Stop Esso!
Just posted a new addition to the postive change section of the main site. Read as Keith protests 45 Esso (Exxon to you and me in the states) filling stations IN ONE DAY!
Use this space for your comments.
Eng-er-land!!!
It’s gone World Cup crazy in the UK (well, in England - the Scots and the Welsh are all supporting Portugal for the next match). Here in the delightful land that is Essex (I jest, it really does contain some of the scariest people in the world!) supporting England is mandatory, even if you’re not English.
There is this strange habit amongst people in Essex to cram as many England (or “Eng-er-land!!!”, as it is said) flags into one car as possible. The Guardian ran a piece on this recently and it’s so true. I have warned our two children to be extra careful around any vehicle with more than one England flag.
Now, what on Earth has that got to do with saving the planet. Well, it’s like this : According to Dr Antonio Filippone of Manchester University, a car with 2 flags burns an extra litre of fuel an hour at an average of 70MPH (that’s the normal speed for highways here). He has calculated that 500,000 similar cars would therefore create 2,800 tonnes of CO2 every hour.
I have seen cars, well SUVs, with 6 flags; so one of those glorious symbols of national pride is generating about 15kg CO2 every hour.
And when England are knocked out of the cup, they will all go into landfill to sit there for 1000 years.
New Member!
Please join me in welcoming Keith to The Sietch. He will be serving as our UK correspondent, and is a very cool guy.
An Inconvenient Truth
I went and saw Al Gore’s new movie (some would say the new movie about Al Gore) An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. Aside from the many product plugs for apple, this was a good movie.
Being the kind of internet geek that compulsively trolls all media sources for news about everything there was not a lot of things in the movie that I have not seen. Judging from the repeated shocked gasps from the audience it seems that others however have not. This movie is nice, very nice. It lays out the arguments for why we need to act now to stop global warming. Only the most fact-resistant among us can withstand its calm, logical, and scientifically based claims. Gore does an amazing job of illustration just how important it is that we start doing something major about global warming, and that we start doing it now.
The movie also highlights a version of Al Gore that makes many in the liberal community almost cry. We cry because if the Al Gore in this movie, would have been the Al Gore that ran for president in 2000, he would have won by an even greater landslide. When we in the progressive community look back on the last 6 years of out of control rampage by George W. Bush and his ilk we yearn for what could have been.
I remember being fooled like everyone else in 2000. Thinking there was “no real difference” between Gore and Bush. Thinking that both men seemed somewhat robotic, and uninteresting. Both “seemed” to be saying almost the same thing. I voted for Gore, more because I didn’t like Bush, not because I had much good to say about Al Gore. If only Gore would have demonstrated this passion then that he has shown since the “loss” in 2000.
If you have not seen this movie yet, go see it. If you are a skeptic of global warming science, go see this movie. If you want to see a man that is passionate about one issue, go see this movie. Most of all, if you want to see the shadow of “what could have been” go see this movie.
Monday Confessional
Big Monday for me, took a day off of work to get some other more important work done, lots of balls in the air right now, trying to juggle them all at the same time. Big changes could be in the works for me soon….Will keep you posted.
Wonderful day at the beach, it seems I like to swim. I had a wonderful time rolling around in the warm water today. My mother and brother are coming to visit on Saturday. It should be fun. Going to go on a whale watch, and walk around Ptown. Go to the beach, see some sights, go for some hikes.
I am really tired for some reason, guess all the mental stress of the day, combined with some sun, and swimming and I am beat.
We Were On NPR!
When I am not thinking up new renewable energy projects, or bitching about the republicans, I have a little side job tasting ice cream. My friend Tess and I run the Cape Cod Ice Cream Challenge.
Recently we were on NPR talking all about our adventures in ice cream. Check them out here.
I Now Live In A Jungle
It has rained more this summer and spring than is has not. Seriously it seems like it is raining 7 our of ever ten days as of late. If I wanted to live in a rain forest I would move to Brazil. I know its silly to complain about the weather, but damn could a brother get a little sun. Seriously.
Hello Big Brother, Welcome To America
We already know the government is watching out phones, and our internet (Hi Dick, Hi George! Hope you enjoy the site) now it seems they may be looking over our bank records as well.
The Bush administration, relying on a presidential declaration of emergency, has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials.
Initiated shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance program has used a broad new interpretation of the Treasury Department’s administrative powers to bypass traditional banking privacy protections. It has swept in large volumes of international money transfers, including many made by U.S. citizens and residents, in an effort to track the locations, identities and activities of suspected terrorists.
Current and former counterterrorism officials said the program works in parallel with the previously reported surveillance of international telephone calls, faxes and e-mails by the National Security Agency, which has eavesdropped without warrants on more than 5,000 Americans suspected of terrorist links. Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI’s use of “national security letters” to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.
Now for all I know the good people at the NSA are only going after “suspected terrorists” (and that is the problem we have NO idea what they are doing). But these people have been using up a lot of my “trust capital” as of late. A free society demands an open government. We can not be so afraid of getting attacked that we give up all of our freedoms. If you are monitoring my emails, phone calls, and bank records, you had better have a warrant that targets ME specifically and states what you think I did.
There should not be broad warrants that apply to thousands of people. What even happened to “innocent until proven guilty?” Imagine if the government went through your mail box in your front lawn, g-men strolling door to door reading all of your mail. They might find evidence of terrorist activity, but its far more likely that they would simply be invading the privacy of millions of innocent Americans.
This is exactly what is happening now. Our phones are tapped, our email is being read, and now our bank records may be tapped. All because they “might” find something. When does this end? National ID cards? Mandatory fingerprinting? Mandatory DNA submission? If you are not worried, you are not paying attention.
If this continues we are on a path to a fascist government that knows everything about everyone. George Orwell almost got it right. Instead of a militarily enforced “Panopticon” or all seeing eye, the government has instead lulled us all into an amazing apathy, and then used that apathy to do whatever they want. We are not marching in the streets, we are not calling our leaders, we simply go back to watching American Idol, and ignoring the problem.
Now is the time for action people, call your rep, call your congress person, vote, write the white house, organize marches, start a blog, tell a friend, DO ANYTHING. Our freedoms are worth fighting for.
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Ben Franklin
New Solar Thermal Panel Project
I just added a new solar thermal panel project to the project section of the main site. It works a lot better than the first one did. Check it out and leave a comment here.
Monday Confessional
WOW! It has been a busy busy week already. Big meeting at work, lots of stuff done this weekend, just crazy good all over. Got a new project for The Sietch coming soon, my ice cream website is getting lots of attention, had a wonderful time with Tess this weekend, went swimming twice this weekend, and saw opening day of the Cape Cod Baseball League game between Bourne and Wareham. All in all I am a happy boy. Might even fix the whole being homeless things soon. It’s ok if you want to say “ooooh” or perhaps “ahhhh” I can understand how you would be amazed at all of that.
But in a more serious note, work is getting really heavy, been very busy as of late. As such my blogging has slaked off a bit. Sorry! I do love blogs, (tappy tappy tappy), but work and real life has to come first. Those solar panels and wind turbines are not going to install themselves.
In geek related news I stopped using java script to do my RSS to HTML and am now using a PHP script from Carp. The problem was that google and other search engines could not index my java script generated stuff. The php shows up as good old html, so it gets indexed better.
So that’s about it, trying to cram 40 hours a week’s worth of work into 20, and then get everything else done after that. All while having as much fun as humanly possible. Its a wonderful life. My mom is even coming to visit me over the 4th holiday. Go mom! Cape Cod is great in the summer, if you don’t mind gridlock, crazy tourists, and the chance that some old snow bird could kill you at any moment with there giant Lincoln town car.
Why, just yesterday someone was giving me shit about my pro wind stickers on my car. Screaming crazy stuff at me, who does that. I mean I don’t scream at people with Bush stickers, or anti-wind farm stickers. I thought that was the whole idea behind bumper stickers, you let other people know how you feel. His car had no stickers. He was not following the rules. In case you read this crazy guy, buy a sticker that reflects your views, and then put it on your car. Then shut up. Thank you.
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