Resurrecting the electric car

In another wave of General Motor's blitzkrieg on the environmental side of the automotive business, a plug-in hybrid is apparently set for debut at the NAIAS. There's no word yet on which brand it will wear, nor what fuel type it will use. I'm with Autoblog on this one though: make it small and fuel efficient to the point of absurdity. Demonstrate it is cost effective for the consumer (lower cost per mile than comparable non-plug-in cars), give it acceptable performance (8 or 9 sec to 60 mph should do the trick) and make the vehicle fully operational even without access to an outlet (easier said than done). With those attributes, they won't be able to make them fast enough, and the rumored sequel "I Know who Killed the Electric Car" won't ever see the light of day.

Quote for the day

"Americans will always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the alternatives."

-Winston Churchill

(via Sullivan)

Thinking about it, that's not so terrible an insult.

Active euthanasia for disabled newborn children

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in "Great" Britain has advised that active euthanasia for severely disabled newborns be considered, due to the pain and suffering they and their family may have to endure.

I'm in agreement with Simone Aspis, of the British Council of Disabled People: "completely wrong."

One thing I must applaud, however, is the clarity in the whole debate. As in this quote, from John Harris, a a professor of bioethics at Manchester University and member of Britain's Human Genetics Commission:

We can terminate for serious fetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it OK to kill the fetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?

He's in favor of "active euthanasia" by the way. This could be the strongest support I've yet seen for my pro-life views. Even this guy, way on the other side of the debate, knows that partial birth abortion and killing newborns are essentially equivalent.

Sweet!

It's about time the scientists figured out the teleporting thing. I've got my flip open communicator already, now it's time to move on with our Star-Trek lives. I'll need teleportation, a body hugging spandex suit, a Klingon friend and a spaceship with built in Scottish engineer. This whole enterprise (ha ha!) is moving along nicely.

Not to be outdone...

...Honda has also released an updated version of their Fuel Cell Vehicle, the FCX. It's predecessor was one of my favorites from the NAIAS, and the progeny carries the family name well. Only good can come from this competition to have the best fuel cell car.

GM and the lightest element

General Motors is forging ahead with plans for hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles by introducing the experimental Sequel concept, which is a completely functional cross-over type SUV. It looks good and is by far the most advanced and usable fuel cell vehicle I've seen. I'm impressed with both the capability and overall execution of the car; it actually looks (both in pictures and specs) likes something I could and would drive. The major hurdle still in front of this vehicle (and perhaps the only real problem perplexing the engineers for the last few years) is cost. I'm sure the current Sequel would have to sell for the price of a small house in order to turn any profit, so finding cost effective ways to manufacture and sell it at a competitive price will determine its fate. You may wonder about the infrastructure for dispensing hydrogen, and that's a serious problem. The Autoextremist has reported that the "oil companies" estimate the price of equipping every gas station in America with hydrogen capability to be $12 billion. They put this in perspective as only half the price of the Alaska pipeline. With that thought, I'm in agreement with The Autoextremist on this one: "eminently doable."

In another smart move, GM is also pledging to build and lease 100 fuel cell vehicles, based on the Chevy Equinox, to customers in California, New York and Washington, D.C. This is more impressive than their Sequel, being a real world application of their technology rather than a one-off piece of technological art. The only issue I see that they overlooked: I don't live in any of those markets.

Sequel coverage:
Autoblog 1, Autoblog 2, Autoblog 3
Autoextremist

Fuel cell Equinox fleet coverage:
Autoblog
Autoextremist

"We torture."

I'll repeat that, as Mr. Sullivan requests, because it is painfully true. Check out this video posted on The Daily Dish of Matt Lauer asking the President about our "alternative methods of extracting information." It seems to me our President thinks "waterboarding", and other like techniques, are not torture, or at least are "within the law," and should be used on detainees. If this weren't the case I'm confident the President would say so; all Matt gets are clumsy evasions and ridiculous sound bites.

Also, I'll second that call for three cheers for Mr. Lauer. I'm not much of a TV news guy and know little about him, but for today he's my favorite reporter. Keep it up Matt and you might win a convert back to the TV fold.

The tragedy cannot be removed...

...from Steve Irwin's death, but we can remember and appreciate all that he did. A moving veneration: The Thundering Positive Energy of Steve Irwin

The view from CNN

Anyone who thinks about the Iraq war at all should read this piece in the Washington Post. I'm not entirely sold on the current direction of the whole mess, i.e. remaining engaged at the current troop levels, but if the sentiments of the Iraqi leaders in the article are correct, perhaps that is what must be done. As much as I hate the dimbulb "cut and run" label that has been applied to anyone who wants to keep our young men and women alive by getting out, the idea might be correct and perhaps, as the piece points out, the only solution is time. But more time means more dead, and that's not something to be papered over with bravado and hubris. I'm really tired of this mess, and the lame, childish Republican sound bites about the war are starting to get under my skin (I know, just now starting?). And the Democrats, oh the Democrats; the sound bites don't get any better over there. I think I'd gladly vote for anyone who stopped talking to us like we're all twelve years old.

Very very cool

Take at look at this article; apparently Ferrari F1 team members are using their crazy fast pitstop skills to help sick children. Thus from now on I must consider it my duty to buy Ferrari and support this work. Helping these kids is worth any price.

Quote of the day

"You cannot deny this gorgeousness, you can only hope to handle it."

-Get Fuzzy

Tesla!

Thanks to Autoblog's exhaustive coverage (here, here and here), I now have a new car to drool over. The Tesla Roadster is a fully electric supercar (as fast as a Porsche 911 Carrera S to 60 mph), in the spirit of a Lotus Elise, that will sell for approximately $80,000. It goes 250 miles on each charge, recharges fully in less than four hours and looks fantastic. I may not have the 80 grand to lay down on a hedonistic machine like this, but if I did and was so inclined, I can't think of a good reason to buy anything else. For starters, it's right in the running with every other car for this price, and it does all its work silently. To me, that's as cool as the symphony from a Ferrari's pipes. Moreover, there's no reason any sports car of this caliber should travel more than 250 miles from home without being trailered. I'm sorry, but highway miles on a Lamborghini just don't make sense. But most of all, $80,000 for a sports car of the traditional persuasion is, well, boring; been there, done that (metaphorically, of course). It's high time to try something new.

Top 6 percent baby!

Check this out, apparently I'm in the minority of bloggers; I don't primarily preen rhetorically for my electric audience. You could say I'm a bit political (though my contributions are so often lame, I excuse myself from this class). That puts me firmly in the technology and spirituality sections, making up 6 percent of all bloggers. The top 6 percent, of course.

Materazzi

By now everyone knows and has spouted off on how the World Cup ended: Zidane is insane, Italy won but must now face charges of scandal and what exactly did Materazzi say? But what no one has mentioned, and which I guess doesn't make much of a news story, is that Materazzi was the key Italian player in every one of the three major events in the final: he "fouled" a French player to set up Zidane's penalty, he leaped over Vieira to head one into the net and, of course, he managed to get under Zinedine's skin, possibly winning the game for Italy by sidelining the legend just before penalty kicks. To my mind it's crazy that one guy had so much impact on the game in such disparate and unlikely ways.

(Update: Someone else did notice.)

jEdit, force quit and the world's most advanced operating system

Recently I've been looking for a good text editor on OS X (as XCode just didn't seem to cut it), specifically to write numerical simulations in Fortran. Since this isn't one of the mainstream languages for computer programmers, and I like a usable GUI, it was a bit difficult to find a really suitable one. It had to have customizable syntax highlighting, but beyond that I didn't need much. Browsing the ol 'net I found jEdit, a sleek Java based text editor that claimed to work with Fortran and also be customizable. From the beginning it worked great on my Mac (OS 10.3.9), except for one simple but really annoying bug, which I will get to in a minute. jEdit works great with Fortran, is simple but meets my needs, looks and works the same across platforms (since it is Java based) and has numerous plugins. My favorite is jDiff, which graphically compares two files and shows the differences.

The bug, however, still remained. What would happen is this: after using jEdit for awhile, with the Mac OS plugin installed and set to put the jEdit menu bar in the OS X menu bar (as is usual with Mac applications), the menus would cease working, essentially disabling the program (I hear jEdit might work from the command line in this state, but that's still not acceptable behavior). I would have to force quit and relaunch the program, with the potential for losing some work. But, through the magic of the internet I found a solution. It turns out the problem is not jEdit but OS X. The world's most advanced operating system (at least version 10.3.9 with Java 1.4.2) has a bug in Java. Turning off the option to put jEdit menus in the Apple menu bar seems to fix everything, and I'm back in love with jEdit. A simple fix, but to me, a mere engineer with little real programming knowledge, it was a bear to find.

Quote of the day 2

Bob Lutz (once more cribbed from AUTOEXTREMIST) in response to a recent Thomas L. Friedman New York Times column (which politely starts: "Is there a company more dangerous to America's future than General Motors?"):

"In an email to The Detroit News, Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman, said that Tom Friedman, 'is so 'over the top' that it borders on psychosis.' Lutz said his hope 'is that the majority of Americans, not being extreme liberals, and harboring a deep-seated distrust toward the media, will see his piece for what it is: the product of an unusual, but not altogether well, mind.'"

Quote of the day

"...and others of his ilk who share Friedman's laughable, Detroit=Bad, Toyota=Good mantra, and who would have us all driving flatulence-powered clown cars made out of balsa wood, hugs and a smile, if they had their way - with Toyota emblems on them, of course."

The AUTOEXTREMIST himself, Peter M. DeLorenzo. Who else?

"...an entire herd of reindeer was rendered sterile."

You learn basically nothing about the Bugatti, but this is the best review I've read yet.

Taxing "excess profits": bad

Check out this argument for not applying an "excess profits" tax to oil companies. I'm no economist, but the points made seem reasonable and dovetail with my initial reaction. Moreover, despite being economically unsophisticated, it seems I had some idea of "user cost" rattling around my head. Truly I have a dizzying intellect.

"...there is not a sniff that the goalkeeper can do..."

Who says "useless theoreticians" never produce practical work?