My Final Project

 

http://putstuff.putfile.com/25332/8398416 (The page wouldn't load for me Ben! - Jamie, UrthBound)

 

That's my final project. It is both the compiled executable and the source code.

 

I don't feel that I really had a high output to input ratio on this project. I overestimated my programming ability and so had to fight with this one. The functionality of it is pretty nice. It does what I would want it to do but not in a very user friendly or pretty fashion. Frankly there are nicer programs with similar functionality out there that I found while compiling this one. (I insert one here for whoever was making the website: http://howto.altenergystore.com/Calculators/c5/ )

 

On the plus side I think it has value as being a resource for anyone wanting to make a program after this. With a little tweaking and a conversion into Java it could be a really nice little tool for monitoring the cost effectiveness of solar paneling. Rite now I just have a few demo panels in there, but I've left instructions in the source code for adding more.

 

I'm going to be learning Java in the future and I'll probably use this source code as a place to experiment and work with. As such I think it will continue to grow and hopefully become something that is really much more usable and valuable as an addition to the center for sustainability.

 

 

Things to improve:

 

Visuals - Black and white dos text, practical but not very aesthetically pleasing

Library - It really needs a way to reference current products. Rite now, updating and adding panels is a bit labor intensive. If it ever gets switched over to Java I'd look into finding a way for it to price search and post those as options.

Projections - It needs to include cheaper forms of renewable energy. Rite now unless you live n CA or Hawaii you don't earn your money back in a timely fashion. the program needs to highlight how much you lower your ecological footprint.

 

Things that work:

 

Usabilty - I think it's an easy little program to use. It pops up and gives you quick understandable results that you can map out in your mind.

Groundwork - I think there is a lot of code in it that can be useful for someone who'd like to improbe the program. The laying out of the menus and the switching between options works nicely I believe.

 

Overall self grade - B-

 

I think my Project showed a lot of effort and a solid idea. The execution doesn't come off nearly as well as I'd like to and I question it's immediate value as a contribution to the center for sustainability.

 

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The Return of Pinchback

 

Pinchback, author of 2012 the Return of Quexquatal, was on the Colbert Report tonite. Not a particualry long or involved interview. But it he talked a bit about iwasca and his experiences with Shamanism.

 

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Done With My Project

 

http://www.otherpower.com/wardsolar.html

 

There...I did it. Kind of. In that I found someone who had done it. If you really think about it, the net effect is the same. I'll take my A now.

 

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Why Aren't You Looking at my Program?

 

Because I'm a moron. I have it up and running, but at the moment is pretty adamant that if you run a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours a day you will pay a monthly bill that can only be conveniently expressed as a power of 10. So there has been a delay.

 

I think I've got most of it on track, but I was really hoping to have you guys start trouble shooting a lot of it for me today but clearly that's not going to happen. Look for it tomorrow and be once again disappointed. I'm kidding. Kind of.

 

Not really any other exciting sustainability news going on. One of my friends does aging research and apparently the trick to eternal youth is walnut salads and getting very drunk. Go figure.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/science/02drug.html?ex=1165986000&en=0abe93ed86120d79&ei=5070

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/nutrition/31agin.html?ex=1165986000&en=77889eba57ee432f&ei=5070

 

Apparently those monkeys are her monkeys. In what sense this is meant I'm not sure. But let me tell you how I inferred their relationship. Actually, let's not and keep this website PG-13.

 

Video Games

 

I was thinking about games that would make sweet sustainability remixes.

 

Final Fantasy - No changes necessary. All those games are about saving Gaia from industrial forces.

 

Mortal Kombat - I was thinking that after you had decapitated your opponent and left his body a bloody mess you could mulch it and use it for a composting pile. Then you could use that to fertilize a garden to grow fruits and vegetables that you could eat to build strong muscles and healthy bones.

 

Mario - Instead of saving the princess from various castles, you'd be hunting for solar panels. After you had collected them all you would return to your former life as a plumber but with drastically reduced energy bills. Also we'll make Mario anything other then a cheap Italian stereotype.

 

SimCity - This one actually could be sweet. Simply redo the power supply sections to accurately reflect the way sustainable power sources work now. Then it would be a cool new way to do SimCity. The only huge problem I see coming out of that would be the discovery that the model is untenable under current tech so we'd encourage the idea that sustainability is a pipe dream.

 

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PBwiki is Editing My Content

 

I used digging, and they linked it to Digg. How quaint.

 

So I'm thinking that maybe all we need to do is talk to people. I was flipping through the web today and stumbled across a fascinating artist and this led to a series of discussions between me and my friends and my family. This conversation has meandered into christmas present territory and such. In short I'm wondering if we can really have an effect. It seems to me we're fighting an uphill battle against chaos and entropy.

 

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Digging and such

 

I had a moment the other day that was intersting to me in terms of how I viewed the planet. We were putting power and drainage into the house. This involves making about 8k trenches all across the work site.

 

So I leave one afternoon to come up to class and when I come back the next morning our whole yard is crisscrossed with these trenches. My dad had rented some kind of infernal device and dug up all these trenches. So fast forward to two days later when we've set all our pipes and drilled all the wholes we'll need.

 

So now it's time to fill in these trenches and my dad hands me a shovel. I've spent a coup[le days now just tossing dirt into these trenches. We have to put in screening then lay tape then throw in more dirt. And it's just silly labor intensive. You'd be surprised at the short durations over which you are able to really shovel effectively. Well I am anyway.

 

So I had a kind of interesting moment when I was out there shoveling when I got to thinking about the fact that it had taken me the same amount of time to fill in 1/10th of our trenches as it had taken my father to dig them with his machines. We really do have an amazing capacity to change the landscape around us and I think it took doing some work like this to really make me appreciate how much power our machinery contains.

 

I wonder if there isn't some way we can make everyone experience this kind of thing.

 

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Thursday T-T-T-Terrapost

 

So then I'm flying back from Boston and I got to thinking about people voiting with their pocketbooks versus people voting with their long term health in mind. So I got myself to pondering, how do we get people to expand their minds and accept the fact that they live on a huge planet?

 

Oddly enough my first thought was that we need to look into third world countries er, developing nations - whatever we're calling them. Of course they are doing the tiniest little fractions of damage. But they were the people that I naturally assumed would the least able to view the world as an encolsed system. Then I realized that this was silly 'common sense' thinking. If anything these people are probably much more attuned to the nature of limited resources then we are. Sure they are caught between the rock and the hard place of exploiting their natural resources or starvation but in this thought process we see an important fact. They are closely tied to their natural resources. I personally don't give a shit about how much coal is left in Pennsylvania. It doesn't - on a very visceral level- matter to me at all. I don't work in a coal mine. None of my friends or family do. On a more thoughtful plane I understand that as a fossil fuel a large supply of coal would increase the likelihood of our switching from one fossil fuel to another.

 

This little thought process led me to think that there are 3 levels of thought and it's the middle one that's dangerous. At the 'bottom' level we see people who have a close tie to nature who understand that it is fungible and operates according to its own rules and laws. Then we get people who have progressed up a technological ladder who view nature as a resource but don't have the foresight or connection to the earth that allows them to understand the earth as a system. then we have me, a person who lives in a technological society but has some idea of where he fits into the bigger picture.

 

So in short I was thinking we need someway to make people skip over step 2 where all they worry about his short term econmic gain. I'm not sure how we could do that with rhetoric. The idea of not simply being a money grubbing capitlist stooge has been done quite a bit with no real effect. It's enough to make me wonder if maybe what we need is some kind of apocolyptic event.

 

I hate posts where I basically take a long round about way of saying that I have nothing to say but that's what this has boiled down to. My apologies but such is life.

 

If you're looking for an interesting article, this month's rolling stone has a piece on a guy who used to work for the Star Wars program who wants to begin geoengineering projects. Fascinting Icarian kind of stuff there. MAde my toes tingle.

 

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Monday M-M-M-Megapost!

 

So I got trapped in Boston with no internet connection. It was horrible but somehow I survived. So here is a megapost wherein I expound upon some random notes that I've found scribbled in my notebook. They were supposed to keep my thoughts alive till I could return to the Intertron but now they serve as little more then cute archaelogical puzzle.

 

So first up - some thoughts I had flying into Boston. I was looking down on the City as we flew in and we got close enough that you could really make out the details of the cars. So it got me to thinking about how it never occurs to me, when I'm sitting in my car, that there could be somone floating in the sky up above me watching everything I do. It's simply not a thought proccess I can have spontaneously. And it got me to thinking that this kind of thought is the same kind of thought that the idea of living on a planet is.

 

If we're going to get people to think about living on a planet I think we need a little more then saying instairs and outstairs. Clearly shooting everyone into space isn't feasible- but there must be a way to make people come face to face with the idea short of dragging them all across the planet.

 

Job Interview - So for those of you who don't know I was out job hunting. So when I was there a debated started on whether the environmental movement should be focused on altering the behavior of individual citizens or whether we should be focused altering institutions. It reminded me of the argument we had at the beginning of class.

 

I saw this debate through the lens of my recent thoughts on the plane. I don't see how we can expect people to make every decision through a sustainable lens. It's going to be impossible to get 6 billion people to weigh the sustainablity of every action they make in a given day. Instead we do need to build some kind of appartus that allows us to make that decision once then have it ripple outward. Think of the difference between trying to get every american driver to buy the most fuel effcient car versus raising CAFE standards. Getting people mobilized and educated to get CAFE standards up would take a lot less time and persuasion then getting them to all take it into account when they get onto a car lot. People are going to vote with their pocketbooks in those situations 98% of the time.

 

There was more...but it's already Tuesday. I'll post the rest of the megapost tommorow, er today. Hopefully before class.

 

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Electric Car

 

I thought this documentry was strong by comparison to the others we've seen on a couple key points.

 

One, it's antecdotal. This documentry tells a story about a fairly small group of people involved in one particular event. This kind of narrative is much more effective then Al Gore's flow charts and pie graphs. Its obvious drawback is that you are asking people to extrapolate from this one antecdote which gives you less control on what views they will come to about what this story means in the context of globalization and sustainablity but I think if we've decided anything in this class it's that evolutionary approaches to thought and change are best.

 

Second, it had lots of famous people in it. Famous people are awesome. Plus they really are cultural landmarks and in a weird way, being able to say that Tom Hanks had one makes it seem realer then if it's someone random who owned the car. It's a kind of Bizzaro version of having somone you know have cancer instead of someone you don't.

 

Third, it was much more optomistic. The tone of this documentry was much better about saying - wouldn't this have been great! as opposed to : evil corporations will always destroy all that is good. You could make this story bend either way but this documentry left you with the impression that while the EV didn't work out, there are still people out there working on and improving this technology - that in fact the Electric car wasn't dead at all.

 

Fourth, a cute redhead. We should find some way to link sustainabilty to a cute perky redhead.

 

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Boomerang

 

So I've been scatter brained all week trying to get a silly number of things done at once - so I've been basically out of class commision for a week.

 

The problem facing us today - in terms of the bucky dillema - is the myth that somehow capitlism is responsible for the rise in the standard of living. Free markets have existed for a long time. Aside from moments in history with severly limiting caste structures anyone was free to trade anything for whatever they wanted. The situations that invariably arose were ones where winners kept winning. Landholders would slowly accumlate more and more wealth until they reached a critical mass wherein the people surrounding them decided that it was worth it to take their property by force. At which point the cycles started over again.

 

What has created the rise in the standard of living over the past 200 years has been science. With the emergence of the scientific process and the valuing of innovation over tradition we have been able to build better and better mousetraps. Faster forms of transport allow more people more flexibility in where they live and what oppurtunties are presented to them. Better technology allows larger scale production and the creation of more goods and services for all.

 

Capitlism is simply the observation that human desire - tempered by myriad outside factors - determines who produces and who benefits from these advancements. The idea that all technological process would stop if there was no cash incentive in it is bunk. Feel free to poke through the history of any of your favorite technological devices I will guarantee you that they were created either out of some kind of military necessity or by some nerd in his garage just monekying around.

 

I think the challenge we face is shifting the perception away from cut throat capitilism to a more socially and environmentally aware model. One where people understand that their actions need to be relevant in a global pattern and we'll see a vast improvement of the quality of life for those who currently struggle at the bottom of theconomic laddr.

 

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Controlling Perception or Perceiving Control

 

Butler's book serves me as a reminder of how desperately we should avoid trying to control people. We've talked a bit about bottom up versus top down thinking in where we should aim our rhetoric and Dawn reminded me of the confrontational nature of many people when confronted with an iron hand.

 

I've never been able to view the Onklai as Utopian in any way because I am never able to reconcile how little choice the humans have over their destiny. The choice that the humans get is basically a false one - the Onklai wield so much pwer and humanity is so dependent on them that you can never really argue that the human beings in the story have much autonomy.

 

And this drives me bonkers. Especailly early on in the book, I just feel this constant seething annoynace at the Onklai and the way they remove all other options then pretend like they let you pick what remained. I think it's important that we avoid that kind of rhetoric when we try and get people to change the way they live. We need to focus heavily on positive reinforcment to avoid generating resentment. I also suppose we could do so because it would be more effective and less morally questionable. On the downside we wouldn't get a chance to beat people with sticks for engaging in behaviors we dissapprove of.

 

Elusive Ephiphany

 

I really need to carry a pen and paper around with me - I have about 10 thoughts a dayh that I love that then slip through my my fingers.

 

But I got thinking today about organic versus systemic learning. I've always been a big propenant of informal education. Almost every skill that I've ever learned or found useful has been learned outside of school -with the exception of certain basics reading, riting, rithmatic.

 

I've always found that useful knowledge is usually very apperant. When I was out camping with my family as a child I wanted to learn how to make a fire because it was a skill that had obvious value to me. I found computers followed a similar path for me and all my sports skills were garnered from pick up games.

 

What I started thinking about during class was the way in which systemic teaching quashes organic learning. The need to spend time jumping through hoops and garnereing skills that have been chosen by a group of crotechty old white man who have a vested interest in students learning skills that will propogate their industries. But I don't mean to say it's a conspiracy as much as it's a series of events that have unfolded to hinder organic learning.

 

I need some time to think about this a little more beofre I'd fully outline the ways it operates but here's a thought that did just occur to me and I'll write down here. Colleges found that kids that did lots of extracurriclars tneded to do better then those with better SATs or grades so they recruited accordingly. I would be willing to bet you dollars to donoughts that this effect has diminished as more and more extra-curriclars have been adopted into the system. Extra curriculars were and indicator of success because they pointed to kids who had an interest in skills and learning. Now it's just another indicator of overbearing parents.

 

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What's work?

 

So I was wondering about what people consider 'work.' Basically I was thinking along the lines that we were talking about at the end of yesterday's class: Actually not working entirely is basically living at an old age home which is almost universally accepted as torturous. When I started dreaming up my early retirment project I naturally assumed I'd be doing a fair amount of 'work' in the form of basica maintence, some lite gardening etc.

 

So the question I put to the class is: How much work would you have to do on given day before you'd consider yourself working?

 

For me perosnally I imagine hving about four hours of work to do a day to be retirment. That's 12 hours of leisure a day assuming you sleep 8 hours a nite. I'm curious as to the thoughts of the rest of the class. Where do you find the sweet spot between being an invalid and working at a sweatshop?

 

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Ghost of a Chance

 

No cute pun in my title today. Life is full of little dissapointments isn't it?

 

I think the Burroughs book does a good job of bringing the concept of 'new thinking' or 'noise blasting' that Burroughs is always working on to the way we see the world. Burrough's bizzare non narrative style is as always either off putting or highly engaging. Personally I find that the confusing construction and untraditional narrative style draw me in. When you find yourself in totally different world in terms of literary construction it makes me more liklely to open up my mind and wonder whether or not this guy is really on to something.

 

I don't know that it has mass appeal. I think people would pick up this book get half way through and ask me "Wait, is this science fiction? Or a novel? Am I supposed to understand what's going on?" I think this book requires an already open mind. You have to be willing to go with it for a bit with a relaxed mind if you're going to get the most out of it. I don't know that that is the best way to draw people in and get them thinking differntly.

 

That said I don't really have a suggestion for how Burroughs could be more effective. Trying to get people to step back and really question their core beliefs is not easy. I'd go so far as to say that people are either willing to do that kind of examination or not and no book will change that. I do think this book is effective for the former.

 

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Bizzare Couple Days

 

I don't really have much to say. I missed class today - yesterday at this point. Other then my bizzare and schedule with trying to get this house built not much going on.

 

I wish I read the paper more. I used to read the paper almost everyday and haven't really done so in about a month. I feel like I'm missing out on the pulse of what's going on in the world. Not reading the paper in so long has also got me thinking about cultural involvment. I was watching bits of the governor's debate between Lynn Swann and Ed Rendell and the debate seemed to remind me of what bothers me about all these elections: There is a very real me first appeal.

 

Let's skip over the lower taxes thing. I mean sure that's the most obvious point but I'm a little tired of yelling at people for worrying about getting their taxes lowered while missing the big picture. And I think that's where we should focus a lot of our energies. I think if we could get people to focus on how living sustainably benefits them directly we'd do a lot to help our cause.

 

When we see Al Gore going on and on about Global warming it's just too big. No one is going to really support an effort to cut down on emissions in the hoeps that 6 billion other people will do the same to prevent some disaster that's years off. Simply not going to happen.

 

I think we need to start thinking back along the lines of our suggestions for greening people's homes. We need to find little pieces and ways to make people go greener for smaller gains. Then when the effects start to stack we'll start seeing change on the Global Warming front.

 

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Al Bore

 

Frankly I've always thought Al Gore's robot reputation was basically undeserved. World's most charasmatic speaker? No.

 

Which is sort of how I felt about his presentation. It reminded me watching a college lecture. It was certainly the best 2 hour presentation I've seen on the causes and effects of global warming.

 

The problem is that is really pretty lame duck at this point. This idea that we just need to educate enough people and that will get them doing what needs to be done seems naive. Global warming is not a low profile issue.

 

The two camps that are left are those that dont care and those that don't believe. You're not going to ever sway the people who don't want to believe at this point. As Al Gore points out, there aren't really any scientific evidence to the contrary. Those people are holding on by sheer force of will. The other camp are the people that know about global warming but choose not to act. Getting those people motivated is also a hopelss task. But Al Gore doesn't even begin to go into it there. He continues with the same old scare tactics.

 

In short the problem is that this appeal to the masses has been tried over and over. And everytime the people who know what's going on get all excited because a big name has shown up to 'really get people talking'. And for the umpteenth time nothing will come of it. It's more then a little Charlie Brown.

 

I think this change is really going to have to come from the top down. Some big name political players need to be persuaded to sacrifice their careers to try and get some kind of legislation that forces the U.S. to go green quickly.

 

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Corporate Needs

 

Bending corporations to be more green is fairly simple. All you have to do is put the carrot in front of them. The trick to making them greener is to constantly place green alternatives as cost saving alternatives.

 

As the price of crude goes up this gets easier and easier to do. Already many companies have felt the pinch in transport. As it gets more expensive to move around waste it benefits companies to reduce the amount of waste they generate. A number of companies have been focusing on ways of re-using materials they would previously have discarded or sinmply working on not creating these by-products at all.

 

I think targeting local business would be more effective then targeting local homes for our 'x-treme' makeover idea.

 

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My Parents Did My Homework

 

I couldn't really think of a multimedia project. But I was trying to think of images that talked to me about sustainability. It made me think of this set of pictures my Dad took in Afghanistan.

 

 

 

That's a hydro-electric generator that some Afghanis built using an old engine and the frame of an old pickup. You can see where the axles are connected to the generator. This little generator provides power to their town because getting a supply of gasoline to run the generators is difficult for reasons that should be obvious to all of us.

 

I just thought this was a great example of how simple it can be to create sustainable energy with a little know how and some ingenuity.

 

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Propaghandi

 

I didn't find the video to be particularity effective. It suffered from conspiracy nut syndrome. For having a cast of financial experts and geologists they all came off as amateurish or nutty.

 

I think the problem had a lot to do with the filmmaker and camera work. All of this crooked angle work and the montages. It's hard to take a man seriously while he's driving a car and the camera seems to be placed in the cup holder.

 

the documentary End of Suburbia covered basically the same ground but did it with higher production values. Some of this had to do with taking a less alarmist stance. In End of Suburbia there was a more educational tone. They went out of their way to present facts and a full discussion of the problem up front. Then there was a discussion of alternatives and solutions. I didn't get that feeling from this piece. In this piece when they discussed the problem they basically said we should get on it right now. But then they didn't talk at all about what to do.

 

In short I think the biggest problem with this documentary is that it sought to alarm not to educate. I don't think alarmism has a very good track record, it tends to get diffused and mocked. If we really want to make an effective piece we need an educational tone. It has a longer lasting effect.

 

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We Should Just steal from the Government

 

I was just over on Howstuffworks.com reading about the new Stryker system the army is developing. Let's skip over the fact that the Army feels comfortable naming military systems with Gen X's callous disregard for spelling.

 

I have no idea how much money they spent developing this system. But let's just assume 36 billion. That's a shitload of money for blowing people up. Why can't we get the government to shell out that kind of cash.

 

So I see two options here. One we find a way to make non-sustainability scary. Making long term problems have a visceral impact has not worked out well for the green movement in the past so I'm taking a pass on that idea.

 

Our other option is to get in touch with people doing research and work on getting them more funding from the government. I can't imagine it would be too hard to make pork barrel politics work for us for a change.

 

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Where's my Flying Car?

 

From Xmilitary ' And spin may be the most important aspect of that; it looks like it might be our job in this class to basically brainstorm ways and implementation for ensuring anyone from our neighbors to our neighboring companies, schools, governmental organizations, and whatever else expect and demand the benefits of sustainability rather than avoiding the self-deprivations too often assumed in discussions of sustainability. If we can help to publicize the benefits of current efforts at sustainable living in the right place, we could do a lot of good. '

 

I think the problem here is that our first hurdle is really going to be getting people to appreciate the long term benefits of research science. I think if we had cheap efficient solar panels I could sell them. 'Hey, spend X hundred dollars putting these solar panels on your house and you'll never have to pay an electric bill ever again'. That strikes me as being relatively easy a couple puppy dog commercials and the free market would take care of that for us.

 

The problem is that we need to get those cheap panels and other technologies that would make sustainability cheap and easy. That's a much harder sell. 'Hey give us X million dollars and maybe in couple years we can lower your electric bill'. We need to focus on getting people to prioritize the work toward making our current mode of living compatible with sustainability. I think that will be our biggest hurdle.

 

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Credit

 

I pulled this clip out of Oldman's wiki:

 

In response to Nonprophet's thoughts on sustainability, I totally agree that sustainability is a politicized word, and one that I was instantly criticized for when bringing it up among my friends. As I am entirely used to being called a "hippy-tree hugging-liberal" I was not fazed by their comments, but I was disappointed in their lack of interest. It is scary to see just how easy it is to turn an otherwise useful discussion on the planet's ecosystem into a game of words, words that discredit the importance and mere rationality of such a discourse.

 

 

A lot of this 'lack of interest' comes from an effect that I dubbed the Santa Claus effect. This is the effect where children cry when they learn there is no Santa Claus. There isn't really a good reason to cry - they're still going to get as many presents the only thing that changes is the name on the box. Kids cry anyway. People have an inherent fear of changing their mind. Even if the change to sustainability were completely harmless you would still be fighting societal inertia. Implicit in the argument that sustainability is 'right' is the idea that people who don't work toward sustainability are wrong. And people hate to be wrong so they'll refuse to change their minds since that is easier then admitting fault. And that is the root of a lot of the hostility that Oldman is talking about.

 

Which is why I put forth that any argument for sustainability needs to be couched in pre-existing narratives. We will never get people to consume less so we have to get them to consume smarter and call this market progression. Then the people who hate tree hugging liberals can look back in 20 years and say 'See the market sorted it out.' We'll have to content ourselves with the knowledge that we did all the work but won't get any of the credit.

 

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The First of Many

 

I've been floating around the east coast the last couple days - family wedding. In doing so I've run into a couple people building houses and it got me to thinking that this idea of not portraying sustainability as a question of sacrifice is ludicrous. Having watched people pour over blueprints and schematics I can tell you that there is little to no concern for conservation. The emphasis is entirely on comforts and square footage.

 

Perhaps there is a way to sustain the lavish standard of living that Americans have become used to in a sustainable environment but it would require advancements of leaps and bounds in the technologies of energy and food production.

 

Even if I could convince these people that they should create a sustainable house they would have to give out a lot of what they want - and we are instantly back in the arguments of deprivation.

 

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