http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/opinion/29schlosser.html
November 29, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Penny Foolish
By ERIC SCHLOSSER
THE migrant farm workers who harvest tomatoes in South Florida have one of the nation’s most backbreaking jobs. For 10 to 12 hours a day, they pick tomatoes by hand, earning a piece-rate of about 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket. During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes. For their efforts, this holiday season many of them are about to get a 40 percent pay cut.
Florida’s tomato growers have long faced pressure to reduce operating costs; one way to do that is to keep migrant wages as low as possible. Although some of the pressure has come from increased competition with Mexican growers, most of it has been forcefully applied by the largest purchaser of Florida tomatoes: American fast food chains that want millions of pounds of cheap tomatoes as a garnish for their hamburgers, tacos and salads.
In 2005, Florida tomato pickers gained their first significant pay raise since the late 1970s when Taco Bell ended a consumer boycott by agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound for its tomatoes, with the extra cent going directly to the farm workers. Last April, McDonald’s agreed to a similar arrangement, increasing the wages of its tomato pickers to about 77 cents per bucket. But Burger King, whose headquarters are in Florida, has adamantly refused to pay the extra penny — and its refusal has encouraged tomato growers to cancel the deals already struck with Taco Bell and McDonald’s.
This month the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, announced that it will not allow any of its members to collect the extra penny for farm workers. Reggie Brown, the executive vice president of the group, described the surcharge for poor migrants as “pretty much near un-American.”
Migrant farm laborers have long been among America’s most impoverished workers. Perhaps 80 percent of the migrants in Florida are illegal immigrants and thus especially vulnerable to abuse. During the past decade, the United States Justice Department has prosecuted half a dozen cases of slavery among farm workers in Florida. Migrants have been driven into debt, forced to work for nothing and kept in chained trailers at night. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers — a farm worker alliance based in Immokalee, Fla. — has done a heroic job improving the lives of migrants in the state, investigating slavery cases and negotiating the penny-per-pound surcharge with fast food chains.
Now the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange has threatened a fine of $100,000 for any grower who accepts an extra penny per pound for migrant wages. The organization claims that such a surcharge would violate “federal and state laws related to antitrust, labor and racketeering.” It has not explained how that extra penny would break those laws; nor has it explained why other surcharges routinely imposed by the growers (for things like higher fuel costs) are perfectly legal.
The prominent role that Burger King has played in rescinding the pay raise offers a spectacle of yuletide greed worthy of Charles Dickens. Burger King has justified its behavior by claiming that it has no control over the labor practices of its suppliers. “Florida growers have a right to run their businesses how they see fit,” a Burger King spokesman told The St. Petersburg Times.
Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger King has suggested that if the poor farm workers of southern Florida need more money, they should apply for jobs at its restaurants.
Three private equity firms — Bain Capital, the Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners — control most of Burger King’s stock. Last year, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein, earned the largest annual bonus in Wall Street history, and this year he stands to receive an even larger one. Goldman Sachs has served its investors well lately, avoiding the subprime mortgage meltdown and, according to Business Week, doubling the value of its Burger King investment within three years.
Telling Burger King to pay an extra penny for tomatoes and provide a decent wage to migrant workers would hardly bankrupt the company. Indeed, it would cost Burger King only $250,000 a year. At Goldman Sachs, that sort of money shouldn’t be too hard to find. In 2006, the bonuses of the top 12 Goldman Sachs executives exceeded $200 million — more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year. Now Mr. Blankfein should find a way to share some of his company’s good fortune with the workers at the bottom of the food chain.
Eric Schlosser is the author of “Fast Food Nation” and “Reefer Madness.”
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Super Trains
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4232548.html
Super Trains: Plans to Fix U.S. Rail Could End Road & Sky Gridlock
By John Quain
Published in the December 2007 issue.
With airports and highways more congested than ever, new steel-wheel and maglev lines that move millions in Europe and Japan have the potential to resurrect the age of American railroads.
Unlike conventional diesel- and electric-powered trains, the motor for maglev trains is essentially embedded in the track. The track creates a traveling magnetic field beneath the train, which lifts the cars and propels them at 300-plus mph. The train’s on-board systems are powered by induction from the track. And only the section of track under the train is energized.
Nestled between the seaside bluffs of Southern California’s Torrey Pines and the concrete arteries of Interstate 5 is the low-profile campus of General Atomics, home to the only magnetic levitation, or maglev, train in the United States. The company’s Electromagnetic Systems Division built the test track here three years ago, basing it in part on a design for a maglev rocket launch system developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
General Atomics’ director of maglev systems, Sam Gurol, has promised me a rare ride on this prototype train, which is not really a train at all, but rather a single, open chassis with no seats. The track looks a little like the guideway to the Walt Disney World monorail in miniature—just 400 ft. long and raised 2 ft. to 5 ft. off the ground.
As I climb aboard the chassis, a researcher waves enthusiastically from a nearby control room like a parent sending his child on a first roller coaster ride. Gurol stands next to me. “Hold on,” he warns, and directs me to a single bar at the front of the vehicle. There’s a subwaylike jolt, a quiet rumble, and we’re off.
For a few moments I feel nothing but the soft La Jolla breeze as we accelerate. It feels as if we’re floating, and we are: Between the car and the track is a 1-in. gap that allows the train to operate with zero mechanical friction. And almost no sound. One of the most surprising things about maglev propulsion is that it is whisper quiet. Suddenly, we’re decelerating. There’s another vibration, and we stop. The whole trip took 22 seconds, and our top speed was 20 mph, but the technology used on this modest test track may power a new generation of ground transportation in the United States.
As a proof of concept, the General Atomics maglev is impressive, but to fully grasp the potential of high-speed trains in this country, you still have to use your imagination. Here’s how it could work: You board a train in downtown Anaheim, Calif., at 5:30 on a Friday evening, destined for Las Vegas. Instead of inching out of the traffic-choked Los Angeles metro area on what is typically a 4- to 6-hour drive, or gambling that the 1-hour, 15-minute flight will depart on time, you glide out of the city, accelerating toward Barstow. As the train fires through the Mojave Desert, it hits a top speed of more than 300 mph, and then pulls into Vegas just 90 minutes after departure—in time for dinner before an 8:00 show.
That scenario won’t come to pass for years, but commercial high-speed train travel is no mere fantasy. In other countries, “steel-wheel” bullet trains have been in operation since the 1960s. Japan’s Shinkansen sails along the 645-mile route between Tokyo and Fukuoka at up to 186 mph. In France, the high-speed TGV tops out at 199 mph on the 480-mile run between Paris and Marseille, which takes 3 hours. Within the U.S., Amtrak’s seven-year-old Acela Express can reach speeds of up to 150 mph, although the tight curves and dangerous roadway crossings of the Northeast Corridor route curtail its average speed to 86 mph. Magnetic levitation, the technology floating the test train at General Atomics, has a smaller commercial footprint, but it has the most impressive capabilities in the world of superspeedy trains. A maglev train that began service four years ago in Shanghai runs 20 miles between Pudong International Airport and the city’s business district in just 8 minutes at speeds of up to 267 mph. And this past September, the city of Munich, Germany, announced plans to build a new maglev line that will cover the 25-mile route between Franz Joseph Strauss International Airport and downtown in 10 minutes.
Is Maglev Our Only Hope?
Proposed North American High Speed Train Projects
There are plenty of plans in the works for next-gen passenger rail, from upgrading existing lines to building super-high tech tracks. Given the expense, the technical challenges and the political complexity of these projects, it’ll be at least a decade before the first trains go into service—if they ever do.
If the projects mapped above come on line, just how fast, efficient and enviro-friendly will next-gen rail be compared to other options? We gathered numbers from federal and private sources for a 400-mile trip (the equivalent of traveling from Boston to Baltimore).
High-Speed Rail Amtrak (Diesel)
Travel time: 2 hours, 54 minutes (maglev); 4 hours, 35 minutes (steel-wheel)
Energy used per passenger mile: 1180 Btu* (maglev); 1200 Btu (steel-wheel)
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 0.47 pounds (maglev); 0.48 pounds (steel-wheel) Travel time: 7 hours, 5 minutes
Energy used per passenger mile: 2709 Btu
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 0.46 pounds
Airplane Car
Travel time: 2 hours, 20 minutes (including 1-hour check-in time)
Energy used per passenger mile: 3264 Btu
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 1.06 pounds Travel time: 7 hours, 6 minutes
Energy used per passenger mile: 3445 Btu
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 0.77 pounds
*Btu stands for British thermal unit. One gal. of gasoline yields about 114,000 Btu.
Acela notwithstanding, high-speed rail has been a difficult sell in this country because of high startup costs and the traditional reliability of our air and highway transportation systems. But it’s increasingly apparent that, in many areas, those systems are reaching capacity. The average commuter spends 38 hours per year stuck in traffic. And air travelers are spending more time in security lines and waiting on the runway before they ever get into the air. According to the Department of Transportation, 2007 is on track to be the worst year in the past decade for airport delays, with 25 percent of flights arriving late.
Furthermore, all that waiting costs money—and fuel. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that last year U.S. drivers wasted 2.9 billion gal. of fuel sitting in traffic. That kind of inefficiency is becoming increasingly worrisome, with oil cracking $80 a barrel and all those idling engines generating significant greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, high-speed trains draw power from the electrical grid, which is fueled primarily by domestically produced energy sources, such as coal. Plus, trains require about a third as much energy per passenger mile as automobiles (see above). Although nothing powered through the grid is entirely carbon-neutral, high-speed trains produce no direct emissions. “In the United States, some people are commuting to and from work over 200 miles a day using expensive fuel on dangerous highways,” says Rod Diridon, chair emeritus of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. “We’re going to have a tough time meeting any reasonable standards of pollution control if we continue to rely upon automobiles and short-hop airlines for our transportation needs.”
Building high-speed train routes in the U.S. would not be easy or cheap. Almost every proposed route faces some sort of political fight, and, depending on who you ask and what technology you’re considering, the cost per mile of high-speed rail is anywhere from $5 million to $100 million. However, more and more transportation engineers and city planners are starting to see high-speed rail as the only rational way to ease the strain that booming populations are placing on their already overwhelmed infrastructure. “By 2035, the six counties in the Los Angeles region will add roughly 6 million people—that’s the size of two Chicagos—to the 18 million residents already living here,” says Richard J. Marcus of the Southern California Association of Governments. “How are all those people going to get around?”
As our current transportation infrastructure groans under the stress, the idea of high-speed trains is starting to catch on. Eleven existing railway corridors in the U.S. are undergoing improvements for an upgrade to high-speed steel-wheel rail. Some of the most advanced, such as those in California, may be running trains as fast as 170 mph within 11 years. In addition, there are several maglev projects in development—one connecting the Pittsburgh airport and city center; another between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn.; and a third that would link Baltimore and Washington, D.C. While some maglev proposals have mini-mal support, others are being promoted by well-organized, politically connected operations. The most ambitious is the California-Nevada Interstate Maglev Project described earlier.
The Real Fate of High-Speed Trains
Reinventing Rail
There’s more than one way to make a train go fast. High-speed steel-wheel rail technologies are already in service in 13 countries, with several more projects in development. As for maglev, electromagnetic suspension (EMS) tech is just beginning to enter the marketplace. Electrodynamic suspension (EDS) is still experimental.
Steel-Wheel Electric Power: Overhead lines supply steel-wheel trains with 12 to 25 kilovolts of power, which is transmitted via an articulated arm known as a pantograph.
Motor: High-speed trains use AC traction motors and mechanical transmissions similar to those found in most electric trains.
Track: Wheel flanges lock trains to the rails. High-speed trains must run on tracks with wide curves or employ a hydraulic tilting mechanism.
Electromagnetic Suspension Levitation: The EMS train chassis wraps around the guideway. Upward-facing levitation magnets pull the train upward toward the track.
On-Board Magnets: Complex electronics constantly monitor the amount of current in the train’s guidance magnets to maintain a gap of just 38 in.
Propulsion: The underside of the guideway acts as a long, electromagnetic stator, which creates a traveling field to pull the train forward.
Electrodynamic Suspension Levitation: EDS trains are suspended above the guideway by repulsive forces that build up as the train’s magnets move past levitation coils in the track.
On-Board Magnets: Older systems use on-board cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets, while the General Atomics system uses permanent magnets in what’s known as a Halbach array.
Propulsion: A second set of propulsion coils in the guideway pulls the train forward with alternating current.
The technology for conventional steel-wheel high-speed trains is well-established. All high-speed rail trains are electrically powered, drawing current from overhead power lines. They operate on tracks carved into the landscape with wide-radius turns and grades that max out at about 5 percent. Although high-speed rail trains can travel on standard tracks, the Federal Railroad Administration has ruled that trains traveling faster than 125 mph must operate on tracks with no grade crossings—meaning no intersections with public roadways.
There are two main “flavors” of maglev technology: electromagnetic suspension (EMS) and electrodynamic suspension (EDS). In EMS designs, the train chassis wraps around a guideway and, when current is applied to the rail, the train rises. With EDS technology, the train does most of the heavy lifting, as powerful magnets in the chassis generate an opposing force against conducting plates in a guideway. Each technology has its advantages and drawbacks: EMS trains can levitate at a standstill, but require a lot of sophisticated electronics to monitor and adjust the gap between train and track. EDS trains require less on-board intelligence—they’re ”basically a dumb vehicle on a smart track,” explains General Atomics’ Gurol—but they need to build up speed on wheels before they can lift off the guideway.
Almost all of the maglev projects in the U.S. are based on the more established EMS technology by Transrapid International, the German company behind the Shanghai and the planned Munich maglev projects. EDS designs, on the other hand, are in the experimental stage. But the technology for both systems is still evolving. For example, the General Atomics test vehicle I rode on is an EDS design using magnets arranged in a pattern known as a Halbach array to achieve liftoff at walking speeds. MagneMotion, in Acton, Mass., is developing a hybrid EMS design that dispenses with much of that technology’s on-board electronic monitoring in favor of permanent magnets.
Maglev trains are capable of 300-plus-mph cruising speeds, but with current steel-wheel trains already passing 200 mph, is maglev really necessary? Maglev proponents argue that it is easier to maintain—most designs do not include wheels, transmissions, brakes or axles, thus reducing the need for repairs. “Engineers joke that the only moving parts are the doors,” says Richard Thornton, MagneMotion’s CEO. But maglev’s skeptics argue that lower maintenance costs are just speculation, since there aren’t enough commercially operating tracks to know what real-world performance would be. But mostly, critics of maglev point to its enormous expense. “Maglev routinely costs three to four times what is projected,” Diridon says.
In the end, the fate of high-speed trains in America will come down to money and politics. Federal funding comes and goes depending on the priorities of different branches of government. “We’re not really pushing high-speed rail,” says Steven Klum, of the Federal Railroad Administration. “This administration believes that money would be better spent on more immediate concerns, such as highways, transit and airports.” And Congressional appropriations for high-tech train projects often get labeled as pork. The proposed California-Nevada maglev line is a pet project of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—and an article last year in BusinessWeek painted a picture of the Nevada senator financing a popular local project with millions of federal dollars.
It does seem evident, however, that for trains to remain relevant in the U.S., they’ll have to go fast enough to release the pressure on short-haul air traffic in crowded corridors. Since the development timeline for high-speed trains is so long, many railway authorities are pursuing short-term technologies to make trains on existing tracks faster. Positive Train Control systems from companies such as General Electric use GPS positioning data to maintain distances between trains and to automatically stop trains in emergencies. These systems are already used in freight trains (PM covered cutting-edge freight-train tech in Jan. ’06) and could allow passenger trains to operate safely at speeds up to 150 mph—a far cry from the speeds of the world’s fastest trains, but at least a step in that direction.
A few hours after my ride on the experimental maglev track, I find myself back in the real world behind the wheel of a rental car, baking in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 5. As I fret about getting to the airport on time, I wonder how many other drivers around me are wishing there was a more efficient way to travel. There may be a better way—I just tried it.
Super Trains: Plans to Fix U.S. Rail Could End Road & Sky Gridlock
By John Quain
Published in the December 2007 issue.
With airports and highways more congested than ever, new steel-wheel and maglev lines that move millions in Europe and Japan have the potential to resurrect the age of American railroads.
Unlike conventional diesel- and electric-powered trains, the motor for maglev trains is essentially embedded in the track. The track creates a traveling magnetic field beneath the train, which lifts the cars and propels them at 300-plus mph. The train’s on-board systems are powered by induction from the track. And only the section of track under the train is energized.
Nestled between the seaside bluffs of Southern California’s Torrey Pines and the concrete arteries of Interstate 5 is the low-profile campus of General Atomics, home to the only magnetic levitation, or maglev, train in the United States. The company’s Electromagnetic Systems Division built the test track here three years ago, basing it in part on a design for a maglev rocket launch system developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
General Atomics’ director of maglev systems, Sam Gurol, has promised me a rare ride on this prototype train, which is not really a train at all, but rather a single, open chassis with no seats. The track looks a little like the guideway to the Walt Disney World monorail in miniature—just 400 ft. long and raised 2 ft. to 5 ft. off the ground.
As I climb aboard the chassis, a researcher waves enthusiastically from a nearby control room like a parent sending his child on a first roller coaster ride. Gurol stands next to me. “Hold on,” he warns, and directs me to a single bar at the front of the vehicle. There’s a subwaylike jolt, a quiet rumble, and we’re off.
For a few moments I feel nothing but the soft La Jolla breeze as we accelerate. It feels as if we’re floating, and we are: Between the car and the track is a 1-in. gap that allows the train to operate with zero mechanical friction. And almost no sound. One of the most surprising things about maglev propulsion is that it is whisper quiet. Suddenly, we’re decelerating. There’s another vibration, and we stop. The whole trip took 22 seconds, and our top speed was 20 mph, but the technology used on this modest test track may power a new generation of ground transportation in the United States.
As a proof of concept, the General Atomics maglev is impressive, but to fully grasp the potential of high-speed trains in this country, you still have to use your imagination. Here’s how it could work: You board a train in downtown Anaheim, Calif., at 5:30 on a Friday evening, destined for Las Vegas. Instead of inching out of the traffic-choked Los Angeles metro area on what is typically a 4- to 6-hour drive, or gambling that the 1-hour, 15-minute flight will depart on time, you glide out of the city, accelerating toward Barstow. As the train fires through the Mojave Desert, it hits a top speed of more than 300 mph, and then pulls into Vegas just 90 minutes after departure—in time for dinner before an 8:00 show.
That scenario won’t come to pass for years, but commercial high-speed train travel is no mere fantasy. In other countries, “steel-wheel” bullet trains have been in operation since the 1960s. Japan’s Shinkansen sails along the 645-mile route between Tokyo and Fukuoka at up to 186 mph. In France, the high-speed TGV tops out at 199 mph on the 480-mile run between Paris and Marseille, which takes 3 hours. Within the U.S., Amtrak’s seven-year-old Acela Express can reach speeds of up to 150 mph, although the tight curves and dangerous roadway crossings of the Northeast Corridor route curtail its average speed to 86 mph. Magnetic levitation, the technology floating the test train at General Atomics, has a smaller commercial footprint, but it has the most impressive capabilities in the world of superspeedy trains. A maglev train that began service four years ago in Shanghai runs 20 miles between Pudong International Airport and the city’s business district in just 8 minutes at speeds of up to 267 mph. And this past September, the city of Munich, Germany, announced plans to build a new maglev line that will cover the 25-mile route between Franz Joseph Strauss International Airport and downtown in 10 minutes.
Is Maglev Our Only Hope?
Proposed North American High Speed Train Projects
There are plenty of plans in the works for next-gen passenger rail, from upgrading existing lines to building super-high tech tracks. Given the expense, the technical challenges and the political complexity of these projects, it’ll be at least a decade before the first trains go into service—if they ever do.
If the projects mapped above come on line, just how fast, efficient and enviro-friendly will next-gen rail be compared to other options? We gathered numbers from federal and private sources for a 400-mile trip (the equivalent of traveling from Boston to Baltimore).
High-Speed Rail Amtrak (Diesel)
Travel time: 2 hours, 54 minutes (maglev); 4 hours, 35 minutes (steel-wheel)
Energy used per passenger mile: 1180 Btu* (maglev); 1200 Btu (steel-wheel)
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 0.47 pounds (maglev); 0.48 pounds (steel-wheel) Travel time: 7 hours, 5 minutes
Energy used per passenger mile: 2709 Btu
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 0.46 pounds
Airplane Car
Travel time: 2 hours, 20 minutes (including 1-hour check-in time)
Energy used per passenger mile: 3264 Btu
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 1.06 pounds Travel time: 7 hours, 6 minutes
Energy used per passenger mile: 3445 Btu
CO2 emissions per passenger mile: 0.77 pounds
*Btu stands for British thermal unit. One gal. of gasoline yields about 114,000 Btu.
Acela notwithstanding, high-speed rail has been a difficult sell in this country because of high startup costs and the traditional reliability of our air and highway transportation systems. But it’s increasingly apparent that, in many areas, those systems are reaching capacity. The average commuter spends 38 hours per year stuck in traffic. And air travelers are spending more time in security lines and waiting on the runway before they ever get into the air. According to the Department of Transportation, 2007 is on track to be the worst year in the past decade for airport delays, with 25 percent of flights arriving late.
Furthermore, all that waiting costs money—and fuel. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that last year U.S. drivers wasted 2.9 billion gal. of fuel sitting in traffic. That kind of inefficiency is becoming increasingly worrisome, with oil cracking $80 a barrel and all those idling engines generating significant greenhouse gas emissions. By contrast, high-speed trains draw power from the electrical grid, which is fueled primarily by domestically produced energy sources, such as coal. Plus, trains require about a third as much energy per passenger mile as automobiles (see above). Although nothing powered through the grid is entirely carbon-neutral, high-speed trains produce no direct emissions. “In the United States, some people are commuting to and from work over 200 miles a day using expensive fuel on dangerous highways,” says Rod Diridon, chair emeritus of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. “We’re going to have a tough time meeting any reasonable standards of pollution control if we continue to rely upon automobiles and short-hop airlines for our transportation needs.”
Building high-speed train routes in the U.S. would not be easy or cheap. Almost every proposed route faces some sort of political fight, and, depending on who you ask and what technology you’re considering, the cost per mile of high-speed rail is anywhere from $5 million to $100 million. However, more and more transportation engineers and city planners are starting to see high-speed rail as the only rational way to ease the strain that booming populations are placing on their already overwhelmed infrastructure. “By 2035, the six counties in the Los Angeles region will add roughly 6 million people—that’s the size of two Chicagos—to the 18 million residents already living here,” says Richard J. Marcus of the Southern California Association of Governments. “How are all those people going to get around?”
As our current transportation infrastructure groans under the stress, the idea of high-speed trains is starting to catch on. Eleven existing railway corridors in the U.S. are undergoing improvements for an upgrade to high-speed steel-wheel rail. Some of the most advanced, such as those in California, may be running trains as fast as 170 mph within 11 years. In addition, there are several maglev projects in development—one connecting the Pittsburgh airport and city center; another between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn.; and a third that would link Baltimore and Washington, D.C. While some maglev proposals have mini-mal support, others are being promoted by well-organized, politically connected operations. The most ambitious is the California-Nevada Interstate Maglev Project described earlier.
The Real Fate of High-Speed Trains
Reinventing Rail
There’s more than one way to make a train go fast. High-speed steel-wheel rail technologies are already in service in 13 countries, with several more projects in development. As for maglev, electromagnetic suspension (EMS) tech is just beginning to enter the marketplace. Electrodynamic suspension (EDS) is still experimental.
Steel-Wheel Electric Power: Overhead lines supply steel-wheel trains with 12 to 25 kilovolts of power, which is transmitted via an articulated arm known as a pantograph.
Motor: High-speed trains use AC traction motors and mechanical transmissions similar to those found in most electric trains.
Track: Wheel flanges lock trains to the rails. High-speed trains must run on tracks with wide curves or employ a hydraulic tilting mechanism.
Electromagnetic Suspension Levitation: The EMS train chassis wraps around the guideway. Upward-facing levitation magnets pull the train upward toward the track.
On-Board Magnets: Complex electronics constantly monitor the amount of current in the train’s guidance magnets to maintain a gap of just 38 in.
Propulsion: The underside of the guideway acts as a long, electromagnetic stator, which creates a traveling field to pull the train forward.
Electrodynamic Suspension Levitation: EDS trains are suspended above the guideway by repulsive forces that build up as the train’s magnets move past levitation coils in the track.
On-Board Magnets: Older systems use on-board cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets, while the General Atomics system uses permanent magnets in what’s known as a Halbach array.
Propulsion: A second set of propulsion coils in the guideway pulls the train forward with alternating current.
The technology for conventional steel-wheel high-speed trains is well-established. All high-speed rail trains are electrically powered, drawing current from overhead power lines. They operate on tracks carved into the landscape with wide-radius turns and grades that max out at about 5 percent. Although high-speed rail trains can travel on standard tracks, the Federal Railroad Administration has ruled that trains traveling faster than 125 mph must operate on tracks with no grade crossings—meaning no intersections with public roadways.
There are two main “flavors” of maglev technology: electromagnetic suspension (EMS) and electrodynamic suspension (EDS). In EMS designs, the train chassis wraps around a guideway and, when current is applied to the rail, the train rises. With EDS technology, the train does most of the heavy lifting, as powerful magnets in the chassis generate an opposing force against conducting plates in a guideway. Each technology has its advantages and drawbacks: EMS trains can levitate at a standstill, but require a lot of sophisticated electronics to monitor and adjust the gap between train and track. EDS trains require less on-board intelligence—they’re ”basically a dumb vehicle on a smart track,” explains General Atomics’ Gurol—but they need to build up speed on wheels before they can lift off the guideway.
Almost all of the maglev projects in the U.S. are based on the more established EMS technology by Transrapid International, the German company behind the Shanghai and the planned Munich maglev projects. EDS designs, on the other hand, are in the experimental stage. But the technology for both systems is still evolving. For example, the General Atomics test vehicle I rode on is an EDS design using magnets arranged in a pattern known as a Halbach array to achieve liftoff at walking speeds. MagneMotion, in Acton, Mass., is developing a hybrid EMS design that dispenses with much of that technology’s on-board electronic monitoring in favor of permanent magnets.
Maglev trains are capable of 300-plus-mph cruising speeds, but with current steel-wheel trains already passing 200 mph, is maglev really necessary? Maglev proponents argue that it is easier to maintain—most designs do not include wheels, transmissions, brakes or axles, thus reducing the need for repairs. “Engineers joke that the only moving parts are the doors,” says Richard Thornton, MagneMotion’s CEO. But maglev’s skeptics argue that lower maintenance costs are just speculation, since there aren’t enough commercially operating tracks to know what real-world performance would be. But mostly, critics of maglev point to its enormous expense. “Maglev routinely costs three to four times what is projected,” Diridon says.
In the end, the fate of high-speed trains in America will come down to money and politics. Federal funding comes and goes depending on the priorities of different branches of government. “We’re not really pushing high-speed rail,” says Steven Klum, of the Federal Railroad Administration. “This administration believes that money would be better spent on more immediate concerns, such as highways, transit and airports.” And Congressional appropriations for high-tech train projects often get labeled as pork. The proposed California-Nevada maglev line is a pet project of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—and an article last year in BusinessWeek painted a picture of the Nevada senator financing a popular local project with millions of federal dollars.
It does seem evident, however, that for trains to remain relevant in the U.S., they’ll have to go fast enough to release the pressure on short-haul air traffic in crowded corridors. Since the development timeline for high-speed trains is so long, many railway authorities are pursuing short-term technologies to make trains on existing tracks faster. Positive Train Control systems from companies such as General Electric use GPS positioning data to maintain distances between trains and to automatically stop trains in emergencies. These systems are already used in freight trains (PM covered cutting-edge freight-train tech in Jan. ’06) and could allow passenger trains to operate safely at speeds up to 150 mph—a far cry from the speeds of the world’s fastest trains, but at least a step in that direction.
A few hours after my ride on the experimental maglev track, I find myself back in the real world behind the wheel of a rental car, baking in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 5. As I fret about getting to the airport on time, I wonder how many other drivers around me are wishing there was a more efficient way to travel. There may be a better way—I just tried it.
Q&A: Talking with Stephen King
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1687229,00.html
Friday, Nov. 23, 2007
Q&A: Talking with Stephen King
By Gilbert Cruz
Stephen King likes to start the conversation and so the horror author began asking questions before TIME's Gilbert Cruz could take a seat to interview him in New York City. But Cruz soon took over. Excerpts:
STEPHEN KING: So who's going to be TIME Person of the Year?
TIME: I really don't know, there's a very small group of people who make that decision.
I was thinking, I think it should be Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.
Really?
Yeah. You know, I just filmed a segment for Nightline, about [the movie version of his novella] The Mist, and one of the things I said to them was, you know, "You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you're missing the whole fox hunt." Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear. And yet you get this coverage of who's gonna get custody of Britney's kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other shit.
You know, this morning, the two big stories on CNN are Kanye West's mother, who died, apparently, after having some plastic surgery. The other big thing that's going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peterson] killed his... wife. And meanwhile, you've got Pakistan in the midst of a real crisis, where these people have nuclear weapons that we helped them develop. You've got a guy in charge, who's basically declared himself the military strongman and is being supported by the Bush administration, whose raison d'etre for going into Iraq was to spread democracy in the world.
So you've got these things going on, which seem to me to be very substantive, that could affect all of us, and instead, you see a lot of this back-fence gossip. So I said something to the Nightline guy about waterboarding, and if the Bush administration didn't think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture. And then the guy from Nightline said, "Well, obviously you've not been watching World News Tonight with Charlie Gibson." But I do — I watch 'em all!
You might be one of the few people who does.
We're news junkies in my house.
Do you actually think Britney and Lindsay should be on our cover?
Yeah, I do.
Sort of a, 'This is what the media's actually interested it, so let's just put it out there' thing?
I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics — trying to play a serious part in the world — to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their f------ Representatives are.
But you've been well in the public eye for decades now. Is it pretty blatant how much worse it's gotten?
It's worse every year. And the guy says to me — the Nightline guy — I didn't get the guy's name. Granted, I haven't been feeling real well and it was a long day of interviews. But he said to me, "If we didn't cover cultural things, we wouldn't be covering you and The Mist, and promoting the movie." And I'm like, "Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan aren't cultural." They aren't political. They're economic only in the mildest sense of the word. In fact, if I had to pick somebody, some celebrity who has had some impact this year, some sort of echo in the larger American life, I would say Hannah Montana. That whole issue of online ticket sales and scalping fascinates me. There are [legitimate] issues there about the Internet, so that actually does seem to have some cultural significance.
But Britney? Britney Spears is just trailer trash. That's all. I mean, I don't mean to be pejorative. But you observe her behavior for the past five years and you say, "Here's a lady who can't take care of her kids, she can't take care of herself, she has no retirement fund, everything that she gets runs right through her hands." And yet, you know and I know that if you go to those sites that tell you what the most blogged-about things on the Internet are, it's Britney, it's Lindsay. So I think it would be terrific [to have them as TIME Persons of the Year]. There would be such a scream from the American reading public, sure. But at the same time, it's time for somebody to discuss the difference between real news and fake news.
True, in terms of Britney Spears, she's still fairly young. When you were young, fame sort of screwed you up a bit, didn't it?
The difference is that Britney is now famous for being famous. Her sales have gone down with almost every album, bigger and bigger jumps, so that nobody really cares about her music anymore. They care about the tabloid headlines and whether or not she's wearing panties. I mean, is this an issue that the American public needs to turn its brainpower on? Britney Spears' lingerie, or lack thereof?
I'll pass your suggestion along. So you're a news junkie?
I got hooked by my wife. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't be surprised, being that I'm around John Mellancamp a lot — he and I are doing this play. But it's the news 24-7. Always on.
What's this play?
It's called Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. It's a musical.
What's the plan with that?
Hopefully we'll open out of town next year. Maybe in Atlanta, if they have any water left.
When next year?
My guess it probably like June or July. We're at the point where we've got the director. The music's set. The book's set. We're fairly set. At least until audiences turn up. If they turn up their noses then things change. We're supposed to be, maybe in Atlanta, maybe in Boston, I've heard talk about California. But we've got to open out of town and see if people like what we've got.
What's the gist of the story?
[Mellencamp] had bought a place in Indiana by a lake, and he said that the person had told him the place was haunted. Well, you hear that — when you buy a place that's been around for a while in the woods, people are going to say it's haunted. [Apparently], there was some kind of tragedy that involved two brothers and a girl in the fifties — one of the brothers shot the other one apparently in some kind of a drunken game. Killed him. So the other brother and the girl jumped in the car to take the kid to the hospital, because they thought maybe they could save him. They ran into a tree and they were both killed. So apparently the ghosts haunted the place. So John asked me, "Do you think we could turn this into a play?"
In a way, he came to me at the right time. He's been doing what he does for a long time, and I've been doing what I do for a long time. John has tried things, he's tried to keep the music fresh, he's continued to release new music, [to] try different things and different formats. And he wanted to graze, to try this idea of doing dramatic music. I've always been up for something that was a little different — just keep turning the earth over, so you don't dig yourself a rut and furnish it, you know what I mean? That's how we got together.
So you expanded that little snippet of a story?
Yeah. That's my job, to take something like that, which is fairly generic, and make a story out of it that's unique. I [wrote a little and Mellencamp did some music] and then I went to him and said, "We've reached a decision point here. Neither of us knows s--- about theater. The only thing I know is that, at this point, it either becomes like Andrew Lloyd Webber — and everybody sings everything — or it can be like My Fair Lady, where people actually talk in between the singing. They go blah blah blah and then [he sings] "I could have danced all night." And then they blah blah blah some more.
Well, if it opens in New York, I'll check it out.
It probably will. We're a bit radioactive, because it has a subtext about homosexuality and it's set in the fifties so they bandy about a lot of pejorative words that were common coinage back then. But, Tennessee Williams got away with it.
Alright, I have to ask you some questions about The Mist.
Of course you do.
Short questions. First one...
And short answers!
This is the third movie you've done with Frank Darabont, the third movie he's directed based on your work.
Well, actually, there are four. The way I met him was, he did a short film of [my story] "The Woman in the Room." That was back when he was in his early twenties and he was trying to break into movies. Like [The Shawshank Redemption], which he did next, it didn't have so much as a smidge of the supernatural in it.
Are you guys film soulmates? Does he just do your stuff better than other people?
He does it really well, though there are other people who have done my work and I've been pleased with the results. But the only person that I can say that has come back for seconds and has really done me proud other than Frank would be Rob Reiner, who did Stand by Me and then came back and did Misery. And Frank will say, "I have the world's smallest specialty. I only do prison movies written by Stephen King." And he's been going on about how proud he is that he made The Mist and broke out of that mold. But I told him, "Frank, it's still a story about people in prison. They're just in prison in a supermarket!"
Is he going to do more of your stuff? There are tons more stories out there that haven't been made into movies.
Frank has the option on a short story called "The Monkey."
The one that was on the cover of the old Skeleton Crew paperback?
Right. And he'd like to do The Long Walk, which is one of the Bachman books [written by King under a pseudonym]. But The Long Walk is so downbeat, it makes The Mist look like Young Frankenstein.
Part of The Mist is this subtext about how fear makes people irrational. How do you think that's playing out in the world today?
Well, it's always there. What The Mist reminds me of is a big, exciting version of a episode like "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." In that episode, these aliens did an experiment to see what fear did to human beings. [In The Mist], there really are monsters and they show up on Main Street in this little town. Granted, the situation is unreal, but an audience can say, "Here's a good, harmless place where I can actually test drive what I would do in a disaster." Particularly if the disaster was just totally inexplicable. But in the real world, if disaster strikes us, it seems to me that it's always inexplicable.
There have been so many movies and TV miniseries made from your stories and, not to be disrespectful, but some of them are stinkers. Sleepwalkers, Sometimes They Come Back and its various sequels, etc... How do you maintain quality control? Do you even try?
I'd go crazy. I don't try to maintain quality control. Except I try to get good people involved. The thing is, when you put together a script, a director, and all the other variables, you never really know what's going to come out. And so you start with the idea that it's like a baseball game — you put the best team you can on the field, and you know that, more times than not, you're gonna win.
And in my case, more of the movies than not — if we except things like Return to Salem's Lot, Children of the Corn 4, The Children of the Corn Meet the Leprechaun or whatever it is — if you do that, then most times you're going to have something that's interesting anyway. That doesn't mean you're going to have the occasional thing that's just a train wreck like Dreamcatcher, because that happens, right?
Why do you think filmmakers are so fond of your work?
It's visual. I grew up at the movies. I went to movies before I wrote. My first editor Bill Thompson used to laugh and say "Steve King has a movie projector in his head." Filmmakers react to that. They see, because they're visual creatures themselves, and they say, "Gee, I'd love to do that." In some cases they run their heads into the noose, because it's easier to make it up in your mind than it is on the screen.
You retired there for a while but then came back with a few books. What are you working on now?
When I said to that lady from the L. A. Times I might retire, I was still recovering from the accident that I was in [where King was struck by a car], I was in a lot of pain, and I was under the pressure of finishing The Dark Tower. At that point, retirement looked good. When the pain went away and The Dark Tower finished up, retirement started to look bad.
I have a book that's coming out in January called Duma Key, and there's the musical. I'm like Travis McGee, I can take my retirement in chunks.
Are you enjoying it?
I have a good time. I came in last night, after the premiere [of The Mist] and I kinda said to myself, "This is not a bad life." They give you the keys to the playground and they say, "That's your job for now on, you play for the rest of us. You're the designated kid. Make up stories," so what's not to like? Well, sometimes there's stuff. Lot of interviews, sometimes it gets you down, but, mostly it's good.
Well, we'll wrap this one up.
Friday, Nov. 23, 2007
Q&A: Talking with Stephen King
By Gilbert Cruz
Stephen King likes to start the conversation and so the horror author began asking questions before TIME's Gilbert Cruz could take a seat to interview him in New York City. But Cruz soon took over. Excerpts:
STEPHEN KING: So who's going to be TIME Person of the Year?
TIME: I really don't know, there's a very small group of people who make that decision.
I was thinking, I think it should be Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.
Really?
Yeah. You know, I just filmed a segment for Nightline, about [the movie version of his novella] The Mist, and one of the things I said to them was, you know, "You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you're missing the whole fox hunt." Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear. And yet you get this coverage of who's gonna get custody of Britney's kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other shit.
You know, this morning, the two big stories on CNN are Kanye West's mother, who died, apparently, after having some plastic surgery. The other big thing that's going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peterson] killed his... wife. And meanwhile, you've got Pakistan in the midst of a real crisis, where these people have nuclear weapons that we helped them develop. You've got a guy in charge, who's basically declared himself the military strongman and is being supported by the Bush administration, whose raison d'etre for going into Iraq was to spread democracy in the world.
So you've got these things going on, which seem to me to be very substantive, that could affect all of us, and instead, you see a lot of this back-fence gossip. So I said something to the Nightline guy about waterboarding, and if the Bush administration didn't think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture. And then the guy from Nightline said, "Well, obviously you've not been watching World News Tonight with Charlie Gibson." But I do — I watch 'em all!
You might be one of the few people who does.
We're news junkies in my house.
Do you actually think Britney and Lindsay should be on our cover?
Yeah, I do.
Sort of a, 'This is what the media's actually interested it, so let's just put it out there' thing?
I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics — trying to play a serious part in the world — to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their f------ Representatives are.
But you've been well in the public eye for decades now. Is it pretty blatant how much worse it's gotten?
It's worse every year. And the guy says to me — the Nightline guy — I didn't get the guy's name. Granted, I haven't been feeling real well and it was a long day of interviews. But he said to me, "If we didn't cover cultural things, we wouldn't be covering you and The Mist, and promoting the movie." And I'm like, "Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan aren't cultural." They aren't political. They're economic only in the mildest sense of the word. In fact, if I had to pick somebody, some celebrity who has had some impact this year, some sort of echo in the larger American life, I would say Hannah Montana. That whole issue of online ticket sales and scalping fascinates me. There are [legitimate] issues there about the Internet, so that actually does seem to have some cultural significance.
But Britney? Britney Spears is just trailer trash. That's all. I mean, I don't mean to be pejorative. But you observe her behavior for the past five years and you say, "Here's a lady who can't take care of her kids, she can't take care of herself, she has no retirement fund, everything that she gets runs right through her hands." And yet, you know and I know that if you go to those sites that tell you what the most blogged-about things on the Internet are, it's Britney, it's Lindsay. So I think it would be terrific [to have them as TIME Persons of the Year]. There would be such a scream from the American reading public, sure. But at the same time, it's time for somebody to discuss the difference between real news and fake news.
True, in terms of Britney Spears, she's still fairly young. When you were young, fame sort of screwed you up a bit, didn't it?
The difference is that Britney is now famous for being famous. Her sales have gone down with almost every album, bigger and bigger jumps, so that nobody really cares about her music anymore. They care about the tabloid headlines and whether or not she's wearing panties. I mean, is this an issue that the American public needs to turn its brainpower on? Britney Spears' lingerie, or lack thereof?
I'll pass your suggestion along. So you're a news junkie?
I got hooked by my wife. You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't be surprised, being that I'm around John Mellancamp a lot — he and I are doing this play. But it's the news 24-7. Always on.
What's this play?
It's called Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. It's a musical.
What's the plan with that?
Hopefully we'll open out of town next year. Maybe in Atlanta, if they have any water left.
When next year?
My guess it probably like June or July. We're at the point where we've got the director. The music's set. The book's set. We're fairly set. At least until audiences turn up. If they turn up their noses then things change. We're supposed to be, maybe in Atlanta, maybe in Boston, I've heard talk about California. But we've got to open out of town and see if people like what we've got.
What's the gist of the story?
[Mellencamp] had bought a place in Indiana by a lake, and he said that the person had told him the place was haunted. Well, you hear that — when you buy a place that's been around for a while in the woods, people are going to say it's haunted. [Apparently], there was some kind of tragedy that involved two brothers and a girl in the fifties — one of the brothers shot the other one apparently in some kind of a drunken game. Killed him. So the other brother and the girl jumped in the car to take the kid to the hospital, because they thought maybe they could save him. They ran into a tree and they were both killed. So apparently the ghosts haunted the place. So John asked me, "Do you think we could turn this into a play?"
In a way, he came to me at the right time. He's been doing what he does for a long time, and I've been doing what I do for a long time. John has tried things, he's tried to keep the music fresh, he's continued to release new music, [to] try different things and different formats. And he wanted to graze, to try this idea of doing dramatic music. I've always been up for something that was a little different — just keep turning the earth over, so you don't dig yourself a rut and furnish it, you know what I mean? That's how we got together.
So you expanded that little snippet of a story?
Yeah. That's my job, to take something like that, which is fairly generic, and make a story out of it that's unique. I [wrote a little and Mellencamp did some music] and then I went to him and said, "We've reached a decision point here. Neither of us knows s--- about theater. The only thing I know is that, at this point, it either becomes like Andrew Lloyd Webber — and everybody sings everything — or it can be like My Fair Lady, where people actually talk in between the singing. They go blah blah blah and then [he sings] "I could have danced all night." And then they blah blah blah some more.
Well, if it opens in New York, I'll check it out.
It probably will. We're a bit radioactive, because it has a subtext about homosexuality and it's set in the fifties so they bandy about a lot of pejorative words that were common coinage back then. But, Tennessee Williams got away with it.
Alright, I have to ask you some questions about The Mist.
Of course you do.
Short questions. First one...
And short answers!
This is the third movie you've done with Frank Darabont, the third movie he's directed based on your work.
Well, actually, there are four. The way I met him was, he did a short film of [my story] "The Woman in the Room." That was back when he was in his early twenties and he was trying to break into movies. Like [The Shawshank Redemption], which he did next, it didn't have so much as a smidge of the supernatural in it.
Are you guys film soulmates? Does he just do your stuff better than other people?
He does it really well, though there are other people who have done my work and I've been pleased with the results. But the only person that I can say that has come back for seconds and has really done me proud other than Frank would be Rob Reiner, who did Stand by Me and then came back and did Misery. And Frank will say, "I have the world's smallest specialty. I only do prison movies written by Stephen King." And he's been going on about how proud he is that he made The Mist and broke out of that mold. But I told him, "Frank, it's still a story about people in prison. They're just in prison in a supermarket!"
Is he going to do more of your stuff? There are tons more stories out there that haven't been made into movies.
Frank has the option on a short story called "The Monkey."
The one that was on the cover of the old Skeleton Crew paperback?
Right. And he'd like to do The Long Walk, which is one of the Bachman books [written by King under a pseudonym]. But The Long Walk is so downbeat, it makes The Mist look like Young Frankenstein.
Part of The Mist is this subtext about how fear makes people irrational. How do you think that's playing out in the world today?
Well, it's always there. What The Mist reminds me of is a big, exciting version of a episode like "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." In that episode, these aliens did an experiment to see what fear did to human beings. [In The Mist], there really are monsters and they show up on Main Street in this little town. Granted, the situation is unreal, but an audience can say, "Here's a good, harmless place where I can actually test drive what I would do in a disaster." Particularly if the disaster was just totally inexplicable. But in the real world, if disaster strikes us, it seems to me that it's always inexplicable.
There have been so many movies and TV miniseries made from your stories and, not to be disrespectful, but some of them are stinkers. Sleepwalkers, Sometimes They Come Back and its various sequels, etc... How do you maintain quality control? Do you even try?
I'd go crazy. I don't try to maintain quality control. Except I try to get good people involved. The thing is, when you put together a script, a director, and all the other variables, you never really know what's going to come out. And so you start with the idea that it's like a baseball game — you put the best team you can on the field, and you know that, more times than not, you're gonna win.
And in my case, more of the movies than not — if we except things like Return to Salem's Lot, Children of the Corn 4, The Children of the Corn Meet the Leprechaun or whatever it is — if you do that, then most times you're going to have something that's interesting anyway. That doesn't mean you're going to have the occasional thing that's just a train wreck like Dreamcatcher, because that happens, right?
Why do you think filmmakers are so fond of your work?
It's visual. I grew up at the movies. I went to movies before I wrote. My first editor Bill Thompson used to laugh and say "Steve King has a movie projector in his head." Filmmakers react to that. They see, because they're visual creatures themselves, and they say, "Gee, I'd love to do that." In some cases they run their heads into the noose, because it's easier to make it up in your mind than it is on the screen.
You retired there for a while but then came back with a few books. What are you working on now?
When I said to that lady from the L. A. Times I might retire, I was still recovering from the accident that I was in [where King was struck by a car], I was in a lot of pain, and I was under the pressure of finishing The Dark Tower. At that point, retirement looked good. When the pain went away and The Dark Tower finished up, retirement started to look bad.
I have a book that's coming out in January called Duma Key, and there's the musical. I'm like Travis McGee, I can take my retirement in chunks.
Are you enjoying it?
I have a good time. I came in last night, after the premiere [of The Mist] and I kinda said to myself, "This is not a bad life." They give you the keys to the playground and they say, "That's your job for now on, you play for the rest of us. You're the designated kid. Make up stories," so what's not to like? Well, sometimes there's stuff. Lot of interviews, sometimes it gets you down, but, mostly it's good.
Well, we'll wrap this one up.
Ways Automakers Can Meet New MPG Standards
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4218266.html
June 21, 2007
Top 4 Ways Automakers Can Meet New MPG Standards: Detroit Report
First automakers were standing tough. Then they caved in. But after the Senate voted tonight on the stickiest part of the new energy bill, here’s the reality: America is looking at its first big rise in fuel economy standards in decades. After contentious debate on Capitol Hill and lobbying from the industry, new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards will jump to 35 mpg for all cars and SUVs by 2020, up from the current 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.5 mpg for trucks. Here are four keys for automakers to bolster their fuel economy. One thing is for certain: This is going to be expensive for everyone. —Chuck Tannert
CUT THE FAT
Dramatic mileage gains demand hefty weight losses. The lighter the load, the smaller and more efficient a vehicle’s powertrain can be, so it uses less gas per mile traveled. First, automakers should start using lightweight, yet strong building materials. Most of today’s cars and trucks are made primarily of steel. Switching to aluminum (quite a few Audis and Jaguars already do) and using a few carbon-fiber body panels (like the Corvette Z06 does) could make an immediate—but of course, expensive—difference. And that’s not all. Glass, for example, is one of the heaviest components of an automotive body—a polycarbonate sandwiched between two ultra-thin pieces of glass could replace traditional tempered glass windows, looking the same but weighing about half as much. In addition, reducing the amount of cables throughout the vehicle would save a surprising amount of weight. Given the state of wireless technology, that’s not out of the question.
BUILD A BETTER POWERTRAIN
The quickest way to boost MPG is to improve the efficiency of your powertrain. Hybrids are no-brainers. And someday perhaps we’ll all have hydrogen-powered rides. But there is a more short-term solution that automakers can easily embrace. “With diesel, you can have your cake and eat it too,” says Rob Moran, public relations manager of product and technology for Mercedes-Benz. Diesel engines (like the one we just opened up) burn 30-percent more efficiently than similar sized gasoline engines—i.e., you get 30-percent more mpg. Also, as PM explained in our May cover story, plug-in technology will become more feasible over the next decade as lithium-ion batteries improve in quality and are produced en masse.
KEEP ON ROLLING
For optimum fuel efficiency, tire manufacturers must design tires for minimal rolling resistance. That’s on the horizon. Tires may not get any skinnier, but they will have new compounds that maintain wet and dry weather grip and decrease rolling resistance. Designing a tire inflation system that could vary pressure depending on the conditions could essentially allow on-demand changes in rolling resistance. A study by the Transportation Research Board, commissioned by the National Highway Traffic safety Administration, found that cutting resistance by 10 percent yielded a 1- to 2-percent improvement in gas mileage. There’s a tradeoff, of course: reduced performance.
GIVE 'EM MORE GEARS
This is one of the easiest ways to improve mileage. Manufacturers already have 6-, 7- and now 8-speed transmissions. More gears equal better mileage, especially when the transmission design has double overdrives. Continuously variable transmissions (CVT) should help, too. Normal transmissions only allow a few different discrete gear ratios to be selected, but a CVT essentially has an infinite number of ratios available within a finite range, so it enables the relationship between the engine speed and driving wheel speed to be selected within a continuous range. This can provide better fuel economy by enabling the engine to run at its most efficient speeds within a narrow range. Nissan is already using them in almost every one of its passenger cars.
There’s no question that Detroit can build cars and trucks that meet the new CAFÉ standard. And Congress is determined to make them do it. But has anybody calculated the costs? Raising fleet standards to these levels would add thousands of dollars to the cost of the average vehicle—carbon fiber and polycarbonate don’t come cheap, folks! We appreciate Congress’s effort to grapple with this issue, and automakers need to respond. But raising CAFE standards is a pretty blunt instrument to encourage complex technological change. We suspect that consumers—and voters—may experience something like sticker shock when they realize they’re the ones paying the bill.
June 21, 2007
Top 4 Ways Automakers Can Meet New MPG Standards: Detroit Report
First automakers were standing tough. Then they caved in. But after the Senate voted tonight on the stickiest part of the new energy bill, here’s the reality: America is looking at its first big rise in fuel economy standards in decades. After contentious debate on Capitol Hill and lobbying from the industry, new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards will jump to 35 mpg for all cars and SUVs by 2020, up from the current 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.5 mpg for trucks. Here are four keys for automakers to bolster their fuel economy. One thing is for certain: This is going to be expensive for everyone. —Chuck Tannert
CUT THE FAT
Dramatic mileage gains demand hefty weight losses. The lighter the load, the smaller and more efficient a vehicle’s powertrain can be, so it uses less gas per mile traveled. First, automakers should start using lightweight, yet strong building materials. Most of today’s cars and trucks are made primarily of steel. Switching to aluminum (quite a few Audis and Jaguars already do) and using a few carbon-fiber body panels (like the Corvette Z06 does) could make an immediate—but of course, expensive—difference. And that’s not all. Glass, for example, is one of the heaviest components of an automotive body—a polycarbonate sandwiched between two ultra-thin pieces of glass could replace traditional tempered glass windows, looking the same but weighing about half as much. In addition, reducing the amount of cables throughout the vehicle would save a surprising amount of weight. Given the state of wireless technology, that’s not out of the question.
BUILD A BETTER POWERTRAIN
The quickest way to boost MPG is to improve the efficiency of your powertrain. Hybrids are no-brainers. And someday perhaps we’ll all have hydrogen-powered rides. But there is a more short-term solution that automakers can easily embrace. “With diesel, you can have your cake and eat it too,” says Rob Moran, public relations manager of product and technology for Mercedes-Benz. Diesel engines (like the one we just opened up) burn 30-percent more efficiently than similar sized gasoline engines—i.e., you get 30-percent more mpg. Also, as PM explained in our May cover story, plug-in technology will become more feasible over the next decade as lithium-ion batteries improve in quality and are produced en masse.
KEEP ON ROLLING
For optimum fuel efficiency, tire manufacturers must design tires for minimal rolling resistance. That’s on the horizon. Tires may not get any skinnier, but they will have new compounds that maintain wet and dry weather grip and decrease rolling resistance. Designing a tire inflation system that could vary pressure depending on the conditions could essentially allow on-demand changes in rolling resistance. A study by the Transportation Research Board, commissioned by the National Highway Traffic safety Administration, found that cutting resistance by 10 percent yielded a 1- to 2-percent improvement in gas mileage. There’s a tradeoff, of course: reduced performance.
GIVE 'EM MORE GEARS
This is one of the easiest ways to improve mileage. Manufacturers already have 6-, 7- and now 8-speed transmissions. More gears equal better mileage, especially when the transmission design has double overdrives. Continuously variable transmissions (CVT) should help, too. Normal transmissions only allow a few different discrete gear ratios to be selected, but a CVT essentially has an infinite number of ratios available within a finite range, so it enables the relationship between the engine speed and driving wheel speed to be selected within a continuous range. This can provide better fuel economy by enabling the engine to run at its most efficient speeds within a narrow range. Nissan is already using them in almost every one of its passenger cars.
There’s no question that Detroit can build cars and trucks that meet the new CAFÉ standard. And Congress is determined to make them do it. But has anybody calculated the costs? Raising fleet standards to these levels would add thousands of dollars to the cost of the average vehicle—carbon fiber and polycarbonate don’t come cheap, folks! We appreciate Congress’s effort to grapple with this issue, and automakers need to respond. But raising CAFE standards is a pretty blunt instrument to encourage complex technological change. We suspect that consumers—and voters—may experience something like sticker shock when they realize they’re the ones paying the bill.
Chrysler Goes for the Green
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4232650.html
November 21, 2007
Chrysler Goes for the Green With EcoVoyager, ZEO and Renegade Concepts: Detroit Auto Show Preview
There may be new owners in town, but the corporate shuffle isn’t stopping Chrysler LLC from charging ahead with forward-thinking, environmentally friendly concepts. Using Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep as platforms, three vehicles will be unveiled at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. All three incorporate electric motors powered by advanced lithium-ion battery packs, which are supplemented by an alternative-fuel system tailored to each brand’s personality.
Chrysler’s ecoVoyager Concept is a bubble-shaped sedan accentuated with flowing lines and a slender profile that utilizes a “one-box” design as opposed to typical “three-box” sedan designs (one compartement for engine, one for people and one for luggage). Beneath the private jet-inspired cabin lies an advanced lithium-ion battery pack that powers a 200-kW motor. Regenerative braking returns energy to the battery, and the electric drivetrain is augmented with a small hydrogen fuel cell that extends the vehicle’s cruising range to over 300 miles. Zero-60 mph is expected to take less than 8 seconds.
The long-nosed, low-slung, Dodge ZEO Concept is the hot rod of the group, and is propelled solely by electric power. Dubbed a “2+2 sport wagon,” the ZEO’s lithium-ion battery should be capable of propelling the ZEO at least 250 miles. While going from 0-60 in under 6 seconds reduces cruising range, it enables the ZEO to approach HEMI performance territory.
Of the three, the insect-like Jeep Renegade Concept is the most imaginatively designed. This B-segment two-seater sports a stubby speedster windshield, a roll bar and a hose-out interior ready for sloppy offroad expeditions, while the minimalist interior features eco-friendly materials. Featuring a 4X4 system propelled by dual electric motors, its 40-mile lithium-ion battery pack is paired with a small-displacement BLUETEC diesel engine that should produce fuel economy in excess of 110 mpg.
While these concept cars are thematically diverse, each is designed around the reality that typical commutes involve roundtrip drives of less than 40 miles. Though their sheetmetal is bold, these individualized zero emissions powertrains show us the number ways Chrylser LLC might be ready for a greener future.
—Basem Wasef
November 21, 2007
Chrysler Goes for the Green With EcoVoyager, ZEO and Renegade Concepts: Detroit Auto Show Preview
There may be new owners in town, but the corporate shuffle isn’t stopping Chrysler LLC from charging ahead with forward-thinking, environmentally friendly concepts. Using Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep as platforms, three vehicles will be unveiled at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. All three incorporate electric motors powered by advanced lithium-ion battery packs, which are supplemented by an alternative-fuel system tailored to each brand’s personality.
Chrysler’s ecoVoyager Concept is a bubble-shaped sedan accentuated with flowing lines and a slender profile that utilizes a “one-box” design as opposed to typical “three-box” sedan designs (one compartement for engine, one for people and one for luggage). Beneath the private jet-inspired cabin lies an advanced lithium-ion battery pack that powers a 200-kW motor. Regenerative braking returns energy to the battery, and the electric drivetrain is augmented with a small hydrogen fuel cell that extends the vehicle’s cruising range to over 300 miles. Zero-60 mph is expected to take less than 8 seconds.
The long-nosed, low-slung, Dodge ZEO Concept is the hot rod of the group, and is propelled solely by electric power. Dubbed a “2+2 sport wagon,” the ZEO’s lithium-ion battery should be capable of propelling the ZEO at least 250 miles. While going from 0-60 in under 6 seconds reduces cruising range, it enables the ZEO to approach HEMI performance territory.
Of the three, the insect-like Jeep Renegade Concept is the most imaginatively designed. This B-segment two-seater sports a stubby speedster windshield, a roll bar and a hose-out interior ready for sloppy offroad expeditions, while the minimalist interior features eco-friendly materials. Featuring a 4X4 system propelled by dual electric motors, its 40-mile lithium-ion battery pack is paired with a small-displacement BLUETEC diesel engine that should produce fuel economy in excess of 110 mpg.
While these concept cars are thematically diverse, each is designed around the reality that typical commutes involve roundtrip drives of less than 40 miles. Though their sheetmetal is bold, these individualized zero emissions powertrains show us the number ways Chrylser LLC might be ready for a greener future.
—Basem Wasef
2008 Smart Fortwo Test Drive
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4232419.html
November 19, 2007
2008 Smart Fortwo Test Drive: A Slow but Solid American Start
Smart already has the kind of hipster, enviro-concious image other car companies spend millions to cultivate. These small-on-the-outside, large-on-the-inside rides, designed by Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), have been a hit in Europe for almost 10 years and will start rolling onto United States streets in January. The Smart Fortwo (as in for two passengers) will create a new, sub “B” car class in the U.S. market. It’s a vehicle specifically designed to comfortably and efficiently transport its occupants through the worst areas of urban congestion. The micro-size dimensions make it over 2 ft. shorter than a Mini Cooper. And at just over 5 ft. across, the Fortwo sits as wide as it does tall. You can park this Smart widthwise across a conventional parking space. So, yes, it’s quite petite. We recently got a chance to take the Fortwo on a two-day spin around California’s Bay Area, from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. Here’s what we learned.
The first thing you notice about this car is exactly what you thought would be the Smart’s biggest drawback: its size. It’s actually big inside, with two fullsize adults driving comfortably for hours. Fortwo was designed with a minimalist mentality—no center console here, just a cup holder and gearshift dividing the driver and passenger seat. The entire dashboard design has an open, airy feeling thanks to that big bubble of a windshield. And there’s loads of legroom so you quickly forget that the rearend of the car’s frame is a mere 2 ft. behind you. It’s odd, but on the highway the Smart seems somewhat larger than its two closest competitors—the Mini Cooper and Honda Fit. And that’s probably because it towers over the Mini by 5 in.
Okay, that’s the good news. The bad news is that the relatively (and we mean relatively) tall design makes for an awkward and sometimes wobbly feel at higher freeway speeds. This probably isn’t the first car you’d choose for a trip across the country.
Speaking of speed, the 1800-pound Fortwo really doesn’t have a lot of it. Power comes solely from a rear-mounted, 70-hp 1.0-liter three-cylinder mated to a five-speed automatic that drives the rear wheels. Punch the throttle and hold it wide open for a while and the Smart will reach 90 mph—eventually. The trip from 0-60 mph takes an estimated 12.8 seconds. That, folks, is slow. Then again, in metropolitan areas, when does the speed limit ever exceed 55 or 60 mph? This is, after all, a basic commuter car. Once underway, we could easily thrust the little tyke into the 70-80 mph range. And the transmission’s auto-manual shifting ability makes it kind of fun—especially with the paddle shifters. But the shifts aren’t exactly butter-smooth in automatic mode. Unfortunately, like most cars, the fuel consumption is directly related to the pressure exerted by the right foot. And since the Smart revs relatively high at freeway speeds, economy appears to plummet in proportion to speed more quickly than on some small cars. But drive, ahem, smart, and you’ll get 40 mpg in the city and 45 on the highway. Although this car wasn’t built to challenge Porsche 911s or Corvettes, it’s a solid, economical ride.
From the beginning, Smart, as a company, has been environmentally conscious. During production, the entire bodywork is powder-coated rather than painted, which not only uses 40 percent less energy but also has zero solvent emissions and water consumption. Plus, Smart collects the powder overspray, because 98 percent of it is reusable.
Since the original was built for the European market and didn’t meet U.S. safety standards, Smart redesigned the Fortwo and achieved a four-star crash rating from NHTSA. The little automaker that could also opened up a bigger trunk for the U.S. model that fits a set of golf clubs. And for winter sports, the passenger seat folds flat, leaving enough room for a pair of skis. Plus, with an electronic stability program, traction control and anti-lock brakes, the Fortwo makes a descent foul-weather friend.
The Smart Fortwo will be offered in three models: Pure ($11,590), Passion Coupe ($13,590) and Passion Cabriolet ($16,590). And, of course, one of our favorite standard features is the aux input jack for external audio players (aka iPods). Hey, we need our tunes, man. The convertible is fun, especially once we learned the top could be lowered (or raised) at any speed. Sadly, even though the three-model fleet will hit dealerships in January, wait for a Smart car is looking like six months to a year—ouch. But it’s worth the wait when you consider constantly rising gas prices and overpopulated urban sprawls; the efficient Fortwo simply makes a lot of sense. —Brittany Marquis
November 19, 2007
2008 Smart Fortwo Test Drive: A Slow but Solid American Start
Smart already has the kind of hipster, enviro-concious image other car companies spend millions to cultivate. These small-on-the-outside, large-on-the-inside rides, designed by Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), have been a hit in Europe for almost 10 years and will start rolling onto United States streets in January. The Smart Fortwo (as in for two passengers) will create a new, sub “B” car class in the U.S. market. It’s a vehicle specifically designed to comfortably and efficiently transport its occupants through the worst areas of urban congestion. The micro-size dimensions make it over 2 ft. shorter than a Mini Cooper. And at just over 5 ft. across, the Fortwo sits as wide as it does tall. You can park this Smart widthwise across a conventional parking space. So, yes, it’s quite petite. We recently got a chance to take the Fortwo on a two-day spin around California’s Bay Area, from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. Here’s what we learned.
The first thing you notice about this car is exactly what you thought would be the Smart’s biggest drawback: its size. It’s actually big inside, with two fullsize adults driving comfortably for hours. Fortwo was designed with a minimalist mentality—no center console here, just a cup holder and gearshift dividing the driver and passenger seat. The entire dashboard design has an open, airy feeling thanks to that big bubble of a windshield. And there’s loads of legroom so you quickly forget that the rearend of the car’s frame is a mere 2 ft. behind you. It’s odd, but on the highway the Smart seems somewhat larger than its two closest competitors—the Mini Cooper and Honda Fit. And that’s probably because it towers over the Mini by 5 in.
Okay, that’s the good news. The bad news is that the relatively (and we mean relatively) tall design makes for an awkward and sometimes wobbly feel at higher freeway speeds. This probably isn’t the first car you’d choose for a trip across the country.
Speaking of speed, the 1800-pound Fortwo really doesn’t have a lot of it. Power comes solely from a rear-mounted, 70-hp 1.0-liter three-cylinder mated to a five-speed automatic that drives the rear wheels. Punch the throttle and hold it wide open for a while and the Smart will reach 90 mph—eventually. The trip from 0-60 mph takes an estimated 12.8 seconds. That, folks, is slow. Then again, in metropolitan areas, when does the speed limit ever exceed 55 or 60 mph? This is, after all, a basic commuter car. Once underway, we could easily thrust the little tyke into the 70-80 mph range. And the transmission’s auto-manual shifting ability makes it kind of fun—especially with the paddle shifters. But the shifts aren’t exactly butter-smooth in automatic mode. Unfortunately, like most cars, the fuel consumption is directly related to the pressure exerted by the right foot. And since the Smart revs relatively high at freeway speeds, economy appears to plummet in proportion to speed more quickly than on some small cars. But drive, ahem, smart, and you’ll get 40 mpg in the city and 45 on the highway. Although this car wasn’t built to challenge Porsche 911s or Corvettes, it’s a solid, economical ride.
From the beginning, Smart, as a company, has been environmentally conscious. During production, the entire bodywork is powder-coated rather than painted, which not only uses 40 percent less energy but also has zero solvent emissions and water consumption. Plus, Smart collects the powder overspray, because 98 percent of it is reusable.
Since the original was built for the European market and didn’t meet U.S. safety standards, Smart redesigned the Fortwo and achieved a four-star crash rating from NHTSA. The little automaker that could also opened up a bigger trunk for the U.S. model that fits a set of golf clubs. And for winter sports, the passenger seat folds flat, leaving enough room for a pair of skis. Plus, with an electronic stability program, traction control and anti-lock brakes, the Fortwo makes a descent foul-weather friend.
The Smart Fortwo will be offered in three models: Pure ($11,590), Passion Coupe ($13,590) and Passion Cabriolet ($16,590). And, of course, one of our favorite standard features is the aux input jack for external audio players (aka iPods). Hey, we need our tunes, man. The convertible is fun, especially once we learned the top could be lowered (or raised) at any speed. Sadly, even though the three-model fleet will hit dealerships in January, wait for a Smart car is looking like six months to a year—ouch. But it’s worth the wait when you consider constantly rising gas prices and overpopulated urban sprawls; the efficient Fortwo simply makes a lot of sense. —Brittany Marquis
300-mpg Electric Aptera Ready for 2008 Production
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4232400.html
November 20, 2007
300-mpg, Electric Aptera Typ-1 Ready for 2008 Production, Not Jetsons Remake: First Look
The Aptera Typ-1 might look like something straight out of George Jetson's garage, but it’s a real car. And it’s a real look at our possible future when it comes to emissions-free transportation. We recently sat down with Aptera CEO Steve Fambro to get a better idea of this all-electric three-wheeler’s production realities. According to Fambro, the two-speed Typ-1 will weigh in at less than 1500 pounds (even with solar panels and LEDs inside) and go 120 miles on a single 110-volt charge—and it’s coming to market next year (you can make your reservation now).
Fambro, an engineer by trade, initially found his inspiration for Aptera in the sleek 2003 Volkswagen 1-liter concept car, a vehicle that VW claimed could deliver 235 mpg. “I was amazed at how the car could get such great range from aerodynamics and low weight,” he says. “For our car, we studied every angle to create the lowest-drag vehicle possible while keeping passengers in a traditional side-by-side configuration.”
The Typ-1 only takes a few hours to fully charge the 10-kilowatt lithium-ion battery packs, which aren’t made up of individual cells as in, say, the Tesla Roadster. The exact chemistry for the Aptera packs are (predictably) not for public consumption, but we do know that the batteries make up about a quarter of the cost to build this car.
Since it’s a three-wheeler, the Typ-1 can be classified as a motorcycle here on U.S. roads. And while Aptera doesn’t have to adhere to the same safety regulations as regular automobiles, Fambro says his design team has made safety a priority, using advanced computer modeling to perform virtual crash tests throughout the Typ-1 build. A 45-in. front crumple zone combines with side-impact beams, redirecting crash energy from the front. “The cage, which is a steel frame with a variety of composite panels, creates a powerful passenger safety cell,” Fambro insists. What’s more, any crash would probably see cars slide under the high-sitting main compartment of the Typ-1 and head straight for the tires, which Fambro tells us are designed to absorb significant impact.
Aptera’s electric vehicle will come with an airbag, but instead of your typical front airbag, it’s in the seatbelt—a design very common to aircraft. The belt looks and operates like a standard one, but the airbag is stored in the lap-belt portion of the seatbelt, deploying up and away from the seat occupant. This affords passengers of all sizes critical protection to the head, neck and torso in the event of a crash.
Inside, the Aptera team replaced standard rearview mirrors with embedded cameras that display a 180-degree rear view on the instrument panel. Solar cells mounted under the roof operate an “always-on” climate control system, ensuring the interior never gets too hot or too cold. The three-wheeler also has energy-saving LED interior and exterior lighting, plus enough cargo room for 15 grocery bags—or two sets of golf clubs.
A second Aptera model will roll out shortly after the all-electric Typ-1—the Aptera Hybrid. This plug-in vehicle will use an electric drivetrain assisted by a small, fuel-efficient gasoline engine coming from a European motor manufacturer. The hybrid is said to achieve a driving range anywhere from 120 to 300 mpg equivalent. We can’t wait for our turn behind the wheel of either car, so stay tuned. —Brittany Marquis
November 20, 2007
300-mpg, Electric Aptera Typ-1 Ready for 2008 Production, Not Jetsons Remake: First Look
The Aptera Typ-1 might look like something straight out of George Jetson's garage, but it’s a real car. And it’s a real look at our possible future when it comes to emissions-free transportation. We recently sat down with Aptera CEO Steve Fambro to get a better idea of this all-electric three-wheeler’s production realities. According to Fambro, the two-speed Typ-1 will weigh in at less than 1500 pounds (even with solar panels and LEDs inside) and go 120 miles on a single 110-volt charge—and it’s coming to market next year (you can make your reservation now).
Fambro, an engineer by trade, initially found his inspiration for Aptera in the sleek 2003 Volkswagen 1-liter concept car, a vehicle that VW claimed could deliver 235 mpg. “I was amazed at how the car could get such great range from aerodynamics and low weight,” he says. “For our car, we studied every angle to create the lowest-drag vehicle possible while keeping passengers in a traditional side-by-side configuration.”
The Typ-1 only takes a few hours to fully charge the 10-kilowatt lithium-ion battery packs, which aren’t made up of individual cells as in, say, the Tesla Roadster. The exact chemistry for the Aptera packs are (predictably) not for public consumption, but we do know that the batteries make up about a quarter of the cost to build this car.
Since it’s a three-wheeler, the Typ-1 can be classified as a motorcycle here on U.S. roads. And while Aptera doesn’t have to adhere to the same safety regulations as regular automobiles, Fambro says his design team has made safety a priority, using advanced computer modeling to perform virtual crash tests throughout the Typ-1 build. A 45-in. front crumple zone combines with side-impact beams, redirecting crash energy from the front. “The cage, which is a steel frame with a variety of composite panels, creates a powerful passenger safety cell,” Fambro insists. What’s more, any crash would probably see cars slide under the high-sitting main compartment of the Typ-1 and head straight for the tires, which Fambro tells us are designed to absorb significant impact.
Aptera’s electric vehicle will come with an airbag, but instead of your typical front airbag, it’s in the seatbelt—a design very common to aircraft. The belt looks and operates like a standard one, but the airbag is stored in the lap-belt portion of the seatbelt, deploying up and away from the seat occupant. This affords passengers of all sizes critical protection to the head, neck and torso in the event of a crash.
Inside, the Aptera team replaced standard rearview mirrors with embedded cameras that display a 180-degree rear view on the instrument panel. Solar cells mounted under the roof operate an “always-on” climate control system, ensuring the interior never gets too hot or too cold. The three-wheeler also has energy-saving LED interior and exterior lighting, plus enough cargo room for 15 grocery bags—or two sets of golf clubs.
A second Aptera model will roll out shortly after the all-electric Typ-1—the Aptera Hybrid. This plug-in vehicle will use an electric drivetrain assisted by a small, fuel-efficient gasoline engine coming from a European motor manufacturer. The hybrid is said to achieve a driving range anywhere from 120 to 300 mpg equivalent. We can’t wait for our turn behind the wheel of either car, so stay tuned. —Brittany Marquis
The Top Ten Cryptozoology Stories for 2007
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/top-cz-07/
November 27th, 2007
The Top Ten Cryptozoology Stories for 2007
by Loren Coleman, Cryptozoologist and Author, Mysterious America, Cryptozoology A to Z, and other books.
From Bigfoot to Yeren, and from dwarf killer whales to dwarf manatees, it was quite a year.
Welcome to this year’s top stories in cryptozoology. It wasn’t heaven during 2007 for the cryptids, but instead seemed to have been a year of reflection, mistakes, fakes, and a few new finds.
In the 1940s, the Scottish-born American zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson began using a word he coined, “cryptozoology,” to describe a new discipline of science that investigates hidden, yet-to-be-discovered large animals. In the late 1950s, after a decade of correspondence with Sanderson, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans began formalizing “cryptozoology.”
Today, cryptozoology is to be found from academia to museum exhibitions, from new television series to tee-shirts.
My annual picks are cryptozoological events, which became newsworthy during 2007 (even though they may have happened in an earlier year).
Here is my top ten list of the cryptozoology accounts of most interest to the public, cryptozoologists, Bigfooters, fans, friends, foes, and the media during this year. They may not be the most remarkable but they are the ones that garnered the largest media reaction and greatest public discussions on our favorite topic for 2007:
1. Holmes Nessie Videotaped
Gordon Holmes, a 55-year-old lab technician, was at a lay-by about 70 feet above Loch Ness on May 26, 2007, when he captured digital video of what he said was “this jet black thing, about 4 to 5 feet (1.4 m) long, moving fairly fast in the water.” Adrian Shine, a Nessie skeptic, described the footage as among “the best footage ever seen.” The footage shows no points of reference to demonstrate scale.
At Cryptomundo, the film’s credibility was questioned early, due to Holmes’ past claims of filming black fairies. Many also wondered aloud if this video was nothing more than an otter swimming in the loch.
Nevertheless, media interest in Nessie and other lake monsters was extremely high in the wake of the Holmes video, which was broadcast on BBC Scotland on May 29, 2007, and on CNN on June 1, 2007.
In early September 2007, a brief Internet frenzy occurred regarding the 20-minute video of six Lake Tianchi Monsters in China. A closer look at the Chinese video seems to show probable waterfowl.
2. Shunka Warak’in Mount Found
After 121 years, the mysterious taxidermy mount of the Shunka Warak’in (a wolf-hynea-like cryptid), from 19th century Montana, was found. The wolf-like creature prowled the Madison Valley, Montana, destroying livestock and reportedly letting out ungodly screams.
After being killed and stuffed in 1886, the taxidermy mount disappeared. In 2007, the body was tracked to the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello. It will be on display at Montana’s Madison Valley History Museum in May 2008. Hopefully DNA testing will finally determine this mystery candid-like species’ identity.
3. Bigfoot Film’s 40th Anniversary Celebrated
At Bluff Creek, California, an apparent female Bigfoot was filmed on October 20, 1967, by Roger Patterson, with assistance on his search from Bob Gimlin. Because this was the 40th year since that event, Bigfooters talked a great deal about the film in the last few months, attempted one gathering in California that was cancelled due to people not wanting to pay the high ticket prices, and quickly organized a celebration at Willow Creek. No one has proven the footage was faked, and during 2007, the merits of the footage were discussed frequently.
4. Cuero Chupacabras Killed
In July 2007, the pictured animal was hit by a car and killed on Phylis Canion’s property, on Buenger Road off U.S. Highway 183 south of Cuero, Texas. Canion had said she saw this “animal” for two years roaming her property. The immediate cry heard throughout the media was “Chupacabras” (sometimes incorrectly spelled without the “s”). Before the frenzy was over, tee-shirts had appeared on the scene.
In early November, the DNA results from tests run on the so-called “Chupacabras” by biologists at the Texas State University found the dead animal was a coyote (Canis latrans). In the end, the “Cuero Chupacabras” was only a mangy canid.
5. Dwarf Killer Whale, Dwarf Manatee, Giant Peccary, and More Discovered
The year was filled with a number of new species being announced. In a paper entitled the “Dwarf Form of Killer Whale in Antarctica,” the first 2007 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy summarized findings that few paid any attention to. Meanwhile, media accounts of the six years ago reports of the giant peccary in Brazil, or the more recent discovery of a dwarf manatee in the Amazon spread widely.
At Cryptomundo, other new species findings, from a new monkey in Uganda to a new clouded leopard in Southeast Asia, from new limbless amphibians in India to walking sea anemomes off the Aleutians, projected hopes for more cryptozoological surprises for the future.
The list is a long one of the 2007 discoveries. Reports of these new species were shared often at Cryptomundo, and included news of bizarre octosquids, legless amphibians, ethnoknown vipers, beaked whales, flying foxes, eel-like catfishes, golden frogs, Thai geckos, Hawaiian sharks, Thai mountain frogs, Panama salamanders, sucker-footed bats, cloud-forest rats, Madagascar millipedes, chicken-eating tarantulas, and Steve Irwin’s new turtles.
Also, an extinct echidna was rediscovered, an extinct blind snake was found, the first Zanzibar coelacanth was caught, the first Sumatran striped rabbit photographed, and the first video footage of elusive Borneo rhinos was captured. It was a good year. (Compare that list to a couple missteps - a fake photo of the allegedly extinct-in-the-wild South China tiger and a hoax photo of a supposedly rediscovered parrot.)
6. Nguoi Rung Kidnap Victim Returned
Ro Cham H’pnhieng, 27, was discovered on the edge of the Cambodian jungle in January 2007, after she was caught trying to steal food left under a tree. She was seen with a hairy Wild Man, a Nguoi Rung. Reportedly, she had been kidnapped in 1989 by the wild people and taken into the jungle. Attempts to find the Nguoi Rung (below) were made, with no positive results.
In October 2007, after Ro Cham H’pnhieng’s family tried to have her live with them again, after several incidents of her running away into the forest, she escaped for the final time, apparently to return to the Forest People. She had made her choice, her family felt.
7. Cryptozoology TV Succeeded
During 2007, two down-to-earth field-oriented cryptozoology documentary series were broadcast on cable television. Both programs, each in their first seasons, received high ratings and good reviews.
The SciFi Channel’s “Destination Truth” was produced by the Mandt Brothers, and the History Channel’s “MonsterQuest” was produced by White Wolf Productions. “MonsterQuest’s” episode on “Sasquatch Attack” created quite a stir in the Bigfoot community. The program dealt with an apparent rock-throwing incident that occurred during the actual filming of the program. Furthermore, DNA tests were conducted on old blood and tissue samples left on screws said to have been stepped on by a Bigfoot.
8. Mapinguary and Yeren Reemerged
The Mapinguary (pronounced MA-ping-war-E), the huge unknown anthropoid ape or the giant sloth-like monster of the Amazon, was in the news again in June and July 2007. New attention from The New York Times, revisited the topic early in the year, and spread to the UPI and NBC’s “Today Show.”
“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the Mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” said David Oren, former director of research at the Goeldi institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River.
The South American focus continued with the Centre for Fortean Zoology’s end of November excursion to Guyana to look into reports of the Didi and the overlap with the accounts of the Mapinguary.
New sightings of Chinese “Wild People,” two Yeren in Shennongjia, were reported on November 18, 2007. According to the witnesses, the two Yeren were skinny and covered with black hair. The taller one was about 1.7 meters high and the other one was approximately 1.3 to 1.4 meters. On November 22, members of the China Association for Scientific Expedition took plaster casts identified as two footprints left along the Licha River where the two mysterious creatures had been spotted.
9. Jacobs Creature Photographed
With timing keyed to the 40th anniversary of the Patterson-Gimlin footage, a Pennsylvania trailcam photograph was released for maximum exposure labeled to indicate it might be a “juvenile Sasquatch.” The picture and accompanying photographs of bear cubs were reported to have been taken on September 16, 2007, by a Bushnell game camera by an individual named R. Jacobs.
The “Jacobs Creature,” or “Jacobs Photograph,” as it was called, resulted in several ridicule-filled media reports and much debate within the Bigfoot community on the worth of the photograph. Cryptomundo noted it appeared to be of a “mangy bear,” and anthropologist Jeff Meldrum agreed, as did the Pennsylvania wildlife department. A few saw in the photograph a youthful Bigfoot.
Were other frames of the trailcam sequence being hidden from the public? Why was the photographs withheld for a month? What is the entire story of the Jacobs cryptid? At year’s end, many questions remain unanswered about the events surrounding the mystery photo.
10. Heuvelmans Biography Published
The biography of one of the “Fathers of Cryptozoology,” Bernard Heuvelmans, was published for the first time in 2007, in French. Jean-Jacques Barloy, who wrote the biography, “Bernard Heuvelmans, un rebelle de la science” (1st volume of the “Bibliothèque Heuvelmansienne,” Editions de l’Oeil du Sphinx, juin 2007) - Bernard Heuvelmans: A Rebel of Science - would win an award for his writings, the “Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2008? (category essay). The announcement of the prize was made on November 3, 2007.
Plans are in place to have the Heuvelmans biography translated into English, and published in a forthcoming year.
As far as obituaries for 2007, the most prominent in cryptozoology was the death of Bigfoot researcher Archie Buckley, an early and significant member of hominology, a cornerstone founder of the Bay Area Group, the Sasquatch research collective of the San Francisco Bay area. Buckley died on June 18, 2007.
+++
Join Loren Coleman on Saturday, December 1, 2007, as he delivers his talk, “Introduction to Cryptozoology,” at 1:00 PM, at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, in conjunction with their current exhibition, Mythic Creatures.
Loren Coleman has been involved in cryptozoology since 1960. He is the author of over 30 books and hundreds of articles, appears frequently in documentaries, and is the director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Coleman may be reached via email at lcoleman@maine.rr.com
November 27th, 2007
The Top Ten Cryptozoology Stories for 2007
by Loren Coleman, Cryptozoologist and Author, Mysterious America, Cryptozoology A to Z, and other books.
From Bigfoot to Yeren, and from dwarf killer whales to dwarf manatees, it was quite a year.
Welcome to this year’s top stories in cryptozoology. It wasn’t heaven during 2007 for the cryptids, but instead seemed to have been a year of reflection, mistakes, fakes, and a few new finds.
In the 1940s, the Scottish-born American zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson began using a word he coined, “cryptozoology,” to describe a new discipline of science that investigates hidden, yet-to-be-discovered large animals. In the late 1950s, after a decade of correspondence with Sanderson, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans began formalizing “cryptozoology.”
Today, cryptozoology is to be found from academia to museum exhibitions, from new television series to tee-shirts.
My annual picks are cryptozoological events, which became newsworthy during 2007 (even though they may have happened in an earlier year).
Here is my top ten list of the cryptozoology accounts of most interest to the public, cryptozoologists, Bigfooters, fans, friends, foes, and the media during this year. They may not be the most remarkable but they are the ones that garnered the largest media reaction and greatest public discussions on our favorite topic for 2007:
1. Holmes Nessie Videotaped
Gordon Holmes, a 55-year-old lab technician, was at a lay-by about 70 feet above Loch Ness on May 26, 2007, when he captured digital video of what he said was “this jet black thing, about 4 to 5 feet (1.4 m) long, moving fairly fast in the water.” Adrian Shine, a Nessie skeptic, described the footage as among “the best footage ever seen.” The footage shows no points of reference to demonstrate scale.
At Cryptomundo, the film’s credibility was questioned early, due to Holmes’ past claims of filming black fairies. Many also wondered aloud if this video was nothing more than an otter swimming in the loch.
Nevertheless, media interest in Nessie and other lake monsters was extremely high in the wake of the Holmes video, which was broadcast on BBC Scotland on May 29, 2007, and on CNN on June 1, 2007.
In early September 2007, a brief Internet frenzy occurred regarding the 20-minute video of six Lake Tianchi Monsters in China. A closer look at the Chinese video seems to show probable waterfowl.
2. Shunka Warak’in Mount Found
After 121 years, the mysterious taxidermy mount of the Shunka Warak’in (a wolf-hynea-like cryptid), from 19th century Montana, was found. The wolf-like creature prowled the Madison Valley, Montana, destroying livestock and reportedly letting out ungodly screams.
After being killed and stuffed in 1886, the taxidermy mount disappeared. In 2007, the body was tracked to the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello. It will be on display at Montana’s Madison Valley History Museum in May 2008. Hopefully DNA testing will finally determine this mystery candid-like species’ identity.
3. Bigfoot Film’s 40th Anniversary Celebrated
At Bluff Creek, California, an apparent female Bigfoot was filmed on October 20, 1967, by Roger Patterson, with assistance on his search from Bob Gimlin. Because this was the 40th year since that event, Bigfooters talked a great deal about the film in the last few months, attempted one gathering in California that was cancelled due to people not wanting to pay the high ticket prices, and quickly organized a celebration at Willow Creek. No one has proven the footage was faked, and during 2007, the merits of the footage were discussed frequently.
4. Cuero Chupacabras Killed
In July 2007, the pictured animal was hit by a car and killed on Phylis Canion’s property, on Buenger Road off U.S. Highway 183 south of Cuero, Texas. Canion had said she saw this “animal” for two years roaming her property. The immediate cry heard throughout the media was “Chupacabras” (sometimes incorrectly spelled without the “s”). Before the frenzy was over, tee-shirts had appeared on the scene.
In early November, the DNA results from tests run on the so-called “Chupacabras” by biologists at the Texas State University found the dead animal was a coyote (Canis latrans). In the end, the “Cuero Chupacabras” was only a mangy canid.
5. Dwarf Killer Whale, Dwarf Manatee, Giant Peccary, and More Discovered
The year was filled with a number of new species being announced. In a paper entitled the “Dwarf Form of Killer Whale in Antarctica,” the first 2007 issue of the Journal of Mammalogy summarized findings that few paid any attention to. Meanwhile, media accounts of the six years ago reports of the giant peccary in Brazil, or the more recent discovery of a dwarf manatee in the Amazon spread widely.
At Cryptomundo, other new species findings, from a new monkey in Uganda to a new clouded leopard in Southeast Asia, from new limbless amphibians in India to walking sea anemomes off the Aleutians, projected hopes for more cryptozoological surprises for the future.
The list is a long one of the 2007 discoveries. Reports of these new species were shared often at Cryptomundo, and included news of bizarre octosquids, legless amphibians, ethnoknown vipers, beaked whales, flying foxes, eel-like catfishes, golden frogs, Thai geckos, Hawaiian sharks, Thai mountain frogs, Panama salamanders, sucker-footed bats, cloud-forest rats, Madagascar millipedes, chicken-eating tarantulas, and Steve Irwin’s new turtles.
Also, an extinct echidna was rediscovered, an extinct blind snake was found, the first Zanzibar coelacanth was caught, the first Sumatran striped rabbit photographed, and the first video footage of elusive Borneo rhinos was captured. It was a good year. (Compare that list to a couple missteps - a fake photo of the allegedly extinct-in-the-wild South China tiger and a hoax photo of a supposedly rediscovered parrot.)
6. Nguoi Rung Kidnap Victim Returned
Ro Cham H’pnhieng, 27, was discovered on the edge of the Cambodian jungle in January 2007, after she was caught trying to steal food left under a tree. She was seen with a hairy Wild Man, a Nguoi Rung. Reportedly, she had been kidnapped in 1989 by the wild people and taken into the jungle. Attempts to find the Nguoi Rung (below) were made, with no positive results.
In October 2007, after Ro Cham H’pnhieng’s family tried to have her live with them again, after several incidents of her running away into the forest, she escaped for the final time, apparently to return to the Forest People. She had made her choice, her family felt.
7. Cryptozoology TV Succeeded
During 2007, two down-to-earth field-oriented cryptozoology documentary series were broadcast on cable television. Both programs, each in their first seasons, received high ratings and good reviews.
The SciFi Channel’s “Destination Truth” was produced by the Mandt Brothers, and the History Channel’s “MonsterQuest” was produced by White Wolf Productions. “MonsterQuest’s” episode on “Sasquatch Attack” created quite a stir in the Bigfoot community. The program dealt with an apparent rock-throwing incident that occurred during the actual filming of the program. Furthermore, DNA tests were conducted on old blood and tissue samples left on screws said to have been stepped on by a Bigfoot.
8. Mapinguary and Yeren Reemerged
The Mapinguary (pronounced MA-ping-war-E), the huge unknown anthropoid ape or the giant sloth-like monster of the Amazon, was in the news again in June and July 2007. New attention from The New York Times, revisited the topic early in the year, and spread to the UPI and NBC’s “Today Show.”
“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the Mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” said David Oren, former director of research at the Goeldi institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River.
The South American focus continued with the Centre for Fortean Zoology’s end of November excursion to Guyana to look into reports of the Didi and the overlap with the accounts of the Mapinguary.
New sightings of Chinese “Wild People,” two Yeren in Shennongjia, were reported on November 18, 2007. According to the witnesses, the two Yeren were skinny and covered with black hair. The taller one was about 1.7 meters high and the other one was approximately 1.3 to 1.4 meters. On November 22, members of the China Association for Scientific Expedition took plaster casts identified as two footprints left along the Licha River where the two mysterious creatures had been spotted.
9. Jacobs Creature Photographed
With timing keyed to the 40th anniversary of the Patterson-Gimlin footage, a Pennsylvania trailcam photograph was released for maximum exposure labeled to indicate it might be a “juvenile Sasquatch.” The picture and accompanying photographs of bear cubs were reported to have been taken on September 16, 2007, by a Bushnell game camera by an individual named R. Jacobs.
The “Jacobs Creature,” or “Jacobs Photograph,” as it was called, resulted in several ridicule-filled media reports and much debate within the Bigfoot community on the worth of the photograph. Cryptomundo noted it appeared to be of a “mangy bear,” and anthropologist Jeff Meldrum agreed, as did the Pennsylvania wildlife department. A few saw in the photograph a youthful Bigfoot.
Were other frames of the trailcam sequence being hidden from the public? Why was the photographs withheld for a month? What is the entire story of the Jacobs cryptid? At year’s end, many questions remain unanswered about the events surrounding the mystery photo.
10. Heuvelmans Biography Published
The biography of one of the “Fathers of Cryptozoology,” Bernard Heuvelmans, was published for the first time in 2007, in French. Jean-Jacques Barloy, who wrote the biography, “Bernard Heuvelmans, un rebelle de la science” (1st volume of the “Bibliothèque Heuvelmansienne,” Editions de l’Oeil du Sphinx, juin 2007) - Bernard Heuvelmans: A Rebel of Science - would win an award for his writings, the “Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2008? (category essay). The announcement of the prize was made on November 3, 2007.
Plans are in place to have the Heuvelmans biography translated into English, and published in a forthcoming year.
As far as obituaries for 2007, the most prominent in cryptozoology was the death of Bigfoot researcher Archie Buckley, an early and significant member of hominology, a cornerstone founder of the Bay Area Group, the Sasquatch research collective of the San Francisco Bay area. Buckley died on June 18, 2007.
+++
Join Loren Coleman on Saturday, December 1, 2007, as he delivers his talk, “Introduction to Cryptozoology,” at 1:00 PM, at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York, in conjunction with their current exhibition, Mythic Creatures.
Loren Coleman has been involved in cryptozoology since 1960. He is the author of over 30 books and hundreds of articles, appears frequently in documentaries, and is the director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Coleman may be reached via email at lcoleman@maine.rr.com
100 MPG Available Now!
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/3374271.html
100 MPG Available Now!
Where's the magic carburetor? Where's the car that runs on water? Those are fantasies, but listen up: A four-door that gets 100 mpg really is possible. Today, with current technology.
By Ben Stewart
Published on: July 18, 2006
Why can't the world's car companies make a vehicle that gets 100 mpg? Automotive technology keeps improving and people keep asking the question, but--as with fusion reactors and comprehensible phone bills--the reality always seems to be just a few years away. Sure, student engineers have achieved 2000 mpg in design contests, but those vehicles have been exercises in automotive minimalism, not practical everyday cars.
Steve Lapp, a professor from Ontario, says the moment has nearly arrived. "I've actually gotten over 100 mpg on some trips in my 2001 Toyota Prius," he says. The secret? He mounted solar panels on the car's roof to keep the batteries charged when the sun is shining. If Lapp, a backyard big thinker, can get triple-digit mileage occasionally, why can't the world's carmakers hit the mark on every drive?
Recently, they've come close--in Europe. The Volkswagen Lupo 3L turbodiesel and the Audi A2, which use the same engine, have both edged close to 80 mpg. That's better than a hybrid. On the downside, that amazing three-cylinder diesel doesn't meet U.S. emissions standards and the vehicles are Ringling Bros. size by American standards.
So the question remains: Could manufacturers deliver a practical car that a typical American family could use as daily transportation, getting 100 mpg or better on every single trip? We asked some of the most inventive engineering minds in the country. We looked at designs, materials and drivetrains. The answer? Yes, it can be done.
Our goal was simple: Create a a car that can carry a family of four under its own power--no umbilical cord to the electric grid allowed. Using technology, manufacturing techniques and materials currently available. Possible? Certainly. Expensive? Oh, yes.
Taking the Weight Out
Fuel economy is all about efficiency. The lighter the load, the smaller and more efficient a car's powertrain can be. That saves fuel, and using a lighter engine saves yet more weight. Marc Ross, a University of Michigan physicist, suggests that--other things being equal--reducing the mass of a typical light-duty vehicle by 10 percent would increase the fuel economy by 7 percent. That's good, but dramatic mileage gains would demand hefty weight savings. Where to find them? While most cars today are made essentially of steel, some rely on lighter structural aluminum. That metal, however, presents manufacturing and repair challenges. The best choice for building a 100-mpg car would likely be a carbon-fiber composite, which can weigh less than half as much as steel. Carbon fiber is both expensive and hard to work with, but it offers an outstanding combination of light weight and strength. Carbon fiber is used extensively in motorsports and on exotic cars.
"If you look at exotics, they're all engineered for high performance. But you can apply the same type of technologies to meet fuel-economy goals," says Tadge Juechter, assistant chief engineer for Chevrolet Corvette.
Low-volume production of such large automobile structures is expensive--up to $100,000 per copy--according to Jon Fox-Rubin, president and CEO of Fiberforge, a leading manufacturer of advanced composite structures. Part of the price comes from manufacturing difficulties and a high rate of rejects, says Paul Williamsen, Toyota's product education manager: "You still have to pay for what gets thrown away." However, as the technology advances and volumes rise above 50,000 per year, the unit cost for carbon-fiber body structures could eventually drop to around $4000, low enough to make mass-market cars feasible.
GM's Ultralite showcar, built back in 1992 by Scaled Composites, the aerospace firm that later built SpaceShipOne, was a testament to the potential of advanced lightweight materials. Ultralite had a carbon-fiber-skin/PVC-core sandwich panel structure for the chassis and body panels. The structural weight, with doors, front and rear bumpers, and interior components, was only 420 pounds.
Weight savings can be found throughout a vehicle. Glass, for instance, is one of the heaviest components of an automotive body--heavier per square foot than the most commonly used steel. "Polycarbonate glazing will be coming into production within the next 10 years," Juechter says. The material is already used to cover headlights. For windows, a plasma process will be used to deposit a thin layer of glass on the polycarbonate, he says. "To an ice scraper or carwash it will look like glass, but you have a 50 percent weight reduction."
Engineers also can save weight by paring down the hardware needed to support the electronics so prevalent in modern vehicles. "There is so much cabling and wiring in vehicles today that it's not trivial, weightwise," says Deborah Hopkins, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Given the current state of electronics, it's possible to imagine a car without bulky hardware for audio, video and navigation. Instead, you'd have a thin screen with a port. "The cellphones of the near future would already carry these functions in them. There'd be a wireless connection to the display screen," says Richard Plavetich, technical design manager of Nissan Design America.
In contrast, "airbags and belts don't add as much weight as you might think," says Greg Thomas, a senior engineer at Honda R&D Americas. All the components of a modern restraint system weigh less than 25 pounds.
To get around the high costs of making components of magnesium, carbon fiber, light steel and other alloys, David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., suggests a model in which, "instead of buying these raw materials, the owner leases them all and gets credit for returning the car for recycling."
Rolling Easily Along
Any weight-reduction plan needs to account for wheels and tires. As these elements spin, their weight, in effect, increases. As a rule of thumb, the rotating weight of a spinning tire is 1.5 times its actual mass--so this is an area where trimming pounds really pays off. Dymag, a British wheel manufacturer, has produced a very light wheel with a magnesium center and carbon-fiber outer rim that's now being used by American exotic-car maker Mosler Automotive. "They cost about 40 percent more than our standard wheels," says Mosler engineering director Todd Wagner. "But we save about 11 pounds on each wheel."
For optimum fuel efficiency, tires must be designed for minimal rolling resistance: skinny, with a shallow tread and the ability to hold their shape at speed. "The lowest rolling resistance would be something like a locomotive wheel, which doesn't deform," Thomas says. The price paid is a harsher ride and somewhat compromised handling--necessary tradeoffs in the search for 100-mpg performance. A study by the Transportation Research Board, commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, found that cutting resistance by 10 percent yielded a 1 to 2 percent improvement in gas mileage.
Honda Insight
On the market here since 1999, the small, two-seat Honda Insight was a harbinger of the hybrid mania and advanced technology to follow. Devotees continue to modify their Insights; some owners claim well over 100 mpg.
Tire manufacturers already use silica in the tread compound to help lower rolling resistance. David Van Emburg, Michelin North America's product marketing director, says we could soon see exotic tires with 20 percent lower rolling resistance than today's models. And, imagine a tire that could sense its environment and adjust air pressure to minimize rolling resistance--essentially a tire with active pressure management. "We have our group in Milan looking into technology embedded in tires. It's certainly thinkable," says Steve Carpino, director of R&D for Pirelli North America.
Slicing Through the Air
Aerodynamics are critical for good fuel economy--especially on the highway. "The aerodynamics become a factor exponentially the faster you go," says Nissan's Plavetich. A low-slung, top-speed machine isn't exactly the best design for shuttling the kids to school. But the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car concept could do the job. Its fishlike profile is tall and skinny, but it is one of slipperiest designs ever conceived for a passenger car. The shape helps the 2888-pound concept deliver a claimed 84 mpg on the highway.
Bionic Car
This concept car from Mercedes-Benz has a tall, narrow shape with a coefficient of drag of only 0.19. That's about 50 percent slipperier than most modern family sedans.
"You can get to a fairly small frontal area by going narrow and tall--a cross section that feels a little more upright and vertical but slender," says Stewart Reed, who chairs the Transportation Design Department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. "We're noticing in the wind tunnel that what you do on the bottom of the car can be more profound than the roof shape," he says. In addition, the rear
of the car needs to be either long and attenuated or abruptly cut off, Reed says. A car's wake can have a detrimental effect on the mileage by creating a partial vacuum behind the car, tugging it backward.
A teardrop shape with all four wheels enclosed would be ideal. But front wheels need to turn to steer the car. Skirts that move with the wheels would work. So would active aerodynamics. Juechter likes the idea of a car that changes shape. "As speed increases, the car would morph into a streamliner." Neither technology yet exists.
Small, fuel-sipping diesels are common in Europe. The three-cylinder 799cc unit in Mercedes-Benz's funky Smart FourTwo CDI is the world's smallest turbodiesel; the car gets around 60 mpg. Emissions regulations make passenger-car diesels rare in the United States. But Mercedes-Benz will soon introduce an E320 Bluetec diesel that meets new, even more stringent 2007 federal standards.
"Diesels are going to be more and more prominent in the years ahead," Plavetich says. "If you combine a clean-burning diesel with a hybrid electric drive system in a lightweight car, I think 100 mpg is doable."
The diesel portion of this drivetrain is well-established. The electric part is still evolving. Today's hybrids use nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) battery packs. These deliver the needed high voltage, but are somewhat limited in their storage ability. Lithium-ion batteries--like those in your laptop, cellphone and, increasingly, power tools--
Volkswagen 1-Liter Car
VW developed this experimental two-seater to use less than 1 liter of fuel per 100 kilometers. That works out to about 240 mpg. The 0.3-liter 8.5-hp one-cylinder engine, however, just doesn't have what it takes to handle U.S. interstates.
"The idea for better batteries on hybrid-electric vehicles is on everyone's mind," says Dan Doughty, manager of the Advanced Power Sources Department at Sandia National Labs. Li-ion batteries have some distinct advantages over NiMH: They contain 50 percent more charge per unit mass and require only one-third as many cells to achieve a given voltage.
However, today's lithium-ion batteries are two to four times more expensive than NiMH batteries. Also, currently, lithium-ion's life span isn't long enough for automakers' demands. Thermal management is an issue, too. "If a cell is damaged and you have an internal short circuit, the battery will release that energy and it could explode," Doughty says.
Doughty estimates that li-ion technology will be ready for hybrid use in two to four years. A nice thing about batteries is that they can be recharged from more than one source. Tapping into the electric grid is one option; there are also more self-sufficient technologies--which brings us back to Steve Lapp. Solar cells like his could offer the extra energy needed to push a diesel-hybrid car into the high-mileage end zone.
Large, roof-mounted solar panels like Lapp has on his Prius have limited appeal, but there are other approaches. Energy Conversion Devices is among a handful of companies that have developed amorphous photovoltaic material--a thin film that can be contoured to any surface. Some day, all of a car's horizontal surfaces could harvest energy to feed the battery pack.
Volkswagen Lupo 3L TDI
This small front-drive hatchback has a 60-hp three-cylinder engine, airbags, ABS and real seats for four. It is also 330 pounds lighter than a standard Lupo and gets about 80 mpg. However, it sold poorly and was dropped by VW.
Battery recharging can be enhanced further by reclaiming the regenerative braking power of all four wheels, as Toyota's Highlander Hybrid does, rather than just two, as in the Prius. Toyota's Williamsen speculates that using the four-wheel system can yield up to a 2 percent fuel-economy gain over a two-wheel system.
As an additional measure, using better insulation and electrochromic (self-darkening) windows could minimize the need for energy-gobbling climate control systems. Berkeley's Hopkins thoroughly insulated the passenger compartment of an experimental car when she worked on the government/industry collaborative Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles project. Her team used ultralightweight, ultrahigh-performance, xenon-gas-filled insulating panels in the doors, roof, dash and floor of the project Taurus. Next, they coated the windows with solar-control film to block the hot rays of the sun. "We were able to reduce heating and cooling loads by 70 to 80 percent," she says.
Building What People Buy
Clearly, a car that gets 100 mpg every time you drive can be designed and built. But, absent government regulation or far higher fuel prices driving consumer demand, will any car company actually do it?
"There's no business case for it," says GM's Juechter. "How many people would spend $200,000 on a car that would ultimately save them a few thousand dollars on fuel over the life of the car?" That's the worst-case scenario in terms of price estimates, but there's little doubt that a 100-mpg car would cost thousands more than today's bigger, more powerful vehicles.
"Small, clean diesel engines run about $3000 and you can add another $4000 for the hybrid," Cole says. "So you're looking at a $6000, $8000 or even $9000 premium for just the car's powertrain. And we haven't even talked about the cost of the materials."
Few drivers would ever make up the cost premium at the pump. However, working out the requirements of a 100-mpg car makes it clear just how feasible it would be to build, say, a 75-mpg car--for far less money. Besides, saving money isn't the only reason people choose a car. It became fashionable to drive SUVs because they projected an image of power and an active lifestyle. It's possible to imagine drivers being drawn to the environmental and national security benefits of efficiency--and to the cutting-edge engineering, as well.
So perhaps people have been asking the wrong question all along. It's not, "Why can't they build a 100-mpg car?" but rather, "Do we really want one?”
100 MPG Available Now!
Where's the magic carburetor? Where's the car that runs on water? Those are fantasies, but listen up: A four-door that gets 100 mpg really is possible. Today, with current technology.
By Ben Stewart
Published on: July 18, 2006
Why can't the world's car companies make a vehicle that gets 100 mpg? Automotive technology keeps improving and people keep asking the question, but--as with fusion reactors and comprehensible phone bills--the reality always seems to be just a few years away. Sure, student engineers have achieved 2000 mpg in design contests, but those vehicles have been exercises in automotive minimalism, not practical everyday cars.
Steve Lapp, a professor from Ontario, says the moment has nearly arrived. "I've actually gotten over 100 mpg on some trips in my 2001 Toyota Prius," he says. The secret? He mounted solar panels on the car's roof to keep the batteries charged when the sun is shining. If Lapp, a backyard big thinker, can get triple-digit mileage occasionally, why can't the world's carmakers hit the mark on every drive?
Recently, they've come close--in Europe. The Volkswagen Lupo 3L turbodiesel and the Audi A2, which use the same engine, have both edged close to 80 mpg. That's better than a hybrid. On the downside, that amazing three-cylinder diesel doesn't meet U.S. emissions standards and the vehicles are Ringling Bros. size by American standards.
So the question remains: Could manufacturers deliver a practical car that a typical American family could use as daily transportation, getting 100 mpg or better on every single trip? We asked some of the most inventive engineering minds in the country. We looked at designs, materials and drivetrains. The answer? Yes, it can be done.
Our goal was simple: Create a a car that can carry a family of four under its own power--no umbilical cord to the electric grid allowed. Using technology, manufacturing techniques and materials currently available. Possible? Certainly. Expensive? Oh, yes.
Taking the Weight Out
Fuel economy is all about efficiency. The lighter the load, the smaller and more efficient a car's powertrain can be. That saves fuel, and using a lighter engine saves yet more weight. Marc Ross, a University of Michigan physicist, suggests that--other things being equal--reducing the mass of a typical light-duty vehicle by 10 percent would increase the fuel economy by 7 percent. That's good, but dramatic mileage gains would demand hefty weight savings. Where to find them? While most cars today are made essentially of steel, some rely on lighter structural aluminum. That metal, however, presents manufacturing and repair challenges. The best choice for building a 100-mpg car would likely be a carbon-fiber composite, which can weigh less than half as much as steel. Carbon fiber is both expensive and hard to work with, but it offers an outstanding combination of light weight and strength. Carbon fiber is used extensively in motorsports and on exotic cars.
"If you look at exotics, they're all engineered for high performance. But you can apply the same type of technologies to meet fuel-economy goals," says Tadge Juechter, assistant chief engineer for Chevrolet Corvette.
Low-volume production of such large automobile structures is expensive--up to $100,000 per copy--according to Jon Fox-Rubin, president and CEO of Fiberforge, a leading manufacturer of advanced composite structures. Part of the price comes from manufacturing difficulties and a high rate of rejects, says Paul Williamsen, Toyota's product education manager: "You still have to pay for what gets thrown away." However, as the technology advances and volumes rise above 50,000 per year, the unit cost for carbon-fiber body structures could eventually drop to around $4000, low enough to make mass-market cars feasible.
GM's Ultralite showcar, built back in 1992 by Scaled Composites, the aerospace firm that later built SpaceShipOne, was a testament to the potential of advanced lightweight materials. Ultralite had a carbon-fiber-skin/PVC-core sandwich panel structure for the chassis and body panels. The structural weight, with doors, front and rear bumpers, and interior components, was only 420 pounds.
Weight savings can be found throughout a vehicle. Glass, for instance, is one of the heaviest components of an automotive body--heavier per square foot than the most commonly used steel. "Polycarbonate glazing will be coming into production within the next 10 years," Juechter says. The material is already used to cover headlights. For windows, a plasma process will be used to deposit a thin layer of glass on the polycarbonate, he says. "To an ice scraper or carwash it will look like glass, but you have a 50 percent weight reduction."
Engineers also can save weight by paring down the hardware needed to support the electronics so prevalent in modern vehicles. "There is so much cabling and wiring in vehicles today that it's not trivial, weightwise," says Deborah Hopkins, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Given the current state of electronics, it's possible to imagine a car without bulky hardware for audio, video and navigation. Instead, you'd have a thin screen with a port. "The cellphones of the near future would already carry these functions in them. There'd be a wireless connection to the display screen," says Richard Plavetich, technical design manager of Nissan Design America.
In contrast, "airbags and belts don't add as much weight as you might think," says Greg Thomas, a senior engineer at Honda R&D Americas. All the components of a modern restraint system weigh less than 25 pounds.
To get around the high costs of making components of magnesium, carbon fiber, light steel and other alloys, David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., suggests a model in which, "instead of buying these raw materials, the owner leases them all and gets credit for returning the car for recycling."
Rolling Easily Along
Any weight-reduction plan needs to account for wheels and tires. As these elements spin, their weight, in effect, increases. As a rule of thumb, the rotating weight of a spinning tire is 1.5 times its actual mass--so this is an area where trimming pounds really pays off. Dymag, a British wheel manufacturer, has produced a very light wheel with a magnesium center and carbon-fiber outer rim that's now being used by American exotic-car maker Mosler Automotive. "They cost about 40 percent more than our standard wheels," says Mosler engineering director Todd Wagner. "But we save about 11 pounds on each wheel."
For optimum fuel efficiency, tires must be designed for minimal rolling resistance: skinny, with a shallow tread and the ability to hold their shape at speed. "The lowest rolling resistance would be something like a locomotive wheel, which doesn't deform," Thomas says. The price paid is a harsher ride and somewhat compromised handling--necessary tradeoffs in the search for 100-mpg performance. A study by the Transportation Research Board, commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, found that cutting resistance by 10 percent yielded a 1 to 2 percent improvement in gas mileage.
Honda Insight
On the market here since 1999, the small, two-seat Honda Insight was a harbinger of the hybrid mania and advanced technology to follow. Devotees continue to modify their Insights; some owners claim well over 100 mpg.
Tire manufacturers already use silica in the tread compound to help lower rolling resistance. David Van Emburg, Michelin North America's product marketing director, says we could soon see exotic tires with 20 percent lower rolling resistance than today's models. And, imagine a tire that could sense its environment and adjust air pressure to minimize rolling resistance--essentially a tire with active pressure management. "We have our group in Milan looking into technology embedded in tires. It's certainly thinkable," says Steve Carpino, director of R&D for Pirelli North America.
Slicing Through the Air
Aerodynamics are critical for good fuel economy--especially on the highway. "The aerodynamics become a factor exponentially the faster you go," says Nissan's Plavetich. A low-slung, top-speed machine isn't exactly the best design for shuttling the kids to school. But the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car concept could do the job. Its fishlike profile is tall and skinny, but it is one of slipperiest designs ever conceived for a passenger car. The shape helps the 2888-pound concept deliver a claimed 84 mpg on the highway.
Bionic Car
This concept car from Mercedes-Benz has a tall, narrow shape with a coefficient of drag of only 0.19. That's about 50 percent slipperier than most modern family sedans.
"You can get to a fairly small frontal area by going narrow and tall--a cross section that feels a little more upright and vertical but slender," says Stewart Reed, who chairs the Transportation Design Department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. "We're noticing in the wind tunnel that what you do on the bottom of the car can be more profound than the roof shape," he says. In addition, the rear
of the car needs to be either long and attenuated or abruptly cut off, Reed says. A car's wake can have a detrimental effect on the mileage by creating a partial vacuum behind the car, tugging it backward.
A teardrop shape with all four wheels enclosed would be ideal. But front wheels need to turn to steer the car. Skirts that move with the wheels would work. So would active aerodynamics. Juechter likes the idea of a car that changes shape. "As speed increases, the car would morph into a streamliner." Neither technology yet exists.
Small, fuel-sipping diesels are common in Europe. The three-cylinder 799cc unit in Mercedes-Benz's funky Smart FourTwo CDI is the world's smallest turbodiesel; the car gets around 60 mpg. Emissions regulations make passenger-car diesels rare in the United States. But Mercedes-Benz will soon introduce an E320 Bluetec diesel that meets new, even more stringent 2007 federal standards.
"Diesels are going to be more and more prominent in the years ahead," Plavetich says. "If you combine a clean-burning diesel with a hybrid electric drive system in a lightweight car, I think 100 mpg is doable."
The diesel portion of this drivetrain is well-established. The electric part is still evolving. Today's hybrids use nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) battery packs. These deliver the needed high voltage, but are somewhat limited in their storage ability. Lithium-ion batteries--like those in your laptop, cellphone and, increasingly, power tools--
Volkswagen 1-Liter Car
VW developed this experimental two-seater to use less than 1 liter of fuel per 100 kilometers. That works out to about 240 mpg. The 0.3-liter 8.5-hp one-cylinder engine, however, just doesn't have what it takes to handle U.S. interstates.
"The idea for better batteries on hybrid-electric vehicles is on everyone's mind," says Dan Doughty, manager of the Advanced Power Sources Department at Sandia National Labs. Li-ion batteries have some distinct advantages over NiMH: They contain 50 percent more charge per unit mass and require only one-third as many cells to achieve a given voltage.
However, today's lithium-ion batteries are two to four times more expensive than NiMH batteries. Also, currently, lithium-ion's life span isn't long enough for automakers' demands. Thermal management is an issue, too. "If a cell is damaged and you have an internal short circuit, the battery will release that energy and it could explode," Doughty says.
Doughty estimates that li-ion technology will be ready for hybrid use in two to four years. A nice thing about batteries is that they can be recharged from more than one source. Tapping into the electric grid is one option; there are also more self-sufficient technologies--which brings us back to Steve Lapp. Solar cells like his could offer the extra energy needed to push a diesel-hybrid car into the high-mileage end zone.
Large, roof-mounted solar panels like Lapp has on his Prius have limited appeal, but there are other approaches. Energy Conversion Devices is among a handful of companies that have developed amorphous photovoltaic material--a thin film that can be contoured to any surface. Some day, all of a car's horizontal surfaces could harvest energy to feed the battery pack.
Volkswagen Lupo 3L TDI
This small front-drive hatchback has a 60-hp three-cylinder engine, airbags, ABS and real seats for four. It is also 330 pounds lighter than a standard Lupo and gets about 80 mpg. However, it sold poorly and was dropped by VW.
Battery recharging can be enhanced further by reclaiming the regenerative braking power of all four wheels, as Toyota's Highlander Hybrid does, rather than just two, as in the Prius. Toyota's Williamsen speculates that using the four-wheel system can yield up to a 2 percent fuel-economy gain over a two-wheel system.
As an additional measure, using better insulation and electrochromic (self-darkening) windows could minimize the need for energy-gobbling climate control systems. Berkeley's Hopkins thoroughly insulated the passenger compartment of an experimental car when she worked on the government/industry collaborative Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles project. Her team used ultralightweight, ultrahigh-performance, xenon-gas-filled insulating panels in the doors, roof, dash and floor of the project Taurus. Next, they coated the windows with solar-control film to block the hot rays of the sun. "We were able to reduce heating and cooling loads by 70 to 80 percent," she says.
Building What People Buy
Clearly, a car that gets 100 mpg every time you drive can be designed and built. But, absent government regulation or far higher fuel prices driving consumer demand, will any car company actually do it?
"There's no business case for it," says GM's Juechter. "How many people would spend $200,000 on a car that would ultimately save them a few thousand dollars on fuel over the life of the car?" That's the worst-case scenario in terms of price estimates, but there's little doubt that a 100-mpg car would cost thousands more than today's bigger, more powerful vehicles.
"Small, clean diesel engines run about $3000 and you can add another $4000 for the hybrid," Cole says. "So you're looking at a $6000, $8000 or even $9000 premium for just the car's powertrain. And we haven't even talked about the cost of the materials."
Few drivers would ever make up the cost premium at the pump. However, working out the requirements of a 100-mpg car makes it clear just how feasible it would be to build, say, a 75-mpg car--for far less money. Besides, saving money isn't the only reason people choose a car. It became fashionable to drive SUVs because they projected an image of power and an active lifestyle. It's possible to imagine drivers being drawn to the environmental and national security benefits of efficiency--and to the cutting-edge engineering, as well.
So perhaps people have been asking the wrong question all along. It's not, "Why can't they build a 100-mpg car?" but rather, "Do we really want one?”
FCC Chairman’s Big Media Giveaway Exposed
http://www.freepress.net/press/release.php?id=303
November 26, 2007
Jen Howard, Free Press, (202) 265-1490, x22
FCC Chairman’s Big Media Giveaway Exposed
Free Press report outlines 10 facts Kevin Martin ‘doesn’t want you to know’ about cross-ownership proposal
WASHINGTON — Today, Free Press released Devil in the Details, a report exposing 10 key facts that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is hiding from the public about his recent proposal to lift the longstanding ban on “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership.”
Using a carefully crafted PR campaign — including an op-ed in the New York Times — Chairman Martin has portrayed his proposal as a “moderate compromise” that would only allow one company to own both a daily newspaper and a broadcast TV or radio station in the 20 largest media markets.
But Devil in the Details exposes how the loose and ambiguous “waiver” standard proposed by Martin creates a giant loophole for big media companies to sidestep the ban in any market and for any station.
“Chairman Martin’s double-speak can’t disguise the fact that his proposal would gut the cross-ownership ban everywhere,” said Derek Turner, research director of Free Press and co-author of the report. “The reality is that Martin’s plan is no moderate compromise. If passed, the new rules would unleash unprecedented consolidation across the country.”
To stop a merger in the top 20 markets, the burden of proof would rest with average citizens and public interest groups opposing the deal. Outside the top 20 markets, the burden of proof would rest with media companies — the same companies that control all the information and could make promises that would be almost impossible to enforce.
“Martin’s proposal stacks the decks against the public interest,” said Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press and co-author of the report. “The expensive and bureaucratic waiver process would pit the limited resources of average American citizens against giant media companies with the money and time to game the system.”
As this new report illustrates, Martin’s rhetoric can’t match the reality that his plan is a massive giveaway to the largest media companies. The 10 facts about the proposal include:
FACT #1: Martin’s “modest” proposal is corporate welfare for Big Media. Martin’s plan would unleash a buying spree in the top 20 markets, making it easier for companies like Belo, News Corp. and Tribune Co. to push out independent, local owners.
FACT #2: Loopholes open the door to cross-ownership in any market. Under Martin’s loose standards, cross-ownership waivers could be approved in hundreds of smaller cities and towns.
FACT #3: Loopholes allow newspapers to own TV stations of any size. The same technicalities could permit top-rated stations in any market to combine with major newspapers.
FACT #4: FCC history shows weak standards won’t protect the public. The current rules forbid cross-ownership, but the FCC hasn’t denied any temporary waiver request in years.
FACT #5: Cross-ownership doesn’t create more local news. The latest studies — using the FCC’s own data — show that markets with cross-ownership produce less total local news, as one dominant company crowds out the competition.
FACT #6: Cross-ownership won’t solve newspapers’ financial woes. Claims that the newspaper industry is about to “wither and die” are greatly exaggerated, and no evidence shows that cross-ownership would make things better.
FACT # 7: The Internet is an opportunity, not a death sentence. Mergers and consolidation are not the answer to the financial problems of the traditional media.
FACT #8: Martin’s plan would harm minority media owners. Nearly half of the nation’s minority-owned TV stations are lower-rated outlets in the top 20 markets, making them a target for Big Media takeovers.
FACT # 9: A broken and corrupt process creates bad policies. The FCC’s lack of transparency, flawed research and secret timetable have tossed aside basic fairness and accountability in the rush to change media ownership rules.
FACT # 10: The public doesn’t want more media consolidation. Martin’s actions ignore the millions of Americans — and 99 percent of the comments in the FCC docket — who oppose letting a few media giants swallow up more local media.
“Chairman Martin has demonstrated an unyielding determination to ignore the public will and any evidence that challenges his predetermined conclusions,” said Craig Aaron, communications director of Free Press and co-author of the report. “His proposal undermines the FCC’s fundamental responsibility to protect competition, localism and diversity over the public airwaves. It’s now up to Congress to put the brakes on runaway media consolidation.”
Read Devil in the Details:
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/files/devil_in_the_details.pdf
November 26, 2007
Jen Howard, Free Press, (202) 265-1490, x22
FCC Chairman’s Big Media Giveaway Exposed
Free Press report outlines 10 facts Kevin Martin ‘doesn’t want you to know’ about cross-ownership proposal
WASHINGTON — Today, Free Press released Devil in the Details, a report exposing 10 key facts that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is hiding from the public about his recent proposal to lift the longstanding ban on “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership.”
Using a carefully crafted PR campaign — including an op-ed in the New York Times — Chairman Martin has portrayed his proposal as a “moderate compromise” that would only allow one company to own both a daily newspaper and a broadcast TV or radio station in the 20 largest media markets.
But Devil in the Details exposes how the loose and ambiguous “waiver” standard proposed by Martin creates a giant loophole for big media companies to sidestep the ban in any market and for any station.
“Chairman Martin’s double-speak can’t disguise the fact that his proposal would gut the cross-ownership ban everywhere,” said Derek Turner, research director of Free Press and co-author of the report. “The reality is that Martin’s plan is no moderate compromise. If passed, the new rules would unleash unprecedented consolidation across the country.”
To stop a merger in the top 20 markets, the burden of proof would rest with average citizens and public interest groups opposing the deal. Outside the top 20 markets, the burden of proof would rest with media companies — the same companies that control all the information and could make promises that would be almost impossible to enforce.
“Martin’s proposal stacks the decks against the public interest,” said Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press and co-author of the report. “The expensive and bureaucratic waiver process would pit the limited resources of average American citizens against giant media companies with the money and time to game the system.”
As this new report illustrates, Martin’s rhetoric can’t match the reality that his plan is a massive giveaway to the largest media companies. The 10 facts about the proposal include:
FACT #1: Martin’s “modest” proposal is corporate welfare for Big Media. Martin’s plan would unleash a buying spree in the top 20 markets, making it easier for companies like Belo, News Corp. and Tribune Co. to push out independent, local owners.
FACT #2: Loopholes open the door to cross-ownership in any market. Under Martin’s loose standards, cross-ownership waivers could be approved in hundreds of smaller cities and towns.
FACT #3: Loopholes allow newspapers to own TV stations of any size. The same technicalities could permit top-rated stations in any market to combine with major newspapers.
FACT #4: FCC history shows weak standards won’t protect the public. The current rules forbid cross-ownership, but the FCC hasn’t denied any temporary waiver request in years.
FACT #5: Cross-ownership doesn’t create more local news. The latest studies — using the FCC’s own data — show that markets with cross-ownership produce less total local news, as one dominant company crowds out the competition.
FACT #6: Cross-ownership won’t solve newspapers’ financial woes. Claims that the newspaper industry is about to “wither and die” are greatly exaggerated, and no evidence shows that cross-ownership would make things better.
FACT # 7: The Internet is an opportunity, not a death sentence. Mergers and consolidation are not the answer to the financial problems of the traditional media.
FACT #8: Martin’s plan would harm minority media owners. Nearly half of the nation’s minority-owned TV stations are lower-rated outlets in the top 20 markets, making them a target for Big Media takeovers.
FACT # 9: A broken and corrupt process creates bad policies. The FCC’s lack of transparency, flawed research and secret timetable have tossed aside basic fairness and accountability in the rush to change media ownership rules.
FACT # 10: The public doesn’t want more media consolidation. Martin’s actions ignore the millions of Americans — and 99 percent of the comments in the FCC docket — who oppose letting a few media giants swallow up more local media.
“Chairman Martin has demonstrated an unyielding determination to ignore the public will and any evidence that challenges his predetermined conclusions,” said Craig Aaron, communications director of Free Press and co-author of the report. “His proposal undermines the FCC’s fundamental responsibility to protect competition, localism and diversity over the public airwaves. It’s now up to Congress to put the brakes on runaway media consolidation.”
Read Devil in the Details:
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/files/devil_in_the_details.pdf
Carson Daly About to Defy Writers Strike
Carson Daly, Entertainment Douchebag of the Month
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8T6F7HO0&show_article=1
Carson Daly About to Defy Writers Strike
Nov 28, 2007
By FRAZIER MOORE
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - NBC's "Last Call with Carson Daly" is about to become the first late- night talk show to defy the writers strike and resume production.
Daly, who is not a member of the Writers Guild, will begin taping new episodes of his Burbank-based show this week for airing next week, an NBC spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.
The half-hour "Last Call" airs at 1:35 a.m. EST weeknights, but whether Daly's first new episode would air next Monday or Tuesday was initially unclear. No guests were disclosed.
"The Writers Guild of America, East joins our colleagues of the Writers Guild of America, West in expressing our profound disappointment with Carson Daly's decision to return to work," the guild said in a statement that also commended other late-night talk show hosts for showing solidarity with their writers. "We thank them and hope that Mr. Daly will reconsider his decision, including the soliciting of scab writers to provide material for his program."
Daly is not the first talk-show host to go back into production. Ellen DeGeneres, who is a member of the union, has continued taping her daytime syndicated talk show after shutting down the first day of the strike. But "Last Call" becomes the first to break ranks among the late-night shows, which all had chosen to air repeats rather than tape new shows without their striking writers.
It was unclear what effect, if any, the return of "Last Call" would have on other late-night talk shows, which include NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," and ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Comedy Central's late-night news-and- commentary spoofs, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" with Stephen Colbert, have also been in reruns.
There was no immediate word on when any of those shows might follow suit and return with new episodes.
On Monday, contract talks with the studios resumed for the first time since movie and TV writers went on strike Nov. 5. The Writers Guild is seeking more money for material distributed over the Internet and cell phones.
___
NBC is owned by General Electric Co.
___
On the Net:
http://www.nbc.com/
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8T6F7HO0&show_article=1
Carson Daly About to Defy Writers Strike
Nov 28, 2007
By FRAZIER MOORE
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - NBC's "Last Call with Carson Daly" is about to become the first late- night talk show to defy the writers strike and resume production.
Daly, who is not a member of the Writers Guild, will begin taping new episodes of his Burbank-based show this week for airing next week, an NBC spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.
The half-hour "Last Call" airs at 1:35 a.m. EST weeknights, but whether Daly's first new episode would air next Monday or Tuesday was initially unclear. No guests were disclosed.
"The Writers Guild of America, East joins our colleagues of the Writers Guild of America, West in expressing our profound disappointment with Carson Daly's decision to return to work," the guild said in a statement that also commended other late-night talk show hosts for showing solidarity with their writers. "We thank them and hope that Mr. Daly will reconsider his decision, including the soliciting of scab writers to provide material for his program."
Daly is not the first talk-show host to go back into production. Ellen DeGeneres, who is a member of the union, has continued taping her daytime syndicated talk show after shutting down the first day of the strike. But "Last Call" becomes the first to break ranks among the late-night shows, which all had chosen to air repeats rather than tape new shows without their striking writers.
It was unclear what effect, if any, the return of "Last Call" would have on other late-night talk shows, which include NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," and ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Comedy Central's late-night news-and- commentary spoofs, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" with Stephen Colbert, have also been in reruns.
There was no immediate word on when any of those shows might follow suit and return with new episodes.
On Monday, contract talks with the studios resumed for the first time since movie and TV writers went on strike Nov. 5. The Writers Guild is seeking more money for material distributed over the Internet and cell phones.
___
NBC is owned by General Electric Co.
___
On the Net:
http://www.nbc.com/
Witnesses testify in Blackwater lawsuit
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/blackwater_prosecutions
Witnesses testify in Blackwater lawsuit
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Nov 28, 2007
A federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide heard witnesses Tuesday as a private lawsuit accused the government contractor's bodyguards of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, the civil complaint also accuses North Carolina-based Blackwater of failing to give drug tests to its guards in Baghdad — even though an estimated one in four of them was using steroids or other "judgment altering substances."
A Blackwater spokeswoman said Tuesday its employees are banned from using steroids or other enhancement drugs but declined to comment on the other charges detailed in the 18-page lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of five Iraqis who were killed and two who were injured during the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The shootings enraged the Iraqi government, and the Justice Department is investigating whether it can bring criminal charges in the case, even though the State Department promised limited immunity to the Blackwater guards.
Justice Department national security prosecutors Kenneth Kohl and Stephen Ponticiello, both of whom are handling the Blackwater case, spent much of Tuesday afternoon in the grand jury room, which is off limits to the public. Two witnesses also spent hours behind closed doors in the District of Columbia's federal courthouse. One of them emerged sporadically to speak with an attorney, who refused to identify himself, his law firm or his client.
When the grand jury was dismissed for the day, the men left without commenting, as did Kohl.
Before the shootings in Baghdad last September, the three teams of an estimated dozen Blackwater bodyguards had already dropped off the State Department official they were tasked with protecting when they headed to Nisoor Square, according to the lawsuit filed by lawyers working with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Blackwater and State Department personnel staffing a tactical operations center "expressly directed the Blackwater shooters to stay with the official and refrain from leaving the secure area," the complaint says. "Reasonable discovery will establish that the Blackwater shooters ignored those directives."
Additionally, the lawsuit notes: "One of Blackwater's own shooters tried to stop his colleagues from indiscriminately firing upon the crowd of innocent civilians but he was unsuccessful in his efforts."
The civil complaint offers new details of the incident that has strained relations between the United States and Iraq, which is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.
The Justice Department says it likely will be months before it decides whether it can prosecute the guards, and it is trying now to pinpoint how many shooters in the Blackwater convoy could face charges. A senior U.S. law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday that government investigators are looking at whether the Blackwater guards were authorized to be in the square at the time of the shooting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
In an interview, lead plaintiff attorney Susan L. Burke said private investigators turned up the new evidence through interviews with people in Iraq and the United States "who would have reason to know." Those people do not include government officials, Burke said, and she declined to comment when asked if they include Blackwater employees.
The civil lawsuit does not specify how much money the victims and their families are seeking from Blackwater, its 11 subsidiaries and founder, Erik Prince, all of whom are named as defendants.
"We're looking for compensatory (damages) because the people who were killed were the breadwinners in their families," Burke said. "And we're looking for punitive in a manner that suffices to change the corporation's conduct. We have a real interest in holding them accountable for what were completely avoidable deaths."
The lawsuit also accuses Blackwater of routinely sending its guards into Baghdad despite knowing that at least 25 percent of them were using steroids or other "judgment-altering substances." Attorneys estimated that Blackwater employs about 600 guards in Iraq. The company "did not conduct drug-testing of any of its shooters before sending them equipped with heavy weapons into the streets of Baghdad," the lawsuit states.
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Blackwater employees are tested for drug use before they are hired and later given random quarterly tests. She said use of steroids and other performance enhancement drugs "are absolutely in violation of our policy."
"Blackwater has very strict policies concerning drug use, and if anyone were known to be in violation of them they would be immediately fired," Tyrrell said.
She declined comment on whether the bodyguards ignored their orders and abandoned their posts, or on other details outlined in the lawsuit.
Blackwater's contract with the State Department to protect diplomats in Iraq expires in May, and there are questions whether it will remain as the primary contractor for diplomatic bodyguards. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his Cabinet is drafting legislation that would force the State Department to replace Blackwater with another security company.
The State Department declined to comment on the case Tuesday, citing standard policy on pending legal matters. Deputy spokesman Tom Casey referred questions on the matter "to those involved in the lawsuit."
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
Witnesses testify in Blackwater lawsuit
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Nov 28, 2007
A federal grand jury investigating Blackwater Worldwide heard witnesses Tuesday as a private lawsuit accused the government contractor's bodyguards of ignoring orders and abandoning their posts shortly before taking part in a Baghdad shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Filed this week in U.S. District Court in Washington, the civil complaint also accuses North Carolina-based Blackwater of failing to give drug tests to its guards in Baghdad — even though an estimated one in four of them was using steroids or other "judgment altering substances."
A Blackwater spokeswoman said Tuesday its employees are banned from using steroids or other enhancement drugs but declined to comment on the other charges detailed in the 18-page lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of five Iraqis who were killed and two who were injured during the Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square. The shootings enraged the Iraqi government, and the Justice Department is investigating whether it can bring criminal charges in the case, even though the State Department promised limited immunity to the Blackwater guards.
Justice Department national security prosecutors Kenneth Kohl and Stephen Ponticiello, both of whom are handling the Blackwater case, spent much of Tuesday afternoon in the grand jury room, which is off limits to the public. Two witnesses also spent hours behind closed doors in the District of Columbia's federal courthouse. One of them emerged sporadically to speak with an attorney, who refused to identify himself, his law firm or his client.
When the grand jury was dismissed for the day, the men left without commenting, as did Kohl.
Before the shootings in Baghdad last September, the three teams of an estimated dozen Blackwater bodyguards had already dropped off the State Department official they were tasked with protecting when they headed to Nisoor Square, according to the lawsuit filed by lawyers working with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Blackwater and State Department personnel staffing a tactical operations center "expressly directed the Blackwater shooters to stay with the official and refrain from leaving the secure area," the complaint says. "Reasonable discovery will establish that the Blackwater shooters ignored those directives."
Additionally, the lawsuit notes: "One of Blackwater's own shooters tried to stop his colleagues from indiscriminately firing upon the crowd of innocent civilians but he was unsuccessful in his efforts."
The civil complaint offers new details of the incident that has strained relations between the United States and Iraq, which is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.
The Justice Department says it likely will be months before it decides whether it can prosecute the guards, and it is trying now to pinpoint how many shooters in the Blackwater convoy could face charges. A senior U.S. law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday that government investigators are looking at whether the Blackwater guards were authorized to be in the square at the time of the shooting. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
In an interview, lead plaintiff attorney Susan L. Burke said private investigators turned up the new evidence through interviews with people in Iraq and the United States "who would have reason to know." Those people do not include government officials, Burke said, and she declined to comment when asked if they include Blackwater employees.
The civil lawsuit does not specify how much money the victims and their families are seeking from Blackwater, its 11 subsidiaries and founder, Erik Prince, all of whom are named as defendants.
"We're looking for compensatory (damages) because the people who were killed were the breadwinners in their families," Burke said. "And we're looking for punitive in a manner that suffices to change the corporation's conduct. We have a real interest in holding them accountable for what were completely avoidable deaths."
The lawsuit also accuses Blackwater of routinely sending its guards into Baghdad despite knowing that at least 25 percent of them were using steroids or other "judgment-altering substances." Attorneys estimated that Blackwater employs about 600 guards in Iraq. The company "did not conduct drug-testing of any of its shooters before sending them equipped with heavy weapons into the streets of Baghdad," the lawsuit states.
Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Blackwater employees are tested for drug use before they are hired and later given random quarterly tests. She said use of steroids and other performance enhancement drugs "are absolutely in violation of our policy."
"Blackwater has very strict policies concerning drug use, and if anyone were known to be in violation of them they would be immediately fired," Tyrrell said.
She declined comment on whether the bodyguards ignored their orders and abandoned their posts, or on other details outlined in the lawsuit.
Blackwater's contract with the State Department to protect diplomats in Iraq expires in May, and there are questions whether it will remain as the primary contractor for diplomatic bodyguards. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his Cabinet is drafting legislation that would force the State Department to replace Blackwater with another security company.
The State Department declined to comment on the case Tuesday, citing standard policy on pending legal matters. Deputy spokesman Tom Casey referred questions on the matter "to those involved in the lawsuit."
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
Psi-Lord
New Rense.com advertiser site:
Psi-Lord
http://www.psi-lord.com/
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Psi-Lord
http://www.psi-lord.com/
Psi-Lord.com - The Hypersite - the only scientific explorer, developer, creator of new psychic discoveries in every field of Psi, exposing the pitfalls and the rewards of Psi-technology.
This Hypersite web complex has all the leading edge psychic, psychotronic, Psi and shamanic; psychotronic crystals, generators, batteries in dedicated websites to every different range of products discovered by scientist, author, world geopolitical and military foreign correspondent for U.S. National Radio, expert on Tetra and microwave weapons, TV personality... only a HyperSite can give you a dedicated guide to all psychic development (see Psychic Warrior Shaman) a comprehensive step by step programme to evolving your Awareness to re-discover ancient Seer Psi (circa 100,000 BC as documented by Carlos Castaneda in his books) and future Psi brought into the present by using next generation Remote Viewing - Lucid Viewing. The guide has click ons to relevant sections in the Hypersite that are good starting points for your search through the largest psychic resource on the Internet.
War Paint and Lawyers
War Paint and Lawyers: Rainforest Indians versus Big Oil
Greg Palast investigates for BBC Newsnight - TONIGHT
Chevron: "Nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."
Tuesday, November 27, 10:30pm GMT [5:30pm New York Time] - live on BBC2 TV or on the net at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
BBC Television Newsnight has been able to get close-in film of a new Cofan Indian ritual deep in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. Known as "The Filing of the Law Suit," natives of Ecuador's jungle, decked in feathers and war paint and heavily armed with lawyers, are filmed presenting a new complaint in their litigation seeking $12 billion from Chevron Inc., the international oil goliath.
It would all be a poignant joke - except that the indigenous tribe is suddenly the odds-on favorite to defeat the oil company known for naming its largest tanker, "Condoleezza," after former Chevron director, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
For Newsnight, reporter Greg Palast, steps (somewhat inelegantly) into a dug-out log canoe to seek out the Cofan in their rainforest village to investigate their allegations. Palast discovers stinking pits of old oil drilling residue leaking into drinking water - and meets farmers whose limbs are covered in pustules.
The Cofan's leader, Emergildo Criollo, tells Palast that when Texaco Oil, now part of Chevron, came to the village in 1972, it obtained permission to drill by offering the Indians candy and cheese. The indigenous folk threw the funny-selling cheese into the jungle.
Criollo says his three-year son died from oil contamination after, "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood."
Flying out of the rainforest, past the Andes volcanoes, Palast gets the other side of the story in Ecuador's capitol, Quito. "It's the largest fraud in history!" asserts Chevron lawyer Jaime Varela reacting to the Cofan law suits against his company. Chevron-Texaco, Varela insists, cleaned up all its contaminated oil pits when it abandoned the country nearly 15 years ago - except those pits it left in the hands of Ecuador's own state oil company.
What about the Indian kids dying of cancer? Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez asks, "And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible." The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."
Even if the Indians can prove their case and win billions to clean up the jungle, collecting the cash is another matter. Chevron has removed all its assets from Ecuador.
But, this week, the political planet tilts toward the natives as Alberto Acosta takes office as President of Ecuador's new Constitutional Assembly. Newsnight catches up with Acosta - who gives Chevron a tongue-lashing. "Chevron is responsible for environmental and social destruction in the Amazon. And that’s why they’re on trial."
"He LOVES Chavez"
Little Ecuador does not seem like much of a match against big Chevron - whose revenue exceeds the entire GDP of the Andean nation. However, behind Little Ecuador is Huge Venezuela - and its larger-than-life leader, Hugo Chavez. "Acosta," complains one local pundit to the BBC, "loves - LOVES - Chavez."
And apparently, the feeling is mutual. That is, Chavez sees in Ecuador's new government, which won election campaigning to the tune of the Twisted Sister hit, We're Not Gonna Take it Anymore, a new ally in his fight with George Bush over control of Latin hearts and minds - and energy.
Chevron-Texaco's largest new oil reserves are in Venezuela; Venezuela stands with Ecuador; and Ecuador now stands with its "affectados," the Indians and farmers claiming the poisons in their bodies trace right back to the Texaco star.
Suddenly, the David-versus-Goliath story of Little Indians versus Big Oil is becoming part of the larger conflict between Uncle Sam and Uncle Hugo. The outcome is now a cliff-hanger. Indeed, Newsnight has learned that this month, Chevron will face a new legal challenge by Cofan attorneys before US securities regulators to investigate whether the company has fully disclosed to shareholders the massive potential legal liability from the equatorial Rumble in the Jungle.
Watch the story live on BBC2 or, in the US, on the net at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm after broadcast - or via a link from http://www.gregpalast.com/. WARNING: The day's news events may require Newsnight to delay broadcast to another evening.
And this weekend, catch Palast discussing the BBC Report with environmental crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on RFK's Air America Radio program, Ring of Fire.
And pick of a copy of "Ecuador: Oiled and Despoiled," one of the documentary shorts on Palast's DVD film collection, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, released this week. Available only by making a tax-deductible donation to The Palast Investigative Fund at http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/
BBC Television Newsnight story filmed in Ecuador by Rick Rowley, edited by Jacquie Shoohen in New York, produced in London by Meirion Jones, written and reported from Ecuador by Greg Palast. http://www.gregpalast.com/
Widely Reported
Greg Palast investigates for BBC Newsnight - TONIGHT
Chevron: "Nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."
Tuesday, November 27, 10:30pm GMT [5:30pm New York Time] - live on BBC2 TV or on the net at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm
BBC Television Newsnight has been able to get close-in film of a new Cofan Indian ritual deep in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. Known as "The Filing of the Law Suit," natives of Ecuador's jungle, decked in feathers and war paint and heavily armed with lawyers, are filmed presenting a new complaint in their litigation seeking $12 billion from Chevron Inc., the international oil goliath.
It would all be a poignant joke - except that the indigenous tribe is suddenly the odds-on favorite to defeat the oil company known for naming its largest tanker, "Condoleezza," after former Chevron director, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
For Newsnight, reporter Greg Palast, steps (somewhat inelegantly) into a dug-out log canoe to seek out the Cofan in their rainforest village to investigate their allegations. Palast discovers stinking pits of old oil drilling residue leaking into drinking water - and meets farmers whose limbs are covered in pustules.
The Cofan's leader, Emergildo Criollo, tells Palast that when Texaco Oil, now part of Chevron, came to the village in 1972, it obtained permission to drill by offering the Indians candy and cheese. The indigenous folk threw the funny-selling cheese into the jungle.
Criollo says his three-year son died from oil contamination after, "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood."
Flying out of the rainforest, past the Andes volcanoes, Palast gets the other side of the story in Ecuador's capitol, Quito. "It's the largest fraud in history!" asserts Chevron lawyer Jaime Varela reacting to the Cofan law suits against his company. Chevron-Texaco, Varela insists, cleaned up all its contaminated oil pits when it abandoned the country nearly 15 years ago - except those pits it left in the hands of Ecuador's own state oil company.
What about the Indian kids dying of cancer? Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez asks, "And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible." The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."
Even if the Indians can prove their case and win billions to clean up the jungle, collecting the cash is another matter. Chevron has removed all its assets from Ecuador.
But, this week, the political planet tilts toward the natives as Alberto Acosta takes office as President of Ecuador's new Constitutional Assembly. Newsnight catches up with Acosta - who gives Chevron a tongue-lashing. "Chevron is responsible for environmental and social destruction in the Amazon. And that’s why they’re on trial."
"He LOVES Chavez"
Little Ecuador does not seem like much of a match against big Chevron - whose revenue exceeds the entire GDP of the Andean nation. However, behind Little Ecuador is Huge Venezuela - and its larger-than-life leader, Hugo Chavez. "Acosta," complains one local pundit to the BBC, "loves - LOVES - Chavez."
And apparently, the feeling is mutual. That is, Chavez sees in Ecuador's new government, which won election campaigning to the tune of the Twisted Sister hit, We're Not Gonna Take it Anymore, a new ally in his fight with George Bush over control of Latin hearts and minds - and energy.
Chevron-Texaco's largest new oil reserves are in Venezuela; Venezuela stands with Ecuador; and Ecuador now stands with its "affectados," the Indians and farmers claiming the poisons in their bodies trace right back to the Texaco star.
Suddenly, the David-versus-Goliath story of Little Indians versus Big Oil is becoming part of the larger conflict between Uncle Sam and Uncle Hugo. The outcome is now a cliff-hanger. Indeed, Newsnight has learned that this month, Chevron will face a new legal challenge by Cofan attorneys before US securities regulators to investigate whether the company has fully disclosed to shareholders the massive potential legal liability from the equatorial Rumble in the Jungle.
Watch the story live on BBC2 or, in the US, on the net at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm after broadcast - or via a link from http://www.gregpalast.com/. WARNING: The day's news events may require Newsnight to delay broadcast to another evening.
And this weekend, catch Palast discussing the BBC Report with environmental crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on RFK's Air America Radio program, Ring of Fire.
And pick of a copy of "Ecuador: Oiled and Despoiled," one of the documentary shorts on Palast's DVD film collection, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, released this week. Available only by making a tax-deductible donation to The Palast Investigative Fund at http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/
BBC Television Newsnight story filmed in Ecuador by Rick Rowley, edited by Jacquie Shoohen in New York, produced in London by Meirion Jones, written and reported from Ecuador by Greg Palast. http://www.gregpalast.com/
Widely Reported
Bourbon Pecan Pie
Uncle Fats' Tasty Meal of the Week
Uncle Fat's Note: Liberal usage of bourbon above the 2 tablespoons is encouraged...
http://floras-hideout.com/recipes/recipes.php?page=recipes&data=b/Bourbon_Pecan_Pie_-_NY_Times
Bourbon Pecan Pie - NY Times
Servings: 8
Categories: Alcohol / Crust-Pie / Desserts / Pies & Pastries
Ingredients:
Crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sweet butter; cold, cut up
3 tablespoons shortening, cold
3 tablespoons water, iced
Filling
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons bourbon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup pecans, chopped
Directions:
1. Crust Place flour, sugar, and salt in bowl of food processor. Pulse just to combine. Add butter and shortening. Pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. With machine running, slowly pour in water. Process just until mixture begins to come together. Gently press dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to fit a 9 in. plate. Place dough in plate and trim, crimp edges.
3. Preheat oven 375 degrees.
4. Filling Whisk together the eggs, sugar, light and dark corn syrups, butter, bourbon and salt. Place the pecans in the bottom of the pie plate. Pour the filling over the pecans. Bake until set, about 35-40 minutes.
Uncle Fat's Note: Liberal usage of bourbon above the 2 tablespoons is encouraged...
http://floras-hideout.com/recipes/recipes.php?page=recipes&data=b/Bourbon_Pecan_Pie_-_NY_Times
Bourbon Pecan Pie - NY Times
Servings: 8
Categories: Alcohol / Crust-Pie / Desserts / Pies & Pastries
Ingredients:
Crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sweet butter; cold, cut up
3 tablespoons shortening, cold
3 tablespoons water, iced
Filling
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons bourbon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup pecans, chopped
Directions:
1. Crust Place flour, sugar, and salt in bowl of food processor. Pulse just to combine. Add butter and shortening. Pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. With machine running, slowly pour in water. Process just until mixture begins to come together. Gently press dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to fit a 9 in. plate. Place dough in plate and trim, crimp edges.
3. Preheat oven 375 degrees.
4. Filling Whisk together the eggs, sugar, light and dark corn syrups, butter, bourbon and salt. Place the pecans in the bottom of the pie plate. Pour the filling over the pecans. Bake until set, about 35-40 minutes.
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