Benford's law, also called the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers, the leading digit is likely to be small.In sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford's law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.
Off-grid is one of those loaded words that often comes with a lot of baggage. It is often associated with very remote country, wilderness a long ways from civilization and it’s power lines. People think Alaska or Montana, not up a driveway, off a country road in Upstate NY. People think everything must be do-it-yourself, that there is a willful ignorance and avoidance of permits and following the state building code — which exists primarily to protect the owners and occupants in the structure they live in and the environment it resides within.
The thing is it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a fair amount of affordable rural property on the border of deep rural in Upstate NY without going deep rural. Deep rural, a concept a dairyman once told me about, is the land beyond ordinary commuting distance to a large metropolitan area. There is rural property, some fairly remote and some just offset from other residences by terrain and farmland that doesn’t have neighbors right up to you. Maybe not wilderness, but also not suburban. Having a house offset from the road and not hooked to power poles doesn’t requires wilderness, it just requires determination and some thought by prospective home builders and their future owners.
Maybe its better to call it a solar house or green living. Even a cabin suggests something that isn’t primarily residential, and is excessively primitive like you might live in the bush of Alaska or during hunting season. Of course, green living is a misnomer, because if anything the long commute is likely to bolster your carbon footprint, to say nothing of waste production in form of quickly junked automobiles. But certainly using solar and wood as your primary household energy sources, has some green virtues. But I’m not considering anything too far out there or unconventional — still want running water, hot showers, and flush toilets, if only to appease town officials to expedite permitting. Plus I’m a professional who needs to be able to be clean before work, and I don’t want to get sick from contaminated water, like I did as a child from my parent’s shallow well, which was unfortunately down-gradient from septic leach field. I’m glad such a set up would not be permitted these days, as a little child I could have died from drinking bacteria-contaminated water — in rural Upstate New York in the 1980s.
Do American building and health codes encourage wastefulness and consumerism? To a certain extent yes, though by far they are about protecting your own well-being. You can and should build greener, but also respect what professionals have determined, and what the codes require to ensure your own health and well being, while minimizing pollution and safety risks from the place you seek to call home.
Not hiking today as I want to get to camp and get set up before the wind picks up later and the chance of lake effect snow showers blowing west becomes too great.
Just a little more, go to the bathroom, then north I will head. ⬆️Taking the Northway rather then NY 30 as it’s likely to be snow free and your farther east so less chance of Lake Effect. I need to stop on the way up north to get more bananas 🍌 and more importantly milk. 🐮 I actually might be fine without bananas but I need milk for the coffee. Then I also need fuel as I have less then a 1/4 tank left.
Tomorrow honestly looks like the best day for hiking and riding, 🚲 so that is likely what I will spend the balance of tomorrow doing. Sunday looks cold and snowy but I will probably spend that day in camp. Monday I’ll break camp, hopefully without too much shoveling deep snow and ice, then head south. Supposed to not be so snowy on Monday, I’m thinking I’ll do some of the short hikes around Warrensburg and then drive home in the evening.
I got my 10 November borrows out on Hoopla 📚 along with a bunch of other books and audio books on Libby. Looking forward to having a lot of good listens and reads while I’m up north. While I usually wait to the last day of the month to get my monthly reads, I figure I may not have cell service until December 1st on Monday when I come home, and then I’ll have ten books/audio books to enjoy both at camp and the next 3 weeks. Then I can either get more books on Hoopla from my December borrows or Libby. I kind of feel guilty getting all these Hoopla borrows, realizing now that the library pays $1 to $3 per book you borrow to the publisher, but then again I do pay a lot in taxes 💰 and I do enjoy the reads. It’s actually not a terrible deal for the local library, as it’s likely cheaper to just rent the books that are rarely read compared to popular titles where it’s cheaper to get a number of licenses for people to read the individual book.
It will be great to be off the grid for a few days. 🔕 Things are too crazy 🤪 in America and I want time to read 📖 and think in the beauty and cold of the winter Adirondacks. There is so much to be upset about these days but it will be remote without even a FM radio. 📻 But the cold ❄️ and quiet will feel great.
Off to camp in the great frigid north! To see how this goes. It will be great!
