cycling and sponsorship - pinarello and specialized comparison

Cavendish has a personal deal with Nike, while Sky's kit is supplied by Adidas, and Cavendish prefers a Specialized bike but Sky has a contract with Pinarello. [cyclingnews] It is complicated when you have people paying you buckets of money to use their stuff, and other people paying to use different stuff. Its tough when you don't want to use the stuff you are paid to use because it is not right for you.

So what's a rider to do? I wouldn't know as I have never been paid to use bike equipment before (although of course I am expected to wear my club racing kit when I compete... which I do!) But of course I have been asked to do things, by my employer even, that I personally felt were against the best interests of that same employer. What's a guy to do? When personal ambition is involved – such as in your own pride in winning a race – or (in my case) in teaching a subject well, or presenting an idea clearly, we are left with a conundrum. Tough call. If I were Cavendish I would take the Pinarello! :-)

it must be time for the TDF

I was putting in a couple of hard laps of a local circuit when I spotted a woman on the footpath walking into the same blasted headwind that was hindering my progress. Her scarf was fluttering in the wind and her overcoat was blowing and flapping about as she moved. "That's really silly", I thought to myself. "What a waste of energy. Why would anybody dress like that for the Team Time Trial?"
Okay I admit it. I must have tour fever :-)

the chickpea and the stone

Once upon a time, many moons ago, I was enjoying some chickpeas when, CRUNCH. Ouch. That hurt. I bit into a stone that had somehow infiltrated my lunch!

Years have passed since that incident. I seldom eat at that restaurant anymore. Instead, I frequently eat sushi and Californian rolls for lunch. Today, I was happily eating a salmon roll when, CRUNCH. Ouch. That hurt. I bit into a chickpea that has somehow infiltrated my lunch!

So now I want to know, was that the chickpea I should have had in my lunch all those years ago? Why was it back? Was it trying to force me to visit the dentist first by its absence and now by its presence?

The world is a strange place. Eat carefully.

moral sustainability and cycling - robert nelson

(Moral sustainability and cycling: an ecology of ambition for a hyperactive planet. Published by St. Andrews Sustainability Institute and Ellikon, Melbourne 2010.)

Although I was aware that the author of this text frequently commuted by bicycle and that he was an active art critic, the discovery of his new mini-book on the links between cycling and our current environmental predicament was an exciting surprise. In this essay Robert investigates the reasons many people make uncomfortable cyclists, in particular why many are unwilling to cycle-commute despite recognising its health and environmental benefits. So, why do people buy themselves a shiny new steed on which to commute to work, and then after a few days hide it in the spare room to gather dust and cobwebs?

As well as dealing with the obvious discomforts associated with vigorous activity in the outdoors, the author addresses a number of seldom considered aspects of the daily pedal to work. He reveals several reasons that have little to do with the availability of bike paths, the extra time that might be involved or the danger of mobile-phone wielding mothers in 4WDs. One reason explored was the disparaging high-speed, lycra-clad bunches of athletes and their portrayal in the media as “real” and glamourous cyclists. Cyclists outside of this context are perceived in the Australian psyche as inferior and sub-human. There are of course exceptions. For instance cycling helmetless down a country lane with a basket of bread, cheese and wine is acceptably Euro-romantic and a “simple” pleasure that even advertisers legitimise. Commuting when a car would do? Holding up peak hour traffic by occupying a lane? Never would cycling in this way be seen as desirable or marketable in our country.

It is here that I find one significant issue that the essay misses, the “fixie phenomenon”. Countless teenagers, university students and some alternative lifestylers here and in many major cities hostile to cyclists, have, in the last ten or so years, cottoned on to the New York bicycle couriers’ preference for track bikes. They carry messenger bags slung over a shoulder and hefty bike chains are worn as bodily adornment. Melbourne now has fleets of NY messenger impersonators heading brakeless into traffic. They run red lights, skid and skip their rear wheels through pedestrian crowds, before heading like bicycle salmon against the flow of one-way streets.

I have even witnessed a student at my university driving his fixie to a nearby hotel carpark, removing it from the boot and cycling the last few hundred meters to university. I can speculate on the reasons for this: (i) It is too far and too hilly for him to ride his fixie’s one gear from home to university; (ii) The fixie is cool, a geared bicycle is not. He would not consider riding geared; (iii) He saves himself the cost of the permit required to park his car at university and has the added bonus of impressing his friends with his lovely bicycle upon his arrival.

I have also seen a different student call out to another as he rolled past on his way to class, “Yeah, sweet bike. Fixie mate!” The bike was not actually fixed, it was a single-speed with a freewheel. It was not "sweet" either. It was a crappy 1980s ten-speed conversion. But these subtleties were lost in the excitement of the pedestrianian's proclaimation of his identification with the rider.

This phenomenon has made commuting by bicycle cool, even here in the motorcar’s second homeland. It contributes to providing a solution for the middle-aged commuter who understands the sense in having brakes, mudguards and panniers. I have seen cyclists aged between 14 and 80 riding fixed gear bikes, with and without mudguards, lights and panniers. The mere fact that a bike is fixed gives its rider the credibility that many crave. Maybe, just maybe, this removes a few cars from our roads. It certainly raises the visibility of cyclists on our roads. For this I am thankful.

As Nelson indicates, as soon as you can afford a car it is barely socially acceptable for you to ride. Our society is set up so that there is no prestige associated with making your appearance at the office bathed in sweat. Physical activity in this context is uncouth. Are you too poor to afford motorised transport? Nelson proposes the electric bicycle to be one machine with the potential to remedy these problems.

Unfortunately, as he notes, electric bicycles have one major drawback — they are seriously uncool. Whilst the fume-spewing 50 cc Vespa has euro-café-style and Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday sophistication, none of this washes off on the humble electric bike, despite its better environmental credentials. I agree with Nelson that these are marvellous pieces of engineering. But as he knows too well, they are not sexy artefacts. I am not sure how this might be rectified, if at all. Maybe a manufacturer could convince a supermodel to pose naked on one?

A valid engineering solution to a recognised problem may stare people in the face, yet it may be overlooked for purely social reasons. The consequences of this type of human stubbornness have often resulted in a needless struggle for survival. This has sometimes been followed by extinction of entire cultures. Colonial societies for instance have carried the ways of their homelands to new horizons. Rather than adapting their behaviour by mimicking the successful lifestyles of the locals, they have stubbornly clung to inappropriate agricultural practices, poor hunting and gathering choices, incongruous architectural styles and scarce but familiar building materials. The results include malnourishment, starvation, decimation of local ecosystems and, as Jared Diamond discusses in his book of the same name, Collapse. As a planet we are headed this way via our momentum-propelled reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable population growth.

Nelson’s book is entertaining, slightly rambling but always insightful. This style suits me perfectly. A diversion exploring the eroticism of the bicycle saddle was amusing but, I felt, unnecessary. This tangent in particular seemed to confuse the book’s main drive to detail our relationship with the bicycle in all its engineering simplicity and marketed complexity, and to explore its socio-environmental credentials. In these latter respects the text is informative and original. It has stimulated me to think more deeply about why I ride so often and why I seldom commute.

gnome

Before gardens there were garden gnomes. As they couldn't be proper garden gnomes without a garden, they invented one, the garden of Eden. The gnomes filled it with all manner of flora so that they would have somewhere to sit in the shade. As well as various animals, they put two dullard giants in the garden. The first was made from earth, Adam, and the second, made from his rib, Eve. Adam and Eve then misbehaved and were kicked out of the garden to live in a world where they had to make their own gardens. Nevertheless, to this day the gnomes keep watch over them and their offspring from various vantage points around suburbia.

on making up your mind with clichés

During a recent discussion on creativity with a colleague (there's quite a bit of that going around at our lab lately), he made a remark that I interpret as "You can't hope to change the mind of somebody who has made up their mind". That's not exactly what he said, but that's how I am going to interpret it for the sake of this post. He felt that only fence-sitters could be swayed. Once you're on one side of the fence, there's no way you'll be able to haul yourself back to the opposing side, even if the grass is greener over there. Personally, I feel that whether or not you can climb the fence again depends heavily on how much you have invested in your back garden. Sometimes its hard to write off your investment and run into foreign territory. Also, I suspect, some people are better climbers than others. How's that for a string of lousy metaphors to start the ball rolling?

So where am I going with this? We have all heard the cliché that we must "accept change". This grates like a block of cheese. Change, instability and complete and utter (to quote Paul Sherwen) chaos are steps on a steady decline. This is not how the universe works. Let's take the evolutionary process for example. It doesn't just throw away things and replace them with novelty! It selects the successful strategies and slowly weeds out those that are less so... in nature, evolution has shown itself to be superior to revolution. I don't see why anybody in their right mind would adopt "accept change" as their personal motto. According to my theory, either those who live by and spout such nonsense are not of right mind, or I am simply a poor fence climber.

One argument I have heard in favour of accepting change runs, "change is inevitible so you may as well accept it". There's no point in fighting a losing battle... get onside and move forwards. This sounds to me like a cop out. If you are opposed to something, the hardest thing to do is stand up and fight. This approach could cost you your life, or the lives of those around you. An unfortunate consequence that too often holds true. The easy, and often peaceful, way out is to accept change. Sit silently. Say nothing. Maintan the status quo. Resistance is futile. Be at peace with the world.

Is the fight ever worth the cost? How much have you invested in your back garden? How green is your neighbour's lawn? This is a question that only an individual can answer. There cannot be a "one size fits all" solution to this problem. I will make up my own mind and I leave it to you to make up yours as the need arises.

on old age and evel knievel

A couple of days ago, Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel screened on local TV. Like Hammond, I had played with the Evel Knievel fly-wheel driven motorcycle as a kid. Perhaps I still have some bits of it lying around. I knew little of the man himself, having invested most of my childhood days jumping pedal-powered bikes off dangerous concrete landings and dirt piles, rather than watching motorcycles hop cars and buses. Still, I switched on to have a look...

Evel was frail and very ill. He sucked on his oxygen mask unhealthily as he was driven around his small-town American home and asked to reminisce about footage of him crashing and injuring himself. Strangely enough, Evel reminded me of Frank Booth, the bizarre and frightening character from Blue Velvet. The hovering body guards, the unpredictable turns in Evel's demeanour, these radiated unease. It was as if the whole situation would turn violent at any moment. It didn't seem like Evel ever really got along with Hammond and the most pertinent questions often went unanswered. All the same, his character (well, at least two characters) came through. Perhaps Evel was too concerned with his own health at the time to take to the British interviewer. This is hardly surprising given that Evel had suffered a stroke just a couple of days before.

I found much else unusual about this documentary also. The way Evel hovered between being "the legend" and the reality of his current existence was unsettling. Certain triggers caused him to roll out the old bravado, whilst others seated him firmly in his past and present woes.

Why is it that former celebrities seem convinced that they mustn't "let their fans down"? This is a common remark made by today's elite cyclists as they are suspended for doping infringements and led tearfully to waiting cars. Hammond's wander around Evel's town during a festival of bike stunts revealed to me the extent to which some of the locals idolised their fallen and broken-boned angel. Or was this only the kids who never grew up? Did the true youngsters really care about this man? Could they reconcile his appearance with the daredevil their parents insisted he had been? Without him their town would be just one of thousands. Evel was the icon that put them on the international map... long, long ago, before many of these childrens' parents had themselves been born.

"Jump for Jesus"!? A modern Knight Templar and former bodyguard of Evel, dressed in white with giant red crosses emblazoned on his bike and leathers jumped through a flaming board. The announcer on the P.A. claimed it was something to do with Jesus and Satan. He was so earnest. The Knight's followers were so serious and were moved to tears by his words. For them, this was a religious experience. As a viewer from far away, this was a chance to see the U.S. of A. in all its technicolour glory.

"Live for your dreams", proclaimed Evel near the conclusion of the show. Quite likely his own poor health prevented him from dreaming too far in advance. Nevertheless, he had prepared his own tombstone. This of course is the limit point for the dreams of those who don't cherish anything that carries on without them. His last dream was to be buried in the middle of town, the centre of attention at least in this tiny location, so far from the centre of anywhere.

the death of j.g. ballard

Crash. Until I'd read Ballard's book, I had no idea twisted metal, burning plastic and shattered bones could be considered by anybody to be erotic. I remember diving into the text on a flight home from Canada 15 years ago. The air hostess thought I was reading about aeroplane crashes... "Ahhh. Ummm. No. Actually the book is about sex in car accidents." I think that stunned her. She didn't pose any more questions apart from those she was paid to ask. "Tea or coffee?"

"J.G. Ballard died of cancer on the 19th August, aged 78", I read over my morning toast. The first thing that sprang to mind was Crash. Then by chance my eyes fell upon the water level indicator on the front page of the paper and a vague memory of The Drought returned... people travelling miles across barren salt plains created by desalination plants to capture sea-water with paddles and sweep it homewards... it has been a long time since I read this book. Concrete Island is fresher in my mind... an architect becomes trapped in a concrete space between freeway lanes. Unable to escape, he spends days, then weeks in the company of a couple of other outcasts who call the tiny island in urban hell their home. Shades here of one of my favourite books, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes. Ballard was that kind of writer.

I only know a half dozen of Ballard's books, but of those, I'd call Crash and Concrete Island "great" works of disturbing fiction. His comments on human psychology, the bizarre but believable views he takes towards humankind's future and that of our planet, all ensure I am saddened by his passing.

de renner / the rider - Tim Krabbé

In about the same time as it takes to complete a short road race I have ridden the English translation (from the Dutch) of De Renner, The Rider (1978). Tim Krabbé has done a marvellous job of recreating the experience of a road race. I don't believe anybody but a cyclist and an author could have written this novella so convincingly and with such authority. Its a deceptively simple book — the thoughts of the author as he struggles to win a fictitious race against fictitious opponents in the mountains of France. The book ticks through the kilometres at race pace, sometimes sluggishly, sometimes in bursts of pain, through wind and rain, up steadily and down awkwardly as Krabbé struggles on the high-speed bends. This is no time trial, Krebbé's opponents are an intimate part of his mental and physical tournament. They're written into the text at the level of detail that any rider knows his (or her) adversaries. This is true also of the rider's thoughts as he competes... the half-ideas, repetition of poorly-formed sentences, the struggles to remain focussed and the fluidity and stillness when the crowd and background is submerged are all captured with the efficiency of a practiced pedal stroke or the flick of a friction down-tube shifter. This is a great piece of literature: highly recommended for cyclists, cycling widows and anybody who doubts the poetry of the obsession for suffering on a bike. I'm still puffed!

[The author is also known for the disturbing story known in English as The Vanishing, which has twice been made into a film.]

what's wrong with second life? [rant]

Second Life (henceforth referred to as 2Life) is the cyberspace version of the hole in the ground on Highbury Rd. that used to be a quarry and now is trying to become (for about the third time) a middle-class housing estate. I have never been into either 2Life or the old quarry. In each case I can see an entrepreneur investing heavily in the idea and then trying to con others into believing that they should pay good money for it. You can buy real-estate in the giant hole in the ground, or in the giant hole in cyberspace. Both would be a complete waste of resources.

However undesirable living in a baking, flooding hole in the ground is, with real-estate prices in Melbourne what they are, this offers a place to put a house in which people could actually try to live a normal life (albeit with high air-conditioning and heating bills given the micro-climate of the hole).

2Life is a place for people too inhibited to dress up (judging by the screen-grabs, in bat wings, expensive dresses and enormous boots etc.) in real life or too constrained by the dress code of their 9-5 office jobs to let loose with an international assortment of others who feel a similar repressed urge. What is the point in spending money on a pretty dress for an avatar!? Are these people stupid? What is so wrong with their own real lives that they feel compelled to invent new ones and play out their fantasies from a desk chair? I could well understand if people suffering through war or the pain of terminal illness might for a moment wish to step outside of the real and enter a make-believe world in which they can, just for a moment, be someone else and somewhere else. I can also understand somebody wanting to step outside a tiring real job and other commitments for a time. But to waste resources in buying a stupid dress for a character that doesn't exist. To buy "property" and spend money on virtual "architecture" is appalling. This is just virtual decoration for a glorified chat room where people lose focus on the content of the chat and instead pride themselves on their latest pixel pot plant arrangement.

Send the money to people who need it. Make a difference to people who need it. Buy them a real house. Plant a real tree in real dirt. Don't throw parties for avatars owned by other middle-class morons with more money than sense. Brighten up a person's life by sending them a food package. Buy them a bicycle so they can get around. Send them some relief clothing instead of buying another set of pixel lingerie. You make me so mad! Wake up. You are being stupid. It is not too late. Help make somebody's FIRST and ONLY life worth living. If you are not happy with your own life and can afford to waste money in 2Life, you can afford to do something useful for yourself in real life too. Turn off your computer and go outside.

death of a cyclist

Today a woman was killed by a bus as she cycled to work along Swanston St. Of course this street is an obstacle course the likes of which even Indiana Jones has never encountered. Tyre-swallowing tram tracks, huge tourist buses, erratic taxis, horses and carriages, inattentive pedestrians talking on mobile phones, 10 tonne trams, lost motorists (the street is supposed to be closed to motorists as a through-way), delivery vans and... cyclists. During shopping hours this street rates in the vicinity of "X-treme Sport". It makes a Madison seem like a jaunt by the seaside on a shopping bike.

Apparently a large number of cyclists gathered this evening to pay their respects to the deceased woman. Its marvellous that the death of a cyclist can galvanise others and for what other reason than they share a common mode of transport? This is lovely, this idea that cycling can unite people. Do motorists gather at the scene of a car crash hours after the ambulance has departed to commemorate the needless loss of life? Not as far as I know. Perhaps the friends and family might visit the place to lay a wreathe or install a cross by the roadside. Anonymous motorists don't usually attend. Do they?

Motorists isolate themselves from the world, "...in shiny metal boxes. Contestants in a suicidal race..." (The Police). Cyclists are open to the elements and often one another. I acknowledge other cyclists as I pass them in the street. The complement, the recognition of my existence, is almost always returned. Sadly this openness to the world allows a cyclist to be hit. This is always a tragedy.

R.I.P.

velodrome weather

Down here a lot of things are back-the-front. For instance, we have our track racing season in the summer. We swelter under the corrugated iron roofs of the indoor velodromes. We fry and bake in the scorching centres of the outdoor tracks, our tyres exploding at random in the heat. Sweat pours from our brows as we struggle to get a wheel or cog change made in time for the start.

The time is nigh. Today it reached 24 degrees (Celsius). Daylight savings and evening rides are coming. The summer wind gusts that make breaking away on an outdoor track a nightmare (spinning out in one straight and labouring into the gale on the opposite one) have appeared for the first time in months. All the lovely machines will be hanging for only a short time more in the garages of trackies across Melbourne. Some glint of chrome, some of blood red or deepest metallic blue. Others are shiny, curvaceous, carbon black. Soon these masterpieces of engineering will flash around the track under the Australian sun.

High pressure air escapes as tyres are inflated. Sausages sizzle on the BBQ, the smell of burning fat is nauseating. Newly spoked wheels ping and creak into place. The starter's whistle blows. Kids focus on the line: too high on the bends, too wobbly on the straights, intense concentration furrowing their brows. The girls too, although outnumbered many to one, stake out their claim to track space. Grown men tussle and strain. The bicycles flash like lightning – chrome sears retinas. The lap bell rings. The swearing begins, at oneself as much as anyone else, or at nobody in particular. Darting from within the bunch, lunging for the line, laughing from the sheer joy of it. You have survived another race. Wobbly knees, vomit rising in your throat, head throbbing, heart pounding, sweat pouring. How long until the next start?

environmentally unfriendly LCDs

Computers involve environmentally toxic manufacturing processes. These machines and their trim are nasty! The lifetime of a computer (for somebody who works in computer science) is limited to a few years at most. One can try to stretch this out, perhaps to five years, by carefully selecting new models and soldiering through operating system and software upgrades stoically. So far this Powerbook G4 has served me well for 4 years (OK, I needed to replace a dud hard drive).

My recent street rambles have occurred during our suburb's hard rubbish collection. The number of CRT monitors and TVs piled on people's nature strips is astonishing. The LCD revolution is here with its promise of clearer pictures, less energy consumption and flat, elegant displays. But, is there a cost? LCD monitors consume less power during their use and so the naive assumption people make is that CRTs should be replaced with this new technology to "green up an office".

Unfortunately, such replacement is not necessarily a good thing. The paper, Life-cycle environmental impacts of CRT and LCD desktop monitors (by Socolof, M.L.; Overly, J.G.; Kincaid, L.E.; Dhingra, R.; Singh, D.; Hart, K.M. in Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, 2001, pp. 119 - 127) compared LCD and CRT environmental impacts. It assumed in its survey that the monitors were replaced after the same period and for technological upgrade, rather than because the device had failed. The analysis, taking into account potential sources of error in the data, investigated 16 components of the impact of the production, use and decommissioning of these monitors: non-renewable resource use; renewable resource use; energy use; global warming; ozone depletion; air acidification; photochemical smog; air particulate matter; aesthetics (odor); water eutrophication; water quality: biological oxygen demand; water quality: total suspended solids; hazardous waste: landfill space use; solid waste: landfill space use; radioactive waste: landfill space use; radioactivity.

Energy cost and global warming contribution were given special attention in the paper. The CRT requires a lot of manufacturing energy, in particular for glass. This is the most significant factor, and exceeds by far the amount of energy that these monitors consume in use. CRTs consume more energy in production and during their life cycle than LCDs. LCDs do not consume as much energy in production, nor do they consume as much electricity during use. (Although interestingly enough, they are nastier in production than CRTs in almost all other ways - a point for another day!)

Global warming contributions of the monitors is however the reverse of what one might expect from considering energy consumption. The main global warming contribution of CRTs comes from electricity consumption during their use. During their manufacture, various forms of energy production are employed and these do not all uniformly contribute to global warming. LCDs, as noted above, consume less energy to manufacture and use than CRTs, but in the manufacturing process sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is employed and this swings the pendulum against the LCD when considering global warming contributions:

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, SF6 is the most potent greenhouse gas that it has evaluated, with a global warming potential of 22,200 times that of CO2 over a 100 year period" (Science Daily)

Oh dear, we are not saving the planet by throwing out energy hungry CRTs. Instead we are worsening the situation by increasing the manufacture of LCDs and tossing out CRTs that may have had a good few years left in them, their manufacture being the dominant component of their energy cost, even if not their contribution to global warming.

So what should we do? My suggestion is to keep CRTs until they are worn out and use 100% renewable, green energy to avoid the CRTs making any further contribution to global warming. Simple!

Of course since LCD monitors certainly consume less energy in use than the CRTs and energy consumption is measurable by business on an energy supplier's bill, changing to LCD is an easy way to make documented claims about "being green". I suspect this naive approach will be more likely to occur. Anyway, LCDs are much slicker technology and take up less desk space so that we can reduce office sizes and save on rent, heating and air-conditioning bills :-)

Face it. Computers and electronics are environmentally toxic. Use them for as long as you can and on green power. Resist the urge to upgrade.

colour and pain

It never really concerned me before if I experienced "red" in the "same way" as somebody else. Did I experience it myself in the same way from day to day? I could see why it might be interesting to contemplate this but its not something I would invest my life in wondering or writing about. But recently something of similar experiential origins has changed the way I think about perception --- pain!

The experience of chronic pain completely changes the way the world is perceived. Focusing on things outside of the body becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, and attention is directed inwards. Everything that does come "from outside" passes through a filter that renders it of such a low priority that what was dominant without the pain may become completely insignificant with it. How much of this pain originates from the injury or other problem? How much is concerned purely with the brain's response to the pain it perceives and is entangled with the sufferer's mental state (including their expectations and fear of the injury)?

Of course the whole situation is distressing also for those around the sufferer because the person they used to know no longer engages with them as expected. The sufferer becomes "a different person". Their internal state is completely altering their external appearance and interactions yet there may be no externally obvious reason for this. Outsiders simply need to rely on the pain sufferer articulating the experience and a large dose of empathy.

...and then along comes an external agent and removes the source of the pain. As if a switch was flicked the world of the former sufferer changes colour again. What has changed? It may be a physically (or chemically) tiny thing that was causing such a dramatic perceptual reconfiguration and now it is gone or mended. Or is it only that the mental state of the sufferer has gone from one of "victim" to one of "saved"?

Once pain's filter has been experienced and has ground its way into the sufferer's consciousness over time, everything outside looks slightly different. Is the red seen now the same as the red seen before the pain? Is it the same red that was seen during the pain? These appear to be three different colours. But in what sense could it be said that they are different? To what extent does previous experience change our perception of something as physical (cf. conceptual) as the present experience of colour?

I feel this demonstrates simply and clearly how wrong any artist (e.g. Kandinsky) is when attempting to discern the absolute properties of various colours. The idea is ridiculous.

Feminism, Deep Ecology and Environmental Ethics

Notes on, Zimmerman, Michael E., Feminism, Deep Ecology and Environmental Ethics. In The Deep Ecology Movement, An Introductory Anthology, Drengson and Inoue (eds), North Atlantic Books, 1995, pp 169-197.

In a nutshell, this is a paper responding to feminist claims that Deep Ecology is so heavily based in patriarchal thinking that it cannot possibly succeed. Main reasons (according to this male author) as I (a male) interpret them are:

1. That until males accept the domination of women as equivalent to male domination of nature any such philosophy is only giving lip-service to the ideas it professes;
2. That the specifically male trait of identifying self as independent of social relations is tied to the uniquely male trait of identifying self as independent of nature;
3. That women have such a different (and superior) world view (that they somehow inherit despite their obvious domination by and participation in this admittedly patriarchal society) that they are uniquely positioned to overcome the problems men have created;
4. Only men could be concerned with "rights" of humans and other organisms because only men see themselves as independent selves. For women this point is moot since they are social, natural beings.
   

Zimmerman responds to each of these points carefully. I have not read the sources he cites. I have read little feminist literature. This paper confirms my understanding which is a pity. I am always hoping to find a view that will burst the bubble that isolates me from the authors of this literature, especially if it is written by a male critic and can be interpreted by a male (me).

Clearly there are differences between males and females. Our physiology and life experiences are shaped by different chemical and societal conditions. I prefer philosophies that cherish these differences and at the same time seek our similarities. We are all part of the same system. We can't exist without one another. We are the combined result of 4.5 billion years of evolution. I acknowledge the mess males keep getting into and the messes they make of female's lives. I bet females would get into their own messes (and some of them would clearly make a mess of male lives) if this was a matriarchal society. Enough already. This is why we need to work together and stop squabbling about what is a male/female trait/notion/ideal. Action: acknowledge the problem and identify ways of life that can improve the situation.

shallow and deep ecology

Remarks on, Naess, A., The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary (1973).

The Shallow Ecology movement:

Fight against pollution and resource depletion. Central objective: the health and affluence of people in the developed countries.

The Deep Ecology movement:

1. Reject the idea of "human (or any thing) in environment". Humans (and other things too) are part of a wide range of inter-connected systems that define us and the systems of which we form a part. It is not helpful to draw boundaries that delineate us from everything else.
2. Biospherical egalitarianism. All living things (including all humans) have a fundamental right to "live and blossom".
3. Diversity and symbiosis are better guiding principles than a naive "survival of the fittest" approach.
4. Anti-class (human)... I am not sure I understand the reasoning given to support this point although the principle itself makes perfect sense to me.
5. Fight against pollution and resource depletion - but not without also considering the other principles. I.e. it is not acceptable to place burdens on developing nations to offset the pollution of the West.
6. Distinguish between Complexity and Complication. Appreciate the complexity of this planet and its ecosystems. Never over-estimate our level of understanding and ability to forecast the impact of our behaviour.
7. Favour local autonomy and de-centralisation. We can tread more softly in this way (the Earth's ecosystems are not homogeneous) and we can consider local concerns without crushing them under "one-size fits all" solutions.

Overall this is a comprehensive set of principles. The Idealist in me would love to see them widely held. There are some practical hurdles to be overcome though. For instance, billions currently scrape out a meagre living with de-centralised agricultural practice. How can people living on low grade land, with little natural resource (e.g. fertile soil, water) support themselves without importing food? Of course it is not acceptable to let them die (see Diamond J., Collapse for a number of telling tales). Why not allow for global trade powered by renewable and clean resources so that they can support themselves with food they cannot grow themselves? Or should all peoples somehow move in together into regions where they can farm happily? Do we destroy our existing large cities?

If we are to maintain this planet in the long term there are going to be some hard decisions to make. Who will make them? "Live and let live" is a great policy. How do we put it into practice whilst observing the other principles also? How do we overcome the current structures' momentum in time?

These are deep and vexing questions.