:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 ::

Uniforms at Langley?

General Michael V. Hayden was sworn in as director of the CIA today. Given that he is now the head of a civilian agency, am I the only person to think that it was inappropriate for him to wear his full blown military uniform with ribbons for the occasion?

I am not anti-military, but the security of our Republic relies heavily on separation between military and government, with the government controlling the military, not the other way around. If someone in the military takes a post in the government, he or she should leave the military, and the uniform, behind.

I might point out the example of Dwight D. Eisenhower. After being Supreme Allied Commander, and he wore a suit and tie to his inauguration as president. Granted, Eisenhower had retired from the military in order to assume the presidency, but if Hayden is not going to retire or take some kind of leave from the Air Force, he has no business running a civilian agency. Except, perhaps, in the bizarro world we find ourselves in, with a president who thinks the Consitution is an amusing, outdated collection of suggestions on how the government should work.
:: Ray 3:54 PM [+] ::
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The problem with compact fluorescents

Despite my suburban lifestyle, I want to leave the lightest energy footprint possible on this planet. Yes, I have an SUV, but I use it mostly for moving big things and towing my Airstream. My primary car is a VW Golf that gets decent mileage, and my wife and I both commute to work via train most days. We just replaced the ancient furnace at our new house with a 93% one and the AC with a 13 SEER unit (which we don't intend to use very much). The lawn at the new place is so small that rather than buy a power mower for it, I picked one of the old-style manual push ones. It works great!

Several years ago, I began to experiment with compact fluorescent (CF) lights. The appeal was high: pay a few bucks more up front, and get a light that lasts many times longer (saving the hassle of having to change it) and uses a fraction of the electricity of an incandescent light bulb. The reality turned out to be disappointing in several respects.

First, it took several purchases of different brands before I settled on GE Soft White as the only one that gave what I considered to be acceptable light quality. There were quite a few bucks down the drain, wasted on cheaper "bargain" brands.

Then I discovered that CFs aren't very good in situations where they are turned on and off a lot. Especially during winter time when temperatures are cooler, they are initially very dim when turned on, and need time to warm up to get to their full brightness. This makes them fairly useless for rooms that are used only for short periods of time. And if you think about it, that 100 watt bulb in the storage room is only used for a few minutes at a time when you are in there anyway, so it doesn't make any sense to replace a fifty cent bulb with a more efficient seven dollar one.

CFs also can't be dimmed, so don't install one in a fixture with a dimmer. If you are a fan of dimmers, like me, you are out of luck.

In short, instead of a panacea for replacing incandescents, they turn out to be useful only in very limited situations: undimmed lights usually left on for long periods of time.

The kicker for me, though, was that after a year or so, one of the CFs "burned out." Then another did, too. They were supposed to last for 5-7 years. The didn't. I'm not sure why they died, but here are my guesses: they were in a fixture with two of them sideways, next to each other, inside a glass dome. Either they didn't like the voltage spike of being turned on a the same time (I've seen this kill incandescents before), or they didn't like being sideways, or they didn't like the heat. Whatever the case, they died prematurely, negating any financal savings on them. Sure, they were guaranteed, but did I save the receipts from their purchase? And to make matters worse, now there is that much more mercury at the local dump. That's right - each compact fluorescent has a little bit of mercury in it, just like big fluorescents do. They ought to be disposed of separately from regular trash, but they aren't.

But that's not all! Compact fluorescents are supposed to save energy. They use less electricity, yes, but just looking at one you can tell it takes more energy to make than does an incandescent, just as it takes more energy to make a hybrid car than a regular one (search google on hummer and hybrid if you don't believe me). If a CF lasts 5-7 years, hopefully the electricity saved offsets the energy used in manufacture, but if it dies early like mine did, you end up with a net loss. The planet would have been better off if I never bought the CF. There's a bright idea!

Does this mean I will never buy any more compact flourescents? No. But I will be extremely judicious about where I apply them. And the next time I want really high-effiency lighting, I will consider LEDs.

DISCLAIMER: This is one person's anecdotal experience with compact fluorescents. The math, on paper, still supports their use. As in with those fantasy mileage ratings on cars, however, there are more factors involved than just those numbers, and a bit of consideration of these factors is appropriate. If anyone out there has had a different personal experience with CFs, I would love to hear about it.
:: Ray 12:04 PM [+] ::
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A few words about fashion.

Can someone tell me what's up with women's pants?

I'm a heterosexual male. As such, I spend a not-insignificant percentage of my time gazing at women, their posteriors included. I am not a fashion expert but I observe and take note. Of late, something has struck me as odd. Dress-casual pants as currently sold for women by any company even remotely current fashion-wise (J Crew, Banana Republic, Gap, etc.) have fake back pockets. More specifically, the pants with slit pockets in back, not patch or flap pockets, are real, but the inside of the pocket is only an inch and a half deep or so, rendering them completely unusable.

Seriously, take a look at a few women's butts...discretely, of course (as I always am)! If you are a heterosexual man or a lesbian, this should be an enjoyable undertaking, and if not, think of it as an academic exercise. Look at the pockets of the ones wearing modern pants. Underneath the surface fabric, you will see the outline of a pocket, but it isn't even deep enough to fit a single credit card. Why?

I recognize that there are a few factors involved:
1) Women wearing dress-casual pants don't generally use their pockets to the extent that men do (spare me any preaching on generalizing...the fact is that the only women I have ever seen carrying a wallet in their back pocket were wearing jeans).
2) Women are generally more concerned than men about their pants fitting their posteriors in a flattering way.
3) The pants in question are emulating menswear pants of similar styling, which have back pockets.
4) Menswear fullsized back pockets are not necessarily pleasing to the eye on a woman's behind, interrupting the curves therein with lines underneath.

So if full pockets don't work for women, but emulating menswear requires back slit pockets as ornament, why bother with these ridiculous shallow pockets? Why not just put a seem there that looks like a pocket, but doesn't open and doesn't have any extra fabric inside to interrupt the curves? And if women DO want back pockets, why not give them pockets they can actually use? I don't get it.

There is something else I don't get about women's pants. Why do some have flies that zip up left-handed, when some others zip up right-handed, like men's? All I can say about this one is that given the nature of the location involved, you'd better be a whole lot more careful than you were with the back pockets if you decide to have a look and see if I am right...
:: Ray 11:35 PM [+] ::
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Cloudbusting

Side 1 of Kate Bush's Hounds of Love is arguably one of the better album sides in pop music history, unless you don't like Kate Bush. I do, and I played this side (on vinyl) tirelessly for years after I bought it. Four out of its five songs are hits: Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), Hounds Of Love, The Big Sky and Cloudbusting.

The Meteorological Mix of The Big Sky, with the voices talking about what the clouds look like, remains one of my favorite tracks of all time. Sadly, my 12" vinyl copy of it never quite had the dynamic range it was supposed to. One day I shall have to purchase the CD so that I can get a digital copy of it in all its glory.

At any rate, via Metafilter, I discovered today that there are tons of 80's music videos available on YouTube, among them the one for Cloudbusting. You might remember it as the one with Donald Sutherland as Wilhem Reich, Kate as his young son, and the big metal rain machine (a "cloudbuster") . Seeing it again made me a bit teary-eyed.

Enjoy. Or don't.

PS If you really don't like Kate, then you really shouldn't watch this other, older, cheesier video! Don't say I didn't warn you.
:: Ray 10:18 PM [+] ::
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Anniversary

A year ago today Mary Green and I were married. Happy Anniversary, Mary, with hearts, flowers, ponies and rainbows, not to mention fishnet, shiny aluminum and playa dust!
:: Ray 1:39 PM [+] ::
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Comcast - worst customer service on the planet

The latest: in going through the bill from the whole fiasco of switching Comcast service over to our new house, we just discovered that they charged us $50 for the unreturned cable modem from the old house. The only hitch is that they never asked for it back. By voice or mail, I have yet to receive instructions on how to return it to them. What am I supposed to do, spend another hour trying to get through to a rep who knows what the hell is going on and then ask, pretty please, how can I send this thing to them and be assured that its receipt will be acknowledged?

It's nice to know I am not alone in thinking that Comcast sucks!
:: Ray 1:29 PM [+] ::
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Staring down a raccoon

I won't have to chase away the sparrows that had nested in a small bit of the eaves on our new house that had fallen open...a raccoon took care of it for me.

Tonight, after the housewarming and first anniversary party we threw today, Mary and I had just settled into bed when I started hearing quite a racket from where we knew the birds were. I suspected a raccoon right away, based on the size of what must have been making the noise and the fact that it was at night. It scratched and clawed, and I heard metal twist and what sounded like insulation rustle. After failing to scare the 'coon off by pounding on the ceiling, I got dressed, found a flashlight, and headed outside to have a look at what was going on. The little bugger had taken down about six feet of the aluminum flashing material! I figured he must still be up there, so I walked around until I spotted him skulking by the chimney, eyes reflecting the light back at me.

I stared him down for a while, and tried to communicate to him this thought: "I won't share my home with you, and I won't let you destroy it." I don't think he got the message, because he is still up there, creeping around trying to find a way in.

In a way, I can't blame him. The weather sucks for May. It is cold (we actually turned the furnace back on last night) and it has been raining on and off for a couple of days. But I meant what I told him. Tomorrow if it is dry enough, I will get the ladder and go up there to do some patching, then perhaps make a trip to the hardware store to buy a trap. Raccoon, your days of living on my roof are numbered!

Makes fighting squirrels seem like a piece of cake by comparison.
:: Ray 12:14 AM [+] ::
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Catching up

Apologies for the lack of posts. The missus and I have been feverishly prepping the new house we moved into a month ago for a little event this weekend.

The Comcast follies still haven't ended. I decided to cancel the phone service (excuse me, "Digital Voice") because it was just too damned expensive for the lame service and features. The phone call to make the appointment went so smoothly (they never even connected me with customer retention!) that I knew something had to be wrong, and I was correct. Their technician never called or showed up for the appointment this morning. When I called to ask why and reschedule, only then did the rep and I discover that the number they had on record, and which presumably somebody called this morning to see if we were home, was the phone number of my old house, service which they themselves had disconnected a month ago! Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

On another note, has anybody else noticed the backlit billboards that JC Decaux has installed on downtown sidewalks? A few years back, the City of Chicago contracted with Decaux to install and maintain bus shelters, to be financed by the sale of advertising on mini-billboards integrated into the shelters. I was skeptical about the deal, but in retrospect it has worked out fairly well, which is to say that the bus shelters are being maintained better than they would have been if it was a poorly financed city department handling the job. I am not talking about the bus shelters, however, but rather the new, freestanding billboards that are inscribed "City Information." A few of them have downtown maps on them, but most are just big ads.

Call me a kook, but if the only civic benefit reaped from tons of revenue derived by littering the public way with advertising is a few measly backlit maps, I am underwhelmed. Who payed what money, and to whom, to make this happen? Of equal interest to me: who is paying for the electricity, JC Decaux, or the taxpayers of Chicago? I cannot find any reference to the deal at the Trib, Sun Times, or Google News. Does anybody know the scoop?
:: Ray 5:50 PM [+] ::
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