heat
Winter is by far the oldest of the seasons
...and we feel warm because it is cold out-of-doors.
Retained as a quality
Thermal information is not differentiated in our memory; rather it is retained as a quality, or underlying tone, associated with the whole experience of the place. It contributes to our sense of the particular personality, or spirit, that we identify with that place. In remembering the spirit of a place, we can anticipate that if we return, we will have the same sense of comfort or relaxation as before.
Two thermal archetypes
The hearth, a refuge of dry warmth from a cold world, and the oasis, a preserve of coolness and moisture in a desert wilderness.
The notion of a thermal optimum persists
There is an underlying assumption that the best thermal environment never needs to be noticed, and that once an objectively "comfortable" thermal environment has been provided, all of our thermal needs will have been met. The use of all of our extremely sophisticated environmental control systems is directed to this one end—to produce standard comfort zone conditions.
Warmed by the afternoon sun
Textbooks on water-system engineering state that supply mains are generally installed on the north side of the street in the Northern Hemisphere and on the south side in the Southern Hemisphere, so that the sun will warm them. In both hemispheres they are supposed to be on the east side of north-south streets, on the premise that the afternoon sun is warmer than the morning sun.
Predicted Mean Vote
A DefinitionThe predicted mean vote (PMV) was developed by Povl Ole Fanger at Kansas State University and the Technical University of Denmark as an empirical fit to the human sensation of thermal comfort. It was later adopted as an ISO standard. It predicts the average vote of a large group of people on the a seven-point thermal sensation scale where:
- +3 = hot
- +2 = warm
- +1 = slightly warm
- 0 = neutral
- -1 = slightly cool
- -2 = cool
- -3 = cold
Every Tool Shapes the Task
Imagine the world like a cake
Imagine the world like a cake. Imagine that you slice it into the customary slices by vertical cuts. Each slice of that cake should signify for us, a constituency. Each is geographically located as one segment of the larger cake. Each slice is more influenced by its immediate neighbors than by what might be in the cake quite far away.
What technology has done in the world increasingly is to put horizontal cuts in that cake. You don't only talk up and down. Now you can talk across barriers.
Power makes knowledge sufficient
Whether it is civil rights' violations in many countries, whether it is the increasing numbers of unemployed people in our own country, whether it is the homeless we see on our way to work, it isn't as though we don't know.
But there is that horrible realization that, while the knowledge of facts may be a necessary condition for action, and we talk about democracy in civic action, it is unfortunately not a sufficient one.
While knowledge may be a necessary condition, it may in fact be a less necessary condition that the one that makes that a sufficient condition, and that is access to power.
To do some more pushups on the internet
There may be a lot of things that have to be studied, but there is also what I call "occupational therapy for the opposition" that says, send them off to do some more pushups on the internet. You need to be mindful that it is possible to use information, and the need for information, as a delay for the call for action.
Adding up to hair-brained
I have for myself come to the point where I say that people or groups or governments make the decisions that make sense to them, even if they look totally hair-brained to me.
My task then is to figure out the constellation of forces, the pushes and pulls, that in fact do add up to that hair-brained decision-making. Then we can go into the next iteration and say, "What can we do about the balance of the push and the pull that seems to result in totally non-constructive decisions?"
Who the problems are
Recently my attention was drawn to a quote from Peter Drucker who said, "If there isn't dissent, we would not know where the problems are."
I said to my husband, "Look, if there isn't dissent, we wouldn't know who the problems are." I think one has to keep that in mind.
Your new electronic microscope
Learn what is in this Internet. But then keep your head clear and go back to your goals. What in fact, in the best of all worlds, do you want to do? Do any of the activities with your new electronic microscope bring you closer to that?
Cyberspace as a global dump
If we think that cyberspace is a public space, then let's think of the oceans. They used to be as much of a world resource as anybody could think of but didn't belong to anybody. So everybody put their garbage into them. The potential of cyberspace as a global dump is quite substantial.