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10 Responses to “Thurs/Fri open thread”

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1. NC Cop says:

   December 6, 2007 at 9:45 pm

   Here’s an interesting little tidbit of information from the every important climate conference that the U.N. is holding in Bali.

   LINK

   The United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia is hosting hundreds of journalists from all over the world. But U.N. officials rejected a credential request by the “Environment and Climate News” — which is published by the conservative Heartland Institute — and distributed to every elected official in the country

   The U.N. will only say that the publication did not meet its criteria for accreditation — after it sought advice from its New York office.

   Heartland Institute spokesman Tom Swiss accuses the U.N. of rejecting applications from any media skeptical of man-made global warming dogma. He also tells FOX News that U.N. officials violated their own policy by giving a list of media requesting credentials to groups such as Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists — so they could send press releases espousing their points of view.

   Now why, I ask you, why would the Global Warmers not want to have any contradictory viewpoints at their meetings. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
2. Severian says:

   December 7, 2007 at 10:08 am

   On a completely unrelated but much more fun topic (drag racing), here’s some fascinating facts I found:

   Top Fuel Drag Racing Put Into Perspective:

   * One Top Fuel dragster makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows of the Daytona 500.

   * At full throttle, a Top Fuel dragster consumes 11.5 gallons of Nitromethane per run; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate but produces 25% less energy.

   * A stock 426 HEMI does not produce enough horsepower to drive a Top Fuel supercharger

   * At full throttle the supercharger is ramming 3000 CFM of air into the cylinders. The mixture is so compressed that the engine is on the verge of hydraulic lock.

   * Nitromethane burns yellow. The white flames seen above the exhaust stacks is actually Hydrogen, which has been dissociated from water by the heat of combustion.

   * At stoichiometric, the nitromethane air/fuel ratio is 1.7:1. Flame front temperature is 7050 degrees.

   * The dual magnetos produce 44 amps to each plug. This is enough current to arc weld.

   * Spark plugs are totally consumed during a run. In fact, after half way, the engine is dieseling from the compression and the glow of the exhaust valves. After this point, the engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.

   * To accelerate to over 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds the dragster must average 4 Gs. For the dragster to reach 200 MPH by half-track required 8 Gs.

   * A Top Fuel engine only turns approximately 540 revolutions from light to light. Including the burnout, the engine must survive only 900 revolutions!

   * Redline is quite high at 9500 RPM.

   * Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew is working for free, and nothing blows up, each run costs $1000 per second.

   Perspective:
   So you take your specially tuned $140,000 Lingerfelter “Twin Turbo” Corvette, and start back about a mile or so, accelerating as fast as you can, reaching your top speed of 200 MPH. This is really moving and would be something anyone would be proud of. You’re approaching the starting line where the Top Fuel dragster is sitting – stopped – waiting for you. As you cross the starting line, the light turns green.

   Within 3 seconds you are deafened by the incredible whine of the dragster, which has caught up to you. He passes and beats you to the end of the 1320-foot quarter mile.

   Boggles the mind doesn’t it?
3. PCD says:

   December 7, 2007 at 10:40 am

   Sev,

   I have to question you on this quote:

   “* A Top Fuel engine only turns approximately 540 revolutions from light to light. Including the burnout, the engine must survive only 900 revolutions!

   * Redline is quite high at 9500 RPM.”

   Only 900 Revs? Uh, my T-Bird’s V-6 does more than 900 Revs at idle. I think you dropped a unit of measure or something.

   I did see someone bring a rail to Hangover Fest at Cordova. It didn’t do well because the temps were below zero.

   I find it interesting that many dragsters use the Mopar Hemi as the base block they use for their “mill”.

   Also, the engine is totally rebuilt between runs.
4. Severian says:

   December 7, 2007 at 11:00 am

   Not sure, but remember that it’s revolutions per minute and a run only takes 4.5 sec. If, from light to light, the car ran at red line that’d be 9500/60 times 4.5, about 712 revolutions total. So, I think the 540 is probably accurate considering that the engine doesn’t run at redline the whole run. Kind of a counterintuitive figure but there it is.

   These things are just staggering to be around and watch. First time I saw one live I thought my bones would disintegrate, the sound was so loud. And if you’re in the pits, every time the guy revs the engine it’s like a hand grenade going off (the blast from the exhaust will blow your shirt back), and you’re eyes are stinging, nose and throat and lungs are burning from the nitro fumes. Damn, what fun!

   It’s amazing the engines even survive one run, the stresses are up at the limits of the materials, sometimes beyond.
5. Severian says:

   December 7, 2007 at 11:02 am

   BTW, these engines put out about 8000 horsepower at the crankshaft.
6. PCD says:

   December 7, 2007 at 11:34 am

   5, Yeah, and Ford castrated my T-bird with less than 2% of that HP.
7. Severian says:

   December 7, 2007 at 11:40 am

   Here’s an interesting quote I found at Patriot Post:

   North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap recently published his memoirs, in which he said the American media won the Vietnam war for the Vietcong. “What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it” he wrote. “But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!” Giap’s words are an important lesson from the past, to be sure.

   How little has changed in the past 30 odd years, except it’s gotten worse.
8. NC Cop says:

   December 7, 2007 at 3:19 pm

   NBC does it again!!!

   Group Says NBC Refuses to Air Ads Thanking Troops Over Holidays

   WASHINGTON — NBC has nixed holiday advertisements meant to thank troops for serving overseas in opposition to the inclusion of a non-profit’s Web address.

   Why would they do this?

   “Per my previous email, the http://www.freedomswatch.org website will have to be redacted from the commercials for approval. This comes from Alan Wurtzel and Rick Cotton,” according to one of the notes.

   How convenient!!!! Here’s my favorite part:

   However, he said, the link to the website violates their policy on controversial issue advertising because it encourages political action and other activities.

   Indeed. So NBC thinks that thanking the troops is “controversial”. Absolutely pathetic.

   How some people can think that the media is not severely biased is beyond me.
9. Mwalimu Daudi says:

   December 7, 2007 at 4:32 pm

   As a gift to the moonbats, here are assorted Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories to keep them unhinged and enraged today:

   1. Japanese bombs could not have possible sunk the US ships in Pearl Harbor. It it was done by controlled demolitions like the ones that brought down the WTC on 9/11.

   2. There is no evidence that Japan actually attacked the US. The planes and warships in the Pacific Ocean were actually US military craft painted to falsely implicate Japan and steal her oil.

   3. The war in Europe was illegal. Germany never attacked the US before she was attacked. The war against Germany was simply an excuse to occupy Europe.

   4. The war against Japan was actually a phony war used as a pretext to drop the atomic bomb in a bid for world domination. Has any other nation ever used atomic weapons? Leave it to a Rethugican administration to be the first to use weapons of mass destruction against civilians.

   5. George H.W. Bush was a pilot in World War II. More evidence of the illegality of the Rethugican war-for-oil. Is it really a coincidence that Bush would become a “war hero” and go on to steal the Presidency?

   6. Americans of Japanese descent were illegally confined during World War II. As they are presently doing in Iraq, this was yet another Rethugican attempt at ethnic cleansing to make America a white male homophobic Christianist theocracy. Such a violation of human rights would never have happened during a Democrat administration.

   Are you choked with rage yet? Good! Now go out there and parade your moral superiority by waving signs proclaiming NO BLOOD FOR JAPANESE OIL, throwing up in public, exposing your private parts, banning US military recruiters, calling for dialogue and mutual understanding between Americans and Nazis (the political party of peace), or something else progressive!

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