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

Joke Spectrum

HARSH----------------------------------------------------------FUNNY

Passive Aggressive --- Sarcastic --- Facetious --- Satirical

we are one of few... or not

floating in the vast, black emptiness of space must be a lonely existence.

Floating far away from the music, the lights, the smells, and the grit of a solar system, it's like living in the galactic countryside. a few farmers houses, vast open ranges of grains, simplicity in every direction as far as the eye can see. Wind is pretty much the only thing you share, like in the interstellar space between our star and the other stars in our galaxy... a few hydrogen and helium atoms floating around, whizzing past, on their own journeys.

I imagine my mother listening to Michael Jackson songs on YouTube at full volume, connected to the internet, simultaneously reading emails and taking calls, feeding the cat.... and I imagine myself in our vast, dark backyard, out in the dewy midnight grass, staring at the glowing window, hearing the distant thud of "Billie Jean's not my lover"... but surrounded immediately by a lack of sensory input. The grass itself, is far more sensory input than you'd experience floating out in the raw emptiness of interstellar space... and that's just within the Milky Way Glaxy. Imagine yourself in Intergallactic Space. A billion of light years away from anything. As if you could tell the difference... A billion light years might as well be a hundred yards.

Billie Jean is not my lover, she's just a girl who claims I am the one...

Staring out at the sky in every direction would look somewhat analagous to what you see when you look up on a clear night. Stars, except, in every direction for a total of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, if each had an average of 9 planets... well you do the math.

My point is that there are definitely other sentient beings out there, even if it's very few of them. We have tiny microscopic little eyes pointed out at them, called telescopes, and I can nearly guarantee you the futility in finding other sentient beings out there before we use up every possible resource on our planet there is so much electronic noise out in the universe we'd be lucky to hear someone else trying to send out a signal. Human beings in our current form will most certainly not exist when whatever organic matter that originated on our planet comes to know this.

The communal goal of humanity needs to be to get off this planet, mine other planets, constantly be researching and figuring out everything around the goal of finding these others in the universe... because we really need to confer with them and find out what the hell we're all doing here. It will take thousands of generations to find others in the universe and we better get busy doing this, or get busy dying.

we're not going to take it

Americans are reluctant to buy Chinese toys and food because of the health risks and bad ingredients, and the occasionally sickened American child, or discovery of toxic chemicals in a toy. But we're torn because Chinese products are so cheap and ubiquitous, that it's hard to find something totally made in America anymore (This is all not to mention that America includes NORTH, CENTRAL and SOUTH America. I don't think they have $60/hour union auto laborers in Mexico, my friends)

Well I have always touted that over time our standard of living in this country will fall, and the rest of the world will be lifted up. Somewhere inbetween the golden years of the USA and the terrible payment and labor practices of the Chinese, the future will lay.

This is one story about a Chinese worker who was abused, intimidated and possibly tortured and finally killed himself over the stress of his job in China, making products for rich Americans:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/reports_missing_iphone_prototype_leads_to_suicide.html

While I totally wanted to buy this product, I was well aware of the fact that Apple hires Chinese companies and keeps the product price low because they make their workers work very long days and pay them, basically, shit. And it was the choice of this employee to kill himself, probably, unless someone "pushed" him out of a window.

See, I bet that Apple's secrecy policy is that there is a potential that FoxConn could lose their contract with Apple if too many of their secrets get out. And it was likely this man who caused the leak of the iPhone case photos online in the USA, which at one point Steve Jobs mentioned in his keynote address revealing the iPhone to the world. FoxConn, operating in an environment where abuse, torture, and intimidation is an accepted practice, would then employ those tactics to keep their workers quieted--China.

All of this for what? So that apple can have secrecy on its next-of-kin portable phone/computer device and an insider can invest heavily before the rollout occurs, and sell after the spike in price....

Another story that shows how neither authoritarian communism not free-market unregulated democratic capitalism work. I'm not a socialist or a communist, but the world has been trending in that direction more and more over the past 5,000 years. It's simply undeniable. More and more the people are in charge. More and more the markets are being regulated and shaped and controlled by the government of the people and not of a monarch, emperor or nepotistically chosen-one.

a little argentine limerick that sounds cute

el zapatito me aprieta

la media me da calor

y el muchachito de enfrente

me tiene loco de amor

- My mom said this last night for absolutely no reason and it cracked me up

MS 150 Tour De Farms bike ride donation!

Dear friend,

I need your help.

-=A Major Bummer=-

As you may know, Multiple Sclerosis has touched my family directly. My sister, Ileana, and my dad, Carlos, have been living with MS for about 15 years. Ileana and Carlos can't walk anymore, they need help for self-care, communication, travel, even basic stuff like cooking a meal for themselves and anything that requires manual-dexterity, things you and I take for granted. And the toll on our family has been devastating over the last two decades. I recently met a man my age with the disease, and am constantly hearing about people with new diagnoses and we need to act NOW to give them help and hope with new research.

-=Hope...=-

Luckily, we have a lot of great people working for us. There are doctors, research labs, state governments, legislators and average Joes out there doing so much for us every day. We have hope that new medical research will find some kind of treatment or a cure for MS, and government and volunteer programs that help with medical care and travel, and new treatments and clinical trials that are really starting to make progress, all of this carries our sprits along every day.

-=150 miles of sheer insanity=-

In two weeks, just 14 days, on June 20-22, myself and two thousand other bikers with similar stories of connections to MS, or some with just a crazy ambition to have a blast and raise money, are going to truck it out to DeKalb, Illinois, and we are going to bike ride 150 MILES to raise money to cure MS, rain or shine! (one hundred and fifty miles, HOLY COW!)

-=We need your help, big time, and NOW=-

This is where you come in. I am trying to raise $3000 to fight for MS IN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS!

Please donate to help me raise money to fight MS. Click on the MAKE A GIFT link below the thermometer.

Obviously, any donation, no matter how small or large, will help. Your support isn't all we need, please send this letter anyone you might think could help. I encourage you to forward this.

-=Where it will go=-

With the money we raise, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Greater Illinois Chapter will provide programs and services for people with MS and fund research aimed at finding the cause and cure of the disease. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has raised and spent more than $460 million on research-related programs, allowing for phenomenal progress over the last ten years. My family and millions of others touched by this disease need your help, your sponsorship, which I KNOW will help find a treatment or cure for MS. If you would like to learn more about the research and programs supported by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, visit their website at www.msillinois.org.

Please donate to the cause. Donate to sponsor my grueling and fun ride to raise money for MS. Donate to find a cure.

I truly appreciate your support because only together can we help people live with multiple sclerosis today and without it tomorrow.

JUST TWO WEEKS LEFT BEFORE THE BIG RIDE! DONATE NOW! LETS FIND A CURE!

Thank you so much,

-Daniel Rucci

email me with questions or comments at: Danielrucci79@yahoo.com

MY DONATON PAGE: http://www.msillinois.org/goto/drucci

LAME

Blogger just disabled one of my other blogs because it thought it was spam! WTF?

Sharia Law

Let's take for example, this case....

...In which Sharia law is an arbitration option for US, Canadian, and/or other people who are working out an issue in a governmental court.

Why the sam-hell would a muslim woman CHOOSE to arbitrate a divorce case in a Sharia court when Sharia courts are by the book aligned against the interests of women? It's an absolute outrage as far as my chrisitan-centered life is concerned.

It brings to mind the ultimate questions of disagreement and culture in humanity. At some point in our development as a species we were governed by survival of the fittest, then perhaps higher consciousness' took over and we began to have culture and democratic law, and theist-centered beleifs took hold some time before that, even.

So thinking about humanity and judgement of our actions well into the future, how can we see this proceed. Perhaps in the near-long term, our society will be governed by a unified humanistic view of our place in the universe. This will take many years, as languages homogenify and cultures follow suit. As soon as we hear back from our nearest radio-enabled neighbors in the near galaxy neighborhood our society will more quickly unify and we will be governed more readily by a set of laws that shape our society towards meeting our nearest neighbors in the universe personally. And as our goals in general as a species on this planet change, we will always be changing our laws and regulations.

I often think about how far into the future we should think, as a species. I think it is prudent to consider the near-short term goals of our society, like the preservation of our environment, but should we really be considering the 3000-8000-year plan for humanity? What is that plan? I somehow think that the unequal oppression and stoning of women is not going to be part of that long-term plan. Wh y waste our time with it now? And why the fuck are we allowing Sharia to infilrate our culture? Because these democra-socialist countries are open-source allowing Sharia law to be melded with western judeo-christian  greek democracy beleifs?

Finding common strings in ideas that appeal to me.

The following lyricists, idealists, geniuses have something in common that really gets me:

Randy Newman

Steely Dan

Noam Chomsky

Pat Condell

I think there are common strings here: Wryness, irony, artistic sarcasm, misunderstood or unpopular genius.

I love unrecognized or unpopular genius. I can sniff it out everywhere I go. As Sean Bedlam says "I swim in an ocean of unoriginality" and that's where there are island resorts like Randy Newman, but they are all still only visited by a very small percentage of desperately loyal and adoring fanatics. The other 95% of people could just as well pass it by and not see it.

not caring.

Something to say to someone who is whining:

"Welcome aboard the S.S. I Don't Give a Ship!"

fed up

Another phrase that should be eliminated, summarily: "fed up"

what like k-fed?

or like 7up?

I don't get it.

Sadly, you can't be fed. it doesnt work alone. I suggest being pissed off or done with... instead

unforgettable

I'm very sorry to say that I've come across another terrible word in our english language. The MAJORITY of the word I'm talking about connotes badness and regret, and yet with a little prefix, the meaning is changed to mean the exact opposite.

"Gee, too bad. It sucked so bad, I tried to forget it. It was totally forgettable"

or

"We'll go on some unforgettable dream-vacations this summer."

What a fucking terrible word. 'Unforgettable' doesn't make something good. It just makes it not possible to forget. Getting put into a stress position by an interrogator at Guanatamo might be unforgettable, but that doesn't mean it was fun. It just means it was memorable. There's a better word, 'memorable', but again you've told me nothing.

"It was a memorable time"

Yes. Yes the fuck it was a memorable time because you remember it but HOW WAS IT? Still I know nothing, theoretically, about what happened.

'Memorable' and 'unforgettable' should not be used as written-only words because they only assign qualitative value to an event or memory based on how they are spoken.

Let's go deeper: This kind of stuff happens all over our language. Uphemisms and cliches. Someone decided 'unforgettable' and 'memorable' were going to be glass-half-full kind of words and they would insinuate a benevolent memory that makes good feelings happen.

How about we replace these words with "inspiring", skipping right past the fact that we remembered the memory, all the way to it inspired us to do something. Then again, it could have inspired you do go rob a bank. so we need to modify that with a solid qualitaive word. "Awe." "Awe inspiring..." now that's a good idea. Inspire something; how about awe. Now we're definitely brimming with good stuff, not just insinuating good stuff.

'it was a vomit-inspiring roller coaster'

I'm not suggesting we take things this literally, but its food for thought

Stake-out

ROFL.

Just read the word "stake-out" on a product brochure page. What the heck is a "stake-out" anyway? Is it a time when you go out camping to surveil someone/something and you put stakes in the ground to set up a tent, because surveiling something overnight requires a tent?

dictionary says: stakeout - noun informal.   a period of secret surveillance of a building or an area by police in order to observe someone's activities."

wikipedia says: "A stakeout is the coordinated hidden surveillance of a location or person for the purpose of gathering evidence, especially in regard to criminal activity. The term derives from the practice by surveyors of using stakes to measure out an area before the main building project is commenced."

okay so my tent theory is incorrect but its just making me laugh. Lets go for a stakeout. sounds rediculous. like in 20 years "xerox" as a verb will be rediculous, and all those other misnamed nomenclature anachronisms