New Years Resolution: Solve Americas Biggest Problem, End up Bitter and Cynical

by Stephen Simac

delegation, as Tom Sawyer told Huckleberry Finn.

  This Piggie Built with Straw

  Okay, humans have had affordable housing since time immemorial, as they say. In many parts of the world they still have it, because they build out of available, cheap, local materials. In America there are rules against that. There's a pretty clear correlation between number of rules in an area and lack of affordable housing.

  There are good reasons for zoning laws around health and safety issues. There should be certain structural integrity standards for both affordable housing and unaffordable housing. Basically fire/quake/flood/wind resistant with waste disposed of in a sanitary manner.

  That's not what we have, now. Health and safety standards that are open to new ways to meet them would allow American pragmatic spirit to create solutions, where before there was only a problem. Challenges not obstacles.

  I started with the basics. There's the homeless, of course. Don't really like 'em, but might have to buddy up. Nights are freezing up here. Most would be happy to live like the Boy in the Box. A warm, secure, dry space they could sleep in, store some essentials and not burn it down by falling asleep with a cigarette.

  These could be put up quite cheaply. Hexagonal cells stacked like circled beehive wagons, with a methane generating shitter fueling their campfire, running water and a solar shower would make most of them ecstatic, for a while. Eventually there'd be some havoc. You'd probably need some Sarge to keep order.

  But the homeless are only the open wound of the affordable housing situation. There are many people who live in their vehicles. Technically they aren't homeless, merely nomads. At least while their vehicle runs. Keeping it running can be expensive, then your next bed is pavement.

  Living in Glass Houses

  The fear of that final solution to the unaffordable housing problem, resides even in the American middle class, like a dark succubus in their nightmares. They are in debt financially because of unaffordable housing, childcare, transportation, food and health care.

  An injury, illness, getting downsized or up and quitting in a rage and they could end up squatting alongside those people begging on the sidewalk. Sleeping in a cardboard box. The homeless are the flip side of the American dream, failures in the struggle to stay housed. That cottage with the picket fence was only an illusion.

  There are trailer parks, where for a reasonable sum working Americans can actually buy or rent a large aluminum box to live in .Lots of poor working people or on fixed incomes live happily ever after in them.

  Except for their unfortunate tendency to attract tornadoes, this is not a bad thing. Often, trailer parks charge rent and fees for the space that aluminum box is propped up on. Still it's usually more reasonable than living in a wooden box. Yet no one would want to take shelter in a trailer when a hurricane is coming.

  I thought of a way to turn a trailer into a wind/flood/fire resistant structure. Reinforced concrete can provide more protection than aluminum and fiberboard. Trailers can easily be jacked up high enough off the ground to avoid most flooding, even tsunami waves. Drive up with a cement truck and a framing system, pour a concrete foundation with some flying buttresses, a concrete shell with window recesses and shade awnings to keep it cooler, maybe a nice flat roof with some drainage/ rain storage for a rooftop garden, vitamin D accumulation and solar cell or two. For less than the cost of a single Hurricane Warning evacuation, every trailer could be a refuge, instead of landfill material afterwards.

  That's fine for trailers, but a shipping container would do just as well. Maybe use the trailers like a lost wax sculpture. Still, there's not enough landfill space to trash every trailer out there. So that's a keeper, if only to deal with old problems.

  Palaces Pumped with Air

  To an idea man like me though, old problems are boring. I started thinking about concrete. The Romans discovered it, although Egyptians and Chinese claimed to too. Concrete is basically an aggregation of gravel, sand, lime and water- with other materials optional for special effects-, which becomes agglutinated into an agglomeration through some alchemical magic.

  If shredded paper is mixed into this blend to make Paperkrete, it has similar strength with less weight and cost. It seems like Styrofoam pellets could be added to the mix for the same effect. Styrokrete. Hmmm.

  Although the main ingredients of concrete are plentiful, they still add up to unaffordable housing, if you're pouring walls thick enough to hold off a tornado. The weight of concrete increases the costs of reinforcement, even if you're using old bedsprings and scrap metal.

  It came to me late at night, or early in the morning depending on whether your glass is half empty or half full. There oughta be a way to make a concrete light enough and strong enough for load bearing walls, roofs, even a geodesic dome or two. Using cheaper materials than the same stuff the Romans did. We're not in Rome, after all.

  What is there way too much of? Currently going into Landfill Mountains that theoretically could be agglomerated. Diapers, plastic and Styrofoam, destruction rubble, juice boxes, Kerry campaign buttons, cigarette butts, broken toys and stuffed animals, out of date electronics, music/ video discs, old clothing, important papers, the ends of glue tubes and toothpastes, greasy TV trays, scented candles in glass jars, without enough wax to light.

  All that stuff could be ground together, zapped with sonic waves, shot through with bubbles as a carbon dioxide sink, transmogrified through some mercurial allembration. And emerge from a Gran Cloaca as a pourable, light, strong, load bearing concrete. CrapKrete for affordable housing.

  So easy to work with even a single mother could pour her own free form style house, like a coiled clay creation. You'd have to claim it's an art project to get it through zoning, anyways.

  I hate it when people say, but that's never been done before. If Cristobal Colon had believed that, Native Americans would still be fighting with stone tools. Americans love doing what hasn't been done before, by God.

  Naturally that's led to trouble, but CrapKrete should be safe enough. Layer a softer Styrofoam and rubber mix on the inside to make it child/elderly/clumsy safe and hose washable. Clad it with solar electric nanotechnology using cast off CD/DVD's and broken glass, hooked into the grid so these houses would earn money, not burn it.

  Don't tell me it can't be done. As Nike says, Just Do It!

  THE SIREN WAILS FOR THEE: SAFER ROADS FOR ALL

  March 2005

  Another story about a group of teenagers smashing a car or three up, dead bodies littered across the highway, cripples being loaded into ambulances. It's enough to really harsh your buzz, even if you're following your bliss. The New Years resolution to only write about solutions, not problems is all good and all, but runs up against reality. That's never limited me before.

  With prom and grad nights coming up, then the summer season, it's a war zone out there for America's teenaged drivers (and their passengers). You have to wonder about parents who are justifiably terrified by the idea of their kid going to Iraq, but think nothing as their teenager takes off in a car on America's highways. Call me on your cell phone, in case of emergency.

  Not withstanding the recent study that showed cell phone use gave an 18 year old the braking reflexes of a 70 year old. Add a few passengers and a beer and you're talking centenarian skills. You can only wonder about septuagenarians on cell phones.

  We hold ceremonies for America's war dead, but don't have a Traffic Deaths day. There's just too many to mourn, more than all our wars combined. An average 40,000 Americans were killed a year over the last five decades, with 15,000 lives saved a year since MADD went viral. There's been millions severely and partially disabled from traffic collisions with reality.

  The automobile industry has had a pretty good ride for the last century, dispersing their external costs all over the landscape, while their profits accumulated centrally. When it comes to emergency medical care for accidents, and long term care for injuries they haven't paid a dime. Nothing for t
raffic enforcement, building and maintaining the roads, parking lots, gas stations with leaking tanks, licensing and testing. Nobody sent motor vehicle manufacturers a bill, although they obviously profited from them.

  Building a safer car has always come grudgingly to Detroit. Ralph Nader had to pull seatbelts out of their asses with pliers; airbags took some serious twisting and red-hot pokering. The Swedes have gone at it with a passion, but people are still getting killed in Volvos, even more by them. Those top heavy SUV's are crushing drivers when they roll over and more fuel-efficient cars when they drive over them. Allowing some of these beasts to be driven on public roads is like allowing rodeo cowboys to use bucking bulls for transport.

  Teenagers are most at risk. Traffic accidents are the number one cause of death for their age group, although it ranks in the top five well into middle age. More rigorous driver's education and enforcement of driving restrictions would help. A motor vehicle is basically loaded for bear, yet almost any idiot can get behind the wheel and peel out of the driveway.

  Little old Lady from Pasadena

  There are a lot of factors that make people more dangerous drivers. Impaired, Distracted and Aggressive driving, excessive speed for conditions of either road or steerer are the primary causes of collisions. Now it's possible to