May 22, 2013
A terrible attack
This is a horrible thing. Obviously it was intended to be horrible. (UPDATE: Two black guys in the UK captured a British soldier and beheaded him in public, then waited around for the police to show up, exchanged fire with them, and both were hit. Of course, they were yelling "Allahu Akbar". No word on whether either of them died.)
When I was reading it, there were two sentences that stood out for me and hit me in the head:
1: "They took 20 minutes to arrive, the police – the armed response."
2: "There were people passing by who were screaming and running away."
This was in the UK somewhere. What struck me when I read those things was, Here in Cowboy USA that's not what would have happened. At least some people who observed the situation would have gotten involved. If there had been someone with a concealed-carry they'd have stopped it.
And a 20-minute police response time to something like this is totally scandalous. If you disarm your citizenry, you should protect them better than that.
This is the result of draconian gun control. The bad guys have guns, the civilians are helpless, and when seconds count the police are about half an hour away.
Tell me again why, exactly, the British approach to this is better than ours?
UPDATE: "2 UK govt officials: London attack appears to be motivated by radical Islam"
No kidding! I wonder how they figured that out?
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Posted by: sqa at May 22, 2013 12:09 PM (KuPSx)
2
Hrmm... blank comment. Didn't know you could do that on accident.
Anyway, reason the British system is better? So those damn Yanks can't go and rebel at will! (Their actual gun control insanity is actually a far more recent thing)
Posted by: sqa at May 22, 2013 12:10 PM (KuPSx)
3
Another incentive to get my own permit once my I can afford the classes.
I hope the killers get the punishment they deserve, but from the news I've read from Britain lately, I suspect they won't...
Posted by: Siergen at May 22, 2013 12:16 PM (Ao4Kw)
4
Given the course the UK has been heading over the decades, it may be possible that if any bystander
had intervened in the killing, it would have been the Good Samaritan(s) who would be prosecuted by the Crown, not the attackers. Indeed, if the Good Samaritans had injured either of the attackers during the attempt to stop the murder, the Good Samaritans would been considered at greater risk of legal actions from the Crown than the two attackers who were trying to kill!
Britain is a classic example of what happens when you combine firearms prohibition AND the criminalizing of defense of self/property, with a state that lacks a monopoly on armed force. For firearms prohibition to 'work', the state has to provide absolute protection of its citizens from criminals and enemies. If a state will not allow you to defend yourself, and is not able to defend you, than it has fail the most basic responsibility of a state.
Posted by: cxt217 at May 22, 2013 03:46 PM (HWMXn)
5
Yeah, I wrote about that
here.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 22, 2013 05:56 PM (+rSRq)
6
In the US, no official would DARE state that the attack was motivated by radical Islam.
Posted by: Mauser at May 23, 2013 04:35 AM (cZPoz)
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May 14, 2013
See no Evil
Sorry, I haven't had a lot to say recently. But today I got motivated to write about politics. I sent it to Gabriel Malor to post on Ace of Spades, but I'm feeling guilty about neglecting you all, so I thought I'd post it here, too.
UPDATE: It's been posted.
more...
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May 09, 2013
Bing News: it swings, and it misses
After Google News larded up its page with a "local news" column that it didn't permit me to turn off, I switched over to Bing News. It has an undeleteable column, too, but it isn't as obnoxious. The Bing News column is labelled "You might also like" (a phrase I really despise, but anyway) and just now it had this in it:
The picture caught my eye, because that's Michael Dunn. I have fond memories of him playing Dr. Loveless in the TV show "Wild Wild West" where he was a guest something like 10 times. Michael Dunn was a very intelligent man, and a fine actor. He had an amazing, totally unique voice. Smooth as silk; I could listen to him speak (or sing) all day.
Michael Dunn was also less than 4 feet tall. He died in 1973 at age 38 due to consequences of his dwarfism. I don't think he's the "Michael Dunn" who is having legal troubles right now.
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1
Being dead
would be a valid reason for denying him his Miranda rights.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 09, 2013 07:52 AM (PiXy!)
2
Using wrong file photo like that is quite common, or at least I seem to remember seeing it often at sites like Failblog.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 09, 2013 08:28 AM (RqRa5)
3
Of course, if he
was Dr. Loveless, then faking his death in 1973 would've been easy for him, and probably part of some fiendish plot.
He stole the show on Wild Wild West every time he appeared - he just oozed charisma.
Posted by: Siergen at May 09, 2013 12:41 PM (Ao4Kw)
4
And they knew it, too, which is why they kept bringing him back.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 09, 2013 01:57 PM (+rSRq)
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Wow, I just watched part of 'Night of the Raven' on youtube. I don't think that one ever was a part of syndication in my area (or they didn't show it.) I'd forgotten how much of a villain he was.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at May 10, 2013 05:34 AM (7MwAL)
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May 04, 2013
Ace of Spades?
I just submitted an article to Ace of Spades. I wonder if they'll post it?
If they don't, I'll post it here.
UPDATE: OK, it got posted.
Hooray for the Second Amendment!
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1
Man, Ace's comment sections are a major trainwreck, you know that?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 05, 2013 08:53 PM (+rSRq)
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Thought about contributing there, decided not to bother.
There's one more layer to the analysis that you didn't touch on, and that's this - the tyranny in question need not be police breaking down your door. In fact, in a lot of ways that's an outdated mode, since it's hard to deny that the heavy hand of the state is behind that sort of thing.
No, these days the fashion is for non-state organizations to do the heavy lifting when it comes to oppressing what was once a free society. Paramilitaries, "government supporters", really under the command of the ruling party but not formally a part of the government, and thus not obliged to play by the same rules as that government. Peaceful protests "spontaneously" erupt into violence, opposition members harassed, voting obstructed, but the government's hands are clean... at least, that's what they claim to the various UN and international observers. Police are mysteriously nowhere to be seen, though if any other party tries to so much as assemble for a street protest, the cops are out in riot gear.
But that's problematic when the populace is armed. Breaking into a shop for a little opportunistic looting, or going out with some of your buddies to beat the hell out of the scapegoat of the week, these things are fine if you aren't worried about someone giving you an extra orifice. But who wants to be the first guy in when you hear that shotgun shell being racked? Who wants to be the one to throw the first punch when that guy could be packing who knows what under that coat?
And, of course, all this is why gun ownership is important, because one of the powers that a tyranny has is not exercised in direct oppression, but in refusing to prosecute its sock-puppets for the crimes they might commit against the government's enemies. But while you can make a thug immune to the law of man, you can't make him immune to the laws of physics, and the thug knows it.
But gun ownership isn't sufficient to prevent this by itself - after all, if you shoot a brownshirt and the police can collar you for murder, that's yet another route to oppression. We don't just need guns but also proper laws, ones which recognize the individual's right to self-defense, the right to use their guns on those who would attempt to harm them or steal from them. And that doesn't work without courts that are independent from the government, including the right to a jury trial.
So long as we have arms, and the laws to let us bear them, there will be no "taking it to the streets", no Night of Broken Glass. And that's something that protects all of us, not just those of us who prefer elephant plushies to donkey plushies. But the desire to bring such things to pass, it's fair to say, is something that's not equally distributed among the political spectrum...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 06, 2013 02:17 AM (GJQTS)
3
#1- No kidding. I could barely get a dozen comments in before giving up. I can appreciate enthusiasm, but. . . Also, seriously, what does birth control have to do with anything in the post?
As for the actual topic, ahem, I think the most insidious part is not that the lack of arms and self defense will be used to forcibly oppress the people, directly or indirectly. Rather, I think the nastiest aspect is that, whether the power of self-defense is legally allowed or not, people might forget the ethic of self-defense. In place of it would be a assumed dependence on others. . . and oppression would become unnecessary. People would simply do what they are told, because they've forgotten how to be free.
Posted by: metaphysician at May 06, 2013 05:20 AM (3GCAl)
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May 03, 2013
A punchline missed
Today's "Real Life" has this punchline:
So, minor drawback. Amazon doesn't seem to sell "Boobs".
Sez you. I just did a search there for "boobs" and got 8736 results, including this one: NSFW
Man, don't they have fact checkers over there at Real Life? (heh)
(I wonder how many people did what I did?)
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World's first entirely-3D-printed plastic gun
They've been warning it was coming, and now it's out.
It's pretty crude looking, but they had to make it that bulky so that the plastic could hold the stress of the powder charge exploding. Also, I think it's single-shot; you have to manually load a bullet each time.
The only metal part is a standard nail being used as a firing pin. (They also included a large metal part in order to comply with federal law, but I bet most people who fabricate the design won't include that.)
This first design is crude, but it won't be the last, and it makes a mockery of background checks and owner lists. Which means...
...which means the new focus of the gun grabbers will be ammunition sales. Until now, ammunition sales have been largely uncontrolled, on the assumption that ammo did you no good without a gun and gun sales were supposedly being carefully monitored. (Which is a laugh, but...) However, if people with a will can create their own guns, ones which are better than zip-guns even if not as good as the stuff Glock sells, then the opposite logic will apply: it doesn't matter if you can create your own gun if you can't get ammo for it. That's where we're headed next.
Moreover, someone, somewhere, eventually is going to argue that even if the Second Amendment protects individual ownership of guns, that there's no consititutional right to buy or own ammunition.
Just wait. Someone will say that.
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1
People say it kind of regularly. Almost depressing, really. You don't see people saying "you have a right to a free press, but we can ban ink!" or "you have a right to religious worship, but we can ban churches!"
But ammunition control doesn't work because you can manufacture your own ammo as well... and even if you couldn't, surely we're not laboring under the impression that banning it would actually prevent criminals from getting it? The War on Black Powder wouldn't work any better than the War on Drugs.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 03, 2013 10:32 AM (GJQTS)
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...which hasn't prevented them from waging the war on drugs.
Posted by: Mikeski at May 03, 2013 11:38 AM (UJxjX)
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I thought about writing a post about this: it isn't criminals that the gungrabbers fear. It's actually the law-abiding gun owners they want to disarm.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 03, 2013 11:44 AM (+rSRq)
4
Indeed. Its not even really about the guns, per se. Its about the ideal of self-defense. People who believe in defending themselves are more independent of mindset, and independent people are harder to get to do what they "should" do, "for their own good." Take away everyones' guns and get everyone to accept that they aren't supposed to defend themselves, they are supposed to rely on the state to defend them, and you get people who are much more pliable.
Posted by: metaphysician at May 03, 2013 12:51 PM (3GCAl)
5
It's actually quite a bit deeper than just that, metaphysician.
I got a chance to talk to a former Leftist a bit over a year ago and he explained the interior thinking this way. The reason the Left will try to take all Power upon itself and fears (to the core of its being) someone else having actual Power is that they know what they would do with that Power, if the shoe was on the other foot. They fear themselves, then think that other, functioning groups in a society are just like themselves, so they want the Power to prevent others from doing... what they *know* they would do to themselves.
It makes a lot of sense when you merge together the thinking of the Progressive Movement from the 1880s to 1920s and the Marxist philosophy that's taken over much of the academy.
Your either the Oppressor or the Oppressed; the Government can put Top Men on the job; We're all the same, just with minor differences in appearance. This is the thinking they subscribe to, and it dictates completely how they respond.
The end result is that their political thinking resembles the way a clique of 12 year old girls operate. And that isn't a joke. It's that level of self-delusion to reality. Which is why absolutely Zero logic will work on the truly hardcore ones. Their assumptions about reality are just too far removed from the actual way things operate to capture actual functionality. Still, it doesn't effect their ability to perform jobs, carry out tasks or otherwise live. Which is how they've managed to make such large organizations that exist to make the lives of everyone worse (in practicality) even when they think they're helping.
So, they fear those that abide by the law. They don't fear criminals as they already have Cops to deal with that or they already own a gun themselves, normally from a "may" issue State. Crime and Safety are easy to deal with when your opinion & political elites are closed off from the rest of the world.
Posted by: sqa at May 03, 2013 01:51 PM (dvTNf)
6
Lest anyone doubt sqa's "the Left [...] fears (to the core of its being) someone else having actual Power is that they know what they would do with that Power, if the shoe was on the other foot," plenty of lefties have come right out and said they want to ban guns because they know they would be tempted (apparently beyond self-control) to just go wild.
Posted by: RickC at May 03, 2013 02:13 PM (WQ6Vb)
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Avatar_exADV, having been the stupid teenager who thought that "there's no right to bear bullets" was clever...
It makes a lot of sense when you don't have any real concept of the Second Amendment as anything more than a weird archaism (which, prior to recent Supreme Court decisions, "everyone" agreed it was) and have no understanding of the anti-gun control argument other than "crazy people want to stop us from making everyone safe because they are crazy". From that perspective, you're not weaseling your way around a constitutional right, you're countering exploitation of technicality with another technicality.
Posted by: Aaron Nowack at May 03, 2013 02:52 PM (91AfK)
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Sqa, they usually don't have guns themselves, but armed bodyguards, like Bloomberg and Jim Carrey. Sometimes the bodyguards have illegal guns, like the one for the head of Media Matters.
Posted by: muon at May 03, 2013 06:48 PM (jFJid)
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May 01, 2013
Google Glass -- wrong answer!
18 hours with Google Glass:
Ask the device to Google something and, thanks to a Bluetooth link to your smartphone or the built-in Wi-Fi, it will search the Web almost immediately. I tried Googling the length of the Golden Gate bridge (8,980 feet), how to say "I love you” in Japanese ("Watashi wa anata o aishite”), and checking the weather ("No, it isn't raining in New York, the weather is 58 and clear”).
That seems excessively wordy. What happened to good old "Daisuki!"?
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1
For machine translation it may be OK, but it sounds weird. On one hand it is extremely stiff and formal (especially if the speaker is male.) On the other hand it lacks a formal verb ending.
Posted by: Jonathan Tappan at May 01, 2013 02:28 PM (poC8e)
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And it's a complete sentence, so it sounds pedantic.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 01, 2013 02:53 PM (+rSRq)
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This is one place where something like Glass could eventually help, though.
Machine translation of "I love you" into Japanese is tough; it changes for age of the speaker and/or listener, man-to-woman, woman-to-man, parent-to-child, human-to-pet...
If the Glass knows who you are, and can use its camera to estimate who/what you're speaking to, it can give you the right words and politeness level.
Posted by: Mikeski at May 01, 2013 02:55 PM (UJxjX)
4
...give Glass some ability to read your vital signs in real-time, and it can even get "ai" vs. "koi" right. 
Posted by: Mikeski at May 01, 2013 03:03 PM (UJxjX)
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Yeah, without iru/imasu at the end, the meaning is closer to "I want you to love yourself". Could be worse; it could have used koi instead of ai, getting you into trouble when you try to translate "I love my dog" or "I love pie".
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 01, 2013 03:06 PM (fpXGN)
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...I suppose it could use the camera for that, too. If it's focused on her chest instead of her eyes, it's "koi".
Posted by: Mikeski at May 01, 2013 04:18 PM (UJxjX)
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I don't think I want Google to know
that much about my life!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 01, 2013 04:27 PM (+rSRq)
8
(Also, it could take a GPS fix and use local idiom or dialect!)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 01, 2013 04:29 PM (+rSRq)
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You can overdo that. I don't want it coming out "Hey, sekushii no neechan, isshoni yarou!" just because I happen to be in Roppongi...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 01, 2013 06:11 PM (pWQz4)
10
Or "yaranaika" in other places
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 01, 2013 06:42 PM (RqRa5)
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April 24, 2013
Notes about the times
It looks like I had an indirect stroke of luck. My previous monster notebook failed on me in January, so I sprung for a new one to be my main desktop computer. And I was able to get it with Win 7 installed. Looks like I dodged the Win 8 bullet. It's been a long time since Microsoft has made a misjudgement this poor.
It'll be quite a while before I need another new computer, and I assume by that point this will all be straightened out. Word is that the sales rate for new PCs has dropped considerably, and a lot of people in the industry are blaming Microsoft for that. I imagine that a lot of computer manufacturers will be retreating to Win 7, until Microsoft can issue an "update" that makes it possible to not use that abortion of a new user interface.
(I've heard that the head of the Windows division was canned last fall just after the Win 8 release. Looks like he deserved it.)
This Penny Arcade is funny, and well drawn as usual. And the point it makes is a good one. But I'd like to point out that there really are women who are built like that. Most of them have health problems as a result; it isn't by any stretch of the imagination "normal". But they do really exist. There's never been a man like that, though.
There was a Russian girl who was a favorite of certain men's magazines maybe 15 years ago, named something like Julia Ivanovna, whose breasts were considerably larger than the one in that comic. No human physical feature naturally varies as much in size as women's breasts.
A lot of the women who pose for men's "Big 'uns" magazines use the money for breast reduction surgery, I've heard. Can't say I blame them, but it's nicely ironic. And it seems a shame. But then, it's easy for me to say that because I'm not the one having to haul those things around all day.
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On the completely unrelated note, Dell is shipping a Windows 8 tablet (NOT Windows RT - real Windows). I thought your HP 500 was the last of the kind, forever, but apparently not! It's heavy like all get out though - 1.43 pounds.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 24, 2013 03:39 PM (RqRa5)
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I'm having some small amount of difficulties with my graphics card in my desktop. She's a wonderful system, but it's getting harder and harder to replace things like that, simply because she's seven years old. I was beginning to look at replacing her, but because of the whole Win8 fiasco, if she fails altogether I'll just shift to my laptop for a while.
Yulia Nova.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 24, 2013 03:43 PM (9jITs)
3
My Slate 500 is ample proof that Win 7 just isn't cut out for touchpad machines. It's pretty much unusable without a mouse. (Fortunately they included a USB port, and two more in the charging stand.)
I can understand that Microsoft needed to have a competitive entry for that market. It's obviously the Next Big Thing.
But they should have forked. It was a titanic miscalculation to try to force that new GUI back onto regular PCs.
(I know why they didn't. If they fork the OS, they also fork the app market, and they don't want to do that.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 24, 2013 04:31 PM (+rSRq)
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A confined sub-set for the table-top version of Windows would have been less of a problem.
Which is also kind of hilarious they wouldn't do that for Windows if you know what they've been up to with .NET for all these years.
Posted by: sqa at April 24, 2013 07:07 PM (dvTNf)
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If they'd simply included the same functionality and configuration settings provided by Start8, there would be almost zero fuss. The swish Aero Glass has been replaced with a minimalist Flat UI, but they've improved actual functionality in a number of places, so it's not a bad tradeoff.
Their mistake was deciding that what was good for Microsoft - i.e. leveraging their huge install base to tackle the tablet and smartphone market - was more important than what their customers actually wanted. Technically it would be easy for them to fix Windows 8. I doubt they will, because that's not how large corporations work.
Oh, and Wonderduck - nice way to bury the lede.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 24, 2013 08:52 PM (PiXy!)
6
J-list sells some
Yulia Nova DVDs and photobooks (NSFW).
Posted by: muon at April 25, 2013 01:22 AM (jFJid)
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It's true that there are very busty women in the real world, but Gabe's joke is also about her snapped spine, missing internal organs, and other Escher Girls anatomy. Yulia Nova isn't particularly pretty, IMHO, but at least her boobs come attached to a shapely human body, and aren't filled with helium. She had her own little section in the video stores I went into in Kyoto and Osaka; there were asian and western models who were bigger, but as is so often the case, the more they selected for size, the less attractive the rest of the model was.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 25, 2013 08:49 AM (+cEg2)
8
It seems this is what they were talking about:
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 26, 2013 08:24 AM (+rSRq)
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That one, but also the Amazon from the same game, albeit for different reasons.
Personally, I think its misguided. While there is definitely a big problem with sexism and misogyny in video games, this is a poor choice of games to take a stand against. As near as anyone can tell, its *only* crime is extremely stylized artwork, and amusing-but-misguided webcomic commentary aside, its about equal in how it portrays the male and female characters. Yes, yes, distinction between power fantasy and sex fantasy artwork. . . except that both the Wizard and ( to a lesser extent ) the Fighter use bishounen art tropes, which are at least as much sex fantasy for women as half-naked women are sex fantasy for men.
Basically, trying to draw more than a really weak and superficial gender aesop from this game seems to be pointless, and if you really want to fight sexism, there are much, much better games to target.
Posted by: metaphysician at April 26, 2013 10:20 AM (3GCAl)
10
Nice use of "definitely". The science is settled.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 26, 2013 10:43 AM (RqRa5)
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I stand by my judgement.
Posted by: metaphysician at April 26, 2013 10:45 AM (3GCAl)
12
Metaphysician, I see one big difference when I look at their web site: the male characters are fighting, the females are posing. I saw only one non-pinup pose of a female PC. So, while the wizard is drawn as a bishie, he's still more male power fantasy than female eye candy; the sorceress is just pandering ("no,
bigger!").
There's nothing wrong with pandering to a well-defined demographic, but it excludes a lot of people who might otherwise buy your stuff, and that group is
getting more vocal about it.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 26, 2013 01:20 PM (fpXGN)
13
@10 Pete, are you
really suggesting that there ISN'T a problem?
Really? Let me get my popcorn, I'm gonna want to hear this one...
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 26, 2013 05:39 PM (9jITs)
14
#12-
Oh, I don't disagree that there are issues with the game's art. It almost certainly is pandering. I just think it is a really poor choice of games to focus on. To name some examples:
1. The Soul Calibur fighting game series has female character models that are, relative to the art style of the game and the design of the male characters, much much worse. . . and has a literal observable trend where female characters get bigger boobs and skimpier costumes from one game to another.
2. Metroid Other M. The artwork has issues, but is almost completely irrelevant next to the plot, which glorifies a relationship that cannot be described in any way but "codependent and physically abusive." And it does this to a character who is one of the earliest female icons of gaming.
3. The extremely toxic fighting game community, where casual misogyny is almost universal. You could likely substitute "DOTA" and "FPS" in there and have the sentence be just as meaningful.
Next to that, some questionable artwork from a company whose prior games have a reasonably positive track record, vis a vis sexism, doesn't really inspire offense.
Posted by: metaphysician at April 26, 2013 06:19 PM (3GCAl)
15
In the Tomb Raider series, Lara Croft's breasts got bigger in each successive game -- until the last one, where they shrunk about half.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 26, 2013 06:33 PM (+rSRq)
16
"
a company whose prior games have a reasonably positive track record, vis a vis sexism" ...is a company that might still be persuadable. I don't think anyone expects the creators of the DoA franchise to abandon years of ever-increasing titty action, any more than they expect Rob Liefeld to suddenly start studying human anatomy.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 26, 2013 08:18 PM (+cEg2)
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But Laura Croft was always facing the wrong way to see them.
They also gained in vertexes, but nobody complained about that.
Posted by: Mauser at April 27, 2013 12:06 AM (cZPoz)
18
Lara Croft is a bit of an odd case. Her artwork definitely had elements of objectification, especially the growing bra size. OTOH, that was pretty much restricted to the artwork. The game otherwise was good, in that it had her clearly as the hero of the game, with full and proper agency.
One of the big concerns of the reboot/prequel Tomb Raider game of late was that it attempts to make a "realistic Lara Croft origin story" filled with traumatic events. Implicit in this is the deeply sexist notion that female heroes need *justification*. You can't be an adventurer because you want to adventure, you need some horrible event that breaks you inside. . . because normal, healthy women don't want to be tomb raiders. On top of being an egregious double standard, it also strips a female hero of agency, in that now their hero-doing is no longer a choice, but a reaction. Its a subtle, but pernicious, manifestation of "Men Act, Women Are."
As for whether that worry manifested in the final game? People are divided. The general reaction is that "most elements were not as bad as feared, but undertones were present and the game felt weird in other ways." Most of the fans seem to want the franchise to just move past the origin story reboot and go back to playing Lara as Lara. Maybe not the best outcome, but at least its not Other M. . .
Posted by: metaphysician at April 27, 2013 12:12 PM (3GCAl)
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April 23, 2013
Ready for... Formula E?
It's a racing event, where all the cars are electric. My big question is what the power sources are? I assume they're using fuel cells; I can't imagine any other portable electric source that could create enough power to avoid being a joke.
F1 engines run on the order of 700 hp. That's about 520 kilowatts. The only batteries which can operate at that kind of power levels are silver-oxide batteries AFAIK, and there's no way they're using silver-oxide batteries.
These cars probably don't run 500 kw, but if they're less than 250 kw then the performance really would be a joke.
I think the most interesting part of watching this race would be the lack of noise. We've all seen clips from other kinds of racing, and the engine roars are impossible to miss. But electric cars are notorius for not making a lot of sound, and I think that tire noise would be the most prominent sound -- and that ain't very loud most of the time.
The first racing season will be 2014.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
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Old news and maybe not accurate, but:
The prototype vehicle developed by Formulec, a French maker of electric racing cars, is a two-gear machine that runs off lithium-iron batteries and weighs 780kg.
It has a maximum speed of 220km per hour, and an acceleration of 0 to 100km/h in three seconds. It can run for 25 minutes before needing charging, meaning drivers will have the use of a second car to complete the one-hour race.
F1 cars are capable of going from 0 to 100km/h in 1.7 seconds, and cars can reach speeds of more than 300km/h.
So about what you'd expect from an electric race car, I guess. (And I dunno how 2 x 25 minutes = 60 minutes. Maybe the driver runs the last 10, as a motorsport biathalon?)
Posted by: Mikeski at April 23, 2013 03:03 PM (DU6Ja)
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I'm guessing that while the second car is on the track, the first one is getting recharged. All it needs is enough juice to do the final ten minutes. Plus, if there are some yellow-flag laps, the endurance time goes up and they might not need to switch twice.
There would be great pressure for the car designers to improve battery life. Getting to 30 minutes of endurance would mean only one car switch, not two, for a race with no cautions.
Posted by: Boviate at April 23, 2013 03:10 PM (KvJTj)
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I bet there is only one car, and they switch the battery pack.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 23, 2013 03:40 PM (+rSRq)
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Yeah, I suppose. The foot race would be funnier, though.
So since the article also talked about the green-ness of these cars... does producing an entire second electric vehicle really do less damage to the environment than the fuel burned in one normal one? (Whether you believe in CO2-caused AGW, or just worry about the other less-fun-to-breathe chemicals in automotive exhaust?) I'm guessing "no", myself.
Posted by: Mikeski at April 23, 2013 03:41 PM (DU6Ja)
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And I'm not sure I'd want easily-removable batteries in a race car like this. That much energy density laying on the track due to a wreck (or a pit lane mistake) could be... exciting.
Posted by: Mikeski at April 23, 2013 03:43 PM (DU6Ja)
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Joke? Perhaps if that's how you define it. But I'll take the joke, then, thanks.
F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of the motorsport, but if we look at the track record of F1 drivers in NASCAR, it's not all that spectacular even for proven F1 winners such as Juan-Pablo Montoya. So, I don't really care for F1 technical superiority.
Lots of other series provide excellent racing. F1 only has the bling and glitz going for it. If they took all the cars and drivers away and swapped it for, say, Australian v8, I would be just as happy following it, and the racing would be probably improved.
BTW, I raced an electric kart at K-1 racing in San Francisco and it was quite nice. It's a racing application where endurance is not that important. And the throttle response of electric car is incomparable.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 23, 2013 03:50 PM (RqRa5)
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There are reasons I haven't written about Formula E at all over at The Pond, even though I've known about it for a couple of years.
They do make a sound, by the way. If you've ever heard a battery-powered R/C car, it's like that. A little deeper, maybe, but not all that much. It's not pleasant.
Posted by: Wonderduck at April 23, 2013 06:31 PM (9jITs)
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Out of curiousity, why couldn't they use silver-oxide batteries? Expense?
Posted by: metaphysician at April 23, 2013 07:19 PM (3GCAl)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 23, 2013 07:20 PM (F7DdT)
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They are quite expensive but they also contain mercury. A wreck would be...bad.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at April 23, 2013 07:34 PM (F7DdT)
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Silver-oxide batteries aren't rechargeable.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 23, 2013 08:36 PM (+rSRq)
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Assuming the battery pack lasts 25 minutes at top speed, it would be a very interesting race to watch if (a) it lasts 60 minutes and (b) they allow only one battery change.
Might be difficult to ensure that all the battery packs are identical, though.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 23, 2013 09:51 PM (PiXy!)
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@Pete:
If F1 was Aussie V8 racing, it'd be more hilarious, at least. (And more of the work would be done by the drivers than the tech crews)
Though I really think they could just do it like RC cars, but with real sized ones. That would probably make the racing more fun than just betting how far the cars will make it, in a weird inversion of Le Mans style.
Though
Top Gear kind of beat me to that idea.
Posted by: sqa at April 24, 2013 08:35 AM (dvTNf)
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Another question: do high performance electric vehicles exhibit more torque than gas powered ones? If so, would that change the style of racing to be more of an acceleration battle?
Or am I totally off base?
Posted by: wahsatchmo at April 24, 2013 08:38 AM (r4uXE)
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Electric engines may have different torque curves for some reason. I'm fairly ignorant about them, perhaps it has to do with the current DC vs AC and being synchronous or asynchronous. The common DC motor has most torque at 0 RPM, which linearly falls. So, they are awesome off the line. However, when common electric cars are put on the dyno, they always have a very flat plateu at the low RPM. It is so flat that I am certain that it's capped in software, perhaps to make sure wires do not melt.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 24, 2013 09:05 AM (RqRa5)
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April 20, 2013
Gunshow "loophole"
One of the things the gungrabbers want to do is to require background checks for all gunshow sales, even when the seller isn't a dealer.
If that went into effect, I think I know how it would work out. The gungrabbers hope it would prevent private sellers entirely, but it wouldn't. Instead, the organizers of the gun show would set up a station to do background checks, probably next to a food court. If someone decided to buy a gun, they put down a deposit, and the seller gives them the form to fill out. They then go to the background check station, fill the form out, and hand it it. Then sit down for a cup of coffee or a snack. Once the check is done, their name is called and they're given a slip that indicates they passed. They then return to the seller, give him the slip and pony up the rest of the money.
The gun show might decide to make that the standard for everyone, not just private sellers. The background check station would have many clerks sitting at computer terminals, submitting the forms. And presumably the gun show would make arrangement with the state to have a big staff on hand to do the work at that time, so that it didn't back up unreasonably.
I can see people grumbling about this, but I can't see it as really all that big a hurdle. Just kind of annoying. The biggest headache would be for the people putting on the gun show, because they'd have to set up and staff the background check station. That's why they'd probably require everyone to use it, because they'd have to charge all sellers an extra fee for the service. (Flat fee? Or per-background-check? Probably both.)
What it wouldn't do is cut down on the number of guns sold.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
06:31 PM
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The problem isn't so much at Gun Shows. How do you handle it when the deal is "Say Frank," your Neighbor asks, "I'll trade you my extra shotgun for that old motorcycle you don't ride any more." Typically running the deal though a licensed Gun Shop costs you an extra $25-50. If you have one nearby.
That would be a typical sort of private sale deal. The problem is, many of the proposals are of the sort that a background check and fee could be required even for "Say, Steven, would you like to try a few shots?" With the potential for a life-changing Felony if you didn't do it.
The devil is always in the details.
And even when the proposals have carve-outs for things like temporary transfers (loaning a gun to someone for a hunt kind of thing) those exceptions become the NEW "Loophole" that needs to be closed and the cycle repeats.
Posted by: Mauser at April 20, 2013 11:07 PM (cZPoz)
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The problem here is that the people who you're relying on to run the background checks (i.e. gun dealers) are people who have a direct financial interest in reducing private transactions (because they're gun dealers.)
That's not so bad if the gun show organizers can get permission to run background checks - but by and large that's not going to be the case, because to work, the system is relying on records-keeping requirements with ongoing concerns. If you set up a company to run a gun show, run a dozen gun shows, and dissolve it after, who has the legal responsibility to keep those records years from now, when the cops would like to paw through them? (Naturally a centralized database would dispose of this problem, but introduce several others which are well-known to anyone reading this.)
The best comparison I can think of is to the system for shipping firearms around. The requirement that you ship to federally-licensed dealers doesn't look too bad - for a modest fee, surely these guys could agree to receive your shipments and keep the necessary records. However, a lot of them aren't inclined to, because they're gun dealers; they don't want you transshipping guns you bought over the internet, they wanna sell you a gun. So while in theory the law of the market would create a clearing price for the gun shipments, in practice in a lot of areas you just plumb can't get it done - there are so few willing FFLs that the price is pushed up above the costs people are willing to spend to move a firearm around (or, as intended, instead of buying cheap and shipping there, people are diverted into buying from their local shops instead.)
Having a system of private background checks run through firearms dealers has every potential to turn into the same situation - where significant areas just don't have access to the service, because none of the legal providers want to offer that service, because those same providers make more money if they don't have to compete with the second-hand market.
All this, of course, is completely aside from the relative uselessness of these background checks - as if someone who's prepared to shoot people is going to balk at faking an ID! - and also from their real purpose: to reduce firearms sales by making private sellers concerned that they will have legal responsibility for guns which they sell to other parties. If you're the last link in the paperwork chain, and the cops come knocking on your door, are they going to care that the actual crime was committed by people you've never met? Or are they going to charge you and then seize the rest of your guns, conveniently "losing" as many of them as possible into their personal collections or selling them for their own profit?
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at April 21, 2013 02:13 AM (GJQTS)
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Most of what I'd say has been said, but I'll add the fact that California already has it, and it hasn't delivered what was promised. All transfers (except close family, and even that has paperwork and fees, for handguns) must go through a licensed dealer, with a background check and 10-day waiting period. So, we have years of experience with "closing the loophole", which can be summed up as "all cost, no benefit".
-j
Posted by: J Greely at April 21, 2013 07:03 PM (+cEg2)
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