An interesting moral/ethical comparison of Brazil and Canada’s environmental records. If we see fit to hold Brazil accountable for the state of the Amazon rainforest, then shouldn’t we also demand Canada leave the tar sands in the ground?
Climate of Denial
Understanding American climate change politics by analogy with the World Wrestling Federation. The Carbon Lobby is the “evil” wrestler, scientists the “good” one, and the media plays referee. The kind of referee that’s always preoccupied with something outside the ring when the bad guy starts beating the good guy up with a chair. From Rolling Stone of course.
Discounted cashflow analysis of scientific programming
Software Carpentry does a little math describing the value of teaching scientists how to build good software. Even with very pessimistic assumptions, it’s clearly worthwhile. With realistic assumptions, it’s a frigging research bonanza. WTF? Why don’t advisers and administrators make sure everyone is on board?
Unnatural Selection
An interesting Q&A from Shanghai Scrap with the author of Unnatural Selection, a book about the world’s 160 million missing girls, abortion, and the “perversion of choice”. In some Chinese counties, the male to female ratio at birth is skewed as far as 3:2 by elective abortions, which starts having broader societal implications. How does a western pro-choice feminist reconcile this outcome? Especially when the choices are predominantly being made by the women themselves.
Bicycle Seed Crystals
A wonderful little social patterning, guerilla marketing experiment, in which a bicycle occupies automotive space, and replicates. And a larger version, in which bicycles have their own designated replication space.
The Bicycling Orchardist
My friend Kerry is putting in some fruit trees, and we decided to make a trip out to the CreekSide Tree Nursery on 61st St. near Pearl by bike to pick the first of them up. It’s fun to serve as a kind of “proof by existence”. Look, I’m doing it, and I’m smiling, so it’s possible, and it’s okay. The tree probably weighed 25 kg (50 lbs) and so did the trailer, which even when added to the weight of my bike, is less than my own mass. Just avoid any serious hills if you can, make sure you’ve got some low gears, and maybe have a snack afterward. I think 3-4 trees this size would have been totally doable, but then I probably would have broken a sweat!
Virtual prison labor gangs in China
China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work. Prisoners are coal mining by day, gold farming by night… to the benefit the prison guards. Don’t earn enough gold? Get beaten with a pipe. Yet another indication we are living in a cyberpunk novel.
On the morality of a carbon-intensive lifestyle
Nils Gilman looks at the morality (or lack thereof) of our carbon-intensive way of life, by way of analogy with antebellum slavery. The average (mean) global citizen today wields roughly 20 times the intrinsic power of a single human being (~2,000 watts). It’s like having 20 “energy slaves” to do your bidding at any time. In the US it’s more like 100 human powered equivalents (~10,000 watts). Most North Americans have a hard time imagining life without the fossil fueled slaves. And so it was that most of us 150 years ago, other than a few radical eccentrics, had a hard time imagining our lives without the economic fruits of literal slavery.
Slugging
Slugging is a self-organized carpooling system that’s popular in Washington DC. People who want to use the HOV lanes troll known meetup locations for folks heading to the same exits on the freeway out of DC, and pick up several strangers. Seems like a great consequence of having HOV lanes… But then I saw the distances and times involved. Alone, people are driving 6 miles, and it takes an hour. In the HOV lane, it’s cut to a mere 30 minutes. With any kind of semi-reasonable infrastructure, bikes would beat even the carpoolers in a race.
On the Economics of Mass Transit and the Value of Common Sense
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight thinks about what we ought to measure when comparing public transportation options. Does Modesto, CA really have better public transit than New York City? There are a lot of measurable quantities, but only some of them are interesting. In particular, it’s not the absolute convenience of public transit that matters — rather, it’s transit’s relative convenience compared to driving alone that determines how people get around.