Moving (forward)

First movement. Well, I've found someplace to live! (Huzzah!) I'll be living on Finkman St. in the Princeton Heights neighborhood of St. Louis in a beautiful brick bungalow with a very cool lady (who also happens to have red hair). I'll be a whopping 12 miles away from school, which is a lengthy bike commute, but I think I can shave it down to 11 using my awesome powers of google map manipulation. I guess I'll just have to spend some time once I get down there learning

In the meantime, I spent some quality time with my co-worker Jeff in a van full of children on the way to Platts Vegas and back. We talked about everything from gold plated bicycle nipples to the efficiency of certain European auto engines. If you're unfamiliar with Jeff, he's a fountain of knowledge on all things science and tech and quite possibly more. He mentioned how nobody uses the word conservation anymore. Everyone is obsessed with how to find the newest latest energy source to support gluttonous energy consuming habits while invariably ignoring the concept of conservation.

I mean... are biofuels really a sustainable alternative? Take powering cars with leftover vegetable oils, animal fats. Or cellulose based ethanol from corn. Or fuel derived from sugar cane. Do we really want to be using our food supply to power our cars when the earth's population is growing exponentially? Check this out.

Before I leap into this conversation about conservation (I did smirk a bit as I wrote that), I can't deny the growing need for fuel alternatives. Wind power, solar power, biofuel, etc... the research is necessary. Watching our desperation for petroleum shape our suffering foreign policy is vomitous. But finding fuel alternatives is not enough.

Conservation is a broad term and we all know what it means in terms of environmental issues. But you just don't hear the term thrown around anymore. I did a search on CNN.com and found just one result that actually had the word "conservation" in the title on the first page when sorted by relevance. It appears that nobody in this country is interested in hearing about ways to save on energy. Obviously things are being done about it. Technology is improving to improve heat efficiency, electrical efficiency, etc. Rather than depend on technology to save our precious lifestyles, what ever happened to plain old saving?

Heat/cold efficiency?
People are working to make their homes more energy efficient with heat efficient windows. Here's a fantastic article on how to naturally cool your home rather than turn on the AC. You can bet your panties that I'll be referring to this once I move to St. Louis. I mean people lived for thousands of years without AC. What did they do? They worked with what they had... built light colored homes made of earthy materials, rooms underground where you could spend time. I've never been in a basement where it wasn't cool. It's amazing the kinds of old school tricks we ignore in favor of our 'easy' central air. I don't know about you, but I'm not real interested in depending on an air conditioner to keep me cool.

Transportation
Firstly...
look what Paris has done!
The solutions are pretty simple, but it requires commitment and dedication on everyone's part. Walking! Biking! Heck even little Vespa motorbikes. Using public transportation. It makes me crazy that we as a nation don't invest more into our rail systems. Anybody who has been to Europe and even Asia has experienced the ease and efficiency of their train systems. When I lived in Belgium, I'd ride my bike to the station, hop a train to Brussels and then hop out and walk or use Brussels' local transit system. It was brilliant. It was a way of life. What will it take for people to realize that rail is a more fuel efficient way to move goods (rather than semis), people and their pets?
Another interesting article about the future of rail in the U.S.

It would be so very simple if cities would just paint bike lines. More people would be willing to take to the streets on bike if the city as a whole was more aware of cyclists and bike commuters. Apparently St. Louis is in the process of making itself more bike friendly, but in my opinion, it should be every major road, not just the major major ones (short of highway). I always loved coming to a red light in Bruges with a pack of twenty or so cyclists on their way to work/school in the morning. We were expected. It was lovely.
If you want my honest opinion, we should just cut to the chase and seek the technology for Star Trek transporters. But wait? How fuel efficient would they be?


Anyway, I'm losing grip on my focus here, so I suppose I'll cut it out for now. More later perhaps!