Post what you want; self-linking welcome.
I’m in Ithaca visiting my family for the next week, so I might not be present on the blog much, btw.
I really love how the weirdness level in this video (which was shown to me by Mandolin) just keeps building.
I wonder if Myca still intends to follow up on the “Political Attitude Test”?
I Hate You 10 poems by Diana Trees.
No energy to bitch about this over at Angry Black Woman, but I’ve been following the Shirley Sherrod case, and came across this batshittery: http://mediamatters.org/research/201007220054
I want what they’re smoking.
Interleaper said what I wanted to say. Why am I a 52? What does that mean?
A 52?
52?
OMG!
Okay, call 911 immediately and ask for medical assistance (just tell them you scored a 52 — they’ll know what that means). Keep your feet elevated and try not to get excited. And above all else, do not come in contact with any pregnant housecats today. If you have been in contact with a pregnant housecat, then you should immediately wash your hair using a cucumber rinse, but be careful that none of the water gets in your ears.
We’re gonna get you through this all right, Sam. (Choke, sob.) Excuse me… I’ve got to… I’ve got… say, isn’t that the doorbell ringing?
Nojojojo, that was just astounding. I…. I’m kind of stunned. Every time I think there’s a limit to how unreality-based Beck et al are, they take it a step further still.
What if Alas, a blog were on geocities?
It’s the little dancing figures inserted on the sidebar that really make it great.
Yeah, I’ve been reading some of the Breitbart defenses, but they hold no water for me. I don’t know of Breitbart was given a video that he didn’t check out or if he made it up out of whole cloth, but that video clearly represented that the incident she was relating was something she’d been involved with in her current position, and that’s apparently a lie.
I finally started a blog to better ruminate about what I’m learning from the smart people. No promises on anything interesting (who cares what I think??), but visit if you wish.
http://apprenticefeminist.blogspot.com/
Quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan recently passed away. In tribute here’s a short film he narrated and c0-directed.
I have a used car question that I thought I’d see if anyone on Alas has an opinion on.
Recently my car got totaled (apparently, someone put in an order for ’98 Honda civic seats), so I’m looking for a replacement. I’m obsessed with getting good gas mileage, and I could conceivably afford a ’03 honda civic hybrid (HCH), but the early HCHs apparently had transmission issues. So what I’m wondering is whether the fact that an unusual number of HCHs had transmission problems at low mileage means (a) that an older HCH is more likely to have transmission problems too or (b) that some portion of HCHs had defective transmission, and those transmissions will have been repaired or replaced by the time that the car gets to 100k miles, and that the rest of the HCH transmissions are no more likely than the standard civic to have transmission problems.
I’ve been trying to research this online, but beyond determining that it is the case that early HCHs had a lot more transmission problems than standard civics, I haven’t been able to figure this out. If anyone knows anything about this, or if anyone knows of any good used car related forums that I should ask this on, I’d be very grateful.
Consumer Reports thinks the ’03 Civic Hybrid has better than average reliability. Although they don’t go into the minute detail that they do for the non-hybrid, it’s a good bet that the HCH is unlikely to have major transmission problems at this point. If they did, I don’t see how CR would find them to be of above average reliability.
Keep in mind that the CR reliability ratings are based on info gotten from their readership.
You may also be interested to see that in CR mileage tests, the ’03 HCH averaged 36 mpg. As a comparison, my ’04 non-hybrid Civic gets an average of 32 mpg – when it was mostly highway driving it was 42 mpg. So the difference isn’t great, especially if you’re doing under 10k miles per year.
You can do just about as well or better with other cars if mpg is the most important component of your decision. If it was me, I’d shy away from the first version of something. It takes a little while to clear up all the problems & I’d rather let others deal with that. If you can afford an ’04 or later hybrid that may be a safer option.
I thought of Mordecai when I ran across this story about a hospital refusing treatment to a woman because of her gender identity. The person I got it from suggests going and yelling at the hospital on their facebook page.
Yeah, the honda civic hybrid definitely depends on extremely attentive driving to get any real value out of the hybrid-ness. The epa site has a range of user reported mileages of 37 to 58 for the HCH, while the non-hybrid has a range of 30-40 (and the echo has a range of 37-48). So the maximum mileage for a HCH beats any non-hybrid, but the typical performance if you just treat it like a car is no better than a similar high mileage car.
I’ll probably go with an ECHO if I can find one, or a Metro or a Swift if I can’t find an ECHO.
While I was thinking about this last night, I remembered the Echo & decided to suggest it. You beat me to it. I don’t think that there’s a car of moderately recent vintage that will beat it for mileage. Plus it’s the successor to the Tercel & is really, really reliable. Our ’91 Tercel is still going strong, though its mileage is down to the low 30’s these days.
So, farewell then, Prop 8.
I admit, I’m surprised that we won this round and still not optimistic about the legal future of SSM in California. It’ll also be interesting to see whether this or MA’s threat to DOMA gets resolved first, and whether they affect each other at all.