Steve recently noticed that my previous post, “Public Utility Chutzpah,” had a comment, a mysterious person named “meagancb@gmail.com.”  This comment said,

Prop 16 will actually help communities design alternative energy programs that are more likely to have strong community support and be successful. This initiative does one thing; it ensures taxpayers and ratepayers, who will foot the bill or repay the debt, have the final say if their local elected leaders decide to get involved in the retail electricity business by using public dollars or incurring public debt. By requiring a local vote, this initiative will increase, not diminish, local control.

Funny — this text appears almost identically on the FAQ at the site http://www.taxpayersrighttovote.com.

And who pays for that site?  It says on the front page:

Paid for by Yes on 16/Californians to Protect Our Right to Vote, major funding from Pacific Gas & Electric Company, a coalition of taxpayers, environmentalists, renewable energy, business and labor.

Hey, PG&E — thanks for spending the fees that I pay to you, a monopoly public utility, on paying a PR company to troll blogs and post comments without attributing them to you!  Is that legal?

In light of the most recent Killer Whale attack at Sea World I think that cetaceans should not be held in captivity and forced to perform. The animals are clearly intelligent. They should be given the option to perform… maybe an “open” aquarium where they can voluntarily open a door, swim into and out of the ocean as they please and interact with humans on their own terms when desired. I wonder how many would be interested in this type of interaction…

Don’t get me started on octopuses and cuttlefish.

Today, I noticed an ad for California Prop 16, with the catchline “Preserve Your Right To Vote.” Thinking that this sounded like a lot of spin, I decided to look it up.

According to Ballotpedia, this is basically an initiative funded by PG&E to make it more difficult for municipalities to start their own utilities.  It would amend the California state constitution to require that any Community Choice Aggregator be approved by a 2/3 vote.

Now, I already thought that California’s system for amending the constitution by a simple majority is ridiculous, but this really takes the cake.  (Perhaps even the lemon olive oil cake.  See below.)

Let me get this straight — you’re using a simple 50% vote to require that, in the future, individual communities need a 2/3 majority to do something?  That seems really backward.

But what really gets me is that PG&E, a monopoly public utility, is planning on spending $25-35 million dollars to singlehandedly fund the campaign for this initiative — that’s money that we’re paying them!

Last year I became one of the millions to join the Borg of the social network known as Facebook. I had been apprehensive about joining (why would I want to spend more time online?) I have come to enjoy the ability to stay abreast of what my friends are up to (or at least what they are bragging or complaining about).

But as FB has worked itself into my life I have also come to wonder if it really is beneficial to me in the end. Do I really need to maintain relationships with so many folks I barely know? Do I really want to be publishing my life to friends of friends of friends?

Well, there’s a new solution called the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine which helps you “commit” the deed and get back to your real life in meat-space.

Here’s a collection of silly protest signs of 2009. My favorite:

And, yes, it’s been a slow day at work.

“In 2003, inspired by an episode of The Simpsons, he grafted together a tobacco root and a tomato stem to make ‘tomacco’.
In ‘E-I E-I D’oh’ (episode 231, first aired November 1999) Homer invents giant tomacco plants that taste disgusting but are completely addictive (‘That’s horrible!’ says Bart as he spits one onto the floor: ‘I want another one!’).
Baur’s tomacco, on the other hand, has made him something of a Simpsons legend and given him a story to dine out on to this day (at wastewater conferences, he says, he often gets introduced as ‘Mr Tomacco’). After the plant produced its first fruit, he sent a press release about what he’d done to a local television station, thinking they might find it reasonably funny.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/6872418/Simpsons-stories-the-tomacco-man.html

Marilyn bucks Santa

(h/t: Nate-o)

that’s right

just wanted to share that after all these years of hearing about “how awesome a cron job is… oh man, it’s the greatest thing… etc.” it finally made sense to take part in the act…

and if you’re curious and want to watch, i’ll be performing it every hour, on the hour from now until infinity. i may however tone it down to weekly if there aren’t many viewers.

…just in case you hadn’t geeked out yet today…

Thank god for complicated diagrams! Now I understand everything.

The background.