Black Boys on Mopeds

One of my older Latino relatives was heard recently saying that 'If that Nigger gets in the White House, I'm taking the RV and moving to Mexico."

Old School.

This wouldn't be the first time someone said this. Didn't one of the Baldwin's say he'd emigrate if Bush got in? Alec? And I remember Sinead singing she was leaving England so her boy wouldn't have to know grieving. Suppose Alec left for England and Sinead left for the US...seems like they'd just cancel each other out altogether.

I'm guessing Barack's worst demographic is elderly whites, followed closely by older Latinos. Racism is so strong in these demographics that the usually clean Democratic and Republican separations are blurred. A Latino over 45 voting Republican? It would have been unheard of four years ago. But the times they are a 'changin. I think there's enough of us younger people who've never known the pre-civil-rights-era to counter such thinking.

This morning the news was abuzz with Scott McClellan, former Bush press secretary, a defector from Bush's inner sanctum. I didn't follow it but for one quote -- "that I had such high hopes for this administration, and that we thought we could do so much good...I was disappointed."

Thinking about Obama who will likely be put up; he stands an excellent chance this fall in part due to himself and in part due to consecutive Republican fumbles at the 2 yard line. If he makes it to the Big Dance...do you think he has any chance of following through on withdrawing from our overseas engagements? Or will his press secretary be saying the same thing McClellan did in 3 years time? There is such a strong correlation to our actions abroad, to our failed energy policy, and to our failed behaviors at home...although I don't presume any mendacity of tanking into Iraq for their oil. But what will Obama do? Will he be able to sever the bungee cord between energy and war?

It only takes one disgruntled Nigerian in a Jackalberry dugout and an RPG to raise world oil prices another 5 bucks; a mad Arab with 10 pounds of Semtex and a camel, 10 bucks; a Palestinian hijacked airliner into Ras Tanura, 25 bucks. What would the price be if Iraqi oil production languished because we sucked ourselves out of there and the country couldn't self govern? What would be worse for you...an extra $75 cents a gallon because we ended the war early and Iraq imploded...or no price increase, but mired in a perpetual war paid for by others?

I know America's answer. Things were just fine 18 months ago, weren't they; when energy was cheap, the war ignored and payments for it deferred, food bountiful, homes pricier, and the economy plugging along plenty good enough. Oh, to return to such normalcy!

Although I have a preferred outcome, I really don't give a shit how it all turns out -- so long as my son never gets conscripted. I have a right to be selfish about this because I've done more than enough to wean myself off foreign oil. We have enough domestic supplies to keep a sustainable, no growth economy working. We wouldn't need imports if more of us Americans were diagnosed with the big C -- conservation. Iraq would have the same significance as Rwanda. That is, we could afford not to give a shit.

Formula Flame Feast

At our quarterly business unit meeting I listened to an interesting presentation from our top budget guy. These aren’t the sorts of things I had any interest in in the past. I’m an engineer; just give me the dollars and I engineer. Simple. I benchmark my performance by ensuring I work just hard enough so that they’ll fire someone else first…in case the budget impacts personnel.

But the doomer in me had a silent orgasm in the auditorium today hearing about what’s coming down the road for SMUD. And wouldn’t you know it, we can see it coming from forty miles away. We didn’t prepare for the housing bust or higher commodities yet we saw these coming from fifty miles down the road.

I know my bias, as do you. One has to filter the Franklin Monologues through it. I accentuate the negative when it comes to energy, and I likely always will because I take such personal issue with US energy policy. I don’t see it changing without a whole lot of misery and pain, because we are too fucking stupid to manage it preemptively. We wait until it becomes a crisis.

Anyway…SMUD will likely need a double-digit rate increase before 2010...and so will most California utilities. There are many factors at play. The biggest is natural gas, but I already blogged about that. There aren’t too many rosy forecasts about the price these days, and most expect natural gas to stay at or rise above current levels.

Secondly, we’ve had two bad consecutive water years. In the absence of good hydrology we have to purchase more market energy…which is always more expensive than our native hydro generation. Hydro is, far and away, the cheapest electricity you will ever get. Fuel costs are zero and the plants/dams/generators’ capital costs were paid off a long time ago. But consider this -- we, today, average about 10% less water than we got 60 to 90 years ago, even before we used it to generate. Historical Sierra Nevada records show an inexorable decline in water as each decade marches on…supposedly due to climate change. So while the EPA insists that California doesn’t have ‘compelling and extraordinary circumstances’ to warrant our own automotive fuel efficiency standards to combat global warming, the watershed for 2/3rds of the state is in slow decline and all signs point to future declines in quantity.

Thirdly, renewable resources are more expensive. We recently completed stage II of a 100 MW wind farm in Solano County for just over $120 million. Estimates for stage III, another 100MW, are now over $200 million. This is because demand for wind turbines is acute. Vestas wind turbines are in such demand these days they command top dollar, and demand is driving up renewable cost. Demand -- the same reason my solar panels today are almost 9% more expensive than when I bought them last year.

Fourthly, ageing infrastructure. SMUD sees huge capital investments necessary in the next few decades, and future spending will be geometric. Indeed, I worked all of Memorial Day weekend to support transmission line relay upgrades, relays that had been in service since 1968. The average age of our bulk transformers is 34 years. That’s the average; we have a lot of equipment still in service since the mid-fifties. And this is bulk power equipment, mind you, so when they fail, they fail hard. Hard to replace, hard to recover from, etc.

Added together, the situation looks bleak. It's a formula flame feast. Actually, from my chair here, it looks fetching; I’ll have guaranteed work for the next 25 years. But you the ratepayer -- prepare for higher electricity costs. Prepare. While I might be completely wrong, I don’t see a working cold fusion reactor or 2 penny nuclear coming back anytime soon.

Low Profile

I was wondering about the idea of living on a fixed income. I hear this all the time on the news...and always in reference to the elderly. They always show a 4 second sound bite from some old lady who says she can't afford the increase in pork shoulder because she lives on a fixed income.

Well...the last time I checked, my paycheck from two weeks ago was the exact same as the paycheck from four weeks ago...and six weeks ago...it sure seems to me that I am living on a fixed income, and I'm but 38 years old. I do not want to trivialize the impact of higher food prices on certain elderly Americans, but at the same time I don't understand fixed incomes. You must live within your means regardless.

I am not terribly worried about my future financials. I am confident that I can make ends meet under all but the worst scenarios. Recall I'm a doomer. I have always thought that I could work with my hands as a carpenter/woodworker if the occasion called for it, sorta my backup plan. But also by maintaining a career in an essential field, I've more or less self-insured myself against future financial calamities. Farming would most likely be the most essential skill, but then, I can't grow shit. I've tried, but I'm not any good at it.

Today I could take a 60 month hit...I could lose my job and make ends meet for 5 years before I would have to start tapping into the retirement fund or the home. I'm not saying it would be pleasant, but I've worked and saved my ass off to provide for such a reserve. I did so by living on a $15,000 salary when I made $25,000. And $40,000 when I made $50,000..and so on. That is, I always lived within my means and I maintained a positive savings rate. How is it that since 2006 Americans have a negative savings rate? I am suspicious of this statement, although I can't say I don't believe it, as I look out my front door.

I cite two observations: My neighbors across the way and next door. In 2005 Bob and Joan bought an Infinity QX56 and sold their house to buy up; to a larger house here in Elk Grove. He told me his 'QX56 was paid for,' but indeed, she later disclosed that they used the proceeds from the sale to pay it off. So they had that much less down for their next house...about $25,000...now financed for 30 years. Indeed, they traded the Infinity in for a Nissan Armada just last year. He's a cop and she's a school teacher. Average wage earners, but combined prolly above median.

Next door, our other neighbors, in 2004, bought their new Yukon Denali and spent another $6k for low profile tires and rims. These are used only during the spring and summer months. Each fall and winter, the original rims and tires that are stored in the garage go back on because you shouldn't drive the really good ones in the icky, icky wintertime muck that Elk Grove is so notorious for. She also now drives a late model Lexus. From our real estate friend down the street, we discovered that their house was refinanced twice between 2001 and 2005 from $190k to $310k. As far as I know, they are average wage earners as well.

I'm sure I sound like Gladys Kravitz...spying on my neighbors, digging into their financial lives, sorting through their trash for SSNs and account numbers, installing remote cameras in their floorboards and crown moldings...that sorta thing.

From just two local examples, there's no need to wonder why Elk Grovians have been particularly hard hit by this latest economic recession slowdown.

Fast & Painful

My son the other day mentioned a concern of his about working a 35-year career at Union Pacific. His understanding is that a large percentage of retirees die within a few years after retirement due to lung afflictions or cancers that spread from the lungs. Anything to do with the surfeit of diesel particulates released from the Roseville yard?

My mom said the air around here is plenty good. And as I head outside right now to potty the dog, I concur. It sure seems plenty good to me. But I am prescient -- I already know how I'm going to die. From lung failure. And it will hopefully be fast and painful.

I am smart enough to know that dying fast and painlessly is not probable. And I certainly don't hope for a slow and painful death. So I split the difference and ask that it be fast and painful. I can accept this. Shit, the only exercise I get is pedaling up and down Franklin Blvd. in traffic. While all the drivers are breathing the same pollutants, they aren't breathing as heavily as I am. Deep down, I'd bet my lungs are heavily damaged already...so I think lung failure is imminent. Although I'm diabetic and statistically I should die sooner of kidney or heart failure, I'm preparing my lungs to fail sooner by biking to work...not to mention the higher probablility of a car-bike fatality. So it is.

I consider fast and painful anything less than, say, 20 hours. I will accept any pain, especially one that's gonna kill me, for 20 hours but no more. So if I'm wrong about the lung failure, 20 hours gives me a range to accept any of a number of fast and painful fates: hit by a bus, mauled by a cougar, rammed by an enraged motorist, massive heart attack, bleeding compound fracture, massive stroke, drowning, or electrocution.

My Muslim co-worker Khondakar is a bit taken aback of my prediction. This is something that only God decides, he says. Well, ok. Here's to hoping that He grants me a fast and painful exit.

Ne'er Do Well

Last night I was stunned, stunned! to hear my wife speak of getting a scooter. If my wife entertains the idea of a scooter, then I stand to correct my faith in American willingness to modify behavior.

This was completely unexpected. I make more than the median family income -- direct expenditures for fuel wouldn't be an issue for us even if I drove twenty eight thousand miles a year. We could absorb it -- not without bitching, mind you, but we'd absorb it. We don't live in a 'fuel or prescription drugs' quandary. It could be that I'm blessed...but I have to think that 25 years of frugal living also had something to do with it.

With a scooter, I could sell the Honda and drop the insurance, registration, and bi-annual smog costs. I could buy a used scooter for a fraction of the proceeds and completely eliminate any concern with 'not having private transportation within a 100 foot radius at all times.' Not that I do, but my wife might. She can haul the kid to school and pick up a gallon of milk, and if it rains we'll still have the one car. And if this turns out to be something she doesn't really want, well, I'll sure as hell be able to use it to get to work when my calves can't take biking anymore.

I noted earlier how in a depression or severe recession people will only pretend to have a license and insurance. Well, it's happening now, even though we've apparently escaped a recession. Driving to dinner the other night we saw three cars with expired tags...not just two or three months, but six months or more. And...get this...yesterday my boss's Sequoia was seven months expired. I joked about it with a co-worker. When my co-worker confronted him (I'm not good at such things) he said 'we just don't drive it much anymore.'

And I don't mean to imply this is something I wouldn't do. Of course I would. Abso-fucking-lutely. If I had any expectation that I wouldn't get caught, you're damn right I would. My boss did.

Registation and insurance are expensive. Like running a coal plant, you weigh the penalties for polluting against the costs of not polluting. I have seriously though about dropping the insurance and registration on the Honda because there's no way I can lower these 'fixed' costs even if I drove it only 1 mile a year. I've driven 500 miles so far this year. The costs are about the same as if I had driven it 50,000. And what's worse worse! is that I can't even drop my liability coverage down on the one car. I hardly drive the fucking thing, so if I can't drop my insurance rate because I drive so little, I thought I could lower the coverage to the state minimum and take the chance.

Ha! Allstate laughed in my face. Not only can I not drop the liability coverage for just one vehicle, they also refused to underwrite a liability policy at the state minumum! They refused! I won't lower the liability on my wife's car because she drives much more than me -- but I can't lower one without all the others. I'm rat-fucked!

If a ne'er-do-well well-to-do blogger bitches about such things and is even willing to cross the line, what do people on the economic margins do? What do you think?

They suffer from the same delusion we all do, that we have to have a car to function at any cost. So I'm 110% sure that there are thousands more driving illegally these days than before.

And I should be one of them.

Three Card Monty

As of late, we've heard the same refrain from a few industries: "Our business model can't survive $120 oil." Airlines, independent truckers...but what about utilities? Haven't heard much from them, have we.

SMUD, as with most other utilities in the US of A, has almost exclusively relied on natural gas fired power plants to meet load growth over the past 20 years. Natural gas now provides 60% of our energy; hydro 20%, 7% from solar, geothermal & wind, 4% from nuclear/coal, with municipal waste and cow shit making up the 9% balance.

Although gas represents 60% of the mix, gas purchases represent 60% of SMUD's budget. So there's 40% for everything else: transmission lines, lawyers, distribution lines, hydro/solar/methane generation assets, facilities, customer services, bucket trucks, my salary, and the operation and maintenance of all of them. One single budget item taking up 60% is high exposure if you ask me...small fluctuations in the price of gas can have huge budget implications.

And so it is.

SMUD approved a 7% rate increase on Jan 1. Since then, gas is up 50% to $11.70/MMBtu, just in 5 months. You don't hear about that from Brian Williams or Katie Couric, now do you, cause 'you ain't fillin' your tank with gas.' Wait, that didn't come out right. 'Natural gas.'

And SMUD didn't plan on such an increase going forward. Barring a natural gas price turnaround (which I don't predict), SMUD will absolutely be forced into another substantial rate increase by 2010. But...we'll pass the costs on to ratepayers! What a novel idea! Those who consume the product get charged! So why aren't truckers and airlines doin' the same? Why can't their business models operate under any price structure?

I don't know the answer. But I do know that as of today you'll get directly charged for checking in luggage if you fly. I don't know why airlines don't just raise the fucking ticket price. No, they 'sneak' in charges that do the same thing. It's a Three Card Monty.

Natural gas, historically, is in lockstep with oil, priced at eleven times MMBtu per barrel of oil. 11 * $11.70, and you get less than what a barrel of WTI or Brent crude is currently trading at. (Should you end a sentence with a preposition?) So it appears gas might have some room to go higher.

Utilities don't fuck around with higher source costs -- we pass it on to the ratepayers...unlike 'discretionary industries' like airlines, who seemingly act like politicians: "No fare increases...but we will have a higher destination fee." "You'll be charged a fee to bring any additional shit on board." "We are phasing out our coffee, tea, and Sanka offerings. Please pardon the inconvenience as we seek an alternative beverage solution."

If airlines are willing to remove a 35 lb. coffee cart to accommodate higher energy costs, what else are they willing to remove?

The Drunk Driver at Midnight

I recently read about a major road improvement to Freeport Blvd., a north-south surface street in SACTOWN that's been used by hundreds of millions over the years to drive between the job centers downtown and the south-land suburbs. Some of the key characteristics of this improvement project were traffic-calming measures.

Traffic calming. What a joke. These sorts of concepts will invariably keep me blogging for decades to come.

I'm a fan of Jules Verne, and he loved to exhaustively list things. I do too, but perhaps not so exhaustively. I'm absolutely confident that the reader could identify hundreds of environments that will never need traffic calming, too...but my job here in the modern Nautilus is to do that for you: Old Sacramento, Santillana Del Mar, Savannah's historic district, Amsterdam, Tribeca, Boston's Beacon Hill, Chicago's Wrigleyville, Old Georgetown....

These neighborhoods are among the highest valued in the world. Why? Not just because of location. They were built in an era that respected human scales, and people are naturally drawn to enclosed, well-proportioned, properly scaled living arrangements. While not ubiquitous, the T-intersection is a key feature that's no longer an option in the modern city planning repertoire.

And why not?

It doesn't support the efficient movement of motor vehicles. Have you ever noticed that every subdivision today exists on curvilinear streets? They never even existed 25 years ago, yet modern urban planners can't design without them because they only think about cars -- not bicyclists, joggers, dog-walkers, or the people in the houses. Streets today are designed with the ‘drunk driver at midnight’ in mind – no trees (fixed obstacles to drunk drivers), wide lanes (to allow drunk drivers to weave safely) and never, never! any T-intersections (the drunk driver would plow into the building at the end). I offer my own local observation: where I live, the corner of Frye Creek and Moonlight Way.

Frye Creek is a two lane, 35 mph curvilinear street, 46 feet wide, with nary a white lane marker to be found. Cars routinely move 55+, with ease. Curvilinear to close the vista at the end (to offer some degree of an enclosed space) but not so curved as to impede a 60 mile an hour vehicle. Moonlight Way is also two lane and curvilinear, but ‘only’ 32 feet wide, also with no white line delineation. I live on a 27-foot radius corner. Not only do the theoretical pedestrians have to now cross the larger distance between corner to corner, they also have to negotiate it alongside the hurtling 40 mile-an-hour suburban housewife on a cell-phone turning the wide, car-accommodating corner.

I cannot overstate how fucked up I think this living arrangement is. I recently lost my dog to a speeder. I lost a basketball hoop and trashcan to an idiot turning the corner too fast. I lost the use of my truck when another idiot plowed into it in my driveway and garage while turning the corner too fast. It’s only a matter of time until something more serious happens.

So… I could fight like hell against the city to have them stripe lane markers or install speed bumps. Ha! Traffic Calming! Now required because of their fucked up urban planning! It would take years, would require traffic analysis and metering, and I would likely not ‘qualify’ for such measures – the street isn’t 750’ feet in length, it’s 735’…it doesn’t meet the ‘volume’ threshold; fast cars, yes, but not enough of them…insufficient evidence of accidents, deaths, or dismemberments. And do you know who routinely objects to speed bumps? My own fire department! Overt or otherwise, they are the real culprits as to why I have such wide streets to begin with, why I don’t have any goddamn ‘traffic calming’ devices, and to that end, why there aren’t any T-intersections. Can’t negotiate an oversized fire truck on narrow ninety-degree street corners or alleyways, can they.

I’d bet the Elk Grove fire department spends a larger percentage of their time responding to traffic accidents than to fires…accidents that they’ve enabled by their own fucking idiotic requirements. I don’t want to discount the culpability of irresponsible drivers. But to enable a 17-year old to drive 65 down a suburban street because of poor design? Adults drive to their limits of comfort…teenagers drive to their limits of danger. These are things that we don’t have to live with! But we do! All to enable the motor vehicle!

My contempt is obvious. For the reasons cited above, I am willing to sacrifice my and your lifestyle and livelihood for the desperate hope that our 50-year suburban experiment soon comes to a quick, violent end.

Minority Report

The pace of road construction on Franklin Blvd., seen from my bike, is painfully slow. Both directions now have the sidewalks torn up and there are hundreds of feet of exposed re-bar, waiting for concrete encasement. I'm riding 3 feet into the traffic lane because there's a sharp drop off from the asphalt and I'm not gonna ride anywhere near it. If I went in, I could, seriously, die by impalement. I'd rather be hit by a car.

But there isn't any major stacking at the traffic lights either due to me or the construction. Overall, area commuters have coped. This is the same thing that's going to happen in two weeks when they shut down all lanes of I-5 for a few weeks. There won't be horrific in-town congestion...people can and will adjust, as they did during the '89 Bay Area quake, the '94 Northridge quake, and the '07 MacArthur Maze tanker truck fire.

This leads me to wonder...why do we spend so much money in this pursuit of normal traffic congestion relief if unexpected events such as these demonstrate our capacity to absorb them? In 2006 this state's constituents didn't want to tax oil for alternative energies (prop 87) but were more than willing to float billions, billions! in bonds for traffic reduction (prop 1B). We could argue the merits of prop 87 either way, but the trend is telling: we want to keep driving at any cost; and preferably, at least cost.

I don't support road capacity improvement projects and that's exactly why I could never get into a position of power. I'd never receive the necessary campaign funding from pro-growth industries and thus I'd never stand a chance. It's partially because my minority report says that excessively cheap motoring will not have a prominent role in our future...but mostly because building our way out of congestion does not work.

Assume that the free market, when it's ready, will deliver us hydrogen, batteries, or any other alt.energy source to allow us perpetual, convenient motoring. So energy isn't constrained. I don't doubt this to be a possibility...just not a probable one. Anyway, we'd drive more. A lot more. And so it is with roadway capacity. Every 'congestion relief' project there has ever been has only led to increased roadway use...and more congestion, not less. There's a powerful latency effect. The question shouldn't be "Can we build out of our congestion?", but rather the question is, "How many lanes of congestion do we want?"

Today I modify my behavior around traffic congestion and I don't even drive. Do I ride to the supermarket at 5:25PM or don't I? Do I get on the bus at 3:25 or at 4:50? So it is that actual car drivers are doing the same thing, and if there weren't any constraints their behaviors would reflect that. My observation: the second a new freeway lane is built, it's always sucked up by latent use, either immediately or shortly thereafter.

I will post my own personal observations about the I-5 shutdowns here during the next few weeks. I don't think there will be much to report, however. People will grumble, but they will cope.

Smallbox

I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting in a running car while my wife and nephew shopped at Walmart this weekend. While I don't ever go on my own, all my family members do, as does a large percentage of the populace. When I mentioned to a co-worker a few weeks back that I don't have a membership to Costco, he replied, "You don't have a membership to Costco?"

"No, I don't have a Costco membership."

"Really?"

"No."

"Really?"

"No."

I honestly can't use a five gallon bucket of mayonnaise and I don't like idling in the long gas lines in the parking lot to shave six cents off a gallon of gas. But while sitting in that Walmart parking lot I thought of how I was contributing to the destruction of my local economy.

It used to be that a local retailer would likely maintain at least two buildings in town -- his own home, of course, and the retail shop itself. He had a vested interest in his shop. I remember a locally owned hardware store here in Sacramento -- Brown's Hardware on Auburn Blvd. Brown's was destroyed by a nearby Lumberjack, the first generation of big-box retailers. Lunberjack was later eaten up by the second generation -- Lowe's and Home Depot. But for every one of these Brown's, there are five hundred thousand other small, independent retailers that lost out to the economics of scale. Look around you: I guarantee there's a Joanne's Fabrics, Lowes, Office Depot, Sports Authority, Old Navy, Petco, Home Depot, Target, Fry's, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Staples, Toys R Dus (as Ryan used to call it), Borders, or Walmart. And likely two or more of these. If you don't like what they offer, tough shit; you're gonna take it, because there is no longer anyone else around to offer anything else.

And the buildings won't be cared for as local owners would have cared for them...and local owners don't exist, they are now just employees. Why the fuck would they care when they can just as easily drive down the boulevard and be employed by the next big box retailer? The buildings aren't built for more than a 20 year life service life, anyway. By then, the real economic opportunities will have migrated further out the suburban ring anyway and corporate will just relocate.

Just the few stores I listed...there is a 100% probability that in every strip mall in every city in every state in this nation, one of them has opened there. The owners are never local as they are owned by shareholders, so there is no one beholden to local issues of commerce. Real return of taxes collected on sales is reduced, spread largely based on generous national or multinational tax codes. They are always overbearing -- big lettering, unnatural colors, cartoonish exterior decorations. And there is always, always! an illuminated sea of parking between the street and the storefront, now set back several hundred feet. They are pedestrian wastelands. No one would ever consider walking to one of them...$4 dollar gas or not.

Sitting in my parked car in the Walmart parking lot, I couldn't see the storefronts of the retailers across the street (Florin Road) due to the curvature of the earth. If I had decided to journey over there to shop while my wife was in Walmart, it would have taken 15 minutes on foot just to get there, crossing a six-lane thoroughfare and dodging traffic in both parking lots.

Tell me...if the first generation of box stores destroyed small stores and the second generation destroyed those -- what's the third generation going to look like? Is this really what we want? I can understand the desire to save a few dollars on napkins and dog collars...I really do. But if the next generation of retail entails remote-lot parking and people-movers, will we be better off?

Will we?

I propose a return to small box retail. I think that as the 8,000 mile supply chain to Asia becomes increasingly more expensive (and possibly tenuous as we compete with Asia for energy), we will be forced back into localism. I hope that my nation develops a nasty case of smallbox sometime soon.

Entitlement

I drink beer. While lately I've experimented with whiskey and tequila, beer dominates. Beer drinkers aren't in the top social flights as are those into wine, but hey, your author would never make it in those circles even if he were a teetotaler.

I brew my own from time to time. Perhaps 30% of my alcohol comes from homebrew. And just like mowing the lawn and the environment, I try to think about the impacts of shipping a beverage that's predominately water from large distances. I like both German and English brews, so to import them comes with certain social costs. I brew beer at home with domestic water, and (for the most part) they turn out OK. I do my part to support local homebrew shops. In full disclosure I'm buzzed as I blog at this moment. Not drunk, but feeling pretty good. A fine day's work is behind me and I'm at home with the wife and child napping. I feel I'm not neglecting anything or anyone...except you the reader.

But drinking alcohol is a vice, and I was thinking about a sister vice that I don't engage in: gambling. I understand that in a recession (which we apparently have now avoided), alcohol and gambling never suffer. This is verified by my own observations.

We are currently in an Indian Casino boom in the Sacramento region -- so much so that we've finally been able to pull gamblers in sufficient quantity away from Tahoe to warrant a paradigm shift in Tahoe recreational marketing. And they are BOOMING. Enterprise Rancheria, Foothill Oaks, Mechoopda; these are being built as I write. These are in addition to Cache Creek, Jackson Rancheria, Colusa, River Rock and Thunder Valley Indian Casinos already well established in this region.

Why gambling? I think it's the new American creed of unearned riches. I think of the family of six in the rental duplex, huddled around the foil-antenna TV perched on the three-legged dinette, watching the lottery call on a Wednesday night, desperately hoping for a miracle to pull them out of perpetual destitution. We are selling an entire generation on the idea of American Entitlement.

Unearned riches were evident during the dot com and housing booms. With the expectation that stock prices and home values would grow 25% per annum ad infinitum, techies bought Ferraris and retired at 30 and home flippers drove Mercedes to and from properties, assured that the good times were here to stay. They didn't have to produce anything; they only had to manage the production of goods produced elsewhere by others for other consumers. Times were indeed good. Even in (and before) our 'recession', witness the urban gangsta's creed of unearned riches, social security disability lawyers, Chapter 7 personal bankruptcies due to 'consumer debt', reparation payment discussions, IRS settlement attorneys, the requirement for animal protein at every meal, thumbing our noses at manual work, Bear Sterns bailouts, who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire, Vegas megacasinos, kids that must be chauffered to schools, tort litigation, homeownership for anyone with a pulse, corporate board grifting, looking for a job only when the EDD payments expire...

Do you think that in an era of global energy contraction we will tolerate such behaviors? We might not accept many of the things I list but you can bet (pun intended) we will collectively gamble more. And we will be drinking more...at least I will be.

Salmonella Sams

During a recent visit to my Grandma Diemer's house here in Orangevale we combed through a box of old family photos. Buried in the stack was a menu from a 1956 United Airlines flight from Chicago to Sacramento.

A menu!

Air travel must have been quite the experience fifty years ago. What struck me about this menu wasn't that there were three courses to choose from (although that was striking), but that there was a concise biography of the chef! I don't remember the details. But imagine how it might have read:

Your chef today is none other than Francois R. Diemer, schooled at the Rosecrans Culinary Institute in Toulouse, France. Following his formal studies, he interned for eight years under renowned Monsieur Jaques Belanger of III Forks, Chicago, and five years under Clayton Anderson at Salmonella Sam's in Paris, Kentucky. The Preferred Choice for today is medallions of veal, served on a bed of couscous with fresh...

Today, on a flight, consider yourself extraordinarily fortunate if you can score a bag of chips (processed in a facility that also processes tree nuts, peanuts, and/or wheat).

It's amazing not only the sea-change in food service 5 miles above the earth, but also that my Grandma found it worthwhile to save such a thing from a half century ago. It was a big deal. You can see where I'm going with this...what item of today would you (want to) save for your great-granddaughter to marvel at in 2058? A Northwest electronic ticket stub between Minneapolis and Columbus?

Limiting Choice

I think I'm finally better able to understand the politics of the right. I regularly read the opinion section and letters to the editor in the Sacramento Bee. Right leaning writers, I think above all, passionately decry any interference in their ability to choose. When we are taxed, when we restrict Arctic drilling, when we legislate fuel economy or regulate beef processing, we are in effect limiting choice. This is my basic understanding of Conservatism.

The choice to be able to externalize costs and maximize profits -- when this is restricted it brings out the most vociferous protest. This is why failure to exploit ANWR and the Santa Barbara coast are the reasons most often cited by the right as the cause of our current energy problems. Not demand or the non-negotiable American lifestyle. Not speculation or the falling dollar. And certainly not oil company profiteering.

I've always though of myself as conservative. But I now understand that being conservative is not the same as being a Conservative. I assumed in the past that if I kept my own finanacial house in order I must be a Republican, and so I was for many years, because I take personal responsibility for my own financial affairs (and Democrats don't). So it is that single payer healthcare, social security, progressive tax rates and the EPA are required by our society only because others fail to take personal financial responsibility. If only everyone else worked as hard as I do, or at least worked as smart as I do, then they could afford their own health insurance, wouldn't need an old-age handout, we'd all be taxed the same (and I'd be taxed less) and could choose to live in places that weren't polluted like shipping ports or near refineries.

Only until quite recently have I taken on such ideas as environmentalism, social justice, and international solidarity. And I think it stems from a shift in my thinking that while I can exploit, I no longer choose to. I've chosen not to exploit limited natural resources. Not to exploit cheap foreign labor or indebt another generation. And not to bomb brown people. This is never presented quite so starkly as it is here in the Franklin monologues...but my understanding of today's Conservatism is exactly this, cloaked in family values, economic prosperity, religious piety, and the defense of freedom.

Whose losses?

22 years ago when the North Sea was raging, Cantarell was streaming on-line, and the US's North Slope was hammering out oil, the consequences of such an oil glut led to $10 a barrel oil. Bush the Elder attempted to goad the Saudis into producing less to stave off economic losses in Houston. Yesterday Bush the Junior tried to get them to produce more, for the exact same reason...to stave off economic losses. It's only a difference of whose losses we are talking about.

We can't ask the same of Venezuela, Iraq, Angola, Iran, Nigeria, or Russia; we're not in bed with them, yet. Either they don't have any capacity to produce more or we don't like them. But the effect would be the same -- flood the market, prices drop, and economies spring back from the crypt.

But we are currently bedding down with the Saudis. This request yesterday; you'd think that with a red phone call Bush could arrange for some other form of wealth transfer to Saudi Arabia in exchange for more production...so such a public call-for-more seems suspicious. But in any event, we also decided to forgo the 70,000 barrels a day push to our strategic petroleum reserves, which is now almost full at ~700 million barrels. This should drop prices a few cents, yes. Of course, realize that 700 million barrels represents 33 days of use at our current rate, or 58 days' worth of imports.

If there's such a big issue these days about living paycheck to paycheck, and that a slew of us Merikans will sink within a month of losing our jobs...aren't we doing the same thing with the SPR, reducing our capacity to weather any future, real, production shortfall?

The thing I take from this is that, like social security, medicare, the trade deficit, state budget deficits, and the total national debt, we are slowly discovering how much we have really borrowed from others. I suppose being in debt isn't such a bad thing provided our economy grows faster than we grow debt. But if we, for whatever reason, can't grow our economy (energy, maybe?)...

The Right Hand Rule

I just heard a facinating bit of news; but first, some history.

Two years ago Yoli and I watched a phobia show on cable, where a lady in London had a phobia of making left hand turns while driving. So I tested this out one afternoon in Folsom with my co-workers Mark and Greg - both of whom are also electrical engineers. We had to get from the office to Jenny's Palace (read: Chinese food) -- making only right hand turns. We did make it, although we had to navigate through two Folsom neighborhoods and a supermarket parking lot.

So it is that cheap foreign oil permits us Merikans the opportunity to squander energy in such foolish pursuits! Horrors!

Or...is it?

Cut to the present. Diesel is now about $4.50. As it turns out (pun intended), right hand turns are more energy efficient as left hand turns usually involve mandatory stopping at lights and in most cases require the clearing of traffic in both directions, not just one, as a condition before beginning the turn. So it is that I learned today that UPS uses complex algorithms to plan truck routes that maximizes, among other things, right hand turns.

What can Brown do for you?

An Ant in the Afterbirth

This Monday I was powerless on the bike.

I left so late that the bus wasn't an option, so on the bike I went, directly into a 22 mile an hour north headwind. Here in SACTOWN a springtime north wind is always dry, and it stirs up so much shit in the air because every male green plant alive is ejaculating its pollen (read: sperm) into the air. I am quite allergic to grass pollen, and I arrived at work demoralized from the wind, with bloodshot red, itchy eyes, and with a slight hangover from Mother's day whiskey at my in-laws.

Riding into the wind...sucks. I can't hear a thing, deafened by the howl, and I couldn't see, what with the Sycamore pollen grenades exploding all around, I was blinded. And with all the cars I was dodging, I was powerless. I was just an ant in the afterbirth.

So it was that I still chose to do that instead of drive...so that everyone else's gas is decrementally cheaper. All they have to do to fight the wind is push the gas pedal about 3/16's of an inch farther down, something they won't even notice. But it does have an effect on mileage. So it is that they gas up the Pacer a few hours sooner than they would have otherwise and scratch their heads as to why they didn't get the advertised 19 miles to the gallon.

Oil is priced on the margin. The marginal price is the price that the last buyer is willing to pay and I think this is the pricing we see when we read that a barrel is $126. There are many other contracts and such that are dealt not on this price, but on whatever buyers and sellers agree on. This $126 is a spot market price for next month delivery. There are a lot of ways to play in the Global Finance Casino.

So it also is that Bush II is to visit the House of Saud here shortly, to ask for a capacity handout. The world's largest consumer asking the world's largest producer to produce more. At 10 million barrels a day in production, with a (presumable) 12 million barrel capacity. They are the only swing producer. So, say there's about 2 million barrels in spare capacity against a daily total production of 84 million barrels per day. Growth in oil demand is about 1.5% per year, or 1.2 mbpd. If things continue, even Saudi spare capacity will be wiped out in 2.5 years. We either need to grow supply or curtail demand.

But there are 1.5 billion people in the world that no longer want to ride bicycles. Sure, here in US demand is in a 'tailspin' recently, falling a heretofore unbelievable 1.5% over last year. But do you really expect this from every other nation? If oil is denominated in dollars, and China holds 1.1 trillion of them in reserves...

Whiskey Victor

I had a roommate at West Point from West Virginia, Dan Clevenger. As you can guess, he wasn't brown. Neither was my old WAPA boss, Bob Miller. I'm not too bright about a lot of things, but based on the few people I know from Whiskey Victor (Dan's nickname), I can see why Obama didn't win that country state today.


I wonder if Hillary donned overalls at Joe's fill station whilst campaigning in WV this weekend. While taking hits of moonshine, I'm sure she peered down the jug and reflected on how corn ethanol (i.e., legalized moonshine) could help these folks with the awful price of gas going forward.


But quitters never win, so on she goes, having, according to the news, lost another 4 super delegates to Obama today. The thing is, you can never discount how much of a crafty bitch she might be. I mean that in a good way. That is, what's the possibility that she loses the popular vote, raw number of states, delegates and pledged delegates and somehow at the end of the Denver convention, she wins? That is, she knew all along that she has the real power, the real influences necessary to pull off a last-minute coup. Wouldn't that just be something?


Come on, she more or less waltzed into the New York senate, riding her husband's coattails...they were from Arkansas, weren't they? Is there any requirement that you live in the state you represent? I haven't read the constitution lately, so I really don't know. But you don't get into such positions of power without knowing how to sidestep a few landmines, and Obama might just be another landmine.


If the right is characterized by a splintered base, imagine what a sudden Hillary overtaking would do to the left. White Woman uses her considerable clout to trample the Black Man. In addition to destroying the democratic party it could almost undue all the civil rights progress we've made in the past 40 years. I'm serious about this...but it's just another doomsday scenario, so it's just a thought exercise, right?


What I'm really thinking about, however, is how race relations will play out in any future era of energy scarcity. Do you allocate energy based on wealth? Or will it be more democratic? I highly doubt the latter, particularly when you consider the resources we will by vying for aren't necessarily ours to begin with...they are global. If you look at oil today, this exact Tuesday, at $126 a barrel, this is the global price. We have already priced out Lagos, Dhaka, Montevideo...wouldn't the wealthy in our country do the exact same to our poorer citizens? And who are our poorest? Urban Blacks and Rural Whites from Whiskey Victor.

Insania
Tue, 13 May 2008 20:45:23 +0200

Transitory Globalization

I think globalization is likely a transitory condition. It didn’t exist 40 years ago. In my opinion, it will unravel in 40 years’ time. Sure, there has always been and always will be trade across oceans and continents, but the current mega-scheme is based on three things, I think, that have come together: 1) relative international peace 2) cheap foreign developing-nation labor and 3) cheap fossil fuel energy.

What can be said about #3? Is this about to change? If consumption patterns in developing nations continue on their upward arc, there will be a lot more competition for energy, so if supply can keep up, energy will still likely cost more and more as time goes on. And if supply can’t keep up – well, then there will be a third class of nations – “Nations Never-To-Develop” -- North Korea, Suriname, Bangladesh, Botswana, etc.

Personally, I don’t think supply will keep up. I try to imagine an oil scarce future, when my son Tyler is, say, 20 years old. Only 8 years away. Not scarce as in not available, but certainly not as liberal as we had it just 8 years ago, when oil was $30 a barrel and the North Sea, Mexican Cantarell, Indonesia, and a dozen other countries and fields were still on their upward production cycle. These are all now in depletion, and by all estimates, Mexico will not be exporting oil at all to the US in eight years’ time. They are our #2 supplier of oil, behind Canada.

So I see cheap fossil fuel energy going away, moving to expensive fossil fuel energy. All the domestic resources we have aren’t 300 feet down, on land, with enough natural pressure that we don’t even have to pump it out. That easy oil was already extracted, refined and burned by my parents’ and my generation. The remaining domestic oil is in the Arctic, under 13,000 feet of rock under 2,000 feet of water in the gulf of Mexico, or housed in kerogenic shale in the Rockies. All this oil will be taken, ANWAR will be developed, you can be assured of that. This consumer nation will make sure of it. But it won’t come as cheap.

If transportation energy is more expensive, then I don’t see how we can efficiently exploit cheap labor markets overseas. I see the Chinese developing their own US-styled internal consumptive markets, anyway. Their laborers will start demanding higher wages for their own Chery automobiles. Their kids will want to listen to their own Chi-pods. But oil will be as expensive for them as it is for us. The U.S., China, South Korea, Japan...none of us have more than 2% of the world’s remaining oil reserves. We will all be competing for the same diminishing, ever more expensive resource.

What does that say about relative international peace? Imagine a short, one-time, temporary supply disruption here, say, a refinery explosion in Galveston. I can’t even see my own City of Elk Grove handling scarcity well, let alone how a nation of NASCAR morons would take odd/even fill up days. Shit, there would be fist-fights, thefts, hoarding, angry mobs, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, poor vs. rich. Can you see South Sacramentans allowing their energy squandering birthrights to be taken away voluntarily? How about the citizens of New Orleans, Gary, Detroit, or Atlanta? So how would we do internationally, when we compete for oil from West Africa, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, or Iran. And their own citizens -- isn’t their own domestic consumption going to grow? Their own resources are going to be depleting while their own domestic consumption is going to grow. So how fast will their exports fall? You can look to Dubai today, right now. A massive city, built up in just the last five years, and now using a much, much larger share of UAE’s own domestic resources than before.

I like to think about such things. That’s why we invented blogging. I have to admit, I do think we are more resilient than I sometimes like to think. But I do think of worst-case scenarios. I’m a Doomer...what can I say?

Beans and Cabbage

The Monologues recently received word that there are more readers than just this author. Fascinating. This is just the lone ranting of one man, and truthfully there can't be much of an audience that wants to hear that our American way of life is truly negotiable.

This was starkly evident last week when I went to the, get this, the All American Speedway in Roseville. All American. That your author routinely criticizes the NASCAR mentality of this nation while engaging in the same activity locally, well, you're just going to have to resolve that cognitive dissonance on your own.

I do enjoy the races. I always have. I always watch the Indianapolis 500 (now just two weekends away) and the Daytona 500 in February. I don't get into many other NASCAR events because I really only like the oval track. I also like drag racing, both funny car and top fuel. As a kid I regularly went to motorcycle racing (I always liked Dwayne Yarro, the Purple Guy) and drag boat racing in Redding and Chowchilla. My next door neighbor races the flatbottom gas Dago Red boat. A coworker races at Excelsior Speedway in a modified Mopar. I have always wanted to own a 1970 GTX...that car can shit and git.

I don't have any inherent aversion to burning energy this way. Entertainment venues. I own a boat and I'm going to use it this summer. If it costs $400 to fill it up, well, so be it. I also don't have any problem flying to remote locales on holiday. This form of energy has always been a part of my life and there's no reason to think that it won't in the future. Cheap energy is the catalyst for why I can get my molars taken care of when they break, that I use an insulin pump rather than having to boil-sterilize glass syringes, that I can blog and criticize others.

It is a common fallacy to assume that treehuggers and others of my ilk find it a requirement to not use any fossil based energy. Bullshit. What about the 1960's counterculture - how could they have possibly engaged in any rebellion were it not for the normative energy consumptive culture? They required a society of consumptive energy users to rebel against. And as far as I can tell, they needed fossil energy to drive their VW vans to and from their war protests and they needed coal to power the amps driving the bass lines of Joplin and Hendrix.

This has never been an all-or-none proposition. I just think that we can and should find ways to live sustainably. If you really want to take it to the gnat's ass then breathing should be banned. All we humans do is exhale carbon dioxide, a GHG, and if we ate cabbage and beans the night before, we also produce a whole lot of methane, 25 times more potent a GHG than CO2. The only issue in my mind, the only issue, is that we should emit only so much pollution that our local environment can absorb. Anything beyond that is setting ourselves up for a future catastrophe.

So I will never be made to feel guilty about taking the car out to pick up a tuxedo for a wedding instead of taking it home on my bike rack. However, I don't drive to work every day in my own car, because I feel that this is not a sustainable pattern. Everybody cannot do this. Sooner or later we will realize this.

The Walk of Shame

I would consider any public transportation system high quality if:

• the first and last stops are within a 1/4 mile of your source and destination
• it's available at least every 15 minutes, and
  
• provides a modicum of safety, comfort, and cleanliness.

That first point is most crucial. If someone has to drive to the stop/station, then they are just as likely to continue to drive all the way to work. It's critical you don't use the car. In my case, once I start the car, I'm taking her all the way into work. All the way, to fourth base. None of this bi-modal bullshit and besides, it's always faster to drive than it is to take the bus around here, always.

Of course...how would you like to live within 1/4 mile from the 19th street Oakland BART station? And even if you didn't, how would you like it if RT/BART/YOUR TRANSIT HERE were to put in a new station 600 feet from your front door? NIMBY-ism. Well, technically, it's NIMFY-ism if we're talking about your front door. But can you imagine? Declining Property values! Increased Crime! Riff-Raff!

There has always been one major problem with public transportation: The Public. My observation: the people on light rail and the bus, mostly, do not look like me. On the Elk Grove busses they're all Asian, on Light Rail they're all Brown. Many are not dressed for success. What Riff-Raff! Commoners! There is such a chasm between what white, middle-class, suburban, three-car-garage property owners think of, and the reality that is, public transit. There was no finer example of this than when my oldest son Ryan was about nine. As I was driving him home from school, we saw a bus at the bus stop and he remarked that only poor people ride the bus.

I was amazed that, at nine, white chauffeured kids at school are already forming opinions about how their poor, brown neighbors were managing. Ryan, as far as I know, has never once stepped foot into an RT bus, never once walked the Walk Of Shame, from the front door to the bus stop. We joke about what he said, now some 11 years later, but a subtle remark by a 9-year-old shows just what's at issue here. This is exactly why we have low-density gated housing suburbs and single use zoning, why the inner tier rings of cities are always dilapidated and why the cancer keeps spreading outward, why port terminals, substations and sewer plants are located where they are, why we don't have neighborhood groceries, why a subdivision can mandate the construction of only 3,800 sq and larger homes, and why transit never 'works'.

$3.XX a Gallon

I fell asleep on the bus ride home on Thursday. No small feat considering the bus was standing room only, but I had secured a seat by walking up to an earlier stop. The days of offering a seat to a woman or child might be over. I've done this quite a few times, in some cases I'd get up before they get on so as to not have to even ask them to take the seat. But then, the last time I did that, a guy took my newly vacant seat while I and a few other women stood. That was uncool.

But the days of offering a seat might be over because so damn many people are riding the bus these days! There are a lot of folks standing up, which is good, in some ways. That the busses were so crowed early last year E-Tran decided to increase the number of Big Horn Express busses going to and from downtown Sacramento. So while I might stand from time to time, the level of service has improved. I consider it high quality: every 15 minutes from 6:00 to 7:30 AM, and every 15 minutes from 3:30 to 5:30 every evening. With more ridership, these times won't get worse, and they just might even improve. The stop is a quarter mile from my house, so I don't ever have to get in the car.

But there's a problem. Fares only account for about 1/3 of E-Trans expenses. The rest comes from local taxes and other government funding, but these latter two sources have declined with the economy and the deficits these entities face. So I don't expect any increased level of service in public transportation even though we are in a ridership growth spurt. And when gas goes back down to $3.XX a gallon, these new folks will resume driving, so ridership will falter. There is no way we can improve public transportation under the 'lower gas prices at any cost' schemes offered by our government.

I, The Doomer

So I spent over one hundred and thirty bucks at the bike shop last weekend, buying spokes, ferrules, a tire pump, new brake cables, a new helmet, two new tubes, and chain cleaner. My other helmet was ten years old, and supposedly you should replace them every three years or a crash, whichever comes first.

On a per mile basis, biking is much more expensive than a car. I shelled out $450 last year to get new rims, hubs, chain and new sprockets, because I wore them out. The bike will likely not cost me much more this year, but I the Amateur fixed the broken spokes and the wheel isn't in the best of Rounds. If/when I break another spoke, into the shop it'll go into a professional's hands. More money.

But, if I drove the Honda Civic to work, it'd be 30 miles, and at 27mpg on surface roads (34 on the freeway), I'd be looking at 4 bucks a day in gas. Assuming some incremental cost for tires, brake pads, batteries, struts, etc., maybe $4.30 a day.

This year so far, I've driven 360 miles to work, biked 935, carpooled 150, and bussed/trained 855. That's 43 round trips by bike, and at $4.30, I saved $185. I'm nowhere close to breaking even biking. It's cheaper to drive -- particularly considering I can't drop my car insurance and registration/smog, and the car is losing as much value sitting in the driveway as if I drove it.

It's cheaper to drive...until you factor in the cost of the car itself. Supposedly, the less I drive it, the longer it will last. Here, I really don't know if that's true. At my current rate, I'll be putting 2,500 miles a year on it (we do drive it elsewheres).

This car was the last one I will ever buy -- for myself, I mean. Seeing how I already own it outright, and that my son is three and a half years away from driving, he can use it, and then if he wants he can have it. I mean, there is no person, in a seventy mile radius, between the ages of 17 and 27 who rides their bike for utilitarian purposes anymore...and whatever gas costs in the future, this demographic is still going to drive, and only drive. If you subscribe to several stories that in China, only the guy with the car gets laid, there is no way my son or any other son in the world is going to ride a bike if a car is available. My oldest son at 20 hasn't ridden a bike in probably ten years, and before he was even twenty he owned three cars. Again, that I ride a bike and take the bus has no bearing on what my family does, or what anyone else does. I am in the severe minority.

There is nothing that's going to stop our use of oil...not global warming, not taxes, not potholes or collapsed bridges, and not price. The only thing that will stop it will be its depletion. And I the Doomer think the global production peak is right around the corner. I like the Arabian saying, "My grandfather rode a camel, my dad rode a bicycle, I drive a Mercedes, my son will fly a Gulfstream, and my grandson will ride a camel."

You Got a Call, Bitch

Supposedly in a few months our Golden State will ban handheld phones while driving vehicles. I wonder, does this mean farmers can’t field calls while tractoring? What about in your driveway? Today you can’t have the keys in the ignition if your drunk and parked, because conditions are such that you might drive. I wonder if an active cell phone on the passenger seat without blue tooth technology is the same. Conditions are such that the driver could make an illegal call, so therefore this is illegal too. All too confusing if you ask me.

The classic bike-car crash case of an unattractive, distracted woman on a cell phone in a beat-up station wagon making a right on red turn that didn’t see the law-obeying, alert bicyclist -- this nearly occurred this morning on Franklin Blvd. What a bitch. I have mixed feelings about this new law, because I will be the first one to violate it. I make about two to three phone calls a year while driving and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna buy the stuff needed for hands free chatting and then gear-it-up every time I get in the car for the eventuality that I have to talk on the phone.

Just like more and more people are pretending to drive with a license and insurance, they will also likely only pretend to be using a hands-free phone. It seems to be an unenforceable law that only matters if it can be shown, after the fact, that an accident was partly attributed to the illegal use of a cell phone.

I think it’s just that I’ve got this terrible bias against cell phones. I find the ringing of one in a meeting or gathering horrifyingly distracting, and then more so when the offender has to field the call. And with a personal ringtone to boot! I would want mine, in the blackest rap voice you can imagine, say "You got a call comin' in on your cell phone, bitch, you got a call, bitch, a call, bitch."

And the day they’re allowed on airplanes, holy shit! I see it now...I’m in the middle seat on a Delta flight to Atlanta. The guy to the left of me is returning home, calling his wife to tell her she’s gonna get the shit beat out of her when he gets home because she served him a cold breakfast that morning and he lost the account because of it. The guy on the right has just left his new girlfriend in the terminal and they’re going back and forth saying “ You hang up...no, you hang up...no, you hang up first...”

Pee-On

I've been hesitant to check on the price of solar panels. Understandably so...if they drop in price I'll have been an idiot to install them, so ignorance is bliss.

The reason power plants weren't built in California between 1997 and 2001 was because there wasn't the all powerful market signal coming from the California ISO and Power Exchange telling power providers to do so. Too much uncertainty. Unknown future regulations/rules/tariffs/restrictions/covenants/market rules/fees/excise charges/surcharges. We had to create a crisis of supply, and then the classic overshoot of engaging in many high valued, excessive long term contracts were made to secure energy suppliers a future revenue stream for providing energy from future plants. And man, these were some of the most ridiculous financial arrangements ever dealt on behalf of the electric consumer, and I got to witness the whole fucking thing. I was telling everyone I knew how dumb it was to be signing these when energy prices were ten times their historical average, but I was just a Peon.

Fundamentally, no one will build a power plant if there isn't some degree of certainty going forward. However, that's exactly what I couldn't get, any future expectation, and it was the only way for me to have gonesolar. Again, I'm just a Peon.

I am a fan of subsidies, because without them, no one would even try solar. Manufacturers wouldn't build them, wouldn't refine their manufacturing processes or take risks in new developments, and the economics of scale would never apply. They are critical for all the emerging technologies. After they are somewhat self-delivering, they go on their own.

In my case I did get a big buydown, on the backs of both myself as a ratepayer and every other ratepayer. But if any argument is made that my own solar energy is produced on other people's capital, well, I am also the only one taking all the risk. If PV prices fall, or future energy doesn't grow as expensively as I project, well, I'm the one taking it for the team. And if I consume less, I get paid less for my energy. So I'm still the Peon. And the social benefit of clean local production is shared by all.

I decided yesterday to look up what Sharp NE165U1 panels cost. They are on average $52 more expensive than when I bought them in March of 2007. Times 12 is about six hundred bucks, or another $0.31 per DC watt. My guess is that freight is also quite a bit more due to diesel. For the time being, I'm not a Peon.

Powerman 50,000

Across the street at my first house I remember the old couple had this huge front yard tree. The Zimmerman's were a fine, upstanding Christian couple, he a minister in his early years. I suppose I will be rude about it...there aren't any Christian environmentalists...he had the tree chopped down one day, out of the blue -- it had to have been there for at least 25 years, based on its size, and I probably think more like 30 years.

I came home one day to see this tree being mulched, and stunned I asked the old man why. He was tired of the bugs that the tree 'produced'; not getting in the house, but getting on him between the house and his truck. That was it...not roots tearing up the sidewalk or lawn, or it was rotten and threatened the house, or that he needed fuel for the hearth, or that there was sap or aphid shit on his truck...but some bugs that dangled from the branches and he couldn't take it.

Dale and Jeannie, next door to him, also couldn't believe it. Worse for them, the full power of the afternoon sun now beamed on their southern exposure that for years was shaded.

I'm going to guess that if he lived on 41st street and Folsom, among the huge formal sycamores, it'd be illegal to chop it down. The couple died a few years back. That tree would have still been there if not for this insane act, still shading the houses, still providing some sort of cover for mockingbirds, squirrels, and yes, bugs.

I lament the loss of that tree more than the passing of that couple. A perfect example of man's domination over earth's natural resources run amok. We are still doing it today...let's raze the equivalent of two Belgiums to grow algae in the tropics to produce fuel. It's interesting today, today! the debate over bio-fuels, and how there are some decrying the conversion of food to fuel in the current economic environment. Not 500 days ago the economic environment was 'favorable.' Now it's not? Just five hundred days later? What about 5,000 days from now? 50,000?

We are going to reverse course a thousand times between now and some ambiguous future date when we live sustainably. One way of the other, the end result is the same, but for now, we've somehow collectively made the decision that the raping of Mother Earth is inevitable, so she should just relax and enjoy it.

My guess is, that 50,000 days from now, a couple living in Sacramento will learn to live with bugs, like people who lived in Sacramento 50,000 days ago.

Blackjack

Mowed the lawn today. Until I cannot move around anymore, I will probably continue to do my own yardwork. I recall my friend Kevin Graves, before his death in 2006, said paying $70/month for lawn care was the best thing he ever did. They'd come around 4 times a month, edge, fertilize, and fix sprinklers on occasion.

So ever since then, every time I'm out there sweating my ass off in the Sacramento heat, I think, man, twenty one bucks for someone else to do this today. The whole time I'm pushing that mower, I think of that twenty one bucks. 21 dollars...My yard is more complicated than his was, so I estimate twenty one bucks a week, for someone to edge, blow, mow, and trim the trees.

I earn what, $45 an hour? And it takes me two to three hours to do a complete job. Clearly, my time is more valuable spending it elsewhere. But, I'm still out there. This is a sign of the times. I mentioned a neighbor not acknowledging her lawn workers. And most neighbors these days farm out their landscape work, perhaps two thirds of all my neighbors. And I can see their point.

But my point is that while I don't necessarily enjoy it, I do find it somewhat aerobic, I need all the exercise I can get, and I mentally calculate what that 21 bucks would buy me...maybe two extra lunches out per week. And consider the social cost of having someone or someones drive to my house and do the work. It seems appropriate to do it myself, doesn't cost a thing, and I limit the amount of net energy needed to perform the function.

Sure, I could use a pushmower, hand trim the edges and weed by hand, compost all trimmings and leaves, and use a broom and really make this an exercise in 'green' living. But, at least I have made some efforts here. It is cumulative. This is one small part in an overall system of trying to do better.

My Great Paradox

In general, I still think most of the really good durable shit is still produced here in the U.S. -- furnaces, railroad axles, manhole covers, mining equipment, hardcover books, carpet, microprocessors, power transformers, dentist drills, etc.

But as I look around my room here, I can rattle off all the items not produced in my own country: scotch tape, computer speakers and printer, ball point pens, lampshade, light bulb, iPod speakers, CD rack, television, electric pencil sharpener, glass chess set, power strips, paperclip holder, Easter basket, massage chair...and the shirt on my back.

But the stapler...man, this thing was built well, by Arrow in Brooklyn. And it looks old, like maybe 1988. That is old in household equipment terms. As I look around -- what else might also have been produced 20 years ago? The answer is nothing. Not even my room is 20 years old.

What in this room will still be in service in 2028? Outside of my picture frames, some books, and a small shelving unit I built a few years back, I suspect nothing will survive. Except maybe the stapler. Tastes change, the lamp will get tossed, the window shades will be changed, the particle board furniture will dissolve, the phones will break -- all these and all my son's toys will end up in the landfill.

So it is that consumer spending drives most of our economy. What I have to do, which will be impossible, is to learn to live without a clock in the room. Or a game console, or two cordless phones. Or a glass chess set that has never once been played. It will be impossible, because I live in a family that does not choose to stop consuming. The drive to change simply isn't there, and I won't make any effort to try because I also value my relationships.

So I make personal decisions, and that's the best I can do. Just like I can't change a sheet metal worker's commuting habits, I can't change my own families' habits either. Reducing consumption is something they and the majority of Americans don't value. And I can see why, what with all the advertising, the Jones' next door, and the ability to buy a shitload of cheap merchandise from cheap overseas labor.

So this is My Great Paradox -- I'll claim I live a life of personal virtue, commuting by bike and bus and the like, and all the while owing three vehicles, a boat, two computers, five televisions and three refrigerators in the distant suburbs in a big house filled to the rafters with foreign merchandise with no hope of ever being able to live without all this stuff.

The Sacrifices of Conservation

Today I took the time to fix the dryer -- Yoli & Tyler mentioned the other day that the laundry room felt like the Amazon. I cleaned out the exhaust vent and fixed the leak.

I also, finally, discovered and fixed the problem with the stereo. Now we get sound, and, just as important, I put the entire system on one of the powerstrips that I already had behind the cabinet and put it in an accessible spot. Now, the subwoofer and the standby receiver, which for 6 straight years had been constantly on, can now be turned off when not in use. It is off as I write...

This is a classic case of a phantom load. I'm going to guess that I'll save about $10 a year in energy not to be powering this stuff. I am never home alone, so I rarely get to use the stereo (as the resident metalhead). At least now it's not also drawing energy while I'm not listening to it.

$10 bucks, that equates to say 90 kWh per year. My solar panels would take 10-11 days to produce that much energy. What this is telling me, is that I should have done this first. I should have spent the effort to find and eliminate these phantom loads well before I bought solar panels.

Without a tool to help me identify what each load in the house draws, I am only guessing. I guess 90 kWh. If I could know ahead of time how much each item drew, I would likely have discovered this earlier and acted earlier. Ten dollars a year, what, eighty cents a month? Who gives a shit about eighty cents? I'd lose that much in 3 seconds with a single pull of a slot machine in Reno.

The thing is, I knew about that subwoofer ever since I bough it. It is out of sight. Every so often I'd have to get behind the TV, and then I'd see it and think 'damn!, that thing is on all the time'...but I still didn't do anything about it. The subwoofer is a perfect example of what a fucking waste of money I've spent on things earlier in my life. How many times have I used it? Fifty? Seventy Five? And what did I spend...$189? $249? I don't even know.

Granted, when I do use it, I enjoy it...but I have finally learned that the acquisition of such shit doesn't make me any happier. I spent more time thinking about it being on than listening to it! When it woofs for the last time, I will not buy another. I will accept that I may not get to hear the bass lines of Exodus or Death Angel as they were meant to be heard. Such are the sacrifices of consumptive conservation.

So I will spend the time, in the near future, to hire professionals to analyze my house and list out the changes I can make to 1) be more comfortable in the summer/winter and 2) reduce energy usage. These things will likely be as obvious as the subwoofer load, but because I choose not to 'see' them, they are eating away at my paycheck and comfort.

This will change.

Schutzstaffel

I broke two rear wheel spokes this afternoon on my ride home, right during acceleration out of a stoplight on 65th street. Bummer. I was able to loosen two on the other side and fixed the wobble, unbelievably so, it worked perfectly. I gingerly rode the remaining 8 miles home.

Compare this to Hillary's commute in a much finer chariot the other day, in a sheet metal worker's borrowed F250 truck. Trailing her were six Suburbans, two squad cars, and a green SUV which carried the press to document said commute.

I realize I bike so that I do not compete for gas with sheet metal workers in Indiana. Oddly, the more I bike and the less fuel I use, the lower the price of fuel becomes so that sheet metal workers can buy more. There doesn't appear to be any net reduction due to my actions. If gas drops in price, both through my lack of use and/or her proposal to suspend the use tax, then sheet metal workers can drive to holiday this summer, instead of just barbequing in the backyard.

Although the F250 was borrowed to accommodate Hillary's Schutzstaffel, this sheet metal worker normally drives a F150 and his wife a Suburban, both of which are necessary to navigate their 1,200-foot dirt driveway in the southern city of Plymouth, IN - and assuming he lives on the north side of town and works in south South Bend, he faces a smart 22-mile one-way commute. Hillary picked up his $60 gas tab. Half a tank. I dunno, a F150 these days might get 18mpg on the freeway. So 2.5 gallons per day, or a total gas cost of nine bucks. What does he make, say $28/hour? I really don't know, he's a unionized worker, wages are usually pretty fair. He only needs to work less than a half hour each day to cover gas. The truck and suburban payments, registration, maintenance and insurance are likely 5 times that.

There is almost nothing more that needs to be said. Such a stark example of why things are so fuckered up. Consider this playing out every day, in every state, in every region, in every city, in every neighborhood. And the future holds that the Hangzhou resident who also can't take the city life will be soon commuting from the future Hangzhou suburb of Shaoxing...

I lament that I won't be around in the future to see the changes we will have to make regarding oil-based commuting. I will likely die of lung cancer breathing in all the fumes during my rides well before we make any serious attempt to change our domestic behavior. But I'm in the 5th stage now, so I accept it. I do well and that's all I can do, and in the meantime, I will will enjoy hearing about sheet metal workers' pain at the gas station.

Their pain is constant and sharp, and they do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, they want their pain to be inflicted on others...