It's all over but for the sweating?

[freebeard]

Arragonis -- You're back!

Go on then, how do you do that whilst being here - with your PC, internet and so on ?

Do you go off grid or not ?

I can't quote and respond to all that. Instead of a yurt, I live in a 35' R-license park model aluminium trailer. It cost me US$900. I consume hydro-electric power that costs me 5¢/KWHr. I bicycle the 2 blocks to a discount 'little-lots' grocery store.

I don't begrudge people their kids. Dogs (=~SUV environmental impact) and cats (~=compact car) frustrate me though. Especially cats; they leave muddy footprint trails up to the top of my car and back down, because in their tiny little brain they are asserting dominance over it. They think "people like it so I will go up and kiss is with my b*tthole". And don't get me started on taxoplasma gondii.

My frustration is that R.B.Fuller put the solutions to all our problems on the shelf, so we could take them down when we needed them; and we didn't.

He was big on 'metaphysically engendered materials'. That not just plastics; see buckminsterfullerenes, quantum dots, quantum wells, invisibility cloaks, &etc. If you push you heating/cooling needs down to the molecular level of the surface of your window glazing, those nuclear reactors can enjoy a well-earned retirement, de-commissioning (where all the $Profit$ goes away) and *burial*.

My 1984 Mac used 15 watts, less than a night-light. Google "Eben Moglen Freedom Box"; actually, I just did that for you.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Arragonis -- You're back!

I've been lurking but not posting until yesterday, I will probably do that again this week as it is a busy work week. Hope you (and everyone else here) is well

Originally Posted by freebeard

I can't quote and respond to all that. Instead of a yurt, I live in a 35' R-license park model aluminium trailer. It cost me US$900. I consume hydro-electric power that costs me 5¢/KWHr. I bicycle the 2 blocks to a discount 'little-lots' grocery store.

In Scotland we have a load of Hydro but I have little idea how much of what comes out of my plugs is renewables or hydro vs anything else. Would love to know how you know yours is. If you can pin it down that seems good IMHO - then everyone can make a choice.

My "beef" with renewables is the amount of subsidy they need which is added to everyone's bills. I'm lucky enough (at the moment) to be able to afford it but a lot of folks are not - at the same time the main benefactors of it here are rich landowners. How is that fair ? (rhetorical)...

Originally Posted by freebeard

I don't begrudge people their kids. Dogs (=~SUV environmental impact) and cats (~=compact car) frustrate me though. Especially cats; they leave muddy footprint trails up to the top of my car and back down, because in their tiny little brain they are asserting dominance over it. They think "people like it so I will go up and kiss is with my b*tthole". And don't get me started on taxoplasma gondii.

Mrs A sits in the house like a coiled Ninja waiting for cats to trespass. They do not linger long...

Originally Posted by freebeard

My frustration is that R.B.Fuller put the solutions to all our problems on the shelf, so we could take them down when we needed them; and we didn't.

He was big on 'metaphysically engendered materials'. That not just plastics; see buckminsterfullerenes, quantum dots, quantum wells, invisibility cloaks, &etc. If you push you heating/cooling needs down to the molecular level of the surface of your window glazing, those nuclear reactors can enjoy a well-earned retirement, de-commissioning (where all the $Profit$ goes away) and *burial*.

I have noted your mentioning of Mr Fuller before and I am aware of the ...fullerines as a structure used in loads of things, but as for the man and his other work I know very little. If you would like to post or PM me with a starter I would be interested to know more. As maybe others would to. Digging into science guys' other work often leads down other paths which are fascinating and sometimes disturbing.

Originally Posted by freebeard

My 1984 Mac used 15 watts, less than a night-light. Google "Eben Moglen Freedom Box"; actually, I just did that for you.

Eben Moglen is that really cool lawyer guy who told SCO (and others over time) to "go forth and multiply" when they claimed Linux was a rip off of some other stuff. I worked for a M$ gold partner at the time and some of the sales guys at the time pushed this idea of Linux being "questionable" - I followed the Groklaw blog and kind of felt the case had no merit.

As for your old Mac - You see whilst folks like zero growth I like development and tech which is kind of driven by growth. For example a typical netbook is probably 3-4K as fast as your 1984 Mac and uses about the same power. And now that the fad for them has died you can pick them up really cheap - go for the Asus 1000HE - 8 hours

I'm tapping this on a recycled Asus Netbook (1201 series) running Linux Mint - both came free And using the same argument as above both ARE free

And I still program stuff using the Microsoft stack.

Good luck.

[freebeard]

In Scotland we have a load of Hydro but I have little idea how much of what comes out of my plugs is renewables or hydro vs anything else. Would love to know how you know yours is. If you can pin it down that seems good IMHO - then everyone can make a choice.

It's probably not strictly true—just after Woodie Gutrie wrote his songs about the Columbia, we got the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. And the current controversy is coal dust falling off the trains on their way from Montana to Coos Bay, and ultimately half way around the world, to China.

I'd like to pull into a gas station and see the pumps labelled 'North Sea', 'Venezuela', &etc. They do it with wine.

Eben Moglen (co-founder of EFF) is a hero; as was Aaron Swartz (RIP). As for Bucky, nothing helps your fame like having an elemental form of Carbon named after you. For anyone with any curiosity at all:

Richard Buckminster Fuller is *the* most inspiring hero. He came out of the New England Transcendentalists; so as a philosopher he was committed to manifesting his theories as artifacts. Cartographer, mathematician, environmentalist before it was cool, longest entry in Who's Who, blah, blah, blah.

It's an inspiring life story: A low point in agony at the bedside of his dying first daughter, the suspended in mid-air in a halo of light on the shore of Lake [Michigan?], flying twice around the world in his 80s. It ended with the doctors telling him his ailing wife had only hours to live. He went into the next room and laid down and died so he could be waiting for her on the other side.

Start with Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, or Utopia or Oblivion. Move on to Your Private Sky [Lars Muller Publishers]. Once you 'grok' Bucky's syntax, there's always Synergetics.

Thanks for asking.

[niky]

RE: Kids. A married couple having two to three kids is sustainable practice, considering that in any given population, there are people who won't have any.

The problem with "overpopulation" is that poor third-world families have several to a dozen children at one go. That is not sustainable. Our politicians are pointing to the benefits in terms of exportable labor this grants, but that's pure BS. Our labor export comes from middle class families, mostly, and though there are many lower class citizens who bootstrap themselves up into the export labor force through dint of hardwork, they're a tiny percentage of the whole. Smaller families would allow more of the lower class to afford education (even if primary is free, feeding and clothing kids appropriately for school is not). Once you get the ball rolling, you can basically forget about pitching contraception and family planning to the middle class, because they do it on their own, anyway.

[NeilBlanchard]

If you aren’t alarmed about climate, you aren’t paying attention | Grist

[freebeard]

Niky -- Reckless 'engineering' of a solution to the problem could cause (as unintended consequence) population crash. Better to learn to feed and house everybody and wait for the leveling off and decline that now seems likely.

Hey what do all y'all think of this:

www.foreignpolicy.com: A New U.S. Grand Strategy

In case you don't recognize Foreign Policy, this is like 'from the horses' mouth'.

Simply put, the current U.S. and international order is unsustainable, and myriad disruptions signal that it is now in a process of collapse. Until the United States implements a new grand strategy, the country will face even more rapid degradation of domestic and global conditions.

This is not an over-the-horizon danger. The interplay of four strategic antagonists is causing Americans daily harm...These four challenges -- inclusion, depletion, depression, and resilience -- are the four horsemen of the coming decades.
...
To succeed, America must revive and update the discipline of grand strategy. It must create a civilian Office of National Strategy, within the executive branch, to organize the effort. The country must, from this moment forward, expose the framework of U.S. national strategy to democratic scrutiny and adapt it as conditions evolve.

It's all turning out like Benjamin Fulford said it will.

[niky]

The thing is... it seems increasingly likely that population control (whether the government tries to increase or decrease it) cannot compete with personal interest.

Ergo: If people want/don't want to have kids, they will/won't. If I recall, Japan has huge incentives for having kids, but they still can't stop the sliding population.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Well it is / was a prediction - it has receded now - less purple.

That's called weather :-) The purple will be back.

If you had taken some time to research it you would note that the same people predicted permanent droughts a few years ago...

...just before loads of floods and overloaded dams and people drowning or being bitten by poisonous snakes or attacked by crocks in their own homes.

If you've ever lived in an arid climate, you'd know that floods and droughts are not mutually exclusive: Floods in Driest State

In fact, around here (east slope of the Sierra Nevada) floods can cause droughts. River runoff and ground water depend primarily on the mountain snowpack. Get a series of warm storms (AKA "Pineapple Express") and you have rain at high elevations melting the snowpack. Since the ground is frozen, it all runs off, causing a flood. Then because the snowpack all melted, in the summer you have a drought.

[TheEnemy]

I wish I had time to keep up with this discussion, though I think I would just get frusterated at the fearmongering, disinformation and lack of interest in the real science.

[freebeard]

"frusterated"? Eat some spinach, Popeye.

Did you not look at the foreign Policy article? That's just the tip or the iceberg. The banksters figured they had cornered the world's gold cornered, so they made their move. Turns out 9/10ths of the worlds gold is 'old money' sequestered in caves in Asia, it will come out and create a financial reboot and the power play will be rolled back.

So don't despair, it's about more than the science. While we wait, here's Eben Moglen on Innovation Under Austerity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2VHf5vpBy8

If you're pressed for time, here's the transcript, but he's a great speaker—listen while your doing something else.
Innovation under Austerity - Transcript - Software Freedom Law Center