A Curious Statistical Anomaly

For a long time, people have been talking about the Internet and how it’s killing historical documents collection because email, blogs, ezines and other forms of electronic documents are ephemeral and won’t last as technology changes. Yesterday, someone sent me a link to a blog that is historical. WWI: Experiences of an English Soldier is a blog 90 years after the fact. Bill Lamin had his grandfather’s letters and wondered what to do with them. He decided to start a blog of William Lamin’s letters to his family. Each letter will be posted as it was written on the blog 90 years after it was originally written. There’s a BBC programme about it also.

While electronic communication may or may not be ephemeral, it does have an impact on our lives now. Bill Lamin’s idea will allow us to read the worries, concerns, and daily life of an English soldier much as his family experienced it — waiting for word, hoping and praying that the next message they get is a letter and not a notification of his death or injury. This can and aught to be an wonderful adjunct to history units on WW1, a time and a war that most of us have only read about or seen in movies.

While history books may have a difficult time maintaining records of today’s world, this blog is an indication that perhaps the Internet may be a new tool in keeping our history alive for all of us now.

Well, I tried my hardest — those Zinc thingys, lots of juice, lots of water, staying warm but it hit and hit hard. This flu-ish/cold thingy looks like it’s here for a while. Since I’m not, as my son says, working with full thrusters at the moment, I decided to dig out some sock yarn I’d recently purchased and start a pair while watching Pride & Prejudice.

The first attempt with size two needles had a far too loose fabric. So, out it all came and now with size 1 needles, it’s looking much better. These are basic socks. Toe up increasing 4 stitches every other round until it looks big enough when I try it on my foot then knit until two inches from the end of the foot, do a short row heel (this time I might try something different), and then a 2×2 ribbing until I run out of yarn and bind off. That’s it; not much thinking because I’ve done this lots of times but I can at least feel productive while sniffing, coughing, and feeling like an undead who didn’t get it right.

We were out running errands today and passed one of the many roadside shrines that people put up to commemorate a loved one lost in an accident — usually involving a car. This one has been gathering stuffed animals nailed to the tree, lots of plastic flowers and ribbons, candles in holders, a large cross and several smaller ones. I imagine that leaving mementos must somehow make the family and friends feel better but like many I wonder about these growing tributes to death, the danger to those who stop to add to the clutter, and the eyesore they are to others driving by on these roads.

Searching the internet, I found that this custom is a cultural one in the southwest. I found a site called Descansos that talks about that and has some photos. The photos on this site show small memorials that do not overpower the area. If all these roadside shrines were as simple in line and function, I guess it probably wouldn’t become such an issue. A quick Google search showed that many states have passed legislation to clear up these roadside shrines as dangerous and in some cases unsightly. The New York Times had an article, “As Roadside Memorials Multiply, a Second Look“, in its February 6, 2006 edition.

In many ways, I can understand the family member wanting to commemorate the death of loved one. My brother was killed many years ago in a tragic car accident, leaving a wife and two children, mother, sister, aunts, uncles, friends, and acquaintances — bereft and tearful. But, not once did any of us think to put a shrine on the site of the accident. For me, that would be celebrating his death not the life he lived. To me the best way to remember the lost family member would be to remember their lives and share memories with those who knew him or who might have liked him if he’d lived to met them.

It just struck me today, that I have no idea why people do this. Maybe it’s a lack in my understanding because to me it’s got the thing backwards keeping the death clutched to their heart rather than celebrating the life they had and the memories they shared. But that’s just me — rolling ideas around in my heart and head.

The problem with holidays is that they end and then it’s back to the usual day by day stuff. The side effect when you work at home is that the detritus of the holidays is all around you — or not detritus per say but the tree is still up and the wreathes. We’ll be taking most of it down tomorrow or next weekend but it’s stuff I could be doing during my work day. But, yesterday I managed to get a lot done and can actually see most of the floor around my office space now. You see I’m on a mission to organize and straighten the controlled chaos I usually work in, while we try to decide about where to put my office space in the basement or how to finish it off down there.

Meanwhile, I decided to get into the new organizational spirit with a brand spanking new calendar — Mary Engelbreit’s “From the Bottom of My Heart 2008 Calendar. I love her artwork. It reminds me of simpler and more cozy times that never were but should have been. It’s a weekly calendar with room for deadlines and such and can fit (in a pinch) in my carry-all bag for outings.

I also got a new coffee cup. Its white with red lines. I’ve had it a while actually — got it off the super sale table at Starbucks in the fall. I liked the clean lines and the shape and the fact that it reminded me of the old diners in Maine that we used to stop at for coffee on long trips — though I’ll admit their cups were usually the all white clunky ones, but somehow this cup spoke to me of those trips and the clean lines match with my organizing mood.

So, now I’m set to embark on a major clean up of the house and my desk. Of course this may just be a way to avoid work but we’ll soon see.

Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year’s Eve. This is a bit late, but we went to dinner at our friend’s house in Alexandria, VA and after dinner out to the First Night activities. I’d never been to a city’s First Night before, although we’ve lived in several that had lots of activities on First Night. So, we had a great time.

The weather was cold but not fiercely so — so we walked most of the way to the Torpedo Factory Art Center for a bit of old fashioned rock and roll by the Grandsons. The surprising bit was that people spontaneously started to dance in the open area away from the stage. There was no seating and the stage was the floor, so unless you were in the front rows or exceedingly tall, you could only hear the band. The second surprise was the families — many people with children. Throughout the night, in all the venues we dropped in on, there were families with children. Here many were teaching their kids to jitterbug and fast dance. It was a hoot and everyone seemed to have a great time.

Next we walked to a jazz venue. On the way, Ern helped a couple taking pictures so they helped us out by taking our picture.

From left to right is my husband Paul, me, and our friends EJ and Ern.

The jazz was wonderful but the venue was very, very warm — it was packed and all the standing room was filled. So after three numbers we headed over to hear another group. At the Old Presbyterian Meeting House, we listened to Al Petteway and Amy White who played a number of different instruments and played Celtic and Appalachian folk songs (some their own). We stayed to the end of their set. And because I loved their music I bought two CDs: Winter Tidings and Acoustic Journey.

Next it was back to EJ & Ern’s for dessert and to watch the ball drop in Time Square. Some interesting conversation and  then it was the homeward drive and sleep and dreams of a better year to come.

Hope everyone had a wonderful a safe and joyous New Year’s Eve.

I was thinking about the latest breakthroughs that have been made in solar technology, wave-energy extraction, cargo carrying dirigibles, and using sails to improve fuel efficiency of ships (from my previous post). I was also thinking about all the nay-saying going on about these same technologies. The problem is that people want solutions that are either ‘This’ or ‘That’. They complain solar isn’t good enough to remove the average home from the grid, and that the sail isn’t good without the wind, so you’ll still need the engines. That is exactly the philosophy that we (the human race) needs to get past. The reason for the ship-pulling kite isn’t to replace the engines, but to supplement them. The purpose of the cargo dirigible isn’t to replace airplanes and trains, but to add another option for when it makes sense to use it. So what if solar energy technology isn’t good enough to fully supply an average American home? If we put solar on every roof in America, and that provided even 10% of the power the home used, think of the total reduction in energy generation that would represent. How many power plants that wouldn’t need to be built. It doesn’t have to replace the current system, as long as it makes a useful contribution towards the whole. And any kind of large scale use of any technology is only going to spur more research and better and better versions of that technology.

This in turn got me thinking about cars. There’s a fierce debate going on as to whether we should keep using gasoline cars, or go diesel, or go ethanol, or go all electric, or go electric-gasoline hybrid. The last is the one that makes the most sense, but even then it’s too limited for my taste in its current form. It’s basically a very complex system that runs on electricity, electricity and gasoline, or just gasoline depending on circumstances. But the batteries in these system are charged either via the gasoline engine or regenerative breaking. It’s all nifty, but it’s a closed system. There are some new versions now being developed that allow you to charge a much larger battery with household power and then drive up to 150 miles before switching over to gasoline, but these tend to keep the two systems separate. It’s either all electric, or all gasoline. Now, since I work about 25 miles from my home, this would be ideal for me. Charge it up overnight and then go to work and even stop and do a few errands, all on pure electric power. Only when I had to travel a longer than normal distance would I actually burn gasoline. But this could still be improved. Why can’t we make the roof/hood/whatever of the car out of photovoltaic material. Then, while I’m sitting at work, the battery would recharge from the sunshine. Maybe it would only charge 5%, but that would be 5% I wouldn’t need to pull off the national power grid. Add the regenerative breaking to this mode and you could grab a few more percent. Hell, put a little fan in the radiator grill and grab another 1% from that darn icy wind that’s alway in my face trying to walk from the parking lot to the building.

The point is, instead of thinking either/or, think, how can I pack it all in and get the best of all worlds? And yes, I’d want the systems separate so the failure of one won’t kill the whole car. But that’s just engineering, and we do have some of the best engineers in the world. So how about we hook our homes up to Solar, Wind, Wave-energy, geothermal sinks, and the national grid? Or at least which ever combination of those makes sense for where ever you are. We don’t need to have a silver bullet technology that will free us forever from the evils of petroleum. That may be the ultimate goal, but let’s grab the present with both hands and see what we can make of it.

If computers could evolve from the TRS-80 Model 1, running at a whopping 1 MHz, to what we have today in a matter of only 20 years, what could solar cells and batteries do if we actually decided make them the focus of national attention? With a little bit of thought and a little more experimentation, we might be able to brew up a stew of possibilities that nobody alive today could possibly predict, and yet in twenty years, nobody could live without.