Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla

Google joins the world in commemorating what would be the 153rd birthday of a man that changed human history. Nikola Tesla ushered in the age of alternating current, radio, and television with fanfare. Though his showmanship as a scientist often made overt skeptics of his colleagues his ideas were centuries ahead of their time and are only now receiving the kind of consideration and awe they deserve. When presenting his new concepts he insisted that one of his coils (pictured above) be spouting off the visual manifestations of electricity, popping and fizzling so loudly as to make his words inaudible. If his contemporaries could have heard his voice they would see he had an infectious obsession with progress and the idea that the hidden powers of electricity and magnetism could be unlocked to allow humanity to live more easily. He had a vision for free and equitable POWER (in all philosophical and practical definitions of the word) for every man woman and child on earth. His efforts to realize this were thwarted by J. P. Morgan and other financial backers who caught wind of Tesla's scheme to deliver free electricity wirelessly to the public through Tesla's giant telecommunications tower at Wardenclyffe on Long Island. There was no profit to be made by giving people what the needed freely. But presently, as the internet gains depth and gravity, this vision is being pieced together slowly and perhaps one day will be complete. The ghost of Nikola Tesla breathes life into the very medium in which I pass these keystrokes along. Happy Birthday Nikola!

Read more about Tesla and enrapturing story of his life here here and here
Above pictured is a sculpture of Nikola Tesla located at Queen Victoria Park near Niagara falls, unveiled on July 9, 2006. Tesla is standing atop an AC motor, one of the 700 inventions he patented. The monument was the work of Canadian sculptor Les Dryzdale.

T. Boone Pickens Pulls Out!

Is this is a guy who can see which way the wind blows or just another green-wagon hopper? T. Boone Pickens announced today he would call off the erection of more than 600 huge wind turbines on the Texas panhandle. The problem - lack of transmission lines. He was banking on the government coming through quickly and constructing a "smart-grid" that could take his product (electrons) to market. Good luck waiting the eons it must seem to these NOW NOW NOW profiteers. They have no patience. There is money to be made and they want in today not 25 years from now!

The problem with big wind energy sources is that they are variable, inconsistent, and often located too many miles away from the people that would use the energy. The real hurdle to unleashing the floodgates of the "Saudi Arabia" of wind power that exists all over our fruited plains is an effective means of energy storage and transfer. If a hydrogen economy does emerge and the highly pressurized infrastructure comes to fruition the on-site conversion wind-generated electricity to isolated/pressurized hydrogen gas would be a meaningful option. NREL and Xcel Energy have been collaborating on this scheme for years. Why can't T. Boone use this technology at his wind energy outposts? Am I missing something other than profit-hunger-induced shortsightedness here?

A Fish with Humanoid Teeth

This image comes from a National Geographic Blog. The subject - Piaractus brachypomus - an Amazonian fish with an eerily similar set of chompers to you and I. They use these flat masticators to crack nuts and seeds. I initially thought it was photo-shopped... Uncanny!

Werner Arber - Gwildor of Molecular Biology

The locksmith that uncovered the keys to genetic manipulation - Wener Arber - expressed some of his thoughts on the nature of natural selection last week at the Annual Meeting of Nobel Laureates at Lindau, Gernamy. P.Z. Meyers at Pharyngula critically reviews his synthesis and takes a particularly skeptical view of his conclusions.

The main conclusion Arber makes is that genomes contain a duality of genes that affect mutation rates and therefore the rate of evolution. On one hand there are genes that "benefit individuals for the fulfillment of their lives" and on the other hand there are genes that "act to the benefit of an evolutionary development, for a slow, but steady expansion of life and biodiversity." Arber is saying that there are parts of all genomes that actively promote variation but at the same time there are also those that maintain the happy status quo. He calls the former "evolution genes" - this terminology might come off as a little sweeping and inappropriate but I have a proposed explanation coming up. PZ has a problem with this because he says there is not evidence for the existence of genes "that will only help an individual's many-times-great-grandchildren."

This is where my thoughts came rushing in. For some random reason last week I was reading various online biographical sketches of Barbara McClintock - the Nobel Prize winning scientist who discovered "jumping genes" aka transposons - these are genetic sequences that can "cut and paste" themselves around the genome's geography. She demonstrated that 50% of the Zea Maize genome is comprised of transposable elements. That is one highly variable genome! She spent a large part of her career studying the evolution of the corn plant and made some profound observations about the nature of the genome before the structure of DNA was even known. I digress. I propose that these transposable genetic elements are the very "evolution genes" that Arber is talking about. Consider that some transposons have heat-shock like promoters (for non-scientists - promoters are like genetic bookmarks that tell the cell which pages of the blue-prints to read in order to build the cell's machinery). Heat shock promoters become engaged when a cell is subjected to stress- starvation, extreme heat, cold, etc. etc. It has been proposed in the literature that increased rates of mutation due to increased rates of transposition may be beneficial to a population of cells under environmental stress¹. Thus if the environment is pleasant "status quo genes" are free to maintain a steady biological state, whereas in changing environmental conditions the "evolution genes" can come out of dormancy, even after epochs, to save the day.

In the end PZ criticizes Arber's talk saying that it really doesn't bring any new ideas to the table. Well I have noticed that the blogging-heads mentality of new new new everything really does not allow us to reflect and reorganize old knowledge in possibly useful ways. The point Arber is making really builds an accompanying theme to the premise of Dawkins' the Extended Phenotype. In that book Dawkins explains how genetic instructions intertwine with the non-living environment through behavior modulation. Arber is saying that the non-living environment ultimately and actively directs the course of evolution through activation of variability-promoting genes (even though variation is usually detrimental). I think PZ was initially confused in thinking that Arber was assigning some kind of higher direction to that non-living "natural reality."

1.Strand, D., & McDonald, J. (1985).
is transcriptionally responsive to environmental stress
Nucleic Acids Research, 13 (12), 4401-4410 DOI: 10.1093/nar/13.12.4401

Tegucigalpa, Chicken Buses, and Revolution

Imagine President Obama sound asleep in his pajamas in the White House at 5:30 AM. Now imagine he is stirred by 200 armed military personnel and quickly whisked away on a military aircraft and dropped off without a word at the Ottawa international airport. Consider that this is the direct result of an order passed down from the supreme court requesting his forcible removal from power.

This scenario played out yesterday in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for president Manuel Zelaya. President Zelaya is a "leftist" and part of the Chavez, Ortega, Castro coalition of Bolívarian idealists that have been attempting to foster the rise of Latin cultural unity for decades. Now his comrades are defending him. Chavez, Ortega and leaders from Cuba connived in Managua, Nicaragua yesterday to coalesce their stance on the Honduran coup. That stance being hostile and aggressive.

This rapid revolution is quite an interesting case-study and opportunity to dissect the results of "leftist" policies in Latin America. As a leftist myself I consider the word in quotes when describing this collation because I take offense that they cloak their classicism, and aristocratically laced greed in the guise of "leftism." Traveling inside Nicaragua last summer I saw first hand whole villages where children play in open sewer streams and human refuse is carried down the streets of major cities because there simply is no civil engineering nor infrastructure. I saw countless vagrants walking the streets, eyeballs rolling to the backs of their sockets huffing a yellow glue from tiny jars. I heard the snake-like hiss of young men taunting women in the streets making them objects in a gallery.

These "leaders" call themselves leftists but it is truly a farce. They live like a priestly cast in luxurious settings on large ranches, mustaches filling out, eating well while the majority in these countries are kept in poverty. I do not know all the circumstances surrounding the revolt in Honduras but I do understand the desire for a government that - in practice - really does work for the people rather than corrupt idealists whose actions fall far from the scope of their words. Revolution is beginning to swell in Latin America and I have seen with my own eyes why.

I spent much of my childhood in Puerto Rico where I witnessed the long-term affects of good government policy transforming a people from a poor majority to a flourishing middle-class. I saw Rooselvelt's public works projects lasting effects on the psyches and pocketbooks of an island. This may seem idealistic in its own right but I feel that a cultural unity in Latin America should not separate itself from the world but rather integrate with a rising global culture to lift itself from the darkness of the "us versus them" mentality.

A person dear to my heart is at this instant traveling on a chicken bus from Managua through Honduras to El Salvador. I can not think of a more perilous day for her to be traveling through a country where people on the street carry fully automatic weapons in times of peace. I fear for her safety and the safety of all the people of Honduras as revolution is too often accompanied by discharged weapons. My hope is that the world would join me and the people of Honduras in discussing the merits and short comings of the current government to ensure democracy remains intact throughout this process.

As the Iranian revolution deserves our conscious attention so does this. May we combine our minds in contemplating a peaceful path out of these uncertain places and times.

Semifinals!

A post from the ghost has made it to the next round in the first ever "Top Quark" science blogging competition over at 3 Quarks Daily. Thank you to all who cast their vote for our humble submissions. Between now and June 11th the editors at 3QD will scrutinize those twenty posts and distill them to seven. These will then be submitted to Steven Pinker for final judgment. The other semifinalists are listed in ranked order from the public voting round here. May the most powerful post prevail!

Reborn after 200 years

Thomas Paine - the man of letters that built the foundation of ideas the American revolution sprung from - died 200 years ago today.
His rebellious spirit still stirs resentment amongst dyed in the wool crown-lovers to this day.

Listen to what one commenter had to say about the man 200 years after his death in response to this BBC Magazine article...

Thomas Paine was a traitor to his country. It doesn't matter if what he said was right or wrong or we look back on as profound, his meddling in colonial affairs were catastrophic. Supporting a French dictator and American rebels? His descendants should hang their heads in shame.
Lucian Whippe, Cambridge

This is why we revolted!

Viva Tom Paine's revolution!
And long live the power of the PEOPLE!

An amusing coincidence was pointed out today by a catholic magazine.

Auto-Tune the News

Rachael Maddow had the producers of "auto-tune the news" on her show a few weeks ago. The 4th installment on their unique reiteration of the news has recently debuted. Amazing to me that with just a handful viral You Tube videos this group has captured the attention of the main stream media. Says a whole lot for a dash of creativity. You can see what I'm going on about below.. Shor-tay

Twenty years since Tiananmen

Phil put it well - "Honor, not amnesia, for the martyrs of Beijing 1989"

Cheating Death - Colbert on Fire!

Oprah is a prominent gate-keeper and her constant promotion of quackery opens up the topic of responsibility when using free speech from certain platforms. I surely can not, with good conscience, stand by while Oprah spearheads the charge to flay the hypothetical Hypatias of our time.

How do you think these matters of free speech vs. phony speech should be handled? Perhaps a network sponsored special running for several weeks consisting of a panel debate on each claim inviting experts from academia and clinics in for each issue - vaccines, the secret, Dr. Phil etc etc.

Some would argue that this would be a bad idea because it gives equal footing to those making fraudulent health claims. But I say the truth should be able to defeat any imitations using the "disinfectant of sunlight" as justice Louis Brandeis might have put it.

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