The holy grail of startups is the ability to crack Google’s virtual monopoly on searching. The way technology changes, one assumes it will happen eventually, but it’s difficult to conceive of how any small group in their basement could challenge the Behemoth.

But there is a way… unless Google does it first. The rise of Google was matched only by the rise of the collective and open software movement. And the power of Google is matched only by the productive power of independent coders, particularly when they can get some money for their time.

Imagine an open search engine forum. Any coder could submit a bit of intelligence– a new search algorithm, a new net-scraping bot, or even a new storage system. Like creatures in an ecosystem, these different agents compete to produce search results: Every query provides some CPU cycles to multiple algorithms, and the search results combine their answers. A click is like food or a vote in favor of the algorithms that produced it. The best algorithms float to the top, and their developers get a corresponding share of potentially immense advertising profits.

I don’t have time to build it, but I would encourage anyone who does and wants to be fabulously wealthy while helping make a world where the next search-god is not just as monolithic as the last one.

Scientific American now has frequent articles on the cutting-edge between science and technology and world problems. The problem that concerns the plurality of these articles appears to be food– growing it more quickly, with more calories, on less arable land, to sustain a growing population of hungry poor. The articles never address why we need to do it, just how. With a world already straining under the weight of 6.6 billion souls, that unspoken question needs some air.

First, the reasons for feeding the poor go beyond simple compassion. Any developing country, it’s said, goes through a baby-boom on its way to stability. Infant mortality drops a generation before fertility does, and the only decent way through it is to continue to provide food security and women’s education, and trust that it will resolve itself. Second, a significant part of the reason these baby-boomers are so poor is that we made them that way– by colonizing them, extracting their resources, and changing their climates. They deserve our support. Finally, we already have the capacity to feed everyone. Like smallpox, starvation could be a thing of the past, if we just collectively decide to do it.

Even so, these arguments may be insufficient. Limits to Growth predicted a catastrophic population collapse, which we might read as the result of expended watersheds in areas like China and India. As long as our political will to help doesn’t keep track with the number of poor, we are doing little more than maintaining their poverty. As climate refugees multiply, the West risks being a huge Israel to the world’s Gaza Strip: the hordes will come knocking, and when we don’t let them in, they will die, hate, fuck, and kill.

Whether we can ride out the world’s booms, and what will happen if we don’t make it, are questions ultimately of science and innovation. However, one possibility that we must be aware of is that failure in 20 years will be far worse than failure now. When a system has been systematically pushed beyond its natural boundaries, with each step making the chronic strain worse, it can collapse far more catastrophically than it previously would have been capable of.

Feeding the hungry without limits is not humane. It disregards their future generations and the world they live in. We need to cultivate a worldview that holds neither the human being alone nor our time as central, but recognizes that we are part of a vast web of life, stretching across species and centuries.

Of course, standing aside while people die is similarly unconscionable. I think that a third option exists. Aid is already given with strings attached, and it’s time to make those strings into composite ropes of steel. One possibility is to concentrate aid into distinct sustainable community projects. If we only have enough money to support a hundredth of the population, then construct a fair system for selecting that hundred and provide them with truly good infrastructure, extensive education and sustainable livelihoods. And give them high walls, because they’re going to need them.

Go see it. Or wait for the DVD, but watch it at some point. Flame and I watched it last night and talked about it for hours afterwards. The day feels somber in its wake.

A dream recently reminded me of something that I would do, or would happen to me, as a child. If I had had the words to describe it, I might have said that I had schizophrenic episodes. Something– and sometimes nothing– would trigger them, and like a rush closing in on me, the world would change its sound. Silence sounded like angry silence. The softest noises were amplified, with the extra volume grumbling like a mad crowd. The worst was the crinkling of paper, which with each crumple would shout in accusation. There were no words in the world’s anger, but neither was there reason or reprieve. I think the episodes would last anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple hours. It wasn’t long before I learned to recognize the change, and knew that the difference was just in my head, but I’m sure that my personality and body language shifted and cringed in an unconscious response.

I imagine that people in middle of the neurotransmittic bell curve never realize how close we all are to the extremes. As I remembering these episodes, I realize how easy it would be to recreate one now. It’s all in how you manage your brain– which instabilities you cultivate, which messes you allow to fester, which vibrations you let yourself rock to. The schizophrenic suffers from an excess of dopamine (amongst other things), the same chemical and feeling intensified by speed or Aderall. Some people, like my ex, naturally lead low-dopamine lives; when they take those drugs, they start acting a lot more like I do naturally. Every few years, some combination of surprises causes me to faint, with a little seizure for good measure. My faints are caused by a simple inner formula– a brain behavior that I know how to do but generally avoid, of focusing on a resonance that consumes my world. I think I see the same behaviors in the swaying of autistic children and the accusations that madmen make at lampposts. Madness is just around the corners of our minds, and only the most delicate mix of ego and observation keeps us from showing it.

I consider myself fully sane and fairly stable, and yet my inner experience seems at such odds with the transparent narrative we’re told to expect from ourselves. Any time I inspect them, my senses seem more like drunken sailors than clear lenses. My world appears more fabricated than discovered. My endless mannerisms seem so much stranger and more senseless to myself than they seem to seem to others. I’ll never know if my current instabilities stem from esoteric philosophy, intense relationships, past psychedelic drugs, innate nature, or willful choice. Each of these individually has a proven capacity to shift one over the edges of well-adjustedness, but I wouldn’t choose a life without all five. Together, they give me abilities unspoken of in the transparent-self narrative: to unburden myself of cares and life-dust by will alone; to grin inside at the thrill of life at its darkest and most painful moments; to recognize the secret activities of my unconscious.

Flame and I had our Going Away party last night, and are currently endeavoring to reprime our apartment walls. We leave Friday!

There’s a surge of updates, so here’s my piece.

I just came back from Louisiana-and-surroundings to try to help, where I went with Flame and two friends from work. Including the drive, we had six days to lend our services however we could, and they were pleasantly full of frustratingly senseless running around. We filled out all the right forms, and contacted a dozen other organizations besides, but all our leads fell through. The morning after flopping ourselves into a motel at the end of the 18-hour drive, we discovered the Louisiana BP crisis command center in Houma, LA, and slid into a training at the last moment. For the next four days, we peddled our training to dozens of contractors, broke into two or three “bases”, almost got hired to pick up oil, almost got to volunteer at a wildlife rescue group, and ultimately were unable to help in a single way. Almost everyone seemed excited to have volunteers, and then told us to contact the same three numbers to actually get started. We’re going to write up something more thorough in the next week about what we learned.

The day I went back to work, I gave my two weeks’ notice, narrowly dodging a promotion to project manager. Apparently it’s a good time to go, because every possible organizational change is currently being made. I’m relieved to have my imminent departure known, and my pile of work seems lighter now. Flame and I are going to have a joint Going-Away, Tag-Sale, Flame’s-Half-Birthday party in a couple weeks, do some frantic packing and re-painting, and head to California on the 23rd. We’ll be in wine country, with my family, for the weekend, San Francisco for a day, Seattle for two days, and Vancouver for three. Flame’s father feels guilty for not bringing her on a trip to see the world cup (he got tickets for giving a talk), so he’s bankrolling movers for us when we get back.

Workman Publishing Company
Attn: Editorial Department
225 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014-4381

To whom it may concern:

I was thrilled when I recently encountered the book How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Successful Dog Trainers, by Karen Salmansohn, and published by Workman Publishing. I am interested in producing a sister self-help book, to help men use modern dog training techniques on the women in their lives. As both a professional dog trainer with over ten years experience and a blogger on relationship issues with thousands of devoted readers, I believe I am uniquely qualified to produce this work.

I worry that many men, hoping to help their own women learn to behave, have purchased Ms. Salmansohn’s book, only to realize that her approach does not apply equally well to women. While women are like dogs in many unexpected ways, the techniques used for dogs must be translated differently. Mistranslating those techniques can result in adverse reactions and ill-mannered or absent women. Done correctly and with the most modern, sophisticated dog-training secrets, even beginners can produce obedient and dutiful women in 21 days or less! I am happy to say that I have used these techniques personally and helped many others use them to stop their women from misbehaving, talking-back, or running away.

Below is a tenable chapter listing for this sister volume:

Introduction: Biology and learning to see your lovers as a dog
1. Purebreds and Mutts: The two breeds of women and how to judge them
2. Going to the Pound: Finding women whose history and habits make her easy to train
3. Basic Housebreaking: Woman-proofing your house, locks, cages, and learned helplessness
4. Punishments and Rewards: The “outbursts and forgiveness” approach to bad behavior
5. Learning to Beg: The joys of submissiveness and showing her who is the “big dog”
6. Sit and Shake: Training your woman to please you in bed
7. Roll Over and Play Dead: Using conditioned women for your financial success
8. How to Put Her Down: Techniques when you are ready for a new pet
9. The Joy of Kennels: How to keep several women in your home

If you would like, I can produce a sample chapter or the introduction, but I am prepared to enter a contract and begin the book immediately. I believe that I can complete this work in approximately six months, and my financial needs are flexible.

I look forward to working with you soon!

Sincerely,
[]

(Here’s the scanned letter, for the post when they reply!)

I visited Boston last weekend and attended (amongst other events) a small reunion of the Experimental Study Group, my old haunt at school. I had the same conversation with nearly everyone: “What’s your PhD program going to be in?” followed by, “So, what’s Sustainable Development?”

I usually said that sustainable development was like international development, but done sustainably. In other words, it was about identify the problems of poor, developing countries, and helping them improve both themselves and their environment. The vision goes much deeper than that, but our words for talking about it are broken.

A few weeks ago, the Economist had an article about Antoine van Agtmael, the guy who coined the term “emerging markets” (Schumpeter, “An emerging challenge”). The first paragraph suggested that it wanted to question Mr. van Agtmael’s understanding of the developing world. The last sentence revisited that criticism, and everything in between was a somewhat fawning discussion of the coining of terms for the developing world. “The third world” connoted people wallowing in soviet mud; “the developing world” suggests the heavy role of government and policy-making by developed countries, which is always distasteful to economists. And so, “the emerging market” was born.

The article missed the most important problem with these phrases. Terms like “emerging” and “developing” suggest that other countries are like unformed clay, which a benevolent hand of state or capital can help form into a new people. We need to recognize that the clay has been cast, as people with bent backs, disrespected traditions, and savaged land. These are the worlds that Colonialism has wrought, through war and manipulation. Our words for describing poor countries entirely shy away from the actual problems of these countries: their people are poor, their societies are unjust, and their environment is in ruin.

I am not going into sustainable development. I am learning International Revitalization. Revitalization is more than a set of tactics. It’s a worldview that includes major changes in both rich and poor countries. It calls for a world where international cooperation is pervasive, diversity is cherished, and our decisions are based on long-term and eco-centric goals. International Revitalization is about taking the modest steps needed to eliminate world hunger, protect habitats, and secure family planning. We have the answers; now we can all be revitalists to make this a world we can be proud of.

I need to write about my weekends camping at Monongahela and running around Boston, but for now, check out this slick comic I found:

Make your own preferential voting races! Use them to make decisions in groups, to keep track of personal priorities, to decide where to go to dinner with friends! Try it out!

Preferential voting allows you to rank all possible candidates, and then applies an “instant run-off” scheme to get the final winner. As a result, you can vote your actual preference, even if you don’t think the candidate has a good chance of winning. Candidates are eliminated from the bottom, and when just two are left, the voting results accurately reflect how much each candidate would get in our normal “two party” voting system.

Vote on How I should improve the site next and See the results.

It will record your vote, based on your IP address, so you can go back and change it later.

This month’s Scientific American has an article on a new process for rejuvenating cells (“Your Inner Healers” by Konnad Hochedlinger). Technically, a simple cocktail of genes has been discovered that can reprogram an adult cell to have the pluripotency of embryonic cells. These cells have a healing ability unknown to the adult body, like “a Fountain of Youth to escape the consequences of aging and disease.”

It seems likely that within our lifetime, we (or at least those who can pay) will have full access to this power of rejuvenation. Which brings me to my question. Suppose by a simple process you could reverse aging, as much as you want. Your new stem cells would find the most worn-out of your adult cells, and replace them with shiny new ones. As a consequence, however, you would lose an equal part of the experience stored throughout your body, in a kind of fading away. You could become 20 years old again, but you would not be a sixty-year-old in a 20-year-old body. You would be a twenty-year-old, emotionally and intellectually, with vague remembrances of the 20th century.

Would you do it? How many years, and how many times? Would you live forever, eternally young and eternally forgetful?

Also, Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (author of Dykes to Watch Out For) is phenomenal. Intertwining threads of family and sexuality, lost in a forest of literary exploration, return again and again on ever deeper levels. Alison’s history unfolds in a gorgeous water-color, multimedia, cinematic way that only sequential art is capable of. I want to be every character in that book.