Someone found this blog with the phrase “the budd dwyer effect”.
That would be one hell of a band name.
VJM03 nerdery later. For now, ScarbsF1 has a blog post about it. In other news, ScarbsF1 has a blog. It’s like Christmas all over again, but without converting to the Julian calendar.
That’s what Thomas Friedman said the PRC’s government could, to its apparent advantage, “just impose” upon a country that isn’t just not ungovernable but also “committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.” It sure sounds good: without NIMBYing idiots like Ted Kennedy fucking up the works, the PRC can put wind farms and fission plants wherever they please, generating petawatt-hour after petawatt-hour of clean electricity to make sure Joel Epstein’s beloved high-speed trains run on time. It’s a technocratic wet dream: wise and benevolent leadership gently but firmly Doing What Needs Doing over the short-sighted clamouring of the ignorant masses.
Now, something curious happens in the brains of arrogant grass-eating watermelons like Friedman and Epstein when they hear the word “electricity”. The underlying reality of watts, amps, and volts disappears from view, and “electricity” becomes a sort of magical talisman harking back to the space-age future imagined by Disney’s Tomorrowland before it got all grimy and scratched-up under the grease-smeared thumbs of millions of children. It becomes synonymous with clean, friendly, comfortingly opaque technological appliances like the iPhone (when it’s working) or the starship Enterprise (when it’s working). But back here in the harsh light of reality, electricity doesn’t issue from the hindquarters of unicorns:
(Hat tip: The Smallest Minority)
Under the deal, the firm will build a new mining complex to give China Power International Development (CPI) 30m tonnes of coal a year for 20 years.
[...]
Most of China’s power stations rely on coal – and demand has risen sharply in recent months after a government stimulus programme re-energised its economy.
Here in the real world, autocrats aren’t benevolent and enlightened.
Without further comment:
Reagan wins: DC shut down on his birthday.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
If climate change means more days of governments getting snowed under, I’mna change out my CFLs for 150W incandescents.
Okay, finally a look at the French Fantastic.
2009 was a disappointing year for Renault F1. They bet the farm on KERS and ended up with a car that was heavy, ungainly, and slow through the corners — even if it was difficult to pass on the straights. The team that won the World Constructor’s Championship in 2005 and 2006 finished a dismal 8th, with a single podium when Alonso picked up third at Singapore. ING dropped their role as title sponsor, and Renault nearly quit F1 in a huff like Toyota and BMW.
But instead, we get this:
All images scavenged from the f1technical R30 thread
Finally, something better than that damn orange-yellow-white ING livery. Yellow and black are Renault’s colours going back to the RS01 in 1977, and if this car’s any indication they’re going to look pretty damn good on the grid. Visible from the three-quarter view is a W-shaped rear wing mainplane, clearly interacting with the tall (and rather monolithic) shark fin on the engine cover. The sidepods aren’t as undercut as most cars, more bulky like the MGP W01’s pods; that profile would seem to direct more air up and over the engine cover rather than underneath, and the radical profile changes on the rear wing are probably designed with that in mind.
Furthermore, the car (a) doesn’t have any barge-boards and (b) has a much thicker cross-section at the sidepod intakes than anyone else. Taken together, those suggest more air going over the car rather than around the sides. Those sidepod intakes extend much further down than anyone else’s, just like last year; I have to wonder how much of the R30’s aero package is going to change between now and Bahrain — or between the Valencia and Jerez tests, for that matter.
Looking at the front, we see a very McLaren-ish wing — from last year — with endplates that once again don’t seem as aggressive in channeling air to the outside as we’ve seen on other cars. The R30’s brake ducts are very intricate, which makes sense if the front wing is channeling more air inside the fronts than outside.
The nose itself looks interesting compared to the other cars we’ve seen, but as far as I can tell it’s an evolution of the R29’s nose section rather than a major change. It’s not as low and heavy as last year’s car, but it’s still pretty low and heavy, with sculpted fences on the outside (and around the suspension). I’d be more than a little bit surprised to discover that the underside of the nose isn’t a venturi section, same as last year. Here’s another look:
The fences under the suspension are a bit more obvious here. Those two bulges on top of the nose are no doubt clearances for the suspension’s bellcranks, further evidence that Renault wanted to keep the nose as low as possible. Oddly, the R30’s mirrors and mirror mounts — components used to great effect on other cars — are basic and undeveloped.
More on the Renault R30 here and (after some amusing confusion on the “half-R30″ presented at Renault’s studio debut) in this forum thread.
So this cycle has repeated itself a few times:
Because the rest of you are fucking useless on your own, that’s why. Unbefuckinglievable.
(Did you know that Renault debuted the R30 with last year’s nose, making studio launch shots laughably inaccurate? And that it’s damn hard to find representative shots of the car from the Valencia tests? Maybe I should just write about the STR5 instead.)
Economist Karl Case (of Case-Shiller fame) sums up the housing crisis in verse:
(Hat tip: Greg Mankiw)
Rather than post the whole thing, I’ll just add a few tidbits:
For the last few years, we have shed many tears
Living through a recession.
The economy’s broke and it’s not a joke,
When we talk of another depression.
Fifteen million without a job,
Foreclosures and banks that fail,
401K’s became 201K’s,
And everything’s up for sale.How can it be? What didn’t we see
That led to all of this trouble?
There is little doubt that the proximal cause
Was a bursting housing bubble.
But other than that, who can we blame?
And what do they lament?
Millions of people contributed to
This hundred-year event.[...]
It didn’t matter what rate you paid
Or what you made in a year.
For a while liquidity led to stupidity,
“Just sign and see the cashier.”
High LTV’s and Option ARMs
Negative AM’s and more,
2-28’s with teaser rates
And ridiculous Fico scores.[...]
That free markets work to provide what we want
Is a notion that is not in dispute.
The problem is that once in awhile,
Markets overshoot.
Of course there is greed and there is a need
For moral hazard and rules.
You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
To be “pure” is a game for fools.Politicians, of course, are starting to shout
That they want more retribution.
It’s better, I think, if they used their time
Helping to find a solution.
It’s good. Read the whole thing.
…for a brief return to politically-charged content.
——
On the question of “Is taxation really theft?“, we discover commentary here, here, and here (h/t Uncle) to the effect that the Internal Revenue Service is buying sixty (more) short-barreled shotguns. Are IRS agents really kicking down that many doors these days?
Render unto Cæsar… or else
I’m not all that worked up about armed tax collectors — quelle fucking surprise — but it’s instructive to point out the iron fist when it removes the velvet glove. Most people have their income taxes withheld from their paycheques and their sales taxes included in their bills, which makes it easy for them to forget that they’re being extorted under threat of force.
(And of course if you want one, you have to pay extra tax on it.)
——
Next we discover that LabRat put torch to tinder and lit the DADT Drama Llama on fire here and here (Update: and also here). Further discussion here, here, and especially here and here. (Read the last two if you read nothing else. And yes, I’m getting awfully lazy with my linking.)
One particular feature of the anti-repeal argument that rubs me raw has to do with the “rational, objective” points raised in opposition. (Can’t let people on the internet think you’re a fagbasher, after all. Might lose you some face if they did.) Comments about unit cohesion and open romantic relationships in the ranks and homophobes lynching their fellow servicemen sound a lot better than “butbutbut… OMG TEH COOTIES!“, but being grounded in an objective reality they can be investigated. (Which is something we ought to do anyway, and oh look!) In particular, the folks advancing these arguments never seem to address the obvious question: given that a whole lot of nothing happened when Britain, Canada, and Israel (to pick the first three that come to mind) dropped their bans on GLBT service personnel, what is it about Americans that makes us unable to handle teh ghey in our armed forces?
While I’m on the subject, it seems to me in my more cynical moments that the Democratic party leadership has carefully timed the DADT debate to provide a wedge issue for the 2010 midterm elections. (Why wasn’t DADT repealed by simple executive fiat in mid-2009? Because it wasn’t politically convenient to do so.) This points to mainstream conservatism’s new-found respect for civil rights being an attempt to forestall that Democratic wedge by making it irrelevant in the spring, when only policy wonks and bloggers give a shit about the midterm elections. Good outcomes in the narrow sense, but not the process I’d have hoped for.
——
Finally, steering this post off into philosophical matters like a front-wing vortex into a brake duct, I can’t help but point out two illuminating posts on EconLog: first, Arnold Kling on his position between Rothbard and Hayek; and second, Bryan Caplan responding to the notion that libertarians should stop worrying and learn to love the government.
——
Well, that clears the decks for a little while; now we resume our glib analysis of pre-season Formula One cars.
Last year, Richard Branson threw a little bit of money (well, relatively speaking) at Brawn GP. Apparently he liked it, because he went and bought himself a team for the 2010 Formula One season. And just to show he’s serious, he hired on Nick Wirth as technical director.
Wirth, if you’re not familiar with the name, began his career as an aerodynamicist for March, designing and coordinating aero development for their Leyton House F1 cars. After developing a fairly decent active suspension for March, he moved over to Benetton in 1996, where he replaced Ross Brawn (who left for Ferrari with a German guy called Schumacher). Lately, Wirth has been doing aero development for Acura’s (now moribund) Le Mans Prototype programme.
I relate all of this to convince you that Wirth knows what he’s doing, because the most notable feature of the VR-01 is that its aero has been entirely developed using CFD. No wind tunnel time. None. And this is what they came up with:
Easily the best livery on the grid (so far), and that counts the vespid Renault scheme about which I haven’t written yet.
The first thing I notice about the car is its low front suspension geometry. This is not your standard Formula One nose arrangement: the inboard pickups are all quite low and the instant centres might be in useful places. That arrangement ought to provide the VR-01 with plenty of mechanical grip at the front, but flies in the face of the long-standing common wisdom that Air Flow Under The Nose Must Not Be Impeded. In fact, cleaning up front airflow was the motivation behind the Newey vee-section — which we see on the VR-01, but on this car it looks like an excuse to lower the main section of the nose.
While we’re on the subject, the front wing is a very different solution from the one found on most cars. The endplates are Sauber-ish, but the wing itself has only two (admittedly enormous) sections with no room to mount what ScarbsF1 is calling “cascades” — high, forward-mounted winglets which’ve become nearly ubiquitous over the 2009 season. Looking at the nose section, I wouldn’t be surprised if Wirth is trying to get downforce by controlling the air above the nose.
The front view also emphasizes the deeply-undercut sidepods (now standard-issue, and notable in their absence on the MGP W01) and incredibly tight packaging around the airbox and engine cover (now also standard-issue). The turning vanes at the sidepod corners don’t have mirrors on them (yet), but are carefully sculpted and just scream “lots of CFD” to me. Nothing dihedral about the sidepods, and the mirror mounts look pretty basic.
Let’s have a look at the profile:
Still an awesome livery.
The nose reminds one of the Ferrari F10, except lower at the tip, and the sidepod/engine cover/airbox arrangement is very McLaren-ish. The side view (so far…) is notable for its simplicity.
Well, this is the first of the totally-new cars to be unveiled. And if I may indulge in some far-flung speculation for a moment (this being my blog, you’d be hard-pressed to stop me), if the VR-01 can compete with the other newbies and contest for mid-pack finishes it will be a great day for motorsport. Aero development is often cited as one of the most ravenous cost centres in all of racing, and has propelled many once-great series into the dismal Purgatory of spec cars. But computer power is still getting vastly cheaper per teraflop, and many smaller constructors (Van Diemen, Reynard, and Stohr — just to pick the first three that come to mind) may be able to afford CFD clusters whereas time on a rolling-road wind tunnel at a large enough scale to get useful Reynolds numbers would be ludicrously expensive. In short, cheap(ish) CFD — if useful — could put race car development back to where it was in the early ’80s, when clever engineers with good ideas could build cars that win national championships with minimal infrastructure. (Now all we need is a way to lay up and autoclave carbon-fibre monocoques in the privacy of our garages.)
Anyway, enough of my speculation. There’s more on the VR-01 here, here, and in this forum thread.
