Venkatesh Rao writes:

This is a very simple example of what is known as an exploration-exploitation trade-off in control theory and machine learning. You are assuming that there are returns from exploratory trial-and-error activity that outweigh the costs of wasted resources. These returns diminish the longer you explore (so if you crumple and toss 1000 sheets of paper, you might have an entirely different problem like writer’s block), but the point is, waste is good in a definable and quantifiable sense.

The problem of course, is applying this sort of logic to human civilization at large. The leap of faith that wasting oil will lead to a new abundance somewhere else is much less defensible than wasting paper in search of the perfect angle from which to write about a subject.

But for better or worse, technological debates today are based on the idea of climbing a stairway to a heaven of permacultural abundance, with the stairs below you crumbling as you climb. A sort of bootstrapping via profligacy. You either believe your sins of waste will not catch up with you before you reach the heaven, or that they will.

I am not satisfied with this. It is not a resolution of the abundance/scarcity dichotomy. But it is a starting point that may lead to a more basic and powerful dichotomy. I think.

Good waste/bad waste is sort of a temporary framing. I like it because it gets at both our moral and conceptual confusions around resources, and forces us to examine the vast amounts of cultural baggage we carry around under the term “waste.”

For writers the good waste has to be the time we invest walking across the heath or stroking the cat. I really am working when I sit and stare out the window, damn it.

Way back at in the middle of June I emailed Sarah Wilson Jones:

Good morning Sarah,

This summer I’m doing a personal experiment testing my own energy levels when I drink mostly cold-brewed green tea or Yerba Maté instead of straight water.

My plan is to start with half-gallon batches of green tea and Yerba Maté made from a ratio of 45 g of green tea/75 g of Yerba Maté to one gallon of water and conduct one-week tests of each.

Do you have any recommendations as regards brewing time, brewing container, green teas that work particularly well for cold brewing, etc.?

As always, thank you for being Superbarista.

Do all you can to make today the best day possible,

Jeff

Ever vigilante to aid in the consumption of coffees and teas, Sarah emailed me back that afternoon:

Hi Jeff!

Sounds awesome! If u blog about it let me know and I will link to it from the phoenix facebook page.

We brew ours for 6 hours using glass jars. My favorite green tea of ours is our maofeng tranquility green.

Great umami flavor, hard to find in a moderately priced tea. I drink it hot and cold.

Can’t wait to hear how this goes!

Good luck!

Sarah

I tested Yerba Maté and three varieties of green tea: Sencha, Genmaicha and Mao Feng. I drank 72 ounces of cold-brewed tea a day for seven days.

I followed Sarah’s instructions and brewed the teas for six hours using 25 grams of tea or 42 grams of Yerba Maté in 72 ounces of water. For the first four weeks I brewed the teas in a stainless steel filter from a tea pot that fit perfectly in the mouth of the jars I was using. My idea was that I wouldn’t have to worry about loose bits floating around in the water. The teas were good, but a little on the weak side in the proportions I used.

For the second four weeks I dumped the loose teas directly in the water, gave the jars a good shake and left them to sit. This produced a superior drink at the same proportions, but required a double filtering. I first poured the cold-brewed tea through the large metal filter in the middle of the above photograph to catch probably 99 percent of the tea leaves. Then I poured the tea back into the original jar using the very fine-mesh filter in the lower right of the photo. This aeration also added a certain brightness to the tea.

As far as caffeine loads, the Yerba Maté definitely delivers more caffeine, but I didn’t enjoy drinking it in the large quantity as much as I did the green teas. Of the green teas, the Genmaicha won hands down. I’ve always been partial to it as a hot tea (there’s something about the toasted rice) and, for me, it beat the Sencha and the Mao Feng. I did discover an ice-brewing method for the Mao Feng which is fascinating if you have the time and the patience for the process.

Brewing a jar of the Genmaicha is now part of my morning routine and I fill two large water bottles to take with me during the day.

Rana Khoury writes:

The speakers led chants against Occupiers (“Take a Bath! Behave Yourself!”), called them Marxists who are somehow similar to the new rulers of the “Islamic State of Egypt,” and singled out the few counter-demonstrators in attendance as “cowards.”

And herein is the irony. For, those counter-demonstrators, all ten of them, embodied the lack of threat from this purported enemy. They were not there on behalf of Occupy, but rather for their own support group for the “Cleveland 4” accused of the bomb plot (there are five defendants, but one has entered a plea deal). Occupy has repeatedly distanced itself from the suspects, disavowed the incident, and reaffirmed its commitment to nonviolence. On the eve of the Tea Party demonstration, they discussed a response (a press release versus physical presence at the rally), and in the end decided on neither.

The Occupy movement has obviously petered out, in Cleveland and elsewhere (the reasons for that warrant another discussion). Yet the Tea Party is still at war (and wars need financing, which they apparently have). As they themselves proudly – and perhaps rightly – boast, they are the ones winning seats on Capitol Hill anyway. And for this spoil alone, they intend to continue waging their war, even if the media and the Occupiers leave them alone in their battle.

Elect Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala…

From Blogger Rana:

Hey Jeff,

I really enjoy following your blog, especially for its often spunky musings! Please check out mine, As Ohio goes, when you have a chance. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Keep up the spunk!
Rana

Who knew?

[Update at 0332 on 22 August: With all the spunky musings bouncing around in my skull, I woke up in the middle of the night with Wild Cherry in my head. Curse you Rana!]

Andrew Brietbart is gone, but his media fief continues.

I initially embedded the Brietbart video of Saturday’s protest in Cleveland, but after spending about 20 minutes attempting to alter the code so that the video wouldn’t autostart, I’ve removed the code. You can still go directly to the site and view the video there.

As a replacement video, I offer the unedited version of Tim Russo’s video from the event.

I’m officially issuing two open invitations to anyone from Northeast Ohio (as opposed to those bused in by Big Coal) who attended this protest on Saturday. The first is to sit down, one-on-one with me to have a cup of coffee. I want to listen. The second is to see what another aspect of Democracy, the Ekklesia, looks like by taking part in the monthly Socrates Café which meets on the second Tuesday of each month at the Phoenix Coffee on Mayfield Road in South Euclid.

Charles Blow writes:

Shady money, voter suppression, shifting positions, murky details and widespread apathy.

If there is a road map for a Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan win in November, that’s it.

In my email box this morning from Tom Peters:

It’s Monday. Monday = Fresh start. What will you do in the first 10 minutes at work which smacks of Renewal-Excitement?

Well?

Nisha Kittan Lodge: Reject the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy

We, the Scouts and community members of the Metro East and Southern Illinois urge the Nisha Kittan Lodge to reject the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy.

Among service organizations, the Boy Scouts are increasingly isolating themselves with their discriminatory policy. Organizations including the Girl Scouts, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, as well as the 4H Club all welcome gay kids as well as adult leaders.

We expect the Order of the Arrow, as Scouting’s national honor society, to be a leader in the removal of this policy because of it’s higher standards. This should be considered a privilege that we are seeking the help of the Order in this cause.

We love the Boy Scouts, but we can’t support this policy. That’s why we urge you to speak out against the ban on gay Scouts and leaders and adopt an inclusive policy like other troops, packs, councils, and lodges across the country have done — so the Boy Scouts can maintain its relevancy, improve recruitment, and truly live by the principles it teaches its members.

Previously…

Adam Harvey tweets:

“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan” is an anagram for “My Ultimate Ayn Rand Porn”

Mainstream media is trickling in, but the Tea Party faithful are unhappy with the citizen journalist efforts of Tim Russo above.

Be sure to check out the hilarious exchange in the twitter feed.

So, when it comes to food, never say never. When the dessert cart arrives don’t gaze longingly at forbidden treats. Vow that you will eat all of them sooner or later, but not tonight. In the spirit of Scarlett O’Hara, tell yourself: Tomorrow is another taste. p. 237

From Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

On Monday I had an excellent lunch with Cavana Faithwalker and his daughter at the Barroco Gill on Madison. The food was amazing (you have to try this place) but the conversation was more so.

One of the topics we discussed involved a story Cav had sent me earlier involving farmers in India profiting from selling what had been a staple food crop to petroleum companies to extract one of the chemicals used in the fracking process and whether or not we could ask those farmers to not contribute to the process.

The short answer was no, we had no right to make such an outrageous request.

The longer answer was more complicated because a great deal of what we do on a moment-by-moment basis can have detrimental affects upon our family, our community and our environment. Walmart came up and we discussed my Little Walmart Toothpaste Buycott which Cav was taken by and then this morning I read this on CNN:

They’ve been called “blood phones.”

It’s a reference to the fact that some metals used to make smartphones and other electronic gadgets are sourced from war-torn areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Experts say these “conflict minerals” help fuel one of the world’s deadliest conflicts. An estimated 5.4 million people have died there from war-related causes, including disease and malnutrition, since 1998, according to the International Rescue Committee.

But according to a report released Thursday by the Enough Project, an advocacy group, metals from the Congo are getting less bloody.

Less bloody mean improvement, but what does that mean in real numbers? Does it mean that only 10 people die per phone? Enough Project, the people writing the report, don’t know. All they know is that the best company on their list, Intel, is following 60 percent of their recommendations.

Whoopee!

The real question, however, is what do I do about this? Do I toss my phone and go back to a land line? Do I go 100 percent online and communicate only by emails?

What would you do?

Here’s my suggestion. Don’t buy a new phone unless your old phone isn’t working anymore. No upgrades. None. You don’t need a new toy.

And when you phone does crap out? Buy a used phone. Down grade. Go retro. Better to buy a used phone than a new one because you won’t be fueling the mining of those minerals.

The idea is far from perfect, and I’d love to hear your better ideas.

We do have to be the change we want to see.

The more I consider Stars Earn Stripes, the more disgusted I become.

Via Mano Singham…

Matt Taibbi writes:

Still, it wasn’t surprising that Holder didn’t pursue criminal charges against Goldman. And that’s not just because Holder has repeatedly proven himself to be a spineless bureaucrat and obsequious political creature masquerading as a cop, and not just because rumors continue to circulate that the Obama administration – supposedly in the interests of staving off market panic – made a conscious decision sometime in early 2009 to give all of Wall Street a pass on pre-crisis offenses.

No, the real reason this wasn’t surprising is that Holder’s decision followed a general pattern that has been coming into focus for years in American law enforcement. Our prosecutors and regulators have basically admitted now that they only go after the most obvious and easily prosecutable cases.

If the offense committed doesn’t fit the exact description in the relevant section of the criminal code, they pass. The only white-collar cases they will bring are absolute slam-dunk situations where some arrogant rogue commits a blatant crime for individual profit in a manner thoroughly familiar to even the non-expert portion of the jury pool/citizenry.

In other words, they’ll take on somebody like Raj Rajaratnam, who stacked his illegal insider trades so brazenly and carelessly that his case almost reads like a finance version of Jeff Dahmer tripping over bodies in his Milwaukee apartment. Or they’ll pursue Bernie Madoff on the tenth or eleventh time he crosses their desk, after years of nonaction, and after he breaks down weeping and confessing. Basically, if someone backs a dump truck up to the DOJ and unloads the entire case, gift-wrapped, a contrite and confessing criminal included, a guy like Eric Holder might, after much agonizing deliberation, decide to prosecute.

Why am I not surprised?

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Rather, it’s because — as I’ve written about many times before — the very concept of Terrorism is inherently empty, illegitimate, meaningless. “Terrorism” itself is not an objective term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized instrument and has been used that way ever since.

The best scholarship on this issue, in my view, comes from Remi Brulin, who teaches at NYU and wrote his PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris on the discourse of Terrorism. When I interviewed him in 2010, he described the history of the term — it was pushed by Israel in the 1960s and early 1970s as a means of universalizing its conflicts (this isn’t our fight against our enemies over land; it’s the Entire World’s Fight against The Terrorists!). The term was then picked up by the neocons in the Reagan administration to justify their covert wars in Central America (in a test run for what they did after 9/11, they continuously exclaimed: we’re fighting against The Terrorists in Central America, even as they themselves armed and funded classic Terror groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua). From the start, the central challenge was how to define the term so as to include the violence used by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel, while excluding the violence the U.S., Israel and their allies used, both historically and presently. That still has not been figured out, which is why there is no fixed, accepted definition of the term, and certainly no consistent application.

Greenwald concludes:

It is a telling paradox indeed that [terrorism,] this central, all-justifying word is simultaneously the most meaningless and therefore the most manipulated. It is, as I have noted before, a word that simultaneously means nothing yet justifies everything. Indeed, that’s the point: it is such a useful concept precisely because it’s so malleable, because it means whatever those with power to shape discourse want it to mean. And no faction has helped this process along as much as the group of self-proclaimed “terrorism experts” that has attached itself to think tanks, academia, and media outlets. They enable pure political propaganda to masquerade as objective fact, shining brightly with the veneer of scholarly rigor. The industry itself is a fraud, as are those who profit from and within it.