meta-roj

civil rights

dead milkman. [ouch]

well, gay people getting married is a big story in america, but if you really want to get to the whole sanctity of marriage question, perhaps a quick glance across the equator will shed some light:

Church slams Chile divorce plans

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Chile has criticised government plans to introduce the nation’s first divorce laws.

according to the article, if this goes through, that will leave malta (a mediterranean island-nation “slightly less than twice the size of washington, dc”) as the only democratic nation without legal divorce.

perhaps there’s enough room on this democratic bastion of solid marriage values for all the righteous sanctity of marriage advocates?

from the cbc (i think – in any case, it was a radio program) comes news [in the new scientist] of the house-building robot of the future. 2005, maybe. behrokh “berok” khoshnevis and yan xiao brings us this wonder. and it’s well on its way – from what i’ve seen 2005 isn’t just vapor – even if they don’t quite get all the painting done, it’ll still be a good chunk of a finished house.

this could be a big change for habitat for humanity. it could also be a lot bigger than exporting geek jobs to india.

a random statistic i pulled out of the thin web (credited to the building industry association) suggests that it takes 1100 human-hours to build a typical house. another random statistic says that there were 1,700,000 housing starts in 2004. that’s about 1.87 billion human-hours devoted to building houses in the united states (close enough for blog work). so when this thing does its thing, then this housing-construction market could collapse (we shared something vaguely like this before. 1.87 billion human-hours (that’s 935,000 2000-hour work-years)… say… 408 million (that’s three 8-hour shifts for 10 days, or 240 hours per house).

i’m just speculating, of course. eventually, maybe you just drop this machine off on a worksite with some architectural plans and show up every couple hours with a new truckload of building-goo. given our experience with inkjet printers, i think you can count on paying more for the building-goo (in special, drm-controlled, chipped, patented containers) than for the machine.

then we have to revisit the concept of “homeless in america”

update (2005.04.10): this story now covered in discover and subsequently slashdot

a brillant bit of news. if only i could get along with institutionalized education.

yahoo ran it, i picked it up at metafilter

Along with eliminating the average $2,300 expected contribution from low-income students’ families, Harvard also announced that students whose parents earn from $40,000 to $60,000 will receive a substantial increase in aid.

Tuition, room, board and fees at Harvard cost $37,928 this year.

this just flashed through cnn as a teaser, and cbs has a story about people watching porn in… *gasp* vehicles. mobile porn. wow.

[cue paradise by the dashboard light]

is it really a surprise? the looney tunes edition suv isn’t just for cartoons anymore… [insert reference to technological determinism]

and it’s not really new news, a few weeks ago, a similar story was picked up as far away as south africa and new zealand (or maybe it’s just something about reading about watching porn in the southern hemisphere…)

gotham city without the matrix? (no, not that matrix, the multistate anti-terrorism information exchange) how will we ever catch the joker now?

interesting news from the ap wire…

“New York has dropped out of a multistate crime database program”

monologue-ist

aw, geeezz… you had to open with coffins and piles of rubble?