Monday, August 23, 2010

Vermiculture

I started a vermiculture bin this weekend with 30 red wigglers from the Fishin' Shedd. I'm hoping to go to a vermiculture workshop this Saturday but time may not allow. In the meantime, fed the little fuckers a bunch of veggie cuttings on the damp paper bed. we'll see how it turns out.

The Works of Paolo Bacigalupi


So far this cat has put out three books, one of which is a collection of short stories ("Pump Six," the title story of which we'll delve into here), one of which is for adults ("The Windup Girl"), and one of which is for young adults ("Ship Breaker").



"The Windup Girl" is certainly the most frightening in some ways as Mr. Bacigalupi's imagination takes off from  the realm of the absolutely possible. The eponymous character is an artificial human or "new person." The "windup" reference is based on the idea that at first glance it is hard to tell the difference between the artificial person and the "real" person, so the designers implant a slightly jerky motion as an identifying factor. In other words, these new people in some ways move like windup toys.

Bacigalupi shows us a world where huge agricultural corporations based in the U.S. have wreaked havoc on the world through genetically modified pests. Those same corporations then sell seeds resistant to those pests, but those seeds are incapable of second generation growth. Easy to see where this is going, and far too easy to believe as a tool of economic warfare.

He also doesn't spare us when it comes to depicting the mistreatment suffered by the Windup Girl at the hands of "real" people.  It is brutal, ugly, and again, all too believable. But Bacigalupi also presents us with a complex political thriller that highlights the bravery (or in some cases obstinacy) of major and minor characters
in a country (Thailand) struggling for survival in a frighteningly real new world.

"Ship Breaker" takes place in the same world as "The Windup Girl," though as a young adult novel Bacigalupi goes easier on the violence. But it is still a dangerous and violent world. The main character is a young kid working the Gulf coast beaches with a "light crew" pulling wiring out of ship hulks. Bacigalupi extrapolates the current talk of returning some shipping to sail into a new age of clipper ships...high tech, hydrofoil ships opening a new age of globalization after the end of oil caused the retreat of the one we are in now. Bacigalupi makes a good YA writer because like the best of those writing for young adults he treats his audience with respect (like Pullman and unlike C.S. Lewis) and provides a great adventure story full of fascinating ideas.

Which does bring me to a brief aside; what is the difference between a YA novel or story and one for adults? Judging from Bacigalupi's writing the devil is in the details. In "The Windup Girl" there is much more grit and a sense of hopelessness. The rape and torture depicted that The Windup Girl herself experiences is not so graphic as to qualify for the "Hostel" series but graphic enough. In "Ship Breaker" when the beautiful "princess" washes ashore we know she is in danger of enslavement, prostitution, rape, and more. The threat is more implicit but feels real enough. Another difference in Bacigalupi's work is that in the YA book there are some heroes; the main character is young enough to be largely without sin (a touchy concept in a world such as ours filled with child soldiers). He is not an addict of the newest super-meth his father is hooked on, nor a drinker like others. He is loyal to his friends and chooses to do the right thing; he is a hero, flawed, imperfect, but a hero.

In "The Windup Girl" there are people who are heroes to their countrymen ("The Tiger of Bangkok" is a former Muy Thai champ turned cop for the Environmental Ministry) but who are fatally flawed by hubris and other sins, and there are a lot of broken people trying to survive, who may not be heroes, but who we can recognize as "that could be me." There are any number of villains, but some of them are acting in what they believe are the best interests of their country and countrymen (ain't THAT always the case). But where there are some black and white issues in "Ship Breaker" (though not without some coloring- our hero remembers his father before the death of his mother and before the onset of addiction as a decent husband and father), there are none in "The Windup Girl." There is, at least, a little bit of justice.

Which is not to say that Bacigalupi is strictly a Dystopian with nothing but negatives to show us.

"Pump Six" is the title story of the collection of short stories and could be considered an homage or reference to "Idiocracy." I know, it's a Wikipedia link, but it works.

In the New York of "Pump Six" our hero is a sewer repairman. He's a hard living guy  with a hot girlfriend who isn't exactly dumb but who has to be reminded that when she smells gas she shouldn't stick her head in the oven and light a match to see what is going on. And she is pretty smart compared to the rest of the people we meet.

One aspect of this New York is that it is overrun by "Trogs." Nobody really knows where these funny looking little humanoids came from. They are naked little crosses between people and toads in appearance, they are all over the place, and they copulate a lot. Our hero has an epiphany when he seeks out the last library in the city (Columbia University) and realizes that college student behavior is no different than Trog behavior. Amidst rains of bricks falling from buildings in disrepair, our hero schleps around trying to figure out how to fix Pump Six and prevent NYC from drowning in its own shit.

Bacigalupi's world-view is bleak and brutal but not hopeless. There is human ingenuity to temper the end of oil, but human greed still reigns as ever. There is heroism to temper that greed and avarice, but heroes fall. The light at the end of the tunnel may be a flickering blue flame from a methane lamp, but the light is still there.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Today's Hustler-style extreme closeup Heap Centerfold

OMG! That is soooo hot!
Actually, it IS pretty hot. The white stuff you see is some serious chemical reactin' and what you can't see is the steam coming off of the pile. I suppose I'm going to have to wait until cooler weather to get a really good shot.

Today's Heap Centerfold

ooooooooohh baby!

The Most Miserable Motherscratcher of the Morning...

was a punk driving his SUV on the B-Line between Kirkwood and 6th streets. He was apparently avoiding the construction on Kirkwood. He was grinning and thought he was pretty clever.

As they say, never a cop around when you need one.

But this is the third very stupid and very dangerous thing I've seen "young-people-who-certainly-appear-to-be-students-but-jeez-don't-want-to-label-anyone-unfairly" do in the last 12 hours (the first two being guys running stop signs... also in SUVs), the fourth possibly-accident-causing bad driving (the other being a person in the right turning lane who went straight... not so bad unless you're illegally merging into a single lane with the person who is in the correct lane.

Two days ago, while on my bike, a pedestrian and I were crossing on the crosswalk at 2nd and Walnut (with the "walk' light on for us, after we waited for the eastbound lane's green arrow to change) and some lady turning north on Walnut (and on the phone, driving one handed) forced her way past us. I'm sure that the cursing I leveled at her was loud enough for the person on the other end of the phone to hear. I certainly hope she hasd a nervous breakdown, or cried herself to sleep, or whatever.

Most of which adds up to just plain stupidity and highlights the fact that most people just shouldn't be driving. But the jerk this morning, quite obviously pleased as punch with himself for his clever rebelliousness, just needs his clock cleaned. That is the kind of dangerous arrogance that threatens bicyclists everyday.

Are bikers annoying? Yes, many are, and many exhibit their own brand of hubris and dangerous behavior. I sincerely feel sorry for any rational motorist who runs over some stupid biker who blows off a stop sign or whatever. But being two-wheeled and self-propelled most of the time these days I do see a lot of really ridiculous behavior from people in cars. Not to mention that we still haven't put our foot down as a society on people who are simply too old to be driving anymore. This IS a hard one; I know, I've had to take the keys from my own mom. But them old folks is dangerous.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

6 years ago today

the adoption of my daughter was finalized in court. It was a great day. Each year we celebrate the kid's adoption day in a special way. Hopefully she won't choose Cheeseburger in Paradise again, but at least they have beer.

Cooler weather

sure does highlight some good steam coming off of the pile.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

A Very Nice Apocalypse- Justin Cronin's "The Passage"

I think I got a heads up on this book from one of those online retailers always trying to read your thoughts. They turned out to be right.

This is a vampire book, but not your namby-pamby Mormon tweener vampires fruitbats or your trailer park vamps or any of those other loser vampires. This is actually cool.

Cronin does characters, let's get that established right away. Some characters don't even have a spoken line in the book and make only a brief appearance but Cronin is able to create a very cogent idea of who this person is and what makes them tick. Or maybe the key is that your imagination is able to take the crumbs he gives you and fill in the rest. I guess it just depends on what kind of crumbs the author throws you.

So while this is a vampire book and an apocalypse story and while there is plenty of action, it is the parts between the action-which is exciting and well-written, also- that treally makes this book shine.

Cronin's narrative is seemless, even when he jumps a century into the future. We step effortlessly from the end of our world (which ends, at least for some with something like a wimper) into a world of the future that remembers us and is clinging to life using the corroded threads of our knowledge and technology. One of the most masterful constructs in "The Passage" is The Colony.

As a viral plague (of vampirism) is wiping out the U.S., starting at a military base in Colorado, California and Texas both secede. California sets up a series of fortified colonies to keep out the "virals," "jumps," "flyers," "smokes," and "dracs," as they are variously known. The Colony is one of those Cali collectives. By A.V. 92 (92 years after the virus) the residents of the Colony have long lost contact with all of the other colonies and believe they might be the last survivors in the world. Cronin provides us with the Colony's "articles of incorporation" and social structure. There is no mistaking that these people are the good guys; they work hard, and they cherish their "Littles" to the point that they hide them in "the santuary" (a former elementary school) until they reach 8-years-old, to prevent them from knowing the true horror of the world until they are past their formative years.

As the title suggests, this is also a story of a voyage, though the titular reference in this case is a bit deceptive. In any Odyssey, Ulysses has got to meet some weirdos. In this case we get creepy collaborators, Texas tough guys, a stray dog, massacre survivors and a whole nation of ghosts. No disappointments there.

The vampires are not completely sentient. They are glowing, superhumanly strong gargoyles, occasionally with shreds of their former identity clinging to their new bodies, like a bunch of rings stuck on the fingers of what was previously an old woman, or a shock of ragged, dyed red hair. Through one major character, we hear their thoughts, which mostly consist of "Who am I?" with fleeting glimpses of the people they once were. So these vamps ain't sexy, but they are oddly sympathetic as well as scary.

And the great thing is, there is so much more going on between the characters; love, rivalry, hatred, grief, loss, hope, it's all there.

I do hope that this isn't the start of a trilogy or something though. It would be like "Stephen King's The Stand II." The story is told here in as complete a fashion as it needs to be told. This is a vampire apocalypse book that is epic in scope and character, with battles, heroes, villains, the works, but it completely avoids becoming pulp (pulp is great, but everything doesn't have to be pulp) fiction of the sort that rehashes the same characters in the same or similar situations over and over. If Mr. Cronin's resume serves as any indicator his next book will be nothing like this one, but then again, with the mad skills he's showing here, if it is a sequel, he may have some new tricks to show us yet..

Ye Olde Heap Got to Stinkin' Yesterday

I did a little experiment I like to call "The Cellulose Experiment" over the last few days on the heap.

Using my big old 55 gallon trashcan I frequently use for staging and mixing I pulled most of the semi-intact foodstuffs and paper and cardboard out of the heap and put it in the can, mixed in a smaller amount of more refined compost, stirred like hell, and soaked the whole thing. Stirred frequently over the next couple of days.

Last night, I dumped it out. It smelled like a sewer/swamp, especially at the bottom. The smell disipated pretty quickly though (releasing methane into the atmosphere, though, so a bit too long without stirring, I'd say) and what was left was nasty, gunky proto-Black Gold. So in general it worked well, though I need to shorten the cooking time or stir more frequently to avoid the anaerobic conditions that breeds the stinks. I was worried it wouldn't disipate and I'd have angry neighbors with pitchforks coming after me. But I wasn't too worried; I, too, have a pitchfork.

Why You Pay for Other People's Kids to Go to School

One question frequently asked these days is why a person with no children should pay for the education of other people’s children. So here goes:

Before the rise of representative governments, free markets and secularism, power was in the hands of a few people. The “divinely appointed” kings and their vassals had land and weapons. Land meant food. Weapons meant they would kill you if you didn’t adhere to their social order, which basically consisted of “This is my stuff and if you touch it without permission I will stab you with my sword.” The Church also had lands and weapons, but also had the market cornered on learning and on ideology. The ideology of the day consisted of “Do what we say or we will not only kill you in this life, we will make your afterlife very unpleasant.” These power holders wanted cheap agricultural labor. People didn’t need to know how to read to do that work. Additionally it always becomes evident, sooner or later, that when people start reading they start asking pesky questions and making trouble.

Flash forward to colonial America. Many colonials were religious fanatics who wanted to read the Bible for themselves. They were allowed to go to the colonies because nobody in Europe liked them and it was dangerous work being a colonist, so you might as well send people you don’t like, because you won’t see them again. The colonists went to war with their mother country. They lost almost every battle. They won the war. Various reasons can account for this but one reason is that it is hard to kill ideas, and the British were fighting ideas as much as Minutemen.

These ideas were shared among the colonists in newspaper, pamphlets, and word of mouth. Eventually, some of these ideas became laws. On top of that, as the financial institutions of the world were undergoing rapid transition also, something called the middle class arose. These people ran businesses or had trades and therefore needed more education. There were a fair number of these people in the New World. So ideas, words, and their natural ally education were cornerstones of the new republic.

When people don’t have educations their ability to work decent jobs becomes severely limited. They make less money than educated people. They become part of a marginalized impoverished underclass. They turn to crime, violence, drugs, alcohol, and they don’t make very good citizens in general. People in America thought that having a populace that was educated and personally invested in the political process is a better thing than having an ignorant, unskilled and uninvolved populace. Those Founding Troublemakers, in other words, wanted a nation of troublemakers.

We have managed to hold on to this precious bit of egalitarian thought for a couple hundred years. Those opponents of paying taxes for schools, many of who of course are products of the public school system, simply don’t understand the importance of education for a healthy society.
You pay for schools because you went to one. You pay for schools so little Johnny next door can get a decent job and not break into your house to steal your stuff or kill you. You pay for schools because your country doesn’t die when you do. You pay for schools as an investment in freedom. If you don’t have kids or you opt-out of the public school system you still live in a society that relies on public schools, and so you pay.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Current read:

"The Passage," Justin Cronin.

Next up: "Super Sad True Love Story," Gary Absurdistan.

"The City and the City." China Mieville.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Bill McKibben, writing in TomDispatch

and reprinted in Truthout here.

When a rational guy and Methodist Sunday school teacher like McKibben says "this is fucked up" it's time to listen. We have been failed by our political representatives at all levels, from the POTUS on down. Perhaps our local reps, city councils, etc., should be spared, but in most cases, they're probably not doing enough.

Cap and trade was an opportunity. PACE is an opportunity and "cash for caulkers is an opprtunity. But the greed-fest of globalization has blinded every suit from sea to shining sea into thinking life and the planet are endless schmorgasbords.

Not so.

As McKibben writes, NOAA, which admittedly shouldn't be treated as the world's most reliable newsource at times , but which SHOULD be believed on something this basic, reveals we have just been through "the hottest decade, the hottest year, the hottest 6 months, and the hottest April, May, and June" in the history of recording weather.

It reminds me of the beginning of "The Road Warrior" where the wheels of industry grind to a halt while the world falls apart and the politicians "talk."

So, as McKibben says, it's time to get mad. This is the new civil rights movement, in terms of the effort that will be needed. Time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

24 years ago today

I foolishly ran a motorcycle into a parked car at somewhere between 40 and 60 miles per hour. Luckily, I got out of the deal alive.

It's a good thing stupid shit like that mostly happens to us when we're young and strong enough to survive it, maybe.

But it makes you wonder why, even though we cry over the fatalities if they're close to us, or shake our heads in abstract sadness if they're not, why we tolerate 40,000 or more deaths on the road every year?

Unfortunately, the answer is obviously money. Oil companies and auto companies stand to lose too much from sanity, or regulation of "The American Way" of limitless freedom. Buy your 16-year-old a car. Make sure they drive everywhere.

GRIST online ran a somewhat weepy but nonetheless interesting analysis of how bicyclists are treated in film. Basically, if you're on a bike and not in a car, you're a loser. Now, I drive too, and "I'm an excellent driver," unlike most of the rest of the world (and most of the rest of the world believes themselves to be "excellent drivers" also. They are not.), but I love biking and I'd love convenient (more convenient, I should say, it's not too bad in Bloomington) mass transit. One car per family SHOULD be enough. But until infrastructure catches up, we're pretty much stuck.

Infrastructure won't catch up until politicians do. Politicians won't catch up until we do. When we're ready to vote for people who aren't just whores for oil and big business, maybe fewer people will die. Maybe.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Dymaxian car pages

Seem to be proliferating on the web.

For the 10/10/10 350.org Bloomington Carbon Free Racing Street Challenge I think I'm going to try to build a Dymaxian.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Amazing color pics from the Depression from Denver Post Photo Blog

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/

So the pool house WILL be a tiny house

in addition to being a playhouse for the kids. Dual purpose, right? I might even get started after the wedding, but it may have to wait until after the 10/10/10 Carbon Free Outlaw Racing Day, because there are some cars to be built.

But it's basically a no-brainer. I'll need to poor a semi-foundation (it sits about halfway on the pool deck as it is) mostly just to help insulate and seal against bugs and other critters. We're going to change the slope of the shed, but I'm not exactly sure how at the moment. My current thought is to leave the northern facing half as is, and remove the southern half, and use the semi-clear corrugated plastic as roofing to let light in. The current gable is at a 30 degree slope, so the new half of the roof would go at a 10 or 15 degree slope from the centerline. That will raise the height by several feet, open it up, let light in.

A real door, and some windows. I'd like to get some idiosyncratic windows, like portholes or something, but I'll make due with whatever fits. They will need to be smaller, but If I can get a glass door along with the "clear" plastic roofing, there should be plenty of light. Then, insulation,, paneling, a wood floor, minimal furnishings (fold out bed and end table) and a small wood stove and it's pretty much done. Thinking about electricity, though; if I could scrounge a solar panel and get enough juiceto have a light on or maybe a small A/C in the summer? Paradise.

I will probably

spell check future posts so they don't look like some wing-nut wrote them.

I need a couple of burritos.

Watched a George Carlin clip yesterday or so which made me miss the guy. It was a typical Carlin rant about how we are owned by the bosses, and it was 100% correct- they want docile workers who don't bitch about how we're getting screwed.

God (or rather, noGod) knows I LOVED me some George Carlin. He was right about most of the things he ranted about, and this bit was no exception. However, he was sometimes wrong, too. When he bitched about environmentalists, he was on target in regard to preachy assholes who are holier than thou and who think donating to Greenpeace can or will save the planet. But he was wrong in saying we can't do anything to affect the planet and that the planet will scratch itself one day and we'll be gone, and the planet will be just fine. Or at least, he was wrong in asserting that his stated outcome is INEVITABLE, and dead wrong in stating we can't do anything to harm or heal the planet.

Some yahoo wrote a column in the HT recently making a seemingly "reasonable" plea to not take "drastic" actions like carbon caps and to look for other "solutions" to the "possibly": man-made global warming problem. Obviously the science hasn't caught up with everyone yet, but the reality is that while some other options are available to augment emmissions reduction, the fastest, easiest, and most sensible way to reduce carbon is to reduce emmisions. We can seed the clouds, sure, but wouldn't mass transit solve many more problems as well.

Dumb fucks.

Anyway, back to George, the other problem I have is that nihilism has never really been my thing. George would say enjoy yourself, because your fucked any way you look at it. I don't have a problem with that, but why not at least try to be decent about it while you're at it? Fuckin' start a compost heap, man, you'll live longer (a recent study shows that men who stare at boobs live longer, too. I'm definitely giving that one a try).

Since we started 'postin', we have gone from two and sometimes three trash cans per week for pickup to one not-even-completely-full-can. Which means saving money. Which means more beer to drink. Which means a happier Deke. And so on.

Plus I'm going to be eating organic onions, tomatoes, 'taters, eggplants, corns, and swiss chard from my gharden next year, feelin' healthy, and so will my fams. So, fuck it! Do something good, compost, stare at some boobs, eat some good food, and THEN tell the powers that be to go FUCK THEMSELVES. With a buzz on you got from the extra beer you were able to afford from not having to buy so many goddamned trash stickers.

Black gold

Yep, so the 'post is 'postin' pretty effin' good. Threw in the grass clippings and now it smells (literally) like horse shit. This stuff is gonna be like uber-fertilizer on my beds next year.