One way to save gas is to make sure your tires are properly inflated. You can even go so far as to sign up for consumerreports.org and search for tires that have low rolling resistance. The idea is that the easier your tires roll, the better mileage you get. Tires that are underinflated do not roll as well.

Another way we could save gas is to revisit the timing of traffic signals in this city. The fact that you can drive 20 blocks on Washington Avenue and hit a red light every two blocks is ridiculous. A lot of these semaphores haven't been adjusted for decades and they hinder traffic flow. Cars burn most of their fuel when accelerating, and idling at stop lights doesn't help. And don't forget the additional noise of accelerating engines and the additional stress and drive time of waiting in traffic. The city of Phoenix has already spent millions to adjust their traffic signal timing and the result is that you can time your driving to hit only green lights; it is time the Twin Cities likewise invest in adapting the timing of our traffic signals to current demographics and traffic patterns. Maybe after the small-minded Pawlenty is out of office we could start investing in the future again.

Back to tires, I bought a set of Cooper Zeon 2XS tires for my car a couple of years ago. I had no experience with Cooper, but that was the only brand the service shop I took the car to had. I decided to take a leap and try them. At first they were fine. They handled nicely and all that. But a year in they started losing air pressure and I would have to put air in them weekly. Lately I've noticed cracking and bulging in the sidewalls and the road handling is nowhere near what it was or should be.

Well coincidentally I read about a recall of 288,000 Cooper tires, including some Zeon 2XS's. The reason for the recall is exactly the same problem that I have, but the size on my car is not among the sizes they are recalling.

The reason for this tire rant is because I have since registered the tires with Cooper in hopes that they would somehow be including them in the recall. On Saturday, May 13, 2006 I sent them an email asking how to go about making a warrantly claim to get them replaced. So far, no response. Unfortunately, I am losing confidence in the tires and, at $150 each, I don't want to pay to have them replaced. Given the lack of response and the difficulty I have had in finding proper contact information (anyone have a fukkin phone number for warranty claims?), coupled with the fact that the tires are failing prematurely, it will be hard for me to find a reason to buy Cooper tires again. I guess I'll have to try working the phones after I get back from Germany in June to see what I can accomplish.

Yeah, so I am really familiar with gas station air pumps now. Holiday Station is the only chain that has free air any more it seems, but the problem is there is always some dipshit there trying to work the thing. It is not uncommon to wait 15 minutes for someone to fuck around with the hose and a pressure gauge before you can get in there. Shit, high gas prices aren't a problem, it is fuckin air that I need.

Now I'm in a bad mood. Let me get back to something new and interesting. I've been reading about hybrid cars lately, since Consumer Reports released their review of some of the models. I've been waiting for this because there has been a lot of marketing hype but very little in the way of actual analysis.

No surprise, but the Honda Civic hybrid and the Toyota Prius are the best hybrids. What I suspected and what Consumer Reports confirmed is that the price premium you pay for a hybrid may not be worth it. Something like a Camry or Accord hybrid is actually marketed as a premium model, with the electric motor providing for additional performance. The Lexus RX400h, an SUV, sees very little benefit from it. I think this is why the German and US automakers have not jumped on the bandwagon yet. A luxury car has so much weight and electronic gadgetry that there is little juice left for an electric motor. A big American car would need a bigger electric motor and more heavy batteries to make a difference.

With the Prius and the Civic hybrid, the additional cost of the car offsets all or most of the savings in gas. This does not include the cost of replacing the batteries, which could run $3000. Just like the battery under the hood of your conventional gasoline car, the hybrid batteries have a life span. Considering that hybrid models cost $3000-$5000 more than their conventional counterparts and 5-10 years in you will be spending $3000 on new batteries, only the smaller models make sense to buy and only if you drive a lot in the city.

Hopefully the economies of scale will improve with hybrids, but in the mean time it is worth looking at the more efficient Japanese gasonline-only cars or the TDI (diesel) models from Volkswagen. There is talk among some other manufacturers, maybe Volvo or Mercedes, in bringing some of their diesel models to the US market too. Diesel engines are a bit more efficient than gasoline engines. Toyota and Honda have outstanding fuel economy in most of their cars too, so personally I would stick with one of those or a TDI and try to drive less to save gas.

I really should get back to work, but one more bit about hybrids. There are people who outfit their Priuses with extra batteries and charging circuitry so that they can plug the car in at night to charge it up. This costs on the order of $20,000 to do. The car then runs mostly on electric power, with the gasoline engine serving only as a backup for long trips. In cold weather I would expect the gasoline engine to kick in more frequently, since batteries have lower capacity in cold weather. But in the long term I hope cars that can run like this will be available directly from the manufacturer. With improved battery technology, it could become viable. It would be possible to charge your car at night when it is sitting in the garage (sorta like running your waching maching all night as far as power consumption) and you'd only have to fill your gas tank every couple of months or so. Yak yak yak...

My Diversity Speech, Again

A recent article in the New York Times went on about how Microsoft and Google are gearing up for a battle and how talent will be the key. It cites the examples of GM losing to the Japanese auto makers, Sears stomping Montgomery Wards, and the individuals who guided each to success or failure in changing times. I like to think of things in these terms but on a bigger scale. The USA has seen so much success because of the diverse people who have come here looking for a better life.

This country was built on the backs of immigrants. From the Chinese out west who worked on the railroads, to the Germans and Scandinavians and Poles who farmed the midwest, to the Italians and Irish out east who worked the docks and factories, to the slaves who were brought here against their will to work the plantations in the south, we owe the first 200 years to these people. And now we want to shut the next wave out. The illegal immigrants who make 1,000 calorie Chipotle burritos for office workers, the Africans who clean up the 200 calorie shitlogs left behind by those office workers, the Indians and Chinese who teach our college students because we don't produce enough scientists, the Central Americans who work in construction - these people, whether here legally or not, are filling the roles that most Americans do not want to fill. They do it willingly and for less pay, and everyone wins.

America is strong because we have the best, hardest working, most diverse people. It is necessary for our prosperity that we continue to import the people who want to live here. We do not procreate enough to replace our native population and we do not turn out enough world beating engineers and scientists any more. But we don't need to, we just assimilate the best from other cultures into our culture. Like Google hiring the best software engineers away from Microsoft, we hire the best people away from other countries as we always have since 1776.

The Amish peoples in the eastern US have had problems with genetic diseases. Some people think it is from inbreeding, but more accurately it should be attributed to the small size of their reproductive gene pool. There simply is not enough diversity in their population after so many years of isolation. Everyone is carrying the same sets of genes around, increasing the chances that two with genes for a particular disorder will procreate and thus proliferate the disorder. With diversity in the gene pool, the more dominant, favorable genes will prevent the undesireable ones from winning out. Diversity ensures that a population will be strong and healthy.

Similarly, with a company like GM we see that after years of sitting on the top of the heap doing things the GM way, the company has rendered itself incapable of designing anything with original styling and innovative features, let alone employing modern techniques of quality management. The bean counters at the top are the main culprit because they simply don't see beyond the accounting. GM is a company in need of some fresh new talent, from both Japan and Korea but also even from non-automotive American companies who understand style and efficiency and modern trends. GM needs diversity.

When I hear or read about the efforts to limit diversity by closing our borders, deporting illegal immigrants, ignoring what our allies tell us, outlawing gay marriage with consitutional amendments, and declaring an official language, I worry that we are moving down a path to self defeat. Fortunately most of these efforts have failed, but there is a cloud of closed-minded thinking sweeping over the country. When something like 9/11 happens there is a temptation to scapegoat people of another ethnicity. We want to throw up barriers to shut the bad guys out, but instead we are closing ourselves out from the rest of the world. In World War II, we were reluctant to get involved but eventually we stood with the world and took the problem head on. America is great for its diversity, and we can't let that go.

Dear peacocks: why so sassy?

Posts bitching about one's employer or boss suck so I try not to write them, but here I am going to bitch about my boss as an individual, not as my boss.

I was in a meeting a few days ago and it was decided that we needed to set up a meeting with some dudes downtown. Since the dudes were going to be helping us with a project, it was suggested that we go to a place close to them and pick up the lunch tab. My boss says, "I don't want to go downtown. Is it safe to go downtown?"

It is safer to go downtown than to drive to and from Apple Valley, where my boss lives, every day in rush hour traffic. There was a murder outside a club downtown a few weeks ago and all the suburbanites are scared of Minneapolis now.

Goddam suburbanites. Tens of thousands of people live and work in downtown Minneapolis every day. A suburbanite sees that someone was murdered there on the evening news and is galvanized with fear at the notion of going there for lunch. Jesus fuck, my boss voted for Bush too, and he's never been outside of the USA, he's probably one of the dorks who can't find Iraq on a map, and he makes six figures running operations at a college that prides itself on its internationalism and diversity.

It would be like if I were afraid to go to Burnsville because I heard some kid chopped his parents with an axe while they were asleep. As though the kid would come looking for me if I set foot in that city.

Goddam fuckcheese.

Silicon is the most abundant element on the planet. It is used to make solar cells, computer chips, and glass.

At times it seems like the motivation of the human race is to reorganize the planet into something more orderly and hospitable. From a telescope on another planet, the Earth would appear the same now as it did thousands of years ago. It is just a big ball of water and silicon and carbon and so on. But we take all the minerals and elements and reorganize them into cars, paved surfaces, and buildings.

On one side we cherish nature for its beauty and purity. On the other, we destroy it to make way for the orderly system of roads, sewers, gas lines, electricity lines, and houses of our neighborhoods. We want to keep nature in our back yards, but we want to control it. We don't want alligators and bears to come in our yards to eat our puppies and babies.

When the oil runs out, we'll have solar panels made of silicon or germanium or some other substance to give us power. It is as though we were given just enough oil to figure out how to make a cleaner form of energy. I was talking to Jesus in my dream the other day and he told me he isn't coming back until we clean things up and come up with some solar panels that are cheap and efficient, or maybe cold fusion or something like that.

If you have any doubts about where the world is headed, just keep in mind that from a telescope on Mars it still looks the same as it always did. Rising energy prices and rising temperatures are starting to motivate people to come up with better solutions. Fascists and religious extremists such as George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are always defeated because their plans leave too many people on the outside looking in. We may be shuffling things around down here on the surface of the planet, but it is still a big ball of water and sand and oxygen.

By the way, I've been thinking about technology lately and the one thing that I think will benefit humanity most of all is space travel. Can you imagine what it would be like if every person could experience what it is like to rocket away from the surface until it becomes a giant blue ball outside the window, and then look the other way and see nothing but blackness? Being able to see the Earth from that perspective has to be the most humbling experience one could have. I hope everyone gets to do it some day.