Worms, Sealevel, BitCoin

WWW Worst Weekend in a While
Worms.
Typhoon Falcon has apparently trashed my clothes, TV & Turkish carpet? in my house in B-Silang(Caloocan)
Hope the toilet (Septic Tank) still works. We were smugly confident it would last for years.
Even with 6 girls in the household, Wash not wipe meant no paper, so the system would last for yonks.
Wash is also much more friendly when youre dealing with a 3yr old.
Also more healthy. I got many more threadworms in Sydney &; Wellington than I ever got in 3rd world.
- I dont get threadworms  now in Wellington,because I wash my hands obsessively often with a stiff brush (Raven) and use ethanol-gel .  And I dont buy salad rolls from any-old take-away. I frequent just a few take-aways, & they must have a queue.- ie be  popular. Really, thread worms are a marker for faecal contamination which could extend to HepC & killer Coli.

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Also on the weekend, my neice Scary Maclary, got a busted ankle ain Roller Derby, Titanium screws suck.
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A local expert on sea levels TimNaish VUW sea levels 0.5- 1.5 m this century
The latest news suggests that Antarctica has a net annual loss (and the loss is increasing)- there has been much sniping but the net loss seems definite
The Himalayan glaciers story has not cleared up since the 'scandal' over quoting 'amateur' estimated (FOE? was it?]
score one for the big-Carbon obfuscators!
But The Mekong delta looks set for a squeeze between salt rising and less fresh flowing


Speaking of which, that old Thatcherite Matt Ridley was on Radio Kim, pushing his new book. Which is apparently a paid fluff piece saying that Fracking Methane is gonna save us.
(funny how much nicer "Natural Gas" sounds than "Methane"
... The footprint is just a small concrete pad... the water pollution is small.. theres enough for yonks ... luke warm on greenhouse...
I got really irrated by the way he ends every 2nd sentence with "and so on' "etc" which in a contentious discourse are some kind of dog-whistle "oh you soft non-Thatcherite pro-interventionist fools know what I mean"
actually MR wrote a rather fine book "The Red Queen" - about sex, evolution and parasites, [ I think he's that Ridley, there are a few of thenm about] before he fell under the spell of Maggies farm. Since then hes been popularising free-markets. A short break running a merchant bank "Northern Rock" into the ground, before grasping $50billion from the State.
His main target is Wind Turbines. Bad because there a "C13 technology" which sounds a bit of a desparate shot.
Says theyre "dirty" because China neodymium mines arent run nicely.
But his most irritating remark is about how they spoil the "Landscape" Heaven protect us from rich twits who think ecological soundness and environmental protection has anything to do with "landscape". Now that Teddy Kennerys gone we seem doomed to have Matt pushing the Big Carbon barrow.
Actually he's correct in a lot of what he says, its just that he's such a pratt. And Wind Turbine success depends a lot on social movements sitting down with legislators, industry and consumers.
 Re footprints, a US farmer can get $2000 for the lease on 1/4 acre for a Turbine vs $500 for moderate grain yield. You can graze right up to them dammit, and when we finally get photocells cheap Turbines can be trucked away and recycled.
Matt is mostly right that Methane is a step in the right direction away from Coal. But hes fibbing when he says theres no Government subsidyin Big Carbon. And Methane is astep towards flooding deltas from East China through Mekong to Banglaesh and beyond.
Wellington Wind Turbines now run the whole city shebang. Denmark is at 20%.
Matt rather meanly took a shot at organic farms sprouts deaths versus Fukushima. The small number of obvius immediate deaths when a Nuke explodes seems to the the scoundrels argument. No mention of the tens of thousands of Russians who were rotated through Chernobyl.
Who ever heard of a 50km exclusion zone around a Wind turbine?
The big problem with Nukes is that theyre so big that when one goes bang an entire  nations energy supply can trip up. Not to mention Welsh farmers burying lambs 20 years later.
Anyway Matt isnt pushing a Nuke barrow, hes pushing Fracking, with attacks on Wind as his main contra.


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May2011: Greater Wellington chairwoman Fran Wilde said she understood people's frustrations with the delay, but rumours of problems with the Matangi trains were "unsubstantiated crap".
Old Socialists never die, they end up chairing GWRC
stuff
How come Fran gets to explain?/expostulate?
Glad I'm not on the transport committee
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Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics
wired
jason Tanz Wired July 2011

The Kinect lets people navigate the digital world through gestures rather than mouseclicks.
Willow Garage, which sells a $500 open source robotics kit that incorporates the Kinect. (The previous non-Kinect version cost $280,000. - thats disruptive tech.
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"Life and Debt" a film by Stephanie Black Jamaica IMF

independent johann-hari

food pleasandrew-michaels
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http://www.nearfieldcommunicationsworld.com/2011/06/14/38015/mastercard-and-anz-launch-new-zealands-first-nfc-payment-trial/
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BitCoin
the idea is great: chains of signatures.
Anonymity - it actually sounds rather complicated ,,, Tor, send back to youself, in small batches from a cafe, keep up traffic masking...
Wikipedia reckons you'd be dumb to believe its anonymous.
bitcoin

Getting actual money for your bitcoins
seems difficult ie I couldnt make head nor Tail of the OTC site

tradebitcoin returns nada,
actually it doesnt say anything, just resets the page
so does that mean nothing, invalid, serch not working or what?
what I need is a website that works, re-assuringly..

ibtimes problems...
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theregister

he problem confronting Bitcoin users. Not only do they have to implement personal security better than the likes of Sony, Nintendo or RSA can manage: they also know that only a relatively small transaction – $1,000 worth of coins, which at the pre-collapse level was fewer than 60 Bitcoins – constitutes a “run” on the currency.
How well the Bitcoin recovers in the short term depends on how well Mt Gox can restore the currency to its state before the attack. In the long term, however, Bitcoins will have to solve the kinds of problems that confront currencies in the real world. ®
Update: Since I began writing this, it has emerged that details of more than 60,000 users have been stolen from the Mt Gox exchange. The compromised information includes hashed passwords.
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Another problem is Bitcoin’s crazy volatility. Back in its early days a few years ago, Bitcoins were worth only 5 cents on the dollar. By June 9th, it had shot up to $28 per coin for a gain of 5,600 percent, according to Financial Times. Then, on June 10th, it plunged 33 percent in one day.
If Bitcoin wants to be a serious currency in the long-term, its value simply can’t fluctuate like that. Businesses and individuals need predictability so they can depend on their currency and plan for the future.
So why even bother with Bitcoin, given all its problems and challenges?
Bitcoin is worth the trouble because its soundness and anonymity is unparalleled.
Its infinitude is better than fiat currencies and even gold. As many citizens around the world are aware now, governments can print fiat currencies at will, dilutes their values, and extract the invisible tax of inflation. Even gold runs the risk of a mining boom.
Bitcoin is also the only anonymous digital currency. Other alternative don’t even come close.

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