cool vintage retro awesome hip audio equipment for sale

Fall Cleaning over here. Check Craigslist for a 1969 Retro 8-Track playing Hi-Fi with FREE 8-track. We also have two excellent Vintage Kenwood speakers with FREE speaker wire.

Here is a little something to whet your appetite:

cool vintage retro ultra-hip sweet nice bad excellent hi-fi awesome

i like trains too.

Some people bemoan the lack of train connections in the US, some just complain about the lack of alternatives to the car or plane. People often ask why it is that Europe has a better (presumably defined as more dense, accessible, and frequent) rail network than the US. I am pretty sure that this question is often asked rhetorically, but I’ll answer it anyway: After World War Two, European countries invested heavily (yes, with monetary help from the US) in their damaged rail networks.

With that out of the way, I can introduce the issue at hand. There is currently a lot of excitement over the prospect of high speed rail in America. Californians passed a bond issue to finance a high speed link from LA to SF; a cabal of governors in the midwest signed an agreement to promote high speed rail; and the federal stimulus plan includes money for developing high speed corridors in several places in the country. This is all very exciting, and has undoubtedly lead to a massive surge in articles of dubious accuracy extolling the joys, benefits and statistics of high speed rail.

For clarification, I really like trains. Trains are my favorite form of transportation. I look forward to reading train industry journals online – the ones filled with advertisements for ballast tamping machines and in depth analysis on the different types of track and sleepers available. Some of my friends at university thought it was weird how much I liked trains – I could only explain my interest by saying that since I had been deprived of trains as a child, being exposed to so many made me go over the edge. It was an infatuation. One might expect me to be very excited by the prospect of having high speed rail in my own country. I’m not really.

For all of the great things that can be said about high speed rail, it is not really what we need. We need a solid, extensive, well served passenger rail network first. High speed rail would serve a few cities, when a train is traveling at 186 mph and above, it is not practical nor efficient to stop very often. Services of this speed would only serve major cities spaced over a hundred miles apart. High speed rail is designed to compete with air travel. While this is great, it limits the users of the network to those in major cities. What is needed is an expanded network, not a slimmed down one. Access to train travel needs to be increased, not restricted.

Right now, Amtrak has 44 routes. 31 of these routes only have service daily, if that often. The number of route miles served more than once daily is hardly 14% of the number served only daily (3,934 route-miles served more than daily, 28,233 route-miles served daily or less. source.). A network like this does not serve its potential customers well. What is needed is a serious attempt at making rail travel a viable travel option in the US. A more complete network would be able to feed into the inter-city routes that make money for operators.

A successful rail network could consist of three parts: Local, Inter-City and High Speed.

Local trains could share track with Inter-City trains. These would be slower, smaller trains which stop more often. Capable of speeds up to 80 mph, these trains would serve the sprawling urban areas and smaller communities along the Inter-City routes. Services could run frequently during the working day to maximize the usefulness to commuters. It should be noted that may local and state authorities already operate services like this.

Inter-City trains would run faster and stop less frequently. Routes for these services could follow major transportation corridors, and current Amtrak routes and serve cities too small for high speed service. These could run fairly frequently throughout the day. With double track, these trains could operate around 125 mph and share tracks with the local trains.

High Speed trains would run on dedicated high speed lines. Modern traction technology such as exhibited in Alstom’s AGV allow for these trains to operate at up to 220 mph. Services of this speed would compete directly with air travel and serve cities over 100 miles apart. The slower services would feed passengers into the service at major cities.

It would not be easy to build such a national network. Unfortunately, it has been a long time since American had an extensive network, and many of the miles of track have been taken up or fallen to low standards of maintenence. After all, standards for track built pre 1940’s would not be the same as the precise engineering required for high speed lines. Amtrak shares track with freight trains. Much of this is single track, and even though Amtrak gets a two hour window for travel, a single delay on a long distance train may set the train back for longer farther down the line. The tracks need to be upgraded so that Amtrak can operate at its most efficient speed. Or better yet, the government could take over the ownership of the train tracks themselves. This would allow a single body to oversee the construction and maintenance of track. Depending on the conditions of such a deal, rail operators may actually like the idea: they get to stop worrying about track maintenance, handing over cost and liability to the government; they may get an immediate cash infusion (most large train operators have high debt loads) as the government buys the track and land from them; all they have to do is subject themselves to a timetabling authority, where they could be guaranteed a slot close to when they need it.

Many people object to the idea of the government playing such a large role: owning the track, operating the trains… As far as owning the track, it does not really matter who owns it, so long as it is maintained to high standards. Most people are happy to tacitly consent to the governments ownership of roads, so the government owning other transportation infrastructure really shouldn’t bother anyone. Privatization of rail is possible, if it can be first established well enough to turn a profit. Privatization may not be needed though. State ownership of train operations is less relevant in Europe now with open access of one country to another. By this I mean that one can catch a German train in France, a French train in Italy, a Polish train in Hungary, and many other great combinations. It doesn’t matter that it is a government owning the company that owns the train, pays the conductor and picks out the decor – it is free market competition amongst government owned operators. So long as there is effective, efficient management, it does not matter that the government plays the role of sole shareholder and regulator of one or more train operators. Local and state governments could play a more active role in local and regional services, providing line with its own flavor and democratic ideal.

High speed rail is sexy, no doubt, and building an excellent network is a noble goal. With an average speed of 86 mph, the Acela, America’s only ‘high speed’ service, is laughable. It would be much more impressive to see an American Iron Horse splitting the countryside at 220+ mph. Before that is done though, we need to ensure that the rest of the passenger rail network will be strengthened. It is no use building a high speed rail network if the rest of the network falls into decay and passengers turn their backs on it due to lack of accessibility. High speed trains would certainly raise the profile of the train network, but that would be lost when potential passengers look at their options only to find that they have none.

the rise and fall of standards

President Obama recently proposed that we raise fuel economy average from around 25 MPG now to about 35 MPG in a few years. This post is not about raising CAFE standards.

I would like to start by saying that I really like the Atlantic. The biggest disappointment about it is that it has too much good content to make an RSS feed useful. I generally find the quality of writing to be excellent, the views well supported and in depth. Every now and then I find a poor article or post. The latest example of the latter description is this post about the new CAFE standards. I have decided to pick apart each point here, because that is what I did when I first saw the article. Finding unsupported statements masquerading as fact such as this is always annoying; when someone does it under the respectable branding of the Atlantic, it is disheartening. I have tried to assemble some evidence, and am going to squeeze some more scientific information out of official safety ratings and fuel economy information. In the meantime, articles which express concerns similar to the original can be found on the Atlantic and Christian Science Monitor.

Firstly, 35 MPG? How does that have people all in a fit? That isn’t radical! When driving a 1999 Toyota Camry I generally average 33 MPG combined driving. I can easily eke out over 35 MPG if i drive a bit more carefully. Driving a 3000+ pound 1980’s Volvo (It is a solid steel beast!) I have pulled over 28 MPG out of a tank. Even a simple engine tune up would give a power and efficiency boost. I am pretty sure that two decades of technological innovation and weight reduction strategies could be produce a similar car with far better mileage.

I will go through the four points in backwards order:

• If you want to cut down on the pollution from driving, this is about the worst possible way to do it.  On the other hand, it may be the only politically feasible way to do it.  If you take global warming seriously, as I do, it may be the best of a bad set of policy choices.

Is this really the worst possible way to cut down on pollution from driving? Really? You can’t think of a worse way? Is it worse than easing restrictions on pollutants in the hopes that the market sorts something out? This is heavily context dependent, and if you judge solutions in any part by feasibility, then you may find that this is the best solution.

• This will either help the Big Three compete, or seal their doom as the Japanese manufacturers continue to eat into their market share.  If I had to bet, I’d wager this means big ongoing subsidies for our favorite three public charities.

This is a safe non-statement. “Maybe… but maybe not” is not an argument. It is not even a proposition. Yes, the new standards may help the Big Three. Yes, the new standards may hurt the big three. But there is a third way: it may have no real effect on the Big Three. They may adjust fine, just like the rest of the world probably will.

Also, apparently the automakers support the new standards. So at least they aren’t being coerced into it. Maybe their new cars will be more competitive around the world.

• It will reduce our carbon emissions, but not by as much as advertised, because more fuel efficient cars make driving cheaper, so people will do more of it.  This “rebound” effect robs about 25% of gains, and also means more congestion, and more wear-and-tear on roads.

Even if it did make driving radically cheaper, and we only got 75% of the gains out of the improvement, how is that a counter argument? This has said “Yes, this will be an effective program, just not quite as effective as you say.” Its like winning the lottery and then complaining that you would rather have won more money.

• It will raise the prices of cars, and make them less safe.

This is a desperate shot. This is actually two separate assertions, each runs into contradictions with other points raised. These points are also not linked as the sentence format would suggest. It is misleading to put these together, safety and price do not go hand in hand.

If you assume that it will make vehicles more expensive, then surely the previous point about cost of driving makes no sense. The purchase price of a new car is the largest part of the cost of driving. Gasoline costs for a year at 25 MPG, 12000 miles a year and $3 gasoline would be about $1440 a year. Raise that to 35 MPG with the same price gas only $1028. Sure, its a savings, but is that really enough to make you get a new car just to drive a few more miles? More expensive gas in the future will close that gap more. Sources vary widely on how long people keep their cars for, but at a four year life span (this seemed to be a popular upper limit in my unscientific scouring of the internets), the gas savings only add up to about $1600. Clearly gas cost is not a major component of the vehicle cost. The argument that it will make cars more expensive and driving cheaper just don’t belong together.

But then, when you look at it, what they are all quoting a senior administration official who pointed to a $600 price rise over 10 years. Thats 60 dollars a year. If you are worried, put away twenty cents into a jar today. Put twenty cents in tomorrow. Put twenty cents in that jar every day. On Sundays, put that twenty cents in the offering plate. Take a two week holiday away from the jar every year. In ten years, that jar will cover the price rise. Painless, isn’t it? You don’t even have to sacrifice vacation time. So maybe it will lower the price of driving – but that would make cars more affordable.

The safety argument is completely unfounded and dangerous to make. The basic train of thought goes like this: to be more efficient, cars need to be lighter, if they are lighter, they are more dangerous. This is wrong. Making cars lighter is not the only way to make them more efficient (and indeed, since 1984 fuel economy has changed little as “cars have gotten bigger faster and uglier” as my grandfather observed). Lighter cars are also not necessarily more dangerous, in fact, the opposite may be true. This argument is dangerous to make as it ignores issues more important to safety and may give people the impression that there is nothing that they can do to make themselves safer on the road.

If one assumes that more efficient cars have to be lighter, they can contradict other arguments pushed in this article. One argument says lighter car has less energy and so will absorb more energy in a crash. This is true. So if we are to assume that making all cars more efficient will make them lighter, then we see that all of the cars involved in a crash will be lighter. There will actually be less energy banging about in future crashes. As it turns out, this is fairly unimportant. Car design and safety features are far more important than weight in a car crash. Driver ability, in turn, is far more important in having a safe car than anything. Cars are not dangerous without a bad or impaired driver lurking behind a wheel. Vehicle weight cannot cause an accident, but drivers can avoid accidents.

Many people site this report by the National Academy of Sciences which states that CAFE standards were “probably” responsible for a rise of 1300 to 2600 deaths on the road each year. The report notes that not everyone on the committee agreed with this, and some thought that CAFE was only responsible for 0 deaths. A few pages later it says that decreasing weight of heavier vehicles (the ones which have the most to lose) would actually make them safer and less damaging, potentially resulting in fewer deaths from traffic accidents. While the report is a cracking read, the issue is clearly undecided. Some sites such as one HotAir.com compare the 1300-2600 figure to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afganistan, which is not really relevant at all. A generous rounding up gives about 300,000 soldiers in the two countries. A small rounding down gives about 300,000,000 people in the United States. The scale just doesn’t work for that argument. Overall, there were about 41,000 traffic fatalities in the US in 2007. Thats about 41 fatalities per 300,000 people, the high National Academy of Sciences estimate (which they aren’t even certain about) works out to 2 people per 300,000 in population. Besides, if those people were wearing helmets, flak jackets and had proper training on how to defend themselves on the road, there would probably be significantly fewer accidents and fatalities on the road. At this point it may be pointless to note that Americans aren’t the only ones to die in Iraq or Afghanistan. While our roads may be dangerous, they are not nearly as dangerous as active war zones. The comparison is silly, and the assertion is based on a report which admits that it could be completely wrong. It hasn’t even been demonstrated that the CAFE standards do lead to more deaths.

Better driver education and stricter driving tests may do more to improve safety than anything else. The only driver education i received was chauffeuring my grandfather around the countryside for a week. My written test was a ten question multiple choice test. The hardest question was “Up to what age should children be kept in child safety seats?” the easier questions were along the lines of “What color is a stop sign?” and “Which side of the road should you drive on if there are no lane markings?” I still don’t know how old kids need to be before they get out of a car seat. My driving test was going around a block in an empty neighborhood. Anyone who actually cares about improving vehicle safety should start with driver safety. As long as tests ignore real safety skills and insurance companies don’t bother with education, our roads will be full of idiot drivers. All the safety features in the world are useless if someone is barreling down an unknown road at night while on the phone and changing the radio station.

If you assume that cars will get lighter, then surely you must also recognize that the cars will cause less damage to our roads. Lighter cars means less wear and tear.

Reducing the weight of a car is not the only way to make it more efficient. Engine technology has not stopped evolving. According to www.fueleconomy.gov less than 15% of the energy in gasoline ends up getting the car from point a to the destination.

There is tremendous room for improving the efficiency of engines and drive systems of vehicles. It is not a big secret as to what can be done to improve efficiency, a link on the same page lists seven improvements which increase efficiency 5-13%. The forthcoming Aptera and Loremo tout their aerodynamic shape as the best way to reduce energy use at cruising speed. Yes, these are stereotypically small cars, but they are just extreme examples (getting 120-300 MPG). The faster a car goes, the more energy it loses to air resistance. More efficiently shaped cars could save fuel with no change to the inside or engine. To think that there are no technology improvements to be made, and only weight can cut down on fuel consumption is to be ignorant of innovation and scientific progress happening every day.

Performance does not need to be sacrificed for fuel economy. The report from the National Academy of Sciences observes that between 1975 and 1984 there was a 62% improvement in fuel economy without any loss in 0-60 performance. After that it says that “Fuel economy remained essentially unchanged while vehicles became 20 percent heavier and 0-60 mph acceleration times became, on average, 25 percent faster.” So the argument that performance or weight needs to suffer for fuel economy to improve simply fails here. The report goes on to detail technological improvements which would improve fuel economy without sacrificing performance.

The efficiency for safety tradeoff is a myth. You can speculate all you like as to who may benefit from perpetuating that myth, but the fact remains that the evidence does not wholly support that argument. The argument is not over, the debate has not been settled. Presenting this argument as a fact is irresponsible at best. Supporting this idea contradicts other arguments made. The safety argument is not only wrong, but it is dangerous. Larger cars are not inherently safer (am I the only person who remembers the SUV rollover epidemic about 8 years ago?). Car safety is determined far more by design and safety features than weight. This also glosses over the fact that far more can be done for safety by improving the drivers themselves.

So if I were to assemble some points to post about CAFE standards I would say:

Lighter vehicles, with more appropriate performance, with far better fuel economy may be safer than current vehicles.

Safety concerns are not valid as arguments against CAFE or lighter cars: the conclusion does not follow from the premises. They are not helpful either, as they ignore the importance of the driver in road safety.

Inflation happens, or so my economist friends tell me. But also, scientific progress makes technology cheaper (similar to Moore’s Law).

Innovation and technological advances will probably provide the greatest influence on fuel economy and safety in the future.

Calm down, CAFE is only an average: fuel chugging trucks and SUVs will still be on tap at your local dealership as long as people want to buy them. Even better: those vehicles will probably benefit from the performance upgrades that technology can bring. Performance and fuel economy can improve hand in hand.

I do not know if CAFE standards are the best way to improve things. The point of this post is not to glorify more stringent fuel economy standards. The point of this post is to point to more information on the matter. The debate about the effectiveness of rightness of CAFE is not over. I hope that I have brought a little debate to the original article. I want people to see that the original article (and so many others) may not have all of the answers, and are not be the final word on these matters. Hopefully people will find more objective reporting on the matter elsewhere. Hopefully this blog will not become a refuge of unsubstantiated claims and abuse of logic.

getting more out of technology?

This post is about twitter. but generally internet communication mediums. but its really about Adium. A while ago i was going to write a post about twitter, but never got around to doing it. So this is what i was thinking of.

I got a twitter account sometime around easter in 2008. Not an early adopter or anything, but I beat Oprah to it. I was inspired by an article in wired which i can’t be bothered to find anymore. It pretty much made twitter out to be something that was interesting to use, and possibly useful sometime maybe in some sort of context that might occur somewhere. I think the most ‘useful’ use of twitter at the time was when someone was arrested in egypt and sent a tweet about it. It’s actually not that impressive. This just kind of highlights the main question people have about twitter. “What is the point?”

I got an account because I figured it would be interesting to play with. With pretty much everyone on facebook, and a massive limit to what you can do on twitter (really, just the one function) I guess it didn’t make that much sense. There was a sense that maybe this would be my joining of the technological revolution. These social tools would actually make life better by connecting people more. I sent a slightly passionate email around to some friends about joining twitter so that it would be more interesting. I found that it was useful for telling my friends (followers in twitter speak) things that weren’t worthy of email, or were too urgent. One day I saw a steam train leaving the station, not really worth sending an email about, but interesting nonetheless, I sent a text message to my twitter account mentioning it. My friends could see the post without the bother of checking through emails expecting something more profound.

I once sent a tweet announcing that i was boarding my plane home, my brother saw the update and let mom know that I was on my way. You could argue that this was pretty much pointless as she knew when i was due back anyway, but you have to take into account that a mother is always glad to hear where her son is, even if she already knows.

Other people have clearly found uses for twitter as well. The local paper tweets their latest headlines, and even covered a federal trial through tweets.

They have launched a new channel JFP_local which announces local events, currently it seems that they text every time their favorite bar has a drink promotion, but im sure there will be more useful updates soon. This is a great service, if you follow the feed, and have it sent to your phone, you would get texts with ideas for going out every week. Not a bad use. Urgent updates and casual conversations live side by side with drinks deals and details of lunch in my feed.

At the end of the day, twitter helps keep me in touch. I can see little glimpses of the lives of my friends. Its not something that weighs me down to check, it doesn’t take much time to update, glance at everyones updates and go. It is another one of the tools that people who happen to find themselves in front of a computer screen use to keep in touch with other people who find themselves in front of a computer screen. Before twitter though, everyone was on AIM (or MSN). Chat programs were what kept me in touch with people online before the days of facebook. When I got an iBook before senior year in high school, my brother recommended Adium as a client for my AIM account. It was simple, easy to use, and had a cute green duck as the dock icon, he even flapped his wings and quacked when someone wanted to chat.

It is hard to convey the importance of IM programs at the time. It is just what people did – we chatted online. I would leave adium running whenever i was on my computer. I would leave adium running whenever i was not on my computer – this lead to my mom thinking that i was just ignoring her all of the time. Unfortunately in the last year I have not been on Adium as much. I have been working more, studying more and wanting to be disturbed less. Now this goes against the idea that I would get more into these technologies to get more out of them. Deep down I still prefer Instant Messaging to other technology assisted communications – its always available, quiet in the background, and not distracting. With adium it is easy to organize multiple conversations across accounts. It is a good thing that I could connect to everyone. If I am to keep adium up and running all of the time, it makes sense that I update twitter from it as well…

Opening safari to update Twitter is a hassle. The twitter clients that are available for my old Mac os 10.4 are limited, very limited. In fact, only Twitterific appears to work (well, tweet deck too, but it asked for unrestricted access to my system and network connections. I dont know what that even means, so i figured it would be best to stay away). Twitterific is far from ideal; besides, i prefer fewer things running. It just makes a lot of sense to update through an IM client. Support for IM updates was poor in the past, and apparently was cancelled at some point. Adium 1.4 promises Twitter integration, but it appears that that will not be available on my old Mac OS 10.4, besides, waiting is difficult. excla.im restores the simple IM update to any jabber account. A simple way to update twitter, through a client I already have and use. After signing up for jabber and making a few tame authorizations, i had an update. The creator, Harper Reed, was even kind enough to give it a “little kick” for me when i decided that 17 seconds was too long to wait for it to start working properly.

i now have five accounts consolidated into my Adium. The original AIM serves my american friends, the rest of the world can find me on MSN. Facebook and Gmail chats (pointless in a browser) are now consolidated in. Why facebook and gmail added chat is a mystery (well, no its not, they want more information, to sell more ads). The real question is why are the chat services so poor. Both of these require that you remain on the site to use it. After the initial excitement of facebook wore off, I realized that I really had nothing to do on facebook besides an occasional update or message. Checking gmail only takes a moment (or less when I don’t have any email). Having chat on these sites gets in the way of the useful bits of the screen, the buggy conversation windows just keep me from getting things done. Most annoying is if someone navigates away from the site, the chat ends completely. People do use these chat features, and adium has rescued them from my disdain by bringing them into the fold. Throughout all of this, adium has remained pretty much the same. There are more accounts, more people to talk to, and i can customize the look (‘smoothseparatelines‘ theme message window, buddy list 35% opaque, spacing adjusted to the pixel, and a bounding Hobbes as my dock icon upon launch). Other than that, no real functions have been added, no irrelevant uses have been invented for it. Adium is a small window which holds my text conversations. Nothing else is needed.

Moving twitter onto adium will definitely get me on adium more. Integrating the accounts have made it more useful, and it will get more use from me. Maybe full twitter integration will come with the next adium upgrade, but until then, I am happy with excla.im. I know that chat and twitter updates are not really the best way to connect with people but it is far better than not connecting. For all of the time that i would spend on my computer, online or otherwise, having a line open to chat is convenient. Hopefully this will work out as I originally hoped, and I will be able to get more out of the technology. I do want to get in touch with people, i just don’t want these to chain me back to my computer screen.