Those were the days

I remember in the days after September 11th (no, not in a "yada, yada, yada... September 11th" way, which has become this administration's mantra), our first and foremost question was: Who did this? If you'll remember, we didn't know it was Al Qaeda, or who it was who did it. So when the administration was asked, how do you find out who did it? The answer? Forensic accounting. (They also said if you let fear stop you, then the terrorists have won, but this administration did plenty of work to help the terrorists make sure you were afraid, but that's another topic.) There was a huge buzz about this little-before-heard method of crime scene investigation. Basically it involved following the money trail back to the source to figure out who did it. In fact, Bush's own exact words were:

And by the way, this list is just the beginning. We will continue to add more names to the list. We will freeze the assets of others, as we find that they aid and abet terrorist organizations around the world.

We have established a foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks.

It will bring together representatives of the intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to accomplish two goals: To follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions.

We are also working with our friends and allies throughout the world to share information. We're working closely with the United Nations, the EU and through the G-7/G-8 structure to limit the ability of terrorist organizations to take advantage of the international financial systems. - G.W. Bush, September 24, 2001

So when a New York Times article came out that, indeed, that's exactly what they did, I thought, oh, they just did what they set out to do. In fact, the tone of the argument was that, unlike the domestic spying problem, they got all the necessary legal court orders they needed to do, and carried it out as they said.

So what's the problem?

Basically, the administration and Republican Party is still mad at the New York Times for highlighting previous and potentially-unconstitutional actions taken by the Bush Administration in the War on Terror. They beat their chest and cry treason, but it's really a first pre-election volley to try and discredit the press and rally their base before the election season heats up, just as it happened in 2004.

Funny how the press is only a problem in even years. Oh, and gay married terrorists are going to try and make you sing the national anthem en español. Boo! And don't you worry your little head about those problems with Katrina, gas prices, no health care, and we can't build levees in New Orleans because we need to build a fence.

Again, fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice...

Kill a watt

Disclaimer: Yes I know. I'm a geek. :-)

I recently decided to leave my computer on all the time. I donated the idle CPU time to grid computing, which goes to help find cures for cancer, new drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, determine the effects of global warming, you know, general "save the world" kind of stuff. (For details, see http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/. I highly recommend doing it! It runs in your idle time, so even while it's running, you generally don't notice it running, and it's for great causes!)

The problem is, it bumped my electric bill up just over "baseline". Since I live in California, electric users have a graduated system of rates. Every is given a baseline based on your consumption profile (for example, a one-bedroom renter in San Francisco would have a different baseline than say a four bedroom rambler in Sacramento). It even varies by the time of the year (you're given a higher baseline if it's hot and you have to run the AC).

Anyways, so if you're below baseline, you pay a certain rate. (Mine's 11.5 cents/kwh.) If you're above baseline, any kilowatt above baseline is 12.9 cents/kwh. Then there's rates for 130% of baseline, 170% and so on. I'm told it can get as high as 39 cents/kwh for 300% of baseline. The system has it's advantages. For those who really need use the power, it can make solar more cost effective once it starts to get that rate.

Anyways, so enough of the background. The point was, I had bumped myself up into another rate bracket. It just got me thinking, how much electricity do all these things use? Some stuff, it's pretty easy to figure out. A 60 watt light bulb uses, yup, 60 watts. The 700 watt microwave? Yup, 700 watts.

But other stuff isn't so easy to figure out. A lot of stuff may be rated for a certain amount, but it only uses a percentage of the capacity. For example, the power supply on my computer is rated at 300 watts, but it typically doesn't use anywhere near that much, unless you had it stacked to the gills and then decided to use it all at once.

So how much do they use? I recently bought a device to figure exactly that out. The Kill-a-watt is pretty much just a specialized amp meter. It can tell you how many watts and amps something is using, along with the current voltage, hertz, power factor, as well as the cumulative kilowatt-hours a device has used. For example, I was able to figure out my refrigerator uses about 122 watts when it's running, and about 1.5 KWHs per day under normal conditions.

Then I found all sorts of interesting statistics. In over consumption, there's three things you have to worry about. Appliances that use large amounts of electricity for relatively short amounts of time (say an electric clothes dryer), those that use moderate amounts of electricity off and on (like the refrigerator), and those that use small amounts of electricity but all of the time. The first two, you just get the most the most efficient model you can afford. And they'll probably save you a lot later in electric bills too.

But it's the last point that was the most fascinating. There's a lot of things we leave plugged in all the time. But did you know they're using electricity? Even if you think they're "off". And quite possibly more than you think.

For example, I found out that my laser printer used 4 watts of electricity when it's off. It's not doing anything. 4 watts doesn't sound like much, but 4 watts x 24 hours a day x 30 days a month is almost 3 KWH a month, or about $6 a year... to do nothing. There was other stuff like that. My entertainment center used almost 90 watts off. That's like leaving a pretty bright light bulb on all the time. I found out my TV is Energy Star compliant, so it used an indetectible amount when off (the Kill-a-watt device registers anything below half a watt as zero), but the VCR, DVD and mini-disc player combined used about 13 watts when they're just sitting around waiting for something to do. That's 9.3KWH a month, or about $1.20 a month. I use them so rarely, I put them on a separate power strip and just turn the strip on when I put in a DVD. The PVR is technically always "on", but by turning the broadcast off, I saved a few watts. The stereo used 8 watts if was on but wasn't even playing anything. I try and remember to shut that off too.

So it's not so much the fact that they use a lot of power. It's just the fact that they have a tendency to run 24-7, and much of the time you really only use them a couple hours a month at most. The rest of the time, they're sucking the juice. Slowly, but save a KWH here, a KWH there, and I'm just back below baseline.

And it wasn't everything. I found out my alarm clock used an indetectible amount of electricity. To charge your cell phone? About 0.004 KWHs. The electric tooth brush charger didn't even register. Most of the stuff with a battery (laptops excluded) can't hold that much power, so it doesn't take much to charge them either. But it did annoy me that my AA battery charger did use about 0.1 KWH a day even when there's nothing in it, especially since that's not much less than it uses when it actually is charging something. I don't keep it plugged in unless I need to charge something now. I think more than anything it gave me a quantitative value to what I should worry about and what I shouldn't.

It had other uses too. Since I'm something of a electronics junkie, I used to have a tendency to overload a circuit and flip the circuit breaker. Now that I know how much electricity things were using, I'm just a lot more aware of how close I am coming to blowing the circuit, knowing that the big screen TV uses 200 watts, the microwave 700 watts, the entertainment center 100 when on, the lamp uses 100 watts... a couple more times could get me close.

But I haven't blown it since I bought it. :-)

Gay marriage: only a problem in even years?

"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protections, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing, and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages." - Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, President George W. Bush called upon Congress to pass the "Federal Marriage Act" to write into the constitution of the United States to ban same-sex couples the right to marry.

The last time Congress was called to do this was in 2004. Hmmm, 2004 and 2006. It has even less of a chance of passing this time as it did last time.

So why do it? Was it just not a problem in 2005? Or just simply not an election year?

It's purely a simple of politics, of turning same-sex couples into political cannon fodder.

And I will not be turned into political cannon fodder sitting down.

The only purpose of this tactic is to deter the voters from the record-low approval ratings and distract people from the real issues. In fact, several other bills were delayed because of a debate on an bill that had little chance of passing. These bills dealt with critical issues, including those funding Homeland Security, funds to battle a possible Avian flu pandemic, US military operations in Afghanistan, and other critical budgetary items.

I call upon all intelligent Americans to see through this tactic for what it truly is: a despicable attempt to rally the most base instincts and worst of people. I call upon all intelligent Americans to rise up above it, and see what is really going on.

Fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice, shame on you.