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A guy in a lab was playing with Quantum Dots and has come up with an energy saving way of creating light.

While the nano-crystals [we are talking 100 atoms and less] are known to produce light, he discovered a way of making them produce white light that can be used to increase the output of light emitting diodes [LEDs] with no increase in power consumption.

If you created a film or spray with the dots you could have a surface that would generate its own light in the presence of a lesser source. For example, if you coated the inside of a tunnel, your headlights could cause the entire tunnel to glow with a much brighter light than your headlights alone could produce.

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It is always entertaining to notice how defective and limited is the knowledge of American history displayed by people who presume to call themselves “conservative”.

Over at archy John’s post, Bork hates Miers, makes reference to the Saturday Night Massacre, October 20, 1973, when talking about Robert Bork.

When “conservatives” talk about Bork’s failure to be confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court, they like to portray the event as a “liberal” attack on a “conservative”. They don’t mention that Bork was a tool of the Nixon administration’s attempt to stop the investigation of Watergate.

Nominating Robert Bork to be a judge was an attempt to bury the truth of Watergate. It wasn’t going to happen, and anyone with a minimum of understanding would have known better that to have made the attempt. Bork was tested and found wanting. He might have the wisdom of Solomon, but he displayed the moral courage of Daffy Duck.

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Keep in mind as we await the action of Patrick Fitzgerald, that Robert Novak’s column didn’t reveal simply the identity of a single CIA agent, he revealed the connection of everyone working for or with Brewster Jennings & Associates, a front company that cost millions of dollars and years to create.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of people were put at risk by what the White House did. A major intelligence operation tasked with monitoring weapons of mass destruction was exposed to unfriendly intelligence agencies around the world.

The ability of the United States to maintain, much less expand, its human intelligence capabilities was permanently damaged by this action.

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There is no doubt that Bird Flu is a bad situation that could get much worse, and, considering who’s in charge, a pandemic would be catastrophic in the US.

Having said that, my first response to the news that a parrot had died from bird flu while in quarantine in the UK was to picture John Cleese and Michael Palin discussing the health of a “Norwegian Blue Parrot”.

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So much for the record for most named storms: Alpha will be named today and probably cause more rain-related deaths in Haiti.

It doesn’t look like it will develop into a hurricane or continue towards the US.

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