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It had to happen sometime and it finally has…  The U.N. is going green.  Sort of.  According to the New York Times, the glass curtain of the famous East River Headquarters will be redone with new super-insulated glass and windows that are designed not to open, which, combined with other improvements in the heating and cooling systems of the building will make it 44% more energy efficient.  Quite an improvement!  Of course, the price tag, which is approaching the 2 billion mark for the whole kit and kaboodle, may be seen by detractors (or members of the coal and oil lobbies) as yet another financial argument against the current rash of green buildings going up all over the world.  Especially with the current global meltdown in full swing, the question must be asked (again, probably by the coal and oil lobbies), is this green renovation really worth all the cost?

The short answer is ‘Yes,’ for the simple reason that even though the economic factors are very real to many people, they’re still just made up.  Yes, the whole world works with currency, but when you really think about it, isn’t currency just a value that has been assigned to something that is completely worthless. (Can we breathe or eat gold?)  A building that uses less energy (no matter the cost of production) saves resources with actual long-term value–namely the ability of our atmosphere to provide us with a climate we can live in and air we can breathe (notice I didn’t say oil or coal, which are just as valuable as gold or gravel when you think about it).

And while I’m on the subject of using less energy, let me give you my long answer.  Yes, we’re spending huge amounts of money to make a single building more energy efficient, but what if I told you that there was a completely free way to have made the building much more efficient when it was first built–but that was ultimately not adopted.

It’s true.  The 38 story U.N. Secretariat Building, with it’s striking presence along the East River is a sliver of a structure with its two broad glass sides facing East-West.  This means that every morning, the AC has to kick into overdrive to keep the East Side cool in the face of the rising sun, and then every afternoon, the same has to happen on the West side as the sun sets.  This condition is compouned by the fact that the Secretariat Building is at least seven times as wide as it is deep (if the width is North/South and the depth is East/West).  With a simple 90 degree change in orientation, the two expansive sides could have been shielded from the sun, thus saving untold amounts of money in cooling costs.

Of course, the building was built to be an architectural statement in the heady years just after World War II, where we’d won an entire war mostly on the strength of our technology (not knocking American servicemen, but if you took a combat pilot out of his P-51 and put him in a biplane he wouldn’t be nearly as effective).  Also, at that time fuel and power seemed endless, the concept of pollution was not what it is now, and thus, energy consumption was not high on anyone’s list.

But it sure is now…  Taking advantage of passive design techniques (like building orientation or the lay of the land) represents the cheapest (but least flashy) way we can save energy, and thus our way of life as we know it.  The Secretariat Building is a permanent reminder of our pesky tendacy to try to dominate nature, not to embrace it.

Many wonder if Sniff This lives full time at the Dodd farm, or if he has a lair or a cave somewhere and was raised by bears. A certain sect of Falcon Ridge-goers believe that he is the manifestation of all the mischevious thoughts of the whole folk world. Well, the intrepid, award-winning photo-journalists at doylebrau.com were granted unprecedented access to Sniff This’ pre-Falcon Ridge rituals and will be able to put many of these myths to rest. The photo-essay below may not fully explain his ecentric behavior whilst at the festival, but it at least puts it in context…

Sniff This wakes up early on Thursday morning. He has a full day ahead of him, but the thought of returning to the friendly confines of the Dodd farm puts a little bounce in his step.

Rub-a-dub-dub, Sniff This in a tub. This will be his last shower for the next four days. A bathing song makes the job go faster. His favorite is Afternoon Delight, much to the chagrin of his roommate.

On the subway, taking part in the great New York City rat race.

Gotta make the donuts… Only 8 more hours until he can leave for Falcon Ridge. Sniff This Factoid: His co-worker actually fear even the mere threat of the Sniff This smell.

Standing at the Hudson Train Station. His odessy has just begun, as he now must find his way across Columbia County to Dodd’s Farm. Last year he was able to hitch a ride with a weathervane salesman, but this year seems to have him at a disadvantage, being that Dodd’s farm already has a weathervane.

One of the many well kept secrets of Sniff This is that he loves ice cream. He asked for a small, but got a medium instead. Now he’s trying to eat the evidence before the shopkeeper comes over to ask him for the extra quarter.

Take it from Sniff, the bathroom at the X-tra Mart on the corner of 23, and 9H is not worth the trip, despite what it says in the brochure.

Waking up in a tent on Friday morning. The smell has not yet fermented to its full potency.

Watch as the wild Sniff stalks its prey…

Inexcusable.

Saturday afternoon. Looking a bit more like a bloated rock star than usual.

Sunday afternoon. Good god.

If you would like to meet Sniff This, please contact his manager, Patrick, who will arrange a meeting over a couple of servings of cheeseballs.

Last weekend was He-Man weekend up at Lake George. He-Man weekend, which takes place on the last weekend of April in a drizzly, muddy, windy version of lovely Tiroga Point, is a tradition that goes back decades. We men of the point all arrive on Friday and converge on one living room (the one that can fit the most card tables). We come up for other reasons besides drinking beer and playing cards (most of us, at least). He-Man weekend is the time for fixing the water pump and unshuttering the windows, for unending trips to the hardware store, but mostly we’re there to win lose money.

Both my brothers (and the other male member of the family) came up with my Dad to celebrate this most joyous of holidays and, as third generation Tirogans, we were vastly outnumbered by the second generation. It also didn’t help that we youngins underestimated the scale of the game by about 20 dollars and showed up with about 15 dollars of change and small bills between us. Sadly, that lasted us about an hour into Friday night, by which time we were all broke and taking out loans (tuition, he called it) from our Dad. Ryan briefly came back on Friday and early Saturday, but wisely bowed out when he stopped recognizing the games the other guys were calling.

Which left us with a dilemma. We still wanted to play, but didn’t want to keep losing money. Enter old-fashioned Kennedy ingenuity… The three of us chose Indian Poker, a favorite game of our youth. But what to bet with?

We wracked our brains before realizing that that was exactly what we’d do, we’d wrack our brains! We would bet flicks to the forehead!! Amazingly, the game lasted almost half an hour and betting got as high as twelve flicks (though we found if we went any higher, it would cause everyone still in to fold).

There is video of this game and once I can get it off my father’s camera, I’ll post it here!!

So it goes.

Quarts: 9
Quart breakdown:

• 1 Stewarts brand
• 1 Horizon Organic brand
• 1 Southern Comfort brand (no hooch in it, they make you buy that crap separately)
• 1 Hood brand
• 2 quarts (half gallon) Hannaford brand
• 2 quarts (half gallon) Turkey Hill brand (my favorite!)
• 1 quart of Organic Valley Eggnog (which a co-worker raised on a farm laughed at)

Also, I have in my possession Doom the book. That’s right, all the rip-roaring action that made the Doom movie such a rousing success is now compressed into 304 pulse-pounding pages.

For those of you playing the doylebrau home game, that’s a book, based on a movie, based on a video game.

I was rooting around in my junk drawer and I found him, my Tamagotchi, still alive after all these years.  Hell, I think the last time I fed him was 1997.  What has he been living on this entire time?  He was in a little plastic case, so that rules out any kind of gorging on the random sticks of gum or twizlers that might be stuck amongst my things.  Maybe he was fasting?  When I turned him on, he looked a little gaunt, so maybe he’s been in a constant state of meditation and reflection for the past ten years.  It would make sense, its really dark in there most of the time.

I remember my friends trying to keep theirs alive.  Always feeding it healthy food, watering it, keeping it away from junk.  I just threw mine in a locker and took it home at the end of the year…

Wait a minute.  That means that my tamagotchi feels pretty neglected, probably abused.

Maybe I should try to take it down before it tries to kill me.

Updates soon.

Update:  Okay, this thing will not die.  I’ve been cramming it’s belly with the bad food (B button,  B for Bad) for, like, an hour now.  What is going on?  i’m scared.