Honestly? Both. The world needs both. I'm glad that Tesla is building a battery factory in Nevada, closer to the source of their critical Lithium supply. So long as Tesla had to import batteries build in factories, stage by stage, around the world, the costs would remain high and they were hostages to any part of the system that opted to go evil and ransom the materials. This is better. And Reno is Pro-Business so is happy to get the jobs and not cause trouble for the factory. The last time I went to Reno, it was cleaner than California.
As for Elio Motors, with their three wheel Elio-car, I want to tell folks, because the question keeps coming up: the motor is the water cooled version of the Triumph motorcycle engine from 1965. That same engine went into the Geo Metro, cars that you still see on the road today, 25 years later. Daihatsu is making them on contract, and put them into Suzuki Swifts as well. So the engine is well tested and reliable and despite being 3 cylinders and 70 HP, plenty enough engine for the little car. How those cars fare in highway crashes is a separate question. Elio claims they are tested and safe and will come with 3 air bags. Okay, possibly. Nothing does well in a crash with a big work truck or SUV, not even another SUV, and you always take your life into your hands when you get on the road, every single time. Even going to the store can kill you. Anything over 15 mph is potentially deadly. But real life is dangerous and if you wanted to be safe you'd stay home and order take out delivery food and pay for grocery delivery service till you ran out of money and then starved to death. Safety is just an illusion.
The Eliomotors car is a motorcycle for people who don't like motorcycles. You don't need a helmet. It has a windshield wiper and a roof. It has three wheels so won't fall over at the stoplight. It has a door and a lock. It gets way better mileage than a prius, and requires no lithium imports. Someday, when gasoline is closer to $40/gal, you can swap the engine for a diesel and run it on modified soybean oil based diesel or algal diesel. Not as convenient as the Tesla that plugs into your garage charger, but also not going to strand you when the powercell dies and requires a day to recharge. Getting stranded doesn't sound very convenient to me.
For most commuter needs, the Tesla is great, and this being an area with a lot of rich, retired people, I am starting to see them on the local roads. Eventually I'll talk to one and find out if they live up to the hype or have some drawbacks, like weight, or cornering on the slippery local roads in the wet time of year, which we have entered.
Ever since US manufacturing went to China, and IT jobs went to India, the middle class in America has seen its jobs evaporate and most of them fall into poverty. Most have lost the houses they bought during those good years a decade ago. Most have deep debts. Few have full time employment, and many have no employment at all. For America, prosperity in Asia has been a disaster.
Since last night, there has been a large protest by students and young people in Hong Kong, demanding the right to nominate and vote for their representative government, rather than "voting" for the only person put forward by the Commies. This is a pro-democracy demonstration. The markets were terrified tanks would roll in and kill everybody, like they did in Tianemen Square 20 years ago. Everybody remembers the shopper blocking the tanks motionless. Nobody remembers the machineguns on the tanks mowing down thousands of people, and arresting, imprisoning, and enslaving or executing the survivors. All they care is that their iPhone from Fox-conn is shiny.
Now, I want you to imagine that all these protestors succeed. That China caves and gives them their proper election process, and the rest of China sees this. All those youths slaving away in Shanghai and Quangzhou and Beijing and every city with major populations of youths, working for too little money, because its better than farming. Picture all of them getting a light bulb idea. Now they all protest, peacefully, for higher wages standards, waving communist flags for workers rights. And the party can't attack their own chanting stuff from Mao's Little Red Book, so they enact measures forcing employers to charge more for their products and pay much better wages. Imagine, Chinese workers getting real wages, like we used to, rather than $6 a month, which was double what they used to get as farmers. This causes inflation in China, but the Chinese Peoples Treasury just prints more money and who cares if rice costs 100x more this week? The Chinese are getting paid more. They can import it from America and Vietnam and the Phillippines. Why not?
Trouble is, the new higher prices suddenly require higher prices back in America and Europe, the primary buyers of Chinese goods. The US and EU markets can't absorb the price increases. Their orders drastically fall, so the Chinese factories have mass layoffs because there isn't enough orders to keep them going full tilt anymore. The drop in available parts in the US and EU, and the higher prices, encourages semi-skilled hobbyists and retired machinists and factory tooling engineers to see about building stuff domestically. This sounds great. It would mean jobs in the USA, for all those unemployed people. Only, the companies that built machine tools got driven under by the Chinese and their milling machines used to make the factory equipment are long sold off to China, and new milling equipment isn't available because those factories are shut down too. China is in a Depression. Thanks to fair wages. The rest of the world can't build up their own factories because the only place with the hardware is China. And they're idle. Even with the orders, the inflation is such that they can't sign the contracts because the price is breached in a week and they bankrupt and sometimes the managers suicide to avoid being tortured by the Peoples Army, who has taken that as their standard response to a factory closing. Its chaos in China.
Without machine tools, the USA and EU are in real trouble. Using hand tools provides low quality products, slowly, and there's no interchangeability. Everything is sort of built one at a time. Even shoes. Tires become unavailable as things slow down, and most people end up walking, and only going to work as far as they can walk in an hour, and heading home before dark. Nobody has a working flashlight anymore. Who has batteries? Those are from China too.
Jay Leno was a popular late night talk show host. He did this for decades. I wasn't someone who stayed up that late, so didn't watch his show. After he retired, very rich from the show, he started putting videos on the net about his car collection, many of which are classics. In a very real sense, he's the American Top Gear, only a great deal more respectful and far less flippant. He doesn't have the audience or mindset of Top Gear fans, either, and Jay keeps what he buys for the most part. He's got 1920's Dusenbergs, and a 1980's McLaren F1, which is an odd, very expensive, production sports car that's road legal, but being $1.3 million should rarely be trusted around traffic. Jay Leno's Garage recently posted a video on a visitor with the Lancia Fulvia Zagato, which was a car ahead of its time, and very interesting because of it.
Here's the video. I really enjoyed watching this. Thank you, Jay Leno. Your respect for vehicles and history makes California proud. I really think these programs are more of a legacy than all those years of late night TV because those shows are largely forgotten by my generation, but these car documentaries are valuable and will likely be referred to a century from now.
So the official start of Fall was 4 days ago. And its Fall. The temperature dropped down from 90'F days to barely 70'F. Leaves are falling. And it has rained. The King Fire is nearly out. It is snowing near Lake Tahoe, up high above 9000 feet but along there, there's plenty of mountains that tall around the Lake. Mount Rose got snow today. It is now officially too cool for summer blankets. I had to switch over to winter comforter and heavy sheets. It was cold enough this morning to reach the lower 50's, and open windows, even cracked, drafted in a distinct chill. The afternoons are warm enough for shirt sleeves, but the evenings get chilly as the sun goes down. Isn't that something? There's threat of rain tonight and tomorrow. The blobs of it on radar aren't here, and don't seem very large, but perhaps a shower. Or maybe something substantial will come in off the coast. Radar only sees so far, and mountains are what makes the rain fall, thanks to the orogenic effect. I expect we'll have extra visitors to the library tomorrow so I'll be extra busy shelving. Good times.
Meanwhile, first season of Lois and Clark, a show from the 1990's that I enjoyed, with Teri Hatcher at her physical peak playing cynical "modern woman" before the entire idea took a sour turn of disappointment for millions attempting the feat. Turns out you CAN'T have it all. Pick one: career or children. If you try both, you fail at both.
On my walk today, in the brisk Fall breeze, under shimmery mares tails clouds and intense white clouds scudding out of the river valleys, I pondered how a house situated to take in this view properly would be a fantastic place to live, provided you've got power and internet streaming. And possibly natural gas supply. Power and natural gas are both VERY expensive to bring to a remote location, which is why even delivering propane is expensive and rural folk have BIG tanks to avoid the $200 delivery surcharge. Considering I like the truly rural locations where there's actual peace and quiet, I've need to likely spend tens of thousands drilling a well, then depending on that water supply, irrigate a vineyard to occupy my time and make wine every Fall, while the weather is so wonderful. On a mountainside, you can see so very far, and my childhood had fantastic vistas out the front window. It is something I miss here, and requires a walk to see my state, though the walk shows me a fair bit of it from the hillside. All the way north to Lassen Volcano, and east to Sierra Buttes, and from a different location on the same hill, a couple hundred yards away, the Sutter Buttes and the distant peaks of the Coast Range north of Williams. Imagine dragging an Airstream trailer up there and parking it beside the water tank and hooking up a septic field, once you find the right site, with the best view. Post a lightning rod and call it good. Might go weeks or even months without talking to anyone else. The wonders it would do for concentration and peace of mind. Sigh. Pity. Who can afford that sort of luxury anymore?
UPDATE: It rained after all, last night. It is snowing more around Lake Tahoe this morning. It is cold enough we have the heat on this morning. It is a beautiful morning. The falling snow will almost certainly change the colors of the aspens/alders in the high country. Hopefully we can visit tomorrow, if only to drive through. Depends on whether it is snowing or not. WeatherUnderground is still the best weather radar site, and the map loads way faster than In-accu-weather, which is often wrong.
In continued failure by the Warming Cultists, it is raining in the Sierras today. Have a look at this beautiful radar map. http://wxug.us/1kql5 It is from www.wunderground.com not to be confused with a terrorist with ties to our president, of course.
This is the latest image of Antarctic Sea Ice. In 2011, Al Gore shamefully proclaimed that the Arctic would have no sea ice in the summers by 2013, a point which disgraced him in the entire (qualified) scientific community, but his zealots continue to support because that's all zealots can do (other than kill people). He also suggested that the Antarctic melting would cause sea levels to rise and most of the seal ice on the shores would be lost by 2013. As you can see, its the largest EVER RECORDED. Admittedly, we've only had satellite technology to record this for the last 3 decades so this isn't as astonishing as it could be, but the growth of the sea ice over the Antarctic winter, where they were recently fund raising for penguins presumably wiped out because they didn't have as far to walk to get fish... well, now they have to walk a lot farther. Much farther. Perhaps they'll move their nesting site?
The rough math on the ice growth, per this tongue-in-check article reminiscent of the Warmer's threats of impending doom and fund raising tactic is hilarious. Kinda wish it was funnier, actually. Should make up some BS stats and make appeals over "the planet". And how this must be dealt with immediately. Emotional appeals are not science. When you see all the Warmers accusing those who want further information about accuracy get defensive and attack those questioning? Well, that's what Con Men do, and Warming is just the latest Snake Oil scam. Here in the Gold Country, we know about Snake Oil. Laudnum was a great business, and modern super-pot is the same kind of patent medicine of those people, hurting others just like their grand pappy did. Those claiming its harmless aren't seeing my economy and how damaged it is by the dopers wandering around, lost and stinking. Its NOT harmless. Same as giving money to Warmers who attack our way of life, and indirectly fund terrorism.
Ever since a mad arsonist lit the King Fire a couple weeks ago, we've had smoke trundle in around midnight and stick around until midmorning or noon, but sometimes all day, like Yesterday. When we got rain here last week, it did NOT rain on the fire but the winds stirred up the fire even worse. The Lake Tahoe Ironman race was cancelled this morning because the smoke is so thick it would have put racers into distress. Thin air and mountains to climb in the raise are considered enough challenge. Adding smoke is a bit much. The racers said they were going to get a beer and figure out what race to do next. Good for them. A healthy response. I think they have an Iron Man at Lake Sonoma, and there's one at Lake Berryessa too. Neither is currently on fire. Both have great mountains to ride bikes over. Maybe those will be available?
Meanwhile I get to spend lots of time indoors with the windows shut, and when the wind does clear the smoke out I can open the house, change the air, cool it down again. And when the smoke comes back, close it again. This is the situation. There was a big thunderstorm out of the Southwest, which is Southeast of here of course, and dropped rain and lightning strikes right up to the edge of the fire but never quite onto it. This also means it missed us. Once it reached Hwy 50, the wind shifted and blew it straight west, of all things, into the Bay Area, which is a very abnormal pattern for a storm. Since this is now the first day of Fall and the Autumnal Equinox, fire season will continue until we get actual rains. Not showers, but drenching rains that soak the ground and make everything too wet to burn. This is California. Normally there's no rains in the summer, though technically they do get them in the Sierras as thunderstorms. If normal patterns were followed and the underbrush was allowed to burn every couple years, there would be no crown fires, which are the big ones that burn entire trees. Normally, a lightning fire ONLY burns the tree it hits, and then the underbrush burns but since its underbrush it never gets big enough to carry the flames into the tree tops so only the ground burns. The trees survive many fires, if things were balanced. The Indians used to help this along by noticing how the fires worked, and noticing that after the fires, there's a lot of grass growth which the deer like and so a couple years after a fire, there's meadows and deer to hunt. Deer taste awful, but its food and a lot better than acorns and buckeye mush which even their best soakings still cause upset stomach thanks to all the tannins and alkaloids. Still, its something to eat. The Indians cut down the brush, burned it, spread the ashes which helped the grass grow and when they moved camp to the last place they'd cleared, they got the advantages of plentiful game. The forestry department duplicated this effort and did serious clearing of understory brush so fires can't burn the trees. They continue this task along Highway 20, which is east of me. Its controversial. Fussy home owners think it is unfair to be charged money to clear land when they're already paying for fire planes to drop retardant to put out the fires. CalFire points out they wouldn't be dealing with all these fires if the brush was cleared, as nature intended and the Indians used to do before. There is lots of bull-headed stupidity responsible. The old way was the best because it duplicated the random lightning strikes. Everywhere these big fires have come will have severe erosion in the next rains, and that silt will flow into streams and from there to rivers and from rivers into reservoirs, where the slowed water will lose the carrying capacity, dropping it into the bottom of the reservoir. Eventually they fill. Englebright Reservoir, damming the Yuba River, is filling up with rocks and sand. Same with Lake Mead. California can only have agriculture, its big money maker, because of these reservoirs. If nothing is done, the water will be lost, and the flood control value in storms is lost and before you know it, before the end of this century, those dams will be little more than waterfalls with meadows and winter storms will flood the plains, making them into swamps of mosquitos, bass, and birds. Genocide Greens will love it. They love anything that kills humans. Unfortunately, for most normal people who just want to make a living and have a beer after work, it will become somewhat inhospitable. Odds are rather good we'll suffer some disasters after these fires. For now its huge clouds of smoke. In a month it will be landslides and road closures.
I live in the mountains. There are trees in the mountains. There was gold here, but there's still plenty of iron. There's so much iron that tree roots carry the iron into their bark and leaves and even sap. On a hot day, sap sprays in a fine mist out of the trees thanks to evapotranspiration. This mist of red iron impregnated sap drifts down in the breeze to fall on objects below. The concrete is stained red by the sap, worse when a wet leaf is allowed to settle onto the pavement. What looks neat to a passerby is actually obnoxious to the person whose job it is to remove, such as the homeowner or broom operator. In this case, me. The sap also falls on other objects. In this case, my beautiful shining white Honda. It gets freckles on the paint when the sap lands. For years I've struggled with removing iron ore stains. Redwood tree sap does this too, in case you wondered.
I've tried washing it off with soap. Nope. Not entirely water soluble except in heavy sustained rains. Any traces left leak out into spreading blood stains. Looks horrible. Paint polish removes that, along with some of the paint. And requires a lot of elbow grease. I recently discovered that a polishing rag with a bit of compound in it, damp with water, works best at removing the sap, especially if its had hours to be damp, such as in the morning dew. I managed to remove the sap from my car this morning after a couple hours of effort instead of the usual 2-3 days by straight hand polishing. With this much effort invested, you can imagine I prefer not to do this very often. I think the last time I did this, there was a sudden and vicious blizzard afterwards which made the state news. The wax helped the inches of snow slide off so I could see. Alas, my tires were useless in the snow and left me repeatedly stuck. I was rescued half a dozen times by passerby and other motorists trapped behind me. This town is better than it thinks it is when it really matters.
I am now waiting for the temperature to warm up enough that the wax will actually stick to the paint so I can finish the job. With any luck, my efforts will result in rain, as that's what normally happens when I wash the car. As this is a desert in the summer, you can imagine its pretty surprising for that to happen out of the blue, but the Pacific ocean is only 5 hours away by passing cloud so things can surge from there to here with shockingly little warning.
One of the magnificent things about the Gaelic culture, besides being considerably older than the Greeks who called them Foreign (Keltoi means Not Greek), is the invention of 7 key music. The most advanced at that point was 5 key, and the Asians only had 3, which explains a lot. The Gaelic culture was seagoing, and their language was spoken by tradesmen at ports around the Med and up to the Baltic and along the North Sea, well before the Viking raiders. Those extra keys are the minor ones, which makes for much more complicated music than your glam rock can offer. That means more complex emotions, and deeper thoughts. So the Gaels were thinking deeper thousands of years before the Greeks started building things out of marble and insisting their logic was the right way to go about things. Logic is valuable and still isn't widely practiced by the heathens in the Middle East, for example (who should be concerned about water but instead kill over gods nobody really believes in because its a handy excuse to murder people and that's what middle easterners REALLY like: murder). So minor keys are important to culture, and explains a lot why the Gaels (aka Celts) kept living in a frequently harsh environment like the British Isles, and why their primary export remains music.
Here's Journey's popular chant "Don't Stop Believing" which was a stadium-level power ballad in the 1980s.
And here's a few more. See how it shifts from pride to contemplation just be changing to a different key?
See? Its really sad that the Middle East has offered nothing to culture since formulating a better alphabet and basic algebraic math. And that was over 1000 years ago. What since? Murder. Lots of murder. We had to show them how to build dams, and then actually do the building. They're too busy killing each other. And not very good at it, considering they haven't yet finished. We've got music and art, and they've got bloodletting and people who explode. How can anyone worship a god of bloodletting and murder but isn't good enough to finish the job? Even the Mayans managed that. The Incan's too. The Aztec needed help to finish, but they were quite close, and if Coronado hadn't shown up there probably wouldn't be a Mexico, just a lot of creepy stone monuments that attract flies. They invented Zero, allegedly (but wouldn't the Arabs have invented zero to do algebra?), but the Mayans still got laid low by the same kind of drought we're having in California, when their wells dropped too low to water their crops. The surviving Mexicans, after the Aztecs and Coronado etc were so glad to have music, with all the scales and keys, they seized on tubas and accordions and are still copying Gaelic songs, putting Spanish words to them, and pretending its original. Listen to a Spanish language station and you'll hear an 80's tune with different words. Its astonishing.
Most of those 80's tunes are based on ancient, multi-thousand year old, ballads from the Gaelic peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England before the invaders slaughtered everyone who could carry a tune in a bucket. The Mexicans think they know about suffering, but the Gaels and Picts and bronze and stone age peoples were hit by repeated invasions before and after the north sea flooded. The Vikings are just one of the more recent, as were the Normans, and the Saxons before them. A series of invaders, raping and pillaging for a few hundred years each. Living near the east coast of Britain was asking for it. Surviving all that, then conquering the world does cause an excess of pride. Pity the British Empire was too arrogant to deal fairly and hold onto it. Now all we have is the language and music, and a lot of history, and not nearly enough understanding of what it really means. The songs sound sad, but we aren't sure why. I think this is the answer.
Been fiddling around with Forza 4 on my Xbox 360. I found in the data that I've been ignoring a few cars and I recently regained the trick of driving a RWD car, such as the BMW M3, but also some fantastic ones like the Nissan Sylvia and the Alfa Romeo 8C (Competizione), which is really fun but the ignition is so hot the exhaust pops in an annoying way. Better than the Mercedes SLR Coupe, but still, an annoying sound. Of them, the BMW has the best suspension, since its balanced well enough to hunker down under hard throttle rather than spin out of control like the Mercedes. Seriously, I can see why Top Gear found the Mercedes to be nearly undriveable and their owners survey found it "most disappointing". The Brera was a better engine noise with that super charger, but not nearly as fast, and the big hatchback rear end resembles a Porsche 944, a car I don't like either.
The odd thing is that slow and cheap cars are fantastic when driven like a cat on fire. The Yaris S with sticky tires, alloy wheels, and anti sway bars you can floor and drift despite being front wheel drive, and its insanely fun on really twisty roads where you're revving the engine around like a maniac. Love it. James May, of Top Gear, had a wonderful review of the Fiat Panda because its skinny tires and tiny engine means it starts to go out of control on a roundabout at normal speed so its hilarious fun to drive since its often almost crashing.
I've found that MOST of the cars in the Forza game require anti-sway bars to be stable in high speed cornering, and that's one of the most important things you do for performance. Another is sticky tires, better shocks and brakes, and a nice high flow air filter, which is a huge boost to horsepower. I also go for better oil cooler and radiator, because running hard will overheat your engine. In the real world, this leads to blown head gasket, cracked head, and expensive repairs, possibly requiring an engine rebuild thanks to a broken valve or cracked piston.
The downside of the game is that in the real world, a Peugeot, a Renault, and an Alfa won't run for long. In the game they're great fun and loud and powerful, but in the real world, the Honda and Toyota will leave them behind in pools of their own oil after their engines explode. Also, to be fair, the torque steer in quite a few front wheel drive cars is significant. The way to avoid this is called a half-shaft, which puts the U-joints at the same angle so the power is delivered equally. Acura does this, and so does my Honda Accord, but I don't think many other car companies do. Ford should but uses electronic trickery (applying the brakes to counteract the power) instead. A pity since I think a proper half-shaft would greatly improve the Fiesta STI.
Naturally, there's no torque steer in the game, but there should be. Its a real thing, and it will really make you crash in the real world as you apex a turn on a twisty mountain road. For the most part, Forza 4 is decent training, but the absence of physical feedback, like gee forces and seat vibration, means you're relying on wheel vibration and tire squeal noises to remain in control, and certain types of turns you'd be able to detect near failure in the real world, you can't feel in the simulator. Ass-heavy cars, for example, are wrecks waiting to happen. Ironic since in the real world, a mid engine should be better, not worse. In the simulator, any increase in power makes them really hard to control. RWD front engine cars are easier, and that's just not true in the real world.
Also: surprise rain this morning. The enormous apocalyptic fire south of here looks like an approaching hurricane, and its 100 miles away. Its just that huge. The smoke has been really terrible, arriving in the night to choking levels that wake you up and make you itch (poison oak smoke also causes the allergy itch) and force you to close windows. I miss my daily walks, but the smoke has been so thick in the mornings its been impossible. But maybe today, after the rain clears off, I can walk a little. One can hope.
It is worth pointing out that only Astronomers and Geologists understand time properly. No other field needs to keep it is proper perspective, to professionally recognize its scale. Most people learn what they need to get paid or avoid ridicule in their jobs and substitute religion for science the rest of the time. When I worked with biologists, I learned just how ignorant and superstitious they were. I expected better, like all serious scientists being proper atheists with some understanding of all the other sciences, like I have. That's my failed Optimism, right there.
Time to a geologist, begins with the planets accreting together after the sun ignites. Most prefer to focus on the earliest rocks, found in Pennsylvania oddly enough, which are 4.5 billion years old. To a geologist, we find things like that worth knowing, and get interested in features and discontinuities which suggest weathering, then being covered over by later events and environments. I've stood on the seashore and looked at the cliffs by the sand and found proof of a series of powerful hurricanes over a thousand miles from their usual tracks. How did they get there? A change in winds from Alaska meant the sea remained warm in the summer, enough to sustain a hurricane rather than dissipate its energy with cold water, and allows them north towards Oregon. This is a hugely important deal because these events pre-date human beings, so you can't blame us for climate change since these are proof that climate changed before we were around. And that it can change back. In proper time scale, there's all sorts of butterfly wings moving around, changing the courses of hurricanes. Sufficient heat in the arctic ocean could release sea water to form clouds and dump lots of snow on the high northern Rocky Mountains by the Arctic Circle, reform the glaciers, shifting water out of the ocean and putting it on the land again, like during the last 3 ice ages. Two of which happened before we were around. That shift of water also lowered sea levels 80 meters, around 300 feet. Not rise, lower. So higher temps can lower sea levels. Once that goes on long enough, the Bering Straight goes dry and the arctic ocean influence of the North Pacific stops, allowing the Pacific Ocean temps to rise further, allowing way more hurricanes to climb the Pacific Coast to Washington State, and moisture flowing inland can produce glaciers on the Sierras, Cascades, and Rocky Mountains. Also, it can refill the salt lakes and get rivers down there going again.
During the last Ice Age, California was getting 120 inches of rain a year. That's as much as you see in the Olympic Peninsula, and produces some seriously huge redwood forests and major flood events and the current "islands" of the San Joaquin Delta near Stockton and Antioch were actually serious floodlands filled with millions of migratory waterfowl: ducks, geese, etc. The interior deserts of California weren't deserts. It is entirely possible the coastline would have been lashed heavily by hurricanes, so the liveable places were inland. Much of the California Coast is crumbly chert and mudstone, and any mechanical attack by waves when the ground is saturated makes for landslides. We've seen that in normal Pacific storms. Badly sited million dollar homes falling into the sea. Big deal. Rich people paying for hubris.
This is not to say you can't build homes to survive direct hits from hurricanes. Get above the storm surge. Stay off the cliffs. Build windbreaks. Avoid overhanging roofs so they won't catch the wind, and bolt down the roof. Use strong enough materials that don't lift off in 150 mph gusts. Lots of houses on the Atlantic Seaboard follow this rule. And lots don't. I studied architecture before I studied Geology. There's a fussy bunch. Lots of CYA in that field. Most home building qualifies as wooden tents. It keeps the rain off, and the heat in, but structurally not that durable compared to good old 4 foot thick stone walls or concrete wrapped adobe, houses of which are around after 500 years. Wood frames don't last that long. Post and beam lasts better, but they're illegal in California because they collapse in earthquakes. Ironically, the light tent structures of stick lumber is strongest in quakes and least likely to fail in shaking. The upside is these stick houses are cheap to put up and safest in quakes, but the downside is there's no value to building quality to last, so people don't. We don't have to stay in one place since we just don't have that much invested in our wooden tents. Its cheaper to rebuild after a hurricane knocks it all down that to build a structure that will survive it because the earthquakes are a much more common threat. Again, the sense of time is responsible for the outcome.
Earthquakes are another issue of time. To an Easterner, quakes are so rare they only happen in California, except that's not true. The East gets quakes too. Really big ones. Charleston was completely leveled by a quake before the Revolutionary war. The New Madrid quakes (plural) in Tennessee flattened or tossed cabins, erupted pockets of methane and arsene gas and coal, changed the course of the Mississippi River, and if it happened now, would cause around $2-3 trillion dollars in damages to homes, businesses, and most importantly, public utilities. It would knock down the powerpoles and shatter the water and sewer lines and sever the levees and bridges and natural gas pipelines. Picture that. It would devastate everything within about 500 miles. From the Great Lakes to New Orleans, from Savannah to Omaha, to Pittsburgh and possibly Buffalo and Philadelphia and certainly Washington DC and New York City. Serious disruption on the fringes, serious damage and devastation in the center. 100 million people homeless. This is NOT something the USA is prepared to deal with, not at all. The Mississippi River would almost certainly shatter the levees and finally crash through the Atchafalaya Valley to the Gulf, leaving New Orleans without its usual shipping income. And to a geologist, Earthquakes are NOT an "If" question but a When. It is incredibly rare for the energy to result in pure deformation and lockup of a faultline. Most often, prior quakes indicate future quakes, 99% of the time. So the stresses that made the last quakes, and destroyed the Mound Builder Culture before that, are due for the next hit. Now that the region is heavily developed and mechanically fragile. Memphis will be leveled. The St. Louis Arch might survive, but the rest of the city will fall. To a geologist, this is the inevitable consequence of people insisting on living in the way of natural, inevitable disasters. Its just as foolhardy as building a house in the path of a hurricane on the Barrier Islands in North Carolina. Or swimming in shark infested waters. You're going to pay the price. Do something stupid enough times for long enough and eventually you get smited for it. That's a function of time.
Someday the Yellowstone Caldera will erupt again. The lava chamber was recently mapped in 3D and its 100x bigger than previously believed. It is capable of far larger and longer eruptions than we realized. Its not a simple shape either. When that goes, there should be weeks of warning, and its heavily watched. And yes, it is possible for earthquakes to trigger eruptions and eruptions to trigger earthquakes. A quake a few months ago was on a faultline leading directly to the magma chamber of Lassen Volcano, which had a powerful eruption a century ago and remains active today. Someday that will go off again. Same with Mount Shasta, which is the largest stratovolcano in the lower 48 states. Its very pretty, but its serious as a heart attack, and a major transportation route goes right past it. An eruption would probably close I-5 to truck traffic, and the major rail route runs beside it. We built our infrastructure in a very scenic by dangerous place. Such is life in the West. We mostly move away from disasters, if there's time, but the entire town of Weed burnt to the ground over the last couple days in a major wildfire. A shame too. Looked nice on Google Earth, and having driven past it, it has a lovely view of the Shasta Volcano. So few things make proper sense, but when life is so short, and views of time even moreso, people don't think "I should not build a house and town on the side of a volcano or surrounded by trees that catch fire." Just saying. Yet more evidence that human beings are self destructive.
Turns out that wasting viewers time with fantasy global warming broadcasts from 2050 makes them change the channel and increasing numbers of subscriber cable companies ban it for offensive programming and lack of interest. Funny how that is.
The Pause in warming, which is now nearly twenty years, and early snowfalls in the Northeast and Denver, as well as the current record levels of ice around Antarctica, and normal levels of ice in the Arctic since 2007 make all the frantic cultist threats look really stupid. Also, it should be noted that there's been no sea level rise either. I keep waiting for signs of the ice age is beginning again, since that's how those work.
Generally speaking, it is best to stay away from cultists and tinfoil hat types. I like a good scifi story as much as the next guy, and the idea of them makes for fun ways to daydream or inspirational art, but in the end? Its just fantasy to pass the time. I really wish the Global Warming cultists would get back on their meds and stop bothering the rest of us, stop insisting their pot-fuelled daydream is actually real and then taking our money to try and find proof. They are still being allowed funds from our taxes, and that's just wrong. No religion deserves access to taxes.
A just and fair govt would go after them for fraud and put them in debtors prison, seize their houses and cars, and put them in jail, and into chain gangs cutting weeds along roads in the South, during the long hot summers. That's what they deserve, those con men and frauds. Stealing money is theft, and that is still a crime.
I do hope it rains properly this fall, but California is famous for its good weather, and we've had droughts like this before. The nights are cooling off nicely and the days are not so hot now that it is September. I'll be polishing and waxing my car for winter and put rainx on the glass, because when it does rain it will likely be a surprise.
So it turns out several hundred thousand signatures on the 6 California's ballot measure were not from US citizens. LA and Yuba County, both heavily aliens, had the highest rate of fraud on the ballot measure, around half not being citizens.
Funny how the Democrats are all "let illegals vote" right up until those Mexicans are voting to get the Democrats out of power. Its something to like about Mexicans, btw. They're mostly Catholic, and pro-family, anti-Abortion, and thus Republican. Similar to Asians, who are also pro-family and pro-business and thus Republican. California has huge populations of both. Rather than divide California govt up by region to deal with regional problems sanely, all of California will continue to pay for the largest bunches of idiot voters in the few cities. Which was the cause of the division movement in the first place.
So California will stay together. And White Flight will continue, and the black-on-black genocide will continue too. This is all part of the Democrat's plans to empty the state of California entirely, leaving it merely mansions with servants for the ultra rich. All of which would be big Donors to the Democratic Party. Considering the cost of living here keeps rising, that would figure. Is destruction of California through malfeasance and waste and taxation just a real estate scam to expel the middle class and the poor they used to employ? It does follow pattern, doesn't it?
Jefferson state needed the support of the 6 California's voters, which are spread around the state. This means that Jerry Brown can continue to ignore Levee and Reservoir maintenance which would largely solve our water crisis. He can continue to impose ever-higher gasoline taxes on the population to fund trains to nowhere and tunnels to kill salmon and smelt (illegally), and get discount water for the cities that voted him into office while bypassing development of the Northern Sacramento Valley in desperate need and failing infrastructure. But that's okay because LA voters don't even know where Colusa and Chico and Redding and Marysville are. So they can hang. Right?
Once I get my library degree, I'm going to apply at a lot of libraries and whichever hires me with sane home prices (and tolerates Atheists), I'm going there. Especially if it's out of state. Somewhere sane. And hopefully not going to trigger my allergies.
Dunno how many of you knew this or not, but the reason that Stargate SG1 used the Fabrique Nationale Grendel P90 submachinegun is this: FN couldn't sell them (for the $2500 each asking price) and offered to supply the guns and all the blank ammunition the show could shoot. A P90 was supposed to be an anti-armored terrorist weapon that wouldn't go through the wall behind the one you're shooting in the mazes of Jerusalem and Riyadh. It got adopted into a PDW (Personal Defense Weapon) because its very small and holds a lot of spray and pray ammo in the magazine. Turns out that once you've fired a few rounds and bump it, the ammo tumbles in the magazine and the gun seizes. The engineers needed to be shamed over that. And that's why its not a big seller in the real world.
In the pilot episode, the base security open fire on the invading aliens with full magazines of M-16, and later in the series, during some big sales of the P90 to Saudi Security forces when there was a serious shortage of blank ammunition, they carried around Heckler and Koch G36 rifle and MP7s, which are a competing system. The G36 is a piston driven version of the M16 firing the same ammunition. And the funny bit? The Grendel's ammo is slower and less powerful than an M16 and G36. So just a little movie conceit for television there. The P90 is lower powered than the .223, a ballistic twin to the slower .221 Fireball, which is half an inch shorter and several hundred feet per second slower despite the very light bullet it shoots. The mechanical advantage of the firearm is its a blowback lock, like a conventional submachinegun rather than a proper automatic rifle or main battle rifle. They are cheaper to make. And they jacked up the price a ridiculous amount. Wars are fought with economics. FN lost the plot. So they had to give them away.
Of course, in the real world, body armor has gotten good enough that our troops aren't always able to kill with the M16 right away. Beyond 200 yards the velocity of the .223 bullet drops below a critical mechanical threshold and its usual explosive deconstruction ceases so it just drills through, leaving a small hole. So beyond 200 yards, a full length barrel won't fix it. A shorter barrel M4 makes it WORSE and fiddling with lighter bullets is gradually returning performance, however penetration is based on sectional density, which requires long heavy bullets, but they can't reach full speed without full power loads and a long barrel to accelerate in. Which doesn't work in CQB like the mud hut cities our troops keep fighting in. This irritation leads to air strikes and genocide.
In the real world, bullet sizes are climbing again, and the 6.8 SPC retrofitted into the M4 magazine space is much more effective at both distance and CQB. But a longer round, with more velocity and a new magazine designed for it would be better. The nearly ancient .308 fired by the M14 are back because they rip through body armor and can drop an enemy at much longer than the effective range of the M16, which is 200 yards in the full barrel length, but merely 100 in the P90 with its puny bullet, cheap construction techniques, and low recoil ammunition with the high markup. Its about profits.
Stargate was a fun show, and the P90 is more effective than the MP5. They could have used MP10's, however, and offered Flechette core rounds or something. Its not like the villains followed the Geneva convention so use whatever works. A flechette is a weighted dart, like a 16 penny nail with fins with a disposable sleeve to fit the gun barrel, fired by conventional gunpowder. The lightness of the round and its low drag means it goes very fast and punches through armor at very long ranges and deforms on impact into frightening levels of explosive damage. No wearable armor stops it. They were banned by the Geneva Convention right after they were invented because they worked. If our troops had them, the war would already be over. For pure terror value, put them on drones with miniguns. They would easily go through adobe walls.
There's also the .300 Blackout, which is meant to be very quiet and subsonic. Considering the characters are often sneaking into bases and getting caught, escaping, and blowing stuff up, that would probably be a good choice. Meh.
Having recently visited Reno and found it is in better shape than here, with a lot more operating businesses than here? Yes, I would move there. I like the desert. Thanks to new laws on Indian Casino gambling, Reno has less to offer that industry, and Vegas is newer, but also suffering thanks to the costs of fuel. Most gamblers would rather spend their money gambling, not getting there. What Reno offers is cheap housing with close access to the Eastern Sierra and Great Basin, which is very nice outdoors. Reno has a lot of bicyclists too, at least as many as Nevada City and I spotted a fair number of scooters operating too. Modern poverty, the New Poor, are mostly college graduates who put most of their wages into student loan payments, aren't addicted to drugs or living in slums in Oakland, and seems a lot happier than Old Poor. I'm sure they'll get run-down eventually, but the New Poor have every reason to start their own businesses in places like Reno where that's legal and there's few obstacles. This is a huge difference from California, which only really wants tourists to take out loans, spend the money, then leave, spending the rest of their lives miserable and trying to pay off the debt. In Nevada there is no zoning laws. You can do what you want with your land. Garbage dump? Machine shop? Horse ranch? Yep. Whatever. Placement of stuff in the area is a bit more random, but the economics are different and its a very freedom loving state, which doesn't explain why they kept electing a bigot to the Senate. Course, California elected a neurotic with PTSD to ours and her recent comments indicate senility just as badly as his. Perhaps if Nevada gets rid of the prick it would be worth it to move there.
Anyway, Sparks, a suburb of Reno on its east side, is a good location for the Tesla factory for some important reasons. Its got railroad access. It has major trucking interstates. The mine for the lithium they're going to make the batteries from is in Nevada, so its a lot cheaper to truck it there than to Texas or Detroit or whatever. The mine in question works by rain falling on a big basin of rocks, the lithium leaches out, then the water is pumped out of a well at the low spot in the basin, and the water then gets the lithium removed. Presumably to be sprayed across the square miles of rock again. Few non-geologists know this, but Nevada is full of volcanoes and has serious earthquakes just like California does. I seriously considered going to grad school at University of Nevada Reno for Vulcanology, mainly because its really interesting when mountains explode. My grim and dark humor funny bone tingles then.
See. Isn't that cool? The non-fiction section of the library has more fun stuff like this in the natural sciences section 550 ish. Also check in periodicals, though serious science papers on geology are either chemistry or environment articles in most cases. Chemistry at the small scale drives the large scale events like this eruption, which is mostly steam and carbon dioxide overcoming the ability of the rocks to contain the pressure. Geology classes makes this sort of thing a lot more dull. That is precisely why I opted not to study meteorology because I want clouds to remain pretty.
So I'm glad that Tesla is doing the sane thing and building a factory that's relatively close to the mine so they can retain control of their batteries and thus the price of the car, rather than be mocked for shipping the lithium to Germany and China for different stages of the process before shipping it back. All that shipping costs money, and its bad for the environment but the money is the important thing. You can't sell a cheap electric subcompact to the masses if you are putting most of the cost into the battery shipping around the world twice. This is better. So kudos for sanity.
Its going to take several years to build the factory and get things running before they hire anyone, but if you've ever wanted to work with lithium, which explodes on contact with water, you can certainly do so. Be sure to write up a will, and take extensive photos of your body to help the plastic surgeon if you happen to survive getting splashed and burned by it. You can even bicycle to work during the summer. Just understand that in the winter, they get some snow, and a lot of black ice so winter tires are a really good idea in that season. Upsides are lots of cheap houses from the boom are still sitting empty, and its a short trip to Tahoe and skiing if you like that sort of thing.
Iced tea is traditional in America as the predecessor of soda pop, back before we had bubbles, and when those seeking refreshment didn't want to get silly drunk on ale or mint juleps. My mother was from The South, in the boonies no less. I have a second cousin who plays banjo and is famous. He only has the normal number of fingers.
Most people who do iced tea do it wrong. Powder tastes horrible. Its also, unfortunately, too strong. The best way is sun tea, where you hang tea bags in a gallon jug of water in the sun for a few hours on a warm day, then chill the jug a few more hours in the icebox before serving. And I do mean icebox as opposed to the Spring House, which my grandmother used to use for keeping things cold. Iced tea done right is cheap enough that no matter how poor you are, you can afford to make it.
My own preference for iced tea begins with English Breakfast tea, as it is just sharp enough and its black tea, which is far better tasting than green. It has been roasted or fermented. I also use mint. Many people put spearmint in their tea. Others put lemon, to counteract the acid of the tea. I don't like it. This is almost the base of a mojito, only its caffeinated rather than hoochified with rum.
I prefer peppermint in my tea. The best tasting and strongest peppermint tea I can buy commercially is Celestial Seasonings Peppermint. Stash mint tastes stale and not strong enough. A proper peppermint tea bag should be just short of stained with the oil. The kind I buy comes in bags without strings.
So boil 2 cups of water in a pyrex measuring cup, in the microwave. It takes around 4 minutes.
Add 2 bags of mint, 3 bags of black tea.
Steep for at least 20 minutes to get every last bit of flavor and caffeine out of it.
Pour tea into nearly a gallon of water, less the pint, into which you've placed 3 or 4 packets of sweetener. I went with Stevia. It doesn't screw with my bloodsugar so this is a free food.
Pour tea into jug, pour jug into measuring cup, repeat a couple times.
Cap the jug and place into the fridge a few hours before serving.
Serve in a tall glass with ice. I find it lasts me several days and exactly hits the spot when I'm dehydrated and tired from shelving books for hours. Works a treat.
Formula 1 racing is struggling this season. The new hybrid engines are finicky. Normally, racing should be on the edge of failure, but the new ones are more like the edge of functioning. Most of the time, they're broken. And for most of the teams, the irritation is getting to the point that two of the three leading teams are threatening to dump the entire series entirely, one of those being Ferrari. You can't have Formula 1 without Ferrari. Red Bull (Renault racing) is also struggling and their chief driver Sebastian Vettel was 4 time world champion in the prior series car. In this he struggles to finish. When world champion race drivers can't rely on their car to actually finish a race? You have serious problems. Teams are going through engines and taking penalties for changing them. The cars lack sufficient front grip for passing in most of the places they like to pass, and the tires are unreliable and finicky for their operating temperatures too, to make up for this. They don't wear well when they're working, either. This formula sucks. There was a sign posted opposite the pits at Monza this morning: "Formula 1 Is Dead." And these are Italian fans.
Guys, you gotta fix this. Over two thirds of the teams are threatening to dump the formula and take their teams and money elsewhere, probably to American Le Mans or possibly start a new series. What they should do is put their collective foot down and dump this car. It sucks. It is a disaster. My Dad, who has been watching formula one for most of his life, suggested a really simple solution.
Offer two engine choices.
V6 turbo, 2.5 liters.
3.0 Liter V8 normally aspirated.
That's it. Give them back the wings. No more ERS/KERS, no more electric motors and batteries. Let the drivers be 20 pounds heavier. Driver weight is an actual rule, btw. They are stick thin and just this side of actual starvation. Most doctors would put them on IV nutrition and hospitalize them, based on how they look. Their blood tests are probably showing all sorts of dangerous chemistry and organ failure happens in starvation like this. Did you know that? It is true.
Anyway, those two engine choices, more front and rear wing. I don't care if this is like the older cars. The older cars were better and with more downforce they can pass in more places and that's more interesting than watching the drivers skid off the track because the stupid cars have about 500 pounds of battery onboard, which overheats, causing the rear brakes to fail since those are actually shifting energy to the battery, which then causes the front brakes to overcompensate and skid instead of stopping and has caused most of the crashes under braking this season. A hundred million dollars worth of damage and its life threatening too. Eventually it is going to kill a driver. So get rid of it.
Racing is NOT regular car driving. This is important. With this latest hybrid mess, the series organizers said this would relate more to modern driving but it really doesn't. All it does is show how horrible electric cars are, and how unreliable and dangerous they are. Let Formula 1 be actual race cars. If there were no gasoline for my car anymore I would ride my bicycle to the track and camp overnight to watch it. That's how much I like racing. If there were no fuel coming out of the ground we'd synthesize the gasoline for the race by converting it from coal or cracking it from algal biodiesel. Whatever. These are things that can be done.
In 1911, before WW1, people used to ride on horsedrawn carts to the race track to watch those newfangled automobiles and see those barnstormer fabric wing airplanes, and wing walker acrobats. Warren't that the finest show? Indeed!
So yes, stop pretending that Formula 1 should have squat to do with a Prius Hybrid and turn them back into the fastest cars again. Right now, Indycars are 20 mph faster than Formula 1, and that's just embarrassing.
Dump the hybrids, Bernie. Get back to regular engines.
Just picked up Poe's "Hello" CD from the library where I volunteer. They have music, including popular music, there. I don't have a paying job, and I'm fond of this older album. I used to work with Angry Johnny, so we liked his theme song at work.
It's nice to have music when I can't afford to buy it anymore.
My recent post on Tiny Houses in the age of poverty was the most viewed of any of my posts. 105 and counting. I am stunned. I spent a week writing that, adjusting and erasing and rewriting it until I figured it was enough, then added videos and posted. It drove up my daily views for 252, which is my personal best. Considering I only have 2 followers, most of the time my posts are being read by two people at most. The other 10 hits are bots checking for advertising revenue mentions. Weird.
So my 17 year old Honda Accord is potentially dying. The differential is going out. I'm taking it to a shop this week in hopes they can fix it, but if they can't I'm driving it till it dies. If I can't land a paying job before that happens, I either buy something used, or more likely, I ride my bicycle to the volunteer job I'm working till they hire me of I run out of optimism or I graduate with a Library Technician degree and get a paying job somewhere else. And that's certainly possible.
To that end, I have been cycling up and down the hills here, so that when I have to do it for real, riding to Nevada City requires climbing a hill, following a ridge a couple miles, then dropping a steep twisting road, then a long slope into Nevada City, cross a bridge and climb another steeper hill where the town is. Naturally, the library is at the top of the hill. And note that a return trip would descend that hill, then climb back up to this ridgetop road, a long climb of about 800 feet from the bottom of the hill at the bridge. On narrow streets with potholes, parked cars, texting soccer moms, drunks, junkies, and dog walkers with long leashes. It would be challenging, to say the least. For those of you who ride in flatlands, these hills require first and second gears and drops you down to nearly walking pace. Due to nearly silent modern cars, you also have to pay attention listening for those creeping up behind you, so no music, you headphones. You listen or you'll get hit. You should also know that 10% of the air is missing because its 2600 feet elevation, just below the snow line, and we DO get blizzards here without much warning. So you wheeze till you adjust to the elevation. Good for training, however.
I am running a hard frame mountain bike, no shocks etc, and slick tires to roll easier on pavement. I've replaced the brakes, since the old ones had plastic in a critical load bearing part and failed, and swapped the handlebars for more ergonomic ones, which helps a lot. I am still using the original chain and derailleurs and even pedals, once I adjusted them to move easier. Works great, very smooth. I think this bike had top level parts, other than the brakes. With the replacements, the bike is dandy, and very quick despite being steel. So if I have to bike to my volunteer job, I can. And if I get hired but can't afford a car till I've got a down payment, I can still bike.
In the snow.
Uphill.
Both ways.
UPDATE: Took the car to the mechanic, says its too expensive to fix the right way and metal shavings in the gears have likely destroyed them too so replacing the transmission, which is more expensive than the car is worth by Bluebook. I either have to find a used transmission and swap it, possibly doing the work myself since the shop wants $1200 for that labor and its literally 5 bolts and fluids and I already own jackstands. If I can track down a transmission in California, it would be worth it to pick the thing up rather than pay hundreds for shipping. Everybody wants to rip you off. That's America today. A bunch of con men and thieves. I wonder if the Honda is the car equivalent of the iPhone? An invitation to be ripped off?
There's a bunch of graffiti on Donner Pass, in the old abandoned railroad tunnels, the ones that were the original transcontinental rail line built by the Chinese and Crocker, before his opium addiction and whore of a wife invented the United Nations while high at their mansion in San Francisco.
This is the view from the railroad bed, now just a gravel road with the tunnels running through. Back then in the 1860s, during the construction, Crocker was free climbing the cliff faces and dealing with the Chinese rock cutters building the tunnels in the granite. This being granite the tunnels are still there.
I climbed these on Sunday and took pictures of what is currently there. There's lots more, but these were the most artistic looking stuff.
Ugly sister?
I would respect this so much more if it said "Orwell was right" instead of Ormes. Lame.
This should say: Camus. Because, ya know, Existentialism, yo!
Product placement ad for the Roku streaming box. I swear this place would be improved with some touchups. A few more U's and suddenly its hilarious.
Also, the MYSTERIOUS PETROGLYPHS left behind by some bored Indians, probably actually drunk Truckee loggers who then peed on the rocks after "discovering these ancient ruins" that are who knows how old in reality. Honestly, anybody can scrape a rock and then pee on it to make it weather artificially. I'm naturally suspicious of any claims of ancient value, particularly since the trail goes right by this and its already weathering away pretty quickly. My bet is they're recent and fake. This is why I think bored sculptors should assemble steel plate art of crouching Japanese anime mecha in fields, with plagues suggesting whatever joke you want. Leave them there for tourists to laugh at. Car-henge kind of humor.
