The number one British single today in 1959:
Today in 1964, the Beatles set a record for advance sales, even though with 2.1 million sales the group would argue …
The number one single today in 1967:
No comments on Presty the DJ for March 16
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My high school political science teacher, now a blogger too, passes on this from The Daily Beast:
God is dead in literature. According to conventional wisdom and prevailing perceptions, Christian themes, along with faith outside the detached analytical realm of sociology, no longer have a role in the narrative of contemporary novelists. …
Let us consider an entire “genre.” Crime fiction weaves its tale in the threshold between right and wrong, just and unjust, good and evil. It is because of its naked confrontation with philosophy and ethics, and its depiction of drifters, confidence men, femme fatales, petty criminals, serial killers, and agents of the law beset by iniquity and caught in the web of moral turpitude, that it is so effectively and naturally able to deal with doubt, faith, and the inner combat of spiritual warfare. The case for faith in fiction is to be made by those who deal with cracking cases for a living—the fictional detectives, private investigators, and troubled protagonists who inhabit the scandalous, seductive, and serpentine setting of noir.
Crime and noir have always told the story of people who decide to cross an invisible but palpable moral line. It then measures the wreckage—physical, emotional, and spiritual—that results from the voluntary crossing over into another ethical universe—a colder, tougher, and uglier universe. These same questions haunt the tales of the Bible and the lives of the saints. …
[Lawrence Block’s] Hit Me hits shelves on the heels of the release of Walter Mosley’s new e-book,The Parishioner. Mosley is most famous for his Easy Rawlins mystery series—Devil in a Blue Dress was adapted into a film starring Denzel Washington. In Mosley’s new book, Xavier Rule is a reformed gangster attempting to transform his life from criminality to responsibility under the guiding hand of Father Frank, a mysterious and often autocratic preacher at a secluded church in California. …
Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch series and The Lincoln Lawyer, which served as the basis for the movie starring Matthew McConaughey, navigates noir with a spiritual compass, and, like Mosley, uses crime not only to tell a suspenseful story but also to provoke the reader into evaluating evidence demonstrating the veracity of concepts far larger than any criminal case. The search for redemption and the opportunity for moral transformation provide the pulse to Connelly’s fiction. Mickey Haller, the protagonist of The Lincoln Lawyer, believes that there is “nothing scarier than an innocent client,” and is content to represent obvious criminals, steadily amassing wealth as a defense attorney. When he discovers that he was partially responsible for the conviction of an innocent man, and when he is forced to confront the pure evil of a guilty man, he surrenders to a moral calling. He determines that his life must have meaning.
Connelly’s most famous character, Harry Bosch, is named after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, whose religious paintings depict the hellish consequences of earthly sins and, with a frightening blend of realism and surrealism, took on apocalyptic dimensions in their representation of spiritual torment, the battle for justice, and the judgment of God. The homicide detective, like the painter, is motivated by a sense of fairness formed by faith and a nonnegotiable moral code. His stone-cold consistency is the source of his virtue and his vice—he is comfortable with bending the law in an “ends justifies means” philosophy of law enforcement.
Connelly and Mosley prove that hands of sufficient delicacy and muscularity can transform the genre of crime fiction into the art of literature. No man is more adept at accomplishing such a feat, however, than James Lee Burke. Burke is the winner of two Edgar Awards and is most famous for chronicling the life of David Robicheaux, a New Orleans homicide detective turned New Iberia sheriff’s deputy. Robicheaux is a recovering alcoholic and practicing Catholic who is married to a former nun and is guided by a system of philosophy that combines hardboiled realism and incorruptible mysticism. Burke’s stories might begin with a simple homicide or rape but ultimately feel as if they are anecdotes from the Book of Revelation.
The Tin Roof Blowdown, released in 2007, is set in the Armageddon atmosphere of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Robicheaux must apprehend a pair of rapists, prevent a vigilante from creating more death and destruction, and save the life of a priest friend with a morphine addiction. Robicheaux believes that the rapist and the priest are equal in the eyes of God. The rapist hand-delivers a letter of apology to try to make amends for a crime that can likely never be forgiven, and he prays for forgiveness and redemption before dying. In one of the most moving conclusions to any book, Robicheaux believes that the rapist and the priest, who died in the days after the hurricane, are “safe inside a pewter vessel that is as big as the hand of God.” …
“Learn to love sinners.” That’s Catholic priest and author Robert Barron’s advice to his seminary students if they ever hope to become effective priests. God is not dead in literature. He is hiding in the stories of sinners.
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Today being the Ides (Ide?) of March, let’s begin with the Ides of March:
Today in 1955, Elvis Presley signed a management contract with Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, an illegal immigrant from the Netherlands who named himself Colonel Tom Parker.
The number two single that day:
The number one British album today in 1969 was Cream’s “Goodbye,” which was, duh, their last album:
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U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R–Janesville) in the Wall Street Journal:
America’s national debt is over $16 trillion. Yet Washington can’t figure out how to cut $85 billion—or just 2% of the federal budget—without resorting to arbitrary, across-the-board cuts. Clearly, the budget process is broken.
In other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
House Republicans have a plan to change course. On Tuesday, we’re introducing a budget that balances in 10 years—without raising taxes. How do we do it? We stop spending money the government doesn’t have. Historically, Americans have paid a little less than one-fifth of their income in taxes to the federal government each year. But the government has spent more.
So our budget matches spending with income. Under our proposal, the government spends no more than it collects in revenue—or 19.1% of gross domestic product each year. As a result, we’ll spend $4.6 trillion less over the next decade. …A budget is a means to an end, and the end isn’t a neat and tidy spreadsheet. It’s the well-being of all Americans. By giving families stability and protecting them from tax hikes, our budget will promote a healthier economy and help create jobs. Most important, our budget will reignite the American Dream, the idea that anyone can make it in this country.
The truth is, the nation’s debt is a sign of overreach. Government is trying to do too much, and when government does too much, it doesn’t do anything well. So a balanced budget is a reasonable goal, because it returns government to its proper limits and focus. By curbing government’s overreach, our budget will give families the space they need to thrive. …
The other side will warn of a relapse into recession—just as they predicted economic disaster when the budget sequester hit. But a balanced budget will help the economy. Smaller deficits will keep interest rates low, which will help small businesses to expand and hire. …
Our budget repeals the president’s health-care law and replaces it with patient-centered reforms. It also protects and strengthens Medicare. I want Medicare to be there for my kids—just as it’s there for my mom today. But Medicare is going broke. Under our proposal, those in or near retirement will see no changes, and future beneficiaries will inherit a program they can count on. Starting in 2024, we’ll offer eligible seniors a range of insurance plans from which they can choose—including traditional Medicare—and help them pay the premiums.
The other side will demagogue this issue. But remember: Anyone who attacks our Medicare proposal without offering a credible alternative is complicit in the program’s demise. …
The current tax code is a Rubik’s cube that Americans spend six billion hours—and $160 billion—each year trying to solve. The U.S. corporate tax is the highest in the industrialized world. So our budget paves the way for comprehensive tax reform. It calls for Congress to simplify the code by closing loopholes and consolidating tax rates. Our goal is to have just two brackets: 10% and 25%. House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp has committed to pass a specific bill this year.
If we take these steps, the United States will once again become a haven of opportunity. The economy will grow, and the country will regain its strength. All we need is leadership. Washington owes the American people a balanced budget. It isn’t fair to take more from families so government can spend more.
The opposing view comes from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., as National Review observes in its Morning Jolt:
When it comes to chasing a balanced budget, President Obama is not exactly Inspector Javert (or Samuel Gerard, depending on your pop-culture frame of reference). But he admitted Tuesday he was never really trying that hard:
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Obama rejected calls to balance the federal budget in the next ten years and instead argued that his primary economic concern was not balancing the budget, but rather growing the economy.
“My goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we are going to be bringing in more revenue,” he said.
“We noticed,” the guys at Weasel Zippers quip.
In the broadest sense, Obama is right: A country with the economic resources and general stability that the United States has enjoyed through much of its history can afford to run a deficit. Wiser minds than me argue that the real measuring stick is the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Our national debt is . . . $16,703,943,129,416.14, as of Monday. That’s $16.7 trillion.
Our nominal GDP is $15.6 trillion. Oof.
Looking at the inflation-adjusted numbers for our annual deficit, year by year . . . you know what used to be considered “a lot”? $500 billion, in 2004. (That year, unadjusted for inflation, it came in at $413 billion.) Back in 1991, it came in at $453 billion. So a half a trillion was the pre-Obama all-time high.
Now look at the Obama era: $1.5 trillion in 2009, $1.36 trillion in 2010, $1.32 trillion in 2011, $1.1 trillion in 2012. We’re supposed to be really happy that this year it might come in under a trillion, in the $900 billion range.
In other words, the best Obama has done is twice as bad as it’s ever been.
Which doesn’t mean Ryan’s budget is ideal as Reason.com points out:
Due to a variety of reasons, real spending has been flat for the past several years without Americans starving to death or being overrun by Islamic fundamentalists or neo-Soviet invaders. More important, the political establishment should understand that voters respond to politicians whose actions and policies stem from principle rather than from expediency. Was it only a week ago that a handful of senators led by Rand Paul (R-Ky.) created one of the most stirring moments in recent political memory simply by refusing to conduct business as usual? In standing up to a chief executive, an attorney general, and the man who now heads the CIA over questions of transparency and executive power, Rand Paul and his colleagues didn’t just show a spine and a vision sorely lacking in the typical Washington “statesman,” they spoke for voters who are rightly worried and concerned about the people who rule them. Whatever plaudits the filibuster partiicipants won, they also were widely attacked by the nation’s leading editorial boards and even senior members of their own party (John McCain memorably – and sadly – dubbed them “wacko birds”).
Would that the crew behind the House Republican budget had one ounce of the same spine and ideological fervor of folks such as Rand Paul. If they did (or if they dared to include people such as Justin Amash in the budgeting process), they might have produced a document that would actually address out-of-control government spending and a future that is overwhelmed not simply by red ink but by slow economic growth caused by debt overhang.
Sure, “The Path to Prosperity” will be “better” than the Senate’s long-awaited plan – at four years in the making, you’ve got to wonder if the ghost of slow-poke film director Stanley Kubrick is guiding that sad-sack document. And it will surely be “better” than the president’s – already late in turning in this year’s document, Obama has signaled that he’s not signing on to anything that doesn’t reverse the sequester’s cancellation of White House tours and other core functions of government.
But being “better” than plans that will be put forth by political opponents shouldn’t be mistaken for being “good,” or even worthy of support. The fact is that the GOP budget plan, apart from its first two years on the spending side, in which it slightly reduces outlays from the current amount, is nothing to celebrate. There are workable alternatives out there, including plans floated by people such Paul, Sen. Tom Coburn, and the Republican Study Committee. While none of these proposed reform agendas represent a turn-key operation, they all have the benefit of actually grappling with the actual issues that are both at hand and about to slam the American people in a few years’ time.
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The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan was blogging from the Vatican before the cardinals chose the next pope:
There is a sense too, at least among American Catholics I talk to, that this is in some new way a crucial moment for the church, even though we don’t understand or cannot name exactly why. It’s not only The Scandals, the Vatican bank, that source of half a century’s rumors, or Vatileaks. It’s not only the three cardinals who reportedly made a dossier on the last, bound in red leather and locked away like the third secret of Fatima for the next pope’s perusal. Those cardinals—again, reportedly—wrote of rivalries and ambitions. But what exactly does that mean? Who are the rivals and what are they fighting over? Ambitions for what, to do what? We are all wondering about this.
Anyway, I talk to a lot of Catholics who are publicly sanguine and privately unsettled.
All this is at odds with the burly bonhomie shown in public by those such as New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who in his few days in Rome has always been seen laughing and reaching out, joking and teasing. It’s a good thing to see. I want to feel the way he seems to feel. Maybe by the end of the conclave I will. …
… there’s a lot of ignorant, tendentious and even aggressive media chatter about the church right now, and it’s starting to grate. Church observers are blabbering away on cable and network news telling the church to get with the program, throwing around words like “gender” and “celibacy” and “pedophile” and phrases like “irrelevant to the modern world.” …
Right now every idiot in town feels free to tell the church to get hopping, and they do it in a new way, with a baldness that occasionally borders on the insulting. Whatever their faith or lack of it they feel free to critique loudly and in depth, to the degree they are capable of depth. I have been critical of the church over the sex scandals for longer than a decade. Here’s one column—but I write of it because I love it and seek to see it healthy, growing and vital as it brings Christ into the world. Some of the church’s critics don’t seem to be operating from affection and respect but something else, or some things else.
When critics mean to be constructive, they bring an air of due esteem and occasional sadness to their criticisms, and offer informed and thoughtful suggestions as to ways the old church might right itself. They might even note, with an air of gratitude free of crowd-pleasing sanctimony, that critics must, in fairness, speak of those parts of the church that most famously work—the schools that teach America’s immigrants, the charities, the long embrace of the most vulnerable—and outweigh a whole world of immediate criticisms.
But when they just prattle on with their indignant words—gender, celibacy, irrelevant—well, they’re probably not trying to be constructive. One might say they’re being vulgar, ignorant and destructive, spoiled too. They think they’re brave, or outspoken, or something. They don’t have enough insight into themselves to notice they’d never presume to instruct other great faiths.
CNN found someone who actually knows something about the church:
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, the new pope, is breaking historic ground by choosing the name Francis.
It’s the first time the name is being used by a pope, said CNN Vatican expert John Allen.
Pope Francis chose his name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi because he is a lover of the poor, said Vatican deputy spokesman Thomas Rosica.
“Cardinal Bergoglio had a special place in his heart and his ministry for the poor, for the disenfranchised, for those living on the fringes and facing injustice,” Rosica said.
St. Francis, one of the most venerated figures in the Roman Catholic Church, was known for connecting with fellow Christians, Rosica added.
Allen described the name selection as “the most stunning” choice and “precedent shattering.” …
The name symbolizes “poverty, humility, simplicity and rebuilding the Catholic Church,” Allen said. “The new pope is sending a signal that this will not be business as usual.”
Wigderson Library & Pub (and remember that Catholics started colleges and celebrated the wine part of the Eucharist):
One of the advantages of being Catholic is that, instead of offering an opinion on who should be Pope, we’re more or less left to accept and offer prayers that the Cardinals make the right choice. That said, obviously there was a rooting interest for Cardinal Timothy Dolan. God must have other plans. I suspect the White House, as much as it prays, was hoping Dolan would become Pope, too, if only to get him to move to Rome. …
It was interesting to listen to the speculation regarding the meaning of the name Francis. It was like watching a funeral from the Soviet Union and trying to figure out the significance of who is on the reviewing stand.
What we know of Pope Francis is that he’s a Jesuit, he’s an Argentine, and he’s a humble and faithful man. He’s the first Pope from the New World.
Pope Francis is a stauch defender of the unborn, even believing that politicians that support abortion and euthanasia should be denied Communion. That should make for an interesting visit by American Vice President Joe Biden to the Pope’s inaugural on Tuesday.
He’s committed to ministering to the poor and unfortunate, but he’s not a Liberation Theologian. He is not afraid of conflict with secular authorities over gay marriage and adoption.
He’s not a young man, yet Pope Francis is hoped to be a reformer of the institutions of the Church.
The London Daily Mail adds:
While he is unlikely to soften the Church’s approach to issues such as contraception, he has spent many years administering to the poorest in the land, endearing himself to them as ‘Father Jorge’.
Though unwaveringly orthodox, he has never closed his mind to pastoral realities. Six months ago, he delivered a blistering attack on priests who refuse to baptise children born out of wedlock, calling it — in his own typical style of phraseology — a form of ‘rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism’. …
He has spoken out against liberal abortion laws and gay adoption, arguing that it infringed the rights of children to both a mother and father.
This earned him a rebuke from Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
But he has shown deep compassion for Aids victims, once visiting a hospice to kiss and wash the feet of 12 Aids patients.
At the same time he has spoken passionately about the importance of pastoral care for divorcees. …
He considers helping the neediest in society, rather than ideological battles about religious doctrines, the essential business of the Church.
He has labelled those fellow Church leaders who enjoy the trappings of high office as hypocrites, saying they forget that Jesus bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes.
This sort of pastoral work, aimed at capturing more souls and building the flock, is an essential skill for any religious leader in the modern era, says Bergoglio’s authorised biographer, Sergio Rubin. …
Eight years ago, when he came second in the papal ballot, there were some doubts about his toughness. Why this should change now is yet to be explained.
But, in electing him, the cardinals undoubtedly feel that, with his Italian roots, he will be able to take on the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia — which has been subject to accusations of money laundering. And that he will take a tough line on the sexual scandals which continue to embarrass the Church worldwide. …
The hope is that he will not put up with the cover-ups of recent years. We shall see. Certainly, he has never worked in the Vatican, so he has much to learn.
But his appeal is in drawing respect from both conservatives and moderates, and for his deep spirituality. In an address last year he said Argentina was being harmed by demagoguery, corruption and totalitarianism. …
And why did he choose to call himself Pope Francis? After 13th-century St Francis of Assisi, who set out to ‘rebuild a Church’.
The funniest unfunny comment comes from Tim Nerenz:
Be happy that the Pope is not elected in Wisconsin – a recall website would already be up and running, some Dane County judge would set aside the Conclave’s decision, the GAB would certify the votes of 13,000 new Cardinals bussed up from Illinois, all that smoke would be blamed on the Mining Bill, and the newly elected Pope Sarah Manski would immediately resign and move to California. -
The texting shorthand term “smh” (“shakes my head”) didn’t exist in 1955 because texting didn’t exist in 1955.
But surely “smh” was invented for things like this: Today in 1955, CBS talent scout Arthur Godfrey made a signing decision between Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.
Godfrey chose Boone.
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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorially harrumphs:
Statistics by Public Policy Polling reveals a partisan trench in Wisconsin wider and deeper than in any other state, according to some number-crunching by the Journal Sentinel’s Washington Bureau Chief Craig Gilbert. We can, we should, do better.
Gov. Scott Walker’s approval rating among Republican voters: 92%. Among Democrats: 9%.
President Barack Obama’s approval rating among Democrats: 93%. Among Republicans: 4%.
Those divides are wider in Wisconsin than in the other 40 or so states the company has polled in since 2011.
The same results go for U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Janesville, the Republican candidate for vice president in the November election, for newly minted Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. …
There is little doubt that the election of Walker in November 2010 and his decision to challenge the public unions pushed voters into their corners. Walker’s goal of bringing the state’s labor costs under control were achievable without the sort of radical attack on organized labor that he undertook, an attack that essentially ended collective bargaining for most public workers.
But signs of deep political division were evident even before Walker’s election. One example: The nasty 2008 state Supreme Court contest won by challenger Michael Gableman over incumbent Louis Butler, which saw conservative and liberal interests spend millions in a fight for control of the state’s highest court.
For those with short memories, believe it or not, Wisconsin politics wasn’t always like this. Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson was known as a dealmaker who would gladly reach across the aisle to get something passed. Politicians like that still exist – think state Sen. Tim Cullen of Janesville, a Democrat, who has worked closely with Republican state Sen. Dale Schultz of Richland Center.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them, as a column Monday by the Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice made clear. Bice recounted a recent bit of nastiness between Republican state Rep. Steve Nass of Whitewater and Democratic state Rep. Andy Jorgensen of Fort Atkinson, who got into a heated email exchange over a minor bill that had bipartisan support.
The wounds of the past two years may take years to heal, but surely legislators can do better than that. And surely the state’s leading politicians can find common ground from which to do the will of the people who elected them. Is that too much to ask?
Well, uh, yes, it is too much to ask. We are a divided state, and we have been divided far longer than the Journal Sentinel has noticed. We’re divided between the People’s Republic of Madison and the rest of the planet. We’re divided between “water fountain” and ‘bubbler.” We’re divided between Wisconsin basketball fans and Marquette basketball fans.
That wasn’t what the Journal Sentinel had in mind. But this partisan and ideological divided has existed far longer than the 2008 Supreme Court election. The Journal Sentinel could have looked back to the 1990s, when Republican Speaker of the Assembly Scott Jensen and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala ran their houses like dictatorships. Jensen and Chvala may have figured out before other politicians that politics is a zero-sum game — one side wins, the other side loses. The most charitable observation about Chvala could be that he was doing what he could knowing that the most powerful governor in the country was able to undo whatever he didn’t like coming out of the Legislature.
(The Journal Sentinel inadvertently proved why governors make better presidents than senators. Governors are expected to get things done. Senators can, well, vote present.)
The fault lies in the parties. Each party benefits by demonizing the other to generate voter passion and, more importantly, money. Both parties have bought into the idea that government must solve all of our social ills, even if government cannot do that.
The Democratic Party is against reducing government. The Republican Party says it wants to reduce government, then doesn’t. There are numerous clear examples of how the state GOP, for example, has had the opportunity to cut government spending and has lacked the guts to do so. That makes one think they’re either frauds or in love with the political power the GOP has had since voters fired Democrats left and, well, left in 2010.
But at least as much fault lies in the media. Here’s a crazy thought for the management of the state’s largest newspaper: Whenever a statement floats into your email from one of the party’s chairs, or particularly their spokespeople, delete it. Every time the media quotes a party official, the media is providing free advertising for that party. Party officials contribute nothing, and have zero governmental authority, and yet the Journal Sentinel, the Wisconsin State Journal and other offenders act as if we should care about what they think.
More broadly, the media is at fault every time it covers politics instead of government — when the media treats politics like something between a sporting event and a beauty pageant. The Journal Sentinel demonstrated this by wasting space on the snit fit between Jorgensen and Nass. Who cares? The media has also served the parties by exposing conservative Democrats and Republicans who don’t toe the current GOP line, as if issues should be decided on personalities instead of the merits of the issue.
Far too many stories written in the past two years were about how Walker’s or Democrats’ political fortunes would be affected by Act 10 or other legislation. Political non-nerds wanted to know how legislation will affect them, not on who gets along, or not, with some other politician, or who’s going to run for what more than one election cycle down the road.
The media should not stop covering government, since politicians spend (and more often than not waste) our tax dollars. But the media should strongly consider stopping coverage of politics, because it only encourages politicians to do things that will attract media attention.
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The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1960:
Today in 1965, Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds because he wanted to continue playing the blues, while the other members wanted to sell records, as in …
The number one single today in 1965:
Today in 1967, the Beatles hired Sounds, Inc. for horn work:
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Environmental skeptic Bjorn Lomborg:
Electric cars are promoted as the chic harbinger of an environmentally benign future. Ads assure us of “zero emissions,” and President Obama has promised a million on the road by 2015. With sales for 2012 coming in at about 50,000, that million-car figure is a pipe dream. …
For proponents such as the actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, the main argument is that their electric cars—whether it’s a $100,000 Fisker Karma (Mr. DiCaprio’s ride) or a $28,000 Nissan Leaf—don’t contribute to global warming. And, sure, electric cars don’t emit carbon-dioxide on the road. But the energy used for their manufacture and continual battery charges certainly does—far more than most people realize.
A 2012 comprehensive life-cycle analysis in Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially the battery. The mining of lithium, for instance, is a less than green activity. By contrast, the manufacture of a gas-powered car accounts for 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: 14,000 pounds.
While electric-car owners may cruise around feeling virtuous, they still recharge using electricity overwhelmingly produced with fossil fuels. Thus, the life-cycle analysis shows that for every mile driven, the average electric car indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon-dioxide. This is still a lot better than a similar-size conventional car, which emits about 12 ounces per mile. But remember, the production of the electric car has already resulted in sizeable emissions—the equivalent of 80,000 miles of travel in the vehicle.So unless the electric car is driven a lot, it will never get ahead environmentally. And that turns out to be a challenge. Consider the Nissan Leaf. It has only a 73-mile range per charge. Drivers attempting long road trips, as in one BBC test drive, have reported that recharging takes so long that the average speed is close to six miles per hour—a bit faster than your average jogger.
To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55 miles. As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: “Don’t Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much.”
If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime, the huge initial emissions from its manufacture means the car will actually have put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a similar-size gasoline-powered car driven the same number of miles. Similarly, if the energy used to recharge the electric car comes mostly from coal-fired power plants, it will be responsible for the emission of almost 15 ounces of carbon-dioxide for every one of the 50,000 miles it is driven—three ounces more than a similar gas-powered car.
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The number one single today in 1966:
The Beatles had an interesting day today in 1969. Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman …
… while George Harrison and wife Patti Boyd were arrested on charges of possessing 120 marijuana joints.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 