Resurrected

Is wasting 25% of the energy that we burn coal or fission atoms to produce so we can recharge a laptop without plugging in a wire a good idea? What would Al Gore say about this?

I'm sort of over blogging right now. It was fun while it lasted. Maybe my attitude will change someday, but for now I'm going to state that I won't be posting stuff to Fun Removal Squad for the forseeable future.

'Bye popular internet self-publishing trend.

ART?

STUFF THAT BALLOT BOX.

You almost made it through all of February without a new post you lucky devils! You can't escape that easily. Mike is vying for a major award and your help is needed. Visit his excellent website for nature-centric posting and observations and then check out his pictures. He's getting better by the day with that trusty camera. Drop him a line to tell him your favorite picture so he can win, as his talent deserves nothing but victory. Here's one of my favorites:

CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS.

SHOULD vs. COULD

Despite the fact that you are seeing perhaps THE LARGEST rice krispie square in history, Ronald actually got very little. Could wins!

A LITTLE ALGEBRA IS USED TO KILL SOME FUN.

The Drumstick ice cream cone is an excellent treat. On the small side so I don't feel too guilty, but there's chocolate and ice cream so my sweet tooth is satisfied. I like ice cream so I tend to have one of these every few days or so. They come wrapped in a plastic package... a bag really. When you open the bag some of the crushed nuts have invariably fallen off the top of the ice cream and get thrown away or spilled. I estimate that it's about 0.5 grams of nuts per Drumstick. They come 8 in a box, so that's 4 grams of nuts wasted per box.

The Peanut Institute (assume they are peanuts for argument's sake) states that a 1oz (28.3 grams) serving of peanuts have 166 calories. Now there's two ways to go from here: positive or negative. I'll start with the positive. I am saving myself 2.8 calories per drumstick by tossing those nuts away. On the downside someone grew, harvested, processed, shipped, packaged, and delivered those nuts to me... and I threw them away. If I enjoy a delicious treat 3 times per week, this means that in a year I will have wasted 75 grams of peanuts in an entire year! And that's just me! How many other people throw those peanuts away without even doing some simple math? Where is this planet headed?

I hereby resolve to prevent this extravagant wasting of delicious and nutritious peanuts if I have the power to prevent it. Who's with me? ... Drumsticks at the ready... GO!

ps- Don't even get me started on the niacin I'd miss out on.

RATHER SIT AROUND

I saw the first ad for the Daisy open-source MP3 player kit a while back. It seems really interesting: get the kit, follow the instructions, solder, etc. Got yerself an MP3 player with access to all the innards that iPods keep your dirty fingers away from like the battery, the memory card, the inputs. I wondered if it would be fun to get one, build it up, really get into it and become an electronics guys. Then I realized that I don't like to listen to music when I'm doing other things. I like to listen to music when I can really concentrate on it and nothing helps my concentration like being at home in a chair... where my stereo is.



So long Daisy.
UPDATE: I just noticed that the guy in the picture has an iPod in the background. WTF? How many music players does one person need? We have one iPod Shuffle that we share... UPDATE #2: E Money just pointed out that, based upon my position in this post, I must do very little at work, because my Google Talk status is constantly showing my current music track. Touche. Please recall that headphones can sometimes be removed while music is still playing.

ENV-ious

Neat bike.
Pessimistic questions:

• How do they keep the hydrogen from killing everyone like a mini-Hindenberg when you get hit by a truck on the roadways? Is it just in an armored and pressurized tank or do they fix it to some sort of inert matrix, releasing it as energy generation dictates?
• How much? I guess $20,000... Seriously.
• ENV stands for environment neutral vehicle or something. What's neutral about burning gasoline? "But it's a hydrogen fuel cell" you say. Where do I fill the "Core" fuel cell with it's hydrogen fuel? Out back of the shed? You can't just make your own fuel if the fuel is hydrogen unless you want to set up a chemistry set and start splitting water molecules and that takes energy. Here's what Intelligent Energy's Compact Hydrogen Generator runs on It seems do-able but it also seems like an extra step when you can get a diesel motorcycle and fuel it with biodiesel or even old corn oil. That might be seen as eco-friendly but pouring kerosene into a funny box that hums and fills up your "Core" fuel cell with piping hot molecules which are then inserted into the ENV and converted into vroom seems kind of like more of the same to me. Perhaps they are hoping GWB's "Hydrogen Economy" will become a reality. I'm not buying that argument because it still takes burning hydrocarbons to create enough energy to snag hydrogen from the environment. Where's the love for the trees and squirrels and such?
• Why did they have to make a pearlized white one like some knobby-tired iPod? Who's going to ride that? Sir Galahad?

Optimistic comment:

• I WANT A BLACK ONE.

[original coverage from Wired]