May 2008
Smari on voting
A new type of voting system
Now, lets talk about voting systems. When voting, a voter is presented with two functions: vote for one of the options, or don’t vote. I suggest we add a third: forward your vote to a third party.This is the essence of “representative democracy”, but I’m talking about expanding it - in representative democracies everybody forwards their vote to a predefined subset of the people, and each representative has an equal weight in subjects. Here I’m saying anybody can forward their vote to anybody, and forwarding votes increases the weight of that individual’s vote.
http://smari.yaxic.org/blag/2008/05/27/the-shadow-parliament-project/
I’m not so up for messing with existing states - but this idea of an issue base which people vote on in this transferrable way makes a lot of sense. I remember thinking something along these lines through in the mid-1990s and coming to broadly similar conclusions.
Two things that I think are important.
1> How many people need to vote on an issue for it to be binding?
2> How are new issues tabled?
My approach would be to have issues bubble up - people vote yes or no on something, in a manner (god help us) much akin to Digg or Reddit - and issues which make the “front page” have a binding decision made on them.
Dumb as this might sound, if it works for filtering interesting content from the endless noise of the Internet, it might well work well enough to filter common sense from the ocean of dunderheaded idiots that seem to make up our political classes.
Really interesting articles on an Angolan adventure
We learn that if you want to run a business, you must generate your own power. The Municipal power is on for perhaps 3 or 4 hours during the day, on a good day. This turned out to be so, not only in Tombua, but throughout the country.
(from half way through)
See the whole thing here: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5462339#post5462339
The bit about power is really important. Either solar, maybe wind, or big batteries you can charge off the grid while it’s up (a dubious option at best) will changes these places.
Radically.
Things get intense when we get into old soldier stuff.
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5512848&postcount=598
Deep.
who reads Chinese?
http://bbs.fobshanghai.com/thread-1150820-1-1.html
discussing using hexayurts in China.
Global Swadeshi Dialogs
Click here for the main interview discussion:
http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topic/show?id=2097821%3ATopic%3A501
Here are the supporting links:
1. Global Village Construction Set (and weblog):
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=198
2. Open Source Technology pattern language:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Pattern_Language
3. Development page:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=CEB_Press
and overview:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Overview
4. Year 1 of our Life at Factor e Farm
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=First_Year_at_Factor_e_Farm
5. Economic model:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/steve_bosserman/2008/02/09/giving_it_away_making_money.htm
Today’s other video release - Dr. Linton Wells II and I discussing STAR-TIDES at FAHUM
Great explanation of STAR-TIDES. This was shot at the FAHUM expo. It’s a little noisy for the first half, but it clears up at the 24 minute mark, and there’s a lot of great content past that point.
Enjoy.
China and intellectual property
I live in China right now, and the concept of intellectual property is relatively new here. It’s a more natural part of Chinese culture to take ideas from each other. Instead of innovating into uncharted territory, Chinese innovate in place, creating immense depth within a single discipline, for instance martial arts, tea drinking, and calligraphy. This is because there are no intellectual property laws retarding development of these disciplines, and people have been copying and improving upon each others’ techniques for thousands of years, spreading across a huge nation.
Emphasis mine.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=563921&cid=23541879
Five notes on video: if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly
Word to Jonathan who’s been my video guru these many months.
Here are my five notes (most of which he won’t approve of 
)
1> The only thing that’s worse than bad video is no video at all.
2> Properly synchronizing sound and images is nearly bloody impossible, and, worse, even if it’s right on your computer, once it’s on youtube, it’ll be screwed up again, I don’t know why.
3> I have no idea how to manage all the files. It’s a mess. I guess it’s usually a separate job, like “archive manager.” I don’t even know what that person is called.
4> Audio is key. One of the great lessons Jon taught me was that the continuity of video is generated by the audio - if it would sound right as a radio piece, it’ll be fine. The images hang off the narrative thread of the audio. This was a considerable enlightenment.
5> It’s really fun to make films, even if they’re not technically great, because film is how serious people communicate. Films, and of course, books.
I might have to try the book thing next year.
But, for now, I’ve got two hour-long films compressing. Both of them are essentially unedited - straight shot discussions or monologs that would probably work fine as radio pieces, but for now, they’re video. Somehow just making those work seems to have taken forever, largely due to a massive mess of Little Things. But it’s close enough for now, and maybe later either I’ll get better at it (some formal training?) or somebody who knows what they’re doing will take over.
Video matters.
One will be up on STAR-TIDES and the other will be up on Global Swadeshi Network tomorrow.
How to make hydrogen airships safe.
1> Suspend the gondola / cargo etc. 200 m below the lift balloons to keep them away from explosions.
2> Carry a cargo-sized parachute, perhaps with powered deployment assistance, on the gondola.
That way, if it goes bang, you don’t get fried, and you get to coast to the ground. Helps if you fly high.
Light grafitti
http://www.digitalpicturezone.com/digital-pictures/25-amazing-light-graffiti-pictures/
Basically, long exposure time, bright light, draw in the air, make a picture that looks magic. Gorgeous results. I wonder if they’re different on film.