Humans are amazing creatures...

And again I find myself onboard a collection of metals and man-made materials soaring through the air. If anyone ever doubted human ingenuity, they need only travel commercially. Hundreds of people traveling 100s of miles in an hour. An infant can make a trek that was considered impossible 100 years ago. Interplanetary travel is possible although not yet practical. We can outrun the cheetah, outfly the eagle, outswim the shark. The elements bend to our whim. We have conquered the planet so completely that we have done damage to it. But, we learn; that is our gift; that is the single thing that allowed us to conquer. It saddens me when others think we cannot continue to learn. You can easily find detractors of the steps taken, but "carbon footprint" was an abstract notion discussed among small circles ten years ago. The number of solar and wind installations continues to imcrease. We are learning to live within our means... slowly, maybe, but that depends on the time scale used. It took us millions of years to start any civilizations of note, thousands more to harness steam power, hundreds more to gain powered flight, decades more to split an atom, years more to harness an atom's energy... We now act as if our reliance on fossil fuels always was and always will be. That the modern day rail barons will be able to stop progress when their predecessors could not. We, like every generation before us, think that the variables will not change. We imagine that controlled fusion is impossible because we haven't figured it out in a few years. We imagine that the electric car is being held back by some kind of conspiracy rather than consumer choice and actual technical concerns. We fantasize that the gains in efficiency in solar panels are being slowly delved out over time.

The fact of the matter is that every single human is capable of invention; that controlling the flow of information is nearly impossible. Two bike mechanics gave us flight. A patent clerk gave us relativity. An alchemist gave us the laws of motion. A special effects company gave us MRI. I would be no more surprised if MIT won the next X Prize then if a group of West Philadelphia high school students did. Modern civilization and the United States in particular have brought about a distributed base of wealth. Not as distributed as we may like, but distributed none the less. If there is a cause worth fighting for, there is someone funding that cause. Although most of the world's wealthy horde money just as their predecessors did, many realize that this is futile and have brought their influence to bear. The X Prize is a shining example of this type of entrepreneurial distribution. If you want something done, do it. If you can't do it on your own, find a group of like-minded individuals. If what you build, design, figure out, etc. has merit, someone will buy it. If you don't believe it, think about the founding of the company you work for. Although there may have been acquisitions/dispersals/etc. if you go back further, you will find an individual with an idea. The idea sold. There was no secret vote by 13 10,000,000th level Masons. There was no papal audience. Just supply and demand. Just 1 idea and customers who thought it worth paying for.

There are electric cars. Thus far, I only know of one with performance specs worth a damn. It retails for $100,000 and around 500 have been sold since its creation. There are several different methods for generating power from solar energy. None of them are all that efficient. There are dozens of battery technologies. The best ones still contain heavy metals and the organic methods don't come close. Rechargeable batteries were rare and spotty 20 years ago, now they power billons of devices and outlast the devices they are in. LEDs still aren't quite available in white and until they are, there's compact fluorescents. You want change. You don't have to make it happen. Just let others know that you are willing to pay for it. The Chevy Volt won't die because of some grand conspiracy. It will die because they can't sell it for less than $40,000. But Honda, Nissan, and Mazda see the market opening and will sell the electric-leaning hybrids. They have to in order to counter the Toyota lead. Simply put, the only thing holding it back is the perceived profit margin and a bunch of naysayers who keep waiting for a perfect solution.

There is no perpetual motion. There is no free energy. Now that we're past that, let's start embracing current innovations and stop following snake-oil salesman. You want change? Cast your vote. The ballots are measured in U.S. dollars. Figure out where you are going to spend yours.

Returning from another world...

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." I cannot reference the quote at the moment. It flashed up in some strange airline movie. It somehow fit. I was noticing the landscape below and saw two sets of lines: 1 set regular, crisscrossing, hard-edged, the other winding, interweaving, varied. Nature is an abstract painter. It's impressionist strokes forming grand structures but designed to be observed differently at the microscopic level. We on the other hand, attempt precise order. Our structures only grandiose in our own scale.

But, our lines are permanent, if anyone or anything ever finds this planet it will know we were here. I have just been to a place that reminded me that we are both of this world and apart from it. We may shield ourselves or change the environment, but on this planet we are native. On this planet, the air, the water, the terrain, our co-inhabitants, are all very much part of us. It has been our home and our teacher. It has presented climates which we can thrive in naturally and those which require all our ingenuity to survive in.

It has also indicated its limits. It can destroy thousands of us in an instant. It can also slowly cripple us. Remind us in minuscule degrees that our technology is not perfect and that it can exploit these imperfections. Change the pH slightly and our planted crops die. Temperature variations warp our metals and reduce the efficiencies of our fuels. We are in the end fragile creatures underneath it all. Without protection of some sort, we will die of exposure or heat stroke outside of a belt of 80 degrees. There are very few places we can live year-round. We must move to survive. We must adapt to endure. But adapting is exactly what we do.

I have spent a week a year in a place the planet indicated was off limits. A remote spot on one of the more inhabitable continents. A place that resembles the planet's lone natural satellite as much as it does other parts of the planet. A place where the ground destroys tissue and the air can choke. A place where the temperatures reach the full range of habitable and the lack of humidity can lead to death in hours. The planet has coordined off this area. Our tiniest relatives do not live there. It is a place devoid of life. While we have adapted to the more median areas of our planet, other lifeforms have adapted to the more extreme and remote... none have adapted this place. This is our cue. We shouldn't be there.

But we go. We go to prove we can. We go because it is difficult. We go because 50,000 of our closest friends will be there. We also go because this strange place offers the freedom of being disconnected and exploring limits. We bring parts of our world to this place and create things that simply cannot be found anywhere else. We build monuments to the ephemeral. We test ourselves. We rely on others. We learn about ourselves.

Nature lets us come. It will even let us stay... for a while. But one by one either our resources or our resolve runs out. We are pack animals. We cannot stay in such a place long without a community. The resources needed to inhabit such a place permanently would take significant investment. The sun would have to be used for everything. There are no microbes to absorb our waste. There is no earthbound water of note and very little in the air. Your very presence there would change the ecosystem. The absorption of airborne water would have a noticeable effect on the humidity. The placement of structures would affect rainfall and thus ground surface. It is a place we were not meant to be and it will fight us for as long as we stay.

By the way, the quote is Voltaire. I knew I liked it. I'll be returning to the best of all possible worlds.

The man burns in 12 days...

Packing has commenced...
Plans have been checked...
Plans have been re-checked...

The pilgrimage has already begun for some. For me, it begins on August 30th... sort of.

You see, the truth is the pilgrimage started weeks ago. Some of my gear is already heading west. My focus has shifted further and further west for some time. At this point, my thoughts are directed to the desert.

I'm thinking about shade structures, hydration, gifting. I'm afraid the 9 to 5 can't quite compete. By the way, if there's someone in Reno that has 1,000 square feet of carpet or fur they need to get rid of, call me.