Day 365 (bis) : End!

Well this is it.  After 365 days my blog is finally coming to an end.  I know there have been ups and downs, good and bad, controversial and bland, funny and depressing so I appreciate those of you who have managed to stay with me all this time.  My blog has been a great outlet but also a burden sometimes.  On average it has taken me 1 hour a day which, if you subtract 7hrs of sleep and 9hrs of work, represents 12.5% of my personal and family time (25% of my evening time).  My darling wife has been very understanding (even appreciative sometimes) but I think I need to increase my level of home interaction.  I have the feeling that I haven't managed  to convince a large following to take up cold showering or close their facebook accounts but I hope I have occasionally informed and provoked.

I would like to thank all of you who commented, sent me messages of encouragement, referred to me in their own blogs or just occasionally read it.

This blog has been made with 100% organic thoughts and is completely recyclable.  No animals were harmed in the process.  No slave or child labour was used in the production of this blog which is certified as 100% free of nationalism.

Just in case you were wondering the blog competition was won by my sister (hiding under the pseudonym of Aunt_C).  She therefore wins the right to takeover my blog for a year (you're welcome!  Ruben came in second thanks to a concerted effort in the last quarter and Julian Farod (10 retroactive points to the first one to tell me who that is) came in third after being in the lead for the whole of the 3rd quarter.

Day 365 : End ?

Not quite.  Its late and I have a 6:40 AM flight tomorrow so my final blog post will be tomorrow!

Day 364 : Justice

This is my penultimate blog and I realise I haven't talked about justice.  I have had occasion to go to (civil) court a few times in my life and while you wait for your turn you listen to other people's cases.  The most interesting part of the proceeding is the realization that most of the time both sides have equally plausible stories.  I remember wondering how judges could ever decide cases when both sides have seemingly cast iron cases.  When my children were younger if they had done something wrong and they started to blame it on each other I would tell them I'm not interested in the stories as it was impossible for me to tell whose version was the "real" one (if there is such a thing).   I'm not a fan of the criminal justice system, but I can see why sometimes society needs to protect itself against individuals with violent behaviour.  On civil cases however I think we need to rethink our approach.  Instead of having a judge we could have a mediator.  The parties involved in the dispute would be required to negotiate until they had reached a common agreement.  In the absence of an agreement both parties could be fined (according to their means) or the object of the dispute could be sequestered.  The best outcome is always a negotiated rather then an imposed outcome.  Justice is based on the idea that there is a "fair" or "real" version of a human interaction.  We need to move away for this absolutist (quasi religious) view of the world and accept the relativity of all our point of view. There are 15 million civil lawsuits every year in the United States: that's 15 million occasions to engage with someone and try to come to an agreement.

Day 363: Offset

Its Tuesday night and I left Paris on Sunday afternoon taking a train to Amsterdam then I drove 3 hours to Essen near Bremen in Germany the next day Monday I drove 2 hours to Hamburg. Finally today I flew to Paris this morning and flew back to Hamburg this evening and then I will fly back to Paris on Friday morning.  In one week I will have generated at least 250Kg of CO2 when the individual target to  combat climate change is 40Kg per week. As I can't change jobs in the short term I need to offset my excess carbon generation.  Luckily there are  all sorts of projects to which you can give money to plant trees or otherwise offset your CO2 emission.  I'm not a fan of just sending a check, so I worked out what I need to do:

1. Assuming I will live to a 100
2. My full life of CO2 emissions will probably represent around 800 Tons
3. I need 2 trees to absorb 1 ton of CO2

That means that if I want my presence on this earth to have been carbon neutral I need to plant 1,600 trees, lets call it 2,000 to be safe.  So my next project will be to work out where I can buy enough land (preferably for a low price) to be able to plant 2000 trees!

Suggestions and offers welcome

2 more posts

Day 362: Water

I had 5 hours sleep last night and I will have less than 5 tonight, so I will keep this post brief.  Yesterday I slept in Cloppenberg which is a small village close to Bremen in North Germany.  I can confirm that cold showers there are particularly cold probably 12° rather than 14° or  even 15° in Malta.  After over a year of cold showers I have no desire to go back.  Even though its still hard sometimes to get under the water my overall level of satisfaction is extremely high.   I'm also sure that they contributed to my overall health this year..  I wonder if I will ever take a warm shower again?  

3 Posts left.