LifeItself

This blog is a companion to "The Discrete Charm of Living at the Peak."

If you follow national media, you are probably convinced by now that in 10-15 years from today, the United States will be producing enough oil to become independent of foreign oil suppliers.  (In most predictions of energy independence, Canada and Mexico are treated as the almost domestic oil suppliers.)

So can the United States of America be dependent only on domestic crude oil production and imports from Canada augmented by Mexico? This scenario is not as nonsensical as it may sound, if (1) the United States continues to destroy demand for petroleum just as it has in the last four years; and (2) crude oil imports from Canada increase dramatically, because Mexico will not be able to export much crude oil in 5-10 years from now.  Since 2008, the U.S. has destroyed demand for 2 million barrels of crude oil per day, which translates into an average annual destruction rate of about 0.5 million barrels of oi…

Modern societies run on power, not mere energy.  Power is energy per unit time, or force times speed.  We aren't interested in driving as fast as we run, or in phone calls that take a day to go through.  We also don't like sitting in the dark, while food is getting warm in the refrigerator, only because our outlets ran out of juice.  In short, we crave for power that is just there, waiting for us to be used at will.  And, yes, most environmentalists have similar sentiments.

But, there is a price to pay for our cravings. No, I am not speaking about carbon dioxide emissions or mercury in the fish we eat.  Hardly anyone cares about such things anymore.  I am talking about our utter, total reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, with large dams providing a thin icing on a huge power cake.  You see, renewables can produce a lot of energy, but never enough power, 24/7, and when we want it.  This is the discovery the impatient people and their governments are making in 2012.

E…

Yesterday, I inadvertently looked at the TV screen in my house.  MSNBC was on, and Brian Williams said something funny about how stupid and empty TV news has become.  He aged very well.  The last time I saw him, he was 5-7 years younger.  Now you know how much TV I consume.

After about 5 minutes, the 10 o'clock news was on.  The news started from giving us an overview of the deadly Nile virus that has been truly decimating us poor Texans.  We were told how we should fear the virus, mosquitoes, walking outdoors, wearing shorts and short sleeves, and being near water - especially stagnant water.  A 90-year old woman in Dallas was reported to have died of the virus. Next, they showed a guy, who was younger than my wife or me. The guy told us how concerned he was for his life.  An older woman followed and spouted out how she too feared for her little old life.

Being an eager student of Edward Bernays, and other younger experts in propaganda and manipulating the little people, I sat on…

We live in the Big Country Ranch neighborhood, south of the Austin City boundary, and five miles from a major road. It is safe to say that we live in the middle of nowhere.  The southwest side of our 15-acre property touches at least 500 acres of undamaged ("undeveloped") land that is one of the last refuges of wild life in this part of Texas.  We can hear coyotes, many coyotes, howling in the evening next to our home, and we get visits from the numerous wild turkeys, quails, armadillos, racoons, deer, lizards, tarantulas, scorpions, and snakes.  In fact, an armadillo family lives in a small cave next to our house, and a family of six or so racoons lives in the attic of a small utility house nearby. The smart racoons scoured a 7 inch round hole in the siding under the roof and adopted the attic as their family residence. We hear about sightings of mountain lions.

I own three guns: a handgun, a hunting rifle, and a pump shotgun.  I bought the handgun after my house was burgla…

My wife and I are in Australia, in Brisbane, a beautiful thriving city on the east coast, with roughly 3 million people in the metropolitan area that includes the paved-over beaches along tens of kilometers of a formerly pristine habitat in places that used to be the surfer's paradise and sunshine coast.  It is highly impressive what developers can do to a fragile coastal area by pouring millions of tons of concrete onto it and making a financial killing.  The biggest concrete enclave is called the Gold Coast for good reason.
Please do not get me wrong.  Brisbane is a splendid city with wonderful public transportation, universities, and restaurants.  In the 39-floor condo building, where we have stayed, all elevators are globally optimized to minimize electricity use, and all lights along the corridors are on motion sensors.  The windows are deeply tinted and open widely enough to provide a strong breeze through the rooms.  There is only one small air conditioner in the bedroom.   …

My wife and I are finishing a two week vacation in California and Washington State.  We reconnected with a bunch of friends in the Bay Area.  And on Friday, July 13th (not the full moon), my oldest son, Lucas, defended with gusto his Ph.D. thesis in agriculture at the Washington State University, and became Director of Thurston County Extension and Small Farms Faculty.  We are so proud of him!

People of all walks of life really like Lucas.  This is clear from the comments we overheard and a recent article about him.  The young Dr. Lucas will need all the good will of many to introduce agriculture to the legislators and public in the fast-growing Thurston County, and get funding for the numerous projects he wants to carry out.  Helping young farmers to grow organic crops and open new markets to them by creating necessary infrastructure will not be easy. Public funding for agriculture is very scarce these days, unless you are a 67 years old corn grower in Iowa, making millions regardle…

I want to write about many things that deeply disturb me. But if I did, most readers would not bother to read my sermons and others would be shaken and annoyed by their implications. So I'll limit myself to commenting briefly on the growing chasm between complexity of a modern society and inability of most everyone living in this society to grasp and follow its complexity. Converse is also true: Since we do not understand the complicated world around us, we resort to the simplistic, narrow, and random snippets we call "our opinions". Most of these snippets have little to do with reality, thus the gap between what is and how we perceive it keeps on widening.

Let's start from something light and uplifting. I keep on hearing good news about the various new sources of energy that will totally displace the existing fuel mix: "Genetically modified bacteria or viruses that produce enough liquid fuels to make crude oil production obsolete." Or "North Dakota is…