Internet Car reviews

Back before internet, car reviews came in magazines, Road & Track, Motor Trend, Car & Driver. Since the magazines accepted a LOT of auto company advertising, the car reviews were always favorable. Didn't matter how wretched the car, the reviews made them sound wonderful. Never read a bad review.
Then there was Consumer Reports. It didn't accept advertising from anyone, and the editors hated cars. So the annual new car issue was depressing, it just listed warts. They used to invent warts just to avoid saying any thing nice about anything.
Now we have free internet reviewers. These guys have a new set of quirks. They are all car buffs and wannabee racers. Doesn't matter how much engine power the car has, they will tell you it needs more. Unless the transmission has 8 speeds forward it's obsolete. Interior must be trimmed in rare imported leather, hand carved mahogany, and engine turned stainless steel. Plastic is always bad mouthed as too shiny and too brittle. Cockpit design is derided as bland. Gigantic 25 inch diameter wheels are praised. They all love rear wheel drive.
Let's get back to the real world. More engine power costs you gas mileage. If you just want to get to work and not go drag racing, one horsepower per 35 pounds of car will get you there and get you back. One horsepower per 18 pounds of car is plenty lively enough for any kind of street driving, passing on two lane roads, and hill climbing at 100 mph. Four speeds in the transmission is plenty for engines of 4 liters (260 cubic inches) or larger. Manual transmission gives the best gas mileage and serves double duty as an anti theft device. Good automatic transmissions have a lockup clutch that eliminates slippage in the hydraulic torque converter. The lockup clutch will improve gas mileage by 2-3 mpg.
Interior trim is a matter of taste. Back in the 1950's Detroit interiors were bright with chrome, polished metal, fake wood strips, and two or three contrasting colors. In the 1960's the safety people came in and things were toned down. Reflective metal was banned because of blinding reflections in sunlight, and the eye catching trim went out. The result is a bland interior that doesn't distract the driver's eye from the road. As long as the interior looks well made so it won't come apart and look shabby, it's OK.
Big wheels smooth out the bumps but require more space inside the car to avoid the wheel hitting the inside of the fenders. Fourteen or fifteen inch wheels are plenty, the mega wheels popular now don't improve ride, handling, or tire wear.
Front wheel drive was cool back when it was new. In snow country it's the way to go. Front wheel drive gets rid of a space hogging drive shaft tunnel and transmission hump that used to eat up cockpit space.
Things the reviewers don't talk about. A good car has about the same weight on the front wheels as the back wheels. Fifty-fifty weight distribution it's called. The less the car weighs, the better the gas mileage. A hatchback with fold down rear seats lets you bring stuff back from the lumber yard.
You will save money if you buy a car you like. If you like it, you will keep it longer, which saves money. The virtuous car that you never liked, will encourage you to trade it on a new one sooner. Hybrid cars are so much more expensive than plain gasoline powered cars that the somewhat better gas mileage never pays for itself. You will sell the car before you break even.

Slow Speed Rail

Getting up here without a car. Take Amtrak's Vermonter from New York to White River Junction VT. Amtrak departs NYC and 11 AM and arrives in White River at 6:45 PM, (sometimes). That's 263 miles in 7 3/4 hours or 34 mph. Speedy.
By contrast, the bus, with a change at Hartford, makes it in 7 hours, (37 mph) and you can drive it in 4 1/2 hours (58 mph).
Why so slow? Old and weary track. The rail line up the Connecticut River was laid in the 1830's and has been allowed to quietly rot since the 1970's. The ties are so rotten that spikes can be pulled out by hand, it's bumpy, the rail joiners are loose, and you can see the track flex under the weight of the train. So they don't run it very fast. The trainset is all modern stuff that could do 100 mph on good track.
It wouldn't take all that much to fix the track up enough to allow 60 mph schedules, even with stops at Stamford, Bridgeport, Hartford, and a few other places. Let's see, 263 miles by $500,000 a mile, is $130 million, a mere pittance compared to the $787 billion porkulus.
In short, it's not Euro style 200 mph rail service that we need, it's plain old 1920's style 60 mph rail service. The Vermonter runs pretty full, they demand reservations in advance. If it was faster, more people would ride it.

Have your ever seen a toad struck by lightening?

One of Hally Berry's few good lines in X-men. An Airbus-330 airliner enroute from Rio de Janerio to Paris is overdue, presumed lost. The home office suggested that it might have been struck by lightening over the Atlantic. Maybe, but I don't really believe it.
My Air Force squadron had two F-106 fighter planes struck by lightening back in the 1960's. Both planes landed OK. One suffered electrical damage to an antenna, sufficient to warrent replacement, but not so bad as to knock out the radio.
Lightening strikes on aircraft are not uncommon but very seldom do much damage. Since the aircraft is not grounded, being high in the air, the full current of the bolt has not where to go. Plus what current does flow thru the aircraft flows thru the highly conductive aluminum skin.
Maxwell's field equations say that electric fields cannot exist inside a conductive shell, which means the aluminum fuselage offers highly effective shielding to everything (passengers, fuel, electrical and electronic equipment) inside it.
The "lightening did it" press release sounds more like "it wasn't our fault".

The Post American World Fareed Zakaria

Geopolitics and the future of America. Copyright 2008, or just before Great Depression II started. It's well written, reads smoothly, and contains this newsie's advice to US citizens. He speaks of "the rise of the rest", by which lots of countries that were either bombed flat or still medieval at the end of WWII have rebuilt or modernized and now offer real competition to the US. He speaks fondly of his native India's economic growth since abandoning Nehru's quasi socialism in the late 1980's. He assesses the strengths and competitive advantages of America and finds them strong. The US economy is still the largest in the world, US popular culture is compelling. Unfortunately he doesn't talk about the strength of the US economy after the onset of Great Depression II, because the book went to press before the crash. He doesn't see the crash coming or even talk much about weaknesses that were obvious to more real world oriented papers like the Wall St Journal.
He talks about a dysfunctional US political process, by which I think he means that democrats didn't have the votes to push thru their pet projects. Now that they do have all the votes they need, will the country improve or will the democrats drive the country off a cliff? He also describes the US federal government as "weak", a surprising description now with Uncle owning banks and car companies, and running up a $1.5 trillion deficit in the first half of 2009.
Zacharia's prescriptions for US revival are pretty general and could have served as Obama speeches, heavy on motherhood and apple pie, short on specifics. His hindsight is fairly good but his foresight is no better than mine.
Worth a read, but it's a read once kind of book.

Cyber Security Czar

So we get yet another Obama staffer in the White House, drawing his pay out of our taxes. He is supposed to "strengthen computer security" otherwise known as keeping hackers out of government and corporate computers.
Actually, security does need to be tightened. But I doubt that another Obama staffer will do much about it. What's needed is good stiff penalties for sloppy security. About once a month some company or agency admits that hackers stole lists of names and social security numbers. That would stop if each case was treated as criminal negligence and prosecuted. A few heads mounted on pikes would tighten that up. Follow up with class action suits demanding treble damages.
Then Microsoft needs a clue by four laid up along the side of the head. Windows is totally vulnerable, with gaping security holes in the front, the back, the bottom and the top. A pack of personal injury lawyers ought to be sicced on Microsoft. Better that than more asbestos claims.
Finally we need to get serious about passwords. System managers need to insist on strong passwords, changed quarterly.

There oughta be a Law Pt 2

Against TV commercials overlaying the program. Bad enough we have to suffer thru the unending commercial breaks. But, now the commercials never stop. While the program is running we have network logos, speeding race cars, palm trees and whatever overlaying the program material. It's getting so bad you can't see the program for all the little commercials racing across the bottom of the screen.

Music Labels Zap DVD releases

Who a thunk it. The labels have things so tight in the copyright department that the studios cannot release old TV shows to DVD 'cause the labels want too much money for the rights to the musical score. Apparently the studios neglected to sign air tight agreements with the musicians back when the shows were produced. Some are quite old, say The Fugitive from the '60s, back when VHS and DVD rights hadn't been imagined.
It's so bad that some of the old shows are released with a new score, just to sidestep the copyright tangle on the original score. Which is incredible, redoing the score on a 40 year old TV show has got to be expensive. You would think in a real world it would be cheaper to buy off the labels than redo the score on a TV show.
The labels probably use the same lawyers they sic on file sharers to gouge the studios.
And the studios really really need to get better lawyers and make sure they own ALL the rights to the scores of their productions.