This will be my last post on this problem for a while. I promise. I just wanted to explain the reason for being all butthurt in the previous couple of posts and flying the introvert pride banner for a while.

Maybe an example would help. Consider this article titled “The introvert’s personality traits. A guide to introversion for shy people”. I am sure that article was well-intended and even helpful to many people, but it is quite biased as is shown in the choice of wording. I want to make it clear that I am not trying to single it out and that I am just using it as an example. It is quite representative both of other articles on introversion, but in particular of people’s attitudes on the subject. I am sure that most of these are well-meaning and that they are not aware of how they come across to an introvert. But let me show you:

Consider the following quote from the article:

Introverts have an inward focus and aren’t usually the life of the party. They have a strong sense of self that can make them feel highly self-conscious around other people – making walking into a crowded room a little nerve-wracking. Introverts have a hard time being goofy in front of the camera and telling jokes to more than a couple of people at a time, but they can be extremely witty. They’re less “Larry, Curly, and Moe” and more Woody Allen – but that doesn’t mean introverts’ personality traits are neurotic.

Now, let me paraphrase this, flip it and describe the extrovert (Maybe “A guide to extroversion for shallow people”?):

Extroverts have an outward focus and usually don’t read a lot. They have a weak sense of self that can make them feel highly dependent on other people – making being alone a little nerve-wracking. Extroverts have a hard time being serious or having a deep conversation with another person, but they can be extremely goofy and they enjoy slap-stick humor. They’re less “Woody Allen” and more “Larry, Curly, and Moe” – but that doesn’t mean extroverts’ personality traits are histrionic.

Indeed not, but didn’t it just come across like that? In addition, it did not sound very flattering or even neutral?
Was it accurate? Yes and no. Both descriptions pointed towards a prejudice of some kind and prejudices usually reflect reality in some sense but the implied value judgments do not—they only reflect impressions of reality. In the first case we see the introvert from the extrovert’s point of view. This is the typical point of view held by most people and most literature, even literature by introverts. In the second case we saw the mirror image.

Feeling a different emotional or cognitive response from reading these two quotes would mean that your point of view is biased, perhaps even unknowingly. I’d like to think that mine isn’t but I am not above getting annoyed by being constantly exposed to a biased point of view, and then I write posts like this.
Maybe I should know better, and I assure you I do. Most of the time.

We now return to the regular scheduling…

Originally posted 2010-01-19 00:15:25.

I am using hyperlatex to simultaneously mark up a HTML version of the LaTeX that I’m using to typeset my book. Therefore it should be be fairly easy to share the bibliography of the book without a lot editing.

Aside from providing links for all of them… *ugh*!

I have read every book on the list below and these books have formed or contributed to my thinking when I wrote the ERE book. You can consider them to be recommendations although some will be more interesting than others depending on where you currently are in your thinking.

1. George Orwell, 1984
   
2. Cody Lundin, 98.6 degrees
   
3. William Coperthwaite, A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity
   
4. Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to general systems thinking
   
5. Howard T. Odum & Elisabeth C. Odum, A Prosperous Way Down
   
6. James Allen, As a man thinketh
   
7. Ann Dale, At the edge
   
8. Miaymoto Musashi, Book of five rings
   
9. Robert T. Kiyosaki, Cashflow Quadrant
   
10. Paul Terhorst, Cashing in on the American dream — How to retire at 35
    
11. E. O. Wilson, Consilience
    
12. Don Casey and Lew Hackler, Cruising the Thoreau approach
    
13. Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds
    
14. David W. Orr, Earth in Mind
    
15. Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
    
16. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
    
17. Daniel H. Pink, Free Agent Nation
    
18. Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness
    
19. Ayn Rand, Fountainhead
    
20. Zora & David Aiken, Good Boatkeeping
    
21. David Owen, Green Metropolis
    
22. Martin Page, How I became stupid
    
23. Harry Browne, How I found freedom in an unfree world
    
24. Chris Balish, How to live well without owning a car
    
25. Charles Long, How to Survive Without a Salary
    
26. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
    
27. Gareth Morgan, Images of organization
    
28. Robert G. Hagstrom, Investing: The Last Liberal Art
    
29. Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
    
30. Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions
    
31. Peter Krass, Little book of business wisdom
    
32. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, State
    
33. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
    
34. Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature
    
35. Michael J. Mauboussin, More than you know
    
36. Chellis Glendinning, My name is Chellis and I’m in recovery from Western Civilization
    
37. Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents
    
38. D. T. Johns and H.A. Harding, Operations Management
    
39. David Holmgren, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability
    
40. Richard Brewer, Principles of ecology (The father of Philip Brewer, the wisebread.com writer)
    
41. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda
    
42. William Catton, Overshoot
    
43. Matthew B. Crawford, Shop class as soulcraft
    
44. Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
    
45. David Wann, Simple Prosperity
    
46. Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
    
47. Charles Hugh Smith, Survival+
    
48. Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design
    
49. Amy Dacyczyn, The Complete Tightwad Gazette
    
50. Ann Thorpe, The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability
    
51. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline
    
52. Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto
    
53. Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman
    
54. Dick Stoken, The Great Cycle
    
55. Peter Lawrence, The Happy Minimalist
    
56. Lin Yu Tan, The importance of living
    
57. Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap
    
58. Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man
    
59. Scott Nearing, The Making of a Radical
    
60. Margarat Lobenstine, The Renaissance Soul
    
61. James Dale Davidson & Lord William Rees-Mogg, The sovereign individual
    
62. G. F. Gause, The struggle for existence
    
63. Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook
    
64. Jeff Yeager, The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches
    
65. Ori Hofmekler, The warrior diet
    
66. Edward Goldsmith, The Way
    
67. Joshua Piven, This Green House
    
68. Thomas Cleary, Training the Samurai Mind
    
69. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
    
70. Robert Clyaat, Work Less, Live More
    
71. Larry A. Ferstenou, You can retire young
    
72. Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robin, Your Money or Your Life
    

Originally posted 2010-08-06 12:43:14.

Dealing with heat is far worse than dealing with cold because you can not just put more clothes on. Now, one could just switch on the A/C, but there are also ways to avoid this by taking advantage of the environment rather than ignoring it or working against it.

In general the nights get tolerably low or even nice and cool, so if you are not tied to specific working hours like 9-5, consider working very early in the morning or in the evening. This is a good time to to garden work (when the full moon is out). Then reserve the mid day for a siesta. Also, remember, the less you use A/C the more used you get to high temperatures. You simply start sweating better. If you don’t have A/C and the nights get very warm, consider sleeping outside on the balcony. Failing that, keep the window wide open and sleep right under it. Another thing you can do is to make the mattress wet. The evaporation will have a cooling effect, but now we’re talking dessert conditions.

Here’s how I cool the RV. I believe this would work on a house as well. The difference is that an RV has far less thermal mass than a house, so I see wider swings, and that insulation, at least in our model, is non-existent (kinda like the surrounding houses in CA).

First, at night, I open all the windows, since it is cooler outside, and arrange the blinds for some draft. This brings the inside morning temperature down to the lower 60s; it is always good to start cold if it is going to get hot. In the morning I then close all the blinds on the sun side to stop the radiative heat. The air is still cool outside, but the radiation on the roof and the sides will start heating up the RV like a car. As the sun moves around (We’re oriented on a N-S axis), I open the blinds on what is now the shadow side and vice versa. Once and if the outside temperature goes significantly above the inside temperature (I have a car thermometer, so I get both), I close the windows and the back compartment and run the front A/C only (since this is a big rig, we have two A/Cs, front and back). Around 5 the wind starts blowing, so I open all windows for the draft shutting off the A/C. Depending on how hot it got, I may or may not close the windows later to preserve heat. If it gets really hot, I also use the mattress trick on the roof of the RV (you can do this to your house and surrounding trees .. it’s good for 5-10F depending on how windy it is).

In other words, I continuously try to gauge whether I can balance convective cooling against radiative heating or whether I should just give up and run the A/C.

Originally posted 2009-05-08 10:18:15.