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There is a little known restaurent in Playa del Carmen, Mexico called Alux (pronounced Aloosh) that is built entirely underground. It is an amazing place off the beaten path that spiritual people should experience.  It is a maze of interesting nooks and rooms built in harmony with the cavern.  It also has a very interesting and unique energy about it.

Affecting One Billion People

Here is an idea that could potentially affect 1 billon people; a sustainable fridge. Just heat it up on a cooking fire for 30 minutes, let it cool for 1 hour, finally place it inside the container to cool. No electricity required. It will cool a 15 litter vessel down to near freezing for 24 hours. Great for storing vacines, food, etc. Cost $25 in high volumes and $40 in low volumes.

Adam Grosser and his Sustainable Fridge

Changing A Continent

Neil Turok has a dream about the next Einstein comming from the continent of his youth. He also has been working to create that reality (in addition to his day job). He worked to create a successful model in the the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. That model can be scaled to cover the whole of Africa. Neil lectures about his wish here .

I have been contemplating about the conflict between conservative and liberal values… related to many different arenas of thought… including politics. For the last 10 years or so, the world of open source software has been in conflict with profit producing companies in the areas such as software, internet content, internet searches, and telecommunications. Many things affect the future of this conflict, including laws, judicial rulings and governmental agency policies.

I recommend you watch the TED talk from Yochai Benkler on Open Source Economics for an introduction.

Then checkout:

• The recent developments between Apache web server vs. Microsoft web server.
• Yahoo vs. the open directory project.
• skype vs. the telecoms
• wikipedia vs. encarta

Imagine how open source might explode if the $200 laptop project became a reality and every child in the world was connected to the internet. I hope that fear is not the thing that keeps us from embracing new economic ideas. I think fear is the motivation that makes many people embrace conservative values.

I recieved this response to my previous post.  It is long but well worth reading. 

I was reading your site articles and saw an article related to sex. If you have time, read some of what I have to say regarding that subject and marriage.

I have some of my friends and … [a relative] studying in… [the USA] and for sure they might be feeling the same way too.  I mean getting used to American culture.

Nobody here talks about sex and they leave it to their children to figure it out by themselves. Now it would not have been a big problem but for the invention of internet and the easily available information regarding sex it is very easy for people to get misguided.

We have a lot of castes with in Hindus; I mean divisions within a division. I will list some here: Gounder, Brahmins, Naykar, Chettiar, Nadaar and many more.

It is not only a sin to have sex before marriage; it is a great sin to marry people from other caste.

For example: My caste is Gounder and if I marry some one from Brahmin caste, I will lose respect and support from my relatives who all will see me as some one who has just committed a crime.

We are not allowed to choose our life partner until after we complete our studies and go for work… [A]t the age of may be 27 or 28 our parents will take our horoscope and go to our caste office where they will have similar horoscopes of men and women who are ready for marriage within our caste only(strictly). And select a suitable match. This matching is done solely based on the word of an astrologer who will look for matching horoscopes (I don’t know how they match but they look at some old astrology books written by sages) and tell our parents.

If we don’t marry them and try to convince our parents of love marriage (…choosing our own partners), even though some times our parents will accept our decision because of their love for us, our relatives wont respect us and wont want to talk to us.

How could they decide who we should live our life with and what if for a girl the guy who was selected was… [of poor] character?  Why should she put up with such a boy, while she has the option of finding the man of her dreams and living life to the fullest?

If you go in to a Brahmin family and look at their life style and…  look at my family’s life style it would be very different, We eat differently, talk the same language with a different slang, it would feel as though you have left… [the] country and entered another one.

…[I]nter-caste marriage does not have the convenience of mother-in-law [or] father-in-law relationships because, a Brahmin will not like the way we live and we won’t like the way they live. If some one goes against the norm and marries outside of the caste they are by themselves for their entire life. This is changing slowly now and people are now trying to learn different cultures, because they have no choice. At least that is what my mother is doing, because she has no other choice. My sister married a Brahmin boy. But the rate of change is very slow.

Now people in India want their daughters and sons to be settled in USA, but want their cultures to be preserved. I don’t understand how this works. They want their children to live in USA because it is a developed country and it gives them a sense of pride to tell everyone that their son has got married to some one in their culture and it is arranged marriage and they are living in USA which is a dream in it’s self for them. But they did not know that, if and when, their son puts his children in an American school he would only follow that culture and this caste differences would vanish. If they want the luxuries and opportunities and the American life style, they have to leave behind their cultural differences.

So slowly due to globalization and because more and more Indians are settling in US and some are coming back, I see that US culture is spreading rapidly in INDIA.

I can understand when you once told me, it will take some time for Indians to wake up to HBI knowledge. Because every one here wants to experience western way of living, which is what they are told when they are very young, they have to go USA for their studies. No one will think about life and its inner meanings until they experience that way of living (American) and which will in turn break away the cultural differences…

Check out on an interesting article on cultural mores on sex called  My Strange Relationship With Sex.

An Indian epic, the Mahabharata, has a story describing a wise prince who was given a riddle by a Sphinx-like demon. The demon asked, “What is the greatest mystery in the world?” The prince answered, “The fact that we all have to die, but we spend our lives denying it”. If I had to answer the question today, I’d say, “The fact that sex is such a fundamental part of human existence, yet we refuse to talk about it”. As my struggle with writing this article has shown, sex is a difficult topic even for somewhat liberated people to discuss. It should not be that way.

I am huge fan of increasing connectivity between people; E-mail, the internet, cell phones.  It’s like adding additional neurosystems to the planet.  I was under the impression that the cell phones in Europe are better and cheaper the in the United States because that’s what someone from Europe living in the U.S. told me.  Then I started to do my own research and found this blog: CTIA 2007: How far behind is the U.S. vs. Europe?

I guess you shouldn’t always believe what someone tells you.

I have thought a long time about how a country like the United States could take the lead in improving the situation in other countries in a way that would actually improve things for other people.  Here is my current best idea for how this might be done:

The US President picks trouble spot in the world such as Africa.  There is a lot of despair in Africa right now that affects the entire world, whether people recognize it or not.  Then President appoints a new cabinet level position; the Minister to Africa.  The new cabinet member gets a very small budget to set up some offices, hire a few staff members and funds for overseas travel.

Then the US President lobbies Congress for additional aid money to Africa, a small amount to start,  perhaps an additional $300 million.  That money, when approved, becomes available for countries in Africa to buy from the United States the things they think they need to improve their countries.  Of course, there are a few conditions, but only a few.  The money is only available when all countries in Africa act together, in consort.  And a few goods, such as anti-malarial drugs, the US government mandates to be sold at cost.  The consortium of African countries must pay their own shipping for the goods they acquire here.

Help Africa help themselves.  Then a united Africa can come to the US, and buy things they want to improve their situation.  Need water technology; fine, buy it with part of the $300 million.  Need an engineer to build a damn, fine, we will pay his salary.  Need anti-AIDS drugs or anti-malarial drugs, fine, buy it.

Encourage other countries to provide aid in the same manner.  Say India puts up $20 million in African aid.  This could be a real benefit because perhaps drug costs are half in India that they are in the United States.  This frees up the US money for other things.

Then every year, audit how the money is spent.  Did it reach the people?  Did it help?  Yes, then raise the amount to $330 million the next year.  Did a government official in country XYZ steal the drugs and sell them on the black market and hide the profits in his Swiss bank account.  Darn, only $270 million the next year.

It’s time we start to acknowledge that the old school way of solving problems is not enough. Information needs to be shared so we can come up with and acknowledge new ideas. Some of the new ideas that civilization needs to adopt already exist but they have not spread. The seeds are planted, it is up to humanity to see what sort of crop is cultivated and grows. Today I will focus on medicine and energy production.

Medicine:

Modern medicine is certainly ripe for change. A treatment for Alzheimer’s that should be explored is Aluminum Abstinence Therapy. This idea is being pushed by a doctor or a medical researcher but from a manager at a residential care facility for the elderly.

A professor at Washington State University has presented a new way to look at chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), fibromyalgia (FM) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Gulf War syndrome that also includes a treatment protocol. Initial results from trying the treatment protocol seem promising.

And then there is cancer. Is cancer the disease or is cancer the symptom of the actual cause? I don’t know, but it is certainly something to ponder.

Energy:

I’m not I know what is our world wide energy policy. I suspect the United States intends to burn every single barrel of oil that can be extracted from the Earth, whether it gets extracted now or 100 years from now. Never mind that burning ALL THE OIL may cause significant changes to the world wide climate. See AutoblogGreen.

…at a private lunch, GM chairman Maximum Bob Lutz said global warming is a “total crock of shit.” Bob adds “I’m a skeptic, not a denier. Having said that, my opinion doesn’t matter.”

Countries like Holland are much more invested in the problem of climate change.

January 28, 2008 · Architects in Holland are showing the rest of the world a way of turning adversity into opportunity.

The inevitable rise in sea level that comes with climate change is going to make it increasingly difficult to control flooding in low-lying Holland. But instead of cursing their fate, architects are designing a new Holland that will float on water, and the Dutch government seems willing to try out the scheme. Holland has made other countries begin to question, too. Who says you have to live on dry land?

Some data out there is starting to suggest that we have already reached a point of world wide peak oil production. And demand will continue to grow. Growth in countries like China and India ensure that demand will continue to increase. When the price of oil peaked a few weeks ago, the price per barrel had increased 500% in the last six years. Good for Exxon Mobile stock holders but will eventually be a drag on economies around the world. I suspect that eventually the oil will run out. The real question may be when does world wide oil production begin to decline. And what effects will that have on economies and society? And will we be ready to deal with the consequences?

Theoretical physicists have been searching for the elusive theory of everything for most of a century. There are between 5 and 7 theories out there, but the mainstream pretty much only focuses on one, superstring theory. One of these theories is even one from a surfer. My favorite is from Xavier Borg and available for perusing at the web site run by his non-profit research group. A potential side effect of this theory being true is that it may lead to an energy source that does not damage the enviroment.

It is possible to completely change a society in a single generation. The nation of South Africa is an example of sweeping changes in a short period of time.

Many religions are in currently in need of broad changes in thinking and practice. There is now some evidence that some of these religions may be starting to change for the better. In the words of Mohandas Gandhi, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

For some evidence, see an Associated Press article by Kelli Kennedy about a new strain of Christianity and Donald Miller’s book “Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality” (2003).

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Donald Miller still loves God and Jesus. Don’t misunderstand him.

His problem is with Christianity, at least how it’s often practiced.