[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 70, Issue 8

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 11:08 PM, spike wrote:

snip

> But I do know how to slay a beast and prepare it to be
devoured.  But can I catch it with no tools?  And if I do, can I dress it?
No.

Hmm.  I have killed and dressed out something like a 1000 animals,
mostly rabbits and chickens, a few goats.  My brother has killed elk
and/or deer and dressed them out every year for the last 50 years.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5news/L5news7903.pdf  The lead
article discusses impromptu butchering a hog on the side of a road on
a bitterly cold night.  I should write it up sometime, there is more
to the story including why we were there (installing a computer) and
the reaction of the desk clerk.

>A lot of us here are code jockeys.  We want to record what we know, but do
you know how to build a computer?  Do you know how an integrated circuit
works?  Could you write down for the next generation the basics?

Yes to all of these.  Could we skip the vacuum tube stage of
technology?  Maybe, would take considerable thinking about it.

>How would you write it?  On what, with what?

On animal skin, with iron based ink, quill pen or similar.

>Assume a lake or sea.  Can you catch a fish without any hooks or string?  If
you catch one, then what?

Have done this.  Chase fish into shallows, grab.  Grill over fire.  It
was delicious.

>Do you have any guess how the first humans melted iron?  Don't google on it,
think, how would YOU do it?

Melting iron gives you the substance for pots.  Making iron into other
useful items is more complicated.

I could go on for hours about this.

>We stand on the shoulders of giants, and most of the time we don't even
realize it.

Certainly a mountain of memes, many of which, such as the horse
collar, we don't even know who thought them up.

Keith