Like most Autopia articles, the story is light on facts and mostly designed to produce a storm of comments.  This time using the over the top headline to draw the partisians; one of their trademarks.  Naturally, it had the desired effect, and a mild hybrid vs. diesel flamewar was the result…not to mention lots of pageviews for Wired.

In any article like this that stresses the fuel efficiency of diesels, some commenter always insists that it’s the ultimate proof that we’re all wasteful idiots in the US because we don’t all drive diesels.  If we were smart, like the Europeons, we’ld all drive diesels.  First off, it isn’t true; they do have both diesel and petrol vehicles in Europe, although diesels are more popular than they are here.  So, it’s a fair question:  Given the higher energy potential of diesel and the the better fuel efficiency of the engines, why don’t we all drive diesels?

Well, the answer lies with crude oil refinement.  Refining the crude is essentially a distillation process where the component hydrocarbon marterials separate at different temperatures.  The shorter hydrocarbon chains like LPG and gasoline separate at lowest temperatures, the kerosine and diesel separate next, and, finally, the heavier fuel oil and tar products separate at the highest temeratures.  In the end, the average refinery gets about 20 gallons of gasoline and 9  gallons of diesel from every 42 gallon barrel of crude.

Now through processes known as cracking, some of the long hydrocarbon chain distillates can be broken into shorter chains to maximize gasoline production.  Other processes can combine shorter chains to maximize diesel production, but there are limits to what can be done with these processes.  Currently, the most diesel optimized refinery on the planet manages to turn about 42% of its crude to diesel.

So, considering that base percentages of distillates, the limits of the optimization processes, the fact that the marterial transports side of our transportation system is based on diesel, and, worldwide, the increase in demand for diesel is outstripping the demand for gasoline, I don’t think we’ll all be driving diesels any time soon.  Then again, there’s always biodiesel.

It’s a beautiful building…kind of a modernized twist on a turn of the century manufacturing center.  The choice to skew it on the log was brilliant.  It keeps it from looking too much like a factory and puts the city skyline in all of its site lines.  That is difficult to capture, however, because of the nature of the surrounding area.  The near south side has all of its utilities above ground, making it hard to find a vantage point to capture the scale of the thing, its relationship to the skyline, or even the roof line, that isn’t obstruct by a utility line.

Fortunately, the land between the RCA Dome and the new stadium is being developed and has been cleared.  This allowed for some nice shots juxtaposing the new against the old.

I made eighty-eight shots is just under an hour.  The wonders of digital.  Fortunately, Aperture makes narrowing that down to my twenty or so favorites a fairly quick process.  See the photos page for all the rest.

The anchor stores are relegated to out lots behind or at the end of Main Street often separated from Main Street by  a parking lot big enough to handle the anchor store and the overflow parking for the nearer parts of Main Street.

Now, I confess that I’ve never actually shopped at one of these new malls.  However, as I rode through one on my weekly ride yesterday, I got to thinking about the merits of the layout.  The upsides are that if you are just trying to visit a particular show on a lite shopping day, you’ll probably get in and out fairly quickly.  Also, on beautiful spring days like yesterday, it is probably nice to window shop along Main Street.  But, on a busy day, you’ll still be parking a decent hike from where you want to go, and, in the dog days of summer and in winter, you now get to make that hike and the strolling between stores exposed to the elements.  Plus, instead of walking from one anchor to the other like most people do in traditional malls, it seems most would drive from one anchor to the other in this layout in all but the nicest weather.

This may be a misguided attempt visually copy some of the design elements of New Urbanism communities, but this isn’t a mixed used development.  This is a destination shopping center with a car trip involved for the vast majority of the customers.  It is not about reducing car trips.  In fact, it likely increase car trips within the shopping center.  I just don’t get it.

After the long journey out, it seems that little Beagle II, the lander of the Mars express mission has successfully separated. If all goes well, the lander should touch down on Christmas Day. Seems that NASA has actually lost the edge in robotic space exploration.

Please don’t take this as a dig at the ESA; they do good work, although, given the size of their collective economy, they could step it up and invest a little more. It’s more a reminder to the “we suck, we’re a failing empire, we cause all the problems and contribute nothing” crowd.