You might have noticed that I was out for a bit. I wonder if something happened over here? I don't remember. In any case, here is an interesting piece about how much it costs to provide air-conditioning in Afghanistan. Reading this, a lot of things seem absurd to me. I feel bad telling a poor soldier serving in Afghanistan to just deal with the heat, but..... I tell hundreds of teenagers to deal with unheated, unair-conditioned schools every day. It isn't Afghanistan though.
One thing that always strikes me about going back to America is the absurd use of air-conditioning. It might just be my mother's house. It probably has a lot to do with the way we build our houses. But it all seems like a bit much to me. My house now in Kyoto, which is notoriously hot in the summer, has two air-conditioners which I never use. Their filters are still sitting out from when I cleaned them. I use a fan and carry a towel around with me. That is about it. When you think about all of the things our world has to go through for power, air-conditioning and dryers and the like start to seem a bit frivolous. Especially when we are cutting the social safety net to threads at home so people can have air-conditioning somewhere where most of the country doesn't think we still need to be.
One thing that always strikes me about going back to America is the absurd use of air-conditioning. It might just be my mother's house. It probably has a lot to do with the way we build our houses. But it all seems like a bit much to me. My house now in Kyoto, which is notoriously hot in the summer, has two air-conditioners which I never use. Their filters are still sitting out from when I cleaned them. I use a fan and carry a towel around with me. That is about it. When you think about all of the things our world has to go through for power, air-conditioning and dryers and the like start to seem a bit frivolous. Especially when we are cutting the social safety net to threads at home so people can have air-conditioning somewhere where most of the country doesn't think we still need to be.
