chuck kottke

I'm doing well, I should be sleeping by now!:laugh3: How are you doing? Seems like your home is where the music is I gather?:rolleyes:;) static is electrifying though. :sunny:

Hey, you're getting fantastic mileage given your vehicle's peak performance - the rest is a matter of getting the vehicle manufacturer's to improve their technologies for improved efficiency, something that needs to happen and can happen as the room for improvement in their field is so great. And the bike is cool!:cool: How is it for stability though? Is that Pink or is that Magenta? :laugh3: Looks like some variant of both.. But Blue is pretty cool though, gotta love the deep colors.. My Green Machine is almost complete - now I just need a horse or a team of oxen, and I'm set. (or a camel maybe, or donkey?!..)

:rolleyes::laugh3: What have you got against waxed mustaches? Poor Rollie Fingers would be hurt by that comment were he on this board! :P Rollie-Fingers.jpg (JPEG Image, 258x366 pixels)

Paradise is Wonderful :) & You Too.

File:Obeissante.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Anyhow, a bus from 1875. If not for all corporate regulation favoring railroads, buses would have taken off long before our modern age! But what does that have to do with Range Rovers and Estate Wagons and things!!:laugh3: Why not get a good team of horses, and hitch a real estate wagon up for true green transportation - just add hay, oats, and water, and your power plant is fueled up! wagon with team - Google Images

:laugh3: Oh but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now... I was just thinking that somethings are so "out there" that even if I did say what I was thinking, most everyone would so not go there:laugh3:

Amazing, to not know how the Carthaginians affected Spain and the Roman excuse to invade based on that - seems like history anyone is taught! Too much regionalism yes, I see the problem.. I actually don't know that much about Spain's relatively recent Democracy after Franco, how it functions or how it is structured. All Democracies are experiments, no two alike, so just find the formula that works best for you - ours hasn't been running so well lately either! Oh, so your Democracy was initially co-opted by the high and mighty from the get-go, hm, that's unfortunate - I wish you well in retrieving your democracy! Here, it was somewhat the case as well, but the ideals are good, if ever we get back to those ideals. . I can't understand austerity in times of economic slowness, it's not logical when there's capacity for growth. Sounds like the same argument put forth here by the high and mighty in congress - the workers need to pay more taxes, the wealthy can all but skip out of town. The age of inequity is causing massive dysfunction in the world as I see it. So the only motivation to correct imbalances is the fear of riots, how wrong-headed that is! Nothing matters it seems unless there's revolution in the streets.. The working classes who can pay but haven't begun to revolt are ignored unless they revolt then? I can't understand the wealthy - they dry the forest floor and wonder why the fire spreads so quickly; instead of sharing the water, it all gets sucked up to the canopy and they neglect to return a fair share to the roots. Only when they see a neighbor's forest ablaze do they realize the conditions they have set up in their own biome. The US hasn't faced this yet, but conditions aren't so far off from Spain's or England's.. Official unemployment is at 9.1%, what is Spain's rate like?

It really was a most excellent gig, gotta love it! :dance::heart:

:shy: I was working on a bass-heavy version of clocks, hm.. nah, must be just coincidence! Will wait to hear the new sound.

I suspect we are all pawns in a game being played by the global plutocrats, and their risky, corrupt methods have us all suffering from bad economic designs. When governments no longer serve the long-term interests of their citizens, and larger concerns are undermined by regionalism and nationalism, things are in need of revamping. I think what is needed is actually social businesses, worker-owned and managed by boards selected by the worker-owners. Governments which serve the interests of the people as a whole require an informed educated electorate which has access to information from news organizations that are motivated to produce excellent in-depth unbiased reports with insightful analysis; perhaps this revolutionary period will bear such fruits. I hope a new type of democracy arises - something to provide a bell weather example to the greater world.

That's an excellent step to take Nancy, having the government's postal service take the first step to pioneer the common usage of electric vehicles, especially on an island with short routes. With government investment comes the first step and support for the switch-over (pun intended) to electrics. ;) The US ironically had mostly green-tech delivery systems in 1900, with postal delivery being either by horse-drawn carriage, or by electric delivery vehicles! electric-vehicles.pdf (application/pdf Object) Here, the US postal service has about 43,000 electric vehicles in service, still a small % of the total, but a good start - and that could be a lot more! UPS to deploy 100 electric trucks in California | Post & Parcel Or with more Green alternatives, less trees cut and more communications electronically: » Step Forward | U.S. Postal Service Delivers It Green Ecology Today: Ecology News, Information & Commentary Blog

Tilting at Windmills, occasionally with success. I have been patient with the Justices, they've had a good week to respond, but since their replies are so slow in coming, I think it's only fitting that I post one such letter, one to Justice Ginsburg here for all to read: Dear Justice Ginsburg, I am seeking your opinion concerning writing a draft amendment to the United States Constitution. I believe all citizens have a right to fair elections and to fair campaign processes, and I am deeply concerned that this right is being ignored. In an attempt to assert and restore the right to fair elections for our nation's sake, I am hoping to word this proposed amendment in a manner which is fair, sound, effective, and lasting in its protections of that right. Please offer me your opinion and suggestions regarding this draft amendment defining our right to fair elections. Below are two wordings I have thus far come up with: Draft Amendment, first wording: The right of the citizens to fair elections, the right through which all other rights are preserved, shall be protected and enhanced, and equal access to and equal time on the common broadcast mediums of the day guaranteed for all qualifying candidates. Congress shall determine allowable funding levels and limits for political campaigns, and shall have the power to enforce this amendment through appropriate legislation. Draft Amendment, second wording: The right to fair elections, the right through which all other rights are protected, shall be guaranteed, including equal access to, equal funding for, and equal time on the broadcast commons for all qualifying candidates running for a particular public office. Congress shall determine campaign funding amounts allowed, and shall have the power to regulate campaigns and enforce this amendment through appropriate legislation. If you notice any flaws or caveats, or see any omissions, please suggest the improvements you would make to this draft. With Great Sincerity, Chuck Kottke

Eh, no biggie. ;) I hope you find a comfy vehicle. :) China and India's phenomenal growth and consumerism, plus the accompanying industrial expansion and emissions is definitely a big issue as well when it comes to overall carbon emissions, and I agree - who are we to tell anyone else not to seek vast economic improvements. But instead of telling these rapidly blooming nations to slow down their emissions because of climate changing gasses, we could institute national policies to help aid their industries in achieving maximum efficiency using any technologies we've developed that they don't already have. There has to be a way forward of great efficiency, where economic expansion and gross domestic happiness improves, and the quality of the environment is maintained & improved as well. Estate wagon - and instant confusion over mileage comparisons for me.:dizzy: Using the defuzzler calculator, 50+ Imperial MPG works out to roughly 42 MPG U.S., or 5.6 L/100Km in the Canadian & EU & Latin American Universe. So that's pretty good, Diesels are better to begin with for mileage, but as David points out, there's a kind of mileage inflation auto companies often use, so the mileage will undoubtedly be less than that, which is something to consider. If we demanded it of the auto makers, they could be making cars that get in the range of 90 -120 MPG with existing technology, which is probably what we need to be demanding of them, as this is a realistically achievable mark with today's technologies, but we will have to prod them. This is what I'm reading here in National Geo. Mag., Dec. 2009 issue, p. 29: "By 2008, the level of CO2 in the tub was 385 ppm and rising by 2 or 3 ppm each year. To stop it at 450 ppm, Stearman says, a level many scientists consider dangerously high:stunned:, the world would have to cut emissions by around 80 percent by 2050. " "Plants, oceans, and rocks all drain carbon from the atmosphere, but as climatologist David Archer explains in his book The Long Thaw, those drains are slow. It's going to take them hundreds of years to remove most of the CO2 that humans are pouring into the tub and hundreds of thousands to remove it all. Stopping the rise of CO2 will thus require huge cuts in emissions from cars, power plants, and factories, until inflow no longer exceeds outflow." So cutting emissions by 80% means a lot of reductions in all the major contributing sources, and there's no way around it - automobiles are a big part of the total - on par with electricity generated from burning coal: Carbon Dioxide - Human-Related Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide | Climate Change - Greenhouse Gas Emissions | U.S. EPA So we will have to triple auto mileage in the next few decades, and replace half the global transportation fleet with green-energy rechargeable electrics, if we're going to cut auto emissions by 80% by 2050, while adding a billion or more new autos to the roads. And I think the citizens of India and China will want these changes sooner than anyone else, since the cities in both those nations are very populous and the air quality is adversely affecting citizen's lives; they'll be at the forefront of these improvements. So we can do it, and the results can only make things better for us all!

Paul McCartney and Wings:wings: With a Little Luck

I gather yo live in the desert then? Here, pretty pleasant in the 70's, but the pollen today: itchy sneezy ack!! :nod:

Aww man, you need some food! I just cooked a chicken with butternut squash and served it with whole wheat bread to soak up the gravy - now I feel completely guilty! :laugh3: If you bought one of those matter-antimatter re-converters, I would gladly tele-port some food to you! What about free crackers at the local restaurant?

And three guys on a motor cycle with side car with a Lithuanian Flag!:laugh3: Or a Slovenian flag, or an Italian flag, or a Russian Flag or a Georgian Flag or a Latvian Flag. Sounds exciting though - I had no clue basketball was so big in Europe!

The Band! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQwmR5KLUI8]Official song of EuroBasket 2011 - Marijonas, Mantas, Mia - "Celebrate Basketball" - YouTube:vuvuzela:[/ame]

I'll be planning a revolution, a labor uprising.

So what's your solution to the ecological and ethical problems we're faced with? I agree, the eco-friendly choice needs to be the economically attractive one as well - how do we get that to happen? Maybe engines & liquid fuels are one of the the answers - let's say one could easily double or triple the economy of this car - how do we best get that to happen?

Sorry, I did go at that all wrong, but it's just when a hurricane powered by a warming tropics rips up the coast here and washes away homes and cars and people get clobbered and killed with blowing pieces of roofs & drowned that I kinda get upset at the jump towards fancy cars and jump away from really truly advanced efficient cars, when the connection is clear. Callous regards we all have towards the atmosphere, the biosphere, and our fellow human beings on the planet - the more remote the connection, the less we care - we need to change that, don't you agree? Severe droughts that kills hundreds in the Horn of Africa and other planetary effects are happening. So 29 is better than 20, but we really ought to be aiming for 60 or 100 MPG if we are aiming for a livable planet, given everyone's desires to own automobiles. It's really more an issue of why the obsession with cars as symbols, shiny carriages with horsepower and peeling rubber to show off in the endless horse races we run amongst ourselves to put our tail feathers in the air, all prodded by the marketing departments through their persistent mind games which we fall for that worries me - blinded by immediate personal gratification and savvy marketing, where the environment always takes a distance second in consideration - and half measures just won't do, we're moving at a snails pace while a billion more people want cars. Sure, a 2.0 Liter engine is much more efficient than a 4.0 Liter, but I am frustrated by the obsession we seem to have with defining ourselves by what we own, not by who we are or how we are and how we treat one-another. Our value system is upside-down. Wouldn't it be better to show off how earth and human friendly your car is, or your options to take the train are, than to show off how big an engine or how fast your car peels away off the line when the light turns green?? That, and we settle for much less than what is possible from our auto makers - the wastefulness of autos today is obscene, but then it all seems to be driven by money & image rather than by ethics. The fact that a great deal of the CO2 emissions are from factories doesn't escape me, but the fastest gains we can make in reducing CO2 emissions may be through vastly improved auto efficiency standards and building efficiency standards - manufacturing efficiency is another aspect certainly as well, making them carbon neutral is a laudable goal yes, important as all slices of the energy pie are. But this is a green cars thread, and not a green factory thread! (maybe one of those is needed too...) Yes, well I'm glad you have lived in California and have family there (I have family there as well), I would imagine that increases your awareness of these issues, especially with the air quality issues in some of the cities, and the sheer volume of car and truck traffic. And I agree, natural disasters will happen, sadly so, no matter what we do. But it's like gambling, and we've been stacking the odds against ourselves through our collective actions. We need to protect our commons - the impacts are real, the odds of severe hurricanes and more frequent hurricanes is but one consequences of our inability to prioritize our overall safety over our individual desires. I guess what I'm saying is that it's nice to have some fun with fun stuff, but the well being of all comes above our personal desires, and we've got a long long ways to go in many aspects, but especially in auto efficiency and earth-friendliness of the auto. What car companies want is to do as little as possible, to drag their feet, and hype the racing aspects of the car - they sell to our egos, our impulses, our sexual desires to display feathers, not to our altruistic deep social and ethical needs to rise above and act as socially conscious responsible human beings. It isn't radical to break from consumerism, it's a necessary survival mechanism. We only have one home planet, and most of us are on it.

2.) Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our vote and participation count. Hence, the right to fair elections. The times we are living in call for real reform measures, guaranteeing in plain language our right to a fair elections process and equality of candidate dialog with the electorate, as well as fair and open debates between candidates in the public square of the day, uninfluenced by a set of wealthy elites. No more crumbs to the birds while the lords of commerce grow fat off the backs of the workers. What we need is something clear, something unambiguously written, something which cannot be ignored and to which any politician who tries to circumvent this rule immediately becomes the focus of attention and scrutiny by the voting public.

.. it's a funny world we live in, we're all a bundle of contradictions, but I think we can get our average up if we try.

Which planet do you live on again? :thinking2: Good, do that, and then move to New Orleans or Down East, and just wait for the next category 4 or 5 Hurricane, cause' if it's a boat you be drivin', it's a boat you'll be needin' honey! ;)

I thought Willy's rendition was heart-felt, and the sentiments about returning to sustainable farming, healthier for all aspects of life just makes good, good sense; it's worth every bit of our support. Food isn't commodities, it's life itself, it is all connected to nature, and the more we work in sync with nature, the healthier we get, the healthier nature gets. I'll support them, I support organic, sustainable, and family farms. Slow food is real food. Think Globally, act Locally.