1.  At your generic auto blog, supposedly the commenters know cars.  I'm looking for somebody to talk about the rather unusual drive train (how is it performing in the snow & ice?  What about hitting bumps and skids?)  Tell me something about the MDS and actual gas mileage.  Any news on the release of the hybrid?  I was disappointed to find--well, exactly what you might expect--that the comments about this SUV are almost exclusively about the likes/dislikes of the body style.  Doesn't that describe our current culture?  Everybody's obsessed with "looks" and ambivalent about function, use, and substance.  Sigh. 

 

   2.  I visited a site called Hybridcar.com.  Voila!  An article on the Aspen.  Against my better judgment, I read it.  You may find the opener interesting.  (The article does end on a rather fair note, giving Chrysler credit for manufacturing a vehicle that makes some sense.)  Yet, the tone of the entire piece is quite condescending--check out this excerpt (emphasis mine).

Hemi Hybrid Hijinks

The introduction of Chrysler’s first hybrids could be misconstrued as a bad practical joke. That’s because Chrysler’s Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen Hybrids will pair up a hybrid gas-electric system—the symbol of automotive virtue—with a powerful Hemi engine, which is best known for winning car races. . . Chrysler’s 5.7-liter V8 Hemi hybrids are very likely to offend the die-hard hybrid drivers, a group easily riled by any corruption of hybrid ideals. From the Prius point-of-view, DaimlerChrysler is flaunting its disregard for the environment by marrying sacred hybrid technology with an obscene amount of horsepower. . . Even after hybridization, these vehicles will barely break the 20-mpg mark—a fraction of what the average Prius driver achieves.

. . .Releasing two Hemi hybrids is a form of technological triage—another example of today’s ultra-light form of green consumerism which asks for no compromise from the buyer. Thanks to technology, more is still more—for now.

kballs says:  Going from 14-16MPG may save more oil than going from 35-50MPG, but going from 14-50MPG saves even more. While a 2MPG bump is a good thing for delivery trucks, garbage trucks, etc., some people can't really justify driving a land yacht. They should consider something "big enough" to meet their needs without waste. It's a vehicle, not a living room. You don't need 4ft of leg room and shoulder room. You probably don't really need 7-9 seats for the 1 time/year that you carpool with your friends to the ski slope either. . .

 

Richard says:  Justify, what's justify got to do with it. Choice baby, now they can have that Hybrid snobery in powerfull Hemi to boot.

   

Choose says:  I really like the idea of a hybrid, or all electric, and I would like to one day have a home that uses renewable energy sources.  But when I read these forums, I get turned off by all the preaching of everyone telling others what they "need" or "should have". If someone chooses to have a big car, little car, hybrid, diesel, or whatever, then that is their choice. Why should anyone tell you what you must drive, or what job you should have, or who you should vote for?  The green movement is feeling a lot like the old communist movement, in that they want to control our actions "for the greater good of the planet/society/politik". Am I the only one who sees this line of thinking, this willingness to tell others how to spend their money as scary?

 

kballs says:  That's right, you can choose to be wasteful ifn you damn well fcuking please.  People who think they are being told what they must drive should wake up, the world doesn't revolve around you OR tell you what to drive... or do you feel that guilty?Most statements are of more of a "reevaluate your needs" nature than saying "everyone must drive a Prius, SUVs should be illegal".  There are people who use their big trucks and SUVs to capacity for a majority of their miles driven. But there are a lot of people who commute daily in their big gas hogs, completely empty... their reasons for "choice" are along the lines of "I like the space, which I never stretch out in because I'm always behind the wheel", "It can haul stuff, which I rarely do, but it's cool, unlike a minivan or wagon", or "It's safe because it's big and heavy and I 'win' in collisions by killing and maiming the other people."  So you're welcome to choose to be wasteful. In fact, I'm going to freely express my god-given freedom and patriotic right to be wasteful by buying a Prius, and all the gallons of gas I save over a Suburban I'm going to set on fire for all to watch. I have a right to impact the environment and it's future effects on our race to the full extent of everyone else even if I don't need to, because it's about choice, not needs, practicality, or moral obligation.

 

The price of rice, which has almost tripled in a year, rose 2 per cent on the Chicago Board of Trade yesterday as the United Nations food agency gave warning that millions faced starvation because aid agencies were unable to meet the additional financial burden.

Gordon Brown responded to mounting concerns about the global rise in food prices by signalling that he might scale back Britain’s commitment to biofuels, which critics say has exacerbated the food crisis because land has been given over to grow crops for energy rather than food.  John Bason, finance director of Associated British Foods, one of Britain’s biggest food producers, said that wheat prices had doubled in a year and supermarkets would have to raise the price of bread again. Vegetable oil was also likely to soar in price because the price of corn oil in the US had almost tripled, he said.  [Of course, this is due to the US ethanol craze, and subsidization of biodiesel production.]

At a meeting at Downing Street yesterday, Mr Brown asked farmers, supermarkets and consumer groups to agree steps to rein in rising food costs. He said that Britain must become “more selective” in how it supported environmental initiatives to counter climate change.

“If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets,” he wrote on Downing Street’s website. Britain is now likely to press the European Union to recast its target for 10 per cent of transport fuels to be supplied from biofuels by 2020. Downing Street sources said that ministers would press for any such target to be introduced in a more “sustainable” way and that Britain would not go beyond its own target for 5 per cent of fuels to come from biofuels by 2010....

Yesterday’s [UN] meeting on food prices also focused on the impact on developing countries of global increases in food costs, driven by higher production costs as oil prices soar and increased demand due to population growth. [Apparently even the UN understands "supply and demand."  That doesn't say much about the average American who thinks George Bush and the Big Oil CEO's are responsible for pump prices.]

The United Nations Food Agency said that rising food prices threatened to plunge 100 million people across the world into hunger....
 

Imagine a world where there's no prejudice, no judgments, nobody feels "left out" because of unsightly shaped, fungal-infected or discolored toenails.  Imagine wearing sandals with no fear of name calling, retribution, disenfranchisement, disciplinary action at work, sexual harassment, trouble concentrating, headaches, arm tingling, blurry vision, or a bad hair day--due to toenails.

 

Shed the stigma of toenail prejudice Monday, April 28 on National Toenail Day!  Miss Scarlet's Vittles has generously volunteered to host a series of educational events and a photographic ensemble of nails entitled "Cutting Free."

Watch for it.  Get ready.  National Toenail Day:  Love yourself.  Love your toenails!

 

espect for the president is a longstanding American tradition and one that is still very much alive, as the weeklong national obsequies for Ronald Reagan recently proved. But there is also an opposing tradition of holding up our presidents, especially while they are in office, to ridicule and scorn.

Which is to say that while Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression. Mixing sober outrage with mischievous humor and blithely trampling the boundary between documentary and demagoguery, Mr. Moore takes wholesale aim at the Bush administration, whose tenure has been distinguished, in his view, by unparalleled and unmitigated arrogance, mendacity and incompetence.

That Mr. Moore does not like Mr. Bush will hardly come as news. "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opens in Manhattan today and in the rest of the country on Friday, is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies. What did you expect? Mr. Moore is often impolite, rarely subtle and occasionally unwise. He can be obnoxious, tendentious and maddeningly self-contradictory. He can drive even his most ardent admirers crazy. He is a credit to the republic.

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

Positing the theory of intelligent design as a valid scientific hypothesis, the film frames the refusal of “big science” to agree as nothing less than an assault on free speech. Interviewees, including the scientist Richard Sternberg, claim that questioning Darwinism led to their expulsion from the scientific fold (the film relies extensively on the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy — after this, therefore because of this) [Classic tactic I: fail to definitively support emotional outbursts, and then follow with philosophical gobbledygook], while our genial audience surrogate, the actor and multihyphenate Ben Stein, nods sympathetically. (Mr. Stein is also a freelance columnist who writes Everybody’s Business for The New York Times.)

 

Prominent evolutionary biologists, like the author and Oxford professor Richard Dawkins — accurately identified on screen as an “atheist” — are provided solely to construct, in cleverly edited slices, an inevitable connection between Darwinism and godlessness. Blithely ignoring the vital distinction between social and scientific Darwinism [Classic tactic II: Lead reader to assume understanding and ability to discuss complex ideas, yet simply regurgitate terminology incidentally recalled from undergraduate sociology], the film links evolution theory to fascism (as well as abortion, euthanasia and eugenics), shamelessly invoking the Holocaust with black-and-white film of Nazi gas chambers and mass graves.

 

Every few minutes familiar — and ideologically unrelated [Classic tactic III: Assume a relationship does not exist because you do not understand one] — images interrupt the talking heads: a fist-shaking Nikita S. Khrushchev; Charlton Heston being subdued by a water hose in “Planet of the Apes.” This is not argument, it’s circus, a distraction from the film’s contempt for precision and intellectual rigor. This goes further than a willful misunderstanding of the scientific method [Revisit tactic II: substitute terminology from undergraduate biology-for-liberal-arts-majors instead of sociology]. The film suggests, for example, that Dr. Sternberg lost his job at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History because of intellectual discrimination but neglects to inform us that he was actually not an employee but rather an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term.

 

Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges [Classic tactic IV: act horrified that anyone dare draw abstract conclusions but do so yourself in the disciplines of "art" and "media"] at every turn “Expelled” is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. In its fudging, eliding and refusal to define terms, the movie proves that the only expulsion here is of reason itself.

 

“Expelled” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has smoking guns and drunken logic [Revisit tactic I].

 

THE lonesome chill that seeps through Ang Lee's epic western, "Brokeback Mountain," is as bone deep as the movie's heartbreaking story of two cowboys who fall in love almost by accident. It is embedded in the craggy landscape where their idyll begins and ends. It creeps into the farthest corners of the wide-open spaces they share with coyotes, bears and herds of sheep and rises like a stifled cry into the big, empty sky that stretches beyond the horizon....(oh hurl). 

 

Epic??  C'mon on.  (Note to self: avoid all references to "herds of sheep" when discussing such a topic.)  

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

The Second Crucifixion

 

They crushed the thorns into His brow and struck harsh blows that day.

O Lord, I would not treat Thee so--I only walked away.

 

They drove the nails into His hands and raised the cross on high.

O Lord, that men could be so vile--I only passed Thee by.

 

But blinded eyes and heart of stone will spurn a love like Thine.

O Lord, I struck the cruelest blows; the sharpest thorns were mine.

--Victoria Beaudin Johnson