Heard on the internet recently:

HOUSE # 1:

A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home.

This house is not in a northern or Midwestern ’snow belt,’ either. It’s in the South.

HOUSE # 2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university,this house incorporates every ‘green’ feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The  system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system.

Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The  collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE # 1 (The 20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee . It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist  Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as ‘the Texas White House,’ it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

So whose house is gentler on the environment?

Special thanks to Steffy for sending me this today.

I have to give someone at Google credit for a great sense of humour.

1. go to www.google.com

2. click on “maps”

3. click on “get directions”

4. type “New York” in the first box (the “from” box)

5. type “London” in the second box (the “to” box)

6. click on “get directions”

7. scroll down to step #23

You get this map:

And these directions (23 is circled):

Well shoot if I had known it was that easy….

The Duke Lacrosse rape case has been at best a fiasco, and at worst a travesty of justice from the word go.  The victim who changed her story, the exculpatory DNA evidence that Prosecutor Nifong suppressed as it actually vindicated the players and so much more.  Some of the charges were dropped earlier, but today the final charges were dropped.

Dropped?  They were harshly repudiated.  Normally when a DA drops charges, the attitude seems to be one of “insufficient evidence to prosecute” or at best they declare the case as still open and the evidence as inconclusive.  The State AG went much further then that.

All lacrosse charges dropped

State Attorney General Roy Cooper said today he would dismiss sexual assault and kidnapping charges against three former Duke University lacrosse players, declaring them “innocent of these charges” and accusing Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong of overreaching.

Cooper said at a news conference at the RBC Center that he would drop the charges against David Evans, 24, of Bethesda, Md.; Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y.; and Reade Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, N.J.

One aspect of considerable debate is the victim.  Her stories have been a constantly shifting tale of assault and rape and kidnapping, with little or no evidence to back them up and she herself being the best witness against her.

So will she face charges of filing a false report?

Cooper said the accuser — Crystal Gail Mangum — will face no charges. Mangum, 28, still maintains that she was assaulted.

“Our investigators who talked with her and the attorneys who talked with her over a period of time think that she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling,” Cooper said. “They worked real hard with her. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t piece it together.”

He said sexual assault victims often have inconsistencies in their accounts. But the inconsistencies in the dancer’s accounts were significant, he said. “In this case, the inconsistencies were so significant and so contrary to the evidence that we have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house on that night.”