Enter the SHV: sport hybrid vehicle

While US car manufacturers were sitting on their thumbs saying there's no demand for hybrid or electric vehicles Toyota just got busy making them. Yes, Honda made one too and for a long time Honda's Insight held the miles per gallon record for commercial hybrid vehicles. What Honda failed to realize that charging $20K or more for a two seater with the performance of a Reliant Robin, and storage capacity of a Porsche would naturally doom it to a niche market.

Toyota however decided that there was no reason a hybrid shouldn't be practical too and produced the much more popular four seater Prius which still managed to give a respectable 50+ mpg and better city mileage than the Insight. With their 2004 Prius they rolled out an improved power system for 60+ mpg, lower emissions and better performance. This was all combined with improved storage capacity and interior space, a fold down back seat and new less dorky design. So once again they managed to beat Honda at their own game and have made the new Honda Civic Hybrid a far less popular car than it would otherwise have been. Now it seems that everyone wants a Prius and Toyota simply cannot keep up with the demand. The car has up to a n eight month waiting time, and sells for significantly above sticker price (no Blue Book pricing on this car!) and used models with thousands of miles on the clock are selling for even more than new ones.

Now Toyata are pulling off yet another miracle in the hybrid car world and launching a "Sport" version of the Prius with a bigger engine, beefier electrics and hence significantly more horsepower but apparently almost identical performance in the fuel consumption department. While its no sports car (but their Volta is) it certainly will go a long way to induce even more demand for hybrids. I will predict that the Prius GT will have even long waiting times and be a runaway success in America and the world over, finally burying any remnants of the stodgy "no demand" reputation hybrids once had.

Now watch all those American car companies run to catch up...

New URL, same old long dark tea-time

As of today this blog should be accessible with the new URL http://www.longdarkteatime.com. The old URL will continue to be valid for the foreseeable future however all archive and content links will be updated to point at the new location. It would help if anyone referring to this blog update their links to the new www.longdarkteatime.com URL. Thank you!

The Flip-Flopper In Chief Part 2 - The Return of Old Doublethinking Teflon Shoulders

Brad DeLong has collated a whole series of self-contradicting remarks Bush has made about 527 campaign ads and freedom of speech. When its Republican supporting 527s he's supporting he just say "well that's what freedom of speech is all about", when he's under fire from Democratic supporting 527s its all "we aught to get these things off the air!".

The two things that stick in my craw most about George Bush are that he's able to do this flip-flopping continuously and the media doesn't report it much and that even when they do he's able to get away with it. Indeed its not even flip-flopping since he rarely pretends to hold one position or another, any more than a reed in the wind pretends to lean one way or the other. Its more like genuine Orwellian doublethink, Bush really does think that 527s are bad and should be removed and that 527s are just plain old freedom of speech and shouldn't be meddled with.

For the most part the press can never make any acquisition stick because Bush never acknowledges and change in policy, any contradiction in what he says, no error of judgement and never acknowledges the existance of history that is littered with errors, SNAFUs, bad policy, lies, and even thousands of bodies. With Bush everything is always in the future, its always "well we have to do that or someone's going to do this" and never mind that almost every policy decision he's made in the last four years has been boneheaded and wrong.

When it comes to doing what he wants he takes all the responsbility, he has to tell us what is good for us, when it comes to dealing with any failure in policy he never takes responsibility, holding a president responsible would be unpatriotic wouldn't it? His shoulders are so teflon coated its unreal, all responsibility just falls away and never sticks. I just don't know how they do it - I thought the teflon spin-off from NASA was for frying eggs not protecting the Office of the President from the shit sticking.

One nation under Bush, divisible by issues

Its amazing how you can go away for three weeks and not really follow the news and when you come back the exact same insignificant issue is front page every day. Is this nation really going to select its president on a single issue that irrelevant to the daily lives of virtually all of it inhabitants and certainly to the 6 billion other people on this planet which it, by defacto assertion, is the sole "superpower" of?

If America is a superpower what kind of super power does it have? Super obsessive compulsive disorder power is my guess - that is the ability to divert the entire nations focus obsessively on minutiae that are irrelevant to day to day existence. First it was Clinton's peccadilloes which should only have been an issue between him, his family and Monica. Now it is the details of Kerry's war wounds and aversion for preemptive war, which for some reason have managed to outshine Bush's self selected program of "military abstinence".

Unfortunately Kerry has run himself into a side road of mediocrity and hence can no better than run to the FCC to complain. As Dave over at Chicken or Beef put it, if he was half the candidate we all wanted him to be he would have come back shooting from the hip with "Even the nay sayers place me on a swift boat in Vietnam, where the f**k were you George AWOL Bush?". Similarly he should be fearless in defending his post Vietnam anti-war statements in the same way as someone can "support the troops" but be against war in Iraq. If Kerry cannot do both these without fear of tarnishing his reputation he shouldn't be standing up there pretending to represent half (or hopefully more than half) of the country.

Which brings me back to the title...

Are we once again going to see this country select its President based on a narrow set of issues that really have no relevance to the lives of most of its people? Today the news has hit that this year there are 1.3 million more Americans living in poverty. You would think that those 1.3 million would surely be voting for a democrat like Kerry instead of a candidate who's one goal is to pander to his rich benefactors with massive tax cuts?

Unfortunately it is quite likely that they will decide that issues that hardly affect them at all in their day to day lives. Like tax cuts, gay marriage, the "war on terrorism", school prayer, or something else is a higher priority than having a higher minimum wage in their pockets, food on their plates, health insurance and motivated well paid teachers teaching their kids in school. When you're in the poverty trap selecting the president based on the exact circumstances of how he received war wounds thirty years ago is like divorcing your wife because she told you she lost her virginity to her high school sweetie on the back seat of a Buick, but found out it was actually in motel with a one night stand. At the time it was a big deal, thirty years on its pretty much irrelevant.

What's more galling is that there is so far no evidence that Kerry's story is anything but true and his only mistake ever was to divert from his originally safe plan of not using his war record as a campaign issue. If only he'd only stuck with "I served and was awarded three purple hearts and still believe that war is wrong except as a last resort". Instead someone persuaded him to jump on the war hero band wagon and the rest, as they say, is history.

Naturally Kerry was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. We all know the consequences of him using his war record, but if he hadn't the swift boat people would probably still have seized on the opportunity and chastised him for not being a proud soldier. Naturally they would do it without the finesse to distinguish between being proud of serving, and laying one's life on the line for country and comrades vs. just going out to kill people because you are forced to.

In serving one's country it stands to reason that doing so "with honor" is a distinction must be earned, you don't get it for just showing up - or not as the case may be. George AWOL Bush did his best not to serve and clearly never achieved even a passing grade in the honor department. Kerry, apparently inspite of objecting to the reasons for the war, went out of his way to be in the line of fire and served with honor. Furthermore at the time he did justice to his own conscience by continuing to support the anti-war movement and speaking publicly against war. If only he was brave enough to continue to do so now he might actually be a candidate we could all support with pride and confidence that he's the right person for the job, and more importantly one that can actually beat Bush - with honor.

Digital voting - again

As if by magic Jim Hightower was speaking on the radio tonight and called digital voting systems "faith based voting". Well it made me laugh.

Pop quiz

As a non-American living in California I find I easily qualify as "a minority" so I thought I'd try the Which America Hating Minority Are You?. Not that I really hate America since that would clearly be a an irrational hatred of some abstract ill-defined concept. Is America a geographic region? Is it a political system? Is it a way of life? Is it a collection of movies, records and sound bites? Or is it just a name associated with a sordid trail of bloody conquest in the pursuit of me, me, me?

Indeed what is it about America, whatever it may be, that makes Americans so upset when anyone, even its own residents, dare to criticise it? Could it be that its actually just a big last resort refugee camp for all those who couldn't put up with with the s**t somewhere else and hence those who dare to criticise should really, well, you-know... go home. It doesn't even matter if you were born here, or your family has lived here since European invaders first started their genocide of the indiginous population in the name of riches and caucasian superiority. One can only imagine that those millions that were murdered, worked, and starved to death probably wished for long centuries that Americans would simply just "go home".

Could it be that America is still carrying with it a deeply buried collective guilt for its truely appauling history of genocide both at home and abroad? Its like some unspoken of family secret that no one ever wants to talk about, but if given a good airing would do everyone a lot of good (see "Secrets and Lies"). That long buried guilt prevents anyone breathing or accepting a word of criticism lest it unlock the whole pandora's box of fear, uncertainty and self doubt about America. Indeed when when the georgraphical borders have vanished, the flag is filled with stars, the white Baptist America blurred to a technicolor pantheon, it could be that the only truely identifiable American trait will be its unshakeable denial of the past and refusal to accept any criticsm.

Anyway, just what kind of America hating minority am I? Well isn't it obvious?

While you're at it you can also try Which Enemy of the Christian Faith Are You? which is worth checking just to see the unusual questions and answers it includes. My type? Philosopher-Scientist of course.

Quiz links thanks to Misanthropy In Five Easy Lessons

This democracy is digitizing itself to death

Tonight while listening to my friends discuss how to select a board for a new organization I joked, "Well you can just call it a democratically elected board but then hold the election with digital voting machines...". The ellipsis standing of course for the inference that with digital voting machines just about anything is possible. Of course that's pretty typical of my cynical and biting humour, but as more and more people are becoming aware such thoughts are dangerously close to the truth. The article Sum of a Glitch at In These Times highlights just a few of the more notable "glitches" that are totally subverting any semblance of democracy in the United States.

The most important lesson to learn from "Sum of a Glitch" is that people are on the whole, gullible and blissfully ignorant about how any of the technological systems around them work, or should work. It used to be that the majority of people just need to know how to plough a field, when to plant the crops and when to harvest. The kind of knowledge that could be passed on easily from generation to generation and for the longest time, indeed thousands of years, got people by.

The most technologically advanced people you might encounter in life might be doctors, which if they were too effective at healing might be mistaken for witches, or messiahs. Fortunately for all concerned they generally weren't and the most effective remedies were so called folk remidies known to virtually all and for the most part freely available to all.

Sure there were craftsmen and artisans who specialized in skills not related to food production, but even though the layman did not have their specific knowledge of how to do stuff it was easy to comprehend how one might shoe a horse, make furniture, throw a pot, or paint a portrait. There just wasn't really any magic involved in those things. Sure a few things appeared to have magic behind them, like the use of explosives, but usually the "magic" was just an artifact of some well kept secrets of the trade such as the recipe for gunpowder and how to pick a lock.

Then along came the industrial revolution and all that went to hell in a hand basket. Machines were invented that worked in ways and with technology that the ordinary person just plain didn't understand. The external and internal combustion engines, electricity, magnetism, the electric motor, radio, semiconductors, nuclear power, genetic engineering, biophysics, chemical engineering, even basic structural engineering and physics. The list goes on and on and for the most part its just an accepted fact of modern life that most people will blithely interact and even worse, completely depend on, many systems every day that they have no clue how they work or what to do if they stop working.

So really its only natural to expect humans of this era to calmly and unquestionably accept that the most fundamental process of democracy, voting, should suddenly become this thing that no one understands and no one questions. In less than 100 years its easy to imagine future generations who would ask "How could you vote without a machine?" just as these days someone can say "How could you do math without a calculator?" or "How can you do research without the Internet?" or "How can I get to work without a car!".

Should this be a frightening future to contemplate? Well as the early evidence is showing, the answer is most definitely yes!. It is often said that to err is human, but to really foul up requires a computer and foul up they have been. And behind each incident is a human saying something inane to the effect of "the computer did it!" or "its just a glitch!" etc. etc. and just because no one dies because of a voting machine error for the most part they get away with it. Unfortunately what is dying is not people at the voting both (well, that hasn't happened yet) but the very democratic process that a significant part of American is trying to cling onto.

When every vote is fully machine based and incontestable because there was no paper trail the entire democratic process will titer on a precipice, at the whim of any passing gust of corruption, or subsidence of its footings caused by network and software errors or infiltration from outside. And because Americans are for the most part blissfully ignorant of even the very basics of maths, science, statistics, logic and more importantly history, well then any old hand waving argument about how "the computer is always right" or "it was computer error" will win them over as easily as that old "follow the lady" trick played by street corner grifters. Its always has and always will.

Indeed institutionalized ignorance has progressed so far that we have even started to reach the point where the old "fear of those who know" line can easily be played to discredit those who really do know. After all people for the most part would prefer to believe those that just tell them everything is going to be okay, whether from a position of ignorance or knowledge. The appearance of an outsider with bad tidings or new ideas contrary to the official wisdom (as in the case of the consequences of global warming) is seldom a welcome visitor. Using fear, uncertainty and doubt is a very easy weapon to persuade the uninformed locals that he should be sent packing ASAP just like the lone cowboy from out of town in an old spaghetti western.

Perhaps this was always the case, but from my subjective point of view it does seem that suspension of disbelief in this country really has reached an all time high. Study after study on digital voting systems that are fundamentally flawed, insecure and basically fail, fail and fail again just doesn't manage to get people protesting on the streets. All we can do is raise our arms and say "Yeah!" and praise be to Diebold that there will never be any more hanging chads and coincidentally no more pesky paper trail to have to have to ponder about recounting. The eventual elimination of the later (if many have their way) is clearly a very convenient outcome of the 2000 election for anyone interested in the kind of election fraud that we've always pointed and laughed at other countries for putting up with.

The 40,000 legitimate voters purged from the electoral roll in Florida is just over 0.01% of the population of the USA. Coincidentally that's just about the error rate claimed by voting machine manufacturers when they say their equipment is "99.99% accurate". Clearly when large numbers of votes are involved a lot can slip into the cracks of the democracy without anyone noticing or caring even though as we've seen, just a few hundred can make literally a world of the difference.

So if you think the screw ups, and yes folks even election fraud we've seen so far perpetrated in the name of "fairer and more accurate elections" is big deal, well then you ain't seen nothing yet - you mark my words! But you had better print them out quick before I delete them without a trace because in a digital world anything is possible and the truth is as quickly erased as the history is altered to prove it never happened.

Racism European style

The British are notorious for their wickedly satirical sense of humour - something that the Americans notoriously just "don't get". A grand example of this, and perhaps the funniest thing I heard in the whole three weeks I spent in Europe was "the only acceptable form of racism is now anti-Americanism". Indeed I almost spat my warm beer half across the room when my mate said it.

The irony of course is that not only is it so funny because it's true, it's also patheticaly sad and un-funny because it's true. Being laughed at is the thing that drives Americans mad with fervent patriotic rage - how dare those impertinent pompous old Europeans poke fun at them! Well America, as they say "there's no smoke without fire", so as long as American remains the arrogant super-bully of a super-power it currently is they will continue to enjoy making you the butt of their jokes.

Welcome back to SUV land

One thing that Europe is mercifully almost free of is the SUV. Indeed the dinkyness of most European cars is to be admired. Families aren't any smaller in Europe, and the need to transport kids safely, and luggage conveniently isn't any smaller either. Somehow Europeans just cope and with decidedly better safety and fuel economy. Is this economy of car size caused by the smaller roads (driving at 60mph or greater against opposing traffic on a narrow undivided road is no problem for Europeans), smaller parking spaces (at best "compact" sized compared to American), or higher gas prices (about two to three times even current US prices)?

Its probably none of these, just a realization that bigger isn't necessarily better and just because you can then you don't really have to. Also in Europe the governments have no fear of imposing tax rules for cars that actively penalize any car with more than a 1.6 liter engine, and discourage low fuel economy cars. The same rules in America would severely affect just about every single car driven and would certainly be considered damaging to the economy and "un-American". The reason that Europeans don't regard such tax laws as un-European is of course that European's realize that their countries include the air over their heads and in their lungs, and that freedom to drive gas guzzlers might actually be bad for other peoples freedom.

No greater shining example of American vehicular excess could be given than the SUV, symbol of wretched excess and freedom to consume gone wild. In Europe they are the exception that they should be, driven almost exclusively for their four wheel drive capability, and not as status symbols or tax breaks. Hi end car manufacturers in Europe build small, safe, fuel efficient cars including Audi, Mercedes and others. Even American companies like Ford build many sub-compact models in Europe that never see the light of day in Europe. Those who want a status symbol in Europe buy a small roadster by Porsche, TVR or even Smart Car - not a giant Hummer H2 that is mercifully almost non-existant that side of the pond of sanity (or insanity depending on your perspective).

For those who live in America a good sanity check on how out of control things have got in the USA should read California's SUV ban at Slate which points out that many US "Sport Utility" vehicles are now infringing restrictions designed to prevent large trucks from tearing up suburban streets never intended to handle their 6000+ pounds of weight. Not only do owners of such vehicles get a huge tax break to own one, guzzle gas produced by a lovingly subsidized US oil industry (tens of billions this year alone), pollute far in excess of their "utility", make giant profits for the cushy friends of government - car companies, but dash it all they also tear up our heavily tax subsidzed roads in a way that is unfair to all and would never be tolerated if a working class truck driver was behind the wheel doing, heavens forbid, real utilitarian work.

Tipping here and there

One difference between Europe and America that always hits me right away is tipping. In England your pint of beer costs you $4.00 or so (about two to two pounds fifty), but there's no ten to twenty percent tip expected by the bar tender, or even for the waitress if there is one (there almost never is). In a restaurant a small tip for service is nice, but not essential except in quite upmarket establishments. Ten percent is almost always adequate and zero percent is still considered fine if service or food wasn't satisfactory. In the later case Americans seem to prefer to tip the waitress and complain except in cases of extreme customer abuse.

I was remdinded of the tipping issue last night at around 3:00am when my baggage finally arrived courtesy of United Airlines. Having experienced a six hour mechanical delay in Chicago I was offered a switch by their customer service people to a flight to Oakland instead of SFO which meant no trek across the Bay to home. That sounded fine by me, but I was warned that my bags "may not make it". Feeling lucky and tired after 24 hours of travelling I went for it. Had I known that "may not" was actually a "definitely wont" I might have stuck out at Chicago to get the proper flight.

A day after arriving and still no bags I finally waited out the long delay on their automated customer service line to speak to a real person and was instantly told that my bags were not actually "in transit" (whatever that meant) but were actually sitting at SFO which is exactly where they were told to go. Apparently United had no record that they were supposed to be going to Oakland and even though my address was in Oakland and my phone numbers were with the claim no one in SFO had thought to ask me if I wanted them. So the switch to the Oakland flight apparently being ignored and I was immediately told that the bags would be delivered to me later in the day or tomorrow. At 11pm I got a call to say that the bags could be delivered that night if I wanted, "Yes", I said. The bags finally arrived at 3am (or it might even have been closer to 4am, I don't quite recall having being deeply into jet lag induced sleep deprevation) and then it hit me. Do you tip the guy who delivers your baggage that is over a day late at 3am in the morning?

In American the answer is clear: of course you do. He wasn't responsible for delivering the bags late. He's doing you a service and is working late into the wee hours to get you your bags. In this case he didn't actually wait around for a tip, but I gave him one anyway, its the American way: reward those who do what they are supposed to do, complain to those that don't.

Will I complain to United for losing my bags? Probably not. I've flown dozens of flights with United and hundreds of thousands of miles and only twice have my bags gone astray. Both times were caused by a switch to a different flight route after checking bags, something I advise against doing unless you really don't care if you see your baggage when you arrive.

Time for bed

After three weeks out of the country I am back home again. It appears that local politics of my building, neighborhood, state and country have gone on as normal without me. Fortunately due to the miracle of GSM I was able to keep on top of email and the pile of snail mail wasn't too daunting. However the backlog at Bloglines (my prefered blog reading tool) was just insurmountable. After about five seconds thought I just hit "Mark all as read" and forgot about it. I'm sure I've just missed out on a thousand wonderful gadgets at Gizmodo and dozens of mind bending political revelations elsewhere in my blog roll, however life will just have to go on without them.

Having duely managed to catch up on everything important in less than a day that leaves me with the rest of the afternoon to take a nap and catch up on my timezones - hence the title. Naturally I developed my own backlog of thoughts to pontificate on which I duely made note of. However without a laptop in tow (a decision that I don't regret) I did not bother to write anything while away. Stay tuned for a few highlights coming soon (but they will have to wait until after the nap).