The environment will thank us, part 3.

I arrived at school to this comment from KC (on my blogspot version) in reference to the last post:

yeah this sucks. I really liked your analogy to the homework questions. I read that Prius article either yesterday or the day before and the reviews of that and the Civic. I think now if it was my car I would lean toward the Prius, however Bernie doesn't like the look of it...

What kills both myself and my wife about the Prius is that there actually used to be a Prius that did not look so goofy. Check out the original, 2001 version of the Prius. It's no '67 Shelby GT500, but it looks a lot more like other cars on the road.

I of course cannot prove this, but the Prius is so goofy-looking because people want to project the image that they are doing something for the environment whenever they do so. If you had a car that looked like everybody else's, who would know and then, who would praise you? While I am happy that people are buying and driving hybrids, I really wish that they were doing so for the right reasons rather than for image. The hybrid Camry and Accord look normal, and people still buy those, so I of course may be wrong.

The solution, of course, is to live close to your work so you can bike or walk every day. Or take public transit (like Alison) or private vanpooling (like I do). As my good friend KG (not in SF) pointed out, people who buy a new Prius to replace their old car are wasting a lot of resources having a brand new car created. Our culture of disposability is one of the greatest problems facing us today, and getting new cars constantly (instead of retrofitting old ones) is not helping.

The environment will thank us, part 2.

As the title suggests, this is the second post about the environment on Earth Day (today, April 22); if you missed the first, it's down there somewhere, and I'm sure you are smart enough (being a reader of this here blog) to locate it yourself.

I got sidetracked on the previous post talking about recycling in Socorro. But what made me want to blog today was some exciting news I read today.

The Bush Administration is doing its Earth Day duty and releasing some environmental news. This news is that they are going to raise fuel economy!

Wow! That's exciting! What do you think these new levels will be, considering that we currently have cars that can get 48 MPG city/45 MPG highway under the new EPA rating system? And considering that individuals have modded those very cars to produce a 100 MPG version (with about $6,000 in upgrades)? And considering that these standards do not have to be met until 2015, which is like 7 years away, plenty of time to refine techniques and change assembly stuff and work toward more efficient cars? 35? 40? 50 MPG? It could be done! What will it be?








New Fuel economy standard will be 31.6 mpg

You dicks.

There are a lot of things that really bother me about our president. Not the least of these things is that he unabashedly claims to be an environmentalist, while also constantly proving himself wrong. He's like the boy who cried wolf, except that it's more like Bush is the boy who cried "I'm awesome!" so many times, and it was shown to be a blatant lie, that even if he did something that helped the environment, I would just be completely skeptical. However, I think that it is pretty clear that 31.6 MPG by 2015 is a piddly goal.

But let's not just listen to me. The proof is in the blubbering, so they say. The auto industry has no desire to increase fuel efficiency. Therefore, any real, proactive stance taken toward actually doing something about the ridiculously low fuel efficiency of our vehicles should piss them off, right? Thanks, logic! Well, here's a quote from them:

“These numbers are very challenging. They will stretch the industry to innovate in ways they haven’t had to do in the past and will continue to set us on a course to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new autos,” said Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co. and others.

Anything that would actually be helpful should have resulted in something more like:

"Oh my god, holy shit, what are you people doing to us? We're going to lose our houses over this! Won't somebody think of the children?!

Instead, we get "ooooh, that'll be really hard" which is what you would tell your teacher if they wanted to know whether they should add more questions to your homework set. It's not that you couldn't do the extra problems, it's just that you would really rather not because you think that time could be better spent surfing the internet and finding things like this and this.

Note that Ford produced the first Model T back in 1908, and it had a mileage of 13 to 21 MPG back then. There is no reason that we shouldn't be leagues ahead of where we are today. Europe is already ahead of us (keep in mind that we have a lot more automotive engineers than they do), and will institute a 47 MPG requirement by 2012. Of course, in Europe they don't have so many SUV's.

Check out this article entitled "U.S. ‘stuck in reverse’ on fuel economy." Included is this gem:

Adding insult to injury is the fact that nearly two-thirds of the 113 highly fuel-efficient models that are unavailable to American consumers are either made by U.S.-based automobile manufacturers or by foreign manufacturers with substantial U.S. sales operations, such as Nissan and Toyota.

America's "me first" attitude is going to come back to bite it one day. What can we do to change society in time to save it from itself?

The environment will thank us, part 1.

Today is Earth Day, the one day per year where we acknowledge the giant (approximately) oblate spheroid of rock/ductile rock/magma on which we live. What are you doing for Earth Day? The Earth Science Club here at Tech has a little lunch where they discussed some issues. I think there were about 7 people there when I left (to go to class). Nice idea, although they were not to warm to my suggestion that they should start a community garden for the grad students in an effort to eat more local food.

The City of Socorro has "started" a recycling program here, which basically consists of a company that picks up your recycling happening to move from the East Mountains (east of Albuquerque) down to Socorro. I am dubious that this has been an effort on the part of the City. The recycling company actually calls itself Morning WoodCutters, which, if you are like me and watched a lot of Beavis and Butthead will strike you as either hilariously funny or generally shocking. And to drive home the point that this is not any kind of accidental naming, scope out this picture on the Morning WoodCutters website, which leaves very little to the imagination.

The upshot of the Socorro recycling thing is that you pay $20 a month for MWC to come to your house and pick up your recycling once a month. If you want a one-time pickup (that utilizes the entire truck), this will cost you all of $90. I recommended to those at the lunch that, if they go to Albuquerque once every month or so anyway, it would be much smarter for them to just take their recyclables up there themselves. I guess I should have encouraged the local option for the benefit of those who cannot go to Albuquerque. However, I would have taken less than that per person to transmit recyclables up to Albuquerque back when we lived in Socorro. (By the way, according to the City website it looks like the range of materials that MWC will recycle is the exact same stuff that Albuquerque recycles, leading me to believe that they just dump it off on the same recycling company).

The school is trying to get the Earth Science Club to handle the recycling for the entire campus, which consists of collecting recyclables (plastic bottles and aluminum cans only) from 38 different points on campus and taking them up to Albuquerque. Now, mind that the club is not going to get paid for any of this. I think maybe they get to keep can revenues, but that is unclear. Maybe with MWC now collecting recyclables it would make a lot of sense for the school to shell out $90 per month for its very own recycling runs (I'm pretty sure they spend much less that on flowers every month) and get one of the FacMgmt people to collect stuff. I made this suggestion, we'll see if it actually happens.

I didn't intend to actually write anything about Socorro, and was instead going to be all caustic about the Bush administration, but I guess this will have to be broken into multiple posts...

Baseball and Fireworks!

This weekend we went to another Albuquerque Isotopes game at beautiful Isotopes Park. They were playing the Nashville Sounds, who I remember watching many times back in the day at Omaha. I went with the wife as well as her "little sister" (she's in Big Brothers Big Sisters of America).

The game started out not-so-hot. The 'topes went down 3-0 after the top of the 2nd, but the home team busted out 10 runs in the bottom of the 2nd. You'd think this would translate to a laugher, but the Sounds actually came back to 10-9 by the middle of the 7th. The final score was 15-10 'topes, and there was a total of 9 home runs in the game, and not a single one came out onto the berm. Several cleared the weird hill in center field, and some jerks actually jumped the fence to get one of the balls. And somehow the park staff didn't do anything about it. Blergh.

The main attraction to going to the game was the fact that it was a fireworks night. The fireworks displays are pretty good for a ballpark display, and the best thing is that, if you are on the berm, the fireworks are pretty much directly over you. It's a wild time; next time I'll try to remember to take the camera and the tripod. And the music is patriotastic! Actually, it's a weird mixture of blind patriotism and classical music, but it's much more fun to make fun of "Proud to be an Amerrcan." We ended up getting the little sister home after 11pm because of all the offense.

The only bad part of the evening was that the berm was packed with children who were running around, screaming, stepping on our blanket, even running into us at times. And stealing other kids' baseballs. But any night at the ballpark is a good night.

Take me out to the ballgame!

Look! It's Matt! And he's alive!

Yes, I apologize for not blogging at you for the past 1.5 months. I imagine this is my longest drought ever. I just didn't have anything interesting to say (not that that usually stops me). Finally, though, a subject about which I can speak passionately: Baseball!

That's right, last night was the home opener for our beloved local Isotopes, and I, the wife, AW, and BT all bundled up to attend. We sat on the berm, where the team has raised ticket prices 20% since last year (from $5 to $6)! Also, I am extremely sad to report that Isotopes Brewing Company has apparently gone out of business, so no more Slammin' Amber or Isotope Ale. This makes me very, very sad, as these beers were quite excellent (especially considering that the team had no real reason to make a really good beer, since people would buy it anyway for the novelty), and the best beer available at the ballpark (they also have Fat Tire). Certainly the freshest! They were also cheap for ballpark beer, about $5-6 a pint. A trip to the ballpark will not be quite the same any more, and I'll probably no longer buy beer at the park in Albuquerque.

Our ballpark has been recognized by many as one of the nicest in the country, and in the pregame ceremonies (which included our mayor receiving an oversized novelty rent check) one person claimed it was the nicest in all of baseball. Now, we're not going to be visiting PNC Park in Pittsburgh for another month yet, and that's been called the best park in the majors; we'll see.

The theme of the evening was "cold." It was 47 degrees Fahrenheit when the game started, and the sun quickly set. Some of the players were wearing these cold-weather head things like Placido Polanco does. Of course, others were in t-shirts and whatnot. I had a thick fleece over a thinner one, and Alison was even more bundled up:


BT is the only one of the four of us who paid attention to the weather and truly prepared for it. We sat on the berm, as we always do, and I don't know whether this made us colder or warmer. The 'topes did not get off to a very good start, and were down 5-2 after the top of the third. The cold made it difficult to pay attention to the game, and I hadn't been around AW for awhile, so he had to assail me with a couple months' worth of puns in the span of a few hours. I was watching the scoreboard to monitor the major league scores (the Tigers actually won a game!) and the temperature as it continued to drop through the game. 46...45...44. At some point each of us had to get up and walk around for awhile to warm up. AW got some Crown Royal, Alison and BT went to locate hot chocolate (unsuccessfully - the concessioners must have run out), and I went to the warmest place in the park - the gear store. I didn't buy anything, although I was sorely tempted.

After the 5th, it was 6-3 Redhawks and about 44 degrees. AW, Alison, and I were all ready to go home at this point, but BT refused to leave before the end of the game. I guess we all felt emasculated, and stuck it out. I took a picture in the 7th after the temperature dropped to 42 degrees:


We ended up staying until the end of the game. The announced attendance was over 9,200, but there could not have been more than a couple hundred people left at the end of the game, and maybe fewer than 10 on the berm. Go us! The temperature when we left was 41 degrees, and the Isotopes lost their home opener.

Anyway, we were (or I was, anyway) glad to go see a baseball game for the first time this season, and look forward to seeing some more. I have two new major league parks on my schedule this summer (PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Comerica in Detroit), so that will be pretty exciting and blogs are sure to be forthcoming!