Science, Technology & Health: June 2007 Archives
Here's a nifty story about Shell building an underground ice wall to help them extract oil from shale in the Rocky Mountain states.
Oil-shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have technically recoverable reserves of 500 billion to 1.1 trillion barrels of oil, according to a study last year by the Rand Corp. for the Department of Energy.The midpoint of the Rand estimate - 800 billion barrels - is three times the size of Saudi Arabia's reserves and enough to meet 25 percent of current U.S. oil demand for 400 years.
Eager to tap into that possibility, Shell is spending $30 million to create and test a massive "freeze wall" that would extend from the surface to 1,700 feet below the ground. The walls would be 30 feet thick in a shape 300 feet wide by 350 feet long.
It is designed for a dual purpose: to keep groundwater from infiltrating Shell's oil-shale wells, and to prevent produced oil from contaminating nearby groundwater.
"We see this as our last major technological hurdle," said Terry O'Connor, a Denver-based Shell vice president in the company's unconventional resources division.
A perfect example of how oil supplies increase as the price of oil goes up. We'll discover all sorts of ways to thrive without oil long before we run out of it.
I enjoy highlighting absurdities in the British health care system because this is the sort of government intrusion the Democrats want to invite into the lives of Americans.
Smokers are to be denied operations on the Health Service unless they give up cigarettes for at least four weeks beforehand.Doctors will police the rule by ordering patients to take a blood test to prove they have not been smoking.
The ruling, authorised by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, comes after medical research conclusively showed smokers take longer to recover from surgery.
Note that this doesn't just mean surgery for ailments connected to smoking... this means all routine surgeries, like hip replacements and heart surgery. Congrats, smokers! You pay billions of pounds in cigarette taxes and then get sent to the back of the line for "free" public health care.
Americans shouldn't imagine that a nationalized health care system in our country would be any less intrusive!
Let's look at another issue deemed so important that it requires Continent-wide regulation:
The European Commission is considering a proposal to extend the forthcoming ban on smoking in enclosed public places to cover doorways. ...A spokesman for the Department of Health said the Health Act 2006, which covers the July 1 ban, contains reserve powers to extend the law to outside areas. Sports stadia, bus shelters and train platforms are already classed as enclosed public spaces under the Act and it would not have to go back to Parliament to be extended to doorways.
Leftists love this kind of micromanagement! A single Eureaucrat can control the behavior of hundreds of millions of people with the stroke of his pen. These kinds of articles are political pornography to American Democrats.
Maybe I'm slow to the party, but it just crossed my mind today that the last ten years have probably been the only period in history in which huge numbers of people have been required to memorize numerous secret and unique bits of data: computer/network passwords. I can't think of another widespread example of such a phenomenon.
Ubiquitous cameras are our future, and the only real question is whether or not the camera network will be usable by the general public, or only the "secret police" who will monitor our every move.
Consider City Number One. In this place, all the myriad cameras report their urban scenes straight to Police Central, where security officers use sophisticated image-processors to scan for infractions against the public order -- or perhaps against an established way of thought. Citizens walk the streets aware that any word or deed may be noted by agents of some mysterious bureau.Now let's skip across space and time.
At first sight, things seem quite similar in City Number Two. Again, there are ubiquitous cameras, perched on every vantage point. Only here we soon find a crucial difference. These devices do not report to the secret police. Rather, each and every citizen of this metropolis can lift his or her wristwatch/TV and call up images from any camera in town.
Here a late-evening stroller checks to make sure no one lurks beyond the corner she is about to turn.
Over there a tardy young man dials to see if his dinner date still waits for him by a city fountain.
A block away, an anxious parent scans the area and finds which way her child wandered off.
Over by the mall, a teenage shoplifter is taken into custody gingerly, with minute attention to ritual and rights, because the arresting officer knows the entire process is being scrutinized by untold numbers who watch intently, lest her neutral professionalism lapse.
In City Two, such micro cameras are banned from some indoor places... but not Police Headquarters! There, any citizen may tune in on bookings, arraignments, and especially the camera control room itself, making sure that the agents on duty look out for violent crime, and only crime.
Despite their initial similarity, these are very different cities, disparate ways of life, representing completely opposite relationships between citizens and their civic guardians. The reader may find both situations somewhat chilling. Both futures may seem undesirable. But can there be any doubt which city we'd rather live in, if these two make up our only choice?
I pick City Two, and I think it would be preferable to what we've got now, if only because we could monitor our government much more efficiently.
(HT: Bernardo.)
