Super computer for $2500. Cheap enough for you?

Geeking out here just a little, 26 gigaflops/second for 25 hundred bucks.  Microwulf.    Homepage.  Frickin' cool!

The Geekster Phantom

Solar powered remote WiFi!

News article today about a new start-up selling solar power solutions for off grid applications like WiFi and security cameras.  Solis Energy is the company.

A small US startup has announced technology for running Wi-Fi routers in remote places using only the power of the sun.

Among the first round of products from Solis Energy is the Solar Power Plant, touted as being capable of supplying 12, 24 and 48 Volts DC for use in stand-alone applications such as surveillance cameras and outdoor Wi-Fi.

Comprising a large solar panel connected to a generator unit, the system claims to be able to power such devices for up to seven days without sunlight to recharge its batteries, hence the out-sized panels. In normal use, power stored during the day keeps the system running at night.

They have a couple more interesting things, like a power tap for running wifi routers off street lights.  Cell phone and cable companies better get the lead out or wifi/Voip is going to eat their lunch.  Bring on the fiber optic-to-home installs.

In other news, San Francisco discovers that wifi alone does not a dollar make.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's high-profile effort to blanket San Francisco with a free wireless Internet network died Wednesday when provider EarthLink backed out of a proposed contract with the city.

The contract, which was three years in the making, had run into snags with the Board of Supervisors, but ultimately it was undone when Atlanta-based EarthLink announced Tuesday that it no longer believed providing citywide Wi-Fi was economically viable for the company.

And no wonder.  Get this:

In January, the city agreed to a deal in which EarthLink would have paid the city $2 million for the right to build, install and run a free Wi-Fi network and to partner with Google to provide Internet service. People could have paid $20 per month for a faster connection.

In other words, its hard to make money off "free" internet service when you have to pay two million bucks for the privilege AND pony up all the equipment, installation and insurance etc.  Funny how this San Francisco socialism fails every time its tried.
Better idea, the city steps out of the way and lets private companies rent or buy space to put their routers, and doesn't try to dictate to them how it will all be paid for.  They'd end up with two or three competing wifi providers insead of one monolithic Soviet-style piece of crap.

They'll never do it.  No wifi at all is better than cheaper/faster capitalist wifi.  For the poor.

The Phantom

more brilliance!

Today is a good day for cheap, clever hacks!  Check this:

Until now, determining the mechanical properties of these thin films was either an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, requiring powerful microscopes to view the films, or scientists examined composite structures and made uncertain assumptions. This new research will give scientists a simple way to access the material properties of most thin films.

"As we delve more into the nanotechnology, it becomes increasingly important to know if the material properties of ultrathin films differ from their properties in the bulk," said Thomas Russell, a program director in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. "Everyday we see examples where a material's dimensions can change its properties. Aluminum foil is flexible, whereas a bar of aluminum is not. But what happens when a film's thickness approaches molecular dimensions" These experiments give us a simple, inexpensive way to measure mechanical properties of films that are only tens of nanometers thick."

Russell and his colleagues use a low-power optical microscope to observe what happens when they place a tiny drop of water on thin film as it floats in a Petri dish of water. The "capillary tension" of the drop of water produces a starburst of wrinkles in the film. The number and length of the wrinkles are determined by the elasticity and thickness of the film.

In some of the materials studied, the wrinkles in the ultrathin polymer films vanished with time, unlike the skin of a dried fruit or the crumpled hood of your car after an accident. This vanishing provides insight into the relaxation process of an ultrathin film by yielding information on the way polymer chains move in the highly confined geometry.

That's clever.  :)  And a kid can do it in the basement too.

The Phantom

What makes glass... glassy?

Today's piece of  gear head geeky brilliance, a rig for watching teeny weenie particles with a video camera.  Why?  To see why glass is the way it is, of course!

"One idea for why glass gets so viscous is that there might be some hidden structure," says Weeks, associate professor of physics. "If so, one question is what size is that structure""

The Emory Physics lab began zeroing in on this question two years ago when Hetal Patel, an undergraduate who was majoring in chemistry and history, designed a wedge-shaped chamber, using glue and glass microscope slides that allowed observation of single samples of glassy materials confined at decreasing diameters.

For samples, the Emory lab used mixtures of water and tiny plastic balls Ð each about the size of the nucleus of a cell. This model system acts like a glass when the particle concentration is increased.

The samples were packed into the wedge-shaped chambers, then placed in a confocal microscope, which digitally scanned cross-sections of the samples, creating up to 480 images per second. The result was three-dimensional digital movies, showing the movement and behavior of the particles over time, within different regions of the chamber.

"The ability to take microscopy movies has greatly improved during the past five to 10 years," Weeks says. "Back in the mid-90s, the raw data from one two-hour data set would be four gigabytes. It would have completely filled up your hard drive. Now, it's just a tiny part of your hard drive, like a single DVD."

Emphasis mine.

Glass, crazy glue and a microscope, and you can test the theory that's been bugging people for years.

This gets an Official Phantom A1 Awesome award for doing science with no money.  NASA take note.

The Phantom Cheapskate

Clever new hack in archaeology.

Something new under the sun in animal archeology, which doesn't happen every day.  A new and fabulous way to discern the locomotion style of an animal based on only the skull.

"We have shown that there is a fundamental adaptive mechanism linking a species' locomotion with the sensory systems that process information about its environment," says Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Penn State University, one of the team's leaders. The researchers studied 91 separate primate species, including all taxonomic families. The study also included 119 additional species, most of which are mammals ranging in size from mouse to elephant, that habitually move in diverse ways in varied environments.

The project is the first large-scale study to document the relationship of the dimensions of the semicircular canals to locomotion. These structures are filled with a fluid, which moves within the canals when the animal moves. The fluid's movement is sensed by special cells that send signals to the brain, triggering the neck and eye muscles to reflexively keep the visual image stable.

The basic hypothesis of the project was that the organ of balance -- which helps stabilize an animal's gaze and coordinate its movements as it travels through the environment -- should be irrevocably linked to the type of locomotion produced by its limbs. "If an animal evolves a new way of moving about the world, its organ of balance must evolve accordingly," Walker explains. From the visual information, the animal tracks its position relative to stationary objects such as tree trunks, branches, rocks or cliffs, or the ground. Having a stable image of the environment is especially crucial for acrobatic animals that leap, glide, or fly.

By mapping the structure of the balance organ to each style of movement they have created a map for comparison of extinct species.  Example, baboons have much more development of the semicircular canal than sloths.  Humans have more than baboons. Given a skull fragment with most of the canal structure in it and a CAT scanner to image it, you can arrive at a general idea of what kind of animal it was.

Damn that's clever eh?  I love cleverness like that.

The Phantom

Punks with guns.

Having got nowhere trying to kill Jews and Lebanese Muslims, the Palestinians have settled for killing each other.

Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement's most important security installations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, and witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen from the building and killed them in the street.

No independent confirmation on the killing them in the street part, but the media spin is predictable:

The moderate President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.

Translation from MSM Speak, gang leader Abbas's murderous punks aren't as tough as the Hamas punks, and besides Hamas is getting better bang bang stuff from Egypt.  Must have a special deal with the Egyptians,  without whom, by the way, these rival gang shit heads would be reduced to fighting with pointed sticks.  Hamas probably paid somebody off bigtime.

The MSM is now dignifying this with the title "Civil War", but really its a case of two criminal gangs fighting over turf.  Change the names Hamas and Fatah to get a better idea of what is going on.  Crips vs. Bloods in San Diego, with RPGs and mortars they bought from Mexico using money they got from the UN and the EU.  But less organized.

Whoever comes out on top is going to be the next bunch of a-holes the Israelis are expected to "negotiate" with.  Kind of a special revelation on the complete futility of the Mid-East Peace Process.  Looks like Israel had the right idea with the Wall.  Put up a fence and let the rats duke it out over UN table scraps.

Speaking of the UN, lets see how much aid the Egyptians sends to help their suffering brothers and sisters in their time of need.  I'm betting they send zippo, other than selling the bastards more ammo.

The Phantom

Another step on the road to perdition.

Today the Supreme Court of Canada announced that collective bargaining is protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Previous decisions of the Blackbirds held that Canadians have no right to private property.  Or freedom of speech (that'd be the hate speech legislation).  Or guns.

Just to be clear, unions are protected by the Charter but not people.  This concludes our Perdition road trip for today.

The Phantom

Pipeline bomb plot: mostly crap, kids.

Ok, so they caught four guys plotting to "blow up" the fuel pipeline that runs into NYC.  Good cop work, a well earned attaboy for Homeland Security.

But now we get the overheated media "lets make a buck!" coverage.  Example, "Pipeline Security A Joke" from the NY Post.

Or, "Ex-Airport Worker Plots Massive Attack On JFK"  (Officials Believe Attack Could've Been Worse Than 9/11)

Uhm, no.  There's two unalterable facts about pipelines.  First, you can't guard them.  Not a chance.  They are too long, and they are too numerous.  Second is that you can't "blow them up" as described in the red-hot but dead-wrong MSM reports.

The most you can do to a pipeline is put a hole in it.  If it is running natural gas or gasoline you can get a dandy fire going where the hole is, but you can't ignite the whole pipeline.  No oxygen in it, just fuel.  The most that Abdul Bin Dumbsheisse and his merry band of idiots could do is interrupt fuel deliveries for a little while, maybe make the MSM some more money selling doom and destruction stories.

When exactly did "educate and inform" become "alarm and dishearten"?  I'm starting to think journalists are a bigger problem than these moronic terrorists.

The Phantom

Mother Sheehan hangs up her spurs.

In a blog post entitled "Good Riddance Attention Whore", Cindy Sheehan calls it a day.  Seems she's tired of taking abuse from all sides.  Poor baby was fine as long as she restricted herself to slagging the Republicans, but when she started in on the Dems she made a shocking discovery.

Unlike Republicans, the DemocRats aren't gentlemen.  They use live ammo!

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party.  This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

So, Mother Sheehan slinks off into a well deserved obscurity, another tool used to destruction and cast aside by the Left.  These are the wages of fraud and deceit, as many a useful idiot has discovered.

I can't say it makes me happy to watch this woman suffer.  She's just another example of the Universal Law:  what goes around, comes around.  Don't be a jerk and the Universe probably won't go out of its way to crap on your head. 

From these examples we learn wisdom.

The Phantom

Palestinian refugee camp shelled!

Yep, the Nahr al Bared  refugee camp has had the living crap blown out of it this week.  Bet you didn't know that.

On May 20, ... troops surrounded the camp, with tanks and artillery pieces shelling it at close range. Army snipers gunned down anything that moved. At least 18 civilians were killed, and dozens more injured. Water and electricity were cut off. By week's end, much of the camp had been turned into deserted rubble. Thousands of terrified residents fleeing the camp reported harrowing stories of famished, parched families trapped in their basements.

Palestinian women and children dying of thirst, lots of photogenic explosions for TV crews, guys getting blasted by snipers in broad daylight, big friggin' tanks tearing around blowing shit up... and not a peep out of CNN.  No mutilated bodies of kids, no stuffed animal pictures, no Green Helmet Guy.

How can this be? 

Its because it happened in Lebanon, not in Israel!  In Jenin the Israelis sent infantry to remove dug in Palestinians, with careful attention to civilian casualties.  The Lebanese Army just drove up to the fence and walked a barrage across the place.  For a week.

Just as Lebanon's stew of eternally warring Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Hezbollah terrorists and militarized clans serves as a Mediterranean microcosm for the political dysfunction of the Arab world, this month's events capture perfectly the utter cynicism of the Islamic world's trumped up vilification of Israel, and the West as a whole. As with the Muslim- on-Muslim slaughter in Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza and a dozen other hot spots, the siege at Nahr al Bared shows that what inflames "the Muslim street" (for lack of a better cliche) isn't Muslim suffering, but the relatively tiny fraction thereof that jihadi propagandists and their Western apologists can lay at the feet of Jews and Christians.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what makes the Lefties and their willing accomplices in the Main Stream Media such a bunch disloyal, lying bastards.  A pox upon them.

The Phantom

A picture of matter waves.

Remember back in high school when the teacher said matter was made of waves just like light?  And you nodded while thinking "As IF!!!" to yourself?


Check that out.  Matter waves.  Do we live in a cool time or what?

The Quantum Superimposing Phantom

Re: Panel loaded with gun buffs

Dear Ms. Delacourt,

With regard to your article of May 28th, "Panel loaded with gun buffs", you say that like its a bad thing.  Unlike previous governments over the last 17 years, the Conservatives have appointed a Firearms Advisory Council composed of people who actually know something about guns.  Odd that their opinions on the gun registry would be different than your own, isn't it?  Why would that be?

Its dozen members include a man who argued that more guns in the hands of students would have helped in the recent Virginia Tech massacre, in which 32 people were killed, and another shooting aficionado who described a weapon used in last September's Dawson College killings in Montreal as "fun."

The committee's pro-gun tilt lends to the perception that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence – especially in Toronto. Jordan Manners, 15, was killed last week in a school shooting, days after philanthropist Glen Davis was gunned down.

Let us take these objections in order.  First, it is self evident that the Virginia Tech Massacre wouldn't have been any such thing if even one of the students or staff had been armed.  Your outrage at the suggestion indicates you may have a very low opinion of people generally, and may consider them too unstable and/or unintelligent to be trusted with firearms.

Second, the weapon used at Dawson College was a Beretta CX4 according to the CBC.  That is a small rifle chambered for 9mm pistol ammunition.  Prior to Kim Campbell's gun ban of 1992 I used to own a rifle something like it.  They are fun at the range, as the man said.  Their purpose is primarily sporting, as in shooting pop cans and possibly the odd ground hog.  Your outrage at the suggestion that such a thing could be fun indicates you may be a spoil sport.

Third, the committee of men and women who are not just buffs but widely respected experts in the fields of firearms and policing "is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence– especially in Toronto."  I agree, and I suggest the reason for that may be the unrelenting campaign against self defense and firearms generally by the kill-joy misanthropes in the Toronto press.  You tell people the same story often enough, and no matter how idiotic the story may be, many of them will start to believe it.

Your outrage that this panel refuses to conform itself to your views indicates you may be more attached to your propaganda campaign than you are to preventing more murders of little boys, because clearly your gun registry/gun ban ideas are not working.  Jordan Manners' murder is sufficient proof of that, if more proof was needed. 

There has been strict registration of pistols in this country since the 1930's, and a billion odd dollars has been spent registering all other types since 1995.  Yet a 17 year old with poor impulse control, who no doubt has a police record three feet long, was able to acquire and carry around the pistol he used to murder a 14 year old at school.  Possibly increased gun registration may not be the most effective means of stopping such atrocities.  A panel of experts would probably know that and advise accordingly.

Doing more and more of what isn't working seems to indicate your side of the argument has run out of ideas, wouldn't you say Ms. Delacourt?  Why not let somebody with a clue have a go?  I doubt they could do worse than Kim Campbell and Alan Rock.

The Phantom

News of America's decline premature.

Jihadis and other like-minded wankers of the world listen up.  Here's what you are messing with.


For those of you who didn't get the get the image, this is an 11 year old kid with a humongous revolver leaning on a wild hog.  A nine foot, four inch hog.  Its as big as a Volkswagen.

Jamison [Stone], who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Through it all there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation of doing.

Ya.  Think rhinoceros here.  Think half ton of pissed off pig with five inch teeth.  They needed an earth mover to get it out of the woods.

These are the kind of people Al Queerda thinks are going to be easy meat.  Doubt it eh?

The Phantom

Inevitable gun control screaming begins.

Well, here we are back again.  A little boy was killed yesterday, at school, in the Jane/Finch shooting gallery.  Guns are to blame. Ban the guns!

Ontario politicians called on the federal government Thursday to get tough on handguns following a tragic high school shooting that claimed the life of a 15-year-old Toronto boy.

"We have seen too many shootings result in too many funerals for our young people," Premier Dalton McGuinty wrote in an open letter to federal party leaders, urging them to push through proposed criminal justice legislation and implement a "real ban" on handguns.

"Handguns are designed for one purpose only – to shoot people – and should have no place in Ontario or anywhere in Canada."

Ontario AG goes farther, blaming those eeeevile gun owners.

The value of allowing handgun collections should be reconsidered, said Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant.

"There's got to be a balance between people's property rights and personal responsibilities to others," he said.

That rascal, he's pretending we Canadians have rights to property.  What a card!  Hee hee!

Finally the mayor of Hogtown gets to the real truth:  It isn't just those reckless gun "collector" lunatics, its the Americans, stupid!

Toronto Mayor David Miller, who voiced his support for an outright ban, went a step further and recommended that handgun regulation should become an international issue.

"We know that there's two sources of guns used in Toronto: one is guns that are stolen from collectors, and the other is guns that come from the U.S.," Miller said.

"The U.S. has to take some real steps, otherwise we're going to keep seeing tragedies. ... I mean, a 15-year-old boy. You know it's absolutely tragic."

To their credit, the (Red) Star actually includes the existing law in the comments which serve to mock these Liberal apparatchiks.  We've had full handgun registration for 60 years, handguns are extremely well controlled under the law, and carry permits are nearly nonexistent.  Meanwhile back in Ottawa there's some gun related legislation being stalled in committee by, yes friends, the Liberals!  Why?  I can only surmise because it isn't THEIR legislation, and it doesn't involve banning guns.  The Conservatives are pursuing the novel idea of actually jailing people for doing crime with a gun.  Liberals are afraid this might reduce the number of killers on the streets and give the Conservatives a win, so they resist with all available force.

Some random kid getting whacked in a school isn't a problem for the Liberals, its an opportunity! They get to whip out those polished speeches of outrage, make some mileage in the main stream press, and generally collect brownie points in the Toronto electorate.  Win win win!

Meanwhile, drunks armed with Kalashnikov style assault rifles (banned since 1992, thanks Kim Campbell) wander around Caledonia Ontario shrieking death threats, in plain view of Ontario Provincial Police, and indeed shoot young people with no intervention from the OPP.  I note that Premier Dalton, AG Mikey and Mayor Dave had nothing at all to say about that incident.  Could be because it didn't happen in Toronto, or possibly because it was only an Indian that got shot and they expect that kind of behavior from Indians.

Or, as an outside possibility it could be that the three of them are so full of shit their eyes are brown.  Hey Mayor Dave, we're going to "keep seeing tragedies" until murderers start getting life with no parole (at least!), and armed robbers get 25 years, no parole.  You point a gun at somebody, you go to jail.  No bail, no time off for good behavior.  After a couple hundred of these goblins get stuck in a hole someplace the crime rate should respond rather nicely.

Media logic.

Here we have an article by Mr. Don Cayo of the Vancouver Sun today.  I couldn't pass this one by.  Its just too illustrative of the kind of drek the MSM serves up as commentary.  Way to go Mr. Cayo.

He's reporting the findings by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that taxes make up 1/3 of gas price at the pump.  Which they do.  The title of the piece is "Our gas prices are shocking -- they're far too low"

"A third?" I said when I saw the figure. "Is that all?"

I feel this way because the amount falls far short of what Canadians' love affair with the car actually costs our citizens and the economy.

Ok, here we go.  After the usual litany of PC offenses the humble car makes against humanity, he comes up with this beauty:

Driving-related taxes -- not just gas taxes, but also taxes on vehicles and repairs, licensing fees and the like -- add up to more or less enough to cover direct driving-related costs, such as road-building and maintenance. But if you subtract the general taxes like GST and PST -- which apply to everything else, so why should driving be an exception -- the revenue for government falls well short of the expenses.

And if you toss in the massive externalities -- the cost of car-related injuries and deaths, of productive hours lost to congestion, of health and economic losses caused by noxious and greenhouse gases -- then the extent of the free ride for car drivers starts to become clear.

Indeed, if the car hadn't been invented a century ago, there's not the slightest chance it would be allowed to be built today.

Can you imagine how a regulator might respond to a proposal to introduce the automobile now? I fancy the conversation would go something like this:

"You say that these new-fangled 'automobiles' will kill 300-400 British Columbians -- as many as 3,000 Canadians -- a year, and they'll injure tens and tens of thousands more? That they'll trap people for hours on end on roads, and tie them up so badly that Greater Vancouver alone will lose half a billion dollars a year, give or take, in forgone productivity? That they'll spew gases which may collect in the air and make vulnerable people sick in places like the Fraser Valley, and they'll become the biggest single contributor to global warming?

Clearly they do not teach logic in journalism school.  Or perhaps they do and Mr. Cayo is just being more biased than usual. 

Picture this headline:  Appendectomies kill hundreds annually! That's not even a lie, I'm sure a hundred or so people die world wide on the table or due to complications from appendix surgery.  Can you imagine how a regulator might respond to that?  If he had half a brain he'd say "well, but how many people die from burst appendix every year?"

This is a favorite rhetorical trick of some "journalists", they just cut off half of the cost/benefit ratio and then rage on about the cost part.  In this particular case we are treated to the spectacle of Mr. Cayo preaching in support of taxes to Canadians, who have nearly the highest level of taxation in the developed world.

Next up, the di-hydrogen monoxide threat.  It kills hundreds every year!  Deadly chemicals in our food!!!!  Run away!

The Phantom

Common sense prevails for park wardens.

Here's a refreshing change from the usual Liberal crap.

Canada's park wardens were stripped of all law enforcement duties and equipment Thursday, the day after a federal ruling called for them to be issued handguns.

Parks Canada has taken away enforcement tools such as batons, handcuffs, body armour and pepper spray from wardens. They have also been asked to turn in badges that identify them as peace officers.

And if they encounter any anything criminal on the job -- from wildlife poachers to noisy campers -- they are now under orders to call the RCMP and stay back until police arrive.

...

Parks Canada was ordered to either arm wardens and give them weapons training or remove their law enforcement role in a 200-page decision issued by appeals officer Douglas Malanka Wednesday.

What makes this a good thing?  Because for a really long time federal park wardens have been doing cop stuff out in the woods with NO guns at all.  Which is really, really stupid.  These guys are HOURS away from backup, not minutes.  For my money they should be issued .308 assault rifles, not just pistols.  Sometimes they have to shoot animals.  You get a rabid grizzly bear, ain't no little pistol round going to stop it.

Finally a somebody with the brains God gave a goat.  Arm the wardens or send cops, no middle ground.  Now if we can just get some progress on arming campers in bear country...

The Phantom

It's the Dust, stupid!

As I've reported here before, Mars is getting warmer. But now an MSM paper has discovered it! Woo!

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

Yeah, dust. Right. Or it could be that the sun is having a 1000 year sunspot maximum and there's more sunlight shining on Mars, which is making for more wind and more dust as well as heating things up.

Naw, it must be my truck doing it.

The truth is like a flounder.

Yes it is.  You kick it under the table and ignore it long enough, it'll start to STINK.

Case in point:  University!

In their forthcoming book Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis, Prof. Côté and his co-author, Anton Allahar, sound the alarm about the demise of higher education, where many students are more interested in the piece of paper they get at the end of their programs than in the intellectual journey along the way, where professors are cowed into watering down courses and bumping up grades, and where universities are run like corporations hawking mass-produced degrees which are increasingly in demand but increasingly meaningless.

The consequences, the authors argue, are a disengaged student body, disillusioned faculty and a glut of bachelor-degree-holding graduates with unrealistically lofty aspirations in for a shock when they land in a job market fuelled by "credentialism" and plagued by under-employment.

Credentialism!  This is what you get when people are assumed to be incompetent morons unless proven otherwise.  Doesn't matter a damn if you can DO the job, you have to have the right paperwork. 

Kids are preparing for the workplace the best way they can.  They sleep through the indoctrination, browbeat the gatekeepers into punching the damn ticket and get the hell out ASAP.  That they don't know anything and can't do anything is irrelevant so long as they got the ticket!  If they schmooze well they can parlay their incompetence into a pretty decent sinecure in one of the many layers of public or corporate bureaucracy modern life is infested with.  Kids learn early that the system rewards popularity, not ability.

Problem is this credential madness leads to poor performance in corporations and government.   Guys have the ticket, they look good in the suit and they can bafflegab with the best of 'em, but they can't do the friggin' job.  Leading to countries like China eating our lunch.

That'd be the bad smell from kicking truth under the table too much.

The Smelly Phantom

Blasting the myths

Dear Ms. Marsden,

I was surprised to read your article "Blasting the Myths" in the Sun today.  Equating nukes with handguns is the kind of rhetorical trick I usually expect from a Liberal.

Do you know why Palestinian terrorists use suicide bombs?  The Palestinians discovered 20 years ago that when their death squads tried to stage a massacre in some school or store or theater, they'd get killed  before they could empty a magazine.  Whoever was in the crowd would immediately return fire, long before the IDF showed up with heavy weapons.  Mr. Terrorist would whip an AK out, and some old grandma would blast him.

Bystanders.  Killing terrorists.  With handguns!  In Israeli cities.

But it can't happen here because people like you, Rachel Marsden, hold your fellow Canadians in contempt.  You trust the increasingly corrupt and incompetent Federal government apparatus more than the average Joe.  That's not Conservatism.  That's the same mentality that drives our high tax rates, runaway regulations, the cult of PC victim hood and absurdities like Kyoto.  People are too stupid, venal, wasteful and bigoted to be allowed freedom. They must be controlled by the gentle but firm hand of their betters. 

That's gun control Ms. Marsden.  You want that for our country, you need to join your intellectual brothers and sisters in the Liberal party.

You also need to learn a little about guns before you start raving on about pistols.  The Virginia Tech killer had to shoot his victims multiple times to kill them because he used a handgun.  Had he been using a common deer rifle or shotgun, one round each would have sufficed.  Rifles are considerably more destructive than pistols.  We do not want the nut cases switching to rifles.

If you want to opine on these issues and not appear uninformed and indeed silly, do some homework eh?

The Phantom
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/

New clot finder prototype tested in India.

On a day in which we are being inundated with bad news from Virginia Tech, I thought I'd look at something good instead.  Just to be contrary.

So here it is, a portable device that they claim can image CVAs.

The device, called an "infrascanner", can spot blood clots on the surface of the brain known as haematomas, which can lead to death or disability if left untreated.

It is being tested in India, but if successful it could have benefits for patients anywhere.

<snipola>

The infrascanner uses harmless "near-infra-red" light - like that in a TV remote control.

The light beam penetrates the skull up to three centimetres.

A blood clot absorbs near-infra-red light differently to normal brain tissue and the signal is bounced back to the scanner.

The tech then views the results on a computer or even a PDA.  There's a picture of the whole lash up in the article.  Looks like a really sweet piece of kit, particularly for ambulances, emergency rooms and old folks homes.

The nice part is it'll be cheap enough to become wide spread in use, just like the portable defibrillator.  This will hopefully allow lots of clots to get diagnosed early enough for those miracle clot-buster drugs to have a shot at fixing up the patient.

So there you go, some good news on a bad day.

The Clot Bustin' Contrary Phantom