Smallist

It’s not you, it’s me. Or really, it’s Dreamhost. Smallist has been having server issues since last night. I’ll cook up a few stories while we’re down, and hopefully years from now we’ll be able to laugh about this whole thing.

Thanks, MetaFilter, for all your kind comments this weekend! And thanks, Josh, for posting.

The MeFites had some great small links of their own. Puke & Cry reminded everyone of Harvey Birdman’s nemesis, the Reductor. Rhomboid found a series of keychain drives even smaller than Sony’s. And quin had a story about this tiny cat.

On the art front, ericb had Willard Wigan’s microsculptures, and this eensy weensy street art that’s been popping up around London. And miniature books too. I really like the origami-like copy of Robert Frost’s A Patch of Old Snow. The descriptive blurb is longer than the poem.

ClaudiaCenter mentioned the fantastic Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, which were recently featured on Oprah, and was actually one of the inspirations for me to start blogging about small things. (Yes, I occasionally get ideas from Oprah. No, not that “The Secret” crap.)
They’re truly works of art, in that they challenge the way we see shelter. The house becomes a thing within a larger environment, instead of an escape from the environment. It’s the absolute opposite of a McMansion, which absorbs every square foot of its lot.

That said, they also seem to suffer from the SUV commercial fallacy: Sure, if you had acres of land in Montana to have one as a camping spot, it’d be a fun trip. But am I really going to tow one of these to an empty lot in Westchester?

I knew about shutdown day. I signed up for shutdown day. Then, yesterday, I forgot to shut down.

By popular demand:

I mentioned that, earlier in the show, a drug joke - and I hate to do that, because it creates a mess, and I’m not into drugs any more. I quit completely, and I hate people who are still into it. Well.. I do take one drug now - for fun - and, maybe you’ve heard of it, it’s a new thing, I don’t know if you have or not. It’s a new thing, it makes you small. [ indicates size with fingers ] About this big. And, you know, I’ll be home, sitting with my friends, and, uh.. we’ll be sitting around, and somebody will say, “Heeeyyy.. let’s get small!” So, you know, we get small, and uh.. the only bad thing is if some tall people come over. You’re walking around going, “Ah hahaha..!” Now, I know I shouldn’t get small when I’m driving.. but I was driving around the other day, and I said, “What the heck?” You know? So I’m driving like.. [ extends arms high in the air like he’s reaching up to a giant steering wheel ] And, uh.. a cop pulls me over. And he makes me get out, he looks at me and he says, “Heyyy.. are you small”? I said, “No-o-o! I’m not!” He said, “Well, I’m gonna have to measure you.” They have this little test they give you - they give you a balloon.. and if you can get inside of it, they know you’re small. Now, I’ve already talked it over with the cast - they’ve been working all week, it’s a tough thing to do, come out here live. Immediately after the show, we’re all gonna go out.. and get really small!

Thanks for reminding me, Matt!

In my earlier post about hypermiling, I referred to drafting a truck as “a bit of a hack”:

You’re just trading your own carbon emissions for the truck’s really.

My brother said this probably isn’t true, since the vacuum would be there anyway. So I asked Metafilter.

The consensus seems to be that, no, it’s not a zero-sum one-for-one tradeoff. In fact, a properly proportioned train of cars behind the truck would improve its profile and reduce its slipstream. But it’s not entirely clear whether the car’s presence actually benefits the truck. With the new shit that’s come to light, it sounds to me like it does.

Since the first day some nameless primate stood upright and got a raise, we have known that big has its advantages. From the Pyramids to the Colossus of Rhodes to the Mall of America, Mankind has aspired to create a lasting mark on his environment. This often leads to bankruptcy and decline, and thousands of years later a snotty Romantic poet comes along and makes fun of you. Or worse yet, Mel Gibson.

Big Gulps presaged the decline of the Hellenic age.

But it’s easy to see the whole bigger-they-are-harder-they-fall thing on the macro level. The real problem is that big creeps up on you slowly. You really think the first pyramid was Cheops-size? Nah, it was probably like the size of your living room. Big enough for some myrrh and a few cats. Then one day the funeral home hires a few marketing people. Your funeral is your special day, they say. Why not splurge? They create a deluxe model tomb that’s 20 cubits bigger but only costs an extra 15 grains. You’d be crazy not to buy it! Their competitors respond in kind, a crypt race ensues, and a few generations later anything less than 300 cubits tall may as well be a pine box. Your condo’s Nile view is shot to hell, your first-born drops dead, and it’s raining blood and crickets, or whatever the hell happened in that movie.

All because everybody wanted to outdo everybody else on their special day. And if you don’t think it can happen here, try picking up a copy of Brides Magazine without a spotter.

Point is, big doesn’t strike us suddenly, it creeps in. Because our years in the wild have taught us to climb one extra branch to spear the fatter sloth, lest famine set in next week. We’re financial wizards when it comes to maximizing our popcorn and soda intake per dollar, even if the price is ludicrous to begin with.

And it’s not just food! Operating systems weigh in at ten gigs these days. Families buy SUVs so they can haul entire palettes of toilet paper and cranberry juice home from the Costco. Houses are built to take up as much of their lot as possible, creating what future architects will term “rowhouses of the giants.” An American uses 15 times the energy of a third-worlder, presumably to fuel the giant car and air condition the giant house. And we do all this while going steadily into debt from JUMBO mortgages.

But I hate to sound preachy. There’s plenty of purely selfish and shallow reasons to go small, and my guess is that they’ll stick better in the long run. And that’s the purpose of this blog: To see smallness as a quality worth pursuing in its own right, instead of seeing reduction as an exercise in selflessness or stoicism.

So repeat after me:

• Smaller is cuter.
• Smaller is faster.
• Smaller is cheaper.
• Smaller is easier.
• Smaller is lighter.

No rocket science there, right? Over the life of this blog, I’ll delve into the specifics on these points, providing tips, news, and links on how to live small. It’ll be fun and slightly educational, and with any luck, you might even find yourself a bit happier in the process.

And if not, you can always give up, move to the exurbs, and buy a Hummer.