Category Archives: Security

Energy, Security

Diesel cars outsell Gasoline

Leave a comment

The BBC notes that diesel overtakes petrol car sales for first time:

Diesel sales made up 50.6% of the total in July, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.

The sale of petrol cars dropped by almost a third in July compared with the same month a year earlier.

The article gives two main reasons in their analysis: company fleet restock and drivers buying more efficient engines. They say the tipping point came with diesel pump prices reaching the same as gasoline.

“They are buying despite the £1000 extra cost of diesel car, relying on the 15-20% greater fuel efficiency to leave them better off in the long run.”

According to the motoring organisation, a petrol car owner is now spending on average £123.85 a month on fuel compared with a diesel driver’s average spend of £103.28.

The popularity of diesel has been helped by a substantial fall in the price differential between petrol and diesel. In 2008 it was 13p per litre, wiping out any substantial cost savings a more fuel-efficient diesel engine might offer.

Last month, the difference at the fuel pumps was only 1.5p per litre.

I do not agree with this analysis. The price at the pump varies regularly and diesel is usually close in price. Diesel can be above or below gasoline with very little explanation or reason. Thus, unless people are buying cars on a moment’s notice, there is something else driving them (no pun intended) towards a diesel engine.

My guess is that the usual criteria like performance and prestige are a bigger factor. Why else would so many purchase cars that require premium fuel, which always costs more than regular? BMW, for example, markets their cars to drivers who are concerned with the time to go 0-60. The new diesel 3-series is as good or even better than the gasoline model. That is more likely a real tipping point, rather than just cost at the pump.

The aesthetics of a modern diesel also may be a factor: quieter, better-smelling, better-looking…all the things that used to be said about gasoline are now the reverse. You want an engine that purrs or has a low growl? Diesel comes that way by default. The high-pitched whine of gasoline is out.

Perhaps most important of all, however, is the efficiency measured in terms of convenience and lifestyle. A man who lives in San Francisco I recently met said that due to his first newborn he finally sold his Chevrolet Tahoe and bought a VW Jetta SportWagon with a diesel engine. His eyes grew wide and his hands gestured excitedly as he explained “I have to find a station and stop for gas half as often now — just once every other week. I get back so much time!” When was the last time you heard the father of a newborn talk about all the time they have found?

A quick calculation on productivity in America could make regulation go something like this: require all new pickup trucks to have engines that get 45mpg without any loss in towing power or capacity; this has been done before using diesel technology and could easily be done again. In some sense, it already has.

The funny thing about general technology/marketing evolution is that this 1980s vision of utility

has recently been turned into this (concept)

and this (reality)

There will be approximately 1.5 million pickups sold this year, which get a (questionable) publicized average of 22mpg. Take the 1.5 million gasoline engines filling up 20 gallon tanks every week and compare it to the same number of diesel engines filling up 15 gallon tanks every other week. Right there you eliminate 1 billion (975 million) gallons of fuel consumption in one year and that is just for new vehicles. Assuming 30 minutes is spent for each pump visit we also would recover 19.5 million hours of time for those new vehicles. With current pump prices ($0.20 difference between regular and diesel in America) that means $2.6 billion saved ($1742/yr per vehicle). If the time saved is mapped to $20/hr of productivity that is $585 million gained a year ($390/yr per vehicle).

US Savings in One Year: If All New Pickups Had Diesel Engines

In other words moving the pickup market to diesel would return approximately $2,000 per vehicle in time and cost per year. These calculations alone, however, will not be enough to move the majority of consumers, as noted above. When you add in performance and more prestige — being seen as macho, hip or cool with a diesel — you cover all the primary issues in the American market. On that note the recent fashion trend towards 80s nerdiness (led by the coming-of-age consumers born during that time) should make it easy to see how diesel could outsell gasoline even in the American market.

Food, History, Security

Identity and the Gefilte Fish Test

Leave a comment

I love old black and white spy movies where a subtle etiquette or taste mistake foils a plan. They highlight the importance of privacy and identity as related to culture. One example is the American spy in German-occupied France of WWII who switched his fork and knife during a meal in a cafe.

It is news to me that the flavor of Gefilte fish can be one such identifier. Today few of us probably are familiar with variations of home-made Gefilte, but many years ago…

The “gefilte fish line” ran though eastern Poland.

Jews living to the west — most of Poland, as well as Germany and the rest of Western Europe — ate the sweet gefilte fish. Those to the east — Lithuania, Latvia and Russia — ate the peppery version.

The real story is how fish flavor represents a major geographic divide in customs, culture and even language. In other words, choose the peppery version and you could reveal far more information than you might realize.

Can you tell where this recipe is from?

Balls
—————————-
Grind together
—
1 lb whitefish
1 lb pickle
1 small onion
1 stalk celery
1 egg

Mix in
—
1 heaping Tablespoon matzo meal
1 teaspoon salt

Broth
—————————-
Fish heads and bodies that were carefully boned
1 sliced onion
1 whole carrot
1 stalk celery
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 inches water
Bring to boil then simmer

Together
—————————-
Form fish balls in palm of hand
Put on top of broth
Poach for about 1 hour with pot covered
Strain broth after removing fish balls
Add gelatin dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water to broth
Mix well and chill

Other recipes, such as the three day one used by Firefly, call for just 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns.

History, Security

Churchill’s Cherwell and the 1943 Famines

1 Comment

Scientific American has a detailed historical look at the role of Lord Cherwell who served as Winston Churchill’s Personal Technocrat. The article says the analysis of security for Britain had a humanitarian flaw — a disregard for people of their former Colonies and the importance of trade routes — that caused unnecessary famine.

In his memo to Churchill, Lord Cherwell suggested that the Bengal famine arose from crop failure and high birthrate. He omitted to mention that the calamity also derived from India’s role of supplier to the Allied war effort; that the colony was not being permitted to spend its sterling reserves or to employ its own ships in importing sufficient food; and that by his Malthusian logic Britain should have been the first to starve — but was being sustained by food imports that were six times larger than the one-and-a-half-million tons that the Government of India had requested for the coming year. The memo did raise the prospect that harm would be inflicted on long-suffering Britons if help were extended to over-fecund Indians.

Cherwell was born in Germany in the late 1800s as Frederick Alexander Lindemann. He gained respect from his strong work ethic, broad intelligence, innovation, and sharp data analysis. However, he also seems to have been insecure about his intelligence. This is perhaps what led to his most notable mistakes such as believing in a model of humanity with structured high and low status.

“Somebody must perform dull, dreary tasks, tend machines, count units in repetition work; is it not incumbent on us, if we have the means, to produce individuals without a distaste for such work, types that are as happy in their monotonous occupation as a cow chewing the cud?” Lindemann asked. Science could yield a race of humans blessed with “the mental make-up of the worker bee.” This subclass would do all the unpleasant work and not once think of revolution or of voting rights: “Placid content rules in the bee-hive or ant-heap.” The outcome would be a perfectly peaceable and stable society, “led by supermen and served by helots.”

That perspective is probably not what most people think of when they hear the name Cherwell or read the stories of a brilliant scientist known as the most fervent anti-Nazi, Hitler-hating, advisor to Churchill.

Food, Security

Insects Flee From Breath

Leave a comment

Researchers have found that insects sense the breath of approaching herbivores and flee plants to survive. A process of elimination isolated the characteristics of their detection system

The team suspected that several cues might have motivated the mass dropping, including the sudden shadow cast by the goat, plant-shaking triggered by the munching marauder, and/or the herbivore’s exhalations. The researchers tested the effects of each cue individually and found that simply casting a shadow on the plants had no effect on the aphids. Vibrations caused by leaf picking caused only one quarter of the insects to flee the plant. By contrast, when the researchers placed a lamb within five centimeters of the foliage (close enough to breathe on it, but not nibble on it), nearly 60 percent of the bugs dropped to the floor, suggesting that breath was the key danger signal.

Temperature and humidity turned out the be the most important factors

Altering either parameter alone produced only modest increases in aphid dropping, but the combination of increased warmth (to 35 degrees Celsius) and humidity (at 90-100 percent) caused nearly 40 percent of the aphids to plummet.

The next question should be whether they vacate completely or come back shortly after.