Broken Arrow 2: The "mean" of all opinions (Why We Are Trolls)

Before I set out on the posts "Broken Arrow", about how my company has to make some deals under the onslaught of so-called E-Stewards and BAN-friendly state regulators, I have to find some zen.  The "ugly sandcastle" blog last weekend (post-titled "Broken Arrow 1") is an apt analogy.  Shutting down our exports to Egypt or Malaysia or Peru or Africa isn't that big a deal.   It's not the beauty or necessity of the sandcastle, it's the value of the experience building it together with people you care about.

And that's something intensely personal, something I'm prone to feel too passionately about.   And people mistake that for caring about the sandcastle.

I want the right to build sandcastles with my kids, and the right to trade with "geeks of color", even when the sandcastles fall and the repaired and working units eventually become waste.

I don't like the fact that expensive "new" sandcastles, mined from Congo conflict metals, are sold to people with fewer choices, who can't afford them.   Those "new" and "fully functional" units crumble just as much as sustainable used refurbished sandcastles do.  I don't like planned obsolescence, or laws banning the "right to repair", even if all technology, and all companies, are like sandcastles.

But time should give us a prospective that protects us from lashing out and "trolling the internet" with vitriolic comments.  Blogs included.

(AT least check out the photo below, it's a treasure of obsolescence)

Broken Arrow 1: Like Protecting an Ugly Sandcastle From a Rising Tide

One of the best things a father can do is really enjoy building a decent sandcastle on the beach with his three kids.  Get into it.  My wife, Armelle, often sits under a hat or a parasol and reads or works crossword puzzles, while I motivate the kids for the sandcastle project.

Getting totally into it... that's the secret to sand castles.  If you are doing it by rote, as some kind of obligation, without passion or inspiration, the kids will pick up on that and you are finished within an hour.   My best sandcastles got all 3 kids involved, and kept them involved.  The castles meant something to me, and to the kids, even though I knew what happens to sandcastles.

One or two times I remember pretty vividly.   Nine or ten years ago, the kids were probably four and eight (times two), or three and seven.  As every summer, it took place in Le Barcares France, where my wife's parents (French Catalans) purchased a condo.

from wikipedia commons, mail order

One of the special sandcastles was a first "history lesson" for the kids.   I started by making a tiny compound and told them, "this is how people lived about three thousand years ago".  There was a garden, and some huts, and a well.   Then I told about how someone takes charge and organizes, motivates, leads... I don't really believe people in villages simultaneously decide to build a wall to protect their garden, or a silo for their grain.  I suspect it takes a person with a vision, someone to convince people to work a little harder, save a little more, defer gratification.

The sand grain silo became a tower, and the walls became a fortess, as people realize that deferring and saving makes a tasty target for theft and raids.   I talked about feudal systems with the kids, and "land lords".  The ones who built the castles offered protection in a raid, and a fortress silo was like a bank.

We built moats, and trenches, and roads.  The history of Europe sandcastle continued to grow for 3-4 hours, and my kids were into it.  They felt some kind of history or ownership, like they had know the castle for generations, for a thousand years.

Labor Saving Devices Advertise Jobs In USA

There are older versions of this song on youtube, and versions I like better.



This is a song about jobs, it romaniticizes hand labor.

Shredding machines have been given a much lighter job than rail setting machines.  They don't repair, they don't even set aside repairable items.

And in fact they don't finish the job.

The specifications you see advertised on electronics shredders are real.  They really do produce the copper, aluminum, and plastics streams they show.  But the trick is this.  They produce 80% of the sort in the first 20% of the time and energy they run.

In 20% of the time, the machine owner gets 80% of the benefit.  The owner of the machine has to continue to grind, grind, grind, running the shredder 5 times longer, to get the cleanest stream advertised in the shredding magazine.

It's called "diminishing returns".

Adam Minter's book (Junkyard Planet) shows the lines at the back end of the shredders, the people who hand-sort material that has been shredded not-quite-to-spec.  As he documents, it's appropriate at some point, when the labor has run into it's own Paretto Principle, when there are diminishing returns for the labor.  My company sends a percentage of cleaned e-scrap off to shredders, we are not hand-disassembly "purists".

But even the material we send for shredding doesn't "end of life" there.  Most profitable USA shredding companies turn the machines off before 50%, sending the remaining pieces overseas to be hand-sorted.  They never run the machines 100%, due to "diminishing returns".  It takes as much energy to clean the last 20% of material as it took to clean the first 80%.  Sorters do a better job, by hand, in China, and just as much labor is exported as was displaced in the USA.

The irony is that shredding companies advertise themselves as creators of jobs in the USA.  That's really not true.   The shredders who advertise "USA jobs" are using mechanical means to eliminate labor in the USA, and to eliminate repair and remanufacturing jobs which simultaneously create more employment in both the exporting and importing country.

Protein and Gold: Gore's Generation of Environmentalists Circuitous Path

"I believe in global warming"

"I don't believe in global warming"

These two statements seemed to starkly define a generation.  They become emblems of environmentalism, or environmental skepticism.   Many use one of these statements to define who they are.   The first is more popular, perhaps, because it's emblematic of compassion, and people dig compassion.

I believe extinction, the consumption of diverse species, is the simplest measure of our society's place in history of the planet.  Any other measure - carbon, or prayers, temperature, or wealth - is a distraction from what future people will care about that we did today.  What drives our impacts today?   Protein and Gold.

I dig baby elephants.  And I want baby elephants to have papas and mommies.  It's a simple faith in nurture, and it doesn't make me an environmental scientist.  But because I don't want elephants, or frogs, or tigers, walruses, or seals to be extinct, I work in recycling.  And it has nothing at all to do with landfills, or with carbon.   To save these species, we must alter our love of metals, especially expensive metals like gold.   And if you think teaching humans to consume less energy is challenging, try teaching people to let go of gold.

This is not a statement about the science of global warming.  It's a statement about human psychology, and the way media tries to educate society about need for change.  When we need society's consumption to change - and I'm convinced more than ever that we do - we need to understand our own psychology, our own cognitive dissonance, our own appetite for opinion change, and to invest in messages which opinion research indicates will make a darn difference one hundred to one thousand years from now.

For now, the loudest discussions, if not debate, are over global warming and climate change (thanks Mr. Gore).   There is no denying that there are many, many sophisticated arguments humans engage in to support either position at the top on belief in global warming.   There is also no denying that public discussion of the issue focuses primarily on the psychology and assessment of the opponent.

Merely referencing dry scholarly work on the shrinking (or not) of Mars poles, as an indicator of the average temperature on Mars, demands an apology.  From Yahoo answers discussion, links to these two papers are presented with a disclaimer... "I'm not a denier but evidence shows that they (Mars plar caps) are melting." 

http://sirius.bu.edu/withers/pppp/pdf/bo... 
http://depts.washington.edu/marsweb/pape... 

The discussion of global warming here on earth is usually hedged today with similar qualifiers.   "It's undeniable that even if the Earth is warming for other reasons (solar or celestial energy), that humans are producing more carbon, and carbon will exacerbate the rate of global warming."

Fresh Air Rematch: Terry Gross interview with Adam Minter

http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/

Have not listened yet, but can't wait.

November 13, 2013

wednesday's show

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View captionRajanish Kakade/AP

Christmas Lights Make Slippers In Global 'Junkyard' Economy

The Chinese town of Shijiao is known for recycling discarded Christmas tree lights for their copper and wire insulation, which are then used to support growing economies and make slipper soles, respectively. In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter explores the business of recycling what developed nations throw away.

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Coming Up: The author of Junkyard Planet explains the global billion-dollar trash trade, Wednesday on NPR's Fresh Air.