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Go 2,000 miles on 1 tank of fuel. From London to Venice!
This sleek machine is being hailed as the future of high-performance, eco-friendly motoring.
With an engine that runs on pure biodiesel, the Trident Iceni can do 2,000 miles on one tank of fuel - enough for a return trip to Venice from London.
Capable of topping 200mph, the car has been designed and manufactured by Phil Bevan, of Norwich-based firm Trident Performance Vehicles.
Just 500 go on sale from next year, priced at £75,000, after the firm spent £2.3million in development.
A spokesman said: ‘It’s like having a Lamborghini without the cost or the damage to the environment.
‘Electric cars are great for short distances but not really ideal for people who live in rural locations.
‘The Iceni is incredibly economical on fuel, which is virtually unheard of in a car of that speed.’
It uses a technology called 'torque multiplication' which helps keeps the revs low and thus uses less fuel and gives out less emissions.
The chassis is made from stainless steel which won’t corrode and the body isbuilt of composite which will never rust or degrade.
I'll take one please! This sleek machine is being hailed as the future of high-performance, eco-friendly motoring. ... more -
Government's spin bill rises to nearly £400m - Telegraph
Official figures showed that central government spent a total of £391 million on advertising, marketing, PR and other presentational work in 2007-08.
The total is up by £53 million on the previous year, when it was £338 million - a rise of almost 16 per cent.
When he took office last year, Mr Brown pledged a new sort of politics and sought to distance himself from his predecessor, who was frequently accused of being too heavily involved in spin and presentation.
But since last June, Mr Brown has faced repeated charges that he is at least as inclined to spin as Mr Blair.
Earlier this year, the annual wage bill for the Prime Minister's special advisers was estimated to have risen by more than £350,000 to £1.75 million - roughly the same as when Mr Blair was at No 10.
The latest spending figures are revealed in the annual report of the Central Office of Information, which co-ordinates government marketing, advertising and PR work.
The Information Office's total spending has more than trebled since Labour came to power in 1997. The latest figures show that the government spent £167 million on advertising, as well as £29 million on PR and sponsorship and £12 million on "strategic consultancy".
Some government communications schemes have sparked political controversy. Ofcom, the communications regulator, is investigating the use of £800,000 of public money to sponsor an ITV programme about community support officers.
Greg Clark MP, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, said the figures showed that Mr Brown's talk of a "new politics" had been a sham.
He said: "At a time when families and businesses are having to cut back, Gordon Brown is increasing spending on promoting himself and his government. Spending on PR and advertising has rocketed under Gordon Brown's premiership by over four times the rate of inflation, and now Labour want to spend even more.
"It is a sign of just out of how out of touch Gordon Brown is with the situation facing ordinary people that he thinks it reasonable to let rip with spending on PR and advertising while telling everyone else they have to tighten their belts."
This is an outrageous waste of peoples money. Better spend the money doing positive things for the country and under privileged and let the media cover the spin on that. Official figures showed that central government spent a total of £391 million on advertising, marketing, PR and other presentational w... more -
AUG 27th Naked Lush Day in USA
In the now classic tactic of nudity as a form of protest, Lush employees in 24 US cities are being encouraged to wear only their apron in an attempt to raise awareness of wasteful product packaging. The video is from their prior event in the UK. In the now classic tactic of nudity as a form of protest, Lush employees in 24 US cities are being encouraged to wear only their apron... more
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McCain and Economics
I just really like the admission that McSame doesn't know much about Economics... lovely ad.
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NREL Solar Cell Sets World Efficiency Record at 40.8 Percent
I think you'll like this report on progress in the field of Solar Electric...
"August 13, 2008
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity. This is the highest confirmed efficiency of any photovoltaic device to date.
The inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell was designed, fabricated and independently measured at NREL. The 40.8 percent efficiency was measured under concentrated light of 326 suns. One sun is about the amount of light that typically hits Earth on a sunny day. The new cell is a natural candidate for the space satellite market and for terrestrial concentrated photovoltaic arrays, which use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto the solar cells.
The new solar cell differs significantly from the previous record holder – also based on a NREL design. Instead of using a germanium wafer as the bottom junction of the device, the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell's three junctions for higher potential efficiencies. This is accomplished by growing the solar cell on a gallium arsenide wafer, flipping it over, then removing the wafer. The resulting device is extremely thin and light and represents a new class of solar cells with advantages in performance, design, operation and cost.
NREL's Mark Wanlass invented the original inverted cell, which recently won a R&D 100 award. His design was modified by a team led by John Geisz that further optimized the junction energies by making the middle junction metamorphic as well as the bottom junction. Metamorphic junctions are lattice mismatched – their atoms don't line up. The material properties of the mismatched semiconductors allows for greater potential conversion of sunlight.
NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by Midwest Research Institute and Battelle.
For further information contact NREL Public Relations at (303) 275-4090." I think you'll like this report on progress in the field of Solar Electric... "August 13, 2008 ... more -
"It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Wetback"
Superman should be deported. He's a f'n wetback. Where the h*ll is his green card? Let's deport him to Kripton.
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The Doha dilemma
Wouldn't a dual solution be appropriate? I think that co-operation seems necessary.
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Will America Stagnate?
While I fear a repeat of the Japanese Economic crisis, I have a (perhaps foolhardy) belief that the Fed will begin to review the literature surrounding the Japanese real-estate crisis and make decisions accordingly. I hope that the lessons of the past may help us in the future. I would rather not think of the consequences otherwise. While I fear a repeat of the Japanese Economic crisis, I have a (perhaps foolhardy) belief that the Fed will begin to review the liter... more
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Five Ways to Wreck a Recovery
Five Ways to Wreck a Recovery
By Amity Shlaes
Monday, August 18, 2008; Page A11
Perverse monetary policy was the greatest cause of the Great Depression. But five non-monetary missteps were important in making the Depression great, and the same missteps damaged the global economy as well. While many are thinking about the Depression, few seem concerned about replicating these Foolish Five today:
· Giving in to protectionism. In Herbert Hoover's time, Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. W.C. Hawley proposed a tariff that was to raise effective duties by as much as half. More than a thousand economists signed an open letter warning that the duties would "raise the cost of living and injure the great majority of our citizens."
But Hoover's Republican Party didn't much care. In its 1928 platform, the GOP had pledged to "reaffirm our belief in the protective tariff." Ambivalent, Hoover signed the bill. An irate Canada and many other nations retaliated. At a time when the United States was begging for foreign markets, it lost them. The selfish signal discouraged an already unstable Europe.
Today, international trade claims a sizable share of our economy. Bilateral free-trade agreements with Colombia or Panama are good insurance -- cheap steps that might prevent an expensive loss, that of the Western Hemisphere to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
Yet again, one party -- the Democrats, this time -- is cavalier. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is blocking passage of these bilateral agreements. And another ambivalent politician -- Sen. Barack Obama -- has sent mixed messages to Canada about just how much he wants to roll back the North American Free Trade Agreement.
and more at the link [two pages]...
enjoy... [yeah, i know.. you don't believe it.. :)]
+af Five Ways to Wreck a Recovery By Amity Shlaes Monday, August 18, 2008; Page A11 ... more -
Obama Chooses BIDEN
There is only one thing to note... Obama will be the next President of the greatest country ever.
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The Fish You Eat Probably Isn't The Fish You Order...
Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.
In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.
They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.
What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere.
The project began, appropriately, over dinner about a year ago. Ms. Stoeckle’s father, Mark, is a scientist and early proponent of the use of DNA bar coding, a technique that greatly simplifies the process of identifying species. Instead of sequencing the entire genome, bar coders — who have been developing their field only since 2003 — examine a single gene. Dr. Stoeckle’s specialty is birds, and he admits that he tends to talk shop at the dinner table.
One evening at a sushi restaurant, Ms. Stoeckle recalled asking her father, “Could you bar code sushi?”
Dr. Stoeckle replied, “Yeah, I think you could — and if you did that, I think you’d be the first ones.”
Ms. Stoeckle, who is now 19, was intrigued. She enlisted Ms. Strauss, who is now 18.
Their field technique was simple, Ms. Stoeckle said. “We ate a lot of sushi.”
Or, as Dr. Stoeckle put it, “It involved shopping and eating, in which they were already fluent.” Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-te... more -
The 2008 student loan blues
Back to school, kids, if you can scrape up the tuition. By some estimates as many as 200,000 college students may not find anyone willing to lend them money for school this year.
The 2008 Student Loan Blues Higher Education
Nicholas von Hoffman: Some 200,000 college students won't qualify for loans in September, and millions more will pay higher interest rates. Can they count on Obama to help them out?
Millions of others are going to have to jump through more hoops, pay higher interest rates and/or get their parents to co-sign their loans. This last expedient depends on the parents having a credit rating good enough to satisfy the money-lenders.
When students get loans this year, they will pay more for them. In at least some cases students are looking at rates of 23 percent. With those numbers a young person might be better off borrowing from the mafia.
Students shopping around trying to get themselves lower interest rates had best be careful. They can inadvertently get stung with higher rates as a result of trying to get lower ones.
In few other areas of consumer life are you at risk of being penalized for seeking out the best deal.... To quote a rate, lenders check an applicants credit history. And every time a shopper asks a lender for a rate quote, it can show up as another inquiry on a credit report. Lots of inquiries send the wrong signals to the formulas that create the popular FICO credit score. The lower the FICO score the higher the interest rate a student will have to pay for tuition money.
Cashing in on the kids is no small business. Last year it amounted to more than $17 billion. The interest on that is a lot of cabbage for private, government-subsidized loan companies, which explains why some college loan officers have taken bribes to steer students to favored lenders.
They have been lining up to screw unworldly 18-year-old freshmen and their parents who may not understand that there is a government student loan program at 6.8 percent interest--which is no bargain for someone about to start out in life, but better than getting the money from a guy with a baseball bat down on the docks. Since there is a cap on how much a student is allowed to borrow at the government rate, millions are also forced to sign up with the sharks.
No one can say how many students who take on these loans appreciate what a bad deal they have signed up for. Regardless of what bad luck may hit them in later life--unemployment, sickness, being run over by a beer truck--they must discharge that loan. There is no forgiveness. Unlike other debts, the law says not even bankruptcy will wipe out a student loan obligation.
It's a neat system. The colleges and universities run up tuition without stint or limit in a society in which you either go to college or live on the verge of poverty. You must go to school and incur the costs.
No tuition restraints were included in the just-enacted higher education law. But there are more costs than tuition. Higher education is better than the airlines at tacking on fees and special charges. And the publishers of textbooks costing more than $100 are exempt from prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Young people have no representation powerful enough and well enough bankrolled to go up against the higher ed lobby. Barack Obama is their best hope.
He and the Democrats are counting on the youth vote to put them over the top this November. Lets hope that, if the young people win it for Obama, the new President will ignore the rich, academic liberal types who swarm about him and repay his youthful followers by getting them something approaching an even break. Back to school, kids, if you can scrape up the tuition. By some estimates as many as 200,000 college students may not find anyone will... more -
Ridin on Chrome
A look at how the slumping economy and high fuel prices have effected after market car tuners and their customers.
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Windows down or AC? City-driving versus high-way miles.
Like most people, I crank up my car's air conditioning on hot summer days. But my wife has recently been tsk-tsking me for this practice—she says the AC wastes too much $4-a-gallon gas, and that we should roll down the windows instead. But I've read that rolled-down windows also decrease fuel economy, since they increase drag. What's the most efficient way to cool ourselves while driving?
Leave windows open for city driving
The rule of thumb is to keep the windows down while on city streets, then resort to air conditioning when you hit the highway. Every car has a speed at which rolled-down windows cause so much drag as to decrease fuel economy more than a switched-on AC. As you might expect, however, that milestone speed varies widely from car to car—and in some cases, it may be well north of posted speed limits.
Your wife is certainly correct that air conditioners sap power from the engine and increase gas consumption. Depending on your vehicle's design, an active AC can cut fuel economy by anywhere from 3 percent to 10 percent in standard summertime temperatures. During a brutal heat wave, though, the power drain can be near 20 percent—the hotter it is outside, the harder the AC needs to work at maintaining your cabin climate. (It's worth noting here that automotive air conditioners no longer use ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons; now they use much safer tetrafluoroethane.)
At low speeds, at least, the fuel-economy losses associated with rolling down your windows are minuscule. But as your foot gets heavier on the accelerator, the situation rapidly begins to worsen. That's because drag increases with the square of speed. So when you hit the highway, all that wind whipping through your open windows begins to take a major toll. Even with the windows sealed tight, the majority of your car's power goes toward fighting wind resistance when you're cruising at 55 miles per hour. With the windows down, the engine really starts to strain.
But at what exact point do the numbers tilt in favor of air conditioning? The Society of Automotive Engineers studied (PDF) this issue back in 2004, using both a wind tunnel and test track in Mesa, Ariz. The organization's researchers looked at two vehicles, an SUV and a full-size sedan, both of which featured powerful eight-cylinder engines. (The tests were conducted at an average ambient temperature of approximately 86 degrees Fahrenheit.)
The engineers found that rolling down the windows on the SUV had only a small negative effect, in part because the vehicle's big, boxy shape was already creating a lot of drag. So, from a fuel-economy standpoint, a driver of an SUV will always do better to shut off the air-conditioner. The sedan, on the other hand, has a sleeker shape and a lower drag coefficient. As a result, its fuel economy was noticeably affected when the windows were rolled down at highway speeds; at around 68 miles per hour (the test's maximum), there was barely any difference between air conditioning and nature's cooling. If you were driving the sedan any faster than that, the increased drag would presumably make AC the more efficient option.
.. con't in article Like most people, I crank up my car's air conditioning on hot summer days. But my wife has recently been tsk-tsking me for this p... more -
Goodbye Grand Canyon if uranium mining gets go ahead?
More insanity of humanity: " Mining companies stake claims on federal land adjoining the park, while opponents say drinking water will be at risk.
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona - On a ragged outcrop just a short walk from a Grand Canyon overlook where millions of visitors annually come to gawk at one of the world's most stunning vistas sits the old Orphan uranium mine. Soil radiation levels around it are 450 times higher than normal. It's encircled by a protective fence.
A sign warns: "Remain behind fence - environmental evaluation in progress." In the canyon hundreds of feet below, another sign by gurgling Horn Creek instructs thirsty hikers not to drink its radioactive water. "
More Truthout.org link above. More insanity of humanity: " Mining companies stake claims on federal land adjoining the park, while opponents say drinking w... more -
Millions Against Monsanto Campaign, from Organic Consumers Association
Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.
Sign OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/petition.jsp?p...
The petition can also be found half way down the subject page above organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm after the following story.
Multi-Billion $$ Monsanto Sues More Small Family Farmers
Percy Schmeiser is a farmer from Saskatchewan Canada, whose Canola fields were contaminated with Monsanto's genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola by pollen from a nearby farm. Monsanto says it doesn't matter how the contamination took place, and is therefore demanding Schmeiser pay their Technology Fee (the fee farmers must pay to grow Monsanto's genetically engineered products). According to Schmeiser, "I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract.
If I would go to St. Louis (Monsanto Headquarters) and contaminate their plots - destroy what they have worked on for 40 years - I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away."
Rodney Nelson's family farm is being forced into a similar lawsuit by Monsanto.
Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.
Sign OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings.Monsanto Takes Ownership of Public Water Resources
Over the past century, global water supplies have been contaminated with the full gamut of Monsanto's chemicals, including PCBs, dioxin and glyophosate (Roundup). So now the company, seeing a profitable market niche, is taking control of the public water resources they polluted, filtering it, and selling it back to the people. In short, Monsanto is making a double profit by polluting the world's scarce freshwater resources, privately taking ownership of that water, filtering it, and selling it back to those who can afford to pay for it.
Sign OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" petition. These petitions will be physically delivered to Monsanto and related court hearings Support Schmeiser, Nelson and hundreds of other farmers who are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by gene... more -
Energy firms hike prices
Two of the UK's "big six" energy firms have hiked their gas and electricity prices, creating further difficulties for many households already struggling to pay their bills. Scottish & Southern Energy, which has 8.8 million UK customers, is raising gas prices by 29.2% and average electricity costs by 19.2% from Monday, while rival E.ON also unveiled rises of 26% and 16% in gas and electricity prices respectively. Both firms blamed soaring wholesale energy prices.
SSE's energy supply director Alistair Phillips-Davies said: "The world is experiencing an energy shock of a kind not seen since the early 1970s, but which is likely to have more profound and lasting consequences." Two of the UK's "big six" energy firms have hiked their gas and electricity prices, creating further difficulties for m... more -
Housing and economic takeover act of 2008
Add it all up and my guess is more than $10 trillion of private and public funds has been pulled out of America by fraudulent means. That is an interesting number, given that it was an amount sufficient to pay off the direct national debt before the housing bill added Fannie‘s and Freddie’s debts to our burden.
In short, our problem is not that our national debt is out of control. Our problem is a financial coup d’ etat. The reason we have debt is that the federal accounts have a private back door that is feeding an insatiable parasite. The money we need to address our financial, social and retirement obligations has disappeared and we need to get it back. The housing bill does not do this. Quite the contrary: it represents a step in the opposite direction. Instead of getting the money back, the housing bill ensures that our contingent liabilities increase astronomically and puts in place additional mechanisms for engineering more missing money and draining small business and communities as a result of further centralization of mortgage credit into Washington and Wall Street.
If you look at various estimates of what it would cost to end global poverty, ensure that all Americans had health care and no one lost their home to foreclosure or solve this problem or that problem, what you discover is this $10 trillion is more than enough to make significant inroads in solving most of the world’s ills. It appears our problems may not be material. Instead they are political. Which means they are ultimately cultural and spiritual.
more@url Add it all up and my guess is more than $10 trillion of private and public funds has been pulled out of America by fraudulent means. T... more -
We need more laws and more government to fix our problems... NOT!
you won't read or believe this, either... i just love it!
+af
from the linked article...
"Less Is Better
This brings me to the big question that arises from government activities: What should government do when the economy moves into recession? The lesson history seems to teach is that government should do as little as possible.
The first major recession America experienced as an independent nation was in 1819. There was a clamor to halt immigration, but nothing was done. Within two years the economy was once again booming.
There were further panics in 1837, 1857, 1873, 1883 and 1893; federal activity was minimal, and, in effect, the downturns cured themselves. The 1907 panic was settled by J.P. Morgan, a private individual, who, with fellow financiers, determined which businesses could be saved and which would go to the wall.
The panic of 1920 was cured by the masterly inactivity of President Warren G. Harding: He did nothing at all, and the trouble cured itself.
The same thing might have happened after the big Wall Street crash in October 1929 if President Herbert Hoover had followed the advice of Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury. Mellon remembered 1907 and 1920 and knew that a key to capitalism is allowing badly run businesses to go bust in a down cycle. He told President Hoover that the destructive forces unleashed by the crash should be left free to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate [and so] purge the rottenness from the economy."
Unfortunately, social engineer Hoover rejected this wise advice and began to do a great deal of fiddling. As the recession deepened and persisted, he fiddled more and more. But all this fiddling did, in effect, was to keep badly run and fundamentally insolvent businesses afloat.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office he didn't change Hoover's policies; he intensified and enlarged them. Hence, the punitive power of natural economic forces, which ultimately serves a constructive purpose by clearing the ground for more efficient businesses, was deadened and restrained. The original recession thus became the Great Depression, which continued throughout the 1930s. Only the advent of the Second World War revived the economy. The Hoover-Roosevelt policies are a textbook example of how not to deal with a major economic downturn.
The golden rule of economics is to go with nature, not against it. I am seriously worried that this rule will be ignored in the current recession, especially if the Democrats win the presidency in November. Barack Obama has been compared with John F. Kennedy. To me, he's beginning to look like a Hoover-FDR hybrid." you won't read or believe this, either... i just love it! +af from the linked article... "Less Is Better ... more -
EPIC FAIL: Sony wipes out PS2 profits with PS3 marketing campaign
Sony must be feeling rather under the weather lately, as the Guardian reported today that they have spent more on the marketing campaign for the PS3 than was earned in the five years PS2 was top of the market. Oopsy... Sony must be feeling rather under the weather lately, as the Guardian reported today that they have spent more on the marketing campai... more
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Economics
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Economics
