We Don’t Need No Stinking Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy 23 Comments

CNN Money:

Electric car company Better Place is planning to file for bankruptcy within the next several days, Fortune has learned.
[…]
Better Place originally launched in late 2007 to build out a network of battery-swapping stations for electric cars (basically a twist on charging stations). Its premise was that the electric car market would eventually take off thanks to rising oil prices and the decline of traditional automakers. And, when that happened, Better Place already would be built out and ready to serve.
But when oil hit $125 per barrel and General Motors (GM) filed for bankruptcy within just 18 months into Better Place’s existence, it failed to successfully execute.

I toured the Better Place demonstration site in Israel when we were there in 2010, saw a nice video and rode in a electric car around a closed circuit. Their plan included recharging their swap-out car batteries with solar panels.
The guide didn’t like my questions very much.
h/t Ed S

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 24 Comments

In tonight’s musical oddity en route to the Tips, a teenage pop star who would later change his name to Yusef Islam sings a catchy little number about engendering respect through the threat of lethal force: From 1967, here’s a young Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Georgiou) singing I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.

“Of course he’s not supposed to do that. “

It's Probably Nothing 10 Comments

The Virginian;

Virtually all the major financial institutions use Bloomberg terminals. I say virtually all because it’s possible that there may be a hold-out, but Bloomberg is indispensable to the financial world. It now appears that the Bloomberg sales force, the guys at the bottom of the information pyramid, has access to their customer’s usage patterns and could see what they were doing. How much more can the top guy find out about what his customers are doing?
For people who are not in the financial industry an explantion is in order. The Bloomberg system is like Google, Bing, Facebook and the telephone company combined. It’s a vast data base for people who want to look up statistics and financial facts. But it’s also a communications network that allows Bloomberg’s customer to make trades. The people who run the Bloomberg System can monitor this, and Michael Bloomberg is at the top of that system.

Enjoy Them While They’re Still Alive

Uncategorized 15 Comments

“Understand once this generation dies off you get to deal with aging boomer hippies, middle aged Gen X’er feminists, and entitled Gen Y’ers and millineals, all of which have to one extent or another been influenced and impaired by feminism. In other words the last true remaining, classy, Sophia Loren-esque women will die off and you will never get to enjoy hanging out with them, leaving you with “empowered women” and “masters in communications” types of females who are only female in gender.”

Look! Over There! A Fat Guy!

Media 24 Comments

Conrad Black on the Bizarroworld of Canadian political reporting:

If the Canada Customs and Revenue Authority had been used to harass and intimidate political and media opponents of the government in the run-up to a general election — as the Internal Revenue Service has done in the United States — it would be the greatest scandal in the country’s history, and would provoke a national crisis of confidence in the integrity of the federal government. The governing party would be out.

And if a Republican was in the White House, the scandals gripping Washington would be unfolding by the hour across the Canadian airwaves. But there isn’t, so they aren’t.

More Pavilions At Folkfest

Great Moments In Socialism More Pavilions At Folkfest 28 Comments

Sweden riots spread beyond Stockholm – “The whole policy of immigration and integration is being questioned”
Nice of them to finally notice. More here.
And here…

The media in Sweden sometimes report on studies in which researchers submit several job applications, some with names that sound Swedish, and some with more foreign-sounding names. Applicants with “Swedish” names are more likely to get called to an interview, something journalists interpret as meaning that immigrants in Sweden have little chance of finding employment.
Young immigrants, particularly those living in economic and social exclusion, get the impression that they might as well give up the idea of succeeding in the Swedish labour market. Journalists communicate this message with the hope that it will sound alarm bells that lead to efforts to reduce discrimination and racism. But it would be much more constructive if the journalists themselves better understood how discrimination works, and instead put forward a more nuanced perspective.

Heh. “They’re not riots, they’re diversity bonfires.”

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