Links: 20120920

• Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say – Progress in warp drive technology. H/t Next Big Future
• North Dakota hits another oil production record with 674,066 bpd in July – I shudder to think of what the US economy would be like without the shale oil/gas revolution.
• Genome sequencing improving faster than Moore’s law – Juan Enriquez of Biotechonomy interviewed by Sander Olson.
• Trucking companies see challenges, opportunity in ND – This clearly illustrates the dysfunctional state of the US labor market. Somehow, with high unemployment and record food stamp usage, high paying, blue collar jobs are not being filled.
• Murray Rothbard on Austrian Business Cycle Theory – This is the most succinct account of ABCT. It is an excerpt from the first chapter of Rothbard’s outstanding book America’s Great Depression.
• The Truth Behind the Romney “Gaffe” – An article about the reality of politics in the modern democratic-republic welfare-warfare state.
• The United States Plummets to 18th in New Economic Freedom of the World Rankings – I direct your attention to the graph that shows the declining trend in economic freedom under Bush-Obama
• Watchbird – A science fiction story by Robert Sheckley that forecasted the use of drones for local law enforcement.
• Heat To Electricity Breakthrough May be Commercial Scale – A new thermoelectric material with a record setting ZT of 2.2 has been developed.
• Blue River Technology – Replacing herbicides with robots.
• Rethink Robotics unveils Baxter – This is the company formerly named Heartland Robotics that was founded by Rodney Brooks, the man behind the roomba robot. Brooks’ stated goal was to produce a low cost robot that could work in the same environment as humans to increase productivity of various types of manual labor such that manufacturing in the US would be cost competitive with that of low labor cost countries.