March 2007
Peace through appropriate technology
Palestinian sewage dyke collapses burying people in shit. Turns out their sewage processing infrastructure was overloaded by overcrowding and they started storing it in lagoons.
Aid officials said plans to build a larger waste treatment facility had been held up for years by perpetual fighting in the area.
[…]
The Gaza City mayor blamed the collapse on local people digging out dirt from the structure and selling it to building contractors.
Now imagine if these cities were built using composting toilets. Low disruption installation processes mean that you don’t have to wait for the fighting to stop to expand your toilet capacity. Individual ownership means that people won’t be consuming communal resources personally trying to survive, with disastrous results. Distributed infrastructure has political implications.
Cute - the Evolution of Homer Simpson
http://www.devilducky.com/media/59679/
Solar powered air conditioner
Uses about 500W, costs $2,500, doesn’t appear to be a swamp cooler.
An amusing note
It occurred to me recently that I am an individual with a foreign policy.
Bruce Sterling on social change and the hazards of being an early adopter and incidentally on Ning
How many &&^$$@%^&$ times in my life have I been through this early-adapter shuffle? The opportunity costs, the cognitive loading… the *pain* of all that…. I just now bothered to blog-embed a *&^%&%$ youtube video, and now look at THIS.
Pesky Scoble! He’s like one geek with a damn camera! There used to be *whole thick bureaucratic and financial and economic and social and personal layers of insulation* between tech startups and the general populace… I mean, people like La Bianchini there, they sure existed — but you didn’t get *pitchforked right into her lap*… What happened to the #$@$%# lagtime and market-friction?!
Those *&&%$$ blogger revolutionaries! They’re worse than the 90s dot-com boomers! They’re more disruptive. They’re violently disruptive. They are not just kiting stocks, they are really tearing into the fabric of reality. What a thing to see.
I recently advised a friend not to set up Ning for their new book project because it would become YASN (Yet Another Social Network) that would go through the cycle of cool early adopters to loser-packed wannabe station in three months. Just set up a damn mailing list and disband it to the invisible CC: list social network when the jerks arrive.
YEHAW
Very good post about science, faith and the paranormal burden of proof
How do you prove that photography exists to a blind man?
Really a very good piece of scientific reasoning about experimental design wrapped up in a tidy little blog post!
Peace Through Capitalism
We don’t hate you more than we love money
- Gupta’s Observation on Capitalism
Gizmo Project - Open source VOIP with a good service package - and how to answer 775 calls incoming
The Gizmo Project is a rather good open source based alternative to Skype. They will give you a free 775 area code number which you can get calls inbound from for free.
Yeah. Free US area code inbound phonecalls, and two cents a minute outbound.
However, there’s a problem. YOU CAN’T ANSWER THE DAMN PHONECALLS. It says “press 1 to answer” and there’s no place to press one and…. you…. discover that the solution to the Callwave / Gizmo Project 775 can’t answer calls problem is that you hit the little button in the bottom corner, and it pops up the keypad.
So, knowing that, it works just fine. Good software, thanks guys!
If these subpoenas go forward, can we waterboard Karl Rove?
You know… that’s how to make a point about the acceptability of torture.
One tweak, and mice get color vision
of course, the process requires introducing a human gene into them…