Ancient History, Teenage Accidents

1967 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396

Dustbury mentioned a 1966 Chevy II Super Sport in a post this morning, and it reminded me of these true life horror stories.
    I had a friend by the name of Richard Bagley in Bexley, Ohio back in 1969. His father bought a Chevelle Super Sport 396. It was the be all and end all of all cars. You couldn't ask for anything better. Richard took it out one evening and ended up dead when he let somebody else drive it and they took an exit ramp off the Interstate at 100 MPH.
   There was another guy, John Veatch, from my high school in Utica. He wasn't a friend, but we were friendly. He got killed driving a car on the freeway in Newark. He was going over 100 MPH. He hit a road sign 12 feet off the ground.
    I think there were four people in each car. I don't think I knew any of the other people, and I don't recall if there were any other fatalities, but I knew these two guys.
    Then there was a girl from Granville who has a serious accident on her bicycle. Her brakes failed while she was going down a hill. I think she must have broke her pelvis or something. She was in a cast from the waist down for months.

Eurocopter X3 reaches speed of 255 knots

Twin 2000 HP turbines drive the main rotor as well as the two propellers. There must be some fancy mechanicals in there because the props are driven at different speeds (the right hand prop runs faster because it also acts as the anti-torque reactor), and the main rotor speed is independent of the prop speed.

Isle of Man TT Motorcycle Race

Guy Martin on a Suzuki GSXR 1000 Superbike going around the course.
Stu put up a post and I've kind of been paying attention. It's been going on for the last two weeks. 200 MPH on a motorcycle on an ordinary road is kind of impressive. This might be the last real road race for bikes in the world, well, at least until the 3rd world gets into the act. I've watched several videos, and this is the one I like best. He doesn't actually manage to outrun the chopper, but the camera does lose track of him for a few seconds. Bonus is that nobody dies in this video. I don't like watching the ones with the bad accidents. Seeming them once was enough.

Counting the Seconds

I really don't like waiting. If there is even a single car ahead of me at the gas station, I will go on to the next station. I may end up using more time to do that than if I just sat and waited, but at least I am in motion, not sitting there dying. Besides, if you are sitting there waiting, Murphy's law says that the car in front of you is going to have a problem and they are going to be stuck there for the rest of the day. You will get blocked in and be unable to move, and then terrorists will attack and blow up the gas station and you will die a horrible death in a blazing inferno. So, no, I'm not gonna sit and wait on mis-dis-efficient.
    I don't like traffic lights. They are so sloooooowwwwww. I have learned to cope by counting the seconds I have to wait. I find that most of the lights at big intersections run on a one minute cycle. These are the ones where you have dedicated left turn lanes and signals, so you have four groups taking turns. Occasionally you will run into a big intersection, like one with five or six points that runs closer to two minutes. Counting the seconds gives me something to do until light turns green. I will have a bill for the traffic gods when I die.
    Traffic jams are another unpleasant fact of life on the freeway. I try and notice the time when I am forced to a crawl, and then try and imitate a zombie until things clear up. Suprisingly, most of these messes clear up within five minutes. Yes, rush hour is an exception. Just stay at work. Or walk. Funny how there is no place close by to work that is really inviting.

S.A.R.S. - Perspektiva

Just when I think I have figured out how the world works I come across something like this that tells me that a lot of people have not. Or maybe they have and it just doesn't make any sense. I ran the lyrics and the name of the band through Google translator and got, well, not much. Perspectiva is maybe Russian or Slovenian for perspective.
Update: I admit I posted this because of the video. The tune, while bright and lively, is nothing special. The woman has a pretty face, and she's kind of a bad-ass, though it's more in the line of a junky-slut than a ninja-assassin, but hey, she's dressed in black and she can hold her liquor. What more does a guy want from a girl? Besides, most guys can't actually handle having a ninja-assassin for a girlfriend. Since I haven't heard anything else interesting lately (other than superbikes at the Isle of Man, which, while musical, don't really have much of a melody) I listened to some of their other videos, and this band is actually pretty good. They even use an English word or two occasionally.

Reflectance

I just walked down to the mailbox. On the way back I noticed that one of my neighbors has a new sports car so I walked across the street to ask him about it. Walking barefoot on the sidewalk is a bit of a challenge for my tender tootsies. The concrete has a rough surface and it was a little warm. The black asphalt on the street was unpleasantly hot. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!
    The other day when I was studying the Tu-160, a.k.a. the white swan, I read that it was painted anti-flash white. This paint gets its name because it is supposed to reflect some of the thermal radiation given off by atomic bombs when they go off. I imagine they were hoping to reflect the infrared radiation. Higher energy electromagnetic radiation, like X-rays and gamma rays aren't going to be dissuaded by mere paint, or even by a thin sheet of aluminum. Still, simple heat energy can cause plenty of damage all by itself, so maybe it would help. At least it might keep the air crew from being roasted alive. That way they can return to base and fill out their reports before they succumb to radiation poisoning from the atomic radiation that the paint did not reflect.

    The other day there was a mystery radar event down at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Well, it's a mystery to everyone who wasn't in on it. Looks like they might have been testing a new kind of chaff. Chaff. That's a funny word. Developed about the same time as radar (WW2)  it wasn't initially used by either side because they were afraid that once the enemy caught on to it, they would start using it, which would render their radar useless. The original chaff was foil backed paper cut into thin strips one-half the wavelength of the radar you are trying to fool.

The stuff that turned up on the ground outside Redstone looked by little tufts of fiberglass. Wouldn't think fiberglass would reflect RADAR, but then maybe it's not ordinary fiberglass but some sooper-secret glass with little bits of magic inside.

P.S. Turns out the 'new' sports car is 14 years old. Several years ago the check engine light came on and previous owner parked it, not wanting to pay the German car dealer the umpteen zillion dollars they wanted to turn the light off. My neighbor rescued it and has spent the last couple of years removing the moss and tree and sap that had accumulated while it was parked.

Disturbing

Recent reports documenting the collection of Verizon customer telephone records by the National Security Administration are disturbing, but certainly not surprising. Programs like this have been a concern since they were authorized in the Patriot Act in 2001. This is one of the reasons I have voted against that legislation every time it has come to the floor for reauthorization.

While the White House has explained that the order does not allow the government to listen in to anyone’s conversations, and asserted the program has been valuable in protecting the nation from terrorist threats, I remain dubious about its effectiveness. As of last October, 4.92 million federal employees and contractors had access to secret information, which is larger than the entire population of Los Angeles. I am concerned that the amount of information being reviewed by the intelligence community and number of people involved may actually be making us less safe.

I urge Congress to use this controversy, and the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2013 which will soon head to the floor for debate, as an opportunity to reevaluate methods of domestic surveillance, the growing size of the intelligence bureaucracy, and reiterate the importance of maintaining the privacy and civil liberties of American citizens. 
Sincerely,





Earl Blumenauer
Member of Congress

It's little things like this that make me think that maybe, just maybe, there is some hope for our benighted country.