This happened to me the other day, and I wasn’t quite certain how to handle it. Maybe you can help. I’m in the restroom washing my hands, when a guy comes out of the stall and I hear some clinking noise and immediately notice that his belt is still unbuckled. Now, there is a big mirror in front of the sink, so I figure the guy will notice and fix the problem. However, the guy continues to wash his hands, and as I’m finishing up, he still hasn’t done anything about his belt. It’s right there, making all the clinking noise, how can he not notice? I almost feel like following him to see how long before he notices. So, do I tell him, or let him figure it out for himself? If his zipper was down, I would let him know, since you can’t really hear that, but a clinking belt, come on. I felt as if this guy should have noticed. Of course, I’ll find out later that he is deaf which will lead to a ton of guilt for me, but for now, I’m feeling fine.

Daycare is one of those things that for some people, i.e. us, is a necessity, but for others is a choice. I’ll choose to enlighten you on my thoughts since Kyle just started a couple of weeks ago. There are many benefits to it, but there are also some downsides. Basically, the benefits are the socialization aspect, the ability for a parent to go back to to work, and well…School Pictures! (click images to enlarge). Also, the kid learns that Mom and Dad won’t always be around, so they will have to listen to other adults, just like when they go to school. Finally, this is a downside in the beginning, but an upside in the end. Kids get sick! Kyle was there one week and got a cold. Unfortunately for him since he is too young, he cannot build up anti-bodies so he can catch the same thing over and over again until he gets to be about 6 months. The good news is, by the time he goes to school, he will have had most of the sicknesses, so he won’t catch them again. Kids that have been at home and not socialized a ton, will get sick when they first start school. You can’t get away from getting sick…but you can postpone it.

The downsides of daycare is getting sick. Like I said, Kyle got sick, then Mom got sick, now me. Basically our whole family has been sick the past week, which is no fun for anyone. Another downside is the fact that someone, other than a parent, is spending almost the majority of time with your kid. Sure, you get them in the morning and evening, but since kids go to bed so early, there isn’t much time. Of course, if you have a brat for a kid, this could be a positive aspect. Finally, there is no better person in the world to raise your kid than you or your spouse. If anyone is going to mess them up, might as well be their parents. At least the kid will know who to blame for all the quirks they have when they grow up.

So, which is the better route for you? Don’t worry about, you don’t get to make the decision, your finances will answer that for you!

Apparently the second round is not kind to Bay Area sports teams. The San Jose Sharks were duly eliminated by the Detroit Red Wings last week, and just yesterday, the Golden State Warriors were ousted by the Utah Jazz. It is actually quite exciting to see the cities come alive when their sports teams are doing well. Although they are not my teams, everyone else seems to be in a better mood, and it is a good excuse to stay up late and watch sports. Too bad all the fun ended last night, but it wasn’t without some drama from a friend of mine picking on a Golden State Warrior fan in front of us after the other guy looked back and jumped into our conversation. I was thinking of using the Steve Nash quote “I’ve been working on my guns, and was looking to score some points to the body!” Gotta love that nutty guy, even though he is a Santa Clara grad.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers out there. Barbie and I headed to Modesto to celebrate with the family, and had a good time. Friday night was spent with Mimi and Grandpa plus the Knudsen family, and Sunday morning we swapped out the Knudsens for Barbie’s grandparents. of course, this was a special Mother’s Day for us as it was Barbie’s first official Mother’s Day, which is great for her, but puts a lot of pressure on me to find the “perfect” gift. After racking my brain on whether to get something memorable, expensive, or something we could both use. In the end, I decided to go with the memorable approach and got her a couple of black and white picture frames and put in pictures of Kyle and the family (in Black and White also). They actually ended up looking very good and will be a nice addition to either our house or Barbie’s office. I don’t have a picture of them yet, but I’m sure you get the idea. In conclusion, I hope all of you had a great day, and gave your mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers all a special call or gift.

I heard about this a couple of weeks, but just today found the link. Apparently, well not apparently as it is fact, there is a Falcon that has decided to use the top of San Jose City Hall as its nest. Luckily for all of us, there just so happens to be a camera up there that they have started streaming over the internet so you can watch the young falcons grow up. They hatched sometime last week, and are growing up, and should be full size within just 40 days. Just go to the link below to get your daily fix of Animal Planet in a big city.

http://falconcam.sanjoseca.gov/nest

There has been a lot of hype in the world about the use of Hybrid cars and how it saves the environment b/c it uses less gasoline. Well, according to a UC scientist, this is not the case if you take into account the amount of energy required to actually produce the ethanol in the first place. He didn’t go about thinking this was the case, but after giving his students an assignment to find out the “true” energy savings of ethanol, all the students’ reports came back saying it actually required more energy. I had actually heard rumors of this in the past, so I decided to look it up and this is the article I found. If this is true, it’s definitely something that should be brought up when you are talking to a Global Warming fanatic. As NBC says in there promos…”Knowing is half the battle.”

UC scientist says ethanol uses more energy than it makes
A lot of fossil fuels go into producing the gas substitute

Elizabeth Svoboda, Special to The Chronicle

Monday, June 27, 2005
The Cost of Biofuel. Chronicle graphic by John Blanchard

Ethanol, touted as an alternative fuel of the future, may eat up far more energy during its creation than it winds up giving back, according to research by a UC Berkeley scientist that raises questions about the nation’s move toward its widespread use.

A clean-burning fuel produced from renewable crops like corn and sugarcane, ethanol has long been a cornerstone of some national lawmakers’ efforts to clear the air and curb dependence on foreign oil. California residents use close to a billion gallons of the alcohol-based fuel per year.

But in a recent issue of the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad Patzek argued that up to six times more energy is used to make ethanol than the finished fuel actually contains.

The fossil energy expended during production alone, he concluded, easily outweighs the consumable energy in the end product. As a result, Patzek believes that those who think using the “green” fuel will reduce fossil fuel consumption are deluding themselves — and the federal government’s practice of subsidizing ethanol by offering tax exemptions to oil refiners who buy it is a waste of money.

“People tend to think of ethanol and see an endless cycle: corn is used to produce ethanol, ethanol is burned and gives off carbon dioxide, and corn uses the carbon dioxide as it grows,” he said. “But that isn’t the case. Fossil fuel actually drives the whole cycle.”

Patzek’s investigation into the energy dynamics of ethanol production began two years ago, when he had the students in his Berkeley freshman seminar calculate the fuel’s energy balance as a class exercise.

Once the class took into account little-considered inputs like fossil fuels and other energy sources used to extrude alcohol from corn, produce fertilizers and insecticides, transport crops and dispose of wastewater, they determined that ethanol contains 65 percent less usable energy than is consumed in the process of making it.

Surprised at the results, Patzek began an exhaustive analysis of his own — one that painted an even bleaker picture of the ethanol industry’s long- term sustainability.

“Taking grain apart, fermenting it, distilling it and extruding it uses a lot of fossil energy,” he said. “We are grasping at the solution that is by far the least efficient.”

Patzek’s report also highlights the potential environmental hazards of ethanol production.

“When you dump nitrogen fertilizer on corn fields, it runs away as surface water, into the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico,” he said.

The excess nitrogen introduced into the water causes out-of-control algae growth, creating an oxygen-poor “dead zone” where other marine plants and animals cannot survive. And while ethanol produces fewer carbon monoxide emissions than regular gasoline, some researchers have found that ethanol releases high levels of nitrogen oxide, one of the principal ingredients of smog, when burned.

Ethanol has long been touted not just for its promise as a renewable fuel, but for its usefulness as a gasoline additive. Fossil fuels blended with it produce fewer carbon monoxide emissions than regular gasoline and have a higher octane rating, meaning they burn more evenly and are less likely to cause engine knocking. While most gasoline sold in the United States now contains approximately 5 percent ethanol, some cars — such as the Ford Explorer and Chevy Silverado — can run on fuel blends containing up to 85 percent.

Though his work has been vetted by several peer-reviewed scientific journals, Patzek has had to deflect criticism from a variety of sources. David Morris, an economist and vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, has attacked the Berkeley professor’s analysis because he says it is based on farming and production practices that are rapidly becoming obsolete.

“His figures (regarding energy consumed in fertilizer production) are accurate for older nitrogen fertilizer plants, but newer plants use only half the energy of those that were built 35 years ago,” he said. He also cited the increasing popularity of no-till farming methods, which can reduce a corn farm’s diesel usage by 75 percent. “With hydrogen fuel, people are willing to say, ‘25 years from now it will be good.’ Why can’t we also be forward-looking when it comes to ethanol?”

Hosein Shapouri, an economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has also cracked down on Patzek’s energy calculations.

“It’s true that the original ethanol plants in the 1970s went bankrupt. But Patzek doesn’t consider the impact new, more efficient production technologies have had on the ethanol industry,” he said.

Shapouri’s most recent analysis, which the USDA published in 2004, comes to the exact opposite conclusion of Patzek’s: Ethanol, he said, has a positive energy balance, containing 67 percent more energy than is used to manufacture it. Optimistic that the process will become even more efficient in the future, he pointed out that scientists are experimenting with using alternative sources like solid waste, grass and wood to make ethanol. If successful on a large scale, these techniques could drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuel needed for ethanol production.

Other contributors to the debate argue that ethanol’s net energy balance should not be the sole consideration when policymakers are evaluating its usefulness — factors like the fuel’s portability and lower carbon monoxide emissions need to be considered as well.

“So what if we have to spend 2 BTUs for each BTU of alcohol fuel produced?” reads an editorial in the Offgrid Online energy newsletter. “Since we are after a portable fuel, we might be willing to spend more energy to get it.”

Cornell University ecology Professor David Pimentel, however, sides with Patzek, calling production of ethanol “subsidized food burning.”

“The USDA isn’t looking at factors like the energy it takes to maintain farm machinery and irrigate fields in their analysis,” he said, adding that the agency’s ethanol report contains overly optimistic assumptions about the efficiency of farming practices. “The bottom line is that we’re using far more energy in making ethanol than we’re getting out.”

Patzek thinks lawmakers and environmental activists need to push ethanol aside and concentrate on more sustainable solutions like improving the efficiency of fuel cells and hybrid electric cars or harnessing solar energy for use in transport. If they don’t, he predicts economics will eventually force the issue.

“If government funds become short, subsidies for fuels will be looked at very carefully,” he said. “When they are, there’s no way ethanol production can survive.”

This weekend I kinda got back into a training groove with a 27 mile bike ride on Saturday, which included two substantial hills (12 minutes up the first and 6 minutes up the second). On Sunday, despite the 90+ degree temps, I managed to get a good 4 mile run in, albeit at a very slow pace since my legs were tired from the day before and b/c my body isn’t used to Summer heat yet. Anyways, after each session, I felt extremely good and began thinking why is it so hard for people to do things that are good for them?

For example, exercise is one of those things that is great for you, but very difficult at times to get up and do. Yet, at the end of it, you always feel better. So, given the fact that it makes you feel better, why don’t we do it more. Another example is eating habits. Everyone knows that eating healthy is better, but why are all the good things in the world bad for you? E.g. sweets, alcohol, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, etc. Why can’t they just be good for you? In other words, why doesn’t broccoli taste like chocolate, and why does laziness not lead to weight loss? Imagine if the world was reversed and it was bad for you to go for a run. Would it make us run more since it was “forbidden?” Sort of the old saying “You want what you can’t have.” Just something that made me think this weekend when I was struggling to finish my four mile run.