It's the ideas

This was a response I wrote, posted on the alumni FB page, to a former colleague who seems to think I should have drank the Kool-Aid when it was offered and taken a job with the newly rebranded "Unity Environmental University." (Names have been removed.)

"...if you worked for twelve years to get a qualification that certified you to research and/or teach a specific topic or related set of topics that you were fascinated by or passionate about and had spent half a lifetime learning, would you take a job pushing paper? 

"Or, for that matter, if you were committed to experiential education and hands-on learning and the pedagogy of Kurt Hahn ("rescue service!"), would you take a job teaching online? 

"Or, if you were committed to academic freedom, freedom of expression, the value of independent, critical thought, and the responsibility of faculty to control the curriculum, would you take a job with a college that undermined these accreditation requirements at every step? 

"Or, if you were committed to an ethical worldview and Right Livelihood, would you take a job working for someone you found unethical? 

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. I'm sorry you're so muddled and conflicted by this, and I don't believe you deserve all the flack you've gotten, nor that you and others getting so much flack is healthy for the Unity community, but you don't seem to understand that there are important ideas at stake here. 

"The faculty who were forced out or left of their own accord to take their lives and thoughts elsewhere are not the ones that have let you down. We stood up for what we believed in, and when it didn't work out, we took our licks, thought it through, and adapted. Most of the faculty who left that were young enough to continue their careers have stayed in that line of work. We were committed to the ideas, see, not the place, nor even the people, and certainly not the leadership. And some of those ideas are about governance, ethics, and freedom. That's why we were forced to leave. Most of us would have been forced to leave eventually in any case, had matters continued as they were, only without the excuse of Covid. 

"Our ideas, perfectly in keeping with a small liberal arts college using Hahnian pedagogy, were and are at odds with what the place has become. It does a disservice to those ideas to try to pretend it could have otherwise."

How to trace a parasitic draw

Use a multimeter (not a VOM). Put the multimeter in ammeter mode (<10A). Make sure to switch the common to the correct socket. Make sure the key switch is off and the key removed. Take off the negative terminal of the battery. Put your foot on the brake pedal to drain any remaining current in the circuits. Hook the red probe to the disconnected negative terminal connector and the black probe to the battery. Look to see if there is a current draw, any more than a milliamp or two. If there is not, revise your hypothesis and suspect the battery. If there is, pull the fuses and replace them one by one until you find the fuse that makes the number on the multimeter readout drop significantly when you pull it, then troubleshoot that circuit. Trace it backwards from whatever utility it runs, disconnecting connectors in sequence moving towards the battery, until you unhook the connector that makes the number on the multimeter drop. The faulty circuit is now isolated.

EVs vs Ice

r/sustainability question: EVs seem to be all the rage when thinking of ways to sustainably travel, aside from, of course, public transit, but how does the price stack up to traditional ICE vehicles? Are they worth the switch, or is it just going to drain the wallet?

How do electricity rates stack up to gas prices? What about maintenance costs?

Lots to consider, let me know your thoughts.

Intelligent Tinkering: The only way an ICE vehicle beats an EV for ease of use, cost effectiveness, and GHG emissions/mile is 1) if it's a plug-in hybrid used properly, so the first roughly forty miles are EV miles but there is no range limitation or worries about winter heating shrinking range in a cold climate, or 2) if the standard offer electricity supply in the region is particularly dirty with coal and no attempt is made to mitigate, or 3) it is used for heavy work where the energy density needs for efficient use are higher, so heavy towing, snow plowing, and so on, or 4) if it is an older ICE vehicle that has outlived multiple average vehicle lives. Embodied emissions in EV vehicles mean that they are not climate neutral even when run on solar, and the ratio of lifetime fuel consumption to embodied emissions for an ICE vehicle is about five to one, so it is not so hard for an older ICE vehicle that has exceeded multiple average lifetimes to catch up with an EV in total emissions/mile (including embodied emissions). We should note that the "error bars" on applicable studies of embodied energy in EV manufacture remain high. This is because of doubt in the energy costs of materials sourcing. 

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-life-cycle-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-a-mid-size-bev-and-ice-vehicle

Sludged up or bad switch?

Kubota tractor owner: What is the simplest way to clean out the crank case? Manual says rinse with kerosene and somehow wipe it down. I'd like to pull the pan and rinse from the top. Also r&r the oil pump. Pull the engine or pull the front axle? Did an oil change and new oil is filthy after a short run and oil pressure light is on. Should also mention B6000 4x4.

Intelligent Tinkering: If the oil pressure light wasn't on before the oil change and is on now, you probably should make sure it is actually working. It should go off at higher rpm. If it doesn't, I'd suspect the pressure switch. You can take it off and check with a VOM set to the continuity setting, using air pressure (turn the compressor output down to less than 30PSI), or check it by replacing it. If that doesn't help, there are two causes of low oil pressure: bad pump or bad bearings. Bearing wear is far more common than pump wear because the design of the pump is robust. When bearings wear, their ability to hold pressure drops. But typically the light will still go out at higher rpm. It's unlikely the sludge has accumulated in the oil passages. I've stripped down a lot of engines and any sludge is usually just in the sump.

Wood burning worries

 Question from a sustainability student:

In the last few years I've seen demands that using wood as a power/heat source (by burning it) should not be declared sustainable.

I understand that burning wood releases particulates. I also understand that sometimes we burn woods from forest that are not reafforested which is obviously unsustainable.

However, if we filter the particulates while burning wood and we reafforest the forests that the wood comes from, isn't burning wood sustainable? What am I overlooking?

Mick's answer: 

We burn wood for 80 of our heat (in total energy terms), about half or less our heating costs. We harvest about half of it from our own woodlots at a rate of about two cords a year. The remaining trees in our woodlots are growing, and some are growing faster as a result of "tree release", getting more sunlight. Our trees are sequestering far more carbon than the small amount we take each year. We have seven acres and take up to two cords. Using typical averages (of cords produced per acre and weight per cord) for New England hardwood forests, that means we are sequestering 8 to 10 tons/tonnes a year (very roughly), some of which forgives the logging needed for our other two cords which we buy and some proportion of the fossil fuel needed for our stove and vehicles. The trees we take are all ash, which is threatened by the invasive emerald ash borer and will very likely die anyway. The larger mass particulate pollution from wood burning, which contains far less aerosolized component than the equivalent from gas, oil or coal, typically falls out of the atmosphere after only a few miles at the most. It is a form of pollution that is predominant (and harmful) in cities, not in low density rural areas like ours, where they are only 21 people per square mile, and so what particulate there is, is diluted. The biggest sustainability problem with wood burning is when large scale power plants add wood biomass to the fossil fuels used in turbines. So, for instance, woody biomass in the southern US is clear cut from plantations and even natural forests, then shipped to Britain where is is burned in old coal fired plants like Drax in Yorkshire. This industrial use of wood is far less sustainable because a) natural forests store carbon in the soils and much of this is lost when clearcut, b) the fossil fuel used in transportation and processing, and c) the much larger density of particulate produced on-site. It is only cost effective because of "perverse" economic incentives set up by EU carbon regulation.

https://newenglandforestry.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/NNE-carbonstorage-100119.pdf

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63089348

BTW, what I like about this question is that it neatly illustrates the wide variety of disciplines needed to solve sustainability problems. 

And if you don't believe me...

... to be a serious person you would need to read (all) this first before you say anything:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C20&q=effectiveness+of+remote+college+teaching&btnG=

And this:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C20&q=does+distance+education+work&btnG=

Now, obviously as a lifelong practitioner of the educational theory of Kurt Hahn, I'm biased. Hahnian teaching requires physical contact, not just physical presence. But let's remember that Unity College was one of a handful of Hahnian colleges in the US and so unique in that role. It was disposed of, unthinkingly, by a decision process that did not even consider the full nature of what was to be lost.

I doubt very much that the board even knows what kind of education was previously provided. You'd think they would at least know who Kurt Hahn was. But I doubt it very much.

So, read this too:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C20&q=educational+theory+of+Kurt+Hahn&btnG=

Distance learning doesn't work well

Duh!

I mean, ask any experienced in-person educator that has tried distance learning, or worked on a later sequential class with students that took the previous class remotely and those who didn't, in the same class.

Oh. I forgot. We're not allowed to talk to the teachers any more. Not without going through the President first.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/11/23/covid-research-remote-school-poverty/

Today's rant

 

Rescue Service

The team may be defunct but SAR service goes on. Mike Latti, former UCSAR officer, found the cas with his SARdog Luna.

If you want to know why an institution of higher education focussed in part on SAR, you should refer to Kurt Hahn, the founder of Gordonstoun School and Outward Bound, on his theory of rescue service. 

“The experience of helping a fellow man in danger, or even of training in a realistic manner to be ready to give this help, tends to change the balance of power in a youth’s inner life with the result that compassion can become the master motive.”

https://www.wmtw.com/article/maine-man-rescued-spending-30-hours-lost-woods/41829452

From the alumni page

These things have a habit of disappearing. This way I can hold on to them.

"I am most definitely not here to attack any individual, but let me share my perspective. My husband went to the old Unity in the late 70’s and it changed his life. I followed him here and later taught as an adjunct after I earned my MFA. We settled in Unity as a result of the incredible interaction between the college and the campus. We went to the Performing Arts Center for music, theater, lectures, and art. We held field days in Field of Dreams. I had Unity students in my science classroom up the road, for ITL experience. My kids checked out books at Quimby Library where I later donated my library of 5000 books. My husband became an administrator for NRCS and was able to hire other alums. We live just down the road and I drive past the sad, empty campus everyday. The lively interchanges at cross track are no more. The Cheeseman farmhouse has been sold, and I would think the original founders would be rolling in their graves. I always expected that both my sons would attend Unity. No way; they attended campuses that were IRL communities. My youngest, now at UMFarmington, had 100% in-person classes all throughout the pandemic. The value of the loyalty to the old Unity College is priceless. It has been squandered. There is a place for online classes, and I was a non-trad student and get it. But it shouldn’t be called Unity College. Melik traded in a shining diamond for a piece of dirty coal. He stole a name, a shared identity, from many people and that is why we are so upset. Enrollment data can be manipulated, as all data can, to infer what is not reality. Trust is lost. I worked with a middle school guidance counselor once who got his degree 100% online at Liberty University. You can imagine the result: bad. Taking the salary while the kids’ real needs went unmet. My husband, on the cusp of retirement, decries the lack of practical IRL knowledge of young hires. They are great with the tech but don’t have a clue on the landscape, so they struggle to gain the confidence of clients. Zoom school, for us teachers and students was a sham, as test scores are now revealing."

Professing

"You're a professor. Professors should profess." 

That's what one of my mentors told me, a long time ago. Back in the day, before online teaching and the general adjunct-ification of higher education worked together to bid down the price and intellectual capacity of the teaching help, a professor was supposed to have her own ideas about things. She was also supposed to be able to express them freely without fear of being fired or sidelined. Academic freedom of this kind had a purpose. It ensured the open marketplace of ideas could flourish, which itself aided in the development of modern liberal society: society with free markets, free speech, and free institutions. Free students led by free professors who grew up to be the building blocks of a free society. 

Through the free expression of ideas about culture, economics, business, politics, technology, and even education, modern society developed and moved away from the religious dogma in which it was founded. Think about just about any idea that has any importance, from the rule of law to the factory system to the US Constitution, and you notice that this idea, in its day, had detractors. But the marketplace of ideas won out, and today we are protected by the rule of law, our products are made by the factory system, and the US Constitution is still in force last time I checked. 

Try to imagine society without these ideas.

I have some strong opinions about a lot of things, but as a PhD-trained climate policy specialist who also studied "PPE" (politics, philosophy, and economics), I was encouraged to express these ideas without fear or restraint -- except the intellectual restraint that grew out of the facts themselves. 

Actually, I was required by the nature of my PhD program to express my ideas. 

If I hadn't had any ideas I would not have passed the program. And I kept having ideas and expressing them right up until the time that my having ideas, and the ideas I was having, became incompatible with the new so-called leadership of (some) parts of American higher education. 

Some folks just don't like ideas. 

Well, they didn't stop me. I've been at it again. 

Professing.

From the comment section of the New York Times:

Mick Womersley | Maine
Bret has made a workmanlike job of setting aside bias and exploring the options. I wish more conservatives would do the same. My only quibble is that he hasn't quite gotten his head around the math and so has picked, in a weak-minded way, the wrong option, doing nothing now. Global circulation is a complex dynamic system and requires a dynamic systems model. This kind of math isn't taught except in science programs. Commentators get it wrong. Yes, climate policy is a kind of insurance, an ounce of cure to avoid a pound of pain. So much is mentioned fairly. But the full scope of possible outcomes is missing or slighted. As one example, the results of the recent Thwaites Glacier expedition have served primarily to demonstrate that one possible outcome, the catastrophic melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is more likely than previously thought, with enough sea level rise as a result to swamp a good portion of the worlds largest cities. There are several other bad possible outcomes to discuss. They aren't. It isn't alarmist to cover all the bases. You buy house insurance to offset the risk of a drastic fire. It may be a low risk, but the results of the fire would be sufficiently bad that the conservative householder views the premium as a reasonable expense. Climate scientists have been asking the free market to pay the premium for decades and it hasn't done so. So we will instead choose to rebuild after the fire. That's the logical outcome of the thinking in this column.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/28/opinion/climate-change-bret-stephens.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/world-close-to-irreversible-climate-breakdown-warn-major-studies

College Nightmares

Otherwise happily retired, I still occasionally have long weird dreams about somehow righting the disaster that became our previous place of academic employment. 

This is of course my subconscious at work, and it signifies nothing except the weird workings of one fat old white guy's subconsciousness.

In this latest one, graduation was somehow held mistakenly outside Aimee's craft room window, and a board (bored) meeting followed. We were able to eavesdrop on all the lies and wool-over-eyes-pulling that went on, directly from the lips of the lier-in-chief to the ears of the gullible items supposedly responsible for an institution of higher education.

In the dream we were morbidly fascinated and outraged by all the BS that was spouted. At times we laughed our heads off, the lies were so fantastic. But nothing happened. No hard questions were asked, and none answered.

Especially, questions were not asked, or answered, about learning: when it happens, how it happens, how experienced teachers can make it happen, and how to measure that it actually has happened. 

Now, this was only a dream. But dreams do come true.

Specifically, on the spectrum of conscious knowledge, there are people who know and know what they know, people that don't know and do know what they don't know, and people that think they know but don't know what they don't know. 

If this all sounds rather Rumsfeld-ian, it may be because that former Secretary accidentally put his finger on, or in, a greater truth.

As did my dream.

The GOP War on College

The Comical Of Higher Edification has a moderately decent feature article, "above the fold," on the history of right-wing opposition to learning here. It's not behind a paywall but you will need to sign in.

It always fascinates me that right-wing types believe you can run a complicated modern country without the kinds of clever folks that earn advanced degrees. Where do they think all the computers and robots that do our work and make our houses and cars run, all the advanced medical care that keeps us well, and all the advanced weaponry that protects us against authoritarian states like Russia, China, and Iran, where do they thing it all comes from? 

Trump voters? Q-Anon? Don't make me laugh.

If you subtracted the combined output of clever people with advanced degrees from the economy, there wouldn't be very much left.

And of course, we have working examples of this. The new Trump-era book "The Divider" by Glaser and Baker, the husband/wife NYT best seller team, is useful here, recounting the absolutely mind-fucking thoughtless chaos inside the Trump White House, as Trump picked staffers and appointees for their loyalty and their "...from Central Casting" good looks, not their qualifications.

Of course, it burns right-wingers to the core that, once begun, higher education tends to produce liberal thinkers. 

Well, duh. The whole premise of scientific education is to learn to think without bias. That's the purpose of scientific logic, the use to which we put the theory of probability, and the rationale behind the need for statistical significance before publishing the results of a study.

But right-wing thinking seems full of thoughtless bias. Against people of color, against ideas, against sexual freedom, against different cultures. It's a morass of thoughtless nonsense.

It may be time to paraphrase the old RAF engineer's adage, "If flying were hard, the engineers would have to do it." 

If right-wing thinking were hard, people with college degrees would have to do it. But they can't do it, or won't, because it's not actually hard, just wrong. 

We should call it wrong-wing thinking.

College Scorecard

An NYT article about the dollar value of graduation in earnings -- always a limiting way to look at things* -- is here (behind a paywall).

(*Limiting because, of course, the person properly educated to use their brain to look after themselves and others, and their stuff, needs less money than someone who doesn't to be happy. Basic Buddhist/Quaker thinking. And... duh!)

'Tis a gift to be simple.

I downloaded the DoE base data, just for shits and giggles. I'll publish what I find here.

From the archive, an oldie but goodie

 Career counselling?

What advice would I give to a student looking for a career in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate change mitigation?

This is an interesting question, as our Unity College admissions calendar is well in progress and the Admissions Office is assembling next year's entering class. It's also in the news. Each morning, if I have time, I read the New York Times and scan the education section headlines, and lately the paper has been full of articles about admissions.

I encounter the admissions process through visits by high schoolers. I generally meet most of the entering students in our Sustainability Design and Technology Program one or two years before they attend Unity College. They come for a visit, or attend one of our Open Houses, meet me, and we have a conversation.

The conversation that I can have with them at that point is naturally shallow, as are most processes associated with this stage of the choosing-a-college process. I can't tell you how many students have shown up to talk, only to realize that they were looking for something completely different. Students show up thinking that we offer a program in household installation, for instance. Or they somehow arrive believing that they can have a career in energy without doing science or math.

Often the first thing I ask is, "so you want to be an applied scientist working in the energy field" When they're stumped or bemused by this question, that's a bad sign. They hadn't realized that what we offer is a science degree in energy. I don't know how high schoolers show up at my door thinking this, but they do.

Indeed, I'm not sure how high school and college age people think or where they get their information from.

Which is good. That's not really my job.

But every week I have long conversations and/or email correspondence with half a dozen to a dozen different professionals that already work in this field. Sometimes we are talking or writing about students, setting up internships or projects, for instance. But more often than not I'm helping solve real world problems that these professionals encounter, in energy analysis, anemometry, finance, or legislation. They call me up or email me for answers, to stay in touch, to learn how to do new things, or I call them for the same reasons.

So I know what these well paid professionals do for a living, how they or the businesses they work for make money, what the skill sets are that they seek in order to make more money, and how to train students up to the proper standard in those skill sets.

That is my job, isn't it?

Thank heavens I don't have to think like a high schooler, though!

What I have to do instead is put the information needed in the workplace into forms and levels that high school and college-entry age folks can understand.

So, based on that information, what advice do I have for the student seeking a degree program and remunerative employment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate mitigation?

First, up, lay down the iPod, get off Twitter or Facebook, remove all distractions, and settle down for at least a minute.

You're going to need to learn to concentrate.

The modern world is full of distractions for all people, young and old, and the way that the field of energy and climate is evolving is no different. There is all kinds of spin and greenwash. But the great majority of successful professionals I encounter are not this kind of person. They are analysts and engineers, number crunchers and applied scientists who have a natural tendency to want to solve practical problems in making green energy or saving dirty, brown energy and in accounting for the emissions that are reduced when either of the above happen.

This is good, because this is where the money is, that pays their salaries. Energy is valuable, and green energy more valuable than brown, so if you know how to make green energy or save brown energy, then you know how to make or save money. You have to be able to account for making or saving that money if you want to get paid -- you must prove to your employer or the government that you are making or saving this money. But the potential supply of money to pay your salary is quite large. There's an awful lot of wasted energy in this world.

You need to learn to concentrate so you are capable of analyzing the energy problems of whatever organization you are working for, and solving them. Most organizations are complicated and energy can be made or saved in hundreds of different ways. It takes concentration to analyze all the ways and lay them out for study and pick the most cost effective ones and come up with physical improvements.

If you are prone to distraction, you won't do very well at this. So learn to concentrate.

The next thing I would say is, get real. Put away the ego. Stop noticing yourself. The world is not a stage on which you may play out the fantasy of your life. Get used to noticing, identifying, interpreting physical reality instead.

These energy problems are real problems with real physical embodiments. There's either a leak in the building envelope or there isn't. The oil level goes down faster or slower in the tank. The meter turns faster or slower, or if you're really good, backwards. Something physical has happened. You have made a difference or not.

You're in the picture, but you're not the important thing. The machine or the building that is using energy is the thing. Reduce the ego, get outside of yourself, and study the thing, not how you feel about the thing.

This is not a job for folks who enjoy telling fictional stories, for fantasists, or egotists, or grand-standers who like the idea of spinning out their own egos. Good analysts are often quite modest types, with modest dress and modest habits. Sometimes we're downright frumpy.

This is a job for somewhat grumpy Zen masters who can leave their egos at the door to the boiler room. People who are prepared to see things, to notice stuff. People who are more comfortable doing than being.

Pocket protectors, suspenders, toolbelts, sensible shoes, backpacks or handbags that contain useful stuff, these are all signs of the emerging energy master. Who cares what others think about how I look? It's not what I look that counts. It's what I know. My students may not be the most well dressed on campus. (But they will be the most well paid on graduation.) They are not the most gregarious, nor the most popular. Some, like me, tend to the grumpy.

But this is only because what we are interested in most is outside of ourselves, and we don't necessarily like what we see. When we get to the point where the thing we wish to fix is fixed, then we'll be happier.

The next thing I'm going to say is, be patient. Take your time to understand things.

Good news. This is a good area to be in right now. It's probably the best area to be in, from a job security and financial point of view.

Here's a common-enough type of headline about humanities majors who can't find jobs.

Our Sustech students won't have that problem. The energy sector, especially the renewable energy sector, proved relatively recession-proof during this latest business cycle droop.

Wind power in particular was one area where companies continued to hire during even the worst of the recession. And salaries are relatively high. Most of the just-left-college professionals I talk to, with only two or three or four years under their belts, get paid more than I do.

If I didn't love teaching and learning, I'd quit and take one of these jobs myself!

So why can't our Admissions Office find more students who want to work in this relatively recession free and relatively well-paid area? The usual American aversion to science, technology, engineering and math is one reason. There was a time when this country turned out the best scientists and engineers in the world, and in many ways that's still true, but you wouldn't think so sometimes, especially when you're trying to find a high schooler who wants a good career.

I don't know what it is that teachers and parents and pop culture does to scare students away from science and math, but it sure works.

Science and math is hard, but not that hard. One of the things that constantly amazes me in my energy outreach work is how easily people's eyes glaze over or they get confused when you show them a schematic, a spreadsheet, or a GIS map. People lack patience with complicated ideas. We geeks and wonks get paid because we have this patience. The huge STEM salary premium, the extra money you get paid for the rest of your life for being a bit of a wonk, is not so terribly hard to get.

You just have to be a tiny little bit more patient with science and math than the competition. That's all it takes.

Finally, I'd say, be prepared to change your ideas lots of times in life, based on new evidence and the emerging situation. I can't tell you what the price of a barrel of oil or a tonne of carbon will be in even one year's time, let alone for the rest of your career. But everything you want to do, every problem you want to fix, will be more or less easily fixed depending on those two metrics and many others. As the major facts of the energy and climate system change, so will you need to change. And you will need to be able to bootstrap yourself into new areas of expertise. the basic skills and knowledge: analysis and problem solving, physics, ecology, engineering, accounting, business skills, presentation skills, these will remain the same.

But the problem will change. So don't get stuck on one thing. Keep your eyes looking down the track. Read the papers and the blogs, trying to see what's ahead.

And keep your hard hat handy.

Climate bill article cites Jimmy Carter Solar Panels

A long time ago in an educational galaxy far away I became the default Guardian of the Jimmy Carter Solar Panels. Now they are cited again in todays WaPo. 

The $200 boat

One of the great pleasures of living in Maine is the dickering lifestyle. Dickering is the business of buying and selling secondhand stuff. They even made a TV show about it, Downeast Dickering. This show came out just at the moment when we harried first-time parents were just learning to get a kid to sleep and it was a great thing to finally get her down and then relax with a show that showed a lot of familiar scenery and even some familiar characters. North Woods Law was a better Maine-based show, featuring several of my former students, and I even made a cameo once giving a pre-search brief to the Unity College SAR team before a line search. But Dickering was close to home, culturally speaking.

Aimee and I furnished and outfitted three homes and a small farm mostly by dickering. One of those homes, our AirBnB, is fully-furnished with dickered-for treasures, and seems quite successful despite this.

Anyway. I digress. Again. As always. 

Long story short, last year, in search of a compelling summer project that might be good family fun, I went and dickered for a secondhand motorboat and trailer, all of which I won for $200. This is a 1979 Galaxy 17-footer "bowrider" made of sprayed, chopped fiberglass. 

This was a cheap way of making a boat in the seventies and eighties, much maligned by "Wooden Boat" magazine types and other purists. But the thing about a heavy chopped glass boat is that it's hard to sink and even harder to destroy. So much so that boats like this are ten-a-penny on the sides of the road in Maine, although they are seldom if ever running and floating. You could buy one rather like it today on FacePlant for $500. There are at least three for sale locally. All would need at least as much work too, and probably not be worth a whole lot more at the end of the process. You don't get rich dickering. But you can improve your lifestyle significantly.

It took three trips to get boat and trailer home, one to buy it and scope out a plan for moving it, and two to execute the plan. The trailer was in such bad shape that it needed to be dismantled on site at the house where I bought it. The boat was intact, but had to be transferred from the dilapidated trailer to my flatbed. I used the flatbed winch and PVC pipe rollers for this. Then there was a complete engine in boxes, which went into the truck bed and cab on the second lift.

Here's the boat on the flatbed.

Here's the trailer on the flatbed, in pieces. This was dismantled and rebuilt with new fasteners and bearings and then sprayed with urea formaldehyde paint. Should last as long as I do.

And here's the engine in the process of being rebuilt. This is a Mercruiser 120, a popular sterndrive model from the glass pack boat era, built on a versatile GM base that also went into mail trucks and forklift trucks. It's a cast iron block, so eminently repairable by the backyard mechanic in a way that modern aluminum blocks are generally not. 

You can see the cracked crankcase leaking water. This is hosepipe pressure at 40-60 PSI, much greater than working pressure with the engine running. Rather than spend $500 or more for a rebuilt case, I welded it over and again until almost of this spray stopped and then put JB weld on a couple of tiny remaining pinholes, a time-honored shade-tree technique. I don't have great faith in this lasting forever, but I expect if it starts to leak again it won't be catastrophic. I'll have time to make it back to the dock.

New pistons, rings, bearings and seals cost around $400. Add another $300 or so total for a new marine alternator, a starter, a starter solenoid, and a little less for a tilt motor (the hydraulic pump that lifts the sterndrive out of the water for trailering). This particular tilt motor was rare as the proverbial rocking horse shit but eventually I sourced a supplier of modern replacements.

It was surprisingly easier to rebuild an engine in boxes than it would have been to strip one down and rebuild it. Everything was there, although the purpose and placement of some items was a little mystifying at times. 

Just a big 'ole jigsaw puzzle for a sumpy.

Here's a video of the engine in the final stages of rebuilding and testing.

And here's the final boat today after this year's job, which was to service the sterndrive to deal with an overheating problem that materialized on the final outing last year. I replaced the outdrive water pump and cleared a blockage in the exhaust, which in these boats also exits the cooling water from the engine. I also fitted a new Bimini cover that I got new-but-soiled merchandise from eBay. Nothing was wrong with it. Someone had ordered and returned it. 

Older carburetor-equipped motors start hard like this if you don't keep the carb charged with gas. You do this by starting it daily. That's annoying, but better than charging batteries. 

So, for an outlay of maybe $1,500, we have a nice boat here. All dickered-for, paid for, and fitted out.

I'd like to find a small outboard to use as a "kicker.'" This is a smaller motor used to save gas and noise while trolling for fish or maneuvering in tight spaces. There's already a mount for one on the back of the boat. It would also serve as an emergency motor, which would make it safer to use this boat while camping on big lakes or Maine sea islands. 

That might be a project for another year. For this year we'll just go cruise around a couple of local lakes.

One reason I wanted a motorboat was because our kid was so frightened of the canoe. Here she is the first time we took her for a canoe ride. What a face!

And here she is in the "engine boat." What an improvement!

It was worth all the effort just for that moment.

Why I fix

I fix to make money, sometimes by saving money, and to build and enhance lifestyle. I can give my family a better life than would otherwise be possible by building things and repairing them. This applies mostly to vehicles and houses, but also to smaller things like toys and garden equipment.

How much, in dollar terms? We'll be strictly utilitarian, even though I don't agree with the morality of that analysis. More than enough, in most cases, to justify the time spent on an hourly basis. Somethings, like fixing houses, pay better than others, like fixing clothes or consumer electronics. I tried to fix a GE laundry machine once, only to discover the replacement parts cost more, collectively, than a new GE laundry machine. But I live in a house on three acres that cost only $60,000 before repair and is worth at least twice that, and drive a reliable car, a Toyota Camry that cost only $3,500 secondhand, before repair, has give 120,000 miles, and is still worth at least $3,500. Both house and car have given us many years of service. I have another car, a 1975 VW bus, that was given to me and that I subsequently have gotten at least 400,000 miles out of, for perhaps another six thousand or so dollars in parts. At the IRS tax rate (2021) of 58¢/mile, that's $226,000 in value.

I fix to build friendships and community. I am not by nature particularly social. I no longer dance, hardly ever go on outdoor excursions with groups other than my family anymore, something I used to do an awful lot, and I dislike small talk. But people need help with stuff, so helping gets me out of the house.

I fix because I can. I was well trained in a tough school. Royal Air Force Number One Technical Training School Halton, Bucks, plus six years on squadrons, flight lines, in repair hangers, and engine bays from one end of the British Isles to the other. We were given a full parade inspection every morning and marched to our shop classes by drill instructors. I tell shouty and bullying people, "You can't scare me by yelling. I was yelled at by professionals." Being that kind of asbestos has probably made me thousands at contract negotiations and saved thousands in therapy fees. Then I worked in a rental repair yard, a mine, a lumber mill, a car dealership, and in construction yards, building sites, and home repair all over the US. I haven't yet met the system or assembly that I couldn't somehow take apart and troubleshoot. Even electronic gadgets can be fixed. You may not be able to fix a computer chip by yourself, but printed circuit boards go bad in other places and can be fixed by repairing solder, switching out components other than chips, or simply replaced in modular fashion. Just about everything can be fixed. If it can't be fixed, you can at least begin to understand why. That's better than not knowing at all.

I fix because you have to keep fixing. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. I didn't fix things as much during the twelve years I spent in full-time college, 1989-2000 (BA, MS, PhD). My skills atrophied. I didn't learn as much new stuff. I missed a decade of technological development, particularly in autos, and had to catch up later. These were the years that onboard diagnosis (OBD) technology came out -- OBD is your car's "check engine" and other code system for signifying faults -- so they were crucial years to miss and it took a long while to catch up.

I fix because fixing puts me in charge of my life. It reduces my dependence on others and on parts of our social system that I often do not agree with or support, particularly monopoly capital. Matthew Crawford, author of "Shop Class and Soulcraft," writes that nothing is more pathetic than a modern individual who is unable to even begin to fathom the technology he depends on. And there's nothing I despise more than a company who deliberately goes out of their way to prevent you fixing their product.

I fix because I like old stuff and old stuff is often nicer than new. Or the new version simply doesn't exist or do quite the same thing. My 1975 VW camper, for instance, which has been taking me places since 1993, has no modern analog that retains all the indispensable features of the old. There are no modern camper vans that have such a simple engine and such a clean uncluttered interior. My 1973 Kubota B6000E tractor is the smallest strongest tractor ever made for the US market and comes with a wide range of useful implements. I paid $6,000 for it and all the implements.

I fix because society depends on fixers. If nothing was ever repaired or made better, where would we be? Someone has to do it. Old buildings, old cars, old things in general shouldn't just be thrown away. Even throwing stuff away requires fixing. Someone must keep the demolition and scrapyard equipment running. And society will always need fixers. Your drippy tap has to be fixed by a local person. You can't outsource it to China or India. One of the reasons the allies won WW2 was because there were so many handy fixers in the allied armies, technicians who could keep Spitfires and B17s and Sherman tanks and Liberty ships running. During the Cold War, the Soviet leaders' fear of our technology -- and by extension the technicians (like me) who maintained that technology -- kept communism and its gulags contained. I can claim credit for a small role in preserving my own freedom and that of our daughter. That little nugget of self-respect is a priceless value. In Ukraine today, fixers are keeping the increasing brutal Russian hordes at bay by repairing aircraft, abandoned Russian tanks, drones, and donated weapons of all different kinds. More power to them.

Finally, I fix for peace of mind and related spiritual feeling. This is the closest thing to religious practice that I have. 

Robert Pirsig, author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (and former Mainer), writes, "Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial to technical work. It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good work and that which destroys it is bad work."

If I'm down, which is rare to begin with, I often feel better just looking at stuff that was broken or not working that I have fixed and keep around. I feel like I can handle this life. I feel like life is good and good to me and mine. If I'm depressed, a good thing to do is to tidy my workshop and put tools away. I always feel good about myself with a clean shop.

I know lots of people, particularly younger people, that don't feel this way. Some have killed themselves. Others manage with prescription drugs that are supposed to make them feel better but often don't seem to help much. It isn't surprising that they have learned this sadness and helplessness when society tells them that they shouldn't even try to figure out what is wrong with the stuff they own and use, never mind try to figure out what is wrong with society or themselves. Or what society is doing to themselves. I feel bad for them. I often try to help. But it's very hard, it seems, to repair this problem once it is well-established. A hard fix.

It's better to fix, and keep fixing, from the get-go, and just keep fixing as you go along. Staying in command of your stuff helps keep you in command of your life, and keeps you from being overwhelmed by the dysfunction around you. You can create a personal island of stuff and ideas that work. You can extend this island by helping your friends and neighbors.

Sooner or later enough of us will do this and it will spread and the whole system will start working better.

Dr. Daly in the daily

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/18/magazine/herman-daly-interview.html#commentsContainer

Zen of...

A guy on FB thought he had reset his VW bus engine valves, but then it wouldn't start. This is a fine lesson in the Zen of VW bus maintenance: 

You have at least one and perhaps two valves that are not closing. If all you touched was the LH valve train, then the distributor is still able to show you when the engine is firing on cylinder numbers three and four (The LH ones. Three is top left or forward left, as seen from the back of the engine. Four is bottom or rear left.) Pop the cap, rotate the engine on the crank bolt until the rotor arm is pointing at the place where number four HT lead used to be, check against the timing marks on the fan to be sure you're at TDC, then reset the valve lash (clearance) to 10 thousandths of an inch. Remember: Firing order is 1342 and the crank rotates two full turns for each full four cycles for a four cylinder engine: The timing marks, therefore, show TDC for one and four cylinders, but don't tell you which cylinder. It could be one or four. The rotor cap is what tells you which cylinder is at TDC, assuming the distributor hasn't been messed with. Rinse and repeat for number four. (Ten thousandths is the "old" setting for before we allegedly got better precision in engine parts and so on. The new is 6 thou, but in your situation you need more lash to be on the safe side.)Make sure to re-read the procedure for setting valve lash carefully, since you likely did something wrong before. Most likely you set the valve lash for number four when number one was at TDC and for number three when number two actually was. This is the usual mistake. There's an easy last-minute check. Both (inlet and exhaust) rocker arms should be loose and clatter a bit when you wiggle them at TDC with the rotor pointing towards that cylinder's HT lead on the cap. Once you get a start, reset the other side too, just to check. If you really did only change one thing at once, and it was actually the valves, you will get a start. There is only a slight chance that something else went wrong coincidentally. But a lot of guys can make themselves think they only changed one thing when they actually did other stuff too. So if it doesn't start, ask those kinds of questions. Did you tinker with the dizzy when you set the lash, for instance? All you should ever do is take the cap off and put it back on carefully. Then look for proximity. Did you accidentally knock the hot wire to the coil off? That's in the same region. Is the brake booster hose loose? The EGR hose? It's going to be something you did whether you like it or not. Denial is not a river in Egypt and not your friendly friend. Even removing and replacing the dizzy cap can be done wrong if you really try. The old science lab rule that you should never ever change more than one thing at once unless you can't help it applies to auto mechanics too.