The Worst of Our Generation:
Table of Contents
Bragging About Good Gas Mileage
The Inability to Change a Tire
Bragging About Good Gas Mileage
Recently, I have been seeing a Honda commercial advertising their SUV, The Honda Pilot, as "Surprisingly Fuel Efficient". At best, this is a ridiculous joke, but the way I look at it, it's a sad commentary on America's desire and ability to jump on the most ridiculous of bandwagons.The Honda Pilot gets 21 advertised miles per gallon. 21. A 1908 Ford Model T got 25 miles per gallon, and it wasn't fuel efficient. The average American fuel economy is a little over 24 (a joke in and of itself), so it isn't even comparably fuel efficient.
Basically, I've seen about 20 television advertisements bragging about the fuel economy of new vehicles. More often than not, the fuel economy the cars are bragging about is average at best. Occasionally, I see a small Volkswagen or a Toyota that brags about high efficiency, and it gets 35 miles per gallon or so. Admirably, thats better than average, but its far from impressive... its the bear minimum anyone should be buying.
Come back and brag when your non-hybrid cars are getting 50 or 60 miles per gallon like older Volkswagen Rabbits, or 160 miles per gallon like the Loremo. Or give me a car company, and I'll build you one. Meanwhile, complaining about good gas mileage with less than 50 miles per gallon should be embarrassing to you.
Hydrogen Vehicles
Introduction:
Hydrogen vehicles are essentially a stall between the automotive
technology currently available and a viable future automotive fuel
system. Hydrogen, for a number of reasons, is not now a feasible source
of alternate energy, nor will it be in the foreseeable future. More
over, hydrogen is not a source of energy at all, but a means of energy
storage.
Problems With Hydrogen Fuel:
Unfortunately, I may have lost people with that last statement, but yes
you heard me right. For those who don’t already know,
hydrogen is a human generated fuel. In order to produce hydrogen, we
must use energy, which in this case is in the form of electricity. This
electricity is coming off the power grid, not only putting strain on an
already overworked electricity network, but producing more pollution
and uses more natural resources. The other source for hydrogen for use
in hydrogen fuels is by processing methane
Granted, hydrogen fuel would still be cleaner, more efficient, and cheaper than gasoline if it could be implemented properly. This however does not mean that hydrogen fueled automobiles are a worthy endeavor. The biggest problem is the loss of efficiency when using hydrogen as a fuel.
This page also has a very good introduction to some of the larger problems with using hydrogen as a fuel source.Efficiency Problems
Let’s compare two systems, the first is a plug in electric
car, the second is a hydrogen car. The plug in electric car uses
electricity coming out of the home, converts it to a voltage it can
charge itself with, and then charges its batteries. According to
Wikipedia, (source),
an expected efficiency for charging the batteries on an electric car is
about 85%. This, mind you, is averaged with old, out of date charging
and battery technology. Charging efficiencies of over 95% are quite
possible.
After the batteries are charged, the energy must then be converted into mechanical energy to move the car. This, again according to Wikipedia, has an operating efficiency of 95%. After the vehicle has been accelerated, it will eventually need to be slowed. Electric vehicle can convert the energy of the moving car back into electrical energy which can be used later. This means the energy in the car can be up to 150% as effective, as a portion of it can be reused . Regenerative breaking at the moment is not nearly so efficient, the Toyota Prius for instance makes around 18% back.
Hydrogen cars are somewhat similar in operation. They still use electricity to drive an electric motor. The difference comes in the source of the electricity. On every fuel cell car, there is a tank which holds compressed hydrogen. This hydrogen is then piped to the fuel cell, which converts the hydrogen and oxygen in the ambient air into water an electricity. This hydrogen is man made, as there are no large reservoirs of hydrogen to mine, harvest, ect. When produced from water using electricity, the cutting edge technology can reach efficiencies of up to 85% (source), though electrolysis is about 70% efficient (source).
Hydrogen however, does not come out of a wall socket in your home. The hydrogen must be produced at a plant, then transported to a fueling station, then put into the vehicle it is intended to be used by. All of this transportation uses energy. This would be a substantial amount of energy, though exact metrics are impossible to predict. Additionally, this hydrogen must be compressed at high pressure to be transported and used.
After the hydrogen is in the vehicle, it needs to be converted back into electricity. This, once again according to Wikipedia (source), can work out to be around 36% in regular practice. After the hydrogen is converted to electricity, it must then be converted to mechanical energy by the motors, again at a rate of about 95%. In contrast with the electric vehicle however, hydrogen vehicles have no way to convert their momentum back into electricity through regenerative breaking.
So, for those of you who have lost count of the number here, lets recap. Let’s say you have 100 units of energy in an electric car, and 100 units energy in the fuel cell car. Lets also say that under perfect efficiency without regenerative breaking, 100 units of energy could drive 100 miles. All calculations are using the more realistic numbers. In the electric car, after taking the efficiency and regenerative breaking into account, one could drive 96 miles. The hybrid car on the other hand, would be able to drive 24 miles, which doesn’t take into account the amount of energy it takes to transport the hydrogen.
Besides this huge disparity in overall efficiency, hydrogen economies provide the opportunity for the same extortion that gasoline companies currently partake in, as users would have to visit vendors who sold a commodity necessary for daily life. Even more of an issue is the expense and work it would take to convert the American fuel industry to be able to produce, transport, sell, and use hydrogen fuel. Power plant electricity output would need to double, high pressure transport of the hydrogen would need to be devised, and fueling stations would need to be constructed.
Why are will still pursuing hydrogen then?
Well, it’s not on accident. I’m not a person who
lend credence to conspiracies, though my best guess might border
categorization as such. With the fuel issues the world has been facing
for decades, many people have become interested in alternative energy
sources, and rightly so. The government and many individuals have
responded, and put large amounts of money towards alternatives.
Alternative fuels however, while promising to the world at large, represent a threat to both oil companies and to the automotive industry. (Mostly American) Automotive industries have a long history of only making advancements most would deem absolutely necessary and obvious when forced to (airbags, seatbelt, crumple zones, ect). Additionally, companies such as General Motors and Ford have decades of research and huge amounts of money invested in gasoline engine technology, and do not wish to leave this behind.
The result of this aversion is rather clever, however tragic. It is my assumption that the engineers at GM, Ford, Exxon, and the like know enough to realize hydrogen fuels aren’t going anywhere. Because they aren’t going to lead to a viable solution, they allocate all the money they can to further research in that field. In this way, these companies can show that they are putting large amounts of (other people’s) money into a apparently good cause, while still being able to perpetuate their current mode of business. The huge grants and donations that automotive companies receive for hydrogen vehicles is there by diverted into something less threatening then real alternatives.
If even half the money that has been put into hybrid technology in the past five years had been allocated to hybrid and electric car design, the streets today would be filled with a very different populous.
Buying New Vehicles
Just don't. You're losing at least 20% of the value instantly if you do. What benefit do you get from buying a new vehicle? What argument could possibly be made that a vehicle with 5,000 miles worth of test drives on it is worth the extra money when compared to a used vehicle with 15,000 miles?
I'll venture a bit further though and say: Never buy a vehicle from a dealer. Ever. Used or New. If a dealer is selling it to you, he is making a profit. That's how he feeds his family. If you buy from a private owner, you save yourself the middle man market the dealer would take, and you most likely give the former owner more money than he would have gotten from a dealer.
What's more, you get a valuable insight on the past of the car. When buying a car from a dealer, the car has been cleaned, all the fluids have been changed, and the buyer has no contact at all with the old owner. Please, if you are going to buy a vehicle, take a test drive with the former owner. Let him drive you around. Take notice of how well they drive, how hard or easy they are on the car, ect. Ask the seller the standard questions, but try to get a feel for how well the car has really been taken car of, and how the car has treated them so far.
Leasing Vehicles
Admirably, there are some circumstances where buying a vehicle might not be a good choice. For the most part though, people who lease automobiles are throwing money away. Theres really no difference between leasing a vehicle and renting one for an extended period of time. You end up paying half the cost of the vehicle or more, with nothing to show for it at the end of your lease.
Now, if you're comparing leasing a vehicle to buying a new vehicle every 4 or 5 years, then it's not such a bad offer. You'll be glossing half the vehicle value in that long anyway, so why not just pay the difference? Because you can save yourself the cost by not buying a new car.
Starbucks
This should be a relatively simple to figure out. Coffee is one of the cheapest drinks to produce. Before designer mocha chino’s and frapa-whatever, coffee was free in waiting rooms, or you could drink it all day at a restaurant and never have to break a 5 dollar bill.
And yet, we've decided to ditch that path in favor of $5 outings to the coffee shop. Apparently the average Starbucks drinker visits Starbucks 6 times per month (as quoted here) but after looking to my friends and family that frequent Starbucks, I'd wager closer to 6 times per week. As in 30 dollars for 6 beverages, plus gas and time to venture out.
No one buys coffee at Starbucks. They buy coffee related products, the store itself smells of coffee, but that’s about as close as it gets. What the Starbucks buyers are buying is essentially a caffeinated milkshake.
Bottled Water
So, what's the logic here? I understand concerns that there may be lead in the tap water in some homes. But, it's either there or it's not. By now, everyones home's should be tested. Chlorine bugging you? Do what my grandparents have always done. Take a big pitcher, fill it with water, put it in the fridge. It will be nice and cold, any chlorine will have evaporated off, and any sediments or whatever will have settled out. The standards for bottled water are in fact often lower than the standards for tap water. At the very least, if you really feel you must, buy a filter and filter your own water, but don't buy bottled water.
Besides the expense of buying bottled, which can be thousands of times the cost of a bottle of tap water (as quoted here) and no more delicious, bottled water has another big problem that should be pretty obvious: Bottles.
Think about this. The average person is supposed to drink 8 glasses of water per day. Lets say 6 of those are from bottled water. According to this website, water bottles, which are made from PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) use about 6.45lbs of oil per lb, 294.2 lbs of water per lb, and result in 3.723lbs of greenhouse gas emissions per lb. Water bottles weigh about 200mg a piece. If one were to drink 4 per day all year, thats
6 x 200mg = 1200mg
800mg x 365 days = 0.438 kg
438 kilograms = 0.966 pounds of PET
0.966 pounds PET = 6.23 lbs of oil = 0.83 gallons of Oil
0.966 pounds PET = 284 gallons of water polluted
0.966 pounds PET = 3.6 pounds of greenhouse gasses
This means you've personally polluted 284 gallons of water, added 3.6 pounds of greenhouse gasses to the environment and used almost a gallon of oil just for bottled water you don't need. This still doesn't seem like a substantial amount though. When one takes into consideration the amount of people who drink bottled water however, the results are much more stunning. Half of the American population drinks bottled water, and a third do so often. Assuming only a quarter of the population drinks bottled water very regularly, that's 75 284 986 people.
0.966 x 75,284,986 people = 72,725,296 pounds of PET
75,284,986 x 3.6 = 271,025,950 pounds of greenhouse gasses
75,284,986 x 284 = 21,380,936,024 gallons of water polluted
75,284,986 x 6.23 lbs of oil = 469,025,463 gallons of Oil
That's enough oil to fuel all of the USA for 23 days, that's twice as much water as all the homes in the United States combined use daily, going by a 100 gallon per day estimate, and 271,025,950 pounds of greenhouse gasses released, because Americans will not fill up reusable water bottles with tap water or drink from water fountains.
Update:
Penn and Teller, in there usual awesome style, have done a nice peice about bottled water, and have even started marketing there own "Penn & Teller Bull-Shit Water" The video is quite good, I'd reccomend you watch it.
The Inability to Change A Tire
This is quick and to the point. Everyone who wants to drive needs to know how to change a tire. No one should be stuck by the side of the road waiting for a tow truck with just a simple flat. This used to be taught in drivers ed, but in my home state of Maryland at least, this is no longer required knowledge.
Also on the need to know list: How to set up road flares, jump start your car, check your oil (if not change it), and check/top up engine fluids and tire pressure. If someone can't accomplish all of these tasks (assuming their physically able), they should not be driving.
The first time I heard the president use the phrase "Evil Doers" I laughed. I suppose I was 13 maybe. Adults don't call people "evil" do they? Evil is used in the bible maybe, or perhaps by crazy old lady's known to utter the phrase "Next there will be dancing!", but not by reasonable adults, and certainly not by anyone in power, let alone a president, right?
Even young kids know that you can't simply label a person evil. If you label them evil, you make it okay to do all sorts of things without question because, hey, their evil, they get their just deserts.
More than that though, calling someone evil invokes a spiritual meaning to their description. It's close to saying "This person is sent by the devil". Now, while its perfectly okay if someone wants to believe that, it's not a statement one can make from or on behalf of a public office in this country.
MTV / MTV2
Music videos can be artistic. They can be interesting. Those are the only 2 things MTV has going for it. First, lets go on the assumption MTV has anything to do with music. MTV should theoretically play music videos in one of two ways: if a song is popular, they play its music video, or if a video is popular, they play it more.
MTV however, is essentially a way for the music distributors to make more money. MTV will play music videos from music they want to be popular, and because most people have no mind of their own, the music videos MTV wants to be popular will start to become popular. And because of that, the music MTV wants to be popular will start to become popular.
This has the unfortunate consequence of making music of poor quality seem more appealing to those watching MTV, which further influences a downward spiral of positive feedback on often terrible music. Music distributors often pay more attention to the ability to make a music video out of a song (which plays into its marketability) than anything else, because a good video could mean the public will buy the CD despite its terrible contents.
This is a metaphor. There should be no more obvious statement in the world of politics than that. This is a metaphor.
Terror can not be fought. Terror can be prevented. Terrorist acts can be reduced. but you can not fight "terrorism".
There are a few issues with using this phrase. The firstly, it links any military action since September 11, 2001 to an effort to prevent further terrorist acts. The military actions going on today have little to do with any terrorist acts towards the United States, aside from the fact the current war would not be underway without the excuse of the conflict our country's been stirring up since September 11, 2001.
The more important thing to realize here though, is that we shouldn't try to -fight- terror. There is a reason we are being attacked. Granted, the reasons are not good ones, but the reasons exist none the less. Until those reasons are addressed, their is nothing anyone can do to deter the impulse to attack us, and the easiest way for many individuals to attack this country is through terrorist actions.
The point here is that physically fighting and killing off terrorism doesn't solve anything, except eventually food and housing shortages when the populations of third world countries are whittled down enough. (cliché alert) Fighting hate with hate is not productive, it only breeds more hate. (end cliché alert) Seeds of anti-American sentiment has been spread around the worlds, and we've done nothing but pour fertilizer on top, in no place more than the already conflict-fertile middle east.
The best job I've seen anyone do in this regard was by a group of doctors. I’m unsure on the details, its been a while since I read the article, so if anyone has a link that would be incredibly helpful. The joist of it however consisted of the following. There was a larger earthquake in a third world country overseas a few years ago. Most aid that other countries donated was in the form of paradroped used clothing and food. What the people needed at the time was medical help.
A sizable group our doctors took time off work and grouped together in I think New York, They stocked up on medical supplies, paying for everything out of their own pockets. They then flew themselves, again at their own expense, to a third world country in chaos and proceeded to give free medical car to whoever they possibly could. They ate what they could get, they slept where they were find a place to sleep, and they found rides to wherever they were told they were needed. It was my understanding that they were allowed into areas Americans had never before been allowed.
That group of doctors fought terrorism. Any one of those people they helped, or witnessed them helping other will almost certainty think twice about trying to attack a country that helped so selflessly. Now, if only more than a few doctors would help more than once in a while, maybe we wouldn’t be the intended target for so much of the worlds flack.
Short and Sickening... For the record, "9/11" changed nothing, except for the lives of those directly effected. Our government officials were the ones who changed everything. Blame them.
Shiz happens, we'd been lucky so little had happened for so long. We need to be able to deal with such occurrences in a much better manner, without having our world collapse around us.
There was a time in history, not so long ago, when thrift was a value to be proud of, a skill to practice, or in my mother's case, damn near an art. I swear that woman can make a dollar go farther than most people could make a twenty.
My point is, the current growing generation, my generation, is coming to fruition in a world that encourages, no, demands constant buying, disposing and replacement.
The first issue here is that products are designed to be replaced. Granted, with some technology that’s the nature of the beast, but it need not be with most consumer items. The trouble is, there’s no way to argue this fact. Companies will never put out items that last as long as they should, or they wouldn’t sell as many items. Additionally, how many products today can be regularly serviced and maintained by the owner? To me, this knocks the idea of a quality product out the window. So much for pride in your work.
The second issue is one of stigma. That if one doesn't have the same products to show off as the people on TV, that somehow they are less cool, or less wealthy, or less interesting than everybody else.
Remember the American dream? pulling yourself up from you bootstraps, building a life for yourself and your family, getting a job and moving up in the world through hard work and perseverance? I know people who have done this, and believe me, they didn't do it by buying a new pair of shoes every other month, buying a new cars and clothes, or by eating in restaurants more than a couple times a year.
They did it by pinching pennies, spending in sensible ways, and keeping on keeping on. After several years, those people had all the money they ever needed. The moral of that story is it doesn't take much to get rich, you just can't have as much on the way their.
On the flip side, you have the current culture. A culture that buys a new cell phone just because it looks better or is smaller, even if the old one works perfectly. You have people who buy a new, gas guzzling car (or for that matter a car at all) when they don't have health insurance. You have masses of individuals who don't even check the price on what they're buying, let alone shop around to get the best deal.
Thrift stores, used car dealerships, taking care of and maintaining one's possessions, not hiring people to do things one could do themselves, those are the paths to financial stability, if only the average American could buck up, swallow their pride, and follow them.
In short, unless the masses wise up, the financial situation of the average American will continue to fall as the bottom line of the big businesses they play along with continues to grow.
Coming soon!
The RIAA, Lawsuits, and Intellectual Property
Boyd Coddington Hot Rods
Army
Pods
Please feel free to contact me regarding anything you read here. I welcome input, arguments, and suggestions. Though I can't promise a prompt reply, I'll do my best to reply when asked to do so.