Paying YOU To Use Electricity?

Did your parents ever yell at you for wasting electricity? You know, for keeping the TV and the radio on at the same time? Or not turning your light off when you leave a room? Mine did. I was the child of a thrifty family.

So, naturally, this would drive my mother to drink: apparently, there is so much energy being generated by wind and nuclear power, that electricity has become ‘cheaper to use than free’ for certain people. Check this:

In west Texas and Illinois, when the wind blows at night and nuclear plants run around-the-clock, power generators produce more electricity than people need. This oversupply “has forced electricity prices into the negative range,” an expert explains—meaning that some customers are paid to use electricity.

Energy companies are experimenting with ways to store this excess energy, such as with compressed air. Pacific Gas and Energy can be done by “pumping compressed air into an underground reservoir, using mainly wind energy produced during non-peak hours, and then release it to generate electricity during periods of peak demand”. However, it’s going to take 5 years to develop this technology. As of now, there’s no technology in place, so all of this energy is going to waste. Is this drastically unsustainable? What do you think?

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Steve Romain

Real (And Fake) Pundits on Health Care

When it comes to smart, funny television, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart run neck and neck in the race for the lead. In a brilliant piece of satire and biting television, last night’s Colbert Report took on Insurance Companies. Absolutely genius:

I’m gonna digress for a second. Instead of simply asking what you think and sending this piece out to pasture, I’ll present you with some commentary that a “for-serious” pundit actually spit onto the airwaves.

When you’re going to have to make a decision because we can’t afford good healthcare for everybody, somebody’s not going to get a kidney transplant. Somebody’s not going to get heart surgery. Somebody’s not going to get kidney dialysis. Somebody’s not going to get that surgery. Who’s it going to be? Is it going to be the Millennial that doesn’t give a flying crap about anybody else but themselves because they’re special, look at all the trophies they won?

That was an actual recent quote from your favorite pundit and mine: Glenn Beck.

I find it ironic that Beck can go spout this sort of nonsense when youth are so engaged in the health care debate, as activists for a hundred different youth driven organizations or in more passive roles, as a segment of the American citizenry facing some of the highest rates of unemployment and lack of healthcare coverage.

Think about it this way: many young people are voting their confidence in progressive health care reform by consistently watching programs, such as The Daily Show and Colbert Report, which are lately discussing health reform every other night. These young people keep coming back: Jon Stewart isn’t the most trusted man in news for nothin’.

Alas, I’m taking a long road to a short conclusion: as much as the ‘RAWR I’M LOUD’ pundits like to say young people aren’t engaged, you and I – the engaged young people – know we are. We’re living with the health care crisis some like to think only exists in “REAL America” – the America where everyone has two-and-a-half kids, a picket fence, a dog and a yard – which is insulting and degrading to the diverse ranks of our society. But hey, you knew that.

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Steve Romain

Detroit Is Not “Urban Wasteland”

My art is a medicine for the community. You can’t heal the land until you heal the minds of the people.

-Tyree Guyton

Despite classifications of Detroit as an ‘urban wasteland’, I can’t help but disagree.

Maybe it’s blindness, optimism or stupidity but the concept of a city becoming a wasteland while people live there confounds me.

Nevertheless, countless articles refer to Detroit as a shadow of it’s former self. A dead zone. This past week, over 9,000 properties were auctioned off by the city – with many not even being picked up.

Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York’s Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

However, a wasteland is dead. Detroit is not. Against the odds, there remains an energy in the city. The picture above is from The Heidelberg Project: a street filled with vacant houses that were decorated into a large art project by those in the neighborhood. Tyree Guyton and his family, seeing the city ravaged by the Detroit riots in 1986, Guyton transformed the ravaged street into a giant art installation: one that is just as important almost 25 years later.

Check it below:

Tyree Guyton and The Heidelberg Project remain an incredible inspiration for our hard hit times. By transforming the landscape, Guyton has pushed the greater public to get involved and invest their time and effort in neighborhoods that are the hardest hit. But I can let the folks at the Heidelberg Project tell you about that in their own words:

“The Heidelberg Project offers a forum for ideas, a seed of hope, and a bright vision for the future. It’s about taking a stand to save forgotten neighborhoods. It’s about helping people think outside the box and it’s about offering solutions. It’s about healing communities through art – and it’s working!”

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Steve Romain

Is Climate Change Terrifying British Kids?

What commercials do you remember? One of them – which is kinda before my time – is the Apple “1984″ commercial. About 25 years ago, a commercial came out symbolizing Apple as a ‘change from the ordinary’. Today, it seems, commercials are pushing the envelope a bit more: in England, a climate change ad is on the chopping block due to content that is “scaring kids”.

According to Treehugger,

The premise is simple enough: it’s a British TV ad designed to get adults’ attention and to highlight the importance of acting to stop climate change. It shows a father reading a bedtime story about global warming to his daughter. The story comes to life, showing starving, crying cartoon bunny rabbits and drowning dogs–and the daughter is terrified.

Check it:

Is it too scary? Or just scary enough?

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Steve Romain

The Fight Against Love

If there’s something I personally hate, it’s when people abuse their power to accomplish their own personal vendettas. When TV hosts, politicians and famous people use their social standing to attack topics they have no right or basis to speak about. Especially when that topic is love.

This is why it makes my blood boil when discrimination about marriage or sexuality comes into play. When someone beats their definition of marriage as ‘it was in the bible’ into law, knowing this because they are religious and white, it undermines the progress towards unity that we’ve made over the past 50 years.

Frankly, some of these people know about as much about ‘traditional marriage’ as Falcon “Balloon Boy” Heene knows about flying – basically nothing.

Nevertheless, bigots pushing their own dated views are nothing new. Let’s take a look at a Justice of the Peace who denies marriage licenses for interracial couples and a bunch of politicians who are calling for a Department of Education appointee to be kicked out because he is.. wait for it.. gay. Stay tuned, after the jump.
… Continue Reading

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Steve Romain