Soon To Be Obsolete? Owning Things

In theoretical energy-saving circles - those exist - there's an expected shift in the ownership model of various home goods you use everyday.  Today, you buy a dishwasher, run it till it won't run no more, drag it to the curb, and then buy yourself another.  You're the owner - you control that dishwasher's entire lifecycle.  Such a practice might be considered quaint in a decade or so.

You don't really want to buy a dishwasher, do you?  Unless you're a passionate collector of aluminum-and-plastic mechanisms, you're probably seeking something else - not a good, but a service.  You want clean dishes.  What you're paying Best Buy (and Kenmore, and so many other supply chain intermediaries) for is the service of expedient foodware sanitation, and it happens to come with a 115-lb cubic anchor.

Same goes for your furnace.  Your clothes dryer.  Even your lightbulbs.   You don't covet a $3500 steel-caged firebox, you covet the warmth it proffers.  You don't need a spinning metal cylinder, you need clothes that aren't soaking wet.  And no one's in the market for gas-filled glass ornaments - instead, we seek illumination.  It just happens that when we procure a service to fulfill a need, the transaction leaves you saddled with a "thing".  You buy it, you own it, and at the time of your choosing, you dispose of it.

Energy industry gurus foresee a future where a new sector rises up that specializes in taking your ownership of the "thing" out of the equation.  It'll no longer be your responsibility to shop for, purchase, and replace your burned-out bulbs with new ones.  Instead, you'll auto-pay your monthly light bill.  Sensors will monitor rooms, know when a replacement is called for, and ship you a new one.  In some cases, you'll ship the old one back.

For $49 a month, my fictitiously-dubbed Visicor Illuminaries will assure you of optimal lighting throughout your manor. Actually that's not a bad name. Don't steal it.

Ah, but here's the critical part.  Visicor isn't just covering the cost of the bulb, but the electricity, too.  So for six hundred bucks a year, you're assured a round-the-clock well-lit world.  And here's the value proposition - were Visicor not your lighting supplier, you'd be buying cheap, inefficient bulbs, and paying closer to $1000 a year, and sacrificing lighting quality (burned out bulbs, insufficient luminosity, mal-applied color temperatures, and so on).  Your purchasing decision has changed from upwards of a half-dozen annual stops to the hardware store for a wide variety of bulbs, lamps, fixtures and such, to one perpetual choice: what single-source vendor can supply all my lighting needs?

This is a significant departure from today's model.  And it will manifest itself in all sorts of ways. Your furnace - a large, upfront capital investment.  It either combusts natural gas or petroleum-based heating oil, both of which are supplies you'll pay for at an ever-increasing rate (fossil fuels in finite supplies).  And as it ages, it requires perennial service.  One day, you'll need to make a difficult decision and bite the bullet to have it replaced.  Not if you had a climate comfort supplier like Idealaire Temp Controllers.  ITC is the owner of your ultra-efficient furnace - one that costs twice the model you would have bought.  They have a roving crew of servicepeople that keep it optimally tuned - filters replaced, ductlines cleaned out, every weatherization function you can imagine.  They're overarching mission is to keep your family comfortable in all seasons.  For that, you pay a flat fee, year-round.  One of your most critical tasks as a homeowner was just taken out from under you - and it will save you 25% over your current costs.

Like it or not, it's a major paradigm shift, and it's coming.  As fuel prices steadily rise, the efficiency of your appliances will be increasingly prized.  There will emerge market opportunities for a player that has the capital backing to outlay for that top-of-the-line refrigerator - with a set, profit-packed payment package that helps smooth out your budget-making.

Meanwhile, the environment proves the ultimate winner.  When Visicor collects your spent bulbs, they recycle them.  The hyperefficient lighting they manage for you means fewer coal plants are built. When Idealaire retrieves your dead furnace, they disassemble its parts and dispose of them in the appropriate fashion.  The resources stay in the production loop.  Industry waste plummets.  Oil imports plummets.  Those dollars stay domestic - getting split between your climate comfort supplier and you, the savvy homeowner. 

Everything is in place for such a transition to begin.  There are no technological barriers, and economically there are only incentives.  The battle will be a cultural one - changing long-held behaviors that have been ingrained for generations.  But market forces are a powerful thing.  When the invisible hand begins putting things in motion, don't resist.  This paradigm shift will be a welcomed one.

Nissan Leaf : 73 Miles from Consumer Acceptance

Article first published as Nissan Leaf: 73 Miles from Consumer Acceptance on Technorati.

So let's say you have a car company, Otto's Autos, and you just manufactured a long-awaited car that runs on an unconventional fuel source - oh, I don't know, marshmallows.  The only tailpipe emissions are smores, and ain't nobody complaining about that.

Of course, marshmallows aren't found at every traffic intersection throughout the country.  And the last thing your customers need is to sputter out on a major highway for lack of 'mallow.  Should such a thing be a regular occurrence, the ensuing PR nightmare would hit a frenzied pitch.  You (Otto, remember?) would watch your stock swiftly sink, and you may find yourself looking to dump 35,000 engines that run on internal confection .  And worst yet, eBay fees just went up.

Gotta love parables.  They help you see a greater truth without having to endure the hard-fought struggles that wisdom usually requires.  And it's a real-life one, at that.  Nissan Motor Company is dropping the mythically-hyped Leaf this winter.  Unlike the Chevy Volt, the $25,000 Leaf has no gas engine at all, giving it sole claim to the title of first all-electric vehicle to reach dealerships.

Nissan touts the Leaf's range at 100 miles between charges.  But a week ago, in stepped the EPA to set the record straight: under normal driving conditions, the Leaf's range is actually just 73 miles.  Given that range anxiety is one of the inhibiting forces stifling consumer adoption, this was a heavy blow to a public that ordinarily expects three hundred miles between fill-ups.

The American car-buying market is a stubborn bunch.  An average year's worth of driving (12,000 miles) will cost a Leaf owner less than $500 (using the conservative figure of 4 cents per mile, which of course depends on your electric utility rates), while a gas vehicle will soak you closer to $1500 (25 mpg at $3 per gallon).  The proposition, then, is this: are you willing to stop to recharge every seventy miles in order to have a car that reduces our nation's dependency on foreign oil, (marginally) cleans up the environment, and saves you a grand a year in operating costs?

The Nissan Leaf waiting list of more than 20,000 hopeful buyers seems to think you will.

But it's all about those seventy-three miles.  That number will scare the coal-powered daylights out of people.  Where does seventy-three miles get you, anyway?  To the forefront of the electric car revolution, that's where.

Image source: insideline.com

To Kill a Kill-a-Watt

Killy, during better times.

Have you ever lost a best friend?  I don't mean like in the mall or something.  I mean for good.  And I don't mean 'for good' to mean 'in order to defeat evil'. I can hardly imagine a situation arising where that would be an effective tact.

My best friend was Kill A Watt­™ by P3 International.  Yes, that Kill A Watt­™, the one that runs you $25 and lets you monitor the electricity appetite of all your hungry gadgets. Does your best friend's name have the word "trademark" in it? If he's Mark Tradesman, yeah, okay, I guess, but mine's no man at all.  He's a machine.  A watt-killing machine.  Or at least he was.  Cue flashback interlude.

We used to laugh together.  "Can you believe my refrigerator?  It's so powerful!"  "Yeah. EnergyStar? More like EnergyBlackHole!" "Dynamite astronomical reference, Killy." "Thanks."

That's just one example.

Together we studied the energy consumption of all my appliances.  We judged their instantaneous power draws.  We evaluated their electricity usage over long periods of time.  We never figured out what to make of the other buttons.  We didn't care.

How much energy does my microwave use, Killy?  Eleven kilowatt-hours per month.  Is that more or less energy-intensive compared to my oven?  I don't know, the oven runs on 240 V and my Kill-a-Watt only measures on 120 V lines. Anti-climactic, I know, but even the best superheroes have flaws.  Come on, you know you watched the first season of Heroes.

The perp, lookin' all smug...

But our time together was cut short.  Killy was cut down in the line of duty.  With winter approaching, I made the decision that I'd be keeping my nighttime central heat at a nippy 61° F, and supplementing with a ceramic space heater in my bedroom.  Naturally my next step was to gauge the watt-hours I would be racking up.  I was offsetting $3.49-per-gallon heating oil, but burning lumps of coal to stay toasty.  It proved fateful.

My Bionaire BCH9221 ceramic tower heater ran me $70 at Home Depot, less here.  With an electric thermostat, a remote control, oscillation, it had all the earmarks of a real energy saver for my heating needs.  Operating at 1500 watts means that four hours of use per night amounts to 6 kwh daily flung onto your electric bill - nearly 200 per month.  But the impact of turning down a furnace a whole five degrees that runs at 4000 watts and guzzles precious petroleum, well that's truly significant. 

Let's get to the lesson.  Fifteen-hundred watts of electricity flowing through one outlet - no problem.  But flowing through an extension cord into an outlet that also shares a laptop, and, on that somber, black night, a floor lamp - that's what we call a suicide mission.  What I discovered the next morning was graphic.  If you have children in the room, specifically plastic ones, you may want to shield their eyes.

Killy, 2010 - 2010

How does one go on from here?  Can I waltz into my local hardware store and snag a replacement?  Well duh.  Will it be the same as the glory months Killy and I spent together one magical Summer and Fall?  Is it ever?  If question marks cost a quarter each, would our society be more declarative?  Who can know?

Kids, relish your time with those who matter to you.  You never know when a surge of electrons will fry their internal components and melt their exterior casing.  No metaphor here.  I just miss my Kill A Watt.  Trademark...

Eagles Land on Top of Power Rankings - Not in American Football Of Course, But Still

The Philadelphia Eagles just learned that the line for Stadiums With Cleanest Energy Sources apparently condones frontsies.

Upon further review, the turbines appear to be on-sides.

A $30 million project is soon to be underway at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the footballing Eagles.  The facility will enjoy all its power from renewable sources.  The project includes 80 wind turbines and 2500 solar panels.  It will also feature a cogeneration plant relying on biomass and natural gas.  The Eagles just scored a touchdown environmentally, which reminds me - when faced with the opportunity for glaringly obvious word play, you just need to go for it.

The Linc: one of Philadelphia's finest drinking establishments - now with football!

Such a project is unprecedented in the sports world.  And time will be the judge, but it ought to be the first in a wave of progress in this arena.  Sporting complexes are highly unproductive energy hogs.  Consider a dedicated football stadium - open for business an anemic two-tenths of one percent of the time (eight home games lasting three hours each).  Compare that with an office building, which operates more than 20% of the time - a one-hundred-fold difference.  Both the stadium and the office building are still constructed the same energy-intensive way, but one sits idles almost constantly.  It seems that city governments should be mandating such progressive stances on energy.  Want to build a new stadium?  No problem - now when does the solar array go up?

It should be noted that Lincoln Financial Field will not hold the title for world's most energy-sustainable sporting arena - that honor goes to Taiwan's Kaohsiung National Stadium.  Built in 2009 in preparation for the World Games, it features nearly four times the solar capacity as the Linc.   The Taiwanese don't front.

I don't know whether to attend a professional athletics event in it or wrangle it into a box.

Are Your Hot Water Pipes Insulated? Mine Weren't, and Gosh Do I Feel Foolish.

What am I, an idiot?!  Politely don't answer that.

For all the "care" I allegedly have for this planet, I haven't had insulated copper pipes.  Eight years I've been living here.  Eight years, no insulation on my hot water pipes.  I'm disgusted.  Am I an idiot or what?  Politely continue not answering that.

It's exactly like this.

Shake it off.  We learn, we grow, we et cetera.  I studied the labyrinthine maze of copper tubes that hang from the ceiling in my musty cellar, right-angling every-which-way like that one screensaver.  Some pipes carry hot water.  Some cold.  Some inexplicably do nothing, which may come in handy during a future Home Alone-esque booby-trapping, the specifics of which I can't yet envision.

Oh, it's already remedied.  Don't you worry about that.  Yeah, about thirty bucks worth of polyethylene foam sleeves, and my copper's nothing short of cozy.  It was remarkably easy.  They comes in 6-foot lengths - 1" diameter or 3/4" diameter, both of which I needed about thirty feet worth.  A 6' length runs you about two and a half bucks.  They're pre-slitted along one side making it a breeze just to slip them over the pipe.  They also have adhesive strips so they seal nice and tight.


It's a long video, yes, but with a host like Passionate Pat, ten minutes feels like a mere twelve.

Yup.  Just yesterday morning I heard my furnace a-purrin', so I descended, felt all the pipes, and whichever ones were hot got a brand new sweater.  And it all seemed very obvious to me - if the metal itself is emanating heat, that heat's being stolen from my water!  Same goes for the hot water tank itself.  Give it a bear hug and if you suddenly feel a rush of second-degree burniness, your tank needs insulation.  Most new tanks won't be hot to the touch, and thus can go au natural.

How much money will this save?  Well, considering the average home (two adults, two children, and heavy, heavy debt) spends about $630 annually on hot water, and this foam should last a good ten to fifteen years, even a mere one percent efficiency boost saves twice the cost of the insulation itself.  And if that savings is more like fifteen percent, it's like someone knocking on your door in ten years time and handing you ten crisp Benjamins.  (They're worth more crisp, obviously.)

It's a Hold Up! You'll Get it When You See the Photographs.

Is there anything more iconic than a pair of disembodied hands cupping the Earth to complement a fluff piece on environmentalism?  Or, alternatively, the fast-fading globe manufacturing sector?  Today's answer is no, and it's brought to you by every stock imagery entity in existence.

The one you see above is the standard.  The perennial go-to.  This shot is so well-worn that the prominently featured America only has forty-eight states.  That atmosphere is so old, there's only 275 parts per million of carbon in it.  Damn, I am just ripping on the age and ubiquity of that photo! 

Ah, but there's more:

With the hands in black and white and the Earth glowing, it conveys the sense that we are but a transient species, a speck of dust passing in the wind in the great rolling meadow that is the everlasting planet.  Plus, printing in black in white, way cheaper.

Three hands?  Wait.  Is it three separate people, or did the original dude get his buddy - oh, no, all left thumbs.  Yeah, that's three people.  And what view is this?  Are we looking at a pole?  Come on, folks, we center on America for the same reason North is always up - so I can recognize stuff.

A lot of hands.  Presumably children's hands, okay, I can work with that.  The Earth is a weighty orb, let's give it the support it needs.

Hmm.  Hands on...top.  Wait that's not even the Earth, is it?  Hold your sphere-o'-sky-shot how ever you like.

The "Taking Communion".  And you gotta wonder - is it a turtleneck?  You just know it is.

Yes, good, now this one speaks volumes.  The hands are the Earth.  Mind, body, soul.  One hand is black, one hand is white.  I see in this picture the confluence of all things.  And yet part of me takes exception to earthface.

Whoa there!  Come on!  That's our only one!

Skeleton hands.  Naturally.  Centered on the Middle East.  Telling.

Oh dear.  That robot's big!  Doesn't it make you feel small?  And extinct?

Now that's what I like to see!

Business Gentleman 1: I think that was a transaction that benefited us equally!
Business Gentleman 2: I agree.  I'd call it a win-win!
Business Gentleman 1: I'd call it a win-win-win!
Business Gentleman 2: Who's the third 'win'? 
Business Gentleman 1:  Oh, right.  Yeah, just win-win.
Business Gentleman 2: Right.
Business Gentleman 1: Red Lobster?
Business Gentleman 2: Red Lobster.

Love in the Time of Al Gore

He's all, "now wait just a second!", or something.

Image Credit: TopNews.in

From time to time, we need to step back and remember why it is we do the things we do.  Some things we do because we have to - going to the dentist, for instance.  No one loves seeing the dentist, save, I suppose, dentists' spouses, and even they fall into ruts, and yes, that was a cavity joke.

But this post isn't about periodontic passion.  It's about restoring the very intimate connection each of us have with things that matter to us.  I, for one, love correcting people's spelling and grammar errors, especially those of eating and drinking establishments.  I care greatly for supercheap whiteboards, and you should too.  I also love misleading link text, like this solar array in New Mexico.

And I started this blog because I care deeply about contributing my resources - snarkitude and broadband internet access - to solving what I feel is our generation's defining challenge: growing our planet from 6 billion people to 9 billion people by 2050 using an energy source other than the several we're currently depleting at a dizzying pace.  No less than the welfare of posterity is on the line.  And I like wagers where you go all in, even though we kinda went all in by accident on this one.  We played with house money for the past two centuries, and we just realized the house is on the brink of bankruptcy.  A bankruptcy that falls under one jurisdiction only - Mother Nature's.  And let's just say she's doesn't plan on abiding by the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA).  On a side note, the house seems to be well-stocked on nested analogies.

So let's all drink up (we, uh, we're drinking, right?) to reaffirming our personal convictions in this world of ours, whatever they may be.  Whether it be a love of golf, an aching desire to see the ice caps, or just a burning need to Facebook friend all the living cast members of Cheers.  What matters is not the object of our pursuit, but rather, our pursuit.  Damn, yo.  That's some fortune cookie ish right there...

I leave you with something that should make you all smile, unless you're the type that hates synchronized puppy play.

Gettin' the Blog Back Together

I'm on the left.  That's Gary on the right, and Phil off to the side.  Phil's got a bad back.

Nice little sabbatical.  I went the standard route - you write thirty posts, you take two months off.  This is very normal here on the internet.  Respected bloggers would agree, the next-to-last thing you want your site to suffer from is "too much fresh content syndrome".  The last thing, of course, is malaria.

Hey, what's happening in the world of energy?  Any like, fixes yet?  I know one thing - every time I flip a switch, a light still goes on.  Which is actually an issue, because it's supposed to turn on the ceiling fan.

So does this mean we're back, providing unique insight on the energy sector, the conservation movement and everything related to that dreaded word that is a color and start with "gr-" but is not grey, grullo or granny apple smith?  I dunno.  We'll see.  But I can tell you one thing: this post goes out to all my fans.  Of which there aren't enough to start a basketball team. And I won't say exactly how many there are, but man could they put together a foursome on the golf course.  There's four.

Peak Magazine Subscription

At bookstores everywhere in the Moorestown Mall named B. Dalton.

I just started a couple magazine subscriptions in the past few months, so naturally the expiration notices are already arriving en masse.  The last one actually struck fear in my heart.  Newsweek sent me a brown, craft-paper envelope - no indication of sender - with big, bold letters stating "LAST NOTICE - YOUR EXPIRATION IS APPROACHING!"  Now if that's not an explicit death threat, I don't know what is.  Either that or existentialism via postal carrier. 

"My passport!" we'll pretend the middle guy exclaimed.

Why have I chosen to let my periodic mailbox friends lapse?  Ugh.  This stupid environmental...thing.  It's as though I did something ecologically disastrous in a past life or something.  Maybe I was in charge of throwing those Manhattan post-war confetti parties or something, and in the days leading up to the parade I'd bounce around the supply room incessantly barking "more confetti!!"  God I loved confetti...

And now here we are, on the brink of man-made cataclysm, and I have to read my Good Housekeeping online, like a chump.

How deleterious is the magazine publishing industry?  Let's find out.  Do you know how many are sold every single day?  I went to the only source that counts - Yahoo! Answers - and learned I wasn't the first to inquire:

Quat a lot indeed!  I'm definitely going to dig a little deeper and talk to the store staff/manager to find out.  Naturally I'll specify WHAT magazine - are we talking about you?  Wheels?  So many variables.

[Fourth-wall break: that was the "Best Answer"?  This world is f@%&ed.]

Of course, this doesn't account for the vast number of mags produced and not sold.  Sure they're recycled.  But the embodied energy in the quat-a-lot of never-even-once-perused issues of BOP and Tiger Beat is so staggering as to induce apoplexy.  (Do they even make those magazines anymore?  Yes.)

So like it or not, no more confetti parades for me.  Thank god we didn't just wrap up a seven-year foreign war, or I might suffer a relapse.

You'd Think Solar Installation Companies Would Work "It's on the House" Into Their Marketing. Or Maybe You Wouldn't, I Don't Know.

 Had that dream again last night. You know the one - you open the hybrid microwave-mailbox to find an envelope so ragged and abused it looks like Marty McFly sent it from fifty years in the past.  You rip it open to find out that the installation of your new solar array is scheduled for this Wednesday, and the state grant came through - the whole install is free!  It goes on to note "make sure the elevator in your house is clear of debris so installers can work safely and quickly" - that's when the dream-panic kicks in: my elevator is a mess!

It'll have to remain a dream for now.  It's not that the glorious photovoltaic array that taunts me while I sleep is too costly - the financial gymnastics that can make it wildly affordable are very much in place and available.  No, I'm merely abiding by the ever-cherished Energy-Efficiency Pyramid.

It was gonna be called the Energy-Efficiency Triangle, but then they thought, come on...

See it?  Yeah, there at the top - Renewable Options.  Damn that's up there.  To express why, let's go through a boring exercise.  Say you currently use 1000 kilowatt-hours per month.  Your monthly electric bill, thus, $200.  In order to completely replace your utility needs with renewable solar, you'll need an 9.4 kW system (assuming the Northeast's average of 3.5 'sunny' hours per day).  Neat, fork over the $60,000 (post-incentives) and it's yours. 

Above, a 10 kW system, in order to show your inability to afford it.

That is, if you're living in Stupidville, population one.  And the one is you.  And you're the mayor.  And for some reason you still campaign during election season.

Picture any pyramid you've ever seen.  No one starts at the top.  Sure, paratroopers, but they were so rare in Ancient Egypt.  The bottom is where it's at.  You take the first step - understanding conservation in general, performing energy audits, using the web as a resource for study and planning.  If you're bipedal, you proceed one foot after the other, ascending Mount Sustainability incrementally, bumping your summer AC up to 77, popping in CFLs where they oughtta be, and caulking the s-word out of your leaky walls.

Different Mario.

There's still a long way to go before you're relying solely on the Big Yellow Dude in the Sky.  The sun, we're talking about. Wait who did you think?

And so I'm somewhere in the middle. Sure I've extended my reach upward here and there, then slid back down to collect some of the lowest-hanging fruit I missed.  It's like when Mario completes a level, but then runs backs and has a coin-collecting fiesta. 

Let's go back to your hometown of Stupidville for a second (btw, you're mayor and sole voter - change the name?).  You only "use" 1000 kilowatt-hours because you haven't yet climbed the EEPyramid.  Picture any number of movies where there's a montage and through a series of physical and spiritual exertions, our main character grows substantively and by the time the montage is over, is a changed person.  Similarly, run up the various steps of the pyramid, and you'll quickly reduce your energy needs.

Wow.  Talk about incontrovertible.

Diminish your dependence on frosty AC and toasty heat?  One-thousand kilowatt-hours suddenly drops to 900.  Kill all your vampire outlets that trickle wattage when devices aren't in use?  900 is now 880.  Ditch the hot water when washing clothes or running the dishwasher?  Down to 825.  Caulk up the leaks, spray insulation where needed - 800.  Now to some heavy hitters - replace the old fridge, hot water heater, or best of all air conditioner?  Watch that 800 fall to 700.  Send your kids to boarding school?  Sweet, merciful five hundred.

Made up numbers, I know.  But if you can cut your electrical use by half, suddenly your cost-prohibitive solar installation becomes not only palatable, but straight-up appropriate.


EDITOR'S NOTE: I tried to 'shop a solar panel under Rocky's arms as he climbed the steps of the art museum.  Evocative image, eh?

OJSTW Quandary: If W Gets S'd, How Will I Lazily Waste My Mornings?

Caught a really superior TED talk today.  Jason Clay from WWF explains how the great changes in the market that are needed shouldn't be coming from the consumer side - it will just take too long, and we'll be in a Costnerian waterworld by the time the mindshift is made.  Instead, an intense focus should applied to the real movers and shakers - the top 100 companies that are directly involved in the commodity trading of the world's most precious and endangered resources (think pulp for paper, cotton, biofuels, etc.).

He argues that transforming these companies into sustainable purveyors will generate a kind of market gravity and pull in smaller producers to the same ecologically suitable practices in order to stay competitive.  

You watch now.

LOLpower: four

Alright, Um, Stalkers...Caterpillars... Gas Prices - OH, Things That Creep!!

Out of sight, out of mind.  So goes it with gas prices.  It's an okay metaphor - not perfect by any means - but here's what I'm saying: when the price of gas at the pump isn't at the forefront of the national discussion, we seem to forget about it and how critical it is to crafting our government's foreign policy.

Again, for effect: our government's foreign policy.  Sound important?  It should, I wrote it in italics.

And no, we're not at $4.11 per gallon, where we peaked in July 2008.  We're sitting relatively pretty at $2.74.  Of course, the days of $1.50 a gallon are long gone.  We've come to accept high-twos as the new norm.  It's doesn't take a crystal ball to predict we'll soon view the low-threes as the new norm.  But if there's one indicator the nation should be following like Tiger on the 18th, it's the price we're paying at the pump.

"Good try, n00b," my one friend who's smart at this stuff would say.  "Per barrel pricing is where it's at.  And I don't say 'n00b'."

Seventy six bucks.  Seems paltry compared to its record of $145 that same July 2008.  But if there's one commodity where pricing can be artificially invented as though out of the ether, it's petroleum.  I don't know that for sure; the real answer might be pork bellies, but when's the last time a pork belly drove you to work?  Don't answer that.

Fact is, there's a sleeping giant on the other side of the world.  Actually the giant has been rising for some time now, but it's one of those giants that's way, way bigger than you think once it's fully upright.  Like a giraffe, I suppose.  This giraffe is two-headed - China and India.  You can picture it.

Take a look at this technical statistics graph I drew up.  What jumps out at you right away is how much the expected China/India demand is probably going to be as compared to the current demand.  The number of oils used by these two exploding nations is going to skyrocket, not to mention grow stripes.

What does it mean?  It means when that striped demon-Giraffe is fully-awakened and sprinting, the finite supply of oil will be in that much greater demand, thus pressuring prices upward.  How up? 

Fifteen dollars per gallon.

Nah, probably not, but let's keep an eye on it, mmk?

Bringing Home the Gold: Trophy Recycling, and My Curious Distaste for Sporting Commemorations

Clearly not won for Best Photographer.

One way writers like to start an examination of a topic is to offer the etymology of the word itself.  It tends to cast the topic in a new light and asks that the reader consider another - presumably simpler - culture's perspective.  In this historical frame of mind, a more profound understanding is supposed to surface.  I guess.

Well this post is about recycling trophies.  And you know what?  Trophy in any other language still means trophy.  Latin, trophaeum - monument to victory.  French, trophee - spoils of war.  I'm none the wiser having learned that.  Or am I?  I'm not.  What's clear, however, is that the concept of 'trophy' is nearly ageless.  But it's our consumer culture that has turned it into a first-place beast.

Cleaning out my old room, I decided the thirty or so trophies I'd amassed throughout my childhood didn't warrant sitting on my mantle.  For one, I'd have to get a mantle.  There's just no place in a latter-twentysomething's home to showcase all the teams I was a "Participant" on.  That's right, participant.  Sure there's a championship in there, a couple all-star games, but the majority of them are of the "He Totally Rostered!" variety.  This post is not intended to elucidate the virtues or lack thereof of "awarding" everyone, thereby diminishing the prestige of the actual victor.  Instead, it's to ask where the effsies are all these trophies gonna go??

Think about it.  If every kid averages 1.5 recreational sports, 6 years of participation, 2 teams/leagues/seasons per year, and earns 0.25 merit-based awards per year, that's 22.5 trophies per person.  Where, pray tell, will these shiny little monuments of mediocrity end up?  Sure, that half-a-trophy gets thrown away - its little dude on top is missing its head.  But let's extrapolate on this math for a sec. 

Do you know how many ten to fourteen year-olds there are in this country?  Imma tell you.  Twenty mill.  Yup.  Brats, too, but that's another story.  So these twenty million brats kids will grow up, slowly drop from their respective sporting teams because of their a) badness at said sport, or b) growing interest in opposite sex.  They'll attend college, drink all the beers, and get a job they tolerate.  Meanwhile, this small slice of the American population will be carrying in tow...a half a BILLION trophies!  

If all those trophies were lined end-to-end, they'd still be...a half a BILLION trophies!  And if you tried to stack them vertically, you stop right away because trophies are odd-shaped and cumbersome.

Half of a billion trophies.  It's like a word-play thing.  If you don't like it just move on.

"But writer guy," you ask, "where did you come up with all those little stats?  Source please?"  Man,  I dunno, I made them up.  Full disclosure, there.  Come up with your own stats if you so choose, but you can't deny that there's a trophy problem in this country.  And our political leaders are all too quick to just sweep it under the rug. And surprise, surprise: Big Trophy's behind it.  And you know what happens when you ask too many questions of Big Trophy?  They give you a goddamn trophy. 

Step one is disposing of the existing glut of these memorials.  There's actually a good amount of services that will recycle them.  Check this out for a more serious treatment on the subject.  Planet Green also spits game.  There's really just a few options - the items are stripped down for their recyclable materials, reused with a new nameplate (often for charitable organizations), or turned into art.  Ogle below.

Image Credit: Green Eco Services

And here's Hunter Cross, who just went berserk with a glue gun and made this happen at The Dallas Contemporary for an installation in late 2007.  More pics at the link.  Obv.

Image credit: Hunter Cross

The next step is the trickier one, which I'll only touch on briefly.  That is to change the mentality of the American athletics community.  Terrific, you took third place in districts.  Celebrate?  Absolutely.  Memorialize with millennia-to-decompose cubic foot-occupying closet fodder?  I dare say no.

But being a part-time unpaid blogger, I totally understand the psychology behind it.  High-fives fade.  The joy, the smiles, the one idiot that dumps Gatorade 95% on the ground and 5% on Coach Thompson - all memories worth keeping.  But we feel a compulsion to embody these memories in a...thing.  Something that lasts a little longer; something to give the memories life - but not immortality.  May I suggest...

1. Ice Sculptures for winter sports
2. Watermelons for summer sports

Wow.  Environmentally-devastating tradition over.  New, sustainable and let's face it, super-cool one begun. Armies of farmers and ice sculptists gainfully-employed.  Now that's a victory for everyone. 

And as for Big Trophy?  If they want to play in the 21st-century sporting arena, they'll retool their shops and get busy on that water-freezing machine.  Which I guess is just called a freezer. 

Renaissance Man Crush....GO!

So there's a great resource on the web that shows you how much electricity it takes to do all sorts of things - run your washing machine, light your home, freezify your popsicles, etc.  It's been my go-to for a couple years now, and today being Sharing Wednesday (somewhere, probably) I thought I'd bestow it unto you: www.michaelbluejay.com.

Yes, that does read "I was born into a cult". 

If you're feeling clicky, your first thought was like mine - when did Weird Al start wearing suits?  Au contraire, Frenchie, that in fact is Big Mike Bluejay, Human Extraordinaire.  In addition to creating the web's definitive guide to household energy use, Mr. Electricity (a moniker that appears to be self-donned) also drops comprehensive knowledge on the process of home-buying, how to snag cheap plane tickets, bicycle safety, and his stint as a Ben Folds Five groupie (natch...).

Google "cheap airfare guide" - Bluejay's on top.  Google "household battery guide" - it's Bluejay season.  "How to buy a home"?  The Bluejays are in town for a three-game series.  If you were dorky enough to ask Jeeves "what's a boss site about saving electricity?" - you guessed it: the North American Coastal mother-flyin' Bluejay.

Homey just slays search engines.

It harbors hope, doesn't it?  One guy, rockin' long last-century locks, just pwning number one rankings.  Sure, his page looks like it was designed in 2001 - but it's actually from '98, so dude's a visionary.  Don't hate on his skills.  (BTW - search "website design tips"?  Yup.  A Michael Bluejay Joint.)

Why is he worth noting on a blog about saving humanity and all of nature's creatures and the environment and music and love?  I'll let the man speak for himself.

He doesn't use air-conditioning until it gets up to 96°.  He's never had a beer in his life.  He sleeps on blankets instead of a bed.  Anyone else picking up on the Chuck Norris/Jack Bauer/World's Most Interesting Man vibe?  I'm just sayin'...

So should we idolize him?  Raise him up to the vaunted status of welebrity cewebrity Internet icon?  I don't know.  All I know is I want to get an apartment with him and possibly write his autobiography.  That's right, autobiography.  That's how inside his brain I need to get.  Also seems I would make more money that way.