Iridium is a very rare metal used in spark plugs, mainly because it is the most corrosion-resistant metal. As you may or may not know, high temperatures make metals corrode easier. In your engine, you don't want things to corrode. Normal spark plugs corrode fairly easily, and when they corrode they don't fire nearly as effectively, thus you don't burn as much fuel in the cylinder, thus you are a naughty child and you're wasting precious petroleum. Iridium doesn't corrode, not at temperatures found in your typical engine anyway, so it fires much, much more efficiently. Use the Iridium spark plugs!
Note: Iridium was formed shortly after the meteor that killed the dinosaurs struck the Earth, and that was the only time that it was formed, based on the evidence that Iridium is almost always found at the same depth in the crust. Thank you dinosaurs, for giving us Iridium.
Over Thanksgiving break I had the experience of teaching a small child something. It was nothing short of amazing. I taught a two-year-old how to build a wall of dominoes that doesn't fall over. Engineering principles were embued into his brain. How f'n cool is that?!!
This post ends now because I have other things to post.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Another Day in Paradise
It's 5:20 in the evening on a Sunday. My foot is swelled to the size of a small melon. Oh, how I love to blog about a broken system.
What shall we discuss this week? I suppose it will inevitably end in me ranting about one or another, but let us at least attempt to fool ourselves otherwise, if only for a moment. I have things to think about, though I can't really put these thought processes into coherent sentences, or even half completed thoughts. Why is this? Was it the TV that I watched when I was a young child, which supposedly destroyed my linear thought? It is true, that TV's sporadicity of blaring voice-overs couple with bright, fast-changing color scheme encourages one to think in much the same way, and sit passively to absorb information instead of investigating it for themselves. My kids will not know what TV is until they are at least twelve years of age. That's obviously impossible to achieve. No TV for my kids. That's what I'm trying to say. There is quite the fiasco going on around my neighborhood. Hurry up and get to the hospital people! Jeez you're gonna have people dying if you don't hurry up! I think that'd be a lot of fun, to drive an ambulance. I've often been told that I'm not "cut out" to be in that kind of work; lives on the line, extraordinary pressure to not screw up, adrenaline pumping, people screaming, palms sweaty, but I like it. I like it, don't love it. That's why I could never be a politician. Politicians irritate me like the itchiest tag of a shirt that is impossible to both find and remove. They're a bunch of smooth-talking con artists that appeal to people with a myriad of different approaches, many of them facetious and generally shady. I don't like politics. It's a big money game and a see-who-has-the-biggest-pecker competition. But I digress. What am I saying? I haven't progressed for a long, long while. Of course one must beg the question: "What is progress?" What is it? Define it in your own words. Is it simply getting better at something? What is progress for a civilization? For a race? Is it more intelligence, better technology, better health, better ice cream? I don't know how ice cream ties into that at all, but I often wonder what the far or not-so-far future will bring. I sometimes imagine in my mind's eye a vast city of gleaming white and blue crystalline structures, floating majestically over the landscape below. I think of people with beards and robes and swords of light energy. Okay, so I stole it Star Wars. I do wonder about the future, sometimes I worry. I know worrying about things doesn't do any good, but for some reason it makes us feel better. That's odd, we feel better about stressing ourselves over things. Doesn't make much sense, but neither does a kangaroo playing hopscotch. Often times I would believe that the future will essentially be a hemorrhoid on the cosmos's anus. The elite will become more elite, or at least more powerful, the poor will remain poor, disease will plague those who are in the worst parts of the world, spreading to the better parts of the world, the elite will subdue the ignorant and sickly masses most likely both with government and military action, and we will essentially have the film 28 Days Later, live. What does that have to do with the price of rice in China? The significance of that hypothetical yet plausible situation is this: there isn't enough room at the top for everyone. It's economics. A massive economic boom left by it's own devices will not keep increasing indefinitely, it will correct itself, by crashing and burning, the severity of which can only be speculated and then discussed at length after the fact. That's another thing I don't like about history. They talk about the same things over and over and over and over again and then they bring up similar instances in history where the same principle draws a parallel. Okay, we get it, wash your hands after pooping, let's move on. Anyways, back to my theory about connecting a common theme between humanity and economics. We have over 7 billion people on this planet. People always say "Saving lives is most important." By what merit? It's an arbitrary decision to make, that humans are absolutely the most important thing ever and there is absolutely no circumstances whatsoever in which human lives may be sacrificed for the greater good. That's a kindergartner's philosophy. They live in a black and white world, where something either is or isn't. I reference Daniel Tosh, in that most people believe domestic violence is unacceptable no matter what. What your wife is drowning your children? Is it okay to hit her then? What if she's violent? What if it were the other way around? Is it okay for a woman to assault a man? No one can say with absolute certainty, because it's necessary to examine the extenuating circumstances before making a judgement. With that idea in mind, that it's impossible to say anything is true or false without first looking closely at the context, think back to the overabundance of people living on this planet. With 7 billion people there is predictably a lot of disease, lots of murders, lots of stealing, rape, injustice, general problems, headaches, traffic jams, pollution, other life-threatening conditions, social and economic difficulty, identity theft, war, racism, genocide, and a myriad of other evils. I often wonder if there is more evil in the world than good, and I would very much like to believe that there is more good than evil, and most days I do. Other days I entertain or seriously consider the notion that this a fallacy I'm believing in, and life is simply a bitch. "What would make it better?" I wonder to myself. What if we did away with the terminally ill? Would it save money? Yes. Now, I realize money is not the most important thing in life, far from it. But think of other possibilities, difficult though it may be for some to see the good in ending human lives. I often view it on the micro scale. A village of 100 people. If twenty are bound to die, what do you suppose happens to them? Are their lives prolonged by all means necessary, sapping time and energy from the other eighty who are healthy? No. They would be killed, assuming the other people have the same kind of primal survival instincts most humans possess. Sparta is another example of an elitist society. I will admit that their policy seems a bit extreme, but when you look closely at their success as a people they were pretty successful. Was there crime? Not any to speak of. Was there a poor and sickly class? Hardly, they had slaves, and even the slaves were trained into the same way of hard, militaristic life, or subdued by their superior with the same approach.
If you want to skip all that and read this paragraph, I'm trying to say that not everyone can be at the top of the mountain. There simply isn't enough room. We have conditioned ourselves to think that a life is a life is a life and it doesn't matter how undeserving or ill-suited for life they are, they are entitled to life, to aid from the government, to a piece of the pie, to a spot on the summit of the mountain. I say no to this. Free market economy. Freedom of enterprise. Survival of the fittest. That's the good stuff.
Boom. Roasted.
What shall we discuss this week? I suppose it will inevitably end in me ranting about one or another, but let us at least attempt to fool ourselves otherwise, if only for a moment. I have things to think about, though I can't really put these thought processes into coherent sentences, or even half completed thoughts. Why is this? Was it the TV that I watched when I was a young child, which supposedly destroyed my linear thought? It is true, that TV's sporadicity of blaring voice-overs couple with bright, fast-changing color scheme encourages one to think in much the same way, and sit passively to absorb information instead of investigating it for themselves. My kids will not know what TV is until they are at least twelve years of age. That's obviously impossible to achieve. No TV for my kids. That's what I'm trying to say. There is quite the fiasco going on around my neighborhood. Hurry up and get to the hospital people! Jeez you're gonna have people dying if you don't hurry up! I think that'd be a lot of fun, to drive an ambulance. I've often been told that I'm not "cut out" to be in that kind of work; lives on the line, extraordinary pressure to not screw up, adrenaline pumping, people screaming, palms sweaty, but I like it. I like it, don't love it. That's why I could never be a politician. Politicians irritate me like the itchiest tag of a shirt that is impossible to both find and remove. They're a bunch of smooth-talking con artists that appeal to people with a myriad of different approaches, many of them facetious and generally shady. I don't like politics. It's a big money game and a see-who-has-the-biggest-pecker competition. But I digress. What am I saying? I haven't progressed for a long, long while. Of course one must beg the question: "What is progress?" What is it? Define it in your own words. Is it simply getting better at something? What is progress for a civilization? For a race? Is it more intelligence, better technology, better health, better ice cream? I don't know how ice cream ties into that at all, but I often wonder what the far or not-so-far future will bring. I sometimes imagine in my mind's eye a vast city of gleaming white and blue crystalline structures, floating majestically over the landscape below. I think of people with beards and robes and swords of light energy. Okay, so I stole it Star Wars. I do wonder about the future, sometimes I worry. I know worrying about things doesn't do any good, but for some reason it makes us feel better. That's odd, we feel better about stressing ourselves over things. Doesn't make much sense, but neither does a kangaroo playing hopscotch. Often times I would believe that the future will essentially be a hemorrhoid on the cosmos's anus. The elite will become more elite, or at least more powerful, the poor will remain poor, disease will plague those who are in the worst parts of the world, spreading to the better parts of the world, the elite will subdue the ignorant and sickly masses most likely both with government and military action, and we will essentially have the film 28 Days Later, live. What does that have to do with the price of rice in China? The significance of that hypothetical yet plausible situation is this: there isn't enough room at the top for everyone. It's economics. A massive economic boom left by it's own devices will not keep increasing indefinitely, it will correct itself, by crashing and burning, the severity of which can only be speculated and then discussed at length after the fact. That's another thing I don't like about history. They talk about the same things over and over and over and over again and then they bring up similar instances in history where the same principle draws a parallel. Okay, we get it, wash your hands after pooping, let's move on. Anyways, back to my theory about connecting a common theme between humanity and economics. We have over 7 billion people on this planet. People always say "Saving lives is most important." By what merit? It's an arbitrary decision to make, that humans are absolutely the most important thing ever and there is absolutely no circumstances whatsoever in which human lives may be sacrificed for the greater good. That's a kindergartner's philosophy. They live in a black and white world, where something either is or isn't. I reference Daniel Tosh, in that most people believe domestic violence is unacceptable no matter what. What your wife is drowning your children? Is it okay to hit her then? What if she's violent? What if it were the other way around? Is it okay for a woman to assault a man? No one can say with absolute certainty, because it's necessary to examine the extenuating circumstances before making a judgement. With that idea in mind, that it's impossible to say anything is true or false without first looking closely at the context, think back to the overabundance of people living on this planet. With 7 billion people there is predictably a lot of disease, lots of murders, lots of stealing, rape, injustice, general problems, headaches, traffic jams, pollution, other life-threatening conditions, social and economic difficulty, identity theft, war, racism, genocide, and a myriad of other evils. I often wonder if there is more evil in the world than good, and I would very much like to believe that there is more good than evil, and most days I do. Other days I entertain or seriously consider the notion that this a fallacy I'm believing in, and life is simply a bitch. "What would make it better?" I wonder to myself. What if we did away with the terminally ill? Would it save money? Yes. Now, I realize money is not the most important thing in life, far from it. But think of other possibilities, difficult though it may be for some to see the good in ending human lives. I often view it on the micro scale. A village of 100 people. If twenty are bound to die, what do you suppose happens to them? Are their lives prolonged by all means necessary, sapping time and energy from the other eighty who are healthy? No. They would be killed, assuming the other people have the same kind of primal survival instincts most humans possess. Sparta is another example of an elitist society. I will admit that their policy seems a bit extreme, but when you look closely at their success as a people they were pretty successful. Was there crime? Not any to speak of. Was there a poor and sickly class? Hardly, they had slaves, and even the slaves were trained into the same way of hard, militaristic life, or subdued by their superior with the same approach.
If you want to skip all that and read this paragraph, I'm trying to say that not everyone can be at the top of the mountain. There simply isn't enough room. We have conditioned ourselves to think that a life is a life is a life and it doesn't matter how undeserving or ill-suited for life they are, they are entitled to life, to aid from the government, to a piece of the pie, to a spot on the summit of the mountain. I say no to this. Free market economy. Freedom of enterprise. Survival of the fittest. That's the good stuff.
Boom. Roasted.
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