For more background on WITTS, see: http://peswiki.com/index.php/D...

Or also an open source version of one of those idea by a different group: http://peswiki.com/index.php/O...

Just pointing out the info -- making no claims about the validity of any of it. In general, the peswiki is a big collection of similar claims. Of course, only one of them needs to be true to change the world significantly.

Here is something posted to the peswiki myself, previously sent to Rossi about why he should open source his eCat rather than try to make money off it (assuming it actually works as suggested):
http://peswiki.com/index.php/O...
"The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioeconomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore."

http://www.denverpost.com/news...
"They harden themselves to survive inside prison, guards said in recent interviews. Then they find they can't snap out of it at the end of the day. Some seethe to themselves. Others commit suicide. Depression, alcoholism, domestic violence and heart attacks are common. And entire communities suffer. ... Prison work "bleeds over into your private life. You go into restaurants, you sit with your back to the wall. You want to see all the entrances and exits, and you notice if somebody is carrying something bulky. You can't turn these skills off," said Matthew von Hobe, 50, a former manager at the four-prison federal complex in Florence. He knows of two colleagues who committed suicide."

So, like you imply, looks like a tough road to rehabilitation for many prison guards...

Good to see so many comments mentioning the lead connection to violent crime. There are nutritional connections too.
"Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat: Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behaviour"
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...

The problem is, of course, the prison is one of the main social safety nets in the USA, and also that putting people in prison boosts the employment rate (jobs for guards, prisoners off the unemployment roles). We need to rethink our economy, like with a basic income that a person does not get while incarcerated?

Also related to show how bad it could get:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
"The "kids for cash" scandal unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of inmates in the detention centers."

Here is am excerpt from a related satire by me regarding expanding prisons for copyright violators that I sent to the US DOJ a dozen years ago in response to a slashdot article, but sadly sometimes it seems people may be taking it more as a blueprint than a cautionary tale: :-(
http://www.pdfernhout.net/micr...
"""
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. ...
      First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
    MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in cost, not free as in freedom.
    In any case, why would you want to pay public servants like those old time -- what were they called? -- Senators? Representatives? -- around $145K a year out of public funds just to make free laws? Laws are made far more efficiently, inexpensively and, I assure you, justly, by large corporations like MicroSlaw. Such organizations need the motivation of micropayments for application, discussion or reference of their laws to stay competitive. MicroSlaw needs to know who discusses what law and when they do so, each and every time, so they can charge fairly for their services and thus retain their financial freedom to innovate. And America is all about financial freedom, right! [Audience applause].
    [Inaudible shouted question] Prisons? There are only a million Americans behind bars for copyright infringement so far. No one complained about the million plus non-violent drug offenders we've had there for years. No one complained about the million plus terrorists we've got there now, thanks in no small part to a patriotic Supreme Court which after being privatized upheld that anyone who criticizes government policy in public or private is a criminal terrorist. Oops, I shouldn't have said that, as those terrorists aren't technically criminals or subject to the due process of law are they? Well it's true these days you go to prison if you complain about the drug war, or the war on terrorism, or the war on infringers of copyrights and software patents -- so don't complain! [nervous audience laughter] After all, without security, what is the good of American Freedoms? Benjamin Franklin himself said it best, those who don't have security will trade in their freedoms.
    I'm proud to say that the U.S. is now the undisputed world leader in per capita imprisonment, another example of how my administration is keeping us on top. Why just the other day I had the U.N. building in New York City locked down when delegates there started talking about prisoner civil rights. Such trash talk should not be permitted on our soil. It should be obvious that anyone found smoking marijuana, copying CDs, or talking about the law without paying should face a death penalty from AIDS contracted through prison rapes -- that extra deterrent make the system function more smoothly and helps keep honest people honest. That's also why I support the initiative to triple the standard law author's royalty which criminals pay for each law they violate, because the longer we keep such criminals behind bars, especially now that bankruptcy is also a crime, the better for all of us. That's also why I support the new initiative to make all crimes related to discussing laws in private have a mandatory life sentence without parole. Mandatory lifetime imprisonment is good for the economy as it will help keep AIDS for spreading out of the prison system and will keep felons like those so called fair users from competing with honest royalty paying Americans for an inexplicably ever shrinking number of jobs.
    Building more prisons... [Aside to aid who just walked up and whispered in the president's ear: What's that? She's been arrested for what again? Well get her off again, dammit. I don't care how it looks; MicroSlaw owes me big time.]
    Sorry about that distraction, ladies and gentlemen. Now, as I was saying, building more prisons is good for the economy. It's good for the GNP. It's good for rural areas. Everyone who matters wins when we increase the prison population. People who share are thieves plain and simple, just like people who take a bathroom break without pausing their television feed and thus miss some commercials are thieves. Such people break the fundamental social compact between advertisers and consumers which all young children are made to sign. And let me take this opportunity to underscore my administration's strong record on being tough on crime. MicroSlaw's system for efficient production of digitized legal evidence on demand is a key part of that success. So is the recent initiative of having a camera in every living room to catch and imprison those not paying attention when advertising is on television, say by making love or even talking. Why without such initiatives, economic analysts at MicroSlaw assure me that the GNP would have decreased much more than it has already. Always remember that ditty you learned in kindergarten, Only criminals want privacy, because a need for privacy means you have something evil to hide. ...
      By the way, I am proud to announce government homeland security troops are successfully retaking Vermont even as we speak. Troops will soon be enforcing federal school standards there with all necessary force. Their number one priority will be improving the curriculum to help kids understand why sharing is morally wrong. Too bad we had to nuke Burlington before they would see the light, har, har, [weak audience laughter] but you can see how messed up their education system must have been to force us to have to do that. And have no fear, any state that threatens the American way of life in a similar fashion will be dealt with in a similar way. I give you my word as an American and as your president sworn to uphold your freedom to live the American lifestyle we have all grown accustomed to recently, and MicroSlaw's freedom to define what that lifestyle is to their own profit.
    So, in conclusion, a body of legal knowledge free for all to review and discuss would be the death of the American dream. Remember, people who discuss law in private without paying royalties are pirates, not friends. Thus I encourage you all to report to MicroSlaw or your nearest homeland security office anyone talking about laws or sharing legal knowledge in other than an approved fashion and for a fee. Always remember that nursery school rhyme, there is money for you in turning in your friends too.
    God Bless! This is a great country! [Wild audience applause.]
    Addendum -- March 4, 2132 -- Freeweb article 2239091390298329372384 Archivists have just now recovered the above historic document from an antique hard disk platter (only 10 TB capacity!) recently discovered in the undersea exploration of a coastal city that before global warming had been called Washingtoon, D.C.. It is hard for a modern sentient to imagine what life must have been like in those dark times of the early 21st Century before the transition from a scarcity worldview to a universal material abundance worldview. It is unclear if that document was an actual presidential speech or was intended as satire, since most digital records from that time were lost, and the Burlington crater has historically been attributed to a Cold Fusion experiment gone wrong. In any case, this document gives an idea of what humans of that age had to endure until liberty prevailed.
"""

And it will take just as long to get it in Austin. The summary says that this was announced back in April, but it was announced (and the linked story is from) April 2013. It's been 16 months to learn that in two months neighborhoods with the same density as mine, but in another part of town, can sign up for fiber. They'll get it some time after that. It seems unlikely to be before 2017 in my neighborhood now.

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.

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..