Category: Technology

Climate change – What can I do?

By showering less often I’m cutting my water use to less than half, and turning down the flow rate reduces water use by about half again.

I’ve just watched the latest ‘Just have a think’ video from Dave Borlace. I really enjoy his videos – they are well produced, clear, uncompromising, polite, thorough … well, you get the idea. The latest one asks what we can do individually to help reduce the pace of climate change, and he describes a survey that shows most people are just waiting for someone else to do something about it.

That rings true!

Here’s the video, watch it, then scroll on down and read my personal take on, ‘What can I do?’ I believe we can have a large impact – if we all pull together.

What can I do?

I’m going to share one idea with you, something I’ve been doing for a long time now, and something I’m finding quite easy that also makes a big difference. Just remember though, this one idea is just an example. Maybe you can think of something in your own life that you could change that would also have a useful impact.

I used to shower every day, after all it takes less time, water and energy than having a bath and that has to be a good thing, right? Well, yes.

But for a number of years now, I’ve made a point of showering once every two or three days, turning down the water flow, turning down the temperature, and also minimising my use of shower gel. I still enjoy my showers, the temperature’s warm enough to be pleasant, I’m not advocating cold showers!

So how does this help?

Much more than you might think. By showering less often I’m cutting my water use to less than half, and turning down the flow rate reduces water use by about half again. So I’m using only 25% as much overall. Turning down the temperature a little combined with the reduced water use reduces the heating energy required to perhaps just 20%. I only use shower gel under my arms and around the more personal parts of my body, cutting consumption by 50% or maybe a bit more. Combined with showering less often my use of shower gel is therefore down to 20 or 25% overall.

Bear in mind that shower gel takes energy to manufacture as do the plastic bottles that it comes in, as does disposing of the empties. Add in the energy cost of producing and supplying water, and of removing and treating the waste water, and it all begins to add up.

I hope this illustrates the energy savings that can be achieved by one, small change in one person’s lifestyle. And there are other benefits too. For example, my skin microbiome is probably more healthy for the reduced frequency and coverage of shower gel. If we all did this, and thought of other ways to reduce our individual energy use, we could make a huge difference.

Don’t just leave it to others. Work out what you can do – and make a difference!

See also:

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

The snowflake designer

I’ve always been interested in their symmetry, their beautiful shapes, and their infinite variety

Since I first saw a photograph of a snowflake under the microscope, I’ve always been interested in their symmetry, their beautiful shapes, and their infinite variety. But never had I imagined that it would be possible to create such snowflakes in the lab or control their growth to order.

Meet Ken Libbrecht, the snowflake guy. He began by investigating how they form, and can now build snowflakes more or less to order. Amazing! Watch this video in which Ken demonstrates his work to Derek Muller on Veritasium.

Ken has discovered so much about the conditions that cause snowflakes to form. He also understands the subtleties of humidity, temperature and so on that produce different kinds of snowflake growth, why they show the six-fold radial symmetry that they do, why they branch at particular places, and why individual ‘arms’ of a snowflake are almost identical to one another while different snowflakes are unique.

See also

Evolution and behaviour

A computer program that simulates coding and inheritance on the one hand, and neural function on the other, permits the emulation of simple animal-like organisms

Today I want to share two striking YouTube videos that I found recently. Maybe you’d like to watch them yourself.

Part of a DNA molecule (from Wikipedia)

Introduction – The animation shows the molecular structure of DNA, rotating so you can visualise it more easily. Watson and Crick famously published this structure in April 1953.

DNA contains the genetic information that specifies the nature of plants, animals and other life forms. Each species has it’s own form of this DNA ‘instruction book’. Amongst other things, a species’ DNA controls the basic structure of the brain just as it does for other body parts. But here’s an interesting fact: The coding and behaviour of DNA can be simulated by strings of characters stored in a computer.

Brains involve cells called neurons with connections between them, and neural networks running on a computer can behave in a similar way to a very simple brain. Building a computer program that simulates coding and inheritance on the one hand, and neural function on the other, permits the emulation of simple animal-like organisms, and there are applications out there that do just this.

First example – One such program is Minute Labs’ Evolution Simulator (check out their YouTube to see it in action).

Second example – Another program, and I want to focus mainly on this one, is from David Randall Miller. He wrote a particularly fascinating simulator, see his YouTube demo and explanation below for some quite deep insights. It’s a long video, but breaks into logical chunks for easier viewing; I suggest viewing the first section and continuing if it seems interesting.

It’s a really helpful approach for anyone wanting to better understand evolution. It assumes only fundamental levels of the topics, but will enhance your appreciation of maths and computing while also demonstrating the basics of genetics, inheritance, simple neural networks, and animal behaviour. That’s quite a lot of benefit from just one video!

Some questions to ask yourself…

  • What new understandings did you gain?
  • Did you disagree with anything?
    • If so, why?
  • What conclusions did you draw about the nature of living things?
  • Was anything surprising to you?
  • What questions do the videos cause you to ask?

Another way – write.as

The focus moves from advertising, costly payments and central control to an absence of these things

There’s more than one way of doing most things, and write.as is an alternative way of writing stuff online. Whether you want to create a blog, a story, or just private notes, write.as is well worth a look.

It’s part of a long standing move by some web users away from the commercial world of Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on, towards a very different model of which Wikipedia is the best known example. The focus moves from advertising, costly payments and central control to an absence of these things.

If you like freedom, privacy and simplicity, you’ll find all three at write.as . I suggest you take a quick look around, you can begin with a simple page I put together in less than five minutes – write.as/chrisjj

Marble Machine – Wow!

What an amazing device

I came across this marble machine today, somebody posted the link to Mastodon, I watched it once, and absolutely had to write about it here. What an amazing device. It does lose its marbles – well, a few of them anyway towards the end.

The astonishing Marble Machine

What is Mastodon, I hear you cry? It’s sort of a bit like Twitter, but is an open, free and distributed system. Wikipedia, the fount of (almost) all knowledge knows what it is. (Wikipedia even knows about the Marble Machine.)