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I Want My SUV - Fat People
Posted by Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 12:02AM EDT)
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Overheard on Blog Day Afternoon: "Give up my car, you say? Try a slower, less powerful vehicle fueled by a non-fossil fuel? That would entail patience and it's all about me, here, now... Are people pacified by the beer, by the drugs, by the TV, by cushy cars and the everyday mindless distractions of American life? Boy, we've come a long way, baby, in 227 years."
Americans love large automobiles. Light trucks, minivans and SUVs now comprise half of all new vehicles sold in the United States. Each major player in the auto industry produces at least one luxury truck. Companies not noted for trucks have entered the game. Volkwagen's Porsche line has suffered poor sales for well over a year. When it entered the luxury truck market, its fortunes changed. Although auto sales continue to decline, the company is in the black thanks to sales of the Porsche Cayenne. It accounts for 46% of the Stuttgart manufacturer's total sales.
One theory holds that SUVs appeal to reptilian instinct, a trait associated with basic survival. Reptilian behavior is not learned. It is acquired through millions of years of evolution. The reptilian shouts "Move it or lose it!" He fans his tail to ward off rivals. The SUV is the peacock's tail. It is large and powerful. It says, "Although my dick is small, my truck is large." Or something like that. The theory was put forth by Dr. Clothaire Rapaille, consultant to the auto industry. Fortune magazine dubbed him the "car shrink" and he's made a fortune peddling advise. Detroit provided gobs of cash and Rapaille said "Make them bigger and meaner." The doctor's advise has paid off handsomely.
Rapaille is nothing short of brilliant. He sold Detroit a sexy way to market XXL vehicles for XXL people. The truck boom blossomed with the obesity epidemic. Rapaille and I noticed the trend early and tried to ride the wave. I approached Detroit with "Wide Bodies for Wide People" while Rapaille hit them with animal instinct. Detroit blessed the reptilian with riches while I was relegated to late night blogging. And so it goes.
The rise of the SUV has been accompanied by a rise in social criticism. Envirnomentalists sound alarms for destruction of the planet. Isolationists warn of dependencies on foreign oil. Arrianna Huffington rides around in a stretch limo and tells anyone who listens that SUVs are bad for the planet. While these concerns have merit, they all boil down to this: "Will you look at how much Fatty's eating!" When you see a fat chick walking around with an ice cream cone, don't you wanna just smack it out of her hand? SUV, same thing. A big fat guy in a big fat vehicle chewing up more gas than he needs? You just want to smack that nozzle out of his hand.
Luxury truck owners are strapped for rebuttals in face of criticism. "SUVs are safer" (They're not) "SUVs take me to the mountain that I climb each weekend." (Yeah, right) They are forced to rely on lame reptilian replies as Detroit had selected Rapaille's interpretation over mine. But if you were reading his blog while I was sitting in my mansion, then SUV owners would have a perfect rebuttal for the era of political correctness. "Thin people are picking on me. Make them stop."
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 08:08AM EDT)
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Doctor Doug is a fake doctor but that doesn't prevent him from practicing medicine. He now has a blog. Check it out...
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By Mark (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 08:36AM EDT)
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Screw you. I have a SUV and I am thinner that you. I pay for the SUV, I pay for the gas. Mind your own business. Making blanket envirnomental statements....I do not know where to begin with that. For starters, the distance driven would be the biggest factor to consider. Keep in mind that these statements come from a guy that lived approximately 1 mile from work and drove his turbo charged V-6.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 09:01AM EDT)
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Did you actually read this piece? "The truck boom blossomed with the obesity epidemic." As Americans grew increasingly larger, so did their vehicles. Fatso can't drive a Boxer because it's too low to the ground. Once Porsche lifted his chair, Fatso bought them in droves.
Unlike some of the nutters I've mentioned, I didn't take a particular issue with SUV owners. With Fatso driving the trend toward larger vehicles, it is perfectly rational for other people to respond with larger vehicles. I lobbied my wife to purchase a Volvo wagon. (She didn't) With Fatso clogging the roads with trucks, it makes sense to respond with a suit of armor.
Finally, with regard to physique, talk to me when you're pushing forty. I'm in great shape compared to most of my contemporaries.
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By Mark (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 09:15AM EDT)
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This list appears to be moving toward anti SUV mode - reference point, the nutty statement at the top of the page. I am making a stand for the SUV owners / consumers. I would debate pollution issues with anyone. The reality is, most people that make "nutty" envirnomental statements are not envirnomentalist. My first reply to any pollution "nut" is, if you can't explain the reason why the pollution forms (SO2, CO2, CO2, etc)....SHUT UP.
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By doctordoug (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 09:19AM EDT)
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Good Gawd!!... If I can't explain why a vibrating string in front of a wooden box makes notes am I not permitted to critique guitar players?
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By Mark (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 09:44AM EDT)
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Critique away. If I can continue with the guitar analogy...just don't tell me that I should play an acoustic because my electric guitar burdens an already strained power supply, especially when you cannot show me that the power supply is strained. BIG DIFFERENCE DOUG.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 09:22AM EDT)
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Well, perhaps you should take that up with the person who made the statement. Hint: It is introduced with a clause which reads, "Overheard on Blog Day Afternoon:"
The earth's ability to absorb the human population will probably force the moment to its crisis way before a hole in the ozone. The latter issue is one for engineers to solve, the former falls into the hands of generals.
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By Tom (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:16PM EDT)
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Repeating something over and over does not increase the validity. Do you have numbers that show a link between obesity and suvs or are you confusing correlation with causation?
Both trends might be caused by the increase in developmental sprawl, which increases drive time (and the desire for larger luxury vehicles) and decreases the opportunity to burn calories since retail, office and school are not accessible without wheels.
As for your larger point of why anyone cares...put it down to consumer wahhabism. Existentialism holds that a life has no meaning but the sum of its choices. Unfortunately 66% of those choices are about what to buy and 50% are probably about what to eat. It is no suprise (but certainly boring) that the moral giants of the age latch on to consumer preferences as the battle ground of their holy wars.
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:31PM EDT)
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Repeating something enough times does make it true! Fox News *IS* fair and balanced!
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By Tom (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:56PM EDT)
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QED. I retract my statement.
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 12:18PM EDT)
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I think the real grudge is against being wasteful. Owning an SUV is *usually* the epitomy of waste and excess. There are tons of other activities which are also excessive but they are not called out because some may call them petty. But the SUV has enough bulk to it that it is also seen as threatening by non-SUV people. Being excessive was annoying, but every American is. But threatening too! Then the complaints begin. The media has also latched into this because it can irrate people on both sides, good and bad. Auto manufacturers don't mind because any advertising is good advertising. And for those who complain loudly enough, its simple market research they are getting in creating a new SUV that the heaters might like.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 12:44PM EDT)
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> "Will you look at how much Fatty's eating!
A fat man eating is ________?
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 12:38PM EDT)
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I find it ironic that "utility" is used in refering to these automobiles.
This term was used by 18th century philospher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham (before J.S. Mill used it in his treatise) in regard to what is right and wrong. When determining what action is right in a given situation, he says that we should consider the pleasures and pains resulting from it, in respect of their intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity (the chance that a pleasure is followed by other ones, a pain by further pains), purity (the chance that pleasure is followed by pains and vice versa), and extent (the number of persons affected). He says we should next consider the alternative courses of action: ideally, this method will determine which act has the best tendency, and therefore is right.
SUVs (and use of fossil-fuel engines in general for the majority of our mass-transporation needs) might cause immediate pleasure, but in the long run they lead to increased pollution and dependence on the Middle East. (If the Saudis really had any balls and weren't so greedy, they would bite the bullet and just cut off our oil supply, bringing us--and our war machine--to our knees. Not that I want them to, but they could. And we've allowed this to be a possiblity.)
I believe that each individual needs to make responsible choices in the present under our current realities to better our future. Since local farming has been replaced by national mass-market industries and 18-wheeler trucks still provide the bulk of our country's food distribution (as well as other goods), why don't we save the gasoline for them since we have no suitable alternative at this time, or at least cut back where we can? Do we all TRULY need an SUV? I'm not just anti-SUV, I also want Americans---if they're going to have a car at all-- to drive smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Or better yet, have American automobile manufacturers invent an innovative, fast, alternative-energy vehicle.
If this sounds nutty to you, then so be it.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 12:55PM EDT)
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Sure he's been "dead" since 1832, but if you want Bentham's thoughts on utilitarianism, then just ask him. The man has been hiding in a University College of London closet since the papers first ran his obituary.
BTW: Since you can't possibly advocate mandatory compliance to the Julie Energy Policy, how do you plan to enforce it? People have a long and sorid history of self-indulgance and gluttany. Why would anyone drive a smaller car for sake of the planet or the future? Now if gasoline prices suddenly sky-rocket...
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By Anonymous (Wednesday April 07 2004 @ 04:50PM EDT)
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you would want a smaller car because if u screw up or enviroment it will have a impact in the near future. listen to that!
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By Mark (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 01:23PM EDT)
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"The US only imports 54% of its oil, and of that, only 24% of the oil comes from the Persian Gulf region." - See Matt's Blog from Feb. You are bandwagon liberal that bases your opinion on the current fad. Example - "One 747 arriving and departing from JFK airport in New York City produces as much smog as a car driven over 5,600 miles, and as much polluting nitrogen oxides as a car driven nearly 26,500 miles. While the government has effectively required cars to undergo emissions inspections (with resulting improvements in emissions and efficiency), airplanes have not received the same scrutiny. Meanwhile, air travel is increasing in popularity twice as fast as car travel and is projected to double within the next 20 years." This is just one example. You are kidding yourself if you think non-commercial cars and trucks are causing oil dependency or are a major source of the pollution problem. Trust me, when you actually decide the examine some of the actual causes of pollution, SUV's do not appear on the screen.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 01:38PM EDT)
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> "The US only imports 54% of its oil, and of that, only 24% of the oil comes from the Persian Gulf region."
Please don't tell me that you think the United States is the ONLY country buying oil. See my original comments from the same entry: When it's all said and done, oil gets plunked into a single supply. If Middle Eastern production was suddenly cut, Japan and Europe will find themselves slurping from the same barrel as the United States with all parties sharing the cost of increased competition for limited supply. It's purely for political reasons that we like to say that we buy X from Y and not from Z.
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 01:44PM EDT)
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"You are kidding yourself if you think non-commercial cars and trucks are causing oil dependency or are a major source of the pollution problem. Trust me, when you actually decide the examine some of the actual causes of pollution, SUV's do not appear on the screen."
But why not make an effort to help decrease pollution whenever possible? Every little bit counts. And maybe if more people did this on a day-to-day basis, we'd all be a bit more conscious the bigger picture in general of our state of affairs.
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By Mark (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:28PM EDT)
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"But why not make an effort to help decrease pollution whenever possible? Every little bit counts. And maybe if more people did this on a day-to-day basis, we'd all be a bit more conscious the bigger picture in general of our state of affairs." This statement is a cop-out. It is easy to point the finger if you don't use the product. The SUV is the popular target, hey who cares about the facts.
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 01:38PM EDT)
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Well, there's always the route of U.S. Dept. of the Interior. Perhaps there will be an admiinistration position with my favorite U.S. Senator when she wins the Presidency---2008? Why not? I've been to Chappaqua!
And until then, there's the Grassroots Interface Verity (GIV) initiative. The GIV plan seeks to spread knowledge at the individual level (making the Internet a perfect vehicle, pardon the pun).
And for those who'd like to give to GIV, you know what to do.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 01:48PM EDT)
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If that favorite senator advocates legislating human choices, then count me among those who vote "NO." And if knowledge actually altered human behavior, then AIDs would have joined the endangered species list years ago. You must get tired pushing the ocean back with that broom. Me? I prefer to laugh as the lemmings swim out to sea. And if the shore gets boring, then I'll join them. Ker-splash!
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:20PM EDT)
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There are zillions of human choices already legislated for the sake of us all living together as a civilization. Do you think it's a good idea to allow people to get as drunk as they want and then attempt to drive home---on roads that we're all suppose to share? I think it would be wise to take legislation in a case-by-case basis. To me, the problem in this regard is when capitalist interests becomes a factor in legislation.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:36PM EDT)
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It is one thing for the government to forbid your efforts to jeopardize the welfare of others. It is quite another to provide citizens with a list of acceptable consumer goods.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:16PM EDT)
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How does one "have" auto manufacturers invent the "innovative, fast, alternative-energy vehicle"? If it is that easy, why not "have" someone invent faster-than-light travel, teleporters, and replicator machines? I am going to take a crazy guess here and state that you probably aren't a scientist or engineer or hold a degree in one of those fields. You remind me of some of the managers I deal with, who want a service or application to be better, faster, and cheaper. I tell them to pick two.
The combustion engine is incredibly efficient, meaning that it produces a LOT of energy using what are quite plentiful and cheap materials. Efficient electric cars, hydrogen cars, cow-fart powered cars, or whatever tech you might imagine people should be made to invent just does not exist, and no amount of encouragement (especially the kind I would imagine you'd favor, armed thugs forcing people to do things, aka government) is going to make that come about beyond what exists in the market. If a better way of powering autos is found, the market will reenforce it because it is better. Ask yourself why the computer you are using is based on silicon transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
If you really think it is possible to have a cheap, clean, fast, low-cost non-fossil fuel engine then invent one. You'll save the baby whales or whatever and make a few cool million in the process. Doesn't sound like a bad deal.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:29PM EDT)
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Inventing an alternative means of motorization is an engineering problem whose complexity falls short of, say, a round trip to the moon. Competition from the gasoline industry is your sticky wicket. What are oil companies doing while you're building an hydrogen tanking infrastructure? Hint: They are not sending you a Good Luck card.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:39PM EDT)
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You need to read more carefully. Inventing an "alternative means of motorization" is not that difficult of a problem. Heck, even a teenager can build his own fusion reactor. The problem is doing it cheaply and making it more efficient than the combustion engine. The above fusion reactor takes more power to run it than it emits, which makes it not very efficient.
I am not sure what you are implying by stating the oil companies are "not sending you a Good Luck card". What are the oil companies doing that keeps Julie from building her cheap, fast, innovative alternative-fuel engine, or what do you think they should be doing for her but are not? Let us be specific, please.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:10PM EDT)
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*YOU* need to stop leading the witness. I said its complexity was short of a round trip to the moon and you interpreted that to mean: "Inventing an 'alternative means of motorization' is not that difficult of a problem." That's rich even for you.
If you attempt to establish an alternative fuel infrastructure, you can expect to face price gouging, restructured licensing to forbid petro resellers from including your alternative and a consolidated marketing campaign of FUD. You will have to compete against a petro distribution system that already includes prime real estate along the highway system.
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By doctordoug (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:23PM EDT)
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Speaking of an alternate fuel infrastructure.... How bout corn based fuel additives. Something capitailism would completely ignore. Thank gawd for those environmentally concerned agri-commie lobby dudes.
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 04:58PM EDT)
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Corn takes way more energy to produce and refine than gasoline. In fact - it might take more energy to produce corn based fuel than the energy it provides. The sun is only a tiny piece of the pie w/respect to corn.
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By Tom (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:28PM EDT)
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Hey Perry Mason! Are you gonna explain again how obesity is driving SUV purchases. Cause if it's all based on the fat man you saw getting out of his Land Cruiser, I'll raise you 3 skinny white women I saw gettting out of their Navigator, Trooper and Oddysey over lunch.
WRT wagering -- I lost the bet that we'd get through this post without someone claiming that the auto and energy industries are all that stand between us and cheap clean and efficient cars.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 04:05PM EDT)
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My case is based on corellation, SUV sales rose with the obseity epidemic. I understand you want a thesis, but I write five entries a week and that's a tall order.
I did a little research and guess what? Reptilian instinct existed in 1980 when SUV sales totaled 250,000. While my contention is based on corellation, Clothaire Rapaille's theory is based on even less. Of course his theory is worth considerably more than mine as demonstrated by his vast material wealth.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 04:33PM EDT)
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I seem to recall an argument you put forward in which you correlated Powell's visit to Moscow with a pipeline in the Middle East.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 05:30PM EDT)
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Cite?
I didn't think so....
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 06:48PM EDT)
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While I couldn't find the original conversation, I did find this reference to it. Note item C.
On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 08:54:54PM -0400, Matt wrote:
> No. You leap to conclusions any time I bring up anything unconventional.
>
> On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 07:20:44PM -0400, Jeff wrote:
> > Conspiracies are my strawman? Aren't you the guy who proposed various
> > conspiracies based upon:
> >
> > a. A book by two Frogs that you've never read that has been proven bunk
> > b. The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush which I've proved bunk
> > c. Correllation between a meeting with Powell & unrelated Russian action
> > d. Day of Deceit which I've shown was bunk.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 06:42:46PM -0400, Matt wrote:
> > > What I mean is that I do not disagree. I've said again and again
> > > there are no conspiracies. Conspiracy theories are your straw men.
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By Matt (Friday September 19 2003 @ 09:58AM EDT)
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For those who can't follow the bracketed quotations, JEFF is the one that posted that alphabetized list of things, NOT ME. If you see my comments, it is obvious that deflecting Jeff's Strawmen is something that I've had to do for quite some time, not just here recently.
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 04:57PM EDT)
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I think the correlation of fatness is proportional to the rise of the Remote Control.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:44PM EDT)
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But it is not an engineering problem; using known science to do something is engineering. You conflate science and engineering. No one is building anything that meets the criteria without advances in physical chemistry or some other field with yet-unforseen engineering opportunities in energy production. If you want to claim that it is just an engineering problem, I am all ears. Explain the physics and chemistry of your alterna-fuel engine. Explain the theory behind how it works. Then produce a basic design that would be a worthwhile investment, meaning the engine puts off more energy than it consumes, the fuel is cheap and plentiful, and the engine is not too cumbersome to power a personal auto.
You just described that in capitalism the legacy industry will compete against a new industry. Well, no shit. I fail to see why this means anything special such that you feel the need to mention it. A better engine will replace the old. The current combustion engine is radically different than the original engine in the first cars. Competition didn't discourage its use, it encouraged it. That is the point.
The single greatest key to ensuring that your new tech will win out over the old is to somehow involve pornography. The rapid growth of the WWW, DVD vs. laser disc, and VHS vs. Beta would all make good case studies of the success/porn correlation.
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 05:01PM EDT)
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Actually wasn't beta technically better but bad marketing decisions made it lose to VHS?
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 05:41PM EDT)
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I think that Matt is comparing apples and, uh, peaches here. The greatest way to develop new technology is to have the U.S. Government spend tons of time and money on it. (Hence, the Internet.) But they're not when it comes to a non-fossil-fuel engine that can compete with a combustion engine, because they're shackled by their ties with auto-industry PACs.
No one has mentioned that here in America we are paying so much less per gallon than our European counterparts. Why is this? Because the U.S. government is subsidising our addiction to gasoline. We're a Welfare nation.
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 07:43PM EDT)
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The Internet did not come about because the gov't had money to burn. It was done out of necessity to have a distributed network which was robust to add new nodes and have routes die seemlessly. In case "the bomb" fell. There is no reason for the gov't to develop an oil free vehicle unless it was in the military's interest.
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By Matt (Friday September 19 2003 @ 10:08AM EDT)
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It is interesting how your mind works. Euro gas prices are higher because their governments tax the shit out of petrol. Lack of taxes is not a "subsidy" or "welfare" to me. It is the natural state of things.
Funk pretty much refuted the "government invented the Internet" myth. I would add that "the Internet" is a lot of things, and equally if not more important to the wires connecting diverse nodes (the only part the gov't could get credit for 'inventing') are the TCP/IP suite of protocols (thank you Berkeley Labs), the C programming language and the UNIX operating system (thank you Bell Labs), and the WWW (thank you CERN).
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:54PM EDT)
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OK. If I have to sacrifice something, I'll sacrifice "fast." That would be a bonus, as I prefer a much slower pace. Nature's beauty is missed the faster one passes it by.
You are correct sir--I am not a scientist. (I spend my time sweeping back the ocean with a broom.) If I had the brains and the inclination to invent such a car, of course I would! The reason I think it hasn't been a priority of those who can is that, since the Industrial Age, the earth's resources got left behind in lieu of capitalist industrial interests. (PACs from the automobile industry.) Now, some people are recognizing that a change may be in order, that the benefits our industrialized society once brought us might have run their course and might soon be coming back to kick us in the butt. It's time to shift gears. (Pardon the pun.) If we as humans can smash atoms, certainly someone can harness the power of the sun towards a new engine?
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By Funkman (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:58PM EDT)
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The sun's power has been harnessed for vehicles and there is an annual race each year. But the cars are tiny, they hold one person, they go slow, and don't work well on cloudy days. The internal combustion engine is too efficient! (and cheap)
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By doctordoug (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:04PM EDT)
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I gotta have some fun in a vehicle.
Fast???? Gotta have it. I do it with a vey light car and a four cylinder engine that gets 30 mpg even when I beat the piss out of it (always). Safe??? Not so much so.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:25PM EDT)
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Not many people would be willing to sacrifice fast, especially Jeff. And no one would be willing to sacrifice cheap. The technology exists right now to build a home with solar power such that the entire home is completely self-sufficient and can actually put power back into the grid, earning the home owner money. Why aren't we doing this? It isn't because of some tin-foil hat conspiracy theory involving power companies. It is just simple math. E.g., a $120,000 house may use $1200 in electricity a year at market prices. With state of the art solar technology, the house can actually produce more than it uses and earn the home owner $500/year at market prices. Unfortunately this state of the art solar tech costs $10,000 on top of the base cost of the house. So for this to make sense to the consumer they would have to stay at the house for 20 years before starting to see a pay-off (solar panels are like swimming pools - they cost a lot but they aren't going to get you more for your house when you sell). Many people expect to move into a different home for some reason short of those 20 years.
The example above is an actual real house, built by PPL as a concept house. They would love if people built these houses and they could turn around and sell that extra power to industries, and close their very expensive fossil fuel and nuclear plants.
You want a cleaner environment and you think we can do it through some wundertech that you can't really describe but think ought to exist. That is a very common belief amongst those without a scientific background. Elsewhere someone was telling me how "we" ought to be "working on" building something giving us the ability to fly faster than light. Your idea suffers a similar problem. Above Jeff states that the alternative fuel engine is an engineering problem, and he is wrong. Right now it is a physics and chemistry problem. Going to the moon in a rocket is just an engineering problem. We already know the science to do that within a certain cost. We can't build the FTL spaceship or cheap/efficient/alternate-fuel engine until we see advances in some scientific theories. Without the math, you aren't building anything. Entire departments of Universities are devoted to working on these fields and others. Hopefully some brilliant mind will come along and provide a theoretical leap. If advances are made in super-conducting physics that PPL concept house might only cost a couple of thousand in materials, and you'll start seeing them. Advances in physical chemistry could provide us with a way to cheaply extract large amounts of energy from some other fuel source than petroleum without the pollutants. But no one is building anything until that stuff happens. Your computer only became a novel engineering design problem once the physicists made advances in solid-state physics and Quantum Mechanics.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:28PM EDT)
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This is why the Tuesday night drinking crowd has set a 300 page limit for its book club.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 01:56PM EDT)
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I have an SUV, although my truck's design existed long before "SUV" was a marketing meme from Detroit. While the gas use is not incredibly efficient, given that I drive very little each week (I live very close to work, and when I travel long distances I either go by air or rail), I am sure the pollution I cause is far far less than that of the person in their efficient car who commutes 30 minutes or more to work each day.
I disupute that my SUV is less safe than a car. I was broadsided by a moron in a full-sized Ford Bronco and hardly had a scratch inside the vehicle or on my person. In fact I carely felt the impact, because I had a large frame to absorb the force. An SUV is less safe if driven like a car, or if you are in a little car and are hit by an SUV. But if some moron is going to crash into me, I'll choose my Rover over your VW every time.
I'm also not sure what vehicle I should have, given that I:
- Need to carry drums
- Need to be able to take 4-5 adults, comfortably
- Drive to campsites and shooting ranges
- Drive through 12+ inches of snow
I'm not sure what other vehicle is going to provide that kind of utility. A wagon or a minivan has the versatility for hauling what I need to haul, but it lacks the off road ability my vehicle has. A Jeep might be able to handle the off-roading with some modifications, but then I can't haul anything.
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By doctordoug (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:49PM EDT)
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Granted utility is the reason a **LOT** of folks drive what they drive. Matt needs the space. But, I suspect that it is his overwealming desire to change fuses several times a day that points him toward a Rover. It is certainly vanity that drives the choice of a lot of vehicles. Lets legislate an end to vanity.
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By Matt (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 02:57PM EDT)
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Latest Dubya Executive Order: vanity now illegal, men must mate with ugly girls.
What, a British vehicle having bad electronics and wiring? I do carry 3 spares of each kind of fuse in the truck, and the panel is located right in the dash, so I can change a fuse without leaving the driver's seat. People see it and say "how cool, they put it somewhere easy to reach" until I tell them to think about how often I must change fuses such that the manufacturer needed to put it within reach....
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By doctordoug (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:02PM EDT)
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Hot freakin Dawg... I was WAY ahead of the curve on that one. Erm... before I met my wife that is.
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By Julie (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:11PM EDT)
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Hey, don't pick on our First Lady!
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By kevin the one-armed boy (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:23PM EDT)
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And that Hillary..... what a looker! If I had legs like that I could squat 475lbs.
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By Jeff (Thursday September 18 2003 @ 03:25PM EDT)
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Somewhere in America "Mark" is smiling smugly to himself for having wrought holy war...
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Enlighten me, Marge
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The most formidable weapon against errors of any kind is reason.
-- Thomas Paine
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We Did Our Job!
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