The Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution

update: global swadeshi network members RSS feed

http://friendfeed.com/globalswadeshi

Combines posts from nine or ten of the member’s blogs - let me know if you’d like to be added!

Flying deck spar for seasteading

The idea is to extend the mast of the Spar above the deck, and then to hang a lightweight deck as a tensile structure, akin to a bridge, off the mast. This is a good idea because tensile structures are cheap compared to compression structures.

The cables would probably be fairly light, and number in the thousands, rather than having a few big cables - better to spread the support. The deck would probably have a few major masts extending NSEW to hold the deck in place horizontally, possibly also supporting tensioning cables.

This structure would be open decking, so waves would pass through it, and primarily be intended for low-value activities - rented housing, farming, solar energy collection. Things which are either not destroyed by a big wave, or can be cheaply rebuilt afterwards.

If one was expecting big weather, people would lash all loose objects to the deck, and then retreat to the mast until it was over. In an emergency, I suspect the deck could be jettisoned at a relatively low cost compared to the spar itself. Envisage things like lightweight construction practices.

Conventional spars were built for heavy equipment, not for maximum cheap surface area, so I suspect nobody ever had the need that would give rise to a design like this.

how bad can it be?

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11219554

275 meals in a 5 gallon bucket for $80

never a truer word

“Ask an impertinent question, and you’re on your way to a pertinent answer.” Bertrand Russell

via Jonathan

Copyright originated as a tool of political oppression

http://english.rickfalkvinge.se/2008/05/03/copyrights-shameful-origins-part-1-of-2/

according to the Pirate Party. Fascinating.

Oh really? 200 visits to the white house…. **200** visits to the white house?

The other big gay scandal of the Bush years was bungled completely by the mainstream press. In January 2005 a blogger named Jeff Gannon who was a regular at White House briefings finally attracted the attention of his peers when George Bush called on him at a press conference so that Gannon could lob an exceptionally soft softball question at the president.

A little checking turned up the fact that Gannon’s real name is James Guckert, that he had been rejected for a congressional press pass because of his lack of experience as a journalist, and that he had another interesting sideline — as a prostitute.

Until he was exposed by the blogosphere, the White House had for some reason been giving Guckert daily press passes for two years. How could this have happened? Guckert told Anderson Cooper there was no mystery — White House officials “aren’t interested in reporters’ sexual history,” he said.

Obvious questions were never answered: Who was Guckert’s patron in the White House, and why was he or she so eager to allow the nonreporter access to daily press briefings?

Imagine how reporters would have reacted if they had discovered a female prostitute had been granted special treatment by Bill Clinton’s press office during his administration. But because this story was about a gay hustler and George Bush, the Washington press corps just shrugged.

Two months after the story broke, the mystery deepened when two Democratic representatives — Louise Slaughter and John Conyers — forced the Secret Service to release White House logs under the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about Guckert’s comings and goings. Raw Story reported that Guckert had made more than 200 White House visits — including 24 appearances when no White House briefings had occurred. On at least 14 occasions, records showed that Guckert’s entry or exit time was missing from the logs. On several visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry point than his usual one, and one day he actually checked in twice but never checked out.

http://www.out.com/detail.asp?page=3&id=23655

So, what’s the deal here?

Fixiing Wikipedia: Wikipedia.com

So here’s the idea. Two wikipedias, sharing the same infrastructure and databases - in fact, the same site as now, with a special case.

Wikipedia.org serves the content without ads
Wikipedia.com serves it with ads

You can use whichever site you prefer, but one of them raises money for Wikipedia.

Thoughts?

What the word needs… A LiveCD with homedir-on-flash-drive

1> Boot from the DVD on any computer.

2> Plug in your flash drive.

3> Compute, including saving documents.

4> There’s your simple computing environment for, well, pretty much anywhere. For bonus points, make general software installable to the keychain drive.

Why doesn’t this exist?

$180 video projector

http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20071031/torpedo-projector-lets-kids-go-big-%e2%80%a6/

Odd resolution - 920 x 240 or something - but looks remarkably like video projectors for all

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