Car(bon)free in California

The challenge of norms.

2011-12-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

Treehugger has a post on the insensitive banter to police officers had when covering an accident scene where a jogger was critically injured by a truck while running to work.

A man jogging in West Seattle was struck by a semi truck, and was critically injured. According to eyewitness accounts, the man was broadsided by the truck, was flung into the air, and landed on his head. Barely clinging to life, cops arrive on the scene--and proceed to mock the man, who for all they knew was dying, for not driving a car.
...
(from the Seattle Post Intelligencer - The accident took place during the extended closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, when the state Department of Transportation was urging commuters to bike, walk, or take a ferry to work in order to avoid a traffic gridlock.

The normal of driving is such that incidents like this convince parents not to let their kids walk or bike to school. This in turns creates the belief in kids that cars are the only way to get around and they cannot wait to get a drivers license as soon as they can. The challenge in life is to understand that there are other ways possible.

The pictures, er, charts say it all.....

2011-12-14T23:27:00.000-08:00

Bike

Breathe

Live

Go here.

Thanks to FB (no not Facebook) for the pointer

The Numbers say it all...

2011-12-10T23:26:00.000-08:00

Felix Salmon over at Reuters has a fantastic post about how the efforts of Janette Sadik-Khan (or better known as "JSK") on making NYC more bicycle friendly. I'll just post the picture below:

But Salmon puts it well

The lesson of this chart, then, is that if you build bike lanes, cyclists will appear to fill them. That’s fantastic news, since cities with lots of cyclists are always the most pleasant cities to live and work in — even for people who don’t bike themselves. New York City has a long way to go before it can be considered genuinely bike-friendly.

On the subject of Bicycle advocacy, The Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition is working with local cities to make them bicycle friendly. Consider the gift of membership this year if you are in the Bay Area.

ruh roh!

2011-12-04T22:55:00.000-08:00

doesn't bode well. being responsible in this modern age means falling on your sword. how were we able to reduce CFCs and stop ozone depletion, but have not been able to do so with carbon emissions?!?! thoughts?

Read this...

2011-10-24T10:06:00.001-07:00

A great analysis of bike lanes and cost of parking. My life has been swamped so blogging has taken a back seat. But this merited a post

The economics of bike lanes

Rally for electric cars.

2011-09-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

On Saturday September 24th, the Silicon Valley chapter of the Electric Auto Association is hosting a Electric Vehicle Rally at Palo Alto High school. There will be electrical vehicles of all kinds and even the opportunity to get a ride in one. For more details visit the Rally Home Page.

I'll be there, make a note in the comments if you want to do a real world meet up.

What's missing?

2011-09-14T23:53:00.001-07:00

This is what I saw coming out of the high speed train station in Suzhou. Note that there are not directions to car parking, just bicycle parking and other forms of alternate transport. Wonder when they will add car parking? China's economic growth is happening without cars (though it growing to cars, is that progress?). Which is a precondition for another?

A vision to tomorrow....

2011-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Frank Bruni has a nice Op Ed Piece in the New York Times on the leadership of Janette Sadik-Kahn whose bicycle advocacy efforts have been covered before.

Bruni discusses the challenges of not only changing a city, but a mindset and the chicken and egg challenges of putting infrastructure in place to support alternate transportation. He presents some nice statistics on how New York compares to other cities, the enforcement of traffic laws and the availability of bicycle parking. (More on that in a future post). Much of a community identify comes from the symbols that matter. Bruni closes with this fantastic observation:

The Chicago transportation commissioner, Gabe Klein, noted that biking pushed back against a range of modern ills. “There’s the congestion problem,” he said. “The pollution problem. The obesity problem. The gas problem.”

On top of all that, it makes an important statement about our priorities — about our willingness to amend the reckless, impatient, gluttonous ways that have created not only smog and clog in our cities but also a staggering federal debt.

“Bikes are definitely a symbol of what your city stands for,” said Klein.

Overall a good read.

10 years later.....

2011-09-10T23:57:00.001-07:00

As I write this, today is my birthday. In about five minutes and what will be the date of this post, it will September 11, 2011. Ten years later. Today when my mother called me to wish me a happy birthday, she asked me how I felt about tomorrow, and I told her that I felt sad, that it seemed like a wasted opportunity, that it triggered us entering into two wars, one of which was clearly needless, that it distracted us from the larger issues at hand instead of bringing a great country into focus, we became obsessed with shopping, gross consumerism and excessive easy credit that led to the economic overhang that haunts us today. But most of all I feel that except for a few hassles at the airport, things seem amnesic as if nothing meaning occurred to us.

This week, I've been coming back from a long trip, and for some reason I've been angry for reasons that I haven't been able to pin down. Later this evening, while I was cleaning up after a casual celebration I realized that the anger has been in the lack of perspective and context that infuses our lives. We seem a country obsessed with drama. Reality TV shows, a New York Times article about resorts that boast about where Snooki had slept (to be honest, I'm inferring that, I just saw the email teaser and couldn't breakdown and read it in a rare bout of self control), here in Silicon Valley the focus was on the twin dramas encompassing Techcrunch/AOL and a potty mouthed CEO unceremoniously fired over the phone. In the realm of real news, we have a presidential campaign dominated by flamboyant non-issues of the promise of $2 per gallon gasoline. The largest legitimate salvo to some does of relevancy was a jobs bill whose goal was to generate demand by more tax cuts on the hope and prayer that those funds will be spent across the economy to stimulate demand, though my fear in an age of mass market consumerism a few top brands will simply witness increased dominance as more people buy iPhones and iPads, the spoils will continue to go to the few. Perhaps a few service sectors such as restaurants and beauty services may see an uptick, but not enough to pull an economy out of the doldrums. My wager is more of that tax cut will be spent of movies, than books. Junk food than exercise.

That is the world that I see, I am fortunate that I was not directly impacted by that day. I had no friends in the towers or in Washington DC or Pennsylvania despite my ties to the New York Area. I did have the responsibility to motivate and organize the communities I oversaw to bring some positive action. I was unemployed at the time, it was my most productive time. I along with other alumni leaders of the Ivy League and Seven Sisters channeled the energy of fellow alums by organizing a non-profit community service fair that wasn't a job fair but a volunteer fair. We were oversubscribed both on non-profits who wanted to present and people looking to make a difference. It was a time where people wanted to change the conversation, not merely accelerate it. People wanted to re-engage with the communities.

A friend of mine created a discussion group called the "Engage Forum" and we met in potluck style meetings and looked over out ballots in earnest to understand what we being asked to decide. We had discussions, both left and right, even in San Francisco. As we went to Iraq, we were fortunate to be able to get Larry Diamond to speak on his experiences on the Coalition Provisional Authority to make sense of what was coming next. I invited a friend who was also the Mayor of Mountain View to attend since she had recently been part of a group of leaders selected to go to Afghanistan as part of an outreach effort. She fell in love with the country, and eventually went to Afghanistan to create opportunities for Afghan women to become self sufficient. Whenever a news story about a death of an American came on the radio, I would pause. She would eventually pass away in Afghanistan, but due to illness not ill will.

In the aftermath, there was a possibility of a deeper understanding of our role in the world. The door was open, but somehow it closed. Most people where I live have no connection to anyone who is serving to keep our cupcakes flowing. So without that connection, we focus on the cupcakes flowing. When gas prices go up, it's not clear we connect the dots. The context is that things are good, at least things are good for me.

And it is good for me, and that is why I am sad and angry at this time. In the reflection of ten years past, in my milestone of another year on this planet, in the milestone of 10 years since that fateful day. I ask what have we learned, I ask what have I learned? And the conclusion I come to is that the past 10 years have been an accelerator of our former selves. Arno Penzias, the Nobel prize winner once said that technology is not good or bad, it makes things just more so. It's an accelerator. If you don't know where you are going, a sports car gets you lost faster and further than you could before.

The debt has grown, our bodies have bloated, our distractions have multiplied. All factored by the new tools we have today. In our effort to return to normal, we accelerated the life before the event in a huge game of catch up, and so we did and then some. We focused on meeting those people's immediate desires, we still do. That's what this valley does.

However, ten years ago we took a pause to reflect on those desires, today perhaps in remembrance we should pause again.

Ideas and Execution.....Making mass transit work?

2011-09-08T23:22:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a trip and part of that trip took place in China, where I had the opportunity to take one China's (in)famous high speed trains. And while one can speak about the safety of the trains, one should reflect on the safety of cars in China as a baseline for comparison. Mass transit accidents stick in people's minds because they are so rare, while car accidents though far more frequent are forgotten because they are so common. So the odds were in my favor, but this isn't a post on transportation safety.

What was amazing was how smooth and efficient the trains were. Going to the train station if you were a Chinese resident you would simply go to an automated kiosk and obtain a ticket. You put your destination and it would tell you which train was free. What is amazing with this system is that it coordinated the seating for all the stops along the way. Someone would get off, that seat would be free and you could buy a ticket, if not it would offer you the next train. Pretty amazing logistics.

The other thing that impressed me was the distance it covered. It's often said that mass transit required density, but maybe it just requires numbers. I traveled between Shanghai and Suzhou which are about 70 miles apart. That is about the same distance between San Francisco and San Jose. Even though there were highways, the trains were frequent and full. About 3 and hour. It was clear that the train was a better alternative, it was fast and comfortable.

What would happen if we made a huge investment and made trains in the U.S. more frequent? Would they be full? The argument is that we won't add trains until there are more riders. But there won't be riders until there are more trains. It's a chicken and egg problem. There are many metropolitan corridors where mass transit might work, but the key is to make it workable for the needs of people.

"Make Taste Not Waste" - greening your coffee drinking

2011-09-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

(Source: www.bodum.com)

"Make Taste Not Waste" is the advertising slogan currently being used by coffee press manufacturer Bodum. I saw this slogan at a cafe at Tokyo Observatory and was surprised by the direct line taken against the ubiquitous single ushttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife coffee capsules by Nespresso and Keurig K-Cups. The single use convenience pods do make a particularly good cup of coffee there is clearly the downside of all convenience food in the packaging and waste of the pods when used. The increasing popularity of these pods are definitely a concern for traditional coffee maker manufacturers.

I do agree that the pod systems make for a consistent cup of coffee, but is it worth the 9 billion capsules that are disposed of every year according to Bodum. Something to think about, even when you consider the source. In full disclosure, I do use a Bodum french press daily and have been very satisfied. I chose this interestingly to avoid having to use the disposable paper filters which predated the capsule craze. Another side note, a green product has to work in reality, not just marketing. I also purchased this Bodum Travel Press with less than stellar results. So an effort at being green, ended up being potential landfill (though I still keep it since it's all plasticy and I use it for tea).

So it's nice when advertising is meant to ask bigger questions. So I applaud Bodum's move and hope that the competitors will come up with green alternatives. Though others are trying, as this Instructables article shows. (It is an awful lot of work, so you have to be really dedicated. Keurig offers a Reusable Coffee Filter as well and the reviews seem pretty positive overall.

But a simple way to address the issue of packaging is to use less, one of my favorite perks for coffee is that Peet's offers $0.25 discount if you bring back your old coffee bag when you get fresh beans. I can personally vouch that it's possible to use a bag for an extra long time.

So you can make your morning buzz more green, regardless of how you make your coffee.

When business knows what politicians don't...

2011-09-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

Been traveling, back from Asia and a lot to write blog about alternative transportation. A little to jet lagged to write originally, but here is an interesting look at reinsurance, risk and climate change. Enjoy

Bloomberg has an interesting editorial on how the Insurance industry is looking at climate change and how it differs from pro-business politicians views. The insurance industry has to be brutally honest at the way it looks at data, there are no politics in loss. In short it's betting on climate change happening.

Hurricane Irene’s residue is likely to include a confusing debate over whether insurers or property owners are responsible for storm-caused water damage. There’s no lack of clarity, however, over whether the insurance industry believes in climate change and its ties to lethal weather: It does.

The editorial points to a cover story article in Bloomberg Businessweek which has the following:

To that end, Swiss Re has started speaking about climate risk, not climate change. That the climate is changing has been established in the eyes of the industry. “For a long time,” says Bresch, “people thought we only needed to do detailed modeling to truly understand in a specific region how the climate will change. … You can do that forever.” In many places, he says, climate change is only part of the story. The other part is economic development. In other words, we’re building in the wrong places in the wrong way, so wrong that what we build often isn’t even insurable. In an interview published by Swiss Re, Wolf Dombrowsky, of the Disaster Research Center at Kiel University in Germany, points out that it’s wrong to say that a natural disaster destroyed something; the destruction was not nature’s fault but our own.

There is a solid discipline in gambling, you play the odds and in most cases you shouldn't gamble (outside of entertainment value). The house knows this, but most players don't. This plays out in the general public as well.

Reinsurers, however, have no incentive to mislead. Their choices on risk, with billions of dollars at stake, are necessarily aligned with the pursuit of truth. If a reinsurer is more scared of a risk than it should be, its shareholders will punish it. If it is less scared than it should be, the world, eventually, will break it. There are rewards for politicians, corporations, think tanks, and activists who dissemble about risk. There are none for reinsurers. If they’re taking on less of it than their insurers would like them to, then the world is more dangerous than we’re willing to admit. What a reinsurer will underwrite, then, offers a marker, one edge of what Bresch calls the gap between modeled and perceived reality.

We are players in the casino, and the house is mother nature. But while we can't completely change the odds, we can shift them to our favor (card counting, etc) and we can price the returns (going to different casinos with different payouts). Most of our politicians are placing sucker bets by denying any possibility of climate change. A lot has been said about "tail events" such as "Black Swans", but what if you assume black swans aren't that rare? Cultures do live that way:

Catastrophes do not surprise all societies equally. Greg Bankoff, an historian at the University of Hull in Britain, has defined for the Philippines a “culture of risk,” a set of adaptations built around the constant threat of natural disaster. Agricultural systems in the Philippines focus on minimizing loss rather than maximizing yield. The islands developed a kind of low, buttressed “earthquake baroque” style for stone buildings. Communities are quick to relocate out of danger.

As a culture, Americans are about maximization of return, not minimization of loss. We see this in our habits, our loan behavior (housing bubble anyone. Pricing climate change into our actions and policies is not a definite outcome, but it does make for a good insurance policy for our future.

The cost of infrastructure: past, present and future.

2011-08-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

The economy has been really tough on people, and it's becoming really tough on our country's infrastructure. The New York Times has an article on the increases in fares for mass transit to cover deficits from other funding sources and the simultaneous reduction in service level. (Sounds ominously like an ideal budget deal). But like the economy, mass transit systems suffer from feedback loops. It's too costly to take mass transit fewer people ride and the budget deficits expand. Too infrequent, people find it inconvenient and the look for alternatives. But this time it's different, as the economy forces individuals to ride mass transit even more.

The economic downturn is playing havoc with the nation’s public transit systems even as ridership remains near record levels: since 2010, 71 percent of the nation’s large systems have cut service, and half have raised fares, according to a survey released Wednesday by the American Public Transportation Association, a transit advocacy group.

And in many cases, those fare increases and service cuts — made necessary by flat or reduced state and local aid — are being implemented on top of similar moves earlier in the downturn.

“It’s compounding,” Art Guzzetti, the vice president for policy at the transportation association, said of the repeated years of service cuts and fare increases. “I’ve been in the business 32 years. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs along the way. That’s been the nature of the business. But notwithstanding that, this is the worst it’s been in my time.”

...

It explained its bind in a note to riders, which said that the downturn has caused the regional transportation sales tax it relies on to “plummet,” and that it was now on track to take in $350 million less than expected through 2013. The rising cost of diesel fuel, meanwhile, will cost the agency $18.3 million more than expected this year. And the agency warned that it would be dangerous to continue taking money out of its capital budget, which is needed to pay for a much-needed backlog of repairs and improvements, in order to keep its trains running.

“Further depleting the capital budget to pay for operations will only make the problem worse and eventually result in impacts on our service and service delays,” it warned.

How do you avoid going deeper in the hole. It's a big dilemma. It's not just limited to transportation infrastructure, as the Verizon Land line strike is straining customer patience as the New York Times reports. The challenge of infrastructure is it costs a lot to build, and it costs a lot to rebuild. And at some time you have to rebuild. We've become so broke, that the roof is leaking, the paint peeling and it's not clear what can be done. We haven't always thought of the moment, but beyond the moment as this nice anecdote from Stewart Brand demonstrates:

The anthropologist/philosopher Gregory Bateson used to tell this story:

Founded in 1379, New College, Oxford is one of the oldest Oxford colleges. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with huge oak beams across the top, as large as two feet square, and forty-five feet long each.

A century ago, some busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, which met the news with some dismay, beams this large were now very hard, if not impossible to come by. "Where would they get beams of that caliber?" they worried.

One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be some worthy oaks on the College lands. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country which are run by a college Forester. They called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him if there were any oaks for possible use.

He pulled his forelock and said, “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.”

Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years saying “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.”

A nice story, one which raises an immediate question, “What about the next time? Has a new grove of oaks been planted and protected?”

How much does a new bike set you back?

2011-08-14T11:39:00.001-07:00

The Green Lantern Column on Slate tries to answer the question "How far do I have to ride my bike to pay back its carbon footprint?" The questioner wonders how far behind is his carbon footprint to make and ship a brand new bike. According to some calculations, it's 530 pounds of carbon emissions and "Given a "typical U.S. diet," you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint." As the saying goes, your mileage may vary, but a bikable distance for work is usually about 8 - 10 miles. So if you ride once a week, you pretty much break even in less than half a year (20 miles round trip 20 times). Not a bad return on effort. The column goes on to look at other alternative forms of transportation, and the bike still wins.

If you are really concerned about adding new carbon emissions for a new bike, then consider buying a used bicycle. The truth is that many things that require physical effort such as bicycles don't get used after their initial novelty. As a result you can find many great deals on Craigslist or eBay with no new carbon added.

Envisioning a city...

2011-08-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Slate as part of their "Top Right" series honors Janette Sadik-Kahn (or JSK to her colleagues) was Bloomberg's hire for New York City Transportation Commissioner. who looked at New York City through the lens of real estate developer thinking less in terms of efficiency but more in terms of curb appeal and what would it take to realize the intended uses of space. Famous for rerouting Times Square traffic to make it more pedestrian friendly and bringing bicycle lanes throughout Manhattan she has changed the way New Yorkers get around.

The article highlights some of her still in progress initiatives

>The bike lane furor still hasn't entirely subsided, but Sadik-Khan is already on to the next big thing—or rather, things: the pedestrian wayfinding project, which will put signs on sidewalks to give pedestrians directions and distances to nearby landmarks; a bike-share plan, modeled on a program that Washington and other cities have implemented to good effect; and Midtown in Motion, which would allow traffic engineers to adjust stoplights remotely as traffic conditions change.

An essay on her vision for NYC is also on Slate. Transportation is a part of the landscape, not just merely drive through space and understanding the value of that space is an addition to the conversation that I hope other municipalities consider.

Being Cute...

2011-08-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

Wired magazine has a fascinating interview with Bill Gates who talks about the world's energy challenges. In typical Gates fashion he analyzes from the data and concludes that only large scale solutions matter. This includes nuclear power, which he says is the only way out. He goes further to explain that nuclear power plants are built on 1950s technology and hence it is also the area where the most innovation can occur since there is going to be a lot of low lying fruit. He is sort of dismissive and supportive of the efforts of us here in the modern world and what we try to do to be more green, he says it's cute.

If you’re going for cuteness, the stuff in the home is the place to go. It’s really kind of cool to have solar panels on your roof. But if you’re really interested in the energy problem, it’s those big things in the desert.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things. We can afford to overpay for medicine, we can overpay for energy, we can rig our food prices and overpay for cotton. But in the world where 80 percent of Earth’s population lives, energy is going to be bought where it’s economical. People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.

You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a reasonable price to get anywhere. It’s great to have the rich world, because we’re there to think about long-term problems and fund the R&D. But we get sloppy, because we’re rich.

He is really critical of the current fiscal allocation, explaining that basic research is being slighted. In short, the rich world is not tackling the big problems in a meaningful way, but instead in emotional ways, and that is the luxury of wealth. It's easy to confuse activity with progress, but they are not the same. In the end, we have problems of life because we are out of sync and rhythm, technology overcame them in the short term, but in the long term it's not so clear technology is the solution.

Just in Time vs. Just in Case: Creating real world sharing opportunities.

2011-08-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was helping my friend sell her stuff as she is preparing to move out of the country. As she was looking over her possessions she remarked that a lot of this had been in storage for the past four years and she never accessed it. She bought a lot of things because she should she would need it. Other items were gifts and giveaways from companies that she didn't feel she could throwaway earlier. It made me think how much of our lives are about just in case vs just in time. I can't say that either is better than the other since they are hedges against different circumstances.

However, much of our economy is based the worry part of our natures. You should have this just in case you need it. And sometimes you do, I have a scanner that I don't use every day. but it's nice to have when you need it. But there are products that we seem to buy as a single use purchase that linger when not needed. I recently borrowed a slide scanner from my friend, he bought it to convert his old negatives to digital and I borrowed it. I spent a weekend scanning all my photos from my past and it was a nice accomplishment. But then I returned the scanner to him. It's nice to have someone in your circle to be able to borrow things, especially things you don't use all the time. And no one uses all the time. There is a start up called Roonga that is trying to do that. It's in "beta" and it is living up to that moniker, but the concept is solid. What do we have that is "on the bench" that we can make available. Obviously there are things like party supplies (punch bowls, card tables, etc) that one can offer in a pinch. There are tools that one can offer to those in need. And there are libraries (both books and media). Delicious Monster offers a nice product called Delicious Library that tracks your library and has a share option. GoodReads.com has a bookswap option to let your friends know of books you like to swap, it would be great to have a lending option.

The problem is that most of these solutions exist in the digital realm, but they fail to jump the chasm into real world usability. Tracking and managing atoms is so much harder than bits. So what do we need to do to get these things processes to work better. I think we need to think about the workflow of everyday things.

The first issue is, just in time availability. People have been borrowing goods from each other for all of time. People have also been struggling to get things back from people almost as long. Identifying who you do things with on a regular basis is really important to make things work. The other way to improve things is to make returning and lending part of one's everyday life. I love the if it fits in a box it's one price option of US Priority Mail. Lend a book, but include a pre-addressed pre paid envelope. Maybe print it out in the borrow process.

Second issues if latent value, how do I know the value of something is not more for someone else. For instance, my friend had a remote control for her computer. She never used it, it was brand new. I interestingly had recently joined the real world and got television reception through a digital tuner and started using my PC was my TV. (I was TV free now I am for all intent and purposes a couch potato just like everyone else). It had huge value for me, well not huge but I do use it and it's a nice solution. Identifying the value match still needs to be figured out.

Third issue, defining a meaningful sharing network. When you want to lend, you want to lend to those that you trust. Social networking sites help find potential real world sharing opportunities, not just digital ones. Creating trust and rating models is a huge area. Ebay did this was ratings, but let's face it some of your friends are flakier than others.

Last issue, timeliness. It is interesting to see freecycle as it is run by email, but often when something is available you don't need it and when you need something, someone has offered it but it was never picked up. Solving the time mismatch issue will increase use.

We have a lot of "dark stuff" in our lives waiting to be lit and used. Figuring out how to do it can help the environment and our society. I do have concerns that our current economic model may suffer from greater use efficiency, but that will be for another post.

Parking hazard...

2011-08-03T15:07:00.001-07:00

If you are looking for a bicycle friendly city, what comes to mind? Portland? Minneapolis? Vilnius? Did I say Vilnius? Yep. Bicycle advocates are always lamenting how city leaders are rarely supporters of bicycling, can only wish that they would emulate Vilnius mayor Arturas Zuokas who commandeered a tank to drive over a Mercedes Benz that was parked in a bicycle lane. In a YouTubed stunt to put drivers on notice that they cannot park anywhere they want without penalty.

The event was clearly staged, but it was a fantastic way to get attention to the implicit primary role that cars get and don't necessarily deserve. I am not sure it's an auto rights issue as a class issue since apparently the most egregious offenders are owners of extreme luxury cars. The link between cars and class i discussed here and in 2009, Chinese were outraged at a rich kid's lack of remorse concerning a pedestrian accident while racing down a street. Cars are tools, but they are also embodiments of identity. What rights do a car have that a person doesn't?

Going Dutch....

2011-08-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

There is a charming op-ed piece by Russell Shorto who ruminates about the way that people in Amsterdam look at mixed transit, relative to how Americans do. He tries to figure out what is the root of the difference. Is it geography, age of cities or attitude. In the end it's a mix of them all, but he leans toward mind-set.

Sadly he thinks that governments putting resources toward bicycling is somehow paternalistic. But perhaps another way is looking at supporting bicyclists and mass transit as a form of democracy. Letting each person have access to their preference, cars get roads, bikers get paths, mass transit people get trains. Democracy is not merely majority rules, but simultaneously providing for the rights of the minority. The allocation of resources to different transports is not giving special interests preferential treatment, but giving equal treatment. Obviously there are limits to when a minority of one results, but looking at the impact and resources consumed in aggregate, bicycling is an act of citizenship.

What side of the tracks are you on?

2011-07-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

Environment shapes choices, for all the rhetoric about how people can rise above their means, the reality is that geography often governs the choices we have.

This clearly the case in this sad story of the tragic death of a child in this NPR story. The mother Raquel Nelson did what people do all the time and jay walked to save some time. She crossed a four lane highway and unfortunately was at the wrong place at the wrong time and her son was killed by a drunk driver. The twist in the story was the mother was also charged with reckless endangerment of a minor for crossing there.

She was crossing since the bus stop was right across from her apartment complex and to go to the crosswalk was a third of a mile away. This is about ten minutes with children to get to the crosswalk and ten to the apartment complex. A pretty large time penalty.

Goldberg tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that these new residents are "using the bus, they're walking, but they're in places that are entirely hostile to people on foot."

Goldberg says the bus stop where the accident took place primarily services Nelson's apartment complex, yet there is no crosswalk at the stop, forcing riders to walk far out of their way just to cross the street at a traffic light and get to it. He says that neither state nor local transportation officials have addressed the safety issues posed by the accident because of the potential for litigation.

For all practical purposes, the United States is built with cars as an assumption of citizenship and not having a car is almost a poll tax on participation in our society. Transit has always defined class lines in most societies. The car is a sign of arrival (whatever that means) in China and India where having a car is a signifier that you are upper class. The two properties that a car confers are privacy or exclusivity and time. Exclusivity, in that we don't have to experience others. And time in that we don't have to wait for our transport (but ironically, in China, since no one has to wait for their car, they have to wait in their cars instead). The power of locomotion over time facilitated people living in the suburbs and on hills. In the past, people use to talk about people who were not of the right class as living on the "other side of the tracks" Transportation defines class, and the lack of effective public transportation is a form or redlining, as much as any political action. That seems to be the case in Atlanta where this tragedy occurred.

What's interesting is our most vibrant cities, the wealthy frequently use mass transit. One of the things that can raise the value of a house in New York City is it's proximity to a subway stop. In fact the A, B and C subway lines stop in some of the most desired addresses of Central Park West. So transit can be an equalizing force, because it's a vehicle for understanding, for seeing how the other side lives.

In closing, in our escalation of class separation, if you think this phenomenon is limited to cars, check out this story in the New York Times about how private planes are now the preferred way to get your kids to camp.

Was Missing Persons right, "Only a nobody walks in L.A.?"

The coming of the e-bikes, or biking for the bunches?

2011-07-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

The August 2011 issues of Outside Magazine (On newsstands at the times of this posting) has an exploratory article about the possibility of ebikes becoming mainstream. The article by Todd Balf talks to different acolytes of ebikes including San Francisco shop owner Brett Thurber of The New Wheel who carries a range of electrical bicycles and bike fitting kits.

There is no doubt that E-bikes can definitely be a part of the solution in citieswhere short distances make the difference between car and bike negligible. The bigger question will be is this going to be viable for the suburbs where distances are larger. Out towns are zoned for cars, but perhaps our zoning laws could be changed to reflect a more earth friendly scale. Note that most building codes in the suburbs mandate a minimum number of car spaces for commercial spaces, but they do not mandate minimum bicycle spaces. A problem I've encountered in the past.

The cost of e-bikes is also prohibitive, but the popularity of these in China and Europe should drive the price down. Something to think about as time moves forward. While I was looking for the article online, I found out that Outside had written a blog post from 2009 where it reported sales were 200,000. The article this month says that sales are in the 350,000 for a single year with an expectation 800,000 within five years.

I can say personally that if one is not time pressed, electric bikes are a great way of exploring places in a relaxing manner. Last year I tried Change of Greenery in Napa Valley and we were able to explore a lot great wineries and enjoy the great scenery. While the bikes were heavy, it was definitely doable for any reasonably fit person to see a large part of Napa.

So if you have a chance to e-bike, or have e-biked, please let me know your experience in the comments.

The sad cost of road rage...

2011-07-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

Being in Silicon Valley, it's not a surprise that I am involved in the technology industry. I was shocked to hear about the sudden death of a well respected Software Engineer Steve Lacey as a result of Road Rage incident detailed here and here.

Cars have become such extensions of ourselves, magnifying both the speed our lives, but also the power. The discontinuous nature of small actions that cars enable is something we often forget.

"Let's be careful out there" - Sargent Esterhaus, Hill Street Blues.

Now that's commitment!

2011-07-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

A Santa Monica Airlines Skateboard owner who pledged to donate $10 per minute that the bikes beat the plane made good in the most appropriate way. He sold his car to raise the funds! more details here and here.

What a winner in every respect.

P.S. Some more coverage of "Carmageddon" from the NYTimes. People took it in stride. We assume cars are the only way, in the same way that a fish goes what's water. This is Water.

Leadership when we need it....

2011-07-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker's News Desk details New York City Mayor Bloomberg's donation of $50 million to the Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal" campaign.

The campaign’s aim is to stop the construction of new coal-burning power plants and to shut down—or to use the more polite term “phase out”—up to a third of the coal plants now in operation. Coal produces more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than any other fuel, so any reduction in coal use means a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions.

I have been impressed by Bloomberg's approach to problems in that he is relatively free of ideological fervor, equally likely to approach a problem from either side of the aisle. He is a data driven leader, understanding that science knows no ideology. I heard him speak, and I was really impressed that he defended the work of civil servants, saying they were as sharp as anyone he had worked with in the private sector. That reluctance to fall back on stereotypes is a strong trait in a leader.

Here's to a more sustained sensible discussion on the topic of climate change.

A step toward cars and peds safety

2011-07-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

Over at Network World (yeah go figure) there is a blog post on a new technology by Toyota that makes cars stop for pedestrians. Unfortunately due to the increasingly distracting lives we lead, collision avoidance systems of all types will become more necessary. This is a nice advance in that it helps cars avoid smaller objects as well. Check out the video too.

You don't have to be going at high speeds to cause damage, according to this website driveway accidents are the second leading cause of deaths for children at home. Something to think about.

Summer of Smart Sustainability: Hackathon 3

2011-07-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

A reader reached out to me to let me know about the Summer of Smart Sustainability sponsored by the Gray Area Foundation For the Arts. This series of events have brought together individuals from different backgrounds interested in creating solutions to our commuting and transportation needs. They are looking at crowdsourcing, self reporting and sensor based solutions to find better ways to help people get around more effectively. If you have a laptop, the Android SDK and iOS SDK are free and if you have a techie background relatively easy to learn.

Also look at technologies from Nike such as the Nike+ GPS Sports Watch, Nike+ iPod and the Garmin Forerunner collect GPS data and can be used to track how many miles you DON"t drive and give encouragement. One of my favorite features of the Nike+ GPS Sportswatch is that it will remind you "Are we running today?" it may be possible to hack these devices to ask, as we not driving today. Battery life remains an issue, but we charge our phones nightly don't we.

Anyway, a world of opportunity out there. Too bad I found out too late.

Disclosure: I occasionally get notified of products, events, resources by PR agencies, companies, other bloggers, etc. My policy is to disclose the source of the information where there may be a commercial tie. Note: Commercial does not mean bad, these are legitimate ways of getting the word out. I will do my best to vet the product, event etc to determine if it is relevant to the audience of this blog. If I am unable to vet, I will simply note that I was informed and passing this along.

Another argument for reuse over recycling.

2011-07-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

MIT Senesable City Lab wanted to track down what happens with e-waste when the first world is done with it. They put together a cool video which is available at Bostinnovation. Worth a few minutes to check out.

A nice recap....

2011-07-17T00:02:00.001-07:00

Slate's Tom Vanderbilt recaps the #flightvsbike action. Who would have thought people ride to the airport on their bikes? I've ridden from my home to the airport en route to downtown, and beaten light rail. It's the parking that's the pain.

"bikes beat the plane, bikes beat the plane, bikes beat the plane"

2011-07-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

"bikes beat the plane, bikes beat the plane, bikes beat the plane" - the Ghost of Bobby Thomson.

Congrats to the @WolfpackHustle for beating the BUR->LGB JetBlue flight, and to JetBlue for being such good sports. Final results: Unofficial times via twitter - Bikes-1:34 Metro/Walk-1:44 Rollerblader-2:40 Plane/lost cab driver-2:54.

What turned out to be the highlight of the Carmaggedon weekend was the throw down match between the Wolfpack Hustle a bicycling club in Los Angeles and a special promotional flight offered by JetBlue (just when you thought unlimited blue potato chips couldn't be bettered) for the weekend. The whole thing was kicked off on Twitter by Author Tom Vanderbilt who wrote the book Traffic that I've written about before who twipondered (to ponder out loud on Twitter) could some bike beat the flight if all the security lines were taken into account. Add did they, by a long shot!

As fun as the event is, it does bring into mind how much of our transportation is getting to the transportation. I have a 2 mile rule where I try to make as many of my less than 2 mile trips on my bike. Not a problem in sunny Califorhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnia. There are viable alternatives when and where there is support. I recently rode to a strip mall and there was ZERO bicycle parking. It's interesting that most local building codes mandhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifate minimum car parking requirements, but they don't mandate minimum bicycle parking. This tweet asks the big questions

class5tax Devin Martin
Cyclists just proved bike is most efficient transit in LA...so why do cars/planes get all the tax breaks?? storyful.com/stories/100000… #flightvsbike

Cars have become the oxygen we breathe. In the same vein, most citizens don't realize the expenses of driving, in the same way they don't think of many government services as government Service. Robert Reich points out a survey by Cornell professor Suzanne Mettler:

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A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don’t really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they “have not used a government social program.” More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability.

The cost of the 405 Freeway expansion is about $1 Billion. I wonder how much people think the expansion is going to cost? Probably not even close.

This little stunt was exciting in that it shows, alternatives exist, but we have to believe this is true to act on it.

A race for the ages!!!!!

2011-07-16T11:40:00.001-07:00

It's finally here! CARMAGGEDON! For those who haven't been overwhelmed by the debt ceiling coverage instead have been covering the important things, freedom of lightbulbs, NO! It's Carmaggedon, the closing of the 405 in Los Angeles that was going to paralyze all of L.A. (which having been to L.A., isn't that normal?)

Jet Blue in an stroke of marketing genius, is offering $4 flights between Burbank and Long Beach (that is actually cheaper than taking bus normally). Some intrepid twitterers had the genius idea, would it be faster to ride your bike. Slate has the details in this great article.

I honestly do justice to how hilarious the article is so, just stop reading and go here/ or just follow it on twitter at #flightvsbike. I'll be back with an update tomorrow.

Go BIKES!

How do you motivate people to take the bus?

2011-07-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Or more correctly how do you motivate people to take the bus at a different time. One of the reasons traffic is so terrible is that we tend to live ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn lock step, hence the phenomenon known as "rush hour" This creates havoc for mass transit systems since if you build for peak, you have a lot of "rolling stock" being unused or underused most of the time. This is the same reason that on Mother's day you'll often get "all circuits are busy" messages when you call mom.

Singapore has invested a lot in their mass transit and the Economist explores the novel incentive system to encourage off peak ridership. Instead of directly paying individuals to leave earlier, they use a system of lottery tickets to get more chances at winning a larger prize. It works in the same way that slot machines do at casinos, the stakes are high enough that you win occasionally, (or others close by win) to keep you habitually tied to the new schedule.

It'll be interesting to see if it works in Singapore...

Does Feedback matter?

2011-07-10T10:35:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has an article looking into the efficacy of the new law in Montgomery County Maryland to post the calorie counts of food items on menus at restaurants. Unfortunately the data does not look good, most diners don't take into account the posted calories when ordering.

Now what does this have to do with carbon free living? A lot given that meat has a much larger carbon footprint than vegetables, and the fats and oils associated with meat tend to lead to higher calorie counts. So why is this the case that people act against their own best interest? Well the cynics in the article exclaim

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You don’t need a pile of studies to tell you that people do not always do what is in their best interest. If humans were a fully rational species capable of using obvious information for obvious benefits, then millions of people every year would not keep forgetting to sign up for their 401(k) plans, nor would they eat an entire bag of Doritos when the label says the bag contains three servings.

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However, I think that there is something else at play and that numbers without context are just numbers. What most people don't know is what is the daily calorie consumption for an average person? I would argue most people don't know. Another question that people don't know is what are the number of calories for a pound of additional weight on your body? (Approx 3600) Add to that if you eat a gigantic meal you don't immediately gain a pound the next day (unless you are Kobayashi). So causality is very difficult to establish for most people. So they shrug going, oh well....

The other factor at play is that behavior stems from belief. One of the challenges in climate change debate is not the data (which is incontrovertible, the Keeling curve is a great example). But if you fundamentally don't believe there is a problem, you won't change your behavior. Most people believe they are in good shape, I think it's interesting in the article that most people who don't care tend to be white males, who have a well established place in the hierarchy. Conjecture, but it'd be interesting to see who does and does not change their behavior.

There is something to be said for norms, which is a form of belief. In the article, they do highlight one positive light in behavior change -- Starbucks. Where people did alter their food purchasing habits but not their drinks.

Loewenstein, in his editorial, cited just one “rigorous” study showing a positive effect: at Starbucks stores in New York City, where diners seeing calorie information reduced their intake — but only for food, not beverages. Researchers consider that result a bit of an outlier, theorizing that Starbucks consumers are more sensitive to nutritional information. “I’m sure the average BMI at Cheesecake Factory or McDonald’s is a lot larger than at Starbucks,” Loewenstein said, only half-joking.

These norms are important. Liberal circles often talk about acceptance, but we do have norms that specify what is rude and what is not. It's interesting that the article mentions Starbucks as I was there last night after dinner grabbing a cup of tea. And in there was a very obese man who grabbed a gigantic coffee and a pastry. What was great was that he was also riding a bicycle which he rode quite well. I paid a lot of attention to how he was getting on the bike and riding. My friend asked was I going to make fun of him and my response was "You never make fun of someone who makes an honest effort to improve themselves." Hats off fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifor him to being carbon free.

But back to Starbucks and I think most restaurant menus is that the values listed don't actually offer a choice. Almost every pastry at Starbucks is high in calories (400 - 500). The only things that are lower in calories are smaller versions the standard offerings. There hasn't been an effort to offer something with lower calorie density. (Not true, they do offer bananas). So if you are joining people for a meal you have a choice usually of a salad or something high calories. Menu diversity is going to be critical if we truly offer people an viable alternative to choose.

Information and incentives are not going to be enough to change behavior, David Brooks in his most recent column talks about actions and decisions in context. It's a good read about why we need to understand the interleave between incentives and path dependency. It is very reminiscent of the decisions that get made when we are aroused as demonstrated in Dan Ariely's Laptop Experiment where explicit choice seems to be an option but is not.

Understanding our imperfections are going to be critical to improving our actions for our planet. And that's a lot to digest.

Bicycles as engines of economic development.

2011-07-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

It's fitting on Independent Day that Nancy Folbre an economist at the University of Massachusetts has a fantastic blog post on the benefits of bicycling on economic development and the negative economic benefits of driving. In short the benefits of bicycling for freedom.

It has a lot of links to great resources including one to that liberal paper The Economist. I really can't do it justice, but here is a sample. but go read it directly:

Here is the economic logic behind increased efforts to promote bicycle use:

Cars enjoy huge direct subsidies in the form of road construction and public parking spaces, as well as indirect subsidies to the oil industry that provides their fuel. These subsidies far exceed the tax revenue generated by car use (as this excellent discussion of the technical issues at stake in these calculations makes clear.)

Yet cars impose major social costs: their use contributes to global warming, traffic congestion, accident fatalities and sedentary lifestyles.

Bicycle use is good for both people and the planet. In a country afflicted by obesity and inactivity, people who get moving become healthier. Riding a bike to work or to do errands is far cheaper than joining a gym. Cutting back on gas consumption improves air quality, reduces dependence on imported oil and saves money.

Increased bicycle use is practical and feasible, especially if it can be combined with effective public transportation for long-distance needs. As John Pucher of Rutgers University (dubbed Professor Bicycle by some of his fans) explains, about 40 percent of all automobile trips in metropolitan areas are less than two miles – a distance easily biked.

Making people and cars equal.

2011-06-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an article talking about policies in European cities to make it down right hostile to drive. Actions include, unsyncing stop lights, letting pedestrians walk anywhere and most importantly eliminating parking (as discussed in Michael Kodransky's report titled "Europe's Parking U-Turn") . These steps have been able to drive down car ownership.

The goal of these actions is not to make it hell for cars, but to make cities habitable for people again. Also the other action is to make resources more equitable between people and cars. It takes 115 cubic meters to support a car vs 3 for a pedestrian. A greater than 30 to 1 ratio! My favorite quote of the article is:

“When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.” said Pio Marzolini, a Zurich city official.

Riding in Style....

2011-06-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has an appropriately expensive articlearticle titles "Easy Riders". (Hint if you hit a paywall, do a google search on the title and WSJ.com and you should be able to get a preview version in it's entirety) that describes some nice albeit pricey bicycle clothing that makes it possible to bike and live normally. The Nau Jacket seems reasonably priced for a style item.

Closer to home (or at least my home) "B Spoke Tailor" and Nan Eastep hand crafts made to order bike clothing. The S.F.B.C. has a nice write up on other custom clothiers for bicycling.

On a slight related note, Matt Modine is a big bike promoter as noted in the WSJ article. One of his early movies, "Gross Anatomy" has a great scene where the med student is being quizzed in a "practical" where you are shown a body part and told to tell what it is. Some question is asked about the number of nerve pairs or something and the med student goes "12 (or some other number)" and the Professor goes "do you know or are you guessing?" Med student replies "Am I right?" and the professor goes "Yes" and the med student replies "I'm not guessing".

Driving and Obesity.. coincidence

2011-06-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

The Economist has a nice chart showing the correlation between increase in miles driven and obesity. Now this is hardly ground breaking, many have seen this correlation and one can look at studies that show that individuals in cities are on average thinner than suburban fold, and that they drive less.

I think you can look at many corroborating reports that tie, more driving is more sedentary and this leads to greater obesity. The Freakonomics blog has a post showing causation of his age with obesity. A bit cheeky, since the sample size of one is ridiculous, where the larger population suggests a pattern. Granted some normalization for average vehicle miles and maybe normalized BMI may be more convincing. But not sure, I'm not a statistician.

Freakonomics is taking a pot shot that can be used to describe any trendline going up.

What are the most Dangerous Cars in America?

2011-06-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

interesting to see what is safe and it isn't. Some things are intuitive while others not so. The most dangerous car is a sports car, speed kills not a big surprise.

More details here.

It's summer, it's time to go "slugging"

2011-06-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about the World Champion, let me say that again, World Champion San Francisco Giants. And all you spoilsports who say it's not the "World Series" hey it's America, if you brand it it's true. I'm talking about Slugging sometimes known as "casual carpooling". I had heard of people picking up people randomly for before the bridge to save on toll on get to use the HOV lanes. But I didn't know that it existed in Washington D.C. and Houston until I read this article in Miller McCune that talked about the history and how even public transit agency covertly fund slugging organizers.

I love this quote:

“People are cooperating … to commute?” says Marc Oliphant, underscoring the novelty of what is going on here. “It’s like the opposite of road rage!”

It's amazing what a small shift in transit patterns through mechanisms like "Slugging" can do. This is really interesting:

Society always reaches first for the infrastructure fix — the costly highway expansion, the new route for the metro rail. But what if government could just nudge more people to do what they’ve done here, creating their own commuting cure within the existing system? Federal Highway Administration studies suggest that free-flowing traffic can be restored on a clogged highway simply by removing 10 percent of its cars.

Imagine what could happen if we took advantage of the roads and cars that are already present. I could share more, but it's worth a read to see how mass transit could be the peoples transit. Dynamic carpool services like my friend's company Zimride may be a technical solution to expand the people's mass transit. It's exciting to imagine a grass roots effort. I like it.

mass human movement...

2011-06-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

The Bolder Boulder 10K running race just happened in Boulder, CO and one of the things I was most impressed with was the mass transit put in place to get runners to the starting line. It was called the "Run Ride" and it worked like the best of mass transit. You showed up without planning, and a bus was either there or soon to be there to get you along the way. The joy of driving is that it's on demand and you don't have to think or you don't live in fear of missing the bus. Just like great subway systems.

Perhaps the key is not huge buses, but lot of microbuses that run regularly. I know the cost component isn't in the bus but the drivers but perhaps this is an employment program that can make the earth better.

Saving Private Router - the next generation.

2010-11-08T22:40:00.000-08:00

Time sure does fly, about a year ago I wrote about Saving Private Router and my effort to resurrect an old router that I had that died. Through laborious debugging I figured out it was the pesky power supply and purchased a replacement power supply that saved me moolah and gave me a "Housian" moment of where I figured out the puzzle. Not to mention I liked the fact that I had a print server in the bugger that I didn't want to lose.

Well recently I had another discovery moment where I had incorrectly blamed the nameless AT&T for slow speeds on my DSL. Through some random digital spelunking, I figured out that it was not my DSL that was slow, but that my router was in fact the culprit. I was about to buy a new router when I realized that I had an old router that I picked up to do some science experiments.

There is a class of computer hardware that is imminently "hackable" where you can take the body and do a brain transplant and give it an entirely new personality. Well you can do this with the fondly loved Linksys nee Cisco WRT54G router. You can take a plain jane, vanilla off the shelf home appliance and turbocharge it to do things that you probably won't use but hey ain't it cool that you can squeeze out every little bit of functionality out of the litter bugger. Well that's what this device is known for, it's basically "Geek stock car tinkering" just on something not so loud.

Well I had done a brain transplant and played around with the funky firmware of the dd-wrt and made it so overwhelmingly busy that it ended up being really slow. But it did a lot of stuff really slow. In this state of overwhelmedness, the router was "fun" but it really wasn't useful so I decided to resurrect it to the factory brain, erhm "flash". I looked up on the internet how to do it and gave it a try, punched a few things into my computer keyboard, and rebooted the litter sucker and what did I get.... crickets..... The industry term for this is "I bricked it" for you turned something that worked into the functional equivalent of a brick.

Whoops.....A little more "magic eight balling" of the internet and asking "Can I fix this" hit enter, flip over the computer and the answer was "answer hazy...try this..." OK, I basically figured out a way to check the pulse of the device and we got a faint one... It lives...barely. This is the best way to make a nerd completely non-functional. Give him a puzzle where there looks to be an answer and off to zone land.....ended up late for an appointment, completely non-functional like the little bugger..."hello Charles, did you hear what I was saying"....me "did you say something? oh sorry but you know I didn't try that method" and looking up, eyes glazed over. That dinner was a wash. Oh well, after some efforts and some relentless plugging along, I applied metaphorical paddles to the little bugger and went "clear!!!!" beep....beep....beep. It's ALIVE. Really ALIVE. Somehow I wasted four house of my life, alienated a friend to save $50. But that's now the point...

The point is that most things that we think are broken, really aren't broken but can be fixed. With effort. But the economic calculus of pricing your time vs replacing it. That's sort of saying you know my kid's sort of not that great, honey let's put a little Marvin Gaye on the stereo and you know in 9 months we can have a brand new kid to replace the broken one.

The entertainment value of an old Atari 2600 is motivating my friend to try to fix the one from his mother's house so he can show his kids what use to be cool. Thank god they are not teenagers and haven't figured out how to roll their eyes. But you know they were fun. Tetris still rocks.

So the battle continues, what to do with the old technology that lies in our midst. Do we use it as landfills, maybe use them as real bricks (could you make a house built out of old electronics as walls? -- a little too toxic?) Can you give brain transplants to the device to keep them going? Well the answer is maybe?

I just upgraded my old PC to some new Windows 7 goodness, being in the biz as they say I relented and said sure I'll upgrade and it was cheaper than buying a new computer. Amazingly my computer was capable of that yumminess known as 64 bit, so I said hey it'll be more efficient. Do it. Well that efficiency meant that some of the things like my scanner, my stereo effects box among other pieces of hardware stopped working with the new and improved computer.

What's funny is that this reminds me of the classic Diderot's "Regrets on Parting with my old Dressing Gown" in where the philosopher Diderot upon receiving a gift of a new dressing gown, feels the compulsion to upgrade everything else to match the elegance of the new dressing gown. Oh will my scanner be hip enough for my new operating system.

But this does not have to be the case, if manufacturers when they cease to support their antiquated hardware published the specs and information about the old devices to let industrious (and probably under-entertained and under-distracted) souls rewrite the brains of those devices and make the old work with the new. It'd be like living in Cuba where the old cars run and you look at the engines and the engines are clever combination of parts to make them work.

I don't think the engines of commerce would shut down. So let's figure out a way to keep using the old, because it might force us to really think of something new, not just tweaking the old to make it feel new.

More on the cost of throwaway food.....

2010-11-07T13:39:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times has a nice guest column that further explores the impact of food waste in the United States. A particularly striking quote was the following:

Squandering so much of what we grow doesn't just waste food; it also wastes the fossil fuel that went into growing, processing, transporting and refrigerating it. A recent study estimated conservatively that 2% of all U.S. energy consumption went to producing food that was never eaten. To give you a sense of perspective, every year, through uneaten food, we waste 70 times the amount of oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico during the three months of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

It's incredibly difficult since so few of us cook anymore, and eating out the portion wars are still going on. SuperSizing hasn't disappeared. The truth is that given our generally sedentary lives, our need for food is very moderate. I medium bowl of rice with veggies and some protein is really enough. Oddly having food in front of me makes me eat more, overpowering my satiety signals.

The author of the column Jonathan Bloom has a blog Wasted Food.

Everyday waste...

2010-11-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has a blog post on the rampant waste of food that goes on in our lives. A lot of it is based in that we live our lives in a "Just in case" mode instead of a "just in time" mode. Apparently 30% of our food is wasted, I can believe it. I am guilty of such behavior, especially when I go to the farmers market. The food that is that fresh just doesn't last. Part of it is I think is because of the geography of our lives. We have to drive to get our fresh produce when we need it. So we buy frozen goods all the time.

Or since we don't want to head out to buy groceries so much, we buy a lot and try to figure out how to use it. When it goes bad we throw it away. Perhaps part of the problem ironically is refrigeration. When I lived in Taiwan, my great aunt tended to go shopping daily for her food as part of her routine. The food was amazingly fresh this way and only cooked leftovers remain. Though to be honest some of that disappeared.

Another thing to think about is that if 30% of the food is wasted, 30% of all the energy to bring the food to market is wasted as well. How did we end up with such gluttony. Why don't we even notice it?

I guess one size doesn't fit all, but it doesn't matter.

2010-10-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

In an incredibly ironic day in green motivation. The conservative Wall Street Journal has an articleon the Secret to Turning Consumers Green, an in this stalwart of capitalism they say it's not saving money or charging people that motivates people to be green but guilt. Or more importantly what they believe others are doing. So the WSJ talks about motivators other than the market.

On the flip side, the supposedly liberal bastion New York Times has an article about how to motivate red staters to become more ecological. Secret, don't talk about climate change or being ecological. Instead, appeal to religion and being stewards of the planet. More importantly,

But they were very eager to hear about saving money, Mr. Lahn said. “That’s what really motivated them.”

In the end does it matter, whether you become more efficient because of god, green or just to save some dough. It's different strokes for different folks. Just like some people choose to stay in shape running, others by tennis. In the end it's all good.

What motivates a cheapskate?

2010-10-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has an article on the new book The Cheapskate Next Door. And one of the not so surprising finding is that many supposed "cheapskates" are driven by environmental motivations. The common thread is that people live within their means, and this doesn't mean just economically, it means ecologically as well.

One of the difficulties that we have to deal with an economy is that it is driven by acquisition beyond what we can live with. It is easy to buy ten pair of shoes in an outing, but its really difficult to wear ten pairs of shoes. One of the things mentioned in the article is that many cheapskates eschew yard sales because you often buy things you don't need. But I still do, because if you show with intent it can be a great way to shop, just like the thrift stores they actually do shop at. Disclosure, I do both. It is amazing how many electronics you can find that are still usable. Case in point, today I was looking for replacement router since I "bricked" mine trying to do some funky hacking. While looking I found two brand new motherboards, the main system board of a computer. Unfortunately these were from 2001 so I'm not sure they have a lot of utility. So what motivated that person to buy those two motherboards in the first place. My guess was an ambition to do a special project. And that's what motivates so much of our buying, potential, ambition, intention.

My favorite example of good intentions when I go thrifting are all the pieces of exercise equipment that one can find. And that is so much of our economy, we have so many options, so much space we buy not what we need but what we think we need. The irony is that our supply chains are so much better today, is it possible to lead a life of just in time instead of just in case?

The irony is that we buy so much and hold it so we feel that we can be in control, but the debt we take on means we aren't. In the end cheapskates do splurge (well most of us) the question is we do it consciously.

It's all about balance...

2010-10-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

David Lenhardt of the New York Times has a really great article (HT to Marginal Revolution) that explores alternatives to cap and trade. What makes this article really good in that it is incredibly balanced and nuanced in the different ideologies present in the discussion. Leonhardt is clearly a fan of markets, but there is a grudging acceptance that government funding in directed efforts can lead to breakthroughs citing the internet, radar and microchips.

What I find interesting is that the conventional wisdom is that you should make the externalities pay to encourage competitors to come in at the same or less price. What government directed investment does is create solutions that are actually less than the price of current market leaders. In effect what it does it changes the time horizon of investment. Most technology innovation investment operates on some functionally defined time horizon, most private parties can only stay solvent for so long. The government can make continuous investment over a longer period of time. And if a breakthrough does happen, it can afford a longer recoup time.

The real winner for technology investment proposed is that it changes the conversation universally. Cap and trade in effect is a universal taxation system, suspect to cheating by parties. There are temptations to undercut. A new technology that is cheaper and created by public investment gets distributed globally. Think the microchip under the Bell System or the internet. This makes cheating irrelevant. As the old saying goes, the stone age didn't end because of a lack of stone. The same will be true of the age of oil.

Lest we get too depressed, Andrew Revkin of the Dot Earth Blog has a nice post taking elation in the rescue of the Chilean miners. As a species when tested, we unite and can do amazing things. But it has to be identifiable and believably tractable problems that unite us, but really the argument in the end is that this is just a matter of perspective.

If it's good enough for the military, good enough for the rest of us.

2010-10-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has this great article on how the military, yes the military (this is not a misprint) is moving toward renewable energy because it increases the security of our troops. Apparently in Afghanistan the number one import is oil based fuels and protecting them is incredibly challenging and places our troops in jeopardy. The beauty of the decision by the military is that it escapes the political rhetoric. This quote says it all:

“There are a lot of profound reasons for doing this, but for us at the core it’s practical,” said Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who has said he wants 50 percent of the power for the Navy and Marines to come from renewable energy sources by 2020. That figure includes energy for bases as well as fuel for cars and ships.

The thing I don't understand from all the debate about those who are against increasing efficiency such as raising the average miles per gallon, is that those against these efforts are against the driving force of capitalism. Increased productivity.

It's my hope that this gets a lot of coverage, because those who call people people looking to move away from fossil fuels "tree huggers" are about to get a dose of cognitive dissonance. Let's go back to looking at what's a good thing, increasing our independence and increasing our security. What could be more patriotic?

WSJ say Folding Bikes Trendy!!!

2010-10-03T20:09:00.001-07:00

Really. I kid you not.

Check it out here (hopefully the pay wall won't catch you). It's a pretty good overview of the different styles of folding bikes that are out there and the trade offs. These include the low end populist Citizen Bike of which has been seen often on Caltrain. The high end, aficionado Brompton. To the ever present Dahon.

Looking beyond these traditional folders, the article introduces the Freeman Transport and the Montague Crosstown and I'm looking for the corresponding Capulet option.

It's good to see bicycles getting their due, and the practical aspects of folding bicycles. I am looking at other alternatives for my mass transit connection mode. Of particular interest are longboards. I was in NYC at Joe's Art of Coffee (very good coffee, though Jack's is dang good too). And there was a man on crutches who broke his ankle. My friend asked him what happen and he said he fell off of his longboard. Whoops. Debating on whether I will reconsider? Inline skates perhaps?

what really is dangerous.

2010-09-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

In the New York Times "Week in Review", Lisa Belkin writes in "Keeping Kids Safe from the Wrong Dangers" about how parents assess the dangers that seem present in our lives, and that yet with all that knowledge (or maybe because of all that knowledge) we are unable to assess risk. We overreact to hypothetical risks, but don't even blink at every day very real risks.In her article she highlights the real risk of cars in many places. Some things to mull about:

There is an inherent hypocrisy in our attempts to control our odds — putting the organic veggies (there is no actual data proving that organic foods increase longevity) in the trunk of our car (researchers tell us there is “evidence” but not “proof” that car emissions accelerate heart disease), then checking our e-mail on our cellphone at the next red light (2,600 traffic deaths a year are caused by drivers using cellphones, according to a Harvard study).

If that doesn't seem to be enough, think about the leading causes of injury to children to age 18 according to the CDC:

Car Accidents
homicide (usually at the hands of someone they know --> this was quite surprising)
child abuse
suicide
drowning

The top five things parents fear, I'll let you read the article but it seems that we spend too much time watching television.

The other quote about cars that stuck out was:

“The least safe thing you can do with your child, statistically, is drive them somewhere,” said Lenore Skenazy, author of “Free-Range Kids,” a manifesto preaching a return to the day when children were allowed to roam on their own. “Yet every time we put them in the car we don’t think, ‘Oh God, maybe I should take public transportation instead, because if something happened to my kid on the way to the orthodontist I could never forgive myself.’ ”

So this goes back to a basic question, are we rational or social rational? When I look back at history, the things we use to consider normal seem appalling. This is part of the job of "Mad Men" since there is a smugness in watching the show. The only question to ask is 50 years from now, who's going to be the smug one?

Changing the world one bike at a time...

2010-09-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

Kristof has a honest and poignant column in the New York Times about World Bicycle Relief that is an organization dedicated to disseminating bicycles to regions where access to easy, affordable transportation can open new doors in the lives of people residing there. I am really impressed by the thoroughness of the organization in thinking about how to make sustainable bicycles that will survive the elements. In our highly optimized and specialized lives we create societies that function only on the "happy path". They also think not only about distributing bicycles, but creating infrastructure to service the bikes as well. This is truly about building to last.

It's great that some of the supporters of this project are SRAM, and American manufacturer of bicycle components. I'll be honest, I'm mostly a Shimano guy because that's what came with my bike, but it's good to see that we are still trying to build in this country.

What can we do in our own country to build things and systems that are built to last. How do we build systems that not only live on the happy path. As I clean up my place, I have a hard time throwing things away because I know they have utility. I curse myself for picking it up in the first place, but in many cases I salvaged it from the garbage. I have a very good Just In case kind of life, but it's overwhelming. What is the sum waste of our lives that we leave behind. How much to make a buck. I have an air freshener system from two years ago that I got in my goodie bag at the Rock 'N Roll Half, it's still sealed. It didn't make my happy path, and they probably knew it. But the utility of the air freshener was not in the dispenser, but in the refills. Without the refills, it's just junk. It's a terrible dependency.

But I digress but not really, with bicycles the means of locomotion are there if the machine is working, no gas required. It's a truly humanitarian ideal. In the movie Mad Max, the fight was for gasoline, in a bicycle world it would just be Max. Max happiness.

Great Pic

2010-09-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

Check out this flickr page of a Peter Drew stencil. Here is a preview:

Other Pro-Bike images too!

Joyride...

2010-09-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post has a story about Joyride a book on how Portland became bicycle friendly. That combined with its light rail network shows that foresight can lead to integrative transportation solutions. Portland is good, but I do think it is oversold. The techburbs are too far from the city center. But I keep muttering under my breath "best is the enemy of better, progress is what matters"

HT to Richard for posting on his Facebook.

Reflections on Three Months Car Free

2010-09-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

It's been three months today that I've lived without a car. The funny thing is that my friends and family have been more concerned about my state of affairs than I have. That said rainy season is coming and I am close to capitulating for similar reasons as I did last time. I thought I would take a few minutes to reflect on what has changed since my last car free spell, what works well and what the future holds.

1. The first reflection I have is that being car free ironically is more dangerous than ever. If you are a cyclist, you really need to be extremely conscious of your surroundings. The deadly combination use to be cars and alcohol, observations suggest that this has been replaced by cars and mobile devices or mobile distractions. There is so much economic motivation to upsell users all the time, every moment, every place. So our mobile phones are becoming much more aggressive in that motivation. People feel that ic they are not connected they will miss something. I will tell you that if you are too connected, you will miss something. That car, person or bicyclist in front of you! If you have not seen this synopsis of Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to Death" you should.

2. The magic number is 15 minutes. If you able to get somewhere by bicycle within 15 minutes. It is likely that a bike and a car are neutral in transportation time door to door. Parking a bike in most cases is faster. The car may win, but it is usually 2 - 3 minutes faster in the wash. What is different is that a car exchanges human energy for gasoline power. This may not be socially acceptable to human and sweat. We'll have to see. Electric powered alternatives may be viable. I am not sure the Segway is the answer, but it is something to consider. I actually think electric scooters may be more viable. The state goal of the Paris Metro is a metro stop within 10 minutes walking.

3. Mass transit works if it is designed to either be extensive or service major corridors. Extensive systems like Paris, London, New York work well because they are extensive. The Chicago El is surprisingly workable as well. Caltrain serving up and down the Peninsula here works, because it goes through major business zones. You are usually able to get a ride or ride your bike from there. VTA the Light Rail system doesn't work. It does not hit the densest sections so basically it's nominally better than a bridge to nowhere.

4. Don't make people plan. The main appeal of a transportation system is that it does not require forethought. The car wins in people's minds since they don't have to look at schedules (they do think of rush hour, but they don't have to worry about missing something). Mass transit works where it does since you don't think about when to go, you just think about where to go. That is no different than a car. This implies that frequency matters more than anything else in a transportation system. If you plan for peak hours only it will fail. The reality of our modern society is that we no longer live by rigid schedules. If anything this has probably been facilitated by the automobile. Other modes of transportation have to catch up.

5. Cost transparency matters. When I look at when people think about using mass transit in the bay area, they think it's expensive. This is because each transaction is very transparent on a per trip basis. With cars, costs are forward loaded. You gripe for 10 minutes when you buy gas, but the next trip in your car. You don't think about the cost. In NYC, you buy week passes or monthly passes and you are done. This is how most local residents do it. People don't think in terms of total cost of the car because they never do the analysis. With mass transit as it stands in the suburbs you are always doing the analysis. The other thing bulk buying either in gas or a monthly pass is that it mitigates transaction times. My suggestion: A city concerned about traffic should consider working with VTA and Caltrain and get Go Passes or equivalents for all their residents for one year to see what the effect is.

6. The value of signaling of a car is highly overrated. Oddly, it's a necessity in most people's minds. A nice car indicates a little oh wow initially, but it dissipates real fast.

Not having a car is doable, but it requires a degree of rigidity in your life that is counter to our current structure of life. If you live within 15 minutes of your life tasks by walking or biking you are set. The car has transformed the radius, but the time factor is the same. I'm fortunate that my life generally meets this criteria. But if we are to make a car free life a viable alternative, we need to think about investing in systems that capture the flexibility and price bundling that cars do.

What's the real cost of where you live....

2010-09-09T21:14:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite books is Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin's Your Money or Your Life which asks you to figure out your relationship with money. One of nine steps in the book is to calculate your true hourly wage by counting all the money you spend to work, and the time you spend to work. This includes commuting time and costs. Well in a recent Bucks blog post there's an article about a site Abogo that calculates the average expenditures for transportation for people who live in your area. They describe themselves this way:

Abogo is a tool that lets you discover how transportation impacts the affordability and sustainability of where you live.

I punched in my neighborhood and the mix of residential and commercial leads to an odd map. But it does highlight for most places that the suburban zoning model of live in one place and work in another and shop in a completely different place adds up. So if you buy a nice house in the 'burbs thinking it's a good value. Once you add in how much it costs to get from your MacMansion to life, maybe it's not such a great deal after all.

Why am I not surprised...

2010-09-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the DMV to pick up my drivers license since my old one was just about to expire. It's one of those things that you need when you go on a business trip, and it's nice to have an alternative ID besides one's passport. Thankfully the branch of the DMV that was closest to me was close to the train station so I rolled up on my bike to find out that there weren't any bike racks. (Or at least I did not see any, and another bike was locked up to a sign as well). I guess they don't call it the Division of MOTOR Vehicles for nothing. I am not surprised...

Buy or Lease: The electric question...

2010-09-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

I am in the market for a new car (shudders) and probably going used for various reasons. But GigaOm has a nice breakdown on an electric car for buy vs lease. Something to think about it if you are in the market.

The best thing about this article that has got me thinking, $7500 tax credit if I get a Tesla Roadster. hmmmm.. tempting.

And on the subject of efficiency...

2010-09-07T21:26:00.000-07:00

In the last blog post, the article on improving efficiency had this great quote:

Efficiency is often confused, detrimentally, with conservation. Conservation connotes making do with less — turning down the heat or driving a smaller car. Efficiency means getting more bang per buck.

Another way to think about this is how do you use the most of what you have. Rachel Botsman is quoted in this article on Collaborative Consumption that "80 percent of the items people own are used less than once a month." This is pretty amazing and it rings true. We buy a lot and we throw away a lot. Many of these items can be used by others with imperceivable wear and tear on the borrowed objects. Yet we don't. So of course here in Silicon Valley we have a simple solution....

...the internet

So basically there are these sites that enable people to log what they have and share things. Think Delicious Library 2 on the web and with software to keep track of things and who has what. And that's the model, right now libraries are government owned entities, but what happens when everyone become a library?

The clear way is to figure out a way to take advantage of one's buying history to create a library automatically for everyone. The best source for this in the U.S. might be Amazon. Imagine downloading you Amazon purchase history and annotating those things that you will share. Imagine buying with sharing in mind?

Any takers in the internet land out there? Amazon has the interfaces, who has the sweat equity?

$100 bills lying around, why's nobody picking them up?

2010-09-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an article on the glut of energy efficient opportunities around us and it makes a pretty convincing case. So the question with so much free money available, why don't people take advantage of it. Says a lot about inertia is my guess. If a light bulb is working, why replace it. And you pay your electricity bill because you have to, it hurts but when you write the check. You forget the pain and move on.

So the goal is to make sure that people don't have to think about taking advantage of efficiency. They just do it since all choices available are efficient.

Quickie: Shoup vs O'Toole

2010-09-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

This is a case of a fish being asked "how's the water?" and the fish going "what is water?" The permanence and ubiquity of cars is the new normal. A response by Shoup to Cato's O'Toole

I hope to blog some more about recent experiences with dealing with the heat.

"Does Driving Cause Obesity?"

2010-08-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

On the Freakonomics Blog, there is a post covering the correlation that in places where car use is prevalent, people are fatter. There has been little evidence that there is a cause and effect in play until now. The post is so short and succinct, I quote it below

People are significantly fatter in countries, states, and cities where car use is more common. Mass transit use, on the other hand, is correlated with lower obesity. But there has been scant evidence that public transportation actually causes widespread weight loss — until now. A study of residents in Charlotte, N.C., found that users of the city’s new light rail system were 81 percent less likely to become obese, and reduced their Body Mass Index by an average 1.18 points — the equivalent of 6.45 pounds for a person 5’5″ tall. The study appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

My own personal experiment of the past few months corroborates this, I definitely and thinner (though weight is only nominally less). Interestingly, increased mass transit use has also reduced my appetite for some reason. Perhaps there is something about transient exercise that moderates appetite as well?

Fifteen years and counting...

2010-08-22T16:38:00.001-07:00

As I ride caltrain back from a screening at yerba buena I realize the tradeoffs of life sans car. Three hours of transit for 97 minutes of movie. Of course the difference is really one hour. It probably would have taken two hours by car. I will get some reading done after this post so that helps. We live in dimensions and scale dominated by transit.

I just realized that my bridgestone mb5 has been used for over fifteen years. I am trying to think of any car of mine that has lasted that long. Looking at used cars I worry about the failures ahead. With a bike it's all frame. You are good to go.

Is being green sexy, well not if it's frugal.

2010-08-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Ron Lieber in his NY Times "Your Money" column asks How to Be Frugal and Still Be Asked on Dates which has sparked a bit of interest in that it's been emailed a bit and a few comments on the Bucks personal finance blog section of the Times.

I think it is a really interesting question, because it asks a lot about what people are looking for in a relationship, and assuming you are willing to establish a partnership with that person, what you want. The premise of the article is basically can frugal be sexy? And like a good deconstructionist text, the word frugal is pregnant with meaning, and much of that meaning can be tied to the same tenets that govern green living.

The general meaning associated with "frugal" for better or worse is cheap. And people don't want to date a tightwad or a miser. Which often are associations with frugal that can be negative. The other connotation with "frugal" in the dating game is that the date is "poor"

On the flip side, some other connotations of "frugal" are "simple" and "basic" which depending on your perspective may not be sexy or attractive. However these are less negative. Many individuals leave simple lives but are incredibly classy. There are basics that never go out of style. A good example of that is the Patagonia line of clothing, which are basic but incredibly well made. Now does that constitute frugal? In my mind it does, since it is a focused on value and sustainability.

Now what does being green connote. It does seem to suggest simple living, not being ostentatious, living within one's means. Saving and not being profligate, which oddly are the same things that being frugal entail. Yet green does not seem to entail the same negative connotations, but it does have others such as being "crunchy" and not showering.

What is interesting is that green and frugal both represent value systems, and dating is the pursuit someone with values that resonate with you (ok, and perhaps a nice set of legs too). So how does the negative perceptions of frugal relate to the dating marketplace values?

Looking at it from an economics or evolutionary standpoint, dating is an evaluation of signals of prospective partners. Frugal is an implicit inferred signal. It can mean poor or it can mean simple. People tend to take it as poor. (Which is odd since the people who I know who adhere to a simple lifestyle have the highest net worth). So frugality commonly signals poor, it can also signal self control but not usually.

So what is the opposite of frugal? Spendthrift is probably the most accurate linguistic opposite. This oddly does not have the same negative connotations. People who are spendthrifts tend to be looked at with some degree of sympathy, perhaps most people can sympathize with the urge to spend more that they have. People like nice things, so when looking for someone they can related to that. Very few people can relate to people who don't have the desire to go shopping all the time, and many can't relate to people who are in control with their finances. They can't imagine it for themselves, and perhaps fear that those who are in control are some sort of robot.

Spendthrifts tend to signal they have a lot of resources, which implies they are providers to the lower part of our minds. Again this is implicit and suggested. since the invention of mass consumer credit has made outward signs a very unreliable signal. It is amazing how much resource signaling is not very environmentally friendly. Think SUVs, constant changing of clothes to meet the latest fashions, huge houses that cost a lot to maintain. The act of waste is a positive sign for resources!

This concerns me, because there are few more power drives than the desire for companionship. The maxim is that in the course of human history, no sexually transmitted disease has been eradicated comes to mind.

So if green living overlaps so much with actions of frugality, and those actions manifest themselves with negative connotations. Will it be possible to get people to live more green because they feel it will put them at a disadvantage? Buying a $4 tomato doesn't signal well since a tomato is a tomato from the outside. That Whole Foods bag however does signal. Guess, greenies who want a date should start getting those Tesla Roadsters.

So if you need more space for your bike than a Roadster will provide, then perhaps the solution is to get a Prius and let's work to reclaim frugal to its original meaning "living without waste" and making everything you do count.

Ahh the trials and tribulations of being green.

2010-08-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, cartoonist Scott Adams has a humorous and depressing piece on the challenges of trying to create a green home. Between the ignorance and the outdated policies in our building codes, he finds out that it's very hard. Which unfortunately jives with other recent studies this week.

I use to be a big fan of Dilbert, but stopped reading when it became to nihilistic and hitting close to home, it's great to point out that things are F'ed up but you have to somehow go further. However, humor is often a good palliative to the craziness of this world. Adams in the article breaks down that the issue of being green is often in contradiction to our aesthetics (Bauhaus excepted) and simple physics. It is also a mess that getting information is full of conflicts and ulterior motives, the money quote for me was:

Heating and cooling are the biggest energy thieves. And roofs and windows matter the most for heat transfer. Focus your research and budget there. Most of the information you find will come from manufacturers who have a financial interest in misleading you, and also of course from cartoonists who write opinion pieces after being misled by those same manufacturers.

It's a jungle out there to be green. Onto more positive things, given the fact that we are clueless about saving energy, it was good that Techcrunch referenced about about the recent energy knowledge survey didn't just highlight the survey, but analyzed and told us what to do. The best way to reduce your impact in every day ways are as follows:

Here are five of the most effective things you can at home to lower your energy consumption:

1. Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs
2. Weatherize your home with caulk or weather-stripping (80% of older homes are under-insulated)
3. Install a more efficient heating and/or air conditioning unit
4. Install or upgrade attic insulation and ventilation
5. Adjust your washing machine settings to warm, or even cold, water

Environment Magazine has a fantastic article on energy use. Single largest use of energy by individuals. You guessed it. guessed it: Private Automobile.:

Human nature and driving.

2010-08-20T09:37:00.000-07:00

The problem with driving is that it combines high attention, monotony and habitual behavior in a life threatening activity. The consequences of mistakes are incredibly high running in the tens of thousands of deaths a year. It is the single most dangerous activity that people do in their lives. Deaths by car accident are no longer tragedies but statistics.

Add to that the increasing number of distractions in our lives (such as blogs - guilty) and you do have a recipe for sadness. Kevin Tofel of GigaOM discusses a study on fleet drivers and their gadget use while driving.

"You can hide from the truth if you want to, but you have to know it first" - John Ostrander

Uh Oh! Confusing Wants and Needs again....

2010-08-20T07:55:00.001-07:00

Ezra Klein has a blog post discussing a Pew Research survey on "necessities".

Klein highlights that the centrality of cars as a necessity means it is going to be difficult to price carbon well. He's not kidding. If you look that most people consider clothes dryer and home air conditioning as necessities you realize that role of high energy use use cases (try saying that three time fast) in our lives. Though apparently, the economy makes a big difference in people's thinking. In 2005 at the peak of the boom, clothes dryer, air conditioning and microwave were at their peak in perception, while in 2010 each dropped about 20% points. Necessity indeed. So maybe there is hope.

However, the car line remained pretty much flat, which is not surprising. Our city planning necessitates a car and changing our infrastructure in response to the economy is a lot more challenging. It may even get worse since road projects are often a favorite of stimulus projects.

Though if you have to have a home air conditioner, it's good to hear that McMansions are on their way out. Halving your home volume will make cooling it easier.

Carjacked: Have we been taken for a ride?

2010-08-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

I went to the library the other day and while perusing the new books section struck upon a book that was up my alley, Carjacked: The culture of the Automobile and Its Effect On Our Lives by Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez. One an executive, the other an Anthropology professor at Brown. I have only started the book but have been amazed at the plethora of facts about the role of automobiles in American society and how it took such a central part of our lives. The suburban sprawl was not a result of market forces but a deliberate set of choices that we are now all locked into.

The collection of statistics is mind boggling. I'll try to share some notes as I go through the book. Things like the Drive Through, parking lots, cul de sacs etc are direct manifestations of cars. This book looks like it's going to look at the flip side of car culture and bring to the surface the externalities that are inherent in our way of life. Good reading.

Go to Free Parking! Do not pass go, do not collect $200

2010-08-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Because you already got the money in the form of free parking. Tyler Cowen in this week's NYT's Economic VIew brings up the subject of "Free Parking" that was already covered in Slate that I blogged earlier.

I'm glad to see that the New York Times is picking this up as well. Cowen's article is interesting in that he highlights the role of regulation in determining how much parking we should be assured. The relationship between regulation, taxations and market economics is very convoluted in the United States. More often skewed by rhetoric and polemic than a real analysis. In any case, it usually make hypocrites of us all if we actually adhered to our stated philosophies. (Note I am including myself in this morass). Most suburbanites who abhor taxes, probably think that this mandatory parking is a good idea. It definitely makes life easier at the big box store, even though it is an implicit tax or subsidy. Free parking further distorts the real price of driving.

Professor Cowen is also well known for a blog know as Marginal Revolution and he has a brief comment about the Islamic Center planned in Lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center. In the post he has the observations:

I fully support letting the NYC mosque proceed for reasons well articulated by Sullivan, Krugman, Yglesias, and others; if nothing else, this episode shows "politics isn't about policy" but rather about the relative status of different societal groups. We should think more seriously about how we might give Islam, and Muslims, higher status in the United States and elsewhere.

We tend to think of societal groups in terms of race and religion in the U.S. But there is another way of looking at the different societal groups and that's through a class lens. The suburban class due to its numbers has a lot of influence not just for the U.S. but for the world, They structure our society and cars make up a lot of the structure.

Before we leave thinking that autos are all about fun and games, the tragic accident in Southern California. What shocks me is how dismissive the spectators were to the risk and how close they were to the cars. As a bicyclist, I am fully aware of the risk cars pose to unshielded pedestrians. Cars have become so common place that we forget they can be dangerous. It's sad when fun and frivolity end like this, often we forget that when we play with the dragon's tail it can bite.

Lessons learned in my second cycle.

2010-08-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a little over two months since I went car free unintentionally since my accident. I have to say that it's not been as hard I as remember, and there are some real benefits to self locomotion for commuting as Arduous shares on her blog. But it hasn't been easy. The things that have made this stint of carfreeness work are the following:

1) You have to have very sympathetic friends. Now most of my friends consider me a bit of a nut case, with my crazy rules, beliefs and causes. But they are also have sympathy for me and are willing to shuttle me around to be able to participate in social activities or else choosing venues that are close to mass transit.

2) My work and stores are all within mass transit distances to make it possible. If I lived where my brother lived when he lived in the Portland suburbs or back in Colorado where office parks are isolated from the town, as as shopping centers. This would not be possible. Density provides options. Lack of density restricts engagement to those with cars only. An interesting note is that people has asked me how I do grocery shopping? And it's actually pretty easy since I have a Safeway that is about 2.5 miles from my places and most of it is available via bike paths should I choose. I take side streets and bike paths for efficiency. Bicycle panniers make it easy to bring food back and forth. And aside from a break up induced stupor to my Trader Joe's for some scotch. I've been doing pretty well getting food as I need. Also fortunate is that there is a neighborhood market about 10 minutes walk away from me which helps a lot.

3) I have autonomy with my schedule. If I was to get bumped from a train and did shift work that would be a problem.

Even when I had a car, my driving was less than the California standard of 15,000 miles a year. I will probably get a car for the exceptions as I shop for a used Priur. While it is definitely possible to live car free, it is dependent on city planning to enable it. I am worried about Caltrain cutting schedules, and the more I research the High Speed Rail initiative it seems a boondoggle to fund jobs. We really need to spend those monies improving regional transit where it'll make mass transit competitive with driving. For all those who point to other countries high rail systems between cities, they forget to mention that these countries also have excellent regional mass transit systems too. Let's not put the cart in front of the horse. Supporting the common case is more important than the exciting case.

The experiment continues.

A DIY bicycle movement in NYC

2010-08-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Crunchgear has a really interesting article about how some hackers in New York City have created a do it yourself bike sharing system. What's really amazing is that instead of having custom bikes, their system is able to put on standard bicycles and convert any bike to a bike sharing system. You check out bikes using an iPhone application. It is really amazing that there are technology components that can enable the grass roots to create such a solution.

Well ingenuity alone won't get them going so they are entering a Pepsi Contest to fund cool ideas with seed money. So if you think this is a good idea, you might cast a vote for them.

At some point, it does seem silly doesn't it.

2010-08-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

The grey lady has on the Coffee Connundrum and the rise of Single Coffee pods. Are we really so lazy that we can't just use a french press or drip coffee. Now I've used the K-cups and thought are these biodegradable. Well the answer is no. I really have to sympathize with the cause of Fake Plastic Fish. It does seem that the disposability crusade has gone too far. Convenience has a cost, it always has a cost. The fraud is that we are trained to value our time as if every moment we use is precious and can have better utility. Well maybe. But maybe the time is what gives the pleasure, the wait, the process. It's like having a rushed tea ceremony, what's the point. My favorite quote is:

Still, Ms. Hoover wonders whether there is a simpler solution to the waste question. “At some point you have to ask, ‘But do we need this product enough that we need to be trying to find all these different solutions for the components of it, or can we just go back to the old way that we used to make coffee, and was that good enough?’ ”

If you really want a nice fix, check out one of these or if that's too costly, check out this one\. The grounds go in the garden.

The power of limits.

2010-07-26T23:31:00.000-07:00

Circumstances have forced me back to a carfree life again and it's really amazing what I've remembered from my last stint of carfree living. Most recently I've realized the power of limits on your behavior and the ability to force you to live in the here and now. In particular I am realizing that having limited amount of space in my backpack and in my panniers forces me to decide exactly what I am buying at the store and do I really need it since I have to lug it around for the rest of the day. In the past I'd buy something and I could just toss it in my trunk. I see this in so many cars that I get rides from that our cars become our lockers. I know mine was.

Since i have to be very careful about what I need to buy since I need to carry it, I find myself more conscious of my purchases. Do I really need all those peaches? And if so how many do I need. What am I going to do with them? I find myself buying just in time vs just in case. A nice side benefit is that there is less clutter accumulating in my life.

And for what does stay in my life, I find out that I can figure out new uses for different ingredients and tools. Limits of things makes your mind think of new ways of using what you have.

If it wasn't so easy to carry things that we buy as we go from store to store, it means we would probably make fewer impulse buys. I know I do. Limits bring you into the moment, asking you what do you need vs what might you need. It shows you the possibility of what you can do with what you have even if you weren't planning to use it that way.

Limits force you to better choices.

Moral Hazard?

2010-07-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has a really instructive article titled "Why going green won't make you better or save you money" on some psychological research on how incredibly powerful our weakness in our resolve can be. If I wanted to be pessimistic, I would say that the research described is depressing, but being more positive knowing our failings allow us to compensate, which is ironic because the research is that we are very good at bargaining with our psyches to convince ourselves that we are better people than we are. The gist of the research is that we are able to use a green action (such as buying organic food) to convince us that are green even though we do something much more negative in another action. For instance the article highlights the following:

Like most Whole Foods shoppers, David Bain thinks he is a decent citizen of Earth. His family buys mostly organic food. They recycle. He recently fortified his green credentials by removing a leaking oil tank in his yard.

But here's a head scratcher: Though the Bains live in Arlington within walking distance of Whole Foods, they often drive there in an SUV that gets just 19 miles per gallon. He has noticed that his SUV is not alone in the lot.

Does that make Bain a hypocrite? He paused before responding: "I could see how people would come to that conclusion, but I don't have the illusion that people's decision-making is always logical."
...
"There are so many contradictions in today's world, especially when it comes to green issues," said Keith Ware, who has watched with raised eyebrows as Hummers pull up to his environmentally sensitive appliance store, Eco-Green Living, near the nuclear-free zone of Takoma Park.

I've written in the past about laughable construction projects and green homes in the exurbs. No one wants to be austere, we only want to pretend to be.

We have become cyborgs.

2010-07-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges in car free living is that you have to live as a living human being. It's true that human beings when engaged in locomotion under their own power have the unfortunate side of effect of sweat. It's how we demonstrate that we are living beings as we metabolize energy to move and in doing so warm up our bodies and need to cool down. This even happens when we swim believe it or not, even when we are submerged underwater.

The problem is that sweating is somehow thought of as being not normal even thought it is the most normal thing a person can do. So instead of sweating, we have become cyborgs, we augment ourselves with machinery to avoid that human function of sweating. We attach ourselves to cars and air conditioners to we can change the nature of our existence. We cannot function in societally acceptable ways unless we attach ourselves to machines. Yes we have become one with the mechanical to become the living in our modern age.

So what are we going to do to go car free and live as we come out of the womb, a self regulating, body cooling set of correcting cycles that allow us to do that simple thing called living? Maybe all that is needed is a new point of view, and probably a little bit new point of smell.

Going Car Light and Car Free

2010-07-17T20:52:00.001-07:00

Today is a big car oriented day for our friends at the New York Times. The first story is about a city sponsored car sharing service in Hoboken, NJ. In a city with too many cars, it seems odd that adding cars would improve things, but at first glance that seems to be the case. The convenience of cars seems to be wearing thin with the cost of ownership causing being more than its worth. Author Tom Vanderbilt (who I've feature in past posts) says it's like the difference between owning your music and streaming it. Much more convenient. Hoboken is still more urban than say where I live.

If I could find a way to create a fractional car ownership business along the lines of NetJets I'd be thrilled.

The other story is the rise of tricycles in New York City. People are increasingly using tricycles meant for hauling things to carry their kids and run errands in New York City. It is again the glamour moms driving this. No pun intended. It makes a lot of sense, as I've investigated getting a pull cart for my bicycle to run errands. At this point, a new set of panniers will probably do the trick.

The effective range of bicycling is probably 4 - 8 miles, Manhattan is ideally sized for this kind of use. We'll see what happens in the winter. But I'm glad that people are doing it now. What we need is Tricycle sharing program. ZipTrike anyone?

A sure path to cycling popularity...

2010-07-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has a nice article on the rise of bicycles as fashion accessories. The nice thing is that it highlights bicycling not as spandex cruising but tools for getting around everywhere. I find it really funny though that like many thing in life like say the iPhone 4. Style is more important than substance and the retro look is really in. What amused me was the following:

It's a testament to our love affair with retro that people are importing Flying Pigeons, a simple bike used in China since 1950.

Now the Flying Pigeon is legendary and about as prol' as you get. Hipsters are about as un-Prol' as you get. This my friends is called irony. The PA-02 is about $150 in China today, and in the U.S. it fetches about $500. The original bike was built about durability. We have new technologies and for $500 you can a good light weight bike that will be more practical, but maybe with a little less style.

But if style will get more people on the road then that's a good thing.

RIP Harvey Pekar

2010-07-13T21:33:00.001-07:00

I was never a fanatic about Harvey Pekar, but I was inspired by the movie to go out and check out the comics from the library and read them and be deeply moved. It really is a story of the ordinary yet epic struggles that most of us go through to make it through the day. In some ways it captures the challenges that we have in living a non-impactful life. However the challenges of the world, the architecture of the world conspires against those who try. It's that struggle Pekar captured in his stories. Great voices can come from anywhere as Anthony Bourdain shares here

While this blog is about eco-living and the impact of cars on our society, Pekar's death reminded me of the touching work of graphic novelist Jason Lutes Jar of Fools. In it there is a series of panels talking about the goal of life for some is not to make big splash and cause ripples, but to leave no ripples at all.

Something to think about.

A way to keep score...

2010-07-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

Everything is becoming a game. Or this is the claim of game designer and Carnegie Mellon Professor Jesse Schell in the talk at the DICE 2010 convention. If you have ever visited your Facebook news feed, all those stories about finding lost sheep probably confirms it. In that same vein, Cateye has created the new Commuter bicycle computer that tracks how much carbon offset you are performing by riding your bike. From their description:

The Carbon Offsets are computed by using a fixed 150g/km or 240g/mile figure and multiplying it by the distance ridden. It tracks it in real time and shows day to day, week to week, month to month and total carbon saved.

So with those figures you can figure out on your own. Pretty neat. It's too bad there's not a way to upload this to your computer or Facebook. (full disclosure: "I am in a relationship with Facebook" and "It's complicated" :) so you could tweet it if you want instead). The notion of tracking your progress reminds me of something from Schell's talk:

“If anyone has the new Ford Hybrid car, it has a speedometer and it has a gas gauge. What are those leaves? What the hell is that? The more gas you save, the more the plant grows. They put a virtual pet in your car and it changes the way you drive. Games have crept out and they are going everywhere.”

Bonus points to save the world!

So how much is that drive costing you?

2010-07-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

One of the things that make public transportation seem so expensive is that you pay each ride and it seems to be a lot. But have you ever figured out how much it costs to drive a car. We had a recent commuter day at work and AAA was there. They were handing out a pamphlet called You Driving Costs which spells out exactly how much driving a car costs, and the amount is surprising: $0.56 per mile. This takes into account the cost of the car, insurance, maintenance and gasoline. So this means that the average commute according to the ABC News/Time Magazine/Washington Post Poll is 16 miles and costs about $8.50.

So mass transit is really a bargain, except for the fact that mass transit takes more time and that's really the wash. In NYC and other places, mass transit can be faster. Elsewhere that's the rub.

So cars may be faster than mass transit in many cases, but they are not a bargain.

looking to the future.

2010-07-10T14:02:00.001-07:00

Development is a huge issue here in Mountain View, where Google is located. There is a lot of desire by businesses to grow. However, there is a lot of concern about the impact of that growth. People tend to live far from the office, and here in California that means more cars. Major companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Apple and Facebook even have private bus systems that ferry employees who wish to live in San Francisco to get to work. Most of these companies have commute programs.

Well Google wishes to grow and in this article you can read about their proposal to the Mountain View city council. It is something out of Buck Rogers. Pods carrying individuals around.

Less futuristic are ideas about mixed zoning so that apartments and offices co-mingle. Concerns of creating a "second downtown" Well maybe not a new Downtown, but Canberra in Australia has a layout of multiple town squares that serve as anchors to the community. You can see this classic layout in Savannah, Georgia as well. What is old is new again.

So the question is how do people live these days? Work and non-work are blending timewise. We are tied to Blackberries and iPhones more and more. So as those temporal zones of life disappear, why do our physical zones of life remain segregated? I am not saying there are good reasons for boundaries, but for white collar work for good or bad they are disappearing.

One thing is that we focus on the new at the expense of the old. Segways replace biking. We prefer powered transport over self powered transport. The equation of power and time collide with efficiency. In the end we want richer lives, not more efficient ones. Our locomotion impacts our health, just as apparently our information mediums impact our learning.

I am happy to hear that there are dreamers looking for a new future, but let's make sure we don't reinvent the wheel.

Brought to you by our loyal members...

2010-07-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

Today I received my renewal from my local NPR station reminding me to renew my membership (they start really early since my membership doesn't come due until October) and it got me thinking about one of my pet peeves. And that's not pulling your weight.

I read an interesting statistic that only 1 in 10 active listeners are members of their local NPR station. So that means that for everyone one person who donates, they are carrying the weight of nine others. If a public radio station just covers its expenses that means that each person who does pay, is paying TEN times their FAIR share. The average yearly membership is about $60. So that means the average active listener's contribution is $6. SIX DOLLAS. That's not even a beer at a San Francisco restaurant. Hardly a sacrifice.

What kills me is that most people who listen to NPR if you believe the stereotypes are liberals who want public subsidies and taxes. But when they have a chance to voluntarily pay they shirk their RESPONSIBILITY. There aren't many reasons for not becoming a member of your local station if you are a regular listener. Perhaps people do need to be coerced. What a bummer view of the world.

So how does this relate to the environment? If someone really cares about the world they live in, then they have to step up just a little bit. If you derive benefit from public radio, it's only fair that you step up to your $6 instead of letting someone else do it. If you really care about global warming, then don't just click on some MoveOn.org email petition. Actually modify your drive once in awhile. Take mass transit, carpool. Sure it might be a little inconvenient, but once in awhile it'll make you appreciate what you do have that much more. Do something. I have plenty of liberal do gooder friends who have never ridden mass transit in California. Good intentions are swell, but let me repeat. Do something.

This clean planet is brought to you by our loyal members. It's the only way it works.

More on parking, and bicycle parking.

2010-07-04T13:45:00.001-07:00

Andrew made a recent comment on the cost of parking, and I decided to do a little more reading from the source of my original post by Tom Vanderbilt. (It's clear that Tom Vanderbilt is becoming the contemporary version of Howard Kunstler and his classic Geography of Nowhere.

In this post, Vanderbilt talks about the importance of bicycle parking to enable commuters. It is very true that if you are tethered to your mode of transportation, the means of storing your transportation becomes that more valuable. What is under appreciated with cars is that they not not only serve as transportation, they function as personal storage and recovery spaces. Any policy needs to take that into considerations.

Highly urban cities have developed cultures of spaces to just hang out. Be them pubs or coffee shops. In highly scheduled lives there are gaps between appointments, and a place to hang and recuperate is very valuable. Cars do serve that purpose for many people. For those in cities, I know that friends develop networks of friends where they can camp out for an hour or two between appointments.

So in addition to parking for our transportation, vibrant alternative transportation also needs to figure out how to configure the zoning to support hang out spaces that are profitable for owners as well as comfortable for patrons. In Taipei and other places in Asia I have found that McDonalds oddly fits the bill. Ironic that a place associated with drive throughs is associated with walk throughs.

If we leave bicycle parking for a moment, Vanderbilt's recent post on dedicated bicycle freeways is interesting. This quote strongly resonates:

"Most people don't ride bicycles to work not because they're difficult to store/lock up but because they are at a serious disadvantage safety-wise. No bike helmet will protect you if an SUV driver on a cell phone accidentally broadsides you!"

This is a scary proposition when you are in a car as I recently found out when I was driving and hence once again carfree. On a bike it's a downright showstopper. And with the myriad of distractions in cars (Puhleez, do we really need DVDs in the front console of a car?).

So my question is this, does the architecture of our society rule out bicycles and if not, what can we amend to make it viable?

Too much parking?

2010-06-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

Tom Vanderbilt is at it again, with a series at Slate looking for ideas to make cities more nimble. Today he explores whether parking should be reduced, as opposed to increased. In particular the work of Professor Shoup

But to critics, minimum parking requirements warp markets and create a de facto subsidy in favor of driving. Donald Shoup, a professor of planning and author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is withering in his critique of parking minimums: "They distort transportation choices toward cars, and thus increase traffic congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption. They reduce land values and tax revenues. They damage the economy and degrade the environment. They debase architecture and urban design. They burden enterprise and prevent the reuse of older buildings. And they increase the prices for everything except parking."

The other thing about parking that I find most annoying is that it expands the space of buildings. You walk from one moat or parking to another. Parking changes the scale of our communities as much as the actual driving. Something to think about.

if you can't have best always strive for better.

2010-06-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a work function that required me to head up to San Francisco, and in all my grand ambition I was hoping to take the train up. Unfortunately a fire drill entailed and I missed the train. So instead I ended up driving my car to the event. The saving grace was that I was able to drive some people up and back saving a few other cars from being on the road.

Not best, but sometimes better is all you can do.

The color of love is green...

2010-04-04T13:47:00.001-07:00

Flipping through USA Today online, I came up upon this article on how green is your dating life. It's not particularly informative but does link to some other articles of interest such as the New York Times article about how environmental world view influences relationship harmony.

So the question that is more interesting is not how green is your dating, but can people live together with different views about consumption? This may be a significant other, or it could be kids and parents. One of the more interesting things about the movie "No Impact Man" was the strain and compromises that went on between the main characters in what is acceptable.

So back to the subject of dating, do you evaluate and explore your prospectives views on consumption. What signals do you look for in the choices they make during the date? Do you look at the car they drive? Does a Prius make a prospective date more sexy?

Being more of green in dating is great, but is it their politics that matter more? Does greenness indicate a more sustainable relationship, in addition to a more sustainable planet. Or is the strain too hard to sustain.

harvesting the sun and putting it into the grid

2010-03-28T23:07:00.001-07:00

Mobile phones are all the rage. Everyone compares to see who has what. People spend a lot of time blinging them out with cases and rhinestones. But as cool as they look, unless they have electricity and batteries powered. With the beautiful screens and always on radio half the time the phones are paperweights. Well a company called Neon Green (note the website is "Go Neon Green" but equally well is "Gone on Green") is releasing a line of backpacks that have built in solar panels to charge your devices. The idea of going off the grid or supplementing the green is a great idea.

I've always wanted solar on my car to charge batteries for my laptop or iPod. But better yet, wouldn't it be great to plug your car into the grid to charge the grid. Imaging every parking space have a plug where our cars would connect and pump electricity from the solar panels on the roof of every car going to power the grid during peak times. We have all this space, wouldn't it be great to make it productive. And most cars just sit outside taking up space while people are at work. Let's put it to use. We don't just need smart cars, we need smart parking lots.

Any takers for passive solar everywhere?

If you can believe....

2010-03-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

As a proud alum of Cornell, I am truly amazed by the run the boys have done in just advancing to the sweet sixteen in this years NCAA Basketball tournament. I can see the headline if the Big Red can advance against the Big Blue, the Ancient Eight meet the Elite Eight.

So the improbable can happen with hard work and discipline. The same can be said for living more green. Here's to the Big Red and here's to going green.

Generational Technology.

2010-03-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I live in Silicon Valley. It's the heart of technology where the latest and greatest is invented. We spend our long days and nights birthing the technologies that make this blog among other things possible. It's pretty amazing that we take sand from the beaches and eventually make websites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others. We live on internet time, and that's compared to dog years, where seven years equals one. It's exciting, it's amazing that the pace of change is so amazing.

But sometimes I think we lack ambition, we are always looking for the new new thing, but we forget about what happens to the new thing. And with this I struggle. Right now the hottest thing in the "Valley" is the iPad. 50,000 of this latest wave of technology were pre-ordered on Friday. In all the Facebook and Twitter updates, people are excited. Saint Steve is not likely to disappoint, he rarely does. But for some reason the excitement isn't there for me.

I am pretty much a pack rat, and recently I've been shuffling some of my stuff from one place to another. Been giving some of it away and repurposing other stuff. One of the things I uncovered were a few PDAs, an Palm Pilot Pro, a Palm Vx that I have in the original box (hey I said I'm a pack rat) and a Tungsten T3, and these sit collecting dust. Now these devices are functional, they serve great as calendars and address books. And in some cases they will even interface with the modern computers of the day. But they sit unused. A quick check on eBay shows that everyone listed has zero bids, so basically it's junk.

So this is what gives me pause about information technology, and I'm not talking about computers and IT equipment I'm talking about anything that can be reduced to data. You can buy a toaster from 20 years ago and it will still work. Granted, it only does one thing, but you can still use it. You can even use a toaster from 40 years ago. But for computers, from five years ago and it's a quaint museum piece ready for the Computer History Museum but in any real way it's not usable. Think of the 8-track, cassette tapes, MD players, all relegated to obsolescence. Even now, this funny trick called Blu-ray is likely to make is such that it will be the only available format and everyone will have to upgrade their DVD players to get a movie from their local video store. And where do those old technologies go?

To the dump most likely, or in my garage if I buy it. So that's why I hesitate to get an iPad since I know that there is something else around the corner, that's what we do. I'm right now reading Cradle to Cradle (book) where the last step of a product is not the dump, but to a place where it can be the next product. Silicon Valley has always been ambitious, but in this regard I don't think it's ambitious enough. If you can think of how the last product can be the next product then you're really innovating. Otherwise my garage is running out of space.

Passing the laugh test.

2010-03-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an article on the granting of green status to a 10,000 square foot new home being built in Berkeley, California. The designation was granted since the new home had received enough points based in features and materials used it it's construction and perceived ongoing maintenance. The beauty of such a system is that it is relatively objective and straightforward. The downside is that it's very easy to game a system where you get something ludicrous. Reading the article you can't help but chuckle. I can't even feign outrage because it so goes to the history of human nature.

Technologies as a solution for green and environmental issues are always touted because they are cast as market solutions, and markets foster innovation is the claim. And the wealthy always want the best which trickles down to the proletariat, um excuse me, the middle class. It really seems to be a new twist on the old idea of indulgences where you paid the pope to absolve you of your sins. Sort of like the Montana energy wasting fines.

it also boils down to the notion of outcome fixes vs value changes. The green technologies marketing reminds me a lot of the fat free food marketing. I can eat more of this "bad" stuff because we've taken the bad out. When in reality you just ate more of it and had as much bad as when you started. Or people substituting popcorn as a snack because it was low calorie but then eating more of it and still gaining weight. The real question is what is the total resource consumption per capita when evaluating greenness.

At 6500 square foot of livable space for two people, and a per capita 3250 square foot per person, more than the average American household space for four people (and this is a current average including the mcMansions) does seem excessive. So sure the Kapors should be commended for supporting green technologies, but please don't say that makes you green.

Google provides Bike Directions

2010-03-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

This is old news that has been sitting in my drafts folder and a few of my readers and others have mentioned it. Google has added bike directions to their maps product. Using algorithms to find bike friendly paths that get people from place A to place B.

Today I went to see a showing of No Impact Man: The Movie and it was interesting to see what this little experiment revealed. Most impressive was the giving up of electricity, that is something that I could not do myself. Though I have entertained buying one of these to mount in the rear seat of my car to charge extra laptop batteries during the day.

During the post discussion of the movie, someone mentioned the blog San Jose Hates Pedestrians and you can really see how streets are engineered impacts and incentivizes certain modes. Initiatives such as the Livable Streets movement really shows that governance matters and getting involved matters.

How to get rich from your home, and it's not what you think.

2010-03-09T21:30:00.001-08:00

In my last post, I talked about eBay hawking their green bona fides raving about the environmental and economic benefit of selling and buying used. It takes less energy and resources to reuse something that it does to make it new. The old mantra goes with reduce, REUSE, recycle for a reason. eBay is basically playing to our desire to get a little cash for our trash.

I am totally for this, except I tend to be a pack rat, but for different reasons. But I digress, this is a good thing. If you are a typical American living in the suburbs think about how much stuff you have. And think about how many things you can use at any one time. In most cases you might be able to use four items simultaneously and that normally happens when you are cooking. Most of the time most of your stuff just sits there not getting used. It's inert, it's not useful. And a lot of times, that stuff will never get used. It was bought on a hope and a prayer. So common sense suggests that you get rid of it. The easy way is to toss it, another way is to donate it and let Goodwill throw it away for you. (This does happen.)

Another way to give these inert goods some life is to freecycle(tm) it, which is basically good will via email to people who can use it. The theory is that some people will take free things because it is free is actually false since there are things that I have not been able to give away. One of my friends recently held a Freecycle(tm) party, what one member affectionately called a "shit swap" where people brought things they didn't care about to offer to others. It wasn't too bad, I did get rid of a lot of stuff, and I picked up somethings that in all honesty I will probably end up giving away later. But there is hope and a prayer all over again.

So going back to the theme of eBay, there is actually a lot of merit to decluttering your home and earning a little money. You can use this money toward your down payment, or if you want to be really green put it toward more efficient appliances. Whatever, but if you go through everything you own, I bet you there are a lot of things you can convert to cash. The question is how.

Garage Sale: nuff said, but that relies of buyers and sellers matching in time and place.

Craigslist: coordination is a pain but it works. I have bought stuff this way.

eBay; you have to rely not so much on place, but you have to auction something in the same time as your buyers.

So the winner for me is Amazon. It's really easy to list your items, and it's free. So you can list everything without any up front costs. This encourages you to put everything online for sale. Also since you can pull an item if it hasn't sold, you can change your mind in most cases.

If you have a lot of books, CDs and DVDs a great way of listing things is a piece of software called "Delicious Library 2" which will scan the barcodes of these items, look them up on Amazon and list them if you want. How cool is that.

So convert your stuff to cash, be green, be frugal and participate in the secondary economy. But, but, but....won't this kill the economy. Well no, you can spend it on services which are green and help local economies. And keeping it local, is kind of green.

QED. Well not really, but you get the idea.

ebay meets second life

2010-03-08T12:01:00.001-08:00

Today the New York Times has this article on eBay highlighting the green options to buying used items are being environmentally conscious. Regular readers of this blog know how big I am on sourcing from garage sales and good will for that exact reason. Nice to see that they have caught up.

Decluttering one's life has a lot of other gains besides environmental ones. The big one is community. I'll cover that in a future post.

Frog in a pot...

2010-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

There's the old parable of the frog who let's him or herself get boiled to death as long as it happens incrementally, sort of like global warming.

The California Academy of Sciences blog highlights an NPR story that indicates that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is occurring and that humans are causing the effect. The NPR story goes into the cognitive reasons why people don't believe. Which basically boils down to people believe what they want to believe. No surprise if you've worked in a corporate context.

I've written before that when engaging in debate, one has to ask the opposing side under what conditions would you change your mind, and if they are not able to offer any such conditions you are just wasting your time. Their minds have been made.

But assuming that most people are reasonable, one of the difficulties with climate change is that the change is so imperceptible to the human mind and the human lifetime. People can understand accidents and cataclysms, but slow transformation is hard to comprehend. Even slow personal change.

People don't become overweight instantly, it happens a few ounces at a time. But over the long haul one suddenly becomes "fat" but the individual meals and snacks (our human actions) don't seem to matter at the time of consumption. The diligence to stay thin, is lost over a long period of time and that's why it's so easy to become fat.

Our climate issue is very similar to our obesity issue, there is not one action that causes it, but unlike climate change it's visible so we can make some changes.

The power of presence....

2010-02-28T23:15:00.000-08:00

Today was a good day, beautiful weather, I am only coughing up one lung instead of two, unlike the rest of last week. So I decided to chance it and continue what's become a tradition for me. The local sports store's Fun Run 5K. For me it's been a personal benchmark to see how the winter holidays took a toll on my conditioning. (I have another fitness challenge in the form of a one mile timed swim I did last week and probably took out both my lungs for the rest of the week. Details). Since I did the first three races, hell or bad health I had to the fourth running. I wont' bore you with the details, as sadly my streak of continuous improvement was broken.

But this is an eco-blog, not a fitness blog. Now the Sports Basement is an incredibly example of local commerce. It is not just a store, but a center of activity for the local fitness community. They collect old shoes for recycling, they have recycling bins all over the store. But one place they did not have it was at the race end. There were lots of donated goodies, drinks from different vendors and all kinds of nourishment post race. But for all those plastic bottles they didn't have a recycling bin. Now someone asked the organizer about it and he said they'd separate it later. I had no doubt someone on his staff would. They are those kind of people. But it still bugged me. The issue is not so much whether it would be separated, but whether there was a reminder that we need to separate.

There is a conventional argument that recycling should be single stream disposal, this way you don't put the onus of recycling on the consumer hence inconveniencing them. With single stream, all garbage goes into one receptacle and it's sorted later. And even when you have multistream recycling with recyclables and non-recyclables. The truth is you still have to sort of the recyclables since someone is going to toss non-recyclables in the recyclables. So it's redundant so might as well go to single stream.

Yes this makes sense if the point is the recycling, but no the point of recycle bins is ultimately behavior change. Seeing a recycling bin and others recycling makes a conscious imprint that there is a norm, that recycling matters. Aside from the few jerks who antagonize the system, most people will try to adhere to the norm. It's how we are. Well most of us.

The goal of our systems is not to outsource activities so that we don't have to consciously recycle. No the goal of our systems is to have us recycle without consciously thinking about it. So the presence of bins and recycling markers makes a difference, not in the end result but in the pre-result.

Killed my last template.

2010-02-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

Argh!

If you are looking for your favorite links on the side. I accidentally edited them out of existence since I thought I was editing a different blog.

Don't be too satisfied...

2010-02-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

You know, the olympic games usually make me a cheery person, but a pair of articles that have been making the rounds of the intertubes have been making me a little cranky.

The first is an article in the Wall Street Journal about the trials and tribulations that the city of Boulder, Colorado is going through to reduce it's carbon footprint through incentives. The carrot isn't working even in the most self identified liberal places. The truth is that whether on the right or the left, people are people. Self sacrifice is hard. I was amazed by the success of Arduous gave up buying anything new for a year, but even Arduous will admit that it was not easy.

In full disclosure, I spent part of my childhood in Boulder, grew up outside of Boulder. The results don't surprise me since one does not know if one holds a value until it is seriously challenged and one has to act on that value. And Boulder is just too comfortable to be challenged in any meaningful way. That leads me to ...

The other article that is making the rounds is the TED Talk by Jamie Oliver on encouraging food education to every child in America. In this talk he spoke about the obesity and his efforts to educate the residents of Huntington, West Virginia how to cook and live within their means. He identifies the usual, and correct culprits in his talk. My sense is the people in the audience felt very self congratulatory. Yes, we know that obesity is bad. We need to do something comes out of the spirit of the talk. And then we all fall into the trap that afflicts those that know better.

Knowledge is Power

No, hate to tell you this, knowledge is not power, knowledge is a tool. It allows you to change your actions, but it does not in and of itself have any power. It's very easy to look at others and go they should do something. But it't hard to do that when you live in a bubble. Take a look at the following chart from the WSJ.com article:

Now Boulder is above the national average, and I can almost guarantee that Huntington is below the national average in these same categories. And it is easy to go to TED and intellectualize the problem, and I for some reason I have a feeling that more people from Boulder have gone to TED than from Huntington. Credit goes to Oliver that he actually went and lived in Huntington to experience the challenges that are out there for regular people. So the danger of the affluent left, is to think that their normality is normal, that it is not privileged and that knowing about the problem is enough. That self-satisfaction is dangerous, especially when you have the mechanisms to choose. That ultimately is what Jamie Oliver is trying to do is say that people should be educated and choose. But what happens when you are educated and you still choose poorly.

I'll close this blog post out with another link, and that is to the blog of the website OKCupid and their analysis of people's behavior when they think people are not looking. Most people I think will not identify themselves or their friends as racists. And if not being racist is not judging people by their race. (slightly more restrictive than judging people exclusively by their race) than the data is disconcerting. Again, the knowledge is racism is bad, but not bad when when it applies to our personal decisions. Cognitive dissonance is rampant and until we face and act on that knowledge it'll be difficult to make changes. This is why I am for architectural changes so that people act. If there is a corner you can cut, you will. Make it so you can't.

Knowledge is a tool, it is a catalyst. But it's not power in and of itself.

Cool product for real time monitoring.

2010-02-04T09:32:00.001-08:00

I won't expound or talk about this product, but if you have a moment, this blog post about WattVision's Energy Monitor is a nice tie in to my EcoDrive post of a few days ago.

Living by the numbers: Fiat Eco Drive

2010-02-03T06:47:00.000-08:00

If you talk to any management guru, sit in any MBA class, listen to a coach, they all share a common belief. The power of feedback and the power of measuring. For some reason human beings need some measurement in order to improve, in order to know where they stand in the pecking order. This is the idea behind the Fiat Eco Drive which is a software package for your car, yes your car, that tracks the efficiency of your driving style and offers ways you can improve it. Basically the way it works is that in featured cars, you plug a USB Flash Drive into your car and use it to collect data about your driving. When you get home, you plug the USB Flash Drive into your computer and it uploads it for analysis and community!

Nike has figured this out a long time ago with the Nike+ system as described in this WIred Magazine article. Prius drivers know this well, often trying to game their driving for maximum efficiency. There is something about making things a game that motivates people.

I think that's one of the challenges of reducing one's carbon footprint in that there is no clear visible trace of one's carbon footprint. No easy way to visualize to understand your impact. It's not enough to be aware of your own footprint but others do as well. For instance if a car's exhaust is invisible we tend to discount it, but if it's sooty we tend to want to reduce it. We all know that exhaust is bad, that's why we expel is AWAY from us, but we don't see it. Most of our Waste is sent AWAY so it's out of sight out of mind. That's what makes home composting so interesting is that it causes you to be conscious of your waste.

I'm curious to see if Fiat's Eco Drive changes driving behavior, but I like a game that games our own impulses. It scares me in some ways (since those same buttons are pushed to get us to buy stuff) but I think it's an interesting approach.

What personal games can we do to make us aware of our carbon footprint?

Go Go Gadget.....

2010-02-01T23:04:00.001-08:00

The New York Times has an article about the increasing popularity of electric assisted bicycles. Originally from China, these bikes are finding an audience here in the U.S. The article talks about the pros and cons of these new "hybrids". Are they powered vehicles and hence have to be licensed for the road or are they bicycles eligible for bicycle paths. In a world of legal definitions, resolving what these vehicles are classified is are key to their adoption.

There are a lot of concerns that the larger versions of these bikes are safety hazards, going at speeds of 30 miles per hour. These are legitimate concerns, and it makes sense to pass legislation that permits their use on the roads under the same conditions are regular bicycles (which with effort can reach such speed).

The reason for supporting such bikes is that they address the major issues of both bicycles and cars for the mass market. Pedaling a bicycle with effort can make you sweaty, and we as a society don't permit such odiferous side effects. This reduces the exertion that individuals have to make. The other dilemma is that most people drive more car than they need. I know I do. My car can hold five passengers, but mostly drives just myself. A electric bicycle is an inexpensive alternative to provide transport for individuals at an individual scale. It also serves to address that most errands are less than five miles in distance.

So while the article talks about the weaknesses of electric bicycles, they serve as the perfect additional vehicle for the family. Anything that can offset the use of large cars will net positive and who knows some might even "upgrade" to a completely people powered experience later.

The color of love is green?

2010-01-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an amusing article about therapists reporting an increasing in marital strife over whether one's partner is green enough. As expected, women tend to be more in the green camp than men who are in the economic analysis or self determination camp.

I guess that it's that women tend to worry about the welfare of their children more than men, and they worry whether there will be a planet for their grandchildren. Men less so, wonder why. Sting had a song during the cold war called "Russians" where the refrain was

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Russians love their children too

So presumably men love their children too. I see this dynamic in a couple who are good friends of mine and the split is identical as the analysis. I think part of it is that men tend to look at concrete measurable things (i.e. this heater will have a break even when?) vs qualitative measures. This is not a bad thing, especially when there is so much green washing going on.

Whatever the reason, ultimately it comes down to priorities what do you and your partner envision as a lifestyle you want:

Still, Robert Brulle, a professor of environment and sociology at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said he had seen divorces among couples who realized that their values were putting them on very different long-term trajectories.

“One still wants to live the American dream with all that means, and the other wants to give up on big materialistic consumption,” Dr. Brulle said. “Those may not be compatible.”

America is a very status conscious society, and there are very few ways of signaling status and one is the material possessions one has. (I won't explore the role of debt distorting that signal) so I think it's going to be hard to change. This is very much the case in that many women choose men of high status and rely on those signals. The contradictions abound!

Now are we missing the point?

2010-01-18T12:39:00.000-08:00

The BBC has a blog called "Ethical Man" that can be amusing. In this particular post where he wonders what is the most efficient transportation available with respect to carbon emissions and he comes out with some surprising conclusions. Flying is not that bad because it flies a lot of people, walking turns out to be very carbon intensive due to our food supply chain and cars with more than one people are more efficient than mass transit.

Some of the arguments are canards of course. We really don't eat food to move around, we eat food to live. So it's going to happen anyway. As for automobiles, the issue ends up being that we create carbon intensive architectures to support the car. Towns and metropolitans were smaller when people walked and took mass transit. Now we live on roads, and roads (in particular freeways) are incredibly costly. But since we as a society fund it collectively we don't notice it. Jet travel poses it's own problems (and given my line of work have two choices, fly or be unemployed).

The question is how de we redefine our economy to be more effective. The internet may solve some of those problems. Videoconference is now how I keep in touch overseas. Hybrids will offset some our emissions, but it won't solve the issues associated with manufacturing a car. Dirty secret, things built to last reduce consumption since you don't have to replace them. One of the amazing inventions of our age is the infusing everything with a notion of fashion in addition to utility. Do you really need that new shirt, well not functionally, but because it is out of fashion. And we all know we are judged by how we look.

Malthus really understood the challenges of population growth, he wasn't wrong we just are able to extend the curve out but we haven't been able to change the shape of the curve. Modern economics plays on a deep understanding of our psyches, our competitive drives. I can't find the source, but in the course of modern medicine we have never eradicated a sexually transmitted disease. The urges and desires are too strong.

So what is the point of this digressive post. The goal is not arguing which is the better form of transport. The question is how do we look at our lives in time and space to work to our urges as opposed to fighting against them. And it's not going to be a simple cost benefit analysis. How much space do we need to live, how long is a reasonable time to wait for transport (can we design a mass transit system based on average wait time), can we figure out zoning to make it possible to get a quart of milk without having to get in your car.

These are the more important questions than which is the better transport.

Clarification....

2010-01-11T23:23:00.000-08:00

A reader submitted some background on the case of the motorist vs the bicyclists in the Brentwood hills. The two articles are here and here and the evidence seems that the driver may have had a history of aggressive driving in the past.

What is most interesting is the dialog that is happening in the comments. There are those who are condemning the driver, citing his aggressive stance and other criticizing the cyclists for either provoking the driver by not being courteous riders or for following too close (which technically is correct, if you are a vehicle you are suppose to stay far enough back to be able to stop if necessary, and cyclists have to observe the same rules of the road.)

The thing that is most disturbing is that the dialog is very polarized, most are accusatory on both sides. The debate is a winner take all attitude. If I am 49% wrong and you are 51% wrong then you take all the blame kind of discourse. Of course sentencing is suppose to address the nuances. The sentence of five years at first seemed excessive but visiting the Bureau of Justice Statistics five years seems about average as quoted here.

Felony convictions

State and federal courts convicted a combined total of nearly 1,145,000 adults of felonies in 2004. Of these felony convictions, an estimated 1,079,000 adults were convicted in state courts and 66,518 were convicted in federal courts, accounting for 6% of the national total.

In 2004, 70% of all felons convicted in state courts were sentenced to a period of confinementconfinement in a state prison (40%) or a local jail (30%). Jail sentences are short-term confinement (usually less than 1 year) in a county or city facility. Prison sentences are long-term confinement (usually 1 year or more) in a state facility.

Prison sentences handed down by state courts in 2004 averaged almost 5 years .

and given the intent to harm and the use of a weapon (car) based on an internet definition below

A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he or she attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another or causes such injury purposely, knowingly, or recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life; or attempts to cause or purposely or knowingly causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon. In all jurisdictions statutes punish such aggravated assaults as assault with intent to murder (or rob or kill or rape) and assault with a dangerous (or deadly) weapon more severely than "simple" assaults.

The felony sentence seems appropriate.

Unfortunately this case has polarized more than resolved issues. Our network of roads, streets and paths are signs of a civil society. Maintained for the citizenry for the benefit of all the citizenry. Our tax distribution and allocations really exemplify that our support for cars is first and foremost. And this allocation of resources only reinforces that cars are special. More balanced spending on different modes of transportation would go a long way to removing the subconscious notion that cars and mechanical transportation is normal. It may be our norm, but it is definitely not natural. And since it is not natural, we can shape our own norms. It's time that we do.