We had a nice few days with DJ Mitchell and his wife at their ranch in southern Utah earlier this week. They’re in the process of building on to their cheese facility so they can start making it in 100 lb. lots. That’s me of the left not quite awake with the sun in my eyes and DJ on the right.

DJ posts and comments here and also blogs at AsymptoticLife and JackRabbitCheese.

And – as a special added bonus – here’s their outside dog Pepper doing the Pogo because it’s dinner time.

Director admits hacked files genuine

The files were taken from the East Anglia Climate Research Center, a leading research center of climate change. The leaked emails appear to show deliberate attempts by researchers to falsify data to make global warming seem more pervasive than their data showed.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap.

The inexpensive bacteria are sprayed over an area and shortly begin to glow green in the presence of explosives.

Video via SFist where a commenter says

I’m confused. I missed the part where the UC regents have access to a magic wand they can wave to produce $500 million out of thin air.

The whole freaking state of California is broke. No, wait. “Broke” implies you just have no money. California is much worse off than that. It owes vast sums it has no idea how to pay.

In a state with huge unemployment and a high foreclosure rate, the tuition increases might not seem that onerous to many.

For an undergraduate student from California, annual fees will rise from $7,788 to $8,373 this academic year, and to $10,302 for next year.

Just saw a Facebook post about a single mother who got laid off four months ago, has looked hard for a job ever since with no luck and just got an eviction notice. Her daughter is fourteen.

California. The party is over. At least for a while. The money just isn’t there.

Via The Hill, John Conyers hammers Obama’s weak stance in the healthcare battle in a radio interview:

“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House,” Conyers said on the liberal Bill Press radio show. “He only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t even anything to write home about.”

“The only way he could have got it through was that progressives held their nose,” Conyers added.

The veteran Michigan Democrat had teamed with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to push single-payer options in the health reform bill, a battle which Conyers said was far from over.

And on Rahm Emmanuel? Via the NY Times:

“That’s essentially what Rahm Emmanuel has said,” Mr. Conyers agreed, adding that he was tired of his approach of “give us anything and we will declare victory.”

Of health-care legislation, Mr. Conyers concluded: “This is all my buddy Rahm Emanuel trying to get anything. But look the bill doesn’t go into effect for three years. Many of the people that we are trying to help will be dead by then.”

With the collapse of tourism in Hawaii, relatives on the Big Island tell us they and many others increasingly are growing their own food, as well as fishing and hunting (like for wild pig.) There are few jobs there now since tourism dropped off sharply as a result of the recession. It’s fend for yourself, tilting towards a barter economy, as in I’ll swap you fresh mangoes for some of that fish you just caught.

I bet we see much more of this. If such economies grow, then governments becomes less and less important. Hmmm.

The U.S. consumes around 100 quads (100 quadrillion BTUs) of energy a year and 55 to 60 quads get dissipated as waste heat

“The best known investor in Web 1.0, involved in the founding of Amazon, Netscape, and Google,” John Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins, have raised a billion dollars to be channeled into greentech.

“Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” said Doerr.

Unlike investment banksters, venture capitalists like Doerr have actually created things of value and no doubt will continue to do so with their start up funding of cleanteach companies.

The New York Times shows what side of the class war they are on by explaining that US workers really are just so overpaid, something Fenian Rising finds obnoxious. So do I.