“The industrial economy…reduces the value of a thing to its market price….But when nothing is valued for what it is, everything is destined to be wasted.”
-Wendell Berry, “A Nation Rich in Natural Resources,” in Home Economics, 135.
Archives For Creation Care
I was over at Sojo.net just now and read a short article by Tom Sine talking about Shane Claiborne. Shane is part of what is being described as The New Monasticism. It is a post-Protestant re-conceptualizing of a common religious life informed by the writings of the great Monastic leaders of the Medieval Church. Since writes:
Over the past two decades, a new Protestant movement very much like the Franciscan order has emerged. Like many in the traditional Franciscan order, they have moved into the poorest urban communities in our world, live in community as families and singles, and care for the poor, often living at the same lifestyle level of the poor around them. A number of them have even developed a rule of life.
This is a compelling way of life and one that is counter-intuitive to our prevailing notions of the good life. I have not always been as interested in this movement as I now am. Once upon a time, in 1998, Shane and I were in seminary together at Princeton. I did not know him personally, but remember him asking a question in OT (I think it was OT) and prefacing it by saying that he lived in intentional community. I had no idea what “intentional community” was and I certainly thought he was something of an odd bird (as the English say) since he wore apparently home-made clothes. Ten years later, I am a little more enlightened. The one thing that does concern me about this movement is its inability to capitalize a community. It seems to be a charity movement in the sense that it is dependent upon money from others in order to be sustaining. I am not sure that it creates wealth for a community. However, I am willing to admit that this is not the only (or perhaps not even the most) important thing for a Christian group to do. Thanks Shane, and others, for creating an interesting alternative to traditional evangelical and post-evangelical Christian living.
From How Stuff Works:
Is there a way to compare a human being to an engine in terms of efficiency?
It turns out that “biological engines” — which is what the muscles in your body are — are pretty amazing in terms of efficiency. To find out how efficient, let’s look at how many calories a person burns while riding a bicycle.
If you look at a page like this calorie chart, you will find that a person riding a bicycle at 15 miles per hour (24 km per hour) burns 0.049 calories per pound per minute. So a 175-pound (77-kg) person burns 515 calories in an hour, or about 34 calories per mile (about 21 calories per km).
A gallon of gasoline (about 4 liters) contains about 31,000 calories. If a person could drink gasoline, then a person could ride about 912 miles on a gallon of gas (about 360 km per liter). Considering that a normal car gets about 30 miles per gallon, that’s pretty impressive!
To be fair, keep in mind that a car generally weighs a ton or more, while a bicycle weighs only 30 pounds. Cars also travel a lot faster than 15 mph. But it is still an interesting comparison. Note also that people cannot drink gasoline. However, people can drink vegetable oil, which contains nearly the same number of calories per gallon (if you look at How Fats Work you can see that fat contains long hydrogen/carbon chains just like gasoline does).
The people riding in a race like the Tour de France are riding more like 25 mph. Because air resistance rises very quickly with speed, they are burning about three times more calories — something like 100 calories per mile. In a 100-mile stage of the tour, a racer might burn something like 8,000 to 10,000 calories in one day! So they are getting only about 300 miles per gallon. The only way to replace those calories is to eat a lot of food (see How Dieting Works for details).
I read this morning that the US has the highest per capita bicycle ownership in the world. I also read that cars are used for over 95% of our travel.
The Wall Street Journal features an interesting article highlighting the differences between automobiles in europe and in the United States. Some interesting facts:
+Average fuels efficiency for european cars is 35 mpg.
+70% of cars and trucks sold in the United States have 6 cylinder engines or above.
+In europe 89% of cars sold have 4 cyclinder engines or less.
