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A sturdy airplane (Piper Supercub), the skill to land it pretty much ANYWHERE (some landings begin in the water and end on a beach!), a trusty 12-gauge for bears, and a desire to see Alaska AND record it all.
That's what this blogger has done.
I'm impressed.
Fairly arrogant of your blogger, having his own interpretation of this Christian day of joy, especially when I can't really call myself a committed Christian, but more of a camp-follower.
But, interpret it I will.
This week, I sent a good friend off to his Reward, and that gave me plenty of pause for reflection.
Last night, I sent a young man off to war (Cavalry Scout, shipped out for his departure post today, goes to the Sandbox Sunday after next), and that has given me even more pause to reflect.
Didn't God do this same thing 2,007 years ago? Gave up his first-born son to the defense of the culture?
Merry Christmas to ALL. Yes, even if you aren't a Christian, you benefit from Christ and Christmas in no small measure, as a citizen of this nation. I'm here to tell you that you need to recognize that, and cut out this "Happy Holidays" nonsense.
Defend your culture, or at least don't stand in the way of those of us who do so.
Just made my annual last-minute shopping trip. Succeeded with one gift and failed with one. The success was scoring a bottle of Cask Strength Macallan's 12-year Single Malt, usually all sold out by this time.
The failure was something my wife wanted to give her former work buddy, an automated cat feeder. We used to have these, but somehow, they have stopped making them. Oh, well.
The unwanted thing was the berserk drivers out there. Everyone wanted to be at their destinations a half-hour ago, and so the traffic resembled downtown Baghdad before the surge, combined with the NASCAR Food City 500 at Martinsville. I'm lucky to get back without having to break into the Macallan's (although I would have broken into the Chivas I also bought, first), and without any dents in the vehicle.
Oh, and it might snow tomorrow night, Christmas night. Lest you get all weepy-eyed about a White Christmas, first, you are SO BUSTED for even putting those two words together (heheheh, I was trained to be a PeeCee cop), and second, if you knew Portland OR, the bonehead drivers here see one flake of snow and they go nutz, totally forgetting how to drive in the slick stuff (if they ever knew, it's doubtful in most cases). I'm ready. I have the steel-studded snow treads on the back axle of the Little Black Truck, and 200# of gravel back there in buckets out by the tailgate. Throw my winter survival kit in there, and I'm ready for the worst.
So...
Merry Christmas, all ye stalwarts of the culture. If you're not a stalwart of the culture, don't eat too much, lest you get fat and can't hide behind a 3 MOA red dot....
It's been a somber eve of the celebration of the Joyous Birth of Jesus. Let's open this post with our National Anthem, which, somehow, seems more precious to me than it did before Thanx for the link, EllTee.
When I wrote yesterday's post, I felt sad, but I also felt proud of it, so I decided to read it to my good wife, who also knew Marty well. Reading to her in the privacy of our home, I had difficulty finishing the words. Great difficulty.
Today, I met my daughter's new B.F., as they staged at my house before leaving to partake of the bounty of the huge mountain snowfall on their boards and skis. Stalwart lad, and I paid him the respect of calling him "Coach", which he does for a living at my alma mater, Portland State University. He seemed to like the gesture. Point to me.
After I got them off (without the half-gallon of Bombay Sapphire that the dau. wanted), I went with my retired Chief of Training from my former Sheriff's Office to the Clark Co, WA gun show, mostly to lift my spirits. Small show, but the nice thing about small shows is that you can visit all the tables more than once. I did the "closing hours" thing, and scored some reloading components at VERY good prices, and some reloaded .40S&W ammo for good prices ($6.65/box).
The show being in Another State, I would have been stuck for firearms purchases with shipping to an Oregon FFL, which would add 35-50 bucks to the transaction, so I didn't buy any guns. I DID find some challenging buys, though. How about a Remington Varminteer 700, NIB in .308, for $699? I also found a beater LC Smith SXS 12-ga double for $400. It might not have been operational though (had a bum firing pin in one barrel, but I know how to mill them out of a Grade-8 bolt using a high-speed drill as a lathe), but I could have used the upper (barrels) as a cut-down set to make a Coach Gun option for my own LC Smith, which has a perfect lower and upper, and needs only a new hammer to make it worth well into 4 figures.
Was also tempted by a almost-new Taurus .38 snubbie lightweight for $269, but it would have been for the frau, and she wasn't there to try it to hand, so I didn't get it.
I DID score a hard-to-find front sight adjusting tool for the CETME Modelo B, and will now finish sighting it in at my earliest convenience (maybe tomorrow). When the S.H.T.F., it will be a hard choice whether to take the CETME or the M14, if it is just me going to war. Perhaps readers would care to comment!
The retired SGT and myself doped out at least one scam worth noting: I found a sealed set of two (supposedly) GI unissued M-14 magazines, in a sealed cloth-and-paper wrapper. First, I was suspicious that the Army ever issued these in such a package (long, skinny package, 2-20 rd magazines placed end to end), but then the Federal nomenclature didn't seem right, either. The label said "Magzines" and that is obviously wrong, and there is ZERO tolerance for incorrect nomenclature in the Federal supply chain. Also, there was a FSN (Federal Stock Number) which I had no way of checking, but NO FEDERAL CONTRACT NUMBER. I could easily have paid $74.95 for two Chinese junker magazines worth no more than $15 each.
Any Sunday at a Gun Show is better than any Sunday doing damn near anything else, so it was a good time, and definitely a healing time.
Martin Hopkins died today in Portland, Oregon. You didn't know him, but you will miss him.
I first met Marty when my then-new bride introduced me to his wife, some 32-odd years ago. Martin was a steam fitter. S.T.E.A.M. F.I.T.T.E.R. No, he didn't fit new boilers into steam locomotives, although some he broke in with had done that.
Martin joined pipe together. Reading a blueprint on a big job, he would be assigned to fit piping to it's new task, whatever that task might be. A fitter is someone who has to work very exactly, but have great strength. Typically, it's pipe, but it might be other metal work. The metal, whatever it's function, has to be cut and fitted according to engineers' plans. Pipe has to be cut, then joined with no loss of strength from the stock materials.
The fitters are the hands of the engineers.
Martin built nuclear power plants, then overhauled them. He built on the Aleyeska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. He put together pipe which carried some of the most dangerous materials on God's Earth, and carries it to this day, safely. Recently, he built solvent carrying systems for semiconductor plants.
Martin was good with his hands. His craft, once common as this mighty nation built itself from scratch in the Industrial, then the Steam Ages, declined.
Fitters are dangerous people to Engineers. A fitter is probably the only one on a job site who knows for certain when an Engineer makes a mistake. Engineers go to school for years, and still make mistakes that they should hope Fitters catch, but they are invariably angry when a Fitter tells them that what looks good on paper won't work in reality, so an expensive modification has to be arranged to make it work.
I remember sitting around with Martin, Linda and my wife, and Martin regaling us with tales of how the fitters on some job just saved CH2M Hill or some other big engineering company's bacon. Yes, it's happened plenty of times, and plenty of times Martin was that Fitter who caught that bonehead mistake.
Martin was a sailor. He owned a Cape Dory 25 sloop, inch for inch the toughest little bluewater boat ever built. I had sailed in my early days, but the day Martin and I sailed his boat on a broad reach through a howling spring cold front on the Columbia River, never shortening sail as the wind screamed into the forties, I knew forever what Martin was made of, and I learned some more of what I was made of as well.
Martin was a gun owner, and one of the first in the State to qualify for his CHL. He lived in a tough, blue collar and worse neighborhood, but the scrotes generally left him alone, because they knew better than to mess with him. The day before he died of a massive heart attack, in his favorite chair in his own living room, Martin had gotten up the energy to meticulously clean every already-clean gun in his safe, as if he knew that they were to be passed along soon.
I rushed to the hospital when I heard that he had been stricken, but the news wasn't good. The EMTs had shot him with three Epi-Pens, and had to give him five sets of shocks before getting a feeble pulse back into his work-worn frame. The docs put the chiller on him, and he was heaving un-naturally with the effort of the respirator when I got to his side. I looked at him and he was not at peace. I stood for a few moments, willing the last communication with my friend, the gentle giant. Then I went out to his wife, who wasn't ready to lose him, they never are. I tried to compose myself, and I told her, "Linda, Please forgive me for not asking your permission, but I just told Martin to punch out his time card. His shift is over."
The docs planned to warm him back up slowly overnight and try to revive him this morning, but early on, his oldest son, himself a journeyman, called me and said those plans had changed, that they didn't consider him recoverable and would unplug the machines late this afternoon, about as I finish this piece.
Good-bye, old friend. You built this country, with pipe of steel, copper, stainless, bronze, aluminum and God-only knows what other exotic metals.
You've earned your rest, Martin Hopkins, now get on up to Saint Peter and get your forever seat to see how well your work stands the test of time.
I've got the mainsheet and the tiller, now, Martin, you may go off watch. I'll take us both across the bar.
I'm a Glock owner. I've had three of them. My current Glock is a Model 22, the full-size .40S&W.
I have read every story about Glock "failures", and consider all but one or two to be operator error (let the hate mail begin!). The one or two only seem explainable to me by parts failure.
I've even seen direct evidence of what had become known as "Glock Kabooms", ALL of which, to my knowledge, have been caused by an overcharged round.
I think that Glock makes an excellent, properly-priced, highly reliable weapon.
Glocks feature THREE different internal safeties that will prevent firing of a loaded Glock with a chambered round unless the DAO trigger is pulled all the way through it's travel BY THE TRIGGER FINGER.
That makes the weapon VERY safe, in my extensive user's opinion.
Because it lacks a push-on, push-off manual safety, though, some do not consider it safe. Those people are ill-advised, but unfortunately, some of them carry some weight in their communities as political appointees to high office, such as Chiefs of Police, or even elective office such as Sheriffs, or they might be Department Armorers of major police forces. These people have caused their deputies and officers to be equipped with something other than Glocks. Fine, that's their choice. If they choose other fine duty firearms for these LEO's, I have no beef with that.
Where they and I part company is when they refer to Glock weapons as being "unsafe". There aren't many of them, but there have been just enough of them to give Glock some cause for worry, the state of product liability law in this industry being what it is (precarious).
There's a calmative now, a "Zoloft" for Glock-phobics, as it were. It is this add-on manual safety, which acts to lock the trigger from it's connector bar pivot pin, thereby immobilizing the trigger. These worry-wart LEO executives will order their men equipped with Glocks to buy them starting now.
Those executives will be attending the funerals of some of their men, whose deaths they are responsible for, starting now.
There's a simple reason why. When you deal with the extreme stress of mortal combat, your overloaded brain almost always falls back on experience. This is what makes the rabbit jink instead of running straight ahead when a bobcat is running it down. The rabbit can jink better than a bobcat, and has a much better chance of not being a meal for a hungry cat if it jinks, so it does it by instinct.
Our instinct as thinking animals is to revert to our training. For those of us who have used Glocks for a long time, we know by instinct that all we have to do with a loaded and chambered Glock is pull the trigger through it's full travel to fire the weapon. Now, imagine we have a boss who forces us to add this little gizmo safety to the weapon, and we find ourselves in a situation where we have to draw and fire immediately and accurately, or we will be killed. With that safety, a number of us in that situation are NOT going to remember to disengage the manual safety, and our first presentation of the pistol to the target will NOT result in our firing it. We then die if the threat has their weapon out, presented and ready to fire.
We CAN train ourselves to use this manual safety properly and quickly. That calls for LOTS of range time and LOTS of simulations, HUNDREDS OF THEM, to overcome our initial "just-pull-the-trigger" training.
These same CLEOs and armorers who order these safeties are NOT going to spend the HUGE amount of money necessary to re-train their people to use them properly and quickly, because that training will amount to almost the cost of initial training, and that ain't in the budget, McGee.
So, people will die solely because some brain-dead CLEOs and armorers thought they could make someone safer by using this equipment and didn't think the process through to it's logical end.
As for the places selling this device, they would be well advised to include a clearly-written caveat about the need for EXTENSIVE training with it. If they fail to do that, they will probably (and correctly) be sued out of existence when someone they sold it to dies because of it.
For their advice, I'd be happy to testify for the plaintiff in those cases, and you might have noticed that my post title on the subject is easily searchable.
For MY readers, those who might have come to value my advice on firearms, I state this strongly and boldly: Do not buy and use this piece of equipment without completely retraining yourself in the use of your Glock.
I cannot make it any clearer than that.
ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, DAMAGE CONTROL ACTION BELOW, SET CONDITION SWEAT.
Damage Controlman Chief Rivrdog here, going off watch after a grueling eight hours trying to save my home from the evil toxic mold after an internal flood caused by (spit!) another water pump failure on my Kenmore Elite laundry machine.
It started about 1430 hours. I was in Blogstation Alpha, jawing with a Customer Service rep from the local electric company, trying to find out why they've jacked up my equal-pay electric rate by 18% for the new year. I was running a large load in the washing machine. I remember hearing the machine change from the rinse cycle to the pump-and-spin cycle, but there was a strong SNAP! noise when it did. That registered with me as a strange noise, but I was in the middle of doing some calculations then, and didn't get up to look. Major FUBAR.
The laundry room is on the second floor of my home. The laundry machine sits in a shallow tub with it's own drain, just in case of a leak, so it won't inundate the house. Two years ago, the pump cracked and the tub saved the house.
Today, the entire bottom of the cheapo plastic pump body departed this existence, and the rapid flow of 16 gallons of water did not all stay in the tub, but inundated the laundry room, leaked down into the floor, and started coming out of the ceiling in the family room below.
Every bath towel in the house was thrown into the pool, then soaked, but then I had to see to the ceiling downstairs, threatening collapse as it was.
The damage control instincts kicked in. I had some 1X4X12' planks in the garage, and soon had a half-dozen of them cut to 9 1/2 feet and jammed into the soggy wallboard to hold it up. Next the tarps. Tarp everything. Then run 3 heavy baskets of soggy towels to my neighbor to spin-dry in her laundry machine. Then contact the insurance company, then the water-damage cleanup outfit they contracted.
Then I waited. And Waited. And waited, watching the ceiling, now dripping in numerous places, watching the ceiling lamps to see if any water was running out of the ceiling canopies. Waiting, waiting.
3 hours of waiting, and finally the company shows up, first a foreman with beaucoup paperwork, then the young college student on vacation putting in two weeks for pay shows up. The two of them set out more tarps, we moved a half-houseful of furniture, then they started ripping down the ceiling. The pile of soggy wallboard grew higher and the ceiling got more naked.
My home theater speakers went away, then the breakfast-nook light. The wet joists were all exposed and immediately started drying under the influence of my stout 4-ton air conditioner, which I was running in the dead of winter to de-humidify the house. The crew placed huge blowers, then a giant dehumidifier, and I changed over the HVAC to heating. The noise down there is horrific, so I have abandoned the lower level, after feeding the crew and bidding them goodnight at 2230. The little computer they set up monitors the dehumidification, but tells me nothing.
My nose tells me that we're half-dry, though.
The good ship "Rivrdog Castle" will stay it's course. Damage control is a strange thing, sort of like gunfighting practice. You work and work at it, you prepare yourself and your tools and your material supplies.
You hope you never have to use those skills, tool or materials, but you're damn glad you trained yourself up to the task you hoped would never come to pass.
Thanks to all who pitched in, my good retired friends who charged over at my call and helped move the heavy machines so as to dry under them, my good neighbors who pitched in to keep dry towels coming my way, and mostly, my good wife, who did not freak when she saw the sad state of her house, but invited a friend over, and sat down to watch the Red Hot Trailblazers knock off the Toronto Raptors while I and the crew slaved to ease the damage.
A bad day all around, but it takes a day like this to see what you, your family and your friends are made out of.
Splice the mainbrace!
I'm seeing a lot of this, not to single out the excellent blogger "Say Uncle" who posted it, but I'm VERY worried that this "defense of the 2A" tactic will backfire on us. When you fisk someone's screed, you run the risk that your fisk will be less understandable than the flawed piece you fisked.
Who is this type of communication (fisking) aimed at? That is the cogent key question here.
If it's aimed at gun owners, we don't need the reinforcement of our values. If it's aimed at the average citizen, asking them to know enough about militaria guns to be able to savvy these differences is asking WAY too much. A message which goes over the head of it's intended target is worse than no message at all, because then the target tunes out the next message, which might be that critical last warning that the 2A is going down the drain and needs help NOW!
Let's back off trying to hammer the GFWs on their mistaken weapons nomenclature gun knowledge.
It's just too obtuse confusing.
See, I can edit my crap for clarity, so let's all do it.
I've done business before with J&G Sales, of Prescott, AZ. No mistakes with them. I'm on their email list, and they just sent me a bulletin about a HUGE sale on optics. Since I'm preparing to outfit several weapons with "gizmo" (read: electronic) sights, I'm interested in trying out a cheap version of a panoramic holographic sight. J&G has one advertised here. I was curious about this rock-bottom price, $19.95 plus $9.95 shipping, so I did some research, and found them here, at Century Arms, for over FIVE TIMES AS MUCH! Now, J&G takes pains to tell us that there will be NO guarantee on this item, only their 3-day inspection/return period. That could mean that Century Arms has had problems with them and decided to dump their entire inventory, I don't know. It will be a crapshoot.
I'm gonna bite on one, and try it out on my Marlin Camp 45. If it functions well on that weapon, I will immediately order several more.
I was also interested in this "tactical" holosight. It is also quite inexpensive, but doesn't come with an integral mount, so I'm going to pass on it for now. To me, the only advantage of the "tactical" style is that the lenses have lens covers and there are turrets to make windage and elevation changes with. These sights are basically a 50-yard affair, though, so you probably won't be using them at a range that requires dialing in corrections. They are a snap-shooting aid, not a sniping sight. Of the ones I've handled, I like the panoramic style best.
BTW, J&G also has South African 7.62X51 NATO ammo again. It's packaged in 50-round boxes for $24.95. At two rounds for a buck, it's not cheap, but it's some of the best 7.62 NATO ever made. It's NOT reloadable. There is little other 7.62 NATO milsurp out there, so this won't last long.
Hope you have some Xmas dollars left for vital gunny expense.
Yep, that's a question mark beside the title of this otherwise dispassionate look at electric vehicle technology. I put that question mark there because in the entire electric car controversy, something is missing, and that something is glossed over by most who shill for the immediate mass adoption of the current electric vehicle technology.
That something is physics.
Yes, Physics, that simple science of unmistakable truths (well, unmistakable except to the Church of Gaia, as interpreted by His Hollowness Pope Algore, but that's for other screeds).
The simple science here is that we can already build a complex machine fueled by petroleum distillate, either gasoline or diesel, that will do a lot of things in the way of locomotion, and have extra power available to do things like heat the interior of the car, cool the car, generate electricity for electrical needs, etc.
Electric vehicles don't convert the latent energy of fuel (unless they are fuel-cell vehicles, which do that, but only with very small mechanical power production capabilities), they release stored electrical energy from batteries of various kinds.
Physics tells us that some forms of energy can be relatively more economical to convert to useful mechanical energy than others. Of all of the available forms of energy suitable for propelling a vehicle anywhere it needs to go, petroleum distillate internal combustion engines are the best compromise between the requirements of safety, economy and total power conversion from the stored or latent form to the mechanical or useful form.
Electric motors are much more efficient devices for producing power than are gasoline engines, but the chassis of a vehicle must not only include the motor, it must include the form of power conversion within it's confines as well.
The present electric power vehicle technology stores it's power in batteries, then feeds that power to a low-horsepower electric motor(s), which then propel(s) the vehicle. In a fuel-powered vehicle, very little of the total weight is given to the stored fuel. In my Mazda B2500 pickup, which weighs 3600 pounds with just the driver, only 107 pounds are given over to fuel with a full tank, and the empty tank weighs maybe another twenty pounds, for a total of around 130, which is only 3.6 percent of the total vehicle weight.
There is an electric conversion kit out for the Chevy S-10, which, for the sake of argument, we'll assume weighs the same as my vehicle. It's electric power is stored within 24 GC5 golf car (6 volt) batteries, which will weigh, with connecting cables, about 75 pounds each. That's 2,025 pounds of batteries. The battery-charger, motor controller and motor probably weigh another 200 pounds, for a total of 2,225 pounds, from which you will subtract the weight of the fuel and tank, 130#, and the gas engine, which weighs roughly 600# (the clutch and tranny remain in the conversion), so that's about 1500 pounds more weight than the truck weighs dry, 2,895#. add them and you get 4,390#. The GVR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) for a mid 90's S-10 (you aren't going to convert a new one, and the older ones are lighter, anyway) is 4,600# or so, so you can have 210 pounds of carrying capacity (enough for two midgets or one driver of average weight) before you illegally overload the vehicle.
When you get that vehicle converted, as this kit will let you do, you have a vehicle which will carry you 40 to 60 miles at up to 75 mph. Very quietly, too. You have to recharge the batteries every 60 miles, and you can't run any air conditioning or heat in the cab, but you are oh, so green. About $12,000 for the truck and the kit. Oh, by the way, those batteries have a useful lifespan of about 3 years if you take perfect care of them, then you'll be spending $2,500 or so to replace them (and grunting a lot as you do the heavy work this entails).
But, the greenies will say I'm unfair for using such a heavy example of an electric vehicle. OK, let's take a current-production one and look at it's specs.
Let's look at the ZENN (Zero Emissions No Noise) car, which is built in Canada from parts imported from La Belle France. It retails for about $13,000 to $15,000 in it's base-model form. It weighs 1,200 pounds, and can be loaded to about 1,700#, for a legal load of 500 pounds. The range is "up to 35 miles". The speed is limited (I don't know about this, I think it's a Canadian rule that may not apply here) to 25 mph, which precludes it's use on freeways or even suburban boulevards. It must be recharged OVERNIGHT, unless you get the optional fast charger and battery upgrade, which total another $9,900. So, you are going to pay about $25,000 for this car in it's most useful form, and that's none too useful. A local proponent of the cars, who wrote in to the local paper touting it, says he expects the recharger electricity from his house to total $65 for the year (he didn't say how many miles that was, but let's say he drives it 500 miles a month for 6,000 miles). Gasoline for a 55-mpg hybrid Toyota Prius (it would be that efficient at those speeds) would cost $350 or so at $3.25/gallon, so the difference on fuel alone (the cars cost about the same) is less than $300/year or $25/month.
Oh, did I mention usefulness? The Prius will do over 100 mph (just ask Pope Algore's son), is air conditioned, will carry 4 adults who are NOT midgets or Twiggy-clones, and has an actual trunk that will carry luggage as well.
Let's talk vehicle politics.
The US auto industry has brought the idiotic idea of these volts-wagons on itself with several bonehead faux-pas. The first is the bonehead horsepower race, which has trickled down into even basic cars. A basic econobox doesn't need more than 80 horsepower or so, they built some very good ones in the 70's with less (I owned several). Stepping up, the "family sedan" that is the holy grail for marketing cars in the US, needs no more than 150 horsepower to do it's job adequately, but larger engines are usually put into them. Some family sedans are sold with engines in the 300 horsepower range now.
Physics again. If you have an engine which will produce 300 horsepower, it's not as efficient as one which tops out at half that. I'm a conservative, and I don't want to ban big engines, but I would agree to have a large penalty for driving one, say a hefty registration fee based on horsepower that goes up exponentially with horsepower over the needed amount. That figure should be whatever will drive the car, fully loaded, at legal speed of up to 80mph, with adequate power reserve, in the high country (think I-10 across New Mexico or I-40 across the Rockies in Colorado). That's about 150 hp, by my experience. The dollars generated by these horsepower fees MUST be directed into engine efficiency research and development, and not into the general fund.
Politics again. The eco-nerds are fond of speculating that the 120-mpg carburettor exists (it does, but trying to keep that weed pipe lit at speed is a bitch), and that the eeeevil oiiiil companies deep-sixed both the equipment AND it's inventors so that it could never be produced. Then there are the "miracle" fuel-line "ionizers" or the "miracle" gasoline additives which will give you fantabulous mileage, and THEY were also defeated by the oil companies. Horsepuckey. Refer these people to the nearest community mental health center, please, and refer back to basic physics. Then there is the very real farce of Ethanol, which works as a motor fuel, but not nearly as well as gasoline, so for it to be a panacea for our fuel import problem, we would have to have it sold at least 25% cheaper than gas (it's about 8-10% cheaper now). It is also a total energy pig, costing more energy to make than the savings it will bring, so it is actually uneconomical. Ethanol is the new farmer's welfare program, and only Archer-Daniels-Midland profits by it. The rest of us poor saps, taken in by it's phony promise, are going to pay a hidden bill for it at our grocery stores (think $7/bushel corn and now, $10/bushel wheat), then pay again at the pump, because Ethanol costs MORE per mile to drive your car than gasoline does. Biodiesel doesn't actually have fuel-usage penalties, it works about as well as petro-diesel, but then, only so much bio-oils can be produced, so it will never amount to much of a fuel source, and there is a lack of production infrastructure for it.
Bottom line on all of this: until the 250-mile electric vehicle is built, which will recharge in 15-20 minutes, go 80 mph with a full load and cost no more than a standard sedan, we can't use them. Sorry about that.
Readers excoriate me for ending on sour notes, so here are some positive suggestions to alleviate the fuel demand issues. First, the car owners:
Then, the car producers:
The government needs to get into the act too (no worries, elect (D)emocrats and they will, but not with THIS list). They need to:
