While Amsterdam was busy harassing me and forcing me to abandon my small bicycle tool kit at the airport in the name of national security, they allow on board someone who nearly blew up a plane last week.
I was able to take my tool kit on four earlier flights. The TSA says it's legal to take it on board in any event...yet, because our zero tolerance policy focuses security on white guys, white grandmas, nuns, priests, rabbis, paraplegics, asthmatics, and nursing mothers, they can't focus enough efforts on the most likely terrorists.
My odds, and frankly your odds, of dying at the hands of a terrorist are less than being struck and killed by lighting...yet we've spent over one trillion dollars, a million million dollars, fighting terror the world over and fighting white environmentalist bicyclists from packing a 2.5mm hex wrench on board flights. Since the state department has been keeping track since the 1960's, only 5,000 people have been killed by terrorists...as many by lightning. That many Americans are killing themselves each month on our roadways. The odds of either you or me dying by the hands of a terrorist are zero.
You know, in the end, this makes for fantastic blogging fodder. My house is nearly paid off, I have a fantastic recession-proof job, I'm outta debt -- I really couldn't give a rat's ass about how much you spend to fight phantom terrorists like me (carrying aboard a bicycle chain tool is the same as five pounds of Semtex according to TSA). I pay my taxes happily and wouldn't be bothered if I have to pay more for your happy shit to save Our Way Of Life From Terror. If you so choose to allocate a trillion dollars to prevent another 5,000 people from dying while ignoring the more obvious such as spending a tenth of that to get almost all our assholes off the roadways, well, that's your prerogative.
I will sit back and have a lot to blog about in twenty ten. I will be publishing my 2010 forecast shortly.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Motor Mania
Thursday, I took RTs 65 bus to work for the first time ever. I wanted to take my usual e-Tran 52, but because Christmas Eve is a quasi-holiday and the e-Tran website said the 52 was on a limited schedule without defining what limited means, I took the RT bus.
And man! It was as fast as e-Tran! I have to take it up my Franklin Blvd. to Florin light rail, catch one train, then another train to get to work but it worked great. The same amount of time with the 52 and one train. This in stark contrast the the rest of my neighbors, all of whom subscribe to the Elk Grove Compulsory Motoring Program. The EGCMP, even with $3 gas, is alive and well.
I was thinking about the 1950 Motor Mania, where Goofy transforms from Mr. Walker into Mr. Wheeler when behind a car. Now nearly sixty years later, it's as valid today as it was then. I am beginning to realize the futility of blogging about energy and transportation when many people sixty years ago felt that auto dominance wasn't healthy yet we've done every fool thing since then to only make it worse. I hold a minority opinion.
Motor Mania is such a fantastic short! It depicts an electrified train with passengers/pedestrians as undesirables, much like I am viewed as a bus/train rider today. The last train passenger cheerfully offers a "good morning," in the exact same way as I feel coming off the train into work instead of how I feel coming out of my car. I discovered early on how liberating and how stress-free my commute has become since I'm no longer Mr. Wheeler. This is one of the best cartoons of our time.
And man! It was as fast as e-Tran! I have to take it up my Franklin Blvd. to Florin light rail, catch one train, then another train to get to work but it worked great. The same amount of time with the 52 and one train. This in stark contrast the the rest of my neighbors, all of whom subscribe to the Elk Grove Compulsory Motoring Program. The EGCMP, even with $3 gas, is alive and well.
I was thinking about the 1950 Motor Mania, where Goofy transforms from Mr. Walker into Mr. Wheeler when behind a car. Now nearly sixty years later, it's as valid today as it was then. I am beginning to realize the futility of blogging about energy and transportation when many people sixty years ago felt that auto dominance wasn't healthy yet we've done every fool thing since then to only make it worse. I hold a minority opinion.
Motor Mania is such a fantastic short! It depicts an electrified train with passengers/pedestrians as undesirables, much like I am viewed as a bus/train rider today. The last train passenger cheerfully offers a "good morning," in the exact same way as I feel coming off the train into work instead of how I feel coming out of my car. I discovered early on how liberating and how stress-free my commute has become since I'm no longer Mr. Wheeler. This is one of the best cartoons of our time.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Letter to the Bee
RE: RT a drain on the county's taxpayers, Dec 19:
The opinion correctly states how intensive public transit subsidies are, but fails to offer that the major alternative to transit, namely cars, are provided much larger subsidies from public tax revenues. The costs of highway building, maintenance and free parking are borne only partially by users but also indirectly through higher taxes and prices. I doubt California would build any additional highways if federal matching or stimulus funds weren't available to subsidize them.
The underlying problem is that the Sacramento region is comprised chiefly of low-density suburban development which cannot be adequately served by public transit. Combined with single use zoning that pervades regional planning, it is absurd to suggest that light rail ought to reduce congestion and commute times. We implicitly built in automobile dependency.
The question that isn't asked is "what kind of environment do we want to live in?" A region where the only viable transportation option is your own car(s) and perpetual debt servicing? Continued dependence on foreign energy? Public transit ought to be subsidized even more, and integrated with medium density, walkable, mixed-use development. A more liveable Sacramento would result, and would promote the climate and energy security goals that loom on our horizon.
Edit: Published in the Bee on 24 Dec, 2009.
The opinion correctly states how intensive public transit subsidies are, but fails to offer that the major alternative to transit, namely cars, are provided much larger subsidies from public tax revenues. The costs of highway building, maintenance and free parking are borne only partially by users but also indirectly through higher taxes and prices. I doubt California would build any additional highways if federal matching or stimulus funds weren't available to subsidize them.
The underlying problem is that the Sacramento region is comprised chiefly of low-density suburban development which cannot be adequately served by public transit. Combined with single use zoning that pervades regional planning, it is absurd to suggest that light rail ought to reduce congestion and commute times. We implicitly built in automobile dependency.
The question that isn't asked is "what kind of environment do we want to live in?" A region where the only viable transportation option is your own car(s) and perpetual debt servicing? Continued dependence on foreign energy? Public transit ought to be subsidized even more, and integrated with medium density, walkable, mixed-use development. A more liveable Sacramento would result, and would promote the climate and energy security goals that loom on our horizon.
Edit: Published in the Bee on 24 Dec, 2009.
Veterans Of Future Wars
My sister commented that the next generation would have a lower standard of living than the previous generation. I'm curious about her statement. She has no children, but her siblings do...does that influence her opinion? And why now? Why the next generation specifically?
I think people with children are biased in believing that it can't get worse, because they don't really want to think about their children living with energy constraints, pollution (either local or global), oceans without edible fish, crushing national debts, forests without lowland gorillas, greater wealth disparity, escalating armed conflict, health care whose costs increase at 7% per year, homes whose values rise at 20% per year remaining perpetually unaffordable...
But they also don't want to act either -- because doing so might limit their access to their own wants. So long as their health care is covered by their employer, so long as their own house continues to rise in value 20% per year ad infinitum, so long as their pensions are viable, so long as their tank of gas costs less than $40...
The American way of life -- a life of profligate energy use, wanton consumption, on the receiving end of global wage arbitrage, and entitlements. This is the definition of a good standard of living -- access to your wants, and there is no better way than to use as much energy as you please, to drive where you please, to have access to 1080p televisions, two refrigerators and a 3,200 sq ft starter mansion, access to copious volumes of cheap products manufactured by others, to have access to perpetual unemployment checks. I believe our nation will remain willing and able to engage war to preserve this way of life.
I look at my thirteen year old son and wonder if he will someday engage in war, and if so, what kind of war would it be? Seems Americans are quite the warring people, engaging in a major war every 20 years or so since inception. Doesn't it seem plausible, even remotely plausible, that if Venezuela or Nigeria withheld available crude (horrors! another embargo!) we'd construe that as economic terrorism? Shit. We invaded Iraq for less. What's next? An economic war? A war on terror? A revolutionary war? A war of attrition? A war of conquest? A civil war? A guerrilla war? Based on American history, my son will live through and will perhaps himself engage in another war sometime between now and 2023. He very well might become a veteran of some future war.
Today --a military engaging in two foreign wars to fight terror and expensive gasoline while the rest of the population consumes, leisures, ignores, and defers payment for all of it...damn, the ultimate definition of a high standard of living.
To make this standard even higher, I offer the following:
That it is inevitable that this nation will engage in another war within the next twenty years, and that it is expected that future consumers should also reap the benefits of wars conducted by others without cost or loss of access to property, I demand the government offer a $15,000 check to all consumers to consume consumables upon conclusion of the next war, payable in 2029. However, it is but common right that this check be payable immediately, plus 20% compounding interest annually and retroactively between 2029 and 2009, as history demonstrates (through cash for clunkers, TARP, and other stimulati) that economic stimulus be brought forward, for the consumer, the most deserving, should be able to enjoy his/her consumption now rather than later as they have become so accustomed.
I think people with children are biased in believing that it can't get worse, because they don't really want to think about their children living with energy constraints, pollution (either local or global), oceans without edible fish, crushing national debts, forests without lowland gorillas, greater wealth disparity, escalating armed conflict, health care whose costs increase at 7% per year, homes whose values rise at 20% per year remaining perpetually unaffordable...
But they also don't want to act either -- because doing so might limit their access to their own wants. So long as their health care is covered by their employer, so long as their own house continues to rise in value 20% per year ad infinitum, so long as their pensions are viable, so long as their tank of gas costs less than $40...
The American way of life -- a life of profligate energy use, wanton consumption, on the receiving end of global wage arbitrage, and entitlements. This is the definition of a good standard of living -- access to your wants, and there is no better way than to use as much energy as you please, to drive where you please, to have access to 1080p televisions, two refrigerators and a 3,200 sq ft starter mansion, access to copious volumes of cheap products manufactured by others, to have access to perpetual unemployment checks. I believe our nation will remain willing and able to engage war to preserve this way of life.
I look at my thirteen year old son and wonder if he will someday engage in war, and if so, what kind of war would it be? Seems Americans are quite the warring people, engaging in a major war every 20 years or so since inception. Doesn't it seem plausible, even remotely plausible, that if Venezuela or Nigeria withheld available crude (horrors! another embargo!) we'd construe that as economic terrorism? Shit. We invaded Iraq for less. What's next? An economic war? A war on terror? A revolutionary war? A war of attrition? A war of conquest? A civil war? A guerrilla war? Based on American history, my son will live through and will perhaps himself engage in another war sometime between now and 2023. He very well might become a veteran of some future war.
Today --a military engaging in two foreign wars to fight terror and expensive gasoline while the rest of the population consumes, leisures, ignores, and defers payment for all of it...damn, the ultimate definition of a high standard of living.
To make this standard even higher, I offer the following:
That it is inevitable that this nation will engage in another war within the next twenty years, and that it is expected that future consumers should also reap the benefits of wars conducted by others without cost or loss of access to property, I demand the government offer a $15,000 check to all consumers to consume consumables upon conclusion of the next war, payable in 2029. However, it is but common right that this check be payable immediately, plus 20% compounding interest annually and retroactively between 2029 and 2009, as history demonstrates (through cash for clunkers, TARP, and other stimulati) that economic stimulus be brought forward, for the consumer, the most deserving, should be able to enjoy his/her consumption now rather than later as they have become so accustomed.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Copenhagen
Copenhagen was a fantastic choice as the site for the next round of climate change talks. It is as close to a correctly built city I can think of. If nothing else, this city should be used as a demonstration to Americans of exactly how wretched we've built our own cities here.Some details of Copenhagen emerge -- nearly 36% of all trips are taken by bicycle, with a city goal of 50% by 2015. This wasn't always the case. In the 1960s Copenhagen was overrun by the automobile, as is the case for every American city, but leaders collectively agreed to change the urban fabric to accommodate bicycling, with immense opposition I might add. As Schwarzenegger pointed out in his comments, today Copenhagen is considered one of the world's most livable cities....and of course, because people want to live there, it's among the world's most expensive cities, too.
What stands out is that this city is nearly uniform in density -- medium density, with active storefronts at street level, with six to seven stories above, a uniform architecture to bind buildings together creating a sense of outdoor enclosure (that is, it makes people want to be there), with active and regular public transportation via electrified light rail, buses, and trains.
So I can't help but compare this against my fine little Elk Grovian burg, king of low-density auto-dependent sprawl, where nobody nobody! rides a bicycle to get anywhere, where light rail train service is a moving 20-year target, and where less than 5% of the population has ever boarded an e-Tran bus.
In my opinion, all of our green this and green that is really pointless unless we frame it around more livable places to live. The substitution of wind powered electric cars for the ICE doesn't address this fundamental flaw -- profligate American energy consumption because of how we live.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Chinese Cars
You were aware that China will sell more cars than the U.S this year, yes?
What will invariably happen, with tens of millions of new vehicles in that country, will be the Elk Grovification of former Chinese farmland and open space to create concrete/asphalt roads to get Betty Liu and Billy Chu out of their awful cities and into new suburban homes. Note that China has about 18 cars per 1,000 people...compared to the U.S. with 765 motor vehicles per 1,000. A quintupling wouldn't even begin to halve the disparity between us.
All occurring in a nation with a substantial savings rate, holding a substantial volume of U.S. debt, and with less than 2% of the world's crude reserves. These aren't batterized vehicles, they ain't hybrids and they aren't powered by alt.energy -- they are all gasoline powered, and several hundreds of millions more are coming, and deservedly so. When they quintuple their number of vehicles to 90 per 1,000, that would put them with the same number of cars per capita that the U.S. had in 1927.
Either the rest of the world comes up to the current American way of life, or the American way of life falls back to equalize with the rest of the world. What do you think will really happen? Do you really think China will someday have .765 cars per person?
What will invariably happen, with tens of millions of new vehicles in that country, will be the Elk Grovification of former Chinese farmland and open space to create concrete/asphalt roads to get Betty Liu and Billy Chu out of their awful cities and into new suburban homes. Note that China has about 18 cars per 1,000 people...compared to the U.S. with 765 motor vehicles per 1,000. A quintupling wouldn't even begin to halve the disparity between us.
All occurring in a nation with a substantial savings rate, holding a substantial volume of U.S. debt, and with less than 2% of the world's crude reserves. These aren't batterized vehicles, they ain't hybrids and they aren't powered by alt.energy -- they are all gasoline powered, and several hundreds of millions more are coming, and deservedly so. When they quintuple their number of vehicles to 90 per 1,000, that would put them with the same number of cars per capita that the U.S. had in 1927.
Either the rest of the world comes up to the current American way of life, or the American way of life falls back to equalize with the rest of the world. What do you think will really happen? Do you really think China will someday have .765 cars per person?
Environmentalism Canceled
I am somewhat amazed at how well my 2009 predictions held true. One more on my list came to fruition Wednesday with the CARB announcement that California's diesel emissions standards would be canceled due to the economy. Exactly as I predicted.
See? Environmentalism is only applicable when times are good. When bad, all environmental bets are off the table, and in this case, the diesel standards set to begin in 2011 will be delayed because the trucking lobby argued, successfully, that due the the number of idled trucks our "air ain't quite so bad no more."
Well, if it's a recession that's to blame for creating cleaner air, well, count me in for cheering on a full on depression. A full on depression. Let every damn truck in the state go idle, then.
Unless you commute by bicycle every day up and down Franklin Blvd., you have no idea what it's like to cycle alongside Carson Ice trucks, Campbell Soup supply trucks, and the 300 Conway Freight trucks on 47th and breathe that particulate exhaust. This is a [not so] small reason why Elk Grovians will never bike to work -- there aren't options for avoiding these emissions, and subsequently they generate copious amounts themselves with their own driving. There aren't options for avoiding these emissions because CARB won't enforce their own rules.
So, you really think this nation, really, is gonna accept carbon legislation when the economy is bad? You are dreaming if you think it's going to happen. Even if there is consensus in Congress to push through legislation, which is debatable itself, won't the various trucking and energy lobbies delay it to such an extent that it won't be meaningful? That unless we are burning through 21 million barrels a day in a booming economy it's going to get canceled because we are only burning 19 million barrels a day in an economic downturn?
I don't care much about the global climate issue when we can't even get localized environmental policy enacted. Take care of your local environment and the global environment will follow. There is no way, no way, this nation of ours will possibly reduce CO2 emissions under any conceivable scenario in my opinion. We might cancel it due to economic harm. We will likely cheat relative to any international agreements if we don't cancel it. And you can be sure our fellow Elk Grovians, whose lifestyles are wholly dependent on the burning of copious quantities of fossil fuels, will never stand for a reduction, Tuvalu be damned.
See? Environmentalism is only applicable when times are good. When bad, all environmental bets are off the table, and in this case, the diesel standards set to begin in 2011 will be delayed because the trucking lobby argued, successfully, that due the the number of idled trucks our "air ain't quite so bad no more."
Well, if it's a recession that's to blame for creating cleaner air, well, count me in for cheering on a full on depression. A full on depression. Let every damn truck in the state go idle, then.
Unless you commute by bicycle every day up and down Franklin Blvd., you have no idea what it's like to cycle alongside Carson Ice trucks, Campbell Soup supply trucks, and the 300 Conway Freight trucks on 47th and breathe that particulate exhaust. This is a [not so] small reason why Elk Grovians will never bike to work -- there aren't options for avoiding these emissions, and subsequently they generate copious amounts themselves with their own driving. There aren't options for avoiding these emissions because CARB won't enforce their own rules.
So, you really think this nation, really, is gonna accept carbon legislation when the economy is bad? You are dreaming if you think it's going to happen. Even if there is consensus in Congress to push through legislation, which is debatable itself, won't the various trucking and energy lobbies delay it to such an extent that it won't be meaningful? That unless we are burning through 21 million barrels a day in a booming economy it's going to get canceled because we are only burning 19 million barrels a day in an economic downturn?
I don't care much about the global climate issue when we can't even get localized environmental policy enacted. Take care of your local environment and the global environment will follow. There is no way, no way, this nation of ours will possibly reduce CO2 emissions under any conceivable scenario in my opinion. We might cancel it due to economic harm. We will likely cheat relative to any international agreements if we don't cancel it. And you can be sure our fellow Elk Grovians, whose lifestyles are wholly dependent on the burning of copious quantities of fossil fuels, will never stand for a reduction, Tuvalu be damned.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Ribeye In The Sky
It is almost futile to describe to my fellow Elk Grovians the wondrous waterfowl we had have here in this area.
I spent seven hours out at the Stone Lakes Wildlife Refuge today, primarily to kill ducks and geese, but secondly, to observe things that 99.893% of this city's inhabitants have never seen, don't care about seeing, and will never see. There is a tremendous heritage of natural beauty around this city of mine that is being destroyed daily, through the relentless march of economic progress -- the building of low-density suburban slums from Sacramento to Galt. A total waste.
This morning, in my blind here in Elk Grove, I saw 4,500 speckle belly geese, 35 mallards, 55 sand hill cranes, 25 honkers, 4 snow geese, 780 cormorants, 7 otters, an entire blackening of the sky with starlings, 35 American white pelicans, and a few thousand various swallows, blackbirds, and other unknown birds. I would have liked to take a honker like this one from two weeks ago:
This bird. I took its flesh while I respected its soul. If you find this offensive, well, piss off. I have a much higher affinity for our animals than most, and that counts for much more than buying bologna at the WINCO. I only take what I eat, and I only take what's given. It's hunting...not shooting. I spent three days over the last five trying to get birds but I shot nothing.
I am personally at odds, sincerely, with how the building of my own suburban house contributed to the destruction of this sort of wildlife. I opined in my first sentence what my Elk Grovian neighbors think of all this -- they couldn't give a rat's ass about any of it, so long as their roads aren't congested, so long as gas is cheap, and so long as their sprawl economy continues unabated. This comes from personal interaction with my neighbors. Not a one has any understanding of what their suburban enclaves and asphalt has taken from what's been here for 230,000 years.
Perhaps this post can offer some insight into what we (my co-worker Joe and I) saw this morning, and how special an occasion it was. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen in Elk Grove, in my fifteen years in this city (or near it, to be clear). From our blind, just over the cottonwoods, we could hear the sandhill cranes coming. A group of eleven:
They emerged from the tree line and flew not twenty feet above our blind. We could see the whites of their eyes, their redheads, their heads scanning back and forth, their bodies flying in perfect sync. They looked like 747's they were so big. I understand in Texas they are hunted -- they are considered ribeye's in the sky, their meat is so valued. Here in Elk Grove, all hunting is banned after 12:00 PM because this is prime sandhill habitat.
You cannot, and will never, understand the poignancy of such an event unless you get out there and see this for yourself. Take the time and the effort to get out to the Consumnes preserve and witness this for yourself. As an Elk Grovian, I am totally ashamed of what my city is doing to destroy this last refuge of the last undammed river in Northern California, the Consumnes river. I am a hunter, yes...but a preservationist first.
I spent seven hours out at the Stone Lakes Wildlife Refuge today, primarily to kill ducks and geese, but secondly, to observe things that 99.893% of this city's inhabitants have never seen, don't care about seeing, and will never see. There is a tremendous heritage of natural beauty around this city of mine that is being destroyed daily, through the relentless march of economic progress -- the building of low-density suburban slums from Sacramento to Galt. A total waste.
This morning, in my blind here in Elk Grove, I saw 4,500 speckle belly geese, 35 mallards, 55 sand hill cranes, 25 honkers, 4 snow geese, 780 cormorants, 7 otters, an entire blackening of the sky with starlings, 35 American white pelicans, and a few thousand various swallows, blackbirds, and other unknown birds. I would have liked to take a honker like this one from two weeks ago:
This bird. I took its flesh while I respected its soul. If you find this offensive, well, piss off. I have a much higher affinity for our animals than most, and that counts for much more than buying bologna at the WINCO. I only take what I eat, and I only take what's given. It's hunting...not shooting. I spent three days over the last five trying to get birds but I shot nothing.
I am personally at odds, sincerely, with how the building of my own suburban house contributed to the destruction of this sort of wildlife. I opined in my first sentence what my Elk Grovian neighbors think of all this -- they couldn't give a rat's ass about any of it, so long as their roads aren't congested, so long as gas is cheap, and so long as their sprawl economy continues unabated. This comes from personal interaction with my neighbors. Not a one has any understanding of what their suburban enclaves and asphalt has taken from what's been here for 230,000 years.
Perhaps this post can offer some insight into what we (my co-worker Joe and I) saw this morning, and how special an occasion it was. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen in Elk Grove, in my fifteen years in this city (or near it, to be clear). From our blind, just over the cottonwoods, we could hear the sandhill cranes coming. A group of eleven:
They emerged from the tree line and flew not twenty feet above our blind. We could see the whites of their eyes, their redheads, their heads scanning back and forth, their bodies flying in perfect sync. They looked like 747's they were so big. I understand in Texas they are hunted -- they are considered ribeye's in the sky, their meat is so valued. Here in Elk Grove, all hunting is banned after 12:00 PM because this is prime sandhill habitat.You cannot, and will never, understand the poignancy of such an event unless you get out there and see this for yourself. Take the time and the effort to get out to the Consumnes preserve and witness this for yourself. As an Elk Grovian, I am totally ashamed of what my city is doing to destroy this last refuge of the last undammed river in Northern California, the Consumnes river. I am a hunter, yes...but a preservationist first.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Four Hummers
Cranes and flatbed tractor trailers were recently employed in my SMUD parking lot to remove the hydrogen fueling facility that SMUD placed into service in April 2008.
Remember Bush? Yes, that forgotten president and his famous "addicted to oil" and "we'll transition to a hydrogen economy?" Well, a mere nineteen months into our "new economy" we've abandoned it. The electrolyzer and hydrogen tanks were taken away, never to return.
SMUD built an 80 kW solar array to power the electrolyzer, enough for 14 hydrogen cars. Do you have any idea how expensive an 80 kW array is? Do you have any idea how expensive the whole hydrogen facility is? The solar array will remain above the parking lot, providing the important service of shading parked vehicles. Over those nineteen months, I never once witnessed a single hydrogen car being fueled up, but I've seen some paradoxical things in the shade cast by that array.
Consider this gem:
One of my co-workers. This single picture illustrates the massive, massive chasm between the fantasy of an alternative fueled society and the reality we live in.
Aside from parking like a prick (he'll sometimes take two compact spaces if the end space isn't available), the driver represents extreme forms of pride, excess, energy density and wanton consumption, underneath solar panels representing expensive, rarefied energy. I find the dichotomy quite interesting.
The direct energy consumed by just four Hummers driven 12,000 miles a year is equal to the entire annual energy output of this array. I haven't even mentioned the energy used to produce the array and the energy used to produce the cement pillars, the reinforcing steel rebar, the steel I-beam structure, or the alpha male building contractors. Cement manufacturing produces heroic volumes of CO2 while coal (coke) is burnt to produce steel. The two dozen or so contractors who built this array all individually drove F250s...not one of them arrived for work in a subcompact, Prius, hydrogen car, bicycle, or on foot.
I wonder -- can a guy driving a Chevy 3500 from his 3/4 acre horse property in Lincoln to construct a PV array in Sacramento still be considered a green collar worker, even though he'll burn through more fossil fuels than the supposed energy savings his job will create?
This photo demonstrates to me the impossibility of transitioning to an alternative powered society. We won't transition, in my opinion. Ever. We will instead choose to wage energy wars to keep our way of life going and we will allow our privileged culture to self destruct before we voluntarily reduce/constrain energy use.
Remember Bush? Yes, that forgotten president and his famous "addicted to oil" and "we'll transition to a hydrogen economy?" Well, a mere nineteen months into our "new economy" we've abandoned it. The electrolyzer and hydrogen tanks were taken away, never to return.
SMUD built an 80 kW solar array to power the electrolyzer, enough for 14 hydrogen cars. Do you have any idea how expensive an 80 kW array is? Do you have any idea how expensive the whole hydrogen facility is? The solar array will remain above the parking lot, providing the important service of shading parked vehicles. Over those nineteen months, I never once witnessed a single hydrogen car being fueled up, but I've seen some paradoxical things in the shade cast by that array.
Consider this gem:
One of my co-workers. This single picture illustrates the massive, massive chasm between the fantasy of an alternative fueled society and the reality we live in.
Aside from parking like a prick (he'll sometimes take two compact spaces if the end space isn't available), the driver represents extreme forms of pride, excess, energy density and wanton consumption, underneath solar panels representing expensive, rarefied energy. I find the dichotomy quite interesting.
The direct energy consumed by just four Hummers driven 12,000 miles a year is equal to the entire annual energy output of this array. I haven't even mentioned the energy used to produce the array and the energy used to produce the cement pillars, the reinforcing steel rebar, the steel I-beam structure, or the alpha male building contractors. Cement manufacturing produces heroic volumes of CO2 while coal (coke) is burnt to produce steel. The two dozen or so contractors who built this array all individually drove F250s...not one of them arrived for work in a subcompact, Prius, hydrogen car, bicycle, or on foot.
I wonder -- can a guy driving a Chevy 3500 from his 3/4 acre horse property in Lincoln to construct a PV array in Sacramento still be considered a green collar worker, even though he'll burn through more fossil fuels than the supposed energy savings his job will create?
This photo demonstrates to me the impossibility of transitioning to an alternative powered society. We won't transition, in my opinion. Ever. We will instead choose to wage energy wars to keep our way of life going and we will allow our privileged culture to self destruct before we voluntarily reduce/constrain energy use.
Fabrique En Chine
A few days ago I lamented how American manufacturing lost out to low wage foreigners by suggesting that we wanted it. Yes - we wanted the evisceration of whole towns, cities, and communities so we could save a few dollars on a toaster.
While making toast this morning, I lifted my toaster up and in bright, beautiful, black letters, written in Lucida Sans Unicode font I believe, were those comforting three words: Fabrique en Chine.
I felt good. I felt real good. The toast was good, too; not too crunchy and just the perfect shade of brown.
I felt good knowing that I saved about eight dollars and forty two cents by not having to pay an American worker to build it. His toaster is Chinese, too. I felt good knowing that I will be buying another one in five years time instead of fifteen years time, negating those savings and indeed costing more in the long run, because Chinese manufacturing is utter shit compared to domestic production.
But hey. This is what we really wanted. We wanted lives of leisure. We didn't want that smelly toaster factory anywhere near our suburbia. We wanted clean jobs in office parks, jobs that service and manage the financing and shipping of said toasters from factories in China, pitting these factories against each other to see who can fill Target/KMart/WalMart orders the cheapest, with presumably the cheapest labor.
This weekend I saw what this means to towns like TuleLake, Klamath Falls, and Malin. These towns have fallen on hard times. Granted, their livelihoods are based on high desert agriculture that's marginal even in the best of times, but little local production of value added goods from these raw materials remains.
I plied the town of TuleLake, CA, looking for the old horseradish plant and storefront that I remember from years back. I gave Christmas gifts of TuleLake horseradish (and other foods) years ago to family and I wanted to do it again this year, but the small plant was abandoned about nine years ago for cheaper, centralized processing elsewhere. The specialized goods this town used to produce is mostly gone. Horseradish is still grown there, yes, as it has been grown in the volcanic soil for generations, but it is more and more being produced and shipped in from China as Chinese horseradish can be imported cheaper than producing it here in Northern California.
But hey. This is what we really wanted.
While making toast this morning, I lifted my toaster up and in bright, beautiful, black letters, written in Lucida Sans Unicode font I believe, were those comforting three words: Fabrique en Chine.
I felt good. I felt real good. The toast was good, too; not too crunchy and just the perfect shade of brown.
I felt good knowing that I saved about eight dollars and forty two cents by not having to pay an American worker to build it. His toaster is Chinese, too. I felt good knowing that I will be buying another one in five years time instead of fifteen years time, negating those savings and indeed costing more in the long run, because Chinese manufacturing is utter shit compared to domestic production.
But hey. This is what we really wanted. We wanted lives of leisure. We didn't want that smelly toaster factory anywhere near our suburbia. We wanted clean jobs in office parks, jobs that service and manage the financing and shipping of said toasters from factories in China, pitting these factories against each other to see who can fill Target/KMart/WalMart orders the cheapest, with presumably the cheapest labor.
This weekend I saw what this means to towns like TuleLake, Klamath Falls, and Malin. These towns have fallen on hard times. Granted, their livelihoods are based on high desert agriculture that's marginal even in the best of times, but little local production of value added goods from these raw materials remains.
I plied the town of TuleLake, CA, looking for the old horseradish plant and storefront that I remember from years back. I gave Christmas gifts of TuleLake horseradish (and other foods) years ago to family and I wanted to do it again this year, but the small plant was abandoned about nine years ago for cheaper, centralized processing elsewhere. The specialized goods this town used to produce is mostly gone. Horseradish is still grown there, yes, as it has been grown in the volcanic soil for generations, but it is more and more being produced and shipped in from China as Chinese horseradish can be imported cheaper than producing it here in Northern California.
But hey. This is what we really wanted.
DECLINED
I have been using an automatic bill pay feature through Wells Fargo for a dozen years. Admittedly, I occasionally overdraft because I overpay my mortgage -- leaving me with too much month at the end of the money. Overdraft fees are steep, but I've noticed how Wells Fargo maximizes their ability to assess them. If I have several bills that I pay on the same day, they post the largest bill first, in succession from largest to smallest. In this way, if I do overdraft, they can hit me with fees on a larger quantity of smaller charges instead of a single fee on the largest bill.
Clever fuckers, they are.
But my day of overdraft reckoning is coming. My mortgage is almost paid off. The cause of my overdrafting is trying to pay down debt. I suppose I am too overzealous to pay off my mortgage, but I accept the overdraft fee(s) for my own stupidity. I'm not whining that the government step in to fix this. I'm whining that we have an America whosecitizens consumers couldn't accept the social stigma of being DECLINED while consuming consumables. Consequently, I have no way to turn this shit off on my own debit account.
The American Consumer got what it wanted with this. The worst, most despicable, and horrific form of public humiliation imaginable is to have a credit card or debit card be DECLINED while trying to consume consumables with several other Consumers present, waiting behind you, giving you the "stare" for being such an unfit American. Socially, we accepted overdraft fees (it's a short term loan, isn't it?) to avoid such awful, degrading, public humiliation. To be declined in public? Gawd. You'd feel lower than a snake's ballbag.
So we passively accepted these overdraft fees. Wells Fargo calls this a fee instead of what it really is, a short term loan, to avoid the truth in lending requirements that apply to loans but not fees. If I use their debit card, I have no ability to request that they turn this feature off and simply deny the purchase if I don't have the money...but this isn't an option. I don't want the fucking loan but they give it to me anyway, saying that I passively wanted it by overdrafting. A $4 latte at 'Lil Willys would cost $35 more upon overdrafting. What is that, a few thousand percent interest?
The thing to do, if you do use automatic bill pay, is to never send more than one payment each day. Stagger them over successive days and pay the smallest bill first, defeating Wells Fargo's ability to post the largest transaction first. If you do overdraft, yes, you'll pay for being a dolt...but at least you will [likely] only overdraft the one large transaction instead of several smaller ones.
Clever fuckers, they are.
But my day of overdraft reckoning is coming. My mortgage is almost paid off. The cause of my overdrafting is trying to pay down debt. I suppose I am too overzealous to pay off my mortgage, but I accept the overdraft fee(s) for my own stupidity. I'm not whining that the government step in to fix this. I'm whining that we have an America whose
The American Consumer got what it wanted with this. The worst, most despicable, and horrific form of public humiliation imaginable is to have a credit card or debit card be DECLINED while trying to consume consumables with several other Consumers present, waiting behind you, giving you the "stare" for being such an unfit American. Socially, we accepted overdraft fees (it's a short term loan, isn't it?) to avoid such awful, degrading, public humiliation. To be declined in public? Gawd. You'd feel lower than a snake's ballbag.
So we passively accepted these overdraft fees. Wells Fargo calls this a fee instead of what it really is, a short term loan, to avoid the truth in lending requirements that apply to loans but not fees. If I use their debit card, I have no ability to request that they turn this feature off and simply deny the purchase if I don't have the money...but this isn't an option. I don't want the fucking loan but they give it to me anyway, saying that I passively wanted it by overdrafting. A $4 latte at 'Lil Willys would cost $35 more upon overdrafting. What is that, a few thousand percent interest?
The thing to do, if you do use automatic bill pay, is to never send more than one payment each day. Stagger them over successive days and pay the smallest bill first, defeating Wells Fargo's ability to post the largest transaction first. If you do overdraft, yes, you'll pay for being a dolt...but at least you will [likely] only overdraft the one large transaction instead of several smaller ones.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
How Did You Like The Play?
"Aside from 'that,' Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
This morning, I'm wondering if today we refuse to discuss any bad news. We just shove it aside and listen to good news about green shoots, a 3.5% good quarter, or some other such things. I'm wondering if it is worst (sic) than we acknowledge.
Obama, acknowledging that our national security interests are at stake in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more, while at the same time acknowledging that our national security interests will expire in eighteen months by withdrawing, represents America correctly -- both he and we collectively refuse to acknowledge bad news. In this case, I believe the bad news is that a perpetual war where we eventually "declare victory" will have the same outcome regardless of date. I believe it might be worser (sic) news if we brought these few hundred thousand troops home to 17% unemployment (U-6). At least they are gainfully employed overseas, just like all our former manufacturing jobs we exported because we wanted to save a few dollars on a toaster.
I asked last year, before the election, if he could have the capability to "declare victory," reach in, and suck out our troops. Clearly, he doesn't, or won't, or whatever. While my two sons aren't going to be fighting over there, they will likely spend a fair portion of their lives working to pay it off, because I'm not paying for it...I've never been asked to pay for it. This bad news perpetuates but with Obama in charge it doesn't seem so bad, does it?
Remember, there were a few million like-minded right-of center Republicans who also felt betrayed by their president in the 2001-2008 time frame; all of today's doves will find plenty of company, all of them falling into an unrepresented "middle," facilitating our two party government's inabilities. But bad news persists regardless.
By the way, where have the green shoots gone? Are they now little trees, growing our 70% consumerist economy back to life? Are they giant oaks, meaning we are completely out of recession and our "way of life" of debt fueled hyper-consumption can resume? Or have the green shoots withered, as shoots are wont to do without a solid base of minerals, soil, and nutrients. I dunno...I think our green shoots have died but we refuse to discuss it; we refuse to accept that fiscal stimulus, cash for clunkers, $600 stimulus checks (remember those?), and $8,000 buy-a-house-now programs have done little. Bad news persists regardless.
That interviewer in 1865 must have been trying to see the good news in an otherwise shitty circumstance. Bravo.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Digital Fruit
I took a short weekend visit to Fresno this weekend to a wedding anniversary celebration. My observations during this trip, among other observations, highlight the diminishing returns of technology.
Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps it only happens to me due to my subdued personality, my inability to engage people in different social contexts such as breakfast at Perko's, dinner at a banquet hall, lunch at Thai Basil -- I find that I am ignored by virtually everyone around me while in these situations as they dwaddle with their cellularized telephones, blackberries, treos, MP3 players, and other "wonders of the digital age."
I ate breakfast at Perko's on Saturday and while at the table, my mother-in-law jawed on the phone for fifteen minutes, my sister-in-law spent 20 minutes deleting texts or something while the cursed thing kept beeping at the table, my son's iPod was loud enough to be heard, and my wife received two texts and was compelled to respond then and there.
I hadn't seen my friend Mark in almost a year and a half. I met him for lunch a month ago and it took him a full 20 minutes to stop e-mailing via Treo. Lunch was nearly over before he finally put that damn thing down.
Some time ago, when my sister-in-law was ready to drive home to San Diego, she spent 20 minutes off the I-5 exit entering her destination into her new OnStar. She's been driving home for thirty seven years -- why did she now need to have some talking machine on her dash to tell her how to get home?
I ate lunch with my friend Joe just last week. We discussed our upcoming hunting trip and he spends a half hour on his Blackberry trying to load in the Cabela's catalog web page for goose decoys.
What is it with all this?
It's not a generational thing -- everyone from nine to ninety is attached to the hip to these things, and it's only going to get worse. I can only imagine what it must be like for a shy boy at a school dance trying to ask a girl to dance as she intentionally ignores everyone while fuckering about with her phone all night long. Ignoring made easier through the magic of technology. Texting while driving is all but impossible to enforce. Dying made easier through the magic of technology.
One thing I've thought about has been the gradual elimination of a number of human jobs that used to route phone calls for business. Instead of hiring a human with their bothersome salary, vacation, and health care needs, we've gone down the "press #" route where the customer is now shouldering the responsibility to route his/her own inquiry -- and over half the time you press a series of digits to talk to a live person anyway. Wasting time made easier through the magic of technology.
All of this is maddening to me. Maddening. I don't think I'm going to survive the new age. My sister gave thanks last week to digital fruit -- her new Blackberry. She's a bona-fide convert and is hopeful she won't develop this crack-like addiction that has affected the rest of our culture. Perhaps I am only delaying the inevitable by postponing my own entry. Perhaps someday I will be forced into it, I'll get addicted, and I'll be blogging from hotel rooms, beach fronts, funerals, church, my dad's cabin, casino halls, thrash metal concerts, weddings, and everywhere I possibly can while ignoring every other live human around me.
I'm waiting for the Boysenberry to arrive before I take the plunge.
Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps it only happens to me due to my subdued personality, my inability to engage people in different social contexts such as breakfast at Perko's, dinner at a banquet hall, lunch at Thai Basil -- I find that I am ignored by virtually everyone around me while in these situations as they dwaddle with their cellularized telephones, blackberries, treos, MP3 players, and other "wonders of the digital age."
I ate breakfast at Perko's on Saturday and while at the table, my mother-in-law jawed on the phone for fifteen minutes, my sister-in-law spent 20 minutes deleting texts or something while the cursed thing kept beeping at the table, my son's iPod was loud enough to be heard, and my wife received two texts and was compelled to respond then and there.
I hadn't seen my friend Mark in almost a year and a half. I met him for lunch a month ago and it took him a full 20 minutes to stop e-mailing via Treo. Lunch was nearly over before he finally put that damn thing down.
Some time ago, when my sister-in-law was ready to drive home to San Diego, she spent 20 minutes off the I-5 exit entering her destination into her new OnStar. She's been driving home for thirty seven years -- why did she now need to have some talking machine on her dash to tell her how to get home?
I ate lunch with my friend Joe just last week. We discussed our upcoming hunting trip and he spends a half hour on his Blackberry trying to load in the Cabela's catalog web page for goose decoys.
What is it with all this?
It's not a generational thing -- everyone from nine to ninety is attached to the hip to these things, and it's only going to get worse. I can only imagine what it must be like for a shy boy at a school dance trying to ask a girl to dance as she intentionally ignores everyone while fuckering about with her phone all night long. Ignoring made easier through the magic of technology. Texting while driving is all but impossible to enforce. Dying made easier through the magic of technology.
One thing I've thought about has been the gradual elimination of a number of human jobs that used to route phone calls for business. Instead of hiring a human with their bothersome salary, vacation, and health care needs, we've gone down the "press #" route where the customer is now shouldering the responsibility to route his/her own inquiry -- and over half the time you press a series of digits to talk to a live person anyway. Wasting time made easier through the magic of technology.
All of this is maddening to me. Maddening. I don't think I'm going to survive the new age. My sister gave thanks last week to digital fruit -- her new Blackberry. She's a bona-fide convert and is hopeful she won't develop this crack-like addiction that has affected the rest of our culture. Perhaps I am only delaying the inevitable by postponing my own entry. Perhaps someday I will be forced into it, I'll get addicted, and I'll be blogging from hotel rooms, beach fronts, funerals, church, my dad's cabin, casino halls, thrash metal concerts, weddings, and everywhere I possibly can while ignoring every other live human around me.
I'm waiting for the Boysenberry to arrive before I take the plunge.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Zhu Zhu
I wonder if there was any consideration, any at all, for Russel Hornsby and his small company, Cepia LLC of St. Louis, to manufacture his Zhu Zhu Pets in the U.S.
I'd bet the decision to manufacture elsewheres took less than a picosecond.
For a host of strategic reasons, the manufacturing was offshored because of the financial realities of taxes, financial incentives, and cheap wage labor. But I'd bet also that today he would have an inability to borrow to expand production of these little robotic hamsters.
Imagine trying to go to a major bank to proposition them to finance a manufacturing facility in St. Louis. Horrors! Imagine trying to secure capital from private investors to fund the ramping up of domestic production. No way.
Even if Missouri provided some sort of tax break or other financial incentives, it would likely take eighteen months to obtain all the environmental, health, and safety permits to build the facility. By then the Zhu Zhu craze might have waned. Imagine the costs associated with employee health and vacation benefits, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, and compare that with $2.00 an hour Han Chinese immigrants in Hangzhou. Imagine next Christmas, when employee health benefits will cost 7% more than today.
Imagine having to build a supplier network here in the U.S. from scratch, to get all the raw fuzzy material, stuffing, electronic and plastic components necessary to build the hamsters. If all these suppliers are only overseas to begin with, why do the end manufacturing here anyway?
Imagine the host of complaints and ensuing litigation that neighbors would raise if St. Louis adopted this new manufacturing facility anywhere near residential housal units. Imagine smokestacks near your housal unit! Nope, can't have that, so the residents will demand the location be put way out on the margin, with no hope of any sorts of alternative transportation to it other than solo occupant motoring, enslaving the workers to thirteen years of life working to buy and keep their cars.
Can you imagine any resurgence in American manufacturing? I didn't think so.
I'd bet the decision to manufacture elsewheres took less than a picosecond.
For a host of strategic reasons, the manufacturing was offshored because of the financial realities of taxes, financial incentives, and cheap wage labor. But I'd bet also that today he would have an inability to borrow to expand production of these little robotic hamsters.
Imagine trying to go to a major bank to proposition them to finance a manufacturing facility in St. Louis. Horrors! Imagine trying to secure capital from private investors to fund the ramping up of domestic production. No way.
Even if Missouri provided some sort of tax break or other financial incentives, it would likely take eighteen months to obtain all the environmental, health, and safety permits to build the facility. By then the Zhu Zhu craze might have waned. Imagine the costs associated with employee health and vacation benefits, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, and compare that with $2.00 an hour Han Chinese immigrants in Hangzhou. Imagine next Christmas, when employee health benefits will cost 7% more than today.
Imagine having to build a supplier network here in the U.S. from scratch, to get all the raw fuzzy material, stuffing, electronic and plastic components necessary to build the hamsters. If all these suppliers are only overseas to begin with, why do the end manufacturing here anyway?
Imagine the host of complaints and ensuing litigation that neighbors would raise if St. Louis adopted this new manufacturing facility anywhere near residential housal units. Imagine smokestacks near your housal unit! Nope, can't have that, so the residents will demand the location be put way out on the margin, with no hope of any sorts of alternative transportation to it other than solo occupant motoring, enslaving the workers to thirteen years of life working to buy and keep their cars.
Can you imagine any resurgence in American manufacturing? I didn't think so.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
H1N1
Whatever you might think about an electrical power engineer put near the top of a very short list to receive the hog flu vaccine because my work is considered "important to national security," let me tell you -- the shot was painless compared to the seasonal flu shot.
I asked the nurse if I could see the vial. He said OK. I just wanted to see where it was made.
Liverpool, England.
Sigh...we don't produce anything here in the U.S. anymore.
I asked the nurse if I could see the vial. He said OK. I just wanted to see where it was made.
Liverpool, England.
Sigh...we don't produce anything here in the U.S. anymore.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Decade Of Aggression
I wrote extensively last year about our total apathy and complete disregard toward our two wars, that what most Americans are doing is the least they could do. Truthfully, we aren't really at war. Congress has never declared it. Nonetheless, a trillion dollars and a few hundred thousand lives later we are on the edge of a paradigm shift and we'll finally abort our mission(s) overseas and get back to whipping our consumerist economy in shape.
Ha.
I doubt it. We are so entrenched that Obama will be mired in these two campaigns well into the end of his first term and if the economy stays flat, well, he'll be mired until the end of his one-term presidency. This is American warfare of the 21st century: bomb, attack and surge, then get bogged down in perpetual insurgency until some arbitrary and capricious date when we declare victory and pull out.
Question is, when is that arbitrary and capricious date?
Friday?
Next week?
December?
2010?
2013?
2031?
I could care less about our wars. In lieu of giving a shit, I was instructed to go buy a car, which I admittedly didn't do. I didn't follow the instructions. Perhaps I failed America by not doing so. Did I fail America?
Do I fail America by not caring a whit about Afghanistan and Iraq? Do I fail America by thankfully realizing the amazing luck that 1) I contracted diabetes and got out of the service before our decade of aggression, 2) my oldest son was just old enough to land a steady job before the economic slowdown/perpetual wars and 3) my youngest son is just young enough to likely escape all this when he comes of age?
Perhaps I fail America. Perhaps that old "Love it or Leave it" slogan should be hung around my neck while I'm pilloried on the public square for being so anti-American. Wait...there aren't any public squares here in Elk Grove...thank God for that!
I will likely refuse to accept any rationalization for our continued presence in either nation and, as Obama will likely announce at West Point this Tuesday, another thirty thousand troops to be sent to Afghanistan. I think I am entitled to an opinion, and this opinion -- particularly when I have made [recent] efforts to live a life not predicated on continued private solo motorization, the importation of cheap Chinese consumables, and the gross volumes of imported energy required to keep it all running. I firmly believe that our way of life is at the heart of a great many problems -- supposed climate change, a wholesale lack of meaningful places to live, a finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) economy not based on building anything anymore, exurban sprawl, poor social interactions, cheap consumerism, lack of places worthy of our visiting, the increasing importation of energy from foreign sources, $12,000,000,000,000 in debt and counting, and money-for-nothing expectations from the lowest class (entitlements) to the middle class (housal unit flipping and NASDAQ) to the upper class (CDOs & default swaps), from the youngest ($8,000 housal unit credit) to the oldest (cash for clunkers).
I am not a fan of this way of life. I am not a fan of the exportation of this way of life at the cost of a trillion dollars and more to the point, the wasted national effort in lives, resources, and energy. We are about to engage Thanksgiving and I will be thankful for the fact that my sons aren't overseas. These wars aren't about national defense -- they are about the continuation of a lifestyle (see above) that is wholly unsustainable. If you think that the defense of this way of life is indeed worthy of such wars, well, I suppose we will never agree.
Ha.
I doubt it. We are so entrenched that Obama will be mired in these two campaigns well into the end of his first term and if the economy stays flat, well, he'll be mired until the end of his one-term presidency. This is American warfare of the 21st century: bomb, attack and surge, then get bogged down in perpetual insurgency until some arbitrary and capricious date when we declare victory and pull out.
Question is, when is that arbitrary and capricious date?
Friday?
Next week?
December?
2010?
2013?
2031?
I could care less about our wars. In lieu of giving a shit, I was instructed to go buy a car, which I admittedly didn't do. I didn't follow the instructions. Perhaps I failed America by not doing so. Did I fail America?
Do I fail America by not caring a whit about Afghanistan and Iraq? Do I fail America by thankfully realizing the amazing luck that 1) I contracted diabetes and got out of the service before our decade of aggression, 2) my oldest son was just old enough to land a steady job before the economic slowdown/perpetual wars and 3) my youngest son is just young enough to likely escape all this when he comes of age?
Perhaps I fail America. Perhaps that old "Love it or Leave it" slogan should be hung around my neck while I'm pilloried on the public square for being so anti-American. Wait...there aren't any public squares here in Elk Grove...thank God for that!
I will likely refuse to accept any rationalization for our continued presence in either nation and, as Obama will likely announce at West Point this Tuesday, another thirty thousand troops to be sent to Afghanistan. I think I am entitled to an opinion, and this opinion -- particularly when I have made [recent] efforts to live a life not predicated on continued private solo motorization, the importation of cheap Chinese consumables, and the gross volumes of imported energy required to keep it all running. I firmly believe that our way of life is at the heart of a great many problems -- supposed climate change, a wholesale lack of meaningful places to live, a finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) economy not based on building anything anymore, exurban sprawl, poor social interactions, cheap consumerism, lack of places worthy of our visiting, the increasing importation of energy from foreign sources, $12,000,000,000,000 in debt and counting, and money-for-nothing expectations from the lowest class (entitlements) to the middle class (housal unit flipping and NASDAQ) to the upper class (CDOs & default swaps), from the youngest ($8,000 housal unit credit) to the oldest (cash for clunkers).
I am not a fan of this way of life. I am not a fan of the exportation of this way of life at the cost of a trillion dollars and more to the point, the wasted national effort in lives, resources, and energy. We are about to engage Thanksgiving and I will be thankful for the fact that my sons aren't overseas. These wars aren't about national defense -- they are about the continuation of a lifestyle (see above) that is wholly unsustainable. If you think that the defense of this way of life is indeed worthy of such wars, well, I suppose we will never agree.
Franklin Crossing
By the time my career is over, by the time I'll be sipping pounding Mai Tai's on some foreign beach somewhere, I will reflect back on my life and silently cringe, knowing that I took part in the complete destruction of a small town on Franklin Blvd. -- the town of Franklin.
I've been reviewing the land acquisition for the future SMUD Franklin bulk substation, to be located just south of the town of Franklin on my Franklin Blvd. I also received a map of the future Franklin Crossing subdivision, a wholly wasteful, grossly proportioned, and energy intensive piece of shit that will surround the substation, and indeed, represents one of hundreds of other subdivisions scheduled to be constructed once our economy gets "back on track." Our economy -- you know, the one that is solely comprised of the building and accessorizing of low density suburban sprawl, the creation of retail and myriad service jobs necessary to support it, the re-assignment of manufacturing to Asia, while we financially engineer the whole thing from San Francisco, Charlotte, Seattle and New York.
Franklin Crossing. This is almost a correct name. It really should be called the Franklin Burial Grounds, because I will bet my house that someday that entire town will be razed to the ground and paved over for a corner strip mall/shopping complex (call it the Franklin Crossroads or Franklin Marketplace) to service the sixty thousand thru commuters from all those eastern subdivisions...all those commuters heading towards I-5 to get to their Bay Area or Sacramento jobs.
What a waste. A total waste. Someday I will set the protection on the transmission lines and the bulk transformer in the Franklin substation and instead of feeling a sense of worldly accomplishment I will sit on that beach and think about how I was one small cog in the gigantic wheel of progress that rolled over and obliterated that small town out of existence. This Franklin Crossing -- a perfect example of a living pattern wholly devoid of the notion of a community, the notion of connectedness, nowhere near jobs or natural resources, and will in fact destroy what value the land had for agriculture or open space or wetland habitat.
Franklin Crossing -- a living pattern that owes its whole existence to the acquisition and timely, consistent delivery of cheap gasoline. I am going to write future chapters in my Franklin Monologues devoted to what $3 dollar gasoline would mean to Franklin Crossing; what $4 gasoline would mean to Franklin Crossing; what $5, $6, and $7 gasoline would mean to Franklin Crossing. It's development is predicated on the continuing cheapness of gasoline so you might understand my wholehearted desire for oil to climb in price so rapidly and so consistently such that we rethink our plans for this stupid development and rethink our plans for continued exurban sprawling madness. I cannot think of anything else other than energy depletion that would crimp this eighty year experiment of national waste, because cheap energy underwrites all of it. All of it. When I mentally envision a future of energy scarcity (or at a minimum, energy at a premium), I see a future worth living in, because we will finally build worthy urban arrangements.
I've been reviewing the land acquisition for the future SMUD Franklin bulk substation, to be located just south of the town of Franklin on my Franklin Blvd. I also received a map of the future Franklin Crossing subdivision, a wholly wasteful, grossly proportioned, and energy intensive piece of shit that will surround the substation, and indeed, represents one of hundreds of other subdivisions scheduled to be constructed once our economy gets "back on track." Our economy -- you know, the one that is solely comprised of the building and accessorizing of low density suburban sprawl, the creation of retail and myriad service jobs necessary to support it, the re-assignment of manufacturing to Asia, while we financially engineer the whole thing from San Francisco, Charlotte, Seattle and New York.
Franklin Crossing. This is almost a correct name. It really should be called the Franklin Burial Grounds, because I will bet my house that someday that entire town will be razed to the ground and paved over for a corner strip mall/shopping complex (call it the Franklin Crossroads or Franklin Marketplace) to service the sixty thousand thru commuters from all those eastern subdivisions...all those commuters heading towards I-5 to get to their Bay Area or Sacramento jobs.
What a waste. A total waste. Someday I will set the protection on the transmission lines and the bulk transformer in the Franklin substation and instead of feeling a sense of worldly accomplishment I will sit on that beach and think about how I was one small cog in the gigantic wheel of progress that rolled over and obliterated that small town out of existence. This Franklin Crossing -- a perfect example of a living pattern wholly devoid of the notion of a community, the notion of connectedness, nowhere near jobs or natural resources, and will in fact destroy what value the land had for agriculture or open space or wetland habitat.
Franklin Crossing -- a living pattern that owes its whole existence to the acquisition and timely, consistent delivery of cheap gasoline. I am going to write future chapters in my Franklin Monologues devoted to what $3 dollar gasoline would mean to Franklin Crossing; what $4 gasoline would mean to Franklin Crossing; what $5, $6, and $7 gasoline would mean to Franklin Crossing. It's development is predicated on the continuing cheapness of gasoline so you might understand my wholehearted desire for oil to climb in price so rapidly and so consistently such that we rethink our plans for this stupid development and rethink our plans for continued exurban sprawling madness. I cannot think of anything else other than energy depletion that would crimp this eighty year experiment of national waste, because cheap energy underwrites all of it. All of it. When I mentally envision a future of energy scarcity (or at a minimum, energy at a premium), I see a future worth living in, because we will finally build worthy urban arrangements.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Kilo, Mega, Tera
I do believe we are about to get yet another foreclosure here on my street in Elk Grove.
A couple bought a housal unit here on Moonlight Way in about 2003, yet moved out of town in 2007 (to a better, more exclusive place no doubt). They opted not to sell...how could they in 2007? So the rental began. After a year and a half of renting the tenants packed up and moved on, leaving the couple today with a second mortgage payment.
I last saw them a few weeks ago, helping the guy strap down a chest freezer he was hauling to their newest home in another county. Their tone of voice said it all: "We don't know...(long pause)...we might just sell it or rent it out again..."
Codespeak for "The keys are already in the mail."
I am aware of several people around me who were dumb enough to buy in 2003-2006 but smart enough to have purchased a second house in late 2007/early 2008 after the asset bubble had burst, only to abandon their first home and its underwater mortgage. This is clearly the most desirable economic thing to do. I fully admit, had I also fell into the speculative frenzy of housal unit flipping, reaching for a drink from that chalice of easy-money -- leveraged real estate -- or fell into the bigger debt trap of a better, newer housal unit (with its larger mortgage), I absolutely would have been one to do the same thing. Absolutely.
Imagine what more would come if credit was still as easy to get as it was five years ago. Alas, but it almost is! Perhaps you weren't aware that the recently extended $8,000 federal credit to spur "new" owners to buy a housal unit can be used as a down payment. That is, keep allowing people with no skin in the game to keep playing the game. That the statistics say that the 2001-2006 no-down-payment 'programs' resulted in higher default rates apparently doesn't register with current policymakers. That the remote possibility of further housal unit value declines and the remote possibility of further unemployment might spur these late entrants to also say fuck it and walk away also hasn't registered with current policymakers.
I don't really care much about all this...the results, that is. I highly enjoy thinking about the possibility of financial implosion if only because I think I'm much, much better positioned to survive any financial calamity. As an electrical power engineer I often think in large numbers (kilo, mega, tera) but I no longer even know how many zeros are in a trillion anymore. If forty is the new thirty, a trillion is the new billion.
I can't say I don't really care much about all the foreclosures around me, though. I do care. It's not that my own housal unit value might decline -- I could really care less about that; what bothers me is that the endless cycle of people in/people out cannot possibly lead to any real sense of community (not that low density suburbia has any hope of that to begin with). I cannot live in a vacuum regardless of how financially stable I might personally be. I am better off than most, I believe, through lifelong prudent fiscal responsibility, but that doesn't mean I could live correctly without a stable community for reciprocal support.
This isn't something anyone else thinks about. I believe it prudent to consider the remote possibility that things aren't going to immediately get better. We are all beginning to believe that thisis was just some sort of V-shaped recession, now with a 50% return of the stock market and 3.5% GDP growth. Give it another eight months, following that logic, and we will be at 100%, having not lost any nominal stock value with growth at 7% with all our former problems passed away.
A couple bought a housal unit here on Moonlight Way in about 2003, yet moved out of town in 2007 (to a better, more exclusive place no doubt). They opted not to sell...how could they in 2007? So the rental began. After a year and a half of renting the tenants packed up and moved on, leaving the couple today with a second mortgage payment.
I last saw them a few weeks ago, helping the guy strap down a chest freezer he was hauling to their newest home in another county. Their tone of voice said it all: "We don't know...(long pause)...we might just sell it or rent it out again..."
Codespeak for "The keys are already in the mail."
I am aware of several people around me who were dumb enough to buy in 2003-2006 but smart enough to have purchased a second house in late 2007/early 2008 after the asset bubble had burst, only to abandon their first home and its underwater mortgage. This is clearly the most desirable economic thing to do. I fully admit, had I also fell into the speculative frenzy of housal unit flipping, reaching for a drink from that chalice of easy-money -- leveraged real estate -- or fell into the bigger debt trap of a better, newer housal unit (with its larger mortgage), I absolutely would have been one to do the same thing. Absolutely.
Imagine what more would come if credit was still as easy to get as it was five years ago. Alas, but it almost is! Perhaps you weren't aware that the recently extended $8,000 federal credit to spur "new" owners to buy a housal unit can be used as a down payment. That is, keep allowing people with no skin in the game to keep playing the game. That the statistics say that the 2001-2006 no-down-payment 'programs' resulted in higher default rates apparently doesn't register with current policymakers. That the remote possibility of further housal unit value declines and the remote possibility of further unemployment might spur these late entrants to also say fuck it and walk away also hasn't registered with current policymakers.
I don't really care much about all this...the results, that is. I highly enjoy thinking about the possibility of financial implosion if only because I think I'm much, much better positioned to survive any financial calamity. As an electrical power engineer I often think in large numbers (kilo, mega, tera) but I no longer even know how many zeros are in a trillion anymore. If forty is the new thirty, a trillion is the new billion.
I can't say I don't really care much about all the foreclosures around me, though. I do care. It's not that my own housal unit value might decline -- I could really care less about that; what bothers me is that the endless cycle of people in/people out cannot possibly lead to any real sense of community (not that low density suburbia has any hope of that to begin with). I cannot live in a vacuum regardless of how financially stable I might personally be. I am better off than most, I believe, through lifelong prudent fiscal responsibility, but that doesn't mean I could live correctly without a stable community for reciprocal support.
This isn't something anyone else thinks about. I believe it prudent to consider the remote possibility that things aren't going to immediately get better. We are all beginning to believe that this
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Housal ATM
Whenever I go to a restaurant these days, I'm paying cash. I take the effort to get cash ahead of time to try to eliminate the 3% loss the restaurateur would take if I paid with a debit card. For me, it's not about some faceless corporation stealing money from a small business -- banks do need to charge to allow for this service -- but I figure that the 3% that stays and circulates in the local economy is much better for both me and the small business owners, so I take some efforts to work mostly in cash.
Amid the endless suburban shitscape of the Sacramento region, I am unbelievably privileged to be able to work in a building within 400 feet of a light rail station and within a quarter mile of a bank, pharmacy, independent grocery, a hardware store and twelve restaurants. It takes zero effort to hit the ATM first before patronizing everything else.
If I do use a card, I always ask which is cheaper for them, debit or credit. The pricing structure that processors charge is so convoluted and opaque that it's often impossible for them to even know beforehand, but I ask anyway. It might be only a matter of a few nickels. I don't care. I do it anyway.
Quite recently, three three! co-workers have received letters in the mail from their credit card companies indicating their rates are going to be jacked up. I believe this to be a preemptive strike against the coming 2009 credit card act which will limit their ability to change rates. Two of them have said fuck it, they're closing their account. One asked me yesterday if it would hurt her credit score, and while I am one to hardly know, I believe it will -- closing a long standing account in good standing would not likely improve one's creditworthiness, you think?
Easy credit is what fueled our pre-2007 boom, which ultimately led to our current mild economic slowdown. Personally, I hope that going forward credit becomes much harder to get. Bear in mind that we homeowners pulled out $5,000,000,000,000 from our housal ATMs over the last decade to buy shit we didn't need with money we didn't have. To buy shit we didn't need with money we didn't have. I am extremely hard pressed to figure out how a 70% consumer spending economy such as ours is going to dig out any time soon if consumers aren't consuming more consumables on credit.
Amid the endless suburban shitscape of the Sacramento region, I am unbelievably privileged to be able to work in a building within 400 feet of a light rail station and within a quarter mile of a bank, pharmacy, independent grocery, a hardware store and twelve restaurants. It takes zero effort to hit the ATM first before patronizing everything else.
If I do use a card, I always ask which is cheaper for them, debit or credit. The pricing structure that processors charge is so convoluted and opaque that it's often impossible for them to even know beforehand, but I ask anyway. It might be only a matter of a few nickels. I don't care. I do it anyway.
Quite recently, three three! co-workers have received letters in the mail from their credit card companies indicating their rates are going to be jacked up. I believe this to be a preemptive strike against the coming 2009 credit card act which will limit their ability to change rates. Two of them have said fuck it, they're closing their account. One asked me yesterday if it would hurt her credit score, and while I am one to hardly know, I believe it will -- closing a long standing account in good standing would not likely improve one's creditworthiness, you think?
Easy credit is what fueled our pre-2007 boom, which ultimately led to our current mild economic slowdown. Personally, I hope that going forward credit becomes much harder to get. Bear in mind that we homeowners pulled out $5,000,000,000,000 from our housal ATMs over the last decade to buy shit we didn't need with money we didn't have. To buy shit we didn't need with money we didn't have. I am extremely hard pressed to figure out how a 70% consumer spending economy such as ours is going to dig out any time soon if consumers aren't consuming more consumables on credit.
Larger Than Themselves
I am stuck in my ways. I prefer riding my bicycle the same way to work and back every day, along the exact same roads, the same exact paths. I am one to think that if I rode the same way every day for the next twenty five years I will always find some degree of pleasure in the routine. I will never bore of my commute.
This afternoon I detoured off Franklin Blvd. to my ophthalmologist's office on Florin Rd. to retrieve my new pair of glasses. It was lunacy navigating a bicycle alongside the wretched surburban madness of Florin Road in South Sacramento. But I did it anyway.
I guess I did it to prove I could. I did it to show that it's possible -- to make a statement. I understand why people do the risky things they do. I understand why the old black lady at Martin Luther King and 22nd Avenue risks her life every morning as a crossing guard. I understand why every weekday morning the retired black guy rises and dresses and volunteers as a crossing guard at Franklin Blvd. and G Parkway -- they are making a statement that pedestrians count, that they are worthy of guarding against the two hundred thousand asshole drivers in our city.
I am hardly comparing my bicycling to the noble deeds done each morning by these two. But I think I better understand why they do it, why the subject themselves to the elements, to inattentive hurried drivers, to getting trash thrown at them and insults hurled at them (it happens all the time). They do it for reasons that are larger than themselves.
I started bicycling primarily to keep my diabetes in check, but over time I've come to realize how marginally better my living environment is because of it, and I like to think about what Elk Grove could have been had more of our decision makers also had type I diabetes, and also discovered the benefits of exercise, and also discovered what a hostile city they've created for people without cars.
But they aren't diabetic. They don't walk anywhere anymore. They require campaign funding from pro-sprawl sources to remain decision makers. And while I claim that I don't care how all this plays out, under the assumption that I've got no power to spur change, and how I immensely enjoy blogging about our wretchedness, I look to those two crossing guards and I see that they are making a substantial contribution to a better environment.
This afternoon I detoured off Franklin Blvd. to my ophthalmologist's office on Florin Rd. to retrieve my new pair of glasses. It was lunacy navigating a bicycle alongside the wretched surburban madness of Florin Road in South Sacramento. But I did it anyway.
I guess I did it to prove I could. I did it to show that it's possible -- to make a statement. I understand why people do the risky things they do. I understand why the old black lady at Martin Luther King and 22nd Avenue risks her life every morning as a crossing guard. I understand why every weekday morning the retired black guy rises and dresses and volunteers as a crossing guard at Franklin Blvd. and G Parkway -- they are making a statement that pedestrians count, that they are worthy of guarding against the two hundred thousand asshole drivers in our city.
I am hardly comparing my bicycling to the noble deeds done each morning by these two. But I think I better understand why they do it, why the subject themselves to the elements, to inattentive hurried drivers, to getting trash thrown at them and insults hurled at them (it happens all the time). They do it for reasons that are larger than themselves.
I started bicycling primarily to keep my diabetes in check, but over time I've come to realize how marginally better my living environment is because of it, and I like to think about what Elk Grove could have been had more of our decision makers also had type I diabetes, and also discovered the benefits of exercise, and also discovered what a hostile city they've created for people without cars.
But they aren't diabetic. They don't walk anywhere anymore. They require campaign funding from pro-sprawl sources to remain decision makers. And while I claim that I don't care how all this plays out, under the assumption that I've got no power to spur change, and how I immensely enjoy blogging about our wretchedness, I look to those two crossing guards and I see that they are making a substantial contribution to a better environment.
The FIRE Economy
I maintain I hold one of the few, rapidly disappearing manufacturing jobs in the U.S. I manufacture electricity. A stretch? Yes, perhaps. But as I bike up and down Franklin Blvd., and as I offer the following south to north listing of all the strip businesses I pass everyday, tell me we actually produce anything in this nation anymore:
SF Market
Cash 1 Check Cashing
Walgreen's
Raley's Supermarket
Hollywood Video
B&S Oriental Market
Q The Style
Gas Station
US Post Office
Prince of Peace Church
Security Public Storage
Hair Plus Beauty Supply
Fiji Indian Food Market
Maharaja Indian Restaurant
Goodwill
Rite Aid
FoodMaxx
Carl's Jr.
Pizza Hut
Suzie's Adult Superstore
Goeman's Bar
Hanson Realty
Sacramento Japanese Methodist Church
Southgate Glass
Southgate Veterinary Hospital
Japanese Motor Shop
United Carburetor and Auto
Unlimited Smog Stop
Exotic Aquarium
Extra Space Storage
Public Storage
Overhead Door Company
Pedro Auto Sales
Atlas Muffler Shop
Look, I understand that listing all the strip retail on a particular boulevard in Anytown, USA and then claiming we don't manufacture anything is fraught with inaccuracy. Most manufacturing isn't done on a collector road in suburbia -- it's done in factories on the margins, in heavily mechanized and automated facilities. We don't allow manufacturing sites anywhere near "clean" suburbia; instead we offer "clean industries" such as Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE), in their own single use office parks and towers only a short easy drive from suburbia. Keep them separated, damn it. Can't imagine the property value hit a residential subdivision would take if it fell withing walking distance of an office park. Horrors!
Along Franklin Blvd. not a damn thing is built -- it's all about servicing the vehicles necessary to live here, about offering fried food to all those drivers in drive-thru's, about storing myriad consumer consumables in storage pods, and about praying to various Gods for salvation with manicured hands and nice hairdos.
We don't build anything here, and I am at odds with trying to understand how our economy will grow when during the boom years of 2001-2006 we grew largely on the hallucinated wealth of financial gaming, speculation, and leveraging...we grew on the burning of a FIRE economy. With all of that now up in smoke, where exactly is our future growth going to come from?
SF Market
Cash 1 Check Cashing
Walgreen's
Raley's Supermarket
Hollywood Video
B&S Oriental Market
Q The Style
Gas Station
US Post Office
Prince of Peace Church
Security Public Storage
Hair Plus Beauty Supply
Fiji Indian Food Market
Maharaja Indian Restaurant
Goodwill
Rite Aid
FoodMaxx
Carl's Jr.
Pizza Hut
Suzie's Adult Superstore
Goeman's Bar
Hanson Realty
Sacramento Japanese Methodist Church
Southgate Glass
Southgate Veterinary Hospital
Japanese Motor Shop
United Carburetor and Auto
Unlimited Smog Stop
Exotic Aquarium
Extra Space Storage
Public Storage
Overhead Door Company
Pedro Auto Sales
Atlas Muffler Shop
Look, I understand that listing all the strip retail on a particular boulevard in Anytown, USA and then claiming we don't manufacture anything is fraught with inaccuracy. Most manufacturing isn't done on a collector road in suburbia -- it's done in factories on the margins, in heavily mechanized and automated facilities. We don't allow manufacturing sites anywhere near "clean" suburbia; instead we offer "clean industries" such as Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE), in their own single use office parks and towers only a short easy drive from suburbia. Keep them separated, damn it. Can't imagine the property value hit a residential subdivision would take if it fell withing walking distance of an office park. Horrors!
Along Franklin Blvd. not a damn thing is built -- it's all about servicing the vehicles necessary to live here, about offering fried food to all those drivers in drive-thru's, about storing myriad consumer consumables in storage pods, and about praying to various Gods for salvation with manicured hands and nice hairdos.
We don't build anything here, and I am at odds with trying to understand how our economy will grow when during the boom years of 2001-2006 we grew largely on the hallucinated wealth of financial gaming, speculation, and leveraging...we grew on the burning of a FIRE economy. With all of that now up in smoke, where exactly is our future growth going to come from?
Friday, November 20, 2009
He With The Most Lug Nuts Wins
Another Furlough Friday down Franklin Blvd. this afternoon, a day that couldn't have been better for bike riding. I made a mental note of the average gasoline price today ($2.87) and then thought about all that effort to ride back and forth to work...and it only saved me one gallon of gasoline. I saved three fucking dollars.
Less than three bucks a day...against a $50/hour salary...No wonder all my co-workers are driving Sequoias and Yukons...it's dirt cheap to operate them and you don't have to break a sweat. You are also supposedly safer -- he with the most lug nuts wins in an accident. My bicycle has no lug nuts....I won't ever win.
Nonetheless, today I rode by the newest self storage facility on Franklin Blvd., Extra Space Storage, and for the last two weeks they've had a wacky
waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man outside in its newest advertising campaign. If your eye catches it just right you can see the sign the wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man is holding -- 'first month rent is free.'
FREE?
Wa-hey!
"Honey, let's once and for all clean up the garage and off load some of that stuff into an off-site storage locker. Our skiing gear? We can load it up in the spring, and spring it out in the fall. Your late mother'shideously ugly beautiful electric mixing bowl collection? 
I know you don't want to get rid of all sixty seven of them, so how about we preserve those precious memories of her by storing them properly? My bum knee will someday get better, so I'll store my tennis racket in there, too. How about that extra computer printer we know we'll someday need when the current printer fritzes out? Yes, into the locker it goes. All our camping gear, the table saw I never seem to have time for using anymore, Aunt Martha's lamp...oh, and Aunt Martha's ashes..., my Foosball table, your old breast pump, my AMC Gremlin that I can't decide to restore or part out..."
And the wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man will be our silent sentinel, providing 24/7 security for our precious stuff.
Less than three bucks a day...against a $50/hour salary...No wonder all my co-workers are driving Sequoias and Yukons...it's dirt cheap to operate them and you don't have to break a sweat. You are also supposedly safer -- he with the most lug nuts wins in an accident. My bicycle has no lug nuts....I won't ever win.
Nonetheless, today I rode by the newest self storage facility on Franklin Blvd., Extra Space Storage, and for the last two weeks they've had a wacky
waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man outside in its newest advertising campaign. If your eye catches it just right you can see the sign the wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man is holding -- 'first month rent is free.'FREE?
Wa-hey!
"Honey, let's once and for all clean up the garage and off load some of that stuff into an off-site storage locker. Our skiing gear? We can load it up in the spring, and spring it out in the fall. Your late mother's
I know you don't want to get rid of all sixty seven of them, so how about we preserve those precious memories of her by storing them properly? My bum knee will someday get better, so I'll store my tennis racket in there, too. How about that extra computer printer we know we'll someday need when the current printer fritzes out? Yes, into the locker it goes. All our camping gear, the table saw I never seem to have time for using anymore, Aunt Martha's lamp...oh, and Aunt Martha's ashes..., my Foosball table, your old breast pump, my AMC Gremlin that I can't decide to restore or part out..."And the wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man will be our silent sentinel, providing 24/7 security for our precious stuff.
Option None
I was, up until August, totally bomb proofed during this mild recession. August brought cuts to my Elk Grovian e-Tran bus service, reducing my options to get to work without the use of my private automobile. The recession hit home for the first time.
The second recessionary hit occurred yesterday, when news that Russ has abandoned my old house that I sold him in 2006. He will foreclose. I am still carrying paper on it.
When I moved to Elk Grove in 1997, Russ wanted to rent my old Sacramento house, and while I wanted to sell it, he started renting the day I moved out and he rented it until 2006 when I sold it to him. Back in 1997 he couldn't afford to buy it, so renting was a good option for him until he was ready to buy. He was finally ready to buy in 2006. He made a colossal mistake by buying at the peak of the market.
Russ had no business entering into a mortgage he could barely afford; his broker had no business charging him such fees to arrange the sale; the bank, Option One, had no business offering such a loan. I tried, in all sincerity, to convince him not to do it. I tried, in all sincerity, to tell him to use another broker because I saw what he was going to get charged...but he did it anyway...along with one million, nine hundred thousand other Americans who also thought that if they didn't buy then they'd never be able to afford later, because everyone thought the good times were going to last forever...
I made out like a fucking bandit. I sold at the exact peak; I sold the same year I started at SMUD during the only year I've ever had a depressed salary -- so I paid zero AMT. Instead of buying his and hers SUVs like most other sellers, or a 1031 like-exchange that everyone suggested I do, I instead plowed the proceeds into reducing my own mortgage. Everyone, from my investment advisor, to Russ's broker, to the title insurance lady, to the escrow officer -- everyone told me I was an idiot for paying the capital gains and not buying a like property to continue the 20% ad infinitum returns...because the good times were going to go on forever, they said.
Option One paid me a shitload of money and later lost out. They have ceased to exist; they are no longer...they are Option None. As for my second -- Russ will continue to pay me, although truthfully, it's like paying on a car with four flat tires. To me this second has always been funny money, and some of us are still laughing, because the good times are going to go on forever...
The second recessionary hit occurred yesterday, when news that Russ has abandoned my old house that I sold him in 2006. He will foreclose. I am still carrying paper on it.
When I moved to Elk Grove in 1997, Russ wanted to rent my old Sacramento house, and while I wanted to sell it, he started renting the day I moved out and he rented it until 2006 when I sold it to him. Back in 1997 he couldn't afford to buy it, so renting was a good option for him until he was ready to buy. He was finally ready to buy in 2006. He made a colossal mistake by buying at the peak of the market.
Russ had no business entering into a mortgage he could barely afford; his broker had no business charging him such fees to arrange the sale; the bank, Option One, had no business offering such a loan. I tried, in all sincerity, to convince him not to do it. I tried, in all sincerity, to tell him to use another broker because I saw what he was going to get charged...but he did it anyway...along with one million, nine hundred thousand other Americans who also thought that if they didn't buy then they'd never be able to afford later, because everyone thought the good times were going to last forever...
I made out like a fucking bandit. I sold at the exact peak; I sold the same year I started at SMUD during the only year I've ever had a depressed salary -- so I paid zero AMT. Instead of buying his and hers SUVs like most other sellers, or a 1031 like-exchange that everyone suggested I do, I instead plowed the proceeds into reducing my own mortgage. Everyone, from my investment advisor, to Russ's broker, to the title insurance lady, to the escrow officer -- everyone told me I was an idiot for paying the capital gains and not buying a like property to continue the 20% ad infinitum returns...because the good times were going to go on forever, they said.
Option One paid me a shitload of money and later lost out. They have ceased to exist; they are no longer...they are Option None. As for my second -- Russ will continue to pay me, although truthfully, it's like paying on a car with four flat tires. To me this second has always been funny money, and some of us are still laughing, because the good times are going to go on forever...
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
More Alive Than Ever
I spent the better part of this morning in the town of Franklin, down south on my beloved Franklin Blvd., out at the Stone Lakes Wildlife Refuge. Two Canadian geese came into range this morning and were killed by me. I was really duck hunting, but if geese come into range, well, they will be the target of my passive shots...much like these sentences...quite passive.
Two geese! In four years of hunting I have only ever taken a single shot at a goose -- I had never killed one, and today I bagged two in separate passings. I felt more ALIVE than EVER.
So I will breast them out tonight and will follow a recipe from my goose-hunting co-worker, and hope like hell I like goose. I am afraid, really, that I won't like goosemeat, because I will not kill them going forward if I won't eat them.
I am afraid, really, that as our hallowed economy rebounds and Elk Grove expands ever southward, there won't be any birds left around here. It was absolutely fantastic to observe about fifteen mating pairs of Sandhill Cranes fly overhead this morning, with two landing just outside my spread. It was equally fantastic to watch about 65-80 American white pelicans circle around my blind.
Pelicans. Twenty minutes from home.
I am afraid, really, that as Elk Grove commandeers more land to its south to site all those supposed 55,000 average median income (AMI) jobs the city says it needs, then that will simply allow for thousands more people to escape the confines of the city proper and build themselves starter mansions on 2-3 acres on former farmland or former open space, creating more long range commuters, more roads and expansion of the rural roads already in existence. While Stone Lakes itself might be spared, when we destroy all the surrounding areas to build theaters, strip malls, auto repair shops, Asian foot massage parlors, jiffy lubes, cell phone shops, big box retail and dozens of square miles of low density car-dependent suburban slums, this will all lead to waterfowl declines.
We will have no open space left -- and it will all go unnoticed by the thrum of suburban living -- housewives driving minivans to get their morning latte, to attend yoga at the gym; househusbands driving Yukons to drop the little ones off at practice; residents yawning at 3:45 AM preparing to slog out their daily commute to Walnut Creek; Elk Grovians driving, driving, driving.
The bane of Elk Grovia -- open space.
Two geese! In four years of hunting I have only ever taken a single shot at a goose -- I had never killed one, and today I bagged two in separate passings. I felt more ALIVE than EVER.
So I will breast them out tonight and will follow a recipe from my goose-hunting co-worker, and hope like hell I like goose. I am afraid, really, that I won't like goosemeat, because I will not kill them going forward if I won't eat them.
I am afraid, really, that as our hallowed economy rebounds and Elk Grove expands ever southward, there won't be any birds left around here. It was absolutely fantastic to observe about fifteen mating pairs of Sandhill Cranes fly overhead this morning, with two landing just outside my spread. It was equally fantastic to watch about 65-80 American white pelicans circle around my blind.
Pelicans. Twenty minutes from home.
I am afraid, really, that as Elk Grove commandeers more land to its south to site all those supposed 55,000 average median income (AMI) jobs the city says it needs, then that will simply allow for thousands more people to escape the confines of the city proper and build themselves starter mansions on 2-3 acres on former farmland or former open space, creating more long range commuters, more roads and expansion of the rural roads already in existence. While Stone Lakes itself might be spared, when we destroy all the surrounding areas to build theaters, strip malls, auto repair shops, Asian foot massage parlors, jiffy lubes, cell phone shops, big box retail and dozens of square miles of low density car-dependent suburban slums, this will all lead to waterfowl declines.
We will have no open space left -- and it will all go unnoticed by the thrum of suburban living -- housewives driving minivans to get their morning latte, to attend yoga at the gym; househusbands driving Yukons to drop the little ones off at practice; residents yawning at 3:45 AM preparing to slog out their daily commute to Walnut Creek; Elk Grovians driving, driving, driving.
The bane of Elk Grovia -- open space.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
To Kill A Bufflehead
I spent a fantastic Wednesday morning by my lonesome out at the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. A beautiful bluebird morning out in the marshes.
I was trying to kill birds.
As a waterfowl hunter I fully respect what wilderness we have left around Elk Grove. I am keen on what I'm doing, I do so responsibly, I eat what I kill. Truthfully, contrast that with eating at Cape Cod fish and chips or Mikuni's -- and tell me that the netting of cod in the Atlantic ocean and transporting them 3,400 miles, or farming Octopus in Japan and sending it 6,200 miles is more environmentally friendly, then tell me again how disgusted you are that I'm out killing innocent birds for pleasure.
As a hunter I believe I have a greater respect for where our food comes from than virtually every other Elk Grovian, all of whom drive to the supermarket for cottage cheese without a shred of knowledge where it's processed, how much energy is used to manage feedlot diary cows, how much energy is used to transport their cottage cheese, 1,500 miles on average, to them. I am far more willing and able to minimize how much energy is used to feed me, having a far greater impact on oil use, climate, and traffic congestion than virtually all these other "green" things we supposedly should do.
A significant portion of my hunting license fees go towards the preservation of land, to support waterfowl habitat. Open space is something we will lose forever the moment we bulldoze it over for a suburban housal unit or office park...but that's what we are doing. Stone Lakes is abutted by an Elk Grovian subdivision of the same name, Stone Lakes. It will only be a matter of time, if we fail to respect and preserve our open spaces, before we say fuck it, we dam up the creeks that feed the refuge, we bottle the water for sale at the supermarket, and we pave over the refuge for a new interchange to the freeway.
I was trying to kill birds.
As a waterfowl hunter I fully respect what wilderness we have left around Elk Grove. I am keen on what I'm doing, I do so responsibly, I eat what I kill. Truthfully, contrast that with eating at Cape Cod fish and chips or Mikuni's -- and tell me that the netting of cod in the Atlantic ocean and transporting them 3,400 miles, or farming Octopus in Japan and sending it 6,200 miles is more environmentally friendly, then tell me again how disgusted you are that I'm out killing innocent birds for pleasure.
As a hunter I believe I have a greater respect for where our food comes from than virtually every other Elk Grovian, all of whom drive to the supermarket for cottage cheese without a shred of knowledge where it's processed, how much energy is used to manage feedlot diary cows, how much energy is used to transport their cottage cheese, 1,500 miles on average, to them. I am far more willing and able to minimize how much energy is used to feed me, having a far greater impact on oil use, climate, and traffic congestion than virtually all these other "green" things we supposedly should do.
A significant portion of my hunting license fees go towards the preservation of land, to support waterfowl habitat. Open space is something we will lose forever the moment we bulldoze it over for a suburban housal unit or office park...but that's what we are doing. Stone Lakes is abutted by an Elk Grovian subdivision of the same name, Stone Lakes. It will only be a matter of time, if we fail to respect and preserve our open spaces, before we say fuck it, we dam up the creeks that feed the refuge, we bottle the water for sale at the supermarket, and we pave over the refuge for a new interchange to the freeway.
Los Angeles Without The Freeways
So....3.5% growth last quarter...we are ready to resume our suburban slum blowout here in Elk Grove from the Sacramento City border to our north to Galt to our south. Elk Grove is Los Angeles...without the freeways.
I sat at the dentist's office off Elk Grove Blvd. and Bruceville last Wednesday, on the edge of a massive corner strip mall called Elk Grove Commons (the dentist, Kohls, GameStop, Pete's Coffee, etc), overlooking the weed filled "developments" of Laguna Ridge and Poppy Ridge Estates.
First of all, these so-called Commons are privately held, owned and operated. You are only allowed onto the commons as a consumer, and upon commencement of your consumptive activities you are invited to hurry on out, to make room for another vehicular enabled consumer. Hardly a public realm. Hardly a common good. But, that's all we got, and such an apt name for a strip mall -- the only place an Elk Grovian can go to meet other commoners. Even the stores themselves within the Commons are too far separated to walk to. You exit the Trader Joes and you'll have to drive to the other side of the commons to get your hair cut at the Vietnamese QT Nails.
Nonetheless, this is the essence of 3.5% growth. Commons that aren't common, weed-filled empty tracts of leveled dirt just waiting for a housal rebound, waiting to build out another subdivision full of auto-dependent people -- each one fighting each other for the use of the only truly common thing we have in Elk Grove...the roadway. You can remain on the roadway for 24 hours if you'd like. But try hanging out in the Commons or in Elk Grove Park after sundown. You'll be shackled and booked.
3.5% growth means just more suburban slums in Elk Grove. When a new subdivision pops up near you, is your first thought "Look, Honey, new neighbors are moving in!" or "Awww, fuck, more congestion!"
Bring on the growth.
I sat at the dentist's office off Elk Grove Blvd. and Bruceville last Wednesday, on the edge of a massive corner strip mall called Elk Grove Commons (the dentist, Kohls, GameStop, Pete's Coffee, etc), overlooking the weed filled "developments" of Laguna Ridge and Poppy Ridge Estates.
First of all, these so-called Commons are privately held, owned and operated. You are only allowed onto the commons as a consumer, and upon commencement of your consumptive activities you are invited to hurry on out, to make room for another vehicular enabled consumer. Hardly a public realm. Hardly a common good. But, that's all we got, and such an apt name for a strip mall -- the only place an Elk Grovian can go to meet other commoners. Even the stores themselves within the Commons are too far separated to walk to. You exit the Trader Joes and you'll have to drive to the other side of the commons to get your hair cut at the Vietnamese QT Nails.
Nonetheless, this is the essence of 3.5% growth. Commons that aren't common, weed-filled empty tracts of leveled dirt just waiting for a housal rebound, waiting to build out another subdivision full of auto-dependent people -- each one fighting each other for the use of the only truly common thing we have in Elk Grove...the roadway. You can remain on the roadway for 24 hours if you'd like. But try hanging out in the Commons or in Elk Grove Park after sundown. You'll be shackled and booked.
3.5% growth means just more suburban slums in Elk Grove. When a new subdivision pops up near you, is your first thought "Look, Honey, new neighbors are moving in!" or "Awww, fuck, more congestion!"
Bring on the growth.
Monday, November 9, 2009
The Stimulati
So having vacuumed up all those loose stimulatory nickels in Washington, SMUD is primed to spend north of one hundred and twenty million dollars to install new metering and other more smarter stuff, forming the floor for our upcoming smarter grid.
And while those in control are saying that this stimulati has created or saved 640,000 jobs, SMUD is ready to eliminate a fair number of meter readers once wireless metering is installed. Loss of jobs, of course, is [in part] how our smart grid is projected to save money in the long run.
I'm guessing that when we stack all those saved nickels, when we devise long term budgeting for the smart grid, we happily include the savings from these eliminated metering positions to make a stronger business case for smart gridding, but I warn that we will totally fail to account for myriad other jobs that will need to be created and filled to manage the fourfold complexity of this technology. We will underestimate this by a long shot...a long shot.
I'll say it again -- look to the California ISO, then tell me that duplicate energy monitoring and control functions along with the creation of extremely complex marketing arrangements has decreased the cost of electricity in California...has made energy and capacity trading less expensive for utilities. There are whole divisions in PG&E, whole business divisions, that now exist to trade energy through the ISO, to detail outage requests, to process the tractor-trailers full of market settlements, to manage marketing risks, to lawyer lawsuits and subpoenas and summons and testimony before FERC and...all that didn't exist before.
Then tell me that our smart grid's gonna do the same, it's gonna shave costs. Please identify one instance in human history, just one, where the use of additional technology has led to a overall reduction in total energy use.
I dare say there isn't one. Smart grid, in my opinion, isn't at all about saving the world or using less power or any of that horseshit -- it's about expanding the role electric service providers have in providing that electric service, expanding the role of nine hundred thousand new vendors providing new meters, new home area networks, new smart enabled products, gadgets, appliances and services, under the rubric of "increased reliability and decreased costs." That technology will pave the way towards hassle-free billing, metering, and delivery of electricity.
Uh-huh...
And while those in control are saying that this stimulati has created or saved 640,000 jobs, SMUD is ready to eliminate a fair number of meter readers once wireless metering is installed. Loss of jobs, of course, is [in part] how our smart grid is projected to save money in the long run.
I'm guessing that when we stack all those saved nickels, when we devise long term budgeting for the smart grid, we happily include the savings from these eliminated metering positions to make a stronger business case for smart gridding, but I warn that we will totally fail to account for myriad other jobs that will need to be created and filled to manage the fourfold complexity of this technology. We will underestimate this by a long shot...a long shot.
I'll say it again -- look to the California ISO, then tell me that duplicate energy monitoring and control functions along with the creation of extremely complex marketing arrangements has decreased the cost of electricity in California...has made energy and capacity trading less expensive for utilities. There are whole divisions in PG&E, whole business divisions, that now exist to trade energy through the ISO, to detail outage requests, to process the tractor-trailers full of market settlements, to manage marketing risks, to lawyer lawsuits and subpoenas and summons and testimony before FERC and...all that didn't exist before.
Then tell me that our smart grid's gonna do the same, it's gonna shave costs. Please identify one instance in human history, just one, where the use of additional technology has led to a overall reduction in total energy use.
I dare say there isn't one. Smart grid, in my opinion, isn't at all about saving the world or using less power or any of that horseshit -- it's about expanding the role electric service providers have in providing that electric service, expanding the role of nine hundred thousand new vendors providing new meters, new home area networks, new smart enabled products, gadgets, appliances and services, under the rubric of "increased reliability and decreased costs." That technology will pave the way towards hassle-free billing, metering, and delivery of electricity.
Uh-huh...
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The Wait
On a Halloween night that couldn't have been nicer, with zero wind and 63 degrees, there were absolutely no kids out this year. The worst showing in the thirteen years I've lived here in Elk Grove.
Why? I will ask that question to myself here on my blog over the course of the next year, and wonder if somehow we are changing for the worst. The Great Recession? Pig Flu? Game 3 of the World Series? Were these the causes of such a poor turnout?
I remember when I first moved here with my two eight-year old and 18-month old boys, I remember taking them out on our first Halloween and thinking how utterly dead my new "community" was, how no one bothered to open up their houses to trick or treaters. My very first thought, being a white guy growing up in the white suburbs of Carmichael where Halloween was always very well played out, was that maybe all my new neighbors just didn't give a damn about Halloween because maybe it wasn't in their Asian/Black/Mexican American vernacular. I noted how very diverse my neighbors were -- Filipino's next door, a Chinese man and a Korean woman next to them, a Black man and a white woman across from them, a Mexican couple next to them, Punjabi's next to them, and so on. Was Halloween a white-only event? I kid you not, that was my reaction. I thought Halloween was a whites only affair.
I spent most of this beautiful Sunday morning retiring my Halloween props to the attic for another year-long wait, and all morning long I lamented what our Elk Grovian kids won't ever have that I had...good Halloweens with hundreds of kids and pillowcases full of candy and dozens of scary neighborhood displays and a full night of walking and... Elk Grove has always had a shitty Halloween turnout, but this year was exceptionally bad. I now don't attribute it to any cultural differences due to a highly diverse population...I attribute it to the poor respect Elk Grovians have towards their Elk Grovian neighbors, and I will attribute that to our car dependent, low density, private-only, public-be-damned urban design.
When you build communities that are from the start lifeless, that are chopped in half with brutal NASCAR styled collector roads, that are not fit for walking, that have no respect for the public realm -- then you don't ever get children out on Halloween and you don't ever get parents who will even let their children go out on because of the one-in-three pedophiles among us, because of the razor blades in the gummy bears, because of all those speeding assholes. They button themselves up inside their private realms, turn off all the lights, and vegetate while watching Dancing With The Stars...
I should also offer that perhaps my little community, now some 19-years old, is at the stage in the lifecycle of suburbia where kids are simply non-existent -- perhaps we just don't have as many kids because young parents with children want their own new housal unit which means all the children are now a few miles farther out in the newest fifth-tiered suburban ring of Sacramento. This is an idea I should explore further.
Why? I will ask that question to myself here on my blog over the course of the next year, and wonder if somehow we are changing for the worst. The Great Recession? Pig Flu? Game 3 of the World Series? Were these the causes of such a poor turnout?
I remember when I first moved here with my two eight-year old and 18-month old boys, I remember taking them out on our first Halloween and thinking how utterly dead my new "community" was, how no one bothered to open up their houses to trick or treaters. My very first thought, being a white guy growing up in the white suburbs of Carmichael where Halloween was always very well played out, was that maybe all my new neighbors just didn't give a damn about Halloween because maybe it wasn't in their Asian/Black/Mexican American vernacular. I noted how very diverse my neighbors were -- Filipino's next door, a Chinese man and a Korean woman next to them, a Black man and a white woman across from them, a Mexican couple next to them, Punjabi's next to them, and so on. Was Halloween a white-only event? I kid you not, that was my reaction. I thought Halloween was a whites only affair.
I spent most of this beautiful Sunday morning retiring my Halloween props to the attic for another year-long wait, and all morning long I lamented what our Elk Grovian kids won't ever have that I had...good Halloweens with hundreds of kids and pillowcases full of candy and dozens of scary neighborhood displays and a full night of walking and... Elk Grove has always had a shitty Halloween turnout, but this year was exceptionally bad. I now don't attribute it to any cultural differences due to a highly diverse population...I attribute it to the poor respect Elk Grovians have towards their Elk Grovian neighbors, and I will attribute that to our car dependent, low density, private-only, public-be-damned urban design.
When you build communities that are from the start lifeless, that are chopped in half with brutal NASCAR styled collector roads, that are not fit for walking, that have no respect for the public realm -- then you don't ever get children out on Halloween and you don't ever get parents who will even let their children go out on because of the one-in-three pedophiles among us, because of the razor blades in the gummy bears, because of all those speeding assholes. They button themselves up inside their private realms, turn off all the lights, and vegetate while watching Dancing With The Stars...
I should also offer that perhaps my little community, now some 19-years old, is at the stage in the lifecycle of suburbia where kids are simply non-existent -- perhaps we just don't have as many kids because young parents with children want their own new housal unit which means all the children are now a few miles farther out in the newest fifth-tiered suburban ring of Sacramento. This is an idea I should explore further.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
God, Guns, and NASCAR
I find it highly interesting, highly, that our nation's Republicans are chanting "No government health care," obviously decrying government intervention, yet when it comes to one of the most heavily subsidized programs in America, the funding for our National Highway System, somehow it's all OK.
The NHS is important, so our government says, for our economy, for national defense, and for mobility. I particularly like the one about national defense...ever since 1956 when it was first begun we've heard that our highways were a vital component to our national defense. Really. Really? What, exactly, have we had to defend against in the last fifty three years where some fucking road played a crucial part in protecting our way of life? In protecting our freedoms?
In my little opinion, it's our building of roads that has underwritten our defense budget. If we didn't have 3.4 million super-commuters in our car obsessed nation, consumers who spend north of 1 1/2 hours each day commuting, I'd wager we wouldn't be in Iraq. The ability of anyone with a pulse to motor down the highway is independent of whether they pay income taxes or not. A woman living in Oakland who commutes to SoMa to wait tables? If it's indeed true that 47% pay no income taxes, then nearly half of all those who use the freeway are only paying a fraction of what they use via gasoline taxes, which don't come close to covering the true cost of driving.
Yet, for some reason, Republicans are more than happy to overlook that subsidy. Yes, more than happy, because roads provide for the economy, for their defense from infidels, for their mobility. What God, gun and NASCAR loving Republican doesn't approve of that government intervention, huh? One would think they'd be marching on Washington to get government out of road building and get the free market managing, building, and maintaining our roads...but no...when it comes to the NHS, more government is more gooder.
CHIMSL
SMUD represents 4% of the total electrical load in California, but was recently awarded 64% of all the federal stimulus monies borrowed dollars allocated to California for a new, more smarter smart grid.
I am wont to decry the smart grid and the funding mechanisms of federal stimulus, but hey, SMUD built a fantastic vacuum cleaner earlier this year with our funding proposals and is now sucking up all those loose nickels floating around Washington. Good for us!
I hasten to add that SMUD was going to move forward with the installation of smart metering regardless of stimulatory funding. All this did, in my little opinion, was shift the burden of funding the smart grid from SMUD ratepayers to general taxpayers. Now, a SDG&E ratepayer in the suburban slums of Mira Mesa, CA will file her taxes in April 2010 and get to watch a portion of that fly northward to offset the cost of a new meter installation in Orangevale. Likewise, a CenterPoint ratepayer in Houston will help fund my Elk Grovian smarter smart meter.
I will offer that my new smart meter will provide absolutely zero demand side management value to SMUD. Here's why:
My own move to a smart meter will not provide any load shifting to SMUD, as it will also likely not apply to anyone living in Land Park, Folsom, Silver Springs, Arden Arcade, or East Sacramento. Tell me that these people will sit and sweat it out inside their Garage Majals and defer air conditioning until kWh rates drop by a nickel, or Horrors! engage the public in an air conditioned public venue.
That is, demand side management won't work for a fair number of installations, say, 15%, while the remaining 85% will try but will run up against Our Way Of Life. The second refrigerator in the garage will not get unplugged when rates are high. People won't sit in the early evening dark without lighting. When it's cold at 5:00 PM the heater will come on. People won't defer watching TV until 2:45 AM. If you enable your smart washing machine to come on when rates are cheap and it starts washing at 12:05 AM, tell me our residents will get up at 12:55 AM (because the smart washing machine sent an e-message to your Boysenberry at your bedside to alert you that the clothes are done) to put them in the dryer and allow their wet clothes to sit until their smart dryer determines it's cheap enough to run.
OK. Perhaps you might defer running your dishwasher until midnight. But if you are already on time of use rates, do you really need a smart meter to tell you to do that?
When the department of transportation decided to mandate the use of the center high mount stop light (CHIMSL) on vehicles, they expected a 15% reduction in rear-end crashes because that's what study after study revealed, but in practice, while there was a marked early reduction in crashes as the lights were phased in, the actual rate didn't stay at the supposed 15% but rather reverted back nearly to the pre-CHIMSL level, a levelized 4% reduction. Perhaps, yes, an argument can be made that we've received a 4% benefit and so the new CHIMSLs are a good thing, but this represents the diminishing returns of new technologies. Side question: if your CHIMSL is burnt out, can you be stopped for a busted tail light?
I would argue that smart metering will follow a similar trend. As soon as that first ridge of high pressure parks itself over Four Corners with 109 degree days in Elk Grove, after the third day of that heat wave Elk Grovians are going to say fuck it and will turn on the AC no matter how much it costs. Yes, there will be some load shifting, but I would suggest that it ain't gonna be as big as SMUD or Smarte Grid proponents believe, particularly in light of the costs associated with managing all that data and keeping it hacker proof. This isn't just some new wiring and a new tail light, folks -- this smart grid represents technological complexity of the highest order.
I have yet to "Come to Jesus" regarding this smart grid, but in a follow on post I will describe the expected benefits to distribution automation that really should make headways in system reliability. This is where our smart grid will likely provide some very tangible benefits. More to come.
I am wont to decry the smart grid and the funding mechanisms of federal stimulus, but hey, SMUD built a fantastic vacuum cleaner earlier this year with our funding proposals and is now sucking up all those loose nickels floating around Washington. Good for us!
I hasten to add that SMUD was going to move forward with the installation of smart metering regardless of stimulatory funding. All this did, in my little opinion, was shift the burden of funding the smart grid from SMUD ratepayers to general taxpayers. Now, a SDG&E ratepayer in the suburban slums of Mira Mesa, CA will file her taxes in April 2010 and get to watch a portion of that fly northward to offset the cost of a new meter installation in Orangevale. Likewise, a CenterPoint ratepayer in Houston will help fund my Elk Grovian smarter smart meter.
I will offer that my new smart meter will provide absolutely zero demand side management value to SMUD. Here's why:
- I am already knowledgeable about how and when I use electricity.
- I'm rich. Fabulously wealthy. I can afford all discretionary uses of electricity. When it's 105 outside, the AC is coming on...regardless of how much the time-of-use energy will cost me.
- If I am spurred on to use electricity more efficiently, I don't need a new meter to tell me that. Energy efficiency measures have already been employed at my housal unit using my old dumb meter.
- I will not shift any more electrical use. I will not drive to the library to enjoy publicly provided conditioned air while I wait for the price of a kWh to drop a nickel before conditioning my own air. I will not choose to read a book instead of watching TV or vice versa because some smart meter told me it's more economical to do so.
- SMUD will still have to dispatch a meter reader to my housal unit as my PV production meter is un-smart. If SMUD decides to swap that one out as well, then I will have doubled the cost to SMUD to smarten my house, offsetting all possible future gains from any supposed demand shifting.
- I always pay my bill, so SMUD will never have to utilize the remote disconnecting means that come with the meter...a hidden cost in all these meters.
My own move to a smart meter will not provide any load shifting to SMUD, as it will also likely not apply to anyone living in Land Park, Folsom, Silver Springs, Arden Arcade, or East Sacramento. Tell me that these people will sit and sweat it out inside their Garage Majals and defer air conditioning until kWh rates drop by a nickel, or Horrors! engage the public in an air conditioned public venue.
That is, demand side management won't work for a fair number of installations, say, 15%, while the remaining 85% will try but will run up against Our Way Of Life. The second refrigerator in the garage will not get unplugged when rates are high. People won't sit in the early evening dark without lighting. When it's cold at 5:00 PM the heater will come on. People won't defer watching TV until 2:45 AM. If you enable your smart washing machine to come on when rates are cheap and it starts washing at 12:05 AM, tell me our residents will get up at 12:55 AM (because the smart washing machine sent an e-message to your Boysenberry at your bedside to alert you that the clothes are done) to put them in the dryer and allow their wet clothes to sit until their smart dryer determines it's cheap enough to run.
OK. Perhaps you might defer running your dishwasher until midnight. But if you are already on time of use rates, do you really need a smart meter to tell you to do that?
When the department of transportation decided to mandate the use of the center high mount stop light (CHIMSL) on vehicles, they expected a 15% reduction in rear-end crashes because that's what study after study revealed, but in practice, while there was a marked early reduction in crashes as the lights were phased in, the actual rate didn't stay at the supposed 15% but rather reverted back nearly to the pre-CHIMSL level, a levelized 4% reduction. Perhaps, yes, an argument can be made that we've received a 4% benefit and so the new CHIMSLs are a good thing, but this represents the diminishing returns of new technologies. Side question: if your CHIMSL is burnt out, can you be stopped for a busted tail light?
I would argue that smart metering will follow a similar trend. As soon as that first ridge of high pressure parks itself over Four Corners with 109 degree days in Elk Grove, after the third day of that heat wave Elk Grovians are going to say fuck it and will turn on the AC no matter how much it costs. Yes, there will be some load shifting, but I would suggest that it ain't gonna be as big as SMUD or Smarte Grid proponents believe, particularly in light of the costs associated with managing all that data and keeping it hacker proof. This isn't just some new wiring and a new tail light, folks -- this smart grid represents technological complexity of the highest order.
I have yet to "Come to Jesus" regarding this smart grid, but in a follow on post I will describe the expected benefits to distribution automation that really should make headways in system reliability. This is where our smart grid will likely provide some very tangible benefits. More to come.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Dignity of Place
The Michigan Theatre
Built in 1926, this glorious building functioned as a performance space until 1976, when it was converted into a parking garage.
This photo and caption from Time Magazine discloses many of the ideas I ruminate on The Franklin Monologues: parking is king; failure to provide for and maintain viable public realms; evisceration of our national manufacturing base; private cars vs. alternative modes of travel; and failure to respect the dignity of place.
Free parking in downtown Detroit! Sorry -- parking is never free...it comes with substantial hidden costs that are rarely revealed to and rarely directly levied upon our motoring public. It most certainly costs less to house vehicles in a dilapidated shell of a former [public] venue, yes...but hardly free.
When I decry the loss of manufacturing jobs, take note that I'm an electrical engineer who works in the support of the manufacturing of electricity. I not only lament the loss of good paying manufacturing jobs but by practical necessity many engineering jobs that support that production are also lost -- all the engineers designing robotic controls in manufacturing facilities, civil engineers designing factories, etc. I don't know much about global economic theory but my gut feeling tells me that our service/financial sector and consumer economy can't be sustained without a productive floor. With the loss of manufacturing jobs, Detroit workers and their families failed to attend theatre anymore. A parking lot it became.
In your city, if your city happens to have a pre-automotive central core, perhaps you've also witnessed that when an old building was at the end of its life it was often razed to the ground and paved over for parking. The lot below might just become a surface parking lot:
If the original building stood with other buildings in a coherent, walkable downtown core, the creation of a parking lot would destroy the street enclosure, destroy the connectivity of buildings. These aren't trivial things, because once you start going down that road the rest of the core is compromised. When you further consider that the property taxes paid by the lot owner are likely less due to it being undeveloped, and that better economics arise from building suburban sprawl instead of infill projects, the core turns to liquid shit.
The core deteriorates while the first suburban ring approaches the end of its newness and a second suburban ring is built, then a third. Property wealth migrates farther out. Look at my Sacramento region -- sure, we are finally recognizing the substantial potential of our downtown core, but the real property wealth has migrated out, to Elk Grove, to El Dorado Hills, to Folsom, to Lincoln, while the earlier inner rings of Del Paso Heights, Carmichael, Valley Hi, Orangevale and Fair Oaks are going the way of the Michigan Theatre...perhaps not quite so dramatically, but nonetheless they are going.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Indifference
I'm amazed at the indifference my Elk Grovian neighbors have towards one other:
House on left -- occupied by people who care about their pristine landscape.
House on right -- foreclosed on due to default on deed of trust.
House on left -- occupied by people who don't give a flying fuck about their neighborhood.
House on right -- man-sized weeds due to nature.
House on left -- occupied by people who think they are an island of their own.
House on right -- clearly neglected by rightful owners.
House on left -- clearly negligent of their own neighborhood and everyone else who might live among them.
Seems to me that if someone is willing to keep up their property, the very nature of living next door to a foreclosure should spur them to provide for a modicum level of maintenance even if it means doing some manual labor like cutting weeds. Certainly these neighbors of mine don't give a rat's ass about where they live, only about where they live. We can bash the people who bought a house they couldn't afford, yes. But why these next door neighbors couldn't spend a few minutes of their time to maintain the landscape of a bank owned property is really telling of what kinds of people we have in our communities. People who don't give a shit about anything but what they own, their own property, their own private realm.
This is what Elk Grove is -- a land of private realms with no public realms filled with indignant people who only care about me, me, me, my, my, my, mine, mine, mine, and fuck everything else. This is what suburbia gives us. It gives us people who are failures at being citizens because there is no reason whatsoever to become a decent citizen. So long as the roads are maintained to perpetually drive, so long as the big box stores are regularly and cheaply filled with 12,000 items, they couldn't give a shit about their neighbors because they mean nothing to them, they provide them nothing of value.
Nothing of value.
House on left -- occupied by people who care about their pristine landscape.
House on right -- foreclosed on due to default on deed of trust.
House on left -- occupied by people who don't give a flying fuck about their neighborhood.
House on right -- man-sized weeds due to nature.
House on left -- occupied by people who think they are an island of their own.
House on right -- clearly neglected by rightful owners.
House on left -- clearly negligent of their own neighborhood and everyone else who might live among them.
Seems to me that if someone is willing to keep up their property, the very nature of living next door to a foreclosure should spur them to provide for a modicum level of maintenance even if it means doing some manual labor like cutting weeds. Certainly these neighbors of mine don't give a rat's ass about where they live, only about where they live. We can bash the people who bought a house they couldn't afford, yes. But why these next door neighbors couldn't spend a few minutes of their time to maintain the landscape of a bank owned property is really telling of what kinds of people we have in our communities. People who don't give a shit about anything but what they own, their own property, their own private realm.
This is what Elk Grove is -- a land of private realms with no public realms filled with indignant people who only care about me, me, me, my, my, my, mine, mine, mine, and fuck everything else. This is what suburbia gives us. It gives us people who are failures at being citizens because there is no reason whatsoever to become a decent citizen. So long as the roads are maintained to perpetually drive, so long as the big box stores are regularly and cheaply filled with 12,000 items, they couldn't give a shit about their neighbors because they mean nothing to them, they provide them nothing of value.
Nothing of value.
Permanence
While I was preparing my relays at the Orangevale substation earlier this month, someone left the April 1977 National Geographic magazine in the control room. A nice old article on how the North Sea was just streaming on line and how, within a few short years, Britain would become a net oil exporter after having been dependent on foreign oil for three decades.
And yes, by 1980 the North Sea was producing loads of oil -- Britain & Norway became oil exporters. Even Germany, Holland, and Denmark all had their slice of that North Sea pie, too.
Yet now, some thirty years later, Britain is once again a net oil importer. And in that time they built an economy where one of every five people work in the financial services sector. That is, one in five are managing the monetary affairs of the other four people's money, other four people's labor, and other four people's productivity. That seems quite a racket, don't you think? A sector that ostensibly produces nothing taking in about a fifth of that nation's GDP. We have the same thing going on here, with Long Term Capital Management, Goldman Sachs, each player taking their slice of the national productivity in the form of fees, interest rates, and the like.
But I digress. This graph is a few years old but illustrates how the bonanza of the North Sea (along with Alaska's North Slope) was what helped propelled Thatcher and Reagan out of the early 1980's recession:
Once again, Britain is an importer of oil and will continue to import for as long as it remains a nation. Importing is now a permanent feature of the U.S., the UK, Indonesia, Australia, Germany, and so on.
I'm a simple minded Western American blogger that likely can't digest all the nuances of our modern global economy, our global financial systems, etc -- but I think -- if we emerge from recession and oil stays at $80 a barrel and/or increases more over time, how exactly is our economy going to get going again? And what, pray tell, does "emerging" mean? Back to suburbanized sprawl fueled on cheap credit, the selling of 2.3 cars per housal unit to service the housal unit, and the thousands of new freeway miles and strip mall centers needed to keep our obese, socially impaired citizens tooling along? Is this all our economy consists of? Tire shops, radiator shops, Asian foot massage parlors, Q's sports memorabilia, U-Stor-It storage pods filled to the brim with cheap imported shit you can't live with but you can't live without, cell phone stores and bluetooth kiosks? This is it?
Obama won't have a South Slope and Brown won't have a South Sea to help spur suburbanized oil-fueled sprawlish expansion keeping our unsustainable living model going. They are wishing, really, wishing, for a "green" sector to come along and magically provide for 3,000,000 new jobs on top of the 965,432 coal, oil, automotive and natural gas jobs that would be eliminated for not being "green." Imagine an American force of 625,000 Americans out installing solar panels! Imagine 323,000 Americans building and installing wind turbines!
Can you imagine it? Yes? That's all you're going to do, imagine it, 'cause it ain't gonna happen. These Americans will be too busy selling cheap imported Chinese shit to each other to give a rat's ass about sustainable living. They will be too busy mounting and balancing low profile tires and pimpin' rims on SUVs, too busy trucking Mexican cantaloupes to Montana in February, and burying themselves in the latest Japanese/Taiwan electronic gadgets surfing porn or socially "networking" without the social part.
I might sound like I'm anti-American, anti-Our Way Of Life and all that, but in reality I am a balanced person with fine principles and a good loving family -- I'm someone who wants better but who realizes that Americans are incapable of doing better. I've resigned to accept that our string has been played out -- so I hope for a crash and burn to force us to change because we won't do so voluntarily. That's why I blog, to cheer on our crash and burn. We are crashing socially, economically, and environmentally. I only hope we continue to crash because this is the only way I see us turning ourselves around as a people, as a species. If it means we lose our extraordinary American birthright to consume as much as possible whenever we feel like it, well, so be it.
And yes, by 1980 the North Sea was producing loads of oil -- Britain & Norway became oil exporters. Even Germany, Holland, and Denmark all had their slice of that North Sea pie, too.
Yet now, some thirty years later, Britain is once again a net oil importer. And in that time they built an economy where one of every five people work in the financial services sector. That is, one in five are managing the monetary affairs of the other four people's money, other four people's labor, and other four people's productivity. That seems quite a racket, don't you think? A sector that ostensibly produces nothing taking in about a fifth of that nation's GDP. We have the same thing going on here, with Long Term Capital Management, Goldman Sachs, each player taking their slice of the national productivity in the form of fees, interest rates, and the like.
But I digress. This graph is a few years old but illustrates how the bonanza of the North Sea (along with Alaska's North Slope) was what helped propelled Thatcher and Reagan out of the early 1980's recession:
Once again, Britain is an importer of oil and will continue to import for as long as it remains a nation. Importing is now a permanent feature of the U.S., the UK, Indonesia, Australia, Germany, and so on.
I'm a simple minded Western American blogger that likely can't digest all the nuances of our modern global economy, our global financial systems, etc -- but I think -- if we emerge from recession and oil stays at $80 a barrel and/or increases more over time, how exactly is our economy going to get going again? And what, pray tell, does "emerging" mean? Back to suburbanized sprawl fueled on cheap credit, the selling of 2.3 cars per housal unit to service the housal unit, and the thousands of new freeway miles and strip mall centers needed to keep our obese, socially impaired citizens tooling along? Is this all our economy consists of? Tire shops, radiator shops, Asian foot massage parlors, Q's sports memorabilia, U-Stor-It storage pods filled to the brim with cheap imported shit you can't live with but you can't live without, cell phone stores and bluetooth kiosks? This is it?
Obama won't have a South Slope and Brown won't have a South Sea to help spur suburbanized oil-fueled sprawlish expansion keeping our unsustainable living model going. They are wishing, really, wishing, for a "green" sector to come along and magically provide for 3,000,000 new jobs on top of the 965,432 coal, oil, automotive and natural gas jobs that would be eliminated for not being "green." Imagine an American force of 625,000 Americans out installing solar panels! Imagine 323,000 Americans building and installing wind turbines!
Can you imagine it? Yes? That's all you're going to do, imagine it, 'cause it ain't gonna happen. These Americans will be too busy selling cheap imported Chinese shit to each other to give a rat's ass about sustainable living. They will be too busy mounting and balancing low profile tires and pimpin' rims on SUVs, too busy trucking Mexican cantaloupes to Montana in February, and burying themselves in the latest Japanese/Taiwan electronic gadgets surfing porn or socially "networking" without the social part.
I might sound like I'm anti-American, anti-Our Way Of Life and all that, but in reality I am a balanced person with fine principles and a good loving family -- I'm someone who wants better but who realizes that Americans are incapable of doing better. I've resigned to accept that our string has been played out -- so I hope for a crash and burn to force us to change because we won't do so voluntarily. That's why I blog, to cheer on our crash and burn. We are crashing socially, economically, and environmentally. I only hope we continue to crash because this is the only way I see us turning ourselves around as a people, as a species. If it means we lose our extraordinary American birthright to consume as much as possible whenever we feel like it, well, so be it.
Speed Kills
Speed kills.
Well, in this case, not a killer event, but it damn well could have been:
Just another night in Elk Grove, just another car accident due to nothing but excessive speed, just another waste of our EGPD dollars responding to just another dumbshit driver, just another dumbshit driver adding to the cost of all our insurance premiums.
And just in front of my house...or rather, on Frye Creek and Deepdale, just to the side of my house. I don't park on the side anymore, but for twelve years my truck was parked on that side and it didn't get hit but it was only a matter of time. This time it was a parked car on the neighbor's side and this lady hit the parked car and careened it into the brick wall on the other side of the street.
It very easily could have been a pedestrian or a bicyclist fatality had we actually had any bicyclists or pedestrians in our city...but we don't, 'cause everyone drives, so in this case only the young female driver was shaken up. Her family members were quite indignant with me as I was taking photos of the wreck, clearly pissed that I was doing so. "Hey, you want to take photos of me, I'm photogenic," and "Hey, you a policeman, you got a right to do that?" but the EGPD just let me do it. I did it to document the wreck so perhaps my fucking city will install some "calming" devices on this street.
Not that I expect them to work even if I can convince them. It isn't the calming devices, it's the dumbshit drivers that need to be calmed. And Elk Grove is full of them.
Well, in this case, not a killer event, but it damn well could have been:
Just another night in Elk Grove, just another car accident due to nothing but excessive speed, just another waste of our EGPD dollars responding to just another dumbshit driver, just another dumbshit driver adding to the cost of all our insurance premiums.
And just in front of my house...or rather, on Frye Creek and Deepdale, just to the side of my house. I don't park on the side anymore, but for twelve years my truck was parked on that side and it didn't get hit but it was only a matter of time. This time it was a parked car on the neighbor's side and this lady hit the parked car and careened it into the brick wall on the other side of the street.
It very easily could have been a pedestrian or a bicyclist fatality had we actually had any bicyclists or pedestrians in our city...but we don't, 'cause everyone drives, so in this case only the young female driver was shaken up. Her family members were quite indignant with me as I was taking photos of the wreck, clearly pissed that I was doing so. "Hey, you want to take photos of me, I'm photogenic," and "Hey, you a policeman, you got a right to do that?" but the EGPD just let me do it. I did it to document the wreck so perhaps my fucking city will install some "calming" devices on this street.
Not that I expect them to work even if I can convince them. It isn't the calming devices, it's the dumbshit drivers that need to be calmed. And Elk Grove is full of them.
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