Category Archives: Thoughts and ideas

Han dynasty silk painting from China; Julio Romero de Torres painting from Spain

A team of geneticists at the Broad Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts is investigating how DNA differs among human genomes from around the world. Over the course of human history, naturally, different mutations have sprung up in different regions, and became prevalent or not depending on local conditions. Having identified region-specific pieces of DNA, the interesting part is then trying to figure out what those pieces of DNA do.

An example under current investigation is the EDAR370A gene, which is found in Asian people, and is thought to have arisen in China 30,000 years ago. To determine EDAR370A’s thing, the experimenters snipped it out, pasted it into mouse embryos, and waited to see how the mice turned out. They grew up to have Continue reading →

This is a graph showing global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels over the years 1990-2011 (published in last week’s New Scientist). The curve shows a meandering upwards over the course of the ’90s, gathering in force and momentum along the way, and really carving a groove up through the last decade. Around 2008 there was a small hiccup following the financial crisis, but otherwise, the story is largely one of not only rising emissions, but of rising rates of rising emissions. Which is funny, because all this time, the talk — and in ever increasing volumes — has been about Continue reading →

Everyone knows time is essentially arbitrary. An hour is a useful way of describing the motion of the earth as it spins its path through spacetime, but it is very ineffective when it comes to measuring the human experience of consciousness. According to circumstances, an hour can feel anything from almost interminable to gone in no time at all. Likewise, an hour can variously be momentous, irrelevant, euphoric, excruciating, etc.. To live through some hours feels free; others cost us a lot.

For precisely this reason, the hour can be a very unsatisfactory means of monetizing time. Both work and money are essentially human units of value, and yet hours — i.e. equidistant steps along the trajectory of the earth through spacetime — relate to a very inhuman concept of time. One hour is much the same as another to a rotating planet, but not so to a human being. Why therefore are we chained always to this crude way of thinking in dollars per hour when we bill?

think of it like a dollar pump

We propose billing according a much more human measurement of the experience of time: the human heartbeat. When thinking of how to cost work, instead of asking how many hours are spent working, heartbeatbilling asks how many heartbeats are expended on that particular piece of work. So when pricing something for a client, a supplier could say a task equates to e.g. 350,000 heartbeats at x dollars per heartbeat, and quote accordingly.

This offers three key advantages. Firstly, it is likely the price of a piece of work will more accurately reflect the volume of human lifeforce sucked up. Secondly, if you become more active, accelerating both your biofunctions and the pace of your work, this is justly reflected in the fee. Thirdly, if your client or boss starts stressing you out and pushing up your heartbeat, then you can charge for that.