When times are uncertain people often times finding themselves looking inward rather than outward.  After 9/11 we found anyone who had money was making every move possible to insulate their homes with not just provisions and duct tape but to make it pretty with Curtains, couches and comforters.  Nesting they trend was called.  I think that trend may well be about to begin again.

I can foresee in the near future the government handing out cash to Americans and this trend beginning again.  Given a few grand what would I buy, probably something for the home for sure.  It isn’t often I get a few grand put in my lap for doing anything.  That said I would most likely use it to make the house more energy efficient and their is only so much you can do to a rental property.

• Window shades, plantation shutters, Kitchen curtains, bamboo shades and country curtains make good blinds and plantation shutters. New shades would reduce my summer AC bill.
• I think I would replace a my TV with an LCD which is not only more energy efficient, it puts out considerably less heat.  While I don’t mind the living room being five degrees warmer in the winter, in the summer it rather sucks when I am trying to run the AC and can’t get the living room cool.
• I would replace my old clunky fans with some new small fans to use at my desk or by the bed when I don’t want to run the AC
• The fridge came with the house, but there is nothing that says I have to use it.  I could easily put it out in the garage and let it sit while using a more energy efficient one I can take with me.

In the end if you are going to nest think not just about the comforts of your home, but how you can also make it more environmentally friendly and energy efficient.  Saving money and the environment shouldn’t be thought of as something only for other people.  We each take up space on the planet and each of us can do something to make the most of the space we use.

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In a rush job to get through all the comments and concerns people have over the endangered species act Department of the Interior Officials appointed only 15 people to review all of the text and gave them just thirty two hours to do it in. That isn’t four standard business days type of thirty two hours, that is a day and a third total. If they want to kill the baby seals and polar bears I am not sure why they didn’t just say screw it and outsource their extinction program to Sarah Palin. I am sure if she shoots something with a shotgun it won’t be an accident.

INSIDE WASHINGTON: Fast readers wanted - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Rushing to ease endangered species rules before President Bush leaves office, Interior Department officials are attempting to review 200,000 comments from the public in just 32 hours, according to an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has called a team of 15 people to Washington this week to pore through letters and online comments about a proposal to exclude greenhouse gases and the advice of federal biologists from decisions about whether dams, power plants and other federal projects could harm species. That would be the biggest change in endangered species rules since 1986.

The fact is all our resources are limited, including our wildlife. There is no need to rush through this in the waning days of a presidency. Not only is it irresponsible, it is possibly criminal. I would like to see a stop to this kind of political bullshit that can’t be done during the regular political season. I would like to propose a new executive powers amendment that would require any executive branch department decision made within the last one hundred and twenty days of an administration temporary unless signed off by the incoming administration within the same one hundred and twenty day period.

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In an effort to get more bang for the buck on large scale hydrocarbon burners a new approach to dealing with carbon dioxide is being taken in England.

Turning carbon dioxide into fuel - CNN.com
LONDON, England (CNN) — You might have thought that recycling is limited to paper, plastics and glass. Well, think again. A Californian company is developing a new technique for recycling carbon dioxide, or CO2, and turning it back into fuel.
Carbon Sciences are developing a “breakthrough technology” to make fuel out of waste CO2.

Carbon Sciences believe they have made a breakthrough with their technology, which they say can transform CO2 back into basic fuel building blocks efficiently.

Their biocatalytic process converts CO2 into basic hydrocarbons - C1 (methane) C2 (ethane) and C3 (propane) — which can then be utilized to make higher-grade fuels like gasoline and jet fuel.

This looks to be a grand opportunity for the world, but I question whether or not American companies or the government has vision enough to see the opportunities to be had with this sort of investment. We seem to be a big country with lots of people who don’t mind pollution so long as it isn’t directly in their backyard.

“We don’t use high temperatures or high pressures, which is a huge advantage in terms of scaling the project up,” McLeish said.

In the future, McLeish envisages Carbon Sciences setting up shop next door to large CO2 emitters — coal, gas-fired plants and oil refineries — recycling concentrated streams of CO2 discharged from fossil fuel plants. Trying to take CO2 out of natural air just wouldn’t be worth it.
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“The beauty of this system is the whole infrastructure to distribute, to market and to use it is already in place,” he said.

The recycling process has five main stages. After rudimentary purification and regeneration of the biocatalysts, the CO2 is transferred to a Biocatalytic Reactor Matrix where mass quantities of biocatalysts function in a matrix of liquid reaction chambers breaking down CO2 and turning it into hydrocarbons.

We too have the infrastructure to put this in place, but once again I wonder if we aren’t too myopic to see beyond the dollar signs that no doubt will need to be invested in this sort of project. With $700 Billion plus going to bail out Wallstreet I wonder if Joe Sixpack has the vision to see beyond anything that might cost more money right now. Don’t get me wrong we still need to keep those companies afloat, but I wonder if we can still afford to invest in the future while saving our ass at the moment.

Post 4 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

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The more bio-fuel we make the less food we can grow. We already produce an excess of corn which is fuel intensive to grow. We aren’t using crop land to grow the switch grass though we could and still come out ahead. We can drive the cost of growing crops down by harvesting with bio-fuel powered machinery.

• Ethanol puts out more pollution than gasoline. In some studies this is the case. However automakers never wanted to work on the problem, because they were one in bed with the oil companies and secondly because there was no demand to do it.
• Ethanol will harm my cars engine. This is partly true. Old gaskets and seals won’t withstand long term ethanol use. Many of those cars and trucks need to be taken off the road anyways which is slowly being done by attrition. We have the technology to make gaskets and seals which are safe for use with ethanol, some even do better against ethanol than they do gasoline.
• It will cost more to make ethanol burning cars than it does gasoline burners. False. This is just one more thing automakers say to keep people from using ethanol.
• The price of gas won’t go down. Well duh, nothing is going to make the price of gas go below $3.00 a gallon ever again.
• It is better to buy or use diesel machinery than ethanol burners. In some things it most certainly is and there is nothing stopping us from planting different, highly productive crops to make that too. The goal isn’t just to produce fuel it is to cut down on how much is wasted by grass mowing. The fact we can make fuel from alternate plants is just a bonus.
• Refineries cost too much to build for the government. False. Huge refineries cost a lot of money, but a cellulosic or bio-diesel production facility doesn’t have to be huge. You can easily produce small ones to handle local amounts of bio-matter for very little money. Secondly there is nothing that says it has to be a public processor. A local processor would encourage others to use local unused lands for the same crop, producing even more fuel.
• Expensive pipeline infrastructure would been to be built. False. Sending the final product away from the production facility defeats the purpose of local production and consumption. Secondly we need new a pipeline infrastructure anyways. Most of our current system is old and starting to show signs of degradation.

Like my call to stop cutting grass on an individual level I am not saying we should totally eliminate the task. There are some places that need cutting and some very good reasons to do it in others. However simply reducing the amount of time we spend doing it will save not only money, but lessen the impact we make on our environment.

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This applies to everyone from homeowners and golf courses to the state and federal governments. With a fuel crisis full on for everyone it seems stupid to keep wasting gas mowing grass. Really people think about it. This isn’t just a hot tired cranky guy who sweated his ass off this afternoon doing his city mandated task of cutting the grass saying this either.

Let’s take it from my point of view first and foremost though. I have a roughly 50 x 100 foot yard. There is a 30×40 foot house in the middle of it but there is a chain link fence that has to have the weed-eater taken to it or the city will fine me for that too. In an average year I can squeeze 9 days between mowing the front and only do the back every other time. The city has actually mandated I do it every seven days, but I have yet to get called out for it.

In that average year I go through 12 gallons of gas for my yard machines. That will run me more than $50 this year, and that doesn’t count wear and tear, weed eater string, oil, and what not that also goes into it. There are roughly 17,000 houses here in my town of 40,000 plus. We all have to do the same thing ever week (or so). That is more than 200,000 gallons costing $800,000 this year and going up every year. What does it all go for? Beautifying the city? I don’t know.

I can tell you what it does do though. It endangers the health of a lot of people who can’t afford to pay others to do it for them. It spends money most of us could use on paying ever high electric bills. Last but not least it is environmentally unsound, we should be planting grass seed not lawn mowing.

Think about this. Your yard tools: lawn mower, weed eater, side walk edger, blower all put out a high level of green house gases. Yes, we could all switch to electric yard tools, but electric versions last half as long and end up in the landfill that much sooner. Decent ones also cost more to start with. Lastly, electric yard tools mean we incur a higher electric bill and tap the grid at peak times. Up the line there is also a fossil fuel power plant which only changes the source of emissions.

I am not suggesting homeowners stop cutting altogether, though I wouldn’t really mind. On the other hand look at the savings if we went to once a month or even every other week. Alternately think about what we could give to other programs with that money. I don’t think any of us would mind paying a $25 yearly levy for the library, teachers, or school programs if we could trade away half our yard mowing. It is also irresponsible of the government to insist we keep mowing with a fuel crisis on. Where there is a water shortage, they tell people they can’t water their grass, why not tell people to not mow their grass when there is a fuel crisis?

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New superpowers are competing for diminishing resources as Britain becomes a bit-player. The outcome could be deadly

I have long been saying that it was water not oil that really matters in the world. If you have ever thought Tibet was about land you would be greatly mistaken, unless you were referring to the watershed from those mountains. There will come a time in the not so distant future when oil hits $200 a barrel, or maybe even $150/barrel that Americans decide they have had enough and make the hard switch to biofuels. I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I can put two and two together and many large corporations have been buying farm land for decades and losing money on it.  They wouldn’t do that if there wasnt a future profit motive to it. That tells me others have seen a biofuel future too.

When America refuses to pay the burden of oil, it won’t take long before we are producing most of our own fuel, as we did more than a century ago. Then let us ask what happens to the rest of the world. The hardest hit will be developing countries that often rely on food subsidies from the US. We will simply say, I am sorry there is no wheat or corn for you, because we moved our surplus production that you have relied on for decades into sorghum, switchgrass, and oilseed crops. Don’t think for a moment that Americans aren’t going to feel that pinch too. Given our habits most Americans would rather have cheap fuel, then they would a sandwich especially when the cheap bread goes to five dollars a loaf.

In some respects $5/loaf will be good for the people. years ago when government statistics were put together they gave a much higher weight to food prices when they decided what poor was. For years now food has not kept up with the price of housing, which has over taken the American budget. Of course this being the American government we are talking about, they are likely to decide that after decades of study and sitting around with their heads up their asses that the cost of housing really is what we should base poverty levels on. Coincidence? I very much doubt that, this is the US government we are talking about.

I know what some of you are thinking, so what if a bunch of people in Africa starve. Well you should care, not just because they are human beings either. Africa is not only a land of tribal peoples, but of great Muslim extremism. if you think we have the Islamicists pissed at us for our involvement in those oil rich countries, think what happens when we tell the ones we have been feeding all these years to suddenly go fuck themselves. Without water and without food, they have nothing to live for except to hurt us, and hurt us they will. They flock to terror training camps with not a holy crusade, but revenge in their hearts…

read more | digg story

Is there a solution to all of this? Not an easy one, and not one that doesn’t mean changing our habits and demanding better fuel efficiency now, rather than cheaper fuel prices later. We will never see dollar a gallon gas prices again, but I do believe it is possible to see twenty miles per dollar spent on fuel.

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Arbella Perkins Ewings blew out all 114 candles on her birthday cake on March 13 and quietly took part in the celebration that comes with being the third-oldest person in the world.

There was a proclamation from Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, speeches by friends and family, TV cameras and a roomful of well-wishers.

read more | digg story

As I read by this little blip from Digg, I knew I had to say something more than the tiny comment area warranted. At a 114 I am sure this woman was imporant to her friends and family, but I want to know what she did to help society the last 30 years or more. What did she contribute to the world? Why are we celebrating, and more importantly why should we be? Is living a long time reason enough to be happy? Or does a person have to do something other than breath and use resources to be worth celebrating?

As we live longer and longer, the question because what is the point? We retire in our mid sixties from a job, then live another twenty or thirty years to do what. What do old people really contribute to our society once they retire. Sure some of them provide childcare for their children and grandchildren so they can work or go to school, and that is a great help to the economy. Some people work long past the age of retirement or get a job even after their official retirement. However why should we get excited about those who don’t? What benefit do people who sit around and just wait to die provide?

Should we allow people to keep living after they quit being useful? Congress is in fact full of useless people, and by no means do I advocate killing them, so I can’t advocate euthanizing old people just because they quit contributing. However, I do think that there comes a time as a society when we must start putting the financial burden of living just for the sake of living on the the person and their family if they wish to keep living. Our planetary resources are limited so the smaller the population we have the better off the world is. We need to start thinking about the reality of that or one day not many generations from now all these kids we have to make our life feel complete will be killing each other over food and water rather than oil and ideals…

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Vatican sex guide urges Catholics to do ‘it’ more often
By Julian Coman
Last Updated: 12:32am BST 31/10/2004

A Vatican-sanctioned sex guide is encouraging churchgoers to make love more often in an effort to offset “impotence and frigidity” and address papal concerns over declining birth-rates among Italian Roman Catholics.

The controversial book, It’s A Sin Not To Do It, written by two theologians, promises the reader answers to “everything you wanted to know about sex but the Church (almost) never dared to tell you”.

This new Vatican sex manual on a positive note has says nothing about priests getting it on with anyone. However it does go on to contradict the churches new modern deadly sins.

“In view of the trivialisation of sex and the rise of impotence and frigidity in consequence, as well as the increasing number of only children, it is better for the Church to promote sex in the right circumstances, instead of just focusing on prohibitions and perversions.”

What the church fails to realize is how how having lots of extra children violates their new first Deadly Sin of the Modern Age causing pollution. In the western world we can reasonably expect a child born in the year 2000 to live until the are 75 and 85. Of that lot if the girls have one child at the age of 25 with an even distribution of male and females. You can expect a stable population at a one child per couple. If you double the birthrate and leave all other things like premature death and gay or infertile children out of the population you triple the population in only two generations. Since the Vatican knows it is hard to convert people without the crusades and inquisition, breeding an army a flock of slaves of birth believers might seem like the answer.

Factoring in real statistics from around the world we find that the actual population growth according to any number of population clocks and calculators the world growth rate is about a hundred and 150% over the next two generations. We are expected to hit roughly nine billion people by 2048. If you think things are bad now when it comes to pollution and scare resources, you haven’t seen anything yet. If the Vatican among others in the breeding for the Bible camp gets its way, we could hit that mark a lot sooner.

In the end any time we start to talk about the environmental responsibility be it pollution or natural resources, we need to stop and consider the impact of population growth. Westerners can no longer ignore this simply as a problem in other countries, it is real problem here at home. In the US we have a net gain of one person every thirteen seconds. While that is lower than the expected world population growth, it is still population growth of 130%

What is the solution to the population crisis? If we wish as a world to ever achieve environmental responsibility, we need to decrease our population significantly. While I can’t see any governments actually advocating any population controls other than China. We certainly need to be discussing this and being blunt with the numbers. There is one easy solution for those who can afford it to have more one child, adoption. There are plenty of children who need loving families, both her in the states and abroad. If you can afford more than one, then think about sharing the love and doing something environmentally responsible for the child you already have.

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