don’t panic

So I was listening to the radio this morning and I heard an ad for Volkswagen’s new car, the Tiguan, which they were calling a “Compact SUV.”

What gives? When did the definition of a Sports Utility Vehicle suddenly change? I mean, you might be able to get away with the “sports” part, but it has always been assumed that “utility” mean that you can put big stuff into it, at least to me. Not that I know anyone at all that takes their $50,000 SUV off-roading in the mud and brush, but still. Isn’t Compact SUV an oxymoron?

I’ve always thought that the whole SUV terminology was a little bogus to begin with – something thought up (brilliantly) by the marketing gurus in the auto industry to dupe us gullible consumers into thinking we’re getting a truck without having to have a truck. We can still look “cool” in an SUV. A woman can drive an SUV. We like to think that we could do the sports part if we really wanted or needed to.

And having a big car can be really helpful at times. If you have a family of six or are a regular cargo carrier for your son or daughter’s beach parties, then having a truck-that-is-not-a-truck is great. Unfortunately, the greater percentage of SUV’s are used as commuter cars with the only cargo being a briefcase and an occupancy of one. And frankly, in over a year of use, I have only ever filled my tiny little Scion xB to “capacity” once, and that was moving a literal ton of goods out of our storage space. Hardly something I do often. The fact is, any car is a “utility” vehicle. It’s only the auto industry that wants us to believe that you simply can’t carry cargo unless you have something with the size and power of a Semi.

But I wanted to give VW a fair shake. Their ad slogan was something like, “Giving people what they want.” I’m not sure if those are the exact words (my memory being more and more fallible these days) but when I went online to check, I found that VW uses the shotgun approach to slogan creation. There where literally hundreds of them. Anyway, this, giving-the-people-what-they-want thing really struck an off-chord with me. Everything that I have read in the news about car sales recently would seem to indicate that using the term SUV almost guarantees you won’t sell the vehicle, new or used. So does VW really think that by adding “Compact” in front of SUV we are somehow going to be duped into believing we are getting a fuel-efficient vehicle? But then, my Scion xB, which looks more like an SUV than a sedan, is listed as a “compact” car and still gets between 30-35 mpg real-world milage, so maybe VW had come up with something like that too. I went to their site to check.

Nope.

The Tiguan gets 18 city, 25 highway, which is not bad for an SUV, but hardly the “fuel efficient” vehicle they would like you to believe on the homepage. Also keep in mind that these are the manufacturer’s milage numbers. Not many of us drive at a perfectly consistent (and slow) speed around a testing track. And this is only a four cylinder car!

So let’s see…

Crappy milage… check!
It’s “compact”, so we loose all that nice cargo space… check!
Complete lack of any real “sports” power… check!

Yup… that certainly seems to be giving the people what they want all right. Oy.

What in the world is wrong with the whole car industry these days? Don’t they get it yet? How many times can they blame the economy for poor quarterly returns when they keep on building big, stupid cars! The television ads would have us believe that car companies employ the very latest in expensive high-tech testing equipment to give us the absolute cutting edge in automotive design and efficiency. All that brainpower… so little result.

Well here’s a freebee. First off, fire any exec that makes even the slightest mention of the term “SUV” in the same discussion as future models. If you haven’t figured this one out yet, you are either dead in the water, or Ford. Secondly, give us back the Geo. You want to give people what they want? Give us a car that gets 60 mpg or more, and gets us to work and back. Do I care that it takes ten seconds to go from zero to sixty? Nope. (The traffic in SoCal is going 15 mph.) Do I need it to shuttle my kayak and skis up a mountain three times a week (or ever for that matter)? Nope. Am I going to need it to haul a three-ton trailer? Nope, that’s what U-Haul is for.

Gasoline is currently $4.34 for a gallon of regular around my home (the VW site indicates that for “best performance” – read, “milage” – you should use premium gas.. at almost $5.00 a gallon). For the difference in the cost of gas between this year and last, I could easily rent a truck to do all my cargo needs each and every month. That difference would pay for my insurance… and registration… and all my maintenance.

Get a clue, guys.

Why , oh why can’t Florida stay out of controversy?

I am so very disappointed in both Democratic presidential candidates. The whole early voting mess is indicative of a major flaw in our electoral process, and neither candidate is willing to even acknowledge it.

In their absolute arrogance, Florida and Michigan gave the Democratic National Committee the finger and held their primary elections before the stated cutoff. When their delegates were stripped, they cried foul and are now spouting that it’s unfair to the people of those states to “ignore” their votes and that it only hurts the Democratic party because those voters are then going to vote for McCain come November. Right.

So now both states are working with the DNC on some form of compromise where the delegates would be split in some fashion. Like that will work. No matter what is decided, BOTH candidates pledged that they wouldn’t campaign in those states and would accept the DNC decision. And, look!… There they both are, campaigning in Florida.

If the DNC allows those delegates to count it will completely kill any faith I had in our voting process. Why? Because what will stop a dozen other states from doing the exact same thing four years from now? They will look back and say, “Florida got away with it. So will we.” And they’ll be right, because the DNC will have set a precedent that says, “our rules and regulations don’t mean squat.” If one or two penalized states is going to “hurt the Democratic party,” imagine how much more it will be damaged to have a dozen or more states scrambling to be first in 2012.

A party without rules is nothing more than a witless mob. That neither candidate will acknowledge this because they are too busy salivating over those uncounted delegates is insulting. Do you really want a president that doesn’t play by the rules, that thumbs their nose at regulations and does whatever they want anyway? Oh… I guess we already have that.

Do you want it AGAIN?!

My vote goes to whichever candidate will acknowledge that the people of Florida and Michigan should have elected smarter and less controversial officials instead of complaining that their vote isn’t being heard. It was heard alright… way back when they choose a bunch of idiots to run their respective states.

So once again, a Senate Judiciary Committee dragged a bunch of oil exec’s into a special session to grill them on why the price of oil is so high. Mind you, these execs and their respective corporations are making huge amounts of money right now. More money in fact than ever before. LOTS more. Understandably, the public is feeling a little miffed. And sure enough, the execs are saying that it’s not their fault… supply and demand and all that.

But what do we really expect them to say…

“Well… we’re purposely timing our refinery expansion and capacity such that we make maximum profit just like any other corporation. By reducing our output when demand is high, we create a profit-rich environment with a locked-in consumer. So sorry you bought a Hummer.”

I found it interesting that they used this meeting to push for increased access to currently restricted drilling areas and looser environmental standards for their refineries.

“We cannot change the world market,” said Robert Malone, chairman and president of BP America Inc. “Today’s high prices are linked to the failure both here and abroad to increase supplies, renewables and conservation.”

Put the blame anywhere but on big oil. And yet, Peter Robertson of Chevron says –

“We are investing all we can [in finding new oil] given the limitations of access and our own human capacity,” he said. “We have adequate refined capacity, inventories are at an all time high. The issue is the price of crude.”

Inventories are at an all time high? So, how is increased supply a factor again? More supply, less demand, remember?

It’s easy to call for conservation when you know your users are addicted.

In a CNN article today, “a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Treasury Department is violating the law by failing to design and issue currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired people…”

I’m certainly not blind, but I can appreciate the position of the visually handicapped when it comes to money. With Uncle Sam making all bills the same size, it becomes next to impossible for someone who can’t see to identify the money that might be found in their wallet. But the whole idea of redesigning our currency for the sole purpose of appeasing a small percentage of the population just strikes me as a huge mistake. Especially when other options are available… such as using a credit or debit card… oh wait, someone could be watching you enter your pin… or they could have entered some other value onto the credit slip you’re signing. But… well, they could have given you they wrong receipt to begin with.

The point is, being blind, you are going to have to make some concessions if you want to interact in everyday society. Chiefly, you’re blind, and well, most everyone else isn’t. You’re going to have to trust that the lady at the register tallies your groceries correctly and that she asks for the correct amount of cash. If you trust her enough to do that, then don’t you trust her to help you with your change?

“Meaningful access” as granted by the Rehabilitation Act is one thing, but where do you draw the line? Can a person with hearing impairment sue Apple because it has earbud volume limiting enabled by default on iPods? Our how about all those miles and miles of Federal State Park hiking trails that are completely lacking wheelchair access? Shouldn’t all books come with a free audio copy for the blind? I even read an article not long ago that some people were suing Target because their website wasn’t accessible enough for the sight impaired. This wasn’t the physical building, but rather the virtual online store that is accessed through a computer. It’s hard enough to make those things cross-browser compatible (thanks mostly to Microsoft), let alone uncluttered enough to be understood by a special browser for the blind. To put that into perspective – less than 1/2 of one percent of the U.S. population is telling all the other 99.5% of us with businesses online that we must ditch all that nifty garbage called “design” and change our online presence to something resembling a flat list. I’m sure the American Council of the Blind would say I’m completely exaggerating. And I’m also sure the American Council of the Blind has absolutely no idea how impossible (physically and financially) it is to do what they are asking them to do. Simple “alt” tags ain’t gonna cut it.

Personally, I’d like to see a Federal mandate which requires all landscapers to trim low hanging branches back to at least six feet three inches so I don’t smash my head or poke my eye out. But you know why it will never happen? All the landscapers (at least in my neighborhood) are about five foot two.

Don’t get me wrong. Uncle Sam should change the money. It just shouldn’t be done as some kind of forced all-at-once kind of thing just to make a point. Money gets redesigned on a fairly regular basis, so in the next iteration of a given denomination, you change the size or add foil or whatever. No problem.

Just make sure you don’t make the bills any larger than they are today. Why? Because it would impact a massive number of industries. I mean, what’s the point of being able to identify a dollar bill if you can’t use it in the coke machine on the corner? Bigger bills means new wallets and purses, complete redesign of ATM and vending machines. Toll booths, ticket centers, subway and bus systems, change drawers… the list is endless if you go larger.

So if anything, make them smaller. The dollar is shrinking anyway, so why not complete the analogy? Smaller bills would require a lot less redesign, and would still fit in our pockets.

All this so that the blind don’t have to ask for help at the register. Seems like with all our vast mental resources in government (cough) we would have seen this one coming a little sooner and designed our bills (and coins) to be more easily identified. Something like holes in the bills could work I suppose (the more holes the lower the denomination), then they could even hang on spindles. The banks would love it. Our coins almost work (what joker decided to make the dime smaller than the nickel?) except for that unfortunate Susan B. Anthony dollar that was almost identical to a quarter… Sheesh, it’s not like the guys designing money have hundreds an hundreds of variations to worry about. It’s like a baker’s dozen, and some of those are pretty rare. Don’t think I’ve ever even seen any denomination over $100 so why in the world can’t we make coins and bills that make sense? If not holes, you could trim the short-side edges with some form of cut pattern instead of making them flat, or add the foil as was mentioned, all without even changing the size of paper money at all.

So instead of fancy anti-forgery technology and embedded threads that allow you to track large wads of money moving down the freeway, how about giving the blind a break the next time you introduce a new bill? Or, hey! Maybe you could give those sensors to the blind so they could use them for something practical… like buying groceries. Of course, they’ll still have to ask the next guy in line if the cashier is ripping them off with their change, but progress is progress.

Why? Why oh, why would someone with any aspirations at all to lead our fair country make mindless and pointless statements about where they envision the world will be in five years?

In a recent CNN article, McCain paints this prophetic vision of the world in 2013. A world that has “won” the Iraq war and captured Osama… al Qaeda in Iraq will be defeated, and there will still not have been a “major terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001.”

O. M. G. Does he actually think this information is going to help his chances at the polls?? Are people really that naive?

I’m sure a lot of people will just say that he’s setting goals… Great. How about this goal – Get us out of this freaking recession. Or how about – Admit that the Iraq war was a huge mistake and GET OUT… NOW.

News flash - We already lost the war in Iraq. We lost the moment the first soldier set foot in their country based on lies and false information. We went in because we were 100% certain there were “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorists galore. And like good little citizens we just sat back and trusted our President and his administration because they wouldn’t lie to us… they had billions and billions of dollars invested in the latest greatest high-tech information gathering organization in the world. They had the most advanced equipment on the planet and the best trained and brightest advisors, so how could they possibly be wrong, right?

We were so amazingly stupid. We sucked up the rhetoric and flashy explanations and ever supported our leaders no matter how blatantly obviously they had screwed up. It blows me away that we are willing to impeach a President for having an illicit affair, but being 100% dead wrong about invading a country and killing tens of thousands of people (a hefty sum of which are American) gets you only a low approval rating?? Granted, the lowest Presidential approval rating in all of history, but still! People have been shot for a lot less than that!

And why is it so pointless to talk about where we will be in 2013? Because the world simply won’t be the same place it is today. There won’t be the same problems, or the same focus, the same economy, or the same issues. Do you think that five years ago anyone was thinking we would be in the middle of a massive financial crisis with the country in a recession? Do you think five years ago anyone was saying the housing market was going crumble to pieces or that global warming would finally be accepted as a truth that is wreaking havoc with our planet?

All it takes is one event like what is happening in Myanmar or China TODAY, one Katrina, one overdue fault to finally let loose and BOOM. Do we really believe that we are going to be able to keep terrorists out of our country indefinitely? That there will no new viral outbreaks and no other major hurricanes for five years?

How unbelievably childish it is to even speculate on where we will be in half a decade, let alone make prophetic envisioning of broad and complicated world issues. You want to have goal, Senator, fine. But keep them to yourself until you have dealt with the problems we face TODAY.