Oil Crisis: Solution
 

Stop accelerating towards red lights. Stop repeatedly accelerating and slamming on your brakes and accelerating again just to get a few car lengths ahead. Do you realize what you've gained, when you've achieved the advantage of a few car lengths? Imagine your car passing a fixed point. Then, the people you've struggled diligently to get around, they pass that same fixed point a few seconds later, at most. The net gain of all your furious maneuvering ultimately amounts to a net gain of a few meaningless seconds.

What does it matter, you may ask? Well, during all your adrenaline-driven fits of useless accelaration, the MPG of your automobile sinks to abysmal levels. In order to preserve our current fuel supplies, for many generations to come, all we need do is for you to quit driving like a complete asshole.

No technological breakthroughs, no government regulations, no car-pooling or bike-riding or tele-commuting necessary. Just pull your head out of your ass and start driving like a decent human being.

Actually the acceleration isn't the problem, it's the braking. Every time you apply the brakes you're wasting gas.

My definition of "driving like a decent human being", would be not causing the line of cars behind you to sit through another light. They'll, combined, use more fuel sitting through another light cycle than you would doing a 6000rpm hole-shot, through the light. Moderation, balance, consideration, brains,....it takes all of them to...... I'd like to teach the World to sing, in perfect.... ;)

Maybe, but I'm actually getting really excited at the thought of biofuel and hybrids taking off. My prediction is a combination biodiesel/electric hybrid, electric for shorter runs around town and bio for long hauls.

I saw a program on the Discovery Channel a few days ago that showed a guy making biodiesel from old cooking oil he collected from Mexican restaurants. Very little loss of performace, plus the exhaust smelled like taco meat!:D

But again, you ignore the problem. This 'need' for 'performance' - not to be confused with what performance really is. No car or SUV needs anything larger than a four cylinder (standard or high performance version) because no car needs all that wonton acceleration. (Acceleration being confused with performance.) Acceleration need is due to psychological hype - just like the SUV driver who needs to be higher.

Correct. We are wasting most of our fuel, getting noting in return but "feeling powerful" or whatever it is people get off on. Our vehicles are a conveyance intended to transport us to a destination. We can't afford to treat them as playthings, because there is no metaphorical mommy and daddy to keep buying batteries for us. We're dealing with a finite amount of resources, but we aren't treating it as such.

Jeeze, take deep breath and chill out tw. Only you would take something like taco scented exhaust and turn it into a scowl-fest about SUV drivers. I never attempted to address 'the problem', just offered my personal hope for a silver lining and a humorous tidbit about a possible green technology.
Man oh man, you are as sour as they come.

The real problem is the litigation that will ensue when militant vegetarians are subjected to second-hand taco exhaust.

Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket!!! That driving behaviour you note, Flint, makes me want to scream (I actually do sometimes).

In my mind I'm working on a pod system; pods that run on tracks or monorail. They will use the same ROW as existing roads and be automated so monkeys are will no longer operate vehicles. How stupid is having a primate operate a deadly car? Imagine: no accident death, no drunken driving death. The automoble companies can get the contract to design the pods, and our Nation's universities will design the system. I think it will be electric.

And that is the problem with the line of reasoning I have presented here. It's logical conclusion results in some kind of restrictive social engineering.

No no, weren't you paying attention? It was Mexican grease, not Chinese.

:thumbsup: :lol2:

Otherwise all that energy consumption adds up to a very dim sum.

:::groan::: You fill your car up...and it's hungry an hour later . . .

Since we have to consider Baby Flint's future World, it's time to stop wasting valuable energy and raw materials making musical instruments. After all, computers can do all that stuff now. :cool:

Not so fast, Mr. Bruce.

When I made decision to concentrate exclusively on accoustic drums, I took into account, primarily, that the definition of a drum, to me, is something which can produce music without dependance on a source of electrical power. A drum is a simple construction, made of renewable, recyleable, organic materials materials like wood and animals skins.

Now, these computers you refer to, I believe they quickly become obsolete, and are promptly deployed to clog our landfills with toxic chemicals . . . What exactly was your point?

The real problem is that we have no rail system to speak of. All the highways currently filled with cars should be rails with a genuine train system connecting cities.

Yes, trains would eliminate be one way to the wasteful practice of vanity acceleration. Plus, nobody gets "road rage" on a train. Of course, sometimes you just get bored, on a train, and start stabbing people at random...or so I've heard. I wouldn't know, I grew up in the largest city in the country that doesn't have a public transportation system. (According to urban legend, and Wikipedia)

The US is the largest country in the country which doesn't have a public transportation system.

Trivia: "largest metropolitan city in the country without a public transit system for the general population" (And don't just Google this phrase)

can I extrapolate from your Texas location? If so, how's Dallas?

Close enough. It's Arlington. Right smack-dab in the middle of the DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) "Metroplex" . . .

Wood and animal skins? Red metalflake wood and skins from the wild polyethylene terephthalate Boar?

I'm glad you can produce music without electricity because your going to have to amuse yourself during the looooong wait for the rest of the band.
I hear the saxophone crop was ruined this year and the princess in the tower is way behind with the guitar string spinning.

No, the computers don't become quickly obsolete. Even if they did, they can produce and store enough music to last thousands of years, and do it without copyright infringement, virtually overnight.

So I decided, you don't need to make music.
That's only fair since you decided I should ride the fucking train/bus. :eyebrow:

Drums
 

I have a cuica. Man, is that thing loud.:eek:

You guys ever play a cuica?

I was hoping you wouldn't have to spell it out. We all value choice. The question is will we value each others?

I tinkered around with my drummer's $3000 Roland kit and it was

stone
cold
awesome.

Every surface including cymbals seemed natural and right to hit, and with a press of a button he could go from the Zep "Rock n Roll" sound to a light jazz ensemble playing with brushes in a small room.

Plus, it set up in minutes.

Reconsider!

Reading Comprehension 101 - Final Exam
 

<insert some kind of profound message, disguised as a smilie>

Roland V-Drums
 

Roland's V-Drums are sweet, no doubt about that. The tunable mesh heads with positional sensing and triggerable rims are a delight, very responsive. One of the coolest things about V-drums is the virtual sound modeling - you can "build" a drum from scratch: what kind of shell material, how thick, how many plies, how deep, what kind of head, what kind of mic, what mic position, in what kind room, etc. etc. etc. - it's like having every possible drumkit, all in one set. Plus, the effects are built in.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. As a gigging drummer, the possibilities are endless with these things, because for each song, you can construct the ideal sound palette - IE, for slow tempo ballads, dial up a huge snare that goes "boosh." I've seen cover bands using these things to great effect, having patches built for each song which emulate the exact sounds heard on the album.

Taking all this into consideration, one of the fundamentals of drumming, to me, is that less is more, and too many options are a distraction. You always run the risk of your work being influenced too heavily by the tools you used to create it, leaving a discernable artifact on the music which isn't your own personal signature, but one that was pre-destined at the factory. My chosen path in drumming, at this point, is to stick to the fundamentals, and expand my musical horizons through technique, as opposed to gadgetry. That's just where I'm at right now.

Ahem.

I have a potential solution. One where nobody is told what they have to do.

First, the oil crisis is primarily that we are using too much foreign oil.

We shouldn't use any. Foreign oil is the most costly oil there is. It's costly because we have to meddle in the Middle East to keep it flowing.

How many billions of dollars have we spent on Isreal? How many billions on Saudi Arabia? How many billions in Iraq? How much did our economy lose as a result of 9/11? You get the picture. If we could just eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, we could completely cut out all that spending. As a bonus, if we were no longer meddling in the Mideast, the terrorists would probably leave us alone. Wouldn't it be nice to never have to pay attention to the Mideast again? Let the Chinese or the EU worry about them for a change. I'm talking about pulling out completely. No aid for anyone.

So eliminating our foreign oil dependence is our goal. But we're obviosly not there yet. So in the meantime, we can shift the cost of that dependence to where it really belongs. The gas pump.

This is a pie in the sky solution that will never happen, but I think we would go a long way toward solving our oil problems if gas was sold for its true price. If all that Mideast meddling was payed for with gasoline taxes instead of income taxes, we would have more money in our wallets after we get paid, but we would be facing a higher price at the pump. That's when you get to make a choice. That's when the market helps to decide the direction we should take. Nobody is told what to do. You can buy an SUV or an econobox car. If you buy the SUV, you will be spending all your extra paycheck money at the pump. If you buy a fuel efficient car, you can maybe take the wife out to dinner once or twice a month. Alternative fuels, which have been proportionately more expensive would suddenly be able to compete. Consumers would be shocked at the price of gas and would be more likely to choose more fuel efficient vehicles and/or public transportation.

It's really just a simple shifting of costs, but will have the tendency to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

I don't have all the details figured out, and the devil would be in the details, but the basic idea is that you have more money in your pocket, but gas costs a lot more.

Added bonus is that as the price of gas goes up, alternative fuels are able to compete. Also, people will tend to use less, so carbon emmisions go down, and the global warming situation is improved.

No terrorism. No global warming. No wars in the Mideast. We become self sufficient and more secure. What's not to like? All with a little accounting trick.

Take a look at this page. Note which countries have the largest oil reserves. Then decide if you want to be beholden to those folks and let that be your guide.

As for me, I've been riding my bike a lot more to run local errands.

World Oil Reserves

Saudi Arabia: dictatorship and refuses to be a democracy
Canada: mostly in tar sands which means oil prices must remain 'high' to recover oil
Iran: not a democracy and part of the axis of evil
Iraq: now a net oil importer after being Pearl Harbored
Kuwait: dictatorship and refuses to be a democracy
UAE: cannot be trusted (see Dubai Ports World to define the problem)
Venezuela: openly advocated violence against the US by claiming to be targeted
Russia: who knows what Putin's agenda really is
Other: Includes Nigeria - the largest source of US imported oil and may be failing into civil war due to too much wealth and corruption by a elitist few and so much hunger and despair among its people.
Includes Indonesia who even Israel does not trust on their Lebanon border.

We should nuke them all and just take our oil.

US was once the world's third largest oil producer. But we sucked all that up as if there would be no tomorrow. So routinely suck up oil with no regard that people even complain when oil prices only return to 1970s levels. Now we make deals with corrupt K'stan nations to protect our SUVs and acres of commercial buildings that have virtually no insulation.

But every time oil exploration within our own borders becomes a profitable venture,
we proceed with the routine taxing-out-of-business of our own wildcatters.

I can't understand why we do not use, used fry grease and other by products of our society, to fuel our life styles. "Diesel" engines have gotten a bad rap over the years because of excessive smoke and smell. the compression ignition engine will run on any combustible liquid, except gasoline and other light distillates.
I believe that the big oil companies are blowing chunks by not pushing bio and other alternative fuel sources.

The "Diesel" engine was designed to run on vegetable oil.

But that was over a hundred years ago. Ruddy's engine design has evolved considerably, so that in order to use alternate fuels, the engine or the fuel have to be reworked.
While it can be done, the transformation would be slow and expensive, in order to not bring commerce to a standstill.

Used vegetable oil wouldn't even be a pisshole in a snowbank compared to demand, so I would suggest that to be collected and used by dedicated engines. Perhaps stationary diesels used by municipal power plants, schools, or sewer authorities.

For commercial transportation (read trucks), new vegetable oil would have to be brought online at a rate. making the engines to use it efficiently a realistic choice for the truck buyers. A very large juggling act that only the feds could manage, I'm afraid. Of course whenever the feds get involved, smart choices and logical solutions, seem to go down the drain. :(

The "Diesel" engine was designed to run on vegetable oil.
Coal dust actualy , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine

Whenever they trot out that used restaurant vegetable oil car, they mention how it smells like fries wherever it goes, and they say it like it's a good thing. When you stop to think about it, that would be a terrible thing to have.

The coal dust engine (first generation Diesel) was 10 ft high, developed 13 hp and exploded.

The 1900 4-stroke that ran on vegetable oil (actually Diesel envisioned his inventions would run on hemp oil), made 25 hp but the diesel didn't really become viable until 1927 when Bosch invented a crude fuel injection.

Between the 1893 coal dust engine and the 1900 veggie oil engine, the machine changed so much the patents didn't apply anymore. :cool: