Blessed by the Potato

Today I target my random realtor rage at Roya, who put up a MLS listing for a million-dollar mansion with two libraries lined with wall-to-wall bookcases, and not a single interior picture.

[Note: I waited too long to post this and the link/listing is now dead]

I have to give some props to Mojan: the house she’s flogging is like 40% overpriced for the street (especially for not having any landscaping), but the website with its own domain name is impressive.

Previously, I wrote about the fear surrounding hybrid cars, specifically the magnetic field exposure:

For the hybrid car issue, we have the question “what are the fields?” and we don’t even have a good answer to that, from which point some people fall into hysterics (up to selling their car). The real issue is then several steps removed: the Prius may have higher magnetic field exposures than other cars, and those fields have an unknown but probably small effect on human health, and that might outweigh the positive aspects of the technology.

I was understandably baffled that some people would make a mountain out of a hypothetical mole hill, especially in light of the fact that there are many other EMF “risks” that are obviously higher in everyday life, such as using a hairdryer, cell phone, or riding on a subway, which may not offer the benefits of a hybrid drivetrain. I was upset that the few people that have actually taken the measurements have not published or shared them in any way. I figured that when I eventually get a Prius for myself, I would have to borrow the magnetometers from the lab and do the job myself (and possibly get a published paper out of the deal!). (Un?)fortunately, someone has beaten me to the punch: G. Schmid and colleagues from the Austrian Research Centres in Seibersdorf have measured the fields in a Gen2 Prius under various conditions and reported the results at an international conference.

The exposure frequencies can go up to 1000 Hz due to some of the power switching. They found that near the floor in the backseat the exposure was highest, averaging 10% of the permissable general population chronic exposure according to the ICNIRP guidelines (which are frequency dependent), and could reach 30% in the maximum case (a switch from maximum acceleration to maximum braking). Even just at lap level the exposure is <5% of the guidelines (since children have short legs, this is perhaps the more appropriate measure).

They accounted for the effect of the tires (rotating tires with steel belts/cables in the makeup produces magnetic fields of up to 4% of the guideline exposure), which would be present in all cars. They also compared to some conventional cars — and the Audi A4 and VW Passat both had significantly higher exposures than the Prius! In fact, the Audi A4 exceeded the ICNIRP guideline in some conditions. The main source of exposure in those cars was from the air conditioning systems, which are “not as sophisticated” in their electrical management as in the Prius. One factor in particular that they mentioned was that the conventional cars tended to use the chassis as a current return, wheras the Prius has dedicated, shielded wiring loops that return to the battery.

In other hybrids it was found that magnetic field exposure does not correlate with installed electric motor power — the Honda Civic Hybrid has nearly 3X as much magnetic field exposure as the Prius does.

For comparison, another presenter looked at exposures on British Rail cars (not the underground — the motors are in locomotives separate from the passenger cars) and found that the fields were also in the 5-10% of ICNIRP guidelines range.

Permalink.

So this morning, before my alarm goes off, Wayfare pops in my room, sits on my bed and asks “How long have we been together???” in a fairly urgent, 3-question-mark-important kind of way.

“Ugh. 2001, do the math.” I mumble, being not a morning person (nor for that matter, a person who generally takes kindly to any kind of questioning within 5 minutes of waking up no matter what time of day or night that may be — in fact, I’m exactly the kind of person who will die in a fire caused by a herd of riioting elephants without ever fully waking up).

As I started to wake up a little more I put together the question and the tone of voice and started to get worried about exactly what kind of nearly asleep pop quiz this might be, and what consequences failing might hold. I quickly (I think — my sense of time isn’t all that sharp when the whole world seems kind of fuzzy and unreal) decided that I had best turn this around and start quizzing her before some really hard questions started coming my way.

So I blurt out the first question I think of. “What’s the square root of three!”

“I don’t know!” she exclaims.

“Damn, neither do I. Ok, square root of 9!” My brain is clearly working slower than my mouth at this point, as I realize I had just given the answer away in the previous question.

Then I was saved by the cat, who is thrilled when I wake up because it means its time for her nearly-favourite game Jump On Potato’s Full Bladder While He’s Too Sleepy To Move (her very favourite game is Pretend To Want Snuggles On The Human’s Lap Until He Pays Attention To Me Then Run Away, though a close third is Hey I Can Type Too).

Oh shit, there goes the planet.

My car was broken into again sometime yesterday or this morning. The club was on it, thankfully, so the car itself didn’t go anywhere, but the driver’s door was left ajar (with the dome light on and the battery not dead yet) and all my stuff had been rifled through — sunglasses on the driver’s seat, etc. As far as I can tell, nothing has been taken (and I’m getting awfully sick of trying to mentally inventory the stuff left in my car), and no damage was done. Either I forgot to lock the driver’s door (and my last trip was for groceries, so I might have), or they just jimmied it open without blasting through the whole lock.

I just can’t wrap my head around why this keeps happening — we’re close to downtown, and there are a lot of students in the neighbourhood, but I’d be really hesitant to call it a high-crime area. Plus it’s a 12-year old Honda accord. It really doesn’t look like the kind of car that would have valuables in it. I think I’m going to have to get some stickers to that effect made up and put in the window.