Energy Bill

The energy bill is out there floating around, attempting to institute cap and trade on the ability to emit the bad stuff and require higher efficiency and more renewable energy sources. From what I hear the big argument against it is that industry and energy companies will shift the costs on to the consumer. I'm no political kingpin, but....fucking duh? Did this surprise people? I feel like fools are just being combative because they feel they have to oppose something. Next stop, Limp Bizkit fandom.

It has to be paid for somehow. Doesn't it make the most sense to put a price on emissions and let the market do what the market does to work out what still makes sense? Pollute more, pay for it. Suddenly the cheapest way to do things becomes not the cheapest way to do things. Bam, cheap dirty industry is priced out by cleaner industry that was once more expensive. And fittingly, those end users who use the most power or those who use dirty energy will be the ones to pay more for it. Yes, it will cost more than it does currently, but y'all sure as heck weren't going to approve something bankrolled entirely by Uncle Sam, were you?

de-train

From time to time I labor under the idea that people from far away locales are reading this. I don't labor very hard, to be sure, which is just as well since I'm fairly certain my 3 readers (down 40%!) are all locals. Anyhow, its worth saying that our rail system in Northern California and the Bay area is fairly linear. Multi-linear, perhaps, but certainly falling well short of being a web or a network. If the New York area rail system resembles a box of uncooked noodles poured out on the counter, the Bay's rail is the crayola 12-crayon box lying in a heap. Odds are you can find something heading from vaguely your direction to vaguely the place you want to be, but unfortunately the difference between 'vague' and where you're actually going seems to be a minimum of 4 miles.

We do, on the other hand, have a growing traffic problem. San Francisco isn't NYC, but I've had the pleasure of commuting through the bay before and I don't know what to call it aside from a phrase involving a cluster. For both infrastructure logistics and green reasons, the train starts to look like an attractive alternative.

Here's what we expect the train to be: It should be a little slower than a fast car ride in no traffic, since it keeps stopping, but should be consistent, without worry of a traffic jam. You should be able to relax while you're riding the train, since you don't have to worry about steering the thing. And, of course, it should at least link up with something that can get you where you need to be.

The grossest failing of the train is it's lack of consistency. It weighs 500 tons, rides on a set of rails, and has a published schedule, and yet is still somehow subject to traffic. Amtrak, it seems, is not only burdened with the usual set of mechanical issues but also takes a back seat to freight traffic and track work on a routine basis. Some sort of delay occurs every second day or so, and several times a month the delays stretch into the hours, sometimes to the point of asking the passengers to switch to another train. And at that point the comfort of riding the train becomes the hope that you can make it 80 miles in under 3 hours, and that you won't be stuck standing on the platform for too long at 11pm waiting for the delayed replacement train.

West coast rail is nowhere near the East in scope, and it doesn't make sense to expand it unless more people are going to ride. The way things are looking though, I'll be keeping it out of my own plans.

6/29 Edit: Numbers are in, train ridership is down 13% this year. Bam. They responded by raising ticket prices. Bam?

Leverage

So if you are reading this odds are you know me, and if you know me you know I have a bit of a germ thing. It's not debilitating, it's just a thing. It has largely to do with people being gross. Not you necessarily, but people. I've seen them digging for green gold on the freeway, and don't even get me started on the bathroom etiquette in my building. Anyhow..

To open a door you should push (or pull) on the side opposite the hinges. This provides you the greatest leverage so that the least amount of force is required at any point, although you have to push over a greater distance. Who cares, you were walking through the door anyway. From a bioergonomic point of view (yeah I made up that word) you should push probably between shoulder and hip height, otherwise you'll be using all sorts of weird muscles just to be stable and not pushing like you otherwise could. So basically, push where the handle or brass plate is.

Now if you have this thing about doorknobs that get so used that they're actually worn out, you do what you can to avoid the greasiest parts of the door. This usually results in me picking a spot about 6 feet in the air right in the center of the door. It may not be completely unused, and I'm pushing twice as hard as I need to, but it makes me feel better or something. I haven't swapped hand crud with the entire building, just maybe one or two people.

But wait! One or two people indeed. There are often some handprints in random stupid places on the door, like my 6ft center spot. Who else is doing this? Is it other germy fearin' folks who happened to pick the same random spot, or am I being contaminated by....morons? And it's back to the decision board.

Swiss Made

We ordered up some new equipment the other day and it turns out it’s Swiss Made. You can tell because it says it right on the front. Despite what the underdeveloped logical part of my mind is saying, this knowledge really goes a long way to assuring me that what I’m holding here is a quality product made with great care and precision. Why? There are plenty of fine Swiss watchmaking companies, to be sure, but there is no reason to believe that the companies who craft these famous watches have anything at all to do with my swiss made lab instruments. Ferrarri and Lamborghini are both Italian brands, but that doesn't mean that Fiat is built to the same standard. So why so much faith in the Swiss attention to detail? Because for some reason I can’t explain I am certain that Switzerland is populated mostly by people who could be described as an elderly Hans Christian Anderson/Geppetto fellow with thin rimmed glasses and a jewelers loup working diligently in a shop filled with pocket watches and springs. I think this exposes me as both an ignoramus and a racist or xenophobe (an inaccurate one at that – HC Anderson and Geppetto were Danish and Italian, respectively) at the same time. But hey, at least I can pick out the Swiss from the Swedes…with these new Swiss Made forceps we just got in.

Didn't get that memo eh?

Here we are, year 2009 a mere 3 years shy of the predicted apocalypse and living in the age of information. Somehow, between email, google, wikipedia, spellcheck, and other lightning fast info sources, we still have people living in caves. Undisciplined, yes-men filled caves.

Think back to the last time you went to the airport. Guaranteed that somebody in line tried to bring an economy sized bottle of shampoo and 8 gatorades through the security point, and was completely flabbergasted when they were told by the dude in the homeland security getup that it was not allowed. Regardless of how absurd you think the rules are, they've been the rules for years now. It's right up there with no smoking on the plane. Google it. Ask somebody. Turn on the news. something.

In 2006 the FCC announced plans to terminate analog television broadcast in 2009, meaning that people with old TV's still relying on rabbit-ears to get their signal would have to get a digital converter box, which is free with a government subsidized program. Easiest thing in the world to target this audience - just play the above information once in a while on the six and a half channels that you still get on broadcast. Bam, done. And yet somehow, 3 years wasn't enough time for people to call the hotline and do something about it, and now 5.8 million unprepared households want an extension. And here I was assuming it was old people, but from the sound of things it includes a fair number of slacker college kids.

Then you have your suspiciously plentiful pile of sub-average internet users who insist on typing everything in all caps. This is the most painfully confusing demographic I've ever discovered, and I suspect that it was created by a government think tank to hurt my head. One would assume that a member of the 'internet' who is well informed enough to use a 'computer' and construct a craigslist/ebay/forum post would get a clue about the all caps thing. One would be wrong, and go to bed early dreaming of variations on the Geico cavemen commercial.

Not My Problem

The following is a list of things that are piled up outside the stairway to my office building. None of them are mine.

-Two 40 gallon drums of 95% and 100% Ethylene. It ranks just south of "hella flammable" on the burn-o-meter.
-An ever changing tidal line of leakage from said drums.
-Approximately 50 cigarette butts.
-Some leaves.
-A 1950's era refrigerator door.
-A plastic tampon applicator device thingy.
-A pile of inside out (presumably used) latex gloves.

why would you ever do this?

If you were to ask me, the man on the blog street, what I love to hate most, you might surmise from pretty much any of these posts that it's stupidity. And, while that does get my undies in quite an untidy bunch, general stupidity is usually pretty aimless. The rub is that it's so damn general. Anyhow, there are worse offenses: aggressive stupidity, such as trying to run me over with your pickup truck while a-hootin and a-hollerin, and professional stupidity, where you're just being plain negligent at the thing you supposedly do well.

For today's example we turn yet again to the traffic circle. They're all the rage these days, everybody who's anybody is installing them. A quick hint though: If you build a bike specific traffic circle, and make it a really small radius one for whatever reason, it'd probably be best not to put super slippery metal utility covers right in the middle of the path.