the pumpkin patch
has been harvested:
orange orbs galore.
Pumpkin Patch [Haiku]
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Tag Archives: Farming
Farmland, Unchecked [Free Verse]
From a hilltop,
farmland stretches
to the horizon:
parceled into rectangles
of brown, beige, and oh
so many shades of green.
It must be the tropics,
for ripe grain to
coexist with verdant
& fallow patches.
So different from the farmland
of my youth
where all the rectangles
were one of two colors -
because everyone had to
pack into the same tight
growing season.
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BOOK REVIEW: Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil
Inventions and Innovations: A Brief History of Infatuation, Overpromise, and Disappointment by Vaclav SmilMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: February 14, 2023
This book is about technological failures, the various ways in which technologies fail, and what lessons can be learned from these failures when hearing about new “world-changing breakthroughs.” The author explores nine technologies in depth, three for each of three varieties of technology failure.
The first group are those technologies that came online as promised, fixing a major problem, only to later be discovered to have side-effects deemed disastrous. The examples used are: leaded gasoline, DDT pesticide, and CFC (Chlorofluorocarbon) refrigerant. These technologies have come to be associated with health defects, air pollution, ecological collapse, and ozone depletion.
The second group (like the first) came online, but then never became competitive with existing technologies. The technologies presented as examples are: airships, nuclear fission for power production, and supersonic flight. Airships died out not only because of the Hindenburg disaster, but also because people preferred airplanes to a craft with the combined slowness of a boat and the crash potential of a plane. Nuclear fission became untenable for new commercial power plants due to a risk premium on build costs even though it doesn’t contribute to global warming and (once powerplants are paid for) is exceedingly cheap per kilowatt-hour. Supersonic flight was just too costly and short-ranged to compete with subsonic flight.
The final group are those technologies that failed to come online at all, despite intense efforts. These include travel by vacuum tube (i.e. Hyperloop, and, yes, like at the bank but with people inside) nitrogen-fixing grains (negating the need for fertilizer,) and nuclear fusion. Despite the celebrity billionaire love of Elon Musk and Richard Branson, hyperloop isn’t advancing because of challenges of maintaining vacuum over large distances. Making cereal grains that feature the nitrogen-fixing capabilities of legumes has also proven more difficult than expected. Nuclear fusion recently experienced a moment in the sun when, for the first time, they got more energy out of it than was needed to achieve it. (This wasn’t written about in the review copy I read, but I suspect will be mentioned in the finished book. At any rate, it doesn’t negate the author’s point as it’s still just one breakthrough of several that would be needed for the technology to be commercially viable.)
In the last chapter, the author gets into a number of other technologies with shorter discussions that are meant to illustrate specific issues with excessive technological optimism. He also investigates some technologies that he believes need to come down the pike, given our present and expected future challenges.
I found this book fascinating. The author seems to love being contrarian (he not only contests popular optimism by those overestimating technological progress but also contests the pessimism regarding the first group of failed technologies, so it appears that he enjoys pointing out how mass opinion [or the opinion of another smart person] is wrong.) That said, there’s a great deal of thought-provoking information in the book. And, I think it can help people more critically consider claims about up-and-coming technologies.
View all my reviews
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The Rice Gamut [Haibun]
Terraced rice fields. Some, in rectangular blocks. Others, following valley contours. In the tropics, all stages exist at once: The mirrored surfaces of flooded but unplanted paddies. The orderly stubble of freshly planted fields. The max saturation green fields, densely packed with verdancy. The tawny fields of heavy-headed ripe rice. One may pass all of these (and gradations, thereof) as one walks the narrow lanes that dissect farmland. People, birds, and animals transit the slender paddy levees, lending color to a monotony of vibrancy. Sometimes, a weather-beaten man or woman wades in the field -- feet wide and bent at the waist. Nowadays, people come from far away (sometimes even paying admission) to see these fields -- to see so much green packed under blue skies and to let that photosynthetic glory wash over them. mirrored paddy -- flooded but unplanted; a child studies himself lush green fields. crows on the paddy dike command the eye tawny rice. stalks bent under grain-swollen heads
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DAILY PHOTO: Rice Terraces, Eastern Bali
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Farmer [Haiku]
DAILY PHOTO: Coffee or Tea? Why Not Coffee & Tea
A Farmer’s Reverie [Haiku]
with field cleared, the farmer leans on his scythe, and eyes cloud figures
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Tractor [Free Verse]
the tractor idles in the end-row, chugging and sputtering, with a rattling exhaust flap soon the tractor lurches into straight-line locomotion, chugging down the row, carving out furrows, peeling soft, black soil aside the cut worm does not forgive, but neither does it know what hit it -- some thunderous storm, monotonously rolling nearer - becoming more all-pervading - until it starts to fade, but by then the worm is halved everything becomes something else: worm aerates soil and then becomes food for the tugging bird
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Green Field [Haiku]
sunlit green field; clouds drift in from behind -- the farmer watches
Tiger Riding for Beginners 