Car tricks

How you drive is as important as what you drive when trying to save gas.

Bad organizations

If you work for a company or run one that sounds like this, be wary.

• The butts-in-seats method means that when a company starts like holding you strictly to time cards, they are demonstrating a powerlessness to determine your actual worth.  Bad indicators like this suggest an artificial organizational structure and definitely not a meritocracy.  Showing up on time in this organization is therefore far more important than providing value to the company.
• Appearances are everything, which is similar to butts-in-seats, a dress code means appearing to be a good worker means you are a good worker.  A strict dress code is all the more painfully false.
  
• Must use the "maybe" requirement means you're never allowed to say "no" or "I don't know" to your boss, which is considered defiance or stupidity.
  
• Tacitly encouraged to slow innovation means make sure that breakthroughs are gradual and continuous -- you are not rewarded for one gigantic win and then 100 little ones.  Better to have 50 medium successes to illustrate yourself as a continuous producer.  This may be why diseases are no longer cured, only managed and why small out-of-someones-garage companies are so important.  Also the "what have you done for me lately" problem.
  
• Power to the manager involves extremely relative metrics for success that empower managers to continue asking for more from their employees, without rewarding them for real work.
• The police method means having impossible metrics available so you can always justify a firing.  Similar to how a good cop can always come up with a reason to arrest you.

Ethics and business

Those of us that have worked for companies of less-than-stellar reputations may see ourselves described here.  The author relates his own experience making far too much money for doing less than excellent work, while never saying no.  In an era of CEOs with golden parachutes, its pleasant to read that some are not able to purchase a clean conscience.

TV is lying to you

Enjoy it when something vile turns out to be something good after all?   The idea of an article explaining how to do the opposite of what you see on TV should be great fun.  Well, the article doesn't pay off very well in terms of its initial promises, so here's how it should have been written.

TV:

• Has lots of stuff you don't need.  Live slim for a few years to help build your savings.
• Has lots of serial killers, but they're not frequent in real life.  If you have extra space, rent it out.  A solid contract and a big deposit will prevent most problems.
  
• Is where public transportation gets threatened by disasters.  These too are rare.  Use public transportation in any big city, especially when you travel.
• Portrays Ethnic people poorly (e.g. soup nazi / goofy).   Yet somehow Ethnic restaurants are frequently cheaper and just as good. 
• Wants you to go to Best Buy or other slick, overpriced gadget hole.  Instead, check Craigslist/Freecycle first for almost anything you buy or sell.
• Thinks you need help.  Whatever it is, try doing it yourself first before you pay someone else from coffee to losing weight.

Related: Freezer tricks to save $

Cash injection not a cure

Western society seems to worship youth, money, and beauty, but it won't surprise anyone that a 16 year old, beautiful, sudden millionaire didn't turn out well.

While the importance the lottery plays in the hopes and dreams of people who are on the bottom is noted, this outcome isn't unique or restricted to the young. If you've seen some of the people hurt by gambling, there's danger both on the effort to win as well as after you actually succeed.

While it seems like a lose-lose scenario, it would be silly to suggest that this is a reason to embrace poverty, but the clear lesson here is if you run into a lot of money, go in with more than a simple plan.

Image credit.

Best ways to keep your car running

Some good tips from the guys at Car Talk.

Related: Minimalism

What to do about the economy?

In a strong case for the current stimulus, John Stewart talks to John Sununu about the economic recovery and the recent Republican focus on taxes, pointing out that the last 8 years have been about reducing taxes to stimulate the economy and that's what got us where we are now.

Additionally, Republican lawmakers including John McCain complaining that our children must pay this debt seems hypocritical as a Republican-controlled federal government who, for the last 8 years, reduced taxes while spending more.

Still, even with a line of thinking that seems to favor the current stimulus package, where does it end? Just because Bush Jr. pushed the deficit to record levels at a record rate, the opposite of this failure is not to spike it higher and faster. Are Americans just numb to this issue? Someone's got to pay for this someday. Someone must kill the level of comfort we all feel with being in debt both personally and nationally.

Is the only advocate I can find for this really "they have been positioning Obama for a long long time" Ron Paul?

Minimalism

The "do less manifesto", 10 ways to save money in a recession, and why drive an old car.

Reasons to drive slower (using physics)

The physics of moving objects certainly apply to your car, although the math varies greatly depending on the type of car you drive. The work a moving object does to overcome air resistance increases in a cubic relationship to increases in speed. This means that when speed doubles, air resistance increases by a factor of 8 (= 2^3). So it takes 8x more energy to push your car through air at 80 mph than it does at 40. That's 64x more energy than at 20 mph!

This explains why you should (where possible) keep your windows down in town but roll them up on the highway and use your air conditioning system instead.

Going faster is more dangerous because the the energy is a product of half its mass times its velocity squared (e = 1/2m * v^2). So if you double the speed, the energy that must be dissipated to stop increases by a factor of four (because velocity is squared).

So using the example above, your car has 4x more energy at 80 mph than it does at 40. That means your brakes are less effective if you have to slow down rapidly to avoid an accident and if you don't avoid it, your car will have to dissipate 4x the energy.

Loosely speaking, this means that 80 mph accidents are 16x more dangerous than accidents at 20 mph.

Related:

• More tips on saving gas
• Good things about higher gas prices
  

Mint.com Review

mint.com : Really glad I set up this site to keep track of my finances. Really frees you up from using just one bank and sets up alerts and budget stuff. A great first step towards getting your finances in order.