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| Jan. 29, 2018. |
Idea number 6. Re-shippers
Reusable mailers for all shipping companies to eliminate cardboard boxes, tubes, and paper (SASE) envelopes. Shippers belong to and automatically return to the nearest sender location, USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, Mac, whomever. "Rent" of shipper included in postage/shipping cost. Especially for high-cost goods like laptop computers, the reusable shipping containers will easily pay for themselves after a specific number of trips from warehouse to homes and businesses.
Plastic last “forever” why not use it for a durable product that could be easily cleaned of road grime etc… The chips-stickers we now use only once could be installed in the box and another reader-sticker could be placed on the address strap that seals the shipper. A record of the distance traveled by each shipper and weight at scanning could be both fun to see how many miles/kilometers and how many trips each re-shipper travels before it gets worn-in to a state that requires it to be up-cycled.
The cardboard we now use for shipping boxes could be better used for packaging of perishable goods, like milk cartons or ice-cream tubs etc… Because cardboard is compostable or burnable. Plastic is not.
If you wonder what these plastic crates might look like, the USPS and other companies that handle bulk sorting of mail/packages. Use tubs in mail centers all over the world right now. But, I bet everything I ever wanted and don’t have that there are a few hundred designers out there twiddling their thumbs that would be entertained for several lifetimes by designing the most efficient reusable shipper for all types of products, and I also bet some of them are already designed right now, just waiting for the world to realize they need them.
I'm just going down my list 6/50 posted on this blog so far this year, 2018.
I know this doodle/draw fool for, Jan. 30, 2018 is a completely unrealistic green roof urban landscape - it's my daydream, let me lose my mind and find peace there.
Idea number 7. No more toxic roof chemical runoff -- anywhere.
I thought this daydream every day when I walked the streets of Inner Sunset San Francisco or rode the trains and stared out the window at all the houses and shops going by. I knew the reason people didn’t do it, couldn’t do a green roof/rooftop living area, was money. But, SF is the second densest population in the US after New Jersey. I know people wanted that green space away from the street.
The roof has three vectors of climate impact. The first is chemical runoff in water. The second is soaking up heat and radiating it back. The third is our buildings are taking up space on the planet that used to be part of the ecosystem. We can’t give our cities back unless we lived in subterranean dwellings with a forest or a prairie growing on top. But, we can reduce our impact, maybe even grow some wildflowers for everyone, including the bees.
P.s. in case you think I just make this crap up. Runoff chemical leaching from roofing materials has been studied for decades and they are working to improve what we install on top of our buildings.
Here's a couple images from a study done by Washington State Department of Ecology.
Speaking of toxic chemical run-off and pollution caused by cement kilns.
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| Doodle for Jan. 31, 2018. |
Daydream number 8. No more asphalt or cement parking lots.
From city corners to small town strip-malls, wouldn’t it be great if all those square mile, after who know how many million square miles of parking lots and parking spots, were converted to flexible public green spaces with EV (electric vehicle) charging! Actual parks on the roofs at the top with planter boxes and benches to pause and take breaks or eat lunch outside sheltered from sun and rain under solar-panel roofs, tilted to collect both rain and sunshine.
In front of stores, no more curbs, I hate curbs. Instead bench-high planter-boxes on the expanded sidewalk where the parking spots used to line the streets, making extra room for carts and perhaps a seating area or two for people waiting.
Of course, pick-up/drop off spots near the entrances would be nice with handicap only parking. Everybody else uses public transit or parks in the towers.
Number nine continues where this daydream leaves the parking spot.
All paved roads for slower traffic under 35 miles per hour, could be designed to breathe. Light in color in most climate areas, dark only in extreme polar roads that are heated to keep them clear of ice. Roads made of pearled glass (i.e. big grains of sand) native gravel and recycled plastic (i.e. No tar, no asphalt, no cement). The entire road surface has tire groves, drainage and is designed to prevent road kills.
When a sidewalk runs along a road or crosses it, pedestrian and bike paths are separated from the tire grooves. The median has markers for self-driving cars to keep traffic in the grooves.
Around schools and urban shopping hubs, the entire drop off/pick-up areas could be textured brick/cobblestone-like a speed bumpity bump. Automatic photograph tickets of anybody speeding past children and school buses or shoppers. City center areas should be pedestrian first, automobile-second ergonomic designed safer for people than cars a.k.a. pedestrian-first spaces, with underground mass transit to parking structure hubs and burgs.
The fast roads are all underground. It doesn’t even have to be deep, it could be a tube with the top at the surface where the highway used to be. Or a tube under a city.
P.s. Fast highway tubes under cities is not my idea. Do a search for Elon Musk underground LA, tube highway designs.
I did doodle something today, but I decided to start mixing things up. This mutant gnome is a stand-in for today's #drawfool P.s. Yes, it has 8 limbs/tentacles 5 feet, two arms and a tail. Feb. 1, 2018.
I spent all morning and afternoon outlining a 5 book science fiction series that keeps burbling up in my dreams, again. No joke, the first book I started when I was 16, it's somewhere around draft 5 progress wise, tho only 3/4 written and printed out double-spaced for editing notes, in two boxes (one box with notes from a beta reader). Then a prequel happened, a novella or short book via various dreams I kept scribbling on in-between other projects in 2015. It's also mostly drafted. I have decided that if I'm going to embark on another novel series, this time it's going to be completely outlined with storyboards and maps before I get lost in the details.
I wrote this idea out as a joke in a blog post last year, in 2016.
Here’s a link if you would like to read that post.
The next paragraph is a synopsis if you would rather skim the gist. Bellow the gist is my opinion of grass.
Save water and end lawn mowing machine noise, weed whacking, edge trimming and mowing machine fuel/energy consumption and cease fertilizer/pesticide/weed killer related runoff pollution of surrounding water systems, i.e. lakes, creeks, rivers, oceans etc... Restore native habitat for birds, bees, frogs, toads, moles, field mice, and insects. Only, athletic areas for playing sports should be maintained by mowing: soccer/football fields, golf courses, baseball diamonds and other athletic fields used by many people.
As for me? I love grass. But, just like cut flowers. I love grass uncut, wild, gently changing color over the seasons, pale green and light purple, yellow, straw white, brown peeking out of the snow, the green tips of sprouting bulbs, the round or interesting pattern forbs, plant like clover that nitrogen fix the soil, and are the preferred diet of grazing sheep. Then the grass, all types, grows tall and blooms. There are more species of grass than any other type of plants on Earth. Each grass has its own grain or seed pattern. Some grow along the stem, some cluster at the top like wild oats or those tall fluffs of Pampas grass that grow all along the California coast, or the native bamboo grass, red and green that grow in South Carolina swamps. Bluegrass the plant is in its own life as musical as Bluegrass the music. As long as no one cuts it. Tallgrass dances in the rain and the wind. One of my childhood memories is wandering through a field in Oklahoma that once was prairie, following a turtle to a cattle watering hole. Real prairie is not as dense as the bounce of the tundra of Alaska. When we went to a wildlife refuge, real prairie is lumpy and uneven, several layers of grass and plants matted but it is beautiful. Like a painting, endless texture and patterns to follow. We can’t easily replicate prairie in the grass areas of our yards. Our yards are not vast enough, and there are too many plants all woven together. But, if we each learned to “paint” with a mix of a few native plants, starting around our own homes, we would change the world.
I continue this thought on my leisurely Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018.
Gardening is the number one hobby worldwide, everyone should have access to fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. From urban hydroponics and gardening field trips to rural gardening clubs. This is happening more, in recent years. We just need to step it up, get creative. Every sunny wall should be a green wall. All courtyards should be full of plants, carefully planted, for where the plants would be happy. Office plants should be succulents and non-smelly or non-blooming plants that clean the air and don’t add pollen or allergens to the air. Alternatively grow fragile or perishable salad & herb foods in rooftop greenhouses and humidity controlled window boxes. Neighborhood gardens should be available for local populations everywhere, just like city parks and playgrounds are now. You have to get your team on the schedule for little league. Or your gardening group has an area in the dirt and a shift of yearly gardening work. Not like communism but social. Are you unemployed? This gardening group could use some help harvesting or weeding or planting spouting beds etc… You put in some hours per week and earn a basic income by helping improve everyone’s quality of life. Yeah, I said, it "basic income". There is a ton of work that needs to be done and the US has a big enough GDP to spread "it" around. Work is the opposite of the stagnation of amassed hoarded profits. Technically, no one should be unemployed or homeless and gardening work and plant care is a great place to start improving the quality of life.
Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018. I am resting and meditating on "things".
The spaces between my daydreams and my reality is an abyss of depression, full of holes/bubbles bursting or defuse with half-way solutions. An answer to one problem creating 11 or 12 more complications or at least one step forward half a step back, over and over, every day. Many of the ideals I imagine and weigh are like the road to hell, paved with good intentions. But, the source of that proverb or aphorism may be a duel between two Popes in 1150. Maybe the Serenity prayer by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 1951 is more fitting.
God, give me the grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
It's very nice, but I'm no Evangelical either. I think my "religion" may be art and my philosophy may be fiction, so much so that to me Serenity is the name of a spacecraft in the TV show Firefly. Even the prayer copy and pasted above, came to mind from a few lines repeated in TV show we just binge-watched.
Guilt is no motivation but in the time we live in, as the artist, Douglas Coupland Quote/art "Knowing everything turns out to be slightly boring." IMO isn't ignoring everything and expecting things to change also quite tedious?
In front of stores, no more curbs, I hate curbs. Instead bench-high planter-boxes on the expanded sidewalk where the parking spots used to line the streets, making extra room for carts and perhaps a seating area or two for people waiting.
Of course, pick-up/drop off spots near the entrances would be nice with handicap only parking. Everybody else uses public transit or parks in the towers.
Number nine continues where this daydream leaves the parking spot.
Daydream number 9/50. People and living creatures first, automobile second road design.
All paved roads for slower traffic under 35 miles per hour, could be designed to breathe. Light in color in most climate areas, dark only in extreme polar roads that are heated to keep them clear of ice. Roads made of pearled glass (i.e. big grains of sand) native gravel and recycled plastic (i.e. No tar, no asphalt, no cement). The entire road surface has tire groves, drainage and is designed to prevent road kills.
When a sidewalk runs along a road or crosses it, pedestrian and bike paths are separated from the tire grooves. The median has markers for self-driving cars to keep traffic in the grooves.
Around schools and urban shopping hubs, the entire drop off/pick-up areas could be textured brick/cobblestone-like a speed bumpity bump. Automatic photograph tickets of anybody speeding past children and school buses or shoppers. City center areas should be pedestrian first, automobile-second ergonomic designed safer for people than cars a.k.a. pedestrian-first spaces, with underground mass transit to parking structure hubs and burgs.
The fast roads are all underground. It doesn’t even have to be deep, it could be a tube with the top at the surface where the highway used to be. Or a tube under a city.
P.s. Fast highway tubes under cities is not my idea. Do a search for Elon Musk underground LA, tube highway designs.
I did doodle something today, but I decided to start mixing things up. This mutant gnome is a stand-in for today's #drawfool P.s. Yes, it has 8 limbs/tentacles 5 feet, two arms and a tail. Feb. 1, 2018. |
| Comically bad #drawfool doodle for Feb. 2, 2018. |
I wrote this idea out as a joke in a blog post last year, in 2016.
Here’s a link if you would like to read that post.
The next paragraph is a synopsis if you would rather skim the gist. Bellow the gist is my opinion of grass.
10. Replace monoculture mown and trimmed grass lawns with native grasses and other low maintenance ground cover plants.
As for me? I love grass. But, just like cut flowers. I love grass uncut, wild, gently changing color over the seasons, pale green and light purple, yellow, straw white, brown peeking out of the snow, the green tips of sprouting bulbs, the round or interesting pattern forbs, plant like clover that nitrogen fix the soil, and are the preferred diet of grazing sheep. Then the grass, all types, grows tall and blooms. There are more species of grass than any other type of plants on Earth. Each grass has its own grain or seed pattern. Some grow along the stem, some cluster at the top like wild oats or those tall fluffs of Pampas grass that grow all along the California coast, or the native bamboo grass, red and green that grow in South Carolina swamps. Bluegrass the plant is in its own life as musical as Bluegrass the music. As long as no one cuts it. Tallgrass dances in the rain and the wind. One of my childhood memories is wandering through a field in Oklahoma that once was prairie, following a turtle to a cattle watering hole. Real prairie is not as dense as the bounce of the tundra of Alaska. When we went to a wildlife refuge, real prairie is lumpy and uneven, several layers of grass and plants matted but it is beautiful. Like a painting, endless texture and patterns to follow. We can’t easily replicate prairie in the grass areas of our yards. Our yards are not vast enough, and there are too many plants all woven together. But, if we each learned to “paint” with a mix of a few native plants, starting around our own homes, we would change the world.
I continue this thought on my leisurely Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018.
Daydream 11/50. Plants, plants and more plants -- everywhere.
 |
| #doodle #drawfool for Feb. 3, 2018. |
Gardening is the number one hobby worldwide, everyone should have access to fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. From urban hydroponics and gardening field trips to rural gardening clubs. This is happening more, in recent years. We just need to step it up, get creative. Every sunny wall should be a green wall. All courtyards should be full of plants, carefully planted, for where the plants would be happy. Office plants should be succulents and non-smelly or non-blooming plants that clean the air and don’t add pollen or allergens to the air. Alternatively grow fragile or perishable salad & herb foods in rooftop greenhouses and humidity controlled window boxes. Neighborhood gardens should be available for local populations everywhere, just like city parks and playgrounds are now. You have to get your team on the schedule for little league. Or your gardening group has an area in the dirt and a shift of yearly gardening work. Not like communism but social. Are you unemployed? This gardening group could use some help harvesting or weeding or planting spouting beds etc… You put in some hours per week and earn a basic income by helping improve everyone’s quality of life. Yeah, I said, it "basic income". There is a ton of work that needs to be done and the US has a big enough GDP to spread "it" around. Work is the opposite of the stagnation of amassed hoarded profits. Technically, no one should be unemployed or homeless and gardening work and plant care is a great place to start improving the quality of life.
Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018. I am resting and meditating on "things".
The spaces between my daydreams and my reality is an abyss of depression, full of holes/bubbles bursting or defuse with half-way solutions. An answer to one problem creating 11 or 12 more complications or at least one step forward half a step back, over and over, every day. Many of the ideals I imagine and weigh are like the road to hell, paved with good intentions. But, the source of that proverb or aphorism may be a duel between two Popes in 1150. Maybe the Serenity prayer by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 1951 is more fitting.
God, give me the grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
It's very nice, but I'm no Evangelical either. I think my "religion" may be art and my philosophy may be fiction, so much so that to me Serenity is the name of a spacecraft in the TV show Firefly. Even the prayer copy and pasted above, came to mind from a few lines repeated in TV show we just binge-watched.
Guilt is no motivation but in the time we live in, as the artist, Douglas Coupland Quote/art "Knowing everything turns out to be slightly boring." IMO isn't ignoring everything and expecting things to change also quite tedious?
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