Human population exploded during a relatively benign period in earth's geologic history (19th and 20th centuries). Natural climate variation is usually not so gentle. What that means is, we have hundreds of millions of people living in places that will be destroyed, basically. Even New York City has had a catastrophic hurricane/storm surge strike almost once per century. Geoengineering could be used not only for global warming, but averting regional catastrophes like hurricane Katrina.
I say, for now, simulate, simulate, simulate. Develop the means to divert solar radiation in a small region for example, that could be used to divert a hurricane or dampen its energy. This capability would be a prelude to reflecting the solar radiation that the polar ice SHOULD be reflecting (but since it has shrunk, is not, even acknowledging the last two years of colder temperatures). Develop an emergency plan, using existing resources to start.
Btw, do people in America realize that the pine beetle infestation in British Columbia (and the Katmai Peninsula in Alaska), a symptom of the higher temperatures up there, means that 75% of the red pine up there will be dead by 2020? Can you imagine the firestorms that will result? The "let nature take its course" argument is moot, there are too many people and too much wealth in every corner of the globe to let disaster happen.
Not sure if Cybrid still plays, but saw them at the Mozilla launch party at DNA Lounge in San Fran back in 2002, very good!
wearecybrid.com
Les Horribles Cernettes would be my first choice, but they are in Switzerland
http://musiclub.web.cern.ch/MusiClub/bands/cernettes/
Frank Zingrone wrote, in the Media Simplex (published 2001 by Stoddart,
ISBN 0-7737-3293-4), pp.78-81: "Since television viewing severely reduces the healthy stimulations of high-beta wave activity in the brain, we should expect that the patterns of chaos in healthy brains are missing in television viewers, and there is strong evidence that they are. Studies conducted at the Australian National University in Canberra by the Emerys, a husband and wife team, determined that television viewing reduces cognition to low levels and thwarts learning, in the normal sense of material being subject to conscious recall.
"The evidence is that television not only destroys the capacity of the viewer to attend, it also, by taking over a complex of direct and indirect neural pathways, decreases vigilance- the general state of arousal which prepares the organism for action, should its attention be drawn to specific stimulus." [the Emerys]
"The Emerys display their findings in a "Summary Map of Relativities for
Radiant and Reflected Light Perception." This chart shows the slowness
and relative speed of brain-wave activity given specific tasks. The
results when compared across several other investigations are clear: all
perception attending to television viewing is considerably slowed down,
whereas watching reflected light, from film to book reading, produces
significantly faster brain waves."
"It remains to be seen just what effects projection TV has on brain-wave
function."
"Television viewing leaves the left hemisphere almost in darkness.
Magnetic resonance imaging and EEG techniques, too, give us mesmerizing
pictures of the brain's dynamic actions. These techniques show that
verbal centres shut down and all lively brain activity is severely
reduced in response to tv watching."
He then goes on to write about how CRT/VDTs (including computer monitors,
and this would include LCDs, though perhaps less) incur similar effects
in hampering learning.
and staying with the Zapatistas? The U.S. economy probably won't be growing much in the next few years anyways, esp. if Dubya gets his war (the Economist predicts a high probability of worldwide recession if that happens). Good opportunities for someone with your skills may exist moreso in the developing countries. Starting from the ground up could give you the opportunity to implement cool new ideas (e.g. XCP). Changing your identity would be a cool hack, too.
not because of the large format ads that are coming, or the subscription-based alternative to viewing these ads. No, those might be necessary in the end to save this service, I don't really know. But I was hoping that with the hundreds of thousands of intelligent and educated people visiting this site on a daily basis, many of whom are now out of work, Slashdot's bright founders would find a way to harness all that potential for ENORMOUS new economic activity. Not to have a discussion about alternatives to merely increasing the obtrusiveness of ads is such a cop-out. How about a job board or at least forming an alliance with one or maybe collab.net, company critiques, reviews of opportunities for getting grants/SBA loans to start open source ventures etc? If Slashdot helped put money in my pocket I would be much more open to subscribing. What Slashdot does, I think it does well- but it's not enough, because it isn't much of a true community, that could uplift its hurting constituency- Slashdot is people publishing their opinions to news, mostly. That isn't enough interaction to form a community (with apologies to Philip Greenspun).
Your website users' behavior tends not to support your business, but that's unconscious behavior that happens all over the net. As a fellow vegan I want your site to succeed, so the constructive aspect to my criticism on this point is that maybe you could educate them on how to support your site via links- make a little 'vegan portal' to Amazon maybe?
My other constructive criticism is to point out why I haven't frequented your site (till today-loved the raw article from LA Times). Sure I've been there once or twice before in my almost 13 years of being vegan (oh, and I've been on the net since university, 10 years ago). However, there are veg*n websites I visit weekly/daily... like Veggiedate.org. That is an obvious money maker, but it shows how you can mix free and subscription-based use (i.e. subscribers can interact, free can't).
If you want more money from vegans, why not promote vegan-specific financial activity? How about a vegan job board, resources/forums for vegan businesses? I'd love to start a vegan business, point me in the right direction, offer me a forum moderated by a person or persons successful in the area of interest, and I'll subscribe! Slashdot take note- I would probably subscribe if free Slashdot went away- but just barely, as I would do so with the caveat that I want to see more ACTIVE support for open-source business (i.e. answer my questions- to be honest the whole mod-points system you have isn't of much more use to me than thumbs-up/down). Best wishes Erik on vegan.com and your book (which I will have to read)! JP
My advice: in planning this, take away the "gee-whiz" factor of PDAs, "mediaglyphs"... technology itself. If this project is to lead to some increasing change, then it must be, in the words of Freemon Dyson, "auto-catalytic"- that is, there must be some ongoing and increasing incentive, or fulfillment of a human want, for people to join and contribute to the momentum of change. The Gremane (sp?) Bank is Dyson's prime example of a successful "auto-catalytic" organization (it's a bank started by a Bengladeshi economist that loans money to groups of 3 women at a time). Growth implies geometric change.
Also, most people (including children) are sheep. How are you going to attract the motivated kids in these countries?
Maybe you could push this project more in a hacker direction, and organize the young 31337 to create a highly-publicized event (the World Game is a cool idea, but who is going to pay attention to it in the media, unless it interacts with the real world somehow).
I'm pretty cynical about the potential of having children be a test-set, but it is cool to think of the project as an opportunity to mentor bright children from diverse backgrounds.
... if you want optimal performance out of your minds and bodies. Since humans didn't have fire until 40-100k years ago, it makes sense that we evolved to eat raw food. Cooking denatures proteins, creates free radicals, and a host of toxins. You know why people are aren't suing pesticide makers for causing cancer from residues in foods? It is because cooking makes food more toxic than most pesticide residue (see the work of Bruce Ames and his Ames test for proof).
Futhermore, given the poor quality of animal husbandry in this day and age of factory farms and mad cow disease, it makes sense to go vegetarian. Guess who else was vegetarian- Socrates, Plato, Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein etc.
So do you want to be a flash-in-the-pan geek who falls apart after age 30 due to lack of exercise and a shitty diet, or do you want to work toward the greek ideal of sound mind and sound body, like the raw vegan Pythagoras, and leave a lasting legacy? Learn how to sprout, it is cheap, easy, and eating them will make you feel pretty amazing->www.rawfood.com
Slashdot Mirror
Human population exploded during a relatively benign period in earth's geologic history (19th and 20th centuries). Natural climate variation is usually not so gentle. What that means is, we have hundreds of millions of people living in places that will be destroyed, basically. Even New York City has had a catastrophic hurricane/storm surge strike almost once per century. Geoengineering could be used not only for global warming, but averting regional catastrophes like hurricane Katrina. I say, for now, simulate, simulate, simulate. Develop the means to divert solar radiation in a small region for example, that could be used to divert a hurricane or dampen its energy. This capability would be a prelude to reflecting the solar radiation that the polar ice SHOULD be reflecting (but since it has shrunk, is not, even acknowledging the last two years of colder temperatures). Develop an emergency plan, using existing resources to start. Btw, do people in America realize that the pine beetle infestation in British Columbia (and the Katmai Peninsula in Alaska), a symptom of the higher temperatures up there, means that 75% of the red pine up there will be dead by 2020? Can you imagine the firestorms that will result? The "let nature take its course" argument is moot, there are too many people and too much wealth in every corner of the globe to let disaster happen.
Not sure if Cybrid still plays, but saw them at the Mozilla launch party at DNA Lounge in San Fran back in 2002, very good! wearecybrid.com Les Horribles Cernettes would be my first choice, but they are in Switzerland http://musiclub.web.cern.ch/MusiClub/bands/cernettes/
Frank Zingrone wrote, in the Media Simplex (published 2001 by Stoddart,
ISBN 0-7737-3293-4), pp.78-81: "Since television viewing severely reduces the healthy stimulations of high-beta wave activity in the brain, we should expect that the patterns of chaos in healthy brains are missing in television viewers, and there is strong evidence that they are. Studies conducted at the Australian National University in Canberra by the Emerys, a husband and wife team, determined that television viewing reduces cognition to low levels and thwarts learning, in the normal sense of material being subject to conscious recall.
"The evidence is that television not only destroys the capacity of the viewer to attend, it also, by taking over a complex of direct and indirect neural pathways, decreases vigilance- the general state of arousal which prepares the organism for action, should its attention be drawn to specific stimulus." [the Emerys]
"The Emerys display their findings in a "Summary Map of Relativities for
Radiant and Reflected Light Perception." This chart shows the slowness
and relative speed of brain-wave activity given specific tasks. The
results when compared across several other investigations are clear: all
perception attending to television viewing is considerably slowed down,
whereas watching reflected light, from film to book reading, produces
significantly faster brain waves."
"It remains to be seen just what effects projection TV has on brain-wave
function."
"Television viewing leaves the left hemisphere almost in darkness.
Magnetic resonance imaging and EEG techniques, too, give us mesmerizing
pictures of the brain's dynamic actions. These techniques show that
verbal centres shut down and all lively brain activity is severely
reduced in response to tv watching."
He then goes on to write about how CRT/VDTs (including computer monitors,
and this would include LCDs, though perhaps less) incur similar effects
in hampering learning.
and staying with the Zapatistas? The U.S. economy probably won't be growing much in the next few years anyways, esp. if Dubya gets his war (the Economist predicts a high probability of worldwide recession if that happens). Good opportunities for someone with your skills may exist moreso in the developing countries. Starting from the ground up could give you the opportunity to implement cool new ideas (e.g. XCP). Changing your identity would be a cool hack, too.
not because of the large format ads that are coming, or the subscription-based alternative to viewing these ads. No, those might be necessary in the end to save this service, I don't really know. But I was hoping that with the hundreds of thousands of intelligent and educated people visiting this site on a daily basis, many of whom are now out of work, Slashdot's bright founders would find a way to harness all that potential for ENORMOUS new economic activity. Not to have a discussion about alternatives to merely increasing the obtrusiveness of ads is such a cop-out. How about a job board or at least forming an alliance with one or maybe collab.net, company critiques, reviews of opportunities for getting grants/SBA loans to start open source ventures etc? If Slashdot helped put money in my pocket I would be much more open to subscribing. What Slashdot does, I think it does well- but it's not enough, because it isn't much of a true community, that could uplift its hurting constituency- Slashdot is people publishing their opinions to news, mostly. That isn't enough interaction to form a community (with apologies to Philip Greenspun).
Your website users' behavior tends not to support your business, but that's unconscious behavior that happens all over the net. As a fellow vegan I want your site to succeed, so the constructive aspect to my criticism on this point is that maybe you could educate them on how to support your site via links- make a little 'vegan portal' to Amazon maybe?
My other constructive criticism is to point out why I haven't frequented your site (till today-loved the raw article from LA Times). Sure I've been there once or twice before in my almost 13 years of being vegan (oh, and I've been on the net since university, 10 years ago). However, there are veg*n websites I visit weekly/daily... like Veggiedate.org. That is an obvious money maker, but it shows how you can mix free and subscription-based use (i.e. subscribers can interact, free can't).
If you want more money from vegans, why not promote vegan-specific financial activity? How about a vegan job board, resources/forums for vegan businesses? I'd love to start a vegan business, point me in the right direction, offer me a forum moderated by a person or persons successful in the area of interest, and I'll subscribe! Slashdot take note- I would probably subscribe if free Slashdot went away- but just barely, as I would do so with the caveat that I want to see more ACTIVE support for open-source business (i.e. answer my questions- to be honest the whole mod-points system you have isn't of much more use to me than thumbs-up/down). Best wishes Erik on vegan.com and your book (which I will have to read)! JP
My advice: in planning this, take away the "gee-whiz" factor of PDAs, "mediaglyphs"... technology itself. If this project is to lead to some increasing change, then it must be, in the words of Freemon Dyson, "auto-catalytic"- that is, there must be some ongoing and increasing incentive, or fulfillment of a human want, for people to join and contribute to the momentum of change. The Gremane (sp?) Bank is Dyson's prime example of a successful "auto-catalytic" organization (it's a bank started by a Bengladeshi economist that loans money to groups of 3 women at a time). Growth implies geometric change. Also, most people (including children) are sheep. How are you going to attract the motivated kids in these countries? Maybe you could push this project more in a hacker direction, and organize the young 31337 to create a highly-publicized event (the World Game is a cool idea, but who is going to pay attention to it in the media, unless it interacts with the real world somehow). I'm pretty cynical about the potential of having children be a test-set, but it is cool to think of the project as an opportunity to mentor bright children from diverse backgrounds.
... if you want optimal performance out of your minds and bodies. Since humans didn't have fire until 40-100k years ago, it makes sense that we evolved to eat raw food. Cooking denatures proteins, creates free radicals, and a host of toxins. You know why people are aren't suing pesticide makers for causing cancer from residues in foods? It is because cooking makes food more toxic than most pesticide residue (see the work of Bruce Ames and his Ames test for proof). Futhermore, given the poor quality of animal husbandry in this day and age of factory farms and mad cow disease, it makes sense to go vegetarian. Guess who else was vegetarian- Socrates, Plato, Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein etc. So do you want to be a flash-in-the-pan geek who falls apart after age 30 due to lack of exercise and a shitty diet, or do you want to work toward the greek ideal of sound mind and sound body, like the raw vegan Pythagoras, and leave a lasting legacy? Learn how to sprout, it is cheap, easy, and eating them will make you feel pretty amazing->www.rawfood.com