Month: March 2007

motoring in the future

Kottke on Hypermiling, a series of techniques/tricks that raise fuel economy to double or triple the EPA ratings:

Competition, even with yourself, can be a powerful motivator. I’m not convinced, however, that FCDs would improve gas mileage across the board. There are other games you can play with the display — the how-much-gas-can-I-waste game or the how-close-can-I-get-to-18-MPG game — that don’t have much to do with conserving fuel consumption. Still, next time I’m in a car with a mileage display, I’ll be trying out some of Gerdes less intensive driving techniques, including the ones he shares on this Sierra Club podcast (Gerdes’ interview is about 2/3 of the way through).

What if the display showed dollars per mile? I bet it would be hard to resist competing to raise your fuel economy.

Apropos of that, my local NPR affiliate had a piece on hybrids, with some guests from GM, a journalist/skeptic, and a serious hybrid enthusiast/zealot. It will be interesting to see what’s available in the next 5 years. I think the simple hybrid that offers full electric power with plugin capability and a small internal combustion powerplant to charge the batteries when you exceed the cruising range offers a lot of promise. Assume that most of that driving will be out of cities where the air is less likely to be polluted anyway, and that the plant (could be natural gas, gasoline, ethanol, biodiesel) runs very clean as well as being very small, and it could be a real contender.

All were in agreement — well, the GM guy didn’t weigh in that I could hear — that increased CAFE standards were a must, and there was even a call for an EU-style petroleum tax: can you see gas at $5/gallon, when it’s cheap?

are affinity-based charity campaigns a good idea?

Kottke seems skeptical:

It seems to me that if The Gap really cared about stopping HIV/AIDS in Africa, they would just donate the $7.8 million they spend on (RED) advertising to the Clinton Foundation. If Discover really cared about saving you money, they’d lower their APR to prime + 1.

I realize that the entire US economy is a house of cards kept standing by the escalation of spending and credit card debt by American consumers, but the sad fact is that to save money, you need to cut spending or increase income. And if you really want to help fight AIDS in Africa, instead of buying that (RED) Gap t-shirt for which Gap will donate 50% of its profit to The Global Fund, buy a cheaper one at American Apparel and send the $13 difference to the Global Fund yourself.

But it would be interesting to determine if people will just give money, in the same amounts, as they when they buy some tchotchke that tells everyone what a selfless person they are. I’m being unfairly critical, I know: I would rather people kept on buying (RED) items than stopped. After all, part of what The Gap is selling is an endorsement and some promotion for the campaign. And I haven’t seen the goods, but my assumption is that it says more about the campaign than about The Gap, which is the way it should be.

2001 days and still no Osama

Cenk Uygur: 2001 Days Since 9/11 — And Still No Osama:

It’s been 2001 days since September 11, 2001. I don’t see Osama. Do you see Osama? After all this time, why have we still not caught the man who ordered the attacks against our country and killed nearly 3,000 Americans?

We found Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground in Iraq. Why? We were trying!

2001 days and still no Osama. Why? You tell me.

To the Bush administration, I would like to ask a question originally posed by Darryl Worley: Have You Forgotten?

The Young Turks

learning all the time

Reading this book:



“Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs” (Ansel Adams)

and I was stunned to learn that this image:

200703041332

[source]

was made, not with large-format (4×5, 8×10) camera but with a medium format Hasselblad. I had never thought of any of Adams’ canonical Western images to have been made with anything but large-format.

I should just buy a copy, since every time I borrow it from the library, I learn something new, even if I don’t know how to use it.

name that storm contest gets wild

Still, the weather service was inundated with plenty of entries that took a droll approach to the storm:

Firewood for the Next 10 Years Storm. Overtime for Utility Workers Storm. I Can’t Find My Inflatable Santa Storm. Chainsaw Massacre. Bouillabaisse Day Storm. Blowzilla. I Hate My Neighbor Because He Has Power Storm. Why I Lived in Southern California Storm. Party’s Canceled Storm. Stephen T. Colbert Wind Storm of Truthiness. When the Evergreens Got Mad Storm. It Wasn’t Such a Wonderful Life Storm. Incompetent Utilities Storm. There’s No Place Like a Dark Home for the Holidays Storm. Lawn Chair Launcher Storm. Kiss Your 80-Year-Old Tree Goodbye Storm. Douglas Firs Are Shallowly Rooted Storm. Columbian Blow. Hey, Buddy, Can You Spare a Presto Log Storm. A Sliver of Armageddon. Chief Sealth’s Revenge.

“Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006” was chosen by many people, and the winning entrant won by random drawing.

The list of possible winners was whittled down to 18, with “The Great Storm of 2006,” “Mid-December Blast” and “The Blackout Storm” getting particular attention.

But “Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006” was compelling, said Colman, because it’s an important symbol, and because it’s a festival of lights.

“That was the most convincing point, the use of candles,” he said, “And here we had 1.5 million people without power, using candles.”

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