Monday, May 13, 2002

How To Be A Patriot True patriotism is an act of love, not of hate. It is debate not salutes, contributions not cheers, participation not prohibition, service not revenge. It’s the product of vastly different people with remarkably similar dreams, for it is not a primeval past or cultural similarity that binds us but rather a shared present and future.  (05/13/02) The Burden of Success The historical pattern is clear. Cultures rise and fall. They fail to change their success criteria as conditions alter around then. They therefore decline and new societies took their place. Success has burdened cultures many times in the past. The collapses have sometimes been ecological. Successful cultures have seen their populations grow: This has stressed the capacity of the local ecosystems to provide food and eventually bad weather or bad planning destroyed previously flourishing cultures. This pattern is clearly visible in the anthropological record. Much of the Middle East was ravaged in earlier millennia by overgrazing and overuse of soils: Green and pleasant lands became deserts. Cultures throughout history have also collapsed when citizens were unable to find roles within a changing socioeconomy, while others benefited and enjoyed increased affluence. In Roman times, it was government policy that Italian Romans should remain in the homeland, supported by food and other supplies from a huge empire which was defended against the so-called barbarians by troops recruited from within the conquered territories. The isolated, purposeless, well-fed inhabitants of Rome were entertained by increasingly bizarre and violent exhibitions in the arenas. Roman society was dominated by the provision of "bread and circuses." Citizenship declined, leadership failed, social structures broke down, and eventually the Empire was overwhelmed by more organized and energetic external enemies. (05/13/02) The Indigenous Way Indigenous cultures are generally held to be non-industrial cultures with ancient roots in their land, though some have been migratory and others forcibly displaced. Their cultures range from very simple material lifestyles to extensive historical urban/rural systems such as Maya, Inca and Aztec. For all their great diversity, we will see that they do hold some common elements of worldview and values that unite them with each other and distinguish them from modern or post-modern industrial cultures, which are also diverse, yet united by their basic worldview and values. In today's world, there are very few even relatively intact indigenous cultures. Yet we do have indigenous people to whom traditional knowledge and ways have been passed on and who live by this knowledge. This knowledge represents a relationship with the rest of our living planet that has been essentially rejected by industrial culture, yet is very relevant to our healthy future. (05/13/02) Turning Carbon Directly Into Electricity Electricity direct from coal is one of the earliest dreams of electrochemical science. The first attempts date from the late 19th century, when Boston entrepreneur William Jacques fashioned a coal fuel battery that used coke electrodes in a molten sodium hydroxide electrolyte. Because the molten electrolyte became exhausted, Jacques’s invention operated as an exhaustible battery, not as a fuel cell, despite impressive demonstrations on the kilowatt scale. Other problems included a buildup of ash entrained with the fuel, the cost of making the carbon anodes, and the difficulty of distributing carbon fuel electrodes to the many cells. Efforts to develop practical carbon-based fuel cells during the 20th century, such as those tested at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1980s, were also hindered by the buildup of ash and by the costs and difficulties of carbon electrode manufacture. The Lawrence Livermore approach circumvents the historic barriers to a coal fuel cell by using extremely fine, virtually ash-free, “turbostratic” carbon particles that contain small amounts of ash and have a high degree of structural disorder on the nanometer scale. The team found that turbostratic carbon particles, when mixed with molten carbonate to form a slurry, operate like rigid electrodes when the melt is brought into contact with an inert metallic screen. Exactly how the carbon particle delivers energy to the screen is under investigation, but reactive chemicals in the melt produced by the carbon are likely intermediates. (05/12/02) Some Good News Some rare, positive news on the tech employment front this morning. A study from the Information Technology Association of America says managers who hire technology workers expect so much hiring in the rest of 2002 that they won't be able to fill all the available jobs. "[H]iring managers at both high-tech and non-tech companies said they expect to have more than 1.1 million technology jobs available," the San Jose Mercury News reports.  (05/12/02) At Chaordic Edge Thanks for the nice comments and links to SynEARTH network from the Chaodic Edge.  (05/12/02) 11:18:06 PM

© TrustMark 2002 Timothy Wilken. Last update: 6/1/2002; 7:11:28 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.