Thank Geeks It's Thursday

I had promised an analysis of the Toyota Prius versus a Corolla but an Omninerd beat me to the punch with a very good analysis of the Prius. I was going to blog about a person who carpools and whether a Corolla is then better than a Prius. My belief is that it is obviously better to own a Corolla and carpool than own a Prius and not carpool. The effective fuel economy on a Corolla with two people alternating their driving is higher than the one person in a Prius. The cost of ownership of a Corolla is lower, and the added benefit of lessening the amount of cars on the road for all other motorists is also considerable. I once opined that more than 2 billion gallons of gasoline are wasted in traffic jams in the USA in addition to the more than 4 billion hours of wasted time of the motorists stuck in traffic. If we had 2/3 of the cars filled with 2 people instead of 1 person we would eliminate 1/3 of the vehicles from the road and this would free up traffic flow considerably. My crystal ball says we would better than halve the wasted time and gasoline eaten up by traffic jams. On this basis over 1 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved by not sitting in traffic. On top of this if we had one third fewer cars on the road (about 70 million vehicles) each not using 2 gallons a day for the five work days a week this carpooling effort would directly save 35 billion gallons of gasoline a year. On this basis oil prices would drop back to $2 a gallon and America would be saved. I carpool and us Carpooligans are the Paul Reveres of the 21st century.

Our science department has noticed some interesting research into nano diamonds. These diamonds are simply carbon crystals that that of the order of a nanometer in diameter. These diamonds can deliver chemotherapy to their target DeBeers is investigation the pharmacokinetics data to find out if a nano diamond is forever.

Mayor Dilly Dally of Chicago who should have read a TT from over six months ago has woken up and acted to limit bottled water in the windy city with a tax on the plastic bottle He must have called his friend Gavel Newsome for some advice and finally this distant relative of Richard the Third has brought down the gavel on Dasani. Dasani has responded with an add campaign title make our mouth water. But Dilly Dally has an ace up his sleeve and will respond with his magnum 38 saying maybe your mouth will water, but I can make you breath through your skin.

All this talk of violence makes me shake. There is a new breed of chips that can generate electricity by capturing or harvesting energy from light, vibrations or even temperature difference. I think we will be able to power wrist watches (quartz drive) from body heat. We also may be able to power an Ipod from walking.

The appendix may have a useful purpose after all as a reservoir of beneficial bacteria to aid digestion. Kind of like natural yogurt.

It is kind of scary that Craig Venter is about to unleash a new form of life in the form a genetically modified bacterium. I kind of prefer the inhabitants of my appendix over the bacteria being synthesized in Rockville, MD, even if Venter claims they will chew up global warming gases.

The word of the day is stentorian. As this blog is rated G for TGIT I will not make a play on words about stentorian gases but these load voices could provide the vibrations to power the new breed of energy harvesting chips.

stentorian \sten-TOR-ee-uhn\, adjective: Extremely loud.

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