Lockheed Martin’s Desalination Graphene Filters
March 23, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Lockheed has developed a special material that doesn’t need as much energy to drag water through the filter.
Graphene is a substance made of pure carbon. Carbon atoms are arranged in a regular hexagonal or honeycomb pattern in a one-atom thick sheet.
This special material is a film of a special structure of carbon, a honeycomb lattice called graphene. Because of its structure, the sheet is dotted with holes that are one nanometer or less. These holes between carbon atoms trap the salt and other impurities.
Graphene researchers won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for developing the wonder-material.
In addition, the film is super thin — just a single atom thick — so that the water simply “pops through the very, very small holes that we make in the graphene and leaves the salt behind,” John Stetson, the chief technologist at Lockheed for this initiative told Business Insider.
via Business Insider.
Very cool. Good… Great news for developing countries and ocean going vessels. Hopefully it will lead to cheap, easy to use water filtration products for everyone to use. Can’t live without drinkable water.
China Economy to Overtake U.S. by 2016
March 23, 2013 § Leave a Comment
China’s economy expanded last year at 7.8pc – its slowest pace in more than a decade – and recent data has fuelled concerns that any rebound in the country’s growth is losing steam.
However, the OECD was upbeat, predicting in a new survey of China’s prospects that the country’s economy could expand by 8.5pc this year and by 8.9pc in 2014.
While the OECD noted the slowdown in China’s aggressive expansion, it nonetheless predicted that growth should average 8pc in this decade at current rates of investment and reform.
After allowing for price differences, it forecast that China could become the world’s largest economy, overtaking America, around 2016.
via Telegraph.
High debt is a drag on growth. You’re using sooo much money for debt service (paying interest) that could have gone to pay for more useful activity… education, roads, technology, etc.
China’s economy grew at nearly 8% last year. U.S.’s economy grew at less than 1/2 that. (Thanks Obamacare and businesses fearing other Obama policies.)
Also worth noting that this story NOT being carried by any major U.S. news organization save the Washington Post and CNN International. Not even a single link / page to the regular CNN site despite the story begin pick-up by Reuters news service. To ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC and yes, even Fox this story is not news worthy.
Sugary Drinks Kill 25k per Year in the U.S. Alone
March 20, 2013 § 1 Comment
Consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages may contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world, mainly due to Type 2 diabetes, a new study says.
The results show sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is linked to 180,000 deaths a year worldwide, including 25,000 deaths a year in the United States, the researchers say.
via Business Insider.
Holy Cow!!
These drinks kill almost as many people as firearms.
So… when is Dianne Feinstein going to propose a ban on Coke.
Moody’s Downgrades Chicago’s Motor Fuel Debt
March 14, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded to A3 from Aa3 the rating on the City of Chicago’s (IL) $181 million of outstanding rated motor fuel tax debt. The outlook has been revised to negative.
via Moody’s.
Surprises no one. Barely qualifies as news actually.
The City’s broke. Unemployment (real unemployment, the U6 number) is out of control and people simply don’t have the means to support driving when they don’t have to. Tie that in with Springfield’s ability and desire to continue to kick-the-can down the road and Chicago may just get screwed on its portion of the fuel tax.
It’s generally dumb anyway that Chicago gets a kick-back on the state’s fuel tax anyway as the city has it’s own fuel tax. It’s just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Round and round the money goes.
SEC Hits Illinois with Securities Fraud Charges
March 11, 2013 § 1 Comment
Illinois broke federal securities laws in misstating the true health of the state’s depleted pension funds when going out onto the bond market between 2005 and early 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday. …
The finding of securities fraud doesn’t subject the state to any fines or penalties but amounts to a warning to potential investors about the state’s past financial misdeeds.
The action focuses mostly on misstatements made during impeached ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration, though Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration wasn’t spared entirely in the federal order.
“Municipal investors are no less entitled to truthful risk disclosures than other investors,” said George S. Canellos, Acting Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement in a prepared statement.
“Time after time, Illinois failed to inform its bond investors about the risk to its financial condition posed by the structural underfunding of its pension system,” Canellos said.
via Sun-Times Politics.
Wow!! So, the article says (twice) that there are no fines or penalties that go with this… But what the article doesn’t say is that the State is now subject to a civil suit by bond-holders.
Q: Where was Lisa Madigan while this was happening?
Just curious.
FREEDOM License Plate Banned in D.C.
March 5, 2013 § Leave a Comment
According to the official list of banned D.C. plate combinations, it may take some extra creativity to get your idea accepted by the city’s meticulous censors. The capital city’s DMV has a 53-page list of 26,993 license plate no-no’s that prohibit everything from praising the local baseball team to expressing disgust with the Internal Revenue Service. The list was made available through a Freedom of Information Request filed by the transparency website GovernmentAttic.org. …
Tough luck America, even “FREEDOM” won’t fly in the nation’s capital.
via Yahoo! News.
No wonder the country is in such a sorry state.
Druckenmiller: Old Stealing From Young
March 1, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Druckenmiller, who is known to be media shy, told Bloomberg TV that he sees “a storm coming, maybe bigger than the storm we had in 2008, 2010″ and it has to do with a demographic bubble.
“But the demographic storm is just starting now. It reminds me of ’05 when people just extrapolated housing prices going up for 50 years…Everyone sorta lives with their rulers in the past and doesn’t look at coming changes,” he said.
What’s happening, he explained, is we have a working population now where the current workforce pays for the benefits of the seniors. Since 2000, there have been about 4.5 to 4.8 workers per retiree. He said by 2050 it will be only 2.4 workers per retiree.
He told Bloomberg TV that people like him need to speak out about this issue. Just to be clear, he’s not against the seniors.
“And let me just say one thing. I am not against seniors, okay. I love seniors. Unfortunately I’m going to be one in the not-too-distant futures. What I am against is current seniors to me stealing from future seniors.”
via Business Insider. (Video at the jump.)
Now is the time we should be saving money like mad. Paying off debt and getting ready for the massive exodus of retirees from the workforce. Instead we’re spending like drunken sailors and not worrying about tomorrow. (Tomorrow never comes.)
Right now millions of savings from boomers still flow into the market each week. The money has to go somewhere. This is artificially keeping stock prices high and bond rates low. There will come a day soon when the net flow of money is not INTO the market but OUT. Retirees will be pulling money out so they can pay bills and buy food. When that happens look out!!
The markets will turn upside-down overnight.
Prepare.
Illinois Pensions — A Simple Primer
February 8, 2013 § Leave a Comment
I found this while at the Khan Academy.
Quinn Spends Another $1.5 Billion We Don’t Have
February 8, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn on Thursday signed into law an extra $1.5 billion in spending for road construction and child welfare investigations, even as Republicans decried the measure as including ill-timed, pork barrel money.
via Chicago Tribune.
What is wrong with this guy? Really?
Quinn already stopped a bond auction because the rates for Illinois bonds are too high (and only going to go higher.)
Illinois already has $9 billion in unpaid bills. There’s also the looming pension time-bomb that no one wants to talk about.
What does The Machine not understand?
STOP SPENDING MONEY!
Illinois Never Met a Tax it Didn’t Like: Sneakers? Really?
February 8, 2013 § Leave a Comment
The cost of a new pair of basketball shoes could jump by 25 cents under a proposal floated this week by an Illinois lawmaker.
State Rep. Will Davis, D-Hazel Crest, wants to create a new tax that would generate an estimated $3 million annually for a youth job preparation program. He said the added cost would likely go unnoticed by most consumers, while helping finance a program for kids during tight budget times.
via St. Louis Today.
Embarrassing that we have these people represent us.
