Deadly Gas, Cheap Power

Magma: A stream of magma from a nearby volcano flowed into Lake Kivu in 2002. Lava like this could cause the lake to release a huge cloud of toxic gas. J. naegelen/reuters/scanpix

To live on the banks of Africa’s Lake Kivu is to risk your life every day. Large amounts of methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide gas are dissolved in various layers of the lake’s deep waters. Scientists warn that a disturbance such as a volcanic eruption or earthquake could cause a redistribution of the lake’s waters and the gases in them. This shuffling, known as an overturn, could unleash an invisible, suffocating cloud of these compounds—a rare event known as a limnic eruption—killing as many as two million people nearby. Now, rather than simply wait for disaster, scientists hope to put some of that gas to use, as cheap energy.

Lake Kivu, located on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is one of Africa’s largest lakes. It covers 1,040 square miles and is nearly 1,600 feet deep. The region is particularly volcanically active, and magma and groundwater feed gases and minerals into the lake.

Carbon dioxide dissolves best in high-pressure, low-temperature water like that at the bottom of the lake—and the CO₂ makes the water more dense, so it stays at the deepest levels. Dissolved methane, hydrogen sulfide and minerals also increase the water’s density. Organic materials, such as dead plants and fish, decompose on the lakebed, producing additional methane. As a result, the bottom of the lake contains layers of pressurized solutions of water and gas—a lot like a bottle of soda—while the less-dense layers of water on top act like a cap.

Over time, the deepest waters of the lake have accumulated about 60 cubic miles of CO₂ and about 14 cubic miles of methane. With these gases mostly trapped at the bottom, the lake’s dark depths are a time bomb.

Do Not Disturb

A disturbance of the lake could have the same explosive effect that occurs when you open the top of a soda bottle or pop a champagne cork—a bubbling over of liquid and gas. In the lake, the cause of the sudden release might be an earthquake or the immersion of hot lava that disturbs the layers of water in the lake. Large amounts of gas would bubble up and, just like it happens in the bottles, the contents of the lake would surge up and spill over.

The lake lies in the Great Rift Valley, where Africa is splitting apart as two tectonic plates move away from each other, making it an earthquake hot zone. Early this year, there were two serious quakes, which killed a total of 40 people.

There have also been volcanic incidents at Lake Kivu in the past. On January 17, 2002, a stream of lava from Mt. Nyiragongo, a volcano approximately 11 miles from the lake, burned its way through the lakeside city of Goma, forcing between 300,000 and 400,000 people to flee and destroying several nearby areas. When the lava hit the water, it created a huge cloud of steam, and some scientists worried that a deadly overturn would result. Luckily, the lava sank only about 300 feet into the lake—not deep enough to release a toxic cloud of CO₂ and methane.

Contract and Extract: An Israeli company, Ludan Energy Overseas, is one of the contractors working to set up a facility that can exploit the lake’s gas to produce electricity. giora shafir/Ludan engineering ltd.

Had the molten rock sank to a depth of 1,000 feet, it might have unleashed a catastrophe like the one that hit Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. In the course of just a few hours, Lake Nyos released enough CO₂ to kill 1,700 people as far as 15 miles from the lake, suffocating them in a cloud of dense carbon dioxide. The event may have been triggered by a landslide, but the exact cause is unknown. And Lake Nyos wasn’t the first such disaster. In 1984, an overturn at Lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, killed 37 people.

Samples taken from the sediments on the bottom of Lake Kivu and from deposits on its rocks reveal that overturns like these have, in fact, occurred there within the past 5,000 years—and some scientists believe that another could strike within the next century unless something is done.

Putting Gas in the Machine

In Cameroon, the solution has been to install pumps that gradually pull gas from the bottom of Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun and release it at the water’s surface. Researchers now realize that a similar method could bring the methane gas in Lake Kivu up into a power plant onshore. The lake contains enough gas to deliver inexpensive, clean electricity to the region for many years. A preliminary project is now in operation, and the governments of the two countries that share the lake are hoping to produce large amounts of power as soon as 2020. Rwandan officials estimate that Lake Kivu could supply electricity to almost the whole of the country for more than 40 years, with some left over for the Congo.

Both countries have drafted an agreement to put Lake Kivu’s methane to good use, and a number of investors, including the World Bank and contractors such as COWI, a Danish consulting group, are working to get the project under way.

From a technical perspective, the process should be simple. A local brewery used methane from the lake bottom for many years to produce its energy, proving that the gas can be brought up from the lakebed and used to power businesses and homes in the area. In the 18 years before it closed, in 2004, the brewery relied almost exclusively on power produced by the lake’s gas.

Pumping Lake Nyos: corbis/scanpix

In principle, all that’s required is sinking a pipe deep enough to reach the floor of the lake and pumping up the lowest layer of water. As the water rises, its pressure falls, and it releases bubbles of methane, CO₂ and other gases. The bubbles increase the buoyancy of the water and force it upward and out of the pipe, creating a partial vacuum that pulls more bottom water up; eventually, the pump is no longer necessary. The methane can then be separated from the CO₂ and hydrogen sulfide and sent to a power plant, where it will be burned to provide energy for turbines.

Complicating matters, however, is the fact that the lake’s CO₂ is not useful, and releasing the greenhouse gas in the process would contribute to global warming. It’s the price that must be paid, say those involved, for avoiding a deadly disaster. “If we don’t do anything, there will be an eruption,” says Finn Hirslund, a senior engineer at COWI. “The question is how to avoid that the right way.” For now, the plan is to pump the CO₂ back into the upper levels of the lake water, from which it will slowly dissipate into the air.

A Bottomless Tank

Scientists and engineers estimate that there are almost 10 cubic miles of methane available for extraction in Lake Kivu, and in time they expect that installations will be built to pump gases up from several locations in the deepest parts of the lake.

The Rwandan and Congolese governments hope that by 2020 methane from the lake will provide 400 megawatts of electricity to be divided equally between the two countries. According to one company involved in the project, the resulting power will cost a fourth of the current price of electricity in Rwanda.

In the meantime, as organic material sinks to the bottom of Lake Kivu and decomposes, more methane will continue to be produced—about 3.2 billion cubic feet a year. But rather than threatening the lives of those who make their homes on its shores, the lake could, in fact, be a source of livelihood in the region.

Lake Nyos: In 1986, gas released from Lake Nyos in Cameroon killed more than 1,700 people and thousands of animals. corbis/scanpix

Africa’s Other Killer Lakes

Researchers know of three lakes in the world with the geological structure that make them capable of trapping and releasing deadly amounts of gas. All three lakes are in Africa, and in the past 25 years, two of them have demonstrated just how dangerous they are. The disasters at Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun in the 1980s were the first indications to scientists that the phenomenon was even possible. Pumps have been installed in both lakes to pull gas from their depths.

Lake Nyos is located in northwestern Cameroon. Under its waters lies a pocket of volcanic magma, out of which CO₂ seeps and dissolves into the lake’s water. On August 21, 1986, something—most likely a landslide, but possibly an earthquake or thunderstorm—triggered the release of a large amount of CO₂ from the lake. The gas spread up to 15 miles from the lake in a thick, suffocating cloud. Some people managed to escape, but 1,746 died, and thousands of animals were killed by a lack of oxygen. On the advice of scientists,
a pumping system was installed in the lake in 2001.
Lake Monoun is near Lake Nyos in Cameroon. On the night of August 15, 1984, people living near the lake heard a strange boom. It came from the lake, which released a CO₂ cloud that spread out and suffocated 37 people, including 10 people in a truck (according to published reports, two people sitting on the truck’s roof, above the CO₂ cloud, survived). What triggered the disturbance is still unknown. Pumps were installed in 2003 to avert a repeat disaster.

Why no Snow Lightning?

Light Show: Wintry conditions limit lightning strikes to an average of just six times a year across the country: Dan Farrall/Getty Images

Nearly every summer rainstorm comes with thunder and lightning. Yet during even the blusteriest blizzard, there's nary a spark in the air. It can occur (although snow lightning strikes just six times a year on average in the U.S.), but winter air doesn't make for prime lightning-forming conditions, says meteorologist Robin Tanamachi of the University of Oklahoma.

During the summer, the lower atmosphere is full of warm, humid air. Above that, it's cold and full of ice crystals. As the warm air rises, it carries water vapor with it, these molecules brush against the ice crystals, and this friction creates an electric field in the cloud -- like scuffing your feet across a carpet. The ice crystals gain a slight positive charge, and the updraft carries them to the top of the cloud, giving the cloud's bottom a net negative charge. Once the difference between the negatively charged cloud bottom and the positively charged ground becomes great enough, a bolt arcs between them.

But in snowy months, the atmosphere is cold and dry throughout, so there's no updraft to create friction within the clouds. Wind stirs the molecules and crystals some, but that action rarely generates a strong enough electric field to spark lightning.

Mercedes Split View LCD allows both passengers to view different things

A single LCD monitor on the dashboard lets a driver view the nav screen while a passenger catches a movie

By Mike Spinelli Posted 12.12.2008 at 10:46 am 0 Comments

Mercedes-Benz Splitview: Mercedes-Benz will offer its new Splitview, a dashboard-mounted display screen that allows driver and passenger to view two different images simultaneously, on its flagship S-Class sedan in mid-2009. Mercedes-Benz

Picture this: You're motoring down the highway, following route guidance on the navigation screen, when the guy in the passenger seat decides he wants to watch Raising Arizona on DVD. Mercedes-Benz and Bosch jointly devised a novel gizmo can satisfy both viewing requests, without a sword and the smarts of Solomon. It's a dual-view LCD monitor system called, elegantly enough, Splitview.

Splitview is a dashboard-mounted display screen that allows driver and passenger to view two different images simultaneously. Here's how it works: The eight-inch active matrix, backlit color monitor nests a second image feed on adjacent pixels. A masking filter divides the combined image such that, depending on seating position, only one set of the pixels can be seen.

With Splitview, the driver has access to information from Mercedes's control and display system, called COMAND, on the display, while the front passenger can use a remote control to watch DVDs, TV channels or music videos, though the car's speakers or via headphones. Mercedes-Benz says it will introduce Splitview in the company's flagship S-Class sedan in mid 2009.

Cancelling Cables

Two new ways to send HD video to your TV without wires

By Sean Captain Posted 12.11.2008 at 5:55 pm 0 Comments

Flat-panels were supposed to eliminate the hulking television cabinet. But they are tethered to boxes -- cable tuners, disc players, A/V receivers -- that fill a big piece of furniture. A wireless connection lets you at least stash those peripherals out of the way. We tried out the first two cable-free HD technologies: one that uses radio waves and another that piggybacks on your home's electrical wiring. We tested them by sending video 25 feet from both a Blu-ray disc player and a Sencore VP401, a machine that produces test patterns that break up conspicuously if there are any reception problems.

Through the Air

Sony Bravia Wireless Link
The Tech
Sony's Wireless Link uses a technology called WHDI to send data over a signal similar to Wi-Fi. WHDI favors data bits with a big effect on the picture -- say, ones that change the color of an object. It may sacrifice others, like bits that subtly affect hue.

The Results
WHDI certainly loses a lot of data. We saw that clearly with test patterns: Some finely detailed images stressed the system so severely that the screen went blank. But with a Blu-ray movie, video and audio seemed crisp and fluid. The errors in the signal were undetectable to a casual viewer.

EDITORS' RANK: 8/10

A dark scene from the No Country for Old Men Blu-ray disc over a standard HDMI connection:

Through the Walls

Acoustic Research HDP100 Powerlink

The same scene over the Acoustic Research HD Powerlink. Notice the blockiness in the dark background:

The Tech
HD Powerlink converts high-def video into a format called motion-JPEG and sends it over Ethernet signals through the power wires in your home's walls.

The Results
Running over modern home wiring, test patterns looked almost perfect, but actual video had minor problems. Dark areas onscreen, such as shadowy interiors, often appeared blocky, and colors overall were slightly faded. Both could be from errors in converting video to and from the M-JPEG format. We also heard a faint hum from the TV's speakers.

EDITORS' RANK: 6/10

Obama Clashes with Nasa Moon Program

The space agency's transition to an Obama presidency is not going smoothly, and the future of the moon program is uncertain

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin: NASA Kennedy Space Center

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is not playing nice with the Obama transition team, according to a post by Robert Block of the Orlando Sentinel. He reports that Griffin is resisting efforts by former NASA associate administrator Lori Garver, who heads Obama's space transition team, to "look under the hood" of the space program. Griffin has also reportedly instructed aerospace industry representatives to say only good things about NASA's plans for returning humans to the moon.

The current program calls for retiring the space shuttle in 2010 and sending the yet-to-be-built Ares I rocket and Orion capsule to the moon by 2020. But as Block reports elsewhere in the Sentinel, Ares is in serious trouble. It may not be powerful enough to boost Orion into orbit, and engineers are concerned that the rocket may crash into its support tower during liftoff.

Some engineers are recommending that Ares be canceled, and Garver's team has inquired about how much money could be saved by doing so. Even if the Obama administration chooses to stay the course on Ares, there is little doubt that change is coming to NASA.

By Dawn Stover Posted 12.11.2008 at 5:48 pm 6 Comments

Credit Card Crackdown coming soon to protect consumers

The Fed is set to vote Thursday on a number of key protections for credit-card customers.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Cash-strapped consumers might get some welcome news on Thursday when the Federal Reserve Board votes to rein in controversial credit card practices.

The proposed rules, which have received overwhelming consumer support, prohibit banks from practices like raising the interest rates on pre-existing credit card balances unless a payment is over 30 days late, and applying payments in a way that maximizes interest penalties.

The Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration, are all expected to approve the regulation. It's unclear when the rules would take effect.

"It will fundamentally change the relationship between cardholders and banks," said Peter Garuccio, a spokesman from the American Bankers Association.

If approved, the Fed's rules will mean an end to double-cycle billing, which averages out the balance from two previous bills. That means that consumers who carry a balance can get hit with retroactive interest on their previous month's bill - even if they've already paid that off.

Consumers would also be given a reasonable amount of time to make payments, and payments would be applied to higher-rate balances first to reduce interest penalties and fees.

Credit card statements would clearly list the time of day that a payment is due, and any changes to accounts would be in bold or listed separately.

And, finally, no more universal defaults, a policy which allows credit card issuers to increase the interest rate on one card if a customer misses a payment on another card.

Trouble keeping up

Consumer advocacy groups say credit-card reform couldn't come soon enough. Travis Plunkett, the legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America said new rules are "essential" at a time when "so many Americans falling behind on their loans."

In the midst of a credit crunch, Americans have about $976.3 billion in revolving credit and 4.9% of all credit cards were delinquent in the third quarter, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve.

"This industry has been mostly deregulated since the 1980s and we've seen the effects of that," said, Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRatings.com, a consumer advocacy group. "It hasn't worked."

Representatives from the banking industry argue that while many of the changes are consumer friendly, there might be a downside to increased regulation that should not go unnoted.

"By limiting the ability of issuers to use risk-based pricing, the result is likely to be higher prices and less available credit," explained Peter Garuccio, a spokesman from the American Bankers Association.

Not only would card companies have to impose higher interest rates across the board to offset losses, but low introductory offers and zero percent balance transfers are likely to be scaled back as well, he said.

Some consumer advocates argue alternatively that these reforms don't go far enough. Plunkett said he hopes Congress will pass more sweeping credit-card reforms next year that address a number of other "abusive practices" including "reckless lending to young people and high fees."

Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Carolyn Maloney have both proposed credit-card legislation that would impose even more constraints on issuers.

Madoff Mess is a real Black Eye for Banks

Chismillionaire says: "At least this collapse didn't steal from the average non sophisticated investor, rather the Palm Beach set and bankers who should have known better but who were too inept or careless to look after their own money.
People had been complaining to the SEC for almost a decade that the returns generated by Madoff were not possible with his holdings without front running or outright fraud. This was not a shock to some.

Charity begins at home. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is."

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The losses in the Madoff mess are still being tallied. But even if U.S. financial firms avoid a big hit, this episode won't exactly bolster their tattered reputation.

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities collapsed Thursday, when Madoff, the founder of the big broker-dealer, was arrested on a charge that he ripped investors off to the tune of $50 billion in a long-running pyramid scheme. The failure of Madoff's firm may have cost thousands of investors their life savings.

So far, none of the big losers have come from the ranks of major U.S. commercial and investment banks. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) declined to comment on their possible exposure to Madoff, and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) didn't immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

Investors may soon find out if Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) are on the hook for any potential Madoff-related losses when the New York-based investment firms report their fourth-quarter numbers. Goldman's results are due out this morning and Morgan reports its results on Wednesday.

Shares of these and many other banks tumbled again Monday, with JPMorgan falling nearly 8% following a downgrade from Merrill Lynch. Analyst Guy Moszkowski cited depressed capital markets in cutting JPMorgan to "underperform," essentially a sell.

It's clear that uncovering a massive fraud in the middle of the worst year for investors in decades hasn't helped sentiment. Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg noted "the hit to investor confidence from the Madoff affair" in his morning memo Monday.

The biggest losses to this point have been borne by the fund-of-hedge-fund firms that steered wealthy investors' dollars to Madoff's firm, and some big overseas banks.

HSBC (HBC), the big London-based bank, said Sunday it could lose "in the region of US$1 billion" from its financing of institutional clients who invested their funds with Madoff. Other foreign banks that face possible Madoff-related losses include BNP Paribas of France and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Those aren't the only institutions that will get a black eye in the collapse of the Madoff empire. Banco Santander, the Spanish bank that's the biggest financial institution in the euro zone, said it had invested $3 billion of client funds with Madoff through its Optimal Investment Services unit.

But if these sums aren't enough to threaten institutions with balance sheets running into the trillions of dollars, they certainly do nothing to shake the growing suspicion that the finance industry has failed spectacularly in its duty to guide its customers away from problematic investments.

"There has just been a lack of common sense," says Mark Sunshine, the president of middle-market lender First Capital in West Palm Beach, Fla. "No one has bothered to do the math."

The 'smart' money burned more than once

As audacious as the alleged Madoff scam was, Sunshine says it was no less breathtaking than another financial fleecing that was uncovered earlier this fall: the federal fraud case against Tom Petters, the Minneapolis entrepreneur who was arrested this month on charges he defrauded investors of as much as $3 billion over a more than decade-long span.

While Madoff's secretiveness and his years of unusually steady gains now appear to have been surefire marks of investment returns that were too good to be true, Sunshine says the claim behind the alleged Petters scam was even harder to believe.

An informant told federal authorities that Petters had, in one case, lured investors by promising outsize returns on name-brand electronics gear that the Petters group was buying for the purpose of selling to big-box retailers.

This, Sunshine says, should have raised red flags among investors because carrying out such a plan "would have required a warehouse the size of New Jersey."

"The whole thing was just beyond ludicrous," he says.

Yet according to an indictment filed Dec. 1 in Minnesota federal district court, Petters managed to keep his scheme going for 13 years. Along the way, he picked up stakes in well-known companies such as Polaroid and direct marketer Fingerhut.

Petters' companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October. They have been sued by several investors including Ritchie Capital Management, which claims to have lost $220 million in the Petters case.

The losses in the Madoff and Petters cases show that when the market tides roll out -- stock indexes worldwide have lost between 40% and 50% of their value this year -- even supposedly astute investors are suddenly exposed.

And regulators' failure to probe the Madoff investment business, despite warnings filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as much as a decade ago, will do nothing to increase investors' confidence in the fairness of markets.

That's not likely to change until it's clear that Washington is ready to exert itself by vigorously enforcing current laws, let alone adopt new ones.

"The SEC looks out to lunch on this one," Sunshine says. "Investors can make their own stupid mistakes -- they don't need help from regulators not doing their jobs.

Goldman Sachs posts $2.1 Billion Loss

Venerated Wall Street firm slips into the red for the first time since going public in 1999; loss bigger than expected

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Goldman Sachs suffered its first loss as a publicly traded company Tuesday, serving as yet another reminder that no corner of Wall Street has escaped the ongoing financial crisis.

The once-revered investment bank said it lost $2.1 billion, or $4.97 a share during the fourth quarter, representing the company's first loss since it went public in 1999.

Few analysts were expecting the company to maintain its impressive run given the recent market turmoil across financial markets and the upheaval in the nation's financial services sector. Still, the results were worse than expected. Consensus estimates were for a loss of $1.63 billion, or $3.73 a share for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' chairman and CEO, blamed tough market conditions for the loss.

"Our results for the fourth quarter reflect extraordinarily difficult operating conditions, including a sharp decline in values across virtually every asset class," he said in a statement.

Investors, however, were encouraged by the news. Shares of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), which have lost 69% of their value so far this year, rose 5% in pre-market trading Tuesday.

Rival Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) is also expected to report a loss for the quarter when it delivers its results Wednesday.

Hussman Funds Weekly Market Comment- 12/15

Recognition, Fear and Revulsion

Stogie Guys Reviews: Perdomo Reserve 10th Anniversary Champagne Robusto

Monday, December 15th, 2008

You won’t find much information online about this relatively obscure cigar. Perdomo’s extensive website doesn’t even mention the blend, and my emails to the company have gone unanswered so far. All this is a shame, especially since I was pretty pleased with the three Reserve 10th Anniversary Champagne Robustos that I smoked for this review.

Here’s what I do know: The line features a Cuban-seed binder and filler from Nicaragua and a triple-fermented Connecticut shade wrapper. As with many anniversary cigars, this one was created to celebrate Tabacalera Perdomo’s ten years in the business.

The five inch by 54 ring gauge Robusto looks like many Connecticut shade smokes, albeit save for the orange-yellow cellophane in which it is wrapped. The wrapper leaf is oily, light, and clean, and the stick is firm and tightly packed with an overall feel of quality. The unique band is as huge as it is ornate.

Now for those of you who consider yourselves too macho for Connecticut shade tobacco, don’t write off the Reserve 10th Anniversary Champagne just yet—this unassuming stick packs a lot more flavor than you’d think. While the main profile of sweet hay and grass is predictable, it is partnered with heavier, more unexpected notes of pepper, smoky wood, and cereals.

I don’t want to give you the impression this Perdomo rivals a 601 Oscuro. It doesn’t. But it incorporates more complexity and flavor than many Connecticuts, even after the taste settles down after the midway point.

While the construction isn’t impeccable, it’s better than most cigars that sell for around $130 per box of 25. The white ash is a little too flakey as it layers gorgeously atop the fairly straight burn. The draw is deliberate but easy. Despite some reviews I’ve read, I had no trouble keeping my three samples lit.

My overall verdict is that this is a solid, multifaceted smoke with more taste than meets the eyes. Don’t pass up the Perdomo Reserve 10th Anniversary Champagne Robusto as a delicious early evening cocktail smoke. I give it three and a half stogies out of five.

Beekman Bar and Books reopens in the NYC after 10 year hiatus

Remember Beekman Bar And Books? It's back. And you can smoke.

The swank Manhattan lounge opened in 1993, near the start of the cigar boom, and closed in 1999 as cigar sales cooled. The lounge is back, at its original location on First Avenue, between 49th and 50th streets, and thanks to clever work by its owners, cigars are welcome—with a twist.

The New York City smoking ban prohibits opening a new cigar bar, or expanding an old one, so Bar And Books owner Raju S. Mirchandani and Beekman's managing partner (and mixologist) Ben Scorah turned to their legal team to find a way to puff in peace in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's antismoking New York. They came up with a special cigar room, down a hallway from the bar and lounge proper, with a ventilation system that whisks the smoke from your corona to the very top of the building. They also will keep employees out of the lounge. To enjoy a drink with your cigar, you must order it from the bar, or a member of the waitstaff, and take it inside the smoking room.

"Smoking in New York is a privilege," said Scorah. The cigar room, decorated with ornate bottles of rum, Champagne and Cognac, has two tables, and four additional seats by a rail. The tables must be reserved in advance.

The bar and lounge, which had its grand reopening last night, is decorated with dark woods, leather-clad seats and small round tables, all of which are surrounded by a library of antique books, the Bar And Books trademark. The bar features an array of fine cocktails and cigars for sale, the latter ranging in price from $8 (for a Partagas Purito) to $69 (for a Zino Platinum Crown Series Scepter Chubby Tubo).

The Bar And Books chain consists of three New York City locations (there is also one on Lexington Avenue, in the 70s, and a downtown location in the meatpacking district called Hudson Bar And Books) as well as two venues in Prague, Czech Republic.

Posted: Thursday, December 11, 2008

By David Savona

Hawking Predicts Discovery of Alien Life: But Asks, Will It be Carbon Based?

On the 50th anniversary of NASA, Stephen Hawking, Newton's heir as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, answered the question, “Are we alone?”

His answer was short and simple; probably not!

Hawking presented three options. One, being that there is no life out there, and two – somewhat pessimistically, but subsequently, a little too realistic – being that when intelligent life gets smart enough to send signals in to space, it is also busying itself with making nuclear bombs.

Hawking, known not only for his sharp mind, but his sharp sense of humor, prefers option number three. "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," he quickly added: "Some would say it has yet to occur on earth."

Alien abductions, in Hawking’s view, are nothing more than claims made by “weirdos,” but we should be careful if we ever happen upon an alien. Because alien life may not have DNA like ours, Hawking warns "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."

Other prominent astrobiologists have warned that we humans may be blinded by our familiarity with carbon and Earth-like conditions. In other words, what we’re looking for may not even lie in our version of a “sweet spot”. After all, even here on Earth, one species “sweet spot” is another’s species worst nightmare. In any case, it is not beyond the realm of feasibility that our first encounter with extraterrestrial life will not be a solely carbon-based occasion.

Alternative biochemists speculate that there are several atoms and solvents that could potentially spawn life. Because carbon has worked for the conditions on Earth, we speculate that the same must be true throughout the universe. In reality, there are many elements that could potentially do the trick. Even counter-intuitive elements such as arsenic may be capable of supporting life under the right conditions. Even on Earth some marine algae incorporate arsenic into complex organic molecules such as arsenosugars and arsenobetaines. Several other small life forms use arsenic to generate energy and facilitate growth. Chlorine and sulfur are also possible elemental replacements for carbon. Sulfur is capably of forming long-chain molecules like carbon. Some terrestrial bacteria have already been discovered to survive on sulfur rather than oxygen, by reducing sulfur to hydrogen sulfide.

Nitrogen and phosphorus could also potentially form biochemical molecules. Phosphorus is similar to carbon in that it can form long chain molecules on its own, which would conceivably allow for formation of complex macromolecules. When combined with nitrogen, it can create quite a wide range of molecules, including rings.

So what about water? Isn’t at least water essential to life? Not necessarily. Ammonia, for example, has many of the same properties as water. An ammonia or ammonia-water mixture stays liquid at much colder temperatures than plain water. Such biochemistries may exist outside the conventional water-based "habitability zone". One example of such a location would be right here in our own solar system on Saturn's largest moon Titan.

Hydrogen fluoride methanol, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and formamide have all been suggested as suitable solvents that could theoretically support alternative biochemistry. All of these “water replacements” have pros and cons when considered in our terrestrial environment. What needs to be considered is that with a radically different environment, comes radically different reactions. Water and carbon might be the very last things capable of supporting life in some extreme planetary conditions.

Posted by Josh Hill with Rebecca Sato.

First-Ever Photo of Liquid on Extraterrestrial World

By Wired Science

The Huygens probe has captured an image of what may be the first drop of liquid ever observed on an extraterrestrial surface.

The photo is evidence that liquids may exist on the surface of other planets and moons, not just frozen lakes. And liquid is more likely habitat for extraterrestrial life.

Among the pictures snapped by the Huygens probe after landing on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005, one appears to show a dewdrop made of methane that briefly formed on the edge of the probe itself (indicated by arrow at bottom of image on right). Scientists think heat from the probe caused humid air to rise and condense on the cold edge of the craft.

Though Huygens may have helped produce it, the methane drop is still the first liquid directly detected at a surface anywhere beyond Earth.

Like Earth, Titan has clouds, lakes and river channels, and it may be the only other place in the solar system where liquid evaporates from the surface and returns as rain. "Aside from Earth, it's the most exciting world there is," said lead author Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The Cassini space probe, which took data from above the moon after separating from the Huygens lander, detected what scientists believe are lakes of liquid methane on Titan's surface. Microbes that eat methane thrive on Earth, and scientists think pools of methane could be comfortable homes for similar organisms on Titan.

Because Titan's current atmosphere is a lot like the early Earth's, the lakes could be a lab for studying the origins and early evolution of life.

Astronomers have speculated since they found methane in the atmosphere in 1983 about whether the moon's methane rain falls in violent thunderstorms, light drizzles or some other form. So far, no one has caught it on camera.

The hundreds of images snapped by Huygens, from the time it hit the atmosphere until its power ran out an hour after it landed, revealed only faint, wispy clouds that looked nothing like rain clouds, Karkoschka said.

None of the images showed evidence that it had rained during the previous few years, according to an analysis to be published in the journal Icarus. And some images suggested that Titan’s lower atmosphere was full of small dust particles, which would have been cleared out by rain.

But the scientists noticed light splotches in some of the pictures that hadn't been there moments before. Some of them had spots that initially looked like raindrops because of their uniform size and smooth edges, but analysis showed they were most likely electronic imprints created by cosmic rays.

However, Karkoschka said, "One of those spots was so big that it really cannot be a cosmic ray." He concluded that it was a real, short-lived dewdrop, so close to the camera that it must have condensed on a cold metal shield designed to protect the camera lens from direct sunlight.

Robert West, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, thinks the dewdrop is "a cute observation," but he's more interested in the lack of rainfall. "There are reports in the literature that concluded there is a drizzle going on near the surface," he said. "The fact that Huygens didn’t find anything is significant."

— Lisa Grossman for Wired.com

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Bela Fleck and the Flecktones: Jingle all the Way: Live at the Quick

MY VIDESO FROM: Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - Live at the Quickcenter

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Part 2



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Part 8

For Bela Fleck, make it Quick

Bela Fleck says Fairfield University's Quick Center is the perfect venue for his Flecktones

By SEAN SPILLANE
Staff writer


When Bela Fleck and the Flecktones was plotting out its current two-month tour, an idea popped into Fleck's mind.

"I thought, 'Hey, let's go back to the Quick Center because we haven't been there since that show,' " Fleck recalled during a recent phone interview from San Francisco, where the band was doing a six-night residency at Yoshi's Jazz Club.

"That show" he was referring to was a night at Fairfield University's Quick Center in 2000 that was captured for a live CD and DVD, called Live at the Quick, which was released in 2002.

"That show has become a historic show for us," Fleck, a master of the banjo, said. "That DVD has ended up being very successful worldwide and we're constantly signing them and talking about it. It will be fun to come back."

So why, with all of the venues the band has played around the world, did it choose the Quick Center for the project?

"It's perfect," Fleck, 50, answered simply. "It was the right venue on the right tour at the right time. We knew we were going to film a show on that tour and we were looking at the schedule for where to film it and we kind of zeroed in on that room. We knew it would be a great place to do it.

"We had played there a couple of times and always thought it was a great room to play in and we've always played well there. And it looked good and it has a good vibe to it. Those are all good reasons."

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones will be performing two shows at the Quick Center Friday night at 7 and 9:30 on a tour promoting Jingle All the Way, a Christmas album that has been a long time coming, according to Fleck.

"We've wanted to do one since the very beginning," he said. "We've always talked about it as one of the things we've got to do. It just took a long time for it to be the right time for us to do it. This was clearly the right time because we were planning to be off the road for most of the year and just do a couple of months of touring at the end and we didn't want to not have new music to play.

"But if we made an album of original Flecktones music, it would be inappropriate to tour for just a few months. It would be just like throwing it away.

"Normally, we tour a new album for a couple of years. It sort of fit the bill in every way because we could tour for two months and when Christmas is over, it's done and we could go back to the other things that we're all developing right now."

Fleck knows the Christmas concerts will be a nice change from past tours with the Flecktones -- Victor Wooten (bass), Jeff Coffin (woodwinds) and Future Man (drumitar, percussion) -- and he appreciates the fact that it is different than a normal trek.

Anyone who has followed Fleck's career knows he is constantly searching for new sounds and works in many different genres -- country, jazz, bluegrass, world music. Fleck has won eight Grammy Awards and has been nominated 20 times, but most notably, he has been nominated in more categories than anyone in Grammy history.

"We make a lot of efforts to keep things fresh, from changing our set list every night to doing new material as often as possible, bringing in guests and playing with a lot of other people outside of the group," Fleck said. "All of those things help us to keep the thing exciting and spontaneous when we come together.

"You can get stale with anything if you do the same show every night and do the same songs. Trying to keep the creative energy flowing while on a tour where you're playing 25 days out of 30 is a challenge.

"You have to continue to throw things in there that force you to be aware and be alive and to respond in different ways than you did yesterday or you get stuck in a routine and it stops being fun."

Fleck has spent much of this year putting the finishing touches on a documentary he filmed with director Sascha Paladino in 2005, "Throw Down Your Heart," which found him performing with musicians in Africa, where the banjo was first created. As a banjo player, the filming hit close to home.

"Absolutely awesome," he said of the trip. "They're some of the greatest musical experiences I've ever had and luckily they're all on film. I'd like to share them and turn people on to some amazing music. If you know me and like what I like, come with me and I'll show you some awesome African acoustic music that's deep and wonderful.

"It's incredible, I have to say. It's one of the most ambitious things I've ever done."

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones performs Friday night at 7 and 9:30 at Fairfield University's Quick Center, 200 Barlow Road. For tickets ($45-$50), call 254-4010 or 1-877-278-7396 or visit www.quickcenter.com.

On the Set of McG's 'Terminator Salvation'

We go toe to toe with the latest Terminator.

By: Karl Rozemeyer

Christian Bale as John Connor and Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Rising up from the plateau of the Albuquerque desert is the burned remnants of a concrete highway overpass, and on the ledge, a figure is about to jump. Dressed in a black bomber jacket and combat boots, with weaponry slung about his waist, he hesitates for a second and then plummets head first to the ground. He's Christian Bale, and he's the newest Terminator.

"Hey, Christian, that looked great!" The voice belongs to a tall figure in a Penguin shirt, black shorts, and a white Stetson, hidden from the desert heat in a makeshift tent. McG watches the action from behind several monitors but also keeps an eagle eye on the set towering above him. "Did you see me start to spin though?" laughs Bale, before downing a bottle of red Vitamin Water.

Bale is hoisted on wires to the top of the set for yet another take, this time joined by a few members of his heavily armed resistance group. The atmosphere on the set seems to shift subtly, a palpable sense of tension rising as set medics gather around.

"Standby!" A low hissing noise is audible. "Everyone got what they need? Picture's up! Fire in the hole! We are rolling... 3-2-1. Action!" Just as Bale tosses a bag over the ledge, a massive explosion blasts the actors from the edge of the concrete structure. Chips of wood, charcoal and other debris scatter over the set in a brown rainstorm. The acrid odor that follows the explosion is quickly replaced the unmistakable smell of... sewage. A cleaning service, blissfully blind to the fact that one of 2009's most expensive and highly anticipated films is shooting a key action sequence, has just cleaned out the set's portable toilets. A mind-numbing stench settles over the set, and actors and crew flee in all directions, covering their noses.

Back in the editing room, McG, the maverick director perhaps best known for the 2000's big screen version of Charlie's Angels, is unable to contain his passion for Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, aka T4. McG freely reveals innumerous crucial plot points of the story and describes in detail how the movie, slated to be the first in a reboot of the series, opens.

"You start with storyboards," he says. "I want Connor to run up and get into his chopper. He thinks there is a pilot [in the helicopter]. He touches him on the shoulder. He falls out dead. One single shot to the head. He realizes it is the mark of a Terminator. Connor is proficient [in flying]. He gets in and takes off in his helicopter. Through the window we see the body of the communication outpost below and it implodes before it explodes like all those nuclear test films [from the 1960s] that we all saw. The shock wave hits his helicopter. He goes into a flat spin, but ultimately lands. The camera stays fixed inside the cockpit, and we stay with him as he crawls out. We shift to a steadicam and go with him, arch around until we see the body of the cloud of the explosion behind him, and we register his grief. But before he can do anything about it, he is interrupted by the hand of the Terminator which he landed on on the way in. And then they battle in a way designed to replicate the Sarah Connor battle at the end of the first [Terminator film] — like mother, like son. He ultimately [destroys] it with it with a machine gun.

"The interesting thing about this movie is that Connor comes to be under suspicion. Command will look at him and say, 'How come you keep coming through these things alive? And you know so much about the machines? What is that all about?' And they point a finger at him while the audience is realizing..." and here McG's voice is raised to an indignant shout: "... that is fucking John Connor! If anybody is on the side of humanity, it is this guy!' One thing I learned from Amy Pascal at Sony," he muses, "is make sure your hero deserves all the credit in the world and gets none. And that is John Connor."

And in T4, John Connor is Christian Bale, arguably Hollywood's most sought-after male lead for both action and drama. The film plots John Connor's early rise as leader of the Tech-Com human resistance against Skynet after their destruction of much of humanity in a devastating nuclear holocaust. "He is extremely focused," says McG of the Batman franchise star. "He is deeply in tune with his instrument. He diets judiciously. He is very methodical and well prepared. He asks a great many questions. We work on the script day and night."

But the film is not exclusively centered on John Connor. Much screen time will be dedicated to developing the parallel history of Marcus Wright, a member of the resistance who befriends Connor but who is later revealed to be a decommissioned Terminator. Wright has no memory of his past: his earliest recollection is of being on death row. It is up to Connor to figure out if Wright, who did not figure in the prophecy handed down to him by his mother, is someone from the past or perhaps sent from the future.

For the role of Marcus Wright, McG picked little known Australian actor Sam Worthington, who first drew the attention of international critics for his nuanced performance in the indie flick Somersault. That led to other roles and eventually the coveted male lead in James Cameron's highly anticipated Avatar. Cameron, who directed the first two Terminator films, vetted Worthington as the ideal choice for Marcus Wright, but the main recommendation came from a fellow actor from Down Under.

"I just wanted a guy who you could hit with a shovel and it would look like he could shake it off," says McG, "I find that a great many of today's young male actors are pussies. They are waify, and they are all sort of heroin chic. Sam is a fundamentally tough guy from Western Australia. He's a no-tears kind of guy. Truthfully, it was an email I got from Russell Crowe that said, 'You won't be sorry if you cast this guy.'"

For Worthington, the movie is about beginnings: "How did John Connor become John Connor? In this one he is not the general, the leader as such, as yet. He is working his way up the ranks. How did Kyle Reese become Kyle Reese, the Michael Biehn that we know from the first one?" Worthington was sent the script and wanted to play the role but was cautious about stepping into a franchise that had been created by the director that had just cast him in his biggest movie role to date, by the man who will make him a star of the future. "I wanted [Jim's] blessing to be honest, getting into something as big as this and after working with him for so long. It is his baby. I did not want to do it if it were a crap move."

The weight of taking on the mantle to continue one of the most successful and beloved sci-fi series in cinema history is not lost on Worthington: "It's a big thing. The movie has got a lot of history, and a lot of people love it. You just don't want to fuck it up, to be honest. So that is what keeps going on in my head... We hound McG all the time to try and get this story right because you read all about [if there] should be another one. What is the point of us making another one? We've got The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Why are we doing T4? So, what do we want to say? Yeah, it is a big popcorn movie, but what are we trying to say on a deeper level?"

Aside from the pressures of living up to the past and communicating the sociopolitical message of the film, the sheer physicality of the part is also taxing. "We have torn many muscles," says Worthington. "I was doing a fight scene. The guy was a dead weight, and as I pulled him off I just tore all my intercostal muscles. But you just pump yourself full of painkillers and keep going. Then get another bruise and worry about that."

The new installment in the series will be the first not to star Arnold Schwarzenegger or Linda Hamilton, although the director does hint that the now Governor of California may have a "special appearance" in the picture. McG, who says he spoke with Schwarzenegger about the Terminator character, says he was "very supportive" of T4. But, jokes McG, "He was mad at us for not shooting in California!"

Anamorphic Art: Images That Morph Before Your Eyes

newscientist.com — An anamorphic image is one that can only be interpreted when viewed from a particular angle or through a transforming optical device like a mirror.



The Ambassadors (1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger

The skull in this painting (best seen standing to the right of it), hanging in the National Gallery in London is regarded as the most famous piece of anamorphic art, but the anamorphism is not immediately obvious and many people need to be told where to look to find it.

When the painting was first in the possession of the National Gallery, it took some years before anyone solved the puzzle of the "splodge" in the front of it, appearing to spoil an otherwise detailed painting.
Many sixteenth century European portraits include skulls as reminders of death

Copyright: The National Gallery, London

click here for the rest: Anamorphic Art: Images That Morph Before Your Eyes

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Santa's Not Coming: All KB Toys Stores To Be Liquidated And Closed

By Meg Marco

KB Toys has returned to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, says the Wall Street Journal, and will be liquidated by its parent company — Prentice Capital Management.

"Going out of business" sales will begin quickly at the chain's 277 retail outlets, 40 larger KB Toy Works stores, 114 outlet stores and 30 temporary "holiday stores."

The WSJ says the liquidation was prompted by a 20% decrease in sales in the second half of this year.

The article had no information about the fate of KB Toys gift cards (though KB Toys website says they have suspended sales of gift cards for the 2008 season) — a detail that is up to the bankruptcy court. Generally, gift card holders are considered "unsecured creditors" unless provisions are made for the store to continue redeeming the cards.

Know anything about KB Toys gift card policy during liquidation? Email us at tips@consumerist.com

KB Toys Faces Liquidation [WSJ]
Gift Card Rules [KB Toys]
KB Toys Succumbs to Holiday Slump [NYT]
KB Toys Files Bankruptcy, Citing ‘Sudden’ Sales Drop (Update2) [Bloomberg]