more on recycling

I linked recently to a Washington Post article on how the economics of recycling have been less favorable lately. Not so fast, says Philadelphia Magazine, or at least not everywhere. While it is true that Philadelphia has gone from making money on recycling to paying for it over the last year, it is still cheaper than landfilling or incineration. This article also illustrates how complicated global dynamics affect the local economics.

China (the largest importer of American recycled materials) is no longer sustaining an insane annual GDP growth rate of 10 percent, weakening demand for raw materials; the Chinese are also getting pickier about the quality of recycled materials; the cost of petroleum has been free-falling over the past year, making new plastic much cheaper to make and recycled plastic less cost competitive. There was also the nine-month labor dispute with West Coast dock workers that prevented lots of recycled materials from reaching overseas markets — costing MRFs money.

those fantastic American bike lanes

Recently I was talking about passive house, an extremely innovative energy standard that has taken root in Europe, Germany in particular. What I was surprised to learn was that the genesis of the idea was in the United States. There seems to be a pattern where innovative ideas come out of the United States but get implemented elsewhere. For example, here are a couple surprising articles about bike (cycling) lanes in the U.S. For example, protected bike lanes were all the rage right around the turn of the 20th century, before automobiles became the dominant technology. The historical images in this article are fascinating – it was not unusual for the bike lane to be paved and the horse and buggy lanes not. The layout of some of the bike lanes looks very familiar from today’s recreational trails.

Much more recently, the U.S. Federal Highway Authority had a serious standard for protected bike lanes in the 1970s, and it seemed like they were likely to move forward. Of course, we all know they did not. But again, in Europe, they did on a large scale. I don’t know whether the Dutch and Danish designs were copied or inspired by the American designs, but they did start to take off right around that time.

Holmes’s Brain

Sherlock Holmes knew that science and problem solving are about logic and reason, supported by facts. Creativity is the opposite of all that, right? Not so fast, according to an article and book by Maria Konnikova. Facts play a role, and Holmes had a large but carefully organized “attic” of the ones that he felt were most useful. To solve problems, you need a lot of information in your head, and access to a lot more, because you never know in advance which facts are going to combine in which way to produce an answer. The process of putting those facts together is not always cold, organized, and logical. In fact, you can’t force it. Holmes was willing to sit and contemplate as long as it took, distract his mind with music and recreational drugs, and let his mind access the facts in the background and bring him the solutions.

 

“rebooting” cars

Here’s a long article on some projects to integrate smart phone-like technology into cars. Basically, either you plug in an actual smart phone, or your car itself gets software updates. The former makes more sense to me, because why would you want to invest in technology that is trapped inside a car, when you don’t want to be trapped inside a car any more than absolutely necessary?

I’ve also been thinking for a long time about the contrast between innovative, nimble companies in Silicon Valley vs. the old-guard Detroit auto companies. I’ve wondered if the auto companies would evolve to be more like the tech companies, find ways to team with them effectively, or just fade away and be replaced by them. I see the third option looking closest to reality. I don’t believe cars are the technology of the future (at least, not one of the dominant technologies), but even when we do see car companies integrating technology effectively, it is not the old-guard Detroit companies doing it. I wonder if they will fade away or go out with a bang. Remember, during the financial crisis they survived only with a government bailout, and that happened because they made a decent case of their importance to the larger economy. Will they be able to make that case next time if our transportation system has evolved to use a wider range of technologies produced by a wider range of companies?

 

Elon Musk vs. The Terminator

The Terminator is baaaaaack.

In related news, Elon Musk is worried about this actually happening:

The Boston-based Future of Life Institute (FLI) today announced the selection of 37 research teams around the world to which it plans to award about $7 million from Elon Musk and the Open Philanthropy Project as part of a first-of-its-kind grant program dedicated to “keeping AI robust and beneficial”. The program launches as an increasing number of high-profile figures including Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking voice concerns about the possibility of powerful AI systems having unintended, or even potentially disastrous, consequences. The winning teams, chosen from nearly 300 applicants worldwide, will research a host of questions in computer science, law, policy, economics, and other fields relevant to coming advances in AI.

nature and mental health

From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science:

Urbanization has many benefits, but it also is associated with increased levels of mental illness, including depression. It has been suggested that decreased nature experience may help to explain the link between urbanization and mental illness. This suggestion is supported by a growing body of correlational and experimental evidence, which raises a further question: what mechanism(s) link decreased nature experience to the development of mental illness? One such mechanism might be the impact of nature exposure on rumination, a maladaptive pattern of self-referential thought that is associated with heightened risk for depression and other mental illnesses. We show in healthy participants that a brief nature experience, a 90-min walk in a natural setting, decreases both self-reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported rumination or neural activity. In other studies, the sgPFC has been associated with a self-focused behavioral withdrawal linked to rumination in both depressed and healthy individuals. This study reveals a pathway by which nature experience may improve mental well-being and suggests that accessible natural areas within urban contexts may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world.

passive house

Here is a long article with some details on the passive house standard, which promises order of magnitude energy use reductions in buildings. It was invented in the United States, forgotten/ignored in the United States, adopted in Europe, and now is finally filtering back from Europe into the United States.

The passive house standard requires a tightly sealed and heavily insulated building envelope to ensure optimum energy efficiency. The minimum airtightness level allowed is 0.6 air changes per hour under 50 pascals of pressure. To ensure that a house is in compliance with this limit and that there are no leaks, the building’s designers conduct an on-site blower door test. “The biggest challenge is the sealing,” says Priputen, adding, “If you have a weak spot you have to make all of the other areas stronger in terms of insulation and air sealing.”

The other main pillar of passive house construction is a compact air and heat exchange system that conserves energy by transferring heat and/or moisture between incoming and outgoing streams of air. Designers specify one of two systems, depending on the site’s climate: heat recovery ventilators (HRVs), which transfer only heat, or energy recovery ventilators (ERVs), which transfer both heat and moisture.

revolution: the movie

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Revolution

Revolution is a feature documentary about opening your eyes, changing the world and fighting for something. A true life adventure following director Rob Stewart in the follow up to his hit Sharkwater, Revolution is an epic adventure into the evolution of life on earth and the revolution to save us.
Discovering that there’s more in jeopardy than sharks, Stewart uncovers a grave secret threatening our own survival as a species, and embarks on a life-threatening adventure through 4 years and 15 countries into the greatest battle ever waged.

Bringing you some of the most incredible wildlife spectacles ever recorded, audiences are brought face to face with sharks and cuddly lemurs, into the microscopic world of the pygmy seahorse, and on the hunt with the deadly flamboyant cuttlefish. From the coral reefs in Papua New Guinea to the rain forests in Madagascar, Stewart reveals that our fate is tied to even the smallest of creatures.

Through it all, Stewart’s journey reveals a massive opportunity, as activists and individuals all over the world are winning the battle to save the ecosystems we depend on for survival. Presenting the most important information on human survival and inspiring people all over the world to fight for life, Revolution is essential viewing for everyone. Startling, beautiful, and provocative, Revolution inspires audiences across the globe to join the biggest movement in history that’s rising to the challenge of saving our world.

Revolution premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and has already gone on to win ten awards, including the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Atlantic Film Festival, Most Popular Environmental Film Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Victoria Film Festival and the Social Justice Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

June 2015 in Review

Negative stories:

Positive stories: