Housing Price Crash

Preconceived notion: housing prices always go up.

Historically, this has indeed been the case (not unlike the stock market, with a generally rising trend).

1987	62.03
1988	66.67
1989	72.43
1990	75.58
1991	73.43
1992	74.30
1993	74.46
1994	76.46
1995	77.74
1996	79.61
1997	81.82
1998	85.71
1999	92.08
2000	100.00
2001	109.27
2002	118.00
2003	130.48
2004	146.26
2005	169.19
2006	188.66
2007	184.83
2008	159.17
2009	128.81

The numbers listed are the relative home price by year (in real dollars). The values can be viewed as percentages as compared against the value in the year 2000 (which is 100.00 or 100 percent), As can be seen by the numbers, by the year 2006, the value of this home had increased 88.66% over the value in 2000. This means that on average, a house which was "valued" at $100,000 in Q1 of 2000 would have been worth $188.66 in Q1 of 2007. As can be seen from the numbers, this type of growth is highly uncommon (the pre 2000 growth was closer to 1.5% per year).

So what happened between 2000 and 2007?

Fundamentally (economics), for value (price) to increase, demand must grow faster than supply.

What are things which contribute to

Increased DEMAND

Increased Population (Population increased ~1.5%)

Increased Wealth (Income) (Income/tax-filing decreased ~3% - dot com recession)

Increased Purchasing Power (Value of USD) (Above taken in real dollars)

Decreased SUPPLY

Number Homes Built (~6% increase over 4 years (2000-2004))

Number Homes Destroyed (Negligible)

As we can see, the wealth per person decreased, and supply of houses increased. Economics would tell us that prices would decrease, but over the four-year period from 2000-2004, the housing prices increased 46% (MUCH faster than historical values). Not only had this never happened in history (even if the days of fastest growth/wealth creation), it was happening during a recession.

Housing/Financial System

Hey:

In an effort to do a few things:

1) Use this blog more often

2) Better understand a problem, and

3) Document what I'm learning

4) Be informative

I've decided to do a series of posts on housing markets and the financial system. The majority of the content will be from Sal Khan at www.khanacademy.org/ - though I will include my "own" thoughts italicized as well as other facts, figures and relations I can bring from other sources.

Hopefully this will be informative, but if not, at least it will do 1-3.

Enjoy,

Over a year - 400 days. It's amazing how the months just fall off the calendar. I'm approaching graduation at warp speed without a clue where to end up. The ideologies in my mind are at odds with the logical, accustomed progression of school, work, grad school, more work, retire, die.

Why is it so hard to do something that I want to do?

Paper or Plastic?

Paper or plastic? This question has been posed to us for generations in the check-out line of the grocery store. There’s not much difference in the bags themselves; the paper bag may be slightly larger and more durable, but the plastic is very easy to carry. Which, then, is better for the environment? Plastic bags are made from crude oil extracts and take up to one thousand years to biodegrade. Paper bags, on the other hand, are made from trees and take massive amounts of energy to manufacture. The question we should be asking is not “paper or plastic?” but “when did we make the choice to live in a disposable (albeit convenient) world?” In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency published information that between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic grocery bags are consumed every year (National Geographic News). The materials used, the production methods, and the means of disposal exhibit the not reusable grocery bag’s destructive environmental impact.

The primary sources of the key ingredients in plastic grocery bags are petroleum and natural gas. About 10% of the nation’s oil consumption goes to synthesis of plastics. Paper bags are made from commercially cut trees. In 1999 about 14 million trees were harvested to make 10 billion paper bags in the US alone. In the realm of materials, it is a draw for which has a more negative effect on the environment. Our choice here is whether we prefer deforestation (and all the damages which come with it), or drilling for and using nonrenewable energy sources to create disposable items (ABC News).

When trees are harvested, more is damaged than the individual trees. Whole ecosystems are built around the habitat of the land, and removal of trees can threaten the species (both flora and fauna) that live in the vicinity. Beyond this direct damage, commercial deforestation requires the use of many heavy machines and equipment, which also can damage the ecosystem. Roads must be built to get to a section for harvest; roads which displace still more species. While these paper bags can be made out of recycled paper, this uses up massive amounts of energy (Chemical and Engineering News).

Plastic grocery bags, on the other hand, are made from petroleum and natural gas, both of which require extensive processing and refining. In addition, both of these key ingredients are full of unutilized energy when in the form of a bag. Plastic bags may take less energy to produce but the fact that they are made from petroleum (a nonrenewable) based plastic makes them comparable to paper bags in terms of waste and energy consumption (Chemical and Engineering News).

What happens to these disposables after they help you get your groceries home? On a positive note, both plastic bags and paper bags can be recycled. Plastic bags can be made into white resin deck furniture (and other plastic products), and paper bags can be recycled to make more paper products. Unfortunately, less than one percent of plastic bags (about 0.6%) see a second usage. For the other 99.4% of plastic bags (994,000,000,000 of them annually), it’s off to the dump along with the paper bags that weren’t recycled (about 90% of paper bags aren’t recycled) (National Geographic News).

But surely paper wins the ecological award in the area of waste. Unfortunately, it does not. In fact, in today’s dumps, trash is isolated from light, water and oxygen; necessary ingredients for natural materials (like paper) to biodegrade. Thus, in dumps in the United States, paper bags decompose at nearly the same rate as plastic ones. Surprisingly, when not disposed of properly, paper bags can spread even more groundwater and airborne contamination than their plastic counterparts. Further perpetuating damages caused by improper disposal of plastic bags is that many of these littered bags find their way to the sea. Marine animals such as a turtles have been known to mistake them as jellyfish and try to eat them (Get Green).

Problems grow beyond simple questions like “paper or plastic?” The root of this question is why do we spend so much time and energy creating what will inevitably become waste after one or, at best, two uses? How did we get to the point where we cut down the trees that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen to make disposable grocery sacks out of the pulp? Why do we use 10% of one of the most potent energy forms on the planet to create the non-reusable objects that fill our dumps and clutter our streets? More so than either paper or plastic bags, disposability is the problem.

In today’s so-called “eco-friendly” society, the question should not be “Paper or plastic” but “Deforestation or non renewable resource?” People want to be eco friendly but not as much, it seems, as they wish to live in a world of convenience. One time use exemplifies this idea. As more and more people populate this planet, more and more are realizing that there is a serious problem. What may be convenient for us is not convenient for this planet. However, there is an answer to the dilemma of paper versus plastic, and it’s “Neither.”

Works Cited:

1) National Geographic News: Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?

< http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0902_030902_plasticbags.html>

2) Chemical and Engineering News: Plastic Bags

< http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8238plasticbags.html>

3) Get Green! Facts: What the media is saying about plastic bags

< http://www.greensak.com/page4.html>

4) ABC News: No bags, Thanks! < http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/bags/default.htm>

Isms Afterthought

Although the period of my consciousness on this planet is still short, as of the date that this is written, I can think of no time in history when there was such oppression against this simple and essential question (with the exception of McCarthyism in the fifties).


Why?


I am absolutely astonished that so many people don't ask this simple question.

It is an essential question which needs to be asked (and not only tolerated, but encouraged) more often. Without this question, it would be impossible for Democracy to exist, and indeed when it is not asked, we see the democratic spirit upon which this country was founded wane.

It is interesting how the most radical (radical in this case meaning those who don't "go with the flow") are often socially "casted out". We call them "hippies", "tree huggers", "animal rights wackos", "liberals" and any number of other things. They are almost always looked down upon, laughed at and joked about and they are always a very small number compared to the majority. And yet they are the ones who seem to make the changes see.

While there are countless, here is one example:

During the early 1960s, a group of four African American freshmen sat down at the counter of a diner near their college in Greensboro. As was commonly accepted at that time (at least up to that point), they were not served. The movement gained speed as the weeks and months went by and the sit down protest spread around North Carolina and then over other states. Bravely facing the verbal and physical abuse which surely ensued, these brave people saw an injustice and decided to change it. By the time the civil rights act was passed (1964), many of the formerly segregated stores and diners became integrated.

These freshmen in North Carolina did not wait for the government to remedy the problem. They asked "why" and understood the injustice of the circumstance and changed it.


A similar example is the desegregation of the public transportation system.

Another is the small group of free thinking British citizens in a colony in the New World who were fed up with being under control of (what they believed to be) an oppressive regime thousands of miles away.

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

- Margaret Mead

Isms

I just read a very interesting article titled “What is a Freegan?” In short, they describe a Freegan as

“people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.” (More info/the whole article can be found at www.freegan.info )

Freegans, as I understand it, realize the flaws in our economic system and as opposed to selecting one evil over another, they simply reject the system as a whole. Some themes mentioned in the article (which I would strongly recommend reading) include: Waste Reclamation, Waste Minimization, Eco-Friendly Transportation, Rent-Free housing, Going Green, Working less/Voluntary Joblessness.

According to the article, the word “Freegan” comes from a compound of the words “Free” and “Vegan”.

“Vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals in an effort to avoid harming animals. Freegans take this a step further by recognizing that in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy. Sweatshop labor, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution, eradication of wildlife on farmland as "pests", the violent overthrow of popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators compliant to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and payoffs to repressive regimes are just some of the many impacts of the seemingly innocuous consumer products we consume every day.”

This made a lot of sense to me for a lot of reasons. One of the most apparent stems from the glaring contradictions I see through some of my friends. One of my friends in particular is strongly against animal cruelty and avoids all products/medicines violating this belief of hers. It’s the same person; however who buys Nike shoes which are made by an eleven year old in a Chinese sweatshop.

Likewise, another friend refuses to eat meat, but instead feeds into the American Myth that consumption will make you happier. At the root of this is immense quantities of waste, exponential depletion of natural resources, causing severe damage to natural environments for raw materials and carbon-based fuels to send the raw materials to Asia and then use petrol to haul back completed and assembled products (like new Nikes). Throw in the abuse to all laborers (many of whom are underage, overworked, and underpaid) and we certainly have danger brewing.

I suppose that’s why the Freegan movement is so interesting and appealing to me. How else can we sidestep evils which are so deeply rooted in the system, short of starting from scratch?

It is interesting to think of the cycle as a train going around a circular track. There is no place to say “we change the way we act past this point” because, in fact, there is no place in the cycle that isn’t a crime to humanity and nature. The only thing that can be considered a “solution” is to stop the train; if not for everyone, at least in our own lives.

As a side note, we should ask ourselves: How happy do these material things actually make us? Do your new Nikes make you a happier person? If not, ask who convinces you to buy these things? Not as though our happiness over petty material objects would be cause to let these conditions exist. How can we, as human beings, let this injustice exist?

This follows closely one of the most dangerous ideas (in my opinion) in the world today: Sheeple. People who choose to follow as opposed to think. People, who are nothing but undistinguishable faces in the crowd, whose individuality not only no longer exist, but needs not exist. Sheeple collectively and unquestionably follow authority figures (including but not limited to Media, Advertisements, Branding and the fallacy of social pressures whose fires are stoked by the aforementioned)

I think that this is the reason that I (along with a growing number of people) have not been able to just forget about the vicious and degenerative cycle of consumption. We really aren’t any happier. If we were, it would be a lot easier to forget and continue living out our lives.

So, Isms. There are many similarities. If we simply gently scratch the surface, we see that “Animal Rights” can be extrapolated to include not only animal testing but human sweatshop labor. It can also be inclusive of rejection of the logging, mining and oil industries (which comprise some of the most concentrated sources of ecosystem destruction through deforestation, improper waste disposal, poor drilling practices, oil spills, and the seemingly irreparable damage caused by the burning of carbon based fuels TO NAME A FEW). Being against carbon fuels entails being against driving, 95% of the electricity in the USA, and the plastics industry. Not to mention all objects not made in a very near proximity to you (because that pair of shoes takes a lot of petrol to be shipped from China to you).

Well wait, you just wanted to protect animals, right?

Another interesting thing I learned recently is that for all of these “solutions” there is a big grey area. As demonstrated above, it’s nearly impossible to stop all adverse affects to animals. In fact, the best thing to do to preserve animals would be to kill yourself in the forest and nourish the wild (ironic, yeah?).

The bigger picture, though, is that all of the people who embrace “isms” have one common streak. We all want to do what is right (and “what is right?” is a completely different conversation). We just choose different places we want to do the right thing. Freegans are, in this sense, the unifiers of all of the isms. As opposed to saying “I reject products which test on animals”, Freegans say “I reject your system because it is so inherently flawed, and I choose to introduce my own.”

Certainly there are negative connotations with such a belief, especially in a culture based in consumption, like the one in the US. But can we really trivialize and look down upon the idealistic beliefs of these people? Au contraire, it is the true definition of humanity and the antithesis to the Sheeple syndrome that we look at ourselves, our habits, our leaders, our idols, indeed our world and ask ourselves “Why?”

Wow

A quarter of a year since I last came to this blog. Since then a lot of things have happened:

I did a LOT of traveling around Europe...

And then left Europe...

Now I'm home in California...

In a month and a half I'll be back in New York...


Hmm. It really doesn't seem like much when you look at it on paper. I suppose the last three weeks have been spent doing very little. Just doing what I like to do: Learning, Biking, Gymming, Changing.

Anyways I've opened my mind ( I hope ) through viewing countless documentaries. It turns out that there are a LOT of things I not only care about but I'm really interested in as well. In high school my least favorite subjects were English, Lit, Language and History. Now I think those are my favorite. Naturally (I've heard its natural) I'm about to start a third year in college and I don't know what I want to do. I do, however know of many things I DON'T want to do (which is good I guess?).

Anyways, I think I'm going to become a volunteer firefighter and see if I can help at all with all of these fires in California.

Also on my plate at the moment are:

Energy (as always)

Anti-Consumerism

Food (Growth/Production/Packaging/Distribution/Sale/Consumption)

Sustainability

Politics (History and current)

Philosophy

Music


Anyways, more updates soon

Projects

Okay

This post is designed for me to get all my projects planned out and done so that I don't wind up with a bunch of half finished piles of crap when I leave Denmark. So here's the plan:

Complete Foosball Table within one week.

Fix all (5) bikes and get rid of 'em.

Bar atop container P (Within the next two weeks - I'm really stoked about this one)

Welding project (Top secret - more info later)

Pangea Day (If you don't know what this is, check it out for sure)

Hydroponics? (Probably not, just because I don't want to buy anything else in Denmark

Anyways, I'll fill you in on the haps in the coming days because the projects should be a whole lot of fun.... although I don't think I have any readers yet. O well for future people's enjoyment.

ENJOY!

Energy... as usual

So as you can probably can see from my blog, I care a lot about energy and (more importantly) the planet. How cliche that's becoming, sadly, but happily (because it means it's finally being said). Or maybe it's just because I hear/talk about energy so much, I think it's cliche. Annnnnd then again maybe I'm just off topic.

The point of this post is to talk about the sun. The grand-daddy of all life as we know it.

More specifically, the energy from the sun. Plants do amazing things with this energy. (I'm totally envious but thats a side note.... I don't think I'll ever photosynthesize...). BUT (back to topic again), there are ways we can use some of the energy the sun is throwing at us.

SOLAR THERMAL.... IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL....

And better yet, it doesn't involve making a whole bunch of silicon wafers, it doesn't involve doping, and (thank goodness) it doesn't cost 6.7 dollars a watt (like PVs).

It's super cheap....
We have everything we need to make them....
It's CLEAN....


So whats all this talk about (we'll be using FFs for at least another 50 years?!)

Heck, with a few adjustments to the grid we could have this baby up and running all across the sunbelt in no time.

Even better, this grad from MIT has started building these solar thermal generators out of old car parts and plumbing supplies. Now imagine: using things that are waste (parts) and using them to make energy....

What doesn't make sense?

Who gives a shit if PVs become super efficient in the future? What about the here and now??? Let PVs continue to grow and expand, but until then how about we make things a little better?

The longer we don't, the longer renewables stay expensive and the longer politicians shy away from them (cycle repeats, add nausea).

About every week, China produces a coal fired power plant producing about 500 megawatts and *you wouldn't believe me if I told you* tons of CO2. Each of these power plants will be in operation for 50 years. That's a fact. As long as the plants are functioning, they will run. Every week China makes a 50 year resolution to keep using coal. Now I'm not saying that China should try to make a 500 megawatt solar farm.... but you have to crawl before you can walk...

Success

I remember when, up until only a few months ago, success seemed to the only thing I was aiming for in this life. Right now it feels like it would be such a sell out. With all I learned in the past few months about other cultures (from all the people I've met) and from all the reading I've been doing about the people who live in poverty-stricken, disease-infested, corrupted government-ruling, war-torn places. Not all the bullshit we see every day. Not the oh-so-high-prices at the gas pump. Not the guy who just spilled his Starbucks coffee on your Mac. No, none of the shit. How can we run around "filling" the meaningless voids in our lives with so much shit that we don't remember those people who could actually benefit from the help we have all the power to give. It seems like in today's age, it is almost impossible to be it all. How can you be a successful (savage) capitalist and still do anything for anyone else?

I just want to say fuck it. Fuck this higher education that I've been throwing my money at for the last two years. Fuck the bullshit, dead-end job that's at the end of these "best years of our lives". The only things I care about I haven't heard a whisper about in any of my classes. What I want (and hope) to do with my life is sure as hell not something that can be learned in a classroom. I want dirty hands. I want a sweaty shirt. I want to help the people who need help.

Getting up and going to my Computer Aided Design class in 6 hours is going to be harder then I can say with words. But I'm still going to go. And I'm going to hate myself for it. I guess I just don't have the balls to get up and walk out. Yet.

Everyday Tragedies

All the people who never achieve their life dreams. The single mothers working double time to give their kids shit they never had. The children of Iraq lost in the sand. Palestinian kids stuck in the ghetto. The people on their deathbeds who regret their lives. All the soldiers that never got to go back home. The Bangladeshi children who choose between food (a job) and education. The surviving half of a loving, happy old couple. Patients that received HIV from a blood transfusion. Victims of the Darfur Genocide. All the Africans chained to a sunken slave ship in the bottom of the Atlantic. Everyone killed by drunk drivers. Everyone stuck in the cycle of poverty. All the oppressed victims of the Imperialism that exists all over the world. All the people who didn't get up after falling down. The innocent who are struck down. Every refugee ever who had to leave everything behind. School children who are gunned down. People who work hard their whole life and are still poor. The babies born addicted to heroine. Women trapped in an abusive relationship. People who lose everything in "natural" disasters. The oppressed. The rich folks who realize how little all their money matters. American Indians walking on the Trail of Tears. The starving in Cambodia. The people who spend their lives in darkness. Parents who have to bury a child.

The Uncultured Project

Along the same lines of my "Africa" post, yesterday I stumbled across "The Uncultured Project". Shawn Ahmed is a Notre Dame grad who was influenced by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, an author and speaker, who spoke at Notre Dame on September 14, 2006. One of Sach's books is titled The End of Poverty.

The speech along with the book inspired Shawn Ahmed to make a difference. He went to Bangladesh and worked and spoke with many of the poorest villagers. He brought with him many water purification tools and mosquito nets, in order to help flood victims. The people he interviews are quite remarkable, to say the least. But I don't need to tell you, check it out for yourself.

YouTube http://youtube.com/user/UnculturedProject

Blog http://uncultured.com/

(I don't know if there's some protocol for linking on blogs, but it's just me giving props to Shawn for his work)

I find Shawn inspiring and hope to do some similar work in the near future.
Before I saw "The Uncultured Project", I had began making plans to go to South America. Perhaps it's a sign?

The Prophecy - Immortal Technique

I calculate planet alignment like Mayan astronomy
Discovering atrocities worst than Aristotle
Subjecting children to sodomy
Your theory of the galaxy is primitive like Ptolemy
The truth about the universe stuck up like Aztec pottery
Unpredictable results like experimental psychology
I stomp the streets with emcee's beneath my feet in colonies
But presentation and spirit revolve around autonomy
Searching for monogamy
And cutting fake bitches out of my mind like a lobotomy
So obviously I'm not gonna be here to play games
Walked the top of the world and leave the arctic circle in flames
Battle the beast and false prophet predicted in the King James
I give a fuck about your emcee name I don't admire you
Only by dental records will you be identifiable
Cause the future is not reliable
Remember when rap was not economically viable
Comparable to what motherfuckers think of me
I might be nobody but wait till I'm together like a symphony
Resounding sound that will continue infinitely
Angel of death punishing all those who live in infamy
And shine so far away from you
You'll never get a glimpse of me
Attempts to extinguish me don't even bother me none
Like retarded kids throwing ice cubes at the sun
A victory against Immortal Technique will never be done
Just degrees of losing it every second your adding one
Some niggas dream of pushing kilos but I drop tons
With more facts and formulas and philosophical logic
Then a basement full of scientists puffing on chronic
Dip the mic in potassium cyanide and liquid bubonic
And use it as a sonic one to find the spawn of the demonic
Screaming like onyx is of absolutely no consequence
The poison is dense enough to clog up your arteries
Mercy is not a part of me
I cause you bodily injury permanently be simply verbally murdering me
Is inconceivable cause of the unbelievable evil injected inside
The blood stream of my people
And redemption is not located under a church steeple
The feeble and the meek in soul just like the technique
Will inherit the earth, But the earth will be weak
Mother earth in her decrepit terminal illness physique
The year three thousand is bleak no happily ever after
Just death following the Forth Reich disaster, a legacy of bastards
With plastic explosives your futures been eroded
Cause you forgot that when your free it's multiplied indefinitely
By the struggle that be the struggle I see
To socialistically united the third world countries
Expose hypocrisy in Americas democracy
Sloppily obsessed with stopping me cause I speak prophecy
Trample and dismantle your capitalist philosophy
The same way I stomp the conquering rap monopoly
And I'm not a fucking prophet
But that's the fucking prophecy

YouTube

The video on YouTube with the most views of all time is called "Evolution of Dance". It was viewed 77,524,468 times as of March 8th 2008. The video is 6:00 long, exactly. The cumulative time spent by YouTubers watching "Evolution of Dance" is 885 years.

Just putting things in perspective.


-Adam

Africa

It seems like in the past two weeks the topic of Africa has come up just about every other day. In Time Magazine last week, in a few documentaries I watched and in my wandering about on the internet, I found a wealth of information on one of the less popular continents.

All around we hear stories about the suffering in places like Darfur and Rwanda, and the epidemics spread across the continent. It seems that Africa is in a strange place, unlike developing countries and yet a blind eye seems to be cast upon the country by the so-called "first worlders". Not to mention the civil unrest and potential for war everywhere south of the Sahara.

It struck me as odd when I learned the population of Africa - over three times the population of the US. Almost a billion people living in such vastly different conditions and environments. It is striking to think that for every one person in the US there are three African counterparts. It pains me to see the images on the internet of these places. We have time, we have resources, we have money... so why do we allow this type of tragedy to exist?

Light Pirate

Lately I've been overcome with urges to turn off lights. Sometimes when I don't have anything better to do I just walk around buildings and turn off all the unused lights (you'd be surprised how many there are). Anyways, an idea occurred to me just the other day as I was making my rounds. I remember a professor I had in a design class talked about making people more aware of the energy they use (or waste). His idea was some kind of resistance in the switch so it would be harder to flip the longer the light was left on. That way, when someone forgets to turn off a light, they are reminded of it when they finally turn it off. The main problem with the system as it exists today is our energy is just too cheap. This is indicated by the fact that we use SO much of it when we could easily cut our use in half and feel almost no impact on our standard of living.
During the day people should turn off the lights and open the blinds! This takes no electricity, almost no effort, and the natural light is much more pleasant to work/be in.
If our energy cost was higher (as to reflect the damage to the environment (which is priceless) ) it would increase people's awareness of how much they actually use (although, as a side note, I'm not proposing we make energy unfordable for the poor, rather we possibly have a per capita energy amount that you can get for today's price, and then beyond that the price increases (as to eliminate frivolous usage) ). Same goes for water; it's WAY too cheap. Same, needless to say, for fossil fuels. Even if it didn't slow the massive consumption of all of these things (which economics dictates it WOULD), it would at least give increased profits, profits which could be used to find cleaner, cheaper and better energy technologies.

Anyways....

The idea I had is this:
What if there was a company who paid people to turn off lights. It would be great, people would turn off lights wherever they went - it would be like finding money on the ground (but you don't have to bend over to get it). The money would come from the people who left the light on but weren't using it. Sooooo as opposed to the energy companies getting the money, it would go to the do-gooder who turned off the unused lights.
Now obviously this type of system will never be implemented (for obvious reasons) but hey, it sure is something to think about. I just wish people understood that we pay a lot more for our energy than that little figure you see at the bottom of your monthly bill.

Copenhagen and Oslo

Ok, so on Friday I biked into Copenhagen to go to the airport (by the way, I would not recommend anyone bike to an airport unless it's necessary...) and on the way I rode all around the city looking at Copenhagen in daylight (which I'd never seen before). It turned out to have a lot of really cool small shops and things not the typical franchise, chain branded stores I'm used to in the states.
I read a lot about "Second hand Copenhagen" which is a group of these shops that specialize in used stuff (clothes mostly, but also furniture). Again, these shops were a lot different than the second hand stores I'm used to. In the states, second hand shops (Goodwill, The Salvation Army etc.) receive donations and then sell them at low prices and use the money to fund poorer areas (at least I think). The idea behind this is that it will benefit the lower class in more than one way: they benefit from the profits of the stores and they have affordable clothes available to buy. In Copenhagen, however, second hand boutiques such as Kobenhavn K, KK Vintage, The Second Way, and Fiske are quite expensive indeed. In fact, these stores were comparable to if not more expensive than stores selling new clothes.
While the clothes were out of my price range (Tee shirts from 100DKK to 300DKK (20USD to 60 USD), I had a lot of fun looking at them. There were a lot of retro stores selling some really cool tees, jackets and sun glasses and one store with all vintage shoes. Very cool.
I really feel the second hand idea and I guess this works so well in Denmark because of the country's enormous wealth. Which is too bad for me (who wanted to buy some cool new (or rather "used") clothes), but I still got some cool pictures.
So after 5 hours of exploring Copenhagen, I headed south to try and find the airport. Annnnnnd that turned out to be quite a task. Once I found the airport (took like an hour), I tried to find an entrance that wasn't a freeway or an underground metro (took another hour). But all was well, and I found a way and everything worked out alright and I got on a plane and headed to Oslo (in Norway) for some snowboarding. Quite awesome, but two things were not so good. First, I thought Denmark was expensive, but sadly Norway is a fair amount more expensive. And secondly, I like broke my wrist snowboarding, so I'm on my way now to the Doctor to get it checked out =\\\. All in all though it was a really good weekend.