Posted by seniorgeek | 1 Comment
Newsletter 7/20/2008
Now that politics is in full bloom, the speech makers should check out some of the previous great orators of the past and learn from them on what to say and what not to say. Ok, how do the current politicians find these great speeches? They just need to read my newsletter and I will point them to the greats speeches of history. The answer is right in front of their nose. The Internet. OK, I need to be more specific.
The following site has a database of and index to 5000+ full text, audio and video versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/
Ok, now they have some good speeches to go over before the stand up in front of us and tell us what they are not going to do in the next term if elected. They are going to give you a bunch of statistics that may or may not mean anything. Where did they get all those numbers and reports? Oh, gee, let me see, from their expert research team? Na, they probably just found them on some special interest web site. They could have just looked at our own government web sites and found all the numbers they need.
“Celebrating 10 years of making statistics from more than 100 agencies available to citizens everywhere” (from the web site)
http://www.fedstats.gov/
Next we will hear from our elected officials that we are not in a recession only a weakening of our economy. Hmm, I checked the price of food and energy and it is way up, then I check my pay check and it has not gone up, next I looked at my retirement account and it was down, finally I looked in my wallet and it was depressed. Does this mean we are in a recession or a depression? To me this means that we are in a recession, but don’t take my word for it, just go over to this ‘how stuff works’ web site and they will explain it you in great detail the definition of a recession.
http://money.howstuffworks.com/recession.htm
Now, we have this thing called the ‘Consumer Price Index’ (CPI) that is suppose to tell all the government types how our economy is doing and we are suppose to believe it. I thought I had better check out the official government CPI web site to see how they get this all knowing number. Here is the answer:
- “The CPI represents changes in prices of all goods and services purchased for consumption by urban households. User fees (such as water and sewer service) and sales and excise taxes paid by the consumer are also included. Income taxes and investment items (like stocks, bonds, and life insurance) are not included.
- The CPI-U includes expenditures by urban wage earners and clerical workers, professional, managerial, and technical workers, the self-employed, short-term workers, the unemployed, retirees and others not in the labor force. The CPI-W includes only expenditures by those in hourly wage earning or clerical jobs.
I guess this is what is considered the average wage earner.
http://www.bls.gov/cpi/
With all this politicin’ going on, we need some rules. I figured this web site was as good as any to cover rules of order to follow.
“In 1876 General Henry M. Robert set out to bring the rules of the American Congress to members of ordinary societies with the publication of Pocket Manual of Rules of Order. It sold half a million copies before this revision of 1915 and made Robert’s name synonymous with the orderly rule of reason in deliberative societies.” Are we a deliberative society?
http://www.bartleby.com/176/
Posted by seniorgeek | 0 Comments
Newsletter 7/6/2008
Health care is expected to remain among the top domestic issues for voters in the 2008 election. So where do the candidates stand? WebMD attempts to give an unbiased opinion on what each candidates platform is related to health issues. You will have to decide if the information provided is accurate.
http://www.webmd.com/election2008/
The automobile industry association released the June figures on what cars increased or decreased in sales for the month of June.
Interesting to see how the foreign manufactures are doing compared to the US auto makers. OK here are the main facts.
Biggest winner – MINI increase of 40.5%
Biggest loser – HUMMER decrease of 54.2% (gee what else would you guess with today’s gas prices)
Now for the quick dirty results by manufacture
Honda America 13.8%
BMW Group 0.1%
Chrysler Group -28%
Ford Motor Co -19.1%
Toyota Motor Co. -11.5%
General Motors -8.3%
Nissan North America -7.54
Check out this video about a cool new little vehicle that looks like something we all could use, a 3 wheel enclosed scooter.
http://en.xingyueshen.com/product_gd.php?id3=22#pic (manufacture webs site)
http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/local&id=6238661 (news article and video)
I just heard on the news that some congressman want to return to the National 55MPH speed limit. It didn’t works last time and it won’t work again. Why can’t congress come up with a REAL solution to the problem? May I suggest items such as alternate energy, solar, wind, battery, etc.
There is a guy by the name of Doug Pelmear that say he converted his ’87 Ford Mustang with a V8 motor to get 80MPH.
A rather hefty boast for a V8 driven car. Check out the article below from the web site to see if you think it is real or just plain a bunch of BS.
“Doug Pelmear has lots of secrets beneath the hood of his black 1987 Ford Mustang on which the only outward hint of individuality is a series of stickers. But looks can be deceiving. Mr. Pelmear’s 21-year-old pony car has enough technological innovation to quadruple the classic Mustang’s original gas mileage while almost doubling its available horsepower.
That’s 80 miles per gallon and 400 horsepower, folks. And the 48-year-old electronics engineer and master mechanic is not done yet.
The third-generation automotive tinkerer hopes that next year his Mustang – more specifically its engine – will help him win the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize: a “race” to find an affordable, marketable automobile that gets at least 100 miles per gallon, or its equivalent.
“I’m an optimist, and I think people need to know there is hope out there,” Mr. Pelmear said. “That’s why I decided to enter the X Prize race. I could have sold this [technology] off, but then people might not have seen it.
“It’s not about the money. Our country really needs this.”
The Progressive Automotive X Prize is sponsored by the X Prize Foundation to focus attention on and improve technology for real-world fuel economy.
Private teams compete in two categories, mainstream and concept, and compete against one another in a staged race that will judge performance, fuel economy, and marketability. There are no official entrants yet, but scores of teams have signed letters of intent to participate in the races, scheduled for 2009.
What radical technology did Mr. Pelmear introduce? His patents are not fully in place, but he said it mostly is a matter of electronics and precision.
“We redesigned a lot of different things on the [engine] block,” the engineer said.
“It’s still a rod-and-piston engine; it just has a lot more electronics on it.”
Mr. Pelmear said that traditional gas engines operate “at a very low efficiency, like 8 to 10 percent, and our engine is like at 38 percent efficiency.”
He said he could greatly increase even that number if his car used traditional gasoline instead of a mix of gas and 85 percent ethanol, which burns hotter but releases fewer hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.
His engine also would be more efficient if he had sacrificed some of its 400 horsepower or 500 foot-pounds of torque, but Mr. Pelmear said his design is intended for “real-world” uses, not the laboratory.
“I’m not the highest-miles-per-gallon vehicle entered in the X Prize, but I think I’m the more consumer friendly, more down to earth, more conventional,” he said.
Mr. Pelmear’s Mustang is entered in the X Prize’s “mainstream” competition against other modified production cars.
According to the X Prize foundation, he will compete against several dozen other vehicles from around the world.”
http://www.mustangevolution.com/20080702712/
