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

Big Oil Profits Go To Investors Not R&D

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life? The answers lie in Power, Greed, and Stagnant Energy Science. In a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires, the economy keeps falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry. Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price of all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific 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

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.




Big Oil Profits Go To Investors Not R&D
HOUSTON, July 22, 2008
(AP) As giant oil companies like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips get set to report what will probably be another round of eye-popping quarterly profits, just where is all that money going? The companies insist they're trying to find new oil that might help bring down gas prices, but the money they spend on exploration is nothing compared with what they spend on stock buybacks and dividends. It's good news for shareholders, including mutual funds and retirement plans for millions of Americans, but no help to drivers already making drastic cutbacks to offset the high cost of fuel. The five biggest international oil companies plowed about 55 percent of the cash they made from their businesses into stock buybacks and dividends last year, up from 30 percent in 2000 and just 1 percent in 1993, according to Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. The percentage they spend to find new deposits of fossil fuels has remained flat for years, in the mid-single digits. The issue has become more sensitive as lawmakers and Americans frustrated by high gas prices have balked at gaudy reports of oil industry profits. ConocoPhillips is scheduled to kick off the latest round of Big Oil earnings reports Wednesday. Oil prices are set on the open market, not by the oil industry. But that hasn't stopped public protests, a series of congressional grillings for top oil executives, and a failed attempt by lawmakers to slap Big Oil with a windfall profits tax. In the first three months of this year, Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest publicly traded oil company, shelled out $8.8 billion on stock buybacks alone, compared with $5.5 billion on exploration and other capital projects. ConocoPhillips has already told investors that its stock buybacks for April to June of this year will come to about $2.5 billion - nine times what it spent on exploration. Stock buybacks are common throughout corporate America, not just for Big Oil. They shrink the amount of stock on the open market, essentially increasing its value and giving individual shareholders a bigger stake in the company. But some critics say Big Oil focuses too much on boosting stock prices, in an industry that sometimes ties executive pay to stock price. And in focusing on buybacks and dividends over exploring for new oil, some critics say, oil companies jeopardize its already dwindling share of world supply. "If you're not spending your money finding and developing new oil, then there's no new oil," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University who's studied spending patterns of the major oil companies. Investor-owned companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron hold less than 10 percent of global oil and gas reserves, way down from past decades. And finding new oil has become harder and more expensive. State-run oil companies, like those in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, control about 80 percent of oil reserves - and at today's prices, it's not surprising they're keeping a tight grip on what they have. Scarce equipment and hard-to-find labor also pose problems. No one questions that Big Oil is rolling in cash. The cash the biggest oil companies bring in from running their businesses, or operating cash flow, is four times what it was in the early 1990s. "It becomes a management decision," said Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's. "It's not like they're going to the board and saying, 'Well, I can do one or the other or the other.' The balance sheets are flush with cash." So what's Big Oil to do? The companies say they are doing what they can to find more fossil fuels around the world, but the easy oil is gone. Exploring these days may mean expensive projects in thousands of feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico or costly ventures pulling petroleum from Canada's vast oil-sands deposits. TransCanada Corp. and ConocoPhillips Co. just said they'd spend $7 billion to nearly double the amount of crude flowing through a pipeline from Canada's tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast. And analysts point out that because there's no guarantee oil prices will stay in the stratosphere, oil companies should approach exploration projects with caution. "There's only so much money you can throw at it without being ridiculous," said Joseph Stanislaw, a senior adviser to Deloitte LLP's Energy & Resources practice. "I think they're doing what they can." It's also important to remember it can take several years before a company produces the first barrel of oil from a new field. One example is an oil field in the Gulf of Mexico called Thunder Horse. Operated by BP and partly owned by Exxon Mobil, the platform only last month began producing oil and gas - nine years after the field's discovery. At its peak, the multibillion-dollar project is designed to produce 250,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas each day, which would make it the Gulf's largest producer. "When you look at the spending that's going on, the companies are bringing on a lot of long-term discoveries," said John Parry, a senior analyst with John S. Herold Inc. At ConocoPhillips, the capital spending budget for 2008, which includes exploration and production, is $15.3 billion, more than double the spending of five years ago. "Could we spend $20 billion or $25 billion? Absolutely," spokesman Gary Russell said. "Could we do it effectively, in a way that provides ultimate value to our shareholders? Probably not." Exxon Mobil, known for its disciplined approach to investing in energy projects, has drawn criticism for its reluctance to invest in alternative energy sources like wind and solar power. The company expects to spent $25 billion to $30 billion on capital and exploration projects each of the next five years. Last year, it spent about $32 billion on share buybacks. "You fund your investments that make sense," said spokesman Alan Jeffers. "You have criteria, and you have to meet that to be a good investment for the shareholder. And then if you've got cash that's left over, you're going to return it to the shareholder because it's theirs." Exxon Mobil often touts its $100 million contribution to Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project. By contrast, BP says it plans to spend $8 billion over the next decade developing alternative energy using wind, hydrogen and other means. Big Oil isn't alone buying back large amounts of stock, but the companies are certainly some of the biggest indulgers. A boom in stock buybacks has been under way in corporate America since 2004. In the first quarter of this year, Exxon, ConocoPhillips and Chevron were all among the top 10 companies for share buybacks in the S&P 500. In Washington, one Democratic proposal would impose a 25 percent tax on "unreasonable" profits of the top five oil companies, which together made more than $120 billion in 2007, and put the money toward a trust fund for investment in alternative energy sources. Republicans say it's a gimmick that won't help at the pump and will discourage domestic oil production. But Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the fervor for stock buybacks is a clear sign Big Oil isn't interested in new production or alternative energy. "When you hear that," he said, "it screams out for a windfall profits tax."
MMVIII The Associated Press