I have been saying it for quite a while, our economic system needs to change. You need a system which is not as dependent on people working 40 hours per week, not only because of third world countries, but also increasing automation which is never going away. Some economic experts are saying capitalism is dying and one of the reasons is even small business using automation will be able to manufacture things for the same price as big business. This is not good for big business. One economic expert stated nobody ever imagined automation could reduce the cost of objects so much that some of them can be made almost for free. It could turn out small companies with lower overheads will be able to create products cheaper than big companies. This turns the entire capitalistic system upside down.

I know those who don’t believe in global warming will scoff at this, but the huge ice sheet in Greenland is starting to melt. When Eric the Red discovered Greenland he decided on its name. It wasn’t very green, but if he would have called it Coldland or something like that, the Vikings would never had come to it. Imagine their surprise when they got to Greenland. Anyway so much ice melted in one day, the scientists had to recheck to make sure they were seeing things clearly and no mistake was being made. Very high temperatures for Greenland are taking place. What scientists are hoping is since so much ice is melting in April, it will freeze again sooner. They believe Greenland is set to receive a very hot year compared to its average temperature.

The Philosopher’s Stone is a legendary substance supposedly capable of turning base metals into gold. It is said Sir Isaac Newton copied a recipe relating to the stone. A hand written copy of one of his many manuscripts details how to make a key ingredient of the stone. Each page of this manuscript is being digitized and then it will be released and we will all be able to read it.  It is said Newton wrote over a million words to do with alchemy.

It seems Japan is cursed or they just don’t do their homework. Finding live faults under nuclear plants is not a good thing just as building a plant in a tsunami zone is not. This didn’t seem to stop Japanese power companies from building in these places and it doesn’t seem government regulations prevent this either. The Hokuriku Electric Power Company’s Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa Prefecture is said to be built over an active fault. Is this going to turn out to be another Fukushima nuclear disaster? The plant should be shut down immediately. The world is still paying the price as the Fukushima nuclear reactor is spewing out radiation, it is just the media is not mentioning it. What is the purpose of the United Nations if they can’t even get a dangerous nuclear plant closed?

The truth about the NASA space pen is not what most of us heard. We were told NASA spent millions of dollars to get a pen capable of writing upside down in space while the Russians used a pencil. This is not true. First of all graphite use in space was dangerous, because it is highly flammable and grains of it in the atmosphere would be asking for trouble. The Fisher Pen Company designed a pen with a pressurized cartridge with leak control. Fisher paid for all the research. The pen was never a NASA contract nor did they ask for it. It became popular in both space programs, American and Russian.

We keep finding out ravens are even smarter than we thought. Did you ever play a prank on anyone? Ravens play them on each other. One raven under observation was seen tricking another raven to look for cheese bits in empty containers while he went to ones full of cheese. The researcher said, “This shady behavior satisfies the definition of ‘tactical’, or intentional, deception and admits the raven to an exclusive club of sociable liars that in the past has included only humans and our close primate relatives.” Recently it was proven ravens and other black birds are smarter than dogs even though their brains are much smaller.

Recently gravitational waves were discovered and now all sorts of possibilities are being connected to them. One is the possibility of time travel. I can’t help but think this is just another bit of wishful thinking, because the best I bet they could do would be to see images of the past, not the actual past itself. Still seeing past images would be incredible. Imagine being able to observe the building of the pyramids, or the battle where the 300 Spartans held off the entire Persian army for days. While not actually time travel it could reveal what the true human past was.

France became the first country in the world to ban wasting food. The law effects big sellers such as supermarkets and producers. They will have to donate unsold food to charities. A survey showed the average person throws away about 220 pounds of food every year. It would be a shock if a law like this could ever pass here. It goes against the profit motive of the corporations in this country. If they give large amounts of food away to charities, the charities won’t have to buy food. Call me what you like, but I would be the first one to advocate this, but with huge criminal penalties for any charity that sold this food.

Scientists were amazed when they just found out the Babylonians had calculated the movements of Jupiter. They had used an early form of geometric calculus. This was about 1,400 years before we thought this system was invented. They did this far before the invention of the telescope. The discovery was made when a tablet was found from ancient Babylon and decoded.