The prevailing consensus opinion is to drive everywhere. This is true for the US and of course is different in other countries. The resource use requirements to drive everywhere is pretty steep and I am one who, as any reader of this site knows, is of the opinion that we are heading to a resource crunch that threatens our society. Therefore anytime i go somewhere the question comes up, well, how do i get there? Yesterday the question came about because of a FedEx delivery where I had to go to their office.
So, how did I get there? The local FedEx office is in a industrial office park area of Sunnyvale, a 15-20 minute drive away. But because I'm so intent on eliminating burning gasoline I minimize using my gas car. I have just bought an electric car but it doesn't (yet) have the range to get there. Hmmm what a quandary but fortunately there are other options.
I could have ridden a bicycle. But I didn't know how big the packages would be. Further I had a hankering to listen to some podcast episodes along the way.
The FedEx office happens to be near a VTA light rail office and there is a bus going near my house that can take me to light rail. I've used this bus and train on my commute and going to the FedEx office is just a couple stops further down the line. It is a pretty attractive option. Walk out the door with iPhone and ear buds playing the podcast, a couple blocks walking, a bus ride, a train ride, and I would be there. Easy, right?
It is pretty easy and enjoyable. It was harder than it need be, however. For example the light rail stop is several blocks from the FedEx office. That meant a longer than expected walk. A completely unexpected issue is that the FedEx office neighborhood is unfriendly to pedestrians. There is no sidewalks and there are large trucks driving around. The trucks are because it's lit industrial and there are both UPS and FedEx offices in the same neighborhood. This didn't make it impossible nor even hard, but is an interesting concern. For example employees of those businesses might not like to take the light rail to get to work even thought the station is right there because the neighborhood is pedestrian unfriendly.
Finally the whole trip took nearly 2hours from leaving home to returning. At each step of taking bus and train there was a few minutes wait between getting off a bus and waiting for the train, etc. Also none of the bus or train stops meshed up perfectly and like I said about walking to the FedEx office, there was a lot of walking. A walk to te bus at the beginning, walking around the FedEx office neighborhood,and walking from the bus back home at the end.
Owne might think since the trip took twice as long as it should that was wasted time. I see it a different way. First by walking around I had a bit of exercise, perhaps 2 miles of walking. Second the time was filled with listening to podcasts that I would have listened to anyway. Third I participated in living in the world I want to occupy rather than conceding to the world that I don't like. I prefer a world with more walking, bicycling and mass transit rather than the car dominated world I live in today.
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica has been a wild roller coaster journey and now it is over. My earlier posting was a study on some of the ways BSG reflected current events and having watched the final episode I am in awe with how this tied up, and most especially how it relates to the themes I cover on this blog. For me the point of the ending was a demonstration of a way to end the cycle of violence, however I'm not quite in agreement with their apparent decision that technology is the root of the evil humans do to each other. As an ending of this show, the colonial humans are depicted finding a planet with primitive tribal people, then deciding to give up on their technology and go native, rather than rebuilding the society they knew. As if it's the technology that's the problem.
But before I get too far down this path, it's likely that a few of you readers don't know what Battlestar Galactica is. It's a fraking TV show, where frak is a swear word, where the human race is in danger of extinction, and... well, I've attached a couple videos to the end which may help you to catch the frak up.
All through this show humans have been in a war with Cylons. Cylons are robotic beings with blinking eyes that swing back and forth. Essentially the Cylons represent technology developed to a level we are beginning to glimpse. Machines with enough something to make us think they are people.
It was the machines which threatened humanity. It was the machines which had to be killed, for humanity to survive, and that was the ending. They killed off all the machines, except for the ones who helped them. But was this the only possible conclusion?
The Cycle of Violence throughout history
The series demonstrated a cycle of violence spanning thousands of years. A refrain all along has been "This has all happened before, and it will happen again." The context in which the show was developed is the terrorism filled world since September 11, 2001, and it sure does seem in our world there is a cycle of violence which goes on and on and on and when will it ever end. How can it end? How can we stop the pattern of killing each other? That's what I want to know, what about you?
Consider the war in Iraq, which just entered its sixth year. It's a stupid illegal war, sure, but it's a continuation of a cycle of violence as well. The Iraq war was perpetrated supposedly because of the September 11, 2001 attacks except that the Iraqi's had nothing to do with that attack, meaning the war was perpetrated really because of megalomania among the Neocon leaders then in control of Washington. Go back in recent and ancient history, and we find a long series of events not just in Iraq but elsewhere in the Middle East over generations. There was the prior war in Iraq, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the continuing fighting between Israel and her neighbors, on and on, including a 1920 war where Great Britain invaded Iraq to occupy the country for many years at a cost of thousands of British soldiers. But it doesn't begin there, it goes back further and further into our history.
War is a continuing practice of human societies. Is it something we really want to be doing? Not really. I think most of us want to live our lives on our own terms. But clearly there's something which drives human societies to war.
One can map patterns in the cycles of violence. A grudge leads to seeking revenge, a misstatement leads to misunderstanding leads to estrangement, on and on. Escaping the cycle of violence involves taking a different path than the typical pattern. It requires choosing differently than seeking revenge or otherwise using your anger to incite more violence.
Violence piled upon violence begets more violence.
I began to see this theme being present in BSG around season 4 episode 10. The Cylons had had their own civil war, the humans met the remnants of one faction in the Cylon civil war, and they made a tacit alliance. In the heat of a showdown between the humans and these renegade Cylons, Lee Adama took a different way than escalating the showdown. Rather than escalate and escalate, he proffered peace, acceptance, a handshake, and an agreement to work together. It was a difficult path which did not go down well with the fleet, leading to a bloody mutiny.
This show ended with humanity as a whole choosing to take a different route than continue the cycle of violence. They found Earth, our Earth, but 150,000 years ago, inhabited by primitive tribes of hunter gatherers wandering the wilderness. They were a technologically advanced race, they could have landed and built a city of technological marvels. But they chose to give up their technology and join the natives of this planet.
Why?
Does destroy the tool used to engage in violence end the cycle?
Are they thinking it was their use of technology which led to their problems? One view is that their problems came from developing the Cylons, that their technology rose up to equal themselves and became a danger to their survival. Hence they could be thinking that technology is the danger, and that to be safe they must give up technology.
The reimagined BSG began with a foreboding speech by Commander Adama
The Cylon war was long ago, yet we must not forget the reason why so many suffered so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform can be high...but...
Sometimes its too high.
When we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction, but we never answered the question "Why". Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept responsibility for anything that we've done, like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play god, create life. When that life turned against us we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really.
You cannot play god and then wash your hands of the things that you have created.
Sooner or later the day comes when you cannot hide from the things that you've done anymore.
Why are we as a people worth saving?
All through the show the on-screen people never asked nor answered the "Why" question. They simply acted for their own survival. In the end they chose to give up their technology and start from a clean slate. Their clean slate created our society now, and the things Cmdr Adama said on the Galactica could be said about us today.
We, our people, our society, commits murder because of greed, spite, jealousy and more. We, our people, our society, still visits all our sins upon our children. And are we, our people, our society, accepting responsibility for our actions? No. We, our people, our society, is playing god, creating life, exploring the universe around us, etc.
Global warming and other dangers is in a way a response to the things that we, our people, our society, created. Our creations are causing great ecological and political harm across the world. Harm which threatens the survival of our society.
It isn't said in the series why the Colonial humans gave up their technology to go native on the planet they found. It is up to us to ponder why they would do that, and what we would do in that situation.
This is my pondering.. I wonder whether technology is the root of the problem. I think people can be angry with one another regardless of the technology they have in their hands. People can kill each other with rocks and spears and fists, just as they can kill each other with nuclear weapons.
Technology has an amplifying effect on everything we do. Using technology we can blow the tops off 50 million year old mountain ranges (to get the coal underneath), and using technology we can rain death upon whole continents. Technology helps us be more efficient at our conduct of war and murder because of greed, spite or jealousy. Technology helps us be more efficient at inflicting sins upon our children or our neighbors.
But is technology the problem? Methinks technology is a tool we use to amplify things we do, and that the problem lies within ourselves. It is humans who still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. It is not the machines which do that, it is human beings who choose to do that to one another.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Well, there is a question hanging here. What happens when the guns become self aware intelligent beings in their own right? What happens when the guns can make their own decisions? Today the U.S. military is pouring megadollars into researching robotic weapons. Perhaps the U.S. will "pull out" of Iraq and leave behind a robotic army to continue dominating Iraq. In any case the roboticists are ignoring Asimov's laws of Robotics, violating the first rule of Robotics, and creating robotic machines whose design is to kill people. What will happen in perhaps 20 years when enough computing power can be on those robots that they behave and act just like people. Will those robots begin clamoring for their rights? Will they turn on us? And if they do is the "guns don't kill people" adage still true?
If our tools stop being inanimate objects that have no volition of their own, are we responsible for their actions?
A few weeks ago the clothes dryer at my house broke down which led me on an exploratory journey: Powering down on drying clothes is a serious look into what it would take to replace an aspect of modern American living with a lower power equivalent. If it is true we face a future of dwindling energy resources we as people need to learn, or perhaps relearn, ways of living with lower energy inputs. I've done a bit more exploration, have a better solution in hand, but it is not yet completely satisfactory.
Lazy Line Dry was very interesting to read. Of course, so simple, this isn't complicated at all, it just requires a clothes line.
Clothes Line is a specific kind of rope available pretty much everywhere. I found a 100 foot length available for a few dollars at the local hardware store, bought that and some nails.
Location presents a little challenge with clothes lines. Drying clothes outdoors runs the risk of them being rained on, right? But drying them indoors means taking up living space with clothes on a line. Currently I've run my clothes line in the garage between a pair of nails.
One problem with the current situation is drooping line. The line is pretty long and droops in the middle, and the clothes tend to bunch at the droop. Not good. Perhaps it's going to require a shorter line and certainly keeping the line taught minimizes the droop.
The Lazy Line Dry article offers an interesting labor saving suggestion. Simply put the clothes directly on a hanger, and hang the hanger on the line. The stereotype for clothes line use is to use clothes pins to pin clothes to the line. But if you put the clothes directly on a hanger it saves a fair bit of work, especially over the work required with a machine dryer. Running clothes through a machine dryer takes a lot of steps of unloading the washer, loading the dryer, unloading the dryer, folding clothes, hanging clothes, etc. Clipping clothes to a clothes line is fewer steps but still more steps than simply putting the clothes on a hanger in the first place.
It's suggested to use plastic hangers rather than steel wire ones. Hurm. I have a collection of wire hangers I've owned for 30+ years. They were inherited from my father and they're still in good shape and still do a great job. But the article has a good point, that steel can rust and stain clothes. But given that I've owned these hangers for over 30 years and they haven't rusted yet I wonder how valid that concern is.
One thing I found is for drying pants the hangers which have clips on them are essential. You clip the pants to the hanger, and the pants hang straight down. I've for decades hung pants folded on a wire hanger but have found that wet pants hung this way do not dry very well on the folded part. Pants hung straight have an easier time of drying out.
There is another option besides the traditional clothes line. I found plastic clips that hang on the top of a door. These are strong and can easily hold wet clothes to dry. Simply buy enough of these clips to hang on all the doors in your house, then spread the clothes (on hangers) among those clips.
The clothes dryer at my house seems to have broken. It's a typical american big-as-heck clothes dryer and I've measured its power use as being 750 watts. Last week it stopped getting hot and hence the clothes did not dry out and the dryer just spun and spun and spun for hours. I suppose there may be a simple thing busted inside it, like a heating element, or a fuse, or some such. Or it may mean replacing the whole thing. Since I don't own the house nor the clothes dryer there's a little bit of complication. And in any case I have the idea to use this as an opportunity to experiment with powering down.
"Power Down" is a phrase I learned through the Transition Towns initiative. Transition Towns is asking us to recognize twin crises facing us -- peak oil and climate change. Peak oil and the peaks of other resources says that our society is going to be facing a crunch in available resources very soon and that the wise thing to do is to find ways to decrease the required power and resource usage in order to maintain our lives. We americans use far more resources than do other countries and we could very well be more efficient about our resource utilization while still maintaining a high quality of life.
In any case .. drying clothes. Obviously our clothes will still get stinky and dirty and still need to be cleaned. Cleaning clothes means they get wet, and then have to be dried. Obviously in power down we'll still have to dry our clothes somehow, the question is "how".
The first step in my own experimenting was to buy a typical accordion style wooden drying rack from the local hardware store. I really knew better but talked myself into it anyway. Of course one of the wood pieces broke on the first time using it and I had to jury rig a way to keep it upright. But it did to the job of drying the clothes (overnight). I also draped some of the clothes over the space heaters and that worked rather well.
Here's a few resources I found...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer - Goes over the types of clothes drying techniques commonly used. But most of the discussion is about the typical "modern" dryer with the spin cycle and all that stuff. The question seems to be what's the effective way to get moisture to evaporate quickly from the clothing.
http://www.urbanclotheslines.com/ - is a vendor selling a variety of low power clothes drying tools. Primarily they have several versions of the outdoors clothes line. They carry a fancy drying clothes rack that looks very tempting.
Clearly there is historical use of clothes lines and drying racks. An outdoors clothes line runs the risk of clothes being rained on etc. One curious result I've seen from air drying towels is they always come out stiff and scratchy, whereas machine drying towels they come out soft and fluffy.
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Clothes_Dryer -- A closet dryer consists of a dehumidifier in a large wardrobe, walk-in wardrobe or utility room. The implementation is a wardrobe, you put a dehumidifier in it, hang the clothes in the wardrobe, the dehumidifier automatically switches on and off with rising and falling humidity. This is more convenient than the extra step of putting clothes into a dryer and there is less wear on the clothes (tumble dryers are rough on clothes). They claim it's drastically less power use, on the order of 0.15 kilowatthours of electricity to operate the dehumidifier versus several KWH for a regular tumble dryer.
http://www.laundrylist.org/ - Project Laundry List is an activist organization aiming to demonstrate that personal choices can make a difference for the Earth and its people. Project Laundry List is making air-drying laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy. Air drying clothes is a form of using solar energy, has long historical precedent, etc. It seems that some places are outlawing the practice of hanging your clothes outside to let them air dry.. uh? This is what they're fighting for, the right to do this.
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/washing_machine.html -- is an experiment by a guy who's going a lot with using pedal powered machines to generate electricity. Think "exercise bicycle" connected to an electrical generator. He tried to keep up with his normal washer/dryer using his pedal power generator, and was unable to keep up.
Wall Shelf Drying Rack The wooden Wall Shelf Drying Rack is easy to install on any wall surface. You can put the unit on your porch for solar drying, near back door for easy access or in laundry room for indoor drying. You can also use it as a drying rack for flowers, herbs and pasta. This drying rack is constructed using sturdy, unfinished Eastern White Pine with durable Birch hardwood dowels and four Shaker-style pegs.
*The expandable drying rack is a space saving must have. *Allows you to dry your clothes then store it a way when it is not needed. *Sets up in seconds. The expandable clothes drying rack is a space saving must have. This hassle free drying rack sets up in seconds and allows you to dry your clothes then store it a way when it is not needed. This unit folds down to just a few inches so it can be stored under the bed, sofa, or in a closet. The steel construction makes this laundry rack sturdy and stable. The shiny chrome finish makes it attractive. Great for dorm rooms.
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080409154707AA2Sv9k -- Someone asked about this problem on Yahoo!Answers and they described ways to diagnose the busted electric dryer. The consensus is it's probably cheap to fix and just call the repair guy already. I'd do that except I'm really interested in the alternatives.
The wooden Wall Shelf Drying Rack is easy to install on any wall surface. You can put the unit on your porch for solar drying, near back door for easy access or in laundry room for indoor drying. You can also use it as a drying rack for flowers, herbs and pasta. This drying rack is constructed using sturdy, unfinished Eastern White Pine with durable Birch hardwood dowels and four Shaker-style pegs. 