Bad news with the scooter, but it is expected news. The only Chinese part supplier in the area invariably sends the wrong part first. Even if you supply them the exact information they always try to unload some junk on you first. This is the new forks they sent with the shaft two inches too short. It’s always something like that. They must be making money intentionally doing things wrong or they would not be so persistent. The scooter will be at least another day or two.
Which kind of cancels an entire week of chasing around I’d planned to clear up the backlog. Once again I state that the Third World is a place where efficiency and doing right is not rewarded. Florida favors the stupid, the lazy, and the unprepared. The favored plan of the locals is to make their every delay into your problem instead of theirs. I can confirm they get right pissed off when you spring that trap right back on them. (You get three guesses where I learned to do that.)More trivia is always fun. Which companies have the worst customer service reputations in America? The cable TV people with their empty promises. NASA reports Curiosity has found evidence of a streambed, while at the same time not releasing the publicly-owned photo. Studies show that Greek workers are, dollar for dollar, 40% less productive than German workers. Have you seen the VW “doubleback camper”? The price tag is $87,000 USD. And I have a theory based on a review of my own videos that says the smarter people are, the less need for them to look at you when you are talking to them. If you don’t believe it, try to give instructions to some dumb bastard over the telephone.
Between rainstorms, I read a somewhat technical account of the fire-bombing of Japanese cities late in WWII. The weapon was napalm, a word coined from the two ingredients that made gasoline into jelly. The B-29s came in between 6,000 and 10,000 feet, which was so dangerous the Japanese hadn’t built any anti-aircraft guns to cover that band. The M-69 is a small weapon contained bomblets that splatters globs of the jellied fuel in a pattern that merges into bigger fires quickly.
More civilians died in Tokyo than from “flash-boom”, a translation of the Japanese word for the atomic bomb. The cover-up of Japanese atrocities has been so complete that today few people comprehend the decision to bomb. The war was won by airplanes, around $3 billion worth of B-29 bombers. The Japanese had weapons to counter the conventional army-navy invasion, but not the airplane. The Japanese army had killed millions of Chinese women by rape, then beheading. Number of Chinese POWs that survived the war: 56.
An account of the murders of American flyers is presented in the paperback “Flyboys” (ISBN 0-316-10728-X). The island of Chichi Jima was a radio outpost north of Iwo Jima that was assaulted by air only, then bypassed by the US until the surrender in August, 1945. The Japanese often abandoned entire armies if they proved too difficult to supply, as in Indonesia, where the soldiers resorted to cannibalism. The book points out the Emperor’s surrender speech never once mentions any words remotely meaning “defeat” or “sorry”. Instead, Hirohito laments how the Japanese will have to live under the yoke of the cultureless barbarians, attributing the American victory to pure luck.
In later years, when America was spending billions to defend Japan, the Japanese refused to increase their own defense budget. Instead, they built up their factories and social programs, saying the world looked to them for economic rather than military leadership. That is, they were doing the same as most of Europe by avoiding costs of their own armies knowing the US would not let them be invaded.
My average blood pressure during this year’s Colorado vacation: 114/79. Clearing the work area, I found several small notebooks, which I also keep in addition to this journal, and I have the habit of writing the date up in the corner. I found references to my original contact with Hacktronics, the mileage notes of my first scooter (the one that got stolen), and my diagrams where I used to connect transistors backwards. It’s sad and funny to read the notes where I was so close but didn’t know at the time. Weller, the soldering iron people, gets a big “Boo!” from the consumer for making replacement tips expensive and almost impossible to find.
Here also is my sketch after I concluded that since windmills could not be much improved, the inlet had to change. This is my “wind scoop” a mile long that channelizes prevailing winds onto a “half open” turbine. Drawn in Colorado in August. The incoming blast of air does not hit the returning half of the fan blades. A circular turbine would also work. I.K. Brunel, eat my dust.[Author's note 2017: OK folks, remember this was way back in 2012, compare my "campaign promises" to the talking points of the 2016 Trump election.]
I read the newspaper. I would vote for any candidate that did the following, in total. But there is no such candidate. They are more concerned about health care, abortion, and public television.
1. Stop the war
2. Seal the Mexican border
3. Expel all illegals
4. Cancel all foreign aid
5. Adopt a flat tax
6. Slash military spending
7. Abolish the civil service
8. Kick the able-bodied off welfare
9. Legalize marijuana
10. Limit credit to 10% of annual income
It was with some interest I heard the report that government SWAT teams pulled over dozens of cars on the way to the Hungarian festival in Sarasota last week. Dozens of persons, particularly young people, were arrested and deported to Hungary. Hey, now that you macho types know your terror tactics work on European teenagers, are you ready to target Calle Ocho? I can’t find any mention of these arrests in the local media.
I stayed up late examining coils, the electronic kind. All the reading says the coil opposes a change in current. Therefore, the addition of a coil to a circuit with a flashing light would cause the light to fade on and off rather than blink. It doesn’t work or I need significantly larger or smaller coils to play with. I even took the coil wire and did the nail wrap to see if I got magnetism, but nothing measured. Which brings up another topic, the magnetic compass. Years ago I acquired quite a nice one. But it came without instructions and to this day I can’t find any that use the features. These include a type of peep sight, a wire across a slit, two magnifying bubbles, and a ring marked 1 to 60.
Even later I watched Sherlock Holmes, but which one? Who knows, I lot count too long ago. It must have been a lot easier to hop on European trains a hundred years ago, considering they frequently slowly headed for Switzerland with so many clean, empty, unlocked boxcars. Great scenery, period costumes, and replicas of German weaponry. “A Game of Shadows”, that’s the one. You know, I’ve still never owned or seen a BluRay movie at home.
To the news about the guy who died in a cockroach eating contest: just desserts.
ADDENDUM
More blog analysis shows that less than 350 blog hits came from pods or mobile devices (which didn’t exist when this blog began) and a quarter of the referrals are from Craigslist. My audience remains overwhelmingly North American though a respectable 8% are from England. And I lose audience when I don’t post every day. That means more regular readers than a year ago because they are the ones who won’t click if they see an older date.
Those stats don’t measure content, nor can they. Most blogs are meaningless drivel and the numbers are geared toward advertising revenue. Yet, I know that attracting new readers is far more important than I’ve been treating the matter. The most blatant tactic is to publish what appeals to other’s self-interest, but that would knock the learning component out of these posts. The most I’ll concede is to include more Addendums for now.
