Recent Comments:
"Dumb on all counts" - the experts chime in on the gas tax holiday idea {Autoblog Green}
May 1st 2008 3:56PM Tax cuts are a strange thing. Everyone always feels that they are taxed too much for everything and that taxes are "high enough" so saying that the taxes for something can be cut always generates a predictable response...
The problem is that there's never such a thing as a free lunch. Tax cuts cost somewhere, and more often than not, you'll be paying for it down the line. In this case, we'll be paying for it with crumbling roads and bridges. Look at the whole picture... not just what your gut feeling is.
"Dumb on all counts" - the experts chime in on the gas tax holiday idea {Autoblog Green}
May 1st 2008 3:46PM jpm100:
So McCain's plan will help stem the tide of recession by giving driving Americans an average of $2 per fillup?
What about the flip side? What about the road construction jobs that will be lost because the government will have to cut back on road repairs because of the millions of $ of taxes that won't go into the highway repair fund?
What will we do when we have more crumbling bridges like we had in Minnesota?
Cutting the gas tax makes no sense... it's just distraction to make people drive more and stay dependent on oil for one more summer. Who's to say that the oil companies won't raise the price to make up for the 18 cents that were lost?
"Dumb on all counts" - the experts chime in on the gas tax holiday idea {Autoblog Green}
May 1st 2008 3:41PM To whoever says that the government makes a windfall when the price of gas goes up, that's totally wrong.
The tax on gas is a fixed amount per gallon. It isn't a percentage of the price of gas. If anything, higher gas prices hurt the amount going to pay for the price of road maintenance because consumption will go down.
The tax on top of gasoline has not kept up with the rate of inflation over the years. Combine that with the rising price of gas, and we're actually paying less and less taxes compared to the price of gasoline.
New Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer implies suicide, again {Joystiq}
Apr 24th 2008 3:52PM Binado. Depression is a serious matter, and it's never as easy as Step 1 : go see a doc, Step 2 : get better, Step 3 : get on with your life.
For people who really have depression, and are suicidal, but are recovering, every day is a struggle. It's not a quick 123 thing to fix it.
Furthermore, you say "how hard is it to know you're depressed and go see a shrink." For a lot of people, they don't realize their depressed until it's too late, and they're no longer in control.
If you've never been through it yourself, you'd never understand.
If you truly have such hate in your heart that you don't pity those who have ended their own lives, but REVERE in their passing as garbage lives and laugh at them, you have your own problems. Seriously, get help, or grow up.
NHTSA announces new CAFE standards through 2015 {Autoblog}
Apr 22nd 2008 4:44PM @zmf :
You have some misconceptions about how hybrids work. Who told you that hybrids only work for < 1 hour trips? Because when I drove 6 to 7 hours in my hybrid going on a long highway trip, I certainly didn't see the mileage tank, or the car break down after the 1 hour mark. I got the same or better mileage, because if you're driving for more than 1 hour, the engine and everything warms up, and it gets a really clean and efficient burn.
Big rigs can maybe take a page from the other brutes of cross country freight : locomotives. The best and most efficient locomotives are diesel-electric *hybrids*. And these things haul MANY times more freight at once compared to a big rig on an interstate, longer distances, at faster speeds.
NHTSA announces new CAFE standards through 2015 {Autoblog}
Apr 22nd 2008 4:43PM @zmf :
You have some misconceptions about how hybrids work. Who told you that hybrids only work for
NHTSA announces new CAFE standards through 2015 {Autoblog}
Apr 22nd 2008 4:37PM It has been 20 years since CAFE standards have been increased. 20 years. Since the standard was last increased in the late 80s, the average fuel economy of automobiles in the US has not moved one bit.
I'm not convinced that we've hit some sort of insurmountable wall that we can't improve fuel economy any more. The problem is that without small increases in the requirement, the car manufacturers are too lazy to innovate.
In my opinion, the car makers, and all of their engineers should have been working on improving efficiency for the past 20 years when no one's been grading them. Given that, 27 years to get from 27 MPG to 35 MPG is not too much to ask.
Forgive me if I don't have as much sympathy for the car makers or their engineers. If they're scrambling to start work on this just now, then they're like a high school student procrastinating until the night before to start his term paper.
DoD establishes institute tasked with regrowing body parts {Engadget}
Apr 22nd 2008 4:19PM Josh... you make a good point about science not bounded by one method or research, however, in a purely political move, the government cut funding for embryonic stem cell, nearly torpedoing any research by starving those projects of federal funds.
Private funding of stuff like embryonic stem cell research isn't enough. On this issue alone, the government is meddling with the way science can work, throwing up roadblocks to progress.
DoD establishes institute tasked with regrowing body parts {Engadget}
Apr 22nd 2008 4:13PM Both.
Guitar Hero hack takes cheating to ridiculous new levels {Engadget}
Apr 21st 2008 3:14PM Well... it doesn't seem too accurate at this point. It would have been far more impressive to see it 5 star a song, but it was definitely gonna fail that one.
