Tag: Opinion

Auto Fuel went up a bit this week, but is still astonishingly low. While it’s lovely to fill up for $25, and definitely bringing out the fuel guzzler classics and monster trucks around town again, it is also somewhat disconcerting. Fuel prices dropped far and fast. There was no abrupt increase in supply. Either the price variation reflects huge loss of demand, or deliberate manipulation of prices. Neither prospect is comforting to consider. There is talk of raising a gas tax. I will be surprised if anyone has the guts to do that, but then it’s been a surprising year.

You can’t get much more ostentatious than this Chrome Mercedes McLaren SLR. At least not yet. Surely the opposite of “green” is chrome.

Perhaps you read that the National Park Service is trying to eliminate the communications equipment from the top of Shasta Bally. Their concerns revolve around aesthetics and views for the park.

Those concerns are valid, but only to a point. The laws of nature and physics dictate the best positioning for this equipment, not aesthetic judgments. The antennae and equipment pre-date the park. It was put there by (apparently wiser) citizens some 50 years ago, who saw the site as the only viable and practical location for complete coverage. The Park Service seems to have very little concern for local communication, only their vision for a prettier mountaintop. It’s an admirable idea, on paper. The reality is that Shasta Bally is not Half Dome, and the man-made lake it overlooks is not Tahoe. While it is lovely to consider a pristine mountaintop presiding over our park, that vision is trumped by the absolute necessity of getting clear communication in an emergency in our mountainous areas. This is not an aesthetic concern, it is a concrete reality of the electromagnetic spectrum. We should not lose this irreplaceable communication resource for the vague goal of an idealized mountaintop. Your life may well depend on it someday.

Eliminating this local resource will be harmful to the local population. Tell the Park Service Bureaucrats how you feel about this at their website HERE. In attendance at the hearing in Redding last night, it seemed apparent that the decision has already been made, and your interests and safety are secondary. Imagine CalFire unable to communicate, or an auto accident on 299. If you think those antennae aren’t pretty today, I guarantee you will feel differently in an emergency. The Park Service individuals making this decision may no need to live with this after they retire to wherever, but YOU WILL.

This image is making the rounds on the internet. Sort of funny and not funny, all at once.

Yesterday, local Red Bluff Ford announced they were declaring bankruptcy. And Miller Auto of Redding announced they would be abandoning Mitsubishi. Today, we learn they won’t be selling Suzuki or Cadillacs, leaving only Jeep. Obviously, local auto sellers are struggling. Should they be bailed out too? Where does the bailout end? Who decides?

I think the bailout raises a lot of questions. I don’t see those questions being asked as we race to bailout the big players, while local small businesses fail without a similar lifeboat.

The fake ad implies that US Automakers failed because their products sucked. Elsewhere in my blog I wrote that we made a business decision specifically to buy American cars, and in our case Cadillacs, to be supportive, and (we thought) to show some national pride. But my Cadillacs have had serious and expensive problems, in and out of warranty. It’s very disappointing. Should their lack of quality be rewarded with a bailout? Also, a large part of the big automaker’s financial problems stem from their very generous labor contracts. Their workers and retirees enjoy excellent pay and benefits, which is great for those workers. But as I look around my town, it becomes apparent that excellent pay and benefits are rare indeed. Should the poorly paid workers in my town be expected to bail them out?

Oh well, nobody said life was fair. Unless you’re getting a bailout.

As in, what happened with all the bad mortgages, and how that affected the financial markets. The drawings are crude, shall we say, and so is the language, but it makes the point. Not suitable for work, maybe, and don’t look at it if you are easily offended. I saw this a while back but thought it worth posting in case you didn’t see it. I think it pretty much sums it up.

You’ll need to view this in full screen mode to read it, which is the little icon that looks like a projection screen at the bottom of the slide viewer. The show has no audio, so you might want to put some music on first by clicking on the Ovi player. This piece, Infinity’s Edge is from the live planetarium recordings featuring Craig Padilla I have been running the past few days, and is about 10 minutes long.