successful science, before being replaced by a more complete understanding in the form of relativity. Overturning science is an extremely high bar for Steorn to vault, but it's not necessarily impossible.

Steorn's OCube USB charger is available to be ordered now for delivery within six weeks, for the cost of 1200 euros plus shipping. The OPhone is available for pre-order, for delivery in the first couple months of 2016, for 480 euros plus shipping. For more information, go to orbo.com.

If you're interested in finding out whether (and how) Steorn's Orbo technology works, but don't have the money to spend on your own OCube or the expertise to figure out what makes it tick, there's another way to get involved. A group of PhD engineers and scientists from Helsinki University is holding a crowdfunder to raise enough money to purchase an OCube, so they can test it and figure out how it works. A documentary crew is following this project, and contributors will receive a DVD of the finished film.

This is a decisive moment for Steorn; once they start taking payments for orders, they're legally obliged to deliver the miracle they've claimed, or else they're on the hook for fraud. It might be the beginning of the end for Steorn, or just the end of the beginning. Either way it continues to be an entertaining ride. And if a future of abundance and the end of global warming just happen to come out of this, so much the better. I plan on ordering my own OCube and putting it to a long term test. For updates, you can follow my blog, Dispatches from the Future.

Michael Ferrier is a cognitive scientist, game developer, and curious soul who lives surrounded by chickens in the woods of southeastern Massachusetts. He's been blogging about the mystery that is Steorn since 2007.

The villain is the hero of his own story.

“For starters, Trump has already suggested the government may need to shutter U.S. mosques and create a mandatory registry to track Muslims in the United States. While many of his rivals took issue with those remarks, they don’t sound all that different from him on the stump. Many have called for the same type of no-Muslims religious test for Syrian refugees looking to resettle in the United States. Ben Carson has proposed a similar test for future presidents (while also likening Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs”). And Ted Cruz has vowed to “shut down the broken immigration system that is letting jihadists into our country.” The common conservative refrain on the campaign trail, meanwhile, has long been that the first step in fighting ISIS is to define it as “radical Islamic terrorism.” (Republicans feel noticeably differently, however, about terrorist attacks committed by Christians.) The GOP field, then, is already on the record that they believe the Islamic faith itself poses a threat to the United States. Trump’s proposal is the logical conclusion to the type of illogical belligerence that Republicans have increasingly directed at Muslims in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris and last week’s massacre in San Bernardino, California.”

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Josh Voorhees at Slate

While many in the punditsphere are rushing to condemn Trump – and they should – keep in mind that the rest of the GOP Clown Car shares his basic views almost exactly, but they just use coded language and dog whistles to say it.

And Trump’s insanity about censoring the Internet, free speech be damned? Hillary Clinton just said pretty much the same thing.

Just stuff to think about.

Do I have thoughts on Donald Trump today? Why, yes. Yes I do.

1. Without offering this up as an excuse — it’s rather the opposite — I don’t think Trump planned to become the face of 21st century American fascism. I suspect rather strongly that he entered the presidential race for the usual reasons that Trump does anything publicly, i.e., for the publicity and the long-term brand benefits that accrue. He said outrageous things and when they gave him a boost, he kept on going in that direction, because why wouldn’t he, and here we are. Of course Trump is going to escalate his rhetoric, because that’s what he needs to do to keep the focus on him, and to starve the other competitors for the GOP nomination of the spotlight, forcing them off the stage.

Which is to say that Trump is running his campaign like he’s on a reality show, which has no other context than itself, and of which the goal is to win the presidency, not actually to be president. He’s not wrong about the reality show aspect of the campaign, and that’s on all of us. He’s wrong about everything else, and that’s on him.

2. I don’t believe that Trump actually thinks about Muslims or Mexicans in any particularly deep fashion; I think he likes and respects the members of either group exactly as much as they have money and a willingness to do business with him. So if you’re a Carlos Slim or a Saudi prince, he’ll like you just fine and be happy to cut you all the breaks you want (Carlos Slim, it should be noted, recently dumped Trump). Otherwise, you’re an abstraction that he can use to motivate another abstract group, that is, likely GOP primary voters, who, to be clear, I suspect he thinks about and respects as much and in the same fashion as Mexicans and Muslims — for what they can do for Trump, and only exactly that much.

3. Fundamentally Donald Trump doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than Donald Trump, and while this is obvious to anyone who knows anything about Trump for the last thirty years, it’s still apparently confusing to a number of people, who like to offer up various conspiracy theories for his continued existence in the race. He’s a plant by the Democrats to make the Republicans look bad! He’s a plant by the GOP to make the rest of the field look more moderate by comparison!

Well, no, and no. In the former case, the modern GOP doesn’t need any help; in the latter case, one need only look at the current other two front runners — Cruz and Carson — to see what nonsense that is. It’s extraordinarily telling that less than a year out of the election, the top three GOP candidates can all be described by the same two words: “Career narcissists.” That’s something for the Republicans to ponder. But to get back to Trump, there’s no reason to spin up increasingly bogus and complex conspiracy theories about who is tugging on his strings when Occam’s Razor — and common sense — dictates that this is Trump doing what Trump has always done: Making things about Trump, and his need to have the spotlight on him in order to build the brand.

4. This may lead you to ponder the philosophical question of “If you espouse fascist, bigoted points of views but don’t really believe them, are you really a fascist and a bigot?” In these troubled times it’s useful to turn to the words of a man wiser than I, so let me quote: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Indeed much of surrounding context for that particular quote is useful in the case of Trump.) Trump is espousing bigoted, fascist ideas and is campaigning to become president on the strength of those ideas and the fervor they generate. Whether he’s saying them because he believes them or merely because they give him a short-term benefit for a longer-term business strategy, the end result is a mainstreaming and affirmation of those ideals.

But he’s an outlier! Well, no. You can’t say the man who has for months led the polls to be the candidate for president of one of the two major political parties in the United States is not in the mainstream. Trust me, the bigots and the fascists are delighted by the amount of cover that someone like Trump gives them to say that their views are, in fact, at the heart of the American experience. There are others equally delighted that their inchoate bigotry, which before they knew enough to keep to themselves, now has a focus and cover for expression. You don’t get to walk away from the responsibility for doing that.

5. Which is the thing that genuinely confuses me about this whole thing. Bluntly speaking, Trump is never going to be president; mainstreaming fascism or not, at the end of the day the numbers won’t break his way. He’ll be swamped in the electoral vote certainly and probably in the popular vote as well. And then what? As noted, you don’t just walk away from being a bigoted fascist; that shit follows you around. As a business move it’s puzzling; it tarnishes the brand value of the Trump name — and burnishing that value is why I think he was in it in the first place.

It’s possible Trump doesn’t see that there will be long-term damage (or doesn’t believe it), or believes that he’ll be able to work within the universe of people who don’t mind he yanked his brand toward bigotry and fascism. Hey, it didn’t stop Hugo Boss or Volkswagen, he might say, afterwards. And, you know, maybe that will work out for him just fine. Maybe it’ll get him new casinos in the Carolinas and speaking gigs to “values” organizations. On the other hand, speaking anecdotally, before this election I saw the Trump brand as merely vulgar. Now I find it repulsive, and I strongly suspect for the rest of my days I’m going to go out of my way to avoid anything to do with it. The question is whether the people like me do more damage to the brand than the value added by the people who don’t mind bigotry and fascism.

6. Lindsey Graham today has been calling out Donald Trump, calling him “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” which is correct, and I absolutely applaud him for saying so. He’s also saying that Trump “doesn’t represent my party,” which is, unfortunately, not correct at all. Again, Trump has been leading the GOP polls almost without interruption for months. He’s not an outlier. He’s there for a reason. The reason is that the GOP has made space in their party for race-baiting xenophobic religious bigots, and has done so for years by conscious and intentional strategy. Trump did not bring his supporters into the GOP. They were already there. I strongly suspect Graham knows it. The GOP wasn’t always the party of race-baiting xenophobic religious bigots — there’s a reason the term was “Dixiecrat” and not “Republidixies” — but they took possession of them 50 years ago and have been banking on them ever since.

The GOP’s problem is that Trump is the distillation of every political strategy they’ve honed over the last several decades, and particularly ramped up over the last two. Lionizing the “political outsider”? Check! Fawning over billionaires? Check! Ratcheting up political rhetoric so that everyone who opposes you is the enemy and sick and awful? Check! Scaring the crap out of not-young white conservative Christians with the image of lawless racial and religious minorities? Check! Valorizing the tribalism of white conservative Christianity over the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States? Check!

There’s a reason why the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s executive director wants GOP candidates to “be like Trump” even as Graham bleats that Trump doesn’t represent the party. Lindsey Graham, are you shitting me? Trump doesn’t just represent your party. He’s the goddamn Platonic ideal of it. You can’t spend decades preparing the way for someone like Donald Trump and then pretend to be shocked, shocked when he roars down the field, flawlessly executing your playbook.

7. Also, getting rid of Trump, which the GOP now fervently wants to do, doesn’t solve the party’s fundamental problem, which isn’t Trump, but rather the fact that the race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigots he’s currently energizing will still be there if and when he goes. Dear GOP: Do you think that when Trump goes, the remaining candidates are planning to turn their backs on that particular constituency? Hell, Ted Cruz is positively drooling at the prospect of snapping up Trump’s leavings. And Cruz may not even have to wait that long; he’s gaining in Iowa, primarily on the strength of the same crowd Trump is riling up.

I think that the GOP wants to get back to where it was before, when it could pretend with a wink and a nod that race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigots weren’t in fact one of the two twin engines of the party, the other engine being rich autocrats, who don’t care for silly things like regulations or workers’ rights. Guys: It’s a little late for that (we figured out the rich autocrat thing, too). There’s only one way to fix your race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot problem, and it’s not (just) by getting rid of Trump. He’s the symptom, not the disease.

Actually, he is a disease. But he’s an opportunistic infection allowed by a previous illness. You have to have had the one to have the other. The GOP didn’t vaccinate for the first. It actually smeared the infection vector all over its body.

8. In case it wasn’t clear: No one — no one — should be supporting Trump at this point. No one should have been supporting him at any point, mind you. But now more than ever is the point when anyone who isn’t comfortable with outright fascism and bigotry should make it clear, to themselves if no one else, that they are out. It doesn’t matter that Trump won’t win the presidency; it doesn’t matter that he might not even win the GOP nomination. Right now, in the United States, the leading candidate for president of one of the two major political parties — the leader by a substantial margin — is openly talking about denying an entire class of people their fundamental Constitutional and human rights, and being cheered for it. It’s not right, it’s bigoted and hateful, and yes, it absolutely is dangerous.

Trump has a right to say bigoted and fascist things. Other bigots and fascists have a right to support him. The rest of us should also exercise our rights and call Trump and the others out for what they are. And right now, the fact is: If you’re supporting Trump, you’re supporting a bigot and a fascist. That may or may not make you a bigot or a fascist, but it doesn’t say good things about you in any event.

If you love the principles that make the foundation of our laws — and of the United States in a general sense — then you should take your leave of Trump, and for that matter, of any candidate who would cheerfully ride into power the same constituency Trump is mining. What you stand for and who you stand with matters. It’s time to stand away from Trump. As far away as you can get.

micdotcom:

Watch: Their interaction is enough to turn even the grinchiest Grinch into a total holiday believer.

I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING. I BELIEVE IN MALL SANTA.