Big Brother steps back from the thermostat
Joseph Somsel first revealed here that California was considering requiring the installation of remotely controllable thermostats in all new construction and remodeling, so that authorities could lower or increase temperatures when energy supply considerations made this desirable in in the eyes of the all-knowing state.
The California Energy Commission has now backed down and removed programmable communicating thermostats (PCT) from the 2008 Building Standards.
The days of the all powerful government bureaucrat, the green police and the carbon cop are nearly here. We’ve seen the increased proposals to tax you for having to many children, to issue carbon cards to ensure your carbon neutrality and the concept of consumption taxes. Some mock the idea that such incredible intrusions into your personal life could ever happen in the good ‘ol US of A, and yet it nearly did in California. The age of the nanny state is upon us and it continues to flex its muscles. How long before we are truly not free, but merely subserviant serfs to the almighty modern feudal state?
And don’t miss The Bureaucrat in Your Shower.

You might have some vague memory from childhood, and perhaps it returns when visiting someone who lives in an old home. You turn on the shower and the water washes over your whole self as if you are standing under a warm-spring waterfall. It is generous and therapeutic. The spray is heavy and hard, enough even to work muscle cramps out of your back, enough to wash the conditioner out of your hair, enough to leave you feeling wholly renewed — enough to get you completely clean.
Somehow, these days, it seems nearly impossible to recreate this in your new home. You go to the hardware store to find dozens and dozens of choices of shower heads. They have 3, 5, 7, even 9 settings from spray to massage to rainfall. Some have long necks. Some you can hold in your hand. Some are huge like the lid to a pot and promise buckets of rainfall. The options seem endless.
But you buy and buy, and in the end, they disappoint. It’s just water, and it never seems like enough.
The link also contains one of those great “Warning: The following section is for information purposes only” that tells you how to dramatically increase the water flow from your showerhead and skirt the restrictions of the ‘water nazis’. Alter your shower at your own peril, but with my blessing.
From The Shower Episode of Seinfeld:
Kramer, Newman and a ‘salesman’ are at the back of a van in an alley.
Salesman: All right, I got everything here. I got the Cyclone F series, Hydra
Jet Flow, Stockholm Superstream, you name it.
Newman: What do you recommend?
Salesman: What are you looking for?
Kramer: Power, man. Power.
Newman: Like Silkwood.
Kramer: That’s for radiation.
Newman: That’s right.
Kramer (pointing to the largest one): Now, what is this?
Salesman: That’s the Commando 450, I don’t sell that one. What about thi-
Kramer: Well that’s what we want, the Commando 450.
Salesman: Nah, believe me. It’s only used in the circus. For elephants.
Newman: We’ll pay anything. We’ve got the (hands a wad of money to Kramer)
What about Jerry?
Kramer: He couldn’t handle that, he’s delicate.