Soon to be seen in more than 3 homes.

Just a quick note to point out that up till now our crazy rantings have only been viewed by a select (and supremely intelligent) few. (A little ego stroking there.)
However our blog will be seen by a wider audience soon as Google has agreed to place it in some of it's search paradigms. We don't know what effect it will have, perhaps 5 people will see the blog now. We can only hope. Can't wait to get that first hate mail.
See you soon. Ciao for now.

Another one of THOSE nights.

While sleeping peacefully through our first winter storm at about 4:30 this morning we were visited by the bladder fairy. (You know the one, he flies from house to house like a fat drunken bumble bee and fills peoples bladders.) Unfortunately the Sandman and the Bladder fairy are at war which not only can make a heck of a mess but also makes for somewhat early wakefulness. So in a vain attempt to find sleep inducing reading materiel an internet search resulted. And somehow, (and we really don't know how.) We stumbled across the Scary Santa recording. This recording was made by Thomas Edison to cheer up the kiddies for Christmas, We think it would have the opposite effect, children would be fleeing the house in fear of Santa. Check it out at the address here some of the other recordings here are eerie too but we think Evil Santa takes the cake.
On another note we recently came across two separate news stories that were a bit odd. It seems a calf was born with a cross on it's forehead, and an egg was lain with a cross on it, all in the same week, what does it mean, Steak and eggs of course. By the way the Psychological phenomena in which people see shapes and hear sounds which they think are significant but are not is called pareidolia, and when you put different sized objects in a bowl and shake it, the larger ones stay on top the smaller ones go to the bottom, the scientific name for this is the brazil nut effect. Pareidolia and the Brazil nut effect are not related but we feel they somehow should be. Ciao for now.

A few things you might not know about solar panels.

Brushy Clump Large Weasel had emailed us about recent events with the recent global warming email fiasco (which I won't get into right now.). But it got us thinking about some things we learned recently involving solar energy. Firstly that only about 1% of our national electric usage is currently (that was not a pun) being made by solar panels. Here are some things about solar energy you may not know. Firstly that the solar panels in use on our very successful mars probes Spirit and Opportunity are not the typical type you see on rooftops all over the country (you see many more in Germany but we'll get to that later.). The solar panels on the Mars probes actually are much more efficient, they catch more than the current solar panels in use on earth.
Current solar panels here use only a limited part of the solar spectrum to create electricity. The mars probes are designed to catch a wider range of the spectrum and are much more efficient (also much more expensive, about a million dollars a square foot.) But recent discoveries in the field are yielding promising results. For example there is actually a solar panel that can be painted on (although it is capable of using only about 10% of the solar energy available.) Remember that every square foot of sunshine contains in it about 1000 watts of power (enough to power your tv, computer, house lights, and step dad's experimental dog polisher.) We mentioned Germany. That government recently put a freeze on electric costs for the next 20 years, they also are paying people to build and use solar panels. One pig farmer cleared a few acres of field and got a loan for 5 million dollars to build a solar field which provides power to about 1500 homes. He makes 600 thousand American dollars a year of which he says about 60 thousand is profit. The idea is not perfect but by the time the 20 year freeze is lifted he will have paid off his loan and be producing free energy for himself and be able to charge his neighbors a much lower rate than current electric charges. A win win in my book. Germany currently produces about 20 percent of it's power through solar energy. As of this writing the United States has no plan or policy to do anything similar. Although about 150,000 people are currently employed in the solar energy field in America. There are many other examples of solar energy use being a profit making venture, which in this country is the way to make something take off and run. As you can see, at the crazy we are solar extremists, but unfortunately poor solar extremists. Acquiring the materials for solar energy is currently costly, but soon we may be able to use solar energy by simply painting our rooftop or house itself at a fraction of the cost of current solar panels. Are you a gloomy gus? Do you think that cloudy days are a death knell for solar power, nope, even on cloudy days there is a lot of wattage falling on us.
Clouds block out only visible light, most of the ultraviolet light still comes through. So what needs to be done to make solar energy viable for every American? We need to improve storage techniques (the EverReady bunny really doesn't keep going).
We also need to improve the efficiency of solar panels (recent tests have produced materials that convert about 30% of sunlight falling into energy. When we can convert about 50%, then Solar energy will be competitive to current gas and coal powered electricity. So cheer up, if someday we run out of fossil fuels (which we will) Solar energy is one of the possible replacements waiting in the wings. And we won't even mention recent experiments with algae.

Reflections on a quiet morning.

Climbing from our bed this morning and doing the things that the body requires each day.(And as we get older sometimes in the middle of the night.) Stumbling around in a not fully awake haze of dream memory, and coffee craving zombie like numbness. And suddenly seeing through the kitchen window the first shaft of sunlight creeping through the trees on the hill behind the house. It's cold outside with a dusting of snow on the ground, (which is not normal as usually the snow is knee deep by now.)
Closer to us is an apple tree which is stripped of leaves and just past that our summer garden, now a white space with a few stubs of corn stalk poking up from the frozen ground. Higher on the hill, tall pines block most of the sunshine. And the sun will not break over the top of the trees till almost noon. But to the right of the apple tree about halfway into the yard a bright slot of sunshine on the ground. Marking the day like an ancient calendar. Struck by the simple beauty of the bright yellow sun on a stark white dusting of snow a good day now begins.

Merry Hodgepodge and a happy new year!

We love Christmas here at the crazy, everything from the good will of men to the smell of pine in the house. The good food, family and friends. Giving gifts (when we can afford it.) Watching A Christmas Carol. (Some of us here try to watch it every year.)
In the last few years we have been surprised by a lot of noise from the right that Christmas is under attack. And we suppose there is some truth to that statement, some people believe that America is a secular nation and when we have a national holiday to celebrate a Christian celebration it violates our constitution. So being thinking individuals some of us agree that this may hold some truth to it, but, and this is a big but. (almost put two t's in the last but, which would have been true also but not relevant to the conversation.) Christmas is actually a hodgepodge of at least 4 different celebrations. The Roman celebration of Saturnalia, which was celebrated from the 17th through the 23rd of December, in the 4th century in an attempt to get more pagans to turn Christian, religious leaders promised the pagans they could continue to celebrate Saturnalia if they converted as December 25th was decreed to be the day Christ was born. It also closely coincides with the Winter Solstice which was celebrated by Druids for many centuries before that time, Celebrated by worshipping trees in the forest or bringing them into thier homes to decorate. As for Saint Nicholas who was a senior bishop at the council of Nicea in CE 325. (Which by the way decided that Jews were "the children of the devil.")
He was actually brought into the Christmas HodgePodge by Turkish sailors who brought his bones to Italy in 1087 there he replaced a female boon giving deity called The Grandmother who would fill childrens stocking with gifts. So what do we have for Christmas Celebration 1. Saturnalia. 2. Solstice. 3.Nicholas 4. The Grandmother. 5.Jesus Christ. All in all quite a happy little family, so next time someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, if you are Christian, wish them a Merry Christmas back. If you aren't Christian smile and say Happy HodgePodge to you. But we think the number one rule, quit being offended by other peoples belief systems. They do you no harm by wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hannuka, Happy Kwanza, or Merry Solstice.
They are spreading good will, and there certainly is nothing wrong with that.

A six degrees of seperation sort of thing.

While drinking our morning cup of decaf coffee, (seems kind of pointless doesn't it.)
we stumbled upon a little piece of music trivia that raised our eyebrows in a Spock like fashion. It seems that one of the worlds most famous mass murderers had a song on the music charts. The title of the song was "Cease to Exist." but was actually recorded under the title "Never learn not to love." It reached number 37 on the billboard album charts in 1973. Some of the lyrics were changed also as the line "cease to exist" was changed to "cease to resist." The band who released the music was The Beach boys on their album 20/20. The writing credit is listed as Dennis Wilson, he later admitted it is a song written by none other than Charles Manson. Making him the one and only mass murderer to have a song on the billboard charts. The song can be found on youtube but we recommend you pass, as our son would say every time we try to sing in this house, "Stop, my ears are bleeding." Ciao for now.

Would that it were that easy.

Did you know that in some areas of the world it is illegal to die. This is true, Originally it was illegal to die for religious reasons. In the 5th century B.C. on the Greek island of Delos it was forbidden for anyone to be born, or to die. Which we have to assume resulted in a lot of sick people and pregnant women being shuttled off the island in a hurried attempt to avoid punishment. (If you died on the island the punishment must have been severe.) But ancient Greece is not the only time and place that dying was forbidden. In the Spanish village of Lanjoran the Mayor has passed a law to forbid dying until land is bought for a larger cemetery. A sensible response to politicians who told him he is not working fast enough on buying more land for cemetery use. Why don't they simply cremate the remains to save space, religious reasons of course. In the Brazilian town of Biritiba-Mirim the mayor has forbidden the populace to die or their relatives will face serious fines or possibly jail. That'll teach those selfish people not to die on his watch. (The fines would of course be used to buy a larger cemetery plot. Although it will be difficult to find land that is viable as the area has many underground rivers.) There are 19 other towns in Brazil that have forbidden dying, also places in France. These are just another example of how INSANE politics can be. Ciao for now.