University of Bath News - New machines could turn homes into small factories

University of Bath News - New machines could turn homes into small factories

The new system is based upon rapid prototype machines, which are now used to produce plastic components for industry such as vehicle parts. The method they use, in which plastic is laid down in designs produced in 3D on computers, could be adapted to make many household items.

However, conventional rapid prototype machines cost around £25,000 to buy. But the latest idea, by Dr Adrian Bowyer, of the University’s Centre for Biomimetics, is that these machines should begin making copies of themselves. These can be used to make further copies of themselves until there are so many machines that they become cheap enough for people to buy and use in their homes.

Dr Bowyer is working on creating the 3D models needed for a rapid prototype machine to make a copy of itself. When this is complete, he will put these on a website so that all owners of an existing conventional machine can download them for free and begin making copies of his machine. The new copies can then be sold to other people, who can in turn copy the machine and sell on.

This is the very primitive beginning utilization of this concept. Use your imagination and see where it could lead. Perhaps a quick read of Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman for those with tuckered imaginations.Nanoforge anyone?

A Family Tree in Every Gene--the title itself contradicts the article

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: A Family Tree in Every Gene

The principal error made in this article is that genes group together in populations because race is real, when in fact genes group together in populations because people believe in races and behave accordingly. Mr. Leroi suggests that "race" is somehow not a social construct, but a scientific reality, when it is far less defined than the scientific concept of species, which itself is easily demonstrated to be a social construct. It is a nomenclatural formalism. That it is useful for parsing populations is not argued against. That people can practically evaluate others with this social construct is happily granted. That these points justify the statement that "race" is a scientifically real and inescapable quality is hokum. I am at a loss to determine what could even motivate a desire to return race to a concrete popular usage when it is pointed out even in the text of the article that it has a vicious history. What if it weren't resurrected, but allowed to remain sidelined in the population like so many other shorthand concepts that are counterfactual or based on erroneous science? What loss? Newtonian mechanics remains the tool of the people, but no one is suggesting that it should be restored to scientific "fact."

I can see nothing in this article but a celebration of difference, of a person happy that he can define his race, like an American who can trace his ancestry back to English royalty in the 1600's crowing about his "blood."

More later. Feel free to help.

Journalists Push for Government Openness

Yahoo! News - Journalists Push for Government Openness

WASHINGTON - The Associated Press and seven journalism organizations are joining forces to promote policies aimed at ensuring government is accessible, accountable and open.

The Sunshine in Government Initiative seeks to combat what the member organizations see as increased government secrecy since the 2001 terrorist attacks. The coalition will lobby for legislation and seek to educate the public about First Amendment issues.

That seems like a good plan.

journalism
government

Boeing Chief Is Ousted After Admitting Affair

The New York Times > Business > Boeing Chief Is Ousted After Admitting Affair

More of the same. Having been caught using no ethics and poor business judgment, the corporation brings in someone to refurbish their image, and it turns out he's just another scalliwag.

Mr. Stonecipher, married and with grown children, was forced out for having violated an internal code of conduct that he had imposed on all Boeing employees as he tried to improve the company's actions and image. His predecessor, Philip M. Condit, was forced to resign in 2003 because of ethical lapses, including affairs with employees, and poor business prospects that Mr. Stonecipher was hired to remedy.

First, let's say that everyone is a scalliwag, and then we'll ask what it is that's really wrong here, and what is the cause?

I suppose that the idea they have is that if they get assurances from people at all levels, especially on paper, that those people will do what the company needs, then that should be enough. But it's obviously not enough, verbally or on paper, or in church or on the golf course. What might work to encourage community bolstering behavior and personal standards are respect for people, and truly including people in the good fortunes of a company and community. The verbal honor system doesn't work for the small fry because it has been repeatedly demonstrated that they will get a very small percentage of the good times, and take the brunt of the damage in the bad times, and the honor system doesn't work for the big fish because they've been given far too large a slice of the pie and too safe and easy a way out when the flak flies. They just take their plush pensions and savings from obscene salaries and stock options and bonuses and go get another job very like this one. Has anyone followed the career of a disgraced bigwig and found them to wallow in the poverty of the less than $100,000 range, having to mow their own lawns, eat at home, and worry about health insurance? Have you ever read such a follow-up? No. Because their is no such situation. Once a man has been paid a few thousand years worth of a normal salary, he is a made man, unless drink or drugs overcome him. So as unpleasant as a slap on the wrist might be, the basic problems still remain, and no amount of loyalty oath signings, song-singing, or TQM meetings and memos will overcome the basic us vs. them. As long as the masses sink (in good times and bad) they will feel no loyalty, and as long as the Royals are coddled and pampered they will feel no loyalty. Those in so-called leadership roles must be tied to the fortunes of the ship, or they will not watch out for anything but their own interests.

I call again for the end of the power hierarchy.

Under Mr. Stonecipher's tenure, the company's stock had risen by more than 50 percent. His pension will not be affected by his firing. In 2004, he received a base pay of $1.5 million and incentives of around $1.8 million. It is unclear what his compensation will be for 2005. He is also one of Boeing's largest individual shareholders, after having negotiated a merger between Boeing and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, where he was once the chief executive.

ethics shmethics

Great Mixed Media Spot

Local news tonight reported that there would be a 25-cent increase in
the price of gas over the weekend, and that this was partly due to the
plummeting value of the US dollar around the world.

The dollar's value relative to foreign currency is a total bromide to
the population at large, but the price of gas is paramount, so tying the
latter to the former is a stroke of accidental genius, alerting
thousands of unsuspecting Americans to the precarious state of their
economy.

Someone probably will get horsewhipped for that tip of the hand.

Great Mixed Media Spot

Local news tonight reported that there would be a 25-cent increase in the price of gas over the weekend, and that this was partly due to the plummeting value of the US dollar around the world.

The dollar's value relative to foreign currency is a total bromide to the population at large, but the price of gas is paramount, so tying the latter to the former is a stroke of accidental genius, alerting thousands of unsuspecting Americans to the precarious state of their economy.

Someone probably will get horsewhipped for that tip of the hand.

U.S. National Security Strategy On Line

U.S. National Security Strategy

"When nations close their markets and opportunity is hoarded by a privileged few, no amount-no amount-of development aid is ever enough. When nations respect their people, open markets, invest in better health and education, every dollar of aid, every dollar of trade revenue and domestic capital is used more effectively."

--President Bush
Monterrey, Mexico
March 22, 2002


Why this link? What's here? I get the impression from most people, and introspection, that somehow we believe that when the people who ostensibly represent us make governmental decisions, they do so in plain view and that there is a large contingency of decent, responsible, intelligent arbiters somewhere outside our social sphere who parse what they say and take the representatives to task for errors in judgment, and who furthermore give the representatives immediate, between election feedback that they can use to improve their governing performance.

Now, I know their are Political Action Committees, and there are apparently innumerable lobbyists for various sub-groups in our society, but I have never met any of either group, and they are almost by definition partisan, and from what we can glean in the media their goals and visions are uniformly short-sighted. So where is the disinterested group of intelligent, motivated observers who have day jobs and in the evenings analyze the government?

Let me put it this way: You can go to the state.gov site above and read this supposedly guiding document, but in all likelihood you haven't. And you read blogs about politics. What about the average person? What's the average amount of reading in regards to current government practices that an US adult reads every day? Every year?

Let me put it this way: I think most of us treat government like we treat religion and philosophy in general. When we were six, Daddy and Mommy took care of all the thinking, and it was our job not to worry about the big picture, but just to see how much we could get in the short term. Most of us have continued this stratagem into adult life, and will do so until we die, merely seeking candy and whining about neglect. So at least skim that article, and at least look around you for someone you can say is a sort of objective observer "Daddy" person watching out for us. Ask around. Who reads this stuff? Who knows what's going on inside the "beltway?" Most of us don't even know what that is. Many of us don't know where it is.

Uggabugga has some things to say about this particular issue. Is anyone listening to them?

What can we do? Put down the phone, turn off the white noise television, and read a book. Just once in a while. Ask a real question once in a while. I'm not asking you to join a commune, or overthrow the city council, but just to adjust your behavior a bit more towards what it would be if you truly believed Lincoln when he described us as a government of the people, by the people and for the people.


government

NYT--Ebbers Mounts an 'I Never Knew' Defense

The New York Times > Business > Ebbers Mounts an 'I Never Knew' Defense:

In painting the picture of an earnest man aware of his limitations, the defense has tried to show that Mr. Ebbers relied on financial experts and was unaware when they started hiding billions of dollars in expenses to mask the company's deteriorating condition.

Mr. Ebbers is not the only fallen corporate titan who - after being paid hundreds of millions of dollars to run a multibillion-dollar company - has fallen back on the legal defense that he was in the dark and too unsophisticated to know what was happening.

Richard M. Scrushy, the former head of HealthSouth on trial on fraud charges in Birmingham, Ala., has adopted a similar defense. Kenneth L. Lay, the former chairman of Enron, is expected to use that defense when his trial begins next year.

And yet, at the same time but on another portion of the playing field, we are told repeatedly that the reason we all pay our CEO's 500 times what we pay ourselves is that's what it takes to get the best man for the job. So who's right here? The CEO's or their defenders? It is quite clear to anyone who has worked in the corporate structure that the best man for the job is most often overlooked, and even un-looked-for, and that the boob finally jury-rigged for the part is a many-level incompetent with just enough savvy and smarts to be sold to the troops with the usual rationalizations.

It's time for the call to end the ancient and outdated and inefficient hierarchical structure in which the priests at the top of the pyramid are paid as much as all the slaves in the bottom three-quarters of the pyramid, and given powers, breaks, shelters, perqs, and laurels so that they hardly need their paychecks. In a time when the bottom 3/4 was almost wholly ignorant of this, and the priests were the same executioners for the duration of the pyramid's time in the sun, this was a grotesque tragedy of a system, but now that the Masses have access to the Information (for now) and the Priests pass from Pyramid to Pyramid every 3 1/2 years after looting the treasury, it goes beyond travesty and becomes black comedy, with a chorus of bullet-headed, poor-white-boy slaves singing the praises of their Master and Model.

corporate structure