MIKE Hunter's smaller car thesis??

On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 18:33:20 -0400, "Mike Hunter"
> wrote:

>I do not now, or have I ever owned an SUV. I am retired now and what I do
>have is fifteen years of my thirty years experience, as an automotive
>structural design engineer, designing automobile crumple zones and test
>crashing hundreds of all types of vehicles and observing the result on crash
>dummies.
>
>Whether one chooses to agree or not is immaterial, the fact is one can not
>defy the laws of physics. The fact remains the larger the vehicle, the more
>efficient the crumple zones, and the safety features are in absorbing the
>forces a collision and thus much less likely for properly belted passengers
>to be injured or killed by the "third collision" where ones
>organs strike ones skeleton, period.
>
>One is free to believe whatever one wishes and buy whatever one chooses.
>For me, I choose to never be caught dead in a small car, to save a
>relatively few hundred dollars on fuel annually.
>
>
>mike


Perhaps you didn't learn physics as well as you could have or didn't
design cars properly??? I think it is stupid to make a blanket
statement like big cars are safer (for the occupants) than small cars.
If they were identical except for size than I agree but often that is
not the case.

You are entitled to you own opinion. However I know better.

mike

<under construction> wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 18:33:20 -0400, "Mike Hunter"
> > wrote:
>
>>I do not now, or have I ever owned an SUV. I am retired now and what I do
>>have is fifteen years of my thirty years experience, as an automotive
>>structural design engineer, designing automobile crumple zones and test
>>crashing hundreds of all types of vehicles and observing the result on
>>crash
>>dummies.
>>
>>Whether one chooses to agree or not is immaterial, the fact is one can not
>>defy the laws of physics. The fact remains the larger the vehicle, the
>>more
>>efficient the crumple zones, and the safety features are in absorbing the
>>forces a collision and thus much less likely for properly belted
>>passengers
>>to be injured or killed by the "third collision" where ones
>>organs strike ones skeleton, period.
>>
>>One is free to believe whatever one wishes and buy whatever one chooses.
>>For me, I choose to never be caught dead in a small car, to save a
>>relatively few hundred dollars on fuel annually.
>>
>>
>>mike
>
>
> Perhaps you didn't learn physics as well as you could have or didn't
> design cars properly??? I think it is stupid to make a blanket
> statement like big cars are safer (for the occupants) than small cars.
> If they were identical except for size than I agree but often that is
> not the case.

"Mike Hunter" > wrote in message
...
>> Perhaps you didn't learn physics as well as you could have or didn't
>> design cars properly??? I think it is stupid to make a blanket
>> statement like big cars are safer (for the occupants) than small cars.
>> If they were identical except for size than I agree but often that is
>> not the case.
>
>

> You are entitled to you own opinion. However I know better.
>
> mike
>


So, you're saying there is no shape or design that can make a small car as
safe as a bigger one? Is that your final answer?

"larry moe 'n curly" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
>
> But the war was completely wrong for our interests, as I've
> consistently maintained since 2002, and that was assuming that we'd
> fight Iraq the right way, with a true international force that
> included at least 500,000 Americans and the co-opting of the Iraqi
> military and police early after military victory. Saddam simply had
> no nuclear weapons and only insignificant amounts of chemical and
> biological weapons (and no credible ways to deliver them), wasn't
> cooperating with any international terrorists, and had been too well
> penned-up by British and American air patrols.
>
Actually, we knew he had at one time truly staggering amounts of chemical
weapons. No nuclear or biological weapons as far as we could tell. UNSCOM
had found the paperwork - dictatorships are remarkably dependent on
subordinates documenting just what they are doing - but little of the
material was brought forward by Saddam's regime. Richard Butler, the
chairman of UNSCOM, reported his team being held at gunpoint at one site as
trucks roared in and out. See "The Greatest Threat" by Richard Butler. The
problem wasn't that we didn't find any so much as we knew it was somewhere
and we didn't know where. The view that he didn't have large amounts of
chemical weapons is popular among politicians who never had any
responsibility for containing the threat, but is absurd in light of the UN
teams' findings.

> The chief UN weapons inspector said nothing had been found in Iraq,
> and his team had been given fairly free reign (as free as could be
> expected from a huffy dictator) to check almost everything in Iraq,
> and they stopped their work only because of impending US invasion.
>
>> When Russia told us the time is near it was time to make the move.
>
> Vladimir Putin has long been fence sitting between the US and China,
> and with the Iraq war he probably thought it was better to side with
> the US because he expected us to be the winner..
>
>> How would you feel about GWB if he had presided over
>> the slaughter of ten million Americans and allowed Saddam to hold himself
>> up
>> as the one who could lead the Faithful everywhere to victory over the
>> unbelievers? Or would that have been a smart chance to take?
>
> And what if any president allowed tens of millions of Americans to die
> because he failed to go to war against Iran? IOW your scenario about
> Iraq never had any credibility among people who knew even the basics
> about the Middle East, and the invasion of Iraq was never a smart bet.
>
I concede Iran is a tough nut to crack. Iraq as an institution was never a
threat - the threat was contained in the person of Saddam Hussein. Iran and
Al Qaeda are institutional threats - it really doesn't matter who is the
leader at any particular time. Al Qaeda's time is running out; since their
moment in the sun they have been smothered wherever they try to show their
power. That is bad news for them, although they could still flare up. Iran
is much tougher. The revolution is nearly 30 years old - more than a
generation - and they can legitimately claim to have stood up against the US
and prospered (relatively, anyway.) Their technological capacity must not be
underestimated. There was a simple military solution to the Hussein threat -
eliminate him and the threat is effectively quashed. Everything that
followed is housekeeping, regardless of the distortions of our perspective.
We could leave now and only the Iraqis would suffer unless Iran decides to
invade. There is no obvious solution - military, diplomatic or otherwise -
to the threat Iran poses to the world.

>> There also was never any doubt this is global Islamic revolution in
>> progress.
>
> Saddam hated the Islamic revolution, which was probably why Iraq under
> Saddam had no al Qaeda presense.

Saddam was a competitor to the Islamic revolution in Iran and to al Qaeda.
He never made a secret that he was competing for Arab leader, a position
also sought by Khadaffi and Hafez al-Assad. Since Iran isn't arab and since
revolutions make neighbors nervous, Saddam found wide support for what the
Arab world knows as the Gulf War. The popular American explanation for the
incursion was to seize the Shatt al-Arab, a silty and shallow waterway that
could have provided a port for Iraq. Trouble is, Iraq could have leased it
for a song if Iran actually controlled it and would not have been faced with
the hopeless task of holding the land. What's more, the disputed border ran
right through the middle of the waterway, giving Iraq no gain for their
losses. American references to this war tend to portray both sides as
stupidly fighting for unimportant borders, a view that doesn't do justice to
the canny political strategies of each.

For all that, barely a year after the bitter eight year war that ended in
Iraq slinking away from the conflict, Saddam sent the remains of his air
force to Iran rather than lose it to the Allies.

>
>> Our infotainment sources tend to focus on the middle east while
>> the South Pacific and Africa go largely unnoticed.
>
> I'm sure the news broadcasts in China pay lots of attention to those
> regions because the Chinese government certainly has. They've
> recently been playing their economic and diplomatic hands brilliantly,
> plus our actions of the past six years have made things easier for
> them. Something is really wrong in the world when people in most
> nations approve more of China than the US.
>

Something is wrong with us if we care. Each nation must chart its own
course, and of all the other nations of the world only Israel can understand
what it is like to be the nation that must be subjugated in order for
terrorists to be elevated to power. In the '30s the US leaned toward joining
Germany in the fight against its neighbors, not for reasons of our own
convictions but because of sympathies. This time we should get a backbone so
we don't help plunge the world into a new dark age.

>> Iran has never made any bones about declaring themselves to be
>> the nucleus of Islamic revolution to replace the last Caliph, who
>> was deposed in 1924. Al Qaida publicly declares their television
>> programming to be "the Voice of the Caliphate." Saddam
>> occupied the seat of the Four Righteous Caliphs - Baghdad.
>
> Then how should we handle Iran and the Islamic revolution? I don't
> think that taking away Iran's most important enemy in the Middle East
> was a good idea, nor was it smart to let the nations that perceived us
> as being invincible in early 2002 (when we had just taken over
> Afghanistan) to realize that we weren't invincible after all,
> something the Iraq war has done.
>
I have an idea but I don't see it beginning. Iran is about a prize, and that
prize is probably indestructible. Islam is not going away and there must be
a leader to fill the vacuum. There are three generally accepted ways a
Caliph may gain power. http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/politics/khalifa.html One
way is to be named by the present Caliph, so that's out. Another is to seize
the office through force, as long as the duties of the office are
fulfilled - that's the path the contestants are seeking now. The third is by
a selection process reminiscent of the way a Pope is chosen. If we were to
encourage the election of a Caliph Iran would find the carpet pulled from
under them but would not lose face nor lose power within their own country.
That would be fine with me.

Mike

"larry moe 'n curly" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
>
> The Callifornia electric power crisis wasn't caused primarily by
> shortages of capacity but by Enron manipulating the market, as court
> records, including audio recordings, have shown, and planning the
> ouster of Grey Davis to have him replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
> That's not to say Davis had even an ounce of competence in him.
>

Did you ever wonder why California and not surrounding states? Sadly,
legislation more than a decade old was at the root of California's crisis.
California was on the bleeding edge of the deregulation experiment, and they
effectively shut themselves out of the power market. Unbelievably, Southern
California Edison and PG&E were forbidden to buy power generated in
California! In addition, long term contracts were forbidden, forcing
California utilities to buy on the far more expensive spot market. San Diego
Gas and Electric was not constrained in that way - I don't know why.
Everybody else had the entire market from which to choose for the modest
amounts they hadn't contracted, so California power producers had to compete
with everybody while California power providers had to buy from a smaller
market that was already heavily committed by contracts. Supply and demand
got the frenzy going, and some power producers and wholesalers began gaming
the market to squeeze spot buyers harder. Enron was the worst of the
gamesters, but dozens of power producers and wholesalers were investigated
(including the utility I work for, which has both production and provider
branches) and about half were faulted.

California hasn't learned a thing. Legislation signed in recent months now
prohibits the purchase of power produced by coal once present contracts
expire in 2012 and 2017. Unless things shift dramatically by then half the
power generated in the American West will be bought by everybody else at a
bargain and California will wonder why they pay so much more.

Mike

Michael Pardee wrote:

> "larry moe 'n curly" > wrote in message
> oups.com...
> >
> > But the war was completely wrong for our interests, as I've
> > consistently maintained since 2002, and that was assuming that we'd
> > fight Iraq the right way, with a true international force that
> > included at least 500,000 Americans and the co-opting of the Iraqi
> > military and police early after military victory. Saddam simply had
> > no nuclear weapons and only insignificant amounts of chemical and
> > biological weapons (and no credible ways to deliver them), wasn't
> > cooperating with any international terrorists, and had been too well
> > penned-up by British and American air patrols.
> >
> Actually, we knew he had at one time truly staggering amounts of chemical
> weapons. No nuclear or biological weapons as far as we could tell. UNSCOM
> had found the paperwork - dictatorships are remarkably dependent on
> subordinates documenting just what they are doing - but little of the
> material was brought forward by Saddam's regime. Richard Butler, the
> chairman of UNSCOM, reported his team being held at gunpoint at one site as
> trucks roared in and out. See "The Greatest Threat" by Richard Butler. The
> problem wasn't that we didn't find any so much as we knew it was somewhere
> and we didn't know where. The view that he didn't have large amounts of
> chemical weapons is popular among politicians who never had any
> responsibility for containing the threat, but is absurd in light of the UN
> teams' findings.

Either Butler was wrong, his successor's (Hans Blix's?) inspection
team was wrong when they failed to find chemical weapons, or Saddam
eliminated his chemical weapons by the time the latter came in. BTW,
I believe Butler opposed the 2003 invasion.

> > The chief UN weapons inspector said nothing had been found in Iraq,
> > and his team had been given fairly free reign (as free as could be
> > expected from a huffy dictator) to check almost everything in Iraq,
> > and they stopped their work only because of impending US invasion.

> How would you feel about GWB if he had presided over
> the slaughter of ten million Americans and allowed Saddam to hold himself
> up as the one who could lead the Faithful everywhere to victory over the
> unbelievers? Or would that have been a smart chance to take?
>
> > And what if any president allowed tens of millions of Americans to die
> > because he failed to go to war against Iran? IOW your scenario about
> > Iraq never had any credibility among people who knew even the basics
> > about the Middle East, and the invasion of Iraq was never a smart bet.
>>
> I concede Iran is a tough nut to crack. Iraq as an institution was never a
> threat - the threat was contained in the person of Saddam Hussein. Iran and
> Al Qaeda are institutional threats - it really doesn't matter who is the
> leader at any particular time. Al Qaeda's time is running out; since their
> moment in the sun they have been smothered wherever they try to show their
> power. That is bad news for them, although they could still flare up. Iran
> is much tougher. The revolution is nearly 30 years old - more than a
> generation - and they can legitimately claim to have stood up against the US
> and prospered (relatively, anyway.) Their technological capacity must not be
> underestimated. There was a simple military solution to the Hussein threat -
> eliminate him and the threat is effectively quashed. Everything that
> followed is housekeeping, regardless of the distortions of our perspective.
> We could leave now and only the Iraqis would suffer unless Iran decides to
> invade. There is no obvious solution - military, diplomatic or otherwise -
> to the threat Iran poses to the world.

Al Qaeda will fail because it's so repressive that it can't gain the
support of the masses the way Ho Chi Mien did, and not having a single
national base is a big handicap, despite the powerful draw of Islam,
because tribalism and nationalism trump everything else.

> There also was never any doubt this is global Islamic revolution in
> progress.
>
> > Saddam hated the Islamic revolution, which was probably why Iraq under
> > Saddam had no al Qaeda presense.
>
> Saddam was a competitor to the Islamic revolution in Iran and to al Qaeda.
> He never made a secret that he was competing for Arab leader, a position
> also sought by Khadaffi and Hafez al-Assad. Since Iran isn't arab and since
> revolutions make neighbors nervous, Saddam found wide support for what the
> Arab world knows as the Gulf War. The popular American explanation for the
> incursion was to seize the Shatt al-Arab, a silty and shallow waterway that
> could have provided a port for Iraq. Trouble is, Iraq could have leased it
> for a song if Iran actually controlled it and would not have been faced with
> the hopeless task of holding the land. What's more, the disputed border ran
> right through the middle of the waterway, giving Iraq no gain for their
> losses. American references to this war tend to portray both sides as
> stupidly fighting for unimportant borders, a view that doesn't do justice to
> the canny political strategies of each.
>
> For all that, barely a year after the bitter eight year war that ended in
> Iraq slinking away from the conflict, Saddam sent the remains of his air
> force to Iran rather than lose it to the Allies.

I believe President George Bush thought Saddam could become another
Hitler and had to be nipped in the bud by forcing him out of Kuwait.

> Our infotainment sources tend to focus on the middle east while
> the South Pacific and Africa go largely unnoticed.
>
> > I'm sure the news broadcasts in China pay lots of attention to those
> > regions because the Chinese government certainly has. They've
> > recently been playing their economic and diplomatic hands brilliantly,
> > plus our actions of the past six years have made things easier for
> > them. Something is really wrong in the world when people in most
> > nations approve more of China than the US.
>
> Something is wrong with us if we care.

Not in this case because it's a sign that we failed. OTOH after 9/11
and our Afghanistan war victory, our popularity was at its height and
gave us an opportunity to accomplish a lot internationally because the
world was strongly on our side then. Unfortunately GW Bush failed to
exploit that opportunity.

> Iran has never made any bones about declaring themselves to be
> the nucleus of Islamic revolution to replace the last Caliph, who
> was deposed in 1924. Al Qaida publicly declares their television
> programming to be "the Voice of the Caliphate." Saddam
> occupied the seat of the Four Righteous Caliphs - Baghdad.
>
> > Then how should we handle Iran and the Islamic revolution? I don't
> > think that taking away Iran's most important enemy in the Middle East
> > was a good idea, nor was it smart to let the nations that perceived us
> > as being invincible in early 2002 (when we had just taken over
> > Afghanistan) to realize that we weren't invincible after all,
> > something the Iraq war has done.
>
> I have an idea but I don't see it beginning. Iran is about a prize, and that
> prize is probably indestructible. Islam is not going away and there must be
> a leader to fill the vacuum. There are three generally accepted ways a
> Caliph may gain power. http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/politics/khalifa.html One
> way is to be named by the present Caliph, so that's out. Another is to seize
> the office through force, as long as the duties of the office are
> fulfilled - that's the path the contestants are seeking now. The third is by
> a selection process reminiscent of the way a Pope is chosen. If we were to
> encourage the election of a Caliph Iran would find the carpet pulled from
> under them but would not lose face nor lose power within their own country.
> That would be fine with me.

Because we're bogged down in Iraq and look weak, I don't see how we
can influence in the internal workings of the Iranian government, and
we may have to wait until it collapses from its own mistakes or from
old age

"JoeSpareBedroom" > wrote in message
...
> "Mike Hunter" > wrote in message
> ...
>>> Perhaps you didn't learn physics as well as you could have or didn't
>>> design cars properly??? I think it is stupid to make a blanket
>>> statement like big cars are safer (for the occupants) than small cars.
>>> If they were identical except for size than I agree but often that is
>>> not the case.
>>
>>
>
>> You are entitled to you own opinion. However I know better.
>>
>> mike
>>
>
>
> So, you're saying there is no shape or design that can make a small car as
> safe as a bigger one? Is that your final answer?
>
Why are you responding to this troll?
Haven't you heard of killfile?

BobG wrote:
>> I'd also like to know more about what types of accidents were involved,
>> especially for pickups. My guess would be rollovers.
> ====================================
> There was a campaign in the US to get get the good ol boys in pickup
> trucks to use their seatbelts. Maybe they thought their personal
> liberty was being encroached on by the intrusive governmant
> regulations, but they were dying in disproportionate numbers by flying
> out during crashes.

They probably didn't believe in evolution, either.

Jeff wrote:
> jim beam wrote:
>> Wickeddoll® wrote:
>>> "Bill Ward"
>>> , BobG wrote:
>>>>>> I'd also like to know more about what types of accidents were
>>>>>> involved,
>>>>>> especially for pickups. My guess would be rollovers.
>>>>> ====================================
>>>>> There was a campaign in the US to get get the good ol boys in pickup
>>>>> trucks to use their seatbelts. Maybe they thought their personal
>>>>> liberty
>>>>> was being encroached on by the intrusive governmant regulations,
>>>>> but they
>>>>> were dying in disproportionate numbers by flying out during crashes.
>>>> Evolution in action.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I live in bubba territory (North Carolina), and we just had two
>>> ejection-from-truck accidents, and in both cases, the (belted)
>>> passengers lived.
>>>
>>> I saw a little kid, about a year old, *walking around* in a king
>>> cab. I would have reported them, if I wasn't so busy watching that
>>> child and fuming.
>>>
>>> I don't get why *they* don't get it.
>>>
>>> Natalie
>>>
>> chill babe! you're witnessing something vital to the survival of the
>> species! if the stupid ones kill themselves [and their kids], they
>> will die out. that leaves more for the rest of us!
>
> Actually, they just need to kill their kids.
>
> However, it often has a lot to do with education, not intelligence.
>
> Rather, I would like to keep all the kids alive and have them well
> educated.

You sound like some liberal wuss! <bfg>

wrote:
> JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
>
>> "Michael Pardee" > wrote in message
>> .. .
>
>>> Although, if you are talking about US imports, we don't buy much oil from
>>> hostiles - Venezuela is the top of the hostile oil supplier list at 13% of
>>> our imports. Canada is our #1 source of imported oil at 22%, Mexico is #2
>>> at 19%, Saudi Arabia is #3 at 16%. It's been that way for a long time. In
>>> fact, according to the US Dept of Energy, 55% of our oil imports come from
>>> the western hemisphere.
>>
>> For further clarification of "hemisphere", I'll share some enlightenment
>> from the commander in chief:
>>
>> "Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because
>> it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods."-Austin, Texas, Dec.
>> 20, 2000
>
> As a public service, please accompany any quotes of George W. Bush
> with his blood alcohol level at the time he spoke those words.

LOL - great post!