[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Olaf', 'O')ne of my favorite quotes, unfortunately I don't know the source, is:

"Someone once asked me, 'Why do you insist on taking the hard road'?, and I replied, 'Why do you assume I see two roads'"?

Olaf

[gg3]

Re. PMS, re. "liked by women...."

Oh, I like being liked by women and men both, in the friendship department; but when it comes to the love & romance department, yep I'm lookin' for another guy. Any fellow gay dudes around here are welcome to apply.

Re. Keith McClary, re. cement:

Yes, I'm painfully aware of the energy requirement to produce cement. However, cement mills are now running on combustible waste products notably scrap tires (with major pollution abatement on the smokestacks). I expect price increases and spot shortages, but not total lack of supply in the timeframe where we will be building stuff. And I'm designing micro-houses and mini-houses where the total square footage will be small so the foundations will be small as well.

The point of pedal power to mix the concrete, is to have a simple practical backup system in the event we're in a rapid buildout when fuel costs are high or grid power is unavailable. As it turns out, it is highly likely that the limit will be 1 cubic foot per batch per person pedaling. For a small house foundation & poured basement, total about 16 cubic yards, the crew and time requirement would be: Two small mixers (for example Gilson 150-UT or 300-UT, or Red Lion RLX-3), one person pedaling each mixer, three people loading the mixers, two people ferrying concrete in barrows to the forms, one person placing & finishing (using an oldschool spading rod instead of an electric vibrator), one person spare for relieving workers who need breaks, e.g. rotating lunch breaks and bathroom breaks. Total crew size 9 people. Total time requirement, assuming a 2-minute batch cycle with this setup: 7.2 hours. The balance of the 8-hour day goes to cleaning up the tools at the end of the day.

So, one house foundation per day. Not bad. Now I just have to do an empirical test on the pedal power setup and I can mark the proverbial check in the box and go on to the next design task. At present I'm also writing a paper on graywater systems, and another on micro-house and mini-house design.

This is called being an optimistic doomer.

Quite frankly, between PO and the climate catastrophe, my moods run from scared shitless to downright depressed. Doing all this design engineering & systems development is not only useful to my community, but it also relieves the misery somewhat. Engineering mode is solution-oriented. I live my life and earn my living by providing solutions. I give myself room to feel the miserables about the problem scenarios (add to that living under a domestic tyranny), and then get back to rolling up my sleeves and working on solutions. It's a coping mechanism, one could say, and it's more productive than getting drunk or stoned or immersed in corporate media or screwing my brains out.

[gg3]

And occasionally I indulge in bad attempts at something like humor. For example the following.

To the tune of "Home, Home on the Range."

Oh the future is grand
hauling water by hand
eating food that you hunt in the woods
life is spartan and stark
as you freeze in the dark
and make money on hand-crafted goods!

Home, home in a cave!
while the city folk go to their grave
'cause a camp with a fire
beats a camp with barbed wire
and it's better than being a slave!

[Heineken]

Actually, that's pretty good, gg3, especially stanza 2.

What will come out of your fertile mind next, one wonders.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'A')ctually, that's pretty good, gg3, especially stanza 2.

[PenultimateManStanding]

It's a nice tune and in the spirit of reciprocity, I offer another Peak Oil interpretation to the tune of Home On The Range



If we just had more oil
Then our fate we could foil
Eating food from so far far away
But our chances we've blown
Now we reap what we've sown
No more nights oh so cheerful and gay.

Screwed, screwed in a Crash
Now the Bankers ain't got any Cash!
Guess I never will know
How it all came so low
Now they won't even gather my trash.

[gg3]

Heh, pretty good work yourself there, PMS.

And I see you caught me on my out-of-place line.

Originally I had it as, "and make money on contraband goods," but I made an edit for posting in public, so as not to be seen as endorsing illegal activities.

Heinekin: Thanks; and you'd be surprised.... now if I could get a gig doing creative development for Gore'08 once he declares...

[Heineken]

I think PMS has you slightly beat in the poetry corner, gg3, but as a general brainiac you can't be caught.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'I') think PMS has you slightly beat in the poetry corner, gg3

[Heineken]

Rhyme and meter ARE as dear to you, PMS (since we're being literary critics here). Just pickin' at ya.

[gg3]

Better, worse; more, less; these too are the measure of our doom.

We have today (and arguably have had since about the mid 20th century) the technology to make life a material paradise, with abundance of everything including free time, learning, recreation, creativity, and yes even love and reverence and good works. In such a world, the struggle for survival would be relegated to history alongside death by smallpox. There would be no further need of hierarchies of dominance and submission, any more than there would be any further need of human sacrifice.

It would be indefinitely sustainable, as the eventual end of any given resource for example oil, would be forecast with enough foresight to enable the development of a replacement with enough lead-time to make the transition painless.

We could do that at a total human population level of about one billion humans.

And we could eventually start tinkering with our genes to change the homeostatic set-points of human emotion now that such feelings as chronic anxiety and depression no longer had adaptive rationales. In doing so we could rewrite the atavistic ape-programs that produce the compulsion to reproduce without limit and consume beyond our means. We would be prosperous and we would also be content, and we would have built a platform from which to launch the quest for near-universal enlightenment in whatever way you wish to define that term.

But, no.

The monkeys have won, 6.5 billion of us, breeding without restraint and consuming without reason, right up to the homeostatic set-point of our collective pain: the threshold, with its bread and circuses, below which revolutions do not occur. We have even nicknamed our present ruler Chimpy, an irony almost too much to bear.

And so we lurch along toward the edge of the proverbial cliff, missing one opportunity after another to change course just in time.

[Heineken]

A fine commentary, gg3.

Yes, our basic problem as a species is that our bad characteristics outweigh our good ones; our intelligence and opposable thumbs translate and magnify the differential into the negative byproducts that are killing the world.

Had the balance been the other way around, the world could indeed have been a garden.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Interesting question: could we have been enlightened enough to have done it differently? I don't think so. Behind the scenes there's always been a sense of desperation as we lurch from one disaster to another. Humans grabbed onto oil like it was a life raft. We clung to the comfort of all that energy like a greedy kid trying to hog the cereal. No. It couldn't have gone any other way.

[Ludi]

Please read the books of Daniel Quinn to dislodge your misapprehension that our problems are due to "the human species." They are due to our culture, not to our species.


Read a book. Please.


<<<< on knees begging

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'P')lease read the books of Daniel Quinn to dislodge your misapprehension that our problems are due to "the human species." They are due to our culture, not to our species.


Read a book. Please.

[Ludi]

Ok, so taking the tiny minority of human cultures (those which are civilization) you blame our problems on the species, most of whose cultures have not been civilized.


If you really want to stick to that belief, which is anthropologically false, that's your decision, I guess.

[Ludi]

BTW, when I say "our culture" I mean civilization, not "our first world US (or whatever) society."


Uhhhh, I can't believe, after frikkin' YEARS of begging folks to read Quinn's books, we're still having this debate here on po.com.

[Olaf]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'P')lease read the books of Daniel Quinn to dislodge your misapprehension that our problems are due to "the human species." They are due to our culture, not to our species.


Read a book. Please.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'O')k, so taking the tiny minority of human cultures (those which are civilization) you blame our problems on the species, most of whose cultures have not been civilized.


If you really want to stick to that belief, which is anthropologically false, that's your decision, I guess.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shannymara', '[')
You got a source for that?