Category: Interesting Tidbits

Drive

Ford Mach E, courtesy of Ford Motor Company https://www.ford.com/

There’s lots of talk these days about electric cars. Europe says it’s gonna happen — well, except for five countries. California says it’s gonna happen. Most of the rest of the states are not so enthusiastic. There are of course pros and cons.

Not everyone should be considering them. But it looks very much like I am the poster child for who should be considering one:

I drive a regular daily commute of under 20 miles one way. Furthermore, I drive that reliably 5 days a week.

I have a garage where it’s easy to install an outlet. Plug it in Friday night when I get home from work and don’t worry about it.

Surge pricing for power you say? Fine, most home charging systems can be set up with a timer to start in the wee hours of the morning.

I live in a town with reliable electric infrastructure. Even if Lake Mead dries up and Hoover Dam is no longer producing lots of electricity, the sun is still shining and solar power will continue to work. If the sun stops shining, we all have much bigger problems than charging our electric cars.

Thanks to the casino industry, chargers are everywhere. Looks like there’s a dozen public charging stations near me, each with multiple charging units. Malls have them. Some big employers have them. It wouldn’t surprise me if hospitals started installing them since I’ve met many doctors who love their Teslas (heh, and one pharmacist who hates his). And the car or your phone will have an app telling you where the nearest chargers are.

Let’s also address some of the arguments against electric cars. Road trips? There’s a gas car in the family so that’s a non-issue for me. That vehicle is a small SUV with a towing package, shutting down the “but what about hauling” argument before it begins.

“Just as dirty as gas cars, but moving the pollution elsewhere”? Electricity can be made more cleanly than it is today. Petroleum based solutions cannot.

But what about maintenance? This may still be a valid argument regarding Tesla and Rivian. But now you can buy electric vehicles from VW, Nissan, Ford, Chevy, Cadillac, Hyundai, Kia, Volvo…. and you can get your electric car serviced at the many places that sell those cars.

And what about the price? There are some models under $30k. Not many I concede. This is not yet a solution for people making less than $15/hr and living in apartments.

I’m not saying it’s the answer for everyone. I’m not saying California is on to something. I still think “can I make it from Vegas to LA without stopping for a charge” is a valid metric. But it may be time for people to start looking at whether it’s a good option to consider for one of the family vehicles.

Infrastructure

The other day a bridge collapsed (no, not the one in the picture). Old news, right? The NTSB is investigating, and they’re going to find that maintenance that should have been done, repairs that should have been made, renovations that should have been budgeted for, weren’t. I can say that without fear of contradiction; only the details are yet to be determined.

It’s not the first bridge to collapse, just the first big one this year. There’s other things that fall down when they aren’t supposed to as well. For a long time, we’ve been putting off repairs on our bridges, roads, schools, and other infrastructure, and the bill is coming due. It’s been bad enough for long enough that even Trump ran on promises to put money into infrastructure. This appealed to many of the people the Clinton campaign urged to “be reasonable.”

The Biden Administration did manage to get an infrastructure bill passed, but it’s probably too little and spread out over too many things. We also need state and local governments to get out the checkbooks and say “we need to fix this stuff before somebody gets hurt.” Oh but that will raise taxes. This is one of those cases where an ounce of prevention really is better than a pound of cure.

Regrettably, state and local governments want to argue over whether masks are important and what books should get banned instead of making sure the road less travelled remains a road at all.

Happy New Year

May it be better than 2021. Seriously.

A lot of you have New Years Resolutions. I think it’s wonderful that you want to do something to improve yourself and/or your life. However, I will point out that if it were really important to you, you would not have waited for an arbitrary calendar date. You’d have started working on it right away (or at minimum, started making plans).

There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple decades about SMART goals: a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time constrained. That R (often mislabeled as “reasonable,” and how is that different from achievable?) can also be seen as your Reason for the goal. It’s the “why it’s important,” and arguably the most important part. Why do you want to have a million dollars or lose 30 pounds or earn your degree? That why is what will get you up in the morning to work your goal.

Picture taken by me at Mandalay Bay. I needed a cool picture to start you guys off. I’m going to try and post more regularly this year.

Lessons from a Pandemic

Some of these are things we are now learning. Some are things we should have long since learned but are now becoming obvious.

We should be taking medical advice from medical experts, not politicians. Insert the Fauci Facepalm here. Some of our Governors are remarkably well informed, because they choose to be informed by medical experts. Gov. Cuomo’s presentation Sunday was particularly level, and riddled with facts. Gov. Sisolak is doing the best with what he’s got. I wish him and NV Attorney General Aaron Ford much luck making banks follow rules.

Employer based insurance was [still] never going to cover everybody. Long time readers know I’ve been beating this drum for over a decade. First, it’s never going to cover all children. Second, it inhibits the growth of small business. And finally, there’s the unemployed. Which brings me to….

COBRA is [still] a bad joke on the newly unemployed. I said it years ago. People are now saying it on the radio!

The uninsured aren’t somebody else’s problem, they’re everybody’s problem. Cancer isn’t communicable, nor diabetes, nor hypertension. But TB sure is. And now, COVID-19 sure is. There’s a couple of problems with the uninsured in an epidemic or pandemic. First, people who don’t think they can afford a doctor are not going, not getting help, probably still going to work (because they can’t afford not to work, duh), and most importantly infecting other people. So yeah, now it’s your problem. Oh, I said a couple problems, didn’t I? All those unpaid costs are going to drive your medical costs up. The hospital isn’t getting paid for a bunch of critically ill patients? Your bed cost goes up.

It turns out a lot of jobs can indeed be done from home. I’m hearing radio shows from home studios, seeing TV shows done via videoconference. There’s a lot of “important meetings” that can now be done remotely, or not at all. That is a trend I hope sticks. Of course, this may mean that business travel is in for a longer term slump, since it’s easier, safer, faster, and cheaper to teleconference to San Jose than fly there.

It turns out a lot of jobs are essential. We all knew medical personnel, firefighters, and the like were essential. Some of us in reality-land also knew that “environmental services” (cleaning staff) were essential — I can’t keep people from getting diseases in a hospital if the hospital isn’t clean. Maintenance staff? Essential. Supermarket staff? Essential. Oh yeah, and that “kid” who makes minimum wage making your burger at lunchtime when an actual “kid” should be at school? Essential.

$1200 a month isn’t a lot of money. I don’t know if Congress actually considered this, but with a minimum wage of $7.25/hr, 40 hours of minimum wage a week for 4 weeks is $1160. Round that up to the nearest $100, and that’s $1200. So if you’re kvetching that you can’t pay your bills on that, think about the “essential” employee who does just that. More on what Congress did here.

Forty Days

It is the 40th day of 2016. Mardi Gras, in fact.

Forty days.

We’ve already lost musicians Glenn Frey (of The Eagles), Maurice White (of Earth, Wind, and Fire), and David Bowie (The Sovereign — is anybody else concerned that Dean is now in charge of the Guild of Calamitous Intent? Or is he?). Over and above that, we’ve lost impressario René Angélil, conductor Pierre Boulez, and producer Robert Stigwood.

In addition, we’ve lost actors Alan Rickman (Severus Snape), Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams), and Abe Vigoda (Fish) — this time for real. Oh, and voice actor Joe Alaskey.

And truth be told, that’s just a few of the people who have already left us in the last 40 days.

So hey, all you great actors and musicians out there: Be careful.

I sure hope the afterlife has bubblegum

The Earth bids farewell to Rowdy Roddy Piper.

In Closing: I have a problem with the fact that a night in jail can be a death sentence; the TPP is still out there; the NSA is scaling back; Too Big To Fail; the other lion; who the hell are the parents who make it necessary to say this??; the same guys who say kids under 2 must never see a television running and grocery carts are evil want to be in a tizzy that doctors are not doing the nurse’s job; can’t kill the beast; soybean oil.