poor grades?

[jeh25]

Greg wrote:

John, I love your sig quote.  Every time I see the "drugs cause terrorism" scare ad I think an "S.U.V.s cause terrorism" ad would be far more accurate.

You mean like this? http://www.detroitproject.com/ads/default.htm  

The short version is that Arianna Huffington made a suggestion that someone make an ad in her salon.com column (http://salon.com/news/col/huff/2002/10/22/oil/index.html ) maybe 3 or so months ago. People liked the idea so much they just started sending her checks. Soon the fund to make the ads was up to $200,000 and thus the ads came into being. The interesting part is that most (every?) major network affiliate is refusing to run them.

The 2nd part of the sig with the Lovins quote is my own doing.  We need to recognize that our choices as consumers have real implications in terms of global security. The tree huggers can keep eating their granola for all I care; I believe fuel mileage is a national security issue first and an environmental one second.

Thing is, I don't even hate SUVs per se. I just hate the fact that Detroit doesn't even *try* to make them fuel efficient. How ironic is it that to really be a patriot and consume less gas, you need to buy a Japanese Hybrid or a German Turbodiesel? (Putting a drag inducing made in china plastic USA flag on your Excursion doesn't make you a fucking patriot.)

Personally, I just bought a Jetta TDI because it gets 49 mpg on the highway (42 city).  With a very close Cornell ROTC friend currently stationed in Kuwait and a sister at RAF Lakenheath the UK, it seemed the very least I could do. I haven't yet, but this summer I also plan on running my stock unmodified car on a domestically produced, renewable fuel. ( http://www.biodieselnow.com )  In fact, if I have time on Saturday before the Harvard game, I'm planning on making a run to Burke Energy in Chelesa to get my 1st tank of B20 right at the pump. ( http://www.burkeoil.com/enviro.htm )

So ask yourself what *you* can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?


(Just for the record, I'd support GWB drilling in ANWR *if* he also raised the fleet average fuel economy standards 10 mpg in the next 3 years. Hell, even if he just closed the damn SUV mileage loophole, I might consider it.  http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030120&s=easterbrook012003 )

Edit: all links should work now. Age's automagic link-o-maker doesn't like the () I love to put around URLs.

[Tub(a)]

Here is the fixed link to the article John posted. If you have a free 15 minutes, you should spend it reading this article.

No, I take that back. You need to make 15 minutes available to read this article.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030120&s=easterbrook012003

[Greg Berge]

Yeah, their drivers are definitely the most idiotic, self-centered, heinous bastards out there.  They should make it a condition for Mah and Pah Stockbroker that upon purchasing one they must immediately move to a gated community -- where we have the keys.

Of all the many good things the PNW has done for the country, this is probably second only to grunge in being A Horrible Mistake That Is All Our Fault.  It makes sense to have a pickup if you live on the slopes of Mt. Hood or Rainier, which you actually can and still have a nice upper-middle-class-veal-fattening-pen job out here, and all the trophy wives of the local Intelies and Nikites started pestering hubby for a "nice" (read: ludicrously expensive) one about 15 years ago when the McMansions started going up.  Fast forward five years and they're driving them in downtown Portland.  'Nother five years and Detroit's billion dollar force feed, and it's downtown Boston.  Yeah... that makes sense.

[jeh25]

Hey Greg-

Any of these pumps work for you? http://www.fuelwerks.com/stations.htm

Seattle:
Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks:  912 NW 50th St. (206) 783-5728

Bellevue:
Chevron:  1607  145th PL SE  (425) 641-1531   5AM-11PM

Olympia:
West bay Marine Services:  210 West bay Dr. (360) 943-2080 or  (800) 884-2080    Mon-Sat  9AM-5PM

Port Townsend:
Middlepoint Biodiesel:  (360) 385-1396

For everyone else, you can find a Biodiesel pump near you at:
http://www.afdc.doe.gov/refueling_mapsite.shtml
or
http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfuelingsites/default.shtm

Barring that - check out http://forums.biodieselnow.com/default.asp?CAT_ID=1 to see if there are any bulk buying co-ops near you. I live 100 miles from the nearest commercial pump but have a co-op 7 miles away.

[David Harding]

The great physicist P.A.M. Dirac wrote a classic text on quantum mechanics.  I'm told that his class lectures consisted of his reading from that book.  Students would complain now and then, but his response was that he had put years of effort into refining the exposition of the subject in the book.  To give them anything else would be to give them a second rate product.

[Greg Berge]

Was Paul Dirac the "look, ma, no particles" guy who won the Nobel for his 30 page masters' thesis from age 22, thus pissing off every physics boy wonder for the rest of eternity?  ::help::

My favorite lecture stories are about Wittgenstein, who would continue the same line of extemporaneous thought, day after day, picking up at the same word, even though it was all off the cuff.  He also did some time as a primary school teacher in rural Austria.  His students didn't like him very much. ;-)