joshkelahan.com

I don’t understand the recent fascination with rain barrels.  For the not so informed, the idea is that the rain from your roof runs down into your gutters, and then your gutter runs into a barrel.  Now you have all of this water.  But what are you supposed to do with the water?  Water from your roof is not clean water, its got chemicals from your roof shingles, plus little bits of bird feathers, squirrel fur, and whatever else has been up on your roof.

Obviously you couldn’t drink this water (if you value your life anyway) nor could you use it to water your vegetables (for the same reason).  So what are you going to do with it? Water your lawn?  You will need a pump and a hose.  Water some flowers? Again, you will need a pump (or a watering can I guess).  You can’t give it to your animals.  So what’s the point?  You aren’t being green if you can’t use the water. Maybe you are trying to increase the mosquito population.  I don’t know.  It just seems to me that resources could better be spent making something worth while that you could use, than wasting it all on a giant plastic barrel.

I’m sorry if you actually looked at my twitter feed that was on the sidebar.  It had to go.  While I admit that I am becoming somewhat addicted to twitter, the truth is that their service can be extremely slow.  Having the feed on the sidebar was increasing the load time on my site to unacceptable levels.  Perhaps twitter will get some spare VC money in teh future, and will be able to upgrade their shit, but until then if you want to see my twitter feed, please visit me at http://www.twitter.com/jdkc4d

Last week there was a big story on Treehugger, ecogeek.org, etc, about how the U.S. goverment has put a moratorium (the kabash) on all future solar projects on public land for the next two years.  The government “claims” that they are doing this because they don’t know how a solar power plant will effect the environment, so they don’t want to let any move forward until they figure that out.   OMGWTFBBQSAUCE?!?!  It looks like the solar industry is strking back (cue empire strikes back theme): Treehugger, Reuters.