As IF Times

link Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret.

We see this often these days.  People are so smart that they are actually dumb.   From the very first time that Cro-Magnon man picked up a stick to beat up an adversary, necessity has always been the mother of invention.  That’s the way it works.  People will always tinker with things just for the intellectual amusement of tinkering, but for the most part, inventions make it to general usage because there’s a practical and commercial utility to it.  Some inventions are really of marginal utility; they exist only because someone sold the idea of its usefulness.  The electric toothbrush is such an example.  I’m sure many would be lost if they had to manually brush their teeth.  Up, down, up, down, oh the humanity.   Still, it does fulfill some consumer need.

For this reason, my invention of a gas powered pillow fluffer never took off as I had originally anticipated.  Neither did my solar powered dog polisher,  or hand cranked nose hair plucker.   Because of the mass delusion that has been foisted on a naive public by global warming zealots over the past few generations,  vast resources have been given to people preaching the quixotic vision of green power.   While it’s hard to argue with the general intent of this vision, the free market has not adopted the results of the “innovations” thus far.  In the case of many consumer items today, the populace have come to embrace the whole notion of green/sustainable/organic/natural items.  It’s only a matter of time before they start selling shoes made of seaweed at Whole Foods.  They’re only good for about 300 steps, but at least they are green.  In the case of battery powered green cars, the resources put in compared to the results achieved are truly dismal despite what the optimists claim.

Spending $40,000 to buy an electric vehicle with the lofty range of 60 miles would have no commercial takers unless you were a) an idiot, b) a zealot, c) too rich for your own good, or d) all of the above, the worst possible combination.   Instead of spending untold billions of taxpayer dollars to fund technology that is inherently flawed, the simplest solution is right in front of us.

Buy cars with smaller engines.  The internal combustion engine has been around for a long time and has gone through numerous refinements by all manufacturers.  They have never been more efficient in power transmission and continue to be cleaner burning as well.  Porsche goes as far as to claim that the air going in to their engines is not as clean as the air coming out of their exhaust pipes.  That may be a stretch, but if you’ve ever breathed the air in Beijing or Shanghai, it’s somewhat believable.  Regardless, the technology already exists for fuel sipping small displacement engines that are as efficient as some so called green electric vehicles, especially when factoring in the cost of battery production.  More importantly,  the biggest advantage of existing gas powered cars is that people can actually afford them and are able to plan trips beyond the range of what their eyes can see.   A road trip in an electric car is essentially a ride to the city limits.

In this day and age, with a gas station every mile or so in most cities, idiots still manage to run out of gas.  What makes people think there will be charging stations available when the battery goes kaput while on their way to a doctor’s appointment?  The irony is that they will call the automobile club for a rescue.  They of course will show up with a gas powered car.   If people really want to push the green powered nonsense, maybe they can bring back horses and covered wagons.  We know horses are good for at least 60 miles, although acceleration is nothing to brag about.

link Pastor Terry Jones released from custody after his bond is posted.

There are innumerate church and other religious groups in the U.S. that pursue beliefs that may be questionable to non adherents. Not a lot of people would ordinarily know or care what Pastor Terry Jones does with his flock of parishioners down in Florida.  Adults are free to believe what they want.   In any free society, this is one of the cornerstone elements; people can subscribe to their own versions of truth and reality.  Certainly, there are no shortage of choices for people’s religious beliefs, or of course for the right not to have any.  It’s like the cheese display at Whole Foods where customers have a selection ranging from the benignly mild dairy flavours all the way up to the truly offensive strong ones which approach rotting fish in old socks.

There are no placard waving demonstrators inciting people to eat one cheese over another.  There are no threats of death to those not acknowledging the superiority of their cheese over everyone else’s.   No one is expected to treat any one cheese with any particular reverence.  Some are appealing only to those with narrow, specific tastes while others are more suitable for the masses.  Some spoil and rot when exposed to air, others have more robust longevity.  Naturally, there will be attempts to convince people of the merits of certain types but this stops well short of coercion.  Free samples are given in order to attract customers, but no commitments are necessary.  Eventually, people will consume what they feel most comfortable with.

Why can’t religions be exactly the same?

This Terry Jones character is obviously out to sell his brand of religion and perhaps that’s distasteful.  But what he also does is call bs on the political correctness created by the popular media for a particular faith, namely Islam.  When the media drew a line connecting the violence and deaths in Afghanistan to his burning of the Koran, it became the truth.  Just because they said it was so, the media have credited Jones with single handedly rousing the ire of otherwise peace loving Afghan Muslims to a frothing fervor, enough to go on a killing rampage.  It’s a real toss up to see which of the three groups involved here is the nuttiest.  Relatively speaking, Jones appears the most sane.  The U.S. has seen episodes of flag burning, cross burning, record burning, book burnings, effigy burnings and even bra burnings, but until Jones came along, no one could cause massive murders on the other side of the world by simply burning the pages of a  Koran.   Who would have thought a Pastor from an obscure town of 23 in Florida could be so influential?

A guy like Jones who has that kind of influence should be harnessed for commercial gain.  Get him to push Coke over Pepsi, GM over Ford, Apple vs PC, or margarine versus butter.  To lock  him up and demonize him?  Forgive them, they know not what they do.  The global warming idiots had better hope Jones doesn’t take umbrage with their cause.