According to justgive.org, the “average American gives about 3.1 percent of his or her income to charity (before taxes). That’s well below the 10 percent tithing level recommended by religious institutions.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy breaks that down by zip code, which leads to inevitable political commentary. Personally, I came in well below the average—and far below the religiously recommended—for 2012 (around 2.5%). I did, however, donate to a wider variety of places this year:

• Boot Campaign
• Building a Goddam Tesla Museum, just up the road a ways
• Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
• Denver Center for the Performing Arts
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Leatherback Trust
• My high school alumni foundation, to give students iPads
• My local fire department
• National Public Radio
• Stony Brook Children’s Hospital
• Suffolk County Police Athletic League
• Water.org
• Wikimedia Foundation

I also helped kickstart quite a few projects this year. I get a product at the end of most of these, so they don’t really count as charity. A few, however, are either structured mostly as charities or I funded without selecting any “rewards”, such as the low cost land mine detonator, an Arduino-based public access satellite, something that may turn out to be the next generation of manned spaceflight, rescuing out of print science fiction and turning old shipping containers into farms.

I hope, by posting all this, you’ll find at least one thing you’d be interested in helping with a few bucks. I aim to do better myself next year.

Imagine you are a member of an alien race that lives on a big arcology ship. The million of you on the ship mostly have jobs, and earn quatloos in exchange for work. Your society is divided into castes, depending on how many quatloos you earn. Most people are “betas”, and they live throughout the ship, some parts better than others. The top 10% of the earners, however, are “alphas”, and live in a special, luxurious compound within the ship. Since the alphas, even though a small portion of the population (100,000 out of the million), control half of the quatloos, they live really well.

One day, the ship-wide newscasts show you something odd. A small, but vocal portion of the alphas are protesting about income inequality. You watch the story, figuring they will talk about the big divide between the alphas and the betas, but they don’t. Instead, they are complaining that 1% of the other alphas control too large a portion of the collected wealth of the alphas. In other words, there are 1,000 “alpha primes” that have really pissed off the alphas.

Now, given that you are a beta, how much do you care about the plight of the alphas?

Translated to our own world (via the Global Rich List), if you make at least $25,140, you’d be an alpha.

Dear Home & Garden Television —

It is with some concern that I note that no HGTV program appears anywhere near the “top ratings” lists in the late night time slot. In fact, late night HGTV programming consists of little more than repeats of episodes aired previously in the day. While traveling recently, I hit upon an idea for a show your network could create that could provide some ground-breaking late night content (and, likely, more than a little buzz for HGTV).

The background of this idea comes from an experience in a hotel, but it can be universalized to homes, apartments and so on. When people walk into a room that they and their significant other will sleep in, such as a hotel room, they spend some time looking around, noticing the furniture, closets and so on. Somewhere in the back of their heads, one of the things they are evaluating is if and how they will have sex in that room (though some will probably not admit this). Is that table strong enough to sit on? Is that ottoman the right height? Once you start noticing this, you will quickly realize that private spaces, including people’s own bedrooms, are often set up totally wrong for this kind of activity. Here is an example:

In a large hotel in Las Vegas, a room contains a bathtub constructed for two. It looks like this:

Now you might think that, being a bathtub built to be used by two naked people, there would be some possibility of those two people, naturally, having sex in that bathtub. You could argue, in fact, that this is the whole point of such a tub. But take a good look at the photo. Do you see the problem? Why is the faucet exactly in the spot where one of the occupant’s head would be? Any fantasy you might have about fun in a tub for two is totally ruined by the harsh reality of smashing your head into a piece of metal that should have been placed a meter to the side. And why is that? Why was the faucet placed so stupidly? I submit it is because there is no source that trains designers to think about this kind of thing. It is a real concern people have, but it is never talked about openly, and therefore, not noticed as a need worth serving.

A late night show on HGTV could change that. As a working title, I suggest something like How Are We Supposed to F*$k on That?, though you might want to go with something less provocative. The format would be much like other design shows on HGTV, except that content would be exclusively devoted to design for “personal spaces and needs”. To gain an odd sort of credibility, hosts for the show (one man, one woman) might be drawn from the adult film industry. You are virtually guaranteed to find adult stars with design experience. (A quick Google for “porn star interior designer”, for example, finds this article from ABC news.)

At a guess, the show would likely target a younger audience than some other HGTV programming. I think you would find fairly long list of sponsors as well, looking to get their products noticed in a legitimate venue. An obvious choice, for example, would be Liberator, Inc, who produces furniture intended entirely for sex, but I’m guessing a lot of less overtly sexual products would be interested in buying time or product placement on your show.

As an example, search the Linen & Things web site for “waterproof mattress pads”. You can walk into any L&T and find these in stock, in all sizes. Why? Well, some of it might be for people with bladder problems, such as kids wetting the bed, but in a king-sized bed? I’d wager that the population of people who both have bladder control issues and sleep in a king-sized is vanishingly small, certainly not enough to warrant stocking stocking products for it in every L&T in the country. No, the reason they are there is because lots of people buy waterproof mattress pads to protect mattresses from sex (and not, as you might guess from the pictures, from mysterious blue water). These products are not marketed as such, of course, but that is the reality, one that this show could bring to the public’s attention through product placement.

Naturally, I’m sure you all can think of a number of other ways to push the basic idea of the show, which is why I’m giving the idea to you. Think about it.

(By the way, if anyone feels like designing the title graphic for this show, please put a link to the result in the comments.)

The recent reboot of the Gamma World role-playing game flicked a switch in my brain, tuning me on to something I should have noticed sooner, and that we’re going to see a lot more of: mainstream role-playing game makers have turned the corner on what they do. Going forward, their core business will be less and less about producing gaming rules (with supplements ad nauseum) and will instead center on producing gaming artifacts. That is, games that, like board games, revolve around fiddly bits that are difficult for the average player to produce by himself.

For example, in addition to its 160-page rulebook, Gamma World, now comes with several decks of cards. None of the previous six editions of the game used cards, but now they are required for play. While it is possible for the end user to produce card-like artifacts themselves fairly easily, the end result is not particularly satisfying or sturdy. Producing actual cards is fairly difficult, requiring specialized paper, techniques and equipment. Why would you bother going through the expense, when you can just buy the professionally produced artifact for cheaper?

And that, really, is the point. It’s an end run around the electronic age. Rather than combat the bittorrenting horde, gaming companies will just build products that can’t be replicated in a satisfying way from an electronic copy, at least not without spending more than it would cost to just buy the original.

Cards are only one option (and we’ll see how long it takes before making quality cards at home becomes painless). Gamma World also comes with “two sheets of die-cut character and monster tokens”. These are, in effect, a cheaper version of miniatures but, even so, they are still artifacts the home user would have to do special work to replicate themselves. This would be easier than making cards, but still a hassle that many would be willing to pay to avoid. Plus, even more would rather use real miniatures anyway. If Gamma World is anything like Dungeons & Dragons 4E (and, being rules compatible with D&D4, it is) it relies heavily on tactically maneuvering pieces on a map, creating a market for the miniatures artifact. It is probably not a coincidence, for example, that the Gamma World setting can make use of many of the figures in Wizards’ Heroscape line of miniatures that would be out of place in D&D (such as the omnicron snipers).

In a similar vein, the $100 game Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is based entirely around custom made dice and comes with “more than 300 cards”. (No doubt it will find uses for the extensive line of Warhammer miniatures as well.)

None of this is particularly new. Games like BattleTech, which is more of a board game than an RPG, have long offered game artifacts, like the old Reinforcements boxes, with card stock versions of most mechs with little plastic stands, and recently their map packs have become a bit more interesting. But RPGs used to focus mostly on books. Those days, it seems, may be ending.

Reaching the conclusion that I have no more use for my Exalted books, I am auctioning them in a large lot. The starting bid is $1 and there is no reserve. When you consider that the cover price for the bunch is over $500, that’s should turn out to be a pretty good deal.

As with my earlier auction, I am keeping a couple of things: the gilded Limited Edition and the Dreams of the First Age box set.

(Also, I’m selling a surplus microphone as well, if that interests you.)

The life-altering news is apparently not new, but I only learned of it last night, when my wife returned from a routine run to Target. She said nothing, only smiled, reaching into a environmentally irresponsible plastic bag. From the bag she pulled pure joy, and then the incredible message was clear: Arnott’s Biscuits, the Australian cookie maker, now distributes (through Pepperidge Farm and Target) Tim Tam cookies in America.

Let me say this again: you can now buy Tim Tams at Target.

Some readers may not appreciate the importance of this news. Perhaps they have never been in an international airport in Australia and witnessed the stores containing nothing but Tim Tam cookies, and watched as visitors buy cases of them for their return home, or open their large carry-on bag to reveal only an empty void they then fill to the brim with Tim Tams. Perhaps they have seen this, but never have done a Tim Tam slam with tea, coffee or hot chocolate so don’t know what all the fuss is about.

On the other hand, maybe you do know about Tim Tams, but think the American versions are inferior. All I know is that even if that is true, the American versions still induce involuntary biological reactions. I had nearly repressed the memory of Tim Tams to avoid the pain of not being able to get them locally.

Repress no more.

It is pretty clear that the world has been warming up over the last 150 years. It doesn’t really matter if you just shoveled two feet of snow off your driveway (as I did). It also doesn’t matter whether you believe the temperature increase is caused by human activity or not. Nor does it really matter that 150 years is nothing on a geological time scale; chances are that these higher temperatures will reign for the majority of your remaining natural life.

Teams from the various governments of the world, most of which do believe that this warming is man made, nevertheless failed to take any meaningful action when they met in Copenhagen last week. Most are blasting this as a “failure”, a “disaster” or, at least, “disappointing”. Instead, though, it really should be viewed as exactly what it was: the result of a number of diverse, self-interested parties acting completely rationally. That no magical concord came out of this is totally unsurprising. Likewise, no such concord will come out of the next such meeting, nor the one after that.

In other words, get used to it being hotter.

So, how to best do that? People seem to assume that every aspect of global warming is automatically bad. This is certainly not the case. How best to take advantage of its advantages? And how best to minimize its disadvantages?

What follows suggests some advice on how to prosper in a hotter world. One caveat: it is tailored to people living in the United States. Some of it might happen to be applicable to those of you reading from other countries, but you’re on your own. Which brings us to the first point:

1. Assume that nationalism will increase. As the ecosystem adjusts to higher temperatures, the status quo of resource allocation will change. In some places it will get better, in some places worse. Nations will want new sources for what they used to have, and will want to take advantage of and protect what they have gained. In the short term, interruption of existing systems and their rearrangement will result in a net decrease in whatever the system produces or manages. So, not only will nations be trying to rearrange the shares of the pie, the pie will be getting smaller. This will make many countries grumpy, insular and tribal.
2. Budget more for food. The “shrinking pie” will be most noticeable in the area of food production. It will be shocked hard, and will take a while until people figure out what works the a higher temperature world. While some have thought a lot about preventing this, it will probably happen anyway. In addition to the shrinking pie, pushes for renewable energy will divert more of the river of corn that feeds America into fuel production. (Since it seems like corn is killing us, this may not be a bad thing.) All of this will conspire to raise food prices, which have already risen quite a bit. You might want to start looking for local food or start growing some of your own to offset the higher costs.
3. Move slightly north. At a very loose approximation, if you want to stay living in the climate you grew up in, you’ll need to shift a few degrees of latitude toward the pole. If you stay where you are, it will get hotter. But north of you is already colder, so moving there as it also heats up will keep your average temperature the same. Obviously, climate is more complicated than this, so you need to allow for terrain and such, but the basic idea is that if you find your current location becoming unbearable, somewhere more palatable is probably not that far away.
4. Move slightly inland. If you are living right on the beach, you might want to sell now. While the really alarming maps of sea levels rising turn out to be BS, no one is really that sure about how sea level change works. If you look at a bunch of different effects and guess a bit, you reach a reasonable estimate of a one meter rise in sea level by 2100. This would be pretty bad news in Asia and parts of Europe, but not so much the U.S., unless you live right on the beach. Or in Florida. And, I wouldn’t move back into New Orleans. But, in general, the map doesn’t change much for a one meter rise, so just moving back a bit from the coast should be sufficient.
5. Don’t be overly concerned with species extinction. So far, billions of species have gone extinct (something like 99.9% percent of all species that have ever existed are no more). Hundreds of species (90% or which were never cataloged) will go extinct this year. One will probably be extinct by the time you finished reading this post. Naturally, this species probably will be something dull, like a plant, or ugly, like a beetle, so won’t get as much press as, say, a polar bear, but it’s dead just the same. Yet this has happened every day of your life and, somehow, the remaining 10 million species on the planet have soldiered on (even if we’ve only cataloged three out of every 20 of them). Now, one of the concerns about this hot spell is that, geologically speaking, the temperature change is quite rapid and it is the rapidity of the change that speeds extinction, not the change itself. The idea is that a change can be so fast than nature can’t keep up. For example, assume a forest 25 miles across lives in a “viability zone”, beyond which it’s plants cannot survive. North of the zone, it is too cold; to the south, too hot. Suppose this zone is slowly shifting north. This isn’t really a problem for the forest. Even though the plants don’t move, the forest can “migrate” is by spreading north with new seed, while letting the southern border die off. But, assume that this zone instantly, magically shifts 100 miles to the north. That forest (and the species that rely on it) is now screwed because it can’t keep up. Even if the rapid temperature rise shifts these zones faster than nature can keep up, however, one force probably will be able to work around this: man. You can bet, for example, that corn will “migrate” north as temperatures increase as fast as man can carry it. (Also, it turns out that the “shrinking forest” problem is not likely anyway, as plant populations expand in conditions where temperature and CO₂ rise in tandem.)
6. Have faith in science. Assuming CO₂ really is killing the world, the worse it gets, the more likely (i.e. cost-effective) it will be that science can solve the problem. Imagine, for example, a magical machine that sucks in CO₂ and uses energy from the sun to pull out the carbon atom, releasing O₂ into the atmosphere and embedding the carbon in some fixed medium. With enough such machines, CO₂ is reduced, life goes on. Considering that billions of these “magical machines” already exist (they are called “plants”), it’s not much of a stretch to guess that science will be able to replicate (and probably improve) this idea synthetically as artificial trees or some such.
7. Assume environmentalists will rail against solutions that don’t involve environmentalism. Solutions like artificial trees are collectively known as geoengineering, and environmentalists generally tend to hate them. Sometimes, such as when the idea is particularly bad, this hatred makes sense (usually because there are some obvious unintended consequences). But some environmentalists, usually the most vocal, will reject even ideas that demonstrably meet the goals they claim to have, if the idea uses a method other than the one they are really pushing. As an example, even if the artificial tree concept was able to meet any arbitrary CO₂ concentration goal for, say, three dollars, there would still be environmentalists shouting it down and saying that clearly we should instead be spending billions to prevent the evil corporations from producing CO₂ in the first place. (Such objections would, among other things, ignore the notion that, once emitted, about half of the CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for 40+ years, so even stopping all emissions wouldn’t have any effect for generations while, meanwhile, artificial trees could be removing that CO₂ immediately.) Bank on furor like this happening and causing political strife. Also bank on the profit that will be realized by those that ignore it.
8. Don’t count on science. Faith in science isn’t like faith in religion: it is only rewarded when it was warranted in the first place. Faith in something like artificial trees (which is basically just a chemistry problem that already has at least one known solution) shouldn’t be blindly extended to everything, especially when there is good reason to doubt that science can help. As an example, science appears to be reaching the limits of how much it can improve crop yields, not necessarily due to limits in science, but rather limits in photosynthesis. Likewise, sometimes even low-cost science that sounds like an interesting idea treats the symptom, not the disease, so leaves much of the problem unsolved. The message here: learn more science, so you can tell the difference.
9. Avoid political goals that require global agreement or action. There will probably be a time when the whole planet will be able to agree on something enough to act mostly in unison, but you are unlikely to live to see that time. (Or, if you do, it will be because things have become so bad that there is no other choice, which is beyond the scope of this post.) Consequently, political action expended towards goals that require this will be more profitably spent elsewhere. As one example, if all of the money and effort currently expended in the U.S. in pursuit of some kind of global climate policy (something the U.S. does not and cannot control by itself) had instead been spent attempting to to rid the U.S. of its dependence on foreign oil (something the U.S. can control by itself), we would have gotten a lot more bang for the buck (and, ironically, would have likely reduced our CO₂ emissions more than we did barking futilely up the global climate tree). This goes hand in hand with the point above about nationalism.
10. Assure a supply of fresh water. This is harder than it sounds, and will become moreso. Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting. Since 20% of the world’s fresh water is in the Great Lakes, you might want to mosey that way. (And, hey, that’s probably north and inland from you as well.) While it isn’t one of the six drinks that changed history, water is about to be the seventh.
11. Realize that climate change is not the only (or even the most important) issue. Many of the concerns mentioned above really come down to issues of resource scarcity, and population growth is likely to put much more stress on such resources than climate change will. Mostly likely, while climate change is reducing the supply of things like food and fresh water, population growth will be driving up demand at the same time. In fact, it may be small consolation to realize that all of the problems “caused” by climate change would probably be getting worse even if the temperature wasn’t rising, because the population is still increasing. So, enjoy the weather.