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Eco Factor: 3D telecasts of FIFA World Cup matches to be powered by renewable energy.

We recently reported about Qatar’s bid for the FIFA World Cup 2022 matches that involved sustainable stadiums powered by renewable energy. Japan has also rolled out its proposal for the event with a promise that football fans worldwide will be treated with ultra-realistic 3D telecasts.

The $6 billion project dubbed “Universal Fan Fest” will allow some 360 million fans at nearly 400 select stadiums in FIFA’s 208 member countries. The images would be captured from 360 degrees by 200 HD cameras during each match. The 3D images will be transmitted to stadiums worldwide, where the matches will either be shown on giant screens or, if technically possible in coming years, the images will be projected like real matches onto the pitch itself, giving viewers the illusion of watching the real match.

Microphones will be installed below the playing pitch that will bring realistic sounds of the ball being kicked and the referee’s whistle. The futuristic communication systems will be powered in part from the electricity generated by spectators cheering and stamping their feet as well as from solar panels on the roof of the stadium.

Via: Physorg

Did you know that Square Enix was supposed to give Nier exclusively to Microsoft for the Xbox 360? That’s true, no less than Square Enix Executive Producer Yosuke Saito revealed this nifty trivia in an interview with

Eco Factor: Solar-powered hydrogen fueling stations stretching from Maine to Miami.

Proton Energy Systems and SunHydro have broken ground on the first connection of the planned Hydrogen Highway that can create an East Coast market for cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The Hydrogen Highway will be a network of nine stations stretching from Maine to Miami.

The Hydrogen Highway should be completed by the time automakers start to roll out hydrogen cars at the rate of thousands. The stations on the East Coast can also help change automakers’ opinion of this as a viable market for fuel cell cars.

Hydrogen fueled cars don’t emit any toxic gas as the only thing coming out of the exhaust is water vapor, however generating hydrogen from natural gas can cause pollution. SunHydro’s hydrogen generating systems are different, they produce hydrogen from water using renewable solar energy, which ensures a 100 percent zero-emission fuel.

Fuel cell cars have a range of 200-450 miles, so with the Hydrogen Highway stations strategically placed, owners can drive the entire East Coast using the alternative fuel.

Via: Hartford Business

What kind of oil does my car need? Here we tell you what kind of oil does a car need and when you suppose to get the oil changed. Basically there is only one type of oil in your car you need to maintain to keep the engine runs in good condition, which is the engine oil. This is because the oil responsible for lubrication as well as to cool down the engine. However, it requires the right knowledge in choosing the right oil to give the engine longer life time.

What kind of oil does my car need

As there is too much motor oil available in the market, it is often make consumer confuse about what kind of oil their car really need. Using the wrong oil may shorten the life time of the car engine and resulting bad running condition. Therefore here we shared the top 3 methods to choose the right oil for your car.

Find the right oil that your car need

The owner manuals that gave to you when you purchase your new car have stated clearly what kind of oil best suitable for the car and how much oil you should put into the car. Try to look download it from internet if you have lost yours.

Learn to read the oil viscosity

All the engine oil comes with a weighty subject to determine the viscosity of the oil. The character “W” is used to determine it. Usually there will be numbers before and after the “W”. The number before the “W” is the cold viscosity rating and the number after it is the hot viscosity rating of the oil. This means low number before “W” allows you to start your car easily in cold climates.

Basically there are 3 main types of oil viscosity, once you have learned how to read it, it will answer the question “what kind of oil does my car need” in your mind:
Fully Synthetic: 0W-30, 0W-40, 5W-40.
Semi-synthetic: 5W-30, 10W-40, 15W-40.
Mineral (Low quality oil): 10W-40, 15W-40.

Check on the oil type

Some oil is specially only for diesel car or only for gasoline car. Oil refiners will usually place the labels on the container. For example, A3, A5 or SM for petrol engines, B3, B5 or C14 for diesels. Read it carefully and do not use diesel engine oil for gasoline car, vice versa.

See also oil related: How much oil does my car take, How much oil do I put in my car, How much oil does my car hold.

What kind of oil does my car need

As today’s cars last longer, oil refiners has produced formulated oil for higher mileage cars. When a car has more than 80,000 miles on the odometer, it is considered a high mileage car. Older cars and high mileage car tends to have oil leaking because of the crankshaft seals may have lost the flexibility. In this case, the special formulated oil can work as seal conditioners to give the engine a better run.

In addition, it will be better to choose thicker oil (higher code oil) for high mileage cars as high mileage cars need more tolerances. Other than that, put a little bit more oil into the engine if you noticed there is some oil leak out to the floor.

In conclusion, most of the ordinary car requires oil changed for every 3000 to 5000 miles. You will have to know when to change the oil as well as the oil filter to maintain the car at good condition. So have you learned what kind of oil does my car need?

Source: Cars, Fast Cars, Cool Cars, Sports Cars

by Umbra Fisk

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

I hate to bother
you, but I tried doing a Grist search to answer my question and nothing really
turned up.

I was hoping you
could recommend some environmentally aware fiction writers or books. I love Barbara
Kingsolver, but have read everything of hers twice already. 🙂 (I’d especially
appreciate a recommendation for some female writers.)

Thank you!

lilacwine
Evanston, Ill.

A. Dearest
lilacwine,

Photo: timetrax23 via FlickrReaders
are never a bother. Well, not usually. It is occasionally tedious to read about
so many people beating themselves up over the teeniest of eco-conundrums—or
beating me up for actually bothering to answer them. But yours is to wonder why,
mine is to answer. Or try, as I always say.

Thusly,
your question is a bit of fresh air—a nice momentary breather from heavy,
albeit very important, environmental issues such as the massive Gulf oil spill
(see the last question in this week’s column). I did a little searching through
the Grist archives as well and came
up with this piece from
February,
which reviews the novels Far North by Marcel Theroux and Primitive by Mark Nykanen—both are worth a look, for
sure.

Additionally,
with a little help from my fellow Gristians, I’ve compiled a list—by no means
comprehensive—of some environmentally tinged fiction by both female and male
authors to whet your eco-literary appetite.

Margaret
Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and its companion novel The
Year of the Flood,
both dystopian-future tales with genetic and biotech experiments gone awry and
a massive eco and health catastrophe threatening humankind

Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, a modern
retelling of King Lear and a devastating
but beautifully written account of industrial farming

Ian
McEwan’s Solar, in which a Nobel prize-winning physicist
struggles with his fifth failing marriage and attempts to save the planet from
environmental disaster

Vapor Trails by R.P. Siegel and Roger Saillant, about
an oil exec who is unable to reconcile his financial success with the
destruction he’s caused (hmm…)

Edward
Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang, about a former
Green Beret who returns from war to find his much-loved desert threatened by
industrial development

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn,
which is about an extraordinary teacher—a gorilla—with a story to tell about
how humans came to treat the earth the way they do and the possibility of a
still-salvageable future

If
you’re looking to simply wade rather than dive into the world of environmental
fiction, I’d recommend a short story. A few that are worth a gander: A
Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, A
White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett, and It’s
Such a Beautiful Day by Isaac Asimov.

And
then there are always the much-loved classics The
Little Prince by Antoine de de Saint-Exupéry and The
Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Never underestimate the power of a quality children’s book:
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get
better. It’s not.”

Bibliophile-ly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

You might check out
a funny novel by Cordelia Strube entitled Planet Reese, all about what happens to an environmentalist who
short-circuits.

Barry H.
Toronto, Ontario

A. Dearest
Barry,

Thanks for
the suggestion. We’ll tack it onto lilacwine’s list above. Readers, here’s the
skinny on this tome, per Powell’s Books:

“Reese Larkin is
desperate to find the perfect mattress. His job is in jeopardy and he’s been
forced to separate from his wife and children, but he believes that if he can
find the ultimate sleep system his life will begin anew.

In her seventh novel,
Cordelia Strube grabs readers by the neuroses with a dark but wickedly fun
story about a former Greenpeace activist forced to turn marketeer who battles
against a world in which he is confronted by shift mattress sales clerks, a
Fred and Ginger-obsessed strip-bar waitress, derisive colleagues, and a wife
who has mysteriously turned cold and is keeping his children from him. Alone in
his damp basement apartment with his daughter’s hamster, he longs for a good
night’s sleep and, though faced with despair, begins each day hopefully as he
grips tighter to the edges of his life.”

Sounds intriguing!

Witherspoonly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

I’ve heard that
people are donating their hair to help the oil cleanup of the Gulf Coast. I’m
an old-school hair farmer, and I want to know if it’s harvest time for a good
cause. What do you think?

If it’s a good
idea, then to whom do I send my bountiful harvest?

Hair Today, Gone
Tomorrow (to a good cause)
Seattle

A. Dearest
HTGT,

UPDATE: Since I wrote the answer below, Matter of Trust has posted the following to its website: “After a few days of mixed messages to the press,  Ronald D. Rybarczyk,
BP government and public affairs,  contacted us at Matter of Trust
tonight. Rybarcyzk informed us that they have a plentiful supply of
ideal boom for their needs and will not be in want of donated boom or
renewable fiber.” Alas, the search for a solution continues.

Props to
you for your willingness to donate your locks for this hairy situation. And
have I got the organization for you: Matter of Trust.

The
organization, known for its oil spill hair mats, is collecting
nylons, human hair, and animal fur to create hair booms to place in the water
to collect oil. Here’s a great article from The Washington Post explaining the
effort and its progress.

It’s
important to note, though, that the oil spill has gotten way too massive to think
that this approach can necessarily fix everything, but the grassroots effort
has finally gotten BP’s notice—the company contacted Matter of Trust last week.

You can
donate your own hair, animal fur, and nylons by signing up for Matter of
Trust’s Excess Access database and then
following the instructions for sending in
your hair harvest.

Thanks
again, HTGT. Every little bit helps.

Shornly,
Umbra

Related Links:

In wake of Gulf spill, should this be the summer of energy reform?

Show how much you—and BP—care with a commemorative oil spill T-shirt

Matthews tells Obama to kill BP’s disaster capitalism

Realistic Simulation of Technical Processes

In practice, considerable amounts of water vapor are often released during the combustion and gasification of organic fuels, which also affects the thermal behavior of the sample substances. Therefore, in order to replicate certain processes realistically, it is necessary to induce a humid atmosphere in the analytical chamber. To meet these needs, NETZSCH is now also offering a new water vapor furnace in combination with the tried-and-true STA-MS coupling.

Water Vapor Furnace – Temperatures up to 1250°C
In this new thermoanalytical system, water vapor – with or without a carrier gas – is transported from the water vapor generator to the STA sample chamber via a heated transfer line. Another transfer line, also heated, then leads from the gas outlet of the water vapor furnace to the QMS 403 C Aëolos® mass spectrometer. The coupled STA-MS combined with a water vapor furnace is a system capable of analyzing the sample’s reaction with water vapor at temperatures up to 1250°C. The water vapor concentration can be set anywhere between 0 and 100%.

Areas of Application:
– Corrosion and scaling processes for steels
– Analysis of sintering processes in ceramic components
– Water gasification of petroleum cokes
– Analysis of inorganic construction materials, e.g. cement

On the 1st of May 2010 the group has acquired the M.Schneider group, based in Vienna Austria. Worldwide player in the DIN-Standard fuses and fusegear segments, M.Schneider is a leading force in the German-speaking market.
Through this acquisition, Ferraz Shawmut, Electrical Protection division of Carbone Lorraine, is set to become number 2 worldwide in DIN-standard fuses and fusegear.
We will be able to offer our customers the most comprehensive portfolio of fuses and fusegear in the segment of NH and D0 fuse systems. This will be a great benefit for our existing and future customers. Due to the combination of our international sales network and the reliability of our products and services, we are able to guarantee optimized protection for electrical installations from one single source at the right time and place.
Our objective is to develop Ferraz Shawmut offering and sales in the DIN-standard fuses and fusegear segments. The products marketed for these segments and coming from Ferraz Shawmut and M.Schneider are totally complementary.

The Automation division of DS4 Laser Technology, DS4 Robotic Division, has realized a new high speed system for high production canning in the food industry . This is a modular robot with parallel kinematics for boxing biscuits (but outside of food, also applicable in pharmaceutical, cosmetics, the paramedical and, more generally, in assembly and handling applications) capable, in the configuration realized, can than 5,000 cookies per minute. The machine is managed by a supervisor software that, through an articulated vision system is able to issue individual commands to each robot on the line, this versatility allows you to manage lots of any size, large or small production, eliminating the programming time. The software is in fact designed to ensure an immediate start-up production, a variation of the production load on the fly, since all content is uploaded in real time.

[via Google]

Filed under: Google, Science & Technology, Video, YouTube

MySpace, the popular social network that aims to focus its platform around social games, has recently launched Games Lab, a program that will invite game developers to the company’s headquarters in Seattle and Los Angeles to work together with MySpace personnel for several weeks.

The person in charge of the games division, Manu Rekhi… (read more)

At last, here comes the link and the steps to download Google Pacman for free! In celebration of Pac-Man 30^th Anniversary, we continue to bring you PacMan perks and fun. As the Google Pacman game is no longer available online, you may now play the Google Pacman game even offline. To download Google Pacman for free follow the steps below:

1. Click the link: http://github.com/macek/google_pacman.

2. Then, click “Download Source”

3. A pop-up message will appear, select ZIP if you are using Windows or TAR if you are using MAC OS platform.

4. Once the file is downloaded, decompress or unzip the file; you will obtain a folder “macek-google pacman”

5. Inside the folder, click “index.html” file.

6. Enjoy and play Google Pac Man Game

Related posts:

1. Play Google Pac Man Game Offline! Steps to Download Free Google Pac Man Game!
2. Working Copy Pac Man 30th Anniversary Google Doodle Logo
3. Pac-Man 30th Anniversary Free Download: Google Pacman Ends, Download Pacman Game Now!

Eco Factor: System to store surplus wind generated electricity as ice to cater peak energy demands.

In an effort to reduce peak need for air conditioning on hot California afternoons, a consortium of municipal utilities in California will being retrofitting government offices and commercial properties with systems that use ice made at night using surplus wind power to replace air-conditioning during the afternoon.

The system will reduce fuel consumption by the state utilities by 30 percent and by individual building owners by up to 90 percent. Developed by Ice Energy, the system makes cheap ice overnight when electricity demand is low, using a high-efficiency compressor that freezes 450 gallons of water. In the middle of the day the device shuts down the air conditioner and instead pipes a stream of coolant from the melting block of ice to an evaporator coil installed within the building’s HVAC blower system.

The block of ice will take about six hours to melt completely, which covers the peak afternoon load on the grid. A total of 6000 devices will be installed by 11 small participating utilities at 1500 locations to provide 53MW of energy storage to reduce load on the grid.

Via: CleanTechnica

I am not a fan of fake meat products, and I find no real need for them or craving in my vegetarian diet. There is one time, however, when I need some quick protein and salt, and fake meat comes in handy: backpacking. A friend introduced me to Stonewall’s Jerquee. These chewy treats are made from vegetable protein, and the original flavor is a little spicy. They do take a little getting used to, and my daughter calls them “dog treats”. I wouldn’t eat Stonewall’s Jerquee everyday, but I think they are a good snack during physical endurance activities.

Lovely idea but don’t waste/spend too much time playing the 30th anniversary Google PAC-MAN doodle. A win-win cooperation between Google and NAMCO.

[via Google’s PAC-MAN rules & Celebrating PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday]

Filed under: advertising, Business, Fun, Game, Japan, Marketing

Despite life-threatening illness, Bret Michaels beat the odds and made it to finish line Sunday of “The Celebrity Apprentice” and was rewarded the victory prize of $250,000 which will be proceeded for charity.

“Lately it seems like me just standing up risking my life,” Michaels said, adding that it was worth the risk and he ‘came to win’. He walked haltingly and with a slight limp. His presence in the show brought a moment of honest reality to a carefull constructed TV genre.
Along with the other finalist, Holly Robinson Peete, the last two standing in the contest was asked to create a brand new flavor of the drink Snapple with a complete product launch and a commercial. Both flavors was sold in locations in the United States. The proceeds from the sale of the drink had been turned directly into their chosen charities. This was a great news for
their chosen charities.

Michaels, who as a child was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, claimed the winner’s prize for the American Diabetes Association, and Peete learned that her charitable group would receive a matching amount.

Related posts:

1. Celebrity Apprenctice Winner 2010: After All Sacrifices Everything Comes To An End
2. Bret Michaels at Oprah, The Apprentice and His New VH1 series
3. Ron Burkle donated a whopping amount of $200,000 to Holly Robinson Peete

by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON
– Right-wing darling Sarah Palin accused President Barack Obama on Sunday of
being lax in his response to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and suggested this
was because he is too close to Big Oil.

The
former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, who champions offshore
drilling, criticized the media for not drawing the link between Obama and Big
Oil and said if this spill had happened under former President George W. Bush
the scrutiny would have been far tougher.

“I
don’t know why the question isn’t asked by the mainstream media and by others
if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and
his administration and the support by the oil companies to the
administration,” she told Fox News Sunday.

More
than $3.5 million has been given to candidates by BP over the last 20 years,
with the largest single donation, $77,051, going to Obama, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.

Palin
suggested this close relationship explained why Obama was “taking so
doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and
the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The
BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, and
sank two days later. Ever since, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil,
perhaps even millions, have been spewing each day into the sea.

The
resulting slick, now the size of a small country, threatens to leave Louisiana’s
fishing and coastal tourism industries in tatters, ruin pristine nature
reserves, and cause decades of harm to the ecology of fragile marshes that are
a haven for rare wildlife and migratory birds.

The
Obama administration has been forced to defend its response to the disaster as
some Republicans have sought to portray it as its Katrina, an allusion to
Bush’s mishandling of the response to the hurricane that devastated Louisiana
in 2005.

White
House spokesman Robert Gibbs mocked Palin’s suggestions that Obama was somehow
in bed with the big oil companies because of 2008 presidential campaign
contributions.

“Sarah
Palin was involved in that election, but I don’t think, apparently, was paying
a whole lot of attention,” Gibbs said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”
program. “I’m almost sure that the oil companies don’t consider the Obama
administration a huge ally. We proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked
their oil prices up to charge for gasoline. My suggestion to Sarah Palin would
be to get slightly more informed as to what’s going on in and around oil
drilling in this country.”

Earlier
this month, Obama ratcheted up criticism of BP over the spills, betraying
frustration with the company’s failure to stop the leak, and more recently
announced a bipartisan presidential commission to probe the huge oil spill.

Obama
has also accused oil companies of enjoying a “cozy relationship” with
the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency set up to monitor the
energy sector, which was later broken up into three separate agencies. He
ordered “top to bottom” reform of the agency after it was accused of
allowing BP and other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without first
obtaining required permits.

“BP
will pay for every bit of this,” Gibbs said Sunday. “We have to
figure out and make sure that the relationship that is had with government and
oil companies is not a cozy relationship as the president said.”

He
also dismissed analogies with Katrina, which still haunts U.S. politics and
provides an easy comparison for the media when considering the longer-term
fallout that may plague Obama’s energy agenda for months or even years.

“If
you look back at what happened in Katrina, the government wasn’t there to
respond to what was happening,” said Gibbs. “That quite frankly was
the problem. I think the difference in this case is we were there immediately.
We have been there ever since.”

Palin,
who quit the Alaska governorship after serving less than half of one term,
famously promoted the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!” that rallied
supporters while dismissing possible environmental impact of offshore drilling.
Her detractors switched the line to “Spill, baby, spill!”

Related Links:

In wake of Gulf spill, should this be the summer of energy reform?

Show how much you—and BP—care with a commemorative oil spill T-shirt

Matthews tells Obama to kill BP’s disaster capitalism

Quando se fala em inovação nos desenhos de carros, o Centro de Design e Estilo da Citroën é referência no mundo inteiro como o mais ousado e criativo. Basta olhar para um dos veículos da marca para indentificá-lo, à primeira vista, como um Citroën. E é por isso que há 90 anos a Citroën tem ditado tendências no cenário do design automotivo.

Para compartilhar sua criatividade e incentivar designers do mundo todo, a Citroën organizou seu primeiro concurso internacional de design gráfico, o Créative Awards. Os inscritos terão a oportunidade de expressar sua criatividade personalizando um CITROËN DS3. O vencedor verá seu projeto exposto no C42, vitrine da Marca no coração da mais bela avenida do mundo, a Champs-Élysées, em Paris.

Os dossiês poderão ser entregues até 4 de julho de 2010 através do site http://www.citroencreativeawards.com/?lang=en . Os trabalhos serão examinados por um júri composto por peritos da marca e do mundo do design, da arte ou ainda das mídias. São eles: Anne Boulay (Chefe Redatora da Revista GQ), Sonia Perrin (Diretora da Fundação Cartier), Arthur King (Artista Plástico, DJ e Produtor) e Xavier Dixsaut (Diretor Inovação Louis Vuitton Malletier).

Além de um prêmio em dinheiro, o vencedor do concurso terá a sorte de ver seu projeto apresentado no C42 no mês de outubro de 2010, na oportunidade da nova temporada Mundial de Paris. E, como recompensa de um projeto de estilo, sua proposta de personalização do teto será apresentada como elemento de série na gama produto 2011.

Citroën DS3
Forte em suas exigências de estilo, o DS3 quer ser exclusivo graças a seu amplo leque de personalizações, com notadamente os múltiplos stickers de teto que têm a figura das coleções de prêt-à-porter.
Este carro chique abre seu guarda-roupa aos candidatos do CITROËN CREATIVE AWARDS para explorar universos inesperados e acentuar ainda mais seu caráter único. Os participantes, designers amadores ou de experiência, deverão de fato propor sua própria interpretação do teto e do painel de bordo do recém-nascido modelo da linha europeia.

Fonte: Citroën

Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, Dr Gordon Moyes has pointed to the severe social, economic, and health costs to society and family life incurred by the widespread misuse of alcohol. As he explained, “Alcohol and substance abuse are related to poverty, violent crime, academic under-achievement, high health care costs, family breakdown, child abuse, homelessness, teen pregnancy, and work problems.”
He continued, “The cost begins early in life, with maternal alcohol abuse associated with adverse perinatal outcomes such as foetal alcohol syndrome, pseudo-Cushing’s syndrome, alcohol withdrawal in the newborn, and increased risk of perinatal mortality. The incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome has been estimated to be 250 to 500 new cases per year in Australia, which is heart-breaking and preventable.”

“During childhood we also have problems with underage drinking,” Dr Moyes explained. “Australian research shows that more young people are drinking alcohol, drinking at an earlier age and increasingly adopting harmful drinking patterns. It is estimated that at least two thirds of the alcohol consumed by young people under 25 years of age poses a risk of short-term or acute health consequences.”

“This heavy use leads to many hospitalisations. In Australia the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation (AER) estimated that approximately 72,302 hospitalisations were attributable to the misuse of alcohol and the financial burden of alcohol misuse to the community has been estimated to be $4.5 billion per year, including lower productivity due to lost work days, road accident costs and legal and court costs, as well as health costs.”

“In Australia, past studies have found that alcohol abuse plays a significant role in violent crime. It is estimated that about 13% of Australians aged 14 years and over (well over one million people) have been physically abused at least once by someone affected by alcohol, while 16% have had their property damaged at least once. Alcohol has also been implicated in about one-third of sexual assault cases, and many other innocent people bear lifelong scars of glassings, assault and injury in road accidents.”

“In Australia thirty-seven per cent of road injuries in males and 18% in females are attributed to alcohol, as are 12% of male and 8% of female suicides. Alcohol is also implicated in 47% of assaults, 44% of fire injuries, 34% of fall injuries and drowning and 16% of child abuse incidents. At least 1% of our population (about 180,000 people) has a close family member with a serious alcohol problem. Isolation, neglect, aggression and disruption within the family, particularly spouse abuse, are frequent. Sexual and financial problems, stress, verbal and physical abuse, separations and divorce are also common between couples where at least one partner abuses alcohol.”

A Victorian report in 1988 found that alcohol was definitely or possibly involved in 53% of several thousand reported incidents of family violence. Children are particularly affected by having an alcoholic parent and they are more likely to become depressed, have lower IQ, and be alcohol dependent themselves in the future. In 1992, there were 226 hospital episodes resulting from alcohol-related child abuse in Australia. However, the extent of family problems is probably underestimated because there is underreporting of alcohol-related domestic violence.

“Alcohol and drug abuse have reached epidemic proportions: crime, violence, divorce, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, organic brain syndrome, school problems, job problems, mental health problems, family problems, financial problems, etc., are all consequences of alcohol and drug abuse as it ripples throughout society and all of these have financial costs. Police and paramedics and others involved in public security are often assaulted. We need a return of the Summary Offences Act so that violent drunks are locked up for the sake of public safety.”

“I never laugh at the antics of a drunk nor can I accept his fellow drinkers’ praise of how well he holds his drink or what he achieves in spite of it. The rest of society pays the price of his drinking. I have spent fifty years of my life helping people who have willingly drunk alcohol only to find the cost was extremely high.”

“I have worked every week for fifty years with those who were homeless, who lost their mental capacity, whose marriages and professions were in tatters, whose children were on their own, and whose actions in the end added nothing to their credit or to our society. It doesn’t matter what offices they have held nor what achievements they have accomplished, if they have the intelligence to know the consequences of their actions and still continue to drink, they are a disgrace to society which has a right to be protected from them,” he said.

REV THE HON. DR GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C.
Contact: Rev Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC – 0407 433 499 or 4389 1860

What could David Jaffe be working on right now? A lot of us sure are wishing it’s Twisted Metal, but unfortunately, it looks like Mr. Jaffe’s got something else on his mind.
 
 
 

Bmw introduced last year the brand new 5-Series GT but it appears it also did a little mistake. Apparently, the problem is that the car was available only with rear-wheel drive and a V8 engine.

“The V-8 was probably not the right car to launch it with,” said Rich Brekus, BMW’s general manager of sales for North America. Of course, this will change as Bmw is planning to introduce an all-wheel-drive model in June as well as a six-cylinder engine in the fall. Since its launch, Bmw sold only 1,143 GTs, outperforming sales of the 5-series wagon last year. “This time next year,” O’Donnell said, “we’ll tell you if it’s successful or not.”

[via autonews – sub. required]

Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots