[personal profile] ewt
It's way time for a link round-up.

PacWind make a Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine that appears solid to birds even at higher rotation speeds - too bad it's a little too large for domestic urban use...

These felt bags made from factory wool waste unzip entirely to fold flat. Pretty!

Eco-Village in Craik, Saskatchewan. I'll be watching this to see how it turns out.

Falk Sleeping Bag - possibly a good addition to emergency kit?

The Internet is for Meta-Analysis, by [livejournal.com profile] gnimmel. I really, really want to see this as a poster.

Research finds music training 'tunes' human auditory system; I'm really glad that they're showing support for my profession, but I question the quality of the research. Maybe people who have good auditory wossname are more likely to have continued with music lessons for more than two years? Bah.

Simuze appears to be some sort of creative-commons music site. There goes the Mammoth Project. Only, it's in Dutch, and I don't see an 'English' button anywhere. I guess that's okay for something in beta...

Depressed mothers can still be good moms. Again, I don't like the way the science is being presented here; it seems to have a lot more to do with knowledge and experience than depression, and really to make the research valid they'd have to compare depressed and normal mothers both from some sort of starting point and after undergoing the same training. I'm not saying that some training can't help some people, or that depressed mothers can't be good moms - just that they've not set up a control, and the study appears to be about education in those who are, incidentally, depressed, rather than comparing skills of depressed to 'normal' (whatever that is) mothers. The title is pretty misleading.

How to build your own ECG machine. Brilliant. See also OpenEEG.

Thumb drives get bigger and bigger. I wonder about the applications for tiny computers... I know there are mp3 players out there that have significant storage and can act as USB hosts for cameras and other devices. I'm wondering about things that are basically terminals with net access and so on, running off of a USB drive you plug in.

Bayonet fitting 2W lightbulbs, each as bright as a 25W incandescent. Still cheaper on eBay, I suspect... but it's nice to see these actually entering the market here. They make very nice little work lights, and a few of them light up a room quite happily. They also last aaaaages.

Little old granny puts up fight to be able to use cannabis for pain relief.

Interview with Rosamond Naylor on Global Food Security. Complex stuff, and important.

Why so important? Well, if you thought the world was crowded now...World population to hit 9.2 billion by 2050.

Physical and psychological torture has similar impact. Poor grammar aside, I've been saying this for years as regards abuse.

Top 5 Things that should be taught in every school - this is rather US-centric, but the basic concepts are quite valid. I guess I did alright - "communication skills" sounds an awful lot like English class to me, although learning French as a second language probably helped a lot. We had health classes too. Thing is, I know my parents taught me at least some of that stuff, or tried to... why is it the responsibility of the school to teach these things? I mean, I agree it makes good sense to educate citizens to not be crap, but all of these things are also beneficial to the actual student. What should be the job of parents, and what of schools?

It's worth telling you again about the Geek Scrapheap Challenge II, Saturday 24th March. I posted about this way back in February and then didn't say anything for a while - oops! But, um, please come.

Photography by [livejournal.com profile] lynnyn. Some of this makes me pretty nostalgic for God's Country...

Sack Patsy - I admit I haven't read all the details, but Dr Crippen advertised it so it must be good, right? Um.

Right. Now I don't have to use a scroll button to get through all my tabs...

Date: 2007-03-15 09:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purpletigron.livejournal.com
Some kind of HTML snafu?

Date: 2007-03-15 09:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ewtikins.livejournal.com
Yeah and I can't find the darned thing. Workoing on it...

Date: 2007-03-15 09:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purpletigron.livejournal.com
I'm intending to be In The Smoke this weekend, and At The Pembury on Sunday evening? Be nice to see you :-)

Date: 2007-03-15 09:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ewtikins.livejournal.com
Yay! *nognognog*

If you're extremely lucky (ie if I get my arse in gear tomorrow), there will be a pair of slippers for you.

Date: 2007-03-15 09:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purpletigron.livejournal.com
That would be a lovely, but completely optional, side-benefit :-))

Date: 2007-03-15 10:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jaq.livejournal.com
You mean terminals like this? (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/store/Mini_ITX_Systems/Damn_Small_Machine)

I have DSL (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) on my USB drive, along with QEmu so it can either boot on a machine that can boot from USB, or run in the emulator on Windows. I've only been experimenting with it though.

Date: 2007-03-15 10:12 am (UTC)
ext_74: Baron Samadai in cat form (Old Man Coyote)
From: [identity profile] siliconshaman.livejournal.com
Actually, Pacwind's seahawk model would be ideal for domestic use... see the gallery. Things not much bigger than a beer keg. It generates 5Kw so you'd need two for a typical household, but it'd be ideal as supplementary source to a Pv solar cell array.

Date: 2007-03-15 10:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elmyra.livejournal.com
Re the top 5 things which should be taught at school: Where is the parents' reponsibility in all of this?

Date: 2007-03-15 10:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] elmyra.livejournal.com
I should probably read your comment on the link before I click on the link and then comment. ;-) Apologies, I am sleepy today.

Date: 2007-03-15 10:16 am (UTC)

Date: 2007-03-15 10:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 403.livejournal.com
..why is it the responsibility of the school to teach these things?

Because there isn't a "minimum ability to care for and educate a child" standard for allowing people to breed. (Put more charitably, one can't teach something if they don't know it themselves.)

Date: 2007-03-15 05:45 pm (UTC)
liv: cartoon of me with long plait, teapot and purple outfit (ewe)
From: [personal profile] liv
I think it's a bit specious to argue that certain life-skills should be the parents' responsibility rather than the school's. Part of the reason we have compulsory education is to mitigate the disadvantages of people who have crap parents (as far as possible, anyway).

Personally, I learnt essentially nothing (apart from exam technique) in most subjects in school until sixth form, because it was all stuff I knew already from intelligent and engaged parents and my own independent reading. That doesn't mean schools don't need to bother teaching reading and rudimentary history and a smattering of science and world religions and so on. I don't entirely agree with the article, because it's too business and marketing focused for my tastes. But I think it is useful to question whether personal finance and time management might be more worthwhile than a detailed knowledge of the terms of the treaties after WW1.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing cooking and what used to be called home ec compulsory on all school curricula. That perhaps falls slightly below reading as an essential life skill but not a long way behind. Of course parents should teach their children these things, and a great many others, but if the parents can't or won't, the future adults still need the skills.

Thanks...

Date: 2007-03-15 08:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lynnyn.livejournal.com
for the nod to my website... I really need to get more on there though! :)

Date: 2007-03-15 10:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gnimmel.livejournal.com
I've actually set up a rudimentary cafepress store (http://www.cafepress.com/gnimmel) -- I've just had no time to polish it up and post about it :(

Date: 2007-03-16 09:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ewtikins.livejournal.com
Neat! Let me know if you want me to point people at it...

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