Cinnamon Swirl

Good sports

2008-05-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

A friend passed along this inspiring story of sportswomanship. I'll let it speak for itself.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/24392612/from/ET/

PORTLAND, Ore. - With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count — an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

Doing work that is disconnected from your own heart

2008-05-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

A friend passed along this patent application for an outsourcing assessment methodology from Bank of America. From the patent text:

A typical American employee demands a high salary, good benefits, a good work environment, vacation time, and other job-related perks such as reimbursement for higher education. These job-related perks are expensive and may not be cost-effective for the business entity. A business entity is forced to commit significant resources to employ an American work force and may often find that the demands of American employees far exceed the allotted budget.

B of A's methodology will allow companies to select countries where workers will work for a low salary, without benefits, in a poor work environment, without vacation or training. It is worth noting that all the inventors on this patent are American.

I am finding this quite puzzling, and also sad.

The Rise of the Rest

2008-05-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Newsweek ran an interesting article called The Rise of the Rest. It is an upbeat look at how the world is moving away from having a single superpower-- a situation that was always unstable, of course.

The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years.

[The author then debunks a number of potential objections to the phrase "positive trends"...] It turns out that we'll probably survive just fine as the rest of the world grows in prosperity and power:

Per capita, it turns out, the United States trains more engineers than either of the Asian giants [China and India].

But America's hidden secret is that most of these engineers are immigrants. Foreign students and immigrants account for almost 50 percent of all science researchers in the country. In 2006 they received 40 percent of all PhDs. By 2010, 75 percent of all science PhDs in this country will be awarded to foreign students. When these graduates settle in the country, they create economic opportunity. Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first generation American. The potential for a new burst of American productivity depends not on our education system or R&D spending, but on our immigration policies. If these people are allowed and encouraged to stay, then innovation will happen here. If they leave, they'll take it with them.

More broadly, this is America's great—and potentially insurmountable—strength. It remains the most open, flexible society in the world, able to absorb other people, cultures, ideas, goods, and services. The country thrives on the hunger and energy of poor immigrants. Faced with the new technologies of foreign companies, or growing markets overseas, it adapts and adjusts. When you compare this dynamism with the closed and hierarchical nations that were once superpowers, you sense that the United States is different and may not fall into the trap of becoming rich, and fat, and lazy.

American society can adapt to this new world. But can the American government?...

Yes, it's true. Our greatest weakness is likely to be the slow adaptation of those in Washington, D.C.

But like the author, I see the "demotion" of the US from Leader of the World as a potentially positive shift. It would allow us to change our values from an unending quest to stay on top to a more gentle and cooperative role. That was a shift we couldn't make when the rest of the world was still agreeing that we are "#1". As they change their attitude, we are freed.

There are models for peacefully relinquishing power, by the way. The dismantling of the British Empire was largely peaceful, at least compared to other examples from history. We'd do well to step down gracefully.

Vote in Dell's ReGeneration Green Computing contest

2008-05-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

Recently, Dell solicited entries for its "Green Computing Technology Design Contest" and got 180 responses. A panel of experts has already narrowed the field down to five, all of whom received $10,000. Now the public can vote to choose the top finalist, who will receive an additional $15,000.

Entrants were encouraged to consider all aspects of sustainability, including materials, logistics, power use, end-of-life, and even the service model.

Details of the contest and a description of the five final entries is here.

I invite folks to vote for a finalist (by May 7)! Some of the entries really seem to "get it," including multiple dimensions of sustainability in their designs. Sure, they're all concept models, far from finished products. I find it encouraging that such things can even be envisioned in fairly complete form.

A better mousetrap

2008-04-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

There is a hole in the wall behind my refrigerator. I think it was made by the previous owners of the house because they ran water lines there for the water-spout-enabled fridge they bought. Anyway, I didn't think about it much until I looked over from my computer one fine day in February and saw.... a mouse. In the middle of my kitchen floor. Believe it or not, I caught this mouse with nothing more than a paper bag. It scooted out of the kitchen to the hall closet, and when I got it to emerge, I strategically put the bag in its path, and it ran inside. Donning garden gloves, I carried the bag to the local creek and let the little terrified guy (or gal) go free. I told it to watch out for cats!

I wasn't really sure what would transpire from that, so I didn't do anything. And then a couple weeks ago, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye -- a little black mouse was slinking from the space behind the fridge to the space under the oven. Hmmmmm.

This one was much more timid, and hence impossible to catch in a bag. (Proving once again why we have a natural tendency toward fear, caution, and suspicion -- these mental qualities are evolutionarily valuable, even though they don't apply as much now as they did in the savannah). So I ordered a Smart Humane Mousetrap, which catches the mouse live.

It's a brilliant design. The mouse catches itself via a lever that springs the box closed. The bait is placed between two panels of a plastic lift-off door so that when you lift it open, the mouse must eat its way out. In this way, you avoid contact with the mouse, and the mouse gets the fuel it needs to survive out in the wild.

So I've had a relationship with this little black mouse for a while, as I worked to catch it in the trap. And consequently, I learned a few things about humans too. At first, I followed the directions to bait the trap exactly, placing the bait (bread with peanut butter) between the plastic panels. But this takes some effort, so after a couple days I got lazy and just put a little piece of bread inside the trap.

At first nothing much happened - the bread remained, the trap was unsprung. It got to be routine to check the trap, replace the rock-hard bread, and reset the trap. Sometimes I tried a bit of granola or cereal instead. Then one day I noticed that the bread was gone! But no mouse! Clever fellow. Or maybe it was a giant spider taking the bait?

When it happened a second time, I decided I was the problem. The directions did say to set the trap very lightly, and I wasn't sure how lightly I was setting it. With some experimentation, I found that I could set it like a hair-trigger, sometimes springing it just trying to set it down. I also went back to putting the bait behind the window, so the mouse would have to spend a little more time in the trap figuring out that the bait was not accessible.

Nothing happened the first night. In the early afternoon, I got the idea of weighting the level arm with a few pennies to make it even more sensitively triggered. As I typed on the computer at 2 pm, the trap sprung.

Yes! A little black mouse was inside!

I immediately felt the fear of the trapped mouse. And I felt sorry that I had put the bait behind the window because it meant that the mouse didn't even get a reward for venturing into the trap. In the future, I will bait the trap inside.

I put the whole trap in a paper bag and walked again to the creek. I got out the trap and set it on the ground. The mouse and I made eye contact. I apologized for scaring him. I reflected on the fact that mice can carry diseases, so that it was really better not to have him in my kitchen. And about the fact that not everyone would use a live trap, so if a neighbor had noticed him, he might have been killed in a deadly trap. Yes, there are cats out here, but there are cats in my neighborhood too.

I opened the box at one end. The prison door was gone. But the mouse did not go out. It stayed huddled at the other end, staring at me. Freedom was fully available in that moment, but the mouse did not get up and walk out the door. How similar it is for us.

Finally the moment shifted, and the mouse shot out and over a small ledge in two big bounds. May you be well, mouse.

(And just to be sure, I am baiting the trap again...)

Streaming video

2008-04-21T18:09:00.001-07:00

This YouTube video shows some amazing footage of the Vulcan Project by Kevin Gurney at Purdue University. (More on The Energy Blog at http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/04/study-develops.html).

I was struck by just how much CO2 is coming from the Eastern US compared even to high-emission places like the Bay Area and Los Angeles. My guess is that it is related to:

More extreme weather (more heating needed in winter, and more cooling in summer)
Higher population density
More factories/industry
Less efficient buildings???
Less environmentally conscious behavior???

Check out where the gases stream off over the ocean also. In the east, they go toward the North Atlantic. I know I've read about how these are affecting the usual pattern of the Gulf Stream. In the west, they head downward toward Baja California. And there's a hot spot.... pretty close to New Orleans in the Gulf. Hmmmmmm.

I'd love to see this worldwide.

Oil, gold, and blood

2008-04-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

I recently visited some friends in Lubbock TX, which is on a high, cold, windswept plain. The town of 200,000 consists mostly of strip malls and fast food joints, and does not even have recycling. The surrounding countryside is devoted to traditional cotton farming and livestock. The very picture of unsustainability, and yet beautiful in a rugged way. Just 100 miles away is the Palo Duro Canyon, second largest in the US (to the Grand Canyon) - where we went for a truly stunning Easter hike.

The other highlight of the trip was visiting the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum (in Midland - hometown of George W Bush). This huge oilfield supplies oil to many US states, including California. The musuem was a combination of fairly technical information on petroleum engineering and historical/cultural information about how the oil industry reshaped life in that region. I really got a sense of how much human ingenuity and perseverance were needed to extract this stuff from the Earth and pipe it all over the country. And how oil was a major transformative force in this poor, rural area that otherwise scratches out a living from dusty soil. There was a propoganda-like movie about the current challenges of the petroleum industry - fewer big oil fields, lower-quality oil, etc - calling on young people to help join the battle to scour the Earth for more of it. "We must not fail," it concluded ominously.

It was both chilling and deeply moving. I had never felt a particular emotional connection to oil, except in sort of a derisive intellectual way when expressing frustration with our thirst for it. I can understand the analogies to gold, and to blood, much better now.

Kim is talking about... cage fighting???

2008-04-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's right. Cage fighting. And specifically, a form of professional fighting that is rising in popularity, called "MMA" - mixed martial arts. This is Western-style fighting that is grounded in an Asian martial arts background, along with the mental discipline and philosophy of martial arts.

My connection to this is through my tai chi and qi gong teacher Chris Shelton, who is American, but has 20 years' experience in these Chinese practices. He is also an excellent Chinese doctor skilled in medical qi gong therapy. About a year ago, he was given the opportunity to enter the MMA world, both as a participant and as a doctor to the fighters. He trains with Cung Le, a well-known MMA fighter.

Why would Chris take this opportunity? Why tread the path of staged fights in a cage - apparently the ultimate in boneheaded brutality and the American celebration of violence? Precisely because he wants to transform some of this energy. Chris has noticed that Americans think tai chi means "old people in the park." In reality, this Asian practice works with incredibly powerful energy and has the potential to improve the practitioner's health and spiritual depth. The mental discipline of most martial arts would be a beneficial substitute to the mindless, reactionary violence often seen in young fighters. Instead of turning away from our interest in violence, Chris is turning toward it, trying to increase interest in tai chi and other martial arts so that more young people will take this rigorous training and improve their mental state.

In one sense, I can respect that. I have decided that despite the violence and disrespect inherent in Western capitalist business, I will enter that world and bring a new energy to it. It is the area where my work is. And Chris' work is with the "fighter" mindset among young people.

To my heart, this is a really challenging area. Kicking and punching another life form are grounds to make me feel ill. Incredibly, some folks enjoy it. Chris works in what is literally a battle zone. That takes strength of character-- which I know Chris possesses because I've studied with him for several years. I wish him well in his work. The world will indeed be better when more young people learn tai chi.

This YouTube video is about a fight in San Jose between Cung Le and Frank Shamrock. It's a pre-fight interview at Cung's gym, and includes some footage of my teacher Chris performing medical qi gong after the workout (to rebalance Cung's energy). Check it out. My experience with Chinese medicine is that it works.

(Incidentally, Cung Le won the fight. You probably already knew that if you're an MMA fan. I had to do a Google search to find it).

Adam Werbach

2008-03-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

Adam Werbach is the former President of the Sierra Club (a station he achieved at the age of 23) who now works on Wal-Mart's environmental initiatives. This is a speech he gave to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in December, 2004:

Is Environmentalism Dead?

It's quite long, but worth reading carefully. It is clear that Adam's mind had already turned away from traditional activism toward "radical" solutions such as engaging Corporate America in environmental programs. He stresses interdependence over the extreme factionalism that characterizes the political sphere. Ironically, he is now finding the private sector far more amenable to such ideas. Maybe it's time to re-examine some of our often unquestioned assumptions about "how things are."

If I had to choose one line to encapsulate the speech, it might be this one:

It's easy enough to deconstruct the concept of the "environment": if humans are part of the environment, then how can some human problems be "environmental" and others not?

Right. The system is all linked together. The good news is that in an interconnected system, you can really start helping anywhere, and it will eventually filter to help everywhere.

Werbach has gotten a lot of criticism for his decision to work for Wal-Mart, most of it coming from his old friends, colleagues, and clients. (For example, see this Fast Company article entitled "Working with the Enemy.") But after reading this speech, and attending BGI for 2 years, I think Werbach is far more visionary than most political activists. He outgrew the Sierra Club, even by the age of 30. He is willing to wrestle with very challenging issues that are far from black-and-white, and is never willing to simplify his thinking just to make it more comfortable for other people. Best of all, he doesn't just think and talk about it -- he is willing to go out and experience the things he wants to learn about. Ten years with the Sierra Club, and now a few years with Wal-Mart... he's actually tasted the things he talks about.

I feel confident that Werbach's complexity is leading in a good direction, and look forward to his continued development. One of my favorite inspirations comes to mind (attributed to Einstein): "I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity."

NUMMI plant tour

2008-03-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

A group of BGI folks toured the Toyota NUMMI plant on Friday. We spent much of last quarter in both our Operations and Management class learning about "The Toyota Way" - lean operations, continuous improvement, fair management, clear accountability. I highly recommend the book by Jeffrey Liker called The Toyota Way.

First of all, the tour was very well organized and scripted, as you would understand after reading The Toyota Way. We assembled in a common room and watched a video about NUMMI (starting promptly at 10:15 am, no waiting for stragglers). We got some instructions about how to behave on the tour (keep all body parts inside, wear the safety glasses at all times, etc), then proceeded to the trams. The pathway to the tram was marked in paint, like all pathways everywhere in the plant (kanbans!). Even the parking spaces in the lot were drawn as rectangles, not just lines. ("Put car here.")

They introduced a few of the key Japanese words, like kaizen (continuous improvement), muda (waste), and kanban (visual cues as a key part of the process efficiency). We were told about the management structure/help chain, with team leaders, group leaders, assistant managers, managers, etc, all receiving the same pay on a given level.

We immediately noticed the visual signals everywhere, often in the form of large flat-screen video panels displaying data, such as number of days since the last injury (45), current level of productivity (96%), and status of the line (stopped or running). Everything was labeled, including a post that said "kanban post #19." There was a little square painted on the ground for nearly every piece of equipment, every trash can, every toolbox.

The aisles at NUMMI are narrow and always humming with electric carts and three-wheeled bicycles making JIT (just-in-time) deliveries of parts to the line. There seem to be intuitively understood "rules of the road" that allow the drivers to whiz along really fast without causing accidents or traffic jams (although at one point a cart nearly cut off a pedestrian right in front of our tour tram, and the pedestrian shook his head in surprise).

The andon cords are pulled quite often, usually just for a brief time. (These stop the line when a worker finds a quality problem or otherwise cannot perform his/her task in the time allotted). They activate a light by the worker’s station and set off an auditory cue also. Sometimes it is just a ringing bell, but in some parts of the plant, different andons have different musical signals – like cell phone tunes – so they can be easily distinguished.

The takt time was 81 seconds that day, and workers seemed to be able to go about their business quite calmly – neither rushing nor standing around too much. The tour guide told us that when there is a stoppage and a worker has a few minutes, he/she is encouraged to grab a broom, mop, or paintbrush. Perhaps that is why the place was incredibly clean – no metal chips or spare screws on the floor, no dust bunnies, no sawdust.

It is really true that they have one-piece flow. The NUMMI plant makes Toyota Corollas and Tacomas, and Pontiac Vibes. The cars coming down the line were a mix of these in various colors. The only complication is that 81 seconds is not quite enough time to perform some steps for the 4-wheel drive (the Vibe), so they never have 2 Vibes in a row (we were told there was about 1 Vibe for every 6 Toyotas).

The robots were especially cool. Japan is the master of robot technology, years ahead of the US. Most of the robots were in the welding section, assembling the large parts of the chassis. We also saw computer-controlled forklifts that have no drivers! That’s a little eerie to watch.

Much of the tour emphasized how well workers are treated. The tram driver said hello to everyone we encountered (he often knew their names), wishing them a good weekend (it was Friday). He explained how the plant has 2 working shifts with 2 hours between the day and night shifts for maintenance or necessary overtime. The paint shop has 3 shifts because it’s a long step. Maintenance crew runs 24/7/365. People are screened through 8 entrance exams, and only 47% make it through their first year. But "if you work hard, you’ll be paid well and get good benefits." They offer medical, dental, education scholarships, training, 16 paid holidays, etc. Most workers are in the union, and there has never been a strike at NUMMI. About 17% of line workers are women, which sounded pretty high to me for the type of labor. I wondered if 17% of managers were also women.

The tour guide commented that at least 2 companies were among our tour – some people from Lam Research for example. Lam Research makes semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and I would suppose a NUMMI tour would help them think about ways to make their equipment more user-friendly, as well as ways they can work with their customers (like Intel and AMD) in everything from delivery to the customers’ plant operations. It seems that another group on our tour was people who might want to get jobs at the plant eventually, some sort of training or job placement program. Some of the folks talked about what they might need to do to pass those 8 tests the tour guide mentioned.

Afterward there was a chance to ask questions. We asked a few questions the guy couldn’t answer, so it seems we learned our class material well! :-)

Overall, a really great experience, and a chance for genchi genbustu (go see for ourselves)!

A stroke of insight

2008-03-26T22:11:00.001-07:00

This 18-minute TED video is well worth watching. It is from a neuroscientist who woke up one morning, realized she was having a stroke, and was able to experience the process and now articulate it amazingly well.

Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight

Earth Hour

2008-03-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

March 29 from 8-9 pm (whatever your time zone is) is the second annual Earth Hour. Please turn off your lights, TV, computer, etc, during this hour to ease the burden of energy use. You may even discover something enjoyable about it!

The stress of climate change

2008-03-23T07:48:00.000-07:00

When one's home begins to change, it no longer provides the deep solace that people have come to rely on. This may lead to a palpable sense of dislocation. As climate change disrupts the old patterns of weather and ways of life, people are becoming stressed. WorldChanging.com recently published an important article on this subject.

A small yet growing body of evidence suggests that how people think and feel is being influenced strongly by ecosystem transformation related to climate change and industry-related displacement from the land. These powerful stressors are occurring more frequently around the world.

A case in point: When researchers from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at the University of Newcastle in Australia conducted interviews in drought-affected communities in New South Wales in 2005, the responses suggested some of their subjects may have been suffering from a recently described psychological condition called solastalgia (pronounced so-la-stal-juh).

Solastalgia describes a palpable sense of dislocation and loss that people feel when they perceive changes to their local environment as harmful.

The particular vocabulary is not critical to me. What matters is that we realize how climate change has this psychological dimension. I hope it will invoke in us a sense of compassion as we go about making the changes to society that are necessary. We will still go about our work of dismantling our unsustainable ways of living, but let's do so with an open heart and a kind demeanor. We may feel angry that some people seem to be holding on irrationally to the old ways, or otherwise making very unwise and harmful choices. Well, that is to be expected of people under stress, especially when the stress is unconscious to them.

Also, we can be aware of how this stress is operating in ourselves. I know that I feel deep pain as I watch the beautiful Earth being damaged, and as I experience the effects of global warming in my local climate. I need also to take care of myself -- to make this stress conscious so it is not running insidiously below the surface. If I don't, I won't be much help in the world.

Irreverant, but perhaps not irrelevant, thought

2008-03-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

I was watching a video yesterday about Mindfulness and the Brain, and heard the following:

The brain comprises about 2-3% of body weight
It uses 25% of the body's energy resources

Sound familiar? The United States has 5% of the world's population, and consumes 25% of its resources. Maybe a truly egalitarian/social justice view of the body would consider this grossly unfair? Or maybe, given that human societies are simply a larger-scale version of a natural system like the body, it is not so surprising that the world could have evolved to this state of affairs. (It is still our choice how to respond, of course).

Bhikkhuni Seminar, 2008

2008-03-18T07:33:00.001-07:00

It's been quiet here, but that's all right, of course. It is natural for things to be active and then quiet, and then active again. I have been inspired to post again by the picture seen here.

It is rare to see so many ordained Buddhist women at one place. They are currently attending a Bhikkhuni Seminar at the Santi Forest Monastery in Australia. It is a time of gathering energy for Buddhist women in the Theravadan tradition, and such meetings allow them to coordinate, connect, and help each other. More and more laywomen are interested in ordaining, spurring the need to build more centers, gather more resources, and agree on certain principles of practice.

I know one of the Bhikkhunis at the seminar fairly well, and have met two of the others. I find them all to be stellar people, highly worthy of support. Just look at them (pictures available at the above Seminar link)! That is what happiness looks like.

Lunar eclipse

2008-02-18T07:37:00.001-08:00

There will be a total eclipse of the moon on Feb 20 (or 21, depending where you are), not to be repeated until Dec 2010. There is more information on the NASA website.

I'm looking forward to seeing it. These types of natural display are awe-inspiring, and can serve as reminders that humans are all just living here on our one little planet. It brings needed perspective to our problems. We also should not underestimate the importance of having a conscious attitude toward the eclipse (say, one of awe). In history, eclipses often meant societal chaos or breakdown because they were approached with an attitude of fear, or superstition, or some other interpretation. The eclipse is always just the eclipse: What we make of it is our own choice. (And that's true about... well, just about everything). Enjoy Wed evening!

Unusual confluence

2008-01-25T07:59:00.000-08:00

The ever-changing mix of challenges in our interdependent economy can create new and surprising confluences of interest. For instance, the alliance of left-wing liberal environmentalists with conservative communities of faith who are interested in environmental stewardship. Here's another one: Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger co-authoring an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Beyond Payday Loans

Here is one initiative that can unite progressives and conservatives as well as business leaders and community activists: helping the "unbanked" enter the financial mainstream by opening checking and savings accounts, and working collaboratively with financial institutions and community groups to develop and market products that work for this untapped market. [...] Imagine the economic and social benefits of putting more than $8 billion in the hands of low- and middle-income Americans. That is the amount millions of people now spend each year at check-cashing outlets, payday lenders and pawnshops on basic financial services that most Americans receive for free -- or very little cost -- at their local bank or credit union. Over a lifetime, the average full-time, unbanked worker will spend more than $40,000 just to turn his or her salary into cash.

Who knows if this particular idea will work. The point is that Clinton and Schwarzenegger are both capable of thinking outside the usual party lines as well as outside the current structures of institutions. They are able to say, "Hey, why can't banks serve this other set of customers? What would we have to do to make that possible?" Flexible thinking, aligned with an ethical goal, is an important tool for making progress. In this time of election, it's worth checking the candidates against this ability -- those without it will probably not help society much.

Island in the woods

2008-01-17T06:58:00.000-08:00

When I go up to BGI, we have class on a "campus" that isn't really ours. We rent a facility for the weekend called Island Wood, an environmental education center on Bainbridge Island. It's an amazing place. This month's Metropolis Magazine features a story about Island Wood that captures the key elements.

The intention behind Island Wood is to allow inner-city kids from Seattle to experience nature and sustainable living. They love it.

“Like when kids get outside and look back here,” Wolf continues, “they see this butterfly roof instead of a normal one with the peak in the middle. One side of the roof is designed to have solar gain, and we want high windows facing south so we can get passive solar heat, and the roof butterflies there so we can capture the water right down the middle, pour it into that cistern. Kids see that kind of stuff and ask about it.”

Island Wood’s architecture, then, is didactic. Mithun project lead David Goldberg calls the structures “a textbook.” The buildings are a meta-environment: they’re not only sustainable, they’re about being sustainable. There doesn’t seem to be any element to the architecture that isn’t making a statement about itself.

Is this an expensive place? One of those nice showpieces that kids can visit, but that is totally impractical for our budget-limited school system? Think again.

[Debbi Brainerd] was concerned at first about the high costs, “but [Mithun] determined that we could integrate all of the green pieces we wanted by taking out things that you would find in a traditional building to offset the price. In the end our cost per square foot was $194, compared to schools being built here at the same time, which were around $235 per square foot. So our cost was really low, and most of that was just trade-off: if you walk around our buildings, especially if you’re in these big areas, we don’t have any lowered ceilings or paint…we’ve left things sort of raw. And we have radiant-floor heat, which will save us money in the long run.

Come visit if you can -- more info at Islandwood.org.

Lyrica

2008-01-15T15:25:00.000-08:00

There is now a drug for the condition known as fibromyalgia. Lyrica is being prescribed to treat the widespread, unpredictable body pain that characterizes this condition. The headline of the New York Times article is blunt: Drug Approved. Is Disease Real? Fibromyalgia does not possess the characteristics usually required to call something a "disease" in our culture. So it is with some reluctance that Lyrica has been approved.

It is indeed interesting that there is a specific drug now. I was sorry the article only said a little bit about what kind of drug it is, and nothing about how it is used or what the results of early trials were. But the more important issue is the ongoing "is it real" debate, and more specifically, how to deal with people who claim to have severe pain, the cause of which cannot be found by any known medical test. The above article has a decent summary of the main views.

I am coming to see that the challenge about this so-called debate is that both sides are right-- and both sides are wrong. It is indeed true that people who get lots of attention for being in pain are more likely to become dependent on having pain and to begin noticing every ache that other people would simply live with. And it is also true that people in pain who are ignored or dismissed will be more likely to spiral down into having more and more pain, often becoming depressed. So the formula seems to be: Ignore it, and it gets worse. Indulge it, and it gets worse. Both are true.

In the West, we tend not to see alternatives to indulging or ignoring. For example, we are routinely told that the only options for dealing with emotions are to "let them out" (ie, loudly express them) or to "suppress" them. We know suppression is bad, so we assume that expression is good. But usually that expression takes the form of indulgence. Do you know anyone who routinely expresses anger who has, as a direct result, become less angry in the long run? I don't -- mostly these people keep the same temperament, only momentarily blowing off the steam. But people who repress their anger of course don't fare any better.

What we fail to realize is that there are other options. For instance, simply noticing and letting things be, with neither expression nor suppression. I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is always the best option or even that it reduces pain. But I do know that there are options for handling both physical pain and difficult emotions besides the usual two that we acknowledge. The heart of the "debate" around fibromyalgia is whether it is better to "coddle" people who have inexplicable pain, or to use "tough love" to get them to shape up -- basically, expression or repression. Given that this is a nonexistent dilemma, I see the whole issue as largely misunderstood by both doctors and patients. When you are asking the wrong questions and barking up the wrong trees, there is really no way to make progress.

Nonetheless, I hope that Lyrica helps some people who have been diagnosed, either directly by controlling their pain or more subtly by providing enough psychological support that they can find other options for themselves. Being in that kind of pain is harmful for everyone, not just the person experiencing it. I know.

Bringing life to 2008

2008-01-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

A friend sent a link to this talk by Janine Benyus at TED 2005. I was struck in particular by the point made in the 12th rule of sustainability from Nature:

Life creates conditions conducive to life

This is a useful guide to mindful, socially helpful, peaceful living. I have been noticing my behavior in light of whether or not it is "conducive to life." Some areas that seem clearly unskillful (and hence unnatural): sarcasm, cynical thoughts, and resistance to alterations in what I had "planned" would happen. These seem to be worthy focal points for improving my behavior in 2008. They are things to let go of.

Of course, when we let go of things, we also let go into other things-- the things worthy of cultivating. When I reflect on this right now, the word that keeps coming to mind is space. I am not entirely sure how this will manifest, but it feels important for me to cultivate space in 2008. Space creates the openness crucial for the experience of joy, for profound reflection and insight, and for acting wisely. Space is in short supply in today's rushed world-- its creation and cultivation also aid society. Let's see how this turns out: More space in 2008!

What are you doing in your life to create conditions conducive to life?

Lakota Nation secedes

2007-12-29T07:33:00.000-08:00

I notice that this is not front-page news, but some Americans might be interested to know that the Lakota Nation has seceded from the United States. From Common Dreams:

WASHINGTON, DC - December 20 - Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

There is much more at LakotaFreedom.com.

Confucius say:

2007-12-16T15:33:00.001-08:00

Study without reflection is a waste of time. Reflection without study is dangerous.

The Story of Stuff

2007-12-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine just created an animation called The Story of Stuff. It's a 20-minute encapsulation of how we in the rich countries end up with loads of cheap consumer items that we don't really need (and which we then toss out as ever-larger mounds of trash). Best of all, it offers alternatives.

I highly recommend watching the whole thing. If you don't have a spare 20 minutes in your life, that's something worth pondering in and of itself. But if you really want something shorter, here are a few teasers:

Teaser #1

Teaser #2

Teaser #3

"The Drop"

2007-12-11T07:21:00.000-08:00

This past weekend up at BGI, our Marketing class did an exercise called "The Drop." When we started, our professor told us that it has been performed by countless business school students all over the world, although never quite like we were doing it. The scenario was that we needed to deliver protein to people living in the high mountains of Madagascar... in the form of eggs. Of course, there are complications: You can't land a plane there, people speak 25 different dialects, and they have never seen or eaten an egg.

We were given a bag full of materials to use in constructing our "delivery mechanism," which was the "product" we were selling to the government, who had hired us as consultants to solve this problem. We could only use the materials from that bag-- things like rubber bands, balloons, styrofoam cups, paper, string, and wooden sticks.

Adding one more dimension, there were preferred design criteria: Cost should be minimized (achieved by choosing the fewest possible types of materials); environmental impact should be minimized (styrofoam... not so good); the integrity of the egg must be visible from the outside of the package; and for some reason, the natives preferred square/boxy shapes to other shapes. The egg would be dropped from 15 feet high, and had to hit a target 10 feet out. Accuracy was counted in your final score.

Finally, we had to produce "marketing materials" for our product -- ie, a brief for the government about how it works, as well as an instruction manual for the natives to use in retrieving and cooking the egg. (The latter should be done in pictures, given the 25 different dialects). The quality of these added into your score (but watch out! Each color you include in your marketing materials raises the cost!)

Oh, yeah-- and we had to accomplish the task in 1 hour, in teams of 5-6 people.

It was a blast! We were allowed 2 test eggs that could be broken if early designs didn't work. Then we were given a final egg for the Official Government Demonstration. Here are pictures from the demo! (Note: Only available until Dec 15th). You can see various teams' designs. And you can see that not all the eggs survived :-).

My team was the first one shown. Our cone-shaped delivery device (OK, so it wasn't square...) landed very nearly on the target and kept the egg intact! Our marketing materials weren't top-notch, and the device wasn't so elegant, so we didn't win overall, but we did win the "Eco-Star" prize for having the most environmentally friendly design. The overall winner was the 4th device shown in the slideshow, with the striped wings.

Overall, it was a great exercise. We had to quickly get through all the team dynamics challenges, so we could settle on a design, test it, and produce marketing for it. We disregarded a lot of barriers that would normally exist, such as people's tendency to hold onto information and only share strategically to the degree that it benefits them: We shared freely and enjoyed the process. On the other hand, in "real life" we would have had access to more experts and more information instead of doing so much guesswork and hacking together of things in a somewhat sloppy way.

What fun!

Scrap House!

2007-12-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a house that a couple of women built for about $3,000 -- yes, you read that right. Watch the video: The Scrap House.

We throw away enough stuff from which to make an entire, functional house. It's probably not the warmest house, but the creativity in the reuse is truly inspirational. As she says, "Let's start now!"