Goodbye 100w, 75w Incandescent Lamps

[JoeSpareBedroom]

That's a pretty weak argument, Pete. Funny, but weak.

[Kurt Ullman]

Also, we need pull some of the "Highway taxes" away from highways and let it go to building other forms of transportation like light rail, etc. We well and truly blew that over the years. FWIW, I have long suggested that the Feds zero out their gas and highway-related taxes (along with the money) and let the individual states raise theirs to take up the slack and let them spend it as they see fit.

[HeyBub]

I invented a device and tried to sell it to the city. It was a bipod for keeping long-handled tools vertical.

I figured the city could carry my invention on their trucks and do away with having to have four people standing around the holes holding shovels and hoes in an upright position.

I'm sure it was union opposition that prevented me from getting a contract.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

I'm going to make a statement below. I want you to tell me if the statement is true or false.

The United States now has laws in place which make it a crime for "charities" or corporations to funnel money to terrorist organizations.

TRUE OR FALSE?

[JoeSpareBedroom]

That's correct.

[Kurt Ullman]

I would be more impressed with that as a safety measure if it exceeded the average life span of the car. All that means is that the guy who buys it from me is more likely to have problems.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Good idea (light rail), except for one problem: They *TEND TO BE* run by municipalities. By comparison, highways are big money makers for the construction industry. Until we cut off the cash flow from that industry to politicians' pockets, you won't see light rail become a reality in much of the country. Here (Rochester NY), a light rail plan was presented some years ago as an alternative to widening one of our highways. There was a rail bed already in place alongside the highway. For that and other reasons, the plan was nearly perfect. It never got a serious evaluation by the county's elected slobs. Instead, the highway was widened, which of course provides a nice annuity for the companies that need to maintain it constantly.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Please rephrase the question. Based on the word "fungible", I'm not sure what you're asking.

[Kurt Ullman]

One of the many indications that the major law passed by Congress is the Law of Unintended Consequences is the demise of the station wagon. When they first issued the CAFE regs, they covered wagons as cars but not vans and SUVs as trucks. The rest is history.

But that is as much of an indication of how we have failed to develop anything at the other end. The demand for public transportation options should grow if they would ever be available.

[Kurt Ullman]

There are two different things going on here. One is the price of oil the other who gets the money. We could reduce our dependence on foreign by using our own energy sources. While that might or might not make a big difference in prices at the pump, it would more likely starve some of the nasties in the ME .

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Wrong. All experts on the subject agree that civilian nuclear projects are a potential source of dangerous material for the wrong kinds of people. The issue becomes one of trust, and we know how far that goes. Physically building the bomb itself isn't very complicated.

I'm not saying we should eliminate nuclear power generation, but if you believe it's a good idea, then logically, you forfeit the right to act surprised or annoyed when countries like Iran start rattling their swords.

[Kurt Ullman]

Probably. What's yellow and sleeps four?

A highway department truck..

[HeyBub]

Hmm. Say an ordinary bulb lasts four years. Each signal has four bulbs (two red, one yellow, one green). On average, then, the signal itself requires attention once per year. My city has over 2,000 signalized intersections with at least 4 signals per intersection (sometimes, it seems, as many as ten!). That's a minimum of 8,000 signals or 8,000 maintenance visits per year.

Think of the savings if those 8,000 maintenance visits could be cut to, say, twelve total. Shucks, a fella could have a good time in Vegas with the savings.

[Pete C.]

Mini vans do the job as well if you don't need off road capability or much cargo weight capability. I seem to recall soccer moms in min vans being regularly disparaged before those mini vans were replaced with SUVs and they were in turn disparaged. Seems more like the people are the ones that are disliked, and the vehicle is just a convenient PC target.

An unsubstantiated assumption. The fact that a person traded in an SUV neither tells us that it didn't fulfill their needs, nor does it tell us they didn't trade it in for another SUV.

Again false. SUVs are not better under any conditions for drivers who lack driving skills, they are indeed better for those of us who do posses driving skills and understand their capabilities, limitations and how to handle them. The failings of our driver education and licensing in the US is not the fault of the vehicle.

I haven't seen many SUVs on dealer lots with actual off road tires, all terrain seem the most common and do just fine in snow.

Yes, really. The SUV detractors try to hype up rollover deaths, but the reality is that there are far more accidents involving SUVs where the occupants are uninjured and the vehicle does not roll.

And less frequent.

Again poor driver education and licensing is the problem, not the vehicle. Note that most every commercial vehicle, from step vans to box trucks to semis have much higher CGs than any SUV and yet there isn't a plague of rollover accidents with them. The difference is entirely driver education and licensing. Not to say that thos commercial vehicles don't ever roll, just that it is quite infrequent relative to the number of such vehicle miles.

An advertising campaign would help that. Remind people of the carpooling and mass transit options while they are receptive due to the increased fuel prices.

[JoeSpareBedroom]

True. It also requires removing administrators who have no clue. Here, the city still uses a hub & spoke system, where many buses come from the suburbs to one place downtown, and some riders need to switch to a bus that takes them out to another suburb where they actually work. Every now and then, someone suggests running direct routes that mimic the heaviest car traffic, since that's obviously where people are going. The response is usually "duh...whuh? How do we know all those people would use the service?"

[HeyBub]

Wasn't that, let me think, during the CARTER administration?

[Pete C.]

Again more hype. Power reactors don't produce material useful for bomb making, and while conceptually building a bomb is simple, the devil is in the details and building one that actually functions is very difficult. The only potential from a power reactor is as a source of material for a "dirty bomb" and those are very overhyped.

I have no problem with Iran having power reactors, especially if they keep them open to inspection by outside agencies, something they have no reason not to do if they are only generating power. Heck they could put up web cams in the plants so the whole world can watch and it would have no effect on their ability to generate power.

[Pete C.]

Like the Iraq sanctions Starved Saddam? The nasties never get starved, entirely because they are the nasties and are perfectly happy to steal the food from the mouths of children.

[Rick Brandt]

Here's part of the economics of the problem as I see it. Let's hypothetically assume that gas prices stabilize for the long term at 2.75/g which I think most people would agree is more than reasonable to live with (thinking long term now).

Given this hypothetical we can reduce the issue of lowering our dependence on foreign oil to...

a) choosing something greener b) not sending money to the middle east

Now let's hypothetically assume an alternative is discovered that is perfect regarding points (a) and (b) but which costs 3.00/g. I think the vast majority of people would be delighted to pay that difference (roughly 8%) to accomplish the goals of (a) and (b).

Now of course this is so successful that the cost of foreign oil now drops to an effective gasoline price of 2.00/g because we are no longer buying so much of it. Now with a price difference of 50% you are going to lose a lot of supporters to the alternative fuel. That is how commodity pricing works in world markets. If you are a significant consumer of a commodity and you reduce your usage then the price drops and there will be tremendous pressure as a result of that drop for consumption to go back up.

The only way I see us reducing our foreign oil consumption is if an alternative is found that is so dramatically cheaper than FO that it will still be cheaper when the inevitable price drop in FO occurs.

[Pete C.]

For most cars they will. Trucks typically have longer life spans so perhaps not there.