Did anyone else catch this? How could this ever slip by the Reuters editors: Lord and his colleagues, who produced infrasound with a seven meter (yard) pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.
Now I can understand telling someone a meter is about the length of a yard (or vice versa), but a.) not in a written science news article and b.) by the time you pile seven of these things on top of each other they are nowhere near equivalent sizes.
There are a number of newer CFLs that among other things are tinted to more closely match the incandescent color that seems so much gentler than the typic full spectrum flourescent light. Also, new ones are exactly the same size as a standard incandescent light bulb ( for fun, look up a theatre lighting website that lists all of the different globe shapes, base types and sizes, gas mixtures, and filament types various bulbs...err lamps). But I digress, newer CFLs also are now made for use in recessed fixtures, globe shapes for vanities, and reflector shapes (ie PAR) for track lighting, etc. They even come in retro-stylin bug yellow for your back porch-light needs
Not only that, but you have to be aware that the device even exists, or plan on microwaving every single one of your purchases. The Caspian site shows RFID tags they have found embedded in the rubber soles of sneakers, in between layers of paperboard, you name it.
I view this technology much like the use of genetically modified foodstuffs, the technology itself has tremendous potential to make life better/easier, but I think that before we start intorducing these things to the market (a little late on the GM foods for that) we need a serious public awareness / education program. I simply don't trust corporations to use this sort of technology responsibly. Until there are serious and meaningful checks in place to prevent abuse, I strongly oppose the use of these technologies.
When I bought my first domain, I thought it was entirely new, but it turns out it previously belonged to some small tech company in SoCal. I still get maybe 5-10 pieces of ham a week intended for these people, and probably another 60 pieces of spam. Overall not too bad, but its strange because even though I've never figured out what this company did ( and maybe that was their problem too..) I've kind of gotten to know each of the six or so people who had addresses on the domain simply based on the type of mail they receive. If I ever found out who these people were, I'd probably forward the mail to them just to be nice, but they seem to have dropped of the face of the planet.
Is it worth it?
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Is it worth it? That's my question for all the geeks who work the incredible hours. I know, I was once there too. Luckily although my employer did not pay overtime, my supervisor did his best to reward it with food, (near-giveaway) employee auctions of obsolete but perfectly functional equipment, etc. So sure, we all worked 80, 90, even the occasioanl 100+ hour week.
But not anymore. I grew up and got out of that rat race. Work/jobs basically are an agreement where you trade your time for money. I realized that by passing up on upgrading my machine every 12 months and buying all of the cds and movies I wanted, instead eating in more than going out, and driving an older car I could live quite well working only part time.
So what do I do with all of this free time?
I spend it with my family, I go backpacking, skiing, etc. I indulge in hobbies in everything from laser light shows to weaving. I donate time to non-profits like the local farmer's market, church groups, Habitat for Humanity, the Community Farm Aliance, and local theatres.
Living on less is far more rewarding the getting caught up in life as a consumer where the only dominant more or social value is work more to buy more.
And I'd give up well-paved roads for some high-speed commuter rails like in Germany and Japan.
weeds aren't the problem, weed killer is.
on
Hi-Tech Weed-Killer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This gives factory farming a new name! Why do we get weeds? As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum. So, any tilled space between plantings and rows is enrgy going to waste. Weeds sprout up in this empty space to capture that energy.
So if you want to control weeds in a manner that doesn't cost (hundreds) of thousands, pollute rivers, stream and groundwater, just keep it simple stupid:
Plant cover crops in-between and among your primary crop. It could be a harvestable plant, such as pole beans on corn or basil with tomatoes, though this makes harvesting a job for people and not machines. Or plant a companion crop which adds nutrients to the soil. Legumes add nitrates, buckwheat grass makes great compost, just till it under with your next planting. Even better plant flowers and other hebs that attract colonies of beneficial insects that will help control insect populations in your primary crop.
We got by for a long time without these chemicals. Organic farmers in the US and Bio-dynamic farmers in Europe and harvesting yields that dwarf factory farms, with better flavor and nutrients than conventional produce, and no toxic chemicals.
I was thinking the same thing. I am blessed with three incredible public radio stations here, some that play entire albums each afternoon, full of eveything from the latest Americana to european electronic artists to traditional african drummers. I'd love ot record a lot of it, but I always miss the first few seconds of the song (the DJs rarely, if ever "talk over"
So, how do I make a device that does something like this??
Maybe its just me, but within the past two days I've noticed a huge jump in the number of Pro Iraq War or Save Our Troops Spam. All I can say is, "Way to support your cause boys, I know I always get people to agree with me by spamming them!"
Strangely enough none of the Peace movement organizations have spammed me. Perhaps even more stange, or suggestive, is that all of the peace groups are non profit, while all the pro war psam seems to come from some business hoping to sell some thing or another (offensive t-shirts, duct tape, plastic sheeting, etc).
Even more fun on this topic, since women have entered the labor force, the wage disparity between men and women has slowly, and by and large, disappeared. But this isn't good news for society. It turns out that over the last 20 years, women's wages haven't gone up so much as men's have gone down. Think about it, Ward Cleaver and his contemporaries all were able to support their families on a single income, even send most of their children to college. Today, virtually every family needs two wage earners and still need massive loans to send their children to college.
Oh, as if the US doesn't habitually break whatever international laws and treaties happen to inconvenience it. If we think the Chinese are going to get something we want, well, my guess is we'll find whip up another batch of fear, mix in some flag waving jingoism, add a dash of racism, and nuke those Chinese commie bastards to hell and back.
Speaking of Posse Comitus (sp?, the Civil War era law prohibiting the use of the military against US citizens), did anyone else notice the small blurb in Thursday and Friday's news that one of the accused terrorists killed by our drone in Yemen was a US citizen. It might be worth noting that citizens are entitled to trial by jury. Somehow I don't think an Unmanned aircraft half way across the continent counts as a jury of ones peers. That man may have been the most vile killer born since Hitler, but that does not justify what the US becomes when it starts to defy national and international law.
Whose financing all those lawyers for poor geeks a and b to fight this thing all the way up to the Supreme Court? We're all giving what we can to the EFF, but Supreme Court rulings (especially ones in your favor) don't come cheap these days, all bribes and payoffs aside.
Saying MS messenger comes bundled is an understatement...have you tried removing from XP Home.... it's practically impossible for anyone who isn't very computer literate. Registry edits, the whole bit.
Umm, allow me to suggest: a recent Alternet article
or even better, everyone's favorite Walmart-watch.org
Before we talk about walmart doing anything positive for anyone. Fiduciary resposibility is just another name for greed.
The strange thing about all this is the weird nostalgia that I'm noticing in myself and a lot of the DEC fanatics out there. The company had a really strange culture. My father was there from the late 70s through the merger (and is one of the few still with Compaq, though his days as an engineer are long over). I was brought up in the DEC culture, and even though I never appreciated it when I was young (the last thing in the world I ever wnated to do was a computer job like my Dad's...so boring and technical) What do I do now, boring technical work!! But I have a real soft place in my heart for DEC, and I am amazed to see so many others who do as well.
So why? What was it about DEC? It's products? Its attitude? that people still collect/proudly wear the DEC logo as opposed to other tech companies? Will we have Compaq nostalgia? My feeling is that Compaq, running more like a multi-national corporation treating employees as resources, not family, and lacking DEC's perpetual underdog mentality, probably won't have this sort of associated nostalgia. Or will it?
You are more right than you imagined. I just finished an environmental law class, and this was one of the issues we looked at. For the human body, more than 60% of drugs ingested are not absorbed by the body. Nor can these drugs be filtered out of the waste water at the sewage treatment plant. Tests of water downstream of these plants show high levels of virtually every drug on the market, from antibiotics to tylenol and birth control. Now, just ignoring the environmental effects of that, one of the biggest problems is that this low concentration of antibiotics in the water makes it much easier for bacteria in the water to develop resistance to the drugs that form out mainline defense against thousands of disease.
Best case scenario, drug costs go up as Pharmaceutical companies have to invest more in R+D to develop new drugs to replace a growing number of useless ones. Worst case, they can't, and simple infections, and other illnesses once easily treatable through antibiotics start to become deadly again.
Agricultural waste containing these hormones and antibiotics is far worse because this waste is often not treated at all, unlike human sewage, and ends up straight in the water supply.
Academic departments need to be carefull with that whole weeding out the chaff attitude towards low level course. When I started in my major (theatre design) I was one of approximately 60 total new freshman in the department (both performance, dance, directing, and design majors. Of them, I am the only one remaining graduating on time, and one of but three who will graduate at all. Guess which department is getting their funding cut do to falling enrollment?
In all fairness, from what I've recently read, BP now has more invested in clean energy research than they do in oil. Also, I seem to remember hearing that after the whole Enron debacle, they decided to cease all corporate funded campaign contributions. I doubt any oil company is totally clean, but I'll give credit where due. Now if only I could remember the sources.
i once visited a scene shop in the theatre of a local university and the technical director there showed me one of the most dangerous things I have ever seen. They had an older style table saw, the type that rarely has a blade guard (nor can you use them anyways when ripping an 8' piece of ply). He powered it up once, it ran normally. He turned it on or off a couple more times, and finally said "Got it". Though I could distictly here that the saw was on, the blade appeared not to be spinning. When he slid a two by four into the blade it slowedthe rotation down just enough that you actually could see the blades turning, though it was in a funny oscillatiion, like dancing in a high speed strobe light. Turns out, the flourescent lights flickered at just the right frequency to make the moving blade appear to be standing still.
I was giving my undergraduate thesis presentation to abut 250 people from all over the state(design theory for entertainment laser diplays) Powerpoint, for sake of ease (But I swear, not one piece of clipart or animated transition, anywhere) Shortly before I was about to begin, I dropped my MS optical mouse. I moved it around quick to see that the currsor still moved, but forgot to check the buttons. So I started the presentation, but when I went to click to advance to the next slide, nothing happened. The mmouse body had separated just enough from the chassis that the buttotns wouldn't depress enough to do anything. But that wheel still worked!! Thank god! I was able to do the whole shebang w/out any problems, and afterwards, in full light it took me about thirty seconds to pop the thing back together again. If only I could get a keyboard so hardy!!!!
I absolutely love the google toolbar..I just wish it was available for browsers other than IE. Next to Winamp, it is the most used piece of freeware on my windows machine (IE doesn't count...I only use it because of the google toolbar.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget the next verse, especially in light of the RIAA suing the likes of 12 year olds and college students:
But no matter where you ramble
or where you may roam
You'll never see an outlaw
rob a family of there home
Did anyone else catch this? How could this ever slip by the Reuters editors:
Lord and his colleagues, who produced infrasound with a seven meter (yard) pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.
Now I can understand telling someone a meter is about the length of a yard (or vice versa), but a.) not in a written science news article and b.) by the time you pile seven of these things on top of each other they are nowhere near equivalent sizes.
There are a number of newer CFLs that among other things are tinted to more closely match the incandescent color that seems so much gentler than the typic full spectrum flourescent light. Also, new ones are exactly the same size as a standard incandescent light bulb ( for fun, look up a theatre lighting website that lists all of the different globe shapes, base types and sizes, gas mixtures, and filament types various bulbs...err lamps). But I digress, newer CFLs also are now made for use in recessed fixtures, globe shapes for vanities, and reflector shapes (ie PAR) for track lighting, etc. They even come in retro-stylin bug yellow for your back porch-light needs
I view this technology much like the use of genetically modified foodstuffs, the technology itself has tremendous potential to make life better/easier, but I think that before we start intorducing these things to the market (a little late on the GM foods for that) we need a serious public awareness / education program. I simply don't trust corporations to use this sort of technology responsibly. Until there are serious and meaningful checks in place to prevent abuse, I strongly oppose the use of these technologies.
When I bought my first domain, I thought it was entirely new, but it turns out it previously belonged to some small tech company in SoCal. I still get maybe 5-10 pieces of ham a week intended for these people, and probably another 60 pieces of spam. Overall not too bad, but its strange because even though I've never figured out what this company did ( and maybe that was their problem too..) I've kind of gotten to know each of the six or so people who had addresses on the domain simply based on the type of mail they receive. If I ever found out who these people were, I'd probably forward the mail to them just to be nice, but they seem to have dropped of the face of the planet.
But not anymore. I grew up and got out of that rat race. Work/jobs basically are an agreement where you trade your time for money. I realized that by passing up on upgrading my machine every 12 months and buying all of the cds and movies I wanted, instead eating in more than going out, and driving an older car I could live quite well working only part time.
So what do I do with all of this free time?
I spend it with my family, I go backpacking, skiing, etc. I indulge in hobbies in everything from laser light shows to weaving. I donate time to non-profits like the local farmer's market, church groups, Habitat for Humanity, the Community Farm Aliance, and local theatres.
Living on less is far more rewarding the getting caught up in life as a consumer where the only dominant more or social value is work more to buy more.
Opt out!
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
it takes two minutes!
And I'd give up well-paved roads for some high-speed commuter rails like in Germany and Japan.
This gives factory farming a new name!
Why do we get weeds? As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum. So, any tilled space between plantings and rows is enrgy going to waste. Weeds sprout up in this empty space to capture that energy.
So if you want to control weeds in a manner that doesn't cost (hundreds) of thousands, pollute rivers, stream and groundwater, just keep it simple stupid:
Plant cover crops in-between and among your primary crop. It could be a harvestable plant, such as pole beans on corn or basil with tomatoes, though this makes harvesting a job for people and not machines. Or plant a companion crop which adds nutrients to the soil. Legumes add nitrates, buckwheat grass makes great compost, just till it under with your next planting. Even better plant flowers and other hebs that attract colonies of beneficial insects that will help control insect populations in your primary crop.
We got by for a long time without these chemicals. Organic farmers in the US and Bio-dynamic farmers in Europe and harvesting yields that dwarf factory farms, with better flavor and nutrients than conventional produce, and no toxic chemicals.
So, how do I make a device that does something like this??
Strangely enough none of the Peace movement organizations have spammed me. Perhaps even more stange, or suggestive, is that all of the peace groups are non profit, while all the pro war psam seems to come from some business hoping to sell some thing or another (offensive t-shirts, duct tape, plastic sheeting, etc).
Even more fun on this topic, since women have entered the labor force, the wage disparity between men and women has slowly, and by and large, disappeared. But this isn't good news for society. It turns out that over the last 20 years, women's wages haven't gone up so much as men's have gone down. Think about it, Ward Cleaver and his contemporaries all were able to support their families on a single income, even send most of their children to college. Today, virtually every family needs two wage earners and still need massive loans to send their children to college.
Oh, as if the US doesn't habitually break whatever international laws and treaties happen to inconvenience it. If we think the Chinese are going to get something we want, well, my guess is we'll find whip up another batch of fear, mix in some flag waving jingoism, add a dash of racism, and nuke those Chinese commie bastards to hell and back.
Speaking of Posse Comitus (sp?, the Civil War era law prohibiting the use of the military against US citizens), did anyone else notice the small blurb in Thursday and Friday's news that one of the accused terrorists killed by our drone in Yemen was a US citizen. It might be worth noting that citizens are entitled to trial by jury. Somehow I don't think an Unmanned aircraft half way across the continent counts as a jury of ones peers. That man may have been the most vile killer born since Hitler, but that does not justify what the US becomes when it starts to defy national and international law.
Yeah, that's it: Join the army, travel to exotic places, meet interesting people...
And Kill Them!
Just the way to see the world.
Whose financing all those lawyers for poor geeks a and b to fight this thing all the way up to the Supreme Court?
We're all giving what we can to the EFF, but Supreme Court rulings (especially ones in your favor) don't come cheap these days, all bribes and payoffs aside.
Saying MS messenger comes bundled is an understatement...have you tried removing from XP Home.... it's practically impossible for anyone who isn't very computer literate. Registry edits, the whole bit.
Umm, allow me to suggest:
a recent Alternet article or even better, everyone's favorite Walmart-watch.org Before we talk about walmart doing anything positive for anyone. Fiduciary resposibility is just another name for greed.
So why? What was it about DEC? It's products? Its attitude? that people still collect/proudly wear the DEC logo as opposed to other tech companies? Will we have Compaq nostalgia? My feeling is that Compaq, running more like a multi-national corporation treating employees as resources, not family, and lacking DEC's perpetual underdog mentality, probably won't have this sort of associated nostalgia. Or will it?
Best case scenario, drug costs go up as Pharmaceutical companies have to invest more in R+D to develop new drugs to replace a growing number of useless ones. Worst case, they can't, and simple infections, and other illnesses once easily treatable through antibiotics start to become deadly again.
Agricultural waste containing these hormones and antibiotics is far worse because this waste is often not treated at all, unlike human sewage, and ends up straight in the water supply.
Academic departments need to be carefull with that whole weeding out the chaff attitude towards low level course. When I started in my major (theatre design) I was one of approximately 60 total new freshman in the department (both performance, dance, directing, and design majors. Of them, I am the only one remaining graduating on time, and one of but three who will graduate at all. Guess which department is getting their funding cut do to falling enrollment?
In all fairness, from what I've recently read, BP now has more invested in clean energy research than they do in oil. Also, I seem to remember hearing that after the whole Enron debacle, they decided to cease all corporate funded campaign contributions. I doubt any oil company is totally clean, but I'll give credit where due. Now if only I could remember the sources.
i once visited a scene shop in the theatre of a local university and the technical director there showed me one of the most dangerous things I have ever seen.
They had an older style table saw, the type that rarely has a blade guard (nor can you use them anyways when ripping an 8' piece of ply). He powered it up once, it ran normally. He turned it on or off a couple more times, and finally said "Got it". Though I could distictly here that the saw was on, the blade appeared not to be spinning. When he slid a two by four into the blade it slowedthe rotation down just enough that you actually could see the blades turning, though it was in a funny oscillatiion, like dancing in a high speed strobe light. Turns out, the flourescent lights flickered at just the right frequency to make the moving blade appear to be standing still.
I was giving my undergraduate thesis presentation to abut 250 people from all over the state(design theory for entertainment laser diplays) Powerpoint, for sake of ease (But I swear, not one piece of clipart or animated transition, anywhere)
Shortly before I was about to begin, I dropped my MS optical mouse. I moved it around quick to see that the currsor still moved, but forgot to check the buttons. So I started the presentation, but when I went to click to advance to the next slide, nothing happened. The mmouse body had separated just enough from the chassis that the buttotns wouldn't depress enough to do anything. But that wheel still worked!! Thank god! I was able to do the whole shebang w/out any problems, and afterwards, in full light it took me about thirty seconds to pop the thing back together again. If only I could get a keyboard so hardy!!!!
I absolutely love the google toolbar..I just wish it was available for browsers other than IE. Next to Winamp, it is the most used piece of freeware on my windows machine (IE doesn't count...I only use it because of the google toolbar.)