Nobrainer’s Think Tank

In the past I have often said that the hydrogen economy is not perfect. I’ve used it in my rants toward re-accepting nuclear power. Although, I was recently reminded that even uranium won’t last forever.

Anyway, thanks to A Red Mind in a Blue State, I have found a more thorough analysis:

Warning: The Hydrogen Economy May Be More Distant Than It Appears
Nine myths and misconceptions, and the truth about why hydrogen-powered cars aren’t just around the corner

It looks like it’s going to be nuclear or conservation.

I think it’s time for me to buy a bike.

Drew and crew don’t care for Bob Huggins, either.

UC Sucks.

(2/12/2006: I moved the image to my server, the original is available here.)

In the last two days I have run across the same article three different times. This is not altogether uncommon. However, the most recent link to the article came from Drudge with the headline “SHOCK: Human corpses used as crash-test dummies…”

I’m not sure that the “SHOCK” is all about. University researches in Austria obtained about 30 corpses from the local medical school. Those bodies were then used in tests to study the body’s reaction to low speed crashes. In fact, these were not crash tests. The bodies were strapped into a seat that was given an initial velocity, around 9 to 10 mph, then stopped to simulate a slow speed crash.

I’ll wager that most humans have gone through similar decelerations without any problems. Football players probably take hits worse than this every day of their lives. This testing seems entirely non-violent.

The researcher involved may be charged for violating the dignity of the dead. But let’s remember that these bodies were apparently donated to medical schools, assumedly for research or instruction. Low speed deceleration testing, I think, fits neatly into the research category.

So I guess it’s really shocking because most who read the headline will assume it happened in the United States. I’m sure they were relieved to find out this was happening in that barbaric Austria. Well think again. The University here definitely uses corpses for testing. I have watched videos of chest compression tests. A corpse is loaded into a testing machine that imparts a sudden, but not catastrophic, compression to the chest. This helps determine the effective spring and damping rates of a human chest for future computer modeling. In fact, some researchers here believe they may have been the first people to observe that the angle the ribs make with the spine increases with age. This effectively explains why it’s more likely for old folks to suffer broken ribs in a crash.

This has been Nobrainer filling in for Paul Harvey, and “that’s the rest of the story.”

North Carolina’s favorite ex-Senator is in the news again: John Edwards Takes Post at UNC. So now I have another reason to hate UNC. Seriously, is Edwards trying to be affiliated with every school in the ACC?

Ok, so my last serious question wasn’t serious at all. Anyway, Edwards has basically been given some position in some new department with the aim combat poverty. The required reading on this topic was covered by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek in late January.

Put differently, if we define the poor as those who live, say, in the bottom quintile of the income distribution, then the poor will indeed always be with us – and centers such as the one planned by John Edwards will always have a ‘problem’ to ‘solve’ even as the real curse that such institutions appear to address – material deprivation – shrinks into an ever-more-distant memory.

And for an even better analysis: What Do You Give to a Failed Candidate?

The statements made by those to whom I have linked above, really sum up the situation. There’s not much I can add, other than to officially dub Edwards as “ex-Senator Ass-Clown”.

Update: After re-reading an article on ex-Senator Ass-Clown, I noticed that “John Edwards, former senator and vice presidential candidate, has a new part-time job” for which he “will earn $40,000 a year from the state university.” So, millionaire, Senate pension for life ex-Senator Ass-Clown can accept 40g’s per year, part time, while professing that “We have millions of Americans who work full time and still live in poverty, and that is absolutely wrong.” FUCK YOU EX-SENATOR ASS-CLOWN!

Bad news for GM

NEW YORK — General Motors Corp. (GM), which rocked investors last week by slashing its 2005 income outlook, plans deep cuts to its nonunion employee ranks, according to a Wall Street Journal report…

The Journal said GM began offering buyouts to white-collar workers earlier this month, with thousands of workers likely to accept the packages this week…

On Wednesday, Detroit-based GM said its income for 2005 would be only $1 to $2 per share, far below the $4 to $5 the company had predicted earlier this year. GM also said it expects a $1.50-per-share loss in the first quarter. Cash flow for the year, once expected to be a positive $2 billion, is expected to be negative $2 billion…

Analysts have long expected that GM would be forced to seek major concessions from the United Auto Workers on issues as fundamental as head count, capacity and benefits. For example, GM’s unionized workers currently pay nothing for health insurance.

After GM lowered its guidance, Standard & Poor’s said it was revising its ratings outlook for the automaker to negative from stable, reflecting concerns about the company’s profit potential. S&P’s decision could foreshadow a downgrade of its rating on GM debt to junk status, which would significantly increase GM’s borrowing costs.

Maybe if the company wasn’t spending up to $1.3 billion per year to pay people to not work, as I commented on before, they’d be in a bit better financial shape.

Any time I now see anything about the UAW, it makes me cringe. I can hardly believe that they try to associate with NASCAR. How many Red-State NASCAR fans even know what the UAW is about?

I briefly looked this morning for information regarding Japanese automakers in America and their ties to unions. Well, there really isn’t much of a tie in. USNews reported last summer that apparently good management practices will dissuade people from wanting a union. Lo and behold, it seems that everyone is happier in the end. What’s more

…at United Auto Workers Local 696 in Dayton, the worker-retiree pyramid is inverted: The local represents about 1,600 fully employed members, working for auto-parts supplier Delphi–and about 3,500 retirees. Honda’s newer factories are also far more efficient; and a nonunionized workforce allows Honda more freedom to invest in labor-saving technology.

Well with that kind of retirement structure, I sure want the UAW to tell me how to run social security, which they seem Hell bent on doing. Perhaps they have so little faith in the plausibility of their retirement system that they want to make sure their folks have a safety net.

Of course it also speaks poorly of unions when they specifically block new technology. They should really read any economics book. Cut costs. Increase reliability. Increase sales. Increase the needed workforce due to larger market share. Although I’m sure the UAW would rather have millions of worker whittling wheels “out of a piece of wheat” because that would surely keep them busy and employed. It seems that our Japanese counterparts are better able to embrace American capitalism than Americans are. At least our lazy older brother, Europe, seems to be in no hurry to improve on the American way.

I further love how the unions blur the line between being anti-worker and anti-union. But that will be a discussion for another day.

From ESPN’s Page 2, an offer for their traveling journalist who’s living as a student on various campuses of NCAA tourney teams:

“We have ample couch space for you to spend the week in our house. The toilet on the second floor tends to overflow during parties and drip through to the first floor, often giving people an unwanted shower.”