Author: Brian

Religious people are overridden by a smug superficiality.

Is the order of respect for belief adequate?

It’s beside the point. I even believe the expression is dangerous. It confuses two things. What we must respect are the believers. But the intangible right to disrespect beliefs, that is, the right to subject them to critical examination like any other system of thought, is an altogether different thing. Nothing may be set aside from this acid of public discussion. That’s our world’s order. To attempt to assign limits to it is absurd. That amounts to disowning ourselves without any possibility of achieving the desired result.

The West Is Blind to the Impact of Globalization on the Economy and on Morals: an interview with Marcel Gauchet in Le Monde, Saturday 11 March 2006

Why is resentment more intense in Islamic countries than elsewhere?

Because proximity works as an aggravating factor. It’s the third monotheism, a religion that believes itself to be the continuation of Judaism and Christianity and claims to be the seal of Prophecy, the ultimate and definitive revelation. Yet today, the Prophet’s faithful find themselves inexplicably in the position of the vanquished, the dominated – and at more than one level. They have suffered colonization. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is experienced as a symbol of the perpetuation of that colonial humiliation. To top it all off, they experience that Western-style development to which they are subject as an aggression that doesn’t work.

That’s the difference with countries like India or China. Nationalist feeling is certainly no less, but these countries can count on collective cohesion and political structures that allow them to a successfully appropriate Western technology and the economic thinking that accompanies it, as Japan had done before. For them, it’s possible to harbor the ambition of beating the West on its own ground, all the while mastering the process and remaining themselves. There’s nothing similar in the Arab-Muslim world. Their governments are both weak and tyrannical. The tools for modernization are missing. In those conditions, they suffer the damage from runaway Westernization without enjoying any of the benefits. That exacerbates the impression of being dispossessed. How can they avoid the deep uncertainty about the solidity of their religion that animates the pretension of putting it outside and beyond any discussion?

via wood s lot

“Be not too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not merely good – be good for something.” – Henry David Thoreau

A good society will doubt itself.

[click pic for larger image]

Imagine living under trees this large?

Or gathering the needles after a windstorm?

Another collection of vast huge wonderful forest and pioneer pictures, including redwood scenes like these is posted at the The San Joaquin Valley Digitization Project

10 Reasons Jobs Suck

“Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:

1. Income for dummies…
You only get paid when you’re working…Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously…

2. Limited experience….
The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over…

3. Lifelong domestication.
Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet…

4. Too many mouths to feed…
You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate…

5. Way too risky.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you?…

6. Having an evil bovine master.
When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”…

7. Begging for money…

8. An inbred social life…

9. Loss of freedom…

10. Becoming a coward.
Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault… It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards…”

Read more in this provocative post from Steve Pavlina.

People have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent … War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today. – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

A Short History of America

For over three decades, Robert Crumb shocked, entertained, titillated, and challenged

Non-Animated, at crumbmuseum

All men have the same defect: they wait to live, for they have not the courage of each instant.

Why not invest enough passion in each moment to make it an eternity?

We all learn to live only when we no longer have anything to expect, because we do not live in the living present but in a vague and distant future.

We should not wait for anything except the immediate promptings of the moment.

We should wait without the consciousness of time.

There’s no salvation without the immediate.

But man is a being who no longer knows the immediate.

He is an indirect animal.

via bookofjoe

At the end of the 80s I was paying Ziff-Davis Publishing over $12,000 per month for full page ads in newstand PC/Computing mags in order to sell over 3,000 titles of $3 floppy disks crammed with freeware and shareware. In those days, it was a labor and an art to index and fill a 5-1/4″ floppy.

This was a helluva library for its era.

But Howard Ziff then bought a worthy competitor’s library in Texas called Public Shareware and began to give titles away free as part of PCMagazine promotions.

Within four months my cashflow sunk.

As we love, we invent.
We are enterprise, families, and nations.
We are tying the the best of us into the grand of us.

We are the effort of love.
We are the glorious gift we carry in our arms.

We are night and day.
We print where we step.
We bring better color to day.

Our reach is what breathing brings.
Our imagination is refusing colder winds behind us.
Our glance across infinity is where we repair each moment.

We cannot satisfy ourselves pleasing each other.

We are instead to walk toward more tremendous tasks.

All is.
We are.
There is no waiting.
Dark we revel and ignore.
Our ache we blame on each direction.

Inside the red and blood is history,
that noise of our gloom,
our best yet,
then bright,
our flame,
Choice.

Many folks say that reporters look for bad news in Iraq.

But the reality might be that only a bit of each day’s bad news is published.

This pic “shows the whiteboard at the NBC correspondents bureau in Baghdad on March 6, with all the relevant news for the day.

[click pic for larger version]

Only a tiny fraction of those make it into the Western media.”

The real reality in Baghdad at Lunch over IP

Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher has won this year’s Templeton Prize – worth more than $1.5 million.

Taylor investigates people’s desire to seek meaning and spiritual direction, and has suggested that the world’s problems can only be solved by considering both their secular and spiritual roots. He argues that by failing to take individuals’ spiritual needs into account and focusing only on the economic and political, politicians have left out a large part of how people of all religions find meaning in their lives.

“I think the reason why young children turn to violence in Gaza City is not just through socio-economic factors but also through the meaninglessness of their lives,” (Taylor) said yesterday. “They feel no purpose and people come along and offer them a ’cause’.

“Or take the people who were involved in the July bombings in London. What we know is that some were highly successful and integrated in British society and yet they did what they did, because they were excited by some greater cause of Islam on a global level. They were giving some sense to their lives by becoming fighters. We need to understand this ‘dark spirituality’ as the West is very unschooled in this.”

Found at hurryupharry

The Mississippi River built south Louisiana over 7,000 years. These pics show how it’s disappearing.

Each year the state loses 24 square miles of wetlands – approximately a football field every 45 minutes.

By 2020, New Orleans will be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico.

The Rise and Dissappearance of Southeast Louisiana is a 15 minute Flash presentation of the current situation, very well done, that provides insight into the challenge faced by New Orleans.

Katrina may be only a part of the disaster facing Louisiana.

I discovered some words to help explain my feelings surrounding a recent experience with an odd fellow I was recently stuck too near while in Sacramento:

“It’s kind of striking that angry expressions are a very negative signal to almost everyone, yet making others angry can be a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for.”, said Oliver Schultheiss, University of Michigan associate professor of psychology.

A parade of rightness is a stimulant for some folks.
Many people love to make other people mad.
It’s an addiction.

Unlike a true reward, this addiction is an arrangement as hurried and impulsive as administering weekend drugs. Some people find that raising anger from others is so rewarding they go out of their way.

Perhaps reinforced by annoying someone, some people continue to heckle. Instead of offering wisdom, peace or love, this addiction seeks only to justify a greedy stimulant.

A small person raises small threats, thus the behavior is not perceived as a threat and becomes a reward.

Testosterone levels and dominance motivation is a learned sequence.
Recent work has been published in the journal Physiology and Behavior.

This snippet helped explain to me a zonko dingy oddwall experience.

I recall a good and vigorous heart that once exclaimed, “All beings seek attention in order to grow.”

They love to make you mad

Over much of the years after the crisis of the 1973 oil embargo, I was reading NASA technical bulletins delivered by mail each month.

I learned that a coil of cheap black pipe is the most cost effective solar water heater period — a loop on the roof. The pipe can degrade and requires attention to be safe and secure, but it works.

That anything dark brown, green or blue absorbs no less than 97% as effectively as anything costly solid black in order to capture heat. The cost benefits of hi-tech and ultra-absorption systems usually fail.

That piles and piles of cheap rock or huge tubs of (safe) water under and near where you live at night will keep and convey more heat (or cool) than a dozen new technologies, tax incentives or sales discounts.

That discovering the heat gain/loss angle within 10 or 15 degrees of a window or a wall can alter a monthly utility bill more than 30%.

Temperature is where you find it. Often three feet above or fifteen feet under.

I was the State of California’s #88 license as a Certified Energy Manager, founder of the western branch of the Assoc. of Energy Engineers, held an 8000 store contract with the Independent Grocers Association to teach owners how to insulate, install usage timers and heat curtains that you might remember over the milk section, plus energy manager of 11,000 church buildings for the Cal. Ecumenical Association.

Because so much of “new energy” merely boils down to dark surfaces, shadows, angles, and old fashioned “brains”, the commerce of “new energy” did not become profitable during my generation. Even these days, it’s a risky gamble to expect any new energy option to suceed.

For cheap energy at home: Color, angle and mass remain the most effective, the least costly, the most neglected.

Temperature differential is the first tool to move energy. Shade, height and mass are the methods.

When new owners purchased a gas station and convenience store in 1986, it was mainly a gas station and convenience store.

They immediately expanded the business by adding a fresh produce section. Since the addition of produce, the annual sales have gone from $200,000.00 to $1.3 million.

I am ashamed of and worried about the poor food quality sold at 100,000s of small and gas station food vendors. I rarely spend a dime inside when I fill my tank. But I often picture the billions of dollars being funnelled through American bodies into the coffers of Coke and Pepsi and the breweries that dominate the shitty sector of the food business.

Which of these images is the most common mental picture of a coal fired power plant?

Opponents of coal power usually post images that smother the air and rampage the earth.

All of which is true, yet recent proposals show a very different picture – sponsored by huge if not always credible institutions such as the US DOE.

FutureGen, scheduled to begin operating in 2013, is a US$1-billion “clean-coal” prototype, bound for either Illinois or Texas, the finalist states.

FutureGen’s power plant will be the first coal-fired operation ever designed to produce electricity and hydrogen with virtually no harmful pollution.

And why pollution?

The Future of Coal – a report that was released this week by the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicts that coal consumption in the US will grow significantly by mid-century. “In virtually any scenario that we’ve explored, coal use increases – even when you place a substantial price on CO₂ emissions.” Unlike oil, which is expensive and concentrated in geopolitically problematic locations, coal is plentiful in those countries where future demand is likely to be greatest, notably the US, China and India. [story at New Scientist Environment]

Given that coal generates the most CO₂ per unit energy of any fossil fuel, the implications for climate change are serious.

MIT is recommending a massive scale-up of technologies that capture the carbon released by coal burning and sequester it underground in porous rock formations.

Others promote what they say is a technologically simple method to grind coke and pipeline it to salt mines.

Several urban governments are considering pipelines that will force carbon dioxide into empty underground pockets around their cities.

Alberta is discussing a pipeline to move carbon dioxide from the oilsands and store it underground at a cost as much as $5 billion.

The Sierra Club has said carbon sequestration only encourages dependence on fossil fuels. [wiki on artificially
capturing and storing carbon]

---

Scripps researchers found large amounts of carbon particulates from Asia over the West Coast of the United States.

More than three-quarters of the particulate pollution known as black carbon transported at high altitudes over the West Coast during spring is from Asian sources, according to a research team led by Professor V. Ramanathan at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

Future Pundit posits that with the Chinese putting 1 to 2 new coal burning electric plants online per week this problem of soot from Asia is going to get much worse before it gets better.

---

Update:
In the book, a cheese-loving king’s castle is infested with mice. So the king brings in cats to get rid of the mice. Then the castle’s overrun with cats, so he brings in dogs to get rid of them, then lions to get rid of the dogs, elephants to get rid of the lions, and finally, mice to get rid of the elephants.

That scenario in “The King, the Mice and the Cheese,” by Nancy and Eric Gurney, should give scientists pause before taking extreme measures to mess with Mother Nature, says Weaver of the University of Victoria.

However, in recent months, several scientists are considering doing just that.

They are exploring global warming solutions that sound wholly far-fetched, including giant artificial “trees” that would filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre “solar shade” created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth’s temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.

Gender makes a distinct difference on what parts are stared at the longest.

Take a look at the hotspot picture.

All users tested looked the image, but there was a distinct difference in focus between men and women.

Although both men and women looked at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face.

For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.

This difference doesn’t just occur with images of people.

Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

Where men focus and where women do not. Ha!

eyetracking research

Update: Mind Hacks posted this link.

Cognitive Daily has a fantastic piece on a eye-tracking study looking how artists and non-artists look differently at visual scenes.

Update:
Reported in Hormones and Behavior [story at physorg]

Women using hormonal contraceptives looked more at the genitals.

Women who were not using hormonal contraceptives paid more attention to contextual elements of the photographs.

Men looked at the female face much more than women, and both looked at the genitals comparably.

Growing potatoes in mid-air, in a new technique called aeroponics, is showing great promise. The technique consists of cultivating potato seedlings on specially adapted frames so that the roots, and the tubers, grow suspended in the air, without touching the soil.

This avoids the need to disinfect the soil with harmful chemicals and keeps the tubers healthy as well. The frames are covered with black plastic to keep out the light and the plants are sprayed with a solution of nutrients to allow them to grow.

The International Potato Center (CIP) is using the technique to improve production and reduce the cost of producing seed potatoes. The method is up to ten times more effective than with the conventional techniques. Another advantage is that the little tubers can be harvested at any size seed user wants, from 5 to 30 grams. Spraying fertilizers directly on to the roots makes it possible for the growth phase to continue for more than 180 days without interruption, which does not happen with conventional techniques.

First results have been very successful. For example, 67 seed tubers were obtained per plant with the variety Yungay; with Canchán INIA, 70 tubers and with Perricholi, 69.

With conventional techniques, the average is from 5 to 10 tubers per plant.

Comparison shopping is an essential part of shopping and product research. Summize uses heatmaps to compare products. Again, the ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ wisdom proves true. Seeing the heatmaps side by side gives the consumer a quick verdict on what other consumers collectively voted for…

readwriteweb has a thorough review which states, ”

Summize is impressive. Its power is in delivering a lot of information, using a relatively simple interface. Summize brings together reviews and normalizes ratings to output essentially a single rating number.

The presentation is not only innovative, but useful.

Crowdsourcing is improving.

Fred Wilson has an interesting idea:

“Superdistribution means turning every consumer into a distribution partner. Every person who buys a record, a movie, reads a newspaper, a book, every person who buys a Sonos or a Vespa becomes a retailer of that item. It’s word of mouth marketing, referral marketing, but with one important difference. The consumer is the retailer.”

“The thing I want to eliminate is FRICTION. I want to supercharge commerce.”

“I am done with the old way of selling goods.”

“I don’t want to buy from an institution. I want to buy from my friends. And I want to sell to them.”

via emergic

Can’t you just imagine the confrontation of economists? Roll over Adam Smith.

Here’s a pic from an older post about turning used tires into a thing of beauty.

Last year, 300 million tires were discarded – about one per American – and 261 million of those were recycled. Most of the 39 million or so tires not recycled were processed for landfill disposal.

A Pittsburgh area company has succeeded in becoming the nation’s largest waste tire processor. Liberty Tire Recycling LLC handled 70 million tires, most of which were recycled for use as fuel or in products ranging from welcome mats and railroad ties to asphalt and athletic fields.

That’s nearly a quarter of all waste tires produced nationwide last year.

The company operates 10 processing centers, which serve 16 states, mostly in the East, and employs 450. Its Braddock plant, with 25 employees, processed about 3 million tires last year with plans this year to recycle 4 million.

“We’re 21/2 times bigger than the next guy in the industry…

“We’re looking to fill in the map from one state to the next and keep building up market share…”

Tires are shredded and processed to produce crumb rubber. The shredded rubber is frozen with liquid nitrogen, then shattered into crumbs as fine as talcum powder.

Steel belting and fiber are removed before the rubber is screened for size for different uses, and the steel is recycled. The 40 million pounds of crumb rubber produced in Braddock is shipped in 1-ton containers to companies that make new tires, mix it with glue to make matting and other rubber products, or combine it with asphalt to make roads more durable and quieter.

The Rubber Manufacturers Association said “rubber asphalt concrete” is used in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida and South Carolina. It’s recently been used to make railroad ties that are stronger, longer lasting and require no creosote as wooden ties do. Shredded rubber, high in BTUs, is burned in power plants and produces fewer pollutants than other fuels such as coal. As more profitable methods of rubber use are developed, less will be burned.

The bulk of crumb rubber is used in athletic fields, where it’s mixed with sand or used as its own layer below artificial turf. Crumb also is poured atop the turf to make the blades stand tall and resemble grass. An athletic field requires 250,000 pounds of crumb rubber – about 20,000 tires.

[Salem News]

I spent a few months building proposals to export hammer mill machines and tire shredders to the USSR in the late 1980s. The tough part was gaining the patience of American vendors while they tried to figure out why we were taking months to arrange cross-trading in order to convert rubles into dollars. There are mountains of used tires in the region.

Attraction is ‘determined by walk’

An hourglass figure has long been perceived to be the ideal figure for a woman to have.

But New York University researchers have found that to be found attractive, a woman had to move in a feminine way – swaying her hips.

Men, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper found, were more attractive if they moved with a “shoulder swagger”. [BBC]

A quarter of US veterans treated by doctors when they return from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer mental health problems, according to US research.

The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, looked at 103,788 personnel between 2001 and 2005.

The most frequent diagnosis was post-traumatic stress disorder, but anxiety, depression and substance-use also counted as mental health problems. [BBC]

Surveillance cameras are common in many cities, monitoring tough street corners to deter crime, watching over sensitive government buildings and even catching speeders. Cameras are on public buses and in train stations, building lobbies, schools and stores. Most feed video to central control rooms, where they are monitored by security staff. The latest breed, known as “intelligent video,” could transform cameras from passive observers to eyes with brains, able to detect suspicious behavior.

A person carrying a heavy load under a jacket would walk differently than someone unencumbered – which could help identify a person hiding a weapon.

A car pulled into a parking lot and the driver got out, a box springing up around him. It moved with the driver as he went from car to car, looking in the windows instead of heading into the building.

In both cases, the camera knew what was normal and what was not.

The gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers

[story]

By the time the Atlantic Ocean pours through the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia with a controlled fury that is unmatched anywhere in the world, nearly 14 billion tonnes of seawater will have sloshed into that channel — equivalent to the combined flow, some have calculated, of every river on earth.

Canada may well be the place for tidal power, or at least what is called in-stream generators.

The latest technology relies on small propellers or turbines that can be anchored to the sea floor.

Nova Scotia is considering as many as 300 units in a seabed farm, at least twice the 20 foot diameter of the test unit in this picture of a test unit by Scotland’s OpenHydro, in strategic locations around the bay.

[story at CBC]

The world’s first field of underwater turbines, using currents of the East River, will be in New York City. [link to post]

Tuberculosis is back with a vengeance with a third of the world’s population currently infected.

TB is a highly contagious disease of the lungs that was thought to have been virtually eliminated by the 1960s, but is now resurgent and kills nearly two million people worldwide every year.

New infections are occurring at a rate of one per second.

There’s a dramatic rise in the incidence of new strains of TB that are resistant to traditional antibiotics. As a result, the World Health Organisation, the Bill Gates Foundation and the European Union have all launched initiatives to tackle the problem.

The bacterium survives the initial attack by the body’s immune system and then lies dormant, usually in the lungs, waiting for any sign of weakness, such as a secondary infection. Its resurgence over the last 20 years has been closely associated with the AIDS epidemic, which destroys the human immune system and has allowed TB to get a grip once again.

London is the TB capital of Europe, although most large cities here and in North America have seen rapid increases in the number of TB infections. However, the problem is most acute in Africa and Asia where HIV/AIDS is also most prolific and a shortage of traditional TB medicines and problems with patient compliance has led to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of the disease.

“There were only ever a limited number of drugs that were effective against TB… [link]