Today, I’m guest blogging at In the Pink Texas again. This time about cameras on the border.
by James Brush
Month: December 2006
Today there was a message for Vida on my answering machine. Apparently some financial planner would like to help her sort out her debt. I jotted the information down in case I should ever meet anyone named Vida, I could give her the message and perhaps help her out of her debt hole.
That was the only message, and it left me wondering how many telemarketers attempting to call me dial the wrong number leaving opportunities that should rightfully be mine on the doorsteps of others.
Lots, I hope.
Week seven of the Slate/Treehugger Green Challenge has arrived and this week’s topic is water. Specifically hot water since water don’t heat itself. Once again, the quiz reveals we’re already pretty green regarding the relationship between CO2 and H2O.
Short showers? Already doing it. It’s really simple. Short shower = longer sleep. ‘Nuff said. Low flow shower head? No. Here’s where I’ll play the hey-I-have-a-hybrid-card. Boil only the water I need for my tea? Check. Run dishes when the dishwasher is full? check. Keep the water heater at 120F or less? Probably. Mine has low-med-high with little hash marks in between. It’s set one hash above med as near as I can tell. It’s hard to get to and checking it would require backing the car out, which would require starting it and adding needlessly to the CO2 in the atmo.
For extra credit, I pledged to do things I was intending to do anyway: replace the water heater with a tankless model when it needs replacing and replace our current Energystar dishwasher with another Energystar when it dies.
The results page says this:
- Installing a low-flow shower head saves an average of 507 pounds of CO2 per person per year.
- Running the dishwasher only when it’s full saves about 50 pounds of CO2 per person per year.
- Setting your water heater’s thermostat to 120 degrees Fahrenheit saves about 275 pounds of CO2 emissions per person per year.
- Insulating your hot water heater saves about 500 pounds of CO2 per person per year.
- Installing a solar water heating system reduces your CO2 emissions by about 360 pounds annually per person.
The last two I won’t be doing at this time.
So, this week we shed some water weight and reduced our carbon load by 911 lbs or .09 cars. This brings the total reduction to 7881 lbs or 43% of my original total of 18274 lbs.
Saving cold water also helps as well, which reminds me of my grandmother’s admonition: ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown flush it down.’ She lived her whole life in the deserts of Arizona. We won’t go that far.
I haven’t watched a single movie since July (when the last Monday Movie Roundup appeared). It’s not that I don’t like movies – it was my first profession, after all – but I just don’t find myself wanting to invest the time.
Or perhaps it’s that once perfection was achieved with Lord of the Rings, there has been really no need for any more movies to be made.
But seeing as how Hollywood hasn’t yet packed it in, something was bound to strike my fancy…
Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005)
Though not watching movies, we have been catching up on old TV shows that we missed, and the best of these was the unfortunately short-lived (damn you, FOX, are you good for anything!?!) Firefly. The series follows the adventures of the crew of Serenity, a firefly-class starship, who earn their keep running smuggling and petty crime jobs out on the border planets where the all-powerful Alliance doesn’t have much authority.
Visually, the show is a wonderful hodge-podge of science fiction technology blended with the imagery of the old west with its gamblers, gunfighters, outlaws and saloons. Such is life on the border worlds. I loved it immediately when I realized that it played with the best ideas of Lucas’ Star Wars universe (imperfect technology, space pirates, charismatic scoundrels) without doing all the do-goody rebel alliance business. Of course, Captain Mal Reynolds used to be a rebel fighter, but his side lost the civil war and he lit out for the territories in his old freighter.
We watched the eleven episodes that aired and immediately rented the film Serenity, which picks up two months later and attempts to tie up most of the loose ends from the series’ early cancellation. I won’t say much about the film except that I enjoyed it, and wish mightily that there will be a sequel someday.
The Firefly universe is one of the richest and most fascinating that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s full of potential, and I’d love to see it explored more thoroughly.
Damn you, FOX. Damn you to the border moons.
Phoebe, ever the faithful camera assistant, checks for dust on the lens.
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When I was a kid, the story of the lost dutchman who disappeared while searching for a legendary gold mine on Arizona’s Superstition Mountain fascinated me. I remember looking at those mountains whenever we visited my grandparents in Phoenix and imagining all the stories that they must hold.
I like this photograph, taken with my old 110 in 1982, because faded with time and dirt, it reminds me of the myths of the old west and the magic they still hold for me.
I’d love to follow that old dirt road leading along the telephone poles up onto that mountain and search for that old mine myself even though I know it would be as futile as searching for the Loch Ness Monster or the Seven Cities of Gold. Hopefully, though, they wouldn’t some day spin yarns about the lost Austinite’s gold mine.
Selections from the 2006 Austin City Limits Music Festival are now available on iTunes. The only acts I saw that are available are The Tragically Hip and The String Cheese Incident.
The sound at the Hip’s set wasn’t too good. Mostly the vocals were buried too far in the mix, and the iTunes selections reflect that, though the guitars sound great. There are seven Hip tracks available, the best being “100th Meridian” and “Courage,” which is about how I remembered the set. If you like The Tragically Hip, you’ll want these two at least. The rest are good, coming off better than they sounded in person.
I only downloaded one String Cheese track – “The New Pollution,” which was as good as I remember it being. Also available are Matisyahu, Gomez, Son Volt, Flaming Lips and a few others. Why, oh why, did they not record Calexico. I’ll never forget how good they sounded on “All Systems Red” and “Not Even Stevie Nicks…”
Still, it’s nice to relive a great weekend.
At long last, all of the non-jazz CDs are on the ‘pod. The next project is to get the rest of the jazz on board, which will dramatically change the character of the shuffle.
Here’s today’s random ten with *’s by the artists I’ve caught live…
- “Girlfriend is Better” – Talking Heads *
- “St. Mary’s Walk” – Shearwater
- “They Are in Love” – David Byrne
- “Tim Moore’s Farm (Tom Moore Blues)” – Lightnin’ Hopkins
- “Non-Addictive Marijuana” – Supersuckers *
- “Two Spaces” – Frank Black *
- “What Do You Want From Me (Live)” – Pink Floyd *
- “The Walk” – The Cure *
- “Honky’s Ladder” – The Afghan Whigs
- “Babylon (Live)” – David Gray
This week’s edition of the Slate/Treehugger Green Challenge focuses on the holidays. Keeping in mind that no one actually diets during the holidays, I figured that carbon diets would be no different, and as it turns out I was right.
There was nothing I was willing to pledge to do to reduce my footprint other than recycle my holiday waste, which I was going to do anyway. That saves a statistically insignificant 15 lbs. I could have agreed to purchase various kinds of carbon offsets for the people on my list, but I’m thinking that would go over as well as, well, a lump of coal.
Speaking of lumps of coal, though, in an effort to reduce my carbon footprint in ways that aren’t recognized by Slate and Treehugger, I will no longer be giving lumps of coal to all the bad kids on my list. Instead they will recieve broken shards of solar panels and pieces of old windmills. That’ll teach ’em.
And so, this week I take no cars off the road and hold fast at the 32% reduction in my original footprint that I hit last week.