What will it take?

Let's face it; the global economy sucks, the weather patterns are being altered, surpopulation is overloading the planet's resources.
Not only most of the human population seems to be blisfully ignorant of the damage we are causing our environment, but those who do know are not helping matters much.

What will it take to make humans change course and adopt a rational way of living?

Reasoning with or educating people is a waste of time if you try to apply it globally. Too many cultures are indifferent or plain hostile to new ideas. As you well know, any average person will not move unless his life is in emminent danger.

Of course, the cause of all this global misery is selfishness. Everyone wants to be happy and free of suffering. And happiness in this age is defined by consumerism; get as many things as you can before you die. It doesn't matter if you really need it or not, the ones selling the stuff WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED!
And since most people are too lazy to do the research for themselves, even with today's internet resources, don't count on people to educate themselves about the worthiness of consumer products.

The solution is simple; first everyone has to understand what their basic need are:
1- Food
2- Clothing
3- Shelter.

Everything else is luxury. Food includes clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, healthy food to eat. Clothing is what you need to keep healthy, not to look good in the eyes of others. Shelter is to be adapted to local climate and seasons for the purpose of providing a safe space to sleep, eat and support a family.

Nothing exceptional here. But somehow humans got so lost in superfluous stuff that they are destroying natural resources at an unprecedented speed in the history of this planet.

Why? It seems that in humans, having enough is never enough. Look at the diet of north-american average Joe's, way above what is life sustaining. Double or triple the amount of calories needed is swallowed every day. They just can't stop eating.
How many shoes do you own? Yet how many can you wear at any one time? Answer: you can only wear one pair at any one time, so what's the use of owning 10? 20? 2000?
Same goes for everything fashionable. If the neighbour happens to buy the latest lawnmower, you can be sure those living around him will soon get one too, even if the old one is only 1 year old. Ridiculous.

But that's just me it seems, when I start talking like this to people, I get the "look", as if I'm a lunatic. That's the selfishness again. People simply have brains that are wired so that only the things that interest them personally get's past their senses into consciousness. Everything not immediately threatening to their lifes is simply ignored.

As I always say; Nature will take care of herself, even if it means the destruction of everything we have built.

Rationality...

Most people think they act rationally most of the time. Yet when you see them on the road driving a car, you can seriously doubt they are acting rationally. The fact is that several scientific research have concluded that rationality is not the normal operating mode of the human brain. It turns out that the decision making process is influenced by emotions and a bit of experience. To act rationally would mean that the brain has access to a vast amount of accurate data relevant to the situation. Instead, we make a judgment based on what we know, and the feelings of the moment. This is far from rationality. What then are the consequences of this? Just look around and you will see people that are obese because they feed themselves according to what they desire instead of what their body actually needs. You will see people gambling their life saving away because they "feel" they will beat the system instead of considering the statistical odds. You will see people voting for complete assholes instead of looking at past track records of political parties.

I'm very pessimistic concerning the future of a race that will decide it's ultimate fate based on the irrational thinking that rules these days. The vast majority of people cast their votes based on nothing but emotional impressions they get from TV, and that not rational. Of course this points to the mental state of the whole civilisation, which is about the same anywhere on this planet.

Only very few people will place rational thinking before personal gain and greed. In their head, it all make sense, but only to themselves. To hell with the human race, as long as I'm making gazillions of dollars.

It's the default mode of operation of the brain, to gather information, analyse it, then draw a conclusion... seems innocent enough. What throws a brick in this system is the emotional side of the brain. It colors everything, it steers the decision making process away from the rational conclusion. What results is sometime wonderful, heroic even. But most of the time, the outcome is selfish, greedy and destructif.

Yep!..

Busy all the time...

Yeah! always busy with something or other. But finally, I have found this neat little software that makes your PC sound like an old typewriter... Yes! Finally because the last time I used a PC with this keyboard sound was in the days of the Atari ST. And I have searched regularly ever since. Why? Because having the sound as feedback somehow doubles my typing speed... So now I have doubled my production. LOL.

For those interested, the software is called Clickey and it's free.

Follow-up on the Redsail CNC router

Finally got around to modify the table to my taste. All the T-Slot extrusion have been reinforced with 1"X2" aluminium extrusions screwed to the underside. Then the 1/2" plastic strips screwed on top and milled flat with the router. Now the surface of the table is precise to 0.001" all over the 24" X 36", with no deflection when you press down on it. excellent.

First project done on it was a frame for a test jig. Everything came out within .002". I'll post pictures next week and maybe a video.

Redsail RS6090 CNC router

I received this machine at work recently and these are my impressions about it.

First, this machine is made in China by a company called Redsail. They state that they sell in over 40 countries, with more than 10,000 machines sold. They have a wide range of machines, from small desktop laser engraver to big industrial multi-head CNC routers. They also have stone CNC engravers.

This model has a 24" X 36" work area, with 4" Z height.
The spindle is a water cooled variable frequency drive, 2.2KW motor. Top speed is 24,000rpm.
The chuck is standard ER-20 collet. Can take up to 1/2" dia shanks.

The construction of the table frame is cast steel, not pretty to look at but is flat and very rigid.
The Table frame sits on a 3" welded square tubing stand, also very rigid.
The gantry is made with very thick cast aluminium parts.
X and Y ballscrews are 1", Z ballscrew looks like 1/2"
25mm linear bearings and tracks all around.
No detectable backlash anywhere.
Spindle has less than .00025" runout, the limit of my dial gauge.
The electronic is hand held DSP control, separate drivers for the motors, the electronic enclosure is spacious with fan forced ventilation.It is integrated in the base.

The top of the table is covered with T-slot aluminium extrusions, and are very thin walled. They are rigid enough for sign making in wood or plastic, but can't handle precision machining in aluminium.
Also, those extrusions come covered with a "rigid foam" that will compress when you tighten the clamps to hold your work, making it very difficult to maintain the level of the part.

To correct this problem, I removed the foam and will replace it with 4" wide strips of 1/2" Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMW), fastened on the extrusions every 4". Then milled flat by the machine. The T-slot extrusion will be made more rigid by the addition of 2" X 1" aluminium structural extrusions on the underside. Will post more pictures later.

Dead birds falling, dead fish floating...

By reading some of the idiotic comments posted about the above recent events by the ignorant masses of idiots all over the net, you can conclude that the end of the world won't be brought upon us from external events like cataclisms or celestial alignments... but by collective extreme idiocy.

These mass bird and fish death have happened before and mostly caused by inhabitual weather events, in this case probably a cold snap.

Just look at what happens to the traffic in New York during the snow storm before Xmas...

Collective extreme idiocy is closely related to common beliefs and education of society. This is what happens when the only source of continuing education is TV game show and talk shows...

One comments was about the government not telling the truth about those events... The fact is very few people bother to look for the truth themselves, as it would require to direct their eyes away from their TV for 5 minutes...

What I find most funny is that if the end does come, 99% of the ignorant idiotic masses won't have a clue why.

Open Awareness

The aim of buddhist meditation, in one form or other, is to expand the awareness by un-focussing the attention. The difficulty reside in that "attention" is a brain function that is hard to control. Attention, just like breathing or digestion can't be stopped. And it gets bored fast, it jumps from objects to objects, constantly attaching itself to everything around you, or when done with the stuff outside you, it will start daydreaming about the past, or the future...endlessly talking to itself...

STOP! BREATHE! RELAX! become aware, but don't analyse. Just sit and be aware. Let the river of conscious thoughts go by without following them. It's not hard, just keep coming back to just being aware when you catch your attention focussing on something.

The Tree: I like this analogy. Imagine a big tree with thousands of leaves flapping in the wind. Hear the sound. Now focus on one leaf. See it move. Now move your focus on the leaf next to it. Now include the first one in your attention. Are you aware of the two leaves? Keep expanding your attention one leaf at a time until all the leaves are in your awareness. Becoming the tree is to be intimately aware of every leaves, branches, trunk and roots...