Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Future Water-Powered Vehicles

From Science Daily.com, a Purdue University engineer has developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines, and the technique could be used to replace gasoline.

I am still thinking if America and the rest of the world is going to replace gasoline, hydrogen is a better replacement than ethanol. It seems that too many people think ethanol is the magic bullet which it isn't. Hydrogen might not be the magic solution either but at least it will burn cleaner than ethanol.

Monday, May 21, 2007

A Potentially Dangerous Lawsuit

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is suing the store clerk that alerted the authorities about the intentions of the Fort Dix, New Jersey, terrorist plotters. The One News Now article does not say what the suit is about but my hunch it's about violation of privacy. I am thinking CAIR is saying that the clerk violated the terrorist plotters civil rights. Just a guess.

For those who don't know CAIR is the Islamic version of the ACLU. Unlike the store clerk CAIR is definitely not looking out for America. They are only looking out for interests of militant Muslims.

This store clerk should be given a commendation from the city, state and federal gov'ts for his patriotic act. Good for him. This behavior should be encouraged not discouraged. Then you have the New York Times implying that the clerk is an informant and that informants cannot be trusted. First, informants usually work for law enforcement and even newspapers and TV news stations. This clerk did not work for either. He was just an alert person doing his civic responsibility. Two, it's funny when New York Times criticizes informants when they probably use them too. If informants (the news media calls them sources) cannot be trusted then what does that say about news stories that use them for information? Especially, if the sources are unnamed. If people are afraid to report suspicious activity like this then we are all in trouble. The Islamofascists are playing for keeps.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Dealing with Militant Jihad

What follows is a policy to deal with militant jihad. This policy comes from Robert Spencer's 2006 book The Truth about Muhammad. His statements are in bold face. The comments afterword are mine.

  • Stop insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. According to the The Religion of Peace web site, Islamofacists have carried out more than 8,259 terrorists attacks since 9/11. If you think the Iraq War is the cause of most of these attacks then what caused 9/11? Or the bombing of the Twin Towers in the 90's? Or why did Muslim extremists kill two Buddhists one of which was a 70 year old man in Yala, Thailand on May 7 of this year. As far as I know Thailand does not have any troops in Iraq. Then today in the same country a hospital worker and a father were murdered by jihadists. I could go on, but you get the point. To be fair there are traditional Muslims like the Sufi who translate jihad to be a personal spiritual struggle instead of a holy war. But fundamentalist Muslims do not treat modern and traditional Muslims as true believers. And by the way the word Islam means "to submit."
  • Initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources. Or find more domestic oil in America and use that. The problem is that there is not enough refineries and the ones America has is getting old. The oil companies make money by not keeping the existing refineries in shape--they control the supply that way, and environmental extremists don't want any new oil refineries because it supposedly hurts the environment. So, the consumer gets squeezed in the middle. As Pip Coburn in his book The Change Function states, consumers won't change to a new technology unless their user crises of the current technology is greater than the perceived pain of adoption of a new technology. In this case the current technology is gasoline and other petroleum products and the new technology is an alternative fuel. The user crises here is oil producing countries that support militant Islam.
  • Make Western aid contingent upon renunciation of the jihad ideology. This pressure would have to come from the U.N. preferably. But if not then NATO. The more nations that would do this the stronger the pressure would be. America can not be alone in this pressure. I hope to God that nations wake up to what is going on with the militant Islamists. It was almost too late when the world finally stopped Nazism.
  • Call upon American Muslim advocacy groups to work against the jihad ideology. Not just American Muslim groups but Muslim groups everywhere in the world. This is going to be tough for non-militant Muslim groups in other parts of the world because the Islamofacists persecute and even kill Muslims who speak out against these jihadists. Muslims who see this persecution become scared and become what Natan Sharansky called double-thinkers. People who don't like what is going on but are too scared to speak out or to do anything about the situation. Double-thinking mainly happens in autocratic oppressive countries. Natan Sharansky should know what he's talking about. He lived in the now defunct Soviet Union. That is why I think it is important for Muslims in democratic countries should denounce radical Islam ideology. The Rand Corporation thinks that non-militant Jihadists in Western countries should form alliances or networks. Mainly the secularists, liberal Muslims, moderate traditionalists, and some Sufis should form these networks. I suggest the reader read the summary at least of the article. You might find it interesting. Denoucing militant Islam has got to start somewhere and denunciation means more coming from another Muslim who can do it without fear.
  • Revise immigration policies with the jihad ideology in view. Some people might think this is racism. It is not. Anyone can be a militant Muslim. Basically, the author thinks Western nations should ask hard questions about the applicant's views of features of Western societies that is challenged by elements of Muhammad's teachings and Islamic law. The applicant could lie but any Muslim that takes a militant view would have to think twice about committing a terrorist act.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Chimps Deserve Human Rights, Group Says

In Vienna, Australia a bunch of animal rights activists wants to legally declare a 26-year-old male chimpanzee a person. The group say they don't want to give him voting rights just certain human rights. There is one problem here though. Animals can never be considered human for certain basic fact--they don't have free will. That is what separates mankind from the rest of the animal world. For a while it was thought that man was the only animal that used tools. Then researchers found that chimps can use tools. They observed a chimpanzee using a stick to eat termites.

What these animal rights activists are doing is personifying the chimpanzee. Using an exact quote one of the activist said: "He has a real personality. It strikes you immediately: This is an individual. You just have to look him in the eye to see that.'' Anyone with a pet knows what I am talking about. You treat it as a member of the family. I have had parakeets and a cockatiel for pets. I sometimes thought they acted like people. Especially, my first parakeet. But they are not. Yes, animals have distinctive personality, but having a personality does not make one a person. I would think you can have certain safeguards against animal cruelty without declaring chimps as people.

One final thought. The lawyer hired by the animal rights group said: “Chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA with humans. OK, they're not homo sapiens. But they're obviously also not things." Well, human fetuses have 100% human DNA and are not considered human by pro-abortionists. To paraphrase the lawyer, human fetuses are not things either. Something to ponder.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Ethanol Vehicles A Health Hazard

Bad news for ethanol vehicles. According to a Stanford University atmospheric scientist if all America's vehicles ran on ethanol, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations would likely increase. Why? Because it increased two carcinogens: formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. That is definitely not good. The reader should recognize the former carcinogen. It is used in embalming fluid. Acetaldehyde if the chemical compound that causes hangovers. The article also states that ethanol would also increase ozone which is the main ingredient in smog.

Along the same lines, farmers that grow crops for biodiesel vehicles increase nitrous oxide (laughing gas) amounts which is far more potent than any carbon dioxide.

You know if we are going to switch to another fuel source we should be sure that is isn't worse than gasoline. People should not jump on a particular fuels bandwagon just because it sounds cool without researching it first.