The End of the American Era

With the unprecedented $700 Billion USD bailout of wall street, we are reaching the end of the ‘American Era’.  What we are actually experiencing is a massive shift of wealth and power in the world due to the worst monetary policy in history.  This isn’t anything new to history.  How did America became the superpower that it was pre 2000?  In the 19th century Britain was the dominate world power, but after WWII Britain had accrued so much debt fighting in the war that it had to hand over power to America.   Thus, in the 20th century America is the dominate world power.  Now the balance of power is shifting again.  America has too much debt (10 trillion+) with up to 50% of it being borrowed from foreign countries.  After a temporary global slowdown to reconcile this change we will witness the rise of the new super powers in the 21st century lead by China and India.

Site – http://money.cnn.com

Autosub 6000

Autosub6000, which was developed by British scientists, descended almost three miles below the surface to investigate a canyon north of the Canary Islands. The trough contains the deepest seabed volcanoes in the world. Its next mission is to investigate the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, one of Europe’s worst natural disasters, in which more than 10,000 people died. The successful first dive this week formed part of a research expedition investigating potential threats to Western European coasts from tsunamis, giant landslides and earthquakes.On its return to the surface, 24 hours after its launch, it provided scientists with three-dimensional images showing holes in the sea floor the size of Wembley Stadium – evidence of giant underwater avalanches in the past, and a potential cause of tsunamis in the future. Autosub6000, which was developed at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton, can dive to a depth of 6,000 metres – nearly four miles – allowing it to reach 93 per cent of the world’s seabed. It is an exciting prospect as the deepest parts of the sea floor remain the last explored places on our earth.

Site – http://www.timesonline.co.uk

ITER

After years of waiting, It was really satisfying yesterday to see the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) come online to an amazing amount of media coverage and be successful.  However, that was only the first test for the LHC and the really interesting stuff we are still waiting for.  So while we wait for the ‘big-bang’ experiments, I thought it would be a good time to talk about a couple of other projects which arguably are just as important as the work being done at the LHC.

The fist is ITER project, a joint international research and development project that aims to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of Fusion energy.  Fusion is the energy source of the sun and the stars. On earth, fusion research is aimed at demonstrating that this energy source can be used to produce electricity in a safe and environmentally benign way, with abundant fuel resources, to meet the needs of a growing world population.  ITER is very early in its development and its likely we won’t see anything like the spectacle surounding the LHC for 20+ years.  This is partly due to the enormous amount of energy it takes to start a Fusion reaction and the extreme temperatures (think the Sun) it produces.

 

Site – http://www.iter.org

Ghost in the Shell 1.5 – Human Error Processor

Human-Error Processor presents for the first time in America the lost GITS stories, created by Shirow Masamune after completing work on the original GITS manga and prior to his tour-de-force, GITS 2: Man Machine Interface, but never collected until now.  GITS 1.5: Human Error Processor is a set of four chapters that were left out: “Fat Cat”, “Drive Slave”, “Mines of Mind” and “Lost Past”.

Deep into the 21st century, the line between man and machine has been inexorably blurred as humans rely on the enhancement of mechanical implants and robots are upgraded with human tissue.In this rapidly converging technoscape, the covert-ops agents of Section 9 are charged to track and crack the most dangerous terrorists, cyber criminals, and ghost hackers the digital future has to offer.Whether dealing with remote-controlled corpses, lethally malfunctioning micro machines, or cop-killer cyborgs, Section 9 is determined to serve and protect… and reboot some cyber crook ass!

 

Site – http://en.wikipedia.org