How to acheive 35.5 mpg

It's simple. Henry Ford knew how. Make the car lighter. Less weight means less power to move it. How do you reduce the weight? Again, simple, make the car smaller. Less metal means less weight.
The safety people are already crying that lighter cars are not as safe as heavy ones. They cite laws of physics showing that in a head on collision, the lighter car gets hammered harder. True, but do we really care? Head on collisions are so dangerous that you are in deep yogurt no matter what. Plus head on crashes are relatively rare, 'cause drivers know how deadly they are and do their damndest to avoid them. How often do you go head on with anything, let alone an 18 wheeler?
Real safety comes from good brakes, good tires, good handling, and reasonable engine power that allows you to avoid collisions. Plus seat belts, a roof strong enough to hold the car up in a rollover, head rests, and airbags.
How small is small? The VW Beatle got 32 mpg back in the 1960's, the VW Rabbit did 40 in the 1970's. That's how small cars will have to be to make Obama's 35.5 mpg average. Kiss your SUV goodbye.

Oh California

Looks like California has more woe ahead. Like all of us, their tax receipts are down 'cause of Great Depression II, and expenses, well expenses always go up. But, I'd like to understand a couple of things.
First, why are tax hikes submitted as referendum questions? I know, and you know, and everyone knows, that voters are not stupid and won't vote to give the government more of their money. The elected representatives of the voters are supposed to get together and wheel and deal until something workable happens. Seems to me that the elected representatives of California failed to get with the program and do something, they passed the buck to the voters, who lit the buck on fire.
Second, why is the State of California hiring grade school teachers? According to the Journal, the Governator threatens to lay off 25000 K thru 12 teachers. Around here, grade school teachers are hired and paid by the cities and towns, not the state.

35 MPG CAFE? Is this doable?

Heard on NPR this morning that Obama is going to call for even tighter fuel economy standards on new cars, starting a few years from now. Goal is to get the average fuel economy of the entire fleet, including "light trucks" up to 35 mpg by 2016.
Only two vehicles were ever made with fuel economy that good. One was the diesel Rabbit in the 1970's and the other is the Prius hybrid. To get the entire fleet (every car/truck GM makes) up to 35 mpg, means building nothing but small diesel powered econoboxes and Chevy Volts. Families looking for a real family car will be out of luck. No SUV's, no minivans, no crewcab pickup trucks, nothing bigger that a Corolla.
Actually, the EPA is responsible for the death of diesel cars in the US. In Europe better than half of all cars are diesels. EPA felt that diesels smoked too much and tightened up the emissions limits so far that no one could meet them. Starting last year EPA required production of "Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel" (ULSD) for all motor diesel fuels. Presumably a diesel running on ULSD could pass EPA emissions limits. About half the diesel pumps in the country now dispense ULSD, and all of them will be on board by next year.
People who need pickup trucks like farmers and builders and tradesmen will to out of luck. They will have to keep their old trucks running, or buy used ones. Actually, you can keep an old truck running pretty much forever (look at Cuba) if you don't mind putting the money into it. The reason cars get replaced with new ones is economic. It doesn't make sense doing a $4000 engine replacement on an old pickup that's only worth $2000. But if the new one are not made, then the old ones get rebuilt and rebuilt again.
Of course, there is one out. The argument could be made that plugin hybrids used to drive to work use no gasoline at all. The Chevy Volt is supposed to go 40 miles on battery alone. That's enough to get to and from work, anywhere I ever worked. You get home on the last of the battery, plug it in and next morning it's all ready to go. If Detroit was allowed to count plug in hybrids as extra high mileage, then they might be able to make one big light truck for each plugin hybrid they sell.
This deal is really a "kill SUVs and pickup trucks" bill. It surely won't help Detroit crawl out of bankruptcy. But the greenies will love it.

Why do I have four VCR's?

Well it started out with one. Nice Mitsubishi with S-Video output. Bought it new about 5 years ago. Then one day last year it just croaked. Wouldn't start, the front panel display showed rapidly moving gibberish. Took it apart, put it together, still dead.
Inquired at the local store (WallMart) for a replacement. Sorry, we don't sell VCR's any more. Can I sell you this nice DVD player instead?
Coupla weeks later, I picked up a well used junker in a second hand store in St Johnsbury. It worked poorly, and lasted a few months. That makes two.
Picked up another oldy but goodie at a yard sale last summer. It worked better and still plays. Sometime it decided to stop recording, or at least stop recording the sound. Any one need a Goldfinger tape with no sound? That's three
Yesterday I spurged on yet another yard sale VCR. It's a newish RCA. Didn't have a remote. But, pure luck, a remote marked RCA turned up at the next yard sale. Washed the dust and crud off, hooked it up and it plays. Actually it plays quite well. Found the user manual on the net. Put batteries in the remote and it works too. It isn't quite the right remote for this unit, it lacks a "clear" button needed to reset the ZIP code, but it does record/play/rewind and let me do the auto channel search. So that's four.
Gotta have a VCR strip down party in the shop, salvage all the wheels, gears motors, and fasteners, followed by a trip to the recycling center.

Z1485 IS. Replace Kodak Easyshare with Picasa

Had another go round with photo management software. First thing was trying out the memory card slot on the front of my Compaq Presario. Wonder of wonders. Pull the memory card out of the camera and stick it in the slot. Presto, Windows Explorer can see the card pretending to be a plug in disk drive. Just drag and drop the .jpg files off the memory card into the disk folder of your choice. Even cleverer. In Windows Explorer set View to "Thumbnails" and instead of random number file names you see thumbnail pictures. With that turned on, the odds of finding the pix you want are greatly improved, and sorting the photos into file folders (e.q. graduation, wedding, party, children, cat, model trains) is trivial.
So, using the memory card slot completely replaces the need for Kodak's Easyshare.
I then downloaded Google's freeware photo management tool Picasa. It will resize, crop, do slide shows, red eye reduction and other simple photo edit tasks. It has excellent instructions and help functions, it's only 6 megabytes. Loads in a flash. Only uses 38 megs of Ram. Whereas plump Easyshare eats up 150 megs of disk and 500 megs of Ram and takes for ever to load or do anything.
Big breakthru in Picasa. It supports disk folders. You can sort your pictures into folders using Explorer or Picasa. It sticks. You can back up a disk folder to CD with your ordinary CD burner.
EasyShare only supported "albums" and the albums are internal to EasyShare. Moving a picture into an EasyShare album doesn't move it on disk. Backup of the photo folders does not retain the "album" information. You can sort your pix in Easyshare, but all that sorting is lost when you roll in the backup CD to a new machine.
With Picasa, the sorting happens into real windows disk folders which can then by backed up, copied, emailed, whatever using ordinary Windows tools like Explorer.
And, Picasa can download photos from the Z1485 camera over the USB cable, should your computer lack the handy memory card slot.
My recommendation. throw away the Easyshare CD that comes with the Z1485. Download and use Picasa. It's faster, more dependable and less aggravating.

Who needs 38 special design cargo planes?

The Air Force is buying 38 C27J cargo planes. It's a nice looking twin engine turboprop military transport. This is a new aircraft going into the inventory. That means we will pay the one time costs, "non recurring engineering costs", buy the tooling, set up the production line, write all the unit test procedures, write all the technical orders, buy spare parts, develop training for air and ground crewmen, and then train said crewmen. That's a lot of money. And we only get 38 airplanes for spending all that money.
What do we get in the C27 that we don't get in the tried and true C130? We get half the cargo capacity and half the range. Whereas the already in the inventory C130 can haul twice as much stuff, twice as far, and land and takeoff on just as small, maybe even smaller airfields than the smaller C27. Take off distance is a little bit variable, depends upon load and willingness of the aircrew to take risks, but the specified take off roll of a C130J is 1950 feet, loaded. The C27 takeoff roll is 1903 feet. Plus, the C-130 can do considerable better than specified. Back in the 1960s a C-130 made repeated takeoff's from, and landings on, a Navy aircraft carrier, and those things are only 1000 feet long.
So we are spending serious money to buy a few, new, cute little airlifters that aren't any better than the C-130. Serious waste of taxpayer dollars in the estimation of this taxpayer and Air Force veteran.

How many people die of flu? Swine or ordinary?

Good question. Today's WSJ shows the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimating 36,000 flu deaths per year. But, only 849 death certificates list "influenza" as the cause of death in 2006. CDC's estimates are way way over reported influenza deaths. CDC clearly thinks that doctors all over the country cannot diagnose properly. On the other hand, who do you believe, front line doctors or research guys on a sunny campus in Atlanta?
So how dangerous is this month's media darling disease, swine flu? Compared to regular flu? If you believe CDC's estimate of 36,000 ordinary flu deaths a year then the handful of swine flu deaths is lost in the noise. If you go with reported flu deaths of only 849 the handful of swine flu deaths becomes a bit more meaningful, although still not much.
Every death is a tragedy, each human life is precious. But life is full of risks, and if the risk is small, we shouldn't get too bent out of shape.