Dear AccuWeather.com Weather Forecast Widget,

It's time to pack it up. Better luck next time.

FREE TACOS FOR AMERICA

Taco Bell, I protested your anti-labor ass for a good long while, but I just saw watching the World Series the following:



Right on!

Can't get much tighter than the FDNY

The International Association of Fire Fighters giving Rudy Giuliani a serious tightening up:

Drylanta

As an army brat, I grew up playing with my Skeletor castle and bike on lawns and in the streets of neighborhoods in Texas, California, Colorado, and Georgia, to name a few states.

Unequivocally, our Georgian neighbors won the cake prize for most obsessed with lawn watering and maintenance. Maybe it was the Augusta (Masters golf tourney) factor, maybe it was unemployment rate, maybe it was territorial lust embedded in most southerners that want the South to defend her shores and lawns against Yankee intrusion.

Well, the Yankees have arrived in Chevy Sububus in droves and carpetbagged the southern urban form. The vast majority of U.S. population emigration is from the rust belt to the South and Sun Belt. Suburban cookie cutter developers are only too happy to accommodate the new neighbors with gigantic isolating lots, homes, and lawns. The homes consume a much larger amount of, well, everything: land, Scott's fertilizer, water, electrons for space conditioning. We are fatter, and so are our hovels.

Population expansion plus new residents = significant more demand stress on aging infrastructure. In my Alt. Energy Resources class yesterday, our professor was none too surprised with Atlanta. If you place 30% new demand over the last generation on relatively static supply, rapidly declining reservoirs are not out of place.

When a giant American city is now 87 days outside of straight up running out of water, it is probably time to rethink the culture of lawn, and start thinking more sustainably about parks, higher efficiency passive space conditioning homes, and greater connectivity and pedestrian friendly communities. Small is beautiful, people.


This won't be the last time a massive urban, suburban, exurban megalopolis tells all of its residents to suddenly cut its water use in half, after spending all summer business as usual. What happens in Las Vegas probably won't matter in 50 years if there is no more fucking water in Lake Powell in the Rockies. For that matter, everyone will move back to the coasts when the over stressed groundwater in the Ogallala Aquifer runs dry.

PS> Tight Nod Amory and Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalists. Check them out at www.rmi.org.

Tip o' the Cap to the New Mr. October

One of my all-time favorites, Josh Beckett, pitches tonight in Game 1 of the World Series for the Boston Red Sox against Jeff Francis, who is also pitching lights out this postseason, and the Colorado Rockies. It will be interesting to see what happens tonight as the New Mr. October, one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time and the MVP of the 2003 World Series pitches tonight against a team that has won 21 of its last 22 games, a buzzsaw if ever there was one. Because of their sweeps in the first two rounds while the Red Sox crushed the entire city of Cleveland (a city which hasn't won a championship game in any sport for a longer span than any other city) by coming back from a 3-1 series deficit, the Rockies have had eight days off. Because it seems that they haven't been on the field for a real game in months, the Rockies are once again enormous underdogs, a role they have thrived in for the last 22 must-win games.

Despite the roll the Rockies have been on since September 16th, the Red Sox are the favorite in the series and the number one reason is this:



The New Mr. October.

Enjoy the game tonight and enjoy watching one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time.

A tight epiphany

While discussing the notion of money incentives and our insatiable hunger to perform only when the proverbial carrot (or in this case a fat bonus) is dangled in front of us, Barry Schwartz offers a compeling observation

"The more society embraces the idea that nobody will do anything right unless it pays, the more true it will become that nobody does anything right unless it pays. And this is no way to run a ballclub, a school system, or a country."


Maybe, I'm just a poor, bitter, bleeding liberal, but I think that's a tight observation...

More logo tightening

We all know that the terrorists need to tighten up their logos, but how are we doing?

Based on the looks of the CIA's new "Terrorist Buster" logo,
not so good.


Who are we supposed to be fighting an existential war with, Islamic terrorists or cartoon villains from the Eighties?

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Sure, but can they dress?

The LA Times tightens up the fashion sense of this year's Nobel winners.

"We understand that winning such a prestigious award, especially for work on stem cells, is enough to buy anyone some leeway when it comes to respect, but even that has its limits. Here, Capecchi, an Italian-born U.S. citizen, accepts the honoris causa degree in medical biotechnologies from the University of Bologna. We understand that college ceremonies require the gown, so there's the leeway. But what's with the hat? He looks like Chef Boyardee's evil cousin."



"And here is Gore trying to dress down for his appearance at the Live Earth concert in New Jersey last summer. We know that Gore has long preached the virtues of recycling, but it appears that Mr. Environment took his old vinyl records and melted them down to make this shirt. At the very least, he could have pulled out the tails and spared us the sight of that belt, which looks as if it was stolen from Bret Michaels' closet."

SANTACON 2007

NYC Tighten Uppers:

Prepare for Santacon 2007! Start shopping for Santa and Misses Santa outfits ya!

December 16, 2007!

http://santacon.com/nyc/

Who is with me?



"Ho ho ho!
It's that time of year again... time for Santa to dig himself out from his elf-and-reindeer hogpile, wash the vomit off his pants and join us for a madcap drunken joyous wandering of the city streets we know and love.
When: December 16th, 2006 10:10:10AM
Where: Delancey Lounge (168 Delancey St)
Check here for hourly updates on Saturday!
Santa will be serving some weiners, but this is not a breakfast stop. Make sure your sleigh has a full tank of gas. "

So long, old friend.

Well old boy, it's been a good run. You were my first laptop. We wrote a lot of good papers together, stole a lot of music, and processed a lot of fun pictures. Your faux wood paneled handrest got a lot of looks, and your Inspiron 4100 moniker was...inspirational.

But let's be honest, you haven't been keeping up lately, man. You've only got one USB port. It takes you 20 minutes to turn on, and even then I can barely run Firefox and Acrobat Reader without you hyperventilating. Your 20 gig hard drive, once an enormity, just isn't enough for me anymore. Worst of all, your power cord is so barely attached that sometimes when a butterfly flaps its wings in Central Park, you threaten turning off. And for god's sake, you don't even have wireless capabilities without eating up that USB port.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to miss you. I think the MacBook's silvery finish is a little much, and I prefer your smaller size, but Jesus, man, you let yourself go. I'll never forget you, but I've got to tighten up and have a machine that will tack where I tack.

Semper Fi old friend--you've served well. But I'll never buy another Dell as long as I live.