Category Archives: Energy

Breaking Human Limits

Radiolab has a humorous hour of interviews about how humans can exceed their own limits by studying them and then breaking through (e.g. hacking the body, mind and knowledge)

On this hour of Radiolab: a journey to the edge of human limits.

How much can you jam into a human brain? How far can you push yourself past feelings of exhaustion? We test physical endurance with a bike race that makes the Tour de France look like child’s play, and mental capacity with a mind-stretching memory competition. And we ask if robots–for better or worse–may be forging beyond the limits of human understanding.

Vuoi Vuoi Me (Henrik Schwarz Remix)

A Sámi song by Mari Boine, remixed by Henrik Schwarz.

From the album “It Ain’t Necessarily Evil – Mari Boine Remixed Vol II”

And below is my remix of the translation from a language once banned:

Sami languages, and Sami song-chants, called yoiks, were illegal in Norway from 1773 until 1958…in Russia, Sami children were taken away when aged 1-2 and returned when aged 15-17 with no knowledge of their language and traditional communities.

language and song were considered such a risk that they were banned for centuries.

The Sami chant, the yoik, traditionally had a dual function. On the one hand, it was, and still remains, the distinctive musical expression of the Sami. The yoik is used “to remember people”, to characterize individuals, animals and landscapes. It can be described as a melodic-rhythmic lecture, in which rhythm is paramount and less emphasis is put on the verbal description of the lyrics. The yoiker’s task is to use music and images to create an emotion or atmosphere that then evokes the person, animal or place yoiked. In the pre-Christian religion, the yoik formed an important part of religious ceremonies. In such ceremonies, the shaman added a rhythmic accompaniment to the yoik by beating his drum. This dual function is the reason why some people even today see the yoik as sinful and therefore incompatible with Christian religious life.

As early as the 17th century the yoik was banned by law. Anyone breaking the law was to be punished severely. The reason the yoik was banned and condemned at this time was that the period saw the beginning of Christian missions among the Sami, and the yoik was seen exclusively as an expression of pre-Christian religion.

Finnmark protests 1981Mari Boine explains in the video below how and why she started to recognizes and reclaim her own heritage and sing the yoik.

She mentions the protests and violence in the news at the beginning of the 1980s, as seen in the photo to the right, had a strong effect on her sense of identity; the controversial construction of a hydroelectric power plant on the Alta river in Finnmark, Northern Norway created feelings of anger and rage for her as a Sámi.

Vuoi mu gollelottas
Vuoi mu beaiveidjalottas
giehka ja goaskin
Vuoi mu spalfu
Vuoi mu spalfu
miellevuol besiinis
Vuoi mu idjaloddi
ravddahis geahcastagainis
Vuoivuoi mu
Vuoivuoi mu

Vuoivuoi daid iluid
Vuoivuoi daid iluid
skeaikkigavnnasmeriidisguin
Vuoi daid morrasiid
Vuoi daid morrasiid
salteganjalmearaidisguin
Vuoivuoi daid buollasiid
Vuoivuoi daid buollasiid
vuoi gesiid mearehis bahkaid
Vuoivuoi mu
Vuoivuoi mu

   Vuoi my little yellow bird
Vuoi my summer night bird
cuckoo and eagle
Vuoi my swallow
Vuoi my swallow
with nest under riverbanks
Vuoi night owl
with limitless vision
Vuoivuoi me
Vuoivuoi me

Vuoivuoi joy
Vuoivuoi joy
with hearty laughter
Vuoi sorrow
Vuoi sorrow
with oceans of salty tears
Vuoivuoi winter frost and cold
Vuoivuoi winter frost and cold
vuoi summer with burning hot days
Vuoivuoi me
Vuoivuoi me

Networking Food

One of the primary reasons Rudolf Diesel invented his engine in 1893 was to help ensure farmers were not dependent on an external/industrial source of energy, but rather could generate it on their own.

Unfortunately, the agriculture industry has gone the opposite direction from his (and the American populist platform of the People’s Party) and become entirely dependent on petroleum.

A new film made by Postgraduate students in London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where I did undergraduate work, looks at current food issues facing the UK.

Will a localized, resilient and redundant peer-to-peer energy and food model be able to displace the highly centralized, fragile and foreign-based client-server system advocated by petroleum companies?

Something tells me that the following statement on risk has more impact to policy than all combined comments by consumers feeling the pinch from rising petroleum costs.

“The Navy has always led the nation in transforming the way we use energy, not because it is popular, but because it makes us better war fighters,” stated [U.S. Navy Secretary Ray] Mabus.