Homemade Air Conditioning and Alienation in New Jersey
Today, green blog Treehugger covered how to build a solar-powered air conditioner. Treehugger also linked to the blog lifehacker, which also posted instructions on making your own air conditioner (similar in design to the university student's but with a "closed-circuit" system that reuses water).
I'm happy to learn that even something as unwieldy and technically incomprehensible as an air conditioner has a cheap, homemade counterpart. Of course one shouldn't expect such units to cool one down as much as a commercial unit, but the savings in cost (on the unit itself and electricity) might make this an option worth exploring for some.
And here's a completely unrelated quote:
"And I thought that one natural effect of life is to cover you in a thin layer of ... what? A film? A residue or skin of all the things you've done and been and said and erred at? I'm not sure. But you are under it, and for a long time, and only rarely do you know it, except that for some unexpected reason or opportunity you come out--for an hour or even for a moment ... as when you were a kid.And you think: this must've been the way it was once in my life, though you didn't know it then, and don't really even remember it--a feeling of wind on your cheeks and your arms, of being released, let loose, of being the light-floater."
-The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
A good book on alienation in contemporary life, set in the New Jersey suburbs outside New York City. I first read Ford in the New Yorker. His short story "Quality Time" is one of my all-time favorite pieces of literature. The story is reprinted in one of his recent collections, and I'd highly recommend it.
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