Day: November 27, 2005

Attention and Appreciation

Dave Pollard writes in the context of cultural anthropolgy:

I think what most of us want, male and female, human and other, is attention and appreciation. Everything else is derivative of those two things.

It’s really all about attention, and paying attention. The attention we pay to others, and that others pay to us, defines us, far more than our appearance or our name. And how can we appreciate what someone (a life partner, a business partner, a customer, an employee, a friend, a foe) is about and has to offer unless and until we pay attention to her, really listen and observe with (as much as is humanly possible) no judgement, no personal filters or frames impeding. And once weve paid enough attention that we really understand that person (or for that matter, that creature of any species), how can we not appreciate her?
…

Things are the way they are for a reason. Watch, listen, observe, pay attention, and you will know that reason. Most genius, most innovation, most emotion, I am convinced, stems from this ‘first-hand’ knowledge.

This is the skill, more than any other, that I need to learn.

Solar Energy

WSJ writes:

Ambitious plans to cover two big swaths of California desert with solar dishes could finally help the energy-producing technology make the leap to industrial-scale development.

Stirling Energy Systems Inc., of Phoenix, hopes to construct 20,000 solar dishes covering four square miles of the Mohave Desert near Victorville, Calif., each dish pointing skyward to collect the sun’s energy and convert it into electricity that would flow 80 miles south to power-hungry Los Angeles. The solar encampment, if eventually built, could produce 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to meet the daytime needs of 300,000 homes, doubling the state’s solar capacity. The project cleared a hurdle last month when state regulators approved a 20-year power-purchase agreement between Stirling and Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International.

A second project, involving Stirling and San Diego Gas & Electric Co., a unit of Sempra Energy, awaits approval. It calls for the purchase of 300 megawatts of solar power from a Stirling project in the Imperial Valley, east of San Diego, with an option to expand to as much as 900 megawatts — the equivalent of two big gas-fired power plants.