I love using my scooter, be it for a trip to the shops or just an afternoon ride to the sunset; however one thing is certain in my mind: I have to pay attention.
Scooters (and the idea) are sold to people as some sort of dreamy fantasy
beautiful bright future city-scapes and people dressed neatly and smiling, no crowds on sunny days ... its idylic, even pretty chicks can do it looking fashionable and hot.
The reality however is usually obscure obstacles that didn't stand out to your untrained eye
but when you get down to wheel level and look will be sufficient to off you with your itty bitty wheels ...
when you hit them without looking and going fast (see this post).
Often they can be hidden under leaves or small debris:
so the rule is: if you can't see it suspect it.
Hitting small (you thought) insignificant obstacles which in combination with the itty bitty wheels of scooters your daydream ride may turn in to this
even at speeds that (if you've only been in cars) seem not fast ... the reality is however even a basic scooter goes faster than you can run and if you trip while running full speed you'll also risk injuries like the above.
We all know that EV's will save the world by reducing CO2 emissions to zero.
right?
Well ... the other day I was in the supermarket and I saw this vehicle promotion set up
No prices mentioned ... but I'll get to that
I sauntered over and looked at the stickers on the windscreens; first the Niro
I couldn't help but notice that it was Zero ... yippie ... but what's that hard to read small print in low contrast there?
oh ... what do you mean "unless 100% renewable energy is used?"
Well if you charge that in this area at home at night then its basically going to be electricity coming from the Coal Powered grid, and so the "combined test" 16kwh / 100km ... or (as identified in a previous post) means releasing 13.6kg of CO2 / 100km ... oh dear.
So lets have a look at the Cerato
Which gives 6.8L of fuel per 100km, which will translate into (based on their claims) 15.8kg of CO2 / 100km which isn't much different to the reality of 13.6kg really.
But wait, what's this Combined and Extra Urban??
well this is because Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) use less fuel on highway use than around town use. Interestingly with EV's this is reversed. This is backed up by not only this site:
Unlike gas- or diesel-powered vehicles, which regularly beat their EPA ratings in our highway testing, every one of the 12 EVs that we've run range tests on to date has fallen short of both its EPA highway and combined figures.
but in the personal experience I have with friends who own EV's and also my scooters. Literally the faster you go the worse it gets (which is also true of ICE powered cars, but nobody tests them doing 80km/h along the track).
So this means that out here in the countryside that Niro will be more likely to be used at 100kmh NOT "combined" which will mean that the CO2 produced will simply go up above that claim, and maybe produce even a little MORE CO2than the ICE version.
Oh Dear.
No wonder they didn't list them separately ... cunning.
Prices?
So the Cerato is the 1.6L Turbo with Dual Clutch Transmission which is listed at AU$34,190 while the Niro is listed at AU$70,990
FARRK that's over AU$36,000 more.
So lets just do some quick stuff here. At current prices of about AU$1.50 per liter even just spending $30,000 will give you 20,000L of fuel which even at 8.9 (the urban figure) will give you about 222,222km (or something like 10 years of driving).
As always the devil is in the details when dealing with King Wang Marketing...
For years I just wore a watch; mechanical, quartz, training watch ... I occasionally bought straps or bands if they wore out. I never really put much thought into it.
My recent return to searching for and buying a watch revealed a new thing to me: the NATO phenomenon. I would never have even found out about it if the Seiko I bought didn't come with one.
Why does everyone love this piece of weird stuff? Its like a Solution looking for a Problem (which does not exist). Is it because "it sounds military"
The stated problem is "what if my spring bar breaks" ... well a simple strap would solve that, no need for the two thickness and keeper strap (which I usually cut off as discussed here).
The keeper isn't needed to hold the watch on the strap, unless you take it off, hold it by the buckle and whirl it around your head.
Then there is the idea about it being a Bond thing ... well, Bond never wore a NATO, until after the Bond NATO was established in the watch community
Is the only answer that its about this problem?
Applying Occams Razor I think this is probably it.
More or less I'm just going to republish this as it stood; in the unlikely place of Facebook (link) However in case that goes away or you don't have Facebook here it is.
NOTE: emphasis and formatting mine:
“Do your research!!!”
Here’s the thing. Research is a learned skill; it is hard, it is nuanced and complex, and it is true that the majority of people would not even know where to begin or even HOW to do [their own] research.
Research is NOT:
Googling,
doom scrolling your FB newsfeed, or
binge serial watching what the YouTube algo feeds you or
reading Reddit / 4Chan 😖
to search for the results you are hoping to find to be “true.” These are called confirmation biases, and are quickly and easily ruled out when doing actual research.
A post credited to Linda Gamble Spadaro, a licensed mental health counselor in Florida, sums this up quite well:
Please stop saying you researched it.
You didn’t research anything and it is highly probable you don’t know how to do so.
Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on the reported results? No?
Did you at least take each article one by one and look into the source (that would be the author, publisher and funder), then critique the writing for logical fallacies, cognitive distortions and plain inaccuracies?
Did you ask yourself why this source might publish these particular results? Did you follow the trail of references and apply the same source of scrutiny to them?
No? Then you didn’t…research anything. You read or watched a video, most likely with little or no objectivity. You came across something in your algorithm manipulated feed, something that jived with your implicit biases and served your confirmation bias, and subconsciously applied your emotional filters and called it proof.”
This doesn’t even go into institutional review boards (IRB’s), also known as independent ethics committees, ethical review boards, or touch on peer-review, or meta-analyses.
To sum it up, a healthy dose of scepticism is/can be a good thing…as long as we are also applying it to those things we wish/think to be true, and not just those things we choose to be sceptical towards, or in denial of.
Most importantly, though, is to apply our best critical thinking skills to ensure we are doing our best to suss out the facts from the fiction, the myths, and outright BS in pseudoscience and politics.
Misinformation is being used as a tool of war and to undermine our public health, and it is up to each of us to fight against it.
PS: this video emerged on YouTube in late August of 2023 by Sabine
I strongly recommend watching it in full.
Next from this lecture in what amounts to a teams 50 years work on a topic we get this sound advice:
https://youtu.be/7mOvJbmpG6A?t=569
From the transcript starting at 9:31
Now before I present any clinical evidence let me just make three principles about research.
First of all my boss in the my early years in Cardiff, Archie Cochran, of this University, he very effectively publicized the principle that; in evaluating evidence it's essential at all available evidence is considered and never just a selection.
It's awfully easy to have a hypothesis and spend a Friday afternoon going through the literature and finding one or two Publications that show the same kind of thing as we're looking for in that particular hypothesis. That is so misleading it should never be done. So he went to enormous efforts as you will see in what follows that we would collect all the available evidence.
Then the follower of other modern medicines William Moser he said I think it sums up "medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability". In the end science never proves anything, always [it is] another explanation and conclusions about a particular hypothesis [and] can only be established at best to be Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
Don't look to me for any certainty in what I say but I think we've established a number of important steps which go beyond Reasonable Doubt.
Sage words.
Lastly a new skill (for anyone not still in high school, where at least in Australia this is now part of the curriculum) is the concept of Critcal thinking. Its outlined well at Monash Uni's site here.
Becoming an expert takes a lot more than just time, it takes feedback that you were wrong or confirmation that you are correct.
