February 2008
Lazyweb I want a solar powered USB jack
Simple: a solar panel, 2.5W, output 5V and 500 mA, with a USB jack attached. In sun, you plug your USB device (ipod, phone etc) into the solar-powered USB jack, and it charges.
Pure, simple. Who’s got it?
http://www.rei.com/product/770230 - $115 == $40 a watt, that’s Not Right.
http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/details/sf_solar_uno_slim.php - another candidate, fifty dollars, much closer… but still, $20 a watt… that’s Not Right either.
Chinese intelligence work differently
I mean, I remember one case in which a person engaging in intelligence activities had his kids in the room with him when he was meeting with someone. And you’ve never, you can’t imagine how unattractive it would be to present in court espionage in the background and two kids watching TV in the foreground. I mean it just, you’re not going to make a case that’s going to be binding. This is the bad guy you want to send away for life? You know, it’s a hard target because of the way they do what they do, and the fact that it’s so different from the others, and the fact that there isn’t, for the most part, the central direction and control that leads to the specificity you need to get the elements of the client.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/spy/spies/different.html
Conceptual art - Freezone - holidays off the net…
The global “mother of big brother” will create a giant sensor net. The virtual world of databases will be connected via our electronic gadgetry. The giant sensor net of embedded chips, CCTV, bio tech and the internet will all be available to all via Earth pro version 10.2.
Freezone is a unique global company offering short holidays. All bio chips, ID cards, GPS, will be neutralized at the door for the duration of the stay. Obviously “they” will know you are in Feezone, but what you do is up to you.
http://www.stanza.co.uk/ideasrus/freezone.html
Barefoot Solar Engineers
This is how you do it.
Hexayurt Build at University of Eindhoven
Shows the whole process from start to finish. Could use more details on the tape anchors - we were pushed for time so we didn’t do them on every side - but this, combined with some of the detail shots from Combined Endeavor - is a comprehensive record of how to build a Hexayurt.
Here’s the animated gif preview:
Here’s the main video. This is an hour long, and has not been edited. It’s just what the camera saw. Everything you need to do is here, but details are obscured because we didn’t do close ups of details. The construction details are in the next clip.
Download the original video from Archive.org. (Direct link to the 100 meg Quicktime version for download.)
This video shows various construction details - how to do the roof cone, coordinating the final seam taping and so on. It starts with the folding hexayurt, then goes through a series of details.
Download the original hexayurt construction detail clips here.
We’ll take a crack at assembling all of this into a comprehensive How To Build A Hexayurt video at some point. Please note that all this footage is Public Domain, so if you have some video skills and some free time, we’d really like your help.
Thanks to Arno Pronk and Daan van Kinderen of Technical University of Eindhoven who helped organize and build the this Hexayurt, and to Daan’s friends who volunteered their afternoon to come and help.
The most Metal thing I have ever seen
Unbelievably cool. Can you imagine if Ronnie James Dio had access to this technology?
an *almost* plausible biological/genetic explanation for the evolution of homosexuality
Stay with me here, tell me where my logic is faulty.
Statements of the obvious:
1> At the earlier stages of human evolution, brain volume increased
very very rapidly, in a manner which is almost universally believed to
be a result of intelligence-based selection, possibly sexual selection
driven by the complexities of comparatively larger human tribal size.
2> Significant infant and mother mortality was associated with the
generally larger infant heads.
Imaginative Leaps
3> Females generally have smaller heads than males, and therefore it
is possible that at an earlier stage in human evolution, many more
male humans died during childbirth than women, leading to a time when
female humans outnumbered male humans based on a differential in head
size.
4> Furthermore, there is a significant possibility that female humans
of this period could have evolved to have proportionately larger heads
than male humans. This is because a 5% increase in male head size
might (say) double infant mortality, where as a 5% increase in female
head size might not have the same associated rise in infant mortality.
5> Therefore it is possible that for a very, very long and intense
period of human evolution, women on-average had proportionately
greater cranial volume increases than men.
6> If cranial volume increased human mental capacity, and at this
time, the strongest suggestion is that it did, then for a long and
critical evolutionary period, women were smarter than men.
This might go part way to explain why women appear to casual observers
to have a larger Dunbar number than men.
7> One genetic pressure resulting from this selective pressure is for
male humans with proportionately smaller heads to survive, where
larger-headed babies died more frequently.
9> Females typically have smaller heads than males, as stated before.
Wild Speculation
10> There might have been an adaptation in which some male humans
followed a biological curve closer to the female curve while in the
womb. The selective pressure towards this would be smaller head size
resulting in reduced infant and mother mortality. One possible
mechanism to produce this developmental change would be a change in,
say, hormone levels leading to the acquisition of some female
characteristics in the womb, including smaller heads.
11> The result might have been intelligent men originally had strong
female characteristics.
12> Hence, homosexuality could have evolved - both genders could
prosper better when some proportion of the male embryos had a
closer-to-female developmental curve, resulting in proportionately
smarter human males who had an increased probability of female
characteristics in other areas, because of the developmental changes
in the womb resulting in the imagined smaller male head size.
The Crazy Part
* This would suggest that some of the human archetypes (dumb ox-like
hetro-sexual males, and correspondingly intelligent, articulate,
social homosexuals, and also women who are generally smarter than men)
relate to a previous time in human evolution, and we expect them to
exist in the environment due to genetic factors that relate to a much
earlier stage in our evolution, when these types of human were
predominant in the environment.
* It might have been that male homosexuals were very genetically
different from male non-homosexuals at one point in time, but as
intelligence increased and infant mortality at a given head size
dropped due to co-evolution of larger pelvis, the genes for
intelligence might have circulated freely, keeping the human race at
two genders.
Flaws in the chain of argument
A> Does the fossil record indicate there a time when female craniums
were proportionately larger to male craniums than now?
B> In cultures without extremely strong medical care systems, does
infant mortality vary with head size? Or is there evidence that it did
so at one time in the fossil record?
Logical problems
C> Wouldn’t the male humans with partial female characteristics derive
great benefits from being as active in breeding as the hypothetical
straight-male humans? Why didn’t that evolve? Did it?
D> What about homosexuality in non-human mammals? Is there a similar
head size story there?
If there no human-like history of head size selective pressure in
other mammals, which still have significant homosexuality rates, then
this is dead theory. And I’m fairly sure there’s no such history.
Thoughts? Can anybody see a way of fixing that fatal flaw in this theory?
The “Lawrence of Arabia” problem
Lawrence: We’ve taken Aqaba.
Brighton: Taken Aqaba? Who has?
Lawrence: We have. Our side in this war has. The wogs have. We have…
Brighton: You mean the Turks have gone?
Lawrence: No, they’re still there but they’ve no boots. Prisoners, sir. We took them prisoners, the entire garrison. No that’s not true. We killed some, too many really. I’ll manage it better next time. There’s been a lot of killing, one way or another. Cross my heart and hope to die, it’s all perfectly true.
Brighton: It isn’t possible.
Lawrence: Yes it is. I did it.
This is the basic pattern: extremely serious and prolonged tactical successes turning into straegic successes
posing the next question… now what?
If you get the small stuff right often enough and long enough, and you’re working on serious problems, you can begin to win in ways which the current contexts think of as impossible, creating strategic problems that appear to originate with persistent tactical success. Growth, too many new options, risks of strategic leadership failing to adapt to what has become possible…
I think I know maybe four people who are encountering this problem. I count myself privileged to be around that much talent.
Pop music success is largely chance
But here’s the thing: In each of the eight social worlds, the top songs–and the bottom ones–were completely different. For example, the song “Lockdown,” by 52metro, was the No. 1 song in one world, yet finished 40 out of 48 in another. Nor did there seem to be any compelling correlation between merit and success. In fact, Watts explains, only about half of a song’s success seemed to be due to merit. “In general, the ‘best’ songs never do very badly, and the ‘worst’ songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible,” he says. Why? Because the first band to snag a few thumbs-ups in the social world tended overwhelmingly to get many more. Yet who received those crucial first votes seemed to be mostly a matter of luck.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/28/tippingpoint-skeptic.html