su·per·cil·i·ous

It is official that General Motors has given up on the idea of AUTOnomy (their hydrogen cell car) and are putting all of their efforts into the an electric car. If you think about it - the lessons of the Iraq War have been really clear for the US - you need to reduce your dependence on oil and it sounds like they are starting to realise this and the Chevrolet Volt is evidence of this. But this isn't all GM is doing. They have invested in ethanol companies that use garbage not food as feedstock and the fuel costs less than half of the cost of petrol in the US today.

They may have killed the original electric car - but the political and economic landscape has changed a lot since the days of the EV1. The Volt is due out of the factor in 2010 and will be chargable from your household electrical port. The issue is that it will have a range of about 60 kilometres a day - but it also includes a 1.4 litre petrol engine to act as a generator for the batteries when the charge runs low. This will give it a 480km range. At current prices the electricity to cover your 60 kilometre round trip would cost one or two cents a kilometre; compared to eleven cents using petrol. Use green power and you have no carbon from driving your car.

I just hope the Holden takes up the baton and ensures that we get the Volt (or something similar) here.

So the 2008 Paralympics will kick off in tonight Beijing with 4200 athletes taking part this year. With the over commercialisation of the main event, I actually really like the achievement that the Paralympics represents. We will have to see how the Australian team achieves. In Athens they came in fifth place behind China, Great Britain, Canada and the US (after winning the tally at the home games in 2000). So good luck to the team for the next week or so - and good to see coverage on the ABC.

Plenty of airline news over the last couple of days with plenty of trials and tribulations. Things are looking pretty grim with the International Air Transport Association forecasting that international airlines will lose up to $12bn by the end of next year - as a result of the 'perfect storm' of rising costs and falling demand. Indeed they are tipping losses of $US2bn in India alone! The IATA keeps a watch list of airlines they are worried about and include Alitalia and Zoom in Canada at the moment. Ouch. I wonder if they have Aerolineas Argentinas on the list after the Argentinian government has decided to nationalise the airline because of problems with its Spanish owners Grupo Marsans (who also own Austral). They have decided to do this the airline is responsible for 85% of air travel in Argentina and if the airline failed they would be in big trouble.

On the other side of the coin, Virgin Blue has announced that it is going to expand its network to incorporate Papua New Guinea into its network through Pacific Blue. The plan is for it to take on Air Niugini with 737 services from Brisbane and it has applied to the International Air Services Commission for 900 seats a week. Interesting move.

Also interested to read that the government is considering offering financial incentives for people to switch over to digital TV before the 2013 turn off of analog. Apparently from January 1 next year, Nine, Seven and Ten are going to turn on second digital channels. The incentives are likely to only be available for 'vulnerable' or 'socially isolated' people so I don't know what that is going to take the form of. In the US they gave households $US80 in coupons to help them pay for a digital set top box, but it doesn't appear to have worked that well - with more than 15% of households no having upgraded (and they turn off analog in February 2009).

About to head off to town now to pick up Ruen and we are heading to Dendy to watch Welcome to the Sticks. Will report on it later. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Rumours are intensifying about Apple releasing a subnotebook Mac. Somewhere between the MacBook Air and the iPhone is the speculation with rumours of a multi-touch tablet design running fully fledged OS X and including a SuperDrive. Indeed Apple have taken out a patent recently for a MacBook Touch. Sounding good. Of course the following is just some Fanboys idea of what he would like - but I am there with him - give me one of these anyday.

Speaking of computers, Dell has jumped on the bandwagon to bring out its own netbook. The Inspiron Mini 9 is on sale at only $599 - in an effort to take on the ASUS Eee PC. Its got a 8.9 inch monitor; weighs only one kg and has a 16Gb solid state drive. It comes with a 1.6GHz processor and has 1Gb of memory. Interesting.

So a day of big drama in the ALP with Morris Iemma dumping Treasurer Michael Costa and Health minister Reba Meagher; Costa holding a press conference where he claimed that the governments policies are threatening the NSW AAA credit rating; the Caucus telling Iemma that he no longer had their confidence; Iemma resigns; Nathan Rees and Carmel Tebbutt installed as the new leadership team; Rees dumps the new high profile spin doctor team including the boyfriend of Meagher Adam Walters. Phew. I doubt whether any of the changes made today will have any impact on the electoral changes of Labor in the 2011 election. 

Early this evening I headed off to check out the very cute little flick Son of Rambow. This is a totally sweet coming-of-age story from the UK. Set in the 1980s it is about two schoolboys who set about making thier own Rambo flick. It redeems me for the watching of the film that I saw yesterday!