I've had a Honda Insight since 1999. s/n 152. Good car. It has a good suite of efficiency readouts. The lifetime mpg is about 55, pretty good. It's got a 5-speed manual transmission, a dinky 1 liter 3-cylinder engine, zero-RPM "idle," and an 18hp electric motor (on the engine side of the clutch and transmission) that serves as the hybrid motor, the regenerator, and the starter for the engine.
The ammeter readout (labeled "Charge -- Discharge") trained me to optimize both acceleration and regenerative braking pretty well. Regenerative braking cuts out at 30mph in fifth gear. This isn't documented anyplace, but it's easy to sort out from the ammeter.
I'll tell you, though, this Insight's design is uncompromising in saving gross weight, and I think a lot of the efficiency comes from the low weight. I have a fat friend. When we ride together places, efficiency goes down to 45 mpg. (And no, I don't hassle him about it, in case you were wondering.)
It's very smart to plan to zero out the foundation in a fixed amount of time.
Big perpetual foundations attract lots of greedy types. After the demise of the people who established the foundation, it becomes easier for it to lose its way and start focusing on self-perpetuation.
This announcement by the Gates foundation (which by the way includes the Buffett fortune) shows real unselfishness.
Grameen Bank (whose founder Mohammed Yunis just got the Nobel Peace Prize) built a mobile phone system in Bangladesh for poor people. This allows them to do things like find buyers for the shirts they make using the sewing machines they bought with the $75 they borrowed from Grameen.
The article about CITI says this:
Until now, most micro-finance initiatives aimed at the lower income groups had emphasised lending, rather than savings accounts, leading low-income earners to keep most of their money under their beds.
Ventures catering for India's poorest are likely to remain marginal earners for the banks for many years.
I suspect the problem is much worse than money in jars under beds. I suspect that all kinds of middlemen gouge these poor people when they try to get their payments from their customers. I suppose various kinds of bandits prey on them too. Also, no doubt the Grameen borrowers' husbands (they're well over 90% women) sometimes raid their savings. So a biometric ATM and wire transfer system may be a very good thing, as long as CITI doesn't gouge these people too viciously.
The Mass. active RFID toll-transponder system (which has the foolishly confusing brand-name "Fast Lane") misreads a lot. They really do have to use the license plate photos to get it right. I moved a transponder to another car once. They give you one grace ticket, then they start charging you $50 tickets. When the grace ticket came (after my FIRST day in the different car) I called them and added its license plate number, so they restored my grace ticket.
I'd worry about privacy on license plate photos, except that OCR automation on those things hasn't got a prayer of working accurately enough to write tickets unless they are illuminated by very good structured lighting and taken from slow-moving cars.
If you enter a footrace you'll get a passive RFID tag to tangle in your shoelaces. This thing lets the race judging system give you a time. After you finish the race you throw the RFID tag in a bucket, and they reuse it on the next race. A great use of technology! Nice writeup here.
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I've had a Honda Insight since 1999. s/n 152. Good car. It has a good suite of efficiency readouts. The lifetime mpg is about 55, pretty good. It's got a 5-speed manual transmission, a dinky 1 liter 3-cylinder engine, zero-RPM "idle," and an 18hp electric motor (on the engine side of the clutch and transmission) that serves as the hybrid motor, the regenerator, and the starter for the engine.
The ammeter readout (labeled "Charge -- Discharge") trained me to optimize both acceleration and regenerative braking pretty well. Regenerative braking cuts out at 30mph in fifth gear. This isn't documented anyplace, but it's easy to sort out from the ammeter.
I'll tell you, though, this Insight's design is uncompromising in saving gross weight, and I think a lot of the efficiency comes from the low weight. I have a fat friend. When we ride together places, efficiency goes down to 45 mpg. (And no, I don't hassle him about it, in case you were wondering.)
It's very smart to plan to zero out the foundation in a fixed amount of time.
Big perpetual foundations attract lots of greedy types. After the demise of the people who established the foundation, it becomes easier for it to lose its way and start focusing on self-perpetuation.
This announcement by the Gates foundation (which by the way includes the Buffett fortune) shows real unselfishness.
Why do poor people need ATMs?
Grameen Bank (whose founder Mohammed Yunis just got the Nobel Peace Prize) built a mobile phone system in Bangladesh for poor people. This allows them to do things like find buyers for the shirts they make using the sewing machines they bought with the $75 they borrowed from Grameen.
The article about CITI says this:
I suspect the problem is much worse than money in jars under beds. I suspect that all kinds of middlemen gouge these poor people when they try to get their payments from their customers. I suppose various kinds of bandits prey on them too. Also, no doubt the Grameen borrowers' husbands (they're well over 90% women) sometimes raid their savings. So a biometric ATM and wire transfer system may be a very good thing, as long as CITI doesn't gouge these people too viciously.
I wonder what Younis thinks of this initiative?
The Mass. active RFID toll-transponder system (which has the foolishly confusing brand-name "Fast Lane") misreads a lot. They really do have to use the license plate photos to get it right. I moved a transponder to another car once. They give you one grace ticket, then they start charging you $50 tickets. When the grace ticket came (after my FIRST day in the different car) I called them and added its license plate number, so they restored my grace ticket.
I'd worry about privacy on license plate photos, except that OCR automation on those things hasn't got a prayer of working accurately enough to write tickets unless they are illuminated by very good structured lighting and taken from slow-moving cars.
If you enter a footrace you'll get a passive RFID tag to tangle in your shoelaces. This thing lets the race judging system give you a time. After you finish the race you throw the RFID tag in a bucket, and they reuse it on the next race. A great use of technology! Nice writeup here.
c eTimingWithChip.cfm
http://www.marathonguide.com/features/Articles/Ra
Toll transponders are another very convenient use of technology. Sure, there are some privacy issues, but they're convenient.