Speaking Personally
"Bodacious Tatras" by Paul Niedermeyer at Truth About Cars .... he writes beautifully (bodaciously) about ranges of disappeared cars although the factory still makes trucks. Tatras were manufactured to fill need for luxury automobiles in a land locked central European country where vicious tariffs made imported cars expensive. Tariffs in Tatras case allowed almost hand production of innovative engendering. Independent suspension, rear V-8 air cooled engine, and streamlined design were hallmarks of the 1930 Czech cars. Ferdinand Porsche borrowed enough from Tartra for his people's car that in the early 1960's the company won a heafty court award setelment Wikipedia has a nice writeup with additional photos.
One of the key Tatra body design benefits is very low drag coefficient at 0.212. The design is like a tear drop with a vertical dorsal fin at the small end of the drop. Today we might call this a wing and a few other car makers used similar design notably Delage although I suspect the fin resembles an airplane tail more than ground effects in function. Today's Aptera, a 300mpg streamlined urban transport pod designed for southern California, uses fairing around its rear wheel which probably functions as a lower (anal?/caudal?) fin and contributes to its 0.11 drag coefficient.
VIDEO: Autoblog goes behind the scenes at Consumer Reports ... Autoblog's crew arrived at the Consumer Reports Connecticut test site after a snow storm. It looked like a snow plow had been used to clear some test surfaces enough to demonstrate in a realistic manner the type of test comparisons CT does. I have never taken my Subaru off road unless you count a grass parking lot and I would not try CR's hill climb. Still its interesting to see how rough an uphill climb over boulders set into a hillside is and how various trucks and SUV's move over the track. The track looked more like one of those rocky Central American gorges one sees Landrovers and Jeeps demonstrating their prowess on than a precisely laid out test track.
Quotes and Pointers
'The Edge Annual Question — 2008
When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.
Re Vertical: 'Huckabee has been using this metaphor throughout his presidential run; it wouldn’t surprise me if he employed it during his gubernatorial campaigns. It’s flown under the radar, frankly, because most of us haven’t been paying him much attention.
UPDATE: Joe Carter emails to note that there’s a whole “Vertical Politics” page on Huckabee’s website. Much of it, frankly, is odd, focusing on an interactive “Vertical Day” outreach. But this paragraph encapsulates the idea:
Everywhere I go on the campaign trail, I meet voters with a real thirst for a healthy discussion of the issues. Ultimately, people don’t care whether an issue comes from the left or the right. What they want to talk about are ideas that lift America up and make us better. It’s what I call “Vertical Politics” and it is why we felt it was so important to set a “Vertical Day” aside to focus on the issues.
This is classic Third Way politics, à la Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.'
'Longleaf is just another dull suburban place in New Urbanist drag, but it makes me realize that the developments along the Panhandle are unusually urbane. Taken individually, they might be as stilted and dull as Longleaf, but taken together, the communities along 30A feed on each other’s vitality and creativity. They relate to one another and enhance one another, as do neighborhoods in a city. This cluster has grown dense enough and interesting enough to be a real place, a sort of linear Brooklyn.
Out and About on the Net with Twitter Lines
Clinton's National Lead Collapses-- Time to unleash Bill
Huckabee Hides His Full Gospel? -- Not too well.
wikia -- New enterprise search engine from Jimmy Wales the creator of wikipedia.
Tokyo Year Zero -- A "Brother of Jackals" book review.
et alli is cross posted at The Intelligence Forum