I have a new business plan!

[Scotness]

Thought you'd like this Roger

[MovieStuff]

Thought you'd like this Roger

Like what?

Roger

[Scotness]

Click here to go to their page - they yanked my link to the picture

(the temerity of it.........)


Scot

[MovieStuff]

That's hilarious. Good find.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Roger

[David M. Leugers]

Let's put aside for the moment the actual cars being made by GM, Ford and Chrysler today. The bailout of the auto makers seems to be the only issue Americans have with the bailouts. The amount of money we are talking about represents about 20% of the amount of money given to Wall Street and the banks
for BONUSes. Apparently they did such a great job of swindling retirement funds, investors, other banks, countries etc... they deserve it. Screw the auto makers and the 3 million jobs reliant on it. The issues are way more complicated than most people would even dream of.

Diesel engines are not even needed. The myth of taking away food to produce ethanol is very damaging to moving forward for a greener earth. Every American car can be made to run on pure alcohol (ethanol). Ethanol burns incredibly clean
and it has a relative octane rating of 105. Engines love it. Racers use it. Over 90 percent of corn raised in America goes towards animal feed. All of that can be used to make ethanol. The left over corn mash is actually better for the animals than raw corn. Animals gain more weight and faster. It is an entirely win-win situation. And the thing is, corn is not nearly the best thing to use to make ethanol from. So much more, but check it out yourself. The model T Ford ran on alcohol for years until Prohibition made it illegal for farmers to make it...

[MovieStuff]

Let's put aside for the moment the actual cars being made by GM, Ford and Chrysler today. The bailout of the auto makers seems to be the only issue Americans have with the bailouts. The amount of money we are talking about represents about 20% of the amount of money given to Wall Street and the banks
for BONUSes. Apparently they did such a great job of swindling retirement funds, investors, other banks, countries etc... they deserve it.

I really blame the media for much of this. A friend of mine works as an accounts examiner and she says there isn't a single bank that the FDIC would consider "solvent" that can withstand a true "run on the bank". You can make a bank fail by just starting a rumor that it will fail because people then freak out and line up to take all their money out at once. Thus making the prophecy come true. When my bank Washington Mutual failed and was bought up by Chase, I was a bit worried because the media was reporting it as the largest bank failure in history. But my friend reminded me that the only reason it was the largest is because WaMu had spent the last several years buying up other banks that had failed. And when Chase fails, then Chase will be the largest bank in history to fail. The point is that these sorts of things happen all the time and people never really pay attention or know about it.

It is important, yes, but the media often breeds mass hysteria which then affects otherwise healthy businesses. My son in law had a company that was about to go public and was in good financial shape but, as a result of all this financial nonsense, their bank ended up cutting off their line of credit and the PO was a bust as a result.

...Screw the auto makers and the 3 million jobs reliant on it. The issues are way more complicated than most people would even dream of.

Agreed. But the problem that I have with the motor industry is them pleading with Congress to give them money "to protect all the employees jobs", etc. When GM says they are temporarily shuttering 20 plants and that there are Dodge and GM car lots full to the brim with salable automobiles then, let's be clear, these are not companies without resources and certainly not without the ability to liquidate some valuable assets and tighten the belt a bit without laying off everyone.

This is like when Rubbermaid told Walmart to raise their prices due to an increase in raw materials. Walmart refused. As a result, Walmart canceled their contract because Rubbermaid couldn't deliver the products as needed at the price agreed on. Well, the press had a field day reporting that Walmart caused 200+ Rubbermaid workers to lose their jobs. But, of course, Walmart didn't fire anyone. Rubbermaid did. If the shareholders of Rubbermaid had been willing to accept a slight decrease in their profits, they could have saved 200+ jobs.

So when the big three car companies say they will be out of money, the translation is "We won't be able to make as much as we would like." The shareholders will suffer, yes, but not as much as a laid off worker.

Diesel engines are not even needed. The myth of taking away food to produce ethanol is very damaging to moving forward for a greener earth. Every American car can be made to run on pure alcohol (ethanol). Ethanol burns incredibly clean
and it has a relative octane rating of 105. Engines love it.

Very true. My late father had a Studebaker that he ran on alcohol just for the sake of it. Ran great. Lot's-O-Power.

Roger

[super8man]

While ethanol may be a boon, let's not overlook all the crazy "schemes" regarding companies promoting ethanol. Heck, some companies make a living out of "promising" to make "cellulosic" ethanol when in reality it has never been done (beakers don't count, I am talking barrels, not gallons, barrels...). Just look up your favourite ethanol company stock (assuming it's public) and see where they are at...another fad that has come and gone when the fundamentals caught up with them...

[S8 Booster]

only factor with ethanol / metanol is that they have significantly less energy density than gasoline/diesel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg

http://www.flyhi.org.il/fuel.htm

shoot.....

[Blue Audio Visual]

There is also the uncomfortable probability that in order to produce enough bio-fuel to make reasonable inroads into the global fuel market would require plantations on a massive scale. The inevitable economic reality would be that this would mean clearing huge swathes of virgin woodland/rain forest/arable land used by already impoverished subsistence farmers in 3rd world countries. The potential environmental impact of bio-fuel is a complex picture. Whilst David's idea about using corn-mash for livestock is a nice idea in principle I'd be amazed if the volume of bio-fuel that could be produced using that model would amount to any more than a drop in the ocean.

Now if only the good folks in the USA and elsewhere were to recycle all the fat used for deep-fried food and use that in converted Diesel engines...

Or alternatively (were Bush still in power) the Americans could always consider invading a country with lots of nice arable land to turn over to bio-fuel production. Canada is nice and close, all they would need to think of is how the hell to engineer picking a fight with them???

[super8man]

All the land mass in the world would only produce 1/5 of our fuel needs...(pretty sure this is the correct statistic on it).

[Blue Audio Visual]

That should probably be rephrased to say "All the land mass in the world would only produce 1/5 of our fuel consumption"...

[super8man]

Presumably what we consume is what we need. Like in film...or are you suggesting we cut back on shooting ratios to 1:1?

[Blue Audio Visual]

Hi Mike,

With all due respect your argument is pure sophistry. I'm neither an ardent apologist for the petrochemical industry nor a firebrand environmental demagogue, but consider myself capable of taking a pragmatic position somewhere between those two extremes. Not that I believe that you were being entirely serious anyway, but I'm sure you knew what I meant by my qualification of your comment. I'm pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of people would agree that we need far less fossil fuel than we currently consume, and that we could easily modify our behaviour without seriously compromising our quality of life.

My wife and brother both convinced/press-ganged me into going by train to the south of France this Christmas, and I've got to say it was thoroughly enjoyable compared to flying there. We were even rewarded karmically on the return leg from Paris to London by being upgraded for free to 1st Class on the Eurostar. Very nice indeed. I'll be travelling by train more in future not because it is better for my eternal soul or the environment, rather because it is a more enjoyable way to travel. It is simply a bonus that it reduced my carbon footprint by something like 90% (a statistic which I have shamelessly plucked out of the air).

Not that I'd say the same about taking the bus to the shops rather than driving there, but then again I reserve the right to be completely hypocritical.

Oh, and incidentally I haven't eaten any meat since 1986, so I suppose I should feel guilty about the fact that my self-imposed dietary regime won't be shoring up the future corn-mash to bio-ethanol industry.

Very little of the above should be taken entirely seriously...

[aj]

My wife and brother both convinced/press-ganged me into going by train to the south of France this Christmas, and I've got to say it was thoroughly enjoyable compared to flying there. We were even rewarded karmically on the return leg from Paris to London by being upgraded for free to 1st Class on the Eurostar. Very nice indeed. I'll be travelling by train more in future not because it is better for my eternal soul or the environment, rather because it is a more enjoyable way to travel. It is simply a bonus that it reduced my carbon footprint by something like 90% (a statistic which I have shamelessly plucked out of the air).
...

Well, I certainly like driving my car. But indeed taking the Thalys train from Rotterdam to Paris is certainly fun and easy travelling with arrival at classic Paris enty-point Gare du Nord.
Who needs a car in Paris. And while the Rotterdam-Bruxelles highspeed track is ready the software on the ERMTS train signaling is rather not, still normal speed there. Never trust a software-project-planning Thus currently 'only' the Bruxelles-Paris is travelled at near 300km/h which is really fun when travelling along with the toll-way where cars crawl merely at 130km/h

[super8man]

Hey, being from a major city like Vancouver, I enjoyed public transit and made the most of it.

However, ironically, moving to California is a whole 'nother matter. Basically, only the poor and the homeless ride local light rail on offpeak times (scary at best)...and to say the Central Valley of California is anything like what you describe in Europe would be a joke at best and a comic tragedy at worst...Europe has more to offer the traveller than California can and I would love the idea of not needing a car to get around. In this state, you simply CANNOT make due without a personal vehicle. Now, San Francisco may be a different matter but even then you have to limit your choices of where you can go and when.

Europe is set up for trains and transit from what PBS and everyone I know suggests. But, unfortunately, most Europeans have no clue about how spread out we are in the west of this continent. Like I say, even British Columbia is like the size of Europe - or it may as well be! California is smaller than BC and yet they managed to delude the populace to vote for a bullet train to solve a problem that no longer exists (the flow of people between Northern and Southern California is now handled by air travel and, no, people won't go back to taking a day to accomplish what jet travel does in an hour or two).

As for carbon footprint, hey, if it floats your boat, cool. As for me, I prefer to simply lead an efficient lifestyle of my own choosing. I don't need it dictated to by a government that has a bad history of "picking winners."