Eggs and Energy

Darn you Jake.

Jake recently wrote a post on his blog about food poisoning (the link to his blog is to the right, click on the one that says Blair), and trys to make a claim that eggs can go bad (dumb, right?). I mean I've eaten eggs that have sat in my refrigerator for months before. With that protective shell and all, how could they even begint to go bad. Plus, with that expensive price tag, ($.93 for a dozen) how could you not do everything to not throw them out. Well, all this talk of eggs, made me want an omelet. So, I grabbed the eggs from the refrigerator taking special notice of the best to buy before date of October 15 (if they want you to buy them before October 15th, that means they expect you to eat them later, so we'll say expiration date of October 25th). So I said, "That's only three weeks old, I definitely eating these guys!!" So, I turn the stove on and start cracking the eggs. I crack the first egg and immediately question the yolks texture. I crack the second egg and question why the egg didn't crack right. I grab the rest of the eggs and throw them in the trash. I couldn't do it. Jake was totally in my head. Now, I have to wait until I forget about Jake getting food poisoning from eggs to enjoy them again. I'm not European, I'm not going to go to the supermarket everyday. That's why they invented pasteurization (that begs an important question, why can't the French pasteurize their stuff, their man Louis Pasteur invented the process). So I could enjoy my eggs a month after purchase.

Two asides about eggs.
1. You can get 3 pretty nice meals out of a dozen eggs. At $.31 a pop, that has got to be the deal of the century.
2. At Evan and Scott's bodybuilding competition, they had free magazines. In one of said magazines, there was an advertisement for egg whites. The product was a bucket full of egg whites that you add as a supplement to protein mixes. The worst thing about it, is that the bucket of eggs looked like one those gigantic lotion bottle looking containers. You know the kind they have ketchup in in baseball stadiums. So you basically you be like, "Ok, I need 3 squirts of egg white byproduct in my drink. Delicious." More like disgusting.

Ok, next topic. Geothermal Energy. I recently went to the Net Impact Conference in Nashville (you can Google Net Impact for more info on them), and one of the speakers was this guy who made a documentary (Kilowatt Ours.....get it) on where our energy from. He had this really effective illustration of how when you flip a light switch, you are effectively blowing up a mountain in Appalachia. Now, is that sensationalistic. Yes. Effective. Yes. Anyway, although his film was made at a much lower budget than An Inconvenient Truth**, I liked it more because the entire second half of the film was solutions and I thought that was lacking with Al Gore's film. The solutions were based on how much money one could save. Saving money is always more effective to getting people onboard than trying give people the soft sell. Either way, you're saving the earth.

One of the solutions was geothermal heating, and it showed this man who ran his pipes really deep into the ground to have the earth geothermally heat his water. He saved something like $600 a year doing this (the man probably had a 5,000 square foot house, so why he was worried about the money, I have no idea).

There is another type of energy called wave energy. Wave energy is energy derived from wave motion. In practice this means taking a magnetic and anchoring it to the sea floor. You place this magnet inside a buoy with electric coils inside it. The motion of the ocean (hehe) causes the buoy's electric coils to oscillate up and down along the magnet and creating electricity. Cool.

But, I see a problem with both types of energy. What happens when a large amount of people start using it? Energy is a zero sum gain. If tons of people starting using energy to heat their water, that means their is less geothermal heat to go around. What effect does that have on the earth? In 100 years will people be calling for the end of geothermal energy before its too late. If tons of coastal cities create wave energy parks (groups of these wave energy buoys), the oceans kinetic energy will be turned into cities potential energy. Those waves you see at the beach will begin to become much weaker. In 50 years, will people call for the end of wave energy and the use of oil. It remains to be seen. You do have credit people for trying to find solutions.

Probably the best solution is an epidemic or aliens. I'm kidding......kinda.

Another issue I've been pondering lately is this. Ryan Adams is almost finished with his contractual obligations to Lost Highway records. As such, the rumor is there will be a box set of all his releases. I have half of Ryan Adams releases, and I want the other half. But I don't know what to do. I could buy the rest of them and not have the official box set. Or I could wait, buy the box set, and them have doubles of half his stuff. No good solution. Geez.

Song Recommendation - House By The Sea by Iron & Wine