the fall of Kronos…

with the 30 September termination of talks between Penske and GM on the sale of Saturn, another American car company is relegated to historical status. and, like the vast majority of failed car companies, deservedly so.

Saturn was an interesting experiment in the 1980s, an attempt to beat the Japanese in their own specialty. acknowledging the superiority of cars from Honda, Toyota and others, GM decided circa 1982 to build a new small car different from anything they’d done before. by 1985, they’d made the decision to do it with a new company. for a corporation that already had at least ten brands, what was one more?

the early Saturn cars were fairly sophisticated and forward-looking vehicles, as well. the plastic-paneled Z-body was lightweight and durable (if somewhat flammable). the aluminum castings in the car (including the engine block) were made using a (at the time) revolutionary lost-foam casting process. cars were sold at a set price, without the off-putting haggling other dealerships had. the EV1 was leased and serviced through Saturn dealers.

but before long (in historical terms, anyway), Saturn became just another brand at GM. instead of building its own cars, it used common platforms and engines with other GM models. the same thing that poisoned Pontiac/Buick/Oldsmobile/Chevrolet/Cadillac killed Saturn; instead of building cars people wanted, they built the same car as Pontiac/SAAB/GMC/Buick/Chevrolet/Opel/Vauxhall – just with a slightly revised grille or plastic on the dash.

and so the experiment ends; but this time, without a Golden Age to follow. Saturn is condemned instead to Tartarus.

quote of the day:

“A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.” – Elbert Hubbard

why does environmentalism…

“belong” to the liberal left?

i consider myself an independent, which mostly means i’m disgusted with both sides of the American political equation (we’ll save the vitriolic ranting against a two-party system for another day).

i recycle. i drive a car that gets almost 40 mpg. i ride a bike or walk in lieu of driving whenever possible. but when a political discussion comes up, and i mention i voted for the wrinkly white (Republican) guy, people are horrified. “How could you do that?” “I thought you were one of us!”

now, most of my friends are liberals of one sort or another; some claim to be libertarians, but i think that many of them have their definitions confused. but for the most part, left-wing (or at least left-leaning) liberals.

there is nothing wrong with this – everybody has to be something. and this country (like it or not) has always been at the forefront of social liberty. which is a big part of the left; we’ll ignore the big government safety net stuff for the purposes of this post. the conservative right is, to my mind, a rather recent development in a lot of ways – however much they might wish to claim the Founding Fathers as their own.

but my friends who are environmentally aware naturally assume that anyone else who is is also a liberal. this is no real surprise, as the left is the only side that has embraced environmentalism wholeheartedly (or at all).

why is it the conservative side of the nation will not do the same? is it the fruit and nut image that “green” calls up?

for convenience’s sake, i’m going to lump Neocons, Paleocons, Anti-Federalists, etc., all into the same “conservative” lump. while they all have very differing views on things like interventionsim and protectionism, they have similar views on economics (classical liberal Laissez-faire, for the most part). and environmentalism is just good business. it’s what a larger and larger number of consumers want to buy, after all. and it doesn’t hurt with the rest of them.

you know all those right-wing hunters, who always vote the Republican party line? many of them are environmentalists. they’d never admit it – there’s too much stigma attached to the term – but they (for the most part) want to protect the world’s wild places. many of them even realize this starts at home; they recycle, turn off lights when they leave rooms, all the little things that get lumped into “environmental responsibility.” and they’re not liberals.

Theodore Roosevelt, man’s man, hunter, champion of business (look up “regulated trust”); he was an environmentalist. and he was a champion of the values the right claims to espouse: equality of opportunity and personal freedom.

“When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit…” – T.R.

sounds a lot like what the political right (especially as embodied by the talking heads in the media) claims to espouse. so why won’t they embrace environmentalism?

is it because they are blinded by other issues? too focused on opposing the Democratic left’s government-growth policies? News Flash: y’all did a crappy job with this when you were in power, too. some could say worse. so you should probably STFU about how Obama’s policies are going to grow the deficit. one trillion dollars spent on the “War on Terror” since 2001, over one third of which was in Iraq, kind of makes for massive feet of clay.

one benefit the “left” has over the “right” seems to be an avoidance of this type of myopia. but that’s neither here nor there.

or is it? let’s assume, for a moment, that neither side of the political divide is one hundred percent correct (crazy, i know). therefore, the best course for the nation lies somewhere in the middle. but neither side will look to the middle; they have far too much invested in being the “good guys,” with the other side being the “bad guys.” but what if they would? there needs to be some way to bridge the gap, right?

quote of the day:

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.” – Hannah Arendt

art meets… life?

first, an admission: i don’t use Twitter. while i think it has a lot of utility – primarily due to its popularity – it also suffers greatly from a low signal-to-noise ratio.

but plenty of people do use Twitter – i’d guess that a majority of my tech-savvy friends do.

and, from March of this year, so does Roland Hedley – a fact that was brought to my attention in today’s Doonesbury comic strip.

there are any number of people on Twitter (and the internet, for that matter) who have assumed the names of fictional characters. but, in this case, the Tweets are coming from an essentially fictional character. it’s not a fan assuming the character’s identity, but the creator (or someone Garry Trudeau has assigned the task). so, inasmuch as it can be, it truly is Roland Hedley Tweeting.

which brings me to my thought: where is the internet taking us?

with the anonimity provided by our screens and keyboards, we are accepted as who we seem to be. it’s possible, given the freeing nature of that same anonimity, that when interacting with strangers on the internet, we truly are ourselves.

as an extension of this, our “internet personas,” therefore, are real people that may differ from our “meatworld” aspects. with the increases in computing power afforded both by advances in chip technology and distributed processing, it probably won’t be long before some of the entertainment personas on the internet are partially or wholly automated. will these artificial personas have similar rights and obligations to those run wholly by meatworld puppeteers? or will those rights and obligations be solely borne by their creators?

i think we need to start considering where the line should be drawn now, before we have to make a decision then.

quote of the day:

“Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.” – Alan Kay

good-bye, Uncle Walter.

news broke this evening that Walter Cronkite had passed away.

my generation is probably the last to have “first-person” memories of Uncle Walter – i was six years old when he retired as anchor of the CBS Evening News, and since then i’ve been exposed to recordings of his other historic broadcasts – whether the moon landings or the Kennedy assassination, Walter Cronkite is the voice i hear in my head.

growing up in a journalist’s household, i was inculcated with a general respect for the older generation of newsmen, and Cronkite in particular. he was the person who came into our home every evening, anyway.

launched in 1984, NASA had a “Teacher in Space” project – but what many people are unaware of is there was a paralell “Journalist in Space” program as well. my mother was one of 1,033 applicants for the spot – and when she heard Cronkite had also applied, her reaction was, “If Uncle Walter wants to go, they should let him go.”

now, as an adult, i am in awe of his accomplishments: landing (as an embed) with the 101st during Operation Market-Garden, covering the Nuremberg trials, reporting on the Kennedy assassination, his marathon Apollo 11 coverage, Apollo 13, Vietnam, Watergate, the 1968 Democratic Convention – all events that he made accessible and understandable to middle America.

but the respect my mother had for him will always most shape my memories.

good-bye, Uncle Walter.

quote of the day:

“And that’s the way it is… This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News; good night.”

Day 5: sobering observations.

i hadn’t intended to post any more about the trip until i got home to South Carolina, but today’s “sightseeing” kind of hit me.

we drove into town yesterday, spending a goodly part of our jaunt on US 90 – picking it up in Biloxi and rolling along to the vicinity of Waveland. it was somewhat disturbing to see all the empty foundations and hollowed shells of buildings – but not like what we saw today.

today, we stood on the levee bordering the Lower Ninth Ward at the location of one of the major breaches – and, except for scattered new construction, there was nothing in front of us.

makes one thankful for having a roof overhead, among other things.

Day 3: go west, young man. but east first.

covered plenty of ground today (albeit less than yesterday’s “entirety of Alabama”). we went from Tallahassee east to Lancaster, Florida. pretty much just a crossroads in the middle of nowhere (at least according to the TomTom).

speaking of the TomTom, it had me driving random dirt roads and instructing me to turn off of them onto other roads. which happened to not exist.

works great when you’re near civilization, though.

anyway, came all the way back west from there into the far end of the panhandle. we’re in Pensacola tonight (lots of Blue Angels stuff everywhere: murals, planes on pedestals, etc), and off to Mobile in the sunshine tomorrow. plan to visit the USS Alabama during the day, and perhaps even get to NOLA in the evening.

see y’all on the road.

quote of the day:

“It follows than as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.” – George Washington

Day 2: free internet!

well, not so much.

we stayed at a Days Inn last night – in the hopes that the promised free internet would allow a certain amount of updating upon our progress.

well, you get what you pay for. namely, nothing. nowt. nada. zip.

spent a heck of a day on the road yesterday – we hit three state capitals (Atlanta, Montgomery and Tallahassee), and drove through what seemed like the entirety of Alabama.

we’re somewhere east (yes, east) of Tallahassee now, and off towards Mobile today.

lots of fun, more later, etc., etc., etc.

quote of the day:

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

Underground:USA, Day 1 (well, actually, Day 20)

it’s just Day 1 for me, Geoff started back on the 17th of last month…

today we left the Charleston metro area in search of Woodford, SC.

View Larger Map

found it!

not that there was much there to find. did get to drive down random dirt roads in the middle of nowhere.

then we zipped on down to ATL on I-20.

off to Florida tomorrow…

quote of the day:

“Fame is only good for one thing – they will cash your check in a small town.” – Truman Capote

Ich habe…

ein neues Auto gekauft.

because i had to, mostly. the Hamster passed 310k miles recently and then pretty much said, “no more.”

well, actually, the Hamster passed 310k miles, broke some more (and yes, as in “was already broken and reached a new plateau of failure”), and I said “no more.”

so, what did i buy?

behold, the Blue Beetle!

technically, it’s not actually blue. it’s more of a purple.

but i say it’s blue, so sod off if you can’t take a joke.

so, the gory details:

2001 VW Beetle GLS TDI, 90 hp, 155 lb-ft, ~12 seconds 0-60, 110 mph top speed. which makes it both quicker and faster than my old MGB “sports car.”

for those who are surprised (given my avowed and obvious fascination with fast cars) that i would buy a diesel, you must understand the first car i ever bought for myself was a diesel – a 1976 Peugeot 504 A90 sedan, to be precise. 2.3 liters, 4 speeds, and nonexistent performance.

but it ruined me for gasoline cars forever.

well, not really. but i do love diesel. i think it’s something about the smell.

absolute worst fuel economy so far has been 36.5 mpg (around town). best was 38.6 on a road trip to Charlotte (with highway speeds up to 95 mph – so it’s not like i was dawdling). would have gotten better mileage there, but for all the other idiots on the road unable to pick a speed and stick with it.

i like it, and that’s what’s important.

for those wondering about my “fast car guy” outlook, i did consider both an Audi S4 and Saab 9-3 Viggen before latching onto the Beetle.

like i said, i think it’s the smell.

quote of the day:

“As a rule, when I drive, I drive very carefully and sensibly. Tonight was an exception to the rule.” – Harry Dresden

i’m REALLY not drunk enough for this one, folks.

so, a friend of mine from England is currently embarked on a 13,000-mile road trip to all 48 contiguous states. there’s a hook (he’s a former world-record holder for fastest transit of the London Underground, and he’s stopping at locations with the same name as Underground stops in each state), and he’s been video blogging as he goes.

but there’s been a huge snag. last night, pretty much all his stuff was stolen from his car. $6k in electronics, gone.

so, those of us who know Geoff (and those who don’t, other than through his blog) are trying to raise money to get him back on his journey.

so check out the links, and maybe – if you can – give a little bit? it’s NOT tax-deductible, and it’s not going to save the planet or the whales. but maybe a little bit of good karma?

http://helpgeoff.wordpress.com/
http://thedigitel.com/helpgeoff
http://www.lowcountrybloggers.com/helpgeoff
http://xark.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/06/the-helpgeoff-thing.html

thanks for reading, folks.

quote of the day:

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do.” – Helen Keller