Dave Williams' Web Log

August 2008

comments to dlwilliams at aristotle.net
newest entries at bottom

08/01/2008:

> "Heat the fuel" setups have been around a long time, usually based
> on the assumption that hotter fuel will vaporize better and give more
> complete combustion.  I expect that auto manufacturers have experimented
> with this and, if there are gains to be had, have already designed the
> system so that the fuel will be in the desired temperature range
The fuel temperature limit is determined by vapor lock.

Motor fuel can contain quite a bit of entrained volatiles such as propane and butane. The fuel system has to handle worst-cast fuel in a worst-case scenario - pulling a maximum load over a 10,000 foot pass in New Mexico, for example.

Even EFI systems can have problems if the fuel starts to boil in the rail; cylinders go lean and the engine sets a code if you're lucky.

Generally, for best fuel economy you can do the tried and true basics:

Put 36 or 40 PSI in the tires to lower the rolling resistance, keeping an eye on the wear patterns.

Special low-rolling-resistance tires are now available in a few sizes, OEM on some hybrids.

If you have drum brakes, adjust them so the shoes don't drag.

Run the hottest thermostat you can get away with (ping). 215s are available for some engines.

Make sure the hot-air tube on the intake snorkel of your older carbureted car is hooked to the shield on the exhaust manifold, and that the flapper valve works correctly. Most fuel injected vehicles don't use a hot air flap; they just hose fuel in so you can turn the key and drive off. But that's wasteful of fuel.

Adjust the choke pull-off to the quickest operation, or better yet, go to a manual choke.

Many older cars with V6 or V8 engines used a thermostatic flapper valve in one exhaust manifold or pipe, that restricted exhaust flow on that side when the engine was cold. This did two things: it kept some hot exhaust in the cylinders, which helped warm the engine up faster, and it forced exhaust through passages in the cylinder heads and exhaust manifolds to escape out the other wide, which also helped warmup. Remember, cold operation is usually rich, and wasteful.

There's no real need to "warm up" an engine. Start it, give it a couple of seconds for oil pressure to come up, put it in gear, and go. You don't want to dog on a cold engine, but it won't hurt a thing to just drive it. Remember, your mileage sitting in the driveway is ZERO.

If using a Holley, pick an accelerator pump cam that doesn't do much for the first bit of throttle travel, and the least stroke you can get without a flat spot. The cams are plastic and easily modified. For an AFB, use the inner position for the pump link to reduce the stroke.

Adjust the spark advance in 2 degree increments, forward, back, check a full tank each time.

If EFI, you can do similar things to the fuel and spark curves. You'll have to buy into the stuff to tweak your OEM computer, or go to an aftermarket, programmable system.

Make sure the EGR is hooked up and functioning correctly. In some cases, if you can add more EGR (override circuit or a second valve) at cruise, you can reduce pumping losses and get better fuel efficiency. Driveability can suffer with high amounts of EGR, so you might want to play with a "cruise mode".

Goosing the ignition output can make a big difference on some cars, no difference on others. Nice sharp plug electrodes, high output coils, multistrike or high power spark boxes can be tried.

Going from a standard to a projected-tip spark plug can also be worth a tiny amount.

A full course of synthetic lubricants is worth a bit - motor oil, trans fluid or gear oil, diff lube, wheel bearings. You might give one of the new 0 weight engine oils a shot, or 30-wt Syncromesh or ATF in your manual trans if it calls for 90wt.

Reducing the frontal area will help - lower the vehicle, or at least the front, as much as you can get away with.

Convert from an engine driven fan to an electric.

Make sure the front end doesn't pull to one side. If you have power steering, the pump will drag on the engine all the time if the steering wheel isn't straight.

Some cars have substantial toe-in to give them a more stable feel. Going to less or zero toe reduces sideways scrub, and therefore rolling resistance, on the tires.

Weight isn't much of a factor in highway driving, but in town, all the weight has to be heaved up to speed from every traffic light or stop sign. Not much you can do about the basic vehicle, but cleaning all the junk out of the trunk or bed can't hurt.

Wing-things on the back don't help mileage, and in extreme cases, can hurt. Same for "air deflectors" on the roofs of vans and station wagons.

Big visor-things that hang over the windshield are bad news, aerodynamically.

EPA tests in the 1970s showed no difference in mileage with pickup trucks, tailgate up or down. The air is so turbulent it's "invisible" to the air flow. There have been reports of slight gains with late model trucks, which have much taller/deeper beds, but you'd probably have to try it for yourself.

A camper shell or "topper" on a pickup can help a lot. On my Mazda B2000, it was worth four miles per gallon. Downside: visibility sucked in traffic, and in the winter the windows frosted over too.

Air conditioning can take a lot of fuel. The AC knocks 4mpg off my Malibu, but some cars it's barely noticeable. NOTE: most cars run the air conditioner if you have the defroster selected, so you might be paying for AC even if the heater is on. I unplug the connector at the compressor in the wintertime.

An engine preheater can help a lot, even in summer weather. Both carbureted and EFI cars run rich when cold, and it can take several miles for the car to warm up and lean out. If you make predominantly short trips the heater can make a noticeable difference.

Avoid oxygenated fuel if possible - that's ETBE, MTBE, E10 and M10. For E85 or M95 you'll have to figure the cost of the fuel straight or blended with pump gas, and the mileage on some cars will vary considerably depending on the blend, due to effects from the spark and fuel curves. It would be worth your time to make a spreadsheet if you're serious about finding the optimum blend for your car.

If for some reason you can get "heating oil", kerosene, or jet fuel for less than the price of unleaded regular, most cars won't even notice a 25% blend with gasoline. I've tested blends down to below freezing with no starting problems, and in the summer without pinging problems. Actually, I was using Diesel fuel, back in the days when it was cheaper than gasoline...

Try one of the "Diesel-Kleen" cetane improver additives in your fuel. Yes, in gasoline. Start with about 1/4 of the recommended ratio and try more or less on successive tanks and see what happens. In my tests it was worth about 1 mpg with no tuning of any kind, just dump it in the tank. [Glassman's "Combustion" (third edition) explains the chemistry of this in detail; it's not magic] With gas at $1.59 the additional cost of the cetane improver balanced the fuel savings, so other than running nicer, it was a wash. Gas is a little more expensive now...

For driving, remember many vehicles use the same amount of fuel from idle to 30mph or so. (flowmeter on two of my carbureted vehicles, Diacom datalogs on a couple of injected cars) For urban driving, the engine uses about the same amount of fuel per minute whether the vehicle is moving or not. When stopped, your fuel mileage is ZERO. If you're rolling along at 15-20mph on a detour around traffic, at least you're getting SOME miles per gallon, and increasing your average.

There are driving techniques that are proven to optimize fuel economy. These basically involve cycling between full-throttle acceleration and then coasting in neutral. Interesting, but not practical in the real world. DaveWorld, anyway.

Generally, upshifting early and avoiding sudden throttle movements that will actuate the accelerator pump or enrichment mode are good. You don't want the engine to lug or chuggle, [yes, that's a real word used in driveability analysis] but otherwise keeping the RPM down usually results in increased economy.

08/02/2008:

Every now and then I check eBay to look for a small benchtop metal shaper. Shapers are theoretically-obsolete machines that use a reciprocating arm and a lathe bit to do things that nowadays are done by vertical mills.

Back in the day there were giant multi-ton production shapers, which can be had now for the price of scrap metal because they're too slow for modern production shops and too big for home use. Small benchtop shapers were much less common then, and highly desirable today, so they usually sell for more than new price. Doesn't keep me from looking, though.

On eBay, "metal shaper" will return pages of... corsetry. Apparently corsets are called "shapers" now, and some have metal hooks, so eBay returns them when you search on "metal shaper."

I was able to figure this out after looking at some of the ads. But that doesn't explain Google's results some years ago, when I was trying every possible combination of keywords trying to find some place that could laser drill some tiny holes in an oil spraybar. "Laser drill" inevitably returned thousands of hits on sites dedicated to zoophilia and bestiality.

By the way, just "shaper" returns a bunch of woodworking ads. Apparently router tables are now called "wood shapers."

Later, searching for "steam cannon" on Google got hundreds of hits on some kind of role-playing game involving dwarves.

08/03/2008:

Simulacron-3 : ~/
[ronin] fortune
It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task.
            -- Sydney J. Harris

08/04/2008:

> > Yeah, Interesting period.  Actually Churchill fired most of the british
> > civil service between 1940 and 1943.  Not to mention a lot of generals,
> > admirals and air commodores..
Oh, yeah. Lots of deadwood and good-old-boy featherbedding was clogging the system. We had the same problem over here, particularly in the National Guard units, which had largely become the personal fiefdoms of various state politicians. After a few disasters, the regular Army basically gave all their officers and senior NCOs and boot and moved the rest under the command of the Army. 
> > By the end of the war the civil administration
> > had developed to the point where it could bring something like the Health
> > Service into existence.  (I know this isn't too popular in America but it's
> > certainly well regarded here!)
I suspect that due to the flatter class structure (I hate that phrase, but it's the closest I can think of) of the USA, more people had better access to medical care during the interwar depression period than in Britain. After the war, Britain was *this* close to bankrupt, while over here, Truman and Eisenhower kept the economy moving at close to full wartime production. It leveled off later, but the differences in real income meant that everything was cheap over here, at least until hospitals started becoming profit-centered corporations in the 1970s. The advent of employer-backed medical insurance in compliance with Federal labor laws took up a lot of the slack the NH did in Britain, and every American who spent time in the military, active duty or veteran, has personal experience with "free government health care", which mainly exhibited appalling indifference to the poor bastards who were able to get nothing better. Snowbacks dropping down from Canada to purchase care they can't acquire through their NH system reinforces the idea that it's probably not a good idea.

Right now the whole healthcare situation in the USA is a mess, but we've been too badly burned by the Fed for most people to favor the idea of more government involvement. Clinton and the Democratic Party had a British-style NH plan they were going to implement after his election in 1992; public reaction after the announcement was such that it was instantly dropped and never brought up again. 

> > What was remarkable about Churchill is that he actually managed to take
> > charge of a system that has been designed so it can't be taken over.
He had the public backing of the King, which I expect was worth a lot more with Hitler grimacing over the Channel than it would have been otherwise, and he had a huge percentage of the Parliament publicly backing him as well.

Churchill's blunder in the Dardanelles had basically ruined his political career. He'd spent most of the interwar period making a pain of himself, and then making an even bigger pain of himself bragging that he had been right all along. When it came time to replace Chamberlain, Churchill was the squeaky wheel. "Put the big mouth up there, let *him* be the one to do the reasonable thing and make an accomodation with the Germans, that way none of the fecal matter can stick to *us*." It's hard to interpret from 60 years later, an alien political system, and the "Churchill spin" that slants a lot of what was written, but don't think anyone really expected Churchill to pull a rabbit out of his hat. Hitler was, at the time, offering remarkably generous terms - if Britain would sell out the rest of their treaty partners in Europe like they had done the Czechs, Germany would respect British territoriality outside of Europe. Any *reasonable* man would have agreed instantly, despite what happened to the others who'd done the same thing and regretted it later. 

> > I think most of them actually believed they were going to be invaded and
> > were shitting themselves.
No doubt at all. Most modern histories present the course of the war as a foregone conclusion, but it wasn't any such thing.

Albert Speer mentioned in "Inside The Third Reich" that Hitler had told him 'Victory will go to the side that makes the fewest mistakes." For a while there, it looked like the Keystone Kops vs. the Three Stooges.

08/05/2008:

> > Eventually I'll have the same question for this list, but when I do, I will add
> > that it needs to be absolutely dead-nuts reliable.
A gun that won't fire is just an oddly-shaped club.

Rifle or pistol, it *must* fire under all conditions. Everything else is secondary. Even accuracy.

The target shooters can afford persnickety firearms; for hunting or combat, you might have to take it through a couple of mudholes and a sand wash to get where you're going, and the bad guys aren't going to cease fire while you stop to clean your piece, or you may be hunting something that thinks long pig would be a fine dinner.

08/06/2008:

> Inexpensive guns, are like inexpensive helmets.
Stupid old Bell advertising. "A $10 helmet for a $10 head?"

Well, how much is your head worth? $10? $100? $10,000?

Modern Snell-certified helmets are now so heavy and bulky that broken necks are much more common than they used to be. "Look Ma, I'm a quadraplegic!"

If they carry things to their logical conclusion, a Snell 2050 certified helmet will be a big hamster ball. You just crawl inside, latch the door, and peer out through a couple of those little door-spy thingies. You won't be able to *do* anything inside the helmet, but that'll be okay, since the Safety Nazis will have outlawed any dangerous activity anyway. 

> > But, guns have no min certification level.
Inexpensive guns aren't necessarily bad. Hiking the price way up has practically zero relation to design and construction; it's mostly marketing. I see an almost inverse ratio of price vs. desirability.

08/07/2008:

> > The South is noticeably more spread out.  Here I walk to the Post Office,
> > restaurants, barber shop, liquor store, video rental, etc.  I do have to
> > drive to work, though, 11 miles away.
I've noticed the odd Yankee tendency to clump up in hamster piles, with large stretches of nothing (or woods, same thing) isolating the piles.

I've never understood the desire the majority of people seem to have for living in each others' pockets. 

> > I am. Plus, said round trip. You are easily 25 miles away, two round
> > trips of 50 mi each.
I drive that far to use the copy machine at Office Depot.

You guys kill me sometimes, like the citydwellers who think traveling six blocks is a major expedition.

08/08/2008:

> > customer meeting.  They say they use the local Maaco cause they have this
> > one guy who does all the paint work and he is supposed to be very
> > experienced and accomplished.
I've seen quite a few $1000+ boutique paint jobs that had easily visible problems for me to expect that simply writing a big check would guarantee good work.

Maaco or Earl Scheib will paint a car in an ordinary color for about what I can purchase the paint, hardener, reducer, and other supplies for. Whatever's on the car, they'll paint right over... but they'll guarantee no sags, no runs, and no overspray, and the minimum-wage flunky with the paint gun shoots paint eight hours a day. If you do a little prep at home, the local ones can lay a perfectly acceptable coat of paint over the car.

I've spent my lifetime allocation on fancy paint already; between the door-thumping *holes in parking lots and the guy who keyed my last paint job two days after I pulled it out of the shop, all I ask for is something to keep the car from rusting.

08/09/2008:

> > professional English writer I reject all those English idiots who
> > claim that the way people use it in England has some priority. I much
> > prefer the majority/convenience/elegance arguments for a usage.
I don't worry about it, other than I think the British pronunciation of "schedule" is danged peculiar... I've sold a book and a handful of magazine articles in England. Some of them get edited into British-English, some don't. Doesn't matter to me as long as I get paid, and I suppose those editors have to justify their own pay somehow. 
> > The disadvantage of this one-way traffic is that the exporters (US
> > culture) can suffer from a massive 'hearing loss', failing to
> > understand common English terms from outside the US.
Though it might not be readily apparent to a foreigner, there's a considerable amount of that within the borders of the USA. Words and phrases that aren't part of the media's "Midwestern Newscaster" language subset can cause a fair amount of difficulty. That's not even counting the slight cultural shifts, which even today get Yankees in trouble in Dixie, etc. 
> > because it helps. 2 weeks back on a US trip I found out that my US
> > listeners didn't use/understand the very common English word 'kit'.
> > I was saying 'Is your kit on that aircraft?' or 'is this soldier
> > wearing the right kit?' And they were, like, ???
Perfectly ordinary word in American English too, still used in the military and by hunters, Boy Scouts, backpackers, etc. But any word that's not part of this week's television subset can cause problems. I am always amused by how everyone picks up the same slang at the same time, nobody ever remembers where they got it from, and they all drop it at the same time. Since I started avoiding the Videodrome signals in 1986, these things are much more apparent than they used to be. 
> > And I suppose in the
> > unlikely event of a romantic encounter, the timeless English phrase
> > 'get your kit off' would mean nothing.
Churchill's history of WWII had a few examples of how differences in idiom confounded the Federal and Imperial general staffs as they worked together. "To table a discussion" meant the exact opposite from one group to the other, for example. 
> > I wish there was a guidebook to 'English' English phrases that
> > Americans don't understand!
They actually issued such things to American troops in Ireland, England, and Australia.

I'm not sure if it was Churchill or someone earlier who said that England and America were two nations divided by a common language.

08/10/2008:

It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

08/11/2008:

We watched "Species 2", which was pretty much the same stuff as "Species 1", except Natasha Henstridge apparantly gained some weight around the ass by the time the second picture was made. Typical monster movie. There was one scene at the beginning that nearly had me rolling off the couch. The Mars orbiter slides through our field of view... and as the rear goes by, there are giant ads for various food and consumer electronics products.

After a few minutes to think it over, it wasn't funny at all. When router companies spend millions to buy the name rights to entertainment parks, they'd spend even more to put their logos on something like that.

Hell, Coca-Cola and Sony might do a better job than NASA, at that...

Next was "Johnny Mnemonic." Not bad. Not great, but not bad. Screenplay was by William Gibson. It has nothing to do with his short story of the same name, but as usual, he recycled a bunch of stuff from his earlier works; in this case, stuff from Virtual Light as well as the BAMA stories and novels. It wasn't a complete waste of time, but as usual, someone in the editing room who knew his ass from a videotape could have made it a lot better.

08/12/2008:

>> Did he try magnets on any gas of oil lines?. Alledgely NASA has seen
>> better ICE performance with magnets lining up the ion flow.
Properly oriented magnets also square up the aetheric transmissions from the orbiting mothership, which is important if you're not wearing aluminum foil in your helmet. It really sucks to receive commands from On High and not be able to figure out that you're supposed to do. Aetheric transmissions move data in ideographic blocks, and there's not really any error checking since the transmission medium is supposed to be error-free. A few missed bits and the ideograph can change meaning completely. One time I was getting ready to assassinate the governor's cat when I got a new transmission asking where the hell the pizzas were... Hey, it's not *my* fault they didn't allow for powerline leakage when they designed all this stuff.

08/13/2008:

>> THIS is what I was talking about with the coreyard, folks...
Ever go into a junkyard to get, say, a distributor, and find that EVERY SINGLE ONE of them in the whole yard had been pulled out already? That's because some core yard came in and gave them $3 each for them, and now they're sitting in a row of barrels somewhere. They sell to rebuilders and engine shops.

08/14/2008:

> I've seen similar systems used with employee ID badges to know where people
> > are in the building at all times.  Just like in the movies!
Yeah, there's a system out there that merges with your PBX to do call forwarding. The smart badges talk to sensors scattered throughout the building. When you get a call, it rings the phone nearest you.

Personally, I thought that idea SUCKED. I can see being zoned out on some admin or programming problem, and the goddamntelephone starts ringing.

"Bob?"

"Bob's not here."

"Well, could you check around and see if he's out in the hall or something?"

"ARGH!" [SLAM]

If you absolutely, positively have to have instant access to people, give them pagers or cellphones. Don't turn everyone into fucking receptionists!

08/15/2008:

>> Watched the conclusion of Civil War miniseries on PBS last might, a very 
>> good series overall, just the battles & the warriors, no politics outside 
>> the military arena.
War is all about politics. The majority of military histories fail to make the connection, so I don't feel so bad that it took me a long time to realize it.

Politics starts wars, politics dictates the shape of the war, politics decides when the war is over. Generals and battles are just chessmen on the board; it's the smoky back rooms where the real wars are fought.

It's a big bite, but Churchill's history of WWII will hammer the point home.

And it'll also hammer the second point home: the other half of war is logistics. A majority of the time, victory goes to the side that gets there "the firstest with the mostest", as J.E.B. Stuart mentioned in the Civil War.

And do you know what logistics depends on? Politics...

Politicans are the dingleberries on the ass of the human race, but they're the ones who are running the show.

08/16/2008:

Even the lowliest traffic judge is answerable only to God when his court is in session, and even God better watch His step. A judge can do anything he wants, regardless of what the law says, and there's nothing you can do about it except appeal to a higher court to overturn his decision.

If you've never seen American-style justice in action, take an afternoon or evening and visit your local municipal court. I guarantee it's more like "Night Court" than "Perry Mason." Back in Old England they used to charge admission to spectators; now you can get hours of entertainment for free.

08/17/2008:

> Emm.. if you say so.  I have no idea what the NRA is doing lately.
I know *exactly* what the NRA is doing, this very second. They're trying to figure out ways to screw a few more bucks out of their membership and figuring new ways to try to terrorize more people into joining up.

"SEND US MONEY OR THEY'LL GET YOUR GUNS! SEND MONEY NOW! OOOH YES YES YES!"

Oh, and if you die, the NRA would like to get your gun collection, so they can sell it off to raise money. And they'd appreciate it of your widow signs over the life insurance money, too. And maybe sells her kidneys for the Cause...

The NRA is no different from the televangelists, except you have to take Hell on faith. You can actually visit DC, though it's probably almost as dangerous.

08/18/2008:

>> I don't see anyone lining up to pay more taxes to offset the higher
>> school lunch costs without the sponsorship.
When I was in school, we had to pay for school lunches, which weren't cheap at all. Unless your parents made under some specified figure; about half the kids either got their lunches at a discount or for free.

Some kind of meatoid product - they were big into soy substitutes - peas or lima beans, either green Jell-O (never any other color) or a postage stamp sized piece of "cake", and, no matter what else was on the tray, you ALWAYS got a jumbo half-pound scoop of cole slaw. The ladies with the hair nets dipped it right out of the 55-gallon drums.

My last school lunch was somewhere in the 9th grade, when I got my third or fourth carton of milk (no other drinks were available, not even water) that was full of blue mold. After that, I just did without until I got back home.

08/19/2008:

>> It's a shame she got that much.  In Tennessee the law says that the last
>> person capable of avoiding the accident is responsible.
In Arkansas, if you had right of way, you're in the clear, even if you didn't bother to "try to avoid" the crash.

Which is only sensible. If you're required to give way, then you don't have right of way; you can do any damned thing you want to, and if you get hit, it's the other guy's fault.

Virginia law requires that you "give way to avoid a collision." In the DC area they take this to heart; no Virginian worries about looking before they back out of a driveway, it's okay to run stop signs if you're in a hurry, if you cross lanes while playing with your laptop, they have to get out of your way. Scared the hell out of me the couple of times I was in that area. I saw a hell of a lot of dented cars on the road, too.

08/20/2008:

>> I have a book from about 1950 that instructs the driver, if a crash can
>> not be avoided, to dive under the dashboard and lie on the floor.
That sounds a lot like the Civil Defense training we got in elementary school, what to do in case of nuclear attack. Climb under your desk and put your head between your legs.

I always thought it would be better to pose in the correct position to make cool wall art from the photon flash. "Hey, look, that guy made a picture of a duck!"

08/21/2008:

We rented "Akira" on DVD and watched it. Every time someone mentions "Heavy Metal", the manga freakazoids start raving about Akira, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

The first ten minutes or so set up the basic plot; Japanese teen motorcycle gangs, secret government laboratories. Then an hour and a half of destroying Tokyo, one piece at a time. AB started fidgeting even before I did. You can only see so many explosions and gun battles before it starts to pall. Then some odd mystic stuff, and The End.

I found it tedious to sit through, and certainly not worth watching a second time. AB agreed. The animation was generally excellent, but there just wasn't much movie backing it up.

Whoever did the animation truly loved motorcycles, though. They lavished more detail on those than anything else.

We also rented "Timecop" with Jean-Claude van Damme. I was pleasantly surprised. The only major problem I had was with the uniforms. They were an ultrasecret Federal police agency, except they have fancy Timecop uniforms, complete with shoulder patches saying who they were, but they attracted no attention in either 1994 or 2004 Washington DC. In LA or 'frisco, I'd believe it, but in the Land Of The Three-Piece Suits it strained my willing suspension of disbelief.

Clicking through the bonus material, I found out van Damme (whose real name is something else) is from Belgium. I had always thought he was Canadian. Hey, learn something new every month...

08/22/2008:

It is said everyone has at least one double somewhere. I have two; a disc jockey in California who is not only the same age and from my same home town, but even has the same name! His web site has vanished, but I exchanged a few messages with him a few years ago.

Then there's the other double. We're the same age within a few weeks and look eerily alike; enough that I'd probably trigger a SWAT response team if I tried to enter about half the countries in the world, including my own. Allow me to present Hassan Nasrullah:



And exactly who is Hassan Nasrullah? Though he's walking around wearing my face, he's my exact opposite, like the two guys in that old Star Trek episode. Hassan Nasrullah is #2 as they rank terrorists; he's the head of the Hezbollah. Just the guy who you don't want any trigger-happy TSA goons mistaking you for.

A friend of mine spotted this particular picture on the al-Jazeera web site and sent me the URL.

08/23/2008:

"I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite."
-- Guard to Garibaldi in Babylon 5:"Between the Darkness and the Light"

08/24/2008:

I finally had a chance to download the new SuSE 11.0 and install it on a spare hard disk. Konqueror in my two-year-old 10.2 version doesn't like some of the heavily-Microsofted web sites, and it's a hassle to upgrade only Konqueror, since it's a core part of the KDE system.

11.0... Um. To start with, it's fugly. Every single one of the themes and styles is blurry, like the screen is wiped with Vaseline. And there's way too much green. Eventually those could be corrected, but... Konqueror still works for file management, but they now want you to use something called "Dolphin". Splitting it into two programs is a big step backward, considering there are a few ftp sites I can only access by dragging and dropping files through Konqueror. None of my command-line ftp clients seem to be able to handle it. You still have to go through a bunch of hacks and cracks to get it to play mp3s or watch video files. The only changes seem to be for the worse.

So... two years ago I was running Mandrake 10.1. I have 2008.1 on the laptop. It's razor-sharp, plays all my videos, and it looks like that will be the next version on my desktop...

08/25/2008:

>> The point is, Ashcroft is not the embodiment of Satan per se, he is
>> merely one of many reptilian shape-shifting aliens bent on taking
>> over planet Earth, i.e. merely one more of Satan's many minions.
I wanted to be one of Satan's minions, but I failed the physical.

08/26/2008:

I saw "Judge Dredd" recently. My expectations were low, considering the movie's origin and intended audience. (noir comics and their fans) I was pleasantly surprised. It isn't going to be one of my favorite movies, but it had a reasonable plot, decent characterization, was internally self-consistent, and didn't depend on any silly gimmicks to help the plot along. It's your basic rogue cop story in science fiction trappings, but nicely done. Hell, there are only so many plots out there, after all... I can't fault that.

I think I forgot to mention Schwarzenegger's "End of Days", which AB picked up at the video store the other day. It had Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, but it wasn't a Schwarzenegger type movie. Instead, oddly enough, it's a fairly serious religious movie. Another one that's not going to be a favorite, but it wasn't a waste of time. I see Arnie in so many of the same type of movies that I tend to forget that he really *is* an actor, and given an appropriate role, he's not bad. It takes a hell of a lot to overcome being built like the Incredible Hulk, having a cleft palate, and learning English late in life.

Though the movie wasn't to my taste, it was a pleasure just to watch him work.

08/27/2008:

> > But I do hope he has a business case for a paper
> > book, because the most environmentally-correct way would be CD.
...until you want to read it, of course. And it would only be good as long as you could read the media. How would you like to try to read a book on 4-track cassette, laserdisc, capacitive CD, Atari ROM cartridges, or punched paper tape?

Paper requires only a modest amount of light; I have some books over a hundred years old that are still perfectly readable. Same for scrolls dug out of Egyptian tombs.

08/28/2008:

> > Apparently I hit my 100th work unit yesterday with Seti@home. I've
> > devoted 0.21 years of computer time to crunching numbers :)

>         Find anything?
If other civilizations are anything at all similar to ours, the first thing we pick up will be some form of advertising...

I don't know if I'd be reassured by the common thought processes with an alien culture, of if I should just plan to blow my brains out in frustration.

08/29/2008:

>> I was watching a piece of a show on the history channel about organ
>> transplants. They are in short supply, and it is illegal in the US
>> to pay money for an organ.
>>
>> This doesn't make sense to me.  Although it has been brought up in DC
>> many times to have a reimbursement of some kind for organs, there
>> is high resistance.  I can't understand why.
Find a copy of "The Day Before Forever" by Keith Laumer, or "The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton" by Larry Niven for logical extensions of trafficking in human body parts.

Laumer's book described a gerontocracy living off the gleanings of organ-stripper gangs who would kidnap people and break them down for their component parts. Niven's book had the transplant banks and their contents made part of a socialized health care system. People wanted to live, so eventually they were levying the death penalty for traffic tickets or delinquent taxes.

Both are excellent novels, by the way.

08/30/2008:

[Bush's visit to Afghanistan] 
> > How many times would the supreme allied
> > commander of all allied forces go up in a converted fighter plane to
> > cruise a hot battle zone? That pilot must have felt the world on his
> > shoulders.
Churchill was delayed for some more meetings on his first trip to DC, and had his little fleet sail back to England without him. Roosevelt loaned him a bomber and a pilot to fly him back to England. Churchill was so enthralled by it that Roosevelt gave him the bomber and seconded the pilot to the RAF as Churchill's personal pilot. He used them to go to Cairo, Moscow, and other places for summit meetings.

I forget the designation of the plane, but it was a plain old bomber. It apparently never occurred to anyone that sound deadening, heat, or a pissoir might be handy; Churchill's description of the flight to the Cairo summit was ROFL funny, with Admiral This, Lord That, Imperial Chief of the other with cotton stuffed in their ears, wrapped up in blankets, miserable and half frozen to death while Churchill went forward to take a hand at the controls...

Churchill had taken flying lessons back in the 1920s. His wife made him give them up after he crashed three times on landing. That didn't stop him from grabbing the controls whenever he could, once he was important enough nobody wanted to refuse him.

08/31/2008:

>> Well I absolutely agree.  For all the non-technical reasons mentioned.
>> When the oil runs out we'll be on our own!
Yes, but the motion picture industry has prepared us thoroughly. We'll need rock-star hairdos, lots of leather and studs, a few piercings here and there, and really bad attitudes. And burning barrels. Burning barrels seem to be a staple of the post-Apocalypse world, at least according to Hollywood.

Hollywood, however, is just a carrier; the shape of the post-Apocalyptic world is defined by the cultural memes descended from "Mad Max 2", which has joined "Dracula", "Frankenstein", and others that influence Western civilization.