Engineering Lessons Based on Top Gear Fails

Top Gear is a car show, now ended. The guys in it often did challenges with the words "How hard can it be?", which is the English equivalent of "Hey Bubba, Watch this!", which is an actual Darwin Award phrase. One of my classes last semester (semester is over now), was about teaching classes. The upside of this exercise is its meant to teach you to think of things you see as potential ways to get the attention of classrooms of kids, teens, or adults (college) students needing something more educational and interesting than "lecture, reading, report" sort of lessons.

The great thing about this phrase is this was a fine way to introduce examples of really terrible engineering, which they knew were terrible, but made the point by doing it badly, and this was comedy. One of my favorites of these was the Caravan Challenge. These are actually homemade motorhomes, based on really bad choices of vehicle. That was part of the comedy.

So imagine an entry level engineering class at your local community college to improve on this? Form groups, brain storm, and what would you do better?

1. Use a proper van or truck frame for the vehicle, with a big enough engine. A V8 is a good idea. One with sufficient cooling and the right gears to haul lots of weight. If the top part is wrecked or missing this is fine. Install things like water tanks before you build the rest. 
2. Use common materials for the frame so going around a corner won't tear it apart. In modern times this means either tube steel or aluminum. Either can be welded by a reasonably competent home shop 220 V-AC welder. The frame outlines your living space and provides support for the interior and cover. Make sure it is big enough, but not ridiculous. 
3. Cover the frame with either fiberglass, thin plywood (less common but was a practical option once), and keep the total height below 12 feet. The 18 foot tall example here was for comedy. 
4. Add insulation so it is warm enough for expected conditions where you plan to camp. In the Sierras, this means below freezing, even during summer. In Cornwall, in the video above, 50'F is as cool as it gets. Blocking the wind and a small electric heater should do. 
5. Work out your heater setup, and the battery use if electric, and install the battery and charging so it will work. And make sure the car alternator that charges the batteries won't fry doing this, with a cutoff so it won't overcharge and catch fire. 
6. Work out the propane setup for your stove and heater, if you use it. Remember that expanding propane gas absorbs heat which can freeze up the expansion chamber, creating ice until it seizes. It is common for propane heaters to shut off due to freezing in cold temps, meaning the design is seriously flawed in the real world. Using a light bulb to heat the expansion chamber can solve the problem, but it uses a lot of electricity to work, meaning you need more battery. Sometimes the right answer is not propane, but a smaller pellet stove and a car battery to run its electric system. Keep that in mind. 
7. If you decide to use a white gas stove setup, only do this with good ventilation. The benzene is toxic and the CO (carbon monoxide) will kill you. Good ventilation is a good idea regardless, but it also removes your heat if it is cold. I mention this because it is deep winter and I spent 15 minutes de-icing my car this morning. There was black ice everywhere this morning. Most of that melted this afternoon but if it doesn't dry enough we'll have more tonight. At 83% humidity, I expect more black ice. 
8. Carry enough fresh water for the expected duration of your trip. Also carry enough grey and black water tanks for your expected waste. And setup the thing to be easy to dump without getting dirty yourself, and the cleanout valve/connector is much recommended. If you do this right it is easy to do without getting splashed or filthy with human waste and blue stuff, neither of which is the least bit tolerable. 
9. Seriously consider a prefiltered tank, a filter system, and a pump or boiling system to transfer from grey water and then treat back into clean water. This might not work, so testing should be done. Prefilter tank would be a place to put untrusted water like river or stream water, filled from buckets or rainwater, then slowly treated and shifted into the main clean tank for use. If you can re-use some of the grey water that will allow you to extend your time on vacation before resupply, especially in desert areas like Nevada. Power or heat to do this is the challenge. 
10. Install solar panels on the roof, and batteries to hold the power, with vents so they won't make the cabin explode when the hydrogen released during charging, and heaters on the batteries so they work even when cold. 
11. Also install a traditional gasoline powered generator, a quiet one. 
12. Install an Air Conditioner, with a heat exchanger. This should be simple since they're made for this. Also install a CO and CO2 detector so the heat exchanger keeps the air flow moving to prevent suffocation. If the trailer is too airtight, you can die of suffocation. 
13. Don't drive too fast, and remember to pull over regularly to allow people by. 

I'm pretty sure that the above things make up most existing commercial RV's today, especially class C and B types. Despite the video, there were plenty of commercial examples which they could have driven, showing their potential for speed and polite driving. Caravanists don't pull over in the UK, which is why they're hated. They block the highways. Top Gear wanted to demonstrate faster RVs, and failed. If they were a bit more serious they might have succeeded. Winnebago, for instance, has a V10 engine with supercharger or turbo (forget which) that boosts the power enough to haul its own weight up a mountain pass road at full freeway speed.

Climbing over real world passes this is important. While Donner Pass is 7229 feet, there are several passes over 8000 feet along highway 395, which runs north and south down the back of the Sierras. Many caravans and RVs traverse this road during the spring, summer, and fall, and it s a primary route for Snow Birds, the collective name for retired people with RVs who winter in Yuma Arizona (or Florida) and summer in the high country and mountain meadows which are so pretty and peaceful and get tens of feet of snow during the winter months. If you tried to come up with a similar trick in Europe this would be like wintering in southern Italy or Spain or Greece and summer in Sweden. 

Hilarious Whining

I am amazed at the whining from the losers of this election. Seriously, either shut up or get the hell out of my country. My people finally yelled "no more!" and Obama is out on his treacherous ass. We will be blaming him and your bad voting for the next 25 years, and we'll even be right. He's scarred and vandalized America during the entire duration of his reign of terror.

And its almost over. The Tyrant Punk is about to be the butt end of the Presidential Porta Potty Library joke.

Biden was really hoping Hillary would get arrested by Comey, but apparently Comey found his own suicide note in Hillary's emails. It caused him to NOT prosecute her hundreds of felony treason violations of the Official Secrets act or whatever the legal name of the secrets law is called.

Obama made Jimmy Carter look successful. 

Moving on, things are improving. My semester is nearly over. It hasn't been great. One of the classes was useful. The other two weren't, and the fourth is best forgotten. The problem with teachers is most of them are delusional. They exist in communism. They have no idea how the real world works, and are utterly clueless about real life because they are protected by their socialist tenure contracts. You can't fix what is wrong with education until you end Tenure and fire the communists and lesbians running them. You also have to fire the hippies and junkies and sexual predators of both genders operating there. Schools are too important to allow creeps to run them.

Next semester I'll be taking more practical courses and some programming classes required for graduation. These should be more useful when turning up for a job interview, and getting the job interview in the first place. And while the leftist panic mongers are screaming that libraries will lose their funding because only leftists have been running them for 8 years, what they ought to be saying is "we are going to lose our leftist jobs and be replaced by right-wing librarians who know a library is not a machine shop or drug treatment center".

Adaptation and Business

For the last 8 years, Republican gun owners have quietly carried on despite the abuses of govt that actively hates us. Eight Long Painful Years. We have gotten by, quietly, and kept our heads down, and adapted and survived. It has not been a nice time.

The racists of the left are really ticked off their racist candidate lost the election because the majority did not vote for her. We held our noses and voted for Trump and that is that. So, leftists, what do you do now?

In prior elections where leftists' side lost, the economy dramatically improved because leftists were no longer screwing it up. Seeing that the economy was better run by someone else, the leftists went on to start small businesses like bakeries and wineries and breweries. They learned how to operate a business, and a balance sheet. This is a great use of leftist energy, making and selling things, and far more productive than complaining. Republicans kept our heads down for 8 years of misery under your racist hate monger, and its party platform of racism and hate for black people. Democrats hate the poor, which is why the keep them that way. Now it is your turn to shut up and get back to work. Do something useful.

If your useful skill isn't building a business in a physical site, or you can't stand where you live anymore and think you want to see more of America, do that. There's plenty of businesses which can happen on the road. Truck driving and delivery driving is interesting and rewards people who can do math. There's also outside sales. Selling stuff to people who need it, like selling scanners to hospitals, and arranging payment and delivery and training etc. That makes money. That is useful to people in a very direct way. Far more useful than rioting because you lost, you hypocrites.

Women Should Build Their Own House

Women like to stay in their home town, surrounded by relatives and familiar faces. They're really big on this sort of culture. Many women consider men to be a sort of accessory, and not actually important to their lives long-term. Once they have the house and a good lawyer to seize it in the divorce, that is often the end of their marriage. This explains a great deal about what is wrong with America today.

Men don't care about home towns. Men like fast cars and motorcycles and uncomplicated friendly women. Men like seeing new faces and are more content to live without all the social requirements that women prefer. We find beer more satisfying than women. Men go fishing because their wives are obnoxious on a regular basis, and fish and mosquito bites and freezing cold or sweaty heat are less annoying than dealing with her. There's not much advantage for men staying in their home town. Home towns are for women and raising children.

Two story craftsman home, built by one guy on weekends, with a hammer, nails, saw, tape measure, and level. 

Men used to get a job, buy a piece of property, then build their own home on the weekend. It was a called a Craftsman House, because you bought the plans from the Sears and Roebuck Catalog for about $4. That's around $100 in today's money. It had plans and instructions on how to build it with hand tools: hammer and handsaw and square and plumb bob or spirit level. After they finished the house they would get married, and have a family. That was 100 years ago. Before rampant divorce and DNA tests that prove her kids aren't yours. Women want houses, but they won't build them for themselves like they should.

Building a house isn't actually that hard. I've done portions of it myself and even someone with weak arms and clumsy can still do this job. Most of the parts can be bought at Home Depot, Lowes, and your local lumber mill.

Women love to declare their independence, but I have never witnessed one building her own home in the real world. An independent woman should be able to do everything a man can, everything from change her car's oil, mow her lawn, and build a house. The same as men did 100 years ago.

Women insist they are equal or better than men. This is conceited, but they can certainly stop whining and stand up for themselves. Get a job. Save your money. Buy some land. Get some house plans online for a house that will suit your actual needs, with room to house your accidental pregnancy results. Pay for the building permits. Where I live that's $160,000 for the permits alone, which is too much and a great reason to move somewhere else. So don't do it here. But build your house, at least 700 square feet, not this tiny house crap.

A tiny house is not a house. Its a wooden tent, and just as unliveable. At best they are a detached guest room.

Build your house legally and don't miss any steps or hammer in a screw (something I HAVE witnessed women do).

Get the house inspected with building permits as you go so it is legal, and pay the fees and taxes like men do. Every woman should be able to do this job. Stop needing men to pay for your conceits. Pay for it yourself so you can stand up and have legitimate pride. When you build your own house, with your own money and your own labor you then have the right to do what you want.

Millenial Debt and Trump

I am happy that the Hag lost the election. She was evil and utterly unsympathetic. A terrible leader, and a bad liar. With the Community Organizer leaving, America can restore jobs, fix our trade imbalance, and repair a lot of infrastructure abandoned by the Community Organizer for the last 8 years. Remember this?

Dozens of people died. Why did it happen? Minnesota is run by Socialists. Keeping infrastructure repaired is a Republican problem. Democrat-Socialists are all about the pregnant hookers and legal dope. And if you're high, or pregnant, what do you care about working people dying? Right? This is the primary difference between the parties, and events like this are the reason Trump won. Normal people care about this.

I do hope that Trump restores bankruptcy protection and returns Credit Cards and Student Loans into bankruptcy, since that fixes Millenial debt burden, allowing them to start businesses instead of pay for useless educations that didn't provide jobs. Collapsing those banks and scammer credit card companies from all the bankruptcies of those debt agencies will ALSO end credit card fraud, since it becomes the issuing agency's problem again. Bush W caused this problem. It needs to be corrected. And restoring bankruptcy also ends the protests, since most of these disenfranchaised kids are only disenfranchaised because they're in debt slavery. Fix the debt, fix the problem. Besides, those agencies all gave money to Clinton, so screw them twice.

See? Solve this problem. Give them the right to walk away from bad investment again.

News from Ottowa, Canada

News Update from Canada

The flood of Trump-fearing American liberals snaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week. The Republican presidential campaign is prompting an exodus among left-leaning Americans who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, pay taxes, and live according to the Constitution. Canadian border residents say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, global-warming activists, and "green" energy proponents crossing their fields at night.

"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said southern Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota . "He was cold, exhausted and hungry, and begged me for a latte and some free-range chicken.  When I said, I didn't have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields, but they just stuck their fingers in their ears and kept coming. Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals just south of the border, pack them into electric cars, and drive them across the border, where they are simply left to fend for themselves after the battery dies. 

"A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions," an Alberta border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a single bottle of Perrier water, or any gemelli with shrimp and arugula. All they had was a nice little Napa Valley cabernet and some kale chips.  When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing that they fear persecution from Trump high-hairers.

Rumors are circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer, study the Constitution, and find jobs that contribute to the economy.

In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans in blue-hair wig disguises, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were alive in the '50s. 

"If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we become very suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage, are buying up all the Barbara Streisand CD's, and are overloading the internet while downloading jazzercise apps to their cell phones. "I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "After all, how many art-history majors does one country need?"

Trump and Dope

Ordinarily, Trump and Dope are not related things, but both passed in the same election here in California. So the Democrats can all smoke dope now that they've lost the election. The big upside of Trump is way more jobs than under Obama and what Hillary was planning, the even if she hasn't yet been charged with alleged crimes of treason and mishandling official state secrets, collusion to hide the mishandling, corruption, and bribery. She hasn't been charged yet, but after Trump is sworn in? I wouldn't wait long.

The thing about recreational dope is there's important local consequences.

1. Around 25-30% of my library patrons are into growing semi-legal dope. 
2. The new dope law means anybody can legally grow it without having to hide they are. This means all people who want it will be growing it. 
3. This shrinks the market for buying dope, lowering prices and thus money in the industry. 
4. Less money and less market means less the local jobs in dope are about to go away. 
5. Plantation dope in the lowlands will happen now. That means mechanization and even higher yields. 
6. Philip Morris was alleged since the 1980's to have dope plantations waiting for the day it was legal here. Now it is. 
7. Expect a HUGE surge of cheap dope in cigarette stores for over the counter sales. 
8. Dope can now be refined into honey oil legally and used in those e-cigs and sold there too. 
9. Dope seeds will probably be a major sales item at this point. And books on growing it will be big at the library where I work. 
10. Previously, you couldn't ask an employee who was high if they were high because it is illegal to inquire of an existing medical condition and medical dope was legal. It is also illegal to test one person for dope, and testing everyone is expensive. Business owners would either deal with doped up workers or fire them under another pretense. 
11. Locally, many workers were high while on the job. It was obvious, they stank, and you learned not to do business there because they screwed up every job. This drove business out of the local shops and businesses. 
12. Locally, dope inebriation causes more car crashes and fatalities than alcohol, according to the highway patrol. 
13. Statewide legal dope should cause even more crashes. Part of the problem with prosecuting dope inebriation (DUI) is the tests only reveal the user has had some in the last 3-4 weeks. Not in the last few hours. So proving inebriation at the time of a crash is a major technical challenge. Heavy users will share tips to avoid DUI prosecution for dope driving.  
14. Any business interested in quality control will avoid California since the population is high, or can't be proved otherwise. 
15. Taxes here are already really high. Taxes on businesses are punitive. This reduces the available jobs to chain stores and is pushing out lots of other businesses. 

Trump will help a lot of businesses but probably not here. Repealing Obamacare will help a lot, but people have gotten used to serious increases in poverty, and we've had 8 years of that, and 8 years of employers abusing their staffs by cutting hours and benefits. I doubt we'll see happy times from this around here. It will probably be a lot better most other places. Just not in California.