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Geeking out on politics and alternative energy

// January 17th, 2008 // Politics, Technical

Well, Christmas and the New Year have come and gone… sorry for a lack of updates, but I’ve been somewhat introverted for the past 2 months. Our new house has finally started to make some headway, we have some new pictures of the initial dirt / framing on our shady shores house flickr photo album.

Now on with the usual rigamaroll:

Good candidates on both sides
I’ve been known to lean left in some elections, and lean right in others.. it all depends on the candidate. I can tell you now that this election is going to be a tough one for me to decide, because there are 2 candidates on each side that I’m really pulling for. For the Democrats we have Barack Obama (my hopeful front runner) and Denis Kucinich (my maybe possibly no-shot-in-hell left candidate), and for the Republicans John McCain (the republican who I’ve always admired the most), and Ron Paul (finally a traditional conservative who isn’t hell bent on destroying our liberties at every turn). I’ve been watching each primary / caucus religiously, with the live statistics and punditry comment.. what political geek wouldn’t be in heaven? The thing that makes me laugh the most is watching the media collectively scramble to predict winners (days/weeks ahead of time) then get it all wrong and quickly find who to point the finger at, as if it wasn’t their own self-indulgent curiosity that sparked the insanity to begin with. To be fair, not just the media’s pollsters have been dead wrong, but pollsters working for the candidates themselves seem to be in the wrong at the same time. In general, I think this is just a great thing for this election.. unusable poll results will mean we probably have the best chance of an un-influenced, high-participation vote this time around. I’m looking forward to an insanely active campaigning year. Let’s let the candidates and the issues speak for themselves for once..

A new found respect for General Motors
As it’s my geeky habit to do, I’m starting to feel the car upgrade itch (had my current car just a notch over 4 years). Since Paige and I are building a new house w/ more space that’s close to a lake, and we’ll be having munchkins running around eventually.. I’ve set my sights on a mode of transportation that is more flexible. Originally I thought I might go with the new 4-door Jeep Wrangler (and I still think that thing is damn sexy). After some battle with my conscious, I’ve decided I won’t be able to buy ANY larger vehicle (Truck, SUV, CUV, whatevs) that doesn’t have at least some alternative energy source attached to it. So naturally, being the geek that I am, I started searching the landscape to see what the current offerings are, where the automakers are going, and where the promising technology lies. My basic conclusion is that E85 fuels (up to 85% ethanol, 15% gas) seem to be the most promising in the near-to-mid term. FFV (flexible fuel vehicles: cars that can take any combination of Gas and Ethanol) allow us to start using renewable energy that is lower on carbon foot print, more effecient in energy spent vs energy gained, and is beneficial to our domestic economy, all while reusing current infrastructure. And that’s all just based on the current batch of “ineffecient” corn-based ethanol. There are already companies like Coskata who are revolutionizing biofuel with forms of cellulosic ethanol that are 6-7 times as effecient as corn-based ethanol, and all we need to do to make current FFVs support this is change the mixture! So I’ve set my eyes on the current supporters of E85 (GM, Ford, Nissan) as the bearer of our energy independent future, as they are taking on not only alternative fuel sources, but they are also embracing hybrid and battery technologies that further supplement and decentralize our energy concerns. That Chevy Tahoe Hybrid with E85 engine never sounded so sexy.