TheBigUpshot

I was driving today behind a blue-hair and a piece of crap blew out of the bed of his truck. It flew under my car and blew two of my tires. I managed to get my car stopped safely – thank God for run-flat tires.

I’m also sick – I’ve got a fever as high as the Arizona desert heat – about 105 F today – and I still played in a tennis tournament. I went to work because I consider my job to be an essential service. But then I went to play tennis because I said I would. I don’t want to be the guy who bails.

Peter says, ‘at least you’re not bored.’

He’s right – I’m not bored often. About the only time is when people stick me with problems they said they would have under control. My gripe today is about people who say they will make something a priority, but then they don’t. I said I would make this tennis tournament. I said it was a priority. So I showed up.

I’m not perfect. I want to do things, and I run out of time like everyone else. I want something to be as important to me as it is to the person I’m talking to. But sometimes it’s really number 423 on my list. It’s on the list, and that means I want to do it. It just means I won’t be able to do it today. Or this year.

I guess it a skill like any other. A person has to learn to identify the priority of a project before he commits to it, and be up front about where it stands. It’s honest and polite to tell someone that ‘I would love to, and I will if I have time, but I have other priorities right now, so that will take a back seat.’

That’s how someone else will be prepared. And it’s better to know up front that find out later… and have boring down time while the issue gets resolved.

-Matt

Tags: Life Management by matt
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I wrote up a little piece a bit ago on the complexities of the food-or-fuel choice implied in the manufacture of biofuels.

Richard Jones at Softmachines.org wrote about biofuels a while back (Driving on sunshine). He has returned to the matter more recently. “It seems that some of the drawbacks were more easy to anticipate than others. What’s sobering about the whole episode, though, is that it does show how complicated things can get when science, politics and economics get closely coupled in situations needing urgent action in the face of major uncertainties.”

I love biofuels in principle. The idea that we could use the agricultural technology of the whole of human history to power the most modern inventions seems appropriate. But the economics are complicated. There is always switchgrass which promises to make use of otherwise useless land. And there’s algae on which I did my high school science project. There you can use huge regions of the ocean to produce energy. That won’t have unintended consequences.

In any case, I think there could be a future in biofuels. If it raises the value of agriculture, then we can see more agriculture. I think that could be a good thing for people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Traditionally, agriculture was how cultures developed themselves. That seems like a worthy subject for development. I’m not sure right now, though. Corn ethanol, for instance, barely breaks even on the energy balance.

What that means (in simplified terms) is that you burn a gallon of gasoline to grow, process, and transport a gallon of corn ethanol. Ethanol is “green” except if you burned a gallon of petrol to get it. In that case it is utterly useless in energy terms. It makes a job or two, but you might as well pay people to not grow corn. Some of you might remember the discussion of the lucrative possibilities in getting paid to not grow corn in Catch 22. More recently: “Acreage Reduction Programs (ARP) paid farmers to set aside an amount of land on which they would not grow corn.”

Anyhoo, I have a dissertation to write and a second job to pay the bills. I wish I could believe that greenwashed fuels were the solution to the energy crisis.

-Peter

Tags: Science by Peter
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