A 2007 study by the Electric Power Research Institute calculated that powering a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle would cost the equivalent of roughly 75 cents per gallon of gasoline. I'm not sure where you live, but we haven't seen 75 cents per gallon of gasoline around here since the 1970s. Chevy is claiming that at average electric rates it will cost $1.50 to charge the Chevy Volt's battery. The Nissan Leaf will be able to go 100 miles on $2.80. If I had a Volt and used it to commute the 20 mile distance to my office, my round trip would cost me $1.50. I currently drive a Honda Accord that gets about 30 mpg on drives to work, less if there's ethanol in the gas. Gas currently costs about $3/gal where I live, resulting in a round trip cost of about $4. That's a savings of $2.50 per commute.
Comparing the tax break given for purchasing a hybrid to the "kickbacks" (Corn producers are subsidized in the name of environmentalism, i.e. ethanol, but I'm not sure what subsidies you are referring to that are given to energy companies. Perhaps, you have just been trained to think that oil companies are bad.) given to some corporations is pointless.
He could have been referring to the incredibly low 9.2% effective tax rate that the petroleum industry pays. Or that for many small and medium size petroleum companies the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by various credits. Tax rates that low are effectively a subsidy. There are lots of other subsidies given to the petroleum industry. It isn't difficult to find them if you take the time to look. I'm not saying these subsidies to the petroleum industry are wrong, they may be justifiable for national strategic reasons. For the same reason, subsidies to jump start an EV infrastructure could also be a worthwhile investment for the government.
Transporting energy in chemical form, i.e. as gasoline, is much, much more efficient than transmitting electricity.
That depends on how the energy is being used. If we're talking about heating a house, then yes, fuel oil is more efficient than electricity. But for moving cars, ICEs are so inefficient that using batteries charged through the electrical grid is more efficient. A 2007 study by the Electric Power Research Institute calculated that powering a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle would cost the equivalent of roughly 75 cents per gallon of gasoline.
Disposal of hybrids and electrics and their batteries must also be taken into account.
What disposal issues did you have in mind? Is this any more of an issue that currently exists for ICE vehicles? The material in EV batteries and electrical motors is recyclable.
In fact, the very fact that laws are being proposed to push alternatively powered vehicles onto consumers strongly suggests that the technologies are simply not commercially viable yet.
I guess this is like the internet, then. It wasn't commercially viable when the government started subsidizing it, either. Fortunately, legislators like Al Gore had enough foresight to see what it could become.
I live in a rural area in central NY, and you might find it hard to believe, but I know a lot of people with families that don't own an SUV or similarly large vehicle. They got over that fetish somewhere around the turn of the century. Many of them own a mid-size sedan and an compact or sub-compact car. My family gets by with a Honda Accord and a Honda Civic. The Civic very, very rarely drives more than 75 miles in a day. With some planning there's no reason it would ever need to. We managed to raise two children without the need for an SUV or something like it. Really, it is possible to get by, even in a snowy rural area, without an SUV.
It's also well known that many people own two cars. My family owns two cars. My wife and I have analyzed our car usage and concluded that we could easily get by with one of our two cars having a limit of 100 miles. An EV with a range of 100 miles or more would be a viable choice for our family, as it would be for millions of others. SUVs and pickup trucks are a bad choice for many, but they're the right choice for some. Small cars don't work for some families, but they're a good choice for others. Just because something doesn't work for everyone doesn't mean it's a bad choice for many.
The problem isn't the idiots in charge, it's the idiot voters who elect them in the first place. The government in the US is the result of the contradictory demands of a highly polarized and frequently badly misinformed electorate.
How exactly does this make us anymore secure? If a terrorist could exploit a loophole in the pat down procedure, then he wouldn't care whether it was anymore embarrassing.
Once you no longer have the right to move freely without the proper documents and every shred of your personal freedom is gone, then you'll truly be free. Remember, the next time we enter into another war, and anyone who asks too many questions is labeled unpatriotic, that WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. And then thank Big Brother that you have it so good.
Let's extrapolate:
Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
Let's extrapolate further then. Why can't we put a cop in your house? I mean, if you're not breaking any law, so why should you care? Therefore, if you don't want any cops in your home, cops should not be allowed on the street.
But seriously, almost everyone agrees you need some level of police presence, or at least police need to be able travel freely about, but almost no one thinks they should be able to just willy nilly go into anyone's residence. Private space is private, public space is public. I believe there are both practical and civil liberty problems related to constant public surveillance, but I don't think that it follows that just because an activity is permitted in public spaces it should be allowed in private spaces, or vice versa.
Do you even know what socialism is? Because it isn't this.
Socialism - Anything political that is disliked by a conservative.
Fascism - Anything political that is disliked by a liberal.
I think that used to be true. Any more some conservatives seem to use the terms interchangeably. There have been plenty of instances of conservatives claiming that Obama is a Fascist. Some conservatives seem torn between calling him a socialist and a fascist. Then there are the posters showing Obama with a Hitler mustache. Who knew that pushing the health care bill through the senate was equivalent to the final solution and the jailing and execution virtually all political opposition?
And the GDR was the German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany. There's frequently not much of a relationship between what political movements call themselves and what they actually are.
When you own something you are allowed to do stuff with it. Try just willy nilly walking into the corporate offices of a corporation in which you own stock and see what you're allowed to do. The relationship that most shareholders have with the companies in which they own shares is about as owner like as the relationship that depositors in a bank have with their bank.
The current status of large corporations in the US is something that the founders couldn't even imagine. Corporations as they now exist are unlike any entity at the time of this country's founding. If huge transnational corporations had the same influence in the 18th century as they do today I'm sure there would have been some provision in the constitution to protect individuals against corporations and to reduce their ability to influence legislation.
In some US states Lee Lacey would be guilty of statutory rape and be facing time in jail. Even more so if Chelsea Rowberry was under 17 when she got pregnant. Several years ago a guy in the state of Georgia was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.
When my son was in kindergarten we were visiting my parents. Everyone was sitting around a table talking and laughing, and all of a sudden my 5 year old son says "kiss my pussy", and laughs. Everyone got quiet and looked at him. I calmly asked him why he said that, and he said the girls on the school bus said it to each other all the time and then laughed. While I explained to him that the phrase was not one he should use, and not just because it didn't apply to his anatomy, I couldn't help thinking that it was unfortunate that a harmless euphemism for a part of the body should be considered vulgar.
Or you could tax heavily but be more fiscally responsible like Germany. The people in Greece want to have the social benefits of Sweden and the tax rates of Mississippi.
In the US there are a plethora of ways to invest money that have little or nothing to do with creating jobs in the US. Would someone investing in IBM be creating jobs in the US or India and China? How about investing in Boeing? To a lot of people it matters where the jobs are created.
I love how people complain about tax. Illinois has some of the highest tax rates in the country. People usually end up around 25% tax, and 9.25% sales tax.
You're the first I've seen making any reference to "intimidation," which is entirely subjective. How are they being intimidating?
In much the same way as Americans might feel if I started selling toilet paper with the US flag on it.
In and of itself, that would be insulting and disrespectful, but not intimidating. I don't know of any Americans that would feel intimidated by putting the US flag on toilet paper, or burning the flag, for that matter.
I work from home these days, and I take one or two small lay down and doze naps each day. It makes a huge difference in my productivity and the quality of my work. I work in a very nap tolerant organization, and even when people are in the office management doesn't mind when people close their office doors to nap for a bit. Our management cares about real results, like whether you're meeting your commitments and that your clients are happy. This nap tolerant attitude may be the result of the organization consisting of older, experienced developers, architects and managers who have worked with each other for ten or more years, and trust that when you say something is going to be done by a specific date it will be completed and really ready for integration testing by that date.
One approach to charging stations would be to have them scattered about at retail locations where people normally spend a bit of time, like super markets, malls, parking garages or golf courses. Employers could could provide charging stations in their parking lots as a benefit for working for them. The same RFID card that gives you access to the building would turn on the subsidized electricity that fuels your vehicle. Businesses could offer complementary charges to paying customers. Unlike gas stations, where large tanks of toxic material must be supplied, maintained, and monitored, charging stations seem like they could be placed in a much wider variety of locations. Just as ATMs were at one time only available at banks, but are now scattered about, charging stations do not need to be located in specialized locations. We can go from having to stop at specialized locations to fuel our vehicles, to a situation where charging stations are ubiquitous. In a scenario where you can easily fill up at any number of locations where you are normally going to be spending a bit of time, electric cars could end up being just as, or even more, convenient than ICE vehicles. Yes, there are millions of people for whom electric vehicles are not a viable alternative, but there are tens of millions of people that could get by just fine with an electric vehicle and easy access to fast charge charging stations.
I had heard that current rechargeable pacemakers aren't as popular as the non-rechargeable units because they're much bigger and bulkier than non-rechargeable units.
After reading TFA, I was left wondering if this technique could be used to generate enough power to eliminate or reduce the need to replace pacemaker batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
A 2007 study by the Electric Power Research Institute calculated that powering a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle would cost the equivalent of roughly 75 cents per gallon of gasoline. I'm not sure where you live, but we haven't seen 75 cents per gallon of gasoline around here since the 1970s. Chevy is claiming that at average electric rates it will cost $1.50 to charge the Chevy Volt's battery. The Nissan Leaf will be able to go 100 miles on $2.80. If I had a Volt and used it to commute the 20 mile distance to my office, my round trip would cost me $1.50. I currently drive a Honda Accord that gets about 30 mpg on drives to work, less if there's ethanol in the gas. Gas currently costs about $3/gal where I live, resulting in a round trip cost of about $4. That's a savings of $2.50 per commute.
Comparing the tax break given for purchasing a hybrid to the "kickbacks" (Corn producers are subsidized in the name of environmentalism, i.e. ethanol, but I'm not sure what subsidies you are referring to that are given to energy companies. Perhaps, you have just been trained to think that oil companies are bad.) given to some corporations is pointless.
He could have been referring to the incredibly low 9.2% effective tax rate that the petroleum industry pays. Or that for many small and medium size petroleum companies the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by various credits. Tax rates that low are effectively a subsidy. There are lots of other subsidies given to the petroleum industry. It isn't difficult to find them if you take the time to look. I'm not saying these subsidies to the petroleum industry are wrong, they may be justifiable for national strategic reasons. For the same reason, subsidies to jump start an EV infrastructure could also be a worthwhile investment for the government.
Transporting energy in chemical form, i.e. as gasoline, is much, much more efficient than transmitting electricity.
That depends on how the energy is being used. If we're talking about heating a house, then yes, fuel oil is more efficient than electricity. But for moving cars, ICEs are so inefficient that using batteries charged through the electrical grid is more efficient. A 2007 study by the Electric Power Research Institute calculated that powering a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle would cost the equivalent of roughly 75 cents per gallon of gasoline.
Disposal of hybrids and electrics and their batteries must also be taken into account.
What disposal issues did you have in mind? Is this any more of an issue that currently exists for ICE vehicles? The material in EV batteries and electrical motors is recyclable.
In fact, the very fact that laws are being proposed to push alternatively powered vehicles onto consumers strongly suggests that the technologies are simply not commercially viable yet.
I guess this is like the internet, then. It wasn't commercially viable when the government started subsidizing it, either. Fortunately, legislators like Al Gore had enough foresight to see what it could become.
I live in a rural area in central NY, and you might find it hard to believe, but I know a lot of people with families that don't own an SUV or similarly large vehicle. They got over that fetish somewhere around the turn of the century. Many of them own a mid-size sedan and an compact or sub-compact car. My family gets by with a Honda Accord and a Honda Civic. The Civic very, very rarely drives more than 75 miles in a day. With some planning there's no reason it would ever need to. We managed to raise two children without the need for an SUV or something like it. Really, it is possible to get by, even in a snowy rural area, without an SUV.
It's also well known that many people own two cars. My family owns two cars. My wife and I have analyzed our car usage and concluded that we could easily get by with one of our two cars having a limit of 100 miles. An EV with a range of 100 miles or more would be a viable choice for our family, as it would be for millions of others. SUVs and pickup trucks are a bad choice for many, but they're the right choice for some. Small cars don't work for some families, but they're a good choice for others. Just because something doesn't work for everyone doesn't mean it's a bad choice for many.
The problem isn't the idiots in charge, it's the idiot voters who elect them in the first place. The government in the US is the result of the contradictory demands of a highly polarized and frequently badly misinformed electorate.
It would be cool if you could program where the characters were along the different axises. That way people could customize it for their preferences.
Just tell them you are gay, before the pat down. That will make them uncomfortable.
Or just start moaning and bucking your hips when they get to your crotch.
How exactly does this make us anymore secure? If a terrorist could exploit a loophole in the pat down procedure, then he wouldn't care whether it was anymore embarrassing.
Once you no longer have the right to move freely without the proper documents and every shred of your personal freedom is gone, then you'll truly be free. Remember, the next time we enter into another war, and anyone who asks too many questions is labeled unpatriotic, that WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. And then thank Big Brother that you have it so good.
After making that comment you might want to check your car for a tracking device.
Let's extrapolate: Why can't we put a camera in your house? I mean, you're not breaking the law, so why should you care? Obviously you don't want cameras in your house because you just want to break laws.
Let's extrapolate further then. Why can't we put a cop in your house? I mean, if you're not breaking any law, so why should you care? Therefore, if you don't want any cops in your home, cops should not be allowed on the street.
But seriously, almost everyone agrees you need some level of police presence, or at least police need to be able travel freely about, but almost no one thinks they should be able to just willy nilly go into anyone's residence. Private space is private, public space is public. I believe there are both practical and civil liberty problems related to constant public surveillance, but I don't think that it follows that just because an activity is permitted in public spaces it should be allowed in private spaces, or vice versa.
Do you even know what socialism is? Because it isn't this. Socialism - Anything political that is disliked by a conservative. Fascism - Anything political that is disliked by a liberal.
I think that used to be true. Any more some conservatives seem to use the terms interchangeably. There have been plenty of instances of conservatives claiming that Obama is a Fascist. Some conservatives seem torn between calling him a socialist and a fascist. Then there are the posters showing Obama with a Hitler mustache. Who knew that pushing the health care bill through the senate was equivalent to the final solution and the jailing and execution virtually all political opposition?
And the GDR was the German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany. There's frequently not much of a relationship between what political movements call themselves and what they actually are.
When you own something you are allowed to do stuff with it. Try just willy nilly walking into the corporate offices of a corporation in which you own stock and see what you're allowed to do. The relationship that most shareholders have with the companies in which they own shares is about as owner like as the relationship that depositors in a bank have with their bank.
The current status of large corporations in the US is something that the founders couldn't even imagine. Corporations as they now exist are unlike any entity at the time of this country's founding. If huge transnational corporations had the same influence in the 18th century as they do today I'm sure there would have been some provision in the constitution to protect individuals against corporations and to reduce their ability to influence legislation.
In some US states Lee Lacey would be guilty of statutory rape and be facing time in jail. Even more so if Chelsea Rowberry was under 17 when she got pregnant. Several years ago a guy in the state of Georgia was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.
When my son was in kindergarten we were visiting my parents. Everyone was sitting around a table talking and laughing, and all of a sudden my 5 year old son says "kiss my pussy", and laughs. Everyone got quiet and looked at him. I calmly asked him why he said that, and he said the girls on the school bus said it to each other all the time and then laughed. While I explained to him that the phrase was not one he should use, and not just because it didn't apply to his anatomy, I couldn't help thinking that it was unfortunate that a harmless euphemism for a part of the body should be considered vulgar.
Or you could tax heavily but be more fiscally responsible like Germany. The people in Greece want to have the social benefits of Sweden and the tax rates of Mississippi.
In the US there are a plethora of ways to invest money that have little or nothing to do with creating jobs in the US. Would someone investing in IBM be creating jobs in the US or India and China? How about investing in Boeing? To a lot of people it matters where the jobs are created.
I love how people complain about tax. Illinois has some of the highest tax rates in the country. People usually end up around 25% tax, and 9.25% sales tax.
According to http://www.revenue.state.il.us/businesses/taxinformation/income/individual.htm Illinois has a flat income tax rate of 3% of net income, which is lower than some other states.
You're the first I've seen making any reference to "intimidation," which is entirely subjective. How are they being intimidating?
In much the same way as Americans might feel if I started selling toilet paper with the US flag on it.
In and of itself, that would be insulting and disrespectful, but not intimidating. I don't know of any Americans that would feel intimidated by putting the US flag on toilet paper, or burning the flag, for that matter.
I work from home these days, and I take one or two small lay down and doze naps each day. It makes a huge difference in my productivity and the quality of my work. I work in a very nap tolerant organization, and even when people are in the office management doesn't mind when people close their office doors to nap for a bit. Our management cares about real results, like whether you're meeting your commitments and that your clients are happy. This nap tolerant attitude may be the result of the organization consisting of older, experienced developers, architects and managers who have worked with each other for ten or more years, and trust that when you say something is going to be done by a specific date it will be completed and really ready for integration testing by that date.
One approach to charging stations would be to have them scattered about at retail locations where people normally spend a bit of time, like super markets, malls, parking garages or golf courses. Employers could could provide charging stations in their parking lots as a benefit for working for them. The same RFID card that gives you access to the building would turn on the subsidized electricity that fuels your vehicle. Businesses could offer complementary charges to paying customers. Unlike gas stations, where large tanks of toxic material must be supplied, maintained, and monitored, charging stations seem like they could be placed in a much wider variety of locations. Just as ATMs were at one time only available at banks, but are now scattered about, charging stations do not need to be located in specialized locations. We can go from having to stop at specialized locations to fuel our vehicles, to a situation where charging stations are ubiquitous. In a scenario where you can easily fill up at any number of locations where you are normally going to be spending a bit of time, electric cars could end up being just as, or even more, convenient than ICE vehicles. Yes, there are millions of people for whom electric vehicles are not a viable alternative, but there are tens of millions of people that could get by just fine with an electric vehicle and easy access to fast charge charging stations.
I had heard that current rechargeable pacemakers aren't as popular as the non-rechargeable units because they're much bigger and bulkier than non-rechargeable units.
After reading TFA, I was left wondering if this technique could be used to generate enough power to eliminate or reduce the need to replace pacemaker batteries.
if i see another +5 insightful "correlation != causation" my brain is going to fucking explode.
Then you'd be really ugly. A judge would probably slap you with ten to life just for jaywalking.