Ethanol

A great article by Robert Samuelson of Newsweek about President Bush’s plan to decrease gasoline consumption. While it is a great goal, the means is via huge government subsidies, when all that is really needed is requiring vehicles to get better mileage (rather than just passenger cars like the proposed scheme):

http://tinyurl.com/2w8tmj

I would propose that any vehicle (car, truck, SUV, whatever, no exceptions) that gets less than 25 miles per gallon should have a $3,000 tax assessed. Any car that gets over 45 miles per gallon should get a $3,000 tax credit. Those numbers would have to be adjusted to make sure that the two balance each other out, but that’s probably a decent start. It would cost the government nothing and instantly result in people buying cars with 80% better mileage.

My post in 2003 on Green Cars

Timex Watch

The band on my watch is getting very frayed, so I figured it was about time for a new watch rather than spend money getting a new band. I’ve had fairly good luck with Timex watches so I went to their site to see what they had that would be similar to my current watch.

timex-t56731.jpgDuring the search I came across a Timex Ironman watch that has the interesting feature of having analog hands over a face with an LCD display that can be turned on or off. In the comments for the watch at Amazon people mentioned the Will Ferrell movie Stranger Than Fiction. According to Wikipedia the watch practically co-starred in the movie (I haven’t seen the movie yet). That article also identifies the watch as being a Timex T56371 model. I guess Timex paid a bunch of money to have their watch in the movie, but it would still be kind of neat having the same watch as in a movie.

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Shopping with Susan

Today Susan and I had a lot to do. First we were going to Rhodes Furniture to pick up a new chest of drawers I had ordered from them (to replace the blue one that Grant and I used when we lived in the Silvastone basement). Then we were going to Fernbank to see the frogs exhibit (I would still like to take Kelly and Claire when they get a chance) where Susan found some things to buy at the gift shop. Then we were going up to Gwinnett Place to visit Honda and Toyota dealers and test drive some cars Susan was thinking about getting.

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