"Build it and Ride It"

I found an amazing book from 1948 called "Build It and Ride It." It has plans for a couple dozen soap box derby racers. I need to get to a copy shop and start scanning that stuff in and posting up on Bloomington Carbon Free Racing, but dizzam! this book rocks.

This could inspire a lengthy column about how "back in the old days" people had to make their own toys but I'm not in the mood, nor, I suspect, is the rest of the planet.

Suffice it to say that this is a well written book directed at young readers (and possibly their parents, though I also suspect in 1948 parents weren't too concerned with turning their kids loose with a bunch of tools and wood) that is definitely also a relic of a different time.

Giant leaf-sucking vacuums

Last week it seems the concept of doing away with the giant leaf sucking vacuums was being bandied about by the city.  It really only makes sense.  I, of course, turn all that carbon into compost, and would encourage others to do the same, if they garden. But not everybody like plants, or flowers, or food, or saving the planets, so we can expect everybody to do so.

This is a good example of a service that is nice but unnecessary. People have been raking their lawns for a long time, or paying some neighborhood kid to do it. A newer service like this is kind if cool but not necessary. I bought an electric leaf blower for $25 that can be reversed and used as a mulcher. The biggest pile of leaves can be turned into a pile less than 1/4 of the size in no time at all. Compost them, fill in holes, spread them on your lawn.

In my readings on compost, wide ad varied that they are, I have read about communities starting their own compost piles. IF these leaves were going to something like that then it might be worthwhile, however, I'm pretty sure these are ending up in the landfill.

This could be a good service for someone to get into. A monthly yard waste and non-toxic bio-waste removal (as in everything that is kitchen waste except for meats, bones and oils, the basic non-compostable stuff)with a composting facility where yard waste couple be mulched and mixed with kitchen waste. Stir, add water, and bada-bing. You got yerself a product to sell- compost.

Fucking sleep study

DAMMIT. I have to go back for the SECOND time to that creepy fucking clinic and have wires stuck all over me AGAIN and have some technician monitor me all night so I can spend a thousand fucking dollars on a goddamn machine to help me sleep better.

Or maybe, more pertinently, to make my wife sleep better.

I, of course, won't care if I die in my sleep. I'll be dead. Darkness at the top of the stairs, etc. But my kick-ass wife et al might bum on that, and meanwhile, while I DON'T die in my sleep from Sleep Apnea, my wife wakes up when I start sawing down the rain forest. So fuck it. Hopefully I'll sleep THIS time.

Grass roots and compost

The bus ride this morning WAS a pleasant mood changer in that is was a heartening bit of sunshine that it was as busy as it was. Again, not that I like crowded buses, I'm not a frotteurist, but the possibility that a younger generation might be rejecting the notion that riding in a car is always the best solution.

I recently read, though I can't remember where, that younger people are also less inclined to see cars as status symbols. Of course, both of these things can change as people age, we all get more conservative in some ways as we age. But I'm going to take this as a good sign for the future.

The problem is, most of these same kids didn't vote. I'm not going to rehash Mark Morford's column today because while it does highlight the angry side of my brain today, that side is tired. But the disillusionment of these young voters needs to be addressed. Morford dismisses them all as whiny. Well, maybe true, but they're also young, and so maybe they just don't know any better.

The Tea Party is/was a fake grass roots ('AstroTurf') movement, started the minute a black dude got the White House (or the minute Ron Paul got his feelings hurt by not getting elected POTUS, again, your choice).

What do these kids care about? Where do their self interests lie?

Hopefully, they realize THEY are the 'grandchildren' we are supposed to be worried about in regard to global climate change. They are the ones who will inherit submerged condos and crowded cities of the plains, dust bowls and likely 20+% unemployment in the coming years. They will inherit gravel and dirt roads.

But who am I kidding? It's all happening now. I wouldn't care so much about gravel roads if there was a train network and if locally the State wasn't talking about building I-69 (it costs money- there isn't any). WE are the grand-kids. We are inheriting all these problems. So maybe, aside from the glimmer of hope on the bus this morning, I came to realize that I had more in common with those kids than I previously thought.

Say what you will about kids these days...

On my morning bus ride today, thinking about what a mess this election turned out to be and thinking about how it is all the fault of the youth of America, a strange dichotomy was made evident.

First of all, 90% or more of the MANY passengers were young. That's good. The two kids next to me were complaining about hating the bus because it is crowded, but the simple fact that young people are making this sensible decision to leave their cars at home (if they have them) and ride is a good sign.

Beyond that, they were all polite and I don'tthink I saw more than 10 people out of 60 or 70 get off without thanking the driver. That was cool.

One of the people who DIDN'T thank the driver was the oldest person on the bus.  Admittedly, this lady came off as more bag lady than classy dame. But apparently this lady thought "Get out of the way you brain-dead, I need to get off" is an appropriate substitution for "Excuse me, this is my stop."

Score one for the youth of America.

Men are Predominatly Slackjawed Chickenshits- An Assessment of the 'Yelling Shit While You're Driving Past Phenomena'

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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.

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!

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.

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.

Current read:

"The Passage," Justin Cronin.

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

"The City and the City." China Mieville.

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.

Haiku to My Compost Heap

Steaming compost heap
Nitrogen and carbon cook
The bugs and I smile

About that title

I have discovered over the years that I learn more on my own than in a class... or do I?

"It's pronounced..."

We've all heard that once or twice in our lives. I went through school up until college an avid reader and bullshitter. It didn't work in college. The specificity of topics and the quality of work demanded made half-assing it no longer an option.

So out into the real world I went after a few years of half-assed attempts at college.

Back part-time and then full -time years later, older than most students by 10 years and fairly motivated to succeed I walked away after 3.5 years with an undergraduate degree. A couple years later went back for most of a graduate degree.

Looking back now, my choices were not great. Not terrible, but not great. Not great in that I did not choose either an undergraduate degree (Geography) or a graduate degree (Criminal Justice) that led to an immediate career path, though I have worked in the criminal justice field for almost a decade now and anticipate continuing to do so for another decade.

Not terrible, in that my degrees have served me in my work to some extent or another since I have earned them/mostly earned them, and continue to do do, and my second college lives did teach me how to learn in a more focused and disciplined fashion.

Learning, as they say, is a lifelong activity. Ultimately, all learning is done within the individuals brain case... but it does help to have a good guide. Maybe the biggest benefit of structured education is ultimately emerging from that experience with the ability to be your own guide.

Here's to Autodidacticism.