I’m not a political candidate but I approve this flashback message that you could be Dodge material, just in time for a female Air Force officer to take charge of basic training.
Tag Archives: cars
Latest score in preserving world peace
For those of you keeping count at home, here’s the latest score:
Non-U.S.
2,977 victims and 19 hijackers on 9/11/2001
3173 and counting deaths of U.S/ally military in Operation Enduring Freedom
4 U.S. embassy personnel in recent Libyan attack
U.S.
1 (Osama bin Laden)
2,562 – 3,325 (via drone attacks)
countless thousands of “insurgents”
Annual domestic U.S. deaths by category:
- Heart disease: 599,413
- Cancer: 567,628
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
- Alzheimer’s disease: 79,003
- Diabetes: 68,705
- Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
- Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909
- Accidents (unintentional injuries) ………………………..118,021
- Transport accidents ………………………………..39,031
- Motor vehicle accidents……36,216
- Other land transport accidents….1,033
- Water, air and space, and other………………………………….1,782
- Nontransport accidents ………………………………78,990
- Falls …………………………………………24,792
- Accidental discharge of firearms…………………………..554
- Assault (homicide)…………………………… 16,799
- — Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms …………………..11,493
- — Assault (homicide) by other unspecified means……..5,306
Winner? You decide
There once was a dog named Vetch
While the Venezuelan government decides whether to threaten the U.S. and/or British intelligence agencies for the recent destruction of vital equipment meant to scare Central and South American countries into submission, the Association for the Assertion of Ascension assessed the accuracy of counterterrorism techniques taught in typing pools.
Very cool.
Now, a word from our sponsor:
Have you ever wanted to zoom in on your list of potential customers, getting to know not only their general habits that you’ve targeted for years but also their quirks, so you can tailor products to their needs and whims in the moment?
Well, we here at Bullseye Tech have just the service you need.
As you’re probably aware, we’ve provided surveillance data to governments around the world for years.
Why, just this week we were asked by your government to plant a person in each showing of a film about what the world will be like if your current chief executive is reelected. These casual observers have been capturing facial snapshots of all the audience members, evaluating emotions displayed during specific scenes in the film, and recording private conversations they carry on while entering the theatre, watching the film and exiting in order to ascertain the range of voice intonations that indicate shock, surprise, agreement and/or controlled rage.
In other words, does a documentary like this simply serve to reinforce beliefs, strongly or weakly held? Can it actually change voting patterns?
In addition, we use DMV data of the audience’s vehicles to gather property ownership, tax history and election data captured in private voting booths.
Select members of the audience were tagged with waterproof audiovisual and GPS data collection devices that send information on an hourly basis for up to 48 hours and then self-destruct, resembling bird droppings, splattered food and other innocuous substances often found on clothing and motor vehicles.
By determining the film’s effect on the actual voting and shopping behaviours of our government’s “customers,” we help keep the local economy running at its current level of inefficiency in order to destroy the economies of rival governments in other parts of the world.
As you can see, we have our fingers on the pulse and our probes on the thoughts of any and every customer you can imagine, from pet spiders to neglected great-aunts.
Give us a call today because we already know your business is about to go under due to the services we provided to your rivals who, for now, are one step ahead of you.
However, if you buy our latest technology, you’ll have a competitive edge on your rivals who were unwilling to pay for upgrades.
Don’t delay! Time is a commodity you can’t afford to lose when price is no object!
We return you to the limerick contest currently in progress:
There once was a dog named Vetch
Who played a mean game of Fetch;
His owner, though blind
Was not very kind —
Ordered his dog to catch, then retch.
Get your tweet on
So how many people have tweeted that it would be fitting if the NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger failed this drug test because of cocaine just before he’s supposed to drive in the “Our formula contained zero percent cocaine (but, maybe, coca leaf ‘extract’)” Coke Zero 400?
Random drug testing — another catchy phrase for “I saw my opponent use the same drugs as me and I want him to lose so I’ll report him before he reports me.”
Also known as the Jose Canseco Rule.
Who says NASCAR isn’t a professional sport? Unruly behaviour? Punching fans and reporters? Messy, public divorces? Failing drug tests? Gee, sounds like every other professional sport on this planet, doesn’t it?
In other words, time to sit back, unsnap the top button on my pants after eating a big, hearty meal at Amis Mill Eatery (Happy 23rd month birthday to your child, Brandi!) and snooze in front of the TV edition of the Doozy in Daytona, courtesy of clueless NASCAR owners/officials.
If history doesn’t repeat itself, why read about it in the first place?
What’s been going on in India lately that hasn’t been going in Sydney that I need to talk about here? Ich weiß nicht!
German private industry vs. American military industry transportation choices
The beauty of a brain in retirement is letting one’s thoughts wander.
For instance, as I was driving back and forth from unrestricted territory down a long road into a restricted American military base, I looked around me.
I remembered when I used to commute via airplane and taxi from the U.S. to Germany on business.
In Germany, I noticed that some companies, such as Fujitsu-Siemens in Augsburg, offered large covered parking areas nearest buildings for people who commuted by bicycle or motorbike.
Here in the U.S., at the local military base called Redstone Arsenal, those who carpool (more than one person per vehicle) are allotted spots to park nearest one of the buildings but motorbikes were allotted uncovered spots in the middle of the carpark.
Which got me thinking…
When are we going to design our infrastructures to optimise the mix of devices we use in our transportation systems?
In other words, if we make token efforts to promote efficient means of transportation, then people will continue to pay for the convenience of inefficient methods.
Only when we make it difficult and/or inconvenient to use relatively expensive transportation vehicles (cars/trucks/SUVs) will we change our habits.
For instance, what if people had to use mass transit to get onto a U.S. military base, with tiny carparks and large bicycle/motorbike storage facilities located at mass transit pickup points throughout walk/bike-friendly [sub/ex]urban neighbourhoods?
Would we encourage people to walk or bike to work rather than the majority piling into their one-person occupied metal-and-plastic contraptions lined up one-after-another in traffic jams morning, noon and night to get on the base?
Would we worry less about the dangers of large carparks full of uninspected vehicles on military bases?
Would we find better ways to spend our time than wait on crowded roads for our turn to drive through traffic-light controlled intersections?
Would we have more time to spend with family before and after our workdays are done?
Makes an argument like the one cited here at wired.com moot, doesn’t it, when you eliminate the need for the motorised/EV transportation devices altogether?
Bumper sticker of the day
I don’t remember the vehicle but as I was driving down the freeway after picking my wife up from the airport, I saw this bumper sticker on the back of it:
I work for people who don’t know I work for them
Mountain Retreat
Bill Tewlast prided himself on his do-it-all workshop.
He had inherited his grandfather’s tools when Bill was a boy and spend most hours, when kids were playing outside, apprenticing himself on the intricacies of turning any kind of metal into useful items such as kitchenware, fireplace pokers, rakes, shovels and frames for racing go-karts.
By the time Bill graduated from secondary school, he had the smell of metal in his skin and on his breath.
For graduation, Bill’s parents bought the young, strong man a small place on the edge of town, a former full service petrol station complete with the latest in industrial-scale 3D model making equipment.
For the first few years, Bill worked on restoring antique automobiles, an easy craft for someone with his skill but also very lucrative.
When he couldn’t find a part he needed, or didn’t want to pay the price being asked, he simply forged his own.
As he became more familiar with the CNC functions, he realised his limitations and hired a couple of kids to create an automated, computer-controlled mind reader that could turn Bill’s thoughts directly into workable reality.
The kids had gotten their start in the DIY home modeling business, picking up some used 3D cutters from a Maker Faire.
Bored with their desktop versions of live chess pieces, they turned to the Internet and advertised their services.
Bill brought them on-board, promising to make them millionaires before they were 15.
They informed him they were already millionaires but couldn’t touch their money so they wanted to become billionaires and have that much more money they couldn’t touch, keeping them hungry and creative.
The kids, a twin brother and sister (but not twins to each other), Trynce and Gwythreun, were familiar with the feeling that someone was feeling what you were feeling, usually when you had an odd feeling, so they often dismissed Bill’s comments about feeling someone was reading his thoughts when he was feeling odd.
They explained that after you hook up to a human-machine interface, there is no going back — the more connected you are, the more integrated you feel, and thus it was perfectly normal to feel someone, not the actual machine that reads your thoughts, was reading your thoughts.
Anthropomorphism is as old as our species, and probably older, they explained, having received their PhDs in Anthropological Molecular Studies in Pathological Psychosis from an online university in Tajikistan when they were 12.
Bill nodded and went on to his work, rarely noticing that before he thought he needed a special tool, the tool would appear next to him and then disappear when its unique use was no longer necessary.
One night, Bill fell asleep on the old leather sofa in the office area of the workshop. Despite his best efforts, he had never created a machine that could fabricate the perfect cup of artificial coffee. The price of real coffee had shot up so high he decided he’d quit caffeine and try adrenaline for a while.
While he slept, he dreamt.
His dreams were run-of-the-mill fantasies that mixed snippets of reality with imaginary landscapes tied to Bill’s emotional states. He rarely remembered his dreams and concentrated on his waking thoughts, instead, as profitable as they had been.
But this night, a creature walked into his dream that he had never imagined before, followed by one after another of flying creatures, some big and some small, some harmless and some worse than his worst childhood nightmares.
They congregated around an enormous building that resembled an architect’s version of a kid’s half-cathedral, half-castle cardboard cutout in the backyard.
Some of the flying creatures flapped their hairy wings and caught updrafts, perching on the lookout points and entranceways when they landed.
The creature that walked looked like nothing Bill had ever seen.
It was like a squid but not like a squid.
Its eyes stared at him and they stared at nothing.
Its flesh pulsed in iridescent waves.
It had arms that turned into tentacles, then spikes, next hooks and variations in-between.
It had a shape but then it didn’t have a shape.
It…could…read…his…thoughts!
It was real.
In his dream, he watched as the creature read the thoughts of his about operating the CNC equipment and the conversations he had with the kids about even better ways to use the CNC equipment to create a thinking, autonomous being that they nicknamed Golem of the Gorge. The creature intrepreted Bill’s memory of the conversation and heard “Gorging Golem.”
Bill tried to wake up but he was held in a subconscious trance. He wanted to warn the kids.
The creature had figured out that a lot of these CNC machines, both industrial-scale versions like Bill’s and the used MakerBot Thing-O-Matic like the kids had, were connected to the Internet.
The creature was now connected to the Internet.
The creature was upset about something and had one thing on its mind — mischief.
While Bill slept, gargoyles disguised as mailboxes, jewelery, castle/cathedral guardians and temple protectors awoke from the deep sleep of eternity.
They, too, found susceptible people asleep nearby and tapped into their dreams.
They, too, connected to the Internet or slipped past human-based security systems — motion detectors, eye/finger scanners, typewritten passwords — and turned on cutting machines around the world.
Over the next 24 hours, a new army of autonomous creatures entered the lives of Homo sapiens, opening the dawn of the age of {^#!*&”>, the unpronounceable name of the creature from another planet.
{^#!*&”> did not declare itself emperour or dictate new rules. It simply went about the business of building itself a world focused solely on getting it off this world eventually.
As people woke up from their new nightmares, they scrambled to see what their machines had made.
They found nothing out of the ordinary.
Everything was as normal as the day before.
A few people, those who kept meticulous records of their inventory, noted a shift in the quantity of raw material, but when they investigated, the total inventory was well within tolerance of counting errors. “To err is human…” they thought to themselves, forgetting the second half of the quote in the rush to solve the mystery of why one night in their lives, their dreams seem to have a life of their own.
{^#!*&”> was satisfied. If it had a plan, the plan was on schedule. If the schedule had a milestone, the milestone was a launch date. There were 13,824 days to go until launch.
After Bill woke up, he decided he had to sell a copy of this CNC interface. With a machine like this, one could stop running to the store for a rarely-needed tool, saving time, and when one was finished with the tool, the person would throw it into the pile of raw material for the next time a new tool, part or unique gift for that special someone was needed with no time to spare. He’d call the machine/interface device the R-Cubed, short for Reduce/Reuse/Recycle, just in time to take advantage of the latest craze in sustainable engineering products for the home, office and business.
Trynce and Gwythreun called to say that somehow their Makerbot had reproduced and replaced itself with hidden features they only dreamed possible.
Bill felt a tickle at the edge of one of his thoughts, as if…
{^#!*&”> was smiling, if you could call its skin colour changes the equivalent of a smile, sitting behind the wheel of a truck, simulating a human truck driver in case anyone bothered to pay attention to a person’s hidden under a large sombrero.
Bill wanted to get an R-Cubed into everyone’s hands. To some, its interface would resemble a mobile phone. To others, a game controller or TV remote control. To many more, a computer keyboard. An R-Cubed interface to suit every taste, reading people’s thoughts, controlling Internet-connected CNC machines and adding to the hidden army of {^#!*&”>.
People would not notice the subjects of their conversations changing as more and more of them connected to the autonomous bots loyal, if such a word will suffice to explain an unbreakable bond between created and creator, to {^#!*&”>.
{^#!*&”> drove on into the heat of the day and throughout the heat of the night — it was taking over this world more quickly than it thought possible.
But then it knew everything is possible when one has a defenseless planet like this to call one’s own.
{^#!*&”> wanted to enjoy this new pleasure of hot wind in its face and strange, rhythmic sounds pouring out of the round objects mounted in doors and other spots of this inedible motorised transportation device.
After a couple of days picking up these beings that beckoned {^#!*&”> to stop, eating them and discharging the hard-to-digest parts, it was getting hungry for something tastier.
With no need to waste energy as a hermaphrodite, laying fertilised eggs in town after town, plenty of its little babies growing up and feeding upon the local livestock, disguised as coyotes, vultures and other native scavenging beasts, {^#!*&”> decided it was time to go into hiding for a while.
Let the plan take its course, with {^#!*&”> checking in by reading thoughts when it wanted, but otherwise acting like whatever beast or flower it felt like at the moment, feeding when it needed.
Hidden in plain view, its genetic and artificial offspring reshaping the world without a single rebellious thought amongst them.
{^#!*&”> liked his creations doing his bidding.
Decisions by committee was for creatures when there were too many of them and not enough resources to share or dominate easily.
Beings like {^#!*&”> took off, disappeared, found worlds to call their own when the danger of committeeism threatened to infect their ways of life.
Even now, {^#!*&”> sensed that thoughts of the dominant species of this planet were making headway into its thoughts.
What is a “committee”?
Eat and be eaten, that is all.
{^#!*&”> drove the truck over a cliff, climbed out of the wreckage and rested in the shade of the crushed cab.
Time is irrelevant. {^#!*&”> lay there for ten years, hibernating.
Meanwhile, its offspring fought for control of the world, “technological versus organic” the main theme.
Hybrids formed an underground revolutionary movement to eliminate both the sentient machines and the ravenous beings that claimed they were descendants of the Pure One.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves, isn’t it?
We haven’t lived in that future yet, have we?
Have we?
Ringtonia set down the recent auction winnings of her uncle, who had bought this paper edition, “History of Earth, 2000-2999,” in exchange for a few scenic vistas he had inherited here on Mars from his great-great-great…well, his 10th great-grandparent, the first of the approved GMOs, genetically modified organisms specially designed for life on Mars.
“Uncle, did we win?”
“Win?”
“Yes, was the Uprising our victory or theirs?”
“Ringtonia, nobody wins a war. However, people are always paid to write history favourable to their ways of life.”
“Was this book written for us, then?”
“That, my dear, is a question, isn’t it? May I have the book back now?”
Her uncle had grown good at blocking Ringtonia’s thoughts a few years ago. She had pretended, since “birth,” to be him when she read his thoughts, his not being used to genetically-related material having closer access to his well-guarded thoughts than the general population.
This time, he let slip a thought that the war went in favour of an entity no longer around. What did that mean?
Getting old, can’t remember how to insert a table…
Have you ever forgotten the simplest capabilities such as inserting a table into a blog entry or how to create a macro in a spreadsheet?
Boy, am I getting older, not so much more forgetful, just more stuff to push to the front of my thoughts, letting the less-used thoughts sit in unused neuronal pathways.
That’s why I’m listening to the Cikada String Quartet on earphones while I write this. Nothing like a little Kaija Saariaho, John Cage and Bruno Maderna to rearrange my thought patterns and make new connections to old habits.
I digress.
I came here to catalog a thought that bugged me while traveling a long distance between two cities.
What is the value of keeping my old car — with no monthly payments and little in the way of major repair costs — in relation to fuel efficiency of more modern vehicles? Is there a significant difference such that I should spend time hunting investment-quality instruments to “play”?
For instance, my car gets 25 MPG (U.S. Miles Per U.S. Gallon) in the city and 30 MPG on the highway.
Traveling 25,000 miles a year back-and-forth to the city, I burn about 1000 U.S. gallons.
If I had a vehicle that got 40 MPG, I’d burn about 625 gallons.
A difference of 375 gallons, about 1 gallon per day.
What is my monthly cost savings using average cost per gallon for those 375 fossil fuel units?
375 gallons x [$/gallon] /12 = cost savings per month
$/gallon ….. cost savings per month
3 ….. $93.75
4 ….. $125
5 ….. $156.25
8 ….. $250
10 ….. $312.50
Therefore, by not purchasing a new vehicle with more efficient fuel usage, I spend about an extra $100 per month (ignoring new vehicle monthly payments vs. old vehicle average monthly maintenance, insurance, licence fees, etc., which would make the difference negligible (in fact, the costs would be significantly more in the other direction [it saves me money to keep the old car])).
Conclusion: I have no one to impress (no need for the latest gadgets, shiniest rims, sleekest lines, Internet access while driving, surround sound system or safety features), so the old bulldog, the baby BMW 325i, sits at the top of the driveway, ready to burn 25-30 miles per gallon at my request, saving me money in comparison to purchasing a new vehicle, costing me money in comparison to walking or riding a bicycle (since public transportation is nonexistent in my neighbourhood). Now I can throw away that scrap of paper on which I scribbled the calculations!
Lookie, lookie, lookie
In the continuing saga of “life finds a way,” we take you into a town called Sauceburg, where children are hooked up to indoor gaming devices or texting tablets, well protected from the scorching ultraviolent rays of the hot sun.
Deep into the labyrinthine lanes, streets, courts, roads and sidewalk-lined, curbed, cobbled, paved and concreted vehicle access paths of suburban housing estates.
Where, except on Mondays and Thursday, when lawn maintenance crews cut, sweep, mow, and blow landscape material, hauling the unapproved composting contents away, babies are raised, teenagers tolerated and adults get their weekly five-minute breaks from the horrors of reality.
Otherwise, during the day, relative quiet hangs in the air, hardly a soul in sight of patrolling drones.
At night, sleep.
Occasionally, a raucous sound pierces the peaceful dreams of parents, driving the stake of fear through their hearts!
Oh my God, Jasmyn! Drunken young adult drivers weaving through the neighbourhood!!!
Quick! Press the button that lowers your curbside mailbox into its protective underground vault, safe from the screeching tires and solid bumpers of SUVs out of control!
What did you say?
You didn’t follow the Joneses and buy the latest in home protective services, including the Postal Service Access System 3000 that only allows preauthorized, certified delivery of mail and small packages to the pop-up mailbox, activated by the security badges worn by prescreened postmen (and women! (and robots!)), which, after delivery, lowers itself automatically and attaches to the underground conveyor that passes your mail through metal detectors, bomb sniffers, white powder zappers and pest control fumigators to the comfort of your home, your castle, the virtual womb that encases you and your family, well out of reach of those who intend only harm and malice?
Well, that’s too bad.
Because, in that case, this is you:
Stay tuned to what happens when your neighbours are in too big of a hurry to investigate the manufacture of mailboxes they stick into the ground because the suburban covenant says they have to have one despite all their correspondence flying back and forth electronically.
Take it from a motorcycle driver
Have you driven down the road and noticed a change in the style of guardrail protecting you from leaving the roadway in case you lose control of your vehicle?
Let’s put the Law of Unintended Consequences to use today.
Take the cable barrier, for instance:
Let’s say you lose control of your vehicle and cause either yourself as a motorcycle driver or another person steering their iron horse to veer off the road and smash into a cables strung out to protect you.
In secondary school, a classmate was decapitated when he lost control of his motorcycle and his helmet was caught on the rim of a steel beam guardrail.
These days, if fate puts you in the hands of a cable guardrail, you may not lose your head but get limbs mangled and sliced off.
The choice is yours.
Hey, be careful out there!
I am going to walk outside and enjoy the sweet serenade of the Brood I cicada cycle, their flight paths less likely to put them in harm’s way of cable guardrails. Maybe a few car grilles, instead.
Will catch up on thank-yous later this weekend.
treetrunkdings 