Interesting Review of Avatar

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lscott/2010/01/04/the-last-conservative-avatar-review-you-need-to-read/

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The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

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Miss this guy yet_

Got this forwarded from a friend

MISS THIS GUY YET?

 

"Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it." -Ronald Reagan

 'Here's my strategy on the Cold War:

We win, they lose.'

- Ronald Reagan


 'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'-Ronald Reagan


 'The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.'

-Ronald Reagan


 'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the  U.S. was too strong.'- Ronald Reagan


 'I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.' -Ronald Reagan


 'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.'- Ronald Reagan


 'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.'- Ronald Reagan



'The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.' - Ronald Reagan


 'It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.'- Ronald Reagan


 'Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it'

- Ronald Reagan


 'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.'- Ronald Reagan


 'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'- Ronald Reagan

--
The Old Fool


“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.





Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.


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John Galt's Wisdom

Some pearls of wisdom from the Ayn Rand character, John Galt, in his rousing speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged...

Excerpts:

* * * * *
"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. his body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch - or build a cyclotron - without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.

But to think is an act of choice...............reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct."

* * * * *
"If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others, or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind. That is the moral absolute one does not leave open to debate.

I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason.

I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think.

I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer's wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him - by force. "

* * * * *
"The restriction they [the immoral, the irrational, the socialists, the new philosophers and mystics] seek to escape is the law of identity. The freedom they seek is freedom from the fact that A will remain an A, no matter what their tears or tantrums - that a river will not bring them milk, no matter what their hunger - that water will not run uphill, no matter what comforts they could gain if it did, and if they want to lift it to the roof of a skyscraper, they must do it by a process of thought and labor, in which the nature of an inch of pipe line counts, but their feelings *do not* - that their feelings are *impotent* to alter the course of a single speck of dust in space, or the nature of any actions they have committed.

Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their *feelings*. 'Things ar they are' are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason, and they become 'things as perceived by your wishes.' "

"They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his 'minimum sustenance' - his food, his clothes, his shelter - with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright.

To receive it - from whom? Blank-out.

Every man, they announce, owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the world.

Created - by whom? Blank-out.

Frantic cowards who posture as defenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics as 'an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the goods supplied in limited quantity.'

Supplied - by whom? Blank-out.

Intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors, shrug away the thinkers of the past by declaring that their social theories were based on the impractical assumption that man was a rational being - but since men are not rational, they declare, there ought to be established a system that will make it possible for them to exist while being irrational, which means: while defying reality.

Who will make it possible? Blank-out.

Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind - and whoever agrees or disagrees with his statistics, no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun.

Enforce - on whom? Blank-out.

Random females [now celebritards] with causeless incomes flitter on trips around the globe and return to deliver the message that the backwards people of the world demand a higher standard of living.

Demand - of whom? Blank-out."

* * * * *
"The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute, and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right, and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting a responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube."

* * * * *
"As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man's demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property - and loathsome as such a claim might be, there's something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it's ever proper to help another man? No-if he claims it as his right or moral duty that you owe him. Yes - if such is your own desire based on your ownselfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle.

Suffering as such is not a value; only man's fight against suffering, is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still a trade and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim - is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values."

* * * * *
"When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made the factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think and whom you spend your time denouncing.
...
Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but it's only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he'll rise.

Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor, consumes the material value-equivalent of his own contribution to the process of production, and leaves no further value, neither for himself nor others.

But the man who produces an idea in any field of rational endeavor - the man who discovers new knolwedge - is the permanent benefactor of humanity. Material products can't be shared, they belong to some ultimate consumer; it is only the value of an idea that can be shared with unlimited numbers of men, making all sharers richer at no one's sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of whatever labor they perform.

It is the value of his own time that the strong of the intellect transfers to the weak, letting them work on the jobs he discovered, while devoting his time to further discoveries. This is mutual trade to mutual advantage; the interests of the mind are one, no matter what the degree of intelligence, among men who desire to work and don't seek or expect the unearned.

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention recieves but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns.

But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, recieves an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability.

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time.

The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.

Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the wak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.
...
You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our own palaces and yachts - you decided that YOU had a right to your wages, but that WE had no right to our profits. that YOU did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that was: 'May you be damned!' Our answer cdame true. You are."

* * * * *
I only wish the BSG phrase could now resound: "So say we all."

Good night, and sleep well with dreams of rational thinkers surviving somewhere underground as the looters and new mystics of the "social" take over.


--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.



Blog - Musings of an Old Fool by Juan Lopez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at lopezj4141.blogspot.com.

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Acai and Corn

Some time ago I made the comment that what "helps" one group salve it's environmental or health conscience is often at the expense of another's.

Example: Oprah's Acai Run

Read the article all the way through, it's illuminating.

Another example of this type of item was the vast increase in corn prices when the ethanol craze started to take off, and has now become a constant fixture in American life - especially with the summer blends of fuels. Though much of the ethanol corn is American-grown, there is a demand for corn that remains - usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup used so ubiquitously in US consumer goods (the good/bad aspects of that are for another time and discussion).

This increase in corn prices meant that farmers in the "free trade zone" of NAFTA were MUCH more inclined to sell their corn to the US than to the local markets. As a result, the price of THE staple food for the poor in Mexico nearly doubled in price. NEARLY DOUBLE. If you are a poor person living on the EDGE of survivability, and your one staple food goes up that much...well, we can all imagine the consequences in human misery.

But, we're wealthy, happy, and unconcerned by that which we can't see - and can salve our conscience about the "environmental" impact of our wealthy lives. All the while increasing human misery with the very choices we so altruistically enacted.

Finally, there is the misery involved in electronics recycling.

Again, we thrill ourselves with the concept of e-waste recycling. We drop off our machines, and give no thought to what must go on after we have done the great work of dropping them off at the nearest business that recycles waste. And never stop to think of what happens after we drop these off and go on our merry way, thinking of how we have helped to "save" the environment. We may even congratulate ourselves a little bit.

And on and on and on. For the most part, when the great masses of "bleeding hearts" who discover something or another that is "natural" or "great for you or the environment", there is a price in human misery to be paid by some wretched souls somewhere in the world, so that these comfortable, high-minded, obscenely wealthy (by comparison), people can FEEL good about themselves.

Think of the bottled water issue. Look at the previous post. In what we SPEND on bottled water instead of relying on our WONDERFUL local water supplies, we could give the WORLD a healthy water supply. Trust me, coming from Mexico where bottled water jugs of the 5 gallon type are a necessity to prevent e. coli or amoeba infections, the water here is a DREAM. The fact that people despise the wonderful benefit they have available from their tap that many in the world would literally kill for is an affront to all of suffering humanity.

I do not advocate we all become self-sustaining agrarians, don't get me wrong. I simply abhor the self-indulgent joy these small-minded people get when they believe they have done something for their health or the world's good that simply ends up making someone else miserable at their expense. I despise the obtuse perspective that ignores the true nature of their selfish choices. This is the true reason for my disdain of "hippies". People who are so enamored with "bettering" themselves by making more natural choices - etc, etc, etc - but who are merely selfish children willing to plow the world under to satisfy their own self-righteousness and continued existence of their comfortable, worry-free life (again, relative to the wretched souls of the world).

I do not pretend that what I do is without its cost. I understand my relative wealth, comfort, and position relative to the world's poorest, and I do not resent THEM for it. I also am THANKFUL for my opportunities, and while I try not to waste more than necessary, I do not waste the opportunities presented to me. I realize I am blessed, and am thankful for it.

Finally, a great commentary on social 'justice'.

Bottled Water

Again, though all who may know me know how far from generally hippie Earth Day Prius-ey I am, I do think that it's the small choices in everyday life that can make all the difference...not gigantic government spending (to combat climate change, for example).

Great little slideshow for all you bottled water addicts out there:

Water Disaster

Original Link

Make small changes in life - waste less, and the world changes. Don't ask for those extra napkins at the drive-thru, don't take more condiment packets than you are actually going to use, don't go for the bottled water - in fact, try to avoid the individually bottled drinks overall, use compact fluorescent bulbs in your home. Small, simple daily changes that when multiplied by the many hundreds of millions in this country, add up to gigantic differences. We don't need gigantic government spending programs to change the world for the better when we can simply be better stewards of our own resources and lives.

Handcuffs we willingly wear

I think this is an amazing quote.

"I'm not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don't set out to kill innocent people. We don't cheer when innocent people die.

The people who did this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people."

– Dave Barry, September 13, 2001.

No matter what the frothing-at-the-mouth deranged leftists in this country think, we ARE a decent people, and have behaved decently in this war, because of this very reason. We don't set out to hurt the innocent, nor is it a driving factor behind our actions. In fact, we are willing to consider the non-combatants AS innocent, something our enemy does not - for non-believers can never be innocent in their eyes. Compared to those deranged theocrats, I am PROUD to claim the title "infidel", for I would cringe and shudder at the very THOUGHT of being acceptable to those insane bastards.

While I'm on the subject of "ranting", the following two articles are great:

Why hate crime legislation is a crock and should be called the Orwellian name it deserves: Thought Crime.

"Rules for Radicals" are in full effect in the modern American left.

Bottled water...and stuff.

I'm not for the governmental regulation, but all for the idea in the article below. 

Want an easy environmental fix that everyone can get behind? Drop your bottled water, you hippie wannabe health nuts! Fill a reusable bottle from your home. Trust me, coming from a country where the water from the tap is nearly sure to CRIPPLE you with illness, I find it abhorrent that people would pay more for essentially tap water than they do for GASOLINE or MILK. Especially abhorrent when their tap water is so healthy and safe from the city. 

It's NOT the city's fault if your own pipes are nasty and give the water a terrible taste. When it comes from the city, it's usually very highly regulated and monitored.

Cities in Canada want to issue resoutions banning bottled water.

There are huge differences that can be made with conservation without having to go all eco-nutjob. Think of the difference in the powergrid if everyone used energy-efficient lightbulbs. I'd be willing to bet that this one change ALONE would do for energy conservation what many proponents of wind/solar are pushing. 

In my Texas home, around 2000 sq.ft., I changed all the lightbulbs and replaced my dying 20-year old central air conditioner with a heat pump version with a scroll copressor. Guaranteed to last 10 years, expected to last 20. The energy difference was vast - 25%. 

//////A 25% difference in a home's energy consumption without having to change a single thing about our lifestyle. //////

If we didn't throw away millions of pounds of plastic because of our narcissistic need to "look healthy" by carrying around the now status-symbol of a water bottle, what would our non biodegradable percentage of landfill waste look like? How about the millions of customers who go to fast food restaurants every day and get their food handed to them with a handfull of napkins, because it's easier to grab a handful when you're in a hurry, and people often complain about not enough napkins (I know, I worked at two different fast food joints). A single wetnap would often do the trick. Etc, etc, etc. Our gadget fetish...how much stuff is going into waste disposal because we simply must upgrade to the latest and greatest? Very rarely is there not a method to recycle that old-but-still-functional gadget or device in a way that is helpful all around. All computers I've ever owned have had healthy lives as second and third hand-me-downs to successive generations of folks with specific needs. Ditto for cellphones.

I'm no hippie eco-freak (as any of my friends might readily testify... ;o) ). But that doesn't mean that I don't see a need for stewardship and being reasonable for how we do things with our daily choices. It raises my hackles to a huge degree when I hear people pushing ecological ideas that are meant to make us feel good about ourselves, but also meant to crush business and progress, when there is SO much that can be done before heading into hippie la-la-land (Reusable toilet wipes, look it up).

Bottling

I still have a hard time getting over the fact that people pay more for a gallon of water than it cost to buy a gallon of gas at it's peak in the last year or so, and yet they found the value in said water, but howled at the gas. Starbucks is even pushing water bottles that are meant to make you feel guilty about NOT buying them - Ethos water, buy it or money will not get to go to Africa to help people get good TAP water. How...ironic? I don't even know the right word. I'd also like to know how all of these people feel about the sheer volume of OIL-based plastics that are going into LANDFILLS because for some reason the tap water at home is not nearly as good as the tap water that the bottling company used to put in their product. If they are lucky, SOME kind of filtering will have occurred. Basically, the same kind of filtering you could get with a home Pur system or something similar, but with none of the landfill. I'm no hippie, but I'm always amused when I see the enviro-vegan freaks sucking down those healthy waters because of course they would never drink something like a calorie-filled death-accelerating liquid.

The Weather Underground (or how I realized I AM South Park's hippie-blasting Cartman)

Current mood:  annoyed

I just got done watching the Weather Underground documentary (2002-2003). I would certainly recommend watching it. It's not a documentary in the sense that there is an overbearing narrator, but rather, mostly the "veterans" of that group talking about themselves and what they did back in the day.

I knew I always disliked smelly hippies, but I never knew how much like Cartman I really am. Oh my God do I dislike smelly hippies...Cartman's actions are the fantasy of my psyche playing out when it comes to them, especially after watching these kooks. However, as opposed to the Weather psychos, I at least simply chuckle at this fantasy in a cartoon  rather than seek out these people who are so offensive to me and plant bombs.

What freaks me out is that these guys are merely the militant ones that got themselves in trouble. But the thousands and even millions of people that thought much like these guys did before the group splintered into it's crazy "revolution", have now all grown up and are the "respected community members" in our society - many without having grown up out of these angsty teenager attitudes.

It's endemic to the country, and it's all a bunch of over-idealized children who wanted to have a rose-colored world where we all hug each other with flowers in our hair, without recognizing the truly permeating truth about humanity: it's a rotting corpse of selfish horror and greed that will never, never, NEVER function the way they envisioned it could. Not that I'm glad it's that way...it's actually a sad and depressing thought...but mankind will never simply be "good" to each other. Strength will always be needed, and authority will always be necessary to be exerted. The human social animal requires a structured society. Even in the deepest, darkest, wildest jungle where humanity has established itself in isolated tribes, social STRUCTURES, with RULES, PUNISHMENTS, and SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS have emerged. It is a necessary thing to deal with this crazy creature called man. It's when the rules prevent us from doing something we want that we explode at how horrible this system must be. Like a petulant child denied a box of candy, wailing and weeping, and gnashing of teeth ensues.

That ideology is as crazy and dangerous as the emerging terrorist ideology of the recent decades - the one that says if the world does not think like we do, we will force it to change and accept us, and then conform to us. These are children who always resented authority, and never learned to grow up. Now, I am fair in my accusations - I no more like the emerging Pat Robertsons of this world that would like to do the same to the planet, only substitute "Jesus" for "Allah" in many of the terrorist ideology handbooks. It's when we seek to mold society to fit OUR selfish and INDIVIDUAL wants, goals, and desires, that we can end up in a dangerous location.

 

Want to make a TRUE difference? Bring education to those in your country. Reach out to the poor and the needy. And, if you must, proselytize your beliefs. For, if enough people think like you, then the government will eventually begin to shift in your direction. But don't take shortcuts. Change rarely happens overnight - and these "revolutionaries" are merely people who are too impatient to allow change to occur without the violence and upheaval. Impatient, impertinent little children who must see the world work the way THEY want it...and see it NOW, or dammit they will do something "revolutionary" about it.

To the patient and the persevering will go the spoils of ideology. Or to those with enough crushing might to fully stamp out the opposing viewpoint (I'll grant that point ahead of time. :-)  ).

Wow...I haven't let out a diatribe/rant like that in a while. Phew, felt good. Glad few people read this, or the interminable flames and trolling would commence, as there are few people in this world willing to have a discussion - instead, everyone must try to "convince" you and "win" an argument rather than simply discuss the issues in a level-headed way.

I admit to sometimes slipping into that category myself. It IS after all, grotesquely satisfying to take someone's ideology and crush it like a piece of overripe fruit. But, such arguments and tactics rarely lead somewhere useful.

I have been surprised how in Graduate School I have had very few opportunities to have deep, meaningful, level-headed discussions of this kind - as opposed to having them on a weekly basis when I was in my last year of undergrad or in the years I worked. I miss that quite a bit - those were some wonderful people, and I miss them all dearly. Many of my fondest memories are with the SMELLIEST of hippies...but smelly hippies near and dear to my heart, who were willing to simply discuss issues and not get involved in a monkey-poo-flinging session.

When I read this again in a few weeks, I'll probably wonder what came over me to write it. I may even delete it. But at least it's out there for a while, and I feel some catharsis. :-)

Music that accompanied the diatribe:

Prince Charming
I Stand Alone
Divide
Wait and Bleed
Robot Love
Execute
Snuff
Nothing Else Matters

Sad world we live in

Check out the verification on snopes: http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler.asp

The prize doesn't always go to the most deserving--see below and you will see why:*

 Irena Sendler

There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an 'ulterior motive' ...

She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German.)

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids.)

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.  The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught,  and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar  buried under a tree in her back yard.  After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family.  Most of course had been gassed.

Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize .. She was not selected.

*Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

A tale of two houses

- Here's the link to validate it.  http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

 

House  1 A 20 room mansion (  not including 8 bathrooms )

heated  by natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house)  

and a separate guest  house, all heated by gas. In one month

this residence  consumes more energy than the average

American household  does in a year. The average bill for

electricity and  natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas  

alone, this property  consumes more than 20 times the national

average for an  American home. This house is not situated in a  

Northern or  Midwestern 'snow belt' area. It's in the South.

 

House  2

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national  

university. This  house incorporates every 'green' feature current  

home construction  can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet  

( 4 bedrooms ) and  is nestled on a high prairie in the American  

southwest. A central  closet in the house holds geothermal

heat-pumps drawing  ground water through pipes sunk 300

feet into the  ground.

The water (usually  67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter  

and cools it in the  summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such

as oil or natural  gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity

required for a  conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater  

from the roof is  collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground

cistern. Wastewater  from showers, sinks and toilets goes

into underground  purifying tanks and then into the cistern.

The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the

house.  Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area  

enable the property  to blend into the surrounding rural

landscape.  

~~~~~

HOUSE 1 is outside of Nashville , Tennessee ; it  is the

abode of the  'environmentalist' Al Gore.

HOUSE 2 is on a ranch near  Crawford,

Texas ; it is the residence of the President of the United States ,

George W. Bush.

An 'inconvenient truth'.