General Motors - The death of a dinosaur

GM's Bob Lutz at the London Auto Show: "Hybrids are technologically of doubtful benefit, and expensive, but necessary from a political and public relations point of view", according to General Motors vice president, global product development Bob Lutz. (http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2006/07/20/015349.html)

With that sort of attitude, it is no wonder that...

General Motors Corp., reeling from slumping sales, crushing costs and massive losses, said Monday that it planned to close all or part of a dozen facilities in the U.S. and Canada and eliminate 30,000 manufacturing jobs over the next three years. Source: The LA Times

Plain and simple folks - you want to keep making giant SUV's and cars that get 10 mpg while we are in the middle of a gas crunch and paying over $3.00 per gallon then you are going to lose sales. Didn't you live through the 70's? After lines at the pump, VW's and Escorts and Yugo's sold by the tons (saving many a car company) - why? duh... By not stepping up to the plate and making fuel efficient cars, you are not only hurting the environment - but you are also ruining your companies profitability and costing tens of thousands of jobs. Not to mention, more and more, people are just starting to realize that mass transit and bikes are really not that bad of an option. Perhaps if you keep your heads up your butts long enough, people will just stop using cars! Or, at the very least, allow the Hydrogen car folks to step up (anytime now...) and bury you and big oil in one fell swoop.
(a man can dream at least...)

WoW Farewell

After 100 combined played days, I've decided to cancel my WoW account - still, it's been a ton of fun. Thought I'd make a highlights vid of some screenies.

To the Moon! - No really

Every semester I have several students that don't believe we really went to the Moon. By the end of the term, they all know better (and I send them off to spread the gospel of space). Asides from being an amazing artist, David Hardy has compiled one of the most complete pages I have found addressing the issue. Of course, in some ways I can understand the conspiricy theorists - it's hard to believe that we accomplished such an amazing feat over 30 years ago and have not been back since...

DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix:

Ahh - Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee - once again, this is what happens when you vote for idiots... they make laws...

Evolution of Dance

OK, too many serious things lately, must dance till you smile....

The Executive Branch tightens it's control and Congress rolls over and plays dead

For cripes sake this is too much. They call is seperation of powers for a reason, not roll over and give the Executive branch everything they want just because you are too spineless to stand.... Enough is enough. ...and p.s. Screw you Specter - you are a disgrace

Barely two weeks after Hamdan, which appeared to be the most important separation of powers decision in our generation, the Executive is about to get back everything it lost in that decision, and more. In Hamdan, the Supreme Court gave the ball to Congress, hoping for a bit of oversight, and Senator Specter has just punted.

A bit more on the Global Warming Front

In a previous post, I discussed that relatively simple things can help reduce your impact - this recent article about OSU Professor Dr. Jane Lubchenco has one or two for you to consider. We're not asking you to give up your cars (although we did and I can tell you I don't miss it at all - but much of that is cause I live in such a great place) - just do something. It might not solve the problem, but will it really hurt you to try? If it MIGHT help, shouldn't we at least give it a shot instead of screwing the pooch till it dies then complaining when it's gone? (ok, I needed that image less than you did... anyway...)

"The evidence is overwhelming that even simple changes can be a big help and have a huge cumulative impact,” Lubchenco says. “If every American switched just three light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs, it would be the equivalent of taking 3.5 million cars off the road. If everyone switched to a car with five miles-per-gallon better mileage, that would be equal to taking another 150 million automobiles off the roads. Individual actions add up to big changes."

The Road Goes West

Laura and I just moved from the prairie flatlands of North Dakota to the mountains of Oregon - along the way, we saw some neat, strange, cool, odd and wonderful things...

Mind over Matter

All I can say is wow - think what this will be able to do in 20 years - hook me up with a wi-fi transmitter and you'll be able to do a lot more than just check email - cyberpunk dreams...

"The motor cortex is made up of billions of neurons that constantly produce electrical signals, known as "spikes". Activity in different parts of the motor cortex was already known to correspond to different limbs, but Donoghue's team was able to identify signals related to different movements of the same limb.

To do this, they asked Nagle (paralyzed from the neck down) to imagine moving a limb and recorded the corresponding electrical signals. They found that the same small clusters of neurons produced different numbers of spikes when imagined moving a limb in different ways. For example, the same cluster might produce 15 spikes when he thought about moving the left arm to the left and only six when he thought about moving it to the right.

Donoghue's team built a list of spike patterns and corresponding movements. By automatically matching these together, a connected computer allows Nagle to control his computer or robot arm."

Journal reference: (Nature: vol 442, p 164; p 195) - story from New Scientist

Off to the Great Gig in the Sky

We'll miss you Sid

Mini-inflatable space hotel set to launch

Here's to hoping that things blow up without a problem! (sorry, couldn't resist the pun - good luck guys)

Called Genesis I, it is set to launch from Russia's Dombarovsky missile base in Siberia. If all goes well, it will be blasted into an orbit 550 kilometres above the Earth. Once there, it will inflate to its full size of 3 metres by 2.4 m. If Genesis I is a success, Bigelow will launch a second test craft called Genesis II in the fall of 2006. The company is offering people the chance to send up photos or other objects on Genesis II for a few hundred dollars per item.

Genesis I is one-third the size of a proposed space hotel that is based on an abandoned NASA concept for an inflatable space station called TransHab.

Bigelow hopes to build the 330-cubic-metre space hotel by 2012. But even if that happens, the lack of a low-cost vehicle to ferry people to and from the hotel remains a big obstacle. Bigelow has offered a $50 million prize for the first privately funded launch vehicle that could carry humans to a Bigelow space station.