November Linkdump

Here's the roundup of things I ran across this month, but didn't come up with a real post for:

Flying car drives to Africa
Here's a guy just doing a thing and making it happen. I mean, he's got a team. He's not a solo operation. But it's a great example of doing something small, but amazing... something like I'd like to do. I don't want to do big amazing things. I want to do small amazing things.

(Relatively) Simple explanations
Procon is a Web site that presents the two major sides of an current controversial issue, in a theoretically unbiased manner. If you've ever felt confused about some large public policy issue, look here to help clarify your own opinions on a topic.

The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations
Sometimes dumb, sometimes sublime. Occasionally worth a look.

Road map
A map of the contiguous United States consisting only of roads.

Dean Kamen is pretty great

I find Dean Kamen more and more impressive all the time. It seems like he's on the verge of another big breakthrough to public awareness.

You've heard his name before in association with the hilarious, doomed Segway. But other things he is heavily associated with include:

• FIRST -- a robotics competition for high school kids
• IBOT -- a wheelchair that walks up stairs and allows disabled people to "stand" at eye level
• an electric car that's got as good a chance as anybody's to be the next big thing
• Heavy-duty water purifiers and generators that run on anything that you can haul into Nowherezistan on an oxcart

Only catastrophe will prevent this guy from creating things that change the world. He's basically already done it, and I'm not talking about two-wheel dorkmobiles.

Here's his wikipedia entry.
Read a recent U.K. Telegraph article about him.
Here's DEKA, his inventors-for-hire company.

Bulette in plush, in process

Here's a bulette I started on a couple of nights ago. I copied the body pattern from a triceratops plush toy -- disassembled it and started reverse engineering a bulette from there.


I'm impressed by my copying! Like tracing comics when you're a kid, this is the beginning of how you learn to put these things together for yourself.

Next time, I'll try to figure out a way to get the tail up a little more. However, the triceratops provides no guidance on a bulette head, so piecing that together is much more trial and error.


Art Shop is next weekend, so I'll probably spend more time on monsters that use less experimental methods until then. Besides, this works like most of my projects do, I'm due to put it down and not touch it again until late December.

Otyugh in plush

Been working on non-cute, D&D-esque monsters lately too. Here's my first one.


I finished this otyugh a while back, but it took me a long time to get pictures and transfer them to where I could post them. It's a prototype, but full of valuable lessons for the next round. I hope to post these at otyugh.com in the near future.





Lessons learned:

• Long, skinny tentacles/eyestalks/what-have-you with a big bulbous thing on the end are an absolute bitch to invert. Make limbs shorter, wider.
• I needed to insert an armature to make the eyestalk stand up, and the limbs less floppy. This guy's eyestalk doesn't stand up without external support.
  
• I didn't take pix of it (the above was taken before I closed it), but the back of this thing is an ugly mess of visible stitches. I meant to close it on the bottom, but the legs took up all the bottom space. Then all I had left to close was the back. I think the lesson here is to change the proportions next time; make the body bigger, and space the legs farther apart.
• The mouth turned out great! Pretty happy with the mouth. More consistent stitching will improve the look up close. Maybe using the machine will improve that.

One gamer I played Living Forgotten Realms with a few weeks ago told me sight unseen that he would buy a handmade plush otyugh. I hope there's more like him.


Tomorrow: A bulette in process.

Buy Nothing Day 2008

It's the magical time of year again! The time when you're tempted to spend too much money on things that people don't need! That's right, it's almost Black Friday!

Which coincides with the annual Adbusters Buy Nothing Day. In their tiresomely earnest way, they (and I) encourage all good boys and girls to buy nothing on November 28, 2008.

Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll retain personal wealth for one day longer than you otherwise would have. Maybe, just maybe, you will contribute to the righteous cause of having less stupid crap in the world. It is a magical time of year, after all.

Bailout Solution Update

In the shower a couple of days ago, I realized the missing element of my bailout solution (which should pump $375 billion back into the U.S. economy, while loosening the shackles on America's best educated, most responsible citizens).

This is probably why Mr. Paulson has not yet contacted me, but now he's pretty much got no choice but to pass my blog address onto Tim Geithner.

Here's the New New Deal:

Instead of pure loan forgiveness, the U.S. treasury offers compensatory service hours. Essentially, you freelance for debt reduction. If you're willing to make this your full-time pursuit, then you get a decent stipend, and work off your debt much faster.

If you are something particularly useful, like a civil engineer, you get an above-market hourly "wage" in debt reduction for time spent on redesigning our road infrastructure.

If you're less skilled, then you get a lower hourly return in debt reduction, but still a better "wage" than you could make at your run-of-the-mill fresh-out-of-college job.

This complicates the matter, and will require some fine tuning to make it an attractive option, but it needs to be generous so that the best and most indebted people will choose it.

So, let's review. Money is pumped into the economic system, not at the top, where we hope it will create solvency through a Rube Goldberg spit-and-hope trickle-down process, but at the bottom where it will directly affect the piston of the economic engine, i.e. the workers.

In exchange for this money, U.S. education and infrastructure get competent boosts from educated, hungry professionals. And then a bunch of dumb shit pork doesn't have to get funded.

Yuh huh, we can.

My behatted doppelganger

Stan! points me to a picture of a guy who looks so much like me, I thought he WAS me for a second.

Other pictures of him bear less resemblance, but if I ever want to commit crime in Milwaukee, this sentence-diagramming "Boone Dryden" character is taking the heat for me while I escape to Canada.

Try it out

Here's another repost from Real Live Preacher: So You Think You Want to Try Christianity?

Christians who have spent time in the wilderness often display more wisdom than those who haven't. It seems strange to me that a God who calls his followers to obedience seems to richly reward those who wander off and come back.

I know a number of lifelong Xians who are petulant and misguided and occasionally strident about it (yrs trly incl.). It's the ones who haven't thought of Jesus as their birthright who excel at humility, kindness, patience, and half a dozen other fruits of the Spirit.

Come to think of it, they can be crazy in their own ways too. I just find that craziness more acceptable.

Roger's Wish

Roger found a magic lamp. The genie inside told him he could have three wishes -- whatever he wanted.

There were lots of things Roger wanted. A better position in work, better relationships, better quality stuff in his life. But wishes are very valuable, and it would be foolish to waste one asking for a luxury car or a promotion.

Besides, Roger reasoned, better cars and promotions are fully achievable without magical assistance. So while Roger considered how to best use his wishes, he began working on getting things he wouldn't waste a wish on.

Years passed. Roger got many things he might have wished for, though not all. Nevertheless, he found a loving wife and had many fulfilling relationships; through patience and work, he achieved recognition for his efforts; and his family never lacked for food or clothing or shelter. All in all, an excellent life, well lived.

On his deathbed he rubbed the lamp. He croaked out, "Genie, I wish for more time."

And so the genie made him Lord of All Time and Space. Roger soon discovered that this was what he should have wished for all along.

THE END

Depression for a new century

Everybody with a title and a media outlet is real careful to say that there's not an economic depression coming up. But those people also didn't want to say that a recession was coming.

Warren Buffett, a man who I listen to closely, has said that we're in for a long, deep recession. But he hasn't said "depression" either. But that doesn't mean he can't be wrong.

So here's an interesting article from the Boston Globe: Depression 2009: What would it look like?

The recap? It won't look that startling. There probably wouldn't be long lines into the street and families packing all their worldly goods into trucks and people selling apples on the corners. Suburbs will empty, and cities will fill.

TV is one big difference. Once you have a TV, entertainment is essentially free, and you don't even have to leave the house to get it. So people won't. In 1930, it was much harder to hole up. Now, it will be hard not to.

People packed together, ignoring each other.

What the article doesn't go on to say is that an economic depression would lead to massive, crippling emotional depression. People will be separated, and in that separation, people will get lost. Suicide rates among adults could be ugly.

Our church, Circle of Hope, talks a lot about community. But we're only so-so on activating it... it's a very DIY church -- punk without the bad attitude. But if you don't know how to be DIY, you can feel left out.

I've been thinking loosely in the last couple weeks about how we can show Christ, love our neighbors, and help people in the coming recession. I've got a list of ideas, some more workable than other. One I'm adding today is becoming aggressively friendly to strangers, inviting them to do stuff with us, to get them out of their houses, and into some company. Ideally the company of a loving God, in addition to our own. The need for Jesus is about to get stronger in the Philadelphia region... people will need friends in a life-or-death way.