You Asked For It, You Got It

Unless I misinterpreted what Steve Young was trying to tell us in those Toyota commercials during the game, that thing...the Prius, or whatever...gets better mileage in the city than on the open road!

Which makes a certain amount of sense when you factor in the regenerative braking. Oh, and by the way, Steve! In that little dialogue bit between you and your friend with the goatee, where you're telling him all the little features and you mention the regenerative braking and he says, "I don't even know what that means," and you reply, all abashed, "I don't know what it means either..."? Don't play coy with us, pal. You've got a law degree from Brigham Young University. We all know that we'll be seeing you as our U.S. senator from either California or, more likely, Utah at some point within the next 6-10 years. You're not fooling anybody, playing dumb. Even I know what regenerative braking means!

That's because I came up with idea. Now, don't mistake me, I'm sure the talented engineers at Toyota Corp came up with their own version completely independently of mine, but I came up with that idea many years ago, must have been well over 15 years ago. I remember that it was the first time somebody explained to me how an alternator works (I forget now). Something just clicked in my head, which happens, and my immediate response was "well, why can't they just harness the energy that is being bled off and lost when the brakes are applied - all that kinetic energy, wasted, turned into heat and friction! - why can't they reclaim some of that energy, use that as a supplemental power source?" I could tell the guy was pretty impressed by my idea, but he was basically like, "look, do you want to pay extra for a new alternator or do you want the rebuilt one?"

Hey. I never thought of this before, but I bet that bastard took my idea straight to Toyota and sold it for a boatload of simoleons. In fact, as it happens, he already worked for Toyota!

Well, heck. It doesn't really bother me. I'm just happy that something I came up with can help the world to make the environment a better place for people to be able to take care of. That's my bottom line.