My take on Carbon Goggles is something between “obvious” and “pointless.” Second Life has utterly failed to impress me in the suspension-of-disbelief department, thus I’m much more likely to be moved by data on carbon impact than on something that gimmicky. I suspect that while such gimmicks do tend to be effective in getting points across to folks who are not intimately familiar with the subject at hand, the Second Life audience is one that is not ill-educated on climate change.

Recently, I’ve taken on the role of intellectual property champion for the central research division. This means that I’ll be keeping track of trends in what areas we’re inventing, what we’re filing on, and how well we’re doing in generating useful IP for the company. What’s most exciting is that I will be working to devise new, more useful metrics and measurements for the company’s IP performance. This has proved to be an interesting exercise thus far.

What strikes me most is how very little anyone understands about best practices in this area, despite the fact that IP has become central to most of the American economy. I’ve been perusing a report from the General Counsel Roundtable of the Corporate Executive Board that outlines what that group considers to be best practices and they are certainly good, but the implementation is very vague. I’m left with an outstanding question of whether the vagueness is due to the differences in best implementations that arise from legitimate differences between companies or due mainly to the inertia of corporate culture. I expect that I’m going to learn a lot from this.

When he got around to asking our names, he discovered that they didn’t match the one on the account he was supposed to terminate. We pointed out that the folks next door had just moved in and that we’d gotten a misdirected bill for them a few weeks back. We’d dutifully set it back out for the mail carrier and thought nothing more of it. It is alsoimportant to note that our own power bill, then one we’d just paid, had been for a short pay cycle.

It turns out that the folks next door had applied for a connection using our address by accident, realized it, and then re-applied with the right address. Progress Energy decided to simply cancel our account and transfer the service at our house to the guy next door. I was astounded to discover that they would do this without even the most cursory phone call to make sure that we wanted our service disconnected.

After discussing the situation with the company, we’re confident that we’ve got our side of the situation straightened out. They’ve opened a new account for us and made sure that we’d have uninterrupted service. I feel sorry for the poor guys next door. They had almost assuredly been paying their bill - the one that actually was for their address. But when I left, it looked like their power had been cut and the outstanding bill will almost certainly be applied against their credit report. Mainly though, this appears to be a total failure by Progress Energy to sanity check their billing and account processes.

I’m leaving Monday for Chicago again. We’ve decided to lease an apartment up there for the summer, since sublets are fairly cheap now. One of my teammates will be relocating for 2 months, which will mean a lot more work will get done in the lab in Chicago. It will present a logistical hurdle, one that we’ll certainly overcome. For the amount we’re saving, both in total dollars and in dollars per man-hour, it’s a win-win situation.

First and foremost, it appears that Habitat focuses on single family detached dwellings in suburban and exurban subdivisions. While this may not be true of all Habitat affiliates, it appears from my research on local Habitat affiliates and the national website to be generally true. I see this as a cruel prank of sorts on the future homeowner. At a time when it is becoming less and less affordable to live so far outside the city center and less desirable to become more dependent on a car for living, Habitat is offering to folks the false promise of economic independence and middle class lifestyle.

Many writers and publications have taken on this subject, including The Atlantic Monthly and Worldchanging, and the implications are pretty clear. The rising cost of living in suburbia are slowly making these areas unlivable for the people who could just afford to live there. People, like those who are being ‘helped’ by Habitat for Humanity will fare far worse, since they could not have afforded to live there at all.

The opportunity costs that Habitat incurs are high as well. By spending the money and using the land to build low-density housing, they prevent those resources from being used to build more efficient, high-density housing that could have a larger effect on the overall housing market in a region. If Habitat were to make it more affordable to build up the population density in former suburban areas, they could essentially drive the growth of livable, walkable neighborhoods, something that could possibly also make the difference in the cost-effectiveness of public transportation as well.

Further, Habitat focuses on traditionally-built homes. As far as I could tell, no Habitat affiliate makes any particular effort to build highly energy efficient homes. This is a further disservice to the people whom they are trying to help. I would have thought, in particular, that in areas with extremely depressed home prices (e.g. Detroit) Habitat would be working hard to buy and renovate marginal homes to make them more livable and efficient. I saw no such evidence of that on the Detroit affiliate’s web page, at least.

Considering these missed opportunities and disservices, I truly wonder how Habitat continues to attract donors and volunteers. Certainly, there are many opportunities for them in this economic downturn and housing crisis if they can change their model to address them. It may be more difficult for them to make these sorts of changes due to their affiliate structure, but by the same token, that structure might provide a way for particular affiliates to lead the way on their own.

Not too shabby.