4 years ago: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...

From there:

My suggestion for a "Game Changing" project is that NASA (possibly in partnership with NIST) could coordinate a global effort towards designing and deploying self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore (developed under free and open source non-proprietary licenses as progress towards "open manufacturing").

NASA showed the basic technological feasibility of this with work in the late 1970s on space habitats, and also in a 1980 study called "Advanced Automation for Space Missions".

In a long-term space mission or a space settlement, a self-sustaining economy must be created and supported. Therefore, addressing the problem of technological fragility on Earth due to long supply lines and the inaccessibility of key manufacturing data (because it is considered proprietary) is an essential step in the development of the development of human settlement in space. Addressing such fragility would have immediate benefits to improve intrinsic and mutual security globally, and would help humanity survive in the face of plagues, wars, global climate change, asteroid strikes, earthquakes, and whatever other disasters might strike unexpectedly. As the loss of New Orleans showed, Mother Nature remains a formidable adversary even when people are not fighting amongst themselves over perceived scarce resources.

A NASA-coordinated effort to organize manufacturing information and use it to design such habitats (or seeds that would grow such habitats), as well as improve the state-of-the-art in collaboration software, could thus help meet needs both currently on Earth and in the future in space.

Nothing NASA is doing now compares with this at all in terms of gaining the excitement and participation of the world's technologists and technically-minded youth, given this project would have the scale of the entire FOSS movement applied to manufacturing (and simulation). Achieving this goal of a self-replicating space habitat could justify literally trillions of dollars in effort to create a technological infrastructure that could support quadrillions of human lives in space, making nonsense of current worries of "Limits to Growth" or "Peak Oil" or "Overpopulation" or whatever else.

While NASA could coordinate this effort, many other organizations including NIST (and its SLIM program), DARPA, universities, and manufacturers globally could also participate in this effort.

As a whole, this project would help increase US security as a sort of public outreach by helping the global security community transcend ironic and outdated visions of what security means, given that so much abundance is possible through modern technology and this NASA effort would demonstrate that:

"Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism "

http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...

See here for more details:

http://groups.google.com/group...?

This effort could also be done in conjunction with this other proposal I made:

"Build 21000 flexible fabrication facilities across the USA "

http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...

The weight of cars has increased dramatically due to all the new safety and comfort features. The fact average mileage has improved too impressive.

Go find the gross wt of those 80s cars and compare weight vs power vs airbags vs road noise vs electronic options.

See Dan Pink's presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

So, much of the premise of differential rewards to spur innovation is flawed (even though it does apply to some extent for hard manual labor not involving much creativity). What Dan Pink says motivates people most to work in creative innovative directions is a sense of purpose, a sense of autonomy, and an increasing sense of mastery.

Also on that theme by Alfie Kohn:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books...
http://www.amazon.com/No-Conte...

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
"The book argues that there are "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption".[5] It claims that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries.[1] The book contains graphs that are available online.[6]"

And see also, on how the logic of diminishing returns in economics got replaced by the concept of "Pareto efficient":
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science That Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economic...

Also on the social dynamics and mythology related to all this: http://conceptualguerilla.com/...

You made a good presentation of the roots of the better ideas behind capitalism. But somehow along the way, as power accumulated and corrupted our main social institutions in the USA and elsewhere, those ideas got stretched into neoliberalism... Here is a conceptual video on what happens as those neoliberal ideas expand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

For some comic relief (and a bit more insight), the first novel in a futuristic sci-fi series featuring cybertanks fighting against neoliberalism (especially in the third novel in the series started by the Chronicles of Old Guy by Timothy Gawne):
http://www.amazon.com/The-Chro...

As long as we have an economy based mostly on exchange and capitalism, and as automation takes more and more jobs, it seems like we would need a basic income to make the system more humane and also keep it going by creating demand. So, to do that, we can just reduce the age of the first Social Security payment from age 65 to age 0, and fund that via taxes and fees royalties on use of government assets (like the Alaska Permanent Fund) and so on. However, long term, as I say on my website, we will likely see a mix of advanced subsistence production (3D printers, solar cells, Mr. Fusion), an expanded gift economy (FOSS, Freecycle), better democratic planning (like via the internet), and an exchange economy softened by a basic income.

Its no secret Iraq had chemical weapons. They used them liberally against Iranian human wave attacks during the Iran Iraq war.

The reason they were hushed up is because they were provided by western countries. You do know the U.S. and Europe backed Saddam in the Iran Iraq war and most probably encouraged the use of chemical weapons against Iranian teenagers right? Iran had a huge population advantage, Iraqi Shias weren't that keen on fighting Iranian Shia, so Iraq needed technology to level the field and the West helped with that edge.

The West was really happy about a lengthy, bloody stalemate in that war bleeding both countries white.

The summary seems to have left out the most interesting tidbit:

Where were they found? Next to the plants set up by Western companies that filled them in Iraq, of course. Who has control of those plants now? Why, ISIS of course. Don't worry, though, the people who thought it was better we didn't know about these things are assuring us that all those weapons were hurriedly destroyed.

The reason the flu is so scary is because it could mutate into something that kills 70% of the time. And that's just as likely (or moreso) than ebola mutating into something that's airborne. See how easy it is to use that logic both ways?

Anything that might kill us has two parts:
1. Chance of it happening to us.
2. Chance of it killing us if it happens.

Our powerful pre-frontal cortex should multiply the two, and realize that something with a 0.0001% chance of happening and a 70% chance of killing us is no more or less life-threatening than something with a 70% chance of happening and a 0.0001% chance of killing us. But our primitive hunter-gatherer brains increase our fear of rare but occasional events, and downplay our fear of regular events, so we distort that curve.

To pull a few more statistics out of my ass, I bet there are many people who demand the government do everything they can (including suppressing civil liberties like freedom of travel) to protect citizens from ebola, while they simultaneously hate and condemn the government for its efforts to restrict smoking. And I bet more of those people will die (at an otherwise young and healthy age) from smoking than ebola.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jv...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jv...

>> If they work so much now so they don't have time to find someone, is this really the solution to the correct problem?

Why do you presume they haven't yet "found the right man"? Maybe they just don't want to have kids yet, but realize that it's far better/cheaper/safer to extract eggs at 24 instead of 38?

That's a question you would need to ask each individual woman. And respect each answer either way.

You could do without making each forward..
I use a domain name with catch-all email, so everything @mydomain.com gets sent straight into my @gmail.com inbox. And it works perfectly. No labels for these, i just search on the email address.

Whenever i subscribe, i just make up any StoreX@mydomain.com address i deem fit..
Now, whenever StoreX leaks my email to spammers, i can just block StoreX@mydomain.com .. but in reality i dont even need to do that as gmail apparently picks up on it before i do.

I just checked; my gmail catched 40 spams yesterday. I think the daily average is higher, especially since i also have a catch-all @domain.com that forwards to gmail.

About once every 6 weeks i see upto 5 false positives in 3 consequent days, and i think this could be deliberate: to help train the spam filter. Oddly these mostly have some tie to my past search/browse history, which is not creepy but logical in my hypnosis.

To me, the gmail spam filter is near perfect. I go as far to advise clients to use a gmail account if only as a pass-through spam filter..

*holds up mirror for Florian to gaze into*

You were a valuable unbiased source of information on software patents and patent litigation. Particularly the German court's struggle with them. However it came to light -- in a rather surprising way -- that you were paid or possibly employed by Microsoft and Oracle. I have heard much about this and it often casts a negative light on your blogging but I would like to hear your side of these relationships. I can conceivably understand how you could accept money that furthers your ideals but it is difficult to comprehend how I can be assured this does not influence your writing, position, selected details and bias. Are you able to lay my concerns to rest?

No kidding. Those burning fuels will kill more animals in the long run than the .... zero animals likely hurt by Google.