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POPSNectar of the Gods: The cultural history of Chocolate
Chocolate was again the drink the of elite, the delight of the plebeians, the bitterest of potables, the most saccharine of sweets, the iconic symbol of Mesoamerica. In A Tale of Two Cities Dicken’s shows the transitional period of chocolate, between Mesoamerican luxury to the European commoners’ pleasure, when he explains with great detail Monseigneur’s elaborate consumption of chocolate in his Paris hotel room.In Europe—during the time of the novel, and even before—the price of chocolate was a luxury because it had to be brought across the Atlantic ocean before it could be consumed. It was not until 1828 when chocolate changed from a sacred drink to a solid bar we know today, through the addition of cocoa butter. Not only did chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten of the Netherlands create the process of manufacturing cocoa butter, but he also discovered how to treat chocolate with alkalis to remove the bitter taste that had until that point been characteristic of chocolate.
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POPSHymens: Now Made in China In places where honor killings are practiced against women who can't prove they were virgins on their wedding nights, this little, seemingly innocuous sex toy has opened quite a can of worms.
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POPSHUMMERS: End of the Road?! {& pics} "Let's just say they're not selling like they used to," says Neil Kopit, director of marketing at Criswell Hummer, a dealership in Maryland. Sales of the Hummer H1's successor, the slightly smaller H2, were down 27% in 2007 on the previous year, and GM, which had come to rely on its sales of what the industry terms "large vehicles", has announced the closure of four SUV-manufacturing plants in the US, Canada and Mexico. Nor is the decline confined to Hummers, or to America. British registrations of 4x4 vehicles fell by more than 18% last month, it was reported yesterday. The drop is part of a Europe-wide collapse in the gas-guzzler market: as a proportion of cars sold in France and Spain in the first half of this year, SUVs fell by 50% and 35% respectively. ... Guardian
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POPSGreen is the new red white and blue We in America talk like we’re already “the greenest generation,” But here’s the really inconvenient truth: We have not even begun to be serious about the costs, the effort and the scale of change that will be required to shift our country, and eventually the world, to a largely emissions-free energy infrastructure over the next 50 years. Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times specializing in foreign affairs. a bit long article but worth read.
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POPSI am a transhumanist, thanks I say, fear not. If you have clearly transhumanist beliefs, like the notion that human enhancement is coming in the next few decades and will be a big deal, then don’t be afraid to call yourself one. As Dr. Wittgenstein, one of my favorite philosophers ever, used to argue, words are just labels we fill with our own content. To think that a word has any inherent meaning aside from its use in language is absurd.
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POPSGreen technology creating 'green collar' jobs I stand strongly behind my belief that if this country committed ourselves to becoming energy independent with the same determination that we committed to putting a man on the moon, that we could do it and we could create millions of new jobs in the process. It would be an enormous driver of economic growth and strengthen our leverage in the Middle East because we would no longer be reliant on their oil.
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POPSHow To Brainwash A Nation Visit clip source for a great short video about Edward Bernays, Assassin of Democracy. Videos tend to get buried. I thought this to be worth wider attention.
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POPSWeather Balloons To Control Climate Basic calculations suggest that, in maybe a week or less, ten million tons of raw materials could produce enough balloons to cover the entire earth at twenty miles altitude. That may sound like a lot of material, but in fact it's about the same amount that goes into building 100 miles of a modern highway—so it's well within reach of even a small nation to acquire the materials if they have the hardware and software and a desire to control the weather of the earth. Shifting mirrors inside balloons to make some areas warmer and others colder, to make some wetter and some drier gives at least rudimentary power for Josh's "Nano-enabled Climate Control for the Earth." These balloons may well be helpful in slowing, stopping, or even reversing the trend of global warming, as long as we recognize the very real danger of unforeseen, unintended, and possibly irreversible consequence.
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POPSThe 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009 "Each year, Technology Review chooses 10 emerging technologies with the potential to change lives around the world. Some of this year's choices, such as paper-based medical tests and intelligent software that acts as a personal assistant, could reach the market within a year. Others, like biological machines and nanopiezotronics, could take longer but promise fundamental shifts in fields from computing to medicine, communications to manufacturing. The list includes technologies miniature and massive--from fast, cheap, capacious computer memory to batteries that can store enough energy to power a city. All are technologies that we bet will make a huge impact in the years ahead".
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POPS137,228 is the answer The human-generated electricity will deliver enough juice to keep the bulbs blazing during the televised portion of the evening’s broadcast, or about 15 minutes. Afterward, the sign will revert to the utility grid for power for the remainder of the night. The numerical display isn’t the only New Year’s Eve sign in Times Square getting a green makeover: This year’s dropping ball, made of crystal triangles and illuminated by 32,256 LED bulbs, is 20 percent more energy-efficient than last year’s glowing sphere. Gre(en)at idea :)
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POPSA Study of Women Inventors, Part 2 In 2004 the Stanford School of Engineering awarded 267 of it’s 1,161 Master’s degrees and Ph.D’s to women - 23%. According to the American Society for Engineering Education, Stanford is the best in the nation where the national average is 21%.
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POPSSeeds of a new manufacturing revolution I am following this technological trend for quite a while. It is very impressive and has the potential to allow developing countries to reach very high rates of economical growth in a relatively short time, and in a relatively environmental friendly method.
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POPS"wired for empathy"? Petr Kropotkin, maintained that “… under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life..
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POPSLet's get real about alternative energy The public discussion of energy options tends to be emotional, polarized, mistrustful and destructive. I hope that focusing attention on the numbers may make it possible to develop honest and constructive conversations about energy.
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POPSDumping Pharmaceuticals Into Rivers (cont.) Researchers were recently stunned to discover that 100 pounds of a powerful antibiotic called ciprofloxacin was being dumped into a local stream every day! That's a quantity of antibiotics that could treat an entire city of 90,000 people every day.
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