Taking and Causing a Nose (Candy) Dive

An article in the current issue of Mother Jones magazine makes the interesting connection between the declining value of the U.S. dollar, and the 44 percent increase in the street price of pure cocaine in the U.S. during the first 3 quarters of 2007 (“Paying Through the Nose” at Mother Jones).
As you can imagine, the [...]

More MPG…Why Not Now?

While Bob Lutz (Vice Chairman of General Motors) continues to whine to the wind about what tremendous damage the proposed increased fuel standards will do to the American auto manufacturers, an eye-opening article I spotted today points to the fact that there are cars being made domestically that are already capable of a combined 35mpg [...]

A Modestly Idiotic Proposal

As the RIAA begins to realize the fruitless and frivolous nature of attempting to sue individual internet users for their file sharing practices, they’ve begun the search for another way to recoup their “losses” (a.k.a. further pad their bloated portfolios). As such, the RIAA and music labels are currently investigating a proposal that would impose [...]

Engineering Challenge #6

Forgive me for skipping around in the list of engineering challenges, but some of them prove to be more interesting than others. Number 6 on the list of Challenges facing Engineering in the 21st Century is restoring and improving urban infrastructure (Engineering Challenge #6).
There should be little doubt that in both major and minor urban [...]