misc.
advice,
links,
books, and more!
novel
Apocalypsopolis, book one
zines
Civilization Will Eat Itself, Superweed 1-4, best of
"The bigger you build the bonfire, the more darkness is revealed."
- Terence McKenna
misc.
advice,
links,
books, and more!
novel
Apocalypsopolis, book one
zines
Civilization Will Eat Itself, Superweed 1-4, best of
July 29. New landblog post, about keeping flowing water on the surface.
July 29. The Economist covers freight trains vs passenger trains. American freight trains are the best in the world, and this is related to the fact that our passenger trains are expensive and slow: Amtrak has to pay to use railways that the freight companies own, and has to go slow to match the speed of freight. The Economist will never mention that corporations were given the rails in the first place in exchange for conditions that they never met. (See the book Railroads and Clearcuts.) But if we reform the rail system to make it more friendly to human passengers, freight will move with less efficiency.
If you know that the system is collapsing, the article becomes more interesting. It's loaded with examples of the high costs of increasing complexity, and it also mentions the deteriorating highways, a trend that will continue because highways are so expensive to maintain.
A deeper question is: how important is it, really, to move people quickly? I've taken several cross-country Amtrak rides, and I enjoy spending two days watching the scenery at 50mph. My complaint is the cost: if trains are more fuel-efficient than buses and airplanes, why are they more expensive? Won't they get more expensive still if they're faster? It seems like high-speed passenger rail is all about status, about how cool America is compared to other nations.
Here's a related article from a few weeks ago, How Green Is Your Ride, a thorough analysis of the "energetic performance" of different vehicles. Notice that freight trains are one to two orders of magnitude above passenger trains. I'm guessing this is because freight can be packed more densely, but the result is that bicycles are by far the best way to move people.
July 27, late. John Robb had a great bunch of links yesterday.
Also, in case you missed it, Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe. The Big Bang theory has always been shaky, and I think it will be laughed at in 200 years, but I don't know whether it will be this idea that replaces it, or something else.
July 23. As usual, I'm heading up to the land tomorrow, probably back online Wednesday. Also, I want to have a building party around the weekend of August 14-15. With any luck, I'll have straw by then and we can put up some cobwood walls. If I have helpers and not straw, we can to do experimental no-straw cobwood. You'll have to find your own transportation, and bring your own camping gear and food. I do have bulk quinoa and wheat, great spring water, and good beer. If you're interested, email me at the domain gmail and the name is ranprieur.
And if you're looking for more stuff to read online, a lot of my links come from reddit, and here's Karmanaut's map of reddit.
July 23. Anne has just made a very smart post on yesterday's subject, Something About the Duality of Man, focusing on the age-old question of whether bad human behavior comes from nature or culture.
July 22. Last weekend there was a giant thread over on the Anarchism subreddit, I spent two weeks living in something close to pure anarchy, and it sucked. Specifically, he was in the earthquake in Chile, and...
I can't express the intense stress of those days of absolute freedom. Strangers ceased to be humans, and became instead potential threats, to be assessed for the danger they presented... Even the apparent silver lining, the self-organization, was a nightmare. After the first two days the hoarding, leeching, shirking, goldbricking and other idiotic, counter-productive, egotistical and short-sighted behaviours began in earnest.
I'm not going to moderate a new discussion of this issue. But I was disappointed that the thread focused almost entirely on social systems, when clearly the problem was the people. The worse the people are, the more they need an authoritarian system, and the better the people are, the more they can get away with freedom. Of course, this raises two book-length questions: What exactly do "better" and "worse" mean in this context? And how do we make people better? Political thinkers think the answer is political: if we build just the right system, the system will make the people better, and the people will make the system better, and it's utopia. I think the answer lies mostly outside politics. Another question is: Can people get better on a deeper level than culture? Don't answer that -- just think about it.
July 21, late. Double post on landblog, in which I solve the mosquito wall tent problem, and begin mixing cob.
July 17. I'm heading up to the land today, probably until the middle of next week. But I've been saving up a bunch of psychology links. First, David sends this loooong article on couples therapy, Are You There For Me? I didn't read the whole thing, but there's a great insight near the beginning: people behave terribly toward their partners, undermining the relationship, because they are "in a state of anguish and terror" about the relationship dying. Paradoxically, their fear of an event paralyzes them and makes them behave in a way that draws them toward that event.
I immediately thought of this article on what drowning really looks like. Drowning people don't splash their arms and scream, even if it would attract attention that would save their life. Instead, their nervous system forces them to use their arms and mouth to do nothing but take one more gulp of air. And of course, this reminds me of how complex systems fail to prevent collapse: when they get in a state of crisis, they focus all their energy on keeping the whole thing going just a bit longer, while sabotaging their long term survival. I believe that even if every individual in a system knows what the problem is and how to fix it, the system as a whole can still rush to its doom... especially if it's difficult for individuals to withdraw from the system and the behaviors it commands.
Moving on, two links about raising kids. The most frustrating thing about bad human behavior is that so many people think there's an easy answer: it's all caused by religion, or capitalism, or the psychopathy gene. I think the answer is so complex and difficult that we will solve teleportation before we solve ourselves. Anyway, this article debunks one easy answer, by pointing out that good parents can raise bad kids.
And here's a smart comment on a new book, asking, Are shifts in child-rearing making modern kids mean? Basically, humans are nicer than apes because many adults help raise every child, so the kids have to learn empathy to get care from a variety of different adults. Except we stopped doing that! Now kids are often raised by single adults, by overworked teachers, and by the TV and the computer. This might explain why researchers have "found a 40 percent drop in the empathy of college students over the past 30 years."
Next, a great article with a terrible title: The Perils of Introspection. Because it's really about the perils of rationalization: studies show that if you base your decisions on what you are able to explain to other people in words, you will make bad decisions, but if you don't care whether you can explain your decisions, you will make good ones. I don't know what this has to do with "introspection", since less than five percent of my own introspection is cooking up words to justify what I'm doing. Is it possible that this is the main thing that most people do inside their heads? How profoundly depressing! Imagine, if you can, what it would be like to spend hours and hours doing stuff inside your head, without ever using language. (I also wonder: does video technology train us to think in pictures more, or does it destroy our ability to think in pictures, by creating the pictures for us?)
Finally, if you're interested in "magic", in how to use your mind to influence the world of matter, then this is the most powerful magical technique I've ever seen: The Willpower Paradox. If you say "I will do this", you sabotage yourself, but what really works is to say, "Will I do this?" I suggest saying it as often as possible. The article stumbles around trying to rationally explain how this works, but if you just imagine saying both things, and feel your way through, then it becomes obvious.
July 15. A few ecology/economy links: Ivan sends this excellent 1997 article, Places to Intervene in a System. It argues that the leverage point of industrial civilization, where the smallest action will produce the biggest change, is economic growth... but everyone is pushing in the wrong direction! Then there is some general stuff about how to influence systems.
This new Bill McKibben interview goes from growth to some visions of the future after economic collapse and climate change.
And Fritjof Capra explores Qualitative Growth, in which the world gets better without the numbers getting higher.
July 15. One loose end from the other day. Aaron noticed that the Groasis site, which sells the box to grow trees in the desert, has a nice set of animations about how trees grow.
July 12. A few food-related links: Pancakes from perennial grains.
Full fat dairy is good for you.
And the Waterboxx is a new device that can water trees in dry areas by collecting dew. You can order ten of them for $275, but since it's made of plastic, this would be a perfect thing to make with a large RepRap.
Update: a reader sends a similar kind of thing, about bio-conversion units to enable large numbers of black soldier fly larvae to quickly break down food waste. Second update: another reader mentions that black soldier flies "don't leave nice soil behind like worms do."