`Home Documentary more than Breathtaking

Home (2009)

It was at the very end of September 2010, when a friend invited me and other friends to see this documentary at a theater in Dubai.  To say that it was breathtaking doesn't quite capture how superb this was:  It was resonating, it was moving, it was provocative.

That September 2010 was just six months into my work on Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm, and many of my ideas and insights were budding at best and vague at worst.  Still this documentary was pivotal in my crucial preliminary thoughts on the environment, which I took stock of in February 2013. 

How well we keep (or regain) equilibrium for proper sustenance and growth depends on a host of weighty actions, such as:  (a) We halt our adverse impact on the environment.  (b) We reduce our consumption or alter our consumption pattern.  (c) We somehow assist Mother Earth in replenishing herself.

From Weighing Worldwide Heartbreaks.

Home is a mere 93 minutes in length (click on the image caption, above, to view it), but its coverage and reach and impact span millennia in the history of life on earth.   

Algorithm for Environment is forthcoming, but my articles this week are small but notable steps in that long, effortful formulation.

Avoid the Sun Beatdown

When we moved into our house, I noticed that in the late afternoon, it would get too cold in the summer and really chilly in the winter.  It was as if the AC was on overdrive in the first case, and the heater was failing in the second case.

I realized that the thermostat to our central cooling and heating was on a wall in the dining room.  It faced the windows, which had a northwesterly exposure.  As the sun arced across the sky, the thermostat faced more sunshine, and with the shades fully up on those windows, the sun beat on it directly.

Our cooling and heating system is 18 years old, as that was when we moved in.  It's not exactly a smart system, but it's been something like a dutiful servant for us and kept us comfortable in our house.  So with that thermostat being the only sensor for temperature in the house, I had to find a solution.

Our end in mind was to solve the problem I mentioned at the outset.  The Core Algorithm posits that to solve any problem in the best, most optimal way, we need to have sufficient enough grasp of that problem.  That meant looking into it, recognizing what we had, and knowing how the system worked.

The afternoon sun is shining very brightly, but my Samsung Galaxy Note adjusted the exposure

I found a simple enough solution, that is, by walking backward to map the pathway: I had to prevent the sun from beating directly on the thermostat in the afternoon, and to do so it was enough to close the shades halfway down on those northwestern windows. In fact, these days we all live busy lives, so it made better sense to us just to keep the shades closed altogether, especially during the workweek.

We have a programmer on our thermostat, so it adjusts the setting to maintain our comfort and also to conserve energy, depending on time of day. For example, we can it keep fairly cool at night during the winter, as we're all in bed.

For a while, I tweaked the program, so that it would account for that northwesterly exposure. Specifically at 3 PM in the summer, I'd shift the setting from 74° to 76°. On hot summer days, our dining room gets hot, even with the shades fully closed.  By shifting it up, I made sure the AC didn't kick on needlessly, and chill the rest of the house too much.  Conversely, in the winter, the normal setting is 68°, and I'd raise the thermostat to 70°, so the heater would switch on and keep the temperature up where it needs to be in the rest of the house.

In time, though, I realized I didn't need to tweak the program that specifically. As long as the shades were at least halfway down in the afternoon, our system work perfectly fine and we kept our comfort while conserving energy.

Let the Sunshine in

The back of our house has a southeasterly exposure.  So on a bright morning, sunshine floods in through windows in our family room, the kitchen, our master bathroom, and our daughter's bedroom.  To help with energy conservation in the winter, we open the shades and curtains on all of those windows.  I remind my wife that sunshine is free heat and this is one way we save costs on our heating bill. 

So courtesy of the wonderful Fifth Dimension, let the sunshine in!

Of course, in the summer, it's the opposite.  We keep the shades closed for the morning on those windows, in order to keep the sunshine out and thus keep the house cool.  This way, we save on AC costs.  We have a sizable backyard with clusters of trees and a pond adjoining our property.  So once in a while we simply want to enjoy the view outside the family room in the morning, and throw open the shades.

Late winter view of our backyard, from our family room

The Core Algorithm accounts for all of what's important to us, such as comfort, conservation, and enjoyment, and helps us find a balance among all of it vis-a-vis our end in mind.

Stop Frosty from Coming

In the winter, we often found our windows covered with frost, come morning time.  If it's super cold, the frost is thicker and covers more surface.  It's a nuisance, because as the sun rises, that frost melts, and we find pools of water on the window pane and sometimes dripping down to the carpet.

Why does this happen, and how does it happen?  You see, we close the shades for the night, and that traps warm, moist air between the shades and the cold glass surface of the windows.  Low winter temperatures, especially at night, first condenses that air, then freezes the condensation (i.e., water). 

Of course we could leave the shades up during the night, and that would solving this annoying chemical phenomenon.  But we want to have privacy in the evening, for instance, while we're having dinner and watching TV.  Also, we want to be energy conservative, so the shades serve as a barrier to keep the cold temperatures out. 

My end in mind à la The Core Algorithm was to come up with a solution that balanced energy conservation and nuisance avoidance.  (By the way, my wife would go around to each window, place towels on the pane, and later wipe everything off.  To me, that was annoying.)

Walking backward to map the pathway, I reasoned that if the so-called culprit of the frost was condensation, then I had to find a way to stop that from happening. Of course the heat from our house furnace would keep the warm, moist air as gas, and thus prevent the change to liquid or solid.

Once I knew what we had to do to serve our end, the third and final step was simply to do it, that is, walk the pathway.  Instead of leaving the shades up, I rolled them down and kept a one-inch gap above the window pane.  It took a few tries to find the minimum gap to completely prevent frost on the windows.  Also, by keeping the gap to a minimum meant, we used just a little bit of energy (heat) to serve our end.

This last step was an empirical process of adjusting the gap, so we could avoid the frost and conserve energy in the most optimal balance. 

One last thing, winter air inside our house could get so dry that our skin flakes, itches, and sometimes cracks.  So we had a central humidifier installed, and the air was noticeably more comfortable for us.  But I realized that I had it set too high: I released too much moisture in the air, and that contributed to the condensation problem.  By dialing it down, I helped to avoid the frost and conserve energy with an even better balance. 

truthorange on Eradicating Teen Smoking

This is a very inspiring, informative, and resonating campaign targeted at teens.  So what is The Core Algorithm here?

1. From 23% teenage smoking in 2000 to 9% today, now the aim is to finish it and hit 0%.
2. This video captures the music and visuals that teens respond to:  It's catchy and fast-paced, and it brings teens of different cultural backgrounds together.  
3. It's a colorful, empathic call to action.  

Note, after the end is mind (Step 1) is clarified, how the following messages and images proceed to inform, alert and engage teens around a pathway to 0% smoking (Step 2) and to draw on very creative signage to finish it (Step 3):

Even the X is fit for a demographic group bred and raised on media and technology.  Teens know how to exit out of something, and that's to click on X.

It's brilliant, so kudos!

Mayo Clinic and Healthy Lifestyles

I stumbled on this promotional video for the Mayo Clinic on YouTube.  On many videos, YouTube airs such an ad beforehand but gives us the option of skipping it after five seconds.  Their thinking is that if we choose to watch it, which I did in this case, it's no longer an ad but content.  It truly is content for me, as it resonates with The Core Algorithm and in particular two that I'm working on:

Donald Hensrud, MD, a Medical Director at Mayo Clinic, lists three crucial ingredients for healthy living:

1. Nutrition
2. Fitness
3. Resiliency

The third is our ability to manage and respond to life's challenges.  In their research and practice, Hensrud & Co. have found that these three pillars can have an impact on health, that is, with conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  It's a no-brainer to see that keeping proper habits on these three things lead to healthier and longer lives.

But the rub is the challenge Hensrud acknowledges:  Getting people to make proper changes and adopt healthy practices.  He offers a key solution to such a challenge: that is, keep goals well within reach (rf. my motto think big, act small).

I know it's only a short video, but what Hensrud neglects to cover is something central to The Core Algorithm: the end in mind.  What is it that you want to accomplish or gain in your life, and how does it bear on health?     

Let's take my case, as an example.  I am generally fit, health and resilient, thank God.  But while I keep active in my day-to-day life, such as yard work (we have a big yard) and snow shoveling (we had a brutal winter), I realized what I was doing simply wasn't enough.  I hated having difficulty reaching down to put on socks and tying my shoelaces, for example.  So I've come up with a simple algorithm of taking the volume of food I eat a notch, so I can lose weight.  I make sure I eat fruit at least once a day, after days of sometimes not eating any fruit or vegetables, and I track this with discipline.  It's about losing weight, of course, but more specifically my end in mind is not to have such difficulty, not be so breathless, with my clothing. 

Moreover, in the last two months, I've made a habit of walking for an hour a day, four times a week.  It's a brisk walk, so it's aerobic.  Not only is it healthy for me physically, but also it's a wonderful opportunity to meditate, reflect, and think things through.  So it does wonders for my mental and emotional well-being.  My motivation, honestly, is to make sure I live as long as possible for my wife and daughter. 

Begin with the end in mind is of course Step 1 of The Core Algorithm.  Steps 2 is walk backwards to map the pathways, which is essentially to determine what will work best for me vis-a-vis my end.  Step 3 is walk the pathways, as now that I have my roadmap, I just have to do it.  In all, then, I have much more to improve on, as far as nutrition is concerned, but I am confident I can and in fact I am well under way.

Niall Harbison on `Get Sh*t Done!

The Core Algorithm is about getting things done, which matter the most to us.  So when I saw the thumbnail and title of the following Bloomberg clip, I wanted to watch it.  I admit to being skeptical about such lead-ins as A Guide to Getting Stuff Done Without Hating Your Life, because promoters and advertisers, editors and writers have resorted to headline porn to grab readers and viewers to their stuff.  That said, I did a bit of digging around on author Niall Harbison, and found myself intrigued with his personality, itinerary, history and book. 

The words that come to mind about Harbison isn't driven, so much as he is adaptable and peripatetic.  If I were to hazard a guess at his MBTI, it would be ENTP - extroverted, intuitive, thinking and spontaneous.  He acknowledged that he was driven, but boiled it back down to two ingredients for getting stuff done: (a) not being afraid of failure, and (b) taking more risks.  If you have a similar personality, and you're game, and you don't have the typical life commitments or encumbrances, such as marriage, career and family, then Harbison is truly a role model for you (rf. 11 factoids from Niall Harbison’s book Get Sh*t Done and How to get sh*t done). 

How to get sh*t done

How to get sh*t done

MBTI in and of itself tells us there is a wealth of personalities in the world, with variations on a theme after another, on such a combination of traits as ENTP.  For instance, many people with the same profile may have very different degrees of extroversion, intuition, thinking and spontaneity.  My point is that while we may all tease something very useful from Harbison, even if just a general inspiration from what he's done, what he advises is bound to fall short or altogether fail for, I imagine, scores of us. 

His algorithms, as I see it, are those two ingredients above.  From what I gather, that is the essence, then, of his book Get Sh*t Done!  On the face of it, it's hard to discern what his objectives or purpose is for living the kind of life he's led.  But in listening between the lines, I think it's this:  thinking outside the box, avoiding being pinned down, and making just enough money to keep doing what he wants to keep doing.  Again, if his algorithms resonate with you, and more importantly they work vis-a-vis your own objectives and purpose, then his stuff is for you.

The issue, in a nutshell, is that while he seems to have applied The Core Algorithm quite effectively for himself, he really isn't advising or teaching this very effectively to others.  Much as the latter may be his intent, it's about tactical advice and lessons, which again may or may not work for particular people.  He seems to be a sharp-as-a-tack fellow, with a restless soul and feet, and being kicked out of school twice reminds of me college dropouts like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

If you truly believe that you, too, are exceptional as these entrepreneurs and free as Harbison, then I congratulate and admire you and look forward to hearing the things you do.