So its end of year assignment and exam time, and our attention to this site has been limited.  What can you do…

Here’s a shot from my summer trip to Chicago:

Just read this fun little article.

British Airways is shuttling dozens of empty planes across the Atlantic because it has a shortage of cabin crew, it has emerged.

The “phantom” services have been flying between Britain and Canada and the US over the past two weeks in order to retain valuable slots at London’s airports.

Several BA passenger flights took off without a single passenger, using up thousands of tonnes of jet fuel.

The news emerged as the airline passed on the soaring cost of oil to customers by increasing its fuel surcharge on all flights.

Full Telegraph story available here.

Kevin just sent this my way. It’s fuckin’ nutty.

(Photo stolen without permission from the AP)

So here’s the deal: This girl was born in India with four arms and four legs. She is now having surgery to remove the four extra appendages, but there are complications. This is because those extra arms and legs are from a twin that this little girl absorbed into herself. Therefore, she also has four kidneys, two stomachs, and two chest cavities. Luckily for the impoverished parents, the Indian god of wealth has four arms, so this girl is being revered, and is having her surgery taken care of for free. THIS IS REAL! HERE’S AN ARTICLE ON CBC.CA

This new Public Enemy song is really good. You should listen to it. Especially the lyrics.

@ the Toronto Zoo

I’m not actually sure myself whether that’s sarcasm or not, because I’m not yet quite sure what to think about GM’s new hybrid heavy-duty SUV trio. The Yukon, Tahoe, and Escalade are now available with GM’s sophisticated new 2-mode hybrid system, developed together with BMW and DaimlerChrysler. The technology will be spreading through various product lines at all three companies over the next few years.

All anyone should really care about, though, are the numbers. And they’re shockingly good, at least in terms of percentage increase. The three SUVs get 50% better mileage compared to their non-hybrid counterparts, which is a pretty incredible achievement in itself. That brings their mileage up to around 18-20 mpg. Which, while tragically bad on its own, is actually better than pretty much any other trucks near its class. Even the imports. Actually, especially the imports. Fuck greenwashing.

Its easy to look at the number in isolation and disregard the entire affair as fruitless, but if you accept that people will still buy trucks and SUVs until they get some real disincentives (back to the gas tax) it makes a lot of sense. You can make a lot greater difference by improving the worst, and sadly, most popular, offenders than by trying to achieve hyper-efficiency in a niche market, replacing vehicles that have reasonable efficiency already. I may not like that people are buying SUVs in the first place, but there’s nothing anyone can (legally) do to stop them, so they might as buy ones that aren’t quite as bad.

Of course, I only come to that conclusion when I’m in a charitable mood. The rest of the time, I’m not willing to accept that first fundamental point about people buying humongous SUVs. Perhaps its time to put in a plug for FUH2.

(If this thing is symmetrical, it means it has at least 8 “hybrid” badges on it. Subtle, no?)

So the import automakers have finally accepted that the idea of 35 mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards (up from 27 mpg, now) are here to stay. Good for them. Except that they want more time to do it. Right now the proposition is 35 mpg by 2020. If they can’t increase their average fuel economy by a meager 7 mpg in 12 years (!) through legislation, maybe the good ol’ invisible hand in which so much faith is placed will have something to do with it.

Right now, the trouble with CAFE is that it addresses the supply side of the equation, not the demand. It might force manufacturers to build more fuel efficient small cars, but while gas is cheap, everyone is still going to buy 12 mpg SUVs and family sedans with 300 hp V8s. What we need if we want to get things done, is to raise gas taxes. When gas is $6/gallon (or $2/L up here, whichever you prefer), people will be forced - if only by the pressure on their wallet - to stand up and think about their driving patterns. And when people argue that higher gas taxes will most seriously affect low income families and businesses, they’re probably right - so give them a tax cut, or a gas rebate. Or maybe even force them to re-evaluate how dependent they need to be on cars. Shocking.

Of course, it’ll never happen. If the auto lobby has been able to delay legislation for this long, there’s no way that we’d be able to make any headway against the oil lobby…