Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Media reports on Benghazi were botched says Sharyl Attkisson

See details here.

comment:

She's being diplomatic.  These probably weren't "botched", but outright lies.  The leftist media are a bunch of liars.

Never before in American history has so few deceived so many.


US stocks outperforming the rest of the world



2014: The Year The US Decoupled (Again)


Commodity Prices Are Cliff-Diving Due To The Fracturing Monetary Supernova—The Case Of Iron Ore

If Captain Picard was running this ship of state, he would issue a red alert.  Oil is not the only commodity in a nose dive.  We could be witnessing something here that I didn't even begin to anticipate--- global deflation.  It appears to have arrived in the commodities.

What I figured was the opposite, which is hyperinflation.  What if we get massive deflation instead?  You don't want to be a debtor in that situation.


Review of half of 2014 has been done ( corrected )

What did I find out?

Possibly the difference between thought and action.  It is all well and good to think things, but eventually you have to DO things ( or NOT DO things).

I don't think I'm an indecisive person.  If anything, I'm too rash.  I had to install some "brakes" because they didn't come with the deal at the factory, so to speak.  You may see stuff posted here and conclude that I cannot make up my mind.  But that isn't the case.  What is the case is that when I start to act, it will seem sudden and people will wonder what brought all that on.  If you had paid attention, you wouldn't have to ask.


GOP always loses these kind of fights ( repost )

Note:  When something is really good, it stands the test of time.  I think this post is definitely worth reposting.  It has stood up to the test of time.  The current fight over immigration WILL BE LOST because the GOP won't really fight it.

The original post follows immediately...


There's a reason.  They accept the premises of their adversary.  The kind of fight I'm referring to is the debt battle, which was discussed in a recent Ace of Spades post.  Consider when Ronald Reagan was President.  Back then, the Senate and the Presidency was controlled by the GOP, and the House was controlled by the Democrats.  This is the reverse of the situation today.

You'd think Reagan won all those fights now wouldn't you?  But he didn't.  He compromised because "he had to".  Yet, Obama doesn't think he has to, and his supposed opponents, the GOP, agree when they let Obama have whatever he wants.  When Obama won't compromise, that's a victory for the Democrats.  Reagan did compromise, which is also a victory for the Democrats.  Then there should be no surprise that the march is continually towards the left when you declare unilateral disarmament before you start your war.

The so-called right is so brainwashed that they fight on the terms that their opponents set for them.  They may not even know that they are doing it.  Their acceptance of the premises of the left is so deeply rooted that they can't step outside of it and see what they are doing.

The offending quote on Ace

Charles is correct that defeating the debt ceiling hike was a losing game for the GOP. That’s why I opposed pretending to use it last fall. --- Drew M.

This is wrong as I have noted for these reasons:

  1. They are assuming that they are going to lose the battle even before they start. 
  2. They are basing an electoral strategy of winning back the Senate based upon ObamaCare, when there's reason to believe that it won't be the savior of the GOP.
  3. The claim that there is no alternative but to cave in to the Democrats because of the threat of a default is also wrong because they could demonstrate that this is not true either.  Default is a weapon that the Democrats are using.  Why should the GOP concede that this is a weapon that only the Democrats can use?  Why must it inevitably lead to conclusion that the GOP can't fight this?
It's all in their heads.  They can't win because they are addicted to losing, I suppose.  Whatever they do, it must always fail.  So why bother trying?  When it does fail, they'll just blame the low information voters.



The GOP will cave in on immigration ( repost )

Note:  The immigration battle went on throughout the year, so to speak.  Obama went over Congress' head, and imposed a unilateral amnesty.  Now the GOP's response is to oppose Obama next year.

We'll see how that goes, but I strongly suspect that the GOP will still cave in.  They have no stomach that would be necessary for them to be a true opposition party.

Count this prediction as a tie.  Officially, the GOP didn't cave, but they might as well have.

the original post follows immediately...


All the signs point in that direction.  They want to cave in, so they will.

Early in 2013, I predicted that the GOP will show itself to be a me too party or an opposition party.  It took a little longer than I thought.  They aren't an opposition party at all.  The pretended opposition is a ruse.

In fact, my 2013 predictions stand.  They look pretty good in retrospect.



New Year's Eve

Well, I was asked yesterday if I would be available for work today.  My response was I'd rather not, but if nobody else was, I would be available.  I was told I was the first one asked, so maybe someone else stepped up, but I'm not sure, because I wasn't told before she left.

That kinda puts me in a quandary, drat her.

I'll have to keep myself available for work all day, but I won't have to go in to the office.  That could mean I won't do a thing today, or that there may be a little work, but not much.

I'm going to research my blog for highlights of 2014, and maybe do some reposts.  Otherwise, posting will be light.


Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Can people really handle the truth?

You have to wonder.

You cannot make comparisons with the far left and the far right.  I got on Rush's case about this a long time ago.  He puts a lot of emphasis on "ideology", which includes calling himself a man on the right.

Ronald Reagan got it right.  It's not about the right and left.  It's about freedom and tyranny.  But Rush and a lot of other people don't seem to get that.  Instead of labeling themselves as being on the right, they should label themselves as freedom fighters.  People are scared of right wingers.  You should never in any way associate with the likes of Neo Nazis nor KKK sympathizers.  Reagan didn't do that.

These cop killing episodes should not play out as a matter of the far left duking it out with the far right.  This characterization doesn't favor conservatism, as I understand it; nor does to conform to how it was articulated by Reagan.

As I wrote before, people simply do not understand Reagan's success.  If they did, they could emulate it and victory would be possible.  This kind of stuff isn't going to make it.
This is the problem with liberalism – they accept and entertain the ideas from their most radical members while Republicans would never entertain the ideas of the KKK and the neo-NAZIs.
I hope this means that the liberals are wrong and the GOP is right.  It could be interpreted that GOP needs to start considering the KKK and Nazis.  Hello?  Anybody home?

One thing I noticed today was that the GOP is in panic for what one of their leadership did.  That doesn't help either, for it makes them seem for guilty if even the dude didn't do anything.  Unless some wrong can be demonstrated, there's nothing to regret, nothing to apologize for.  He wasn't acting as a representative of the GOP, and not in the capacity as leader at that time.  It is a smear intended to hurt the party and its capacity to govern.

Can people sort all this out and get the right response to this?  I just don't know.


For the Media, the Climate of Hate is Always on the Right

Clarice Feldman, American Thinker

comment:

Couldn't resist the comparison of this with the piece that I mentioned yesterday.  ( De Blasio was being defended)

Hence, the left can spout off hatred, but that's okay.  The hatred is always with the other guys.  If they hate anybody, it is just and correct anyway.


Obama wants war with Russia

This may seem like a ridiculous charge, and I don't expect it to get anything but ridicule, but truth is truth.

Obama's pastor was Jeremiah Wright, who hated whitey with a white hot intensity.  The anti-white people coalition of these types would like nothing better than the US, which is still majority white, engage in a ruinous war with another white majority nation.  Each of these nations would destroy each other, which would supposedly benefit the non-white peoples of the world.

If you don't think the anti-white animosity exists, or exists to this degree as I have indicated, you haven't been paying attention.


Racial politics

It's seems that we are back to that again as the Democrats are ginning up the racial animosities.  Looking at it in that way will help you understand what the cop killings are all about.  This is about hating whitey.  They have already admitted that they don't care about the truth of the matter, it's about the shake down of whitey.

Hey, the Democrats don't think they need the white vote anymore.  They can give the white folks the finger all they want, they can count on that anti-white vote time and time again.

Contrast that with the GOP, who seem to think that they are going to get the black vote.  The blacks will never vote for the GOP because of the indoctrination against whitey.  So, the GOP panics when somebody is said to have spoken to a white supremacist gathering.  Even if true, why the panic?  As I said before, who benefits from race these days if it isn't the black people?  The controversy with respect to the police is now nothing more than a shakedown for money, it is now being admitted.  White people are punished for being white.  White privilege my eye.

Once again, contrast that with the Democrats.  Look, GOP candidates are expected to go grovel for support that they'll never get before such groups as the NAACP, but Obama can have connections with race baiters like Jeremiah Wright, and it doesn't matter.

It really shouldn't be about race, but the Democrats make it so.  Somehow, when you notice that, you are a bad person.  To me, whatever they say can be discounted as false.  Especially on matters such as race.  They aren't interested in good racial relations, but wish to exacerbate the racial divisions for political gain, for all they care about is themselves.


Monday, December 29, 2014

Is the truth always a slippery thing?

Maybe.  That bit about the truth be slippery is one of my favorite sayings.  It is because I know from my own experiences that it is so.  A man ( or woman ) can be wrong.  I was wrong about something, even though I believed very strongly that I was right.  For me, in my own experience, I didn't have the truth, even though I really thought I did.

Now, one thing I notice amongst some people is what I perceive to be a lack of respect for truth.  I will respect truth by admitting my errors when demonstrated that I'm wrong.  But what about others?  Be wary of someone who claims to be always right all the time.  Such cannot be so, unless they have some special pipeline to truth, which I suspect is not so.

That lack of respect of truth can be seen in what the author of the Mahablog has to say.  Will this person ever admit error?  She is defending De Blasio, the mayor of New York.  Now, I don't know all of the particulars there, but what I do suspect to be the truth of the matter is that he is a member of the left wing and the left wing is stirring up these protests against the police.  Now, this author of that blog is saying that De Blasio is innocent.  Really?  He has no responsibility in any of this?  The criticisms of him are unjust and unfair and wrong?

I have very strong doubts about his innocence.  Yet, I am willing to look at all of the facts of the situation.  But I've had my own experiences with the woman who writes that blog.  I don't think she respects the truth.  Hence, her defense of De Blasio is not reliable to me.  I am inclined to not believe this woman.


Going down the same road as Rome did



Civil Asset Forfeiture: The Final Stage Of Collapse Of Empire


Unanswered Benghazi Questions: Third in a Series

Sharyl Attkisson

  • Surveillance video never released, as promised
  • Why jail the maker of the video if they knew the attack was a terrorist attack?
  • Where was the President on that night?  The administration wasn't reluctant to share info about the bin Laden raid.  Why not share that type of info on this night?  It might tell us a lot about this administration.

There's a couple of pictures posted with the articles of Hillary and Hussein with their sardonic smiles.  They need coaching on how to smile sardonically.

The late Ben Bradlee said that the Kennedys could smile sardonically.  So,  I noted that and noted these pics.  Another unanswered question that begs an answer.  Will we ever find out?


Sunday, December 28, 2014

For the record...

I will never vote for Jeb Bush.

Ever.

Never, ever, Never.  It will be a cold day in hell if I vote for him.

Yes, and I will make that stick.

The Bushes have had their chance and they made a mess of things.


Falling Down ( 1993 )

I remember Rush Limbaugh talked about this 1993 flick back then.  It would be tempting to do a review of it, but then again, it's a really old flick now.   Why would anybody care?

It makes a lot of good points that I can identify with.  No, I'm not planning to shoot up a "Whammy burger" joint.  The movie goes a little too far.  You lose sympathy for the guy because he becomes a killer.  People die in the flick, so the humorous parts are drowned out by the darkness of that.

Limbaugh gave it a bad review.  I'd say it misses whatever mark it was trying to make.  If it was about incompetence, then the film may have been better made as a dark comedy.  If it was to be a social criticism, it may have been better if the "D-FENS" guy didn't kill anybody, because there needs to be some sympathy for his position for the social commentary to stick.

Instead, one is left to wonder what the film was really all about.  Just to poke a finger in the eye of a whole bunch of different people?






The Cowsills

The Cowsills had a few hits in the sixties.  The following was one of them.

There was an appearance on the Mike Douglas Show, in which Susan ( pictured here ) sang the Beatles' hit When I'm 64.  Frankly, I didn't like her version at all.  For one thing, she was still a teenager.  Somehow, it didn't go together.

They were better as a group, but they broke up.











Larry King Live with Shirley Temple Black

This is in 1988, and she is 60 years old then.  There was a mention of a movie with Ronald Reagan in it, so I checked it out.  From what I can tell of it, it wasn't a good part for either of them.  A long way from the good ship Lollipop.

The kind of parts that an actor or actress gets can determine their success.  Don't think so?  Think about Schwarzenegger.  If not for the Terminator flicks, would he had been as big a star?




Saturday, December 27, 2014

Alice's Restaurant - Original 1967 Recording






Recap of last week's posts

Breakdown by categories:


videos and movies      4
how to                       4
sugar observation       3
energy                          6
politics                        7
misc                           4
space                          2
Seinfeld                       1
Basic Concepts          3


A comparison week to week with last week suggests a turning of sorts.  Back to the core principles, if it could be distilled down to its most basic elements.


New "Best of" finds:

3554 Amun, a $20 trillion dollar rock

About that 5% GDP growth rate

It looks like a fake!

No!  Say it ain't so!  We really do have a boom going, don't we boss?  Don't we??????????

The boss wouldn't lie to us, ever!  It's all the GOP's fault for being such meanies.

Well, that's the state of this country right now.  They really expect good things to result from this nonsense.


Optimism for the New Year?

There's a poll out saying that optimism is running a bit high about the New Year.

These people need to get away from the propaganda.  Well, that's one of our problems.

On the other hand, they might be like me.  I'd say this past year for me personally wasn't all that bad, but I don't measure my life in dollars.  If I did, I'd say 2014 was a really bad year.  In sum, I'm working harder and getting less to show for it.

But I feel good that it could have been much worse and wasn't.  Perhaps that is too rosy scenario-ish.

I don't think the political situation is anything to be optimistic about.  In fact, things have taken a turn for the worse.

Economically, things look like they're getting better, but I think that is an illusion.

People will likely think I'm a grumpy old man, but I think it is only because I don't fall for the bullshit.


Friday, December 26, 2014

The unsustainability of the current economic and political paradigm



Guest Post: We Just Enjoyed the Last Christmas In America


Low cost producers will win a price war



Saudi Arabia Ready For $20, $30, $40 Oil


Kirk Sorensen: An Update On The Thorium Story

China sprints while the West slumbers

Kirk Sorensen: Oh yes, I can give you a great update because I was at a conference in Nashville just two weeks ago and one of the representatives from the Chinese Academy of Sciences was there. He gave a presentation, showed us where they were at, what was going on. It was really clear to me that they are making tremendous progress. I saw pictures of test loops. I saw pictures of lithium separation cascades. I saw pumps and heat exchangers and fuels and all manner of things under development. So yes, I mean, they are—...Energy is the master commodity. Everything else depends on energy. And if you do not have an energy supply that is reliable and sustainable, you are putting your entire nation at risk...Other people are doing it. The United States—we have discovered every part of this. We really, really ought to be at the forefront.

Not much that's new here.  What didn't get mentioned was that our government suppresses this research.  It is suppressed by the regulatory regime.  If that were to change, it may be possible to get investors interested in this.  As it stands, it is too risky.

It is not risky because the tech is risky.  It is risky because the government is making it impossible to do business.  It is risky in terms of business risk.  The tech is good, but it cannot be developed as long as the regulations remain as they are.

Update:

Our regulators need to be more like Canada's.



Ginned up hysterias

parapundit



I suspect that there is a pattern to the hysterias that suggests a deeper motive. What's the motive? Break down bonds of groups. Cops are a distinct group, well trusted by most people. The cops have emotional bonds to each other and to the larger public. Those bonds are inconvenient to our elites. Our elites are certainly trying to reduce the legitimacy of cops in the eyes of the public.


If this is true, you have to ask yourself how did these people manage to reach elite status?  People who would do such things belong in jail.



What makes something popular, revisited ( part 4 )

This isn't a series, by the way.  Or maybe it is, in an informal way.

On this subject, as well as just about any other, have you ever wondered why a thing was the way it was?  The same is true about popularity.

I think that people don't care about principles.  They don't care about being right or correct about anything.  This must be true.  I know there are people who I'll lose with that statement, but screw it!  People just don't give a shit.  ( excuse my French )  That's the dirty rotten truth.

There was this girl that caught my eye.  She was with the pop group ABBA.

So, I studied this pop group ABBA.  There was someone who stated on a video about them that very few can make it on their talent alone.  In other words, it's about gimmicks.  They showed all the gimmicks that ABBA used to make themselves successful.  Not that they lacked talent, but their talent wasn't overwhelming nor would just stand out on its own.  They needed something extra.

As I mentioned, I got interested in ABBA today because I noticed one of the girls who fronted the group.  Actually, the thing that got said about her ( Frida ) was that she was a "natural", and it was the other girl ( Agnetha, I think, the blonde ) who was a bit shy and reserved and needed to be boosted up a bit.  Anyway, I thought about this and how Frida seemed to be shunted to the back, and the other girl boosted up front.  Why?  I think it was because Frida would dominate too much if this wasn't done.  By equalizing them a bit, this helped the group work better than it would have if Frida had dominated it the way that she could have.  I think Frida could have been sensational, but she was held back.

They spent a lot of time on their costumes and presentation, too.  This is the kind of thing that I would totally ignore.  I think of it as irrelevant, but no.  For some people, this matters more than the content itself.

This reminds me of what Terry Knight, manager of the 70's rock group Grand Funk Railroad, once said.  He said that there's no such thing as bad publicity.  Bad publicity can get you out there and known.  If you relied solely on your talent alone, you'd never make it.  Grand Funk made it for being a "bad" band.  Supposedly, they lacked talent.  The critics hated them.  Parents hated them.  I know my Dad did.  Terry Knight didn't care about stuff like this.  He used this to help propel them to the top.  The bad publicity didn't hurt Grand Funk.  It might even had made them.

I think I'm learning, albeit at a very slow pace.  But it won't likely do me much good.  I care about principles and truth.  Not necessarily a thing that can be made "cool", unless somehow something changed.  Don't bet on it.  You will need the gimmicks.



LPP Fusion Report December 23, 2014-Corrected Version



Focus Fusion December report.

Tungsten cathode nears completion.

----- Forwarded message -----
From: "LPP Fusion Team" <lppmailchimp@gmail.com>
To: <gregmeadows5593@gmail.com>
Subject: LPP Fusion Report December 23, 2014-Corrected Version
Date: Wed, Dec 24, 2014 10:31 am


www.lppfusion.com
View this email in your browser
Our apologies for the earlier version of this report.  It was sent in error.                                   Please discard that one!


LPP Focus Fusion Report

      December 23, 2014

 

Summary:
  • Tungsten Cathode Nears Completion
  • IEEE Spectrum Covers Alternative Fusion, Including Focus Fusion
  • LPPF Releases Processed Data to Public
  • FF-1 Upgrade Continues, Preparations Begun for pB11 Operation

Tungsten Cathode Nears Completion after Long Delays

The long-awaited tungsten cathode is finally nearing completion in a Chinese factory.  According to the latest reports by California-based Tungsten Heavy Powder(THP), which is performing the work in China, machining will be complete within a few weeks and delivery to LPPFusion should occur by mid-February. The 99.95% pure tungsten piece has been in the machining process for nearly two months. Because pure tungsten is as brittle as ceramic and liable to cracking, the part must be removed from machining frequently and heat-treated to relieve internal stress.
 
"We know that it seems the vital electrode is always two months in the future, sort of like fusion but with a shorter time line," comments LPPFusion President and Chief Scientist Eric J. Lerner, "but this time we know the final stages of machining are actually underway."  (see Figure 1)

Fig 1- Tungsten cathode undergoing machining in China on Nov 19, two weeks into the two-month long process. Note the 16 vanes emerging from the tungsten blank. The inward-facing surfaces of the vanes will carry the current once the finished piece in in FF-1. 

The long wait for the tungsten cathode comes from the inherent technical difficulty of the part, which is pressing close to the limits of present-day tungsten technology. Since tungsten melts at a higher temperature than any other material, it can't be poured and cast. Instead tungsten powder is pressed or sintered together at high pressure and temperatures to form a solid piece. This process makes it difficult to form thick pieces and the monolith tungsten cathode is over 15 cm tall. No factory outside of China is now equipped to make such a thick pure-tungsten piece.
 
This technical difficulty has led to long delays. While LPPFusion decided to make the monolithic tungsten cathode in May 2013, the initial supplier, also in China, fell through when it increased the estimated cost abruptly ten-fold to over $140,000.  When no other supplier was willing to complete the part, LPPFusion contracted with THP to produce a cone-shaped blank and with a NJ-based company to machine the final shape, a process that was supposed to be completed by June, 2014. Unfortunately the NJ company first decided that a third firm was needed for initial machining of the part (see Cathode Gets More Machining) and then backed out of the deal entirely, citing too much technical risk.
 
Finally THP agreed to make the part start-to-finish and, after getting corrections on an aluminum model (see Tungsten Anode Goes Into FF-1; Aluminum Cathode Model Is Checked), began machining a new blank at the beginning of November. The entire machining process will take about two months.
 
Given the extreme difficult of making the tungsten cathode, why does LPPFusion not go directly to the final beryllium electrodes? The answer is that tungsten, with its extreme resistance to heat, is the lowest risk material for the next step of our experiment. We need to eliminate evaporation of the electrode and the resulting impurities to get a jump in the density of our plasmoid, and in the resulting fusion energy output or yield. We have firm experimental evidence that tungsten does not erode under the condition FF-1 is currently running. While we have developed and published well-founded theories of how pre-ionization can stop erosion of much less heat-resistant materials like beryllium, we still need to test those theories experimentally. That we can do safely with tungsten, with risking damage to the electrodes or disappointing fusion results. In this way we will confirm or refine the theories and technique, paving the way for the beryllium electrodes.
 
Those beryllium electrode will be ready when we need them. We expect to order them in January, with delivery in the first half of 2015.

 
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IEEE Spectrum Covers Alternative Fusion, Including Focus Fusion

           
One of the leading technical journals in the world, IEEE Spectrum, has reported in its December, 2014 print edition on alternative routes to fusion energy. LPPF's work is mentioned in the first few paragraphs of the story and described briefly as one of five leading fusion alternatives, along with University of Washington's Dynamak, which is featured, and the efforts of Lockheed-Martin, Helion Corporation, and General Fusion. IEEE Spectrum is read by 430,000 engineers and physicists around the world, so the article gives good visibility to LPPF's work among the audience with the most interest in it.
 
Spectrum has been covering alternative fusion for a long time. In July, they featured LPPF's Indiegogo campaign in an energy blog online. Indeed, back in 1980, Spectrum published an article by Eric Lerner, then a Contributing Editor of Spectrum and now LPPFusion President and Chief Scientist, on fusion, including alternatives like the dense plasma focus. It was during the writing of that that Lerner started the theoretical research that later led to the current focus fusion project.
 
In the same December, 2014 issue of Spectrum, engineers Ross Koningstein and David Fork discuss some of the obstacles to achieving clean energy in the near future and shed light on the failure of Google's RE<C initiative to achieve its goal of renewable energy that is cheaper than coal. The authors, who worked on the RE<C project and are still employed by Google, point out that the Google initiative, which ran from 2007-2011, relied on incremental improvements on proven existing technologies, such as wind, solar and geothermal. Instead, what was needed was to invest in "truly disruptive technology". They gave as an example a fusion technology that could produce electricity directly from high-energy charged particles instead of from converting heat into steam. Of course, only aneutronic fuels, such as the hydrogen-boron fuel that Focus Fusion will use, are capable of such direct conversion.
 
In 2007 Lerner was invited to speak at a Google Tech Talks session, describing just such a disruptive technology—the one which we are continuing to develop. This talk, posted online, gave extremely important publicity to our project. However, the RE<C project, then just getting started, declined to fund Focus Fusion or indeed any other fusion project. Koningstein and Fork's article shows the realization that, in retrospect, this was a mistake. Now, the authors say RE<C "didn't go far enough, and that truly disruptive technologies are what our planet needs." They urge that 10% of R and D money be devoted to "strange new ideas that have the potential to be truly disruptive."
 
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 LPPF Releases Processed Data to Researchers and the Public

Developer of the LPP Java Fusion program - LPP Electrical Engineer Fred Van Roessel      
LPPFusion, Inc. has made available on our website the data in our Processed Data Base to all researchers, both professional and amateur. This data provides the key observations for each shot from the start of operation of Focus Fusion-1 in 2009 through the end of 2013 for four instruments: the Main Rogowski coil (MRC), High Voltage Probe (HVP), the Near Time of Flight (NTF) and Far Time of Flight (FTF) detectors. This gives data on the current and voltage produced during a shot and the neutrons and x-rays emitted.  We are making this data publically available in the expectation that other researchers will be able to use the data to provide new insights into the functioning of the Dense Plasma Focus device and advance the field generally.
 
In contrast to the data base of raw data made public last year, this data has been processed by our own Java Fusion program into more useful form. The program, developed by LPP Electrical Engineer Fred van Roessel, measures such key parameters as the peak current and peak voltage of each shot, and identifies and measures the timing, width and height of each neutron and x-ray peak. It automatically aligns the data in the NTF and FTF, showing which peaks correspond in the two instruments. This is work that almost any researcher would need to do before further analyzing the data, so we are here eliminating a lot of effort and duplication of work. We ask that all those downloading this data share their analyses with LPP, publish their results and of course cite our work accordingly.
 
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FF-1 Upgrade Continues, Preparations Begun for pB11 Operation

While FF-1 can't fire until it gets the new tungsten cathode, the lab has not been sitting idle. The LPPF team has undertaken significant upgrades to the device, and started work on further ones. Other than a complete disassembly, cleaning and re-assembly of the vacuum chamber and drift tube to eliminate all sources of impurities, the team has improved assembly techniques to achieve greater symmetry in the device and greater protection for the new cathode itself.

One key improvement is in the process of centering the cathode, the outer electrode, on the anode, the inner electrode. Since there is a tight fit between the two electrodes and the insulator sandwiched between them, any slight asymmetry can affect the amount of plasma trapped in the small space between the parts, and thus potentially the speed of the rundown and the symmetry of the pinch. In the past, centering was done by shimming the part with plastic shims. Now, however, precision micrometer adjustment devices will be mounted on four sides of the steel plate that is attached to the monolithic tungsten cathode (see drawing). The micrometer will allow centering of the cathode on the anode to a precision of 25 microns or less and make the process far faster than the shimming. The design work was performed by Consulting Engineers Jonathan Klabacha and Tony Ellis and our new volunteer engineer, Marc-Antoine Legault.
 

     Drawing of the precision micrometer adjustment device and cathode connection plate.

We are also preparing for a further stage of our experiment, when we switch from using deuterium as a fuel to our final aneutronic fuel, hydrogen-boron or pB11. We have checked our 250-gm supply of decaborane—the compound of hydrogen and boron we intend to use and Chief Research Officer Dr. Hamid R. Yousefi has selected the safety equipment we need, such as glove boxes to handle the material, whose vapor is somewhat noxious. We are in the process of designing and purchasing the equipment needed to heat the device to approximately 120 C, needed to create the vapor pressure to fill the vacuum chamber. While it is still months before we are ready to run with decaborane, we will be ready to make the transition with as few delays as possible.

In addition, we are undertaking a major upgrade of our computers and data processing, which we will report on next month
 
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A Note on Our Name

Readers of these reports may have noticed that we are now referring to our company as LPPFusion, Inc., not Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc, and using the initials LPPF, not LPP. We are in the process of changing our name. While we have not yet changed the legal name of the company, we have wanted to drop the "Lawrenceville" name, which is confusing, since we have not been located in the town of Lawrenceville, NJ for years and our lab is in Middlesex, NJ. In addition our old name did not really say what we are doing, which is developing fusion energy. We expect that it will take time to get everyone, including the media, to start using our new name, so in the interim you can expect to see both names in use. Eventually, we will change the legal name as well. Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. will be history, but LPPFusion, Inc. will be carrying on—same team, new name.
 
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