Panos for Progress: Thoughts and Selections

The bullets below are direct quotes from The New York Times . It’s a damning assessment for university DEI programs. My view of the bottom line is that university DEI tend to be expensive, make-work policies and practices that foster grievances and largely provide lip service to those that they were built fo r. A lose-lose endeavor. I personally experienced the culture of preference, discrimination, grievances and accusations during the last third of my 31 year career at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (2010 to 2021). It took away a big part of the fun teaching large undergraduate classes. It also enabled hypersensitive faculty, staff and students to create mountains out of molehills. I was lucky to be in Engineering which has only a small fraction of DEI issues as other colleges, but the DEI presence was looming large, particularly in my last six years as a department chair.  The DEI climate was one of a handful of factors in my decisions to step down from Chairman after six years,

"The Charles Pankow Foundation has funded a study to assess parking garage safety in light of the heavier weight of electric vehicles compared to traditional cars. Led by researchers from the University of Colorado and University of Massachusetts, the investigation will evaluate whether current design standards for garage live loads, set at 40 pounds per square foot , remain sufficient." A standard US parking stall measures 18x8.5 ft or 153 ft2. The standard parking stall area times the 40 lb/ft2 weight standard yields a maximum of 6,120 lb or 2776 kg. A large US parking stall measures 20x9 ft or 180 ft2. The large  parking stall area times the 40 lb/ft2 weight standard yields a maximum of 7,200 lb or 3266 kg. The largest light duty EV sold on the US is the Hummer EV by General Motors. It weighs 9,640 lb. Clearly, many of them parked in the same parking deck of a parking structure will pose a problem. However, the rest of the EVs on sale, as of end of 2023, as shown in th

[Part 1: Costco – Part 2: Amazon ] The “big news” in the 2021-2024 time period was inflation and the cost of products, foods, and household items. Most of the inflation occurred soon after the Covid pandemic was under control. The rise in prices was due to high demand and limited supply because of labor shortages and supply chain issues in the harbors, etc. We moved to South Reno in late 2021 from Honolulu. Establishing a new household requires many purchases, several of which from Internet retail giant Amazon. Actually, Amazon has a large warehouse in the Reno-Sparks area. Unlike the 4+ days it took even for small shipments to arrive at our place in Honolulu, several of our orders in Reno arrive within 18 to 36 hours! I looked at my orders in summer 2021 and then re-priced the same exact items in summer 2024. (This is why my table is not very long. Some items have been superseded by newer models.) The table below presents a sample of 21 items; click on it to see a clear version. As ex

Strange finding, but it comes from a paper in a well regarded, peer reviewed journal. Do EV cause more at-fault crashes? The answer based on data from The Netherlands (only) is yes. See:  Are electric vehicles riskier? A comparative study of driving behaviour and insurance claims for internal combustion engine, hybrid and electric vehicles ( Alternate link ) Research Paper Highlights Electric and hybrid drivers exhibit different behaviours than traditional vehicles. Electric vehicles record higher at-fault claims than traditional vehicles. Hybrids do not display a statistically significant increase in claim likelihood. Electric vehicles are 6.7% more expensive to repair than traditional vehicles.

[ Part 1: COSTCO – Part 2: AMAZON] In summer 2018, my family and I went on a trip to the Reno-Tahoe area, mostly for vacation but also to get an idea if the greater Reno area may be a suitable one for relocating from Honolulu, after my retirement from the University of Hawaii. During the visit, I took pictures at Reno Costco of some of the products and items we used to buy at the time in Honolulu. I wanted to compare them with Honolulu’s Costco (at Iwilei). I was expecting that the “price of paradise” would hit again, and many items would be more expensive in Hawaii. I was planning to blog about it. Much to my surprise, the prices were basically the same … nothing to write about. Fast forward to 2024 and the “big news” is inflation and the cost of food items. Actually, most of the inflation occurred soon after the Covid pandemic was under control. The rise in prices was due to high demand and limited supply because of labor shortages and supply chain issues in the harbors, etc. Food i

Tesla's Full Self Drive (FSD) or Robotaxi is all camera based. No radars, no lidars. It'll hit the wall of unacceptability and never launch, or it'll launch with cameras only and kill people, or it'll go in a re-design phase with added radars. Any way you cut it, Elon Musk's pronouncements about Tesla robotaxis are mostly fake.

  The September 7, 2024 issue of the Economist has this provocative title on its cover page.  Strong words but they back their statement up with substantial research: They used data from 7.5m crashes in 14 States for ten years (2013-2023. They found that "for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest." Vehicles have been getting heftier over time, but a big culprit are pickup trucks, large SUvs and EVs. For example, ehe Ford F-150 Lightning weighs ~40% more than its gasoline version. EPA figures show that the average new car in the US weights 4,4000 lbs compared to 3,300 lbs in EU and 2,600 lbs in Japan. "Individually, it is rational for people to buy bigger cars. As Tony Soprano once said to his son A.J. when discussing SUVs, So you want to be the sucker in a regular car who gets decapitated? Yet the sum of those decisions is much more lethal roads, as well as

The main causes of disruptions in recent years include the following. 1. Panama canal throughput reduction due to a draught. Current situation, about 33% reduction . 2. Suez canal throughput reduction due to a hostile action by Huthis in Yemen. Current situation,  about 67% reduction . 3. Baltimore harbor complete blockage due to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge . On April 26, 2024 the Dali containership lost all power and control, and collided with a bridge support. 4. Suez canal throughput reduction due to blockage. The 400 meter, 20,000 TEU containership EVERGREEN Ever Given was stuck for six days in 2021 . 5. Stevedore and other worker union strikes at ports, like the looming strike in September 2024 affecting 14 ports stretching from Maine to Houston. 6. Traffic congestion and other obstructions to access at major ports. (The most common disruption of transportation in rivers is drought and flooding.)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Columbus, OH, Memphis, TN., and Milwaukee. WI have some of the fastest commutes, about 22 minutes one way:  The Cities With the Fastest Car Commutes Ten years ago I had a similar plan for Honolulu! But its political leaders insisted on using 19th century technology and have been trying to plan-design-construct an elevated steel-wheel on steel-rail electric train since ... 2006.  After spending well over $10 billion only half of the 20 promised miles were opened in 2023 to abysmal ridership.  The forecast for the 20 mile line was for 105,000 daily boardings. The 10 mile line has a daily ridership below 5,000! The HART rail is located on Oahu in greater Honolulu area. If you thought that 105,000 trips a day is a big deal, you'd be wrong. About 4 million trips occur on Oahu every day. With the best conditions possible, HART rail will relieve traffic congestion by about 2%.  How about it... $16 billion of wasted public monies for a 2% improvement! 

Although cured expanding foam is not considered hazardous by the EPA, it needs to be disposed of properly . Apparently, the railroad ran rests with expanding foam and left several hundred cured "mushrooms" over a quarter mile stretch by Floriston, CA. The task of collection and disposal was avoided, and all those hard probes were left as trash right next to Truckee river. Terrible! Eventually all of these will pollute the nearby soil, the river and many will wound up in Pyramid Lake where the Truckee river terminates. After a while, sun exposure makes them brittle, so these become a form of microplastics pollution.  There are also several older and weathered expanding foam probes, which suggests that this is repeated practice. Both AMTRAK and freight railroads run on these tracks. I have no idea who owns the track, and who conducted these tests. I reported this environmental pollution incident to EPA’s Pacific Southwest (Region 9) office in San Francisco. 

While I do not follow a keto diet, I do like some of the offerings, like this almond flour bread . It is bready, a little spongy and you can't miss the egg in it. Easily done... 60 minutes from start to finish. 5 eggs 5 tbs olive oil 1 tbs maple syrup 1 tsp apple cider vinegar 1¾ cups almond flour, super fine 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt Preheat oven to 350.  Line an 8" loaf pan with parchment paper. In a bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Whisk in the oil, maple syrup and vinegar until smooth.  Mix in the almond flour, baking soda and salt until the batter is uniform and thick.  Transfer to loaf pan and bake for ~35 minutes, until golden on top. Cool the loaf 10 minutes in the pan, remove to a cooling rack and cool another 20 minutes.