Capitalism is a gentler if more insidious form of this. Loans, deals, mortgages are bonds made voluntarily but can be lifelong. Many are permissions to breed: no home, no children is the creed of many couples. So they borrow, and are tied by repayments.
Government - whose prime function is security - works because enough of us give to government the right and duty to maintain force and use it to control us. We relax in our slavery, while debating the form of it. This is the left-right debate of young progressive against seasoned elder.
Breeding is central to slavery: the mother is tied for the duration, the father while he feels responsible. The wealthy employ unattached young to nanny, but rare is the surrogate mother who gives the child all its own mother can. And at the end of the tunnel, the housewife has rarely retained the sparks that kept her man enthralled, while he still has career and intellectual vigour. The good news is that this is widely known, and worked on effectively if jerkily by the liberation movements.
Sweeper culture is widespread beyond the sub continent. We know our places still, even in the free USA. Ivy league is well beyond trailer folk. Few immigrants rise high. Exceptions do not disprove these rules. Immigration continues because the grass seems greener, but the greening is relative, and is assisted by the power of the monies transmitted home from the most basic employment.
So what’s to do? Share knowledge of these matters, study the causes. Prime among them is the evolution of slavery in us, and the co-evolution of slave and free. The tool is education, the liberal education that has in it love of adventure through reading, love of neighbour as an ideal, and delight in creating new links and structures. Then seek to understand the psychology of ourselves and our groups. How we come to believe and accept wicked things. How we have made some good steps. How self-sacrifice is hardwired into some of us. How dissidence within groups is needed for survival. The layers of strengths and the resulting weaknesses. How the nurture including diet our children receive conditions selfishness. The wisdoms we need as a species to transcend our primaeval natures, to detect disguised philanthropy, and to resist backsliding.
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( 2.9 / 144 )Been thinking awhile how stultifying is the limit of light speed. No effective contact with even our nearest stars with chemical or even nuclear powered craft. So we can colonise moon and mars, but then what?
Perhaps one day we will see the enlightenment as prelude to this relativistic limit, followed by quantum, chaos and crisis theory, all culminating in enlightened despair at ever finding a common ethic higher than the hedonistic burn out of fossil fuel airflight.
But if Einstein were wrong about c being the limit, if just one thing could go faster, and that thing were the electric force, then all the dooms from solar increase to end of universe collapse could be reversed, and the future might just teem with richer evolution.
Just read a little bit about electric universe theory, Sheldrake’s vision, and the possibility that there is a mightier brain than ours, and other life forms. Very comforting indeed. True or not, it would be good to think the species has a future and more meaning than our current politics suggest.
Might even help us pull in the same direction to sort the climate changes western capitalism is ignoring.
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( 3 / 223 )Hardware list for a computer display
Motherboard
disc drives of each type, one open
media from tape via floopy to CD and DVD and pen memory
I/O cards labelled
Input devices opened: keyboard, microphone, mouse, digicam, webcam
Modem, router, switch opened
CRT and LCD opened
Projector types inc coin sized
For large displays and systems:
Complete systems to dismantle and reassemble 1 board and leads to peripherals, 2 PC system, 3 server, drives and fans, 4 ISP model.
A timeline around a room with aging items, perhaps illustrating Moore's law or other trend
A class set may have advantages
Collections of pairs of plug-and-sockets
Basic electric components to identify, cobble together or solder
Risk analysis -
Kids swallowing small bits
Sharps, poisons, explosion of capacitors, shock, electrocution by mains connecting
Sensitive or obscener data on old drives.
Fear preventing sensible uses
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( 3 / 208 )Motherboards as a teaching resource. Second draft., somewhat hurried, for topic ideas and ridicule. E&OE.
Motherboards a source of notschool research projects, and as wall mounted stimulant for each researcher to find more projects.
Motherboard as the Morris 1000 of computing, the last easily understood and self-maintained car.
For computer science, all hardware and much system software knowledge is triggered by a glance at the patterns in the boards. Data flows in series and parallel ++. Economies of scale. Future improvements.
Basic circuit theory V=IR can be practiced on any part with resistance from 0 ohms to infinity. Pd’s of 12V and 5V from mains, purple and yellow. Currents from 0 and nanoAmps up to fan power. Power by P=VI and power loss IsquaredR Energy by VIt and IsquaredRt especially for chip heat loss and capacitor breakdown.
Heat losses from heatsink by conduction, convection, radiation and forced cooling.
Trace the main bus lines.
Networking is pre-figured, the relation between CPU, memory and off-board peripherals stands comparison with the server-client relations.
Comparisons with city, company, corpoarate, cell, brain, evolution, packing density in all complex systems, planned and normal obsolescence, self repair and self-addition, plug-in spaces for undeveloped technology, trsting methods, chip replacement life-cycles, recycling of valuable and dangerous components, adolescent attachment to a device (tomaguchi efeect) or a technology. Even for cathedral and bazaar comparisons for independant action. The 'when will computers become conscious' debate.
Wiring up project: add RAM, connect to memories, monitor and projector, phone line and network cable, router, keyboard types and mouse, archiver, keyboard, camera, webcam, sensor, security socket (drill hole for Kensington model, use chain and lock)
EXTRA TOPICS
Dangers and risk assessment:
SHARPS: MANY OF THE CONTACTS ARE VERY SHARP. Handle boards only with thick gloves or wrappings or by flat hand on edges.
POISONS:
1 The heat connecting paste under many heat sinks on chips is nasty and sticky. Do not touch.
2 The chips contain life-threatening impurities. Dispose safely at correct waste site.
3 The capacitors emit lethal featherlike fumes of carcinogenic etc PCB’s if opened or worse exploded by age or over-voltage. Inspect all capacitors for ooze when first seen, and do not apply even the normal working voltage if old.
ELECTROCUTION and EXPLOSION
Never connect a raw unshielded power supply to the mains.
Never apply a higher voltage to a component than specified.
DISPOSAL: Be wary, use an approved council dump only, and then use the high tech skip. The Japanese tech island dump is leaching unspeakable poisons into the sea.
GIFT HORSES. Inspect clearly before accepting only what you need and can store.
RISK ASSESSMENT FATIGUE AND MOCKERY. Do not give way to these. The judge expects you to have been aware of all dangers, and to have taken all reasonable precautions. Your personally edited copy of this on file would help your barrister. They can be made into a fun way of exploring the ultrafeminist dominated antipathy to fun in physics, so enjoy! But do well.
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( 2.9 / 232 )Motherboards as a teaching resource. First draft., somewhat hurried, for topic ideas and ridicule. E&OE.
For computer science, all hardware and much system software knowledge is triggered by a glance at the patterns in the boards.
Basic circuit theory V=IR can be practiced on any part with resistance from 0 ohms to infinity. Pd’s of 12V and 5V from mains, purple and yellow. Currents from 0 and nanoAmps up to fan power. Power by P=VI and powerloss IsquaredR and Energy by VIT and IsquaredRt especially for chip heat loss and capacitor breakdown.
Networking is pre-figured, the relation between CPU, memory and off-board peripherals stands comparison with the server-client relations.
EXTRA TOPICS
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
NOTE: other peripherals like memory I/O and power packs to follow
Dangers and risk assessment:
SHARPS: MANY OF THE CONTACTS ARE VERY SHARP. Handle boards only with thick gloves or wrappings or by flat hand on edges.
POISONS:
1 The heat connecting paste under many heat sinks on chips is nasty and sticky. Do not touch.
2 The chips contain life-threatening impurities. Dispose safely at correct waste site.
3 The capacitors emit lethal featherlike fumes of carcinogenic etc PCB’s if opened or worse exploded by age or over-voltage. Inspect all capacitors for ooze when first seen, and do not apply even the normal working voltage if old.
ELECTROCUTION and EXPLOSION
Never connect a raw unshielded power supply to the mains.
Never apply a higher voltage to a component than specified.
DISPOSAL: Be wary, use an approved council dump only, and then use the high tech skip. The Japanese tech island dump is leaching unspeakable poisons into the sea.
GIFT HORSES. Inspect clearly before accepting only what you need and can store.
RISK ASSESSMENT FATIGUE AND MOCKERY. Do not give way to these. The judge expects you to have been aware of all dangers, and to have taken all reasonable precautions. Your personally edited copy of this on file would help your barrister. They can be made into a fun way of exploring the ultrafeminist dominated antipathy to fun in physics, so enjoy! But do well.
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( 2.9 / 194 )
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