Not much, it turns out.
60 horsepower – about what a circa 1984 Aries K car’s engine produced – is sufficient for A to B getting there and back. More is certainly nice – and definitely fun – but hardly necessary.
Not in the USSA, anyway.
Land of “defensive driving” and checkpoints and safety abounding. Eighty is on the cusp of statutory “reckless” driving in several states. Possible jail time. Certain loss of license and guaranteed “SR-22” (pay three times as much as you used to) insurance. For the next five years. Anything close to 100 is well across the line and if you get caught doing it, you’re doomed. Which is why almost no one ever does it – and those few who do, do so furtively, rarely and very briefly.
Bleak facts, but facts nonetheless.
So, what is it with all these high-powered cars? It’s kind of like giving Liberace a stack of Playboys. What is he supposed to do with them?
The other day, I was out driving around in a new BMW 7. This is a big sedan. Heavy, too. Almost 5,000 pounds. And yet, it required no more than 100 hp to get it up to 80 – and much less to keep it going.
Would you believe in the neighborhood of 40 hp?
Engineers know all about this. Inertia is the enemy as well as the friend of motion. If you’ve ever tried pushing a wheelbarrow, you will know about this, too.
That first push – to get ‘er rolling – that’s a bitch. But once you’re rolling, it really doesn’t take much effort at all to keep the thing rolling. It’s the same with cars. Overcoming inertia – getting those 5,000 pounds of steel and glass off its proverbial ass – is what burns the fuel.
Not maintaining 60 (or even 80) MPH.
The BMW lets you confirm all this in real time by dialing up a pair of gauges that shows you exactly how much horsepower and torque the engine is making at any given moment, making it possible to see just how much power you’re actually using – as well as how much power you actually need.
I did a little experiment. Though the 7’s engine (a turbo-diesel; read the review here if interested) is capable of producing 255 horsepower, I wanted to see whether I could drive the car normally – i.e., with the slow-motion flow of modern American traffic – without using more than 100 of them. So I used the gauges to modulate the pressure I applied to the accelerator with my right foot. It wasn’t tough at all to get the BMW up to 60 MPH with less than half the available/potential horsepower.
Granted, I wasn’t getting there in the seven seconds or so that the BMW is perfectly capable of. This is just the point, though. When was the last time you saw a car accelerate away from a red light at full throttle?
Merge smartly?
People in the main creep away from red lights, gradually building speed. They merge the same way. Which is to say, slowly. They mosey along, their signals blinking (sometimes). The gloved-hand automotive athleticism one sees in the ads is about as true to life as the health of the Marlboro Man (he died of lung cancer). The average American needs powerful, quick cars as much as Liberace needed that stack of Playboys.
Like this guy:
The Clover in the video above was driving a Lexus sport sedan that would maybe have one eye open, stifling a yawn, at 90 MPH. Clover was running (not really the best word, I agree) 63 in a 65 zone. On an Interstate highway designed (back in the 1950s) for safe travel at 75.
It makes my teeth ache.
To be fair, just as Liberace couldn’t help his lack of interest that way, the average American driver can’t help it – his spirit (and initiative) quashed by a generation now of safety nazism. 
But it doesn’t alter the fact that it’s ridiculous – annoying – to see all these cowed and beaten submissives creeping along in 300 and 400 hp cars at speeds a circa 1984 Aries K car could easily have managed while costing a third as much and using half the fuel. Guzzling gas is no crime if there’s a point to it. But idling a 300-plus hp sport sedan made to operate all day at 130-plus at 60 or 70 MPH is a uniquely American species of absurdity.
Codpieces for the impotent.
The cruel irony is that when cars were not powerful you could drive them faster. It’s true the speed limit in those days was 55 – but it was a laughingstock universally ignored. It was almost mandatory for right-thinking people to ignore it, in fact. And even the cops behaved more decently because even they could not defend such idiocy. That’s all changed. “Speeding” has become a close second to pederasty – and safety reigns uber alles. As a result, people are literally tortured by an industry that touts performance that’s unusable and a system that will treat them savagely if it is used. They’re chained to $500 a month payments in much the same way that a divorced man still has to send a check out every month to the woman who no longer sleeps with him.
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For a long time I was the epitome of the driver with the lead foot. I would routinely cruise the freeway well over 100 mph. If the road was open, 130mph was not out of the question. The tiny little 1.8L turbo engine in my 2004 passat could get up 134mph and cruise there comfortably for as long as the road could sustain
For a couple years, I had a 200 mile per day commute along Highway 101 on the central coast of California. I have never seen any road patrolled as much as this road, and in ONE year I received ELEVEN citations between 75 and 85mph (but I always got to work in time to keep my job, which was of greater importance to me). Needless to say my license was suspended for some time, and I had thousands and thousands of dollars in fines.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a couple of years ago I received a ticket in Utah for 120mph. It was a bargain in comparison to what would have happened to me in CA. No arrest, and a $580 basic speeding ticket and warning that if I were got speeding again, I would definitely be going to jail. And then I was sent on my way.
Hi Matthew,
Yup. Been there/done that. It sucks the fun out of it, doesn’t it? Which is just what they intended.
People, in the main, have been cowed into submission. I do not fault them for this. I can’t explain why it hasn’t worked on me… yet.
But the point stands: Because most people are cowed, it is damned near impossible to drive much faster than the posted speed limit for any length of time even if you wanted to. And if you do find the opportunity and take it, it’s only a matter of time before you get waterboarded by the system … and that wears on you.
Man if you ever crash,there wont be enough left to identify,but go for it, if it doesnt endanger someone else.The fastest I’ve been in the past 2-3 yrs is 102 mph(drag limited I suppose in a 6 cyl Dakota(think the v8s are governed to 106) it was very stupid of me doing that.I would have probaly went back to prison,despite not endangering anyone else,I can tell you that 4800# monster doesnt handle that well at speed despite the double sway bars.
What I would like to see is dedicated roads
1High speed roads(no clovers allowed)
2.standard roads(for clover and Joe average)
3.truck roads(dedicated to commerce-no cars allowed)
Kevin,
Although unlikely to occur, I think it is nice to dream. Your 3 tier road system can work as 2 tier system in some areas. Not all areas have available land for all the different road types.
In the North Eastern US there are some roads that ban commercial vehicles and/or vehicles that are over a certain weight. This does not eliminate the clovers, but it is something.
We can always hope,shouldnt be much outcry,the users of the high speed road needs an endorsement on their license and Darwin will take care of the rest(everyone knows you cant sue the “state” we can dream){I fear we have lost that mid twentieth century moxy we had}
For Petes sake people lets make America a leader again,not smothered in a press of warm bodies,the average man reduced to third world squalor,as a young person I believed in utopia and was waiting with bated breathe for this marvelous future that Union Carbide promised in the “twenty first century” a lot of things are better now,but at what cost?
That’s one of the reasons I really love my Harley. The motorcycle (any motorcycle) gives a thrill to ride at sane speeds. A low speed bike, like a Harley, tempers any of the insanities. For my riding style, Harleys are quick enough to provide fun acceleration. (But they are not fast.)
Dear Tom,
Agree. It’s why I’ve always subscribed to the adage: “It’s more fun to drive fast in a slow car, than to drive slow in a fast car.”
It’s what made the old 60s era British roadsters such a blast. Ditto modern counterparts such as the Miata.
Erics article on the excellent miata based Fiat 124 made me think just that
U.S. regime has unjustly killed 20-30 million people who were in no way a threat since 1946. The only difference with other murdering dictatorships, is the revolving door of head tyrant every four years.
Introduction http://www.sott.net/article/273517-Study-US-regime-has-killed-20-30-million-people-since-World-War-Two
After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple.
Although Americans understand in the abstract the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by our nation got little hearing and was soon overshadowed by an accelerated “war on terrorism.”
But we must continue our efforts to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will assist in doing that by addressing the question “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” This theme is developed in this report which contains an estimated numbers of such deaths in 37 nations as well as brief explanations of why the U.S. is considered culpable.
The causes of wars are complex. In some instances nations other than the U.S. may have been responsible for more deaths, but if the involvement of our nation appeared to have been a necessary cause of a war or conflict it was considered responsible for the deaths in it. In other words they probably would not have taken place if the U.S. had not used the heavy hand of its power. The military and economic power of the United States was crucial.
This study reveals that U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars. The Korean War also includes Chinese deaths while the Vietnam War also includes fatalities in Cambodia and Laos.
The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the latter wars there were between nine and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=72d_1424633840
Dear Tor,
“The only difference with other murdering dictatorships, is the revolving door of head tyrant every four years.”
Exactly right.
Champion of democracy: someone who approves of dictatorships as long as they hold elections. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
Thanks Bevin,
I just read thru all the quotes again. Hope there’s even more coming.
In the case of Hitler, he justified all his killings as necessary to fight the powerful foe of Russian Communism.
The world no longer accepts that as valid. I wonder what today’s Germans really think of it.
It’s maddening, after all we’ve witnessed, to still be surrounded by the same good German Americans, who justify all the subsequent Cold War murders as justified for the same reasons Hitler gave.
Or to endure the latest batch of psychopathy known as the War on Terror murders. More than ever, we need a new Hunter S Thompson.
The thing is THERE WAS NO MASTER RACE and everyone accepts this now.
The other thing is THERE WAS NO COLD WAR and everyone will come to accept that as well.
All there was, was senseless killings of tens of millions and mafia enforcings of a band of criminal’s territories. Nothing more. The German rationalization was pure horseshit. The American rationalization is also pure horseshit.
The farce that is America is a true danger to every living human. Of course Zhu would add, that is the case of all states as well
The real enablers of this misery are the property owners and business owners or America. The wealth producers. It’s not the ghetto blacks that keep the holocaust machines running. It’s not the Mexicans and undocumenteds.
It’s not all the spongers and leeches that live off the effort of others even.
It’s not the slackers lost in their smart phones and video games. The zombies blanked out before their TeeVees and Computer Screens. It’s not the enforcers and the thugs with badges. Or officials with clipboards. Or the judges and lawyers with robes. Those are all effects and not the cause of the problem.
The problem is the men right here, with their loose talk of ideals and being honest and on the up and up. Of their good intentions as they keep us on the road to hell. Their sidemouthed cliches that they don’t condone any of this. While all the while standing mute and arms up in the surrender position while their life’s blood is drained away to feed these metastisizing vampires.
There is a limited means of being honest in a dishonest society. The only good citizens of Hitler’s Germany were those who remained off the grid and didn’t let their pockets be picked. The ones who stole from the Machine Men. The ones who dragged their feet, and survived without oiling the machinery of tyranny.
I hope Zhu has a lot more to say. Because there’s far more to be said, by a far better author than I will ever be.
In our lives we are each dealt a hand. Some of us are dealt the hand to be Germans, Americans, Chinese, and Australians. What matters is how do you play the game. What do you do with the cards you hold, in the games available.
Or how do you leave the table alive and avoid the game. Or how do you cheat or seek to bring an end to the game. Who cares who the dealer was in the Reagan administration. Or the superior table manners of the game players during the 18th century.
This is our lives. This is important. At least in America, we have to really consider the whole situation. What are the real stakes. Is any of this even worth continuing. I have serious doubts about all of it. I’m just asking questions, and trying to look at things from a fresh angle, to the best of my limited ability.
Most of this rant is still dogma. I need to get specifics backed by experiments and develop some kind of Catma. Or something like thata.
Dear Tor,
Thanks!
I’m going to keep adding to the collection, as they occur to me.
This sort of pithy aphorism, a la HL Mencken or Yogi Berra, is surprisingly difficult to write.
Believe it or not, It’s rather similar to writing poetry.
How about animalfarmma? Remember the ending?We cant tell our high muckity mucks from from the rifraf’
Being a student of history(believe we are destined to repeat the past crashes)there are still to many dips and valleys in our curve of stability,can someone tell me the curve of stability presently vs the past?,if you understand my query,I bet Tor or 8sm or someone else can tell us(increasing,decreasing,average) in other words given the current zeitgeist,how much longer do we have?
“The glass throne is most secure,
When the king beleives he sits on stone.”
What would you say, if asked what your life’s philosophy is? I’m actually surprised with the one that makes the most sense to me…
-Be the person your dog thinks you are.
That one just gets it done. You could also substitute whoever a young child thinks you are. There’s something about the less-indoctrinated soul that sees the clearest I’ve observed.
-Don’t worry, take it easy.
-Do it without saying you’re doing it, and especially when you’ve insisted you won’t.
-Be kind to everyone!
-Half your age + 7
-The other guy is probably having a shitty day, so let shit go if you can.
-Don’t fuck with people who prepare your food
-Don’t be a cunt
-Don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry
-Whatever you do in life – leave it better than you found it
-Don’t give up what you want most for what you want now.
-Hope like an optimist, plan like a pessimist.
– Never stop learning; it keeps your mind young. Learning is what you do to yourself. Education is what they’ve done to you.
-Don’t be offended, and if you ever are, don’t tell anyone. What you’re really saying is, you can’t control your emotions so now you demand others should do it for you.
-Never stop dancing – it keeps your body young. Never stop loving – it keeps your spirit old.
-The more gold you EARN the more you get to make the rules.
-~1.6180339887…
– Golden Rule by Erik Satie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcCsEgb2hyg
– Debussey song employing the Golden Rule
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnnKmQ-wXZw
Tor and eight-(T what was that ratio,the golden rectangle?)Anyway you two Guys are some of the most down to earth people,I’ve ever had the pleasure of being somewhat acquanited with.
My query is(thinking about the prison thing 8) when will this current ponzi scheme collapse?everyone cannot work for the govt(the govt doesnt really produce anything but aggrevation and hardship on the honest hardworking folks.
I was trucking from a site where they were doing soil improvement,there was this young very strong Blackman lifting the 1 cu ft bags of portland cement(94# of weight)I asked why they didnt get Him the50# sacks,He would have been fine with it He said,would have been a lot easier on Him,but when I asked the Boss He was indifferent(guess you couldnt change the status quo)when the young fellows back and joints went just replace Him.
That is part of the problem in my opinion,indifference,the other mans plight doesnt register sometimes.
We will never get out of this world alive.
Antma, batma, catma, dogma, eaglema, fishma, goatma, horsema, insectma, jaguarma, koalama, lionma, molema, newtma, opossuma, pigma, quailma, ratma, sealma, tigerma, urchima, vulturma, wolfma, xerusma, yakma, zebrama
so many different animals, which one practices the golden rule. Where is the golden rule present in the human body. Do cells practice it.
I assert that the golden rule arises in a female dominant society. Hence, it is the rule of the feminine west. Not of the Muslims and Hindus. Not of the East Asians that live today.
East Asians operate under the brutal experience of he who hesitates is lost. And also distrust the outsider and the one who is different.
Muslims and Hindus believe do unto others as it is their place to be the doer of things, or have things done to.
Another term for the Golden Rule, is Mangina Mind.
When I think back to childhood, I and no other boys considered or acted according to such a rule.
Sure 90% of young girls and women alike advocate and practice the GR. It is a sensible a prosperous doctrine. I enjoy having women in my life and society, and benefiting from what it said to accomplish.
But in my experience, the closest men will approach the golden rule is: do unto others however you must do to not run afoul of authorities. And to not experience blowback and challenges you’ll have to fight over.
It’s well and good to follow the golden rule with your friends, family, maybe even your work associates.
But to say we should optimistically do unto the predators and usurpers. The cagers and the oppressors how we would want to have done to us. Is suicidal. It’s genocide. If you look at the Western Male, you’ll see that this is the case. From all sides, he is losing ground and approaching the extinction of his kind.
This is maybe more dogma, than catma, maybe, I’m not sure.
A masculine strategy from early childhood is to compete to see who is fastest. Who is strongest. Once this is relatively settled. Then enters the sliding scale quid pro quo.
The weak scratch the back of the strong. The strong reward the weak that please it, using any criteria they choose. A relatively weak guy might get the best results of all, if he is skilled at things seen as valuable by others. Unlike apes, it pays to excel and be seen at the best at something. Though often, this thing is not something used to determine social status.
The height of insanity would be to say we’re just not trying the same old thing hard enough. That we should double down and triple down and be more golden, try harder, make this failed altruistic nightmare finally work its alleged magic.
A more sane approach would say, some things are best done using feminine reasoning. Using the golden rule. Other things need to use a merit based caste system. Need to be a race and competition where the man with the most merit should win.
The false dialectic says there is only golden rule, or might make right. This is wrong. To include one thing that’s missing, there is the doctrine of may the best man win who doesn’t initiate force and aggression against his fellow man.
Very interesting take; I’d wager it to be true.
Woman is herd-reliant; she cannot afford to be ostracized from the herd, or she and her offspring will likely not survive.
Yet women are vicious beasts in their own right, and FAR more vicious than men generally are.
Men will fight, injure each other, even – but that’s it.
Women tend to hold and nurse a grudge…. They never forget and never forgive.
Yet they hold to the “golden rule”, as you note, in form (not in action).
Men fight and injure as noted, but when it’s done, it’s DONE. Heirarchy determined, life goes on. (Though the loser may still nurse a grudge, I admit.)
Thoughts?
Females will fight to the death to defend their ‘cubs’ against any threat, real or imagined. This fits perfectly with the Cloverian mindset of ‘What if …?’, or ‘You might …’
Over 15 years ago, I had cats. My parents and sisters all have cats. Neutered and declawed cats. It’s never seemed principled, taking the easy for human way out and doing that to living beings. But that’s dogma. Where is my evidence that neutering brings about a bad result. I’m going to suspend that line of thinking until I consider what the observed and documented facts of neutering really are.
I’m not going to rely on dogma of any kind. No matter how noble it sounds. My definition of dogma is anything one believes without experimental evidence to support it.
An example of this would be the golden rule. That’s sounds noble. It’s quite popular worldwide and historically. But what is the evidence in support of it. What is the proof that it is in fact a good system. Unless such observed facts exist, I reject the golden rule because there is no proof it is efficacious. Why not you better pout, and you better not cry. Why not trick or treat as a life philosophy. All three of these are dogmas, and hence, I reject them all for now.
The way forward is something I’ll call Catma. Each cat is different, and uses its own self-serving anarcho-reasoning to decide what is best for it. It doesn’t bound about blindly trusting in the pack. Or in the human who claims dominion over it. It watches and observes and exhibits incredible patience. It makes decisions and uses the life philosophy of Catma.
Here is an article from Spiked-Online that I hope can be seen as supporting the system of Catma. That promotes the use of observational reasoning, rather than the far more common unthinking dogma, the human feel-good traditions and ceremonial hokum of so-called ancient wisdom and common sense.
Vesalius – 500th Birthday of a Scientific Revolutionary:
TRAINEE DOCTOR
In this era of dogma, we could do with more of Vesalius’s open-mindedness.
Andreas Vesalius.
Born on 31 December 1514 in Brussels, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, Vesalius came from a family of physicians. Still, his talent was precocious. On the day of his graduation from the University of Padua in 1537 – he was then aged 22 – the university promptly offered him a professorship.
Within five years, Vesalius had already published what was to become his magnum opus, On the Fabric of the Human Body. He was just 27.
Vesalius, like his grandfather, went on to become personal physician to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. But Vesalius’s historical importance was not due to his prodigious talent as a clinician; rather, it lay in the impact he had on the way we think about medicine and the body.
As Roy Porter’s Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine illustrates, before Vesalius, dissections, during which most medical teaching occurred, were rather ceremonial affairs. Presided over by a physician ‘decked in academic robes and seated on a throne’, while a surgeon did the dirty work, the point of a dissection was to demonstrate the received wisdom of the Ancient Roman physician Galen. It was not to learn anything new from the real body set before the surgeon.
And this is why Vesalius stood out. While at Padua, he made a radical break with the past by performing the dissections himself. He focused not on what the weight of tradition told him he should see, but on what he actually saw.
And, as a result, Galen’s anatomy, derived from his dissections of Barbary apes and dogs, was found by Vesalius to contain numerous errors: the human jaw was one bone rather than two; the liver did not contain five lobes; and there were no holes in the septum of the heart to allow blood to flow between its two ventricles. The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, it is said, is that Vesalius restored Galenic anatomy in such a way as to transcend it’.
Science and technology
Vesalius’s students, most prominently Fallopius (of the Fallopian tube), continued his project; every correction made to Vesalius’s own errors (and these naturally were plentiful) reinforced his intellectual breakthrough rather than diminishing it.
His magnum opus, the Fabrica, was also an immense step forward from mediaeval medical books, presenting beautifully rendered and naturalistic depictions of his dissections, drawn by professional artists and printed as engravings.
It was the humanistic ideas of Vesalius’s time, just as much as his special genius, that made his work so important. Although Vesalius’s radical attitude broke apart the traditional dogmas of the time, he was neither alone among his contemporaries in the Renaissance in pushing the boundaries of anatomy, nor divorced from the groundwork laid by the classical physicians such as Galen or Arab physicians such as Avicenna.
For it was in 1543, the year his Fabrica was published, that also was the year of Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies, which, through its advocacy of a heliocentric universe, revolutionised astronomy just as much as Vesalius’s Fabrica revolutionised medical science.
Today, the arrival of the two books is today considered the starting point for the scientific revolution. It is forgotten, this important leap from dogma, to scientific Catma.
The intellectual climate in which Vesalius worked was one in which the established way of doing things was rapidly crumbling. The discovery of America 50 years previously had changed the way the world was understood and unleashed economic change, while the Reformation was tearing apart the spiritual and intellectual certainties of Europe.
Vesalius was inspired by the intellectual spirit of the time to explore the human body as it had never been explored before – and our lives are far longer and healthier today as a consequence.
Today, when some are trying to use the findings of science in a dogmatic and authoritarian way, it is worth remembering the 500-year-old break with tradition that Vesalius and his contemporaries initiated. Rarely has that old Royal Society motto – that scientific authority rests ‘on the word of no one’ – been so vitally enacted.
So what do you say, esteemed colleagues. Are we here to build up Eric’s authority. And to discuss the moth-eaten authorities of old and how we might dig up these corpses and breathe life into them again.
Are we here to worship Eric and his empire of cats and cars? Or are we students, here to learn from each other, here to challenge and correct each other, especially Eric.
I submit it doesn’t matter what anyone’s pedigree is, and what his curriculum vitae is, and how expensive his robes are, and how many honors and certificates he has, nor how advanced their website is. And how lucrative his following is.
I hope we’re going for something better than that. We’re here to systematically observe the matrix. Understand the redistributions, and the little tricks where they take their hidden cuts, and assert their secret powers.
That we’re here to dissect the war economy. And look at all the tissues and components. To find the flaws in ourselves and in each other. To rectify or mitigate the effects of our human declawings and neuterings and other debilitating domestications.
The domestications and trivializings that makes us little more than housepets.
Are they all truly for our own good. Or should some things be thrown in the woods. And new things brought into existence. What are the observations. What do we see on the road. In our homes. At work. What do we hear in the zeitgeist.
I hope we are assembling a body of knowledge and techniques that will start to negate this juggernaut of lies and manipulations. That we will move beyond complaints and sharing of miseries. And move beyond reminiscing of better times. And really do something concrete about some of this.
I like your idea of substituting catma for dogma. I can’t decide if what we have in Mordor on the Potomac is ratma or hogma.
Good ones. I’m quite sure we have both. Also out on the roads, we have pigma, where the heroes in blue enforce da lawwww. A real life animal farm where we get fleeced.
Actually knowing our enemy is the first order of business. So what how does the ratma and hogma really work. What are their vermin reasoning processes.
What catches their eyes and makes them squeal, when they’re splashing in the mud and diverting all the resource to themselves to our detriment.
Sui bono sueee suee suee bono!
Very interesting indeed.
I think,therefore,I am.Our very existence will have an effect on the status quo,this science you postulate will certainly have an effect on those that are predisposed to the libertine.
I have never considered,”the rule golden” as a dogma,it has always been to me,one of the self evident truths,from which springs the security to pursue our libertarian ideals.
Elon Musk is a billionaire scumbag on welfare, which is the norm these days. For every 5 dollars in hand outs 2 go to low income people, and 3 go to crony big businessmen like EM.
Testing the Reflexes of Seven Maine Coon Kittens
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=300_1404829662
Kitty Kitty Bang Bang
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=be4_1208258778
Trucker doesn’t answer illegal alien beaner border hero’s questions
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=be4_1208258778
Shot-up Brazil crims taken to hospital in meatwagon
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bb5_1424571458
Lithium-ion chemistry does not have a “memory”, you do not harm the battery pack with a partial discharge. If the voltage of a lithium-ion cell drops below a certain level, it’s ruined.
Lithium-ion batteries age. They only last two to three years, even if they are sitting on a shelf unused.
Don’t “avoid using” the battery with the thought that the battery pack will last five years. It won’t. If you are buying a new battery pack, or a vehicle with LiB, you want to make sure it really is new. If it has been sitting on a shelf in the store for a year, it won’t last very long. Manufacturing dates are important.
Avoid heat, which degrades the batteries.
If the battery gets hot enough to ignite the electrolyte, you are going to get a fire, and maybe even an explosion. If you use a laptop, make sure you have the firewall enabled, just to be safe.
Lithium Ion Battery Life & Death
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/lithium-ion-battery2.htm
Laptop PC explodes violently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC0UWIYswKI
Hello Tor ,et al,
They dont teach Kids how to even read music in band{much to my daughters frustration} and I figured out the Lion fiasco on my own a while back,I’ve had a lot more life out of NiMh batteries{they will come back} heard toyota is making the switch to Lion,so they finally figured out a way to recoup some more lost money on the hybrids{more frequent battery replacement=been my experience when the Lions fail,their gone}but there are a lot more promising and very feasible alternatives on the drawing boards,but the big if is,arethey economically feasible?
kevin, I would say the best thing to do, is discourage all the nonsense that’s out there. The meaningless words. The muddled concepts that disintegrate as soon as you try to do something.
R&B seems somewhat good. 60’s and 70’s seemed like the time of Peak Music.
We’re in decline mode. Rap seems mostly, but not entirely bad. Some rock and alternative continues to be decent. Country music has been hijacked, and now it’s just a rural version of Top 40. Nearly all of it is imposed from outside the individual’s experience. None of it is authentic and coming from the ground up. It’s just a vehicle to sell things you don’t need, and be made to things you shouldn’t believe.
The days of coherence and baroque discipline are far behind us now. It’s all feelings and newspeak. What exactly is Evil. Good. Heaven. Hell. Sociopath. Psychopath. Heartbreak. Love. Hate. A great big cluster of nothing is what. It’s like American English is less disciplined than tribal African tongue clickings these days.
Just take one word. Night. It’s not really a thing. It’s the time of the day when you’re in the shadow of the Earth. But it’s different for all people. It helps a little to say London’s shadow is the one that matters, but it doesn’t help enough. It’s a worthless concept really, because no two people are experiencing the same thing.
Every place starts and stops at different times depending on longitude. The brightness isn’t uniform. Depending on your latitude, the observed length of a night is different.
When your first principle is night and day. You’re already doomed. It’s like you place your fingers on a map key that measures on inch as 100 miles and then try to use those same fingers to decide how far it is from NYC to Dallas. It’s going to be impossible really, when your done you’ll be off by hundreds of miles.
The problem with government at root, is all its measures and truths are so much ancient rocks and sacred sticks. And really none of it adds up to very much at all. It’s all a terrible jumble, and the best thing to do is to just start over, and get each thing right, and then move forward.
tl;dr. Maybe just listen to this 5 minute Stefan Molyneux video. I’m probably repeating myself and beating the same ol’ dead horses that have been dead as long as any of us can even remember.
We can be passionate and not passive. Motivational and not deafeatist. If we want a world worth living in, we’ll have to do the work. No use crying over poor results and playing the victim when we didn’t even make an effort.
Help Eric and your fellow bloggers out however you can. Take a stand against things you disagree with, while there’s still a quorum of people who have the skills and resolve to do something about the growing problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_-18agQNwk
Forget music – they don’t even teach them to read English. Those who learn do so inspite of the GICs, not because of them.
Cant say I totally agree with that(ask Polyphemus)oft times the bully has his day when He gets fragged or sucker punched,not all Humans are Wolves,some are Foxes,Any one who asserts His authority over others mercilessly,will fall eventually,if you dont have the love of God friend,you are missing out,survival isnt all there is to it,great Bully empires willl inevitably decay from within and fail(just as the US is,societal evolution is just that,hit or miss and I like to think that that each plateau on the curve of society gets a little closer to a real society and the dips and valleys get shallower all the time,Gandhi not withstanding,I have noticed this about certain peoples(they are not friendly-merely tolerant)prejudice? perhaps,I dont know,but as a rule I avoid those groups now,you are surely most correct,but its not a world I wish to live in .having fought bullies all my life.
Have you noticed? The time Empires last has been shrinking incrementally. Babylon probably lasted longer than Egypt. Egypt lasted longer than Greece, Greece lasted longer than Rome, Rome lasted longer than any that followed. Rome is said to have lasted 500 years. But that is fiction. Rome’s entirety didn’t include empire.
The same can be said for the united States, sadly the united States fell into empire before the corpse of the Articles of Federation was cold. 1789 is the year the current illusion of liberty was erected. 1810 was the year the uS declared war on England and invaded Canada. Rightly trounced by GB and KG3, they decided to call it a draw. The crap in New Orleans was after the armistice was already declared so the battle of NO of of political value what so ever. BUT the propaganda value was immense.
Some might say the empire started at the Whiskey Rebellion put down and I’d agree to an extent.
However, the treason took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1784 to enslave everyone living as possible on the North American continent.
Another thing, is treason against the powers that be or against your fellow man? I’d say in 1784, the treason was against their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and the future.
To boot, I 100% agree with Lysander Spooner’s treatise “No Treason”. What one generation of men do has no binding effect on any other generation of men.
As to some moron’s reply, that I am subject to some social contract? I want to see the entire contract’s content and where the FUCK I signed stated contact.
The argument that I am subject to said contract merely due to the fact I was born in some area a gang of thugs declared as their operating base doesn’t make it so.
Note here is my definition of what government is: “The first group of thugs that arrives in area of relative peace that claims control over said area after they threaten the individuals that live there with death unless they agree”.
The only part of the Start Rek series I agree with is the statement, “Live long and prosper”. Note that can’t happen with oppression from the state. The state hates competition from any quarter! Why do you think they prosecute people for murder? Why Hell! To quote my fave comedian George Carlin, “THAT’S OUR JOB!” Why do they prosecute people for theft? Same song different offense.
The government will classify patriots as terrorist and the tyrants as patriots. You see the victors classed all individuals that defended the south from the vicious invasion by the north for failure to collect revenue for the northern interest as rebels and terrorist. Abraham Lincoln, the united States first admitted tyrant, declared what he would do in his first address to the nation after being confirmed dictator du jour. So the country is as the people that wrote the original draft of what is called Constitution finally got what their objective was, “Slavery to the state, nothing above that state, all for the state”.
Truth is always the first casualty of war.
Mussolini took his queue directly from the united States. To say they originated this crap is to be naive to the fullest. Everything Italy and Germany did before WW2 was directly copied from the 1860s to the 1900s. Hitler even said so. He stated in his novel that he wanted to emulate Lincoln. No finer endorsement of totalitarianism is there when a mad man copies a mad man, eh?
A parting note to paraphrase Jefferson, “The tree of Liberty must be must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots but mostly tyrants. Starting with the local tyrants.”
David Ward
Memphis, Tennessee
Dear David,
“As to some moron’s reply, that I am subject to some social contract? I want to see the entire contract’s content and where the FUCK I signed stated contact. ”
Indeed!
The social contract: a fictitious agreement not worth the paper it isn’t printed on. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
Bevin? Can I ask you a rather personal question?
David
Go ahead and ask.
I’ll try to answer if possible.
The government is a crime family with a flag. The social contract is an offer you can’t refuse. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
I actually had some moron state, due to the fact I have a SSN aka Tax ID aka stenciled tattoo in my forearm (I wish to state that stenciling in tattoo is exactly what the Germans did with each and every individual consigned to an internment camp. They weren’t necessarily Jewish) that is comprised of XXX-XX-XXXX makes me subject to the social contract aka the state (another thing to note, that Socialist Security started the approximate same time the Germans were incarcerating those that were deemed undesirable). I say, nothing is farther from the truth! Just because the thugs, that threaten to murder people, state we have to be catalogued, stamped and numbered to please them UNDER DURESS, doesn’t mean any binding contract exist.
Note, uneducated individuals agreeing to SSN or Tax IDs under the age of majority, so called minors, are not liable to contract law.
Also note, all individuals where full disclosure of the ramifications of obtaining a SSN or Tax ID, are also, not liable to any said contract.
Again, the duress of NOT being able to work freely except where a SSN or other thug issued ID is required is not a binding contract.
To all existing members of government everywhere. Your time is limited. People will only take so much. When a person has nothing to lose, killing you will not matter. I am reminded of the youth that executed two thugs who were part of the government stating, “When you kill one of us, we will kill two of you!”
When that happens you will wish you were cast of the movie, “The Purge”. You declared war. Well, what did you expect in return? DUH!
David Ward
Memphis, Tennessee
DW – “To all existing members of government everywhere. Your time is limited. People will only take so much.”
I would love to think this true. Unfortunately, for the most part, that would be the people of a much different generation IMO. My experience with folks now is that they actively avoid being informed and won’t tolerate those who try. “I don’t want to hear that depressing shit!” is the usual response. Or, “you are wrong”. Full stop. No argument. No discussion. No investigation.
The people of today have been domesticated. The 2 for 1 guy? The rest of the herd would string him up for standing outside the herd.
When Nazi military personnel were told to execute people en masse, a few actually didn’t participate. Almost all eventually did and after doing so, got better and better at it. Of course this isn’t new. It’s happened all over the world in literally every place where there are people.
If people in this country don’t think cops and military will summarily execute them on orders to do so, they’d better think again…..and a couple times more. There are vast numbers of clovers willing to do anything gunverment tells them. Think your brother in the military wouldn’t do his duty? Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people have had that wrong thought…..their last.
Dear 8sm,
“If people in this country don’t think cops and military will summarily execute them on orders to do so, they’d better think again… ”
Sad to say, that is undeniably true.
Just look at the door to door gun confiscation during Katrina.
NRA: The Untold Story of Gun Confiscation After Katrina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4
This is clear evidence of what our “protectors” will do to us.
More T0N
Bizarre Festiva1 1999
Johnny Kelly 1nterview for T0N Documentary
The 0rigin of the Feces
Best Of T0N – Audio + Video Megamix
Peter Steele on Divinity (Type O Negative, Anesthesia, Second Chances, Children & Facing the Future)
Dead Again 2007 (final a1bum)
Gosh Tor,right you are,I have to observe the “Voice” once in a while and its appalling the flat contraltos,etc.It seems now the only requirement to be a “pop” country star(with a couple of exceptions)is to be married to someone famous and be good looking and dress sluttylike,I cant stand the screeching and caterwauling that passes for singing.Occasionally I get to hear a trained girl from the old countries and She sounds so good,I want to weep(You ought to hear the youngsters from the MacLean school(mostly of Asian descent)playing the strings,they could do even do “Fiddle” one time they even had a Harpist in the ensemble,when they did the “Hoedown” I almost lost it.
Enough of that,has anybody figured out Shania Twains genre?(Yes I think she has a good voice and technique)my home has a violin,console piano and guitar,due to having illness hearing loss in one ear among other things,no muscle memory.I cant play a lick(laugh if you want,but I honestly feel that that high,measles induced fever that destroyed my hearing,retarded me a bit)
Another thing.I hate these newer vehicles you cant hop up,I would love to breathe some life in that Dodge,but the engine is of such a poor design,it wont stand any boost and it will probaly self destruct before 100k(this is probaly my last vehicle of this persuasion)
I used to have to watch American Idol years ago myself. Not lately though. None of the music shows are popular in my house anymore, so I’m spared the damage to my ears.
Now it’s nonstop cooking shows. And Bravo shows where women scream at each other for this or that reason. Or men scream like women at women, just to keep things gender neutral I guess.
The proper enjoyment of music involves resolving mathematical waves of sound as they reach your ear, I would say. I guess public schools don’t teach the pythagorean heptatonic scale and such any more.
Here’s basic ancient greek C Major Scale
C D E F G A B C
1/1 9/8 5/4 4/3 3/2 5/3 15/8 2/1
first second third fourth fifth sixth seventh octave
C C# D D# E
F F# G G#
A A# B C
2(0) 2^1/12 2^1/6 2^1/4 2^1/3
2^5/12 2^1/2 2^7/12 2^2/3
2^3/4 2^5/6 2^11/12 2(1)
Here are the vibration values in hertz
C 261.6 C# 277.2 D 293.7 D# 311.1 E 329.6 F 349.2 F# 370.0 G392.0 G# 415.3 A 440.0 A#466.2 B 493.9 C 523.3
Every octave up is twice the speed of vibration (hertz)
do re mi fa so la ti do(2nd do is twice the speed of first do)
Mathematics & Music, after Pythagoras
http://www.friesian.com/music.htm
Type 0 Negative A1bums & DVDs. The Drab Four!
Wor1d Coming Down
0ctober Rust
Symphony for the Devi1 DVD
B1oody Kisses
Live Lamours – Brook1yn 05-31-1991
Life is Ki11ing Me
Type 0…. those guys could play. God, I miss music. Instead, everywhere I go – outside of my insular world – I am assaulted by auto-toned tweeny squealers and ass-cracked cRappers mufuggah bix nooding and gnomesayin’… booomboombooom uuuhhhhoaaaaaayyyyy I luuuuuuuuuuvvvvvvv you…..
I tried to lead a revolt at my gym. The management began playing cRap (and scheisse Top 40) notwithstanding that two-thirds-plus of the people on the floor were white men in their 30s, 40s and up. Several of us grumbled openly and I got a few of them to go up to the desk and say something.
The bix nooding gnomesayin’ continues.
If I had the funds, I’d open a gym in which there would be no cRap music, ever. No talentless, soul-less auto-toned treacle emanating from the mouth-twats of interchangeable/replaceable/forgettable songsters of the moment.
There would be music, only.
I know what you mean. What I tell myself, is everything is still salvageable and redeemable.
If enough people work together, the best things of our disposable digital culture could be converted into other more tangible formats.
A lot of it might end up being discarded, but what is still decent could provide full employment for all. If the work was begun to perform existing jingles and repetitious song-bites using actual instruments. With scales and harmonies, and all the structural trimmings.
A high quality analog copy could be made. And broadcast using analog transmissions. And then these same radio spectrum transmissions could be enjoyed, learned, and recreated using actual analog instruments. And actual human voices.
Everything that’s now being half-assed and churned out unfinished and premature. Will have to be fully-assed, and not released until perfected and recorded for posterity and future uses.
It used to be until lately, every home had a piano, fiddle, guitar, and other such devices. And plenty of people were decent at using such low tech artistic instruments.
Some were even a virtuoso or at least highly talented. Women sang in beautiful higher registers. Men in lower registers. Not everyone jibbering in cachophony and stupor inducing gutteralisms. Not blanking out and trying to offset every brainwave with utterly flat and assembly line pulses telling you to buy buy buy, fear fear fear, hate hate hate, submit submit submit.
The dirty little secret is we’re blind to our own Sovietisms. It isn’t natural that everything is done for us by external media providers. It’s the same gulag as before, only without the obvious privations and torments.
It just everyone is denied the right to do anything for themselves. Create anything of their own. Or even perform and recreate the works of others. It cyber trade unionisms. Cyber telecorpratism. You have to be licensed and trained and sanctioned to do anything. To provide anything. To perform anything.
No need to try to excel or improve yourself. Nothing at all is expected or wanted from you accept the slightest bit of low effort push a button and get a feed pellet idiot jobs. The missing music we still remember is a nagging reminder that something is gravely wrong. We didn’t always exist in this Soviet Vacuum of Smiling Scripted Dullardisms. We used be artists. And artisans. And makers. And performers. We used to be human and capable of creative labor and capital production.
In order to ensure “permanent revolution,” there must always be class warfare.
Man vs. Woman.
Highbrow vs. Lowbrow.
Young vs. Old.
Vaccinated vs. Anti-Vaccine.
Etc.
And those on top have set the game so they profit either way….
Makes the targets obvious when you think of it that way!
Libertarian class theory in short form is. People divide into (1) those who want to control others. And (2) those who want to be left in peace and have no desire to control others.
i don’t consider that equivalent to the golden rule. To execute that rule, you have to keep track of everybodies actions and determine what their motives are for those actions.
Under libertarian “I don’t care unless you’re a security threat to me” there is no such complex reasoning.
Under strict libertarianism, all kinds of people can be left free roaming about to believe all kinds of heinous things. And to create societies of all kinds of heinous hierarchies. Anything goes as Leonard Reed said. Anything at all as long as its PEACEFUL.
– –
The theory of class conflict as a key to political history did not begin with Karl Marx. It began with French libertarians in the 1810s after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
http://mises.org/library/james-mill-and-libertarian-class-analysis
The major class struggle is a fight to determine which classes manage to gain control of the state apparatus. The ruling class is whichever group has managed to seize state power; the ruled are those groups who are taxed and regulated by those in command.
Class interest, then, is defined as a group’s relation to the state.
State rule, with its taxation and exercise of power, controls, and conferring of subsidies and privileges, is the instrument that creates conflicts between the rulers and the ruled.
What exists, is a “two-class” theory of class conflict, based on whether a group rules or is ruled by the state.
With a free market, on the other hand, there is no class conflict, but a harmony of interest between all individuals in society cooperating in and through production and exchange.
All government, is run by the ruling class, the few who dominate and exploit the ruled, who are the many.
Since all groups tend to act for their selfish interests, it is absurd to expect the ruling clique to act altruistically for the “public good.”
Like everyone else, they will use their opportunities for their own gain, which means to loot the many, and to favor their own or allied special interests as against those of the public.
The state ALWAYS has “sinister” interests as against the good of the public. The public good means specifically laissez-faire government confined to the minimal functions of police, defense and the administration of justice. Or better still, since that always proves impossible, complete eradication of the government.
Those who advocate government must at a minimum always treat such government with suspicion and to provide checks to suppress state power. If not deterred, a ruling elite becomes predatory. The pursuit of sinister interests leads to endemic “corruption” in politics, to sinecures, bureaucratic “places” and endless destructive subsidies.
Imagine the true ends of the government as they really are, in its true nature. Think next of the facility of the means — justice, police, and security from foreign invaders. And then think of the oppression practised upon the people of a nation under the pretext of providing them.
Politics is a struggle between two classes — the avaricious rulers and their intended victims. The great conundrum of government, is how to eliminate this plunder and these relentless sociopaths.
Funny (or sad) – this stream started talking about “How much power do you need?” in reference to cars. But has evolved into “How much power do TPTB want? And how do they go about increasing it?”
I noticed that! LOL.
“Overcoming inertia – getting those 5,000 pounds of steel and glass off its proverbial ass – is what burns the fuel.
Not maintaining 60 (or even 80) MPH.”
There’s a h*** of a lot more air resistance at 80 vs 60 mph.
You’ll notice the mpg difference easily in a big boxy SUV like my Suburban.
Which is why I drive 60, not 80.
Even so He had some lucid moments,He everything but admitted the existence of EBEs(other presidents werent privileged to learn the truth(see the Disclosure project)Hundreds of high ranking people have came forward,consider this, if only one of them is telling the truth-its changes a lot of things.I admit to seeing a UFO or two and have had some dang strange things happen.But remember this the ones We have to fear are the 2 legged neo-chimps that are in charge currently.
I’m also married to a control freak and Hoarder wannabe,I had the option of quitting the control freaks I worked for,the only recourse for the better half is divorce.(but I can hack it,so what the heck?)
This post has brought out some fine sentiments,I will have to check out that one youall mentioned.yes I like warm baths particulary of late, when the bones are screaming from being in the enviroment from sunup to sunrise,a soothing warm bath is a particular pleasure.
Bill from NC,gets it,air at speed behaves like a sort of elastic clingy membrane,my Dodge Dakota,gets its best fuel mileage at 45 mph(why didnt they put that little V-6 diesel in that thing{they couldnt have kept with demand}
Bill, best stay off Tx. roads. If you don’t get run over, you’ll get flipped off a lot. On many roads, 60mph is a real danger to everyone else.
On the subject of music, everybody back in my day participated in making music although not nearly as much as my parents generation or their parents. Practice makes perfect and my grandparent’s generation, almost down to the last person could produce decent if not good music.
I sing a great deal but not where others can hear and not because I’m a bad singer but people just don’t accept music without all the machinations produced in a studio. If you can’t sing without producing all those electronic effects you have just offended most people within earshot. Being able to play a musical instrument has gone to hell too. I like all sorts of music and have pointed out to those who think nothing is as good as ‘soul’ or R&B that old country is simply “white” soul. He said I’ll love you till I die. She told him You’ll forget in time. As the years went slowly by, she still preyed upon his mind. One of the best songs ever written. RIP George, you ol possum.
Reagan the original chimp and insufferable c-word rhymes-with-runt who called in Cali National Guard stormtroopers to stomp on Berkeley kids of college age just like any other brokejunk dicklesstater ever did.
F his corpse with rotted fish heads.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/video-ronald-reagans-press-conference-after-bloody-thursday/284045/
“You bet I’m happy and you bet you won’t say anything that’ll surprise me…
When did any of you stand up before the students…”
I think he had good intentions????? NONONONONO
Reagan was a senile fool and tool!!!!! YESYESYESYESYES
Warm water baths DO make you effeminate. Cold water showers are for men. Don’t you know your Aristophanes?
Clouds – Aristophanes
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE BETTER ARGUMENT: an older man
THE WORSE ARGUMENT: a young man
[Enter the Better Argument from inside the Thinkery, talking to the Worse Argument who is still inside]
BETTER ARGUMENT
Come on. Show yourself to the people here—
I guess you’re bold enough for that.
[The Worse Argument emerges from the Thinkery]
WORSE ARGUMENT
Go where you please.
The odds are greater I can wipe you out
with lots of people there to watch us argue.
BETTER ARGUMENT
You’ll wipe me out? Who’d you think you are?
WORSE ARGUMENT
It’s about time!
My guts have long been churning with desire
to rip in fragments all those things you’ve said,
with counter-arguments. That’s why I’m called
Worse Argument among all thinking men,
because I was the very first of them
to think of coming up with reasoning
against our normal ways and just decrees.
And it’s worth lots of money—more, in fact,
than drachmas in six figures—to select
the weaker argument and yet still win.
Now just see how I’ll pull his system down,
that style of education which he trusts.
First, he says he won’t let you have hot water
when you take a bath. What’s the idea here?
Why object to having a warm bath?
BETTER ARGUMENT
The effect they have is very harmful—
they turn men into cowards.
WORSE ARGUMENT
Wait a minute!
The first thing you say I’ve caught you out.
I’ve got you round the waist. You can’t escape.
Tell me this—of all of Zeus’ children
which man, in your view, had the greatest heart
and carried out the hardest tasks? Tell me.
BETTER ARGUMENT
In my view, no one was a better man than Hercules.
WORSE ARGUMENT
And where’d you ever see cold water in a bath of Hercules? But who
was a more manly man than him?
BETTER ARGUMENT
That’s it, the very things which our young men
are always babbling on about these days—
crowding in the bath house, leaving empty
all the wrestling schools.
WORSE ARGUMENT
Next, you’re not happy
when they hang around the market place—
but I think that’s good. If it were shameful,
Homer would not have labelled Nestor—
and all his clever men—great public speakers.
Now, I’ll move on to their tongues, which this man
says the young lads should not train. I say they should.
He also claims they should be self-restrained.
These two things injure them in major ways.
Where have you ever witnessed self-restraint
bring any benefit to anyone?
Tell me. Speak up. Refute my reasoning.
Jean,
Maybe some day a few of us should plan a fishing trip to Hanging Lake. Preferably before the UN’s Violence Against Fishes act outlaws rods and reels and fishing in Jan 2016
#08 Hanging Lake – by Caroline Blind
http://sonichits.com/video/Sunshine_Blind/Hanging_Lake
The roses gone
The flowers line the walks
And the mourners come
The house of kings and queens
That stood so strong
But tonight, the temple comes down
It’s time that we replace the idols that have pulled us down
It’s time to burn so we can build again tonight
The temple comes down
Now look at the stars In their flickering lights
Our bright neighbors After dayfall time
We reach for their heights And they pass us by
But tonight, tonight The temple comes down
It’s time that we replace the idols that have pulled us down
It’s time to burn so we can build again tonight
These hands of mine are gonna scale your walls
Shake your foundations and tear your temple down
We’re the rats that join the piper
We’re the lambs led to your slaughter
When we wake up, when we look round
We’re Gonna tear your temple down
It’s time to reap so we can sow again on fertile ground
It’s time to burn so we can build again tonight
Sunshine Blind / H4Y
http://sonichits.com/video/Sunshine_Blind/H4y
We can use the lake at 1600 Pennsy Avenue… I hear there’s a limited number of vertebrates there…
But there is one in each and every state, so let’s make it a “worldwide” tour…
—
It’s funny, actually…
I saw a guy in town the other day, sitting on a chair in the middle of the street. Oblivious to the cars that rolled by each tiem the light changed, he sat with a rod and reel, casting down the lane lines, then reeling it back in.
Figuring I’d humor him, I hit the walk button, and walked out to talk to him.
I asked, “How many you catch?”
He said, “You’re the fifth one today…”
Eric… Who are you kidding?? If this is justifiable, then so is cold running water vs. hot AND cold running water; color TV vs. black and white; 3 TV stations VS. 1000’s; AM radio vs. the current spectrum, the Pony Express vs. the internet; 1 big business vs. entrepreneurship, Shall I go on?? Let’s not even mention that the efficiency of engineering from that 40hp K car to today’s 700hp Chrysler entry model is staggering, and the fuel economy is off the charts from the days of the 80’s..
Cute article, but post it as humor!
Hi Greg,
Yeah, but people actually use hot water. And so on.
Do they use 700 hp? Or even 200? Not much, from what I can tell.
Again: How often does anyone in the U.S. ever drive significantly faster than 85 MPH? And when they do, do they do it for more than a few furtive moments?
On mileage: Today’s actually sucks. Even with direct injection and variable cam/valve timing, cylinder deactivation, overdrive and CVT transmissions, etc… few gas-engined cars do better than 40 on the highway.
There were numerous cars capable of doing better than that – without any of the advantages of technology just described – back in the early ’80s.
PS: The Hellcat is far from “entry level.” It’s the top-of-the-line/most-expensive version of the Challenger available. Analogous to the Z06 Corvette.
1986 Golf N/A Diesel.
Never under 50mpg (imp) despite truly abusive driving. Zero electronics. Almost zero maintenance required for engine. No electronic tools required.
At 52 (original) horsepower, at 600,000km this thing could still merge safely onto a freeway, comfortably hold 90+mph on flat ground, and was the most fun/mile of any car I have ever driven. Cornering abilities were epic.
Only drawback was that hills on mountain passes meant 3rd gear and an opaque jet trail. Minor issue and rare enough to live with. Besides, blocking the sun for that psl-10 clover once you got around was always satisfying.
It required performance driving to keep up with traffic. Could be tiring if all you want to do is ‘get there’, but brilliant if you actually DRIVE.
It is the one car I would still buy new today (the 1986). Not the TDI though. I have driven one for extended periods and while truly brilliant technology, there is just too much of it. The original diesel bang/buck and longevity was amazing.
If only they had a 4×4 version with 10″ ground clearance.
Those late ’70s/early-mid ’80s VW diesels were the shit. Meant in a good way. As you say, one could beat ’em like a rented mule and they never broke – and it was damned near impossible to ever get less than 50 MPG out of one, no matter how you drove it.
Plenty of speed, too, if you knew how to drive.
1986 and on for longevity. They switched to hydraulic adjusted valves so the maintenance became basically oil, filters, water. The solid lifters sucked.
Upsize the tires somewhat and use momentum. They were go-carts.
Dragging the unwary onto off ramps way too fast was always fun too. Even if the following car was far more laterally capable, you could see the driver panic when they noticed your inside rear wheel was 4″ off the pavement.
I miss driving that car.
Again, my 1983 Dodge Colt that cost $5344 on road got 52 mpg at 60 mph. Ran 400 miles on $5 worth of gas. It got 38-40 mpg city driving. Had an 85 mph speedo which I pegged several times, 2 or 3 hours at a stretch.
On gas? Even more impressive.
This, to me, is the relevant point. If saving the planet is REALLY the intent,…. small, light, simple to build, low resource consumption, super efficient, reasonable safety*, OK one or two dozen might die in a million, cars, (whew), would likely save more people in the production stream and environment than the 8 airbag, ABS, direct injection, slightly better than almost perfect emissions (never mind hoe the emission controls were made) near TWO TON behemoths (midsize/compact) that roam today. In North America at least.
On this theme, face it, short of NASCAR cages and harness, trying to stop injury in a 70mph’ish head on is pretty much futile. Like a TVR executive used to say about lack of ABS and airbags, “well, don’t crash”. I miss them like my Golf.
*reasonable safety. If you are an incompetent idiot, nothing will save your oblivious moron ass from a ‘where did that come from’, tree, 40 ton truck, granite wall or cliff.
Me2,
Don’t forget the idiot driving off the road for no apparent reason.
It is almost a type of arms race on the roadway. Person A has a big heavy vehicle. If I am able to see over that I also need a big heavy vehicle. The Car dealer is happy to sell more high profit SUVs to anyone they can.
I like that quote from TVR. That was a nice light car. 🙂
The quote was not originally, specifically directed at me. But I liked it too.
My version is ‘do whatever it takes to make you feel safe, as long as you leave me alone’.
Arms race. 🙂
F350 CC/LB BB, lifted, 35″ tires, mega 1/4″ bumper on plates to frame, reinforced plates, guards…….My seat is as far back as possible and I wear my seat belt, no airbag.
Unless you are a semi, and I see those coming and respect their mass, regardless of ‘right’, I probably win. 🙂
I love little, light, underpowered cars. I love motorcycles, heavy, light over or under powered.
Unfortunately, I won’t even dare venture out on the public highways with anything less than 3 tons at a minimum 24+” bumper height and CoG now.
I feel safer, off road, drunk, with loaded guns and liquored rednecks…..Good thing all are abundant here.
Oh.
My personal liking;
Tuscan R
0-100 mph: 8 seconds
100-0 mph: Just over 4 seconds.
Ow, my face. I loved my Golf diesel for it’s insane ‘maximum for minimum’, even if pedantic. I worshiped the Tuscan for it’s lack of care about anything but behaving like a motorcycle. So what if it smelled like resin?
I used to have a ’64 Corvair Monza. Hopped it up a little, but it was still slower than Gerald Ford under sedation. But it was damned fun to drive “balls to the wall.”
There is much truth in the saying, It is more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.
I give you the 73 Datsun 1200,in every way I could see it was better then the Bug,wish we could have cars like that now
Dear Kevin,
Yup. Looking back, those were actually terrific examples of the KISS Principle.
Straightforward and dead reliable. Turn the key, and it started up and got you where you wanted to go.
These front engine rear drive vehicles had none of the disadvantages of the otherwise great Bug, such susceptibility to cross winds, excessive weight in the rear, and swing axle oversteer tendencies.
Yup!
I was there, too. I drove those cars; I know from personal experience what they were capable of. Not nearly as quick, 0-60, as a typical modern car. But perfectly capable of keeping up with traffic – today’s traffic – while getting better mileage than anything not a hybrid.
Tesla is starting to sound like the optimal car.
In NJ some roads have a weaving merge where the entrance to the interchange is say 50 ft before the exit so to enter you may have to cross traffic attempting to exit. Somehow it always works out, but having extra acceleration for 5 seconds helps.
Torque is the answer to that problem, and electrics are good at that. But I’ll keep my TDI, thanks.
How much power do we need? How big a magazine do we need for a rifle? Do we need to have our own guns? What was it that Pitt said about necessity?
Do we need to have our own guns? Yes, as long as the gunvermin have them.
Even if the pheroes and military turn theis in, we will still need ‘a well regulated militia’ don’t you know?
Magazine size I will grant as a matter of personal taste. Just be sure you have several, and practice changing them quickly.
What do you say to the argument that engines lose pep over the years so it’s better to have a somewhat more powerful engine, if you plan to keep the car for many years? I bought a new 4 cylinder civic in 2003 and drove it for eight years, and towards the end it seemed a little more pokey when you punched it to pass on the highway and so forth.
Hi Bobby,
Wear and tear is inevitable, but obvious power loss ought not to be an issue for a long time. Most any new/recent vintage car engine will maintain compression within specifications for 100,000 miles (usually much more) if it’s maintained reasonably well and not abused.
The slowest new car on the road is – IIRC – the Toyota Prius C hybrid. It takes about 12 seconds to reach 60, pedal to the metal. This is more than twice as quick as a ’70s-era VW Beetle.
Just for some perspective!
Bobby,
I have a 2004 Civic Coupe VP. It has EGR. I found if the manifold ports are clogged and the ECM expects them to be clear then the performance on the engine suffers. Now cleaning the ports isn’t something I’d recommend a shade tree mech do unless he is very patient and watches lots of U-Tube videos so he has a good idea of what he’s in for. But cleaning the ports will help to restore some of your lost powah……
David Ward
Memphis, Tennessee
Hi Bobby,
Your car probably just needed a tune-up!
“Codpieces for the impotent.”
So true.
Very well written Eric.
Anymore, if you are a car lover and like spirited driving you almost have to have a track vehicle.(that what I did anyway, I’m taking a break(young kids)…for now)
The state gov’t are brutal now and the traffic too bad in many areas.
I hate to say that my daily driver is an appliance now….if I had anything “cool” outside a track vehicle it would be an old muscle car that has “appliance” performance compared to today’s standards anyway…and I’d only be driving it on the weekends(or Fridays in to work) anyway.
Back when the double-nickel was the law of the land, you could actually do 70-75 without too much hassle because the cops knew it was BS. But then the law was repealed and highway speeds went back to 65 & 70mph like they were before. And suddenly you couldn’t speed anymore, since it was being *enforced*. Sucked.
At least half of the year my mainstay of transportation is a motorcycle.
I’m looking to buy another in the next year or so. I’d love to get an Indian Roadmaster, but I recognize it is way overpowered. What is the ideal size for a motorcycle engine given all the constraints on speed these days?
One problem is that mid-sized motorcycles do not have all the amenities for long distance touring that the large cycles have. I intend to ride my next cycle from Boston to the West coast, and back again.
Would you care to suggest specific bikes that I might look at?
David,
Why the F would you want to come back…? (At least, all the way. Heartland still has some redeeming qualities. Not like the Left Coast, nor the OTHER Left coast…)
And that’s my sentiment BEFORE we got 90″ of snow, and a pubic transit system that goes offline in the NORMAL temperatures of Bean town… (Spelling intentional.)
For those who don’t know: The MBTA has suspended regular service indefinitely.
The head of the MBTA, who earns $200K+, resigned recently. She’s been there for a year, I think, but is known for lots of out-of-state trips and for expensing everything she can. I leave further demographic information to speculation…
Of note:
– Snow melters are offline, have been for years – we’re borrowing.
– Trains aren’t running, as noted.
– the NEW engines are the ones breaking down… Not the 1960’s era GP9 type diesels, which were purchased used in the 70’s and are still running.
– New cars were purchased for the additional load – spot-welded, so they are cold, they are SMALLER than the old cars (in a time of swelling backsides) – and they are breaking.
– ONE snow removal vehicle for the entire MBTA – powered by jet fuel. ($$$)
– MBTA is holding the bonds for the “Big Dig” – you’ll need to google it. It’s taking ALL their income right now.
– Orange line is susceptible to cold – it breaks regularly.
– Red line hasn’t been maintained in years. As in, doors don’t open – or open while in transit between stations! (Note it is still more reliable than Orange line…)
– Green line (trolley) works fairly well, except that they’re shutting down service on the exposed sections… Which goes to the Longwood Medical Center, THE medical center for the area: Harvard, Brigham and Womens, and there’s another hospital out there, IIRC. Tufts, maybe? Not sure. That leaves ONE good hospital in the city…
– Speaking of hospitals? the Effing NEW MAYOR cleared the snow for the Patriot’s Victory parade, but NO ONE COULD GET TO THE HOSPITAL!
– MBTA buys the equipment, someone else runs it (foreign management company)
– Overall, Taxachusetts is pretty lousy on gun laws, taxes (Federal, State, Local, + you pay taxes on your tax return, I shit you not!) Cops can be a-holes or careless; not sure which works, if either. E.G., the woman almost was run over by a car, who went AROUND a stopped cop, WITH THE SNOW ON THE GROUND, to make a RIGHT TURN at the corner… The cop chewed him out but no ticket. OTOH, I almost got a ticket for having a headlight out (got a written warning), and the POS wanted to go after me for not changing the registration; I’m a CONTRACTOR, Jersey is still my legal mailing address at the time, and I’ve been in Asshole-Twoshits less than 30 days. If he’d pursued it, I’d probably be in prison or dead… but they also do warrantless searches up here, which was a REASON FOR THE REVOLUTION… Dumb fucks need to be executed, slowly, in public.
But that applies also to the Sheeple who keep voting the thieves in.
The people are corrupt. They should be held liable and punished, as it’s their own cupidity and lust that has resulted in this mess… But I digress. Parochial minds, disinterested in anything of import (including their OWN HISTORY)…. But they love them their Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, boxing, and even UFC and Pride….
Like I said, Why the F would you COME BACK…? 😛
Take a deep breath Jean,we hear you,trouble my way is the Northern intruders come down here with time on thier hands and the first thing they do is get around to is getting involved with politics( a lot of them anyway) and they want this or that service provided which of course raises taxes and more ordinances to make people behave,so it feeds on itself more govt meddling-more taxes=poorer natives,so you are right why should anybody really want to return to the Hollywood land of Sheeple and warmongers?I’m sorry but societies cannot evolve as long as we put our puppets in and meddle,(the old ways were just fine,we dont need an extremly fast ,jet set life{take time to love-produces lasting results}
In the early 80s many big corps (e.g., American Airlines) were moving HQ from NYC to TX due to no state income tax.
A popular bumper sticker on LBJ (I-635 in Dallas) was “Love NY? Take I-30 east!”
Similar sentiment – Welcome to Texas. Now go home!
Yankees – fish heads are too good for them.
“… / How ’bout a vaccine / to prevent bureacracy? / How ’bout a cure / for the obsessive personality / …”
(Sorry, can’t find the group… Just remember it was a girl band, and I keep thinking Kitty, but can’t find the lyrics…)
Yeah, fish heads are too good for control freaks.
I live with one…
Funny how it works, if you’re OK taking care of yourself, you don’t bother… But some A-hole wants recycling pickup added into those services (or whatever they want) – YOU are forced to pay for it, “for the greater good.”
By the time you find out, it’s already a done deal.
Reasons to know (and occasionally poison) your neighbors…
Jean here’s their info. Some interested netizen would have to put up the lyrics to Fear Makes Perfect you quoted, it doesn’t look like anyone has yet.
Artist: H4Y
Song: Fear Makes Perfect
Sunshine Blind was a Goth/Trip hop/Darkwave band started in 1991 by CWHK and Caroline Blind. They released four albums before breaking up in 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Blind
The next project by most of the remaining members of H4Y was Fear Makes Perfect, which never really found its sound before it dissolved in October 2004. Caroline Blind of both bands, works independently on music at the moment.
Formed in 1991 in New Jersey by vocalist Caroline Blind and Guitarist CWHK, Sunshine Blind’s signature guitar driven rock, powerful vocals and admonishing lyrics made for a break from the keyboard-generated string orchestras used in much of the music played in goth clubs at the time.
The bands’ name and photos appeared in many of the goth zines of the time (Blue Blood, Ghastly, Propaganda), as well as in more mainstream music magazines such as Alternative Press.
Sunshine Blind played and toured along with so many great bands of the time, and 1996, they supported Faith and the Muse on their nationwide “Apparition” tour. In 1997 Sunshine Blind did another nationwide tour with west coast favorites Switchblade Symphony.
They have played shows sporadically since then, in the U.S. and abroad, and released their third (and most Trip-hop) CD “I Carry You” in 2003. Blind and CWHK parted ways in 2003, but played a reunion show in San Francisco in 2010 with William Faith of Faith and the Muse on bass, and original Sunshine Blind drummer Geoff Bruce on drums.
(Sunshine Blind performed at Convergence I and Convergence II; we are ecstatic they could join us for Convergence 20!)
Sunshine Blind – Crescent & the Star
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y54UR0qNdk
Sunshine Blind – I Ran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKwWoRrGzRo
Sunshine Blind/H4Y – I Carry You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXKryWGWkPU
I’ll take Type O Negative instead.
Or, would.
RIP, Pete Steele….
Awesome. checking him out. I think I was some flavor of emo goth before there was such a thing. The only one in the far northern yooper upper midwest listening to alternative music from a long defunct college radio station by some musician permanent student living on his girlfriend’s couch no doubt.
– – – –
I was about to post this 24 carrot looney tunes gem, so will do so below…
What if Henry L Mencken or Ayn Rand were alive and had a blog. What kind of stream of unconciousness drivel would I’ve have posted there by now I can only wonder. If Fred Reed had a forum, I’d have crapped it up by now, too afraid to live like him, still stranded and bowing to the great Ovarian Oracles here in Vichy America. So much real work goes undone. Mom sleeps in a recliner now, won’t let me help, but maybe that’s because she doesn’t think I can, her liver is shutting down due to a lifetime of poor diet, but not drinking or drugs. Somewhere there is a human offspring of mine wondering this earth feeling betrayed by me with prematurely yellowed teeth. Somewhere a chubby IRS bill collecting vulture lolls on a warm rock. Too fat to chase me down and devour me for my unpaid back taxes. What have I done. What am I doing. How can it be I can’t spare a dime because I’m infinitely bankrupt spiritually and actually. If Chuck Bukowski was alive and had a blog, even he’d be like: “dude, sober up and get your shit together mang. you’re an embarassment.” You understand all the issues, you’ve ticked all the freedom boxes. But so what. You’re defacto broke and a pathetic penniless joke. You’ve got to produce. Contribute. Bring home something for dinner. Find a niche and stop being a whiny spammy internet biche you beaky buzzard bastard.
Check it out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO9aD4mzSE8
Eric,
When you mentioned I’ll take Type O Negative instead I was thinking of this video:
BEEP BEEP ~ THE LITTLE NASH RAMBLER ~ The PLAYMATES
Although the relevant song is Transfusion 1956 by Nervous Norvus
Hey daddy-O ah make that type O ah thattaboy.
Awesome, thanks for finding that info, Tor!
The Woman insisted i get rid of my CDs… Been putting them on the computer.
And of course, the computer is set right next to the TV now…
So it’s a de facto removal of my music from my life.
Just another brick in the wall….
🙂
Texas was a completely different place before 1980 when the chimp got popular and leftover military yankees were hired ‘en masse’ by oil companies because yankees’ know how to do everything better. It used to irk all us Texans to the max to see ex-military dipshits get the good oil jobs(not roughnecking, no way, no how)because they had big mouths. Now we have the “tall and clueless’ crowd as bosses and since nobody wants to hear from them, the small and brown who rarely speak English actually doing the work. To paraphrase Milton Friedman If you put yankees in charge of the Sahara Desert there’d be a shortage of sand.
One simple answer: Because that’s where my job is. I have to work, I have no retirement. I’m 71, with a reasonably good job. At my age, with no retirement, one doesn’t just pack up and move to a different part of the country. That’s why I’ll return to Boston. I have to.
Meh, that sucks.
re: No retirement, that’s the new normal,” I think, and been planned for a while…
Although, I do not have much experience with this, you may want to consider a Suzuki V-strom 650 or something similar.
It should be big enough to comfortably travel longer distances and have some amenities.
Totalmotorcycle is not a bad place to ask for opinions on type of motorcycle to choose.
Well,ello’ Eric heard CopperHill mentioned on the weather segment the other day(anybody watching the Solar system-strange things happening better get ready for the pole flip) Any way my 3 cats say a big thumbs up,the Old Tom has about had it,the black dropoff is getting smarter all the time and the Tortiseshell rescue kitty is getting prettier all the time and extremely well mannered(they couldnt catch her,so some blokes were going to shoot her,all She wanted was something to eat)
Good Republicans all,I loathe those B@#$%^ at times.
Anyway those so called Auto Magazines get my goat,they almost always favor the most expensive ,most powerful models,the worthiness of the steed is determined by how many G’s it can generate on takeoff(one thing electrics are good for)
I would like to have an old metal pickup with 4BT power,seen an old studebaker PU tooling down the highway not to long ago Via Diesel(bet it was a 4BT)
You are right people have lost there sensibility,FIL bought a 38K chariot the other day for some reason(He could get by with one vehicle easily were he lives,He already has a Cherry Silverado in immaculate condition for some reason people around here think they need a least 2 vehicles per person)
Everybody passed my Geo Metro, but I always consoled myself with its 50-55 mpg. The only real power around here are my snowdrift-busting, gas-snorting, old 4wd Dodges, which come out of their caves every November.
I’ve got a compact, four-cylinder truck… hardly “speedy” … yet when I drive it, I am still usually passing every car on the road, including cars with twice (and even three times) its power/performance capability.
And I don’t drive that fast, either.
As an example: On the major rural highway that bisects my county, the speed limit is 55 and I typically run 70-75. Which is not crazy fast for this road. It’s almost one-finger-on-the-wheel-speed, in fact. 55 is Old-Lady-in-a-Camry-speed. But most drivers barely go faster and many drivers go much slower.
I usually pass several each way, going down the mountain and back up again….
I drive a Yaris, and I’m the fastest thing on the road, flying past dipsticks driving V10 supertruks at 35mph.
The people of Middle America should have rebelled (over the income tax) in 1978 -80 when they were mobilized and the Feds were running scared rather than backing off and trusting Reagan to set things right.
Mike, I agree!
For a long time, I was among those gulled by Ronald Reeeeeaaaaagan – whose aw shucks avuncularity glossed over the revival of, among other things, know-nothing flag-humping authority-worship. The guy was, at best, a tool. At worst, a John the Baptist figure who paved the way for Clintigula and then The Chimp.
Too true Eric, Reagan was a senile fool and tool of the Wall St. elite. He started the “greed is good” era and the middle class has been sliding downhill ever since.
On a lighter note I have 2 cats crowding my lap while I type, plus a semi-feral stray that shelters in my garage; would love to see pictures of yours and anyone else who hangs out here 🙂
Hi Mike,
Yup.
I think we can pinpoint the birth of the modern American police state to Reagan’s term. In particular, the doings of the cretinous John Poindexter and the teary-eyed thug Ollie North (the latter being the one who single-handedly resurrected “troop” worship hand-in-hand with SA-style extra-legal skullduggery, which is now both routine and publicly routine). Reagan’s funeral was of a piece with the funeral given Reichsprotecktor Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, too.
Don’t forget Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who are throwbacks to the Ford administration.
At the risk of nitpicking, I’d trace the police state genesis to the Nixon administration — Tricky Dick drummed up the war on drugs to whip up some old fashioned witch hunting zeal throughout middle America, and we haven’t looked back since.
Darien – you could be right, but I go back even farther – to LBJ and the ‘Civil Rights Act’ and its non-quota quotas.
And I trace it back at least to the tyrant Lincoln, who started this corporatism crap.
You win, I won’t disagree with you.
There have been no ‘good’ presidents, just some less bad than others.
Even Jefferson took the Louisiana Purchase bait.
And Washington enforced use of Gov’t money (Whiskey Rebellion: Farmers were using whiskey to pay each other, avoiding the taxes. Can’t have good tax cattle if the cattle are permitted to not pay taxes….)
We should burn out Elysium, since we can’t all be declared citizens… (Seen the film? Saw a Matt Damon speech on FB yesterday – sounds like he might be one of us…)
(I’ll have to post the link later. Boston has shit cell service, and I can’t get a signal at SOUTH F*CKING STATION…. not exactly the boonies here!)
Dear Phil,
True.
Government: a gang of thugs that demands obedience and money at gunpoint from everyone with the misfortune to live inside a line it drew on a map. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
Reagan’s biggest problem was that he WANTED to be President. I think he had good intentions (like eliminating the Dept of Ed). When the Rockefeller branch of the GOP saw he was going to get the nomination, they told him that they would throw the election and let Jimmeh be reelected unless he took THEIR man, George H W Bush, former head of the CIA, as his running mate.
Once he got in, he saw how little power the President really has, and folded.
Call me crazy (as many have ), but I believe the assassination attempt on Reagan was part of the plan. Get Bush in as VP, kill Reagan, and voilà: the CIA has its man as president. When Reagan survived, he was made to understand that he had to toe the line in order to continue living.
I have no hard evidence for that belief, but it does fit in with the flow of USSA history from the Kennedy assassination to the present. And it explains why Reagan acted in a way that was so contrary to everything he had ever professed.
That is very apparent. Reagan changed after that event. He put some very dangerous people (people that agree with us on things) into federal positions early on. After the event they were just left unsupported until they quit or were fired for some nonsense or the other.
David Stockman is an example of that. Thank you for pointing out another piece of evidence. Maybe I’m not crazy after all.
My grandma was good friends with Reagan, and she always said he was never the same after being shot.
Hi Rich,
The more I looked into Reagan, the less I admired him. Did you know that as governor of California he enacted the state’s first “gun ban”? But what finally disabused me of any lingering respect for him was his presiding over the revivification of something that had been almost dead in this country: Worship of the military. Ollie North was a gangster-sociopath, a hit man in olive drab. Reagan also aided and abetted the corporate ass-rape of the country which has turned the place into both a banana republic and a police state.
He got away with it, in part, because of his superficial avuncularity and movie star charisma. But the guy was a callous greedheaded old fool.
Jimmah Cahtah had numerous flaws – and was no Libetarian. But I suspect him of being a human being, with a soul as well as a mind.
Reagan had neither.
Dear Eric,
Wow. This is a great thread. Everybody has a piece of the larger Reagan puzzle.
The Reagan administration was a interesting paradox.
I would like to think that he actually meant to do the right thing in the beginning, but as several here have astutely noted, Reagan may have been “turned” with the assassination attempt.
We should remember that he did recruit some very good people. Paul Craig Roberts and David Stockman for example, who are currently writing for LRC. I’m sure there are others with less name recognition but the same orientation.
That joke about showing presidents elect the Zapruder film is funny because it has an element of chilling truth in it.
Bevin,
PCR is a good guy on many fronts, but his protectionism drives me nuts. I’m sure it drives Lew nuts too. Stockman may be in the same boat as PCR.
I guess the thing I have the hardest time with is each of their belief in a role for government, albeit limited. But, best to work with people who you agree with on 95% of stuff. You won’t get anywhere only working with the people whom you agree with 98% of the time. Hahaha.
If someone agrees with you 100% of the time, or you agree with them 100% of the time, somethings wrong.
I’d have to agree with what eric says about RR. I was forced(well, it was one of those moments you feel you can’t avoid when it’s going on)to watch the whole RR debacle including the Ollie North show crying in front of senators you knew were helping the POS. Even back then it didn’t take a genius to know the military was the force responsible for bringing in more cocaine than any other entity possibly could have and Ollie had his finger in the pie and his nose in the pile.
But, as PtB pointed out, LBJ was the guy I first really feared for his trumped up war and obvious assassination of MLK and JFK. It was just as pat as JFK and very few had caught on to either and even if they had, were powerless to do anything about it.
We still lived under the threat of a nuclear attack from the USSR even though it made no sense except to those who swallowed the “godless commies” crap.
But it was part of school, even college so it endured well beyond good sense.
Then when Nixon upped the ante with the war on drugs, it was obvious they had to keep the young and informed down anyway they could.
As far as Reagan went, I knew he was senile before ever becoming prez and also knew of his gun control act just cause he was scared of what LBJ wasn’t feign to say but Reagan was and that was those uppity niggers…..niggers with guns and the legal right to carry them and knew what they were talking about. RR knew(sic)”they” had to keep the races fighting and did his best to see it done.
Eisenhower had been prez most of my life and while he was no saint, he was hands above anyone else who finished their term in office since.
So how did we get here? It was my generation who served in Vietnam and the same that got the war stopped. So what do you do? Give them things to worry about like not being able to eat and the first oil embargo certainly did that although it was pure fiction since we had more oil than we could handle. Those who didn’t sell out brown-nosing their way to some perceived security when they got older for the most part got jailed for saying otherwise and then the program of what I call “Presidents for prisoners”, the make a buck off incarceration bunch got a toe hold and the rest has been rapidly downhill up to the chimp that really upped the ante. We only thought we were losing rights until BillyC and that evil Republican cabal showed us what losing your rights was really about.
Whatever our current POTUS may have thought is irrelevant to what he’s done.
So now the net is about to be shut down for all intents and purposes and everybody’s still spending their time on FB and Shitter and those other non-sensical things you can do electronically and so few of the youth even have a clue. Excuse me, I need a drink.
I agree with Ancap re: Paul Craig Roberts.
But if you find someone with whom you agree 100%, 1 of you is redundant.
Dear ancap, Phil,
No argument there. Few people are “pure”. But hey, that’s okay.
Not even Ron Paul is “pure”.
I forget who it was, but a comedian has this routine:
What is the first thing that happens when a new president is inaugurated? He is taken to a room, told to sit down. The lights dim, and the Zapruder film rolls. After it’s over he is asked, “any questions”?
Dear Mike,
You have me wondering, can Alzheimers be artificially induced?
Never mind, I just Googled “natural news alzheimers” and found this.
http://www.naturalnews.com/048544_aluminum_Alzheimers_disease_antacids.html
“Aluminum in antacids, food, water and vaccines causes Alzheimer’s disease”
How hard would it be for the PTB to take out Reagan for not playing ball, by artificially inducing Alzheimers in him?
Or am I crazy?
The Bush and Hinckley clans were long time friends. Ever read that in the lamestream media or gunvermin approved textbook?
I just looked the Bush/Hinckley connection up.
Holy conspiracy Batman! You are right.
I didn’t know that. It could explain why Hinckley didn’t have a Jack Ruby moment. As an insider he was trusted to keep his mouth shut.
MiS, I am very surprised this is news to anyone. If the FBI and MKUltra didn’t have their hands all over Hinckley then I’m the monkey’s uncle. No telling otherwise how he could come up with a story like he did and being someone seen often around Reagan, even the SS wasn’t worried about someone they’d seen and knew so many times.
When Lennon was gunned down, it was deja vu(all over again). He easily let those in power make fools of themselves and then pointed it out.
Anyone who thinks it wasn’t politically motivated just wasn’t born soon enough. It’s easy enough when you haven’t been keeping score for a few decades to let something like that slide by and not question the who’s and why’s.
Dear 8sm,
Apparently there are suspicious links between Hinckley and Chapman!
“Links have sometimes been drawn between Chapman’s actions and those of other killers or attempted killers. John Hinckley, who only months later tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, was also associated with The Catcher in the Rye. Further, John Hinckley’s father, John Hinckley, Sr, was president of World Vision, for whom Chapman was employed. “
Dear Phil,
So Reagan replaced by Bush was a re-play of Kennedy replaced by Johnson?
Makes sense to me.
Also, don’t forget that George Herbert Walker Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, and HIS father-in-law, George Herbert Walker, were early financiers of the Hitler administration. So this stuff goes back a ways.
That I knew about.
It’s been said that Prescott would have been hung had the war not almost have been over when the charges against him came up. Passions were high and if he hadn’t had TPTB behind him he would have been strung up since the US was finding out more every day about the mass killings the Nazi’s had done throughout the war.
I would recommend Max Hasting’s All Hell Let Loose to come to some serious revelations and connecting the dots about what went on prior, during and after WWll. At 785 pages it isn’t a fast read but probably THE best I’ve read on that war and I’ve ready many historically accurate tomes on it. I don’t consider W&P to be there as accurately since it’s clearly biased.
MiB, since my wife and I are early risers we used to watch the Jim and Tammy Faye show every morning. It was the epitome of RR’s administration. Quote from Jim one morning “God wants you to have diamonds, he wants you to have gold”. What he didn’t say was do your best to fleece it from the flock and he had a large one.
We used to bet how many Valium Tammy had that morning and how much coke. When she got the mix right, she nailed it although she always ended up crying.
Then I’d go to work and hear from management how great Ronnie was(how great thou art)while my co-workers and I rolled our eyes and occasionally made a point that showed Ronnie for what he was. We got no kudos for that.
I went to college near their place. After the fall from grace, a girl and I drove out to Heritage USA and checked the place out (she had a Nissan 240Z — nice). Turns out Tammy was “borrowing” jewelry from the shop in the mall and “forgetting” to return it after the show was taped. Someone from the ministry would eventually pay the bill.
Another Tammy-Faye story. As my college job I worked at the local mall, and she showed up to do some shopping. This was after the story broke and everyone was looking at her (with all her make-up, it was hard to miss her, honestly). Tammy went over to the mall cop and demanded that he make everyone stop.
I can just see that. I’ll bet she stomped her little feet and got red in the face. What an actress…..what a peabrain. She and Jim really were an ideal couple. Tiny little people, even smaller brains and not a conscience anywhere in sight.
We loved it when Tammy got so taken away she cried while singing and had to wipe the rivers of mascara. She could have saved a fortune with tats.
The correct question is, “How much power do I *want*?” The answer is, “As much as I can afford.”
You’re being too generous to the average America driver, Eric. Passivity is a choice. People drive the way they think (or fail to think), and when they fail to think it’s because they abdicated the responsibility.
Wait: You have eleven cats? The hell haven’t you ever mentioned them before? Or posted photos? Come on: cough up some baby pictures.
Ok, Paula… you asked for it!
(Look for it soon…)
eric, damnation, I been trying to find out about your kitties for years. I’ll post mine if you post yours….and BJ is lying on my mouse and is now falling back down on my arm and the keyboard.
I’ll routinely accelerate from a red light at half throttle, maybe 2,000 to 2,500 rpm, and in a ten or twenty seconds find myself well ahead of a crowd of cars lagging perhaps a quarter mile behind me.
My car doesn’t quite make 270 HP, and I recently floored it for the first time ever — for about five seconds at freeway speeds — before I was going fast enough to startle the drivers in other cars, and then slowed back down to cruising speed to avoid a speeding ticket.
I think what you describe is pretty typical, Jim.
My mother-in-law recently bought a new Hyundai Sonata Limited. It has the 2.0 turbo engine and 245 hp. I doubt my mother-in-law has ever in her life driven faster than 80 MPH and around town, she is hard pressed to drive as fast as the flow of traffic. She needs the 245 hp turbo engine as much as I need another cat! (We have 11; don’t ask… .)
A few nights ago, I was coming home late from my brothers after a night of cards. It was after midnight, and there seemed to be very few cops out. The interstate near my house is four lanes in each direction so there is plenty of road at that time of the night. I was passing in the left lane, and I looked down at the speedometer and I was doing 92mph. Faster then I thought I was doing. I look to my right, and I am NOT blowing past the other traffic, going only a little bit faster. Almost everyone was going at least 85mph, including the truckers!
The road is well lighted, the pavement was dry and the road has only very gentle curves and is mostly straight. There is no good reason why 85 shouldn’t be “legal” at least at night. Because at that moment thats what the flow of traffic was doing and it wasn’t “unsafe”.
richb, it’s so obvious you were shit-faced drunk, a hazard to even North Koreans but you lucked out and didn’t( I suppose) kill anyone. You must have that Libertarian view that you can do anything you want at any time and it’s ok. It was “safe” because you didn’t kill anybody THAT time. So maybe you and eric and Brent can wreck each other out some night while other people just want to slowly make their way home…..safe. Clover PS, I just feel for all those other innocent people you 3 or maybe more Libertarians kill and maim.
Those high output engines are fun in the summer but are source of great distress in foul weather and deep snow.
CC,
What are your thoughts on low HP, high Torque engines?
Like the Cummins 4BT?
.
I put one in my Jeep. I love it. Good mileage, great power, makes the old Cherokee downright peppy.
I was actually thinking a bit smaller. (~2001 VW TDI 1.9L 90Hp engine with about 150ft-lbs torque)
A great daily driver.
It has good legs for the highway: (~84mph @ 3000 RPM in top gear)
My preference is lots of torque peaking at lower RPMs and horsepower less relevant. Winter drags for 5 months here, a quick revving engine traversing snow packed and unpaved roads is way more excitement than I require.
From your description, a diesel (especially w/a turbo) would be more to your liking.
C C, you need a DD16 with a peak torque of 2350 ft. lbs. @1,000 rpm…..and it’s only 600 hp or a bit more.
Perhaps. But I don’t need the Freightline that comes with it!
All true. Why I like my 84 Mercedes 190D-2.2. I can literally drive the snot out of those 73 raging horsepower without running afoul of the black hats. And get 42mpg doing it. And deal with as little insurance as allowed.
America has had the life, the fun, all the good things sucked out of it. I have to correct people who say its going to be a police state. Communism came here first with the Fed and the progressive income tax. The Russians were pikers- our propaganda and our proles were just easier- 100 years of relative freedom allowed Americans to lose their natural immunity to government. And then the propaganda kept the left 75% of the bell curve content enough. I really want out.
Everything you say is true. But there is a silver lining…even if it’s a thin one.
You still can use your 300+ horsepower car to accelerate hard up to the max speed limit. And that’s fun! Fairly low risk too, if you don’t do burn outs, or have a “look at me” loud exhaust system.
MikePizzo,
You are correct about the acceleration. At times it can be useful, especially if there is only a small window to get around an obstacle.
Usually I accelerate comfortably up to 60 in 15-20 seconds. The sad note about this is that I often pass other people when I accelerate this leisurely. For the others that I do not out accelerate, I usually catch up to them within a minute or two at most.
I don’t know…
In Jersey, I knew a guy who got a ticket because he accelerated too fast from the tollbooth.
This was while there were a few toll operators, but most booths were automated/unmanned…
ANYTHING you do can be criminalized; it’s been that way since at least the mid-80s.
I just wasn’t aware of it then – I guess my parents were a good “primer”: Dad was an authoritarian prick, free with his hands; mom was a neurotic, emotionally abusive “victim” type.
So, my response now is to see TPTB as the enemy, and treat them accordingly. If I do right and take full responsibility for my life, and care for everyone as a good Christian should, they’ll STILL gang-rape me with a broken bottle, “because safety.”
So I’ll follow the Golden Rule’s Inverse corollary:
Do unto others as they would do unto you, but do it first, and make sure they can’t get back up…
(For those with a masochistic side, a close comparison is the film, “let me in.” No pool, but the bullying is about the same. It doesn’t address the compounding of parental interference.)
I sense a little anger–some piss and vinegar–from you Jean……..I like it.
Re: the golden rules inverse corollary. I always refer to it as the “silver rule.” Do unto others as they do unto you.
Yes, Ancap, that is the silver rule. Then there is the brass rule – do others before they do you. (Kind of along the lines of Dick Nixon – before he dicks you.)
I couldn’t agree more. Back in 06 I drove from east Idaho to St. George UT each week for work. It’s an 8 hour drive at 80 mph. Back then the PSL was 75. I drove it at 90 mph each way, every weekend in an 05, 4 cylinder Accord. I could usually make it there in 7:15 but sometimes on the way back on Friday afternoons there were so many cops, that my passport was constantly beeping at me. It was a constant slow down on I-15 through central UT. If there is a road that could be safely traveled at 100 in today’s economy cars it’s this one.
In the 4 months while I drove that stretch of interSTATE, I passed every sport sedan I could think of. I passed plenty of Corvette’s, Porsche’s and one time a Ferrari–you always notice a Ferrari. I always thought–many times outloud to my co-workers–why have those cars in this country. You can’t even drive them. They’re getting passed by a fucking Accord. But, that’s who was generally pulled over on that trip. People driving Camry’s, Accords, Suburbans, pickups, etc. Even Mini-vans. It was rare to see a Lexus, Beamer, Mercedes or other sport sedans pulled over. I don’t recall a Porsche or Vette sitting there with Mr. Piggy. I only recall passing them at a higher speed. I remember being passed by poor suckers in SUV’s because they didn’t have detectors–I didn’t slow down to 79 for nothing.
This country is a hellhole police state. I can only listen to the stories my dad tells of when they drove 90 mph everywhere. The cars had no seat belts. There were very few 4 lane roads and highways. The cars weren’t near as capable of safely braking and didn’t handle turns as well. Now the only cars that can’t travel safely at 100 mph are the ones who can’t really get up to that speed. It sucks. It’s all thanks to the safety cult, parasite merchants we call LEO’s and the politicians who breed them.
I always have to wonder about the continual wrecks I see. Evidently, roadways such as I-20 in west Tx. are too flat and straight to handle. I wish everyone had to drive a big rig for a while. Typical scenario, interstate full of trucks in states of perpetual passing so injecting a stupid four wheeler driver only escalates the things you have to keep an eye on. That car or pickup is on the entrance ramp and slowly coming up to speed so all the big rigs and other traffic must move over requiring some to brake that were about to pass and often causing some really close situations when all of a sudden, everybody has to slam on the brakes. Meanwhile the entering vehicle is taking clovers good old time and finally gets into the outside lane and upon realizing where they are, gas it and run on away from the speed limited trucks who then have to sort it all back out, some having to brake once again to let all the faster traffic in the inside lane go by while the offending auto cruises on away. Everybody gets back up to speed and puts it on cruise and after a bit, have to brake behind that same clover who slowed down to a speed just slightly slower than the trucks it just made slow down for it. Then the first big rig has to try to pass again but then clover decides the speed the truck is doing is EXACTLY the same speed they desire. It rocks along like this so finally the big rig moves over to let faster traffic go by and by golly, clover once again decides that speed ever so slightly slower than the big rig behind them is the one they want…….until the big rig moves out to pass. These idiots often cause wrecks on straight, level road simply by being the most inconsiderate, discourteous and dangerous driver they know how to be.
Then there’s the construction clover who nails it to go around a big rig and barely makes it into the single lane traffic is necked down to and then proceeds to stand on the brakes, meanwhile the big rig driving is smoking tires trying their best to not run over that fool. And you wonder about all those black marks, gouges and spilt fuel and oil right there where the road is straight and clear.
THESE are the guys needing the wood shampoo, while the phero chants, “what part of ‘yield right of way’ do you not understand?”
Most of I-15 from (at least) the junction of I-70 to one of those little towns just before St George is 85 now.
When I lived in Aspen, summers meant spotting exotic cars on Main St. Oh, they didn’t make the trip from TX or CA (or surprisingly Florida), at least not under their own power. Every Friday a car hauler would pull into the business park across from the airport and unload Porsches, Ferraris, and the occasional Lambo. The private jets would come in later on and the 1% would tool around town, maybe head down to their private track, and leave big tips for the wait staff.
Not jealous, mind you. I’m not capable of doing what they did to earn their millions, and neither are most of us. We have a conscience.
the psl is 80 from the Montana/Idaho border down to St George UT, excepting the cities over 50,000 population where it arbitrarily goes to 65. Also the mountain passes. But, 5 over isn’t “speeding” or so they say. So, 85 all day long. Even 90 keeps you out of trouble. That wasn’t the case back in 06, 90 was a guaranteed ticket back then. Unless you had a good detector like I did. Never got clocked over 80ish I’m sure.