April Fool's Perpetual Motion Machine Humor

The dream of a perpetual motion machine or a source of free energy is an old one. The video imagines a funny scheme for producing bio ethanol.

Happy April Fool!

Fred Flintstone Saves on Gas

Remember Fred Flintstones' pedal powered stone age car? He would put his feet down through a hole in the cabin floor and run to get it going. It might have been stone age technology, but it didn't use a drop of gasoline. As our petroleum era starts to go into the decline phase, the circle has come around again. Just as the stone age cars of the imagined Flintstone past were, so will be the future: petroleum free. Bicycles are an excellent solution for individual personal neighborhood or short range travel.

The video shows a Flintstone style car that has been converted into a four place bicycle. Not very practical ... you would be much better off with a bicycle. You can use a freight bicycle or a bicycle trailer if you want to carry small loads. But it is amusing. Note how at the end of the video the police pull the contraption over. Although the video took place in Toronto, Canada that could be seen as a symbol of the US addiction to cars and oil consumption. The authorities slap down fun, innovative ways to save on gas even as GM and Ford are dying from their failure to adapt to the emerging expensive oil future.

Some Gas Saving Humor

Here is a video compilation of a bunch of cartoons lamenting the high price of gas. Good for a chuckle or so. Just ignore the product promotion at the end; it is pushing a water for fuel scam. I like the cartoon where a father is walking his son to school. The father is saying that walking is not so bad; he used to walk miles as a boy. His son replies "so your parents couldn't afford gas either then". That reminds me of a saying which I have seen attributed to Saudi Arabia, which goes something like "My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son flies a plane and my grandson will ride a camel". We can see the temporary lift oil can give to Saudi Arabia, but somehow we don't see it when it happens at home.

In the past, there was no oil production in the United States. As a result, personal transportation was difficult and time consuming. Only the wealthy could travel at will across the country. Then the oil age came along and cheap widely available personal transportation shrank the country for almost everybody. But in the future, oil production will inevitably decline, which could return us to the old situation, where transport is only available to the wealthy. The more we learn to save on gas, the further off that day will be.

Fight at the Gas Pump

This video expresses the feeling we often have of being ripped off at the pump. The representation of OPEC accurately captures the dependence the US has on oil imports. But the villains are not really the members of OPEC or any other exporting nation. The villains are right here in the US. Detroit has given us gas guzzlers and we have been content to buy them .. even demanding them. Blaming the addiction on the provider is not going to solve anything. The addict has to come around and kick the habit. Time to start saving on gas America!

Trebuchet Commuting

How would you like to save on gas by being flung in to work every morning by a giant trebuchet? A trebuchet is a Medieval siege weapon rather like a catapult. The linked article is just a joke of course.

National Lampoon Saves On Gas

Time for some Friday gas mileage humor. The video lampoons a bunch of gas saving tips. Each tip is actually a good idea which would get you better gas mileage. Taken to extremes they are funny. Watch and have a laugh!

Here is a list of the tips lampooned in the video.

1. Route planning: just go in a straight line!


2. Hill avoidance: go right on over!


3. Carpooling: pack in 40 people!


4. Weight Reduction: throw out the headrests, the seats and starve your children!


5. Drafting (potentially dangerous hypermiling technique): use a grappling hook to hitch a ride on an 18 wheeler!

World Without Oil

The World Without Oil is a website telling a story about what an oil crisis in the United States might be like. The story is told from the point of view that it is real, with blog posts and videos supposedly describing the daily situation. Sort of like the modern marketing campaigns for the television series Lost or the vampire series True Blood. The story covers a 32 week period over which the price of gasoline rises to $8 per gallon. There has been a lot of work put into this story. One problem is the format. Being spread out over simulated blog posts and news stories etc it feels somewhat incoherent. But if you want to instill hypermiling culture in the USA I guess writing stories like this one can only help. If you like disaster stories and are interested in saving on gas, you might be interested in World Without Oil.

Amphicar: Think of the Shortcuts!

If you can shorten the route you take by finding a detour or shortcut it can save on gas. Imagine cutting across a lake with the Amphicar! Of course as a boat it will get poor mileage due to the enormous drag involved in pushing through the water. Being an old car it probably also gets poor gas mileage on land. But the idea of shortcutting across the narrow waist of a lake instead of commuting all the way around it and saving gas as a result is fun to think about.

Think You Have a Gas Guzzler? NASA Probably Doesn't Agree!

NASA uses two enormous tracked vehicles called Crawler-Transporters to carry the space shuttles out to their launch pads from the hangers where they are prepared. The Crawler-Transporters use diesel fuel. Their mileage? They use 150 gallons of diesel per mile. That is per mile, not per hundred miles. Expressing that in gallons per hundred miles or GPHM we have 15,000 GPHM. Next to that outrageous consumption the puny 10 GPHM a guzzling SUV uses is a mere nothing. Of course an SUV would be crushed flat if you sat the space shuttle on top of it!

Solar Golf Cart Conversion Kit

Ever wanted to convert a golf cart to use solar power? Here is a kit you can use to do just that. It seems that putting a solar panel on the roof of a golf cart increases the range by 30%. So if you ever wanted to do the commute in to work by golf cart but ran out of charge 70% of the way there, here is your big chance!

Save on Gas - Drive Blood Car!

The amount of money we spend on gas is not at all funny. Here is a little humor to help take our minds off of the drain on our wallets.

In this movie, the price of gas has gone up to $40 a gallon. Scientists all over the world are scrambling to find alternative fuels, and finally they find one .. human blood! The homepage for the bloodcar movie is here. I haven't seen it, and it looks really bad, so I can't say that I recommend you see it either.