Origami Exchange

I had a great 'origami exchange' with a elderly woman on my flight today. I gave her a butterfly in a small envelop. She was so thankful, but, after a few moments, I had to advise her that the gift was not simply a pretty rectangle. She opened it up and marveled at the butterfly. From the corner of my eye, I could see her examining it closely. After about 5 minutes, she asked if I could make her another one. "Sure", I said, "do you want a different color or something?". "No", she said, "the same color would be nice", and then she showed me a rectangular piece of paper which had previously been the butterfly. "I tried to figure out how it was made", she admitted. "No problem!", I replied, and then I countered, "I just hope you did not have a puppy when you were little" :-)

The Self-Interested Ecologist

In my opinion, only self-interest and economic competition can drive us towards an ecologically sustainable global community. We cannot legislate it. Even if we priced hydrocarbons out of existence in the US, the total global carbon footprint would continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate. We cannot rely on global accords. Every 3rd world country trying to balance reducing greenhouse gasses vs fighting for its very survival will undoubtedly tip the scales towards the latter. If we could see our way clear towards making the right investments and policy compromises to, for example, build enough wind power generation in the plains states such that we can run factories, produce goods, transport them and consume them (even) at a fraction of the cost, then the rest of the world would have to follow suite, as a matter of survival rather than good intention. Of course, there are other avenues to this kind of result. My point is that we cannot rely on good intentions to solve this problem :-/