Coconuts are excellent

Coconuts are good for many reasons.

Expanding Your Social Circle

 

There are many ways to expand one's social circle.

 

Today I did something which I don't normally ever do, which is that I went to Starbucks to use my computer. In fact I did not purchase anything and I am not planning on it, which I'm fairly sure is against the rules, so it's very fortunate that I just don't give a fuck.

 

The interesting thing about this activity was that when I connected to their internet without permission, the first thing that popped up was a bizzare poll in which a word read "cast" and you had to select one of two choices, "a wide net," or "a die."

 

They both fit, obviously, and I scoffed to myself about the unfair and biased nature of this poll, but I selected "a wide net" because it reminded me of my seaweed transport nomads idea and I don't want to forget that. Upon selecting it, however, it showed me that 80% of people agreed with me and presented a link which read, simply, Expanding Your Social Circle. Skeptical but intrigued, I clicked on this link, only to discover that it was nothing more than the Google search results for "Expanding Your Social Circle." During my mindless scrolling I became aware of what a great idea that was. Why not encourage people to meet each other? Isn't that life at its most fun?

 

Noticing that most of the links were blogs, it occurred to me that anybody with a mouth can blow more hot air into this jetstream with which Google is broadcasting itself to the world, or at least to the users of Starbucks's free wi-fi. Now adding to this litany of voices was me.

 

First, for those of you interested in getting laid - look how many hands just went up - there are five things you should try to do very frequently if you are interested in meeting men or women or whatever's going around these days. Second, I will discuss the reason people are not meeting each other - which, in a word, is sprawl - and I will likely bitch a bit so it is still very fortunate that I am someone who just doesn't give a fuck. Third, I will discuss the reasons why I, like Google, am interested in cajoling people into meeting each other. These reasons include lots of little projects like the one I illustrated above and a general reversal of the effects of sprawl, contemporary human discord, and the lawns catastrophe. I believe that by meeting people we can help humanity "advance" in spiritual, attitudinal and behavioral and ways, and make this world a far more interesting, enjoyable, and accessible place. I just pissed off basically everyone that cares about the Oxford Comma. This is why my ideas tend to wallow into the global scale and seem ridiculously impractical to some of my readers and critics.

 

I will end this paper by translating it to Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Norwegian, German, Italian, Cherokee in its first alphabet, Bulgarian, Turkish, Bengali, Dutch, and Welsch, and if I have the time, or if it starts to get popular or lucrative (actually just lucrative) I could add a whole bunch more languages and go work for the EU or the UN or something and buy a briefcase and start wearing a suit to work. This is starting to get out of hand so I'll have other people do it.

 

I'm not sure if I will do this now, or someday, or never. Definitely not now, so one of the other two. In the meantime, I have lots of other ideas for projects which I think will really improve humanity, restoring the mobility and sustainability we had at certain times. Many of these ideas have been sketched or illustrated so I may post them here if ever I happen to do that. I know many people will disagree with me on things a lot so commenting is set to Open Season, as far as I can tell.

 

I need to close this because actually I didn't come to Starbucks to sit around here and lollygag on my blog. However I have added something to the litany of voices screaming Expanding Your Social Circle to drinkers of fancy coffee and because I haven't actually shared any concrete information on how to expand one's social circle I have either been totally unhelpful or absolutely brilliant, probably the former. I may come back and write again because this was easy and I did produce content so you're welcome. So remember to remind your loved ones that life begins outside of their comfort zone, and if, in a word, I were to make a quick recommendation of how to expand your social circle before next time, that would be it.

I want to build a train that connects all the South American capitals.

I think it would be a great idea, and a lot of fun. I illustrated the route here in pencil. (By the way, I drew this map freehand.) There would be a big route that includes the far southern capitals, and a smaller route that cuts through Bolivia and Paraguay. The train would have a bike path running along its entire length, as well as regularly-spaced trees to keep the bicyclists and the train passengers cool. The trees would be native to South America, to whichever region the train happens to be passing through.

 

With this train, anybody who lives in any South American country can travel to their capital, hop on a train, and do a ring around the entire continent in either direction. The South American countries have been working on an agreement called Unasur that will apparently open up the continent and make travelling easier without a passport - so maybe these people can help me finance this train.

 

I don't think a high-speed train is necessary, a regular-speed train will probably work fine. I estimate the whole ride will last one or two weeks, but of course people could get off at any point to explore at any country. This will also facilitate the movement of people between the countries, and improve relations in the region. It will also create jobs.





The tracks would have a bike path and lots of native trees to shade the train cars and the bikes. This illustration is no to scale; there would be more space and maybe a barrier separating the bikes from the train.

The train should stay out of the Amazon as much as possible; that's really important. After it leaves Brasilia it will hug the coast as it goes through the Guyanas. One of the Guyanas is technically part of France, but I see no reason why France, as long as it's down there, should not participate in South American regional projects. Also, nobody really knows anything about the Guyanas, so it would be a really interesting region to travel through.



Does Bolivia has two capitals? After doing some research for this project, I discovered that Bolivia has an unusual situation. The constitution says that the capital is Sucre, but many of the major government buildings are in La Paz. Apparently this is a huge conflict in Bolivia which occasionally leads to violent outbreaks. People in Sucre want the government buildings to move to Sucre, but people in La Paz are worried that it would cause economic problems. After an outbreak in 2008, Evo Morales signed a new constitution which again declared that Sucre is the only capital of Bolivia, but that the government buildings would remain in La Paz. Neither side was really appeased by this move, and so animosity continues. I don't have a dog in this fight, so I've included both La Paz and Sucre in my train route.

The original concept

If you are either interested in helping me build this train, know anything about building new trains, or have the money to finance this project, feel free to contact me. If this project is successful I'm interested in building another train that connects all the Eurasian capitals, and another one that connects all the African capitals.

If there's a bike trail encircling South America (or whichever continent), people will want to ride it for the same reason they climb Mount Everest - because it's there.

I drew a picture of South America

 

I know, I know - Uruguay is not an island. Brazil isn't that squished and Bolivia and Paraguay aren't that high. It was a rough sketch. What I'm happy about is the colors. Look at those purple Andes, the brown Atacama and Patagonian Deserts, the green of the Amazon and southern Chile, the blue of the coastline. All things considered, I'm pretty proud of this. Maybe next year I'll post another sketch that's more accurate. Of Afro-Eurasia.

 

 



A Red-Shouldered Hawk

Recently I saw a red-shouldered hawk in the backyard, next to the papaya tree. He hung out here for like fifteen minutes before getting bored and flying off. You can see the weather went from cloudy to sunny before he left. (Sorry for the low-quality images; my camera isn't that good.)

Wildlife is so important. I guess these birds eat rodents and stuff? To benefit these birds, we probably need more rodents.

I'd love to learn more about falconry. I think it would be great to have a hawk that comes down and perches on my shoulder whenever he wants, and maybe carries letters to California or Mongolia or wherever I need letters to be sent, and I wouldn't have to worry about feeding him because he'd be wild so he'd eat rats or whatever he wants.

My local NPR station recently did a piece on how to attract birds to the yard in South Florida.

Golden Orb Weaver

 

This is a golden orb weaver spider I saw in Deerfield Island Park in Broward County, Florida. They are excellent spiders and they make beautiful silk.

Basically, I would love to collect lots of these spiders, and maybe have a colony of them in one of the trees around my house. They are native to South Florida, and they collect a lot of mosquitoes and other insects. If I put them in a fruit tree, they'll protect the tree from things like aphids and whiteflies.

Over time, the tree will get wrapped in silk. As the spiders reproduce and catch insects, they'll keep putting more and more silk around the tree.

Once I have enough silk, I'd love to get somebody who knows about sewing - or maybe learn it myself; it would probably be most fun as a group project - and then I'd like to make a lot of materials, including clothing (shirts, pants, socks, hats, etc), bags, ropes (with applications in transport), rope ladders, and so on. It's straight silk, the material that financed the Silk Road in Asia for centuries.

Once I turn a profit from all the silk, I could use the money to plant more trees and breed more spiders.

I think this project would be generally beneficial to everybody involved. It would be beneficial to the spiders because I'd be providing habitat for them. It would be beneficial to Florida because these spiders are native here. (In other regions, we could just use other species of spiders.) It would benefit "society," or "the economy" or whatever, because I'd be accumulating money. Maybe if I get big enough I could even have some employees and "create jobs" without having to destroy a little piece of the Earth to do so. Also, if I have several large trees - say, an avocado, a mango, a starfruit, or some Florida natives like oak and mahogany - each full of these spiders (or any spiders, really), clustered around some benches, it would make a great place to chill. The spiders would protect people from mosquitoes, and there would be plenty of shade. One could hold social or educational gatherings in there.

I have a related idea I call "the Silkman." Basically, I would start by having some golden orb weavers on my body - like parrots on a pirate - twenty-four hours a day.

As the spiders produce silk, I'd wrap it around myself - around my arms, legs, chest - I'd use myself as a spool to collect the silk as it comes out. As I collect more and more silk, it would look like I'm wearing clothing.

I would be able to go out on summer evenings without having to worry about mosquitoes because the spiders would take them.

I would allow the spiders to reproduce on me, until gradually I become a man with hundreds and hundreds of baby spiders all over my body. They would never bite me because they'd grow up used to always having me there (and their bites are not harmful anyway, contrary to popular myth), and we'd have a mutually beneficial relationship because I would attract mosquitoes for them. As they continue to grow up and produce more silk and more offspring, I may have an overabundance, and I could release the spiders I'm not using into a park or somewhere they're needed.

There's no such thing as an overabundance of silk. Once I have large quantities of silk, I can either sell it to clothing manufacturers (who will be able to tell their customers it's sustainably harvested!), or have somebody I know make some shirts or something. One sweater alone can be sold for sixty or seventy dollars.

Another benefit to becoming the Silkman is that I can go to dangerous neighborhoods covered in the spiders, and I could walk around and people will be afraid to mess with me because golden orb weavers are very frightening spiders to people who don't know them.