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Monthly Archives: April 2008

A model of the global economy…

Suppose six castaways are stranded on a deserted island, five Asians and one American. Further, suppose that the castaways decide to divide the work load among them in the following manner: (for the purpose of simplicity, the only desire the castaways work to satisfy is hunger) one Asian is put in charge of hunting, an [...]

Pigs as insecticide

http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/04/20/pigs-instead-of-pesticides/ Apples drop from trees due to infestation. Pigs eat apples, preventing reproduction. You think monoculture farming might be really, really stupid? Like, clearly this is pretty much how the apple trees evolved to do this – drop the fruit when there’s a problem, and something will eat it. Fence off the apples, keep out [...]

The Shrimpy Goby

http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2008/04/10/mutualism-inter-species-cooperation/ Very, very cute inter-species cooperation story.

Saltwater farming

http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=336 Interesting possibilities.

Pan Yue on Eco-Socialism

PY: Actually, the Green Party does not represent eco-socialism. I study eco-socialism, but that is not to say I am in full support of it. It is too idealistic and lacks ways of solving actual problems, particularly for developing countries. However, it does provide political reference for China’s scientific view of development, and gives socialist [...]

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 [...]

The eight stages of genocide

1. Classification: At this stage, social groups are classified into “us versus them.” 2. Symbolization: At this stage, the classifications are symbolized. Groups are given names and other symbols (yellow stars, for example) and are required to wear them either by cultural tradition or laws. In Rwanda, Belgium began to issue identity cards (ID’s) around [...]

fixing Libertarianism – the Land Auction

The State, in its typical form, is nothing more than a protection racket for landowners. And that goes right back into the age of kings and barrons. UPDATE: I’m rederiving Geolibertarianism. Albeit with a much more elegant foundation than land taxes. (spits after word taxes.) The problem with Libertarianism is that it assumes that the [...]

price volatility and global starvation

this is *not that hard people.* if X is producing food more cheaply that local resources, local production will tend to drop as people buy foreign food if X then stops producing, or jacks prices, there will be a gap before local production picks up again due to latency in this gap, people starve why? [...]

solar power bubbles

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/04/concentrated-solar-power-balloons.html basically, it’s a parabolic solar collector made using an inflatable form. dunno what they’re using to convert the sunlight into power.