Moronic product of the week.

Meet the Love Bottle.


This is a product I saw being hawked on Treehugger last week and if there's a more glaring example of that site's being out to lunch I can't think of it. The Love Bottle is being peddled as a sustainable way to carry around your own water. The bottle's made from recycled glass, so I have to give them that. However, the idea behind the Love Bottle is this, "Did you know that words and pictures have energy and water is affected by that energy?" That's taken directly from their website. I had to read it a couple of times to make sure I had read properly. It's almost a treat to see that kind of jaw-dropping stupidity. Almost.

I nosed around on their site and sure enough, they are dedicated to the insane fiction that water can be imbued with an intention, and in this case the intention is "love." Apparently, the worker bees who make the bottles whisper sweet nothings while the bottles are in production. Then that love magic stays with the bottles for the rest of their useful lives. I don't know what bothers me more about that. That someone can make such a claim without a challenge or that stupid people will buy a product that makes such a claim.

On a deeper level, where did the idea that you have to lug around your own drinking water come from? This bottle-of-water-in-every-hand-phenomenon came out of nowhere over the last 20 years and seems to be the unholy result of American hypochondria, American self-indulgence and a bottled water industry all to willing to ride those less-than-admirable traits all the way to the bank. Prior to the popularization of water as a beverage, who carried around liquids? When you wanted a drink of water, you poured yourself a glass from the tap and that was that. Ahhh, cool clean water with the twist of a tap. Now there's some real magic for you. If you were at work or at the gym, you went to the water fountain and drank some water. Gee, water fountains. Remember them? But that's too simple I suppose and how can you make gobs of money from a public resource?

So I suppose my big beef with the Love Bottle is twofold. Few things go through me like non-scientific and soft-headed claims regarding the miraculous properties of anything, let alone water. The other thing about it that bothers me is that it further spreads the idea that you need to carry water with you at all times. If the Love Bottle people were interested in a sustainable practice, they wouldn't be adding to an already wasteful idea. Behind all of their fuzzy-headed claims of the paranormal, the Love Bottle's real intentions become obvious when you see the $20 price tag. Aha! The myth of altruism gets exposed again. $20 for a glass bottle. Please.



I have an idea. A billion people in the world don't have access to clean and safe drinking water of any kind let alone magic water in a Love Bottle. But there's a product called the Life Straw that's a solution to that problem. The Life Straw is a hand held water filter that works like a straw. To call it a life save for 1/6th of the world's population is an understatement. If you're tempted to buy a love bottle because you think you're doing something to "save the earth." Stop right there. You can sponsor a Life Straw for $15 through the Rotary Club of Fort Lauderdale and in so doing, you'll be saving a life. Several lives in fact. That will leave you with five dollars and with that, you can buy the nicest water glass you can get your hands on. Leave it on your desk and use it every time you want a drink of water.
Then, if you want to witness a real miracle and the only instance of a thought influencing an object try this. Hold up your right hand. Wiggle your index finger. Hey! That's all the miracle you need.

Cool, sustainable countertop materials and where to buy them

I was combing through my blog list over the weekend and shaking my head at all of the hoo-hah being made about granite lately. I specify granite all the time and whatever reservations I have about it, they are not based on bogus health claims. My only reservations about granite are a) it's pretty much everywhere any more and b) comes out of the ground in some less-than-ideal conditions. So what's out there that's unusual, resilient AND sustainable?

Well I came across a mention of Squak Mountain Stone on Apartment Therapy. Squak Mountain Stone is made by made by Tiger Mountain Innovations and is a counter top material that looks like a cross between limestone or soapstone and concrete. Squak Mountain Stone is a fibrous, cast material made from recycled glass, recycled paper, coal fly ash and concrete. Coal fly ash is what's left over after a power plant burns coal to make electricity. Squak Mountain Stone is an interesting alternative to other, non-sustainable counter top materials. Unlike the rest of its competitors, it's possible to buy this material and install it yourself in simpler applications. It's an interesting idea and the resulting counters look great!

The company behind Squak Mountain Stone also has a product called Trinity Glass, an alternative to quartz counters that's made with 75% recycled glass. Trinity Glass brings a whole different aesthetic to the table from its companion product, Squak Mountain Stone. Just as is the case with Squak Mountain, Trinity Glass is available with a do-it-yourself-er in mind.

Both of these products, and a slew of other sustainable building materials are available at Indigo, a green building products vendor in Gainesville. It's a bit of a haul, but worth the drive. Their website is extensive and you can buy samples and supplies through it.

Wanna know what's new in counter top land? You're looking at it.

Interesting, anecdotal evidence about radioactivity

Watch this video!

Never mind the counters, wear a lead apron when you peel potatoes!

More on the radiation NON-story

Last week, I wrote about the New York times article that claimed falsely that granite countertops were somehow dangerously radioactive. In a case of anecdotes trumping evidence, the Times article didn't enlighten, it alarmed. In the course of the last week, the story grew legs and now it seems that everywhere I look online, I see a reference to that article. The Marble Institute of America had this to say:

In the past few days, a television video has circulated online that has created widespread consumer confusion and concern about radiation levels occurring in
natural granites used for residential countertops. The report suggests some countertops may pose health risks, ignoring years of legitimate and independent scientific research that has concluded that natural stone is perfectly safe to use in homes.

It’s misleading to even hint that we would knowingly sell a product that might harm consumers! The report was prompted by a group that claims to be independent, but is actually funded by two companies that manufacture synthetic stone countertops made of quartz gravel, resins, coloring agents and other chemicals.

Unlike these competing synthetic products, granite is not manufactured in a plant by combining quartz gravel, resins, coloring agents and other chemicals. Throughout the years, consumers have been drawn to natural stone’s beauty, durability, cleanliness and safety.

It’s outrageous that manufacturers of synthetic stone countertops would use a front
group like this to scare consumers. It is also alarming that manufacturers of a
competing product feel they can only compete by groundlessly creating fear about
natural stone, which is safe, beautiful and superior.

In the last paragraph of their statement, the Institute mentions a "front group" used by the "manufacturers of synthetic stone countertops." The group they're talking about is something called the Solid Surface Alliance and their website is here. There are probably other groups such as that one, but I hope not. The Solid Surface Alliance claims that it exists "to provide consumers information on solid surface counter tops, as well as the other uses of solid surface." With that out of their system, the rest of their large website is dedicated solely to blowing smoke and spreading mis-information. It reads like something that Bill O'Reilly would come up with. The hysterical tone, the manipulated statistics and missing contexts are straight out of the Fox News guidebook. They beat the radon drum incessantly of course and even go so far as to link the purchase of natural stone to supporting the Taliban. It's sad, really.

If you have concerns about the radioactivity of household granite, please spend some time reading the Marble Institute of America's website. Rational thinking and facts ought to trump all, but unfortunately that doesn't always happen.

Exeunt omnes

Two years ago I aligned myself with a General Contractor named David Hyde. Over the course of two years, David and I did some great work together. We made a fantastic team and our clients loved us. I drew fantastical pictures and he turned them into real places. I can dream up great designs all day long, but they only count if someone buys them and someone else builds them. For the last two years the someone else who built them was David Hyde. David was a professional, conscientious contractor and he was also my friend.

In a phone call that seems never to have really happened, I found out on Wednesday morning that my friend David Hyde had died a couple of hours earlier. That news is still pounding with a dull throb inside of my skull, almost as if I'd been punched in the head.

David was a year older than I am. Who thinks that a 44-year-old man is going to die suddenly and without a warning? I spoke with him hours before he died and we talked about the work we had planned for the next couple of months. We laid plans in blissful ignorance that Damocles' sword was hanging over his head. I loved that man like a brother and now he's gone. My deepest sympathies go out to his wife and their daughter. Their loss towers over mine and I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a husband and father. It's a strange and overwhelming thing to run headlong into that Ultimate Reality like this.

Suddenly, making sure Mrs. Parker stays happy and that we get the Nicklaus lighting done by next week doesn't quite seem so important as it did a couple of days ago. Shocking though it is, having the Grim Reaper brush past me has had me putting things into perspective with a renewed rigor. In a lot of ways though, I'd have preferred to keep David around and my priorities skewed. But I guess that option's not on the table.

David was everything I'm not. By that I mean he was a suburban, mega-church attending, evangelical with a Jesus fish on his business card. I read the New York Times every day and give money to the ACLU. Forging a working relationship required that each of us put aside the rhetoric we heard from the talking heads on our respective sides of the supposed culture war that's going on in our country. With our ideological differences acknowledged and set aside, we could concentrate on what we had in common. What a concept! That we set aside that crap and saw one another as individuals rather than as our demographic profiles was an opportunity for me, and for him, to let go of the identity politics that is such an easy trap to fall into. Blue states and red states don't really exist you know, and political polarization is an all too effective tool used to win elections. However, it's a lousy way to live your life and shameful way to choose whom to trust. You can only believe that a dreaded Other is your enemy when you can't see his face. I believe that and I know it from first hand experience. I didn't think like that two years ago but I sure do now. So I got to become a better man while at the same time working on a better portfolio. Amazing.

I'm going to move forward, albeit slowly. Everybody will, it's what happens after somebody dies. But a part of me is going to stay right here for a while. So goodbye David my friend, and thanks. I'll take it from here.