cities. physics. food. environment. fatherhood.

Perhaps you all have seen this:

I came across it via a 3 quarks daily item referencing a New York Times article. That I discovered this two-week old clip–which already has millions of views–so circuitously speaks to the fact that I’m just not up on what’s hot on the Internets these days. 

Any number of descriptors come to mind for this video: goofy, joyful, callow, spontaneous, kitschy, universalistic. One could ask what sort of manipulation is going on when upbeat music makes you feel upbeat. One could find any number of reasons to by cynically dismissive of the whole thing–perhaps by counting up the ways it could illustrate Stuff White People Like. That might have been my reaction, some years ago.

But watching the video did bring me a few minutes of joy today. Upon reflection, it brought to mind the “Dancing in the Street” pattern (#63) from A Pattern Language:

All over the earth, people once danced in the streets; in theater, song, and natural speech, “dancing in the street” is an image of supreme joy. Many cultures still have some version of this activity… 

But in those parts of the world that have become “modern” and technically sophisticated, this experience has died. Communities are fragmented; people are uncomfortable in the streets, afraid with one another; not many people play the right kind of music; people are embarrassed….

The embarrassment and the alienation are recent developments, blocking a more basic need. And as we get in touch with these needs, things start to happen. People remember how to dance; everyone takes up an instrument; many hundreds form little bands.

APL goes on to with recommendations for building an environment that fosters dancing in the street. So however accidentally and undeliberately he got into it, Matt Harding is onto something.

The video clip above is the third of his videos. The second video, from 2006, is similar, but consists mostly of Matt dancing by himself. In fact, it was the spontaneous participation of the children in Rwanda that led, in part, to the idea for the third video. The second video is set to a song called “Sweet Lullaby,” by Deep Forest. Watching the video, the song struck me as quite familiar. Was it from an ad? From This American Life? I was having the hardest time placing it, until I realized that it was actually a track on a Lullaby CD of ours.

I like to make iced tea during the summer months. Not that vile powdered stuff, but real tea or herbal infusions. To make it quickly–so one doesn’t have to wait for near-boiling tea to cool all the way down to an icy-cold temperature, I prefer to brew double-strength tea and pour it over ice, such that most of the ice melts, and the near-boiling tea cools, together making an appropriately strong chilled drink.

How much ice does one need? Well, to cool 1 gram of boiling water down to the freezing point, 100 calories¹ have to be extracted from it. Melting 1 gram of ice takes about 80 calories of heat. So a mixture of 56% (by weight) ice and 44% boiling tea will melt all the ice and leave the final mixture at 32°F.

How do you measure this amount of ice? Well, you could weigh it, but that’s not always convenient. Here’s a bit of mathematics to justify a simple approximation: The density of ice is approximately 92% that of liquid water. If you fill a container with ice cubes–or with any solid particles, for that matter–there is a fair amount of air space between the grains. If ice cubes were spherical, then only about 64% of the volume would be ice, and the rest air–this is known as the random close-packed fraction. Ice cubes aren’t spheres, but the fraction should be roughly the same. Which means that if you fill a container up with ice cubes, they would melt to a volume about 59% of that of the container. If you add 50% of the volume of the container of boiling water, the ice would represent about 54% of the total mass of water and ice, and mixing the two together you’d end up with a volume of liquid equal to 109% the volume of the container, at 32°F. To avoid overflow, you’d need to use slightly less ice and boiling water.

So, my iced-tea algorithm:

1. Fill a container most of the way up with ice cubes
2. Measure out as much tea as you need for the full volume of the container
3. Brew the tea using a volume of water that’s slightly less than half that of the volume of the container
4. Pour the brewed double-strength tea (through a strainer, if necessary) into the ice-filled container
5. Stir to cool the tea and melt the ice; most of the ice will melt. Since the brewed tea will have cooled off a bit while steeping, it won’t have enough heat to melt all the ice and so there will still be some ice left.

The tea leaves will absorb some of the water, and many containers hold (slightly) more than their nominal volume, so using (say) exactly 1 quart of water to make tea in a 2-quart container shouldn’t present any problems.

To brew, I’ve adopted the Cook’s Illustrated technique of mixing the tea and cold water in a saucepan, heating over medium heat to 190°F, then shutting off the heat to let steep for 3 or so more minutes: all total, the brewing should take about 15 minutes.

I’m fond of a mint infusion: for a 2 quart container, use 2 Tablespoons dried mint. I also like minted iced tea, for which I use a mixture of 4 teaspoons loose tea plus 3 teaspoons mint for a 2 quart container.

1. Thermodynamic calories, not food Calories. A food Calories, spelled with a capital C, is 1000 thermodynamic calories. [↩]

Last saturday, I purchased a Brompton M6L folding bicycle. It’s my first purchase of a bicycle since I was in middle school. In about 30 seconds, the bike folds down to be roughly the size of a small suitcase: this means I can take it with me during rush hour on the Metro, when regular-sized bikes are otherwise prohibited.

(image from bfold website)

I traveled to New York City to purchase the bike, from bfold, a small dealership that occupies a basement apartment near Union Square.¹ They specialize in folding bicycles, and keep several dozen Bromptons in stock, along with a few other makes.

Although it’s always good to have a reason to take Amtrak up to New York City, I would have liked to have bought locally. One of the 20 or so nationwide Brompton dealers is around here, College Park Bicycles,² and although their website suggests you “Come in for a test ride” of a Brompton, they don’t actually have any in stock,³ and they don’t know how long it would take to get one in. 

Through online research, I was mostly convinced that I wanted a Brompton: they have the most compact and elegant folded form of any of the folding bicycles. Notably, when folded, the chain is in the middle of the package, between the wheels. The rear wheel assembly is hinged: when riding, it is held by compression against the main frame, but when the rider dismounts it’s easy to swing the rear wheel under the rest of the bike in order to park it.

(images from Brompton website).

But still, I wanted to actually see and feel one, and see the folding and unfolding, before the purchase. So off to bfold it was. The folks there–I think there are only two–are great. Talking with the shop owner on the phone, I got the impression that they are folding bicycle enthusiasts who decided to open a store, and not bicycle racers who work in a bike store that happens to sell folders. In the store, we talked about the available options, and they demonstrated the folding and unfolding maneuvers. Talk about elegant! In their hands, at least, the folding and unfolding were very fluid, giving the impression of a very well engineered and built machine. 

The folks at College Park bicycles, who also sell Dahon and Bike Friday folders, did make a few valid criticisms of the Brompton: first, in order to achieve its folded state, it uses several custom-built, proprietary parts. If one of these parts needs replacement, it has to be obtained from Brompton, and if you’re not close to a Brompton dealer, this could mean your bike is out of commission for a while. And a number of these parts are made from plastic instead of metal. I consider myself handy enough to do my own bicycle maintenance, and with several US dealers willing to do mail order of replacement parts, this wasn’t a serious drawback for me.

At 27 pounds, my Brompton is best described as luggable. It’s easy enough to pick up and carry for short distances. It has six speeds, which it achieves through a combination of two-speed derailleur and three-speed Sturmey-Archer hub arranged in a half-step gearing pattern. That is, the ratio of the two derailleur gears is half that of the ratio between the steps on the hub, so that the full range of gears–from 40 to 86 gear inches–is covered evenly with no overlaps. I consider this another touch of elegant design.

By way of comparison, my other bike weighs in at 39 pounds, in its present configuration (with rack, fenders, toolkit, spare tube, pump and lock, but without lights). Both front and rear gears have been replaced several times over the years, such that the gearing pattern is more installed than designed, covering the range of 26 to 92 gear-inches with a theoretical 21 gears, some of which are unusable and some of which overlap. A comparison of gearing:

I’ll write in a future post about the way the Brompton changes my commute. I’d certainly recommend bfold, for anyone interested in a folding bicycle. If you want to seriously evaluate the various makes, and test ride them and so forth, it would be a good idea to call ahead and let them know what you’d like to do and when you’d like to come in: with only two staff and a growing interest in folding bicycles, the store can become quite hectic with only a handful of customers. I also think I should have purchased a model with a rear rack and EZ-wheels, which allows the folded bicycle to be rather easily wheeled about.

1. Rents are high in Manhattan, of course, but with a wide variety of re-purposable spaces, such as the one bfold occupies, small entrepreneurs do have places to start. I don’t know if a similar business could make it in DC. [↩]
2. which otherwise looks like a really cool bicycle shop [↩]
3. I realize that small businesses can’t devote unlimited time to their websites, but I also think that lots of long-established businesses just don’t understand how much people like me depend on the web, and how irked we get when websites have misleading information. I much prefer to look at a store’s website than to look them up in the yellow pages and call, and I would guess that for routine questions like hours and products stocked, it takes less employee time to maintain the website than to repeatedly answer the phone. In fact, I hardly ever use the yellow pages anymore. [↩]

As predicted, our heat wave was broken in dramatic fashion last night with the arrival of some intense thunderstorms. At about 7pm, a series of small-ish storms came in. We lost power for perhaps a minute–not long enough to fetch a flashlight–but our neighbors down the street didn’t fare quite so well.

A large street tree came down during the storm:

Fortunately, the tree fell in the street, not on a house.

The tree did take some electrical wires down with it, to the point of ripping a neighbor’s meter box from the side of the house. I suspect their power outage lasted longer than a minute:

To be fair, it did cool to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. But that was at 6 in the morning, at the very minimum of temperature, after a whole night of radiative cooling into the night sky and before the sun has had a chance to warm things up again. And with 84% humidity, there was no relief to be had stepping into air during this moment of relative cool. By the time I leave the house, just before 8, it’s already 80 degrees. By 11am, it has hit 90, a mark it won’t drop below until the sun sets. The weather’s been at this for a few days now, and with each successive afternoon bake, the overnight relief becomes more meager. 

To keep the house habitable–which has meant keeping the (upstairs) bedrooms at or below about 81 degrees, I have to keep the downstairs at about 76. Such is life when your house is under-insulated, and your central air system is grafted on to early 1940s ductwork that was put in place presuming the house would only be heated.

This evening brings a chance of thundershowers: if they’re big enough, we will get cooling, but if they’re too small, then all we get is an increase in humidity.

To do this summer: install ceiling fans, and upgrade the insulation.

“We should”: one of the most counter-productive phrases in existence.

As a progressive, and with my student days behind me, I’ve come to feel that civic engagement shouldn’t be considered optional. I’ve looked to local organizations for involvement: while in DC, I’ve volunteered with three organizations, plus one political campaign,  and will probably work with others as my priorities nd responsibilities evolve. 

In every setting that involves a group of volunteers–or more generally, a group of people in which the individuals each decide how they will invest their time–the words “we should” are a sure path to inaction. What the words really mean is “I won’t but hope someone else will,” but without the candor to admit that the speaker, in fact, won’t do whatever it is he is suggesting. 

These words are usually spoken in meetings, gatherings that many people claim to disdain. The fact that nothing actually gets done during meetings compels some to ask if everyone shouldn’t really use their time to actually do something. Someone might suggest meetings every other month, instead of monthly.  If a project does require the input of more than one person, however, you need meetings. In the case of volunteer groups, in which everyone has a myriad of other obligations and interests, the truth is out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Nobody’s time is so carefully managed that he could take the time that would have been spent in a meeting and use it on a project: there are plenty of other things that rush in to fill the temporal void. One might read a few more threads on Daily Kos, or watch the television program that comes on after your favorite program, or skim through catalogs you get in the mail instead of sending them straight to the recycle bin. The way things get done in a volunteer organization is through mutual accountability: we agree to take on tasks, and follow through because we value the value of our word.

Meetings are necessary: the trap is to think that meetings are sufficient. I think that even the complainers like their volunteer meetings, perhaps secretly. For one, it’s a chance to hang out with like-minded people for a few hours. There is also a sort of perverse satisfaction from attending a meeting: you get to feel that you’ve accomplished something but you actually haven’t had to expend much effort. You’ve spent a few hours getting updates and making plans for next steps; you’ve thought about the issues at hand, so it seems like you’ve done your part. 

And truthfully, for many, that’s all they do, as the meeting is the only space they’ve made in their schedules for the issues at hand. Of course, we’re all so busy, and it’s tempting to just be thankful that they care enough to show up, but if everyone at the meeting is like this, nothing will get done. Some would do well to re-evaluate their own priorities–they do so much, they get nothing done.¹

Calling out the “we should”s, and insisting on “I will”s is one tool with which to separate the do-ers from the rest. Perhaps meeting organizers should keep tallies of each phrase. Each time “we should” is uttered, put the utterer on the spot, and ask if he’s volunteering to do the task he suggests. Now, this is not to say that someone can’t have good–even inspiring–ideas that he can’t carry out himself,² but in such cases he should simply say so.

A particularly pernicious form of “we should” are the obstructionist “we should”s–that when person A volunteers to take on some task, person B pipes up with an impractical pre-condition that “we should” do before beginning on person A’s task. More than just a waste of time, this could actually derail a real action. In physics, we are occasionally encouraged to “make mistakes as fast as possible.”³ That is, you won’t learn anything, and you won’t get anything done, without doing something. So do something. Say that you will do something, and do it, and if it turns out to be not quite the right thing, then you can do something else.

1. One of Paul Sally’s graduate school advisors apparently told this to him, when in his early grad student days he wasn’t getting much mathematics done. [↩]
2. One idea I’ve had for the organizations I’ve worked with, but can’t do myself, is to create a coloring page based on your organization’s work, so that if you’re tabling an event, and a parent comes by with his or her child, you can let the child color the coloring page (supply crayons) while you talk to the parent about the organization. [↩]
3. A sentiment attributed to the late John Wheeler. [↩]

The recent issue of the alumni magazine from my undergraduate alma mater, The University of Chicago, includes a profile of mathematician Paul Sally, who taught the Honors Analysis in Rⁿ sequence I took in my second year. 

Despite the rigorously intellectual image of itself that the University promotes, the alumni magazine is usually as circumspect as an in-flight magazine. Of course the primary purpose of the magazine is to cultivate us as donors, so on-campus controversy, intellectual or otherwise, gets scant attention. The article on Sally certainly follows the magazine’s formula of uncritical boosterism, but I still found it a delight to read: it took me back to what was probably the most intellectually fulfilling experience of my academic career, a time when all the promotional slogans about the life of the mind were very real for me.

Although my enthusiasm for working in a lab led me to choose physics over mathematics, I still have a fondness for pure mathematics. I retain a handful of habits  that are more a part of math culture than physics culture.¹ Sally’s course kept me on the fence between the two disciplines.

Sally delivered his classes entirely without notes, and the course rarely made reference to the assigned book (a cheap Dover reprint and a small volume from Spivak). He led a “discussion session,” Tuesday evenings from 6:30 until 8 or 9, stretching the amount of class time. He told us he expected at least 25 hours per week from us, at one point advising us to make posters which read “Mathematics… is a full time job.” It was mathematics by immersion.

Not every teacher can pull this off so successfully: it’s easy enough to assign lots and lots of work, but the combination of a heavy workload and an uninspiring instructor usually results in lots of incomplete assignments. 

Sally once remarked that, as you continue in mathematics, you get to a point where hard work is not only necessary, but also sufficient, to prove theorems and make progress. He was getting us to develop the sort of attitude and work ethic to reach that point.

There are many things I learned in college that I’ve now forgotten, many problems I can no longer solve. I don’t know how much review it would take for me to be able to solve the problems from Honors Analysis again, but, 15 years on, I feel I still have a well-developed understanding of the structure of the real numbers. 

Here’s another article about Sally, for winning a teaching award.

1. In particular, I can’t stand the common-in-physics habit of using the word “finite” when what is really meant is “non-zero” or “infinitesimal.” [↩]

Mark Bittman–New York Times food columnist and author of How to Cook Everything, a splendid cookbook with International and Vegetarian volumes, has been speaking and writing about many of the same food issues that Michael Pollan writes about. 

Bittman’s talk from the TED (=Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is now online. In 18 minutes–the length of all TED talks–he examines the ways in which the industrialization of food, particularly livestock, has been a disaster for the environment and our health. Also see his January New York Times article, which discusses the same ideas.

(via 3 quarks daily.)

One horseman of the apocalypse is global warming, another is peak oil, and the hoofbeats of each are now loud enough that we can’t really pretend we don’t hear anything. The story of global warming is fairly well known, thanks in large part to Al Gore. The story of peak oil, on the other hand, although gaining in prominence, is largely overlooked, even as crude oil pushes past $130/barrel and gasoline tops $4/gallon. Perhaps this is because Americans can imagine living in a world in which the global warming catastrophe has happened (hey, just turn the AC up!) but can’t imagine a world in which we can’t each consume more than a gallon a day of gasoline.

A succinct summary of the peak oil story has been (re-)posted at The Oil Drum, which is perhaps the leading site for oil news and peak oil discussion.

Two interviews of note on the Sierra Club Radio episode from May 3: Robert Reich, Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, discusses his recent book Supercapitalism, and John Javna, author of the original 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, talks about the newly updated version of the book.

Javna

The interview with Javna is refreshingly candid. The original book came about as environmental issues were making news in the early 1990s, and Javna saw a need to outline steps that individuals could take to make a difference. The book was intended, Javna says, to be an entry point to environmental activism. Although many–including Sierra Club radio host Orli Cotel–took it this way, a far more sinister thing also happened: corporate polluters were able to latch on to the idea of individuals taking action and transformed that into the idea that individual lifestyle changes were the only steps that needed to be taken. If there are 50 simple things you can do to save the Earth, then saving the Earth means doing the 50 simple things, and not, say, addressing mountaintop removal or clearcutting or pesticide runoff or any number of other issues for which the solutions are beyond the 50 simple things. The message was that our major environmental problems were the fault of individuals, or at least the fault of those individuals who hadn’t done the 50 simple things to save the Earth, and not the fault of the large corporate polluters.

As one might imagine, Javna was quite dismayed to see the rise of the notion, which he acknowledges he had unwittingly abetted, that doing the simple things outlined in his book was somehow equivalent to solving our most pressing environmental problems. He knew full well that many of the steps–for example snipping the rings of a six-pack holder–were largely gestures that were more about raising consciousness than solving problems. And so his cynicism took over; he stepped away from environmental activism, moved away, and focused on raising his family.

The spark for the new edition came when his daughter asked why they didn’t compost anymore¹ and after a bit of introspection came to realize that individual actions were, in fact, a crucial part of environmentalism. But the task wasn’t to disseminate random eco-tips, but rather to foster a shift towards a culture of sustainability. Instead of tips, the new edition of the book is organized around 50 issues (beginning, regretfully, with electric cars), with a variety of actions for each issue. The hope is that readers will become more deeply involved with an issue, taking on progressively more involved actions. 

A brief look at the online table of contents reveals a disappointing stance on transportation and virtually nothing about urban form. Train travel makes it, but I can’t find much about walking or bicycling or density. Perhaps I’ll review the book here at some point.

Reich

What I thought the most intriguing about the Robert Reich interview was his point was that the environmental movement (and, one presumes, other issue-focused progressive causes) needs to see itself not as narrowly focused on environmental issues, but as part of a broader progressive movement that’s working to improve the quality of life for all people in the country and planet. I find a similarity between this and the argument that Markos Moulitsas (kos) of DailyKos makes: that for each arm of the big progressive tent to keep considering only their own issues, with blinders on for other progressive causes, is short-sighted and self-defeating.

Perhaps the best illustration of this came after the 2006 election, when Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope sung the praises of the new Democratically controlled Congress, for example that changes in committee leadership would allow many more pro-environmental bills to make to the Senate floor for votes. The ironic bit is that this change in leadership happened only because Sierra Club² endorsed  Republican Lincoln Chafee lost; had he won, the Republicans would still control the Senate and the chair of the Committee on Public Works and Environment would be Republican James Inhofe instead of Democrat Barbara Boxer. Whatever Chafee’s votes on environmental issues were, he still implicitly voted for leadership that included Inhofe and a host of other anti-environmentalists. In an era when the distribution of support for strong environmental protection is not equal between the political parties, the leadership mindset that a candidate supports is at least as important as any particular vote. If the environment wins because Sierra Club endorsed candidates lose, then something’s wrong with the Sierra Club endorsement process. 

Now, kos is talking about elections and Democrats, Reich is talking about issues, but both are asking us to consider our actions and support more broadly–kos for an issue-lousy Democrat, Reich for issues outside the environmental canon. And if we believe the popular trope that everything is connected to everything else, then this makes sense, because we can build on the synergy that happens with congressional majorities and a broader coalitions. The era of narrow focus and litmus tests should be ended.

1. This was an especially timely note for me, as I just bought a compost bin. [↩]
2. and League of Conservation Voters [↩]