(why I write computer programs instead of movie scripts)

My guess? One of these suckers on the camera lens.

I think the situation is the same with nuclear power. People are irrationally scared: nuclear power is dangerous, and we don't have any way to deal with the radioactive waste. Nuclear power is in fact less dangerous than most of what is currently used. Compare nuclear plant deaths to coal plant deaths, you might find that in the US there have been zero related to nuclear power (and then factor in the deaths related to coal mining vs. uranium/plutonium mining). Further, while it's true that we don't have a way to permanently get rid of radioactive waste, we can contain it, which is much more than can be said of the emissions from coal, oil, and gas plants.

But hey, what do I know. "Nuke-ular" and diesel are scary words, apparently.

The best way for me to express my sentiment for this development is graphically:

Really? A movie about Facebook?

Honestly, having to pay for MS Office is unfortunate, but goddamn is it heads and shoulders above OpenOffice.org.

Though, I hear good things about Word Perfect 98.

Also, all blogs have an RSS feed located at http://[blognamehere].twosense.org/rss.php

Oil is pretty central to the economy, and so from an economic standpoint, I do think that really high oil prices are a bad thing. High gasoline prices, on the other hand, I don't really care about. As far as I'm concerned, if high gasoline prices cause people to drive more efficiently that's great. If they cause people to drive less, that's great as well, from a number of angles: energy, pollution, traffic. I'm personally fine with paying a price premium to drive when I have to or really want to, so I'm not going to bitch and moan about high gas prices and let it affect my political decisions or opinions more than more pressing issues like education and foreign policy.

This leads me to a recent political fiasco regarding fuel mileage and tire pressure, so I've decided to talk a bit about fuel mileage in general, starting with this Obama tire pressure thing. For those who didn't hear about this, recently Obama stated that if everyone in the US inflated their tires properly, the reduction in our oil consumption resulting from that would exceed the amount of oil we would net from new offshore drilling for 10 years. Following this, the McCain crew along with a bunch of other Republicans, (Rush Limbaugh, etc) jumped on a bandwagon making fun of Obama for this, including distributing tire pressure gauges labeled "Obama's Energy Plan." They find the situation completely absurd, apparently, because they can't imagine how the pressure of a car's tires could affect the car's mileage.

And they're right, the situation is completely absurd. But not the way they think. It's absurd because Obama is absolutely correct. Tire pressure does affect gas mileage, and you should most definitely make sure that your tire pressure is correct, if not for energy reasons, then for cost reasons or safety reasons. It's absurd because Obama is correct that this would save more than new offshore drilling would produce, and yet the Republicans are still in favor of the drilling. I don't think Obama is saying so much that inflating tire pressures is the solution to our energy issue, but that if something so little, so simple, and so straightforward would help us more than offshore drilling... maybe said drilling isn't such a good idea after all.

Of course, it seems that a lot of people are eating up what the Republicans are saying, because apparently they also find it absurd that tire pressure can affect gas mileage that much. I'm sure the Republicans knew that, but what I haven't been able to decide yet is which would be worse: they are completely aware that they are completely wrong, and are saying it anyway because they know people are gullible, or they have no idea that they are completely wrong, and are really that stupid to have not researched the facts before trashing Obama for saying that.

Enough talk about tire pressure politics. There are a few other things related to gas mileage that I've seen or heard of people doing or saying recently that aren't the brightest, but are forgiveable for people who don't know too much about cars. The first: premium gasoline. A lot of high performance cars (luxury/sports cars, cars with turbochargers/superchargers) require premium gasoline. This is because they compress the fuel/air mixture in the engine more before igniting it because that generates more power. Premium gasoline is better in these situations because it has a higher resistance to spontaneous ignition (ignition without a spark, aka autoignition), and if lower octane g asoline is used in those engines it might detonate when/where it shouldn't, causing engine damage.

I've seen articles from various sources recently telling people that their cars can still run on lower octane gasoline even though the manufacturer recommends premium, suggesting that they could save some money by buying the cheaper gas. It is generally true that in newer cars, running lower octane gas won't damage the engine; the car's computers are smart enough to change the engine timing to deal with it. However, the critical flaw in this argument is that it reduces the engine's power output and efficiency. With gas prices at around $4 right now, and premium gasoline about $0.25 more per gallon, you'd save around 5% on each tank of gas. That's great, except you probably lose around 3-4 MPG, which on most cars on the road translates into around 10% lost on each tank of gas. If your car is supposed to take premium, give it premium. Probably more importantly, if you could afford a car that requires premium gas, you can probably afford the extra 5% on gas.

Heard any of this stuff about cars running on water? HHO? It's completely fucking bogus and thermodynamically impossible. The claim is that you can equip your car with these kits that use electricity generated by your cars engine to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is then injected into your engine's combustion chamber along with the gasoline, improving power and gasoline fuel efficiency. In other words, getting something for nothing, and a violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Supposedly there are tons of testimonials saying that it really wor ks, but my theory is that they are all people who are too embarrassed to admit that they spent a ton of money on wh at amounts to snake oil.

Another thing that people are doing in desperation to save money is purchasing new fuel-sipping cars or hybrids. If they are doing this and were already going to purchase a new car anyway, then fine, that's a great idea. But it seems that a lot of people have bought big trucks and SUVs in the past 10 years, and are now desperately trying to get rid of them so that they can buy a Fit or Prius or whatever. If you don't believe me, take a look at cars for sale on Craigslist. Buying a new car solely to save gas is a poor idea. There are two reasons why you would do this, and they are both bad:

• Cost: Your Lincoln Navigator is costing you too much money in gas, so you decide to sell it for $3500, at least $6000 under Kelley Blue Book value, since the market for gas guzzlers is so shitty because of high gas prices. So you successfully sell the car to someone who apparently needs a luxury SUV, and you purchase a Prius for $25,000. At this point you are out $21,500, so you better hope you save a lot of money on gas. Well, you're in luck, because your Navigator got 13MPG, and your new Prius gets 46MPG. So how many miles do you have to drive to make up the difference? At $4, I figure about 96,000. Hope you do a lot of driving, and keep in mind that's a pretty extreme example. If you bought a regular small car that got just say, 35MPG for about the same price as the Prius, you're looking at more like 111,000 miles. If you buy that car with financing for 5 years, you're going to have to be driving around 20,000 miles a year to make it worth it. That's about what I did last year, but that was with two trips across the entire country.
• Environment: I'll make this one a bit shorter, and with fewer numbers, and with a bit more handwaving because this one's a bit less clear. The general gist of this is that it takes a whole lot of energy and resources to build a car, so if you go out and buy a new car just to save gas/the environment, you're probably not helping it out that much. Of course, if you're already going to buy a car, and choose to get a Yaris instead of a Hummer, yeah, that was probably a good call. But maybe if you really care about saving the environment, you should get a used Honda Accord. Or a bicycle.

Here's an actual tip that might help you, though. If you've got an electronically fuel injected car (pretty much anything made in the last 20 years), when you're slowing down to a stop, you'll save more gas by leaving the car in gear than you will by putting it in neutral or disengaging the clutch. The reason why is pretty simple; most fuel injected cars completely stop injecting fuel a short bit after you let off the throttle completely, and just let the force of the wheels turning keep the engine going, at least until the engine gets down to idle speed. In neutral or when the clutch is disengaged, though, the engine has to burn fuel to keep the engine running at idle speed because there is nothing else to keep it going.

Of course, how can I talk about fuel-saving tips without mentioning hypermiling? Hypermiling is basically doing as much as possible to get maximum fuel efficiency, and some people actually turn this into a sport/contest. A lot of what they do is pretty smart and clever, but some of it is stupid, obnoxious, or just straight up dangerous. These tactics include: drafting really closely, cruising (mostly down hills) with the engine off, driving below the speed limit, and overinflating tires. Don't do that shit.