Life as a Spectator Sport

KKTV in Colorado Springs reports that Colorado is losing money on gas taxes because motorists are switching to alternate fuels.

A greener commute is making for less green when it comes to highway funding.

With more people using vehicles that run on alternative fuels, the state's Department of Transportation says it's losing several million dollars a year.

Colorado traditionally receives about $600 million every year from gas tax revenues.

A bill is currently going through Congress that would establish a task force to study other ways to pay for highways, including taxing tires or miles traveled.

I'll be in trouble if they start taxing miles. I've had the Daewoo back for less than two weeks and it already has 3000 miles more on the odometer.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

The use of churches as military recruitment centers

Lex says "How would you define fascism?"

Here's a good example of it. Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, held a so-called "Men's Night Out," a church-sponsored event in which members of the military brought weapons and recruiting materials into the church's sanctuary. They covered the cross with a flag, and at one point during their presentation, waved weapons in the air before a projector screen showing an image of Jesus on the cross. The author (a conservative Christian who supported the war in Iraq) was horrified, and described the events in a post on Fark.com. Since then, the story has apparently been moved to a members-only section of the site, so what I have linked to here is a screenshot of the original posted by an Iraqi-American (also, I might add, a conservative Orthodox Christian).

It was the comments to this post that interested me as much as the event itself, inappropriate as it was for a church. Here's one:

This is nothing but an Islamo-fascist ranting against Christianity and our great Christian Nation, which incidentally, is the light of Liberty for the rest of the world. Amazing that they speak against it, don't you think?

We are the last bastion of true Liberty, yet they tear it down in the name of democracy. Democracy is our demise. We are a Constitutional Republic, a Christian Constitutional Republic, like it or not. A republic is rule by law while a democracy is nothing more than mob rule which always leads to tyranny, which we are ovserving right now. Personally, I hope that Christian churches worldwide pick up the "standard" and take down the enemy. Let the games begin, heh heh heh.

"So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of tthe sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." --Isaiah 59:19

When I've posted remarks like this before, I've been reassured that this kind of person is a tiny minority, an aberration, not representative of Americans as a whole. I hope those claims are correct, but I'm hardly reassured. What percentage of Germans joined the Gestapo? Most Germans were decent, quiet, hard-working people, just trying to keep their heads down and put food on the table for their children. A few power-hungry fanatics, added by a relatively few more like the commentor above, kept that country in a fascist prison for a decade, and as a sort of coincidental sidebar, committed the worse act of genocide ever visited upon the earth. No decent German of the 1920's or early 1930's thought this could happen in their country, any more than complacent Americans like me thought it could happen here.

But it is happening, and people like the commentor above are the new Brownshirts. We can hide and wait for the insanity to burn itself out, hoping our families survive it, or we can stand up to them. I'm in hunkering-down mode at the moment, in spite of posts like this.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Weirdness and stuff

Apologies to everyone who has fussed at me for not posting. I've been on the road non-stop for nearly two weeks. When I build up a computer to take with me (mini-ITX on the horizon), and happen to have internet access on the road (not at all a certainty in the towns where I stay), then maybe I can post more often.

In the meantime, strange things. The beginning of the Daewoo saga is so far back in the mists of time that probably few people recall anything about it, so I will recap. In 2001, I bought a 2000 Daewoo Lanos. Cheapie little Korean car, but my van was no longer reliable and I needed something that would start every morning. My reasoning for buying something that cheap (and by implication low quality) was that I take good care of my vehicles (my 1986 Jeep has almost 300,000 miles on it), my driving would be mostly on the highway, and that if Daewoo made good computers (I used to sell them), they might also make good cars.

The only flaw in that reasoning was that Daewoo's US operation very shortly thereafter went into bankruptcy and sold its assets to General Motors, who still builds and markets some models in the US. At about this same time, the 'Check Engine' light came on in the car and it would no longer go up hills without missing and shaking thunderously. I took it to my regular mechanic, who had already pretty much disqualified himself from working on it with muttered remarks like "cheap little Korean car." Something in the transmission, he told me. The controller that made it shift down when more power was needed was letting it just drop back into neutral, from whence it tried to shift into gear again, and again fell into neutral, thereby causing the shaking and shivering.

I had the car towed to the Daewoo dealer in Danville. Big mistake. They didn't bother to tell me this, but they were in the process of not being a Daewoo dealer any more. In fact, while they had my car in their possession, they removed the Daewoo sign from the building and replaced it with a Kia sign. They kept the car for a month, while I was driving an expensive rental (the cheapest rental I could find, but still expensive when you have it for weeks at a time). They said they couldn't really find anything wrong with it and gave it back. Well, no, they didn't give it back, they charged me $400 for their attempt to find something wrong with it. The engine light was out and for the first fifty miles or so, the car appeared to be fine. Then it came back on, the loss of power problem came back, and the car sat for a year while I tried to find someone to work on it. No, I am not kidding. No one wanted to touch it. No one could get parts for it. Daewoo was out of business, I was told, and General Motors said they had not purchased the Lanos model and therefore did not have to provide support or parts for it.

At some point--I don't remember exactly when--I tried driving the car again, and again, the problem seemed to have disappeared. I drove it for a week or so, and just happened to be in Floyd, Virginia, when it all came back--the shaking, the engine light, the loss of power. I drove into the town's one car dealership and asked whether they did transmission work. No, they said, we send it all to General Truck and Auto. I managed to get the car there, talked to Leo, the owner, about it, and he assured me that he could fix it. So there it sat, for the next year and a half, while he tried to locate the needed part. I'll admit that there were times when I doubted whether he was really trying to find the part, but he did eventually come through (and in his defense, it took a class-action suit against General Motors to force them to begin providing parts for the Lanos).

Now I have it back, and here's where the strangeness really begins. This car was so underpowered that I used to feel like I should have one of those bumper stickers that says, "Please be patient, I'm pedalling as fast as I can." I was lucky to be able to get it up to 30 mph on the steep hills around here. It also had lousy gas mileage for such a small light car, though it was enough better than the old van, or the Jeep that I'd been driving, that I didn't complain too much. On the first full tank of gas after I got the car back from Leo, it got 50 mpg! It also felt like a much more powerful engine, shooting up hills like you'd expect, even though it did have to shift down.

I took it back to Leo, who came out of the garage looking anxious. "What did you do to my car?" I demanded. "The gas mileage is twice what it used to be, and it has a lot more power."

My computer was all out of whack, he said. He noticed when he test drove the car, after finishing the repairs, that it "drove like a slug." He couldn't figure out why it would have such poor performance, so he checked the computer and found numerous settings incorrect. He flashed it to clear everything, and then went through it and reset each parameter properly. "And then," he said, "it drove like a little rocket."

Little rocket may be an overstatement, but I'm no longer embarrassed to go up hills in it, and I even occasionally take a chance on passing a slower driver, something I would never had dared before. So now I have to wonder why the car's computer was set so far out. Various possibilities have been suggested: the memory was corrupted somehow, someone who didn't know what they were doing played with it, or perhaps a mechanic accidentally used the settings for a different engine (this model was sold with two different engines). I'm leaning toward the possibility that Daewoo had to sign an agreement saying they would limit the car's performance, before they could market it in the US. While Daewoo models are now being built in the US by General Motors, they were originally imported from Korea. This vehicle, with its current performance and gas mileage, would have been terrific competition for similarly-priced small sedans built in the US. In fact, I'll bet it would have out-performed anything in its price range. 40-50 mpg is approaching the mileage achieved by the hybrid vehicles.

I'll probably never know the truth about why the computer settings were so far off. I'm just glad it's working now. And one other thing: the Daewoo dealer in Danville (whom I won't name, but if you live anywhere near there, you know who I'm talking about) quoted me $600 to change the timing belt. Leo did it for $161.23, including tax. I was so astonished when he quoted me that amount that I asked him to check his figures again. I even told him what I'd been quoted by someone else, not too smart on my part if he had wanted to jack the price up. Nope, he said. That's the right price. So if you live anywhere near Floyd, Virginia, you can't go wrong by having Leo work on your car. I think this is the first time I have ever given any kind of recommendation on this blog, but he deserves it. One of the reasons I got my car back in driveable condition, without all the gaskets dried up and the gas gelled, is that he took it around the block about once a week the whole year and a half it was in his possession, service far beyond what you'd get in any dealership. That's General Truck and Auto, in Floyd, Virginia. You can tell him Liz sent you.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Our first casualty

It was inevitable, but that doesn't lessen the pain. On January 28, our county suffered its first military casualty from the Iraq war. I had met him only once, but his father and I used to work together, and I know his grandmother well. By all reports, he was a young man of outstanding character and high repute, exactly the kind of young person you don't want to send off to get killed. He was the kind of Christian you could brag about, a boy who gave generously of money, time, energy and kindness to others, the kind of kid you'd like to see grow up and raise a family in your community, the kind of man anyone would be happy to call a neighbor or co-worker or friend. Now none of us will have that privilige. His large family has lost a brother, son, grandson, nephew. His fiancee has lost her sweetheart, and our county and nation have lost a valuable citizen.

In four years, Nick will be old enough to be drafted. Over my dead body.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

When real life gets in the way of having fun

My mother reminds me that I haven't posted to the blog in a week. So I'm posting to the blog. I should be getting dressed, repacking the boxes of things to go out to my South Pacific customer, driving into town to pick up a box from the post office, cleaning up the piles of unfiled paperwork on my desk, taking the garbage to the dump because I overslept this morning and didn't get the garbage down to the highway in time to be picked up, doing laundry, making another attempt to get last year's bookkeeping caught up, etc, etc, etc. All of which I'll get to, of course—I'm just whining.

The truth is that I have lost the energy it takes to write about political issues. I haven't lost interest in the issues themselves—I still sputter with indignation every time I read about the newest bit of stupidity. But writing about it day after day has taken its toll on me over this past year. Perhaps people like Josh Marshall can be dispassionate, can distance themselves from what they're writing about. I can't. The things that are happening in our country are intimately important to me. The increasing official hostility to homosexuals threatens me personally. The increasing cooperation among fundamentalists of every religious persuasion threatens me as a woman and as an independent thinker. Economic instability threatens my ability to provide for my family. I can't write about these things as though they were academic issues. So I've chosen not to write about them as much.

On the other hand, the fluff I used to write doesn't interest me at all any more. So I'm not posting much. I haven't disappeared, and won't. But I have to focus my energy on securing my family's future, to the extent that I can. Some of that will get written about, when I have time.

The template is set to display 10 posts. To see all the posts for this month, click on the month name in the Archive section

This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here.

RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email to liz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3 KNITTING BLOGS Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Club Orlov Food Storage Made Easy From the Wilderness In the Wake Listening to Katrina Survival Topics The Modern Homestead The Oil Drum Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002