The good old days

A friend sent an email that gave me another ‘duh’
moment. I had been working on a post about how our
country had changed and hit a snag. This video
fixed that problem.

Bingo! We didn’t have cellphones, color TV, FM
radio, or a lot of other things but we were so
busy being busy we didn’t notice.

Families ate together, went to church together,
and actually talked to each other. We wrote letters
that went to post office, could do math in our
heads, had respect for others, and were proud to be
Americans.

When we acted up we didn’t get a time out. That
was something that happened in a football game, we
got a belt or switch to our backsides. We just
thought it was the price to pay for doing something
stupid.

People weren’t equal, though we all agreed we were
born that way. Failure was an option and many of us
knew firsthand what it felt like.

We didn’t know anyone who sued someone else. If
we fell down on someone else’s sidewalk we were to
blame for not watching where we were going.

And we’ll say it again, there was no sex or cussing
on TV. There were war shows, cowboy shows, cop
shows and comedies but for some odd reason we all
didn’t turn into gun toting mobsters because of it.

Today I would venture that sounds corny and
perhaps even made up. Or prehistoric. But believe
it or not, there are a lot of us who miss those
days, myself included.
Comments are always welcome.

Fast ride

We mentioned the upcoming Speed Week held at the
Bonneville Salt Flats and thought to add a few
posts about the cars and what they are attempting
to do.

The Bloodhound SSC is a supersonic car built with
the intention of reaching 1,000 mph. It is powered
by a jet engine and a rocket engine, plus it has a
Formula 1 V-8 race car engine just to power the
oxidizer pump for the rocket.

A Eurojet EJ 200 jet engine will take the car to
300 mph then the Nammo HTP Hybrid rocket will
propel the vehicle to 1,000 mph. These engines will
produce a combined 21 tons of thrust.

That means 135,000 hp or 0-1000 mph in 55 seconds!
Sound would reach 180 decibels at launch and the
interior temperature of the rocket would reach
3,000 degrees Celsius.

There will be about 550 more competitors at Speed
Week and while we can’t do a post on all of them
we will do some.
Comments are always welcome.

Alien paint

Our son shared a video of a car that got our
attention. In a matter of seconds the car went from
purple to red, blue, green, yellow and brown. It
was claimed that the paint changed colors
electrically.

But according to Snopes the video was a phony
and the color changes were done digitally. The
funny thing is the paramagnetic paint is real and
has been in the works for years.

While the thought of changing your car’s color by
turning a knob sounds far fetched, Toyota, GM and
other car makers have been working on refining the
process for about 7 years.

It starts with a polymer coating with something
called magnetoheological dampers. Basically this
means the coating has paramagnetic iron oxide
particles in it.

When an electrical current is passed through the
coating these particles change alignment which
alters the way they reflect light and changes the
cars color. The default color, when no current is
running through the body, is white.

Got it. But this opened the door to so many more
questions our head started spinning. Would your
title state the color is white or would it simply
say “all”? What color would police cars be?

Would an officer in an unmarked squad car just
turn the knob to become a regular squad car?
Would criminals use this technology to evade
capture? You get the idea.
So take a look at the video and see what you think.
Comments are always welcome.

Obsessions

Some people like nothing more than to smell the
roses in their garden or curl up with a good book.
Others put on their hiking boots or running shoes
and get out to exercise.

And others like to push things to limit by
jumping out of planes, or seeing how much their
bodies and/or machines can take. This post is
about the latter.

Speed Week is almost upon us and in August some of
fastest people in the world are going meet at the
Bonneville Salt Flats to see if they made their
rides faster.

The Bonneville Speedway is an area of 56,650 acres
near Wendover, Utah, that is used for racing.

Scouring the information highway we came across
some numbers concerning the event. So let’s take
a numerical cruise through this event.

550 racers are pre-registered for this year’s
Speed Week coming from 11 different countries and
39 of our 50 states on this 100th anniversary of
the event.

In 1935 Sir Malcolm Campbell set a land speed
record of 301.129 in ‘Blue Bird’. A purpose built
car that weighed almost 5,000 pounds and was
powered by a supercharged V-16 Rolls-Royce airplane
engine.

In 1963 Craig Breedlove went 407.447 mph in his
‘Spirit of America’, one of the first jet-propelled
record holders.

In 1964 Art Arfons did 434.022 in his jet-
propelled ‘Green Monster’.

In 1965 Craig Breedlove came back with a new
version of ‘Spirit of America’ and did the flying
mile at 600.601 mph.

In 1967 Burt Munro (the worlds fastest Indian)
took his Indian Scout V-Twin to 183.59 mph. On
two wheels!

And finally, in 1970 Gary Gabelich took his ‘Blue
Flame’ to 622.407 mph. This was a rocket-powered
vehicle.

We’ll be watching this year and might see some
new speed records. Sounds relaxing to us.
Comments are always welcome.

It started

100 years ago on this date World War One began.
The war lasted 4 years, 3 months and 1 week.

When the dust settled and the treaties were
signed the allied forces had 5,525,000 dead,
12,831,500 wounded and 4,121,000 missing.

As with all wars, and with the passage of time,
the casualty numbers don’t seem as horrendous. But
we must remember all who gave the ultimate
sacrifice so that we would remain free.

Please take the time for a moment of silence today
to remember as we must never forget.
Comments are always welcome.

Stuttering kitten

A friend sent a joke that got us laughing so we’ll
share it with you.

A teacher is explaining biology to her 3rd grade
students. She says, “Human beings are the only
animals that stutter.”

A little girl raises her hand. saying, “I had a
kitty-cat who stuttered.”

The teacher, knowing how precious some of these
stories could become, asked the girl to describe
the incident.

“Well,” she began, “I was in the back yard with
my kitty and the Rottweiler that lives next door
got a running start and before we knew it, he
jumped over the fence into our yard!”

The teacher exclaimed, “That must’ve been scary,”

The little girl said, “It sure was. My kitty
raised her back, went ‘Sssss, Sssss, Sssss’ and
before she could say ‘Shit,’ the Rottweiler ate
her!”

The teacher had to leave the room.

Comments are always welcome.

Getting away

As mentioned we were offline for over 24 hours,
but have returned from our self-imposed exile. If
you live in our little corner of Iowa you know this
is the time of year for the Bix seven mile run.

In 40 years we haven’t run once, but we have
watched a few on TV. While this race is going on
we are almost hostages in our home and decided
this year we’d cruise the northbound highway to
find somewhere to get our sanity back.

We couldn’t go too far north or we’d once again
bump into entrants in the RAGBRAI, which is a
bicycle race across Iowa. So we settled on a stop
in Dubuque, Iowa for some stress free hours in our
normally hectic days.

We left the cell phones off and I never used the
Motel WiFi on my tablet. The wife got her steak
and shrimp, I got my mushroom swiss burger, and we
made it back relaxed and sane.

So here are a few interesting things we’ve found
online since our return. Ever heard of the Tarus
2M? The Russian military call it a motorcycle.

We have to admit that after watching the following
video we can now say we’ve seen Kubota tractor
race a Mitusbishi pickup at a drag strip.

If you haven’t watched a “Shockwave” jet race how
can you call yourself a car nut? There’s just
something about a jet powered, 60,000 horsepower
semi tractor racing at night.

Comments are always welcome.

Amazing company

We are not going to have internet access after we
post this until tomorrow afternoon so we decided
to share something to ponder.

Have you ever wondered where the tallest flagpole
in North America is? Or how tall it is, or how big
the flag is? If you have and haven’t found the
answers yet, please watch this video.

And now you know.
Comments are always welcome.

The circus continues

After reading an article in our local paper we
feel compelled to address a few of the issues that
were mentioned.

It would seem that Alderman Boom believes the
owner of the owner of the team that calls our local
stadium home is out to take over LeClaire park. We
honestly don’t see how that merits print space.

Alderman Boom stated in the article that the team
owner wanted to expand the children’s play area
into LeClaire park, had put a set of stairs on the
park side of the ferris wheel, and was turning
the riverfront in to a carnival.

Our Mayor may believe that Alderman was at the
meeting as he continually referred to Alderman Edmond
as Alderman Boom, even after being corrected by
Alderman Edmond. But we did not see Alderman Boom
in attendance.

At said meeting Dave Heller was adamant that no
stairs, entrance, exit, or egress be built on the
park side of the ferris wheel. He wanted to allow
access only through the stadium.

Had Alderman Boom attended the meeting he would
have known Mr. Heller also talked of installing a
midway between left field and the ferris wheel
complete with games of chance.

To us, a 110 foot tall ferris wheel with thousands
of colored LED lights seemed like a carnival at
the time. And unless we are mistaken, isn’t the
children’s play area on the right field side
of the stadium?

That would mean if anything was added there it
would cut into the sidewalk on the Centennial Park
side. The ferris wheel is up and running so why
beat a dead horse?
Comments are always welcome.

Our world

Do you believe you look at things differently than
others, or march to beat of a different drummer?
Think you could recognize things we see every day
if looked at from a different angle?

Well, take a deep breath, count to 10, forget the
stresses, and take a look at this.

A friend sent the video in an email that stated it
would be the most interesting thing I see today. He
was right. We knew about the eyelash mites and a
few of the others but the video held our attention
right to the end.

So if you haven’t seen this video please take a
little over seven minutes and you will be amazed.
Although we had never seen one before, we thought
the egg of a butterfly was spectacular. There is
more to see but we won’t spoil it.

We hope you enjoyed this different look at the
world in which we live.
Comments are always welcome.