Stormtroopers 9-11

Thanks Dave, hilarious!!!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Speaking of Black Holes!

Awesome! Thanks for the link Zach!

Black Hole Drive Could Power Future Starships

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/19/black-hole-drive-could-power-future-starships/

Such a black hole drive could easily accelerate to near the speed of light, opening up the cosmos to human travelers, but that's just the beginning. The micro-black hole could also be used as a power generator capable of transforming any matter directly into energy. This energy could be used to create new black holes and new power generators. Obviously, creating and harnessing black holes is not an easy undertaking, but Crane and Westmoreland point out that the black hole drive has a significant advantage over more speculative technologies like warp drives and wormholes: it is physically possible. And, they believe, worth pursuing "because it allows a completely different and vastly wider destiny for the human race. We should not underestimate the ingenuity of the engineers of the future."

I love it! Looks like the Cern Supercollider may be turned on this weekend as well...

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/19/large-hadron-collider-could-re-start-this-weekend/

Dawn takes residence in Asteroid Belt

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/16/dawn-takes-up-residence-in-asteroid-belt/

Excellent! I didn't know that Vesta is believed to be the source of most of the asteroid meteorites that fall to Earth. Interesting!

Civilian Supercomputer Shatters Competition

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/civilian-supercomputer-shatters-nuke-simulators-speed-record/

The retooled Jaguar supercomputer blew away the competition on the latest list of the 500 fastest computers in the world, clocking an incredible 1.759 petaflops — 1,759 trillion calculations per second.

“From the early 80s it may be close to a million fold improvement in computational performance,” Hack said.

Imagine in 30 years, when computational performance may be close to a trillion fold improvement over our current technology...

Naomi Klein: Revisiting No Logo

Looks like Naomi is releasing an extended introduction. I haven't read the book yet, but its on my to-read list. The article below is interesting as she wrote it in 1999, and in some ways is as applicable now as it was then.

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/11/revisiting-no-logo-ten-years-later

Rebels in Search of Rules
By Naomi Klein, New York Times, December 2, 1999

It is all too easy to dismiss the protesters at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle as radicals with 60's envy. A seemingly more trenchant criticism is that they are simply behind the curve, fighting against a tide of globalization that has already swamped them. Mike Moore, the director of the W.T.O., describes his opponents as nothing more than protectionists launching an assault on internationalism.

The truth, however, is that the protesters in Seattle have been bitten by the globalization bug as surely as the trade lawyers inside the Seattle hotels—though by globalization of a different sort—and they know it. The confusion about the protesters' political goals is understandable: this is the first movement born of the anarchic pathways of the Internet. There is no top-down hierarchy, no universally recognized leaders, and nobody knows what is going to happen next.

This protest movement is really anti-corporate rather than anti-globalist, and its roots are in the anti-sweatshop campaigns taking aim at Nike, the human rights campaign focusing on Royal Dutch/Shell in Nigeria and the backlash against Monsanto's genetically engineered foods in Europe.

At any time, one huge multinational company may be involved in several disputes—on labor, human rights and environmental issues, for example. Activists learn of one another as they aim at the same corporate target. Inadvertently, individual corporations have become symbols of the global economy in miniature, ultimately providing activists with name-brand entry points to the arcane world of the W.T.O.

This is the most internationally minded, globally linked movement the world has ever seen. There are no more faceless Mexicans or Chinese workers stealing our jobs, in part because those workers' representatives are now on the same e-mail lists and at the same conferences as the Western activists. When protesters shout about the evils of globalization, most are not calling for a return to narrow nationalism, but for the borders of globalization to be expanded, for trade to be linked to democratic reform, higher wages, labor rights and environmental protections.

This is what sets the young protesters in Seattle apart from their 60's predecessors. In the age of Woodstock, refusing to play by state and school rules was regarded as a political act in itself. Now, opponents of the W.T.O.—even those who call themselves anarchists—are outraged about a lack of rules and authority. They are demanding that national governments be free to exercise their authority without interference from the W.T.O. and asking for stricter international rules governing labor standards, environmental protection and scientific research.

Everyone, of course, claims to be all for rules, from President Clinton to Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates. In an odd turn of events, the need for "rules-based trade" has become the mantra of the era of deregulation. But deregulation is by definition about the removal of rules. The W.T.O., charged with defining and enforcing deregulation, is only concerned with rules that regulate the removal of rules.

The W.T.O. has consistently sought to sever trade, quite unnaturally, from everything and everyone affected by it: workers, the environment, culture. This is why President Clinton's suggestion yesterday that the rift between the protesters and the delegates can be smoothed over with small compromises and consultation is so misguided.

The face-off is not between globalizers and protectionists, but between two radically different visions of globalization. One has had a monopoly for the last 10 years. The other just had its coming-out party.

Photographer Collection: David Guttenfelder in Afghanistan

This is an amazing collection of photos, check it out:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/30/photographer-collection-david-guttenfelder-in-afghanistan/

For the past seven years, David Guttenfelder has witnessed and documented the changing landscape of Afghanistan. Although mostly embedded with coalition troops, he has also covered the presidential elections, bodybuilders in Kabul, the state of Afghan prisons and daily life in the country. Guttenfelder is the chief Asia photographer for The Associated Press and over the past seven years has offered the general public a close-up, intimate look at the lives of troops fighting in the mountains and remote regions of Afghanistan.