Thursday, June 29, 2006

Urban Absurdity: If it were this cold outside, we'd turn on the heat

For the past couple of weeks, I've been suffering from the weather..the weather inside the New York Public Library, which is probably somewhere in the fifties. Even a pretty thick hoodie isn't enough to keep me warm. After three hours of sitting and reading, my fingers and lips are faintly blue, and I have to leave. No matter how much anyone complains, there's nothing to be done.
So, when I saw this headline at Alternet, I was really happy. It provides this fascinating fact:
The electricity used annually to air-condition America's homes, stores, offices, factories, schools, churches, libraries, domed stadiums, hospitals, warehouses, prisons and other buildings (not including what's used to cool manufacturing processes and military facilities) exceeds the entire electricity consumption of the world's second and fourth most populous nations -- India and Indonesia -- combined.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

NYPL is one place that should be climate controlled. Given the sheer number of books going through there the likelyhood of infestation with silverfish is high. As of the mid 90s silverfish were as far north as Virginia and they get a little further north every year. Book ppreservation is a notoriously poorly executed science. I think someone at NYPL may be turning the thermostat down on purpose to avoid using some of the quackery of book preservation vendors.
Maybe not though. I worked at the library of a state school and in the summmer everyone had to wear a sweater. In the winter people literally wore shorts. Apparently there had been a conflict between library staff and building maintenence. the result was a sabotaged thermostat, or so the story went.

Anonymous said...

Marc Maron at FDL

... A lot of what seems funny now, won’t seem so funny when it actually comes true.

Anonymous said...

Marc Maron, in the comments of the previously linked post:

I’m mulling over some choices I have been given about my future with AAR as if last Thursday. I’ll talk about it on the show on Weds.

reb said...

that doesn't sound good. They buried the show out there in LA. and now it sounds like he might be on the block again. I'll be sure to catch the podcast. I haven't been listening to Marc M. as much in the past few months because I have too much reading/writing to do for the book.
My main podcast fix is "This is Hell" - four hour weekly show w/great interviews *and* humor, no adds. Out of Chicago...Instead of being a recovering alcoholic, the host there sounds like an active alcoholic...which is the only bad point about the show. Sometimes I cringe when he talks about his hangovers.