Every so often I find something that is innovative and useful. ExpertVoter is just such tool. Check out the snap of their user-interface below:
Click the image to enlarge.
This page is not yet complete (meaning, there isn’t video from every candidate on every issue) but you can see this has promise as an educational tool. There’s nothing like seeing and hearing the candidates talk about an issue as a clue to what makes them tick. This in and of itself isn’t enough, but it sure is a great tool in this age of media to be able to paint pictures of candidates using their images and words on the issues.
Great work ExpertVoter, we’ll visit you often over the next couple of years.
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As you may have heard, today, May 15th is the national gas boycott day. It’s a great attention ploy and maybe even an interesting symbol of protest. But in the end, all it will do is defer sales until later in the week.
What’s required to really move prices? A change in behavior. If each driver in the US would do the following things over the next year, it could reduce fuel demand by as much as 10%.
Easiest suggestions to increase your fuel efficiency by 10%:
- Drive the speed limit, the faster you go, the more fuel you burn (and your ticket risk goes down) this yields around 5% fuel efficiency
- Remove unnecessary items from your car, each 100 lbs of weight removed can add up to 2% fuel efficiency (another good reason to go on a diet? Every pound counts…)
- Don’t idle your car unnecesarily, for any delay longer than a stop light, switch the ignition off
- Whenever you make a trip, combine multiple segments into one eliminating the need for mulitple trips
- Take it easy, hot rod starts and fast braking can decrease fuel efficiency by as much as 33%.
Easy suggestions to increase your fuel efficiency by 10%
- Make sure your tires are properly inflated, wheels balanced, and aligned this will yield around 3% fuel efficiency
- Ensure your car has a clean air filter which could yield up to 5% fuel efficiency
- Keep your car “tuned up” which will yield up to 4% fuel efficiency
- Use the right grade of motor oil, this will yield up to 2% fuel efficiency
More suggestions to increase your fuel efficiency by 10%
- If you must commute, carpool or take public transport
- Buy a more fuel efficient car, a 10mpg difference could save as much as $3,000 per year in fuel
- Avoid “rush hour” travel
- Telecommute to work
Obviously, these suggestions range in cost and effort from essentially zero (change your driving behavior and remove excess weight) to very expensive (buy a more fuel efficient car.) We publish all of them so you can select the actions you want to take to actually change the fuel comsumption over time rather than simply boycotting gas purchase for a day. Not everyone can do everything on this list, but everyone can do some combination of these items to total a 10% reduction. Let’s focus our effort on these pragmatic actions and we’ll see an impact on the price of gas, save yourself money, and oh by the way, we’ll reduce our greenhouse emissions as a bonus.
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A colleague sent this link to me the other day and I thought it was pretty darned interesting. This chart below was taken from USA Today (a bastion of liberal media, yeah right) and shows the approval, disapproval, and no opinion lines of President Bush based on Gallup Polls. The real application at the website is “live” – meaning you can mouseover data points to get detail which is pretty cool.
Click to enlarge the image or visit the live site.
Not surprisingly, the trends track the event line of the past 6 years, though it is curious how there was a temporary crossover in approval just at election time in November, 2004. It would appear the more the “decider” decides, the less people approve of his decisions. Too bad there’s not a super-majority in Congress, this is a case where impeachment is actually merited. But that’s a pipe dream, we’ll have to wait for the next election to rid ourselves of the most corrupt and morally bankrupt administration in the history of the United States.
This entry is sponsored by My Airfare Secrets. Read it before you buy your next ticket and save money.
Have you ever wondered if the seats you’ve selected (or have been assigned) are good ones? Typically you don’t know until you board the airplane and by then, it’s way too late. I’ll never forget the flight to Shanghai I took in June, 2004 on United Airlines. The equipment was a Boeing 747-400 configured in 3 classes, First, Business, and Cattle.
Unfortunately, I was in Cattle in row 62, in seat F. This seat is in the middle of the middle section at the very back of the airplane up against a galley and on the direct route to the lavatories. As a bonus, the seat reclined all of 2 degrees…This was a 12 hour flight (total time in seat, nearly 14 hours.) By the time I was aware of all of the shortfalls to the seating, it was far too late to do anything about it. Boy do I wish I’d had known about Seat Guru before that flight. It was miserable.
Seat Guru has a comprehensive database of equipment, configurations, and amenities for major US and International airlines. This is definitely the place to visit before you select your seats, particularly on the next long flight you have to endure.
Want to get a cheap ticket? My Airfare Secrets can help.
