Applying New Technology to Picking the Guitar

Over at There, I Fixed It is a Russian video of a guy with an electric guitar demonstrating the advantages of picking the strings instead of using his fingers--and about 1:30 in, there is an innovation to picking that must be seen to be believed.

Wrecked Exotics

Shortly after I bought the Corvette, a friend in California pointed me to this website, wreckedexotics.com (or perhaps one with similar content).  It is still a sobering reminder that just because you can buy a high performance sports car does not mean that you can drive one.  (Or maybe you can--and bad luck happens to the best of us.)

This is a Lamborghini Murcielago LP-670-4 SV wrecked in Indonesia to a level that goes far beyond "totaled."

This Mercedes CLK wrecked in Spain does not look like it is even possible.

The most bizarre of all--a Corvette wrecked in Iran.  How, exactly, did a Corvette end up in Iran?

Here is a reminder of what a low nose does for you: a 2008 Corvette that rear ended another car and ended up in what might be considered a compromising position--if you were an animal or person.

And some people are just too stupid to survive.  A 2007 Corvette: "22 year old female driver lost control at high speed, crashed and rolled over, killing all 4 passengers. (Yes, there were 4 people riding in the car)."

Righthaven's Website Has Been Reassigned

Righthaven is about finished off.  Their domain name has been taken away, and handed off to a court appointed receiver be auctioned off to pay for the legal fees of defendants who could afford to fight them.

First Year of Iowa Shall-Issue Permit Law

Thanks to Shall Not Be Questioned for pointing me to this December 22, 2011 Des Moines Register article:

The number of Iowans seeking permits to carry handguns and other weapons has increased 170 percent during the first 11 months of 2011 — a trend one Iowa sheriff calls “unbelievable.”

During the first year in which a new law gave sheriffs less discretion over which residents can be denied permits, 94,516 Iowans sought and received non-professional weapons permits from January through November, the Iowa Department of Public Safety reports.

Why Does Moving To Florida Sound So Good?

We have a spectacularly clear night--because anything like moisture froze out of the air days ago.  The Milky Way was obvious, and the constellations were glorious.

I rolled out Big Bertha, and wow!  I could see an enormous amount of detail on Jupiter at 160x, including the Red Spot, and more detail in the bands than I could ever hope to sketch.  (A bit like Jupiter in this Jack Newton picture, but much sharper.)  But it was just too cold to stay out there!  I can't wear gloves the whole time, and my hands were beginning to ache from the cold.

Something Is Broken in K-12 Education

Or maybe something is broken in our culture.  This December 12, 2011 Contra Costa Times article at the San Jose Mercury-News website reports on how the California State University system is overwhelmed by remedial student needs:

The remedial numbers are staggering, given that the Cal State system admits only freshmen who graduated in the top one-third of their high-school class. About 27,300 freshmen in the 2010 entering class of about 42,700 needed remedial work in math, English or both.

Wait a minute: more than half of the students who were in the top third of their high school class aren't ready for freshman English and math?

"It's a terrible indictment of the K-through-12 system," Postma said. "If a factory was building cars and the lug nuts kept falling off the tires, you would do something pretty dramatic about it. We keep adding the lug nuts back to the tires rather than trying to figure out what the problem is."

The remedial problem is hardly confined to California. Schools across the country have puzzled over how to better prepare students for college and what to do with those who are not ready. 

Minor point: lug nuts fall off the wheels, not the tires, but I can't expect a professor to know highly technical stuff like that!  Still, he's right: if more than half of the top third of high school graduates are unready for college, then something is terribly broken.

I have said it before: Idiocracy is beginning to look less like science fiction, and more like a documentary.

New Product

I mentioned a few days ago that ScopeRoller was expanding into measurement tools (cheap ones).  I had a very practical example of the difference this particular one makes when my son came up this evening to do some manufacturing of ScopeRoller caster assemblies.  Part of the process involves boring out some 1.75" nominal inside diameter aluminum cylinders so that they are actually 1.751" ID.  They have to be bored for 2.00" length.

Ordinarily, this is a a matter of turning the handwheel on the lathe a total of 40 times--and remembering, how many times have I turned it?  Now, because of the ruler under the saddle, he knows where to stop, and then slowly approach the zero on the handwheel.  It has certainly speeded up production a bit.