Sustainability, Draft, Work in Progress
I continue to add to this text.
Current work
I am now starting to add text at the top, since paging down for readers is too much to ask. I do not write this for my blog, but is in Google Docs. I simply copy here, with minimal editing. I do not expect to be found or connected here, or if so, not by much.
If it happens, the life benefactor here, great. This is but to show readers and visitors the context within which I think, live, and duly study chess after work, and work after I write here.
Chess:
I study CT-Art 3.0 for several hours a day, less so some days, more others.
I am now at problem 705, once having gotten as far as about 814. It's not like it is new. Hardly. I have done the first four or five hundred maybe three or four times, but always got thwarted. Now I am seeing.
The classic I-Ching has a word for what I am doing, a concept:
21. Shih Ho / Biting Through [dk 'With clarity, Gnawing Bite (噬嗑 shì kè), Biting Through, Deciding]
above LI THE CLINGING, FIRE
below CHêN THE AROUSING, THUNDER
This hexagram represents an open mouth (cf. hexagram 27) with an obstruction (in the fourth place) between the teeth. As a result the lips cannot meet. To bring them together one must bite energetically through the obstacle. Since the hexagram is made up of the trigrams for thunder and for lightning, it indicates how obstacles are forcibly removed in nature.
Energetic biting through overcomes the obstacle that prevents joining of the lips; the storm with its thunder and lightning overcomes the disturbing tension in nature. Recourse to law and penalties overcomes the disturbances of harmonious social life caused by criminals and slanderers. The theme of this hexagram is a criminal lawsuit, in contradistinction to that of Sung, CONFLICT (6), which refers to civil suits.
Chess and More
Blitz also takes too much energy. I love the game, and am better at it than ever now, but need vital energy for below.
Running
I ran for 3:50 Saturday, about 15 miles in the woods, it was divine. Zero leg pain the next day. Zero.
Last time, it was 5:30 for 18 (-) miles so I flew. Nevertheless, last time, I had to carry a LOT of water, and it was warm. I also had more hills.
Work
Plan to approach corporate about a transfer. I am 100% certain they will plan to say no. I am only interested in extraordinarily effective action here. I plan to ask for an exemption from the six month requirement of initial employment. Why loose a good employee, needlessly?
I am always on time, never sick, great on the phone, truly delight in customer service, very funny, mentor others. Its a no-brainer. But XYZ will probably make keeping their rule MORE important than transformation.
Tacoma
Yikes. Of course it is not an attractive place, in many if not a great many ways offering far less than Portland, thats a no brainer. But my friends, my former Doctor and his wife, hardly multi-millionares, but decently situated, bought a condo to put me in, instead of paying here, 'why give the money to a corporation?'
What readers do not know, is without them, I would sink. I owe $33/34k, and started at $9.50 an hour. I have a medical condition, and they care. Both of them. Also, two other friends who love me are in Seattle, thirdly, the North Cascades call me deeply, I have to, I have to, I must climb again. I am not a big wall dude, but love alpine as steep as you can get without a rope or 'pro'(tection). Where you go which almost causes fear but no decent climber uses a rope.
My depression can be severe. I am a renaissance man, and folks like me don't fit the grid. Its all too easy to say, dk, there must be a job for you. Try 3,000, 4,000 job applications. With a brain like mine, a mind like mine, this can over time crush a man.
These friends want me situated so they can continue to help me. It is hard. They have paid for my rent all summer, and a bit more. They want me to focus on healing, calmly building the next step. They are very awakened.
My running is not commitment or excellence, it is what I need to do to not shoot myself in the head. It is necessary release. It works. Life is hard, but in an odd way, am happier than ever before in life, but some part of me will never be OK, never feel safe on earth, I just am either not of this world or of our time, a kind of refuge.
Having a genius IQ is the other side of retardation, you just jolt the world everywhere you go. Even if you try to hide it or pretend, inevitably it shows up. A bitch. And being highly sensitive is no joke either. But when you have both, AND can be very psychic AND very assertive, its really no joke. Its like being a freak.
And when you know the history of the world, and are awake, and feel nature, you know that the greatest fear on earth is the current, total lack of fear of the current power structure, and sorry to say, we are going to all have our ass kicked, the power will be shut off, food supply cut off, terrible cold, no water, cyber terror. Do I want this? No. But it is coming.
One thing, and mark my words, in America we either have never known suffering or hardly have. Try Sudan, try Kosovo, earthquakes in China or mudslides in some vast Latin American City. It will not be pretty, but this will be step one in awakening.
We are so upset when forty or 3,000 die, but try 80,000, 120,000. This happens historically in other places, but somehow we are immune?
We have access to oil, arable land, guns, industrial RDC (regional distribution centers), and we have this whole thing dialed in. The US Treasury has mapped GDP, interest rates, current accounts (money inflow and outflow offshore), and policy protects us from chaos. Oh really??
So here I am
These friends love me as a family would, and love me for who I am. This is the gift of love. They happen to always see me overcoming what I face. They tell me so. They do not talk, they act. And have over time. Love is unconditional.
OK, got to run, ready for work, dk
PS I toy with the idea of again trying for a 9-11 Police dispatch position. I am the rare sort who can be affable on the phone, yet in a many great instances, be in control, hard to do, but I do it nightly with the Hilton, Sheraton, Exteneded Stay, Crown Plaza, all that. I love these folks. When a supplier talks to a supplier, both are able to cut to the chase, albeit pleasantly. Which I do, but efficiently.
I currently work in Business Process Outsourcing, read call center with intelligence. I was selected as one of fourteen, from 150 interviewed, 1,000 applicants. So they say. Whatever it is, I look to my L, and look to my R, and these are all special people. You can get them very cheap, in Portland, in 2012. Thank you President Bush. Thank you AIG, Lehman, Bernie, and Bear Sterns. Thank you Obama.
I missed qualifying in Seattle. The concept is simple, get paid while helping society during inevitable collapse. Great benefits, good pay. I like the Police. Got through the screening, then first round, but you need to be a very good typist, if not a great typist, but at my job, I am learning to type faster, easier, and might be a benefit. But you cannot have performance anxiety when the clock starts, same as I have in chess! My hands shake! But would be great at it. I love to help others, understand upset, and great difficulties, across all classes and types of persons. And I love the world.
The plan is to get another survival job, even part time, while I figure it out.
Fundraising is an alternative. In the long term. I can evangelize sustainability, and am proven at raising capital. I see no reason to lead a Marxist movement, or solely be an activist alone, nor create a rain barrel movement, or get more solar panels or small wind turbines put in place. Nor am I a politician. But group action, far more than configurations or policy or money alone can give. Others can do that.
All this is needed, the wind, tidal, light rail, but I am not destined to do one of these, but high level strategy and the overlap of architecture, chess like thoughtfulness, combined with coordination-communication, warriorship, capital markets, spirituality.
I would rather fail shooting too high. Too low, and this is like all the rest, just talk. Who says there cannot be a millennial movement???
What I can do is conduct a very high level combination. This means sourcing change, with great will and intelligence, or joining others who will do this, that has problems, too.
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My main concern
Mon, More Before Work, Last Notes 22 Oct 2012
Initiatives
Chess in schools
Sustainability in schools
More trades according to persons not on academic track
After school work
Cleanup of rivers, roadways
Reduction of canned food. Reduction of frozen food
Adding square miles of watershed, forest, green belts, parks
Significant reduction
Mon, Before Going to Work 22 Oct 2012
Reverse Engineering
Key Measures
Water: Gallons per person per household: consumption, kitchen, bath, laundry, landscape/garden
Power: Kilowatt hours per household per person, distinguished by region
Waste: cubic feet of solid waste, cubic feet of recyclables, litters of organic waste, barrels of sewage
Carbon Footprint: measures of emissions, proprietary
Targets
Percentage of water per household by off the grid, either by runoff, collection, or well
Pounds of food per person annually by local produce, grown within some measure, i.e.within ten miles
Pounds of non-animal protein per person annually
Man hours of work per capita per year within ten miles of residence
In health the numbers of measures are endless, such as iodine, mercury, polymers in stool, avg body weight.
Physical: Life expectancy, infant mortality, cancer, cardiac.
Gallons of Alcohol per person per year
Social: Teen pregnancy, Incarceration, employment rate, job changes career year, savings and capital surplus.
Dollars per capita for government, enforcement, and military
Dollars per capita for education, arts, social services.
Kilowatts per hour produced from power originated within ten miles, and within two hundred feet (walkable).
Square feet per household.
Miles traveled per person per year
Miles of airflight
Miles of additional rail capacity, both for travel and freight
Number of semi tractor trailer miles nationally, and by region
Percentage of power from solar, water, wind, fuel cell, combustible, petrochemical. Efficiency of prior.
Average weight, mpg, and life expectancy of cars.
Measure of manufacturing defects, ISO 9000 et al..
Mon, Continues 22 Oct 2012
Modalities, Review
Options are endless. So the point of entry is key. This is not political economy or a masters in business administration thesis or a complexity or adaptive systems construct, yet somehow each of those contain necessarily elements, and represent territory that must be, if not regarded, certainly not disregarded.
Planning and Feasibility. You can figure out needs and requirements.
Design. You can figure it out, letting others make what is determined.
Fabrication. You can make stuff.
Operations. You can run stuff
Logistics and Distribution. You can store it then get it to where it is going
Merchandising. You can select it and make it available
Sales and Marketing. You can promote it.
Governance. You can lead it and regulate it, determining access.
Communications. You can teach it or advocate, such as activism.
Military, Legal, Public Safety. You can force it and protect it.
Manufacturing. You can make it, by size and scale.
Finance. You can make it available, control growth and emergence, and measure or count it.
Medical. You can maintain the bodies of persons doing it with treatment.
Food. You can sustain it and nourish it using oceans, land, with fruits, vegetables, fish, game,
Resource. You can extract it, keep it, conserve it.
Energy. You can fuel it.
Art. You can enjoy, appreciate, and enhance it
Emotional. You can feel it, like it or dislike it: mad, glad, sad, afraid--pick one.
Communal. You can share it and nurture it.
Information. You can compute it, record it, process it.
Mon 22 Oct 2012
First Figure Out What Does Not Work, To Find What Works
Architects can endless spin out configurations, it is what we are trained for, enjoy, and do best. But most architects who are aware of the social aspects of architectural history--and architecture always, if anything embodies a social-political position, are all too painfully aware, that if another idea would create a new community, way of living, then so much which has already been formulated, deeply formulated, would have transformed the world each of the last twenty generations across easily the last six-hundred years. Many schemes have been formulated, proposed, and drawn up. Often very attractively, beautifully inside picture frames for marvel of skill and ingenuity.
Engineers have done similar things, and for a very long time. Think of Popular Mechanics Magazine in the last generation, then Omni, onto Wired Magazine, and dozens of variations permutating now through Google, FaceBook, Twitter, and WikiPedia. Search, persons, messages, and knowledge has been totally interconnected. The very word mutate, denotes evolution and articulation according to the needs of change over time. And on the physical side, as distinct from the informational side, great ingenuity is used to make things like race cars, music, sailboats, name your poison. Or, as Blaise Pascal said in his Pensées, ‘Life is distraction’, and ‘most of man’s ills can be traced to one single thing, and that is that he cannot stay in his room’.
Philosophers have over thousands of years similarly elaborated highly articulated mental constructs. Some arrived in dead ends, others built upon, refined, commentated, criticized, compared, and where practicable, instrumentalized. The great news of being a human is having a mind. And the bad news of being a human is having a mind. The mind endlessly recreates itself, and its primary advantage, and that being dematerialization, is that it can go forever, and deeply, and lead absolutely nowhere. And how utterly fascinating it all can be. You can be alone and do it, go nowhere, and do nothing, carry nothing. You don’t have to heat it or water it, but it just grows. Often it is written then printed, and kept.
Religious philosophers have also done similar things, crafting notions as to the nature of the soul or of love or of reality or conduct. They teach how to carry a broken heart, meet fear, meet darkness, all very good and necessary. But this as well has been shown to be limitation.
Whether policy and leadership constitutes a third variation, or an aspect of this second one, the world of ideas, is not critical, but whatever it is, from Moses to Aristotle, to Mo Tzu or Confucius--pick any of them, or Jefferson-Adams, or Ghandi and Martin Luther King, lots and lots of maps as to conduct, definitions of morality and conduct, determination of value, and frameworks for improvement.
Again, if having a map meant you were still not totally lost, or at least not seriously confused meant that you knew where you were and what to do, if that was the criteria of sufficiency, again, much if not all would be resolved. As is said here, great sophistication exists, and is diffused across major domains like education, militarization, communication, diplomacy, culture and self expression.
Men and women can hold meetings, fly around in airplanes attending far off and significant conferences, make resolutions, accords, protocols. It is all dust. It is basically all talk.
Gurdjieff was eloquent on this point, saying that there are those who are utterly eloquent about awakening, while being utterly and irrevocably asleep themselves. The same thing exists in humanitarianism, running off with prostitutes between speeches or yelling at administrative aids. We have all met those persons. Or ask any number of morbidly obese persons about dieting, and they can tell you exactly what to do and with great articulation, they have the books, the tapes, the equipment, the calendars and schedules.
This is all what is called Wisdom.
So we have two things not to do: not to figure out another gizmo, plenty exist already, and not to create another policy, plenty of those exist already also.
This leads to action. Action has its own problems. You set out to go somewhere, organize efforts, get equipment and arrange group effort, but shoot for the wrong planet or continent, and you wind up in the wrong part of the galaxy or wrong ocean, but went exactly in the direction as planned, maybe even on schedule.
This leads to discrimination, which is figuring out what to do, in what order, and by degree of importance. This is about surveying the field, accessing the value chain, and finding key points of effectiveness.
How this is different or if it is different than more configurations, more ideas, more policies, more initiatives is beyond me, at least right now, but I am asking the question. This is my question.
Late Sunday, Early Monday 22 Oct 2012
More Thoughts from another master
Steve Ruden, long discussion tonight, where he said that all sustainability needs three things to be successful: art, community, and ecology. It struck me how I had completely missed art or what called be craft, or aesthetics, all despite my intensive training. Or, as Robert Schore says, be sure to enjoy yourself. I did mention skills, but skill can be artless, such as jackhammering. I am sure there are Zen heavy equipment operators, just that the traces are not visible. I am sure some criminals use art, in major theft. Anyway...
He also mentioned ecology, which in retrospect, was so heavily used in the 70’s and 80’s that it was all too easy to think that we had moved far beyond all that. We have not. The nice thing about that term is, that it embraces nature, and humans interacting with nature, weather, habit, extraction. Ecology is a balance of factors. Imbalance is not ecology, but dissipation. Ecology is self regulating, where inflows and outflows are in equilibrium.
I knew to call Steven, the perennial student of community and organizational development, not to mention inner development. This touches the great chain of being, not from mineral, to chemical, biologic, plant, animal, human, planetary, divine. He is rather part of the view of relationships with our interior, parental, familial, intimate, communal, social, cultural, and global parts, progressed from inner to outer, hazy to concrete, small to large. And as he demonstrates, there are things you can expect at each stage.
Years ago, he talked about how in leadership or degrees of influence, you can see seven levels, or Copes law, such as rank and file workers, those who supervise them, those who operate that environment, determining its decisions. That makes three.
Level four leaders set direction for entire large scale businesses, cities, intellectual innovation. They control capital, set opinion, and persuade and embody. They lead ideas and events and create the things of the world. They control power. Level five leaders are leaders of leaders. That is CEO’s, national level leaders, major media figures. It takes a certain type of person to control controllers, a skill all to its own. The military is an apt illustration of this. Levels six might be a world leader, or a major capital accumulator or controller or billionaire, or rare creative force. Level seven might be a historic figure, or someone who beyond framing a world or region or domain, frames major paradigm shifts or creates entirely new things, like a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos. Such a person in the arts might create an entire new movement, whereas in level six, these are the supreme exponents of these great forces, the ones who lead, but they do not originate things, however high up, do not envision them. Level six are the top persons, but level seven creates sea changes or are totally millennial, setting entire new domains, or do what has never been done, not just doing it better than all others, as a musician or athlete or explorer can do.
He always said, that you can pretty much expect people to be what they are. This, it seems to me, must--however unclearly--contain a key or pointer as to resolving large scale, high level sustainability. The expectation of the system not only NOT to improve, but to plan on its not improving, as I am increasingly taking as a position, means you plan for failure.
We keep talking about success, like it is a foregone conclusion. The single thing about current times which most alarms me, is the total lack of fear, utter fear or collapse. Which is certain to come. Not if, but when.
My position is that instead of saying, we will be successful, given resources and intelligence and development but might, in the following ways, be at risk, is that instead of that, say we can expect serious outages, great disruption, plan on it, and it is in these ways which we can prepare--electric outage, water shortage, food shortage, power disruption, exogenous geopolitical shocks, and only then, in XYZ ways might work around it, using PDQ tools, policies, fixes, components.
Steve also explicated about Ideology and imperialistic drives. He talked about the long sweep from Russian, to France, to The British Empire, and the long sweep of the industrial revolution promising efficiencies and life saving energy, instead giving bondage, subservience, impoverishment, marginalisation.
I noted that this has gone on today, to include Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola.
I noted to Steven as well as Fred Drohsler, that if Google or Apple wanted to put highly efficient, light, inexpensive cars into AutoCad or CadCam, that the requests to farm out production to Asia, nearly overnight, on a broad scale, could be done nearly overnight, shipped to the USA, integrated, fabricated, to market.
This is done in computing all the time. Cupertino California smokes its computers late into the night, purchase orders and agreements are put into place, and the workers in large cities in China are got out of bed to work sixteen hour shifts to get it out fast, right away, without delay. The engineers model the workflow, the container ships scheduled, the liner board printed, the instruction manuals printed, lightning fast. This is not a matter of speculation. Cisco designs it, it is build, shipped, sold, assembled, connected. Virtualized. Apple puts out a design fix, on an antenna, and they start on it within three weeks.
Detroit used to take five or six years, to mock up a car in wood, then prototypes from experimentation, then it was three years was a big step, then 18 months. Similarly Hollywood.
Youth at puberty at age eleven now, whether it be hormones in food, crowding, lack of exercise. Life is fast.
Wed 10 Oct 2012
INTELLIGENCE:
Sustainability. A Great Opportunity
Wind is relatively constant if not frequent in specific locations, and subject to generating power.
Sunlight is relatively constant from June to September in the northwest, and not completely absent in October, as well as April and May. The well known rainy then cloudy weather of the Pacific Northwest really issues from the last few days of October, constantly till late February, after which, while nevertheless still continuing, is not nearly as constant or heavy. This makes but four months of inclemencies, when of course ‘it all comes at once’ (not quite true, but certainly lot of it), with about three more of bad weather. But the three months of June, July, August, plus, let us say 2/3rds of September, ½ of June, ⅓ rd of May, 1/4th of April, and 1/4th of October, if not more, gives you five months or more of good to great weather. Not so bad.
Water. Water poses a serious problem worldwide. Well night, proving the point, even here in the Pacific Northwest, if there were any serious power outage, between May and October, would result in great hardship, with millions not having convenient access--if any--to water. If this can exist here, then what does this say for the rest of the temperate world?
Mindful conscious development, intelligent design. Whether it be tidal control up the Thames River in London, vast networks of dikes, and tidal control off the coast of The Netherlands and key points within and around Rotterdam in the Amsterdam area, the benefits of thoughtful, far reaching planning then investment, construction, and operations is shown clearly.
Global Warming. The inevitable rise of the oceans is certain. It is not a matter of if but when. This is clear. Tremendous installed base of urbanization exists along coastal areas, with a full 85% of world population in urbanized areas, with the top thirty cities along comprising about 10% of the entire world population. While not all of these areas are coastal, many are or affect or are affected by those areas. Great capital investment, not to mention culture and society exists there.
Labor Markets and Capital. Neither Romney nor President Obama mean harm. Both seek to approach similar problems from different ends of the spectrum, and capable or not, while realization of these plans if not dreams is most unlikely, the core idea of matching the labor to the resources to the needs is totally correct.
Policy. We could go chicken and egg--is it lack of leadership that creates such a gigantic void in policy, or is it the lack of insight then will, motivation to inquire then create then execute policy, which makes leadership so very ineffective does not matter. The Buddhas was asked, ‘is the soul eternal or temporal’, by the assembly around him. ‘Of what use are these questions’, he asked. But seek for yourself the understanding of suffering, the acceptance of it, the way beyond it, and so on’. What is it called in Sanskrit, neti neti, not this not that.
Great Ideas. Great ideas help galvanize action. What is the saying in ACIM, a Course In Miracles: ‘Nothing Real Can Be Threatened’.
Thur 11 Oct 2012
INTELLIGENCE: knowing what to do. Active intelligence: knowing what to do and doing it. Active Intelligence Here and Now: knowing what to do and doing it, moving past discussion into practical, concrete action. Other possible names: Sustainable Intelligence. Sustainable Intelligence: Action that works.
Along With All That: Several acronyms encapsulate major other parts of society and settlement that are a part of all problems and solutions. First, FFF which stands for food, fuel, finance. These feed the body, transportation systems, and capital as a means of commerce. Second TMT, which stands for technology, media, telecom. There could be others such as based on four general categories such as the special technology supporting a world of extraction, production, and distribution: the stuff that makes the world, the things people use, the stuff that is made, and getting it around, putting it somewhere, and commensurating it:
Special Knowledge Consumer Production Conveyances
Technology Medical Manufacturing, or Consumer Durables Retail
Semiconductor Personal Products, or Consumer Non-Durables Food Finance
Biotech Industrial Utilities
Basic Materials Housing
Services Entertainment Energy Transport
With all that, comes an obvious array of non-commercial infrastructure, but nevertheless necessary as the world is today:
Education Agriculture and Land Government Regulation
Military
This is all a roundabout way of saying that even the best of sustainability occurs within the world as it is today. It is like saying even an enlightened person has to walk next to criminals, the disturbed, the unpleasant or willfully unhealthy, or uneducated. Or as my Guru Joy once said, ‘Enlightenment is embodied in physicality’.
Climates and Culture:
Sustainability does not occur in a vacuum, and is always embedded in an ecology, historic, and social system, each adapted to a time, place, people, and ethos. Cultural anthropology is not our point here, which is best left to others, so very important as it is. What does matter is to distinguish that all the heat and cold, north and south, desert and forest or temperate each demand their own unique solutions, adapted to the habits and material life dictated by those peoples and places and resources.
Here To Stay:
Materialism generally does not have the most positive connotations. But the stuff of the world, its infrastructure, major urbanization, harvesting whether large or small, settlement, refuse is here to stay. So then the question is what is the best way to deal with it?
Major problems are where does everyone live, and in what? How do you get around, with the least impact, read cost or harm? What do you eat, how do you get it, and how do you keep it? What do people do and what do they do it in, when not home? This is all basic--you live somewhere, you are in movement, then you go somewhere, and meet somebody, and you do things.
Everywhere there are buildings, capital, human bodies, food, land, and stuff. Its really a lot more simple than is commonly thought.
Roles: I do not necessarily have to base the next big step in my life doing all this, that is to say planning, creating, refining, or delivering sustainability. That is also NOT to say that I am not to do one of them or all of them. The point is, is that there are many ways to work at this large endeavour, making the world a better place, at the material level. Others can provide the goods and services that distinguish or characterize our world.
I could for example simply help plan this, leaving others to do. I can help shape policy, and let others plan. I can take the policies of others, and help structure them, to ready for action. I can be an activist, staying more or less out of production and planning. I could be front and center and communicate or lead it. I can take the plans of others and what they make, and help furnish it, by coordinating it. Coordination takes the plans of others and executes them. I could manage projects or enterprises, which is taking a plan and figuring out what needs to be done, how fast, in what order, with whom, and in what way. Creativity is beyond coordination and project management, but sources projects and enterprise. Then finally communication, where you help everyone know what is going on, ask for help or money, or gather resources such as skills, material.
I could evangelize sustainability. I can help protect it, which I suppose is evangelism, but whereas the prior is to generate energy, the latter is to protect what has been gathered.
I can make the things of sustainability, design them, construct them, contract administer them. I can measure their quality. I can help proportion them. I can hold others to compliance or help govern them. I can publicize them or write about them. I can teach sustainability, or theorize it.
But more talk is the last thing needed, really.
Problems and Opportunities, a Long Inventory:
Wind power, beyond large scale infrastructure. The gigantic, capital intensive, long lead use of wind farms cannot be faulted. But this does not mean small scale wind is not to be thought of or used.
Solar: throughout America, across a wide variety of climates far greater use of solar can be made. This also does not have to mean gigantic, high tech devices and panels, but simple tanks in the sun with tubing to storage vessils.
Water: Again, large scale municipal water makes a lot of sense in lot of ways. But at the same time, the chicken and egg problem of pollution, heavy transport, and sanitation makes this a gigantic problem. Simply put, major use of local, immediate water is a major opportunity. This means smart, adaptive, easy to use filtration.
Fisheries and habitat:
Conservation, Sanctuaries:
Air:
Soil: remediation
Erosion
Land:
Disposal:
Coastal:
Marine Construction, water control:
Rising Oceans:
Forestry:
Tidal Power
Energy Extraction:
Animal Husbandry, Brazilian gas-off to name but one.
Global warming: peat gas-off
Affordable Housing, or tiny houses.
Scale:
You make a project too big, too all inclusive, and you guarantee that it will remain theory, which is more or less just more talk, more writing, more gridlock: ‘We have tried this for forty years, we cannot get it through’.
At the same time, if you just jump onto the first horse you see, you might be taken where you don’t want to go or need to go. This takes a measure of planning.
The key is to bridge the large and small, best accomplished by an array of achievable projects, which are not too long term, but also not so compelled by immediacy, no step back is taken and asked, is this what we really want to do, and is this the right way.
Take a simple refrigerator: how often is a room air conditioned, even in the fall, with power equipment in a room pouring heat into that room? This is incredibly common. Or how often is a refrigerator in a heated room, configured to cool or freeze food, no where near an outside wall, with ample coolant or BTU’s available directly to an outside area? But for eighty years, this is the way in our world. Who needs to bother?
Now with global warming, pollution, overpopulation, industrialization, the previous cost dispersed over time can no longer be hidden, as we approach the certain tipping point, not if, but as we often say, when: the next Roman Empire, British Empire, Easter Island, Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs? Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Tang Dynasty, and lastly, the Tokugawa Period of Japan, where the more or less highly organized society after the Warring States Period popularized in Samurai movies, slowly disintegrated into corruption, laziness, and social decay, read exploitation. The current ‘haves and have nots’--the privileged and entitled, then the disadvantaged and disempowered.
Today we see the same, culminating in fiscal stimulus, The Bank Bailout, Deficit Spending, National Debt--massive borrowing and spending.
Fri 12 Oct 2012
Roles and Functions
Sitting in the back but actively:
Working in a humble, simple, low stress job which is enjoyable, non-harming, if not helpful to other persons, working alongside of or for good people.
While doing so, evangelizing, as a blogger, activist, public spokesperson, committed to appropriate change, correct values, sustainable configurations of housing, food provision, health, education, entertainment, useful technology, spiritual transformation, then integration, into transmission.
Sitting with those doing what needs doing:
Working anywhere in sustainability, whether it be energy efficiency, conservation, social services, clean-up, preservation, products (i.e. filtration--its great to collect water, well, some of it is undrinkable if untreated), services (energy audits, re-engineering or something so simple as retrofit--insulation, new windows, weather stripping, efficiency, additions), demolition.
Some are policy, some are making, some are figuring out or configuration, some are soft such as interacting with persons (the disabled, mentally ill, addicted, rehabilitation), some have nothing to do with choosing a modality or domain such as making, talking, moving, renovation, but rather are functionalities or roles or involve specific skills such are communication, high level support, coordination, project management, sales and marketing.
Then a whole slew of other things such as financing all this, checking it, recording it or reporting it, protecting it (security, risk management) maintenance and scheduled upkeep, an endless opportunity for someone who is thorough and tenacious, as I am.
Markets
Seattle is a gigantic market, and a truly confused place, if not pretty much non-functional. At the same time, the PEOPLE of Portland are much more what most of the broader United States thinks of Seattle as being: approachable, caring, directed. The scale here is also much more feasible.
Sectors and Degrees of Commerce
Retail is obvious--you walk in the door, or have a website, and an array of carefully selected and presented products are provided. Or you offer a service, and go somewhere to do it, or others come to you, in a room or a building. Those are clear cut.
Another level is where you provide to the providers, aka wholesaling or resellers--making the middle between producers, to sellers, to consumers or end users. This is more than just storage, shipment, and profitability, but involves the intelligent combination of carefully selected components, saving retailers, end users, or providers the labor intensive effort of having to first get familiar with then latter research, then ultimately obtain then utilize and replenish those goods and services. Much work is involved, and sometimes its cheaper or more efficient to have others do it for you, saving energy, time, and money ‘to do what it is’ that we or you ‘do best’. This goes under the classic ‘knowing what business you are in’.
You don’t have to make it or furnish it, but you talk about it, then educate about it, and then at the highest level, lead it. An entirely different are is, govern or regulate it.
You can own it or develop it. Or invest in it, or capitalize it.
You can sell it, or promote it.
You can transport it.
You can build it, in the trades or contract it.
Sun 14 Oct 2012
Logical Relationships
Possibilities and alternative are so endless, that without a sense of hierarchy, or logical progression to help sort it out, you are certain to get lost. Shoot for the moon, or more to the point, for example as far off a place as Saturn, and you can be sure that while you will win big if you have the right target or objective, such a gigantic and long range effort will be fruitless, and of great waste if you come out empty handed. If all it were, were spiritual awakening, then yes, truly you could say that even total loss is great instruction, for all leads to awakening. But this about more than making money or waking up, the two extremes of human states. This is about helping the world, and having a great journey while doing so.
At the same time if you are too close to home, picking the low lying fruit, while certain to be attainable, also might not be transformative. The problems of a fossil fuel culture, based on packaged food, petrochemical transport, power produced by coal, nuclear, heating oil, water produced through capital intensive processes, are vast. No time can be wasted, in a sinking boat.
So we can rank problems, starting from the largest. Face the worst, largest, most complicated, most expensive, most toxic, most socially disruptive, most tense problems first. This is top down thinking. Or we can wait to face the most difficult and/or largest problems last, building our strength, or taking profit, and add those profits according to budgeted money, or time conserving, or energy efficient. We can start locally and individually, by elements, according to immediate, realizable needs, which is bottoms up thinking.
The first takes too long, and is too difficult. The prior does not make enough difference, and does not take on enough.
Scale
It seems to be that a key aspect is the matter of scale, that is to say approaching problems of size enough to matter and attract the greatest energy possible, which is human energy--where there is a will there is a way, while keeping close enough to practical reality and available resources, to avoid drifting off into theory.
Ecclesiastes, of Great learning, there is weariness of flesh, chasing after wind. This is the danger of being so creative that you can endless imagine or project. At the same time, if you are so close to the routines and habitual patterns of daily life that you stay enmeshed, they you are as it is said, ‘if I always do what I always did, then I will get what I always got.
This means taking a long list of problems, patterns, and alternatives, a needs analysis as it were, and figuring out which are the best ones.
When Jeff Bezos, of Amazon founder kind, drove across the US in a hatchback, with little property and probably money, he knew that he wanted to sell a product on the web, and had four products in mind. He chose books. I once told a young man, who left Amazon early on, but with thousands of options he had been granted, ‘Amazon is just a book company, you cannot make money at that’, he just giggled, and I do mean out load. He was a tester, and a gifted one. What did he know then that I only know now? Amazon has made a vast distribution systems, with conveyer belts, regionally based distribution facilities, and now sells hundreds of products on the web. What happened? They learned how to do it. And having done so, could replicate it.
Teach a man how to fish!
Then Steve Jobs. A story so well known, as to only mention one characteristic juncture. After being thrown out of Apple, they asked for him back. He could be self centered, difficult, downright surly. But how many times did he confront someone, sending them from his office, told to do it again, ‘is this the best that you can do’, only to come back, the same, four times. Then the fifth time, now you know. Lets start here.
He said, get rid of all this. We will only build four devices, a consumer one, a high end one for performance, a smaller one, and a hand held one. This was a strategy of deliberate focus. This is what I mean for energy.
The Order of Things
You need water to be able to work, but to be able to get water, you need energy. To be able to work, you need shelter. To house, you need materials, and to get those you need food, which takes energy. In a society of division of labor, matched by specialized skills, you are talking transport, moving persons, moving products, moving food.
Too close a circle, and this is limitation. Too far, and this is great expense, which lacks intelligence. This far off circle creates diversity, of things and persons and ideas and attitudes, which makes for more invention and innovation, makes for learning.
* * *
Ripeness
Even the best ideas, in the most intelligent sequence can result in nothing. People have to be ready, and persons live in a society of habits, obligations, existing technologies, and ways of material life.
You can start ripping up the major roadways and breeding horses, mandating micro gardens and raising then slaughter of local game under force of local ordinance, heavily tax fuel and, with that, first educate then reward anything that is low impact and regional if not territorial, but this cannot be done all at once.
Here Are Some Starting Thoughts
Getting rid of, or is it, reducing the extent of large scale transport.
This is a major part of this de-industrialization.
No need to reinvent the wheel, ‘Think globally, act locally’:
Micro rails, which is quite a step down from lightweight rail. With that, Bicycles, and walking trails.
One step at a time:
Tiny houses, energy efficiency therein including solar, earth birming.
Where do they all go, and what do they do? Something to do for everyone:
Small Schools, and with that, vocational training for those who have a part of life wasted in school outside the obvious need to basic reading, writing, basic math, basic history.
Get out of the chair:
Its great to talk about cost of healthcare, mental health, social decay.
Obesity is a major problem, for example, the simplicity of ‘have you ever had a really good salad?’ and ‘have you ever heard a flock of birds in a tree at dusk?’
• People are justly upset, being marginalized, feeling betrayed, or with nowhere to go, or nothing of value to do. There is plenty to do, but it must be led, and leadership is a combination of experience, eldership, wisdom, and foresight. Alcohol, drugs, medications, widespread smart phones and televisions similarly numbing down, shopping malls, there are many forms of altered states. There are better forms of occupation, but they must be re-seeded back into the culture, difficult to impossible.
• The lack of community is a major problem. This is a major source of mental disturbance. Of course the severely mentally ill cannot be recovered by mere programs, but an enormous persons on the margin can be swung out of the slippery slope with care.
• Never mind going down to the village square, to lead a discussion, just trying knocking on your neighbors door, or asking them for a ride. The areas in which we are all separate is gigantic. The key is to encourage persons to gather, but this is a puzzle going back to biblical times. As my guru Joy once said, ‘The closer people get, the messier its going to be’, you can be sure of that. Give me an alternative. I have none. Its called the work of life.
It seems a lot easier for the government to say that obesity is a major problem, or lack of education, which leds to things like changing food and drinks in school, encouraging physical recreation. It is a lot easier to say, we will all learn to read better, and afford more practice. Both of these have the benefit of being specific and measurable, and more to the point, socially desirable.
It is a harder thing to say, and equally as beneficial, at least in the long run: we will reverse engineer health, into saying we will reduce annual miles driven person, number of airline flights, kilowatts per family per year, truckloads of solid waste per household per year, more tonnage of freight used by railcar while reducing truckloads per mile, number of violent crimes and numbers of incarcerations.
So the positive side is: X amount of high mile per gallon cars, in the next five years such as twenty million cars, Y percent of houses made for under five-hundred square feet, Z number of refrigerators at currently one third the current average size, 40% increase of fresh food, and heavy reduction of frozen food sections. Similarly:
A hours of class time in basic cooking, B. reduction of commercial facilities without access to natural air, and effecting air conditioning, a heavy demand on electric power, C. percentage of water provided by water collection on average, within P feet of a residence, D. improvement in water quality, in Q number of watersheds, E. so many linear feet of major tidal infrastructure, in M, N, O, and P major ports, reducing major projected capital loss upon the part of major metropolitan areas, from inevitable raising oceans, F. amount of land increased for Federal and State Park preservation.
Late Sunday, Early Monday 15 Oct 2012
Components Versus Aggregation
There is a big distinction between large scale mass production and what can be termed ad hoc components. The prior is distinguished by having components which are highly engineered, produced in a volume to spread the cost of that engineering over many iterations, passing those savings over to the manufacturing process, allowing more ingenuity if not refinement into those products. Secondly, this allows for efficiencies of labor, allowing further cost reductions. Thirdly, this allows larger scale capital accumulation to both be directed at, and potentially produced from this endeavour.
But there is another side, and this focus, and these efficiencies , refinement, and investments do not win in all cases. The design, production, distribution, and operating process, not to mention formal infrastructure of policy, measures, controls, need to retain skilled workers, not to mention legal, accounting, and risk control elements take longer, and can become fixed costs. You need work, to generate more work, the very virtuous cycle which taken Ad infinitum lead to the capital intensive, extractive, exploitive process that ‘got us into this mess in the first place. Yikes.
Localized intelligence means you can build it yourself, contract out the parts you cannot make or the special labor you cannot perform, adapted to the landscape, climate, capacity needs (read power level), and workflow structured around other obligations, that is to say, can be started and stopped. Interruption from a cost perspective can be pernicious, whereas spiritually, this is where magic can occur. When you cannot do what you think you want to do, and find new things, or are held for a better time, more in tune with the rhythms of your body, environment, social network, the seasons, your mood or interest.
This lower scale can be carried. And what cannot be carried, is not of such enormous cost, from travel at a distance, read large scale factories, distribution centers, large scale trucking and freight, regulation, competition if you will.
So there is this trade off: very smart, takes a long time, and highly competitive, and thus highly monetized. Then there is less refined, but able to be put in place or installed more quickly, suited to the needs of persons and resources nearby (or at least not so far away), and self regulation, self organizing.
This is the essence of the problem of sustainability. Do it right, take forever, more study, more discussion, more obstruction and criticism, or do it funky, here and now, errors are sure to occur, less connections in the social network to permute through.
Monday 15 Oct 2012
Sustaining Sustainability
Be specific, be concrete, be practical. If ideation is taken in its natural direction, that is all it will ever be. There is a reason the term mental masturbation exists.
As wonderful as sustainability is, its also a kind of war, said from a chess perspective, where the world is made up of influence, control, capital, and needs be met by clear tactics, and tactics by strategy, strategy by resolve to action, resolve to action by will, will by moral and spiritual correctness. Doing the right thing. Build it and they will come. The world will beat a path to your door--Cleveland, Zurich, Calcuta, Tacoma, low to high, poor to mundane. Does not matter where you are. What you do is what matters, in what way, and with whom.
So in this war, which first must be less about making a world as help usher in the end of this one, not by violence or force, but great intelligence, in exercising discernment, as to what inevitably will go, at what speed, and in what order.
Scale is what matters, and from that, sequence.
Scale means the things that are too small will produce little, result in nothing of consequence. Scale also means vast, far reaching plans, however great, will gridlock in massive coalition, discussion, need for consensus, the very place we keep getting stuck.
So this war is not a physical one, but a gigantic tug of war from the powers of current vested interest, to those who can see. There have always been those who could see. This is not new. But now the need to see and what is seen is the folly of the force of ignorance on such a massive scale, as to produce a suffocation which is now intolerable. This is not Communism, or Marxism, but simple clarity, rooted in physicality.
The only thing the current powers can understand are raw facts, so many acres, bushels, dollars, truckloads, railcars, megawatts, gallons per minute, board feel, pounds per square inch or foot, numbers of gallons per tonnage per mile .
Key Measures
The Kyoto accord was doomed to fail, but is credited with making specific the measure of carbon footprint reduction, or deceleration, but had the benefit of being clear and specific.
Goal is, in policy, set a clear measure of so many persons, so many BTU’s, so many acres of garden, so many hours allocated to this activity, in making the shift. You can also add so many vehicles, so many houses, so many hours of basic medical care, child care, proper education. Reduction of military, and roadway, and truck or intermodal transport.
You do not say, make this world this way, which is too inconceivable, but take the world as it is, and say, this is the world, and reduce such a percent, like weight loss.
At three hundred and forty five pounds, at five foot five, that it is morbid is beyond question, but the goal to get a hair below three hundred is a very great accomplishment, and more than the fact, is the direction of change. So here--less trucks, less gas, less consumption, more good sense in health, education, community, etc. We all know what that is. Knowing is the last thing we need, but a clear pathway and direction.
My direction is to find the proper direction, this is what I do best as a planner, analyst, communicator, coordinator, evangelist, implementor.
My direction is not to find the proper direction, not for me, but for the world, which needs to get it in the hands of those who can do, want to do, and will do. My job is high level clarification, which sounds a lot like government, which I do not want to do. There is better for me to focus on, but inevitably, if what I say is to grown, it must include rules, owners of capital, and those who make opinion.
Again, not for today, but what can be started today, as a step on a very long journey.
Guilds
The wisdom of gatherings of like minded persons........
centered on skills, productivity, knowledge, succession, craft...........
Late Monday, Early Tuesday 16 Oct 2012
Three Fundamental Attributes Which Are Constant
The way you reduce down an enterprise or effort is to compress everything down to a small handful of major categories. Categories can be endless, and the more you have, the less value does the system have, which is meant to parse things into recognizable components or functionalities.
This really gets into the fundamentals of heuristics, or what can be called integrative or systems system, aka whole systems. This is important, but not our subject now.
Three things are constant in sustainability. You know this is true, because you will find them in any other fourth or fifth or, for that matter, tenth component or concern.
First you have know how. You can have all the money and leadership or governance in the world, and not have invention and application. Know how tells you what to do, upon what, in what way. It is skill, creativity, experience, accumulated knowledge. This aggregates in communities of knowledge or learning communities. Locally in history this existed, grew, and was maintained in guilds, much later in industries and trades.
Second you have capital. Money is delayed consumption, gathered either by a person or enterprise, so that goods and services may be obtained latter, at a distance, or more or less the same, to unknown parties, that is to say, in a market. Capital is liquid and commensurates something very hard to capture, and that is effort.
Third you have governance. Policy tells you what you can do. All the money in the world will not buy and idea which great numbers of society opposes or more or less cannot imagine. At the same time, when for example everyone uses plastic shopping bags, someone somewhere leads and says, do we really need all these bags? The harm is greater than the good, and we must prohibit it. This cannot be done overnight, but consensus is generated then change occurs. Policy is the expression of governance, whereby what is needed and wanted is formally realized. It is studied, and right or wrong is cast.
You can have a large group of persons who decide, social or political will, but lacking capital, ideas cannot be realized.
You can have great invention, but need persons to execute, which is labor, which contains invention.
You can have capital, but lack invention, then you have either stagnant or wasted human energy, which we know is all too common, examples being foremost military, luxury consumer products, and institutionalised health care (read document, don’t treat, and by all means, make protection against risk paramount, even at the cost of results).
Continuing these six permutations or vortices from three points, we round out the next three: You can have an idea whose time has come, where opinion has resolved the timeliness of something ready to give birth, but lacking skill or know how this will is immobilized.
You can have wealth, and with it, know how, but lacking social will not have sufficient traction to provide what money cannot, the motivation of persons who will work with great persistence, with or without money.
You can have innovation, greatly conceived ideas, uncanny cleverness, but lacking financial backing, the desire to sacrifice, and these notions remain mere thoughts.
Of course this is circular logic, but the main thing is money alone, or social will alone, or skills alone are not enough. It is a three legged stool and this is stability, and stability is strength, and stable strength is sustainable. That is what we are talking about. Structure which is self organized. Missing persons, money and invention will attract them. Missing capital, people and invention will go find it. Missing ideas, money and people will develop them and find them.
The key is that whatever is sustained, will always find the three, and if one weakens, will call forth the other two. It is an equilibrium.
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
//////////////////////////////////
from: David Korn davidkorn.specialprojects@gmail.com
to: Fred Drohsler
cc: Yasser Seirawan , Robert Jolly, Marino Kuper
date: Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 2:39 PM
subject: Guys design their own wind turbines - started a company
Dear Fred, Thank you.
These guys are on the right track--cars, hilltops, houses, there are many ways to individuate this.
This is exactly what I see. Small scale, localized power. This needs to be the way--NOT large wind farms with episodes of small ones, but lots of small ones, adumbrated by very large ones when and if practicable.
Its not that the gigantic, large scale ones are not appropriate, more to emphasize that small scale ones can be reproduced in volume, easily shipped and erected, and permitted then erected quickly. These large ones, get caught up in ecological, habitat, land use, and regulatory tangles.
The point is, not that this can only occur, for example, in coastal areas off Labrador or extremely windy places in Oregon and Wyoming (some of the most windy in the United States, all great choices, you see them driving cross country. They are stunning in size, quantity, and location). but extensively.
It seems to me, the key here is making it a habit, omnipresent. The land based units, to me, are of far greater use than the vehicular ones, being more stable. Land things can make moving things, not vice versa
I am grateful for your sending this, you provide great leads. Please keep the good stuff coming. Thank you.
Warmly, dk
PS (1) Marino is a friend in the chess world, a very good man, and after studying law, went into urban planning. Remarkable as it is, he is not Italian! He is very up to date and within the limits of being a father (in the Netherlands, many mothers work part time, if I understand right), taking care of his two boys on Fridays, and active on weekends with his children on the weekends, he is a great resource, if but to look over out shoulders from his country as a leader in alternate power, tidal work, and near Germany, etc. Smart is the word for all this.
This is the most valuable work today which can be done. His German is very good, but assume you only write it with labor, despite being able to converse very well. His English is very good now, after years of writing me back and forth.
(2) Anything you send will be saved. I just made folders in my browser, in Google Chrome, for
1. Whole systems and policy, 2. capital, 3. skills,
4. Water, 5. solar, 6. wind, 7. marine,
8. Food-gardening-green, 9. land use, 10. globalism,
11. Electric-fuel cell, 12. transport, 13. Computing and Communications.
Rounds off at a healthy thirteen (5).
(3) While running last night, and you know I am serious, I am trying to think of a way to contact Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros. Of course, if I shoot too high, will fail. But I also need to consider the level of the miraculous.
If I can fight Xerox in the negative, or alternately, gotten close to speaking for an entire nation or coordinating for a Princess in the positive, why can I not do it for an entire effort? Then I am not dependent on one person or institutions game.
(4) To become a healer, heal yourself first. Then look around you.
(5) Please remind me if I miss a major category. To me, these are obvious ones.
Bcc: DJ, RS. I will not be copying DJ and Robert (Not Robert Jolly, but the 'other Robert', Schore) in all cases, out of respect for their focus primarily on helping patients and others, as well as their own immediate environment such as home and garden, but nevertheless will do so periodically for their awareness on this new endeavour, but selectively, if but to just suggest tone or direction, since they are major helpers.
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Fred Drohsler wrote:
Fred Drohsler, architect
1-607-__________ mobile
Fred_____________.com
Begin forwarded message:
From: af________________@verizon.net
Date: October 11, 2012 12:48:16 AM EDT
To: fredd_______________.com
Subject: Love these guys - decided to design their own wind turbines - started a company
and they drive a test model to simulate the wind !!!!!
Wind energy - a godsend:
'Windenergie - ein Geschenk des Himmels'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbjDJJ4OK-M
Thur 17 Oct 2012
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Psychological Nutritionist DZ Zentner, and Robert Schore MD, DO of Gig Harbor WA. In addition to being long time great friends and consummate and gifted healers, without their help none of this would have been possible.
Special thanks to Registered Architect Fred W. Drohsler of Oneonta NY, for reawakening me from long sleep and firing me back to the intelligence and great need for sustainability. Thank you. Thank you also to my deceased father, Alfred E. Korn who demonstrate correctness, strength, and generosity and his lovely remaining wife, Carol Korn.
Rounding out the ten of my real family and brain-trust: Special thanks also to the best friends in the world who always stood by me, alphabetically: Fred Drohsler RA, Tom Fallat of Sound Sound Studios & Savage Fruitarian Productions and Evan Konecky of 206 Media LLC, Marino Kuper Gemeente Heusden, Robert Jolly Esq, Steven Ruden Analysis, and International Chess Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan. Thank you also for irritation when needed.
Thank you also to Princess Lady Selah' SuJuris and her people of The Ojibwe Nation for reminding me that I could do, and was still far more than I knew. Similarly for President John Hagerty and members of The West Orange Chess Club NJ, and CEO Aaron Ketner of ITP 360, Cloud Provider. Thanks also to friends Harry S. Katz, Steve Natko.
Thank you to teachers of a lifetime, deceased Dean of The Cooper Union, John Hejduk Architect and master teacher Malcolm S. Clark of James Caldwell High School and Southern Pines NC, Guru Joy Gilbert, and Zen Master Dae Soen Sa Nim. I also wish to acknowledge my mother, for teaching me to always speak the truth, even if it hurts, and it is when you are most afraid, that is when you need to move forward. This has caused me no end of problems.
The real problem with acknowledgements, is that the more you add--and its really hard to stop once you really get going--is that the more you find missing, and find it unjust to leave out, yet do not wish to draw most special attention upon the priceless few.
Final thanks alike to first Morgan Stanley then certainly Lowes for powerfully demonstrating everything about what not to do. Many who I acknowledge would strongly recommend against what I am about to say, except that it is key to this work and completely is true: And that is that similarly and most recently, to note that it was the direct example of _________________ of the great cost of lack of morals, disregard for the lives of persons, and great ignorance if not stupidity, providing the last bit of great energy to make the last big push to the need for sustainability for persons, nature, and systems as the only step to be taken for humanity.
The rest is silence.
Fri 19 Oct 2012
My Goal
I am reminded to focus intensely on my goal, and to enjoy the journey.
My goal is to live my life in harmony with the world around me, living comfortably self supporting, while making a major contribution to world sustainability, with a focus upon simple, direct, repeatable affordable, small scale, low impact housing, integrated to water and air quality, tied to appropriate food, land use, and habitats. To preserve nature while generating social and economic structures which are life enhancing. Preservation! Conservation. Health. Fulfillment.
--
http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkorn
+206 284-2722 Mobile
“Special Projects: Focus upon continuous
improvement for end users and project needs"
Late Fri, Early Sat 20 Oct 2012
Basic Elements, Basic Steps, Fundamental Components
Small house
Energy efficient, lightweight, small cars
Lightweight windmills
Easy to instal solar panels
Small refrigerators and other appliances, notably washer/dryer, stoves, microwaves
Rain barrels and filtration
Lightweight, small scale batteries or fuel cells
Efficient, small scale, contained sanitation
Special Projects
Tidal power
Offshore wind farms
Solid waste disposal and recycling.
Context
Land Use, Habitats
Food
Water
Efforts
Clean up, especially major roadways and rivers
Work for youth
Part time work for the elderly
Softer Concerns
Education
Medical
Other Areas
Military
Governmental
Criminal
Borders
Key Measures
Water quality, ppm--improve
Reduce: Truck loads, then also:
Passenger miles
Flight miles
Cubic feet of solid waste per house per year
Percentage of produce fresh versus frozen
Reduce pages of tax compliance
Reduce legal statutes
Reduce government
Increase savings
Reduce debt
Reduce mobile phones in social areas, and prohibit texting or smart phones or notebook computers in schools
Reduce medical testing
Increase restorative health, life furthering healthcare
Teach nutrition
Major measures
Body weight
Kilowatts per household
Gallons of water per household
Distance of travel to work
Acreage of local gardens, food production, or alternately, percentage of food produced within twenty miles distance of consumption
Reduce glass bottles
Eliminate
Plastic shopping bags
Metal food cans
Frozen foods except special cases, like organic blueberries, etc.
Lobbying
Nuclear power
Long distance commuting except in special instances
Enable working persons to be able to both sell then purchase housing based on job changes
Guns
Current work
I am now starting to add text at the top, since paging down for readers is too much to ask. I do not write this for my blog, but is in Google Docs. I simply copy here, with minimal editing. I do not expect to be found or connected here, or if so, not by much.
If it happens, the life benefactor here, great. This is but to show readers and visitors the context within which I think, live, and duly study chess after work, and work after I write here.
Chess:
I study CT-Art 3.0 for several hours a day, less so some days, more others.
I am now at problem 705, once having gotten as far as about 814. It's not like it is new. Hardly. I have done the first four or five hundred maybe three or four times, but always got thwarted. Now I am seeing.
The classic I-Ching has a word for what I am doing, a concept:
21. Shih Ho / Biting Through [dk 'With clarity, Gnawing Bite (噬嗑 shì kè), Biting Through, Deciding]
above LI THE CLINGING, FIRE
below CHêN THE AROUSING, THUNDER
This hexagram represents an open mouth (cf. hexagram 27) with an obstruction (in the fourth place) between the teeth. As a result the lips cannot meet. To bring them together one must bite energetically through the obstacle. Since the hexagram is made up of the trigrams for thunder and for lightning, it indicates how obstacles are forcibly removed in nature.
Energetic biting through overcomes the obstacle that prevents joining of the lips; the storm with its thunder and lightning overcomes the disturbing tension in nature. Recourse to law and penalties overcomes the disturbances of harmonious social life caused by criminals and slanderers. The theme of this hexagram is a criminal lawsuit, in contradistinction to that of Sung, CONFLICT (6), which refers to civil suits.
Chess and More
Blitz also takes too much energy. I love the game, and am better at it than ever now, but need vital energy for below.
Running
I ran for 3:50 Saturday, about 15 miles in the woods, it was divine. Zero leg pain the next day. Zero.
Last time, it was 5:30 for 18 (-) miles so I flew. Nevertheless, last time, I had to carry a LOT of water, and it was warm. I also had more hills.
Work
Plan to approach corporate about a transfer. I am 100% certain they will plan to say no. I am only interested in extraordinarily effective action here. I plan to ask for an exemption from the six month requirement of initial employment. Why loose a good employee, needlessly?
I am always on time, never sick, great on the phone, truly delight in customer service, very funny, mentor others. Its a no-brainer. But XYZ will probably make keeping their rule MORE important than transformation.
Tacoma
Yikes. Of course it is not an attractive place, in many if not a great many ways offering far less than Portland, thats a no brainer. But my friends, my former Doctor and his wife, hardly multi-millionares, but decently situated, bought a condo to put me in, instead of paying here, 'why give the money to a corporation?'
What readers do not know, is without them, I would sink. I owe $33/34k, and started at $9.50 an hour. I have a medical condition, and they care. Both of them. Also, two other friends who love me are in Seattle, thirdly, the North Cascades call me deeply, I have to, I have to, I must climb again. I am not a big wall dude, but love alpine as steep as you can get without a rope or 'pro'(tection). Where you go which almost causes fear but no decent climber uses a rope.
My depression can be severe. I am a renaissance man, and folks like me don't fit the grid. Its all too easy to say, dk, there must be a job for you. Try 3,000, 4,000 job applications. With a brain like mine, a mind like mine, this can over time crush a man.
These friends want me situated so they can continue to help me. It is hard. They have paid for my rent all summer, and a bit more. They want me to focus on healing, calmly building the next step. They are very awakened.
My running is not commitment or excellence, it is what I need to do to not shoot myself in the head. It is necessary release. It works. Life is hard, but in an odd way, am happier than ever before in life, but some part of me will never be OK, never feel safe on earth, I just am either not of this world or of our time, a kind of refuge.
Having a genius IQ is the other side of retardation, you just jolt the world everywhere you go. Even if you try to hide it or pretend, inevitably it shows up. A bitch. And being highly sensitive is no joke either. But when you have both, AND can be very psychic AND very assertive, its really no joke. Its like being a freak.
And when you know the history of the world, and are awake, and feel nature, you know that the greatest fear on earth is the current, total lack of fear of the current power structure, and sorry to say, we are going to all have our ass kicked, the power will be shut off, food supply cut off, terrible cold, no water, cyber terror. Do I want this? No. But it is coming.
One thing, and mark my words, in America we either have never known suffering or hardly have. Try Sudan, try Kosovo, earthquakes in China or mudslides in some vast Latin American City. It will not be pretty, but this will be step one in awakening.
We are so upset when forty or 3,000 die, but try 80,000, 120,000. This happens historically in other places, but somehow we are immune?
We have access to oil, arable land, guns, industrial RDC (regional distribution centers), and we have this whole thing dialed in. The US Treasury has mapped GDP, interest rates, current accounts (money inflow and outflow offshore), and policy protects us from chaos. Oh really??
So here I am
These friends love me as a family would, and love me for who I am. This is the gift of love. They happen to always see me overcoming what I face. They tell me so. They do not talk, they act. And have over time. Love is unconditional.
OK, got to run, ready for work, dk
PS I toy with the idea of again trying for a 9-11 Police dispatch position. I am the rare sort who can be affable on the phone, yet in a many great instances, be in control, hard to do, but I do it nightly with the Hilton, Sheraton, Exteneded Stay, Crown Plaza, all that. I love these folks. When a supplier talks to a supplier, both are able to cut to the chase, albeit pleasantly. Which I do, but efficiently.
I currently work in Business Process Outsourcing, read call center with intelligence. I was selected as one of fourteen, from 150 interviewed, 1,000 applicants. So they say. Whatever it is, I look to my L, and look to my R, and these are all special people. You can get them very cheap, in Portland, in 2012. Thank you President Bush. Thank you AIG, Lehman, Bernie, and Bear Sterns. Thank you Obama.
I missed qualifying in Seattle. The concept is simple, get paid while helping society during inevitable collapse. Great benefits, good pay. I like the Police. Got through the screening, then first round, but you need to be a very good typist, if not a great typist, but at my job, I am learning to type faster, easier, and might be a benefit. But you cannot have performance anxiety when the clock starts, same as I have in chess! My hands shake! But would be great at it. I love to help others, understand upset, and great difficulties, across all classes and types of persons. And I love the world.
The plan is to get another survival job, even part time, while I figure it out.
Fundraising is an alternative. In the long term. I can evangelize sustainability, and am proven at raising capital. I see no reason to lead a Marxist movement, or solely be an activist alone, nor create a rain barrel movement, or get more solar panels or small wind turbines put in place. Nor am I a politician. But group action, far more than configurations or policy or money alone can give. Others can do that.
All this is needed, the wind, tidal, light rail, but I am not destined to do one of these, but high level strategy and the overlap of architecture, chess like thoughtfulness, combined with coordination-communication, warriorship, capital markets, spirituality.
I would rather fail shooting too high. Too low, and this is like all the rest, just talk. Who says there cannot be a millennial movement???
What I can do is conduct a very high level combination. This means sourcing change, with great will and intelligence, or joining others who will do this, that has problems, too.
]
My main concern
Mon, More Before Work, Last Notes 22 Oct 2012
Initiatives
Chess in schools
Sustainability in schools
More trades according to persons not on academic track
After school work
Cleanup of rivers, roadways
Reduction of canned food. Reduction of frozen food
Adding square miles of watershed, forest, green belts, parks
Significant reduction
Mon, Before Going to Work 22 Oct 2012
Reverse Engineering
Key Measures
Water: Gallons per person per household: consumption, kitchen, bath, laundry, landscape/garden
Power: Kilowatt hours per household per person, distinguished by region
Waste: cubic feet of solid waste, cubic feet of recyclables, litters of organic waste, barrels of sewage
Carbon Footprint: measures of emissions, proprietary
Targets
Percentage of water per household by off the grid, either by runoff, collection, or well
Pounds of food per person annually by local produce, grown within some measure, i.e.within ten miles
Pounds of non-animal protein per person annually
Man hours of work per capita per year within ten miles of residence
In health the numbers of measures are endless, such as iodine, mercury, polymers in stool, avg body weight.
Physical: Life expectancy, infant mortality, cancer, cardiac.
Gallons of Alcohol per person per year
Social: Teen pregnancy, Incarceration, employment rate, job changes career year, savings and capital surplus.
Dollars per capita for government, enforcement, and military
Dollars per capita for education, arts, social services.
Kilowatts per hour produced from power originated within ten miles, and within two hundred feet (walkable).
Square feet per household.
Miles traveled per person per year
Miles of airflight
Miles of additional rail capacity, both for travel and freight
Number of semi tractor trailer miles nationally, and by region
Percentage of power from solar, water, wind, fuel cell, combustible, petrochemical. Efficiency of prior.
Average weight, mpg, and life expectancy of cars.
Measure of manufacturing defects, ISO 9000 et al..
Mon, Continues 22 Oct 2012
Modalities, Review
Options are endless. So the point of entry is key. This is not political economy or a masters in business administration thesis or a complexity or adaptive systems construct, yet somehow each of those contain necessarily elements, and represent territory that must be, if not regarded, certainly not disregarded.
Planning and Feasibility. You can figure out needs and requirements.
Design. You can figure it out, letting others make what is determined.
Fabrication. You can make stuff.
Operations. You can run stuff
Logistics and Distribution. You can store it then get it to where it is going
Merchandising. You can select it and make it available
Sales and Marketing. You can promote it.
Governance. You can lead it and regulate it, determining access.
Communications. You can teach it or advocate, such as activism.
Military, Legal, Public Safety. You can force it and protect it.
Manufacturing. You can make it, by size and scale.
Finance. You can make it available, control growth and emergence, and measure or count it.
Medical. You can maintain the bodies of persons doing it with treatment.
Food. You can sustain it and nourish it using oceans, land, with fruits, vegetables, fish, game,
Resource. You can extract it, keep it, conserve it.
Energy. You can fuel it.
Art. You can enjoy, appreciate, and enhance it
Emotional. You can feel it, like it or dislike it: mad, glad, sad, afraid--pick one.
Communal. You can share it and nurture it.
Information. You can compute it, record it, process it.
Mon 22 Oct 2012
First Figure Out What Does Not Work, To Find What Works
Architects can endless spin out configurations, it is what we are trained for, enjoy, and do best. But most architects who are aware of the social aspects of architectural history--and architecture always, if anything embodies a social-political position, are all too painfully aware, that if another idea would create a new community, way of living, then so much which has already been formulated, deeply formulated, would have transformed the world each of the last twenty generations across easily the last six-hundred years. Many schemes have been formulated, proposed, and drawn up. Often very attractively, beautifully inside picture frames for marvel of skill and ingenuity.
Engineers have done similar things, and for a very long time. Think of Popular Mechanics Magazine in the last generation, then Omni, onto Wired Magazine, and dozens of variations permutating now through Google, FaceBook, Twitter, and WikiPedia. Search, persons, messages, and knowledge has been totally interconnected. The very word mutate, denotes evolution and articulation according to the needs of change over time. And on the physical side, as distinct from the informational side, great ingenuity is used to make things like race cars, music, sailboats, name your poison. Or, as Blaise Pascal said in his Pensées, ‘Life is distraction’, and ‘most of man’s ills can be traced to one single thing, and that is that he cannot stay in his room’.
Philosophers have over thousands of years similarly elaborated highly articulated mental constructs. Some arrived in dead ends, others built upon, refined, commentated, criticized, compared, and where practicable, instrumentalized. The great news of being a human is having a mind. And the bad news of being a human is having a mind. The mind endlessly recreates itself, and its primary advantage, and that being dematerialization, is that it can go forever, and deeply, and lead absolutely nowhere. And how utterly fascinating it all can be. You can be alone and do it, go nowhere, and do nothing, carry nothing. You don’t have to heat it or water it, but it just grows. Often it is written then printed, and kept.
Religious philosophers have also done similar things, crafting notions as to the nature of the soul or of love or of reality or conduct. They teach how to carry a broken heart, meet fear, meet darkness, all very good and necessary. But this as well has been shown to be limitation.
Whether policy and leadership constitutes a third variation, or an aspect of this second one, the world of ideas, is not critical, but whatever it is, from Moses to Aristotle, to Mo Tzu or Confucius--pick any of them, or Jefferson-Adams, or Ghandi and Martin Luther King, lots and lots of maps as to conduct, definitions of morality and conduct, determination of value, and frameworks for improvement.
Again, if having a map meant you were still not totally lost, or at least not seriously confused meant that you knew where you were and what to do, if that was the criteria of sufficiency, again, much if not all would be resolved. As is said here, great sophistication exists, and is diffused across major domains like education, militarization, communication, diplomacy, culture and self expression.
Men and women can hold meetings, fly around in airplanes attending far off and significant conferences, make resolutions, accords, protocols. It is all dust. It is basically all talk.
Gurdjieff was eloquent on this point, saying that there are those who are utterly eloquent about awakening, while being utterly and irrevocably asleep themselves. The same thing exists in humanitarianism, running off with prostitutes between speeches or yelling at administrative aids. We have all met those persons. Or ask any number of morbidly obese persons about dieting, and they can tell you exactly what to do and with great articulation, they have the books, the tapes, the equipment, the calendars and schedules.
This is all what is called Wisdom.
So we have two things not to do: not to figure out another gizmo, plenty exist already, and not to create another policy, plenty of those exist already also.
This leads to action. Action has its own problems. You set out to go somewhere, organize efforts, get equipment and arrange group effort, but shoot for the wrong planet or continent, and you wind up in the wrong part of the galaxy or wrong ocean, but went exactly in the direction as planned, maybe even on schedule.
This leads to discrimination, which is figuring out what to do, in what order, and by degree of importance. This is about surveying the field, accessing the value chain, and finding key points of effectiveness.
How this is different or if it is different than more configurations, more ideas, more policies, more initiatives is beyond me, at least right now, but I am asking the question. This is my question.
Late Sunday, Early Monday 22 Oct 2012
More Thoughts from another master
Steve Ruden, long discussion tonight, where he said that all sustainability needs three things to be successful: art, community, and ecology. It struck me how I had completely missed art or what called be craft, or aesthetics, all despite my intensive training. Or, as Robert Schore says, be sure to enjoy yourself. I did mention skills, but skill can be artless, such as jackhammering. I am sure there are Zen heavy equipment operators, just that the traces are not visible. I am sure some criminals use art, in major theft. Anyway...
He also mentioned ecology, which in retrospect, was so heavily used in the 70’s and 80’s that it was all too easy to think that we had moved far beyond all that. We have not. The nice thing about that term is, that it embraces nature, and humans interacting with nature, weather, habit, extraction. Ecology is a balance of factors. Imbalance is not ecology, but dissipation. Ecology is self regulating, where inflows and outflows are in equilibrium.
I knew to call Steven, the perennial student of community and organizational development, not to mention inner development. This touches the great chain of being, not from mineral, to chemical, biologic, plant, animal, human, planetary, divine. He is rather part of the view of relationships with our interior, parental, familial, intimate, communal, social, cultural, and global parts, progressed from inner to outer, hazy to concrete, small to large. And as he demonstrates, there are things you can expect at each stage.
Years ago, he talked about how in leadership or degrees of influence, you can see seven levels, or Copes law, such as rank and file workers, those who supervise them, those who operate that environment, determining its decisions. That makes three.
Level four leaders set direction for entire large scale businesses, cities, intellectual innovation. They control capital, set opinion, and persuade and embody. They lead ideas and events and create the things of the world. They control power. Level five leaders are leaders of leaders. That is CEO’s, national level leaders, major media figures. It takes a certain type of person to control controllers, a skill all to its own. The military is an apt illustration of this. Levels six might be a world leader, or a major capital accumulator or controller or billionaire, or rare creative force. Level seven might be a historic figure, or someone who beyond framing a world or region or domain, frames major paradigm shifts or creates entirely new things, like a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos. Such a person in the arts might create an entire new movement, whereas in level six, these are the supreme exponents of these great forces, the ones who lead, but they do not originate things, however high up, do not envision them. Level six are the top persons, but level seven creates sea changes or are totally millennial, setting entire new domains, or do what has never been done, not just doing it better than all others, as a musician or athlete or explorer can do.
He always said, that you can pretty much expect people to be what they are. This, it seems to me, must--however unclearly--contain a key or pointer as to resolving large scale, high level sustainability. The expectation of the system not only NOT to improve, but to plan on its not improving, as I am increasingly taking as a position, means you plan for failure.
We keep talking about success, like it is a foregone conclusion. The single thing about current times which most alarms me, is the total lack of fear, utter fear or collapse. Which is certain to come. Not if, but when.
My position is that instead of saying, we will be successful, given resources and intelligence and development but might, in the following ways, be at risk, is that instead of that, say we can expect serious outages, great disruption, plan on it, and it is in these ways which we can prepare--electric outage, water shortage, food shortage, power disruption, exogenous geopolitical shocks, and only then, in XYZ ways might work around it, using PDQ tools, policies, fixes, components.
Steve also explicated about Ideology and imperialistic drives. He talked about the long sweep from Russian, to France, to The British Empire, and the long sweep of the industrial revolution promising efficiencies and life saving energy, instead giving bondage, subservience, impoverishment, marginalisation.
I noted that this has gone on today, to include Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola.
I noted to Steven as well as Fred Drohsler, that if Google or Apple wanted to put highly efficient, light, inexpensive cars into AutoCad or CadCam, that the requests to farm out production to Asia, nearly overnight, on a broad scale, could be done nearly overnight, shipped to the USA, integrated, fabricated, to market.
This is done in computing all the time. Cupertino California smokes its computers late into the night, purchase orders and agreements are put into place, and the workers in large cities in China are got out of bed to work sixteen hour shifts to get it out fast, right away, without delay. The engineers model the workflow, the container ships scheduled, the liner board printed, the instruction manuals printed, lightning fast. This is not a matter of speculation. Cisco designs it, it is build, shipped, sold, assembled, connected. Virtualized. Apple puts out a design fix, on an antenna, and they start on it within three weeks.
Detroit used to take five or six years, to mock up a car in wood, then prototypes from experimentation, then it was three years was a big step, then 18 months. Similarly Hollywood.
Youth at puberty at age eleven now, whether it be hormones in food, crowding, lack of exercise. Life is fast.
Wed 10 Oct 2012
INTELLIGENCE:
Sustainability. A Great Opportunity
Wind is relatively constant if not frequent in specific locations, and subject to generating power.
Sunlight is relatively constant from June to September in the northwest, and not completely absent in October, as well as April and May. The well known rainy then cloudy weather of the Pacific Northwest really issues from the last few days of October, constantly till late February, after which, while nevertheless still continuing, is not nearly as constant or heavy. This makes but four months of inclemencies, when of course ‘it all comes at once’ (not quite true, but certainly lot of it), with about three more of bad weather. But the three months of June, July, August, plus, let us say 2/3rds of September, ½ of June, ⅓ rd of May, 1/4th of April, and 1/4th of October, if not more, gives you five months or more of good to great weather. Not so bad.
Water. Water poses a serious problem worldwide. Well night, proving the point, even here in the Pacific Northwest, if there were any serious power outage, between May and October, would result in great hardship, with millions not having convenient access--if any--to water. If this can exist here, then what does this say for the rest of the temperate world?
Mindful conscious development, intelligent design. Whether it be tidal control up the Thames River in London, vast networks of dikes, and tidal control off the coast of The Netherlands and key points within and around Rotterdam in the Amsterdam area, the benefits of thoughtful, far reaching planning then investment, construction, and operations is shown clearly.
Global Warming. The inevitable rise of the oceans is certain. It is not a matter of if but when. This is clear. Tremendous installed base of urbanization exists along coastal areas, with a full 85% of world population in urbanized areas, with the top thirty cities along comprising about 10% of the entire world population. While not all of these areas are coastal, many are or affect or are affected by those areas. Great capital investment, not to mention culture and society exists there.
Labor Markets and Capital. Neither Romney nor President Obama mean harm. Both seek to approach similar problems from different ends of the spectrum, and capable or not, while realization of these plans if not dreams is most unlikely, the core idea of matching the labor to the resources to the needs is totally correct.
Policy. We could go chicken and egg--is it lack of leadership that creates such a gigantic void in policy, or is it the lack of insight then will, motivation to inquire then create then execute policy, which makes leadership so very ineffective does not matter. The Buddhas was asked, ‘is the soul eternal or temporal’, by the assembly around him. ‘Of what use are these questions’, he asked. But seek for yourself the understanding of suffering, the acceptance of it, the way beyond it, and so on’. What is it called in Sanskrit, neti neti, not this not that.
Great Ideas. Great ideas help galvanize action. What is the saying in ACIM, a Course In Miracles: ‘Nothing Real Can Be Threatened’.
Thur 11 Oct 2012
INTELLIGENCE: knowing what to do. Active intelligence: knowing what to do and doing it. Active Intelligence Here and Now: knowing what to do and doing it, moving past discussion into practical, concrete action. Other possible names: Sustainable Intelligence. Sustainable Intelligence: Action that works.
Along With All That: Several acronyms encapsulate major other parts of society and settlement that are a part of all problems and solutions. First, FFF which stands for food, fuel, finance. These feed the body, transportation systems, and capital as a means of commerce. Second TMT, which stands for technology, media, telecom. There could be others such as based on four general categories such as the special technology supporting a world of extraction, production, and distribution: the stuff that makes the world, the things people use, the stuff that is made, and getting it around, putting it somewhere, and commensurating it:
Special Knowledge Consumer Production Conveyances
Technology Medical Manufacturing, or Consumer Durables Retail
Semiconductor Personal Products, or Consumer Non-Durables Food Finance
Biotech Industrial Utilities
Basic Materials Housing
Services Entertainment Energy Transport
With all that, comes an obvious array of non-commercial infrastructure, but nevertheless necessary as the world is today:
Education Agriculture and Land Government Regulation
Military
This is all a roundabout way of saying that even the best of sustainability occurs within the world as it is today. It is like saying even an enlightened person has to walk next to criminals, the disturbed, the unpleasant or willfully unhealthy, or uneducated. Or as my Guru Joy once said, ‘Enlightenment is embodied in physicality’.
Climates and Culture:
Sustainability does not occur in a vacuum, and is always embedded in an ecology, historic, and social system, each adapted to a time, place, people, and ethos. Cultural anthropology is not our point here, which is best left to others, so very important as it is. What does matter is to distinguish that all the heat and cold, north and south, desert and forest or temperate each demand their own unique solutions, adapted to the habits and material life dictated by those peoples and places and resources.
Here To Stay:
Materialism generally does not have the most positive connotations. But the stuff of the world, its infrastructure, major urbanization, harvesting whether large or small, settlement, refuse is here to stay. So then the question is what is the best way to deal with it?
Major problems are where does everyone live, and in what? How do you get around, with the least impact, read cost or harm? What do you eat, how do you get it, and how do you keep it? What do people do and what do they do it in, when not home? This is all basic--you live somewhere, you are in movement, then you go somewhere, and meet somebody, and you do things.
Everywhere there are buildings, capital, human bodies, food, land, and stuff. Its really a lot more simple than is commonly thought.
Roles: I do not necessarily have to base the next big step in my life doing all this, that is to say planning, creating, refining, or delivering sustainability. That is also NOT to say that I am not to do one of them or all of them. The point is, is that there are many ways to work at this large endeavour, making the world a better place, at the material level. Others can provide the goods and services that distinguish or characterize our world.
I could for example simply help plan this, leaving others to do. I can help shape policy, and let others plan. I can take the policies of others, and help structure them, to ready for action. I can be an activist, staying more or less out of production and planning. I could be front and center and communicate or lead it. I can take the plans of others and what they make, and help furnish it, by coordinating it. Coordination takes the plans of others and executes them. I could manage projects or enterprises, which is taking a plan and figuring out what needs to be done, how fast, in what order, with whom, and in what way. Creativity is beyond coordination and project management, but sources projects and enterprise. Then finally communication, where you help everyone know what is going on, ask for help or money, or gather resources such as skills, material.
I could evangelize sustainability. I can help protect it, which I suppose is evangelism, but whereas the prior is to generate energy, the latter is to protect what has been gathered.
I can make the things of sustainability, design them, construct them, contract administer them. I can measure their quality. I can help proportion them. I can hold others to compliance or help govern them. I can publicize them or write about them. I can teach sustainability, or theorize it.
But more talk is the last thing needed, really.
Problems and Opportunities, a Long Inventory:
Wind power, beyond large scale infrastructure. The gigantic, capital intensive, long lead use of wind farms cannot be faulted. But this does not mean small scale wind is not to be thought of or used.
Solar: throughout America, across a wide variety of climates far greater use of solar can be made. This also does not have to mean gigantic, high tech devices and panels, but simple tanks in the sun with tubing to storage vessils.
Water: Again, large scale municipal water makes a lot of sense in lot of ways. But at the same time, the chicken and egg problem of pollution, heavy transport, and sanitation makes this a gigantic problem. Simply put, major use of local, immediate water is a major opportunity. This means smart, adaptive, easy to use filtration.
Fisheries and habitat:
Conservation, Sanctuaries:
Air:
Soil: remediation
Erosion
Land:
Disposal:
Coastal:
Marine Construction, water control:
Rising Oceans:
Forestry:
Tidal Power
Energy Extraction:
Animal Husbandry, Brazilian gas-off to name but one.
Global warming: peat gas-off
Affordable Housing, or tiny houses.
Scale:
You make a project too big, too all inclusive, and you guarantee that it will remain theory, which is more or less just more talk, more writing, more gridlock: ‘We have tried this for forty years, we cannot get it through’.
At the same time, if you just jump onto the first horse you see, you might be taken where you don’t want to go or need to go. This takes a measure of planning.
The key is to bridge the large and small, best accomplished by an array of achievable projects, which are not too long term, but also not so compelled by immediacy, no step back is taken and asked, is this what we really want to do, and is this the right way.
Take a simple refrigerator: how often is a room air conditioned, even in the fall, with power equipment in a room pouring heat into that room? This is incredibly common. Or how often is a refrigerator in a heated room, configured to cool or freeze food, no where near an outside wall, with ample coolant or BTU’s available directly to an outside area? But for eighty years, this is the way in our world. Who needs to bother?
Now with global warming, pollution, overpopulation, industrialization, the previous cost dispersed over time can no longer be hidden, as we approach the certain tipping point, not if, but as we often say, when: the next Roman Empire, British Empire, Easter Island, Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs? Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Tang Dynasty, and lastly, the Tokugawa Period of Japan, where the more or less highly organized society after the Warring States Period popularized in Samurai movies, slowly disintegrated into corruption, laziness, and social decay, read exploitation. The current ‘haves and have nots’--the privileged and entitled, then the disadvantaged and disempowered.
Today we see the same, culminating in fiscal stimulus, The Bank Bailout, Deficit Spending, National Debt--massive borrowing and spending.
Fri 12 Oct 2012
Roles and Functions
Sitting in the back but actively:
Working in a humble, simple, low stress job which is enjoyable, non-harming, if not helpful to other persons, working alongside of or for good people.
While doing so, evangelizing, as a blogger, activist, public spokesperson, committed to appropriate change, correct values, sustainable configurations of housing, food provision, health, education, entertainment, useful technology, spiritual transformation, then integration, into transmission.
Sitting with those doing what needs doing:
Working anywhere in sustainability, whether it be energy efficiency, conservation, social services, clean-up, preservation, products (i.e. filtration--its great to collect water, well, some of it is undrinkable if untreated), services (energy audits, re-engineering or something so simple as retrofit--insulation, new windows, weather stripping, efficiency, additions), demolition.
Some are policy, some are making, some are figuring out or configuration, some are soft such as interacting with persons (the disabled, mentally ill, addicted, rehabilitation), some have nothing to do with choosing a modality or domain such as making, talking, moving, renovation, but rather are functionalities or roles or involve specific skills such are communication, high level support, coordination, project management, sales and marketing.
Then a whole slew of other things such as financing all this, checking it, recording it or reporting it, protecting it (security, risk management) maintenance and scheduled upkeep, an endless opportunity for someone who is thorough and tenacious, as I am.
Markets
Seattle is a gigantic market, and a truly confused place, if not pretty much non-functional. At the same time, the PEOPLE of Portland are much more what most of the broader United States thinks of Seattle as being: approachable, caring, directed. The scale here is also much more feasible.
Sectors and Degrees of Commerce
Retail is obvious--you walk in the door, or have a website, and an array of carefully selected and presented products are provided. Or you offer a service, and go somewhere to do it, or others come to you, in a room or a building. Those are clear cut.
Another level is where you provide to the providers, aka wholesaling or resellers--making the middle between producers, to sellers, to consumers or end users. This is more than just storage, shipment, and profitability, but involves the intelligent combination of carefully selected components, saving retailers, end users, or providers the labor intensive effort of having to first get familiar with then latter research, then ultimately obtain then utilize and replenish those goods and services. Much work is involved, and sometimes its cheaper or more efficient to have others do it for you, saving energy, time, and money ‘to do what it is’ that we or you ‘do best’. This goes under the classic ‘knowing what business you are in’.
You don’t have to make it or furnish it, but you talk about it, then educate about it, and then at the highest level, lead it. An entirely different are is, govern or regulate it.
You can own it or develop it. Or invest in it, or capitalize it.
You can sell it, or promote it.
You can transport it.
You can build it, in the trades or contract it.
Sun 14 Oct 2012
Logical Relationships
Possibilities and alternative are so endless, that without a sense of hierarchy, or logical progression to help sort it out, you are certain to get lost. Shoot for the moon, or more to the point, for example as far off a place as Saturn, and you can be sure that while you will win big if you have the right target or objective, such a gigantic and long range effort will be fruitless, and of great waste if you come out empty handed. If all it were, were spiritual awakening, then yes, truly you could say that even total loss is great instruction, for all leads to awakening. But this about more than making money or waking up, the two extremes of human states. This is about helping the world, and having a great journey while doing so.
At the same time if you are too close to home, picking the low lying fruit, while certain to be attainable, also might not be transformative. The problems of a fossil fuel culture, based on packaged food, petrochemical transport, power produced by coal, nuclear, heating oil, water produced through capital intensive processes, are vast. No time can be wasted, in a sinking boat.
So we can rank problems, starting from the largest. Face the worst, largest, most complicated, most expensive, most toxic, most socially disruptive, most tense problems first. This is top down thinking. Or we can wait to face the most difficult and/or largest problems last, building our strength, or taking profit, and add those profits according to budgeted money, or time conserving, or energy efficient. We can start locally and individually, by elements, according to immediate, realizable needs, which is bottoms up thinking.
The first takes too long, and is too difficult. The prior does not make enough difference, and does not take on enough.
Scale
It seems to be that a key aspect is the matter of scale, that is to say approaching problems of size enough to matter and attract the greatest energy possible, which is human energy--where there is a will there is a way, while keeping close enough to practical reality and available resources, to avoid drifting off into theory.
Ecclesiastes, of Great learning, there is weariness of flesh, chasing after wind. This is the danger of being so creative that you can endless imagine or project. At the same time, if you are so close to the routines and habitual patterns of daily life that you stay enmeshed, they you are as it is said, ‘if I always do what I always did, then I will get what I always got.
This means taking a long list of problems, patterns, and alternatives, a needs analysis as it were, and figuring out which are the best ones.
When Jeff Bezos, of Amazon founder kind, drove across the US in a hatchback, with little property and probably money, he knew that he wanted to sell a product on the web, and had four products in mind. He chose books. I once told a young man, who left Amazon early on, but with thousands of options he had been granted, ‘Amazon is just a book company, you cannot make money at that’, he just giggled, and I do mean out load. He was a tester, and a gifted one. What did he know then that I only know now? Amazon has made a vast distribution systems, with conveyer belts, regionally based distribution facilities, and now sells hundreds of products on the web. What happened? They learned how to do it. And having done so, could replicate it.
Teach a man how to fish!
Then Steve Jobs. A story so well known, as to only mention one characteristic juncture. After being thrown out of Apple, they asked for him back. He could be self centered, difficult, downright surly. But how many times did he confront someone, sending them from his office, told to do it again, ‘is this the best that you can do’, only to come back, the same, four times. Then the fifth time, now you know. Lets start here.
He said, get rid of all this. We will only build four devices, a consumer one, a high end one for performance, a smaller one, and a hand held one. This was a strategy of deliberate focus. This is what I mean for energy.
The Order of Things
You need water to be able to work, but to be able to get water, you need energy. To be able to work, you need shelter. To house, you need materials, and to get those you need food, which takes energy. In a society of division of labor, matched by specialized skills, you are talking transport, moving persons, moving products, moving food.
Too close a circle, and this is limitation. Too far, and this is great expense, which lacks intelligence. This far off circle creates diversity, of things and persons and ideas and attitudes, which makes for more invention and innovation, makes for learning.
* * *
Ripeness
Even the best ideas, in the most intelligent sequence can result in nothing. People have to be ready, and persons live in a society of habits, obligations, existing technologies, and ways of material life.
You can start ripping up the major roadways and breeding horses, mandating micro gardens and raising then slaughter of local game under force of local ordinance, heavily tax fuel and, with that, first educate then reward anything that is low impact and regional if not territorial, but this cannot be done all at once.
Here Are Some Starting Thoughts
Getting rid of, or is it, reducing the extent of large scale transport.
This is a major part of this de-industrialization.
No need to reinvent the wheel, ‘Think globally, act locally’:
Micro rails, which is quite a step down from lightweight rail. With that, Bicycles, and walking trails.
One step at a time:
Tiny houses, energy efficiency therein including solar, earth birming.
Where do they all go, and what do they do? Something to do for everyone:
Small Schools, and with that, vocational training for those who have a part of life wasted in school outside the obvious need to basic reading, writing, basic math, basic history.
Get out of the chair:
Its great to talk about cost of healthcare, mental health, social decay.
Obesity is a major problem, for example, the simplicity of ‘have you ever had a really good salad?’ and ‘have you ever heard a flock of birds in a tree at dusk?’
• People are justly upset, being marginalized, feeling betrayed, or with nowhere to go, or nothing of value to do. There is plenty to do, but it must be led, and leadership is a combination of experience, eldership, wisdom, and foresight. Alcohol, drugs, medications, widespread smart phones and televisions similarly numbing down, shopping malls, there are many forms of altered states. There are better forms of occupation, but they must be re-seeded back into the culture, difficult to impossible.
• The lack of community is a major problem. This is a major source of mental disturbance. Of course the severely mentally ill cannot be recovered by mere programs, but an enormous persons on the margin can be swung out of the slippery slope with care.
• Never mind going down to the village square, to lead a discussion, just trying knocking on your neighbors door, or asking them for a ride. The areas in which we are all separate is gigantic. The key is to encourage persons to gather, but this is a puzzle going back to biblical times. As my guru Joy once said, ‘The closer people get, the messier its going to be’, you can be sure of that. Give me an alternative. I have none. Its called the work of life.
It seems a lot easier for the government to say that obesity is a major problem, or lack of education, which leds to things like changing food and drinks in school, encouraging physical recreation. It is a lot easier to say, we will all learn to read better, and afford more practice. Both of these have the benefit of being specific and measurable, and more to the point, socially desirable.
It is a harder thing to say, and equally as beneficial, at least in the long run: we will reverse engineer health, into saying we will reduce annual miles driven person, number of airline flights, kilowatts per family per year, truckloads of solid waste per household per year, more tonnage of freight used by railcar while reducing truckloads per mile, number of violent crimes and numbers of incarcerations.
So the positive side is: X amount of high mile per gallon cars, in the next five years such as twenty million cars, Y percent of houses made for under five-hundred square feet, Z number of refrigerators at currently one third the current average size, 40% increase of fresh food, and heavy reduction of frozen food sections. Similarly:
A hours of class time in basic cooking, B. reduction of commercial facilities without access to natural air, and effecting air conditioning, a heavy demand on electric power, C. percentage of water provided by water collection on average, within P feet of a residence, D. improvement in water quality, in Q number of watersheds, E. so many linear feet of major tidal infrastructure, in M, N, O, and P major ports, reducing major projected capital loss upon the part of major metropolitan areas, from inevitable raising oceans, F. amount of land increased for Federal and State Park preservation.
Late Sunday, Early Monday 15 Oct 2012
Components Versus Aggregation
There is a big distinction between large scale mass production and what can be termed ad hoc components. The prior is distinguished by having components which are highly engineered, produced in a volume to spread the cost of that engineering over many iterations, passing those savings over to the manufacturing process, allowing more ingenuity if not refinement into those products. Secondly, this allows for efficiencies of labor, allowing further cost reductions. Thirdly, this allows larger scale capital accumulation to both be directed at, and potentially produced from this endeavour.
But there is another side, and this focus, and these efficiencies , refinement, and investments do not win in all cases. The design, production, distribution, and operating process, not to mention formal infrastructure of policy, measures, controls, need to retain skilled workers, not to mention legal, accounting, and risk control elements take longer, and can become fixed costs. You need work, to generate more work, the very virtuous cycle which taken Ad infinitum lead to the capital intensive, extractive, exploitive process that ‘got us into this mess in the first place. Yikes.
Localized intelligence means you can build it yourself, contract out the parts you cannot make or the special labor you cannot perform, adapted to the landscape, climate, capacity needs (read power level), and workflow structured around other obligations, that is to say, can be started and stopped. Interruption from a cost perspective can be pernicious, whereas spiritually, this is where magic can occur. When you cannot do what you think you want to do, and find new things, or are held for a better time, more in tune with the rhythms of your body, environment, social network, the seasons, your mood or interest.
This lower scale can be carried. And what cannot be carried, is not of such enormous cost, from travel at a distance, read large scale factories, distribution centers, large scale trucking and freight, regulation, competition if you will.
So there is this trade off: very smart, takes a long time, and highly competitive, and thus highly monetized. Then there is less refined, but able to be put in place or installed more quickly, suited to the needs of persons and resources nearby (or at least not so far away), and self regulation, self organizing.
This is the essence of the problem of sustainability. Do it right, take forever, more study, more discussion, more obstruction and criticism, or do it funky, here and now, errors are sure to occur, less connections in the social network to permute through.
Monday 15 Oct 2012
Sustaining Sustainability
Be specific, be concrete, be practical. If ideation is taken in its natural direction, that is all it will ever be. There is a reason the term mental masturbation exists.
As wonderful as sustainability is, its also a kind of war, said from a chess perspective, where the world is made up of influence, control, capital, and needs be met by clear tactics, and tactics by strategy, strategy by resolve to action, resolve to action by will, will by moral and spiritual correctness. Doing the right thing. Build it and they will come. The world will beat a path to your door--Cleveland, Zurich, Calcuta, Tacoma, low to high, poor to mundane. Does not matter where you are. What you do is what matters, in what way, and with whom.
So in this war, which first must be less about making a world as help usher in the end of this one, not by violence or force, but great intelligence, in exercising discernment, as to what inevitably will go, at what speed, and in what order.
Scale is what matters, and from that, sequence.
Scale means the things that are too small will produce little, result in nothing of consequence. Scale also means vast, far reaching plans, however great, will gridlock in massive coalition, discussion, need for consensus, the very place we keep getting stuck.
So this war is not a physical one, but a gigantic tug of war from the powers of current vested interest, to those who can see. There have always been those who could see. This is not new. But now the need to see and what is seen is the folly of the force of ignorance on such a massive scale, as to produce a suffocation which is now intolerable. This is not Communism, or Marxism, but simple clarity, rooted in physicality.
The only thing the current powers can understand are raw facts, so many acres, bushels, dollars, truckloads, railcars, megawatts, gallons per minute, board feel, pounds per square inch or foot, numbers of gallons per tonnage per mile .
Key Measures
The Kyoto accord was doomed to fail, but is credited with making specific the measure of carbon footprint reduction, or deceleration, but had the benefit of being clear and specific.
Goal is, in policy, set a clear measure of so many persons, so many BTU’s, so many acres of garden, so many hours allocated to this activity, in making the shift. You can also add so many vehicles, so many houses, so many hours of basic medical care, child care, proper education. Reduction of military, and roadway, and truck or intermodal transport.
You do not say, make this world this way, which is too inconceivable, but take the world as it is, and say, this is the world, and reduce such a percent, like weight loss.
At three hundred and forty five pounds, at five foot five, that it is morbid is beyond question, but the goal to get a hair below three hundred is a very great accomplishment, and more than the fact, is the direction of change. So here--less trucks, less gas, less consumption, more good sense in health, education, community, etc. We all know what that is. Knowing is the last thing we need, but a clear pathway and direction.
My direction is to find the proper direction, this is what I do best as a planner, analyst, communicator, coordinator, evangelist, implementor.
My direction is not to find the proper direction, not for me, but for the world, which needs to get it in the hands of those who can do, want to do, and will do. My job is high level clarification, which sounds a lot like government, which I do not want to do. There is better for me to focus on, but inevitably, if what I say is to grown, it must include rules, owners of capital, and those who make opinion.
Again, not for today, but what can be started today, as a step on a very long journey.
Guilds
The wisdom of gatherings of like minded persons........
centered on skills, productivity, knowledge, succession, craft...........
Late Monday, Early Tuesday 16 Oct 2012
Three Fundamental Attributes Which Are Constant
The way you reduce down an enterprise or effort is to compress everything down to a small handful of major categories. Categories can be endless, and the more you have, the less value does the system have, which is meant to parse things into recognizable components or functionalities.
This really gets into the fundamentals of heuristics, or what can be called integrative or systems system, aka whole systems. This is important, but not our subject now.
Three things are constant in sustainability. You know this is true, because you will find them in any other fourth or fifth or, for that matter, tenth component or concern.
First you have know how. You can have all the money and leadership or governance in the world, and not have invention and application. Know how tells you what to do, upon what, in what way. It is skill, creativity, experience, accumulated knowledge. This aggregates in communities of knowledge or learning communities. Locally in history this existed, grew, and was maintained in guilds, much later in industries and trades.
Second you have capital. Money is delayed consumption, gathered either by a person or enterprise, so that goods and services may be obtained latter, at a distance, or more or less the same, to unknown parties, that is to say, in a market. Capital is liquid and commensurates something very hard to capture, and that is effort.
Third you have governance. Policy tells you what you can do. All the money in the world will not buy and idea which great numbers of society opposes or more or less cannot imagine. At the same time, when for example everyone uses plastic shopping bags, someone somewhere leads and says, do we really need all these bags? The harm is greater than the good, and we must prohibit it. This cannot be done overnight, but consensus is generated then change occurs. Policy is the expression of governance, whereby what is needed and wanted is formally realized. It is studied, and right or wrong is cast.
You can have a large group of persons who decide, social or political will, but lacking capital, ideas cannot be realized.
You can have great invention, but need persons to execute, which is labor, which contains invention.
You can have capital, but lack invention, then you have either stagnant or wasted human energy, which we know is all too common, examples being foremost military, luxury consumer products, and institutionalised health care (read document, don’t treat, and by all means, make protection against risk paramount, even at the cost of results).
Continuing these six permutations or vortices from three points, we round out the next three: You can have an idea whose time has come, where opinion has resolved the timeliness of something ready to give birth, but lacking skill or know how this will is immobilized.
You can have wealth, and with it, know how, but lacking social will not have sufficient traction to provide what money cannot, the motivation of persons who will work with great persistence, with or without money.
You can have innovation, greatly conceived ideas, uncanny cleverness, but lacking financial backing, the desire to sacrifice, and these notions remain mere thoughts.
Of course this is circular logic, but the main thing is money alone, or social will alone, or skills alone are not enough. It is a three legged stool and this is stability, and stability is strength, and stable strength is sustainable. That is what we are talking about. Structure which is self organized. Missing persons, money and invention will attract them. Missing capital, people and invention will go find it. Missing ideas, money and people will develop them and find them.
The key is that whatever is sustained, will always find the three, and if one weakens, will call forth the other two. It is an equilibrium.
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
//////////////////////////////////
from: David Korn davidkorn.specialprojects@gmail.com
to: Fred Drohsler
cc: Yasser Seirawan , Robert Jolly, Marino Kuper
date: Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 2:39 PM
subject: Guys design their own wind turbines - started a company
Dear Fred, Thank you.
These guys are on the right track--cars, hilltops, houses, there are many ways to individuate this.
This is exactly what I see. Small scale, localized power. This needs to be the way--NOT large wind farms with episodes of small ones, but lots of small ones, adumbrated by very large ones when and if practicable.
Its not that the gigantic, large scale ones are not appropriate, more to emphasize that small scale ones can be reproduced in volume, easily shipped and erected, and permitted then erected quickly. These large ones, get caught up in ecological, habitat, land use, and regulatory tangles.
The point is, not that this can only occur, for example, in coastal areas off Labrador or extremely windy places in Oregon and Wyoming (some of the most windy in the United States, all great choices, you see them driving cross country. They are stunning in size, quantity, and location). but extensively.
It seems to me, the key here is making it a habit, omnipresent. The land based units, to me, are of far greater use than the vehicular ones, being more stable. Land things can make moving things, not vice versa
I am grateful for your sending this, you provide great leads. Please keep the good stuff coming. Thank you.
Warmly, dk
PS (1) Marino is a friend in the chess world, a very good man, and after studying law, went into urban planning. Remarkable as it is, he is not Italian! He is very up to date and within the limits of being a father (in the Netherlands, many mothers work part time, if I understand right), taking care of his two boys on Fridays, and active on weekends with his children on the weekends, he is a great resource, if but to look over out shoulders from his country as a leader in alternate power, tidal work, and near Germany, etc. Smart is the word for all this.
This is the most valuable work today which can be done. His German is very good, but assume you only write it with labor, despite being able to converse very well. His English is very good now, after years of writing me back and forth.
(2) Anything you send will be saved. I just made folders in my browser, in Google Chrome, for
1. Whole systems and policy, 2. capital, 3. skills,
4. Water, 5. solar, 6. wind, 7. marine,
8. Food-gardening-green, 9. land use, 10. globalism,
11. Electric-fuel cell, 12. transport, 13. Computing and Communications.
Rounds off at a healthy thirteen (5).
(3) While running last night, and you know I am serious, I am trying to think of a way to contact Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros. Of course, if I shoot too high, will fail. But I also need to consider the level of the miraculous.
If I can fight Xerox in the negative, or alternately, gotten close to speaking for an entire nation or coordinating for a Princess in the positive, why can I not do it for an entire effort? Then I am not dependent on one person or institutions game.
(4) To become a healer, heal yourself first. Then look around you.
(5) Please remind me if I miss a major category. To me, these are obvious ones.
Bcc: DJ, RS. I will not be copying DJ and Robert (Not Robert Jolly, but the 'other Robert', Schore) in all cases, out of respect for their focus primarily on helping patients and others, as well as their own immediate environment such as home and garden, but nevertheless will do so periodically for their awareness on this new endeavour, but selectively, if but to just suggest tone or direction, since they are major helpers.
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Fred Drohsler wrote:
Fred Drohsler, architect
1-607-__________ mobile
Fred_____________.com
Begin forwarded message:
From: af________________@verizon.net
Date: October 11, 2012 12:48:16 AM EDT
To: fredd_______________.com
Subject: Love these guys - decided to design their own wind turbines - started a company
and they drive a test model to simulate the wind !!!!!
Wind energy - a godsend:
'Windenergie - ein Geschenk des Himmels'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbjDJJ4OK-M
Thur 17 Oct 2012
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Psychological Nutritionist DZ Zentner, and Robert Schore MD, DO of Gig Harbor WA. In addition to being long time great friends and consummate and gifted healers, without their help none of this would have been possible.
Special thanks to Registered Architect Fred W. Drohsler of Oneonta NY, for reawakening me from long sleep and firing me back to the intelligence and great need for sustainability. Thank you. Thank you also to my deceased father, Alfred E. Korn who demonstrate correctness, strength, and generosity and his lovely remaining wife, Carol Korn.
Rounding out the ten of my real family and brain-trust: Special thanks also to the best friends in the world who always stood by me, alphabetically: Fred Drohsler RA, Tom Fallat of Sound Sound Studios & Savage Fruitarian Productions and Evan Konecky of 206 Media LLC, Marino Kuper Gemeente Heusden, Robert Jolly Esq, Steven Ruden Analysis, and International Chess Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan. Thank you also for irritation when needed.
Thank you also to Princess Lady Selah' SuJuris and her people of The Ojibwe Nation for reminding me that I could do, and was still far more than I knew. Similarly for President John Hagerty and members of The West Orange Chess Club NJ, and CEO Aaron Ketner of ITP 360, Cloud Provider. Thanks also to friends Harry S. Katz, Steve Natko.
Thank you to teachers of a lifetime, deceased Dean of The Cooper Union, John Hejduk Architect and master teacher Malcolm S. Clark of James Caldwell High School and Southern Pines NC, Guru Joy Gilbert, and Zen Master Dae Soen Sa Nim. I also wish to acknowledge my mother, for teaching me to always speak the truth, even if it hurts, and it is when you are most afraid, that is when you need to move forward. This has caused me no end of problems.
The real problem with acknowledgements, is that the more you add--and its really hard to stop once you really get going--is that the more you find missing, and find it unjust to leave out, yet do not wish to draw most special attention upon the priceless few.
Final thanks alike to first Morgan Stanley then certainly Lowes for powerfully demonstrating everything about what not to do. Many who I acknowledge would strongly recommend against what I am about to say, except that it is key to this work and completely is true: And that is that similarly and most recently, to note that it was the direct example of _________________ of the great cost of lack of morals, disregard for the lives of persons, and great ignorance if not stupidity, providing the last bit of great energy to make the last big push to the need for sustainability for persons, nature, and systems as the only step to be taken for humanity.
The rest is silence.
Fri 19 Oct 2012
My Goal
I am reminded to focus intensely on my goal, and to enjoy the journey.
My goal is to live my life in harmony with the world around me, living comfortably self supporting, while making a major contribution to world sustainability, with a focus upon simple, direct, repeatable affordable, small scale, low impact housing, integrated to water and air quality, tied to appropriate food, land use, and habitats. To preserve nature while generating social and economic structures which are life enhancing. Preservation! Conservation. Health. Fulfillment.
--
http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkorn
+206 284-2722 Mobile
“Special Projects: Focus upon continuous
improvement for end users and project needs"
Basic Elements, Basic Steps, Fundamental Components
Small house
Energy efficient, lightweight, small cars
Lightweight windmills
Easy to instal solar panels
Small refrigerators and other appliances, notably washer/dryer, stoves, microwaves
Rain barrels and filtration
Lightweight, small scale batteries or fuel cells
Efficient, small scale, contained sanitation
Special Projects
Tidal power
Offshore wind farms
Solid waste disposal and recycling.
Context
Land Use, Habitats
Food
Water
Efforts
Clean up, especially major roadways and rivers
Work for youth
Part time work for the elderly
Softer Concerns
Education
Medical
Other Areas
Military
Governmental
Criminal
Borders
Key Measures
Water quality, ppm--improve
Reduce: Truck loads, then also:
Passenger miles
Flight miles
Cubic feet of solid waste per house per year
Percentage of produce fresh versus frozen
Reduce pages of tax compliance
Reduce legal statutes
Reduce government
Increase savings
Reduce debt
Reduce mobile phones in social areas, and prohibit texting or smart phones or notebook computers in schools
Reduce medical testing
Increase restorative health, life furthering healthcare
Teach nutrition
Major measures
Body weight
Kilowatts per household
Gallons of water per household
Distance of travel to work
Acreage of local gardens, food production, or alternately, percentage of food produced within twenty miles distance of consumption
Reduce glass bottles
Eliminate
Plastic shopping bags
Metal food cans
Frozen foods except special cases, like organic blueberries, etc.
Lobbying
Nuclear power
Long distance commuting except in special instances
Enable working persons to be able to both sell then purchase housing based on job changes
Guns
posted by transformation at 3:27 AM
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