2003 TDI Jetta; Diesel seems to have this weird seasonal price track here on the west coast. It gets godawful expensive in the summer, but ends up often being cheaper per gallon than gasoline in the winter (when you'd think it's more expensive due to the requirement for the winter blends).
I run mine on bio (at around $2.70/gal) - no, I don't have a "biodiesel" bumper-sticker, it doesn't smoke, runs rather nice, decent power, kicks the ass of the three Prius' I've test-driven. There is only one place in my county you can even purchase bio commercially, luckily only a few miles from where I work - and since the car runs around 43 miles/gal - I only have to visit the pump once every two weeks.
I don't really have a long enough commute to where this makes a significant economic difference - but I do feel like I'm trying to be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.
Oh yeah, and you can TELL the car is a diesel when you hear it drive by. It's loud. Might have something to do with how I removed all the plastic sound-baffles from the engine compartment.:)
One thing I'll say though: if I can find another car that runs bio, and gets this kind of milage, I'm dumping the VW. VW makes really crappy cars. German-car prices, Hecho-en-Mexico quality. Major electrical gremlins, and even minor repairs tend to run in the $500+ range. (new alternator ran me $450 + $150 for a battery).
Re:A little story in how this is dangerous
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Designer Babies
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· Score: 1
We won't all be giving birth to baby Einsteins. Just the extremely wealthy privileged few. The procedure currently costs $20k.
In a world where not even 100% of kids are vaccinated, I don't see "natural" genetic traits disappearing. We'll have our mutts, and we'll have our purebreds, and as we've seen in communities where natural selection is replaced by human interference (like, royal families, etc.) there will be drawbacks alongside the advantages for the ones who tamper with natural selection.
I can see how some pieces could have temporarily gained altitude; but I can not see through any perversion of newtonian physics how any fragment from the collision could have gained MOMENTUM. There was a net loss of KE in the whole deal.
Yeah, if your cat doesn't kill rodents, your cat has too much cat food to eat. Keep em hungry.
(and more germane to the article: I had a rat problem in my house - I tried EVERYTHING, poison, traps, steel wool, etc. The only sustainable solution is CATS. I do have the unpleasant task of cleaning up the kills. But at least they're out in the open, and I don't have to go into the crawlspace and the attic every freaking day to clean out and reset traps. And Poison==stinking-rotting-rat-carcasses-in-inaccessible-locations.)
There was a sci-fi book, (one of those "power-armor" copycats of Starship Troopers; might have been Mirror in the Sky, or maybe Forever War?), where the suits had a built-in iris-valve feature at every major joint.
You sustain an injury on a limb that ruptures the suit's integrity. . . SNAP, the iris-valve slams shut, severs the limb, seals the suit, and the suit shuts down and injects the occupant with the appropriate drug treatment to stabilize them for medivac.
Books like these are why I decided NOT to join "The Army of Tomorrow". . .
What makes you any better or more deserving than these people?
The fact that the company is located in the US, (safe from foreign invasion, nasty infectious diseases, protesters and unions), profits from sales into the wealthy US consumer market without tariffs, takes advantage of very low US corporate tax rates, extremely lenient regulatory environment, takes advantage of the US's taxpayer funded, VERY COSTLY, infrastructure (highways, internet, power, DEFENSE, etc.), and then gets a big fat taxpayer funded bailout when their executives gamble away the company's future, taking half the economy with it.
And if they want to really boost their profits, they can just locate a minimally-staffed "ghost" subsidiary office in the Bahamas or the Caymans, and skirt US tax laws completely.
Rush Limbaugh told me that the Elites would always act in my best interest as long as they were getting their tax breaks. I tend to trust Rush Limbaugh. He knows what he's talking about. He's been on the radio a long time.
My great grandfather had a pretty adversarial relationship with his employer, a copper-mining company in Northern Michigan, who owned the town, and every store and property in it, where their workers lived, and fixed prices such that workers quickly got into debt, and were unable to earn enough money to get out.
The workers had zero rights, and were treated as slaves, it was pretty damn adversarial, and this situation existed 50 years before FDR.
Let's examine briefly and superficially the very first government in history. Ancient Babylon.
Farmers could farm there, and every few seasons, get wiped out by floods. Food distribution was also pretty unstable, so a huge amount of waste would occur - especially during boom years.
The "government" (essentially a theocracy, but the form of government is not germane here) - enabled an economy to exist by providing critical infrastructure. A system of dikes and levies, in addition to a calendar of predictions. The government also handled the food distribution. This gave the city-states of ancient babylon the economic prosperity required to actually build and maintain a civilization; cities, roads, defenses, system of writing, culture, etc.
These things were not possible without a system of collectively dealing with problems like seasonal flooding.
Note: it took our ideological opponents of Government (the Texas Republican Mafia); to drown an American city, New Orleans - ironically through failed levies.
Oh - they sit on this island, and take advantage of the FACT of US Military Protection (no nasty Commies are going to take over and nationalize any business or property - and if they try, they're close enough to the States to benefit from a Grenada-style intervention). Yet they don't contribute to the enormous COST of the US Military. Apparently, the existence of these shell corporations is somehow a net benefit to US taxpayers?
Sounds like the typical Bush voter who wasn't paying attention to Bush's record as Governor of TX.
He took TX from a record surplus to a record deficit. Gee. Sound familiar? Y'all just weren't paying attention in 2000.
Say what you will about his pre-politics career, or personal history. That kind of stuff is usually only relevant when you're playing the "character-assassination" game which is all too common in American politics. (Has been from Day 1). Fact is: Bush's train-wreck of a political career wasn't just apparent, it was OBVIOUS in 2000. That is what should have been relevant. But we all got our "tax rebate" checks, so of course, highest approval rating in history. And I hope Obama can top that. I'm hoping for a pony this time around.
Um, really? 200bhp on the 1.9l diesel? Because my 03 Jetta TDI is rated at something like 110bph. Pretty anemic, actually. Not at all the most exiting car I've ever driven. And actually, just crazy with flaky little electrical problems.
I do run B99 - but the hoops I had to jump through to find a reliable local supplier is just nuts! (and yeah - I know I'm lucky to live somewhere where I don't have to worry about the higher biodiesel cloud-point, or gelling).
Don't get me wrong - I am 100% committed to the idea of Biodiesel being a crucial part of the overall solution to our (global) energy future.
I just think that VW produces crap cars, and then somehow gets away with charging BMW-prices.
($350 dollars for the one and only oil change I did at the dealer - I now do it myself for under $20, and I actually change the air filter, unlike the motherfucking fraudulent cocksucking lying cheating assholes at the VW dealership).
Today there are just far too many distractions on a PC to get kids away from the task at hand.
. . . yeah. Have you looked through all the cool plugins that are available for Eclipse nowadays?! you could spend HOURS AND HOURS just reading through the list!
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2003 TDI Jetta;
Diesel seems to have this weird seasonal price track here on the west coast. It gets godawful expensive in the summer, but ends up often being cheaper per gallon than gasoline in the winter (when you'd think it's more expensive due to the requirement for the winter blends).
I run mine on bio (at around $2.70/gal) - no, I don't have a "biodiesel" bumper-sticker, it doesn't smoke, runs rather nice, decent power, kicks the ass of the three Prius' I've test-driven. There is only one place in my county you can even purchase bio commercially, luckily only a few miles from where I work - and since the car runs around 43 miles/gal - I only have to visit the pump once every two weeks.
I don't really have a long enough commute to where this makes a significant economic difference - but I do feel like I'm trying to be part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.
Oh yeah, and you can TELL the car is a diesel when you hear it drive by. It's loud. Might have something to do with how I removed all the plastic sound-baffles from the engine compartment. :)
One thing I'll say though: if I can find another car that runs bio, and gets this kind of milage, I'm dumping the VW. VW makes really crappy cars. German-car prices, Hecho-en-Mexico quality. Major electrical gremlins, and even minor repairs tend to run in the $500+ range. (new alternator ran me $450 + $150 for a battery).
Wine & Thorazine?
We won't all be giving birth to baby Einsteins. Just the extremely wealthy privileged few. The procedure currently costs $20k.
In a world where not even 100% of kids are vaccinated, I don't see "natural" genetic traits disappearing. We'll have our mutts, and we'll have our purebreds, and as we've seen in communities where natural selection is replaced by human interference (like, royal families, etc.) there will be drawbacks alongside the advantages for the ones who tamper with natural selection.
And a huge leap backwards for carbon emitters.
(insert Big_Oil_Conspiracy_Theory here). . .
I can see how some pieces could have temporarily gained altitude; but I can not see through any perversion of newtonian physics how any fragment from the collision could have gained MOMENTUM. There was a net loss of KE in the whole deal.
It's not water.
It's oil.
Translucent, Martian oil.
Yeah, if your cat doesn't kill rodents, your cat has too much cat food to eat. Keep em hungry.
(and more germane to the article: I had a rat problem in my house - I tried EVERYTHING, poison, traps, steel wool, etc. The only sustainable solution is CATS. I do have the unpleasant task of cleaning up the kills. But at least they're out in the open, and I don't have to go into the crawlspace and the attic every freaking day to clean out and reset traps. And Poison==stinking-rotting-rat-carcasses-in-inaccessible-locations.)
There was a sci-fi book, (one of those "power-armor" copycats of Starship Troopers; might have been Mirror in the Sky, or maybe Forever War?), where the suits had a built-in iris-valve feature at every major joint.
You sustain an injury on a limb that ruptures the suit's integrity. . . SNAP, the iris-valve slams shut, severs the limb, seals the suit, and the suit shuts down and injects the occupant with the appropriate drug treatment to stabilize them for medivac.
Books like these are why I decided NOT to join "The Army of Tomorrow". . .
What makes you any better or more deserving than these people?
The fact that the company is located in the US, (safe from foreign invasion, nasty infectious diseases, protesters and unions), profits from sales into the wealthy US consumer market without tariffs, takes advantage of very low US corporate tax rates, extremely lenient regulatory environment, takes advantage of the US's taxpayer funded, VERY COSTLY, infrastructure (highways, internet, power, DEFENSE, etc.), and then gets a big fat taxpayer funded bailout when their executives gamble away the company's future, taking half the economy with it.
And if they want to really boost their profits, they can just locate a minimally-staffed "ghost" subsidiary office in the Bahamas or the Caymans, and skirt US tax laws completely.
. . . yeah, and JUST PRIOR to an election too! Who would DO such a thing?
Rush Limbaugh told me that the Elites would always act in my best interest as long as they were getting their tax breaks. I tend to trust Rush Limbaugh. He knows what he's talking about. He's been on the radio a long time.
correction: over-hyper, poorly raised, and poorly educated workers at desk jobs can stress themselves out.
Anyone can learn the skills to not stress-out over whether their boss has got the latest TPS report.
They've not hijacked every firefox installs.
Just the firefox installs on WINDOWS boxes.
Not Firefox/Linux, and not Firefox/MacOSX.
And also, not every Windows Firefox install either. Some of us don't install ALL recommended updates.
Mark has to bow to his paymaster, and talk about "degraded windows experience" to justify not uninstalling software or disabling flash.
This has been standard MS marketing justification for BLOAT for a decade and a half. It's just a different mindset.
That's pretty stupid.
My great grandfather had a pretty adversarial relationship with his employer, a copper-mining company in Northern Michigan, who owned the town, and every store and property in it, where their workers lived, and fixed prices such that workers quickly got into debt, and were unable to earn enough money to get out.
The workers had zero rights, and were treated as slaves, it was pretty damn adversarial, and this situation existed 50 years before FDR.
Let's examine briefly and superficially the very first government in history. Ancient Babylon.
Farmers could farm there, and every few seasons, get wiped out by floods. Food distribution was also pretty unstable, so a huge amount of waste would occur - especially during boom years.
The "government" (essentially a theocracy, but the form of government is not germane here) - enabled an economy to exist by providing critical infrastructure. A system of dikes and levies, in addition to a calendar of predictions. The government also handled the food distribution. This gave the city-states of ancient babylon the economic prosperity required to actually build and maintain a civilization; cities, roads, defenses, system of writing, culture, etc.
These things were not possible without a system of collectively dealing with problems like seasonal flooding.
Note: it took our ideological opponents of Government (the Texas Republican Mafia); to drown an American city, New Orleans - ironically through failed levies.
Have we all learned the POINT?
Oh - they sit on this island, and take advantage of the FACT of US Military Protection (no nasty Commies are going to take over and nationalize any business or property - and if they try, they're close enough to the States to benefit from a Grenada-style intervention). Yet they don't contribute to the enormous COST of the US Military. Apparently, the existence of these shell corporations is somehow a net benefit to US taxpayers?
Well, reconstructing crashed UFO's at secret desert bases ain't cheap!
Sounds like the typical Bush voter who wasn't paying attention to Bush's record as Governor of TX.
He took TX from a record surplus to a record deficit. Gee. Sound familiar? Y'all just weren't paying attention in 2000.
Say what you will about his pre-politics career, or personal history. That kind of stuff is usually only relevant when you're playing the "character-assassination" game which is all too common in American politics. (Has been from Day 1). Fact is: Bush's train-wreck of a political career wasn't just apparent, it was OBVIOUS in 2000. That is what should have been relevant. But we all got our "tax rebate" checks, so of course, highest approval rating in history. And I hope Obama can top that. I'm hoping for a pony this time around.
me too - lol :)
My German car was "Hecho en Mexico".
Um, really? 200bhp on the 1.9l diesel?
Because my 03 Jetta TDI is rated at something like 110bph. Pretty anemic, actually. Not at all the most exiting car I've ever driven. And actually, just crazy with flaky little electrical problems.
I do run B99 - but the hoops I had to jump through to find a reliable local supplier is just nuts!
(and yeah - I know I'm lucky to live somewhere where I don't have to worry about the higher biodiesel cloud-point, or gelling).
Don't get me wrong - I am 100% committed to the idea of Biodiesel being a crucial part of the overall solution to our (global) energy future.
I just think that VW produces crap cars, and then somehow gets away with charging BMW-prices.
($350 dollars for the one and only oil change I did at the dealer - I now do it myself for under $20, and I actually change the air filter, unlike the motherfucking fraudulent cocksucking lying cheating assholes at the VW dealership).
well, that and the solids idea is pork for Morton Thiokol. . .
(and, the fact that what comes out of the tail end of those things is horribly toxic for the environment.
Today there are just far too many distractions on a PC to get kids away from the task at hand.
. . . yeah. Have you looked through all the cool plugins that are available for Eclipse nowadays?! you could spend HOURS AND HOURS just reading through the list!
Wow, and that Software Engineering class I took for my degree was for what exactly?