Hybrid Mythbusting

"Hybrids," or automobiles with both gasoline engines and electric motors designed to propel the vehicle, are the cool gadget to have now, especially here in SoCal. However, there has been a lot of debate about the true costs of a hybrid. In particular, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a hybrid's fuel economy is not nearly as efficient as the EPA sticker would suggest. Hybrids also cause some concern with regard to durability and dangers posed to emergency workers.

Popular Mechanics has attempted to address at least the fuel economy question by conducting a real-world test of two different models of cars with hybrid gas-electric powertrains, alongside their gas-only equivalents. While some decry the growing trend of turning larger sedans or SUVs into "muscle hybrids," Popular Mechanics' test demonstrates that the most significant gains in fuel economy can be gained from larger vehicles, rather than featherweight small sedans whose overall efficiency is already nearly maximized in its gas-only form. Popular Mechanics managed to coax a Toyota Highlander, a 7-passenger SUV, to return nearly 29 miles per gallon on average over their 570-mile test loop, almost nine miles per gallon better than the gas-only Highlander. 29 MPG in an SUV is undeniably a positive result; getting more power at the same time is a welcome side effect.

Which Sports Car Are You?

Here's a fun little internet time-waster. Remarkably, this is my result (I absolutely kid you not):

You are a Porsche 911!


You have a classic style, but you're up-to-date with the latest technology. You're ambitious, competitive, and you love to win. Performance, precision, and prestige - you're one of the elite, and you know it.

Um, okay, but in a nice way.

DIY Motivational Posters

You have probably seen those motivational pictures of dramatic landscapes coupled to vague power words and motivational statements. You may have also seen the brilliant parodies by the twisted geniuses at Dispair, Inc. One of their products:


Now, through the miracle of modern technology, you can make your own. An example:



Fire up those digital cameras and have some fun!

Stardust Coming Home

In space news you might have missed, the space probe "Stardust," which flew through the tail of a comet, will be returning to earth early Sunday morning. The probe captured space dust and other particles by means of a substance called "Aerogel." This is a pretty amazing material. Described as appearing like "frozen smoke," it is 99.8 percent empty space, and is a superior insulator. This is an unretouched photo of the stuff:

I don't know how scientists draw conclusions from thousands of bits of dust, but at least they get to play with these cool toys.

Have Felt Tip, Will Scribble

Having spent a fair amount of time exiting local hardware stores during my time off over the holidays, I was again confronted with one of the most profound questions of our day:

What do those people who stand at the door with a felt tip marker accomplish? They don't check my receipt against the items in my bag, not really, so it doesn't seem to be a theft prevention scheme. They don't affix an official stamp to the receipt; if the mark is anything more elaborate than a short, straight line it is cause for concern. Will I be denied the right of return if I don't get the mark? Should I be worried if the person at the door doesn't get to me, or isn't there? If I brought my own marker and made my own mark to save them the time, would they get upset?

These things take actual minutes out of my sleep. I deserve an answer.

Great Culinary Secrets, Revealed

My microwavable burrito (hey, I happen to like phosphates) came with stupifyingly accurate cooking instructions. Why doesn't every cookbook say something like this:

"Cook until hot and soft."

Well, yeah. Why didn't I think of that?

More Car Name Nonsense

No sooner do I take Lincoln to task for burdening its new compact sedan with the Zephyr moniker than FoMoCo decides to eliminate names for its Lincoln line. In an apparent belief that the move will position the marque upmarket, Lincoln will adopt alphanumeric designations for its vehicles. For instance, the Aviator sport-ute, whose name bears a pleasantly homophonic resemblance to its big brother, Navigator, and its cousin, Explorer, while managing to evoke a more highbrow image (flight over ground-pounding), will now be dubbed the MKX.

Who wants to say that they drive an MKX? Who will even remember that?

Aha. That is the point. Lincoln is apparently pouting that customers remember names like "Town Car," "Continental" or "Navigator," without referencing the Lincoln brand. The solution is diabolically simple: render the model name so meaningless and indistinct that the auto-buying public will have no choice but to refer to "Lincoln." Too bad the best thing Lincoln's product line had going for it was its names.

Except Zephyr.

And Lincoln's keeping that one.

Merry Christmas!

In what has become a Christmas tradition, I spent the evening cooking Christmas Eve dinner for our family, including my in-laws, and cleaning the fine dining implements in the kitchen while Christmas caroling drifts in from the living room. Continuing my new tradition, after chasing wired kids off to bed and wishing I could do the same, I retired to the solitude of the back bedroom to wrap the presents I got for Cheryl (amazingly, I didn't also buy them today). Just a couple more duties to go, then I can retire for the short night.

I hope your day will be as blessed as ours promises to be: surrounded by family, basking in warm, sunny weather, and marveling that no matter what may or may not be encased in colorful paper underneath the tree, we have been given riches in abundance.

The Decidedly Unfriendly Skies

For those of you interested in spectacular or merely intriguing aviation videos, this is a pretty good site. Be warned, some of the videos involve crashes, but many are simply films of unusual flight events.

For instance, ever seen a 747 land sideways?

How about an aileron roll in a 707?

This is an interesting one, not just for the startling sight of a Navy crewman disappearing into the intake of a jet fighter (and surviving), but for the backstory that I learned from one of my Porsche buddies who was serving aboard that carrier at the time (internet clubs draw people in from allpoints of the compass and all walks of life). As he explains it, the first person seen in the video is a trainee checking the position of the launch bar in the shuttle of the catapult and then moving away from the aircraft. The next person on the scene is his trainer who attempted to double check the launch bar position. His mistake, with the engine at full throttle, was to walk straight toward the nose gear, which put him in front of the intake. He should have gone behind the intake and looked forward into the shuttle.

A couple of things saved the sailor's life. First, the nose cone on the front of the A-6 engines is about three feet long. When he was sucked in, his arm was extended over his head which caused him to get wedged between the nose cone and inner wall of the intake. Second, his helmet and life preserver were sucked off and destroyed the engine, causing the sparks and flames out the back of the engine that you see in the video. The pilot immediately cut power to that engine and the launch was aborted. The sailor apparently climbed back out of the engine on his own and fell to the deck; it happened so fast, nobody knew he was there.

The incident is now a Navy training video.

Stupid Car Marketing Tricks

I've been mentally composing a major discussion of car naming conventions. Something has happened recently, though, that demands a response without further delay.

Ford Motor Company recently introduced a mid-sized sedan line that will be sold by at least two of its subsidiaries. The Lincoln version is not a bad car, and has received generally favorable reviews. Lincoln has even given the car a real name. My forthcoming post on car names will bemoan the trend of mysterious alphanumeric jumbles (with notable exceptions) or focus-group-friendly proto-words, so ordinarily I would greet conventional nomenclature with approval.

Unfortunately, Lincoln has chosen to resurrect a thoroughly uninspiring nameplate: Zephyr. What's that? Only the nadir of Ford's 1970's engineering:



Buy a dictionary, Ford. There are so many words out there that could be used for your new product. If Green Bill Ford insists that you must recycle, at least use a name with some heritage; even Sierra would do. Why drag out a musty relic from Detroit's absolute worst era? Has the marketing staff suddenly been overrun by business school grads younger than I am, who don't have personal memories of cars with huge but blissfully power-free engines, steering with all the feel of the stereo volume knob, illegible instruments (all two of them), and chrome bumpers that outweigh a Prius? Shame on you. Nostalgia is supposed to be pleasant, not induce the gag relflex.

Christmas Concerts

Things have been busy lately. Our annual Christmas Concerts took place this past weekend: four concerts in two days, following tech/dress rehearsals on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Unfortunately, I was nursing a pesky cold/flu thing all week that threatened to ruin my voice. Lots of tea with honey, Airborne and Advil seemed to do just enough to keep my head and voice clear. With 12 songs, including a six-person ensemble piece and a major solo, I needed all the help I could get.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the event and we had a good time putting it on (even though it was pretty hard work). Christmas may now go forward as scheduled.

Best Municipal Sign

Seen at a small, fenced-in playground at the San Francisco Civic Center (a homeless haven):

"Adults prohibited unless accompanied by Child."

Turn Out the Lights…

The Mighty Tigers have finally been silenced. Kelly’s team surrendered to the Grey Wolves on Saturday by a score of 2-1. (One would have thought that the larger feline could dispose of the smaller canine…)

Our girls came out a little flat, not playing with the same skill or intensity that they had shown the previous weekend. The defenders played with the ball too much, the offense couldn’t get going. The other team didn’t have any superstars, but they were so much like us that we could not establish a rhythm in the game.

Halftime passed without a score as the tension rose on both sidelines. After playing goalkeeper in the first quarter and sitting out the second, Kelly went back into goal, presumably for the remainder of the game. The game began to be played almost exclusively on our end of the field. Halfway through the quarter, disaster struck. One of our defenders committed an obvious handball infraction, one that the referee could not ignore. To everyone’s horror, the violation was in the penalty box, meaning the Grey Wolves would get a penalty kick. This is the one-on-one shot, in which the goalie must stay on the end line until the shot is struck, from about 20 feet away. Seeing Kelly, the smallest player on her team, swallowed up by the huge goal around her as she faced an opponent who is allowed line up the best shot, made me feel sick for her. We had worked for a while after practice last week in the front yard in the dark on getting low and making good stops, but a penalty shot is a no-win situation for a goalie, especially one who is a good couple of years away from being five feet tall.

Under a leaden sky, the shooter lined up. The other players jostled each other along the lines of the penalty box. Kelly stood impassive in the goal, her hands in a tentative ready position. I crouched behind our chair, half a field away and utterly unable to do anything to help her feel okay about giving up the first goal in a critical game under impossible circumstances. The referee blew the whistle.

She made the save. She made the save!

Not only did she make the save, but she had to dart to her left, staying low, to do so. For someone as small as she is, it was a remarkable achievement, but particularly so under the pressure-packed circumstances. Was I proud? I haven’t stopped smiling about it yet.

Of course, our defense continued its uncharacteristic downward spiral. Not three minutes after Kelly’s game-saving deflection of the penalty shot, one of her own defenders deflected an easy roller away from her into the goal. A few minutes after that, the Grey Wolves’ best player got loose close to the goal and launched a high, hard shot that none of our goalies could have stopped. Our star scored a late breakaway goal, but we all knew the game had been decided long before. The other team simply played better than we did that day.

In the end, the girls had a great season. Out of 24 teams in their division, they finished fifth. I watched two of the other games that weekend, and the two teams that will be in the championship game are not nearly the well-defined team that our girls had. One team depends entirely on a transcendent superstar (look for her in the Olympics, seriously), the other has a Big Girl and a Mouth.

Half of our girls were in tears for a little while after the game ended, such was their intensity, even if it arrived too late to inspire them to a win. In a world that increasingly encourages uniformity by rewarding mediocrity, it was refreshing to see young athletes care so deeply about the success of their team. After a few misty moments, Kelly shrugged it off and moved on with life. That’s good, too.

Short Runway, Bad Weather

Yesterday's skidding crash of a Southwest 737 at Chicago's Midway airport bears an uncomfortable resemblance to an incident involving a Southwest jet landing at Burbank in March 2000 [the link is to the NTSB report; fascinating stuff if you're a wannabe pilot like me]. Like yesterday's crash, the 2000 incident involved very bad weather. A more alarming connection is the similarity between the physical layout of the two airports. Both are relatively small, regional facilities, with runways of 6,500 feet or less that cannot be extended due to the presence of homes and businesses that surround the airports. Like the aircraft in the 2000 Burbank crash, the jet skidded off the end of the runway through a catch fence, ending up in the street outside the airport grounds. Unfortunately, while the Burbank airplane avoided tragedy by sliding to a halt mere feet in front of a gas station, the Chicago airplane struck a car, killing a child inside.

I've written before about short runways. I'm not a big fan. Landing at Burbank usually means that the aircraft is hard on the brakes and reverse thrusters all the way until it peels off to its assigned gate alongside the runway, less than 500 feet before the end of the runway. Bad weather quickly increases the difficulty of the landing, which must occur early over the field and requires hard braking under the best of circumstances. Short of installing walls at the end of airfields that would restrain (but heavily damage) a runaway jetliner, it appears that tragedies like this will continue to happen from time to time at busy regional airports that are too hemmed in by the cities around them to afford a safety buffer zone for runoff.

Book Review: "First Man"

I have long been an enthusiast of the space program. I am too young to remember the last days of the Apollo missions, but I vividly remember arising early to watch the space shuttle Columbia lift off on its first mission. Almost by accident, I have begun to accumulate a nice little collection of books about the space program, which usually take the form of biographies. I have “Lost Moon,” Jim Lovell’s account of the Apollo 13 near-tragedy, “Failure Is Not An Option,” by legendary flight director Gene Kranz, and “For Spacious Skies,” the biography of Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter.

I have now just finished reading the recently-published “First Man: the Life of Neil A. Armstrong,” the first and only authorized biography of astronaut Neil Armstrong. It is a long book, with large sections devoted to detailed accounts of Armstrong’s two space flights, described in second-by-second detail at points of particular interest such as the touchdown of the lunar module of Apollo 11. The book, written by Auburn University history professor and former NASA historian James Hansen, also devotes an equally considerable amount of ink to Armstrong’s service as a naval aviator during the Korean War and his work for NACA/NASA as a test pilot. Drawing from interviews of Armstrong, his family, friends and colleagues, as well as Navy and NASA records, the book is decidedly scholarly, yet quite readable.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, even for his own authorized biography, Armstrong steadfastly refuses to describe the emotional motivation or impact of any of his accomplishments or personal experiences. Long described, perhaps unfairly, as a recluse, Armstrong instead comes across as someone so self-controlled that he has no emotional center to which to refer, even when asked to do so directly. His interviews for the book are consistently non-committal when addressing issues of even the slightest controversy, such as the question of who would set foot on the moon first, his relationship with his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts, or even the death of his daughter due to cancer at age 2. He speaks the engineering equivalent of “lawyerese;” while precise in its own way, his mode of communication is relentlessly circumspect. Ultimately, he exhibits a personality of one who strove so hard to not disappoint anyone that he shut himself off from everyone. Coming to the book hoping to find revealed the normal man that has been hidden from view, you realize that there is no hidden man to find. Like Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, “there’s no there there.”

Oddly, based on portions of mission transcripts reproduced in the book, Armstrong appears to have an easy, dry wit, and would express enthusiasm as anyone would if they were, say, looking at the Earth rising over the Moon for the first time. Ultimately, however, the personality he displays for public, professional and personal consumption is intensely controlled and seemingly devoid of emotional range.

The book demonstrates, however, that Armstrong was an outstanding engineer and test pilot, whose cool demeanor and superior problem solving skills made him the ideal commander for the first manned mission to land on the moon. He may not have been warm and fuzzy, but he got the job done and allowed those around him to do their jobs as well. He also is shown to be a dynamic, gifted extemporaneous speaker, which skill he put to use almost from the beginning of his days as a Gemini astronaut, down to the present.

“First Man” is lengthy and laden with statistical facts that may seem unnecessary (i.e., how many rounds of ammunition Armstrong and his squad-mates expended in Korea; the number of sentences each of the three Apollo 11 astronauts spoke at their introductory press conference). The book, with its intent to be a scrupulously careful historical record, often finds its narrative drifting off correct relatively small inaccuracies in the record of conventional understanding about Armstrong. The book sometimes takes strident tone that comes across as unnecessarily defensive when debunking criticisms of Armstrong, particularly concerning Chuck Yeager. However, for those interested in the glory days of the space program, the level of detail with which Armstrong’s Gemini and, particularly, Apollo missions are portrayed provide a welcome addition to the historical record of these monumental events.

The Playoff Beat Goes On

Two days, two games, two wins. Kelly's team is on to yet another weekend of playoff games after defeating a couple of the best teams from the other group in their division. In their next game, they have a rematch against the best team in the other group, to whom they lost on penalty kicks after playing to a 0-0 tie a few weeks ago.

Three more wins and they become division champions. Three more wins? It's all fun, but I think we're all ready for the season to come to a close. The team pizza party is going to be perilously close to Christmas!

Common Sense Emerges from Hiding

No more cuticle disasters while on vacation, ma'am. Feel free to carry your trusty Phillips head screwdriver, sir! Small pointy things will soon be allowed to travel the friendly, more fortified skies.

Pop Culture Question of the Day

If Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal (the current "it" couple of the indie movie scene) were to have a son, would they be required to name him Aaron?

Thanksgiving Day, Remembered

This day, as with almost every national holiday, is best celebrated with at least a passing remembrance of how it came to be. As we work our way through Ken Burns' "Civil War," we have been powerfully reminded of what a precious thing our national liberty is, and under what forces it was molded. Mr. Lincoln's words reach across time and remain relevant:

Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day

October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

A. Lincoln

A very happy, and thankful, Thanksgiving to all.

Setting the Record Straight

Powerful words, from March 20, 2003:

“It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism. If so, the only exit strategy is victory, this is our common mission and the world’s cause. We're in this together. We want to complete the mission while safeguarding our troops, avoiding innocent civilian casualties, disarming Saddam Hussein and engaging the community of nations to rebuild Iraq.”

Well said, sir.