tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59613098720699020712024-03-13T06:32:36.812-07:00 The Center PunchRuminations on all things political, automotive, mechanical, and technological.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-17346043967061958502012-11-03T14:03:00.000-07:002012-11-03T14:10:21.422-07:00Talkin' 'Bout My GenerationWell time to welcome in the Gen 5 Small-Block-Chevy. It's the new base engine for the 2013 Corvette with 450HP and similar torque over a wider band than the previous engine. It's still 6.2 liters and retains the same bore spacing but it shares no parts with the outgoing mill. They appear to have thrown just about every modern tech trick and tweak that exists at the engine; variable everything, 11.5-1 CR, direct-injection, dry sump oiling, cylinder de-activation, an acoustic foam shell over the manifold to quiet the injectors/pumps, and believe it or not a new sensor that measures air humidity. Oh yeah still a pushrod motor which makes me wonder how the devil Chevy is getting these sorts of power figures with only two valves per cylinder because in specific output terms these figures are comparable to a lot of furrin' big eights that use overhead cams, four valve heads, and their own heaping helpings of ultra-tech. Lastly the 2013 car will be rated at 27 mpg.<br />
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When this new design gets punched out, blown, and stuffed into the ZR1 it might well break the 700HP barrier. Perhaps most amazingly of all it still fits into the same rough footprint the original SBC does. Somehow I doubt this is what the gummint was expecting when they bailed out GM. It certainly constitutes a classic double fingered Stooges style poke in the green obsessed eyeballs of the current admin. Plus it's nothing but cheering that Ford and Chrysler have fielded their own hearty high-power eyeball pokes. Good on all of 'em.<br />
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It is fascinating that the Obamanauts seemed to think that by sheer rhetorical force they could convince the public that they they <i>must</i> purchase small vehicles with poor performance for inflated prices such as pure electrics and advanced hybrids. The hypothesis was, and is for that matter, that if American manufacturers were forced to build ultra high efficiency vehicles that the public would naturally get with the green program by flocking to buy them encouraged by large <strike>bribes</strike> incentives, from the feds. How's that working out guys?<br />
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The darling of this program is the Chevy Volt which is selling in numbers so low that even Lamborghini would be embarrassed. Turns out folks aren't keen on spending forty grand on an economy car no matter how much high tech is slathered upon it or how big the government bribe is. Trouble is even the most virulent anti-automobile activists have not found a way to force consumers to buy a consumer product they do not want to buy.<br />
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It is true that in the case of health care "reform" that the government has enlisted the IRS as a financial leg-breaker in its quest to force the public to buy health insurance and so compliance is likely to be high. However health insurance is, in most cases, not really an optional expense for the public so naked government coercion works more effectively. Buying a new vehicle is almost entirely an optional process for the public however so even the smartest president in history has not yet figured out a way to force them to dance to their preferred green tune while doing it. Luckily the current administration, as of writing, knows that short of literal police-state coercion there is no feasible way to force people to buy a particular kind of ordinary consumer product.<br />
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The response of the feds to this impasse has been to heap ever more draconian efficiency mandates upon auto manufacturers so as to try to achieve by extra-legislative regulatory coercion what they cannot accomplish by rhetorical effort. They are advancing this agenda in the hope of two primary effects. First these mandates are to be phased in over decadal time spans consequently the cost to the public of these mandates will not be entirely apparent until the current administration is fully out of office. The second hoped for effect is that the public, in the manner of the famous frog in boiling water, is far more likely to accept the substantial cost of these mandates if they are spread gradually over time instead of being hit by large price increases all at once.<br />
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In the Soviet Union consumer choice was severely constrained by the state, grumbling might result in a vacation at a gulag, but that approach will not work, yet, here. So stealth and subterfuge must be employed since the all consuming cause of Climate Change is so stupendously critical that any method the public can be made to swallow must be utilized. A more perfect example of "the end justifies the means" is difficult to imagine. If, despite Solyndrical bumps in the programmatic road, the greenwashed political class continues these efforts we may have to exercise our imaginations quite a lot in the coming years. <br />
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The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-70801419940666490462012-04-07T10:58:00.001-07:002012-04-11T11:09:56.805-07:00Baby AcuraLooks like Honda's premium branded Acura division will be fielding a new vehicle that will use a combination of conventional IC power for the front wheels and twin motor electric propulsion for the rear wheels. This gets the vehicle all-wheel-drive while lowering the significantly expensive and weighty levels of componentry normally used to do this job. Acura plans to used a similar system in their upcoming sports car the NSX but the system will be reversed with the IC engine directly powering the rear wheels and the electric motors powering the front. <br />
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On the surface this setup sounds very capable but a deeper analysis reveals that it amounts to baby-steps. Obviously a generator of some sort is required to power the electric motors which adds signifcant weight to the setup. The reason I call this a baby-step is that if electric motors can be successfully used to power one end of the vehicle it's hard to see why they can not be used for both ends. This approach, which I have previously discussed here at some length, would result in weight reduction of as much as several hundred pounds and make all-wheel-drive, stability control, and traction control possible entirely by electronic means instead of relying on the substantial weight and complexity of the usual suite of mechanical whiz-bang required.<br />
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The power requirements in an all electric drive system can easily be split between four motors which obviate any need for a large and heavy centralized motor. What would be the most salient obstacle is the fact that powering these motors would require a generator equivalent in output to the internal-combustion powerplant driving it.<br />
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In the case of premium level sedans this means a generator capable of developing at least 300 horsepower which means that, even in the highest tech form available, such a device will be very heavy and extremely expensive. It is true that although the total weight of such a system could well be less than a fully mechanical one the total cost of such a system is another matter entirely. Even at the OEM level the motors could cost several thousand dollars each and the generator could easily cost as much as twenty thousand dollars. That is merely a guess about the generator which might well actually be far more expensive than that.<br />
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An additional consideration is that whatever powerplant used to power such a generator is unlikely to come straight off anyone's parts shelf. For maximum weight savings and efficiency levels the powerplant would have to be specifically designed for such duty and this means big development bucks--probably several hundred million dollars worth all told. Since such a system could likely only be contemplated for vehicles costing in excess of 50,000 dollars since the far lower sales levels of this vehicle class means each unit has to absorb a much bigger chunk of its development costs. Designed from scratch engine/generator combos are in development (http://oiukm32.blogspot.com/2009/09/lotus-land.html) but there has not been much of a rapid push towards such technology. The Lotus system is interesting but is of a quite low power level and I suspect that as power requirements increase costs would increase exponentially.<br />
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In short Acura is using this "new" setup primarily as a marketing tool and a somewhat less mechanically complex method of achieving all-wheel-drive. This can be construed as a technological "baby-step" but fielding an all electric drive system would be more in the vein of seven-league boots so it's hardly suprising they have done it the way they have. <br />
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It would really be inaccurate to call this notional direct drive IC/electric system a "hybrid" system. In all cases to date the term hybrid refers to the fact that the means used to drive the wheels is mechanically shared between conventional hardware with varying levels of electrical assist with the required juice supplied by batteries. The new Acura alters the equation by using a generator to supply power to the electric motors but the comparison still holds.<br />
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An internal-combustion engine directly powering a generator which directly powers the motors at the wheels is quite a different technological kettle of fish than any currently sold hybrid drivetrain. Whatever packaging, weight, and efficiency gains an IC/electric drive system might confer the generator cost issues are likely to mean that if it is implemented at all in the near term it will be on high end vehicles only.<br />
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Regarding the generator part of such a system a quick internet ramble reveals that a typical conventional 300 horsepower electric generator is ridiculously heavy and absurdly expensive. Of course a 100 HP generator might be more than adequate to power a vehicle since torque levels would be more than adequate for good acceleration but the vehicles top speed would still be limited to whatever the max power output of the generator might be. <br />
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All these numbers may have little to do with an actual automotive situation but there is absolutely no question that an engine/generator combo that could provided performance equivalent to a conventional 300 horsepower engine/transmission setup is going to be a frightening expensive proposition. It might be, on paper, a "good idea" but an idea that turns a $40,000 vehicle into an $80,000 one manifestly rockets the situation down far below "good" territory.<br />
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Sadly a device such as an ultra high-tech light-weight high output generator is not ever going to be subject to the production economies of scale that could alter this equation enough to court practicallity. All-wheel-drive for a pure electric battery powered vehicle is another matter but of course there the so far intractable bugaboo is the horrific expense and weight of high capacity batteries regardless of how technologically advanced they are. For this reason all electric battery powered vehicles will remain little more than a halo products and showroom traffic builders, at best, for manufacturers that, with microscopic sales levels, will contribute little or nothing to overall fleet efficiency for the foreseeable future. <br />
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Add up the sales of Tesla and Fisker, multiply times ten, and the result is a sales volume that any major manufacturer would count as a serious failure. We don't have to only consider overpriced niche vehicles to see true market forces at work. Case in point is the Chevy Volt which will never, I repeat never, recoup its development costs or save its owners so much as a skinny penny durring its service lifetime.<br />
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Indeed I supect vehicles will be powered by dilithium crystals or some other as yet undreamed of power source before battery power becomes anything more than a practically useless icon of misguided green activism. The dreams of battery powered eco-fabulousness continue to run seriously afoul of simple arithmatic. Insisting that two plus two may not now equal seven but gosh darn it with enough "investment" someday it surely will barely merits the status of wishful thinking.<br />
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Acura, and most other manufacturers, are taking baby-steps because much bigger steps do not hold out serious improvements in efficiency or cost. Unlike green activists arithmatic is an inescapable part of their existences. The continued cry that we simply must "do something" to avert sauteeing the planet should in no way mean that we "must" do manifestly pointless and counterproductive things that merely serve to do economic violence to consumers and allow activists to indulge in smug eco-preening. <br />
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Electric vehicles have been the "next big thing" for a century and the next century is likely to maintain that status. The marriage of conventional powerplants and electric drive systems holds more promise but only just barely.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-67345161057698750722012-03-07T10:09:00.002-08:002012-05-26T17:57:25.718-07:00Blood for AwlA recurring trope of anti-war activists in the last decade is that the U.S. interventions around the globe but in particular Iraq were all about oil. In addition the evil Bush/Cheney were, as they say in Texas, awl bidnessmen so ipso facto they were prosecuting military action in Iraq on behalf of their cronies in the petroleum industry. <br />
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The Big Lie it is said can be created by repeating a falsehood ofen enough that it becomes "fact" in the public mind. The "no blood for oil" trope may not quite merit the status of Big Lie but at a minimum it is a "Little Lie" created by a similar process. Even the most cursory examination of the facts shows this trope to be baloney squared but rather than tromp around in that swamp I prefer to examine the oft placarded words themselves. The assumption in all the thusly lettered protest placards is that it is a very bad thing indeed, evil even, for any head of state to procecute a war merely for the purpose of securing oil supplies for either its population or its petro-businessmen. <br />
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Another obvious implication is that no person of reasonable intelligence could argue with the proposition that warring for crude is a bad thing due to the manifest truth of it. In other words intelligent people can <i>only</i> be repelled by a war to obtain oil supplies. To believe otherwise is prima facie evidence of a sub cro-magnon putridity of concience rivaled only by the immense moral vacuum of, say, a Heinrich Himmler.<br />
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The question I have for the placard wavers is this. Is there <i>any</i> vitally important resource that a society might not fight to obtain if the shortages are severe enough? History answers that question very nicely but the placard brandishers seem to be saying that we should be now be evolved enough to consider a war for resources utterly contemptible. In nearly all cases, oil included, this would be true but not because of the inherent villainy of the proposition but rather the fact that wars for resources in the face of the currently structured global commodities markets simply make very little sense. The cost in blood and treasure is simply too high to justify such an enterprise. The return on investment would be ludicrously negative.<br />
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One will notice in the case of Iraq that to whatever extent their crude production capacities have increased in the aftermath of the conflict every barrel of has been sold on the international commodities market and not a single drop of it has been directly tranported to the U.S. without proper payment via the commodities market. Iraq is possessed of considerable crude supplies but it is a fairly small player percentage wise so even in the unlikely event of villianous oilmen directly stealing its crude the world price would scarcely budge.<br />
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So in effect the anti blood for oil crowd is voicing a legitimate sentiment but for all the wrong reasons. The left hates war and they hate oil. Hating war is, to them, a no-brainer and adding oil to the distaste is pure bonus. War is just plain awful and oil of course is the primary bugaboo of the environmental left. So not only is war horrid a war for icky planet killing oil is well and truly beyond the pale. If bloody war is bad and oil is a monumental villain then "no blood for oil" is a rhetorical slam dunk. Quite a pity then that there have not actually <i>been</i> any wars for oil prosecuted by this country and no others come to mind that were strictly about obtaining this resource. A sober examination of the facts has however not exactly been the strong suit of the environmental left.<br />
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One can disapprove of the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan on any number of legitimate grounds but the Little Lie that they were all about oil is simply not one of them.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-38176822148688810392012-02-02T16:04:00.002-08:002012-07-20T09:31:13.334-07:00Mars Needs Newt?Very much ado has been made of Newt Gingrich's recent assertion that we should reinvigorate our space program to the extent of establishing a moon base and perhaps mount expeditions to Mars. Discounting the snark of both liberal and conservative planetary isolationists more sober precincts are exploring the merits of such a proposal.<br />
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The most obvious ointment bound fly is the cost. Establishing a viable moon base would more than likely involve monies the equivalent of, or probably even greater than, the 175 billion bucks (inflation adjusted) of the Apollo program. In an age of truly insane budget deficits such a program really does appear to be, well, insane. The numbers have been run a thousand times and with anything remotely resembling current technology the costs of such an effort are wildly beyond anything any forseeable congress will ever tolerate. It all comes down to dollars per pound to orbit. Using the most sophisticated heavy lifter technology available the numbers just don't add up, to put it as mildly as possible.<br />
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Even the sundry nascent private space exploration efforts, amounting to really only stunts at present, have little chance of driving down costs to levels that will ever make any remote economic sense. We appear to be stuck. Stuck on Earth's surface that is. My personal feeling is that we will remain stuck for probably at least a century. This of course is in the category of a wild-ass guess, could take somewhat less time, and could well take two or three times as long as a century.<br />
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Two central conundra confront us. The first is getting bulk materials to orbit at a cost that is a least three orders of magnitude less than that is possible or foreseen in the next several decades. Lifting the many thousands of tons to orbit required by moon base building or a Mars expedition by means of chemical reaction rockets is simply out of the question as a long term solution. To be sure there are current private efforts to greatly increase the efficiency of conventional rockets and these should bear real fruit in the fullness of time. What they will not do is cut payload to orbit costs by the several orders of magnitude that is actually required for true commercial exploitation. <br />
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This leaves what? Well it leaves exactly one thing and that is the much vaunted space elevator that will mechanically transfer material to orbit for, supposedly, a very tiny fraction of the costs that conventional rocketry can manage. The slang term for such a structure is the Beanstalk. The primary stumbling block for such a structure is usually taken to be the strength of the fibers used to build it which will need to be far greater than anything we have now or promise to have this century barring some truly monumental discovery--so monumental that its discovery will amount to a real life deus-ex-machina. In other words it will take a miracle. <br />
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For the purposes of discussion let us postulate that such hyper-strength materials can be fabricated, and somehow made affordable. This is merely the beginning. The engineering challenges will be stupefying difficult and fabulously expensive. The costs of building such a structure could easily exceed a trillion dollars. We are talking about deploying millions of tons of ultra high-tech materials and hardware on an unprecedented scale with unprecedented problems guaranteed to rear their heads before the project is finished. With such vast quantities of complex materials and huge heavy devices economies of scale will only take us so far.<br />
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Vast amounts of electrical energy will be required to power the vehicles which would ply this mega-tower, some of which can be recovered to be sure, but nevertheless the equivalent of several large nuclear powerplant's worth of generating capacity would be required at the base of the stalk. Unknown dynamic resonance effects will crop up as the immense stucture ascends (and descends at the same time) and will continue to crop up after the structure is finished. Problems of NIMBYism, terrorism, and equatorical political factors will plague the builders. Monies will aways be in short supply with the required coalitions of national finances subject as they always are to interruptions, turf wars and political battles. As in the case of advanced fighter aircraft the project's gestation will be long enough for technological obsolescence to be a major thorn in the side of project management.<br />
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Before the project is finished hundreds of billions of dollars worth of conventional heavy lift capability will be needed to facilitate construction on the orbital terminus of the stalk. After what is likely to be a quarter century of construction the amount of energy to deliver a pound to orbit will indeed be a small fraction of what it is now but the gigantic build costs will have to be amortized over each and every pound delivered to orbit for decades afterward. Further consideration must be given to the fact that during the lifetime of the structure there will many billions of dollars of cost per decade required to maintain and upgrade the structure. Consequently the fully amortized cost to orbit will be thousands of dollars per pound which although cheaper than now is still a stiff tab to pay. The beanstalk concept, although promising, is far from a financial panacea.<br />
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This brings us to conundrum two. Once we get that material to orbit then what? There we'll be all dressed up with nowhere to go because we will still be dependent on conventional rocketry to get where we want to go in the solar system. We will not, repeat <i>not</i> be able to cost effectively explore the solar system with conventional rockets. The costs and time frames are simply far too prohibitive. With conventional rockets we would still need months to get to Mars and years to get to Jupiter and Saturn with severe contraints in terms of the supplies needed for such long journeys and the sundry human factors that will remain as intractable as they do now.<br />
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Nuclear powered rockets are touted as the best hope for cutting this knot. A vehicle under one continuous gee of thrust would only need a few weeks to get to Jupiter, including turnaround and deceleration into Jovian orbit. Trouble is we do not yet have a clue, despite much research, on how we will ever build such devices. All the projects to date envision devices that, although operating continuously, provide very small amounts of thrust. This would be an improvement over the massive fuel consuming burns of conventional rockets but the transit times will still be in the area of many months, at a minimum. Such low thrust scenarios could make a Mars expedition more viable than at present, somewhat, but transits to the outer planets are entirely another matter. The low continuous thrust scenario could well be a cheaper route but it will not be a particularly speedier one.<br />
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To properly address these stony problems will require truly stupendous leaps in the materials and power handling sciences--leaps that will dwarf what we have already achieved--and we have achieved a very great deal. To build a space elevator we will need materials that make the very strongest carbon nanotube based fibers we can manage currently seem like overdone spaghetti. To build nuclear powered rockets that will continuously develop tons of thrust over long periods will require both materials performance and power densities that make the most efficient rocket engines yet devised look like a child's holiday sparkler. It is going to be really really frakin' <i>HARD</i> to achieve all this. It is very possible that we could be in Star Trek territory, beyond the 24th century, before we get a real handle on these bizarrely difficult challenges. It is in fact possible that we might develop a true FTL spacecraft drive before we ever figure out how to get a pound of stuff to Earth orbit at a reasonable cost. <br />
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The big problem is that mere incrementalism is not likely to bear the fruit we want. Slightly ever greater efficiencies in heavy lift capability and marginally ever more powerful and compact drive technologies are not going to get us there because costs are bound to remain a severely hobbling factor. We are beyond baby steps. What we need are true technological seven-league boots. At this point we have not the faintest idea what such boots will look like.<br />
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This is a hard pill to swallow for enthusiasts of space exploration, as I am, but there simply will not be any cheap easy road to the planets let alone the stars. And since our publicly funded space programs are essentially jobs programs that will at best tolerate a timid incremental approach we will be making little progress in the decades to come. I fear that Newt-like boosterism, even if it inexplicably infects the general public, will make little difference in the long run. <br />
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The Manhattan Project and the Apollo program required a reordering of industrial focus and the injection of vast amounts of cash to achieve what they did but both achieved their objectives with essentially what technology was available, or envisionable, at the time. All it took was will and money, a lot of each to be sure. It's naturally going to take vast heaps of both of those to achieve a true interplanetary spaceflight capability but it is also going to require technological leaps the likes of which we can simply can not imagine at this time. The state motto of Kansas is instructive--Ad Astra Per Aspera--to the stars with difficulty. Brother they ain't kiddin'.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-82892783983105246762011-11-12T08:59:00.000-08:002011-11-18T09:26:18.738-08:00Altar ManIt is, truly, amazing how completely hobbled by ideology the current administration seems to be and how much political capital is being sacrificed on the altar of climate change activism. The lastest example is the admin's decision to kick the decision on the Keystone pipeline project down the road past next year's election. Actually in this case being a slave to climate change ideology is the most charitable thing one can say about the decision. The least charitable interpretation is that the O is a craven calculating politically partisan hack of stupendous proportions.<br />
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Since the second choice is so hideously ugly let us assume that first choice of environmentalist ideology drives the decision. Wait a sec. I just realized that the decision really services both imperatives at once. The environmental left, and whatever slice of the Democratic base cheers the decision, will be at least somewhat mollified and <i>perhaps</i> will rouse themselves in numbers sufficient to aid Obama's re-election bid. The rest of the base will at least not strongly disapprove of the decision enough to convince anyone to switch parties, a very low probability in any case.<br />
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So even if the decision is largely political calculation it serendipitously accords very nicely with the administration's steel reinforced rock-ribbed refusal to do anything in its power that can be seen as encouraging the use of any fossil fuel, anywhere anytime. The environmental left and the Progressive political class have at last entirely and indistinguishably melded into one. Progressivism therefore is intractable reflexive environmentalism at least as much as it is anything else. It is exceedingly hard to imagine anyone with spotless Progressive political credentials as having even a neutral, let alone positive, attitude on the subject of increased or continued use of hydrocarbon based fuels. My guess is that the total number of such individuals in this country couldn't decide the election of a schoolboard member in Flyspeck, Alabama Pop. 28.<br />
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It has become far past obvious that the environmental left simply does not in the least care, at all, if the economies of the industrialized world are permanently savaged in the relentless push toward a Valhalla of renewable green fabulosity. The fringe of this fringe insanely views this destruction as a sterling feature of the push and not a lamentable bug in the program. Man is a plague upon the Earth don't 'cha know and the fewer of us, with consequent lowered stress on the biosphere, is only to be appauded regardless of the casualties, economic or human.<br />
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The increasingly obvious deleterious economic effects of heedless green spending appear to matter not one teeny-weeny bit to climate-change nabobs. They are undoubtedly livid that pushback against this hoped for impoverishment is increasing in the largest chunk of the body politic which can best be described as the Non-Insane Community. The plan of the eviro-left to willy-nilly convert the world into a a leaky ship of their foolishness is beginning to run aground on the reefs of economic viability. It's much to early to say that the enviro-left is running out of, er, gas but this just might mean that the likelihood of fierce rear-guard actions will increase. Such a characterization fits perfectly with the Keystone decision. With the decision to make no decision the administration may be hoping that either one of two scenarios will play out.<br />
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The first scenario is that if Obama is re-elected then the decision can safely languish and the can kicked further on down the road past 2016. The second scenario is that if Obama is not re-elected, and the new White House occupant approves the pipeline project, then the environmental left will be presented with a perfect opportunity to do what it does best which is to ululate in turbocharged high dudgeon about the grotesque irresponsibility of conservatives who "want" to kill the planet. Also the opportunities for mediagenic activist protests against the pipline will increase to very satisfying, and money raising, levels. So win-win on this one but either contemplated scenario only reinforces the impression that economic heedlessness is endemic in the "movement". <br />
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Something else, which is an irony of supernova proportions, is the fact that the headlong pursuit of stunningly expensive "renewable" energy will most adversely affect those alleged darlings of the Progressive political class--the working stiff. Now though those stiffs, who make up most of the trade unions, are starting to get a clue so one might think that consideration for lower income workers would help ameliorate a consequences be damned rise in energy prices. Please to think again. Presumably unions are so deep in the bag of the Democratic party that they can be flayed economically without serious consequence. This fact may well be why the administration's quasi and extra-legal attempts to strengthen unions are taking place. Give with one hand and take with the other. Situation neutralized.<br />
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Now though, with the cronyism and financial ineptitude of the greens as exemplified by such as, but certainly not limited to, Solyndra becoming too blatant even for many stalwart unionists, it should be possible for the GOP to cut a goodly number of disenchanted steers out the union herd. The possibility of fracturing the union vote should terrify Progressives but bound hands and feet to the environmental left as they have become they simply may just not care. <br />
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The Keystone decision delay is therefore a political high wire act requiring a very specific set of dominoes to obediently topple in the correct direction. Worthy of insertion at this point is the hoary cliched response of UK PM Harold MacMillan who, when asked what he most feared most, replied, "Events dear boy, events." Progressives seem not to be able to seriously understand that for their grand plans a worldwide financial meltdown could accurately be characterized as an "event" that might spectacularly explode those plans.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-18444497116315847082011-10-20T16:51:00.001-07:002012-07-20T09:41:05.692-07:00The E-BridgetReview of The E-Bridget concept from U.S.A. Motors.<br />
By Dennis Mac Luggage<br />
Car and Track Trends Magazine<br />
December 2013<br />
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Sonny Sanderson, CEO of U.S.A. Motors has unquestionably been gratified by the sales of the Bridget roadster which stand at around 10,000 units in the last year and a half. This is very healthy volume for such a niche vehicle but if the economy were not still in the throes of recovery then the figure would likely be higher. S'ok though because the volume is fairly closely matched to the small factory's capacity and quality of the sweet little ride has not suffered and in fact gripes & gremlins have been in very short supply. This is most likely due to the car's simplicity, many fewer things to go wrong, and who couldn't love that? The firm is modestly profitable as well which is a rarity in the niche market.<br />
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Much of this no doubt must be laid at the feet of U.S.A. Motor's <i>not</i> reinventing the wheel, keeping the vehicle as simple as possible, pitching the car as the sum of its humdrum components, and keeping development costs within the bounds of sanity. 10,000 units would be counted as complete failure for a full line manufacturer but the likes of Tesla would swoon over such numbers. In fact the 100 mil. that Sonny Sanderson spent in getting the Bridget to market, starting from scratch, is less than, by a factor of about <i>thirty</i>, what Tesla has spent on getting its two models to a sales level a tiny percentage of that enjoyed by the cheery uber-Spridget.<br />
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Early this year Sanderson and his merry little band of engineers trotted out the Hy-Bridget which was a suitably minimal hybrid version of the roadster. The car worked, quite well if we're any judge, but U.S.A. decided that however well it worked it just did not fit into their one car lineup. The selling price of the Hy-Bridget would have had to have been at least $5000 higher than the fifteen grand tab of the standard Bridget and it wasn't a bit more fun to drive and fun after all is the object of the whole exercise.<br />
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The standard Bridget easily gets 40 mpg out on the slab and although this figure is becoming much more common every other make uses great heaping helpings of expensive high-tech to accomplish it. An ultra-tech direct-injected turbo motor combined with an advanced 6-8 speed trans may be many things but simple it surely is not. One might say that, except in the fun category, U.S.M. has set low expectations for its product and has met those expectations perfectly.<br />
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The latest Bridget version show evidence of very minor fiddling about the edges of its performance envelope but the looks, price, and functionality have changed not a bit. Yet Sanderson and his engineers are not resting on their laurels completely and so have given forth with another concept on the heels of the Hy-Bridget, the E-Bridget. "We did it" says Sanderson, "because we could." Also because, we're sure, that it did not require vast wads of cash to accomplish.<br />
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One thing pure electric vehicles are not usually characterized by is light weight. The Mitsubishi iMiev, still on the market despite two years of very lackluster sales, weighs twice what a Bridget does. In fact no pure EV or hybrid squeaking below the 3000 pound limit comes to mind. Since the main enemy at U.S.M. is weight then the onus on the engineering team was to make a simple pure electric vehicle that did not outweigh its IC powered brethren.<br />
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Towards that end the relatively pricey wheel motors from the Hy-Bridget were retained. For that matter the E-Bridget is built on the same mule chassis as the hybrid, waste not don't 'cha know. The IC engine/generator combo was yanked out, as was the small supercap that distinguished the hybrid. In their place was deposited an 8kwh lithium polymer battery crafted, not to some mileage objective, but rather to closely match the weight of the removed components. Thusly the E-Bridget weighs within a few pounds of a standard roadster. Atop this battery sits the car's power electronics, also suitably sized. Total battery/electronics weight is in the neighborhood of 300 pounds.<br />
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This is on the small side by pure EV standards but of course the Bridget itself is aburdly light by any standard at all so even though the battery weighs quite a bit less than what the one in a Volt its range is fifty percent higher. Sanderson claims a 60 mile real world range for the E-Bridget with a top speed of 80mph. We've not been given a chance to drive the vehicle but we've little reason to doubt Sanderson since our horseback guess, given the battery size and 25hp each wheel motors, is right in line with his claims. Claimed full recharge time, 120 volts only, is ten hours.<br />
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Since weight has been kept under control we'd expect the fun factor of an E-Bridget to nearly equal that of a standard roadster--minus the lovely feel of its perfect 5-speed trans. So the fun factor and the weight factor is well in hand but the price factor is another matter entire. Even in quantity the battery used would likely cost five or six thousand dollars and this would shoot the price of the vehicle up by that much at a minimum and probably a good deal more since high power battery management systems are far from cheap.<br />
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Sorenson claims, and here again he's almost certainly right, that an E-Bridget would have to sell for at least 25 thousand dollars and any profit at that price would be elusive. Plus now that the heavy federal subsidies for pure electrics have disappeared the market for such a beastie would be even more elusive. And so although the operation was a success the patient will be allowed to expire. No E and no Hy-Bridget will grace a showroom floor in any foreseeable future.<br />
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Perhaps it is for the best. Our darling little Bridget needs no excuses, no broadening product line, no justifications for its existence. The Simple Simon of the automotive world is complete and perfect as it stands. The Bridget is one of the great car bargains, greatest bargains period, and any real attempts to position it within the wildly complex greater automotive zeitgeist is extremely misquided.<br />
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So Sonny says they did it "because we could" but as he wisely knows this reason is simply far too insufficient to bet his corporate finances on whatever passing trendiness is being chased in the escalating techological fever of the greater automotive world. Let it be Sonny. Let it be.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-9008712233585680312011-10-15T12:54:00.001-07:002011-10-20T20:05:07.184-07:00Are You Experienced?Presidential candidate Herman Cain is lamented by sundry current pundits as being too inexperienced for national office. That is to say, aside from a failed senatorial primary bid, he has no political experience at all. This is considered a dire defect by the conservative chattering classes presumably because the country's experiment with an individual with a dearth of experience has proven so unsalutary and a lack thereof may be viewed with alarm by the Blessed Independents whose support is always presumed to be entirely crucial to a pres. candidate's ultimate success.<br />
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The problem with this line of thinking is that although the present Oval Office tenant may be deemed to have had insufficient political experience a far larger issue is that the current tenant had no experience whatsoever in the field of practical and effective economics, to put it as mildly as possible. It's worse than that really. The One not only had no serious economic experience but he, and most of his cheerleaders, futher presumed that a Niagra of government spending, er excuse me, investment, just had to be the ticket back to economic prosperity.<br />
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Not--so--much.<br />
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Leads one to think that conventional political experience is firmly on the overrated side. Political experience, for all its vaunted importance ever and always drags along baggage much of which frequently has to be overcome rather than trumpeted. Mitt Romney is a current case in point along with Rick Perry to rather a lesser degree. In any case political experience, i.e. a feel for the log-rolling and glad-handing of congress critters is something that can be bought. Bought in the sense that a president can surround himself with a staff whose talents run in those directions whilst he referees the shoving matches and tries to keep the policy train on its tracks.<br />
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It is also odd for anyone to think that the experience of several decades of high level business dealings would involve no politiking. Anyone ever hear of office politics? It can be and often is a frothing snakepit the equal of the national legislatures and requiring the sort of talent of the principals that can only be described as political in nature. By this measure ol' Herm has about as much of that kind of experience as any man standing. As much as anyone, and likely far more than anyone else mired in the GOP primary swamp let alone the current big chair occupant, Cain has the experience, the feel, for practical economics that is desperately needed at the moment.<br />
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Regarding Cain's 999 plan it is naturally being attacked by the usual Progressive and leftist suspects but also by most of the GOP primary field as well. A thoroughly Progressive friend has observed that at least Cain actually has a plan which describes no one else in the running. All other candidates, being more or less experienced political animals, know instinctively that once one puts forth any putative plan it will immediately be mercilessly picked apart by one and all other political animals. It would be nice if the critics were offering firm debatable concrete ideas of their own instead of a steady rain of kvetching about how the current system of taxation is unfair and misused. As intimated above the political animal "knows" that in specificity lies danger and so avoid it if they can. <br />
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The closest anyone else comes to specifics is Newt Gingrich with his 6-Sigma presentations and, tantalizingly, he is showing unexpected strengths in the polls as of this writing. Newt however, much as I personally admire him, has as big a political baggage train to pull as anyone and is therefore unfortunately hamstrung by it to a considerable degree. Only Cain can claim the mantle of citizen candidate at this time since he has heretofore been "only" a citizen. I and an increasing number of others consider this, as they say in the software trade, a feature and not a bug of Cain's campaign.<br />
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Angling a bit off camber from the above discussion I am struck by the notion that a presidential contest between Obama and Herman Cain would well and truly be the very first post racial national contest. In my fevered mind only a race between a black avowed hard-core Progressive and a black with undeniable conservative credentials would set to rest once and for all the idea that African-Americans have insufficient access to the halls of power. Additionally the blithering useful idiots of the left are going to get little traction accusing Cain of being insufficiently black for their tastes. The nitwit parade currently painting Cain as a "Tom" or a "token" better be prepared to endure heaps of deserved ridicule, and a possible well deserved fat lip from the candidate himself.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-72209384976346957532011-09-29T19:58:00.001-07:002012-07-20T09:48:18.756-07:00Taking LumpsMuch ado has been made of N.C. Governor Bev. Perdue's statement about wanting to suspend congressional elections for two years. The tale of the tape revealed that the statement showed little evidence that it was a joke, hyperbole, or sarcasm as was variously claimed. Some circles have divined a number of things up to and including a certain National-Socialist ring to the statement, an exxageration surely, but it does betray a another certain tendency abroad in Progressive circles to wistfully long for a "wise authoritarian" to cut through the messiness of politics so that that the really important things can just get the heck done already. <br />
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Being Progressives this naturally means things that Progressives would like to see happen but are having a hard time selling to more than a minority of the electorate. These things comprise a long laundry list which is pointless to recount here but I think that at the least this wistfulness betrays a deep-seated dissatisfaction with the normal chaotic workings of the democratic process. The 900 pound gorilla on that laundry list is of course the "saving" of the planetary environment. This cause is viewed by some as so utterly paramount that mere niggling considerations of consensual governance should be subordinated to it--whatever the cost. Thus emerges the dreamy notion of the wise authoritarian or intelligent strongman who might take charge and steamroll over the naysayers and foot-draggers. <br />
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Progressives can not really point out any current exemplar of such a wise authoritarian, the current lot being such a parade of thuggish sleazeballs, but <i>surely</i> there must be someone out there who might fit the bill. Absent from these yearnings is an apparent lack of cognizance of the hoary adage that "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Unfortunately this adage has a predictive track record of exactly 100 percent and there is not the slightest indication that this record will not continue thusly for, well, ever.<br />
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These authoritarian yearnings are inchoate and diffuse to the extent that if pressed Progressives may backpedal and admit that no such personage exists but if they think the thought at all then perforce they must believe that such <i>could</i> exist and most certainly should exist. That the historical record entirely fails to supports such notions is deemed an irrelevancy since the modern academy, with its presumed salutary and consciousness expanding diversity, supposedly has produced an enlightened cadre possessed of vasty reams of "settled" scientific knowledge, a luminous perspicacity, and an honorable intent heretofore undisplayed by our learning benighted forbears. Seen though the gimlet eye of history perhaps this line of thought should be characterized less as wistful yearning and more as, to put it as charitably as possible, blinkered self-aggrandizement <br />
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Some call these notions an au-courant manifestation of what is called the "totalitarian impulse" but understandably current Progressives recoil from this. Recoil as it may the self-styled "reality-based community" does not appear to recognize that to achieve their goals supra-politically would require not a wise authoritatian but rather a massively repressive absolute dictatorship which would have no truck with another evergreen Progressive touchstone--dissent. The deep and crushing level of social control required to advance the grand overarching green agenda with no naysaying backtalk would make the depredations of Adolf, Mao, and Stalin look like the smugly feckless edicts of Nanny Bloomberg. <br />
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This attitude, however sighingly wistful and unrealistic it might be, does I think tend to inform and strengthen the enthusiasm of the Progressive political class for the next best thing to a wise authoritarianism which is a steady and gradual usurpation of the freedom of action by the lowly messy recalcitrant "people". If a creeping Federalism abetted by similarly inclined regulatory agencies can eventually achieve all that Progressives yearn for then that will just have to do. That <i>is</i> an achievable goal and much "progress" has been made in the last few years. <br />
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A pity then that the nasty hateful racist fascist reactionary idiotic conservatives have fully twigged to the scam and are ferociously pushing back. How dare they think that there is any issue more important than "Saving The Planet"! What boobs, what clueless dimwits, what knuckledragging bog-stompers, what heartless vicious defilers of the biosphere these conservatives must be to not promptly and graciously assent to such a manifestly unassailable high nobility of purpose. This puppy-dog rollover has failed to occur however and thus Progressive frustration with the alledgely inefficient and unresponsive democratic process slips out occasionally in the form of such as Perdue's cri-de-coeur.<br />
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An additional pity, although obviously not from where I stand, is that these cries of the heart are liable to come more frequently as the conservative pushback accelerates against the truly insane and economically suicidal costs, in every metric, of a wildly hubristic planet saving campaign. The brainless lumpen-proles are beginning to ever more resist climbing on board for a multi-zillion dollar planet saving and freedom abrogating boatride, selfish swine that they are, and the elite un-lumpen may just have to, uh, lump it.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-13886189166401426382011-09-17T14:35:00.002-07:002012-04-11T10:53:47.346-07:00Low On MethThere's been a fair amount of press and bloggy argle-bargle lately about using methanol as an auto fuel. The primary alleged advantage of methanol, as opposed to its chemical cousin ethanol, is that is can be made reasonably cheaply from not only any hydrocarbon source such as coal or natural gas but also that it can be made reasonably cheaply from a wide variey of biomass sources. Divorced from these issues is the fact that methanol has many of the same operational problems that ethanol does. It is highly corrosive, manageable, low in energy content, somewhat less manageable, has cold start problems equal to or worse than ethanol, manageable so far only when combined with gasoline, is even more hydrophilic than ethanol, expensively manageable, and has engine wear problems similar to ethanol, more expensively manageable yet.<br />
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Author Robert Zubrin is one of the principal interweb and print cheerleaders for the adoption of methanol as one of our principle fuel choices. His enthusiasm is palpable and his analyses superficially clearheaded but he tends to paper over, as so many alternative fuel enthusiasts do, the significant economic and operational roadblocks presented by these alternatives. Whatever the technical issues are, solvable or not, he and most all other alt-fuel boosters fall prey to the tendency to severly underestimate the various production economic factors as well as the very high infrastructure costs of such adoptions.<br />
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Let us consider ethanol which without both massive government coercion on the distribution end and scandalously large subsidies on the manufacturing end would be only a minor corn belt curiosity and play far less a roll than even the small one it does now. The forced adoption of ethanol blended fuels, from the 10-15% ethanol levels in "normal" gasoline to the 85% ethanol/15% gasoline blend known as E85 has always been, and continues to be very near a 100% political enterprise which is entirely divorced from anything resembling normal market factors.<br />
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Several decades ago ethanol first gained traction as a way to "oxygenate" gasoline fuels so that they might be less polluting. At first it was only used in areas especially sensitive to the concentration of automotive exhaust such as some areas of the mountain states and of course southern California. This effort may well have had some salutary results when vehicles were still in the carburetor/pre-computer era but things have changed radically in those decades. Now new vehicle exhausts are so incredibly clean that they are significantly past the point of diminishing returns in a technical sense although they are are still relentlessly painted as vile crud spewing monstrosities by anti-pollution zealots.<br />
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As this level of cleanliness was being rapidly approached in the last two decades those of a zealous bent found that a new cudgel with which to bash car emissions came conveniently along in the form of a vehicle's "carbon footprint". For the green zealot the only tolerable carbon footprint is zero point zero, that is to say no detectable carbon output whatsoever. Now when new vehicles are compared to their pre-computer ancestors it is easily seen that their carbon feetprints have declined in tandem with large reductions of conventional pollutants while exhibiting large increases in fuel efficiency.<br />
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In the current "climate" of global-warming zealotry the fact that new vehicles are amazingly clean devices cuts no ice whatever if they continue to irresponsibly "spew" any sort of carbon compound into the air, regardless of how low that level actually is. The big bad actor is of course carbon dioxide which is unavoidably produced by the combustion of any hydrocarbon product and being a particularly unreactive compound is stupefyingly difficult to catalytically convert to anything less harmful unlike the bugbear of previous eras, carbon monoxide. Reducing CO levels to the near vanishing point proved difficult but possible however that has not been the case with CO2. However vanishingly low CO2 emissions may become, largely as a consequence of increasing fuel efficiency, it will be extraordinarily difficult, read expensive, if not actually impossible to reduce to the zealot preferred level of zero.<br />
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As a consequence of this new ideological imperative ethanol morphed from an adjunct to conventional pollution control strategies into a welcome vessel of carbon friendliness since it is a lower carbon containing compound than gasoline. Thus began the push towards high percentage ethanol blends as a way to not only reduce carbon emissions but also to service another dubious ideological imperative, energy "independence". As it has turned out it services the reduction of carbon emissions poorly since modern engines are already fantastically clean and efficient and since ethanol has turned out to require, in even the most optimistic assessments, as much energy to manufacture as it can deliver to an engine the independendence angle has proved to be chimerical as well. In the least optimistic assessments ethanol is deemed to be strongly negative regarding its BTU out to BTU in numbers.<br />
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Mr. Zubrin seems convinced that the adoption of methanol can overcome at least some of the principle problems of ethanol. It's true that methanol can be produced from a much wider variety of sources but equally true that hydrocarbon feedstocks inevitably will prove more economically viable than biomass. Zubrin maintains that methanol can be currently produced from natural gas at about $1.38 per gallon which compares favorably to gasoline considering the fact that methanol has about half the energy per gallon. This is a highly dubious line of argument. If methanol were to be produced in the vastly greater amounts needed for any serious penetration of the motor fuels market its pricing structure would have to reflect the addition of yet another distribution and sales infrastructure alreeady burdended by not only ethanol but an unnecessary proliferation of regionally customized gasoline blends. Further if methanol production increased enough to adequately service the motor fuel market it inevitably would become a globalized commodity subject to the vicissitudes of the market and who can predict that?<br />
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The unstated, and likely unwarranted, assumption behind this putative pricing seems to be that gasoline pricing must ever continue its steady upward march thereby maintaining methanol's price equivalency. This is the sheerest of speculation at best and fuzzy-headed pipe-dreaming at worst. Even if that turned out to be true methanol pricing would, in the long term, move roughly in tandem with gasoline--Econ 101. <br />
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Moving along Zubrin seems to entirely neglect the above mentioned infrastructure costs associated with wide-scale methanol adaptation. Currently E85 is very hard to find outside the corn belt and is hardly ubiquitous at the retail level even in those more psychologically friendly environs. Even in corn-friendly precincts fuel distibutors and retailers much surely view with gimlet eyes the cost of adding yet another seriously costly transportation, tankage, and dispensing system to their sales outlets.<br />
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Heading out into the nation at large the adoption of methanol would require this additional costly equipement on a large scale, which might well happen over time, but nationwide retailers would be no less averse to these expenditures than their midwest brethren. This is the chicken/egg conundrum of all alternative fuel projects and, so far, the only "solution" to this issue has been massive government subsidies and a level of coercion that would make the Cosa Nostra blush. Ethanol would disappear from the fuel market at a rapid pace since its "demand" is an artifact of huge subsidies and fuel blending regulations. It is not needed any more as a mitigator of conventional pollution and it is an actual drag on the total energy budget of the country so retailers and consumers alike would let go of the product with both hands in the absence of regulatory coercion and multi-billion dollar midwest agri-bribes. It's true that ethanol subsidies are, er, subsiding but the gummint still holds the whip hand due to its continued insistence on including it in retail fuel blends.<br />
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Why methanol would not be subject to similar vicissitudes is left unadressed by its promoters very likely because it would almost certainly be subject to most if not all of those same issues. These days since ethanol subsidies have acquired the status of economic joke at best and outright scam at worst it beggars belief that in this era of spending contraction that methanol would be extended a helping hand of similar magnitude. It might not need a hand nearly as big as ethanol but it would be foolish indeed to assume that the adoption of methanol would any more successful, in any metric, than that of its sister hydrocarbon. If methanol can find a way to stand on its own two low carbon footsies then fine but if it finds it must grasp the dead hand of government coercion and/or lobby for market distorting subsidies and punitive tariffs then it will consign itself to irrelevancy in the long term.<br />
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As is currently being proven, with a vengeance in the case of the emerging Solyndra subsidy imbroglio, government is a grimly inept picker of economic and technological winners and for them to pick methanol to expensively chivvy along would a rank absurdity. Of course government specializes in rank absurdities lined up to the horizon but there is no discernable case to be made for adding methanol to that rent-seeking lineup.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-17250633615268696432011-09-17T14:34:00.000-07:002011-09-17T14:34:18.021-07:00Props To The OCredit where credit is due to the prez--a novelty in these precincts to be sure. Behold a passage from Obama's Excellent Twitter Adventure:<br />
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We’re still using the same models for space travel that we used with the Apollo program 30, 40 years ago. And so what we’ve said is, rather than keep on doing the same thing, let’s invest in basic research around new technologies that can get us places faster, allow human space flight to last longer.<br />
And what you’re seeing now is NASA, I think, redefining its mission. And we’ve set a goal to let’s ultimately get to Mars. A good pit stop is an asteroid. I haven’t actually — we haven’t identified the actual asteroid yet, in case people are wondering. [Laughter.] But the point is, let’s start stretching the boundaries, so we’re not doing the same thing over and over again, but rather let’s start thinking about what’s the next horizon, what’s the next frontier out there.<br />
But in order to do that, we’re actually going to need some technological breakthroughs that we don’t have yet. And what we can do is for some of this low-orbit stuff, some of the more routine space travel — obviously no space travel is routine, but it could become more routine over time — let’s allow the private sector to get in so that they can, for example, send these low-Earth-orbit vehicles into space, and we may be able to achieve a point in time where those of you who are just dying to go into space, you can buy a ticket, and a private carrier can potentially take you up there,while the government focuses on the big breakthroughs that require much larger investments and involve much greater risk.<br />
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Indeed and huzzah on all counts. Even the Progressive-in-Chief has grokked that the sclerotic centralized control of American space exploration by the horribly bloated NASA apparatus is way overdue for paradigm change. Unfortunately congress refuses to read the wall writing and has actually increased funding for the struggling, years behind, stupefyingly cost-overrun Space Launch System and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle both of which bid fair to make the billion dollar per launch Shuttle program look like a bargain. Getting out of the regulatory way of space privatization efforts is the only sane way forward. Such efforts are progressing very nicely right now but wariness of the heavy bureaucratic hand of the NASA space police should at a keen edge.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-61781532351682626042011-04-30T09:13:00.000-07:002011-04-30T09:18:29.408-07:00Smarty PantsJust how the heck, I ask myself on nearly a daily basis, did Barack Obama ever acquire his vaunted reputation as an exceptionally smart person? How did his vacuous gas-baggery, from his ward-heeler days to the present, ever convince anyone that he is an intellectual heavyweight deserving of praise for his clever "rhetoric"? Beats the heck out of me. I have seen bloody little evidence of it. He is virtually a complete economic illiterate, entirely unfamiliar with the nuances of technology, a clueless parroter of fatuous climate change puffery regarding all energy issues, incapable of mathematical rigor regarding any issue, significantly divorced from reality regarding the nature of the country's enemies--and its friends, uncritically not to mention smugly enamored of a farrago of redistributionist malarkies, a depressing ignoramus regarding the issues, technical and economic, confronted by the automotive industry, and so direly lacking in extemporaneous off-the-prompter speaking skills as to render such as Sarah Palin positively Churchillian by comparison. <br />
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Now all that drivel scrolling down the angled prompter screen could perhaps be laid at the feet of his speechwriters but all that would do is imply that he is too dumb to be that stupid. His addresses and "speeches" contain nothing ringing, nothing as clever as a Whoopi Goldberg throw-away crack, nothing remotely specific or un-triangulated, and betray an ignorance of the problems of that perennial darling of Progressives, the working man, so profound as to make Bonny Prince Charlie seem like Larry the Cable Guy.<br />
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Too harsh? Consider a recent statement in which he averred that if one has a vehicle getting eight miles per gallon then perhaps it is time for a trade-in. The most charitable comment possible on this statement is "easy for him to say". The least charitable comment would require so many euphemistic asterisks as to render it unintelligible. Where o where is the "smart" in all of this? Is it that he has a media neutral accent that in no way sounds southern? What bilge. Is it that his speaking voice has a certain facilely sonorous quality? What what? Are we supposed to be mesmerized by the allegedly comforting sound of his voice and ignore the content and implications of his words? Is it that he graduated from Hahvahd and ipso facto is therefore undeniably smart? Remind me again, from where was it that the reviled dunce George Bush graduated? <br />
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I suspect that the simplest explanation is that to much of the (insert obligatory sneer here) main stream media Progressives are much more to their innate political likings therefore that automatically makes them "smart" whereas anyone even a nanometer more conservative than Joe Lieberman must perforce be assumed to be less smart, a lot less. Only two words and an initial are needed to decisively prove this assumption as meritless as a fevered Birther rant--William F. Buckley.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-77724106908716170042011-04-08T03:10:00.000-07:002011-04-08T03:10:47.833-07:00Diesel ConnieIn my previous post I averred that even if a piston engined airliner were technically feasible that aircraft manufacturers would in no way be tempted to devote the billions in development costs required. I stand by the statement but for the purposes of discussion let's examine whether or not in actual reality such a beastie <i>could</i> in fact be built, and be a useful commercial venture.<br />
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First of let's not delude ourselves that any conceivable putative project could ever come close to duplicating the performance and passenger carrying capacity of a jumbo jet. Not going to happen. The engines on an Airbus 380 for example develop around an order of magnitude more power than the engines on the Lockheed Constellation and the likelihood of any internal combustion engine could be built to develop 30,000 horsepower and be remotely light enough to be used in aircraft is negligible, to put it as mildly as possible.<br />
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So let's take the ol' Connie as a baseline. There are regional airliners which can carry a hundred passengers or so in similar fashion to a fully loaded Constellation so the basic airframe engineering is already in hand. These craft by no look anything like a Connie due largely to advances in aerodynamics, which is a shame considering the sensuous beauty that was the Constellation, but it could not be otherwise. Let's propose parameters that would result in these hundred passengers be carried along at about 400mph airspeed at roughly 35,000 feet of altitude. This would give our putative project enough of an advantage over the Connie to pique the interest of airlines especially if significant fuel savings can be offered as well. I estimate that this performance would require four engines that develop at least 3000 horsepower each. This is less power than developed by the Connie's original 18 cylinder Wrights but I presume that a modern design with composite components would weigh several tons less.<br />
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The engines would have to weigh less as well which would be easy if gasoline were to be used as fuel. Unfortunately this approach would hardly achieve the fuel cost savings that would make this project attractive in the first place. That essentially leaves us with Diesel engines and not only that but Diesel engines that could run on the same fuel that jet turbines do--JP-4. Current Diesels have a hard time using jet fuel but it stretches not the imagination that units could be built from scratch that could use it to its fullest fuel saving potential. I don't view this approach as optional considering the costs of establishing a different fuel delivery infrastructure for an airliner running on conventional Diesel fuel.<br />
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So Diesels are it but they would not by a very long shot have any relationship to the growling smoky beasts of heavy over the road trucks. Automotive Diesel powerplants have made amazing strides in every facet of performance to the point where they are now the preferred engine in prototype LeMans competition cars from the likes of Audi and Peugeot. Powerful quiet and thrifty they have become as the technologies of electronic engine management systems and turbo/supercharging have advanced hugely in the last two decades. <br />
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Diesels do have another big advantage, similar to those huge Wright radials, in that they can easily be designed to run in RPM ranges that match up to the required rotational speeds of propellors thus avoiding heavy and power wasting gearing systems that plague the majority of automotive engines converted to aircraft use. The trick in designing such an engine would not be in arriving at either the desired running characteristics or lowered fuel consumption but rather designing a Diesel that would be both light enough and stout enough to function in its intended role. This will require as much in the way of lightweight alloys and materials as can be marshalled but since in no wise will such an engine cost any more than a jet turbine to manufacture this approach would be valid. <br />
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The lightest most efficient configuration of this engine will likely be a V12 of 2000-2500 cubic inches of displacement with at least two large exhaust driven turbochargers. This would require a very large and expensive aluminum or magnesium engine block casting but in the low volumes contemplated this cost should not be a show stopper. There are other configurations that might be considered but a V12 has enough enough advantages that it would inevitably shake out of most anyone's risk analysis calculations. A V12 is a very smooth running engine, obviously important in an airliner, and is likely the most efficient way to get the lightest powerplant needed to do the job without risking too many technological Hail Marys. Engines of this size and power go back at least as far as WWII and even though few large aero diesels have been built current tech seems up to the task.<br />
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A V12 configuration, water cooled of course, has another advantage over the big old Wrights on the Connie and that's aerodynamic drag. Those huge radials were highly refined for their day but they spent a lot of energy just pushing their bulks through the air. Aero drag from a properly cowled water-cooled V12 would likely be much less than half of what the original Connie's engines could manage. This lowered drag of course translates directly into performance and efficiency gains.<br />
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There's little reason that the full armamentarium of the modern engine designer could not be thrown at this project. High pressure direct fuel injection, multi-valve intake configurations, low friction internals, high-strength light weight components, advanced electronic engine management systems etc. etc. could easily combine, I think, to halve fuel consumption per seat mile compared to current turbine engines--even current turbo-prop versions. So all in all it seems that it could be done but it remains vanishingly unlikely that it will be done. The huge research costs involved, and the inevitable public acceptance issues, are virtually certain to stop this sort of enterprise in its tracks. Bit a shame perhaps when one contemplates what a 48 cylinder Diesel powered airliner might sound like on takeoff.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-61925473047702424432011-03-25T16:26:00.000-07:002011-03-25T16:26:03.102-07:00Fuelish ComparisonThere was an article a while back on the wonderful site Low-Tech Magazine that stated that only recently have jet airliners achieved fuel efficiencies comparable to the highly developed piston engine powered airliners of the 1950s. Examining the evidence this appears to be true,strictly speaking, but there are so many other considerations that any real operational comparisons are essentially meaningless.<br />
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The 50s airliner directly compared was the wonderful, and thoroughly beautiful, Lockheed Constellation. This needle-like beauty was the utter apotheosis of gasoline-fueled piston engined passenger aircraft. I'm old enough to have actually flown in one as a child and am grateful for the experience and as a now card-carrying old fart I am ever appreciative of the technology of simpler times. The Constellation was a technological tour de force for its time with a super sleek airframe, a quirky triple-finned tail, and was one of the first to offer non-stop service between the coasts. Its four engines were 18 cylinder Wrights producing over 3200 horsepower each which provided a cruise speed of a bit over 300 mph at 22,000 feet. It carried from 65 to about 100 passengers. It was the height of speed and luxury just before the dawn of the jet age.<br />
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The original jetliners in commercial service were huge leaps in performance and carrying capacity albeit at the cost of higher seat-mile fuel usage. Obviously fuel usage was a less important factor 60 years ago due to the much lower costs but there are a number of very important differences to remember. Firstly piston-engined airliners of the age used expensive high octane aviation gasoline as opposed to the far less costly kerosene based fuel used by jet aircraft. Jet fuel has several more advantages to consider. Kerosene based jet fuel contains significantly more energy per gallon compared to gasoline and it has a much higher resistance to vaporization at high altitudes. This both allowed transcontinental ranges, despite the greater amounts needed, for jetliners and abetted their ability to cruise at much higher altitudes. Cruising at such high altitudes greatly enhanced the ability of jetliners to attain ground speeds of some 200 mph greater than piston airliners which shortened trip times dramatically and also conferred the ability to fly over bad weather that piston airliners had to fly around.<br />
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Interestingly if jetliners were forced to cruise at altitudes similar to that of 50s era passenger airliners their speeds would not be much greater and their seat/mile fuel usage would be significantly worse. The ability to cruise in the thin air at 35,000 feet and above confers much, if not all, of the jetliners superiority performance-wise. Add to that fact the subsequent 50 plus years of jet turbine technological development and it's hardly a surprise that fuel-efficiency, in any measurable metric, is now the equal of such as the Constellation if not somewhat better. Throw in the same 50 years worth of development in the areas of aerodynamics and lightweight structural design and the jetliner's advantages become completely insurmountable. <br />
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Also noteworthy is the fact the huge turbo-compound multi-row radial piston engines of the pre-jet era were exceedingly complex devices requiring significantly more maintenance hours than modern turbofan jetliner powerplants. Modern jet engines are horrifically expensive to manufacture but their maintenance complexity is far less than commonly assumed.<br />
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Not to be ignored in the equation is that jetliners routinely carry multiples of the number of possible passengers on 50s airliners thus requiring far less time, and fewer aircraft, to deliver a given number of passengers to their destinations. Many small regional airliners routinely carry as many passengers as could embark on the Constellation and the comparisons become entirely absurd when considering the capacities of such behemoths as the massive Boeing 747 and the even larger Airbus 380. Another not inconsequential factor is that average ticket prices are now lower in actual dollar terms than in the 1950s and of course wildly cheaper when factoring in inflation. Longings for a bygone era of romantic air travel notwithstanding the advantages of the modern jetliner are so overwhelming that no possible prodigies of technological development could remotely result in even the highest tech version of a gasoline fueled piston powered aircraft matching a jet's performance and utility.<br />
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Theoretically I suppose it might be possible to design and build a kerosene (diesel) powered propeller driven airliner that could compete favorable with jetliners on seat/mile fuel usage but they would still fall well short in every other performance and utility metric. Plus the chances that any aircraft company would devote the billions in development money needed for such an enterprise are precisely zero. Modern jetliners exhibit such fantastically high levels of cost efficiency now that not even the most fanatical technological retro-grouch, such as me for instance, can deny the immense advantages modern jetliner travel. The sundry <i>annoyances</i> of modern air travel may frustrate millions but the technology of the aircraft themselves is not any sort of issue.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-10444444358572081002011-03-03T08:03:00.000-08:002011-03-06T07:58:04.959-08:00I Dream Of DjinniThe Mideast is erupting. Erupting as if all the strained fault lines and tectonic boundaries that have existed since before the first world war have given way all at once. Each fault line is erupting in its own peculiar and unpredictable way and what may obtain in the fullness of a year's or a decade's time is <i>not</i> anyone's guess because any guesses at this point are wildly beyond useless. A reinforced division of Djinni have climbed out of a thousand bottles to wreak havoc, largely on deserving autocrats, but this havoc is diffuse, inchoate, and thoroughly unknowable in its multitudinous consequences.<br />
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If we know anything, and I stress <i>if</i>, it's that radical Islam is likely to be one of the few beneficiaries of all this turmoil. What they do with that "beneficence" is also unknowable but the odds that the chunk of planet we refer to as the Mid-East will settle into sundry nascent and evolving liberal constitutional democracies would make any Vegas bookie slam his ledger shut in disgust.<br />
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Criticism of the Obama administration's reactions to this chaos, however warranted, are beside the point. There isn't <i>any</i> administration that could constructively ride this unruly horse because what might be constructive one moment is likely to be savagely destructive the next moment. Every boyo worthy of the title of "foreign policy expert" has a different take on just what kind of finger to poke into what part of this chaotic pie so that we, and the West in general, remain influential players in the game instead of ultimate saps and losers in the new order(s) that will emerge. The last ten or so administrations have helped evolve this mess and it may well take the next ten to sort things out in ways that don't result in region-wide carnage and/or resource endangering calamity. Is any administration, is any <i>body</i>, up to this task? The answer must sadly be no. You can't play a game with no rules and I defy anyone to come up with "rules" that can possibly elucidate a clear measured response to what is happening now or in the next few years in the "Holy Land". Whatever the O'man does this response will extend through the next presidency and far beyond. <br />
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However feckless and "in over their heads" the Obama administration may be foreign-policy wise they may in fact be taking the best course. For sure no one knows that they are not. As a critic of said administration I suspect not but how the hell can we be sure? We cannot and if the current regime were to reverse course tomorrow and begin to actively support various "liberation" movements in the Middle-East we have no clue that the results would be the slightest bit better or more salubrious in any term, short medium or long.<br />
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Regarding this administration's putative handling of the situation I quote that famous political sage, Mr T, and say, "I pity the fool." Poor bastids don't really have a clue and really neither will the next admin. even if the next pres. were a combination of Churchill and Reagan incarnate. Even though Islamist activism and Pan-Arabist sentiment may be only minor percentages of the magma pouring forth from the volcano they are without question the hottest constituents thereof. Those constituents will see any "help" from western sources as blatant interference no matter how well intentioned. Going forward, as "they" say, we will be the blind legless and armless being led by vicissitudes of geo-political uncertainty profound enough to make Werner Heisenberg blush in embarrassment.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-92159644977050964402010-11-29T19:44:00.000-08:002010-12-19T19:31:07.120-08:00The Hy-BridgetReview of The Hy-Bridget concept from U.S.A. Motors.<br />
By Dennis Mac Luggage<br />
Car and Track Trends Magazine<br />
April 2013<br />
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Amazingly after less than a year Sonny Sanders, deep pocket begetter of the exquisite Bridget Roadster, is at it again. Even before his original creation debuted to critical acclaim and solid sales numbers his merry band of tech rats were working on a concept vehicle based on the Bridget. It's uncertain if this new concept will be produced but if the public reception is enthusiastic enough, and if the price can be held to within spitting distance of the original sticker of the Bridget Roadster then it just might be in the cards.<br />
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The first odd thing about the Hy-Bridget is its looks--in that it looks exactly like a stock Roadster. Not a square inch of exterior sheet metal, trim, or interior appointment has been changed. The entire meat and guts of this concept are in the powertrain department and even there some parts, like the original engine, remain. It's a hybrid of course as indicated by the name but there is little resemblance mechanically to any other passenger car hybrid on the road today.<br />
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Sanders describes the vehicle as "an experiment rather than a concept". The object of the experiment was to find out if a hybrid powertrain could be developed and produced for nearly the same price as a conventional one without sacrificing performance, without increasing weight, and at the same time increasing fuel economy. He claims to have accomplished this feat, although instrumented testing on our part has yet to confirm it, but since every claim for the original was purely based in reality we question not, yet, these claims. <br />
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Hy-Bridget can perhaps be characterized more by what <i>isn't</i> there rather than what remains. What isn't there is a starter motor, flywheel, clutch, transmission, shifter, driveshaft, rear brakes, or any sign of the superlight but conventional solid axle from the original. What has replaced these parts is a 40HP 300amp generator plugged into the back of the engine, a "wheel motor" on each end of a simple alloy rear axle tube, and a small ultra-capacitor used for energy recovery. What else isn't there that is on a conventional hybrid is any sign of a main drive battery costing many thousands of dollars and weighing hundreds of pounds.<br />
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This is what as known as a "serial" hybrid design, similar in concept to that used in locomotives but rarely seen in the automotive world. Hy-Bridget makes no claims at all of having a consequential electric only range or any plug-in capability. Its standard engine and its diminutive fuel tank remain intact although the tuning of the engine is quite different. The engineering goal was to see if economy gains could be made without the weight of heavy batteries compromising performance or sending costs soaring.<br />
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Sanderson claims to have achieved all these goals and our brief test drive confirmed everything excepting the increase in fuel economy, and the price of course, but there is little reason to doubt him. The key is simplicity, of a sort that "conventional" hybrids can only dream. There's an engine, a generator, one electric motor for each rear wheel, and a 30 pound ultra-capacitor nestled into the still extant driveshaft tunnel. The big honking cap recovers energy as the car slows, assists for brief periods with acceleration, and in concert with the drivetrain management electronics serves as the rear axle's primary brakes. Pretty slick.<br />
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The use of wheel motors in concept vehicles is not new, they've been in development for well over a decade, but what makes them viable in this case is their small size--about 25 pounds each. Each "pancake" style rear wheel motor is rated at only 20 horsepower and 50 pound feet of torque--plenty for the needs of a Bridget. A wheel motor's inherent design provides mechanical advantage characteristics which obviate any need for gearing so full functionality and power is available from the motor at normal wheel rotational speeds. Needing only 25 horses and 50 lb/ft of torque puts these motors on the favorable side of the equation in terms of weight and cost. As such motors escalate to sizes and power levels needed by much larger vehicles prices skyrocket and unsprung weight becomes a major problem. <br />
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A weight of 25 pounds doesn't sound feathery but have you ever seen a conventional AC powered 25 horsepower motor in the flesh? Three strong guys would barely be able to move it. Pancake motors are <i>very</i> high tech and consequently expensive so even with the units replacing a lot of parts under the car it's a bit difficult to understand how U.S.A. motors could make the financial claims they touting. The similarly teched-up generator could only add to the price pressure. Once again have you ever seen a small light <i>fifty horsepower</i> generator? As they say about such things: Strong, light, cheap. Pick two.<br />
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Wheel motors definitely increase unsprung weight but in Hy-Bridget's case the problem is helped greatly by using the motors themselves as the main rear brakes. The HB's power management ensures that even if the ultra-cap cannot accept any more braking energy the rear brakes can have reverse polarity power applied to them to slow things down. If for some reason the engine fails completely and the cap is completely discharged the front brakes are plenty capable of slowing the car in a safe manner--they aren't power boosted if you recall so they need no additional help except for a decently healthy leg.<br />
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The Hy-Bridget's engine is identical to the Bridget Roadster's but it has been tuned to deliver about 20 fewer horsepower at a mere 4000 rpm but an identical 100 pound feet of peak torque. These 20 fewer horsies slow the Hy-Bridget's top speed to about 95 mph which although around 10 mph slower than its sister still feels like about 200 with the top down. The system takes little away from the Bridget's driving joys. No lag in power delivery. The engine spools up quickly enough but with its table flat torque curve it hardly needs to. Acceleration feels very similar to the BR with throttle response that is more than adequate, if slightly less than stellar. Handing dynamics are indistinguishable from the BR as well thank goodness. We didn't bring our bathroom scales with us on the test drive but the car feels no heavier even if it has the slightest touch more understeer than its sister. All in all the chassis tuning is succesfull in replicating that ineffable Bridget handling goodness.<br />
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The dash is almost unchanged as well. Still the same gauges since the engine still needs them but they reflect the changed operating conditions of the power train. No dash indication of the electrics is present nor is it really needed since there is no expensive persnickety battery to baby sit. There is a fault light for the ultra-cap since it is so involved with braking but even if it toasts itself the car is plenty drivable enough to get to you home provided you aren't sluicing down into Denver from the Eisenhower Tunnel. The front brakes alone could probably handle things but a long descent without electrical braking will mean one seriously fatigued extremity and probably some toasted brake pads. On the upside is that this configuration allows full authority traction control under all circumstances and significantly expands the Bridget's rather limited winter weather repertoire. There's no shifter of course and a keyed column and a button for forward and another for reverse take its place. Power management software allegedly assures that if the reverse button is hit at high forward speed nothing will be damaged. I was <i>not</i> brave enough to try it.<br />
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In short the Hy-Bridget "experiment" exhibits virtually the same driving experience as its conventional sister with the exception of a lower top speed. So little has been lost but has anything been really gained? Hard to say really for the light weight of the Bridget puts it in a class of its own in the automotive world. Try to translate such a powertrain to a car weighing twice as much or more and developing three or more times as much power and the cost/weight curves will climb like a P-51 Mustang at full throttle. A biggish battery is needed in most cases for typically sized hybrids or fuel economy gains will be elusive. Add to that the fact that a high-tech 40 horse generator is no heavier than the Bridget's starter/flywheel/transmission combo whereas a 150 or 200 HP generator is a whole other heavy as hell kettle of fish. Diminishing returns rapidly rear their unlovely heads in packages much heavier than a Bridget so one is unlikely to encounter a similar system in 6000 pound SUV. <br />
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CEO Sanderson swears that the car can be built for close to the BR's price but are the projected fuel economy gains worth the trouble? Sanderson is claiming a 60 mpg city rating and a 50 mpg highway rating which are impressive numbers even these days. This amounts to a 50 percent better city rating but only about a 5 mpg better highway rating. In my estimation the experiment has been a success operationally but since the genny Bridget already is a fuel miser the gains from the new powertrain will not make a big difference in operating costs and the maintenance costs may well be higher depending on the reliability of the electrical hardware. If your driving is mostly city based, that is out of the Bridget's natural element, then the mileage will definitely save dough and your range will be stellar. If you use Bridget as she is intended, scooting through curvy countryside, then you'd probably pass on the amped up version. One of each would be nice though and you could buy both for less than most current hybrids cost and instead of twice the fun you'd get four times as much. <br />
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So I count the experiment a success while questioning any real need for production but that of course is up to Mr. Sanderson. No matter. As long as the original Mz. Bridget continues to be produced he can build nitromethane powered skateboards for all I care.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-91092360149447151812010-11-02T09:53:00.000-07:002010-11-02T10:01:21.342-07:00Ticket To RideOnce up on a time it was standard procedure for a person to vote a "straight ticket" in elections, there was usually a method of doing so on most ballots, but for quite a long time the sober "nuanced" modern attitude is that we should instead vote according to the level of comfort we feel with individual candidates. Straight ticket voting is seen by many as irredemably ignorant and willfully ill-considered behavior. There was, perhaps, a period of several decades during which that advice could be taken without severe damage to one's overall political world view. The rationale is that it is better if we vote against our general principles if the candidate of our usual party of choice is seen as an extremist nut job or is so ethically unsavory as to be completely electorally unsatisfactory.<br />
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Nuanced, mature, and responsible are considered those who vote a "split ticket" and thick-headed rubes are those who merely punch or pull the straight Dem. or Rep. ballot or lever. In the past couple of decades however the temptation to vote a straight ticket has proven increasingly irresistible. Straight ticket voting should no longer be viewed as quaintly antique but rather as a simple and clear political necessity. If one is a thoroughgoing liberal/Progressive or conversely possesed of even a vaguely conservative mien then straight ticket voting is essentially unavoidable. For those who constitutionally consider themselves centrists the problem would seem to be severe but it is not really except for the most clueless and uninformed voter. The divide between the major polities is so severe that even the most diehard "centrist" must perforce be drawn toward one or the other because very few folks indeed are completely ideologically neutral. Teetering on the cusp of centrism has become virtually impossible if one wants to participate in the political process at all. <br />
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The facts on the ground now are such that if one is inclined to vote for any liberal/Progressive/Democratic candidate why in the name of sanity why would one vote for <i>any</i> libertarian/conservative/Republican candidate, or vice-versa? To cause me to do this would require the most extreme circumstances imaginable. The Republican would have to be such a clueless Neanderthal and/or a sleazebag of such epic proportions that voting for them at all would require Olympian prodigies of nose-holding. This situation occurs extremely infrequently these days, at least past the primary level, so at least a minimal level of electoral suitability can be safely expected of candidates making it all the way to the election day ballot. National examples of such primary failures are not excessively rare, the election of Al Franken comes immediately to mind, but I personally have never voted in an election where such extremities have manifested themselves. Nevertheless I have for most of my adult life been leery of the straight ticket mindset.<br />
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No more. As much unsavoriness as I might theoretically find in a nominally conservative/libertarian candidate the likelihood that I might vote for his liberal/Progressive opponent is remote to the point of absurdity. Consequently voting a straight ticket seems like the only sane response in the privacy of the booth these days. I do not bemoan this. The divide is starker than ever and the opposing world views are plainer so any vague psychological discomfort attached to not voting a split ticket has dissolved completely. It has reached the point that voting a split ticket now seems to imply not nuanced behavior but rather an utter inattention to the political process. If you have any discomfort at all with the expansion of government and its increasing intrusion in our lives then vote Republican and if you deem governmental action the first and best response to all social and economic "problems" then by all means vote Democratic. Ticket splitting these days is not so much a wholly nuanced course but rather more like a clueless half-assed one.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-91682102175328310962010-06-30T09:06:00.000-07:002010-06-30T09:06:03.730-07:00News From the ICE Wars.I've been wondering for a while when someone was going to finally implement a direct-injection fuel system on an American pushrod V8. It appears that Chevy will be the first with a new generation pushrod SBC in the 2012 Corvette. Reports are that it will be 335 cubic inches and will develop 440 horses which is more than the current 6.2 version does. Even with the power boost fuel economy will undoubtedly improve with direct-injection plus there's equally little doubt it will be approved as an ultra-low emissions engine system. I'm guessing the 'vette version will sport a dual clutch gearbox with at least 8 speeds which will maximize both performance and fuel economy. With such a drivetrain the 'vette might break past 30mpg out on the slab.<br />
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The eight speed gearboxes proliferating on furrin' iron are proving to be both popular and quite useful. This large number of gears might seem like overkill but they provide a much greater overall gear spread and there are only upsides to that circumstance. Eight speed trannies have allowed such as Bimmer, Audi, and Mercedes to achieve sub-five second 0-60 times with power levels that previously would not have resulted in such impressive acceleration even with six-speeds. They can use really low final drive ratios and deep low transmission ratios for sparkling performance and still have reasonable steps up toward the .50, and even higher, top gear ratios that enhance economy. <br />
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In fact I can hardly think of any engine size that would not benefit from such transmissions or even ones with 9 or 10 gear splits. That seems like even more overkill but would result in gearing spreads that are not compromised at either end of the spectrum. Dual clutch semi-autos are turning out to be a fairly reliable and very adaptable answer to many thorny problems. As Audi and Merc have shown Diesels in particular have proven very effective users of high numbers of gear splits. No surprise there, just ask a trucker, but only in the past few years have the technical issues with such multi-geared trannies been largely solved.<br />
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Dual-clutch "manual" boxes have proven much more amenable to high numbers of gear splits because they are not dependent on multiple planetary gearsets and ultra-complex power robbing hydraulic systems of conventional automatics to go about their business. They are complex devices no doubt but less so than regular automatics and they do not suffer from torque-converter losses. Plus they can be used in user transparent auto mode or they can be manually shifted for more sporting driving. All in all these multi-speed boxes, and direct injection, are important arrows in the quiver of the not so late and not yet unlamented ICE.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-36123130317477549482010-05-30T10:28:00.000-07:002010-05-31T17:22:12.366-07:00On Not Following The LeaderComparisons currently abound between G.W. Bush's Katrina response and Obama's BP spill response. Increasingly the Obama response is found lacking, even in Progressive solons, in a manner similar to the former. Rubbish. As Bush's response was wildly mischaracterized and grotesquely unfairly attacked in like wise Obama is taking heat for cirumstances beyond his, or any president's, control. They take the heat however illogical that might be and speaking of possible illogic a fair percentage of the electorate that swooned over the "change" promised by the Chicago Kid are suddenly in a far less receptive mood after assesing the Kid's actually attempted wholesale changes to the economy and health system. Obama may be a "leader" by trying to be "out in front" of needed change but being too far out can put one out of sight of the bulk of the electorate. For all the blather about Americans being sheep they are the least easily led folk on the planet outside the mountains of Afghanistan. <br />
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It is often impossible for a president to know whether he is leading the public or dragging it against its will. Obama seems to be leaning ever the latter way and his downward poll drift reflects that. High dudgeon and rhetorical overreach may win elections but they almost immediately become a liability a few seconds after a newbie president's backside hits the bottom of the Big Chair. And pushing really hard out of the gate virtually guarantees equally hard pushback from the electorate in the fullness of time.<br />
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Obama has pushed harder and faster than any president since at least FDR and the public is pushing back just as hard. The relentlessly promoted air of crisis that has informed this push is simply not felt outside the cloisters of DC. The economy is poor but it's wildly far from a 30s style depression, the majority of citizens like their current health care arrangements, and the bulk of the electorate is comfortable with the idea of American Exceptionalism. Wholesale economic rearrangement and constant international apologias may thrill the heartstrings of the Progressive political class but they fall flat with the centrist majority needed to re-elect a party leader to national office.<br />
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Obama has not gone one program too far. He's gone a baker's dozen, and several trillion dollars, too far and the electorate is hanging back grumbling and kvetching about the forced march. Obama was not kidding about "change". He's pushing it in spades, doing his best to do business a different way, and is rapidly finding out that the multicultural internationalist tropes beloved of Progressive academia are not playing very well in Peoria, or in Houston, Topeka, Albuquerque, Grand Rapids, Macon, Missoula, Nashville, Spartanburg, or pretty much any average center-right polity between the coasts. Many were fooled once in 2008. It is becoming less and less likely that they will be fooled twice. <br />
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Even the denizens of hard-core progressive redoubts on the coasts, and in the ever more stressed Rust Belt, are finding out the hard-core way that headlong governmental fiscal profligacy along with a headlong pursuit of absurdly costly and counterproductive green "initiatives" have proven to be a high-speed maglev ride to bankruptcy. If the coasts ever get that old time fiscal religion then Progressives can kiss the White House goodbye for a generation, again.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-67997967653153476512010-05-10T12:16:00.001-07:002012-07-20T09:52:21.818-07:00Quo Vadis Ya'll?In this country we have been exploring the limits of government for over 200 years and the results are in. There do not appear to be <i>any</i> limits to the power of government. And by any I mean any at all. It is extremely difficult to find an exception to this. I cannot think of any currently pursued activity by the citizens of the western world that is free from local, state, or federal government regulation. Not work, not play, not eating, not eliminating, not sex, not education, not speaking, not living, not dying, not nothin' nohow.<br />
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It is true that we live in an interconnected society but in our modernist zeal we have taken this to mean that any activity, however minute, affects some other person or social institution and perforce some governmental entity must regulate that activity. I defy anyone to pick an activity that is entirely free of regulation.<br />
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We cannot buy any product, a car, a boat, a steak, television, model airplane, handbag, pair of shoes, coffee pot, bar of soap, vegetable, quart of milk, mattress, financial instrument, computer, telephone, road grader, box of cereal, bottle of soda, tee-shirt, space shuttle, fishing rod, pack of cigarettes, bag of cookies, roll of toilet paper, fan, picture frame, lamp, cow, spoon, ball of twine, tire, weapon, wooden board, broom, piece of furniture, aspirin, ladder, refrigerator, light bulb, can of paint, baseball, toothpick, rubber ducky, candle, condom, guitar, hammer, stick of gum, sex toy, screwdriver, lawnmower, locomotive, egg, jetliner, light switch, faucet, paper plate, toilet, bicycle, steel bar, screen door, piano, etc. etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum <i>and</i> nauseum that does not have every detail of its manufacture and sale extensively ranged about by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of pages of regulation.<br />
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Without vasty reams of regulations pre and proscribing our actions we can not: drive a car, make/get a loan, hire a painter, rent a chainsaw, build a house, send a letter, fire a gun, start a business, hunt a deer, catch a fish, raise a child, dig a well, take out the trash, change our oil, have our nails done or hair cut, fix the plumbing, use a phone, ride a bike, paint the garage, mow the lawn, sail a boat, take a bus, oogle a babe or a stud, tell an ethnic joke, cut down a tree, keep chickens, fly the flag, hire/fire an employee, take a cab, ride a horse, make a campfire, smoke a cigar, fly a plane, etc. etc. unto a google of etceteras.<br />
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And in the case of every single product, service, and action there is some segment of the population clamoring for yet more regulation. Government at all levels is happily obliging at a furious pace. I have no doubt that if every page of regulation were counted the total would be in the many tens of millions.<br />
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One has to wonder if there is really any meaningful decision that a member of any developed nation that can make at all without governmental guidance. We have rocketed smartly past Orwellianism and entered realms of state control for which there are no sufficiently descriptive terms. Control that would leave Marx, Lenin, and Mao agog at our audacity. Control that bids fair to ape the religious doctrine of pre-destination. Government control has in large part already replaced meaningful discretion in our behaviors and commercial activities. We have decided, by degrees, that we as citizens are incapable of negotiating the modern world without the hand of the state to chivvy us along at every turn. The state has our back, front, top and bottom. We are in its allegedly succoring embrace in all things.<br />
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Noisy denigrations of the the "nanny state" abound but the impetus for control spans the political spectrum. Divisions are based on what <i>kind</i> of control is appropriate in any given case and little thought is given to the quaint rapidly fading notion that perhaps we should not regulate this or that something or other at all. Perhaps that is simply not possible any more. We as a society certainly seem to be convinced of it.<br />
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This sounds more grim than I really mean it to be but I hope that life extension technologies do not happen so soon that I have to confront the choice of whether or not to be around when the ideas of complete social control reach an inevitable endpoint. It may be a supremely comfortable and safe existence but the vasty unintended consequences of infinite control on the human psyche will almost surely be unpleasant to behold for anyone who once lived in the quaint and unlamented long lost age of individualism.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-24750567602412093252010-04-10T17:54:00.000-07:002010-05-10T13:51:31.565-07:00Strong ConstitutionA LIVING CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br />
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Preamble<br />
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In order to ensure that every resident of the United States of America is guaranteed their fair share of funds and services provided by the federal government we do ordain this living constitution which encourages changes to federal law as the needs of social harmony and the global environment evolve over time.<br />
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Article 1.<br />
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All rights, financial obligations and responsibilities, prohibited and required behaviors, in all cases, in all states, territories, and assigns, at all times, of all residents, commercial entities, and public institutions of the United States of America shall be enumerated and mandated by legislation passed by a majority vote of the proportionally elected agency of the Federal government known as the House of Representatives. In the case of tie votes the Vice President of the United States will exercise a vote to decide the issue. Individual states may institute additional measures in any category but such measures may not supplant, modify, or negate federal statutory law.<br />
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Article 2.<br />
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The actions and policies of all agencies and branches of the federal government created by legislation are subject to review and modification by the elected members of the House of Representatives. <br />
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Article 3.<br />
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Upon passage of legislation a bill may be signed by the United States resident serving as President and become law. If not signed by the President the legislation becomes law withing one calendar week from the time of passage in the House of Representatives. <br />
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Article 4.<br />
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All conditions, remunerations, and terms of service of all employees and elected officials of the government of the United States of America will be mandated by legislation of the House of Representatives. <br />
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Article 5. <br />
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The offices of President and Vice President of the United States will be effected by direct popular vote of the residents of same. Term limitations of, and qualifications for, any federal elected office shall be mandated by legislation of the House of Representatives. <br />
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Article 6. <br />
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No restraints, of any kind, upon the privilege of voting by any person older than 18 years of age, and living within the boundaries of the United States of America, shall be permitted. Military personnel, embassy staff, or United States resident living temporarily abroad may submit ballots by mail accompanied by a copy of the resident's United States government issued identification card. No identification shall be required for voting at a polling place in the United States or territories under its control.<br />
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Article 7.<br />
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The freedoms of life, liberty, speech, religion, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment shall not be infringed except where specifically modified by federal legislation according to the evolving needs of society.<br />
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Article 8.<br />
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The power to initiate, cease, or fund hostilities against a formally declared enemy by the United States military resides exclusively in the House of Representatives. The President will serve as Commander-in-Chief of the United States military subject to review of his actions at such intervals as deemed appropriate by the House of Representatives.<br />
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Article 9.<br />
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The United States of America shall endeavor to be a member in good standing in the community of nations and shall additionally strive at all times to abide by international norms of behavior when pursuing policies that affect those beyond the borders of the United States of America. Duly constituted international law shall take precedence over United States law except where specifically noted by legislation of the House of Representatives.<br />
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Article 10.<br />
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Changes, challenges, or attempted abrogations of this constitution by any resident, or body of residents other than duly elected members of the House of Representatives, are not permitted.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-28929604642322445692010-03-29T16:40:00.000-07:002010-05-05T05:17:57.986-07:00That Clinking Clanking SoundEver get the impression that the Progressive political class doesn't really understand the concept of money? The phrase "medium of exchange" seems to little intrude on their cultural sensoria. A dollar, mark, franc, pound, ruble, etc. etc. has no intrinsic value whatsoever but what we as functioning mercantile societies choose to assign it. When we use money to buy something what we are really doing is trading our services for the services of someone else. As a first order approximation when we work and for our efforts obtain a certain amount of this trading medium we use it to obtain the services provided by someone else. If we trade an actual item for another that is known as bartering which is fine but unworkable on any but the smallest local scales. So money, printed bills, checks, electronically transferred funds, or whatever merely allows a national and worldwide commerce in goods and services to take place more efficiently--or at all really.<br />
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In the end if we borrow, that is obtain some of what we do not already have, we perforce owe the person or institution from which we borrowed that same amount plus a fee for providing that service. A government bond is a loan from the purchaser which after a certain period of time will be repaid along with an agreed upon rate of interest or profit to the purchaser. No government can sell bonds with a zero percent interest rate. Who would buy such a thing? Not even the most addled Marxist/Leninist anti-capitalist zealot would ever buy a government bond with a zero percent interest rate. And the nearly limitless exigencies of the modern welfare state mean that there will never be enough tax revenues to pay for all the goodies received by the populace so money must be raised by selling bonds of sundry types. <br />
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Bond holders expect to be repaid the same as any other lender whether they are individuals or governmental entities. Individuals or governments cannot be forced to buy other governments bonds. They must in some degree be induced to buy them with rates of return that are attractive in some way. If the economics of a given country are grim their bonds can only be sold at higher rates of return or in extreme cases not at all. Shaft your large bondholders and your source of funding will dry up until some sort of fiscal sanity is restored to your economy or enterprise.<br />
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So in every real sense every cent of the ocean of the intangible but nevertheless all to real money surging to and fro around the globe is an amount owed by someone to someone else. And those loaning someones expect to be paid back just as much as when you sell a car and expect the check to cash properly. If that check bounces you are a victim of fraud just as are bondholders, even enormous ones, victimized if a country defaults on its obligations and is unable, or unwilling, to repay those bondholders. So in the end if, say, France gives the U.S. a chicken it expects the agreed upon dozen eggs in return. If the eggs are not forthcoming there may well be no chicken next time. If you don't repay someone for their services, whether it is to fix a flat tire or to finance your wildly burgeoning welfare state, then you perpetrate a fraud--period.<br />
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All the trillions the U.S. is now borrowing to finance its rapidly expanding public entitlement programs <i>must</i> be repaid at some point or the country will default on those loans and there will be forty-nine kinds of dire economic hell to pay.<br />
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Progressives seem to take little notice of any of this and even when they do they claim that the heaped up trillions in debt will be repaid by tax revenues from putative future economic booms. At the rate this debt is piling up the odds that any economy on this planet or any other will be able to do this would make any Vegas bookie bark in derisive laughter.<br />
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Progressives further think that those mean old nasty greedy Rich People should pay their "fair" share to enable the countless grandiose governmental projects touted by said Progressives. I got news for them. There aren't enough rich people. Not nearly enough. If we confiscated every last cent from everyone making over 200k, the newest definition of rich, it wouldn't be enough--not even close. The entire personal fortunes of every single filthy rich plutocratic oppressor of the proletariat and every criminally irresponsible Wall Street trader would not even be a good down payment on implementing the fevered entitlement dreams of progressives. Heck the personal fortunes of every last man-jack and woman-jill taxpayer in the whole country will not be enough. When the debt load equals and then surpasses the sum total gross domestic product of the labors of every single working person in the United States then we will officially be bankrupt and physically incapable of repaying this ever rising Everest of debt. <br />
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Oh sure if such a massive default were to actually occur the huge foreign government bondholders will be stuck, for an indeterminate period, and may have to just suck it up and take the hit. What they will not be likely to do is throw several trillion bucks more good money after bad because that very act would just make it that much unlikely that they would ever be repaid. Our overall public debt level now rivals that of the period during the Second World War which was repaid fairly rapidly it's true but would manifestly not have been if the current entitlement structure, let alone any Progressively contemplated future one, had then been as extensive and overarching.<br />
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Massive defaults by developed nation-states are rare but they are beginning to appear. Greece in fact has ceased to be a going concern in almost every way and is currently hat in hand to the wealthier members of the EU, Germany primarily, for a massive bailout package. If the cradle of democracy has foundered on the shoals of the entitlement state then can anyone say we will always be immune to the same fate?<br />
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No matter how mind-numbingly large the numbers blithely tossed around, and no matter how blase Progressives are that enough suckers will be found to pay, the fact will always remain that every single dollar of debt is and will be owed to someone who would like it back at some point. That's just capitalism which as reviled as it may be is not merely the preferred economic engine of prosperity but rather the <i>only</i> engine of prosperity ever proven to actually work. <br />
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Capitalism is not an intellectual preference competing among many others. It is the inevitable manifestation of the deepest inherent needs and wants of every human on the planet. And this trait is not merely human. No living thing, not even a microbe, can go about its business without the remuneration required for its survival. The more any given state misguidedly attempts to suppress or supplant these imbedded tendencies the more generally miserable will be its inhabitants. Progressives and harder leftists can, and of course will, argue about this until doomsday but it is, whether they will ever admit it or not, inevitable that the current, and unprecedented, massive expansion of the entitlement state will ultimately depend on many many someones somewhere at some time being willing to work for nothing. Any volunteers?The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-68297629896203977712010-03-16T15:38:00.000-07:002010-04-06T07:28:21.247-07:00Tinfoil TomFrom a recent Time article/interview with actor Tom Hanks:<br />
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"Back in World War II we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”<br />
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Well <i>there</i> went any respect I might have been harboring for the man for with a mere four sentences he's officially joined the growing ranks of clueless celebrity numbskulls. What's truly brain boggling is that this is from someone who recently participated in a multi-year 100 million dollar mini-series about the fighting in the Pacific during WWII. <br />
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The statement "We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different." is born of a particularly fine and special sort of historical ignorance. They were indeed "different" from us in that the Japanese Empire was attempting to subjugate and pillage half the world, while killing millions of innocents in the process, and the United States was not. That's the only difference really worth considering you buffoonish yob. Sure they were reviled you nitwit. They were the <i>ENEMY</i>. And by enemy I do not mean the other side of a chess game or a cricket match. I mean a powerful and merciless military juggernaut that for many years before Pearl Harbor had bombed smashed and murdered its way across much of Asia and the Pacific with India and Australia square in its gunsights.<br />
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Aside from the U.S. cutting off raw and scrap material supplies to this juggernaut the main brief the Japanese held against this country is that it might prove a major roadblock in their grandiose dreams of conquest. I doubt there was any serious sort of embedded cultural hatred of the U.S. in Japan that was any worse than the normal sort of extreme Japanese disdain of all "barbarians", i.e. everyone not Japanese. And not even the most bellicose in the Japanese general staff thought that invading the U.S. mainland was remotely practical. So they were not in any wise "out to kill us because our way of living was different." and we in turn did not generally view them as having that attitude. They just wanted us out of the way and the Pearl Harbor attack was supposed to shock the U.S. so much we would sue for peace and allow their pillage of Asia and the western Pacific to proceed without interference. The attack was thoroughgoing, efficiently prosecuted, and of course one of the most profound military blunders of all time but few Americans at the time thought that it was motivated by innate hatred of the people or the culture of this country.<br />
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Before the war U.S. opinion of Japan itself was not particularly ugly, in fact it was frequently laudatory, although those of Japanese ancestry certainly had major problems on the west coast. After Pearl Harbor the U.S. propaganda machine swung into action and painted the Japanese as leering subhuman killers of innocents and savage despoilers of whole countries. The concept of "politically correct" had not reared its putrid head in those days and cartoonish characterizations of enemy peoples and combatants was de rigueur on all sides. The U.S. was lamentably not special in this regard but slack must be cut on this score because the Japanese actually <i>were</i> plainly and unquestionably mass killers of innocents and despoilers of whole countries. In fact their savagery was scarcely eclipsed by the Germans so however vicious our propaganda was it was not only well deserved but actually understated things. However cruel and black-hearted we thought the Japanese military was shortly after Pearl Harbor they continued to surprise us throughout the war with savagery no sane American thought even possible.<br />
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It was entirely the result of the all too real and stupefyingly wicked Japanese depredations during the war that they reaped the ultimate nuclear whirlwind and that consequence had absolutely nothing to do with propaganda posters of smirking bespectacled Japanese troops bayoneting Chinese babies. And they should thank us really because the nuclear bombings abruptly ended the war and likely saved anywhere from five to ten million lives which would have been snuffed out in a full scale invasion of the main home islands. There are in fact many millions of Japanese alive today precisely because we dropped those nuclear weapons instead of invading the country. <br />
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Moving on Mr. Hanks is an unfathomable jackass if he thinks there are any parallels whatsoever between World War Two and the current mutual disregard between the western world and the middle-east. Or at least there are no parallels on the western side. On the middle-eastern side hatred of decadent western culture and its democratic institutions is all too real and clearly supported enthusiastically by millions. Yeah yeah moderate Muslims blah blah blah. Sure there are moderates. Maybe they are in the vast majority but if so they seem especially helpless in reigning in murderous jihadists although admittedly said jihadists appear to be experts in literally explosive intimidation of said putative moderates. Most Americans do not hate Muslims but they should and do properly revile the Islamist human garbage who brought down the twin towers and who routinely attempt to mass murder their co-religionists into submission. Not a lot to love there but even so propaganda posters of caricatured swarthy leering Al Queda suicidists bombing polling places and mosques are notably lacking in American shop windows.<br />
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In summation Mr. Hanks the Japanese just wanted us out of their way while radical Islamists <i>do</i> in fact hate our culture and want to conquer and subjugate us by whatever means possible. Not that they are likely to achieve this but that does not make them want it any less or make their murderous depredations any more palatable. Get a grip Hanks, yank that tinfoil hat off, and really respect those men whom your production is portraying by not painting their incredible sacrifices as a mere clash of cultures or a simple matter of mutual disrespect. They hated the Japanese not because they were funny looking little yellow fellows who did not look or talk like us and did not worship the same god but because they were unspeakably savage, implacably resolute, and enthusiastically suicidal enemies not merely of us but also of the peace and freedom of half the globe. If there had been an actual Captain John H. Miller and were he were still alive today he would be very ashamed of you Mr. H.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-7807008568583447882010-03-10T07:10:00.000-08:002010-03-10T07:10:45.034-08:00Resting PoultryAlthough Toyota Corporation is the one in the soup presently I firmly believe that most other auto firms will be joining the bouillabasse in due course. This happenstance will be not be because of laxness or perfidy on the part of auto makers but rather the result of the technological chickens coming home to roost. Cars have of course increased in complexity steadily since the first quadracycle tootled down the first 19th century inventor's cobbled driveway but the trend has gathered major momentum in the last several decades. The last decade in particular has seen enormous increases in vehicle complexity under the ever greater lash of government mandates in headlong pursuit of greater fuel efficiency, exhaust pollution reduction, crash safety, recyclability, and a mishmash of politically driven "green" initiatives of sundry, and sometimes contradictory, mien.<br />
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There is no other consumer product on planet Earth that is more intensively regulated than automobiles sold in the United States--period. Noting else even comes close. To address this regulatory tsunami, and to not go out of business by not selling enough product, manufacturers have been forced to increase the complexity of vehicles to the point where even jet fighters and space shuttles might blush in embarrassment. <br />
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It should be obvious, but isn't to many, that the more complex a product the greater the likelihood that one of its parts will fail. If you make a device with ten simple parts the failure rate of the device is as a whole usually very low. If you make a device with a thousand parts the likelihood of one of those parts failing is considerably higher. If you make a device with ten thousand parts the failure of one of the components is guaranteed. At least it's guaranteed in a product that the bulk of the population can afford and even in the case of mid six-figure priced vehicles the failure of a component is hardly unusual.<br />
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One amelioration to this statistical inevitability is the concept of redundancy wherein a backup system will kick in when a critical component fails. All well and good but this approach is hardly viable in a consumer product. It is nonsensical to expect a useful level of component redundancy in an automobile. Aside from being largely impractical on an operational level major redundancy capabilities in cars would be hugely expensive and would drastically increase weight and lower fuel efficiency. A Smart Car would weigh as much as a current Mercedes E500 with such an approach--and would cost about the same as well.<br />
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There is another issue which gets little MSM coverage, unsurprisingly given the base ignorance of the non-automotive press, and that is that as vehicle systems become more complex and more under the control of computers the less the practicality of manual control of many systems. Regulation demands ever higher levels of performance, in all terms, which perforce means less direct control by the driver. To wit: Engines have become so complex and computer controlled that they no longer need, or even can accomodate, something as simple as an accelerator control cable. Electrically and hydraulically boosted computer controlled anti-lock brake systems are increasingly difficult to configure with something as simple as direct foot-operated mechanical rods or cables. Even steering systems are starting to appear that only have electronic connections between steering wheels and the cars actual steering mechanisms.<br />
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Until fairly recently if one's power steering or power brakes failed a vehicle might become much harder to steer or stop but it was still quite possible to do either. Throttles virtually always had a mechanical connection to a vehicle's fuel injection system with return springs that assured that an engine runaway was vanishingly unlikely. Now this mechanical "fail safe" tendency is rapidly disappearing. Increasingly throttles, steering wheels and even brake pedals are connected only to electronic sensors which signal the vehicle's computer, many computers actually, to accelerate, change direction, or stop according to the driver's needs. The darlings of enviros, hybrid vehicles, are even more complex, sometimes hugely so.<br />
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This trend toward much greater complexity is making vehicles <i>more</i> failure prone not less and therefore less safe. These new systems are very complex and rely on many sensors, electrical actuators, and, equally if not even more problematic, hundreds of thousands or millions of lines of computer code. At this level of complexity some sort of failure is essentially inevitable. What's worse is that failure of any given part is entirely unpredictable.<br />
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The computer sitting on your desk, however expensive, can be relied on to crash on a fairly regular basis. This can be an inconvenience, even a serious one, but restarting usually puts things to right although the loss of data may be a big pain. The computers in vehicles <i>may</i> be more reliable than home units but they are hardly immune to glitches, bugs, and internal component failure. The problem, rather obviously, is that the failure of a vehicle computer can have far deadlier consequences than merely losing the text of an email you were composing on your lap top. <br />
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If your home computer's mouse fails you run down to Best Buy or Walmart and pick up a new one. If the hard drive, the power supply, or the screen fails, the fix might be so expensive that you retire the offending device and buy a whole new one. In a vehicle if a sensor, actuator, or buggy line of code causes serious problems at 70mph on the freeway it won't matter a damn if replacement parts are readily available at a dealer because you may be stuck, possibly injured, and maybe slightly dead due to the failure.<br />
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Nothing made by the hand of man or machine is perfect. Out of a million things made by that hand or that machine a certain number of them will break, not work properly, or fail to work at all. As vehicles rapidly become more complex under the lash of regulation born of consequence-be-damned green hysteria such failures as currently bedevil Toyota will spread to all auto makers. The more technologically advanced vehicles become the more unreliable they will inevitably be. And due to the anti-corporate hyperventilations of the Progressive political class the trend shows little sign of abating. <br />
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Happy freakin' motoring.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-70075409038167633792010-02-19T18:54:00.000-08:002010-04-10T18:07:32.229-07:00In Harm Reduction's WayThere is currently a battle raging between anti-tobacco zealots, who refuse to countenance any use of any form of the weed at any time, and a rather saner segment that favors what is called a "reduced harm" strategy. The vehemence of the ATZs makes it clear that they think that the tobacco leaf is the pustulent rotting foliage of Satan's favorite houseplant and, mostly being good liberals, slot tobacco company execs at the penultimate nadir of human slime mold just below concentration camp commandants and only just above the arch villain Limbaugh. ATZs will apparently not rest until every fibrous vestige of Nicotiana tabacum is expunged from the society of humankind.<br />
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A significantly less rhetorically incindiary group known as reduced harm advocates admit that the reduction of smoking is a Good Thing but instead of punitive taxation and nanny-state coercion they prefer the considerably more effective course of offering smokers substitutes that deliver nicotine in a far less unhealthy fashion.<br />
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There are number of harm reduction products (patches, gum, "electronic" cigarettes and the like) available which eschew tobacco entirely. Other products can accomplish similar goals although they are not designed expressly as such. This unintentionality is represented by products known generically as "smokeless" tobacco. Until recently in American terms this has meant primarily snuff (moist and dry) and various forms of chewing tobacco. So you got your dip and your chew which are widely popular in the relatively rural hinterlands but have sundry aesthetic drawbacks that hinder a greater level of big-citified adaptation.<br />
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Having closed in on diminishing returns regarding smoking elimination ATZs have set their sights on demonizing, taxing, and to whatever degree possible impeding the "spread" of smokeless tobacco. A favorite tag line for anti smokeless propaganda is "If you think dip is safer than smoking then think again." That overwrought sentiment is in fact a plain baldfaced lie. Dip and chew do in fact have some health repercussions but they utterly pale compared to smoking. Their use is wildly safer with health consequences that are negligible compared to inhaling a pack or two of cigs a day. And oh yeah even the supposedly sober science oriented American Lung Association propagates this abominable lie.<br />
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When pressed hard antis may admit that smokeless may in fact safer than smoking but are quick to trot out the shibboleth that smokeless products are a "gateway" to smoking for young people. There is virtually no scientific evidence to support this but antis seem to believe that if they say it often enough and with sufficient force and sincerity then it must be true. Further antis assert that the recent increase in flavors of smokeless tobacco is a scurrilous and naked attempt to attract impressionable children to such products. Nonsense. It is an attempt to cash in on the proliferating public smoking bans in all parts of the country which affect adults more than whippersnappers. In New York City "Nanny" Bloomberg is busy pushing the ban of flavored smokeless products except for traditional flavors such as "natural" and wintergreen. How this might keep youngsters from using smokeless is a mystery entire. Without doubt steep tax increases, the first refuge of the Progressive, are soon to follow. <br />
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There is one smokeless tobacco product that in addition to making inroads in the U.S. market in recent years is not only far safer than smoking but is safer yet than traditional American dip and chew. It hails from Sweden and is known as snus which is pronounced "snoose". The word simply means snuff in Swedish but any resemblance to traditional inhaled dry snuff or American dip is entirely lacking. Snus is packaged primarily in "portions" which are gram sized amounts of finely ground tobacco encased in a soft tea bag like tube or pouch. These portions are intended to be inserted between one's upper lip and gum and deliver nicotine and flavor in a fashion that is accurately, if inelegantly, labeled "spitless". This means that they draw far less saliva than traditional dip and do not require the spitting out of juice which elevates the social acceptability level dramatically.<br />
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This spitless behavior is due to the way Swedish snus is manufactured. Instead of the normal American practice of fire curing/fermenting snus is steam pasturized which not only renders any adverse microorganisms inert but also greatly reduces the levels of carcenogenic nitrosamines found in dip and chew. In fact it reduces them to near microscopic levels that are far lower than dip and chew--vanishingly low. As a result the deleterious consequences of snus usage are essentially nonexistent. A variety of Swedish government and academic medical studies have shown snus to be by far the most harmless tobacco product sold, period. One study indicated a possible tiny increase in pancreatic cancers among snus users while others have failed to establish any increased disease risk at all.<br />
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What these studies have also shown is that snus is not only not a gateway to smoking but is in fact a brightly lit EXIT sign for smokers. Snus has been made and used in Sweden for over 200 years but its popularity soared in the 1970s when, in addition to the original "lös" or loose form which required hand forming into a small cylinder, the product was offered in "portions". Portions made snus usage nearly invisible socially and were rather less messy than the lös form. The actual product, and the strict Swedish regulation of its manufacture, was not changed. Since then usage has greatly increased so that now over one million people (out of a population of only nine million) uses snus in Sweden and thousands of smokers switch each year. As snus usage increased smoking waned as did overall health consequences. Now Sweden has the lowest rates of lung and mouth cancer of any developed country. <br />
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The comparative health benefits of snus are utterly incontrovertible and as an aid to smoking cessation it exhibits higher percentages of efficacy than any other method. It still delivers nicotine of course but being merely addicted to nicotine is fantastically preferable to smoking. The varying nicotine delivery levels of different brands are what aid smoking cessation because snusers can vary the level according to need. A cigarette delivers about 1mg of nicotine over a few minute period. Snus delivers its nicotine in a time frame of 30 to 60 minutes with some levels as low as 4mg and as high as 19. The lower levels can be used in a "maintenance" strategy and there are versions strong enough to kill even the strongest cigarette cravings.<br />
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Snus is available in a wide variety of flavors and packagings, and nicotine strength of course, which accommodates virtually any taste. Snusing in Sweden cuts across all social, economic, and gender lines, from horny-handed working men to fashionista femmes in executive suites, and thus has no shortage of cosmopolitan cachet. It is practically de rigueur for club hopping and hanging.<br />
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In the past half dozen years snus has begun to make market inroads in the U.S. although its share is still tiny. An extremely enthusiastic and boisterous online community has sprung up with many sites offering commentary and reviews of snus products. A number of online retailers have opened to service this growing market and sales are increasing steadily if not spectacularly.<br />
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A few U.S companies have made timorous forays into the market, most notably RJR with its Camel SNUS line. The brand has had modest commercial success but sales have recently stalled. Snus congnescenti in general disdain the Camel version as greatly inferior in taste and nicotine delivery compared to the real Swedish deal. Some even mutter that RJR is using its weak tea snus version merely as an adjunct to smoking with little intent to displace sales of cigarettes. Having tried it I concur with this assessment. A Marlboro branded snus has made an appearance on store shelves but the less said about this excremental junk the better. Regardless of that if snus continues to rise in popularity the U.S. companies will likely take greater notice and offer product more competitive with the genuine article.<br />
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Snus may well be a boon to clubs and bars since so many municipalities are banning smoking in virtually all public venues. There would be absolutely zero chance of any allegedly harmful "secondary" fumoria for antis to fret and fuss about. Snusing in restaurants will be less popular because although drinking liquids whilst using is possible, and even rewarding, eating is another matter. <br />
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I forsee the advent of the Snus Bar which would offer a selection of product along with the usual sorts of adult beverages. For the non-alchoholic set the coffehouse business model might prove attractive. And just as importantly snusing at work, or at the countless places that now ban smoking, will not involve fleeing outside into rain cold or snow to get a nic fix. Snusing at the movies? By all means. Snusing on hospital visits? Bring it on. Snusing in church? Whatever your conscience will tolerate.<br />
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This rosy future is under threat by the usual suspects. Not only are states and municipalities socking smokeless tobacco with draconian new taxes but ATZs and their progressive fellow travelers in Congress are pushing a bill which is currently oozing its way through the legislative process. It is the PACT bill, short for Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act, and is aimed at illegal cigarette trafficking but threatens to ensnare snus in its blundering nanny-state dragnet. The bill will, among other things, impede and raise the cost of internet sales of tobacco products which are the principal means of obtaining Swedish snus since U.S. local retail sales are as yet fairly spotty. Ironically cigars are exempt from the bill's provisions which raises dark suspicions that the bill's authors think that fat cat CEOs and stogie lovin' pols wouldn't have supported it for fear of having access to their favorite pricy predilection impeded.<br />
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ATZs from hither and yon are naturally applauding the bill because it is, of course, "for the children". O' Lawd give me strength. Oblivious twits that they are most antis are likely unaware of either snus or its potential benefits to the smoking population. Even if they were aware their vehemence would doubtless be unmodified since snus cleanly and conveniently delivers the vile poisonous addictive drug nicotine. Nicotine is of course addictive but in amounts consumed normally by humans the health hazards of the chemical by itself are inconsequential compared to the ravages of the most widely used delivery system which is smoking. Snus usage <i>entirely</i> eliminates the hazards of smoke, threatens no one with secondary effluvia, and is about as minimal a cause of health problems as is statistically conceivable.<br />
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Incidentally the FDA is maliciously complicit in the ATZ's preposterous deceptions by requiring that snus labels have a warning that states "This product is not a safe alternative to smoking." or "This product may cause mouth cancer." No you bloody fools it is a completely safe alternative and will cause <i>no</i> cancer of any kind. How the devil would the FDA know anyway? They have done exactly zero testing of genuine Swedish snus and are apparently unaware of the many studies that have been done by the Swedes, Brits, Australians, and others. If they are not unaware of these studies then the warning labels are a cruel malfeasance which is likely born of being in thrall to, or fearful of, ATZ's eliminationist demagoguery.<br />
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Snus usage will likely increase because of its benefits and enjoyment of use, even while laboring under punitive measures, but if propagandic mendacity, onerous taxation, and relentless perspectiveless pursuit of tobacco bans continue to be employed by ATZs then they will have finally marked themselves as heedless blinkered obsessives who have willingly let themselves be led into abject criminal irresponsibility by impeding one of the most effective methods of quitting smoking.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5961309872069902071.post-72258328967413667682010-02-09T08:59:00.000-08:002010-02-09T08:59:23.737-08:00Politics at PlayPlaying Politics. What an odious phrase this has become. When one is accused of "playing politics" with an issue or event it has come to mean an ignoble attempt to take advantage for pure partisan reasons. What I would love to know is why this is in any sense unusual or for that matter particularly undesirable?<br />
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If it is anything politics is the art of working one's individual or collective will to advance an agenda of policy prescriptions or to denigrate and attempt to stop policies and legislative efforts which which one disagrees. Politics is "our" ideas against "yours" and everything else is details which are of course the Devil's playground but such applies to all human endeavor, political or otherwise. To quote Lil' Abner "Them GOPs and Democrats each hates the other one. They's always criticizin' what the other's gone and done." which is an entirely salubrious state of affairs to this avowed admirer of cholesterotic partisanship.<br />
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<i>Everyone</i> plays politics. Thou canst not be a political animal without doing so. This animal, i.e us, presumably would like to see his preferred policy agenda advance through the legislative system towards implementation. Said animal perforce naturally wants to associate himself with an organization that agrees with his general outlook. What we have to answer that need is political parties. Many many folks despise this allegedly parlous state of affairs which manifests itself in our general binary political landscape. But why? This binary arrangement has ample room for disagreement within party structure as proved by the frequently fractious nature of debate within parties. A wide range of policy preferences, from the center to the extremes, is serviced to varying degrees in either party apparatus.<br />
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Many bemoan this largely binary approach and maintain that the major parties cannot represent the full range of political thought in the country. To whatever extent this is true it is a strength and not a weakness since out of party chaos usually bubbles up candidates and policy initiatives that hover, usually, somewhere about the centers of their respective political spectra. This only makes sense because in presidential terms a fringe candidate's chances for nationwide success are extremely low, practically zero.<br />
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These respective party centers, however representative of their own middle ranges they may be, are usually very far apart in tone, methodology and ideological thrust. Consequently the all too human, therefore all too political, tendency is to attempt to denigrate and vilify an opposing candidate's ideas to whatever extent possible. As we often see this process can be nasty in extremis but it is nonetheless an utterly healthy phenomenon. It is the primary method available for keeping parties "honest". Loudly calling BS on a political operative's statements is not a lamentable defect of the system but rather its finest feature.<br />
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Every political animal has its own style in this process ranging from sober measured reflection to violent profane name calling. We the public must decide what we like most or least about his process and act accordingly. That this is often a tragically imperfect process is beside the point but in a republic it has proven the least worst of all other methods. <br />
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A binary party system has its defects but they pale against the deficiencies of parliamentarian fractiousness wherein many competing factions jockey for supremacy. Ironically the "coalitions" that result from willy-nilly multi-party negotiations usually end up distilling disparate power bases into two competing entities that mimic the entrenched binarism of the U.S.<br />
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Playing politics, hurling possibly unsubstantiated charges answered by the same or worse, is not a lamentable defect but rather a signal virtue. The "truth" will out, especially in this information rich age, so have at it people. Call your names, assassinate other's characters, question each other's patriotism, yell from the rooftops, lie like rugs, parade in the streets, wave goofy banners, carry on like afflicted nut cases, do it all. Play politics like entities possessed. Enjoy yourself and thank your lucky stars that in this country character assassination is a preferred method as opposed to what obtains in too many corners of the earth which is <i>actual</i> assassination.The Center Punchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12715143701625760556noreply@blogger.com0