Posts by Moz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
My version of fun normally involves building stuff, ideally building stuff to solve a practical problem. Put me in the workshop, ask me to make something, I'm happy. Sustainability in the workshop generally means having someone who's covering the costs and more importantly, taking away whatever I make. Otherwise it just piles up until I can't get into the workshop any more.
Speaking of fun, can we talk about cars?
One relevant example is the 10-odd years I spent "saving up to buy a car" before deciding that I didn't really need a car, which was good since I couldn't imagine ever having so much money that I could justify wasting some on a car. Cars cost a fortune to run, regardless of how much they cost to buy (did you know you can often get more than one utterly awesome bicycle for the price a of a car?) Then you have to park them, and clean them, and worry about which bits are about to break, and how you're going to get from A to B in them, and where to buy fuel for them and geez, just get on your bike and point it in the general direction you want to go, already. For me travelling means: get my stuff, get on my bike, go. Not wait for people, wait for the scheduled service, wait for peak hour to end... just "I'm ready, go". That's not "make sustainability fun" that's "OMG, how do you stand all the crap that goes with anti-sustainability (FFS I would be there by now if you'd let me ride my bike) and please for the love of god stop faffing about and get in the car".
-
Southerly: A Tale of Two Iceblocks: Part…, in reply to ,
abstinence has got to be fun to be sustainable
This is something I struggle to understand. To me, living in a warm, comfortable house is a good thing, and it's something I'd be willing to pay for. The idea that I can have a warm, comfy house that's cheaper is mind-blowing. I am, above all else, a tight-arse (also literally, as I also cycle everywhere). But instead I see people everywhere paying a premium to make their houses less comfortable and more expensive to operate. It's weird.
Much the same applies to a whole range of stuff. Our neighbours mostly mow their lawns. With two stroke mowers. We use a silly little electric mower that you just put the battery in and it goes, because most of our formerly-lawn is growing veges. Or fruit trees. Instead of spending time trying to start the mower, I spend it harvesting the survivors of whatever random stuff I planted. I'm a darwinian gardener... I plant whatever seeds are cheap, and a lot of it dies. What grows, I eat most of and let the rest go to seed. I like wandering round the garden eating stuff. I mean "gathering stuff to take inside and make dinner with". Ooops.
-
Southerly: A Tale of Two Iceblocks: Part…, in reply to David Haywood,
Ultimately a system of international GHG traceability on goods and services would solve numerous problems. This would work in a similar manner to the
... contamination tracking that dairy already use. We already have a system that allows annoyed customers or their next of kin to find out exactly where that block of cheese came from, down to the farm(s) involved, so those responsible can pull the rest of that run of cheese before too many people are affected. Or so goes the theory.
The problem is "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" at a whole range of levels. As you point out, the incentives to cheat exist at every level and the benefits accrue to society at large. Alternatively, a lot of people are standing round saying "I would rather die"... than be the first to make a sacrifice for the greater good. Unfortunately we lack the services of a Cohen the Barbarian (via Pratchett) to help those people realise that particular ambition.
-
Up Front: The Best Possible Taste, in reply to Emma Hart,
There are studies which indicate that both men and women perceive the same woman with larger breasts to be both friendlier, and stupider.
I recall reading one of the studies on academic slavery in the US where women teachers got the most astonishing remarks in their student evaluations, with one of the patterns being that more attractive = dumber... but also more likeable. I wonder if breast size is a useful proxy/indication?
The MythBUSTers episode on tipping springs to mind, they padded Kari up to various degrees and watched what tips she got serving coffee. In shocking news, more padding meant bigger tips than anything else she could do. From men and women.
It would be really entertaining to find someone in the micro-education sector (where course are day-to-week long) and see if the same effect applies.
-
Up Front: The Best Possible Taste, in reply to Sister Mary Gearchange,
HR is a wasteland
HR is there not to keep the peasants from revolting, but to keep revolts from damaging anything important (the company and board first, senior executives second). Once you understand that many "problems" with HR can be seen as necessary to its functioning. You may also find the list of naughty words above useful.
-
You know, let's just focus on measuring the scale of the problem for now, shall we.
-
Southerly: A Tale of Two Iceblocks: Part…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But this time we let some accountants into the room and they came up with all these exciting formulas and theories about how they could use economics to solve the problem.
I'm going to talk about Australia because it's easier for me. NZ *had* an almost entirely renewable electricity system, but some people decided that burning fossil fuels was important.
We also get absurdities like Australia producing huge amounts of coal, but since it's largely exported as coal it doesn't count as greenhouse gas emissions. But when Australia stupidly burns the stuff to make iron, steel or aluminium, that counts as emissions. When the end product is sold, that doesn't count as emissions at all, per David's original point. It's all bullshit (economics) IMO.
One of the many worst parts of it is that Australia has plans made and costed by at least three different groups including one commissioned by Treasury to shift to a 100% renewable electricity system. Technically it's all straightforward, the net benefit depends on assumptions about prices (to get it to cost money you can't just ignore the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change adaptation, you have to assume that solar will revert to 1970's pricing or we'll be able to buy second-hand coal plants from China for next to nothing or some other hand-wavy nonsense)
-
I'm kinda with Andin on this, except that I think you have the sales pitch exactly backwards. The goal was further enriching the rich at the cost of everyone else, but the sales pitch was "spread the wealth", with a quiet subtext of "we will spread your wealth to the global poor", generally expressed as "ship low-wage jobs to the third world". Even at the time it was obvious that the agenda was enriching the obscenely wealthy at the expense of the rest of us - remember the widespread disgust with that aspect of Rogernomics? "open our markets, float our dollar... watch as the rest of the world takes advantage without reciprocating"... yeah, nah.
Note that having a higher income isn't helping a lot of those poor people who are also getting the downside of globalisation. From the looting of third world countries, to "spreading democracy" to environmental damage (and boy, you ain't seen nothin' yet on that front). Having more money is no compensation to the average Syrian or Naurian today, and I suspect a lot of (say) Bangladeshi sweatshop workers would take a bit of convincing, even before sea level rise makes their country tidal. My Filipino housemates here as guest workers would much prefer their country wasn't a US colony being run for the benefit of its foreign owners (their views on sovereignty make Trump seem restrained and reasonable.. and look at their new president).
-
Hard News: RNC 2016: A literal shitshow, in reply to BenWilson,
the people who don't usually vote to make the small effort required
If only it was a small effort. Spending a few days or weeks finding documentation, saving a weeks income, submitting both to a bureaucracy designed to work against your interests, in the hope of being allowed to take a day off work in order to queue for hours before being told that you can't submit even a tentative vote for reasons that you know are wrong... that is not atypical, nor is it "a small effort". Voter suppression is the norm in much of the USA.
-
There is a norovirus outbreak at the Republican National Congress.
If I soil myself from laughing too hard at that, does that mean I've got the same virus?
Also "denial and attack" has become the default approach for an awful lot of politicians, mostly those on the authoritarian side of things. Why answer the question when you can instead attack the questioner and still be taken seriously?