Linkstew

Jim Motavalli's New York Times review of the Honda FCX was quite an encouraging read:

Given my experience with fuel-cell prototypes that were noisy, balky and incapable of going very far between refuelings, the FCX was something of a surprise. Featuring the latest generation of Honda's own fuel cells (hundreds of them are arrayed in two multiple sets, called stacks) and a body and electric motor derived from the company's unsuccessful EV Plus battery vehicle, the FCX felt like a real car, not a high-strung test mule.

The FCX carried a federal combined city-highway economy rating of 57 miles per kilogram, but since the car holds less than four kilos of hydrogen - a very light gas - long cruises are a challenge. [...]

The pricing of hydrogen remains fluid. The Department of Energy has estimated that the cost of a kilogram of hydrogen (with roughly the energy content of a gallon of gasoline) could fall to $3 by 2008, but that assumes certain economies of scale that have not yet been established.

In particular, I'm interested in what's involved in preparing hydrogen for usage in a fuel cell. That process needs to be clean and efficient, too.

While searching for this review on news.google.com so I could read the NYT article without logging in, I came across Mike Millikin's discussion of the same NYT article:

A successful plug-in hybrid strategy will have some major PR work to do to counter the apparently automatic (and from what I can tell, unwarranted) bias against a plug-in architecture.

I don't think a bias against plugging in is unwarranted. I suspect people's objections are based on the lack a plug-in terminal infrasctructure . Anything they can't take away from home very long probably isn't going to be received well, and in my case, I wouldn't even be able to use it at home in the first place: I only have street parking for my car; Where would I ever be able to plug it in?

More importantly, as long as there's resistance to plug-ins, there will probably never be enough demand for the infrastructure to overcome the logistical issues with making it available.

See also: laptops.

Morford's recent article (Earth To Humankind: Back Off) combined with the linked article about "The Long Emergency" aren't exactly uplifting reads, to say the least. After reading them, I had one little idea that would make a small difference: how about we stop mass distribting physical media? No more packaging, no more CDs or DVDs, etc. For these things that can be distributed in a purely digital form, why not make that the primary distribution method now, instead of before it's too late even for that?

I know, it's a crazy idea, but I can't help but wonder how much material must go into those industries.

I still haven't had a chance to see Chamber of Secrets, but The Sorcerer's Stone was on TV today, and this thought occurred to me: How could there possibly be any rodents within 50 miles of Hogwarts with all of those owls flapping around?

And yes, I appreciate how silly it is that I'm able to suspend my disbelief for the rest the Harry Potter universe, but that point snapped me out of it.

Ah, home sweet home. Where by "sweet" I mean the sweet smell of the air in the second smoggiest city in the US, of course.

I might bitch a lot about doing dishes, because I don't have a dishwasher and I have to do them by hand and everything. But being home this weekend has made me realize what a crappy job a dishwasher does if you just put the dishes into the dishwasher without scrubbing them a little, first. A dishwasher can't scrub butter off of a knife, for example -- that has to be done by hand no matter which way you slice it.

And doing all of my dishes by hand has shown me that lots of things don't even have to be run through the dishwasher, saving all kinds of electricity and water. Which just means that once I do have a dishwasher some day, I'll just use it sparingly, and not rely on it to actually clean everything magically for me. The commercials might like to lead you to believe that that's how it works, but it actually just leaves ugly dirty dishes.

Last week I was returning to Berkeley on the train, and on the way we got a little delayed. It didn't concern me too much -- Sure, I had a meeting I was supposed to be at, but what was I going to do about it? I understand that Amtrak doesn't own the tracks, and that delays might happen as scheduling gets goof-balled, and that taking the train is more efficient than driving, and more. Heck, I actually like riding the train a lot. Even if I could fly directly home (There are no direct flights to Bakersfield from the Bay Area) in an hour, and it cost as cheap as the train, I'd prefer taking the train to flying, and I certainly prefer the train to the bus or driving myself.

But, on the train last week, there was a young couple (Sophomores in High School) who were heading up to Oakland to see the Mariner's play the A's. It was their first time on the train, and they were having fits about the delay. "I checked the schedule and I told him we'd be there at 4:05! It's already 4:20!" I wanted to ask him why he expected we'd be precisely on time, and I was also vaguely curious why he didn't ask one of the eight people around him who had cell phones if he could borrow one and call ahead and warn the guy who was supposed to pick them up. I don't even know why they were stressing -- the game didn't start until 7, I believe I heard him say. What did they think they were going to do in Oakland for three hours anyway?

I would much prefer to spend the time on the train than at the stadium, for example. The train is air conditioned, the seats are comfortable, we happened to have a nice view of the bay, and I was actually pretty content sitting there waiting for the train to get moving again.

I was content, but this guy was stressing (and his girlfriend agreeing with him). When we "finally" started moving again, he told her "Next time we're driving!" Fine, you go right ahead and drive from Fresno to Oakland (or Anaheim, maybe -- it's the same either way) for a baseball game, and it's going to cost you the same, and you're going to be less comfortable, and most of the time you'll get there in the same amount of time, and you'll be much more likely to crash, and in general, I would far prefer to deal with a delay now and then than drive if I could at all avoid it.

But it wasn't the conclusion that "we should drive" that really irritated me, though it is a wasteful decision. No, what irritated me is that those kids rejected Amtrak based on one bad experience -- They were not at all willing to give it a second chance, despite the fact that the delay had been caused by a grass fire, which could have just as easily blocked the 5 as it did some tracks. What irritates me is that they didn't realize how illogical they were being, and instead decided that "This sucks, we can do it better ourselves."

No, sorry, wrong answer. C'mon people, think!

This is a good article talking about the fact that California's Power Problems aren't because Californians are Power Gluttons. My, that's reassuring. So if we're doing so good on electrical use per capita, then why are we having this power crisis? Well, a former co-worker tells me that it's because PG&E are dumbasses. More precisely, they sold old power plants and didn't build new ones. Further, he told me that if something extreme didn't happen soon, then this "crisis" is going to go on for years. Oh, that ain't good.

PG&E: Dumbasses.

But not the kind of poor packaging you'd expect me to bitch about.

Well, I was in need of a Torx8 screwdriver (the * kind) to install a new hard drive in my PowerBook. After determining that Amazon and Buy and Outpost didn't have what I needed, I decided to go with Sears. First of all, the initial order confirmation I received from them said they'd email again before they shipped the package for some reason. This email was never sent, though. Second, it was more than a week before I got my order. But those two things are mostly forgivable.

What was ridiculous was their packaging. I ordered a tiny screwdriver. It's as tall as my Palm Vx, and smaller around than your standard ball point pen. When I saw a package that seemed about the size of your standard desktop computer, I was a little surprised. So I pulled the box open, and in a sea of packing peanuts I found a heavy brown envelope. There was nothing else in the box. So I opened the unmarked brown envelope and found my shipping invoice and my Torx8. The question is, why did they waste so much shipping material? Why didn't they just send me the envelope? At least Amazon doesn't use peanuts unless they have to.

Not only is this article a great general discussion of the California power crisis and the dark days that lie ahead, but it also features the phrase "Whistling in the dark," which I can only assume was in reference to TMBG. If the lights go out then you can only do what you know how to do well, and that's be you. Be what you're like. Be like yourself. And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.

And as chance would have it, I was listening to a bootleg of one of TMBG's Flood Shows when I read that article.

Sitting here thinking about my impending Geography lecture reminded me of these links: First there's EarthDot, which is basically a slashdot of environmental affairs. Then there's The Hunger Site -- Your click feeds a person for a day. And finally, there's The Rainforest Site, where your click saves some of the rainforest. And finally, there is GreaterGood.com, which is responsible for several worthy causes. Oh, and if you're lazy, The Giving Zone from earthdot is an easy interface to a lot of the help sites. Clicking through them has made me feel better, despite the annoyances of the day. All worth note.