Seduction, Lies and Cellulose

One of the real problems with having a technologically advanced society populated by people that don't understand science is plain old fraud. Scams, shell games and self deceptions are too familiar in the energy industry. There have been scams like Steorn's Orbo, Cold Fusion schemes, Sam Leach scammed investors out of millions with an automobile that ran on water, Irving Dardik preaches SuperWaves and who could forget the "smartest guys in the room" .

Well, if it works, somebody will try it again. It appears that Cello Energy of Bay Minette, Alabama, was doing just that. The EPA had a hand in this one too. They have a goal of 100 million gallons of cellulosic fuel by the year 2010 and they were counting on Cello Energy to produce 70 million gallons of it. They are not likely to deliver.

Cello Energy has been ordered by a federal court to pay $10.4 million in punitive damages for fraudulently claiming it could produce cheap diesellike fuel from hay, wood pulp and other waste -cellulosic fuel. In 2007 Cello's owner, Jack Boykin built a facility the way Hollywood does, just the showy parts, and then lured pulp producer Parsons & Whittemore Enterprises to invest $2.5 million in an ownership stake. It seems that P&W CEO George Landegger was not impressed, but the money was invested anyway. Samples of fuel were provided by Cello Energy, but they were derived from petroleum. It turns out that the EPA had been expecting too much from a company that will deliver nothing! What is amazing is the showmanship of Boykin and his company. They claimed to be able to produce 70 million gallons while other companies were promising only a million or two. Should have been a dead give away don't you think? Well, to be fair, the EPA was guilty of getting the 70 million number from just the size of the planned facilities. Take note, if you are going to commit fraud, get your victims to make a few assumptions on their own and make the claims really big.

George Huber of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a chemical engineering professor wrote: "There are no magic processes for conversion of biomass into liquid fuels," and "If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true." ----But, people seem less prone to invest when they hear the truth, sooooo......send your money to troy@starkeffects.com (paypal will do) and be one of the first investors in my new technology to capture the energy naturally released in the brains of investors when they suffer an imagination fueled endorphin rush while listening to snake oil salesmen.

Troy Starktroy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Evolution. It's just a theory.

How could anyone doubt the family relationship between us the other apes? My Natalie has always recognized how closely her Daddy is related to this guy.

http://www.starkeffects.com

troy@starkeffects.com

Blonde in Zero Gravity

Blondes in space. And I thought all the blonde hair at my house was out of control.

She is looking at solar panels in orbit. With oil over $130 a barrel, solar panels are looking better all the time.

troy@starkeffects.com

www.starkeffects.com

Special Education is Special -The average of 6 is 6 and a half.

I´d love for you to read the whole blog here, but if you´re in a hurry, the last paragraph is the punchline.

For the last two years I have had a pretty reliable inside source telling me what actually goes on in one California High School´s special education class. This class is considered an LH class with students having a relatively wide range of IQ level´s but not including profoundly handicapped or severely handicapped students. Several of the students have been competently diagnosed as autistic. These are not the students usually expected to become scientists or engineers but, in my opinion, their education is still important as most of them will be participating members of society and the people responsible for teaching them should take this responsibility seriously. I'm writing to complain that this responsibility has not been entrusted to the best people for the job.

To begin with, the teacher is more concerned with advancing her career into administration than she is with carrying out the duties of her present position. She spends no time teaching, which I thought was a bad thing, but later on I'll explain why maybe it wasn´t. The aid in class has no understanding of learning disorders or how to help these students at all. She has absolutely no patience with their lack of quick comprehension and she chooses to deliberately undermine the efforts of students she has determined to be unpleasant, and, as you might imagine, many autistic or otherwise behaviorally challenged students are unpleasant to be around.

During most of the class days these learning challenged students are assigned to do independent work. There is no lecture to explain the work, they are simply expected to get their books and work on the assignments themselves. Even the brightest students on campus get more attention from teachers than that. A good number of these students fall into the habit of doing nothing and not being noticed at all. These are sometimes students that would actually enjoy learning, but they don´t ask for help.

When students do ask for help they are ridiculed. Not by the other students, but by the teacher or aid. As a matter of fact, the teacher and one aid were sent to a class on working in this type of classroom where one of the points made was that these students are often bullied, and more often than not the bully is the teacher. As a side note, it was mentioned that maybe these teachers may be bullying out of concern. That side note was all it took for this teacher to justify her bullying methods and ridiculing of students. She seemed to learn nothing from the class. She even led the whole class in ridiculing a student who had decided that putting tissue in his nostrils was preferrable to the annoying runny nose... the whole class was amused by the teacher parading in front of the class with tissue in her nose to show how ridiculous it looked. Embarassment is often used as a teaching method in this room, why?

Assignments are given by the teacher with no clear direction. Assignments so vague that many adults would be lost as to where to start. Assignments like: Make a volcano for science class.

Aids sometimes fall into concern for their own status rather than the learning of the students. One aid got annoyed with students not understanding her explanations of how to do a math problem and then asking the other aid for help. She imposed a new rule to solve the problem: If you start an assignment with one aid´s help, then you can´t get help from the other aid for that assignment. What kind of silly-ass rule is that? Such personal insecurities should not be allowed to interfere with the students progress. This same aid was upset that a student that had not put in any effort during the year was suddenly trying to do math homework and and asking the other aid for help in understanding it. She refused to accept work done out of order and actully vocalised her opinion that the student could not avoid a failing grade now and simply had to learn his lesson.

OK, now I´m going to explain why the teacher may have done the most good she could by not teaching these students. She seems not to understand the condition of each student at all, she labels almost everyone of them autistic, which simply isn´t the case. She creates vague assignments and does not direct the students work at all. And to top it off, here is what happens when she decides to teach math:

"OK class, today we are going to learn how to find an average. As an example, we are going to calculate the average of the girls and the boys in this class. What is the average of the girls and the boys in here?" One student volunteers the obvious information: "There are six girls and seven boys if you include the teacher and two aids." The teacher gives a blank stare at the student for a while then: "How did you get that?" With bewilderment the student answers: "I counted." Well, that wasn´t helping the lesson at all so, on she went: She had the boys stand up and wrote each of their names on the board. Then she had the girls stand up and wrote each of their names on the board. Then she gave a number to each name, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 for the boys and 1,2,3,4,5,6 for the girls. ":Now we have to add them together, 6 plus 7 is 13. Now to get the average of the girls take 6 girls plus the 7 boys divided by the 2 possiblities in the class: 13 divided by 2 is 6 and one half. So the average of the girls in the class is six and a half." The math specialist aid has not said a word. No way to know if she had even noticed this amazing result. Of course, the other aid couldn´t resist: "Which one of the boys is half a girl?"

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Books that Address Science and Society

The Genius Engine discusses one of the most critical sciences of this century. This is a well written account of a complicated topic with important implications involving the impact of science on society. Much of the book relates recent research and results showing the functioning of the brain and which parts contribute what characteristics to your thoughts and decision making. Law and morality may both be informed and simultaneously twisted by this new knowlege. As an example: consider the criminal that can show his deficient prefrontal cortex or portions thereof contributed to his lack of respect for the law. He simply cannot be expected to act as a responsible citizen because his brain simply does not have that capacity so we have to let him go. Right? Whatever the answer is, we will be much better able to discuss these issues if we share a common understanding of how the mind functions and that common understanding will come through books like this one.

The Canon Is a wonderful journey through the basics of science that everyone should be familiar with. Best of all, Natalie's personality shows through in every paragraph making this a fun trip.

White matter and learning impairment.

Half of your brain has been neglected and it may be most significant half when it comes to understanding cognition and mental disorders. New research may even make it possible to improve your thinking –steroids for the brain – maybe not such a great analogy.

It seems that we are slowly becoming aware of the importance of the other half of our brains. Of course, popular culture has known for decades of the differences in the roles of each hemisphere and that same pop culture is slowly realizing the importance of even finer divisions of the gray matter including the mapping of regions of the PFC (prefrontal cortex) into lateral, VM (ventromedial), and orbitofrontal and even rostral regions involved in mixing our emotions with our logic, our memories real and imagined and our beliefs, true or not. We, as a society, are even learning how we might best do that mixing in order to improve our ability to reason as well as live and enjoy life –actually quite a complicated interaction. But that is not the other half of the brain that I’m referring to today.
Learning impairment, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, age related cognitive impairments and even the well known lack of judgment experienced as a teenager may all have origins in the other half of the brain –namely the white matter. We have been aware of the importance of gray matter where the neurons are but our mental performance is actually quite dependent on the white matter where axons that connect different grey matter regions are and where non-neuronal brain cells (glia) are located. Several articles in Scientific American (including the recent March 2008 issue) have discussed the role of glia in cognition. They have also noted the fact that certain outside influences can be detrimental to the myelin sheaths created in the white matter insulating our axons which is essential to clear intelligent thinking. Deterioration of the myelin wrapped around the axons may be causal to many different types of impairments.

Noted in the SciAm article this month by R.Douglas Fields is something I do find rather exciting though. As we age, we wrap our brains in myelin and finally get the complete coating in our 20’s. We are better at learning new things while this is actually being done and we are less adept at learning once this wrapping is complete. There is however a protein, NoGo-A, which is responsible for determining when we are done cooking –or rather wrapping. When that protein is inhibited it may be possible to regain some of our learning capacity. Now that is what I consider exciting and definitely socially unacceptable: Prevent mental maturity, just so I can learn more.

The Golden Compass frightens someone

I just thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful, imaginative tale with excellent, complex allusions and riveting plot with more symbolism than anyone will catch at first glance. The tale is written by a religious skeptic with an obvious alterior motive to make the viewers think -question. I've noticed a large number of people with dreadful fear of anything that makes people question. They'd rather not know anything that doesn't fit their little world view and they certainly don't want children to start questioning. They have launched a campaign to boycott this great little piece of fiction. If we ever develop a world view that can withstand attacks from new ideas, maybe we won't react with such fear. The fear that reveals our insecurity with a world view that just won't work beyond a little false comfort.
Anyway, the movie was great. I enjoyed it with my little Nicole and was very impressed with Nicole Kidman's performance. Her character was beautiful, slightly vulnerable and extremely dangerous- alot like another Nicole I'm acquainted with. It was fun. I recommend the movie highly!
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com
Think -It isn't illegal yet!

The anthropic principle and a great gift for me!

I just read another physicist referring to what he probably thinks of as the anthropic principle: That the universe is fine tuned to make life possible. It is true that life as we know it is possible because the universe is the way it is. If it were different, we'd be different or non-existent. This should not suggest to anyone that it was planned that way. We are observing the universe, therefore the universe is capable of supporting observers like us. Unfortunately, we have evolved to assume a purpose for everything so we assign purposes almost automatically which, I think, blinds us to many realities. Oh well, let's get on to something more interesting!

If you want to get me a gift:

This is an extremely exciting technology -If you want to buy me a gift, this is what I want! Amazon's Kindle is a
book reader. It would be a little like carrying around 200 books but in a package smaller than a laptop. I think this is much more exciting than the mp3 players that everyone loves (including me). You buy the books online and pay less than $10. I could save a fortune and not have to add anymore
bookshelves to my house, which already looks like the city library -maybe I could even replace the books I've got
with the electronic version! Anyway, this is something you need! If you happen to know me personally, this is a
gift I would love! For Amazon's Kindle, click here!

I've got to block my NF Kappa B Gene

I've got to block my NF-Kappa B Gene because, according to a paper in Genes & Development by a team at Stanford University School of Medicne in Californa, it seeems that there really is a genetic program that causes aging. It has long been thought that such a genetic program would have evolved under natural selection and that aging is not just a process of wearing out -since we know we have mechanisms that mitigate that to some extent - but aging is also genetically programmed and now Howard Chang and colleagues have shown that aging of the skin of mice can be reversed (nobody knows yet for how long) by turning off, or rather blocking, a master regulator gene "NF-Kappa B." That is exciting news. I now expect some rhetoric from someone telling me why it is morally wrong to block that gene and reverse aging and I'm taking bets on who will be the first to denounce this new scientific breakthrough.

Why am I so cynical?

- Troy
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com