Podcasts: appropriate agriculture, inappropriate singularity, Argentina
Podcasts can be a way to learn while doing something else. I’ve encountered some interesting ones in recent weeks. Grow rice in Vermont? Why not? The frost-free period is short, but long enough to get...
View ArticleLVT better than bank secrecy or Wikileaks
Former banker Rudolf Elmer, opposed to use of Swiss bank secrecy to aid evasion of taxes by non-Swiss, has provided Wikileaks with two CD’s of (apparently incriminating) data. Who is right here?...
View ArticleInside Job gets outside
Prize-winning documentary Inside Job was posted for free download at archive.org a few days ago. It was withdrawn late yesterday or this morning, but in the interim I had a chance to watch it. It was...
View ArticleBanksters vs. Patent Holders
The Capitol Hill site Roll Call reports that a proposed bill would make it harder for holders of “business process patents” to sue banks which they claim are infringing. Frankly I do not understand...
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Producing electricity from waste heat
The general concept of using waste heat from one process as an energy source for another is quite old, but this report says that some University of Minnesota researchers have figured out a practical...
View ArticleDiscouraging inventors and tax dodgers
Major patent “reform” has passed both houses of Congress, presumably the President will sign shortly. This is called the “America Invents Act,” apparently has as much relevance to invention as the...
View ArticleInnovators’ Patent Agreement
Twitter says it plans for its future patents to be subject to an “Innovator’s Patent Agreement,” which will prevent them from being used “to impede the innovation of others.” Seems like a good thing,...
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Another way to liberate books
image credit: andresmh via flickr (cc) While the logical way to make most books conveniently available to more people is to greatly reduce the scope and duration of the copy-prevention privilege known...
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Feeding a growing population on an earth that isn’t
image credit: Antwelm via flickr (cc) Yesterday’s Guardian carried a very encouraging report from India, where rice farmers are multiplying their production figures by carefully and methodically...
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“We need an anti-Rentier Campaign” says Michael Lind
image credit: Erick_ckB via flickr (cc) A nice series of three short articles (h/t Gloria Picchetti) in Salon by Michael Lind, explaining the difference between an entrepreneur — who may become wealthy...
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GMO crops don’t even increase yield
image credit: Stuart Williams via flickr (cc) Here’s a program note from ABC indicating that yield of GMO crops is no greater than conventional crops. Unfortunately there is no formal citation of...
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Getting back to blogging — just in time for football
Football Cake by Sweet Pea 0613 via flickr(cc) After a couple of months’ diversions, I hope I am getting back to something like regular blogging, starting with a nice article — as far as it goes, at...
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More propaganda I am too slothful to review
Graffito image by Horia Varlan (cc) via flickr A new report “Copyright Industries in the U S Economy” has been released by the IIPA (A conspiracy of seven associations of copyprivilege holders). I...
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It matters how we own what nobody produced
Tenant farmers paid rent here [I]n Bill Clinton’s encapsulation of political strategy, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But the success of an economy can only be measured by its growth. Since growth...
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More stuff that’s still true about location and “intellectual”“property”
Photo by Jimmy Emerson, DVM, (cc) via flickr Anyone reading this blog might get bored with the number of times I say that Henry George was right, and is even more right today than in his own time....
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Storytelling can be patented
credit: mpclemens via flickr(cc) We already knew that computers, equipped with proper algorithms, could write stories pretty much indistinguishable from the work of professional journalists working...
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