A penguin, technically a feather day entry, tea cups, probably from China, and oranges. Down by the riverside.
And that reminds me of a song…
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
When we were all so impossibly young.
This marketing miracle should be filed under the"We lose a little on every sale, but make it up in volume!" strategy.
Ford's Chief Executive Engineer unveils the Ford F-150 Lightning in 2021, in Dearborn, MI
DETROIT — Ford Motor Co.'s electric vehicle business has lost $3 billion before taxes during the past two years and will lose a similar amount this year as the company invests heavily in the new technology. – Detroit Free Press
Ford said it plans to be producing 2 million of the e-vehicles by late 2026, at which time it should be profitable. Then again, the world should have succumbed to the perils of global warming and/or climate change by then according to Greta-damus, so it may all be moot.
For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles - leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.
Battery packs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and represent up to 50% of an EV's price tag, often making it uneconomical to replace them.
Lessons of a long life: it seldom pays to be an early adopter.
I’ve never aspired to be a laggard before.
Today’s Caturday post is compliments of our own Par for the Course via World of Engineering:
Heisenberg and Schrödinger get pulled over for speeding.
The cop asks Heisenberg "Do you know how fast you were going?"
Heisenberg replies, "No, but we know exactly where we are!"
The officer looks at him confused and says "you were going 108 miles per hour!"
Heisenberg throws his arms up and cries, "Great! Now we're lost!"
The officer looks over the car and asks Schrödinger if the two men have anything in the trunk.
"A cat," Schrödinger replies.
The cop opens the trunk and yells "Hey! This cat is dead."
Schrödinger angrily replies, "Well he is now."
Please note: that’s German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg - who famously established the Uncertainty Principle – not Walter Heisenberg from Breaking Bad who was certainly unprincipled.
In an old abandoned ruin of a hotel, there once lived a flock of birds who had forgotten how to fly.They hopped here and there, eking out a living.
One day out of a broken skylight in the hotel in swooped a huge eagle.
He saw these birds hopping about and said, ” Hey, you are birds. You are supposed to fly. Come, I will teach you”.And so he taught the birds to fly again.The birds soon soared and swiveled in the atrium of the hotel shrieking with joy.
They were so happy. They had found their true nature.
And so it went for many seasons.
Until one day, the eagle lay his massive body down and died.
The birds were all very sad. They spoke amongst themselves:
What a great eagle he was!
How much he taught us!
How beautiful he was!
How wise he was!
We must never forget him or his words of wisdom.And so the birds set about writing down all that the eagle had said in a big golden book so they would never forget his wisdom.
And they built a beautiful statue of him so they never forget how magnificent he was.
And they built a temple around the statue so that it would be there forever.
Everyday, they brought flowers to the temple.
They placed fruit at the foot of the statue.
They recited his every word.
Every morning and evening.
They were pleased with their efforts.And slowly but very surely
They forgot how to fly.“Remember, they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you.”
“…every year one day comes, when, although there is no obvious change in the appearance of trees and hedges, the Earth seems to breathe and it is spring.”
Elizabeth Clarke, The Darkening Green
Snow Camp Reflections
This year that day is today. I know many of you south of the Mason-Dixon line are already enjoying the warmth of early spring. In Michigan not so much, although it will climb into the lower 50s later this week. Park City is another story. Except for the past few years of drought we’ve always had snow, generally feet of it, come the first day of spring. This year, I understand from my neighbor, it’s more like yards of snow. Not as much as northern California but enough to say confidently the drought is over. The local Global Warmists are alarmed they no longer have the drought around to prove their point; cyclical weather events always eluding their notice.
In other spring news, today is also Oberon Day in Michigan.
It’s the day Kalamazoo’s Bell Brewery releases it’s summer wheat ale, Oberon, back to their lineup to welcome the return of the sun. Wheat beer was originally known as ‘white beer’ in Europe but as we all know that is racist and no longer tolerated.
A traveler asked a teacher, "What is the secret of life?"
The master replied, "The secret of life is to make wise decisions."
The traveler then asked, "How can I make wise decisions?"
To which the master replied,"You will make wise decisions based on your experience."
"How do I gain experience?" the traveler asked.
"Poor decisions."
NOTE: I received a radiant bouquet of posies from the MOTI yesterday but my Verizon Cloud won’t let me download pictures just now; I must not have accumulated adequate social credits yet this month. I will post the glorious pictures as soon as Big Brother sees fit to allow.
Verizon has finally deemed me worthy to access my own Cloud so here is my lovely bouquet that arrived on Friday from the MOTI. It smells like Spring in the valley and is equally delightful to the eye, all blue and lavender set amongst of deep pink roses with splotches of gold double tulips. It perfumes the entire room. Thank you, my pretties, for yet another bunch of extraordinary pretties. They are even lovelier today as the tulips have unfurled to their full majestic glory but I’m not going to temp the Verizon gods to more mischief, so you must use your imagination. Thank you, thank you!
Closeup of the unfurling tulips:
The Democrat’s guide to solving inflation:
Take one chicken wing. Cut it into 3 pieces.
Now you have 3 times as many wings - so you can afford to pay the new, higher price per pound. If people complain, blame Trump – or White Supremacy. You can now sell the drumettes and wingettes at an increased price to suppliers, who will sell them as overpriced appetizers, donate the wing tips to a soup kitchen and take a tax write-off.
There. Done and dusted.
A bunch of Yankee doodles sticking another feather in their cap.
PS: Beware the Ides of March
Et Tu, Brute?
“What I would do for wisdom,”
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much. Or so it seems.
Even on walks I follow the dog. –
Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry
Not much, evidently.
But then, who needs wisdom when “you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…” (h/t Joey Biden).
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