Current Chaos Manor mail

Current Chaos Manor mail: "Allen argues that a combination of factors led to the industrial revolution, among them international trade associated with the British Empire, an educated and wealthy populace which created a demand for the fruits of technology as well as the skills necessary to produce them, and, crucially, cheap energy. Allen provides the following graph, showing a comparison of energy costs across Europe in the early 1700s."

There are several impressive links there. The IR was more complex then we are led to believe in school.

Hybrid cutlery

Hybrid cutlery: "A Venn diagram showing the relationships between hybrid cutlery like the spork, spife, knork, and the little known splayd. See also forkchops."

Whoa, cool.

Cool Tools: SunRun PPA

Cool Tools: SunRun PPA: "The cool tool here is creative solar financing. Solar-electric panels are pretty much a commodity, but still high priced. What's new is an innovative way for a homeowner to afford an expensive solar set up."

You know I wondered why something like this was taking so long. You can buy lots of things on financing. That concept alone made a huge jump in the standard of living around the world. If your customers can't afford to buy your product all at once thee usually is a way they can do it over time. Houses, cars, home appliances are all major examples about that. Why should this be any different?

It seems to me that banking and financing are a major part of civilization and that I have got to learn more.

From Stone tools to Silicon Chips

How sand is transformed into silicon chips | News | TechRadar UK: "Sand is composed of silica (also known as silicon dioxide), and is the starting point for making a processor. Sand used in the building industry is often yellow, orange or red due to impurities, but the type chosen in the manufacture of silicon is a purer form known as silica sand, which is usually recovered by quarrying."

This is a very important process but in the end is just another metal to master. And the culmination of a process started by shaping stone tools to mine ore for simple copper tools, to bronze (which is copper and tin) then iron and cement, to the steam engine and aluminum to finally silicon and titanium.

The very first tools are usually sticks and stones found near where you needed to use them that were about the shape you needed. Then you found that some rocks like flint could be shaped pretty easily, but not so easily like sandstone to be useless.

So you send out scouts to find more food to hunt or gather and good rocks that can be useful. Maybe you build a fire ring and after a big bonfire you notice a rock that had melted and re-solidified, some good copper ore. Eventually you find some other rocks like tin that make copper stronger which is bronze. Then you start digging up all kinds of rocks to see if you can make an even better alloy. Coal doesn't do much for the copper but it burns really well.

You find iron works better then copper on its own and adding other rocks to it can make it better or worse. But on the whole it makes really good tools.

You keep trying different rocks in the fire. Burning limestone doesn't seem to be worthwhile until it rains and the powder hardens in a rock that doesn't get soft again. You've discovered cement. Now you can shape stone and connect stone and make your own stones much harder and stronger then clay and straw can provide, and its water proof too. This is great for aqueducts and dams.

Good food, clean water, strong tools you can do a lot with that, but you also need a free people and a system of government to keep the people free and you have it made.

Memorial Day

For all those soldiers past and present.
Good job.

Gizmodo - What Is This? - Rosetta Disk

Gizmodo - What Is This? - Rosetta Disk: "Looks like a billion gazillion television screens, thundering their nonsense and babbling at the same time in some gigantic art installation."

Actually this would be really rather useful. But you would want to leave a 500x microscope with it or it would be ignored. At the very least you need to put instructions on making a 500x microscope on the back so people know there is something to read on the front.

I'd rather go with something that can be read without more then a little magnification, but as small as possible.

We are at a cusp, but where from here.

I ran across a couple of very insightful posts this weekend.

What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen?


How the Mighty Fall: A Primer on the Warning Signs


They just seem to go together. Both present different ideas on where we might be in our present development and it can be turned around but we are at a cusp.

We have choices to make and deeds to do and tasks to tend. The question is are we doing the right ones.