Old Fashioned Popcorn

A roommate in his late thirties seems to have forgotten how "they used to make popcorn," because he was stunned to see it done on the stovetop, not in the microwave. (I have done it it fireplace and campfire, too, but that will not be covered this time.)

I know that it is real butter, and how much, because I put it there. Nor do I give control over the amount of salt to Orville or Paul or Jolly Rodger, so it really is to my taste.

If your store still stocks the popping kernels, likely well above or below the prime eye-level location, note that the 1lb. bag costs about half of the box of '8 servings.' It makes about 30 similar volume servings.

The technique outlined here will typically yield a waste of 5-12 unpopped kernels, which is far better performance than most of the microwave bags... if you try to get those last 30-50 unpopped ones by adding 15 seconds the next time, you run the risk of burning some of the popped corn and adding an unpleasant smoke flavor to the whole batch.

In a saucepan with heavy bottom and tight-fitting lid, pour just enough cooking oil to coat the bottom. (Olive oil will burn—do not use!) Pour in somewhat less than enough seed to cover the bottom; roll the pan around a bit to ensure all the loose seeds get coated with the oil. Go for high heat and stay close. As the seeds pop and build an insulating blanket above the bottom of the pan, you can cut your heat in half, then be ready, the moment you have gotten to less than a pop-per-second, to cut the gas or snatch it from the coil if using electric. Tip the popped corn into a serving bowl, then melt some butter in the bottom of the same pan and drizzle it over the corn in the bowl. I like to put salt in my palm to judge the amount, before dusting the surface of the fresh hot steamy stuff in the bowl. I use my table knife to stir popcorn up from the bottom and mix it with the dredged and salted stuff on the top.

You will come to judge how much of each item with time. I like a TBS of butter and 1/8 tsp. of salt for a batch scaled to my 6 qt. saucepan, which yields two very generous servings. In a smaller saucepan, one which is shorter than 5 inches, don't cover the entire bottom of the pan with seed unless you like the thrill of having the batch lift the cover off the top, and maybe a few escapees catching fire before you finish.

On a gas stove, you will be using substantially less energy than microwaving a batch, but with an electric stove you will use more.

I don't serve it with napkins, unless asked. Just as I regard popcorn as a vehicle for ingesting salt and butter, I would consider not licking it off the fingers to be an inexcusable waste! I am left with a pan, serving vessel and knife to clean, but if they are added to the next batch, the added energy consumption—carbon foot print and my own animal energy—is negligible.

Slippery slope of sensibilities

My overarching theme has been the increasing isolation, in our 'developed' (but devolving) society, of the average person from the resources, design, production, repair, and even disposal of the 'stuff' on which we all rely. This could be energy, steel or lumber, or more refined things like automobiles, computers, furniture.

I see a semantic creep abroad in the land (now through the lens of a library science student) that has me pensive, and offer it for your own reflection. Newfangled objects of current popular adulation are paired with quainter terms whose function and sensibility they seem to displace:

information:knowledge :: consumer:customer :: producer:creator

The informal title of this Blog, it occurs to me, may be lost on readers 'below a certain age.' In an era within the cultural memory when I was learning the language, the Saturday night family bath ritual entailed filling the big galvanized washtub with water heated on the woodstove in the kettle... and was reused for all family members! It could be pretty foul for the last member, and all were cautioned to not "throw out the baby with the bathwater."

Something precious may well be disguised in what we are in such a rush to discard. I fear that literal and fugurative dirt under our collective fingernails is a wonderful thing, as it speaks to our independence and power to dealing with our practical world on a common ground where we have lots of options, and are not 'victims' but real players. We interface directly with the real world rather than experience the making and maintaining of its bounty through machines, corporations, or countries that isolate us—at a cost—from all that messy, gritty stuff. We have lost the satisfaction of knowing how to do things for ourselves, and to knowingly evaluate the handiwork of others.

Crafts and hobbies used to be much more central to the typical person's leisure, and gave them a direct appreciation for the skill and quality that went into those things that they DID purchase from others.

Got ten minutes for a 'green rant' about rampant consumerism? Go to
http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html
I think that some of the old-fashioned involvement with all aspects of 'stuff,' will serve us well in getting our sorry world on a recovering track.

How to know when you are Really Learning

As an older student (starting a masters at a 'youngish' 54), I arrived with plenty of real-world knowledge and 'conceptions.' (If you have had them this long, and came by 'em honestly, they are no longer PREconceptions.) It might look like baggage to the pedagogue, even one who is my contemporary, because he or she is so used to looking at relatively blank slates.

You know you are learning when you personally experience paradigm shift.

This is the mental equivalent of going back to the gym after a lapse, and selecting a personal trainer who acknowledged, but just, that you are different from supple young things that seem made for overexertion and subsequent tissue repair.

I have not been asked to leave my past at the gate, but no one will carry it in for me here, either. I was admitted to the academy, now I have to admit the academy into me.

I am looking for intellectual dialogue, if not communion, which I could find on occasion 'before,' but in my school's mostly-commuter population, the chemistry is all wrong. Everyone is always rushing to or from campus, and now I understand why there is no suitable hangout—nothing remotely resembling one, anywhere within a mile of the campus, even—for the kind of intellectual sparring that I craved as an undergrad and in all the aeons since...

The present intellectual 'boot camp' has me in cold-turkey withdrawal from the very stimulation I anticipated. I could use that succor, and kvetching here in monologue only seems to worsen the itch.

It looks like I may make it to the point where I 'pass' boot camp. Guess I will know when the drill-sergeants start saluting back!

Drive By Wire

'Throttle Cable' was a very straightforward name of a car or truck part until recent years; it ran from your gas pedal directly to the throttle lever on your carburettor. Input from driver to engine is becoming ever more mediated by electronic processing. Many vehicles now take your right foot's input as 'demand' input (electromechanical) into a computer, where it is one of several values that are processed, then an electromechanical output (via rod or cable linkage) operates the throttle in a housing or body on the intake side of your engine. Similarly, timing of the ignition spark (and in some cases now, valve operation) is modulated by this processor; each used to be adjusted mechanically and in isolation from the other variables, maximized for at most a few different engine operation regimes.

Those who have driven relatively low powered vehicle might remember being able to 'feel' when additional throttle application gained no additional performance and wasted fuel, or even inhibited performance gains, or when they wanted to be at a certain speed with the throttle already 'packed' to that point of diminishing returns, in order to crest the coming hill without losing a gear. Today's driver, for two reasons, will not generally have such learning opportunities. The vehicles are almost all powered, for their weight, in what we used to call 'sports car' category (1 horsepower or more per 14 lbs of weight) so 'feel' for differences in grade and wind is very subtle. And the sensors and brains are mediating between what we want (demand, via our right foot or the speed control) and the engine components and functions which will deliver.

I will not rail against anti-lock brakes, but point out that the instruction one can get from learning how to feel for the modulation point, where you are at the limits of adhesion between your tires and the road, also instructs about when steering will get squirmy too. Directional control, braking and acceleration all depend on the instantaneous condition of adhesion between four points of contact between tires and earth surface... and 'progress' is taking from us some of the direct ways skilled drivers used to make that very sensible.

Back to our sophisticated throttles: the main downside here is that the connection many of us felt with the primary mover, which told us lots about its capabilities, limits and needs, was also telling us a lot about efficiencies (if we were paying attention). Lots of this is generalizable knowledge, and will prove very useful to us as we figure how to manage fewer resources for more people. The related secondary loss is that engineer/inventor types, and their appreciators, have been put at a remove from the lessons that driving a car could teach about power generation and use.

For now, I hope that lots of Prius drivers are digesting the interesting computer graphics and learning how to get even better mileage by letting up on the 'gas pedal.' Our lives abound in very relevant physics lessons, although we seem to be getting more protected from them all the time!

Dreaming in Cyber

As an undergrad in the early 1970's when sleep-dream research was starting to take off, I lucked into having James B. Maas (Cornell) as my adviser. He, and William Dement (at one of the large Southern California campuses then) were the two big publishers of research that was interesting, fun, groundbreaking, and memorable. Maas's Psych 101 in Baily Hall (1100 seats) was always oversubscribed.

As a subject in one of the survey studies, I remember being asked if I was ever aware of having dreamed in color. Apparently, this was as strange question for many subjects as it was for me... and the interviewers had developed a script to coach us in answering. If you were not specifically aware of having awakened from dreaming with a vivid, specific color memory, they counted it as a 'no.' Over time, I forgot the question and the strangeness of the suggestion that I did NOT dream in color.

I was in my late 20s when I had the described, defining experience. While I cannot generally report whether a specific recent dream was in color or not, I felt certain on the morning of revelation that I had not ever before dreamt in color, or I would have known it.

For what it may be worth, I have been dreaming with increasing frequency over the last year in 'computer screens' (in color, by the way). I wonder if this is analogous to 'dreaming in German,' say, as a hallmark of advanced fluency in a second language. If it gets to dreaming of being on hold to a help desk, I am seeking professional help, or at least looking up Professor Maas.

A slight respite from assignment deadlines coincides with catching up on some reading, and these intersect with some thoughts I have been mulling. Reading Anthony Grafton's Future Reading (New Yorker Magazine, 11/5/2007) it clicked.

The half life of an information technology is the interval between successive media proliferations.

It sounds tautologous... but ponder a bit. I will throw out a few pearls now, and return with more in my next post.

What may be different in this regime change, with digital trying to replace paper records, is that print is still proliferating steadily. (Previously, paper rather deftly displaced parchment, which in turn was seen as better than a wax codex, which in pre-Christian days displaced clay tablets...)

Technology 'this time' allows for the production of either printed or digital records from virtually identical workflows, but once they are created, the stewardship, permanence, accessibility and findability of 'hard copy' records, and their 'born digital' siblings, are very different, in ways we are only starting to appreciate.

At the micro-level of digital storage media, we note, in a dizzying short span, the introduction, brief flourish, then complete obsolescence of: 5.25" diskettes, 3.5" floppies (including the uniquely formatted Apple version), ZIP discs (in 100, 250 and ultimately 750MB capacities), Jazz drives, and a host of tape cassette formats. The rewritable CD seems outright venerable, for having been available all of 12 years now, but one wonders how long 'til it is hard to find an optical media drive that won't have the requisite backward compatibility to read all of my carefully archived treasures...

At the macro level, the digital pile will only grow, if not ever fully take over. The incessant need to migrate digitalia to the next darling format on the next hegemonous medium is certain to effectively leave behind much of our societal record and output from this transition era. God knows my archived e-mails, on scores of lovingly labeled and stored media, are not going to be accessible and readable in ten years if I do not decide to commit to periodic conversions and rewritings, and if my original organizing and labeling schemes prove fugitive through it all.

Previous information tech revolutions were relatively swift, and once most of society heard the new tune, they shifted right to it. The important works, with some sad exceptions, made the migration to the next medium. The present revolution does not hold any promise of an early armistice. Think of protracted trench warfare, of waste, and squandered youth, truth and beauty.

back to the manhole covers...

My short post that asked for replies has only garnered one, by a brave soul who admitted not having ever given the subject much thought. (Scroll down to see the Q and A under Saturday, September 29th.)

A round cover, if it has an adequate little lip on the rim, cannot fall through its own hole. One made with evenly faceted sides—say a square, pentagon, hexagon or octagon— could fall through. Even if it did not kill anyone or damage the works below, there would still be the problem of getting 200lbs of cast steel back up and out, before carefully retrying.

I remember well the train engineer outfit I got for my 5th birthday. In 1958, we did not yet know any astronaut by name, but all still had at least an observer's relation with the physical and mechanical furnishings of our infrastructure. What was encouraged and commonplace has become weird and foreign in a generation.

If you had posed the questions in 1970, most adults would have recognized them as interesting, and a good portion would have gotten it right, I believe. Asking the question today is more likely to elicit a 'whatever' reaction...

I am concerned that, in the main, today's average American adult is completely aloof to the most basic underpinnings of the systems they completely depend on to support their narrow and very specialized pursuits.

"Like Lemmings to Lex Ave"

In the American automotive scene, marketing guys are calling the shots, and we are doing whatever they tell us. They have every new car buyer thinking that you need at least 200 horsepower to get a Corolla from A to B. and no one is saying "Hold it just a minute, there, Buster!"

While it might be fun and thrilling to go from 0—60 in under 7 seconds, wouldn't we rather just be adequately able to do the interstate merge, or pass trucks on a hill (with say 100hp) and get appreciably better mileage? All the great engineering that presently going into getting lots of power out of little displacement, could instead be getting much more economy out of the same engine size, with 'mosdest' instead of 'monster' power avilable.

The entire industry, in the last ten years, asked, "Wanna supersize it?' and we did not even think about the question. They have us just where they want us.

If we look at the market, we see a reflection of how we went along, voting with our collective purse... but my point is that the voting was uninformed, wholesale, across the American market. We have become uncritical consuming dupes, only pushing for diverse feature offerings in things that are in the passenger compartment or on the outside, but estranged from the workings of the beast that bears us, that cosumes fossil fuels in a heat engine and adds to the greenhouse gas burden under which our biosphere is sinking.

If you are like most in the car market, you now want the mileage, and maybe the pollution reductions, because of the prices at the gas pump. Don't feel bad about your past complicity, but instead start feeling good about your choices going forward. Start by hesitating (instead of caving in) when they offier you 'bigger/faster/more powerful' if you did not actually ask.

Being an educated consumer, rather than an emotion-based buyer, is being responsible to yourself and to the environment.

Intense week—economical postings!

Many projects coming due this week, so long essays here are in temporary abeyance! ("Look it up!" my mom used to say!)

A meditation and encouragement, my Grasshoppers, which would have you be in touch with your personal capacity to make a difference: "think globally, act locally"

Thinking about Efficiencey

In the day (circa 1974, right after the first big 'fuel crunch' of 1973) I could provoke an argument by insisting that my sweetly tuned 1960 36 horsepower VW Beetle, notorious for squeezing a then amazing 32 miles out of every gallon of regular gas, was not as 'efficient,' or even fuel efficient, as friend Scott's '63 Merc, with its 265 horsepower 390 cubic inch V-8, that never quite managed 19 highway miles on a gallon of hi-test.

If, by efficiency, we meant: ton-miles moved for fuel consumed, he was doing lots better. Not that this was much consolation to him when he was inwardly questioning whether he really needed to haul around 3600 lbs of tailfins and chrome every time he went from Point A to Point B. But when he took on three passengers there was no perceptible degradation in mileage or performance, while a full load in my beloved 1600 lb.'Wolfbang' meant that several hills which were normally taken in 4th now entailed a downshift—or two—and a noticeable drop to mileage in the mid 20s per gallon.

The term 'efficiency' alone does not specify which efficiency one is discussing. In the era where may of us are now aware of our 'carbon footprint' and should engage in the national dialog about planning and policies that reduce greenhouse gasses, we need to go beyond the usually intended 'miles per gallon' and ponder things on bigger scales.

Come to appreciate that the Q25 MTA bus, only 1/3 full and getting only 5 mpg while lumbering along Parsons Avenue, is keeping 20 autos off the same road. (Hell, if we can convert it to a hybrid, maybe it would even beat 5 loaded, ride-sharing Priuses replacing it!) Ponder the national implications of subsidizing railway construction and improvement, in terms of the fact that on comparable long haul routes that 2-engined 100 freight car train is using about 1/8th the fuel per payload ton mile of the Peterbilt tractor hauling 10 tons in its 60 foot trailer.

In addition to wondering how much money you could be saving now by switching to a hybrid, think higher up and further ahead for a moment. We can find non-fossil fuel ways to move loads on the earth's surface, and should make that an international priority now, because we do not want to preclude the possibility of anyone being able to fly in airplanes after the year 2100. (Maybe by then we will have developed a way to safely beam non-fossil fuel-generated power up to aircraft... and likely by then they will be selling seaside real estate within the city limits of Houston.)

How cool it would be to have a presidential campaign based on the premise that we should lead international efforts to switch to appropriate technologies, to undertake and apply basic science that makes our planet sustainable and improves conditions globally. I am old enough to remember JFK's bold declaration (in 1962) that we would land a man on the moon before the end of that decade, and the excitement and global interest it sustained. It is time to return to visionary leadership, and a visionary citizenry motivated to get to work.

'Connection': is it a Zero-Sum thing?

Staying 'connected' to what is going on, in the real world, in one's family, and in the virtual world, all require committing time and energy to learning curves and maintenance.

None of us get more than 24 hours in a day, and whatever our personal unknown 'magic' number of granted days may be, that is all we will get. So, it stands to reason that we can only do so much 'quality connecting.'

My fear is that we are not even leaning into the wind, resiting the trend to being narrow specialists in the ways we add value to to the economy, while also being (necessarily) more substantial consumers all the time. What we are losing at a rapid rate, is the connection with the real world of inventing, designing, innovating, making, maintaining and repairing the things around us.

Not that I mean to get into a 'blame game' here... as I have noted previously, even if you were motivated to get involved with the workings of your automotive beast of burden today, it seems that the manufacturer cozens to the exact opposite taste.

Another blogger says it well:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/09/14/the-top-5-reasons-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades/

Engaged world citizens

In an increasingly crowded world, one more aware of climate change and other stresses on our home planet and its societies, it is more important than ever that the individual feels the potential to make a positive difference.

Our time will be measured by how well we harness the empowering potentials inhering in global interconnection and meantingful virtual travel, cultural exchange, and learning. The isolating potential of a looming 'digital divide,' if turned around, could afford mankind a new literacy and universal access to the collected wisdom of civilization.

Much as the great democratic experiments are premised on an informed and engaged electorate, there is the real possibility that global community can be powerfully positive if we allow every human to be 'enfranchised.' Can we afford to not engage all of humanitiy's wits in refining and redirecting our path toward a sustainable and attractive future? If a new technology can be either 'problem' or 'solution,' those of us with access to it have a clear moral imperative.

[Dismounts soapbox to modest, polite applause from small, confused crowd.]

A short one—finally!

I confess an untested bias, and ask your help in a little unscientific effort to quantify it a bit.

It is my impression that being observant and analytic, once a generally esteemed combination, is now passé, even 'unkewl,' in the era of hyper-specialization. ("I mean, like, why should we even worry about stuff that is, like, already taken care of for us?")


Would you take a minute to briefly comment on this post, answering these questions?

1) Have you ever consciously noted that manhole covers are always round?
2) Have you tried to figure out why, or to find out why?
3) What year were you born?
4) Are you male?

NOTE: Please do not actually answer the question of why manhole covers are round! It is interesting and not trivial, but besides the point I am pressing here. I will come back to it later.

Trophy shot, RIP

The golden age of the consumer single-lens reflex (SLR) camera was mid 1960's to about 1995, when the manufacturers' attention was distracted generally by the rise of reliable miniature electro-mechanical devices and compact and powerful chips to run them, and in particular by the promises of auto-focus, image stabilization, and digital image capture.

I cut my serious-hobbyist-teeth in the mid Sixties and remember fondly a few cameras that, in hindsight, were very high quality for reasonable price. Yashica, Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Pentax, Miranda, Bessler and others tended to bundle, in 'consumer grade' cameras, features that even today are not available, sometimes even at any cost, on the higher end 'pro-sumer' or even the all-out 'pro' models.

My 'mechanical bodied' Minolta SRT 101 (bought in 1972, stolen in 1978) came with a sharp f1.4 52mm lens, push-button depth-of-field preview, and mirror lock-up, all situated to allow access without removing eye from viewfinder and to allow hand-held existing light photography feats that cannot be approximated today unless one lays out some very, very serious bucks and does not mind hefting a weighty top-of-the line Canon or Nikon. Serious young enthusiasts today have no idea what a really 'fast' lens is... the hegemony of autofocus and its ring-motor ghettoized the f2.0 or faster normal lens to the provence of the professional who can fork over $1500+ (that is just for the lens) and does not mind a very weighty protuberance. Other than keeping old stuff repaired and staying with film, there were not mainstream options, after 1992 or so, to sport a truly fast lens on a reasonably priced new camera... none.

Depth-of field preview has gradually crept back into the electronic bodied SLRs, from the high end down, and can be used with differing degrees of menu-scrolling and clicking difficulty. Mirror lock-up (for elimination of the camera's main vibration on long hand-held shots) is not often found even on the upper lines, nor is it just a simple flick, which is what was always needed.

I specialized in those days taking 400 speed black & white film into bars, clubs, and night-time baseball games with my friends, and coming away with very nice and usable images that captured, in a distinctly graphic and now very dated way, the atmosphere and personalities of my young adulthood. Not every shot made it- I took plenty of risks hand-holding 1/15th or even 1/8th of a second, fully open (f1.4), sometimes also flicking the mirror up as I did my breath control and shutter button 'slow squeeze.' The celebrated keepers were appreciated because they were a challenge and not assured.

Today's 20 year-old wanting to do the same with anything made since 1995 is 'S. O. L.' It will be a flash shot (there goes your atmosphere) and not entail any risks at all in the 'craft' of capturing a usable image in challenging circumstances. With their f2.8 and slower lenses, they would need to hand-hold 4x as long, fully open, as I did in a comparable setting.

Now, with my weakening 54 year-old eyes, I LIKE autofocus, but wish I had the choice for an affordable new fast manual focus lens at each of focal lengths I like. I see many situations in which I would have made an attempt at something very 'atmoshperic' or creative, 35 years ago, where today's consumer grade cameras offer no viable options at all... interior of Notre Dame by only existing light, street scene by dusk or streetlight only, unobtrusive (no flash!) candids in subdued light with a short telephoto lens...

Many of the controls I used most were effectively taken away by the masses demanding autofocus and other whistles and bells. All too few have any real idea of what was lost in the deal.

I applaud the young-turks who push themselves hard in today's Xtreme sports expanding envelopes, inventing and exercising craft, and taking risks. Truth be told, though, in my day we were practicing Xtreme photography, where one had to simultaneously do a host of things perfectly to come away with a winner... but now the craft does not ask you or even afford you opportunities to take technological chances... the hard-earned 'trophy shot' is a thing of the past.

Many today do not even know how to look at an strong photograph taken in the decades before they were born... it does not occur to them that whatever corrections were made had nothing to do with PhotoShop, or its masks, effects and filters. Aesthetics aside, it is virtually guaranteed that anyone can come out of any situation with a technically sound image... 'Nerf' photography has displaced calculated risks.

I am waiting for the day when the digital SLR will give me f2.0 or faster in a 'normal' focal length for the equivalent of 2 weeks' work at minimum wage. I am withholding full enthusiasm for the digital revolution until it restores some of the great stuff it took away.

You're so young!

Professor Thomas Suprenant's course, which might be informally titled 'History and Importance of Computers and Computing,' is the impetus for this blog, and his anecdotes are part of the inspiration. My initial readers will include many of my 20- and 30-something classmates, for whom I am virtually as fossilized as the prof. He could be my older brother, I could be their father, their kinda old father in some cases.

The professor likes to bring in 30 year old hard drives and memory chips to show us progress over what a minority of us see as relatively short periods. Mine is often the sole hand going up when he asks "who remembers...?" It is as though he and I were on the same side when the annual email circulates to 'faculty of a certain age,' reminding them that this year's freshman never lived at the same time as Amelda Marcos (so just put a lid on that old shoe joke).

Herewith, then, a few random things to make most of my classmates feel very young, rather than the obverse. (Hey, it's MY blog!)

-When an occasional car does emit visible or smellable exhaust, I can definitively diagnose a host of different specific conditions, but you kids, fortunately, rarely see visible vehicle exhaust. (Holed piston, bad rings, running rich, blown head gasket). No one my age finds this remarkable in the least, by the way.

-The young turks that persist, at this late date, in smoking tobacco as a hallmark of their rebeliosness or personal immortality, might envy me and my age-set for our slightly more innocent era. I had a flashback yesterday on campus to my 18-year-old self, in the front row of Philosophy 101, smoking a pipe. The only reaction all semester was someone wanting to know which tobacco blend that smelled so nice.

-I (or my brothers) watch the '40s movie where the soldier has to change a tire on the captured foreign car before he can drive back to his captain and save the day... and we have no trouble imagining ourselves in his place. We are the last generation (in the US at least) where our average peer could be plopped down in front of an unfamiliar car and still do basic things to it. Not necessarily smugly, we feel we could be plopped down in any previous era and readily adapt to the technology. Backwards compatibility, if you will.

It has gotten far beyond practical for even the highly motivated, to 'tour the factory,' or otherwise become familiar with the making and fixing of the things we depend on today. All of us, globally, are increasingly interdependent. Individually and nationally, we are getting inexorably more narrow and specialized. Some of us wonder if the old sense of personal technological independence which is now flickering out may be a metaphor for the new vulnerabilities our society has as it 'advances' to a service one from the more 'primitive' producing one...

New Improves Old—After Teething

Lest readers think I am against all things new... today's revelatory post on progress.

Long before the general proclamations of the incipient death of the internal combustion engine (on the heels of the first powerful federal anti-emissions regulations in the late 1960s), the engineers knew most of the variables they would love to finely monitor and control to maximize various efficiencies and output, but did not have available components scaled and priced to go under the hood of production cars.

An American market auto engine in 1968 was still very straightforward, not reactive to (at the beginning) onerous mandates to cut sulphur dioxide and hydrocarbons. Fuel injection was for exotic cars and only very recently electronic (vs. mechanical), and the standard carburettor did not monitor much more than engine temperature (by various means) to control the automatic choke. There were no oxygen sensors, and the only incursion on traditional simplicity of late was the PCV (positive crankcase ventilation) valve, to scavenge hot engine oil vapors and combustion blow-by gasses into the intake air for 'proper' burning instead of free venting to the atmosphere.

As Bosch began electronic injection ('fool infection,' per mechanics of the day), European engine compartments sprouted lots of sensors telling the 'brain' the temperature of heads, barometric pressure, throttle position, exhaust gas temperature, and others. Wiring and more plumbing overlayed the familiar old beast beneath. Early US manufacturer attempts to meet standards had us, into the early 1980s, pumping compressed air into the exhaust gas stream hoping for a bit of follow-on 'external' combustion, but it was tricky to get both categories of emission low; engines had to run a little richer and cooler to cut the sulphur during combustion, and the 'afterburn' had to deal with much less than full or ideal fuel combustion in the chamber.

The artificial pressure of legislation on innovation actually worked, with the invention of the rather elegant catalytic converter. It resimplified things and more directly and efficiently got the industry on track for meeting tightening standards. Cars were retuned for better fuel economy and power, and the exhaust was able to support support it's own substantial cleaning in this pricey new component of the exhaust system. And the entire industry knew that, if it could be made reliable and durable, EFI (electronic fuel injection) would let them finely control fuel-air mix and volume, thousands of times a second, responding to a score of relevant variables, each involving a sensing and electonic feedback loop to one or more interconnected 'black boxes.'

Underhood today, one sees mostly black plastic containing the overlayer of sensing, monitoring and controlling apparatus. Beneath it all, the old internal combustion engine guts have been continuously benefiting from advances in computer aided engineering, new materials and exceedingly precise manufacturing methods, so that we do not need to, say, replace that water pump at 60,000 miles.

There was a difficult era, from about 1975 to 1985, when the industry was scrambling to refine all the needed components, but the upshot is substantial. In perfect tune, the family sedan of 1970 would put its weight in hydrocarbons into the atmosphere three times in 12,000 miles of driving. A similar car now emits about 1/6th the waste and virtually none of it is sulphur dioxides. We would have been delighted then with 20 mpg on the highway, but now are expecting almost 50% better in a comparable car.

My fraternity brother George used to stand on the ground, inside the engine compartment of his 1966 Chevrolet Bel-Air straight six while tuning it up. Long gone are the days when you could look 'through' and see the ground.

I am glad that other fraternity brothers were improving computers, sensors and materials, and paying attention to combustion dynamics. While the death announcements of the infernal combustion engine were at least 30 years premature, societal attempts to limit fossil fuel consumption have always been on cue and all our collective investment in efficiency and alternatives may save the planet, if we are very lucky.

Newsflash: technophobia in tech marketing

Three years ago, a future-thinking friend got one of the second style Toyota Priuses (Prii, for fellow Latin students). Given my old interest in electrics and hybrids (I was once President of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington; see: http://www.evadc.org/) I wanted to learn all about how advances in computers, magnets, traction batteries, motor design, motor control, and component interfacing had evolved in 25 years. Toyota has a good record for gently easing new tech into lower lines then migrating it upward as it is proven (see: http://www.billzilla.org/vvtvtec.htm), and now the reliable hybrid drivetrain is available on the Camry.

His '05 model does not reveal much on direct inspection- smooth grey covers under hood, and no clear indication of what, or even where, the main motive and transmission elements and battery sit. So, to the Owner's Manual! The specs page contained what I was sure had to be a typo; the compression ratio was listed as 13.1 : 1. That should require that we feed our baby DIESEL, not 89 octane. On to the web, where I confirmed that unusually high number on the Toyota website. (Regular gasoline, in a regular air mixture for internal combustion engines, in a warmed engine, will 'pre-ignite' or 'diesel' [sic] if compressed much past 9 : 1; the old Chrysler hemis famously required higher octane fuels to go with their higher compression and output, so that detonation of the charge prior to the piston hitting top-dead-center would not 'knock' and cut power output. High octane fuels can contain their excitement, so to speak, until the moment of controlled and timed spark ignition.)

Surely, Toyota knew the compression ratio of their enigmatic little three-banger in their hig-tech flagship, and I myself had actually put regular gas in it and seen the great result—50 mpg is just a 'so-so' mileage, and he has eclipsed 61mpg on more than one tank in 60k miles.

More web searching. Toyota had said something about an 'Atkinson cycle' engine.... see: http://www.keveney.com/ Atkinson.html Now, if a major manufacturer rendered a production line version of a never-made 1903 patent, in the time my generation was growing up underneath car hoods, there would have been lots of press and lots of talk. Toyota's marketing folks probably know exactly what they are doing in not even mentioning the way they accomplish several different 'miracles' inside their seamlessly sleek package, and in some ways I feel as if I am with Dorothy and Toto, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man, being told to "Ignore that man behind the curtain!!!" I find it sad and remarkable that innovations which would have fostered a year-long 'bragging rights' ad campaign to a receptive public a generation ago, go pretty much hidden from view, even from the moderately interested and motivated.

If you are still reading, you may be one of them. My last treat, explaining how the Toyota compression number given is sort of correct, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle

I would submit that they should refer to "13.1 : 1" as the EXPANSION ratio, but since no one has ever given separate compression and expansion numbers for an internal combustion engine before, they might have tipped their hand to many more than just me, by so doing. (Yes, it seems as if they really would rather NOT talk about it.)

I will try to get out from underneath automobile hoods soon, dear readers, soon.

Looking under the hood... going, going, gone!

For all of my life, to now, it was standard 'guy' practice: a (male) friend or relative shows of the new (or new to him) set of wheels. The standard walk around and running critiques ALWAYS ended with a look at the engine, even if one was a little fuzzy on all the stuff there. Always.

Older brother Jerry came home a few months ago with a brand new midsized SUV that is really fun to drive, fuel efficient, and very well designed inside and out. Under the hood: a big plastic cover hiding our access—even view—of any of the workings, other than dip stick and oil filler hole. They don't want us to even try to top off coolant. For the included 100K mile waranty period taking him up to the first scheduled tune up, he is discouraged from getting even lightly involved in any of the intimacies he shared with every vehicle he has owned since his '47 Ford coupe as a teenager in the late 1950s.

We used to HAVE TO check plugs, points, condenser (and valve adjustments if you had non hydraulic lifters) every 15,000 miles or so, before say 1985. They often needed attention sooner, and rarely needed no adjustment at the specified interval.

It is nice to now be able to not worry about astoundingly more reliable and durable cars, but is being completely isolated from their main workings all good? Younger readers of both sexes, and most women in mine and previous generations, may see it as unmitigated progress, and accuse me of being sentimental for an era when I could be the hero by popping a stranger's distributor cap and running a matchbook cover between the points to clean them and get him or her on their way again... (Remember matchbooks? Remember distributors you could find, or open without any tools?) Well, yes there IS a bit of sentiment, but there is more, too. Stay tuned, so to speak.

Statement of purpose / credo

I am both young and old for my age, 54. I was lucky enough to grow up in a household with older brothers and a Dad who liked to work with tools, took pride in their work, and thought things through. Mom was artistic, crafty and creative. While both parents and all siblings went to college, we never had any hesitations to 'do-it-ourselves,' and we actually enjoyed learning while doing, then having useful, durable things to show for our efforts. When we did call in the occasional plumber, mason or carpenter, they had to accept a two generation audience of 'apprentices.'

Besides specific useful skills for a host of this world's 'mechanical' challenges, I have developed an educated if unschooled perspective on the history of technology, and increasingly feel I have witnessed about half of it in my own lifetime!

I will offer short little essays and rants on skills and technologies that are going or gone, in a context. Some are to be mourned; for others, it is 'good riddance.' Philosophically, ten years ago I would have said that the modern era merely fails to reward the genralist, but today I am prepared to say it is far worse: You will be punished if you have not embraced a narrow specialty, and there are all too few 'extra points' for being able to competently navigate in fields other than your ordained single cubbyhole.

Will mine be the last generation, at least in the technologically advanced cultures, that has the feeling of self sufficiency, of viability in the rough, natural, elemental world? In my mind, I am certain, if stranded with a handful of like-mindeds on Gilligan's Island, we would have comfortable shelter by the first night, hot running water by the end of the first week, and all maner of 'appropriate technology' in short order. I fear that most younger folks would not survive without the support of the producers of a reality [sic] TV show behind it all, just off camera.

I suspect that the average intelligent citizen of a moderately developed country, for whatever other hardships and privations they endure—possibly even because of these—has in good measure a confidence which, in the US, will die with my generation.

I hope I am wrong. I can nearly as easily imagine settings where the day is saved by a 20-something who paid lots of attention to how computer networks were constructed and might be repairded in a national catastrophe. What I hope they will have, in same or greater measure as my 'can-do' generation, is the feeling that they have problem solving skills and analytic abilities that can usefully generalize to myriad situations, and that they are potent as individuals to make a positive difference, even IF the marketplace and 99% of their contemporaries 'don't get it.'

I know that the average 'consumer' is further removed, every year, from the processes of designing, making and maintaining the (increasingly complex) things around them on which they rely for comfort and much more.

As a society, we may be more secure and strong if the average citizen is both able to change a flat AND unistall crummy software that is slowing down an operating system. As individuals, we are enriched to embrace lifelong learning in diverse practical and esoteric areas, and celebrate same in others. Breadth AND depth, forever!