Organic

I think you may be surprised by this post. Yes, I'm a raging tree hugger. Yes I am interested in organic gardening and I'm interested in urban design. Now I'm going to express my distaste for both.

When I think of organic farming I think of how God made the earth. There is an amazing system of leaves falling in the fall, creating a perfect mulch from which a nutrient rich soil can develop. It's a basic system that can be seen in it's perfect arrangement deep in a forest where humans haven't messed it up yet. Now lets compare that to organic farming. We take and destroy the plants in the area, because what was previously growing isn't what we wanted to farm. Then we till the soil to get lots of air in there or something. I don't know why we till, but we have for a long time so we might as well continue. Then we plant a whole lot of one crop over the area we have 'prepared'. Don't worry, we won't add chemical herbicides or pesticides because that would be unnatural. Do you see the same problem I see?

I do want to recognize that I subscribe to Mother Earth News and have seen some wonderful examples of trying to mimic Mother Nature, but still it is all for our benefit. I don't think that we should return to a hunter gatherer system, but I do think that we need to move away from mass monoculture and start trying to mimic God on a larger scale.

Now lets look at development (this is really the one that I want to write about, it's the subject I"m studying for comps right now). The early communities were developed without any plans. You built your house and if you were a butcher, you raised animals in the back (or bought them from the local farmer) and sold them from your shop next to your house. Everyone did this and it created a community that had all of the essentials, supported all of the residents and didn't take any planning.

To be fair, this also lead to some poor situations where people have to live next to a slaughter house or other disturbing businesses. It also lead to some unsanitary conditions because they didn't have plans on how to get rid of their waste. We've changed things up (in large part for the better) and now we have separated the polluting industry from the places we live. Unfortunately that has also separated our destinations from our homes so we have to drive everywhere.

Of course I don't like that most people have to drive everywhere, but there is high demand to have your own little piece of land away from stuff, but in a nice little community. Now there is a neo-traditional movement that says that we should live in tightly packed condos built above stores. It's a great idea from the view point of walkability and environmentalism. The problem is that there is not a lot of economic demand for such places. People don't want to live in small condos (for the most part). The people who can afford those trendy little condos can't pay the bills with the amount of money they would make working at the downstairs shops, so they have to commute out of their 'walkable community' to their job. So where do we get the workers? They commute in from outside of the 'walkable community' because they can't afford to live in the new condos. So we've created a massive flux in and out of the 'walkable community' (mainly by car) every morning and evening in order to provide the needed jobs.

I don't think that people understand that organic means natural, just sort of let it go and allow nature do its thing. I would say that I'm all for organic farming. And I mean real organic farming, not mass produced and then transported monoculture. The organic communities... I'm just not sure. I like some of the principles of Euclidean zoning. I like having some confidence that my neighbor isn't going to start a feed lot in his back yard. But I also don't like the status quo of developing everything further and further apart so we have to drive more and more to get to where we need to go. I like the idea of incentives to make good decisions, to help people make choices that will lead to walkability, good communities, etc. That's not organic. I also don't believe that is realistic considering the current political climate (and the political climate in the foreseeable future).

So what do we do? This is the question I most fear for my comps. (all the questions have been submitted, so as long as Dr. Tucker doesn't read this while compiling them, i should be OK). The status quo is out, we need to make changes (although he political climate seems to be against major change... in my highly skewed view of the world). I think that complete streets that make cities more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists are important. Sure, nobody uses them except for cars, but I think we need to be prepared for that to change and having bike lanes and sidewalks is a step in the right direction. I also think we need to continue developing mixed use. I know I was just making fun of the mixed use ('walkable communities') because they just don't usually work as planned, but maybe as they age, they will become more walkable. The thing is that it is putting people closer to the stuff they need and therefore they have a choice to walk or take another job (although it's often not economically feasible, maybe it will be in the future). Tomorrow I think I'll write about some big changes that I think need to be made, like making it harder for big box stores to set up shop and attracting smaller Mom and Pop shops.

That's enough for now, I'm going to return to studying.

SAS

I forgot to post yesterday. I got so caught up in the excitement of school that I neglected my blog. So what was I so excited about? This is the point where you will discover how lame I really am.

Let me set the scene a little. Some of you may remember the survey that I posted on my site many months ago. Fatty also posted it for me and I got a few other sites to post it. Anyway, lots of people took that survey (about 600 to be exact). I didn't realize it at the time, but the survey equipment that I was using didn't transfer very nicely to excel, so I had to do it manually. I'm thinking that took me 60 hours or more of the most tedious, boring data entry I have ever done. Finally, last weekend I got all my data into excel.

That was huge, I was really excited last weekend, so I went to my advisor and said, "What next?" He questioned what I had gotten myself into. The next step was to get the excel file ready to go into SAS which is really confusing statistical software. He wished me good luck and sent me away with a slight chuckle. I spent about 3-4 hours correcting my spreadsheet, preparing to send it to SAS. I was excited to give it a shot.

Let me explain SAS a little, I don't think you have a feel for it. It is not like Excel. Bill made Excel user friendly so that people would like using it. SAS is made for statisticians who know some computer programming in the SAS language. Statisticians are a unique breed. Computer programmers are also a unique breed. When you have to be both a statistician and a computer programmer to operate a computer program it means that you have to wear thick glasses, a pocket protector and a calculator mounted to your belt in order to operate SAS.

I've taken 1.5 classes that use SAS (and I have a calculator that I sometimes carry in my pocket and glasses that I wear on occasion) so I thought I would give it a shot. For the first 2 hours of trying to import my excel file into SAS I got nothing but errors that ended with "file import unsuccessful". That's OK because there are at least 14 ways to do any given task in SAS, so I moved on to the other way that I knew. After about 3 hours of trying, I finally got data from Excel into SAS.

Unfortunately I had gone from 580 subjects to 193. The data also didn't line up anymore. I had a column of data that was supposed to be how many times a week the person commuted by bike (should have been a number between 0 and 5) and then I'd have a list of data such as: married, full time work, 2, 1000, mountain, road, female. So somewhere along the way my data got all mixed up. I spent a couple more hours trying to figure out how to straighten my data out so that the columns were all the same type of data.

Finally I gave in and made an appointment to talk to my advisor again. I told him the problem and he laughed at me. He told stories of data sets that had taken hundreds of hours to get imported into SAS because of little errors that were difficult to find. But he was willing to give me 30 minutes.

My advisor gave me a third way of importing data into SAS and I tried that. It straightened things out considerably, but there were still some areas where things weren't right. Then I found it. A space between city and center in the question about where the person lived. I took it out and suddenly everything was lined up.

So that is why I didn't write yesterday, I was excited to finally have data to analyze. That was not a simple process, nor was it a simple excuse for not writing. Using SAS really increases my motivation to simplify!

Preschool

I wrote the most incredible post yesterday... and then Google ate it. Come on, I expect that from Microsoft, but Google? Anyway, I'm going to try again. This one will likely be shorter because I'm lacking on time.

I saw this picture over at no impact man and thought it was quite fitting. So I've been watching my kids and thinking of their interactions. The one thing that brings me the most happiness and pride in my life is to see them sharing and interacting. Really, it happens sometimes. Seeing the Mugwump (older child) take Six-pence (younger child) a toy or water bottle and just give it to him. You ask why he did that and he responds, "because it looked like he wanted it." Those are the moments when it is great to be a parent. Sure, I live in a home where the kids spend plenty of time fighting over toys, water bottles are access to a kitchen chair, and those are the moments that bring me the greatest headaches.

So sharing, that principle that most emphasized in preschool is really what brings me the greatest happiness. Looking beyond my kids, those moments when someone stops to offer me a hand with a flat tire or invites me to share a meal with them. Those are the moments that mean the most to me. Yet what happens after preschool? Kids don't need supplies in preschool, everything is provided and everything is shared (that's how I remember it anyway, and I went to A LOT of preschool). Kindergarten, on the other hand, you have to have your OWN supplies and we have our OWN desk and we start in with ownership. By high school, you have your OWN locker to store your OWN stuff and your OWN parking spot to park your OWN car. Why do we move away from sharing? (To be fair, I had to share a locker in high school, but I did have my own parking spot).

So what could we share now? How about a lawn mower and garden tools, or even tools in general. How many times have you gone for a walk around the block and noticed everyone using a hammer at the same time? Couldn't the block all share one or two hammers? Why do we each have our own? Lawn Mowers are a little different story because everyone mows their lawn on Saturday morning. Couldn't we sort of stagger that and share a lawnmower? I'm impressed on our block, the neighbor kids mow several lawns in the neighborhood so they can save up money. I think it's great, that way the neighbor kids have one lawnmower and they mow many lawns. Realistically, we could just share the one lawnmower. Could we also share a car? I know that my family could, if we found the right family to share with, but it would take a little planning.

So why don't we share anymore? I'll give it to you in one word... Inconvenience. I'll give you another word that comes to mind... Greed. Right, we need to have our own lawnmower, otherwise we couldn't mow the lawn on Saturday morning when we normally do. We might have to wait to mow the lawn or actually communicate with others in organizing when we will mow the lawn. That would be completely unacceptable (I'm not sure why, but it seems to be). Imagine if we shared all garden tools amongst a small group. That group would be forced to communicate with one another. We could build bonds among our neighbors. Sure, when Dave up the street decides to use the pruning sheers to cut wire, the group gets upset because he has ruined the sheers. But you know what, that doesn't have to be the end of a relationship. We don't have to hate Dave because he broke the sheers, the sheers are replaceable and we can teach him about wire cutters. That's another thing I like seeing my kids doing, solving problems, why don't adults do that any more? I'll give you another word to think about... Pride.

So I want to talk about that picture. Let's look at the big picture (not the picture at the top of the page, but the metaphorical picture). There are things that we are forced to share. The air, the land, water and public space are all great examples. If we don't share nicely it leads to problems. It leads to bigger problems than we expect. For example, I don't like it when passing motorists use the air I'm breathing to exhaust their cars. That makes for air that is hard to breathe. I know, I'm the only one inconvenienced by that... I'm sure the driver of the car didn't mind at all (that's why all cars should be exhausted into the driver's compartment). Let's look at the bigger picture. Did you know that car exhaust is closely linked to cardiovascular disease deaths and asthma? Do you know any children with asthma? Do you have any loved ones who have died of a heart attack? Do you know that your driving contributed to that? If we continue to "progress" by increasing streets and increasing driving, we may see that picture at the top of the page.

Sorry that turned into doom and gloom, I have a different perspective. Get out and enjoy nature. Do your best to share it with others. One of the best way of doing that is sharing resources. Sure it may be less convenient if you don't have your own, but consider it an opportunity to get to know someone better.

The Children's museum

Thanks to G'ma we were able to go to the Children's museum on Saturday. It was interesting. Six pence really didn't have any inhibitions. He walked around and got into whatever was around. He loved it as long as Dad didn't try to hold his hand, he is far too independent for that (he's 1). The Mugwump (almost 4), on the other hand, had his face hidden against my wife's leg for the first 10 minutes we were there. With an extreme amount of coaxing we were able to get him out from behind the leg and he would play by himself. He never really interacted with anyone, but he played around them... which is a step in the right direction. There was a point where the Mugwump went into the little kid's kitchen and was pretending to make cookies (with fake balogna, cheese and a box of saltine crackers). He would talk to the kids around him, but they never responded. When he was done making the cookies, he took them and tried to give his pretend cookies to people. Again he was totally ignored. He tries so hard to play with others, but he doesn't fight to be heard or to get his way.

So here's the thing. We are considering homeschooling him, but aren't sure. We have this fear of sending him to school and losing our precious boy that is so giving and having him replaced by a greedy monster that is so typical among kids (and adults). I also recognize that kids need to have trials to develop and maybe school of hard knocks (public school) would provide him with experiences that will prevent people from walking all over him the rest of his life.

My wife and I both graduated from the public school system and we turned out OK, so I don't think that public school is bad. I do, however, feel that it is bad to throw your kid into public school without evaluating what is going to be best for the kid. I think some kids thrive with the homeschool environment and others really need to have a public school education so they don't end up weird.