Have you ever heard the story about Robert Johnson at the crossroads?
Johnson was a blues man, back in the ‘20s. The story goes he acquired his skill as a blues man by signing a contract with Legba – a term now out of currency for you-know-who.
The Devil, in case you don’t.
Johnson sold his soul to play the blues.
What has this to do with cars?
Another interesting crossroads approaches.
Electric cars are mostly sold on their speed – since it’s hard to sell them on their cost or their practicality, which is much too high (and much too low) respectively. Elon Musk, for example, is very boastful about the Ludicrous Speed his EVs are capable of.
And, they are.
The Model S sedan is one of the quickest cars ever made – even vs. race cars. It can get to 60 in less than 3 seconds, which is . . . Ludicrous Speed. The thing is a rocket.
Briefly, but still.
Ludicrous Speed is something worth spending money on – regardless of practicality or efficiency. People have done so for years. Porsche’s entire business was built on the concept.
But what happens – to EVs – if that one advantage goes away?
What if a Tesla can’t go any faster than a Corolla – but is unable to go as far as one? And takes at least 5-6 times as long (a minimum of 30-45 minutes) to get going again?
And costs at least twice as much – but only lasts half as long?
An EV’s battery life determines the EV’s useful life. Once the battery needs to be replaced, it’s time to recycle the car – because of the cost of the battery vs. the worth of the car; this happens after about eight years. Actually, sooner – because before batteries croak entirely they lose efficiency partially. Which means whatever the range of the car was when it was new it is less now.
Which means you spend even more time recharging. Eventually – inevitably – the EV can’t be recharged at all. It becomes functionally and economically kaput.
An IC -powered car has a useful life of 15-20 years. Its range never declines during this time and it always takes the same time (not more time) to refuel.
Other than speed, what reason is there to buy an EV?
There’s the “green” aspect, of course. But most of this is just posturing by affluent virtue signalers who wouldn’t be caught dead in something slow and unglamorous. Elon understands this.
Most people who spend substantially more for a car expect . . . substantially more.
Of something other than what they paid.
Of something other than impracticality.
A slow EV – or at least, one that’s no faster than any other car – is a car that is going to be a hard sell.
Well, EVs are about to have that problem, Houston – if the speed limiting tech that has already been mandated for cars sold in Europe comes here.
Which it will, almost inevitably- because it’s already on its way.
Speed Limit Assist, as it is styled (more here) will become de facto standard in cars sold here, even if it’s not formally mandated.
Because it’s been mandated in Europe.
For the same reason Daytime Running Lamps are de facto standard equipment in most new cars.
It is less trouble to manufacture cars one way rather than two ways. If Audi and VW and Porsche and BMW and Mercedes and Fiat and Land Rover and Jaguar and Mini are required by EU law to install speed limit “assist” their cars – because they are European brands and so subject to European laws – they are going to subject us to the same.
They will do so on the making-of-lemonaid-from-lemons principle.
The speed limiting “assist” will be marketed as a saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety feature, of a piece with things like Lane Keep “assist” and automated brake “assist” and other “assists,” which you may have noticed are very quickly becoming de facto unavoidable in new cars, here and everywhere else.
Bear in mind the power (Darth Vader voice) of the Safety Cult – and the supine poltroonery of the car industry. How it eagerly presents its belly at the first sign of complaint or criticism on any matter claimed to be related to saaaaaaaaaaaafety.
It is a dogma of our times that “speeding” – and “aggressive” acceleration – are the apotheosis of unsafe.
Do you suppose, given the tech is now available to prevent it, that any manufacturer of cars will be able to continue selling cars that lack the tech?
For the children, of course.
And because it will save at least one life.
This, when it comes to pass, will be the ruin of all cars – as other than Transportation Modules. Because it will be the end of driving. At least, it will be the end of any point to it.
And it will be fatal to electric cars. Which will become nothing more than very expensive – and very impractical – cars.
But it will be Just Desserts for Elon, et al – who rent-seeked the EV into the monstrosity it has become, as opposed to what it might have been.
Government mandates – and government (taxpayer) money perverted the idea of developing EVs as more economical, more practical alternatives to conventional cars into a grotesque burlesque of the virtue-signaling rich mulcting the not-rich to finance glamour and glitz and . . . Ludicrous Speed.
Somewhere, Legba is smiling.
…
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I went down to the crossroads
fell down on my knees
…dowwn to the crossroads
fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above me
take me if you please.
Baker, Bruce and Clapton!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=becWr0vc6cA
It comes down to the way an old acquaintance and fellow engineer put it: “Non-Technical people making TECHNICAL decisions”.
In a market-driven economy based on FREE Enterprise (e.g., producers, sellers, and consumers each FREELY making their decisions without interference from others that presume to tell each what to do), automobiles are developed IAW market demand, period. Just look at what Detroit itself had to offer from the period it reached a level of technical stability, say, about 1925, through about 1965, when the s-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-f-t-e-e-e-e-e cult and those whom wanted to “protect the environment” started overriding the recommendations of actual automotive ENGINEERS like Lee Iaccoca. Especially right at 1960, when, for the most part, you saw features on various makes and models that made them as road-worthy as today’s ride some 60 years later.
For example, if you wanted pure simplicity and economy, e.g., a compact, eminently fixable ride that was simple transportation, provided you weren’t going to bomb across “Yew-Tah’s” deserts at 90 mph, you had to look no further than the VW Beetle. Sure, it was noisy, slow, and you couldn’t get A/C and you HAD to drive a ‘Stick’, and in winter, the heater was questionable, but it cost 2/3 of what you could get new from anything that Detroit offered, and if all you needed was to put to work three miles away, and the grocery stores, church, and school were likewise near, then it was PERFECT. But even Detroit then had responded with their “import fighters” (which were also the Renaults and similar offerings from the UK, many an ex-GI would at least give you a hard stare if you park that “Kraut Car” or “Hitler-mobile” in your driveway, if not slash the tires, it’s amazing that VW overcame that stigma!). The Corvair, killed by that shyster’s Nader hack-job in ’65, itself at least attempted to correct some of the problems that weren’t inherently fixable in a RWD, rear-air-cooled engined vehicle, and it turned out to have significant performance potential that was ‘Murica’s’ answer to “Paris Envy”, automotive-wise. Or, you could get a Plymouth Valiant with the stodgy but dependable Slant Six, or a Ford Falcon with its own poke-slow-but-dependable Six (the Chevy Nova, which one could even get a ‘four-banger’ version of the Chevy Six, or the Dodge Dart, would both debut in ’62). And, of course, it was a heyday for George Romney’s American motors, as many a Nash Metropolitan or Rambler American soldiered about (if you didn’t mind vacuum-actuated windshield wipers)
And suppose that economy wasn’t your thing, e.g., you have bucks to spend on a ride that was “special”? Oh…my… (thank you, George Takei)…the choices were almost ENDLESS. If you were a Mopar Man, you could go luxury for not too much with a Chrysler 300, with either a 383 or a 413, which still could get out of its own way. Or, on some models, get a 413 with RAM AIR induction and DUAL QUADS. In a full-size Chevy, for still the kind of bucks the “working man” brought home, you could get a “409” that the Beach Boys waxed lyrical about. For a bit more that you needed SOME bucks to buy, but not that many, you could get a “Vette Stingray, and this before the egotistical morons with the gold chains and shirts open to their navels fancied them.
The whole point of this rant is: Americans had many CHOICES when it came to purchasing automobiles, and it was THEIR choices, just as it was the CHOICE of auto manufacturers to respond to their demands, or, in some cases, where the demand was more, shall we say, specialized, the aftermarket provided the answers. It wasn’t subject to being harangued by “activists”, lobbying by the Insurance Mafia, or simply “Gubmint” interference, prompted by political pressure from vote-seeking politicians responded to nit-witted do-gooders. Yes, someone PLEASE explains to me how the American automotive industry has been made BETTER by all these Government=imposed Fatwas, or how, pray tell, the American DRIVER has benefitted…if anything, it’s been a “lose-lose” proposition for the past 55 or so years, save for opportunistic polticians and their supporters lining their own pockets!
Notice how well that worked with Boeing’s 737 MAX 8……..decisions made by accountants and idiot MBAs
I think government is going to double down on EVs. They will push the regulatory standards further and further on ICE cars until they are simply impossible to meet or cost far more than an EV. They will make more areas off limits to all vehicles but EVs. Why? EVs are simply easier for government to centrally control. Of course that may change. Because creating your own control system from scratch for an EV is easier than for an ICE engine.
Brent, that’s what they’re doing in China. In China, you can get an ICEV, but there’s a rub: you’ll pay $14K PLUS for the plate! That’s right; you’ll pay over $14K for the license plate of your ICEV. OTOH, if you get an EV in China, the plate is free. Soooo, technically, you can buy an ICEV; they just make it prohibitively expensive to do so.
Eventually the ev are going to crater as most people are not going to say the “emperor has clothes” on when he is butt naked. The only thing keeping ev afloat are mandates and environmental dogma. The problems of them mainly the battery is going to be their undoing.
The speed limiter will likely cause a revolt against the “safety” at any cost club. At some point the people revolt. Look at the yellow vest protest in France.
People are going to start waking up to the lunacy of the unelected government employees running amok.
People eventually do. The more people speak out against the safety nazi as Eric does the better.
“Safety Cut” – should be “Safety Cult”, but we get you.
It seems more like personal sit down transportation devices will only be for the rich, government party workers and the connected. See last month (June) where oh-so-green Germany had three grid crisis days of having to borrow some kilowatts to prevent blackouts? I bet Europe can’t wait for all those electric only laws to really hit.
Shut down nukes and fossil fuels California commissars are putting charging stations in every parking lot, insanely up jacking up gasoline prices and ordering every new prol residence install $30,000 worth of comrade will feed the grid solar. While decommissioning nuke and coal plants built when the state had 1/2 the population it has today. All run by the same inbred autistic shoulder shrugging gene pool that powers the totally F’d up DMV. Better clean up that Schwinn and get your authorized Multi-pass barcode tattoo. Do it for the progressives global warming terrorized children.
Hi Torino,
My hope is that – soon – the Saxon will grow angry. I suspect he already is.
I wonder if anyone has made a list of what each can do like they do selling software.
Example:
Attribute IC EV
Travel 500 miles without stopping. Yes no
Quickly Refuels Yes no
Starts easily in Winter Yes no
0-60 in 4 seconds No Yes
Energy efficient Yes No
I have no idea how this is going to look when posted….. lol,,,,, E for effort?
Oh well,,,, lol,,,, Didn’t come out like I had it but the idea is there….
Transportation as a service is the ultimate goal. Some accountant type looked at all the space taken up by vehicles that weren’t moving and decided that had to change. Much like how Amory Lovins loves to point out that there’s “enough” wind power in (insert whatever midwestern state is front of mind at the moment) to supply electricity to the entire planet. If only we could put up enough wind turbines to harvest it! Never mind that it is at best intermittent and those calculations assume perfect transfer from air to the power grid. Imagine if cars weren’t parked in convenient locations in cities, but instead dropped you off at your destination then went on to the next job. Or moved itself to the edge of town, or jammed itself into an ultra-dense parking garage. Except that none of that infrastructure exists and probably won’t for a very long time. I remember taking trips to Pittsburgh as a kid and seeing the commercial parking lots and being amazed at how closely packed the cars were. But I also wondered what happened when someone wanted their car back and it was at the other end of the lot? That’s quite a game of shuffling that would need to be done. Better not have a reservation to get to!
City planners love the idea of a car-less city, and we see artist renderings of happy people walking around streets converted into long stretches of parkland. But there’s still a lot of stuff that needs to get to these high density housing units, there’s still people going to need ambulances and fast transport. And unless there’s a wholesale change in the way we work (and play) there’s still going to be peak demand for transportation.
Now add in electrification and it gets even more complicated. All those vehicles headed to high density parking lots, and needing a charge. Better hope there’s a storm over Kansas or you might not have enough electricity to charge all those vehicles. Ah, but the scientist said there’s lots of wind, right? Too bad no one listened to the engineers who are being tasked with capturing it.
“Those who rule us” already have decided that EVs will prevail, despite all their practical deficits. At least, that’s what they intend.
In the war against internal combustion vehicles, the crossroad may have disappeared into the rear view mirror miles ago.
Hi Mike,
Indeed. But the rubber is about to hit the road. EVs have largely been PR-hyped abstractions for most people. Soon, the force-fed reality will be upon them.
I found myself in a brief discussion with, among others, my sister and her 30 year old son about Saint Elon and electric cars just last night. While certainly no candidates for MENSA, they’re not low IQ. Very representative of their respective generations, I’d say.
Every single person there was aghast that I dared to profane the (peace be upon him) sainted name of The Elon and His Master Plan. Honestly, it was like religion with them, from the kids to my 50 year old sis. My nephew actually said that it’s good that money is taken from us to promote electric cars, and that he looks forward to not driving. The idea that GovCo or Saint Elon may not have our best interests at heart was utterly inconceivable to them, to the point that they literally refused to listen to any argument that didn’t support their view that an electric / automated world would be a near utopia. It was actually kinda spooky. And this is my family.
So. That’s the present and the future. We’re dealing with a thoroughly indoctrinated populace. I personally don’t think there’s any hope. Cognitive dissonance will win out, and people will double down on their illusions even after reality starts bitch slapping them. Bernays and Gramsci et al have done their jobs exceedingly well.
Hi Bill,
This is my experience, too. And it’s also why I have pretty much resigned myself to being single going forward. It’s hard enough finding friends who aren’t authoritarian collectivists (I recently parted ways with one of them). But try finding a woman who isn’t a fully patched-in member of the cult.
I still glance at them, of course. I’m not dead. But I am smart enough to leave it at that.
hi Eric I wouldnt give up. Womens idesa of politics are a mile wide and one inch deep. Most could care less beyond some superficial crap they heard somewhere. Much more interested in security your looks and your finances. I’m dating a 30 year old clinton supporter. she cant defend anything if we ever talk about politics but she doesnt care. And accepts me as the cro-magnon caveman I am.
The women I encounter when they do voice something are just outright mean about the collectivist politics. Shallow, but mean about it, and if you didn’t vote their way, take the highway.
I live in chicago. the most communist city on earth. there was one night at a bar in 2016 when a girl I was talking to detected my southern accent and said are you from the south? oh my god are you a trump supporter? I said of course. then she went on a rant about racist etc. its actually fairly rare though that girls care at all in my experience. I think studies have shown conservative guys have more testosterone and get laid more. girls dont think about worldwide stuff much just their own lives. And their kids if they have any. My experience.
I don’t go into the city much but I don’t talk politics with women because the ones who do voice something are that way. Even when I talk politics in person with men I am careful to introduce the libertarianism slowly and from the ways that I know most people here will accept or at least are not unfamiliar with.
I’ll take it you didn’t plow HER “Dan Ryan Expressway” that night. Dodged a bullet, you did.
Probably a good thing there. She may well have charged the old boy with rape and with 18-20 years of child support.
MGTOW
Hi again, Bill –
Another factor is that people in the main no longer consider practical considerations. Living beyond one’s means has been normalized. My own sister is one of the victims of this. She lives hand to mouth in San Diego; dead broke in terms of savings and assets. If anything significant goes wrong – if she needs to spend $400 on car repairs – she is screwed.
Has a new $1,500 Mac laptop. Lives near the beach. Has credit cards – a huge mortgage that she will be paying on until she’s in her 70s.
But she is happy – and unworried.
I don’t get it. Maybe she is smarter than I am…
I have holes in my shoes. My truck needs shocks and my cats haven’t been to the vet in two years. My mattress is so old – and worn out – you can see the imprint of me on the thing. But I don’t owe anyone a cent. I pay cash for everything.
I could live high on the hog, if I maxed out my credit cards and took a loan out on the house. Buy a new EV, even.
Had another recruiter come knocking…. move to CA… go way into debt and they’ll pay just enough more to cover the interest. Make a 3/4 to two million dollar bet on the housing market with borrowed money. (depending on the region)
I don’t know why people want to live that way. I debt. I get that they expect fed gov and the fed to ride to the rescue should anything happen and punish everyone living under their means but meanwhile they are still debt slaves betting on the political winds.
Eric, TRUE wealth isn’t necessarily measured by the size and construction quality of the roof over one’s head, as long as one has a roof at all. Nor by the clothes on your back, as long as you have them, and they’re not filthy rags. And you have food in your belly and the fridge, and the daily prospects of easily procuring MORE. But does anyone realize that for most folks in most times, even THAT modicum of existence would have been considered as “Paradise”?
Sometimes methinks folks here in America don’t appreciate what we have nor what and whom we have to thank for it (hint: not some meddling, do-gooding Dummycrat hypocrite limousine liberal, for Goddamned sure!).
It’s not just not having any debt that’s “Freedom”…it’s also being able to fend for oneself and not be dependent on those whose mission, it seems, is to grab as much as they can out of our respective wallets. For example, I spent my Saturday afternoon doing an oil change on the 2014 Focus, and, with almost 75K miles, its FIRST brake job. Spent about $95 on a decent kit from “Rock Auto dot com” which had ceramic pads, two new rotors, springs, and some pad lube. Spent another ten bucks on some caliper paint (they type with “rust reformer”, believe me, it’s not to “dress them up”) at the O’Reilly’s which is within walking distance here in Roseville. Sure, it was “huckin’ fot” that afternoon, and if I hadn’t grabbed a mechanic’s seat, on sale at “Harbor Fraud” a few days prior, nor borrowed my son’s portable awning, it would have been even tougher. But it wasn’t all that bad, even with this heat, for this sixty-year-old grunt to do that brake job…which Firestone, just a short distance away from my office, wanted NINE HUNDRED to do! Sure, I might have done better at Pep Boys, but this ride IS going to my “little goil” who’s starting college in a few weeks, and I’m not entrusting HER safety to those bozos.
E.G., wealth is also PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE, the foundation of ‘self-reliance”, which, with my last name, I ought to know…
Bill B most people arent capable of critical thinking and prefer to watch our men beat everyone eles’s women in soccer / other sports / or netflix garbage. you still have to try. At my dad’s 90th birthday I told everyone that the 9/11 narrative we were told is all lies and why. You just have to throw the ideas out there without getting too emotionally involved in the dumb responses you tend to get back. My feeling is it will take another severe financial reset to wake people up.
Hi Mark,
I watched some of the footage of WTC 7 again the other day. (And have discovered that YouTube is making it harder to find the footage.)
Watch the vertical welded/riveted steel structure just evaporate, basically. All at once, too.
Remember Occam’s Razor…
With what I knew then and yet have learned more of explosives, especially the use of thermite, my impression of the collapse of WTC2, which I saw, LIVE, on TV, was that it was a deliberate demolition.
So, in 2006, did a BYU professor, Dr. Steven Jones, and he presented evidence of same, which got many upset with him…including, apparently, some GOP stalwarts in the LDS Church, including our own Apostle Dallin Oaks (living proof, with all due respect to his office, that the number of horse’s rear ends exceeds the number of equines). In upholding that hallowed institution of higher learning’s standards, Dr. Jones was immediately relived of his teaching duties, and soon, “retired” (effectively, fired, so much for “academic freedom” at BYU). Had his ideas been unsustainable, he’d had been IGNORED, doesn’t one think?
Yet more reason that I wear my Fresno State “Bulldog Red” proudly.
I immediately said Bullshit, a big building wouldn’t fall like that. Everything that was supposedly(bullshit again)burned to twist and fail wouldn’t have made the whole thing come down in its footprint. When the totally unblievable, for anyone in the construction bidness or a decent understanding of building structures of Bldg 7 collapsed in its own footprint after having damage to only the outside on one side. And Silverstein said “Pull it” and later amended to “pull it as in pull it over” only nobody ever saw it get “pulled over”, it simply collapsed in the same way.
Inquiring minds are certainly taking a break since 2000.
The cover story was well thought out for the towers. It fell apart because of the internet. The media described the towers as tube construction and their sudden failure is consistent with a tube failing. With that information the failure made sense.
What I later learned is that the inner core was a conventional I beam box structure and that the floor trusses could only support floor loads. Now we are dealing with something entirely different.
The floor trusses could not pull in the outer tube and an outer tube failure would leave the core standing. A pancaking of floors would leave the tube and core standing with nothing between them.
But the whole thing came down together. It’s not feasible except on a computer where the constraints can be set to make it happen that way.
Never mind that the demolition of even WTC 7, itself a 47-story skyscraper (I believe it’d be the tallest building in all but 21 of USA cities) would be no trivial matter. To do it in the time frame described would be chancy and pose an unneeded risk even under the best of circumstances, with all the confusion of the other towers having collapsed and thousands dead and dying, how in the hell would they expect to pull it off? And, more important, WHY? Since the area had been evacuated of anyone whom would walk or be carried, save for the survivors still trapped in the rubble, what was the NEED to rush? No, this building in particular was most likely set up for demolition PRIOR to all hell breaking loose. Normally, it takes several DAYS for even the best demolition crews to drill holes in structural members, set the thermite charges, and test the detonation circuits. One doesn’t just push down the plunger, it’s a carefully calculated series of explosions to let the weight of building cause it to collapse into itself…which is PRECISELY what we see with WTC 1 and 2!
I’ve done business with mormons. theyre happy to lie and cheat in my experience. tend to avoid them but can be difficult in the southwest. hispanics are great by comparison.
Sorry to read that’s been YOUR experience with LDS folk, mine has been decidedly more positive, though not with ALL, certainly not my ex-wife, whom I was gullible and stupid enough to marry and too slow to divorce, much to my personal and financial sorrow. Nothing I’ve been taught in 40 years of Church membership has been anything but honesty and integrity in ALL affairs, and certainly nothing like the fictional Ferengi 17th “Rule of Acquisition” – “A contract is a contract, is a contract…but ONLY between Ferengi!”
Check with Gordon Duff over at Veterans Today. Has more shit on the Deep State than you can imagine, especially on 9/11.
Probably some stuff you may not want to know.
Or maybe you should know.
Some stuff that might piss you off.
Uncle Gordy could care less.
As the subtitle says: Journal for the clandestine community.
They go to him for intel.
Hi John,
I worked in DC – in the “mainstream” media – for years back in the ’90s. I was in DC on the High Holy Day, when “America changed forever.” So I am hip to some things, including some inside things about the PNAC. I can also see. And what I saw on that day – and local media covered – was a neat round hole in the side of the pentaclegram with undamaged windows on either side and no damage above. Where, oh where, did the vertical stabilizer and wings of that “757” go?
Those images have been disappeared.
An older friend of mine is an ex-Navy pilot. An ex-fighter pilot. An ex-carrier pilot. He says he couldn’t have flown the pattern we’re told the “757” did… with a “terrorist” at the controls who was not a carrier-qualified pilot or even a pilot at all. He also says the pattern we’re told the “757” flew was beyond its capabilities. That even with a combat aviator at the controls, the “757” likely would have broken up given the maneuvers it supposedly performed.
We have innumerable videos of airplanes flying into the WTC towers. They were going fast, but not hypersonic. People saw them coming; recorded them coming. There was plenty of time to record them because you’d hear them coming. People would have looked up... and recorded.
Where is the video of the “757” that hit the pentaclegram?
Remember: There are probably thousands of security cameras in the area around the pentaclegram and DC generally. Plus thousands of tourists, a good number of them with their own video rigs. And on that day, everyone knew airplanes had already been flown into building twice, in NY.
It beggars belief that a “757” coming in low, flying erratically would not have been recorded by at least dozens if not hundreds of those people. On that day.
It is simply ludicrous to believe that not one recording exists of a “757” on low approach, headed toward the pentaclegram.
Whatever occurred in NYC, it is pretty clear two commercial jets did hit the buildings. Unless we have been bamboozled by holographic projection tech.
Regardless, whatever occurred in DC, I do not believe a “757” flew into a building. The evidence suggests a missile, flying at a speed much too fast for video-recording. This explains the absence of video. And that explains everything else.
There was a documentary on youtube that interviewed a bunch of witnesses and none of their accounts match the government story but they match each other. There was clearly a passenger jet or passenger jets in the air there where it shouldn’t have been and people noticed. However there was some sort of switcheroo or something that happened. Some kind of magic trick or slight of hand.
The government story is a lie, that much was proven by that investigation. What really happened is conjecture.
Eric,
“the pattern we’re told the “757” flew was beyond its capabilities. That even with a combat aviator at the controls, the “757” likely would have broken up given the maneuvers it supposedly performed”
WOW!
This brings up some interesting questions.
Back in 2002 it took me 3 tries on MS Flight Simulator to manage hit one of the WTC buildings. And I had to slow way down to do that.
But what you say above makes me wonder about the 737 MAX.
Where did someone come up with the idea of designing out the inherent stability of a passenger aircraft?
Why would someone take that away and replace it with software?
A 757 with software that augmented the maneuvering characteristics of the aircraft would seem to be required to keep it in one piece.
I’d love to hear what your navy buddy had to say about that scenario.
The 737 Max is what happens when government and software people collide.
Government makes it very expensive to create a new airframe. As a result Boeing worked to meet customer demands while keeping the plane a 737 from a regulatory standpoint. This is where the software came in.
The max isn’t an unstable aircraft in its natural form it’s just not as stable or the same as a regular old 737. Stuff is ‘off’ of where it should be because they had to retain the basics of the old airframe while meeting new requirements. But it has to fly the same so that the customers don’t have to recertify all their pilots. This brings the software solution in.
Here’s the part you’ll probably only hear from me. Mechanical engineering is an old discipline with all sorts of ways of doing things that prevent failure. In this case the 737 Max has two sensors. Because maybe one might fail but not two at the same time. Old school engineering.
Software isn’t an old field and it has been in this realm of doing things for people for a rather short time. It doesn’t have the methods or cultures not to make certain blunders or catch them.
So as a result software people wrote the code to only look at one sensor and not both and certainly not to compare or to figure out one of them may be giving an erroneous reading.
Furthermore and likely again because of government regulation it is difficult to override the computer and keep it overridden.
And there you go, the planes crash.
As a gamer I honestly don’t understand how anyone can trust software to regulate ANYTHING effectively in the real world. Even the most polished product has its share of bugs and glitches, and they are quite often simple “duh moments” where the developers forgot to test some obscure (or obvious) combination of variables.
An example might be helpful: one game surrounds its map with a killzone where you continuously take damage until you die. This is intended to keep players from straying off the edge of the world into empty and unfinished areas, places that were only supposed to look good in cutscenes, places that were used for testing, etc. So far, so good.
However, the game also has sandstorms that kick up about every two real-life hours, and it was found, by some players, that if you enter this killzone during a sandstorm it won’t activate – and you can go as far as you want for as long as you want even after the storm dies down.
This was found because sandstorms also spawn valuable loot which then blows around in the wind and can easily blow off the edge of the map while you’re chasing it. The loot is also marked on your map even after it enters the killzone, and since you can’t see very well in the sandstorm, it’s easy to chase an icon into the forbidden area without realizing it. I don’t know how many people have found this by accident, and yet somehow the developers never did.
This isn’t the first game to have this specific problem or a variant of it, either.
More utilitarian software suffers from the same problems; one popular pop-culture analysis website has an entire page (which takes maybe an hour to read in its entirety) dedicated to boneheaded programming, with Adobe being one of the worst offenders.
Even at one of my previous jobs in fast food, the credit card readers would randomly reboot themselves in the middle of the day, or ask for a PIN in the drive-through (which they weren’t supposed to do), and upgrading to chip-capable machines slowed average transaction times – to say nothing of what would happen even on the old machines if there was connection trouble. The point-of-sale machines themselves were even worse; they were littered with old deals and coupons, had different prices for the exact same product depending on how you rang it up, had a way of getting into a whole other menu full of stuff we didn’t serve (intended for a different restaurant owned by the same company) which I found by complete accident one day, and could easily lock up or get stuck in an infinite loop just from an innocent attempt to modify someone’s order. One of the reasons I was such a valuable employee despite my attitude problem is that I knew more about the registers than the manager himself did.
This is only a fraction of the problems I’ve had with computers over my short life. OS instability (which may possibly be hardware related as it is easy to get a bum motherboard even from a good company), user-made mods that glitch out games or randomly stop working for unknown reasons, things just refusing to work for no apparent reason… my experience is not unique, and the “smarter” software tries to be, the more open it is to this kind of thing. Why would you trust it to fly a frickin’ plane?
BrentP,
“The max isn’t an unstable aircraft in its natural form it’s just not as stable or the same as a regular old 737.”
I disagree Brent.
The CG was moved.
When you move the CG, you run into problems.
Tuanorea, moving the CG doesn’t mean the plane is unstable. The 737Max can be flown just fine without the computer assistance but it doesn’t fly the same as the regular 737 because the CG moved.
It’s not an inherently unstable plane, it’s a different plane and a less forgiving one.
This past week I read an article about all this.
Seems like anonymous engineers were already pissed before it was built since they were hiring foreign software writers for as little as $9/hr. Boy, they sure were saving money.
It’s not as if they normally hire software developers that have no experience writing code for such as a big airliner.
well the MAX wont fly with me on one. Normal 737s are ok. I like airbuses better
Last week VT posted a screen shot of a video that clearly showed a cruise missile just before it hit the Pentagon.
Hi John,
What’s VT? I’ve never seen video of anything except that brief blur the government released. You can’t see anything – other than a fireball.
Which beggars credulity. Commercial aircraft fly fast – but not that fast. There would have been at least the same amount of time (10-30 seconds, if not more. But at least that much) pre-impact, for thousands of cameras to have taken pictures/video of an incoming 757. The fact that none did strikes me as proof there wasn’t a 757.
I was all over 9/11, practically lived on the computer. I got to see a lot of things the first two days nobody else seems to have seen….not that I saw the “missile” hit the Pentagram but I did see the damage only hours after.
There wasn’t shit for debris and that nice hole wasn’t made my an airliner.
Neither did the “burnt hole” in Pennsylvania have a plane in it. It was an old burned hole everyone in the surrounding countryside knew about and the emergency responder, a sheriff I think, who said “Naw, that’s just an old burn hole”. And right he was since there wasn’t a bit of debris there.
So this guy, ex-military at the ripe old age of 25 told me “fighter planes took that plane out over the Atlantic and shot it down”.
Of course that’s ludicrous. He got bent one day when another guy my age with even the same last name(no kin we knew of)and I were speaking of 9/11 and WTF did that Connecticut plane go? It’s never mentioned. There were admittedly by the govt. liars 4 planes. I count 3…..if they were the real planes. Remember that was a first ever “no-fly” day in the US with Cheney hunkered in the best underground facility in the US with the shrub far away at a school no less, in Florida.
A BBC reporter broke the news of the second tower also falling while both towers burned behind her. Not very good timing for the deep state.
And the Mossad new crew dancing in the street and hauled in by the FBI to be released(think what that took)the next day and whisked off to our best ally every, golly gee, oh whiz, Israel to never be heard from again.
And the bin Ladens having the same thing done evidently getting the notice during mealtime and only grabbing ID’s and not much else leaving an entire house of clothes and personal effects and food on the table on a sealed house.
I don’t believe in coincidence, almost at all although I admit it can happen. But it can’t happen with the countless “coincidences” in 9/11. It’s so much bullshit it must have made the sheeple even more stupid.
For god’s sake, you CanNot “pull” down a building. Even our old courthouse that was torn down during the latter 50’s got the contractor in a bind because he couldn’t get it down.
I used to watch how they took down what are really small 4 or 5 story buildings and got to do it for months.
The only pics I’ve seen associated with “pulling” were two…..or different angles of the same track hoe with a tiny cable hung off the boom and only that. No pic of a cable going from that to a building. it would have only requried more of those than exist to pull it over and months of rigging by specialists guided by architectsd and even at that, I don’t think it could even be done and the kicker was it just turning into dust and falling in it’s base…..just like every other building that day. Pyew, what a stinker.
VT/Veterans Today
http://www.veteranstoday.com/
Also, Ted Olson couldn’t seem to remember his lines…..
Just remember these Millennials are now of voting age.
The gods help us all!
Wait until the demands for the electric juice exceeds the capacity to generate it, And the ‘pollution’ from generating it upsets the greenies. Will the fake ‘demand’ for electric cars die like a worn-out battery ? Or will TPTB allow nuke power ?
No, the driving force behind the electric and self-driving car movement is the end of freedom to travel where and when we want and for our own reasons. This will not end well. For them.
Eric,
Elon Musk emphasized the power and performance of Tesla cars so as to break the old stereotype of EVs: that they’re glorified golf carts. That is to say EVs were thought of as slow and had short range, because, until recently, they did. Think the Citicar of the 1970s. The thing had a range of 35-40 miles; it had a top speed of 30-35; and it had lead-acid batteries that took forever to recharge. When looking at the Citicar’s speed alone, it’s not even suitable to high volume, arterial streets; forget about highway use! Until recently, THAT was the image of EVs, because it was reality. Musk sought to shatter that stereotype, and he did.
Hi Mark,
Yes, but speed is an indulgence. It is at best peripheral to economy and practicality. A high-cost/high-performance EV is just a high cost car. And there’s nothing wrong with that – as such.
But it’s beyond obnoxious to subsidize such a thing; for affluent virtue signalers to use the power of the government to finance their toys.
Let Elon sell his Model 3 at what it costs to build, plus a sustainable profit. This would likely mean a base price around $50,000. Very few would sell at that price. Because there are only so many people who can afford a $50k car – electric or not.
The CitiCar was ugly and slow, but it made much more economic and even practical sense than a Tesla.