1. It seems there is an inconsistency in my attitudes concerning car travel in various posts. These inconsistencies can exist across time because the inconsistencies themselves are generated by mood. As a passenger, one can really enjoy a car ride. As a driver, the experience can oscillate from quiet contemplation and pleasure upon viewing the surrounding environment to hot anger, frustration, or simple boredom. The solution is something automated on rails, certainly, since we already kind of follow rails: the road. To cling to the automobile as the dominant mode of transportation is to cling to what should be a waning illusion of control. But of course, mass transit would exist between and within major city centers as the dominant form of transportation for most of the population. I have no problem with people taking out personal vehicles for various needs in such a context. The agitation arises from the fact that we are often forced to rely on cars.
2. It occurs to me now that it isn't strange that we co-exist with the forces of winter. Much as we fear and loathe the idea of freezing and yielding our energy to the negative non-energy of the cold, the same is true of an overabundance of energy and heat, which is more likely to happen, since its happening now. Life exists within a balance between extremes, going from one to the other but tending toward an equilibrium in the middle. Energy is not lost or created, but eternally circulates.
