Nine reasons I like driving over flying:

1.  I can leave within a greater time tolerance, there is no absolute "take off" time.

2.  I don't have to be in "public" mode the whole time. No matter how I try to relax, if there are people around me within a few feet (inches?) I can't really relax.

3.  I can put stuff in my car that doesn't fit nicely in a piece of luggage. I like to just throw my tennis shoes in the back seat, because they take up so much frigging room in a suitcase (size 14). Also, I'm more likely to bring a little food to put in the hotel fridge to save on some breakfasts or dinners at my destination.

4.  Easier access to snacks and stuff. I usually put a cooler in the back seat accessible to me while driving. It sounds dangerous but it's really not (!).

5.  Being able to drive my own car at my destination (usually from hotel to job site and back). I save on the rental car, of course, plus just the comfort of driving the car I'm used to.

6.  Can charge mileage to my company. Even though I am self-employed, it feels like free money when I charge 36.5 cents/mile to myself.

7.  The time lag on each end is dramatically shorter. For instance, for me to drive from Columbus Ohio to Detroit takes just over three hours. A jet can fly there in 40 minutes. However, if you count getting to the airport 1.5 hours early, parking, check-in, waiting on the runway, waiting for your baggage coming off the plane, and getting a rental car, that actually takes over four hours. So driving is quicker and a lot less headache.

8.  No weather delays. Rain, thunderstorms or hail are very unlikely to stop me from driving anywhere. Snow could possibly delay me if it was bad enough but it would delay the airports long before it would be bad for driving.

9.  Not so likely to catch colds. With the recycled air on airplanes, I often catch colds. In my car, the only recycled air I'm breathing is my own (which is bad enough).

8:14:02 PM    comment []  

Ever heard of "community supported agriculture?" This is where cityfolk (me, my wife, etc.) agree to pay a set fee to a farmer for a share of his crops over one growing season. The farmer sets out a wide range of crops: zucchini, carrots, apples, whatever. Then he delivers (or you arrange to pick up) the food as it ripens. You get a big box of fruits and veggies that are different depending on what's ripe at that time of year.

The upsides:

• You get super-fresh fruits and vegetables.
• You get something that you know is organic (if the farmer is organic, of course - most of them involved in these programs are.)
• There is a little excitement factor getting this box of stuff and not knowing what it will be.
• The farmer has guaranteed income every year, no matter whether there is drought, bad crops, whatever. No government subsidies required.
• The food you get hasn't been shipped endlessly throughout the United States on a big truck, encountering whatever crazy things it might encounter on such a journey. (Every ridiculous drive-across-the-frigging-country movie comes to mind.)

The downside:

• You (the cityfolk) might get a bad year and get less than your money's worth. You have to be in it for the long run, to let the good years counterbalance the bad years.
• You aren't getting "salads in a bag" so you might have to wash and cut stuff more than if you buy it at a store.

To me, it's worth it. I heard of it for the first time from John Eastman. It is part of his vision for sustainability.

1:41:37 AM    comment []  

By the way, I'm very open to real physicists telling me how I've screwed up these concepts. That's how I learn - screw up and become enlightened.

12:20:29 AM    comment []  

Okay, now about the quantum mechanics thing and women being right. Here's my thought. I was in a meeting with two women a few weeks ago and I asked a question and one of the women replied "I don't know." Then there was silence. It struck me that women are so much more comfortable saying they don't know something than men are. Men always try to have the answers to everything. I've often said "either I know the answer or I can find it out." For trivia, yes. For life? Fuck, no. But here was this woman stating in no uncertain terms that she definitely, positively did not know. What's the big deal?

In quantum mechanics, we find out that uncertainty is a certainty. We can estimate where a quantum particle will be and what its velocity will be, but it's just a guess. The old Newtonian laws don't apply. One particular quantum physicist created a thought experiment of a cat in a box. Inside the box was a device that could kill the cat. Maybe the device would go off, maybe it wouldn't. The physicist asserted that, until the cat was observed to be alive or dead, it was neither alive nor dead. It was in an "uncertain" state. Women are okay with that in their skin. Men have significantly more trouble with it. I know I do.

Quantum mechanics also says that light is both a particle and a wave, depending on what you are measuring for. If you decide to measure the wavelength, it is a wave. If you decide to measure the trajectory of a particle, it instantly flips into being a particle. How many times have I been frustrated by my wife telling me "I'm crying because I'm happy and sad!" Huh? No problem for her to say something like that. Men don't get it, though. I'm saying men better get our shit together and catch up to our quantum better halves...

12:19:00 AM    comment []  

So, just when I step up to the plate and pay for my UserLand subscription, I immediately take two weeks off from blogging. Disgraceful...

So much for lamentation. I've got lots of thoughts stored up for ya.

I met a man last night named John Eastman. He is the Natural Law Party's candidate for governor of Ohio in the upcoming November election. His ideas had enough appeal to me to prompt me to place a bumper sticker on my car for only the second time in my life (the first was for Free the Mouse).

Nothing Eastman said sounded like a politician. Politicians tend to say things that sound like something but really they're nothing. I guess that's what happened to Janet Reno in Florida. But no, John tended to say things like (these are my remembrances, not direct quotes):

"Renewable energy just needs to happen. Someone needs to have the guts to say, like JFK did, "We're going to the moon. We don't know how every little thing is going to work, but we're going to the moon. Renewable energy is a direction who's time has come. We may not have figured out every detail about hydrogen fuel cell filling stations or solar cell efficiency, but we just have to make it happen. As governor, I would have authority over every state agency, and I will make them understand that the pursuit of renewable energy is a top priority."

"As far as traffic in urban areas, I am in favor of MORE CONGESTION. Any Department of Transportation planner will tell you that whenever we widen the freeways or build more roads, it is always a temporary solution. When we create less congestion, people feel okay about moving further out into the country, creating suburban sprawl and reducing the urgency in peoples' minds for alternatives, like public transportation. If there is more traffic congestion, people will quickly get fed up with it and begin to search for alternatives, which will lead us into better choices. Many communities have already chosen more congestion as the best option. The creation of cul-de-sacs, crescents and non-contiguous streets through residential areas make for more congestion, so people don't cut through those areas. If we take that to a larger scale and use it at a city level, we can also create some new alternatives that will be better for the city, the citizens and the environment."

"Paul Ray wrote a book on 'cultural creatives.' This group makes up 36% of all Americans, but they haven't figured out that they are part of a 'movement' yet. They are all acting independently to change the world for the better. Someone is going to unite these people (holistic healers, renewable energy advocates, new age spiritualists, agricultural co-operative members, organic farmers, environmental activist, etc.) and it might as well be the Natural Law Party. We are the closest in perspective to the cultural creative."

These aren't exactly timid politico statements. I was surprised. It's as if a bunch of people sat around a room and asked "If we could build a platform that would totally satisfy that Chaords guy on Salon.com, what would it be?" Dang.

So, anyway, I now have a John Eastman for Governor bumpersticker on my car. My wife tells me its going to leave a sticky residue on the paint after I take it off in November. I figure better to have a sticky residue on my car than on the state of Ohio.

11:51:09 PM    comment []  

More about chaords to come..

7:05:25 PM    comment []  

The Futurist further reports (Sep-Oct 2002 edition) that urban areas are actually safer than suburbs in the sixty cities they studied, including:  Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. One reason the 'burbs are so dangerous are fatal traffic accidents. People in the 'burbs drive farther, faster and more often. People in downtown areas walk or take public transportation, which is much safer. But murders by strangers are also higher in suburban areas than in cities.

The study was done by the University of Virginia.

If 90% of people believe anything, it's wrong.

2:06:13 PM    comment []  

Best remedy for motion sickness:  cocculus indicus (CI).  This is a homeopathic remedy available in health food stores. I'd tried everything (dramamine, acupressure bracelets, etc.) but nothing worked. I take CI before a flight and I forget all about turbulence of the stomach.

I think I might enjoy roller coasters...

12:13:15 PM    comment []  

The Futurist (sorry, print only) reports that "weblogging will drive a powerful new form of amateur journalism as millions of Net users - young people especially - take on the role of columnist, report, analyst and publisher, while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks." This comment was originally published in the Online Journalism Review (OJR) as an article "We've Got Blog."

The Futurist goes on to say that "Readers may find blogs more credible than traditional media because blogs have no corporate interest to serve: They aren't censored by advertisers or constrained by editorial policies, and they are therefore a more democratic publishing medium."

Okay, but what would happen if advertisers did get a hold of our obloggatory world?

Radio Free Blogistan endorses IBM with providing his "IT infrastructure" (the geniuses behind his latest page re-re-design).

VeryModern Astrology tells us about the special at the Goodyear Gemini tire center. "And don't forget to dine at Jupiter Berkeley on your way home for a satisfying, extraterrestrial steak experience!"

Plan B - Blognovel does product placement for Office Furniture USA. "As I leaned back in my comfortable, double-padded, Corinthian leather boardroom chair, I thought 'Pete would really enjoy one of these chairs..."

filchyboy runs an ad for ParentCenter preschool, exclaiming "K loves it here! They added a restraining order against L for no extra charge!".

She's Actual Size, Nationwide, Believe sets up a bidding war for the band she will endorse. TMBG comes in 42nd with a bid of $37.50.

10:06:28 AM    comment []  

I think double-blind placebo studies as proof of the efficacy of health treatment are drastically overrated.

First, there are so many factors leading to a change in health. What did you eat? Eat at home or at a restaurant? How much exercise did you do? What stresses are in your life? I find it hard to believe that someone who had cancer and was a participant in a study would have a remission no matter what drug they took or treatment was applied, if they were going through a bitter divorce at the time or lost a child. The immune system is much more closely linked to the emotions than any chemical makeup of the blood or brain. What thoughts did you have? Who did you associate with, positive people or negative? Did you take a vacation? What was the weather while you were participating in the study? What music did you listen to? Classical music, especially Mozart, has a good effect on people's health (proven in a double-blind placebo study, of course). How was work? Did you get assigned a big project that had an impossible deadline?

Of course, the people conducting the studies say "oh, we compensated for that." But I don't believe you can. I took permutations and combinations in school. Six factors of ten possibilities each yields a million possible outcomes for each person. And there must be more like a million factors with a million possibilities each. You got that covered? Okay, I believe you.

So, how can we measure success? I don't think we can. Physicists are up-in-arms now that they realize that with complexity science, we can't predict things in physics, we can only adapt to what emerges. Bugger. Same is true for health studies, but the establishment hasn't come to that terrible realization yet.

6:32:19 PM    comment []  

I have only se7en neurons in my brain:

1. The self-organizing/chaords neuron.

2. The open source neuron.

3. The holistic neuron.

4. The iterative/incremental neuron.

5. The 'use case' neuron.

6. The complexity science neuron.

7. The networks neuron.

Every conversation I've had lately ends up on one of these topics. Every book I'm reading or have read fits in perfectly. I think I'm a little overly "focused."

6:33:43 PM    comment []  

How to be a good holistic patient:

1.  Don't call yourself a patient. You're a client (under the care of another) or a partner-in-health or whatever funky name.

2.  Don't go to get your symptoms fixed. Holistic health is not about symptomatic relief. It is about healing the entire body. The holistic health practitioner (the good ones) will always respond to your complaints about symptoms with the same response. a)  They'll listen to you. b) They'll empathize.  c) They'll ask questions. d) They'll proceed with a whole-body healing program that is not focused on fixing those symptoms immediately.  It may make you mad if you're used to the "give me a pill" health protocol. But it works infinitely better. Trust the process and the practitioner. You hear me saying this now, but then when you try the holistic process, you'll still want to revert to your symptomatic way of thinking. I do it all the time.

3.  Don't expect drama. Results in the holistic health process are subtle, always. "Oh Doctor, I feel 100% better after you did that thing to my leg!" Sometimes this happens, but don't expect it.

4.  Expect things to get worse before they get better. This is like the body builder going to the gym. In order to build their muscles, they perform exercises that actually tear their muscles down. After the muscles are hurt, they heal and grow stronger than they ever were. Same with your body. I'm not saying that sore neck will turn into a broken neck or whatever, but expect some ups and downs, not only ups.

5.  Expect "re-tracing." Okay, so after a few treatments of whatever type of holistic health practice, you start to feel better. Cool!  Then the very same thing comes back again. Bummer! I guess it didn't work. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

6.  Check out the doctor's qualifications. You want a doc who has attended the training for the profession. Rolfing, for instance, is very rigorous in the initial training and even what is required on-going. Many holistic health practices are the same. Make sure you have some assurance that this is not just a person who has hung out a shingle. Training of some kind is necessary, even if it is just apprenticeship with a master, like with energy healing or other more ethereal practices.

7.  Notice the really small things. The practitioner was touching your knee and it felt abnormally cold. Hmmm. Just sit with that thought for a while. Why would it be cold? Or, just as commonly, they do something and suddenly you have some urgent thought about another person. Are you harboring some emotion (anger, guilt, etc.) toward that person? Is your pain or problem a way of keeping that emotion inside you? Is there a way to let it go?

8.  There is no "family doctor" style person in holistic health. Holistic health is a do-it-yourself thing. You research the practices. You figure out which to go to. You talk to your friends about the alternatives. You pay (forget about insurance paying for most of it.) You do the healing, the practitioner is just helping you do what you need to do.

These are things I'm learning as I learn more about holistic health. I am not an expert. But I have experienced great things with many types of practices and I want to, in my lifetime, try them all. As a patient.  Er, I mean partner-in-health.

6:37:16 PM    comment []  

Is Hollywood really so bad?

I'm tired of hearing that Hollywood is so this or so that. Yes, I've had bad experiences with Hollywood movies. Most notable for me lately was the Ahnold movie "The Sixth Day." My wife and I decided it was a total recall of Total Recall. Every scene and line of dialogue came from one of his previous movies.

But I think Hollywood gets a bum rap (bum wrap? - nevermind). This industry provides such amazing entertainment to us in such vast quantities that I think maybe we're just spoiled. We've watched several heart-stoppingly wonderful movies in the past month - Vanilla Sky (Tom Cruise), Titus (Anthony Hopkins), The Big Kahuna (Kevin Spacey) and Memento (Guy Pearce). The writing was excellent, they messed with stories and plotlines and reality/dreams until I didn't know really what I was watching anymore. In some cases (like Titus) I wasn't even sure I liked it until I had time to think about it later. Then, I understood what I had seen and appreciated it fully.

Yes, Titus was confusing. Waa. Yes, the Big Kahuna is just three salesmen talking in a hotel room. Double-waa. Yes, Vanilla Sky is a scene-for-scene remake of a Spanish film. Does that make it bad? Yes, Memento is hard to follow.

I feel like we North Americans (and probably the world) have a crazy love-hate relationship with Hollywood. We eat up everything they feed us, then we complain about being full. Hollywood tries really hard and produces a lot of really neat stuff. Plus it adapts very quickly to our needs and tastes. Oh, you liked that indie film, Crying Game?  We can do a bunch more of those until you're sick of them. Oh, you're pissed because we only have pretty boys in action movies anymore, ala Sum of All Fears, Bourne Identity and James Bond? We'll give you hunks. Here's Vin Diesel in XXX. Y'like? It seems like the words were barely out of peoples' mouths (where are the hunks?) and blammo! there they were. Now that's service!

So, here we have an industry that gives us high-quality entertainment in wide variety and instantly adapts to our tastes, and we diss them. I don't mean to say Hollywood is hard-done-by, but jeez, don't they deserve some credit?

11:03:35 PM    comment []  

Even the problems of alternative energy are exciting to me. Wind turbines are noisy and birds often run into the blades, killing themselves. Compared to smog and greenhouse gases, these alternative energy problems are so darn easy! Solar cells are too expensive. Wow, is that ever an obvious problem to throw some technical expertise at. They're too big. Miniaturization? Easy, just give us time. Solar water heaters often leak. Leaky pipes? Easy. Geothermal systems need to tear up a person's yard to put the pipes into the ground. I'm guessing smaller, specialized drilling equipment and ways to make the pipes all curly so they need less surface torn up.

Don't these seem like easy problems to solve? Compared to nuclear (break down go boom) and even hydroelectric (flood thousands of acres to make a dam) I just don't see the "barriers" to alternative energy. It's just a matter of time and energy. Lord Buckminster Fuller said that all our reliance on non-renewable energy sources is just stopgap until we get the renewable sources ready. It looks like coal, oil and gas should last just about long enough for that.

10:08:20 PM    comment []  

So when will alternative energy become mainstream? Isn't it funny how the term "alternative" gets messed up as soon as something because really popular? I've noticed in the past ten years how the music we used to call "alternative music" because it was outside the mainstream is now super-popular but still called "alternative." I guess we don't think of those things when we're naming stuff.

Anyway, alternative energy just needs one reason to jump into popularity. The price of oil. If the price of oil goes up by 50%, most alternative energy sources will instantly become dirt-cheap in comparison. The price of something going up 50% in a short time seems unlikely, unless we're talking about oil, that is. Last summer it rose that much and then came back down again.

Are we running out of oil? Of course we'll never run out of oil. It will just get more expensive. The last drop of oil will never be used because a) it will be infinitely expensive or b) no one will care about oil anymore by that time. Humans are incredibly adaptive to crises like what we're about to face with oil shortage.

First we use up all the cheap oil, the stuff that is just lying around in pools and we can suck it up. Then we drill shallow wells and it comes up gushing. Then we go after the harder-to-get oil, like in Alaska, offshore, in the mountains. This costs a lot more, so the price keeps going up. Then we go after the tarsands, kind of underground pits where oil and sand is mixed together. This is a real pain to extract the oil, super expensive. Price keeps going up. Then we dig even deeper wells. Forget about Middle East crises, the price of oil will rise very quickly in the next five years just due to the cost of extraction.

The alternatives at the top of the heap are wind turbines, solar cells, geothermal ground-source heat pumps and hydrogen fuel cells. Using wind energy is about the same price as getting energy from the utility company today. If oil prices rise, wind will be cheaper. However, the costs are all up-front. You pay for the wind turbine, set it up, buy batteries to store the power when the wind dies down, etc.  Then you basically live for free after paying all that money. You have to amortize those costs over the life of the turbine. If you do that, the price is the same. But to people who don't have the money to spend at the start, this equation doesn't work. Also, a friend of mine is buying a house and putting up a wind turbine but the banks won't provide financing for the whole package including the turbine because they don't understand what it does. And bankers tend to shy away from what they don't understand. So that's a problem too.

My guess is that alternative energy will continue to grow at its current rate of about 20% and then it will "boom" once oil prices rise above the "tipping point" due to whatever combination of Middle East craziness and increasing extraction costs.

Two things I have passion for are holistic healing and alternative energy. Can you tell???

11:17:04 PM    comment []  

The commentary that I find on Salon.com blogs is more powerful, insightful and personal than anything I've ever read in a newspaper or viewed on a new Website.

1:56:39 PM    comment []  

Why focus myself on holistic health? Seems goofy really. I find a lot of people think it's strange to focus on this particular business sector. Most of the practitioners are sole proprietors. They aren't usually cash-rich. The need for information technology isn't glaringly obvious. Why?

First, I realized I have to focus on business sectors where I have passion. I have passion about holistic health. I have had my own life changed, pain taken away, health restored, by holistic health. I have also had equivalent negative experiences with allopathic (convention) health practitioners. So I feel like I want to help the holistic health industry emerge into something great. To be a part of it.

Actually, it is already something great. The whole industry took in about $28B last year. There were more visits to holistic health practitioners than regular MDs, DOs and specialists combined. It is just that the holistic industry needs help with marketing, cohesiveness and maybe, a little sprinkling of technology.

9:07:30 AM    comment []  

Our approach to health insurance.

My wife and I are both self-employed, so we pay the entire amount of our health insurance, no matter what. I feel like we made some good decisions in choosing our approach, so maybe sharing them here will help someone else.

First, we got a family health insurance plan with a monster deductibles - $2500 per person. If we get some massive health problem (car accident, cut off a finger, etc.) we will need that kind of catastrophic coverage. The cost of our coverage is about $150 per month for the two of us, pretty cheap. We used Medical Mutual of Ohio for this insurance.

We had the choice whether to include some riders to add prescription drug coverage and regular doctor visits, but we knew we'd never use them. We are both mostly into herbal remedies and use holistic practitioners much more than regular allopaths.

Then we added a "health discount program" to the picture. This is a card that you carry around that gives you fairly decent discounts on dental, vision, holistic medicine, vitamins/herbs and other stuff. The discounts range from 15% to 50%. The dental discounts for regular cleanings, etc. are particularly good. We used the Healthy Advantage discount program for this. They charge us $120 per year, which we've already almost recovered just from a few dentist and chiropractor trips. Yes, the practitioners must be "in network" but the network is huge. Plus, I think the practitioners must go through some qualification process. We've had good luck so far.

So now I feel like we have a health program that fits our needs. Discounts on massage, reiki, herbs, all the stuff we use regularly. Plus, coverage in case we develop any big problems that allopaths can help us with. And we're not paying for drugs and MD visits, which we don't do much of anyway.

With employers changing their health insurance benefits to shift the burden onto the employees, I wonder if more people will opt for this type of combination. To me, the old system (comprehensive health insurance, MDs, drugs/surgery) is creaking along, ready to fall into oblivion any minute. But it has been hard to see what will replace it. Maybe our ideas are a start towards this.

I'm sure other people have been experimenting similarly, especially dual self-employed families.

10:35:48 AM    comment []  

A pretty serious, very political, well-written blog called Let it Begin Here is worth your time.

8:06:22 AM    comment []