Buying a new car Pt.1: Miles Per Gallon

I'll spare my multitudinous readership the toiling ruminations around getting a car, perhaps, until a later post. But for now I will post my simple calculations about the benefit of owning a Toyota Prius, just so I can get these damn post-it notes off my desk.

Very roughly speaking, you'll save $1000 a year in gas driving a Prius

That's $83 a month I'd save on my monthly payments over buying a similar car.

How I calculated this:
Assuming you drive 14,500 miles per year
Assuming $3.00 per gallon of regular gas (current midwest average=$2.78 but I'm banking on an increase in the next few years)

A Prius gets about 50 MPG city and 45 mpg highway on average, from what I'm reading and have experienced in my mom's 2010 prius. I'll calculate using 48 mpg. I'm generally in the more aggressive driving camp and Chicago winters have a tendency to lower the fuel economy of the Prius some during super cold months so this is somewhat optimistic, but I just achieved 63 mpg on a recent bumper-to-bumper drive up the Kennedy Expressway.

Yearly Gas Cost: (48mpg) Prius: $906
(25.5mpg) Mazda 3: $1705 (Prius savings: $800)
(23 mpg) Subaru Impreza 2.5: $1891 (Prius savings: $985)
(20.5 mpg) BMW 3xi: $2121 (Prius savings: $1215)

My Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Solution #1

I have had many ideas for solving the deepwater horizon oil spill. Unfortunately, none of them have been implemented yet, and I'm certain there's a lot I don't know, but I'd really welcome the chance to sit down with someone from BP or the technical team that is trying to fix this problem, someone who KNOWS the whole situation inside and out from an engineering perspective, and offer my many solutions and see if they can turn them down for whatever reason.

Here is a brief pictorial showing the most easy and obvious first pass method.

Alright, fine. I'm dancing

Sorry... Hands up... shruggin, head bowed and tilted, lips curled... stepping backwards... resigned... alright... fine... you got it... I give up.

I finally like a commercial. I'd really like to meet the agency folk that came up with this. I love the long format, I love what it is, what it's trying to be. It makes it cool. It sends home the message. And I have to give major pro-hizzy-hops to the Black Eyed Peas on this one of course too...

Great Moments in No-Carb Dieting

Sushi, Lambchops, Hot Dogs with Onions... need I say more? UPDATE: added my garlic+shallot New York Strip Steak with grilled Shrimp.

Not to be confused...

- Mesclun - (French pronunciation: [mɛsˈklɛ̃]) is a salad mix of assorted small, young salad

leaves which originated in Provence, France. The traditional mix includes chervil, arugula, leafy

lettuces and endive in equal proportions, but in modern iterations may include an

undetermined mix of fresh and available lettuces, spinach, arugula (rocket), Swi

ss ch

ard (God's Breath), mustard greens (Dijon's Child), endive, dandelion, frisée, mizuna, mâche, radicchio (Italian Spinach), sorrel, and/or other leafy vegetables. Mesclun is good up to 5 days in a plastic

bag. Wash and blot dry just before using. The name comes from Provençal (Southern France)—mescla, "to mix"—and literally means "mixture".

- Mescaline - or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally-occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class. It is mainly used as an entheogen, and a tool to supplement various practices for transcendence, including in meditation, psychonautics, art projects, and psychedelic psychotherapy.

It occurs naturally in the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii),[1] the San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi) and the Peruvian Torch cactus (Echinopsis peruviana), and in a number of other members of the Cactaceae. It is also found in small amounts in certain members of the Fabaceae (bean family), including Acacia berlandieri.[2] Mescaline was first isolated and identified in 1897 by the German Arthur Heffter and first synthesized in 1919 by Ernst Späth.

Problems with the language

These are some problems I have with language. Sarcasm and facetiousness confuse me. I embellish and speak in hyperbole too frequently. I am amused by sardonic language, and satire. I have to thank my spanish-based bilingual upbringing for this... or perhaps some deep chasm of mental competency.

hyperbole |hīˈpərbəlē|nounexaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally

satire |ˈsaˌtīr|nounthe use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. See note at wit .• a play, novel, film, or other work that uses satire : a stinging satire on American politics.• a genre of literature characterized by the use of satire.• (in Latin literature) a literary miscellany, esp. a poem ridiculing prevalent vices or follies.

sardonic |särˈdänik|adjectivegrimly mocking or cynical : Starkey attempted a sardonic smile.

sarcasm |ˈsärˌkazəm|nounthe use of irony to mock or convey contempt : his voice, hardened by sarcasm, could not hide his resentment. See note at wit .

flippant |ˈflipənt|adjectivenot showing a serious or respectful attitude : a flippant remark.

facetious |fəˈsē sh əs|adjectivetreating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant.
embellishment |emˈbeli sh mənt|nouna decorative detail or feature added to something to make it more attractive :architectural embellishments.• a detail, esp. one that is not true, added to a statement or story to make it more interesting or entertaining.• the action of adding such details or features.

if you can't beat them… punch 'em in their soft spot?

Microsoft sucks at making hardware. It's been proven time and time again. Their software sucks too, but I'll tell you they're far better at making software than hardware.

I think Microsoft should go out and develop a bunch of applications for iPhone and iPad, like the entire office suite, and shit, make WINDOWS for iPad! Allowing someone to run an entire operating system with a file-save dialogue window with concurrent running applications within their application! HAH!

They should make the hottest selling applications for iPad and iPhone. Wouldn't that be an interesting twist to the Microsoft/Apple/Google fight that's playing out right now