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I have been doing a lot of thinking about how society is going to change as the effects of global warming play out and we run out of fossil fuels.  We have a lot of thinking to do about how we want to restructure to avoid starving people.  It is going to get a lot harder to feed people.

I think the solution is to start centralizing the population around farming areas, with efficient public transportation to allow people and goods to be efficiently moved within relatively small areas.  Importing food from long distances is a luxury we cannot afford.  Areas of the world that cannot be used efficiently for farming should become centers for power generation (by nuclear fusion ideally), and research into such techniques.  That way, any safety concerns associated with running power plants will be removed from the population, and the land will be put to good use.

The current model of people living far-flung, away from distribution centers, and having to drive to get their food, is completely unsustainable.  We need to create small, localized, microeconomies that are self-sufficient in terms of food.  Electric power can be transported over long distances by the use of high-voltage lines, so it is no problem to create that thousands of miles away.  But goods such as food can no longer be shipped long distances, because that is the source of most of the energy expenditure associated with them.

We also need to scale back on our use of commodities; we need to consume less.  Some products require special facilities to be manufactured, and if we go through them too fast, we will waste energy getting them from place to place.

On the other hand, if we have enough clean energy, that won’t really be a problem.  Nuclear fusion has the potential to produce an immense amount of energy with almost no harmful byproducts.  If we harness more efficient electrical engines to power our machinery, we should be able to live comfortably without having a negative impact on the planet.  That balance is the key.

There is no intrinsic disadvantage to modernization.  The problem arises when we ignore the natural order of things, when we forget that as the dominant species, we are in a unique position to screw ourselves and everything else over with our tremendous influence on the planet.  That influence is both our greatest asset and our greatest liability, and we must tread carefully around it.

I dug three holes, each three feet wide, and one-and-a-half feet deep.  Two and half hours of work for a total of thirty dollars gives me twelve dollars an hour (not bad).  But I wanted to calculate how much I was paid per volume of dirt (disregarding the rather substantial rocks I had to dig out and move).

So:

Three holes, with a radius of one-and-a-half feet, and a depth of three feet.

πr²h = π(1.5)²1.5

3π/2 ft.³ dirt per hole.

Thirty dollars for three holes is ten dollars per hole.

10/(3π/2)=20/(3π) $/ft.³ dirt ≅ 2.122065907891938 $/ft.³ dirt.

I bought David Byrne’s new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today online.  So far, it is pretty awesome.  I wish I had noticed the option to buy it in FLAC as well as MP3, seemingly for no extra charge, but I didn’t.  Oh well.  I did buy the vinyl package, so in a few days I will receive the album on vinyl, which is going to be great.

Chinese food approaches.  As does bimetallism.

Our plans changed rather suddenly this evening.  We were not able to go to the rabbi’s house for dinner, so I instead went to our synagogue’s community Seder.  And this was no ordinary seder.  Deval Patrick himself, the governor of Massachusetts, arrived, and ate with us.  I managed to corner him before he left, and talked to him about charter schools.  I had heard that he opposed them (which I doubted, as it is an oversimplification), and he vigorously denied it as I had thought he would.  He did make the very interesting point that what Massachusetts has not done such a good job of is using charter schools as “laboratories”, as he put it, and applying what we learn from these schools to the district system.  Building off of this, I would say that the reason people are often angry about charter schools is because they don’t see any benefit to having them.  If we look at charter schools as a government investment that allows a new perspective on public education, we see an immediate benefit, as long as those perspectives are used constructively.  I don’t know what specific legal steps Patrick plans to take to make this more of a reality, but I appreciate the clarity of his goals, and his willingness to communicate them.

I got a photo with him, but I was using my mom’s celphone camera, and did not save it properly, so it is gone forever.  So it goes.

Shawarma is probably one of the best foods there is.  I had a fabulous chickens shawarma sandwich.  We are staying at my aunt and uncle’s apartment now.  We walked around for a bit before coming here, as we had been in the car for about an hour from New Jersey.

This morning, before we left, we visited my great-grandmother at the nursing home she is in.  It was very nice in some ways, and not nice at all in some other ways.  It made me think a lot about how I want to be treated and live when I am that age, and how I want to cope as my parents get towards that age.  I think that it is weird that in America we pay people to live with and take care of our old people, rather than just doing it ourselves.  If everyone was in a better position to take care of their relatives as they aged, we wouldn’t need to spend so much money on those institutions.  Ideally, the government would provide money to anyone who is taking care of relatives to help them cope, but until we are in a position to have that sort of health care infrastructure, we will have to deal with these not-so-friendly institutions.  This particular one is rather nice, but it is still an institution, with all of the benefits and pitfalls that implies.  It is a tricky situation.

I am glad that my relatives are being well taken care of, but I wish it was a little more personal, and I wish I saw them more often.

The Webcomics Weekend was a huge success, at least for the two hours I was there.  I met a lot of awesome people, including Ryan North, David Malki, Joey Comeau, and Emily Horne.  I bought two shirts, the first for me and the second for a friend who couldn’t come but is a die hard Dinosaur Comics fan.  Also I got a gigantic pastrami sandwich on an onion bagel at the restaurant at Eastworks, which lasted me the rest of the day.

We didn’t do so well at Harmony Sweeps.  We didn’t place or get Audience Favorite (we did both last year), but the groups that did were fabulous.  I didn’t feel that disappointed, because I had a really great time, heard some really good music, and got a chance to perform with some really fun people.

Also, I had a singularly AWESOME experience after the show.  A bunch of girls came up to the group, and asked for our AUTOGRAPHS!  And they wanted pictures with us!  It was SO COOL!  I have NEVER given an autograph before, and I enjoyed it so much.  They said that they were part of a high school choir as well, and they wanted us to come see their show, which we totally would have, except that it is on June 1st, which is 5-Alone‘s big show as well, and my birthday with all of its investment and skydiving-related opportunities and commitments.  Speaking of my birthday, I was recently informed that Lucky’s, a tattoo and piercing parlor in Northampton, will give you a free piercing on your eighteenth birthday.  This fits in perfectly with my planned theme for that whole day, so I am considering getting another piercing.  It would definitely be an ear.  I have to decide if I want to get my other (right) earlobe pierced, or if I want to go for one of those upper-ear-type things, and if so, if I want it to be on the left (already pierced) ear, or or the right.  Decision, decisions.

Tomorrow I am sleeping, going to see my school’s production of Hair with a friend, and going to a Mock Trial meeting.

Today was an odd day.  My sister is fifteen.  This is a rather advanced age.  I am still grappling with its implications.

The day did not begin well, however.  My sister (yes, the same one whose birthday it is) was very sick, and was up early in the morning.  I was woken at about four, and was able to fall back asleep, but other members of my family were not so lucky.  My sister did not go to school today.  Then, when my youngest sister went out to let the chickens out of their coop this morning, she discovered that one had been locked out last night, and had been killed by a predator.  This is the first time we have had a chicken killed in the almost two years we’ve been raising them, and it was rather shocking.  My sister was rather traumatized, having just been presented face-to-face with the mangled carcass of a bird she thought she was letting out, and she came back inside sobbing.  My father and I had to clean up, and as the poor thing had been out all night, it was frozen solid.  It was quite a job, and I thus had a very sad start to the day.

School went well after that, except that I did not have enough food, and was thus rather headache-ish and grumpy all day.  We had a rather cold ultimate practice outside, and I managed to go the entire day without eating the four cupcakes I was entrusted with by a classmate of my sister’s who had baked them for her birthday and asked me to transmit them to her.  This was no mean, feat, but I got one after dinner, so I am happy.

Our plans for Watchmen are solidified.  A few members of our extended group have been their since a bit before five PM, and I will be meeting them there within a few hours, along with some other friends arriving from elsewhere.  I will be picking up one other on the way.  The movie is two hours and forty-three minutes long, so it’s going to be a late night.  But it will be worth it.

We won our trial today, and will thus be moving on to the first round of the playoffs on Monday.  We will be playing the winner of Region #16, the Berkshires, which will be either Lennox or Longmeadow; they have a tiebreaker trial.

My plans for tomorrow night are almost completely formed.  I am getting PUMPED!  I am going to go to Ultimate practice before returning home, having dinner with my family, and going back out to the movie.

This has been an exhausting weekend, and it is not over yet.  Yesterday I was at work all day, and was fortunate enough to have someone bring in a computer that had been dropped repeatedly, and, I kid you not, had port spilled over the keyboard.  Last night we cooked a sumptuous Valentine’s Day meal, which included steak, sweet potatoes, and other such awesome things.  Then we watched The Truman Show, with Jim Carrey, which is officially one of the best movies ever.  It is transcendently beautiful and astute, especially because it was made before the era of reality TV.

I discovered a fabulous article on the BBC.  My first name is Rafael.

Today I went to Costco in the morning to pick up my new glasses, which are very subtle.  Then I worked from 12-4.  Now I am home.  My family is on their way back from a show at my school (M. Butterfly [which I was REALLY bummed to miss (they sold out of tickets to last night's show [we got tickets to the matinee today (which I couldn't go to [because I was at work (but last night my friend told me that there were in fact seats available at last night's show [so I could have gone (which makes me pretty angry)])])])]), and we are going to go to dinner at our friends’ house in Conway.  I have not seen this family for a long time, so I am looking forward to it immensely.

As I got my requisite slice of pizza for lunch it occurred to me that I have been eating junk food all day.  I had pie when I woke up, a hot dog at Costco, and then pizza for lunch.

Pizzazz (Gonna Give It To Ya!) is a video made by two of my coworkers when they were in college.  It is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time.

We are having a Mock Trial meeting at my house tomorrow.  I will be bedinnering the team.  Pesto.

Over and out.

The glassware at my house is almost as diverse as the silverware in origin and purpose.  Interestingly, as the capacity increases, they tend to become less and less impact-resistant.  Because of the rather high frequency with which we break glasses, we have about six or seven different sets.  One of the inherent challenges this poses is storage compatibility; certain sets can be stacked in certain ways, some can be cross-stacked, but some cannot.  For instance, there are a few sets that are completely incompatible with each other; if stacked they will break or become completely stuck, necessitating the use of hot and cold water as an agent of thermal expansion and contraction.

Another complication is that some of the glasses fit in the dishwasher in certain ways and others do not.  For example, the top rack of the dishwasher has on the left side a sort of plastic ledge that folds down.  If you stack only mugs or small glasses under it, you can fold it down and stack another layer of short items on top, provided they aren’t tall enough to hit the top of the dishwasher.

The smallest set of glasses currently operation has perhaps two surviving members.  We have been using this one for almost a decade.  Only a few are left, but they are incredibly strong.  This is why it’s lasted so long.  We have a concrete countertop, and I have dropped these glasses onto it from a distance of close to five feet, and they have been fine.  They are practically indestructible.  They are also very well designed in that they are constructed of safety glass, so when they break, they don’t break into many long sharp fragments, they break into many small and rounded ones.  They are a pain to clean up, because they go everywhere, but you can sweep them up with your hands, and we don’t have to worry about missing them and having to watch out for them for weeks to come.  Excellent industrial design.  All glass-manufacturers should do the same.

I wonder if there is some sort of coalition or alliance of international glassware-makers.

I am about to get out of bed. It has been a relaxing morning.
Great quantities of some kind of tasty food are in my immediate future.