(from a conversation with David) The thing about just-in-time JIT in all of its manifestations is that it induces system fragility because it encourages optimization against a static frame. The assumption is that things will be tomorrow much as they are today. Worse, systemic underpricing of risk is an evolutionarily stable strategy over the long [...]
Read more →Why? I’ll tell you why. There isn’t a government in the world I’d trust with the future. These pre-communications era ways of dividing up responsibility and power are inane. They’re retarded, and they’re dangerous. Imagine if we ran hospitals or businesses in a manner essentially unchanged from the 4th millennium BC. What we have is, [...]
Read more →http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_20/b4084044908374.htm?link_position=link1 One has to respect the Naxalites. I see them as the harbingers of the kind of trouble that could erupt all over the world if poverty isn’t taken more seriously, and an alternate soft development path isn’t supported. Today, India. Tomorrow… anywhere they can convince the locals they are being screwed. 4.5 billion poor [...]
Read more →Not perfect, but much improved, audio synch. Turns out that Google Video preserves synch much better on uploaded .mov files than on uploaded .mp4 files. Basically this is an hour of Marcin of Open Source Ecology and I discussing the long term prospects for long term economic and political freedom driven by free and open [...]
Read more →China is ruled by geeks. For the last 30 years, engineers have dominated China’s political system. After revolutionaries such as Deng Xiaoping kicked off its economic reforms, the techies took over and built China into the untested superpower it is today. In 1987 the Chinese Communist Party first began welcoming engineers into its inner sanctum, [...]
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Read more →I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to find a good way to compare various humanitarian sheltering technologies to one another. Here’s the bad news: there’s no effective work in the field as far as I can find. What I mean by this is quite simple: how do we approach the question of “is [...]
Read more →Paul Stamets at TED discussing how mushrooms can be used to solve major problems. He’s a deep mushroom mystic looking at deep structures. However, there’s real engineering here also – cleaning up e-coli, potential anti-flu medications, termite repulsion, food growth process anchoring, and growing fuels. It’s been floating around for about a decade. Revolution in [...]
Read more →Unfortunately, the world lacks the natural resources for everybody to be rich and fat unless some truly radical developments take place. The average American has about 30 times the environmental impact of the average Bangladeshi, and the USA, with 5% of the world’s population, consumes 25% of the world’s natural resources. Put these two facts [...]
Read more →http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/travelodge_buil.php The plug-in lifestyle of Shockwave Rider inches ever closer.
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