Random Photo XXIX: Chipper

This guy has been living in by backyard for at least two years. I'm not sure how damaging chipmunks are, but this one is pretty brave. Despite the constant presence of our Jack Russel Terrier, he has made himself at home under our air conditioner.

Of course, he doesn't look very relaxed about it.

tagged: chipmunk, random, photo, Kansas, rodent, cute, wildlife, nature

Crude awakening

Sure, some people are calling the oil spill in the Gulf a "crisis." And I guess to certain people with certain world views, it is a crisis.

But I prefer to look on the bright side of things. Where some people see crisis, I see opportunity. In this case, it's the opportunity to look at our national energy consumption and talk about ways to make it better.

And I'm not alone. Two of my favorite bloggers have noted the increased awareness of our energy situation.

Xavier Onassis, reining Imperator of Independence made some great points in his post about a smart energy grid, or as he called it an "agnostic energy grid":

What we need is a … power grid that will accept input from any source at a standard, pro-rated, kilowatt-based compensation, feed that electricity into the grid where it is distributed as needed at a standard, pro-rated, kilowatt-based pricing system.

There are so many ways to generate electricity that with a distributed generation strategy and a unified grid, we can have all the power we need without depending on fossil fuels.

He then lists many different ways to produce electricity, including small nuclear reactors like those that have been used for years to power America's warships at sea.

That post dovetails nicely into R.Sherman's two-part series on the importance of nuclear energy to our energy future. It's a great series (as you would expect from one of Missouri's finest minds) that scientifically points out that the so-called "green" energy solutions won't be enough by themselves to provide all of our energy consumption needs.

All these points made me realize that as a culture we have a pretty limited view of how we generate electricity. It's either from nuclear plants, coal plants, hydroelectric or wind or some other grand scheme.

But let's not forget that there are many ways to capture energy that is wasted every day. It seems like there are many opportunities to generate-- or rather capture -- small amounts of energy over a very large area. Kind of a "long tail" approach to the energy problem.

For example, an Israeli company has developed a new highway surface that generates electricity as cars drive over it.

A United Kingdom company has developed a way to convert the kinetic energy of pedestrians walking down a busy street into electricity.

There have also been proposals to embedded piezoelectrics in shoes, clothing, even body parts to convert kinetic energy into electricity.

None of these plans individually generate very much electricity. But if created in mass and spread out over a national -- maybe even global -- smart energy grid, a dent could be made in our electrical consumption.

So my mind started to wander and look for ways to capture and convert more kinetic energy into electricity. They've got cars and sidewalks and shoes covered. People have even hooked bicycles up to generators.

And then I saw an opportunity literally right in front of me. We need to have tiny little piezoelectric generators embedded into every computer keyboard and mouse in the country.

Just think of the potential. Any time anyone presses a key on the keyboard -- and it's done billions of times a day -- a tiny electric charge would be created. Every time you move your mouse, every time you hit the enter key, every time you backspace to correct a misspelling you would be generating a tiny bit of power.

All of these tiny bits of power would cascade into the smart energy grid like delicate snowflakes on a mountain top. But by the time they accumulate, they would become an avalanche of clean electric power that anyone could have access to.

And finally, at long last, the millions of bloggers writing inane, uninformed posts about subjects of which they have little understanding would be serving a useful purpose.


tagged: oil, energy, nuclear, Deepwater Horizon, piezoelectric, blogging, environmentalist

Separated at Birth II

Remember a couple of years ago when I did the Separated at Birth with Sarah Palin and Liz Lemon and then Saturday Night Live picked up on my joke and used it in their little skit show for the next 8 weeks?

Well, SNL, here's your new opening bit:

President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court Elena Kagan...


...and former SNL cast member Jon Lovitz...

tagged: Separated at birth, Elena Kagen, Jon Lovitz, politics, pop culture, Saturday Night Live

YouTube Tuesday: Ain't It the Truth

By now you've probably heard that the country has lost one of the brightest cultural luminaries of the last century the other day.

Lena Horne was a tremendous singer and artist and she used her well-deserved celebrity to champion civil rights equality even at the risk of her own career. She had a sense of class and distinction that is sadly lacking in most of today's pseudo celebrities.

Horne wasn't a pop culture giant while I was growing up. Still, a person of my generation had a good chance of seeing her perform on the television box, and more importantly hearing her and being exposed to her music. It makes me sad that she is gone (though she had a long and successful life) and that artists like her are a dying breed -- giving way to the Lady Gagas of the world.

Life is short, short brother
Ain't it the truth
And there is no other
Ain't it the truth
You've got to rock that rainbow
While you've still got your youth
Ain't it the solid truth

tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, music, movie, Lena Horne, Lady Gaga, Ain't It the Truth

Day at the museum

Our family celebrated Mother's Day on Sunday with a trip to one of the best cultural attractions in the metro area.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was hoppin'. A lot of people had the same idea. It was a bit gloomy outside on a cool and breezy day, but not too bad to go out and enjoy a nice walk though the Nelsen's sculpture park.

But the art and attractions in the museum were shining. We arrived around 2 p.m. and it was already busy with crowds of people showing up to view the amazing modern art in the new Bloch Building. One of my favorite pieces was Mark Rothko's Untitled No. 11, 1963, a piece (as most Rothkos are) that must be seen in person to fully appreciate.

One of the proudest moments for me was when we were browsing through the European art galleries when my 7-year-old daughter, an aspiring artist herself, recognized and named the Claude Monet painting.

Undoubtedly, most patrons came to museum on Sunday for the opening of the newly renovated Egyptian Galleries.

Kansas City welcomes Meretites! Exciting new Egyptian galleries will feature an elaborate and complete funerary assemblage from the tomb of a 2,300-year-old noblewoman, Meretites, which translated means Beloved by her Father.

Visitors will have the rare opportunity to view a spectacular inner coffin and outer coffin from middle Egypt, both decorated with hieroglyphics and images of gods and goddesses. The collection includes a gilded mask and protective body plates, plus intricately carved blue and green figurines called shabtis, which were intended as workers in the afterlife.

Their website says there was a fee to view the new gallery, but they didn't charge us anything. We gladly mad a donation since, again, this is an incredibly worthy local attraction.

I didn't get a picture of the mummy in the new display. Too dark, and I didn't want to use my flash.

But I did get a shot of this 2200-year-old Assyrian relief...It's a image of a winged genie fertilizing a date tree and is inscribed with cuneiform markings telling about the conquests of Assyrian monarch Ashurnasirpal II of Nimrud.

With the weather going into a cloudy/rainy pattern, I highly recommend you make a trip to the Nelson and reacquaint yourself with the great collections. Maybe even buy yourself a membership...

tagged: art, museum, Nelson-Atkins, Egyptian, Assyrian, Mark Rothko, Claude Monet, Mother's Day, Kansas City

Random Photo XXVIII: Yard bird

I spent some time on the patio the other day, tracking the comings and goings of another colorful feathered friend. It's hard to catch these guys in flight, especially with all of the trees and shrubs in our yard. But it's fun watching them do their various bird things.

tagged: Random, Photo, blue jay, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring

Bullitt list -- 05.05.10

Today's category:
Hope & Change update

I remarked once upon a time that the famous Hope and Change campaign that swept the current president into office on a tide of schmaltz and triteness wouldn't actually change anything. Well, I've been seeing some headlines lately that indicate that things actually have been changing...

..for the worse.

• One of the things Comrade Obama promised to "change" was the general lack of transparency among government agencies. After all, we're supposed to have a government of the people, by the people, for the investment banks people. Hard to achieve that when the people aren't allowed to know what's going on with the government.
  
  Luckily, Obama put his best people on the task of increasing government transparency. That's why, after a year and a half, federal agencies are NOT more transparent.
  
  In fact, some agencies in the Obama Administration are using trumped up exceptions to Freedom of Information requests more than they did in the previous year.

  Major agencies cited the "deliberative process" exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year... Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

  I guess we'll just have to rely on the Ministry of Truth to tell us what we need to know.
  
  
• But hey, at least we still have a free press in our country, right? In fact, we have the most open journalistic culture in the world. Our reporters have more access to more government officials than any other country in the world, free or otherwise, right?
  
  Well, not so fast my friend. According to the annual report from Freedom House, press freedom around the world declined for an 8th consecutive year, and the United States press now ranks 24th in press freedoms (PDF). And that's before factoring in recent events wherein CEOs of major U.S. corporations who lost their latest techie toy pull strings to have law enforcement authorities harass poor, hard-working journalists.
  


• And speaking of law enforcement authorities, the Obama Administration has has the dubious distinction of overseeing a new record for people under wiretap surveillance. Wired recently reported a 26 percent jump in police wiretapping.

  Courts authorized 2,376 criminal wiretap orders in 2009, with 96 percent targeting mobile phones in drug cases, according to the report. ... Not one request for a wiretap was turned down.
  
  Each wiretap caught the communications of an average of 113 people, meaning that 268,488 people had text messages or phone calls monitored through the surveillance in 2009, a new record. Only 19 percent of the intercepted communications were incriminating...

  This sort of thing shouldn't be surprising given Obama's history of supporting domestic spying. Still, you might want to be careful who you criticize when you're on the phone with your crazy, conspiracy theory uncle.


• Not that you're worried about the government spying on you. Why would they care who you are? As long as you mind your own business, go to your job every day, pay your mortgage, do what the authorities tell you, pay your taxes.... oops. You forgot to mail your tax return, didn't you. Well, I guess there's a satellite-based missile with your name on it...
  
  



• Okay, maybe saying there's a satellite-based missile with your name on it is a bit of an exaggeration. Because despite the spying, censorship and opaque bureaucratic machinations, if there's one thing our government never does it's assassinate its citizens.
  
  Well, almost never. It turns out the Obama administration has ordered a hit on a U.S. citizen, effectively approving a death penalty sentence without a judge or jury or due process of law.

  The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

  Kind of surprising that there haven't been any protests or marches against the administration's abuse of a citizen's civil liberties. Maybe it's because al-Awlaki is a legal US citizen and not a illegal alien.
  

tagged: Bullitt, hitman, Obama, freedom, hope, change, Anwar al-Awlaki, spying, wire tap

YouTube Tuesday: Tears of a clone

I like this short film from the Independent Online Cinema team in London who imagine a dystopian not-too-distant future when clones, and clones of clones, struggle for a sense of identity and the last remaining green goo.

IOC shows that you can have pretty high production value for web-based video and still not break the bank.

Let me know what you think.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, movie, short film, clone, dystopia, Independent Online Cinema

Racing Arizona

Politicians and their sheeple have done a great job this year of bringing back race as a wedge issue.

We were all really concerned that once a black president was elected we would all finally move beyond race and racism, but it's a relief that they have recognized that race as a political wedge issue is still very valuable.

Just look at how well it has been used. If you think we're over taxed, it's because you're racist. If you think the government is spending money on the wrong thing, you're a racist. If you disagree with passing a law mandating 30 million new customers for the insurance industry, it must be because you are a racist.

If you think hundreds of teens should be home studying or working at a productive job on Friday nights instead of rioting on the Country Club Plaza? Well son, you're a damn racist.

Yes sir. Despite all of the hope and change, the race card is alive and well in politics today. Just look at all of mileage the race baiters are getting out of this new Arizona Illegal Immigration law.

Before even reading or understanding the law at all, Koolaid drinkers flew off the handle calling it unfair and racist. I'm no lawyer, and I haven't gone through the legislation with a fine toothed comb, but my friend R.Sherman is, and he has. He's a great guy despite being a lawyer and he points out that the Arizona law essentially takes current federal law and makes it Arizona State law, except that the Arizona law is more lax than federal law.

Look, I'm on record as being pretty status quo on illegal immigration.I certainly don't condone it anymore than I condone any other illegal activity. But then again, of all the problems we have in our country, I don't think illegal immigration is the worst.

To the people who are acting all outraged about the supposed racial injustice of the Arizona law, I question your sincerity. I don't think you're really worried about the rights of illegal immigrants. More likely, your worried about your voting blocks and creating a wedge issue.

That's to bad because there are real, legitimate reasons to not like the Arizona law. Just from what I've read I don't think it's racist, I just don't like the idea of giving the police more excuses to hassle us. Frankly, I think we're putting ourselves at more and more risk when we give the government more reasons to stop us and demand identification.

I mean let's face it. The human rights train left the station long ago. We've already pretty much established that the Bill of Rights is more of a punchline than a protection against government abuses.

But rather than trying to limit government abuses, we've done everything we can as a society to encourage it. We basically said "Here Uncle Same, take half my income. Take care of my neighbors so I don't have to. While you're at take care of my health and retirement planning as well. What? You say you need to read my emails and listen to my phone calls so that you can keep me from doing something that it bad for me? Well, okay. You know best."

And now you're worried about abuses in Arizona? Well, you should be. But as I've said before, we have ourselves to blame. When we put too much faith in "the authorities" to look out for us you can't be too surprised when those abuses inevitably occur. If we make the government collectively responsible for everything, then the governed aren't individually responsible for anything.

You can't have a nanny state without also having a police state.

tagged: race, politics, Arizona, immigration, law, illegal

Random Photo XXVII: Cardinal

This guy and his wife have made my backyard and the backyard of two of my neighbors their home for the last few years. Nice to see that they survived the winter.

tagged: Random, Photo, cardinal, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring