Theist Free

In 1935 a Canadian named Charles Nelson Pogue built the first of his 200 miles per gallon carburetors. Well that is what he claimed you could get with his carburetor. By the end of the 1930s, he had built and sold 317 of the carburetor he called the “Winnipeg” carburetor. The carburetor did existed in reality, but the 200-MPG was pure myth. There were two serious problems with the design. The first one is that the claim violated the First Law of Thermodynamics. Second, the best mileage achieved using a Pogo 200-MPG carburetor was 35 MPG when the carburetor was installed on a Ford Mustang. The Mustang suffered a dramatic loss of power in the process and was all but impossible to drive. As far as anyone knows no one has been able to get anywhere near the mileage Pogue claims.

All these super mileage devices are popular urban myths. Supposedly the automakers and Big Oil won’t allow them to come to market because they’d wreck the industry. As if the auto companies really care what happens to the oil companies. The people who tell you this are usually conspiracy mavens who offer it as an example of how the masses are duped by the Illuminati or some other big bad entity. you do have to be skeptical. Right now oil companies are regarded very lowly by the general public with BP screwing up the Gulf and all. With that the conspiracy theorist has a perfect boogie man to use to sell their scams to a gullible public. It’s far easier to blame a faceless daemon than really study the issue with a critical eye. And lets face it, it is a complex technological issue that to understand requires an understanding of things like Thermodynamics and energy conservation. If you do not understand the technical issues than you can be sold the idea that some extraordinary device can take a car that gets 30MPG and by installing it make the same car get 200MPG. AND here is the most ridiculous part…. the conspiracy theorist sell the idea that auto companies would not use this technology simply because the oil companies or the government said not to. Fact is the auto companies are hurting right now and you bet your life GM would use it, if not they know Ford would, and if not Ford, Toyota or Honda. Something like a 200MPG device could never be suppressed, the value would be far to great. Government could not stop it, what are they going to do, take an auto maker to court for making something a majority of the public wants?  The reason you do not see such devices is the simple fact ‘They do NOT work”,  no one has been able to make it work or demonstrate it is even feasible.

The internal combustion engine does a good job of burning the fuel you put into it, and there is little you can do to the fuel to make that better. It’s just the thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine is not very good, much of the energy produced is not used to propel the car, it’s lost as heat energy.  Just feel the hood of your car or the radiator, all that heat is just being pumped into the air. Things like turbo chargers can take some of that heat and use it to compress the fuel air mixture for more power and improved mileage but it’s small.

Real high mileage is never the result of a single miraculous component, such as a carburetor. Carburetors in general are an obsolete technology now being replaced by computer controlled electronic fuel injection, which offers superior emission control and better gas mileage. Truth is carbs are the equivalent of the buggy whip. Getting high mileage is sum of numerous small improvements. Among these are lightweight materials, small light car require less energy to move, low-friction tires, improved aerodynamics, flywheels to store and reuse energy now lost during braking, and “ultra-lean-burn” engines for more efficient city driving. The theoretical (and unobtainable) maximum efficiency for a small car like a Honda Civic is around 200 mpg for your big beaters it’s much lower. And that won’t come from “blue-collar ingenuity”, some backyard mechanic with a magical carburetor. Claims to the contrary are fraudulent. Want to get 200MPG, you will need a very small car, maybe only two seater, very light with maybe a small turbo charged diesel engine, and, no Carburetor. The reason you don’t see these cars is not because of a giant conspiracy but because the American public won’t buy these cars, they still want SUVs and pick-up trucks.

davekyte Hoax, Urban Legend 200mpg, Gas Millage Hoaxes, Pogo Carb

Data Recorder from car indicated there was no application of the brakes, and the throttle was fully open.

No big mystery here. Of all the hundreds of thousands of vehicle accidents each year the vast majority are caused by driver error. And a smaller present weather related. The weakest link in the car is the nut that attaches the steering wheel to the drivers seat.

Yet you are supposed to believe the current hype and buy the very unlikely situation where these cars are suffering full throttle acceleration BUT also complete failure of the brakes.  AND all this without trace of this double system failure in the cars involved. Nobody has seen this happen to these cars under controlled observable conditions, often using the same cars that drivers have said suffered the event. And these test are not just being performed by the government and the manufacturers but also by organizations who would just love to prove the cars are at fault and yet even they can’t reproduce the claimed events.

Blaming the government and corporations seems to be very popular with a certain segment of the population, unfortunately popular opinion does not make the reality of the situation what they want it to be. And it only tends to make it harder to hold corporations feet to the fire when they really do something wrong.

The Punching Bag Hits Back: Prius Crash Was Driver Error.

davekyte Distortions, General, Urban Legend Toyota, Unintended Acceleration

Team Unintended Acceleration

It’s been about fifteen years now since the issue of unintended acceleration was the big thing in the publics mind. At that time auto maker Audi was the one who got the majority of the blame for this supposed action whereby cars would accelerate away all on their own. Today it’s Toyota. But fact is nearly every car at one time or another have had reports of this happening. Quite frankly the issue is not with the cars but in majority of cases caused by drivers PUSHING ON THE WRONG PEDAL! In some really sad cases this error has caused injury and death. People didn’t want to accept this accident as driver error, especially if you were the one who’s momentary error caused an injury or death, it had to be a fault with the car and the big bad uncaring corporations who built them. I remember the woman who ran over her child with her Audi, you had to feel sorry for her as she described the accident and you could understand exactly why placing the blame on the car was far better for her mental well being than dealing with the reality of the event.

Well Toyota is now the maker suffering from this Unintended Pedal Confusion issue. The problem is the executives at Toyota have not learned from Audi’s mistake. They seem to be afraid to call the issues like it is, too afraid of offending customers and in the process looking guilty as hell. There also is no shortage of trial lawyers who will be glad to sue a major auto makers for $$$$$$$.

This does not stop media hype from playing on peoples fears. Audi suffered a decline in sales in the USA because of a report on TV’s 60 Minutes which purported to show that Audi automobiles suffered from this acceleration problem. Independent investigators concluded that this was most likely due to a close placement of the accelerator and brake pedals on Audi’s automatic transmission cars. You see unlike 1970 era American cars with their wide brake pedal and small gas pedal, Audi used pedal placement more in line with European tradition and derived from it’s manual transmission cars. Many Americans were now buying these cars due to higher gas prices, and being use to the American pedal arrangement found they had a tendency when not paying attention to confuse the two. It’s not like Audi was putting the gas pedal on the left and the brakes on the right, you could make a case that doing so would be negligent, but using a pedal placement that millions of drivers both American and Foreign have had no issue with is not reckless. Get into most cars today and you will find this European pedal setup is very common.

The only thing that seems to be a legitimate issue in the Toyota case is improperly installed floor mats, and not just floor mats but the heavy rubber floor mats. On some cars these rubber mats are designed to REPLACE the carpet mats and NOT to be placed on top of the carpet mats. These can get pushed forward and cause the gas pedal to stick. But again this looks to be a problem of the drivers improperly installing them or removing the mats to clean and then not using the floor attachment hooks to hold the mats in place or breaking the hooks when removing the mats.

If you know anything about cars you know no car with operational brakes can overpower those brakes. Even it the throttle sticks wide open you only need to step on the brakes and the car will come to a stop, it may take longer but it will stop. If you push on the brakes pedal and put the car in gear and push the gas pedal to the floor, the car will go nowhere, you may damage the transmission in the process but the brakes will hold the car. it would take a car with very poor brakes and lots of power indeed for the engine to overpower the brakes. When you hear of drivers claiming to push on the brakes with both feet as the car accelerates always you have to ask yourself “do they really have both feet on the brakes?” or is it a common bad driving habit you see with far too many drivers, that is driving with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. I am sure you have seen it before, a car cruising down the freeway, brakes lights on because the driver is slightly pushing on the brake with their left foot. Not only does this make it impossible to tell if the person is really stopping but it causes the brakes to drag causing heat to build up in the pads and rotors, this heat can decrease the efficiency of the stopping power of the car when most needed. You can also see that in a panic situation a left foot brake person may well find themselves mashing on both the gas and brake at the same time. PLEASE! If your habit is to use your left foot to operate the brake, please stop now, This is just piss poor driving and dangerous. Hey, maybe it’s time for cars to have vocal warnings to prevent drivers from pushing on both pedals at the same time.

Here is the situation in a nutshell. If these cars were in fact running away at full throttle and at the same time the brakes were refusing to work you would certainly see someone who could reproduce the situation and prove their point. If it were a mechanical issue you would see investigators with parts showing these mechanical problems like broken return springs or stuck accelerator actuators. So far all the facts point to driver error or improperly installed floor mats.

davekyte Distortions, Urban Legend Audi, Toyota, Unintended Acceleration

This is one of those little facts you will never hear from conspiracy theorist who promote the idea of a JFK assassination plot. As a young reporter Jim Lehrer was at Love Field that morning, and had asked a secret service agent if the bubble top was going to be removed from the Presidents car. It had been raining, but was now clearing. The agent radioed to find if it was clear downtown as well, so he told others to “Take the bubble top off”.

To me this is far more interesting then any Oliver Stone fairy tail.

davekyte General, Urban Legend Add new tag, conspiracy theory, JFK

Why are truthers such douchebags?

Like the Bush variant, conservatives now seem to have caught a Derangement Syndrome.

The epidemic of Bush Derangement Syndrome BDS hit its peak about a year ago, affecting mostly 20 something slackers living in moms basement watching YouTube videos, and ageing drug addled hippies. The affection is characterized by a propensity to believe any nonsense idea so long as you blame on George Bush. The disease attacked the cognitive areas of the brain preventing the normal flow of logic and important critical analysis. Suddenly you could find yourself listening to Alex Jones, wearing a black T-shirt emblazened with “911 Was An Inside Job” and babbling twaddle about “Free Fall” “Pull It” and my favorite “Super Nano Thermite”. Severe cases may even find themselves wondering aloud about Mini Nukes and Directed Energy Weapons. The fact GWB was for the most part an incompetent boob spouting his own brand of bunkum about science and religion sure didn’t help alleviate the confusion of the non compos mentis. I swear, I think these guy miss old George. Lacking facts and science to back up their 9/11 conspiracy theory, Bush blunders were all they had as a selling point. Now Bush is gone, and being a fairly bright guy the current President pays trurhers no attention.

You had cases of Clinton Derangement Syndrome years ago but it sat dormant for eight years before mutating into the present variant, Obama Derangement Syndrome ODS. Today “Birthers” are the new Truthers. Birthers claim to have questions about Obama’s citizenship, mind you they have no actual proof, but like their truther counterparts they feel questions alone add up to something real. Bet you these are the same people who had questions about Bill Clinton and Vince Foster’s death.

Like most social diseases ODS spreads through unprotected contact with unclean media whores like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter and the rest of the brothel staff at FOX news. Wow!!! I shouldn’t have done that! now I have a vision in my head of Ann Coulter saying “Me Love You Long Time”. Being a consummate Camp Follower himself Alex Jones has gotten down on his knees to service his new clientele with his own “The Obama Deception” Movie. The man sure knows how to cash in, and who can blame him, just look at the money Oliver Stone’s film JFK made selling popular pablum to an credulous public. Look, if you are going to listen to FOX news or Alex Jones or any of the talk radio programs, for gods sake, double-up on the brain condoms.

Sad part is this mental malignancy has stayed with the original BDS sufferers. So now you’ve got a bunch of moron who still go on and on about Cheney McBush, and a bunch of right wing clowns babbling on about Hussein Obama. In the future look for new and more virulent strains of ODS as the conspiracy theory business machine ramps up for the new crop of gullible rubes, this shit sells and suckers are born every minute.

davekyte 9/11 Truth, Urban Legend

It’s been a popular claim by autism activists like Kathie Lee Gifford and others who that measles shots caused their children’s disorders. But a courts confirmed what scientist have been saying all along, this is just popular myth.

The evidence “is weak, contradictory and unpersuasive,” concluded Special Master Denise Vowell. “Sadly, the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding” of autism.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/11/autism.vaccines/

The preservative, thimerosal was outlawed in 2001, and yet we continues to see an increase in autism cases. Why is that? if the drugs were the cause the cases of autism should decline. Maybe the reason is because blaming a child’s development difficulties is easier to take if you can put on a someone else, big paramedical or the government. Add to that lawyers who will take your case to get you some cash and famous TV and movie personalities who peddle the so called cause, and it easy to see why people find the idea compelling.

Rather then admit the vaccines were not to blame, activist continued to tell people not to have their kid vaccinated even though doing so not only threatened their own children but others by increasing the likelihood of measles outbreaks in school children. It’s the “herd immunity” that keeps diseases like the measles in check and once a certain percentage of the population is no longer immune you have a real danger of an epidemic.

davekyte Science & Technology, Urban Legend autism, medical myths

Team Unintended Acceleration

It’s been about fifteen years now since the issue of unintended acceleration was the big thing in the publics mind. At that time auto maker Audi was the one who got the majority of the blame for this supposed action whereby cars would accelerate away all on their own. Today it’s Toyota. But fact is nearly every car at one time or another have had reports of this happening. Quite frankly the issue is not with the cars but is caused by drivers PUSHING ON THE WRONG PEDAL! In some really sad cases this error has caused injury and death. People didn’t want to accept this accident as driver error, to them it had to be a fault with the car and the bid bad uncaring corporations.

If you know anything about cars you know no car with operational brakes can overpower those brakes. Even it the throttle sticks wide open you only need to step on the brakes and the car will come to a stop, it may take slightly longer but it will stop. If you push on the brakes pedal and put the car in gear and push the gas pedal to the floor, the car will go nowhere, you may damage the transmission in the process but the brakes will hold the car. it would take a car with very poor brakes and lots of power indeed for the engine to overpower the brakes.

This does not stop media hype from playing on peoples fears. Audi suffered a decline in sales in the USA because of a report on TV’s 60 Minutes which purported to show that Audi automobiles suffered from this acceleration problem. Independent investigators concluded that this was most likely due to a close placement of the accelerator and brake pedals on Audi’s automatic transmission cars. You see unlike 1970 era American cars with their wide brake pedal and small gas pedal, Audi used pedal placement more in line with European tradition and derived from it’s manual transmission cars. Many Americans were now buying these cars due to higher gas prices, and being used to the American pedal arrangement found they had a tendency when not paying attention to confuse the two. It’s not like Audi was putting the gas pedal on the left and the brakes on the right, you could make a case that do so would be negligent, but using a pedal placement that millions of drivers both American and Foreign have had no issue with is not reckless. Get into most cars today and you will find this European pedal setup is very common.

There is nothing wrong with this pedal setup and it is in fact preferred by drivers who like high performance manual transmission cars. In race cars and high performance driving, when manually downshifting under heavy braking, the accelerator has to be used in order to match revs properly so both pedals have to be close to each other to be operated by the right foot at once, a driving technique called “heel-and-toe”, with the toe on the brake and heel on the accelerator while the left foot operated the clutch.

Well Toyota is now the maker suffering from this Unintended Pedal Confusion issue. The problem is the executives at Toyota have not learned from Audi’s mistake. They seem to be afraid to call the issues like it is, too afraid of offending customers and in the process looking guilty.

davekyte Distortions, Urban Legend Audi, Toyota, Unintended Acceleration