We crawled where we could not see the end.
We stand where we can see there is no end.
Let us fly where we will; it is up to you.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Midsummer
It was exactly one year ago that I spent an amazing evening celebrating the summer solstice with many thousands of Valencians on the beach, bonfires strewn about and music and celebration to be had. It was one of my more memorable nights, and it was exactly one week before I left Valencia.
11 members of the LC, plus one German alum from Braunschweig, are going camping up near Suches, GA this weekend. Plus it's the summer solstice tonight, and Masato leaves for Romania on Wednesday. Perfect timing.
This is what I have written as my Return on Investment project for my Dale Carnegie course. It involves Project01, A.K.A. Engineering the Next Generation PBoX.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION I will make Project01 active and sustainable for when I am gone. There will be a sustainable Organizing Committee set up for the duration of the project, with at least 3 TN takers and 3 EP makers in terms of committees. The project will need to realize four total exchanges by the Spring of 2009.
BASELINE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT - Stable project brand and common business plan usable among all Committees. - Numbers of exchanges already in the system: 4 - 3 permanent OC members plus one OC VP per country involved
IMPROVEMENT OBJECTIVE Go from current stage to a stable branded project that has a clear message for all committees involved. Prepare to recruit at least 3 EPs to go abroad in Spring.
"DRIVERS OF SUCCESS" TO BE EMPLOYED - Self-Confidence: take confidence in the future of Project01 even after I am gone. - People Skills - become capable of selling the idea to both TN takers and EP makers as well as companies and potential EPs themselves. - Develop Leadership Skills - Get others to take ownership of the project and its importance to AIESEC and our own LC, and their own LC.
ROI AND NOTES - New engineering AIESEC members - More engineering opportunities for those members - Restoration of the relevance of AIESEC and of our LC - Building and Maintaining Rep
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 = ΔEk = Ek2 – Ek1 = (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.
The other day I had a vision of a temple to the human genome.
In the fantasy in my head, this temple was built a little over one thousand years from now, in a non-divided world (hopefully stateless). The temple is situated in Olduvai Gorge, known as the "Cradle of Mankind," as an homage to our place of Rising. It was designed as mankind's own magnum opus, with absolutely no detail spared and no corner cut. There are no moving parts in the entire structure, but it is lit and "powered" by the highest of nanotechnology's offerings at the time. Energy is stored in batteries when the Sun hits a metal plate that sits atop the temple, acting as a much simpler and more long-time effective version of photovoltaics. There are no copper wires or bulb lighting; the only electric pulse needed is "piped" through nanotrenches inherent inside the structural material and the light, which only comes on when there is a visitor, is piped-in (and stored) sunlight. The temple's holy of holies is situated deep within the earth, as the temple is designed to withstand almost anything that could harm the Earth. It was built to stand as a testament either before mankind was destroyed by some outer or inner force, or before mankind had to evacuate Earth, and could someday return to remember his origin.
The structure is made of a uniform nano-formed substance which is impossible to break by any conventional means, and is perfectly proportioned according to statutes like the Golden Mean and also the ratio of man's figure, as in the Vitruvian Man. Everywhere within the structure, inherent in the design and not elaborated by generated-culturally significant symbology, are testaments to the reality of the human race, as in a coded book. There is a reference to our understanding of when major evolutionary milestones took place, complete with pictures and most importantly stored DNA of everything from archaebacteria to the chimpanzee, and if possible a preserved specimen, directed in a tree of our evolution. The date of the consecration of the temple, recorded both as a number and as a radioactive isotope (universally understandable) is present. In the hall leading to the holy of holies there are 46 double-helixed pillars designed exactly according to the human genome (this hall is probably extremely tall). At the base of each pillar is a specimen, men on one side and women on the other, of people representing as diverse a gene pool as possible according to haplotypes, who have chosen themselves to be preserved as "offerings" to the eternal testament of our genome. Their blood sample is included at the base of the pillar as well. Inside the holy of holies, at the altar, is a depression the size of the average human hand, fingers spread out. Next to it is a ceremonial knife. When a visitor uses the knife to cut their hand sufficiently and presses it into the depression, the warmth and chemicals of the blood flow into tiny channels to activate a sensor which, if the person is a human, displays their own genotype against the backdrop, which I don't know what that is specifically. It also plays a message appropriate to the discoverer.
I don't know why that's significant, but the day when man is peaceful, sapient, and united enough to produce such a testament will be a glorious one indeed.
