Hey, Ross: when you’re done with the floors in your house, I have an idea for your next project.

Today in Science Express, some MIT scientists announced experimental confirmation for a method of relatively efficient non-radiative wireless power transmission.

Basically, they lit up a 60W lightbulb even though the power source was 2 meters away without making anyone sterile in the process, and it only took 150W of power to pull it off. Imagine setting things on your desk (or on a Microsoft Surface) and having them charge automatically. Imagine never having to plug anything into a cigarette lighter, ever. I doubt you’d want to use it for lights or your air conditioner because of the inefficiency and waste involved, but for small, power unintensive appliences it could be pretty convenient.

I would really like to have access to read this paper for free to figure out how they did it, but maybe later I’ll see if the internet has the info. I’d like to know how the efficiency scales with range. I’m also totally into trying to replicate what they did as long as it doesn’t require a superconducting electromagnet or anything because, seriously, plugging things in is a serious drag. Actually, even if it does require a superconducting electromagnet, I could maybe see if my old physics lab has an old one and, like, some liquid helium sitting around.

If you want people to be smarter, all you have to do is tell them that they can make themselves smarter.

Yeah, sounds ridiculous, right? But check it out. It’s a given that most people think that intelligence is fixed - some people are just smarter. Maybe it’s genetics, and maybe it’s upbringing, but once you get to a certain age your intelligence is set.

But most scientific studies do not support that. People actually can make themselves smarter if they work at it. So what would happen if you told people this? How would they act on that knowledge?

Some people did that study. They created two groups of college students, and taught one group that intelligence could be changed. The other group was taught no such thing. The results were fascinating:

Those students who learned about IQ’s malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group. Even more exciting was the finding that Black students benefited more from learning about the malleable nature of intelligence than did White students, showing that this intervention may successfully counteract stereotype threat.

Can this sort of thing counteract the effect of stereotypes enough to make a real difference? In a later study, the evidence suggests that it can. This same type of study was done on seventh graders. The control group learned about memory strategies, and the test group learned about the possibility of intelligence development.

As compared to the control group, students who learned about intelligence’s malleability had higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and better grades in mathematics. Indeed, students who were members of vulnerable groups (e.g., those who previously thought that intelligence cannot change, those who had low prior mathematics achievement, and female students) had higher mathematics grades following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while the grades of similar students in the control group declined. In fact, girls who received the intervention matched and even slightly exceeded the boys in math grades, whereas girls in the control group performed well below the boys.

Now, who knows if this is real. More studies are needed. But IF it is true, it absolutely must be part of the curriculums of schools, starting at the lowest levels. I mean, I would contribute money to a campaign to put PSA’s on TV telling people that they can become smarter if they want to be. I view this as a really big deal.

Like Midas, I recently ventured to my local multiplex to check out Al Gore’s lesson in effective presentation skills: An Inconvenient Truth.

Now, being the skeptical sort of guy that I am, I naturally started looking for movies that show the other side of the story. Fortunately, I found two!

“Is carbon dioxide a harmful air pollutant, or is it an amazingly effective aerial fertilizer?”

Great question! The answers are provided in the following documentaries, available at the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change:

I mean, they’re not called Greenhouse Gasses because they make everything brown, are they? No!

“Evidence is presented to show how current CO2 levels, which are 35 percent higher than in the pre-industrial era, have greatly enhanced the growth of trees and other plants. Results from controlled studies show how a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is expected to occur over the next century, will boost crop yields, increase the water-use efficiency of much of earth’s vegetation, and enhance the productivity of forests. The impact and implications of such change are far-reaching.”

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On Monday, Maura and I finally got out to see An Inconvenient Truth up at Potomac Mills with our good friends Jon and Ingrid. They are soon to be moving out to California, where Jon is going to study for his PhD in Oceanography, so they were excellent people to go see this particular movie with.

If you haven’t gone to see it, you should. It may very well not be playing near you, in which case you could always download it illegally off of the internet, not that I am advocating that. It is a pretty entertaining movie which boils down to basically an engaging lecture on the global warming situation, its causes, evidence, and consequences. It has a teensy bit of Al Gore biography in it, but it isn’t really an advertisement for him - if anything, it’s an advertisement for Apple Keynote. Go see it!

But this article isn’t really about the movie at all. In fact, if you are the kind of person who doesn’t believe in science or in personal responsibility, it doesn’t really have to be about global warming either. At the least, this is an article about how to save money. Add some idealism, and it could be an article about how to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil. And if you are one of those lucky few who does believe in anthropogenic climate change, well, here is how to save the world.

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Times Dispatch Story

Wilder: Braves balking on downtown ballpark
Braves official ‘blown away’ by mayor’s talk

This story blows my mind. I don’t even know what’s happening- there seems to be utter confusion about the whole project and/or the RTD writer is terrible. This story should be important to anyone who cares about the city of Richmond. Whether you agree or disagree with plans, or love or hate baseball, this project will have a major impact on the city (positive in some areas in negative in others, no doubt). Having read the article, I am more confused than ever about what’s happening with this project, but I’m still willing to throw in my opinions and interpretations of the latest saga….

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Seriously check this out, on my wife’s W2:

Insert finger here and slide along this edge…

Welcome regulars and guests to Haduken’s first, and Virginia’s umpteenth Virginia Blog Carnival. The VBC offers “just a sample of the topics Virginia bloggers have been writing about during the week. We hope everyone’s curiosity will be piqued to read more of the selected posts, thereby giving more exposure to each participating blogger’s site.” See it’s like a celebration of Virginia bloggerism. Get stoked, because here we go.

Non-political

From RiverCity Rapids, Snoopy extols the need for a downtown Richmond organizing committee. Here I’ll let him say it:

We need a new committee to work with the many diverse and disparate groups, people, and businesses to advocate their needs - and the overall need for the city to have a healthy downtown - to the city government. Little has been done in my mind or from what I see to indicate what we have now is adequate.

Read the whole entry.

Roci at Rocianante’s Burdens doesn’t see the need to send 600M$ into space to explore Pluto. I think space exploration is awesome. If you can get as much bang for you buck out of this mission as you did with Galileo (RIP) then blast off!

Big Daddy Chad from Commonwealth Conservative submits a pretty funny caption content. My favorite: Passions in Canada were high on election eve.

Political

SpankThatDonkey in his piece – voted longest VBC title ever – Last Donkey Gov to rebut Bush on State of the Union Speech said Hussein had WMD !!!! says that Tim Kaine will be the democrat of choice to call out “the Greatest Sitting Republican President since Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush.” SpankThatDonkey.com also has a nice picture of Miss Virginia winning the Miss America Swimsuit contest.

Anyone who exists around these parts is probably familiar with the anti-civil-union-slash-pro-family amendment that’s going around. Ben Kyber from Blue in VA brings to our attention an attempt made by Del. Sickles (D-43rd) to clear up the ballot question regarding the amendment. He also thinks “Republicans don’t really trust the people“. A good read.

An author, presumably Matt, from Matt’s Word, calls Harry Belafonte an outspoken anti-Bush blabbermouth.

Doug over at Below The Beltway brings up and goes off on a recent situation in NYC involving Kelo. With eminent domain being such a powerful yet unpopular political power I’m surprised to see politicians willing to use it. Doug also submitted another post here dealing with the evil empire Wal-Mart.

I had a professor in college who devoted an entire class at the end of the semester to answering any question his students asked of him. Any question that was not about Religion or Politics. Early Riser at Early Riser talks about both in his post Religion & Politics. The wikipedia article on Unitarian Universalism may or may not be helpful to those not familiar with the tradition.

Xyba(?) over at Once More Into the Breach posts a commentary on the Lobby Reform Act.

Things I thought were great but weren’t submitted

• Waldo’s post on his time spent at the House Appropriations public hearing. Honestly, it isn’t boring like it sounds.
• Peyton Manning sucks at the big game from SicSemperTyrannis.
• A review of House of Leaves from flying cars dot net.
• A Super Mario Brothers video tribute from Indelible.
• Harvey family fundraising thoughts from SLANTblog.
• Get the hell out of my way during a fire drill from Double Vision

And there you have it folks. The umpteenth edition of the Virginia Blog Carnival. Take a quick look, before you go, at the ratio of political to non-political entries submitted. Also note one of Waldo’s founding ideas of the VBC: “It’d be a great way to get attention for lesser-known blogs, and for politically-minded people to discover the blog world outside of politics.” So lets work on that non-political bloggers!

Technorati Tags: Virginia

While checking out RVAblogs, I saw that there were a couple articles about teachers over at bacon’s rebellion. I am eating lunch at my desk because I was stood up by my lunch dates, so I figured I’d talk about something I’ve thought about before: teacher salaries.

While many people argue for raising them, I’d say it’s the way you raise them that is most important. You need to raise potential salaries the most for the highest performers, measure performance intelligently, and create promotional opportunities to really see benefits from pay raises.
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Has anyone heard about this? As the title suggest I am either instilled with a healthy southern xenophobia, live under a rock, or this hasn’t been covered by the MSM. All are totally possible.

Apparently two (Muslim) Parisian teens crawled into an electrical relay while fleeing police and were — wait for it — instantly electrocuted. I mean duh. Riots ensued; today is actually day six of rioting. The whole situation is very confusing so here is the quote from wikipedia since I am lazy:

The local prosecutor, Francois Molins, said that though the two teenagers believed they were being chased, the police were actually chasing other suspects after a reported break-in in the area.

This in Paris is, obviously, a reason for the youth of Paris to rise up and throw of their — presumably — deliciously baked shackles. I mean long live the proletariat!

The world is weird people.

My mind is blown. George Takei is gay.

Also, and I sort of already knew this, he was in a Japanese internment camp in the US during WW2. That’s when we rounded up all the Japanese-Americans we could find and rolled them into concentration camps after Pearl Harbour. You know, just in case.

Sulu is one of the cooler characters in TOS. In The Undiscovered Country he gets his own ship (the Excelsior) which he uses to help out his old crewmates when they get into trouble with that dirty old Klingon guy who is basically Khan from the second movie with an eyepatch and some bumps on his head. Sulu and the Excelsior show up just in time (after speaking the titular line of this post) to take a few hits (”Let’s give them something else to shoot at”) while Kirk and the boys… well, I won’t ruin it for you.

I always thought that he made an excellent captain. Anyways, good for you, man!

Halloween is coming, and so I have decided that Haduken should have a pumpkin carve-off. So carve or paint you pumpkins take a pic and send it to Max (I’m making him the judge). The only rule is that you can’t use the stencils that are sold in stores. Some of you may know from my Pinky-the-gay-bear-face-pumpkin that I take this seriously, consider that me throwing down the gauntlet. Winner’s pic to be posted on or near the 31st.

I’m not even kidding, and neither is Samuel L. Jackson.

Richmond City, and The Counties™ have announced voluntary water conservation. Basically this only applies to those of us with houses and things to water – such as grass and crepe myrtles. The guidelines are as follows:

• No watering on Mondays
• Odd addresses water on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday
• Even addresses water on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday

So not exciting news, but important news to follow.

Tonight there was a live (for the east coast) Red Cross benefit telethon broadcast. I went to a call center and took calls from people who wanted to donate, and Kanye West decided to be counterproductive.

Kanye West (AP Photo/Michael Kim)

I and many others found out about Kanye’s brilliant scheme to convince fewer people to donate money from callers who were annoyed by it. A significant quantity of people took it upon themselves to pick up the phone, call a telethon volunteer, and give him or her a stern talking-to because Mr. West can’t bring himself to just follow the script.

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