Focus Fusion Update

depend on secondary devices working in the protocol environment. See my many postings on the topic focus fusion.

Let us be serious. We are witnessing a real creditable effort to produce fusion power that is arguably plausible.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Dense Plasma Fusion Project Updates

AUGUST 09, 2010

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) is trying to achieve commercial nuclear fusion.

LPP is trying to get up to 100,000 joules in each pulse. 60 such pulses would be 6 million joules per second, which if converted at with only about 20% loss would be equal to a 5 megawatt generator. The generator would cost about $200,000 and enable power to be generated 50 times cheaper than today.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) completed testing the new spark plugs that they had designed.

1. The first good news is that, with the Lexan insulators and tungsten pins, the spark plugs have lasted through over 200 shots without breaking

2. the amount of current we are producing per firing capacitor has improved. We have achieved 1 MA at 27 kV with only 8 capacitors firing, something that required all 12 capacitors with the old spark plugs. We believe that the large size of the tungsten pins and the better distribution of current has reduced the inductance of the switches and led to the increase in current, which makes us more confident that we can reach the design current for FF-1 of 2.8 MA.

3. Despite careful adjustment of the spark gaps, the simultaneity of firing with the new spark plugs is worse than with the old ones, and on average, only five switches are firing on the trigger. We believe we know the cause and cure of this problem. We have ordered this new power supply, which will increase the charging voltage on the trigger from 20 to 40 kV and will arrive near the end of August. We think that by doubling the rate of rise of the trigger pulse, we will be able to get the trigger voltage up to at least 20 kV before it shorts. That, together with the capacitor voltage of 30 kV, should get us to the 50 kV needed to fire all of the switches together. Another Dense Plasma Fusion project in Las Vegas is working reliably with higher voltages. The best switches cost a lot and are complicated to maintain. On the other hand, spark gap switches (our kind) with much higher trigger voltages—120 kV vs our current 20 kV—have been made to function reliably recently

.


The LPP team is also reporting on readings from three x-ray photo-multiplier tubes.

From these numbers, we can calculate the product n^2V (where n is density and V is volume) for both the electrons and the ions. Both numbers are the same, 1.1+-0.1x10^35/cm^3. This is a strong indication that the X-rays and neutrons come from the same plasma, the plasmoid. It is also a good indication of how our instruments are designed to supplement and confirm each other, so that every measurement we take will be checked by at least two instruments

Marc Thiessen on Waterboarding

I have recently read Marc Thiessen’s recent book ‘Courting Disaster’ and think every citizen should become familiar with its contents in the same way every one is familiar with the effectiveness of a rifle.

Enhanced interrogation methodology won the war against the terrorists for the past several years because it provided clinical methodology that forced captured terrorist leaders to disgorge their knowledge freely. We imagine these methods from our knowledge of past horrors conducted by amateurs. The difference is night and day.

And yes, we have the need and the right to acquire actionable intelligence from an enemy. That we can do it without killing or maiming him must be considered a huge improvement over the past. That alone should mean that the methods can in fact be used more freely. Or do we go back to pulling finger nails off with pliers. The argument that it should not be done at all fits right in with not conducting war at all because it is wrong. No one ever bothers to tell the enemy.

Today we face an enemy who is not fighting our soldiers at all. He is engaged in killing women and children in large numbers with combatants mostly a sideshow. He is not a legal enemy combatant as a state sponsored soldier is. As Thiessen makes clear our defense is mostly to make a captured leader talk.

Waterboarding has been catching bad press. Here the argument that it is somewhat different than that given to soldiers in training is specious. The purpose of the training is to make the soldier understand his personal limits and not to break him. The purpose with a detainee is to break him as fast as possible and waterboarding has proven irresistible. Its power is that the subject, however prepared is unable to convince his body to not respond with panic and abject overwhelming fear.

Yet it does not damage or kill. The subject is soon unable to further resist however tough they are.

As I have stated, while torture relies on pain and progressive physical damage to overcome subject resistance, these methods rely on overcoming the subject’s ability to manage fear without any real damage at all. In that state the subject ultimately submits to his captors and becomes fully cooperative.

It is torture, but a form unlike any other previously practiced ineffectually. This method makes the subject lose control over his ability to resist. It also provides timely actionable intelligence. The maximum that a subject has held out is fifteen days.

I will go a little further. The method of weatherboarding needs to be applied immediately on capture to any non cooperative enemy combatant by trained specialists. This may seem to be harsh, but it is not. Ninety nine percent cannot stand it for more than a couple of minutes and seconds would be more like it. They are instantly rendered cooperative and begin babbling all they have. Another reason for this to be in the field is that soldiers will improvise if deemed necessary as they always have and that is a bad choice.

All other methods are potentially way more damaging and they tie up resources and sooner or later cost lives. Intelligence in actual combat is needed as soon as possible, not days later. In fact, once you have someone for a few hours, his usefulness is very low unless he is special in some way.

This book is about strategic information which can be largely gathered from actual leaders and does he not consider field intelligence.

Marc Thiessen and the Dishonest Waterboarding Debate

Posted by MICHAEL SCHERER Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 9:30 am

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/09/marc-thiessen-and-the-dishonest-waterboarding-debate/

"We waterboarded in the CIA--the CIA waterboarded three terrorists. Just three. Nobody was waterboarded at Guantanamo. You know who else the U.S. has waterboarded? Tens of thousands of American service members during their SERE training."

--Marc Thiessen, former White House speechwriter on CNN, January 20, 2010

In late January, the former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who has since become a Washington Post columnist, appeared on Christiane Amanpour's CNN show to discuss harsh waterboarding. He made a splash.

Mid-interview, Thiessen pulled out a transcript of a previous Amanpour report in which the CNN host had compared the U.S. practice of waterboarding to a water torture practice used by the genocidal regime of Pol Pot. "There have been so many misstatements made about the enhanced interrogation techniques, comparing them to the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge, and I have to tell you Christiane you are one of the people who have spread these mistruths." Amanpour's journalistic failing, according to Thiessen, was a report in which Amanpour had visited a former Khmer Rouge prison, looked at a painting in which a prisoner was submerged in a "box of water," and then asked someone if they knew that this technique had been used on U.S. terror suspects. In other words, Amanpour had gotten the details of the CIA version of waterboarding wrong. CIA interrogators never used a box of water when they waterboarded.

Thiessen was right, and he can be applauded for pointing out the distinction. But then what are we to make of the fact that just a few minutes later, on the very same CNN show, Thiessen clearly committed the same error? As he has before and since, Thiessen claimed that the waterboarding of U.S. terror suspects was not so bad because the technique has been used on "tens of thousands" of U.S. servicemen in training. Now, Thiessen knows the CIA program inside and out. He has written a book on it. And it seems inconceivable to me that he did not know he is clearly misrepresenting the waterboarding techniques that the CIA used.

The Bush-era Justice Department, the same agency that approved the techniques, admitted as much, as my former colleague Mark Benjamin notes in a story today for Salon describing in detail the CIA waterboarding process.

The CIA's waterboarding was "different" from training for elite soldiers, according to the Justice Department document released last month. "The difference was in the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed," the document notes. In soldier training, "The interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth (on a soldier's face) in a controlled manner," DOJ wrote. "By contrast, the agency interrogator ... continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."

There were other differences. The SERE training program used water. The CIA program used saline solution, because the duration and volume of water was so intense that CIA doctors feared the detainees would die of hyponatremia. Benjamin continues:

While Bush-Cheney officials defended the legality and safety of waterboarding by noting the practice has been used to train U.S. service members to resist torture, the documents show that the agency's methods went far beyond anything ever done to a soldier during training. U.S. soldiers, for example, were generally waterboarded with a cloth over their face one time, never more than twice, for about 20 seconds, the CIA admits in its own documents.

As I have said before, I think it is a good thing that Marc Thiessen wants to keep the debate over harsh interrogation going. These are hard issues, and I do not think they have been fully digested by the American people. For instance, I think most people have still not fully understood that some of the worst pain inflicted on prisoners came not from the waterboarding, but from the CIA policy of forced sleep deprivation by stress position for as long as seven consecutive days during periods of extended caloric limitation. But I remain disappointed with the quality of Thiessen's arguments, which seem to be designed more for cable news soundbites than for serious discussion. I wish he held himself to a higher standard.

The full CNN clip follows below.

Read more:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/09/marc-thiessen-and-the-dishonest-waterboarding-debate/#ixzz0vwUsY34x

Great Lakes wolves returning to endangered list

From: AP via MSNBC

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The federal government on Monday agreed to put gray wolves

in the western Great Lakes region back on the endangered species list — at least temporarily.

The decision came less than two months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service discontinued federal protection for about 4,000 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The agency acknowledged Monday that it erred by not holding a legally required public comment period before taking action.

Under a settlement with five environmental and animal protection groups that had sued the agency earlier this month, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would return Great Lakes wolves to the list while considering its next move.

Iran is a Buy

I learned a long time ago that the best way to gather intelligence on a country is to tune into their markets. Even boots on the ground cannot compete with thousands of locally informed investment decisions. One can even sense pending shifts or even black swans. I have picked off a few over the years. The only question is always what?

For what it is worth we are approaching a bullish phase for resource stocks, although this may be at the expense of general markets and continuing unemployment woes in the US. The USA continues to track the development of a full blown depression based economy similar to 1929 through 1932. Failure to resolve the foreclosure crisis has hamstrung the economy and I see only fools in charge who will never give up their positions. If anything Obama is far less prepared that Herbert Hoover.

In Iran, the money is betting that whack job and the blind mullahs cannot hold it together any longer. The only question is what will tip it over.

I have not looked at the available stocks, but the telecommunication companies are a good place to start. When money disappears, they can accept chickens and pay folks in chickens every day and still come out like bandits.

Iran is a Buy

By Christian A. DeHaemer | Friday, August 6th, 2010

In yet another example of why sanctions don't work, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) is booming. In fact, the TSE just hit a record high, and it remains one of the most undervalued markets on Earth.

You know the deal...

Iran has been a supporter of terrorism for the past forty years. The current president is a rabble-rouser who plays to his most conservative Islamic base. He denies the holocaust, and threatens to destroy Israel on a regular basis.

He steals elections. His thugs in the militia beat and jail students who protested the sullied election. His judges sentence females accused of adultery to death by burying them up to the waist, and having their neighbors throw rocks at their heads.

Iran will have the bomb

On top of this, Iran is actively seeking the atomic bomb. And in a year or two they will have it. There is nothing to stop them from getting this weapon, just like there was nothing to stop India, Pakistan, North Korea or Israel. But that's not going to stop the powers that be from posturing like a guinea hen.

In fact, the U.S. believes Iran is such a threat that it has built up bases and carrier groups completely surrounding the country.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, said last week on "Meet the Press" that the Pentagon has plans for attacking Iran and that "military actions have been on the table and remain on the table."

CIA Director Leon Panetta, in late June, appeared on ABC's "This Week" and carefully hinted at covert war options against Iran's nuclear ambitions.

And the United Nations has written a strongly-worded letter and offered up a fourth round of sanctions on high-tech and military goods. Hillary Clinton gave away who-knows-what to get the Russians on board.

It is not working

Despite all the saber rattling and jawboning, Iran remains uncowed.

In fact, judging by the stock market, Iran is doing just fine. The Tehran Stock Exchange hit an all time high on Monday and is up more than 60% this year.

Furthermore, the TSE remains ridiculously undervalued.

The average price to earnings ratio is 5.5, and the average dividend yield is 15.8%. This is the average of 337 companies listed with a total market capitalization of $70 billion. The average.

That's incredibly cheap for the country that ranks third in the world in terms of petroleum and natural gas reserves.

In fact, the Tehran Stock Exchange's main index is up 27% since March 21 – about the time the saber rattling began.

This is because while the U.S. and Europe are trying to "put the pressure" on Iran, the leaders in the country are making it easier for foreigners to invest.

In fact, in the new sanctions there are no restrictions for foreign investors to invest in Iran. Capital gains taxes have been cut to zero. And as far as I can tell there are no restrictions on investing in Iran.

According to Reuters the sanctions are as follows:

The U.S. effectively deprived foreign banks of access to the U.S. financial system if they do business with key Iranian banks or Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

And EU measures set limits on the transfer of funds into Iran, requiring any transfer of over 40,000 euros to have prior government authorization.

Despite these sanctions Iran is taking a different course than America - Iran is trending toward capitalism. Iran will raise $12.5 billion this year by selling state firms, including two refineries. I forget how much Bush and Obama paid for GM, AIG, Freddie, Fannie, etc. Was it billions or trillions?

The truth is that Iran was the only country in the Middle East to hold candlelight vigils after 9/11. The vast majority of the country (two-thirds, or some 50 million people), is under the age of 30. They do not remember the Islamic revolution in the 1970s, nor do they care.

They want what we all want: peace, prosperity and freedom. And they will get it along with the bomb.

Despite what you may have heard, the atomic bomb has brought more peace for longer than any other item, thing or philosophy in history. In ancient Rome, the doors to the Temple of Janus were closed when Rome was at peace. They were closed on five occasions for a total of twelve years.

And as an aside, the Samurai sword killed far more people in WWII than the atomic bomb did. And the Roman short sword, or gladius, has killed more people than any weapon ever devised.

My point is that Pakistan and India used to go up 16,000 feet in the Hindu Kush and lob artillery shells at each other in the dead of winter. They were arguing over a boundary line in a piece of territory that no one could ever use or inhabit.

Since they both got the bomb all they do is strut at the border like chickens.

Don’t get me wrong, there are obvious political risks to investing in Iran. But right now there is tremendous upside. The more sanctions you put on the country the more they will pull their money back home. The political situation can’t be worse, so it will likely get better. They will find a Mikhail Gorbachev. Oil and gas will not get cheaper. No one can beat a diversified 15% dividend yield.

If I can find a way in I’m betting on Iran. I’m currently looking into ways to invest. I’m rounding up my contacts as we speak (if you know anyone who can buy Iranian stocks drop me a line).

The only way I know how to play it is indirectly by buying the Wisdom Tree Middle East ETF (NASDAQ: GULF), which I told you was a buy last week. GULF is far from a pure play however.

I’ll find a way sooner or later. And as I wait, I’ll be happy knowing my other frontier market, Mongolia, has given my readers 727% gains in six months. The best way to make the most money in stocks is to get there first with the most. I've done it in South Africa, Libya, and Mongolia. I’ll do it in Iran as well.

Keep in touch,

Christian DeHaemer

Energy & Capital

NOAA Reports Record Ocean Surface Temperatures for June

From: , Global Warming is Real, More from this Affiliate
Published July 21, 2009 07:30 AM

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported findings of preliminary analysis from the agency's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina that shows global ocean surface temperatures for June broke the previous record set in 2005.

The combined average global/land and ocean surface temperature for June was the second warmest on record, 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees F.

Ocean surface temperatures for June '09 were the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees F (0.59 degrees C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F.

The global land surface temperature for June was 1.26 degrees F above the 20th century average, and the sixth warmest June on record.

Article continues: http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2009/07/20/noaa-reports-record-ocean-surface-temperatures-f

Three Laws of Car Fuel Economy

Okay, the price of car fuel is going through the roof. What are we going to do about it? Drive less?--That's a very good way to stop global warming. Not a good way to be at Aunt Martha's picnic this weekend.

We could get a super-efficient car (like mine--gets 65 mpg) or get a super-efficient engine (like the one under development--see the full theory at http://www.ernsblog.com/), but you would probably miss the picnic. How about some ways to really cut the cost of gasoline TODAY?

That brings me to a new set of rules. You might say they are Rogers' Laws of Car Fuel Economy. These were mostly known before. They may not actually work for everybody's car, depending on how the car was engineered. A well-engineered car should follow the rules to a "T."

Here are the rules. By following them, you should be able to cut your fuel costs by 20% or more, starting today!

Three Laws of Car Fuel Economy
Ernest Rogers May, 2008

1. In highway driving, for each 5 mph that you slow down, your mileage will increase by 10%.
_______

2. For any trip with a present average speed of (mph) and fuel consumption of (mpg), if you speed up to save time, the extra fuel you will use can be estimated by—

Extra gallons = (mph /mpg) x (minutes saved /35)

In words, if you divide your normal speed by your usual mpg, then multiply by minutes you want to save (by speeding up) and divide by 35, that’s the amount of extra fuel you can expect to use. It is a handy rule to see the fuel cost for speeding to save time.
_______

3. Very efficient drivers use pedals less and can get 30% better mileage than inefficient drivers.

Facts on global warming

Global warming has so many implications for industries and government, besides being an environmental issue, that there are powerful forces on all sides trying to convince us of one reality or another. You can only know the truth by digging it up for yourself. Here are some helps in that direction.



1. I just finished reading "The discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer Weart. (Harvard Univ. Press, 2003) This is an account of the history of the subject, written from an expert viewpoint, but fairly balanced. Weart is the director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics--great credentials. This is a great book, but won't tell you details of the science, just how various evidence has fit together over time. It's quite an eye-opener. Only a year old, it is already out of date on technical grounds. You can probably check out this book in a college library, I did.



2. A big sticking point among some "professionals" has been the publications of John Christy (U. of Alabama, Huntsville) which have shown no warming trends in satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature. His measurements have been a great comfort to the present Republican administration, which abandoned the Kyoto agreements that the U.S. had helped to forge. Christy's work is now being seriously challenged by two recent publications that show large warming trends based on satellite data. (If interested, I think you can get a recent Christy paper on-line: John R. Christy et al. "Update on Microwave-based Atmospheric Temperatures from UAH" 15th Symposium on Global Change and Climate Variations. 2003) Christy has a web site: john.christy@nsstc.uah.edu. Following are the challenging references.



3. Qiang Fu et el., "Contribution of Stratospheric Cooling to Satellite-inferred Tropospheric Temperature Trends" Nature 429, 55-58 (6 May 2004). Fu says that Christy overlooked the influence of tropospheric cooling in his calculations. He makes the correction, and finds a large warming trend. This appears to be a hot topic right now. Hard copies of this issue may not have reached library shelves yet, but a helpful librarian can download the paper for you.



4. Menglin Jin, "Analysis of Land Skin Temperature Using AVHRR Observations" Bul. of the American Meteorological Soc. (BAMS) April, 2004, p. 587-600. Jin analyzes satellite data to obtain earth surface temperature. He also shows a large warming trend. This is a major paper, lots of references. Most of the figures are in color, good luck getting it copied.



Final word: It can be shown logically that a warming earth does not necessary cause the upper troposphere to get warmer, as Christy would argue. I will provide this in a future post.



Ernie Rogers