A small calculation

So, a while back I was ranting about Magic the Gathering and how people are just making weenie decks because it is all about winning.

I did a rough calculation based on the fact that there are over 10,000 unique magic the gathering cards.

If you chose 36 cards with no land and no two cards alike, that would result in more combinations than there are atoms in the observable universe.

This simply adds to my frustration about the lack of creativity amongst some magic players.

Aluminum Can Recycling

According to the Container Recycling Institute, a trillion aluminum cans were thrown away from 1972 to 2003.  This is more than enough to easily go to mars and back if stacked one on top of another.  That's a lot of cans.

What is surprising is that the recycling rate for cans in the United States was only 57% in 2010, despite the fact that it takes much less energy to recycle cans than to make new ones, saving 9.5 tons in greenhouse gases per ton of cans.

One company, Alcoa, is working on increasing that rate to 75% by 2015.  Hopefully their initiatives will help reach this moderate goal.

Even achieving this rate of recycling will leave the Americans behind Europe, where recycling rates are as high as 96% - see this graph from the CRI.

So, please recycle and do your small part.

Valerie Bockstette

In researching shared value, I came across a How to Guide for Creating Shared Value.

One of the authors was Valerie Bockstette.  I googled the name and came across her Harvard MBA portrait project, which i guess is one's statement about what they want to do when they graduate and it went like this:

I plan to build trampolines. Remember jumping on one as a kid - the more you jumped, the more support you got - and like magic - you rose higher and higher, as though you could bounce forever? I grew up on such a trampoline. No, my family wasn't in the circus. I had teachers pushing me, parents supporting my endeavors, and friends encouraging me to follow my dreams. It was this network of expectations that acted as my trampoline, constantly demanding greater heights. Most children aren't so lucky. They grow up in a world devoid of high expectations, or any expectations at all. Those around them are too busy keeping order in the classroom, making rent, or joining gangs to notice them. To ask: "Do you want to go to college?" - "Have you read a good book lately?" - "Can you even read?" How do we prevent these kids from falling through the cracks? The traditional answer is to build safety nets, but I think that isn't enough. I will spend my life building trampolines for children who grow up without a network of high expectations. I want them to experience the magnetic thrill of being pushed, supported, and encouraged. The beauty of a trampoline is that it doesn't have to be big. And it only takes one bounce to get going.

Reminds me to give my child high expectations, or at least expose him to possibilities.  Fortunately he isn't in a situation where joining a gang is the only option.

Can we change our cities?

Came across a book by the architect Moshe Safdie and became aware that cities are changing once again.  The book was titled The City After the Automobile and presents an idea of his for a massive car share program that would help maximize the use cars while minimizing the amount of infrastructure needed to support cars, mainly in reducing parking lot size.

It is an intriguing idea but one that may evolve into something real.  But for now, promoting car sharing ventures will have to do.  Vancouver provides a relatively good model of this with three options available to consumer - Car2Go, Modo and Zip Cars.  However, Modo is the only one that provides cars outside of the City of Vancouver, with cars conveniently placed along the different skytrain routes.  I personally have a Modo membership and fully appreciate this placement of vehicles as I live close to a skytrain station and can access the type of vehicle I need - passesnger car, van, minivan, sports car or hybrid.

Zip and Car2Go are limited by being only found within the city proper and even at that, not throughout the city.  Hopefully it will expand to other municipalities within Metro Vancouver, especially Surrey, as it is the fastest growing city in the region and will eventually become more populous than Vancouver.  It however faces the challenge of probably being the least transit friendly city as there is a vast agricultural strip that makes designing routes around the city difficult.

But that's a story for another day.

Ann Finlayson

Another 100 Words, by Ann Finlayson

My vision? That we will be able to understand how to live within environmental limits and then have the confidence and abilities to do just that.

Fundamentally, then, it is about two things - learning and change.

We don't yet know how to live within environmental limits. We will have to learn, reflect, and test new ideas. There is no single solution or best practice yet. This means changing the way we think about education and learning. Then, because doing this often feels impossible, we need to find strength and support from each other to take this difficult task on. I know we can do it.

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Ann Finlayson worked for the Sustainable Development Commission and it looks like she is with the Sustainability and Environmental Education website now.

Off to the library again

This week's haul included:

Quinn Cummings.  The Year of Learning Dangerously.  This is not so much a manual on how to homeschool but a collected set of observations on Cummings' homeschool experiences.  It is more like adventures in homeschooling with a bit of historical information sandwiched between her hilarious stories.

Joseph Stiglitz was to come to Vancouver for a talk but it has been cancelled.  So, I found one of his books, The Price of Inequality to try to better understand the significance of his work.

Fantasy Football

In 2007 I was asked by the organizer of one of the hockey groups I play with to join his fantasy football league.  Now, I've watched the NFL and was a loose follower of the sport so figured what the heck, I'll give it a try.  Tonight we had the draft for the seventh season of that fantasy football league which is quite long for any activity of what is a fluctuating group of individuals.

I've done okay in general, and actually made (but lost) the championship game last season which was an accomplishment for me as I definitely don't follow things as closely as some of the other participants.  The other interesting thing is I still have two players from my original team, Tom Brady and Calvin Johnson who are both amazing players.  Other league participants are continually trying to trade for Johnson, but I continually decline because I can't part with a player who's nickname is Megatron.

So for the record, my starting lineup in a QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, FLEX PPR league is:

QB Tom Brady
RB Trent Richardson
RB Frank Gore
WR Calvin Johnson
WR Anquan Boldin
TE Kyle Rudlph
FLEX Shane Vereen

I think I have a roster that will put me in the top half of the league on the year but as in any sport, it is the playoffs that count and I just to make it into the playoffs.

Strange Connections

So, I mentioned I was reading Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which was referenced in another book I'm working through, The Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer Dixon.

In the chapter titled Complexities, Dixon describes how as a youth he was able to deal with the basic maintenance of a vehicle and understand the workings of all the components, but as time marched forward, cars became more complex, to the point that:

...even most professional mechanics are little more than diagnosticians now.  The modern car is trundled into the shop and hooked to computerized diagnostic systems, and faulty engine modules are replaced in their entirety.  If the faulty modules are repaired at all- rather than simply junked - they are rarely fixed in shop but instead shipped to specialized facilities with the specific expertise needed.  As the complexity and sophistication of our cards have increased, we can no longer repair them in our backyard or in our garage grease pits.  Instead, we increasingly rely on distance expertise and knowledge.  In short, the rising complexity of our machines has reduced our independence and self-sufficiency.  It's ironic that as technology does its job better and empowers us in various ways, it leaves us with less control, power, and freedom in other ways.

This seems to me to relate to the idea of unintended consequences and something we should be careful of because the less we know, the more vulnerable we are to being deceived by the so called experts.  The proportional amount of knowledge that a person needs to know to be functional in an urbanized and technologically advanced society is growing much faster than most individuals are able of assimilating. Without the motivation and resources to keep up with the most basic understanding of the world around us, most of us will become even more dependent on the things we don't understand.