Re: Hey Mr. Hyde!

From: Beth (BethStone21_at_hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com)
Date: 03/27/04 

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 17:53:07 -0000

Alex McDonald wrote:
> There are lot of good ways of reducing energy consumption,
conserving
> resources and investigating alternative sources of energy, and I
applaud you
> for your conservation instincts. But you get the details a over e
every
> time. Beth, there's a trick to being right, and that's being well
> researched, being able to marshall an argument, and, right at the
top of the
> list, having some experience of the subject. Here's a few of the
things you
> got wrong (and I mean wildly, not just a couple of clicks off);
>
> 1. Engines; unrecognisable description, and what valve count has to
do with
> "inefficency" is beyond me.
> 2. Fossil fuel efficency; it's doesn't pack much of a "punch".
> 3. The difference between reservoirs & rivers; pressure, volume, and
work
> performed.
> 4. Solar panels & batteries; energy cost of manufacture, toxicity
and source
> of materials used.

Moan, moan, moan, moan, moan, moan...

"Dear Sirs,

    I am writing to you regards the so-called 'documentary programme'
you screened at 17:29pm this Sunday, May 17th, in the year of our Lord
2003. I was overjoyed at first - whilst browsing my televisual
programme listings magazine - to see that your good selves had decided
to tackle such an often overlooked yet highly educational arena of
equine history. The role of the equine genus in the development of
glorious superior civilisation is an area that many of these young
hooligans, who are constantly truant from their schooling these days,
are severely misinformed regarding.

I was enthused to see that you appeared to wish to address this
educational imbalance, even if you chose to not schedule it with the
significance and weighting such an important subject should garner.
Equine history documentaries are clearly of the highest calibre to
command your so-called 'prime time' slots, rather than these
vandalism-inducing hooligan 'sitcom' programmes that you choose to
display at these times. No doubt contributing to the decline in
discipline and standards we see in our children.

But I was horrified by a series of incalculably damaging errors and
omissions, compounding the already neglected and poorly taught
subject. It is thoroughly unacceptable and unprofessional conduct that
you began your broadcast a whole 29 seconds early. Such a horrendous
action of unthinking undiscipline to a punctual regime would surely
have deprived any viewer who had correctly synchronised their video
recording device to the radio time signal, whilst programming said
device by your published schedules. As it was, I happened to be
watching the broadcast live in person and was only set to record it
for my archives. Had this not been the case and I had not been there
to manually instruct the device to begin earlier than its scheduled
programming, I would have missed more than merely the first 10 seconds
of introductory credits. It was this unthinking unpunctually on your
part which had lost me the vital information of the names of your
incompetent researchers and writers that I could not personally
address them with this letter. You shall be given the benefit of the
doubt, though I remain deeply suspicious, that you had, in fact,
plotted to begin your programme 29 seconds early exactly to ensure
that this information was not recorded, in fear of exactly being held
accountable for your historical inaccuracies.

At 17:43:22, in the 9th scene, just after the 132nd editing cut, your
narrator clearly misidentified the type of bridle that the exemplar
thirteenth century pit pony was wearing. As anyone but your
incompetent fools know, the thirteenth century pit pony would have
been furnished with the Cartwright interleaved bridle, not the cross
bridle of the later fourteenth century. The type of bridle identified
by your narrator was not even invented at this time, let alone in
common use for pit ponies in use in the Yorkshire area.

Furthermore, 23 minutes and 19 seconds later, whilst interviewing
Dr.David Hargreeves, a leading equestrian authority known to us all
from the excellent lectures he gave last Winter at Aston University,
your interviewer posed a malformed question. Though Dr.Hargreeves had
the social grace to overlook the faux pas and attempted to answer the
question nevertheless, I feel that this interviewer should be
reprimanded - or, quite possibly, disemployed by yourselves - for the
clear unprofessionalism of ending their so-called 'question' with a
preposition. As even the 3 year old mutants that these unmarried scum
on that Barrats-constructed housing estate would even be aware of, it
is grammatically incorrect that a preposition is used to complete a
sentence with. Such inexactitude and gross misconduct on your part is
not what I pay my licence fee for!

I felt that this 'catalogue' of two minor errors in your hour-long
production were a demonstration of your genetic and intellectual
inferiority to my Ayrian compatriots. Please note that your names have
been noted in my 'happy shopper' A4 jotter pad and when our glorious
Fourth Reich finally commands over your intellectual inferiority to
such as myself, your name will be supplied to the relevent culling
authorities. I shall endeavour to see your backs against the wall in
front of our firing squads for your clear attempts to subvert equine
historical accuracy in furthering your aims of polluting our
godliness! How dare such no-good filth as yourselves employ immigrants
and asylum seekers. I have noted that you disgrace yourselves in
allowing a known criminal such as 'Handy Andy' to co-present your home
improvement shows.

This conduct will no longer be tolerated in the coming Fourth Reich of
our intellectual and genetic superiority. I note the lack of
documentary materials regarding the truth of the matter about our
superior extraterrestrial origins and the suspicious 'media blackout'
on how our glorious realm of Atlantis was subverted by genetic
pollution from your vile lesser species. Does your subversion,
unprofessionalism and historical inaccuracy know no bounds?

Yours Faithfully,
Alex McDonald (Mr.)"

Moan, moan, moan, moan, moan, moan...

I do apologise that my most vile self has clearly repeatedly offended
your intellectual superiority that you feel you must launch a personal
crusade to whittle out any and every kind of complaint you are able to
muster for anything I write...obviously, I do not meet your high
standards of qualification as a human being or you would not be so
gracious as to mount a campaign of trivially nit-picking my posts and
my posts alone - as inexactitude by others is completely tolerated and
overlooked without hesitation - regardless of your accuracy or whether
there is legitimate justification for you to do so...

Indeed, if only I possessed a firearm then I could save you the bother
and go shoot myself or something...

Nevertheless, to be blunt, you're a lying toad, anyway...and having an
eloquent obfuscating tongue in your head won't disguise that for as
long as you may think it will...

> 1. Engines; unrecognisable description, and what valve count has to
do with
> "inefficency" is beyond me.

Let us set this all in context, lest you try to pretend the discussion
was different to that which it actually was...

You said:

"Hmm... going by Beth's logic, I should install thousands of
thumb-sized gasoline engines under the hood of my car. These engines,
taken individually, are less efficient than a full-sized engine, but,
by some Bethonian magic, when taken together in the thousands, are
more efficient than a full-size engine."

I replied:

"So, tell me, how many _valves_ are there in your car engine? Have you
got one of those "powerhouse" cars that's got those _extra valves_?
Granted, due to the design of the engine, you can't just have one
(because one firing upwards pushed another valve downwards, to create
the pressure which ignites the fuel which forces the valve back
upwards, which pushed the other downward which creates the pressure
which...which is the cleverness of Mr.Diesel's design there ;) but why
not have just two really, really, really big valves inside your car's
engine? How come more valves gets more power out of the engine?
Wouldn't having bigger valves be better, by your reckoning? And, yeah,
an _important part_ of the argument here is that with a bigger valve
and more fuel and more pressure all being combined together, that
engine _does_ become a whole lot more dangerous should something
serious go wrong and it blows up..."

Your complaints, in turn:

1. "unrecognisable description":

a. "Granted, due to the design of the engine, you can't just have one"

b. "because one firing upwards pushed another valve downwards, to
create
the pressure which ignites the fuel which forces the valve back
upwards, which pushed the other downward which creates the pressure
which..."

c. "which is the cleverness of Mr.Diesel's design there"

You disagree, Alex?

So, every cylinder just has intake valve but no exhaust valve...and
this is "standard" for a typical car? Nope, you have _at least_ two
valves per cylinder...one to take air in and one to let the exhaust
out...

Also, by Diesel's design, which is in your standard typical car (well,
based upon in pricniple, he didn't make it personally...what with
being dead and everything ;), you also don't merely have one cylinder
(you might have such a thing in your lawnmower but that's not a car -
which we were talking about - and it's hardly the greatest example of
a powerful, efficient internal combustion engine)...the reason being
that he came up with the idea that the pistons - creating rotational
energy - could all be connected to the same crankshaft...when the fuel
ignites and the cylinder fires, this pushes the piston down, turing
the crankshaft and this "resets" the piston to move back up and
compress more air / fuel mixture to be fired again and so on and so
forth...

In a typical car engine, the cylinders are "interleaved" and all
connected via the crankshaft so that they all work together...each
cylinder fires in sequence because they are offset in an interleaved
fashion that when one cylinder is is firing, the other is
resetting...this was the highly _efficient_ design Diesel came up
with, to get as much energy out of the fuel as is possible...

It's a four stage synchronised process...as the piston moves down,
expanding the space in the cylinder, the intake valve is opened to
allow the air / fuel mixture to enter the cylinder...the valve
closes...then, the next stage is for the piston to compress the air /
fuel mixture and it is ignited...this creates an explosion of energy
which drives the next stage of forcing the piston downwards, turning
the crankshaft...then the final stage is for the exhaust valve to be
opened to let out the exhaust from the combustion process (you need to
let this out to make room for more to come in for the next
"round"...this can be verified by sticking a banana into your exhaust
pipe, thereby stopping the exhaust from being released...just see how
far you get with that "one valve" engine, Alex ;)...

As there is more than one cylinder connected to the crankshaft which
is "offset" in an interleaved fashion, then when one cylinder fires to
turn the crankshaft this conspires to "reset" the other cylinder by
the rotation of the crankshaft (the pistons are all attached to the
same crankshaft and, thus, the rotation of one piston downwards
forces - mechanically - the piston of the next cylinder upwards,
resetting it)...

In addition to this, the valves are attached to the camshaft, which
opens and closes the valves in synchronisation to the piston movements
by using a timing belt that links the camshaft to the
crankshaft...hence, the rotational motion of the crankshaft is
transferred mechanically through the timing belt or chain to the
camshaft in order to synchronise the opening and closing of the valves
to the motions of the pistons...so, one moving down brings the other
upwards, for both the pistons and the valves (though, the valves are
"timed" at one-half the rate of the crankshaft), as per my
description...

If this weren't the case, you'd have an engine "timing" problem
because the intake of air and fuel and the exhaust afterward linked to
the camshaft would not be in synchronisation with the crankshaft and
the piston motion inside the cylinders...the four stage process has to
occur in the right order and in synchronisation or the internal
combustion won't happen...again, swap your timing belt for something
that delibrately gives the wrong synchronisation and see how far your
car gets then, Alex...

2. "and what valve count has to do with 'inefficency' is beyond me"

High-performance engines (such as "dual cam(shaft)" engines) have more
valves...and, also, an increased cylinder count is found in higher
performance engines as well...

The reason? Because, contrary to your assertion and what I was trying
to enlighten you about, is that, in truth, your "engine" is actually
very much employing "parallelism"...this was the genius of Diesel's
design to, indeed, use "parallelism" - multiple cylinders interleaved
on the same crankshaft - in order to improve the efficiency of the
engine...

In other words, you say "engine" as if a single entity but, in actual
fact, the work the engine does happens across _multiple_ cylinders
with _multiple_ valves which are all mechanically synchronised...if
one thinks of a cylinder - which does the actual work - as an "engine"
or "sub-engine" (not unreasonable because in, say, a lawnmower, they
often simply have a single cylinder engine because high-performance
and a powerful engine isn't required...so they reduce it to the
minimum for cost reasons :)...then, really, your car "engine" - though
may not have realised - is really a "collection of multiple smaller
engines" or "sub-engines" all working together...

Sorry, Diesel _saw_ the power in my "immense parallelism", for
sure...and it was because he realised its potential in his engine
designs that we have efficient enough engines to make cars a practical
possibility (they'd otherwise crawl along in comparison)...

And when you spend a lot of money on a high-performance car, the
things listed are exactly cylinder counts, valve counts,
etc....actually check out what "dual cam" means...it exactly means
_MORE VALVES_ per cylinder to _IMPROVE PERFORMANCE_...and the actual
standard measure of performance of an engine is in "cc" (cubic
centimeters of capacity inside each cylinder...becomes "liter" - as in
"1.5 liter engine" - when we reach 1000cc because that's the same as a
"liter"...much like the measure of clock speed is Hz but you switch
units to "3 GHz" rather than list out "3,000,000,000Hz" :)...this is
known as the "displacement" of the engine and it is the _COMBINED_
capcity of all your cylinders...hence, it is implicitly a multiple of
your cylinder count...

Another way to put this is, with a single cylinder engine, you'd have
to make it twice as big to double the capacity...whereas, due to my
"parallelism" that actually _is_ in a car engine, even if you didn't
know it or recognise it, then you could do the same by simply having
two cylinders...most typical cars have a minimum of four that, in
fact, they can be half the size of your single cylinder engine and
produce the same performance...IF all of those four cylinders were
doubled in capacity, you'd actually get _eight_ times - not merely
"twice" - the performance out of the engine...

Right, would an actual _expert_ in internal combustion engines - with
all you guys here, there's got to be one "petrol head" amongst you -
please come forward to verify that, at least generally speaking, I'm
talking some modest amount of sense here?

I'm NOT the world's greatest expert, I happily confess, so I may have
made mistakes here and there...but my general point _is_ right:
Immense parallelism is the way...making things "more numerous" -
de-centralising - is almost always the more efficient solution than
simply taking one thing and "making it bigger"...

"Conservation instincts"? It's _self-preservation_, pure and
simple...I ain't going to pretend otherwise and make out that I'm some
"angel"...this is purely and simply a case of
"self-preservation"...because the current ways are
_self-destructive_...the "consensus" seems intent on subscribing to
_suicide_...well, if that's what's "popular", you can stick "popular"
where the Sun don't shine...oh, I do like the evironment and all that
but my appeals, you'll notice, have been directly to everyone else's
sense of _self-preservation_ too...this ain't about "being nice" and
"hugging trees", this is about not being totally screwed
_permanently_, if not possibly dead from it...and not wanting to force
that onto our children either...

We've - though adoration of "bigger, better, faster" - created a
culture of not only _enslavement_ but of outright _suicide_...don't
take any of this for granted...look to Easter Island: It _CAN_ come to
an end because of blind stupidity...Nature gives no special favours
(why you think we've done nothing but _fight_ her all this
time?)...she _WILL_ take it back, some day...

"Her Love rains down on me...
Easy as the breeze...
I listen to the breathing...
It sounds like the waves on the sea...

I was thinking all about her,
Burning with rage and desire...
We were spinning into darkness
And the Earth was on fire...

She could take it back,
She might take it back,

Some day...

So I spy on her, I have _LIED_ to her,
I make promises _I CANNOT KEEP_...
Then I hear her laughter rising
Rising from the deep...

And I make her _PROVE_ her Love for me
I take _ALL_ that I can take...
And I push her to _THE LIMIT_
To see if she will _BREAK_...

She might take it back,
She could take it back,

Some day...

Now I had _seen_ the warnings
_SCREAMING_ from all sides...
It's easy to _ignore_ them
God knows I've tried...

All of this _temptation_,
You know, it turned my Faith to _LIES_
Until I couldn't see the _DANGER_
Or hear the _rising tide_...

She could take it back,
She _WILL_ take it back,

Some day...

She _WILL_ take it back,
She _WILL_ take it back,

Some day..."

[ "Take it back", Pink Floyd..."The Division Bell" ]

> 2. Fossil fuel efficency; it's doesn't pack much of a "punch".

Oh yes, it bloody well _does_...

Again, I'd like to see you prove this...go on, pull out that internal
combustion engine from your car and then just stick in an electric
motor and, ooh, 8 AAA batteries..."just as good", right?
Unfortuantely, _if only_ that were true...

Take a plastic sewer pipe, cap off one end (with a little hole in it),
lubricate it with some WD-40, put a _drop_ of petrol (US: gasoline)
into the pipe, drop a potato into the pipe...then, through the tiny
hole, ignite your _drop_ of gasoline...this "potato cannon" packs
enough "punch" to potentially fire your potato _500 feet_ through the
air!

[ As mentioned on "HowStuffWorks" here:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/engine2.htm ]

I quote: "There is a _huge amount of energy_ in a tiny drop of
gasoline."

_THAT_ is the reason this is the "fuel of choice" for vehicles...and
why, sadly, electric cars and such have never been able to really
properly "keep up" or match this...

Another way to realise this is to consider how much raw energy it
takes to run a car that weighs numerous _tons_, no doubt, at 60mph on
a gallon of the stuff and managing to go for miles and miles doing
so...you might take it for granted but that's a lot of energy and
there's an awful lot of "punch" in that fuel too...

No, indeed, if it weren't for that potential "punch" then, oh, would
my case here be so much easier to argue...it's not _feasible_ with
current technologies to run cars on much of anything else...that's
also why they like to quote "0-60mph in blah-blah-blah seconds" to
show off _high-performance_ sports cars...accelerating a heavy mass
like a car up to such speeds in a short space of time is completely a
case of "raw punch"...this is why this is the traditional "measure"
and "sales gimmick"...nothing says "raw power" and "punch" like that
kind of measure (which, at the same time, is easy enough for anyone to
understand that you don't need to "know engines" to appreciate
it...another trick in the salesman's armoury there...reducing it to a
"Plain English" measure so that _everyone_ gets the point: "We have a
_very powerful_ engine under the hood to manage feats like that" ;)...

> 3. The difference between reservoirs & rivers; pressure, volume, and
work
> performed.

Be specific; What is your complaint here exactly?

> 4. Solar panels & batteries; energy cost of manufacture, toxicity
and source
> of materials used.

Oh, be careful...you're going to give away that you're just picking on
me needlessly with this kind of argument...as I said NOTHING -
absolutely NOTHING - in my post regards the source of the materials
used...you have tacked on an _imaginary complaint_ thinking that it
would be lost and unnoticed...but the longer the list of your
complaints, the more you believe you can succeed in your illogical
quest to "destroy" me...

Plus, on these last two points, you're NOT saying what you think is
wrong...if I don't know that then I can't make a reply to you...is
that the plan? Be vague so I can't reply to what are actually
_non-complaints_ because they just name nouns, not actually
problems...and then, when I don't reply (because you've made it so I
_can't_ really reply without made wild, wild guesses as to what you
might mean), you claim "victory" in my silence...

If I don't see some improvement in your conduct - because you are, for
some odd reason, ignoring others and just picking on me with often the
most trivial and bizarre accusations - then I warn you in advance that
I'll simply _ignore_ you...as it's clear that you've just got some
"issue" on a personal level and are trying to wage some
"vendetta"...well, I have no argument with you in return and I am not
going to fight any meaningless "war" just because you've got some
prejudice or another...

Beth :)

P.S. "Get over it!"

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