Ladypine

Nobody says the truth.

The truth is that this is the point of highest risk. This is the point where everybody, the graduates and the course managers, have put in all the resources, and no outcome has yet resulted from that. What should be said is:

You owe us. You were bright enough to enter the course, and you have survived so far, but the only thing you managed to actually do was take. You are now in debt, and this is your time to prove yourself. To show that we did not make a mistake in putting our faith in you.

There have been many before you. Some of them deserved the trust. Some of them did not. Those who did not, were soon forgotten. We only remember those who were good enough, and you, too, will soon be forgotten unless you do something really grand. You have the tools. You have the potential. But this is not enough - now it is up to you to make it happen, because it does not happen on its own.

This is the first step of the real part of your life.

However, a new hybrid car was offered - not the Prius (152K shekesl) I have been talking about for years, but the Honda Insight (131K shekels), which is actually half hybrid - it cannot run on its electric motor alone. However, googling for this model has lead me to a story on walla, stating they have measured high levels of magnetic fields in a hybrid car. There was a lot of panic, and also a reasonable response by Toyota, where they asked for the exact test results, stated that their own tests showed significantly lower level, and stated some faults with the test: most important, it was not performed in a secluded place (a Faraday cage), the measurement device may not have been calibrated, and it was not compared to a gasoline car for reference.

This sent me on a wild goose chase on the net. Hebrew results were all motivated by fear, nothing concrete. Among the English results I found that many people who already owned hybrid cars were selling them, or getting a measurement device for hundreds of dollars, or claiming they felt sick (though their doctors disagreed that the cause is the car). I began to develop doubts.

I started considering ordinary cars, of which the Hyundai 130 sunroof seemed the greenest option, with a declared gasoline consumption of 14.4 km/liter and a green score of 6 (compared to about 10-11 for equivalent cars, and 2 for all hybrid cars). It only costs 115K shekels, and if a fun car to drive. It has lots of space on the back seat, and it can even read music from a USB (how come this gadget only came up now?).

I also talked to both Honda and Toyota regarding electric field test results. The Honda sales guy said: "it is ok". I immediately distrusted him. Then he said:"I will give you results of tests done by a client of mine". "And where is your test?", I wondered. "You would not believe me anyway", he answered. This felt fishy. I must admit that I am affected by the personality of the salesperson in front of me. I know it is a bad criterion - I am not going home with the guy, but with the car. But when he kept telling off his child for wanting attention ("I am with clients!") even when I told him I did not need anything from him, I disliked him even more. And the car. In the end he promised to email me the results, if I mailed him.

Toyota's results were a lot easier to get. "They are on our Hebrew website", the salesman said.

Coming home, I first tried to find results of gasoline powered cars. This led me straight to Toyota's results, which relaxed me completely. Toyota displayed results of 5 other cars besides the old and new Prius. The Prius emits less EM fields than most of the cars, in most of the range. Of course, I assume they tested more cars, and displayed the worst of them. But the important thing is that the graph looks qualitatively the same for the Prius and the gasoline cars.

The only remaining question is - how much of the panic is natural, and how much is powered by the fuel industry? Even Ben Elton has not considered this.

After dealing with those issues, we got a message on the Wii - apparently, we were having such fun, that we were playing with it for an hour, and did not even notice the time passing. However, two things are of consolation still: the first is that since it is active play I actually sweated, and not just set in front of the screen getting a carpal tunnel syndrome. The second is that if we got over our desire to play with the new toy before her birthday, we would not be in her way to play with it herself. It is the most awful thing when a parent gives the child a gift, and then play with it instead, making it clear that it was actually a gift for the parent.

And on the other hand, I got the courage today to come up to three people I highly admire, and tell them what I think of them. One of these people I barely know - he used to ride the bus with me, and we have exchanged a couple of words from time to time. For example, regarding the state of his bag's belt, to which he refered as a mechanical project. I think this bag had the age of a project. Later I learned he used to teach at the Technion, at the civil engineering of machine engineering faculty. I do not know how I knew this, but this man had dignity. An inner feeling which radiated all around. A feeling that this is a quiet man, who speaks words of gold. That this is a man to admire. He reminded me a lot of another man I know, who has won a lifetime achievement award a couple of years ago. This year, he won a lifetime achievement award.

What is it which radiates from people like him, which makes me respect him? I wish I knew. I wish I were like him, when I am 65.

Ad memoriam sharing the organisation of August Penguin.