BMW GINA: A Way Forward

To hell with the ego-tourists. This is the real way forward. Stop thinking you're all that for using acidic batteries in your car to increase your mileage per gallon - although that is better than carbon credits, but so is cycling.

It's this kind of thinking which will really drastically reduce your carbon footprint. For scientific proof (although with the recent fervor around biofuels, it's clear no one cares about that anymore), check out the time-tested laws of force and work, both of which are directly proportional to mass - the unchanging weight, if you will.

Briefly, work is directly related to energy (what we all need, and what we'll never get more of) by: ΔE = W, or the change in energy (which produces things like life, your light turning on, and your car moving forward) is equal to the amount of work done to change that energy. Work is defined, in terms of kinetic energy (energy in action) as:
W = ΔE_k = E_k2 – E_k1 = (1/2)mΔ(v²), or the amount of work done is equal to the change in kinetic energy (say, 0 to 60 in 4 seconds?) which is equal to one-half the mass of the object times the velocity squared. Fundamentally, what affects how much energy we use is how much mass an object has (speaking practically, how much it weighs) and how fast it goes. Since we're not figuring out instantaneous wormholes anytime soon, the only way to make the work go down is to decrease the (...Bueller?) mass!

If you're still not convinced, another equation for work is W= Fd, or work is equal to the force times the distance exacted upon an object. That one's simple: you can push against a wall all day but not have done any work because your force does not happen over a distance, but if you were to run your car in park and gas the engine for a minute, you would have done quite a bit of work because of the distance the pistons in your engine would have traveled. Don't do that though because that's against the spirit of this post. Force, in its turn, is related by F = ma, or the force is equal to the mass times the acceleration of an object. This is why you don't really feel any force against you when you're in a train or plane or car moving at a constant speed, because it's not accelerating, and so there is no force on your body relative to the earth / vehicle. However, your pistons are changing their acceleration at an amazing rate, constantly reversing direction, which represents a double acceleration change. Once again, this one is most fundamentally only changed by reducing the mass of the object in question, but not gunning your engine at a red-to-green light change is another way to be smart about it.

In short, a fabric car body can be a great sustainability milestone. Since the car will weigh less, it will require less energy (and therefore less fuel) to make it go the same distance as before, and lighter cars are also less lethal weapons to innocent bystanders.

July Wades Into

Still nothing on the job front. Still working.

Istanbul looms ever closer - I leave Monday. Of course I'm very excited about that - but I'm quite unprepared for what comes after September 3rd. I don't even have a plane ticket out of Turkey. Do I need to pack for warm weather or cold after that date, based on the place in which I don't know I'll be? But for certain, many changes will occur there. Seeing all the old friends and making hundreds of new ones, and working in a way I've never worked before will prove rewarding I'm certain.

I'm pleased that someone with whom I've tried to redevelop a good relationship has responded very warmly to it, and we now hang out quite a bit. I'll miss it while I'm abroad.

I have recently finished two books which I found particularly interesting on the subject of the economy and the way it affects our livelihood and builds our society. They are The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and Deep Economy by Bill McKibben. I finished The World is Flat in Europe, and picked up Deep Economy in Frisco and finished it on the Hawaii trip. I learned a lot from Friedman's book and I agreed with - and was excited by! - much of what the book establishes and predicts, especially in relation to the prospects of the post-capitalist economy. As was to be expected though, Friedman's viewpoint was taken from the prevailing paradigm of study and instead of getting excited about things like Free Open Source Software, he asks in an almost frightened way "When are the right people gonna get paid for it!" McKibben's book, however, was of a different subject and nature altogether - a very refreshing one. Deep Economy, in the vein of Ishmael, is about changing the very way we live and build our economy in favor of slowing (or even stopping) growth, and focusing as much as possible on local networks and sources to produce everything from quality food to culture and entertainment. I will think and search for a long time for the place in which the global, approaching-egalitarian world described by The World is Flat meets the local and sustainable world urged by Deep Economy. I also had many problems with the way that Friedman's description of our own economy didn't care much of any bit about sustainability or cultural quality, and had quite the assumption of superiority - perhaps it would be better to say the lack of an assertion of equality. This is most notable in the way he portrays Indian business executives smilingly and enthusiastically explaining to Friedman that the "place" for Indian IT workers is in call centers, while the "place" for American and "Western" workers is in more dynamic and powerful fields, like consulting and design. I have this lone wanderer-hero to thank for introducing me to the concept of sustainability, which is growing in my personal interest and will probably develop into a life-quest by the time I leave Georgia Tech.

The days inch on by leaps and bounds. But we'll fight for that inch.