Blog – Page 29 – john paganetti

$2 per day

I figured I should write this down before I erase it from my whiteboard.

1lb pasta @ $1.5 / 4 srv = $0.375
1lb oatmeal @ 3.14 / 12 srv = $0.262
1 loaf bread @ $1.6 / 10 srv = $0.16
misc. fillings @ $7 / 7 days = $1
TOTAL / PERSON / DAY = $1.797

Just an idea I had while listening to a recent story from This I Believe. It was a recent story from a prisoner in Michigan. The essay was recorded by phone, since they don’t allow recording equipment inside the jail. This got me thinking about a few blogs I’ve seen run by friends or family of inmates, who post letters they get from prisoners online. Its basically blogging by proxy.

But most prisoners don’t have someone who can do this for them. What if we could set up a site that nearly completely automated the process? OCR is at a point where it would be trivial to scan a letter and post it online. Or it could even be possible to set up a phone number that prisoners could call and their message could be converted to a text post. It seems pretty feasible, and I’d imagine it would be incredibly interesting, so I’m going to keep this idea stewing until I found out what the best way to do this would be.

I made bread!

Yes friends, its true. I’m so proud. With this simple recipe, I was able to make bread from start to finish in about four hours or so. If you choose to do this, I have some suggestions: get a real pot holder/oven mitt. I’ve got a real nice burn because the paper towel I was using was not adequate. On the plus side, I’ll have a really interesting looking fingerprint from now on. Also, don’t let your first impressions trick you. It may come out of the oven rock hard, but its just about perfect. Once it cools you can cut it up and enjoy. Oh, and you probably shouldn’t bake on plates you use to eat, even if they are oven safe. And if you do, you should probably oil them or something so there isn’t a layer of bread burnt on to them.

Anyway, I made bread.

Heavy Things

Whoa, I just saw the last posts from this blog in Google Reader, and its getting way too heavy. Let’s lighten things up. Here’s a unicode snowman for you:

☃

Vlogging

Recently I’ve been missing the show more than usual, so I went out looking for a new vlog to latch on to. And I didn’t find any. Most of the things that come up when I’m looking for vlogs are just internet videos. Meaning shows that could be anywhere, but happen to be on the internet. Some examples are Rocketboom, Ask a Ninja, and Robert Krampf’s Experiment of the Week. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, just not what I’m looking for.

So I went to askme, figuring someone had already asked something along those lines, but they hadn’t, so I did. Two responses. I got 80 when I was looking for Boring Books. Does no one watch vlogs anymore, or are there just no vlogs to watch?

It is worth noting that the suggestions that I got were good. ill doctrine is a vlog that seems to be about hiphop, but from what I’ve watched seems to be often about other things. And Brigitte Dale’s vlog is about as close as I think I’ll get to the show.

the show was the first vlog I ever followed, and I loved it. But I remember reading that it would take him hours each day to compose those few minute episodes. I’d imagine that’s why there aren’t more people vlogging. Someday I’ll give vlogging a shot, but that’s a long way from now. I need to have something worth doing first.

Myth and the Information Age

Myth has its roots in poor access to information. There are loads of myths from ancient times, though as time goes on, the myths get fewer and fewer. In fact, there is a inverse correlation between the amount of recorded information and the amount of myths circulating. Looking at the history of the United States, there were many myths and folktales in the colonies, and as time went on and newspapers grew and people began to write, they became fewer. In the West, there was a strong frontier myth until the West became Urbanized.

But today, we’re looking at an unprecedented amount of information. The internet has made it so that anyone can contribute to the available pool of information, and anyone else can easily access it. What will happen to myth? We know more about celebrity and events than we ever have before in history. As hard as the National Enquirer tries, its not easy to make credible things up.

Myth’s best chance seems to be the purposeful dissemination of bad information, but the internet has already dealt with that. I’ve seen many many cases of “Breaking News” that over the course of a day is quickly revealed as fake. When everyone who reads a story can easily check its validity, it is near impossible to pass any wooden nickels. The future won’t have any cowboys, or Paul Bunyan, or Johnny Appleseed.

I think what I’m getting at is the death of private life. We volunteer so much information that private life no longer exists. I’m certainly guilty of this. But there is loads of talk of that elsewhere, so I’ll stick to myth. It seems that someone would have to go out of their way to create any myth. Artists who don’t give interviews are good examples here. I think I’ll miss myth.

The Story of a Lithuanian

This is an excerpt from a first-person account of coming to America around 1900 from a Lithuanian immigrant named ‘Antanas Kaztauskis.’ The full testimony was originally published in 1904 in The Independent magazine.

[After I arrived in the United States, e]verything got quicker – worse and worse – till then at last I was in a boarding house by the stockyards in Chicago with three Lithuanians, who knew my father’s sisters at home.

That first night we sat around in the house and they asked me, “Well, why did you come?” I told them about that first night and what the ugly shoemaker said about “life, liberty and the getting of happiness.” They all leaned back and laughed. “What you need is money,” they said. “It was all right at home. You wanted nothing. You ate your own meat and your own things on the farm. You made your own clothes and had your own leather. The other things you got at the Jew man’s store and paid him with sacks of rye. But here you want a hundred things. Whenever you walk out you see new things you want, and you must have money to buy everything.”

Then one man asked me, “How much have you?” and I told him $30. “You must buy clothes and look rich, even if you are not rich,” he said. “With good clothes you will have friends.”

If you want to read the whole story, it is online here.

Low Income Intentional Communities

In my sociology of gender class, we were talking about how welfare effects low income single mothers. In the course of this discussion, my professor brought up the national poverty line. To qualify for welfare, you have to have an income below the set line. In 2008 for a family of 4 it is $21,200.

This got me thinking. I had to figure out what the average cost of feeding a person for a day was, for the Tour. With an incredibly basic meal that can be flexible enough to be not boring day after day, I found a person can live off $2/day. That is eating: Oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pasta for dinner. All you need to make any of these meals is water and a stove. Basic, but everything you need.

Going off that assumption, it would cost $2920 to feed a family of 4 for a year. At $8/hr (min wage in many states soon), that comes out to 365 hours, or about 46 days a year. For the entire family. Of course, the poverty level is about $18,000 higher than that, and most people work more than two months out of the year – so where does all that other money go?

The problem is in the infrastructure. Rent and utilities cost a lot, and other basic amenities. How can we get rid of those costs? This is where my infatuation with intentional communities (communes) comes in. Dividing the cost of the infrastructure among many people, and making it completely self-sustaining could eliminate infrastructure costs within a generation. If this completely sustainable environment could house three generations, then it could exist in perpetuity with the only costs being food, taxes, and luxuries.

This situation works for all economic classes within the U.S., and is a far more attractive lifestyle that what is currently the norm. And there is nothing mandating working only two months a year, it is possible to work the same number of hours currently worked, and increase the quality of life dramatically.

The problem, of course, is that this only works if everyone doesn’t do it. For widespread adoption, a different model is required. The only real hurdle is the initial investment. But I fully intend to game the system and pull this off for as long as I can. The more people who work with me, the easier it is.

In the shop

I dropped by Cheney today and found that Anne has been successfully moved inside. Soon the steel to build the tank will arrive, be welded into a wonderful large tank, and mounted in the bus. I’ll be keeping this blog updated with progress.

That time again

I guess I’m lucky to say that this hasn’t happened to me in years. But it is happening again. And I remember last time sucked. Well, when it happens, it doesn’t suck that much – sometimes its even preferable. But the time spent preparing really sucks. That’s why this is such an unfortunate week.

I have four midterms on Thursday. The one class I don’t have a test in, has one scheduled for next week. I don’t know if there’s a right way to do this, but my method is going to involve a lot of dew and trance music. That should do it. Tuck and roll.

Come to think of it, I don’t think this has happened to me before. What I was thinking of was a single week that was packed with tests. And then I had a two year grace period where that didn’t even happen because I was taking classes from so many different departments. If I ever claim to know what I’m doing, I’m lying.