The Art of Correct Conclusions

Somebody, who must have had a lot of humor, gave the name "homo sapiens"  to humans, which live nowadays and which ancestors left Africa about 60 000 years ago.

If we look at, how we humans behave since thousands of years, then this name is totally wrong. Humans have always spent a lot of their resources to develop more efficient weapons, so that they could murder more humans.

And we go on with this behaviour. And we do our best, to destroy all resources, on which we depend, if we want to survive:

• we pollute all water on the globe with chemicals and plastics
• we destroy the farmland
• we do our best, to heat up the atmosphere as quickly as possible, so that the glaciers will melt, the sea levels will get higher and flood all towns near the coasts  and the number of earthquakes will increase, because the molten core of the earth will get loaded differently compared to today.
• vulcanic eruptions will also increase

• we waste our resources for miliary weapons and  wars, which increase the poverty in  the world, but do not solve one problem, but  only add much more.
• we accept, that the majority of humans live in poverty and will have no chance, to improve their living conditions

Question is, why are we so damned stupid on a larger scale but very intelligent on smaller scales ?
We must investigate, why human behaviour does not work on a larger scale. 

We  have the technical skills and all needed resources, so that all humans could have a fair share of  the global wealth and we all would even profit a lot from it.

Because now we are so stupid, to waste  the huge potential of all the poor people, who could attribute a lot to the global wealth, if we would give them a fair chance.

• How can it happen, that so many corrupt and cruel politicians come into power and why does nobody hinder them directly, before they get too powerful ?  Is it, because we are mammals and just accept everybody, who claims to be the strongest leader, without thinking about it for a second ?
• are we just too lazy to think in a rational and logical  way, based on facts and not on claims, which politicians make ?
• How can we find out, why we do not think correctly and how can we change it ?

Architecture with Bamboo

The poverty on earth increases and  solutions are needed to defeat it.

One solution could be, to plant more bamboo worldwide.

• it grows quite fast
• it is very strong
• it is cheap

  In total it is an excellent construction material and houses built with it will probably also withstand earthquakes.

Elora Hardy gives a very good presnetation about it on TED

Cameron Sinclair  is also engaged since many years, to design emergency houses, using locally available materials.

Online webinars

Nowadays it is easy and cheap, to use the internet for communication with others.

Most people  use only emails and the social media.

 But there is much more possible:

• online phoning and  online video conferences  ( using for instance skype:  www.skype.com )

• online reports and online seminars  ( using: www.edudip.com )

Skype is simple to use and can also be used with smartphones, which can save quite some money, if one has to do far distance phone calls.

But it lacks several features  compared with edudip, which makes the last the better choice for online reports and especially online seminars:

• private and public seminars

• number of participants  ( 500 in the free version and unlimited in the paid version )

• duration ( 60 minutes in the free version and unlimited in the paid version )

• Sale of webinars is possible

and  several more useful features. Just have a look at their website.

Assuming, that your internet bandwidth is large enough and you have a high speed internet connection, then  this is an excellent tool, to inform and educate people.

And for such a purpose  it can be used by:

•  private groups 
•  companies 
• organizations 

If only informations  are exchanged, then it is as good as  face to face meetings, saving a lot of  time and money for all participants.

Best is, to take part at some free  webinars,  then offer some  free webinars    and later decide, if one should use the paid version.

How to Use Problems, Using Blogs and Wikipedia

To get ideas, how a problem could get solved or even to get  guidelines, how  to solve it,  blogs can be  an excellent information source.

Many engaged people are active on blogs and more than happy, to  help others with their know how, to solve  problems.

The main problem is, to find the right blogs, which is not always so easy, because there exist millions of them.

But for  that purpose search engines were developed,  which  search only in blogs;  but they search only in  the title of blogs  or at the title of posts in a blog.

Let us assume, that we want to solve a technical problem:

• the blog search engine Technorati is an excellent search engine.
• at first we open it at:  technorati  and we see, that there are about 37 000 blogs. It is of course almost impossible, to go through the total list and we must start, to use search terms.  The search field  is on the right side of the technorati logo at the top of  the website.
• now let's go  on with "proa", which we already used with  "YouTube".  No research result is shown, but a remark, that we shall refine our search.  It is almost unbelievable, that nobody should have mentioned  "proa" in so many blogs. Therefore lets start now with "sailing boat".  Only  3  posts are shown, what is quite peculiar. What is wrong ?  If we look at the search field, we see, that there are 2  search functions:   One for blogs and one for posts.  We had kept posts activated and now we will activate "Blogs" and repeat the search with "Sailing boat".  A list with many blogs about sailing boats is shown.

• we now repeat the search with "proa"   and indeed, we find 2 blogs:

        proa17ufrgs.blogspot.com
        proaufrgsb.blogspot.com

If we activate the shown web sites, then we see, that they are in Spanish and have nothing to do  with sailing boats.

Therefore we have to go back to use "sailing boats"   A list with 84 blogs are shown, which we can go through. But no blog shows up, which fits well.  So this search was not successful. We now could try other  search engines for blogs or we look at wikipedia, to find some good links there:

• http://www.wikipedia.org/
• We give in "proa" and find directly a special site  about it.

From that experience, we can learn, that it can be better, to start at first directly with wikipedia,  check the given links and if that is not enough, then use search engines or look at YouTube.

But we can use blogs, even if they are not specialised onto our topic:  We  can  ask the experts on the blogs for their support. Because it is very probable, that they know something also beyond   the special topic of the blog.

How to Use YouTube for Problem Solving

On YouTube  are many informative videos, which  show,  how problems can be solved.

Of  course,   a bit time is needed, to find the really good ones, for which we can apply a step by step procedure, like for instance:

• At first we have to open the website:  http://www.youtube.com

• then we give some search words into the search field at the top of the screen, right of   the YouTube logo

• lets  take a look at  sailing boats:   We give  in  "sailing boat"  and a list with many video titles is shown, which we  scroll down, to find out, what interests  us

• I find  a  "proa"  interesting and give  this term  into the search field, to get an overview, how many videos deal with proas.  Again, many videos are shown, but also videos, which have nothing to do with the sailing boat proa, but with some sport teams.

• Thereore I now give "sailing boat proa"  into the search field,  to find only the videos, in which I am intested

• again, many videos are shown, one of them is an outrigger canoe and because  I have a canoe, I want to get more information about it and  give in now  "sailing boat outrigger canoe" and I find the video " sailing canoe" interesting and open it,  but because this video shows a trimaran sailing canoe, I now give in "canoe proa"   and find  "Guam Chamorro Traditional Canoes ", which shoes the rebuild of a traditional proa and  we can see very well, how the sailing mast is fastend in an oblique angle and not as in modern types vertically, which is not as good, because the wind  forces  destabilize the boat much more.

We see, that this video was uploaded in 2009.   7800 people have seen it,  but only23 gave positive comments. I think, that this is a shame.  If we see an informative video, even if it is  not  perfectly done, then we should leave a positive comment.

Some other excellent videos, also about proas:

• Outrigger Marshall Island's-National Cup Race

• KiteMaran BaliWind   ( modern proa )

• and an interesting model boat:   Hydroptère RC à Casteljaloux 47

By the way; it is a good idea, to build at first a functional model, to study some of its features, before building a full scale boat. and here a real sailing boat, using this design:  Hobie TriFoiler Promotional Video
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If anybody is interested, to build a sailing boat himself, he will find many execellent information on YouTube, which will help him, to develop his own innovative ideas.

Of course, using the same search procedure, we will find many informations about almost any topic.