Hempcrete.com.au: The Australian Hempcrete Technologists The future according to Google's Larry Page Note: On Jan 3, as Fortune published this article, the Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation of Google's search practices saying it found no evidence that the company manipulated search results in violation of antitrust laws. The European Commission and other regulators continue to investigate the issue. FORTUNE -- When Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, the giant advertising agency, visited Google this past fall, CEO Larry Page sent a car to pick him up at the Rosewood Hotel about 20 miles away. Page's chauffeurless car service is no mere parlor trick. MORE: Google - No. 1 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For Sounds like a crazy mashup of the Jetsons and the '80s TV show Knight Rider. Outlandish ideas and effective, pragmatic management rarely go hand in hand. Tangible results are everywhere. MORE: Google - No. 2 on Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies Still, adding Page to the annals of great CEOs at this point would be premature. MORE: Meet the L-Team
Scotland Community Shows The World Why All Homes Should Be Made Out of Hemp Many people are becoming aware of ways to live that are more harmonious with the planet. It seems that we are transitioning to a very ancient understanding of how to operate here on Earth, with a very advanced ‘know how’ of technologies and methods to begin making that transition. New ways of living are coming to light and although you may not hear about them often, communities all over the world are starting to implement them. A new sustainable housing project in the Northwest of Scotland will use industrial hemp as the main building material. An English housing company that specializes in hemp-based construction called ‘Hemcrete Projects,’ supplied the system. Hemp has many uses, over 50, 000 to be exact. Combined with insulation made from Hemp fibre, Hembuild provides the village in Scotland with houses made from a combination of insulation and thermal inertia. Hempcrete is very versatile as it can be used for wall insulation, flooring, walls, roofing and more. Sources:
The Rise of the Robots by Robert Skidelsky Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space LONDON – What impact will automation – the so-called “rise of the robots” – have on wages and employment over the coming decades? Nowadays, this question crops up whenever unemployment rises. In the early nineteenth century, David Ricardo considered the possibility that machines would replace labor; Karl Marx followed him. Then the fear of machines died away. For some countries, this long-run prospect might be uncomfortably close. Recently, automation in manufacturing has expanded even to areas where labor has been relatively cheap. Now the substitution of capital for labor is moving beyond manufacturing. For those who dread the threat that automation poses to low-skilled labor, a ready answer is to train people for better jobs. As a recent article in the Financial Times points out, in two areas notoriously immune to productivity increases, education and health care, technology is already reducing the demand for skilled labor.
Hemp Facts Industrial Hemp Facts(No THC here) Prototype Lotus Elise The Eco Elise , released at the British Motor Show in 2008, uses a host of sustainable materials to make up the body and trim, including hemp, "eco wool," sisal and a new high-tech, water-based paint. WOW! Hemp is the miracle plant of our time, breathing in 4x the carbon dioxide (CO2) of trees during it's quick 12-14 week growing cycle. Trees take 20 years to mature vs 4 months for Industrial Hemp! 1807: Napoleon signs Treaty with Russia to cut off all legal Russian Hemp trade with Britain. but the Czar refuses to enforce the treaty and turns a blind eye to Britain’s illegal Hemp trade. June 24th, 1812 Napoleon invades Russia to try and put an end to Britain’s main supply of Russian Hemp but by the end of the year the Russian winter had decimated most of Napoleon’s forces. * Hemp sails & rope carried Columbus to the Americas in 1492. The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 placed a tax on the sale of Cannabis.
The inevitability of smart dust I’ve put forward my opinion that desktop computing is dead on more than one occasion, and been soundly put in my place as a result almost every time. “Of course desktop computing isn’t dead — look at the analogy you’re drawing between the so called death of the mainframe and the death of the desktop. Mainframes aren’t dead, there are still plenty of them around!” Well, yes, that’s arguable. The desktop will increasingly belong to niche users. For the rest of the world? People never wanted computers; they wanted what computers could do for them. Everyday objects are already becoming smarter. The sensors you carry with you may well generate more data every second, both for you and about you, than previous generations did about themselves during the course of their entire lives. The end point of this evolution is already clear: it’s called smart dust. Makes desktop computing look sort of dull, doesn’t it? Photo: it’s not fog… it’s smoke… by Guilherme Jófili, on Flickr Related:
Hemp building What is it? It’s building with ‘hempcrete’ which is a mixture of the following three components: hemp ‘shiv’: hemp is a plant that has been used for millennia for making textiles. The shiv is the waste from the textile industry – the woody / pithy core of the stemsa lime binderwater These 3 components are used in different ratios depending on the strength or insulative properties you require for the part of the building it’s going to be used on. A field of hemp on a farm in France. Hempcrete can be used for walls, for floors and as an insulation layer in roofs / ceilings – but it’s not structural, i.e. it’s not strong enough to support the weight of a building alone, and so it tends to be cast around a timber frame, where it provides stiffness and insulation. In areas where hemp is grown for textiles, hemp shiv has been used for generations as animal bedding. Shuttering being added to a very simple timber frame for a hempcrete kitchen extension; note the bags of hemp shiv and lime binder.
How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways: Three Complementary Theories As regular readers of this blog know, I have in previous posts commented on hunter-gatherers' playfulness; their playful religious practices; their playful approach toward productive work; their non-directive childrearing methods; and their children's playful ways of educating themselves. In all of those posts I emphasized the egalitarian, non-hierarchical nature of hunter-gatherer society. In today's post I present three theories as to how hunter-gatherers maintained the egalitarian ethos for which they are justly famous. I think all three of the theories are correct. First, before I get to the three theories, I must address this question: Is it true that hunter-gatherers were peaceful egalitarians? During the twentieth century, anthropologists discovered and studied dozens of different hunter-gatherer societies, in various remote parts of the world, who had been nearly untouched by modern influences. This is true for play among animals as well as for that among humans. [2] Lee, R.
The Nauhuas - Why We Like Hempcrete home > current projects > Nauhaus prototype > hempcrete > The goal of environmentally conscious building design is to create buildings that create a healthy indoor environment while supporting a healthy outdoor environment. After years of experience building, designing, and researching we’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to accomplish this goal is through combining cutting edge building science with what are commonly called “natural building” practices. High performance building science allows us to create buildings that use almost no energy to run, therefore reducing the size and price of the renewable energy system required to produce on site all the energy required to run the building. One of our biggest challenges has been to create a wall system that serves these design objectives. Tradical® Hemcrete® is a mixture of industrial hemp chips (shiv) in a lime-based binder manufactured by the UK company Lime Technology. top of page
Kurzweil joins Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing Ray Kurzweil confirmed today that he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing. “I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining Google as Director of Engineering this Monday, December 17,” said Kurzweil. “I’ve been interested in technology, and machine learning in particular, for a long time: when I was 14, I designed software that wrote original music, and later went on to invent the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, among other inventions. I’ve always worked to create practical systems that will make a difference in people’s lives, which is what excites me as an inventor. “In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.
This Pioneering Grandma is Building These Tiny Sustainable Homes Out of Hemp Hemp is the only plant that can feed you, house you, clothe you and heal you. The DEA considers hemp to be a dangerous substance and it’s still classified as a schedule I drug, alongside heroin and ecstasy, even though the plant contains almost no THC and has no psychoactive effects. Many believe this classification is the result of the oil industry’s grip on the legislative process in America, because hemp is one of the most viable alternatives to plastics, fuel and other building materials, in fact, it used to be an important domestically produced crop, and it even contains extraordinary health benefits. “Hemp is the only plant that can feed you, house you, clothe you and heal you.” The Tiny House Movement is Growing As a response to unbridled consumerism and desire for infinite growth inherent in our economy, some are finding that satisfaction in life is not dependent on having and maintaining the ‘American Dream.’ Unity – Tiny Hemp Housing Final Thoughts About the Author
Money: An Abstraction Decoupled From Nature | Social Rebirth Money is nothing more than a term that represents an abstract form of exchange of labour for purchasing power. This article shall not investigate interest, loans, debt or the creation of money. For in reality money may be gold, silver, match sticks or pine nuts. Here, we shall concentrate on the direct result of defining a value to labour to use in exchange for purchasing power. While it can be offered that the abstraction (money) simply allows for delayed trade to take place, such as; Human x has some chocolate.Human y wants some chocolate and has a chicken farm but at the time has no eggs to trade.So human y offers an abstraction so that s/he may have some chocolate and when eggs are available human x may trade in the accepted abstraction in return for some eggs. What we are actually seeing here is little more than what may be considered the natural progression from barter to a more refined system of economics. Human trafficking in Nike’s sweatshop factory in Malaysia Thrown away….?