Electric Cars revisited

Let’s take a look at owning a plug-in electric car.  The first thing that comes to mind is your freedom from the gas pump.  You never have to care about the price of gasoline or diesel again!  As the owner of a full size 4WD pickup truck with a very large V8 engine, I can see where that would have a lot of appeal. So how much would a plug in electric actually help this situation?

Standard equipment for the plug-ins currently available includes a cable which you plug in to standard house current. If you’ve depleted your battery, you are looking at as much as 20 hours to recharge it. This would be a situation where you’ve run it down somewhere to the point that it could not be driven and you’ve had it towed home.  Let’s assume you didn’t do that, and the car made it into your garage. To be fair, we’ll say that it is discharged to the point that it takes 16 hours to charge back up. To put that in perspective, if you’ve arrived home at 6 p.m. and plugged in your charger, the battery won’t be fully charged until 10 a.m. the next morning.  If you have to be at work at 7, that could be a problem.  I suppose you could unplug it and drive on a partial charge, but I would imagine that the owner’s manuals do not recommend that practice. I haven’t read any of them, but that’s a pretty standard recommendation on any battery powered device.

There is a way around the 20 hour wait however.  For an additional $700 to $1200, plus the cost of installation, you can have a Level 2 charger installed in your house. Commonly referred to as “charging docks”, these chargers require a dedicated 240 volt 30 amp circuit to operate.  In most places, installation will require the services of a licensed electrician. Be sure to check any local codes and ordinances before you buy one of these.  If you live in an older home or in a rural area, you may need to upgrade your electrical panel to install one of these devices. This will pump up the cost considerably. Once installed however, this charger will top off your electric “tank” in about 8 hours.

Ok, you’ve laid down $30,000 for the car, another $1200 for a charger and $1200 more to have it installed so you’re ready to start saving all that gas money right?  Well, let’s talk about my truck for a minute.  I spend about $40 a week for gas for it, more or less depending on if we do much driving on weekends. Through the summer, it’s considerably less, as my wife is out of school and I work at home. If we use $40 per week for an example, the costs associated with the charger bought gas for me for over a year at current prices.  For people that already have small cars and spend say, $12 a week for gas, that’s 4 years of fuel, just in the charger! But you’re saving gas money, remember?

I mentioned earlier that you were free from the gas pump with one of these.  True enough, but if it’s your only means of transportation, you’re on a pretty short leash with one of them. Published specifications say you can get up to 100 miles per charge. That specification assumes you are driving in perfect weather on flat terrain at 35 mph. I would bet that around where I live, you’d see that drop off sharply. There is very little flat terrain in this part of Arkansas, and if you live around here or have watched the news lately you’ve seen that the weather is far from perfect.  We commonly range from temperatures in the teens in winter to triple digit heat in summer.  My wife has a 34 mile round trip commute to work, and I dare say that factoring in the distance, terrain and weather, it would tax the abilities of most of the electrics out there to make that trip every day.  She certainly couldn’t make it two days in a row without a recharge.  Add trips to the market, pharmacy and all the other things you have to do to make life livable and you are now out of range.  You see, they don’t advertise that you can’t get that 100 miles per charge if you have to spend time on a freeway at 70 mph.  Highway speeds sap your battery very quickly. These things are in-town, residential speed commuter cars.

One of the things you see in any argument online about owning these things is what happens when there’s a disaster that knocks the power out. Neither side of the online battles that I have read has any common sense.  For one, if the power fails, you can’t recharge.  That’s a given. If the disaster happens while you are at home that might not be a big deal, depending on what caused it. But what if you need to evacuate? If it’s a manmade disaster like a chemical spill for instance, your little electric car can probably get you to safety. But what happens if you just made your 40 mile commute, got home, plugged your car in, turned on the tv and discovered that there’s a category 5 hurricane headed your way and the governor has ordered everyone to move inland by 200 miles?  After you wait the 8 hours to recharge, it’s gonna take anywhere from 2 to 5 days to go that far in your electric car.  Bad news if the hurricane is 12 hours away.  But if the power is out you can’t pump gasoline or diesel either, you argue.  True, but you can pump it with a hand cranked pump or pour it from a gas can!  The 5 gallon can you have in the garage for the lawnmower, if full, will get you a good long way down the road in whatever sort of gasoline powered car you happen to have.  Your electric might get you to the refugee center, but you’re going without any of your stuff.

Laying the disaster scenarios aside, these things are good for the environment, right?  Well, depends on how deep you look.  Most people prefer to turn a blind eye to the damage done to Mother Earth to make the batteries for these things. It requires digging gigantic holes in the ground, and consuming monstrous amounts of fossil fuels and electricity to mine, refine, ship and fabricate the minerals required as well as all the waste products generated in the process.  All that happens in other countries so we choose not to see it.   We also choose to ignore the dangers these vehicles create in the event of a crash.  All this high current wiring running through the car bodies poses a hazard to rescue workers and the equipment they use to extract victims from crashes.

Do we need an alternative to fossil fuel powered cars?  Absolutely we do.  Is the plug in electric the answer to that question?  No, I don’t think so. I think they have their uses.  If the purchase price comes down in the under $15,000 range, I could see them serving folk who live within 20 miles of where they work and can drive at residential speeds to get there as a second car just for that purpose. As a solitary means of transportation, they are not going to be practical. They will be fashionable for a while, but I think you’ll see a great many of them on the “pre-owned” market that are less than a year old.  The market for these is going to be a small niche.  In these days of “gotta have it now” and do it as cheap as possible, these cars will never succeed.  We complain if a web-page takes a half second to open, so how will we tolerate waiting 20 hours to recharge the car?  Can you imagine the reaction in the business world if some corporate executive called across town to another branch to have someone come over for a meeting or to repair a critical piece of equipment and he gets told “sorry boss, it will be four more hours before my car is charged enough to drive again.”  That would go over like a lead balloon.  Speaking of corporations, how many companies do you suppose would be willing to put charging docks in the parking lots for the employee’s use?  Not many I’ll wager, unless there was some huge tax incentive to do so.  Even then, it would be more trouble than most companies would be willing to endure.

Obama and the million electric car march

Let’s see, where to start.  President Obama wants to have a million electric cars on the roads by 2015.  Interesting idea, but not very practical, I would say.  As I’ve mentioned before in previous articles, electric cars are inhibited by two major concerns. One is the extremely limited range, and the other is a staggering price tag. To offset the latter, our President is planning to offer a $7500 tax credit for buying one.  That would bring the actual cost of a $32,800 Nissan Leaf down to $25,300 (assuming you paid cash for it). Let’s think about this from a practical point of view.  If you financed one of these cars at 7.5% interest for 60 months, with a $5000 trade in allowance, you’d be paying roughly $574 a month for a car that can only go (if you are lucky) 50 miles before you have to recharge it.  This can take up to 17 hours. A trip from Fayetteville to Little Rock and back would take 6 days, assuming you could find someplace to plug it in. You get very many electrics on the road hotels and restaurants will have to start charging for recharging.  It would create a new revenue stream for them, I suppose.  Instead of a parking meter, you could have a “charging meter”.  Might add a whole new definition to the term “charge card”.

These cars would be best suited to those of us who live not in the big congested cities like Los Angeles or Dallas or London, but in the small towns of around 75,000 population.  Why? Simple…less traffic and shorter commutes.  If you have to make a 40 mile commute across Dallas in the summer while running the AC, you’d run the risk of depleting your battery before you got there!  The town where I live is about 65,000 and even if you live at one end and your job is at the most distant point possible at the other end of town, you’re only 10 miles away.  You could drive your Leaf to work and back, to the market and even out for an evening  without having to worry about getting stuck with a dead battery and only have to charge it overnight every couple of days.  That would make a huge impact on air quality and the amount of gasoline as a whole these million cars in the President’s proposal would use.  But you and I both know that won’t happen.  How many families in this country with the economy in the shape it’s in now could afford to buy a car with a nearly $600 a month payment just to go to work and back?  We are being practical here folks…I’m not talking about Tyson and Wal-Mart executives here.  I’m talking about the people that work in the factories, mills, and processing plants. The guy who changes your oil, cuts your hair, and stocks the grocery shelves.  The lady behind the cash register, who waits your table, or takes care of your kid at daycare.   How many of these folks could lay down $574 a month for a car payment, let alone the insurance for these things? 

In the first paragraph I made mention of a trade-in worth $5000. Let’s explore this for a minute.  For this example we will assume that car is paid for, is in reasonably good condition and gets 20 mpg.  At $3 a gallon for gasoline, one month’s payment on the electric would buy enough fuel for you to drive this car for 3826 miles.  If gasoline went up to $5 per gallon, you could still buy enough to drive 2300 miles…for the cost of one payment on the electric.  There is no way that buying one of these things makes any economic sense.  If you are wealthy enough to afford a fashionable toy, then by all means, go for it.

In a previous edition, I put forth my concerns about how much damage to the environment is done by just building these things, and the fossil fuels consumed in the process. All that is hidden behind the “green” movement’s hype and nonsense.  If this is your only car, you certainly don’t want to live in a hurricane zone, or any part of the country prone to ice storms that cause widespread power outages. Can you imagine trying to evacuate your family from a coastal area during a hurricane warning in a vehicle that has a 50 mile driving range? What happens if the power is off for a week?

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not picking on Nissan in particular.  The Leaf is probably the least expensive and most practical of the all the full electrics out there.  What I am saying is that the so-called “plug in electric” will be a fad.  Unless battery technology changes considerably and very quickly, this idea will die a quick death.

Honesty in Management

I’ve been trying to think of something to write about in this edition for the last few days, and quite frankly, couldn’t come up with anything that I thought would be interesting to me or the readers…till now.  I don’t know how interesting this will be for everyone else, but this topic is something that gets my back up so here we go.

I participate in a couple of online forums related to what I do for a living.  These are mostly “question and answer” type forums.  The “how-to” and “why did this happen” type stuff.  One user posted a question about productivity measurement, and got a variety of answers over a couple of days, most of which seemed ok to me.  Then one guy mentioned what he called “sneaky monitoring software” that the workstation user wouldn’t know was in use.  This stuff records keystrokes, or in the case of some of software, the commands issued. Having been in management positions at different levels, I know that you have to keep the people working on what needs done, and some folks need more prodding than others. But come on folks…is it really necessary to be sneaky? If you are having a problem with employees on a department wide scale screwing off, then you need to look at yourself first.   Why are they doing that?  Go sit among them while they work for a couple days.  Compare those days to output when you are not there, and then try to figure out why it’s different.  Does output go up when you are physically present, walking around observing, or does that cause it to go down?  Take a look at your rules and guidelines.  Do they make sense; are they practical for real life?  One of my previous employers actually had in his employee handbook that “there is no excuse whatsoever for being late to work”.  Ok, but if that’s the case, then why was there another section that said “employees are not to arrive on company property more than 15 minutes before the start of their shift, nor remain on the property for more than 15 minutes after their shift ends.”  Not everyone can change a flat tire with the speed of an indy car pit crew, so what are you supposed to do if this happens, call in and take the day off? Traffic accidents are a real possibility and whether it was your fault or not, you are going to miss that 15 minute window if you’re involved in one.  I guess everyone was supposed to leave an hour and a half early, and park down the street till the allotted time came to arrive.

I don’t know if companies that do this sort of stuff think they are being realistic, or if these things get written by upper level managers that have forgotten (or worse yet, never knew in the first place) what it’s like to punch a clock or actually live by the rules they are setting down.  I have suspected at times that they try to come up with these impossible situations simply to have something to hammer the employees with.  Take for example an incident that happened at a different employer than the one mentioned above.  The department manager called all of us into the conference room one day for a collective butt-chewing session on telephone and internet usage.  He read aloud the vaguely written internet policy, as well as the telephone usage policy, and then set off on a rant that ran for the better part of two hours. I should tell you that there were more than 20 people in the room, and his favorite term during this rant was “wasted man-hours”.  As I said, this had gone on for two hours, times 20 people, so he’d wasted a week’s labor for one person on this meeting.  Out of this crowd there was one guy who consistently abused the telephone privileges and another who would break the internet policy by streaming music which he’d listen to with earphones.  At any rate the boss in this fiasco finally got to the end of his rant and asked the whole group if they understood and if not then “by God, the phones and internet would go away. You guys don’t need this to do your jobs and it can be removed!”   Well, here’s the thing…if I don’t need the internet or a phone to do my job, why did you go to the considerable expense of providing me with them? I didn’t ask for it, it was there when I hired on, so why put it there and then tell me not to use it?  Just so you could make speeches that make you look stupid? If the people in your department occasionally need to access the internet in the line of duty, put a couple of extra workstations in the room that are labeled “research stations” and allow them to have access, and cut the rest of the room off. Have your people sign up for time on them. Problem solved.  The extra workstations will pay for themselves in a single day with the time they save if you have this big a problem.  Same with the phones…if no one needs to be on the phone, why have one on every desk? Share a couple of wireless extensions for those rare exceptions when someone needs to make a call.

Now I know that there are certain high security operations where contact with the outside world has to be restricted and monitored.  In those cases, I understand that certain steps are necessarily taken, but if you’re not doing that sort of stuff, and all you are doing is looking for something to brow beat your employees for, then you need to find a new line of work.

You might be amazed at just how profitable your company would become if you’d surround yourself with capable people, give them the tools they need to do the job you are asking them to do, provide them with a direction and then get out of their way and let them work. Provide an atmosphere of trust, inspire loyalty and encourage those who may struggle at times.  Find out what the obstacles are and make an honest effort at removing them. Be eager to reward success. It doesn’t have to be much, kind words and a little recognition go a long way.  By the same token, if that trust is broken through carelessness or deliberate action, be consistent and fair in applying penalties.  The boss’s nephew has to live by the same rules as the guy that just walked in off the street. If someone just isn’t cutting it, weed him out.  Honest mistakes will happen, so make an effort to find out what caused it.  Cure it and move on.  Lead your employees instead of driving them.  If the only tools you have are threats and intimidation, you either need to sell your business and retire, or replace your employees.

Finally, if you find it necessary to spy on your employees activities through the use of monitoring software, tell them that you intend to do so. How can you expect honesty from your employees if you come off looking like a sneak who’s only looking for an excuse to can somebody?

Blizzards, Electric Cars, Solar Power

At time of writing, the biggest winter storm of the year is supposedly bearing down on us. My brother lives 40 miles north of me, and is actually under a “blizzard warning” from the National Weather Service.  While not unusual in the northern states, this is in southwestern Missouri!  For those of you who may not know, I live in northwestern Arkansas, and this is extremely rare in this part of the country.  Just to give you an idea, it is currently just after 10:00 p.m., and already there are 48 closings listed on a local television station’s website, simply on the prediction!  The first flake of snow is yet to fall.

I’m poking a little fun at the situation, but it is very serious.  For those of you reading this who  are not in this area, you should know that we are simply not equipped to deal with situations like this.  We don’t have fleets of snow plows, nor the budget to run them. Heavy snow falls so rarely that it's simply not cost effective to have and maintain a lot of snow removal equipment. The terrain is very hilly and steep, and even a small amount of ice creates very dangerous conditions on roads and sidewalks.  Most cities and counties in this area have some snow handling equipment, but not very much.  The normal procedure is to wait till it stops, then get out and push the snow off the main roads and let the sun take care of the rest.  A big snow for us is 4 or 5 inches, and is usually gone in a few days. Our problem is not really the snow, anyway. It's the ice. Snow plows don't remove ice very well.

The ice storm of 2009 that hit here left millions of residents without power for more than a week. More than 2” of ice accumulated in most places, and anywhere from 1” to 6” of snow fell on top of that. Power lines snapped, and with the added weight of literally thousands of pounds of ice, power poles snapped and fell in domino effect, sometimes for miles. Business ground to a halt, factories were closed, there were even shortages of natural gas and running water because there was no power to run the pumps and equipment to make those things possible.  People abandoned stranded cars all over the area, making snow removal even more difficult.  

For my more local readers who may have never experienced one, a blizzard is defined by the National Weather Service as  “a storm which contains large amounts of snow OR blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for an extended period of time (at least 3 hours).” NWS Blizzard Page.  These storms often produce “white-out” conditions, in which visibility is reduced to zero.  The high winds of course create dangerous wind chill factors, and people caught out in their cars in blizzard conditions without sufficient clothing quickly find themselves in life threatening situations.  Combine that with the terrain in this area, and you have the makings of a disaster if people don’t stay home. 

This storm is predicted to be almost as bad as the 2009 storm, so what should people do to prepare?  Well, in reality, by the time you read this, it will be a little late to do anything for this one, and it may be gone by the time some of you find it. In general however, the best thing you can do for this or any significant weather event is to plan ahead. Every family should have an emergency plan, and should practice it. I’m not talking about finding a cave to hide in when the apocalypse comes, but a plan for your family to get through an emergency situation. First of all, you should have pre-arranged meeting places. For instance, if school is dismissed early, do your kids know where to wait for you to pick them up, or do you have to hunt for them?  What about on weekends? Do your kids know how to get hold of you?  A plan for your home can be fairly simple as well.  Lay in a few days’ supply of food and water, any medications you may need, a few flashlights with batteries, perhaps some candles or oil lamps with oil.  If you have a wood stove or fireplace, bring several days worth of wood inside so that it will stay dry and be at hand.  Make sure your cell phone battery stays charged in the event your power fails. Sparing use will make sure it lasts as long as possible too. A battery powered radio is always a good idea, but don’t forget the batteries for it.  Do NOT use charcoal grills, unvented propane or kerosene heaters and similar devices in enclosed spaces.  These give off carbon monoxide and can kill you when used indoors. By the same token, if you find yourself stranded on the road and sheltering in your car, limit running your engine to just a few minutes out of each hour. This will not only conserve your fuel supply, but will help prevent exhaust gases from building up in the car.  If it’s snowing a lot, make sure the area around your tailpipe stays cleared out.  You should carry a couple of blankets and some non-perishable food  in the car when extreme weather is predicted, just in case you get stuck and have to wait it out.

You can read more about preparedness here: Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.

The influx of solar power in homes and electric cars is another thing to think about when it comes to preparedness.  Solar panels don’t make much electricity when they are covered with snow and ice, and if commercial power has failed, your full electric car may not the best choice for evacuation.  Make sure you have a disaster plan that works around these things if they are part of your life.

Education in the US (or the lack thereof)

Education in the United States is failing.  No doubt about it. The public will say so, the government says so, and even the teachers will tell you that they spend more and more time on mandated paperwork than teaching the children.  And time they get to spend with them is laid out by state “frameworks” that are based on federal standards.  These are intended to allow the children to pass the standardized tests that are supposed to chart a child’s progress through the educational system.  They have no choice but to teach to these tests if they intend to keep their jobs, but the kids aren’t learning the way us older folks did.  In this edition, we’ll explore some of the differences, and how federal intervention is affecting how your kids learn on a local level.

First of all, let’s look at teaching in general.  People see teachers as people who get paid all year for only being on the job 9 or 10 months, getting a paid summer long vacation.  I don’t know how it works in other states, but in Arkansas, that’s horse hockey.  Teachers get a set yearly amount to teach for the school year.  They work under contract.  You get this much to do this job.   As a teacher, you can choose to have that amount divided up in 10 or 12 installments.  It’s just that simple as that folks, no big secret.  Out of that, the teacher pays all the normal taxes like everyone else.  If the teacher takes the insurance available, he or she pays more than most people because teaching is looked on as a high risk profession.  They are exposed to a room full of snotty nosed kids who drag every ailment known to man to school and spread it around.  These poor teachers then take these things home to their spouses and kids, so the insurance companies use this as an excuse to ramp up the cost of coverage.  All you folks out there working in factories and crying because your insurance is 50 bucks a week, listen up. As most of you know, my wife is a teacher and it costs us $900 a month for mediocre coverage, so don’t cry to me about it. I don’t want to hear it.

A teacher’s work day starts about 7:30, and runs till at least 3:30, but usually it’s closer to 5 with the faculty meetings and parent conferences and all that.  There are no scheduled breaks; you can’t even go to the can without getting someone to watch your class. Teachers these days have no tools with which to maintain order either.  When I was a kid, if you acted up in class, standing in the corner or at the blackboard with your nose in a circle was a common punishment.  Further disruption earned you a stint of sitting out in the hall writing multiplication tables or doing a series of long division problems.  And if you still persisted, then the long march to the principal’s office was your doom.  Now, any of these save the principal’s office can get a teacher in his or her own disciplinary trouble, and a paddling will get a teacher or principal suspended or fired, along possible civil or criminal proceedings.  Standing in the corner is, according to the bleeding hearts, humiliating and damages a child’s self esteem. Same with a trip out in the hall.  This is a big “no-no” these days, so that’s out.  You can’t penalize the child, so how do you deal with bad behavior?  Doesn’t take long for the unruly kids to figure out that the dog has no teeth.  Do something that involves or inconveniences the parents, like making the kid stay after school, and you face everything from being verbally abused by these parents to litigation. Even the ones who act out violently can’t be “embarrassed” or “humiliated”.  You’ve probably heard some of the stories on the news where police have been summoned to schools because of children as young as kindergarten have assaulted teachers and other students. Not too long ago there was a big flap over a policeman who handcuffed an elementary student.  Everybody thought that was just terrible and there were months of court battles over it, but what else was he to do?  Cops have few tools to use, but they are effective.  The kid was flailing about, breaking things, throwing stuff at teachers, other students, and everyone in range. He was a danger to himself and everyone in the office, so the cop restrained the kid and in a few minutes was in control of the situation.  This stuff happens every day in our schools. It doesn’t make the news very often, but it happens every day.  Why? Because the kids and their parents know that they’ll get away with it.

I was expected to show up in class on time prepared to do the tasks presented.  Not having a pencil or paper or whatever was not an excuse, it was a punishable offense.  Now, teachers are expected to provide these things, not the parents, and if they are not made available by the school, then how can you expect these kids to do their work? 

Now you have a view of just a few of the things teachers face every day, so now let’s look at what all the so-called experts have to say about it.  Just a couple days ago, one of the “talking heads” on network news was blaming the teachers’ unions for all the problems.  It was all because it was nearly impossible to get rid of bad teachers and that the pension programs were driving all the schools to bankruptcy.  Money that should be spent on the students was being spent on everything but students.  The federal “No Child Left Behind” law was passed in 2002, setting federal standards for local schools. That was almost 10 years ago, but schools have continued to decline, in fact, this law has accelerated the decline because of its interpretation at the local level.  Mandating that every child be on grade level within a certain amount of time sounds noble and gives those who have never dealt with children warm fuzzies about how serious they are about getting these kids an education, but it does not take into account the fact that there are a lot of kids out there who simply are not capable of doing this, and a great many more who simply do not care if they do it. In spite of these facts, this law holds teachers accountable if these kids fail and in fact has provisions to move them along whether they can do the work or not. Another big factor holding education back is the fact that a great many children are immigrants who do not speak English.   If the teachers I know were to be required to speak the native languages of the students they teach, they’d have to be fluent not only in English, but in Spanish, Marshallese, Vietnamese, and an assortment of Middle Eastern languages.   And it’s not that there is one or two of these non-English speaking kids in the class, the bulk of the kids are ESL immigrants.  English speakers are far in the minority, right here in the middle of the Ozarks.  Yet somehow, according to NCLB, that is the teacher’s fault.

Still others would lay the blame it on the economy, or television, or video games or the internet. Parents have to work two jobs or odd shifts so the kids raise themselves.  They learn how to behave by watching Sponge Bob or Pokemon. They interact with other people through the anonymity of the internet, which allows them to be anyone they can conceive. Video games cheapen life and dull the children’s minds to reality.

So with all this finger pointing, who is really to blame for it?  Well, all of them are to blame, in their own measure.  The lion’s share in my opinion falls on parents.  Yes, I actually expect these people to be responsible for the child they brought into the world. You, mother and father, are primarily responsible for guiding your children to what they should know and how they should live.  Yes, I understand the needs of working for a living, but you know what, you are not the first to have to do that.  You have to feed, clothe and house them, absolutely you do.  And if that means working 2 jobs, so be it. I did it for a lot of years.  That doesn’t transfer your responsibility for making sure your kid knows how to eat, how to tie his shoes, which shoe goes on which foot, how to dress himself, blow his nose or wipe his butt to the school system.  You are the one that is supposed to do that.  And yes, you are supposed to be the one making sure your kid can read and write. That he does his homework, that he knows that kicking others in the shins and taking their lunches away is not acceptable. You are the one that should teach your kid to respect the teachers and try to learn from them. This is your job, not the school’s and not the teacher’s.  

Teachers and schools bear a large portion of the blame, second to that of the parents. As with all human endeavors, the pendulum has swung both ways in schools.  They’ve gone from being strict, almost prison-like institutions run by tyrannical martinets where failure meant punishment and ridicule to “politically correct” asylums for mediocrity where everyone is a winner and no one gets an answer wrong and the kid that comes in 49^th still gets a trophy because he tried so hard.  I’ve seen kids get named to the honor roll who couldn’t even read their own names in print.  I’ve seen kids earn full college scholarships whose conversation was limited to “me throw football good”.  All this concern for a child’s self-esteem and giving him a good grade on a test where he got 75% of the answers wrong because it would embarrass him to get a bad grade artificially inflates his ego, and has a detrimental effect on the kid that actually got the answers right.  Why should he try to do it right if the other kid gets the same grade or close to it for doing it wrong?  Believe it or not people, there are right and wrong answers to test questions.  Would you hire an accountant that feels really good about himself but thinks that 2 plus 2 equals 5? 

The federal government shares in the blame.  They have no business whatsoever meddling with local schools.  Setting down federal standards for schools is like using a cannon to kill mosquitoes.  It does a tremendous amount of collateral damage, and may not even kill the mosquito.  The population density, ethnic mix, income level, and even geographic variety of this country makes it ridiculous to even think a federal standard would work.  It’s not that I think any one group or locale is inherently smarter than another, but it is proven and obvious that different surroundings influence how you think and learn. People learn by association. A kid in the inner city surrounded by concrete and steel has a completely different frame of reference than a kid that grows up on a 1000 acre wheat farm or a coastal fishing village.  They can all learn math and science and reading and all that, but if it’s presented in terms they can relate to, in ways that make sense to them, they will grasp it much more quickly and firmly than if presented in a completely foreign manner.  By enforcing federal standards for what you teach and how you teach it, you tie the hands of the teachers and put blindfolds on the students.  And of course, if you have standardized things to learn, you have standardized tests to take to see if you’ve learned it.  This bit so stupid it defies description and belief.  The standardized tests that came along as a result of NCLB are supposed to be the meter for whether the schools and teachers are doing their jobs.  You give the kids test booklets, along with answer sheets where the student fills in a bubble with his pencil to indicate his answer.  Sounds great, right?  Well, what do you do when little Johnny decides he doesn’t want to do the test today, so he goes down the sheet coloring in pretty patterns, or making domino dots?  After all, there are no wrong answers, and he’ll get told what a good job he’s done just for getting it done on time, right?  Not a big deal if a couple of kids out of each school do that, there are lots of kids there to take the average back up, right? Well, that ain’t the way it works.  Remember when I mentioned that the kids that don’t speak English, or may have some sort of learning disability?  The wonderful folks in Washington DC that came up with this standardized nonsense made an attempt at taking these children into account.  There are ways to exempt certain children’s scores on these tests from being counted, as well as the fact that they don’t count immigrant’s scores until they’ve been in country for at least three years.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Wrong.  Once again, they’ve fired a cannon at a mosquito.  What they did not take into account is the distribution of these children throughout a school system.  Let me break this down for you.  A teacher is judged on performance by how well his or her class does on these standardized tests. That is then carried a step further, and an entire school is judged by the performance of its teachers.  Sounds reasonable, right?  You exempt the kids with disabilities and language barriers and test the rest. Average kids should perform to an established range, right?  Here’s where it gets sticky…What happens if you have 25 kids in a class, but scores from only 4 of these kids are counted in the results?  In this area with the great influx of immigrants, it’s not only possible, it’s the norm, especially in the elementary schools.  Let’s say that the target is to have 85 percent of the class pass this test (I don’t know the actual percentages, just using this as an example), otherwise the teacher gets a failing grade. That means that in a class of 25 kids, 21.25 of them have to pass.  If little Johnny draws domino dots today instead of taking his test, that’s not a big deal, but if only his and 3 others count, the best the teacher can hope for is 75%, resulting in bad marks in the teacher’s record. Why is that the teacher’s fault?   If your school has 100 classrooms and this happens in 16 of them, the entire school fails!  In this example, there are 2500 kids in the school, and if 16 of them screw off, the entire school is endangered because the pass rate for teachers dropped to 84%, caused by 16 out of 2500 kids.  Granted, I’ve taken this to an extreme to make a point, but it is a real possibility especially in elementary schools.  You see why federal standards won’t work at a local level? This is an artificial problem contrived by politicians who don’t know what they are doing.

Teachers unions, bus drivers, lunch room workers and all that have an influence on these things, but not nearly as much as the ones I’ve talked about here.  That’s a drop in the bucket compared to these other problems.

Aflockalypse, Apple and solar power plants

It came to light yesterday that Apple has begun “user-proofing” the iPhone with a new type of security screw in an effort to keep users from opening the device.  Apparently the screws are swapped out anytime a customer brings an iPhone 4 in for service, and the owner of the phone is not told about the switch.  Apple has refused to comment, but it is widely known that it tries very hard to protect its secrets.  I think this has more to do with trying to protect the $79 they will charge you to replace the battery instead of you being able to do it yourself for considerably less.  One more reason not to buy an Apple product as far as I am concerned.  I don’t own one, don’t plan on owning one.

Everybody can take a breath of relief, according to a New Jersey Institute of Technology source.  The giant red star Betelgeuse will not explode in 2012 as previously predicted.  While its distance from earth can only be estimated, the current best guess is that Betelgeuse is 640 light years from earth.  For those who may have napped through that portion of sixth grade science class, a light year is the distance that a beam of light travels in a year through free space.  That means that if Betelgeuse exploded today, the people on earth would not see it until the year 2651, or 640 years from now.  If you want to keep tabs on it for yourself, go out on a clear night and find the constellation Orion. Betelgeuse is the pinkish star in the upper left corner of the constellation.  If you look tonight, you are looking at history.  The light you see is at least 640 years old, if the estimates are correct.

A new species of crayfish has been discovered in Tennessee, and is said to be at least twice the size of any others that live there.  Found in a creek that is frequented by human visitors, this 5” long specimen has managed to elude detection until now.  Makes you wonder why we spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to investigate the flora and fauna in places like the Amazon jungle and ignore our own back yards.  (Side note…I love fried crawfish tails!)

The “Aflockalypse” continues with reports of more mass bird die-offs.  These happened in California and Italy this time and the “end of the world” fans are all abuzz about it.  As I said in an earlier issue, this is just the normal workings of Mother Earth, it’s just now people are actually paying attention and have the technology to document it.

In the last issue of this blog, we talked about several renewable energy sources.  One of the best and the most abundant energy sources is our own sun, which brings us all sorts of energy every day, free of charge.  Many folks have taken up the task of inventing ways to harness this bonanza, but as with everything else it has its opponents.  There’s a new solar power plant under construction in the California desert which is being challenged in court now by a group who claim this project poses a threat to migratory birds, the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, ground water resources and rare plants.  The proposed facility will produce 370 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes.  It never seems to matter what gets proposed, one or more of these “environmental” groups opposes it, yet these same groups are the first to say that we have to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. So what would they have us do? Just stop everything?  Life will go on in spite of all this, and we should do what we can to preserve the natural condition of the earth, but we have to have food and power.  A return to living in harmony with nature is not possible, and will not happen.  You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.  We are an industrial society, and will continue to be so until the actual “end of the world”.  We may bring that about ourselves, or it may be a cataclysmic natural occurrence, but it will end sometime.

Methane, wood gas, hydrogen...which to choose?

This edition will explore a few alternative fuels.  Some are more practical than others. Some hold legitimate promise.  Others….well, let’s just say that they are ok, if you can make it work.

Let’s start off with a look at home produced methane. Methane, commonly known as natural gas is a renewable resource and can be produced at home.  The internet is full of plans to build your own effluence digester.  Yes, I said effluence…the stuff that any animal that eats leaves behind.  If you live on a farm, the raw materials for home made methane are all around.  Chickens, pigs, cows and horses will provide you with plenty of it, to be had simply by shoveling it up.  Don’t laugh; if you have a large dairy farm and get hooked up with the right people and equipment, you can make as much or more money from the methane as you can the milk!  Many cities make methane as a part of their sewage treatment facilities.  It’s relatively easy to do, but on a small scale, can be a lot of work.  The leftovers make great fertilizer too.  Methane can be used as a vehicle fuel, but specialized equipment is necessary, as well as extensive modification to a standard vehicle.  There have been some vehicles commercially produced to run on methane, but they are not widely available.

Ethanol is another fuel that can be made at home as well as on a large scale. There are lots of sources on the internet for information on the how and why (and why not) of making ethanol. Home production is possible, but as with methane, it’s a lot of work, and can lead to legal entanglements.  Check your local and state laws concerning making and using ethanol.  Already widely used commercially as a fuel, it’s sold in most states in various mixes with gasoline.  It’s detractors say that using ethanol can interfere with the food supply since it’s made from corn, beets, sugar, and other potential food crops for both humans and animals.  A 25% or greater mix with gasoline can damage engines that are not equipped for its use, and some say performance and mileage is somewhat degraded by using ethanol as a fuel.  Any mix with gasoline, while reducing the overall amount of gasoline used, only prolongs the problem of using gasoline as a fuel in the first place.

Biodiesel also holds potential for relieving at least some of our dependence on petroleum, but it has its own problems.  Yes, it’s a renewable resource, but like ethanol, it’s a bandaid.  Most biodiesels need to be mixed with normal diesel or ethanol to burn efficiently  in today’s engines. On top of that, it also runs the risk of affecting the food supply.  Most homemade biodiesel is in created by recycling used cooking oil from restaurants.  Let’s face it folks, there simply isn’t enough to go around.

Wood gas…this pops up every time gasoline prices skyrocket.  Produced in a contraption called a “gasifier”, this fuel is made by partially burning wood chips, sawdust, charcoal, coal, natural rubber or similar materials. Waste products like rice hulls can also be used. Wood gas itself is a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and in some cases methane and tar.  This process is widely documented and will not be explained in detail here.  Suffice it to say, you can run an internal combustion engine on this fuel with little modification to the engine. The first gasifier was built in 1839, and the first use as a vehicular fuel was in 1901.  Commercial gasifiers are available for purchase, and make a good source of fuel for use in emergency situations, but do you really want to drive down the highway with a wood fire burning in your vehicle?

Hydrogen is in many circles the holy grail of alternative fuels. Stars run on it, so why not cars?  Early attempts at using hydrogen as an automotive fuel were fraught with problems, mainly that of safely storing enough of it on board to get you to where you wanted to go.  While burning hydrogen technically doesn’t produce as much energy as gasoline, it’s much easier to ignite.  A crash could result in an enormous fireball. Fortunately, the invention of the fuel cell alleviated that problem to a great extent.  The internet is full of scams about running your car on water, so if you venture into this arena, be careful how you spend your money.  While it can be produced at home, safely doing so in quantities sufficient to power an automobile is probably beyond the capabilities of the average do-it-yourselfer. Still, it is the most abundant substance in the universe, so we should be able to figure out how to use it, don’t you think?