P2i

Water is pervasive. 

Thatching, waxed canvas, plastic bags over bike saddles, and even Gore-Tex: there's a long history of humans trying to keep water out of our homes, clothes and equipment. 
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But while thatching can keep a cottage dry, it's not much use with hearing aids. 
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Wrapping your phone in Gore-Tex is going to be limiting. 
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There's never been a ubiquitous technology with the potential to protect any object from one of earth's most common substances, but one British company is changing this.
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P2i's technology is built on its chief technical officer's PhD project. 
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Funded by the research arm of the Ministry of Defence, Stephen Coulson was originally aiming to create a coating for military clothing which would protect the wearer from toxic agents, part of a programme called Crusader 21. 

The technology was spun out commercially, and the science that Coulson worked on as a student is now incorporated into millions of products worldwide, from hearing aids and shoes to smartphones. 
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Water, not battlefield chemicals, is now the company's primary adversary.
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Paul Prince, P2i's applications-and-processing manager, shows a lab bench with an assortment of normal-looking shoes, gloves and hats, and a fish tank full of water to dunk them in. 
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A running shoe is filled to the brim with water, then the water is poured out through the laces. 
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No water squishes out of the sole when pressed afterwards. 
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It's dry. 
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A lace is squeezed, trying to force water out of it, but there's none there.
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Even more uncanny are the tissues. 
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Take two, one with P2i's coating, and one without. 
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Both feel, smell and look identical. 
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One is not coated, and plunged into the fish tank. 
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It turns to gloop. 
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The other tissue behaves more like plastic than paper in the water, allowing a fistful of liquid to be scooped up and held, in cupped hands lined with tissue. 
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The tissue is still dry when the water is poured out. 
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P2i's technology, a bit like Teflon, is used to make non-stick frying pans. 
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It makes a surface, any surface, more slippery. 
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But the coating isn't a layer sitting on top of the shoe or hearing aid, preventing water from passing. 
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Rather, the water-resistant material is chemically bound to the surface – inside and out – using a technique called pulsed plasma deposition. 
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It's nanotechnology, and it doesn't wear off.
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One of the deposition chambers is running a test. 
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A white, milky light glows through a porthole – about the size of a saucer – set into the foot-thick aluminium door. 
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To coat a shoe, it is placed inside the chamber and the air is sucked out, creating a vacuum. 
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A tiny amount of the vaporised coating material is then squirted in, and a strong electrical current is passed across the chamber, switching on and off very rapidly. 
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This strips electrons from the coating material, creating what's known as a plasma, or a soup of charged particles which can then bond, chemically and permanently, with every fibre over the entire surface of the shoe, inside and out. 
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Because there are no air molecules to get in the way, the energy that the electric current gives the molecules of coating material allows it to bond with every surface – under the laces, in ridges of the soles, under the tongue. 
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Any object of any size can be coated, if you have a big enough chamber.
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Peter Dobson, who is the academic director of Begbroke Science Park in Oxford, and advises Research Councils UK on nanotechnology, calls P2i the leading "nano-company" in Britain. 
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P2i's success] has happened so quickly, Dobson says.
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It's very unusual to find a start-up that gets out in less than 10 years. 
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P2i is only eight years old.
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But the British company is not the only one looking to protect the world's devices from water. 
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Liquipel and HzO, based in California and Utah respectively, are P2i's main competitors, particularly when it comes to smartphones.
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Liquipel lets individual consumers mail in their iPhones or Androids to undergo a similar process to that which P2i integrates into manufacturer supply chains. 
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For $60, anyone can get a water-resistant phone, though this opens up Liquipel to the messy world of refund policies and terms and conditions, something P2i doesn't have to worry about.
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HzO uses a different type of coating, one that is thicker and lets electronics last underwater for longer than P2i's does. 
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We're vastly different from P2i or Liquipel, HzO president Paul Clayson says. 
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We take a solid chemical, turn it into a gas and introduce it into a vacuum chamber to deposit on the electronics. 
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Our coating is thicker, building layers on top of each other and providing a protection that can endure underwater for extended periods of time.
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However, where HzO can't currently name any of its customers, P2i can name handfuls. 
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Motorola, Timberland, K-Swiss and Ecco all use the UK company's technology in some form, and it even counts Bollman Hats, which claims to be the oldest hat maker in the US, among its clients.
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The benefits of a smartphone that can survive being dropped in the bath or caught in a pocket during a rainstorm are obvious, if uninspiring. 
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Some of P2i's other applications are far more imaginative: pipettes treated with the nano-coating don't hold a final drop of liquid in their nozzle, making for more accurate drug delivery. 
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Air filters can be treated, meaning the water and oils which they pull out of airflows just slip off, extending the life of the filter. 
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If you can reduce the frequency which you have to shut down a gas turbine to change the air filters, for example, that's a big saving, Paul Prince explains.
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P2i also claims that its coating is now applied to 60 per cent of all hearing aids produced worldwide. 
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The ear and hairline are not a hospitable place for electronics, with sweat corroding circuitry and damaging what can be essential technology for the hard of hearing. 
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The world's largest audiology trade show, AudiologyNOW!, has named P2i "Best in Show" for two years running.
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Slippery, liquid-repellent tissues aren't much use, but when it comes to phones, filters and footwear, P2i's technology is changing the way we look at many products.

So who drinks vodka?

1. To remove a bandage painlessly, saturate the bandage with vodka.  vodka dissolves adhesive. 2. To clean the caulking around bathtubs and showers, fill a trigger-spray  bottle with vodka, spray the caulking, let set five minutes and wash clean. . The alcohol in the vodka kills mould and mildew without the dangers  and fumes of chlorine. 3. To clean your eyeglasses, simply wipe the lenses with a soft, clean cloth dampened with vodka. . The alcohol in the vodka cleans the glass and kills germs. 4. Prolong the life of razors by filling a cup with vodka and letting  your safety razor blade soak in the alcohol after shaving. . The vodka disinfects the blade and prevents rusting. 5. Spray vodka on wine stains,.scrub with a brush, and then blot dry. 6. Using a cotton ball, apply vodka to your face.as an astringent to  cleanse the skin and tighten pores. 7. Add a shot or two of vodka to a 12-ounce bottle of shampoo. The alcohol cleanses the scalp, removes toxins from hair, and  stimulates the growth of healthy hair. 8. Fill a trigger-spray bottle with vodka.and spray bees or wasps to kill them. 9 Pour one-half cup vodka and one-half cup water into a Ziploc freezer bag and freeze for a slushy, refreshing ice pack for aches, pain or black eyes. 10. Fill a clean, used mayonnaise jar with freshly packed lavender flowers, fill the jar with vodka, seal the lid tightly and set in the sun for three days. . Strain liquid through a coffee filter, then apply the tincture to aches and pains. 11. To relieve a fever, use a washcloth to rub vodka on your chest and  back as a liniment. 12. To cure foot odor, wash your feet with vodka. 13 Vodka will disinfect and alleviate a jellyfish sting. 14. Pour vodka over an area affected with poison ivy to remove the  urushiol oil from your skin. 15. Swish a shot of vodka over an aching tooth. Allow your gums to absorb some of the alcohol to numb the pain.

No thought of you

'bitching is good' because they are desensitising girls to the effects on others of what they might say or do.

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Girls are being led to believe that making or breaking friendships is like making 'friends' on Facebook, where they are made or dropped at the click of a button.  

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But is also causing more and more people to mistake electronic reactions for human emotions.  

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Social encounters are being reduced to texting or tweeting, which have as much resemblance to genuine relationships as a cartoon does to real life.  

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There seems to be a boundless reservoir of pathologically uncontrollable hatred and violence which the internet has unleashed.

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So where have all these freaks come from? 

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Does social media create all this bitching and bullying, or does it merely provide a platform for what is already out there?

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Probably, both are almost certainly true. 

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The mob has always been brutish, given the absence of any social or legal controls. 

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What the uncontrolled internet has done is provide the mob with an electronic platform.  

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This not only emboldens people to respond to vile messages in a similarly vile manner, but enables them to bully with impunity under the shield of anonymity.  

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Dr Wright, however, is talking more broadly about a culture whose brutalising effects upon girls go way beyond social media.  

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She observed that the female judges in the X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing tv shows were always pitted against each other, with a subtext of meanness or nastiness. 

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Young girls took this at face value, she said, and believed that this was how they too should act.

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There was also an absence of positive role models for young women in celebrity culture where high-profile female friendships, such as that between Paris Hilton and TV personality Nicole Richie, seemed to be based on 'bitchiness, meanness, cruelty and criticising what someone's wearing and how they look'

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When impressionable young girls see this kind of behaviour glorified by the rich and famous, it becomes much harder for them to separate fact from fantasy and to realise there is anything wrong with behaving so atrociously.

Some people think that girls are meaner than boys anyway. 

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Although this is a wild generalisation, it contains an element of truth which you can see if you look at the behaviour of young children.  

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While little boys tend to be more direct, physical and violent, little girls tend to more manipulative, calculating and spiteful behaviour. 

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On the other hand, women have been traditionally believed to be more moral, responsible and prudent than men. 

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But all that has been destroyed, alas, by modern feminism.

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In the 19th century, the early feminist pioneers thought their struggle would count for nothing if women merely used their newfound political freedom to emulate dissolute male behaviour.

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But that is precisely what has happened. 

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With sexual equality being redefined as identicality, women and girls were told that women's liberation meant behaving just like men.  

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This gave rise to the 'ladette' culture among girls of sexual promiscuity, heavy drinking, smoking, swearing and violence.  

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At the same time, women and girls were encouraged to think of themselves as able to do without men, who were vilified on a spectrum ranging from emotionally illiterate to rapist and child abuser.  

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Those pushing non-judgmental 'lifestyle choices' told women and girls it was their right to bring up children without fathers. 

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This amounted to nothing less than telling them they were entitled to cause harm and distress to the children who depended upon their parents for care and protection.

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In other words, as Dr Wright commented, the ladette culture entailed a total lack of both self-respect and respect for others.

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But this surely goes way beyond the behaviour of women. 

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Increasingly, Britain is displaying a general culture of cruelty, indifference and even sadism.

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You can see it on TV in the countless shows - 'reality TV' and others - which seek to exploit precisely those horrible characteristics.

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This cynical and devastating brutalisation of popular attitudes derives in turn from the moral vacuum of the 'me society' which is now to be found in just about every aspect of contemporary life.

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Often, people are genuinely astonished to be told how much hurt they may have caused someone else by their own behaviour. 

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And that's because - frighteningly - more and more are simply unaware of other people's feelings at all.

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You only have to go abroad and then return to become all too aware of how crude Britain has become with its all-pervasive public obscenities, incivilities and yobbishness.

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This is a society which no longer cares about others because it is almost entirely focused on the individual. 

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Any proposed restraint on sexual behaviour, whether legal or social, is considered to be an assault on the fundamental human right to instant gratification.  

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In schools, protecting children's fragile 'self-esteem' is considered so important that all obstacles - such as failure - are removed. 

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In turn, subjects have to be presented as 'relevant' to the child's own life.  

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So instead of helping children negotiate the outside world, the education system makes children feel the world revolves around them. 

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They grow into adults who simply don't register other people's interests at all, and are astounded to be told they may have some responsibility towards acknowledging or even protecting those interests.  

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In intellectual circles, meanwhile, verbal abuse is a commonplace. 

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Insult has been substituted for argument on the left, which vilifies everyone who disagrees with it as right-wing, evil or a nutcase - even in newspaper articles lamenting the culture of abuse.

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All this, however, is only to be expected in a society which has junked Judeo-Christian moral values precisely to live lives of unbridled self-centredness.  

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Moral rules were developed to restrain the worst in human nature and encourage the best. 

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In this post-religious, post-moral society, selflessness, compassion and generosity of spirit have been replaced by selfishness, sentimentality and cruelty.  

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Civilisation is only ever a thin veneer. 

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As Dr Wright said, the combination of the 'me-society' and the new anti-social media is toxic. 

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The internet has peeled back our culture and given us Lord - and Ladettes - of the Flies.

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Melanie Phillips

Gmail - Fwd: -- Plastic bottle caps / Use Them ! -- a good hint - antonyj7@gmail.com

Did this one before, it just might be useful



Gmail - Fwd: -- Plastic bottle caps / Use Them ! -- a good hint - antonyj7@gmail.com:

How to Fold a Shirt in 2 Seconds

Some of us wash things, others don't.
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Some of us iron things others don't.
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Some then fold things.
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For those who do fold things.
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How to Fold a Shirt in 2 Seconds - Video - StumbleUpon
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This is pretty neat!

Causality

What does theosophy have to say about causality and chance?

There’s no such thing as chance.

Nothing happens by chance.

Because nothing happens in isolation.

Everything is part of an intricate web of causal interconnections and interactions.

Two types of action are sometimes distinguished: causal action and distant action.

Causal action means that one thing acts on another through the transference of some kind of energy or force.

Whether physical or nonphysical.

And whether faster or slower than the speed of light.

Distant action, or action at a distance, means that one thing acts on another.

Either instantaneously

Or after a delay, without the transfer of any kind of energy or force.

This idea – whether it’s called ‘acausal synchronicity’ or ‘quantum nonlocality’ or whatever – is an irrational abstraction that explains nothing.

It assumes that no concrete, causal explanation is possible even in principle.

And so it’s little more than a pompous way of saying that things just happen for no reason at all.
 
Two events may seem to occur absolutely simultaneously to us, but one may actually follow the other and be caused by the other through faster-than-light interactions.

If two events do occur simultaneously then obviously one cannot be said to ‘act’ on the other,

Or to be the direct cause of the other.

But simultaneous events, or near-simultaneous events where the first does not exercise a significant causal influence on the other, can still be meaningfully correlated because the causal factors behind both of them are interlinked.

In fact, since all events occurring throughout the universe at any particular instant are interconnected in some way, they are all meaningfully related, but it’s only events that are conspicuously meaningful for us that we call ‘synchronicities’

And some people then invent an ‘acausal connecting principle’ to ‘explain’ them.

A few people have even gone so far as to propose ‘backward causation’

 i.e. that present events can be influenced by future events.

Which basically means that effects can generate their causes.

This is utter twaddle!

David Pratt

Water problems

The world is wasting water on a truly colossal scale, according to the United Nations. 
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More than 80 per cent of the used water on Earth is neither collected nor treated.

The equivalent to the planet leaving the taps full on and the plugs out.
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This and other equally worrying realities were presented to around 35,000 people from 180 countries at the World Water Forum, a gathering held every three years, 

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The forum heard the most disturbing reports yet on the state of the world's rivers, lakes and aquifers.
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Demand for water is expected to increase by 55 per cent over the next four decades, according to a new study. 

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Framing the Water Reform Challenge, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), points out that rapid urbanisation, climate change and the altering global economy are putting growing pressures on water supplies. 
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In around 40 years' time, more than 40 per cent of the world's population – 3.9 billion people – are likely to be living in river areas in the grip of severe "water-stress". 
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The UN warns this could also be felt in parts of Europe, affecting up to 44 million people by 2070.
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Anthony Cox, head of a water programme run by the OECD, said the world is experiencing a water "crisis." 
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More people in cities now don't have access to water than back in 1980. 

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In developing countries, especially, there is a tremendous economic and human cost to this. 
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Since 1900, more than 11 million people have died because of drought, according to the UN, and more than 2 billion have been affected by it .
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More than any other physical hazard.
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The OECD is calling for "urgent reform" of water management and suggests using economic instruments, such as taxation, tariffs and transfers, to encourage greater "water efficiency".
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Olcay Unver, co-ordinator of the United Nations World Water Assessment, said it would be a "game-changer" if the world could tackle environmental challenges without using water-wasting technologies, such as biofuels. 
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Water underpins all aspects of development
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It is the only medium through which all crises can be jointly addressed. 
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It should be seen as an explicit element in any decision-making framework.
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Mr Unver is lead author of a UN report which warns that unprecedented growth in demand for water is threatening global development goals and will exacerbate inequality between countries, sectors and regions. 
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Managing Water under Uncertainty and Risk shows that, while 86 per cent of the population in developing regions are expected to have improved access to safe drinking water by 2015.
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There are still nearly 1 billion people without such access and, in cities, the numbers are growing.
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Water management can no longer be seen as a local issue; it has to be treated as a global one. 

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Water is not only what we drink.
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What we wash with.
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Or what we use to irrigate.
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It is also embedded in the products that we eat, consume and use.
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This gives us a totally different perspective to water.
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It is subject to trade policies.
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And one nation, or one corporation, can have an impact on water shortages somewhere else.

This warning backs up analysis by the Royal Academy of Engineering, which found that Britain and other developed countries depend heavily on importing hidden or "virtual" water from places prone to droughts and shortages. 
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In a 2010 report, the academy estimated that two-thirds of all water that Britain needs comes embedded in imported food, industrial products and clothes such as cotton. 
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In 2008, a study published by the conservation group WWF found that about 60 per cent of Britain's water footprint is felt outside the UK.
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Ashok Chapagain, WWF's senior water adviser, said: "Water scarcity affects at least 2.7 billion people in 201 river basins for at least one month a year. 
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International trade and the globalisation of the supply chain, make water scarcity a global issue.
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But the need is not expected to lessen. 

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Increasingly, underground water sources have been tapped to respond to growing demand and, under what the UN report called a "silent revolution", this process has tripled over the past 50 years. 
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Transnational land acquisition, where countries acquire land outside their jurisdiction to get access to water, has risen from 20m hectares in 2009 to more than 70m today.
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To illustrate the political, technical and financial solutions to the world's water problems, a 400 square metre Village of Solutions will be built inside the Water Forum this year, housing a school, library, town hall, factory and bank. 
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Different funding mechanisms and technologies will be explained.
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However, the forum, organised by the French government, the World Water Council and the City of Marseille, where it is being held, has been criticised for being merely a "talking shop". "
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They will have the big debates there, but it's not where change happens, said Daniel Yeo, WaterAid's senior policy adviser for water security. 

The real situation is that dirty water kills more kids in sub-Saharan Africa than TB, malaria and Aids combined. 

We have the technology to change this; what we need is the political will and the internal capacity to deliver it in developing countries.

Only thinking about money

The emptiness of this way of thinking is clear  
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For it reduces life to money 
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Indeed the well known phrase "Time is money" implies this..
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Yet the reduction of life to money is exactly what is happening through the choices we make.
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And others we are compelled to make.
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It is exactly what is happening whenever technology makes our lives more 'convenient'.
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The reduction of life to money is exactly what is happening through the vast conversion of all forms of social, spiritual, cultural, and natural capital into financial capital.
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This in turn destroys all those institutions and cultural structures built up over the millennia.
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Leaving us with paid for lives.
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Lives devoted to gaining money to pay for all those things that were shared before.
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Charles Eisenstein

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Funny how few seem to have noticed what we have really lost over the last fifty years.
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Increasing separation
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Fewer things shared
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Loss of community
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Less and less time to ourselves.
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And now comes the time where it all begins to flop out into our consciousness.
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Where we begin to see and understand what we have lost.
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A life devoted to money is not a life it is slavery.
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Unthinking slavery to our things.
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Things offering shiny improvements to our lives, what a con.
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When you take away relationships, when you reduce everything to transactions you take away the soul of things.
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Never mind that our current global situation is becoming ever more precarious and will bring us face to face with a very different set of experiences.
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Maybe through these we can find what we have lost.

China and the Pisa tests

China's results in international education tests - which have never been published - are "remarkable", says Andreas Schleicher, responsible for the highly-influential Pisa tests.

These tests, held every three years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, measure pupils' skills in reading, numeracy and science.

Pisa tests - the Programme for International Student Assessment - have become the leading international benchmark.

The findings indicate that China has an education system that is overtaking many Western countries.

While there has been intense interest in China's economic and political development, this provides the most significant insight into how it is teaching the next generation.

The Pisa 2009 tests showed that Shanghai was top of the international education rankings.

But it was unclear whether Shanghai and another chart-topper, Hong Kong, were unrepresentative regional showcases.

Even in rural areas and in disadvantaged environments, you see a remarkable performance. the unpublished results reveal that pupils in other parts of China are also performing strongly.

In particular, the test results showed the "resilience" of pupils to succeed despite tough backgrounds - and the "high levels of equity" between rich and poor pupils.

Shanghai is an exceptional case - and the results there are close to what was expected. 

But what surprises were the results from poor provinces that came out really well. 

The levels of resilience are just incredible.

In China, the idea is so deeply rooted that education is the key to mobility and success.

The results for disadvantaged pupils would be the envy of any Western country.

Mr Schleicher is confident of the robustness of this outline view of China's education standards.

In an attempt to get a representative picture, tests were taken in nine provinces, including poor, middle-income and wealthier regions.

But Mr Schleicher says the results reveal a picture of a society investing individually and collectively in education. 

The Chinese government has so far not allowed the OECD to publish the actual data.

On a recent trip to a poor province in China, he says he saw that schools were often the most impressive buildings.

He says in the West, it is more likely to be a shopping centre.

You get an image of a society that is investing in its future, rather than in current consumption.

There were also major cultural differences when teenagers were asked about why people succeeded at school.

North Americans tell you typically it's all luck. 'I'm born talented in mathematics, or I'm born less talented so I'll study something else.'

In Europe, it's all about social heritage: 'My father was a plumber so I'm going to be a plumber'.

In China, more than nine out of 10 children tell you: 'It depends on the effort I invest and I can succeed if I study hard.'

They take on responsibility. 

They can overcome obstacles and say 'I'm the owner of my own success', rather than blaming it on the system.

This year will see another round of Pisa tests - it's like World Cup year for international education. 

And Mr Schleicher's tips for the next fast-improving countries are Brazil, Turkey and Poland.

Continue reading the main story

Mr Schleicher, a German based in the OECD's Paris headquarters,  has become the godfather of such global education comparisons.

Armed with a spreadsheet and an impeccably polite manner, his opinions receive close attention in the world's

The White House responded to the last Pisa results with President Barack Obama's observation that the nation which "out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow".

The next round of global league tables will test 500,000 pupils in more than 70 countries - with the results to be published late next year.

Education ministers will be looking nervously at the outcome.

In the past, politicians could always say we're doing better than last year - everyone could be a success, he says, describing the tendency for national results to rise each year.

The arrival of Pisa tests sent an icy draught through these insulated corridors.

Perhaps the biggest discomfort of all was for Germany - where "Pisa shock" described the discovery that their much vaunted education system was distinctly average

Education is a field dominated by beliefs and traditions, it's inward looking. 

As a system you can find all kinds of excuses and explanations for not succeeding.

And the biggest change in attitude, he says, has been the United States - once with no interest in looking abroad, now enthusiastically borrowing ideas from other countries.

The idea of Pisa was to take away all the excuses.

People say you can only improve an education system over 25 years - but look at Poland and Singapore, which have improved in a very short time, we've seen dramatic changes.

The biggest lesson of the Pisa tests, he says, is showing there is nothing inevitable about how schools perform.

Poverty is no longer destiny. 

You can see this at the level of economies, such as South Korea, Singapore."

A criticism of such rankings has been that it is unfair. 

How can an impoverished developing country be compared with the stockpiled multiple advantages of a wealthy Scandinavian nation?

Here Mr Schleicher makes a significant distinction. 

It might not be fair, but such comparisons are extremely relevant. "Relevance and fairness are not the same thing". 

He also attacks the idea of accepting lower expectations for poorer children - saying this was the "big trap in the 1970s".

Youngsters in the poorest countries are still competing in a global economy. It's a terrible thing to take away the global perspective.

It was giving the disadvantaged child an excuse - you come from a poor background, so we'll lower the horizon for you, we'll make it easier.

But that child has still got to compete in a national labour market.

This concept of 'fairness' is deeply unfair - because by making life easier for children from difficult circumstances, we lower their life chances.

So why are the rising stars in Asia proving so successful?

Mr Schleicher says it's a philosophical difference - expecting all pupils to make the grade, rather than a "sorting mechanism" to find a chosen few.

He says anyone can create an education system where a few at the top succeed, the real challenge is to push through the entire cohort.

In China, he says this means using the best teachers in the toughest schools.

The shifting in the balance of power will be measured again with Pisa 2012, with pupils sitting tests from Stockholm to Seoul, London to Los Angeles, Ankara to Adelaide.

I don't think of Pisa as being about ranking, it tells you what's possible. 

How well could we be doing?

Decoy

One night a police officer was staking out a particularly rowdy bar for possible DUI violations.

At closing time, he saw a fellow stumble out of the bar.

Trip on the curb and try his keys on five different cars before he found his.

The man sat in the front seat fumbling around with his keys for several minutes.

Meanwhile, all the other patrons left the bar and drove off. 

Finally he started his engine and began to pull away. 

The police officer was waiting for him. 

As soon as he pulled onto the street, the officer stopped him, read him his rights and administered the breathalyzer test to determine his blood-alcohol content.

The results showed a reading of 0.0.

The puzzled officer demanded to know how that could be. 

The driver replied, "Tonight I'm the designated decoy."