21 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
World-Building Questions
1. BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE
There can be no human (or alien) civilization or settlement without plumbing, energy supply, or waste disposal. So you need to spend at least a little bit figuring out how all of this worksunderneath your story’s setting.
How do your characters eat? How do they transport and store food?
How is waste handled?
Where does the water come from?
Who provides the clothes and shoes (or gear)?
What money system is there? Is there a single currency? Several? Electronic mo...Folksonomies: writing science fiction
Folksonomies: writing science fiction
1 19 DEC 2014 by ideonexus
How the Finance Industry Hurts the Economy
In perhaps the starkest illustration, economists from Harvard University and the University of Chicago wrote in a recent paper that every dollar a worker earns in a research field spills over to make the economy $5 better off. Every dollar a similar worker earns in finance comes with a drain, making the economy 60 cents worse off.
[...]
...the growth of complex financial products has served primarily to boost income for the firms themselves, Philippon said. A new paper from researchers in t... 1 
notes
notes22 MAR 2014 by koo5
getting water from air
in 2011 an Australian inventor won the James Dyson Award for a device that cools the air using underground coils, so you only need enough energy to pump the air down a pipe.
Another low energy technique is that used in the Atacama Desert in Chile, and is basically just a piece of mesh strung between two poles, with a trough under it. They get a fog too, and as it flows through the mesh, drops of water condense and run down into the trough.
But NBD Nano claim that the beetle’s skin is sev...Folksonomies: water
Folksonomies: water
lostinscience.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/how-to-make-a-self-filling-water-bottle/
21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Knowledge Grows Faster Than Compound Interest
Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks its own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the commo...It accelerates beyond the comparatively stunted growth of wealth.
27 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Why Economists Will Continue to be Wrong
Carter had initially used arbitrary parameters in his perfect model to generate perfect data, but now, in order to assess his model in a realistic way, he threw those parameters out and used standard calibration techniques to match his perfect model to his perfect data. It was supposed to be a formality--he assumed, reasonably, that the process would simply produce the same parameters that had been used to produce the data in the first place. But it didn't. It turned out that there were many ...They make models based on past data, and when they fail to predict the future, they adjust them to match the new past data. The problem is that so many models will match the past data, there could be no end to the number of models they throw out.
17 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
The Origin of Interest
The international trading became the most profitable of all enterprises, and great land-"owners" with clear-cut king's "deeds" to their land went often to international gold moneylenders. The great land barons underwrote the building of enterprisers' ships with their cattle or other real wealth, the regenerative products of their lands, turned over to the lender as cccollateral.
If the ship did come back, both the enterpriser and the bankers realized a great gain. The successful ship ventur... 1 notes
notesFrom when bankers would hold cattle as collateral, and the cattle had calves. The calves were the interest.
13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus
Knowledge Produces More Rapid Rate of Progress
Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks its own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the commo......in comparison to Capital, which checks its rate of growth with interest.
01 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
GRUNCH
There is no dictionary word for an army of invisible giants, one thousand miles tall, with their arms
interlinked, girding the planet Earth. Since there exists just such an invisible, abstract, legal-contrivance
army of giants, we have invented the word GRUNCH as the group designation--"a grunch of giants."
GR-UN-C-H, which stands for annual GROSS UNIVERSE CASH HEIST, pays annual dividends of
over one trillion U.S. dollars.
GRUNCH is engaged in the only-by-instrumentsreached-and-operated, en...Folksonomies: environmentalism sustainabillity
Folksonomies: environmentalism sustainabillity
1 notes
notesAcronym for the forces preventing human progress and sustainability for their own selfish gain.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
ISPs Can Be Regulated Like Banks
The closest analogy to how ISPs operate on the Net is how banks operate on the terrestrial plane today. In most countries, banks are highly regulated, and they have a duty (in most countries) to know their customers. Although their primary mission is to serve their customers, to some extent they operate as (sometimes reluctant) arms of government. They are supposed to report not just illegal transaction, but also questionable ones--whenever someone shows up with more than $10,000 in cash, for... 1 notes
notesIn order to Bank in the United States, the company agrees to abide by certain rules and reporting practices, ISPs could be subjected to the same.
