North Korea threatens South with 'final destruction'

  

GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korea threatened South Korea with "final destruction" during a debate at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, saying it could take further steps after a nuclear test last week. Jon's comments drew quick criticism from other nations, including South Korea, France, Germany and Britain, whose ambassador Joanne Adamson said such language was "completely inappropriate" and the discussion with North Korea was heading in the wrong direction. 

"In the 30 years of my career I've never heard anything like it and it seems to me that we are not speaking about something that is even admissible, we are speaking about a threat of the use of force that is prohibited by Article 2.4 of the United Nations charter," Catalina said. Since the North tested a nuclear bomb last week in defiance of U.N. resolutions, its southern neighbour has warned it could strike the isolated state if it believed an attack was imminent. Pyongyang said the aim of the test was to bolster its defences given the hostility of the United States, which has led a push to impose sanctions on North Korea. "If the U.S. takes a hostile approach toward the DPRK to the last, rendering the situation complicated, it (North Korea) will be left with no option but to take the second and third stronger steps in succession," he said, without indicating what that might entail. North Korea has already told key ally China that it is prepared to stage one or two more tests this year to force the United States into diplomatic talks, a source with direct knowledge of the message told Reuters last week.

Impoverished and malnourished North Korea is one of the most heavily sanctioned states in the world. It is still technically at war with South Korea after a 1950-53 civil war ended in a mere truce.
Washington and its allies are believed to be pushing to tighten the noose around North Korea's financial transactions in a bid to starve its leadership of funding. Jon said last week's test was an act of self-defence against nuclear blackmail by the United States, which wanted to block North Korea's economic development and its fundamental rights. Jon said the United States had conducted most of the nuclear tests and satellite launches in history, and he described its pursuit of U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea as "a breach of international law and the height of double standards".

Neither Russia nor China, which are veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, spoke at Tuesday's meeting in Geneva. Before its nuclear test, North Korea was already facing growing diplomatic pressure at the United Nations. The U.N. Human Rights Council is widely expected to order an inquiry next month into its leaders' responsibilities for crimes against humanity. MadOne

Solar Charger Sticks to Window to Power Gadgets

Solar chargers for gadgets are becoming more common, and convenient. There's the mPowerpad that charges multiple devices, for example. But for those that want a little style, there's the XDModo Solar Window Charger.

It's sleek and sticks unobtrusively to a window using silicone pads (basically suction cups). It's a good way to free up that cigarette lighter for plugging in other devices. (Does anyone actually light cigarettes with those anymore?) The charger has USB and mini-USB outputs. Odds are most people will use the USB since that's the charger end of most smartphone cables – be they for Android, iPhone or others. The battery inside has a 1300 mAh capacity – most smartphone batteries average around 1500 mAh, so it's pretty close to the full charge. That said, after it charges up during the day, it can keep your phone going through the night, or supplement the battery when it runs low. The output is five volts at 500 milliamps, plenty for charging anything but an iPad.

The maker, Xindao, is in Europe. You can purchase it online for about $65 but you'll have to shell out for shipping to the U.S. – about $65 as well. Technews Daily 

Billionaire funds artificial libertarian islands

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine. Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."


"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late." The Seasteading Institute's Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later. Thiel made news earlier this year for putting a portion of his $1.5 billion fortune into an initiative to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college.

Another Silicon Valley titan, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in June that he would be funding the "Clock of the Long Now." The clock is designed to keep ticking for 10,000 years, and will be built in a mountain in west Texas. MadOne

Republicans rejects higher taxes on oil firms

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday rejected a proposal to scale back tax breaks for big oil firms, calling it a political maneuver. Democrats have crafted a bill to scrap certain tax deductions used by the five biggest oil companies, and potentially free up $21 billion over a decade to help ease the budget deficit. Eliminating the tax breaks has been a goal of President Barack Obama and the call by Democratic lawmakers has become louder as gasoline prices have hovered near $4 a gallon.

Republicans for their part are hammering Obama over high gasoline prices, which threaten to slow the economy just as it is beginning to pick up steam.Under pressure over energy costs, Obama announced on Saturday the expansion of domestic oil production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Tesla Motors: Luxury Electric Cars

ROADSTER

The Roadster is powered by a 3-Phase Alternating Current Induction Motor. Small, but strong, the motor weighs just over 115 pounds. 375 volts push up to 900 Amps of current into the motor to create magnetic fields. It delivers 288 peak horsepower and 295 lbs-ft of torque at the driver's command. At top speed, the motor is spinning at 14,000 revolutions per minute. The battery pack in the Tesla Roadster is the result of innovative systems engineering and 20 years of advances in Lithium-ion battery technology.

The pack contains 6,831 lithium ion cells and is the most energy dense pack in the industry, storing 56 kWh of energy.

Roadsters are engineered to charge from nearly any 120-volt or 240-volt outlet. Most Roadster owners find they rarely use a complete charge, and charging each night means their car is ready to drive 245 miles each morning.

Model S

Model S

Model S

Japan’s ocean radiation hits 7.5 million times legal limit

TOKYO — The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new health limit for radioactivity in fish.

The reading of iodine-131 was recorded Saturday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Another sample taken Monday found the level to be 5 million times the legal limit. The Monday samples also were found to contain radioactive cesium at 1.1 million times the legal limit. The exact source of the radiation was not immediately clear, though Tepco has said that highly contaminated water has been leaking from a pit near the No. 2 reactor. The utility initially believed that the leak was coming from a crack, but several attempts to seal the crack failed.

Google Invests in World's Largest Solar Power Tower Plant

Google has just sealed a deal to invest $168 million in a Mojave Desert solar energy plant. The investment is going to BrightSource Energy, a company that developes and operates large-scale solar power plants, specifically to fund its Ivanpah project. Ivanpah is a solar electric generating system that uses solar thermal technology and "an environmentally responsible design," according to the project's website, to deliver reliable, clean and low-cost power to Californians.

The plant will generate energy with a technology called power towers. Mirrors, called heliostats, are arranged in an array and aim the sun’s rays at a receiver atop a tower. The receiver generates steam; the steam causes a turbine to rotate; the rotation causes a generator to generate electricity. Because such large quantities of solar energy are being directed to such a small area, the power towers are very efficient. The power tower at Ivanpah will be around 450 feet tall. The plant will use 173,000 heliostats, and each heliostat will have two mirrors, making Ivanpah the largest project of its kind. Construction at Ivanpah should be completed in 2013. Here's a video from the plant's groundbreaking ceremony 

U.S. expected to file Gulf oil spill civil case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce as early as Wednesday its first significant legal action stemming from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal government source familiar with the matter said.

The source said the action involved the filing of civil lawsuits, rather than criminal charges, stemming from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and that it was expected to be announced at a news conference as early as Wednesday.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blowout, which began in April and was finally sealed in September, fouled resort beaches and fishing grounds, and led to hundreds of lawsuits against BP Plc and its partners over lost revenues and wages.

Bill Gates: Supports Vaccination, Population Control Plan to Kill Billions

BILL GATES, RICHEST MAN IN AMERICA

On the tails of a recent TED conference where Bill Gates stated that vaccines need to be used to reduce world population figures, he added more to this insanity last week with a keynote address at the mHealth Summit, an annual gathering whose supposedly focuses on improving health care through mobile technology. For all my loyal readers that visit this site, you have to watch these videos. Some serious shit. Power your mind! MadOne.

Part 1



Part 2

The Coolest Home Upgrades

Hidden, Wall-mounted TV

Photo: Electronichouse.com

It's go big or go home with televisions these days - but when you bring one of these drive-in movie-sized screens home, it can often wreck the design of the room. When a guest walks in, they won't say, "Wow, what a nice house," but rather, "Wow, what a big TV you have!"
Well now, you can have it all - a big screen and big style. Designers are increasingly choosing to hide gigantic televisions in the wall and cover them with a mirror or artwork so when they're not in use, you don't even know they're there! When it's above the fireplace, it can be a framed mirror or piece of art. In the photo at left, this Samsung 37-inch LCD is mounted in the closet behind the mirror, hidden by a removable panel in the closet.
You probably want a pro to do this - TVs require proper ventilation.

Master Control for Energy Consumption

Photo: Control4.com

You know you can control your entire house now from a laptop, iPhone or iPad. Everything from the lights and thermostat to the stereo - and even the pool. Here's taking it to the next level - a master control for energy consumption.
"This is very, very new - people are just experimenting with it," said Ron Rimawi, who co-owns Digital Interiors in Atlanta. "It helps make you more aware and more conscious of your energy usage, so you don't waste energy."
Basically, they're small digital panels that connect with the utilities and track various appliances and systems in your home. They can tell you everything from your usage to the temperature and how much it's all costing you! "We have long held the belief that the promise of the Smart Grid can only be realized if the consumer is front-and-center in the design of demand-response systems," said Control4, which makes the master control for energy consumption pictured at left.

 

Pop-up Ventilation for the Kitchen

Photo: Dacor.com

No one wants the lingering smell of smoke and cooking fumes in the kitchen - particularly with how hot the open-concept kitchen-living area is right now. But hoods, no matter what high-end materials you use, can be clunky, not to mention they get greasy and dirty. Enter the pop-up hood vent - You can sink it into an island or other countertop (of course, with an underground vent to the outside) and then at the press of a button, it comes up, sucks all the smoke and fumes out and then press the button again and - poof! - it vanishes again. This is not only great for kitchen design, but also to lure other members of the family into the kitchen to help. Make it high-tech - and they will come!

 

Cooling Drawer

Photo: Electronichouse.com

Let's face it - kitchens are getting cool. From sleek granite to smart appliances, this isn't your grandma's kitchen. One of the places where the most innovation is taking place is in the refrigerator. Maybe they have double French doors or are hidden by paneling that makes them blend in with the cabinets. One of the coolest things - literally - is a cooling drawer, like the one shown left from Fisher Paykel. These are drawers with several different temperature settings, so you can store soda, wine, snacks for the kids - even ice cream. They're individual drawers, so you can have any number of them scattered around the house.
 MADONE

Report: Halliburton, BP knew Macondo well cement was faulty

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, investigating the cause of the BP gulf oil spill,  has found evidence that Halliburton and BP had tests in hand which showed that the cement formulation used on the well was deficient and subject to failure. According to the report, Halliburton, at the time the cement was pumped in to case the Macondo well, had the results of three tests that showed the formula was likely not up to the job of sealing oil from the well bore, and none that showed this batch would hold up. We should note that one test came back after the fact showing the cement would be OK, and that BP says it never conducted a test of the cement's stability.
In short, Halliburton produced and tested cement, says the government panel, that it knew was likely to fail, sent that cement to BP anyway, and BP -- with the test results in hand -- used that faulty cement anyway. Oil and hydrocarbons leaked through the faulty cement and pooled on the deck of the oil well and then ignited, leading to the Deepwater Horizon rig's explosion, Bartlit says in his letter. The environmental consequences of the decision by Halliburton to ignore failing test results will be felt for many years in the Gulf of Mexico and those states surrounding it.

When those tests came back, someone at Halliburton should have said, "Let's put that batch on hold." Instead, they sent it along anyway. Someone at British Petroleum should have read the reports (or performed their own tests) and rejected the substandard cement. If that had happened, it is likely that those 11 men would still be alive today. The environmental damage to the fragile gulf ecosystems could have been averted, but that didn't happen. No one decided to stand up and rock the boat.

Google in major bid for Eastern US wind power

AFP/DDP/File – An offshore wind power farm. Investors led by technology giant Google on Tuesday announced a five billion-dollar …

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Investors led by technology giant Google on Tuesday announced a five billion-dollar project to power the US East Coast with wind from the Atlantic Ocean, in an ambitious bid to spur alternative energy. The project would set up offshore wind turbines and a new transmission grid stretching 350 miles (565 kilometers) from New Jersey to Virginia, the most densely populated part of the United States which suffered blackouts in 2003.

 

Google, the Internet search giant whose interests now run the gamut from broadband to robotic cars, said it would provide 37.5 percent of the initial funding. Rick Needham, director of green business operations and strategy at Google, described the project as a new "superhighway" for alternative energy, creating jobs and eventually providing enough power to serve 1.9 million households.

"We're willing to take calculated risks on large-scale projects that can move an industry. Indeed, that is what's made our company so successful to date," Needham told a news conference in Washington.
The companies said they hoped to begin work on the project, called the Atlantic Wind Connection, in early 2013 and complete it by 2020, subject to government approval. Needham said Google was open to further investment later.

Good Energies, a company which invests in green energy, is also investing 37.5 percent in the project, while Japanese trading house Marubeni has a 15 percent stake. With the right incentives, wind power could meet one-fifth of the entire world's electricity demand within 20 years, environmentalists Greenpeace and an industry group said in a report released Tuesday in China.