The Wee Free Men believe they are dead, so party and fight as their reward after a life forgotten, probably working in some dumpy job. They are a parody of smurfs and highlanders, and paint themselves with woad, making them blue. They love fighting, drinking, and stealing. They call humans "Big Jobs". They don't care about milk, but if you leave them a dish of it they'll steal your cow in retaliation. They prefer Special Sheep's Lineament, which smells suspiciously like ouisquie and should never be given to a sheep. They are about 3 inches tall and run faster than most people can see and use the ability to steal things. They call themselves the Nac Mac Feegles. They are very funny. Unfortunately, nobody has yet made a movie or cartoon of them, unless you count The Smurfs, which I don't. Smurfs aren't drunk, exactly. And smurfs are red communists. Always reading that red book.
In "A Hat Full Of Sky", the Mac Feegles are looking after an 11 year old girl who has just been taken on as an apprentice Witch. In Discworld, witches are about knowing stuff, and most of their magic is knowing answers others don't, often by paying more attention. They also act as midwives, make medicines and pain relievers, and pass along food people pay them with to those less fortunate, who repay the favor later on. It all balances out, so they say. Some witches in discworld are single. Some marry. Some marry many times. Some have quite a few children, so the term grandmother is literal, but all witches over 30 get called grandmother, and bow rather than curtsey because they have to do things differently. The pointy hat is compulsory identification and saves time, like a badge of office. The witches often say that they say the most by speaking the least, and resolve disputes best with a firm look. In villages with fewer homes than you can count on the fingers of both hands, they are the law, the mayor, the govt, and the doctor. Discworld witches are practical in all the ways that hippies aren't. I despise hippies. They were hypocrites and monsters when I was a child, and they haven't changed today. This is a real shame, but I shouldn't be surprised. Their nature is selfish, after all. They, of course, deny this.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Friday, March 28, 2014
Movie: 100 Below
Ever watch a 1 star movie for a laugh? I do. Its a habit I picked up from running out of anime to watch, back when you had to rent it, and then renting bad Jackie Chan Kung Fu movies, and laughing at them. 100 Below was like this. Made with a budget of nearly thousands (of Francs) and with acting like you'd get in a high school play I felt the need to paraphrase most of the "dialog" they mumbled and turned that 90 minutes of digital snow into these key phrases:
Why are there trees on Iceland, the island famous for having no trees and no wild animals whatsoever. This footage looks like Wyoming. Oh look, there's a sudden freak volcano.
"Ah! I have a concussion again. Why do I keep falling down? Why don't I have a helmet? And a coat? It is cold. Why can't you run, sister who looks nothing like me whatsoever?"
"Why? Concussion! Need Helmet! And I smell like dog shit. What did I fall in?"
"Oh good, coats. Leave the gun behind. People are acting crazy so we totally won't need it."
"Hey, French soldier! Why aren't you running away? And why are you shooting at priority rescue civilians? Are you stupid? We're going to the Louvre? Why? And who builds a hospital out of tents at the Louvre, which is covered in glass and having literally no hospital supplies, nor does it have a landing field for the helicopters you said are flying us out of Paris despite apparently nobody being in Paris instead of the 20 million usually teeming around. With all their cars that still work despite the snow that doesn't seem to be accumulating on the roads and streets. So why are we flying? Oh hey, we just drove past a hospital."
"Yay! We're driving through the channel tunnel road in an earthquake. Oh look, the tunnel is cracking. Digital water! Go faster!"
"I can't. This is a French car. It's floored. 45 mph is as fast as a Peugeot city car hatchback goes."
"Wasn't this titled 100 Below? It's just snowing. Why are we driving on grass with 6 inches of snow on it? What happened to the freeway? I'm sure they have freeways in France. I saw them on Top Gear."
"Why does this NATO air base have no fence around it? And only one guard? And one hanger and its painted white? Where did the 6 foot long icicles come from if its 100 Below and never got a chance to melt because the hanger is unheated. And why are you trying to start a helicopter inside a hanger? You tow those outside, dumbass. You just said you're a pilot. Oh, look, the only guy at the whole base was conveniently killed by the falling icicle after opening the door so we don't have to get out."
"Now we're flying in heavy snow and volcanic ash in a soviet Hind helicopter from a NATO airbase for no possible reason I can think of."
Oh look, the teenagers got mugged. Good thing they didn't keep that gun!
"Hey, Dad is coming to the Eiffel Tower with a helicopter. Let's climb up it for no explainable reason instead of wave your bright hot pink shirt to get their attention in this large cleared area where they could land and we can get ON the chopper and fly away into this snow storm. Because it doesn't have a heater, probably. And we gave our coats to the French muggers with two by fours. Because we left that gun, and the two soldiers guns, back there. Because we didn't need them."
"Hey did you know the Eiffel Tower is made out of cast iron and brittle as heck? And its bolted together. And totally cannot take earthquakes. We should totally GO HIGHER up the tower to the observation platform. Oh look, its a snow tornado, because you can get tornados in a blizzard, and there's a helicopter. Why is dad flying a Hind? That's really weird. And is that step-mom just older than we are? Huh. Oh good, let's slide down this wire instead of get onto the helicopter from the ground. Wee! How in hell did that work. Oh, we're crashing."
"Okay, it is snowing in Europe for the next 2 years. There's only ONE plane leaving ONE NATO base, going to Australia on ONE tank of gas. Off we go!"
"See Dad, hitting on women everywhere I go has landed me a hot girlfriend whose life I saved, gave her my coat, and watched her coat get stolen by French muggers in the tunnels under Paris, still strangely lighted despite the power being out everywhere else."
"There is one thing I learned. I got concussions everywhere. I am never leaving home without a helmet again!"
Fade to credit reel, all Russians and John Rhys Davis who is NOT the Monarch of the Sea, nor a dwarf with an axe and looked quite regretful to be the only star in this high school drama.
I am sure this won't be the end of his career. Sometimes you do a film on a bet, or because of bad debts you owed to Russian Mafiya. And this paid it off.
Why are there trees on Iceland, the island famous for having no trees and no wild animals whatsoever. This footage looks like Wyoming. Oh look, there's a sudden freak volcano.
"Ah! I have a concussion again. Why do I keep falling down? Why don't I have a helmet? And a coat? It is cold. Why can't you run, sister who looks nothing like me whatsoever?"
"Why? Concussion! Need Helmet! And I smell like dog shit. What did I fall in?"
"Oh good, coats. Leave the gun behind. People are acting crazy so we totally won't need it."
"Hey, French soldier! Why aren't you running away? And why are you shooting at priority rescue civilians? Are you stupid? We're going to the Louvre? Why? And who builds a hospital out of tents at the Louvre, which is covered in glass and having literally no hospital supplies, nor does it have a landing field for the helicopters you said are flying us out of Paris despite apparently nobody being in Paris instead of the 20 million usually teeming around. With all their cars that still work despite the snow that doesn't seem to be accumulating on the roads and streets. So why are we flying? Oh hey, we just drove past a hospital."
"Yay! We're driving through the channel tunnel road in an earthquake. Oh look, the tunnel is cracking. Digital water! Go faster!"
"I can't. This is a French car. It's floored. 45 mph is as fast as a Peugeot city car hatchback goes."
"Wasn't this titled 100 Below? It's just snowing. Why are we driving on grass with 6 inches of snow on it? What happened to the freeway? I'm sure they have freeways in France. I saw them on Top Gear."
"Why does this NATO air base have no fence around it? And only one guard? And one hanger and its painted white? Where did the 6 foot long icicles come from if its 100 Below and never got a chance to melt because the hanger is unheated. And why are you trying to start a helicopter inside a hanger? You tow those outside, dumbass. You just said you're a pilot. Oh, look, the only guy at the whole base was conveniently killed by the falling icicle after opening the door so we don't have to get out."
"Now we're flying in heavy snow and volcanic ash in a soviet Hind helicopter from a NATO airbase for no possible reason I can think of."
Oh look, the teenagers got mugged. Good thing they didn't keep that gun!
"Hey, Dad is coming to the Eiffel Tower with a helicopter. Let's climb up it for no explainable reason instead of wave your bright hot pink shirt to get their attention in this large cleared area where they could land and we can get ON the chopper and fly away into this snow storm. Because it doesn't have a heater, probably. And we gave our coats to the French muggers with two by fours. Because we left that gun, and the two soldiers guns, back there. Because we didn't need them."
"Hey did you know the Eiffel Tower is made out of cast iron and brittle as heck? And its bolted together. And totally cannot take earthquakes. We should totally GO HIGHER up the tower to the observation platform. Oh look, its a snow tornado, because you can get tornados in a blizzard, and there's a helicopter. Why is dad flying a Hind? That's really weird. And is that step-mom just older than we are? Huh. Oh good, let's slide down this wire instead of get onto the helicopter from the ground. Wee! How in hell did that work. Oh, we're crashing."
"Okay, it is snowing in Europe for the next 2 years. There's only ONE plane leaving ONE NATO base, going to Australia on ONE tank of gas. Off we go!"
"See Dad, hitting on women everywhere I go has landed me a hot girlfriend whose life I saved, gave her my coat, and watched her coat get stolen by French muggers in the tunnels under Paris, still strangely lighted despite the power being out everywhere else."
"There is one thing I learned. I got concussions everywhere. I am never leaving home without a helmet again!"
Fade to credit reel, all Russians and John Rhys Davis who is NOT the Monarch of the Sea, nor a dwarf with an axe and looked quite regretful to be the only star in this high school drama.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Pies
The town of Grass Valley has a substantial Cornish population. The Cornish miners imported for the Empire Mine and several of the others, which operated until 1937 pulling gold out beneath my feet, and has left another $4 billion dollars still down there, at current market price, brought their own cuisine to the area. You can still buy Pasties at a couple local shops and many cafes sell them too. A pastie, not to be confused with a pasty which is a sort of ornamental adult jewelry worn by strippers (not the kind that remove paint), a pastie is a type of pie with the crust folded over and pinched shut. It is sustaining food. You make the crust a bit tougher by briefly kneading it, and wrap it around a filling usually made by a semi-dry stew mixture of diced beef and potatoes, usually with herbs too. The steam from the potatoes cooks the beef and the crust keeps the heat inside.
Cornish wives would rise early, bake pasties for most of an hour in an oven, and then load them and some other things to eat, and a tub of hot tea, into a stacked lunchpail that their mining husband and the older sons, into the mines with them. They'd set down for lunch at some junction, covered in rock dust, smelling explosives and quietly praying that the water pumps don't turn off, and that they don't hit a bad gas pocket that will asphyxiate them all. Mining is dangerous. And it pays really poorly. Gas is more of an issue in coal mining rather than gold mining. Gold tends to be in granite, so the danger is more from flooding and explosions gone wrong. And deafness from the drills. It is a loud business, mining gold. The good old days of rocker arms and pneumonia and laudanum addiction were well past by 1937. It was a modern time of cyanide leaching ponds, hammer mills, Pelton-wheel driven water power, and eventually Gold was extracted, sealed up in a box, and shipped down in a locked box on an armed stagecoach or train, to San Francisco, where the Mint would coin it or store it as bullion bars.
Gold is rare, shiny, and valuable because it reacts to nothing, though it does alloy with Silver, and spontaneously melts in Mercury, which is one of the elements you can sometimes use to find a Gold mine, the hydrothermal kind associated with hot springs. The local gold was found with tin and silver and antimony (similar to tin but different element) and arsenic. Most of the gold and other metals are the last things to react out as underground magma cooled during the formation of the granite depths of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. They tend to stay with the quartz and sulphates and then burst into cracks when the quartz and water do something called Second Boiling, a chemical reaction which tends to be explosive and is currently causing earthquakes under The Geysers as well as Long Valley Caldera, feared by the curious but not going to erupt again. The magma source is cut off so its just cooling into a nice granite down there. No more supervolcano eruptions in Long Valley. Sorry. If you are interested in those, Yellowstone would be your culprit.
I appreciate a pastie, done properly. They are difficult to cool fast enough to avoid food poisoning, which means they really should be eaten fresh, not reheated after freezing. While traditional pasties are meat and potatoes, older varieties could be apples or pears or peaches or raisins. Since the crust is relatively strong, you were after the filling anyway, and it was proper Medieval Warm Period food, you know, that time there's a ton of tapestries and historical records about but the Cult of Global Climate tries to ignore because it makes them look stupid. I'm just glad that these records exist. I especially like the one based on salt cod barrels from the shoals of Iceland. Kept the Vikings busy doing honest work instead of raiding and such, and the English and Scots bought this cod and learned to like it. Same as the sardines caught off the central California coast got canned in Monterey and shipped to Ireland and England for Kippers breakfast in 1900. We fed Great Britain instead of letting them suffer famine. We also overfished. Sardines are a good pie filling too, apparently. If you find yourself with a lot of spare time and some leftover stew, you can make a pie crust and fold in the filling to make a pastie.
Doesn't that look tasty? Better than a burger. Sticks to your ribs. Stays hot inside for hours.
Cornish wives would rise early, bake pasties for most of an hour in an oven, and then load them and some other things to eat, and a tub of hot tea, into a stacked lunchpail that their mining husband and the older sons, into the mines with them. They'd set down for lunch at some junction, covered in rock dust, smelling explosives and quietly praying that the water pumps don't turn off, and that they don't hit a bad gas pocket that will asphyxiate them all. Mining is dangerous. And it pays really poorly. Gas is more of an issue in coal mining rather than gold mining. Gold tends to be in granite, so the danger is more from flooding and explosions gone wrong. And deafness from the drills. It is a loud business, mining gold. The good old days of rocker arms and pneumonia and laudanum addiction were well past by 1937. It was a modern time of cyanide leaching ponds, hammer mills, Pelton-wheel driven water power, and eventually Gold was extracted, sealed up in a box, and shipped down in a locked box on an armed stagecoach or train, to San Francisco, where the Mint would coin it or store it as bullion bars.
Gold is rare, shiny, and valuable because it reacts to nothing, though it does alloy with Silver, and spontaneously melts in Mercury, which is one of the elements you can sometimes use to find a Gold mine, the hydrothermal kind associated with hot springs. The local gold was found with tin and silver and antimony (similar to tin but different element) and arsenic. Most of the gold and other metals are the last things to react out as underground magma cooled during the formation of the granite depths of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. They tend to stay with the quartz and sulphates and then burst into cracks when the quartz and water do something called Second Boiling, a chemical reaction which tends to be explosive and is currently causing earthquakes under The Geysers as well as Long Valley Caldera, feared by the curious but not going to erupt again. The magma source is cut off so its just cooling into a nice granite down there. No more supervolcano eruptions in Long Valley. Sorry. If you are interested in those, Yellowstone would be your culprit.
I appreciate a pastie, done properly. They are difficult to cool fast enough to avoid food poisoning, which means they really should be eaten fresh, not reheated after freezing. While traditional pasties are meat and potatoes, older varieties could be apples or pears or peaches or raisins. Since the crust is relatively strong, you were after the filling anyway, and it was proper Medieval Warm Period food, you know, that time there's a ton of tapestries and historical records about but the Cult of Global Climate tries to ignore because it makes them look stupid. I'm just glad that these records exist. I especially like the one based on salt cod barrels from the shoals of Iceland. Kept the Vikings busy doing honest work instead of raiding and such, and the English and Scots bought this cod and learned to like it. Same as the sardines caught off the central California coast got canned in Monterey and shipped to Ireland and England for Kippers breakfast in 1900. We fed Great Britain instead of letting them suffer famine. We also overfished. Sardines are a good pie filling too, apparently. If you find yourself with a lot of spare time and some leftover stew, you can make a pie crust and fold in the filling to make a pastie.
Cyberpunks of Yesterday's Tomorrows
There's a website called The Verge (not to be confused with The Verve), which posted an interesting article about the recent recovery of Cyberpunk, not as writing or futurism so much as photography posted on Tumblr. And isn't that weird. As a member of the cyberpunk movement back in the 1990's and someone who got into the internet on the ground floor, from before people had computers because they weren't graphic yet, to the various iterations of Netscape Navigator and the Dot.com boom and bust and Y2K, GIS, and cellular phones with wireless data... smartphones are now everywhere, soccer mom's are using cybertechnology more powerful than we could imagine back in 1994, and the alienation caused by technology sort of evaporated. Wireless data is easy. Getting an electric car with real battery capacity when lithium is headed for precious metals index pricing... well, cyberpunk's flashy bits of technology means we're SOL. Those flying cars with antigravity aren't happening. And post-oil means the high energy future is going to be rather dusty, populated with lots of bicycles, and you can't have total control when you can't get there to impose your will, much less get past the power outages. Cyberpunk died. Now it's just art.
I have to agree that I got suitably tired of black leather coats and dusters by the time Matrix came out, and its not something I ever took to wearing once I could afford it. I did like my Wife's old army jacket, but that was mostly because it was really comfortable and waterproof enough for drizzly weather. Leather is the wrong thing for real weather.
The cyberpunk obsession with guns is mostly out of ignorance. Video games and Hollywood movies make it look so easy, but hitting stuff you aim at is actually hard. And getting consistent ammunition requires more effort than a Mall Ninja is ready to put into, what is basically, a fashion statement with murderous implications. I don't like those kinds of people. The great strength of scifi authors is admitting that if there's going to be science in their scifi, they'd better study well the subjects they're writing about. Most authors just want the cool scene, the pose. They loved The Matrix even though it isn't science and badly fails basic math like everything in Hollywood, which is leading to Video Games leaving Hollywood to sullenly pout, alone and unwanted while video games have higher production values and profits. Funny how that is.
Who needs cyberpunk anymore? We live there. Your car has more computing power than the space shuttle. And your video game console's graphics processor is more teraflops than a 90's supercomputer. Suck on that. We live in the future. There is no "punk" in the cyber. Its just people, being people. And modern people are worse than the villains of 80's scifi. More callous, more cruel, more indifferent, more abusive, more disrespectful. Its not what we thought it would be. That's the trouble with Yesterday's Tomorrows. They become interesting footnotes of our own naïve imaginings. How messed up is that?
I have to agree that I got suitably tired of black leather coats and dusters by the time Matrix came out, and its not something I ever took to wearing once I could afford it. I did like my Wife's old army jacket, but that was mostly because it was really comfortable and waterproof enough for drizzly weather. Leather is the wrong thing for real weather.
The cyberpunk obsession with guns is mostly out of ignorance. Video games and Hollywood movies make it look so easy, but hitting stuff you aim at is actually hard. And getting consistent ammunition requires more effort than a Mall Ninja is ready to put into, what is basically, a fashion statement with murderous implications. I don't like those kinds of people. The great strength of scifi authors is admitting that if there's going to be science in their scifi, they'd better study well the subjects they're writing about. Most authors just want the cool scene, the pose. They loved The Matrix even though it isn't science and badly fails basic math like everything in Hollywood, which is leading to Video Games leaving Hollywood to sullenly pout, alone and unwanted while video games have higher production values and profits. Funny how that is.
Who needs cyberpunk anymore? We live there. Your car has more computing power than the space shuttle. And your video game console's graphics processor is more teraflops than a 90's supercomputer. Suck on that. We live in the future. There is no "punk" in the cyber. Its just people, being people. And modern people are worse than the villains of 80's scifi. More callous, more cruel, more indifferent, more abusive, more disrespectful. Its not what we thought it would be. That's the trouble with Yesterday's Tomorrows. They become interesting footnotes of our own naïve imaginings. How messed up is that?
ANIME: Disappointments
There are a lot of good anime, if you focus on Slice Of Life genre. Non Non Biyori is both adorably moe and a surprisingly beautiful, scenic look at modern rural life in Japan.
Unfortunately, for every gem like Servant Service, you get a dog like Galilei Donna. The sisters of Galilei, descended from Galileo in a modern ice age, COULD HAVE BEEN a fascinating Japanese take on Girl Genius, which is what the first pilot episode implied. Instead it was a redshirt slaughter fest that never redeemed itself. I was quite disappointed. Unbreakable Machine Dolls could have been a fun one about AIs but ended up being another slaughterfest and it was grotesque. The best part of that show was the cheery end credit music.
Most people cite the violent dismemberment and carnage inflicted on Asuka in Evangelion as Anime's LOWEST BLOW, and resulted in actual serious death threats against the director. Some naturally some idiot decided to go a step worse and take Robotics; Notes and do something similar, though with less reason. What could have been a playful story about geocaching and Augmented Reality GPS games, and early primitive robotics instead became a vicious and bloody conspiracy murder-power plot. Completely unnecessary. There was enough plot in the games and setting without bothering with actual murders. And they viciously murdered a good character I liked, killed her for no good reason. This is an author who needs to be groin kicked.
I liked that there was a wild programmer hiding inside a computer building coding games. I don't like that they decided to give her a tragic backstory. It wasn't necessary. Otaku programmers are already a tragic backstory. If they had left the data found through the geocaching as a GAME instead of actual data, and if it had been pursued as a game someone put too much time into, as a sort of historical anomaly, and the reason the officials warn them off being that the guy responsible was seriously nuts and killed himself when nobody wanted to promote it because it was nuts, that would have been enough darkness and tied everything back into the AR games the Otaku writes, and could have been used to help drag her back into reality and becoming a useful member of society that has friendships with other people. That would have been a suitable plot appropriate to the audience and material. Instead of the high pressure bloody spray it turned into. What were you thinking?
Apparently the same thing as they were thinking when they took Steins;Gate and turned it from an amusing tale about crazy time travelers who aren't always hallucinating and murdered a crucial moe character so you could tell it was serious. Same people, if you can call them that. I dumped that show for the same reason. I must avoid this studio if they're going to keep pulling this crap. Face punching is needed. Do Japanese express their outrage by repeated face punching, like Americans do?
See that banana? That was amusing. So why go murder the moe chick? There was no point other than viciousness. Who watches that? Who rewards that? And are there really enough fans to justify making such a series of murder programs into children's anime? And Japan wonders why we don't close our military bases there, as if they're vicious and liable to attack their neighbors. Steins Gate and Robotics Notes rather proves my point.
And keep in mind I steer clear of the boys anime which are mostly a series of ever-more-vicious bloodbaths of ego and violence. It is like Japan is trying to breed more violence in its sons, in hopes of restoring the murderers to power that wrecked the country in WW2. Their refusal to punish rape as a real crime when committed by a Japanese male (its serious when someone foreign does it) with maximum penalty merely 2 years in Japanese prison, a sentence rarely handed out, and maximum fines of $20K. That says a great deal about a country. Yep, so our bases aren't going away. And Japan will become more Korean, quietly, as their racist and insane population die off. And their young women move to California. They are welcome here. We don't expect them to look after our parents or be a perfect housewife. This is a shame, too, because Japan's interior is largely empty, and while there are lots of densely populated towns and cities, there are also lots of fields and land to be cultivated. If only farming paid. This is the upside of gems like Silver Spoon and No-Rin, which are both anime about farming, because they show the heartache of failure as well as the joys of success. Farming is intensely risky, and the smart money is planting without getting a loan or risking your own land. It is being very safe so when disaster hits, as it can only hit in farming, you don't lose your farm, just your shirt.
The good shows from Japan are charming and beautiful and I wish them the best. The bad shows bother me that they exist at all. Do the Japanese not understand what that says about their culture? Do they not understand this is why they are imprisoned for the next few centuries, to prevent WW2 ever happening again.
Unfortunately, for every gem like Servant Service, you get a dog like Galilei Donna. The sisters of Galilei, descended from Galileo in a modern ice age, COULD HAVE BEEN a fascinating Japanese take on Girl Genius, which is what the first pilot episode implied. Instead it was a redshirt slaughter fest that never redeemed itself. I was quite disappointed. Unbreakable Machine Dolls could have been a fun one about AIs but ended up being another slaughterfest and it was grotesque. The best part of that show was the cheery end credit music.
Apparently the same thing as they were thinking when they took Steins;Gate and turned it from an amusing tale about crazy time travelers who aren't always hallucinating and murdered a crucial moe character so you could tell it was serious. Same people, if you can call them that. I dumped that show for the same reason. I must avoid this studio if they're going to keep pulling this crap. Face punching is needed. Do Japanese express their outrage by repeated face punching, like Americans do?
And keep in mind I steer clear of the boys anime which are mostly a series of ever-more-vicious bloodbaths of ego and violence. It is like Japan is trying to breed more violence in its sons, in hopes of restoring the murderers to power that wrecked the country in WW2. Their refusal to punish rape as a real crime when committed by a Japanese male (its serious when someone foreign does it) with maximum penalty merely 2 years in Japanese prison, a sentence rarely handed out, and maximum fines of $20K. That says a great deal about a country. Yep, so our bases aren't going away. And Japan will become more Korean, quietly, as their racist and insane population die off. And their young women move to California. They are welcome here. We don't expect them to look after our parents or be a perfect housewife. This is a shame, too, because Japan's interior is largely empty, and while there are lots of densely populated towns and cities, there are also lots of fields and land to be cultivated. If only farming paid. This is the upside of gems like Silver Spoon and No-Rin, which are both anime about farming, because they show the heartache of failure as well as the joys of success. Farming is intensely risky, and the smart money is planting without getting a loan or risking your own land. It is being very safe so when disaster hits, as it can only hit in farming, you don't lose your farm, just your shirt.
The good shows from Japan are charming and beautiful and I wish them the best. The bad shows bother me that they exist at all. Do the Japanese not understand what that says about their culture? Do they not understand this is why they are imprisoned for the next few centuries, to prevent WW2 ever happening again.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
WINE: Tarkettle Road Zinfandel
So ironically, the hard labor of shelving books has made my body sore enough to justify the use of alcohol to soothe my muscles, which does work. Lactic acid from serious exercise damages your muscles, which makes your muscles create more muscle fiber in response, making your stronger. As I work for 6 hours at my volunteer job shelving books, which rather impresses the librarians who are ladies and rather exhausted minding the front desk and answering questions for library patrons, my shelving the books so they don't have to deal with it is a huge weight off their shoulders.
So Dad and I lucked into a rare vintage called Tarkettle Road Zinfandel, from Lodi. Lodi is a smelly place between Sacramento and Stockton. You can tell you're in Lodi because the silage stink is so foul you curse out loud and reach for the Air Recirculate button on your car dashboard, but it is always too late. The stink is inside. You can't escape except by driving away several more miles and opening it again. Sigh. Silage is nasty. I doubt the cows like it much either. Cows are easy to understand. They aren't nice, and I always feel glad to eat them because I was raised next to a cattle ranch, so I have no illusions about nobility or other ignorant crap. Anyone calling a cow noble needs to have their face shoved in some cowpies. Cows are mean creatures. Eating them is doing them a favor. The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe has an ideal cow. One that will nip off and shoot itself so you can eat it. And is glad that you will. That's how a cow should be. Not viciously hoping to gore you. Like real cows.
This Zinfandel from Lodi is good, once you let it breathe, as in oxygenate, and goes well with beef, as in steak or ribs or hamburger or various other cuts of beef. Beef and wine are happy friends. And beef is happy to be roasted or BBQ'ed and devoured by the one clever enough to buy it, rub it in spices, and cook it properly. California is all about the good beef, the good cheese, the good wine, and the good beer. We are also about the avocado and the Spanish style architecture. Cordelia Chase may be a total bitch in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she's a fairly accurate rendition of a Socal Princess, even if the actress is from Las Vegas, and is a mix of Cherokee and Mexican. I wouldn't throw her out of bed. Charisma Carpenter is a Beautiful Woman. I wonder if she likes steak and zinfandel?
So Dad and I lucked into a rare vintage called Tarkettle Road Zinfandel, from Lodi. Lodi is a smelly place between Sacramento and Stockton. You can tell you're in Lodi because the silage stink is so foul you curse out loud and reach for the Air Recirculate button on your car dashboard, but it is always too late. The stink is inside. You can't escape except by driving away several more miles and opening it again. Sigh. Silage is nasty. I doubt the cows like it much either. Cows are easy to understand. They aren't nice, and I always feel glad to eat them because I was raised next to a cattle ranch, so I have no illusions about nobility or other ignorant crap. Anyone calling a cow noble needs to have their face shoved in some cowpies. Cows are mean creatures. Eating them is doing them a favor. The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe has an ideal cow. One that will nip off and shoot itself so you can eat it. And is glad that you will. That's how a cow should be. Not viciously hoping to gore you. Like real cows.
This Zinfandel from Lodi is good, once you let it breathe, as in oxygenate, and goes well with beef, as in steak or ribs or hamburger or various other cuts of beef. Beef and wine are happy friends. And beef is happy to be roasted or BBQ'ed and devoured by the one clever enough to buy it, rub it in spices, and cook it properly. California is all about the good beef, the good cheese, the good wine, and the good beer. We are also about the avocado and the Spanish style architecture. Cordelia Chase may be a total bitch in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she's a fairly accurate rendition of a Socal Princess, even if the actress is from Las Vegas, and is a mix of Cherokee and Mexican. I wouldn't throw her out of bed. Charisma Carpenter is a Beautiful Woman. I wonder if she likes steak and zinfandel?
Friday, March 21, 2014
The Cycle of Collapse
Humans are cockroaches. We survive everything. Even fallen cities had survivors. They probably went somewhere else, and fallen cities tend to be places where the payment for janitorial services was missed so they stopped being repaired and nature did the rest. And nature is an aggressive SOB. You can lose a paved road in about 5 years, just from windblown seeds and water. So its not all pillaging and fire and teeming hordes of barbarians. People love to talk about the Roman empire falling, yet they tend to be the less educated so don't realize it took about 400 years to collapse. Stair step after stair step, generation after generation, values declining and being discarded until what made it an Empire didn't exist there anymore.
Discover Magazine online posted an article which is kinda sloppily written titled: Society Is Doomed. It's the usual limited drivel about the diverse causes of collapse. The truth is a lot simpler. Societies collapse because there's drought. Its always about famine. Drought leads to crop failure and no civilization is more than three meals from rebellion. Remember that phrase. It's true. The article is another one of those thinly veiled diatribes that we should all be liberals and peg our hopes to egalitarianism, or authoritarianism by the enlightened, specially educated liberal tyrants like we've got in charge now, running this country into the ground. Of course. The thing about insane loyalty is it is insane.
The good news is that collapse is inevitable. Only Water Monopolies last, because they can open or close a canal gate and a million lives are lost through deliberate famine. This is the population control aspect. But collapse comes due to lack of drinking water to irrigate crops. What if you don't have to depend on nature to provide that water? What if you can get it out of the ocean, cheap enough to use it to grow food? This is why I keep harping on Cheap Desalination. It is the second best protection from famine, and prevents collapse by buffering water supply. I feel the same way about wild game, and terraced fields and dredging reservoirs and planting wild orchards and heritage seeds in places where they'll self-cultivate. Do this everywhere. Refill the fossil aquifers so all those abandoned farms in the Dakotas and Nebraska can be used again, growing grain. Apply the same technology and efforts to fixing soil and water supplies so everywhere dry can be growing food. Just because we have enough to eat doesn't mean we'll be breeding like rats in Riyadh. Raising kids is a lot of work. A bit of a bother. And they kill themselves off doing "Hey bubba, watch this!" stunts so not all of them live long enough to have more rats, I mean kids of their own. Environmentalists believe that the entire human population should be what we had in the Stone Age, with no technology beyond fire and skins and stone tools. True Luddism couched in angry hatred for the rest of us. If that isn't selfish, I don't know what is. This is a good reason to ignore the buggers.
I would like for California, where I live, to get serious about cheap desalination, starting in Los Angeles where they get only 11 inches of rain a year, enough for 150,000 people yet they have 12 million living there. Most of their water comes from up here and is pumped uphill and over a couple passes to reach LA where it tastes terrible and is loaded with poisons which are likely responsible for the violence there. LA has great weather, since it rarely rains, and it's warm. It needs to get it's water from the Sea. This should be a priority and should be implemented very soon, using no petrochemicals, because we're going to ship those to China as long as they can pay. Since Malaysian Muslims just (two weeks ago) murdered 237 Chinese citizens for some reason, I'm thinking China may get peeved about it. The Chinese coast gets lots of rain. Inland is where the deserts lie, and has had some form of aquifer, mostly man-made, for a couple thousand years. In the last few years, the Chinese started bulldozing them in order to sell more bottled water. Corruption in China is so well understand they plan for it. The very nature of Confucian Philosophy is that. The Uighur Muslims of Western China getting screwed over by the Commissar with the brother in law in the bottled water business was cited as the reason for the Hijacking. That this story leaked several years ago, and the Chinese have done NOTHING but make it worse, it could lead to retaliation. That's probably speculation, but maybe it's true. Cheap Desalination won't do much for the Uighurs, but it will do wonders for the West Africans, for the Sahara, for Peru and Chile and Ecuador, and for Baja Mexico which would be transformed by cheap water for agriculture. Right now, Baja Mexico is a 1500 mile long peninsula surrounded by warm seas, with mountains tall enough to get snow, and dry as a bone most of the year. What little water they get is usually from broken up hurricanes that reform after crossing Central America from the Caribbean and end up becoming pretty thunderstorms in the desert Southwest of the USA after dumping some heavy rain as it drifts up the Sea of Cortez like angry wasps. This is a useful stretch of land, provided you can get water there. The desert soil will grow good crops, if there is water. This is one of the ironies of the desert. While some parts are unusable due to excess calcite, other parts are extremely fertile. The Sahara blooms with 1-3 inches of rain. The Mojave is the same. Small amounts of water and stored seeds erupt, grow, pollinate, and drop new seeds in a matter of a week or two for the next annual rain. Rather amazing resilience. Osage Oranges are a nasty orange ball of fiber meant to be eaten and carried by mastodons, now extinct, yet have managed to hang on despite lacking their natural seed spreading mechanism. Nothing else would eat them.
I think, if the USA breaks up, states like California and Arizona and Texas, all having close ties with Mexico despite pretending to resent each other, may find themselves entrepenuers building cheap desalination and selling it to rich farmers or businesses interested in agriculture to start developing the exceedingly cheap coastline down in Baja. With work, it will bloom. And food is money. People always want money.
So when articles tell me that humans are just going to slaughter each other in an endless cycle of collapse because it always happens like that, I laugh. Cheap Desalination is already happening. We likely won't do it with the current Nihilists in charge of govt turning us on each other like starving dogs. We'll do it for our own profit as this Union fails and the Nation becomes independent states, bonded by trade agreements rather than endless turning the other cheek so some Eastern Bastard can feel smug. Hell with them. California Republic should be finding the cheap ways to make seawater fresh and strengthen its natural resource so when harder times come, they aren't so bad.
This is also why I think we should legalize cheap scooters properly and make that the first option, not $15 million dollar bus stops. How many scooters can you get for $15 million bucks? Scooters won't work in Wisconsin Winters, but I don't live in Wisconsin. I live in Sunny California. We care about Water, and our roads stay dry most of the year, and only a few places get icy. The rest of the state would work fine with scooters. I really wish the local bike shops offered a motorcycle safety training course here, so I don't have to drive down to Rocklin, which is 45 minutes in traffic, three days, and $300. Additional courses cost more commutes, more time, more money. It should be up here. There are people interested in it, even old people, who ride scooters because they would rather pay for a hundred tanks of gasoline to get 100 mpg scooter than grit their teeth filling their gas guzzlers. This is an easy answer to fuel economy. It should be the answer well before electric cars. You can buy your neighborhood scooters for the cost of one bus to carry them, nevermind the cost of the bus driver.
Collapse in modern times is idiotic. Adapt.
Discover Magazine online posted an article which is kinda sloppily written titled: Society Is Doomed. It's the usual limited drivel about the diverse causes of collapse. The truth is a lot simpler. Societies collapse because there's drought. Its always about famine. Drought leads to crop failure and no civilization is more than three meals from rebellion. Remember that phrase. It's true. The article is another one of those thinly veiled diatribes that we should all be liberals and peg our hopes to egalitarianism, or authoritarianism by the enlightened, specially educated liberal tyrants like we've got in charge now, running this country into the ground. Of course. The thing about insane loyalty is it is insane.
The good news is that collapse is inevitable. Only Water Monopolies last, because they can open or close a canal gate and a million lives are lost through deliberate famine. This is the population control aspect. But collapse comes due to lack of drinking water to irrigate crops. What if you don't have to depend on nature to provide that water? What if you can get it out of the ocean, cheap enough to use it to grow food? This is why I keep harping on Cheap Desalination. It is the second best protection from famine, and prevents collapse by buffering water supply. I feel the same way about wild game, and terraced fields and dredging reservoirs and planting wild orchards and heritage seeds in places where they'll self-cultivate. Do this everywhere. Refill the fossil aquifers so all those abandoned farms in the Dakotas and Nebraska can be used again, growing grain. Apply the same technology and efforts to fixing soil and water supplies so everywhere dry can be growing food. Just because we have enough to eat doesn't mean we'll be breeding like rats in Riyadh. Raising kids is a lot of work. A bit of a bother. And they kill themselves off doing "Hey bubba, watch this!" stunts so not all of them live long enough to have more rats, I mean kids of their own. Environmentalists believe that the entire human population should be what we had in the Stone Age, with no technology beyond fire and skins and stone tools. True Luddism couched in angry hatred for the rest of us. If that isn't selfish, I don't know what is. This is a good reason to ignore the buggers.
I would like for California, where I live, to get serious about cheap desalination, starting in Los Angeles where they get only 11 inches of rain a year, enough for 150,000 people yet they have 12 million living there. Most of their water comes from up here and is pumped uphill and over a couple passes to reach LA where it tastes terrible and is loaded with poisons which are likely responsible for the violence there. LA has great weather, since it rarely rains, and it's warm. It needs to get it's water from the Sea. This should be a priority and should be implemented very soon, using no petrochemicals, because we're going to ship those to China as long as they can pay. Since Malaysian Muslims just (two weeks ago) murdered 237 Chinese citizens for some reason, I'm thinking China may get peeved about it. The Chinese coast gets lots of rain. Inland is where the deserts lie, and has had some form of aquifer, mostly man-made, for a couple thousand years. In the last few years, the Chinese started bulldozing them in order to sell more bottled water. Corruption in China is so well understand they plan for it. The very nature of Confucian Philosophy is that. The Uighur Muslims of Western China getting screwed over by the Commissar with the brother in law in the bottled water business was cited as the reason for the Hijacking. That this story leaked several years ago, and the Chinese have done NOTHING but make it worse, it could lead to retaliation. That's probably speculation, but maybe it's true. Cheap Desalination won't do much for the Uighurs, but it will do wonders for the West Africans, for the Sahara, for Peru and Chile and Ecuador, and for Baja Mexico which would be transformed by cheap water for agriculture. Right now, Baja Mexico is a 1500 mile long peninsula surrounded by warm seas, with mountains tall enough to get snow, and dry as a bone most of the year. What little water they get is usually from broken up hurricanes that reform after crossing Central America from the Caribbean and end up becoming pretty thunderstorms in the desert Southwest of the USA after dumping some heavy rain as it drifts up the Sea of Cortez like angry wasps. This is a useful stretch of land, provided you can get water there. The desert soil will grow good crops, if there is water. This is one of the ironies of the desert. While some parts are unusable due to excess calcite, other parts are extremely fertile. The Sahara blooms with 1-3 inches of rain. The Mojave is the same. Small amounts of water and stored seeds erupt, grow, pollinate, and drop new seeds in a matter of a week or two for the next annual rain. Rather amazing resilience. Osage Oranges are a nasty orange ball of fiber meant to be eaten and carried by mastodons, now extinct, yet have managed to hang on despite lacking their natural seed spreading mechanism. Nothing else would eat them.
I think, if the USA breaks up, states like California and Arizona and Texas, all having close ties with Mexico despite pretending to resent each other, may find themselves entrepenuers building cheap desalination and selling it to rich farmers or businesses interested in agriculture to start developing the exceedingly cheap coastline down in Baja. With work, it will bloom. And food is money. People always want money.
So when articles tell me that humans are just going to slaughter each other in an endless cycle of collapse because it always happens like that, I laugh. Cheap Desalination is already happening. We likely won't do it with the current Nihilists in charge of govt turning us on each other like starving dogs. We'll do it for our own profit as this Union fails and the Nation becomes independent states, bonded by trade agreements rather than endless turning the other cheek so some Eastern Bastard can feel smug. Hell with them. California Republic should be finding the cheap ways to make seawater fresh and strengthen its natural resource so when harder times come, they aren't so bad.
This is also why I think we should legalize cheap scooters properly and make that the first option, not $15 million dollar bus stops. How many scooters can you get for $15 million bucks? Scooters won't work in Wisconsin Winters, but I don't live in Wisconsin. I live in Sunny California. We care about Water, and our roads stay dry most of the year, and only a few places get icy. The rest of the state would work fine with scooters. I really wish the local bike shops offered a motorcycle safety training course here, so I don't have to drive down to Rocklin, which is 45 minutes in traffic, three days, and $300. Additional courses cost more commutes, more time, more money. It should be up here. There are people interested in it, even old people, who ride scooters because they would rather pay for a hundred tanks of gasoline to get 100 mpg scooter than grit their teeth filling their gas guzzlers. This is an easy answer to fuel economy. It should be the answer well before electric cars. You can buy your neighborhood scooters for the cost of one bus to carry them, nevermind the cost of the bus driver.
Collapse in modern times is idiotic. Adapt.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Flowers
It's another Spring day. Dad and I are planting flowers, marigolds to be specific, 4 inch tall ones from 6-packs at Kmart, $24 on sale for a flat. That is pretty cheap. The bed we cleared of Day Lillies, overgrown and nipped at by the local mule deer (aka Columbia Blacktails), will be holding a thick bed of bright orange marigolds. It is about 1/3 planted now. We worked till we got tired, about a hour later.
First we waited for it to warm up. Then we worked in the sun, but all the bending and stooping and working the narrow shovel into the soil to churn it up so the plant can put its roots out, and mix in some fertilizer to help that, its work. You stir it up with the shovel, then push it aside deep in the dirt to make a space for the plant. When you pull the shovel out, the plant sinks another inch and you can shift the pellets of dirt around it safely, then water it in.
I'm still sore from the Library yesterday. I'm in kinda weak shape lately. It's middle age, I guess. The library is lots of moving around compared to writing here at my desk. I polished discs of audio books, and some movies too. They have Big Trouble In Little China. They have quite a few slightly older movies there, in the collection. Classics, basically.
I think the marigolds will look nice next to the growing hedge of carefully trimmed Rosemary. The bees certainly like it, and keeping bees alive is a good thing. The local rosemary attracts both native bees and honeybees, and we've got lots of them out there right now. Spring is lovely in the mountains. Make a point of seeing it in all its glory because summer comes on hard and hot around here. Before we know it, it will be too hot to be outside after 10 AM. That's just how things are.
First we waited for it to warm up. Then we worked in the sun, but all the bending and stooping and working the narrow shovel into the soil to churn it up so the plant can put its roots out, and mix in some fertilizer to help that, its work. You stir it up with the shovel, then push it aside deep in the dirt to make a space for the plant. When you pull the shovel out, the plant sinks another inch and you can shift the pellets of dirt around it safely, then water it in.
I'm still sore from the Library yesterday. I'm in kinda weak shape lately. It's middle age, I guess. The library is lots of moving around compared to writing here at my desk. I polished discs of audio books, and some movies too. They have Big Trouble In Little China. They have quite a few slightly older movies there, in the collection. Classics, basically.
I think the marigolds will look nice next to the growing hedge of carefully trimmed Rosemary. The bees certainly like it, and keeping bees alive is a good thing. The local rosemary attracts both native bees and honeybees, and we've got lots of them out there right now. Spring is lovely in the mountains. Make a point of seeing it in all its glory because summer comes on hard and hot around here. Before we know it, it will be too hot to be outside after 10 AM. That's just how things are.
Pork and Apples
My Dad's father is from the South. Mom is from the South as well. The South has some particular traditions. One of them is cheese with apple pie. Another is growing your own food, which is actually possible there since until recently hard frosts and snow weren't common outside the actual winter months. One of the traditions, passed down from Britain, is the use of apples baked with pork or a roast pig. Pigs were slaughtered and roasted in several common celebrations, most important being that if Midwinter Feast, which happened around January 12th. The Catholics combined it with the Winter Solstice of December 22nd and shifted the days around further which is why you eat Ham on Christmas. This is one of those truths displayed in The Hogfather, btw. It's a bit of Gaelic history, and it matters to about 400 million people. Ham or pork, and apples go together well. While the Hawaiians serve pork with pineapple, which is even better but popularized to promote agriculture in Hawaii and promote Dole Inc and make them some money, proper apples, originally from Kazakhstan up against the western slope of the Himalayas, were sour, bitter, inedible messes. The thing is, rarely, they'd have a sweet one. Or a sweet branch. And grafting from those branches is how we've got orchards. These are clones.
All the bad apples, the ones that are sour and bitter, aren't completely useless if you don't eat them. Johnny Appleseed isn't a myth. He was a real person. The trouble is, the seeds he planted only sprouted up SOUR apples, the kind you can't eat, so what he did was crazy and useless. Not that a child understands this. Even the seed of a sweet apple comes up sour. Apple orchards retain ownership of their stock, value of their orchards, because the seeds only produce sour apples. You can't buy sweet apples, plant the seeds, and get a sweet apple orchard later. It has to be clones.
Back in the day, 200 years ago, the thing to do with sour apples as juice them into cider, anyway, and then allow it to ferment. Do this late in the year and allow the casks to freeze in the shade, and remove the ice, again and again, and you're left with a low quality concentration of ethanol. This is a freeze-method of distillation, ice distillation. This is how you make applejack. Its a real thing, even if its not popular anymore. It was a century of boozehounds in the Midwest that started the Temperance Society that lead to Prohibition of Alcohol, which lead to the unintended consequence of turning the Mafia into a drug organization, not just human slavery of fresh-off-the-boat immigrants and vote selling the Democratic part is famous for now. Mafia and Democrat are pretty much synonymous. The Mafia have more rules and tend to obey them more consistently. Democrats are like the Mafia without all the rules or ethics.
So those farmers with the inedible apples and the booze also raised chickens and pigs. A pig was great because all those leftovers turned into tasty lean protein, which could be fattened up into something delicious. At slaughter time, that pig would feed a family for a year, and it was often cured with salt and smoked. In Little House On The Prairie, they wrapped the hams with string and hung them from the ceiling of the cabin, cut them down as needed. It meant they'd drip onto blankets in their sleep, and there would have been flies, briefly, until the salt killed them, but this was a sustainable food supply. And pigs reproduce fast. You can sell piglets for a profit too. Some other family or bachelor farmer wants a piglet for next years meals.
The trouble with having chickens AND pigs, when you're a farmer, of course, is that the bats eating the mosquitos can give the chickens bird flu, and the chickens can give it to the pig, which can pass it on to you. Normally, the bats can't infect you. And even if they infect the chickens, it doesn't often jump to you. The pig is the middleman, so to speak. The Middle-pig? It can transform the virus to be able to get you. This is where Spanish flu came from, Kansas bats. It has been properly traced. And it killed 20 million people. Slightly more than WW1. A war that suffered many battles in Crimea. Heroic ones where most of those involved died. Charge of the Light Brigade, Rudyard Kipling, etc. The reason the USA got into WW1 so late, and would have skipped it entirely, is people were still around who remembered the Civil War and they'd just finished off the American Indians so not terribly excited about brutal slaughter, and the English prodding Australians to die in withering machinegun fire? Not interested. Thanks.
Better to stay home eating bacon, apple wood smoked bacon, sipping applejack or cider, and having some tasty fresh eggs, some whole wheat toast from grain you'd grown yourself, and pondering the lastest Auto Mobile Carriages (Cars, it was being shortened in the latest fashion. Modern times are so FAST). So many labor saving devices. And that new fangled electricity you could see in some towns. Not all, but some.
The great strength of American farmers, and farmers in general, is the ability to ignore politicians because farmers have the food, and politicians just have lots of hot air. Eventually they can be starved out. Crimea may turn into Anschluss and WW4 (WW3 ended in 1989) escalating from merely the Invasion of Kuwait for oil supply control to nuclear weapons in Iran, turning into EU vs Russia open warfare. This is terrible but not our problem. Not directly. I notice that fracking is more successful at energy recovery than bioethanol from Corn when we could buy it for pennies on the dollar from Brazil. Oh well. Stupid is, as stupid does. The USA, such as it is, will make money fracking oil and exporting it to the EU, along with grain since Russia will probably burn the wheat fields in Ukraine, something they have done before under Stalin. Its essentially a foregone conclusion. Putin wants the glories of the Soviet system back. The megadeaths. The firing squads. The secret police. The nuclear missile launch drills. The nuclear submarines off the US coast. That's what he wants. A pity. I think that Siberia will prove to be an interesting place for capitalism someday. Looks like we'll be developing other places first. Who is going to invest in Russia now? They're clearly run by an insane tyrant who tells other people what they can think. Like Jay Carney tells the US press corps. Oops!
All the bad apples, the ones that are sour and bitter, aren't completely useless if you don't eat them. Johnny Appleseed isn't a myth. He was a real person. The trouble is, the seeds he planted only sprouted up SOUR apples, the kind you can't eat, so what he did was crazy and useless. Not that a child understands this. Even the seed of a sweet apple comes up sour. Apple orchards retain ownership of their stock, value of their orchards, because the seeds only produce sour apples. You can't buy sweet apples, plant the seeds, and get a sweet apple orchard later. It has to be clones.
Back in the day, 200 years ago, the thing to do with sour apples as juice them into cider, anyway, and then allow it to ferment. Do this late in the year and allow the casks to freeze in the shade, and remove the ice, again and again, and you're left with a low quality concentration of ethanol. This is a freeze-method of distillation, ice distillation. This is how you make applejack. Its a real thing, even if its not popular anymore. It was a century of boozehounds in the Midwest that started the Temperance Society that lead to Prohibition of Alcohol, which lead to the unintended consequence of turning the Mafia into a drug organization, not just human slavery of fresh-off-the-boat immigrants and vote selling the Democratic part is famous for now. Mafia and Democrat are pretty much synonymous. The Mafia have more rules and tend to obey them more consistently. Democrats are like the Mafia without all the rules or ethics.
So those farmers with the inedible apples and the booze also raised chickens and pigs. A pig was great because all those leftovers turned into tasty lean protein, which could be fattened up into something delicious. At slaughter time, that pig would feed a family for a year, and it was often cured with salt and smoked. In Little House On The Prairie, they wrapped the hams with string and hung them from the ceiling of the cabin, cut them down as needed. It meant they'd drip onto blankets in their sleep, and there would have been flies, briefly, until the salt killed them, but this was a sustainable food supply. And pigs reproduce fast. You can sell piglets for a profit too. Some other family or bachelor farmer wants a piglet for next years meals.
The trouble with having chickens AND pigs, when you're a farmer, of course, is that the bats eating the mosquitos can give the chickens bird flu, and the chickens can give it to the pig, which can pass it on to you. Normally, the bats can't infect you. And even if they infect the chickens, it doesn't often jump to you. The pig is the middleman, so to speak. The Middle-pig? It can transform the virus to be able to get you. This is where Spanish flu came from, Kansas bats. It has been properly traced. And it killed 20 million people. Slightly more than WW1. A war that suffered many battles in Crimea. Heroic ones where most of those involved died. Charge of the Light Brigade, Rudyard Kipling, etc. The reason the USA got into WW1 so late, and would have skipped it entirely, is people were still around who remembered the Civil War and they'd just finished off the American Indians so not terribly excited about brutal slaughter, and the English prodding Australians to die in withering machinegun fire? Not interested. Thanks.
Better to stay home eating bacon, apple wood smoked bacon, sipping applejack or cider, and having some tasty fresh eggs, some whole wheat toast from grain you'd grown yourself, and pondering the lastest Auto Mobile Carriages (Cars, it was being shortened in the latest fashion. Modern times are so FAST). So many labor saving devices. And that new fangled electricity you could see in some towns. Not all, but some.
The great strength of American farmers, and farmers in general, is the ability to ignore politicians because farmers have the food, and politicians just have lots of hot air. Eventually they can be starved out. Crimea may turn into Anschluss and WW4 (WW3 ended in 1989) escalating from merely the Invasion of Kuwait for oil supply control to nuclear weapons in Iran, turning into EU vs Russia open warfare. This is terrible but not our problem. Not directly. I notice that fracking is more successful at energy recovery than bioethanol from Corn when we could buy it for pennies on the dollar from Brazil. Oh well. Stupid is, as stupid does. The USA, such as it is, will make money fracking oil and exporting it to the EU, along with grain since Russia will probably burn the wheat fields in Ukraine, something they have done before under Stalin. Its essentially a foregone conclusion. Putin wants the glories of the Soviet system back. The megadeaths. The firing squads. The secret police. The nuclear missile launch drills. The nuclear submarines off the US coast. That's what he wants. A pity. I think that Siberia will prove to be an interesting place for capitalism someday. Looks like we'll be developing other places first. Who is going to invest in Russia now? They're clearly run by an insane tyrant who tells other people what they can think. Like Jay Carney tells the US press corps. Oops!
Whitehouse Press Corp Scripting Interviews
So it turns out that the Whitehouse is requiring the Press Corps to pre-submit their questions to the daily press meetings there. This allows Jay Carney (and if that's isn't an interestingly descriptive name) to spin the answers in advance. This is massively unethical in every possible sense of the word ethical. Its up there with plagiarism and counterfeiting and child molestation. The propagandists doing this are no longer fit to be called Journalists. They should be blackballed, every one of them, and forced to work for the Tabloids where they belong, reporting on little green men and quality control for wearable aluminum foil.
The real Press is screaming and the Whitehouse is denying this, which based on their years of everything they deny turning out to be true within short order, this is as good as saying the Press is nothing but propaganda tools. That this is absolutely true. The Whitehouse, by denying it, is confirming it.
When I see things this horrible, this Soviet, happening in MY COUNTRY, I makes me think it isn't mine anymore and it would be best to go our own way, as states. To drop the central govt back into the toilet and flush the handle. I'd really like to see Texas and California split off from the USA now. I'd like to see California become several states. That would be just fine. Even if it makes things worse, at least we won't have to give a damn what DC is spouting off because it will be someone else's country. Why is America even one country anymore? Or three, technically (Mexico and Canada are part of North America, remember). Anyway, what is United about these states anymore? We have nothing in common but a language, and even that is debatable. There are lots of jobs you can't get unless you speak Spanish. Restaurant and agriculture, for starters, and most building contractors and landscapers had better speak Spanish or don't show up to work anymore. Nurses should speak Tagalog, though most nurses who speak Tagalog also speak English well. Telecommunications and TV hardware and cellular require you to speak Mandarin, and anybody working in business with manufacturing or import-export needs to speak Mandarin and possibly Cantonese too. If you don't, you won't stay in business long. So with all these languages and interests dissenting, why are we one country when we could be 30 or 50 of them? Let California and the West be our own country. Our concerns are NOT the same as the Eastern Bastards.
So the Whitehouse is evil and a propaganda engine. The answer to this is to shut down the Whitehouse press corps, recall the journalists, and stop reporting what the Whitehouse says every day. Take away their power to spread lies. Stop treating their mouthy statements as truth or news. They aren't. Crimea is about to enter war, and the Press Corps reported that the Little Kenyan was playing fantasy basketball chart. Who cares? Crimea is millions of people and war in the Ukraine is WW4 huge, if Oil Supply is disrupted, which it will be, a billion people in Europe are effected. This is the summer they had better spend cutting firewood and putting up solar panels so they'll get SOME heat during next winter's long stormy nights. Top Gear has been great fun, a last blast of wealth. But the new Soviets won't be satisfied with just Crimea. They'll start killing their way across Ukraine next, but we can't ask the President what he is going to do about it because that's not an approved question for the Whitehouse Press Corps, and you get your pass revoked for asking. Maybe end up in a room with a table bolted to the floor and a big mirror you suspect has people on the far side, staring at your like a fresh piggy. Is this America? Do you want any part of that?
Nope. Divide the country. We aren't one country anymore. We are many, and we should stop pretending we want any relation to those scum in DC.
The real Press is screaming and the Whitehouse is denying this, which based on their years of everything they deny turning out to be true within short order, this is as good as saying the Press is nothing but propaganda tools. That this is absolutely true. The Whitehouse, by denying it, is confirming it.
When I see things this horrible, this Soviet, happening in MY COUNTRY, I makes me think it isn't mine anymore and it would be best to go our own way, as states. To drop the central govt back into the toilet and flush the handle. I'd really like to see Texas and California split off from the USA now. I'd like to see California become several states. That would be just fine. Even if it makes things worse, at least we won't have to give a damn what DC is spouting off because it will be someone else's country. Why is America even one country anymore? Or three, technically (Mexico and Canada are part of North America, remember). Anyway, what is United about these states anymore? We have nothing in common but a language, and even that is debatable. There are lots of jobs you can't get unless you speak Spanish. Restaurant and agriculture, for starters, and most building contractors and landscapers had better speak Spanish or don't show up to work anymore. Nurses should speak Tagalog, though most nurses who speak Tagalog also speak English well. Telecommunications and TV hardware and cellular require you to speak Mandarin, and anybody working in business with manufacturing or import-export needs to speak Mandarin and possibly Cantonese too. If you don't, you won't stay in business long. So with all these languages and interests dissenting, why are we one country when we could be 30 or 50 of them? Let California and the West be our own country. Our concerns are NOT the same as the Eastern Bastards.
So the Whitehouse is evil and a propaganda engine. The answer to this is to shut down the Whitehouse press corps, recall the journalists, and stop reporting what the Whitehouse says every day. Take away their power to spread lies. Stop treating their mouthy statements as truth or news. They aren't. Crimea is about to enter war, and the Press Corps reported that the Little Kenyan was playing fantasy basketball chart. Who cares? Crimea is millions of people and war in the Ukraine is WW4 huge, if Oil Supply is disrupted, which it will be, a billion people in Europe are effected. This is the summer they had better spend cutting firewood and putting up solar panels so they'll get SOME heat during next winter's long stormy nights. Top Gear has been great fun, a last blast of wealth. But the new Soviets won't be satisfied with just Crimea. They'll start killing their way across Ukraine next, but we can't ask the President what he is going to do about it because that's not an approved question for the Whitehouse Press Corps, and you get your pass revoked for asking. Maybe end up in a room with a table bolted to the floor and a big mirror you suspect has people on the far side, staring at your like a fresh piggy. Is this America? Do you want any part of that?
Nope. Divide the country. We aren't one country anymore. We are many, and we should stop pretending we want any relation to those scum in DC.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Style In the Gravel Age
We've had the following Ages:
Gravel is nicer than dirt and dust, because it is still a road when it is wet. And while it does run off in heavy downpour, it's not as rutted and terrible as straight-up dirt. We're getting gravel and dirt roads because tar in asphalt emulsion, aka Macadam, is made from the oil that's running out and being shipped to China and Europe to replace the oil that's not going to come out of Russia much longer thanks to their invasion of Crimea. After all, despite 97% of the population voting to join Russia, once the dissenting 3% are killed, like they do in North Korea, the rest of the world gets to stare at modern Anschluss and worry who the Russians will invade next. And since we won't have that oil to spare, we're going to gravel roads. You'll see. So prepare your mind for this coming reality.
There are upsides to gravel roads. People who love Rally Car Racing can tell you that you can still go fast on them, it's just that when you lose control, and you will, you die. Gravel Roads don't have highway safety barriers to keep your wreck neat and tidy. Physics takes over. You fly, briefly, then impact something vertical and stop, suddenly. The suddenly is often fatal. This is one of the reasons that Rally Car Racing is really exciting. The other is that the spectators tend to stand alongside the road, feet away from the cars going full speed past them. They are cheered up immensely when a spectator is hit with gravel, or the car flips over in front of them. The EU wants to ban the sport, to make it safer since not having races at all is very safe indeed, but the fans remain solidly in favor of racing on gravel roads. The entire nation of Finland are serious about it, and the Welsh promised to sing in public if they aren't allowed to continue Rally driving, and that's about as popular as Morris Dancing during rush hour. It must continue for the sanity of Europe hinges on it. Italians and Spaniards and Frenchmen are also big Rally racing fans. Now that Eastern Europe is civilizing, they want to take part as well. So yes, gravel roads, but still racing cars.
The solution to this dangerous driving is going a lot slower, for non-rally drivers that still want to get there. Since ALL the roads (outside towns) are going to gravel and dirt, and some are going to vanish entirely, slower is better than not at all. Going on 2 wheels instead of 4 is definitely going slower. A motorcycle on gravel has no illusions about sideways grip. You have little of that. You keep it slow or you die. Death, as I've said before, is a fantastic limiter on stupid behavior. Sooner or later stupid people try their BS on the real world and they END, and the world is just that little bit better. Darwin Awards will get to be blasé in the post-pavement world, in the Gravel Age. It might not even be very stylish to die at high speed. And as soon as the girls stop seeing it as stylish, the impetus to drive madly without girls to cheer you on may end the behavior.
And this is a good thing. Many bad and stupid people died in the 1970's who probably would have done their utmost to prevent the internet or the end of the Cold War, just to keep driving musclecars with solid axles and wearing mullet hairstyles and sweatbands. I am glad those people are long gone. They were really annoying when I was a kid. Rude, too.
Slower keeps you alive, and can still get you there half as fast and twice as living as fast does. Or maybe a third as fast, so three times as living? Likely able to form more complete sentences and probably drier in their shorts from the lack of close calls, but you should know that going slower can still be fun. Fun is found in the singing of birds and the smells and scenery of a forest as you mosey through at a gentle pace, a pace you can see because you are NOT pedaling a bicycle. I won't say staring at a horse's behind is FUN, because it isn't. Its just smelly. And there's flies. But it's pretty great not pedaling.
The other upside of slow is you can get pretty fantastic fuel economy because you don't need a very big engine, so 100 mpg is possible, and 70 mpg is likely. Small engines are often on cheaper bikes, weighing less, so they're less effort to ride and while they take more maintenance, they are also nearly impossible to get stuck because you can physically lift them up. None of those two-person lifting issues like Long Way Round in western Upper Mongolia. You just ride OVER the mud, not through it till you stop and fall over. This is important.
While mass produced big wheel small displacement motorcycles work really well, and can be had for $4-7K, ready to go, complete with fuel injection, those aren't the only choice. For those who crave vintage style, and Harley is NOT there to fill your options since their bikes drag pegs on normal pavement and would bottom out on mild swellings in the road, you CAN get other options. Yamaha, for instance, is re-releasing their 400cc kick start bike with EFI.
Its not perfect, and its $6K which is really a lot of moolah for what it is. If you have enough money to not care, fine. Buy one. But if your money still takes effort to earn, it is worth pointing out that older bikes can be restored for less than that and get really great results. I just hate those tall uprights bikers had in the 1970's meant to tie down your backpack and baggage and give your ugly bike chick girlfriend a place to lean. I thought most guys who rode bikes or drove musclecars were ugly. Their girlfriends were worse. Never seen such craggy faces, and the bandannas, this was before helmet laws, weren't flattering. Neither were the braids. Like looked like badly misused hookers.
Bikes that have easily replaced air filters would be key. And its hard to say how fast those will fill in normal gravel roads in high summer. Worse on dirt, because well travelled roads with no rain? Think 4 inches of floury silt powder waiting to be stirred up. I used to run in that, on an extinct volcano near my house. That dust filled your pores. Do terrible things to an engine intake. While it is tempting to try and cover a road with paving stones, those have gaps which fill with weeds which catch bigger seeds and grow shrubs and later trees and the road become something visible only under ground penetrating radar or an archaeologists careful trowelling. And people really don't care that much, so it could be some time before that happens, if ever.
So having a vehicle with an easy to replace or repair air intake is important. One of the strengths of the VW bug is the air intake was actually a pool of oil, dirty oil, that would catch the dust as it bubbled through. Change that oil, and you make the air move smoother. No actual parts to replace, and you can technically run that oil through a coffee filter a couple times to get the dust out and reuse it. Coffee filters are really useful things. They're very cheap, and they work for unfiltered wine, making it clear, and usually sifting out the tannin crystals which aren't always welcome. I suppose if I'd stayed in Sonoma County, I'd have eventually gotten a degree in Enology, and then a Bachelor in Wine Making. It really is interesting chemistry, after all, and people like good quality drugs. Especially ones with so much legal ceremony and paraphernalia like wine has. Until 1976, and the events semi-documented in the comedy Bottle Shock, wine wasn't a very good business, but it survived. When wine tourists started PAYING to sample wine, which happened during my youth because it was free before that, everything changed and it became fashionable to drink and discuss wine like poetry, and unlike poetry, good wine won't give you heartburn, though it can make your eyes swim.
Bad wine gives you a terrible headache and it makes you angry. During the 1970's and 1980's, Dad got into wine making, and provided you keep the dust from the road out of the casks during fermentation, I think wine making will continue after asphalt is a fond memory and America buys and maintains those 6 wheel trucks like they use in Siberia. Those will be welcome here, I think. Even if they end up running on gas turbine engines to be multi fuel, and use batteries and pressure vessels for torque. It's fine.
I have become, over the last several years, a huge fan of BikeExif, despite not actually riding a motorcycle myself. I want to, sometimes, then I see some horrible motorcycle injury or look really hard at pea gravel on a corner and I think I rather like the Ford Fiesta ST or the Subaru Outback Sport or WRX STI and ponder the simpler joy of a scooter instead. Scooters are twist and go, squeeze the brake, simple as can be to operate. I really appreciate them. They are meant for people who get stuff done, even if what they're doing is going to the library or grocery store or a part time job. As we are entering an era where most jobs will be part time, rather than full time, because there's huge economic incentives to avoid full time benefit costs, most of us will end up on scooters eventually.
And you can laugh at that, but take this seriously. I get the timing wrong, but the outcome right. And life tends to be ironic, so around the time that we've given up the pavement and settled into drought, there will be a huge flood that washes out the roads and bridges and there's war with Russia so there's a fuel shortage and we won't be able to buy the scooters fast enough from China, but we're glad when they get here and the shift from 25 mpg to 100 mpg will seem very sudden when it finally happens. Cutting national oil consumption by 75% will do that for you. It is knowing this is coming that keeps me doing maintenance on my existing car, and driving the all wheel drive or fun race cars in a simulator. Cheaper, and leaves me with funds to buy a motorcycle or scooter later, despite their safety problems.
If I were a Librarian, I'd totally have a scooter. There's a decent article today suggesting that serious library users are also technology fans, and being able to search on google instantly isn't enough for ferreting out quality information. One of the reasons the local library wants me as a volunteer, and hopefully will pay me someday, is I'm techno-savvy. That and I know where the apostrophe goes in I-T-S. Sometimes I think that should be my whole resume. It's particularly rare today, you see?
Bike Exif has some beautiful specimens, carefully modified in usually functional ways, of motorcycles made for use in the dirt. It is not dedicated to Harleys. There are lots of websites for those. This is for Triumph and Yamaha and Honda and KTM and Suzuki and Kawasaki and BMW. All serious bikes capable of touring the world. I like it. I like the fact that you can see the parts and what they do and what is working or not is plainly obvious. I also like that you can build a motorcycle that does its job, cheaply and efficiently, and can be fixed when it breaks. This is important because eventually it will. The real world, when the roads can't be counted on after a serious storm, is going to have lots of challenges. Travel will get to be a lot more interesting, and staying put, in your little burg, might be a serious life extending activity, to the sense that leaving is a life ending one. So people who travel will end up looking very heroic, or very desperate. And local farming for food will become a real occupation again, since travel on uncertain roads tends to be hard on cargo, and makes carrying it quite expensive.
This brings up another point. Safety gear is mostly made somewhere there's cheap labor and extra sturdy sewing machines. How long before there's a local motorcycle safety gear maker, armoring clothing for the thousands of locals who just got their first scooter and just had their first crash and can see the point of better safety? Its going to be a growth industry, even if you're going really slowly. Staying warm in the winter, staying cool in the summer, different riding clothes for each. Scooterists also tend to wear their jacket backwards, to keep the rain from going through the zipper. Sometimes using a second jacket or overcoat. It's kinda silly looking, but it works. So how long before you find yourself riding your scooter in the rain to get to your part time, minimum wage job which has everything to do with proximity to where you live and little to do with your previous occupation, mainly because it keeps the bank from foreclosing on your house and kicking your family out onto the street, where it is still raining. And will you learn if you really like your neighbors once you actually know them? And will you be happy? Will you take up beer making and wine making because that's a good excuse for a party and you can't really buy it, not with shipping charges so high since the bridge washed out and local hops and grapes are a lot easier to get... Not joking. Maybe wine in a box is something you'll end up doing instead. Whatever. You learn to make do. I recall there were wineries which would let you bring your own bottles and bottle some of their vintage yourself, for a fee, saving them the trouble. Bottling is nearly as expensive as making the wine, mostly due to labor costs.
You learn to adapt, because failing to adapt is just as useless to your longevity as rally driving full speed. They'll cheer when you wreck, too. Are you someone else's entertainment? Or will you find style in a comfortable and sensible motorcycle, and some home made leathers sewn by a local tailor that used to be an accountant or burger flipper a couple years ago? It doesn't matter what they did before. It matters what's available now. Adding foam armor pads to double stitched waxed canvas or waxed denim, or better yet leather, all with strong zippers and fasteners to connect the jacket to the pants, and proper serious boots with armored ankles so if the bike comes down on it, you'll be able to walk later. All that, even for riding a scooter, but it IS necessary. Bicycle accidents can be fatal too. Having grown up where Tour De France riders train over winter, I am aware of folk climbing the mountain roads very slowly, and mountain bikes originated at Specialized in Mill Valley, Marin County, about 40 miles South. A Mountain Bike, with or without a suspension, can get along without pavement, riding gravel roads carefully. Its still easier to live closer to your job, since living far from your job not only exhausts you, but exposes you to further risks, including wild animals, highwaymen, crazy people, and common accidents and injury.
Whether you ride under your own power or have a motor, appropriate safety gear is important. And it gets complicated, since a bicyclist wants to avoid overheating, whereas a scooterist or motorcyclist needs armor in case they end up sliding on the road, which is a bad thing to do on rutted gravel. Its rather amazing that most accidents in Long Way Round and Long Way Down are at 1 mph, falling over sideways in the mud. They were really lucky not to have a terrible crash, but going really slowly saved their lives. They would have had a better time on a light enduro bike instead of the very heavy highway cruisers they chose, but whatever. You will probably be on a 250cc enduro bike eventually. Probably carbureted because they are cheap used, but if you're wealthy you might own a fuel injected Honda or Yamaha. And if so, you'll like the low end power. And that's great. But you'll still be wearing armor, and whether this is locally made or modified or something mass produced and irreplaceable because that factory doesn't exist anymore, that's your choice. And sometimes your choices are acts of desperation, one after another. That's life these days. The old days of jobs and middle income wages and upward mobility are gone. We survive and we don't trust anybody, for good reason. Make the best of it. Try to find some degree of comfort, and thus style, in the post pavement world. The crunch of gravel under your front tire, and the dust coming off the vehicle ahead of you, when there's another vehicle, those are the good times. It mostly just gets tougher after that.
- The Ice Age.
- The Stone Age.
- The Bronze Age. (aka Hyborean)
- The Iron Age.
- The Dark Age.
- The Middle Ages. (aka Medievel Warm Period)
- The Renaissance.
- The Gilded Age.
- The Age of Steam.
- The Atomic Age.
- The Silicon Age.
- And now that everything is running out, oil in particular despite fracking, we're going to have the Gravel Age.
Gravel is nicer than dirt and dust, because it is still a road when it is wet. And while it does run off in heavy downpour, it's not as rutted and terrible as straight-up dirt. We're getting gravel and dirt roads because tar in asphalt emulsion, aka Macadam, is made from the oil that's running out and being shipped to China and Europe to replace the oil that's not going to come out of Russia much longer thanks to their invasion of Crimea. After all, despite 97% of the population voting to join Russia, once the dissenting 3% are killed, like they do in North Korea, the rest of the world gets to stare at modern Anschluss and worry who the Russians will invade next. And since we won't have that oil to spare, we're going to gravel roads. You'll see. So prepare your mind for this coming reality.
There are upsides to gravel roads. People who love Rally Car Racing can tell you that you can still go fast on them, it's just that when you lose control, and you will, you die. Gravel Roads don't have highway safety barriers to keep your wreck neat and tidy. Physics takes over. You fly, briefly, then impact something vertical and stop, suddenly. The suddenly is often fatal. This is one of the reasons that Rally Car Racing is really exciting. The other is that the spectators tend to stand alongside the road, feet away from the cars going full speed past them. They are cheered up immensely when a spectator is hit with gravel, or the car flips over in front of them. The EU wants to ban the sport, to make it safer since not having races at all is very safe indeed, but the fans remain solidly in favor of racing on gravel roads. The entire nation of Finland are serious about it, and the Welsh promised to sing in public if they aren't allowed to continue Rally driving, and that's about as popular as Morris Dancing during rush hour. It must continue for the sanity of Europe hinges on it. Italians and Spaniards and Frenchmen are also big Rally racing fans. Now that Eastern Europe is civilizing, they want to take part as well. So yes, gravel roads, but still racing cars.
The solution to this dangerous driving is going a lot slower, for non-rally drivers that still want to get there. Since ALL the roads (outside towns) are going to gravel and dirt, and some are going to vanish entirely, slower is better than not at all. Going on 2 wheels instead of 4 is definitely going slower. A motorcycle on gravel has no illusions about sideways grip. You have little of that. You keep it slow or you die. Death, as I've said before, is a fantastic limiter on stupid behavior. Sooner or later stupid people try their BS on the real world and they END, and the world is just that little bit better. Darwin Awards will get to be blasé in the post-pavement world, in the Gravel Age. It might not even be very stylish to die at high speed. And as soon as the girls stop seeing it as stylish, the impetus to drive madly without girls to cheer you on may end the behavior.
And this is a good thing. Many bad and stupid people died in the 1970's who probably would have done their utmost to prevent the internet or the end of the Cold War, just to keep driving musclecars with solid axles and wearing mullet hairstyles and sweatbands. I am glad those people are long gone. They were really annoying when I was a kid. Rude, too.
Slower keeps you alive, and can still get you there half as fast and twice as living as fast does. Or maybe a third as fast, so three times as living? Likely able to form more complete sentences and probably drier in their shorts from the lack of close calls, but you should know that going slower can still be fun. Fun is found in the singing of birds and the smells and scenery of a forest as you mosey through at a gentle pace, a pace you can see because you are NOT pedaling a bicycle. I won't say staring at a horse's behind is FUN, because it isn't. Its just smelly. And there's flies. But it's pretty great not pedaling.
The other upside of slow is you can get pretty fantastic fuel economy because you don't need a very big engine, so 100 mpg is possible, and 70 mpg is likely. Small engines are often on cheaper bikes, weighing less, so they're less effort to ride and while they take more maintenance, they are also nearly impossible to get stuck because you can physically lift them up. None of those two-person lifting issues like Long Way Round in western Upper Mongolia. You just ride OVER the mud, not through it till you stop and fall over. This is important.
While mass produced big wheel small displacement motorcycles work really well, and can be had for $4-7K, ready to go, complete with fuel injection, those aren't the only choice. For those who crave vintage style, and Harley is NOT there to fill your options since their bikes drag pegs on normal pavement and would bottom out on mild swellings in the road, you CAN get other options. Yamaha, for instance, is re-releasing their 400cc kick start bike with EFI.
Its not perfect, and its $6K which is really a lot of moolah for what it is. If you have enough money to not care, fine. Buy one. But if your money still takes effort to earn, it is worth pointing out that older bikes can be restored for less than that and get really great results. I just hate those tall uprights bikers had in the 1970's meant to tie down your backpack and baggage and give your ugly bike chick girlfriend a place to lean. I thought most guys who rode bikes or drove musclecars were ugly. Their girlfriends were worse. Never seen such craggy faces, and the bandannas, this was before helmet laws, weren't flattering. Neither were the braids. Like looked like badly misused hookers.
Bikes that have easily replaced air filters would be key. And its hard to say how fast those will fill in normal gravel roads in high summer. Worse on dirt, because well travelled roads with no rain? Think 4 inches of floury silt powder waiting to be stirred up. I used to run in that, on an extinct volcano near my house. That dust filled your pores. Do terrible things to an engine intake. While it is tempting to try and cover a road with paving stones, those have gaps which fill with weeds which catch bigger seeds and grow shrubs and later trees and the road become something visible only under ground penetrating radar or an archaeologists careful trowelling. And people really don't care that much, so it could be some time before that happens, if ever.
So having a vehicle with an easy to replace or repair air intake is important. One of the strengths of the VW bug is the air intake was actually a pool of oil, dirty oil, that would catch the dust as it bubbled through. Change that oil, and you make the air move smoother. No actual parts to replace, and you can technically run that oil through a coffee filter a couple times to get the dust out and reuse it. Coffee filters are really useful things. They're very cheap, and they work for unfiltered wine, making it clear, and usually sifting out the tannin crystals which aren't always welcome. I suppose if I'd stayed in Sonoma County, I'd have eventually gotten a degree in Enology, and then a Bachelor in Wine Making. It really is interesting chemistry, after all, and people like good quality drugs. Especially ones with so much legal ceremony and paraphernalia like wine has. Until 1976, and the events semi-documented in the comedy Bottle Shock, wine wasn't a very good business, but it survived. When wine tourists started PAYING to sample wine, which happened during my youth because it was free before that, everything changed and it became fashionable to drink and discuss wine like poetry, and unlike poetry, good wine won't give you heartburn, though it can make your eyes swim.
I have become, over the last several years, a huge fan of BikeExif, despite not actually riding a motorcycle myself. I want to, sometimes, then I see some horrible motorcycle injury or look really hard at pea gravel on a corner and I think I rather like the Ford Fiesta ST or the Subaru Outback Sport or WRX STI and ponder the simpler joy of a scooter instead. Scooters are twist and go, squeeze the brake, simple as can be to operate. I really appreciate them. They are meant for people who get stuff done, even if what they're doing is going to the library or grocery store or a part time job. As we are entering an era where most jobs will be part time, rather than full time, because there's huge economic incentives to avoid full time benefit costs, most of us will end up on scooters eventually.
And you can laugh at that, but take this seriously. I get the timing wrong, but the outcome right. And life tends to be ironic, so around the time that we've given up the pavement and settled into drought, there will be a huge flood that washes out the roads and bridges and there's war with Russia so there's a fuel shortage and we won't be able to buy the scooters fast enough from China, but we're glad when they get here and the shift from 25 mpg to 100 mpg will seem very sudden when it finally happens. Cutting national oil consumption by 75% will do that for you. It is knowing this is coming that keeps me doing maintenance on my existing car, and driving the all wheel drive or fun race cars in a simulator. Cheaper, and leaves me with funds to buy a motorcycle or scooter later, despite their safety problems.
If I were a Librarian, I'd totally have a scooter. There's a decent article today suggesting that serious library users are also technology fans, and being able to search on google instantly isn't enough for ferreting out quality information. One of the reasons the local library wants me as a volunteer, and hopefully will pay me someday, is I'm techno-savvy. That and I know where the apostrophe goes in I-T-S. Sometimes I think that should be my whole resume. It's particularly rare today, you see?
Bike Exif has some beautiful specimens, carefully modified in usually functional ways, of motorcycles made for use in the dirt. It is not dedicated to Harleys. There are lots of websites for those. This is for Triumph and Yamaha and Honda and KTM and Suzuki and Kawasaki and BMW. All serious bikes capable of touring the world. I like it. I like the fact that you can see the parts and what they do and what is working or not is plainly obvious. I also like that you can build a motorcycle that does its job, cheaply and efficiently, and can be fixed when it breaks. This is important because eventually it will. The real world, when the roads can't be counted on after a serious storm, is going to have lots of challenges. Travel will get to be a lot more interesting, and staying put, in your little burg, might be a serious life extending activity, to the sense that leaving is a life ending one. So people who travel will end up looking very heroic, or very desperate. And local farming for food will become a real occupation again, since travel on uncertain roads tends to be hard on cargo, and makes carrying it quite expensive.
This brings up another point. Safety gear is mostly made somewhere there's cheap labor and extra sturdy sewing machines. How long before there's a local motorcycle safety gear maker, armoring clothing for the thousands of locals who just got their first scooter and just had their first crash and can see the point of better safety? Its going to be a growth industry, even if you're going really slowly. Staying warm in the winter, staying cool in the summer, different riding clothes for each. Scooterists also tend to wear their jacket backwards, to keep the rain from going through the zipper. Sometimes using a second jacket or overcoat. It's kinda silly looking, but it works. So how long before you find yourself riding your scooter in the rain to get to your part time, minimum wage job which has everything to do with proximity to where you live and little to do with your previous occupation, mainly because it keeps the bank from foreclosing on your house and kicking your family out onto the street, where it is still raining. And will you learn if you really like your neighbors once you actually know them? And will you be happy? Will you take up beer making and wine making because that's a good excuse for a party and you can't really buy it, not with shipping charges so high since the bridge washed out and local hops and grapes are a lot easier to get... Not joking. Maybe wine in a box is something you'll end up doing instead. Whatever. You learn to make do. I recall there were wineries which would let you bring your own bottles and bottle some of their vintage yourself, for a fee, saving them the trouble. Bottling is nearly as expensive as making the wine, mostly due to labor costs.
You learn to adapt, because failing to adapt is just as useless to your longevity as rally driving full speed. They'll cheer when you wreck, too. Are you someone else's entertainment? Or will you find style in a comfortable and sensible motorcycle, and some home made leathers sewn by a local tailor that used to be an accountant or burger flipper a couple years ago? It doesn't matter what they did before. It matters what's available now. Adding foam armor pads to double stitched waxed canvas or waxed denim, or better yet leather, all with strong zippers and fasteners to connect the jacket to the pants, and proper serious boots with armored ankles so if the bike comes down on it, you'll be able to walk later. All that, even for riding a scooter, but it IS necessary. Bicycle accidents can be fatal too. Having grown up where Tour De France riders train over winter, I am aware of folk climbing the mountain roads very slowly, and mountain bikes originated at Specialized in Mill Valley, Marin County, about 40 miles South. A Mountain Bike, with or without a suspension, can get along without pavement, riding gravel roads carefully. Its still easier to live closer to your job, since living far from your job not only exhausts you, but exposes you to further risks, including wild animals, highwaymen, crazy people, and common accidents and injury.
Whether you ride under your own power or have a motor, appropriate safety gear is important. And it gets complicated, since a bicyclist wants to avoid overheating, whereas a scooterist or motorcyclist needs armor in case they end up sliding on the road, which is a bad thing to do on rutted gravel. Its rather amazing that most accidents in Long Way Round and Long Way Down are at 1 mph, falling over sideways in the mud. They were really lucky not to have a terrible crash, but going really slowly saved their lives. They would have had a better time on a light enduro bike instead of the very heavy highway cruisers they chose, but whatever. You will probably be on a 250cc enduro bike eventually. Probably carbureted because they are cheap used, but if you're wealthy you might own a fuel injected Honda or Yamaha. And if so, you'll like the low end power. And that's great. But you'll still be wearing armor, and whether this is locally made or modified or something mass produced and irreplaceable because that factory doesn't exist anymore, that's your choice. And sometimes your choices are acts of desperation, one after another. That's life these days. The old days of jobs and middle income wages and upward mobility are gone. We survive and we don't trust anybody, for good reason. Make the best of it. Try to find some degree of comfort, and thus style, in the post pavement world. The crunch of gravel under your front tire, and the dust coming off the vehicle ahead of you, when there's another vehicle, those are the good times. It mostly just gets tougher after that.
Federal Shutdown Due To Snow in DC Saves Taxpayers Millions
It's sure a good thing about that Global Warming. I mean, all this snow and storms and such, schools and federal govt are shut down, which means that taxpayers are saving millions of dollars by not having federal govt do its usual inefficiency and failure.
Local Govt is very direct, and you can be punched in the mouth if you screw up at the local level. If you're really bad, you can be arrested or find your car on fire. At the local level, everybody knows where you live, so better be polite. Federal govt tends to be abusive, useless, and cruel because, like former managers of mine, they are sadists who enjoy causing pain. Small wonder the Millenials are the most jaded generation in recent history.
Also, Crimea voted overwhelmingly to stop being Ukraine and be a republic instead, and there's 90,000 Russian troops waiting across the border, probably to "assist". The new Crimean Parliament has just founded a bank, last night, to get lots of Russian loans. It is worth pointing out that Crimea is about 97% Russian, ethnically. I suppose it had something to do with genociding everybody else at some point in the past, but whatever. I'm not curious enough to look it up. Much like Global Warming, the "science is settled", which is so not the oxymoron hypocrisy it sounds like. So not. (that was sarcasm)
Global warming is to science what Anschluss was to the Third Reich. If you give an inch, they take a yard, and you still get 1970's style blizzards and ice storms shutting down Washington DC and the Northeast and the Midwest... yeah. Snow in Kansas City and St. Louis. But its WARMING, right? Right?
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Librarian (Volunteer)
I started as a Library volunteer on Saturday. Obviously it is not paid, but I am working shelving books. I spent 3 hours in the Children's Library putting things away. One child kept demanding attention from a mother focused on a laptop screen. The others were much better behaved. They scowled at them both, since their parents taught them manners. I didn't bother interfering. It is pointless. You get sued over stuff like manners when there's children involved and parents who aren't very good at it and preemptively defensive towards lawsuits. So not worth it. I'm just glad the children's library has its own doors. Most of the little ones behaved quite well. Little kids make this burbling sound when they're happy. Even the noisy one did that at times.
I shelved books. It was pretty relaxing. My knees are a little sore, but I put away lots of books. There's several different kinds of collections, including tons of movies and books on Tape and Books on CD and VCR and DVD and picture books and books for those who can read Dr. Seuss and proper books like The Great Brain, which they have the first four of the series. Any autistic kid would appreciate the Great Brain. He is logical. A Catholic among Mormons somewhere in Southern Utah. I think they eventually say it is Cedar City. Near Zion park. Anyway, lots of books.
At quarter of four, having put away lots of books I called it a day said goodbye to both librarians, who were very happy at all I work I did in the messiest part of the library, since this means they don't have to do it later and can focus on the desk and helping patrons. The librarians were glad I cleaned up several days worth of mess there. There were three carts worth of books, you see. It was not a small amount. A couple hundred items.
I drove home in the lovely 82'F Spring afternoon, windows down, classical music playing, through Nevada City and back up the hill, then down Ridge Road under a column of cedar trees on each side. Simply lovely. I took a long hot shower afterwards since kids are covered in germs and why give them extra opportunities to make me sick, right? Then I had a beer, Black Butte Porter. Helped relax the muscles and my mind.
It was a good day. I am glad to work in something useful to others. Maybe a job will come from this, in time.
I shelved books. It was pretty relaxing. My knees are a little sore, but I put away lots of books. There's several different kinds of collections, including tons of movies and books on Tape and Books on CD and VCR and DVD and picture books and books for those who can read Dr. Seuss and proper books like The Great Brain, which they have the first four of the series. Any autistic kid would appreciate the Great Brain. He is logical. A Catholic among Mormons somewhere in Southern Utah. I think they eventually say it is Cedar City. Near Zion park. Anyway, lots of books.
At quarter of four, having put away lots of books I called it a day said goodbye to both librarians, who were very happy at all I work I did in the messiest part of the library, since this means they don't have to do it later and can focus on the desk and helping patrons. The librarians were glad I cleaned up several days worth of mess there. There were three carts worth of books, you see. It was not a small amount. A couple hundred items.
I drove home in the lovely 82'F Spring afternoon, windows down, classical music playing, through Nevada City and back up the hill, then down Ridge Road under a column of cedar trees on each side. Simply lovely. I took a long hot shower afterwards since kids are covered in germs and why give them extra opportunities to make me sick, right? Then I had a beer, Black Butte Porter. Helped relax the muscles and my mind.
It was a good day. I am glad to work in something useful to others. Maybe a job will come from this, in time.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Movies: Gravity 3D
Dad and I just went to see Gravity 3D. Some comments:
The 3D was fun. It really made it more enjoyable, and almost makes up for all the lens flares, which are the second worst I've seen since Star Trek (reboot). When this movie finally comes out on streaming, you'll want to watch it with scientist friends, and drink a shot every time you see an error. An astrophysicist may die, so make sure they're limited to beer shots rather than vodka or whiskey. Also, I miss the "INN A WOORRRLLD..." guy in all those movie trailers. And I'm bored to death of BWAAWWWMMM all the time. Really tired of BWAAAHM. I think I have heard that noise enough. Also, no astronaut will ever IGNORE open flame in a space vessel. Not since the Bell 5 mission. They're super sensitive to flame. Space vessels run low pressure, like top of the Andes, and raised oxygen to make up for it so flame is very explosive. The little ringlets were actually accurate, but probably not the sort of thing which last long before full conflagration. If anything, the entire space station should have been burnt out before she got there.
So yeah, good film, so long as you accept its limitations. It's meant to be horror movie thriller, but if you know science it's one with lots of wincing. It's probably excellent if you're a little drunk. Enough to turn off your brain and just be there.
- True hard sci-fi fans know that space is exceedingly dangerous. It's vacuum. It's full of radiation. The temperature changes are really really dangerous for materials and wear. Nothing up there is going to last except as a gravity well or source of debris. We know motorcycling naked is thousands of times safer than leaving our atmosphere. Running in a thunderstorm carrying a lightning rod is safer than space. Space is for suicidal idiots and astronomy. And astronomy is more useful than idiots.
- It's lovely to see an example of Kepler Syndrome, and I would like to personally kick, in the balls, the person who keeps erasing the article from Wikipedia so the public won't find out about this massively dangerous and potentially devastating consequence to space exploration. Kepler Syndrome is what destroyed everything in Gravity. And it was in the early stages, too. It gets worse, in the real world. The debris doesn't conveniently fall out the sky and burn it. Some of it rises into higher orbits, and breaks up more stuff, or runs into more stuff and makes even more debris. Eventually NOTHING you launch gets through the Kepler Syndrome cloud and becomes more debris. Since Escape Velocity is Mach 25.5, the speed stuff moves at in orbit is WAY faster than the movie showed, and very small objects, like the screw on your glasses, is enough to destroy the International Space Station. As they say in SpaceBattles.com: "Anything at sufficient velocity." They are nerds, but they are right.
- The movie got the math wrong. Orbital math is really different from point and shoot burns. It made great TV, but it was wrong. Orbital math is why there was half a dozen stories JUST LIKE THIS from the 1960's, before the space program, some of which are the reason safety protocols at NASA exist in the first place. Ironically, scifi writers thought up the basic mechanic of the moon landing, (Robert Heinlein) and got used for the actual mission. Back in the old days, engineers were educated, not buffoons who can't detect a parabola calculation (Hubble) isn't right, just by looking at it. Every kid who went through Precalculus and can calculate a Quadratic Equation can spot that. That's junior high school level math, kids. Yet NASA can't pull it off. Nor can they swap between standard and metric. Idiots. So all the NASA stuff breaking? I couldn't stop laughing. Gravity is almost a comedy if you know NASA history in the last 20 years. Or 30 if you want to include Challenger. NASA: "Space Is Our Final Frontier: We can't flip burgers!"
- The only thing that worked right in the whole movie was the final lander. A Chinese copy of a Russian Soyuz. Russian engineering is built with a mind towards function rather than elegance, so it always works. It won't be beautiful, but it works. This is why with the computers catching fire and the module getting hit by debris, landing safely is achieved. That's a spoiler, but this is Hollywood. Could there be any other answer?
- They opted not to actually say: "What else could go wrong?" but the whole movie has that kind of feel.
The 3D was fun. It really made it more enjoyable, and almost makes up for all the lens flares, which are the second worst I've seen since Star Trek (reboot). When this movie finally comes out on streaming, you'll want to watch it with scientist friends, and drink a shot every time you see an error. An astrophysicist may die, so make sure they're limited to beer shots rather than vodka or whiskey. Also, I miss the "INN A WOORRRLLD..." guy in all those movie trailers. And I'm bored to death of BWAAWWWMMM all the time. Really tired of BWAAAHM. I think I have heard that noise enough. Also, no astronaut will ever IGNORE open flame in a space vessel. Not since the Bell 5 mission. They're super sensitive to flame. Space vessels run low pressure, like top of the Andes, and raised oxygen to make up for it so flame is very explosive. The little ringlets were actually accurate, but probably not the sort of thing which last long before full conflagration. If anything, the entire space station should have been burnt out before she got there.
Formula 1 Season Opener: Melbourne OZ
F1, with its new hybrid cars, is having its first race tomorrow at the Grand Prix of Australia in Melbourne. F1 races are on Sunday, but tomorrow is Sunday across the international date line. The initial practice sessions in Bahrain showed the cars had SERIOUS problems with their new powertrains, a mixture of V6 turbo engine, twin turbo charger with electric boost so it acts like a supercharger (no turbo lag) and electric powerplant which generates the equivalent of 220 ft-lb of torque on demand, meaning it can LEAP forward and that's been tearing up tires something fierce on corners. The drivers are overrunning corners because the power comes on too quick. I'd worry about wrecks in traffic, but some of these cars can't even make it out of the pit lane onto the track.
Yesterday's track practice, which they do timed in two sessions prior to the qualifying the day before the race. Qualifying is this evening, which is tomorrow morning in Melbourne. Practice found that Sebastien Vettel, four time F1 world champion, has been having terrible problems with his car. Some of the key engineers have left his team at the end of last season going elsewhere, and they may have played crucial roles after all. He's a good 8 seconds slower per lap than the leader, Hamilton who is in a Mercedes powered car. Jacques Villenueve, former F1 world champion and son of another, said that Renault is completely lost with this new engine technology. Unkind words considering that Jacques Villenueve isn't an F1 driver these days. Still, his point seems accurate. The Renault engines aren't able to stay running and Ferrari is scarcely better though all seem to be figuring stuff out. It seems that the sensors and electronics really needed more of a shakedown, and running the turbo with an electric motor as well as using that as a power generator at full speed, yet limiting the RPMs is making things very difficult for the teams.
I noticed that Kamui Kobayashi is racing for Caterham Lotus again. He's not the fastest F1 driver but he sometimes finishes a race and provides traffic to the leading cars to pass. While he is the slowest F1 driver, that also means he's faster than all non-F1 drivers, meaning the rest of the world. With only 32 or so active F1 drivers, and twice that retired or backup that could come back to the series with sufficient funding, buying a ride with sponsors who follow the driver, not the team, this small cadre of expert drivers with intense focus and discipline and courage, Kobayashi is among the very best of the entire world. So being the worst of the best is still the best.
I also watched a program, a documentary and travelogue with Will Buxton on the Ferrari factory and history, including visits to tracks like Monza, and a small shop that restored and improved old Italian race cars, some of them with hand written and drawn catalogs of parts. The original Fiat 500 was TINY, and had a push-down reverse gear like the Porsche and VW did. Those are tricky because they can pop out again as you release the clutch and go the wrong way. If you have never driven one of these cars, you wouldn't understand, but there's a certain element of suspense when you try to back out of a parking space facing a $90K Mercedes whose bumper is inches from your own, swing your head to the right, slowly back of the clutch and lurch forward stopping before you can hit the brake because you only have two feet, not three. Those who only drive automatic transmissions are missing out on the joy and excitement of driving a proper vintage car. Buxton sat in one in Trieste and said it was one of his dreams. The owner responded "Make me an offer". The flimsiness of an original Fiat 500 is like two sheets of bent metal making friends but nothing actually solid inside, and scarcely thicker than tinfoil. I will note that there is no door handle on the inside, so you have to roll down the window to close it. That must be miserable in the rain. There's no seal on the fabric roof, either. So any speed at all means its coming in around the edges. If it doesn't blow off entirely. Must be miserable in real weather. The Fiat 500 is clearly a car so cheap you wear a coat inside if there's a chance of actual cold. They ought to sell them to college students who want more wheels than a scooter so they can experience proper poverty and keep their hopes down. Keeping them UP is why we're in this mess. Down is what we need.
The F1 race tomorrow night, which I'll watch with my Dad Sunday morning, intensely cheering while sipping hot coffee, will be great fun. Mom liked F1 too. Dad used to take me for drives in the country when I was a kid, and those were roads the Italians liked. I know this because Tour De France cyclists came there in the winter to train because they were just as bumpy, twisty, steep, and bad as those in Europe without getting the snow. That was my fortune, to be raised loving bad roads, and having the ability to drive them. F1 doesn't go on roads like that (Monaco is twisty but smooth), but the visitors take them to reach the tracks. I really wish that someone would combine the road courses and cars of Forza Motorsport with the rain and track condition changes of 2012 F1 (game) and threw in the Rally courses and roads of both Europe and California and Colorado and Appalachia (this is a place. Anyone living there will tell you so) and more twisty roads of Japan, which I'm starting to suspect probably has a fantastic underground road racing sport going on there. Combine all those and throw in the various sections of the old and new Dakar Rally and you'd be able to train drivers, serious dedicated drivers, for a tiny fraction of the costs and those who do it without the cheats would be self posted on the database BBS so racing recruiters could actually follow up for potential test drives. Think that's insane? Not really. Hamilton got started in go-cart racing and was snatched up with a long contract to his eventual F1 team, McLaren. And he's in the top 10 every year, and usually ends up on a podium finish. So it really is possible to see potential in a teenager, train them, and turn them into a winner.
Its going to be really interesting, seeing this race. I have no idea what it will be like. We haven't had enough laps to tell if they can make these cars work consistently, and with 38 laps in the race around the lake there, very FLAT corners and chicanes (that's a dogleg obstacle on a straightaway), with walls either side, its is the exactly the sort of place where rain makes it very exciting, and dry makes it very fast. The vacuum effect under the cars means they throw huge rooster-tails of spray behind them and dry the track off pretty fast, even from huge downpours, so they have to switch tires in just a few laps from soaking wet to dry, rain tires to slicks, which makes for some pretty important strategy and consequences. F1 is not a brute force sport. Racing is NOT all about horsepower. It is about handling and stopping strategy and passing at the right time, and timing in general and a tenth of a second per lap adds up to winning or losing. A bad pit stop, more than 3.7 seconds to change all four tires, can lose your race. It's fascinating. NBC Sports channel is broadcasting the F1 season this year. Check to see if it is available where you live. And that your DVR is HD so you'll see how beautiful it is.
Yesterday's track practice, which they do timed in two sessions prior to the qualifying the day before the race. Qualifying is this evening, which is tomorrow morning in Melbourne. Practice found that Sebastien Vettel, four time F1 world champion, has been having terrible problems with his car. Some of the key engineers have left his team at the end of last season going elsewhere, and they may have played crucial roles after all. He's a good 8 seconds slower per lap than the leader, Hamilton who is in a Mercedes powered car. Jacques Villenueve, former F1 world champion and son of another, said that Renault is completely lost with this new engine technology. Unkind words considering that Jacques Villenueve isn't an F1 driver these days. Still, his point seems accurate. The Renault engines aren't able to stay running and Ferrari is scarcely better though all seem to be figuring stuff out. It seems that the sensors and electronics really needed more of a shakedown, and running the turbo with an electric motor as well as using that as a power generator at full speed, yet limiting the RPMs is making things very difficult for the teams.
I noticed that Kamui Kobayashi is racing for Caterham Lotus again. He's not the fastest F1 driver but he sometimes finishes a race and provides traffic to the leading cars to pass. While he is the slowest F1 driver, that also means he's faster than all non-F1 drivers, meaning the rest of the world. With only 32 or so active F1 drivers, and twice that retired or backup that could come back to the series with sufficient funding, buying a ride with sponsors who follow the driver, not the team, this small cadre of expert drivers with intense focus and discipline and courage, Kobayashi is among the very best of the entire world. So being the worst of the best is still the best.
I also watched a program, a documentary and travelogue with Will Buxton on the Ferrari factory and history, including visits to tracks like Monza, and a small shop that restored and improved old Italian race cars, some of them with hand written and drawn catalogs of parts. The original Fiat 500 was TINY, and had a push-down reverse gear like the Porsche and VW did. Those are tricky because they can pop out again as you release the clutch and go the wrong way. If you have never driven one of these cars, you wouldn't understand, but there's a certain element of suspense when you try to back out of a parking space facing a $90K Mercedes whose bumper is inches from your own, swing your head to the right, slowly back of the clutch and lurch forward stopping before you can hit the brake because you only have two feet, not three. Those who only drive automatic transmissions are missing out on the joy and excitement of driving a proper vintage car. Buxton sat in one in Trieste and said it was one of his dreams. The owner responded "Make me an offer". The flimsiness of an original Fiat 500 is like two sheets of bent metal making friends but nothing actually solid inside, and scarcely thicker than tinfoil. I will note that there is no door handle on the inside, so you have to roll down the window to close it. That must be miserable in the rain. There's no seal on the fabric roof, either. So any speed at all means its coming in around the edges. If it doesn't blow off entirely. Must be miserable in real weather. The Fiat 500 is clearly a car so cheap you wear a coat inside if there's a chance of actual cold. They ought to sell them to college students who want more wheels than a scooter so they can experience proper poverty and keep their hopes down. Keeping them UP is why we're in this mess. Down is what we need.
The F1 race tomorrow night, which I'll watch with my Dad Sunday morning, intensely cheering while sipping hot coffee, will be great fun. Mom liked F1 too. Dad used to take me for drives in the country when I was a kid, and those were roads the Italians liked. I know this because Tour De France cyclists came there in the winter to train because they were just as bumpy, twisty, steep, and bad as those in Europe without getting the snow. That was my fortune, to be raised loving bad roads, and having the ability to drive them. F1 doesn't go on roads like that (Monaco is twisty but smooth), but the visitors take them to reach the tracks. I really wish that someone would combine the road courses and cars of Forza Motorsport with the rain and track condition changes of 2012 F1 (game) and threw in the Rally courses and roads of both Europe and California and Colorado and Appalachia (this is a place. Anyone living there will tell you so) and more twisty roads of Japan, which I'm starting to suspect probably has a fantastic underground road racing sport going on there. Combine all those and throw in the various sections of the old and new Dakar Rally and you'd be able to train drivers, serious dedicated drivers, for a tiny fraction of the costs and those who do it without the cheats would be self posted on the database BBS so racing recruiters could actually follow up for potential test drives. Think that's insane? Not really. Hamilton got started in go-cart racing and was snatched up with a long contract to his eventual F1 team, McLaren. And he's in the top 10 every year, and usually ends up on a podium finish. So it really is possible to see potential in a teenager, train them, and turn them into a winner.
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