Friday, June 26, 2009
According to Jim Glanz in Wednesdays New York Times, an earthquake shook
Basel, Switzerland on December 8, 2006, damaging buildings and terrifying
the residents. It had been 650 years since an earthquake toppled the
towers of the Basil cathedral. This time at least it was not the hand of
God. In an effort to produce almost limitless clean energy, a hole had
been drilled 3 miles deep, fracturing the bedrock that separates Earth's
crust from its molten interior. Water was heated by passing it through the
fractured rocks. The project shut down immediately, but many smaller
quakes continue to rattle the residents. A similar project to harness
geothermal energy is underway in Sonoma County, CA.
Orbo, a perpetual motion machine promised by the Steorn Company in Dublin,
is one of them. You will recall that Orbo was to be demonstrated a year ago
at the Kinetica Museum in London www.bobpark.org/WN07/wn070607.html. It
didn't work. Steorn blamed the air-conditioning, and said the
demonstration would be delayed a few weeks. Well, 50 weeks later, Steorn
says they fixed the problem. Not unless theyve changed the first law of
thermodynamics. Meanwhile, a jury of scientists convened by Steorn has
issued a unanimous verdict: Steorn had "not shown the production of energy."
Libertarians are fond of pointing out that John Holdren, the President's
science adviser, collaborated with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich (The
Population Bomb). Shocking! Ehrlichs best-selling 1968 book predicted
mass starvation by the end of the 20th century due to unconstrained
population growth. Ironically, the major health problem in the US today is
an obesity epidemic. But not everyone lives in the US. Two technological
developments postponed the looming catastrophe: the green revolution for
which Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and the Pill. In
most industrialized countries the Pill has brought the fertility rate down
to about 2.1, needed for a stable population. In Muslim nations however,
which suppresses womens rights, fertility is as high as 8.0
(Afghanistan).
As I have done every Friday morning for 25 years, I arose at 5 AM this
morning to scan newspapers and television channels to find out what was
happening in my world that I should be aware of in composing WN. Alas,
there was no news on television. ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN were all dolefully
mourning Michael Jackson's unexpected death. Damn! It was international;
even BBC and Al Jazeera. They said he was a singer, but I don't recall ever
hearing him sing.
That adds up to 1299 issues. (There was no 8 Sep 2000 issue, the week the
tree fell.) The archives, however, go back only to 1991. Technology
changes required issues prior to 1996 to be retyped to enter them in the
archives. Before that could be completed, the dedicated and capable
secretary who took on the project in her spare time was fired.
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