There's a Reason this Hits Home

[Brant Gaede]

There's nothing wrong about cherry-picking Ayn Rand for the purpose of fertilizing your life. Everybody influenced by her does that. The best way is to take each of four basic principles of Objectivism and work off those for the picking, but Greg hasn't done that so he appears brutal in his approach to the Randian corpus. At least his lack of logic, generally speaking, doesn't result in his trying to do to Rand what he likes to do with Francisco. If he did that he couldn't enjoy such things as "the money speech" or crow about all the other good things he got from her. Atlas Shrugged is full of things like that for him. So too much of her non-fiction.

Greg is completely logical off his own peculiar moral base, which without controversy is called religious, but as a libertarian has mostly a political locus, his moral one and the libertarian don't mix. And just as you seldom if ever hear about a libertarian concerned with "Objectivist" metaphysics and epistemology, Greg goes not there either. (I use "Objectivist" here with quotes for before Objectivism there was science and science has the same m and e.)

Unlike libertarians there is no one else I know of who has presented himself in Objectivism land other than Greg, here, with the logical moral invulnerabilities of chasing his own tail. On the purely moral-being-acting plane he is nothing but consistent and invulnerable. You need to argue and demonstrate out of his context--a context he never leaves so you'll always fail from his perspective as opposed to the more generally rational one.

The libertarians go logical with Randian politics and end up with anarchy. This because both they and Rand are Utopians. Politically Rand sensed this but was unwilling to scarifice her absolutism so in politics she didn't do too much for practical advocacy as opposed to human rights in the Lockian tradition. Ironically, I don't recall her ever even mentioning Locke in all her writings. Makes one think Murray Rothbard was onto something back in his days of conflict with her about her originality.

What was most original about Rand was her putting together a philosophy vertically integrated one part to another, but not original in the (1) metaphysics, (2) epistemology, (3) morality, and (4) politics except particulars, if there be any, inside each. And she took all these and suffused them with deductive absolutism turning Objectivism into dogmatism right out of the box for all the necessary lip service to "rationality." The contradiction is rationality demands modesty and tentativeness outside the context of basic facts and their axiomatic base.

In spite of his inherent bad manners, you'll do better for your life if you work off Greg than Rand if you layer on critical thinking. The political life is optional for Americans today. His bad manners is his constant complaining about those trying to fight for the right to be free from harmful politics by changing the government--Rand must be included!--all the while enjoying the society created by the Founding Fathers out of the human rights English-political-philosophical tradition. Greg has no grace. Grace and scorn don't mix. Scorn is useful for saying "No!" to anything or anyone that would fuck up your life if you'd do X or y or z. The great and over-whelming power of "No" is for another post or thread. In totalitarian tyranny, however, "No" makes you a vulnerable target, first to be taken down. If that happens, we can't/won't cry for Greg any more than we cry for Argentina now, although Argentina ain't so bad we still don't give a flying fuck. If you don't give a flying fuck about the United States you can make a happy life for yourself as a citizen of the world protected by your wealth earned here and likely not abroad. Tyranny is too hard to impose on a world of over 6 billion people. It always breaks down for it runs out of energy for the producers stop producing and tyranny then needs foreign aid which in turn must dry up. Once tyranny becomes merely authoritarian it can't just revert for too many living remember too much. With advances in communicative technologies these memories will never die. Then the rulers are reduced to bribery, bread and circuses, but even those bills have to be paid by someone and soon enough someone will become no one but not in the lives and happenings of the Gregs of this world, for for them it's just the cost of doing business.

So, thank you Greg, for coming here and demonstrating your value as brain fuel. Mine the brain, you the fuel. My cherry-picking. I do to you what you do to Rand. Win/win. On the personal level for me you the man.

--Brant

leave the gun, take the cannolis

that's life--that's human life--and that's free will in action and all free will means for all the stupid, crappy talk about how it's all determined, ignoring range of action differences because of choice between human and all other known life: these living-in-their-heads determinists completely shit on everybody, which is their true wont but it's all circular backward looking it-couldn't-have-been-different-because-it-wasn't-different as if to be refuted at least two different outcomes happened both demonstrable in reality ignoring there is only room for one actual consequence at any point in the derivative vertical chain of conconsequences which in turn are not determined, only fuel for subsequent choices, some hard and some easy (life is a cascade of happenings, but not all because of mere gravity)

[moralist]

This crumbling civilization and jungle creeping into the cities that Francisco mentioned--what's the problem?

The obvious solution:

Don't live in a damn city. (duh)

That's the problem with you do nothing pinhead intellectuals. You are devoid of any practical common sense.

Ayn Rand was offering practical advice. Her prescient prediction was that there is no way to save the cities. So get the f**k out. Galt's Gulch was not in a city.

All one had to do was rise above it by being an American Capitalist producer!

Your chronic error is to believe the lie that if you can't do it, no one else can either...

...and this is what makes you a sucker, Frank.

In fact, why were all the heroes in the book sneaking off to Atlantis? All they had to do was produce more dollars than the looters consumed.

They did... in Galt's Gulch.

It's not just a certain place. You have to build it yourself.

Note: The above comment is not directed to you, Frank. You'll never be able to do it because you lack the moral character to pull it off.

Greg

[moralist]

His bad manners is his constant complaining about those trying to fight for the right to be free from harmful politics by changing the government--Rand must be included!

I don't swallow all of Ayn Rand's ideas whole

You can't "fight for the right to be free from harmful politics by changing the government." You first have to EARN that right to be free.

You can't change the government... you can only change your own life. So if you change your own life first... that will change how the government treats you, because it answers to the same higher moral law that you do. To be treated decently by government demands that you first live a life deserving of a decent government. Only then will you have it.

Greg has no grace. Grace and scorn don't mix.

You're totally correct, Brant... I am completely devoid of grace.

I have nothing but scorn for people who blame their own failure on the government.

Then the rulers are reduced to bribery, bread and circuses, but even those bills have to be paid by someone and soon enough someone will become no one but not in the lives and happenings of the Gregs of this world, for for them it's just the cost of doing business.

Yes. Freedom is being able to live a productive meaningful life in America just as it is right now. If you're waiting for some external condition to be satisfied so as to make you free...

...you'll die a slave.

The only way you'll ever enjoy freedom in America is to work to earn the money to BUY it... because there can be no freedom without economic freedom.

So, thank you Greg, for coming here and demonstrating your value as brain fuel. Mine the brain, you the fuel. My cherry-picking. I do to you what you do to Rand. Win/win. On the personal level for me you the man.

You're welcome, Brant.

I cherry pick Ayn Rand's ideas and ideals. That's how to get the sweet ones. And how do I know this? We have four cherry trees.

Greg

[Francisco Ferrer]

Ayn Rand was offering practical advice. Her prescient prediction was that there is no way to save the cities. So get the f**k out.

Yes, by moving into a secret location in the hinterlands Rand set a practical example for all her disciples to follow.

Quote

In fact, why were all the heroes in the book sneaking off to Atlantis? All they had to do was produce more dollars than the looters consumed.

They did... in Galt's Gulch.

Good to know that all it takes nowadays for anyone to escape, I mean rise above the IRS, the Fed, the FDA, the FEC, the FCC, and the NSA is to move to a little valley and install an invisibility screen over it.

[Brant Gaede]

The problem with urban living is when the shit hits the fan you'll be surrounded by people who can't take care of themselves except by taking you down and looting your property. And if you escape that fate you can watch them suffer and die literally on your doorstep. In some circumstances of sheer dehydration for there being no water from the tap. Even if you have a well with a gasoline powered pump that won't help when the gas runs out or the computer chips inside are fried. A hand pump might suffce.

--Brant

you can take this prepper stuff to the extreme in what you actually do and still get wasted with maximum defensive if not cowardly living

[Brant Gaede]

You finally got me. Your patience has paid off.

--Brant

at least I have my own private operation in my basement

So do I.

It took me a year to jackhammer out a 12' x24' basement under our house.

Hope you used ear protection.

Did the noise cost you your marriage?

All this for an indoor swimming pool?

--Brant

when did you stop jittering in your sleep?

[moralist]

A hand pump might suffce.

It does.

We're in the middle of a drought so I converted our septic system into a residential waste water treatment plant. I just looked on youtube and copied what the municipal water treatment plants do, except on a small scale.

We no longer use the septic pit and instead recover every drop of water from our raw sewage which gets aerated composted settled clarified and filtered as it runs through the plant. Then it either gets pumped up the hill to a storage tank where it's gravity fed by hose to the fruit trees...

...or hand pumped into buckets to water the trees on the other side of the house. It's not sanifary drinking water, just agricultural grade, but the trees assimilate it better because it's "alive" and not chemically treated.

Here's a brief video made just before we installed the storage tank...

I guess you could call my wife and I preppers, as we're always looking for simple practical outside the box do it yourself alternatives which enhance our independence as well as improve the quality of our lives.

Greg

[moralist]

You finally got me. Your patience has paid off.

--Brant

at least I have my own private operation in my basement

So do I.

It took me a year to jackhammer out a 12' x24' basement under our house.

Hope you used ear protection.

Did the noise cost you your marriage?

All this for an indoor swimming pool?

--Brant

when did you stop jittering in your sleep?

No problem... my hearing already got shot from the helicopter engines in 'Nam.

You could barely hear the digging noise in the house because the floors are all heavily insulated and tiled.

It's just like playing Minecraft!

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

A hand pump might suffce.

It does.

Greg

I hope your bucket doesn't have a hole in it.

--Brant

https://youtu.be/GtuwAJTXvTU

[moralist]

you can take this prepper stuff to the extreme in what you actually do and still get wasted with maximum defensive if not cowardly living

Brilliant!

Prepping is a poor substitute for moral courage.

Greg

[moralist]

A hand pump might suffce.

It does.

Greg

I hope your bucket doesn't have a hole in it.

--Brant

https://youtu.be/GtuwAJTXvTU

Link doesn't work.

Works now.

[william.scherk]

From the Money Speech: "You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities."

This crumbling civilization and jungle creeping into the cities that Francisco mentioned--what's the problem? All one had to do was rise above it by being an American Capitalist producer! In fact, why were all the heroes in the book sneaking off to Atlantis? All they had to do was produce more dollars than the looters consumed.

Your pointed irony may miss the mark for some. There is a useful discussion to be had of cities, civilization, wealth-creation, but I don't think Greg will be your ideal partner He lives adjoining thousands of hectares of wilderness area in the Santa Monica mountains. From pictures and descriptions he has given, along with some history, he has all the benefits of 'rural' living, while being less than an hour from Hollywood and Vine.

He can very well point to his septic system, food garden, windmill, miniature train, solar array, and his detachment from the city to the southeast and north. It remains to be seen whether he accepts city peoples' money for his contract work. Maybe he really does have a limited client list of rural-ish mountain folk (though he has told us of work at an extremely citified item, a gay hotel). It is not clear if he rejects work from 'tainted' professions.

As for Rand, my take is that she loved the city. She understood that civilization was not found in rolling forests and endless green vistas, but in the great concentrations of industry, commerce, capital wealth and expertise like New York. She wasn't derisive of 'white-collar' business or those in so-called management, not on the basis of their work-rank (though she was of course derisive of pull, cronyism, corruption). She wasn't critical of bankers just for being bankers, nor was she opposed to a number of professions solely on the basis of profession. She was not a bigot.

I can well understand Greg's mild revulsion for the city, though, since Los Angeles is likely his touchstone. I guess he would find New York City bizarre and a bit frightening, full of suckers and losers and the morally squalid. But this revulsion for cities may have spawned some illogical conclusions about Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and the civilization we live in as North Americans.

The function of a city is to render profit out of the intertwined efforts of many individuals, to render 'the good life.' Outside Canada and the USA, Western Europe and some Asian countries, 'the good life' is yet to come. Whatever the future details, all trends confirm a growing urbanization of the world's population. The good life is one with all civilized attainments of the city. That's my take.

As for the city as depicted in Atlas Shrugged, the crumbling, desolate, dark and unproductive landscape was a result of the strike and degenerated economy that followed. Cities need renewal, upkeep, fuel, provisions, water works and so on. The white-collared folks in Galt's Gulch denied the city its fuel (capitalist managers of business) and brought civilization to its knees

The city is what the heroes struck against, and to which they return, having cleansed its denizens and its politics.

-- if there is a wide disparity between city and city in the USA, between devastated Detroit and similarly hollow central cities and the growing centres elsewhere, I think this is an American problem of region and a testament to free enterprise. If your city and its products do not win on the market, your city fails in its task of delivering the good life to inhabitants. Another city will happily take your place.

-- there is a disparity between American and Canadian cities. We don't have a city like Baltimore or Detroit, with an inner, older core riven by racial divides and senescence and abandonment, nor do we have segregated, crumbling inner suburbs, There is no equivalent blight in our urban landscape. That's one city problem/advantage we have over America, and perhaps why our cities win those awards of livability year after year.

I recognize where my valorizing cities in Objectivish context falls short. I'd have to write at extreme boring length to address all the elements that civilization interwines with cities, and where urban failure is apparent. The main point is that Greg's intuitive style sometimes renders him no profitable knowledge. He sidesteps what a city is in reality, its functions and value to humanity, and this leaves him out on a logical limb. This is most apparent where he does not account for the advantages of the city to his life. His ability to add value to his property and to utilize technology is enhanced by the closeness of the city. His marvelous improvements to his black-water system are 'citified' and sophisticated, fruit of someone else's knowledge and expertise.

(I salute Greg for the sewage waterworks, by the way. The system he has in place in macro-size is brilliant. With a few further sophisticated treatments (born of science and commerce and environmental concerns) he can return pure sweet drinking water.)

What caught my eye in Francisco's remarks was this: you wonder why it's crumbling around you.

Maintenance!

In Atlas Shrugged I wondered at a couple of places just why things were falling off buildings in the city. The city was crumbling at a weird, accelerated rate, it seemed to me. I didn't understand why windows would pop out and masonry would crumble just because of the strike, and in so short a time. Such crumbling of the city's physical stock seemed zany and unrealistic to me. Unless the inhabitants had died, and all the building supers had gone AWOL, and no maintenance was possible, the sequences seemed wrong. Did rust happen faster because of the strike?

The problem with urban living is when the shit hits the fan you'll be surrounded by people who can't take care of themselves except by taking you down and looting your property. And if you escape that fate you can watch them suffer and die literally on your doorstep. In some circumstances of sheer dehydration for there being no water from the tap. Even if you have a well with a gasoline powered pump that won't help when the gas runs out or the computer chips inside are fried. A hand pump might suffce.

Urban living is dependent on smooth running of hundreds and thousands of systems built by humans, the various infrastructures. We see in war-zones only what happens to those systems under extreme stress and degradation.

The great advantage of being in a city when the shit hits the fan is inertia and lead-time. Where you live, there are a lot of little turds that can hit the fan in the lead-up to the great shitstorm in your scenario. The turds will be stresses and strains long before the fabric tears. Tucson's first necessity, water, will long be at risk, but it is more likely that a dry-tap will be result of rationing rather than destruction of uphill infrastructure. In any case, there is the passage of time to consider, unless you are just throwing in a zombie movie for fun.

In the final shitstorm of your fancy, the struggle becomes elemental, against death. Death by lack of water. Death by lack of food. Death from lack of shelter. Death by homicide. We know how people fight. It will sort itself out and there will be survivors, and then the whole trudge back to civilization can begin once more.

Edited May 18, 2015 by william.scherk

[moralist]

He lives adjoining thousands of hectares of wilderness area in the Santa Monica mountains. From pictures and descriptions he has given, along with some history, he has all the benefits of 'rural' living, while being less than an hour from Hollywood and Vine.

It truly is the best of both worlds, William. We have no street lights, no sidewalks, only two traffic lights, and our neighbors ride their horses on the roads. And being unincorporated, there is no city government.

I used to work all over Los Angeles, but now most of my work is serving the local folk in our rural community. It took about ten years to gradually make the transition even though I still serve clients in the city for whom I've worked for decades.

The Santa Monica Mountain Recreation Area is vast... 244 square miles. We can go out our front door and hike miles down to the coast all on open land.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Nothing will kill more people faster than dehydration in this day and age. While you may live near natural water and be okay that's not the case of most in western living. A gigantic EMP, from war or nature from the sun, could fry so many chips and transformers this country might never recover. The huge transformers that enable distribution of electricity through the grid have no on hand replacements and if you pay for a new one today you'll get delivery in about three years. Pumped water? Forget about it. Where to live? Mexico or some country that's poor today comparatively rich after such a disaster. Thailand? A southern state that's not Texas? Maine? By the time the need is real you'll be kissing your ass goodbye.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

He lives adjoining thousands of hectares of wilderness area in the Santa Monica mountains. From pictures and descriptions he has given, along with some history, he has all the benefits of 'rural' living, while being less than an hour from Hollywood and Vine.

It truly is the best of both worlds, William. We have no street lights, no sidewalks, only two traffic lights, and our neighbors ride their horses on the roads. And being unincorporated, there is no city government.

I used to work all over Los Angeles, but now most of my work is serving the local folk in our rural community. It took about ten years to gradually make the transition even though I still serve clients in the city for whom I've worked for decades.

The Santa Monica Mountain Recreation Area is vast... 244 square miles. We can go out our front door and hike miles down to the coast all on open land.

Greg

Sounds sorta like Reagan's presidential getaway.

--Brant

"vast" isn't the word; it's gigantic

[Selene]

Point of information:

Hank Rearden, Ellis Wyatt - no cities...

[moralist]

Nothing will kill more people faster than dehydration in this day and age. While you may live near natural water and be okay that's not the case of most in western living. A gigantic EMP, from war or nature from the sun, could fry so many chips and transformers this country might never recover. The huge transformers that enable distribution of electricity through the grid have no on hand replacements and if you pay for a new one today you'll get delivery in about three years. Pumped water? Forget about it. Where to live? Mexico or some country that's poor today comparatively rich after such a disaster. Thailand? A southern state that's not Texas? Maine? By the time the need is real you'll be kissing your ass goodbye.

--Brant

The book, "One Second After" by William Forstchen offers a chillingly accurate account of the events that unfold as the result of an EMP event. His rough estimate is a 90% mortality rate for the reasons you listed. It's an excellent read, and chock full of useful practical information, if you happen to be interested in that sort of thing.

Greg

[Selene]

What caught my eye in Francisco's remarks was this: you wonder why it's crumbling around you.

Maintenance!

In Atlas Shrugged I wondered at a couple of places just why things were falling off buildings in the city. The city was crumbling at a weird, accelerated rate, it seemed to me. I didn't understand why windows would pop out and masonry would crumble just because of the strike, and in so short a time. Such crumbling of the city's physical stock seemed zany and unrealistic to me. Unless the inhabitants had died, and all the building supers had gone AWOL, and no maintenance was possible, the sequences seemed wrong. Did rust happen faster because of the strike?

You would think that regular maintenance of the "infra structure" when funding was available would be a no brainer.

It is not.

The classic example that I had first hand knowledge of:

The collapse of the West Side Highway in 1973.

Even though it is pummeled by brackish water for its entire length from the tip of Manhattan to West 72nd street near the Marina, the under structure was not weatherized, sealed and painted.

Morons.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

I drove the West Side Highway frequently if irregularly '69, '70, and '71--it was a blast for I was using my step-mom's haul-ass '66 green Lincoln with suicide doors. I loved that road. I thought it was a primo Manhattan asset. Was it ever. I remember reading about that collapse at the time it happened.

Morons.

B...

[Brant Gaede]

A hand pump might suffce.

It does.

We're in the middle of a drought so I converted our septic system into a residential waste water treatment plant. I just looked on youtube and copied what the municipal water treatment plants do, except on a small scale.

We no longer use the septic pit and instead recover every drop of water from our raw sewage which gets aerated composted settled clarified and filtered as it runs through the plant. Then it either gets pumped up the hill to a storage tank where it's gravity fed by hose to the fruit trees...

...or hand pumped into buckets to water the trees on the other side of the house. It's not sanifary drinking water, just agricultural grade, but the trees assimilate it better because it's "alive" and not chemically treated.

Here's a brief video made just before we installed the storage tank...

I guess you could call my wife and I preppers, as we're always looking for simple practical outside the box do it yourself alternatives which enhance our independence as well as improve the quality of our lives.

Greg

Your great advantage seems to be no septic maintenance, for most of your sewage has to be gray water--bath and washing machine--which doesn't need such filtering, I think, for the fruit trees and such. There may be a problem with just using the septic for black water for it might need greater liquidity. You must have diverted everything from the pit. This means if you have any reason to you can start using it again immediately. I have a tank that feeds a field and I'd bet your pit sits on and is part of your field--more primative but not by much.

You have a perpetual motion problem in that it is a closed system once there is no more incoming fresh water. What you do have is not potable out of the pump, but you only need to boil it a couple of minutes or treat it chemically, especially by adding chorine. A great help would be to have a swimming pool for water storage and the fire department could also use it to fight a fire threatening your property. With a fire nothing is more important, however, than wind, velocity and direction. I think with your location cooler air from the ocean flows in at night and hotter air in the day stops that flow courtesy of the sun.

Yada, yada, yada

--Yoda

[Selene]

When we were minimalist tarp camping in Virginia we used bleach:

http://modernsurvivalblog.com/survival-kitchen/bleach-water-ratio-for-drinking-water/

[moralist]

Your great advantage seems to be no septic maintenance, for most of your sewage has to be gray water--bath and washing machine--which doesn't need such filtering, I think, for the fruit trees and such. There may be a problem with just using the septic for black water for it might need greater liquidity. You must have diverted everything from the pit. This means if you have any reason to you can start using it again immediately. I have a tank that feeds a field and I'd bet your pit sits on and is part of your field--more primative but not by much.

Our system still requires periodic maintenance (pumping), just not nearly as much as the regular anaerobic septic system. And our grey and black water isn't separate. Washing machine water, bath water, sink water, pee, poop... everything grey and black, goes into the first chamber where it gets aerated. I designed and installed curved and branched pipe baffle between the first and second tank chambers to keep any circulating solids in the first chamber so they can be thoroughly composted by the bacteria.

Everything breaks down rapidly as the aerobic bacteria are very aggressive. Aeration is the secret. I designed a 6 foot tall 8 inch diameter flue with a large air stone inside so that the rising bubbles constantly draw water along with them from the bottom of the tank up to the top of the flue and spilling over onto the surface. This provides superior oxygenation as well as circulation.

The second chamber with the water hyacinths is where the water settles out and clarifies. The plants have been doing so well I threw in a couple dozen goldfish and a bunch of black worms which live by eating the sludge at the bottom of the tank. The worms also multiply like crazy. So now the tank has become an aquarium. It's an indicator of decent quality effluent when fish and plants can thrive in it.

Right now the sump is automatically emptied by the pump into the storage tank. Since the recent rain we haven't needed to use any water on the trees so the storage tank is full and we have the pump shut off. It's a fail safe system that always favors filling the sump first. Then whenever the sump is full, any excess water automatically continues on to the pit like normal. We've been hand pumping the sump and using the water to fill up a 150 gallon horse trough for more storage. We also use the hand pumped water to keep three fish ponds and a fountain full. It's a real luxury. We're actually recovering and processing more water than we can use right now. In the dry season, it'll all get used.

I also installed an air pump windmill that aerates the aquarium section of the tank.

Oh, and we have no leach field. Only a 50 foot deep pit lined with a 4 foot diameter precast perforated concrete liner surrounded by a two foot thick outer layer of gravel.

[Brant Gaede]

More and more impressive. I assume that's a rose bush behind the windmill--which does not have an electric motor I notice--or maybe a hydrangea?

--Brant

[moralist]

More and more impressive. I assume that's a rose bush behind the windmill--which does not have an electric motor I notice--or maybe a hydrangea?

--Brant

It's a pomegranate tree in bloom and it produces dark red candy sweet fruit that'll be ripe by this Winter. Inside that red box at the top of the windmill is a non electric mechanical air pump directly driven by the bladed rotor.

Greg

[moralist]

Brant writes:

You have a perpetual motion problem in that it is a closed system once there is no more incoming fresh water.

Yes.

All we're doing is reclaiming all of the water used in our house from our raw sewage so that we can irrigate the fruit trees with it.

What you do have is not potable out of the pump, but you only need to boil it a couple of minutes or treat it chemically, especially by adding chorine.

It's not meant to be drinking water. It's just for the trees that provide us with food.

A great help would be to have a swimming pool for water storage and the fire department could also use it to fight a fire threatening your property. With a fire nothing is more important, however, than wind, velocity and direction.

We built a highly fire resistant home with no combustibles on the exterior surface. Tile roof, stucco walls, aluminum and glass windows, concrete steps and landings, no wooden fascia, and no eaves. No overhanging trees. Not one leaf can land on the roof. We don't even need fire insurance because it's already built into the home.

I think with your location cooler air from the ocean flows in at night and hotter air in the day stops that flow courtesy of the sun.

Yes. There's a constant give and take between on shore/off shore flow. But since we're less than 5 miles from the beach, the on shore flow predominates most of the time.

Greg