The Peristaltic Testator

Many years ago, I reflected on the fact that the terms we use to describe—not name, just describe—behavior in ourselves and others come almost exclusively from drafting:

All of these terms, derived from geometry, have nothing to do with actual behavior. An outward willingness to follow rules has nothing to do whatsoever with straight lines drawn on paper. Nowhere on a behaviorally unusual person will you find a circle with its center point slightly shifted. No, we grab these words from the graphic arts and apply them to situations we can recognize, but which we find difficult to describe absolutely. They are metaphors for behavior, not descriptors. They are heuristics, simple concepts we apply to complex situations that allow us to communicate the situations with each other.

I also noted that these communicative heuristics don't exist in the world outside the one we have created. Nature doesn't like straight lines like we do.

I was reminded of that reflection just today when wading through John Michael Greer's weekly blog. This should seem similar:

Modern industrial civilization, for example, is obsessed with simplicity; our mental models and habits of thought value straight lines, simple geometrical shapes, hard boundaries, and clear distinctions. That obsession, and the models and mental habits that unfold from it, have given us an urban environment full of straight lines, simple geometrical shapes, hard boundaries, and clear distinctions—and thus reinforce our unthinking assumption that these things are normal and natural, which by and large they aren’t.

Sorry if this is too "down" a topic for readers needing a shot of happy, but Greer's post (third of a trilogy, actually) concerns why civilizations that manage to build cities of size seem always to peter out after a millennium or so, while pre-city "primitive" societies can trudge through the earth with much the same traditions far longer. He blames the conformity of thought patterns reinforced by the urban environment, patterns that fall apart in the natural world.

By limiting, as far as possible, the experiences available to influential members of society to those that fit the established architecture of thought, urban living makes it much easier to confuse mental models with the universe those models claim to describe, and that confusion is essential if enough effort, enthusiasm, and passion are to be directed toward the process of elaborating those models to their furthest possible extent.

And, since the map is not the territory, those realities of the natural world not featured in the urban architecture of thought will get missed, if not ignored or even hotly denied. What happens then? Economists can assume unlimited growth on a finite planet, even when the fallacy of such an assumption defies the laws of physics.

And that's just one example. Our human built world is full of unoccupied or simply buried examples of civilizations that fell because what they assumed would happen if they did X simply didn't happen that way.

The world around us—call it nature if you will—doesn't care if you don't agree with its laws.

I just skipped over to one of Doug Short's constantly updating sites and checked out the graph of recent numbers concerning how much per capita we in the US are driving. Given the paramount importance over road travel is in these paved states, it's a good indicator of economic health generally, at least as a snapshot. ( I thought I'd share, and offer a prediction! )

X-Posted to talk_politics.

Last February, NPR's Planet Money examined a unique strategy by Ecuador's government to preserve its Yasuni National Park, an isolated and wild place reached best by hours in a canoe. This is one of those places with amazing biodiversity, with more tree species in a hectare than most more northern countries have within their borders.

The problem threatening the Yasuni? It has oil, and President Correa, seeing the destruction other Latin American countries have suffered for oil exploration/extraction, wanted to avoid a similar fate for his most wild of national places. His solution: ask for money to preserve the park as is.

Seriously. Planet Money interviews those seeking to preserve the park by asking for money:

As payment for preserving the wilderness and preventing an estimated 410 million metric tons of fossil fuel-generated carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, Correa has asked the world to ante up in the fight against global warming. He is seeking $3.6 billion in compensation, roughly half of what Ecuador would have realized in revenues from exploiting the resource at 2007 prices. The money would be used, he says, to finance alternative energy and community development projects.

( So, how'd that all work out? )

X-Posted to talk_politics.

Fun time! I got to receive two very different posts on two very different topics today in the same Friend's Feed. Trouble is, they aren't "different" at all.

The first comes to us from our Friends at Faux News.

Oh, a surf bum who eats well on the taxpayer dime! The horrors! I haven't heard about this since . . . the 1970s. Lobster-eating food stamp recipients were a common trope back then, too.

Next, compare poor Jason's chosen fate to that of others, like you and I, perhaps. ( Jesus, Perry, down what rat hole are you scurrying now? )

X-Posted to talk_politics.

Just stumbled upon a New York Times article concerning sustainable development that posits a problem with a popular model, that of the Three Pillars of Sustainable Development. Those pillars are the Environment, Society, and the Economy. Here's a National Council for Science and the Environment page discussing the issue, and an image from the same page depicting the pillars in question:



( Hmmmm. . . . )

I recently heard of a few data points I found interesting. The first, from Mother Jones Magazine, presents a strong case linking violent crime with earlier exposure to tetraethyl lead, "the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines." As automotive use increased, so increased the lead flowing from the tailpipes; in cities, the concentration of cars increased each city dweller's exposure. As lead was phased out, the exposure likewise phased out. Researcher Rick Nevin made the first connection:

The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.

Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.

So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

(I emboldened.)

( Ah, but that was only one data point, and I did promise two! )

X-Posted to talk_politics.

Denial

Anger


Bargaining


Depression


Acceptance

X=Post to peak_oil.

Or, as a single image:

Over the last few years, I've had a sneaking suspicion that somethings have happened in key years that changed the course of history. The first (and, perhaps, the second) involve the Baby Boom.

First, here's the boom in a graph (from this site):



( Oh, he's ranting about the Boomers again. Will it never end?!? )


*It seems the NPR archive is not easily found. I refuse to enrich private podcast caches with a link. You'll have to search it, but it is easily found. Seriously, NPR, what can't you fuck up?

For those of you still unfamiliar with M. King Hubbert and his now-famous theory of "peak oil," do look up Wiki entries on his name and theory. If you don't, not only will this entry seem curious (if not completely unhinged), but so will reality.

If you're still curious about what this might mean for, well, everyone on earth, ( join me as I point out landmarks on the road to simplicity. )


X-posted to talk_politics.

Two weeks ago, work sucked. Unlike the LA Times link, I would not, though, color all of Seattle "clueless." Yes, it snowed. Yes, there were problems. Hills and ice do not mix well when movement is a priority. What happened here is, far from evidence of cluelessness, like a roaring mountain stream hitting rocks and narrow channels, just turbulence added to our lives. Just like a white-water rapid ride, it can be exhilarating and a heck of a lot of fun. That's how I dealt with it.

You see, we have all become accustomed to getting where we "need" to be when we "need" to be there. Few of us have had to deal with chronic impediments to travel such as snow presents. When it comes, therefore, many of us simply do not know how to call whoever and cancel whatever, which is the logical action in the face of dangerous travel conditions. With a few years driving in the stuff and the knowledge of which roads to avoid, I did okay. I snagged a ride with my neighbor to work when the snow height overwhelmed my little Honda. Had that option not been available, though, I would have had no compunction against calling work and admitting travel defeat, something some are loath to do.

Even without snow on the road, the mere threat was enough to freak out a system quite used to open roads. Chains get put on buses when the weather forecasts say it's going to snow, and when on a bus mean the bus can only travel under 30 mph. Schedules written for 50+ get reduced to silly numbers staining paper. Some people freaked out and yelled at me, wondering why I was a half-hour late. I smiled and explained I was an hour late, and that was common, so the yeller should grin and get used to it. Chains, baby!

Yes, it sucked, but I got to wondering: what are people who freak out over such minor delays and chicanes going to do when ( the delays get chronic, perhaps permanent? )