Boulder is a Stoopid Place

If Michio Kaku is correct, we may have people from the future wondering among us.

Here’s his list of most likely science fiction concepts that could happen in the next 100 years.

Category 1, as he dubs it, includes things that may become true within the next century, if not the next few decades: teleportation (already possible, but only among subatomic particles); telepathy (thanks to brain implants); invisibility (already being researched using light-bending ‘metamaterials’); laser guns (existing, but hugely power-hungry); force fields; and the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

Read the next two categories and more.

Revenue in Colorado’s 3 gambling towns fell 10% in February after the statewide smoking ban was expanded to include casino’s.

A statewide smoking ban was extended to the state’s 40 casinos on Jan. 1 and the drop in revenue was noticed the following month. However, revenue in other gambling states has also dropped, including Nevada – home to Las Vegas – which has seen a 5 percent drop.

While casinos suspect smoking may have had some effect, other causes also could be fears of a recession and a cutback in discretionary spending as well as soaring gas prices that make trips to the mountains more expensive.

Read the article here…

DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) toy robot looks like much more than a toy to me. Read about it here as well as watch the robot walking in snow, on ice and climbing up and down a pile of cinder blocks.

Hat-tip to my friend Dan.

Transition from Solar Cycle 23 – 24. Sunspots of both polarities are shown in this article.

With leaders such as these, no wonder there are so many problems in Africa…

In May 2002, in the midst of a severe food shortage in sub-Saharan Africa, the government of Zimbabwe turned away 10,000 tons of corn from the World Food Program (WFP). The WFP then diverted the food to other countries, including Zambia, where 2.5 million people were in need. The Zambian government locked away the corn, banned its distribution, and stopped another shipment on its way to the country. “Simply because my people are hungry,” President Levy Mwanawasa later said, “is no justification to give them poison.”

As Glenn Reynolds says, “Death before political correctness”.

Unbelievable. This is a case where turning corn into ethanol probably isn’t a bad idea.

Do you know what “Clover” is? If you don’t and you’re a coffee aficionado, you soon will. Who knew coffee had so many flavors?

Using a complex brew process, the boxy black and silver Clover aims to coax each of the hundreds of flavors known to reside in the average coffee bean. The menu board behind the Clover at one Seattle Starbucks reads like it was written by wine connoisseur — comparing the “spicy, cedar notes and syrupy body” of the Aged Sumatra with the “dazzling spice, cocoa, wine and berry flavors” of the Arabian Mocha Sanani.

The controversy is that Starbucks acquired the “Clover” company and the $11,000 coffee maker will no longer be available outside of the Starbucks empire. Read up on the politics and intrigue of coffee!

Yikes, sure glad I’m not into coffee.

Great pictures. It’s like another world!

I wonder why Jeremiah Wright hates a country that has treated him so well? Take a peek at his future home.