music for the coming holocaust

this is beautiful... what a joy it would be to work on a project like this.

Analogous thinking about what it means to "work"

This is interesting... I've been thinking about what it means to "work", as in "to find work", "to do work". We don't often think of the connection between "work" as it relates to employment and "work" as it's defined in Physics.

In physics, work is "the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance." So in a physical sense, work has kind of two conditions; a force must act, and energy must be transfered through a distance. If the force acts, but energy isn't transferred over a distance, then no work is done. In other words, for something to be "work", it must move something (e.g. mass, energy) over a distance. And then you can think about what "distance" means in an employment setting. The other component of work is force, which is defined using mass and velocity (" style="vertical-align: middle; ">). Velocity has both a direction and speed. Speed is just the rate of change of velocity, so that's pretty straightforward. More difficult in relating this concept back to employment, is defining direction. What it means to move "forward".

Think about an industrial-scale solar plant, tens of thousands of photovoltaic panels spreading across the landscape. Does this fit our sense of what it mean to move forward? Are the people building infrastructure like this truly what we would consider "workers"?

Perhaps it's not always possible to move forward; perhaps sometimes you need to go sideways, or even backwards before you can move forward. If building a centralized solar plant gets you into a position where you can begin to build distributed rooftop solar applications, perhaps then there's value in it. But the energy exerted to build the centralized plant doesn't become "work" until it moves... what? mass? What's the mass? Mass then could be analogous to society, in which case work is only done when society moves, that is, when society changes.

Therefore, if you're not changing society, you're not doing work. Huh...

Expressed in a positive sense, if you are spending energy and changing society in a forward (i.e. desirable) direction, then you're doing work.

Sting plays Robert Schumann and releases his Un-Christmas album

Hey, I found out this morning on CBC that the letters of Robert and Clara Schumann have been revived in a new stage production, starring (wait for it) Sting and Trudie Styler! That's a show I wouldn't mind seeing in theatres, or on DVD.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/programs/saic/2009/12/02/sting_schu.html

Sting's latest album is on a winter theme, but watching this video, it doesn't quite seem to achieve that air of romance and authenticity you'd hope for. My read on it is that Sting's stardom makes it tough to connect on a personal level with the other musicians in the room; it looks, if not wholly staged, perhaps like a rich man's fantasy playhouse.

I think he's also too much of an ironic figure to embody the sort of deep, winter spirituality that you find on, say, Cockburn's High Winds, White Sky.

And he definitely cannot pull off that beard... actually, maybe can, "pull off the beard" if it's as real as it looks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAleFnbRgw

Ah, the Sting phenomenon offers me no end of amusement....

Personal GHG emissions (Canadian Average)

[Source: Created by Ted Sherk with data from Zerofootprint, 2008)]

This figure represents per capita emissions for Canada, based on data from ZeroFootprint.  Please contact me for a detailed methodology.   

The Edison Company - arts or engineering?

Isn't this interesting.... the Edison Company, which was affiliated in some way (I'm not sure how) with inventor Thomas Edison who created the first electrical distribution system in New York, produced movies for 6 years during the early 20th Century. We can see some evidence of a similar energy technology/entertainment cross-over in the appearance of solar panels in American films like Wall-E, and perhaps a better parallel in Pixar's use of computer animation normalizing and creating demand for high tech computerized devices. The cross-over between arts and engineering is something that has been unfortunately ignored by many programs designed to encourage energy efficiency, conservation and renewable energy.

Who is neighbour?

This blog has kind of turned into a bunch of random reflections, well... that's what it started as too, except that at the beginning they were tailored to Leah and now they're more just whatever's on my mind.  (sip of chamomile tea)  More or less irrespective of an audience.  I don't have a particular audience in mind anyway.  

So continuing in that vein, it seems that people have a tendency to think mostly about other people they know.  I don't know why I'm an anomaly in this respect--I seem to spend most of my time thinking about this abstraction of the millions of people who are almost certainly going to feel the brunt of climate change, and those who (arguably) already are, for example in Darfur.  For some reason I don't need a human face to represent those people to care about them, or maybe I extend the emotion and relational feelings I have for people I know and love to these unknown millions.  (another sip)  I don't know.  Damn, the sun is glorious on this open page of Small Is Profitable.

False piety

The trouble with church people, based on my limited experience, is that we generally don't know how to be good.  Our sense of the world is based on abstractions that are so far from empirical reality that when we try to do something "right", like for instance, buy a more fuel efficient car, we often end up doing more harm than good. 

As an example, I'm seeing more Priuses show up in church parking lots in KW than ever before, which leads me to suspect that something in the pious mindset of church-goers motivates them to purchase a fuel-efficient vehicle as an action that represents their commitment to Creation Care.  But because they don't know that the amount of carbon emissions that are produced in the manufacture of a car is about equivalent to its lifetime emissions from driving, they're unaware that it would probably be better for them to just keep driving their old car.  (UNESCO, date unknown)

  

There's a problem with the way knowledge viewed and used (or ignored) in the church.  While Christians are familiar with certain powerful concepts, such as loving one's neighbours and enemies, turning the other cheek, the log in your eye, and God, we have more or less lost, or de-emphasized, the importance of knowledge, which can even be found in our own tradition expressed in Bible passages like, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard" and Proverbs 2:1-5.

----

As a final note, this argument is misleading for many reasons that someone with a graduate degree in Environmental Studies should be able to identify.  Its most obvious flaw that if driving your old car consumes X mmBTU over its lifetime, and making a new one consumes Y, then the comparison that needs to be made in order to answer the question "Will buying a new car have a lower energy impact than continuing to drive my old one?" is: Y vs. X*(proportion of lifetime remaining)=Z.  

If Z is lower, then it's better to keep driving your old car than to buy new.

For example, using AskPablo's numbers, if driving a car consumes roughly between 327 and 726 mmBTU over its lifetime, and making one consumes 113 mmBTU, and you expect your car to last another 3 years, then the calculation is (worst case scenario) 726*(years remaining/total years) = 726*(3/10) = 218 mmBTU.  So in that case, Z > Y so based on energy alone it would be better to buy new.  But that's based on the number for the Highlander SUV.  If your old car was a Corolla or Civic, consuming let's say 500 mmBTU over its life, you'd get Z = 150

Hm... let's ask the question differently.  Let's ask, is it better to drive my old car for one more year (think of that as the marginal environmental cost) or to buy new?  Then 726*(1/10) = 73, which is lower than buying new.  Therefore the energy used in driving your car for another year is lower than the energy of making a new vehicle.   

Darn... 

This is complex...choosing a valid metric is not trivial.  

And then there are so many other factors that go into converting this energy calculation into a comparison of carbon emissions, and more broadly into a measure of long-term societal benefit.  All I can say is, don't just ask Pablo.  Spend time in school and learn how to do your own proper research.

In Bloom

acknowledge, but signaling to producer, vulnerable

too much

the scream like an old man

the wash out

clean

dancy

Novoselic (Milosevic) long legs

stoner expressions

benevolence

tinkerbell twirling

horror-like flash betweens

everything

attention caught, how did it go

motion

experiential motion

e-motion

i like the part at the end where he goes to punch something and hurts his hand, and stumbles to the mic with his hands between his legs like an early-pubescent girl with cramps

Ladri di biciclette (the bicycle thief)

My friend Kat invited me to see Vittorio De Sica's post-WWII masterpiece Ladri Di Biciclette last week at the Working Centre. The more I think about this movie, the more I realize how relevant it is, and how timely for them to show it at the Working Centre in the midst of a recession.

Its depiction of a society recovering from war and in particular one family's struggle to make money and achieve some level of material well-being strikes me as kind of a knell for consumerism.  (Of course, anyone who knows me knows I see pretty much EVERYTHING as a death knell for consumerism, or at least for consumptionism.) But Ladri Di Biciclette is perhaps even more relevant today than it was during the post-war boom. The father character, Antonio, is motivated by fantasies of opulence, celebrating when he lands a well-paying "city job", and exclaiming to his wife "you will have money to throw away!"
Later, when unable to retrieve a stolen bicycle that is his only apparent link to employment, he treats his son to an expensive restaurant meal, teaching him the ethic of "working to consume" by giving him a taste of consumption-based hedonism, couched in family values. What a toxic mix!

OK, so I'm taking a pretty hard counter-cultural interpretation of what might otherwise be a pathos-inducing human story. I actually do have a great deal of empathy with Antonio and his desire to treat his family well, make a decent living wage, and live well, but... I think the movie also gets to the heart of my difficulties with the approach many advocates for social justice (of which I am one) currently practice. It's reasonable to assume that social justice is only possible in a society that values it. When social programs aim to equip lower-income people with the means to become consumers, there will continue to be hoarding, violence and unhappiness.
One time Kat pointed out over a cup of tea that there is a link between social equality and environmental protection, that is, both are impossible as long as people at all levels of society share the same consumerist aspirations.

Alternatively, we as a society could aspire to different goals, such as a deep understanding the nature of things around us, or something like that--something that everyone can strive for without necessarily depriving others of the opportunity to pursue the same dream. A goal like this gives us the same power and stability we instinctually seek through wealth accumulation, but again, it doesn't come at anyone else's expense. If anything, that knowledge can be shared to allow societies to understand their respective environments, leaving everyone better off.

The path towards peace requires a substitution of knowledge for consumption. There's little doubt in my mind about this.