Relax

It's dark just a little earlier than I thought. It's quiet. Dog lying on the floor to my left. Cat washing herself on my right. Crickets chirping all around. It's a gorgeous night with cool fresh air wafting in through the window above and tickling whatever skin I have exposed. It must be August.

Dragon

This one is for Raya. She keeps buggin me to show her the dragon.

Erika is putting screws into the wall to hold the chicken wire and the mud. We don't want it to fall off.

Half of the first layer of mud is applied.

The left wing is up. You can see the screws in the wall to hold the right wing.
I think we are going to have a lot of cool looking walls if she hangs around a few years.

Sudden understanding

That fleeting moment of clarity... Oh how I love it.
How do I get it more often?, and make it last longer?
Sometimes it seems to come from nowhere. Usually, If you pay attention, you can notice what conditions helped to set it up.

One time I was just writing about the nature of time, a gem popped out in the text and the understanding happened afterwards.

Another time, I was walking on a track in a perfect summer night with nothing to clutter my mind. Suddenly the curves of the track opened up insights into Einstein's view of 4 dimensional space-time and gravity. I never understood it before.

Alas, These little moments of clarity seem so short, usually not long enough to write it all down. How do we pursue these beautiful butterflies of thought?

It turns out to be a healthy safety valve

Deep inside the mind is a psychological process that has puzzled me for decades. Some sources say that up to 40% of ordinary people are turned on by or have fantasies about being tied up. It doesn't take much time to find out that the internet has thousands of sites that pander to such things. There are also countless manufacturers making hardware to sell for that kind of play.

With most people who actively have such fantasies, it only comes around occasionally when the biorhythms and planets line up just right. The rest of their lives they really have little interest in such things.

Why would someone want to let someone tie them up or tie themselves up?
The answer is emerging... DANGER!

Some people pursue danger. They may drive fast, climb cliffs, take drugs, etc. Experts say that the reason some couples get a thrill from having sex in unusual places is the slight chance of getting caught.

Recent tests have proven that when men are shown pictures of pretty women they are more likely to take risks. (Pictures of plain women have no such effect.)
These things feed my theory…

Built into our genes are forces that convince us to conform and behave for the good of society. At the same time (and for very good evolutionary reasons) we have smaller counter forces that tell us to rebel, beat the odds, try something different. Biorhythms and circumstances sometimes align to make those forces stronger. Like most bio-drives, if they are ignored, they just build up pressure.

Some people end up driving fast cars, where the danger can cause instant carnage and death. Some people chase fast women, where the danger is divorce, disease, etc. For those who play games where they tie themselves up, or let a trusted loved one tie them up, they might get caught, or they have some risk of being controlled by another during their play. The danger is psychologically real but physically inconsequential.

This, if done well, is a healthy and safe way to diffuse our internal biological drives to court danger. Just like swearing, it has to remain illicit in polite society or it serves no function.

Third world country

Lately, I've been consumed by learning how to import solar heating equipment. I think it must be because of the challenge of learning new things, the intrigue of working with exotic foreign partners, the ability to economically create products that seemed out of reach a few months ago.

In many ways, I'm starting to feel like we already live in a third world country. Case in point is the solar tubes I'm shopping for. 90% of them in the world are manufactured in China. The few that are manufactured in america are priced many times higher.

In a few short years we have come to accept that products designed in the far east work better than american designs. They are assembled better too. And why not? They work harder in school. I am told that 55% of their college students are engineers, compared to 5% here.

All 7 members of the politburo, the top Chinese lawmakers, are card carrying engineers. Most of our lawmakers are lawyers.

The 20th century largely belonged to america. This next century will mostly belong to the chinese.

The future continues to wax and wane.

Always in motion is the future.

If you are designing a product that will be on the market 5 or 10 years in the future, you want that product to do well in the world to which it is introduced. How different will that world be from the one we inhabit today?

Six months ago I started a serious look into the future. Apparently the teacher took my quest seriously. Every week I was introduced to another view of up and comming technologies, each more startling than the last.

I was fascinated, but the cumulative learning threw me into future shock. Within the span of an average lifetime, we are in for many deep and profound changes. Absorbing this much realization caused psychic indigestion; mild depression.
(if you are compelled to do this; for a start, google Spiritual Machines and NanoTechnology and Desktop manufacturing and Space elevator Each of these will profoundly change our economic and social environment.)
Like fire or water, these forces are equally powerful for good or evil. The net result is that we are in for very positive and exciting changes, if we don't blow ourselves up first. I'm not going to try to detail them here because it would take several in-depth conversations for anyone to even begin to believe it.

Added to these technical changes, many ancient and modern religions predict that these are the end times. Economic patterns suggest hard economic and political times in the next 15 years.

Bottom line forecast:
Be prepared for hard economic times.
Be prepared for great economic times.
Be flexible, resourceful, out of debt, close to the earth.

Death as an advisor

Carlos Castanada wrote a series of books about his teacher, a wizard warrior named don Juan. Many of the lessons he was taught seemed bizarre at the time, yet they ultimately ring true. One of the simpler lessons is to use death as an advisor.

It didn't take long to realize that he is right. The advice you hear usually helps you to calm down, take things in perspective, not fear needlessly, go ahead and act.

Maybe it is because he has a lot of practice, but it turns out that death is a darn good advisor.

Minnesota weather

Two days ago I built a well water air conditioner just in time. Two days ago the nights were warm and the days were beastly hot and humid. The new gadjet cooled off the strawbale building like a dream.

Now the outside air is 50 degrees. Who knows if we will ever need an air conditioner again.

Energetic week

This week has has been busy so far. Negotiating new artists, helping Amy at the fair, negotiating with new business opportunities, new partners, new mud mixers, cob lobbers, rock seperators, built and installed custom air conditioner, tours for college class, designing new solar front for our building, sorting and cleaning and insulating, new massage person, attending tai quan do testing and babysitting, not to mention learning new plants and handling fresh farm produce.

The last half of the week looks good too.

The World's Healthiest Foods

The world's healthiest foods is a site that I just happened to bump into. I ended up bookmarking it because it is so well done, simple yet extensive.

Now that I think about it, Food is the set of habits that I am trying hardest to improve.

Habits

Habits fascinate me. They are the compound interest of life. Over time they become powerful forces, the currents that sweep you through your life's journey. They are behind much of your luck and karma, whether good or bad.

We, as people, are really nothing more than a collection of habits. (Just try to think of some aspect of yourself that doesn't ultimately boil down to some sort of habit.)

Common examples of the power of interest...
:Most people don't realize that the average person pays for their house 3 times due to interest.
:Mathematics graphically explain why you would be a millionaire if, rather than smoke, you put the money for 2 packs a day into long term investments.
(a quick check on an the first compound interest calculator I found on google shows that about $5.5 per day at 9%(average return from stocks) over 50 years adds up to $2 Million.)

That same power is working a zillion times per day in our personal habits. Every little thing we do is usually part of a habit. It can be aimed at making life better or worse, or just aimed randomly.

Mathematics can also explain why your life would tend to be set back by major accidents if you made habits out of taking little safety shortcuts. For instance, let's say that every time you jay walk you have one chance in 10,000 of an accident. If you walk to and from work and end up jay walking 5 times per work day, that's 1000 times per year. In 5 years you have a 50/50 chance of being hit by a car during a jay walk. What if you do it for 30 years?

Multiply that by the countless little habits that make up our lives and...
WOW! We really do create our own luck.

They are going down!

It's hard when you try to help somebody over and over and they just keep making bad decisions. No matter how many breaks you arrange for them, no matter how many times you outright give things to them, they still manage themselves into deeper problems.

Tonight Lynn and I were discussing several situations around us that are coming to a head. Friends who we keep trying to help. They either delude themselves or they delude us or others and eventually it catches up to them. They end up in legal trouble and financial trouble, each causes the other.

At some point you have to stop helping. It is not really helping anyway. They have to sink or swim. Sometimes, hard lessons are the only ones that really work.
I can think of twice we went broke and it turned out to be very good for us. We emerged wiser and ultimately better off.

Sometimes we help someone and it actually has a happy outcome. Those cases usually involve little or no money. Its usually simple stuff that has the best outcome.

Too much at once Rant

Life is busy.
I figured I would spend most of the day at the energy fair in Little Falls, just over an hour's drive away. By the time I did a little babysitting and favors and chores, I didn't get on the road until nearly 2:00. Even the road trip was interupted with another semi-unplanned but high priority meeting. I finally got to the fair 30 minutes before we had to leave again to get to a dinner invitation and concurrent babysitting.

You have to keep in mind that this energy fair is all about what we do. We were even planning on giving a straw bale house demonstration (before Pete died and Ryan broke his finger). It takes us about an hour to talk to each of the dozen vendors of interest. There are things to be learned and connections to be made. 30 minutes doesn't quite do it.

I maybe I can squeeze it in tommorrow night or Saturday.

Growth

Galen is definitely older and more capable than he was last time he was here. He is very polite. I am impressed.

Vitamin D exposure

Recent studies have shown that vitamin D has a great anti-oxident effect. It is powerful at reducing cancer. Sunshine on your skin is the best way to get vitamin D. As long as you don't burn, sunshine is five times more likely prevent all kinds of cancer than it is to cause melanoma.

I love the privacy of our place on a Sunday morning. The sun was shining, the grass needed watering, and I was talking on the phone for hours with Raya. It felt really good to be running around watering the lawn, totally naked except for my straw hat.(My face already gets too much sunshine, the rest of my pastey white body needed sun.) I got comfortable out there. After a long time, I was so into my chore and the phone call that I didn't notice Ryan and Amber driving up the driveway until they were already here. They laughed when I suddenly dropped the hose and ran indoors. I did too.

Hobby

Barb was our first employee, starting sometime around 1986. She has been working for us on and off ever since. She was around while we were a little bitty basement operation. She was with us during the wild white knuckle ride while Hunt Tech grew at 100% per year for 5 years. She is with us again while we are creating our environmental research campus.

Right now, it is pretty hard to articulate our current goals. When a neighbor asked Barb what she does at her job, she replied she has no idea. Today, Barb commented that it boils down to... she has been helping me with my hobby for 20 years.

It's true. When we were poor, my job was my hobby. That kind of focus made us successful. Now my hobby is my job. I hope it also creates wonderful outcomes.

Misc. Stuff

Family has kept me very busy lately. It is good, but reduces the chance of a good blog.

Our new yard is being used quite a lot. The weather is perfect for it, warm and mostly dry, few bugs.

Ray and I have been doing a lot more "what is reality" discussions lately. Ray is feeling compelled to study it. I am loving this. Fifteen years ago, Ray and I spent countless hours "wasting time" in similar discussions when we should have been working. I feel it had a lot to do with the subsequent success of Hunt Technologies.

When I get the time, somebody remind me to post about:
:Future shock
:What is inertia
:Huddha, the minor demigod of obscure realities
:Universe in a computer

Life's a beach

I may have mentioned that we suddenly have a lawn. Did I also mention that it is wrapped around a very nice playground that is sitting in the middle of a giant sandbox? It is our own private beach, without the dangers of deep water.

Today Lynn came home from a two day trip carrying two 6 year old boys and a carload of chinese food. They joined Ethan and Avery and we all had a very pleasant evening burying each other in the sand.

Landmark Time

Time is subjective:
Some hours drag slowly, some wizz by. Each year seems to go faster than the last.

Time is objective:
We agree that some things happen at regular intervals, like the earth turning or an atom resonating. Because we can all observe them and they are regular compared to each other, we use them as a measure of time.

In its travels, our consciousness hangs around these reference points for the same reason you would hang around a landmark. It helps us meet others.

How Wide is "Now"?

It keeps giving me hints.
Perhaps time is not something we are moving through. It IS our moving.
Our consciousness is like a little dot of light traveling through many dimensions. We view some of those dimensions as space. The dot illuminates the wee little bit that we can perceive. We notice changes as the dot moves, and we call it time.

The question is; How wide is that dot?

I am gathering more and more personal experiences suggesting that at a subconscious level we know when something emotionally big is about to happen.


Many times my body "preacts" meaning it reacts hours before some incident happens.
Case 1:
I was a little kid. A group of us periodically broke into an abandoned house. Many weeks later the cops showed up and every one in the group got in trouble. Not me. I was sick that day with an upset stomach of unknown origin.

Case 2:
I was in high school. Some friends stole a piece of the cable TV system, thinking it was not in use. It turned out they knocked out service to a large section of town for a few hours. Many weeks later I got an upset stomach for no good reason and went home to bed in the middle of the school day. I turned on the police scanner for entertainment and listened to them close in and arrest my friends that afternoon.

Case 3:
I'm an adult. My daughter Raya drives 25 miles from home to college every day. In the winter she is to take the larger highway because it is straighter and better plowed.

One day I came home from work totally wiped out (for no particular reason). I went to bed at 5:00. At midnight I woke up, sat in the dark living room alone for an hour or two, feeling lousy and bummed out. Then, out of the blue I decide to give the dog a bath at 2:00 AM.?? After giving him the bath I felt fine and went to bed.
I slept like a log until 7:30 when the phone rang. Raya had just rolled the car. She was ok. The accident happened on the small highway at a curve. Why was she taking that route?
We rushed over to the site; cops, tow trucks, commotion, and our dog runs up to me.
"What is he doing here?" I asked. Raya explained that she was on that road because she was taking the dog to the groomer on her way to college.

It took me a while to put it together. I had been preacting to the car accident. When I bathed the dog, my subconscious was satisfied that I had done something to prevent it.

Case 4:
In a semi dream state I was having a conversation with my "spiritual advisor". To condense the story, I was given a hint that someone on the Crow Wing Co-op board was going to die. The next day, the person on that board who was closest to us died of a heart attack.

Case 5:
My second entry in this blog site was titled "FLOWERS" and I noted that I was compelled to use it and knew not why. Two days later Pete died in a car accident. We were buying flowers.
This case is subtle, but the feeling wasn't. It is also worth noting that the HUG web site journal was currently focused on Pete.

So what do you think? With a little retrospection can you come up with cases where you preacted emotionally?