US Federal mileage requirement: 27.5 mpg

The fleet average for passenger cars in the US must be 27.5 mpg, a figure that has not changed for 31 years: it was enacted by Congress in 1975.

In the meantime, from Business Week:

Boston to Seattle for $3, not including food and lodging? That’s what a cross-country trek would cost if you drove the winner of last month’s Supermileage race in Marshall, Mich., sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Built by students at the University of British Columbia in Canada, this year’s winner [photo shows the winning vehicle and team – LG] can go 3,134 miles on one gallon of gas. More go-cart than SUV, the three-wheeler relies on ultralight materials, sculpted aerodynamics, and a 54cc engine to max out mileage.

Granted that the 3,134 mpg vehicle really isn’t a car, in the usual sense of the word. Still, you’d think the US could do better than 27.5 mpg. Even just 300 mpg—a tenth of what the University of British Columbia team achieved—would be a big help.

How’s the weather? Hot enough for you? Sure makes the corn grow… until it gets hot enough for the corn to wither in the field.

Ignorance? or deception?

It’s always difficult, when members of the Right attack scientists and science, to tell whether they’re ignorant or deceptive. Peggy Noonan provides a perfect example. Ignorant? Deceptive? Both? Hard to tell.

Shaving for the women

Female readers might find this thread of interest. You’ll note that the women continue to use the cartridge razor rather than a double-edged blade in a safety razor, but they really prefer the creams and soaps, applied with a brush, to the stuff in the pressurized can. YMMV, of course.

UPDATE: Oops. Link corrected.

The bowtie

I love a bowtie. My earlier mention of the Saturday Night Massacre and Archibald Cox brought the bowtie to mind: Cox favored a bowtie, as do many independent thinkers. Indeed, the decision to wear a bowtie instead of the long tie requires independent thought in itself: the conforming, default decision is to wear a long tie.

If, indeed, you wear a tie at all. Ties have fallen out of fashion, I fear, and nowadays are worn mostly in corporate business and government offices: both being hierarchical societies in which signs of independent thought make one suspect. So if you’re going to wear a bowtie, recognize that you are making a fairly strong statement that may not be appreciated by those loyal to the hierarchy. You are telling them—and the world—that you march to the rhythm of a different drummer.

And, obviously, if you’re going to wear a bowtie, for the love of God, tie it. Wearing a clip-on or a banded bowtie is…. words fail me. Just don’t. You’ll look as though you’re 14 years old.

It’s a great enjoyment to be able to tie a bowtie quickly and without a mirror, ending up with a pleasingly compact and symmetric knot. The butterfly bowtie (photo) is probably more common, but I especially like the straight bowtie. I do have a couple of the diamond point, but day in, day out, I’d go with a straight.

Internet Explorer and Firefox

As I was working on that last post, I realized that I was setting all the links to open in a new window. With Firefox, this is very nice: the “new window” is just a new tab.

I then realized that, for people reading this blog using Internet Explorer, it might not be so nice: with Internet Explorer, you indeed get a new window, since the current version lacks tabs. (I believe that the next version will have tabs.)

For that I apologize, and I suggest, as a remedy, that you move immediately to Firefox, which has many benefits (among them a wide variety of quite useful extensions) and is perfectly free. When you install Firefox, it will bring over from IE all your Favorites and Bookmarks, so you won’t lose those.

Click here to start.

Firefox users, please add comments of reassurance to encourage IE users to take this leap.

The morning begins

With The Daily Adventure, I look forward to the start of the morning: a time of quiet contemplation and preparation. This morning I used my Vulfix 2235 brush, l’Occitane’s Cade shaving soap, 1940s Gillette Super Speed razor with Swedish Gillette blades.

I followed the advice on how to build a good lather from shaving soap, which resulted in my whipping the lather in the lathering bowl for longer than I normally do—but then I got wonderfully thick lather, dense with tiny bubbles. I used the four-pass shaving protocol, and I topped it off with Pashana aftershave.

The result: a comfortable, baby-butt smooth shave with not a single nick—and a calm and refreshed spirit.