User:E A S

Human with many interests.



Compost Heap
23 October 2011 - Creation of user page. For those who need an inspiration, I will tell why I decided to create this page: A few days ago, on the radio, I heard a stand up comedian say that what was written about him on wikipedia was wrong, but that he was not going to change it because wikipedia was a compost heap anyway and anyone who wants to believe what is written on its pages is free to do so. So I asked myself: Is wikipedia really a compost heap? As an organic gardener, I have a great respect for compost heaps. In fact, I look after an open source compost heap weakly.

Open source Compost Heap
Wikipedia is a collaborative project that can be transformed and used by anyone. An open air compost heap is also an example of open source. It receives contributions and provides valuable services. All table scraps end up in the compost heap so the trash bin does not smell. I have often seen blackbirds scavenge in the heap for food scraps. Their interest also increases when the heap is turned over, as insects, that were hiding become exposed. A hedgehog family once decided that it represented a valuable bit of real estate with free central heating. But the heap is mainly inhabited by load of bacteria and fungi. All the inhabitants work together and against each other to make use of the energy stored in the leaves, the wood and the food scraps. The inhabitants work hard to transform the nutrients, ending in mature compost, a form that plants can make use so that the cycle can start again and nothing is wasted.

Up-to-date Compost Heap
Natural local bacteria are not well adapted to high temperatures. I do not live in a subtropical region and six months a year I have to scrape frost from the windshield of my car. So I add modern compost accelerator, which I assume includes spores of thermophillic bacteria (thermophiles) as well as nutrients. After such additions, the temperature of the heap increases and recycling of nutrients occurs much more rapidly. The local fungi and bacteria also benefit from more heat, except in the core where it is too hot. Hot water vapour is visible when the heap is turned over. The different organisms contribute their knowledge that comes from hundreds of million of years of evolution to solve the problem of making use of limited resources. Unless such resources are recycled, they are lost. Humans need to make a greater effort to recycle, but as a species they have moved away too fast from the natural equilibrium, and have still a lot to learn about how to live together and how to give back at least as much as they get.

Compost Heap Economy
Resources and their exploitation give rise to an economic system. The participants in the economic system of the compost heap work hard for a living and then give up their lives for their offspring and for others. The exchanges between various species are less clear than that between currencies. "The Economist" with its "Big Mac Index" tried to simplify the system of comparison using a single item instead of a basket of commodities. You cannot do this with compost heaps. Compost heaps, are much more complicated, in fact they are 2C2E (Abbreviation from "Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie ), because what is of value for some, is waste for others, so commodities are difficult to price and exchange rates make no sense. At all stages of the decomposition process competition for resources is intense. The compost heap is also an example of an advanced redistributive economic system. Leaves and hedge clippings (not related to hedge funds) come from plants all over the garden and are accumulated in the heap. For those bankers and traders that have never seen a compost heap, I have added a picture. The heap is a bit like Wall Street. The plants around the heap are regularly clipped (taxed) like the other plants in the garden, but they extract from the common heap more than their due. Their underground activities include pushing their roots into the heap and sucking up as much as they can, while plants further away have to wait the intervention of the heap regulator (editors do that job for wikipedia) to receive their share. They are still better off than the plants of many of my neighbours that get their leaves clipped off, put out in green bins and shipped off, hopefully, to be recycled elsewhere.

Abbreviations
2C2E: For those that have not read Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 2C2E stands for "too complicated to explain". It is used by Rashid, Haroun's father, who is also known as the Shah of Blah and the Ocean of Notions, to avoid explaining what he does not know. Wikipedia is a sort of Ocean of Notions too. Taxonomically, humans self define themselves as Homo sapiens, Latin for "wise man" or "man of knowledge" or "Ocean of Notions". I thus finish the page with the same word I started it with. After all, even a stand up comedian that does not want to improve his own page on wikipedia, is only Human.