DJ'ing, Music, Humour, Life
Barney Holmes – my personal blog. Ideas, issues, discoveries. You'll find some posts related to the organisation MindFreedom here as well.Archive for December, 2007
How buying a Video Game can help with Climate Change Solutions.
Facetious ? Well, the technology that pushes around all those graphics, your 3D Video Card, is, of course based on a huge calculator. A calculator that has become very powerful because of all those game and associated hardware sales fuelling the research labs of NVidia or ATI.
Here is the micro city that is the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). A city packed with millions of good little citizens carrying out specialised duties.
( NVidia GeForce 6800 GPU. Source: GPU Gems 2, Chapter 30: The GeForce 6 Series GPU Architecture )
This technology can be used for other purposes apart from games. In part due to companies like NVidia opening up the architecture with new coding languages. Think about it. If the GPU can carry out all the calculations for a game, then it can calculate other things as well. It’s just a big calculator ! Well, somewhat specialised towards “linear equations”.
“Every serious PC gamer knows what a difference a good graphics card can make to the fun they have. But it is not just hardcore gamers who have recognised the worth of a PC graphics card. “
( Source: Graphics chips rev up research results, BBC News 24, Friday, 9 November 2007 )
You might have heard of the Seti@Home like, distributed computing projects using your Video Card for things like protein analysis. Now those specialised chips, often running many times as fast as your CPU, are being used to analyse the flow around turbine blades, in one example.
“Improvements of even 1% in fuel consumption, for jet engines, or 1% in electricity power generated, for steam or gas turbines for power generation, is highly sought after.”
( Source: Graphics chips rev up research results, BBC News 24, Friday, 9 November 2007 )
We are currently being bombarded with the desire to cut emissions, but I don’t hear much about how this will happen. Is this why some countries remain intransigent on the issue ? Instead of seeing improved technologies, improved efficiency, and the improved and MORE PROFITABLE industries that would result from the challenge of climate change, we get endless moaning about “threatened economies”. What tripe ! Look at the challenge of the Moon Shots that boosted various industries for years. With these “lateral thinking” approaches that involve the mathematics of improving engine efficiencies through using 3D Video Card technology, and other approaches, we could see massive cuts, across the board on emissions. It will take time. How long does it take for new turbine technology to come in ? I don’t know.
More so, what about things that are increasing our understanding of physics ? Again powered by huge simulations of atom smashers, physics models and other simulations. Of couse powered by those Video Cards and other computer technologies. What if there were some breakthrough in cheap fuel technology ? Electricity generating technology ? Anything could happen that might be taken up quickly.
I see this big scrap over Climate Change. Is the dust obscuring what we’re good at ? Very good at in fact. Ingenuity. Looking for the solutions to problems.
Barney
Faulty Scientific Reasoning in the Health Treatment Model
I wrote to the UK Health Minister through my MP…the reply:
“Fluorine is bound up in the Prozac compound and is therefore safe.”
I keep hearing this table salt analogy . The last time in relation to Mercury (Thimerosal) in vacinations. As any school chemistry student knows salt has another form … a highly toxic gas. We don’t die if we eat chips though.
But, even so, why is this table salt analogy trotted out in the face of growing evidence that there are very serious human rights abuses, and revolting suffering going on because of the use of pharmaceuticals ? Why are we playing this game of “who has the most intelligent analogy” anyway ? Surely that all should be brushed aside and we look at the HUMAN RIGHT’S CONCERNS. Sorry, I don’t understand this game we seem to be playing.
The salt analogy works both ways as well anyway. If a chemical reaction can make a poisonous gas into a safe salt, then a reaction in the HUMAN BODY can also make a “safe” compound very unsafe. Do we understand much about the human body ? No. Does Science know everything about the Universe. No. Are people dying and suferring while we have this endless debate… YES!
Come on guys … it really IS’NT that difficult. Please.
DJ Barney
New US Air Force Aircraft Carrier Unveiled
“It’s important for Commanders to stay relaxed while commanding the troops”, Admiral Beebody said. “
This is a breakthrough in military strategy”..Beebody expanded …
“We found that with all those afterburners lighting up right next to Commanders trying to think about important military strategy …. well, we had a few frayed nerves” …
“We tried installing a swimming pool on the deck, but keyed up Marines were falling into the pool on the way to their helicopters”….
“Now we can just step back as a helicopter lands, and then continue when it’s in the air”…
“If a jet wants to land or take off, we tell them to take it easy on the turf…that’s an expense that could be difficult to explain in the United States military budget”.
Apparently the Officers are ahead in the latest Golf League, a spokesman said. Meanwhile US Marines have taken to carrying a ten iron on missions for close combat uses.
In other news it was reported that Camel racing was being bought back in Afghanistan to give out of work Taliban fighters something to do.
DJ Barney
Tales from the Crypt: Psychiatry is Crypto-Fascism
“911 Truthers” think that Blair and Bush are “the new Nazi’s”. I say “friendly fire” … “check your targets!”.
I could write here an endless debate about the efficacy of drug treatments, or the reality of various diseases, but that would be adding smoke to the smoke screen. Psychiatry is there to take away the life and rights of the individual for some nebulous “greater good”. From Wikipedia… “Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and social interests subordinate to the interests of the state.”
Clearly Psychiatry is not a state, or a strictly political movement. But here we move into the “crypto” side of that fascism. Try and pin it down and it’s like trying to grab hold of a greased fish, or to try dancing on watered ice without ice skates. You will come a cropper ! This is why Psychiatry is still seen as a respectable profession. At least the government, here in the UK has started setting up the “Care Quality Commission”, according to my MP. A mechanism with the power to shut down operations that are proved to be abusive… or so I’m told. Me and my MP are looking into this. Millions more are going to be spent on talking therapies….why ? Because those are the therapies that not only work for the individual, but also make sense for the state, because they WORK. They get people back to work !
So the state is not the problem (at least, not here in the UK). I reject absolutely the accusations of “mind control” and suggestions of other, again nebulous, state conspiracies. We have moved beyond the threat of the Fascist State. The only thing that has come close to it in modern times is Terrorism, but that is mostly tied to a distributed network more than an actual political state mechanism.
What we have here is more a case of the drug company as a Crpyto Fascist organisation. Hiding behind adverts, Scientific evidence and overblown stories about “violent mental health patients”. It’s encoded, encrypted. Your not supposed to be able to read the real message.
Apply common sense. Basic human rights apply. Again, I could get into a debate about why you shouldn’t believe certain things, but I won’t, because it will spread the cypher again and we’ll be back to square one. No. I believe in your God given powers of insight. Your ability to ask questions, and test the answers to see if they’re true. Your power not to be fobbed off with endless excuses and obfuscations (read “encrypted”).
There’s a line from the Clint Eastwood movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales”…
“…and there’s another old saying Senator…Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining!”.
DJ Barney
This is Not a Game II
Funny how these things work. I’ve just been setting up the intimidating Battlefield 2 game …. so resource hungry that I had to turn to a tweak guide. I download a PDF and what do I find ? The author is Koroush Ghazi, seemingly an Australian / Iranian.
( koroush )
The PDF has a dedication … “In honour of 2,500 years of Persian culture. Dedicated to the noble ideas of Cyrus the Great.” Cyrus wrote “the first charter of human rights”. Was Cyrus a mercenary fighting against a cruel regime in, what is now, Iran ? Is history repeating itself ? In fact Wikipedia confirms some of my suspicions, but I obviously have much study to do.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that as the Space Race begins to grow into curious toddler, we are being taken back to an area of the world that constitutes the origins of what we call modern society, Democracy, and culture. At least, as it has become to be known in international law and relations. First it was Iraq, then Afghanistan. Are we doomed to repeat what Cyrus did with Iran ? It may be a worthy cause, but the question has to be asked. If diplomacy has failed and War looms, is there a third way ?
DJ Barney
SchNEWS
MindFreedom International.
DJ Barney Homepage.
Art by DJBarney and My Prints For Sale.
Music Composed by Me (MySpace)
Encyclopaedia Mythica.
My SourceForge Project...A Wiki for Space!
My Youtube Video's.
My Flickr Photos.
The Encyclopedia Mythica.
The Rath Foundation - Health for All by 2020.
Dr Rath's Supplements ("Red Pills").
The Health Ranger - Natural News
The International Coalition For Drug Awareness.
Alliance for Natural Health.
The Darwin Awards...Or.."Stoopid Ways to Die".
Don't Look Back
The Catrix
Mars Triptych: Part 1
