Nissan announces 2011 electric car project

Nissan announced it has plans to build an all electric car complete with infrastructure to be made available in Israel by 2011. Nissan will work with affiliate car maker Renault and Better Place, where the latter partner will supply the infrastructure. Better Place hopes to use sustainable green energy for its 500,000 recharge points it will build across Israel. Israel was selected for its size where electric cars – which have only a short range – is ideal for testing the viability of such a system.

Boffins bring down bovine belches

Japanese researchers have found a way to reduce the methane from cow belches. According to the Daily Yomiuri methane produced in this way accounts for 5 percent of the greenhouse gases. By feeding the cows cysteine and nitrate the researchers from Obihiro University were able to reduce the amount of methane released. As methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 this is seen as an important solution to the problem. Of the 23.8 million tons of methane emitted by Japan in 2006 6.78 million tons were produced by cows. Patents have been taken out in five countries including Japan, United States and Australia. The method is also said not to effect milk and meat quality from treated cows.

Bomb blasts in Bhutan

So Bhutan has suffered its first political attack of recent times – a series of four bomb blasts. Bhutan is preparing to move towards democracy this year. They will hold their first lower house parliamentary elections and the King will renounce his powers as monarch.

But why should he renounce his power when many of his citizens are happy with a monarchy? And why should the political others resort to violent means in order to disturb a move to more freedom? If the terrorists are not fighting for the people’s rights for a monarchy then what are they exactly fighting for? Baffling.

Is there anything good in politics?

It’s because we have leaders like her that a nation is screwed up

Hiroko Ota, Japan’s Minister for Economic and Fiscal Policy, according to the Daily Yomiuri said in her Diet policy speech that “Japan [is] longer a top-tier economic power”. The other “facts” she quoted include:

• Japan’s national income accounted for less than ten percent of the world economy for the first time since 1980
• Japan’s GDP slipped to 18th among OECD nations.

A few questions: is it a good thing for Japan, which makes up two percent of the world’s population, to be earning ten percent of the world’s income? Why do so many of us see this as good? What is this obsession with ranking? Why is it so important that a nation becomes a superpower? Isn’t Imperialism just having an inferiority complex on the scale of nations?

Perhaps she (still) thinks bubbles never burst. Whatever the reason is for her philosophy I hope the Japanese people are smart enough not to listen, because economies and the environment will be better off thinking about producing and consuming less. Such rhetoric is just foolishness.

My Librarything, barcode scanner and I

Now I feel like a librarian.

I have been a member of Librarything for over two years now. And at the beginning of every year during the holiday break I continue my annual ritual of trying to complete my book catalogue. But this year I got fed up of the slow progress and with the state of my library tags. Something had to be done.

I had decided to start over again. I deleted my existing catalogue of over one thousand books of which I had previously hand catalogued. I used to search by name and author, then later found out that searching by ISBN was more precise. But the latter method also wasn’t necessarily quicker since typing in meaningless numbers requires much concentration.

That is where my new barcode scanner comes in. I bought a new one last week. And in that week I have been able to scan and enter around a thousand books. So my library catalogue is now back up to the around the same as before… all in one week. One wonders what I have been doing for the past two years. So I should have bought a barcode scanner long ago, but trying to purchase as little as possible (reduce consumption) had stopped me.

You might say this strange since I am acquiring so many books. Well, I won’t go into the philosophy of books and book purchasing but I will say I believe knowledge is important. And not only that but not fearing knowledge is important. My children love books and they have their own little library of books. Occasionally my daughter likes to pull my books off the shelves. She is at that age. She even likes to pretend to be reading them. She loves my Sun-tzu’s Art of War because it is pocket size, just right for her little hands. Tip: to stop them from wreaking havoc to your collection pack the books in tight, especially the lower shelves where they can reach. After a while they give up when they find they cannot remove them.

But I am digressing again.

So here are my tips for optimal librarything cataloguing:

Tip#1: Buy a barcode scanner.
I purchased the cheapest one I could find from Amazon Japan, like those you see in libraries or shops, for around US$70. This one was a CCD type, like a webcam. Some I found were one thousand plus dollars laser models. All I can say is a basic model will do.

Tip#2: Physically organize your books into topics.
If your books are not already organised I recommend you do so before you start cataloguing them. It will make your cataloguing task easier and smoother. The reason will become clear in tip#4.

Tip#3: Try NOT to use the Import Books feature.
At first I had thought this feature was great… until I discovered that many of my books were skipped or failed because it could not be found in the database. And then I realised now I cannot find which of my hundreds of books were skipped. If you do use choose to use the Import Books feature I recommend that you make your book import file in small batches.

For example, I have several bookshelves over in the main house where an internet connection isn’t available. That means I can only scan the barcode into a plain-text file. I usually make each file to represent one shelf of a bookshelf. So each file contains around forty books. And then later I import them into Librarything. The trick is not to import several files at once but one at a time. If an error occurs you can take note of the bad ISBN and hunt it down by narrowing it to forty books instead of several hundred, if not a thousand. The better way to catalogue your books will be explained next in tip#4.

Tip#4: Add your books one by one.
This might sound ultra-slow but it isn’t. Here is why.

On the Add Books page select the cross referenced database (Search what?) for which most of your books will be contained. Amazon.com may be the choice for most if your books are mainly in English.

Then choose a tag. I recommend to use a simple general tag to start. Because you can enter more specific tags in batches later once they have been catalogued. This way you don’t need to think about complicated multiple tags when you are trying to concentrate on cataloguing and also you only need to enter a tag once if you have organised or grouped your books (see tip#2). The Add Books page retains the tag information ready for the next search.

Next, in the Advance Options is a check box for Skip Confirmation. Check this and when you scan a book it automatically catalogues it, just like a library; no keystroke or mouse click necessary. And since the cord on my barcode scanner is long enough so that I can have my laptop on a table or even on the floor, and I stand at the book in the bookshelf and scan each book by pulling them out partially, enough to reach the barcode, scan it, then check that the book matches the returned result (I always make the font is large enough on my browser to check from where I stand), and then I continue to scan the next book without having to move from my position.

Using this method I had found I was able to easily catalogue forty books (an average shelf) in less than ten minutes. But this had all depended on the kind of books I was cataloguing. For my old books without barcodes and non-English books it had meant a lot of manual searches or entries need to made. I usually put them off the shelf and entered them by title and name search in a batch. But having said this it still helped me get through rest of the newer barcoded books, meaning most of my library.

So I hope my experience and these tips are helpful. Good luck.

Resolutions revisited (and expanded)

Having things settling down once more I had a look at my resolutions – really too scant. So I have decided to flesh it out.

Sustainability
Firstly, while I had resolved that I would reduce consumption and be a ecologically responsible parent I really needed to be more specific. This year I shall try to focus on two areas:

1) reducing my energy consumption and;
2) reducing my waste output.

What this mainly translates into is commuting less or using less damaging means of transport, rethinking our buying habits and home-grown food production efforts, and being a sustainability role model to my children.

Buddhism
This year I resolve to meditate on a regular basis, say, at least three times a week. I really need to make it clear that I believe that a significant part of Buddha’s thinking is meditation. Many Buddhists seem to believe meditation isn’t a necessary part of being Buddhist. Lay practise is one area this is most obvious. But without meditation as part of the practise you will not be able to distinguish it from a religion or philosophy, which by the way I do not believe it is either.

On the point of religion the defining characteristic is usually the worship of a god, gods or some other greater power. Since Buddha never claimed god status, but considered himself an ordinary person, then it cannot be truly called a religion in the Judeo-Christo-Islamic sense. And on the point of philosophy the practise of meditation together with physical and mental discipline again makes it different. Philosophy is usually about a way of thought. So it seems practise is neither an issue nor necessary to philosophy. And so on this count it cannot be considered a true philosophy in the Socratic-to-Russell sense also. Therefore in order to make “my Buddhism” count as Buddhism I believe I must meditate.

Parenthood
Apart from my previous resolve to teach my son and daughter about sustainable living and responsibility to sustainability I also need to spend as much time with them as possible. With studies and work my time with them in the past year has been considerably less than I (and they) would like. After all, these are said to be the most important years in their social, mental and physical development. To not nurture them in this crucial period would be neglecting my duties as a parent. It is easy to forget and just continue to act as before like in my bachelorhood or childless past.

Blogging
While it might seem ridiculous to make a resolution on a pastime like blogging I beg to differ. Blogging as a medium of expression is no less important than writing,say, a thesis or book. As a matter of fact blogging has helped me learn to write in some very important ways. Although 2007 would not be counted as a great year for my blogging I had learnt through the experience that what makes for good blogging or writing is time and effort. When I began blogging in 2006 I had more time on my hands and therefore I was able to proofread and edit my writing. In 2007 however that changed and I didn’t have the luxury of time and therefore did considerably less of both if any at all. As so as an unintentional experiment I was able to see that proofreading and editing plays a big part in whether one’s writing is successful or not. Looking back I think my writing was good in 2006 though still a little rough. So I resolve to reproduce at least that standard once more, if not better.

I also will try to make time toward the weekends to write something. Some semblance of routine I will need to create.