DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

In January, I expressed wonder at PG&E’s “new math;” in spite of a bankruptcy that would leave ratepayers on the hook for a $7 billion bailout, the utility announced a 4.1% reduction in electricity rates. It made no sense then, but makes perfect sense now. I think my theory has turned out to be correct — it was a distraction. Now that a few months have gone by since anybody gave any thought to their electricity rates, PG&E has filed an application to raise them.

Two confusing and contradictory inserts accompanied my most recent statement. Multiple paragraphs of legalese can be summarized by this excerpt from one of the two pamphlets:

Does this mean electricity will cost me more?
Yes.

A table of revenue figures and percentages of change appears in each document. Curiously, the percentages are radically different. One shows a “Percent Change” for residential customers of 2.8%. The other shows 5.4%. I suspect one pamphlet was authored by PG&E, and the other by the PUC (Public Utilities Commission).

There’s one telling example:

The bill for a typical bundled customer using 542 kWh per month would increase $3.76 from $66.09 to $69.85. The average usage for customers using more than twice their baseline allowance is 876. The bill for this average bundled customer would increase by approximately $24 from $125.83 to $149.79 per month.

That’s 5.7% and 19%, respectively. Hmm, so much for that 4.1 reduction, eh?

The critical thing to remember is that since 1970, electricity rates have climbed an average of 6% per year. There is no reason to believe they’ll ever go down.

Ironically, the pending rate increase is good news for me; it means, in effect, that my photovoltaic system will pay for itself sooner.

Last year, after a lengthy exploration of several of the things that are wrong with the world, I posed the question “how can anyone with children not be an environmentalist?” It drew a response from numerous readers, some of whom who proved to me that it is possible, even now, to raise a family under the illusion of abundance.

(By “abundance” I don’t mean shelves full of trademarked food products or mega-chain coffee shops at every intersection. I mean the simple things, like clean air and clean water.)

Anyway, I found a proverb that encapsulates my feelings about the issue. It turned up in a story about a guy named Michael Deakin, who recycles old-growth redwood from Sonoma County barns. Recounting a lesson taught to him by Salish (Indian) Chief Dan George of Burret Inlet, British Columbia, Deakin said: “We didn’t inherit the land from our ancestors; we are borrowing it from our children.”

That idea fits my worldview like a favorite pair of hemp sneakers. Imagine how differently you’d act if you believed that to be true. And then tell me about it. I’m curious to hear your stories.

“Let the troublemaker kids go across first. If they make it, we’ll let the rest of the class go too.”

Taken at the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge, north of Vancouver.

Just north of Vancouver is the city’s “Natural Wonder,” a 100-year-old “engineering marvel” called Capilano Suspension Bridge. It’s a major tourist attraction.

We didn’t go, because wherever the major tourists were, we wanted to be somewhere else. Our host in Vancouver turned us on to a similar suspension bridge attraction in Lynn Canyon, which would provide these significant advantages:

1. fewer tourists
2. free admission
3. shorter span
4. less height

Yes, I considered it an advantage that the Lynn Canyon bridge is both shorter and less high than the Capilano. I really don’t need to be suspended in the middle of a 450-foot (137m) span, 230 feet (70m) above a river. The Lynn Canyon bridge is less grand, at 164 feet (50m) high and 157 feet (48m) across, but that’s already enough to give me the willies when I lean over the side to take a picture.

These things move, you know.

The Capilano Bridge site boasts that it receives 800,000 visitors every year. Figure the tours get rained out 25% of the time; that means they’re pusing 2900 people a day across the bridge. And through the gift shop.

But wait, it gets worse. The current Capilano Suspension Bridge is the “fourth bridge at this location.” What the hell happened to the first three? Is there evidence of wreckage 230 feet below?!

Anyway, the Lynn Canyon bridge has an appeal of its own, even for thrill-seekers. Following is a virtual menu of ways to get injured or dead at Lynn Canyon, as presented by a three-piece billboard at the entrance to the park. First, some general warnings are presented…

“When your friends ask you to do something dangerous, don’t bend to peer pressure.”

… and then the signs recount stories of past park visitors falling, maiming themselves, and sometimes drowning…

“Severe impact with water after a high jump: force of impact tore running shoes apart and drove shoes up the legs of jumper. Jumper sustained back injuries - 1970.”

“Failure to clear protruding outcrops at 30 Foot Pool. Victim suffered broken leg and gash on thigh - 1980.”

“In 1991 a hiker was trapped in this position for 5 days. The force of the water was so great that he had to be pulled away from the canyon wall by a team of rescuers and commercial divers with ropes and pulleys. He slipped and fell from a log while traversing the canyon. He had been drinking.”

It’s always true that if you climb on rocks near a body of water, you risk falling to your death. But only at Lynn Canyon will you see an artist’s rendering of it.

I’ve been seeing what appears to be spider traffic from Axmo.com in my server logs… dozens of hits per day to various URLs on my site, with http://axmo.com in the HTTP_REFERER field. These aren’t clickthroughs; the IP is the same in every case (82.164.174.188; it doesn’t resolve). I thought it might be “referer spam,” but there’s just too much traffic. I’ve never seen a referer-spammer this aggressive.

I visited the advertised site and found what appears to be a search engine. Google has raised the bar so high it would take something pretty fantastic to make me bother trying a competing product. At a glance, Axmo didn’t have it.

Then I noticed the “pear-2-pear” typo on the URL submission page, and then this surprising description of the company’s technology:

Axmo is the first SE that makes full use of Microsoft’s new file system WinFS that will be implemented in the new OS, LongHorn.

And I thought, that seems like a really expensive way to build a search engine that can’t scale.

But I was momentarily intrigued, so I tried the search: I typed in a word, clicked the submit button… and got a .NET server error! Classic!

Ironically, the full error message suggested I check my spelling. Hmmm.