TEA LIGHTS and energy waste.

So .. I see you can heat your home with a tea-light under an inverted flower pot.
It just appeals to my debunking instinct, so here goes.

A tea-light weights about 17 grams. Paraffin contains about 49 kJ/g.
Total is 833kJ. If it burns in 4 hours, we have about 833/4kJ/hr = 208 kJ/hr
= 208kJ/3600 seconds = 57.8 W pr. tea light.

Knowing it takes about the 600W setting on my heater blower to heat my fairly large office, I speculate I could do it with 10 tea-lights instead of electricity. A trip to IKEA would get me about 100 tea-lights for $4 and I'd be looking at about 40 cents to heat the office for the 4 hours they burn.
In tea-lights, that's about 40 cents for 2.4kWh (600Wx4h).

Should I instead decide to turn my electric heater on, 
I'd pay 6.9 cents pr. kWh or 16.5 cents in electricity. 
If I lost all creativity and just used my natural gas forced air furnace, I'd pay about $7 pr GJ for the natural gas, which is 2.5 cents pr. kWh or 6 cents for the 4 hours.

Let me say that again; 4 hours of heat costs me:
Tea lights :   $0.40
Electricity:   $0.17
Natural gas: $0.06

What if we went to Sweden and did the math there?
After all the IKEA tea-light mine is in Sweden.
Hmm... over there 100 tea lights cost 42 kr. or about $8.25.
That's 80 cents for 4 hours of heat. 

In Sweden electricity is about 60 cents against our 17 cents for the 2.4kWh

Tea lights :   $0.80 (SWEDEN, IKEALand)
Electricity:   $0.60
 
So our Swedish cousins could actually save 50% in heating if they had electric heat and could tow massive amounts of tea-lights over from IKEA in Vancouver.
Now it's getting crazy.

The crazy part is not the difference in price, but how SLOPPY it makes us here with our energy consumption and thereby CO2 budget.


A typical 1500 square feet home in Denmark uses about 18 MWh a year. By law they are insulated with 300mm of insulation material in the roof and most have double or triple windows and zone heating. The price is about 3300 dollars a year.

My home here in Vancouver used about 70GJ last year, which is 20MWH, for which I paid about $1200. ABOUT ONE THIRD of what it would have cost in Denmark.

But I did that with a year average outside temperature of 13 degrees, which means I heated my house by 6 degrees for that sum. The Danish year average temperature is 8 degrees C and the wind is always up. They need to heat the house by 11 degrees to get 19C inside (twice as much as here). Vancouver has no wind to speak of, but Denmark has a fairly steady average wind, which increases the heat bill by at least 50%. This leads me to conclude:

A conservative guess is that my (rented) Vancouver home here leaks heat about 3 times as fast as the average Danish home. My CO2 footprint could be 1/3 with proper insulation.  
If I took an average Danish home and plonked it down here in Vancouver, insulated to standards, I would be paying about $35 a month in heat, one third of what I pay now.

If I took a Vancouver home and plonked it down in Denmark, I'd be paying about $10000 a year, $833 a month, in heat, with the current Danish energy prices.

That about sums it up when it comes to a Canadian or North American CO2 footprint.
IF our energy prices hit the Danish (European) levels, I bet we could reduce the damage we do.

But not by burning tea-lights from Ikea.

/<

It has been 30 days since my last squirrel.

My name is Kent Johansen,
I am a distraction addict.
It has been 30 days since my last Squirrel.
(audience applauds)

So, people are teasing people with ADHD and ADD and such that they chase squirrels and (where did my coffee go) suddenly disappear out of conversations. Their minds fly around. Mmmmm. Mango Pudding. That's not fair. The teasers are just not noticing really loud distractions.
Christina Hendricks. Hrm. Where were we?

Here's what I am going to tell you about Squirrels and people with AD(H)D.

Have you ever noticed a squirrel trying to warn other squirrels? They are completely, super, over, mega, hyper vigilant and see any danger coming. They go through insane measures to warn the entire forest against approaching danger:

Here's what they do:

They tap their teeny weenie front paws two millimeter up and down and whisper "tsk tsk tsk".
The insane racket of the alarm can be heard almost 2 meters away on a silent morning.
Sometimes they even shake their tails a teeny weenie bit. More like vibrate.
Usually they will make the spectacle even more insane by hiding behind the tree trunk.

Believe you me, squirrels are able to make quite impressive sounds. We once caught and relocated a two-colored pirate squirrel from the garden. He was really foul mouthed and had several tattoos and a wooden leg. He screamed and growled and yelled and swore at us, even pissed through the bars to show us how mad he was. He'd have torn our heads off given half a chance and pee'd down the throat hole. Squirrels are not fun animals, they are just member of The Union of Cute Animals. They are killers. Egg thieves. Roof wreckers. Pirate squirrel was relocated because he tore entire boards out of our house with his left hand to get in and wreck the home from inside. His rage was impressive.

Are squirrels not interested in warning other squirrels?
Is this some kind of pirate animal "psst, you, you dropped a $100 note ... oh I guess you did not hear me". ??
Are they faking it?

NO!

I figured it out. Usually people who are easily distracted or have been lucky enough to be diagnosed having ADD or ADHD by a well meaning drug pusher, sorry, psychologist ... are actually sensitive artists. They may even be psychic empaths. Things are LOUD, BIG and EMOTIONAL to them.
They feel the grass grow, hear the sun shine, sense the storm brewing 200 km away or the Earth cracking, preparing for an earthquake. The heartbeats of Birds. The horny of the Elk.

Empaths regularly find themselves in other people's shoes. POW. It happens to them in supermarkets and crowded places. Suddenly SAD walks up behind them and they shed a tear. Or happy. Or serial killer. That's why empaths don't like Boxing Day and Black Friday. They can do 10 minutes and they want home because they are tired of feeling like Jack the Ripper and Mr. Rogers alternating every 10 seconds.

At the risk of being really weird (a risk I frequently and joyfully take) I will reveal the secret about squirrels: They warn other squirrels by telepathy! The tapping and shaking and tsk tsk ing is just to get the juices going. Meanwhile the Ether resounds with a 150 decibel telepathic squirrel warning: WHEEEEEEEE INSANE GUY IN CRAZY NON-MATCHING SOCKS ENTERED FOREST. 

And I go: "Look! Squirrel"

To the mundane person, sadly limited to only 5 dull senses, it's a little tree climbing, unionized rat with a bottle cleaner tail that's tapping its tiny fingers self-importantly. Nothing to write home about.

Not to me.
I'll have my squirrel, thank you.
If you had a 150 dB siren go off next to your ear, you'd be distracted too.
And put the Ritalin away.

/<

Micro-kindness

Remember the movie "Gaslight"?
Being Gaslighted is a psychotherapy term for a relationship, where one partner drives the other insane by removing all their faith in themselves. Their sense of reality is bent until it breaks.

In the movie, it was done deliberately and with a motive. Events were staged and evidence removed.
This happens ... but something happens even more often:

There is a danger in any relationship, which have taken out more relationships, I believe, than any other single danger. It's called micro-aggression. I heard that term for the first time this morning and I realized it is a very very important concept to REALLY get.

In the day-to-day noise of life happening, we make tiny little choices all the time. It's not unlike making the choice of rounding a payment ending on 5 cents up or down to the nearest dime.
The microscopic acts of kindness or cruelty are so small, they all end up hiding in the noise.
Each cruelty so small, it's not fair to make an issue out of it. It's just not worth the sore throat, the potential passive aggressive retaliation and the sinking feeling for the rest of the evening to actually call it and DO something about it.

Besides, you'll look like a nutcase.
Because it was really nothing. Arguing about nothing is called bickering...

The downside to keeping peace is that it will drive you absolutely up a tree. 
Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip. Disguised as rain. All natural.
Nothing to see here. Nothing to complain about.

Of course, it affects whether YOUR next 5 cents are rounded up or down.

Ignoring a question.
Pretending not to hear.
Doodling around when the partner is in a hurry.
Taking the last cup of coffee.
Not emptying the dishwasher.
Leaving the dishwasher open to point this out.
Bringing up stressful issues when the partner asks for connection.
Being annoyed about hugs at the wrong times.
Being too busy to hear a story ... watching the food channel. 
Not saying thank you.
Borrowing tools and not returning them. Again.
Ignoring repeated requests to wrap food when returning it to the fridge.
Putting gross things in the kitchen sink.
Letting the heat out before leaving the partner home alone.
Being late.
Not waiting for the partner to buckle in before driving off.
Going to bed much later than the partner and waking up cranky.
Making idiotic things more important than the now.
Finding the little thing that's wrong with the gift.
Finding little things too small.
Big things too big.
Right things slightly wrong.

If you, at the end of the day, have more than $1 in cruelty cash on your hands, maybe you're short-changing yourself in the process of short-changing your partner.

It's not going to break the budget in any way to round the 5 cents the right way every time. 
Misery is expensive in lost efficiency and lack of motivation. Not to speak of divorces.

Therefore ... resolve to micro-kindness. Make the noise of life a happy noise.
Even if you don't have money or time to give great gifts and luxurious vacations,
remembering to give, a symbolic offering at the Temple of Love is considered as great
as truckloads of gold and myrrh in the eyes of Cupid.

/<

Carving Runes

I seem to have this urge to write long thoughts.

It's not from my Viking ancestors, who tended to write very short thoughts on rocks using runes, like "Gorm carved these runes after his father".
Which one might think kinda translates to "Hey, watch me, I can write with a hammer and a chisel."

Or I could decide that's what Gorm did.

I could also decide that Gorm perhaps, one frosty morning, put on an extra pair of woolen pants and a fur coat. He was thinking about his father and he walked out to that place, where the two used to sit. His father used to tell him stories about Freya and Heimdall and Valhalla and how the World was created by Fire and Ice, all the while teaching Gorm how to make little ducks out of reed.
Gorm is thoughtful this morning. He kisses his wife and kids and tells them he'll be gone for the day.
He gets his stone hammer and makes sure the head is tied on properly, then goes out the heavy wooden door and closes it carefully to keep the heat inside.

The sun is just rising. The cobwebs have caught the dew and Gorm's legs get a bit wet, as he carefully, with long steps, lifting his skin boots high, walks through the purple headed thistles to his fathers final resting place.
Next to a standing stone, he puts birch bark fibers and bark down, lights it carefully with steel and flint and adds pieces of 5 sacred woods to the fire. The sweet smoke rises, meets a temperature shift a couple of meters up and fans out, drifting slowly East towards the rising sun. Soon a good fire is going. Gorm can feel his dad's presence and there is a little tear blurring his vision.
His breath hangs in the air as little clouds of frozen steam. Gorm remembers he is alive.
That air has the breath of his father in it too, but it is no longer warm.

Gorm opens his bag and takes out some good, salted sausage and some mead. He carves a slice of sausage with his knife and puts it at the base of the stone. Then he pours a bit of mead next to it. He pats the ground, which still has that little hollow where his dad used to sit. 

"Dad", he says aloud, keeping a little pause as his breath recovers after stumbling in its pace. "We're going to do something today, which I always will remember." I will write on this stone what we did today, Gorm thought. "Today" he said. It seemed that everything listened. He knew that his dad could hear him too. Then he started to write the memory of the moment, the precious now, the prayer of the present moment, nothing else:

"Gorm carved these runes after his father".

These words describing precisely what happened that day still wind along the edge of the stone, while not much but a few bones are left of Gorm or his wife or his children or even their children's children. Gorm was remembered as husband, father, then grandfather, then next great grandfather then great great grandfather ... but as time went, only the name remained and the memory of his habits, his essence and his kind heart dispersed like the morning dew on the thistles.

This present and precious Today, thirty five generations later, the latest of Gorm's lineage of firstborns is riding a Skytrain, not knowing how special he would be to Gorm. His name is Andrew. Andrew is a bit hung over from trying to entertain himself during the weekend and swearing about his iPhone spell checker. He's a bit depressed because he has nothing meaningful to do, you know, anything meaningful is expensive and he's short of cash, LOL.

Once he wrote something on his messenger about his dad, but he dropped the phone down a fish-tank in a drunken stupor at a friends place. It was time to get a new iPhone anyway and they were free because he was about to get his contract renewed anyway. With a data plan. Nothing less than 1GByte is meaningful, you know, LOL, Facebook eats so much bandwidth.

While this young man was already forgotten and his dad even more so, ... out in some foreign field, among purple thistles, forty bytes continued to witness that once, on a frosty morning, two hearts connected across the realms of existence.

Andrew does not know this.
This is why he is not happy with his spell checker.