As oil washes up against the coast of Florida, does anyone really think BP could ever undo all of the long term damage that is done? The cost in lost tourism alone is huge. It will take a long time before tourists feel it’s safe to return to those beaches. I see commercials from west-coast towns just trying to reassure everyone: “Don’t worry, there’s no oil here.” Of course, this is to say nothing of the fishing economy, and animals killed, many of them endangered species.
We need to get down and do the gritty work of reducing our dependence upon this fuel and these molecules.
Lisa Margonelli: The political chemistry of oil
I just watched this TED talk arguing the cost of gas at the pump does not reflect the true cost. She makes a good point that we keep getting distracted by new technologies, like solar and wind-power, while nothing really changes and the easiest gains could be had by a simple price-signal. We tax things that are bad for us in this country, cigarettes for example, so why not oil?
I just watched this interesting talk about how small things (things that cost very little) can have disproportional effects. This may have something to do with why small companies can out-perform large ones. When you have tons of money, you tend toward more expensive solutions to problems; sort of a “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” problem.
Sure some things need the hammer (or tons of cash), but many things don’t; they might need a screwdriver, wrench, tape, or glue. Think of all the best innovations: the car, the telephone, the airplane. Many times they are just combinations of ideas already around put together in an innovative way.
This video refers to a TED talk presentation about how people over-estimate the difference in “happiness” between different options. Also, that people are generally happy with what they get stuck with.
This reminds me of how some programmers tend to put too much emphasis on a particular choice: language (Java vs. Ruby for example), OS, IDE, development process, or even text-editor. Yes, technology does matter in a lot of ways; don’t get me wrong. However, it isn’t just the technology that makes or breaks you, it’s what you do with it. Also, it’s how much you master it. Without mastering it, any technologyis useless. Besides, once you commit to something, you will probably find yourself loving it.
I suspect this is the root of the emacs/vi debates, and many others. Once you invest tons of time mastering emacs/vi, you tend to love it (whichever it is) and then go on to suspect that the other one stinks. Just replace emacs/vi with Eclipse/IDEA, or Windows/Mac, etc…
So the moral is… don’t loss sleep wondering if there’s a slightly better gadget/technology out there, because most of the time, it won’t make as much of a difference as you think. If you try out every new thing, you’ll never have time to master one and have true productivity.
Our water sphere would have a diameter of 1,385 kilometers (about 860 miles), and span the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas. A sphere this far across would have a volume equal to about 1,386 million cubic kilometers (roughly 332,500,000 cubic miles).
