every time somebody emails somebody else an URL - at the moment - they do it for a reason. and if my experience is even close to typical, this happens often. if a thread results, something was interesting. if the thread is related to the content at the URL (which google will have, one way or another), then chances are the content was interesting.
this could be a *very* good way to slow down people trying to "optimize" for pagerank. it would also allow google to be on top of memes travelling through personal networks, and react accordingly in realtime.
...is actual free trade. what we have now is a mockery of a free market, where the most powerful proponents of free trade are hoarding all sorts of leveraged trade agreements with the back hand. what we really need to do is make it tougher to have it both ways.
don't assume, of course, that i'm all for free trade. but i really wish the folks publicly gunning for it would be honest about what they're really doing.
Organic regs don't say a whole lot about pesticide use, just that those pesticides must be organic and legal. "Organic," at any specificity of definition, says nothing about toxicity. It's sad that people don't realize that.
I'm all for organic food, but I prefer mine without lots of neurotoxin. And that means that I need to know my providers personally, and trust them, or I need to grow my own.
In particular, I almost prefer chemfarmed apples - organic apples need to be sprayed an average of about twice a week. Commercial apple strains tend to be pretty weak... which means that I don't eat many apples.:(
this may have changed since i got mine (700 series), which came with a USB->TOSlink optical converter. so i can get pristine digital copies FROM my computer, but not TO my computer. i don't bother with the USB thing since i already have optical out.
what with that belkin voice recorder add-on and the docking port thingie... i would really, really like something that just provided a stereo digital input to the iPod. that would be damn near perfect. let me use my own a/d converter, just eat the data, have high capacity, and be tiny. i'll be overjoyed.
i'm convinced there's a small but lucrative market for this. somebody make it. give it TOSlink. i'll buy one.
as the owner of a (portable) minidisc recorder i have to tell you... you're absolutely fucking right. it's a real pain in the ass. it's got decent a/d converter, ATRAC sounds far better than same-size mp3. fine. i can record 80 minutes at good quality, double that for passable - that 4 hours quote is for atrac4, which is ok for voice notes but not much else.
the bitch is that to move your nice recordings around without more loss, you need to have a component mp3 player. and not a cheap one, either: the cheap ones only have digital in, not out. my father bought one of sony's first component consumer minidisc machines, and *that* has digital out. but his newer one, at the same point in the model lineup, doesn't. there's the rub.
don't get me wrong - it's wonderful to have a portable minidisc player. i get around 32 hours playback time on one standard AA battery. (recording eats batteries much faster, as you might expect.) it sounds good. it's ultra-stable and more durable than i'd ask. i'm very happy with it, overall. but getting my recordings off the thing really irritates me. if it had digital out i'd be a zealot. but i have to use a different machine for that.
if you're willing to spend $1000 on one, you can get something i think is better than any other solution (if you're looking for a recorder). but not less.
how about generating the electronic results by immediately scanning the physical output? in otherr words,
voter votes votingly
voting machine produces physical documentation
voting machine reads physical documentation, verifying its readability on the spot - maybe the voter can see this happen, approve the result?
if it works, it works, if it doesn't try again
vote result is transmmitted / stored
any voting system should conform to ACID, yes? yes? isn't this obvious? can we work out a way to do that?
i personally dislike instant results, i think they influence the election. i'd prefer there to be no influential results reported until after the election is entirely completed. this way people won't give up and not bother voting for who they prefer.
it doesn't seem like a serious privacy issue from a single viewpoint. but when you take the system viewpoint that the monitoring point will always have, then you see how much information can be reconstructed simply by watching the who & what & when & where & how.
there have been plenty of people convicted largely on the basis of this kind of evidence in (hopefully) statistically significant quantities:
"you called this number at this time on this day."
i don't think it's quite as dissociated from your actual activity as you seem to.
Re:Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them
on
Reading, Writing, RFID
·
· Score: 1
hear hear.
i have set foot on a farm. i miss it. a lot. primitive != less desirable. in fact, primitive is often a better match for reality than "advanced". wonder how that happened...
If you haven't, I hereby offer you an opportunity to gracefully stand down your exclusive claim on regional beer quality and save some face.
There are some fine brews made in the Pacific Northwest, but to propose that beer of equal or greater quality doesn't exist elsewhere in the USA is simply ignorant.
Have you checked all the state laws that are in question? I haven't - but I well remember being told that it was the law back in elementary school when I refused to recite the "under God" phrase of the Pledge. (I was disciplined, but I never did say it, because it feels wrong coming out of my mouth.) This was Ohio, early 80's.
I would not have had a problem if there was simply time set aside for the pledge, but either law or administrative custom in my comparatively liberal school district pushed in a different direction. I know my argument is anecdotal, but I'd really like to see some supporting references for your assertion.
The thing that bugs me about the Pledge of Allegiance is this: it's taught, usually by repetitive drill, to every kid in public school. This is done at a young age, and before the kids have had any formal exposure to the concepts embodied in the Pledge. Those important concepts include the religious content. That stuff got covered in my last year of high school.
(I was just brought up to believe that honesty is important, especially when making promises. The Pledge of Allegiance is a promise. But I don't believe in the sort of god most people mean when they say "God," and I don't intend to be misunderstood.)
...what other reason could there be for everything else to be circling it?
personally, i would rather wait another 10 - 50 years or so. do lots of research in the intervening time.
you say "There _may_ be a limit, but it's likely far beyond what we are at now" - i guess i'm just saying that "likely" just ain't good enough. it's far more conservative to choose to - *gasp* - conserve and try to figure out a better answer than "not likely a problem". what's the rush, really? there is plenty of technological advancement and prosperity to be had while adhering to basic scientific method on a large scale.
the fact, the actual fact, is that We Don't Know Everything. i would like to know a little bit more before i choose to consume as much as possible, or "without artificial limits"... especially when consuming less does not decrease my quality of life. i'll spare you the lecture on how consuming less enhances my quality of life. most people don't enjoy understanding energy economy.
uh, don't forget that some of these fuels are the result of other fuels, and that energy is required to produce the fuel itself. the stuff with lower energy output also take significantly less energy to produce, ie the production cost (in energy) of the energy itself is lower. less efficient fuel, more efficient production.
restated, it requires energy to concentrate energy. this is to my mind an important point in a discussion of sustainable energy.
hey. i could address you point by point, but then maybe you'd miss *my* point. regardless of whether any of the science in any of these debates is correct (or presented correctly), it's a good idea to behave conservatively. and i mean to use "conservatively" in its denotated meaning, not in any politically-charged connotation.
the idea here is to make it as likely as possible that we, as a species, will continue to thrive. unfortunately, all our experience up until the last millenium or so has been with small scale, decentralized, organic production. we've done well enough.
now that we're using highly energetic fuels -- as opposed to lower-energy new-biomass fuels -- we get more done faster. we can make more with fewer people. all sorts of cool stuff.
BUT.
we have no idea how to do the accounting. by accounting, i mean getting a good idea of the energy input and output of our hypothetical system. (if this is over your head or seems irrelevant, you shouldn't be arguing economics... you just don't get it yet.) and if we can't do the accounting, we can't judge the sustainability of what we're doing.
if we can't develop a good understanding of the sustainability of what we're doing now, the safe move is to wait until we can. that doesn't mean calling a halt to capitalism, though it does mean reigning in reckless waste of resources. we're riding a vector, in a historical sense, and trying to change it too much would also require vast quantities of energy. so we need to moderate. to conserve. to take care. to give a shit.
we're only *really* in a crisis if everyone believes those fucking nutcases screaming "there is no crisis". take the long view, and realize that there very well could be a crisis. we just don't know yet. isn't that reason enough to take a few easy conservative steps?
seriously.
wildly different, widely distributed technology and associated effects: 100 years. last 100 years taken against last 20,000: a blip. you're telling me everything is fine, don't worry my pretty little head? that's as much a bullshit response as anything else. it's going to take a lot more time to verify any of this.
the thing i'm really curious about is the point at which many scientists seem to have stopped doing science as soon as a technology was derived. all i'm asking here is that you and everybody else pretending a rational approach actually follow one. remember how science works. remember that when you change a system, you change a fucking system -- it is no longer the system that produced your assumptions.
Re:weeds aren't the problem, weed killer is.
on
Hi-Tech Weed-Killer
·
· Score: 1
three points:
1. if you're already locked in to unsustainable methods, then perhaps yes. just another example of why we all need to be thinking more than two years ahead.
2. there are incentives available to assist with the transition expenses.
3. people already do demand and pay for 100% organic food. "organics" has been growing at over 20% a year for the last three years. find some other economic sector that's doing that well...
well, i've worked on an organic farm, and we used the techniques the parent describes with great success. as far as the corn goes, our biggest problem was not having enough manpower to take care of all the yield (even though we windowed the harvest, we were unforeseeably shortstaffed).
the point of a cover crop is that it does not significantly compete with the primary crop. that is the definition of a cover crop. example: alfalfa for oats. it's really not a big deal.
as far as nutrient depletion goes, look into some of the literature on biointensive farming. the areas in which we experimented with this were the most successful - in yield quantity per acre, in yield quality, and in total efficiency. yes, you need to understand soil ecology, and a few other things too. but don't dismiss it until you understand it and have seen it in action. it makes so much more sense.
will these techniques work in a factory farm? not today. will i work in a factory farm? no. am i willing to eat food from factory farms? no.
Monsanto has admitted, on the record, that they know their GM products have an estimated 30-year life cycle before they're obsolete. In this subject, obsolete means, for example, that pests have developed resistance to the pesticides grown into the New Leaf Potato (TM).*
Serving up Monsanto products to third-world farmers is akin to filling our depressed inner cities with paycheck advance loan companies. The farmers become dependent, but their problems have not been solved. If anything, we've just allowed Monsanto to apply a backhoe to a hole that those farmers and their (necessarily) short-term outlook couldn't dig any deeper on their own.
I won't even bother trying to convince/. in general of the value of the scientific method. "But you're arguing against progress!" No - I'm arguing that as much work, if not more, should go into studying the effects of these "advances" as went into producing them.
The real world of cause and effect is not limited to 1-to-1 relations... and that is one of the real bases of what used to be the organic movement. "Conventional farming" has only been around within the last few (relative) years. Before that, everyone was organic. In reality, we have very little data on the effects of industrial food production techniques. While some effects are quick and obvious, others take many years for us to notice.
Hope you have enjoyed this note from the field,
-j
* Addressing a post a few branches up: just because it's organic doesn't mean it's not poison. Nearly all pesticides (all that I know of) are neurotoxins. There are a few effective "organic" - meaning considered organic by FDA and others - pesticides. It's organic, ie naturally occurring, but does that make it safe to eat? No more so than arsenic. Just because "the only genes spliced in are other plant genes" does not make those genes and the plant they form safe for you to eat.
I've seen two bale structures and have talked with the construction teams for both of them. They're in southwest Vermont, so the environment is not the most stable. I am not a building expert, but I'm very interested.
Tip: find a builder *with demonstrated experience in straw bale construction*. While it may seem to be a simple, attractive technique, everything has to be done right - duh, yes, but here more seriously. Just a little tiny open space in the masonry, and you get a drip, which means a crack, which means more drips, which means rot, which means your house is not only structurally weak but a fire hazard too. Any windows, doors, or other holes are serious points of weakness. Keep in mind that rain during construction is a problem greater than work stoppage.
The insulation value is great only if the structural integrity is not compromised. You're counting on a massive *sealed* airspace.
That said, the building (a house) that isn't cracking (and is storied, timber framed for load) is beautiful and warm.:) And there's a certain appeal to a really thick wall...
do the search (and anything related you can think of). this is simple and easy, not to mention incredibly useful. you could set it up yourself, or use an existing project.
a friend coded one of these up as a toy project - and now a bunch of us rely on it daily. (i'm not linking to it because it'll be revised in a big way quite soon and i don't think he wants the responsibility.)
i find tabs provide a better model of the data i'm perusing. i often have a window devoted to a subject area, with tabs for all the pages within that area under that window. so for example i'll have one window open holding references, one with test cases, and another with mindless crap like slashdot. keeps me organized and efficient, and i don't have to scan [taskbar|dock] to be in the right place.
it's the extra level of heirarchical organization that makes tabs killer for me. same reason i like the OS X columnar file browser. fast, transparent traversal.
yeah, that was antioch. a few points applicable to the subject matter:
1. i went there. i'm really familiar with 'the policy'.
2. it's fucking awesome.;)
instead of thinking about it as taking away spontaneity, think about it this way: you've got to communicate about what you want. how sexy is that? very. if you think it's not, think about being on the receiving end of it, and you'll realize the error of your repressed ways. men and women and women and men 'n stuff are not so different. most of us like to be turned on. you might be surprised how incredible your sex life can be when there's no misunderstanding, no having to say you're sorry, no, uh, beating around the bush.
you'll give, and get, exactly what's needed, and mmaybe more.
Re:Conservative/Liberal take on it
on
Fooled by Randomness
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
the belief that if someone works hard and consistently, they can improve their condition
Unfortunately, a huge number of people who identify themselves as conservative don't seem to realize that condition++ doesn't necessarily meet condition >= decency, or even condition >= survival. It is easily, easily possible to be so low that incremental improvement through hard work is still not enough to get you to the point where you'll be on your own. There is a threshold below which basic 'modern' living is not possible. This is where having basic social services is really handy. If you can get someone above that threshold, they can often stay above that threshold on their own. It's kind of the modern equivalent of knowing how to make fire, or knowing how to fish...
It's also a shame that so few people in the US have any understanding - or put any thought into - the meanings of their tidy political categories (e.g. "liberal" and "conservative"). It's sickening how often those terms are applied in total disregard to their denotations.
Slashdot Mirror
here's another possibility:
every time somebody emails somebody else an URL - at the moment - they do it for a reason. and if my experience is even close to typical, this happens often. if a thread results, something was interesting. if the thread is related to the content at the URL (which google will have, one way or another), then chances are the content was interesting.
this could be a *very* good way to slow down people trying to "optimize" for pagerank. it would also allow google to be on top of memes travelling through personal networks, and react accordingly in realtime.
...is actual free trade. what we have now is a mockery of a free market, where the most powerful proponents of free trade are hoarding all sorts of leveraged trade agreements with the back hand. what we really need to do is make it tougher to have it both ways.
don't assume, of course, that i'm all for free trade. but i really wish the folks publicly gunning for it would be honest about what they're really doing.
Organic regs don't say a whole lot about pesticide use, just that those pesticides must be organic and legal. "Organic," at any specificity of definition, says nothing about toxicity. It's sad that people don't realize that.
:(
I'm all for organic food, but I prefer mine without lots of neurotoxin. And that means that I need to know my providers personally, and trust them, or I need to grow my own.
In particular, I almost prefer chemfarmed apples - organic apples need to be sprayed an average of about twice a week. Commercial apple strains tend to be pretty weak... which means that I don't eat many apples.
this may have changed since i got mine (700 series), which came with a USB->TOSlink optical converter. so i can get pristine digital copies FROM my computer, but not TO my computer. i don't bother with the USB thing since i already have optical out.
what with that belkin voice recorder add-on and the docking port thingie... i would really, really like something that just provided a stereo digital input to the iPod. that would be damn near perfect. let me use my own a/d converter, just eat the data, have high capacity, and be tiny. i'll be overjoyed.
i'm convinced there's a small but lucrative market for this. somebody make it. give it TOSlink. i'll buy one.
as the owner of a (portable) minidisc recorder i have to tell you... you're absolutely fucking right. it's a real pain in the ass. it's got decent a/d converter, ATRAC sounds far better than same-size mp3. fine. i can record 80 minutes at good quality, double that for passable - that 4 hours quote is for atrac4, which is ok for voice notes but not much else.
the bitch is that to move your nice recordings around without more loss, you need to have a component mp3 player. and not a cheap one, either: the cheap ones only have digital in, not out. my father bought one of sony's first component consumer minidisc machines, and *that* has digital out. but his newer one, at the same point in the model lineup, doesn't. there's the rub.
don't get me wrong - it's wonderful to have a portable minidisc player. i get around 32 hours playback time on one standard AA battery. (recording eats batteries much faster, as you might expect.) it sounds good. it's ultra-stable and more durable than i'd ask. i'm very happy with it, overall. but getting my recordings off the thing really irritates me. if it had digital out i'd be a zealot. but i have to use a different machine for that.
if you're willing to spend $1000 on one, you can get something i think is better than any other solution (if you're looking for a recorder). but not less.
try this for a purely economic study of the farm example. in my view as a grower, very well done.
- voter votes votingly
- voting machine produces physical documentation
- voting machine reads physical documentation, verifying its readability on the spot - maybe the voter can see this happen, approve the result?
- if it works, it works, if it doesn't try again
- vote result is transmmitted / stored
any voting system should conform to ACID, yes? yes? isn't this obvious? can we work out a way to do that?i personally dislike instant results, i think they influence the election. i'd prefer there to be no influential results reported until after the election is entirely completed. this way people won't give up and not bother voting for who they prefer.
it doesn't seem like a serious privacy issue from a single viewpoint. but when you take the system viewpoint that the monitoring point will always have, then you see how much information can be reconstructed simply by watching the who & what & when & where & how.
there have been plenty of people convicted largely on the basis of this kind of evidence in (hopefully) statistically significant quantities:
"you called this number at this time on this day."
i don't think it's quite as dissociated from your actual activity as you seem to.
hear hear.
i have set foot on a farm. i miss it. a lot. primitive != less desirable. in fact, primitive is often a better match for reality than "advanced". wonder how that happened...
It's in the Northeast. Maybe you've heard of it.
If you haven't, I hereby offer you an opportunity to gracefully stand down your exclusive claim on regional beer quality and save some face.
There are some fine brews made in the Pacific Northwest, but to propose that beer of equal or greater quality doesn't exist elsewhere in the USA is simply ignorant.
Have you checked all the state laws that are in question? I haven't - but I well remember being told that it was the law back in elementary school when I refused to recite the "under God" phrase of the Pledge. (I was disciplined, but I never did say it, because it feels wrong coming out of my mouth.) This was Ohio, early 80's.
I would not have had a problem if there was simply time set aside for the pledge, but either law or administrative custom in my comparatively liberal school district pushed in a different direction. I know my argument is anecdotal, but I'd really like to see some supporting references for your assertion.
The thing that bugs me about the Pledge of Allegiance is this: it's taught, usually by repetitive drill, to every kid in public school. This is done at a young age, and before the kids have had any formal exposure to the concepts embodied in the Pledge. Those important concepts include the religious content. That stuff got covered in my last year of high school.
(I was just brought up to believe that honesty is important, especially when making promises. The Pledge of Allegiance is a promise. But I don't believe in the sort of god most people mean when they say "God," and I don't intend to be misunderstood.)
...what other reason could there be for everything else to be circling it?
personally, i would rather wait another 10 - 50 years or so. do lots of research in the intervening time.
you say "There _may_ be a limit, but it's likely far beyond what we are at now" - i guess i'm just saying that "likely" just ain't good enough. it's far more conservative to choose to - *gasp* - conserve and try to figure out a better answer than "not likely a problem". what's the rush, really? there is plenty of technological advancement and prosperity to be had while adhering to basic scientific method on a large scale.
the fact, the actual fact, is that We Don't Know Everything. i would like to know a little bit more before i choose to consume as much as possible, or "without artificial limits"... especially when consuming less does not decrease my quality of life. i'll spare you the lecture on how consuming less enhances my quality of life. most people don't enjoy understanding energy economy.
linux guis don't need dumbing, they need elegance... which is something most people using them seem to appreciate only in textual form.
uh, don't forget that some of these fuels are the result of other fuels, and that energy is required to produce the fuel itself. the stuff with lower energy output also take significantly less energy to produce, ie the production cost (in energy) of the energy itself is lower. less efficient fuel, more efficient production.
restated, it requires energy to concentrate energy. this is to my mind an important point in a discussion of sustainable energy.
hey. i could address you point by point, but then maybe you'd miss *my* point. regardless of whether any of the science in any of these debates is correct (or presented correctly), it's a good idea to behave conservatively. and i mean to use "conservatively" in its denotated meaning, not in any politically-charged connotation.
the idea here is to make it as likely as possible that we, as a species, will continue to thrive. unfortunately, all our experience up until the last millenium or so has been with small scale, decentralized, organic production. we've done well enough.
now that we're using highly energetic fuels -- as opposed to lower-energy new-biomass fuels -- we get more done faster. we can make more with fewer people. all sorts of cool stuff.
BUT.
we have no idea how to do the accounting. by accounting, i mean getting a good idea of the energy input and output of our hypothetical system. (if this is over your head or seems irrelevant, you shouldn't be arguing economics... you just don't get it yet.) and if we can't do the accounting, we can't judge the sustainability of what we're doing.
if we can't develop a good understanding of the sustainability of what we're doing now, the safe move is to wait until we can. that doesn't mean calling a halt to capitalism, though it does mean reigning in reckless waste of resources. we're riding a vector, in a historical sense, and trying to change it too much would also require vast quantities of energy. so we need to moderate. to conserve. to take care. to give a shit.
we're only *really* in a crisis if everyone believes those fucking nutcases screaming "there is no crisis". take the long view, and realize that there very well could be a crisis. we just don't know yet. isn't that reason enough to take a few easy conservative steps?
seriously.
wildly different, widely distributed technology and associated effects: 100 years. last 100 years taken against last 20,000: a blip. you're telling me everything is fine, don't worry my pretty little head? that's as much a bullshit response as anything else. it's going to take a lot more time to verify any of this.
the thing i'm really curious about is the point at which many scientists seem to have stopped doing science as soon as a technology was derived. all i'm asking here is that you and everybody else pretending a rational approach actually follow one. remember how science works. remember that when you change a system, you change a fucking system -- it is no longer the system that produced your assumptions.
with love,
your friends at Monsanto
it's self-defined. isn't that nice? ;)
makes it oh-so-meaningful.
three points:
1. if you're already locked in to unsustainable methods, then perhaps yes. just another example of why we all need to be thinking more than two years ahead.
2. there are incentives available to assist with the transition expenses.
3. people already do demand and pay for 100% organic food. "organics" has been growing at over 20% a year for the last three years. find some other economic sector that's doing that well...
well, i've worked on an organic farm, and we used the techniques the parent describes with great success. as far as the corn goes, our biggest problem was not having enough manpower to take care of all the yield (even though we windowed the harvest, we were unforeseeably shortstaffed).
the point of a cover crop is that it does not significantly compete with the primary crop. that is the definition of a cover crop. example: alfalfa for oats. it's really not a big deal.
as far as nutrient depletion goes, look into some of the literature on biointensive farming. the areas in which we experimented with this were the most successful - in yield quantity per acre, in yield quality, and in total efficiency. yes, you need to understand soil ecology, and a few other things too. but don't dismiss it until you understand it and have seen it in action. it makes so much more sense.
will these techniques work in a factory farm? not today. will i work in a factory farm? no. am i willing to eat food from factory farms? no.
Monsanto has admitted, on the record, that they know their GM products have an estimated 30-year life cycle before they're obsolete. In this subject, obsolete means, for example, that pests have developed resistance to the pesticides grown into the New Leaf Potato (TM).*
/. in general of the value of the scientific method. "But you're arguing against progress!" No - I'm arguing that as much work, if not more, should go into studying the effects of these "advances" as went into producing them.
Serving up Monsanto products to third-world farmers is akin to filling our depressed inner cities with paycheck advance loan companies. The farmers become dependent, but their problems have not been solved. If anything, we've just allowed Monsanto to apply a backhoe to a hole that those farmers and their (necessarily) short-term outlook couldn't dig any deeper on their own.
I won't even bother trying to convince
The real world of cause and effect is not limited to 1-to-1 relations... and that is one of the real bases of what used to be the organic movement. "Conventional farming" has only been around within the last few (relative) years. Before that, everyone was organic. In reality, we have very little data on the effects of industrial food production techniques. While some effects are quick and obvious, others take many years for us to notice.
Hope you have enjoyed this note from the field,
-j
* Addressing a post a few branches up: just because it's organic doesn't mean it's not poison. Nearly all pesticides (all that I know of) are neurotoxins. There are a few effective "organic" - meaning considered organic by FDA and others - pesticides. It's organic, ie naturally occurring, but does that make it safe to eat? No more so than arsenic. Just because "the only genes spliced in are other plant genes" does not make those genes and the plant they form safe for you to eat.
I've seen two bale structures and have talked with the construction teams for both of them. They're in southwest Vermont, so the environment is not the most stable. I am not a building expert, but I'm very interested.
:) And there's a certain appeal to a really thick wall...
Tip: find a builder *with demonstrated experience in straw bale construction*. While it may seem to be a simple, attractive technique, everything has to be done right - duh, yes, but here more seriously. Just a little tiny open space in the masonry, and you get a drip, which means a crack, which means more drips, which means rot, which means your house is not only structurally weak but a fire hazard too. Any windows, doors, or other holes are serious points of weakness. Keep in mind that rain during construction is a problem greater than work stoppage.
The insulation value is great only if the structural integrity is not compromised. You're counting on a massive *sealed* airspace.
That said, the building (a house) that isn't cracking (and is storied, timber framed for load) is beautiful and warm.
do the search (and anything related you can think of). this is simple and easy, not to mention incredibly useful. you could set it up yourself, or use an existing project. a friend coded one of these up as a toy project - and now a bunch of us rely on it daily. (i'm not linking to it because it'll be revised in a big way quite soon and i don't think he wants the responsibility.)
i find tabs provide a better model of the data i'm perusing. i often have a window devoted to a subject area, with tabs for all the pages within that area under that window. so for example i'll have one window open holding references, one with test cases, and another with mindless crap like slashdot. keeps me organized and efficient, and i don't have to scan [taskbar|dock] to be in the right place.
it's the extra level of heirarchical organization that makes tabs killer for me. same reason i like the OS X columnar file browser. fast, transparent traversal.
yeah, that was antioch. a few points applicable to the subject matter:
;)
1. i went there. i'm really familiar with 'the policy'.
2. it's fucking awesome.
instead of thinking about it as taking away spontaneity, think about it this way: you've got to communicate about what you want. how sexy is that? very. if you think it's not, think about being on the receiving end of it, and you'll realize the error of your repressed ways. men and women and women and men 'n stuff are not so different. most of us like to be turned on. you might be surprised how incredible your sex life can be when there's no misunderstanding, no having to say you're sorry, no, uh, beating around the bush.
you'll give, and get, exactly what's needed, and mmaybe more.
Unfortunately, a huge number of people who identify themselves as conservative don't seem to realize that condition++ doesn't necessarily meet condition >= decency, or even condition >= survival. It is easily, easily possible to be so low that incremental improvement through hard work is still not enough to get you to the point where you'll be on your own. There is a threshold below which basic 'modern' living is not possible. This is where having basic social services is really handy. If you can get someone above that threshold, they can often stay above that threshold on their own. It's kind of the modern equivalent of knowing how to make fire, or knowing how to fish...
It's also a shame that so few people in the US have any understanding - or put any thought into - the meanings of their tidy political categories (e.g. "liberal" and "conservative"). It's sickening how often those terms are applied in total disregard to their denotations.
Ok, that's all for now. Time for more coffee.