this is how i feel when i walk-in-waikiki at night. i think maybe there are subsets of people and i just don’t like those people. each “establishment” keeping its own patronage, the people coalesce in a strange fragmentation.
i feel i’ve lost my enzymes.
I bought four cans of Red Bull Cola today. I feel dirty and energetic.
I buried pineapple rinds and tuscan melon rinds in the garden today. I feel sort of dirty and organic. The actinomycetes smelled nice when I plunged the shovel into the earth.
I rode my bike around Honolulu today. The vog made me feel Asian. Very small and stifled. I felt dirty and sweaty and very constricted.
I had an americano at the Coffee Bush and Tea Plant. I felt bad about quitting on my first day of work three years ago. But then the barrista fucked up on my girlfriend’s espresso-drink, so I didn’t feel that bad. I felt hyper and bouggie.
I ate grass fed beef and taro greens for dinner today. I also had mug bean sprouts and reconstituted portobello mushrooms. I felt very healthy but not very satiated. I wanted some rice.
I have been reading a three books at once. This one, this one, and this one. They are all good except this one doesn’t tell me much of what I don’t know. I feel like a bibliophile.
I tried to watch jPod: the Sitcom. But Canada sucks. I felt very American.
I listened to Pandora and had to read ads for cellphone service en espanyol. I felt even more American.
I went to Hanauma Bay on Monday. I learned many things. Like: my girlfriend looks more beautiful when she is doing something she loves. Feral chickens integrate nicely in a kiawe silviculture. Volunteer guides don’t know much about esoteric flora. Breathing through a tube isn’t as hard as I’d thought before trying it in earnest for the first time. I like swimming if I don’t have to bother to turn my head to breathe. Pringles are delicious. I would rather buy a tin of them to eat while waiting for the bus than buy a taxi back to Waikiki. I felt very happy to be me.
I have also been watching a lot of tv on the internet. This is nice. As is this and this. But I can’t seem to find a reliable source for this. I feel very happy and fulfilled, although this makes me wonder what the heck is going on these days with script writing. What is Josh Whedon’s thing? I feel confused everytime I watch something he has written. That’s what happens when a man tries to be a feminist.
I am currently writing a thesis on the positive uses of so-called weed species. I am investigating three species in particular: Prosopis pallida (Kiawe) Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, (Silver carp), and Miconia calvescens (referred to in Hawaii simply as Miconia.)
There are many uses and functions for both carp and kiawe in a permaculture system. They are, of course, invasive in many areas outside of their native range. But once established they are not easily removed or controlled. So why not use them productively, and hopefully control them in some positive way, instead of branding them a nuisance or a problem?
I think a good example of this approach is how many permaculturists use and regard dandelions (T. officinale and T. erythrospermum). Every part of the plant is used in a positive way, even if many people view it as a weed or pest. In using the plant, permaculturists improve the land, earn a living, enrich their lives, and produce valuable products. In addition, dandelions are valued for many positive ecological functions. Dynamic accumulators, pioneer plants, apiaries, and food sources for wild animals.
Miconia, in Hawaii and many other tropical places, is viewed as an irredeemably bad plant. Academic literature generally discusses it in a negative light, primarily chronicling the removal or eradication of it. Large groups of botanical volunteers go out to destroy stands of the plant which, to be fair, is a terrible burden on any forest ecosystem outside of __________. It makes the place unenjoyable and tends to crowd out a lot of other, more desirable plants.
I cannot find a single positive use for Miconia on any website or in any electronic resource. Governmental policy is rather unkind to the plant; predictably, so is the research coming out of land grant colleges. One source describes effort toward producing pharmaceuticals from extracts of the plant.
The thesis discusses the positive benefits of inhabitory environmentalism. I.e., if a person lives and depends on a given piece of land for his or her survival and prosperity, they will generally treat it far better than otherwise, and will often improve degraded landscapes as well. One way to describe it as regenerative design
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Human-Ecosystems-Landscape-Resources/dp/155963720X#sipbody
http://www.oasisdesign.net/index.htm
Have you heard or know of any positive uses of miconia plants in productive, human-designed ecosystems?
I am a big fan and occasional practitioner of permaculture. I took a Permaculture Design Course about a year ago. Not much has happened with that recently, but I think about the ideas a lot.
One way to describe permaculture is as applied Ecological Design. Makes sense. But what is Ecological Design? And how does permaculture differ from this field of inquiry?
I'm not sure he had to work that hard to achieve this level of geekery. It's almost as if he has a suprobligatory desire to be as much of a period bike geek as possible.
Honlulu has all the problems of a big city, plus a unique one: we lack a free market. The most important material aspects of our lives in Hawaii are controlled by the government through use or threat of force. Either through a forced, centralized monopoly by the government (such as the police force or taxation), or through a distributed, delegated monopoly by the government’s sub-contractors (compulsory education, water service, access to alcoholic spirits and other libations, even transit and shipping in and out of Hawaii).
Free markets all over the world foster creativity, fairness, and a more secure and sustainable material culture. But in Hawaii, government intervention stifles those positive qualities. They are replaced with economic fragility, environmental harm, and bumbling inefficiency.
Meanwhile, our city entrophies under the constant strain of homelessness, pollution, traffic congestion, rampant drug abuse, chronic hunger and malnutrition, and many more social ills. The government, which controls most of our lives with the barrel of a gun, sees these problems and throws up its hands.
Homeless peddling drugs out of public parks (in which they also squat)? Children being force-fed a lackluster education? Prodigal water waste and pollution? Constant threat of murder, road rage, or domestic assault? In answer to all these problems, the government — which has set itself up as the sole recourse and authority — claims in can do nothing more, and continues to steal our money to pay for ineffectual (and sometimes dangerous) social programs.
Enough is enough. The government has no place controlling our economy. It is time for regular people to take back their material culture. It is absurd to think that if any other organization did things as poorly and rudely as the government, they would still be the vendor of choice for any rational person.
a single house at the top of Saint Louis rise shines in the morning sun. it’s the house that is usually in clouds when the rains come; this house in the waoakua blinds me when i look out my floor to ceiling window.
Man shot in police encounter” is a new story in the Monday, November 23 edition of the Honolulu Starbulletin. The story is about an encounter between the Honolulu Police Department and a “29-year-old man who allegedly” ran away from police. The man 29-year-old man who allegedly retreated from the encounter, was shot in the back as he ran away from the group of armed men. The 29-year-old man who allegedly was shot while running away from a fight was asleep when the armed youth, aged 23, and his partner — who remains unidetified for his own protection — attacked. for His Own Protection initially demanded the 29-year-old man who allegedly retreated follow an instruction. 29-year-old man who allegedly retreated then ran away. The armed posse then fired their weapon.
29-year-old man who allegedly retreated had been initially shot.
This is a biased headline. It signifies a pervasive bias. Who or what entity holds the bias is not clear in this reading. But a bias is evident.
Man shot in police encounter” places the Man, who ran away from a fight with at least two heavily armed men, as the actor in this drama. The direct object, therefor, takes primairy grammatical importance — requiring the alternate passive voice construction. This is considered a style flaw by the AP style manual, along with Struck and White’s “Elements of Style.”
No other headline in the paper has a stylistic bias as glaring as this one.
Sunday
after waiting a week or so for the parts and tools, I finally converted my Crosscheck into a single speed. I used some Origin8 spacers and a no name cog I got from the LBS.
It’s working out fairly well, except for the chain, which doesn’t seem to like its pins being reused. I’ll have to get another one anyway, because I’ll be running a TomiCog with two front chainrings. An 8-speed SRAM recommended for that.
While I was swapping out parts and I had everything out and my hands dirty, I decided to repack my bearings. It’s the first time I’ve done that in about four years. Before today, I’d only done it once.
That’s a tedious affair. But it has to be done. My wheel’s been running slow for months now, and the bike shops in Suncheon just liked top spray some WD-40 kind of thing in them.
The repacking went well, and I think I got the cones pretty well adjusted. Except for one thing: I messed up the axle spacing a little bit, because my wheel is about a centimeter or two off center.
Otherwise, it’s all good.
