GearHeadGeek

Signs of Stupidity

2011-12-14T23:29:00.000-06:00

Imagine if you will a snooty fast-food chicken joint. At Montgomery Plaza in Fort Worth is a LEED-Certified Chick-fil-a and they apparently are making a big deal of that. One would think, given the amount of documentation required for LEED certification, they might have had someone involved in the project who had some skill with written communication.

I pulled up in the rain to find only 3 parking spaces available, each with a sign like the one below in front of it.

I parked my Legacy GT Wagon in front of this sign. I once saw 28 mpg highway with a 25 mph tailwind... normal highway is 24-25 mpg, but on average it returns close to 2x the mileage of my truck, so it's the fuel-efficient vehicle in MY fleet. Since it's not a code issue, there's no force of law behind the stupid sign in the first place, but it IS private property... I guess they could leave a nastygram on the window.

I checked inside, there's nothing posted about what a "fuel-efficient vehicle" might be. I didn't ASK of course, because I may have the opportunity to park there again and need to maintain plausible deniability. I guess it's not that much worse than the "Expectant Mother" spaces at Central Market in Austin, but at least there's a definition of pregnant.

Is this the iPod of photography?

2011-10-20T17:27:00.005-05:00

Really what brought me back to my blog is the interesting Lytro "Light Field Camera" that was introduced a couple of days ago. What I wrote in the previous post is true... I've deleted a few drafts of posts because I was worried I'd be foaming at the mouth by the end of them, and to describe some of the thoughts I've had about various political stooges as "uncharitable" is an understatement of cosmic proportions.

Now, though, I've found something really interesting and cool that I want to babble about. This is the first really different camera since decent-quality video cameras got small enough to carry around anywhere. It's made possible by a quantum leap in both coding and processing power, allowing a personal computer and one small, elegantly simple camera do what just a few years ago took an array of cameras and some heavy-iron-level computing power to do.

Instead of taking a single point-of-focus photo like we've been doing for 150 years, the Lytro records all of the light getting to the sensor, grouped into "rays." Lytro says the image quality is "11 megarays" and the system uses post-processing to determine a point of focus from the field of rays. So, while in the system's native format, the images are "live." You can focus in on different parts of the field of view.

The camera itself seems very straightforward and has an elegantly simple design. It has a power button, a zoom slider and a button to record the image as well as some touchscreen functionality on the viewscreen. Aim it at what you want to photograph, perhaps zoom and compose a bit to get the overall contents of the shot right, click the button once and have the chance to decide what is and isn't in focus later. Now THAT is what I call a point-and-shoot! I can't wait to play with one. Perhaps this will be a device that shakes up the world of photography like the iPod changed the way we listen to music.

Idiot Derangement Syndrome

2011-10-20T17:23:00.002-05:00

So lately I've been suffering from Idiot Derangement Syndrome... everything that seemed relevant to write about has been in the political sphere, and all of the idiots on both sides of the aisle get me a bit deranged when I try to write about their bullshit, so I've just avoided it. Maybe I'll get mad enough about something not to care that writing what I actually think of one pinhead or the other.

Dim Debate on Light Bulbs

2011-03-28T22:12:00.002-05:00

I'm a cynic, and frequently disappointed in politicians. That said, it's even more depressing than usual to see the ignorant Congresschimps throwing their feces on compact fluorescent light bulbs and shrieking about "freedom."

Are our elected officials stupid, or are they liars? Because the legislation they decry (signed into law by W, I might add) doesn't make incandescent bulbs illegal. It simply requires a minimum light output for a given electrical input. In the intervening years, amazingly enough, companies which manufacture light bulbs have introduced more efficient incandescent bulbs in addition to much-improved compact fluorescents and LEDs.

So, what was done was a rarity in legislation... instead of over-specifying and doing something stupid (as the lying bastards are TELLING you they have done) this legislation just said "You have to make light bulbs that are more efficient than the ones your grandfather used." And companies did just that, but your Congresschimps want to roll back the clock to 1950 in more ways than one.

Beck: Blathering Bean-brained Boob

2011-02-22T15:54:00.002-06:00

Like my feelings about his BFF Bachmann, I have gone back and forth in my impression of Glenn Beck, trying to decide whether he's an insane paranoid, an intentionally evil liar or just irretrievably stupid.

Sometimes I think he's evil and completely in love with The Big Lie concept, but then I realize he doesn't understand it well enough to keep telling the same lie. Instead, he just comes up with bigger and weirder lies all the time, undermining his own (imaginary) credibility.

Now he calls the very intelligent and insightful Fareed Zakaria an idiot. I think I may have underestimated Beck... perhaps it's possible for him to be both irretrievably stupid AND innately evil.

License to Flash

2011-02-14T22:46:00.002-06:00

Every time I attend a concert, I'm reminded of just how little people know about how cameras work. That in itself is really not a problem for anyone except the people taking crappy pictures, but then we must consider the flash.

I propose that we require that people demonstrate at least a minimal understanding about how the bloody flash works before they're allowed to carry a camera. How stupid do you have to be to think that the dinky flash on your cheap point-and-shoot is going to effectively illuminate the band 300 feet away from you? Does it not occur to you that thousands of dollars worth of incredibly bright spot lights might provide enough light for your snapshot without temporarily blinding everyone within 20 feet of your useless piddly micro-strobe? Or did you really want to get a nice exposure of the backs of the heads of people 1 and 2 rows ahead of you instead of taking a picture of the act you paid Ticketmaster $50 to see?

I guess if you're clueless enough that you can't figure out how to turn off your damned flash, you aren't smart enough to google "inverse square law" or understand the content of the search results.

Death and Taxes graphic

2010-05-04T13:59:00.002-05:00

This is an interesting poster with a infographical representation of how the US Federal Government spends our money. Click through to view it on their site, because they have an excellent pan/zoom feature that's necessary to view the details.

Ford Fusion

2010-04-12T13:47:00.000-05:00

So we're in Pennsylvania for a few days, and I rented a car. Being a cheap bastard, I rented on price as always, but as it happens Alamo had a promo for their "Standard" class for the weekend and I got a good deal on a 4-cylinder Ford Fusion. After 2 days, I really only have 2 substantive complaints about it, which I'll get to at the end.

This car represents a tremendous leap forward in American mid-size cars. I'd say I haven't driven another mid-sized American in years, but in fact a few months ago I had the distinct displeasure of getting stuck with a Sebring by Enterprise. The Sebring was frankly awful... I drove more pleasing cars in the 1990s and belittled them. Even near-oblivion is barely an excuse for producing such a vile piece of shit and trying to sell it as a modern car.

The Fusion is surprisingly solid, quiet, stable and responsive. The steering is weighted well, the brakes are linear and easy to modulate. I do think the brakes start to grab with barely any pedal travel, but that's something I got used to in the first day and it hasn't been a problem... I'll probably think my Legacy's pedal travel is too long the first couple of times I stop when I get home. The seats are firm and comfortable, and there's plenty of room in the back seat and the trunk. If I needed such a car, I would actually consider the Fusion and I the last time I thought about owning a Ford in that size class, it was the original edition of the SHO.

There is some downside, though. A minor prejudice on my part is that I think it really needs AWD. I'm quite spoiled to that, and noted that even with the 4-cylinder you can't use all the available power until the car really gets moving or the tires will spin and howl. It's available with AWD, though I don't know how well Ford's system works.

More of a problem to normal people is the ergonomic disaster of secondary controls. There's a big field of black buttons on a black background with small white labels that are easily readable WHEN PARKED, but if you actually need to adjust something while the car is moving it requires entirely too much attention. Changing HVAC settings requires a reach well below the height of the shifter, and requires diverting ones attention far from the road. Perhaps with SYNC you can voice-command some or all of this, but my rental is not so equipped so I've no real idea.

One final nit I'll pick is the shifter. This is the first automatic-transmission shifter I've ever experienced that requires a button press to move it from Drive to Neutral. It will freely slide from Neutral to Drive without pushing the lockout button, however, which seems ass-backwards to me. If you're going to lock it in one direction, it should restrict an accidental shift INTO drive but facilitate a panic shift into Neutral, especially in this Age of Unintended Acceleration. I have stated many times while people whinge about killer cars that I have never experienced a car that requires anything but a slap to shift from Drive to Neutral, but I know now that such cars exist. I'm still not sure that absolves people of the responsibility of shifting to Neutral if the throttle sticks open, but it's not quite as trivial as I'd believed in some cars, and the Fusion will happily slip into Reverse from Neutral *WITHOUT* pressing the lockout button, so people might be afraid of accidentally engaging Reverse and try to avoid shifting to Neutral even when it's called for in an emergency.

Chuck Norris is batshit crazy

2010-01-14T23:08:00.001-06:00

So normally I'd write this off with "well, he's just some actor" and not think any further about Chuck Norris' personal paranoia. After all, in the greater scheme of things, his fantasies are not any crazier than those worried about Xenu's crimes in ages past... perhaps actors as a group are just weird.

Mr Norris, however, is politically active and is among those genuflecting to Glenn Beck and spreading poisonous fantasies about the President being a Manchurian Candidate planted at birth (and of course completely missing the point that in order to be a good Manchurian Candidate, one must first be above suspicion. I never said I thought rabid actors were necessarily smart.)

Chuck Norris apparently believes that Mr. Obama's support of sharing intelligence with Interpol is just a ruse to allow the President to hide important records about the war on terror from Americans. Seriously. Norris finds it surprising that it might be necessary to allow Interpol to maintain the confidentiality of international sources of intelligence, but he probably thought it was perfectly fine to allow suspects to be "disappeared" to black sites by the CIA without a hint of due process.

Obama Derangement Syndrome is alive and well, even a year after his inauguration. One can only hope that it causes at least as much distress to the afflicted as their foaming at the mouth does to the sane.

Jeremy Clarkson is helping to destroy the English language

2010-01-14T12:50:00.000-06:00

What the hell are "torques?" I realize that there is a valid way to use the word, such as to say "calculate the torques exerted at points A and B" but that's not what I'm bitching about.

Jeremy Clarkson often babbles on about whatever car he has just smoked the tread off of while hooning around the track as having "500 hp and 600 torques." I know he's an entertainer and as such about as into accuracy as Rush Limbaugh, but "torques" is not a unit. Horsepower is a unit of measure, torque is a way to describe twisting forces and common units for quantifying torque are newton meter (SI) and foot pound (Imperial.)

It grates on my nerves whenever I hear Clarkson say it, and now I'm starting to see that butchery of the language parroted in automotive blogs. Even Wikipedia has it more or less right, it's NOT hard to find the right way to express such things on the internet.

Apple is gradually sucking me in...

2009-10-05T18:52:00.003-05:00

I'm frugal. People who know me personally might say cheap, but I'm writing this so I'll say frugal. I've never bought a new computer in my life (and in fact could argue that I still haven't) and I definitely tend toward either building my own or buying lightly used, since most people really don't need the cutting edge of technology (or the bills that come with it.)

I built a Hackintosh from a Dell Mini9 refurb early this year, and have really enjoyed OSX in spite of the tiny poorly-laid-out keyboard. I have for some time used a Dell Latitude D610 that I bought used as my "TV computer" for watching Hulu or Netflix on the flat panel in our living room, but the improving image quality of streaming sources and displaying them on a 1080p set was starting to point out the Latitude's shortcomings.

One of the important considerations of a Home-Theater PC is noise. One needs a quiet machine to avoid having fan noise interfere with quiet passages of movies and music. One of the quietest machines on the market is Apple's Mac Mini, and they've recently upgraded it significantly with nVidia video processing and a 1066-MHz front-side bus, so I decided to give it a shot for home-theater duty. True to my frugal nature, I scanned the list of Apple refurbs for a few days until I found a base config (1g RAM, 120g hard drive, 2 GHz Core2 Duo) refurb.

I've had the machine 5 days now, and so far I'm quite pleased with its performance for my needs. I'll point out here that I wasn't going for a full PVR system, I have a DVR from my cable company and I'm happy enough to use that, or I'd have needed a dedicated system like the Tivo HD or a Windows-based system so I could use cablecards. I'm primarily using this for Hulu and Netflix and music (streaming and shared from my primary desktop in the house.)

The configuration was Apple-easy, though it's a bit snotty about recognizing my wireless keyboard on a reboot. (It's a 2.5 GHz keyboard with a USB dongle, not bluetooth... I have to unplug it and plug it back in after a reboot and then everything's fine until the next reboot.) Silent, stable, plenty of open-source choices for my needs. I'm using Plex instead of Frontrow, since Plex gives me nice integration with Netflix and Hulu and other sources. Video performance is good, though I'm still trying to tweak the desktop UI to be clear enough from across the room (the Plex interface is fine.) It's an almost-new machine and I'm quite happy with it... if I keep drinking all this Apple kool-aid I'll end up with a Macbook Pro.

So now for my personal machines, I'm at 2 Windows (XP), 1 Linux (CentOS) and 2 OSX... just in case any readers wonder if I really AM a geek!

Honda spits on wagon fans with the Accord Crosstour

2009-09-23T19:58:00.002-05:00

In the interest of honest disclosure, I'll start by admitting that I'm not a huge fan of Honda automobiles. They have for the most part produced very good vehicles that strike me as bland, though there are notable exceptions like the rare and exotic (for its day) Honda NSX (sold in the US as an Acura) and the excellent S2000 sports car.

That said, they rarely seem to make real mistakes. Opinionated schmucks like me bitch and moan about them being soulless and torqueless, but we can rarely claim they are actually bad cars. Their sales would prove us wrong anyway, and their repeat sales definitely show a strong brand loyalty.

One of my beefs with Honda of late is that they make cars I'd actually want, but only sell them elsewhere. They have for several years sold a wagon in Europe called the Accord Tourer that is by all reports an excellent car and is certainly nice to look at. It's well-proportioned and seems an excellent choice for someone needing some cargo capacity in a nice car. Now, the European Accord is not the US Accord, it's more like the previous Acura TSX. It's a bit smaller than the now full-sized US Accord. This means they can't just "bring it here" and sell it as an Accord Wagon (or, god forbid, leave the name alone and call it an Accord Tourer.) They could fairly easily produce an Acura TSX Sportwagon (or Tourer, or call it a WSX or TSX Type-W if you want to pick an Acura-ish name.)

The motoring press started teasing with sightings of mules based on the nice Euro Accord Tourer around a year ago, and things were looking good for a Honda or Acura I might actually put on The Short List. The silver car at right in a Brenda Priddy spy shot looked like an Accord Tourer with a Honda Pilot-style grille. It looked slightly tall, but it's common for US-market cars to have more ground clearance than Euro cars to deal with our more variable road surfaces, so that wasn't a reason for concern.

Then the spy shots showed something just WRONG. Maybe they were trying to throw us off... but no, American Honda is bringing a fat, swollen, repulsive pig of a crossover hatchback lump that's more like the off-scale, overweight, clumsy-looking BMW X6 than the sleek Accord Tourer. The fat white beast to the left is the all-but-undisguised production car, as confirmed by official pictures released by Honda. So far I've only seen postings from a few people who don't hate it, and for all I know they're sockpuppets anyway. For some reason Honda created a Facebook page for the thing, where it's been almost universally panned by people signing up as "fans" just to pour derision on it. In my (completely unscientific) ad hoc analysis of the comments, it looks like about 20-1 in favor of haters. Go haters!

Maybe now they'll bring the Accord Tourer.

Oklahoma students' civics knowledge is not OK

2009-09-23T19:07:00.002-05:00

The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs commissioned a study on the basis civics knowledge of Oklahoma public high school students in which 1000 students were asked 10 questions taken from the citizenship test required for candidates to become naturalized citizens of the United States. The actual test also contains 10 questions and requires that the candidate answer 6 of them correction. According to KWTV News 9 in Oklahoma City, about 92% of candidates for citizenship pass on their first try.

The Oklahoma high school students' performance in the study contributes to my already-cynical view of our public education system. Only 3% of them would be allowed to become citizens if they hadn't been born here! Only 23% of them knew that George Washington was our first president, and only 28% knew that the President is the person in charge of the executive branch. Hell, only 61% of them correctly named the ocean bordering the US to the east!

Instead of basic useful knowledge like this, our citizens debate whether or not we should teach intelligent design and creationism. They're entitled to their opinions, but they probably wouldn't know that such entitlement is written into the Constitution if they hadn't heard it at a Teabagging Party.

UPDATE: Statistician and blogger Nate Silver is a bit suspicious about the pollster who put out the Oklahoma results, and has an article about it here.

The (Forgotten) Concept of Moderation

2009-09-12T17:26:00.000-05:00

I see examples frequently that pragmatism and moderation are largely forgotten concepts on modern society. I'll skip the political bullshit that offers myriad examples and cut straight to the event that prompted me to write this post.

Author and New Yorker Colin Beavan came up with a gimmick for a book... he'd become "No Impact Man" and subject his family to a year without modern conveniences and products in order to reduce their impact on the world... to shrink their "carbon footprint." They were to do this while living in a 9th-floor co-op apartment on 5th Avenue.

The premise itself is reasonable enough, but the execution is almost farcical. Why should we care that some schmuck decided he'd walk up 9 flights as a personal hair shirt in a building that has a functional elevator? His fairly ridiculous antics such as turning off the electricity and replacing their refrigerator with a "pot in pot" evaporative cooler are simply not inspiring to normal people leading normal lives... I doubt that it's going to encourage many people to consider working conservation into their everyday choices and paring down waste in their lives... and frankly I think people who buy their kids $975 boots aren't people to emulate anyway.

The rational thing to do is to reduce our impact in sustainable ways... meaning things we can continue to do indefinitely as improvements in the way we live, not as ridiculous overdone experiments that grate on us during the whole time we've deprived ourselves of a normal life (and often lead to overcompensation when the experiment is over.)

Keep a car as long as it's economically viable (few of us live where it's truly possible to live without one altogether unless you're a writer who doesn't have to go to a job.) When it's really time to replace a car, buy one that MEETS your needs, not one that's ready for taking 7 passengers on the Paris-Dakar rally.

Buy a house that's big enough, not one you think will impress your friends because yours is bigger than theirs. Maintain your house and stay there, nearly everything about moving is both wasteful and expensive, especially if you're "moving up" to a McMansion. Part of maintaining your house is making its systems efficient, and USING them efficiently. Flush the toilet when you need to, but don't cool your house to 65 when it's 90 degrees out (and don't heat it to 80 when it's snowing out, either.)

There are thousands of things that nearly everyone can do to drastically reduce our impact on the planet without getting all stone-age about it. Ridiculous stunts like this just make many people think "that's crazy!" rather than "that's easy, I should do that!"

Wack Job Extraordinaire: Michelle Bachmann thinks she could be president

2009-09-05T11:05:00.003-05:00

I thought that I had become immune to surprise at Michelle Bachmann's idiocy, but I'll be damned if she didn't manage to attain new heights of craziness.

According to MediaMatters, on Mike Gallagher's radio show Bachmann claimed that Democrats want to sabotage any Republican woman who might become president (citing Sarah Palin specifically) and suggesting that's the reason Dems have negative things to say about her.

I guess that's possible, but it seems much more likely that Democrats aren't fond of Bachmann because she's a vapid, rabid, paranoid, delusional hack who shouldn't be president of the local John Birch fanclub, much less a member of Congress.

Sometimes a service policy is worth it.

2009-09-05T10:29:00.001-05:00

In general, I advise against buying service policies. Companies sell service policies because they are profitable on the whole... the house always wins. Especially for new toys you buy under warranty, the service policy is really just extra money you're giving the vendor because you feel like you didn't pay enough for your new toy.

While there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, sometimes you can get a good discount on the blue-plate special. Our refrigerator recently decided it was tired of keeping our food cold and needed a break. A 7-year-old Kenmore Elite, I felt it was a bit early for it to retire so I did a little research. Based on the symptoms, troubleshooting guides indicated that the problem was either quite inexpensive or the most expensive problem a refrigerator can have, so bet on it being the $25 start capacitor/overload relay assembly (and lost.)

Per the collective wisdom of the troubleshooting guide, if it wasn't the start cap it was the compressor itself. My first surprise was that many companies marketing themselves as appliance repair services don't work on the refrigeration system of refrigerators. I guess they just fix icemakers and replace thermostats... they can't be bothered to maintain a license to handle refrigerant apparently. When I finally got an appointment, it was 4 days out. (This is when it's really nice to have a "beer fridge" so we didn't lose our entire inventory of perishable food.)

I had plenty of time to research the state of the refrigerator market. It turns out that nice bottom-freezer refrigerators are not bargain goods, and viable substitutes for mine were $1600-$2000. I was not enthused. I remembered that Sears offers 12-month service policies on appliances less than 10 years old, though, and thought it was worth a call. Sure enough, I could buy one. Here's how it works:

For my refrigerator, they offer a 12-month service policy for $250 that covers repairs (trip-charge, parts AND labor) up to $500 per incident. If the repair costs more than $500, you can opt to pay the rest out of pocket or apply $500 to the purchase of a replacement at Sears. Since the guesstimates I had heard for replacing the compressor ranged from $400-$600, this seemed like the right move.

The total for the repair ended up being $622, so for $397 ($250 for the service policy plus $122 for the excess on the repair plus $25 for the part I bought to troubleshoot the problem initially) I got a $622 repair AND 12 months of coverage should the repair work turn out to be less than perfect. I think that's a reasonably good outcome.

Smitten with a giant Ford?

2009-07-26T15:37:00.003-05:00

I notice that I haven't written anything automotive in a while. I think that's a function of being cranky... I've written mostly grumpy negative stuff in recent posts, including the last automotive thing I wrote. There's a bit of confusion in this topic, but not really the negative kind.

What am I confused about? Well, normally I like smaller cars. My current car, a 2005 Subaru Legacy GT Wagon, is the largest car I've ever had as my daily driver. Even so, the Legacy is on the smaller end of its group of competitive midsize cars, and even though mine is enlarged a bit because it's a wagon, it's not a large car, and never FEELS like a large car. Why then do I like the Ford Flex?

This thing is big. I think it's something about its overall proportions and especially the ride height that make it look reasonably sized. Visually, it seems to be smaller than the Edge, which is actually the smaller of the two by quite a bit. In actual dimensions and interior space, it's close to the size of GM's Acadia/Traverse/Enclave trio on their Lambda platform, but it never looks as huge as those.

I thought at first that it was just some photographic magic, but I've seen many of them in person and they seem to be the "right size" somehow. Happily, I'm not in the market... My Legacy is a great car and I'm still very happy about it, and working from home has really cut the number of miles I'm putting on it anyway. At this rate I'm likely to keep it until I can pay cash for my next vehicle, which would probably make me even more insufferable than usual. Maybe I'll go drive one and feel like it's huge and hate it, but what if I don't hate it? 355 hp/350 lb-ft of torque from Ford's new EcoBoost V6 wouldn't suck, though all that weight would certainly take its toll on performance.

Ah, well, it's safe to be fascinated with expensive toys when I'm too practical and cheap to buy one!

Contradictions in terms: "Glenn Beck" and "Common Sense"

2009-07-26T12:33:00.002-05:00

I was shopping at Costco yesterday, as is pretty normal for me on a Saturday. I browsed through the books, which is less typical of late because I've been utilizing Fort Worth's excellent library system for my own books since we're spending big bucks on David F's textbooks these days.

I noticed a paperback the just set off the "WRONG!" warning in my head... a book by Glenn Beck entitled "Common Sense." Now, the synopses I've read sound like at least part of the book focuses on a decent topic (that our government is spending us into a very deep, dark financial hole) but it just strikes the wrong note with me that a "news" entertainer who frequently comes across like a bipolar guy who's off his meds should fancy himself a modern-day Thomas Paine and brand his musings as common sense. Maybe it's just the title that concerns me, but I'm loathe to give him $6.59 to find out. (Oh, and I noted in reading up about the book that it costs the same for the real, physical paperback at Costco as it does to rent the ephemeral right to read it on your Kindle until Amazon changes their mind. Buy the real one if you're buying.)

Rick Perry loves tolls, hates affordable health care

2009-07-24T17:02:00.001-05:00

Ah, Rick Perry... everyone's favorite States' Rights whiner...er... proponent. I guess he's been logically consistent about States' Rights. He certainly supports the State's right to sell off its highway system to the bidder offering the sweetest backroom deal and the best junkets.

Now Mr. Perry has come out against the proposed federal health care plan. No surprise there, since Perry hasn't spent a penny he didn't have to on health care, trusting that the Magical Market will somehow improve preventative health care for the poor and the working uninsured. Like Roy Blunt (R-Mo), chair of the "GOP Health Care Solutions Group" Perry has no alternative to offer. No market-based magic bullet to lower health care costs or improve access to insurance, just that worthless "Not gonna do it!" attitude.

Liz Cheney supports "Birthers," thinks Obama is unpatriotic

2009-07-24T10:40:00.000-05:00

Liz Cheney thinks that "birthers" aren't crazy, she and they are just concerned that President Obama doesn't "defend our nation overseas."

So, here we see the arch-con(servative) attitude coming out. Being respectful of other nations and cultures rather than being bellicose and swaggering is "not defending our nation." Admitting that we as a nation have perhaps not always done what is best for the world is not sedition, it's intellectual honesty. Of course, there's no reason to expect Ms. Cheney to have learned intellectual honesty at home...

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade channels Hitler for morning show

2009-07-09T08:23:00.003-05:00

Ah, such entertainment that's offered by Fox... as long as you aren't actually looking for what they say they are selling (that fair, balanced thing) you can be amused endlessly by their slant, lies, and racism.

This morning, Brian Kilmeade educated us all on why America is going to the dogs... MISCEGENATION! Why, those Italians and Irish aren't even the same species as us dUhmuhricuns! And Victoria dingbat Jackson thinks Obama is the one like Hitler?

There's a link to video of the segment here at Salon.com.

Senate's amateur buffoon fears competition from professional comic

2009-07-01T13:38:00.002-05:00

Perhaps the most ridiculous and ridiculed member of the US Senate, James Inhofe (R, OK) must be worried about competition. After all, he never seems to be worried that someone listening to the dreck that spills from his festering pie-hole might think he's an idiot, so he must be going for the laughs, right?

Now he's concerned that the senate is "... going to get the clown from Minnesota." Inhofe is the same backwards knuckle-dragger who offers such intellectual gems as comparing proponents of Global Warming to Nazis by stating "It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie." He has also compared "An Inconvenient Truth" (which he admits he's never seen) to Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Inhofe manages to be enough of a redneck jackass to embarrass Oklahomans, many of whom are damned proud of being redneck jackasses. He's worried that with someone in the senate offering a bit of thinking humor, people will realize that his yucks stem from thoughtless buffoonery.

Coda electric sedan

2009-06-03T17:12:00.001-05:00

Behold, the Coda electric car by Miles EV. The company reports this as being a "midsize" car, so let's think of it as comparable to a Kia Optima for the sake of discussion. Coda claim that their car will hit the market at $45,000 before a $7,500 federal tax break for electric vehicles, so let's assume that they're right and call it $37,500. It's limited to about 80 mph (suggesting that it has a single-ratio transaxle connecting the electric motor to the wheels) and they report 0-60 in 11 seconds.

Let's compare that to a Kia Optima EX with the 2.4-liter 4 cylinder. It offers 10-ish second 0-60 performance with a proven company that has made tremendous strides in vehicle quality in recent years and has the most generous standard warranty in the business. Since Coda have the chutzpah to compare the price of their car to that of a BMW, let's assume that it's a full-on luxury car with leather seats, nav, etc. You know, all sorts of goodies installed to use up that battery power! So for a reasonably conservative comparison, I checked every option box on Kia's configurator and came up with $25,495. The Coda site lists only "climate control" as far as interior features, and we all know that no one is paying list for a Kia, but let's just stick with that number for now.

If you drove the Optima exclusively in town, getting only the 22 mpg city EPA-rated mileage, you'd have to drive 66,000 miles while paying $4/gallon for regular unleaded to burn through that $12k price difference, without even considering a) the cost of electricity to charge the Coda or b) the time value of money to amortize that $12k over the years it would take you to rack up 66,000 miles (and of course you could only drive 100 miles/day in the Coda, so no long trips... you'll have to rent a different car or pay airfare to go over the river and through the woods.) So realistically, you're looking at a payback of 8+ years without even considering whether or not you could get a better, nicer car for nearly 40 grand...

Do you want an expensive, unproven, limited-range, low-performance car from China?

The "debate" about Sonia Sotomayor disgusts me

2009-05-29T23:03:00.003-05:00

In the 110th Congress, 59 senators and 174 representatives were also lawyers. You'd think that our national body of lawmakers, especially those who are also lawyers, might know something about the law, about judges and about courts of appeal. Apparently you'd never get these dolts to actually ADMIT it, though, because it might cramp their style when they have to tell the big lies about the other party's judicial nominees.

If Republicans want to paint Sonia Sotomayor as a liberal and/or activist judge, let them show the cases in detail that might suggest this. Let them also step aside after slinging their mud so that others might talk about the rest of Sotomayor's decisions that the Republicans weren't able to spin to their advantage so that we could actually have a reasoned debate on the topic.

Let every Republican who praised Alito's humble upbringing and said it would make him a better justice who understood the "real world" stand up after videotape of their remarks about Alito are played and say why this same standard shouldn't apply to a latina who had better grades than Alito and more years on the federal bench than he had when he was nominated. If even one elected official has the balls to do that, I might admire their ability to lie as much as I despise their willingness to do so.

I shouldn't even bother to be upset about it. No big scandals have turned up so far, so it looks like her nomination is likely to be confirmed. Still, it's galling to see the same people who huffed and puffed and cried "Politics!" about any suggestion that Democrats might not support Alito turn around and threaten filibusters and focus on irrelevant minutiae when a qualified, experienced, intelligent judge is nominated by a president who scares them as much as W scared sane people.

Rick Perry: Stupid, or evil?

2009-04-16T09:59:00.005-05:00

Rick Perry, supposedly the duly-elected governor of my state, has repeated the long-debunked canard that Texas joined the US with a pre-approved agreement to secede if it chose to do so. He couched this in a half-hearted statement that he didn't think Texas should do so, but the fact that he thinks we somehow have the right to do so is troublesome. He's already been busy selling off as much of our state's infrastructure as he can get his helmet-haired head around to the private sector (including private companies based in other countries.)

I was able to ignore Perry for the most part when the biggest part of my shame was that our former governor was busily wrecking the federal government (along with Iraq and Afghanistan) but now that there are signs that we have a president with detectable brain activity, it's time to get rid of Perry. Even Kay Bailey Hutchison would be an improvement, and that is saying something.

Michael Steele is not very smart

2009-02-08T11:15:00.005-06:00

So the shiny new chairman of the Republican party thinks that government-stimulated jobs are just work, but private-sector work is all JOBS and they'll last forever. Never mind the fact that the 8 years of tax-cut driven job-growth bonanza under our last president represented the LOWEST period of job growth since WWII. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Here is a man who either hasn't even a vague clue about economics, or is such a partisan hack that he doesn't mind lying through his teeth to get the job done... either he's not very smart, or he'll say anything to oppose, obstruct and delay. How can addressing infrastructure needs that have been piling up since Saint Reagan convinced everyone that all government is bad and the private sector is the only group that can create the Shining City on a Hill be a short-term fix? Hell, we have enough real infrastructure needs to have projects going on for many years!

Whom does Steele think will do this work? Does he believe we'll suddenly have a Ministry of Work that runs the projects from start to finish, employing all the workers and manufacturing all the materials? Has he such a tenuous grasp on economics that he thinks there is a way to address these big infrastructure problems such as crumbling roads and bridges and an electrical grid largely designed in the 1950s such that all of the jobs and all of the money spent on the projects will just evaporate without any lasting effect on the economy?

I for one don't believe Steele is quite that stupid. I think he's really just a partisan hack who'll say anything to get on the news and get in the way. In his tiny, cold, calculating heart, Steele probably wants the stimulus to pass with as little Republican consent as possible, so they can go on saying what a horrible waste it is for another couple of years and pray that the economy is still wobbly when the 2010 election cycle rolls around.

The Republicans themselves ruined the very idea of government spending to fix things when they were given $350 billion dollars to buy up some toxic assets and stabilize the banking system, and instead they turned it into a big giveaway party to pay off John Thain's decorating bill and fund billions in bonuses to Wall Street zeroes who should be applying for unemployment instead. The real question is whether they were shrewd enough to think they were poisoning the well, or dumb enough to believe they'd get away with it.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6830288

Digital TV conversion confusion

2008-12-22T09:56:00.004-06:00

It's interesting to read article after article about how supposedly confusing and poorly-managed the 17 February conversion to all-digital broadcast television in the US has been. I realize I'm a geek and that any technology more complex than a Zippo seems like magic to many people, but I think reporters are just having withdrawal after the election and need something that sounds scary to write about.

In this article in the New York Times, one can see that even people who are supposedly writing to clear up the confusion either don't write well or don't fully understand the situation. In his very first paragraph, Mr. Taub writes that after 17 Feb 2009, "Old TV sets will no longer work." It's not until the 4th paragraph that he even mentions converter boxes, and then he's not altogether clear on the topic. In the 9th paragraph he writes that "Anyone who gets their TV signal over the air — whether through a rabbit ear antenna on top of the set or an antenna on the roof — will need to buy a digital-to-analog converter box in order to continue getting a signal. Some people may also need a new antenna." This is at best an overstatement, since many people who get their TV signal over the air already have a set with a digital tuner... nearly every flat-panel television has an ATSC tuner, as do many CRT sets people have purchased over the last 4 years or so. I suppose most people with an ATSC tuner realize they have one, but the article is still leaning toward fear-mongering.

It's really pretty simple... if you don't have cable or satellite and haven't bought a TV since the Brady Bunch was in primetime, or if you're still watching a Sony that looks like the one from Poltergeist, you'll need a cheap converter box. Wal-Mart has them, go get one soon (I'm sure they'll be temporarily sold out on 18 February.) If you're already watching TV over an antenna, the concept of an antenna is nothing new, and probably the idea that different antennas are tailored toward different signals isn't new to you, nor is the need to adjust a directional antenna to improve your reception. For those already practised in the black art of optimizing over-the-air TV reception, the only real adjustment will be that they have to find their new tuner's signal-strength display instead of looking at the picture and guessing where the best signal is.

The fact that most TV viewers don't know how digital tuners work shouldn't enter into it... they don't know how analog tuners work either, and they've been using them for years. Only people like me with OCD issues actually want to know HOW things work, most people are quite content if things just work. Perhaps part of my cynicism about this stems from my social-Darwinist attitude... if people can't bother to learn anything, they can just roll the dice and hope it comes out okay. Of course, just to be a bit introspective about the futility of all this... anyone who's reading this probably can figure out how to obtain and connect a digital converter box.

Bailout bozos

2008-12-17T22:46:00.003-06:00

I realize that a great many people were opposed to the banking bailout under any conditions, so they have no cognitive dissonance when they diss the automotive bailout. I wonder at others who think the $700-billion banking boondoggle was "essential," yet they'd let the US auto industry wither and die before they'd LOAN them 5% of that amount.

I think both industries are important to our economy and that of the rest of the world, but NEITHER industry is so important that we should just give them sacks of public money without restrictions and oversight. At the risk of sounding like a Republican bitching about "media elites" I've read articles such as this one by Joe Lauria advocating "ditch(ing) the automobile altogether." The man thinks everything will be okay if we just let people who have the temerity to live somewhere that's not served by a subway walk, or drive a Toyota or a Volvo, even though they are "slightly more expensive." Surely Toyota would sell at exactly the same price without competition from US manufacturers, no? And the fact that Volvo is currently owned by a US auto manufacturer escaped Mr. Lauria altogether. That lends him great credibility in commenting about US auto manufacturers!

A well-structured package of loans or equity positions that the car companies could buy back on terms favorable to the people would be a better use of our money than the disgusting waste that is the hundreds of billions thrown at the financial industry with few restrictions and less oversight. The fact that the gifts to the financial industry were done stupidly doesn't mean that the government couldn't offer useful assistance to the manufacturing sector that could benefit both the public and corporate situation.

If we allow the US manufacturers who sell MILLIONS of vehicles to disappear, Toyota et al will have fewer competitors and will probably become more than "slightly more expensive." Ford, if you've been paying attention, feels that they can actually operate for quite a while without government assistance, and GM has in the last 5 years begun to significantly turn their product line around, and they currently offer some competitive and desirable products. Chrysler may be beyond help... they have little in the way of competitive products, but they are in a different position as a privately-held company, Cerberus could sell them at firesale prices to PSA or perhaps a chinese auto maker that wants a foothold in the US.

Mr. Lauria thinks that if we offer the US manufacturers any assistance, it should be for the government to take them over and force them to make electric cars (because I suppose he approves of electric cars.) It's possible that in 10 years all-electric cars may be viable for extraurban transportation, but the best bet for a truly usable electric car comes from a company he's already written off, GM (the Chevrolet Volt.) All-electrics aren't up to snuff yet.

MANY public transportation projects could significantly improve the state of transportation in certain areas of the country, but the wholesale squandering of vast sums of public money to build a network that would be largely unused in huge parts of the country would be a bigger boondoggle than making well-structured loans to or buying equity stakes in the viable parts of the auto industry.

Mr. Lauria claims he doesn't want to outlaw the car, but still leaves the impression that he thinks the automobile is useless. Considering the scale of the 2 bailouts, I think we'd save more of the people's money by applying some constraints to the financial industry thefts...er...gifts than by ignoring the US auto industry, leaving millions unemployed and further damaging the economies of dozens of American cities. The numbers being bandied about are about 5% of what was tossed to the financial wizards who torpedoed the world's economy in the first place. We need to cut off the free gifts of billions to the financial sector unless and until they promise to use it wisely and responsibly. The billions Mr. Lauria would dump into mass transit would be useful in the densest metro areas and an utter waste in the majority of cities.

Why do some cars still suck?

2008-12-07T11:07:00.000-06:00

Here we are with 2009 just around the block, and there are still American cars in production that are absolute crap. Why is this? Better yet, why do some people BUY the bloody things?

Several weeks ago some cell-phone-addled operator of a motor vehicle managed to scratch up the bumper of my Legacy Wagon in the post office parking lot. If they even noticed the contact between the 2 vehicles, I'm guessing they didn't stop to look for damage or decided they could get away with it, so they buggered off. I wish them a plague of boils.

At any rate, having that repaired gave me the "opportunity" to sample one of the worst cars I've driven in years. While my insurance company was willing to pay for a car like a Fusion or a Malibu, the best that Enterprise had available (without forcing me to pay extra) was a 2008 Chrysler Sebring. This was a relatively fresh car, with about 10,000 miles on the clock.

Let me start by saying I've never been a fan of the current Sebring's styling, and I think the automotive press is unanimously behind me on that front. The car is ill-proportioned with some strange detailing, like the longitudinal lines in the hood that were a much more coherent design element on the Crossfire when it was designed EIGHT YEARS AGO. Not every design element on low-volume halo cars constitute a styling signature for the company. There are, however, some frumpy-looking vehicles that turn out to be quite decent cars. The shoe-box styling of the previous generation Malibu hid a car that was at least efficient and functional, even though it wasn't going to excite anyone. The equally frumpy Ford 500/neo-Taurus is also a much better car that its looks make you think.

The Sebring isn't hiding an automotive gem under its clunky styling, though. Clunky is in fact an excellent adjective for it. The flaccid automatic transmits power delivered in a groaning, wheezy manner to tires offering all the traction of teflon on cowshit. The suspension manages to be both floaty and coarse, and I'm still trying to figure out HOW one does that. The trunk was adequate in size, but ridiculous in access since the lid is proportioned almost like a mail-slot... the back window extends so far rearward that almost all of the trunk space is inconvenient to reach, and there wasn't a single hook or cubbyhole for securing the silly kinds of things people carry in the trunk of their cars, like GROCERIES.

When I look at the problem from an intellectual point of view, I realize that there would be a very negative impact on the economy to let Chrysler fail. When I look just at the merits of what they're offering for sale these days, I think there would be a net positive effect on the mix of CARS available for sale. Sell them to PSA Peugeot Citroen and let them bring us some interesting French strangeness... sell them to a Chinese company and let them at least build cheap bad cars instead of bad cars masquerading as decent transportation. Just don't make me DRIVE one again.

Pocket proJector

2008-12-03T23:46:00.001-06:00

Imagine if you will a digital projector, about the size of a Palm Centro. If you imagine it with a 480x320 resolution and the ability to project a clear image between 8 inches and 8 feet, you might get something like the Optoma Pico, described here by David Pogue. Looks like a cool toy.

VIVACE: slow water movements generating electricity

2008-12-03T23:10:00.002-06:00

I find this one to be a very interesting possibility. Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy (VIVACE) uses the way fish swim to generate energy from slow tidal or water current motion, and does it in a way that can be submerged so that it doesn't obstruct the waterway. The estimate in the article is that recovering 0.1% of the energy available from tidal motion of the oceans would supply power for a population of 15 billion.

Read the Science Daily article about VIVACE here.

WFTV Biden interview: Slanted questions and biased followups, and Fox News' slanted coverage of a slanted interview

2008-10-26T14:01:00.006-05:00

On Thursday 23 October, VP candidate Joe Biden was interviewed via satellite by Barbara West of WFTV in Orlando, FL. Surprisingly, as much of this election crap as I hear about, this little kerfuffle hasn't come up while I was paying attention until today. Flipping past Fox News for the neocon view of things, I saw a story about this and had to look into it more deeply.

Here's the synopsis... West had prepared a hatchet piece, asking Biden to (among other things) tell her if it's Marxist for Obama to want to make the federal income tax rates more progressive. to "spread the wealth around" (to quote the GOP talking point and 4 unfortunate words lifted from a several-minute conversation Obama had with "plumber" Joe Wurzelbacher in Ohio.) She also harped on Biden's poorly-worded version of the same thing Joe Lieberman has said, that the new president will likely face challenges on the international stage soon after his inauguration. She started her questioning off asking if Biden was "embarrassed" about their association with ACORN, and when he didn't grovel before her question she brought out the GOP talking points about Obama being an "organizer and attorney" for ACORN.

I thought Biden handled the actual responses to her questions pretty well. He gave direct answers to her question, even though some of them were obvious hackery and even though he meandered a bit about the questions themselves. I feel that her tone and her follow-ups looked somewhat biased, but nothing that would make Hannity the Manatee proud, and if I had seen the piece before I saw Fox News blathering about it I wouldn't have thought much of it. Biden asked her if the question was a joke when she essentially asked if Obama is a Marxist, and commented "I don't know who is writing your questions" when she asked, regarding his comments on the test of a new president, if he was "forewarning Americans that nothing will be done, and that America's days as a world power are over." This was her worst, most slanted, question that had no sane basis in reality, and Biden answered it as if it really merited an answer and answered it well. (I personally think it merited a bitch-slap, but we can just add that to the whole host of reasons why I shouldn't run for public office.)

Fox had their knickers in a twist because after this interview, the Obama campaign cancelled a scheduled interview of Jill Biden with the same reporter and suggested that it would not grant further interviews with this station until after the election. I understand perfectly the reason for cancelling Jill Biden's interview, she's not a candidate and there's no reason to subject her to the likely unfair, slanted treatment she'd receive from Barbara West. I'm less sympathetic about cutting the station off altogether, but it's nothing in comparison to the McCain campaign's treatment of members of the press who aren't seen as friendly to the campaign, barring them from the campaign planes and carping incessantly about bias. From their piece on this, and watching the chyron, Fox has manufactured unfounded concerns that an Obama presidency would "regulate the media" and that we should be concerned about an administration that won't answer "tough questions" from the press.

I think that in the direct sense of Fox's statement, we SHOULD be concerned about such an administration. Biden, however, ANSWERED all of her questions, even as he questioned their validity. We should be worried about an administration that has a hidden VP who only appears before friendly crowds and only talks to friendly media. We should worry about an administration that thinks favorable historic facts (military service, POW prison) should be reported, but unfavorable historic facts (poor performance in the academy and the cockpit, cheating on his first wife then dumping her for a tall, blonde beer fortune, supporting Charles Keating, visiting Pinochet with "no preconditions", supporting progressive tax rates as income increases, supporting ACORN) happened a long time ago and should be ignored. We should be concerned about what kind of closed-doors, opaque operation a McCain-Palin administration would run.

UPDATE: For those who just read topics and not comments, my friend Howard pointed me to this blog, where Barbara West is called out as the wife of a GOP political and media consultant. I wonder who might have pointed her to those McCain-Palin talking points?

You can view the video here:

How much energy can we save with just our brains?

2008-10-19T01:55:00.004-05:00

My neighbor is wasteful.

Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and all, I'm sure he never even thinks about it. I'm not attacking my neighbor specifically, but this post was brought to mind indirectly by his action (or inaction.) Sunday 19 October 2008 was a gorgeous fall day in North Texas. The low was around 50 degrees, and it didn't get into the upper 70s until the middle of the afternoon. I'd had my AC turned off for over a week at that point.

I open the windows in the evening and let the house cool... closing the windows when the outside temperature begins to exceed the indoor temperature. It hasn't gotten much about 75 degrees inside my house for a week and I haven't spent a dime on heat or AC. By now, you may be starting to wonder what my neighbor has to do with any of this.

Late on Sunday morning it was about 73 degrees. My windows were open and I was pouring a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and I heard my neighbor's AC unit kick on. I started thinking about how much energy and money could be saved if people just stopped for a moment and thought about how they use things. There's certainly an opportunity in many cases to spend lots of money and save energy, but how much energy is wasted just by people who just don't pay attention to how much energy they use? Running hot water longer than you need it, leaving the windows closed and the AC on even when it's cooler outside than in, leaving the TV on when you're not paying attention to it, etc.

Next thing you know I'll be subscribing to Mother Earth News.

Michele Bachmann: The Second Coming of Joseph McCarthy

2008-10-18T10:43:00.004-05:00

On "Hardball" on 17 October, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, MN) as much as stated that she'd like to usher in a new McCarthy era. She'll probably want to call it Bachmannism, of course, because her version will be different in that it will go after every Democratic member of Congress. Don't feel left out, I'm sure she'll happily proceed to investigate every other American citizen who's not a card-carrying Republican willing to pray to Ronald Reagan and follow Karl Rove to the gates of Hell, it'll just take her a while to get around to it. She has to get her secret investigators, hit squads and anonymous-call-takers ready, so she's starting small by simply accusing Democrats in the House and Senate of being anti-American and calling for an investigation of them.

Write your Representative and tell them it's not acceptable for a member of Congress to accuse every member representing the opposing party as of being "unamerican." Tell them we want government, not theater. It's easy, you can do it via a web form or email, and here's where to find yours. I've written mine, and my Senators for good measure. We absolutely cannot afford the venal, dishonest, theatrical distraction of a modern-day "Red Scare" while there are real problems to be solved in this country. If there's any justice, Ms. Bachmann will find herself unemployed after 4 November anyway, but this kind of vile, virulent statement cannot be ignored.

While I think it's more effective to contact your representative directly, you can also join in the chorus of those calling for censure of Bachmann here.

You can view the interview here:

Joe the Plumber is a Republican

2008-10-16T08:49:00.002-05:00

John McCain's favorite topic in the final presidential debate on 15 October was Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, OH.) He mentioned Joe the Plumber several times during the debate, often when Senator Obama was speaking. Perhaps it was suggested to Senator McCain as something that might help him keep from grimacing or blinking?

McCain said again and again that poor old Joe wasn't going to be able to buy the business he's been working for (for 10-12 hours/day, mind you!) because evil Obama was going to take away all Joe's money by taxing him if he buys this business. Joe himself was interviewed on the phone by Katie Couric and didn't say that Obama threatened to prevent him from buying a business... in fact he said that Obama's tax proposals wouldn't raise his taxes "right now" but he's concerned that it's a "slippery slope" and feels that Obama is sure to decide later on that "$100,000 is too much" and raise taxes at that level.

My first reaction to McCain's harping about Joe the Plumber last night, and "small businesses" in general that are sure to be ruined by increasing the marginal tax rate on income over $250,000 is that TAXES ARE NOT ON GROSS INCOME. That's a dirty little secret that McCain is never going to admit to you, and he's CERTAINLY never going to say a word about the fact that the increased taxes will only be on the marginal amount of income that exceeds $250,000. Perhaps he thinks that people who aren't smart enough to see through Palin's perky folksy facade and recognize that she's just another politician also aren't smart enough to understand big words like "marginal" and understand how taxes work?

So, if Joe the Plumber is able to buy a business that has an adjusted gross (after expenses for materials, mileage, employee wages, etc.) of over $250,000, he can probably afford to pay a higher percentage of the amount over $250k. McCain thinks that this will force Joe to fire all his employees... never mind the fact that those employees' wages reduce the income of the business, and CERTAINLY don't talk about the fact that Obama's plan offers tax credits for job creation and for small businesses that provide healthcare to their employees.

Couric's interview of Joe the Plumber really left me thinking that Joe's a Republican and always was. It's okay that he's skeptical about a tax increase that doesn't affect him and may never affect him, but it's disingenuous for McCain to portray this as something that made up Joe's mind... never mind that it's probably McCain's version of Bush 41's "Read my lips" because if he somehow managed to get elected, McCain would either end up raising taxes or doing even more harm to our economy along the same lines as W with his "cut taxes, borrow more" policies.

Slippery Sarah Perky Palin only talks to friendly media

2008-10-09T20:55:00.002-05:00

So, it's been quite a while now since the McCain campaign gave up on the idea of "Straight Talk" winning them the election and have devolved into innuendo and outright lies to try to divert attention from the disastrous financial conditions in our country and our world today. They know that the Republican administration with a Republican rubber-stamp congress at an absolute minimum failed to avert this crisis, even if there's a grain of truth to the right-wing bleating that Clinton "started it all." (I, for one, think Phil Gramm started it all while he was busy securing his lucrative post-senatorial position with UBS by ruining any hope of banking regulation in the US.)

In between her refrain of "Deny, Deny, Deny" about any possible ethical questions (and her persistently ignoring any other questions except those asked by Fox Noise and other far-right media outlets,) while speaking to arch-conservative radio host Laura Ingraham Sarah Palin has the gall to suggest that Barack Obama would diminish the prestige of the Presidency. Does this woman think that W has left any prestige in the presidency at all, with Cheney pulling the strings in the dark behind him and his befuddled response to events in the big ol' world outside our borders (that world he never bothered to see before he took office?) Does she think that an educated, intelligent president who seeks to rebuild our relationships with our allies and fix through diplomacy what W has broken through belligerence could possibly do more damage to the "prestige" of the Presidency than electing another narrow-minded neocon hick to the Executive Branch who's never given a thought to the wider world would?

Let her take her "Mean Girls" act back on the road... preferably the Alaska Highway. We don't need more shallow, ignorant neocon nitwits in DC.

Sean Hannity emasculated by a funny old Brit

2008-10-08T23:01:00.002-05:00

Keith Olbermann read a poem written by one of the funniest men to live in our time... perhaps in any time. One of the reasons John Cleese is hilariously funny is that he's very intelligent, which supports his unique sense of humor brilliantly. Apparently Mr. Cleese's opinion of Sean Hannity is quite similar to mine.

An Ode to Sean Hannity
By John Cleese
Aping urbanity, oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee, faking humanity
Journalistic calamity, intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity, you’re a profanity
Hannity.”

Lies, damned lies, and Fox news

2008-10-03T16:44:00.000-05:00

So, if anyone had any lingering doubts that Fox news is a neocon-loving organization, here's something for you to think about. They are stretching to help the Republicans out by abandoning suggestion and proceeding to outright lies, attempting to paint Obama as somehow "deeply connected" to ACORN. ACORN has been charged with voter-registration irregularities in several instances, so of course the Fox team wants to slyly suggest that has something to do with Obama, perhaps writing their stories in advance to broadcast after an Obama win, hoping to stir up Florida II.

What's the connection they pretend is so "deep" they they feel justifies accusing Obama of being allied with "voter fraud?" Obama represented a coalition of groups that sued Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar in order to get him to implement the federal "Motor-Voter" voting access law. As it happens, ACORN also supported the lawsuit and joined this coalition, along with the US Department of Justice. Of course at the time, it was the Clinton administration's DoJ, so Fox would probably be happy enough to accuse the DoJ of supporting ACORN as welll. Why not, it would have as much basis in fact.

NOTE: I realize my gearhead/geeky blog has turned sharply political of late. It's not that my opinions are newly formed, it's just that there's no shortage of political blogs and normally I haven't found it worth fuming about, but 'tis the season.

Palin says "Nuclear weapons would be the be-all, end-all for too many people..."

2008-10-02T23:05:00.000-05:00

I know it's not what she meant (at least I HOPE it's not what she meant!) but Sarah Palin said that "Nuclear weapons would be the be-all, end-all for too many people..." when asked if there was a time when it might be appropriate to use nuclear weapons.

I hope she meant that the use of nuclear weapons would be disastrous and would end the lives of too many people, but it's definitely not what she said.

One must wonder how many other things she says that she really doesn't mean.

Ann Coulter is a filthy NeoCon whore

2008-10-01T21:42:00.003-05:00

There. I said it. Nearly everyone WANTS to say it, but people for whom journalism and/or blogging is a career may be afraid to do so, because it's the sort of thing people get mad about. Of course, no honest THINKING person would get too upset about it, because they heard the wench lie, or read her lies, or felt nauseous while watching her lie on television.

Occasionally what she says is only slightly untrue, but couched in the most suggestive of phrasing to blame anyone who's not an Aryan neocon whore for all the ills in the world. At other times, such as her ridiculous assertions that the current financial crisis... the one happening at the end of 2008, after 7.5 years of the Bush administration and more than a decade of Republican control of Congress prior to 2006, the current financial crisis is of course 100% the fault of the Democrats.

The reason that I call her a filthy whore in the title and repeatedly in the text (besides the fact that it's a general truism) is that she suggests in the title of her "article" that good Aryan neocons were denied mortgages because banks were required to give them to minority borrowers. Where has this dumb bitch BEEN for the past decade? Anyone with a pulse could get a loan, it was bad business. Lots of dumb Republican crackers and crack-whores got zero-down loans on houses that probably weren't worth 75% of the loan amount. It was a cash-drunk feeding frenzy and it was lauded and supported by Republicans in the administration as well as Democrats in the house, and most of all by corrupt mortgage brokers everywhere. (I'm sure her next "article" will offer "proof" that every mortgage broker who sold a LiarLoan was a Democrat... she keeps all their party affiliations in their dossiers, you know.)

I am tired of her free pass. Are people afraid to mention her and give her more notice? Reading her trash makes me feel ill sometimes... there's only so much ignorant childish fiction passed off as news one can take, and Fox has exceeded my quota for the next decade... Coulter gets no free pass from me.

Sarah Palin has never seen Russia

2008-10-01T14:15:00.002-05:00

Gary Tuchman of CNN has done something old-fashioned. He went to Little Diomede, the island in Alaska from which you can see Russia.

When he went there, he found a community of about 150 people who see Russian territory every day (the island of Big Diomede 2 miles away, itself 25 miles from the Siberian mainland.) While they see Russia on a daily basis, they've never seen a governor of Alaska on their island. Never.

I'm sure Palin's statements about "seeing Russia" across the "narrow maritime border" will be characterized as a figure of speech by the McCain spin doctors, but it smells like another lie to me.

Brokaw lies about poll results?

2008-09-30T18:59:00.003-05:00

Interesting... MediaMatters links to reports that Tom Brokaw represented weeks-old poll numbers (taken just after the Republican convention) as "the most current" and said that the American people still feel that McCain is better suited to be Commander in Chief. It's one thing to be wrong... it's worse to be wrong about a poll supposedly conducted by your own organization. It's worse still to present this wrong information as factual and state that you're reporting this incorrect information that supports one candidate when in fact the polling data after the first presidential debate almost universally went to Obama "in fairness to everybody here."

Perhaps Brokaw had been too busy sucking up to the McCain campaign on behalf of NBC to bother reading the current poll data before hosting Meet the Press?

MoveOn.org and others (on the left, of course) are questioning his impartiality in the upcoming debate he's scheduled to moderate on 7 October.

Small-town mayor thinks Obama might be the Antichrist

2008-09-29T21:46:00.003-05:00

You thought this was going to be about Sarah Palin, didn't you? Actually, if Palin thinks Obama is the Antichrist she'd want him to win, since she attends an "end times" church. This does, however, offer some perspective about how little judgment is required of small-town mayors. (Actually, Kwame Kilpatrick showed us that big-city mayors can be pretty dumb as well, but that's beside the point.)

Danny Funderburk, mayor of Fort Mill, NC, forwarded an email chain letter that contains false claims that the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian bible describes the Antichrist as a man of Muslim descent in his 40s. The email then builds on THAT lie with the suggestion that Obama is the Antichrist. Funderburk claims he was "trying to get documentation" on whether or not this was true, but he didn't put that in the subject header. The story doesn't say if the actual email he sent contained any indication that he was looking for such documentation, and no copy of the email is included in the article.

If there's any truth to his claim, this man needs to learn to Google before he makes an ass of himself. Cynic that I am, I believe he's just an idiot who believed the chain letter and forwarded it on to friends so he could share this important knowledge. People like Funderburk give sane, intelligent Southerners a very bad name.

Why can't McCain use a computer?

2008-09-29T12:43:00.000-05:00

I'm very, VERY tired of hearing what is either cynical mock indignance or abject ignorance from people claiming that the reason McCain knows nothing about computers is that war injuries keep him from using one.

Now there's a new idiotic ad in which a vet claims that Obama is attacking John McCain because of McCain's physical disability resulting from his injuries sustained as a POW. I really think there should be SOME enforceable standard of truth in political advertising, since normal libel laws don't apply to most political statements.

If Stephen Hawking can use a computer, I'd think a relatively spry old bastard who's been a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee overseeing the telecommunications industry and the FCC can probably manage to do so without too much difficulty. I understand that McCain has difficulty raising his arms above his head, but I don't generally put my keyboard or mouse above my head to use them, so that point doesn't suggest that he'd have a physical problem with it.

Assuming that McCain has a dexterity problem with his fingers (I haven't seen this stated anywhere, I'm just covering the worst-case scenario) there are excellent voice-recognition programs available as shrink-wrapped consumer software such as NaturallySpeaking that offer extensive voice control of Windows computers. (Yes, Howard, there's a Macintosh product for the same purpose.) It's quite clear that McCain is capable of speaking, so if he has any desire to learn to use a computer he should be able to do so.

So much for manufactured controversy. Why does it seem too much to ask to have the campaigns and the media concentrate on issues of governance? There are certainly enough out there to keep the media involved, but I guess real issues less entertaining than what Palin is wearing today and whether or not Obama will invite Ahmadinejad for tea in the Rose Garden.

Semantics and posturing

2008-09-28T13:18:00.000-05:00

So how different is it to say "My opponent is right when he says X" rather than "X is true..."?

Much ado has been made by The bobbleheads... er.. talking heads in the media about the fact that Obama said several times that McCain was right about one thing or another being an issue. No one points out that when Obama did this, he proceeded to suggest that McCain's plan for dealing with that issue was wrong, even though his identification of the issue itself was right.

Why is it that even the suggestion of agreement is seen as a weakness? Is there any way to truly have a government of the people without recognizing that there are disagreements among those people? McCain's campaign of course immediately released an ad showing Obama saying McCain is right, so that would seem to be a poor choice of words on Obama's part.

Perhaps next time it can be "It is true that X is a problem in our country. However, the Republicans have shown that their handling of X has been lacking yadda yadda yadda." I fail to see how one could honestly pretend that everything ones opponent says is wrong (McCain's doing it, but he abandoned honesty weeks ago... it's no longer surprising.)

I feel that this weird debate theater highlights some problems with our "Two Party" system... because the 2 parties aren't really sufficiently different for them to simply present the truth and let the people decide. If the parties must manufacture difference and highlight dissent, perhaps they're not really different enough in their policies and their governance.

I was right about small cars in the US!

2008-09-26T22:57:00.000-05:00

I like to be right... ask anyone who knows me. I'm just sad that it only took $4/gallon to make me right.

I haven't written all that much in this blog, but I've written 3 entries on smaller cars. In December 2005 I wrote that I noticed more people buying small cars. Things were still so bad back then that I pointed out the Yaris and the PT Cruiser as "not too bad." I should have mentioned the excellent Mazda3, but I guess I thought of that more as a sporty car than an economical one (and truth be told, the 3 is not particularly economical for its size, though it's decent for the overall performance it offers.

In July 2006 I'm ashamed to say I said essentially the same thing... prattling mostly about the Yaris and the Prius. I wrote about it last in January 2007, lamenting how slowly the uptake of small cars was going even though there were a few interesting new cars like the Aura from Saturn.

It really did take an extended period of $4/gallon gasoline to either make people realize it wasn't necessary to have a 5500-lb SUV to get most people to work, or for them to finally max out enough credit credit cards for it to be hard to fill up the 30-gallon tank. Being a cynical bastard, I tend to think it's the latter. Ford and GM have still been slow to tap their excellent offering in other markets to fill in the dearth of smaller models in the US market, though they're at least talking about it, and GM brought the Opel/Vauxhall Astra over as the Saturn Astra.

The Saturn has met with slow acceptance in the market... it starts just under $16k and the more compelling XR starting around $17,500 and still offering a rather underwhelming 138 hp and 125 lb-ft of torque. The Civic DX offers 2 more hp, 3 extra lb-ft of torque and 2 mpg better fuel economy city AND highway, for $400 less. Who thought this was a good idea? You have to offer a car with SOME advantage... make it more powerful, or cheaper... GM can't pretend to offer Honda's reputation, even though they've improved vastly in recent years. GM will of course pretend that it's just because Americans don't like hatchbacks, and will ignore the fact that they haven't marketed the car, Saturn dealers largely refuse to deal on price and theh Civic is a better deal.

Maybe Ford will do better when they bring the Fiesta. Make it quicker than the competition, or make it cheaper, or make it more economical, or even a combination of those... the US brands have catching up to do.

Now a foreign policy expert, Sarah Palin suggests Kissinger is naive about Iran

2008-09-26T11:52:00.003-05:00

So, Sarah Palin can't help but share her brilliance with us all... when she was being interviewed by Katie Couric, Palin attacked Barack Obama for saying that he would engage in diplomacy with Iran, stating that his world view is "beyond naive," that engaging in diplomacy with Iran would be "beyond bad judgment."

Palin had recently met with Henry Kissinger, and Couric pointed out that Kissinger supports direct diplomacy with Iran. When Couric asked "Are you saying that Henry Kissinger is naive?" Palin's response was that she "... never heard Henry Kissinger say 'Yeah I'll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met.' "

Just for good measure, Couric contacted Kissinger and confirmed that his position is indeed that he supports talks "without preconditions." The NY Times (among other sources) has a brief article on this.

Here we have yet another piece of evidence that not only is Sarah Palin blissfully ignorant of the state of the world, she either is incapable of understanding what experts like Kissinger (and Colin Powell, and James Baker) are saying on the topic or intentionally ignores it so that her necon world view isn't distorted by inconvenient reality. If she is the best choice McCain could make, he's not very good at making appropriate, important decisions.

Why is your house so BIG?

2008-09-21T15:24:00.001-05:00

It's probably a dumb question... if you're thinking critically about it, you're probably not part of a family of 3 living in a 2800 square foot crackerbox and wishing you'd borrowed that extra $50k for the 3200 square footer so you'd feel superior to your neighbor. It's not really a new question, a few people have been asking it for years, but the mainstream is just now realizing that it might be good to ask more than "How much will you loan me?" when they're choosing a house, and it's driven more by the crumbling market than any realization that they haven't opened the door of that 'guest room' at the other end of the house in a month.

I've found lots of references to a report called "Housing Facts, Figures & Trends 2004" from the National Association of Homebuilders on many sites, but I could only find the actual report second-hand here. It's not on the list of publications the NAHB make available on their site that date all the way back to 1997. I can understand why the NAHB might prefer that people not think too much about this... if people realize they don't need a 3,000 square foot house, they might also realize that there are lots of 2,000 square foot houses already out there that they could buy.

Among the interesting tidbits in the report... in 1970, the average home size in the US was 1,500 square feet. By 2004, the average had ballooned 2,349 square feet. At the same time, average household size dropped from 3.14 in 1970 to 2.59 in 2000. (according to US census data.) What are we doing with all that extra space, besides paying to heat and cool it? Master bathrooms bigger than my bedroom, media rooms, formal living and dining rooms that get used once a year... it's crazy!

I think this all ties in with the sprawl of suburbia... if the houses that are already built closer in are those dinky 2000-square-footers they were building in 1990, well, we've gotta go out further... it's just a little more commute time, right? I wonder at the actual driving forces behind it... is it more the fashion and getting ahead of the Joneses? (But not Mother Jones, of course... they don't approve.) Perhaps instead it's the drive by homebuilders to continue to sell new houses, offering bigger, fancier, flashier McMansions in ever more gated and restricted communities so that people will think their existing home is too small in comparison to those of their acquaintances and coworkers.

I live currently in the 3rd house I've owned, and it's a Goldilocks situation... bigger than the first, smaller than the second; younger than the first, much older than the second. For the moment, it's "just right." The 2 of us plus 2 dogs live comfortably in a 1500 square foot house originally built in 1952 (it was built at about 1200 sq. ft, a previous owner added on a room and a 1/2 bath at the back.) I'm sure I wouldn't mind having a little bigger pantry or another cabinet or two, but we can both work in the kitchen and cook good food, and it helps us follow Alton Brown's "no single taskers" mantra. Even with 56-year-old windows, it doesn't cost me an insane amount to cool (and of course in Texas the cost to heat is generally negligible, I could spend the winter in a tent.)

My middle house was new... most of the houses close to my office were in new developments, so I gave it a try. At 1750 square feet, I built the smallest plan offered by the builder, and spent a little extra for some energy efficient upgrades. My house was nice enough, and different from the other houses because most of my neighbors built as much house as they could get financed; there was only one other house on my plan in the whole development. It was still a very "suburban wasteland" experience, with restrictive covenants controlling everything from the color you could paint your trim to how tall your grass could be, all dialed in by the developer and written into the deeds when the tract was subdivided. The results are very beige... if anything is too different, the "architectural" committee of the HOA (none of whom have any architectural experience, of course) will come to hassle you.

I have vowed never to be subject to an HOA again, and it's entirely possible that I'll never own a house over 2,000 square feet. I don't think a well-designed house NEEDS to be that big unless you have a big family. I hope to design our next house, though depending on where David does his residency it may be the house after next. Hopefully I'll remember my small-house prejudices when it comes time to do the design work.

What's a Chevrolet Volt?

2008-09-20T13:30:00.001-05:00

Chevrolet introduced a concept car called the Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show. If you're not a car geek, you may not be familiar with the fact that concept cars are often wildly impractical futurist visions of what a company might do if the laws of physics were repealed... you may have noticed that we still don't have the flying cars promised to us in the '50s, never mind the nuclear reactors in the trunk to power our cars for decades on a single refueling. The Volt Concept was racy-looking, impractically-packaged (for a mainstream consumer car) and described as a series hybrid, specifically GM's E-Flex Extended-Range Electric Vehicle (EREV) system.

If you take a moment to look at that picture, it becomes apparent that the design compromises outward visibility, and if you're seen video or stills of people near the concept, it's not packaged well to be comfortable for 4 people. Never mind the fact that the concept car has a golf-cart powertrain to let it move under its own power, it wouldn't be a practical everyday car even if it had the final production E-Flex powertrain.

Now, a couple of weeks ago GM started leaking pictures of what is to be a production version of the car. Last week that had an official reveal of the production look of the car. The fact that there is to be a production version at all speaks of the upheaval at SUV Central ...er... GM Headquarters over the state of the car market today. Americans have realized that it's not really necessary for one person driving to their white-collar job to drive a vehicle that weighs 6000 lb and has seating for 8, and they've abruptly stopped borrowing against their houses to buy one, so there are Tahoes and Suburbans languishing on dealer lots everywhere.

In a shocking break with recent tradition, GM is planning to offer to the public a vehicle that's more efficient than the current Toyota Prius. A vehicle that will let you drive about 40 miles per day without needing any gasoline at all, and if you need to drive farther than that before you have a chance to plug in and charge it for a few hours, the "extended range" part of the powertrain kicks in and the car will take you as far as you want as long as there are gas stations every 300 miles or so. This is a game-changing powertrain, even if it's not an atomic car. The car that will be produced, as usual, is very much toned down from the show car that has to look good on a turntable but doesn't have to be a good car to drive.

It won't be out for a while (GM is saying late 2010) and there's conflicting info about what it will cost, what tax incentives will be in place at the time, etc. Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of GM, wanders around with random quotes rattling out of his head and generally contradicts official statements, engineers in interviews and whatever he said last month. He was on Colbert last week and didn't really help the car any, but his interview will be largely forgotten by the time the car's in dealer showrooms.

I am amazed at the number of people who are up in arms over the fact that the production model doesn't look just like the concept car. They stupidly throw out epithets not supported by facts like "Electric Malibu!" and "Hybrid Cavalier" and "bait and switch" and claim they don't want one because it doesn't look exactly like the concept that most of them have ONLY SEEN IN PICTURES. It's a different size and platform than the Malibu (it's slightly smaller than a new Malibu) and obviously has nothing to do with the Cavalier that has been out of production for years. It's larger than the concept and has much more passenger and cargo space, and has significantly less aerodynamic drag, but the mouth-breathing hordes are screaming that GM is cheating them by producing a practical car instead of giving them the show car they got all excited about.

I've posted many times in several threads on this topic that GM needs this car to be a success, and the Camry is a much bigger success than the Solstice, or even the Miata. Bland sells. In the case of the Camry, bland sells like ~~free~~ nickel beer. Once GM proves the technology and turns its finances around, it can be used in many other vehicles and they can produce shorter-range, less-efficient cars for the form-over-function types, but any fool can see that people buying family cars buy lots of 4-cylinder Camrys and Accords and Fusions and Malibus because they make sense, not because they make them horny.

I also included a "tinfoil hat" tag because there's a cadre of people following the Volt's development who claim that we should all be driving around in an EV1 and GM and the oil companies want us to be dependent on oil forever and the Volt isn't nearly as good as the EV1 and GM killed the electric car and on and ON. They can't see that this 4-seater car with decent cargo room, a production-ready chassis and essentially UNLIMITED range is better for most consumers (even with its more limited all-electric range) than a hand-built extremely lightweight 2-seater experiment that was never made available to drivers in harsh climates and required a long charging cycle with a non-standard inductive charging paddle when it reached the end of its range in 80 miles or so.

Should you buy a new mower now?

2008-09-05T11:19:00.003-05:00

So, how long will that "perfectly good" lawn mower you've been thinking of replacing for the past 3 summers last you? I've been thinking about that more in the last month or so, because my 12-year-old lawn mower "has issues" but I'm a notorious cheapskate. My first power mower (the same one with "issues") was the cheapest rear-bagger I could find, back when the cheap mowers were under $100 on sale. In recent years, the weird little spring-loaded carburetor can't keep a consistent RPM, but it runs well enough to mow the lawn without stalling (it just sounds like a prop from a 3 Stooges film.) If I buy something new, I'd like it to have a Honda engine and keep it until I'm a grumpy old man paying the neighbor kids to mow the lawn, and you can't get a mower with a Honda engine for $100.

So now I'm torn between spending more than I want for a proven product now, or probably spending WAY more than I want for new tech in a few years. EPA regulations will require cleaner engines on walk-behind mowers in 2011 (the regs tighten for 25+ horsepower equipment in 2010.) So, what do I really need?

For Texas, I have a fairly small lot. I'm not into the big house thing, quality space and location means more to me than square footage. So, electric is an option. I'm not sure what I think of that... the overall technology isn't new (one of my crazy aunts had an electric mower in the early '70s) but some of the new ones are battery-powered. Green tendencies tell me this is a good idea... lower emissions (both total and of course in my neighborhood), quieter, theoretically fewer problems. I've read lots of poor reviews, and don't really know where to find "reliable" lawn equipment reviews. Cords that get in the way, batteries that wear out... but no gas required. The cheap electric string trimmer I bought 15 years ago still works fine, as does the electric blower I bought a year or two after that.

I could buy a new gasoline mower in the next couple of seasons. Now my inner cheapskate is arguing with my inner environmentalist... it would probably run cleaner than my old one but not as clean as one with a catalytic converter after 2011, but it would cost less and if the first few years of lawn equipment with catalytic converters suck as much as the first decade of cars that had them, waiting for a "clean" gas mower might not be a good option.

I have to wonder if I'm subconsciously not deciding because doing nothing is the cheapest option....

Disappearing wagons

2007-12-17T22:22:00.002-06:00

I thought about titling my post "Why are Americans so damned stupid?" but only a few people who know me well would connect that to the topic, so I chose a bit more tame headline.

I want to know why it's so hard to find a good, affordable station wagon in the US. Note that I said affordable... the BMW 5-series wagon is available (for now!) so there's a non-SUV option from them, but the bloody thing STARTS at US$54,000 and it's probably the rarest BMW currently available in the US. There are 10 listings for 2003 or newer 5-series wagons within 300 miles of DFW, a whopping 3 of which are equipped with manual transmissions, and all 3 of those are brand new at BMW of Tulsa, OK.

Why does every mouth-breathing idiot want to drive an SUV to work, by himself, on a paved road in rush-hour traffic? I assure you the majority of SUV/CUV/SAV/SUT/whatever owners don't own a boat or anything else requiring a tow (except the SUV itself when it sucks down all its fuel, but that's another sort of tow...) I can transport as many people and about as much cargo in my Legacy Wagon as Joe Dirt in his Explorer and get there faster. Subaru has decided anyone who wants a wagon really wants an SUV, though, and has eliminated the Legacy Wagon in the US, selling only the Outback SU-wanna-V.

You can buy SUVs from nearly every manufacturer who officially sells cars in the US, and from nearly every marque from those manufacturers. Bentley doesn't have one yet, but parent VAG sells the Audi Q7 and VW Touareg. Rolls Royce is much to posh for that, but the X5 and X3 and the upcoming abomination X6 are from BMW, Rolls' corporate parent. If Ferrari, the last holdout (only because FIAT doesn't sell any of their other lines in the US these days) brings out an SUV I think I'll fly to Italy just to slap Luca di Montezemolo.

Many of these manufacturers sell interesting wagons in other markets, but here it's all trucks or sedans. Even GM and Ford have good wagons they could offer if their showrooms weren't choked with everything from Chevrolet Equinoxes to Lincoln Navigators. Hopefully by the time I am willing to part with my Legacy, Pontiac will be bringing the Holden VE Commodore Sportwagon as a companion to the Commodore sedan they'll be importing as the G8. Of course, by then I may not find a big V8 in a full-sized car a very appealing option... $3+ for Super is annoying enough.

So, if my Legacy got squished today, what would my options be?
Audi A3: the car that lost out to my Legacy when I compared them... almost a wagon
Audi A4: a bit pricey and heavy, but a nice car and still available with a manual transmission
VW Passat: soft, unattractive in this iteration, ends up pricey for VW reliability
Saab 93 Sportkombi: strong contender, even with the GM influence. The advent of AWD helps this one.
Saab 95 Sportkombi: odd-looking, BASE price over $38k.
BMW: both the 3 and the 5 are a bit pricey... the 3 just because key options are wrapped up in expensive packages so you end up around that magic $40k mark quickly. Never mind the idea of owning it after the bumper-to-bumper maintenance ends at 40k miles...
Volvo: stereotypical wagons, but the V50 is short on rear legroom and the V70 is expensive and slushbox-only.

So yeah, there are still wagons to be had (though you have to go looking for one to find it on the lot... the BMW dealer in San Antonio lost a sale to a colleague of mine who was willing to wait for a special order, because they weren't willing to order it!) I just wonder why Americans think gargantuan gas-guzzling SUVs are more desirable than a wagon that's lower, leaner and more fun to drive.

Change in direction (lack of direction?)

2007-12-14T09:50:00.000-06:00

Okay, I think part of my problem has been a too-narrow definition of what I should write about. Yeah, I'm a gearhead and a geek. LOTS of people are writing about those two areas, though, and it feels depressingly "me too!" to just post a bunch of links to articles written by others and say "Cool."

So, before the 3 people who look at my blog take it off their RSS for eternal inactivity, I thought I might loosen up and do some random "What Really Grinds my Gears" stuff. Besides, I have a couple of weeks off work so I can pretend I'm in the habit of writing before I forget about it again when I go back to work in January.

Ooma dumma

2007-07-20T14:07:00.001-05:00

I've been reading today about the "Ooma", a VoIP device that's supposedly revolutionary and will bring P2P advantages to VoIP. I think the most charitable impression I have is that they're not looking critically at their potential customer base.

I think I'd have to characterize myself in most instances as a "not late" adopter. Very-new tech is always more expensive and often less stable than I'd like. Hell, I haven't even bought a TV designed to hang on the wall yet (soon, and doubtless the subject of a boring blog post, but not yet.) Still, in my new old home I don't have a POTS line. I'm thinking of getting one for fax if the workarounds for that begin to annoy me, but I just have no real need for one more number for the telemarketers. I'm very happy with my "old school" VoIP service that's proven quite reliable and very feature-rich (VoicePulse if anyone's curious.)

For Ooma to work as advertised, a significant fraction of their "customers" will need to keep their landline. (I say "customers" because under the Ooma model, all the company's revenue is front-loaded in the overpriced Ooma Hub, there are no future payments to them unless they offer international calling at per-minute rates or somesuch service.) For it to be cost-effective for the "customers" in a market that is the destination for lots of calls, they might not even want the least-expensive phone service, which is "metered" and has either a maximum number of free calls per month, or a per-minute charge even for local calls.

It seems to me that lots of their customers are likely to be people who have no real desire to keep their landline. If someone's paranoid about their ability to reach 911 but too lazy to research or test a prospective VoIP provider's ability to provide 911 service, they may not want to rely on a black box (it seems to be gray from the pictures, but you get the idea) to route their call locally, and what does the thing do if you're one of those bad "customers" who doesn't maintain a POTS line to share with the Ooma community? What does it do with 911 calls then, complain to you that it wants to route via POTS but you don't have a landline plugged in?

I'll stick with regular VoIP and a mobile phone for now.

In-car surveillance

2007-01-04T00:00:00.001-06:00

Okay, so this will probably get me branded as a member of the foil-hat crowd, but I'm getting concerned about the amount of surveillance we're under in our cars. I'm not quite to the point where I think it's Alberto Gonzales' idea (I'd be REALLY worried if that were the case!) It just seems like more and more little things are coming together to allow someone to forensically build a pretty good picture of what's been going on in your car.

Many cars today have a "black box" that records many different types of events. Since car manufacturers are still using older, stable technology, there's not a tremendous amount of storage in these boxes so they're not keeping a running account of your driving (yet), they're just recording major events. Basically any car with an airbag has some form of event data recorder, and it's likely that every new generation will be more capable and store data on more events and over a longer period of time.

Some readers are thinking "But I have nothing to hide, why should I care about this?" Well, let's take as an example a minor fender-bender. You are convinced that the other driver is completely at fault because he failed to yield when he pulled into the major road from a side road, and you're sure your insurance rate is safe. How happy will you be when his (or his insurance company's) lawyer subpoenas the data from your car's black box and shows that you contributed to the collision because you were driving 5 mph over the speed limit?

I think the best hope for keeping manufacturers from putting all sorts of collectible data that's not necessarily pertinent to maintenance and service will come from my least-favorite source, a lawsuit (or fear of a lawsuit.) If the manufacturer feels that collecting unnecessary data within every customer's is a potential liability, they'll think twice before collecting it "just because they can."

Still glacial progress in practical cars

2007-01-01T23:25:00.001-06:00

I suppose there is only a certain sized market for reasonable cars, and people who are thinking practically about their ride are willing to buy boring. This is fine for the everyday transportation unit, but I think if the American car-buying public had some different options, it might not be considered punishment to buy a practical family car.

Don't get me wrong, there's some nice stuff out there these days. The Saturn Aura is actually a very appealing car, and for the not-quite-enthusiast it's a compelling product. I'm still not going to consider one, because there's no manual transmission. I'm one of those crusty anachronistic types who thinks everyone who's physically capable should be taught to drive a manual transmission vehicle. I'm not stupid, I realize that it's easier to learn to drive with a slushbox. After all, you really only have to point the car in the general direction you want to go and remember which pedal does what you want, and you have a 50/50 shot at that. People only rarely run down crowds of people or crash their cars through the walls of buildings because they pushed the wrong one, and it's NEVER their fault, right? I think that if more people actually had at least a vague clue about how the car works, they might be able to figure out that if you put the bloody thing in neutral it'll eventually stop, even if you have your idiot foot planted firmly on the accelerator. Wait, this is starting to sound like an earlier post, that's not what I set out to say.

Chevrolet has actually released pictures of a Malibu that aren't painful to look at. Ford's Fusion is not the prettiest car I've seen recently, but it's a damned sight more appealing than a Taurus, and is almost modern. The thing that mystifies me is the fact that the Aura method isn't used more often. Here we have international companies spending billions on design and engineering of different cars around the world. GM has brought over a SINGLE version of a SINGLE model, their Opel Vectra and Americanized it less viciously than usual to produce the Saturn Aura. It's a nice enough car, but they have available on that same platform hatchback and wagon versions, with efficient gasoline engines, clean, highly-efficient diesels and 6-speed manual transmissions. I recognize that there are certification issues with bringing engines over, but the return on that is the reduction in total number of different engines around the world, and the potential to offer a line of efficient cars in the US that someone would actually want to drive. I'd certainly consider a Saturn version of the Vectra Signum 4-door hatchback someday when it's time to replace my Legacy Wagon.

People in Europe voluntarily buy Fords, and not just because their daddy was a "Ford Man." None of the many Fords models people actually WANT over there are even available here. Their Focus isn't on a platform that's nearly old enough to vote, and their larger cars (equivalent to our midsizes) are unrelated to the Fusion and Five Hundred. Americans will buy any shiny thing you market effectively to them, you just have to deprogram them from the "Big SUV is better" brainwashing Detroit's been doing for the past decade. Gasoline that costs nearly as much as a latte at Starbucks is starting to wake some people up... when the bottom of the middle class have maxed out their cards filling up the Tahoe, they may look around and see that there's something modern, quiet and comfy that gets 3x the mileage without hauling around 500 lb of batteries or requiring occupants to pedal. The automakers need to be ready to fill that need, and someone should tell them that if you make a desirable product people will buy it without being expensively bribed.

Small cars are big business again

2006-07-22T18:56:00.001-05:00

So there are some interesting small cars on the market again, and I even see a few of them on the road here in Pickup Land. I'm interested to see who'll win the race on this one, the $14k Yaris or the $24k Prius. It seems to me that the winner for affordable transportation should be the Yaris, and it's easy to park!

The sales of these cars in the last half of the year will be something to watch, since Toyota has sold enough hybrids to reach the point at which tax incentives on the cars start to taper off. Some people will of course say the cars are not competitive, since the Prius is high-tech, camry-sized on the inside, yadda yadda yadda. To a car geek, they're the same car. Slow, economical, weird-looking. Every time I put $40 worth of Super into the tank I wonder if I should have a commuterMobile, even if they do leave me a little cold. Of course, every time I put my foot in it I'm reminded of why I bought the Legacy GT Wagon, so the balance is in favor of 250 lb. ft. of torque so far. We'll see what gas costs next month.

Stupid people shouldn't buy cool toys

2006-02-02T15:38:00.001-06:00

Ah, our wonderfully litigious society... it's so much more satisfying for people to sue rather than taking responsibility for their own mistakes. Now some mouth-breathing moron has filed suit against Apple because it's possible to turn up the iPod loud enough to damage your hearing. (see the Cnet news story here) Mind you, he's not claiming the iPod increases the volume on its own, or that listening to Mozart at low volumes will suddenly destroy your hearing just because you're using an iPod. He's claiming that if YOU turn up the volume all the way, the iPod gives you the ability to damage your own hearing.

Now, I've had stereo equipment you could do this kind of damage with for years. I've not been dumb enough to do it, or perhaps I've just not been devious enough to decide to sue Linn for making speakers that don't automatically shut off at some "danger level." Then I guess I could file another suit against musical talent who have the nerve to make music that sounds good at high volumes (and of course I'd name all the record companies in that suit just to add some deep pockets to the mix.) Then, hopefully, someone would SHOOT me for being a greedy, irresponsible sack of shit who's a burden to society.

There's a REASON for the concept of torts in the legal system... there are cases in which EvilBigCompany does something irresponsible or even malicious and deserves to get sued. There are cases when Danny Drunk runs over a pedestrian and deserves to get sued (though usually his insurance company ends up taking the brunt of that.) If I can't figure out that sticking a screwdriver into a live light socket is a bad idea (especially when instructions tell me "turn off the breaker" or "call a professional electrician") then I deserve a 120-volt shock, not a check for a million dollars.

Someone's going to say "We need tort reform!" Well, if tort reform were enacted by honest, responsible people with only the best interests of society in mind that would be great. Unfortunately, it would be enacted by trial lawyers and politicians, so my cynical semi-Libertarian side says that would probably end up being a bad thing. Can't we just have IQ tests for jurors?

More fun with VOIP

2006-01-28T10:29:00.001-06:00

My attitude about my work has always been "If this were simple, they wouldn't pay me as much to do it." I'm not afraid of technology, but I'm in the technology BUSINESS, and understand that for the business to be successful, technology you're selling to consumers SHOULD be pretty straightforward, and the business needs to be well-run.

For the most part VOIP is pretty transparent to the user on the technology side, but these companies need to work on the business side. In the previous article you see that I was spitting and fuming about a company that didn't bother to hint to me they weren't selling anything until after I went through their entire sign-up process. I gave another company a try, Packet8. I set my mom up with this service 6 months ago, and if it works well for her you KNOW the technology part is transparent, she just wants to pick up the phone and dial.

My adapter is a different piece of hardware from my mom's, and my network setup is slightly different (but about 4x the throughput she has available.) I didn't expect to have any problems, but wasn't too happy about giving up some of the geeky features that appealed to me on other services. Still, the point was the telephone calls, right?

Well, the service that's been so reliable for my mom just isn't serving me well. I have a problem where the inbound audio drops and the line indicator on the VOIP adapter blinks like mad. Typical first-line tech support personnel blamed it all on the way I'd set the thing up, advised a number of changes that didn't really change anything. For example, they weren't satisfied that I had set my router's DHCP server to serve up a static IP to their device's MAC address, they wanted me to login to their device and set a static IP in it. Okay, sure, I'll do it to get past to you to 2nd-tier support... they were surprised I'd put it on the DMZ before they recommended it, and generally skeptical about there being any problem with their service at all. I ended up getting better service by posting a review of my experience on www.dslreports.com where a Packet8 supervisor stepped in. They shipped another adapter, things got much better and... the problem is still there, just not nearly as frequent.

In the interim I found another interesting company, SunRocket. One of their offerings is an annual service contract for $199, including a free 2-handset cordless phone. Decent features, decent monthly price, and it seemed from the reviews like if your service worked at first, it was going to be fine. I went for it (or perhaps "fell for it" would be more accurate. Fill out the order, get the stuff after a few days, everything works, this is great! 2 inbound numbers, each with its own voicemail, distinctive ring, call groups, etc. What's the catch? Fast forward a week, I find an email saying they've turned off my service! Turns out that just because they say the can provide E911 at the address I listed when I signed up, they can't, and it took them 10 days to figure that out. No warning, no negotiating, just turn it off and send the email. Their email didn't even indicate their intention to refund my money! Apparently they don't do that part until the next day... I called and complained and they assured me they were refunding my money. To their credit, they didn't even want me to return the hardware, they just refunded the money and left it at that.

Okay, so I guess I'll try to do the Packet8 thing... by now they're serious about resolving the issue. They had cross-shipped a new adapter and asked me if I'd help with troubleshooting by packet-sniffing the adapter's traffic while making calls and setting it up. Still, meager features and dropped calls don't make me feel great about their service.

Now, to close the circle, my neighbor talks to Voicepulse and they claim to be taking new orders. Here we go again... I placed the order last night, we'll see how THAT goes!

VOIP shenanigans (geeky but no gears)

2006-01-08T13:02:00.001-06:00

Okay, I've decided to give VOIP service a try. My work is long distance from my house (in fact nearly any number I regularly call is long distance from my house) and let's face it, VOIP is appealingly geeky. I looked at the features and services offered by various providers and decided that one a neighbor uses has the best combination of features and value for me. The service is called Voicepulse, and they sure talk a good game.

They offer cool features like hunt groups, simultaneous ringing of multiple phones, etc. You can access your service via software on your notebook when away from home (for a small extra fee, but still it's a nice option.) My neighbor reports that their service has been reliable. It just seemed like a no-brainer.

Well, as it turns out, Voicepulse is the no-brain entity. I decided to give them a try, and went to their website to sign up. They make it clear via a page on their site and general descriptions of their service that they don't offer 911 emergency services, but I can deal with that since I have a cell phone and intend to keep my co-op land line with minimal services as a backup and to support the alarm system. So, I press on... filling out several pages of info on their site, putting in contact information, service address, credit card info, etc. I select an easily-memorized number from a list of available numbers in the rate center I chose (another tantalizing nice feature) and get to the final step in the process, clicking a box on a page informing me (yet again) that Voicepulse doesn't offer 911 services but will tell me about it when they do. One more button to click and... I get a message saying that Voicepulse won't sell me service because they don't offer 911 services at my service address.

What? Didn't they just make me confirm that I know they're not going to provide 911 services? Maybe I put something wrong in the address info that they can't figure out? Maybe I could choose another address that's in town so I know they could find it with mapping software? I try that... same results. It's starting to smell a bit fishy.

It turns out that Voicepulse isn't selling new service at all right now. Of course it's all the big bad FCC's fault (never mind the fact that many other VOIP providers are selling new service at the moment, and many of them are providing usable 911 service.) I'm sure the FCC is making it hard on these providers, since the old-line phone companies are pulling the strings, but a) other companies are currently selling new service (I proved this to myself, I ordered VOIP service from a known-good provider) and b) many of these other companies are providing 911 and E911 services.

I spoke to a Voicepulse representative who did confirm that they're not selling ANY new service at all, and don't know when they will be again. Of course, he said it would be "soon" and the delay was entirely because they were waiting for replies from the FCC. When I commented that it might be a good idea to announce that BEFORE potential customers spend 20 minutes filling out information on their site only to be told that they couldn't buy anything, he said that "had been discussed in meetings and it was decided to put the message where it is because that's where the 911 disclaimer already was in the ordering process." I suggested that he start looking at the help-wanted ads, because I didn't think an inbound phone sales rep was going to have a job very long at a company that isn't selling anything, and it couldn't be satisfying to answer calls from irritated potential customers all day.

So, I'm going to give Packet8 a try and see if they ever introduce their "coming soon" features that will make them ALMOST as good as Voicepulse WOULD be, if anyone could buy their service.

Car and Driver's "Everyday Heroes": How do they pick these things?

2006-01-01T22:19:00.001-06:00

I'm torn... Car and Driver is my favorite automotive publication, and my Subaru Legacy GT is my favorite of all the cars I've ever owned, and was my favorite of all the cars I compared it with. In the February '06 issue, Car and Driver seems to have forgotten that the Legacy GT exists. It's like having your two best friends hate each other and trying to keep them both happy.

So Car and Driver's Tony Swan writes a comparison test article entitled "Everyday Heroes" in which they're supposed to be comparing cars for those automotive enthusiasts who, like me, can't afford to have a practical car AND a sports car, so we look for a good compromise. They seemed to have a pretty good program, requiring sporty sedans with manual transmissions and a base price under $30k. They included in the test the Acura TSX, Honda Accord EX V6, Mazdaspeed 6, Pontiac GTP and VW Jetta GLI. They explicitly stated that they couldn't get a suitably-equipped 325i or A4 under the $30k cap so they excluded those.

The Legacy GT Limited sedan lists with Edmunds at $29,420 including destination charge with a 5spd, and has more horsepower and torque than all of the cars in the comparison save the Mazda. It's AWD and quite sporty, and seems to lack none of the required elements in their comparison. As I wrote to them, perhaps it's like when they picked the defective 3-series as a comparison winner against a field of fully-functional cars last October, they simply reject our reality and substitute their own.

Note that I'm not bitching that the Legacy didn't WIN, I'm complaining that it wasn't included in the test. The win is a subjective thing in the final reckoning, even though they consider objective parameters as well (how else would a BMW with a defective braking system win?) Still, it seems strange to exclude a mainstream competitor that fits in quite well with the other cars tested.

2 Jan 2006
Ah, details... a careful re-reading of the article found a comment indicating that any car that had been in a similar comparison but wasn't the winner wouldn't be included. So, the underpowered TSX won last year's comparison and gets a chance to lose this year. I suppose they have to draw the line somewhere, but I could've told them to skip the G6, it wasn't going to win anything.

Small-car outlook improving in the US

2005-12-30T22:36:00.000-06:00

I guess one good thing about 2005's increase in US gasoline prices is the increased interest in small cars. I've always liked smallish cars (small for the US, at least) but they've been largely ignored and vilified by American buyers. I know we're fat as a nation, but so am I (just look at my picture!) and I like fairly small cars. Most of the time I'm the only one in the car, after all... driving to work, the grocery store, etc. All things are relative, of course. My Subaru Legacy Wagon would be considered a fairly large car in Europe, but in central TX it's dwarfed by the Tahoes and H2s the 5'5" soccer moms are herding around.

Toyota's new Yaris is encouraging, as is the surprising popularity of the Scion xA and xB. The Kia Spectra5 seems to actually sell, I see quite a few of them around, and I'm guessing most of those are bought because people actually want one, if they're going for cheap the Spectra sedan is significantly less expensive. Even American companies are putting a little effort into it! Ford's Fusion isn't going to make me give up my turbo Subaru, but it's much more interesting than the Contour it (belatedly) replaces. Chevy's Cobalt is trying to be a car someone would buy voluntarily, as opposed to the ancient Cavalier people bought because it was cheap. Chrysler's PT Cruiser has strangely been a sales success, and I guess it's going to have to carry water for the Neon until they have a newer small car.

Yeah, I realize the cars I'm pointing out are all over the map... the Yaris is roughly xA sized and the Fusion is much bigger. They collectively represent a realization that Suburbans don't make efficient one-passenger commuter vehicles. The change will be slow, of course, because Americans will keep putting gas on their credit cards for a while and for many people it would cost more to dump the Expedition in the current SUV-unfriendly used market and buy something practical. Also, lots of people are stuck in lease-type arrangements in which they'd have to pay a big penalty to ditch their H2 before the end of the term, so as those deals come to a close I hope my view down the road will be less choked with lane-filling dark-tinted-window SUVs carrying one person and their cell phone.

Manual transmission axe-grinding

2005-11-21T22:57:00.000-06:00

That's what these blog thingos are for, right? Personal axe-grinding?

The demise of the manual transmission in the United States concerns and saddens me. I realize that a higher percentage of cars all around the world are coming with various forms of automatic and automated transmissions, but the US is where the manual transmission is really disappearing. I think this says something negative about Americans' attitude about the car.

Driving a car with a manual transmission is simply more involving than driving the same or similar car with an automatic. I realize that as traffic crawls slowly to a halt in cities all around the US, most people are more comfortable with a slushbox. They don't have to think about driving (?!), they don't have to put down their beverage and/or cell phone, they don't have to do all that awful exercise with their left leg. I am lucky enough to only rarely drive in heavy traffic, because I made the heretical choice to live near my work.

I think that driving a car with a manual transmission is more likely to lead to an understanding of how the car really works than driving an automatic. I'm sure it's possible to know that moving this stick thing and pushing that clutch gadget in this certain sequence causes the car to move forward without thinking about what's really happening, but I like to think that at least a few of the few remaining drivers of manual transmission cars in this country are actually cognizant of what happens inside the black box.

One of the reasons this strikes close to home for me right now is that I couldn't replace my current car with a new one like it... Subaru, which of late markets its products as something appealing to enthusiasts, came out with a very interesting vehicle for the 2005 model year, the Legacy GT sedan and wagon with a retuned version of the North American version of the WRX STi. I liked it so much I bought one. I have a 50-lb Bull Terrier who travels with me sometimes, so I bought the wagon and you've guessed from the preceding paragraphs that I bought the 5-speed manual. It is my favorite of all the daily-drivers I've ever owned, and I have no regrets about buying it.

Subaru, however, has decided that I don't need to remain one of their customers, because for 2006 they no longer offer the Wagon with a 5-speed manual in the US... it's slushbox-only. The sedan still comes with it, the Wagon is offered with the 5MT in Canada, but in the US apparently wagon owners only want automatics. How depressing. I can only hope that Subaru comes to their senses before I'm ready to buy another car, because I'll certainly consider another Subaru but I'm not ready to give up on choosing my own gears.

Autoblog owns up

2005-10-09T18:24:00.000-05:00

After a day of having several incensed readers posting comments related to the deleted ipod nano contest on all of their top articles, Autoblog eventually posted this message to say "oops, we never meant to make anyone suspicious by refusing to announce the winner and deleting all of the entries and posts related to the contest." I'd say that at the very best, they are quite naive about people's response to a perceived scam. At this point I will wait to see them post the URL for the winning blog before I decide what I finally think about it all, but at least they've admitted they made a mistake in deleting all trace of the contest in a peremptory fashion.

DKB

Autoblog contest scam

2005-10-08T13:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I wanted to give Autoblog the benefit of the doubt, since I know that delivering on commitments can sometimes take longer than estimated. However at this point I have to believe that have perpetrated a minor fraud on the automotive internet community. Several weeks ago they announced a contest to give away an ipod nano to the blogger who created their favorite page of links to the blogger's 10 favorite articles on Autoblog.

Now, it was obvious that their intention was to increase links to their site, and it seemed to me to be a quite legitimate means to do so... it got people to dig through their archives to find articles they liked and link those articles with commentary on their respective blogs... nothing wrong with that, right?

During the contest, Autoblog posted several updates, listing the count of unique entries, etc. This indicated to me that it was a serious contest and the contest they had announced to the public was legitimate. On the announced end date, they posted an article stating that they had received 100 unique entrants with the last one being right before the midnight deadline, and would have all the autoblog writers reviewing the list and posting the results by the "middle or end of the week" which I believe all the entrants took to mean around the 30th of September.

Another week has passed since then, and I for one have posted several queries to their "contact Autoblog" page to find out why there has been no announcement of a delay, of a tie, of cancellation of the contest... no notice at all. Several people (including myself) had posted comments to the contest-closed blog entry asking why there was no information forthcoming, and a few were speculating that the contest was created in bad faith from the beginning.

Now Autoblog has removed ALL trace of the contest from their site... from the original announcement to the final contest-closed (with the incriminating queries from various contestants.) This smacks of bad faith. Whether it was the case from the beginning or one of the autobloggers fell in love with the nano I cannot say, but I for one find it inexcusable that no message has been sent to the entrants or posted on Autoblog's website, and I intend to see that they are excoriated in online forums for their dishonesty.

DKB

How many gadgets are too many?

2005-10-05T11:56:00.000-05:00

I watched an hour-long show about the Frankfurt auto show on Speed recently and one of the vehicles that figured prominently in the show was the upcoming S-Class from Mercedes-Benz. Now don't get me wrong, I like German cars, and I'd love to have so much money that I could convince myself I needed an S-Class. At this point, though, I think I'd buy an older one.

The new S-Class has gone all BMW on us... the odd bustle trunk style like the 7-series BMW (though of course Mercedes cites the Maybach as their trunk inspiration) and the dreaded iDrive. I know, I know, it's COMAND and it's totally different and better and has dedicated buttons for things. Still, I don't see the need for a mouse in my car. Call me old school (I edit with vi, so I guess I am) but a mouse between the seats controlling a display that distracts people from the road is not a positive development.

Car manufacturers' lawyers will tell us that these systems are intended to be used when the car is not in motion, but then newspapers are also intended to be read when one's not driving a car, and I've seen numerous people doing just that. I'd like to claim I've seen someone doing the crossword puzzle, but I can't quite swear to that... I'm sure it happens, I just haven't witnessed it yet.

Do I think we should go back to the AM radio? Hell no! I think steering-wheel-mounted controls for the stereo are a great innovation, a gadget that makes it EASIER for people to drive well, since it offers a simplified set of controls for primary functions in easy reach without releasing the wheel. Navigation systems are a great help to the map-challenged, and some of these have usable voice activation and confirmation to help people watch the road instead of the pretty map display.

I guess it's strange for a gadget guy who's a gearhead to complain about too many gadgets in the cars, but that's the source of Mercedes' recent quality issues, and it's just plain excessive. I must be getting old, and waxing nostalgic for a simpler time.

Maybe the 3-series conspiracy theorists are right

2005-09-25T19:53:00.000-05:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll state straight away that I don't like the looks of the new BMW 3 Series. I've liked a few in the past, and I wouldn't mind driving an older un-Bangled model if someone else were paying the maintenance and insurance, but I wouldn't spend my own money on it. Still, I've always thought the people who write to Car and Driver and howl that they must be on BMW's payroll because the 3 Series always wins comparisons were just a mite paranoid.

Now, well, I'm not so sure. The October issue's article Sport Sedans in Heat leaves me mystified as to how they can justify their choice. Their BMW was a functional disaster, the sort of car I'd be sorry I bought for $25k (I'd be FURIOUS to have paid $40k for it!)

Here's an excerpt of what Car and Driver had to say about their "winner":

"Our 330i labored hard to lose. The electrical ticks began shortly after it was delivered. The new 3-series has a push-button start. Ours would work only after several exasperated pushes and fiddling with the key. Why, we wondered in the free moments this created, must you even insert the "key" into the dash when many push-button systems, including the IS350's, allow the radio-transmitting key fob to roam free?

Then the ABS lamp lit. We tried to execute one stop on our high-desert test road and nearly executed a 360 spin at 70 mph instead (thus, our braking number is from a previous test). Shortly thereafter several airbag-malfunction warnings lit up. Maybe it was just a coincidence."

Okay, so they must have been sucked in by their 330i's styling, since they obviously couldn't be impressed by its mechanical perfection... could they? Well, it's not that either apparently, since they had this to say about the interior: "The new 3's interior, although beautifully tailored with wood accents and leather sport seats, didn't satisfy all. The radio display is hard to read and harder to operate, the A/C struggled in the heat, and the dash is a meniscus that curves coldly away from you." So much for styling perfection.

Yeah, I know these guys don't have to pay for their cars. Still, they could at least do us the service of choosing a car that can stop controllably. A Kia Spectra can do that and leave you with enough change left over for a 12-day cruise in a Royal Suite on the Queen Mary 2, why can't the $40k BMW?

DKB

Hybrid Hype: Balance is the key

2005-09-24T18:31:00.000-05:00

Okay, so if you read my review of a few of the many articles on Autoblog.com you can see that I think SUVs are a pox on our roadways. Lest you think me some rabid treehugger high on herbal tea and brainwashed by Greenpeace, I need to point out that there is hypocrisy and waste at the other end of the automotive spectrum as well.

I'll start by conceding that there is definitely a niche for hybrid vehicles. City cars that spend most of their time at low speed and/or in stop-and-go traffic benefit greatly from hybrid technology and for drivers who put LOTS of miles on their cars in those sorts of conditions might even save enough fuel to offset the extra cost of the hybrid car (after it's sold at a loss by the manufacturer and subsidized with tax credits from the government, of course.)

Average American drivers, however, would be better served by buying an efficient "normal" gasoline-powered car, or perhaps a diesel as low-sulfur diesel becomes available in the US. (In a classic case of bullshit bureaucracy, the federal government has mandated more stringent emissions for diesel vehicles a year before they put more stringent requirements on the fuel itself that are necessary to use the current cleaner, more-efficient diesel technologies that are in use in Europe.)

Why do I say that? Well, let's take the Jones family for example. They live in a suburb about 20 miles from the city center and are looking for a vehicle for Mrs. Jones that will be used primarily to commute to work and drive around on family errands. Their previous car was totaled in a wreck, so they can't wait too long too long to replace it, the insurance company will only pay for the rental car for a few more days. This pretty much rules out the Prius with its long wait list, so let's consider a Honda Civic.

The Honda Civic Hybrid lists for $19,900 and the Civic LX Sedan (the comparably equipped car) lists for $15,610, a difference of $4290. If you want to whinge about the $2k tax credit you can get currently for hybrid vehicles, I'll take a reasonable negotiation discount off the price of the LX (I don't think you'll get much off the hybrid) and let's just call the net difference $3,000.

To reasonably compare the two cars, let's estimate that the mostly-suburban driving Mrs. Jones does falls halfway between the city and highway cycles... so we'll take an average of the EPA rating for the two cycles (even though there are lawsuits from people claiming their hybrids don't achieve the EPA ratings, but that's another entry.) That gives us 48.5 mpg for the Hybrid, 35 for the LX. If Mrs. Jones drives 15,000 miles per year and her fuel price averages $3 per gallon, it will take more than 8 years for the Hybrid to pay for that $3k differential in cost to the Jones family. No one is really sure that the batteries will still WORK in 8 years! Please note that I'm not even applying net-present-value calculations, so I'm offering charity to the Hybrid by suggesting that $1 in fuel savings 8 years from now is worth just as much as $1 in savings today.

It's simply not realistic to compare H2 consumption to a Prius and say that electric hybrids are The Way to cure our energy consumption habit. The two cars I describe are very similarly equipped and their performance is very similar as well... the hybrid has slightly more peak torque but the LX has a 115-lb weight advantage which probably more than offsets that, and at prolonged highway speeds the LX won't have its available power sapped by a discharged battery pack.*

Ah, yes, battery packs. Have you heard anything about what's going to HAPPEN to those battery packs when they no longer hold a useful charge? How much will it cost to replace them? Will the parts be available, or are these cars to be disposable? Another interesting difference between these two cars is that the Hybrid carries its battery pack in a location that precludes folding rear seatbacks, so the LX will be more practical for carrying larger objects from Home Depot and Target.

So, you can buy a less-expensive, lighter, probably more-reliable and longer-lived car for less money that returns comparable or better performance while still getting nearly 4x the fuel mileage of your neighbor's yellow H2, or you can spend your hard-earned money to make a pro-environment political statement that will probably end up creating toxic waste disposal problems when it's time to scrap those hybrid batteries. What will you do? What WILL you do?

DKB

* A reader commenting on this post stated that cars don't need all their power on the highway. I must admit that on a FLAT highway, this would not be a problem. Driving around LA or San Francisco, or in the Texas Hill Country where I live would eventually discharge the batteries and leave you with just the (small) gasoline engine, as has happened in road tests run by car magazines. 26 Sept 2005

Panic on the roads

2005-09-22T22:15:00.000-05:00

So, nearly 200 miles from here it's likely that Hurricane Rita is going to wreak havoc on the coast around Galveston and drive northward, ransacking the border lands between Texas and Louisiana. Gas stations in the Houston megalopolis have sold all their fuel, and that makes some sense since everyone and their dogs are trying to get to ground that's likely to stay drier.

What DOESN'T make sense to me is that many (perhaps most?) stations around San Antonio are running out of fuel too. What the hell? Some people are coming through here on their way to points west (it's ALWAYS dry in West Texas, and all the hotels around here seem to be full already.) Many of them need gas because the usual 3.5 hour drive from Houston is taking people 9... are San Antonians hoarding for themselves? We won't need to go anywhere, most likely, the NWS says we're going to have some rain and that's about it. I think people like to panic. They enjoy it. They like standing in line for an hour at Wal*Mart to buy all the bottled water and flashlight batteries. They're jealous of people from the coast who are really at risk and fleeing for their lives from a hell of a storm.

It happens that my tank is full... filled up on the way home from work yesterday because it was time. My neighbor told me the 2 closest stations to my neighborhood are both out of fuel, so I figure when they have fuel to sell again it's going to be at some stupid price. FUN! Let's give Cheney's homeys some more money, they need a new Gulfstream G-550.

DKB

Check out Autoblog sometime

2005-09-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

Now 8 October 2005, 19:06

Previously in this slot there was a posting about articles I have enjoyed on Autoblog's site.

Since the time I created this posting, Autoblog has acted in bad faith with respect to the contest they were having (see my posting on that topic above.) Since their likely reason for having the contest in the first place was to get more links to their site out there, I have removed that posting and replaced it with this one to remove any directly links to Autoblog from my site.

I regret having to do this, but my personal integrity demands that I do something about it. I have in the past enjoyed their site but I will now restrict my visits to it because of their actions.

DKB

Now 9 October 2005 18:20

In a postscript to this, autoblog FINALLY posted this message on the ipod nano contest. The fact that they waited until I and others started posting "What's up with the scam?" comments on all of their top articles trying to get an answer is a bit disappointing... even leaving a "lawyers are working on it" sort of message would have avoided some suspicion.

Let's Get It Started

2005-09-21T22:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm finally doing this blog thing... I guess it's past time to do it, I'm a professional geek after all. Now I have an incentive, and besides since I like to bitch about all sorts of things, this will make it easier for my friends to ignore my kvetching. I'll probably write lots about cars and gadgets (I'm a Gearhead Geek, right?) and see if anyone cares.

DKB