Probably everybody is aware of the rising gas prices. My area, Chicago, has recently had some of the highest gas prices in the US. I recently drove through the vicinity of Chicago Midway Airport (where probably one should expect prices to be high), and saw several gas stations with $4.59 and one with $4.60.
I have a car with a six-cylinder engine. It's nowhere as thirsty a car as big vehicles like pickups or SUVs, or super-power cars. Still, it's not as economical as I'd like. And supposedly vehicles in general have gotten more fuel-efficient. So I've half-heartedly been exploring swapping my old steed.
There are hybrids, of course, which are not only economical but are more environmentally friendly. But, through working with engineers, I've learned to see with their perspective, to a degree; so I view hybrids as not an "elegant" solution. That is, they have a lot of mechanical and electronic complexity.
So another thing to look at are diesel-engine cars. Diesels are not like they used to be: rough, noisy, dirty, hard-to-start. They're very popular in Europe, but Americans still have memories of a couple of bad American diesel models of some years ago.
Also, there are "turbos," or cars with a turbocharged engine. A turbocharger is pretty much a way of getting free power, so an engine can be smaller in displacement for the same power output. Smaller means more economical.
Another thing I almost forgot about myself is manual transmissions. I think that 97% of vehicles currently sold in America have automatic transmissions and undoubtedly many drivers don't know how to drive a "stick shift." But, if you are willing and able to drive one, that's a way to get another one or two miles per gallon.
Meanwhile, short of investing in a new car, there's one simple and easy thing we can all be doing to get better mileage, and that's to modify our driving habits. See my October 20, 2010 posting on this blog, "Driving More Safely and More Economically."
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
A Rant against Conservatives. Part I
Yesterday a guy was here to do some painting for me. This guy is very chatty, so we got to talking—or maybe arguing.
This guy is a typical conservative. His wife came up from a background of poverty, so he has no sympathy for anyone who lives in poverty; says they don't want to work.
And maybe this guy is a little more extreme than some conservatives. He seems to feel he shouldn't have to pay any taxes at all.
But like a lot of conservatives, when he argues, a lot of his facts are wrong. (I believe that these guys know that the arguments they use are incorrect. Conservative in the public eye, like politicians, do that, and this guy showed that he was doing it, too.)** He said that the property tax that he pays goes to our governor. I got out my property tax bill, and not one single item on there has anything to do with state government. It's all local and county: village, township, county, school districts, this district and that district. But nothing at all that said "Illinois."
These people are so accustomed to hearing, and parroting, common canards of the Right. They have no concern for what is or is not true.
He said he has no formal education, and that's uttered as a boast. Presumably education is a bad thing. I'm reminded of the days when I was a college teacher in a college town, in an otherwise rural area. When I had my haircut I'd hear the attitudes of the "townies" toward the university. We were faggots and commies who were there to subvert their wholesome, corn-fed offspring. They called us the "fuckalty."
And my painter reminds me of my father, who didn't know what he didn't know. Or maybe my grandfather. My grandfather always boasted about being a self-educated man. One day he gave me a problem to solve. I asked for pencil and paper, and in probably less than a minute, I had the answer for him. He was amazed. It was basically a rather simple problem in high-school algebra. But he didn't even know that there was such a tool. See, an example of not knowing what you don't know.
What does education do for people? Ideally, rather than just imparting facts, it also teaches critical thinking and has an influence on attitudes.*
And why do these conservative types, like my painter, glory in being uneducated, scoff at education and the educated? Maybe it's because they secretly know that education would disabuse them of a lot of their currently-held, incorrect ideas.
__________
*Update. On the subject of what a nontechnical education can do for you--a favorite subject of mine, see this link: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/05/26/oh-the-humanities-why-not-to-pick-a-college-major-based-on-a-s/
**Update (October 14, 2011). An example of how conservatives lie: This is from an article on Huff Post Politics:
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
This guy is a typical conservative. His wife came up from a background of poverty, so he has no sympathy for anyone who lives in poverty; says they don't want to work.
And maybe this guy is a little more extreme than some conservatives. He seems to feel he shouldn't have to pay any taxes at all.
But like a lot of conservatives, when he argues, a lot of his facts are wrong. (I believe that these guys know that the arguments they use are incorrect. Conservative in the public eye, like politicians, do that, and this guy showed that he was doing it, too.)** He said that the property tax that he pays goes to our governor. I got out my property tax bill, and not one single item on there has anything to do with state government. It's all local and county: village, township, county, school districts, this district and that district. But nothing at all that said "Illinois."
These people are so accustomed to hearing, and parroting, common canards of the Right. They have no concern for what is or is not true.
He said he has no formal education, and that's uttered as a boast. Presumably education is a bad thing. I'm reminded of the days when I was a college teacher in a college town, in an otherwise rural area. When I had my haircut I'd hear the attitudes of the "townies" toward the university. We were faggots and commies who were there to subvert their wholesome, corn-fed offspring. They called us the "fuckalty."
And my painter reminds me of my father, who didn't know what he didn't know. Or maybe my grandfather. My grandfather always boasted about being a self-educated man. One day he gave me a problem to solve. I asked for pencil and paper, and in probably less than a minute, I had the answer for him. He was amazed. It was basically a rather simple problem in high-school algebra. But he didn't even know that there was such a tool. See, an example of not knowing what you don't know.
What does education do for people? Ideally, rather than just imparting facts, it also teaches critical thinking and has an influence on attitudes.*
And why do these conservative types, like my painter, glory in being uneducated, scoff at education and the educated? Maybe it's because they secretly know that education would disabuse them of a lot of their currently-held, incorrect ideas.
__________
*Update. On the subject of what a nontechnical education can do for you--a favorite subject of mine, see this link: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/05/26/oh-the-humanities-why-not-to-pick-a-college-major-based-on-a-s/
**Update (October 14, 2011). An example of how conservatives lie: This is from an article on Huff Post Politics:
A federal judge ruled in August that the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List had to stop making the claim on its website that "Obamacare" subsidizes abortions because the assertion is false.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Do We Need to Teach Gay and Lesbian History?
One of our radio stations, which I don't usually listen to, just had a commentator talking—negatively—about a bill in California to introduce the teaching of gay and lesbian history in that state's schools.
There was a phone number for listeners to call with comments. I didn't phone, for a variety of reasons, including my lack of confidence in my ability to organize my thoughts in anything like a persuasive manner while speaking. That plus—this needs to be mentioned--the fact that I stutter.
One of this guy's points was that history largely includes bad guys, like Hitler. So he said, "Okay, if you want to find a gay marauder to include. . . ."
But I thought he missed the point. History and other courses in our schools have been tilted and slanted to favor sort of a majority, history-gets-written-by-the-victors point of view: male, white, Euro-centric, and of course heterosexual. As just one example: We might learn about Jane Addams and Clara Barton. But there were lots of very fine woman painters. How many can you name? Possibly, at most, these three who are very well known: Georgia O'Keefe, Frieda Kahlo, and Mary Cassatt. And it's not a coincidence that two of those are pretty modern; earlier ones never got much attention.
In the last few decades women and African-Americans have become vocal in pointing out how their contributions have often been overlooked or downplayed. It's a similar story with the contributions of countries and civilizations outside of those which, for several hundred years, have conventionally been thought to be in the path of the transmission of civilization from East to West. In other words, it's been Mesopotamia and Egypt, then Greece, Rome, Europe, and the U.S.
As just one little example of how wrong this is: It's been found that bronze smelting and casting was done very early in Vietnam. Is Vietnam and its contributions to world civilization included in our history?
Now, as to gay and lesbian people: In many fields there have been contributions by people who were gay or lesbian. Leonardo, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, and so many more. Their sexual orientation has usually been very deliberately omitted from discussion when these people are discussed in our schools. Forster was not free to publish a homoerotic novel he'd written. Whitman was forced to change the pronouns in his poetry, changing them from talking about love of males to females. When history is thus "cleaned up" or sanitized for consumption by our students, not only is an injustice done but we find ourselves in the business of dispensing half-truths which are masquerading as truths.
So it's just a case of how far we feel we need to go to redress the balance. In a way it's the same issue as with affirmative action: Do minorities who have been overlooked, suppressed, discriminated against, now need special emphasis or consideration? They would not, if they had been getting a fair shake all along. And, your answer to that question might just reveal what your prejudices are.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
There was a phone number for listeners to call with comments. I didn't phone, for a variety of reasons, including my lack of confidence in my ability to organize my thoughts in anything like a persuasive manner while speaking. That plus—this needs to be mentioned--the fact that I stutter.
One of this guy's points was that history largely includes bad guys, like Hitler. So he said, "Okay, if you want to find a gay marauder to include. . . ."
But I thought he missed the point. History and other courses in our schools have been tilted and slanted to favor sort of a majority, history-gets-written-by-the-victors point of view: male, white, Euro-centric, and of course heterosexual. As just one example: We might learn about Jane Addams and Clara Barton. But there were lots of very fine woman painters. How many can you name? Possibly, at most, these three who are very well known: Georgia O'Keefe, Frieda Kahlo, and Mary Cassatt. And it's not a coincidence that two of those are pretty modern; earlier ones never got much attention.
In the last few decades women and African-Americans have become vocal in pointing out how their contributions have often been overlooked or downplayed. It's a similar story with the contributions of countries and civilizations outside of those which, for several hundred years, have conventionally been thought to be in the path of the transmission of civilization from East to West. In other words, it's been Mesopotamia and Egypt, then Greece, Rome, Europe, and the U.S.
As just one little example of how wrong this is: It's been found that bronze smelting and casting was done very early in Vietnam. Is Vietnam and its contributions to world civilization included in our history?
Now, as to gay and lesbian people: In many fields there have been contributions by people who were gay or lesbian. Leonardo, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, and so many more. Their sexual orientation has usually been very deliberately omitted from discussion when these people are discussed in our schools. Forster was not free to publish a homoerotic novel he'd written. Whitman was forced to change the pronouns in his poetry, changing them from talking about love of males to females. When history is thus "cleaned up" or sanitized for consumption by our students, not only is an injustice done but we find ourselves in the business of dispensing half-truths which are masquerading as truths.
So it's just a case of how far we feel we need to go to redress the balance. In a way it's the same issue as with affirmative action: Do minorities who have been overlooked, suppressed, discriminated against, now need special emphasis or consideration? They would not, if they had been getting a fair shake all along. And, your answer to that question might just reveal what your prejudices are.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
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