~~~~~~~~~~~~~><((((((((()'>

Most important, perhaps, seasteading opens up the prospect of building a brand new community. It's so much easier to plan a community when you don't have centuries worth of bad planning to work around. you could customer-tailor communities. Starting fresh with only the best technology and surplus clean energy to employ it makes for some pretty exciting living conditions. This should not be dismissed out of hand, and apparently isn't. Think of the sunsets, and sunrises, every day.

<')((((((((><~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Imagine glass ground up so fine you can spray it like paint. Now, imaging that spray forms a new sheet of glass over what ever it comes into contact with. That's what these folks are claiming. Spray-on glass that forms a flexible barrier that's infinitely easier to clean and keep clean. All these claims come down to this poorly explained sentence in the article linked above. The spray: "has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily." Why not?

Perhaps it has something to do with the nanoparticles of glass in the spray filling in all the nano holes on the surface being sprayed. A stainless steel restaurant kitchen table may look smooth, but on the bacteria-size level it's a very rough surface, as this electro-microscope photo of a steel surface suggests. This spray-on glass fills all those tiny voids so less moisture gets in and there are fewer nooks and crannies for bacteria to hide and fester in. Make sense? Good, because we just made it up. But, it makes sense to us so maybe it's right. It would be nice if the article was a little clearer. Obviously, any dirt and bacteria already in the sprayed surface is trapped under the glass, which is kind of funky. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~><((((((((()'>

A Swiss fellow we're reluctant to label a scientist because he has taken pictures of UFOs from UFOs, says an asteroid the size of a Home Depot is scheduled to wipe out Europe in 2036. Normally, we'd dismiss this fellow as being Swiss, but it appears NASA is saying similar things. The Asteroid is called Apophos and she's heading this way. Why this confidant of ET is issuing press releases on the subject is anyone's guess. If you read the whole thing you might find an answer. We included this video to add a little gravity, pardon the pun, to the asteroid story.

<')((((((((><~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This story is fairly bizarre if true. Cavemen practicing sustainable fishing? No doubt they didn't have factory fishing ships or mortgages to pay. They just took what they needed. Bet they didn't throw out a lot of what they caught either. My wife and I were at Lenny and Joes in Connecticut this weekend. They were shoveling out platefuls of fried food at a mind-numbing rate. Mountains of the stuff, and I have to say it was delicious. But how much of that stuff ended in the trash? A third?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~><((((((((()'>

Using trees to fight forest fires may sound like weird science but that's precisely what the US Forest Service, MIT and a Canton, MA, electronics firm will be investigating this spring in what could well become the nation's first country-wide network of outdoor fire alarms. The science is solid as are the mechanics. Trees create a tiny electric current that's used to maintain the ideal pH in the roots and trunk in varying soil acidity conditions. The more acidic or basic the surrounding earth, the more electricity the tree creates. A team of MIT scientists in a paper published last month found it was a renewable source of power and that tapping it was harmless to the host tree.

 These findings have cleared the way for the Canton firm Voltree to start field testing an environmental sensor the firm designed that literally plugs into the tree. Daily soil moisture, temperature and air humidity measurements will be taken by this device and transmitted via radio signal to Forest Service monitoring stations scattered throughout the country. That sensor will include an emergency signal that's emitted whenever surrounding air temperatures indicate fire has broken out. This device is going to be tested this spring at a Forest Service field science center in Idaho. There are other potential uses for this power including motion and/or radioactivity detectors fixed along the nation’s borders. The MIT folks think that might be reaching, Voltree isn’t so sure. Still, the study findings clear the way for serious research and development to begin, with potentially far reaching results.