One day last week we ran out of something, so went to the chalkboard and wrote “HBO.” As I was writing, I realized it was my first time using that abbreviation but at the time it was glaringly obvious what HBO stood for. (I think you know where this is going.)

It’s been a week, and I still can’t figure out what HBO means.

House brand oregano? Hard boiled oysters? Home-baked octopus? Will I ever figure it out?

Or…

A big part of my day job is the translation of executive buzzspeak into human-readable English. But the people who read my translations are primarily executive buzzspeakers themselves. That begs the question of the meaning and usefulness of my work. And thus, dear readers, is the stall that led to my current existential tailspin.

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Years ago, when people first started talking about “biofuel” as a “green” fuel source for cars, I responded with skepticism. My basic idea at the time was that food should be used to feed people, not cars (biofuel is made from plants, usually grains such as corn). Now, with biofuel being pumped from many gas stations across North America, my position has changed – I am no longer skeptical; I’m flat out against it.

Biofuel is popular among a lot of ecologically minded people because it is touted as “green” due to its being renewable. Every year, with every harvest, a new batch of biofuel is cooked up to drive our cars, which is supposedly much better than pulling oil – a limited and rapidly depleting resource – out of the ground to do the job. The fact that biofuel comes from plants makes it seem highly ecological.

Not so. Ecology is a complicated science, and one that is interwoven with other sciences. Just because something is “green” (read: comes from plants) doesn’t mean it is a desirable solution to our complicated ecological problems.

What it comes down to is this: biofuel addresses one problem, does nothing for another problem, and makes a third problem even worse. That’s not a very impressive resumé, especially since the one problem it does address (but does not even solve) is a political problem not an ecological one.

Biofuel Address One Problem

The only real problem than biofuel addresses is the problem of depleting oil reserves and the associated problem of U.S. dependence on oil from the Middle East. It’s no coincidence that ethanol production gets more attention – and financial backing – from the U.S. Government and oil companies than any other ecological initiatives. The corn-based biofuel business is really just a home-grown replacement for oil from abroad, and by painting it green the government(s) can do it with full buy-in from the public.

Biofuel Does Nothing for Another Problem

From an ecological point of view, the primary reason for using alternative fuel methods is to cut down on pollution and greenhouse gases. Pumping biofuel into your Hummer’s gas tank does nothing to address this concern. Burning fuel is burning fuel, whether it comes from a Saudi oil field or a Nebraska corn farmer. Combustion of oil creates polluting smoke and gasses. Full stop. (More on this below, under “Further Reading.”)

Biofuel Makes a Third Problem Worse

Above, I mentioned that my early concerns about biofuel were based on the idea that food should feel people, not cars. My worries were not groundless. Due to the huge amount of corn that is being diverted into biofuel production, the cost of corn for food on the market has risen significantly. People in Mexico, in particular, are feeling this, as corn-based products are a staple of the Mexican diet. In the past two years, the price of corn-based food products in Mexico has shot up dramatically at the supermarkets. According to this Washington Post article, the price of tortillas has tripled or even quadrupled in some areas. (According to Marginal Revolution, tortillas provide about half of the calories and protein for poor people in Mexico.)

Then there is the matter of food aid for the developing world. It used to be that surplus grain from Canada and the U.S. was sold to their respective governments and used as food aid for poor people around the world. But the rise of biofuel has corresponded to higher food costs and less food for developing world food aid. It’s a classic supply-and-demand thing – supply is up, but demand is even “upper.” As a result, prices go up and the grain goes to the highest bidder; the biofuel producers. In other words, food aid is taking second place to biofuel production.

So there you have it. The business of biofuel production is ecological tricksterism that causes hardship among the poor people of the world. That doesn’t mean we should just keep on driving our cars and fueling them with petroleum-based fuels. Rather, I think we should address what really are the two main problems with the heavy and prolific use of internal combustion engines; the dwindling resource, and the pollution its consumption creates.

Dwindling Oil Reserves

Personally, I think the fact that we’re running out of oil is a good thing. It means we’ll finally stop burning that oil and clogging up our atmosphere with greenhouse gases. We’re being forced to consider other energy sources, but we should focus on sustainable and non-polluting ones.

Pollution

The solution is to move towards engines that do not rely on internal combustion. Basically, that means electric. Partnered with this is the need to generate electricity via methods other than coal- and oil-fired generating plants. Wind, tides, water; there are many renewable and sustainable resources that can be exploited.

Short Term

In the short term, pumping biofuel into your car does nothing other than maintain the status quo of our reliance; not so much on oil as on internal combustion. Instead, the short term solutions are to (a) drive more fuel efficient cars, and (b) drive them less, (c) encourage investment in alternative, non-combustion based transportation.

Further Reading

The American Coalition for Ethanol claims that ethanol (a commonly used biofuel for cars) creates 29% fewer greenhouse emissions than does regular gas, but according to this CBC report, scientists at Environment Canada say the difference is insignificant. Quoted in the article is Bill Rees, a professor of ecology at the University of British Columbia:

“People are being conned into believing in a product and paying for it through their tax monies when there’s no justifiable benefit and indeed many negative costs.”

Rolling Stone magazine did a big exposé on the issue last year: “The Ethanol Scam: One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles.”

GlobalResearch.ca really tears the cover off ethanol with this article: “Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly.” To quote the opening paragraph:

“Eight years of Biofuels policy and legislation has cemented in place the first world wide food cabal, which promises a humanitarian disaster, a famine more serious than those caused by any tsunami, earthquake or drought. This crisis is not in the dim future, it is here.”

The article is somewhat bombastic in some of its claims, but it lists some of its sources at the end. There’s a lot of talk about costs, subsidies, and other numerical stuff, but it’s a worthwhile slog.

Regarding the question of food aid, the New York Times has a good story; “As Prices Soar, U.S. Food Aid Buys Less.” AllAfrica.com has similar news in this awkwardly titled story: “Africa: Food Prices Buoyed By Biofuel Affect Aid.” The Cherry Creek News takes a kick a the story here: “More Ethanol, Higher Food Prices.”

More:

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales says biofuels are a serious problem for poor people (Reuters).

Oxfam and Greenpeace say that biofuels cause more harm than good (Bloomberg).

GreenEcoFriend says “Biofuel Production Starves the Poor.”

Market Research Analytics: “Biofuel Production Affecting the Price of Food.”

Happy Earth Day!

It brings me back. Rome is one of my three favorite cities in the world (I haven’t yet decided what the other two are), and as the article suggests, it is particularly magical at night. When Martine and I were there about two years ago, we spent a lot of time walking the various streets and neighbourhoods under the cool white light of the full moon and the ochre-yellow glow of the street lamps.

Piazza Navona, via Giulia, via dei Coronari, Piazza di Spagna, Campo dei Fiori, via del Governo Vecchio … I can’t imagine I’ll never go back, yet there are so many other places to see.

Thank goodness for well written travel pieces, as well as Flickr, my blog, and the Monday Morning Photo Blog. It keeps the memories alive.

Via dei Coronari, under a full moon.

Unfortunately, it’s also the kind of thing that can turn some people into excruciating bores. Tip to those who want to improve their self esteem: keep it to yourself. You don’t need to advertise it or draw other people into it. It’s an internal dialog; keep it that way.

Frankly, anyone who takes a Web article and turns it into a personal program for self actualization is missing more than self esteem. Building confidence, self esteem, and reaching a state of self actualization is not something you get from a Web site; it’s a life-long project that, again, some people do naturally, and others need to apply themselves to deliberately. Articles like this are really just boosters, not the thing in itself.

For those starting out, a good place to begin is to make a pledge to (a) not be an ass, and (b) be sincere about things. If everyone embraced those two things, the world would be a much better place and we’d all be a lot happier.

Yahoo Classic: “Next” means “older” and “Previous” means newer. Confusing!

I find that confusing. Most of us are used to chronologically based Web pages like blogs, so for us, going to older items corresponds to “previous,” not “next.” Unfortunately, a lot of blog templates employ the same logic as Yahoo, including this new one I’m using now. Out of the box, the code that came with the template would put the following at the bottom of a page of posts:

Original design: “Previous” means “forward” (newer) and “Next” means “backward” (older). Confusing!

The logic seems to be based on stacked pages, like in a book, with the most recent items on the top page, and the older ones on subsequent pages. Thus, you go to the “next” page to read older items and “previous” to read newer ones. But on the Web, the ordering is based on time, not position in a stack.

Then there’s the direction of the arrows in the above examples; they’re pointing the wrong way.

The visualization model that Web users have gotten used to is that of a scroll, usually going from right to left, with items getting older as they go farther left. For example, look at most photo blogs, where the most frequently used navigation involves clicking on the left side of an image to go to the older image and clicking on the right side to go to the newer one. There might also be arrows or chevrons involved, in which case <- or << almost universally means “older” and -> or >> means “newer.”

You also see this preferred visualization in the icons on your Web browser; the arrow pointing to the left means “Back” (i.e., older stuff) and the arrow pointing right means “Forward” (newer stuff). That’s a standard we’re pretty used to. So when an email site or a blog comes along and points right for older and left for newer, it is highly dissonant.

Some sites get it almost right. If you use Twitter via your Web browser, you’ll see pretty intuitive navigational links at the bottom of the page. The arrows point in the wrong direction, but the words “Newer” and “Older” trump any discordance from the arrow direction. (The text has more resonance than the graphical element.)

Twitter gets it half right; and it’s the important half.

Flickr also gets it half right. Or more precisely, it gets two halves wrong and the third half right, but it’s a big third half, so it overrides the others. (Are you following…?) In Flickr’s case, it uses the dreaded “Previous” and “Next” (bad!) and the chevrons point the wrong way (double bad!), but none of that matters because it uses the big in your face heuristic of numbers, with your current position clearly indicated. In an ideal world, it would get all three right.

(Top) Flickr as it is. (Bottom) Flickr as I want it to be. No biggie though, because those numbers make it so clear that the other problems are almost irrelevant.

When it comes to my blog, I know just enough about PHP that I was able to re-jig the new template so the links not only point in what I consider the correct direction, but they use words that are more properly descriptive. Namely:

Revised version of this template; clear and easy!

I hereby put out a call to standardize the navigation on Web sites that have linear, chronological pages. Namely:

• Point left for older,
• point right for newer,
• Use descriptive text like “older” and “newer” instead of ambiguous text like “previous” and “next.”

For the uninitiated, Twitter is essentially “microblogging.” You have 140 characters in which to say something, and the only people who see it are those with Twitter accounts who are “following” your feed on Twitter. People can read your tweets through the Web, or they can get them sent to their mobile phones as text messages.

It makes no sense at all, but for some reason it’s fun. And it’s more personal than regular blogging; I like the fact that I know specifically who is reading the tweets I post. With only 140 characters, there’s not much you can say beyond “having a great day,” and “sushi for lunch again, yay me!” It’s all pretty meaningless, but when it’s among friends it plays the role of small talk or idle chatter that doesn’t have to mean anything.

As I’ve been poking around in Twitter, I’ve made a few observations, which I will share with you, below.

Observation: Some People Go Overboard

Some folks follow an absurd number of people on Twitter. As I write this, I’m following fewer than 25, and I think I could squeeze in a few more if they’re not too active. But some folks are following hundreds of Twitter feeds, which makes no sense to me. They must be getting dozens and dozens of new tweets to read every hour, which is too much to assimilate unless they really have nothing else to do. So what is the point of following so many people that you can effectively not really follow them?

Observation: There’s an “A-list”

There is an “A-list” of people on Twitter, just as there is an “A-list” of bloggers. Interestingly, they tend to be the same people. So you get your Kottke, your Scoble, your Powazek. People with widely read and sometimes interesting blogs; interesting because blog posts can be long enough to really say something. But these people have thousands of followers on Twitter, where they can’t really say anything.

I don’t see the point in using Twitter to follow “A-list” people who you don’t know. Twitter, by its nature, is geared towards following friends and acquaintances. As I said above, tweets rarely go beyond brief reports of what people are doing, thinking, eating, or drinking at that particular moment. Whereas I have some interest in knowing what my girlfriend is doing, or what Patrick is eating for lunch, or where Mikel is going for a drink, why would I care about things like that for people I don’t know, even if they are “A-listers?”

Observation: There are Exceptions

There are a few exceptions to this idea that Twitter only works among friends. For example, I follow the tweets from the CBC Radio show “Spark,” because I like the show and I also check its blog and its wiki occasionally. I also follow a few Twitter feeds from the New York Times (books, food, and travel), as they contain links pointing to interesting NYT stories. (By the way, that is a really brilliant way for a publication to use Twitter). As well, some “A-listers” use Twitter to post links to interesting things that people with similar interests might want to know about.

There is also a Twitter feed called “TwitterLit” in which the first line of books are posted, along with links to Amazon, where you can see what book it is and who wrote it (and can, of course, buy it). Again, a brilliant use of Twitter.

Observation: Twitter and Mobiles = Insanity

The idea of using a mobile phone to read Twitter posts sounds absolutely insane to me. For one thing, each tweet you read will cost you a dime in SMS fees, but more importantly your phone will be nagging you every few minutes as tweets get posted.

How can you get any work (or play) done when you are constantly glancing at your phone in order to read things like “This macaroni sure tastes good,” “Going home now, don’t wanna miss BSG,” and “I can really get into the new REM album”?

Mind you, you could ask why such banalities are any better when read through the Web, but at least in that case you’re doing it at a time of your choosing, and it’s free. You can zip through a couple of dozen tweets in about 30 seconds and then move on. A couple of them might make you chuckle. There might be a link to an interesting blog post or news article. If not, you can always type in a tweet that says “Twitter sure is boring today” and then you go back to what you were doing.

To be fair, you can set it up so that only tweets from certain people go to your phone, which could potentially be useful if those people are drinking buddies or people who owe you money. But generally speaking, I would be ready to smash my phone before the day is out if I started getting tweets sent to me that way.

Observation: Twitter Makes Me Want to Experiment

There’s something about the ease and simplicity of Twitter that makes me want to climb in deeper and experiment. For example, I’ve set up this blog so that my tweets show up on the sidebar (look to the right, under “Recent Twitters”). I don’t know how long I’ll keep that up, as there’s a part of me that wants to keep my blog and my Twitter separate, but it was fun to set it up and see it run.

I’m also tempted to try some crazy things like “Twiction,” which is a mix of Twitter and fiction; short stories that are only 140 characters long. Somebody already has a Twitter feed dedicated to Twiction, but there’s no reason why I can’t totally throw my handful of followers off the rails by occasionally flinging a Twiction at them. And how about Twitter recipes? Is it possible to describe a whole recipe in 140 characters?

Observation: Twitter is Not Facebook

Ultimately, what I like about Twitter is its simplicity. I does only one thing, and it does it cleanly and easily. It is unlike the “status updates” in Facebook, because Facebook is a vast sinkhole of distraction, annoyance, and advertising. When you do a status update in Facebook there’s no guarantee anyone will see it, because not everybody reads them. But when you put something into Twitter, all of your Twitter followers are going to see it, because that’s the only reason they’re using Twitter.

So there you have it. My experience with Twitter, which for now is going well. On the other hand, I have no real investment in it, so one of these days I might just put it down and never pick it up again. Who knows? Follow me on Twitter and you might find out.