JayB

No free lunch, but I suspect the waste issue could be dealt with fairly readily by recycling, which should prove more cost effective than extracting nickel, cadmium, and lithium at some point. It'd be interesting to see how the cars stack up in terms of real efficiency, if you follow the energy from turbine to transmission line to miles traveled. I suspect the energy balance is a bit more compelling for electric cars than for Ethanol, which usually yields a net loss when you take a careful look at inputs versus outputs. The energy's gotta come from somewhere, though, and at some point, necessity is going to compel a return to nuclear energy.

Steep, but pretty much every new consumer technology has been brought to market as a novelty for the rich early adopter/hobbyist. I don't think the car as we know it is going to change that radically anytime soon, but these cars are definitely a step in the right direction.

Sounds cool Murray. Here's another non-enviro-hairshirt electric car: $80K, 0-60mph in 3 seconds, range 150 miles. Wired Article Seems like these companies are both fueled by the same combination of idealism and the profit motive that drove the PC through its initial phases of development. This is the first alternative technology that I've been excited about for a while, because I can actually see people wanting to drive these cars, rather than being driven to drive them by the kind of autoflagelletory enviro-guilt that will eventually erode in the face of the ease and convenience offered by a normal car/house/diet/ or whatever else they've castigated themselves into giving up. I don't think these developments will have the fine folks that sit atop the vast majority of the world's oil reserves holding out the tin-cup anytime soon, but if I was in charge of budgeting in Jedda or Tehran I'd start dusting off the calculator and plotting things like population growth versus projected non-state employment growth and oil-windfall-fund portfolio-yields. Might not be a pretty picture in 20-30years.

Sounds like they'd sell in the sub-20 range if they could be manufactured in the 10,000+ range. Makes a lot of sense for a solo-commuter who lives within 30miles of work. My kind of solution. Innovation in response to market forces vs consumer capitulation driven by punitive taxation, e.g. 3+dollar-a-gallon taxes and LeCar's for everyone, all the time. Drive this thing to work, for groceries, etc and save the big vehicle for long drives with lots of people and/or cargo.

Much cooler than the Ed Begley Jr. Memorial Golf Cart. 0-60mph in 4 seconds.

I-25? The only sign that I can remember on I-5 is the Uncle Sam one....

Oh yeah - forgot about the flat-irons. Good rec.

Shelf is great but it's gotta be at least a three hour drive to get there from Winter Park. Eldo, Boulder Canyon, Golden, or Dream Canyon would work for the single pitch stuff. In guess one benefit of Shelf would be that they could hit up the Garbage of the Gods on the way back, AND stop by and pick up those books that you ordered from Dobson and Co and bring them back for you.

JayB, barista from hell. i'm going to have to savor that thought a bit. you ask for a double grande and he starts giving you philosophical arguements as to why you really wanted a chai. Smiles on the outside and tirades/ulcers on the inside is more likely. Just like everyone else who makes your coffee.

Another Evans link: http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/alpine_rock/mt_evans/105745711

If you're right there on I-70 then then you'll probably have to head towards Denver to get any climbing. I'd imagine the closest stuff is in Boulder Canyon. There's always Eldo if you don't mind driving about an hour, but the scrambly alpine stuff on some of the 14ers is probably a lot closer. Gray's and Torrey's should be right there, and there's a cool scramble with a lot of 3rd and a bit of 4th class climbing up one of the ridges on Torrey's (could be Grey's - I get them confused). The sawtooth ridge between Mt. Evans and M. Bierstadt is also a cool 3rd or 4th class climb, the West Ridge of Quandary peak is another really cool, long 4thish scramble, and I can't quite recall, but I think there's some multipitch stuff near the summit of Evans. Never climbed it, but it should be accessible by car, which makes it a bit unique. Very high cragging with no approach. Not sure about the fishing there but I suspect there's plenty of good stuff within a reasonable drive. Here's a link to some info for Mt. Evans, and if you check out the route database on the site you can probably find out what else is in the area... http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/alpine_rock/mt_evans/105744358 Enjoy your time there and watch out for the afternoon thunderstorms if you are up high. They should be waning this time of year, but I had to flee lightning in the middle of winter when I was living out there, so you never know.

You mean, like the Cato Institute or Brookings or the Heritage Foundation? Hmmm..... Yeah - that's one variant of the species. Pretty much any proposal for the betterment of society that begins with "Assume ideal behavior..." is off to a mighty bad start. The French Revolution is one of the better examples that I can think of. Thankfully most of the founders of this country had no such delusions.

That's a great pickup line? Did you get laid? Who needs pickup lines when you're married? For that matter, who needs pick up lines? Probably only those without any real conversation skills. Anyway, do you really dream about getting laid by a software engineer? My condolences.... Rumor has it there's a sub-population of mousy chicks out there that pull the full Van-Halen-Hot-For-Teacher-Video-Maneuver when they're out of the public eye. Wouldn't know myself, but maybe that would be enough to get someone past the intoversion and vintage glasses...

That's a great pickup line? Did you get laid? I think that she was also the kind of chick that gets angry just knowing that there are people in the world that have my political outlook, so I don't think that there was much potential there. However, the fact that she was clearly very intelligent and having to put up with complaints about the foam on a $5 coffee drink being too dense and the million other petty insults and slights that come along with working a gig like that made me sympathize with her plight. I hated those kind of jobs as a teenager, and the hatred intensified with every passing year of education. I'd probably have to slug down a half-dozen paxil every morning before work if want or privation ever forced me back into a customer service job again.

So how is that monorail coming along smart people? Working in research environments has served as a pretty stark illustration of how much we tend to overestimate the importance of intelligence. IMO a genial disposition, a positive outlook, and a strong work-ethic are way, way more important determinants of what kind of a life you'll have than what your IQ is. Intelligence never hurts, but there's quite a few miserable people cruising around who neglected to cultivate any other attributes. I also think that most people with advanced degrees get used to working with idealized systems to explain whatever phenomenon it is that they're studying, and succumb to the temptation of trying to apply this kind of framework to society, and are frequently dissapointed by the results.

I'd bet the demographics are pretty similar for most Western Coastal cities from SF to Vancouver. Foraker's anecdote reminds me of the time I met a girl with a B.S. in physics who was - I think - in a transitional period, working behind the counter at an espresso bar, and obviously hating it. My comment: "What's it like working in a position where your IQ is at least three standard deviations higher than your average customers?"

For the Boarders http://www.absinthe-films.com/more-trailer.html Something for the Wool-Clad-BC-Three-Pin-Folks:

$50 a month really isn't all that bad. You can try Blue Cross/Blue shield, but I doubt they'll be able to beat the price. $600/year for a multi-hundred-thousand dollar hedge against going bankrupt and/or being in debt for the rest of your life is a mighty good deal IMO.

Let me guess: Your job is to write those pithy little 'introductions' to all those horrid displays of 'publically funded 'art''. You know, those ones that look like a someone nailed a bunch of Coke cans to a rotating metal pole and then you write some blurb about how it represents 'the essential organic tension between modern technology and lost ancient goddess cultures blah blah blah'. Meanwhile, you and the 'artist' are sitting at some spendy cafe (after picking up your checks from the Publically Funded Art Dept) bemoaning modern American culture. Nice work if you can get it. Careful dude. Sounds like you're channeling me here. Better self administer a dozen back-issues of "The Nation" or scroll through half as many threads over at Kosland post-haste and sleep it off.

Looks like case closed. Here's a pertinent quote from Isikoff and Corn, two reporters that can hardly be accused of pamphleteering on behalf of the administration: "The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone." Just thought I'd pass this news along.

I have to give top honors to chirp and Ken Ford for the rec's so far. Good stuff.

Whoever wrote the guidebook to the Winds - maybe Steve Roper - defined the boundary between 2nd and 3rd class as the transition from something his dog could climb to something it couldn't. Expanding this methodology upwards might result in the transition from 3rd to 4th class as moving from something that someone with no arms could climb to something that they couldn't.

I remember climbing up the slide in late August a few years ago while on the way to a route between the Notch Couloir and Kiener's, and I watched three folks fall while on the route. One person fell off about 100 feet into soloing the low angle stuff at the bottom, a Euro guy with no ice axe or crampons, who was trying to cut steps with a rock he picked up at the base pitched off a bit higher, and a roped leader who took a 100 foot+ slide about 1/3 of the way up the route. The final velocity seemed to double in each case, and I was pretty sure that if anyone fell from a height equal to or greater than the roped leaders, they'd skip down the ice, rocket into the talus, and literally be torn to pieces by the impact. Pretty amazing that the guy lived. I'm also amazed that there haven't been more accidents there. On a tangentially related note, some distant relation of mine was supposedly the first woman to perish on Long's Peak. Her guide on the fateful outing was either the son or the grandson (still bore the family name) of the Rev. Lamb for whom the slide is named...

Damn - there's got to be some sort of a one-way valve that you can get put on your sewerline to keep the backflow out of your home, if nothing else. Cleaning up a basement that flooded with rainwater sucked enough, and took an eternity to clean - but sewage...

Other Churchill Quotes: ON APPEASEMENT: "There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety." On Socialism: "If I were asked the difference between Socialism and Communism, I could only reply that the Socialist tries to lead us to disaster by foolish words and the Communist could try to drive us there by violent deeds." "Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State." "Government of the duds, by the duds, and for the duds." "No socialist system can be established without a political police." "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." "It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of socialism." "'All men are created equal' says the American Declaration of Independence. 'All men shall be kept equal' say the Socialists." "Some see private enterprise as a predatory animal to be shot, others look on it as a cow to be milked but a few see it as a sturdy horse pulling a wagon." "If you destroy a free market, you create a black market." "The vice of capitalism is that it stands for the unequal sharing of blessings; whereas the virtue of socialism is that it stands for the equal sharing of misery." "Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual." "Is it better to have equality at the price of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality?" "Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate, and malice. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous, fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality...they will increase the well-being of the world." "Bolshevism is not a policy; it is a disease." "The day will come when it will be recognized without doubt throughout the civilized world that the strangling of Bolshevism at birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race." Hee hee.