Done and done.

Well, Torsten and I finally pulled off the ultimate - and I mean ultimate - urban adventure ride.

The ride was initially inspired by a lucky, banked turn on a United Airlines flight that hung me directly over Guadalupe Canyon.

Yeah, I know - I hadn't heard of it either. But, for the uninitiated, Guadalupe Canyon is a beautiful stretch of carless road that climbs out of downtown Daly City up the side of San Bruno Mountain. It's also completely invisible from any direction - except the sky.

So this flight gave me a bird's-eye view of a way to ride across the entire SF peninsula without having to deal with any traffic. I made a mental note of the location, pulled up my handy google maps, and figured out how to get there:


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The ride's got all the makings of a California classic: forest, beach, cliffs, mountain, urban jungle, parks, industrial wasteland, dirt singletrack, ballparks, sketchy 'hoods, and food - all in a single 40-mile cruise.

Definitely worthy of a repeat performance.

death monsters ahead

death monsters ahead
Originally uploaded by everywhereATonce

Transportation options, 2008

I'm tellin' ya, all this worry about oil and cars is incredibly overblown. I seriously want one of these, if for no other reason than to ride it down Valencia and make fun of all the Fixie Hipsters.

Dreams of Vipassana

I've fallen down on the regular meditation thing lately, and was just thinking this morning about how the lack of directed silence has been effecting me. Of course, as soon as I start thinking about it, I run across this little post from some guy who used to work at Blogger (whom I've never met but whose name appeared in a Blogger help forum I was searching for some completely unrelated info (sorta like the way the Internet works)):

Most of what they taught at the intellectual level wasn't anything new to me, and probably many of you have heard a lot of it before as well. Things like "suffering is caused by attachments to cravings and aversions," "everything is constantly changing and impermanent," "the only thing you can really control is how you think and react," and "only you can truly make yourself happy or unhappy." The problem is that just knowing this intellectually doesn't help much because it's so hard to do anything about it. And for a long time before the life of Gautama Buddha, this theoretical level was all there was, until he came along and created (or rediscovered) a technique for putting the theories into practice. That technique is Vipassana.

The theory says that there are four levels of the mind. The first two are perception and recognition -- pretty straightforward utilities that we don't need to worry about too much. Any sensory input (including thoughts and emotions) passes through these first. The third level is called vedanā in Pāli. This is the direct, physical sensation we feel as a result of this input. There are sensations created throughout our body for everything we experience. When we have a reaction to something "out there" in the world, what we are actually responding to is the physical sensation in our body generated by our perception of that object, not the object itself. That response comes from the final level, called saṅkhāra. It decides whether it likes or dislikes the sensations, then develops cravings or aversions to them, or trots out our old, established, habitual reactions. This is the problematic part, because the world is never conforming perfectly to our wishes, and we're therefore constantly feeling cravings and aversions that we can't satisfy, and that's what makes us unhappy.

The idea behind Vipassana is to learn to set up a filter of sorts between the vedanā and saṅkhāra parts of your mind. From a direct experience of the vedanā we can choose how best to react, without being slaves to our old habits of behavioral patterns or emotional reactions. The first part of doing this consists in developing your awareness. You learn to be aware of and focus on all the myriad sensations constantly going on in your entire body, from the most obvious to the most subtle. The second part requires developing your equanimity. Whatever sensations you observe, you do so objectively, dispassionately, taking them as neither good nor bad. If the saṅkhāra comes in and tries to make you react, you don't give in to it. The more you practice this awareness and equanimity together, the more you also come to realize (experientially) how much everything really is constantly changing. These things we form attachments to are coming and going, arising and passing away, all the time. Which makes it easier, of course, to just take things as they come and not form cravings or aversions for them.

Well said. I should go have tea with this guy.

The ultimate urban adventure ride

This is going to have to go down one of these Sundays:


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Beach, mountain, urban jungle, park, cliffs, hills and food - all in a single 30-mile cruise.

Saving it here for my posterior.

A glimpse behind the curtain - WSJ climate science wingnuttery

First, a disclaimer: the Wall Street Journal's news reporting on climate science, clean energy and related environmental issues is and has always been stellar. To a person, the reporters understand the underlying science, are subject matter experts in each of the relevant fields and, when it comes to cleantech, are the lodestars of accuracy, healthy skepticism and a desire to understand the complex, cascading set of issues.

Then there's the Journal editorial page. The page is known for its unabashed defense of ... well, of its own quirky ideology. Despite its passionate pleadings to the contrary, the editors are not exactly free market purists - they favor rigged markets that benefit their ideology. They're also not exactly capitalists; they like profits when they're privatized, as long as the related costs are socialized. But one thing's for certain: they disparage anything that they consider "green" or, heaven forbid, "liberal." A chance to combine the two - well, that's fodder for a week's worth of material.

Usually, the wacky, unsigned opinions on the Journal's editorial page give little insight into the personalities behind these, um, "unique" outlooks. At least, that was the case, until they started recording themselves on video and posting it on the internets. In this sample, James Freeman and Joe Rago discuss Kansas's decision to ban new coal-fired power plants. The state's officials based their decision on the basis of the unreasonable carbon risk they pose to ratepayers - that is, the hidden, "socialized costs" the proponents, Sunflower Electric, want to force unwittingly on Kansas electricity customers.

(Brief related note: I first wrote about this likely outcome four years ago.)

Rago begins with the quickly falsifiable claim that "everyone agrees Kansas needs more baseload coal-fired electricity," follows up with how carbon dioxide is "necessary for all life on the planet," and generally gets more "creative" from there. Watch:



Ouch. Are these the men you want to trust with your economic future? Amazing that millions of Journal readers uncritically accept advice on climate science and energy policy from a couple of guys who are all CEED talking points, no cattle.

Oh, and Joe? That little claim that Kansas' decision is "unprecedented, the first in the nation?" Once again, the facts are heavily biased against your opinion ... California banned new coal-fired power plants two years ago. Heck, even Idaho has banned them due to negative health and environmental effects, and Florida's Republican Governor (that's your party, Joe) rejected new coal plants because they were too expensive and environmentally unsound. Texas rejected plans for several new coal pants in favor of investments in efficiency, wind and some natural gas. A half dozen other states have either de-facto bans, or are considering them.

But you don't have to go all the way to Kansas to find opposition to coal, Joe - just take a cab uptown to JP Morgan.

That, Joe, is what you call a "nationwide trend." But then again, those are facts - annoying little things, ain't they, Joe?

Amusingly, Joe has a history of being fact-addled - so much so, in fact, that even Hugh Hewett has had some fun at Joe's considerable expense:

HH: Joe, you’re 23.

JR: Sure.

HH: Can you be expert in anything? And I’m serious here.

JR: I think I can write a thoughtful article, even though I’m 23.

HH: That wasn’t…the question is, can you be expert in anything at 23?

JR: No, I don’t think so.

So next time you read a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about climate or energy policy and want to tear your hair out, take pity instead - Joe Rago needs all the sympathy he can get.

Generation Debt

I met Anya Kamenetz a few weeks back in San Francisco - she came out for a nightmarish week of conferences on clean energy, carbon markets and efficiency (nightmarish because they were all the same week - and to my untrained eye, seem to all be on the same topic! Oy.) Anya wanted to meet with one of my clients to talk about urban renewal and the very real roles that cities can (and should!) play in creating a sustainable future.

Anyway, I read up on some of her work, and ... she's good. The issue of America becoming a debtor nation is not trivial, and lots of ink being spilled on the topic these days. But Anya saw it coming, wrote about it extensively for some pretty smart publications, and has an excellent blog on the topic. Shout out to you, Anya, you're a smart cookie (mmmm, cookie!)