I like Dick Cheney. I mean, he is not pretentious. He is no more or less evil than he lets on. The crazy speculation about a naked lady reflected in his shades in an official photograph is amusing. It is the closest that he has ever been to seeming sexy. Maybe his sexiness is the real reason for his steadfast refusal to run for President. He knows that his nation is not yet ready for a sexy President.

By the way, it is just the reflection of the VP’s hand gripping his pole.

There is a gigantic ball of gas burning all the time in the middle of our solar system. You might as well cook something while it’s on.

Summer seems like it’s just around the corner and I am moving into a place with a south facing back yard. I have been thinking about cooking with the sun. I don’t know how useful the kit in the picture would be, but it looks pretty simplistic.

SCI has developed a very simple solar cooker for use in refugee camps. After reading up on this program, I felt compelled to make a modest donation to the organization. Here is a video showing people in Chad building and using the cookers…

My family is trying to reduce our plastic waste. I took this picture for plasticless.com, but it looks so good that I thought I would post it here as well.

When we we walking towards the market square this morning, we yielded the narrow sidewalk to a line of tourists. It was a bit surreal to see seven retirement aged people in a row all eating bananas and walking in lockstep.

It’s carnival week here and it is not uncommon to see medium sized groups of young boys in gorilla masks behaving badly. The anonymity makes it a bit scary even for a tough guy like me. I had to smile when I was driving back to my neighborhood and saw a gorilla tagging along with his mom, thus blowing his cover.

Chief Dan George suspected that it might rain, otherwise he might have hung up some laundry.

I have somehow managed to live half of my life without being told by some organization that I can’t have a clothesline. I was a bit surprised to read that 60 million Americans (the Land of the Free???) are not allowed to hang out their clothes. I got the statistic from the Laundry List Project. Advocating for the use of free solar and wind energy to dry clothes is a great cause. Clothes dryers are the second most power hungry appliance in the modern home after refrigerators. I think we are all too sissified at this point to go back to drying meat in the sun, but drying clothes on a line is not that hard to manage.

I have been hearing a lot about the destruction of records in Washington lately. Some people are even suspicious of the recent fire in the White House compound. The secrecy, and the reasons for the secrecy are troubling, but what bothers me more is the waste and the pollution involved in these actions. The Bush administration has been talking the talk with reference to environmental issues in recent months, but they need a lesson in the three Rs. Reducing, reusing and recycling all that incriminating paper and videotape would be much better for the environment than burning it. I created this illustration to suggest a great photo opp; decorating the White House Christmas tree using shredded paper and unwound videotapes.

I made a discovery that I think reduced my battery usage slightly. The only device of mine that requires a regular supply of battery power is my point and shoot digital camera. I found out that batteries that have been deemed dead by the camera can be set aside for a couple of days and when you put them back in, there is enough juice to upload your pictures and maybe even take a picture or two without the flash.

After I discovered this, I had stopped disposing of batteries for several months. When we went on a decluttering rampage this weekend, I was shocked at how many of these toxic little cylinders were kicking around.

We need to get a rechargeable battery setup. I have been down that road before. I hope they have gotten better.

I sometimes forget to keep my phone charged up, so an electric car might sometimes be inconvenient for me. Walking 4-5 miles that I didn’t expect to walk might train me to remember.

The cool thing about the Venturi Eclectic is that three energy sources can be used to charge the big batteries. There is residential AC from an outlet. If I had a day job, I would try to convince my boss that letting me plug my Eclectic in at work somehow made him cooler. There is the sun, which ideally beats down on the photovoltaic cells on the cars roof. The third and most quirky energy source is the wind. When your car is parked, you can mount the optional wind turbines on the roof.

The company that makes this very practical but kinda dorky car also makes the first production sports car that is all electric. It is ‘practical’ and if you have an extra half million dollars lying around.

I couldn’t find a good video of the Eclectic, they aren’t going on sale until next year.

Source: Channel4

The BP Solar Decathlon is a competition between several university teams. Each team designs, builds and lives in a solar home. The competition is taking place on the National Mall in Washington DC. I am routing for the University of Cincinnati with their entry called “A Series of Tubes.”

I had a shower last evening, and like most of my showers over the last two years, the water had been heated by the sun. The water heater on my roof uses the same basic vacuum tube technology that these guys are using an a larger scale. I had an idea recently that involved piping solar heated water into an in-floor heating system. This wouldn’t be a good system in areas with frost. I am very curious about how this team plans to COOL the home using solar energy. I will be checking back to get the details.

There is also an internet voting component to the competition, which starts in just a few days. All the teams contribute blog posts to the blog section of www.bpsolardecathlon.com.

Solar energy is free. We underwent most of our evolution depending on it as our only external source of heat. We could have used dogs to keep us warm at night, but I don’t think they wanted to hang around our sorry asses until after we got the whole fire thing figured out.

If it’s mid morning as you read this, look around to see where your cat is. Is it on a sunny window sill? One low tech way to get solar energy is already in most homes, it’s called a window. Installing energy efficient windows are an advanced technology that any homeowner can take advantage of right now. High tech widows appear to be part of the strategy for some of the University teams at the Solar Decathlon.

Using solar energy to replace nonrenewable energy sources is going to take a lot of ingenuity. BP is happy to support this effort.

I stopped buying magazines sometime late last century. I found that a free paper could fill the void just as easily. I really didn’t have any interests that were well served by any magazines that were available to me. That is hard to believe given the ridiculous number of magazines that fill the shelves in any metropolitan area.

Anyway, we were guests at a Thanksgiving dinner and the host gave my son a copy of WIRED. I was leafing through it and I have to admit that I am impressed with it. I wonder if being focused on IT creates an attitude of continuously trying to justify having a print edition? It has to be about more than killing trees, right?

Hey, I wonder if anyone has a magazine devoted to tree killing enthusiasts?

I am a bit jealous of Oprah’s wealth and influence. I do not personally like her all that much. If she were to save the World, I would suck it up and be gracious.

Her endorsement of Al Gore’s personal efforts to promote positive change with regard to human impact on the environment could have an immeasurable effect. The former Vice President made good use of the platform he was given on Oprah.com. He provided a list of small and relatively simple things that people can do to reduce harmful emissions. I already do some of these things and I am going to try to do more.