Такое странное ощущение, что какой-то shit just happened.

В целях модернизации железнодорожной сети Сиднея предлагаю правительству срочно рассмотреть возможность закупки партии подобных транспортных средств.

ЗЫ – говорят, это не фотошоп, а экспериментальный электромобиль в некотором роде.

Чтобы всем все стало поездато, они придумали новшество – заменить двухэтажные поезда одноэтажными. И даже обоснование этому придумали, в них, дескать, народ будет запихиваться гораздо быстрее и посему стоянку поезда на станции можно будет сократить, а значит, поезда будут ходить быстрее!

Ну, в связи с этим все поезда с запада будут приходить на Central, посему все белые воротнички (если такие вообще останутся к тому времени) будут гудящей толпой бежать на пересадку.

Вот теперь я действиетльно в ахуе.

Ok, that does not seem a joke anymore. Even news.com.au finally popped a little note about it – Australian government is really pushing forward its plan to implement compulsory content filtering in internet.

In press releases available they mention that there will be two levels of content filtering – the one that filters “adult” material (remember previous government testing it and apparently failed?), which could be opt-out and the second compulsory filter which is supposed to block “illegal” material.

There is very interesting detail – they are ready to spend (or should I say “waste”) more than $40 mil on this. Waste because they don’t know what really are they going to block and don’t give a shit how an whether it is going to work at all! Two weeks ago they claimed it would be only child pornography that will be blocked, one week ago they added mysterious “illegal materials” to the list, today they say “euthanasia and anorexia” will be banned. Personally I don’t give a shit if they block this indeed, but I think the idea of leaving to some unknown person to decide what is illegal and what is not is ill. And those who come up with such idea are mentally sick and should be banned from society before they implement any of their crazy plans.

Another interesting detail – it won’t work. They’ll waste these money for what is not going to work at all. Providing that they are not going to build an iron curtain around the country. Let me not to go deep into technical details, just believe me – it will just reduce internet speed to the bottom, will not filter half of so-called “illegal” sites and have a high rate of false positives.

So why the government is so insane about getting that done? They want to protect our fragile minds from horrible contents of anorexia sites or what? Or, which is more likely, they want to build a base to outlaw P2P file sharing? Or, which is ever more likely, someone really wants to get 44 mil of our money for free? In one very corrupted country this is called “to saw the budget”

From my point of view, there are way more things in the country that urgently need those 44 mils. Public transport, hospitals, education, any other infrastructure, at the end. But this government does something weird – they gave 35 millions of taxpayers money to Toyota, then went forward with controversial desalination plant, then want to “protect us” by giving 44 millions to mysterious “internet filter” inventors, and it seems there are more to come.

So dear Kevin, aren’t you afraid of that by trying to keep rabbits away, you may really get there?

Links:

• No Clean Feed
• EFA website
• Internet filtering is just a wast of money

С ужасом ждем рецепта приготовления ядреной мины из степлера и адронного коллайдера из скрепки.

В вечерней порции старообрядного спама обнаружилась местная деревенская газета, в которой помимо истории о том, посылал или нет министр труда официанта кафе куда либо, и если посылал, то не на хуй ли случайно, оказалась весьма занимательная и не менее злободневная заметка.

Я уже высказывал свое отношение к так называемой проблеме “Глобального потепления ™”. Если кто не в курсе, то эта проблема настолько серьезна, что правительства в скором времени просто вынуждены будут взимать так называемый “налог на выбросы C02″ во всех производителей оного, что, несомненно, моментально приведет к тому, что в Альпах снег будет идти два года не прекращаясь, слой льда в Антарктиде испугается и наберет вес, а пустыня Сахара зазеленеет. Возможно, уровень океана еще испугается и упадет нахрен за компанию, но об этом пока не говорят.

Австралйское правительство, очевидно, принимая во внимание рекордно низкую цену топлива, рассматривает введение такого налога для розничных продаж. Всего-то 30 процентов, какой разговор, если шапки полюсов тают, а у кого-то мозги кипят.

Естественно, находятся несознательные и алчные индивидуумы с каменным сердцем, которые проявляя чудовищный цинизм по отношению к бедным пингвинам, самовольно и вероломно прекращают покупать бензин. Вот наша сегодняшняя газета и рассказывает, что в последнее время все больше людей покупает электрические скутеры австралийского и зарубежного производства. Эти творения рук явно сумасшедших учОных совершенно не нуждаются в бензине и могут на одной зарядке проехать до 50 километров.

Так вот, народ, который уже начал путать ценники на бензоколонке с номерами в телефонной книге, обзаводится электрическими мотороллерами. Многие даже продают свою вторую машину (от налогов, гады, уходят!).

И тут всплывают замечательные подробности – многие из таких скутеров, оказывается, запрещены для использования на дорогах. Почему? Потому что местное ГАИ требует, чтобы любая табуретка с колёсиками и мотором унутре была зарегистрирована как транспортное средство (соответственно с номерами и прочими причиндалами). Казалось бы, какие проблемы? Да никаких, за исключением того, что то же ГАИ многие из таких скутеров, которые являются полными аналогами своих бензиновых братьев, за исключением того, что бензиновый двигатель у них либо удален хирургически, либо атрофировался сам, считает, внимание, игрушками (!) и посему регистрировать отказывается.

Нет, будущее и правда is very fucking expensive.

Only the dead does not talk about soaring petrol prices these days. 1.70 per liter of unleaded mixed with ethanol (Folks! There is far more better application for C2H5OH!) is not a joke anymore. Last week TV showed how overcrowded public transport was struggling with rapidly increased number of commuters; and I especially remember an interview they took from a man who complained he could not afford to drive his V8 to work anymore. Sure, that’s the real issue.

And what is government doing? I’d say “nothing”, but that would not be true as they are really up to something. Something, that Chaser’s team explained in just a few words

What’s the point of doing something indeed? Almost half of petrol retail price is going straight to the budget as a tax, the higher is price, the more money for government to spent on something very important. Like sorting rental accommodation shortage and house affordability crisis by releasing new land to builders. Somewhere in the desert, obviously.

An now let’s get serious. Today’s fuel price is not even a beginning. It is simply a very polite reminder that nothing should be taken for granted and nothing is obtained without a price. It is not yet too late to act and start seriously investing in public transport. Seriously enough for making the need in own car appear once a year, not more often, when a rental car would be perfect. And, which is most interesting, it is not a rocket science at all – relatively low population density in Australia could be a very positive factor as large residential areas could be covered by a network of buses or minibuses, or even electric of mini-electric buses (see TrolleyBus) without reinventing a wheel by calling it “Euro-style metro”. By the way, European style metro is not what they want to build in Sydney at all. Of course, CityRail should be kicked to stop their train from being broken every day (take a look at proper European style metro. For instance, in Moscow or Saint-Petersburg, metro is already running over its capacity, but they still get the train every 90 seconds and nobody can remember when, if ever, trains have been stopped or delayed because of breakdown. Come on, train is a big heavy thing made from steel, it simply could not break!) . Introduce toll-free passage on Bridge for those who carry more than two passengers. Promote free or discounted parking in the City to them.

These are very simple actions and the question is why nothing like that has not been already done?

What a joke. You know, these days there are plenty of cars around that have about the same thirst, for instance, my Civic 2007 (not a hybrid, thanks God!) only takes 6.5-7.0/100 km (and I am not joking!), not mentioning dozens of diesel cars freely available on the today market that can run 100km on even less than 5 liters offering truckloads of torque at the same moment. I simply don’t see the point of building hybrids – they are at least as twice as complex as average modern petrol car, they still have that mistake called Internal Combustion Engine under the bonnet, what from engineer’s point of view is nothing else but a joke – several hundreds moving parts, dozens of sensors, neutralizers, computers built for the only purpose to convert less than 20% of energy concluded in fuel into the move (another 80% are simply heating the environment), in addition all this zoo of “state of art technologies” requires once-a-10K oil change, toxic coolant, timing belts, spark plugs and counting. Simply get rid of it, use the space and weight saved to put extra batteries and you get emission free vehicle that costs almost nothing to run, requires almost no maintenance and is easy and fun to drive. How about 300 N*M at zero rpm? That’s what electric vehicle (EV) is.

You say, I am a dreamer? I don’t think so – there already are plenty of people who built EV cars by themselves in their garages and who use them every day. Check this out – The Australian Electric Vehicle Association, it’s Sydney branch; EVMotors, that could supply you all the parts needed to convert ICE vehicle into EV. There is also very interesting EV Weblog by Jerry Halstead, who explains its past and current conversion projects in a very simple language. You don’t have to be a nerd to understand that there is really nothing, nothing at all really complex in EV – everything that goes in there was already invented by the beginning of XX century. No rocket science at all, in fact, resulting EV is ten times simpler than modern petrol car as it does not need most of these weird things that are required to get your ICE actually propel the car. Even gearbox is not needed. Yes, no gearbox at all, no manual, no auto, no CRV transmission.

Sounds good? Well, there is a little issue. Damned batteries! They are heavy, expensive, some require complex electronics to monitor their health and they still don’t have capacity enough to build a car which range would be comparable to petrol car. But is it really needed indeed? Put your hands up who drive more than 50 km a day! In fact, an EV that could run 50 km on single charge could be build using old-fashioned lead-acid batteries, and this is exactly what people do. You get home, plug your car into 240v socket and it is charged by the morning. That’s it. You can even plug it when you get to the office and your range magically extends almost twice (of course, you’ll need to find a parking spot with 240V outlet, which seems to remain a slight issue for at least several years ).

In fact, I am almost sure that the reason why we still drive those weird, polluting and noisy monsters is that nobody actually cares about environment. The oil prices and limited supplies do not seem to concern those who take decisions either.

I wonder how far should oil prices go before we see a little revolution in car making? May be instead of investing into dead technology we should better use these money to encourage enthusiasts and provide more public EV charging points as well as spend a little fraction of them on battery research?

P.S. – I heard that “EVs simply shift emissions to other place”, please don’t repeat that bullshit.

Of course, ladies and gentleman, not surprisingly it is the driver. He was pissed off (0.002 over the limit) and might have possibly smoked “some substance” some time before. Thanks God, we all know that driver simply was drunk and therefore did not notice the gap until very late.

What a bunch of crap, I think. Whole 0.002 over the limit! Did anyone notice any reference on how accurate that blood alcohol test is? But regardless, in the first turn they did not hit the power pole that crossed the road, they did not park in the tree – they drowned in a river of dirty water in the same spot where a road was supposed to be, and, which does not make it any easier for those who really responsible for road collapse, the drainage issue was known well before and the collapse was completely preventable. But nothing has been done. The driver might be drunk but isn’t his and four other people death a bit too severe punishment for not predicting what should and could be prevented?

Living in Australia, we are relatively lucky – we don’t get black ice on the road (awesome feeling of sudden and total loss of control, a fresh change of pants may be required, if you were lucky), we don’t have six months of snowfalls, limiting visibility to tens of meters, the roads are mostly built on rocks instead of swamps, there are still plenty of room for new road (opposed to crowded Europe). The only we need is to build a road and make sure that when rain finally falls, it will go into sewage alone, without taking the asphalt with it. It is as simple as it is and not a rocket science at all – I bet building the house on the slope may be much more challenging than constructing a road. But why the hell things like this still happen? What are they waiting for? For a school bus full of children, sorry, don’t even want to think about that.

They have got their whipping boy, but why should we even care about who to blame? There is nothing we can help them or their families, there is only one question that should be asked – what has been done to stop roads from being flushed away in a country suffering from worst ever drought? Woy Woy road makes me think that very little indeed…

I am very, very frustrated, ladies and gentlemen.

They opened Woy Woy road in one direction and it apparently eased a pressure on evening commuters. But there are no evidences of any work in progress at Bulls hill, everything I could notice was a barricade and 25 km/h signs.

Another question is why did it open it in one direction only – while there is only one line available it still could be reversible, all they need is bring a pair of temporary radio controlled traffic lights and put them on the top and on the bottom of the hill – they do it all the time around roadwork sites anyway! In peak hour the whole thing could be one-directional, but there is no point of leaving it like this permanently – the traffic there has always been far from heavy and a couple of minutes wait in front of light would be much better than 25 minutes “drive” from Tascot to West Gosford.

Did they just never consider this option or there was another reason?