kybernetikos.com

• TruthMapping.com
  Getting closer…
  (tags: debate argument discussion)
• Time banks
  Time based currency is an interesting idea.
  (tags: time currency timebank bank exchange community charity)
• Freebase
  Hurrah for community structured data! I’ve got my invite code, and I’m pretty much maximally excited.
  (tags: database semantic data structure)

Economic Left/Right: -4.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.67

From The Political Compass test. Anyone else prepared to put their spot on the graph? Please comment.

Oh, and I’m seriously considering donating to the presidential campaign of the candidate closest to me in the political compass (except of course, that would be against the law). It should be obvious to everyone now that who the President of the US is affects the security and economy of the entire world, not just those in the USA.

• Scribd
  Excellent Document Sharing
  (tags: document sharing)
• Galaxiki
  A fictional galaxy for the editting.
  (tags: fiction galaxy sf)
• Content Aware Image Resizing
  Very nice technique
  (tags: graphics photography photos images resizing)

Grandfather

It was May 1st, International Workers Solidarity Day, and everyone was expected to be part of the celebrations. My Grandfather left the house, and walked down the street. Unusually for May, it was cold and there was snow on the ground. My Grandfather snorted “What the hell kind of a May the first is this?”. He was taken by the KGB. “Someone doesn’t like International Workers Day?”.

The family were horrified, most people never came back once taken. My grandmother was distraught, but eventually at three in the morning, he came back looking white, and without a word went straight to bed. The only thing he said about his interview in the morning, and that only to his closest family was “not all of them there are stupid”.

Father

When my Father was 18, it was the war, and he was in the army, laying communications cable with one other guy younger than him. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and they were laying the cable through beautiful countryside. They were enjoying themselves until they noticed, not far away, two German youths about the same task who had also just noticed them. They both knew that they would be expected to use their weapons, and attack, but instead, they and the Germans gradually moved backwards away from each other until they disappeared into the undergrowth.

Knowing that if it was discovered that they had failed to attack it would mean discipline, and probably execution, they swore never to tell anyone, and until the last year of his life, my father never did tell anyone.

Neighbour

In Soviet times, it was very easy for anyone to get a summer house in the countryside - they were given to anyone who wanted one fairly cheaply, but the size of the plots was very limited, to make sure that nobody got too independent from the state. There were also specific rules about what you were allowed to do with your plot, to make sure that everyone had more or less the same. The KGB would come and check every now and then that the rules were not being flaunted.

In the hot summer, everyone wanted a swimming pool, but one of the rules was that you were not allowed to build a swimming pool on the plot you were allotted. One of our neighbours did anyway. We warned him “You’re bound to be found out, you’ll disappear, you’re risking your life”, and others did too, but to each of us he just smiled and said “I’ll chance it”.

Sure enough eventually, one of his neighbours reported him, and the KGB came round to inspect his plot. Seeing the swimming pool, they said “what’s this?”, and he showed them a recently erected sign; “Extra Water Storage in Case of Fire”. Commending him on his forethought, they left.

Very soon afterwards, everyone in the neighbourhood had extra water storage reservoirs in case of fire. I taught my daughter to swim in one.

These stories are all more or less as told to me recently by my guide in Kazakhstan

I don’t suppose anyone here reads this, and doesn’t also read roos blog but if you don’t, you’ve just missed some really cool stuff on tangible interfaces, including whiteboard pong and yo-yo tuning.

Also, I love this devious idea from woodly for making guests stay longer.

• We Feel Fine
  A database of human emotion spanning the blogoplace.
  (tags: feeling emotion blog fine)
• Buxfer
  Pretty good money tracking app. Not quite everything I want…
  (tags: money finance tracking web2.0)
• Penspinning Academy (bic)
  The ancient and noble art of pen spinning
  (tags: pen bic penspinning spinning skill)
• SIMILE Project
  Some cool components and ideas. Check out the Timeplot and Timeline.
  (tags: Ajax web semantic simile mit)

I’m probably pretty close to the stereotype of the ignorant consumer, who thinks little about the sources of what he consumes, but occasionally feels a bit bad about it, and so is gradually contributing (when multiplied by huge numbers) to destroying the planet.

There are many important topics in the world to get serious about, but the average person does not directly engage themselves in any of them very much. This is human nature, and any scheme predicated on the opposite will fail.

That doesn’t mean that the vaguely apathetic mass doesn’t care at all, it just means that they need it to be made easy to do the right thing, and they will then do it, even at some personal cost. We of the apathetic mass don’t want to have to think. For things that I care about, but am not personally engaged in, I want to be given the answers. Just look at climate change - it’s not until practically all the experts are agreeing on the things people should do to help that everyone begins to act.

To save the planet, it isn’t enough for the moral to live sustainable lives, we need the masses to live sustainable lives. To make that happen we need a plan that can apply to almost anyone, that doesn’t just help the problem but fixes it. It’s ok for this plan to involve some sacrifice, but not an “unrealistic” sacrifice. If the sacrifices needed are unrealistic, we either have to adjust the plan, find technology to reduce the sacrifice, or reduce expectations or population.

The key thing here is not to find a “sustainable” lifestyle, or a minimal footprint, or a carbon neutral life, but to lead a scalable life.

I was reading about no impact man, and what he’s doing is brilliant. He’s going to be many things, but something he’s not going to be is scalable. We can’t all be journalists and writers, and make money from our unusual ecological experiment. If we all were, he would have nothing to sell. We need to estimate what size population we think the Earth should support, and work out a way of life that allows that many people to live on it, without depleting the Earths resources.

So, where are the studies explaining to the normal person how to live their lives in a scalable way? What can I buy, from whom should I buy it? How much energy should I use per day? Is there some way I can make up for the environmental damage I do by taking the train into work every day? How much travelling is it OK for me to do (can I go help people in Africa)? What energy sources should I be using? There is pretty much no energy source that doesn’t damage the earth in some way, geothermal and solar cool it (and would cause massive climate change and habitat loss if deployed enough to meet our energy needs), nuclear is almost the definition of non-renewable, what can we do about depletion of metals and raw materials? How often can I have a take away? Is it immoral to have children, given the worlds overpopulated state? Cinema: yes/no? Tv: yes/no? Radio: yes/no?

So, if those who do get involved with these things, could just come up with a simple plan that resolves all of these questions and gives me a plan for how to live my life, without giving up my job or friends and post it here in the comments, I’ll try to follow it. Thanks.

• The Jakarta Slide project
  WebDAV based content repository.
  (tags: WebDAV content repository)
• Jigsaw Overview
  W3s own web server, written in Java.
  (tags: java webserver server web)
• Miniature Java Web Server
  Very small, reasonably quick java web server.
  (tags: java web webserver server)

I am, if you will, the opposite of a mystic. I feel myself radically broken off from the Universe, and I know the ragged and intricate edges of that break in the same bodily way in which the mystic knows his oneness with the cosmos. Nevertheless (call it political, if you like) that knowledge is denied me and (call it sour grapes if you will) seems, in most of the manifestations that I’ve encountered it, somewhat cheap and tawdry.

- Samuel R. Delany The Situation of American Writing Today, An American Literary History Interview, in About Writing