Results tagged “Philosophy” from V2

Despite the fact that we're already nine days into the new year, here's my resolution (effective whenever the last few pieces of deli-sliced turkey in my fridge are finished.)

I'm joining the PB&J Campaign for lunch, because every step counts.

As an aside, although a few of the items from the original post are no longer accurate (no more worm bin, garden or CSA produce for me at the moment due to current living arrangements), others have improved:

• nearly all lighting is now CFL
• walk to nearly every store I shop at
• reusable totes for most groceries
• Jasper's litter is now corn-based and 100% biodegradable
• Moved my websites off-site so the computer (my main power drain) is now off when not in use
  

A song I'd forgotten about, and yet the timing of its return to my consciousness was impeccable.

While you were sleeping
The babies grew, the stars shined and the shadows moved
Time flew, the phone rang
There was a silence when the kitchen sang
Its songs competed like kids for space
We stared for hours in our maker's face

Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping

UPDATE: And another...

Something filled up
My heart with nothing
Someone told me not to cry
But now that I'm older
My heart's colder
And I can see that it's a lie

Arcade Fire - Wake Up

Another Christmas has come and gone (well, in ten minutes it will have gone, at least from this coast.) Having missed the past two family Christmases I can't necessarily judge this one as being abruptly different, but people have slowly drifted off either due to death or work, and slowly people have grown older and the excitement surrounding the event has abated. Gone (at least for now) are the days where the kids clamored to open their gifts at the crack of dawn and a separate table was set in the kitchen to contain the mess. Now everyone is either exhausted after a few hours, or has additional family obligations at other houses and has to skip off quickly, leaving a dwindling crowd to pick at the remains of the meal and socialize.

On the plus side, most gifts these days are the cash/gift card variety, which also means gone are the days of waiting in mile-long lines at the returns counter.

One more full day for me in Buffalo; one more full day of recollections and memories; one more full day of the ghosts of familiar sights and sounds; one more full day of old haunts and old patterns; one more full day of flashbacks to my 21 year-old self.

One more day of living out of a suitcase in a guest bedroom in a house I once knew. I'm ready to go home.

In the process of mucking around with some of my Google Account settings this morning, I stumbled upon the old Blogger-powered TCZ group blog (unfortunately, the link to the blog itself is currently dead) that saw its heyday from June 2004 through June 2005, and then faded out slowly after that. I'd totally forgotten about most of the posts I made there, including a hilariously out-of-date post from Aug '05 that simply read "I saw regular unleaded for $2.90 a gallon this morning. (several blank lines) Good."

Reading back, it's interesting to see how my writing style has evolved over time and how parts of it now make me wince... especially where I really forced the dryly humorous side of things. I'm going to go through and post some of them here over the next little bit, in part because the old blog is now dead and thus my readership finally out-paces theirs at one-to-zero.

Back in June 2006 I wrote a draft of the following post, but never actually published it... it's still sitting in the Blogger control panel in draft form, over eighteen months later. I've put it into the extended entry here in its entirety, with only minor style revisions.

Will Sheff of Okkervil River, from an interview with The Believer:

[A] couple months ago I tripped and I smashed my face up and I really fucked up my glasses and I haven't been able to close them since. And I caught my eye and smashed my lip up and I got this deep-tissue bruise. And it was the first time I felt a very severe degree of pain out of nowhere, really suddenly--this is long after I wrote "For Real"... But there was really no mistaking it. That was a very real sensation. You have these moments where you're like--Do I like this girl? Do I love this girl? Or do I just like her? Do I want a ham sandwich or do I want a turkey sandwich? Are my political beliefs just somebody else's beliefs that I've simply adopted or are they what I really think? But when your head is smashing into the concrete you don't have that kind of question about whether it's a real sensation. And ultimately, that’s what's going to unmake us all--smashing up against the physical reality of death and decay, and being unmade.

Matthew Good, 21st Century Living (from the album Avalanche):

Ambition, ambition's a tricky thing
It's like riding a unicycle on a dental floss tightrope over a wilderness of razor blades
Ambition can backfire
Ambition means more
Ambition means faster
Ambition means better

I wonder if you can sup--
Can you supersize ambition?
Does that make you ambitious if you supersize ambition?
Around here, our ambition hurts more than it helps
Around here our ambition throws an non-perishable item in a donation bin at Christmas
And it pats itself on the fucking back because it thinks it's done something decent.

(There's a YouTube video of it being performed after the break...)

Author’s note: this got unexpectedly long, so you might want to grab a coffee and clear the next half-hour of your schedule before proceeding. Consider yourself warned.

It occurred to me the other day that I was nearing the seventh anniversary of my arrival in Seattle. I used to mark the passage of time by the annual return of Puyallup Fair commercials (it vaguely rhymes with "gallop", as the awful ads that also feature rhyming on the word "pal-pi-tate" constantly remind you...), but since I stopped watching TV a few years ago I’ve been forced to pay more active attention by other means. This year, it also had me thinking back on my goals when I first came, and where I ended up.

Seven years ago today, at some ungodly hour of the morning (Eastern Daylight Time), I departed Buffalo for my trek to Seattle to begin graduate school. I arrived in town four days later - Labor Day morning, a little before noon.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Ford Motor Company put out a press release today touting a pro-environmental manufacturing move that at first struck me as utterly absurd, until you think about the potential numbers involved.

They're going to start using a soy-based foam (instead of the current industry standard of pure petroleum-based foam) in seat cushions and padding, starting with the 2008 Mustang and expanding to other makes and models in the following years.

Now this may seem silly at first given that amount of foam used in the manufacturing of some seats is miniscule compared to the amount of gasoline a car uses in its lifetime, but going back to the "every step counts" concept this is still a significant shift and hopefully something that many other industries which use foam can follow.

Based on the press release, they estimate that each vehicle produced today uses approximately 30 pounds of foam, with a total of 9 million pounds of the foam used annually. This new soy foam isn't perfect - it's only 24 percent renewable in the current design (presumably to meet federal safety standards?), but that's still potentially over 2.1 million pounds of renewable, biodegradable material replacing petroleum-derived sources. Furthermore, additional design advances and regulatory testing should be able to increase the percentage of renewable material in the foam in the future, pushing aside yet more petroleum-derived materials.

The other important thing to consider is that many businesses tend to "follow the leader". A little pressure on other car companies to follow suit (especially if the initial research and development is already done) could go a long way toward further increases in the use of renewable resources, and there are obviously many other uses for foam that go beyond seats in cars.

There's still the little issue of soy proliferation causing other environmental harm (deforestation, rising food prices, and so forth), but since the main source of the foam is soybean oil (just like biodiesel!) this technology should be easily applicable to any new bio-oil sources in the future, such as algae.

Here's what I hope will be the first in a series of "What are you doing to reduce your ecological footprint?" posts. I originally intended the "waste" category to center more around wasteful practices in packaging and consumerism, but waste takes many forms and there are many ways to both eliminate and mitigate it.

I certainly don't think what I'm doing is anything special, and there is plenty more that can and should be done to improve on this. I'll probably take some time and go into more detail on these items in future posts, but for now here's a tally to start. I'm also sure I've missed a few things, but this isn't meant to brag - it's meant to act as a reminder to myself.

• Switched to a fuel-efficient (30 mpg city, 45 mpg highway) biodiesel car
• Bus to work (and walk to bus)
• Obtain much of our produce from a local organic CSA
• Compost fruit and vegetable scraps in a worm bin
• Grow our own tomatoes, peppers, and herbs (and maybe cucumbers and zucchini this year!)
• Buy organic when reasonable and logical
• Support local businesses, especially restaurants and specialty shops
• Switched some lights to compact fluorescents (unfortunately much of our current house uses dimmer-controlled ceiling lights, and CFLs don't work in those)
• Line-dry most of our clothing when relative humidity is reasonable

Continue reading for thoughts on future "good intentions" that remain unfulfilled at this point...