AR-15's are not more powerful than other guns, I go shopping for an EV, and a weird looking tree I saw.
You may already have known this, but the idea that rifles like the AR 15 somehow are more powerful than others is false.
To quote the op ed below:
"The rifles dubbed 'assault weapons' are no more powerful than other rifles. Consider the AR-15 semiautomatic. The name is short for 'ArmaLite Rifle, model 15.' It was invented in the late 1950s and introduced for sale in 1964. The AR’s most common caliber is .223. That is, the bullet’s width is 223/1000th of an inch. Under Colorado hunting regulations, that caliber is not allowed for big game hunting because it is too small to reliably take an animal with a single shot. The minimum caliber of big game hunting in Colorado is .240."
Let me reiterate:
"Under Colorado hunting regulations, that caliber is not allowed for big game hunting because it is too small to reliably take an animal with a single shot."
To be sure, bullets out of almost any gun can be used to harm humans. To say that you can't hunt with them because they're too small does not negate this fact.
However, the contention that somehow owning an AR 15 rifle enables you to blast human bodies apart or punch holes in the side of a tank (or some other bit of hyperbole peddled by gun control advocates) is a lie.
It's simply not true.
https://denvergazette.com/opinion/columns/guest-column-assault-weapon-still-a-bogeyman-for-colorado-pols/article_99c09e33-0d46-5bcd-99d2-1254ab21685f.html
Shopping for an EV!
This post (and the one yesterday) were spurred by a slew of articles recently (see the Sun's example linked first below) that are about proposed new subsidies for EV's that could (potentially) be coming.
There are two different proposals in the works, according to the Sun article below:
-- There is a new $7500 Federal EV credit (with lots of strings that may make it not doable--battery sourcing being one issue) and an existing $2000 state credit. That totals $9500, but if Polis' new plan goes, the total subsidy could go to $12,500.
--There is already a $4000 Federal USED EV credit and an existing $3000 credit from Xcel for a total of $7000 off a used vehicle.
I personally have no issue with EV's. If I could find one that did what my current car does, and that I could afford, I'd give serious thought to switching. They do have the benefit of (at least until they get older) costing less to operate. I like that.
Buying the thing is, however, the other half of the story. The subsidies that you see (proposed or existing) are supposed to encourage EV purchase by lowering this bar. What do you get for your subsidy though? I did some looking.
As in my earlier post, I used Xcel Energy's car finder. Not a definitive source, but, as before, you can't accuse me of stacking the deck.
Alright! Let's tool up and go shopping!
I'll start with with my current car and what I'd need to match (in terms of buying and use). Look at Screenshot #1 attached for the criteria.
With those in mind, let's go looking at what kind of an EV would fit my needs. Using the second link below (with search criteria shown in screenshot 2 and more results in screenshot 3), you can see what sorts of cars I could look at.
Take note that the prices shown ALREADY have the current subsidies deducted from the price and also that I'm not too picky on make/model or type (Battery EV or Plug In Hybrid--the kind with just a battery that charges when plugged in or the kind that can either charge by being plugged in or by running its own little gas-powered, built-in generator).
I looked over quite a few of the options listed that have low-end prices at or below $6K. As I recall, at this price range, the maximum range is 94 miles on a charge. That works around town, but that won't get me to Denver (even one way).
That means that a used EV can't meet my price point and performance demands. And this is with the subsidies! That means borrowing to get the car. That means a car payment and also full coverage insurance (right now, my car is old enough and cheap enough that I just carry liability).
Fair enough, you might say, what kind of car could you get for $5000 or $6000 anyway, even if it were gas? Let's look. I am going to use cars.com for all my regular gas-powered car searching. I am not endorsing them, but they're large and national and this will provide some consistency.
I went there searched for all used car makes and models below $6000 and within 200 miles of my zip code. To try and keep pace with Xcel's EV search engine, I narrowed the age window to 2015 and newer. The results are in screenshot 4.
Not exactly a beauty pageant (I'd have more, and likely better, choice if I relaxed my 2015 or newer rule), but the Hyundai in screenshot 5 seems a likely car. The mileage is about what I have now. I'd have no car payment. It's not worth full coverage. The mileage is high, but if the previous owners kept up on maintenance, it's not likely to need tons of work all the time.
**And it has the distinct advantage that I can get it serviced where I live. If I bought an EV, I'd need to take it to Denver for any EV-related maintenance.
As things stand right now, with all current subsidies, I cannot afford an EV that would meet my (quite reasonable) needs. I can afford, however, to get into a reasonable gas-powered car that would meet my needs.
So, right now, I'm staying with gas. I'm not married to the idea of an EV, but if I were I suppose it would be a sad realization. Sad, that is, for me and people like me because I bet there are people with more resources who could better afford one of these cars--people for whom the subsidies would be just enough or perhaps icing on the cake.
So what will the overall effect of these subsidies be for me then? I'll get to support EV buyers with my tax dollars while being shut out of the market myself, those buyers (many likely along the Front Range) for whom a used EV with a 40 to 90 mile daily range would work.
One last thing. What I looked at with Xcel in this post is what is possible (or probable) in the EV market. This is not what is available currently (regardless of price). That's a whole other ball of wax and will show up in a separate post to come.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/01/06/ev-e-bike-tax-credits-colorado/
A curiosity seen while out and about ...
It's not the end of the week, but I just saw this yesterday and didn't want to sit on it.
The picture attached is of a tree I saw yesterday while walking in to an appointment. It was an interesting lesson in how plants react to pruning, and a testament to the will of living objects to continue to live.
I'm not a horticulturist, so if I've misunderstood or if you know of a mistake I've made, please add to the comments and let me know! I'm just going on experience and what little research I've done.
Many plants center themselves in the roots, in particular in the area where the part of the plant that lives above ground, meets the part below ground (called the "crown"). Depending on age and toughness (there are plants tougher than this--we call them weeds!), you can take a plant all the way down to this crown and it will continue to live. Destroy the crown as part of this process, and that's it.
I don't know the story, but looking at the tree yesterday, it's obvious that something bad happened to it and it had to be cut off pretty radically. You can see it because whoever did the cutting did it right. They cut it at an angle so it would heal and shed water.
The tree didn't die from this radical surgery, however, because the crown/root system wasn't too badly hurt relative to the trunk and there were reserves enough to weather the damage. My guess (and it is just a guess because I wasn't there) is that whoever cut the tree off at the trunk probably kept as many lower branches as possible and didn't do any more serious pruning for at least a year. That's what I would've done anyway: I'd have cut it off and then given it a couple/three years free growth then started pruning into a tree shape.
That's what we humans do. Note what the tree did. All plants do similar: cutting off the top of the central stem (in a tree, it's often called the leader) causes an eruption of growth below that point. The hormones that would continue to push upward growth now top out and then start to activate growth buds lower in the plant.
It's hard to see in the picture, but there were lots of pruned branches below the cut. What's not hard to see are all the suckers coming out around the crown of the tree. Their growth was likely also spurred by the radical cutting (though they've not been pruned as the lower branches were).
I use this technique pretty frequently with plants like basil to ensure lots of leaves. "Top" each major shoot and watch the leaves sprout out the sides!
One last thing. I mentioned that the central growth in a tree that vertically leads all the others (the top of the main trunk) is called the "leader". Note how the tree has made one of its side shoots (carefully NOT pruned) its new leader.
That former offshoot branch just at the cut will now be the tree's new trunk.
Cool huh?
