tingilinde

bike commuting tips

A nice discussion of experiences trying to commute on a bike in the Bay Area.

Bikes are amazingly efficient devices. If you were drinking vegetable oil (not that different in energy density from gasoline and something your body can use), you could probably get over 1000 miles per gallon riding a bike. Shifting to a premium ice cream should give over 300 mpg. Using healthy foods lowers you mileage, but you have to keep your body running anyway and this improves your physical shape and probably your health.

friends and their passions

Recently David wrote eloquently about a friend of his.

I too have have great friends - the best sort of wealth there is.

Colleen happens to be one of them. Here is a short piece I wrote about her approach towards dealing with global warming:

The scientific debate is settled. We humans have a major role in the increase in average global temperature and the consequences of the potential rapid change through the rest of the century are not cheery. We have to do something about it if we care about our children, their children and their grandchildren. The first steps are convincing people there is a problem and that there are things they can do to make a difference.

AVP professional beach volleyball player Colleen Smith is hard at work convincing people that climate change is not something we can ignore . Waiting for technology alone to save the day is too risky. She reasons we need to embrace the idea of change and start making changes where we can. The journey is worthwhile and we may even become better people for it. But there are people who need to understand this and share her passion.

Her strategy is to engage people and get them thinking on their own about what they can do. People have to stay positive or they may give up.

Colleen is a tall, powerful and passionate young woman who gets attention when she is at her beach “office” training or playing. The beach is something that will change as sea level increases and this gave her an idea. She wears tattoos at heights where scientists think sea levels may be in the future. People are naturally curious about these marks and conversations begin: Conversations with these props give people a visual sense of what is at stake.

They see,
they hear,
and they remember.

Young people, particularly youngsters, are fascinated by this strong woman and Colleen explains that they should not see this as a frightening future that is out of their hands. It is not something to fear and retreat from, but rather something where we - where they - can change the outcome. We need to attack it with the energy that she attacks a volleyball.

As she talks to the children, she gives them suggestions of positive steps they can take and encourages them to spread the word to their family and friends. They can help their parents make the right choices when important decisions are made. She tells them there is no magic solution, but rather many smaller actions that can and must be done. There is no silver bullet, but there is silver buckshot.

She has started to blog at www.6footsix.com and you can follow her work with kids, her life as a pro beach volleyball player, and Zula and Daisy-Mae - her pups and co-conspirators in all of this.

I don't say this often, but giving a bit to her will make a real difference. This is going to be a terrific season for her and all of us can share in her passion. She is also making a real difference educating exciting kids. She gets them interested in kid things that make a difference and make them appreciate themselves and the outdoors - gardening, biking/walking/running rather than having their parents cart them around. And even a bit of easy conservation smarts. There is a link on her site that is marked paypal, but you can use a regular credit card. If you want to send a check and a letter, send her email and she'll give you an address.

A great friend of mine and two fine causes in one. I'm sure I will write more as the Summer unfolds, but this is a very critical time for her and I stand behind her a thousand percent.

hidden secrets in amber

Greg points out an article about using synchrotron X-rays to look at the 3d structures of objects embedded in amber. Most of the wonder stuff you've seen in amber - like 100 million year old insects - is in clear amber. Most of it isn't and this new technique allows looking at things that were invisible.

wonderful images!

pianowire and chewing gum

When I was a teenager a Japanese auto company imported something called the "Happy Talk" An amazingly bad car the four models remained on a local lot for over a year and, after being painted bright colors and having their price reduced 80%, finally disappeared. Consumer Reports tested the model and referred to its suspension as "piano-wire and chewing gum"...

And now Zap has a candidate for the worst western car - the Zap Xebra -- enjoy the review.

Things don't have to be completely awful to be green, but making a car is a difficult thing and converting a piece of junk doesn't do it. If you really want a reasonable electric car at a semi-reasonable price it is necessary to think about something with a weight much closer to 1000 than 3000 pounds.

And until then there are many other things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.

getting serious about the environment and your food

This is from an extension program in North Carolina - all states have similar programs. It is possible to provide most of the vegetables needed by two people for a year with about 1000 square feet of garden and thirty minutes of work every day during the growing season. Smaller scale efforts still produce great things, are more manageable and may be a great project for kids. (dirt covered active kids are better off than computer game kids)

A good tinkerer might be able to reduce the management time, and displacing something like tv is probably not a bad thing. There are also interesting possibilities for sharing information and trading produce through Internet based communities of place.

A Chicago-based friend is involved in an urban community garden where people trade produce for greater variety. Sadly our condo isn't interested in turning over bits of the chemically enhanced ecological deserts called lawns for such purposes, but perhaps the time has come to reconsider.

There was a time when serious efforts were made to engage people in home gardening - the victory gardens of WWII. Brewster's wonderful archive.org has an old government pr movie (mp4 stream) via the Prelinger Archives. Overkill by today's standards, but people were more focused on solving problems in that period.

notes on bike paths and roads

Hunting around for bike path information, I found this wikipedia article. Links to design and safety as well as a history. It is interesting to note that Nazi Germany made it a priority to discourage bike riding.

Decreasing the number of miles driven and substituting human powered travel where possible has many benefits, but is also tricky. There are existence proofs (notably the Netherlands and Denmark) that progress can be made and it seems like a reasonable goal in the US. I doubt we will see any movement until fuel prices really spike.

early warning ferret

Sukie notes a case where a landlord can't deal with a disabled person who uses ferrets as service animals (watch the video).

I've been around a variety of animals and many do note things about people that we miss. One of our ferrets helped Sukie's when the house filled with carbon monoxide and she became hard to wake. He persisted at waking her and she was able to get out in time. He may have saved her life.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

What a language - this is grammatically correct. How you can puzzle and confuse friends and enemies alike through the use of homonyms and homophones.

This example has been around for awhile - I remember a linguist at Bell Labs impressing a bunch of us at lunch, but had forgotten it until Rich reminded me. Very cool!

My favorite example of lexical ambiguity comes from Groucho Marx and was printed on one of my tshirts

Time flies like an arrow... Fruit flies like a banana.

how not to do ux and design

LG has a competition to design the interface for the a touchscreen cellphone.

Ahem - design and user experience are way deeper than this sort of thing. Treating UX as a wrapper put on top of a product - essentially an afterthought - is why so much stuff just doesn't work play with humans.

getting the lead out

Who would have thought industrialization in places like China would cause holes to appear in English church roofs?

This reminds one of the people in England when monasteries went out of fashion. Weakening the roofs insured the buildings would fall into quick disrepair and lead became much easier to find on the streets from the thievery.

how clean are plugin hybrid vehicles?

Perhaps not as clean as you think. It depends on the source of electricity and scenarios where a plug in hybrid are dirtier than a conventional hybrid are easy to imagine.

A key is to generate electricity with the smallest amount of vented carbon dioxide. Unfortunately coal is very cheap and abundant in the US and coal fired plants last many decades. The best way to deal with this may be a stiff carbon tax to reflect the real cost of energy, but that seems unlikely given the current political climate.

In the meantime using smaller cars that burn less gas and reducing the miles you drive are good strategies.

offshore wind power in the us

Coastal areas of the US are good candidates for wind turbines, but installations similar to those in the UK, Germany and Denmark have been blocked. It appears that the tide is turning (so to speak) in Delaware. (via Salon)

One of the clinchers is that offshore wind may be less expensive than "clean coal" (noting that there is no such thing at this point)

It is sad that US politicians line up lunacies like coal and corn ethanol while trying to appear "green" - it is time voters start calling their bluff. Practically speaking the Democrats are not that much better than the Republicans. Obama and Clinton are both in the pockets of big coal. More remarkable is that this doesn't seem to be a major issue. Ignorance and denial on the part of the politicians.

moving beyond the concept that bikes are toys

Visit most cycling shops in the US and you will see two basic types of bikes. Mountain bikes with fancy suspensions and huge knobby tires and light weight racers with super thin tires and prices that often exceed $200 per pound.

beautiful perhaps, but toys if what you really need is practical transportation

Toys that are mostly useless for the rigors of daily commuting. Europe has perfected the concept of the commuter bike. Utilitarian, rugged and reliable - you can actually use one on a daily basis in most types of weather. Not a bad deal as a bike is one of the most efficient ways to move a human from place to place - much more efficient than walking.^* And bikes move more than just the rider.

Some of the lowest hanging fruit for reducing oil use may be to use human power wherever possible. It would be extremely inexpensive to create a good network of bicycle lanes. The right sort of bike exists, but there is little interest. One wonders if a spike of gas prices to $6 or $8 a gallon would do the trick. Seeing it move up slowly won't, but a quick spike might be useful for getting some good infrastructure installed.

The three major presidential candidates would view increased bike use as silly. After all, Americans are lazy and required large vehicles with at least a half dozen cup holders. Why have a vehicle that weighs a fifth as much as the rider rather than twenty times more? But these are not people who seriously worry about the environment - all three support coal to liquid fuel and corn based ethanol (based on their voting records).

For hilly areas or commutes where the rider's fitness level is not up to the journey it is possible to add a small motor. Here hybrid means electric/human power. This is usually an electric motor that can be switched on and off, but some have regenerative braking and the ability to change the battery by pedaling. Most have inefficient batteries, but modern technology is appearing. Schwinn came out with an interesting looking line recently - mostly practical city bikes with electric assist. Lithium batteries and a reasonably advanced motor, they appear to be good candidates on paper. The fly in the ointment may be reliability issues. A friend almost bought one, but other owners complained about reliability issues. If you are looking at one make sure there is a good warranty. But with gas over $3 a gallon such purchases will pay for themselves.

Most Americans will find a car necessary most of the time, but cutting back on local driving and using human power is not only good for the environment but is good for your health (assuming you can ride safely). People in the bicycling nations look fitter than their American counterparts. As Colleen says: I could ride my bike more often and develop some damn sexy legs ... that should be excuse enough for most people.

So if you are looking for a place to invest your $600 or $1200 check from the government in something that will improve your fitness, guard your health, reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and reduce foreign energy dependence - here is a starting place.

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^*An interesting factoid is many rider/bike combinations are efficient enough to get more than 1000 miles on a gallon of oil (olive or vegetable oil, but the energy in a gallon of either of these is close to that in a gallon of gasoline)