I was just forwarded an article from The Times about an ascetic, if not ridiculous, couple. They are trying to produce no trash for a year. They eat nothing that comes from outside a 250-mile radius. They are not using elevators, cars, trains or airplanes. They are not using a dishwasher or microwave. And, most notably, they are not using toilet paper. But are they using their brains? I don't know, but I imagine the people who sit next to them at work may have an answer. And I imagine the skids in their undies might have an answer, as well. Here's that article. And here is the guy's blog. Of course he has a book deal, silly!

Let me just add a little something to that. Couples like this give a bad name to eco-friendly living. They'll become fodder for people like Jerry Falwell who believe Global Warming is a myth created by kooks. The same kooks who wipe their asses with their hands. We are smart enough, and resourceful enough, to devise a way of living that resembles the 21st century more than it does the 17th. The answer is not in throwing out our microwaves, the answer is creating a better microwave. The same can be said for the car. I'm not saying we shouldn't walk more, or ride our bikes more, I'm just saying that the ideas behind some of our "technological advances" aren't bad ideas. They just haven't been updated. And updating doesn't mean unplugging.

Green building is a step in the right direction. And that's all we can ask right now - a step. It'll be much easier to get the building sector to conform to new standards, standards that in the end benefit homeowners, than to get the masses to walk around with crusty asses. People don't want to sacrifice; people are lazy. That's why, where you can, you make the sacrifices for them. Most people will never know their bamboo floors are rapidly renewable. Most people will never know their walls are made of recycled content. That's the point. And it won't matter anyway. In the near future, it will be the only thing available to them (or at least it should be). The point is we can't trust an uneducated populace to make educated decisions. No Impact Man isn't the problem - and anyone who might be influenced by him isn't the problem. They'll get it sooner or later. The problem is with everyone else. God, I just sounded like a blowhard. Somebody get me Jello shot.

Speaking of the uneducated: the legislature in SC has been using its lottery money, which many thought would go to scholarships to keep bright kids in our state schools thereby improving our state schools, to repair the oldest fleet of school buses in the nation. Why? Because in SC we don't include education in our budget. This is where you could insert your joke about how we can't do the math or something. But the truth, at least a large part of it, is because the people coming up with the budget can afford to send their kids to private schools. And they can certainly afford to give their kids an SUV to drive to school. So why should we care about pouring money into our education system? We're on a golden road to success. And we're certainly not the butt of anyone's joke.

In other school-related news, Rameses, the UNC mascot, dies along with The Heels' dreams of another championship. R.I.P.