Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Ford Fusion hybrid hypermiles, goes 1,445 miles on a single tank
While not nearly as fun as fast high g-force acceleration, here are tips for saving on fuel from the article:
CleanMPG.com founder Wayne Gerdes, an engineer from Illinois who coined the term "hypermiling" to describe the mileage-maximizing techniques, provided the pointers. They include:
* Slowing down and maintaining even throttle pressure;
* Gradually accelerating and smoothly braking;
* Maintaining a safe distance between vehicles and anticipating traffic conditions;
* Coasting up to red lights and stop signs to avoid fuel waste and brake wear;
* Minimize use of heater and air conditioning to reduce the load on the engine;
* Close windows at high speeds to reduce aerodynamic drag;
* Applying the "Pulse and Glide" technique while maintaining the flow of traffic;
* Minimize excessive engine workload by using the vehicle's kinetic forward motion to climb hills, and use downhill momentum to build speed; and
* Avoiding bumps and potholes that can reduce momentum
Monday, April 27, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Government Says Economy Down 1.74%, but Tax Receipts are down 14%?
This year, it’s shaping up to be the “Bailout Year Bummer.” Uncle Sam’s fiscal year began on October 1 of last year, mere days before Congress passed the legislation that has come to be known as TARP, and a bit more than three months after Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid promised to starve the economy of energy and punitively tax its highest producers, creating what I have since called the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.
Through March, federal receipts were running 14% behind the previous year. Each month during the fiscal year has trailed the previous year, and degree of the difference has steadily increased.
Read the whole thing. As Maggie Thatcher once said, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money [to spend]."
Welcome Back Carter
I never thought I would live to see someone as bad, let alone worse.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Foreclosures 46% higher in March than a year ago - USATODAY.com
Foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 341,180 properties in March, 46% more than a year ago and 17% above February's total, RealtyTrac reports today.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Mortgage delinquencies soar in the U.S.
Equifax Inc, reported that 7 percent of homeowners with mortgages were at least 30 days late on their loans in February, an increase of more than 50 percent from a year earlier.
39.8 percent of subprime borrowers were at least 30 days behind on their home mortgage loans, up 23.7 percent from last year.
Adams said the continued increase in mortgage delinquencies revealed in his data foreshadows more foreclosures, short sales and home price declines as homeowners default and banks then repossess the homes to sell them at deep discounts.
Credit Cards:
Banks closed 8 million credit card accounts in February, reducing the number of open cards to 400 million from a July 2008 peak of 483 million, according to Equifax data.
Credit limits fell as well, to $3.27 trillion in February from a July 2008 peak of $3.59 trillion.
"Limits are falling because lenders are trying to minimize their losses," Adams said.
The data shows that lenders have good reason to be wary. Bank card delinquency is at its highest level in the past five years. Some 4.5 percent of total balances on bank-issued credit cards were at 60 days past due in February, a 32.7 percent increase from a year earlier.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Capturing YouTube Videos to your iPod using FireFox and Windows
DownloadHelper - Media download Firefox extension
After you restart Firefox, go to Youtube, find a video to watch and click on it. While it is playing, click on the DownloadHelper icon on your Firefox toolbar. This will open a dialog box that will allow you to save the YouTube flash video file to you hard drive.
Step 2. Go to cnet download and download the FLV Player 2.0 Install this player. You can then click on your download .flv files and watch them on your PC. But this still does not put them into your iPod.
Step 3. Click HERE to download the Videora iPod converter. Once downloaded, install the software. You can use Videora to covert your flash files to MPEG4 format that will play on your iPod. Videora can be used to convert the file, then add it to iTunes. Use iTunes to move the files onto your iPod.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Spokane Bans Clean Dishes
Forces residents to drive out of state to obtain Cascade or Electrosol.
Our governments are in the very best of hands.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Saturday, March 07, 2009
AtlasShrugged - Now More Than Ever
"Perhaps predictibly, Ayn Rand is making a comeback on the right, with Congressmen handing out her books, and loose talk of rich people 'Going Galt'.
I don't think that we will see a mass exodus of productive people to secret hideouts. I look to Atlas Shrugged more for conveniently totable beach reading than an economic blueprint. What's interesting to me, though, is how many details Rand did get right--like the markets in 'unfreezing' Ukrainian bank deposits, so similar to the frozen railroad bonds of Atlas Shrugged. Or the cascading and unanticipated failures, with government officials racing to slap another fix on to fix the last failing solution.
She was able to describe these things so well, of course, because she'd seen what an economy looked like while it was being wrecked. All of Rand's writing is dominated by the fact that she lived through the birth pangs of Soviet Russia, and saw her family's business destroyed by Lenin's ideology, and extraordinarily incompetent economic management. Her philosophy does not work, at least if by work we mean generate a framework by which a person or society can order itself. But she was actually a really very gifted observer, and she had a quite subtle understanding of how all the interconnected elements of an industrial economy fit together.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Keep reading the book, son.
These signs are popping up all over America as people come out to protest the Trillion dollar generational theft being propagated by Congress. And please, stop talking about it being "inherited". These thieves have run Congress and the Senate for the past two years, and failed to work on a 2009 budget until Obama came to power. They now own the 2009 1.5 Trillion dollar deficit.
Laugh of the day
Iranian Air Defense Radar: “Unknown aircraft you are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself.”Pilot: “This is a United States aircraft. I am in Iraqi airspace.”
Air Defense Radar: “You are in Iranian airspace. If you do not depart our airspace we will launch interceptor aircraft!”
Pilot: “This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 fighter. Send ‘em up, I’ll wait!”
Air Defense Radar: (no response… total silence)
****************
overheard recently on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai .
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Photo from the NYC "Tea Party" Deficit Protests
Keep reading Eric. The book is 52 years old and still very relevant.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Joke of the Day
Answer: Jesus was a carpenter and Obama can't assemble a cabinet.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
No Hyperbole Here
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
FirstTimeDriver.com
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