A wonderful quote

“…intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.” -pg. 74 of the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Amory Lovins and winning the oil endgame

Another talk from TED.com:

Amory Lovins is a man I’ve never heard of before, but apparently he is a cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. In his talk he explains why he believes it is important to “Win the Oil Endgame” as he puts it in his book. He goes into how our dependence on oil negatively affects us and discusses how it makes a large monetary difference to conserve oil use. He uses a term called the “negawatt” meaning A measure of the avoided use or the conservation of a unit of energy, which is something he coined over 20 years ago. (In a cosmic stroke, I actually first saw this term in a science magazine called Seed. I hadn’t known that Amory Lovins coined the term before finding his talk on TED. I only just realized it when I googled negawatt for the definition for this post!) What I remember most about this talk is his reference to making automobiles lighter by using a carbon fiber construction instead of steel. He spoke of many different parts to the solution, yet this one stuck out at me. It’s not a new concept to me. There was a Nova special that featured Click and Clack (from NPR’s Car Talk) as hosts and was about the cars of the future. That special also mentioned carbon fiber construction. It’s compelling, but it still makes you wonder if the technology is there. And it makes me wonder, wow wouldn’t that be cool to be the person to figure out that technology to make it effectively and cost efficiently? Too bad I didn’t major in materials engineering.

My new favorite website: TED.com

TED.com is an amazing website. I’m the kind of person who loves the Discovery channel, the Science Channel, National Geographic, the History Channel, History International, Nova on PBS, etc. It’s entertainment that makes knowledge interesting. Somethings they really don’t have to try so hard with. It just naturally pulls you along: Whoa, what? Some Neaderthals had red hair! That’s so cool! I always thought they had a brown, dirty brown colored hair like chimpanzees. The science behind these discoveries is what’s truly amazing. The facts alone are no longer what fascinate me. Facts are facts. They’re there and they’re nice to know. But then you take a step back and wonder, how in the world did anyone figure that out?

So as I showed in a previous post on Ron Eglash, I found a talk by him on this site called Ted.com. That one little search led me to an amazing site. Free talks by some amazing people. They’re roughly around 20 minutes each, less than a short tv show, and only 1 commercial is tagged at the end. Not bad in my opinion. I even watch the commercial because they sponsored the presentation, the least I can do is watch for 20 more seconds.

The next talk I saw was by Al Gore. It turned out to be what I would describe as a mini version of An Inconvenient Truth. I liked that movie, so watching the talk wasn’t difficult. I’ve known about global warming and its harmful effects since every recycling initiative and arbor day they held in elementary school. The concept isn’t exactly new. Growing up, and even up through watching the movie, I had a hard time understanding why our political and industrial leaders weren’t jumping on board. Then I started work in retail. I observed managers and supervisors do things that even they acknowledged were stupid and non-sensical in order to appease a metric, and watched as they sacrificed employee hours in order to assuage a bleeding P&L line not figuring in the long-term alienation of customers whose needs were not met due to poor staffing. I realized that tunnel vision is an epidemic across many companies in our capitalist society. How does a far-sighted person explain what the horizon looks like to a near-sighted person? Here’s an analogy that just occurred to me:

My Dad taught me to drive on the freeway, he said look out ahead about a mile or so down the road. You can see what traffic is doing ahead and the cars closest to you are still in your peripheral, so you won’t miss what they’re doing. It’s easy just to focus on the car in front of you, but if they’re brake lights flash all you can do is step on your brakes and hope you’re braking at the same speed as them – you missed seeing all the cars ahead slowing down for the cop sitting on the side of the road because you weren’t looking at them, you were only looking at the car in front of you.

I like that analogy. It can be used in a lot of situations. At least it makes sense to me. So now that I have a new understanding about retail, I have a new understanding about capitalism. And now that I have a new understanding about capitalism, I have a new understanding about politics. What I realize most is that when it comes down to making the changes that we as a nation need to make to remedy the causes of global warming and find a solution to what has already occurred, in order to be truly heard, we need to talk in terms of P&L. (profit and loss). From corporations to individuals, money defines how well we survive. If the cost of global warming can be monitarily quantitated, (and that estimation believable) it will speak louder than any other statistic. Al Gore talks about a carbon tax, which could expedite change. What would be great would be a personal expense calculator. How much would it cost with current trends, to continue living as one currently does? Compare that to how much it would cost if one incorporated alternative methods? How many years would that take to pay off? I think that information, freely available, is what is necessary to help people think through their wallets. Because we’re going to do it anyway. (And if it already exists, for God’s sake, advertise it!!!!)

Favorites in Entertainment

Avatar: the Last Air-bender

The anime-inspired artistic style is cute. It wouldn’t work well with any other style of cartoon considering the creative influences from various Asian and Native Alaskan cultures, not to mention the incorporation of martial arts styles to visually represent the energy bending of the elements. All of these aspects, right down to the color palette, make this possibly my favorite animated series of all time.

Dr. Who

First of all, it’s British. I seem to like British humor. It seems sterotypical to name a type of humor after an entire nation, afterall our interests including our funny bones, can differ from person to person within a country. But British entertainment seems to have a certain wit to it that others don’t. Beyond the humor, I like how the writers create a blend of fantasy and science fiction to create the epic that is the story of the Doctor. Constantly the story emphasizes the importance of a single life and the potential brilliance of humanity amidst the potential for atrocity. Then there is the mystery of the Doctor himself, a character who has every capacity to be the single-most terrifying being in the universe (and to some he is, depending on the point-of-view), who struggles with a debilitating sense of loneliness and an underlying depression, yet he continues to travel through time and space as the champion of mankind. What especially strikes me about this character is that when he is not overcome by his depression he has a child-like wonder about things he finds in the universe – scientific things, but sometimes mundane cultural things that strike him as brilliant. He explores and finds fascinating things wherever he goes. It drags the viewer right into the adventure with him.

Mabinogi

Mabinogi is a mmorpg developed by DevCat under Nexon. Nexon is also known for another mmorpg called MapleStory. I know nothing of MapleStory, but I do like Mabinogi. It is loosely based on Welsh/Celtic stories called the Mabinogion. I don’t know much about the Mabinogion except for when I googled it when I was bored one day. The game, on the other hand, is addictive. It has a Free to Play aspect that allows anyone with the right computer system requirements to create one avatar/character for free. That player can now roam around Erinn (the mythical setting of the rpg) and discover the game. I won’t get into the details, but if you want to look into, go http://mabinogi.nexon.net. It has a Mainstream Quest element that is good marketing on Nexon’s part: because to unlock the quest, you have to pay for a premium service. The game is playable without this Mainstream quest, but not nearly as interesting. The characters have an anime look to them, which to me also sets the game apart. (I really don’t like anime all that much. I only have exposure to it in this game and the Avatar series.) This game is playable by anyone who’s old enough to read and has their parents’ permission to go online, but I do have a word of caution, while the game “bleeps” profanity, l33t speak and other tricks let chatting players get around it and the conversation topics are not sensored. I’m not much of an in-game chatter, so I ignore it mostly and just play the game.

This post is incomplete.