{"id":93,"date":"2010-02-23T18:52:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T00:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/~david\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=93"},"modified":"2010-02-23T18:52:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T00:52:22","slug":"precipitation-science-and-toyota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2010\/02\/23\/precipitation-science-and-toyota\/","title":{"rendered":"Precipitation, Science and Toyota"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it rains, my car gets wet, the inside and the outside. And after a while of course it starts to smell. This has been a problem for a while. Trouble is, we’ve just come out of a two-year drought, and by the time I figured out I had a systematic problem that the dealer’s repairs had not fixed, the warranty had of course expired.<\/p>\n

“You need a new car,” my brother says, as he quietly listens to my story. (He’s shockingly patient when I share such complaints — the physician in him no doubt.)<\/p>\n

“This might be a good time to buy a Toyota,” he says, referring to all the recalls Toyota is issuing and the public spanking they’re getting in the press. Prices are sure to fall. A perfect opportunity for a picky cheapskate like me.<\/p>\n

But there’s one problem.<\/p>\n

Not only am I cheap, not only am I picky, but I believe in science and the scientific approach to problem solving. I believe in collecting data and forming a hypothesis that explains the problem and in testing your hypothesis against the data. But Toyota evidently believes<\/a>, like so much of the rest of our culture, that science is not so much about hypotheses and data but rather about new-and-shiny stuff. Science to them seems to be more about how to plausibly deny responsibility (or worse, conceal it) without really fixing anything.<\/p>\n

So no. I on second thought this is not a good time to buy a Toyota. Not because I would fear for my life if I were in one, but rather because in my not so humble opinion, their behavior represents everything in our 21st century culture that has run so completely off the rails.<\/p>\n

Life is not all about PR. Life is not all about spin. Facts are important. Words to matter. And I hope they get raked over the coals when they go before Henry Waxman’s committee.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I will not buy a Toyota. And as a result, I’m back to breathing deeply the gathered gloom in my car, because right now outside it’s raining<\/strike> snowing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it rains, my car gets wet, the inside and the outside. And after a while of course it starts to smell. This has been a problem for a while. Trouble is, we’ve just come out of a two-year drought, and by the time I figured out I had a systematic problem that the dealer’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}