Interesting new technology developed in Japan: a sugar-based catalyst to replace the commonly used lye in the transesterification reaction that turns veg-oil into biodiesel:

Michikazu Hara, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Yokohama, Japan, and his colleagues have used common, inexpensive sugars to form a recyclable solid acid that does the job on the cheap. Their research is reported in last week’s issue of the journal Nature.

“We estimate the cost of the catalyst to be one-tenth to one-fiftieth that of conventional catalysts,” Hara said.

The breakthrough could provide cost savings on a massive scale, he said, because the technique could fairly easily make the transition from the lab to the refinery—if interest warrants.
Cheaper Veggie Diesel May Change the Way We Drive National Geographic – 11/14/05

(thanks, Rachel)
Production cost is one major problem holding back biodiesel from large-scale adoption in the US. We need more researchers to contribute in such a productive way to solving the problems of renewable energy, instead of sniping at this technology from the ivory tower.

After apparently reasonably fair elections, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is about to take charge of battered Liberia as the first second female African head of state. This is a very hopeful turn of events for this war-torn, exploited country.

On the other side of the continent, Uganda’s strongman Yoweri Museveni had his main opposition candidate Kizza Besigye arrested for treason, sparking riots in Kampala. The arrest comes as the country is gearing up for a general election. Museveni also had the Ugandan constitution amended, in order to be able to run again in the election. And this is playing out as a regular genocide is in progress in Northern Uganda …

The recent Sony rootkit scandal takes all that’s wrong with our “brave, new world” of networked computing: spam, viruses, spyware, malware, sloppyware (=Windows) and adds a major technology and entertainment corporation’s bad attitude about consumer’s rights.

Earlier this year, Sony sold music CDs with copyright protection software that installs a rootkit on Windows machines, making these machines vulnerable to hackers and trojan attacks. Apparently, this software also calls home – to the Sony offices in Cary, NC.

Sony is apologetic and working hard to fix what they broke, right? Hell no! They have a smart-ass attitude about this. Here is what the president of Sony BMG’s global digital business division Thomas Hesse has to say:

“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”
Sony executive Thomas Hesse on NPR’s Morning Edition, November 4, 2005

Well, fuck you too, Mr. Hesse! Let’s boycott Sony this season.

[UPDATE: EFF shows that the EULA is just as bad as the software. For example, if your house gets burgled, or if you declare bankruptcy, you have to delete all your music. Oh and I forgot to mention that the EFF also reports that the rootkit “uninstaller” from Sony creates yet new security holes. WOW! And these guys don’t even work for the Bush administration!]

Kanzlerin Pestbeule is ready to lead Germany … in circles probably. On the surface a national consensus government may seem like a good idea to accomplish needed but painful social reforms in the next four years. That would be the case if this was 1) a government with a mandate, and 2) a government with real leadership.

1) despite fact that this “coalition” occupies 448 of 614 seats in parliament, it does not represent the will of 70 percent of the population. In fact, a poll last week shows that 75 percent of German voters see the arrangement as a “Notlösung” – a solution of last resort. Better than – uh – no government. A the same time, 54 percent are optimistic about the coalition. That’s not much of a mandate for such an arrangement.

2) Both SPD and CDU have serious leadership problems. The CSU (the Bavarian flavor and Siamese twin of the CDU) has no leadership problems. They have no leadeship. The Social Democrats have just dealt with their leadership problems and put a new generation of leadership in charge. We’ll see how that plays out.

This weird coalition represents quite well the state of mind of the German electorate. They want things to change – but not really. The fact is that Germany has been governed by a hidden “grand coalition” for a while. None of the reforms and changes Schröder’s government did, would have been possible without help from the opposition. These deals were hammered out in bi-and tri-partisan committees. If the Merkel gang had any complaint, it was that the entitlement reforms did not go far enough. The German electorate became frustrated with increasing cost of health care and disappearing entitlements, and voted for a conservative government – but not really.

Germany is entering an interesting transition phase. Several things can happen:

• Nothing much
• New leadership emerges and takes charge
• This “coalition” becomes gridlocked and no one is in charge – which will likely lead to
• New elections

Or any combination of the above.

I doubt that any of this will bring about the much-needed smart reforms of the social network and the entitlement programs.

Remember those paper-and-ink-based information storage devices with the multi-page user interface? Yeah – books! I just read Richard Clarke’s Scorpion’s Gate – the first novel I read in years – and I could not put it down for two nights. The man sure knows how to spin a yarn, but the way the story comments on current events is also quite enthralling. In his story, he basically overlays a global worst-case scenario with a post-Saud Arabian state, Shia-Sunni rivalries and Chinese nukes onto the political constellation right before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and weaves it all together with a classical spy-novel yarn. Very nice.

And also very “not nice.” His underlying commentary on the US leadership clique is rather biting, as he paints his fictional Secretary of Defense as a corrupt, scheming warmonger. Yet, he also does not shy away from letting his idealism show, as his heroes are painted in rather simple strokes, more or less as the “smart good guys who just want to do what’s right.” His characters are not terribly complex, but credible, partly, I think, because their language is so authentic. Like when he has the Secretary of Defense toss a dry “Fuck you” at one of his underlings, echoing Cheney’s insightful advice to Leahy. Also, as a former insider, Clarke is able to paint a vivid tableau full of remarkable detail of the inside of the White House and the Pentagon and various locations around the Middle East, something most authors in this genre have to research painstakingly.

Clarke’s story maintains a tremendous momentum, weaving its threads tighter and tighter across 300 pages, to a dramatic climax. The book turns a bit preachy on last pages, but then, he is making a point here and that gets a bit in the way of literary style. The Scorpion’s Gate is not the “Great American Novel” but it’s a great novel about American foreign policy and the effects of American leadership blindly meddling in other cultures with no understanding or regard for those cultures. The Scorpion’s Gate is also a fun read, a great spy novel, made even greater by its relevance and insight, and precisely by the point it makes.

Last week I picked up 10 gallons of used fryer oil from a local restaurant, and on Sunday I made my first one-liter test batch of biodiesel. I got a nice separation but the biodiesel is a bit cloudy, so there is probably some soap. Now I have to wash the stuff thoroughly, dry it and filter it, and then it should be ready to go in the car …

This is really fun – I showed the kids how to do the titration and they liked the color change “trick.” Now I need to find a plumber who will give me a used, clean water heater, so I can build an appleseed reactor.

On October 13, the International Criminal Court (ICC) unsealed arrest warrants for five leaders of the Ugandan cult-like gang the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA has for many years brutalized the civilian population of Northern Uganda, and abducted thousands of children, sometimes forcing the children to kill their own parents.

Yet, these indictments have the potential to derail peace negotiations and to give the Ugandan military another excuse to escalate the 19-year brute-force effort to eradicate the LRA. In the past, the LRA has responded to such stepped-up efforts with bloody, violent vengeance. Some see the recent killings of aid workers in Northern Uganda as a indication that an escalation is imminent. One of the immediate effects will be that the work of the aid agencies will be much harder and much more dangerous. That will make it very difficult to get aid to the 1.6 million Ugandans living in camps, due to the war.

As much as people suffering under the scourge of the LRA yearn for justice, the arrest warrants have the potential to make their lives a lot more miserable:

“This war has already lasted 19 years and an entire generation has never known peace. We are desperate for an end to this conflict. Many people dream of the day when the rebel leaders will have to stand trial for the crimes they have committed. We are really worried that this dream won’t become a reality,” said Emma Naylor, Oxfam’s Country Programme Manager in Uganda. “For two decades it has been impossible to apprehend the rebel leaders. The communities that we work with are already asking how the arrest warrants will be served. There is a lot of confusion and it’s fast turning to fear.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Northern Uganda has been a war zone or twenty years. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an apocalyptic christian cult, has waged a cruel war on the Acholi people, while the Ugandan military tried to crush the LRA with brute force. The situation is complicated, as the LRA abducts Acholi children, to turn them into child soldiers and sex slaves or their commanders. So, many Acholi prefer a negotiated peace with the LRA in order to possibly get their children back.

Children’s rights activist Olara Otunnu is waging a campaign to raise the international profile of this humanitarian crisis:

Otunnu in August resigned his post as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict to crusade against human rights abuses in northern Uganda.

In July, he had led the effort that culminated in Security Council resolution 1612, which establishes the first comprehensive monitoring and reporting system to protect children in conflict situations.

The resolution includes a “naming and shaming list” of 54 offending parties, rebel groups as well as governments, which are cited for grave violations against children. The Uganda government is on the list.

Otunnu said that the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda had led to massive atrocities, destruction, and infant mortality and produced an epidemic of HIV/Aids.
Otunnu Says There is Genocide in North, The Monitor, Kampala, 9/19/05

Recently, Otunnu has made a point of specifically calling the situation in Acholiland a genocide. On September 14 at Lehman College in new York, where he received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree, Mr. Olara Otunnu said that

the twenty-year conflict in northern Uganda had led to massive atrocities, destruction, rapes, abductions, and infant mortality and produced an epidemic of HIV/AIDS. More than 1.6 million people have been forcibly relocated to what were effectively concentration camps in “abominable conditions,” he said, while two generations of children have been deprived of education and basic health care. “An entire society,” he said, “is being systematically destroyed in full view of the international community.”
Lehman College Press release (PDF), 9/15/05

I think that the reason why it is so hard to focus international attention on this crisis has to do with the complexity of the situation. When a muslim majority terrorizes a christian minority, we have a scenario that is very compelling to many Europeans and Americans. But here in Uganda the victims are ground up between a christian cult and a government that is considered an ally in the War on Terror. This is much harder to explain an therefore does not lend itself to the simplistic black/white worldview so popular these days.

On my trip to the mountains, I filled up at the biodiesel pump in Asheville operated by Blue Ridge Biofuels. It’s a public pump, which is still pretty rare. Most pumps in North Carolina are coop-operated pumps that are not accessible to the public (like our Juicebox).

This pump seemed pretty busy – there were several guys filling up their pickup trucks and someone with a NewBeetle TDI getting the “good juice.” There was also a TV news team interviewing a guy about his grease car. Not bad for a Wednesday afternoon at the local biodiesel pump!
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This morning I went right back to Tsali to ride another trail. Over night the clouds had disappeared and just a low morning fog hovered in the valleys. The sky was clear, the air was crisp and chilly, just slightly above freezing. Last night, the higher peaks in the distance had received their first dusting of snow of the season (see pictures below).

I picked the Right Loop of the Tsali Trail, because it winds along the eastern side of the knoll that juts out into Fontana Lake. So when the sun peeked over the mountains around 7:45 I was on the sunny side of the trail. As I wound my way out to Windy Point, I had a great view of the lake and I watched how the sun slowly burned of the morning fog that hung over the water. It was very quiet, just a few birds were chirping in the chilly morning air and occasionally a squirrel ran up a tree, chattering anxiously. I met no other bikes but a couple of times shots in the distance broke the peace. It was so quiet that the noises from my bike’s gears seemed loud and obnoxious. I had an awesome time – this is a gorgeous trail! When I returned to the parking lot at around 9:30, there was just one other car – a guy with a bow and arrow who was heading out into the woods for some hunting.

More pictures below the fold …
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A little on-the-road blogging from the mountains. I am in western NC for a couple of days, to install some new equipment at our lab in Sylva. When I come up here I always bring my bike along. This afternoon, after I finally got it all working, I strapped the bike to the car and headed over to Tsali Recreation Area to hit the trails.

It was 42 deg F, with a light drizzle, and a gusty breeze blowing across the mountains – what can I say – a perfect evening for a little ride through the woods. There were three other guys out there, a Welsh guy who lives in the area, a guy from Asheville and a guy from Berlin. I had a little trouble with the bike, and had to turn around after a few hundred meters.

When I finally hit the trail for real, I had an hour of – uh – “daylight” left. The Welsh guy had recommended the Thompson Loop Trail, so I rode seven miles along Fontana Lake and back across some the hills. Fantastic ride! I got back after 50 Minutes, and 15Minutes later it got dark, and I was on my way back to the hotel. I think I’ll go back tomorrow morning for another round, before I head back to Durham.

It is the year 2005 A.D. and a border dispute is brewing between Canada and Denmark over a 1.3 km² rock in the arctic. Both countries are members of NATO, but they had competing flag-raisings, flyovers by jets and even officials visiting Hans Island, an arctic island claimed by both countries. Hans Island is a barren rock in the center of the Kennedy Channel of Nares Strait, which is the strait that separates Ellesmere Island from northern Greenland and connects Baffin Bay with the Lincoln Sea. No one lives there, not even penguins.

Yet, this dispute is becoming a matter of national pride, and tempers flare:

For many years, the Canadian military has repeatedly invaded Danish territory, without any respect for international treaties or laws. Therefore, Canada must be excluded from NATO and the UN, and must be forced to give war reperations [sic] for the damages they have inflicted. Furthermore, the Canadian ministry of defence should be disbanded, and all Canadian military equipment should be handed over to Denmark.
Free Hans Island

Yeah, and check out Radio free Hans Island – they even post the “National Anthem” of an independent Hans Island.

The BBC carefully negotiates both points o view:

In 1984, a Danish minister, Tom Hoeyem, caused a stir when he visited the island and raised the Danish flag.

Mr Hoeyem also buried a bottle of brandy at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying welcome to Denmark.

The UPI news agency reported that Canadian troops landed on the island a week before Mr Graham’s visit, planted a Canadian flag and built an Inuit stone marker.

Reports say Canadian troops leave whiskey at the flagpole on their incursions.
Canada island visit angers Danes, BBC News, 25 July, 2005

Newsflash: the Danes now also claim the North Pole. They probably want to charge Santa Claus rent …

Europeans appear to take the bird-flu threat seriously: Germany now mandates that chicken be kept only inside. But although Bush said he read “The Great Influenza” his administration still slashes funding for public health preparedness by $129 million in next year’s budget.

“Critical funding is shrinking just as public health agencies are being required to expand their work in pandemic influenza preparation and response,” said Dr. Rex Archer, health director of Kansas City, Mo., and president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).
The Bush administration, in its proposed 2006 HHS budget, slashed funding for public health preparedness by $129 million — from $926 million in 2005 to $797 million. The House version of the 2006 HHS bill appropriates $853 million while the Senate bill sticks with the$797 million requested by the administration.
Health directors say HHS flu cuts are for the birds Government Health IT, Oct. 18, 2005

All the while, more and more bird-flu reports across Asia.

Hurricane Wilma is another record-breaking phenomenon – let’s hope this monster stays away from land, or at least from densly populated areas. Meteorologist Jeff Masters is pretty excited about Wilma:

There has never been a hurricane like Wilma before. With an unbelievable round of intensification that saw the pressure drop 85 mb in just 12 hours, Wilma smashed the all-time record for lowest pressure in an Atlantic hurricane this morning. The 4 am hurricane hunter report put the pressure at 884 mb from a dropsonde, and the meteorologist reported an even lower 881 mb pressure extrapolated from 10,000 feet flight altitude. This easily bests the previous record of 888 mb set in Hurricane Gilbert of 1988. The eye of Wilma during this round of intense deepening oscillated between 2 and 4 nautical miles, and the area of hurricane force winds only covered an area up to 15 miles from the center. This is an incredibly compact, amazingly intense hurricane, the likes of which has never been seen. The Hurricane Season of 2005 keeps topping itself with new firsts, and now boasts three of the five most intense hurricanes of all time–Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.
Jeff Master’s Wunderground Blog, 12:04 PM GMT on October 19, 2005

Interesting piece on CNN about how the African cell phone market was totally underestimated by the industry. Now, as cellphones are more and more widely used, they can’t put up cell towers fast enough.

“We are developing unique ways to use the phone, which has not been done anywhere else,” says South African Michael Joseph, chief executive officer of Safaricom, one of two service providers in Kenya. For an impoverished continent, low-cost phones make “a perfect fit.”
(…)
“We all misread the market,” Joseph said.

The mistake, providers say, was to make plans based on GDP figures, which ignore the strong informal economy, and to assume that because land line use was low, little demand for phones existed.

The real reason for weak demand was that land lines were expensive, subscribers had to wait for months to get hooked up, and the lines often went down because of poor maintenance, floods and theft of copper cables.

Cell phones slice through all those obstacles and provide African solutions to African problems.
Cell phones reshaping Africa CNN, October 17, 2005

via Timbuktu Chronicles, who asks

The follow-up question could be, what other industries multinational and indigenous, are underestimating and or miscalculating the market for their products and or services in Africa?

Good question! One service, I think is way underestimated in Africa are public libraries. Rural Africa is way under-served when it comes to information access – the cellphones story proves that. Libraries are critical information infrastructure, especially in low-income communities. Just like cellphones, libraries have both an effect on the economy and on the social dynamics. A good library can provide information for farmers, small businesses and students, helping them to be more competitive and to adapt better to changes. And they help change people’s information access expectations. People who expect information will demand more information. And that attitude is essential for democracy to take root.

Tropical Storm Wilma is the 21st named storm of this season, making this the busiest hurricane season ever. Considering that this season included one of the worst natural disasters on the US mainland (Katrina) and one of the 30 deadliest hurricanes (Stan), as well as one of the easternmost hurricanes ever (Vince), this is a truly remarkable season.

The historic Hurricane Season of 2005 now has the distinction of being the busiest ever. Wilma’s formation this morning gives 2005 21 named storms, equaling the mark set in 1933. With over six weeks still left in hurricane season, that mark will likely be surpassed.
Jeff Master’s Blog

To a large extent, as far as I understand, this record season of destructive storms was triggered by unusually warm waters in the Carribbean. I think this should give every global-warming-denier pause.

This being the information age, it has always been pretty clear that the lack of communication infrastructure in Africa was, and is, a major obstacle to progress. The rich nations of the world can proclaim their intention to “eradicate poverty” all they want, but the real beacon of hope in Africa is not the G8, it’s a cell tower.

Richard Dowden is one of many who see the rapid development of communication infrastructure, namely mobile phone coverage, as the key to dramatic changes in Africa:

Africa is changing fast. Driving those changes are mobile phones and radio stations and China’s appetite for raw materials. The G8’s agenda of aid and debt relief may, if delivered, play a secondary role.
(…)

The internal driver is the mobile phone revolution that has transformed business and politics in Africa in the past ten years. In 2001, only 3 per cent of Africans had telephones of any sort. Now there are 50 million mobile-phone users, with numbers growing by 35 per cent a year. The phone companies completely misjudged the market – they thought that only the super-rich would buy mobiles. But it turned out that the people who really needed them were small self-employed businessmen, market women, taxi drivers and the casual workers who keep Africa going. In some areas, beer sales have plummeted as people have invested their meagre earnings in mobile phone cards instead. The pace of life has picked up hugely.

It’s good to talk – even better to sell, the New Statesman, 17th Oct. 2005
(via textually)

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This is a brilliant piece of engineering to make life easier for millions of people: water on in wheels:

Millions of people worldwide are forced to walk long distances on a daily basis to collect their water requirements for the day. Traditional methods of collecting water include the use of 20-liter (5-gallon) buckets, which are laboriously carried on the head. Extensive suffering occurs in the process. This method is very time and energy consuming and is also the cause of many serious health problems.

The Hippo Water Roller was specifically designed to alleviate the suffering caused by a lack of access to water. The Hippo Water Roller is a barrel-shaped container designed to transport 90 liters (20 gallons) of water. It comprises of a drum with a large screw-on cap and a clip-on steel handle.
Hippo Water Roller

They also suggest that a full Hippo Water Roller offers good protection fom landmines!

via Tmbuktu Chronicles

The bird flu has reached Europe, and the US government is slowly waking up to the threat of a global flu pandemic.

The European Commission said Thursday that the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu has been confirmed in Turkish poultry and probably is present in Romania.

If confirmed in Romania, it would be the first instance of the deadly strain known to have reached Europe, and would bolster the theory that it may be spread by migrating birds.
CNN.com – Bird flu strain found in Turkey – Oct 13, 2005

In another example of breathtaking competence, the US government holds tippy-top-secret meetings about the fact that a global flu pandemic would be really, really, really bad (something that many public health officials have been saying for years) and then they go ahead and leak this information to the NY Times:

The administration is putting the finishing touches on its long-awaited pandemic plan to be released after Leavitt returns from his trip. A draft version, dated Sept. 30 and leaked to The New York Times, reportedly predicts a major outbreak might kill up to 1.9 million people and make half the country sick.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, says he learned of the administration’s prediction on Sept. 28 in a top-secret meeting in a secure room in the Capitol. He and a few other senators met with Leavitt; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; and Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The administration, Harkin says, predicts U.S. deaths from pandemic flu could range from 100,000 to 2 million, and as many as 10 million might be hospitalized. Up to 100 million might become sick. Seasonal flu epidemics kill about 36,000 people each year in the USA.
‘Imagine what would happen if a Category 5 viral storm hit every state’, USA Today, 10/11/2005

via REVERE

Boy – I am so glad they were able to straightened this out:

A bowl of Neolithic noodles has revealed that China was the most likely birthplace of this popular food.

For millennia, arguments have raged about whether the noodle was invented by the Chinese, Italians or Arabs.
(…)
The researchers discovered the 20 inch-long noodles inside an overturned, sealed bowl under 10 feet of floodplain sediment in Lajia, by the Yellow River in north-western China. The meal was probably left untouched because of an ancient disaster: the site harbours a settlement that was probably destroyed about 4,000 years ago by a major earthquake and flood.
Neolithic noodles were made in China, Telegraph (UK), 13/10/2005

I do think, though, that the Italians do get credit for the brilliant idea of mixing tomato sauce with noodles.