Blog K

Yup, this one is for knuckleheads; you know who you are; humiliated in class, streamed into the 'trades' and third grade skill set, you found your stodgy niche and stayed there. Some of you may have been stuck with a rich and ambitious father, and your foot up the ladder was easy. Others of you will have developed that cunning that allowed you to progress well into local government, and some of the really ambitious and useless amongst you got to be big time politicians. I've been on this planet long enough to have lost the surprise I originally expressed at the progress of you turkeys. I recall once being in charge of a school group at a ski lodge, where one particularly hopeless case was a boy totally unable to keep out of trouble, who'd fuck with the generators so we had no electricity, and break up and annoy every happy group, and years later, languishing in hospital with a smashed shoulder from a motorcycle accident, I discovered this 'brilliant surgeon' of the same name; the ambitious and wealthy father had made sure his son had gotten well up the ladder, but upon hearing his name I promptly discharged myself from that institution and sought surgery elsewhere. Whew! Have you had a negative experience from an issue of major importance to you? Did someone mess with your justifiable complaint and get you left out in the cold? There are specialist of this ilk in every walk of life; some have the universal password to suitdom; the MBA; the qualification for this is; no track record; time spent in the fringes of business; a pocketful of money gleaned however you like; 20-30 hrs a week spare to attend lectures and study. I know some really good people from all walks of life who've found the break they needed to higher executive roles, but there is a majority of the graduates who have gained solely a license to practice their connerie at a totally different level. I once challenged, informally, a professor of law I happened to be rubbing shoulders with, and he wryly admitted that 95% of his graduates weren't up to scratch. I also knew a lawyer who'd, for a bet, graduated in six years instead of five, WITHOUT READING A SINGLE BOOK. I passed my first management exams without attending a single lecture, principally because the basics are common sense, and amongst the others from my company scored, to their chagrin, the highest mark. Common sense is a natural process. Regrettably the higher etchelons of the law and science and medicine are getting away from that, and the knucklehead factor starts to skew the results, and we have immense wastage of our precious resources in the research and quests for the mindless and banal. Hey, turn on TV; these people are a population segment with an immense power to control or influence or entertain or inform, and what do they give you? You do the math; 400 channels and maybe, just maybe, one will be a reasonable supplier of factual, realistic, educational material; the rest are serving you a vast heap of rubbish; for better or worse; and hopefully a sports channel you can relate to is in there too... but I digress; this factor of life that is the bane of the human race, and will keep us from every sane move for the good, is present right up to the head of the United States; he's in the pocket of every sleazy business shark who ever made a trillion; there are a few of them, and to have him back senseless technologies, and blind alley paths of problem resolution, IS OUR FUCKING DESTINY, unless you can see a way to wake up the USA..... I know there is a huge show of Al Goreism in the world, but whose interest is he pushing really? And the good news this week is that the polar ice melt will open up the North West Passage for the first time in centuries, allowing greater frequency of larger ships with boatloads of PRC shite to get to the EU/East Coast USA market quicker! Are you in, for more shite, quicker?We'll be amazed in five years to look back and see the continued stupidity that curses our corridors of power; the way is possible only to klutzes; why? Intelligence, and the ability to think outside the square is frowned upon; I know; my two brothers were top of every class, top of their schools, between them they achieved amazing academic performances, scholarships awarded only on evidence of true brilliance.... Today, they are both nowhere; in limbo; discarded, ignored, rebuffed and anonymous, this resource of really great brainpower has contributed zero to the progress of the world. I on the other hand, chose not to cast my pearls before the swine of this world, and indulged my every whim in employment and research for the interesting and amazing, and have done a great deal of what I ever fancied to do. That's it; Fancy; and let me tell you, when this world falls into the polluted swirl of sludge that is its destiny, I will be there too, but I will have this rich resource of memories of the awesome, the wonderful, the soul-satisfying glories one can seek alone or with a special one, while you have stuck to your fucking mind numbing inside line to the predictable future you all justifiably deserve... or am I wrong? Will you actually become one of the possible billion voices saying 'enough'? Does your intelligence quotient actually allow you to put your hand up and speak out? Or did you push it down in anticipation of someone else speaking up? No more mate; Nuff said.

Blog J

Call me what you like, but this male gets joy in the company of the female form; frumps and lumps need not apply, and when I take a break from the relentless restoration of a very ancient post and beam farm building into a melange of ancient and modern designer chic, and I switch on the TV in this tiny country, I get more coverage of sport, than an ordinary bloke could ask for, canoe races, international athletics meetings, soccer, bloody soccer, handball, volleyball, swimming, and shoot me dead lord, rhythmic gymnastics. Now I'm a normal bloke, and I don't know if you get coverage of RG in your section of the world, but what I see there could gladden the heart of the most jaded couch potato. They're all teenage girls, and dressed in girls' gymnastic tights, but garnished by the most dedicated embroiderers, (look closely; little old ladies slave thousands of hours to make their grandchildren look good here..) and they perform; hell do they perform. I have only a vague idea of how many hours in the backstreet gymnasiums of Azerbaidjan and Poland these youngsters slave, to attain the precision and physical stamina to get on the podia of Europe, but the result is, overwhelmingly, joy, for me. For you too possibly, but I dread that you know more of Paris Hilton, or Kylie or....... there is, in talent, an adage of 90% Perspiration, 10% Inspiration. These girls, not even young women, a lot of them, have so much talent and dedication, and the stadia they perform in are so often half empty, that I wonder what drives them? Do you have the name of a current RG champion on your lips? I can't recall the number of ice skaters I've seen who've 'made it big' and disappeared into obscurity, but for a quotient of joy, for an amazing few minutes of sheer impossibility, set to music, see what a youngster from some newly emergent republic can put together under the spotlight; I've watched the smoothest Nikest ladies of the 100 metres sprint persuasion, the highest high jumpers, and the pole vaulters, all awesome, but if you've missed this season's output of RG puppies, you've done your eyes a disservice. Joy, pure Joy, but do they feel it? I wonder? The 100 metres girl will get $30,000 for her first place; I don't know what these girls of the RG persuasion get, but think about where you put your eyes and money this season, and give the rythmic gymnasts their due. Nuff said.

Blog H

A hundred years from now I really think 'Happy' will be an extinct word; Bob Dylan once, when asked, indicated that he'd never been happy; thousands of respondents in a global survey did not comprehend a question about 'Happiness', and I view daily many people driving bright shiny new motorcars who in no way reflect their possessions in their visage; scowly, grumpy, lumpy, poorly dressed, overweight, underweight, pale, wan, drawn, flushed, perhaps we feel buying something new improves the image? I am not fooled, but I indulge anyone their fancy, and am the happiest shopper in the world, like in a crowd at a fashion show, horse race, or village fair, happy to watch, to know, to see the familiar reactions to new/different/amazing, as long as whoever I'm with is 'happy'...... am I a cynic? I walked through Japan for six months, in 1987, and was fascinated with that culture... they have no word for 'exciting', exhibit a control in a crowd that has to be experienced to be comprehended, and finally revealed to me where they go in this throb of uniformity; the 'wa' is their inner space that is where they can hang out in peace, not bothered by others' conventions, rules, pressure, and if any culture has it right, Japan gets closest. But scratch the surface wherever you go in this world, and a Dr Mengele is likely to leap out, whether you choose whiteanglosaxonprotestant or whatever, it lurks in us all, and seems to be beyond regulations to suppress. I'd like to think I can protest to someone, but over the years I've tried all sorts of objecting, and the most satisfying period of my life was a brief encounter, in Australia, once, with a series of ex crims who went out and destroyed and vandalized every night; they had already rationalised the futility of lawful protest, and found their only justice in faceless destruction. I could not stand to be in a space like that very long, but my opinion was that they were 'happy', so, one up to them..... Can you offer something better? Please don't push a bible under my nose; there are dozens of books I can escape with, none of them are more than fifty or a hundred years old, and a variety of yoga sessions can do better than that, but what is there, that we can all follow/getinto/find that has us all at peace with one another? When I was seven I was in Aden, wandering wide eyed amongst the port's colour and noise, when a big black soldier, with a funny hat with a tassel whacked the muzzle of his rifle into my chest, signifying, I wonder to this day, 'don't go here', or some other interdiction. I didn't get it, distressed and confused, stumbling back to my parents, but every time, since then, when I hear some plaintive voice crying out 'you're not allowed', I find the officious twerp and say firmly 'yes you are, you just have to ask nicely', and hope some day there will be a place where I can be me, and you can be you, and I won't have to wonder if it is all in some stupid, officially sanctioned rulebook, guidebook, or religious text, which still, despite the best intentions, is going to be twisted and manipulated into another hateful doctrine. The Dalai Llama is probably as good a representative as I've ever heard of, and he's a man without a home..... Nuff said.

Blog G

Are you into your gear? I'm not a mountaineer, because of the incredibly high standard of gear one needs, which, regrettably, one has to tote UP the hill. However I am a skier, and I enjoy most of all the descent, though I can be persuaded to exert considerable energy to get across to a decent expanse of powder snow. My gear is pretty good. I've cheated sneaked and cajoled my way into a variety of test days where I've been able to get onto the best products available and blast a short fast route down a slope to see what really is the gear, and what really is just a load of hype. It's amazing how this stuff varies in quality and performance, and I wonder how we are all doing now we are obliged to source a lot of our recreational goods from the newly emerging asian producers. I have always liked nice stuff; I've enjoyed good tailors whenever I've sought a suit, as I'm a tall skinny type who doesn't fit 'off the peg' clothes much, and the last time I ordered a suit, the fabric fell apart after a couple of day's wear, and, surprisingly, the fabric supplier reimbursed the cost of the cloth AND the cost of the tailor. This is the twenty first century, and most of my time in the complaints department of the many stores I patronise gives me the impression that the customer is always wrong. So now I am viewing the rash of PRC products which I am tempted to buy, and I always scrutinise the labelling on the 'Grand' brands of goods offered too. Here's my gripe. CE is a pair of letters that say there was a set of rules put in front of the manufacturer before he signed the contract to supply. It promises no quality control, and, with my partner's €200 pair of sunglasses, the finish fell apart very quickly, the earpads softened and disintegrated, and while they could replace the frame with a new one, it had to be identical otherwise the prescription lenses wouldn't fit; what would you do? Want another pair the same? I did a replacement of the earpieces using near matching heatshrink tubing, which has done fine, but my ITALIAN sunnies with the synthetic nosepads have gone strange, and they don't make that model anymore, and there is no warranty options available to me; I'll wait till I'm using a cartridge of suitable gunk and I'll remanufacture the nosepads with something durable. I'm renovating a house right now, and my German disc grinder is a replacement for the one that fell apart too quickly, and fortunately the retailer knew me and treated me well. My second grinder is a dirt cheap PRC model with a speed control; it failed rapidly, and I got a replacement, with trepidation, that was the last one on the shelf. I've given it heaps of work and it's fine. Same with a lot of my new gear. Plan to get back to the retailer quickly if there's a problem, hope the second one is better. Now do the math; can't we get the 'CE' quality control up to standard? Is this just a bureaucratic wank? How about TUV? Have you bought any 'TUV' certified product? For years I've sworn by it; it's stamped on my ski bindings; they protect my bones and ligaments, and a recent cheap Polish tool I bought functions perfectly, but I got a lemon, too, and complained directly to the TUV organization; I've had months of 'getting nowhere' with heaps of emails, the upshot of which is that I am expected to do the research on this product myself, take digital photographs and document the problem, and send the wrapping and relevant details to these bods....yeah right.... how about I reappraise the thousands (yes) of dollars I've invested in TUV marked products, and start trying other options? The Gear to Garbage cycle needs cutting down; it's not hard; I'm reminded of the 'Nothing' campaign, where one artist prompted a city to 'just stop' consuming for one day; there was also a climatologically fascinating episode for three days after 9:11 when no commercial aircraft flew American skies; I've a blueprint for a solar powered plastics recycling unit, which turns the melted plastic into giant Lego blocks, free to one and all to construct walls, bins, utility structures; in fact anything at all, as burying this stuff in our architecture is probably the best way of all to deal with the plastic bottles that even this conservationist has no solution for. You want the chance to help fabricate these recycling units? I'm keen if you are; I've got a mile of little structures that could use this product..... Nuff said.

F

There's none so queer as ....... I live in Europe; about 15,000 years of tribal borders. While the Swiss may fancy their design skills, the Germans their engineering, and the French their technology, the tribal fundamentals of this lot means they'e lousy communicators. Across the forty or so languages, one might expect to see a consensus that this EU conglomeration should attend to more effective communication. Forget it. The biggest inefficiency here is the time one spends circling roundabouts looking for a further direction to the sign on the previous roundabout. Add to that the majority of motorists in the roundabout not indicating where they're going, (possibly for the same reason you're not indicating,) and there's the formula for everything that's wrong with modern life. I was trained as a graphic designer to look up to Swiss Typography. Some twenty years later I regularly cross Geneva, (the name of the 'clearest' typeface) to the airport. The intersections are such that it is essential to position one's car in the correct lane a half a kilometer before the intersection, as lane changing is not recommended anywhere else, but try finding an indication of which lane for the airport? Impossible, and the signs, when you do spot them, halfway through the intersection, tacked on a power pole, about the size of a magazine, mean you have a huge detour to find a successful U turn place for the retry. I know the way now, but I always look to see if they have gotten the idea yet, and no, they haven't. But they have gotten a fee at the border for touching their motorway system of forty francs, about twenty five euros, and for that priviledge, you are faced with NO TOILETS for the duration of your trip in Switzerland. Oh, you might get a shit splattered cubicle in a converted freight container at the side of a petrol stop, but I get instant constipation at the thought of even going near such an edifice. I think it explains the pained look on Roger Federer's face, and it certainly explains the anally retentive attitude of the swiss police, who will hold you to a group conference for no reason at all, but I think; 'what a great place this would be if they'd only step back and take a look at themselves'....... and no; there's an industry writing in praise of themselves but nothing else. I actually prefer the French's 'fuck you' attitude; if you can't handle the language and the quirkiness, get lost.... They have a troupe of tourist assistants and training staff in Paris trying to improve the attitude to American Tourists, to no avail. I worked in a gang in the alps, renovating old farm buildings for wealthy British buyers, and never was there an attempt to communicate; if a command could be made more obscure, the language was chosen to make that order as obscure as possible; only a native would understand. I cringe to this day for the stupid fool they made out of me. But here I am in Slovenia. The language is unique; sure it is Balkan, but it has three genders, and verbs conjugated accordingly, and I can listen for an hour to the TV and not comprehend a word; this is a rich treasure; the history goes back thousands of years, Jason and the Golden Fleece was a Slovenian event, to some extent, and is regularly celebrated. But share the treasure? Yesterday was EU language day; I asked several people if they could bring me a couple of copies of the brochures that were being distributed in the cities; no such luck, and every day when I think I have something right, I find, later, that it is 20% wrong, and a return trip is necessary to start the process over again. (Like; buying insulation, fabric, plumbing materials, foodstuffs, posting a letter, ordering timber, painting materials, you name it.) So my solution for saving this environment can only be for these races to extinct themselves as soon as possible, (which is what I see them doing) and to re-evolve over the ensuing millennia and maybe they'll be wiser for their mistakes. Nuff said.

E

Have you noticed how life is a series of options? Take parentage; you are, like it or not, 50% of the equation, but....pregnant? Run or stay? Cohabit or marry? The options go on forever; my personal choice was to stay, and I did, with a woman who had travelled to one hundred and forty two countries; great! I could dig that, I love travel, but.... her option was to not travel again...... while my job needed me to cover the country; you know, two cars, nice house, dinner parties with her dull choice of friends.... holidays in all the right places... it costs, so my option was to stay in the job; till I'd had enough, that is, and my option was to work from home, when I discovered my other half was exercising her option to talk on the phone for six hours average a day, and my option was to leave. Then one discovers where the options end; Statistically, children cared for by a single parent don't do well, in all the studies I can find, but all the children cared for by a single MALE parent do BETTER THAN THE NORM FOR EVEN TWO PARENT FAMILIES. Yeah, dude, where do you find a government department who isn't statitistically driven? Yet where do you find a society where the male is given possibly an even chance with the female to be principal caregiver? When I failed twice, at enormous expense, to have custody of my children, I hired a court clerk to research why I lost the case. First fact; choose a lawyer with absolutely no scholastic associations to the lawyer of the other party, or, if that must be the case, choose a lawyer higher up the pecking order (Yes.) than the other party. Second fact; IF I had won my case, I would have been the first male in 2008 custody cases in my court, to have won..... and the reason I have laid out all this stuff is that the parents of my generation, who were married before and during the second world war, MIGHT have had those options, but generally didn't exercise them; for better or for worse they stayed together, and looked after us in their own, unique, inimitable ways. And I think of my friends, and their parents, and right or wrong, good or bad, they were usually there, for their kids. Now most of those souls are gone, and a new generation is now dealing with the elderly. I have already voiced my distaste for demographics, but there is a huge demand for care of the elderly, and a new generation of suits are being hired by principally religious institutions to ramp up the game of care of the elderly. This varies across various countries, but my partner is French, and back home there are 17,500 people over ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AGE. They have some crazy deals going there; the best is when a person buys the house of an elderly person, and allows them to live there till they die, when the buyer then takes title to the property, and can move in or whatever. France's oldest woman, at 122, was such a lucky person; she had outlived the buyer..... and seemed pretty chirpy about it. But if you live in a place too big, or too remote for contact with a far flung family, moving into residential care is the dreadfullest thing you can do for yourself, even the glossiest of brochures never telling you the thing that will kill you; My parents moved, against my wishes, to such a 'nice' place. The catastrophe just got bigger and bigger; the removal company, an international outfit of 'repute,' lost most of their posessions, and the insurance documents were so complex they'd insured only the things they didn't value..... and the building, a modern chipboard box, had long term leaks from the modern plumbing practices, which put formaldehyde into the air especially near the kitchen, causing vertigo and sudden falling down in two of the healthiest oldies one could wish for. Dad died real quick; I'd exercised my option to stay and care for them, which is why I know so much about sick buildings, and I moved mother to another box with no leaks, but still sick, while the management stripped out and repaired the original killer box. Mother didn't go back there; she was too ill, but died a magnificently lingering death, where every aspect of the 'elderly care' nonsense could be examined closely and found totally wanting, from the 'angel of death' nurses with their pint bottles of morphine, the 'patient alert' gadget with the button to call help, on a chain, slipped behind the fallen patient who waited four hours for me to find her (I'd been absent five hours, and could find none of my six nearby family members to stand in) to the undertaker, who, I would have imagined, would have been able to assess the length and depth of a corpse and get a box that fitted, but no; they all got it wrong. The only bit they got right was the money, every time on the button, heaps and heaps of it, from my parents' pocket to theirs, and my parents' 'investment' dragged down to nothing by a group of Presbyterians who continue to this day to 'care for the elderly'. So I have been coaching my partner through the process of losing her favourite grandparents, and watching just a small variation of this 'elderly care' taking its toll on two people my lady values very highly, and when it is your turn, will you have changed anything? We all know where to start. We all know where it ends. I don't plan to be in any of the options available this day. Nuff said.

D

Are you a hunter gatherer? Do you know what that means? do you believe man has evolved so much that he's a far cry from what he was 15,000 years ago? Our differences from primitive man have only been happening in the last two hundred years. That we use toothbrushes and deodorant is irrelevant. That we trace our physiological evolution via our blood characteristics is probably nearer the truth. Is Ghengis Khan charging around in your bloodstream? Is there evidence in your blood that you were a plague survivor? Does polynesian ancestry assure you there wasn't a chinese encounter six hundred years ago? Our labs are closing in on a fast DNA analysis, MRI is picking over our bloodlines thanks to the Human Genome Project, and one fine day when this world has got your wellbeing a subject of immediate analysis and help, we may be able to get 'wellness' where and when we want it.......but for the meantime, you are what you eat. And hunter gatherers, the 0 bloodgroup of homo sapiens, 46% of us, are designed to eat a meal we found, chased down, cooked or tenderised or just tore apart and wolfed as we found it, depending on our circumstances, which could be the subject of a great deal of speculation, but hopefully I wasn't chased by wolves much, and I was able to snare a bird, wrap it in mud and bake it in a comforting fire, maybe even have enough to bring it home to the cave and share with my kin, tribe, woman; whatever society I was able to coexist with..... My Group A friends are all meant to be vegetarians; they built huts and kept their animals to milk, shear, and generally build into an agrarian society; I've always watched with interest my A friends; they are all losing their mothers to Cancer, and those mothers are, 100%, meat eaters. Some of my A friends tear into meat the way I'm meant to have torn into my prey those thousands of years ago, and I watch them now, and their fragile daughters with interest, wondering when and how they will go, and, if we are indeed what we eat, what is that incompatibility with mother's notion of 'good' that is getting us so firmly into our graves with the big C that, strangely has evolved with our last two hundred years of toothbrushes and deodorants....? (Have you read 'Our Stolen Future'?) I cannot put out of my mind the cries of achievement of the farmers who manage to get a bigger crop, grow a hardier apple, reap a double harvest from a season, and otherwise stretch the natural process of things to get what???? I like Spelt flour, from the original, single row wheat grass. On my European supermarket shelves I can get two, sometimes three varieties of it, and I add a little Rye, and make myself a loaf of bread once a week. Since I got to like this product, I've lost any tendency to have a cold. No mucus. No common or garden white flour. No pizza, unless I make it myself. And a croissant is still just a croissant, and cannot be considered a pleasure if, in eating a product made from Durum wheat, one loads oneself with the wallpaper glue that bakers seek to produce those lighter more glamorous confections, and is the sole reason one would seek a hybrid grain, to facilitate a more facile product. But there is a sector of our community who see to it that our interests and wellbeing come AFTER their interests and wellbeing, which is largely fiscal, and immoveable, if we believe the masses of media targeting our wellness. Wellness is a subtractive process. Achieve by removing from one's diet. Don't need; un-need. The best and biggest lie is that you can harm yourself by not eating. I can do that for 18 days. Always I meet up with someone who invites me to have sushi and I can't resist. I could easily go longer. It is interesting, fifteen days on water alone, to examine what is important in nutrition. Nothing really, once you can stand off from that impulse; It's a bit like smoking... quit that and then quit eating; you'll get an extra three hours to DO STUFF that you just waste with eating. And your energy goes UP, till you are (dare I say it?) superhuman.... try it, rather than a diet. Diet? Nuff said.

B

Buildings used to be intelligent. And 500 years ago when they built the great hall at Oxford University, some absolutely normal bloke squinted up at those soaring beams and figured 'aye, them'll need a replacement or two in a while; I'd better drop some acorns over in yonder paddock', and indeed, the engineer in charge of the renovation of said great hall, when wondering how he'd get wood that size for an authentic renovation, was surprised to find an absolutely normal bloke doffing his cap saying; 'aye, we've 'ad a stand of them oaks earmarked for them rafters for a while', and indeed, the wood went in real well, if you travel a little, and want to look at something a little deeper than your 'destination hotel' and some recently upgraded beach. I'm renovating an old farm building right now; the engineer who inspected it said, in the space of three cigarettes, 'knock it down and build a new one'... the neighbour is doing just that, and getting permission to do all that is taking longer than you can imagine. I will use more than 70% of the 100+ year old wood again; in fact, getting replacement timber of authentic nature is more of a test than it is worth; our native pine is Spruce; everything else is Oak; I will have plenty of tech stuff; but it will be inside; outside will be spruce and oak, and a drop of good oil and a bit of colour will make it look real easy on the eye. There is an industry in Vancouver, of recladding highrise apartments as the original cladding fails; anyone involved in a Body Corporate will know the likely cost of said replacement; a detail not on the glossy brochures when the project was floated; truth is, these industries are the backbone of the economy of many countries, and I wonder how many more centuries this roguery will prevail. Seems there is a line of gullible people believing 'easy maintenance', and just queueing to put their deposits down; the renovations they will need in five years carry a five year guarantee. You do the math.
I don't like advertising; the opposite is the truth, but Biobased is a company making a vegetable based foam insulation you spray on the insides of buildings; it holds the structure together even in a hurricane; but I can't use it here because it has not been approved for Europe; In fact, the company reports it has been extremely disheartening how slow it has been getting approval. This is a great product. There is a hurricane machine at the University of Florida, set up to test the donated housing used to aid Katrina victims; (hey, that's the biggest joke of all ain't it George?) Little can I get of their results; I suspect that the donated houses will, to a one, fold under the pressure. Spray a structure on the inside, with a moisture resistant, environmentally friendly insulation foam, and one has, for all our foreseeable futures, a better step to sanity with the roofs over our heads. I didn't worry about this till I fully clad a house in the latest 'fibreglass batts', soundproofing and all, and in a really cold blow, the house lost all its heat in ten minutes. Since then I do not believe 'R Factor' in insulation; It's a crock, and the founding fathers of YOUR country are up to their elbows in this shit, and sell it to your grandchildren too, unless you wake up. Nuff said.

A

Auto makers, and George W, have our future survival pinned on Hydrogen systems. The world's leading energy entrepreneur, Vinhod Khosla, finds 'no sense' in the concept. There is a research unit in the USA developing a small combustion engine turboed to give the required 300 horses every fat yank needs, with less weight; You do the math; want to lose 35kgs of ugly fat? Cut your head off, yank..... These same researchers figure on 4-5 years before this technology is in place.... long enough for the fat ones to lose those kilos anyway.....
If Mercedes get the plans for Ferrari, bet your bottom buck it's being imported into their formula one designs as we speak, and fining them $100 Million is the most 'anti progress' act any official could conjure up. e.g. 'Patent Trolls' are a nefarious bunch of sneaks who find a living from pointing to obvious likenesses with technologies, and scamming from the threat of legal action....(eBay vs. Mercexchange) and we will get NOWHERE fining an automotive developer. (I live in a country where one faces a fine if one's car is left unlocked...) I'm surprised my car doesn't recognize me the way I recognize it; I feel all this hitech is a waste; I drive slowly as the oncoming traffic doesn't keep to its side of the road; I've sold my Porsche, and am in the process of getting a Renault 4L; it doesn't even have wind up windows, but it has paid its due to the makers and breakers, and my van can go too; I'll carry a tent when I travel... have you ever been trying to sleep in a campervan in a rainstorm?? I'll roll the tent up and find a hotel for only slightly more than a serviced campsite for the van.
Please everybody wake up. This week important people are meeting all over the world to discuss how they will adjust to the effects of climate change. Their Audis and Mercs are wasting resources faster than my combined vehicles, and they're PARKED all day. Our country has declared a day of mourning for six people killed in floods. Holland has residential land 4 metres below sea level. Toyota unveiled two great cars this year; the FT HS concept, which targets 400 BHP for $30,000, a hybrid, of which everyone asks 'can you drift it under electric power?' and a cute little three seater, at the Frankfurt Motor Show last week, where everyone asked 'who is going to drive that?'
Demographics is a sad fact. Designers are meeting the needs of the marketing department; they won't wake up until you do. Nuff said.