Sean Thomas Lugano

Sean Thomas Lugano

Today's the day. Ten years gone and the rest of our lives to go.

This blog honors Sean Thomas Lugano

I knew Sean casually. We went to college together and were on the rugby team together. He was much better than I was. He was very fast and much stronger than he looked. Sean was one of those guys who was reserved but very funny. He wasn't one of those guys who garnered attention by being outrageous or demonstrative. He was just there, always with a smile and quick with a laugh or a joke. He took a lot of flack in college because of his modeling career. He used to model to make money for college and the idea of a rugby player being a model seemed absurd. The only commercial I ever saw him in was for The Gap and ironically, he was playing rugby in the commercial. That seemed to redeem him somewhat in the eyes of his teammates and we didn't rib him much after that.

I didn't know Sean well enough to keep in touch with him after college. Occasionally, I'd see him in the bars in Manhattan or Hoboken after that and we'd chat. His family owned a bar on the Upper East side and my friend was the bartender in the bar next door. I was surprised to see him working the door one night as a bouncer. (Sean was strong but short.) I looked inside and saw his sister and she smiled and waved. That was the last time I saw him. He was only bouncing to help out at nights and on weekends. During the day he was working downtown somewhere in one of the bigger firms, I don't remember which one (BBH?).

I didn't hear about Sean's death until sometime after that day. I think I was looking through the official victim's list and saw his name. I remember I was struck numb. Of all the people who died that day, he was the last one I thought I'd see listed. I don't know why that is, but it seemed impossible that a guy as nice as Sean was killed like that. I am doing Sean a disservice with such a poor tribute but it's not easy to do.

He was known in his apartment building as the guy who would help everyone. He would fix things for the older ladies who lived alone and need help from time to time. He knew everyone's name and always said hello with a smile. He was the guy you'd introduce to your sister hoping she'd marry a guy like him.

Goodbye Sean, you are not forgotten. I wish I had known you better.

Why the "green energy revolution" has been indefinitely postponed

Several local bloggers have been wailing and gnashing their teeth because their favorite boondoggle has not been sufficiently funded by the State of Delaware. I've long been skeptical of "green" or "renewable" sources. Most of them are net energy losers, are too expensive, do not scale or a combination of those. I believe the way to a cleaner energy source is to use much more nuclear energy. Thorium is plentiful, cheap and safe. It has its own drawbacks but they are far better than the alternatives. I also believe that we can use the resources we have more wisely and continually work on polluting less and less. I don't like the idea that we are so firmly wedded to a hydrocarbon economy from a risk standpoint more than anything else. In terms of resources usage we've been rather foolish and wasteful. There are many ways we could substantially improve our energy efficiency that we're not doing for various reasons. Some are political, some aesthetic and some are practical.

Nuclear energy is politically unpopular. Some blame the echoes of Three Mile Island, Silkwood and Chernobyl. I think the latter looms larger than the other two. Unfortunately, Chernobyl is a case study in what not to do if you're running a nuclear reactor. (Wikipedia has a longer explanation)

From an aesthetic point of view, we have houses that are largely (or wholly) subterranean. Underground structures have much lower heat variances. If more houses in the US were built this way we would only need to use heating and cooling a fraction of what we use now as you would only be heating or cooling the space by a few degrees. It's almost 100 degrees today. That means your A/C is going to have to do some serious work to get it down to whatever you have it set for. Conversely, how does your basement feel? We don't live this way because people want natural light and windows and it would probably be claustrophobic for some and just plain ugly as viewed from the curb.

On the practical front, solar cells are very expensive, uneven providers in most markets and do not scale enough to lower ROI to a point that makes them competitive. I suppose they have more value in places like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas where they get much more sunshine than say, Seattle. Still they're not able to compete without significant subsidies.

But solar is both clean and renewable, right? Not so much:

A recent Washington Post article, however, has revealed that China’s booming solar industry is not as green as one might expect. Many of the solar panels that now adorn European and American rooftops have left behind a legacy of toxic pollution in Chinese villages and farmlands. The Post article describes how Luoyang Zhonggui, a major Chinese polysilicon manufacturer, is dumping toxic factory waste directly on to the lands of neighboring villages, killing crops and poisoning residents.

So it's clean for us but very much not clean for Chinese people. This problem also extends to electric vehicles. Electricity isn't a power source. It's generated by power plants. So while electric vehicles don't emit pollution where they travel, they merely transport it to the plant where the power is generated. Prius owners (now with 22% more Smug!) either don't know or don't care about the environmental damage the creation of their batteries has wrought on China.

As for wind, which we've heard endless droning on about here in Delaware; it's not all it's cracked up to be.

In California, the wind turbines have turned into bird chopping machines:

The green killer: Scores of protected golden eagles dying after colliding with wind turbines

California's attempts to switch to green energy have inadvertently put the survival of the state’s golden eagles at risk. Scores of the protected birds have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines.

So we have a trade off. "Clean" energy or rare birds. Enough to tie an environmentalist in knots (pardon the pun).

But wind is good because it's reliable and free. Right? Not so much: Britain is running out of wind

According to government figures, 13 of the past 16 months have been calmer than normal - while 2010 was the “stillest” year of the past decade. Meteorologists believe that changes to the Atlantic jet stream could alter the pattern of winds over the next 40 years and leave much of the nation’s growing army of power-generating turbines becalmed.

Great. Now you're stuck with some very expensive pinwheels.


Sadly, in other news biodegradables are worse for the environment than regular trash:

There is increasing interest in the use of biodegradable materials because they are believed to be “greener”. In a landfill, these materials degrade anaerobically to form methane and carbon dioxide.

Additional simulations showed that for a hypothetical material, a slower biodegradation rate and a lower extent of biodegradation improve the environmental performance of a material in a landfill representative of national average conditions.

Environmentalists don't like these types of facts because it conflicts with their vision for the future. A future where we all live in splendid harmony with nature, all our trash is recycled, all our power is renewable and pollution free and we all have cool jobs and everything is designed by Apple. If only reality would stop getting in the way.

Lastly, we have an article that should have received much more attention than it did. It passed without a blip on the national radar because it points us in a direction that they don't want to go:

Everything you've heard about fossil fuels may be wrong:

If gas hydrates as well as shale gas, tight oil, oil sands and other unconventional sources can be tapped at reasonable cost, then the global energy picture looks radically different than it did only a few years ago. Suddenly it appears that there may be enough accessible hydrocarbons to power industrial civilization for centuries, if not millennia, to come.

So much for the specter of depletion, as a reason to adopt renewable energy technologies like solar power and wind power. Whatever may be the case with Peak Oil in particular, the date of Peak Fossil Fuels has been pushed indefinitely into the future.

Without massive, permanent government subsidies or equally massive penalty taxes imposed on inexpensive fossil fuels like shale gas, wind power and solar power may never be able to compete. For that reason, some Greens hope to shut down shale gas and gas hydrate production in advance. In their haste, however, many Greens have hyped studies that turned out to be erroneous.

In 2010 a Cornell University ecology professor and anti-fracking activist named Robert Howarth published a paper making the sensational claim that natural gas is a greater threat to the climate than coal. Howarth admitted, "A lot of the data we use are really low quality..."

Howarth’s error-ridden study was debunked by Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations and criticized even by the Worldwatch Institute, a leading environmentalist organization, which wrote: "While we share Dr. Howarth’s urgency about the need to transition to a renewable-based economy, we believe based on our research that natural gas, not coal, affords the cleanest pathway to such a future."

There are a few caveats here. We don't know enough about some of the economies of scale for these technologies so the author rightly makes note of them. Oil sands are already online and pouring cash into Canada. I for one, am glad our neighbors to the north are pumping as much oil as possible. I'd like to see our country buy from friendly nations like Canada, Brazil and (nominally friendly) Mexico. That wouldn't prevent oil from funding horrible regimes or terrorism, but it would help break OPEC and their ability to fix artificially high prices for oil.

Would I rather live in a world of clean, green energy? Of course but right now we cannot possibly switch from one to the other. I would like to see us transition there as quickly as possible. We can mitigate risk by having multiple concurrent energy sources competing for market share. Let them compete fairly. No cash subsidies and let the states decide if they want to give tax incentives to lure the businesses. I don't think there's going to be a one size fits all solution for a nation as large and varied as this one. Let the market decide. Let the States experiment.

Look, I made a funny

Some ages ago, I received an email from a friend entitled "50 Questions For Men We Want Answered ASAP". I don't know the origin of this list but I answered them and meant to post the answers here. Blow the dust off and see if it makes you laugh.

50 Questions For Men We Want Answered ASAP

1. Did you really think those Super Bowl ads were funny?

Mostly no.

2. Why do you take so long pooping?

I may be the exception. Redirect, your honor? WTF takes you so long in the shower? Don't give me that "shaving my legs crap".

3. Why do you cup your balls so much?

Very comforting somehow. Don't ask me to explain it if you don't have the gear.

4. Bar soap or body wash?

Bar. Body wash is for chicks.

5. Why ask for my number if you’re not going to actually call?

Same reason you give guys a fake one when they ask.

6. Why the mindset that being in a long-term relationship is the end of fun?

Because we know people who are in them.

7. Why are you so convinced that sex is so much more important for you than it is for women?

See above.

8. Do you ever fake orgasms?

No, why would I?

9. Is there such a thing as “too slutty”?

In public? Yes. In private? Hells no.

10. What percentage of your female friends do you want to sleep with?

Not too many. 10 years ago? All of them.

11. Have you cheated? How often?

Never. Not once.

12. Why do you always seem to be drawn to women who are dramatic?

This is the provinence of young men and it's the same reason you women are drawn to assholes and then complain that they're assholes.

13. Hypothetically speaking, do you remember what I was wearing when we first met?

I don't even know what *I'm* wearing now. I'd have to look down to figure it out.

14. How often do you look at porn when your girlfriend isn’t home?

How long is she going to be gone for?

15. What is going through your head when we’re annoyed with you?

Depends on what we're doing. If we're at work, it's running in the background like TeaTimer and taking up a lot of CPU cycles but not producing anything meaningful

16. Do you actually notice when it’s laundry day and we’re wearing old/unattractive panties or do they all look kinda the same to you?

Yes we notice but those panties are like parsely. Push it to the side and start eating.

17. Seriously, isn’t watching six straight hours of football a bit too much?

Not unless you run out of beer.

18. Why do you continue to eat spicy foods if it only makes you feel sick?

For the same reason you love someone who drives you crazy.

19. What makes you think we will go see movies with guns/bombs/explosions if you will not go see rom-coms with us?

Because guns bombs and explosions are exciting. Rom-coms are on par with root canals.

20. If your mother started an argument with me, whose side would you be on?

Publicly, you but privately, depends on whos' right and who's wrong.

21. What do you have against special facial cleansers?

nothing but they're for you, not me.

22. What does it feel like when you fall in love?

It's very distracting and somewhat unnerving.

23. What are you really thinking during sex?

This is AWESOME!

24. What is the one thing you wish girls did in bed that they never do?

Bring a hot friend

25. What do dudes talk about when they are alone?

Sports, cars, beer, guns, politics, hot chicks and dick jokes.

26. Why do you just disappear? If you don’t want to keep dating me, why not just say something?

Less drama. As Mitch Fatel once said, when you try to break up with a women it resembles a trial. There are witnesses and evidence. "You wrote on this card, 'I love you forever' did you not? Were you lying then or are you lying now"?

27. Why won’t you just buy a new pair of shoes?

Because there's nothing wrong with this pair.

28. Why won’t you ask for directions?

A myth. We do. Just not every 2 blocks.

29. What are your expectations of a romantic partner?

Audrey Hepburn in public, Julia Child in the kitchen and Jemma Jameson in the bedroom.

30. Why do you enjoy video games so much?

Because they're competitive and stimulate the brain.

31. Why don’t you ever change the toilet paper roll?

Because you fuckers are always the ones using all the toilet paper.

32. Do you hate it when we ask you to kill the bugs or does it secretly make you feel kind of macho?

Meh. I just see it as something I do.

33. Have you ever slept with a prostitute?

Not ever, not once. I don't even like looking directly at them. Too afraid of hideous STDs.

34. What is my favorite flower? C’mon, surely you’ve been listening.

Tulips.

35. Do you really like the way we taste down there?

Yeah, not answering that one here.

36. If she cheated on you, would you take her back and try to save the relationship? If not, would you expect the same from her?

Ugh. Depends but I don't know if we'd survive that one. Too many hard feelings. Unless we're talking about with a hot chick in which case we're all good so long as I have a video of the event or a front row seat

37. Do you have a hard time if she’s more successful financially?

Nope. Why would I?

38. If a woman gives birth, do you have a hard time seeing her as a sexual partner?

No, you get over that before she does.

39. Why do you want to stick it in our butt so much? Don’t you think about poo?

Forbidden fruit law.

40. If you were with a woman who never let you near her butt, would you be cool with that?

Yes.

41. What’s worse: Marriage or loneliness?

Who says they're mutually exclusive?

42. Do you care if they’re real boobs or fakes?

If I can feel them they're real enough for me.

43. Do you secretly wish we were virgins the first time we slept with you?

Yes and every time thereafter.

44. What does being kicked in the balls really feel like?

Like taking a baseball bat to the gut with the added bonus of nausea.


45. What do you think about when you’re going down on us?

Let's see if I can get her to lift her butt off the bed

46. Does your mom really like me? Do you care?

Yes and yes.

47. How was your first cunnilingus experience?

Awkward for me but effective for her.

48. Have you ever fantasized about one of my friends? A guy?

Yes and is you crazy?

49. Does your dick feel like a dangling appendage when you run?

No. I have to wear special equipment to keep it from knocking out my teeth.


50. Have you ever considered milking the prostate? I’ve heard it’s the jam!

a million times no.

Mind = Blown

F1 For Sale

Rumors abound that Rupert Murdoch and Carlos Slim are looking to form a consortium to buy F1. Bernie Ecclestone (F1 supremo since 1978) says that is completely not true. That can mean only one thing; it's completely true! Bernie is famous for finding out that his wife was divorcing him by reading about it in the newspapers. If he's that out of touch with his wife you can imagine how out of touch he is with F1. OK, that's a bit of a joke. He's probably more in tune with F1 than his marriage which probably explains why he's still in F1 but no longer married.

NewsCorp. is mum on the subject as is Slim. But consider:

Mexican billionaire Slim already has a relationship with the sport via the Telmex-backed Sauber team through his eldest son Carlos Slim Domit.

and JPMorgan is reportedly advising which explains the leak. They've been leaking deal news like a sieve since 2005 or so when they're trying to either close a deal or pump up interest in a market segment.

CVC capital acquired F1 in 2006 and they've been sliding since then. Stupid rule changes, unwise market expansion and wildly increasing costs have been narrowing margins as well as overall revenue. It would not surprise me if CVC was looking for an out.

Add to that the new F1 track coming online in Austin in the very near future. That puts the US back on the map for marketing and increases sales opportunity for TV rights which puts Fox in the catbird seat.

So; if you have a new track in the US, the ownership is US/Mexican you shift the center of gravity from Europe where the sport is lagging and push it on the US front which has a great love of autoracing (if not F1) and it starts to make sense.

The Vlying Vitaly

Vitaly Petrov Steering Wheel Comes Off

Shame. He had such a great race in Australia. First Russian to ever make it to the podium. He's a great driver I think he just totally misjudged the track apron. I still can't figure out why he went off in the first place.

F1 season is well underway and it looks like this year's rule changes are indeed, making a difference. Let's hope we avoid the boring-ass season we had last year.

I bet I can make you cry

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.