y66 Posted May 30, 2009 Report Share Posted May 30, 2009 From todays WSJ weekend journal. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses. Foremost are the horses. Cars can’t be comprehended without them. A hundred and some years ago Rudyard Kipling wrote “The Ballad of the King’s Jest,” in which an Afghan tribesman avers: Four things greater than all things are,—Women and Horses and Power and War. Insert another “power” after the horse and the verse was as true in the suburbs of my 1950s boyhood as it was in the Khyber Pass. Horsepower is not a quaint leftover of linguistics or a vague metaphoric anachronism. James Watt, father of the steam engine and progenitor of the industrial revolution, lacked a measurement for the movement of weight over distance in time—what we call energy. (What we call energy wasn’t even an intellectual concept in the late 18th century—in case you think the recent collapse of global capitalism was history’s most transformative moment.) Mr. Watt did research using draft animals and found that, under optimal conditions, a dray horse could lift 33,000 pounds one foot off the ground in one minute. Mr. Watt—the eponymous watt not yet existing—called this unit of energy “1 horse-power.” In 1970 a Pontiac GTO (may the brand name rest in peace) had horsepower to the number of 370. In the time of one minute, for the space of one foot, it could move 12,210,000 pounds. And it could move those pounds down every foot of every mile of all the roads to the ends of the earth for every minute of every hour until the driver nodded off at the wheel. Forty years ago the pimply kid down the block, using $3,500 in saved-up soda-jerking money, procured might and main beyond the wildest dreams of Genghis Khan, whose hordes went forth to pillage mounted upon less oomph than is in a modern leaf blower.more ... Those were the days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aberlour10 Posted May 30, 2009 Report Share Posted May 30, 2009 Properly news.....Whoever is still able to do, try to leave the sinking ship GM. Yesterday, the Opel AG did the first step on this way, after 80 years "marriage". In Detroit remains only a minority stake in this new canadian-german-russian ownership. Almost not imaginable a short time ago...but these things seems to change very fast in this century. Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenberg Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 It probably is weird but I do get a bit emotional over the collapse. My first car was a 47 Plymouth, bought in 1954 for $175. The $3500 he speaks of was not even a fantasy. And yes, I did pay for it with my own money as he suggests. I shaved the head (the engine's, not mine), I dragged against anyone I met at a stop sign, and once, and most definitely only once, a friend and I drove straight toward each other in a game of chicken. When a cop wrote a ticket that included the impossible task of getting the car set to pass a safety inspection in seven days, I bought another 47 Plymouth, one that had a dead engine, for $35 and I did a transplant junking the one the cop tagged. Those days are long gone. I drive an Accord and barely know how many cylinders it has. This embarrasses me. As you can guess, I like the eulogy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gwnn Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 HP is not a unit of energy! :blink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenberg Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 Ah yes. HP times time is, right? Or the integral, if HP varies with time. As with kilowatts, and kilowatt-hours. Once again, we trip on the basics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_U_Card Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 HP is not a unit of energy! :) I thought it was a sauce... :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helene_t Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 No Al, it's not a saurce(sp?) of energy either :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_U_Card Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 Unless that would be HP as in Horse Poop which is used as fuel in Mongolia, I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hanoi5 Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 I thought they made computers and printers... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winstonm Posted May 31, 2009 Report Share Posted May 31, 2009 I disagree vehemently with calling this relationship "an affair" - that is living well in the past, around the 1940s or 1950s I would estimate. No, this is not an end of an affair but the dissolution of a really bad marriage, where one partner was totally selfish, arrogant, and completely took for granted the other partner. As with most nasty divorces, this one is long overdue and will cause recriminations for years to come. Good riddance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
y66 Posted June 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 1, 2009 I drive an Accord and barely know how many cylinders it has. This embarrasses me.Who says you can't go home man? This is what carbon offsets are for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_U_Card Posted June 1, 2009 Report Share Posted June 1, 2009 So....if they bury me, I get a carbon offset but if they cremate me I will owe them???? :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.