Category: Steven Stollman

HELP! The only two states that allow recreational pot use are playing

Call it the Pipe Bowl

The new Mayor of New York has made it one of his first priorities to reduce the number of roadway casualties in that city to Zero, from the 271 who currently expire each year, in addition to the 65,000 who are injured. This is more than an ambitious and very difficult, though thoroughly admirable, goal. It is really an effort to evolve the entire population of this place, past the assumptions of unavoidable brutalities that this transportation system invariably provides, as a “normal” feature. It is gratifying that the Chief Executive seems to understand that the need here is tectonic and not cosmetic.

Partly this is a matter of enforcement. Setting up an operation in Brooklyn where cars were ticketed for failing to yield to pedestrians was a trial balloon, to see if the publicity surrounding this was sufficient to have an effect on driver’s behavior in the short and long run. Another much less successful effort, to ticket pedestrians for jaywalking, became a disaster when a Chinese-speaking man was apparently thrown to the ground by a police officer and sustained head injuries. Regardless of such anomalies, everybody understands that the ultimate purpose here is to reduce harm to unprotected pedestrians, and cyclists. In a city with a 30 MPH speed limit, 60 MPH is standard. The Mayor is the Commander in Chief of the Police Department and he can single-handedly direct a comprehensive overhaul of our traffic rules and how they are enforced.

I believe that the other most important factor in engineering this change will be the rapid proliferation of small, safe, human-scale vehicles, to replace the far more dangerous industrial-scale ones that currently dominate the landscape. Not only will this result in saving many lives and preventing numerous serious injuries, but it will also provide major health, environmental and other significant benefits to society. Regardless, It is not going to be easy reining in the taxis, flying down the street, the enormous garbage trucks and buses, and huge SUVs with their relatively limited vision.

In order to accelerate the process of providing ourselves with a new range of vehicles, we will need to incentivize the designers and builders of these devices with both recognition and financial benefits. Pavlov proved that animals are motivated by rewards and will respond to them in a predictable way. Since there is no marketing venue for these objects their introduction over time has been nearly impossible. The advent of the internet and its means to inform the public about novel ideas and attainable objects can help to overcome the historical resistance of the conventional marketplace, bike shops, and car dealers, to provide us with access to these machines. When Rob Cotter used Kickstarter to get his seed money to produce the first multi-modal ELF it signaled a new channel opening up between makers and those who know that this is a vital path to explore. Building on that realization is a new task and a welcome one. His current success in expanding his enterprise will alert many to the increasing value of these new opportunities. Hybrid human/electric-assist vehicles are the wave of the future, and nobody can deny it anymore.

It is not a motorcycle but it is a cycle with a motor, so even the language conspires against us. It is built on the scale of a bicycle, minimal, so the contribution of human power is relevant, and the stored energy is supplied through advanced design batteries rather than fossil fuels, petroleum, so it is considered exotic. In fact, many of the best designs were already made in the 19^th century and will simply need to be updated for this day and age.

The contributions of creative people, artists, and craftspeople are the critical element. The importance of fresh thinking and the use of incredibly durable materials, like polycarbonate and composites, will change the game. Just this week it was announced that an important breakthrough had been made in the use of sugar in batteries, far more powerful than current ones and much cheaper. The amount of effort going into the research into nanomaterials, carbon fiber and all the rest is bringing home the relevance and importance of weight and scale in the design of better forms of transportation.

Mr. DeBlasio’s declarations about safety need to focus on the greatest challenge, reducing the throw weight of the lightly-guided missiles that fill all of our streets. As long as something has a certain bulk and weight, it is automatically a candidate to be regarded as an offending object due to its potential to do harm. The problem with industrial-scale vehicles is their momentum, calculated as weight times speed. Being hit by a multi-ton object moving at 40 miles per hour is often fatal. When the speed is reduced to 20 or 30 miles per hour this hazard is greatly reduced. When the weight of the vehicle can be measured in tens rather than tons of pounds, the risks are practically eliminated. Human-powered, electric-assisted vehicles are nearly on the same scale as a person walking along a road. At the 10-15 MPH that they normally move, the danger is further made smaller and the visibility provided by a relatively open design adds to their safety too. Of course, they must be operated responsibly.

The Mayor is to be commended for taking on such an important task but errs, at least modestly, in his campaign against carriage horses in this Year of the Horse on the Chinese calendar. We need to remember where we came from and to cultivate our awareness and appreciation of our ties to the rest of the animal kingdom. You don’t have to raise goats or love mice but making the connection to your fellow species and acknowledging this linkage is a good thing and along with such arts as handcraft and Yoga, puts you in touch with forces, otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Muscle-power is awesome, both our own and that of other creatures, and recognizing its appropriate role in a world ruled by mechanical and electronic forms of power is essential to our self-understanding and self-realization.

Whitey, the horse that pulled my Father’s fruit and vegetable wagon along, in the early years of the 20^th Century, made it possible for him to cover enough ground to pay his bills, start a family and make his way up in the world. How could he have done it otherwise? The tiny One Horsepower motors required to help food deliverers and pedicab drivers do their jobs without having to punish their bodies are just as vital to our ability to provide a humane and decent world, as is our willingness to co-exist with our natural counterparts.

Banning little electric-assist motors, for no real reason, is just as cruel as it is to send the carriage horses to their doom, to erase them from our sight. Because of the excellent fertilizer that they manufacture can not find its way to a Community Garden nearby? It seems, in fact, that they are extremely well taken care of, at least at the current time. Replacing them with multi-ton “replicas” will only heighten our sense of artificiality, Disney on steroids, which is already far too prevalent, and permanently wipe out one of the few fragments of natural and historical authenticity remaining. Sadly, Mr. Mayor, It will do this harm while simultaneously reinforcing the mistaken and unhealthy sense of entitlement, that the oversized and overpowered urban-inappropriate forms of transportation, that are so hazardous to our health and which currently dominate our space, depend upon. Let’s hear it for muscle-power (with just a little electric-assist please).

COCOA  COffee  COnversation  Action

The original colonial Tea Party was a bit of blame-the-victim, racist, black-bag op terrorism, with a spoonful of patriotism, and so is the current one for many of its most passionate adherents. The difference is that back then, we were rising up against protected monopolies and giant corporations, whereas the current version is largely funded by these megaliths.

We can do better, much better. If we need a theme song, how about the Automat’s egalitarian and inclusive “Let’s have another cup of coffee”?  We can organize friendly people in all the coffee shops and let the people who have trouble with including everybody have tea shops. We can have Starbucks and the corner diner and the morning breakfast table and they can have the crumpets. We can have meetings morning noon and night, all over town, to figure out how to take back this puppy from the beast. Confused and frightened people, looking for help are being told, ”Sharing is Socialism”. So elevators and trains must be hotbeds of Marxism, and water mains and sidewalks a sinister, devious plot, to tie us together and make us dependent.

So what is COCOA, Coffee Conversation Action?  It’s not a Party exactly, (even though a little fun is always a welcome relief from the tedium), or a means to anoint the already too self-important with additional titles and privileges. Rather it’s a minimal mechanism for building an energetic, ongoing, constantly-evolving plan to maximize the chances that our species can have a healthy future on this rock. It is also an action agenda, without hysterical, lying demagogues, and without non-stop, one-dimensional self-interest masquerading itself as the common good and crushing our humanity in its path. We had sound-outs and teach-ins, but we need a continuously-refreshed framework that frees us with the truth instead of confining us in lies, open for business wherever and whenever sippers meet.

That’s the Coffee Conversation Action Agenda, COCOA². Namely: Move over a little so there’s room for everybody and when it’s freezing out there, who doesn’t need something hot to drink to help take off the edge? No matter how cold the facts get out here, friend, in the coming days, please remember what your Mom told you about what you had to do if you wanted to get into Heaven, and make mine hot Cocoa thank you, not hate-filled Cuckoo.

High 5

Pickers and gatherers of produce, People getting their hands dirty, by pulling roots and breaking stems, filling baskets and boxes, are making about a penny a pound for their work, give or take. When the final products of their efforts are passed along to the consumer, the price will be measured in dollars a pound.

If retailers were willing to mark prices in increments of 5 cents (not a common figure currently) this could be used to signify that they are passing this much down the line, to these hard-working men, women and children, an additional 5 cents per pound for their hard labors. Consumers can make certain this way that those employed to supply them with their needed nutrients are being compensated in a more reasonable way than is common today.

How are foreigners and migrants going to be able to keep track of and report what they are due? Rewarding cooperating growers with better sales will help and a well-monitored program of verification and tracking of funds. Of course, a mechanism must be implemented, to make certain that these funds are not diverted before they reach their intended recipients. For these reasons, one cent of the five will need to be used to devise and operate an efficient and honest process to make certain that everything works as well as humanly possible.

Any funds not needed to administer this program are to be used to enable other populations who are accustomed to receive a minuscule portion of the profits generated through their sweat-fueled efforts, apparel workers, etc., to accomplish this same purpose. Perhaps clothing prices will include a 25 cent additional payment to the gatherers of the raw materials, along with those who sew or dye the cloth, with $.25 prices reflecting retailers’ participation.

Will employers simply lower wages by the amount of these “bonuses”? Unfortunately, some will try to, so effective means must be employed, and constantly improved and updated, to thwart humanity’s worst impulses and habits or nothing will change. Great public shame must be heaped on criminals who rob the poor to help themselves and they must know that they will be identified, blackballed and ejected from civilized commerce.

The details needed to make this a reality must be gleaned from a number of conferences, by telecommunications and in person, and the participation of all those to be affected by these measures, workers, growers, retailers, distributors, and consumers of food. Time is of the essence since this has already taken far too long to implement. These actions must be carried out in harmony with not in place of other attempts to improve the working conditions of all farm laborers.

NUTRITION, HEALTH, AND TRANSPORTATION

THE BIG  QUESTION;  IF YOU ARE DOWN TO YOUR LAST TEN DOLLARS, DO YOU GET FOOD, YOUR MEDICINE OR GAS FOR THE CAR?

We need water, air, and the occasional snack, to survive. Clothing and a roof over your head may not be quite as essential, depending upon local climate and social customs of course, but are still pretty important. If you are a person of deep faith, you have the conviction that all of this will arrive, in good time, due to the grace of the Almighty. All that is required of you is patience and fortitude and the ability to suffer the pain which comes from realizing that there is still something missing from this picture. It can even feel as if all of this seemingly undeserved and unnecessary distress was put there on purpose, to put your faith to the test, since it feels otherwise to be so purposeless and random.

If you are more modern in your ideas, you might consider it the job of the government to make sure that you can fulfill these basic, human needs. Some would put companionship in the “absolutely needed” column too, but, aside from our sentimental preferences, we have a demonstrated ability to exist, even prosper, without any nearby two-legged accomplices, for quite some time. Got to have drinkable water and breathable air no matter what though. So why are our supplies of both under attack and in jeopardy? Are we completely out of our minds? Do we think that playing Russian Roulette with our essentials makes the game more interesting, raises the stakes and creates excitement out of the mundane? Is it possible that what we have always taken for granted, as belonging to us, is being completely commodified, and that everything has, or will soon have, a price tag, even the air we breathe?

Meanwhile, if so much has been reduced to numbers, pushed so far into the abstract that we can hardly recognize its connection to our reality, how do we push back and reassert the need to recognize, acknowledge, even celebrate that linkage? Since passivity is the ocean that we swim through to reach our life rafts of activity, it is no wonder that there is so little coordination amongst us in this continuous, ongoing process. Each person is too involved in staying afloat, paddling towards their destinations and making sure that there is plenty of oxygen in the immediate vicinity, to worry much about anybody else, except their own blood and kin.

So, if a problem arises which requires the coordinated effort of these various arbitrarily-distanced souls, there is no mechanism for enabling that to take place. The institutions we formerly relied upon, as narrow-focused as they were, religion, proximity and the rest, are moribund. Sports teams serve as place setters for real community and symbols replace actuality. You root for the home team, maybe win a few and probably lose the rest. Then a Karina happens and we are all brought back down, for a little while, kicking and screaming, to reality. Then the Dream Machine kicks in again and we are glued into our easy chairs, back on the program, waiting for the next wave to break.

The ultimate injury suffered here can not be quantified and in most cases does not even have a name. It is embodied in a concept which we named “empathy”. It is the ability to share someone else’s pleasure or pain, accomplishment or loss. It is natural to us, as is the mechanism which permits us to shut it off and become absorbed in ourselves. If you listen to popular music, the most common word in songs is always “you” and close behind that “love”. The focus is constantly directed to the other, because that is where your affirmation lies, with your lover or your child. The ability to care more for them than for yourself is the path we have been given to escape the tyranny of our own bodies and selves, to displace our attentions and affections on another. Since the other primary drive programmed into us by our natures and our conditioning is to focus on ourselves and to relegate others to bit parts and extras, this is the exposure of our centers to the light, the closest we may ever come to a revelatory experience.

When we can provide all who are alive, and all that is alive, with the grace afforded by these flashes of unselfishness, and unification with what is outside of ourselves, this can be a long sea voyage to the land where change lives. Without mechanisms to sustain you on your way, it becomes very difficult to hold your course though, so we need to become designers and builders, to re-form the institutions and methods that we have contrived, or which, in most cases, been imposed on us over time. Since so much of this existing framework was contrived with only minimal feedback from the consumers of all of this society-building, there is a lot of slack to take up.

When the equipment provided to us to help in our encounter with raw nature has been in the manner of weapons, to force nature back into a predictable and beneficial state, for the sake of distributing better prizes to the populace, there is no reckoning of the long-term effects of so much manipulation of our resources. This is a giant experiment gone off the tracks. Literally, when it comes to trains and figuratively when it comes to everything else. Take the food supply. Here is one thought about how to help put it back on the tracks.

Trike-share and the future of electric transport

 

Many of the most disturbing events taking place around the world, the Middle East, Ukraine, etc. revolve around the supply of fossil fuels. It is a militarized world because there are stores of wealth, instead of more equitable distribution, and they must be defended. The tools used to maintain the status quo are also heavily tilted in favor of big machines, military, and civilian, cars, trucks, airplanes, etc. that also depend upon these materials to provide their motive power. WWII, and even WWI, in many’s estimations, was largely decided by the combatants’ ability to manufacture, use and fuel these enormous mechanisms effectively, to employ the heavy armor that carries its ordinance into battle. In some important ways, in spite of all the miniaturization and other technological advances made in the last century, this is still true. Nobody should ignore the bravery of troops and cleverness of commanders as key factors in these matters of course, along with the righteousness of their causes, and the cooperation of populations in these struggles, but the machines, and the fuels they run on are still huge factors in determining who prevails.

 

Even local conflagrations, like those now taking place in Ferguson Missouri, one commentator suggested, are deeply rooted in the frequency of car stops, the assumed profiling that goes into them and the higher rate of incarceration generated by unbalanced enforcement. “The New Jim Crow”, the book I am currently reading, makes a strong argument that policing policies have had a great impact on the definition of communities and the ability of their members to assume their rightful place within societies. The remarkable revelations regarding the use of retired military equipment and the adoption of quasi-military tactics have become a serious element of the overall picture.

 

We have accustomed ourselves to a world where speed, power and the ability to physically overcome the obstacles that restrain our ambitions and assumed freedoms have become paramount concerns, both psychologically and practically and the source of a preponderance of violence and unhappiness. This is mostly a direct result of the importance of status and the historical differences in access to resources which the past has delivered to us in abundance. We may be able to encourage a more balanced and egalitarian approach to these situations by modifying some behaviors but the underlying influences are powerful and without examining them and finding ways to re-balance these situations, any cosmetic or minor improvements may just serve to sustain the prior contradictions and misalignments.

 

Our inability to face up to and deal with these important issues is dismissed by most as a consequence of our busy lives and pressures to keep things together in an increasingly pressurized and difficult environment. Who has the time to devote to causes when the garbage has to be taken out and the mortgage payments made in time? For the privileged it is mostly a question of priorities, sorting through available pleasures and choosing the most attractive ones. For everybody else, social, environmental and other problems are considered insoluble anyway and beyond the reach of the common man. It is up to the editorialists and the habitually discontented, widely regarded as maladjusted individuals with the need to complain about something, to bring up these issues and grind their molars to bring themselves a measure of self-satisfaction. The only way that things will change if there are a catastrophe and the cure might easily be worse than the problem if you’re not careful, so why bother?

This attitude is encouraged by those who would prefer that things stay the same regardless of the consequences. We are frozen in space, comforted by the amount of company we have in this paralytic coma. We know that our leaders are dunces and expect no more from them. We know our neighbors are in the same boat so why should we be the ones to stand out? The differences in priorities between old and young, black and white, male and female, in themselves are so profound and effective in determining our attitudes and ideas, that the smaller ones, like the variations in income and prospects, sink into unimportance.

We take for granted a host of incongruities and distinctions that are really unfortunate and unnatural yet too minor to rise into full consciousness. We know that everybody is different and would be horrified to live in a world where these aspects of our individual relationship to the world did not exist since we identify ourselves by them and spend a lot of time enhancing or submerging them. Sure, one person is a better dancer and another a smoother talker and that is OK. But what if one seems touched by an Angel and another doomed to fail, should that be accepted without question?

 

We love the competition. More so when we or our team wins, but the thrill of being in a contest where one might prevail gins up the adrenalin regardless. Some of this is perfectly natural and a wholesome way to motivate people to excel. If the game is rigged though, it can dispirit the players and make them permanently cynical. Even more importantly, it creates a model for other activities and sets standards of behavior. It has been said that in a baseball game in Japan, the perfect score is a tied one, and participants are happiest when everybody is a winner and nobody a loser. This kind of societal compassion might be pointed at by cynics as the reason that the country has been in economic distress for decades, a core failure that keeps the spirit of success from pushing individuals to achieve and thereby prosper. Another interpretation is that the commonality here is an expression of the humanity of those people and far more valuable than a trophy or medallion stuck away in a drawer somewhere.

 

Empathy is the enemy of dominance and can not be measured or put into a chart or a bottle to be put on a shelf. In our culture, we are captives of quantification and have sacrificed the concept of quality to the accumulation of points, square feet of house size, horsepower and stacks of possessions. Not surprisingly, 750 watts, a mere one horsepower, brings to mind a lonesome cowboy, a sad and unimposing figure, yet this is three times the figure permitted in the European Union and Asia to propel a person 25 KPH on an electric-assist bike, enough to do the job of getting somebody to work or play each day. It might be necessary to double that figure if you add a second person as a passenger or substantial sized load of goods, some weather protection or the energy to overcome a strong headwind, but it is enough for almost any purpose. Is there any rationale for keeping these vehicles off the road since bicycles are now considered legitimate vehicles everywhere and permitted on city and country roads everywhere?

 

The New York State situation is illustrative. The NY Times this week highlighted the increased role of electric-assist bikes in Germany, hardly a third-world country, with thousands of them in use by the post office there and a rapidly increasing presence as commuter vehicles throughout this heavily-industrialized nation. Last year, a bill here to legalize these vehicles came with a day of being passed by the NY State Legislature. The prospects for this happening next year are good, especially since the national bike organizations, People for Bikes, etc. have now indicated their strong desire for this to happen. For too long, the bike culture looked upon these devices as heretical, a departure from the ethic of self-reliance and self-propulsion essential to their vision of the role of cycles in the society. Finally, they have come to realize that there is a huge portion of the population that wants to bike but finds the exertions necessary to overcome hilly terrain, the long distances of their commutes and their desires to show up to work without having to change clothes, to be serious impediments to the use of regular bikes. Logic, fairness and common sense are overcoming historic prejudices and limitations of vision, but much too slowly.

 

The e-bike industry has done a pretty good job of perfecting this technology. It has come at a price though, in that typical bikes are in the $1500 to $3000 range and the cost of lithium-ion batteries is still relatively high. There is the talk of breakthroughs that will radically lower these costs and extend range while making the vehicles as light as typical mountain bikes rather than the 60-80 pounds that were the rule when lead-acid batteries were the norm. The designs are beginning to evolve rapidly as well, with Kickstarter and other such venues highlighting exotic and exciting-looking alternatives with extra features such as special communications, health-monitoring and mobile-device charging becoming standard equipment on many models. Instead of merely taking regular bikes and adding on a motor these vehicles are now beginning to forge an identity of their own. Prices in the $3000-$5000 range are no longer unusual and every major automobile company from Ford to Mercedes is featuring their own version of this new transport modality. Models with higher speeds, beyond those permitted under the Federal law that limits them to 20 MPH without assistance, are also becoming more popular here, even though they may require more paperwork and permits.

 

In spite of all these changes, the real potential of this modality to radically transform our transportation systems is still to be realized fully. This will involve the shift from the two-wheeled model, a bike basically, to the three-wheeled version usually referred to as a trike. Our concept of trikes is conditioned by their identity as the vehicle of choice for 3-6-year-old kids. The hilarious notion, popularized by the old “Laugh-in” bits, of a full-grown person precariously turning the wheel of his tiny tricycle too quickly and tumbling over sideways, or the elderly resident of a retirement community tooling along at 3 MPH, still dominates our thinking. Human-powered and electric-assisted hybrids, with some weather protection and freight capacity, like the ELF, are now being born, even appearing this month on the cover of the Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog, but are still rare and virtually invisible. In time, they should become the most common form of travel, especially when they can become part of vehicle-sharing systems. Many new designs will need to be perfected and introduced to the public and overcome the limitations imposed by unjustifiable rules, such as the one proposed in New York State which prevents those under 16 years of age from riding as passengers.

 

Sure, over time we will be able to overcome these restrictions and sense will prevail but we are already decades behind in our thinking and really need a leap forward to make up for some of this lost time. One of the reasons that it is difficult to accomplish this is because of the pressures exerted by those with the largest stake in the existing system. Keeping archaic laws in place is possible through the intransigence of public officials who automatically endorse the policies already in place without considering their actual impact. It took 10 years for the NYS Senate to even consider the legalization of e-bikes even though a bill had been passed in the Assembly each year all during that time.

 

This reflexive endorsement of the status quo is a willful failure to consider the improvements to our lives that new technology can sometimes provide, with no other rationale than the protection of existing interests and their historical limitations. Imagine if we were still using landline rotary dial phones because AT and T preferred that system. More public pressure can sometimes help and the ability of these new interesting industries to promote their products matters as well, but we have lost decades due to this form of reactionary mindsets. It is a subtle form of corruption and is one of the factors that is eroding the potential for those now struggling with the exceptional pressure to survive and prosper in this economy. Downscaling is very difficult for those institutions, like governments, that depend upon the scale of economic activity without necessarily relating to the amount of useful activity involved versus the amount of waste being generated. We ordinarily do not distinguish between the two and in this case, we must.

 

This calculation does not even count the most important issue of all, our health. Giving us the option of using our muscles and bodies to accomplish needed work is essential to our futures. The greatest costs incurred are in health care and the loss of vitality is what shortens life and makes it less rewarding and pleasurable. Here is the opportunity to preserve our most important abilities, at the same time as we save money and improve the environment and it is not being encouraged in every way? How can that be? Are we so decadent or are our institutions so out of touch with the most pressing needs that we can not recognize this reality? Sadly, there is only one answer. We are lost and we can not expect our “guides” to bring us home. Only a much higher level of activism and consciousness can change this situation and it is ours, not others, that matters. If we can’t fix something as obvious as this, how will we ever be able to take on the more difficult questions? Answer: we can’t.