Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: carbon credits, climate change, electric cars, EV, Honda Fit EV, PEV, Tesla, transportation
Honda is not selling the Fit EV with gas under 4$/gal. Lowered their lease price by one third.
Under a complicated formula that varies by state, automakers earn “zero emission vehicle” credits for each electric vehicle they sell or lease, and they’re expected to rack up a certain number of credits each year. Not all green cars are equal: All-electric models such as the Fit EV are worth more credits than plug-in hybrid models with gasoline engines like the Volt. The number of credits the carmakers must earn rises each year, and the companies face fines for falling short. (They can buy credits from other companies, such as electric-only Tesla Motors (TSLA), that sell too few cars to be subject to regulation yet still earn credits which they are allowed to sell. Tesla made $85 million selling California and federal credits in the first quarter of 2013.)
via Why Honda's Unloading Electric Cars for Cheap – Businessweek.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: battery, electric car, Elon Musk, EV, PEV, Tesla, transportation
For Tesla owners.
Tesla plans to install the battery-swap machinery at its network of charging stations. Each one costs about $500,000 and requires the company to dig a pit in the ground, which gets filled with the battery-swapping systems. Arms grab the battery pack, remove the liquid cooling systems, then place a new battery pack and screw it in with machines that measure every turn. Tesla customers will be charged $60 to $80 per battery-pack replacement and get automatically billed as their vehicle hits the station. “You don’t even have to step out of the car,” said Musk. Those who want to wait 30 minutes can still recharge for free at the charging stations and, of course, plug in at home or at stores.
via Gone in 90 Seconds: Tesla's Battery-Swapping Magic – Businessweek.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: denver, metered parking, parking, photography, transportation
Just a photo.
Filed under: maps | Tags: buffalo creek, forest fire map, forest fires, Gabbert, lime gulch, Lime Gulch Fire, USGS
Lime Gulch is the name of the latest Buff Creek fire. Funny thing, there is no Lime Gulch around there apparently.
Map via USGS via Bill Gabbert:
http://wildfiretoday.com/2013/06/19/lime-rock-fire-causing-evacuations-southwest-of-denver/
Filed under: maps, Uncategorized | Tags: buffalo creek, Chair Rock, fire, forest fire, Foxton Road, Lime Creek, lime gulch, MTB, Pine
via http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/06/19/lime-gulch-fire-breaks-out-in-jefferson-county/
Buffalo Creek evacuated.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 4th Amendment, Berico, Chamber of Commerce, Endgame Systems, false documents, freedom hating super weasels, Greenwald, NSA, Palantir, PRISM, Team Themis
Freakin sockpuppets are everywhere these days.
Team Themis (a group that included HBGary and the private intelligence and security firms Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and Endgame Systems) was effectively brought in to find a way to undermine the credibility of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald (who recently broke the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of the N.S.A.’s Prism program), because of Greenwald’s support for WikiLeaks. Specifically, the plan called for actions to “sabotage or discredit the opposing organization” including a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error. As for Greenwald, it was argued that he would cave “if pushed” because he would “choose professional preservation over cause.” That evidently wasn’t the case.
Team Themis also developed a proposal for the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the credibility of one of its critics, a group called Chamber Watch. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” giving it to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then subsequently exposing the document as a fake to “prove that U.S. Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.”
(A photocopy of the proposal can be found here.)
In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to infiltrate Chamber Watch. They would “create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second.”
Psyops need not be conducted by nation states; they can be undertaken by anyone with the capabilities and the incentive to conduct them.
The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm.
via The Real War on Reality – NYTimes.com.
Filed under: maps, Uncategorized | Tags: arson, Black Forest, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, forest fire, Gabbert, wildfire
June 14. Not able to see streets very well. Via Bill Gabbert’s Wildfiretoday.com.
http://wildfiretoday.com/2013/06/12/black-forest-fire-colorado-springs/
click to enlarge
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bicycle parking, bicycling, bike parking, Choo, Eco Cycle, Giken, Japan, transportation, urban cycling
Via Danny Choo:
…construction company Giken have come up with a solution which stores hundreds of bicycles underground using a system called Eco Cycle – a robot system which stores bicycles underground in a 11 meter deep well.
via Japan Underground Bicycle Parking Systems.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fascism, police state, surveillance, United States Constitution
…to the Constitution of the United States. At least if it’s written here you know the NSA will read it.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
There is no way that indiscriminate domestic surveillance, data “collection”, whatever without a warrant can be considered lawful.
NHTSA based its decision on an investigation launched in August 2010, after complaints by consumer advocates that the fuel tanks in some Jeep vehicles leaked and caught fire after rear-end crashes.
The agency ultimately found that the fuel tanks on 1993 to 2004 Grand Cherokees and 2002 to 2007 Liberty SUVs — which are mounted behind the rear axle — are significantly more likely to leak and cause fires than those on comparable vehicles.
Its analysis found that vehicles such as the Toyota 4Runner, for example, were involved in similar fatal fires at only about one-fifth the rate as the Grand Cherokee.
via Chrysler defies request for Jeep fuel tank recall – latimes.com.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bicycle, bike, bike share, biking, cycling infrastructure, Friedersdorf, NYC, Rabinowitz, urban cycling, WSJ
That’s right, Friedersdorf.
There is no one in America who objects more consistently than me to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s initiatives: This is a man who favors stop-and-frisk, racially profiling and spying on innocent Muslims, restricting the size of soda New Yorkers can buy, salt limits, a trans-fat ban, and a pervasive surveillance state. Left up to me, no one like Bloomberg would ever exercise political power. My disdain for his paternalism and disregard for civil liberties is what inclines me to defend his bike initiative. It is the least “totalitarian” major initiative that Bloomberg has undertaken, yet is denounced with some of the strongest language. If the critics were merely expressing their personal displeasure at the prospect of cities better suited to bike travel (or doubts about the efficacy of a particular policy aimed at making cities more bike friendly) that would be fine. Instead they co-opt the language of freedom and oppression, as if orienting cities toward automobiles is natural and libertarian, while bike shares and bike lanes are harbingers of tyranny.
That is vapid, paranoid, philosophically incoherent nonsense. By frivolously trafficking in it, I fear that Rabinowitz and friends will diminish all warnings about liberty and government overreach. Even the boy who cried wolf was invoking the specter of an actually frightening creature.
via The Paranoid Style in Bicycle Politics: A Bicoastal Freak-Out – Conor Friedersdorf – The Atlantic.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bicycling, bike commuting, Books, Robert Hurst, urban cycling
The Bicycle Commuter’s Handbook by Robert Hurst
Industrialized Cyclist Notepad 