Wired on the Hexayurt
Originally designed as refugee housing, a Hexayurt can be built for $200 from fire-safe insulation boards and industrial tape. The Hexayurt Project follows a free and open source model; plans can be downloaded at the project’s website.
I visited two of these innovative shelters last year at Burning Man. One belonged to Lindsey Darby, a 21-year-old college student and co-designer on the Hexayurt Project. The other belonged to Kevin Price, a 47-year-old computer technician from Mesa, Arizona, who said he discovered Hexayurts two weeks before Burning Man. “I was thinking of all the ways the tent would be awful. I went right to it: no prototype.” He bought all the parts, cut them in his driveway and assembled them on the playa.
Inside, both Darby’s and Price’s Hexayurts were spacious, quiet and cooler than expected in the hot afternoon sun. According to Darby, her fold-up Hexayurt took only 30 minutes to assemble on the playa, and its impressive R-value allowed her to sleep later than her neighbors.
“I’ve always stayed in a Hexayurt on the playa, never in a tent, so I’ve always been able to stay in bed until 10 or 11 [a.m.],” she said. “But I did notice that I was always the last one up!”
Vinay Gupta, the Hexayurt’s inventor, said: “It’s like having an entire extra day at Burning Man. You can go to bed at 3 or 4 in the morning, get up at noon, and you’re still human at the end of the week.”
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=649579&cid=24654733
Very nice, very nice indeed. I’m very happy with this one 
Encoding IPV6 addresses as pronounceable words
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=649579&cid=24654733
Quite nicely done. Would like to see a linguist take a crack at the list of phonemes, though.
Making course corrections
Deep reexamination of my field of projects, figuring out what stays and what goes, what prospers and what should be killed.
I’m feeling very close to the end of this round of work on household infrastructure and called back towards the state level infrastructure stuff - State In A Box, not just the Identity Services Architecture but things like the property rights registers which govern the perimeter of the state, and (of course) the geolibertarian / georgist stuff which has caught my eye for some time.
I mean… conceptually, the tech is done. It needs a few years to mature and a few more to productize, but it’s just not that hard. We’re really waiting for the network and for e-banking in the developing world so people can actually pay us for stuff. If there was banking infrastructure there would be product, and banking infrastructure is coming fast.
Is it time to go back to working more on consciousness? On teaching people how to remove the ignorance which makes them uncaring about their fellow beings? I don’t know. I alternate between thinking that it’s important that people study, and knowing that at a fundamental level, anybody can awaken to any degree if they choose - the deep part of us which knows is sleepless and deathless.
The other possibility is that I write the book. I’m not sure that political conditions in America are bad enough for it to be meaningful to write a book about the post-American reality - even if my sense of the situation is correct, until it’s actually fully visible, who wants to read a book about how the cold war has retarded some areas of global political progress by nearly 60 years, and what to do about it, while the situation has not changed?
I guess that’s my major issue right now, actually. I’m going to miss America really, really badly, but the America that I loved, that I considered my country at the most fundamental political level, is already dead. Land of the free, home of the brave, if you are to be found, you are to be found abroad.
I am a Hindu. I am against any belief in hell in any form, particularly eternal hells, or hells to which one is consigned at birth and which require external salvation. I see the black-and-white, hell-centered forms of Christianity turning the beautiful religious balance and freedom of the old America into a theocratic state in which one must profess belief in the more extreme forms of Christianity to enter the White House. And a white house which you must swear religious fealty to enter might as well be a Vatican. The separation of Church and State was the crown jewel of American liberty. And, as a Hindu who was once an American, it hits me hard. In a Christian theocratic state, I will always be a second class citizen, a poor benighted darkie who’s going straight to hell when Jesus comes home.
To have that kind of thinking enshrined in government… I’m better out, frankly. I’d cause trouble if I was in.
Imagine the 14th century Vatican with nuclear weapons.
As an individual there is little I can do to change the world. I’ve found a lot of leverage in working on open source appropriate technology, and in using my peculiar knack for dealing with apocalyptic scenarios to get government to pay attention to the potential of simple solutions to complex contingencies. The idea that horrific political bottlenecks sometimes have technical solutions hasn’t gotten as much traction as I wish it had, but it’s hard to grasp from the inside.
But now my instinct is to batten down the hatches. If the shit really hits the fan in America, and it looks more likely day-by-day, I don’t think anybody is going to be investing massive resources in overhauling US govt. approaches to refugee issues, and even groups like the Red Cross will grow much more conservative. I’ve got some ideas about software for representing complex ideas coming along nicely (Processing, thou art a wonder) but even then, in a dollar == twenty cents scenario, new ideas find few friends.
The other option is to teach. Specifically, to teach the traditional practices in westernized forms, to help people tap their inner resilience to face what looks like a very significant upcoming crisis, and maybe even to find their own potential greatness, to squarely face the situation at hand, and do what needs to be done.
The place of greatest stress in times of extreme change is the mind. While it’s unlikely there will be mass starvation in a collapsed global economy, at least in the west, the relative peace and plenty of the past forty years are poor preparation for a generation that may be called to rebuild the world. People are going to need help, and that work is going to need to be done right alongside all other efforts because people who are paralyzed by change can’t do anything, not infrastructure, not policy, not politics.
So maybe that’s the key to the next phase of the work: teach people how to keep their minds clear and their heads above water in the stormy seas of the uncertain future. To teach resilience, from first principles.
is the problem really this simple?
http://dmiessler.com/blog/why-america-is-screwed-pic
What’s missing? Credit card debt. Student loans. 50% taxation. What’s missing is that this is what the people want and you can tell that because 50% or more those who vote, vote for it every year. It’s not like reform candidates haven’t run, from Perot to Nader. It’s not like local political action isn’t possible, on a myriad of issues. It’s not as if fair trade and community supported agriculture don’t exist.
No, my friends, the issue is that the system serves the will of the people. Maybe not their conscious, expressed will, but none the less it serves the will of the people. Everybody gets to blame their politicians, but never asks why their food is so cheap while millions starve. When you balance the books, however you balance them, the American people own the beast, not the other way around. The Germans owned Hitler, too.
Yes, one can talk about phase transitions in materials, about a climate of fear, about agency, but at the most basic level, “no, I won’t” is enough to ensure freedom, from Gandhi to Heinlein, if people are serious about it.
There is a possibility that the mall is a superstimulus, like the large ceramic eggs which birds will choose to nurture over their own small, real eggs. A plethora of stuff appealing to our instinctive desires which over-rides conscious consideration with the illusion of What You Want. Possibly, just possibly it’s that. It could also be the sea of synthetic hormones suffusing the population in the form of birth control pills, altering aggregate behavior by changing what many women want, which changes what men do, which changes how culture functions.
But whatever it is, do not doubt that the will of the people, in aggregate, drives it. At the mall, at the gas station, when houses are purchased, when people choose jobs, when they serve on juries, when the elect their leaders - all the way through the society it echos, a million little decisions of collective will adding up to the American Way of Life ™ in which it is possible to die on the street in similar conditions to those working in the factories that make such cheap goods possible, or rise to become a billionaire.
It’s not all bad: America does the vast majority of the world’s medical research, for example. The standard of living is high, the American Dream is beautiful, but the problem is that dream has obscured the reality long enough and must be torn asunder for people to return to reality, to understanding physical limits and the real cost of “anything is possible” culture. The place where this is showing up is the national debt, personal debt, balance of trade and therefore the overall financial stability of the nation as a whole. The no-limits, we-can-do-anything aspects of American culture have turned into the preconditions of debt-slavery as those who owe become owned, forced to work the third job to pay for the credit card debt accumulated because the second job didn’t generate enough cash to sustain the lifestyle that they desired.
The European model generally features a much lower standard of living in incidentals (not many three car families) but has problems that I like even less involving long-term ossification of critical cultural and social infrastructure. Also I fear fascism in Europe even more than I fear it in America because of the nondemocratic foundation of institutions like the EU.
It is this persistent ignoring of physical limits that has pushed the planet to breaking point. I’ve written elsewhere about the absolute horror of the cold war from a non-participant’s perspective - a squabble between two nations with different ideas about how to divide up scarcity turned into a threat to kill every life-form on the planet. This sickness is very real and very dangerous: ignoring the physical limits, getting confused about how important living under one ideology or another really is without focusing on the quality of life produced…
Will of the people. They took it from their leaders as doctrine, although it made no sense at all, and accepted it passively. And this is consent.
The myth of the left is that somebody else is responsible. They lean on the right, on their position as underdog opponents: the right does the dirty work which allows the left to continue to exist (and vise versa.) The myth of the right is that it’s OK for them to do these things because they can, and that there is no impact or cost for personal irresponsibility because of escapes like the Divine Right of Kings aka Manifest Destiny.
I do not know what it’s going to take to get Americans and, in general, anti-life Capitalism types (a thread I’ll expand on later) to look around them and understand where they are, who they are, and what is important, but my bet is that the process is going to be long and ugly enough to get a name that carries in history for a long, long time.
How long do we have? I can’t see the next president inheriting a healthy America. The fact is that the disease is clear for everybody to see especially bankers and international currency traders. Radical muslims know what McCain represents: years more war which means they have to continue operations or be swept aside by history. Political blocs like Europe and China (more a political bloc than a country, but more on that realization later too) all know that the clock is ticking.
Nobody will pull the trigger, but as soon as the situation can be handled by a combination of irrational investor behavior and slow response from other nation states, America may find the dollar is finished. Likewise, the electoral hacking that will put McCain in power in all probability may well cost America it’s status as a democracy…
What is the will of the people? This is the will of the people. You’re seeing it. But I think the will of the Other People, who aren’t in the 300 million, is about to be seen. The mandate of popular support from the world which went with America after WW2, and to a more limited extent through the cold war is withdrawn, and how that loss of support turns into an America which no longer floats in the clouds above the world directing its affairs remains to be seen.
What we need is a reality that works for everybody. We are not being taken there by the American dream. We know that now, and so it’s over.
Against Intellectual Monopoly review
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/08/against-intelle.html
(pushes main article on to the stack)
Gasoline-backed currency in Zimbabwe
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=156
Nothing unexpected, but confirmed sightings.
Children as pension-providers in China
Parents go to such lengths in part because Chinese culture has always emphasized success, but also for a more pressing reason: Traditionally, children support their parents in old age. With only one child to carry the load, parents’ fortunes are tied to their child’s, and they push (and pamper) the little ones accordingly. “In China, the term for a one-child family is a ‘risky family,’” says Baochang Gu, a demography professor at Beijing’s Renmin University who advises the Chinese government on the one-child policy. “If something happened to that child, it would be a disaster. So from the parents’ point of view, the spoiling is all necessary to protect them.”
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20080623-000004&print=1
Very resonant with the case I made in the Ending Poverty with Open Hardware talk, about how the pressure to large family size comes from the sheer number of kids you need to have to ensure 90% or 99% odds of having two live to adulthood in a high infant mortality society.
Nature Is Scary
it’s just a little shark, but watch the slowmo…
The (divorce) Pill
Summary: the pill gives women a sexual preference for men they won’t want to stay with later. They go off the pill, have kids, then discover they can’t stand their partners.
Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes are involved in immune response and other functions, and the best mates are those that have different MHC smells than you. The new study reveals, however, that when women are on the pill they prefer guys with matching MHC odors.
MHC genes churn out substances that tell the body whether a cell is a native or an invader. When individuals with different MHC genes mate, their offspring’s immune systems can recognize a broader range of foreign cells, making them more fit.
Past studies have suggested couples with dissimilar MHC genes are more satisfied and more likely to be faithful to a mate. And the opposite is also true with matchng-MHC couples showing less satisfaction and more wandering eyes.
“Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems,” said lead researcher Stewart Craig Roberts, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Newcastle in England, “but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill, as odor perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners.”
Sexy scents
The study involved about 100 women, aged 18 to 35, who chose which of six male body-odor samples they preferred. They were tested at the start of the study when none of the participants were taking contraceptive pills and three months later after 40 of the women had started taking the pill more than two months prior.
For the non-pill users, results didn’t show a significant preference for similar or dissimilar MHC odors. When women started taking birth control, their odor preferences changed. These women were much more likely than non-pill users to prefer MHC-similar odors.
“The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors,” Roberts said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080813/sc_livescience/thepillmakeswomenpickbadmates
How bad is it? Well… I think when the lawsuits start, it’s going to be the biggest bloodletting in recent legal history.
The frightening evolution of the King Cobra
Many snakes produce only small quantities of weak poison that is just adequate for their various small prey. But other snakes’ venom can be deadly for large animals—including humans. This is certainly the case for the king cobra, which is the world’s largest poisonous snake and might be capable of killing an elephant with a single bite. The king cobra preys overwhelmingly on other snakes, which have developed resistance to its venom. And that’s the reason for its powerful poison: It takes more venom to bring down another snake than it does a mammal.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-03/evolution’s-most-effective-killer-snake-venom
Via http://hhg.to/weblog/recent