Author: paul

state of the world

2000+ sq ft house on a large lot, 2 cars (or one per driver, whichever is greater), hot and cold running everything, this is all going to look like an aberration of the worst kind in years to come.

…Find a way to replace as many of the internal combustion power sources as possible with electric or hybrid power (either engineer drop-in replacements or buy back vehicles that meet certain criteria).

What is going to amuse our bouches now?

[From The WELL: Bruce Sterling: State of the World, 2008]

This would be interesting to contribute to, but the tone of some of the comments is frustrating. There’s some hand-wringing about “why didn’t we switch away from fossil fuels in the late 60s?” I reply to that with, did you? There’s a weird vibe of “I want to be independent and unique but I want everyone to do it my way.”

So the economics, the USA-centric stuff is the kind of stuff that keeps the wingnutosphere in material. But the larger scale comment is interesting. My favorite quote: lifestyles of the rich and famous doesn’t scale. But the reality is that lifestyles of the middle-class, as we define it here in the US, doesn’t either. 2000+ sq ft house on a large lot, 2 cars (or one per driver, whichever is greater), hot and cold running everything, this is all going to look like an aberration of the worst kind in years to come. Land is finite (except in the Netherlands) and the energy we use is finite, by definition — that’s why we refer to the other kind as sustainable. It means that what we’re doing isn’t.

It seems more and more likely that the only way out of this, in the short term, is some kind of space program for energy.

  • Find a way to replace as many of the internal combustion power sources as possible with electric or hybrid power (either engineer drop-in replacements or buy back vehicles that meet certain criteria). I favor option a, as b would reward people who made poor choices in the first place.
  • Get PV arrays on every flat, south-facing surface.
  • Capture and store heat from the sun to heat the water we bathe and wash in.
  • Re-regulate trucking and get rail working again. Replace short-haul air travel with train or green coach travel (hybrid buses that use electricity for freeway driving and switch to biodiesel on surface streets).
  • Dismantle the byzantine farm subsidy arrangement (sugar subsidies that impoverish 3rd world farmers? paying farmers who can’t eat their corn, as it’s not food-grade) and do away with industrial farming with it’s excessive of petroleum inputs.

Add your own ideas below. I’m sure the business community would complain that all of this is too hard and unfair. Evidently, they don’t teach that what is a challenge to one is an opportunity to another. Seriously, this country put a man on the moon 2 years short of the challenge issues by JFK with technology we can’t imagine trying to use today. And this challenge, without the great unknowns of space travel, is <whine>too ha-a-a-a-r-d</whine>? Please.

links for 2008-01-03

bonus quote of the day

No matter what they tell you, an MBA is not essential for landing or handling a good business job. The chief “skill” you’ll come away by your degree is a diploma, and a network of indebted friends in business.

No matter what they tell you, an MBA is not essential for landing or handling a good business job. The chief “skill” you’ll come away by your degree is a diploma, and a network of indebted friends in business. The latter is actually useful. [From The Personal MBA]

quote of the day

Not that person A is necessarily a Nazi but there must be something morally perilous about B, if espousing it is consistent with turning all Nazi…. They approved of life, liberty, justice, happiness, property, motherhood, society, culture, art, science, church, duty, devotion, loyalty, courage, fidelity, prudence, boldness, vision, veneration for tradition, respect for reason.

We’re all fascists now.

Now we get to what is maybe an actually half-interesting point. There are two reasons why ad hitlerem arguments tend to be rude and crude. (Everyone knows Godwin’s Law is law. Here’s why, more or less.) First, the Holocaust. It’s pretty obvious how always dragging that in is not necessarily clarifying of every little dispute. Second, a little less obviously, ad hitlerem arguments are invariably arguments by moral analogy. Person A espouses value B. But the Nazis approved B. Not that person A is necessarily a Nazi but there must be something morally perilous about B, if espousing it is consistent with turning all Nazi. The trouble is: with few exceptions, the Nazis had all our values – at least nominally. They approved of life, liberty, justice, happiness, property, motherhood, society, culture, art, science, church, duty, devotion, loyalty, courage, fidelity, prudence, boldness, vision, veneration for tradition, respect for reason. They didn’t reject all that; they perverted it; preached but didn’t practice, or practiced horribly. Which goes to show there is pretty much no value immune from being paid mere lip-service; nominally maintained but substantively subverted. Which, come to think of it, isn’t surprising. How could a list of ‘success’ words guarantee success, after all? [bold face added]

[From Crooked Timber » » “Heil Myself!” (and other rude Goldberg devices)]

data, information, and wisdom

I don’t know that telling someone that you have a trillion barrels of light sweet crude in a stable formation so many feet below [some GPS coords] makes anyone’s day — unless they are in the refining business.

…One thing that has always made curious is the fact that the countries that have large oil reserves are willing to part with the unrefined crude oil, rather that refining it and selling the marked up products, especially as it would result in or require investments in utility infrastructure, an educated work force, etc. I suppose it’s easier to let someone else do all that, but for a cartel that seems keenly aware of power and leverage, it seems incongruous to think they would leave that power — and money — on the table.

Rands:

The only thing better than data is data about data. Data about data is information that, in quantity, becomes knowledge, which is just a short hop away from wisdom. And when wisdom shows up, you know you’re this close to figuring it all out.

★ [From Rands in Repose: Year in Twitter]

Is meta-data better than data? The analogy I have used to define these terms is that data is oil in the ground, while information is gas at the pump. The difference is refining: the data, while interesting in the raw, doesn’t always tell a story or illuminate a case. I don’t know that telling someone that you have a trillion barrels of light sweet crude in a stable formation so many feet below [some GPS coords] makes anyone’s day — unless they are in the refining business. I suppose the wisdom here is knowing where to ship the stuff for the best return.

Perhaps this example is meant to explain that, for example, the metadata that iTunes stores and what it says about me is interesting. And I suppose to someone it would be: what I listen to (and what I don’t), when, how often, etc. could be useful to someone.

All I can think of when I hear that is that someone is going to try to sell me something. That’s not wisdom, that’s commerce. And the thought of that makes me release the safety catch on my Browning . . .

Continue reading “data, information, and wisdom”

quote of the day

Spencer Ackerman on Jonah Goldberg’s recently published pile of steaming organic by-product:

…Every child is endowed with the right to believe his or her father is the smartest man alive.

Spencer Ackerman on Jonah Goldberg’s recently published pile of steaming organic by-product:

The real victim of this book isn’t American liberalism. It’s young Lucy Goldberg. Every child is endowed with the right to believe his or her father is the smartest man alive. To take that away is sheer brutality. [From God in his wisdom made you understand]

do-over

two kids blowing chunks from 9PM til 10AM (to be fair, there wasn’t much left after the first couple of episode, of which there were probably 20 between them, not that that slowed down the proceedings) takes a lot of the fun out of it. generally, if you feel this crappy on Jan 1, you might have enjoyed yourself the night before.

can I take a mulligan on New Year’s Eve? two kids blowing chunks from 9PM til 10AM (to be fair, there wasn’t much left after the first couple of episode, of which there were probably 20 between them, not that that slowed down the proceedings) takes a lot of the fun out of it.

generally, if you feel this crappy on Jan 1, you might have enjoyed yourself the night before. this year, not so much.

<yawn>

the help I need but can’t afford

Reading over the description of it, especially the information about conversational interfaces, I have run a few things through it and I think it could be very useful.

…It’s free, so no commitment, no wasted money on systems and no wasted time learning someone else’s way of doing things.

I decided to take a ride on this I Want Sandy service.

Reading over the description of it, especially the information about conversational interfaces, I have run a few things through it and I think it could be very useful. Key items I like:

  • getting reminders to my phone, which detaches me from email/computer/home
  • having events/appointments returned as iCal events, all ready to go into a calendar
  • and the conversation tone (“Wishing I could fax you a doughnut,”) makes it worth reading the replies.

My good friends at the blood center already send me my appointments via iCal/Google calendar, and that helps. But a reminder service with features like contact tracking and a snooze feature (“Remind me in 2 days”) borders on the magical.

I hate all the organizational systems I have tried, though I realize that simply projection: what I really hate is my inconsistency with them.

It’s free, so no commitment, no wasted money on systems and no wasted time learning someone else’s way of doing things. Can’t beat that. And could the icon be any cuter?

[via Sandy, remind me about that New Year’s resolution @sms]