power suck

This chart, from the Standby Power Home Page, shows the watts that plugged-in-but-turned off appliances eat up.


. . .

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

I bought a microwave today for a dollar at a garage sale. (I also got a beautiful quilt rack for $5 at another garage sale, but that's not what this post is about. I included a picture just for kicks though.) Anyhow, I can't remember the last time I owned a microwave. It might be never. Here are the ever-so-fascinating reasons why I decided to rejoin the world of nukers:

• It's probably more cost-effective and environmentally friendly to reheat food in two minutes rather than the half hour it usually takes in my toaster oven; and
  
• My gratification is more instant; and
• It was $1 (although I confess I was pricing them in Walmart and actually carried one around in my cart for a while there earlier this week); and
• It has the crucial "minute plus" function I love so much.

So pained visitors be assuaged! people who hate the thought of we microwaveless (you know who you are) be pacified. For now I nuke.

And although it does beeeeeeeeeep unpleasantly, it lessens my need for the chicken timer (found! by the way--hiding out in the spare bedroom for reasons she doesn't care to share), which, to be fair, has herself something of an unpleasant timbre.

And here are some gratuitous pictures of Lulu. They prove she has eyes.





and one fine tail. I like how feathery it is, although this picture does not do it justice.

Happy Saturday, all.

. . .

just in case somebody missed it

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last week that the Environmental Protection Agency not only has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases in vehicle emissions, its statutory obligations require it to unless it can prove scientifically that the gases do not contribute to global climate change. This opinion is particularly great because apparently the dissent argued (by Chief Justice Roberts) that the coalition that sued the EPA did not have standing. In order to sue someone in federal court, you have to have standing, which is composed of a "concrete and particularized injury" that is "fairly traceable to the defendant," and that can be addressed by a favorable judicial decision. Over the past 30 years or so, Justice Scalia has made it his business to make standing harder and harder to establish, especially in environmental cases. So this case is a big win on at least two issues: unless they can find some nasty weasely way to weasel out of it, the EPA will have to regulate vehicle emissions; and in the future it may be easier to get standing to sue the EPA on other grounds. The opinion is also remarkable in that courts are usually pretty hesitant to second-guess agency policy decisions, unless they think that the agency has gone absolutely bananas. It's pretty telling that even the Supreme Court is willing to weigh in on the lunacy of the Bush Administration's environmental policy. Here's the NYT article.

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