Watching Some Good Friends Screaming

I don't listen to as much talk radio as I used to.

This is a good thing, according to my wife; my blood pressure also thinks it's a good thing (I have less exposure to stupid people, who make me want to rant). However, I feel less informed about the world.

Maybe I have not mentioned that my car (whom I've named Bridget, just so you know) has Sirius Radio in it. Well, it does, and it came with a six month subscription. I really only listen to about ten stations, of which all but two are music (one is sports, the other is "golden era" radio re-broadcasts).

So, it took me a while to hear all these people whining that we can send a person to the moon, and we can make a phone call around the world, but we can't plug a leaking well?

I started a list of things that would compare and contrast these accomplishments. How many years of aerospace engineering went into putting a man on the moon? From Kennedy's promise to Armstrong's words, just over eight. How long did it take to lay the first Trans-Atlantic Cable? Eight years of failed attempts before one worked, and even that one failed within a year and had to be replaced. From Marconi first sending a wireless telegraph signal, to getting a wireless signal across the Atlantic: six years. These feats were over time spans not comparable to the blown well.

Regarding the well itself: it took them several months to drill it, what would make a person think it can be plugged in much shorter of a time frame? Additionally, it is over a mile underwater. This is not an insignificant distance, considering that it's through water, straight down. The pressure at that depth is something like a ton per square inch (depth divided by 33 feet [to get atmospheric pressure equivalency], then multiplied by 14.7 psi, the pressure at sea level). Yet, the oil just billowed out of it, indicating that the pressure on the oil was that much greater.

Now, since it's been capped, and they are monitoring the pressure of the oil on the cap, it's something like 3-4 tons per square inch. So, in just under three months, they managed to cap a blown-out well at one mile underwater, containing pressure of 6000 to 9000 psi.

Time span and difficulty aside, this is a human-caused disaster that is unprecedented. Should they have had a better disaster plan ahead of time? Yes. Should they have used better-quality material in the first place? Yes. Could this have been prevented? Ehh...that's harder to answer. A bubble of the size they estimate ruptured the well would have exerted something upwards of 50,000 psi....and that's a lot of pressure.

Until another time,
Salt

The Female of the Species is More Deadly

I mentioned that I was buying a new car. I have now done so, and am the proud owner of a silver 2010 Volkswagon Jetta TDI (with 6-speed manual transmission).

I traded in my blue 1997 Saturn SL1, who, unknown to my children, had been given the name Stacy shortly after I had made the purchase (before they were born). My son said, "Your car was a GIRL?" and I said, "Yes," and that was the end of it.

This got me thinking about gender conventions in language. I took German for several years in high school, and another term or two of it in college. At one point, I had a reasonable grasp of the language. There were a few things that were difficult for me; one of those was gender of inanimate objects.

I'd been thinking about naming the Jetta, and I'd only been thinking of traditionally feminine names. That got me thinking, "Why does my car have to be a girl?" which got me thinking, "Why are all ships/boats girls?" Supposing that it was a holdover from older languages, I looked up German, French, and Spanish translations of "the boat", "the ship", "the auto", and "the car" (mainly, because I know the genders of "the" in those languages).

It was a dead end. In German, they are all neuter (das),  the Spanish made everything male (el), and the French only had "car" as feminine (la).

So, with my BS detector firmly in hand, I ventured out onto the Internet to ask my question, "Why are ships/boats/cars all feminine?"

Some guessed what I had, it was from when all nouns had gender in language, and the boats (and by corollary, automobiles) had been feminine (maybe in Latin/Greek?). Having already explored much of this, I clicked the next link.

Another posited that in ancient times, ships were consecrated to goddesses, so they were referred to as feminine. That didn't sit well with me, since the medieval period was extremely good at wiping out all non-Christian references to the past. Next link, please.

There was a page that suggested that since these kinds of machines were temperamental, they were similar to women, so they were "she." If this were the case, then by extension, computers would always be female. Since they are not, I moved to the next link.

I was directed to the personal blog of a sailor in the US Navy (red flag #1), who claimed that a superior officer had given a brief (red flag #2) speech on exactly this topic (red flag #3), and he would relate the bullet points in his post. Many were rehashes of what I saw elsewhere, a few were funny (which was the only reason I kept reading), and near the end, there was one point that was "probable."

The probable source (and I'm going with this until proved otherwise) is that sailors knew that the sea was a dangerous place. You were not going to survive long in it without aid, much like a baby or child. So, they referred to the ship as "mother," and eventually that changed to just "she." However, this did not change the fact that a woman was bad luck to have on a ship. I'm not sure about the source of that, but I can imagine that in a place where everyone has a job to do to keep them afloat (on a ship), "distraction" would be bad.

The funny part was "It's not the initial investment, it's the upkeep."

Until another time,
Salt

That's The Way I Like It

I'm in the market for a car.

I know many people take meticulous care of their vehicle, get regular maintenance, keep it clean, and avoid mashing it into other cars/wildlife. However, accidents happen. Also, there are other people who are less consistent with the regular advised maintenance of a vehicle. This group of people tend to have the mentality of, "I put gas it in, it should just keep going!"

So, I guess for the reasons I outlined there, I could amend my opening statement to, "I'm in the market for a new car."

Yes, the arguments to purchase a used vehicle are known to me. A new car, purely by driving it off the lot, loses X% of its value. I am aware that there are 153-point inspections performed by a trained individual or team on all used cars sold from X location, granting them a "Certified Used" status. I know there are 12 month warranties on many used cars. Many dealers will provide a free CarFax History report for the VIN of a used car so you can see its history.

None of this makes me feel any better about used cars. Even the fact that they often cost half as much as they did new doesn't help. Look, I'm going to buy a new car. There's very little you can do at this point to dissuade me.

I currently drive a blue 1997 Saturn SL1, with a manual transmission. Being a driver of a manual transmission car puts me in an extreme minority. As I told the sales rep at a dealership I was courting, "I'll drive an automatic transmission car when my left leg stops working."

So, now I'm on to, "I'm in the market for a new car, with a manual transmission."

Many of the reasons for driving a manual transmission car have gone away. Automatic transmissions are pretty savvy shifters, and the improved mileage you could get from wisely driving a manual has eroded to negligible. Most dealers don't even charge for the automatic transmission anymore, it's just included in the cost. I must admit; when I bought my Saturn, I bought the manual because it was $900 cheaper, and that was a big deal to me back then. For this next purchase, I could probably afford it, but I'm not going to. In addition, my very reliable Saturn has 230,000 miles on it (very nearly a one-way trip to the moon). It still gets 35+ miles to the gallon.

I suppose at this point, "I'm in the market for a new, high-efficiency car, with a manual transmission and is pretty reliable."

I don't want any chrome, or funny wheels, or spoilers, or a sunroof. No extra lights, it can't have an exterior color that is either white or black (I swear, if someone comments about white and black not being colors, I will not publish it), and I don't really want a car with the fuel intake on the passenger side. I don't want to ...

At this point, I feel this post is really long. I'll go into the craziness of actually buying a car another time. So -- 

Until another time,
Salt