Quantum Leaps

[Grumpy Bear]

http://www.enginebuildermag.com/2013/11/the-skys-the-limit-looking-into-mazdas-skyactiv-engine-technology/

 

General Motors and others have added to this cylinder deactivation but the direct injection VVT otherwise is much like the Mazda Skyactiv system.

 

Engine tech has come lightyears since Honda Stratified Lean Burn scheme. Further still since Honda’s High Compression HX wide band cascaded O2 control with VVT.

 

Direct injection isn’t new. Been around since the 50’s. Fact is Solomon had it right thousands of years ago.

 

ECCLESIASTES 1: 9 reads;

 

What has been is what will be, and what has been done will be done again; There is nothing new under the sun.

 

You get a sense of this if you study WW II piston aircraft engines and earlier Euro race and motorcycle engine designs. Thing is…no one has putt the best of the best together. They all just beat about the bush.

 

This has been the focus of endeavor from the manufactures and the government. This side of the pond and the other. A focus science has had in its sites for a hundred plus years and has been thwarted by industrial and governmental bean counters for just as long.

In all that time the thermal efficiency of engines has advanced not as much as you would be lead to believe. It’s all about your point of reference.

 

That said and not the point I want to make here the fact is the single largest input there is the fuel efficiency and carbon foot print doesn’t lay in the house of government or manufacturing. It lays directly under your right foot and between your ears. That place you hang your hat.

 

A late 40 early 50’s Ford Flathead will, with a prudent driver yield in excess of 22 mpg. 80 years later and we have but doubled this number but not with thermal efficiency alone. Today’s cars that are capable of reaching 40+ mpg are half the weight. Half the frontal areal and half the drag coefficient. If you tune your flathead with today’s knowledge of spark and fuel management 30 mpg is for the asking. How sad is that?

 

Truth is, we’ve laid the entire fault of the automotive ecology at the feet of Detroit. We know this because the Government continues to mandate industry. In a way that is good and in another quite misguided. People don’t do what you expect. They do what you inspect. So I’m told.

 

That a given….

 

Thermal efficiency is a sliver of the puzzle. Gasoline is the power of choice for society at large. Industry can do its part to assure the maximum conversion of its BTU content to power. Which is has. That is the basic definition of thermal efficiency. It can also have a SOME impact on the use of that power BY the vehicle. Proper power management. Transmission and gearing. Aero and mass.

 

What it cannot do is manage the drivers intentions, will and proclivities. I like that last word.

Proclivity is rendered as: a tendency to choose or do something regularly…

Your habit of driving which is has the single largest impact on the vehicles usage of fuel, parts and your money. Fact is it has more impact than the combine human knowledge of ALL engineering.

Every time you tell the government that you want more efficiency from a class of vehicle, less pollution from it, more safety from it, so you can drive anyway you choose too…you are saying you want that entity to force industry and other drivers to carry your load for you. A load that is already and has been for decades, at its limits in terms of quantum leaps. Everything it does from here is minutia.

 

[CadillacLuke24]

 

Reminds me of an old Top Gear bit when the stooges were still there...Prius driving flat out and a M5 just keeping pace with it. The M5 got better mileage than the Prius.

 

Or like with my truck. I can easily get 23, 24, 25 mpg on the highway. Because I drive more conservatively.

[barry G]

nicely said.

I am that "mechanic since a boy" story, abused with dad's rigs and then thrown at the military to tackle even more.

build my own engines.

Just got back in the house after cleaning snow off a 30 year old subaru witha rochester carb I built. Started first try and sat there and idled.

A most impossible engine, and my version owns it.

 

Anyway,

Something I get at mad at is "midget".

Tearing into an engine will find the top third of a cylinder wall into the burns of efficient.

injection of any kind fills the same motors stroke alittle more with dwell and timing...

we called it power gains.

same fuel consumption.

 

it reminds me of the j57 engines going over to tf33 on the kc135.

add a little bypass encapsulates a bigger world.

 

I think they'll find direct injection is pushing too much in theories...

and aluminum, that has to go back underground away from the sun, where we'd never see it sitting on top of the earth with a gas fire around it anyway.

 

 

my only prediction that has not stood...

 

the choice of aluminum instead of iron. I assumed iron engines would get all the new stuff.

 

 

I am waiting.

a patient man.

[Grumpy Bear]

http://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-per-year-by-state.aspx

 

How much do people drive? Who would have a better grip on that that the people that insure cars? Thus the above link.

 

You will notice that there is more than one answer to that question depending on how the pie is sliced but a median number somewhere in the 10 to 13 thousand mile a year range would seem mathematically viable.

 

So how long does a car/truck last? That answer is a bit more vague or at first blush would seem so. Wiki ‘bathtub curve’.

 

Failure rate analysis statistical studies seem to indicate that acceptable repair cost weighed against reasonable reliability expectations puts that number for most cars something north of 200,000 miles. Double the mid 1960’s numbers.

 

When we marry these two pieces of information we find that the reasonable service life to be 15 to 20 years. That said this isn’t what statistics show. Google than number and you would find that the average age of a car on the US roads is about 11.5 years but the ownership length is a bit less than 6 years.

 

What is magical about 11.5 years? The length of body corrosion warranties for the industry seems to be (or was until recently) about 10 years or 100,000 miles. So 11.5 avoids 99.97% of all claims. You have to love bean counters.

 

Interestingly enough a personal look into the current past 3 year crop of vehicles as seen subjectively, by the body/paint and fender trade, pegs sheet metal life now closer to 5 years. Period!! You have noticed the reduction in dealer warranty times and mileages right? Dropping like rocks in a well.

 

Doesn’t matter what the component life is if there is nothing to bolt it to!

 

Technology cycle life is about half that or less perhaps. Meaning the car is “old hat” tech wise almost as fast as they can dream it. Worse if that car is teething with autonomous driving technology.

 

What we have here are lemmings chasing shadows off a cliff. Nothing is lasting long enough to have substance thus the shadow and the lemming part? Well cars and trucks are no longer transportation for the masses. They are offices and objects of veneration for those whose self-esteem demands that ‘Anyone…please…someone notice me’. Lemming scream after they’ve jumped.

 

Okay that last paragraph is my opinion and one not so humble but certainly factually in evidence.

 

The question asked was “What can GM do to become successful?” Boys and girls…it already is.

 

Maybe the wrong question was being asked?

 

A little fact of business we should have learned at our first lemonade stand.

 

They can’t sell what you won’t buy. If you’re buying it…they are successful.

Edited December 20, 2016 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

The first car I got behind the wheel of was my mother’s 53 Ford Crestline. 239 Flathead. Three speed on the column and an under dash overdrive and ditto for a parking brake. Manual suicide master cylinder drum brakes and manual steering. Vacuum wipers and a pushbutton AM radio that Dad still has in the shed.

 

You learned to use the parking brake as a ‘hill assist’ to get underway from a dead stop on a hill.

 

You learned to parallel park without automation.

 

You learned to downshift to brake or to hold speed on the down run of a hill. To downshift when approaching a lower speed limit before the need to accelerate. That brakes are for stopping and the transmission is for grade decent and speed regulation. Drivers that failed to learn this lesson were provided gravel traps at the bottoms of a long decent in the mountains.

 

No early automatic transmission had grade logic control and for decades people learned to use the brakes to do the transmissions job. State departments installed more gravel traps.

 

In latter decades the job that a manual transmission did was entirely lost on newer drivers who can’t get down a mountain without exhausting a set of brakes.

 

Drivers that can’t parallel park. Can’t start on a hill without rolling backward or burning up the low band/clutch in their automatic. Can’t follow at a safe distance. Can’t stay in a lane because they are watching TV on the dash. Texting. Video conferencing. Talking on the phone. Play a video game. Typing on their tablet or laptop. Changing their cloths, shaving/putting on makeup or picking their nose.

 

Then the auto industry did the unthinkable. They gave in. We have a not so young generation spoiled by the automatics early development. And we have multiple generations of drivers that are permitted and pampered to enjoy their ignorance and stupidity and confused to distraction that the newest generation of transmissions do the thinking for them, or try anyway.

 

If your transmission is confused over which gear to be in then perhaps you should take that as a hint to make up your mind about what your trying to do.

 

It reads your inputs not your mind.

 

Driving is becoming a lost art at a time when the roads are the most congested and more dangerous than they’ve even been.

[Grumpy Bear]

Ever wonder what makes something better than something else?

 

Is a simple statement to that effect sufficient to prove that claim? Marketing people think so. “New and Improved” without stipulation of the specifics that make that so are the focus point of marketing.

 

Webster says better means improved then states improved means better. I dislike circular reference definitions about as much as I do using the word to define itself. I mean, if you don’t know what the word means don’t use it like you do. So why the trouble anyway.

 

Because better is a ‘quality’ word. Robert Persig wrote an entire book on the concept of quality/better. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

 

Etymology of this word ‘better’ as a noun will take you off your feet. What is your betters are those superior to you. Fostering statements such as, “mind you betters” or do as those who are your superior say. In the marketing context you don’t see better used as a noun but as an adjective.

 

Better: Adj. ; Comparative adjective of good in the older Germanic languages.

 

A point in a scale of comparative analysis, yes, but what kind? Subjective or Objective? This was Roberts dilemma. The former is based on your personal likes and dislikes. Opinions. The latter on a point of reference. Data or at least a starting point. Oddly that point of data is subject to….an agreement of likes and dislikes in a broader sense but as subjective, the word and topic remain unless we can fix a point which is not subject to likes and opinions. This might need an example.

 

I need a truck to pull a load up a grade. Bob, Bill and Joe have trucks. A Ford, a Chevy and a Dodge respectively. If I ask this group which truck is best suited for this task I will likely receive a loyalty vote for each ones choice. What they like for the task is the truck they chose to buy. What questions were not asked that should have been?

 

How much load? How much grade? Maybe even at what altitude and under what conditions? At what pace? Every one of these asks for a data point that is fixed in physics and engineering that has been established by science and common sense as points for that reference.

 

Okay then. I need to pull a 15,000 lb. load over a six percent grade at 12,000 feet above sea level at a pace no less than 55 mph anytime of the year. Loveland Pass Colorado for example.

 

Given the right set ups, these fellows trucks, every one of them is capable of performing this task. At this point none is better than the other. They are equal.

 

Let’s add to our specifications 1.) For the longest period of time and 2.) On the least about of fuel. 3.) Lowest cost of ownership.

 

That will weed out two. Which two depends on the order of importance of the specifications. Again a subjective analysis.

 

We might then add further. 1.) Comfort 2.) Appearance or curb appeal.

 

So let me ask this. Is the truck that proves itself ‘better’ subject to this analysis also the best truck for the single urban owner whose harshest need would be say 12 bags of solar salt three times a year to and from town on the level in Mid-America?

 

Trucks broken out in classes such as half ton, one ton etc., are often advertised “best power in class”. This is an absurd statement.

 

Let’s look at two fictitious trucks that point this out. Both half tons rated at a maximum load of 500 pounds payload. Just pulled that number out of the air. Truck A has a 425 hp. V8 in a truck that weighs 8,000 pound. Truck A’s load combine 8,500 lbs. 20 pounds per horsepower. Truck B weighs 5000 lbs. for a combine weight of 5500 lbs. Has a motor whose power is a V6 at 275 hp. Still 20 pounds per horsepower and as such will accelerate, all other things equal, at the same rate. Carry the same load.

 

Point is, ‘better’ was the wrong word. Highest horsepower in class was true even though given the short list of specification it proved to be meaningless. You will NEVER see “best power to weight ratio in class”.

 

These people went to collage for the most part. The choice of ‘better’ was deliberate. Vague without a firm reference it proves to be unenforceable, deniable and just confusing enough for the consuming public to seem to have some meaning it does not that leverages the sale of the truck. Tis its purpose.

 

Even if you divided GVW by HP for those trucks in that class it wouldn’t tell you anything about ‘better’. It still lacks enough reference to tell any story worth the telling. But it is short and easy to fit into a sixty second commercial.

 

(335)

[Grumpy Bear]

“I’m listening”, soon follows “You’re not listening to me”, and on cue, thank you very much.

 

Thing is, listening and being heard are not mutually exclusive. A plea for a hearing ear is rarely a request for assurance that the volume is sufficient. Rather, it’s an indicator that the speaker is frustrated in feeling they are not getting a point ‘understood’. Which most people take to mean agreed too. Which isn’t true, now is it?

 

So being understood is their goal. If you’re the listener that isn’t as easy as it sounds. If you’re a professional listener you actually took a fair amount of schooling on the subject to learn how to place your will, wishes and opinions on hold long enough to see (with the minds eye) a point of view you yourself may not hold to be true at all.

 

You’re asking, “What’s the point of that?” I mean seriously, if they are speaking they must want your opinion so as to benefit from your experience or they wouldn’t be talking at all. And because we hold that view we are formulating our reply while they speak thus not really hearing them. Point makes itself if you see in in slow motion.

 

Well maybe they do and maybe they don’t. Maybe they don’t want anything at all but to be heard. To freely express a point of view.

 

If you’re a professional you are aware that until you actually understand that persons point of view as they do, you have no useful voice of your own. And maybe, circumstance prevailing, you shouldn’t. If truly heard, they figure it out themselves a good percentage of the time. But not always to be fair.

 

So….if you’re not a professional thus a psychiatrist or counselor or minister and preforming that role, what are you?

 

How about a friend.

 

Not to be confused with Facebook ‘friends’ or Snapchat ‘friends’ or Tweet ‘friends’ or XYZ you fill in the blank_____.com forum friends or any other social media exchange.

 

If you don’t understand that…”You’re not listening”.

[Grumpy Bear]

A line drawn on a slip of paper is a representation. They picture boundaries. They are perceived. Make note of an edge of an object. Defining separation in color, texture, depth, richness, temperature, sound, communications. Thoughts, ethics and even morality. They can be as sharp as a razor or muted over great distances. Science and math and yes, even art, philosophy and religion study lines.

 

They are perceived by all five senses and present in your thoughts. They are present regardless of consciousness. Exist with you and apart from you. We define our world with lines.

 

It’s no wonder we confuse separation with division. It’s a wound self-inflicted.

 

Observed from the space shuttle the earth has no man made boundaries. It is one earth. One human race. One animal kingdom. One atmosphere. One orbit around one sun within one galaxy residing in one universe with one Creator.

 

Everything else is an illusion and a manmade division. Division is convincing indeed if you stand too close but one such none the less.

 

In fact, if you back off far enough man becomes indistinguishable and his significance becomes apparent. The Psalmist observed:

Psalm 8:3, 4

When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers,

 

The moon and the stars that you have prepared,

 

What is mortal man that you keep him in mind,

 

And a son of man that you take care of him?

[CadillacLuke24]

This and Yes Dear are fun to read. Thanks Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

This IS NOT a religious rant. It is a quick look at the inherent absurdity and logic of human susceptibility to self-deception in the face of insurmountable evidence to a undeniable truth.

 

Some think that belief in a popular thought assures you are correct. This is affirmed if there is strong secular evidence to support that stand. Published papers for instance in scientific/psychology/medical/religious journals. Even more impressive perhaps would be support from a major or topic leading university or perhaps even a well-respected encyclopedia, Britannica or World Book perhaps. Maybe a major dictionary such as Merriam-Webster or Oxford. We live online today….

 

Collected from Etymology on Line . Com; Concerning the word FAITH:

 

From early 14c. as "assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence," especially "belief in religious matters" (matched with hope and charity).

 

So…this first mention of faith in the English vernacular is in context of religions faith. That in itself is interesting. Time wise that is.

 

More interesting is that faith of this defined nature is much older than 1200-1250 CE. It is mentioned for example in Hebrews 11:1 which was written about 61 CE in the ancient Koine Greek language. AKA as the Alexandrian dialect, good old fashion common peoples tongue.

 

The word faith in Koine Greek is ‘pistis’. It conveys, in that language the thought of confidence, trust, firm persuasion; and depending on context can also convey faithfulness or fidelity. For the writer of Hebrews however his source of inspiration evidently wished there be no doubts about what was being meant by the word faith in a religious context as it is penned in this verse as a literal definition of itself. So I quote:

 

Hebrews 11:1 ‘Faith is the assured expectation of what is hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities that are not seen’.

 

Let’s have a go at this. ‘expectation of what is hoped for’. So…faith is a thing applied to an hope held in expectation, that is, something in the future. It hasn’t be realized yet. However it is assured…how?

 

By, “evident demonstration of realities that are not seen”. Sounds complicated but it isn’t really. As a simple example; we cannot see electricity but we can receive an evident demonstration of its reality by placing a finger in a light socket.

 

A complete read of this eleventh chapter of Hebrews recounts numerous examples of events past held in evidence of such reason for hope in our expectations for the future.

 

Nut-shelled. Faith is assured by proof positive in past events for events yet to come. It is the reason you believe the sun will rise tomorrow or that corn grows from seeds of corn. Past events provide a warranty, or more literally warrant a trust in that truth.

 

So…how does that compare to "assent of the mind to the truth of a statement for which there is incomplete evidence”?

 

It doesn’t does it? And yet this is what is means to billions of people in our day. Christian or not. If you read the Wiki faith write up you know that this popular definition favors no belief in particular. But it does favor a cause.

 

Remember I made earlier note of the time for its first use in English? Circa 1225 CE?

 

If your cuppa isn’t cold…a quick time line.

 

Around 44 CE the “Way” as it was called before this is recorded in Acts 11:26 ‘as an act of divine providence to be renamed “Christians”’.

 

About 100 CE the last of Christ Apostles dies leaving Christianity in the hands of foretold apostates. Also foretold (2 Timothy 4:2-4)

 

For the next 225 years apostasy grows so that by the First Council of Nicaea a council of apostate bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea by summons of the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325.

 

It was at this time this apostate Christianity was, by the Emperor Constantine, legalized and made part and parcel to the Roman Empire. It had a purpose.

 

This form of religion melted this apostate Christianity with pagan traditions that were the center of Roman best interest in controlling its empire. It was their custom.

 

Nothing has fundamentally changed. Today billions people on this plant, plus or minus a few million, still believe faith as define in English by the Roman Empire circa 1225 DC is blind despite and in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary. What evidence?

 

2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21 The word translate ‘inspired’ in the former means “God-breathed”. Pretty much like his ‘finger’ wrote the ten commandments. No come to think of it, It is exactly like that.

 

So…God said ‘A’ and the Roman State and Church interest of 325 AD said ‘B’…B it is then. Believed so well that 7 billion non-Christians and yes even atheist believe it today.

 

You like good paradox?

[Grumpy Bear]

Lorentz Force F = qE + qv X B

 

I’ve been staring at this physics equation for a few days and mesmerized by the large red X. It means more than to multiply in this equation. It also means the “cross product of”. It’s a three dimensional vector quality unique to magnetic fields. Don’t strain a cell over it because we have no interest in what it is or even what it means within the context of the formula.

 

The interest in it is what it implies about the assumptions made in thinking that turn the flatly untrue into the illusion of a concrete fact.

 

This is the only point I was trying to make in the last post which went down like the Titanic. How so? I assumed that as I started the post “NOT a religions…..” the reader would move past that idea and concentrate on the subject of the “illusion” that create a wildly held belief from not just an untrue source but one with a motive for that deceit.

 

So your saying….blah, blah, blah…what has it to do with _____________.

 

There ya go. Thinking it has a subject like my truck or dinner. It doesn’t. What it has to do with it the quality of life. Your life.

 

There is an entire field of study devoted to deceit. Creation of false truths with intent and purpose. It is called…

 

Marketing.

 

Oddly enough you don’t have to lie or deceive anyone to sell a product worth its designed purpose. But you do the ones that are not and they outnumber those that do by about a million to one.

 

Most will have as much trouble with this idea as we did with ‘faith’ and “cross product of’. We like to be deceived. We must. We choose it every day.

 

We use to by salt in a 2lb paper can for about a nickel. Now it’s no longer ground, it’s left course. Packaged in a grinder and sold for several dollars for a few ounces and it is “better”. Really? It’s just salt. SODIUM CLORIDE. A chemically defined substance.

 

If I would tell you the truth about Flow Bench vs Dyno I would get…..

 

Hands over the ears. La.La.La.La.La.La!!!

[Grumpy Bear]

Ever consider the power of a mirror? I watched this movie from 1936, the Plainsman, Garry Cooper is in it. I like the old stuff. Anyway, there is a scene where Calamity Jane is looking into a mirror to see herself in a hat. What she sees is an image like the reflections at the Fun House. At the other end of the spectrum are mirrors like the new MIT ‘Perfect Mirror’. Perfect reflections of any wave form; light, sound or fluid. 100% of the wave reflected geometrically perfect. Zero scatter. Zero absorption. A BIG step in solar collection and telescopes and microscopes and lasers. The more perfect the reflection the more powerful this tool becomes, the more good it can and does do.

 

There are many uses for mirrors but the one humans like the most is vanity. We use the mirror to see what we look like but we don’t always like what we see. If the intent is flattery then a perfect mirror is the last mirror of choice. What if our self-perception is we are to thin, to fat, to tall or too small. Our vanity would demand a mirror that makes us look other. A perfect refection from an imperfect source would demand an imperfect mirror. Actually one intentionally designed to give the desired result and not the true result.

 

But what if we wish to see our flaws and see them clearly enough to make corrections/improvement, then we would require as perfect a mirror as our circumstances would permit. James 1:22-25 makes a point that more than the outward appearance of a person needs a good sharp reflection if correcting our flaws is the intent.

 

‘However, become doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves with false reasoning. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this one is like a man looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, and he goes away and immediately forgets what sort of person he is. But the one who peers into the perfect law that belongs to freedom and continues in it has become, not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work; and he will be happy in what he does’

 

Do we really want to see our true refection….Or just get a good ear tickling? How much mirror can we bear to look into? For many the mirror of a Bible is something we avoid looking into that closely anymore. We prefer the more imperfect reflections provided by social media, friends, advertisers and marketing groups and…the self-help industry. Just about anyone who will tell us we are perfect just as we are or can be IF…….

 

13.8 Billion dollars per year are spent in the USA alone on DYI self-help books, films, seminars, motivational speakers…….? The money spent after we read the book, see the film, etc. implementing that advise is many multiples higher.

 

We love a mirror that flatters or vanity.

Edited February 5, 2017 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

I have this friend Mike. Older fella. Just a bit older than I, a decade or less. He gave a funeral talk this Friday last for yet another friend of ours who was but nine months older than I.

 

I have a collection on my refrigerator of those little flyers they pass out at the funeral homes that have the deceased picture and a short write up telling about their lives.

 

I’ve been noticing that the ages of these people are upon me and I’m collecting them at a rather rapid rate. Roscoe the name familiar for our most recent. Fact is I just saw him Wednesday night with his grandchildren buzzing about his feet along with every other youngster at church that night. He was the Peppermint man. Always had a pocket full and the kids knew it. He was a robust fella in what seemed prime shape.

 

Truth is, after five days of the ME poking around they have no reason they can assign for his death. Not a single clue. He passed reading the paper, fell asleep in his favorite chair with wife at arm length doing emails and with a smile on his face and never woke up. We had plans for Sunday.

 

No stroke. No heart attack. No blood clots. No ruptured aneurysm. No cancers in fact pink as a new born baby. A naturalist, avid gather, hunter and fisherman. Kept himself in good shape the old fashion way. Worked hard, played hard and watched what he ate. Every bite of it. He enjoyed living and life liked him back…until it didn’t.

 

Roscoe has this Ol double cab long bed dually GMC. Long as a Mississippi Riverboat. He’d say, “I never have to plan my entrance but I do have to give my exit some thought”.

 

Not this time brother, not this time.

[Grumpy Bear]

Know what I miss? Voight’s general store in a two car garage behind the owners home near the place I grew up where I could spend my twenty five cent weekly allowance and buy enough candy to give me a bellyache for a week. I miss 50’s British half liter motorcycles. No matter how bad it runs it puts a smile on your face you can’t wipe off for a week.

 

Besides being in the same general time zone they have something else in common. Their gone for good. Candy for decades but the last of the half pint Brit’s disappeared just a few short years ago when Royal Enfield discontinued the Iron Bullet 500 after 50 plus years of continuous production of the exact same identical model with but a handful of modernizations over those five decades.

 

The generations of buyers that loved them were replaced by new generations that just didn’t understand them, or wish too, thus lacked appreciation for their crude but simple and purposeful elegance. All the sudden a bike that gave decades of faithful service to loving owners were failing faster than a prom night promise. The bike hadn’t changed. The owners had.

 

Owners have changed allot. Owners use to get their hands dirty. There are always a few who will but it use to be a birthright. A young man really didn’t take any interest in math until he needed it to understand some Hot Rod post containing it. We use to keep notes. Gather data. Dream. Explore.

 

We use to deal with facts, data, information as solid as the day is long. Now, we deal with opinion, polling results and ‘likes’. We scorn data and people that love data.

 

We also don’t teach music appreciation in school or cursive handwriting and penmanship. Woodshop, machine shop, drafting, typing, basic electrics. Language arts? Don’t get me started…..

 

Why learn to finely finish a sweet piece of Walnut when you can buy printed plastic simulated sticky back sheet to apply to a composite board made of sawdust and synthetic glue. Especially if you can get the same price for either and improve your margin.

 

If you can wait long enough…the next generation will adopt a new truth which is indeed profitable and yet…not truth at all.

 

Pilot said to Jesus, “What is truth?”. John 18:38

 

We waited long enough. Everyone has forgotten.

 

John 17:17 “Sanctify them by means of the truth; your word is truth”.

 

Odd place for scripture? Not if you actually remember anything at all about the source of all law in this universe that governs reality. These laws are not an opinion. The Law can’t be rejected by ‘likes’, polls or opinions of any majority.

 

Machines, trucks or even a sewing machine are not governed by the whim or the programing of some opinionated engineer. They respond only to law, truth. Garbage in, garbage out. The best engineers, programmers, craftsmen work with law. They do this by understanding it. Their understanding is a product of a search for truth. Truth is uncovered by data (I speak of things made of men). Data filtered by opinion isn’t data, it’s garbage.

 

How is it that the human creature came to believe that God is a subject fit only for studies in theology and worship? The entire foundation of Newton’s scientific studies were based in God’s Law.

 

Guess we waited long enough to forget that too.

 

​808

Edited February 20, 2017 by Grumpy Bear

[Grumpy Bear]

A frog is a cold blooded creature. Toss him a bucket of boiling water and he will jump right out. Put him in a bucket of room temperature water and slowly bring it to a boil and you have frog for dinner. He will sit there until he dies not sensing the killer heat being applied to his body.

 

October 1964. Average Total Private Industry wage in the US was $2.55 (Data 360 wages) per hour and the just released base1965 Chevy C10 cost just over $2,000.00. Base price of the 2017 Silverado? $27,585.00.

 

Meaning wages for the average factory worker in the USA would be, based on the price of new trucks, $35.15 per hour.

 

What is the average Total Private Industry wage in the US in 2017 as of January? $21.84 (Data 360 wages)

 

You have 38% less spending power today than in 1965, if your average and can find a base WT.

 

Thing is that base model truck is rare as hens teeth these days. The current crop of trucks actually at dealers run around $40,000. Or 20 times what was actually on a lot in 1965 which equates to $51 an hour. A whopping 57% loss of buying power!

 

And I should not be the least bit upset over plastic chrome, no paint and wax for rust proof. Really?

 

At what point should the frog have a say or should he remain silent until fully cooked and eaten?