Purdue Researchers Develop "Tactical Biorefinery"

post from The Energy Blog on 05 February 2007 11:59:00 PM. © The Energy Blog

Scientists Develop Portable Generator That Turns Trash Into Electricity By Douglas M Main, Purdue University, Feb. 1, 2007 A group of scientists have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military,...

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A to Z of science suppression

post from Bad Astronomy Blog on 05 February 2007 11:01:41 PM. © Bad Astronomy Blog

I like to keep up with how the White House suppresses science. Well, "like" is the wrong word, but I feel duty bound. But how does one keep up when the hits keep on coming? Why, the A to Z Guide to Political Science Suppression is just what you want.Take your blood pressure medicine first.

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Correcting some misapprehensions…

post from Pharyngula on 05 February 2007 10:09:50 PM. © Pharyngula

Some people have taken blogroll amnesty day the wrong way—or perhaps it has been used in the wrong way. Jon Swift registers the impression that this was an undemocratic purge that simply re-enthroned the same old elites and tossed the little guys on the scrapheap.

But the more I learned about this Amnesty Day, the more I realized that it was a very strange amnesty indeed. The amnesty he granted turned out to be amnesty for himself [Atrios]. He wanted to assuage himself of the guilt he might feel at kicking blogs off his blogroll instead of granting amnesty to others to swarm across the border into his domain. "Everyone feels a wee bit guilty about removing blogs from their blogroll, so they're hesitant to add new ones to an ever-expanding list," he explained. So Atrios deleted his entire blogroll and disappointingly repopulated it for the most part with the usual suspects. Then others in the liberal blogosphere followed his example, including Jesus' General and PZ Myers at Pharyngula, who already takes a very Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest approach to blogrolling. Then Markos at Daily Kos joined this ruthless bloodletting. "It sucks and it feels bad," he said, daubing the tears from his eyes as he typed. So the end result of Atrios' Amnesty Day was to make some blogrolls smaller and even more exclusive than they already were.

Uh-oh. This is precisely the antithesis of why I thought the amnesty was a good idea: we shouldn't take the A-listers for granted and just put them on the list because everyone else does, but should instead critically evaluate all of them. I like Atrios's site, for instance, and browse it regularly because he seems to be an excellent and responsive weathervane for issues that might be of interest to me…but it's all those smaller sites that put a little more care into more substantive or quirkier posts that I appreciate more.

For instance, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo thought I'd dropped him in the revamp. No way, man—that's a much more fun site to read on lefty political issues than what Atrios does. Besides, I've got the t-shirt. I think that means we're in a committed relationship at this point. Oh, and Skippy, I've never been on Atrios's or Kos's blogrolls myself—we're just going to have to settle for each other.

I should also explain that Jon Swift has the wrong impression of my blogroll policy. It isn't quite as brutal as he supposes; I'm extremely liberal about adding new blogs to it, and although I do drop blogs that are abandoned by their owners for a month or more, I'm also quick to add brand new ones that I find, and do so on at least a weekly basis. That's how my complete blogroll has grown to 405 blogs at last count (and which I could never handle without my NetNewsWire to manage everything).

I have and always will consider linking to be a way to break out of stale hierarchies, and I hope no one gets the idea that I would want to use them to lock out fresh ideas.

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International Society for Stem Cell Research
Releases Guidelines for Stem Cell Research. Yawn.

post from blog.bioethics.net on 05 February 2007 09:38:00 PM. © blog.bioethics.net

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Evolution is bad, so stars can't possibly evolve

post from Pharyngula on 05 February 2007 09:04:26 PM. © Pharyngula

It isn't just biology that creationists like to mangle—watch how one of our IDist pals completely screws the pooch on the subject of "stellar evolution". She trots out the whole menagerie of creationist canards in a bizarre attempt to defend the wacky Walt Brown and dismiss whole chunks of physics and astronomy.

It just goes to show that there's something about the word "evolution" that unhinges these kooks. Everyone does know that biological evolution and stellar evolution are completely unrelated processes that don't share any mechanisms, right?

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seamless square tube

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 05 February 2007 07:17:12 PM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

Is it possible to get a seamless square tube of material ASTM A-500 grade C? thanks

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Seamless Square Tube

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 05 February 2007 07:17:12 PM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

Is it possible to get a seamless square tube of material ASTM A-500 grade C? thanks

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When Shell Oil aren't sponsoring cultural events
in London they are...

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Fed Ex Superbowl commercial Bad Astronomy

I missed the Superbowl yesterday because, well, I don’t give a damn about the Superbowl (I stopped caring about football a few years back when when I realized I was wondering which team had more felons on it). I wish I had watched it though; evidently Fed Ex had an ad that was really, really [...]

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Military Shows Off New Ray Gun

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 05 February 2007 06:08:00 PM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

The military's new weapon is a ray gun that shoots a beam (of millimeter waves) that makes people feel as if they will catch fire. The techno...

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