{"id":500,"date":"2008-06-02T00:00:57","date_gmt":"2008-06-02T05:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=500"},"modified":"2025-09-20T15:28:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T20:28:23","slug":"entry-140","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=500","title":{"rendered":"Look Up &#8220;Irrelevant&#8221; in the Dictionary&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u2026and you might find a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20081121091417\/http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2008\/TECH\/ptech\/06\/02\/young.electric.car.ap\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this CNN story<\/a>. (<em>archived copy on archive.org<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>I know a lot of people think this guy is awesome, but he apparently believes that a battery-powered car in the year 2008 with the following properties \u201ccould change the world\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It&#8217;s based on a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lincoln_Mark_series#Successor_(Mark_III,_Mark_IV,_Mark_V;_1958%E2%80%931960)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1959 Continental<\/a> convertible, a car that\u2019s over 19 feet long and weighs over 5000 pounds (and almost certainly weighs\u00a0<em>more<\/em> as a battery-powered electric).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It has required\u00a0over $120,000 of money to convert it to its present state.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Its acceleration control is a knob <em>in the back seat.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Its\u00a0brake control is <em>on the passenger side.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It had a 12-mile test run which <em>almost ended in a collision<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t have a problem with rich people having fun with their money or chasing windmills, but this story is phrased as if we are expected to believe that this car is going to create a <em>revolution<\/em> in electric automobiles. I honestly don\u2019t know whether the person who wrote this story for CNN was pandering to Young or making fun of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I could (theoretically) buy a Tesla Model S&nbsp;for $109,000, how does this story have <em>any relevance at all<\/em>? I don\u2019t blame Young. I blame CNN for passing it off as real news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026and you might find a link to this CNN story. (archived copy on archive.org)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,8],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-geekiness","tag-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1606,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/1606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}