My sacrifice to save the world from Global Warming

I am willing to make the sacrifices necessary to save the planet from global warming. So, I will be taking donations to travel here and buy a Tesla Roadster.

Forget the cheesy-suited, high-pressure stereotype of your everyday car dealership (“How can we can get you in one of these today?”). With its exposed wooden rafters, slick concrete floors and chatty central bar, Tesla Motors’ first store on Santa Monica Boulevard here is an art gallery/coffee house/Apple store hybrid for plug-in vehicles—and the salespeople want you to gawk as much as buy.

“Have a look around, have fun, and if you have any questions, ask,” a friendly employee told us within three steps of our first visit to the store, which opened here on Tuesday. Then she handed us a cup of java and a brochure.

Yeah - I'll take two.

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Outsourcing and insourcing

Now China has decided to build its own jumbo jets. 

Alone this would be no big deal, but it is indicative of a trend that is worrying many about our military capabilities.  Essentially, we are getting to a point where a war with the wrong country would substantially impact our ability to even wage war.  The glaring example of this right now is the sourcing of the Air Force's new tankers to EADS, which is the European consortium that owns Airbus, instead of contracting a US company (Boeing) to do it.  But when you think about all the electronics and chips and cables and even clothing that comes from China and ends up in critical military gear, the problem is even worse.  Some experts worry about back doors being hardwired in these chips, but what if we can't even get them anyway?  Spare parts become impossible to find, and new equipment is out of the question. 

When you base your warfighting around communication and high technology as we do, that supply line has to be safe - from the raw materials all the way to the soldier in the field.  Due to globalization in the defense industry, we are rapidly approaching the place that the proper operation of the links in that chain can not be assured, while China is doing the exact opposite.

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An Al Gore Two-fer

Gore has been promoting global warming as his pet cause for many years. Evidently nothing is sacred to the crusade. Here's Al Gore using a pile of 60,000 bodies in Myanmar as his soap box. Largest cyclones and death count are here. They cover a time span of warm and cool temperatures - not very indicative of global warming.

Of course, that just heightens Al's hypocrisy. I recently received an email I immediately assumed was a hoax. But, Snopes says it's the real deal.

House #1 - A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 12 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in the Northern or Midwestern 'Snow Belt' area. It is in the South.



House #2 - Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every 'green' feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.



HOUSE # 1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the 'environmentalist' Al Gore. HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence of the President of the United State, George W. Bush.

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Going Broke

Is Generation Y going broke?

And yet stats indicate our generation's financial literacy is abysmal, with personal finances to match. Only 52% of high school seniors passed a recent national financial literacy test, meaning adults entering the work force do not know enough about basic budgeting, interest rates or taxes to make sound decisions for their own lives. Quiz: Will you end up in your parents' basement?

As a group, we have failed to get a grip on fiscal reality:

• The median credit-card debt of low- and middle-income people aged 18 to 34 is $8,200.
• The average college debt for recent grads is more than $20,000 and rising.
• People between the ages of 25 and 34 make up 22.7% of all U.S. bankruptcies (but just 14% of the population at large), according to a recent report.

While I was growing up, I did not get a whole lot of financial training, and what I did get was from my parents. Where I really learned about money was working a part time job at the local super market. There's nothing like having to earn that spending money to teach you to respect it.

"We're in a generation that was kind of shielded from a lot of financial responsibilities," says Wong. "Twenty years ago, when you were in college you didn't have a credit card, and (now) all of a sudden we had to take on debt to go to college. Then we get out of college and we have to have that handbag and an iPod," she says. "It is so easy to take on debt."

Now this is something I simply do not understand. "And we have to have that handbag?" No, you don't. You don't have to take on debt to buy that hand bag or iPod. Life is not going to end because you don't have a new iPod Touch. Does no one in this generation have the fortitude to withstand the consumerism and live within their means? It's quite simple - each month you spend less than you make. The excess goes into savings. Of couse, you have to have an idea of what you make and what you spend, which seems to be the problem.

"This generation feels that somehow or another they're going to figure out some technological advancement that's going to get them out of their financial troubles and outsmart the market," says Manning, who served as adviser to the forthcoming documentary "In Debt We Trust." The documentary paints a picture of national financial crisis stemming from the personal-debt burden.

This is something else I don't understand. Apparently personal accountability is out the door along with control. Depending on technology to save you from financial troubles? What, they'll find a better way to counterfeit money? The financial crisis I can certainly believe. When the country with the world's largest GDP is actually spending more than it makes you've got problems.

The fix? "There is hope for straightening (young people) out if they get an education," Siebert says.

Across the country, states are starting to mandate financial education in public schools, and Congress has passed a number of bills to encourage financial literacy.

Evidently the solution is more regulation, another issue I have problems understanding.  School is a good start, but practice is a better teacher.  I think the part time job taught me more than a class room ever could, and is a good plan for any kid's education.

via the Instapundit

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Change

I can't say it any better than this.

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The Segway's Successor?

Check out this thing.

Be sure and watch the video.  How it can move is just freaky.

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Prepping the Shuttle

Here is an absolutely stunning photo series of NASA prepping the Space Shuttle.  Well worth the time to scroll through.

Via the Corner.

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USS Monitor

Shorpy is a photo blog that specializes in very old pictures, from the start of photography through the early 20th century.  Today they have a classic picture of the USS Monitor, after its battle with the CSS Virginia.

You can clearly see the scars of battle on the turrett, especially just to the left of the empty gun port.  During battle, the turret was rotated by steam power, so the two guns could always be brought to bear on the enemy.  Also notice the thickness of the armor on the turrett, best seen in the empty gun port.  The technology did not exist to cast a single iron plate of that thickness, so overlapping plates were used.  Forward of the turrett (farther away in the picture), you can see the sloping sides of the pilot house.  The captain was stuck in this tiny, armored space so that he could see out and drive the ship.  It had to be mighty lonely up there with guns firing at you.  In the distance past the pilot house is a typical sailing ship of the day.  Above the turrett is a shaded area. The awning would be taken down and stowed prior to battle.  You can also get a feel for how low in the water the monitors set.  They only had about a foot of freeboard (distance from the waterline to the deck).  This proved the Monitor's undoing, as it sank in rough waters off the Eastern coast.

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'If' only

This post at Powerline talks about the relevancy of Kipling to the modern world. I have not read a lot of his work, and less of his poetry, but this poem certainly seems relevant to me. It is his poem, 'If'.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

The poem certainly demands a higher standard to be called a Man than you normally hear these days.  I don't detect a hint of victimhood anywhere in it.  If... the male half of humanity would take some of this to heart, then I think we would be better off as a race.  I think that as soon as my son is old enough we will be memorizing this one together.

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So, when do we move in?

Virgin and Google team up to colonize Mars.

An invitation.

Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

I'm sure my wife wouldn't mind having a pair of Martians running around the house. That's so much cooler than regular old Earth children.

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