Conservation Tips For The "Heat Wa-a-a-ve!"

Public Service Electric and Gas, New Jersey’s largest utility, and PJM Interconnection, the electric grid operator for 13 states and D.C., put out an urgent release yesterday, July 7th, asking everybody to conserve electricity, and since it's no cooler today I thought I'd pass along these highly-relevant tips they included.
(Unless you tend to live this way already, in which case Bully for you! And thanks.)

These are some of PSEG's conservation tips:

• Turn off everything you’re not using; lights, TVs, computers, etc. Use dimmers, timers and motion detectors on indoor and outdoor lighting.
• Close blinds, shades and draperies facing the sun to keep the sun’s heat out and to help fans and air conditioners cool more efficiently. (Duh.)
• Close doors leading to uncooled parts of your home. With central air, close off vents to unused rooms.
• Delay heat-producing tasks such as washing and drying laundry or dishes until later in the day, and (or least) wait until a load is full.
• Don't use nonessential appliances, like an extra refrigerator in your garage. Consider setting air conditioners to 78 degrees, health permitting.

More "Energy Conservation Tips from PSEG"

"In the New York City area, Con Edison said its crews were working 24 hours a day to maintain service. Con Edison on July 6 broke its 2010 record for peak electricity use when the company delivered 12,963 megawatts at 5 p.m. A news release said usage would have been even higher if not for the efforts of Con Edison’s customers, who responded to the company’s request for conservation."
- Sunpluggers.com News, where I saw a piece on PSEG's release.

(Can't resist on a day like this:)
"Heat Wave" — (the music starts at 1:40 in)

An Informative Mind-Twister Involving Oysters

Okay, here's one for you, one of those you-gotta-be-kid'nme type facts, from a story about reseeding New York City's waterways with once-plentiful oysters. These are not intended as delicacies for the table, though, but as prodigious pollution digesters:

"Oysters act as natural water purification systems. 'Think of oysters as the catalytic converter on your car,' Fabian Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, explained. One adult oyster can filter up to 24 gallons of water in a day…"

"You Say Oyster," by Katherine Stirling, Sept. 21, 2009 issue, The New Yorker, in "Talk of the Town"
(Note: The New Yorker doesn't have that article online except with a paid subscription)

Besides being just plumb amazing, this is only one more example of how the big new wave of activity for re-greening our world could best be guided.

There's a great principle of accomplishing anything that states, Work From Your Strengths. It would hard to overestimate all the strengths that nature provides, this stupifyingly deep, rich web of life that is always in motion and regenerating itself, spontaneously growing things that we can eat to live(!), and just coincidentally manufacture oxygen which we need to breathe, and all this without requiring a single btu's worth of energy from our vaunted infrastructure.

Even purebread bottom-liners must understand the appeal of the savings in power and electricity alone when you can harness a system that is self-sustaining. You don't have to buy any fuel for the engine!

Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with the whole human evolution thing, the idea that we've got this brain and imagination and opposable thumbs so we can be creative, and respectfully customize and extend our physical circumstances here. And I love my Mac and my Honda, and all their family forebears.

But, going back to the oysters, have human engineers ever designed and built anything which was both that efficient at a job and completely self-perpetuating, and each over extremely long product lifecycles? Have they instead, in the process of going too far out on a limb (probably mostly due to the incitement of grants or investments, let's say), produced maybe as many horrors as upgrades?

(We do have to keep inventing, of course, because aside from any common speculations about our destiny, there's a rumor going around the scientific community that our planet is slowly losing momentum and being pulled closer to and eventually will be sucked right into the Sun. It's surface temperature is said to be around 6,000 degrees — Celsius. So, let's make sure funding for NASA is in good shape, too, cuz we're gonna need 'em.)

The pocket-guide conclusion: To whatever extent possible,

Work With Nature.

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Related, here:
"Where do Great Ideas come from?" (One guess, based on the above...)
Posts tagged appropriate technology

Predators In The Televised Bushes (Tracing Back To Root Causes)

We tend to think of ourselves as "highly evolved," but while our mental world and all the technology we cook up with it has certainly evolved very speedily over the last, say, 100 to 150 years, our body and the back of our brain is still far behind. I think this fact goes a long way towards explaining how confused we are as a species, mostly clumsily crashing our way through life on this planet...

One day, watching some poor band of musicians trying in vain to compete with a couple of television screens just off to the side, I was once again troubled by the fact that I seemed unable to ignore the (stoopit) TVs. My gaze repeatedly switched to the screens, and away from the performance of the real, living, breathing bioforms that I was trying to watch.

Finally, it occurred to me that the reason we are virtually unable to ignore a flickering television, our eyes drawn to it unwillingly again and again, is due to the part of our brain, still very much active, that is always on the alert for any activity in our peripheral vision -- because it might be a wild animal in the brush, measuring us up for a snack.

So I was mightily interested when I came across the same thought applied to a different sense, in, ironically, a blog on a subject that almost could not be more contemporary or "highly evolved," that of digital musicmaking.

The post in Create Digital Music is titled, "Windows Sound Glitches Explained, Plus Glitches and the Fight-or-Flight Response" (11/2/07, by Peter Kirn).

"Your ears and mind are incredibly sensitive to tiny details of sound. Result: if your operating system can’t keep up with sound output for any reason, you’ll get a noticeable “glitch” in the sound — and that’s a big deal. "Microsoft has a great post on their Vista Team Blog today from Steve Ball --

'My colleague on the Windows Sound team, Larry Osterman, also pointed out to me recently that humans are actually “hard-wired” to be disturbed by audio glitches. In an exchange about this topic, Larry observed that audio glitches are more obvious than video glitches because the ear’s tuned to notice high frequency transients — his visceral example of this idea is an image of a stick snapping in the woods behind you as an audio event that wakes you up before a bear wanders into your path.'"

So, it's not that we are so dreadfully unfocused and ADD -- although we most certainly are -- it's more because the base of our brain is still executing a seldom-needed Primary Directive. Unless you live in a big, dirty city, in which case it's just doin' its equally contemporary job.

(Photo on Flickr by Edgar Thissen)

Valuing Trees, In Dollars and Sense

Appreciating the value of trees is not something I’m generally moved to assign a dollar value to.
This being mid-summer in New York’s verdant mid-Hudson valley, it’s usually because I’m looking for some shade, or just enjoying the wonderful effect on the human nervous system of the subtle sights and sounds when they interact with the wind.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see this post in the Boston Globe’s Business Filter, where that blog’s evergreen Maura Welch pointed to an Economist story, "Green Gold," on this particular branch of cost/benefit analysis.

“Following the trend of putting the 'eco' into economics,” she writes, “New York mayor Michael Bloomberg recently did a tree census. The value of the city's nearly 600,000 trees? $122 million.”

Hizzoner the Mayor arrived at that number by adding up estimates for filtering pollution, saving on air conditioning, stemming storm-water run-off, and even for “aesthetic benefits” (which I think would be expressed more convincingly by my proposed "nervous system relief quotient," above. In order to get that one to fly, though, I should really acronymize it, i.e., as "the NSRQ"… but I won’t).

More “shady” numbers are offered in The Economist’s story: a sign spotted at a University of Texas construction site announces,

“The replacement value of this oak tree is $90,000.” The Economist writes, “The trees in American backyards may be worth far more than the cars in the front drive,” and that, “the Forest Service values the urban canopy in all of America at $14.3 billion.”

They summarize the value of these price-per-leaf exercises with, “By claiming that every $1 put into New York's trees returns $5.60 in benefits, (Bloomberg) may find it easier to galvanise New Yorkers to plant more and chop down fewer.”

You know, if that’s what it takes to get people to understand the truly incalculable worth of trees, then by all means, fire up that spreadsheet!

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Ironically, I saw this Associated Press story on the same day, in the same "paper" (since this was online Globe) --

“Man disguised as tree robs bank”

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP), 7/8/07 --A weekend bank robbery involved multiple branches -- of the leafy variety.

According to police, a man with tree branches duct-taped to his head and torso walked into a Citizens Bank just as it opened Saturday morning and demanded cash from a teller. Police said the disguise was the most bizarre they'd ever seen.

"He really went out on a limb," Sgt. Ernie Goodno said Sunday.

Related, here:
15 Houseplants Can Reduce Indoor Pollution

The "Greenest" Cities

Al Gore, crusader (& comedian, even!)

(The rare post containing any political content whatsoever)
I missed Al Gore's Oscar acceptance speech for "An Inconvenient Truth," with his remarks appropriately addressed not just to the glitterati and their adorers, or even just the country, but also to "people all over the world," that we must tackle the crisis of our critically deteriorating environment.

I know from having lived many years in some of the most international cities in our country (NY, Miami, now even Boston), and having received quite an earful from many people born somewhere else, that the rest of the world pretty much considers Americans to be completely concentrated on ourselves, to the exclusion of caring about anyone else. So, nice touch, Mr. Gore.

Contrast this with the current V.P.'s incredible statement this past week that "there's no consensus" that human factors are melting the North Pole(!). Wow; now there's some truly superior powers of denial, hm?

All I saw of the "women's Super Bowl" (as it's known in marketing,) besides the performances of the nominated songs was Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio's turn, with their clever bit on, "Are you sure you don't have anything to announce tonight?" Well done. Without belaboring the point too much here, could we not use an otherwise qualified President who isn't afraid to show a little sense of humor? (Or is that just too much to ask in these rancorous times?)

(Reuters version, in two parts:)
"Gore takes center stage at Oscars"
"With Gore's goading, Hollywood goes green at Oscars"

The rare Prediction
While on the subject on Al Gore and what seems like next month's Presidential election (just this once, because politics is not our thing), I'm ready to predict that whoever's nominated for the Democratic ticket will not be someone who has already declared.

The current candidates will be out there as targets for too long, and after they've either run out of steam or been run out of town on a rail, some still relatively untarnished "statesman" (make that "statesperson") will step in to take it. The last one standing, you might say.

This election is reminding me of the way they start Christmas sales the day after Halloween -- hey, that's just too damn early! C'mon, you're spoiling the party.

NYC to ban PEDs outdoors?

New York City continues to make news, now with the proposed ban on pedestrian use of Portable Electronic Devices (PED – and you may have heard that HTA* here first).

A New York State Senator who shall remain mercifully nameless has proposed a ban on not just the headline-grabbing Podthing but on the whole Boysenberry/ cell phone/ video game/ palm-sized-home-theater gestault. It will be against the law to appear to be in a state of "iPod oblivion" while on a public thoroughfare.

General opinion goes well beyond mere disapproval, tending towards the slightly incredulous. At the end of this article by India’s Techtree.com, a commenter in California put it succinctly: “You can't fix stupid.”

Some predictable smirks in the headlines for a caper like this --

“Lawmaker wants to outlaw street grooves” said Earthtimes.org, stating the law will be for “fining pedestrians caught grooving to MP3 players while crossing the street.”

“Move's afoot in NY to force iPod pedestrians to unplug”
- Seattle Times, WA, where a a civil-liberties attorney suggests we also go ahead with ticketing people when they don’t look both ways before crossing.

(That's not a bad idea to consider, from all the angles, since the approaching saturation point of video surveillance, with software monitoring, will actually make that do-able.)

I mean, we did survive the Sony Walkman (or… did we, really?), an early, now-extinct species that once stalked the earth in great numbers. It bore a startling resemblance to a Pod, except that it was manually fed and the earbuds were inside-out.

It brings to mind a favorite quote of Opus (the Penguin, of course, Berke Breathed's subconscious voice): “Go away, you lawyers! Whatever happened to personal responsibility?”

( * - "High Tech Acronym," of course. And the PED thing is just a wisecrack, alright?)

But while e-jaywalking laws seem a stretch, the sense-saturating potency of all the devices we’re expected to carry around does create a situation that'll have to be dealt with. The story in Australian IT, discussing the two pedestrians who died after walking in front of moving vehicles, cites the fact that, “in one case bystanders screamed ‘watch out’ to no avail.”

Happy New Year, Month, Day...

In what I promise is the last of these meandering, relatively off-topic holiday posts:

I'm in NYC for a bit, so I decided to go, for the first time, to Times Square for the New Year's madness. You know, it's one of those either you've-got-to-do-it-once or once-is-enough things; I thought I'd go and see which one it turned out to be. That would be the latter; although it was fun and I am glad I went. Once.

Almost chickened out when I read in the days before that the city expected one million people -- 1,000,000 people! -- to be there, and that the police would be herding them into "pens" to keep things under control. So I decided to just go into the area for awhile earlier, then leave, just so I could catch the flavor and energy of it all. Of course, once I got there, obviously the only proper thing to do was stay for the climax.

There had to be vids of it on YouTube, because there were so many people holding their camcorders over their heads taping it, and sure enough, a search on YT for "Times Square New Years 2007" produces an ample supply.

I picked this video because that's as close as I got: at 57th Street on 7th Avenue, 15 blocks away. We could see The Ball, though it's hard to spot here; it descended into the spot where the fireworks come from. The papers suggested that you get there by 5 pm to get a penned-in spot in Times Square, where you would then not be allowed to leave for food or any other calls of nature. Uh, no thank you; I was going for a good time.


...and you are there! Sort of.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jg-5S1U7tU