Budget and Avis ban smoking in rental cars

First you couldn't smoke on planes. Then trains banned smoking. Now, you can't smoke in rental cars, at least, not if you rent from Avis or Budget. As of October 1, all cars in both rental companies' fleets will be non-smoking.

Avis and Budget say the policy came about in response to the needs of renters, citing a non-smoking car as the most-popular rental request. Cars that have been smoked in also require additional cleaning and are out of service longer, costing the companies more money. A spokesman for the Avis Budget Group says they expect some smokers to be upset with the new rules and to take their business elsewhere, but that they think overall the new plan will attract more customers than it will lose.
Avis and Budget will be the first major rental car companies to ban smoking entirely (others offer "non-smoking" cars but many don't guarantee them), though they are only instituting the ban among their North American fleet, not worldwide. Each car will undergo an inspection upon return and renters who have smoked in the vehicle will be charged a cleaning fee of up to $250.

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Volkswagen’s Diesel-Hybrid L1 Concept Gets 170 MPG, Available by 2013

Written by Jerry James Stone

Volkswagen will display an updated version of its 1-Liter concept this week at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. The diesel-hybrid car which only weighs around 800 lbs gets an jaw-dropping 170 MPG. So who wants one?

It was seven years ago when VW first announced the idea. Dr. Ferdinand Piëch–currently the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Volkswagen Group–drove a prototype of the car from Wolfsburg to Hamburg. It was the world’s first car to travel 100 kilometers on just a single liter of fuel. But the concept wasn’t ready for production as the body’s carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) was too costly for consideration.

“It is an enormous challenge to control costs in producing the monocoque out of CFRP,” says Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, member of the Board of Management for the Volkswagen Brand with responsibility for development.

The 2-seater L1, with a length of 150 inches, is still similar to that of a Volkswagen Fox, and a height of 45 inches..it nearly matches that of a Lamborghini Murciélago.

Aerodynamics was a huge part of the L1 concept. The idea behind it was the form of a glider–one seat behind the other. It has a special chasi of aluminum components to take advantage of the CFRP body.

The two-cylinder rail-injected TDI, the E-motor and the 7-speed Direct Shift Gearbox are all rear located. The combo not only delivers a high fuel consumption but it only emits 36 g/km of C02. The hybrid module has been integrated into the housing of the 7-speed DSG and consists of a 10 kW / 14 PS electric motor and a clutch.

During general acceleration the electric motor can supply 40-percent additional torque and even propel the L1 over a short distance by itself. It also operates as a generator to charge the lithium-ion battery by recovering braking energy.

Full details on the car can be found at VWVortex. On display with the L1 concept, Vdub will also be showing off their Up! concept. I suspect we will be seeing a lot of these roll out under VW’s new BlueMotionTechnologies brand.

Source: VWVortex

Cash for kids in Japan

By David Nakamura — Special to GlobalPost

TOKYO, Japan — In the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, the newly empowered Democratic Party of Japan has proposed a solution: pay to procreate.

As part of the manifesto that helped the DPJ rout the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party in last month’s election, families will receive 26,000 yen (about $280) per month for each child through junior high school.

“We could use the money; it would help us manage,” said Jun Otake, a human resources manager at Japan Airlines who stands to receive $840 per month for his three young daughters. “People need help regardless of the number of children, but obviously more children mean more mouths to feed.”

Otake, 41, should know. He and wife Yuki are raising their daughters, ages 11, 7 and 2, in an 800-square foot apartment with two bedrooms and a single bathroom that Jun, as the only man in the house, finds ever-more frequently off limits.

To support this modest lifestyle, Jun commutes to work 90 minutes each way from the Tokyo suburb of Fujisama, not arriving home until midnight. Yuki, who gave up her own career 12 years ago, juggles the care of the girls. Their only time together on weekdays comes during mandatory 7 a.m. family breakfast.

It isn’t easy to raise children in Japan, where the birth rate of 1.37 children per woman has fallen well below the replacement level of 2.07 and contributed to structural problems facing the world’s fastest-aging society. The reasons cited are myriad: the cost of schooling, a lack of daycare options and an increasing number of women unwilling to interrupt or forego their careers among them.

But the new measure, which mirrors similar programs in other countries (France, for example, for years has heavily subsidized the cost of raising children), is not without its critics.

The child stipend plan — part of the DPJ’s populist agenda that includes making high school education free and removing tolls on highways — has been criticized by economists who question whether the $54 billion program, which costs more than the country’s defense budget, is affordable.

Furthermore, women without children wonder if the money would be better spent on increasing the number of day care centers and other methods to help women return to work after giving birth.

“The child allowance is not a fundamental solution,” said Vivian Tokai, 41, director of government relations at an international conglomerate who is married but has no children. She and her husband, a marketing executive at a Japanese brewery, live in Tokyo’s Akihabara neighborhood, where waiting lists for public day care facilities are long.

Last October, more than 40,000 Japanese children were unable to register with government-approved day care centers, which are larger than their private counterparts and have better resources, such as playgrounds.

The DPJ proposed the allowance “as a bargaining chip to get elected,” Tokai said. “The government needs to overhaul the fundamental things. Finding child care is very, very difficult.”

Tell that to Mayumi Yamamoto and her American husband, Brad Horton, college professors who are raising a 6-year-old daughter in one of Tokyo’s most child-rich wards.

It took Yamamoto, 49, and Horton, 42, more than two years to find a spot for Shiori because their neighborhood center concluded that the couple was working only part-time at their universities and rated them as lower priorities than families with two working parents.

The ordeal was so difficult and protracted that the couple decided not to have a second child, Horton said. “That’s one less child living in Japan,” he added ruefully.

For working women who succeed in finding care for their children, the costs add up. Eiko Tanaka, who works in the Tokyo branch of a Danish pharmaceutical company, pays about $478 per month to send her daughter to day care each day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tanaka recently returned to work after taking a year off to care for her second daughter, who recently entered a nursery.

Still, Tanaka said she and her husband can afford the costs, adding that the child allowance, which will be paid to all families regardless of income, should be limited to poorer families. “I don’t like that they are giving it to everybody,” Tanaka said.

But Naoko Kaihata, 36, a senior consultant at the Tokyo office of CB Richard Ellis real estate firm, said she and her husband, who works as a research analyst at the Bank of Yokohama, welcome the stipend to help raise their 4-year-old daughter, whose day care costs more than $500 per month.

“It is not so much that we think we will spend more on our daughter’s stuff or family expenses, but this does help us feel more secure for our future,” Kaihata said.

She paused, then added that the government also must spur economic growth by creating incentives for businesses.

“If I can’t get a job in the future, a child stipend is not enough,” Kaihata said. “I will feel insecure and I will start to think I do not want any more kids.”

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"The Lost Symbol" and the Freemasons: 8 Myths Decoded

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

Novelist Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, is doing for the Freemasons what its predecessor, The Da Vinci Code, did for the Catholic Church's Opus Dei—showering new fame, and new fictions, on a brotherhood that's already catnip for conspiracy theorists.

Since long before The Lost Symbol, Freemasons have been accused of everything from conspiring with extraterrestrials to practicing sexual deviancy to engaging in occult rituals to running the world—or trying to end it. Detractors include global conspiracy theorists and religious organizations, including the Catholic Church.

Released today, The Lost Symbol isn't likely to squelch any rumors, beginning as it does with a wine-filled skull, bejeweled power brokers, and a dark Masonic temple steps away from the White House.

But what if Freemasons—the world's largest international secret society—are just a bunch of guys into socializing, non-satanic rituals, self-improvement, and community service?

To separate Freemason fact from Lost Symbol-style myth, National Geographic News went inside the centuries-old order with two Masons and a historian of the ancient Christian order from which some claim the Masons sprang in the 17th or 18th century.

FREEMASON MYTH 1
Masonic Symbols Are Everywhere

It's true that Masonic symbols are anything but lost, said Freemason and historian Jay Kinney, author of the newly released Masonic Myth.

Freemasonry is rich in symbols, and many are ubiquitious—think of the pentagram, or five-pointed star, or the "all-seeing eye" in the Great Seal of the United States.

But most Masonic symbols aren't unique to Freemasonry, Kinney said.

"I view the Masonic use of symbols as a grab bag taken from here, there, and everywhere," he said. "Masonry employs them in its own fashion."

The pentagram, for example, is much older than Freemasonry and acquired its occult overtones only in the 19th and 20th centuries, hundreds of years after the Masons had adopted the symbol.

Likewise, the all-seeing eye saw its way to the Great Seal—and the U.S. dollar bill—by way of artist Pierre Du Simitiere, a non-Mason.

The eye represents divine guidance of the U.S. ship of state, or as Secretary of the U.S. Congress Charles Thompson put it in 1782, it alludes "to the many signal interpositions of providence in favour of the American cause."

There was one known Mason on the committee to design the seal, Benjamin Franklin. His proposed design was eyeless, and rejected.

FREEMASON MYTH 2
Masons Descend From the Knights Templar

Much has been made of the Freemasons purported lineage to the Knights Templar. The powerful military and religious order was established to protect medieval pilgrims to the Holy Land and dissolved by Pope Clement V, under pressure of King Phillip IV of France, in 1312.

After modern Masonry appeared in the 17th- or 18th-century Britain, some Freemasons claimed to have acquired the secrets of the Templars and adopted Templar symbols and terminology—naming certain levels of Masonic hierarchy after Templar "degrees," for example.

"But those [Knights Templar] degrees and Masonic orders had no historic connection with the original Knights Templar," Kinney explained.

"These are myths or symbolic figures that were used by the Masons. But because the association had been made with these degrees, and the degrees had perpetuated themselves, after a time it began to look like there had been a connection."

Helen Nicholson, author of The Knights Templar: A New History, agrees that there is no possibility that Freemasons are somehow descended from the Knights Templar.

By the time of the first Masons, the Cardiff University historian said, "there were no more Templars."

FREEMASON MYTH 3
Masons Are Hiding Templar Treasure

One of the Templar-Mason theory's many veins suggests that some Templars survived the order's 14th-century destruction by taking refuge in Scotland, where they hid a fabulous treasure beneath Rosslyn Chapel (as seen in The Da Vinci Code).

The treasure, and the Templar tradition, were eventually passed down to the founders of Freemasonry, the story goes.

In fact, there was Templar treasure, Nicholson said, but it ended up in other hands long ago.

"The most likely reason [the Templars were dissolved] is that the king wanted their money. The King of France was bankrupt, and the Templars had lots of ready cash."

FREEMASON MYTH 4
Washington, D.C.'s Streets Form Giant Masonic Symbols

It's long been suggested that powerful Freemasons embedded Masonic symbols in the Washington, D.C., street plan designed mainly by Frenchman Pierre L'Enfant in 1791.

The Lost Symbol is expected to prominently feature "Masonic mapping," detecting pentagrams and other symbols by connecting the dots among landmarks. Pre-release clues released by author Dan Brown, for example, include GPS coordinates for Washington landmarks.

"Individually, Masons had a role in building the White House, in building and designing Washington, D.C.," said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. "And [small scale] Masonic symbols can be found throughout the city, as they can in most U.S. cities."

But there's no Masonic message in the city's street plan, Tabbert said. For starters, Pierre L'Enfant wasn't a Mason.

And, Tabbert asked, why would Masons go to the trouble of laying out a street grid to match their symbols?

"There has to be a [reason] for doing such a thing," said Tabbert, himself a Mason. "Dan Brown will find one, because he writes fiction. But there isn't one."

FREEMASON MYTH 5
Freemasons Rule the World

Maybe it's the impressive list of prominent Freemasons—from Napoleon to F.D.R. to King Kamehameha (IV and V!)—that's led some to suggest the group is a small cabal running the globe. But Kinney, the Masonic historian, paints a picture of a largely decentralized group that might have trouble running anything with much efficiency.

"I think the ideals that Masonry embodies, which have to do with universal brotherhood, are shared by Masons around the world [regardless of] religious, political, or national differences," he said.

"But having shared ideals is one thing—having some sort of shared hierarchy is something else altogether."

Kinney noted that the U.S. alone has 51 grand lodges, one for each state and the District of Columbia. Each of these largely independent organizations oversees its many local blue (or beginner) lodges and has little real coordination with other grand lodges.

Internationally, Masonic lodges not only don't speak with a single voice but sometimes refuse to even recognize each other's existence.

Also, many Masons are independent minded and tend to resist edicts from above, Kinney said. "There is no way that they could be run by a single hierarchy. There is no such entity."

FREEMASON MYTH 6
Freemasonry Is a Religion—Or a Cult

But Masons stress that their organization is not a religion, that is it has no unique theology and does not represent a path for believers to salvation or other divine rewards.

Even so, to be accepted into Freemasonry, initiates must believe in a god—any god. Christians may be in the majority, but Jews, Muslims, and others are well represented in Masonic circles. At lodge meetings religious discussion is traditionally taboo, Kinney and Tabbert said.

But some religious leaders believe that Masonic rituals and beliefs—with its temples, altars, and oaths—do constitute an opposing faith. And the Masonic refusal to rank one religion above the others hasn't always been popular.

A 1983 Catholic declaration approved by Pope John Paul II, for example, said that "Catholics enrolled in Masonic associations are involved in serious sin and may not approach Holy Communion."

FREEMASON MYTH 7
Freemasons Started the American Revolution

Prominent Freemasons like Ben Franklin and George Washington played essential roles in the American Revolution. And among the ranks of Freemasons are 9 signers of the Declaration of Independence and 13 signers of the Constitution.

But Freemasonry—born in Britain, after all—had adherents on both sides of the conflict. Tabbert, of the George Washington Masonic Memorial, said Masonic groups allowed men on both sides of the revolution to come together as brothers—not to promote a political view, which would be against Masonic tradition.

"For many years [Masons] claimed in their own quasi-scholarship that all of these revolutionaries and Founding Fathers were Freemasons," Tabbert said. "A fair number of them were, but they weren't doing these things because they were Freemasons."

FREEMASON MYTH 8
Membership Requires Shadowy Connections

Contrary to The Lost Symbol, you don't have to drink wine from a skull to become a ranking Freemason. In fact, tradition dictates that Masons don't recruit members but simply accept those who approach them of their own free will.

When Freemasonry hit its peak in the U.S. during the late 1950s, Kinney, the Masonic historian, said, almost one of every ten eligible adult males was a member—a total of some four million and hardly a tiny elite.

Today membership numbers, like those of other fraternal organizations, have declined dramatically, and only about 1.5 million U.S. men are Masons.

But with The Lost Symbol already igniting interest in Freemasonry, Masonic centers are bracing for tourists—and maybe a few new recruits.

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