Is it the ads? Or the cars?

Was reading an automotive blog, the kind that talks cars and Detroit.  The writer (ranter) went on, and on, and further on, lambasting the advertising done by one of the big three.  He probably has a point, I have seen a lot of car company TV ads, which are so soft-sell, that I couldn't figure out who the car company was, let alone what the car was.  You know the ones,  the color has been faded out to black and white, soft focus, soft lighting, an empty road, some shrubs, and perhaps a Prius turning into sticks and leaves and blowing away in the wind.  Never give the company name or the car name in the voice over.  Never show the logos, or the car.  
   But.  Let's be real.   First you have to have a decent car before you can do a decent ad.  The cars coming out of Detroit's big three, are bland, bland, bland.  Plain melted jelly bean styling, painted light gray or mud color,  too high, too short, and all tilted forward on their noses.  Huge plastic bumpers.  Clearly styled by committee. 
   A good car is different from it's competitors.  In the cheapo econo-box class, we have dozens of look alike, over priced little go carts.  Then we have ONE outstanding car, the BMW Mini Cooper. The retro styling is far from original, but it sells like hot cakes, commanding a $25K price for a very tiny two adult/two children seating car.  Whereas the Chevy Sonic ( yes it's car, not a hedgehog)  only commands a $14 k price.   Coolness sells, the Mini Cooper is cool.
   The secret to success in the selling of cars, is coolness.  The cool cars sell.  The plain vanilla jelly bean cars don't.
   Detroit's challange is to produce more cool cars and less boring ones.

Women go for men driving black pickup trucks?

Just heard on Fox TV news.  They did not explain their research methods.  So you can believe as much of that as you like.
   What a comedown.  Back in the day, we guys really believed that chicks cared about what you drove.  American Graffitti pretty much covered this angle.  Cooliest cars were Ford, Chevy, or Pontiac, convertibles or "hardtops" (sedans with no center pillar between the side windows, giving the convertible look without the rag top).  Mag wheels, lotta chrome, lowered.  Pickup trucks were zero class.   Now Fox tells us that zero class has been promoted to first class?
   Later on in life, we began to think that girls were interested in you rather than in your wheels.  As long as said wheels were reasonably clean and looked like they wouldn't break down and strand them in the boonies, they didn't pay much attention to them. 
   So, tell us girls,  what's the real story?  Do a guy's wheels matter? 
  

Puddlejumpers to the boneyard

Aviation Week has a photo of 5  decent looking little regional jetliners parked out in the desert, the traditional place to store unneeded aircraft.  The dry sunny weather and lack of rain and snow preserves the aircraft for years.  These are small, 44 seat models, with a lot of flying hours left in them.  Apparently little jets don't make enough money to keep themselves flying.  Regular airliners, say a Boeing 727, will seat 150, and big airliners go up to 500 seats. 
   The small regional jets were developed and sold because passengers prefer jet aircraft and view propeller driven aircraft as old fashioned, noisy and high vibration.  But, apparently the very small jets don't earn their keep. 
   Aviation Week didn't say just why the small jets are getting scrapped.  Could be the propeller driven planes are sufficiently cheaper to operate than jets.  Could be air service to small air ports is being abandoned, leaving the passengers to drive to a larger airport.  Could be the small airports are actually big enough to land bigger jets, and the air lines are going for larger aircraft that can serve both small airports and larger ones too. 

Big Split between Dems and Republicans & Independents

On Fox, the carried Obama's State of the Union shindig.  They played that popularity graph that Bret Bahr has been showing on the 6 o'clock news, the one derived from Bing.  It plots Democrats, Republicans and Independants feelings about what is being said.  Blue for Dems, Red for Republicans, Green of Independents.
   Usually, on the evening news, the chatty time with Charles Krauthammer, Ron Williams,and others, all three groups track pretty close,  indicating general agreement among all sides about what the Fox talking heads are saying.
   Not so last night.  The running graph showed the Dems loving Obama's every word, with Republicans and Independents detesting them.  Big split.  Polarization shown graphically. 

Should I bother to watch Obama tonight?

He is giving the State of the Union address, tonight.  It's a slow news week, so all the TV news talks about is the president's address coming up in prime time tonight. 
   Obama's speaking style,  tossing out glittering generalities, feel good words that mean nothing, or mean what ever you want them to mean, is plain aggravating.  Plus, I can no longer trust what he says, not after "If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor". 
   I wonder how many voters feel the same?

Jointers

A simple power tool, that's been around for a long time.  My Grandfather had one, which was passed down to my father and then to my brother.  It's just a flat iron table with a rotating cutter that pokes up thru a slot in the table.  They have been around, in sizes affordable by home hobby shops since the 1920's. 
   But I never really appreciated their usefulness until yesterday when I tried to use some ordinary lumberyard two by fours for a project.  I ripped some pieces out of the two by four.  Next day I found what had been fairly straight pieces, had curled like potato chips.  Cheap modern lumber, sawn from fast growing weeds, instead of proper pine trees. 
   Each piece warped, one side was concave, touched the benchtop only at the ends.  I  jointed the concave sides until they were flat.  Don't joint the convex side, it will rock back and forth spoiling the cut.  Didn't take long, even the piece that had a quarter of an inch of daylight showing under the middle.  Eyeballed the grain, and ran each piece thru my jointer, a humble elderly 4 inch Sears Craftsman, with the grain falling to avoid chip out.  And, they did come out flat, flatter than I will ever do with a hand plane. 
   This gave me all my pieces, flat on one side and bowed on the other.  I just ripped off the bow with my radial arm saw.  If I owned a thickness planer I would have used that to plane off the bow.  But thickness planers are new fangled tools that didn't reach the home hobby shop until the 1960's.  I still don't have one, partly cause I don't have space for one, and partly 'cause I haven't seen one on Craig's list that wasn't 50% plastic. 
   Anyhow, with just a jointer, you CAN make stock straight and flat starting with something all twisty and curly.

Obama says pot no worse than alcohol

I think I agree with him.  Alcohol can get you into a lot of trouble.  Start with DUI (serious offense most places), press on to ruining any relationships (with parents, siblings, girlfriends, boyfriends), getting into accidents, getting into petty crime and moving up to felonies, flunking out of school.   For girls, drinking too much can lead to rape and pregnancy.   Pot  can get a kid in trouble too, but I never saw a case where pot smoking turned out worse than drinking too much.  So,  I agree with Obama, pot is not much worse than alcohol. 
   We need to remember that alcohol is very dangerous.  It's legal, but it's dangerous.  Pot is just as dangerous.