jesserudolph

I have this idea for a composite boat design, with a touring kayak main hull, and two retractable outriggers that conform to the sides of the yak when not deployed. I would like to use a surfboard manufacturing method. I saw a video for a bulky ‘kayak’ design, and it was successful, but I am looking to do something a bit lighter and more streamlined. The method is just glass over carved foam. If you use the right foam, you can flush the finished project with a solvent to dissolve the foam, then tape or plug hollow chamber to lighten it up.

Seems like it would be much easier to get a boat to the desired shape from a rough design than with plank or plywood stitch & glue methods.

I’d say I want a degree because I want to learn, and thats half true, but its not the whole thing. I want to learn, and I have never really had any problem doing it on my own. However, one of the things I have learned (for free) is that higher education isn’t necessarily about learning. Its about validation, I think it would be utterly ridiculous to spend an entire lifetime learning, and never validating any of the knowledge. It is also about guidance. You can learn your self in a circle for free, but sometimes it takes the oversight of someone who has been where you are trying to go, to direct your focus in the most efficient directions.

Luckily, I have wanted a degree for long enough that I now have a pretty sizable scholarship, and do not really have to worry about paying for it. So, more than just ‘getting a degree’, I think I want to get a degree that enters a room before me, and smacks everyone in the forehead right before I enter… letting them all know that ‘this guy knows what the hell he is talking about’. I feel the credibility alone makes the whole process worth the effort put into it.

I really just do not understand the necessity for so much infrastructure. People are pack animals, not hive animals. One of the prior posters said something about civilization being the cause of mental illness, and i think that person hit the nail on the head. We are the most adaptive organisms on the planet, but in its current manifestation, all i see civilzation doing is over specializing the individual. If you want to have a certain profession, and actually accrue enough wealth doing it to have a comfortable life, you have to make a life long commitment to it. You have to make a conscious decision not to persue almost everything else, in order to live comfortably.

I never learned how to dance, for instance. A lot of americans, do not dance, or sing. We cannot set the time on our microwaves, we speak only one language. Now, here in afghanistan, where my current occupation has taken me, every single local I have interacted with, speaks at least 2 languages. They all dance, they all sing…. they all do all sorts of things. Sure, there are farmers, and merchants, soldiers and holy men. But if a farmer wanted to set up a stand at the market, and start selling watches, or whatever… its culturally, not a very big leap. Everyone knows how to do everything, pretty much, they just do what they like, or what is easiest at the time.

I have aspirations that depend on american infrastructure. I think I could one day accomplish those goals. But I do not think it is worth my entire life to set such specific, narrow goals. I do not want to be a sterile drone. I almost think it is worth the stigma of poverty and homelessness to be a more well rounded person than the post-industrial whatever the crap this is will allow. It saddens me deeply, to think that almost all of the communities that have existed in the united states for people like me, have been iradicated, and made nearly impossible to reestablish. There is no place you can really go, other than a gutter, all by yourself, if you want to live outside of the habitat of the domesticated ape. I think I was probably born about 150 years too late.