11/02/1990
Telephonic musings...
The telephone on my disk is only a foot or so from my hand, most times. When it rings, I reach over, pick it up, and say "Hello." No problem, except the caller almost never gets to hear a ring at their end; I pick it up before they ever hear it. Apparently it's hard for some people to understand that the signals they hear are NOT congruent to what may or may not be going on at the other end. When a friend was trying to screen his calls by having people call, let it ring twice, hang up and call back, I never got him to understand that the phones just don't work that way. Never have, that I can remember. Probably haven't since they got rid of hand cranks.
At the barbershop today, getting a haircut. Phone rings. Lady barber goes on point, hand an inch from the handset, quivering like a Doberman, waiting for the next ring so she can snatch it from the cradle. My mother does it. My sister does it. My wife used to do it, until I broke her of it. Why? None of them seem to know.
We've also been plagued with those automated telephone calls. It was OK when Sears used to do it to tell you when a catalog order was in, but when it got to where every other call was a siding, newspaper, or charity running a tape recorder, I got mad. I discovered there's a two or three second delay before the message starts, so I'd pick up the phone, say 'Hello', give it a split second, and hang up. My friends soon learned to be primed to say something, or they got hung up on.
Ring! Ring!
Odd musings on movie props:
movie "Tobor"... before Forbidden Planet?
Robbie the Robot was originally created for the movie "Forbidden Planet" in 1956. I've seen him in at least one episode of "Lost in Space", 1965-ish, and one episode of "Columbo", fitted with tracks instead of legs, 1975-ish
Robbie has also been the subject of a small thread on RelayNet. One person reported he played on an episode of "Mork and Mindy." Another person reported him as having a part in "Gremlins."
That's not a bad set of credits for a 34-year-old robot.
The technical people in the movie, "The Terminator" took a lot of heat
over the ".45 long slide with laser sight" used by the android
(Schwarzenegger). Critics claimed the laser was far too small to be realistic,
or even believable. That was 1983. Gunsight lasers half that size have been
available over the counter for over a year in the $200 price range.
Technology marches on...
Battlestar Galactica fans may be interested to know that one of the
"ragtag fugitive fleet" was a modified prop for the ship in "Silent Running."
11/02/1990
'Way back in the beginning of this conference, kswartz encouraged
everyone to say something about their cars. That was long, long ago
in a galaxy far, far away - off in what's now /general. I've had
about 57 cars in 15 years, at least half of which got licensed and
driven to some degree. 14 of them were early Mercury Capris, the
German-built REAL Capri, not the Mustang/Fairmont joke. I got the
first one while still in high school, only five years old (the car,
that is). It was an awesomely new '72, cost only $50, and had no engine,
the previous owner having removed the original 2000 mill to put in another
car.
If you open the hood of an early Capri, you'll see one of the largest
engine compartments known to Man. My mechanical skills at the time
consisted of knowing which end of a screwdriver would hurt me. Against my
parents' grave disapproval, I rushed out to a scrapyard and got a 302
Ford V8 and automatic transmission. This was no small feat of itself,
the final solution involving removing the hood of my '70 Beetle, laying
some plywood over the fuel tank, and heaving the grungy old V8 right up
in front of the windshield. I drove home hanging out the door to see.
In due course the V8 and the Capri were mated, resulting in a 210hp,
2447 lb (certified scales) machine. With the original 3.44 axle and
P70/13s gearing was rather short but the smoky old 302 wound bravely.
The car saw lots of street racing, some SCCA autocross, and performed
the local area's longest burnout. Tire smoke eddied over the tops of the
telephone poles before the right rear tire exploded the steel belts. The
stripe was 0.7 miles long, quite satisfactory for teenage gratification.
The car was like George Washington's axe. I swapped the bodyshell for
a near-perfect '73 GT shell with factory air, rear-window defogger,
sunroof, and all the deluxe options. The 302 finally rattled its last,
and in went an entirely new engine with 351W-4v heads, 12.5:1 CR,
and the best of everything. A top loader 4 speed, a Mustang II 8 inch
positrac with a more favorable 3.00 ratio, a 22-gallon booster tank
in case I wanted to take a cross-country trip, and *stuff*. I drove it
a couple of months, and it was good enough for me. At 35mph in 4th,
you could just push down on the throttle and the rear end (dressed in
C50-13s, nine inches wide) would drift to the ditch. You could hammer
a quick shift to fourth at 80mph and the rear end would get loose. Most
people wouldn't ride in it twice. It sat in the garage for five years
while I "improved" it, until I made the decision to get rid of it.
The engine did maybe 50 miles in my old Ford pickup before I got rid
of that too. I just sold the entire drivetrain to a friend in England
for about a quarter of what it's worth. It just went into an AC! (not a
replica!)
The last Capri I still have. (#14). It's a '72 2000cc with the GT
interior and brakes. The car had 150,000 miles on it when I got it.
The owner sold it to me for junk because it didn't run. A set of points
and a valve adjustment later and I drove away in it. This one was the
testbed for some of my far-out ideas on suspensions. The rack and
pinion is reshimmed and bolted solidly to the crossmember without
bushings. Ride height is stock, with front springs going from 85lb/in
to 170lb/in. All bushings are replaced with nylon or steel. The front
bar is a TMC 1-1/8, 385 in/lb vs the stock 53, with Koni strut inserts.
The Konis suck dead toads. After they quit drooling oil, they made grinding
noises. The rear has an extra leaf on each side with the springs
interleaved with plastic, greased, and wrapped in waterproof tape. The
shocks are KYB. There are long shackles in the back with lowering blocks,
giving effectively zero ride height change but greatly changing the
rear roll characteristics. I built a Panhard rod of maximum length,
mounting it as low as feasible without dragging the ground, using
solid rod ends. This moved the roll center from axle level to just above
rim level. An Addco rear bar got nylon bushings and proceeded to rip the
mounting stirrups right out of the body. I had angle-iron reinforcements
welded in and fabricated adapters from aluminum billet and used
spherical rod ends. The torque arms had to be lengthened for the new
axle location.
The stock A78-13s have been replaced with 195/50VR15 Eagles on 15x7
negative offset wheels. The Eagles are visibly wider than most 205s
and as wide as some 215s, possibly because of the wide rims. I had the
wheels custom-built and got all four for only $150. They're heavy, but
I couldn't get an alloy wheel set with custom offsets for under $800 at
the time. Oh, yeah,the front bar is dropped on aluminum blocks to add
some anti-dive. Alignment is 0 caster, 0 camber, 1/32 toe-in.
Ride isn't much harsher than before (Capris aren't famous for
boulevard ride anyway). The handling is, in the opinion of all who
have driven it, excellent, though several have complained it is too
quick. Most people tend to wander around the road a bit until they
get used to "go-kart" steering. Roll steer is practically nonexistent.
The engine got a new head after it started using oil. The short
block is pushing 200,000 miles now and the thing will use a quart
between changes (5,000 miles or whenever I remember). The new head
is milled .125 for 11.4:1 compression, the chambers are reshaped,
the valves are ditch cut on intakes and back cut on exhausts, with
the intake stems turned down to .200 diameter. The port work is all
per David Vizard's book. Sig Erson cam, Ford Motorsport springs and
retainers, header and 2-1/2 inch exhaust. I have a set of 40mm
Dell'Orto carbs sitting not far from me even as I type. There's just
no way they will clear the brake booster on a left hand drive car.
I opened the stock carb up as far as I could, but David says I won't
get the power I should have until I go to some type of 4-barrel.
Ignition is a Mallory HyFire and ProCoil. Made a detectable difference
with the high compression.
I pretty well stopped working on the car after it got trashed by some
union types at the last place I worked. It's not too bad, but every
single panel is dinged. One way the Capri gets its strength is by welding
on everything except the doors, hood, and trunk lid. This makes bodywork
expensive. My new upholstry had also died in the sun, Ford quit carrying
parts for it even on special order, and the car sort of got shuffled off
into the back yard. When my state passed its mandatory insurance law and
required proof of insurance to get a plate, the insurance companies
boosted my rate from $150 to $500 for liability only (no tickets, married,
with driver ed), a lot of the CarFleet got disassembled, swapped off, or
sold.
Vroom, vroom............
I have read science fiction since I discovered Andre Norton's "Galactic
Derelict" in the school library while in the first grade. Since then I've
probably read a significant portion of all the SF ever printed in English.
Yeah, you get a little jaded after a while. That's why Sundiver was such
a surprise.
Sundiver was Brin's first book, and as far as I'm concerned far and away
his best. Brin's "Startide Rising" and "The Uplift Wars" take place in the
same scenario, but the awkward forced style of the later books in no way
resembles the smoothly flowing action of Sundiver.
Sundiver introduced me to not one, but four interesting ideas I'd never
come across before. These were:
1) The concept of the "Library", a collection of science and history
going back, not thousands or millions, but billions of years. The
Library is a static body, like Newtonian physics in its heyday. The
body of knowlege is so complete that a species might not contribute
anything of importance during its entire existence.
The implications are profound. "Science" is reduced to merely searching
for the needed information and applying it. Since everything that can
possibly be known is already known, the Library not only stifles new
research, but makes the very idea of discovery ridiculous.
2) The concept of the Uplift. In Brin's universe, Galactic civilization
finds the concept of evolution nearly incomprehensible. Every known
species had been Uplifted from animalism to sentience by an earlier
species, going back to the "Progenitors" so long ago that they are mostly
myth even to the Library. Each species has a caste standing dependent on
the status of its creators and those which it has in turn Uplifted.
3) The concept of the natural laser, used by monocular arboreals for
accurate detection of limbs, etc.
4) The Sundiver itself, or "Solar Bathyscaph." The Sundiver is a manned
probe designed to descend into the photosphere of the sun. It uses a
superconducting hull and pumps waste heat into a "cooling laser" also
used for propulsion. I don't know how practical the thermodynamics are,
but the concept is elegant.
The background:
One of Earth's first starships is contacted by the Galactics, who are
convinced humans are "wolflings", a species partially Uplifted and then
abandoned. Human science is viewed as an amusing superstition. Crash
projects begin for human "Uplift" of dolphins, dogs, and chimpanzees. These
Client species give humanity some small standing in Galactic society, though
humans are considered to be dangerously aberrant.
Humanity has resisted the "gifts" of Galactic civilization. Library
access is limited, and research goes on. One such project is Sundiver,
a political firebomb. ProGalactic humans consider it a waste of money;
after all, if there were anything of interest in a star, the Library
would tell all about it. AntiGalactics point to the absence of Library
information at suspicious in itself.
The Plot:
This is all mere background. The plot is a fairly ordinary murder mystery,
no different in principle than one of Agatha Christie's. Complications
mount rapidly - the victim is a chimpanzee, the murderer could be any one
of a group of pro- or anti-human Galactic "observers", or any of several
specific humans or political groups. We come down to the classic "means,
motive, and opportunity," which Brin turns into a brilliant web of politics
and cultures.
You might think that I've spoiled the story for those who haven't read it.
I don't think so. The venerable storyline serves as an anchor for some
really good science fiction. Brin's characters are well-formed and
believable. His story moves ahead rapidly despite the massive amounts of
background material he has to include. Plots, mysteries, counterplots, and
clues join with some truly original thinking to make the story.
rating: 10 out of 10!
[this one would have been in the automotive section on BIX -dw]
SUNDIVER
by David Brin
reviewed 05/15/90