Germany for sure

Well, we are headed to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, near Kaiserslauten. But, we are going to miss Lark and Curtis. We will probably arrive sometime between July 4 and July 10. We haven't worked out the details yet. I am really disappointed that we won't be able to rendevous with World Cup travelers. Such is life. sigh.

Status of Magnetic-Containment Fusion

PhysicsWeb has an interesting article about the status of research on the magnetic-confinement approach to nuclear fusion. It is exciting to see that the "penultimate step" along the way toward an electricity-producing reactor is now being built. Although the experts claim that we might see electrical power generated from one of these things within our lifetime (by 2035 or so), I suspect that the schedule will stretch out, as it always seems to do for large projects.

Even if we were to run out of oil and natural gas, and even if commercial or nationalized-utility fusion power plants don't come on line in a major way until, say, 2100, that would still allow civilization to continue, as we should have enough coal and fissile nuclear fuel to keep electricity flowing for a couple hundred years from now, with or without fusion. The sooner fusion comes, though, the better. If natural gas becomes too expensive, then we'll have to convert many power plants back to coal, and I doubt that the government will be able to force those plants to keep nasty emissions from coal burning as low as they are now from natural-gas burning.

What do you all think about the future of energy?

How William Shatner Changed the World

edited from AP Wire story:

Capt. James Kirk's alter-ego, William
Shatner, really did shake up the cosmos.
The irreverent documentary "How William Shatner Changed the
World" features the actor examining the ways "Star Trek"
technology inspired real-life innovators, whose inventions include
communicator-like flip phones and medical equipment reminiscent of
the starship Enterprise's sick bay.
Premiering Sunday on the History Channel, the show kicks off the
network's "Out of This World" week, featuring explorations of
comets, meteors and UFOs.
The documentary studies how Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi series
helped energize scientific explorers who created gadgets we could
only dream about when "Star Trek" premiered in the 1960s.
Shatner chats up researchers who, to quote Kirk's Vulcan
sidekick Spock, found fascinating the tricorders, communicators,
medical scanners and other devices Roddenberry and his
collaborators put in the hands of the 23rd century "Star Trek"
gang.
Viewing this brave new world of technology, then staring around
a real world where clunky computers filled entire rooms and talking
long-distance meant tethering yourself to a rotary phone, these
impressionable young minds set out to make what they saw on "Star
Trek" a reality.
"They were deadly serious about `Star Trek,"' Shatner said in
an interview after taping TV spots to promote the History Channel
shows. "Scientists are a strange group in that they catch glimpses
of something that is mysterious and wonderful. They can't quite put
their finger on it, so they grasp at something.
"It's a step-by-step process. You climb on the backs of giants.
Only rarely are there leaps. Scientific advances mostly are
incremental. If enough time goes by, a decade goes by, suddenly,
that increment, you take year one to year 10, looks like a giant
leap. So here we are 30, 40 years after `Star Trek,' and it looks
like it was extraordinary, the advances we've made."
While we're not yet having our scrambled molecules beamed from
place to place, the documentary reviews "Trek"-like technology
that has come into being, including cell phones resembling the
show's communicators, laser scalpels and other noninvasive medical
equipment.
The show also features interviews with researchers inspired by
"Star Trek" to miniaturize computers, study time travel and
search for alien life.

Denial STILL Not Just A River in Egypt

Just when All the President's Men thought they had seen everything - Iraq Civil War, Jack Abramoff Scandal, Cheney Shooting, Port Controversy, etc.
As this post is being written, the Associated Press is releasing a videotape made in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina's landfall. In that videotape, you will see federal disaster officials (including the oft-maligned Michael Brown) warning President Bush and Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff that the storm could breach the levees around New Orleans.
That doesn't mean President Bush and Co. could have done anything to stop the levees from breaching, but for President Bush to claim after Katrina hit that "no one could have anticipated" the scenario is eerily reminscent of the president's claims that "no one could have anticipated" terrorists using planes to ram into buildings despite the fact that he had an intelligence report sitting on his desk titled "Terrorists' Plot to Use Planes in Attacks" a few days before 9/11.
Everyone get your hip-waders on. The BS Spin is about to get really thick.