So maybe I have been spending too much time just cribbing from EcoGeek, but boy do they do a good job.  Today's article on Chicago's Merchandise Mart (a 4 million sq. ft. building with its own zip code) is pretty eye opening.  Aside from Ecogeek's recent realization that buildings use more energy than pretty much all the transportation used in the US is not big news to people in the trades, but as this seeps into the national consciousness, hopefully we'll see more upgrades occur.

The Merch Mart in Chicago did a number of things to achieve their goal of going green.  From EcoGeek: http://www.ecogeek.org/cont...

• Most of the 4,000 windows were replaced.
• Water waste was tracked, to determine which of the 2,000 toilets needed to be replaced with more efficient ones
• Leaks in the air conditioning were tracked down and fixed, saving over $4,000 a year.
• Many of the buildings spaces were metered individually, to determine high energy use areas, and bill tenants accordingly.
• A supply shop for tenants was opened in the basement, making everything from low-vapor paints to high-efficiency bulbs available, inexpensively, to all tenants.
• Lighter carpets make rooms brighter, meaning less electricity is needed
• A Bulb-Eater in the basement eats fluorescent bulbs, contains their toxins, and produces waste bins that are recycled properly.

I like the light carpets and the supply shop.  These are both easy and durable changes that can be implemented quickly across the country.

As always, this is your green, building, and green building open thread.

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Actually, a bit more.  At Shell's yearly Eco-Marathon, the winner this year was a French team from St. Joseph La Joliverie, who went 7,148 miles on a single gallon of fuel.  It makes 4 dollar per gallon gas seem like a real bargain.

Of course, these cars will not be coming to a showroom near you anytime soon, but the ideas are out there.  One of the issues I'm sure is that construction costs probably make the price of a Tesla look like a Fit.  Another is that the vehicles are so light and fragile that any collision would likely turn any occupants into what was colorfully termed "street pizza" on another blog.

Everything I'm reading is saying that super-efficiency is great and that ethanol is great, but it's time to make the big switch from combustion to electric.  Lighter engines with less heat mean better miles per energy unit and tighter body construction which helps with aerodynamics.  Still, 7148 mpg?  Sweet.

BTW, I'll be trying to post more home repair stuff in the next few weeks.  If you've got a home repair issue or just want to talk about home stuff, this is the place.

OK, so you can't buy any of these cars new today and the safety regulations pretty much have eliminated them from ever being mass produced again, but I love these little microcars.  The video is from a show called Top Gear, an English show for fans of car buffs, fans of things getting blown up or crashed, and for general English silliness.  If you like cars, this show should be on your "must watch" list.  In the video, Jeremy Clarkson, the 6'5" host of the show, drives around town (and around office buildings) in the Peel P50, the smallest car ever to go into production.  Advertised as "almost cheaper than walking" it got 100 miles to the gallon.  Of course, it got that 100 mpg at 30-35 mph max.

The video got me thinking about cars though.  There's a Fiat 500 Giardinieria for sale down the street from me which could actually be converted to electric.  I went online to find more treasures of this kind and came across the holy grail of microcars:  The Microcar Museum in Georgia.  This is really a tresure trove of microcars and has piles and piles (well, not literally "piles") of cars that make the Giardiniera look like a bloated Humvee.  Sure, some of them run on moped motor.  Some are even pedal cars, which I think is cheating.  But these little suckers are cute and look fun to drive.

So I was browsing around my normal haunts for a green energy story to write up and came across this short excerpt about starting your own country over at WorldChanging:

Step 1: Make sure you are eligible

As tempting as it might be to declare your cubicle a sovereign state, customary international law actually does specify minimum standards for statehood.

1. You must have a defined territory.

2. You must have a permanent population.

3. You must have a government.

4. Your government must be capable of interacting with other states.

Hmmm, seems interesting.  Turns out the real guide is at ForeignPolicy.com

Step 2 continues:

Congratulations on joining the ranks of Transnistria, Somaliland, and a host of other countries that won’t be marching at the Olympics anytime soon. Just because you’ve met the qualifications and declared yourself independent doesn’t mean that you’re going to be taken seriously. Even the Principality of Sealand—located on a 10,000-square-foot platform in the North Sea—has tried with mixed success to claim sovereignty under these qualifications.

There are a few more steps after the link, including how to get recognized internationally, but let's not put the cart before the horse.  The most important thing to do before we decide to take over the Californian building and declare ourselves an independent state, we should find out if they have showers.  After that, we'll declare statehood and settle on a name.  I do think we can rule out anything with ".com" at the end since there will be an impulse to call our citizens "dot commies".

Anyone want to continue with this?  If you were starting your own country, what would it called and what would the big rules be?

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You want it, you got it.  I'm going to be working with some folks at the paper to implement some features for the photo blog.  In the meantime, let's kick this thing off right away.  I've included a pic of mine here that still needs a bit of photoshopping but I like the lines and the light.

So, couple of orders of business:  First, I'm thinking we'll just dedicate this thread to posting whatever pictures people want, but we'll also find a way to put up a weekly challenge to get people out and about.

Second, I'll get us a dedicated name for the blog by next week and I'll cook up a banner as well.  The hope is that as time goes on, we'll add a bunch of user photos to the blog banner.

Anything else you'd like to see here?

OK Folks, it's Monday morning and you've survived another weekend.  After last week, I figured I'd give a go to taking over the ill-fated New Users Click Here series and try to breathe a bit of life back into it.  As an added bonus, we'll also turn this into an open thread for everyone, meaning that you can pretty much talk about anything you want.  Have a story that you've been meaning to blog?  Post it here.  Have a problem with the blog?  That can go here as well.

As for me, I'm trying to figure out how to embed YouTube Videos in comments. I've seen it done but when I use the "embed" tag I end up displaying all the code, plus a few bits where the software picks URLs out.  So, if anyone can show me how that gets done or lemme know if it's unsupported, that would be great.

Happy Monday!