• In the four-plus years I've been in and out of the building (one story, 5,000 sq. ft.), our HVAC system was, is, and remains a mystery. There appear to be an array of "zones," apparently controlled by individual thermostats. The readings and settings of each bear no reasonable relation to that particular zone's climate at any given time. Our Sacramento seasons are Hot/Dry and Three Months of Alaska Summer But No Rain. The employee base (N=20) is overwhelmingly younger female, and therefore susceptible to the fashion dictates of perennial wardrobe transparency - which leads to geographic thermostat battles that rival any shaky marriage. Finally, throw in a server room amidships that must remain as hospitable as Ice Station Zebra, stir, and things remain interesting. Periodically, Russian expatriates stomp around on the roof, present a bill, and leave.

• It takes 35-40 seconds to generate skin-temperature water in the restroom lavatories for hand-washing purposes, around which there is always bulk finger food of some kind available in the kitchen. Hello, H1N1. (Water waste and third-year drought aside, there could be a correlation between this and our sick leave profile, but that would require (1) awareness and (2) an audit.) The solution? An end-of-run recirculation pump - $400, parts and labor. (I know because I did it at home, years ago.)

• The bare outline's been presented and the opportunity exists to recycle metal, mixed paper, and plastic conveniently. Based on the evidence, though, our twenty to thirty-somethings seem to have missed the fundamentals that are second nature to my sons and their spouses, who are in the same demographic. (Oh, to be raised by the son of an engineer, carrying the baggage of law school...)

• Good Guide, a nonprofit venture supported by an impressive array of databases (over 200), social investors, and pointy and propeller-headed advisors. (Asians and women and Berkeley - Oh, my!) Using your browsing device of choice, you can go there and measure the consequences of buying and using more than 70,000 products, just about as conveniently as you count calories. Here's a taste. Among cold cereals, Cheerios and Wheaties scored more than twice as high as Kashi Organic Strawberry Fields in three performance categories - Health/Nutrition, Environmental, and Social. (Not counting calories? Better start - to be less expensive, remedial health care will have to be scarcer, so don't bank on elective body-mass reduction or organ substitution. This can help.)

• Skin Deep takes you in the same direction for beauty and cosmetic products. In its fourth year, the site posts safety ratings for nearly a quarter of all products on the market - 42,665 products with 8,377 ingredients. Their dual based rating system – a hazard rating that represents a synthesis of known and suspected hazards associated with ingredients and products and a data gap rating that describes the extent to which low hazard scores associated with some ingredients or products are based on definitive data demonstrating safety or, at the other extreme, on a near absence of data either demonstrating or disproving hazard - are based on their in-house collection of personal care product ingredient listings, integrated with more than 50 toxicity and regulatory databases. In the tooth whitening arena, Crest, Colgate Simply White, and Rembrandt varieties rate as seven of the eight highest-hazard (score = 7) products. So, how committed do you need to be to the sodium fluoride family?

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Off hiatus, two-plus years later. Things aren't perfect -- but isn't it wonderful that you don't have to turn aside, squint, and grit your teeth when the Leader of the Free World opens his mouth?

Not just that. Besides the cranial equipment and the grit of galvanizing personal experience, the new sheriff's got grace, dignity, and...

We've shown the world a new face that reflects both our better nature and the hope that possibility brings.

I was 12 when Jack Kennedy was elected President. I think I've already said that the Sisters of the Holy Cross got us down on our knees every Friday afternoon after Labor Day in 1960 to pray for a Notre Dame victory on Saturday and the Senator's on the first Tuesday in November. Avenging Al Smith aside and the other baggage of acquired faith, even at that age I remember a broad sense of cultural shift. It wasn't as dramatic, of course - stability, prosperity, the stewardship theory, and the absence of the 24-hour "news" cycle made it so. Sherman Adams, Checkers, the Republican cloth coat, and the "kitchen debate" occurred, and remained, in context. (Well, okay - the foreshadowing thing.) Francis Gary Powers didn't hold a candle to Abu Ghraib; at least there was an intelligence-gathering excuse that made sense if you said it fast enough. Hell, Kennedy had to invoke Quemoy and Matsu and a manufactured missile gap to even get the media to associate his name with national security.

Oh, and there was the same queasiness among the elders about young Jack's tender years and lack of experience. He'd only served three years in the House and was barely into his second term in the Senate, after all. (Eisenhower had no prior political experience and Truman logged just 10 years as a Senator before being elevated to the Vice Presidency, but never mind.) I saw my all-time, favorite political bumper strip on my paper route that year. Emblazoned in bold red letters on the upper-two thirds was "I MISS IKE!" Underneath, in barely discernible blue, was "Hell - for that matter, I miss Harry, too." I remember a cartoon in the New Yorker: two overstuffed codgers sitting in wing chairs in a paneled club, one glowering, the other pleading. "But, Edgar - if you're not going to vote for either of those whippersnappers, who are you going to vote for?" Nixon was four years older.

Even factoring in my own immaturity and the onset of poisonous adolescent hormones - big stuff. Youth, rhetoric, culture, and fashion kindled the imagination of a Cold War-weary society. The dedicated spirit and the broad calls to citizenship and to civic service. Camelot.

It ended badly. Assassination. (Murder?) LBJ sustained (fulfilled?) the cause but widening war smothered its spirit. Two more bullets, before ballots this time. Retrenchment. (Most of my fellow young "revolutionaries" - I was one birthday short of voting age, pre-26th Amendment - were too sophisticated to choose the Happy Warrior over the Trickster.) Paranoia. Corruption. Impeachment. Cynicism. Two "outsider" governors, the Peanut Farmer (nuclear engineer, but never mind) and The Great Communicator (no visible means of support). CNN, then the rest. Bush the Elder and two more "outsider" governors. Fellatio. Impeachment. Attack. Paranoia. Corruption. Cynicism. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Yes, we did. Things got bad enough that we righted the ship, deliberately or not, and we had a lot of help from both candidate and circumstance. Having just celebrated the traditional Myth of 100 Days, are we becoming the change we sought? Or can we still merely slouch along until we're swept away?

It's plausible - or is it? For your consideration: Xenodu.