2009-12-31

hand warmer for keyboarding in the cold

11.17: proj.gear/hand.warmer for fast fingers:

. keyboard house needs a wire frame made from one wire for stiffness
that comes in 2 parts for adjustable its like 2 tables with on upside down
and legs of them are bound at a distance of your choosing .
. the top table slanted on either side .
. the joists are twist-arounds,
and they hold up the heat pad which is covered by the reflectix .

. to control height add loops end of table legs
to connect them by string so that the string can keep the endpoints
at a fixed distance without having to rely on the frictional force
created by binding the legs together with a winding .

11.21: gear/hand.warmer/redesign for boundary problem:
. the box for kybd has a boundary problem:
sometimes the hands like to travel straight from home keys
over to control keys
and that means the sides have to be clear of any box struts
atleast up to the delete key on the right side .
. instead of the peak sloping to the sides,
it would be more heat and space efficient to slope front and back;
the slope allows the heat pad on the roof to cover more of the arms .
. this also allows a bar from side to side
at both the rear and front
that help stability a bit .
the rear bar is part of the bottom table,
the front bar is part of the top table;
except the table model needs adjusting
because the top`struct has to overhang forward,
while the bottom`struct has to recede .
. one simple wire design is
start from front corner;
mov back horz'ly until past the kybd's delete key;
rise for height of roof`slope`bottom;
mov horz'ly to rear of tray
mov horz'ly to center of kybd;
do same for other side (in reverse order
and so wire is all one piece) .
. the front-back horz gives the top an anchor for
a top that is a horz rectangle
with 2 other rectangles for back and front sides of roof .
the roof hangs with peak over knuckles when fingertips are
numbers row (makes a tight fit for little-used function row) .

11.28: gear/hand.warmer/composite cardboard with metal joints:
. to save on wire, just use it for the joints
bound to scrap wood (or rolled cardboard) .


12.1: proj.gear/kybd.box/heatpad frame:
. make a c-shape when viewed from side
so that to change height,
have chg in depth of c
. then when feels right add reinforce as needed .

12.2: proj.gear/messed wire can be reused:
. mess wire ? can reuse as staples:

proj.gear/kybd.box:
measure:
. 11*2 wide, 8deep at bottom
7" high center for 2" high over peak,
7+3 on to make the c-shape for the back .
wire version:
. final design was an extruded-Y shape with the bottom of y bent L-shaped
to form the let, and the top of the Y acted as joists to lay heatpad across .
extruding means the top of left fork of one Y connected with left fork of other,
and likewise for right forks .
y`bot: 8in,
y`top: 7in .
(2*8+2*7+11+13)*2 = 9.0ft of wire
. after building;
seems ok for heat pad,
but what about sleeping bag? way too heavy .
. the whole lid needs to slide into a box;
then can nix the heat pad .
. found during log that the fingers need a lot of space for shift-combo's
as the main fingers lift as part of landing the pinky on the shift key .
. the mac needs to be higher than the kybd with the box around it .

proj.gear/kybd.box/cardboard version:
. to make the box,
find one of any length that is right in the other dimensions,
and then add the extrusion with sealing tape .
construction:
. needed to be a bit wider than kybd`platform,
this was exactly the width of a box I found,
but a minor distraction was the grey-board quality of that cardboard:
the tape didn't stick well .

Shlomo Sand on Zionism


. Mixing respected scholarship with dubious theories,
the author, Shlomo Sand, a professor at Tel Aviv University,
frames the narrative as a startling exposure of suppressed historical facts.
The translated version of his polemic has sparked a new wave of coverage in Britain
and has provoked spirited debates online and in seminar rooms.
Professor Sand, a scholar of modern France, not Jewish history,
candidly states his aim is to undercut the Jews' claims to the land of Israel
by demonstrating that they do not constitute
"(a people), with a shared racial or biological past.
Consider, for instance, Professor Sand's assertion that
Palestinian Arab villagers are descended from the original Jewish farmers.

Since Professor Sand's mission is to discredit Jews'
historical claims to the territory,
he is keen to show that their ancestry lines
do not lead back to ancient Palestine.
He resurrects a theory first raised by 19th-century historians,
that the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe,
to whom 90 percent of American Jews trace their roots,
are descended from the Khazars,
a Turkic people who apparently converted to Judaism
and created an empire in the Caucasus in the eighth century.

Professor Sand accuses Zionist historians from the 19th century onward
-- the very same scholars on whose work he bases his case --
of hiding the truth and creating a myth of shared roots
to strengthen their nationalist agenda.
He explains that he has uncovered no new information,
but has organized the knowledge in a clarifying way .


any low-crime societies?

11.24: web.pol/any low crime societies?:


. very cool site with rich set of views:
click a country to see all the variables per country .

yun, ilhong, American Society of Criminology, 2009-10-26
Confucianism serves as the origin of reintegrative shaming
as well as low crime rates in East Asia, including Japan.
It also shows how Confucianism relates to
communitarianism, interdependence, and social dynamics that affect crime rates.
Finally, it suggests a strong moral education, both formal and informal,
as a potential way to decrease high crime rates in the United States.

lessons from usa-brit independence revolution

11.10: pol/lessons from usa-brit independence revolution:
. I noticed how anti-communism is rooted in
the independence revolution .
. if your subjects could run away,
would they?
during the dawn of America,
britain should have pushed only for
what it really needed:
. the important thing in the european wars
over control of the new world
was that one superpower should not be able to
use america's vast wealth as a weapon against
another superpower .
. they could have achieved that
not by enslaving the colonists
but instead by insuring that no other euro'power
could enslave them either .
. the war on communism could be seen as having this stance:
[11.14:
. dictatorship is slavery,
and communism is the most alien dictatorship,
if we can root out the slavery of dictatorship,
forces of democracy will at least choose to
sacrifice themselves in a fight against
anything that is alien to our own democratic values . ]

communism and capitalism can complement each other

11.10: pol/communism and capitalism can complement each other:
. use plug-in architectures to both insure separation of power
-- a great american value --
and find the most efficient place for capitalists
within a communistic framework;
eg, finding and motivating employees
is always a cutting edge technology;
so make employment agencies a capitalistic module,
but make them open-book servants to
the separate branches of
directorship and quality assurance .
[11.14:
. the way this would differ critically from the current system
is that corporations have privacy rights like people do;
and under a communistic system,
there would be outsiders who both documented
who initiated the fresh productive ideas,
and also watched for
the rot that occurs in dark places . ]


what health plan were nearly half holding out for?

11.8: co.pol/{newspapers}/what plan were nearly half holding out for?:
. it's hopeful to see the House majority could agree on some bill;
but what were nearly half of the them holding out for?
maybe if the planners would start from first principles:
we are paying so much for religiously-mandated charity care;
how can we have gone this long without mandated health insurance ?!
. to make it affordable,
there should be right-to-die plans excluding your choice of conditions:
I do want full coverage for accident recovery;
I do not want treatments for cancer or obesity-related disorders .
. insurance providers would drool at deals like that!
. I was so grateful they compromised on deal-breaking abortion issues,
lets see some more vision like that:
sane first, and democratic only if they're sure they can pull it off .
. see Michael Moore's Sicko movie again .
. republicans make the dem's look like Death panels and Liberals;
ha! weren't they tossed after outraging seniors
by telling them that the cheap Canadian meds were unsafe?
. lets see less regulation of seniors,
and more leashes on pharmaceutical and insurance co's .

Healthcare X PRIZE

American health care system requires fundamental transformation
to meet the needs of the nation.
An Initial Prize Design for a proposed $10+ Million Healthcare X PRIZE
was announced on April 14, 2009 by the X PRIZE Foundation, WellPoint, Inc.
and the WellPoint Foundation.
This first-of-its kind competition will focus on
reinventing the health care system in a bold, measurable and scientific fashion
to catalyze dramatic improvements in health and health care value
in the United States.
The Grand Challenge for the Healthcare X PRIZE is to create
an optimal health paradigm that empowers and engages individuals and
communities in a way that dramatically improves health value.
The proposed prize is designed to improve health value by more than 50 percent
in a 10,000 person community during a three year trial.
In order to effectively compete for this prize,
teams will need to fundamentally change health financing, care delivery,
and create new incentives that will result in
achieving the required improvements in health value
for both individuals and communities.

finance regulation lessons from Islam

11.6: pol/finance regulation/lessons from islam:
. another muslim-unique rule is no money from lending .
. this could mean that all customers have to pre-pay,
or that all markets should be in stocks not bonds,
where you use your savings to buy co.ownership in a money-maker .
. a usaa fin.mgt and depression historian
pointed out how deflation works:
demand falls off massively in a fin system that borrows a lot;
it involves doing production in huge batches
or for very expensive items .
. mass production can be very cheap
but if the masses don't buy the product
then the business is scrambling to pay for the loan,
because money is rented, so time is money .
. this forces unfair sales prices just to pay off the loan .