powering down

play your hand

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 13:30:00 +0000

Well, the man wants speed, let's just give it to him. Cram it in and break it out. Yeah. Go hard. Yeah. -Cool Hand Luke

[something from 2007 i never got around to posting]

A one man revolution won’t accomplish much. A one woman revolution will accomplish the same. A social, cultural or memetic revolution by definition is the changing of the ideas of many with respect towards the attitudes, beliefs and actions of the group that is itself changing. Equally though, the change of revolution, the idea of rising up as a group to affect necessary change, can not wholly be made through group intent or action alone. In fact it must first take place in the hearts and in the minds and in the actions of individuals before it can be shared among a larger number of people looking to make a similar change. You need a spark to light a fire. The spark (or with any luck the sparks) begin the burn which in turn lights another and another until the blaze is bright and noticeable, picking up speed and beginning to give off heat. It is with a certain amount of radiant momentum that the fire then becomes a revolution. We plan to start one. Are you feeling sparky?

There’s a great scene in the classic 1967 Paul Newman film _Cool Hand Luke_ where the inmates are out on work detail paving a road. The slow pace of this toilsome work is predictable. The prisoners are unhurriedly prodding along, putting down paving, obviously not in a rush. Their labor is forced and they have neither a pay check nor a beer at the end of the work day to look forward to- only a return to the prison yard- so they work at an expectedly slow speed. Despite the despondency of the situation, Paul Newman’s character Luke, begins to pick up the pace. To the dismay of his fellow prisoners, Luke starts to work faster and faster. At first the others discourage him, but gradually they join in finding that together they can accomplish quite a lot in a very short period of time. In fact they finish out the road building supplies long before the day is done. The guards are aggravated but amused. Luke gains great favor with his comrades who seem to revel in this show of strength by the prisoner group.

Earlier in the day, the other inmates were not in favor of such a change in their normal manner of operation, especially in light of the fact that Luke was working more briskly to accomplish the goal. The other inmates though, quickly adopted the challenge and achieved unprecedented results not so much because of their increased work speed (they finished much sooner and therefore probably did much less labor physically speaking) but more accurately because of their willingness to make a sweeping change in the way they worked.

There are a number of grand issues facing us as a nation and as a species. After less than two centuries of industrialization, we‘ve polluted large areas of the land on which we live. We’ve washed away much of the topsoil responsible for growing our food, down streams and rivers, along with vast quantities of nitrogen fertilizers and countless varieties of pesticides, creating ecological disaster sites like the dead zone of uninhabitable ocean just beyond the mouth of the Mississippi river. In the process we’ve polluted much of the small amount of fresh water on Earth capable of supporting human life. Our air has become the depository of harmful byproducts of an industrial way of life. In countless other ways we’ve ravaged the stable ecosystems that long supported the intricate web of life reponsisble for the varied plant and animal life that inhabits our planet. The devastation of myriad symbiotic relationships destroyed by careless actions of human being out of touch with their environment will without doubt come back to haunt our us.

Several specific problems look set to arrive in the early part of the 21st century. Much of the industrialization responsible for the all of our pollution was made possible by the unprecedented energy available in nonrenewable fossil fuel resources, namely coal, oil and natural gas. The most useful of these has been has been the liquid form, oil or petroleum. It appears certain that during the first decade of this century conventional crude oil production peaked worldwide and enter a permanent decline in availability. Likewise natural gas will experience a peak although the difficulties associate with transporting a gas means that regional shortages of NG will be felt long before the global extraction peak is experienced; to say nothing of the effects of fracking. Coal too will be harder to obtain with mines digging deeper into the Earth to try and postpone inevitable day when all fossil fuels are decreasing as a useable source of energy to our modern society predicated on its use. The effects of this loss of stored sunlight will necessitate a return to more traditional ways of harnessing the sun’s energy or doing without so much of it in the first place. The world as we know it is accustom to ever increasing energy availability and the shift to a paradigm of decreasing energy accessibility will be very bumpy indeed.

The burning of fossil fuels has released an enormous amount of carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and other forms of greenhouse gasses that continue to trap an unordinary amount of solar radiation as heat, warming the surface of our planet. We are experiencing the result as an unprecedented increase in overall global temperature. The consequences of this increase are widespread changes in climate. Instead of only a slight, steady increase in daily temperatures, we are likely to experience sharp and sudden changes in our weather patterns. Unpredictable in weather, both long and short term will become the norm. Storms are likely to be stronger and more frequent. Great discrepancies in local weather conditions will likely see some parts of the globe much hotter or wetter than usual while others receive exceptionally cold conditions or possibly droughts that last for decades.

Our age is one of empire. The US has seen extraordinary expansion both militarily and economically throughout the globe during the last one hundred years. Widespread cultural exportation of the expansionist goals of western culture as a way to exploit others to create wealth at previously unattainable levels seems to be the legacy most likely to be left by America.

The result is wide spread discrepancy in wealth and the access to resources available to the poor and the wealthy in disproportionate amounts. This has fueled a backlash by those who feel they’ve been robbed or cheated out of wealth or damage or desecrated in the name of wealth accumulation. These people are fighting back by leveraging the power of industrial age weapons and supporting insurgent activities including terrorism. It should serve as no surprise that Middle Eastern men, angry that their vast resource reserves are being gobbled up by countries on the other side of the planet, are fighting back. This is by no means meant as a pardon for the behavior of terrorists. There is no justification for the murder of other human beings, especially innocent civilians, but the shock with which most Americans view Middle Eastern hostility towards the United States of America reveals a people almost entirely unaware of the full implications of their energy-intensive lifestyles.

To understand our way of life and all its ripples is to view a turbulent pond. The effects of our wasteful use of energy and other resources coupled with the pollutions produced by our modern, western lifestyles is becoming painfully evident to all who care to turn off the TV and take notice. The day is approaching when the effects will be felt in a much more painful way if we do not take action now.

There are other less directly dire reasons to consider a change in the way we live our lives. As a community we find ourselves fragmented and disconnected from the world around us, even alienated from our neighbors next door. Physically, mentally, emotionally and socially we are at a low point in America. Despite spending more the two times as much money as any other nation on Earth, Americans die at an earlier age than the average citizen of at least 20 other countries. We have an infant mortality rate on par with other third world nations. Our rate of obesity, and obesity related disease like Type II diabetes is incredibly high- 50% of Americans will be diabetic by 2050. Mentally and emotionally we seem less happy than those people in other nations with much less material wealth. In the past decade more than 55% of our population report having used antidepressants. More than half of us are so unhappy that we take medication to try and relieve the problems. Socially we live in one of the most violent industrialized nations on the planet. With all the stress of living in what could accurately be described as a fairy tale, it’s no wonder that many Americans are recognizing the American dream as a fabrication that doesn’t reflect reality. The truth is we are disconnect, malnourished, poison-filled, scared, anxious, unhappy and emotional unstable human beings waiting to be told what to do next.

Far from hoping to fulfill the desire to be told what to do and how to do, I’d like to use this opportunity to describe not only what is wrong but also what is not right. Much of the last century has been about doing away with the previous activities and actions that formed a stable, healthy and happy society. In a maddened sugar rush of growth and expansionism, both in scientific and geographic terms, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. It is only now becoming painfully obvious to a growing number of people that much of what we have forgotten is worth remembering. How to remember. What would that revolution look like if sparked?

the truth of fiction

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:09:00 +0000

"Optical devices certainly don't paint pictures. Let me say now that the use of them diminishes no great artist." -david hockney

Is it more important to improve human nature or improve the human condition? - ran prieur

My recent trip to Kansas City included many interesting events. I was there under the guise of presenting at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference. In actuality (which is very different from reality) I was there to was there to see as much KC cool local food stuff as I could possibly squeeze in. Despite the timing- mid winter- I had plenty to see and eat. And the locals were kind and generous with their time.

On the recommendation of the newest local foods-focused grocery store owner in Concord NC (more on that if I ever get around to writing it) I visited the The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art while I was in town. They have a varied collection with a great view for such a flat place. And I enjoyed the conversation as a friend and I wandered around the place.

Outside of one of the gallery rooms we could see a large Monet serving as the focal point for a class conversation regarding painting, photography and the history of art. We weren't hearing anything new in the instructor's explanation of how impressionism was the painters' response to the camera, a device that was rapidly replacing the need for realists. But it (Impressionism) was more than simply a strategy for staying relevant. It expanded the always ongoing conversation about the purpose and the place of art in human society. Art, some argued, was about much more than just capturing reality exactly as it appeared to the human eye. It was about encapsulating something more. This particular instructor gave what I thought was a well articulated version of this arguement and was continuing to do so when we wandered off.

Earlier in my KC trip I found myself in a dive bar with NC people. We had a strange and interesting conversation made more strange and interesting by the following question posed: Is anyone making any money at small scale farming? The question came from a small scale farmer whose off-farm job is trying to help small-scale farmers make money. Incidentally his wife is deeply involved in helping Organic growers become better Organic growers. And here I was in a foreign land surrounded by people from back home visiting KC in order to be even more helpful to small scale farmers and yet questioning why in the world we were even here and doing all of this. And, incidentally, questioning why a small dive bar would need nine urinals in its men's restroom.

That question still nags me, not the urinals one but the underlying question about making money, which is WHY ARE WE GROWING FOOD DIFFERENTLY? It still does actually as does another question about why I even care to try to make things better. And wouldn't it be lovely if I could just answer them by sitting down and typing it out. The truth is I don't have resolution on this. Resolution seems to be in short supply for me lately but that is probably best. I have gone far too long without developing the ability to just chill.

My answer to my friend from NC who was also in KC goes something like this. Food, some argue, is about much more than just consuming calories. And then I went back to asking questions similar to the Ran quote from above. Are we small scale farming in order to change the system or in order to change ourselves? Are we small scale farming to make money or change lives? Whose lives- the lives of those who eat our food- better tasting and fresher? Or are we small scale farming to change our own lives? I think we are doing it as a response to an out-of-control industrial food system that sucks. But are we trying to feed other people something better or are we trying to growing something better to feed ourselves and our souls with real food and real effort at meaningful production. I am what I do right?

This all used to be very academic for me. I co authored a book even to share my thoughts on the food system and an alternative from the 30,000 ft perspective. And now it is so real and so day-to-day that I hardly have a chance to sit and write about it because there are (and these are real examples) tomatoes to be transplanted, chicks to be picked up from the elementary school, local foods-focused grocery store lease agreement letters of intent to edit, beef to transfer, etc. Local food system restoration has become my life in a very real way. And I am doing this work because it feeds me in many ways beyond the dinner table. I can't imagine doing anything else, which is as close as I can come to knowing that who ever sent me here can't help but be pleased.

household energy

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Stuart Staniford recently published this image of EIA data regarding average household energy use.

It inspired me to update our household energy numbers. Maybe one day I'll convert these into BTUs but not this particular day. First natural gas, which we use for heating water and most cooking.

Next electricity.

Our overall trend is definitely downward. In addition to conservation measures, we are burning wood in a high efficiency wood stove which accounts for a significant portion of the NG reduction. We're in the market for a front loading washer and new dryer (yes we line dry but not every time) and we will have a new compressor for the AC system within a month which will likely lower this summer's numbers.

Back to the first chart (colour emphasis added is mine). Two things in particular struck me.

The Midwest uses nearly 3 times as much energy to heat the average home as does the South; the Northeast 3 1/2 times as much- almost as much energy for heating as the South uses for all home energy use combine.

Keeping cool in the South will certainly get harder in a world with ever increasing energy constraints. But I'm wondering what Kunstler would say about these numbers. As I read them it looks like keeping warm in the NE might be more of a problem than keeping cool in the South.

The other is the amount of energy spent on heating water, particularly in the South.

Talk about some low hanging fruit!

Elma C. Lomax Incubator Farm

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:55:00 +0000

Part of my day job is to manage the Elma C. Lomax Incubator Farm, a teaching facility where Cooperative Extension trains new farmers. But no need to read a boring description of the project when you can watch the news video below.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:51:00 +0000

heart attackj

thank you garobattersby.

on up

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:40:00 +0000

In regards to the current conversation about the recent rise in price at the pump and what we can do about it James Howard Kunstler says,

In any case, all this wishing and lying is about to collide with price volatility to make the American voting public absolutely batshit crazy with dread and anger. That, of course, will only prompt more lying, whopper-spinning, and grievance-flogging in the political arena. It will be nearly impossible for the public to evaluate reality.

I was going to start with a bit about oil and gasoline but, Stuart Staniford has done a great job over at Early Warning so I’m just going to let you go and have a look. I will reproduce a couple of his excellent images here and quote him as saying, “You can see that there's a very strong relationship over time. Technically, 97% of the variance of the price of gas is explained by the price of oil.”

More...

Speaking of oil, the noise about Iran continues to ramp up. In response to the new economic sanctions,

Iran has stopped selling crude to British and French companies, the oil ministry said on Sunday, in a retaliatory measure against fresh EU sanctions on the Islamic state’s lifeblood, oil.

“Exporting crude to British and French companies has been stopped … we will sell our oil to new customers,” spokesman Alireza Nikzad was quoted as saying by the ministry of petroleum website. More…

And then there’s the less reported planned Iranian action surrounding oil trades in something other than the US dollar.

"Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vision of economic war with the west." - source Will that really happen? Will it be allowed to happen?

Not surprising to see the cost of oil up at above $108/barrel in late February 2012. Which means higher gas prices if you read above. Of course if we’ll just elect Newt then he’ll bring the cost of gas down to $2.50/gallon. ;-)

And with the price of oil/gas going up and fear of economic catastrophe pulsing through the American psyche the price of gold has also jumped. Warren B has this to say,

"Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 trillion. Call this cube pile A.

Let’s now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world’s most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B?

Admittedly, when people a century from now are fearful, it’s likely many will still rush to gold. I’m confident, however, that the $9.6 trillion current valuation of pile A will compound over the century at a rate far inferior to that achieved by pile B."

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf (pdf warning)

On a not complete unrelated note my boss just walked into my office and asked me where to buy a cow; not beef but a live cow for her to raise and later process for food. Which leads us into funnier territory with this excellent video.

Lastly something a little personal. Two weeks ago I crashed my bike, my first real cycling accident.

Fortunately that image makes the whole thing look way worse than it really was. After the crashI walked 100 yards home with only a few bruises. My 1979 steel frame Trek is quite beat up however and so it was with great anticipation that I ordered my first ever brand new road bike! I have a great commuter and a mountain bike slash long haul set up but this will be my first new road bike ever. It's being built this week by my LBS.

I’m competing in a race in May and between the crash and the race now seems like the time to invest in this Giant Defy 2. It’s an entry level road bike but quite fancy by my standards. Report forthcoming.

Aaron

household energy update

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:09:00 +0000

It's been a few months since I updated our household energy use. The first chart if natural gas which we use for domestic hot water, cooking and sometimes heating our home. We're entering into our forth calender year of tracking this data. You'll see January is down considerably from last year which was down remarkable from the year before. In Jan 2012 we had 4 extra days in our billing cycle compared to the previous year but the average local temperature was 9 degrees warmer. Still I was impressed because we are primarily heating our home with wood so the outdoor temperature shouldn't have had that big of an effect in terms of reduced NG use.

Here's our electricity use. After using slightly more in October 2011 than in October of 2010 we saw decreases in November, December and January. December reduction was probably primarily due to my wife's more judicious use of Christmas tree lights. Hopefully by June, July and August- our three high use months- we'll have our new HVAC system in place. Also we will likely have a new clothes dryer by then. We dried clothes much more out on the line last year than in the past and that will continue but we will continue to sometimes dry inside and we have quite an old machine.

success!?!

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:46:00 +0000

An recent incident involving the closed circuit television security system in Britain provides an example of how more complexity won't necessarily lead to safer streets or even tighter control by the authorities. The law of diminishing returns is in effect here as are more and greater problems facing people trying to work with more complex systems.

The operator [of a British security camera] directed the officer, who was on foot patrol, as he followed the "suspect" on camera last month, telling his colleague on the ground that he was "hot on his heels"... But he failed to realise that it was actually the plain-clothed officer he was watching on the screen.

In other words the camera operator had the officer on the ground chasing himself. more.

Breaking news: Rick Santorum wins in 3 states GOP primary contests last night, trouncing Romney! Of course it's all just more media hype because,

Officially, a total of zero delegates will be awarded after Tuesday's contests. The Minnesota caucuses are the first step in a long process to assign delegates; the same is true in Colorado. Missouri's primary has been described as simply a "beauty contest," since the state's delegates will only be awarded after the March 17 caucuses.

A man was discovered in his home fours years after killing himself. His house had been foreclosed upon.

"David Carter reportedly used a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun to shoot himself in the head some four years ago, shortly after quitting his job and telling neighbors that he was moving to New Mexico. That was in 2007." more.

The article says his neighbors had taken to mowing his lawn. One item in the article that caught my attention was the fact that his body wasn't discovered until a local government real estate worker was checking on the property because the county was taking ownership in light of unpaid taxes.

I know my county is dealing with the issue of owning more properties because of similar circumstances, minus the 4 year old dead body. My county doesn't want the added tax-payer expense of maintaining these properties. Here's a problem that could be an excellent opportunity for someone or some group that could figure out a constructive way to address the issue of unwanted properties like these.

Lastly an article about natural gas availability in Europe. Many parts of the continent are dealing with extremely cold weather. Russian gas supplier Gazprom has reduced NG exports because as Russian Prime Minister Vladimír Putin explains, "it is more important for the company to first supply the Russian market." more

We saw plenty of this when food prices spiked in 2008, countries limiting or banning the export of resources, in that case food in this case natural gas. My guess is we'll see more of this as resource constraints tighten in the future.

backstream

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:18:00 +0000

backstream jan 2012

First an update on the Baltic Dry Index, the measure of international shipping demand I mentioned in the last post. It hit a 25 year low last week, breaking down past a mark reached in the wake of the 2008 economic debacle.

There are varies reasons given to explain this but one I found particularly interesting is that, "shipping companies have also been deliberately slowing down their journeys to save fuel, with trips from China to the US going now taking around 50% longer than they were early in 2011" source.

There has been plenty of talk in the past about peak oil meaning "the end" of globalization and international shipping. Of course some goods were shipped around the world even before petroleum was harnessed as a transportation fuel and will likely continue to be shipped well into the future. My point here is that the way this plays out in the short term is scenarios like this, slower transport to save fuel, not complete and sudden collapse of the international shipping system.

This article is just one of several recently published that point towards the increased likelihood of an Israeli/Iranian war that could drag the US into another armed conflict in the Middle East. But wait, aren't we already at war with Iran? Stuart Staniford puts it this way.

And the series of explosions and assassinations in Iran has been getting longer and more blatant. At some point, the pretense that this is not a war becomes unsustainable, and once people stop feeling the need to pretend, things could worsen quickly. more

And the fact that this is a US presidential election year complicates the matter.

Speaking of which is anyone else thinking of voting for Mitt just so we can continue to be treated to high level gaffs like his recent comment that he doesn't care about the poor? The US could suffer under his leadership but think about the entertainment value of Saturday Night Live under a Romney regime. And no moon colonies as the 51st state!

I've decide to make fun of a few groups of people in 2012 partly as a way of testing whether or not shame still works as a motivator in the US. And partly because it helps me to continue to feel sane.

The first group I'm targeting is people that park cars on sidewalks. No longer content with domination of the asphalt, recently people in my community have take to mounting (more on that term as it relates to this issue coming soon) the curb and parking their vehicles on that 4 foot strip of concrete formerly used only by pedestrians to try and avoid getting run over. I think this phenomenon says a lot about the current mental state of people in my community and maybe throughout our nation.

What I need from you good and loyal readers are name suggestions for my new blog featuring pictures I take of sidewalk parking. Please leave suggestions in the comments section below. Winner gets a T Shirt of course.

Here's a teaser. I took this last week. It is a code enforcement officer working for my local police department who stopped to investigate a food truck set up in a vacant lot. No doubt the officer thought the truck was operating without proper papers. He is seen here on his cell phone, gun on hip. Hours later however the food truck was still serving hotdogs and so I assume it was in fact a legal operation and the officer went away discouraged.

Notice that it wasn't enough for the cop to merely pull over to the side of the road and investigate. He had to get all CHiPs and drive up onto the sidewalk, completely blocking it. Turns out he was the only person violating the law at this particular time and place.

More once I get a snazzy name for the new blog.

Aaron

throwers

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:58:00 +0000

throwers 1 5 2012

It looks like India is set to start buying Iranian oil with gold instead of US dollars. Apparently China is likely to do the same.

http://www.debka.com/article/21673/

What does that mean? Time will tell but my guess is that the price of gold and other precious metals will rise in response and the pressure to go to war with Iran will increase.

ribbonfarm has an interesting post on 'Acting Dead, Trading Up and Leaving the Middle Class'.

I thought this chart was interesting. It looks like the bottom for the price of gasoline in my area corresponded remarkably well with the Christmas holiday. Santa brings it!

Also take a look at the Baltic Dry Index which measures international shipping demand. It's approaching a 5 year low not seen since after the 2008 economic crash.

12 27 2011

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:12:00 +0000

ng update

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:51:00 +0000

I haven't felt much like writing (and haven't had the time) so just more dorky updates on our energy use. I'm going to start posting our natural gas usage along with the amount of electricity we use.

kWh update

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:42:00 +0000

Dorky household electrical usage update below.

aspo 2011 annual conference

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:02:00 +0000

I just got back from the ASPO US annual conference in Washington D.C. I had a great time and met some wonderful people. Here's my presentation. <p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Here&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

#occupy the media

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:00:00 +0000

At this point I do not know what to expect from the #Occupy Wall Street movement, but I do admit to being greatly amused at the way tit is making the conventional media squirm, now that that group has decided to cover them at all. Part of the reason I haven't been writing as much lately is that other people have been doing a damn good job of saying something similar to what I want to express about all sorts of stuff. On this topic Matt Taibbi has two great posts that address media coverage of OWS.

Why Occupy Wall Street is Bigger than Left vs. Right

and

Why Rush Limbaugh is freaking out about Occupy Wall Street

Essentially Matt says the OWS message and sometimes their lack of message doesn't fit the conventional media formula. He's right and even before I read his take on the issue I was almost more interested in watching the media response than watching the protestors themselves.

Conventional Media in the US, and I'm including here Fox, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, etc., has done this country a great disservice by selling out or perhaps just capitulating to the idea that the way to frame a media story is to polarize it, to line up two and only two arguments on the so called left and the so called right (I love their "so called" short hand disclaimer that these terms aren't perpetuated by them but by others) and let two representatives of each end of the political spectrum go at it. Then at the end of story they offer up a sort of "You Decide!" question to the audience. It is as if some stories have no right or wrong answer- as if banks receiving 10 trillion dollars in taxpayers dollars should or perhaps should not be able to give more than a hundred billion dollars out in bonuses the following year. You decide!

Or perhaps some stories can't have more than two perspectives. I fault all the major media outlets for this but I come down hardest on NPR which pretends not to have biases while the growth mantra of economics is built into everything money story they cover. There are never any stories about economics that aren't based on the idea that not only is it grow or no-grow but that grow is the best case economic scenario. I'm not permoting any particaulr alternative here in this post, just pointing out that such a perspective would get no air time on theirs or any other conventional media program. Ask Diane Rehm about staedy state economics and she'd look at you like you'd just grown another head.

And that leads me to another way in which it is fun to watch the media fail to figure out what to do with OWS- the group has of yet no clear demands or agenda. It is as if the media is annoyed that OWS won't get on with it and publish a hard and fast set of wants and a list of leaders who will lobby for those wants. So that the media can give the right and the left a chance to fight about the OWS set of wants and demonize the OWS list of leaders (You decide!) and then move on to the next media story.

Like I said I don't know what if anything the OWS movement might accomplish. Personally I'm happy to let them do what they say they plan on doing for a while OCCUPY. It's interesting enough to watch the media squirm at this point. I'll leave you with a question though. What if a group of largely young, largely disaffect youth learn how to organize through consent and were ready to respond to the next big revelation of corporate and governmental corruption, mismanagement or out right theft? This is what has the 1% concerned.

bloggin' again?

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:00:00 +0000

Note to readers: I parked this blog a few months back. That had a lot to do with me having lots of (read too many) projects going on in the physical world. I am going to have to scale some of them back and give up on others. I am going back to the original intent of this blog, my way of making sense of the world- my therapy of choice. You might get pictures of narwhals my daughter likes on one day and observations on the #Occupy movement like above on the next. No promises.

electric reduction

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 21:27:00 +0000

Another UPDATE:

This is the start of the second year of an effort to more greatly reduce our energy use. I'm even spelling the months correctly in the most recent chart.

NEW UPDATE:

August rounded out one year with the TED device and the new wood stove. We saved 3423 kWh. It also became clear to us that despite living in a home designed to keep rather cool and being pretty conscientiousness about the thermostat (usually between 78-82 degrees F) air conditioning is a huge part of our footprint.

Also this program, Plot Watt, is suppose to interface with the TED and give us a much more thorough breakdown of our usage but I can't get it to work- software issues.

After A/C the big hog is the electric clothes dryer. We upgraded to a sweet new line and Jennifer, who does most of our laundry, redoubled her efforts to use it.

We're about to get a new washing machine to better address the issue. Yes you read that correctly. We're getting a new washer to reduce the amount of energy we spend drying clothes. Both our washer and dryer are 10 years old. In addition to a new washer being more efficient in the energy and water it uses, the new one will spit the clothes out almost already dry. We'll hold off on a new dryer for now.

END NEW UPDATE

OLD UPDATE:

It's been a hot, hot summer but still...END OLD UPDATE:

This is a graph that represents the amount of electricity my family used from September 20o9 until March 2010 vs the amount used one year later after installing the TED smart meter.

It represents an average reduction of 44% over a 6 month period totaling 2112 kWh saved. At an average cost of $0.10/kWh that is $211 dollars. The smart meter costs $240.

It also gets us down to about 40% of what the average American household uses and there are four of us.

Read an old post of mine about the TED smart meter by clicking here.

Aaron

new dietary guidelines

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:05:00 +0000

If you eat this way I promise you will lose unwanted weight and have more energy- guaranteed.

The people who design government dietary guidelines are gagged by the fact that politics and business are so tightly intertwined in this country. Their advice will never directly target the primary source of obesity and metabolic dysfunction-- industrially processed food-- because that would hurt corporate profits in one of the country's biggest economic sectors.

More interesting is the take over of imaging and marketing to support a more truthful message. We're likely to see more of this as the ship sinks.

More here...

carolina farm stewardship association

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association - Join the Food Revolution from GeoCore Films on Vimeo.

japanese farmer suicide

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:40:00 +0000

Tokyo (CNN) -- A farmer's farewell, etched in white chalk, is echoing menacingly through Japan's agricultural sector.

"Wish there was no nuclear power plant. My endurance has come to an end," the note says.

The farmer, in his 50s, then killed himself on the land he struggled to maintain since Japan's tsunami and nuclear crisis began.

The dairy farmer's suicide message was left on the wall of one of the man's barns, members of a local farming bureau said. The man also apologized to his family and friends in the note.

Hiroyuki Ebihara, a member of a local chapter of Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, said he knew the farmer personally and tried to check in with him after the March 11 disaster.

On June 11, Ebihara says, members of his group found the farmer's body.

"The situation here is depressing for everyone," says Ebihara. "We are all in the same situation. Our future with daily farming is unclear, especially since we don't know what the compensation will be. We want TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) or the government to come out with a clear plan for compensation."

The man had fled Japan with his family to the Philippines after the earthquake and tsunami. He returned to the farm after 10 days to care for his cows. The farmer's family remained in the Philippines until this week when they returned for the man's funeral.

He leaves behind a wife and two children, Ebihara says.

The agricultural sector of Soma -- the farmer's region -- has been deeply impacted by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

entire article here

evaluating adaptation projects

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:43:00 +0000

(sample project list)

My family, like most others, has a limited amount of time and resources. We also have differing opinions about what constitutes appropriate adaptations to a changing world. Put differently, my wife thinks I’m crazy to consider adding meat rabbits to our yard this year and just how to decide if she’s right?

Last year I read a post by John Michael Greer, entitled The Cybernetics of Black Knights (hat tip Jack) which inspired the following system. His system which I have modified, was aimed at more narrowly deciding on which projects might be more important and timely. My adjustments are aimed at coming up with a system for making decisions about adapting strategies to undertake in the context of a family with differing opinions on what should be done when and how.

So when facing this question of what to do next how might a family more forward? Here’s what we did.

First on a separate sheets of paper my wife and I wrote down all of the projects we both wanted to undertake – for example putting up a new clothes line and adding meat rabbits. Some projects were known to both of us, projects we had previously discussed. Others fell into the category of secret longings, the refinished kitchen complete with new counter tops for example.

To say that all of the projects were directly related to adapting in place with regards to peak oil, climate change and financial upheaval would be misleading but most had a solid component of reducing our energy and resource use. While a deck on the back of our house would seem like more of an amenity than a need, it will also provide a place to live outdoors (something appropriate in my climate much of the year) and would give us a place to cook and can food in the hot of the summer without heating the interior of our house. In this way many projects were lobbied for as both lifestyle improvements and adaptive strategies. How to know then which one to start with?

We took both our lists and combined them. Then we printed two copies of the combined list. We both took a copy of the list and labeled it with a number and letter.

The numbers corresponded with the following:

1 – This is a project we could do easily with the resources readily available to us.
2 – This is a project we could do, though it would take some effort to get the resources.
3 – This is a project we could do, but it would be a serious challenge.
4 – This is a project that, for one reason or another, is out of reach for us at the moment.

A – This is a project that is immediately and obviously useful for our lives right now.
B – This is a project that could be useful to for us given certain changes we expect in the near term.
C – This is a project that might be useful if our lives if circumstances were to change significantly.
D – This is a project that, for one reason for another, is useless or irrelevant to us at this moment.

Then we recombined the list. Each project got coded with both letters and numbers with 11AA projects at the top of the list and 44DD projects at the bottom. Each item got a cost estimate and schedule time of completion. When we reevaluate the list in the future we will add an estimate of the number of hours a given item is expected to take.

This exercise will produce a rough guide regarding how to prioritize your adaptation strategies. You can refine it. Once you decide, let’s say, that weatherstripping the leaky windows of your apartment before winter arrives is a 1-A project – easy as well as immediately useful – you’ve set up an intentionality that allows you to winnow through a great deal of data and find the information you need: for example, what kind of weatherstripping is available at the local hardware store, and which one can you install without spending a lot of money or annoying your landlord.

Once you decide that building a brand new ecovillage in the middle of nowhere is a 4-D project, you can set aside data relevant to that project and pay attention to things that matter, not just to you but also to the other people in your family, which is key to making real progress.

carolina ground: farmer + miller + baker = NC grown bread

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:29:00 +0000

Update:

They made it. Thanks to all who help.

I have never run advertising on this site. I do have a donate button in the sidebar but I have never actively asked for money; in part so I will seem more genuine when asking for money for people like those working on Carolina Ground. ;-)

Less than 3 days left in the campaign and they are within $3000 of their goal. Check out the video below. If you have enjoyed checking this blog enough over the years to consider supporting it financially don't send me money. Give instead to this project. Minimum donation is $10 so you don't have to give much.

Donate here.

Thanks.

Aaron

reducing your resource use... and staying married

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:02:00 +0000

Just a little warning: This post is going to be less about the actual ways you can reduce the amount of resources you use and more about how you can do it and still stay married. And it’s probably going to ramble on a bit.

I started thinking about this when I found out about Kathy Harrison’s new book, “’I Can’t Believe You Think That!’ Relationship Struggles around Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Hard Times”. You can read a teaser blog post here:

How to ruin a perfectly good argument about peak oil, climate change or economic troubles.

When I read the post I immediately forward it to my wife. Yes we are still married despite our share arguments about how to adapt to the coming changes but there have been plenty of times when the actual adaptation she or I was contemplating turned out to be much easier than the conversations about what to do. It wasn’t so much reducing our electrical usage as it was deciding to do it, how to do it and making all the other minor decisions that go along with major change. I’m not going to list out strategies for handling loved ones during the process of adaptation. Rather I am just going to share some of what my family has experienced.

A little background: My wife and I have been married almost 10 years. We’ve know each other for more than 20. We are in our mid-30s and have 3 and 5 year old daughters.

When I first started talking about "resource depletion" I didn’t use such swell sounding phrase. Back then it was all about “peak oil” and all the changes that would come as a consequence. Not the more nuanced discussion that takes place on many websites today but the more alarmist rhetoric that ruled the Internet back when Matt Savinar’s now retired website was about the only information on peak oil. My friend Todd used to call it “the black page of death”. To my wife’s horror I went through the classic 5 stages of grief as I mourned the end of civilization on account of peak oil and wallowed in stage 4 – Depression.

It was no surprise then that when I finally broke out into stage 5 – Acceptance- my wife looked with skepticism on all the plans I was beginning to make. She didn’t want to get sucked into the same sort of depressing vortex that had befallen me. She wanted nothing to do with anything that was related to peak oil. I can say I blame her. I had a tough time and it took quite a while but eventually she and I were able to talk more openly about all the changes that might be prudent now that we were facing, together, a world where fewer resources, energy and otherwise, would likely be available to us.

One strategy I stumbled upon was to make it tangible for her; to make the changes something she could track. In December of 2007 we had our house sealed and insulated. You can read about that here. It was an important step towards reducing the amount of energy our household consumes. On the list of errors in judgment I would attribute to myself, I scheduled this construction project for late in my wife’s second pregnancy. It also took place over the course of 3 consecutive Fridays instead of 3 straight days in a row. That had to do with the contractor’s schedule but it also meant cleaning up the dust and the mess three separate times. Another misstep of mine. However in the end our house was tighter and cozier and quieter and I was happy. We were happy. But Jennifer’s happiness was most obvious on the first day of the following month. That was the day she received the first natural gas bill after a month of having the home improvements in place. Our energy use had dropped dramatically- down more than 50% compared to the previous January’s bill.

Now you may be thinking that she was excited about all the money we were saving and she was. But that was not the main reason behind her giddiness as she read me the numbers out over the phone. (She had called me at work with the news, unable to wait until I got home.) For her, seeing the reduction made it real. It also made it into a game. How much less can we use in February vs. last February became the goal of our energy reducing exercise. Turning down the thermostat or putting on a sweater or wrapping the hot water heater with insulation was not longer just another pain-in-the-ass request by her husband. Now it was a move in the game aimed at even further reducing our next month’s natural gas bill. Who knew my wife would ever utter phrases like, “therms used per month?”

In fact our NG provider’s website allows you to compare any two months from the last several years of your usage. And they don’t just track therms. They track the average monthly temperature, nights with temps below 40 degrees, days in the billing cycle, cost and other stuff. Our most recent bill arrived today and was pretty impressive.

We’re down from 57 therms used in March 2012 to 24 therms used this year. Unfortunately our NG provider doesn’t keep records online going back to the time before we sealed and insulated our home. The first year after doing so we saw on average a reduction of about 50%. That means it is likely we went from more than 100 therms in previous months of March to now using on 24 therms. That is a pretty significant reduction.

So you might be wondering how we further reduced our NG useage in the winter of 2011-12. The answer,

A Vermont Castings Encore woodstove. Now I don’t plant to get into the pros and cons of different heating systems in this post. What I do want to talk about is the theme of cooperation and compromise among family members while adapting to change. The stove pictured above is beautiful and it came with a handsome tax rebate (although not as big a rebate as was described to us by its salesman) and we have greatly enjoyed having it but… it was more expensive than the stove I would have purchased. In fact I would have been happy with a used stove, one that wasn’t really attractive at all. My wife however fell for the VC Encore. She liked the way it looked. I like its efficiency rating and quality reputation and so I agreed to spend more than I would have spent on the stove of my choice in part to satisfy her desire to have this particular stove.

Some of you might think this is silly -that in our time of change the last thing we should be worried about is compromising with a spouse for the sake of aesthetics. But I would argue against that sort of thinking. True if the extra money hadn’t been there or was strongly needed for another project then it would have been foolish to spend it on the upgraded stove. But the decision was made as a team and was therefore possible and carried out rather smoothly.

Incidentally she didn’t grow up with a woodstove in regular operation so she was unprepared for the twigs and the ash and such that seem to mess up the area around the stove. She dealt with that though, her borderline obsession with a clean floor, and I did my best to clean up after reloading the stove beyond what I would have done if I lived on my own. More compromise.

Another added benefit was the house was much warmer than the 58/62 degrees we were used to the previous few winters. My wife really liked that. It’s not that we tried to keep it a lot hotter but when you’re trying to get a stove to the temperature at which it combusts gases instead of releasing them into the atmosphere you tend to end up with at least a few rooms warmer than 62 degree. But I digress.

So just how did we decide which projects to take on, how much to budget and some sort of order for getting them done? How did we do it together? That will be the subject of my next post.

cabarus county food system interviews

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:19:00 +0000

These are unedited interviews by Sidney Cruze of David Goforth and Carl Pless. Sidney works with the Center for Environmental Farming Systems and is conducting the Cabarrus County Community Food Assessment(CFA).

Eventually these interviews, along with many others that were not captured on camera, will be shared as part of the full CFA report. What does the food system look like in Cabarrus County? This assessment will tell us and will help us get to work creating a new system for the future in our county. You have to know where you are before you can start off on any journey.

Big thanks to Chris Bullard for shooting these and getting them up on the Internet.

smidgie size me

noreply@blogger.com (nulinegvgv) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:54:00 +0000

I recently read an article in The New York Times about the shrinking size of food packages, an alternative for the food companies who don't want to raise the cost of the items we buy at the grocery store but are facing higher commodity prices for the materials they use to make and transport those items. This is nothing new. From a 2008 Times article,

Soaring commodity and fuel prices are driving up costs for manufacturers; faced with a choice between raising prices (which consumers would surely notice) or quietly putting fewer ounces in the bag, carton or cup (which they generally don't) manufacturers are choosing the latter. You can read the rest of that article here.

The newer article though sounds different to me. Maybe it's the tone.

“For indulgences like ice cream, chocolate and potato chips, consumers may say ‘I don’t mind getting a little bit less because I shouldn’t be consuming so much anyway,’ ” said Professor Gourville.

Yeah, that's right. We should be eating less. Remember when Wendy's "downsized"? That was a little different.

Wendy's is doing away with the 'Biggie' drink size and returning to the terms everybody else uses: small, medium and large.

The difference is, though, that Wendy's is increasing the size of all their drinks. What was medium is now a small, etc. So now, small is a 20 ounce drink, medium is 32 ounces and a new 42 ounce size is a called a large. I'll say! 42 ounces is 1.2 liters (or 5 1/4 cups... a third of gallon). Wendy's will still sell a 16 ounce drink on its 99 cent value menu. (link)

Talk about spin. See the processed food companies are in a pickle. They need Americans to feel like they are getting what they are used to which is a lot- often too much- food per item or serving size but the cost of cheap food is going up. The quandary, how to delicately address the needs of the American psyche and it's warped relationship with food and still make a profit.

I remember learning that in undeveloped nations the processed foods are often packaged in single serving sizes because that is what most citizens can afford. In the poorer sections of the town where I live the convenience stores sell single cigarettes. Maybe that's where we're headed with food. Unable to afford 'Biggie-Sized' any longer but mentally and emotionally unable to give up crap food we will dole out a few coins for the 'Smidgie-Sized' portions and blame it on the fact that we are an overweight nation.

Some Serving Size History