Tea + Shooting + Second Life

Three events recently came together to give an idea.

I was reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time . It's an incredible story about an American, who against all odds, managed to build over 60 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The events and barriers he had to overcome could seriously be made into a thriller movie. For example, imagine being detained by a community that is known to be violent and not know any of the language. Later on, two fatwahs were issued to get him out of Pakistan!

The other thing is, I watched my friend play a first person shooter game for the first time in my life. I have to admit, it was pretty exciting. Although I got lost in all the jargon regarding gun swapping, it was entertaining to watch. Now I finally understand a bit more why some people are addicted.

The last thing is my friend showed me a video about Second Life on TED. I knew about second life, but it made me rethink about how it could be used.

So..what if these stories of real heroes like Greg in Three Cups of Tea could be made into video games or Second Life characters so that other people can get to know them in a more fun and interactive medium? I love reading books, but not all my friends do. Why not turn these amazing stories into as many mediums as possible so that it can spread? It took two years to write the book...I'm sure it would take just about the same time to make it into a video game.

P.S. did you know over 300 universities world wide are using Second Life as their platform for distance education courses? (source: wikipedia)

Environmentalism as Politics

A few years back, I was really, really pissed off at Michael Crichton. The pissery was in response to his speech, “Environmentalism as Religion”, given to the Commonwealth Club of California (link: http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html). In it, Crichton describes the modern environmental movement and scientific community as being based on faith and ideological fundamentalism, with elements of Christian redemption theory and eschatology. He believed it was time to reform the scientific community and corresponding movement so that scientific rigour, not ideology or politics, became the movement’s driving force. Suffice it to say that Crichton was a climate-change sceptic: his book, State of Fear, presented an extensively researched collection of evidence that countered (or tried to, at least) the prevailing notion that climate change is a clear and present danger to humanity.

Now, of course, I flew right into Crichton’s trap. My first reaction, righteous indignation, is exactly what an “environmental fundamentalist” would do, and any group that reacted to Crichton’s speech in a similar manner would just as much be inadvertently proving his point. The only good rebuttal is one that wields evidence. Scientists went after State of Fear for the representation of its data (http://www.pewclimate.org/state_of_fear.cfm is an example, ignoring the political comments at the end). This is a science debate, and Crichton was absolutely right in saying that hard science, not politics, or ideology, or personal belief, should shape debate. The only arguments he makes that I would contend with are on the mindset of the climate science community and the validity of climate data.

But this isn’t a blog post about Crichton. (It isn’t?) This is a blog post about the politicization of science. Recently, Senator James Inhofe’s Environment and Public Works press blog had an article entitled “UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims”, and subtitled “Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'”. (Access the article at: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6&Issue_id= .) When I read this, I immediately started to feel that righteous indignation boiling up again, but I calmed myself down, lest I fall into Crichton’s trap again.

As it turns out, the study, published in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters (http://www.agu.org/contents/journals/ViewPapersInPress.do?journalCode=GL&sortBy=author), does not say that! Quoting from the abstract: “The strong correlation
between reconstructed temperature and solar activity suggests solar forcing as a main
driver for temperature variations during the period 1250-1850 in this region.” Furthermore, “Solar contribution to temperature change became less important during industrial period 1850-2000 in the Altai region”. On the fifty percent quip, “Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun.” And note, this article is a study on one region in south-central Russia. There are two possible explanations for happened here: either one of Inhofe’s staff (or he himself) only read the last part of the last sentence of the conclusion (and you’re supposed to read the abstract!), or, for whatever reason, they cherry-picked phrases.

This is, purely and simply, a blatant misrepresentation of a legitimate scientific study. Add in the sensationalist headlines, and you have exactly what Crichton warned against: the politicization of science, and the corruption to public understanding it brings. Public understanding of climate change cannot be guided by U.S. senators or by ex-vice presidents or rock stars: they need to be dictated by the presentation of hard data and good interpretation. The senate minority report attached to the blog post is a list of (apparent; for all I know they could be misquoted) climate sceptics and their credentials. Exactly what am I to do with their credentials? Their endorsements of climate scepticism based on what they perceive to be the politicization of the IPCC and other climate science organizations? Judging by their credentials, these people must have evidence to back up their claims, and that’s where the debate should be. If they don’t, they’re an embarrassment to the establishments that granted them degrees.

My political science professor said in my global politics class the other day that climate change is an issue that draws from natural science, political science, social science and economics. This leaves four axes of knowledge along any one of which a person can be misled. This is why the sceptics movement in the U.S. (largely funded by free-market think tanks and the auto and oil industries) has been so strong: so long as they can keep people’s understanding muddled and confused, they prevent change from occurring.

If Canada or the United States were an autocracy, the king/emperor/president-for-life would need very good, trustworthy advisors in all these fields to tackle the problem (assuming s/he’d want to). Canada and the U.S. are democracies, and so (theoretically) the people have power. Therefore, the people need to be educated in all these fields. Of course, I don’t mean only people with dual degrees in science and the humanities should be allowed to vote. Ordinary people don’t pick climate change policies; they pick people who pick people who pick climate policies. But what the voting population does need is enough knowledge and analytical experience to know when they’re being fed nonsense. Otherwise, people like Sen. Inhofe and his staff (or the people at the David Suzuki Foundation) will have absolute free reign to shape public opinion to suit their own political agendas.

So what to do? The next time you hear a speech on environmentalism, or are presented with yet another “hockey-stick graph” (a la Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation), look at it critically. Do research, and do your best to become informed. I know not everyone is cut out to get PhDs in environmental science, or political science for that matter. But power in this country, and in great industrialized countries around the world, belongs to the people, and those with power should never allow themselves to be patronized and treated like idiots. You have the power to make political change. Once you gain knowledge as well, nothing will stop you.

Oh, and don’t take my word for anything I’ve said here. If you’re not sure about a fact I’ve stated, look it up!

~Charles

P.S. Senator Inhofe has had Michael Crichton on the senate floor to argue the case of global warming scepticism. I wonder what Crichton would have thought of Inhofe’s blog post.

P.P.S. I can’t help myself. Quoting Crichton’s speech:

“I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%.”

The continental United States covers a total area of 9.83 million square kilometres. A square covering 5% of that would be around 700 kilometres to a side, or more than the entire state of New Mexico (New Mexico is around 500 kilometres to a side)! Imagine a city that large - it would be reminiscent of Blade Runner. In the bad way.

That was just for fun, an indication that 5% is a lot. We don’t have Blade Runner yet because that 5% is spread out quite well. But imagine if I crisscrossed the entire country with electric fences so that each square kilometre of the U.S. is fenced off. Surely that wouldn’t take more than 5% of the total U.S. land mass, and wouldn’t affect trees much, but I’ve effectively destroyed the habitat of any creature larger than a fox. Size doesn’t necessarily matter in such cases.

P.P.P.S. I realize that I have failied utterly to give credit where credit was due. It was Jacob who discovered the article, and it was Jacob who found the error, not me. Also, many of the ideas of this post result from productive discussion with Jacob. Sorry, Jacob!

My lottery money just disappeared...and I'm famous

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a reality tv show like this?

People who won the lottery (grand prize) and are willing to donate 50% of their winnings to which ever cause they like will be filmed and featured. Follow where the money goes and where the person goes.

I wonder how many people would be willing to give up that much money to get 1 hour of national (maybe even international) TV fame?

I haven't done any research, but it seems like on average, the prize is around 3 million (?)....think of how many donations this reality TV show can get (each week!)

To sell "less"

I was reading a post about how supermarkets are changing to green on monbiot.com

But there is a bigger contradiction than this, which has been overlooked by both the supermarkets and many of their critics. “The green movement,” Terry Leahy tells us, “must become a mass movement in green consumption.”(10) But what about consuming less? Less is the one thing the superstores cannot sell us. As further efficiencies become harder to extract, their growth will eventually outstrip all their reductions in the use of energy. This is not Tesco’s problem alone: the green movement’s economic alternatives still lack force.

What if stores do start selling us "less"? As a product?

Why not? People bought indulgences; arguably, we're not much smarter today than we were then...
What if these "less" that we sell let's us display to others that we are cutting down on consumption? Maybe it's a badge we can display on facebook...or something like that.

"Hey! Look what I got you for christmas! 'Less'"

But what good can I do?

So my friends and I were having this discussion.

The Large Hadron Collider is just firing up, and the BBC reports that the project cost about 5 billion British pounds, took fourteen years to build, and occupied some 10,000 of the world's finest scientists. The collider is built to smash protons together at nearly the speed of light, and scientists will analyze the resulting collisions in hopes of finding out whether the current models of physics are right. The main experiment is an attempt to find the Higgs boson, a particle predicted to exist but which has not yet been observed.

What we were wondering about is, is this an ethical application of so much effort? Could it be put to better uses?

It's not just the LHC, though. The same question might be asked of publicly-funded science and engineering ventures, like the space shuttle programme, or basic science research, like the construction of a new radio telescope observatory.

So here's the question: Is it ethical to pour money into these projects, while there are still suffering people in the world?

It's a tough question to answer, especially if you're a young scientist thinking about what to do for your career. We want to do the right thing, of course. Should we put our own interests, curiosities, and fascinations on hold when there's others in need?

Well, I'll try my best to tackle this question.

People who say "no, it's not ethical" generally divide into two groups. The first argues that basic research like the LHC has no merit whatsoever, except perhaps to appease a small group of mad scientists who love building these giant accelerators. The second argues that, while these projects do have some value, it's not sufficient to merit the huge expense to the public.

The first is easy to refute. All we need to do is find some kind of practical benefit that can only have come about from these endeavours. I think it's not easy to come up with an exhaustive list, but I'll try to at least give some good examples.

Basic research means trying to learn about nature. It differs from inventing, which is applying what we know about nature to try to make our lives easier. Basic research includes proving math theorems, discovering Newton's laws of motion, learning what atoms are made of, finding out that the Earth goes around the sun and not vice versa, deciding on what gravity is, discovering the nature of DNA, and, yes, trying to tell whether or not the Higgs boson exists.

Well, to me at least, it seems like a strange claim to make that basic research is a less fruitful investment of effort than inventing. That's because we can't apply our knowledge of nature to make medicines and solar panels if we don't know how nature works in the first place! Mathematicians have a habit of engaging in research that seems to be so far removed from real life that it could never have applications. The worst of them are the Number Theorists, who are said to be deeply offended when it's suggested that their work could be put to practical use. But today, if you ever used a credit card online, number theory is at work keeping your personal information encrypted.

The way I see it, basic research tends to have lots of applications - but where and when they'll appear is impossible for anybody to predict. Half a century after J.J. Thompson discovered the electron came the invention of the transistor. It seems unlikely to me that the latter could have ever occurred without the former, but I doubt that Thompson could have ever dreamed what people might have used his research for. I'm sure that at the time, some people would have looked on his science as an ivory-towered pursuit. Now people learn about it in grade ten chemistry.

So my argument is that the benefits of basic research aren't so straightforward, but they do exist and they are significant.

The second is a bit more difficult. "If the benefits of basic research are so great", one may argue, "shouldn't the private sector perform it? Why spend so much public money?"

Some large private sector institutions (like Bell Labs) do give their scientists free range to do basic research, but it's pretty risky. It's difficult to make a business out of basic research, because no matter how savvy of a businessperson you are, or how smart your scientists are, you can't guarantee a big discovery. Furthermore - and this is the key point - you usually can't start with an invention in mind (like a transistor) that you could present to investors, and then ask your scientists to discover the electron so that you can build it. That just doesn't make sense!

The scope of our inventiveness is limited by the science that we already understand. It's impossible to predict how extending the range of our understanding will translate into new inventions. What we can say is that it's never a bad thing to learn a little bit more, and whenever we do, people look to see what new things will be made possible from that pursuit.



Well, okay. I didn't get to the heart of the moral question, but I did address a small part of it. That's probably enough for one day :)

-- Jacob

Vertical Farms...radical?

New, ambitious design for vertical farms report from the website globe.net

Dickson Despommier of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University told his students to "forget about money, space and time, and design a building that will feed and hydrate 50,000 people a year." I wanted individuals to eat 2,000 calories a day and drink water created by evapotranspiration" he said.

The result?

It is estimated that one vertical farm with an architectural footprint of one square city block and rising up to 30 stories (approximately 3 million square feet) could provide enough nutrition (at 2,000 calories/day/person) to comfortably accommodate the needs of 10,000 people employing technologies currently available.

My first response: very typically a modernist approach to nature -- subdue and control. Put nature in a totally human controlled environment and try to control it so it serves only our needs. The arrogance that humans will always find a way to push nature's limits to growth...3 billion more people? No problem! Just farm into the sky!

My second response: maybe it's not such a bad idea... a natural ecosystem is also made up with layers and levels. Nutrients are cycled and everything gets reused. Is it so bad to make an artificial ecosystem with many more layers? Is this really the modernist perspective? Or are we moving from a modernist perspective to one that incorporates nature into our basic thinking?

...who knows?


My question would be...where in the world would they find so much good soil without recking current ecosystems, and how are they going to get enough sunlight into the building for 30 stories of plants?

I am the sunk cost

Recently, my work place has been trying to save every pence because they've gone way over budget for this year, and it's not even half way through the fiscal year.

My supervisor couldn't even order some name tags for a conference because of the budget cuts. So I've had to come up with innovative ways to make materials we need for our displays etc. The most recent project was to make brochure holders out of cardboard and other "waste" material.

Common sense would dictate that it's absolutely insane that I would be paid so much to make brochure stands! It's probably only $5 to buy them...but they have to pay me way more in wages to make them.

But I realised today why it is actually rational (or at least reasonable) that I should make the stands.

I'm the sunk cost in this equation! My wages are already set aside because they have to employ me until my term ends. That means my wages cannot be reclaimed no matter what they do..it's not like they can buy the brochure stands and tell me to stop working for 2 hours, i.e. my wages are 'sunk' in economic terms.

Maybe wages shouldn't be sunk at all. I think it happens in both pay by the hour and pay by the month systems....I wonder if this kind of absurdity happens in successful businesses like microsoft?

Why the night?

"Why is it more dangerous at night than in the day?" My friend asked me this question the other day...and we couldn't reach a satisfactory answer.

May it's because ...
1. It is darker, so less visibility, so when bad people do bad things, they are less likely to be seen
2. it's traditionally been that way
3. ghosts and bad spirits come out at night making people do bad things (:P)

Although the most plausible is probably because most respectable jobs are in the morning (because there used to be no lights, so people couldnt' work at night), so people who were awake and moving around at night didn't have a respectable day job. So gradually these people gave the night a bad name?

Maybe one way to make crime rates at night go down is to put more respectable jobs at night. Especially now, when lots of business has to be done with people half way around the globe, working at night doesn't seem to be such a bizzare idea.

"The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones." - John Maynard Keynes

excercise bath tub

Have you seen those bathtubs/showers for people who want to sit in their bath tub (usually for old or handicapped people)? They open from the side, have a seat in them...basically it looks like a raised up jacuzzi.

Why can't people make this kind of bath tub into a standing pool? You can bathe in it, or swim (on the spot) in it. Works great for people who want to run but can't due to their knees or something. Aquatic exercise in your own bathtub! :)

Buddhist farming

Workless farming? Those two words seem to be an oxymoron. Well, not to Fukuoka Masanobu, the author of "The One Straw Revoluntion"and the founder of the Fukuoka method of farming.

His philosophy is that we should learn how to do less with plants to get more yield, instead of conventional farming, which is to work more for the plant (e.g. use pesticides so the plant doesn't need to fight of pests), so that the plant can concentrate on growing.

He spent 30 years perfecting a system to grow food with the least energy. He has four principles: No cultivation. No fertilizer. No weeding. No pesticides. He claims he can produce enough food to match conventional farming techniques on the same amount of land.

Here's an example of his method (from wikipedia):

There is no plowing, as the seed germinates quite happily on the surface if the right conditions are provided. There is also considerable emphasis on maintaining diversity. A ground cover of white clover grows under the grain plants to provide nitrogen. Weeds (and Daikons) are also considered part of the ecosystem, periodically cut and allowed to lie on the surface so the nutrients they contain are returned to
the soil. Ducks are let into the grain plot, and specific insectivorous carp into the rice paddy at certain times of the year to eat slugs and other pests.The ground
is always covered. As well as the clover and weeds, there is the straw from the previous crop, which is used as mulch, and each grain crop is sown before the previous one is harvested. This is done by broadcasting the seed among the standing crop. Also he re-introduced the ancient technique of seed balls. The seed for next season's crop is mixed with clay, compost, and sometimes manure, and formed into small balls. The result is a denser crop of smaller but highly productive and stronger plants.

He continued on this path of farming because of inspiration from Buddhism: the concept of "mu," which means nothingness, to return to a state of "do-nothing." (Hard to understand for me western types...do nothing sounds just lazy).

I think more parts of our life can be like the Fukuoka method of farming.

Slowing down?

Now I understand why the workers in the Scandinavian countries work less, but with more efficiency.

When you're at work for 7 or 8 hours, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually working for 7 or 8 hours. Lots of time is spent socializing (which can be argued that it enhances work place harmony), surfing the internet, personal phone calls/emails, etc etc. From my limited work experience, it seems like at least a few hours a week is spent on doing these things instead of working.

Of course, without real evidence to back up my claim...but I think cutting our work week to 30 hours wouldn't damage our economy too much. Plus, people won't get as stressed and have more time for other activities (e.g. volunteering, leisure, continuing education).

Although...all this saved time won't be very productive if you increase your commute by living further from the office...

Families are external hard drives?

Part of my job is to do community outreach, which essentially means I hand out pamphlets and talk to people at events.

I find it really interesting how I repeatedly come across the same situation: two people (married or in a relationship I assume) walk by together. Both stop to listen to my sphiel, but only one really listens and takes my pamphlets. And often, immediately afterwards, I can hear the other one asking the one that listened what I was talking about.

Maybe it's because of my habit of only focusing on one pair of eyes when I talk....but I think most likely it's because we treat our other family members as external hard drives. (I read this somewhere before...I just don't remember where).

Because we live so close together, we simply have to ask certain members of the family about certain things they are good at remembering (or doing) instead of learning it ourselves. Therefore we gain an extended memory; our skill set/memory just doubled because one more person is in our family.

It's quite obvious when you consider parents always asking their kids how to use the mostly simplest of technology again and again. It's not that they can't learn, it's just that they don't have to.

This division of labour in the family might be a huge advantage evoluntionary wise....?

Thinking from a plant's point of view

TED talk by Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Twists your thinking a bit doesn't it?

Blue Planet Run

Beautiful, beautiful photobook on water around the world. Free!

Download here

From Amazon.com


I think most books should be like this in the future :)

Cars and Guns, Germs, Steel

I just finished watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and I just finished reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel."

In the first, the seemingly superior invention of the electric car way back at the end of the 1990s was 'killed' and covered up by the automobile industries. The film points to car companies, oil companies, US government, and consumers (I think that's all) as those who should be responsible. And then we spent billions into developing the hydrogen fuel cell technology (and hybrids).

The latter one, talks about human history and some of the trends in different societies. One particular one caught my eye was that over millennia, constantly, there have been societies that have not adopted clearly superior technology (that was invented or imported) and reverted back to their old ones. The reason Jared Diamond offered is that those societies were so isolated (or in China's case, unified under one supreme ruler so early) that there was no competition whatsoever. In other societies, if one tribe doesn't adopt a new superior technology, they would either get assimilated, conquered, or massacred by the other tribes that did. In Europe, all the different countries had different rulers who had a lot of money to invest in different technologies; the superior ones stayed.

That brings to me to worry about the future of the increasingly converging 'developed' countries of the world. Our political leaders, business leaders, and even economic leaders are increasingly the same bunch of people (or people with the same kind of ideologies and paradigms). Are we becoming like the unified China before the modern age? Are we going to start killing all our new innovations because our leaders believe it is not in their (or their company's) interest to do so? How much power are we giving to these leaders to control our future? Is globalization the new isolation?

iPledge

At work, I proposed a 'campaign' to the Green Team for our office. It's called "iPledge."

The idea is simple:

Each month, a new green habit will be posted up.

Each month, people who signed up for the challenge will pledge to follow that habit with all other iPledgers.

For example, here's a bunch of pledges:


I pedge to…for a month:

• To not buy coffee without a reusable cup
• reuse all my single-sided paper
• Bring a reusable bag with me everywhere I go
• Recycle my clothes by donating it to people in need
• Throw on a sweater instead of turning the heat up
• Buy as many things as possible in bulk
• Unplug cell phone chargers and microwaves when not using (reduce phantom load)
• If it's yellow, let it mellow; when it's brown, flush it down
• Always wash full loads
• Turn off the water when soaping up your hands or brushing your teeth
• cutting dishwashing detergent in half with baking soda.
• use indian nuts to wash laundry and reuse them, boiled to make dish washing soap, then pop them in the compost
• For saving water in the toilet, I put a full bottle of water in the toilet tank
• Hang your clothes to dry when possible
• Buy toilet paper made from recycled paper!
• Bring tupperwear in your purse to restaurants for left-overs
• Make your own wrapping paper from scraps or use comics from the local newspaper
• Reduce your household potable water use by over 30% by recycling your greywater with a Brac System
• turn off the heat dry on your dish washer. air dry is good enough
• Do something with the cold water that is wasted while the water is heating up in the shower. Place some buckets under the shower so that the water fills the buckets rather than running down the drain. Use the water to water your plants or flush your toilet.
• reuse coffee grinds as an exfoliant and anti-cellulite treatment.The caffeine apparently promotes circulation and reduces water retention.
• Drink tap water; Most places in BC have the highest quality tap water in the world
• Use a timer power bar to reduce your phantom electricity load
• Donate your old eyeglasses when you buy a new pair.
• sell things you no longer need on Craigslist or leave them at the office for someone else to use
• schedule your showers right after someone else has just showered so you don't have to waste time and water waiting for the water to warm up
• Place mirrors across from windows and behind or across the room from a lamp to light up a room

(Most of these were found here:
http://www.thegreenpursuit.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=46)

Have fun encouraging your friends or yourself or your co-workers to pledge to become greener!

Statistics and Individuals

I saw this quote yesterday: "Statistics don't mean anything to the individual."

Without any quantitative evidence, my intuition tells me this is quite true. Even if only 0.000000001% of humans are abducted by aliens, if you were abducted, it doesn't really matter what the probability is.

But when leaders are making decisions "for the greater good," all they have is statistics to look at. The most you can hope is to maximize some kind of statistic (e.g. the number of people who can go to school). How do we reconcile the differences between the leader and those being led?

No more fights?

I was at a conference a few months ago. One of the speakers had a great way to resolve conflicts:

If any two people are arguing, stop the argument, take 5 seconds to time out, and then argue for the other person.

Meaning...you have to argue for the other person from their point of view. Apparently, the speaker and his sibling never got into real fights because their parents forced them to resolve conflicts this way.

What an amazing way to gain more understanding of the person you're trying to communicate with



P.S. I don't even know what category to tag this in :p

Gifts of money...in a new way

How about a website of gift certificates to your favourite charity?

So you go and buy your loved ones a gift certificate to any charity of their choice. And then you give it to them.

After all, giving only makes you happier!

Paying it forward with gifts:)

Dog Washing Machine

So I was washing my dear doggy yesterday and I realized how much easier it would be if she could just stand on a platform while water and soap is squirted at her.

1. have a platform that the animal (or anything for that matter) can stand on. platform also needs to squirt water.

2. have a cylinder (that can become smaller or bigger) that covers the whole body of the animal. The cylinder needs to be able to spin around fast so water can be squirted out.

3. need to be water efficient and fast at washing whatever is inside.

I thought this might even work with a chair for old people to sit on. I think some old people might have trouble reaching down to their toes to wash them?

plus all the water used can be recollected and used to ...er... make acidic soil more alkaline

Some Ground Rules

So we have to lay down some ground rules for posting on this blog to make the experience fun and pleasant for everyone:

1. No idea is too crazy or silly! This is an ideas blog; we encourage all kinds of random ideas that pop up in your mind daily. To borrow a cliche (which actually almost became the name of our blog), one person's trash is another's treasure. I'll even start by posting a random idea about dog washing machines :D

2. Please tag all your posts with your name or pseudonym so it's easier to search. Please also tag what your post is about (e.g. inventions, politics, economics, engineering)

3. Make lots of comments on other people's ideas!

Caution: Thinking Might Go On Here (once in a while...)

Hola!

Welcome to the blog where crazy inventions, questionable moral systems (as in still in the progress of being defined), unrecognizable political systems, and a whole slew of other random ideas are thrown into a big melting pot, in the hopes that we might actually get promoted to the two percent George Bernard Shaw belongs to.

"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."

---George Bernard Shaw

If you also think that you think, give us a shout. We'll be happy to add you as our ideas contributor, or as we like to call ourselves, the 3 percent.