big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
‘ExitPoint’ from System Sensor draws attention to exit routes in emergency situations.
It makes a big difference not surprisingly.
The tones and intensities from directional devices offer easy-to-understand cues for rapidly finding exits.
Pointing the blare?
Article at Directions Magazine… found at weigo.
Reputation is many things. For our nation, here’s one insight about how we’re doing.
…times have really changed.
Sellers or suppliers are finding that payments are not guaranteed even within the system in North America.Many distributors, contractors, or buyers in North America are not even getting paid themselves by their own customers and thus can not afford to pay the supplier.
Bankruptcies and terms such as Chapter 11 are being learned by foreigners when they find out that the company they sold to cannot and will not pay the supplier at all.
Suppliers are finding that they do not understand the legal system or ways of collecting money from their American customers. Some suppliers are now changing their terms of sales to Letters of Credit only to find out that their competitors have not.
Since it is still a buyer’s market and hundreds of suppliers are selling with open account terms, how does one protect his investment and sell in North America?
Some suppliers are just backing out and saying to themselves “Let us sell to South America or the Far East where buyers pay by Letter of Credit or some guarantee of payment; plus these buyers are not so demanding.
EveryBody Special is a new, low-cost wooden coffin created to meet extreme demand during emergency situations.
Designed by Dutch EveryBody Coffins, the EveryBody Special is a modular coffin that’s extremely easy to assemble. No tools, nails or screws are required – the pieces just click together. The standard material used is 12 mm multilayered wood, and more environmentally friendly options are also available.
Since they’re lightweight and packaged in flat-packs (Ikea-style), transporting EveryBody coffins is very cost efficient: up to 570 extra large (XL) caskets fit into a 20 foot container. Combined with their easy assembly, this makes the coffins highly suitable for burial and cremation in disaster areas and epidemic situations. The company hopes to offer a more dignified, humane alternative to plastic body bags that are often the only option when large-scale disaster strikes.
Besides selling to governmental and aid organisations, EveryBody is also offering its product to commercial distributors in those regions where consumers will welcome a low-cost alternative to expensive caskets. As we’ve pointed out before, everything can be reinvented!
Coffin spotting at SpringWise
Website: http://www.everybodycoffins.com
Couples shouldn’t be so determined to sleep together
Dr Neil Stanley, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey, said: “It’s not surprising that people are disturbed by sleeping together.
“Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.
“Sleep is the most selfish thing you can do and it’s vital for good physical and mental health.
“Sharing the bed space with someone who is making noises and who you have to fight with for the duvet is not sensible.
Once the sex becomes infrequent (or so married men assure me) why not sleep apart some of the time?
Marriage doesn’t just make men dumber. It also takes away some of their drive.
Read much more at futurePundit
Over the last 40 years farm production has become industrialized. Historically, multi purpose, hardy livestock were raised on small farms with relatively low costs inputs for housing, care and feed. Now the agriculture industry depends on highly productive specialized breeds raised in controlled environments and requiring high-cost inputs for nutrition, housing and health care.
The Slow Food movement has done a terrific job in reawakening interest in foods selected for flavour and having deep roots in regional and traditional farm settings. The organic movement documents the potential hazards of relying on food products that are laden with hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. Environmental groups have publicized the toll of intensive industrialized food operations. Slowly, the demand for flavourful food, from older breeds that thrive under natural conditions, is growing.
Despite these advances, the outlook is still not good for rare breeds.
Before we lose the traditional breeds that are hardy, disease resistant and well suited to natural production methods. These breeds are the gene pool, the only source of genetic material that exists to produce future generations of livestock. Many breeds are facing extinction, or severe loss of genetic diversity. Support is needed from farmers, governments, and those who value traditional livestock.
Rare breeds provide a healthy and environmentally sound alternative to industrial food. Farmers of heritage breeds typically look to the long-term benefits of their operations and take care not deplete their resources.
Rare Breeds and Small Farmers
We’re using straw.
The estimate is that one bale of straw is 200 dollars worth of electricity or about 200 dollars worth of natural gas.
The cost of heating with wheat straw is similar to that of using coal but straw fuel is about 90 percent less expensive than heating with either natural gas or electricity.
We put 16 bales on a conveyer, the conveyer feeds them into the system. We have a shedder that shreds the bales into finer particles and delivers it into the primary combustion chamber where we essentially do a low temperature burn, or create smoke.
Then we take that smoke and send it into a secondary chamber, or afterburner, and we burn it in there at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit which then means we get full and complete combustion, clean gas that we then move over into our heat exchanger to heat water. The water, in turn, heats the facilities. via FarmScape
“I have no personal interest in the territorial boundaries of knowledge communities.” [here]
Use it.
Use the web.
Learn to print what you’ve been saying.
It’s healthy.
Free.
Available.
Rewarding.
Democratic.
The future has not once been what you were thinking.
Deep mud, sand and snow are no match for this go-anywhere mutated motorbike, cites Popular Science.
The design entered the 2006 Michelin Challenge Design showcasing vehicles made especially for California’s diverse and often rugged topography.
Hyanide is designed to run on a flexible rubber tread that spans the machine’s entire underside. So if any part of the bottom is touching the ground, the Hyanide should be able to move, no matter how deep the quagmire, no matter how rough the terrain. The tank-like tread consists of 77 identical segments—each made from hard plastic covered with tire rubber —held together by Kevlar rope. Each segment flexes independently, making the tread significantly more limber than if its components were rigid. Not only does this setup help with traction, but it would allow the tank-motorcycle to corner like no other vehicle.
You say tomato:
“The problem of pronouncing names correctly is so extensive, and the possibility of gaffes so omnipresent, that the BBC employs an entire pronunciation unit, a small group of dedicated orthoepists (professional pronouncers) who spend their working lives getting to grips with these illogical pronunciations so that broadcasters don’t have to do it on the air.”
Airlines are set to pump $2.6 trillion into buying new commercial jets over the next 20 years, aerospace group Boeing has predicted.
Boeing expects airlines to take delivery of 27,200 new passenger jets and cargo planes by 2025 – doubling the world fleet. via the BBC
A growing number of livestock producers are at least anxious about the impact on feed prices and supplies if corn is redirected to ethanol.
A reply from USDA Under Secretary J.B. Penn:
“All of a sudden we’ve seen a real increase in demand for corn for ethanol. This is a really big development. Suddenly, we have the opening of a market that has never been there.
Since the time of Christ, corn has been food. But now agriculture is trying to produce industrial products. And this situation has been greeted with great glee in farm country.
Now we’re in a short-run situation where strong ethanol demand and strong livestock demand for feed are competing. We’re trying to get more markets open for products like beef. This is one of those great situations for farmers.
In the past we’ve all been concerned about surpluses. My sense is that we may have some short-term frictions here. Don’t underestimate the technology and the entrepreneurial spirit when folks put their minds to something. I think we’ll be able work through things and capitalize on the renewable fuels and meet the demand for feed and exports.”
via agweb
Thought tips:
Change is neither global nor universal.
Solutions will vary by location, region and company.
Regional resources, infrastructure and taxation are critical factors.
Choices are actions by many not headlines for many.
Mind Hacks posits that the exact function of dreaming is still largely a mystery, but here’s a recent popular scientific theory.
Therefore I will try to explain a current view of dreaming and its possible functions, developed by myself and many collaborators, which we call the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming. The basic idea is as follows: activation patterns are shifting and connections are being made and unmade constantly in our brains, forming the physical basis for our minds. There is a whole continuum in the making of connections that we subsequently experience as mental functioning. At one end of the continuum is focused waking activity, such as when we are doing an arithmetic problem or chasing down a fly ball in the outfield. Here our mental functioning is focused, linear and well-bounded. When we move from focused waking to looser waking thought–reverie, daydreaming and finally dreaming–mental activity becomes less focused, looser, more global and more imagistic. Dreaming is the far end of this continuum: the state in which we make connections most loosely.
Link to Scientific American article ‘Why do we dream?’.
I caught these quips just moments ago.
“I’m not usually one for reflection…
“The wedding is just two months away…
“My job has gone from contract to full time…
“Woohoo! It’s a hockey nut’s dream.
Said to self, “Self, this is, always was, our source of energy.”
Ponder this:
Then ponder this site occasionally,
a study in manufacturing our times:
And memorize this:
mesmeriffic
If I’ve learned anything, I’m little.
All these years I thought that what I knew about big stuff mattered. HA.
It only matters to big people and there aren’t any. HA. HA.
As gas prices rise we think of China and India provoking demand.
One thought:
As gas costs, it is China and India that hurt first, thus reducing demand.
Be sure to use systems theory when factoring outright paranoia.
There is exciting work ahead.
Be heartful.
If there is a gas crisis, intense war, huge inflation, there are always other products.
The genetic diversity of wheat is as high as it was before the Green Revolution.
A study just published shows that modern breeding techniques have restored genetic diversity in wheat germplasm and brought wheat’s wild relatives back into the family.
It’ s good when our effort restores what we’ve overlooked.
Our prairie across America once held a great variety of grasses.
2 inches small to 10 feet tall, and more.
Grasses are the first industrialized, thus the first selected merely for sales. A narrow demand for a handful of types helped ignore hundreds, thousands, of related grasses.
The sands across Arabia were forests not long ago.It’s important to learn what our knowledge destroys.
There is exciting work ahead.
Be heartful.
Germ.
The rise of organic food is a knee-jerk reaction to consumer health fears, and threatens to unhelpfully steer us away from improving the quality of food generally.
Everyone in the food supply chain has a responsibility to put all consumers back in touch with real food.
Organic food is pulling our attention away from the real problem, which is that the whole food supply chain needs to reconnect with its roots.
It is hard to believe, for example, that we live in a society where sliced white bread is almost as unhealthy as sugary fizzy drinks.
White bread sales have admittedly fallen over the last few years as consumers trade up to more wholesome varieties, but this still represents a strange state of affairs when one considers bread has been part of the human race’s staple diet for thousands of years.
The rise of organic food is partly a consumer reaction against this ‘dumbing down’ of real food, a plea for tastier, healthier and more locally sourced products.
Today’s supermarket-led food chain is still messing with reality.
The organic food movement may have unlocked growing public support for changes in the food supply chain, such as more variety, more local products and more nutritious foods. It is these core values, not organic food itself, that should take the food industry forward in the 21st Century.
foodproductiondaily.com
HortResearch has fine-tuned the science of gene discovery to such a degree that they can now accurately determine which genes create the individual flavors and fragrances found in fruits and flowers.
The Invention Connection features 100s of inventions — such as the Mirrored Toilet Seat — available for licensing, investment, sale, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, partnerships. Brilliant ideas waiting to bloom with the proper business nurturing.
Each invention has its own “cyber-booth” web page which includes a photo/drawing of the product, an extensive editorial-style product description with the special features and benefits, an outline of the product’s target market, what the inventor is seeking and the inventor’s personal contact information so interested parties can reach him directly and quickly.
People Per Square Mile in California: 217.2
People Per Square Mile in Northern California: 35.4
Most people in California live south of Sacramento.
Northern California is different.
Learn about efforts to create The Great State of Jefferson
More stats here
Hello Partner.
There are many Rules and Regulations.
It takes time to find a Contract.
It takes thought to write the changes.
Oh yes, and profits.
Much boilerplate but not too much heat.
Much cool but never chill.
And in the meantime, yes, in the meantime, folks are crawling out of the woods .
They each have a paper flag to wave.
The State.
The County.
The City.
The Broker.
The Accountant.
The Lawyer.
The Bank.
The Lease Manager.
The Manufacturer.
The Distributor.
And, oh yes, the Owners.
Each want $$.
Each want time.
This country would double small business productivity if every clerk, administrator, representative, agent, officer, consultant and licensed professional was required to call me to make appointments, submit proposed paperwork for my review, drive over to my office and wait until I can see them.
And then to demonstrate point by point, line by line, why I must sign on any line or pay any fee in order to carry out tasks only they insist are necessary.
Longer, original version:
Starting a business from the trenches
or
Starting a business is the trenches
I thought of marital stuff a few moments ago. Maybe you don’t have time for this. But I’m writing it anyway. I thought of marital stuff because I am working on the administration of a new business. The business required a partner. I got a partner.
Now I must assure that the partner and I stay happy. It takes dedication, good will. It will require patience. And warmth. Much effort. Enthusiasm. The mere preamble is absorbing. Hours of pondering. It consumes thought and exchange to compose an agreement to manage current duties, proposed outcomes and how we will resolve potential upsets. Buy Out. Taxes. Death. Oh yes, and profits.
Much boilerplate but not too much heat. Much cool but never chill.
And in the meantime, yes, in the meantime, folks are crawling out of the woods .
They each have a pulp & parchment flag to wave. The State. The County. The City. The Broker. The Accountant. The Lawyer. The Other Lawyer. The Bank. The Lease Manager. The Manufacturer. The Supplier. The Distributor. Each want $70, $62.93, $450, $4250, $27,450. They each want me to call them before AM coffee or a bit after lunch. They want me to drive over, stand in their lobby or sit a few minutes in their fresh customer service area. They expect me composed, clean, showing a posture but relaxed. A good credit score. Not too much tan. Appropriate creases.
They wait for two to thirty typed pages on their counter, their desk, or more personably in their hands. Each thumb pages. Some thumb each page. All search for errors. They want chat but not distraction. Slide a few pages in my direction. And then pause, point, focus, point, pause. Observing my signature, again, and here, then, yes, again, and so, and there too. And thanks for your check. Is that MasterCard? Sorry, no cash. It’s been such a pleasure. I hope I can crawl out of the woods to serve you again soon.
But it’s hot. My dog is in the car. To whom do I write the check?