Tensegrities

Those of you who have read this blog over time know that I’m an enthusiastic owner of a Toyota Prius. But I’ve just gotten done watching the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? and I’m totally electrified, jazzed up, angry, energized — you name it, that’s what I’m feeling right now. I had NO IDEA there were such wonderful electric vehicles available in the US. Further, I had NO IDEA that there had been such a concerted effort to get rid of them — even to the extent of gathering up all of the cars that existed and crushing them. ARGH!

The film was done in 2006, and it already feels dated in some ways — in the film gas has just reached up to $3.00 a gallon, for instance — but it also, at the very end, makes me feel just the tiniest bit hopeful. Watching these cars zip along the highway in their sleek speediness makes me yearn for one of them. They’re exactly the kind of car that would have been great for us, as we almost never drive more than 60 miles in a day. Still, the film ends with a brief discussion of modifying hybrids — they show a Prius — to become “plug-in” capable, meaning modifying their battery packs in such a way that you can plug them into a standard home electrical outlet and end up getting 100 miles per gallon of gas.

I think that’s something I want to work on — in addition to supporting public transit — and I hope that everyone who reads this blog will check out a copy of Who Killed the Electric Car? and watch it!

I still haven’t gotten around to reading Yochai Benkler’s book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, but thanks to FutureMajority’s tip I’ve watched his TED talk. In the wake of the disastrous Senate vote on FISA, the final few minutes of the talk are particularly prescient. It’s DEFINITELY worth finding 15 minutes to watch:

This number is so huge I can’t even grasp it — $536, 121, 136, 524 — and even as I type it into this program, it’s grown beyond that. This is the cost of the war in Iraq. Translated into numbers that might make more sense, that would be $5,840 per household, $2,147 per person. The National Priorities Project has a handy little calculator that can figure out for a variety of locations, not only what is being spent, but what else it might have been spent on. Check it out.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have both a son and a husband who love all things Mac and technical. But if you’re not blessed in that way, but would still like to use WordPress to blog, here’s a useful “how-to” piece.