BaffledExperts by Adam Norman

We’ve made the world’s largest amateur space rocket. – The Something Awful Forums

Tycho Brahe micro-spacecraft.

They're building a spaceship. They've already built a submarine.

I'm such a loser.

via We've made the world's largest amateur space rocket. - The Something Awful Forums.

Red Menace: Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation | Magazine

I've been long interested in how we price little things like genetic codes. One day, a little-known wild grape is worthless. The next it's saving the world's vineyards. One day, a hardy little grain of wheat is in forgotten the back 40 of a campasino; the next, it's saving us all from famine.

In the US, stem rust was the bane of the Great Plains, which endured frequent epidemics throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the most disastrous episodes occurred in the middle of World War I, when P. graminis obliterated 200 million bushels of wheat — one-third of the nation’s annual consumption. Countless Midwestern families scrambled to survive on nutrient-poor corn mush. “There is and has been for the last six months very wide and extended suffering upon the part of the poor people of this country for want of food,” an Idaho senator declared in the spring of 1917, as the crisis reached its peak. Soon after, the spooked federal government ordered the eradication of barberry, the plant upon which P. graminis rests and reproduces when wheat is scarce. The epidemics abated, but they didn’t stop: A two-year outbreak in the mid-1950s, for example, caused $3 billion worth of damage to the Great Plains’ crops.

In the early 1940s, after the onset of World War II made it impossible to conduct philanthropic works in either Europe or China, the Rockefeller Foundation turned its attention to Mexico, where destitute campesinos suffered from chronic malnutrition. The foundation dispatched 30-year-old agronomist Norman Borlaug to Mexico in 1944 to lead a project aimed at ending the nation’s hunger. When Borlaug first arrived south of the border, Mexico was reeling from a three-year bout with stem rust, which had cut wheat production in half. Borlaug resolved to breed a variety of wheat that P. graminis could not kill. Thus began the Green Revolution, the lifesaving agricultural movement that would earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

There was no high tech trick to Borlaug’s work, just countless hours of experimentation that he would later describe as “mind-warpingly tedious.” The Iowa native collected cereals from around the world, bred them with one another, and then took copious notes on the physical characteristics of the resulting crosses that fared well in Mexico’s fields. After many years of selecting and refining the top performers, he identified several genes capable of frustrating P. graminis. The most impressive was dubbed Stem Rust 31, or Sr31, a gene that several of Borlaug’s colleagues had bred into wheat from a rye chromosome.

Not only did Sr31 successfully fend off the pathogen, it also vastly improved grain yields. Farmers clambered to plant wheat that bore Sr31, which quickly became the world’s predominant rust-prevention gene. Developing nations in particular adopted the seeds, which they obtained from Borlaug’s International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, or Cimmyt (pronounced “SIM-it”).

The creation of rust-resistant wheat was one of the cornerstone achievements of Borlaug’s Green Revolution, which produced multiple disease-proof, high-yielding crops capable of feeding once-hungry populations. By 1970, stem rust was no longer a threat to nations that relied on wheat as a dietary mainstay. It is impossible to calculate how many lives Sr31 and other disease-resistance genes saved, but hundreds of millions would be a fair guess. Finally able to feed their burgeoning populations, developing countries like India were able to grow and prosper beyond all expectations. Two generations of farmers and agronomists came of age never having witnessed a stem-rust infection in the wild, and P. graminis largely ceased to be of interest to anyone except Cold Warriors: The US and Soviet militaries spent years trying to weaponize the pathogen. (America developed a cluster bomb containing turkey feathers smeared with spores; the stockpile was eventually destroyed after President Nixon renounced the use of offensive bioweapons.)

via Red Menace: Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation | Magazine.

Worldchanging: Bright Green: Bill Gates: the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year

GatesEquation.jpg

CO2 = P x S x E x C

Meaning this: the climate emissions of human civilization are the result of four driving forces:

* Population: the total number of people on the planet (which is still increasing because we are not yet at peak population).

* Services: the things that provide prosperity (and because billions of people are still rising out of poverty and because no global system will work unless it's fair, we can expect a massively increased demand for the services that provide prosperity).

* Energy: the amount of energy it takes to produce and provide the goods and services that our peaking population uses as it grows more prosperous (what some might call the energy intensity of goods and services). Gates believes it's likely cutting two-thirds of our energy waste is about as good as we can do.

* Carbon: the amount of climate emissions generated in order to produce the energy it takes to fuel prosperity.

via Worldchanging: Bright Green: Bill Gates: the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year.

America’s drug laws: A fine too far | The Economist

America's drug laws: A fine too far | The Economist.

Hexayurt: An uninspired but cheap place to sleep, kind of

Welcome to the home of the Hexayurt Project.

What is it?

* The Hexayurt is a refugee shelter system based on work done at the Rocky Mountain Institute. It uses an approach based on "autonomous building" to provide not just a shelter, but a comprehensive family support unit which includes drinking water purification, composting toilets, fuel-efficient stoves and solar electric lighting. Other systems can be added in a modular fashion. Here is a one page summary (pdf).

Is this for real?

* Yes. Both the American Red Cross and the US Department of Defense have examined the Hexayurt system in detail and found that it has considerable merit and utility. I hope that we will see it in use by international agencies within two years.

* The best place to get started is to read the slides from the presentation Vinay Gupta gave at the Pentagon in December 2006: Pentagon Presentation (pdf) - 20 pages, not much text, and the best summary of the system we currently have online.

Projected Costs

* Shelter: $200 - $500 per single family unit depending on size, climate and use duration

* Infrastructure Package: around $100 per unit

Materials

* Permanent use: Thermax HD (Dow)

* Temporary use: laminated hexacomb cardboard (Pregis)

* On site fabrication: Tuff R (Dow, widely used)

Units

There are three shelter sizes, of which the middle size is shown.

* Stretch Around $100 per unit, 6' high, 72 sq ft

* 8 foot Around $200 per unit, 8' high, 166 sq ft.

* 12 foot Around $300 per unit, 12' high, 166 sq ft. Resembles a space age cabin, full standing height throughout.

Assembly

Units take a team of three people around an hour to assemble. They are assembled using a 6" wide, 600 lb bidirectional filament tape, and anchored to the ground like tents. No heavy lifting, ladders or scaffolding are required.

Manufacture

Any wood shop or packaging factory can be taught to manufacture units in an afternoon. In emergencies, basic units can be manufactured on site with hand tools in half an hour each (only six cuts are required for each unit.)

Infrastructure Package

* 1 Wood Gasification Stove (burns wood for cooking, 3x more efficient than clay stoves)

* 2 Cold Cathode / LED Flashlights (energy efficient area lighting)

* 1 Composting Toilet (model depends on location and we are still researching options)

* 1 Water Purifier (type depends on location)

* Rechargeable AA batteries (for stove, lights, radios etc), for use in solar charging stations.

Availability

Template:Public domain All intellectual property associated with this project is public domain.

via Category:Hexayurt project - Appropedia: The sustainability wiki.

Art of memory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Art of memory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the 1966 non-fiction book, see The Art of Memory.

Graphical memory devices from the works of Giordano Bruno

The Art of Memory or Ars Memorativa ("art of memory" in Latin) is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. It is sometimes referred to as mnemotechnics.[1] It is an 'art' in the Aristotelian sense, which is to say a method or set of prescriptions that adds order and discipline to the pragmatic, natural activities of human beings.[2] It has existed as a recognized group of principles and techniques since at least as early as the middle of the first millennium BCE,[3] and was usually associated with training in rhetoric or logic, but variants of the art were employed in other contexts, particularly the religious and the magical.

Techniques commonly employed in the art include the association of emotionally striking memory images within visualized locations, the chaining or association of groups of images, the association of images with schematic graphics or notae ("signs, markings, figures" in Latin), and the association of text with images. Any or all of these techniques were often used in combination with the contemplation or study of architecture, books, sculpture and painting, which were seen by practitioners of the art of memory as externalizations of internal memory images and/or organization.

Because of the variety of principles, techniques, and their various applications, some researchers refer to "the arts of memory", rather than to a single art.[2]

via Art of memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Making Ubuntu usable

I've basically given up on Ubuntu on my Eee netbook. Along the way, though, I found out many things that should have worked that I had to fix myself.

To make your Eee usable, dear reader, with the foul and nefarious Ubuntu, learn from my mistakes.

Ubuntu installs from a central source that doesn't work very well

Unlike every other operating system, Ubuntu gets its programs from a central location,  the "Ubuntu Software Center". This usually works well, except when it doesn't. To make it work at all, though, you need to allow your computer to download ideologically offensive material.

Of course, the material isn't offensive to you--you just want to play MP3s. The zealots, though, would rather you didn't, so they keep the MP3 math out of sight, in the "restricted" repositories.

Don't listen to the zealots. Go to "System"--> "Administration"-->"Software Sources", and check every box you see. This will allow you to download ideologically impure (but very useful, software).

Install MP3 math and real fonts

If you use your computer like most people do (to play music and movies, and to surf the net), you need some special equations. Because these equations offend the zealots (I'm not exaggerating at all, by the way; they are equations, and zealots), you're not allowed to have them. To get them, go to Ubuntu Software Center and search for "Ubuntu Restricted Extras". Install them. Now things might work, though the open-source gods will curse you.

Fix your wireless

With these equations installed, you could, in theory, see the stuff on the net. Unfortunately, your wireless will be so slow you'll want to die. Fix it by going to Applications-->Accessories-->Terminal. Enter the following, without quotes. You can copy it easily, but to paste it you will need to use Edit-->Paste

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-karmic

When that's done, enter this:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic

I have no idea what the magic is, but this fixes bad wireless.

Fix the awful fonts

Ubuntu is ugly. There's no way around it. Fix it by installing themes and fixing the fonts. Go to System-->Preferences-->Appearance. Choose a theme from the options there, or download another. If, like me, you hate the brown colour, fix that too. Click on Customize..., and then the Windows colour selector. When you're done, choose a font you like, too from within the Appearances section

And while you're there, go to Visual Effects and put it on "Normal".

Finally, go to Fonts, and choose Subpixel smoothing, then go to Details..., and turn hinting off altogether.

The Trabant had a paper mache body, apparently

At Zwickau, inside the Automobile Werke Zwickau (AWZ) a new model was developed, called the P70 (P for plastic and 70 for the displacement which is about 700 cc).
This car was the first German small car made with plastic body. The name of the material was Duroplast made out of resin, strengthened by wool.

The appeal of Mad Men

One of my friends doesn't like Mad Men. I know why: he's an actor. He doesn't actually work for a living (not that I really do either).

Mad Men is career porn--no man can watch it without fantasizing about how awesome it would be to be that character. Contrast it with The Office and Dilbert, which are career schadenfreude, making us feel better from the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I feeling.