Here’s my favorite song of the Emerald City Supporters, the group that goes mental at Sounders FC games:

TAKE ‘EM ALL, BOYS!

Man, we love our cars. I mean, we LOVE our cars. And by “we”, I mean pretty much everybody.

I was thinking of this recently when I read this blog entry. It’s about the Tata Nano.

Tata is a big industrial corporate entity in India. You (meaning Americans, because I don’t think many non-Amis read this blog… of course, as often as I write these days, not many folks anywhere read this blog!) probably haven’t heard of it, but it’s a huge family of companies. How huge? Well, from the Wikipedia entry on Tata…

The Tata Group has operations in more than 85 countries across six continents and its companies export products and services to 80 nations. The Tata Group comprises 114 companies and subsidiaries in seven business sectors [5], 27 of which are publicly listed. 65.8% of the ownership of Tata Group is held in charitable trusts.[6] Companies which form a major part of the group include Tata Steel, Corus Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Technologies, Tata Tea, Titan Industries, Tata Power, Tata Communications, Tata Teleservices, Tata AutoComp Systems Limited and the Taj Hotels.

Tata’s revenues were over $70 billion US last year, which ranks it (if the Tata Group were a single company) in the top 100 companies in the entire world. It’s a little hard to figure profits, because a significant percentage of the group’s companies are held by charitable trusts, but suffice to say it’s a huge company.

The blog item was discussing how Tata has developed the Nano to be a car for the masses. There is a plethora of masses in India, of course; when we talk population, we always think of China, but often forget that India has over a billion people living in a nation that’s roughly one-third the size of the United States.

And those people want cars.

A few years ago, when I was in China and out for dinner with some friends, I was surprised when the locals all expressed heavy interest in buying a car. The other American dude that was there with his date felt the same way as me- why did they all want cars when a combination of the public transit system and the incredbly cheap (by Western standards) taxis work so well for them all? Cars cost a lot of money- cost to buy, insure, maintain, fuel…

But they hit the nail on the head. They said that a car represents FREEDOM. Think back to when you were a teenager and had your first car, or were with a friend in their car. Anytime you wanted, man, you were by yourself. You decided where you were going to go. You weren’t in a classroom (under the control of a teacher) or at work (under control of the boss) or at home (under control of the parents). You had the open road, your choice of where to go and what to do and who to see- and who to fool around with, and even a semi-private place to do it!

To these Beijingers, yeah, sure, the public transit system was pretty good. They had busses and a growing subway system, and since they were all part of the rapidly growing middle class and relatively rich by Chinese standards, jumping into a taxi was no big deal at all- very cheap.

But all that stuff had them reliant upon someone ELSE. The bus driver, or scheduler, or the guy who comes up with the routes. The limited area that the subway serves. The taxi driver.

When we look at a place like India, and the huge pent-up demand they have for cars, progressive types like me might think “that’s absolutely ridiculous of them, to make the same mistakes the United States made.” We think that it’s really dumb for India (or China, or any other emerging economy) to pour huge gobs of money into infrastructure for individual vehicles; they should continue to build trains and go with buses and other forms of mass transit, right?

But we are forgetting the allure of the freedom offered by a car. We’re forgetting what it was like to be someone who could maybe get their own car, and hence have all those decisions in our own hands.

So when I read the blog post, with its question/title “Will This Car Destroy The World?”…

The Tata Nano goes on sale in India next month. At 100,000 rupees ($1,979), it will be the world’s cheapest car. You can learn about the car’s specs at BBC or Reuters, but the basic takeaway is that it’s tiny, fuel-efficient, inexpensive, and destined to be purchased by a lot of people—India, you’ll remember, has about a billion of them.

The concern among environmentalists is that, because the car is so affordable, it will be purchased by so many people that global carbon levels will skyrocket to irreparable levels. That, of course, would be disastrous.

Naw, the Nano won’t destroy the world. India saw total car sales of around 30,000 for the entire YEAR of 2008, and Tata sold over 100,000 Nanos in the first TWO WEEKS it was available. (Most of that was only preorders, of course.) Yeah, the Nano costs under $2,000 (it’s the most stripped-down car you can imagine). But it won’t destroy the world.

Now, our human nature? Our desire for freedom and demand that we can choose our own destiny? Yeah, that might destroy the world. But don’t blame the car.

Read a blog post today that mentioned that Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunter” ads have been doing some damage to Apple. Mainly, the notion that Apples cost too much is gaining a foothold.

It’s more or less true; Apples do cost too much. There’s a “clone” maker out there who’s selling Apple’s OS on standard hardware, and their prices for computers that are configured the same as Macs are lower by a few hundred to several hundred dollars.

One thing that I’ve always found fairly hypocritical among some of the Apple evangelists (or, more correctly, the pro-Apple-anti-Microsoft evangelists) who talk about Microsoft being a monopoly and advocating a breakup of MS is that Apple’s business practices are actually even more heinous than MS’s. If you want Apple’s OS, not only do you wind up using all of their software, but Apple tries (and is tremendously successful about 99.999999% of the time) to force you to buy THEIR hardware as well- hardware which is overpriced.

A Mac with a 2.66Ghz Core2Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive will run $1,474 from the Apple web site.

If you go to Psystar, the guys who sell clones with the Apple OS X preloaded, you can get a machine with a 2.53Ghz Core2Quad, 4 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB HD for 1,018. If you’re willing to spend around 1480, Psystar will sell you a machine with a 3.0Ghz Core2Quad, 4GB of RAM, two 1TB hard drives, a better video card and iWork in addition to the Mac OS X.

So the markup on Apple’s hardware appears to be 20 to 40% over what the generic version costs.

You see the breakdown even more in laptops. The hottest segment of the market these days is the “netbook”; a small, lightweight version of a laptop that typically doesn’t have an optical drive, doesn’t have a very powerful processor, has a smaller-than-normal keyboard… but it’s very easy to tote around, does web browsing and email just fine, and has built-in networking.

For around 400 bucks, you can get one of the best sellers in this field, an EeePC 1000 HE. It comes with wireless-N networking built in and enough firepower to do what most people buying a netbook want/need.

The cheapest Apple laptop is more than twice as much.

So plainly, Apples do cost too much for a lot of buyers. I think that they’re going to see their market share level off before too much longer; at some point they just won’t be able to get people to keep paying a premium just because it’s got the “Apple” name on the machine that they’re using. Apple does a great job with other stuff- I’ve got an iPhone and love it- but they’ve also got to do something about their image AND the reality, because otherwise they’re heading for trouble.

So the other night, G and I went to an anniversary party for some family friends (of her family). It was their 50th wedding anniversary, which is an awfully long time, and quite an accomplishment!

With all of five months as a married couple, we’ve got a ways to go before we catch them.

I was thinking about how long that is and how long even just a few years seems to me, considering my longest romantic relationship was around five years.

Can you imagine, though, being with someone for 26 years? How you would have built a life with them, and spent all that time with them, seeing them at their good and bad, their best and worst? That’s a long, long time.

I bring this up because I read this diary on Daily Kos, and it just broke my heart… I’m breaking some internet rules and reposting in its entirety here, but what the hell. You can read the original here…

I feel so sorry for the author of this post, and to his friends.

If you really don’t feel like maudlin or depressing diaries, steer clear from this one. I am getting drunk, and I am angry and heartbroken for my friend, so don’t expect much prose or coherence. It will be what it will be. I need this out of my system, so damn be to diary etiquette or protocol.

Tonight, surrounded by his family, my best friend Kenneth took his last assisted breaths in a hospital known for its “compassion and care” in the area. His family held his hands and whispered their loving goodbyes while the life slipped from his body and he went to his rest. A sudden heart attack claimed him.

But someone was conspicuously absent…

In the parking lot, Bob, his partner of 26 years, said goodbye to a photograph. It was a photograph of he and Kenneth on vacation celebrating their honeymoon 6 years ago after having been “married” in a ceremony that meant nothing more than symbolism to a society that was, at turns, benevolent about the whims of a few gay folk, yet smirking about his love for another person of the same sex. “Have your fake ceremonies, for what they are worth, but don’t get obnoxious and ask for anything actually bordering on legal or realistic.” society told them. But Kenneth & Bob took it, because validating it to one another was really what counted. But tonight, it ended up needing to mean so much more.

Bob carried that photograph in his wallet as a reminder of his relationship and what it meant to him. Tonight, he said goodbye to a smiling face in a picture because he had no legal right to be present to say goodbye to his loved one in person. So Bob sat in the parking lot in the passenger seat of my car and wondered the fate of the man he had given his love and life to. He held the only thing at that moment Kenneth’s family could not take away from him – that photograph.

The hospital, at the behest of Kenneth’s family, had banned Bob from Kenneth’s room, or seeing him in the hospital at all. 26 years treated as though they were mere passing acquaintances or work colleagues. Simply because Kenneth’s family could never accept their son’s orientation (NOT “lifestyle” as some refer to it).

Tonight, a nurse sympathetic to Bob’s situation and in violation of the hospital policies, came to the car window and delivered the news to Bob that Kenneth was gone. And Bob said his goodbyes and wishes of love and peace to a picture. A fucking photograph. Held to his chest as though he were holding his loved one in tears. Because that was all he had.

His partner is gone and his partner’s family took away the dignity that Bob had a right to as Kenneth’s lover, confidante, and lifemate to say goodbye. His husband. There, I said it. HUSBAND. WAS THAT SO SCARY YOU HOMOPHOBIC BIGOTS?????

To his family:

You took away Bob’s right to say his goodbyes because of your own misguided fears, but you can never take away his love or his memories. Your son deserved to hold his partner’s hand as he went away, knowing Bob loved him and was there to see him to the other side. You heartless bastards…I hate you right now. You may laugh at our relationships and dismiss them, but your God weeps for your ignorance and cruelty.

You will never take Bob’s devotion to Ken away from him…or the smiling photograph of he and Kenneth in happy times.

Ken, tonight, we say goodbye to your photograph. But we know you understand and forgive us.

You will be missed.