If you use drawer slides in the rack, and use reasonable lengths for wiring, it could work. Another option would be to build a hinged frame to mount the rack on, so it can rotate out from the wall. Or, put it on/in a wall where you can open up the backside of the wall with a door that gives you access (I'm assuming the back of the rack isn't a solid panel). This would also make it easier to route cables down inside the wall.
In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. - Johm 14:2
The usual interpretation of this has to do with Heaven, but who knows? It could mean that we are meant to 'go forth and multiply' and populate the universe. It's just possible that we are the first, the only, and have the potential to propagate Life from its only original source. Maybe that is our calling - to seed Life everywhere. Truly, if/when we do move into space, we will be bringing many other forms of life with us - a significant part of our entire ecosystem.
I predict that someone will use this quotation and others to inspire a space-based neo-Christian (plus possibly also neo-some other beliefs) religion. And if that is what it takes to get us moving off this planet, I'm for it.
We also have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, ameliorated slightly by the plethora of silly loopholes and exceptions, that keep a million or so accountants busy.
Stuff like the gasohol subsidy - basically welfare for Cargill and ADM are good examples of bad ideas. In fact, using tax policy and subsidies for social engineering are bad ideas in general IMHO.
I'll just add that, if the Health and Human Services dept. were a 501(c)3 charity, the entire management would go to jail for corrupt practices. Their cost of administration compared to what actually gets to the street is abominable. And having worked for an independent social service agency with some federal funding (a long time ago), where it took, as we counted, 23 levels of decision making to authorize purchase of pencils. Needless to say, the meetings, reports and analysis cost thousands of times what the pencils cost.
Just for grins, do a bit of research to find out just how much taxes that 1% actually pays. You'll be surprised (hint - average, according to this is in the range of 20% of income. the top 0.1% is the Buffett group, paying about 8% of gross income.). The bottom 50% pay about 12% of their income - but almost 4/5 of that group actually gets subsidies back from the gov that exceed their tax payments for a net negative payment for that group.
The top 1% of income earners in the US pay about 40% of the total income tax, the top 5% about 60%. The top 25% pay 87%. The bottom 50% pay about 2.7% , but again receive more than they put in.
We also have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, ameliorated slightly by the plethora of silly loopholes and exceptions, that keep a million or so accountants busy.
I note that when the Constitutional amendment to allow the income tax was passed, the PR was that it would always be limited to the top 2% of income earners, and would be limited to 2% of their income. Obviously once the camel got into the tent, it began to eat everything in sight. Too bad the amendment didn't include any limits! At one time the entire federal government was paid for by the postage on mail, and the liquor tax. Was that so bad? When you didn't like how one state did things, you could move to another. Now the feds have their noses in everyone's behinds, sniffing to see what we had for dinner. That, IMHO is not the role of a FEDERAL government structure.
Meanwhile, the present administration's spending is (IIRC) 40% of the entire GDP. Of that, it is borrowing about 40% and of that, the Federal Reserve is buying about 60% because the number of suckers willing to buy US debt has dropped precipitously. When the Fed buys it, it is just a silent form of 'quantitative easing', in essence creating money out of thin air. Another name for that is inflation - the most regressive hidden tax there is. 60%X40%x40% = about 10% inflation PER YEAR.:)
Regardless of whose party is in, this has to stop before, like Germany a few decades ago, we will be in the boat where a postage stamp costs $5 billion (no joke - that's what happened, only marks instead of dollars.)
It sounds plausible, maybe. I suppose it would depend on the type of keyboard, and might need to be trained for each keyboard. (Would all those bagel crumbs that fell in between the keys alter the acoustics?) It might be easier from outside the keyboard. Stranger things have been done - bouncing a laser off a window to pick up the sounds in a room (the vibration of the window modulates the laser beam); I think that sounds picked up through a wall have been used to place people inside the room, behind the wall.
But from the same perspective, all those football rooting alumni made their money elsewhere as well. This does lead me to wonder how much does the average CS graduate donate back to their U, or especially their CS/ECE dept.? I confess, I'm not a big donor by any count.
I should note that the last time I was in school, I ran into some of the basketball players in the gym occasionally - they were all good guys and worked very hard, and from what I could tell were planning on real jobs after graduation. I'm not denigrating anyone who can get a college to pay for your full ride! The ones I met were using it as an opportunity to get someplace in the world. Of course their practice and training schedule was intense - I doubt that any of them could have taken a full CS load at the same time even if they wanted to. There just aren't enough hours in the day. But, once those guys got out and got middle-class jobs, maybe their kids could do CS.
Portland State University's new College of Engineering and Computer Science building was paid for with an $8 million grant, and the school renamed after a returning EE grad Fariborz Maseeh, who made a zillion dollars founding a startup in MEMS. He was also a foreign student, originally from Iran, BTW. Many of the smart folks at Intel and Tektronix are graduates from what is now known as Maseeh. (It should be noted that he went to grad school at UT Austin and MIT).
EE is not the same as CS, but I figure this counts - they're a lot closer in similarity than either is to basket weaving or football.
I once read an article which noted that while Michael Jordan made something like $30,000 a day, he would have to play basketball for several hundred years to catch up to Bill Gates. (I don't recall the actual numbers.) I would be interested to see a comparison of total CS-related employment income vs. total pro sports income, especially when you could the Bill Gates, Larry E, Larry P, etc. I would expect that it shows that there is a potential for CS grads to contribute back to the schools that exceeds anything the football jocks can do. But it's mostly spread thinner among more people.
There's another possibility. I did not RTFA, so I don't know if the absolute numbers were in there, but if the number of unvaccinated kids is small relative to the number of vaccinated kids, then it could just be an artifact of the small numbers. There is a theorem in probability about this IIRC, but I forget the name. It's often mentioned with respect to false positives in blood tests, for example.
If a blood test for a disease is 90% accurate for both positive and negative results (for simplicity we use the same value), but only 3% of the population truly has the disease, then the following can occur:
Of the 3% that have the disease, 10% (0.3% of the total population) will show negative Of the 97% that don't have the disease, 10% will show positive - more than three times as many as the number who actually have the disease. This is the key fact - the results may be purely due to this kind of imbalance.
Only the 2.7% that have the disease will correctly show positive. In the total population about 12.7% will show positive, of which over 3/4 will be false.
Substitute vaccination for blood test - some small percentage of vaccinations will fail, but if the incidence of the disease is relatively quite small, that failure will show as a majority of those who have the disease.
The Wikipedia article on Wankel rotary engines is pretty interesting. And I also found there is one about the GM engine, which is also illuminating. GM had a pretty good start and was going to use the engine in the Vega, but had trouble with emissions, then fuel economy, then parts wear, engineering schedules were running out, then a change in management.
The last line in the latter article notes that the AMC Pacer had to go with an inline six, not a V8. So I stand corrected on that point. (Hmm. I wonder if they could have gone to a 'boxer' opposed-six instead?)
My brother had _three_ of them over a half-dozen years. He dearly loved them. I kinda liked them, from afar. Alas, the Pacer got done in by the vicissitudes of technology and intercorporate relations. It was originally designed around the prototype rotary engine that GM was planning to produce - that's how the low hood came into being. The original car was underpowered but the new rotary was going to fix that. However, GM cancelled the rotary, and AMC was left with a car that didn't have room for a V8. So the next year's model had the hump in the hood, as they crammed an existing V8 design in there. But the V8 was also too heavy and had other issues - I think it restricted the turning ability too.
Why are so many taxis I see in Vancouver Priuses? Are all of those business people INSANE? And they keep replacing them when they wear out with new hybrids?
I'm guessing, but I expect that:
a) there is a tax break or subsidy involved;
b) taxis tend to spend a lot of time in stop and go traffic, waiting for lights, and waiting for passengers, and spend relatively little time at speed on the freeway where the gas engine would be running. Since a hybrid's engine stops running when the car's not going, they may be saving a lot of idle-time fuel burn.
Actually, unless things are different in California than New England, resale prices on all Subarus is pretty good. I think it's got the best overall resale value of any manufacturer right now. To my detriment - my old Outback got totalled, and it cost me about $5000 more for a newer one than I wanted to pay. I bought a 2007 with 69000 miles. It needed a water pump, and the dealer replaced the timing belt while he had it open, so it should be good for another 100,000 plus miles before needing much of anything. Here in NE Subaru owners basically don't trade them in - they run them for 200,000 or 250,000 miles. For me that would be over 20 years for a new one, 10+ years for the one I have.
Oddly enough, there's your answer. AC is more than 100% efficient on the heat side. They should build the AC so you either the hot side or the cold side blows into the car. It would also heat up almost instantly. Such AC systems (AKA 'heat pumps') exist - my boat has one. It either heats the water in the ocean and cools me, or heats me and cools the water in the ocean.
As a former tru_u_u_ck owner, I have to note that there is a significant group who actually _need_ trucks. Probably only about 1 in 5, but still. And the latest F150 and equivalent reportedly get MPG in the mid-20s on the highway. My old 1991 F250 got about 13, and the 1973 Chevy before that got about 7 - just before I gave it to someone who was going to rebuild it into a custom truck, and blew the engine up driving it home!:D Also, trucks only improve one's chances of procreation in some less-populated parts of the country. A lot of girls (especially city girls) just don't feel romantic climbing three steps to get into the cab, and riding what is essentially a self-propelled buckboard wagon. When I had my truck, for first dates I generally just rented a car.
After my Subaru Outback got wrecked, I had a rental for a month. For about three weeks it was a Prius. I kinda liked it. I averaged 46 MPG without changing my driving style. So I looked into getting a used one. There were none in my area (New England) for anything like a reasonable price. I ended up getting another Outback (I carry a lot of boat parts and other stuff, so I need some cargo space, and I like AWD in hypothetically snowy New England). I only get about 25 MPG but hey.
I've been told an interesting secret - pull the fuse for the front drive part of the AWD system, and you'll get about 2-3 MPG better. But that's a bit too far off the reservation for me these days (long past the days of rebuilding my VW engine for the fourth time). I'd have to find out about how the wear and tear is affected.
Lithium-ion is explosive (see the various laptop and iPod videos). Putting that next to a gasoline-filled tank == unwise. Also NiMH is not environmentally-toxic so it is the greener choice versus lithium.
I'll disagree slightly on a couple of points.
- Yes, the Li Ion batteries that have been used in laptops etc. have issues with overheating and exploding. However there are several other Li-based technologies such as Lithium Phosphate, Lithium Iron Phosphate and Lithium Titanate that do not have the fire risk. The LiPh and LiFePh batteries are heavier, charge and discharge slower, but don't catch fire - they are good for tasks that involve running for a long time, then slower charging (still faster than Lead-Acid IIRC). I just learned of the LiTi ones, which use a nano technology to get much better efficiency, charging speed and still supposedly also don't catch fire. The ones in laptops are making a tradeoff of cost and safety controls vs. speed and light weight, in order to keep laptop weight down and charging times shorter.
- I think your attitude toward NiMH might change if you get a peek at pictures of the areas around the two big nickel mines and processing sites in the world, one in Canada and one in Russia. Reportedly in both cases nothing grows over an area of 100 square miles. Lithium mining appears to have some workplace hazards (again, that pesky fire thing) but is overall Li mining is considered to have among the least environmental impacts of all mining operations. Also, having just Googled a bit, I found that most people consider Li batteries less hazardous (when they go to landfills, etc.) than NiMH. Of course both are much better than lead-acid. The car makers seem to be stepping up - for example (it sez here) Toyota offers $200 bounty on returned battery packs.
Yes, it's a problem - like so many things affected by US politics combined with US corporate reasoning, AmTrak is somewhat the worst of all possible worlds - it gets hind tit on the rails, as the rails are owned by the railroad companies and freight gets first priority, and it is essentially managed by Congress in such a way as to prevent it from succeeding.
My grand scheme for the railroads (which would have worked great a while back, when they were really struggling) was to nationalize the actual routes - buy the actual line tracks from the companies and some of the marshalling yards, possibly paying for the purchase by giving the rail companies free use for some number of years. Then the rail companies would be free of the burden of maintaining all the line tracks but could continue to operate their freight services at the same or lower cost as they have at present. The government is pretty good at maintaining roads and infrastructure, and could build new routes according to community need. Then allow any company that can meet reasonable standards to use the rails to provide passenger service from point A to point B, at reasonable per-mile rates. This would eliminate the essential monopoly each rail company has on each route, and would allow entrepreneurial folks to take the risks to develop good passenger service between places that appear to make sense. So it's a win-win-win. Back a few years ago when the railroads were getting bailed out (see the history of CSX, just for example), this could have been done. I think now it's probably not workable because the rail companies are doing OK.
Unfortunately, Congress, being essentially a big committee, can only agree on 'beige' solutions. Creative solutions will not make it through the sausage grinder.
A co-worker's neighbor drove 100 miles each way, 2.5 hours THROUGH DOWNTOWN L.A., for years. If he left the house by 5AM he got through downtown L.A. by 6 or 6:15 and made it to work in Ventura by about 7:30. If he was 15 minutes later, he got hung up in the AM commuter traffic, and got to work about 9:30.
In his case, he lived in a very nice expensive suburb (Mission Viejo CA), had several kids in school etc. He was a doctor. He got a new job, and spent 5 hours a day commuting so he didn't have to uproot his family. That was his choice - probably not the one I would have made, but hey. IMHO he should have gotten a helicopter!
Actually the batteries are just plain expensive - the car makers are buying them from the battery makers, and the cost of making them is high. It will get cheaper as new high-volume methods are developed, but it's not just companies trying to rake it in. Mining and shipping battery materials is always going to be more expensive than shipping liquids through a pipeline.
Well, there is another factor - it's where one lives. I used to live on 40 acres, 6 miles from the nearest quickie mart and 25 miles from the nearest grocery store. I worked from home, so no commute. But I had a Ford F250 4WD for when I did drive. Sometimes my driveway (1/4 mile) had 2 feet of snow. So, 13 MPG when I went shopping - but that was only every couple of weeks typically. I had one neighbor who lost one job, got a new one that involved an 80 mile commute each way. There was no way he was going to uproot his family, sell the house etc. for a job that was likely to only last two years.
There are a lot of areas in the US where it's just a long way from Point A to Point B - the US is, like 170th country in the world in population density. A lot of that is accounted for by desert Southwest, but even discounting that, distances tend to be long, and we're used to thinking in those terms. Back in the day I used to hitchhike 600 miles from Portland to San Francisco for a long weekend - multiple times in one year.
If you only need to rent on the weekends, check out Enterprise. Some, not all, Enterprise locations (in the US) offer a weekend deal - three days for $10 per day. Pick up Friday AM or PM, return Monday AM or PM. I used to live in Houston, went three years without a car, rode my bike to work. I walked to groceries and most other casual shopping. Once a month I rented a car for $30 for the weekend and did longer trips. I know they still do it, because I get offers from them in the mail.
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If you use drawer slides in the rack, and use reasonable lengths for wiring, it could work. Another option would be to build a hinged frame to mount the rack on, so it can rotate out from the wall. Or, put it on/in a wall where you can open up the backside of the wall with a door that gives you access (I'm assuming the back of the rack isn't a solid panel). This would also make it easier to route cables down inside the wall.
In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. - Johm 14:2
The usual interpretation of this has to do with Heaven, but who knows? It could mean that we are meant to 'go forth and multiply' and populate the universe. It's just possible that we are the first, the only, and have the potential to propagate Life from its only original source. Maybe that is our calling - to seed Life everywhere. Truly, if/when we do move into space, we will be bringing many other forms of life with us - a significant part of our entire ecosystem.
I predict that someone will use this quotation and others to inspire a space-based neo-Christian (plus possibly also neo-some other beliefs) religion. And if that is what it takes to get us moving off this planet, I'm for it.
(See also James Bliss, "A Case of Conscience". An interesting question is raised.
Actually it will turn out that the solution to P = NP is in NP. :)
Dang, I had written up a nice answer and then accidentally surfed to another page.
See Complexity - it's quite interesting. IIRC, the question of "the minimum number of bits to solve a problem" is itself in NP.
Whether it is in Goedel's class of things that are true but unprovable, hmmm. Could happen. Certainly has happened, empirically, so far. :)
Well, I did mention this:
We also have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, ameliorated slightly by the plethora of silly loopholes and exceptions, that keep a million or so accountants busy.
Stuff like the gasohol subsidy - basically welfare for Cargill and ADM are good examples of bad ideas. In fact, using tax policy and subsidies for social engineering are bad ideas in general IMHO.
I'll just add that, if the Health and Human Services dept. were a 501(c)3 charity, the entire management would go to jail for corrupt practices. Their cost of administration compared to what actually gets to the street is abominable. And having worked for an independent social service agency with some federal funding (a long time ago), where it took, as we counted, 23 levels of decision making to authorize purchase of pencils. Needless to say, the meetings, reports and analysis cost thousands of times what the pencils cost.
Just for grins, do a bit of research to find out just how much taxes that 1% actually pays. You'll be surprised (hint - average, according to this is in the range of 20% of income. the top 0.1% is the Buffett group, paying about 8% of gross income.). The bottom 50% pay about 12% of their income - but almost 4/5 of that group actually gets subsidies back from the gov that exceed their tax payments for a net negative payment for that group.
The top 1% of income earners in the US pay about 40% of the total income tax, the top 5% about 60%. The top 25% pay 87%. The bottom 50% pay about 2.7% , but again receive more than they put in.
We also have the highest corporate tax rates in the world, ameliorated slightly by the plethora of silly loopholes and exceptions, that keep a million or so accountants busy.
I note that when the Constitutional amendment to allow the income tax was passed, the PR was that it would always be limited to the top 2% of income earners, and would be limited to 2% of their income. Obviously once the camel got into the tent, it began to eat everything in sight. Too bad the amendment didn't include any limits! At one time the entire federal government was paid for by the postage on mail, and the liquor tax. Was that so bad? When you didn't like how one state did things, you could move to another. Now the feds have their noses in everyone's behinds, sniffing to see what we had for dinner. That, IMHO is not the role of a FEDERAL government structure.
Meanwhile, the present administration's spending is (IIRC) 40% of the entire GDP. Of that, it is borrowing about 40% and of that, the Federal Reserve is buying about 60% because the number of suckers willing to buy US debt has dropped precipitously. When the Fed buys it, it is just a silent form of 'quantitative easing', in essence creating money out of thin air. Another name for that is inflation - the most regressive hidden tax there is. 60%X40%x40% = about 10% inflation PER YEAR. :)
Regardless of whose party is in, this has to stop before, like Germany a few decades ago, we will be in the boat where a postage stamp costs $5 billion (no joke - that's what happened, only marks instead of dollars.)
It sounds plausible, maybe. I suppose it would depend on the type of keyboard, and might need to be trained for each keyboard. (Would all those bagel crumbs that fell in between the keys alter the acoustics?) It might be easier from outside the keyboard. Stranger things have been done - bouncing a laser off a window to pick up the sounds in a room (the vibration of the window modulates the laser beam); I think that sounds picked up through a wall have been used to place people inside the room, behind the wall.
I guess this is one for Mythbusters.
But from the same perspective, all those football rooting alumni made their money elsewhere as well. This does lead me to wonder how much does the average CS graduate donate back to their U, or especially their CS/ECE dept.? I confess, I'm not a big donor by any count.
I should note that the last time I was in school, I ran into some of the basketball players in the gym occasionally - they were all good guys and worked very hard, and from what I could tell were planning on real jobs after graduation. I'm not denigrating anyone who can get a college to pay for your full ride! The ones I met were using it as an opportunity to get someplace in the world. Of course their practice and training schedule was intense - I doubt that any of them could have taken a full CS load at the same time even if they wanted to. There just aren't enough hours in the day. But, once those guys got out and got middle-class jobs, maybe their kids could do CS.
Portland State University's new College of Engineering and Computer Science building was paid for with an $8 million grant, and the school renamed after a returning EE grad Fariborz Maseeh, who made a zillion dollars founding a startup in MEMS. He was also a foreign student, originally from Iran, BTW. Many of the smart folks at Intel and Tektronix are graduates from what is now known as Maseeh. (It should be noted that he went to grad school at UT Austin and MIT).
EE is not the same as CS, but I figure this counts - they're a lot closer in similarity than either is to basket weaving or football.
I once read an article which noted that while Michael Jordan made something like $30,000 a day, he would have to play basketball for several hundred years to catch up to Bill Gates. (I don't recall the actual numbers.) I would be interested to see a comparison of total CS-related employment income vs. total pro sports income, especially when you could the Bill Gates, Larry E, Larry P, etc. I would expect that it shows that there is a potential for CS grads to contribute back to the schools that exceeds anything the football jocks can do. But it's mostly spread thinner among more people.
There's another possibility. I did not RTFA, so I don't know if the absolute numbers were in there, but if the number of unvaccinated kids is small relative to the number of vaccinated kids, then it could just be an artifact of the small numbers. There is a theorem in probability about this IIRC, but I forget the name. It's often mentioned with respect to false positives in blood tests, for example.
If a blood test for a disease is 90% accurate for both positive and negative results (for simplicity we use the same value), but only 3% of the population truly has the disease, then the following can occur:
Of the 3% that have the disease, 10% (0.3% of the total population) will show negative
Of the 97% that don't have the disease, 10% will show positive - more than three times as many as the number who actually have the disease. This is the key fact - the results may be purely due to this kind of imbalance.
Only the 2.7% that have the disease will correctly show positive. In the total population about 12.7% will show positive, of which over 3/4 will be false.
Substitute vaccination for blood test - some small percentage of vaccinations will fail, but if the incidence of the disease is relatively quite small, that failure will show as a majority of those who have the disease.
The Wikipedia article on Wankel rotary engines is pretty interesting. And I also found there is one about the GM engine, which is also illuminating. GM had a pretty good start and was going to use the engine in the Vega, but had trouble with emissions, then fuel economy, then parts wear, engineering schedules were running out, then a change in management.
The last line in the latter article notes that the AMC Pacer had to go with an inline six, not a V8. So I stand corrected on that point. (Hmm. I wonder if they could have gone to a 'boxer' opposed-six instead?)
At $5-8000. That's a TON of gas right there even at todays high prices.
Actually, at 4 lbs. per gallon, $3.75 per gallon, it's 5333 lbs. - almost TWO TONS. :D
My brother had _three_ of them over a half-dozen years. He dearly loved them. I kinda liked them, from afar. Alas, the Pacer got done in by the vicissitudes of technology and intercorporate relations. It was originally designed around the prototype rotary engine that GM was planning to produce - that's how the low hood came into being. The original car was underpowered but the new rotary was going to fix that. However, GM cancelled the rotary, and AMC was left with a car that didn't have room for a V8. So the next year's model had the hump in the hood, as they crammed an existing V8 design in there. But the V8 was also too heavy and had other issues - I think it restricted the turning ability too.
Why are so many taxis I see in Vancouver Priuses? Are all of those business people INSANE? And they keep replacing them when they wear out with new hybrids?
I'm guessing, but I expect that:
a) there is a tax break or subsidy involved;
b) taxis tend to spend a lot of time in stop and go traffic, waiting for lights, and waiting for passengers, and spend relatively little time at speed on the freeway where the gas engine would be running. Since a hybrid's engine stops running when the car's not going, they may be saving a lot of idle-time fuel burn.
Actually, unless things are different in California than New England, resale prices on all Subarus is pretty good. I think it's got the best overall resale value of any manufacturer right now. To my detriment - my old Outback got totalled, and it cost me about $5000 more for a newer one than I wanted to pay. I bought a 2007 with 69000 miles. It needed a water pump, and the dealer replaced the timing belt while he had it open, so it should be good for another 100,000 plus miles before needing much of anything. Here in NE Subaru owners basically don't trade them in - they run them for 200,000 or 250,000 miles. For me that would be over 20 years for a new one, 10+ years for the one I have.
the increase in smug levels around San Francisco
Haha. I've lived out there before. Sometimes misspelling can lead to truth! :D
The AC works much better.
Oddly enough, there's your answer. AC is more than 100% efficient on the heat side. They should build the AC so you either the hot side or the cold side blows into the car. It would also heat up almost instantly. Such AC systems (AKA 'heat pumps') exist - my boat has one. It either heats the water in the ocean and cools me, or heats me and cools the water in the ocean.
As a former tru_u_u_ck owner, I have to note that there is a significant group who actually _need_ trucks. Probably only about 1 in 5, but still. And the latest F150 and equivalent reportedly get MPG in the mid-20s on the highway. My old 1991 F250 got about 13, and the 1973 Chevy before that got about 7 - just before I gave it to someone who was going to rebuild it into a custom truck, and blew the engine up driving it home! :D Also, trucks only improve one's chances of procreation in some less-populated parts of the country. A lot of girls (especially city girls) just don't feel romantic climbing three steps to get into the cab, and riding what is essentially a self-propelled buckboard wagon. When I had my truck, for first dates I generally just rented a car.
After my Subaru Outback got wrecked, I had a rental for a month. For about three weeks it was a Prius. I kinda liked it. I averaged 46 MPG without changing my driving style. So I looked into getting a used one. There were none in my area (New England) for anything like a reasonable price. I ended up getting another Outback (I carry a lot of boat parts and other stuff, so I need some cargo space, and I like AWD in hypothetically snowy New England). I only get about 25 MPG but hey.
I've been told an interesting secret - pull the fuse for the front drive part of the AWD system, and you'll get about 2-3 MPG better. But that's a bit too far off the reservation for me these days (long past the days of rebuilding my VW engine for the fourth time). I'd have to find out about how the wear and tear is affected.
Lithium-ion is explosive (see the various laptop and iPod videos). Putting that next to a gasoline-filled tank == unwise. Also NiMH is not environmentally-toxic so it is the greener choice versus lithium.
I'll disagree slightly on a couple of points.
- Yes, the Li Ion batteries that have been used in laptops etc. have issues with overheating and exploding. However there are several other Li-based technologies such as Lithium Phosphate, Lithium Iron Phosphate and Lithium Titanate that do not have the fire risk. The LiPh and LiFePh batteries are heavier, charge and discharge slower, but don't catch fire - they are good for tasks that involve running for a long time, then slower charging (still faster than Lead-Acid IIRC). I just learned of the LiTi ones, which use a nano technology to get much better efficiency, charging speed and still supposedly also don't catch fire. The ones in laptops are making a tradeoff of cost and safety controls vs. speed and light weight, in order to keep laptop weight down and charging times shorter.
- I think your attitude toward NiMH might change if you get a peek at pictures of the areas around the two big nickel mines and processing sites in the world, one in Canada and one in Russia. Reportedly in both cases nothing grows over an area of 100 square miles. Lithium mining appears to have some workplace hazards (again, that pesky fire thing) but is overall Li mining is considered to have among the least environmental impacts of all mining operations. Also, having just Googled a bit, I found that most people consider Li batteries less hazardous (when they go to landfills, etc.) than NiMH. Of course both are much better than lead-acid. The car makers seem to be stepping up - for example (it sez here) Toyota offers $200 bounty on returned battery packs.
Yes, it's a problem - like so many things affected by US politics combined with US corporate reasoning, AmTrak is somewhat the worst of all possible worlds - it gets hind tit on the rails, as the rails are owned by the railroad companies and freight gets first priority, and it is essentially managed by Congress in such a way as to prevent it from succeeding.
My grand scheme for the railroads (which would have worked great a while back, when they were really struggling) was to nationalize the actual routes - buy the actual line tracks from the companies and some of the marshalling yards, possibly paying for the purchase by giving the rail companies free use for some number of years. Then the rail companies would be free of the burden of maintaining all the line tracks but could continue to operate their freight services at the same or lower cost as they have at present. The government is pretty good at maintaining roads and infrastructure, and could build new routes according to community need. Then allow any company that can meet reasonable standards to use the rails to provide passenger service from point A to point B, at reasonable per-mile rates. This would eliminate the essential monopoly each rail company has on each route, and would allow entrepreneurial folks to take the risks to develop good passenger service between places that appear to make sense. So it's a win-win-win. Back a few years ago when the railroads were getting bailed out (see the history of CSX, just for example), this could have been done. I think now it's probably not workable because the rail companies are doing OK.
Unfortunately, Congress, being essentially a big committee, can only agree on 'beige' solutions. Creative solutions will not make it through the sausage grinder.
A co-worker's neighbor drove 100 miles each way, 2.5 hours THROUGH DOWNTOWN L.A., for years. If he left the house by 5AM he got through downtown L.A. by 6 or 6:15 and made it to work in Ventura by about 7:30. If he was 15 minutes later, he got hung up in the AM commuter traffic, and got to work about 9:30.
In his case, he lived in a very nice expensive suburb (Mission Viejo CA), had several kids in school etc. He was a doctor. He got a new job, and spent 5 hours a day commuting so he didn't have to uproot his family. That was his choice - probably not the one I would have made, but hey. IMHO he should have gotten a helicopter!
Actually the batteries are just plain expensive - the car makers are buying them from the battery makers, and the cost of making them is high. It will get cheaper as new high-volume methods are developed, but it's not just companies trying to rake it in. Mining and shipping battery materials is always going to be more expensive than shipping liquids through a pipeline.
Well, there is another factor - it's where one lives. I used to live on 40 acres, 6 miles from the nearest quickie mart and 25 miles from the nearest grocery store. I worked from home, so no commute. But I had a Ford F250 4WD for when I did drive. Sometimes my driveway (1/4 mile) had 2 feet of snow. So, 13 MPG when I went shopping - but that was only every couple of weeks typically. I had one neighbor who lost one job, got a new one that involved an 80 mile commute each way. There was no way he was going to uproot his family, sell the house etc. for a job that was likely to only last two years.
There are a lot of areas in the US where it's just a long way from Point A to Point B - the US is, like 170th country in the world in population density. A lot of that is accounted for by desert Southwest, but even discounting that, distances tend to be long, and we're used to thinking in those terms. Back in the day I used to hitchhike 600 miles from Portland to San Francisco for a long weekend - multiple times in one year.
If you only need to rent on the weekends, check out Enterprise. Some, not all, Enterprise locations (in the US) offer a weekend deal - three days for $10 per day. Pick up Friday AM or PM, return Monday AM or PM. I used to live in Houston, went three years without a car, rode my bike to work. I walked to groceries and most other casual shopping. Once a month I rented a car for $30 for the weekend and did longer trips. I know they still do it, because I get offers from them in the mail.