How is this for co-parenting….
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Rat-bots: a more effective solution for a dispersed, un-censorable wi-fi net
March 22, 2012 — xanthippaYesterday, I linked to a TorrentFreak article which showed a video of an elegant aerial ballet performed by wi-fi-emiting file-sharing fly-bots. Beautiful, as well as a functional method of un-censorable, un-regulatable, distributed wi-fi network.
Today, I came across a response to this for a much less elegant, but perhaps more practical solution: instead of aerial bots, create rat-bots.
‘In the city, you are never more than three metres away from a rat. They’re spectacularly successful. We’ve built them a wonderful habitat replete with high-speed autoroutes — storm drains and sewers — and convenience stores to snack from in the shape of dumpsters and trash. And ground level is where most of us wifi users happen to be, most of the time.
Small ground-traversing robots would not be subject to the same weight penalties as airborn drones. The wifi range would be shorter, but their power consumption would be lower and they’d be far more concealable — it’s quite easy to imagine a ratbot that is, literally, no larger than a real rat.’
The author goes on to evaluate the operational advantages, from power consumption to range, and suggest practical evasion and re-fuelling techniques, including charging mats and, perhaps, including bio-fuel conversion and primitive hunting/foraging programming…
And inspiring…
TorrentFreak: World’s First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action
March 21, 2012 — xanthippaOh, don’t you just love this stuff?
‘In short the system allows the public to share data with the help of flying drones. Much like the Pirate Box, but one that flies autonomously over the city.
“The public can upload files, photos and share data with one another as the drones float above the significant public spaces of the city. The swarm becomes a pirate broadcast network, a mobile infrastructure that passers-by can interact with,” the creators explain.’
Whatever you may think of the morality of The Pirate Bay and/or of extre-jurisdictional flying file-sharing machines, you have got to admit that this is not just way cool, it is a formidable weapon against the ‘regulation’ which is systematically eradicating freedom of the internet.
In addition to the beauty of its purpose, it is an artform in its own right! (If yo go to the article and scroll down a little, there is a video of this technological balet: the colours change as files are accessed, the formations break apart and re-form….a work of art in its own right!)
Get all the smart kids together – then expose them to lead, mercury and asbestos
March 21, 2012 — xanthippaOh, sometimes, I just want to give up…
Broadview Avenue Public School in Ottawa is one of the best schools around. It is one of only 3 locations in Ottawa which has a program for students who have been identified as not just gifted, but exceptionally gifted. Broadview houses both the English and French language versions of this most excellent program.
Now, I am not saying that super smart kids are better than other kids and deserve better conditions. No kids should be exposed to these conditions!
However, to select kids specifically for intelligence and then put them into a school filled with chemicals known to decrease intelligence…that is not the most constructive course of action…
While my older son attended that school, he developed chronic fatigue – and environmental factors were suspected. We even had our house tested for everything, from heavy metals to mold – and came up clean. After years of this, with no way to help him, I was close to despair!
The problem resolved itself once he started high-school. Now he is away at University and his health is perfect!
I guess now we know what had made him sick…
Half-a-million to go to Mars?
March 20, 2012 — xanthippaYes, according to Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX!
‘The commercial space travel entrepreneur told the BBC in an interview that he’s figured out how to send a person on a round-trip journey to Mars and back, and that it could be ready in as little as ten years. The best part? Musk says that the “average person” could afford the trip since it will only cost $500,000.’
Sweet!
Of course, if we have to rely on the UN to keep the Iranian nukes from having a bit of a party in North America, one question really needs to be asked:
How much for a one-way trip?!?!?
Dan Hannan: Common law, not EU law
March 20, 2012 — xanthippaThis is something very important – something we do not pay sufficient attention to: common law.
It is the basis of our freedoms: the legislature with all its lawmakers are not the source of our rights and freedoms – they do not grant them to us from above. Rather, core rights and freedoms are something we are born with, not something that comes from the state.
Yes, we recognize that in order to co-exist with others, we may agree to put some restrictions on our freedoms: that is the role of our elected representatives.
In common law, there is the explicit recognition that rights come from within each individual and that governments – all governments – are there to restrict these freedoms. The less (smaller) the government, the fewer restrictions on our rights and the more free we will be. The bigger th government, the more restrictions and the fewer freedoms….
This is a philosophy which views each human being as an individual, full of potential and free to fulfill this potential or not.
It is in sharp contrast to the view that every person is born as a cog in a machine, a member of a society which has the ultimate power over her or him. Under this philosophy, it is the society which is the source of right in as much as it permits each member of the society to fulfil a role it deems most beneficial for the society. In this type of a set up, one only has the options that the society opens for them, no freedoms to choose things or actions outside of what the group would benefit from. This is called the civil law…
We must never forget the distinction between the two – and we must never give up our heritage of freedom for the gilded cage of civil law.
Just last night, I was reading to my son a 19th century traveller’s description of the Magna Carta Island – and the writer had permitted his imagination to float back across the centuries to that unforgettable June morning in 1215 when King John was brought there and forced to acknowledge this principle – already old then, but in danger of being eroded…
Sure, the Magna Carta is an imperfect document – as all human products are. But, it is the source of – and vastly superior to – all further re-tellings of it, from the US Constitution to the Canadian one, and so on. Along the way, the documents have become more and more cumbersome and less and less perfected…so we can trace just how much of our birthright we are permitting ourselves to give up in order to live in ‘civilized’ society.
But, do not lose heart!
Precisely because from Magna Carta on, all these documents are mere affirmations of our pre-existing rights, it is our rights that are supreme should there ever be a disagreement. Precisely because it was the rights that were pre-existing!
Now, if we could only have judges who see it as clearly as this!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 