Honda is introducing the first fuel-cell production car

The new Honda FCX Clarity is an electric car with electricity generated from fuel-cells, which use hydrogen as fuel. The process of combining hydrogen with oxygen in the fuel cells to produce water generates electricity. Water vapor is the only exhaust gas from the process, so it’s about as clean an energy source as you can get.

The Clarity’s motor is rated at 134 horsepower, which is modest but adequate for most driving conditions. It has a range of about 270 miles with the four kilogram hydrogen fuel tank. The EPA considers a kilogram to be equal to a gallon of gas, so that comes out to be about 68 miles per gallon. Not too shabby.

While a fuel-cell vehicle is not your every day commuter vehicle (unless you happen to live near a hydrogen fueling station) it would be practical as a fleet vehicle where garages could have their own hydrogen refueling tank. The $600/month lease price will be partially offset by savings in fuel. Honda will begin leasing the Clarity in 2009.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

Nanotube Loudspeakers

These nanotube speakers are as thin as a film and flexible! Cool stuff!

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22184/

George Carlin – The difference between football and baseball

This was one of my favorite bits from George Carlin:

Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out.

Also: in football,basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you’d ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform,you’d know the reason for this custom.

Now, I’ve mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.

I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs – what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups – who’s up?

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog…
In baseball, if it rains, we don’t go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don’t know when it’s gonna end – might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there’s not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you’re capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! – I hope I’ll be safe at home!

RIP George

Obama’s plan to stop speculators from driving up the price of oil

Here are excerpts from the text of the four-part “Obama Plan to Crack Down on Excessive Energy Speculation,” as provided by the campaign:

1) Fully Close the “Enron Loophole”: One of the reasons our energy market is particularly vulnerable to excessive speculation is the so-called “Enron Loophole” … [which means] Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is unable to fully oversee the oil futures market and investigate cases where excessive speculation may be driving up oil prices. This regulatory gap is dangerous because: 1) the absence of government oversight has the potential to facilitate abusive trading or price manipulation. And 2) the failure of a large derivatives dealer could trigger disruptions of supplies and prices in energy markets. As President, Barack Obama will go beyond the changes included in the recently-passed Farm Bill and fully close the Enron loophole by requiring that U.S. energy futures trade on regulated exchanges. He will call for new, disaggregated data on index fund and other passive investments to increase transparency and oversight of the growing number of institutional investors participating in commodities futures markets. And he will support legislation directing the CFTC to investigate whether additional regulation is necessary to eliminate excessive speculation in U.S. commodities markets, including higher margin requirements and position limits for institutional investors.

2) Ensure That U.S. Energy Futures Cannot be Traded on Unregulated Offshore Exchanges: CFTC oversight of oil market speculation is also limited by rules that allow energy traders to engage in unregulated transactions through foreign subsidiaries of U.S. exchanges. Currently, about 30 percent of U.S. oil futures trades fly below the regulatory radar because they are transacted on a U.S. exchange that works through a subsidiary in London. Similar arrangements are being pursued by U.S. exchanges in partnership with Dubai as well. Barack Obama would limit the price impacts of excessive speculation by preventing traders of U.S. crude oil from routing their transactions through off-shore markets in order to evade speculation limits and also impose reporting requirements.

3) Work with Other Countries to Coordinate Regulation of Oil Futures Markets.

4) Call on the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to Vigorously Investigate Market Manipulation in Oil Futures.
Article

Obama — finally a democrat with a spine!

For years, the right-wing pundits have capitalized on the constant whining and spinelessness of the democrats. That continues today. There is overwhelming evidence that Bush has broken many laws and is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. So where is the support for impeachment? Bill Clinton gets impeached over getting a blow-job but Bush is responsible for thousands of deaths and gets a free ride?

Barack Obama recently opted out of public campaign financing because, as he put it, “the system is broken.” That’s very true. Four years ago, the 527 groups derailed John Kerry’s campaign and there is virtually no limitation as to how much money can be pumped into those groups, so what good are the rules when there are so many loopholes into how much money can be used?

Now it’s the republicans who are the whining since Obama has the money advantage. McCain has already opted into the system, then opted out of it, and now he’s back in it. Most democrats would have stayed within the system and then whined about the republicans not playing fairly. That’s because most democrats are spineless. We’ve seen this with their recent capitulation with the FISA bill.

Obama recognized his advantage in opting out of the system and took it, as he should have. Finally, a democrat with a spine!

John McCain’s Connection to Big Oil & The Enron Loophole

Cartooning off to a slow start

Okay, I admit it… I got a little over ambitious with blogging. I now have four blogs: this one, one for cartoons, one for plug-in cars, and one for software project management. That’s too much for someone who can’t even find time to clean off his desk, so I for the time being, I cut it down to one for software project management and this one for everything else.

This post is for the cartooning process. My wife is out of town with our camera so I can’t post any of my cartoons until she gets back. That is, if I had drawn any cartoons, but the lack of camera is a good excuse. In the mean time, I can share some of what I found about techniques and materials.

I read Mark Parisi’s page about materials and this is what he uses:
2H pencil for sketching
Technical pens from .3 – .7 for inking
Bristol board
Single panel cartoon size: 5″ x 6″

Mark’s a successful cartoonist and that sounds logical, so those are the materials I’ll use to start off. I did some time as a draftsman back in the early 90s and had some technical pens back then. I’m not sure what happened to them, though. I’ll have to check some boxes in the basement. Chances are I’ll need to buy some new ones.

Now that I know what materials I need, here comes the hard part: what to draw. I drew single panel political cartoons back in my college days. I may do some of those again, but there are so many talented political cartoonists, I doubt I could compete. And I guess, that’s not really where my heart is.

So I think I just draw cartoons about life. Most cartoonists say to draw about what you know. What do I know? I know what it’s like to develop software in a large corporation. I did that for about ten years, so some of my cartoons may be in the mode of Dilbert. Then there’s my dog, Molly. She’s always getting into some kind of trouble. There are characters I’ve known — friends, relatives, neighbors… There’s Buddhists and new agey people.

So, I’m ready. I’m going to draw a cartoon. Right after my nap. Or maybe I’ll read some more blogs first. Damn, it’s hard to get started.

Tribute to Tim Russert on Meet the Press

We often take things in life for granted — friends, family, and the few good programs on TV. Meet the Press has been one of those few good programs and it something I looked forward to every Sunday morning.

This morning on Meet the Press was a tribute to Tim Russert. Many of the big names in journalism shared their memories of him. They talked about the loyalty he had for his friends and how politicians feared being interviewed by Tim, but how it made them better politicians in the process. They talked about how he really cared about people — not just those on the same level of importance in the news world, but everyone. And how the most important thing for him was to appreciate his father and to be a good father to his son.

Tom Brokaw broke down on the show while describing a comment made by Tim. I have to admit — at the end when they showed clips of Tim, I felt pretty sad. We no longer have his comments and personality to enrich our lives. The 2008 election campaign will go on, but without his good natured presentation.

Tim Russert set the standard for news media. We can only hope someone else will come along to take over where he left off, and maintain those high standards. But losing a good TV personality is only a minor part of it. The world lost a good man when we lost Tim. He will be missed.

Dishonest surveys

I just received a call from a survey company. The caller told me that if the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 were rolled back, average residents of Colorado would see an increase in their federal taxes of about $2000. He asked, “knowing that, do you favor making the tax cuts permanent?”

The purpose of this survey was to instill fear in the public that their taxes will go up if we elect democrats. That fact is, if your income is over $250,000, your taxes will indeed go up. The tax cuts for the wealthy will be repealed under Obama and a congress controlled by the Democrats, but for the average Joe, our taxes are going to remain what they are.

So I told the caller that I didn’t believe his premise so I wasn’t going to answer his question. I was polite, though. He was just doing his job and probably hated what he was involved in.

Tim Russert died today

Tim was one of my favorite reporter/commentators. He seemed like a good natured guy, but he didn’t take any crap from anyone. We saw that during Scooter Libby’s trial. He was honest and sincere. I never once thought I was getting spin from him.

Sunday mornings won’t be the same without him. He will be missed.