Here’s a follow-up on the story of the Toyota Prius that couldn’t stop without intervention by the Highway Patrol. The driver was afraid to take his hands off the wheel to shift into neutral, but he had a cell phone conversation going and also claims he tried to pry up the accelerator pedal. And he thought shifting into neutral would make the car flip. Really.
But this takes all the fun away from a government determined to regulate everything.
The first car that I bought brand new, right off the showroom floor, was a 1971 Toyota Corona. I kept it for 8 years and never should have traded it in.
Japanese cars were unusual at the time. In fact, “made in Japan” was synonymous with cheap. We had learned in preceding years that foreign cars were likely to give you more for the money, but that applied to cars made in Europe, not Japan. Buying a Japanese car was a leap into the unknown. People soon discovered that Toyota made better cars than any company in America.
Toyota currently has some PR problems, but I doubt that its cars have serious mechanical issues. I just don’t believe the runaway car syndrome, at least not as it’s being pitched. I didn’t believe the Audi 5000 had those problems despite a similar scare in the 1980s. Nobody could replicate the problem, and I find it much easier to believe that the driver went bonkers rather than the car.
The plaintiffs’ bar will have a field day before public opinion begins to turn. There are too many people who tend to blame everything on government conspiracies and corporate cover-ups. There is a large constituency for regulating just about everything, and the government is gearing up to do just that with brakes that override gas pedals. Please.
I find this much more convincing.
So I suspect that you can get a pretty good deal on a Toyota about now, and I have every reason to believe that a Toyota is still a better car than most others. But I need to act fast before the government adds another costly and useless safety device that will ensure that your cars stops when you have both pedas mashed to the floor.
Maintaining a blog is not always easy. Sometimes it’s just too difficult to find the time to come up with new quality posts.
While I was out of town on business recently, some enterprising outfit apparently noticed the lack of activity at Arts & Ammo and offered to help. They offer “quality papers” for sale. I always thought such things were mostly aimed at the student market, and maybe that’s true, but I suddenly became the recipient of their email promotions. Something about the title of my last post “Lost Honor” must have triggered it.
What is a quality paper? Let’s look at an example. One of the first examples to come up on their website (always lead with the best) begins like this:
The hijackers of the flight united 93 did not prevent the pessengers from making calls. When the passanger came to know abput the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagone, the understand what actually was going on. They realised that if they will do nothing than they will also die. So the . . .
Yessir, that kind of writing will get you a solid B+ in many institutions of higher learning these days. What professor would notice the subtle variations in spelling and syntax? After all, anyone who buys that paper and passes it off as his own apparently doesn’t notice, so the professor is not likely to be suspect it isn’t the student’s original work.
Readers of this site are, of course, more discriminating. I’m sad to say I found nothing quite up to the editorial standards that prevail here and was forced to write this snide post all by myself. I would give you the link to the quality paper’s site, but that would give them a promo they don’t deserve. If my spam filters fail, maybe their comments will show up below.
Lost Honor, indeed.
Whether unemployment goes up or down, whether the statistic is for the U.S. or overseas, whether it repeats a pattern or reverses direction, there is one unifying factor in the headlines. A modest sampling:
“New Unemployment Claims Rise Unexpectedly to 627,000” – FoxNews (AP), June 25, 2009
“German Unemployment Unexpectedly Declined in October” – Bloomberg, Oct. 29, 2009
“New unemployment claims fall unexpectedly for fifth straight week” – NY Daily News, Dec. 3, 2009
“U.S. unemployment unexpectedly drops in November” – KGW.com, Dec. 4, 2009
“U.K. Unemployment Unexpectedly Falls for First Time Since February 2008” – Daily FX, Dec. 16, 2009.
“Unemployment claims rise unexpectedly” – CNNMoney, Dec. 17, 2009
“Treasury prices fall as unemployment claims fall unexpectedly” – AP, Dec. 31, 2009
“Unemployment Claims Fall Unexpectedly” – Los Angeles Times, Jan. 1, 2010
“New jobless claims rise unexpectedly” – MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2010
“Initial unemployment claims rose unexpectedly last week” – AP, Feb. 4, 2010
And today we learn from the AP: “First-time jobless claims rise unexpectedly.” Yes, that’s a shocker.
But at least we can certain about the weather in 2050.
China is building a new fighter jet to compete with F-22. Unfortunately, there won’t be an F-22 for it to compete with. Obama killed the F-22 project, saying that we had no need for it. Why? Because, as the administration explained, no other nation was developing a competing fighter.
CNN reported on July 21:
[Defense Secretary] Gates said Monday he’d heard no “substantive” argument for keeping the jet for national security reasons, pointing out that China has no planes that can compete with the more than 1,000 advanced fighter jets the U.S. will have by 2020.
And so Obama threatened to veto the entire defense budget if it included money for the F-22.
Obama went to China last week with a message of “strategic reassurance.” Beijing took the occasion of Obama’s visit to announce its new fighter. Nice touch. According to Aviation Week:
Beijing’s fighter announcement suggests a serious failing in U.S. intelligence assessments, mocking a July 16 statement of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that China would have no fifth-generation fighters by 2020.
And what was Obama’s rationale for killing the F-22?
“At a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, (expanding the F-22) would have been an inexcusable waste of money,” Obama said shortly after the vote.
Hmm, fighting two wars renders weapons an inexcusable waste of money. . . . Okay, we’ll never make sense out of that, so let’s try the deficit argument.
On that score, the massive stimulus funding and the imperative to create jobs simply didn’t apply when it came to defense. We killed real existing jobs at Lockheed to create pretend jobs elsewhere. Just yesterday, in fact, the administration announced on its slick new $18 million web site that it had created a grand total of 30 jobs in Arizona’s 15th congressional district (at a cost of $ 25,380.67 each). Only there is no such place as the 15th congressional district of Arizona.
So, there’s nothing to worry about. Any administration that can create a whole congressional district from nothing won’t have any problem creating regiments and fighter wings from nothing . . . when the need arises.
H/T: RedState
The evidence that global warming hysteria is . . . well, hysterical, continues to accumulate. The latest correction to the data used to justify that hysteria concerns the benefits of using biofuels to cut carbon emissions.
The study, published this week in Science, says that biofuels, marketed as a low-carbon alternative, will actually emit more carbon dioxide than burning gasoline over the coming decades. . . .
The problem stems from a basic error in the Kyoto Protocol - and subsequently copied into European and US environmental legislation - which calculates emissions without taking the source of the fuel into account. . . .
“It literally means you can chip up the world’s forests and burn them for fuel without noting the effect on the world’s greenhouse gases,” adds Timothy Searchinger, a research fellow at Princeton University.
Will this news do anything to dampen the current obsession with enacting new, sweeping regulations based on the old data? Silly question. It’s full steam ahead for the political class.
Like doomsayers throughout history, Gordon Brown says the upcoming Copenhagen summit is our last chance.
“We can’t afford to fail. If we fail, we pay a heavy price,” he warned. “For the planet, there is no plan B.”
Al Gore sees hope in Brown’s hysteria, and says it is swinging public opinion and business leaders his way.
They’re seeing the writing on every wall they look at. They’re seeing the complete disappearance of the polar ice caps right before their eyes in just a few years.
(Is anything melting faster than Gordon Brown’s political career?)
Pew Research reports that Gore is wrong, finding that the gap in public opinion between Americans who support cap and trade and those who don’t has narrowed from 60% in 2006 to 24%.
That shift still leaves a decided majority in favor of environmental policies that can only be justified by spurious data like the Kyoto snafu on carbon emissions. A significant chunk of the population believes the debate is over.
So a lot of people still consider it logical to burn the world’s food stores in our gas tanks while leaving the oil underground.
The Federal Trade Commission is set to become the Federal Opinion Commission. Its tentacles now reach to bloggers and tweeters who receive anything of value and then write about it.
The new rules reach far into the realm of “word-of-mouth” advertising.
The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.
So if you are an employee of Google with a food and wine blog and suggest that your readers use Google Earth to check out the topography of Bourdeau, are you in violation? (Maybe) If you review a book that was given to you, must you disclose the gift? (Yes)
If you review concerts and get a free ticket, do you have to note that in your review? Or does that depend on whether you like the performance?
Is all of this sufficiently ambiguous for you? Bloggers take note. That 30-day free trial you received on your latest widget – you know, the one that comes with its trademark displayed? You might want to tell everyone about that just to be safe.
A fine of $11,000 awaits those of you who get this wrong.
These rules exceed any rational exercise of the FTC’s authority and violate the free expression rights of all bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook users, which today means just about everyone.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I do not work for the FTC or any branch of the Federal government and I have received nothing of value from the Federal government for this review of their rules.)
P.S. At the bottom of the page is a reference to WordPress and the designer of my blog theme. I got those for free.
The extended warranty scam artists will not only harass you daily with telephone calls and fraudulent sales practices, they will have you arrested and put in jail.
Charles Papenfus had enough. He overreacted and made verbal threats to his tormenters.
According to court documents, Charles W. Papenfus, 43, allegedly told a sales representative during a May 18 telephone call that he would burn down the building and kill the employees and their families. He was indicted for making a terrorist threat, a Class D felony; and he could be sentenced to up to four years in prison if convicted.
Let’s agree that threats of physical violence and bodily harm should not be made. But if Papenfus were a traditional terrorist, the kind that indiscriminately kills with bombs and airplanes, we would be asked to engage in a ritual of self-examination to discover root causes. In this case, Papenfus appears not to be merely a deranged zealot, but a man provoked.
The warranty scammers have spread like a cancer, using robo calls to disrupt businesses and invade people’s homes. The calls come with phantom caller IDs. The warranty company’s true identity is concealed. Try staying on the line long enough to ask the live salesman what company he works for.
The Better Business Bureau recently accused the firm of sending mailers to consumers that incorrectly state factory warranties on their vehicles either have expired or will run out soon.
Or simply ask the salesman which vehicle he is referring to. Take my word for it: he doesn’t know who you are, what vehicles you own, or whether any is covered by a warranty.
What are the terms of the warranty? Well, that will all be disclosed in due time – due time being after you fork over a down payment of several hundred dollars. No, they really can’t discuss such sensitive matters with people who are not yet customers.
But you should not ask any of these questions if you have a tendency to become frustrated with lies and deceit offered up by uninvited and anonymous callers. An intemperate remark, and you might find yourself bunking with Papenfus.
Meanwhile, your public servants who are so diligently prosecuting Papenfus are content to paper over the massive fraud that emanates from the St. Louis suburbs.
Last year, then-Attorney General Jay Nixon sued the firm for misleading consumers, and a condition of that suit’s settlement was that TXEN Partners would refer to consumers’ expiring warranties only if the company believes “in good faith” that those claims are true.
It is becoming easier to hold people accountable these days. The PR professionals with big budgets can’t do much in the face of some pointed and well-executed criticism on YouTube, this time from Dave Carroll.
“This struck a chord with us,” said a spokeswoman for United. “We are in conversation with one another to make what happened right.”
No kidding. With YouTube views in six figures, what United thought was just Dave Carroll’s petty problem is becoming United’s public relations nightmare.
Professor Carol now offers a complete self-study course covering 300 years of music.
This romp through music history (and many other historical topics) combines 13 hours of DVD video with a 3-disc listening set from Naxos and a 236-page course book.
From the birth of opera to the Leipzig coffeehouses frequented by Bach and Schumann, from the Orthodox cathedrals of Moscow to Tin Pan Alley, from scientific discoveries to bloody revolutions, spooky dramas and shoe styles, Carol chronicles it all with her unique commentary.
