The Wire, Warren Tate, Petroleum Nut

The Wire (allright, its years ago I know, but people are still commencing to watch it)
Its newness as a narrative art form is underscored most convincingly by its power on DVD, where it can be watched all at once, over sixty hours: ...so engrossing, heart-tugging, and uncertain are the various story arcs that watching in this manner one becomes filled with a kind of mesmerized dread.

nybooks
In this new motion picture format the standard, consoling boundaries and storytelling rhythms are dispensed with—mostly. One is allowed a wider, deeper portrait, a panorama, of entrepreneurial crime, government corruption, a harassed underclass, and faulty institutions of every sort—sprawling portraiture that aims at inclusivity.
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Simon is not interested in viewer comfort; the conventions of prescriptive political fiction do not capture his imagination very deeply; he is far more interested in the unholy bargains everyone makes in the maelstrom of societal injustices.
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Pearson is a Baltimore rapper and quite literally an ex-con, having done time at the Maryland Women’s Correctional facility for a homicide committed when she was fourteen. She had never acted on screen before but was brought to the set by Michael Williams (Omar), himself a former dancer, then placed prominently and without a name change in Seasons Four and Five: her real-life nickname is Snoop.
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Anonymous
..anonymously (sic) encrypts your internet connection ( using a VPN ..). .. web browsing, instant-messenging/IRC, online games, Skype..encrypted and your IP address (and in some cases your country) will be virtually changed
[so you entrust your security to hma & pay for it]
hidemyass $11/month
interesting choice ... pay some company to promise they wont divulge your IP
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, use LogMeIn Free. It’s a VPN, a program that lets you securely connect to your home computer.
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* ForceTLS, a Firefox add-on, changes regular links to secure links (including Firefox and Twitter). The problem is convenience: You have to add each link you want changed to its database. It’
a href="http://technologizer.com/2010/11/10/make-yourself-invisible-to-wi-fi-hackers/">technologizer

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Nifty Molecular Biology

From our chance discovery in the 1980s of recoding (frameshifting..)..an interest in the frameshift mechanism of HIV-1 as a potential site of vulnerability..

Now, our interest has extended to the only gene in the animal kingdom known to use this mechanism, human gene PEG10. The gene was relatively recently acquired as a retroelement insertion and has undergone molecular domestication to become expressed in placenta and amniotic membranes but not, as we have shown, in adult tissues. Significantly, it uses the same frameshifting expression strategy as HIV-1 to produce two proteins.

[how recent? are mammals the result of a viral infection?]
Professor Warren Tate Rutherford medal


* Biochemistry Department, Otago School of Medical Sciences,

WT in some interesting investigations:
Evidence from glycine transfer RNA of a frozen accident at the dawn of the genetic code...
Genetic code as an accident.


biology
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Sustainable Agriculture

07/11/2010 14:36:45 pm
Delna Rivers wrote:
Dear Sir,
I was Chair of a Working Group on Sustainable Agriculture appointed by the Govt of the State of Maharashtra. In the past 7 years I have interacted with thousands of farmers, directly or through NGOs, mainly in India's highest suicide belt of Vidarbha. I have found that suicides occur amongst farmers using Bt (GM) technology and conventional chemical farming and are virtually non- existent amongst organic farmers. The former are locked into high cost high risk agriculture totally unsuitable in rainfed areas - which is 60% of Indian farming - whereas sustainable and ecologically sound agriculture, such as organic, requires abundantly available labour rather than scarce capital and therefore requires no unrepayable debts. With clever marketing and ensuring that seed traders sell only Bt cotton, agrodiversity in cotton has been virtually wiped out as no other seeds are actually available and the farmers are caught in a trap from which they cannot escape. They are reporting livestock deaths where the animals feed only on Bt cotton stalks, inability to grow other crops, unprecedented attacks of subsidiary pests and new diseases, and the pesticide use has not declined. As an organic farmer explained to me : The Bt cotton farmer had to take a loan to buy Bt seeds which cost 10 to 15 times as much as organic seed, and bought expensive chemical fertilisers for it. When the rains failed, the organic farmer replanted from his own seeds. The Bt cotton farmer took a further loan to buy more seed in the desperate hope of recouping his loss . When the rains failed a second time, the organic farmer replanted a third time and got a good crop when the rains came. The Bt cotton farmer was too far ruined to plant again. Selling his land or taking his life become the only way out of the mess created by the profiteering seed companies and agro input providers who are pumping money out of the pockets of the poorest into the pockets of corporate giants. Biotech seeds do not lead to sustainable agriculture, is our ground experience, no matter what well paid scientists may say. I would like to know what is the subsidy being paid, directly or indirectly, to US farmers growing bio engineered crops , and to US organic farmers growing comparable crops - if someone can provide an answer to this.

Economist was taking votes "is biotech compatible with sustainable agriculture" a daffy question, but you know what they mean...

Emotionally (and why not get emotional about food and starvation) I side with organic - in the sense of lots of organic matter in the ground.

Is this important? If Methane derived Urea was cheap forever would Industrial farming be OK?
Would hydroponics be OK to feed the world, assuming it was practical and practicable?

We are told that heavy Nitrate (600kg/ha?) 'kills' soil and results in compaction.. bacteria,fungi, protists,in vertebrates worms, are 10x reduced?

Is this important?

pasture - Ley rotations use animals to bring dung/urine from pasture to crop/rotation lands. This can last indefinitely?

So meat eating sustains sustainable agriculture?

dense mat of rhizomes and roots makes for a tough pasture. But then its plowed up?

If (When) Industrial fixed N gets expensive will the 'dead' soils mean starvation?

Can one persons urine really fertilise 200kg of grain?

Is copper spray allowed on 'organic' farms?

Fukokawa's "One Straw Revolution" recommends no tillage, seeds wrapped in clay, straw mulch. ... Does straw mulch lead to disease?

Can we trust the good intentions of Monsanto ? (No)

Is 'golden rice' a sensible way to provide vitamin A to poor people (No)
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Petroleum Nut (Pittosporum resineferum), is endemic in the northern Philippines.

..Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan..Cordillera Ecological Center known as PINE TREE.
.. an octane rating of 54 cf Jatropha curcas (41)
heptane and dihydroterpene
A single tree can yields 250 kilograms. 15kg fresh fruits = 1 litre oil. The residue, ground up and distilled with steam, can yield 73cm3 more.
..45 tons of fruit or 2,500 gallons of petroleum oil per acre per year.
(1000gallons per hectare?? 800kg??)
single fruit yields 0.1 to 3.3 ml of oil, averaging about 1.3 ml
Benguet province, the tree is called apisang, abkol, abkel, and langis

prior biopiracy:I
“ampalaya” (Mamantia mordica) and “talong” (Solanum melongena), are now the exclusive property of the US National Institute of Health (NIH), the US Army, and the New York University


world oil use 71.7 * 42 E6 Gallons/day = 1.09 E12 Gallons/year
trees required E9ha
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Engineers at the University of Kitakyushu have built this red snapper robot. Intended for wildlife surveys, this robot sports an array of sensors as well as a hand painted silicon body. It is decidedly more realistic looking than the Robofish and the Essex University robot fish.

botjunkie
watch
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geekzone appears to be hypersensitive to criticism of 2degrees
I posted a somewhat intemperate attack on the 2deg $20-1G
- just because it was unuseable in my bedroom.
In fact it is useable in Corny place, and my new place, if you mean slowish face-book
ie 20-50K Bytes? hardly "broadband"

- got a lot of comments accusing me being Telstra troll, saying how wonderful 2D is etc..
- My rant was appearing on google page 1 for "2 degree broadband prepaid"
but is not now - 2D appear to have google-padded
I got banned from geekzone - could still read attacks on my post.. signed up as another
name
posted a comment saying that 2D wasnt that bad, but still miles away from true broadband ie Skype phone
Now I cant read the site - so they have banned my entire work site!
I must wander down Courtney place and sign on as someone else and say why so sensitive guys?
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..Wellington waterfront has free Wi-Fi, which works (most coffee-bars in Wgtn dont work), 2degrees eat yr sensitive hrt out.
..
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vodafone forum registration fails - maybe they dont like mailinator.com
gee i'm broken up about not getting access to phone company forums...
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