Nickel That is Lighter Than a Feather

I wonder how it will hold up in an earthquake!  Here's more from a cool LA Times article:

"Scientists have invented a new material that is so lightweight it can sit atop a fluffy dandelion without crushing the little fuzzy seeds.

It's so lightweight, styrofoam is 100 times heavier.

It is so lightweight, in fact, that the research team consisting of scientists at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and Caltech say in the peer-reviewed Nov. 18 issue of Science that it is the lightest material on Earth, and no one has asked them to run a correction yet.

That's light!

The material has been dubbed "ultralight metallic microlattice," and according a news release sent out by UC Irvine, it consists of 99.99% air thanks to its "microlattice" cellular architecture.

"The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," lead author Tobias Shandler of HRL said in the release.

To understand the structure of the material, think of the  Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge -- which are both light and weight efficient -- but on a nano-scale."

The Answer to America's Problems: Taxpayer funded elections

Lawrence Lessig's NY Times Op-Ed, "More Money Can Beat Big Money", presents a credible alternative to our current state of allowing wealthy donors to control Congress.  Publicly funded elections, at all levels, is incredibly important to achieving democracy in America.  LET'S GET ON BOARD AMERICA!!!

Lessig writes:

"Despite the founders’ intentions, however, Congress has evolved from a dependency “upon the people,” to an increasing dependency upon the funders. Members spend 30 percent to 70 percent of their time raising money to stay in Congress, or to get their party back in power. Less than 1 percent of Americans give more than $200 in a political campaign. ...

So long as elections cost money, we won’t end Congress’s dependence on its funders. But we can change it. We can make “the funders” “the people.” Following Arizona, Maine and Connecticut, we could adopt a system of small-dollar public funding for Congress."

Gingrich is such an embarrassment to the USA

Timothy Egan's NY Times article, "Professor of Profits", clearly demonstrates yet again the hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich.  Who can possibly take Gingrich seriously?

"Bloomberg News reported this week that Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million for giving additional “advice” to Freddie Mac. ...

This is not just another Gingrich laugher, up there with his revolving Tiffany’s account or his multiple personal hypocrisies. This story encapsulates why Washington is broken and how the powerful protect and enrich themselves, unanchored to basic principles.

At the same time, it’s a case study in the Gingrich method: denounce something as outrageous, while doing that very outrageous thing himself. (Politicians with ties to Freddie Mac came in for scathing Gingrich criticism in 2010.) There is no evidence, as Gingrich claimed last week in a debate, that he offered Freddie Mac a dime’s worth of advice in his capacity as a “historian,” or warned against a surge in subprime lending. To the contrary, former Freddie Mac executives told Bloomberg that Gingrich was brought in to help the agency continue down the very path of its ruination – backing subprime mortgages."  Read more.

Replace Congress!

Yet another example of the self-dealing, unethical behavior Congress permits for itself, at the expense of taxpayers.  Insider stock trading is legal for members of Congress.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7388130n