Corned Beef and Cabbage

As a dedicated personal chef, I am cooking corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes in a big cast iron pot on my stove right now. I often feel sorry for lesbians, vegetarians, and lesbian vegetarians. They're missing out on life, and always look angry. I've got beef and cabbage and red potatoes, flavored with onion and celery and some carrot for color and sweetness. Its very healthy food, very easy to make, and very slow to cook if you're doing it right. Slow food is often best. People who don't cook learn to eat fast food and hunt for the better stuff if they can afford it. In this post-civil America that may be a very expensive hobby. I prefer slow food, exchanging time to get a better tasting result. This often works. And I'm happy for that.

I hope my readers, both of you, are cooking corned beef and cabbage today. Cheers!

F1 2015: Melbourne Grand Prix

Good race, except for all the Hybrids dying on the side of the road without any apparently visible cause. They just... stopped. 13 cars finished the race, one of which was last but considered a victory because it FINISHED. Melbourne looks like San Diego, like Mexico COULD be if it was clean and law abiding. They provided a great location for the race so kudos to Australia for hosting this race. The world often forgets Australia, but we get reminded you exist from time to time. I encourage my readers to watch Formula 1 racing. It is interesting because its a mix of technology, skill, and strategy, and I think car racing will continue after the oil age, even if they have to synthesize the fuel in factories, and fans show up to the race on bicycles or electric trams or even horsedrawn carriages and buggies. People used to show up to air races that way, did you know? Can you imagine cycling 50 miles and camping in a tent or hostel to attend a race with thousands of other people who went to similar effort just to be there? To hear a car engine and see the state of the art roaring by at speeds only the very rich can experience. That's the future.

Good times. I am excited about watching these races.

Pratchett Died

Apparently, Terry Pratchett, my favorite author these days, passed away last Thursday. A pity, and he will be missed. It is rare for an author to develop such a consistent level of writing craft. He was great, from long effort and practice. I will miss him.

Putin Stroke Rumor

Confirmed by denial? Who knows.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/vladimir-putin-health-fears-kremlin-denies-rumours-president-is-ill-after-he-cancels-second-meeting-in-two-days-10102967.html There's several different articles on this, but it is probably just a rumor. Putin acts like a maniac clown, but he was head of KGB for a decade and you don't get there by being stupid. If the Russian Oligarches mobilize their private troops or the nuke missiles get fueled or the Ukraine war gets suddenly more exciting, that tells you something. For now, this is a rumor.

FCC Kills Internet

The bullet has been fired. The Internet is assassinated. Govt ruins everything it touches, and now it is going to do to the Internet what it did to Healthcare: remove it from the poor, claim they fixed it, and break it entirely.

When the international sites start being blocked, you'll want to call your state govt about it, and get alternatives setup. When the main trunk lines get turned off, go black, go silent, this is what the govt wants. Utter, complete, control.

The internet will die. Mirror sites, locally, will necessarily be limited. Access to international websites, beyond the deliberate and vicious demands of Govt enforced ignorance, will be cut off.

You can read what is in the bill when the govt decides to share it with you. This is the most Opaque and hidden and dictatorial govt in US history.

I have low expectation that this attack on freedom will be repelled or reversed. Much like what happened with Health Insurance rates tripling after Obama opened his mouth, the internet will die. It is over.

Expect taxes on your netflix. Expect taxes on your data. Expect taxes for everything. Govt's solution to inefficiency is to create more. This is the nature of evil, after all.

American Top Gear, Take Two?

First, this isn't happening. This is a what-if question. IF Top Gear America were to be redone, how would you do it to be BETTER than the prior attempt?

1. Don't copy UK Top Gear in US settings. Not exactly. 
2. Don't host it in the flatland. Brits imagine the USA is flat with straight roads only because they haven't been here and to mock the remaining crap cars with straight axles from Detroit. And those suck except for the limited purposes of pickup trucks on flat roads with no corners. So they work in Iowa. I would host this in California, or possibly Reno, because the twisty mountain roads are a genuine test of a suspension, brakes, and engine power. If the car puts you in a ditch or into a canyon on fire, it failed. 
3. Don't test French cars. We know that French cars suck. All the Top Gear tests of Renault, Peugeot and that other one (Lemon?) are pointless. We don't have those here. Top Gear nearly ignores Japan and they're just across the sea, about 12 days by ship. That's closer than Italy is to London when you throw in all those delays. If we test all the interesting cars from Japan and Korea instead of France and Italy, we've got a leg up. And since Japan is closer, its parts are cheaper and more reliable too. 
4. Involve Jay Leno. He's got a great shop and does his own car show, but his cars are driven for joy, not wrecked by hooligans. 
5. Involve the Blackhawk Car Museum, which used to be the Harrahs Car Museum which I've been to see and its amazingly complete for different types of classic and very old cars of the Teens and Twenties and some of the 1930's. A lot has changed, but you can easily see the appeal of such things on the road today. As long as you aren't late for an appointment while stuck behind one, anyway. 
6. Involve more race tracks and driving schools, and review motorcycles and scooters. Top Gear doesn't do that because Jeremy hates motorcycles. True, he's terrible on them, but still they have a lot more value in a nation where it isn't raining every day. 

I think if you did this and then had some hooliganism and some seriously goofy offroad challenges and some coastal driving segments and maybe some RVer segments, including the joy of traffic jams and the absurdity of the 25 mph speed limit through Yosemite and the 40 mph limit on the Blue Ridge Parkway which is insulting to all drivers not texting, well you could have a show worth watching on Cable TV. Probably be better than most of those horrible dating ugly women shows, or those mean chef "reality" programs, or the communist recruiting programs like the former big 3 broadcast TV channels (Truth? What's that?). We've always been at war with East Asia! Yeah. Poor Orwell. At least the dynamo attached to his coffin is providing the power supply for a third of the Internet. That would be a fun Top Gear challenge. Use perpetual motion machines based on outrageous political lies to power cars on the LA freeway. The Hillarymobile could have "what difference Does it make?" on the coffin of ambassador Stephens. The Obamamobile would be filled with a steam generator heated by the burning shame of a nearly molten Nobel Peace Prize since he personally caused more wars than Adolf Hitler. And a Prius powered by the tears of little children for Al Gore. And for political fairness a bookmobile powered by burning money from Bush Senior's Read My Lips: No New Taxes" pledge. Pretty sure he also signed a strict CAFE standard that can't be met without building them from carbon fiber, charging $80K each, and slowing speed limits to 45 mph. This standard has been ratified by all presidents since then and remains largely unachievable at today's speed limits and safety standards. 

Wouldn't that be a hilarious prank? And they can all be pulled over for reckless driving by the highway patrol. That's the sort of comedy that America needs in its car shows. Rude and biased against the Anti-American Suicide Greens. You know, the ones who vote to kill the population leaving ONLY them to enjoy Nature with a fat spliff? Those lunatics. 

Renault RS-1 Build

In 5 months Renault created a car to race from scratch.

And its a car now. For 282K pounds you can get into racing with this amazing beast made of carbon fiber and pretested and engineered using CAD.

Why is this important? Because a complete car was imagined, digitally test, built, and live-tested in the real world in only 5 months. None of this "well, we need at least 3 years lead time to make any changes" like the Big3. Five months. Why isn't American doing this? Why aren't the auto engineers who got unemployed after decades of budget meetings at GM and Ford and Chrysler doing this? From what we see here, the RS one has a team of around 30 guys involved. Once a car is built and the design formally ready, it can be sold to a card company for millions and then mass production follows. If mass produced, this car would be able to sell for a fraction of the listed price of the prototype. Down to corvette money.

Apply the same design techniques to more conventional designs and less expensive engines and you could seriously reinvent automobile production in America. Rather than be strangled by committees obsessed with budget and using the lowest bidder parts, a supplier wiped out by the Big 3 bankruptcy, CNC can make lighter parts through mass production and auto buyers might feel some enthusiasm rather than resent what crap they're forced to buy because that's all which is available. What if a Mazda Miata were made of carbon fiber? That would halve the weight, and suddenly the original inline 4 engine would be able to make it quicker accelerating, which is what MOST people mean when they describe a fast car, not merely top speed. What if that engine had a small turbo like so many have now? A 1.6L turbo, stick shift on a car that weighs around 1200 pounds? That would be pretty interesting on twisty roads by the seaside or in the mountains.

What if the Ford Fiesta replaced its steel body with carbon fiber like the above RS-01? That drops the weight by half, and the existing turbo engine is already quick. What happens when the power to weight ratio doubles because the weight halves? How much wild fun would that be? The obvious answer to car sales doldrums is wide use of carbon fiber. This improves CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) and drastically improves acceleration so even a small efficient engine can get you up to freeway speed in 4-8 seconds rather than being run down by the truck in the slow lane. Modern turbo diesel engines have a wider torque band and are nearly as quiet as gasoline. Ford has imported its turbo diesel ecoboost 3 cylinder 1.0 L engine block for production in the USA. At this point I think they're being blocked by corruption in the Senate (small surprise) but that's the sort of thing which changes every couple years. Perhaps the new senate will clear the way. When the really corrupt ones retire or implode into senility obstacles get removed and small turbo diesels can get into things like a Fiat 500 built in America, from Carbon fiber instead of Indian Steel at the TATA plant. Besides, the world is about to lose the Red Sea and Suez Canal as a shipping route, thanks to Yemen converting to Al Qaeda. This is a big deal to Europe, and makes delivery of Indian products and Chinese products twice as expensive. American products become relatively cheaper, provided we can produce what they want. We're about 5 days to Europe by sea. China is now around 20. Think of all those manufacturing contracts... And China is unlikely to smash Al Qaeda in Yemen because they have other concerns. The USA has everything to gain by pulling out of Yemen entirely and letting the Red Sea become pirates and anti-ship missiles and the Middle East race to build nuclear weapons in every worthless desert. It is ironic that I agree with the President on pulling out the region. We gain economically by doing so. And we also stop spending money trying to civilize arabs by force. That hasn't worked so far, not in 2500 years. If the oil in Saudi has to go through its southern loading port, that's fine. If Suez gets attacked by radicals in Egypt, that's fine too. The returned high price of oil helps fracking operators, since oil services company Schlumberger laid off 9,000 oil workers due to the price dropping too low to profit. The price comes back, so do the workers. And so does the oil production, putting the USA as the top oil exporter, and justifying the Keystone XL pipeline. Exporting oil paid for a lot of civil engineering products, which made large areas of America inhabitable and catapaulted our rough frontier nation into first world status. We need to get back on top of this again, and the Keystone XL is important. Yes, we'd be shipping oil overseas, but we'd be shipping it to Europe, who can pay well for it, and it fixes our trade imbalance.

I really think every auto engineer should look hard at these videos and think about what Renault did and ask themselves if they like cars enough to investigate carbon fiber as a regular construction material. Building out of steel had its place, last century. Today we need lightness. Cars are as cheap and crappy as they can get, and steel and plastic car are coming from China and India now. The crappy cast plastic dashboards in American cars get slammed by Top Gear because they are crappy plastic. We have forests. We can put wood there. We can finish cars properly so the Europeans don't have such an easy target for snobbery. Even Jeremy Clarkson has found American cars he likes. Richard Hammond is a long-time fan of American muscle cars. James May likes the little ones he can drive barely in control with thin tires and throttle floored. Surely we can make something more fun than a Panda. Clarkson was very positive about the Fiesta and the Focus. They are proper hot-hatchbacks. With carbon fiber and the gearbox and suspension tuned to the weight, and the half-shaft to mechanically correct the torque steer, with independent rear rather than torsion bar... the Fiesta could get better. Much better. And it was already car of the year in 2013 despite its flaws and plastic dashboard that rattles. Surely if Renault can build something amazing, so can we?