I am not a hippy

I have been an Environmental Engineer for almost six months. This might lead you to assume three things.

1. I own sandals and/or a poncho
2. I have facial hair
3. I listen to the Polyphonic Spree.

In this, you would be correct. However, beards and 6-minute tracks about sunshine do not a hippy make¹.

Allow me to quote from the "Overview" page of Module Seven in my taught Masters course notes.

"Nature runs on sunlight. Humankind runs on fossil fuels"
I see what you're saying, but industrial society runs on fossil fuels. Humankind runs on sweet potatoes and diet coke and pankeggs².

"Nature uses only the energy it needs. Humankind waste massive amounts of energy"
Firstly, "humankind" is singular in my book. Also, I'm not sure what you consider "nature". Or, for that matter, "waste". Does sunlight reflected into space count as a neccesary expense? Plus, nature increases its needs to match availability. Bear this in mind as we continue.

"Nature fits form to function. Humankind forces Nature's form to fit it's own function"
I agree that form matches function in most cases, but that's because useless forms tend to be mowed down and eaten. Actually, this isn't always the case. Plus, we're not the only species that does this whole form-to-function thing. In fact, aren't those two statements the same? How else did form fit function if not by being made to?

"Nature recycles everything. Humankind recycles next to nothing"
I should have guessed when you capitalised the word "Nature" in the last bullet point, but I think our worldviews are quite different. I'd define Nature as being the biosphere, that is, the closed system formed by the earth. As such, it has to recycle everything by definition: if it didn't, it wouldn't be nature. Moreover, Humanity is a subset of nature³. Humanity, like all species, is a waterwheel. We extract our existence from a flow of energy and material. Any subset of nature must have imperfect recycling, so that some matter is flowing to and from the rest of the system.
Also, if you mean that life recycles everything, why are there billions of tonnes of organic carbon buried in the crust? Is Humankind doing its part in recycling it back into the atmosphere?

"Nature rewards cooperation. Humankind idolises competition"
OK, now I know for sure that we have different theories of the world. I always thought that it was people who liked cooperation, and nature that said, metaphorically, "Compete. If co-operating is the best way to keep the other bastards down, do that."

"Nature banks on diversity. Humankind opts for monculture, destroys diversity"
Well, it's true that agriculture has a tendency to make this mistake. You know what, I'll concede this point.

"Nature curbs excesses from within. Humankind celebrates excess; greed is good"
Actually, the way that nature curbs excesses is the same way we generally do. Anything that can desire, desires more. It's only humans who can think about that and consciously decided they need less. Case in point: we are the only species to practice contraception. Also, I'm fairly sure most dictionaries put "bad" somewhere in the definition of "greed". I think it might even have made the Top Ten Sins or whatever.

"Nature taps the power of limits. There are no limits, says mankind"
Um... the power of limits, you say? Well, all I will say is that Toucan Broadband know all about limits, even on their "Unlimited service". If they didn't, I'd be in a better mood right now.

Reading this module has given me an insight into how Conservatives must feel all the time.

Maybe I ought to return my tie-dye kit.

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1. Does anyone know the origin of this construction? I figure it's either Yoda, Winston Churchill, or Germany.
2. The food of kings and the king of foods.
3. Maybe you disagree. It's OK, lots of people do.

Scrying

In any debate about how internet has affected society from now on, I'm going to use this example.

Google Maps is Wonder On Tap.

In the immortal words of Sisqo

Here's another tidbit from the life of a paper boy who, in a few months time, will begin work on yield projections for wind power at domestic scales, thank you.

Britain seems to be almost unique in having newspapers that are sorted by audience to the extent that even someone like me who almost never buys one can still describe their socio-political-economic status by the newspaper they would, theoretically, buy. Personally I'm an Independant reader, though most of my friends are Guardian types. My parents get the local paper.

Obviously, different markets implies a different focus. The Telegraph loves it whenever Gordon Brown wakes up suddenly and someone gets a photo of him looking kind of dopy- I mean, that's front-page material. Similarly, the Mail makes it a point of pride to give you all the facts and figures about exactly how many foreigners are creepin' round your back stair.

Nonetheless, some days the news is so important, so grandiose that it shows up on the sweep of human history. On those days, all you can do is apply the house style and know that you've taken part in the grand story.

Times: Yeah, we can't really ignore this anymore.
Guardian: Climate change worse than we thought.
Independant: Humanity royallyboned.
Express: Taxes suck, especially ones aimed at rich white people.

Like one of your insects- larger, of course.

Did you used to like Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in the day? I mean, um, when someone burnt some AVIs of it on a disc for you about a year ago? Yeah?

Did you know that it's still being made?

Well... sort of.

Dogs that love the rain

Being a soulless scientismist, I am less aware of music. Consequently, I've decided to take Pete's concept in a bit of a different direction. Here are a few litmus-paper tracks taken at different depths of history.

Music I was raised with: Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley and the Wailers. My exposure to any Reggae or Ska apart from the patron saint is pretty limited, and this isn't even my favourite track of his. I listened to it a whole lot as a child, though.

The first music I purchased included You're in the Air by REM. My abiding affection for REM is attested by the fact that I included this track in a custom playlist I made a week ago. (It was called "Bishop Princes".) It's not the intention, but I don't know a track that better summarises the haze of angst and confusion that is being a young teenager.

The teenage years were dominated by REM and my trajectory through Radio 1's key demographic, and consequently I listened to rockstars like Coldplay and Stereophonics: Pick a Part that's New is as good an illustration as any. When I arrived at university, pretty much the first thing I did was to stick in REM's Monster album and mash play: Track one is What's the Frequency Kenneth.

Association with indesque types gives my mid-years litmus: I fought in a war by Belle and Sebastian. This will always be associated with the chronic friction between me and the indesques based on my two most unpopular opinions: poetry is just bad prose and CS Lewis's arguments blow chunks. Hard.

There was a fairly distinct discontinuity at the end of my third year, because most people graduated. Going into the fourth year entailed a lot of realisations, like "I have no ambitions beyond graduation" and "Some of my friends are sub-editors now". One summer-vacation track is The Lord God Bird by Sufjan Stevens (download), introduced to me by the rebirth of music radio. The song was played as a requiem for London, which gives it more staying power in my mind because I was on the Tube later that same day.

Another track I first heard on that podcast was Woman King (download) by Iron and Wine, which might be considered the seal on my process of musical americanization. The actual nod for my fourth-year title track, though, is going to go to The Trapeze Swinger, if only because it reminds me of all the funfairs we went on.

What's the track for The Loughborough Year? I don't know, though Calexico's Black Heart is looking strong.

More about Devon

Of course, when I talked about Devon before I forgot one way Nathan-1784 might have left home: the bounding main!
Listne to a Westcountry accent, and then a Pirate accent.

The sea is still there.

Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.

Culture 2.0

There are two inputs into my brain-stew today¹.

Firstly, English schools have been told that when you're talking about diversity, it's OK for white folks to have an ethnic identity too. In addition, the thinking is that we need to do better on teachin' people to be British. I approve of the list of things they've boiled Britishness down to: not breakin' the law, minding your own business and it not being our place to judge.

Me, I know what my culutral and ethnic heritage are. Three of my four great-grandfathers were blacksmiths and the fourth was called John Smith. I'm a Devon boy, which means I have an accent that is like Devon cheese: mild to rustic. The ideal of the Devon man as a "good ol' chap"- not to be confused with good ol' boy- is the one I grew up with. The good ol' chap is a friend to all, generous with money, hard-working, profoundly unpretentious, and skillful. I know I'm not the last, but I'm doing my best to be the others.

Migrant workers from Poland and the Baltic states have integrated amazingly well into the part of Devon I'm from. There aren't many people down there who aren't from there- I remember the first time I saw someone who was not ethnically English, at the age of nine. Now there are a large number of Poles in Okehampton, and what you hear everywhere is "Say what you like, they work hard". There is a general feeling that some sons of Devon could learn a lesson from the new arrivals rather than spending their time haging around outside village-hall discos in shell-suits, drinking Woodpecker cider.

Secondly, I've had good news and now need to take action on it². I feel, vaugely, that the appropriate thing I need to is to "git'r'done", or something. I know there are people who know exactly how the phrase should be used, but wish everyone would stop saying it. It occured to me that a litmus-test of culture is the set of words you understand. Obvious? Perhaps.

As a Devon boy I know crush as a noun, swale as a verb, and the distinction between something that is lush and something that is a properjob. However, my parentage also gives me duppy, ignorant meaning aggressive or truculent, and the proverb that duppies know who to frighten.

However, In the past week I've heard more words by ZeFrank than by my parents. I also know the significance of phrases like Sportsracer, street-chicken and power-move.

My education at Oxford gave me quad, Bumps, hacks and so on, not to mention the white bronco, Cinco de Mayo or conscious clichés like Shelob queen of the Spiders³.

As a geek I can describe situations according to their saving throws and might instruct someone to take twenty on a certain task.

Sometimes terms can be familiar without having had any direct contact, nor the slightest desire to.⁴

These words are shibboleths, badges, banners.

The point is that had I been born five hundred years ago, I would probably have spent my whole life in the company of the same few hundred people. I wouldn't have one set of friends for whom the codewords include Dan Merino, former Quarterback of the Miami Dolphins and other friends who don't know what a quarterback is or why dolphins would have one. This is a phenomenon of the social mobilty of the modern age, but it's really gone critical with internet. Some of the recognisably distinct cultures I'm a touched by of are British (Devon), Physics, Mansfield College, Barbados and US (blue).

On the off-chance that sociologists haven't gotten around to it yet, I'm going to call this either "polyculturalism" or "Venn-culture".

1). I really hope people start using "brain-stew" to describe a set of poorly-thought-out ideas.
2). Riddles in the dark.
3). I mean, I have no idea of Shelob is the queen on spiders, or just a really big one. It might be like calling Phil The Power Taylor the King of Men.
4). I estimate that I recognise about 3/4 of the terms on that shirt, not to mention im in ur base verbing ur nouns, g2g, series of tubes, OMGWTFBBQ and dozens more.

'08ama

Oh, and because I can never remember how to link in the pure html form, then you get this as a reply to Nathan's blog.

Concerning Obama. He's actually a bit more popular with whites than blacks. You know what that means¹? That means he's reached Colin Powell², Oprah and Tiger Woods cross-race appeal. And that means voting for him helps to assuage the guilt of centuries of racism. Wonderful. Vote for a half-black once, and you prove to the world you're not racist.

Anyway, of all the Dems, I'm liking Richardson. He helps me feel better about having an illegal Hispanic worker.

Isn't diversity great?

¹ It doesn't actually mean this, but since it's coincidental, I'm going to do what the "new" media loves to do so much and shout causation when it's just correlation.
² Before he became SecState. That ruined him.

Non-males, non-whites, non-christians and other minorities

Since Afghanistan, it's become increasingly difficult to talk about the Special Relationship between the United K and S. It's now generally used with a sneer. I've heard it put thus: "The special relationship that Britain has with America is the relationship that a tree has with a dog".

Nonetheless, we do care about America and American politics, far more than most people realise. Average British Reader, I ask you: name two unsuccessful presidential candidates. Gore and Kerry, right? There you go. Now, let's talk about John Howard. Who? I'll give you a hint: he's been Prime Minister of Australia for five hundred years.

We might have learnt that you guys over there don't like to be told when we're scared, but at least some of us will still be following aught-eight closely.

Case in point: Hilary (woman) has decided to join the race, and she's on the cover of our newspapers- in point of fact, they're comparing her to Margeret Thatcher but it was the Telegraph so I don't think they meant to imply "heartless" or "senile". Hil Clinton is a pretty solid bet, but it's not because she's a Thatcher. She's an experienced politician, educated east-coaster, middle-of-the-road politically, and a skillfull opportunist. She offers what a lot of voters have been waiting for: a castrated Bill Clinton.

Admiral Roebuck: With all due respect, M, I think you don't have the balls for this job.
M: Maybe. But the advantage is, I don't have to think with them all the time.¹

Being the idealist that I am, I was cheering on Russ Feingold (Jew), but now that he's out and Gore (nerd) is still kind of depressed about 2000, my support² is now 100%³ behind Barack Obama (half-caste).

You know the sensation when you want to sneeze but can't? I've been sensing that sensation in discussions about Barack Obama. He's a contender for the Democrat nomination but without the money, name, or experience of Hilary. You're used to using the horse-racing metaphor for such campaigning. In that metaphor, Obama is the dark horse. There, I said it so that Carlos Mencia doesn't have to.

The problem, critics say, is that anyone who would vote for Obama is already going to vote Blue and he won't get any Red votes. Don't forget that great enemy of political idealism: pragmatism.

1). Astute readers will note that this is the second time I've used James Bond films to illustrate a discussion about gender roles, and therefore disregard anything I ever say again.
2). As I'm not an American citizen and therefore won't vote, my support is worth as much as the support of half of American voters.
3). Percentage determined by latest internet magics.

Hurray

Hurray! My first vision of this was going to put in pictures using conditional CSS. That plan hit a snag, namely that I don't know any CSS.

I spent most of my evening working on this, and it had got to the stage where I no longer cared about anything except getting it to work. "Alyssa's upset that I used the "hiding in foliage" photo? Charlie's mad because I dissed Dixie? The consensus opinion is that this team blog is a terrible idea that will destroy our friendship? I don't care, just tell me if it work yet." This attitude is how you spot a scientis/engineer.

Mic check

I am playing with blogger to see if my dream of a team blog that looks cool is a fruitless one. I don't know how you got here, partner, but I'd try elsewhere. Um. Like my real blog.

One of the things I want to do is put an icon for the poster over on the right, there. I ain't neccesarily good at making them, but I figure it'll give us a little variety.