a phrase you may be hearing more and more

'active disassembly'

also, 'disassembly line'

Nokia has designed a phone that, under very specific heating from (picture Dr. Evil finger quotes) lasers, will activate shape memory alloy, which will pop open and allow the other components of the phone to basically fall out. Evidently it costs between 3 and 8 cents per phone to manually crack the thing open to take out the battery before it's shredded and partially recycled. This way, once the disassembly line and switch to (Dr. Evil finger quotes again) shape memory alloy is paid for, recycling will be much closer to free for the company (they're being motivated by increasingly strict recycling laws).

How long before active disassembly isn't novel, just an obvious step unworthy of much outside chatter?

ooooh, baaabyyy, I loooove you...

Estimated 0-60 in 4 seconds.

*sweaty palms*

Top speed over 130 mph.

*increasing heart rate*

Handling based on Lotus Elise.

*shortness of breath*

250 mile range.

Electric.

*ohhhh yeahhh*

I have a child on the way. I wonder if a healthy white baby fetches the sticker price?

www.teslamotors.com

UPDATE: It hit 130 mph in a test drive, confirming at least one of the above projections... MAN I hope that baby (white or whatever) has all its appendages and a face that can fetch $89K.

fotD 5

OK, the last Tour thing for awhile...

I want to smoke a cigarette...

...and then fall asleep. The 2006 Tour was just that good.

Of course there was the day Landis ascended to heaven: Stage 17.

But Mickael Rasmussen rode a masterful breakaway in Stage 16 that could only have been eclipsed on the next day by Landis' legendary, Merckx-like ride. David de la Fuente, the Tour's overall most aggressive rider, accounted for gritty breakaways over the 2,000 miles, Robbie McEwen won three stages to seize his third green jersey, Thor Hushovd bookended the Tour with wins in the Prologue and yesterday's finish, and Viatcheslav Ekimov, a rock of cycling, closed out his career. Add in Eki's Olympic (two golds and a silver over 16 years) and other stage and race victories, and cycling is losing a steady giant. In a nod to his stature, the rider whose career I've followed since Perestroika led the peloton yesterday onto the Champ Elysees: fifteen starts in the Tour and fifteen finishes, a measure surpassed only once.

Here's a quick photo essay of the Tour, day by day, from BBC.

No analysis or commentary necessary. Vive Landis, Vive le Tour!

A new industry emerges?

From craigslist:

Wanted URGENTLY: Best Man for wedding in Holyoke, MA (Sun 11th)

---

Date: 2006-06-09, 5:13AM EDT


Wedding Date: Sun 11th June 2006

Ok, so I'm backing out on my cousin last minute, and I before I do it, I need someone lined up to take my place, because I'm not sure that he'll be able to find someone at such short notice.

Pay is $200+ (negotiable), plus a night in the hotel in question (I'll sacrafice my room there for the right candidate).

You MUST have comprehensive experience in this position, have a TUX (because the one I have might not fit you), and have transport to and from the locations (to be divulged to selected candidate, but it's in Holyoke).

Email me with a few pictures (preferably in a tux at a wedding, in the Best Man role) and brief history of experience in this position, and a telephone number where I can contact you.

This will be a one time contract job. You will be required to be available during the entire day, from 9am until 12am (perhaps even until 2am). You will be required to make a speech and fulfill other customary duties normally executed by the best man at weddings. If you happen to find a beautiful woman to dance the night away with, that's fine, so long as the aforementioned duties are fulfilled in their entirety and in a satisfactory manner.

Due to the sensitivity of this position, and the short time available, please only apply if you are sincere, clinically sane & stable and experienced.

--

• Job location is Holyoke, MA
  
• Compensation: I'd like to get this done for $200, but it's negotiable.
  
• This is a contract job.
  
• yes -- OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
  
• no -- Please, no phone calls about this job!
  
• no -- Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
  
• yes -- Reposting this message elsewhere is OK.
  

169648769

What strikes me about the whole ad is that the ex-best man walks the tightrope of responsible employer and potentially disastrous absurdity with clear panache. No updated info was available; I hope it either worked out when a model-quality med student from the top of his class offered a speech that made the maid of honor cry and leave her deadbeat boyfriend for him or went horribly awry when his meds wore off and he imagined the bride was on fire while trying violently to avoid touching anyone lest their space germs get on him.

OH MY GOD!!!

Vive Landis!!!

I thought yesterday was the closing scene for Praying Landis; it seemed like he absolutely fell apart, plummeting from le maillot jeune to 11th place, 8:08 down.

Today he ripped the top off the whoop-ass can and ground it into every man he passed, getting launched off the front of the peloton by his team, and steadily accelerating, shaking competitors free as he went. A truly epic ride that makes me hate Wide Open West cable just that much more because they don't carry OLN so I won't be able to see the coverage. Next year, Comcast, come hell or high water. Still 30 seconds out of yellow, but he showed today he's got the legs to take it.

Great god-damned riding today, truly a legendary performance. If Floyd dies in his sleep tonight, it will be with a smile.

MAN, I love this race.

our way is paved with good intentions

Interesting how early foresight can come back to bite one in the ass. The 1988 Alternative Motor Fuels Act gave credit to auto companies toward their CAFE standards for developing engines that could use "alternative fuels." In 1988, that meant ethanol, as electric cars were still pretty Flash Gordon and no one had heard of a hyrid. The Act was renewed in 2004, but the context has changed greatly - hybrids now present the greatest opportunity to reduce oil consumption, eclipsing the gains that could be had by ethanol (there's little agreement on whether ethanol is much of an improvement over gasoline). So it doesn't incentivize producing cars that are more efficient and don't burn gas as much as it incentivizes producing cars that burn ethanol.

Credits are available for producing hybrids, too, but if you get a credit either way, and one way costs more, any business focused strictly on the immediate bottom line will happilly cut it's long-term throat. Ford declared itself just such a company by dropping hybrid goals it had declared in favor of using the same old designs with some cheap modifications and uncertain advantages (and it was the most progressive of the Big 3 on hybrids). Congrats, dinosaur. Toyota, on the other hand, is in the fight for the long term, increasing its investments in hybrids, grabbing more market share, and having a clear impact on oil use. Back to the Alternative Motor Fuels Act - in this case, is it enough of a factor in Ford's decision that it can be identified as one of the causes for the continued pathetic performance of the American car industry?

Ford shareholders: Take the loss, dump Ford, and buy Toyota.

Thanks to Treehugger.com.

add this to the list...

...of things the President does that I can't fathom:

See how his face never really changes expression? It's like he's just bopping along, thinking about getting a pizza or something, when 'Oh, hey, some shoulders to rub...'

Rub, rub, 'wait, she doesn't like that. No problem, keep walking...'

'Now where's that pizza?'

Assassin

The first climb on today's stage is the Col du Galibier. It's named the 'Souvenir Henri Desgrange,' the Memorial to or In Memory of Henri Desgrange for having the highest pass in this year's Tour. Desgrange was the race founder who, in 1910, included the Pyrenees in the route for the first time. Lapize, the winner of that year's Tour, reportedly spat out just one word to Desgrange upon finishing: "Assassin!"

Though Galibier is in the Alps, not the Pyrenees, it's this year's official assassin, though it follow's on the heels of yesterday's feature of the legendary Alpe de Huez, a shorter (3 miles) but steeper (sometimes 12%) ride riddled with switchbacks. But even with an average gradient of 'only' 4.5%, the Col's 26 and a half miles will be punishing in today's 90+ degree heat.

26 miles of up never feels good.

fotD4

Stranded
Originally uploaded by Sizif.

fotD 3

Believe that fotD will be a daily occurence at your own risk. These two guys were holding their breath, waiting for the next 'daily' installment.

behold the power of cold

I haven't had time to read the article yet, but AlterNet displayed this great graphic demonstrating air-conditioning's effect on where people live in the US. It shows population changes in major cities over the past 50 years, when air-conditioning was introduced, and their average summer high temps. Clearly, almost no one would live year round in Las Vegas, the country's fastest-growing city, if not for air-con.

It's interesting to consider that the huge leaps in civic success of big southern cities haven't rested as much on effective planning, business know-how, and hard work as much as they may have on mass migration and rising tax bases.

Currently 20% of the electricity generated in the US goes to cooling us down. Air-conditioning has become a necessity that will exact a very big toll if we don't better address how to provide it with greener buildings and more sustainable power generation.

Re: Yahoo! News Story - GATES AND BUFFETT

A friend emailed this article to me:

GATES AND BUFFETT: 1000 TIMES WORSE THAN KEN LAY - Yahoo! News

My reply:

That was the dumbest article I've read in about a decade.

"instead of building plants in the Third World and relying on the slave labor of prison inmates!"


WTF is he talking about??!! All those darn Microsoft plants in Indonesia, where they use endangered trees and child slave prostitute labor to, um..., write code for the latest crappy version of Windows?

I've read Rall before, and occasionally think he's not a total windbag. And I believe that both Gates and Buffett have done harm in this world just through their legal business endeavors, like most any self-made rich person; business, like sports, almost always requires that someone lose, and the size of their businesses ensures it. But Jesus, to actually compare them to someone who purposely and repeatedly broke the law, consciously ruining his employees' lives (via their retirement savings) is quite a stretch. And I'm sorry, but Buffett just gave away 37 BILLION dollars. Not the end of the world for him, but more than most countries of the world can claim as their GDP.

Back to the tenacity it takes to be a self-made rich person. The corollary of Rall's accusations is that someone who's obscenely wealthy who did nothing to earn the money besides being born would be blameless, yet those aren't the types of people I want to hold up as heroes for my children, either.

You're right, compassion is relative. Just one day of Mother Theresa eclipses beyond all perception the act of Buffett giving up money he can afford to give up. But compassion is still compassion, and Lay died without having it, so he doesn't deserve it. Gates and Buffett are now trying to act on it, so they should at the very least be excluded from the same scorn we reserve for the whining uber-rich who still feel the need to steal from those less fortunate.


j

Not exactly Top Gun with swim fins

Opening September, 2006: The Guardian

*initial reaction, with a surge of adrenaline* 'YES!! A helicopter search and rescue movie!!'

followed by, 'Wait, Disney, Kutcher, and... Costner.'

ack.

then the realization: 'Coast Guard, not Navy.'

double ack.

Coast Guard ocean rescue procedures:
1. Find survivor.
2. Lean out of helicopter door.
3. Cup hands over mouth.
4. Yell "Stand up!"

Missed opportunities by stupid Disney:
1. Naming the movie 'So Others May Live' - the rescue swimmer motto
2. Signing me, not Costner, as the grizzled heroic veteran (I'dve done it for loose change and a gift certificate to Taco Bell)
3. Using ex-Disney guy Michael Eisner as the water-bloated rescue dummy that he is.

What's next:
GI Jane II, where rescue swimmer Kutcher, having converted to the Navy, rescues SEAL Demi after her Mark V is sunk by 'Tears of the Sun' SEAL Bruce Willis. Perennial SEAL Michael Biehn will cameo, appearing very unsmiling.

Random generalizing question and wrap up:
Does repeatedly playing a bad-ass in a movie, or running in a circle of actors who've all played bad-asses make one feel more bad-assish than is merited by one's actual history of acting classes and working as a waiter until one's big break? Or does all the jumping around while playing a bad ass actually impart bad ass qualities? Whatever.
Costner should've stopped with Bull Durham, one of the finest movies ever made.
Doesn't matter because, I'm gonna fork over my eight bucks and lap up the Hollywood inaccuracies and bald emotional manipulation like the rest of the sheep; the only difference will be I'll be wearing my So Others May Live shirt and loudly cheering every tear-jerking catastrophe that could possibly lead to a picturesque and stirring soundtrack-accompanied rescue.

fotD 2

Windy...


We'll be without Mt. Ventoux this year in the Tour. There've gotta be some happy hearts in the peloton at that thought.

fotD 1

Announcing the flickr of the Day.

They're so happy about it in Taiwan, they risked an international crisis by shooting off fireworks pointed at their grumpy red neighbor, claiming that they were the ones who really invented them.

Linux, ISO9000, and Mandarin

Wow.

How much can China's strategy to teach the world Chinese be compared to a company's strategy to get the world to adopt the standards upon which it relies to increase market share, thereby solidifying its position at the top of the food chain?

1%

I've learned that there's a certain degree of risk that isn't worth minimizing. It becomes prohibitive in terms of time or effort or money or even will to chase down every last specter that might go bump in the night, maybe.

Add to that the necessity for a good leader to not get caught up in every tiny detail lest they be immobilized, and you have a good picture of our Vice President's sketchy and inconsistently applied 1% doctrine. Chasing down even heinous threats that have only a minute chance of occurring doesn't sound to me like effectively safeguarding us from terrorism when there are so many credible and immediate threats to our safety; it sounds like flailing without a good plan and losing sight of the target.

I feel itchy just thinking about it

Evidently the wide world of animals has seen fit to evolve foot-long centipedes capable of catching and killing bats. The linked video is not for the faint of heart.