Commercial Product Fail of the Week: Toyota Prius

Oh Toyota - where to begin? Cutting corners in recent years led to a plethora of recalls on your vehicles BUT you still had your golden pony, the good ol' hybrid Prius.

Too bad that's a big FAIL. And, no by fail I don't mean, the inability to stop because of the acceleration issues previously noted, I mean FAIL because the number one thing the Prius prides itself of, is the fact that it is eco-friendly - your very own friendly planet advocate.

Okay, so for consumers who want to save money, the gas mileage is still a plus (I will give the vehicle that) but for the hipster, tree-hugging population of America that boycotts Hummers and such, ironically your planet-happy Prius is enemy number 1 to this planet.

Yup, that's right. Those super special batteries the Prius has that enable such great gas mileage, well those batteries cause a ton of damage. Here's an except from one of many articles written about this matter:

The Prius' battery contains nickel, which is mined in Ontario Canada. The plant that smelts this nickel is apparently nicknamed "the Superstack" because of the amount of pollution it puts out; the area for miles around it is a wasteland because of acid rain and air pollution.

But the main problem that the "Dust to Dust" study has with the Prius' impact on the environment comes next.

That smelted nickel then has to travel (via container ship) to Europe to be refined, then to China to be made into "nickel foam," then to Japan for assembly, and finally to the United States. All this shipment for each tiny step in the production process costs a great deal, both in dollars and in pollution.

The study then concludes that -- all the production costs in mind -- the Prius costs about $3.25 per mile and is expected to last about 100,000 miles. The Hummer, on the other hand, with all the same factors counted, costs about $1.95 per mile and is expected to last about 300,000 miles.

Boo hoo, my planet-friendly car is actually a major contributor to those evil pollution concerns!

Jersey Shore Facts

No matter where you live, you probably have some familiarity with the Jersey Shore (whether negative or positive). But, for people in the tri-state area, the Jersey Shore, though famous for its self-named TV show, is synonymous with Memorial Day weekend.

By mid-day tomorrow, the Garden State Parkway will be bombarded with bumper-to-bumper tourists - polluting the air with the noise of bass-heavy techno beats, cigarette smoke and of course, toxic hair-stiffening aerosal spray. In honor of the influx of tourists and long-lines at local bars, with the upcoming holiday, here are some Jersey Shore fun facts.

1) Along the northern shores (Belmar, Seaside, etc) we refer to these visitors as Bennys. But how did they get that name? According to Wikipedia, "Benny is a derogatory term used by year-round residents of the Jersey Shore to describe summer-only residents who descend upon the area from northern New Jersey cities and New York. It is often said to be an acronym for some of the places that the tourists come from: "Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark, and New York" (hence B,E,N,NY). Now it applies to any non-resident during the summer months, when roads, stores, beaches, and restaurants are more crowded due to the influx of tourists."

2) There is another slang term for summer tourists who crowd the Southern NJ beaches (especially, Ocean City) - these folks are called Shoobies. "The term 'Shoobie' is used by residents of resort communities in the southern New Jersey Shore, from Long Beach Island to Cape May. The term shoobie was originally used to describe day-trippers who took the train to the shore. The train offered pre-packed lunches that came in shoe boxes; hence the term "shoobie." However, over time the meaning has changed to include tourists that wear sneakers or shoes on the beach, as opposed to most locals who go barefoot on the sand."

3) A key element that attracts these tourists, particularly the ones who come to the southern shores, is the presence of boardwalks. Lined with activities like go-cart racing, arcade games and knick-knack filled booths, boardwalks provide entertainment for families and fist-pumpers alike. Speaking of which, did you know that the largest boardwalk in the USA is Atlantic City's?

4)Jersey's shores do boast some history. For instance, the borough of Ship Bottom in Long Beach Island is named based on, "a shipwreck that occurred in March 1817, when Captain Stephen Willets of Tuckerton rescued a young woman from the hull of a ship overturned in the shoals. The rescue became known as 'Ship Bottom.'"

Read some more fun facts about Jersey and its shores.

And, if you are coming to visit, be courteous - while this is your vacation, it is our home. For example, don't drink so many jager bombs that you want to start a bar fight, DON'T leave trash on our beaches, and don't park in residential parking spots or block homeowners' driveways.

More demistification of the idiocracy of "Judgement Day"

As you can see in my former blog post, I believe this Judgement Day nut is just that - a guy trying to elicit self-righteousness and increase church membership through hysteria.

According to him, this Judgement Day comes right from the Old Testament itself - the day and time for May 21 he calculated by choosing some items from the Old Testament.

If the Old Testament does in fact come to this conclusion, other facts from the book shouldn't be selectively ignored. According to most people the Old Testament was written between 1400 and 400 BC. At that time, let's look at the world, as it was, that is being referred to:

1) In 1000 BC, there were 50 million people total as opposed to the 6,852,472,823 living in the world today. That's a difference of more than 6.8 billion people.

2) The Old Testament is accepted as being written in the following locations: Israel, Judah and Babylon. For argument's sake, let's say these places were the same size in terms of total area in 1400 B.C. that they are today: Israel equal to 8,019 square miles; ignoring Judah as it no longer exists today; and Babylon which is now part of Iraq (Babil Province) and is 2,163.3 square miles in size. Between modern day Israel and Babil Province, currently we can account for 10,000 square miles.

The present day land area of planet earth (or the WORLD) is 57,510,000 square miles or approximately 57,500,000 square miles larger than area in which the Old Testament was written.

So what does all this mean. Well, let's see...a good majority of the physical land and water of the Earth was both undiscovered and uninhabited in 1400 B.C. So the earth, according to the writers of the Old Testament was much smaller in land size and population.

Could the writers of the Old Testament determine that a world in which they never knew existed, as it currently is today, was going to come to an end May 21 without being aware of its geographical and demographical makeup?

Or, let's play along and say this nut job and his reference material, the Old Testament, is indeed correct - then it would be 10000 times more probable that the end of the world, or "Judgement Day" would affect 50 million people and 10,000 square acres of land. That world, would be ending.

Rest easy. The Old Testament also said that no one would know when the end of the world would be. Findings are as accurate as the people who express them, and as in most statistics, the elements to be analyzed are chosen to support theories - and such, selectively choosing Old Testament passages do not equate truth without looking at the context in which the book was written and the passages that were ignored.

How scripted is the Jersey Shore?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that reality TV. is only mildly “real.” But how far does the scripting go? I can speak off experience, as a former employee of a has-been reality TV production team, and I can also share shed some light on just how far, one of the favorite MTV shows actually goes.

For a very brief part of my post-undergrad life, I reviewed footage for the then-popular show, Wife Swap. In my naivety, I very quickly learned that as I matched camera angles to the footage shown at any given time, a week of footage was chopped up and presented as the same day.

For an example, on a Monday, perhaps Wife 1 and Husband 2 got in a fight, footage from the following Friday where Husband 2 is sitting peacefully in his office for extended hours is then presented as the same day. Husband 2 is distraught from the fight and then spends hours in his office sulking, in the same day – according to the show. Really, the fight was minor on Monday and on Friday, Husband 2 was working – neither scene are relevant to one another but the audience is to believe that a fight that occurred on Monday was deeply impacted Husband 2 then he needed to enter solitude to handle his emotions.

While, in “reality,” there are a number of problems with basically lying by presenting unrelated footage in order to mislead an audience – though I don’t think laws exist for things like this.

Another example of non-reality of reality TV can be seen on this season’s Jersey Shore. In the episode, “Cabs are here,” Sammi and Deena go to a bar, and after Ronnie walks by with what Sammi assumes is another girl, she flags down two men walking by. Of all the people walking the Seaside, NJ boardwalk, how did they choose these two particular men to be the ones waved into the bar?

Simple, casting. Knowing one of these two men who was waved into the bar, and seeing his facebook page the following day, it became quite clear to me. This same “random by passer,” chosen by Sammi to join her for drinks was on another MTV show in 2008, “From G’s to Gents.”

Though I won’t lie and say he admitted to being cast on the Jersey Shore, it was confirmed that it was in fact him in the episode. So, how, I wonder, did such a coincidence happen otherwise? A former contestant on an MTV show from three years ago happened to be walking on the Seaside boardwalk at the same time MTV’s The Jersey Shore was filming – this same former MTV’er had the impeccable timing to be walking in the right place at the right time to appease Sammi’s wishes.

Right. Let’s be honest – how coincidental is it for J WoW to run into a former flame at a bar, though not be accessible to any random guy? Or, how Pauly’s stalker can bump into him at the bar? The people the cast members interact with are casted by MTV, period.

Sure, I am willing to agree that whatever happens inside the house is natural to the cast members, I mean who would script three episodes about a toilet (though as mentioned I am sure it is the same as the Wife Swap thing, probably all from the same day)? Outside interactions, the story line is not only influenced by MTV but also casted by them.