Electric La-La Land

I know it's inevitable the price of a gallon of regular gasoline will rise above $5 and stay there.

Especially true here in Lovely LA, Home of the Automobile as Life Partner, where if they could wire us physically into our beloved vehicles we'd be ecstatic.  

We are an audience made captive by our State's isolationist fuel and emissions policies, but we wouldn't want it any other way.  Hey, we need to breathe! 

And when that 5 buck a pop fuel becomes an everyday reality, the door will begin to close on the standard combustion engine, at least when employed as the motive force for basic transportation.  Driving (or riding a motorcycle) for Entertainment will continue introducing combustable Dino-Goo to Oxygen in the presence of Fire for some time to come, but for commuting and just gettin' around drudgery, electric will be our future.  And I mean pure electric, not hybrids like the Prius, or even the Volt.  In our 5 dollar per G future, any burning of fossil fuel for anything other than Fun will be a non-starter.  We won't want anything that uses even a drop of oil.

Good Thing Then, that Los Angeles, almost like no other city, makes sense for electrics.  We have plenty of year-round sun to feed solar panels, which in turn can charge up our eCars and eBikes.  We also have lots of bumper-to-bumper traffic, and all that idling of gas engines is nastily bad for our collective lungs.  Electric fumes are by contrast a non-item, a figment of imagination, and totally nonexistent.

There are only three things keeping electric transportation as the norm from happening:

Range - It takes a lot of miles to get where you want to go in LA, so 60 miles or so on a charge won't cut it.  We might settle for a reliable 100 (I said, Might).

Utility - Have you seen current electric vehicles?  Space is compromised to make room for batteries.  You can't carry many people or much stuff.  In LA we drive solo most of the time, but we feel the need to pack in our friends from time to time, and we don't want to leave anyone out to walk.  We also must have room to bring those garage sale gems home from the Weekend rounds - can you fit a nice Chair find (or two) in a Leaf?

Cost - We want range and we want utility, but we don't want to pay much more than we would for a gas-powered ride.  La-La Landers will pay for the privilege to wean ourselves from oil, but we are a city of all economic strata, and there are limits to how much cost we can handle.  Make a compact non-Farkled eCar cost no more than a Fiat 500, and we will pay attention (as long as range and utility have been assured).

A Future Wherein Most Vehicles whistle about electrically across the Land is only a matter of Years Away.  No more than a decade, I'd wager.

Maybe Sooner here in La-La Land ...

Mitt's a Hit!

Oh, what low expectations can do for you.

The pundit-spew following tonight's First Presidential Debate of 2012 gave Romney the victory; he didn't get anything close to a 'knockout', but most agreed he won more rounds and took the decision.

Of course, it is easier to do well if - in addition to having those low, low, expectations in your favor - you don't have any kind of identfiable (and recent) track record your opponent can criticize. Especially when your opponent does have a public record of four years on the job you (or rather your handlers) have had literally years to peruse for any useable weakness.

All you have to do is jab and keep moving around the ring.  Mitt Romney did exactly that.

He did something else too.  He morphed into an entirely different variety of Republican, right before our eyes. That Romney who disavowed the Massachusetts universal health care law he enacted as Governor (aka RomneyCare), because to own it would cost him Tea Party support? Gone!  Replaced by a moderate kind of guy who actually thinks that law was just great.

Romney still thinks that 'ObamaCare' needs to be scrapped, of course, even if it is closely modeled on RomneyCare, and was crafted by some of the same advisors. That contrast might have cost him some points, even brought him to his knees, but Barack Obama seemed caught off-balance by this tactic switch and let him escape to the corner.

Of course, even if Obama had landed a punch on this topic, Mitt's been toughened by all those (20?) GOP debates - there's lots of calloused scar tissue there.

The takeaway fom this first debate is just this:  Romney's handlers have proven that he CAN be trained to speak well in public, even absent a script, if given enough preparation and with knowing the topics in advance.  Obama has been shown lacking in his preparation (not much spare time when you are Commander-In-Chief), and lacking too in his enthusiasm and political killer instinct.

I imagine it must irk the President to debate someone like Mitt, given what Obama's gone through, and what he's accomplished since January 2009; and given that Romney's done nothing but campaign  during that time.  It must sometimes seem to him as if the American people are reality show junkies ironically unable to distinguish the Real from the insubstantial.

But irksome or not, the President has two more of these things to get through, and he'd be wise to shake  off his ennui and come out of the corner swinging.

Poetry Break: Happy Landings

Flying in a Blue Dream, 'eh Satriani?

Soaring over It All

Stifling a Sigh, or maybe a Scream

Consumption be done about it, 'eh Woody?

Of Cough, Of Cough, but beware and be-Woe

Is Mitt Mint, or brass and tinsel?

Will BHO make real Change,

Or just sour Dough?

Diving for Strawberry Fields,

Through Smoke From a (not so) Distant Fire,

Gliding in with flaps down and Spirits Up,

Happy Landings to Us All ...

Firing Up

In a mediterranean climate zone, like Southern California, parts of South Australia, and well, the Mediterranean, summers are hot and dry, and winters are cool and wet.

What happens between the Summer and the Winter, though, is Fire.

At least that's what is becoming the norm here in Fiery SoCal.

Apparently, the cool, wet winters spur spring growth, then the hot, dry summers desiccate all that grown vegetation into perfect fuel.  Then, for reasons still not entirely clear, certain humans decide to strike tinder (intentionally or unintentionally) to that perfect fuel.

The result is a hard and often impossible to control wildfire.

Hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars get spent to fight it; homes and landmarks get lost; and sometimes lives too.  Tens of thousands of living things die or flee to other territory (bears in backyards, anyone?)

When the fire is finally contained, whether through human perseverance and skill, or through running out of fuel to burn, we all breath a collective sigh of relief; and believe, fervently, that something will be done to prevent this, or at least to do a better job of fighting the next one.

And then it gets cooler, and wetter, and we forget for a season.

The Endings of August

The month of August has always felt like a demarcation of the year.  Not in the same overt way the 4th of July does, or even Thanksgiving, but you can still feel it 'in your bones'.

Summer is ending with August, and so, shortly, will most summer vacations.  Back to school, back to seriousness, back to the real year that took a break sometime in late May and needs just now to get its act together.

Other things end in August too.  Some people get divorced.  Others lose their jobs.  Some lose their lives.  These things happen all year, of course, but August seems somehow a more fitting backdrop.

One 'thing' that clearly ended this August was any pretense that the Republican Party is dealing fairly with the American People.  At their convention in Tampa nothing was revealed of any substance, except that virtually everyone who took the stage spoke in meaningless banality; ignoring, slanting, skewing, or just plain corrupting the truth as if truth had no meaning at all.  That was what we learned about the GOP this cycle, and it felt like a true ending.

The Curse of Intelligence

"Envy the slow, the witless, the truly stupid, for they know no doubt."

I put that in quotes, but I'm paraphrasing, since I don't remember where or when I read that sentiment. I do believe it's true, though.  (I've had enough surreal airport and bar conversations to prove the theory.)

Imagine how simple a day would be if you awakened to firm, unshakeable belief in any number of subjects that intelligence tells us are debatable and anything but written-in-stone.

Imagine absolutely no doubt even where ample evidence exists to instill doubt.

Imagine believing as gospel every statement issued by your political party, your religious leaders, or FOX News.

Imagine being a member of the Tea Party or an acolyte of Limbaugh.

What an assured existence that could be.

Trouble is, if you can imagine any of those scenarios and their consequences, you are not qualified for a simple, doubt-free life.  You think too much.

Damnable July

July has not been a kind month.  Midsummer has always been a lunatic time; awash in mysticism, magical thinking, and weirdness.  2012 has seen fit to add tragedy into the mix.

The lunatic actions of a young man mired within his own dysfunctional thinking took the lives of 12 innocents, and altered the lives of 58 others.

Making this horrific July even worse is the return of the endless conundrum mimicking a discussion on the question: 'How can we deal with gun violence?

I have an answer to that shouting match between NRA/2nd amendment zealots and their equally off-base Zero Gun opponents:  Don't Waste Your Breath - unless both sides are willing to move off their positions, or just sit back and let the reasonable middle deal with it, there will be no solution.  The more each group of diametrically-opposed 'thinkers' rant across the divide, the further from any practical solution we become.

And in the meantime, July 2013 awaits ...