Posts Tagged ‘automobiles’
Wheel of fortune goes round and round
Posted in how we live, Videos, tagged automobiles, dare devil stunt, india, motorcycles, video on October 17, 2009| 1 Comment »
“The Little Dreamworld Called Detroit”
Posted in how we live, Transportation, tagged automobiles, detroit, John D. MacDonald on May 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Group of bicyclists, Detroit, Michigan, July 1941. Arthur S. Siegel, photographer.
As I waited, sitting in the full huff of the air conditioner, gulping down the tea, I thought of the little dreamworld called Detroit, fifteen years behind the rest of America as usual.
Janine had nailed it. People hate their cars. Daddy doesn’t come proudly home with the new one any more, and the family doesn’t come racing out, yelling WOW, and the neighbors don’t come over to admire it.
General Motors Building Detroit, Michigan (4 May 1921)
They all look alike, for one thing. So you have to wedge a piece of bright trash atop the aerial to find your own. They may be named after predators, or primitive emotions, or astronomical objects, but in essence they are a big shiny sink down which the money swirls — in insurance, car payments, tags, tolls, tires, repairs.
Heavy traffic on U.S. Highway 62, Charlestown, Indiana (between 1940 and 1948) Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information Collection (Library of Congress)
They give you a chance to sit in helpless rage, beating on the steering wheel in a blare of horns while, a mile away, your flight leaves the airport. They give you a good chance of dying quick, and a better chance of months of agony of torn flesh, smashed guts and splintered bones. Take it to your kindly dealer, and the service people look right through you until you grab one by the arm, and then he says: Come back a week from Tuesday. Make an appointment. Their billions of tons of excreted pollutants wither the leaves on the trees and sicken the livestock. We hate our cars, Detroit. Those of us who can possibly get along without them do so very happily.
For those who can’t, if there were an alternate choice, they’d grab it in a minute."Detroit Electric" auto on promotional tour through mountains from "Seattle to Mt. Rainier": Mt. Ranier in background, c. 1919.
We buy them reluctantly and try to make them last, and they are not friendly machines anymore. They are expensive, murderous junk, and they manage to look glassily contemptuous of the people who own them.
John D. MacDonald, Pale Gray For Guilt (1968)
Emerging Technology
Posted in Science and Technology, shopping, tagged audi, automobiles, blu-ray disc player, cars, consumer technology, dakar rally, mifi device, panasonic on January 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »
While looking around at various modern-day versions of the pocket knife, I came across Gizmag. If you have even only a small degree of interest in gadgets and “emerging technology,” you will enjoy this site.
Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro -- "with a very curvaceous rear end treatment, it really is a knockout."
An article about the Dakar Rally (“the world’s most dangerous legally-sanctioned sporting event”).
A report from the North American International Auto Show with all kinds of car-nut chatter about the Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro (“It was the most aesthetically striking car that wasn’t a concept, and with the 525 hp 5.2 liter V10 engine replacing the 420 bhp 4.2 V8, performance has gone another level. With the quattro all-wheel drive, LED-headlights and aluminum body with a very curvaceous rear end treatment, it really is a knockout.”).
MiFi (top) size comparison with iPhone
An interview with Jon Driscoll, Novatel Wireless‘ VP of Global Product Managment, where he is asked about Novatel’s “clever, compact and compelling MiFi device” which “combines a wireless access point, an internet router, and a 3G modem card into a package that’s the size of a business card.”
A review of Panasonic’s portable Blu-ray Disc player which describes this technological first as “not as lame as people might think.”
Polaroid camera and pocket-sized Zink printer
But the news that made me sit up and say “wow!” is contained in an article from a year ago about Polaroid’s digital camera featuring “Zink zero-ink printing technology.”
What the heck is that, you ask?
Zink zero-ink printing technology is a significant and far-reaching advance in printing technology that seems set to take the world by storm. Using advanced heat-reactive crystals impregnated into the paper, Zink allows you to produce durable, full-color, high-resolution prints from printers so small they can literally fit in your pocket or be integrated into mobile imaging devices.
All in all, it looks to be a good place to go for breaking consumer technology news.
IMMEDIATE UPDATE: How did I miss this?
“There’s now a reasonably priced, high-resolution head-worn camera.” For less than $500 you can get the same thing that the U.K. police use for surveillance operations — a “tactical head camera.”
For you hard-core lunatics, how about the Tachyon XC Shockproof Helmet Camera (“32GB SDHC Rec 64Hrs Dive 28′ Remote”)? (Not reviewed that I know but up as a Google ad when I looked at the review of the head camera.)
No one else is going to put your life on TV, you just have to do it yourself. And now you can! Unfortunately, you can only upload it to Youtube in under-ten-minute increments, and it takes all day to upload two minutes of video, but those are just details.
Really Old Movies! With Horses & Trolleys!
Posted in Animals, Transportation, tagged automobiles, bicycles, car accidents, film, France, horses, library of congress, los angeles, moving pictures, new york, old movies, Paris, public transportation, san francisco, traffic congestion, traffic fatalities, Transportation on November 30, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Steamboats Are Ruining Everything has an interesting article about whether horse-drawn transportation was less or more dangerous than automotive transport. I especially appreciate the links:
If you’d like to see some nineteenth-century horse-drawn vehicles in action, the Library of Congress offers video of traffic in New York’s Herald Square in 1896, near New York’s Dewey Arch in 1899, and on South Spring Street, Los Angeles, in 1897.
The 1905 film of Market Street in San Francisco, “before the fire,” takes a few minutes to load but is well worth the wait. In addition to horse-drawn vehicles, trolleys and pedestrians, it has cars and bicycles!
And you can see what Steamboat points out — how much smaller the streets become once you add in automobiles.
REO Mountaineer, New York to San Francisco and back
By 1905 cars far outnumber horses on San Francisco’s Market Street. In addition, the trolley traffic is much less frequent than appears to be the case in 1896 pre-automobile New York City.
Bicycles were a popular mode of transportation before cars — faster than walking, less involved and cheaper than a horse and buggy — but only a couple brave souls are seen pedaling on Market Street.
Thanks to Steamboats and The Library of Congress!
Somewhere Else Altogether