The Avion, designed and built by Craig Henderson, gets 119 mpg of diesel

(Jalopnik) Craig Henderson drove from Blaine, Washington to the Mexican border — a distance of 1,478 miles — without stopping to refuel. He burned 12.4 gallons for a record-breaking 119.1 mpg in a car he originally designed in 1984.

The Avion is a car Craig Henderson originally built with partner Bill Green way back in 1984 as a prototype for a high-mileage vehicle he hoped to sell.  The car is built with two things in mind: weight and aerodynamics. With such light weight and low-resistance aerodynamics, the car only requires 3–4 horsepower to keep a 55 mph pace, perfect for the tiny diesel to chug along just sipping fuel.

Henderson recently got sponsorship from Goodyear and tossed on a set of their low rolling resistance “Fuel Max” tires and has been seeing 115 mpg averages. As a promotional stunt, he decided to set off from the US/Canadian border at Blaine, Washinton and drive all the way to the Mexican border without filling up. Border-to-border on one tank.

Read the rest From Canada To Mexico On One Tank of Diesel.

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“It’s worse now than it was then,” says Hamdani, a retired middle school English teacher who supports the project. Despite feeling an anti-Muslim backlash in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she says, “at least there was empathy then. I got tons of support. Now I’m getting hate mail.”

Hamdani is one of hundreds of American Muslims who lost loved ones on 9/11, yet found themselves tarred, because of their faith, by the attacks.

They included immigrants from all over: Sarah Khan, a cafeteria manager from Guyana; Syed Abdul Fatha, a copy machine operator from India; Zuhtu Ibis, a computer technician from Turkey. There was Michael Baksh, a Pakistani immigrant on his first day of work at the insurance firm Marsh & McLennan, and Abdoul Karim Traore, who had risen at 3 a.m. that day to deliver USA TODAY before reporting to work as a cook at Windows on the World restaurant. Karamo Trerra, a computer tech, was ready to celebrate his fourth wedding anniversary on Sept. 12.

And there was Salman Hamdani, who apparently abandoned his commute to work that morning to offer his skills as an EMT and police cadet at the Trade Center.

That was where he eventually would be found, in 34 pieces.

“People of all faiths died that day,” including Muslims, says his mother, Talat. “It is not fair to hold us responsible.”

Read the rest: For families of Muslim 9/11 victims, a new pain — USATODAY.com.

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“Poverty is not a crime and it is despicable that Compass Airlines would fire an employee for speaking the truth,” said Patricia Friend, AFA-CWA International President. “Unfortunately, there are flight attendants across the country who have to rely on federal and state assistance to make ends meet.”

via Flight Attendant Gets Fired For Saying She Qualifies For Food Stamps.

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Lisker had missed a federal deadline in which to file his petition but was allowed to pursue the constitutional claims in his case because he met an “actual innocence” exception, the judge had ruled.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips overturned Lisker’s conviction in August 2009 after finding that he had been convicted on “false evidence” and that his original attorney did not adequately represent him.

via Bruce Lisker should be sent back to prison, state lawyers say | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times.

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Boys come round to this view by the age of seven or eight and assume that girls will outperform them at school and behave better in lessons, research from the University of Kent shows.

The study – Gender Expectations and Stereotype Threat – will be presented to the British Educational Research Association’s conference tomorrow.

The paper argues that teachers have lower expectations of boys than of girls and this belief fulfils itself throughout primary and secondary school.

Girls’ performance at school may be boosted by what they perceive to be their teachers’ belief that they will achieve higher results and be more conscientious than boys, the academics claim. Boys may underachieve because they pick up on teachers’ assumptions that they will obtain lower results than girls and have less drive.

Read the rest Girls think they are cleverer than boys from age four, study finds | Education | The Guardian.

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Read the rest: Honoured campaigner forced to sleep in car — ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

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No one has been more influential in defining this narrative than Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Throughout the 1990s, and still today, Krugman has skewered Japan’s economy and leaders. In the late 1990s, Krugman wrote a series of gloom-and-doom articles, complete with equations and titles like “Japan’s Trap” and “Setting Sun,” bluntly stating:

“The state of Japan is a scandal, an outrage, a reproach … operating far below its productive capacity, simply because its consumers and investors do not spend enough.”

But let’s look at some of the Japanese metrics during that time. Throughout the 1990s, the Japanese unemployment rate was – ready for this? – about 3%, half the US unemployment rate at the time. During that allegedly “lost decade”, Japan also had universal healthcare, less inequality, the highest life expectancy, low infant mortality and low rates of crime and incarceration. Americans should be so lucky as to experience a Japanese-style lost decade.

Read the rest: The Economic Fallacy of ‘Zombie’ Japan | The LA Progressive.

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The city’s Personal Cannabis Cultivation Tax measure on the Nov. 2 ballot would impose an annual tax of $600 per square foot on indoor marijuana cultivation of up to and including 25 square feet, and a $900-per-square-foot tax for anything larger. The tax, which makes no distinction between medical and recreational cultivation, would cost a resident $15,000 a year if he or she cultivates pot in a 5-foot-by-5-foot growing space indoors.

Read the rest California town wants to tax marijuana grown at home — Sacramento Living — Sacramento Food and Wine, Home, Health | Sacramento Bee.

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Carol Tucker-Foreman, an assistant secretary of agriculture under President Carter who’s worked on food policy at Consumer Federation of America for decades, asks:

“Should egg cartons be required to carry a message that says ‘Warning — to protect your health and the health of those in your household, you should assume that these eggs are contaminated with Salmonella Enteriditis and must be handled carefully in order to avoid possible illness?’ ”

At IHOP, all egg dishes that can come undercooked are marked with an asterisk. A note at the bottom of the menu says “Notice: items marked with an * may be cooked to order. Consuming raw or undercooked meat or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness.” At Denny’s the wording is “Eggs served over easy, poached sunnyside up or soft boiled may be undercooked and will only be served upon the consumers’ request.”

via Egg industry resorts to blaming the victim in recall, critics say — USATODAY.com.

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Western officials confirm reports that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and others in his government have repeatedly thwarted prosecutions against senior Afghan government figures.

Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, the former deputy attorney general, said investigations of more than two dozen senior Afghan officials — including cabinet ministers, ambassadors and provincial governors — were being held up or blocked outright by Mr. Karzai, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko and others.

Read the rest: Graft-Fighting Prosecutor Fired in Afghanistan — NYTimes.com.

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