Federal commission recommends 40-cent increase in gas tax

I have to think, Alley, that in some piece of research these guys do there have to be a few promising leads.
It just amazes me that none of these companies have seen anything worth pursuing either out of an existing R&D budget, or something that blows their minds that they can jump on and be the first to market by pushing even a few million extra in its direction.

It's one of the areas I think the Bush administration was unfairly criticized for when they were formulating an energy policy. You want to do something, you talk to experts. These companies know what they're doing and have the foundation to go in that direction. Unfortunately, when the sides did get together it looked like a money grab to some people and outrage ensued. Maybe it was a money grab, but it's an area where both money can be made and the public can be served. Probably set us back a bit as far as getting something off the ground.

 

Watch the doc "Who Killed the Electric Car?".

Those pesky oil companies seem to be everywhere.

 

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

Click on "movie reviews" and "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
It's a pretty good dissection of the flaws of that movie -- as well as electric cars -- from a scientific standpoint.

 

Look closely at the bottom of that web site. It's run by Exxon.

OK. Not really.

 

That review reminds me of a 19th century outdoors writer who talked about the working conditions of the gameskeeper in "Lady Chatterley's Lover"

Here's the Times review which I believe is a little more balanced.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/movies/28kill.html

The technical objections in that review are easily addressable. What the movie's really about is the POLITICS of the car.

 

This, and a Steroids investigation.

Isn't it fucking great to see what Congress is doing for America?

 

Fuck yeah.

 

And I thought this was going to be the Congress of, um, change....

Oh wait. I forgot my Pelosi thread. She doesn't like meat loaf.

 

Not to threadjack or anything but Jeff Blair, the baseball writer for the Globe, has a pretty funny entry in his blog about the steroids hearing:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080115.WBbaseball20080115161425/WBStory/WBbaseball/

Yep. Baseball spent another day in front of a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday - you should see the pile of stuff these folks have to deal with and I've finally figured out who Rep. Henry Waxman looks like: Toby from The West Wing, along with Mr. Ed.

and

Fehr - who even brought an ad for HGH with him - proved once again that he has one weakness that he simply can't overcome: he's a damned good lawyer and is as far as I can tell is guilty of making sense and doing a job of representing his constituency better than it deserves.

 

The two seem to be somewhat intertwined. GM didn't want to make the car because it was new and expensive and, like a lot of new technologies, would be prone to bugs. And in a lot of ways, the thing was a glorified golf cart with its limited range. It's a tough sell beyond the hardcore market.
GM might have backed off prematurely, but there were a lot of technical issues that would have caused problems from a business and PR standpoint.

 

Bat,

Americans are good at lots of things but SOLVING PROBLEMS is probably at the top of the list.

And the technical problems are just that: problems to be solved.

If you watch the movie, you'll see that despite the technical difficulties there were other forces at work. I admit the movie does have a bit of a conspiratorial tone to it but it's worth renting if you can gind it.

The point is, the internal combustion engine is a century old bit of technology.

 

Look. There's more important issues, like whether hens being eaten in the Congressional cafeteria are caged or not.