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Merry Japes, eh?

Full load in a car... excellent. Be interesting to see how that equates to other forms of transport when you're off on a protest when you're not off on spring break skiing I guess.

Just wondering, how does a hybrid perform in such cases at high speed over long distances, lugging that battery along?

I guess it can be used for the all the laptops and iPod battery chargers no student would be seen without. Even on an Amish visit.

Pity about the hitch-hiking law (?)... very nanny-state. The rationale will be interesting, and how that gets reported vis a vis other government-imposed efforts 'for our own good'.

Making the time to find out about timber framed housing in the US is a crucial part of your research, as houses represent a major part of energy inefficiency here, but more to the point than even cars and trucks, homes represent independence with just the same importance to peoples lives as they do anywhere. The mortgage and lending crisis is dependent on the revitalization of mortgages and lending - the problem is the solution

Consider the implications of new home building that has a life expectancy of forty years. First, how this can be so, second, what makes this so, and third, what happens if this were to change.

Consider taking out a thirty year mortgage here in contrast to a thirty year mortgage in Britain. It is true that some 1960s high rises and the concrete cancer wartime properties become worthless, and that some relatively new mass constructions have become stereotyped as being like a [rhymes with carrot] home, but it would not occur to people there that a property would only last for four decades.

Compound sub prime with overpriced and under built and you can add the components of the construction and the labour which went into it as a normal face of short-termism waste, which means that rather than appreciating through longevity the actual structures are realistically depreciating despite being the main asset of millions of people.

Therefore even a sound mortgage is not on a sound property. The simplest way to see how the timber construction techniques undermine the property value is to observe mainstream stick-built new build, the see a remodel, and then observe some of the barn construction methods available in kits or as services.

Mainstream constructors use dimensional lumber, pseudo stuctural oriented strand board and non structural sheetrock and follow codes which achieve standards that often defy common sense investment grade outcome - let alone efficiency, performance and comfort.

Any excursion from these techniques renders the house 'custom' and a 'change order'

There are amazing machines to make much of this possible, foremost being the nailing gun, which, though quick to attach renders materials uneconomical to de-nail and reuse

Anything non mainstream to these methods is rated expensive, largely though being less familiar, and the likelihood of taking longer

Other than your garden, if you garden, what should adequate time be spent on if not your main investment and support to your existence, your home?

It would be shaming if better uses of the same wood materials exist which produce far better constructions

- but for the willingness of builders to apply these quality techniques to the mainstream

- but for for banks and insurance companies to recognize this as better practice rather than just be satisfied with any property related sale (eg sub prime) rather than responsible lending

- but for the householder knowing enough to require and/or participate in requiring higher standards for more durability performance and confidence in the investment value

Sixty percent of new home construction in Scotland is now timber framed, but believe that those quality standards are . . otherwise.

There is an unmatched opportunity regarding construction in many parts of the US based on the size of the country and availability of materials which beg to be addressed from the point of view of the potential owner, first time buyer, the young, which must reach higher standards in all the ways touched upon above.

The quest is for high quality affordable housing largely using regular materials but employing construction methods which are not the exclusive domain of 'builders' nor lost to being 'jargonized' out of the reach of clients ie normal folk

These same construction methods need to apply to so-called upmarket properties also, as their luster lasts less long than loveless lust

Take a look at the book Timberframe by Tedd Benson, and follow up with Homepower in Ashland Oregon. Request info on quality made more compact construction

The really unfortunate fact is that while the Banks haven't really been making profit for years, but endorsed the falsification of spiral economics or the 'infinite market', what they helped commit borrowers to was continuity in the general mediocrity of the construction.

All the clean and efficient technologies to come still require the sound platform of the (far) better house to validate them.

Don't omit houses and construction methods.