Consumer Reports early impressions of the +Fisker Automotive Karma are up and it doesn't seem to live up to its $100,000+ price tag.
In large part, the Karma comes across as more of an under-engineered design concept than a viable mass production machine. Not an auspicious start.
#fiskerkarmahybrid #fiskerautomotive
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
Reshared post from +Phil Nickinson
I take it back. It is possible to add something intelligent to the Mike Daisey thing, and this is how you do it..
Embedded Link
4 important truths about Mike Daisey’s lies & the way ‘This American Life’ told them | Poynter.
Standing for journalism, strengthening democracy | Journalism training, media news & how to's
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
We heard an unfamiliar bird call in the yard this evening and can’t identify it. Can anyone else help?
Embedded Link
https://sam.abuelsamid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/bird-call.mp3
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
We heard an unfamiliar bird call in the yard this evening and can’t identify it. Can anyone else help?
The years following the passage of the first automotive emissions standards in the early 1970s until the mid-to-late 1980s is often referred to by car enthusiasts as the malaise-era.
The name comes from the fact that between smog standards and fuel economy requirements, engines lost much of the power they produced in the 1960s and driveability was often severely degraded. The problem was that sensors and electronic control systems such as they were at the time were expensive and generally crude at best. In order to modify the behavior of engines to clean them up, engineers came up with elaborate systems that used actuators powered by the vacuum produced inside an engine when the throttle is closed.
Lift the hood on any car from that era and you'll find a rat's nest of black rubber vacuum hoses running here, there and everywhere. Thankfully, by the late 1980s and early 1990s automotive engineers were able to start taking advantage of the increasingly powerful microprocessor technology that was at the heart of the personal computer revolution. With CPU's, sensors and electrically driven actuators a new golden age of motoring was born.
While it's true that fuel economy standards didn't increase from the late 1980s until just a few years ago, average power outputs doubled in that same period. That means the engineers were actually able to double specific fuel efficiency in that 20 year period by getting twice as much power from the same amount of fuel.
I'll leave the discussion of why they chose to double power instead of absolute fuel efficiency to a later post.
For those that don't recall those engines from the time when I was taking auto mechanics in high school, check out the Honda Civic vacuum hose routing diagram that Murilee Martin found to get an idea of what mechanics of that period had to deal with on a regular basis. It's no wonder that these engines often ran poorly. A leaking vacuum line could easily make an engine stall altogether.
#cars #malaise_era #vacuumhoses
Embedded Link
Quick, Why Won’t This Car Pass the Smog Check? | The Truth About Cars
I've had more Honda Civics than any other type of car (at least one example of each of the first five Civic generations), at one point owning two '85 hatches
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
Watch out vermin, Buffy the mouse slayer will get you!
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
Judging by the performance so far at Sebring, it looks like the Honda Performance Development ARX-03a of Mucle Milk Pickett racing will be the car to beat in the rest of the American Le Mans Series season. For most of the race the HPD car has been running a strong third to the two leading Audi R18s and even now is only down one lap. A second ARX-03a run by the JRM team is running fourth.
What's interesting is that this is basically a four year old design. The ARX-03a is an evolution of the ARX-01e that +Highcroft Racing took to second overall at Sebring last year. That car was an update of the ARX-02a the same team used to win the LMP1 class in 2009 when it still carried Acura branding.
The elimination of the P1 class from ALMS in 2010 meant that Highcroft went back to an updated version of the original ARX-01a P2-class car that the team had run since the Acura/HPD prototype effort began in 2007.
Even now, the car still bears a strong resemblance to its forebear. The fact that the ARX-03a and the P2 class ARX-03b remain so competitive in their sixth year of competition is a testament to the fundamental goodness of Nick Wirth's original design.
#americanlemansseries #hpd #hondaperformancedevelopment #sebring12
2009 Acura/HPD ARX-02a
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
Eight and a half hours into the 12 hours of Sebring, there is a great battle raging in GT. The first four cars in the class are running practically nose to tail with Corvette, BMW, Corvette and BMW and then the fifth place Porsche 911 less than 10 seconds back from that group.
#sebring #sebring12 #alms #americanlemansseries
Google+: Reshared 1 times
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
Mike Daisey is right about not being a journalist, but that doesn't mean he's not influential.
When his tale about working conditions in Chinese consumer electronics factories exploded onto the headlines it raised awareness about the human effect of the products we buy every day. Despite the exaggerations and fabrications in Daisey's version of the narrative, the reality is that China has a manufacturing advantage over the United States because of generally poor working conditions and low pay.
The flexibility and responsiveness that Apple likes to tout from its Chinese suppliers comes from having tens of thousands of workers living in crowded dorms adjacent to the factory that can be pulled in day or night and put to work. That sort of behavior would never be tolerated here and should not be tolerated in China. Cranking up production of a new phone or tablet is simply not so important that humans need to be abused in this way.
The blowback against Daisey's actions may well inoculate companies like Apple, HP and Dell as well as suppliers like Foxconn so that people ignore the problem that is all too real.
#China #chinesefactories #apple #foxconn #mikedaisey
Reshared post from +Dan Gillmor
Mike Daisey "undermined the cause he purported to advance. That's the real scandal."
Embedded Link
Worse Than Kony2012: The Tragedy of Mike Daisey's Lies About China
American
consumers can't do much for Central Africa or Afghanistan, but they
have real power to improve Chinese labor abuses. Will they be less
inclined to believe the next person who tells them ho…
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
+Jeff Jarvis as he so often does calls out the flaws in Mike Daisey's logic, especially mistake #2 Thinking that if you don't call it journalism, it doesn't have to be true. Falso.
Reshared post from +Jeff Jarvis
This American Life retracts its most popular show (podcast) ever: Mike Daisy's monologue and "reporting" on Apple's factories in China.
From the press release: "I'm not going to say that I didn't take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard," Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. "My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it's not
journalism. It's theater."No, Daisy's dangerous mistake #1: Thinking that shortcuts lead to the truth, not away from it.
Daisy's dangerous mistake #2: Thinking that if you don't call it journalism, it doesn't have to be true. Falso.
Daisy's suicidal mistake #3: Thinking that, once discovered, This American Life of all shows would let him get away with it. Wrong.
Embedded Link
http://www.chicagopublicmedia.org/sites/default/files/Retraction%20Press%20Release%20Final.pdf
Google+: View post on Google+
Post imported by Google+Blog. Created By Daniel Treadwell.
