in an already very disturbed world. On a scale, this isn’t a Super Biggie, but I consider it bleakly indicative.

The Times of London is reporting that Royal Dutch Shell oil company (Shell) is abandoning its alternative energy plans. This is not a good thing, IMHO, as they intend to focus on oil, gas and biofuels. Well – oil is at or just past peak, gas is not far behind and biofuels are not an optimal method of keeping things going. This refocusing really only means one thing as far as I can see – they have changed their vision of the likelihood of their scenarios.

Last year, a letter came out of Shell, (From: Jeroen van der Veer, Chief Executive, To: All Shell employees, 22 January 2008, Subject: Shell Energy Scenarios)

that said, and I quote:

The first, a scenario we call Scramble, resembles a race through a mountainous desert. Like an off-road rally, it promises excitement and fierce competition. However, the unintended consequence of “more haste” will often be “less speed” and many will crash along the way.

The alternative scenario, called Blueprints, has some false starts and develops like a cautious ride on a road that is still under construction. Whether we arrive safely at our destination depends on the discipline of the drivers and the ingenuity of all those involved in the construction effort. Technical innovation provides for excitement.

It goes on to discuss their preference for the Blueprints Scenario. And by investing in alternative energy systems, they were investing in the Blueprints Scenario. by abandoning their efforts in alternative energy, the obvious conclusion is they no longer believe the Blueprints Scenario is the likely one, and that the Scramble Scenario is the more likely, and they are positioning themselves for the grinding disaster of such a Scramble. This is NOT good, IMHO.

A Scramble scenario means drastically asymmetric production and distribution of resources – haves and have nots – and Shell is interested in being a “Have”. However, it is clear that as resources tighten and become increasingly difficult to obtain, the trend toward nationalisation of said resources will be necessary by the governments of the nations located on top of these resources, especially if the nation is small. This will only work to the disadvantage of “oil companies” as they are already minority stakeholders in the world oil market with only (IIRC) 17% ownership of energy resources. A Scramble Scenario will pit nation against nation for what lies beneath them, (per Klare) and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in the botched war in Iraq obviously does not serve as a desirable model.

In conclusion, Shell (a company with a long history of brutality) abandoning alternative energy development is a canary in a coal mine moment. These people spend a lot of money developing scenarios and models, and when they decide to shift billions of dollars of research, they don’t do it on a whim. Simply, they are expecting a deeply suboptimal future and are positioning themselves to profit from it. Nice.

Today we went north and hurtled down a snow covered hill. Fun. I also worked on some of the pages for this site. It’s coming along, SLOWLY.

I now officially hate CSS. There is no reason why it couldn’t be handled like Illustrator or (the long lost and sadly missed) FreeHand. But, no. Why? Because it was designed to keep people away from web development, and if it was too easy, it was destroy the wages of CSS developers.

Bah. humbug.

Tomorrow I prep for the quiz on Tuesday, and go to a curriculum committee meeting. Yay.

Now Playing: Calvary Cross by Richard Thompson.

Monday, July 10, 2006
Late at Night

It’s very late – 1.30 AM, and I am here futzing with my computer and electronic gizmos. The light above me is a compact flourescent – not very bright, but it doesn’t have to be – my laptop’s monitor is plenty bright, and as the rest of the room is cluttered with the detritus of years of accumulation – dead computers, broken monitors, keyboards that use a legacy bus that stopped running years ago – there isn’t much else to look at.

I make electronic music, and I give it away, for free. I make art and I give it away, for free. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. I give you my words, my ideas, here – for free. Free as in speech, free as in beer.

I’m up late every night because I snore. I have always snored. As I have aged, it has gotten worse, and sometimes my wife can barely sleep because of it. I’ve tried a number of remedies, and none work. So, I stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, so she can get 4 or five hours of good solid sleep. I crawl to bed and within half an hour I’m out, and usually, she is so deeply asleep, that my snoring doesn’t wake her. At least, that is what I hope – it’s what I tell myself.

In the meantime, I have time to work with my machines – type blog posts, type email, do some web design. On my little G4 iBook. It’s slow, by today’s standards, but it works and it’s cute. I bought it used, for very little money, and it’s very good on electricity – a battery charge can last 3 or even 4 hours, as long as I’m not doing something insane like rendering video clips.

What is interesting about my music system here is that it actually uses a fraction of the amount of electricity it used 20 years ago to do so much less.

In 1986, I got a credit card and maxxed it out and bought a pile of gear. I bought a Korg DSS1 sampler, a Yamaha TX81z synthesizer, an Atari 1040ST computer and monitor, MidiSoft Studio MIDI recording software, Minstrel compsing software, a dot matrix printer, a keyboard stand, a Yamaha SPX90 processor, a MIDIverb reverb unit, a Yamaha mixer, a crown power amp, a Yamaha MIDI merger, and a pair of TOA speakers and stands. Several months later, I bought another sampler, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2002 and a Yamaha DX11. I had quite a rig.

All that gear sucked down huge amounts of electricity.

Now, my entire electronic music system consists of my laptop, a USB powered Oxygen8 keyboard, two Firewire drives, an Edirol UR80 MIDI USB recording system, Ableton Live software, Propellorheads Reason software, Audacity audio editing software, a Mackie Mixer, and a pair of Event PS8 speakers.

I also have a USB powered WACOM tablet for graphics, but it’s usually not hooked up.

All that gear I had back in ‘86 is now just a small part of a drop down menu in Reason.

I often wonder about that – all that electricity to make music – where did it go? I was more productive back then, but I had more time back then – I wasn’t living with a daughter… I was able to get more done then. I have more ideas now, but less time to do them. And now I have compeeting interests with video and imaging. It seems endless…

But now I have these late evenings under the cool glow of the CF lamp, music quietly oozing from the speakers as iTunes spews my CD collection back at me in random fashion.

Sometimes I think iTunes is psychic. At random it pulled “All the Things We’ve Made” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark up for my listening enjoyment.

The lyrics go:

To want this.
Of everything we’ve made.
The times it’s worked before.

Of all the things we’ve said.
They’ve always worked before today.

Will that be the theme song of the transition?

Thursday, December 15, 2005
My Next Car – probably not…

So I did some digging and found some rather discouraging information. Clearly, in the process of reducing energy consumption and going to a lighter, slower vehicle fleet, regulations are going to have to change, a lot, as they are clearly antiquated and exclusive of anything but heavy gas-guzzling death monsters if you want a powered vehicle that runs on more than 2 wheels.

For example, in my lovely home state of CA -

CA VC Section 407. A “motorized quadricycle” is a four-wheeled device, and a “motorized tricycle” is a three-wheeled device, designed to carry not more than two persons, including the driver, and having either an electric motor or a motor with an automatic transmission developing less than two gross brake horsepower and capable of propelling the device at a maximum speed of not more than 30 miles per hour on level ground. The device shall be utilized only by a person who by reason of physical disability is otherwise unable to move about as a pedestrian or by a senior citizen as defined in Section 13000.

Amended Ch. 1292, Stats. 1993. Effective January 1, 1994.

Basically, the law defines a motorised quadricycle as one of those motorised wheelchair thingies you see advertised on daytime TV and AARP magazines.

However, if the vehicle has 2 or 3 wheels it falls under:

Definition of a Motorized Bicycle

(3) Is incapable of further increasing the speed of the device when
human power is used to propel the motorized bicycle faster than 20
miles per hour.

To thoroughly complicate things, at the same time there is this little bit of joy:

HR727 is the House bill that was enacted as Public Law 107-319.

A two- or three-wheeled vehicle with fully operable pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts (1 h.p.), whose maximum speed on a paved level surface, when powered solely by such a motor while ridden by an operator who weighs 170 pounds, is less than 20 mph.

Apparently the full text of bicycle regs appear in the Code of Federal Regulations at Title 16, Section 1512. You can access the CFR at the Government Printing Office website www.gpoaccess.gov/cfr. Type in 16cfr1512 to go straight to the bicycle regs.

Which makes all this rather complex.

What I think it really DOES do is kick quadricycles out of the mix of easily assimilable vehicle forms, while permitting tricycles.

My guess is this was on purpose – if you could build an electric assist quadricycle that had a range of 60 miles, there would be no reason for people to spend countless sums of money on automobiles.

Especially if that quad had a body fairing to keep the rain and cold out. As I noted earlier, delta trikes are scary, and tadpole trikes are low to the ground and get a little “wiggly” under power in a curve, unless they can camber (lean) into the curve. In anycase, trikes with a fairing are fast as hell in the flats due to their aerodynamics. The power assist is mostly for getting them up hills, where the recumbent position is less efficient.

What I thought was simple and straight-forward seems to be much more nuanced than I thought….

The idea of a slow lightweight quadricycle cuts directly to the essence of the automobile in contemporary society as a technological practice in transportation.

According to This Webpage filled with this kind of info from a motorcycle advocacy point of view, “The average United States driver travels 29 miles per day and is driving a total of 55 minutes per day. (This is an average vehicle speed of 32 mph.)”

So, if one halved the average speed to 16, and doubled the amount of time one travelled, people would naturally seek to live closer to work. This would tend to rejuvenate cities like Newark and Jersey City NJ, Oakland CA, Camden NJ, South Central LA and other ruined close in cities and neighbourhoods, as employed and somewhat less dysfunctional people will seek to reduce their commute and living expenses. At the same time, the expense of owning such a vehicle (which would weigh around 70 kg instead of 1500 kg and use no direct fossil fuels. Such vehicles would be most useful in the south and west parts of the USA, which have better weather.

And such gas free vehicles, as they enabled this shift to higher density, would help blunt the edge of the Long Emergency and help form a more peaceful and orderly transition and die-down of the species, instead of a rapid and violent die-off. However, the automotive companies will have to start building these things en masse, ASAP, and the legislation that makes them difficult to implement and the highway speeds that make them impossible and dangerous on said roads will have to change.

(I want to thank Doug from Utah for challenging me to look into this.)

Tuesday, December 13, 2005
My Next Car
RHOADES CAR

Seats two, top speed 18 mph.
Weight of vehicle: 135 lbs.
motor: 24 volt 750 watt Powerdrive motor assist
Range: without electric assist? as far as you can pedal in a day.
With ONLY electric assist? 30 – 60 miles, depending on weather, load, and terrain. Which is about as far as I would want to pedal one of these in a day, anyway…

I figure all I need a car for is to schlep a few miles to work, pick up groceries, liquor & drugs, clothes, etc. and occassionally go downtown so I can dance to the boogie (get down!) with my sweeeeeetie pie, and “the next morning”, take the weeee child to school. This thing would more than suffice.

It’s open, so winters would truly *suck ASS*, but you just do what motorcyclists do: dress appropriately, or move someplace warm.

(In that regard, I was thinking this vehicle could benefit from an actual “body” perhaps made of doped canvas and safety glass. I’m uncertain as to how it would effect the range and speed – it would certainly have less drag than an open vehicle, and be more comfortable in the cold, but it would increase the weight, and could be kind of stifling in the heat of summer… perhaps a removeable canvas body?)

In any case I think ultra-light electric assist vehicles are the bee’s knees. If anyone who commutes less than 5 or 10 miles to work owned something like this, the world would be a much better and cleaner place – we would see a dramatic reduction in fuel consumption, and people might actually lose some weight. What a notion…