Jun 2007
A disturbance in The Force
18/06/07 10:51 AM
I sense a disturbance
in The Force and it is way overdue. An announcement
this week that General Motors is shifting 500 design
engineers over to the production team for it's
upcoming entry into the Green Wars, The Volt, is
really big news. Described as a "Leapfrog" in
technology over the wildly successful yet highly over
rated, Toyota Hybrid designs, the Volt will have
bigger and better batteries, be able to run for the
first 40 Kliks without the gasoline powered generator
engine running at all, and most importantly, the
ability to be charged up at HOME by plugging it into
the wall.
What a concept! A real breakthrough! Ask anyone old enough to remember The Jetsons if they think the idea of PLUGGING in an electric car to charge overnight in your own garage is a radical concept and they might ask you if you are chewing peyote. Of course you should be able to plug it in at home, or at the office, or the grocery store if necessary. No one but an engineer in the employ of a major car manufacturer or an oil conglomerate would think otherwise.
Only someone whose primary mission in life is to appear to be trying to reduce the consumption of liquid fuels of all types while preserving the integrity, and profitability, of a vast distribution network of refineries, pipelines, ships, trucks and service stations would have trouble with the "Plug it in at Home" concept. Hence the serious looking ads on TV lately that have regular looking folks opining on the necessity for Oil companies to be actively looking for and developing new energy sources for our transportation needs.
WHY on earth would anyone expect an OIL company to do that? Tell me that General Electric is working on it, have Steve Jobs announce the ICar on national TV and I would be thrilled. But have Shell oil tell me to just keep filling up with that $1.10 a litre stuff while they are working on the problem and I may have to put a mortgage on Casa Cordina to pay next years transportation bills.
If you have not watched the smash hit documentary entitled, "WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? ", run, do not walk, to your nearest video store and rent it. In this great film we find that General Motors already had such a car. Sleek, stylish, fast, plug it in at home, drive downtown and back, plug it in again, the car was a home run. Except GM would not sell it to anyone, they leased it, and then they terminated all the leases and shredded all the cars. Way too successful.
Imagine how frightened GM must be of two things, 1: falling behind Toyota in world wide sales for the very first time. 2: Watching Toyota sell over 750,000 hybrid vehicles since inception, imagine how frightened they must be and should be to make this stunning commitment to the new VOLT.
The Force is positively quivering.
30
What a concept! A real breakthrough! Ask anyone old enough to remember The Jetsons if they think the idea of PLUGGING in an electric car to charge overnight in your own garage is a radical concept and they might ask you if you are chewing peyote. Of course you should be able to plug it in at home, or at the office, or the grocery store if necessary. No one but an engineer in the employ of a major car manufacturer or an oil conglomerate would think otherwise.
Only someone whose primary mission in life is to appear to be trying to reduce the consumption of liquid fuels of all types while preserving the integrity, and profitability, of a vast distribution network of refineries, pipelines, ships, trucks and service stations would have trouble with the "Plug it in at Home" concept. Hence the serious looking ads on TV lately that have regular looking folks opining on the necessity for Oil companies to be actively looking for and developing new energy sources for our transportation needs.
WHY on earth would anyone expect an OIL company to do that? Tell me that General Electric is working on it, have Steve Jobs announce the ICar on national TV and I would be thrilled. But have Shell oil tell me to just keep filling up with that $1.10 a litre stuff while they are working on the problem and I may have to put a mortgage on Casa Cordina to pay next years transportation bills.
If you have not watched the smash hit documentary entitled, "WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? ", run, do not walk, to your nearest video store and rent it. In this great film we find that General Motors already had such a car. Sleek, stylish, fast, plug it in at home, drive downtown and back, plug it in again, the car was a home run. Except GM would not sell it to anyone, they leased it, and then they terminated all the leases and shredded all the cars. Way too successful.
Imagine how frightened GM must be of two things, 1: falling behind Toyota in world wide sales for the very first time. 2: Watching Toyota sell over 750,000 hybrid vehicles since inception, imagine how frightened they must be and should be to make this stunning commitment to the new VOLT.
The Force is positively quivering.
30
|
TB Guy & the LaCoste defence
06/06/07 09:24 AM
I am certain that we
have all heard enough already about the self
indulgent dweeb from Atlanta who put half the planet
at risk just so he would not have to give up his
deposit on his destination wedding plans. It will
become even more tiresome by about September when I
fully expect the Movie of the Week, TERROR IN THE
SKIES!!!, to show up on our flat screens.
However, can't we just take a moment and enjoy the delicious irony of a man, a family, of Personal Injury Lawyers, the members of the bar who are responsible for all of the bad jokes, broken antennas and general bad vibes that the 98% of lawyers who are NOT blood sucking Shylocks recieve or put up with on a daily basis, being in this situation.
Dad, senior partner in the PI firm, coaxes some doctors from the health authority to a meeting where he secretly records their words while he bullies them into saying out loud, (speak right into that flower pot) that they are really covering their collective ass when they beg Junior to stay away from airplanes. Junior, immediately moves up his departure date by two days, thus avoiding the letter sent by these ass covering medicos as soon as they got back to their office, spelling out their concerns and putting these two jerks on notice that flying is bad.
Doesn't that sound like pre-meditation to you? They had a plan to, first, set a trap for the docs to provide a, "we acted on doctors advice" defense and then they modified their travel plans to make sure that their little trap was not undone by the not-quite-that-stupid but slow-to-act doctors. About Junior's return trip, he knew he was on a No Fly list so he flies to good old unsuspecting Canada and drives across the border, leaving a trail of (now) terrified potential victims across 7 countries behind him.
And how about that US Border Patrol agent, a highly trained infectious disease diagnostician no doubt, who looks at his computer screen which says, DETAIN HIM, KEEP HIS PASSPORT, PUT ON YOUR BIO-HAZARD SUIT, DANGER, DANGER, and then looks at Junior an decides that he "looked OK, cause he wasn't coffing or nuffin" and LETS HIM THROUGH!! You couldn't invent this stuff, come to think of it, when you throw in the REAL CDC expert in TB, the father of the Bride, and you begin to wonder WHAT WAS HE THINKING when he let his daughter not only go out with but marry and go on a honeymoon with this numbskull and presumably kiss him on the lips to seal the deal.
When you put all of these elements together, this isn't good enough for a Movie of the week. If Fox gets ahold of this it will be a full blown series! Move over Lincoln Burrows, get out of the way Jack Bauer, here comes TB Guy, Andrew Speaker.
Given all of this, Mr. Speaker putting up the LaCoste defense by using crocodile tears in his interview with Diane Sawyer and pleading that he never meant to harm anyone and really did not know that he was doing anything wrong sounds much more like a guy that knows just what can happen to him and his money and his rapidly disappearing future career if any of his potential victims gets together with a real smart Personal Injury Lawyer and decides to clean him out then he sounds like a contrite victim of unfortunate circumstances.
Really, Steven King's remarkable story, The Stand, about an infectious agent escaping a government lab and killing 90% of the population was turned into a 6 hour mini-series and it did not even come close to starting out with the same great cast of Keystone Cop characters as this one. I think this show, Terror in the Skies, Love Amongst the Anti-Biotics, will be a great hit.
Who needs fiction?
30
However, can't we just take a moment and enjoy the delicious irony of a man, a family, of Personal Injury Lawyers, the members of the bar who are responsible for all of the bad jokes, broken antennas and general bad vibes that the 98% of lawyers who are NOT blood sucking Shylocks recieve or put up with on a daily basis, being in this situation.
Dad, senior partner in the PI firm, coaxes some doctors from the health authority to a meeting where he secretly records their words while he bullies them into saying out loud, (speak right into that flower pot) that they are really covering their collective ass when they beg Junior to stay away from airplanes. Junior, immediately moves up his departure date by two days, thus avoiding the letter sent by these ass covering medicos as soon as they got back to their office, spelling out their concerns and putting these two jerks on notice that flying is bad.
Doesn't that sound like pre-meditation to you? They had a plan to, first, set a trap for the docs to provide a, "we acted on doctors advice" defense and then they modified their travel plans to make sure that their little trap was not undone by the not-quite-that-stupid but slow-to-act doctors. About Junior's return trip, he knew he was on a No Fly list so he flies to good old unsuspecting Canada and drives across the border, leaving a trail of (now) terrified potential victims across 7 countries behind him.
And how about that US Border Patrol agent, a highly trained infectious disease diagnostician no doubt, who looks at his computer screen which says, DETAIN HIM, KEEP HIS PASSPORT, PUT ON YOUR BIO-HAZARD SUIT, DANGER, DANGER, and then looks at Junior an decides that he "looked OK, cause he wasn't coffing or nuffin" and LETS HIM THROUGH!! You couldn't invent this stuff, come to think of it, when you throw in the REAL CDC expert in TB, the father of the Bride, and you begin to wonder WHAT WAS HE THINKING when he let his daughter not only go out with but marry and go on a honeymoon with this numbskull and presumably kiss him on the lips to seal the deal.
When you put all of these elements together, this isn't good enough for a Movie of the week. If Fox gets ahold of this it will be a full blown series! Move over Lincoln Burrows, get out of the way Jack Bauer, here comes TB Guy, Andrew Speaker.
Given all of this, Mr. Speaker putting up the LaCoste defense by using crocodile tears in his interview with Diane Sawyer and pleading that he never meant to harm anyone and really did not know that he was doing anything wrong sounds much more like a guy that knows just what can happen to him and his money and his rapidly disappearing future career if any of his potential victims gets together with a real smart Personal Injury Lawyer and decides to clean him out then he sounds like a contrite victim of unfortunate circumstances.
Really, Steven King's remarkable story, The Stand, about an infectious agent escaping a government lab and killing 90% of the population was turned into a 6 hour mini-series and it did not even come close to starting out with the same great cast of Keystone Cop characters as this one. I think this show, Terror in the Skies, Love Amongst the Anti-Biotics, will be a great hit.
Who needs fiction?
30
Sniffling towards Paradise
05/06/07 02:59 PM
I don't know about you
folks but here it is early June and we have blown our
entire years budget for tissues. (Curlers are not
allowed to say the "K" word!). Ever since early May,
it seems everytime I turned around, somebody I knew
or lived with was straining to deposit most of their
cranial cavity contents into a tissue through their
nose or wiping red, dripping wet, eyes with ever
decreasing little balls of tissue.
Each occurence is immediately followed by statements like the following.
" I don't know what's wrong with me."
"It must be hay fever but I have never had allergies before."
" THEY say that as you get older......."
Well, I just have to say, WAKE UPAND SMELL THE WEEDS! As I look out our back yard my eyes take in a sea of yellow dandelions where there used to be a pristine, beautifully groomed, soccer field and park. As we drive, or creep, along Ontario's 400 series of Highways, the formally well maintained boulevards and rights of way are choked with weeds of every description. Very soon now, an entire graduating class of University students will be the first to have NOT paid for their tuition working at cutting grass for the MTO at jobs their fathers/mothers/uncles and/or MPP's got for them in return for who knows what consideration.
Our Provincial and Municipal political Leaders/Followers have swallowed whole the mantra of the (figurative) sons and daughters in the GREEN movement of Rachel Carson, author of that wonderful work of fiction called, Silent Spring, which was used to cower the linguini spined bunch in charge at the time to ban DDT. Miss Carson's work not only resulted in the death of millions of people from Malaria, (a real threat), it spawned a movement who got their rocks off dressing up as turtles and marching on politicians and shouting a lot. Over time, Politicians only had to meet an ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST and they would lay down and roll over like a cat in front of a fireplace on a cold day. It wasn't long before all of that weed killing, grass cutting and soccer field grooming gave way to shouts of SHAME and put all of those students out of work.
When we bought our current home over 30 years ago. The Town of Markham had a bylaw that would send a municipal crew to your home, at your expense, to cut your lawn and kill your weeds if you let the evil weed dandelion run amok. Such acts were usually called THE NOXIOUS WEED ACT or something similar and they would put the charge on your tax bill. Now that we have gone all NATURAL, having a week choked lawn is some kind of sacrament and people who let their lawns go all to seed and weed get all smug at town meetings and act all superior like their stuff don't smell bad at all. I keep telling you, the world is upside down!!!
And on top of all that, a whole lot of folks who never had to before are walking around with a box of Scotties Tissues under their arms, red noses, weepy eyes and a look of puzzlement on their faces which is saying, "why is this happening to me?".
Well, I know why, you can thank the next GREENIE who comes to your door begging for money, your signature on a petition or your vote. Be creative, really show them how grateful you are. Use a stick or something, a green one.
Thank you Rachel.
30
Each occurence is immediately followed by statements like the following.
" I don't know what's wrong with me."
"It must be hay fever but I have never had allergies before."
" THEY say that as you get older......."
Well, I just have to say, WAKE UPAND SMELL THE WEEDS! As I look out our back yard my eyes take in a sea of yellow dandelions where there used to be a pristine, beautifully groomed, soccer field and park. As we drive, or creep, along Ontario's 400 series of Highways, the formally well maintained boulevards and rights of way are choked with weeds of every description. Very soon now, an entire graduating class of University students will be the first to have NOT paid for their tuition working at cutting grass for the MTO at jobs their fathers/mothers/uncles and/or MPP's got for them in return for who knows what consideration.
Our Provincial and Municipal political Leaders/Followers have swallowed whole the mantra of the (figurative) sons and daughters in the GREEN movement of Rachel Carson, author of that wonderful work of fiction called, Silent Spring, which was used to cower the linguini spined bunch in charge at the time to ban DDT. Miss Carson's work not only resulted in the death of millions of people from Malaria, (a real threat), it spawned a movement who got their rocks off dressing up as turtles and marching on politicians and shouting a lot. Over time, Politicians only had to meet an ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST and they would lay down and roll over like a cat in front of a fireplace on a cold day. It wasn't long before all of that weed killing, grass cutting and soccer field grooming gave way to shouts of SHAME and put all of those students out of work.
When we bought our current home over 30 years ago. The Town of Markham had a bylaw that would send a municipal crew to your home, at your expense, to cut your lawn and kill your weeds if you let the evil weed dandelion run amok. Such acts were usually called THE NOXIOUS WEED ACT or something similar and they would put the charge on your tax bill. Now that we have gone all NATURAL, having a week choked lawn is some kind of sacrament and people who let their lawns go all to seed and weed get all smug at town meetings and act all superior like their stuff don't smell bad at all. I keep telling you, the world is upside down!!!
And on top of all that, a whole lot of folks who never had to before are walking around with a box of Scotties Tissues under their arms, red noses, weepy eyes and a look of puzzlement on their faces which is saying, "why is this happening to me?".
Well, I know why, you can thank the next GREENIE who comes to your door begging for money, your signature on a petition or your vote. Be creative, really show them how grateful you are. Use a stick or something, a green one.
Thank you Rachel.
30