A shocking weekend

This weekend was actually not too surprising in the sports department. Two number one seeds and two number two seeds are in the Final Four - a pretty ho-hum year. There really wasn't a good Cinderella story to cling on to this year. It is pretty cool, however, that a school like Georgetown can make it to the dance nowadays. I always pull for the small schools in the tourney. However, when my hard earned ten dollars is on the line, I've got Kansas all the way. I'm reckless with my money. I thought KU was a lock.

In another surprising story, Tiger Woods won some World Golf Championship tournament that changes names and locations with more viscosity than a Sergio Garcia luger. Why is Tiger so good?


Trivia:

What school is the lowest seed (highest number) to win the NCAA tournament?


Villanova won the championship in 1985 as an 8 seed. Crazy huh?

Go Green or Go Home

When do you officially become old? Old is certainly a relative term. For instance Alan Greenspan may look at Ben Bernanke as a spry young buck, while Strom Thurman envies Greenspan for his youthful exuberance. Or was that irrational exuberance? In any event, Strom Thurman isn’t envying much at all since he was put six feet under in 2003. What a wild ride it was though.

My proposition for defining when you’ve become old is when you use the terms, “nowadays” and “back in the day” in the same conversation. The first time you make that inevitable blunder, you’ve just crested the hill, so you might as well hop in one of those obnoxious tires from Jackass 2 and enjoy the ride. However there is no need to put leaches on your eye or get in any way involved with a stallion – that stuff is just dead wrong.

So nowadays, going green has become the topic of every article and news bit this side of the ozone layer. Back in the day (whenever the hell that was), we heard about the occasional hybrid car and some pie in the sky hydrogen fuel cell, but recently, there has been a shift from exclusive focus on green automobiles and alternative fuels to green buildings. People are not only going green or going home, but they’re going green and going home. Going green in the building industry is becoming just as popular as putting a fish hook through your buddy’s cheek and casting him into shark infested waters. And because buildings consume 70% of the electricity in this country - this is a good thing, especially since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association reported that this past winter has been the warmest on record.

In particular there’s been a sudden onslaught of interest from large corporations in green building technologies. So why are leaders of companies like Wal-Mart, BP, General Electric, and Bank of America throwing tons of green at getting their green on when up until recently, their interest has been worse than Duke’s performance at this year’s NCAA basketball tournament? They must have come to a collective agreement to put their emphasis on profits aside and help the World strictly out of the goodness of their hearts.

Well, this isn’t actually the case. Though I believe the leaders of these companies are truly concerned about the fate of our planet, unless these guys are smoking a lot of green, there is probably some financial benefit to what they’re doing. Green building has taken off in the corporate world because it not only makes environment sense, but financial sense as well. And this is a good thing. The fact that it took thorough investigation of the financial benefits for the concept to even be considered, well, that’s bad, but fortunately that dilemma is now moot because the numbers cannot be ignored.

In a nutshell, green buildings can save 30% of energy costs with construction cost increases below 10% (usually closer to 5%). So you don’t have to be Pythagoras to do a quick calculation and realize the benefit. You also don’t have to have the risk tolerance of Johnny Knoxville to go green, because the benefits are not only in energy savings.

The most surprising benefit of green buildings in my mind is the affect on worker health and productivity. Basically, if I was writing this in a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified building, I would have finished it an hour ago and moved onto successfully solving the World’s energy problems thus eliminating the need for LEED buildings altogether.

Maybe it’s not quite that good, but green technologies that increase natural daylight, improve air quality, and reduce the overall toxicity of a building can increase worker productivity by 1-2%. And though this doesn’t seem like very much, the financially benefits of greater productivity and lower absenteeism dwarf those of energy saving and in the very least will negate all the lost time from NCAA pool wagering. So throw better health and productivity into the mix and you’ve got a building that can pay back ten times the initial cost of going green.

Green building is also fantastic for public relations. For instance there is little doubt that Bank of America’s hard push on the green button, including a 51-story skyscraper in New York City, will help counter accusations of credit card targeting of undocumented aliens. And there is also little doubt that green Wal-Marts can help battle some perception of the company being a monster determined to put every mom and pop shop into the poorhouse.

Regardless of whether you're Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Johnny Knoxville, or even Strom Thurman, it’s difficult to deny the benefits of going green. Nowadays, it’s just the right thing to do.


Tell John Poole about what it was like to be green back in the day at poolejohn@gmail.com. Also, check out some stuff on the web by Gregory H. Kats, he knows how to get his green on.

Another year, another hour

Springing forward is one of those things that may cost you an hour of sleep on a Saturday night, but brings you countless hours of later daylight throughout the summer. I know I'm surely giving you a wealth of knowlege here, but I will say that I'm a huge fan. Watching the Real World without turning on a light is what summer is for. And turning the clocks ahead three weeks earlier this year is right up there with sliced bread and Krispy Kreme donuts in my book.

I'm still not exactly sure why they do this daylight saving thing. Apparently the energy savings is inconclusive, especially during the summer when air conditioners have to run longer in the evening. It changed during World War I for some weird reason, but that's all I can safely say.

So anyway, go ahead and enjoy a new trivia question:

What witty American first proposed Daylight Saving Time (though slightly in jest)?

Catch y'all on Friday....


Daylight Saving Time was proposed by Philly's own, Ben Franklin.

Move there and they will come

I’ve come to realize over the past year or two that there are certain benefits to living in the Vail Valley. One of these benefits is being blessed with visitors who are coming to see you, of course, and not just the fresh powder and acres of ski terrain. They are coming to see me right?

Sometimes I wonder if I am in fact the focal point of the visit because when East Coast ski areas look more like a site for a monster truck rally and advertisements start howling about how much snow is dumping in Vail, almost like clockwork I start getting calls from every friend, acquaintance, classmate, teammate, second cousin, third cousin, neighbor, ex-roommate, and ex-girlfriend I’ve ever had. Ok fine, I was lying about the ex-girlfriends, but the truth is that since they know someone living in the mountains of Colorado, people feel that it is their God-given unalienable right to plan a ski vacation and use your home as their personal chalet for as long as they‘d like. I’ll get calls that often go something like this:

“Hey man! I just booked my plane ticket.”
“Who is this?”
“I’m coming out for a week this year, none of this long weekend stuff.”
“No really, who is this?”
“I’ve got a few friends coming too. And we’re not too thrilled about renting a car; can you pick us up in Denver?”
“What are the dates,” I mutter as I flip the conversation to autopilot.
“You can get us a deal on lift tickets right?”

And it just so happens that this week is the time that fit conveniently into the schedule of my brother and some other friends for their ski getaway. Now I don’t want to be a total grouch about this thing, because within limitation, I do truly enjoy visitors. For example a couple of weeks ago I had some friends in (and friends of friends of course). They were enjoying their vacation late in the evening when I had to work the next day, when they realize that someone had lost the keys to their car that was parked in my garage. So instead of hitting the mountain after twelve plus inches of snow on Saturday, we ransacked the house in a fruitless attempt at finding the key and then had every tool in our garage strewn about while making a reckless effort of hot wiring the car.

Though this is beside the point, the hot wiring maneuver was successful and the car was driven back to Denver with no key. Friends of friends are much more welcome when they have the handyman skills of MacGyver. Maybe I’ll have an unexpected bomb ticking in my kitchen for this visitation, however I doubt I‘ll be as lucky with the skill-set of my visitors.

Being around people that are on vacation when you’re not is always a little difficult to handle. There’s a certain psychological benefit to going away for vacation. Even when I take some time off, flicking on the vacation switch isn’t as easy as when you land in Honolulu and a cute native throws a lei around your neck. Maybe for this visit of friends and acquaintances, I’ll wear my own lei and throw sand, a beach chair and a heat lamp in the living room.

So I really don’t want this to be a deterrent to any potential visitors, because like I said, I do enjoy the camaraderie. I look back on some of my visitor weekends from last year, and though there were times of mild inconvenience, they were the most enjoyable experiences I've had while living up here.

So feel free to come on out, crash on the pull-out, raid the fridge, borrow my car, lose your keys, hell, go ahead and take twenty bucks out of my wallet while I’m sleeping - after all, you’re on vacation.


Send John Poole your flight itinerary at poolejohn@gmail.com