In honor of this chart, I thought it might be fun to see how many things on the web inspire different levels of sickening fawning. I propose the “W” scale as a reasonable measure of relative cuteness.
Click the chart for a slightly larger version.
Recently, the US passed a new fuel economy standard of 35 MPG. In order to meet the standard, the average of all vehicles produced by a manufacturer for the US market must be at least 35 MPG by 2020. Many have criticized this number as being too small. Others lament the increased cost we’ll see when auto manufacturers must turn to more expensive technologies in order to meet the standard. According to a consumer reports blog posting, this amounts to something like a 70% increase over current real-world fuel economy averages, though it’s more likely that we’ll see closer to a 40% real-world increase because of the silly way that fuel economy is measured when it comes to regulatory compliance issues. This means that the real-world average is going to be about 28.6 mpg, up from the current 22.8 for cars.
Many people are convinced that automobile manufacturers are in league with oil companies to keep fuel economy low. Some point to a perceived golden era of 20-year-old cars that were highly fuel efficient. Hearkening back to the glory days of the automotive industry, the first ever Honda Civic was unleashed in 1973 to an amazed American public. The 70cc inline four power plant put out 50 horsepower, propelling the 1500 pound Civic from 0 to 60 in a stunning 19.3 seconds. And it could do all this at 40 mpg on the highway. The 1986 Honda Civic CRX HF did even better, with an EPA rating of 57 MPG ((“57 mpg? That’s so 20 years ago,” Peter Valdes-Dapena, December 20 2007, Accessed Jan 3, 2008)).
Of course, in those days, cars were allowed to pollute a lot more, and they were a lot heavier. There’s the slight issue that those early Civics were death traps, and would never pass muster these days for safety-minded consumers.
“Without the benefit of modern crash structure and extensive use of high strength steel, cars from two decades ago couldn’t match the crash test performance of today’s Hondas,” said Honda spokesman Chris Naughton ((“57 mpg? That’s so 20 years ago,” Peter Valdes-Dapena, December 20 2007, Accessed Jan 3, 2008)).
In other words, the modern engines are much more efficient than the older engines. It’s the cars that have changed, along with catalytic converters which rob the engine of power and efficiency. There’s little chance we’ll go back to the tissue paper construction of those terrifying early Civics.
So if you’re still wondering if the car manufacturers are intent on keeping the little guy down, consider this: the automobile industry is a very competitive industry, with many players domestic and international. Offering an equivalent car with higher fuel efficiency as a competitor will result in higher sales. A conspiracy of this size, with such a huge advantage for defecting, is extremely unlikely. It’s much more likely to postulate a simpler explanation: Genuine engineering trade-offs affect greatly the fuel efficiency that’s possible, and modern emission, safety, manufacturing, environmental, and other standards negatively impact the fuel economy.
How are modern automobile manufacturers going to meet the new government demands for higher efficiency? There are several likely technologies that will be pursued, and we’ll probably see a combination of many of them.
First, the most obvious: gasoline/electric hybrid engines. We already see a lot of these today, such as the Toyota Prius, which recently celebrated the 10th year since its introduction. Such cars are much more expensive then equivalent gasoline-only engines, and the extra cost is generally not enough to offset the smaller amount of money spent on gas, even at today’s high gas prices ((The costly secrets of hybrid cars, Liz Pulliam Weston, Accessed Jan 3, 2008)). Still, especially with those average standards looming and with consumers clamoring for these chic accessories, we’ll likely see a lot of hybrids sold before 2020, including likely a new breed of plug-in hybrids which are further along the road to pure-electric.
Second, we’ll likely see the introduction in the US of clean turbodiesel engines, which are both very powerful and very efficient. Diesel has a bad reputation in the US based on the dirty, smelly diesels of the past but modern diesel engines running on ultra-low sulfur fuel are at least as clean as equivalent engines running on gasoline. This is likely to be the choice of a number of higher-end cars especially, as hybrid cars tend to be low on power to achieve high efficiency. Europe already runs about half its new cars on diesel ((“The axis of diesel“, Lawrence Ulrich, Oct 19 2006, Accessed Jan 3, 2008)) to take advantage of about 25 to 40% improved fuel efficiency ((“The axis of diesel“, Lawrence Ulrich, Oct 19 2006, Accessed Jan 3, 2008)). And even better, the extra cost of diesel engines is about a quarter of the premium for a hybrid engine ((“The axis of diesel“, Lawrence Ulrich, Oct 19 2006, Accessed Jan 3, 2008)).
Finally, for all cars, we’ll see more widespread use of turbochargers on gasoline engines, as well as gasoline-direct injection technology. This is a likely way forward for small, relatively underpowered cars at the lower end of the market to be able to meet the standards.
What are we not likely to see by 2020? Hydrogen-powered cars for one. This might make sense in the very long run, especially if we move to nuclear electricity generation in a big way, but this technology just isn’t ready for prime time and auto manufacturers aren’t going to take the risk moving in this direction without the needed fueling infrastructure in place. No, expect good old gasoline and diesel to stay around for a good while yet.
And stop it with the conspiracy theories please?
I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
–Ian Rodgers, Vice President and General Manager, Yahoo Music
The music business has had its hand forced by Apple. Unfortunately, it’s still likely to be a long time before this spreads to the other content industries who are unlikely to make the same mistake in handing the keys to their business to a third party.
My grandmother was driving this motor home around 3:30am on Saturday, October 6, 2007 when they ran into a utility pole placed foolishly in their path. 3100 residents of Lafayette, CA were without power after this incident. Her comment was “I’m a damn good driver.”
The motor home itself had a bent frame, a partially shattered windshield, and the broken bumper which is clearly visible at least. Not easily seen is the car which the motor home was towing, as it’s currently underneath the tree. It experienced a pretty seriously caved in roof and hood. Both vehicles were still drivable.
Photo Credit: Bob Johnson
I recently had a discussion with my brother’s girlfriend about the benefits (or lack thereof) of globalization, especially with regard to the world’s poor. The argument is often made against globalization that it hurts either US workers losing jobs to lower-wage workers abroad, or that those workers gaining those jobs are being exploited by the companies involved.
First, the second argument. We’ll assume the absence of some sort of totalitarian command economy whereby citizens are ordered to work (possibly at gunpoint) making sneakers or cheap plastic merchandise for export to the west. If someone is working at such a factory, then, it is because they’ve chosen to do so. So why, if the exploitation of these workers is so extreme, do they choose to work in these factories? Well the answer is, as it turns out, really quite simple: the combination of pay and conditions in those factories is better than what they had available before. In fact, it’s typically much better. Take one particularly infamous example, Nike shoe factories. In Vietnam, the “average pay at a Nike factory close to Ho Chi Minh is $54 a month, almost three times the minimum wage for a state-owned enterprise.” ((“The Noble Feat of Nike,” The Spectator, June, 7, 2003, Accessed July 2, 2007)). So are these people being exploited? No! This is the best thing that ever happened to them.
Globalization is like a targeted cruise missile. It will seek out with great precision the poorest, most destitute people on the planet. But instead of killing them, it will give them jobs. If you were to design a program for eliminating poverty, you could hardly do better than a vast, self-sustaining, profitable system whereby the poorest people in the world are provided with jobs.
At this point in the discussion, my brother’s girlfriend changed to a new, rather unusual position. Not only were the workers being exploited, but eventually, the local economy would improve to the point where the western company could now get cheaper wages in another, poorer country. At this point, apparently, the factories would all close and the local people would again be plunged into abject poverty. First, even if this were true, those people would still be better off than they were before because all the abandoned infrastructure built by the western companies would then be applied to new industry. And second, of course this is nonsense; if all the foreign companies decided to all leave at once, the best place in the world to build a factory would suddenly be the place they’d just abandoned. ((I imagine she was picturing a rapidly moving oscillation of western investment, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake))
Certainly there are losers here: in the short run, unskilled labor in rich countries takes it in the pants, though the landing is typically pretty soft compared to the “normal” condition of the poor outside the western economies. This argument seems to be mostly an invocation of the anti-foreign bias. I don’t see why I should be more concerned about US unskilled laborers and those in the third world. Does the fact that a worker does not live in the US make that worker less entitled to those basic needs taken for granted in the US? And the investment of large western firms into these poor economies absolutely, unequivocally makes these workers better off. And the US economy is better off as a whole and on the average as a direct result of this policy as well.
As a whole, the people in western countries need to stop thinking with nationalistic, “us versus them,” mentalities, and start thinking about the world as a global economy. Recently, McDonald’s has launched a program whereby your order in the drive-thru window will be taken not by a worker in the store you’re visiting, but by a worker in a call center located in Illinois. ((“Outsourcing Drive Thru?,” CBS News, March 11, 2005, Accessed July 2, 2007)) Why has there not been a furor over those ungrateful, unwashed Illinois ingrates who are stealing the jobs of fast food workers in other states. The difference seems to be only the color of the skin or the national origin of the people involved. There are not Mexican stealing our jobs, just as there are not Illinois residents stealing our jobs. There are only people in global competition to market their labor services.
There is no greater force for improving the lives of real people in real ways than that of economic development. Foreign aid is a drop in the bucket (and there are reasons to believe it does more harm than good). You can try to rely on a local economic revolution, but this is a slow process and may never occur at all (and may be hindered by local corruption). At stake here is no less than the entire future of the human race. This is too important an opportunity to miss.
All the components of my evil plan^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H home theater system are coming together at last.
I’ve got:
Still going to need a DVD player though. I suspect that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray isn’t worth buying yet because of the danger of buying an expensive paperweight and the fact that they are actually evil incarnate.
Anyone likely to be reading this probably also know that I’m a fairly committed atheist. I don’t think that humans have any way of reliably ascertaining truth other than through logical reasoning based on empirical evidence. In general, religious explicitly disclaims evidence-based approaches and instead advocates a faith-based approach. In other words, religions advocate blind deference to religious authority, with the only support offered the circular support of the bible or claims that popularity is in itself a form of evidence.
My brand of atheism, however, goes further than mere rejection of faith and of any sort of god or gods as a likely explanation for the mysteries of the universe. For I see not only that religion is simply wrong, but also that it causes a great deal of harm to our society, and to the world at large. There are of course the obvious means of harm like the ideas of jihad in the Islamic world or the inquisition. Great atrocities have been committed in the name of religion of course, but the harm I see as most dangerous is a much more subtle, insidious harm that can color every aspect of societies, like ours, which contain a large number of religious people of any persuasion.
The danger is faith itself. It has become a pervasive idea in many cultures, and indeed all religion must ultimately owe its support to this one, simple idea. When I say faith, I mean simply belief without evidence. I’m aware that some religious people have a hard time with that particular definition, but generally are unable to offer their own definition when prompted to do so, or change their definition fluidly as they move from one topic to another. But in the end, if your religion is based on empirical evidence, you don’t have religion: you have science. So regardless of whether you believe that “belief without evidence” is an adequate definition of faith, you must concede that belief without evidence is the core of religion, so for now I’ll simply call it faith, and if you have a problem with that, you can substitute “belief without evidence” wherever you see it (note that this may be a generally useful practice even outside this document).
Much more than any of the specific “beliefs” taught in mainstream religions, they must teach their adherents how to suspend their critical thinking skills in certain areas of inquiry (or simply never teach such skills in the first place). They teach compartmentalization of beliefs, so you can continue to believe certain things despite all the evidence to the contrary. They teach deference to authority, and suspend debate by calling certain things a “matter of faith”.
In the end, they allow irrational, ill-considered policy to win the day. Even if there is no specific conflict in the religion itself.
An example would be illuminating. Take this line of reasoning, and determine for yourself whether you think that this is a correct chain of inference:
All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea.
Therefore, sharks are fish.
It turns out that if you are very religious, you are much more likely than the average person to think that this line of reasoning is valid. ((The Authoritarians http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/, accessed June 22, 2007)) After all, sharks are fish, but in fact the conclusion does not follow from the premise. A majority of the population is taught not only that their specify brand of mysticism is true, but also that the entirety of rational inquiry is wrong simply because it conflicts with the mythical beliefs, acquired via received wisdom from equally deluded parents or religious authorities.
And thus we are a society that is ruled not by reason, not by evidence, rationalism, or logic. We are ruled instead by irrationality, unreason, and, indeed, delusion.
I’m in the process of trying to work out what sort of TV service I want to obtain at my new place. The possibilities seem to be either Comcast cable or DirectTV.
DirectTV, apparently, offers only a few HD channels, and what HD channels there are are both highly compressed (with artifacts galore) and what’s worse, at only 1280×1080 resolution rather than the standard which is 1920×1080. So the pixels in the signal are actually rectangular, and then rescaled for display on the screen. All in all a pretty shitty way to do it, especially since they everywhere claim to support HD, when in reality they’re lying.
Comcast, however, seems to have just ended its promotional packages for digital cable, though they tell me any minute now they’ll get new ones. So for a little bit I think I’m just going to go sans TV until either Comcast or DirectTV gets their act together.
By the way, for those who weren’t aware, the way to get good prices on TV service is to sign up for the promotional packages that last for about 6 months with your cable company, and then call them every six months and threaten to switch to satellite. They will always offer to sign you up for another six months of promotional package yummy goodness, which is about half the price. Otherwise, it’s just too damned expensive.
It’s been a good long while since I’ve posted to this blog; I suppose I just fell out of the habit of doing so.
Since my last post, I’ve started a new job as Manager of Gateway Development at Webroot software in February, having left Voltage Security. I learned a lot while at Voltage and have fond memories, but Webroot offered me much more money and responsibility and I felt I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
I’m about to move to a new place in Sunnyvale, which is a 4 bedroom house I’ll be sharing with Steve Haas. It’s both a fair bit larger than the place I share with Kevin now and also closer to work, which is an extra bonus. For those of you interested in stalking me, the new address is 932 Planetree Pl, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. Please form a queue along with all the other stalkers out front.
In the free software world, of late, I’ve sadly been reduced to the level of occasional stalker. I comment on bugs and try to offer insights I might have on code I’ve written in GNOME, but haven’t actually written any new code in quite some time, though I’m still an avid user of the system and still follow the development process pretty closely. Perhaps at a time in the not-so-distant future, when, perhaps I’m not quite so busy with moving and other considerations I could get back into it and write a patch or two.
Today I received in the mail a survey from the Santa Clary County Registrar of voters asking me to choose the language in which I would prefer to receive voting materials. The whole thing is eminently sensible, and I’m sure saves them a lot of money in printing costs by having a more accurate estimate of the requirements.
The last two sentences: “Our goal is to hear from all voters. This survey will continue until all voters have recorded their preference.” (Emphasis in the original)