High Mileage Cars: no mystery

High mileage cars: not a mystery
Meade Fischer

There are plans to mandate 62 mpg standards for the cars of the future. Currently, we have the hybrid, a bit expensive, but capable of 48mpg. This is all exciting stuff, almost rocket science. Or is it?

High mileage cars are not a high tech mystery. We've had them before and let them slip away. In 1992 I bought a new Geo Metro, one of the least expensive cars on the market. A few years later, they were renamed Chevrolet Metro, had a bigger engine, poorer performance and less mileage. But the original was a wonder.

This little car, which held four people comfortably, had a three cylinder engine, displacing 1000 cc, about the same as an average motorcycle. People who didn't own them claimed that they were too underpowered for the highway and that the small engines would wear out in a few miles.

The week after we bought the car, my wife and one of her friends took off, along with lots of luggage for a week, to Ashland Oregon. They filled the 10 gal. tank in Gilroy, and after driving 70 mph up the interstate with the air conditioner going full blast, they still had gas when the arrived in Ashland, averaging 48mpg.

We drove the car for nine trouble-free years, never getting less than 45 mpg, even with a sixteen foot kayak strapped on top. Every ten or twenty thousand miles I'd have the brakes checked, figuring it was time to have them replaced, and each time the mechanic would shake his head and say they were fine.

at 120 thousand miles, we sold the car to a friend, who moved to Nebraska with all her belongings in it. Since then she married, and now her husband uses it for a work car. We visited them recently. The car, which now sits outside summer and winter, still looks the same. The husband says that there is a minor oil leak and that he finally did have to get new brakes, as well as a new clutch. The Geo now has 220,000 miles and gets a consistent 45 miles per gallon, down slightly from when it was new. Also, it never fails to start.

So, it's possible to build a fun, peppy, high mileage car that last indefinitely and is cheap to buy. Now, what's the problem with turning out a few million more like that?

crocidle morality

A recent news segment showed a man with a very friendly croc, which one could call either a pet or a friend, although a 17 foot, 950 lb animal doesn't really fit the definition of a pet.

While I have no doubt that should I dive into that croc's favorite river, it would have me for lunch without the slightest hesitation, it was shown nuzzling the man who had found it as an injured baby and had taken care of it. It was clear these two vastly different creatures had bonded. This is just the most extreme version of many incidents of interspecies bonding I have seen, but that's a separate issue.

There is a fundamental and probably instinctive moral code at work here, and it is best summed up as, "don't eat your friends." After all, there is plenty to eat out there, but no creature has all the friends it can use.

Humans, not being exclusively predators and having much more complex minds and social systems, have nuanced this basic moral code and have extrapolated from the fundamental. From "don't eat your friends," we've evolved "don't kill your friends," and since we're social animals, we extend it to "don't kill members of your community, your tribe, your country and even your country's friends. We also extend it to not only don't kill them but don't kill their livelihood, thus, "don't steal." With a bit of effort, we could likely extrapolate the rest of our human moral code from this starting place.

The essential thing is that crocs, like humans, seem to need and value friends. We might also suspect that we can extend not eating friends to protecting them from someone else eating them. I would not want to attack the man in question in front of his croc friend in an effort to check this theory.

I'm becoming convinced that there are deep, fundamental principles at work in nature, principles that are independent of species. Apparently "don't eat your friends" is one of these.

New habitable planet

Good news and bad news: Astronomers have discovered the first possible
habitable planet other than earth. It's only 20 light years away, a
serious road trip, but doable in a multigenerational flight.

The good news is that some of us might escape the foolishness of the
contemporary politics, social policies and religious practices that keep
us at each other's throats. Just load the family in a space ship, and our
grand kids could have the good life.

There are downsides. For one, we'd become the illegal aliens and would
probably be unwelcome. Whoever or whatever lives there would not
appreciate us using up their resources and perhaps taking their jobs.
Another problem is that if you and I decide to go there, what's to stop
all the people we're trying to escape from? I'm guessing that in a couple
of generations every whacky ideology that plagues us on earth will be
firmly established on this new planet.

So, on second thought, moving isn't going to work. Perhaps the solution is
an advertising campaign, touting this new planet as the promised land, and
when all the "seekers" and opportunists leave, Earth will once again be
the legendary Garden of Eden .

Sociology of beer ads

Let's take beer ads to investigate Americans' capacity for analytical thought. An ad tells you why you should buy something, so beer ads should have something to do with flavor.

The most striking example is a very popular beer that bases its ads on it being cold. Now, anyone who got through 4th grade physical science knows that the temperature of beer is the temperature of the refrigerator. One beer in that refrigerator is a cold as any other. Still these ads draw customers.

Another ad just shows people relaxing on a beach, doing nothing particularly other than sipping beer. Hello. You can relax with any beverage, alcoholic or otherwise. You can relax with a bag of peanuts or with nothing at all.

During sports seasons, beer companies advertise that they sponsor the event. Does that mean the players drink it? The coaches? It only says they paid to put their ad on TV.

By the way, what does "Where there's life, there's Bud" actually mean?
How about a beer that claims its name is the Aussie word for beer?

There is one beer ad that comes to mind that actually talks about the flavor, and that just happens to be the better beer. Funny thing.

Now, if people can be manipulated into buying something as mundane as beer by ads that say virtually nothing about the product, how are they going to react to ads that deal with political, economic, social and religious issues?

Anti Nuke Activists and Ancient Fears

There seems to be a new chapter in the old "no nukes" story. Recent stories tell of old time activists teaming up with younger ones to oppose nuclear power plants. Regarding the demonstrations during the 70s, a 66 year old activist said, "It was just the correct, moral thing to do."

That comment leads me to think that this person equates nuclear power with bombs, which is like saying that since there are wildfires, it is morally wrong to toss a log in the fireplace of your mountain cabin.

Yes, there have been safety issues with nuclear power, and we still don't have a perfect solution to disposal of used materials. However, any way of generating energy has a downside. When you think of coal fired plants, think of fatal mining accidents, whole mountains destroyed, trainloads of coal crossing the country and millions of tons of greenhouse gasses. Oil fired plants? Well how about the BP gulf oil spill. Hydroelectric plants? Think about inundated valleys, disrupted fish spawning grounds, massively altered ecosystems and the silting up behind expensive dams. Wind farms take up huge tracks of land and kill birds, and solar simply isn't developed enough to fill our needs.

While the debate on whether we should have dropped the bombs on Japan still rages on without closure, and while few people are coming out in favor of using nuclear weapons in the future, the issue of the peaceful use of nuclear power still seems tethered to these old images of destruction.

For years I drove past the San Onofre power plant weekly, never with the slightest fear. The only two high profile nuclear accidents happened many years ago, and France gets a major part of its energy from nuclear power. Our technology gets progressively better and more reliable, and there are many safety measures in place to prevent accidents. We have a viable way of generating the energy we all use daily, and it's high time to put ancient nightmares to rest and move on.

vote to save our parks

It's common knowledge that our state government is dysfunctional, and it's getting so that the only way to get things done is through the initiative process, which ultimately makes state government even more dysfunctional, if that's possible.

While I can't imagine what clever ballot measure will surface to save our schools from being boarded up and abandoned, we do have the chance to at least save our state parks. A yes vote on proposition 21 in November will keep our parks open and good condition for all Californians. An additional 18 bucks when you renew your auto registration will get you in anywhere, anytime, preserving a park system going on 150 years old.

I've heard weak arguments against it. There are a very few people who claim they never go to a park and feel they shouldn't have to pay. Still, there are people who don't go to school but still pay for that. Then there are the anti tax people who don't want to pay for anything, anytime, any place.

The most interesting was the person who said it would be too expensive, as he had four cars and two motorcycles. Let's see, that comes to 108 extra bucks a year. Seems anyone who can afford four cars and 6 bikes can easily come up with 108 dollars.

True, the most popular parks, like state beaches, will have a parking problem, but that can be solved with the extra money.

Don't forget, yes on 21

red and blue money

Our money isn't keeping up with modern trends. We have the same dull green bills we've had for, probably forever. Green doesn't get an emotional reaction or symbolize anything. Well, I guess it could symbolize the Green party, a very small segment of Americans. We need money that reflects the rest of us.

I propose our money resemble the political maps from the last elections, where we had red and blue states. We should have red and blue money. This way, people could carry the money that reflects their political persuasion. When getting change, a republican could say, "Don't give me that blue cash. I want red."

Every time someone made a purchase, he would also be making a political statement. Also, we could start tracking how people use their money. Do Democrats make better tippers? Do Republicans buy top of the line? Which party buys which beer and how much? We could even color code our ATM cards. Soon we'd have a huge data base that could be used to target the left and right. Of course, the few people in the middle would be ignored and left out.

As this moves from ridiculous to absurd, maybe people will stop and think about what they're doing and that answers to our problems don't come in the choice of black and white, or red and blue. And that if they appear that way, we are probably asking the wrong questions about the wrong problems.