The Courage Campaign has posted an interesting chart of productive time wasted due to traffic congestion in Los Angeles:
They contend that for every year of work a person does in the office, three weeks worth of time is wasted in a car.
Availability also must be a worry, especially in cases of regional disasters, as congestion can only get worse when everyone has to act at the same time (in response) rather than with the intent to keep their own schedule.
Energy consumption and emission is the focus of this mind-bending, paradigm-shifting article in the Times Online.
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Similarly, it seems an airline mogul has been pointing out that beef eaters are a bigger problem for the environment than those who fly:
Michael O’Leary, boss of the budget airline Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was reported to have said that global warming could be solved by massacring the world’s cattle. “The way he is running around telling people they should shoot cows,” Lawrence Hunt, head of Silverjet, another budget airline, told the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. “I do not think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality.”
Statistics are a funny thing, as everyone from Groucho Marx to Mark Twain has famously observed. The question is, however, what really impacts people in their daily life.
The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.”
And to think that kids who sat on the couch and ate bowls of cereal were derided for not keeping a healthy lifestyle. Little did we know they were really trying to save the planet…if you don’t count the marathon television and video game sessions.
The problem with starting a company that is supposed to be good for the environment is that the owners have a big moral dilemma (e.g. a market opportunity) when faced with the waste (e.g. byproducts) they produce.
The NYT reports that industrial chemists in America are seeking ways to make profit from biofuel beyond its primary use. Scientists are working on disposal alternatives for fuel byproduct:
In another lab at Iowa State, Robert C. Brown is using distillers’ dry grain —a main byproduct of corn ethanol that is largely sold as animal feed — to produce hydrogen and a compound called PHA. Mr. Brown hopes his version of PHA, which is biodegradable, could be used for surgical gowns and gloves that must now be disposed of as medical waste.
Ethanol as a fuel is as much a dead-end for our general welfare as corn-syrup is for food, but don’t try to tell that to an industry trying to squeeze every penny out of crops while externalizing risks. Concerns for the welfare of the planet, let alone a fellow human, are not the usual rules of game here. The value system underlying the research is based on the much older highly-industrialized model of finding profit in areas without regulation (e.g. to ensure health). The news these days usually attributes this kind of risky behavior to China , rather than right in our own back yard.
The price of glycerol, now 20 to 50 cents a pound, could drop as low as 5 cents a pound as biodiesel production increases.
Mr. Kraus [professor of chemistry at Iowa State] said the higher quality glycerol made with the new process could command a much higher price. “What we see,” he said, “is an opportunity to make something that might cost 80 cents a pound.”
Money talks. In sum, it appears that the bio-fuel innovators are starting to try and emulate the model they think of as successful:
This, in turn, could help transform the biodiesel industry into something that more closely resembles the petroleum industry, where fuel is just one of many profitable products.
“Just like petroleum refineries make more than one product that are the feedstock for other industries, the same will have to be true for biofuels,” said Kenneth F. Reardon, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “Biorefining is what the vision has to look like in the end.”
The problem with this is that the petroleum industry model is unhealthy. It puts the environment, including human health, low on the list of priorities for success.
In an emerging market where health and the environment threaten to be a top priority, a big paradigm shift for the vision of a bio-refinery seems like a sensible conclusion. More than one product, indeed, but waste disposal should have a whole new meaning. Or as the Director of Beijing Olympics cycling events put it recently
[President of the International Olympic Committee] Rogge’s comment reminds us that we have to work harder to fix environmental problems.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. After billions have been spent, pollution and waste are still a problem, which means a market opportunity of many more billions ahead.
This seems odd to me. What will regulators think of next? Will they ban actual snot?
The BBC explains the risk in an article humorously called “DVLA says ‘offensive’ SN07 number plates are snot allowed“.
The change means that cars registered in the capital are the only ones in Scotland not to begin with an S.
A DVLA spokesperson said the decision to change the plates was taken to avoid offending car buyers in the capital.
She added: “It is our policy that any registration mark that can be construed as being offensive to people will be suppressed.
“In this case, the SN07 marks would have been too similar to the word ‘snot’ and, as that could possibly offend some buyers, they were replaced with new TN07 registrations.”
Snot is really offensive to people? Another story by the BBC suggests the opposite, that poetry about snot is a good way to help children learn about health and medicine. Yes, poetry about snot:
North London GP Nick Krasner, has harnessed the fascination for all things “icky” to entertain and educate.
In ‘Oozing Medical Poems’ he tackles the issues of bugs, appendicitis and personal hygiene through 11 poems aimed at seven to 11-year-olds.
How offensive. Well, at least now plates from Scotland will be harder to identify. Wait, wasn’t that the point of the S?
Maybe they should have changed the N instead of the S? Is SP07 offensive to anyone? What about SC07?
Meanwhile, in American news, a federal judge has ruled that the state of Illinois is required to offer license plates with controversial political slogans:
A federal judge yesterday ordered state officials to offer license plates with the pro-adoption motto “Choose Life,” brushing aside claims that the slogan is really a thinly disguised anti-abortion message.
No, that’s not an anti-abortion plate. It’s an anti-war message. Maybe the pro-life lobby will push for a plate that says “If you’re running on gasoline, you just killed a marine.” Too controversial? To be clear the plate perhaps should read “choose life, unless it gets in the way of oil and pride, then shoot freely”.
Former state Sen. Patrick O’Malley, R-Palos Park, another sponsor, said in a telephone interview last night that it made no difference even if “Choose Life” did represent an anti-abortion slogan.
“Does that make it bad?” O’Malley said. “Whether it is or it isn’t you should still be allowed to express yourself.”
O’Malley clearly does not have a problem with SN07 on his ID. I guess he would also support the MPEACHW plate owner who is being asked by the state of South Dakota to surrender her personalized ID. The Rapid City Journal explains:
State law declares motor vehicle licenses plates to be the property of the state as long as the plates are valid. The law also allows personalized plates with as many as seven letters for an extra $25 fee. But it gives DMV officials the right to refuse to issue “any letter combination which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency.�
Hillmer said MPEACHW meets that criterion. The plates never would have been issued if DMV officials had caught their meaning at the time Moriah applied, Hillmer said.
“This was one that we apparently missed when it came through originally, and we received a complaint from an individual that found it offensive,� she said, declining to identify the individual or provide the contents of the complaint. “I don’t think we ever would have issued it if we’d have picked up on what it was inferring.�
So there you have it. A manual process, perhaps a mere individual, sitting and looking at untold license plate applications and trying to decipher meanings to protect the public from harm. Is that person a trained linguist? A code analyst? Will computers be increasingly used to search a database for offensive patterns? The concept of a state-owned identity that can be personalized presents interesting cross-section of philosophy, security and technology.