Nothing funny about feldspar

Like many people, I do all of my best thinking in the shower.¹ This morning I was wondering about petroleum.

Here we have have some stuff, a resource that up until about 150 years ago was little used. Then someone figured out a way to use this stuff more efficiently, and it replaced all of the other burning oils (animal fats, generally) in use. And then came cars and then came plastics, and the rest, they say, is history.

And now there is some concern that the wells are running dry, and we’re having wars over oil and can’t afford to fill up our cars and trucks and OMG WHERE’S THE OIL!?!! LET’S DRILL EVERYWHERE AND SUCK DOWN THE LAST DROP SO NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE IT!!!!1!!

We neeeeeed it!

What other thing have we (broadly defined as “historical peoples”) needed, have only known recently that we needed it so much, and yet we used it up so completely that our economic society was completely transformed into something else, and what was that something else?

Was it caves -> lack of room for our burgeoning population -> built dwellings? Was it grazing lands -> deserts -> irrigation? Those, I think are long, slow changes. I could see climate changes having a large local effect in a short period of time, but then the people move (like the Anasazi, perhaps). Is there a pattern we are following, that perhaps we can learn from, or break free of?

And then what is the next thing, corn?

1. Sometimes that’s the only time I think at all — the rest of the day I’m on autopilot.↩

I’m not political. Not apolitical, either, just tend to vote for the best choice I have at the moment.¹ So the various conventions leave me cold, I have a countdown calendar to remind me when silly season is over for this year, and I will vote in November for whomever has made me the least embarrassed (or angry) to be an American Voter in the previous few months.

At the moment, I’m leaning towards the Senator from Illinois, but not for his specific policies nor for his message, but because I think the Senator from Arizona is a cynical, calculating, asshole.²

Mr. M’s selection of a person who is expected to attract the people he can’t — women, evangelicals, “hockey-moms”, oil-industry insiders, young people, outsider-to-support-his-maverick-image…

I’ve had too much wine to be able to articulate my precise problem with this — I just have an uncomfortable feeling that Mr. M. is hoping we don’t realize that Mrs. P. is distinctly lacking in experience, is staunchly socially conservative, and is in the middle of an ethics investigation because we are blinded by her youth and vagina.

As a currently-undecided moderate, I’m finding his selection bordering on the near-insulting. He (and she) will have to do a lot of work to get my vote.

1. Tactics, rather than strategy.↩
2. By the way, it doesn’t take much for me to change my (political) opinions, in case you’re wondering. I’m fickle.↩

Next Week’s Challenge

Think of a person’s job title that contains the consecutive letters C-H. Move the C-H to the front, then take what used to be the first letter and put it where the C-H was. The result will be another person whom the first person tries to catch. What words are these?

HINT: It *is* that time of year…

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So I was looking at some news website that was making me look at an ad before I even got to the first page. I happened to look at the URL and it had “prestitial” in the path.

“What?!” I thought. “That’s silly. Did they just make that up?”

Apparently they didn’t. Google tells us that the term has been in use for at least 2 years. It is an interesting extension of the language, though I’ll probably not use it ever again…

I’ve been hanging out quite a bit at a “home builders” forum — one that people who are in the middle of having a house built for them post and ask for advice on everything from choosing driveway materials to where to find that perfect oil rubbed bronze light fixture. This is not an “owner-builders” type place, though many of those types are also here. The people here seem to be more-or-less evenly split between owner-builders, “true” custom and those buying “semi-custom” homes in a development.

It’s fascinating to read these peoples’ concerns. Sometimes you get the feeling that a person is building a house to please the forum participants (there’s one in particular who is notorious for saying “Which color siding should I pick? The builder is waiting!”); others are just there to sell stuff.

The one that got my attention today, though, was the person who was talking about their custom cabinet order costing $150-200k and getting particle board and melamine. Could they really have been that gullible? If they’re putting $150k just into the cabinets how much does the rest of the house cost?!

Although, if they can afford $150k on cabinets, well, I’d like to have their problems for a few days ;).