Car on Michael’s Domain

Putin wants you to drive fast and much!

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I drive rarely, and these days, I rent when I need a car. This summer we decided to spend a two-week vacation in a cottage at a lake in the middle of the Finnish forest. You need a car if you want to get around in the Finnish countryside. Public transport might be working well in the Finnish capital Helsinki, but it is for all practical purposes absent from the Finnish countryside. Filling up the tank of our rental car cost me more than 150€.Given that I could fill up the same tank for less than 75€ still a year ago, I expected that people adjusted their driving habits to save energy, the planet, and their wallets. But I was mostly wrong.Driving slower and driving lessEverybody, who has not been living under a stone, knows that the most efficient driving speed is somewhere between 50 and 90 km/h. The air resistance increases with the speed. This increase is not linear, but exponential. By speeding, you save a minimal amount of time by wasting an incredible amount of energy. Even though most drivers complain about the horrific gas prices, hardly anybody seems to adjust their behavior either by driving slower or by driving less. I would like to know what the reason is for this paradoxical behavior, it’s inexplicable to me. I know that some drivers like to drive fast (I belonged to this category when I was 18). But hey: then you should shut up and just pay for the “fun”!Infantile requests for state subsidiesSuddenly, people who usually defend our market economy are calling for state intervention to lower gas prices. WTF? Just because for the first time you realize that you yourself are subjected to the powers of demand and supply you forget your free market values and call for state intervention. The only way to solve the problem of rising gas prices is to trust the market. Unfortunately, in many countries, the governments are exactly acting against all experts’ advice and are artificially trying to lower gas prices, e.g. by lowering taxation (e.g. France, Austria, Netherlands). That keeps the demand artificially high, further widening the gap between supply and demand, which was causing the high prices in the first place.

The most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

According to this study from the University of Lund, the most effective ways to tackle climate change are largely not being discussed. Not surprisingly, they touch such the things dearest to our hearts: our car, our holidays, our children and our favorite foods.

The car is in the garage

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Finally Claudia’s car is in our heated garage. After moving two thirds of our cellar’s content and half of our apartment’s content to our garage, it appeared questionable whether a car would still fit. I installed many additional shelves and relocated my and Marzena’s bicycles to the condo’s common bicycle storage. The other 7 bicycles and the bicycle trailer were hanged to hooks along the garage walls. Then we lifted Tobias’ 3.5 meter long cardboard rocket tightly under the garage ceiling. Finally I was able to drive it in. I drove in sort of blindly because the car had been snowed in so badly that me and Tobias could not really make any difference by scratching its windscreens half an hour (we had to stop because our fingers were too cold to continue). The snow and the cold had arrived here in Helsinki quite exactly together with the winter solstice.