lone_pedestrian

I enjoyed this book a great deal and I highly recommend it to, well, everyone.

My interests frequently change but the overarching theme that has emerged, particularly in the last couple of years, has centered around an expansion of vision. There has been an ever-widening circle from art, and the people who make it, to architecture and the people who live in it, to the world that makes all of these activities possible, how we make our way in it and think about it.

As usual, I am full of thoughts and incapable of doing anything useful with them.

This is the wrong way to go in my opinion.

Energy should be democratized: your house should have solar panels, the parking lot next to your office should get a canopy with solar panels, your office building should have solar panels and small scale wind generation should be permissible in suburban areas. We get 300 days of sunshine a year here in Colorado and all these empty roofs are a sorry sight.

Using up empty land for the generation of power when there is so much empty unused space above our heads is an utter waste. That land could be open space or agricultural land depending on its location. It has value beyond the 600 odd acres devoted to power. Some of that power is going to get lost during transmission anyway.

The large scale centralized thinking is wrong headed and downright anachronistic. If everyone is so worried about terrorist attacks in our new-fangled post Sept 11th world, why are we still assuming our power needs to come from one vulnerable location? If Americans are so wedded to the ideal of rugged individualism, the ideal that gets in the way of universal health care and broad-based funding for public education, why are we also enamored of unwieldy centralized projects in order to get our energy? If dependence on government is a personal failure what is dependence on a corporation exactly? One would almost think we preferred to talk about being independent individuals instead of trying to live like them.

Widespread alternative energy use is not just about independence from foreign countries, it could also be about personal independence as well. That is, of course, if someone would propose a better kind of project. On maybe a couple of million of them.

Once again CSPAN Book TV makes me hit rock bottom with their 48 hours of non-fiction on the weekends. I watched an entire question and answer session with Ann Coulter. Why? Because apparently on lovely Sunday afternoons I want nothing more than to be irritated.

Some comments for Ann (which were mostly shouted at the TV already):

Fitness for the natural environment and your personal notions of efficiency are not equivalent.
Pure X-men style mutation is not as important to evolution as the level of genetic variation produced by sexual reproduction.
Biologists are scientists and they might actually know more about their chosen field of study than Ann Coulter does.(I know one, she kicks Ann's ass up and down the street)
Some things really just don't fossilize. (I know a geologist too, sucker)
In science you don't know the answer to every problem but you have a method for figuring it out eventually. Throwing up your hands and saying "God did it" will never answer any questions except possibly "How can we further guarantee the degradation of the American economy in the face of globalization?".
Just because the science says you are an animal, one that developed the use of tools and language, does not mean it dictates your behavior. So, Ann Coulter, you are free to stop acting like an ornery junkyard dog every time you are on MSNBC.
There is a response to your critique of science here so don't lie to your minions and say our positions are indefensible when there is a defense on a well known "leftwing nut" site.
"Darwiniacs" is really lame especially when Rush set the bar so high with "Feminazis"

This was not the worst CSPAN Book TV related moment in my life but it was certainly in the top five. The only thing more pathetic than watching CSPAN Book TV at 1am is recognizing the voice of one of your relatives calling into CSPAN Book TV.

I find this quite fascinating even though I am not the hands on type of geek by a long shot.



From the Scientific American blog which if you should already be reading. Of course.

An Inconvenient Truth was interesting but it definitely had some flaws.

2 unnecessary instances of manipulative animation involving computer-generated animals
1 disingenuous editing choice involving calving glaciers
1 outright mistake that I could see

The emergence of hemorraghic fevers in Africa and South America is caused principally by habitat destruction and globalization not the expansion of disease vectors into new areas (made possible by warmer temperatures). The expansion of the habitable zone for malaria mosquitos is problematic enough there is no need to pile on unrelated phenomenon.

Somebody needs to send Al Gore a copy of this.