We’ve also seen a number of possible Democrat presidential contenders visiting New Hampshire, trying to get a feel if there is any support for their possible campaign to become the Democratic nominee for President. It signals that the political silly season has started and that soon we’ll be seeing an increasing and endless train of candidates, camp followers, and press. It will be absolute madness as we get closer to the New Hampshire Primary.
This might be a time to start drinking heavily.
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This isn’t news to any of us engineering types.
It turns out that cold weather can have a negative effect on the batteries of electric vehicles.
Under ideal conditions, these [EVs] can deliver more than 200 miles per charge and, in some cases, even 300. But as many owners discovered last week as winter storms slammed much of the country, cold weather conditions do not qualify as "ideal." A new AAA study finds that when the thermometer drops to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, range falls by an average of 41 percent on the five models it tested.Once it gets below freezing the battery chemical reactions can slow down and the internal impedance can go up, meaning the battery can’t deliver all of its stored charge. While heating the battery system will help maintain the full capacity of the system, the extra drain placed upon the batteries to keep them warm decreases the energy available to drive systems. Now add the need for the environmental system to keep the passengers comfortable and the vehicle range will go down even more.
"We found that the impact of temperature on EVs is significantly more than we expected," said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of Automotive Engineering."
Some EV drivers — including this correspondent — recently found that range can drop by half when the mercury tumbled into negative territory. But the AAA study appears to be the first to have used standard, repeatable methodology to confirm the problem and compare the effect of winter temperatures on different models.
EVs will be fine when the weather is warm, but for places like here in New Hampshire we might find that EVs are a not a viable means of transportation during the depths of winter.
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As if we need yet another in an endless series of proofs that socialism just doesn’t work, there’s Panera Bread’s experiment in socialism that has ended in a dismal failure.
Panera Bread’s ‘pay-what-you-want’ socialist program goes totally belly-up.Better that an experiment in socialism be a small one that affects a single business (Panera) rather than a big one that ruins an entire nation (Venezuela, for instance).
Panera Bread will be closing its last pay-what-you-can restaurant, located in Boston, on Feb. 15.
The move comes after the business’s “nonprofit” restaurant concept became unviable. On Tuesday, Eater reported that none of the restaurant’s five locations was self-sustaining.
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One of the things that at least one potential Democrat Presidential contender has put forth as part of their platform is the oft-touted Universal Basic Income. While it may sound like a good idea at first glance, once one delves into it and takes human nature into account, the idea falls apart. That’s certainly what Finland found out when it tried as an experiment.
When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits.I can explain why they saw what they did: human nature. It always wins in the end.
It immediately attracted international interest – but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.
Did it help unemployed people in Finland find jobs, as the...Finnish government had hoped? No, not really.
Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, *they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren’t given the money. They are still trying to work out exactly why this is, for the final report that will be published in 2020.
But will that stop the experiment from being tried again? Unfortunately the answer is no. It seems the city of Chicago wants to give it a go.
Giving people something for nothing and not expecting anything in return gives you... nothing in return. But it sure makes lefties feel good to be giving out other people's money for such a good cause.I expect the experiment will show the same results as the one in Finland.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the poster child of today’s biased colleges.
Considering her disdain for anything not of a socialist bent, her willful ignorance of socialism’s history, let alone history of any kind, and her stunning lack of knowledge of economics despite an Economics degree from Boston University.
Do you think AOC has read one word of Friedrich Hayek? Do you think that she has even heard of him? What do you think she knows of history in general? We already know how informed she is about the Middle East.And people wonder why she is disparaged with the moniker Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. It’s because she only uses her brain oh a now and again basis.
This is a new form of proud Know-Nothingism. We can't even say it will come back to haunt us because it already is doing just that. Reforming our educational system is the most important mission of our time. Presidents come and go. Even media grandees come and go — after a while (too long a while). But education remains, shaping our future. Change it or everyone sitting in Congress will be AOC. (No it doesn't stand for All-Out Communist. But wait long enough and it could.)
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re expecting some more snow later this week, thoughts of the coming boating season in 3 months, and the realization that Monday is coming upon us once again is disturbing to no end.