2PM Thursday 22nd September 2011.
No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years. A word of warning: that power plant is going to run a little warm.
2PM Tuesday 6th September 2011.
Jesper at Waffle linked a thorough exposé of U.S.-driven dismantlement of Swedish civil liberties (worth reading) which prompted me to look into the U.S. influence on our own recently amended Copyright Bill, and the reintroduced (and renamed) Section 92a.
Distressingly, our new law implements the one point Sweden wouldn't concede: the implementation of a 3-strikes scheme, with explicit presumption of guilt. Below is a series of extracts from cables between Wellington's U.S. Embassy and the U.S. State Department, which prove quite revealing as to the origins of this law.
In March 2009 the then-Section 92a was removed from the new copyright law shortly before it was to come into effect. A U.S.-guided rewrite was already underway:
The New Zealand Government has proactively cooperated with and values the opportunity to work constructively with the United States in a number of international IPR [Intellectual Property Rights] fora.
The removal of Section 92a was seen by the U.S. as giving ‘IP rights holders’ (i.e. large media companies):
…additional time to negotiate … a mutually agreeable code of practice for terminating the internet access of users accused of infringing copyrights.
Note the wording there: ‘a code of practice for terminating the internet access of users accused of infringing copyrights.’ According to the new law (emphasis mine):
an infringement notice is conclusive evidence of the following:
(a) that each incidence of file sharing identified in the notice constituted an infringement of the right owner's copyright in the work identified:
(b) that the information recorded in the infringement notice is correct:
(c) that the infringement notice was issued in accordance with this Act.
That's right. Guilt upon accusation, in law. How did that happen? In May 2009…
Minister of Commerce Simon Power met with representatives of the NZ copyright industry and GNZ officials to discuss a three-step plan to re-draft and enact section 92A of the Copyright (New Technologies) Act by end of 2009.
Minister Power has made it clear to MED officials and to industry reps that the GNZ has no intention of going back on its commitment to strengthen NZ's copyright regime. He expressed privately that he wants to avoid some of the hysterical public reaction that accompanied the last attempt to revise S92A. His plan looks to be well thought out and with the input from a panel of top IPR experts the new provision will avoid the earlier criticism of poor draftsmanship. The Embassy in the meantime has repeated its offer of assistance to GNZ officials to offer consultations with USG copyright experts through a DVC.
Note ‘hysterical public reaction.’ Note also ‘input from … top IPR experts’ and ‘…offer consultations with USG copyright experts.’ Consider that we now have a system, in law, where you can be accused of a crime, fined up to $15,000, and in future be disconnected from the internet, with no recourse because the accusation itself is considered conclusive. ‘Hysterical public reaction’ indeed.
Please also note that Minister of Commerce Simon Power is also Minister of Justice, and Minister Responsible for the Law Commission.
Please don't vote him back in.
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1PM Saturday 16th July 2011.
The most heart-breaking little note in the Bradley Manning/Wikileaks saga is not that Manning was turned in by someone pretending to be a sorely-needed friend, but that through this whole saga Manning – subject to ‘don't ask, don't tell,’ and all – was on the cusp of transitioning as a trans women. She1 said to Adrian Lamo (who would later betray her to the US military):
bradass87: i just… dont wish to be a part of it… at least not now… im not ready… i wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… as [a] boy…
On top of everything else Manning is now suffering (probable life-imprisonment, possible firing squad), she is now faced with the one thing she most wanted to avoid.
1 Manning was planning to begin hormone therapy, and had already begun using the name "Breanna" online. I tentatively assume that ‘she’ would be the preferred pronoun.
9AM Friday 15th July 2011.
Then you’ve got Smurf books. Not actual Smurfs. I mean stories where there are five major characters, and one is brave and one is smart and one is grumpy and one keeps rats for pets and one is a girl. Smurfs, right? Because there was Handy Smurf and Chef Smurf and Dopey Smurf and Painter Smurf and ninety-four other male Smurfs and Smurfette. Smurfette’s unique personality trait was femaleness. That was the thing she did better than anyone else. Be a girl.
Smurf books are not as common as they used to be, but Smurf stories are, oddly, everywhere on the screen. Pixar makes practically nothing else. I am so disappointed by this, because they make almost every kids’ film worth watching. WALL-E is good. I will grant them WALL-E, because Eve is so awesome. But otherwise: lots of Smurfs.
— Max Barry, ‘Dogs and Smurfs; Why women writers and stories about women are taken less seriously.’
2PM Sunday 10th July 2011.
We sat on Lars and Lena's back porch in Sweden on the first day of Spring, enjoying the sun and drinking shots of some evil black liquor.
We listened to music and cooked dinner with Swedish Andreas and Argentinian Fernando in Norway.
I watched wonderful old black-and-white films with Roger and Jane in Scotland. (Films set in Scotland, even.)
I attended a Scottish folk-music concert in an abandoned paper mill in Penicuik, near Edinburgh.
We watched a waterfall go upwards off the edge of a cliff in Iceland.
We saw the same landscape covered in snow one day then uncovered and bare the next, in Norway and in Iceland.
I had a Guinness with a Spaniard in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.
I got terribly drunk with three Americans (one dressed as a cowboy), two Australians (dressed as war-painted Indians), a Frenchwoman, and a Spanish girl, at an impromptu dance-party in a caravan in Liverpool.
I stayed with two different cousins I hadn't seen for a decade, met cousin Helen's three children for the first time, and found a great friend in cousin Fiona.
I stayed in Aberdeen long enough to become a regular at the local cafe.
We danced until 7am in Seville.
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3PM Monday 4th July 2011.
To see how far we've come, consider that prior to about 3000 BC, the probability of an adult human male dying via being killed in a fight with another male was between 15-60% (statistic from Pankaj Ghemawat's excellent World 3.0). From that nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw level, we're now at the far end of the pendulum's swing, where we aren't even willing to risk a day of hunger in order to get some potential value in return. We've mostly lost our ability to gamble except in the form of entertainment.
I think William James said it best, something like ‘The progress from brute to man is characterized by nothing so much as by the decrease in frequency of proper occasions for fear.’
…
I keep repeating one statistic ad nauseum, because people simply don't get how dramatic an effect the creation of an industrial middle class has had on average risk tolerance. In the 1790s, less than 20% of America had a paycheck income. By 1980, more than 80% did, at which time the trend reversed.
— Venkatesh Rao, ‘Is society conditioning us to think that we have to have a job to get money?’
10AM Saturday 4th June 2011.
Coming home from my job at the pedal-powered furniture-making factory to a steaming bowl of solar-oven chili, a local beer brewed with bellows water-powered by the Spring thaw on the nearby river, served cool from the cellar, chilled from the trickle-charged fridge, or frosty from the icehouse, and the wife reminding me that the wind's been dead so I better hook the thermoelectric generator up to the masonry stove if I want to listen to the game on the radio and still have the juice to run the little worklight above my drafting table in my workshop in the old garage… that all sounds pretty darn good right now, actually!
If the world can contain a pedal-powered algae formation processor, then my dream may just come true. ;)
10AM Saturday 4th June 2011.
One thing we've learned in 15 years of off-grid living is to dole out what we have gathered. In terms of watt-hours, small appliances like a blender, toaster, even my electric grinder, chop saw, table saw, and my wife's hair dryer are doable. We use the microwave every day. Good management of a power source is the same as good management of a food source, water source, or money. Mismanagement results in going without for a time. Sawing too much lumber this afternoon may result in no window fan tonight. But, unlike money, acquiring and storing energy requires only a little active participation on our part (firewood excepted).
10AM Saturday 4th June 2011.
…you end up with the most probable energy system of a world after abundance: a patchwork of different energy sources and applications, right down to the level of the individual household or business. In the American households of three quarters of a century ago I mentioned earlier in this post, that was perfectly normal; the radio ran off the A and B batteries, the stove was powered by wood from the woodlot, two lamps in the parlor ran off batteries charged by the windmill while the rest burnt kerosene, the sewing machine ran off a foot-operated treadle, the water was pumped by the windmill and heated by the sun – yes, solar water heaters were hugely popular in the 1920s, especially but not only in the Sun Belt.
7AM Monday 30th May 2011.
Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues:
I was raised up believing
I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can seeAnd now after some thinking
I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Serving something beyond meBut I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will seeWhat's my name, what's my station
Oh just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night
That would do such injustice to youOr bow down and be grateful
And say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls
And determine my future for meAnd I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will seeIf I know only one thing
It's that every thing that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable
Often I barely can speakYeah I'm tongue tied and dizzy
And I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues?
Why should I wait for anyone else?And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables, and soon run the storeGold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm soreSomeday I'll be like the man on the screen
Written by Matt Wilson