Blog Archives 050815 to 050717

Old pointless chatter instead of new pointless chatter.

 

050815 København, Danmark
A while back, I bought myself a 20 GB MP3 player, which I then attempted to fill... Well, I converted all my CDs, then converted my tapes, then joined a CD club (mostly to buy albums which I had on scratched records or mangled tape), and, to make a long story short. I got really hooked. I swapped the 20 GB Archos MP3 player for a 40 GB iPod (more expensive but better interface) and then got to work on filling that.

Anyway, once I tracked down and eventually purchased every album I had ever run across and liked, my CD expenditures finally dwindled to very little... It has been taking me quite a long time to listen to everything. After getting the 40 GB MP3 player, the better interface let me track what I had listened to and how often that track had been played. I made a play list, almost a year ago, that contained every song I had not listened to (on the MP3 player) yet. I had, of course, listened to everything many times when I bought it, and again when I ripped it to MP3, and again when I was checking the MP3s for noise or errors, and again before I moved the tracks over to the iPod... Er, yeah, it sounds pretty darn obsessive, but the random number seeds for playlists often are not so hot, so if you have a massive playlist you will find that about a hundred songs are played time and time again until you are quite tired of them while you are really not hitting other tracks in the playlist. Anyway, the I-have-not-heard-it-yet playlist is the playlist I use every day. Each evening, I remove from the play list anything played that day. Slowly but surely, I am listening to every last track.

OK, that may not seem like much, but when I say everything, I mean *everything*. That Punk Christmas album? Check. Das Fleidermouse (German Opera), Mongolian Folk Music, early REM? Check, check, and check. ELO's Greatest Hits, bought out of nostalga for what mom used to play in afternoons when I was so young that the couch was taller than me? Check. What can I say? I was (or am) being an obsessive nut.

Anyway, this is just a really long introduction to mention something Janis Joplin said (from when she's talking with the crowd during "Ball and Chain", off of "Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits") "Tomorrow never happens; it's all the same fucking day, man." She has a point. It has been phrased a dozen different ways; "it's not the destination, it is the journey", "living for tomorrow cheats you of living in today", etc. Somehow, it is still easy to forget.

050814 København, Danmark
Sandemose (author and playwrite Aksel Sandemose 1899-1965) was an interesting but kind of messed up guy. He was born in Denmark and apparently decided that he didn't like the Danes much, so he moved to Norway. While living in Norway, he wrote several plays and books with social commentary directed at society and/or Danish society in particular. These are not happy works. As best I can tell, Sandemose was bitter and depressed to discover that, although he could leave Denmark, he couldn't stop being Danish.

Anyway, most famously, one of his plays was set in the imaginary Danish town of Jante. As a bit of heavy-handed satire, the town had a set of laws to govern social behavior, the Janteloven (Laws of Jante). These were close enough to the mark for actual Danish social tendencies that they stirred up a lot of discussion. I have yet to meet a Dane who has read much of Sandemose's writing, but every one that I have asked has heard of Janteloven and knows (vaguely) the social tendencies to which Janteloven is referring. I first ran across the reference to Janteloven in the book "Culture Shock - Denmark, A Guide to Customs and Etiquette". Anyway, here are the Laws of Jante, if you are interested.

1. Du skal ikke tro, du er noget.
You shall not believe that you are somebody.
2. Du skal ikke tro, at du er lige så meget som os.
You shall not believe that you are as worthy as us. 

3. Du skal ikke tro, at du er klogere end os.
You shall not believe that you are any wiser than us. 

4. Du skal ikke bilde dig ind, at du er bedre end os.
You shall not imagine that you are any better than us. 

5. Du skal ikke tro, at du ved mere end os.
You shall not believe that you know anything more than us. 

6. Du skal ikke tro, at du er mere end os.
You shall not believe that you are more than us. 

7. Du skal ikke tro, at du duer til noget.
You shall not believe that you are good at anything. 

8. Du skal ikke le ad os.
You shall not laugh at us. 

9. Du skal ikke tro, at nogen bryder sig om dig!
You shall not believe that anyone cares about you! 

10. Du skal ikke tro, at du kan lære os noget!
You shall not believe that you can teach us anything! 

Like I said, Sandemose was pretty down on the Danes. Er, I should say, to be clear, *I'm* not down on the Danes, but knowing about Janteloven explains some cultural idiocyncracies.

050812 København, Danmark
In a shocking new development, my typing has resulted in someone sending me an email talking about my a "different kinds of intelligence" post. I stuck a clipping of the email as well as my response to the end of the "different kinds of intelligence" page.

050811 København, Danmark
Well I started in describing a discussion I got into recently on "different kinds of intelligence", but the post became far too long, so I pulled it out of the blog and put it back in as it's own page. Go ahead and click on the link then email me and lemme know what you think.

050810 København, Danmark
It probably doesn't look like much, but there was a bunch of figuring out CSS to do in attempting to lay out nice rows of separated text for a Finnish phrase listing. Now that I know how to do it, I'll probably eventually post little phrase guides appropriate each non-english-speaking posting as a resource for whomever may want to visit while I'm posted abroad.

Oh, something I just noticed; if the phrase listing looks like ass, then just hit the refresh button on your browser. If you've visited my site at all recently, then your browser may be using a cashed (and now outdated) version of the CSS file for my pages.

Speaking of CSS, I'm not the only one out there really excited for the next specification of CSS when they finally will be supporting ruby text, am I?

Oh, also spring rains flooded the lower level of my work building, so I'm no longer in the office or by the office phone, since the floors are torn up to dry out the place before mold can take over. Yep, I'm even harder to contact now.

*And* I now have some of the information of where I will be living for the posting in North Carolina. If you want the info, it is towards the bottom of the Travel Details page.

050804 København, Danmark
Today, I figured I would post a little back and forth that I've been doing by email with my bro' and father. It may be of interest to some of the people who read this blog but were not involved in the email.

It was kicked off by an article link sent by my father, "UC scientist says ethanol uses more energy than it makes". His quote speaking about the article:
Ethanol Energy Balance - This one talks about energy from corn. I really don't think there's much hope there; we need fuel from the whole plant.

My response:
The critique of energy consumption is an important critique, but one that is increasingly incorrect. The ethanol production that is (accurately stated) "subsidized food burning" is not sustainable, but this has been recognized by players in the fuel ethanol field for years.
The competition between human food needs and energy needs means that there is insufficient production capability to meet both needs using sugar-rich corn (or beets) as the fuel ethanol source. This is why the new technologies (being developed by a number of different companies) are focused on converting corn stover (stover = leaves, stalk, roots, cob remains, etc) into ethanol while leaving the actual sugar-rich corn itself to be used as food.
Since most of the energy-intensive processes critiqued in Patzek's report are already being done to provide the food corn, this means that almost any energy that can be derived from the crop waste (corn stover) could be considered "free" energy.
Coverting the corn stover to a useable fermentation source has traditionally been an energy intensive process, with a boiling acid treatment being the most energy dependent step, but here also there has been a lot of work on gaining the same results with much lower energy input (fine-grinding, follwed by warm enzymatic treatment is showing a lot of promise).
Anyway, it is true that we should consider the true costs of our energy choices, factoring in many dozens of commonly ignored factors (such as transportation costs), but to do an honest analysis of the situation requires that we look at not only the truth of 10 years ago but also the truth today *and* the true costs should reasonable, moderate progress be made over the next 10 years.
In my estimate, fuel ethanol was not viable 10 years ago, is barely viable today, but will be a strong energy producer in 10 years. In another 30 years, it will seem only natural that a lot of what is considered waste today (ex. corn stover) will be the raw fuel of tomorrow.

My brother's response:
If the stover is not rolled back into the field to fertilize the soil for next year's crop (and to act as fodder for essential soil microbes, earthworms, etc), won't the use of (currently petro-based) fertilizers increase, and soil health in general decline? Something more to consider.
Also, most of the plant's energy is going into the corn, I really doubt there will be enough easily extractable energy left in the stover for it to ever be considered a "strong" energy producer. Given the current dearth of other technologies, and our increasing energy demand, I think nuclear will be the only strong producer in the near future, in addition to coal and oil, with the other (green) sources contributing only peripherally.
I think I sent this one (http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-7/p47.html) a while back -- got some interesting numbers in there. He looks at biomass as an energy source as a black box -- solar provides the energy, plants convert it at some efficiency... well heck, here's the excerpt (1 Q = 10^15 BTU):
Start excerpt of "Basic Choices and Constraints on Long-Term Energy Supplies"
"Quite apart from fertile land requirements, the solar-to-biomass conversion efficiency is very much smaller than for the conversion of solar to electrical energy. Modern agriculture can generate about 1-1.5 million kg of biomass vegetation per square kilometer of land with about 16 000 BTU per kg, for a total of about 0.06-0.09 Q on 4000 km2 of land. However, after accounting for external energy consumed through the agricultural process and the conversion of biomass to a useful fuel, the net energy production, if any, is less than 0.02 Q on 4000 km^2 two orders of magnitude smaller than that of photovoltaic cell conversion. That is, biomass conversion would require some 100-fold more area of fertile land."
End excerpt
Even if conversion were 100% efficient, 0.09 Q is not a lot -- current US requirements are around 100 Q. So if we devote all of our arable land (1.6 million km^2 ) to energy production via 100% efficiently converted biomass, we can get almost 40 Q. But we'll have no food left to eat.
Anyway, if the stover contains 10% of the energy of the plant, and we can get if at 50% efficiency (a dream), that's still 2 Q, which is worth pursuing I guess.

My response:
I agree, with your points in general, but it is already true that most of the corn stover is not returned to the fields. Also, if we can get cheap fuel as a bonus from the production of food crops (which we will be doing anyway), then it is worth it.
Back when Winston Churchill shifted the British Royal Navy from coal to oil (which meant that instead of depending upon Welsh coal, the British Navy was going to have the security risk of depending upon oil from Persia and Iran) he said that safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone.
This is the maxim modern oil-dependent nations have lived by ever since. These days, we can easily see a future where oil is a limited and rare commodity. We need to change that maxim to be that safety and certainty in *energy* lie in variety and variety alone. It is stupid to stay reliant on oil and would be foolish to overlook any reasonable future energy source. Wind, solar, geothermal, fuel ethanol, the modern clean coal plants, heck - harvesting the methane produced in our sewers; it all ought to be considered and most ought to have better funding for the research needed for bringing these alternate energy sources into commercial reality.
One thing I probably have not yet mentioned is that the Danes are world leaders in modern wind power technology. Some of their windmills are really really impressive. Massive 3-bladed props stuck out in the sound, which look large until you see a sail boat pass one... Then you realize they are gi-normous.

Finally, the end of the emails; my brother's response:
Amen to that. But we should emphasize those technologies that are likely to a) yield a net positive output, and b) supply a large enough portion of our energy demands to warrant investment. There's an opportunity cost. That said, it seems like there are enough people on the planet who like energy and a high standard of living to pursue all of those options concurrently.

On the topic of opportunity cost, I think people should also consider the cost of doing nothing... It really is the most expensive option, despite what some (cough-Cheney-cough) would like to claim.
Anyway, if you have found the above email exchange even vaguely interesting, then you may want to look at two other links that my father provided.
Environmental economics - Rescuing environmentalism - Market forces could prove the environment's best friend, if only greens could learn to love them
and Environmental Heresies, which opens with the statement "Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.
Both are interesting articles. Take a look.

050803 København, Danmark
Just a quick cultural note today:
One thing I have run across here is a teacher wondering about with a whole passel of very young students dressed up as fairies, pirates, or animals. There doesn't seem to be a particular holiday with which this is associated; it simply seems to be commonly accepted that this is what you do with young children - you have them play dress-up and then take them on a school trip. When they are a bit older, there is summer "Activity Camp", where the children learn old-time skills (camping, rope-making, and such) while wandering about dressed up as Vikings or woodsmen. When my parents and I visited the Middelaldercentret we ran across an entire high school group dressed as Vikings and for an activity-based history lesson about life in the middle ages.

Anyway, Danish society seems to be friendly toward and accepting of playing dress-up at all ages. LARP-ing (Live Action Role Playing) is very popular here. There are several stores in København catering specifically to the LARP community, selling whole costumes, costume pieces, patterns, instruction books, leathers, buckles, leather-working tools, make-up, false ears, fake hair, etc. I thought it was kind of an interesting phenomenon.

050729 København, Danmark
Well, I asked my father how he liked the rant his email had inspired and he said it was kind of disappointing; he could not sense the veins standing out on my forehead and I didn't seem to be foaming at the mouth. I thought about that for a bit and came to the conclusion that I have gotten tired. Maintaining a sense of righteous anger takes energy. After many years with Bush Jr. in charge of the US, I'm starting to run out of steam. I violently disagree with so very much that Junior and his crew have done, that it is now difficult to summon the energy to be particularly upset by any one boneheaded case of BS. I'm also pretty ticked off by the Democrats and their special flavor of BS, but since they have chosen not to use their influence to do much more than whine occasionally, I don't have to waste much outrage on them.
Anyway, sad but true; it will have to be something particularly outrageous for me to get much of a rant going these days.

050728 København, Danmark
My father sent me a link in an email entitled "OK, I Gotta Jerk Your Chain". So, you have been warned. Today's entry is another political rant. Anyway, the link was to an article in the Washington Post. The article is talking about the request by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) for information from three scientists. Joe Barton, who rejects the existence of climate change, demanded that the authors of a study on 15th-century tree rings hand over not only raw data, but also personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes.

Now, I'd like to think the best of our politicians, so perhaps it is possible that Mr. Barton was unaware of the existence of the Congressional Research Service or the National Academy of Sciences, two government bodies responsible for providing scientific advice and analysis to our government. Then again, since both bodies have gone on record stating that climate change is real and there is measurable human impact, perhaps Mr. Barton thought his own nonprofessional interpretation of the tree ring data might somehow be superior to the analysis by dozens of government scientists. Now, even assuming that Mr. Barton just wanted a closer look at the relevant data, we are left with the problem of why he was demanding the personal financial data of the scientists.

Trying to think the best of Mr. Barton, we must assume that this is not an attempt at intimidation, but that Mr. Barton somehow thought that the credit card records of a scientist could impact the changes in growth rings in trees. Hmm. Perhaps Mr. Barton was concerned that the notoriously wealthy tree-huggers had somehow outspent the poor, impoverished oil industry and bought themselves a number of studies. After all, it is well known that the Earth First types have important government friends like, uh, um... And the petrochemical companies are left out in the cold, able to write only a few pieces of legislation and hob-nob with nobodies like Dick Cheney. Unfortunately, even if we pretend that the reverse of reality is true, pretending that the Nature Conservancy is a wealthy organization and the petroleum industry does not commission dozens of studies, even then, thinking that the personal financial information of a scientist will somehow alter the interpretation of the raw data is a demonstration of ignorance about the scientific process.

Dozens of other researchers have already looked at the data, hoping to be able to publish a quick an easy paper pointing out why the tree ring data conclusions or methods might be wrong. As time goes on, more and more studies are done in different fields, with different techniques, and the whole composite model of what it all means is slowly built up, with each individual component critically evaluated.

Unfortunately, the only interpretations of Mr. Barton's actions that make sense are that either he is not competent to sit on House Energy and Commerce Committee, much less be the Chairman of the body, or Mr. Barton was deliberately attempting to intimidate researchers and discount realities he does not like. No matter which interpretation is correct, it paints a bleak picture of the chances of having any sort of reality-based legislation come out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This is not good for the US and it is not good for the world.

Oh, by the way, don't let my above references to the oil industry make you think that I'm blaming the entire oil industry for various bad government policies. BP, for example, not only admits we have a problem with global warming, but they are investing in solar energy research and selling solar panels as a way to help deal with the problem. On the other hand, there are companies like ExxonMobil, which has spent more than $15 million since 1998 on groups attempting to discredit or somehow invalidate the data showing global warming and the human factor in global warming. So, I am well aware that Big Oil is not a homogeneous "bad guy" group; there are those trying to do the right thing (BP) and those trying to do whatever it takes to keep problems hidden or unclear (Exxon). I hope you remember this when you go to fill up your gas tank.

050724 Helsinki, Finland
I was talking to a guy I know here, Sampo, and asking about the differences between Finland and the Scandanavian countries. Specifically, we were talking about runes and the gods of the vikings. For a very long time, there was no written Finnish and written Finnish is still relatively new. They have statues around of the church father who codified how to write finnish. Before, it was all oral tradition. The also don't have dramatic battle tales as part of their mythos. As Sampo summed it up, "We were hunter-gatherers, not vikings. We didn't deal with other cultures, we dealt with reindeer."

The feel of Finland is interesting. Here's the recipe: Take a Lapp (think relatively primitive folk, like eskimos) nation, add a shaker full of Imperial Russian influence, a seasoning of Swedish invaders, and then stew long enough to get a modern democracy. There you have it.

At the city market, there were stacks of reindeer pelts on sale for only €60. Thick short fur. I thought it was wolf at first due to the brown/black and white paterning, and the size (smaller than north american deer). Anyway, if I could have thought of any conceivable use for a pelt, I'd have bought one or two. As it was, the size and weight were issues since I am currently roaming the world and have reasonably tight restrictions on amounts of stuff. Still, if I had my own place and I was not moving constantly, I'd definitely have picked up a pelt or two; they were cool looking.

050721 Helsinki, Finland
I have not seen much of Helsinki so far, but it seems to have the standard northern / north-eastern european architecture; wide streets, large block buildings made of stone/brick/cement, and a 5-6 storey height limit throughout the city.

Flying over Sweden and Finland confirmed what I'd heard of the countries; lots of forest and little human population. Humans don't seem to do so well past the 55th parallel. Northern Sweden is lots of forest ditted with abandoned farmsteds; the farmers mostly left northern Sweden after a few bad years in an era when leaving Sweden for better land was possible. The poor, rocky soil and the short growing season meant it just wasn't worth it to stay. Helsinki, the booming metropolitan capitol of Finland, would barely qualify as a moderate-sized city in the US or southern europe.

I'd joked with colleagues that I was going north for vacation because Denmark was too warm. I have to admit, when I arrived, the weather in Helsinki was windy, a bit rainy, and definitely chilly.

050721 København, Danmark
Hey, I'm taking a few days off for vacation and will be spending them in Helsinki. Should be interesting. This brings me to musing about packing. I brought with me here to Denmark ~100 kg of stuff, most of it being books and most of the books being language texts (German, Japanese, Chinese, and Danish) or hobby related. Since arriving, in order to make room for the chance to purchase something if I really really want to, I have packed away about 1/6th of my possessions; items I have not actively used or wanted out. These things will be eventually mailed to my parents for storage (Thanks, parents!). This past evening, I was packing for the trip to Helsinki, a four-day get-away. I noticed that packing for the long weekend put a visible dent in the amount of stuff left in the apartment. I mean, I still have a lot more stuff here, but it is an indication that I really don't have that much with me any more when you realize that packing a single backpack puts a visible dent in the sum total.

I don't know how I feel about this, or rather, I do know how I feel about it and the two attitudes are in conflict. On the one hand, there is the ascetic urge that looks at the remaining stuff and whispers "You don't really need that, why allow it to continue cluttering up your life?" and on the other hand there is the acquisitional urge that whines "You're thirty-freaking-five. Shouldn't you have stuff? Isn't stuff nice to have?" Mostly, I agree with the ascetic urge to reduce, put it is also true that having stuff makes life easier and more pleasant.

If I get rid of, for example, my towels, it will not affect my life in the apartment much, since it came fully furnished, towels included. However, my next apartment may not include towels and then I would be required to buy some. Also, the apartment only came with only one set of towels and so I would have needed to buy towels for my guests anyway. Similarly, I won't need my Chinese dictionaries for another 8 months, but then they will be quite handy. Stuff you have now is stuff you don't have to hunt down and purchase later. I'm conservative that way. I know several people who habitually sell off or give away whatever they currently don't need and then they simply purchase the items again when they need them again. I've never learned the trick of that and I tend to only buy again those things that I have totally worn out, although I have to admit this is largely because I hate shopping. If I ever learn that habit, I will be able to travel far far lighter than I am currently doing.

Anyway, bye for now; I'd best get going to the airport.

050718 København, Danmark
I don't recall if I remembered to mention it before, but traditional Danish cheese smells and tastes like feet. While most ripe and smelly cheeses seem to have their odor as a deterent, preventing you from enjoying their mild creamy flavors without holding your nose, the Danish cheeses have their odor as a fair warning of exactly what they are going to taste like. It seems to range between amazingly rank sweaty feet that have marinated in their own juices for a week to mildly sweaty feet that have been washed as some point a day or so ago. Other people have claimed to like these cheeses, but (unless I suddenly develop some sort of warped sweaty-foot fetish) I am unlikely to ever aquire a taste for these cheese. The only Danish cheese I like, is a cheese I love. It is a cream havarti that is a wonder of clean creamy goodness. I am convinced it must be imported (and not a "true" Danish cheese) because it tastes nothing like feet.

On an entirely different note, I was recently thinking that blogging is not for those people who are given to wondering whether is is a good idea to let other people see their way of thinking. I'm always wondering a little about the sum impression given. For example, I don't think I'm a jerk, but then again, how many of the jerks in the world actually believe they are reasonably nice people? Rambling on in a blog is kind of like letting more people glimpse what's inside your head. It's not necessarily going to be the impression you might like people to have of you.

Speaking of "not the impression you might like people to have of you", check out Watching America. It is a site which regularly updates with translated (so it is in English) news from foreign news services around the world. Go ahead and see what France, Italy, the U.K., Kenya, China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia have to say about the US. I wasn't surprised, but I've been following foreign news for a while. I think many in the US would be surprised by the world's view.

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