Category Archives: Jeffrey the Barak

Where are the nice cars?

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Where are the nice cars?
A walk through the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show
There are certain cars that just look and feel right. Their design suggests quality and precision. The metal looks solid and the doors close with a solid thunk, and no tinny ring. But other cars look as fragile as tin-foil, with seams that are too wide or too tight. They may have hard plastic where you would expect upholstery, or molded polyurethane where you like to see a softer surface. And then some designs are embellished so much beyond their function that they scream ugliness.
It may be personal preference, and differences in the tastes of middle-America versus those of, for example, the Japanese or the French, but in general, some cars are rolling art, and others are rolling messes. And then there is Steam-Punk, a cartoonish design idea that has now found it’s way onto the showroom floors.
What follows is my personal opinion, and my personal impression, but I at least, agree with myself!
For good clean design that seems functional, well-executed, and just has a quality, precise, expensive feel, look no further than Audi and Volkswagen. Alright, perhaps outside of the USA, their larger SUV’s are a bit bigger than anyone would ever need a car to be, but in general, their designs are elegant and just right. The world loves the Golf, and for good reason. It’s sporty, practical, holds a lot of stuff and takes up little space. The GTI version is as enjoyable on the racetrack as many a six-figure sports car, and speaking of which, the Audi R8 looks so much cooler than today’s Italian supercars.
Also from Germany, the interior of the BMW Mini-E, an electric car, is a beautiful design, with it’s colored swirls and oversized central display. For some reason the fit and finish on the Mini seems to be a step above that of the larger 3, 5 and 7 series, which despite their clever angles are bland, and have orange peel paint, rather like cheaper Chevys.
The new Lexus LFA supercar, has a terrible paint finish that combines a high gloss above the beltline with a visually sticky-looking texture in the same color, and a front-end design that is comparable in style with a Corolla, only with a big gap at the tip of the hood/bonnet. If you search for photos for the front you’ll see it shot from up high, or lit from the side to create shadows, but in real life, it’s a front from Wal-Mart, and yet this supercar costs $375,000. Something does not add up here.
Representing Steam-Punk, the new Morgan Aero SuperSports  was almost a hot car, but is a hot mess. A mishmash of curves and embellishments that should not be shared on one chassis. Steam-Punk can be described as historical future fantasy such as in the visions of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. This ever so ugly Morgan has it down, right down to it’s misguided interpetive brown leather seats.
To understand what is wrong with General Motors, you have to imagine that you are not in Los Angeles, but instead on a street in Rome, Frankfurt or London. You look up and see the grille of a GM SUV coming at you. A big ugly unnecessary jukebox of a grill, stuck onto the front of a primitive oversized hunk of beige metal. To my eye, these vehicles look ridiculous and I would rather have witnessed their extinction than been a part of their bailout with my income tax. Car manufacturing is a competition, and these guys lost that competition. They should not still be here.
Ford got by without a bailout, but what are those big things stuck on the front ends of Mercurys and Fords and Lincolns? Who on Earth likes these grilles?
Design in modern cars treads a narrow ridge path with steep fall-offs on either side into ravines of bad taste. In these ravines, you will see Rolls Royces, Dodges, Fords, and countless other Marques. The traffic on the top will be quite light, even in rush hour.

By Jeffrey the Barak

319A walk through the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show

There are certain cars that just look and feel right. Their design suggests quality and precision. The metal looks solid and the doors close with a solid thunk, and no tinny ring. But other cars look as fragile as tin-foil, with seams that are too wide or too tight. They may have hard plastic where you would expect upholstery, or molded polyurethane where you like to see a softer surface. And then some designs are embellished so much beyond their function that they scream ugliness.

It may be personal preference, and differences in the tastes of middle-America versus those of, for example, the Japanese or the French, but in general, some cars are rolling art, and others are rolling messes. And then there is Steam-Punk, a cartoonish design idea that has now found it’s way onto the showroom floors.

What follows is my personal opinion, and my personal impression, but I at least, agree with myself!

audir82For good clean design that seems functional, well-executed, and just has a quality, precise, expensive feel, look no further than Audi and Volkswagen. Alright, perhaps outside of the USA, their larger SUV’s are a bit bigger than anyone would ever need a car to be, but in general, their designs are elegant and just right. The world loves the Golf, and for good reason. It’s sporty, practical, holds a lot of stuff and takes up little space. The GTI version is as enjoyable on the racetrack as many a six-figure sports car, and speaking of which, the Audi R8 looks so much cooler than today’s Italian supercars.

minieintAlso from Germany, the interior of the BMW Mini-E, an electric car, is a beautiful design, with it’s colored swirls and oversized central display. For some reason the fit and finish on the Mini seems to be a step above that of the larger 3, 5 and 7 series, which despite their clever angles are bland, and have orange peel paint, rather like cheaper Chevys.

lexuslfa375kThe new Lexus LFA supercar, has a terrible paint finish that combines a high gloss above the beltline with a visually sticky-looking texture in the same color, and a front-end design that is comparable in style with a Corolla, only with a big gap at the tip of the hood/bonnet. If you search for photos for the front you’ll see it shot from up high, or lit from the side to create shadows, but in real life, it’s a front from Wal-Mart, and yet this supercar costs $375,000. Something does not add up here.

morganfmorganrRepresenting Steam-Punk, the new Morgan Aero SuperSports  was almost a hot car, but is a hot mess. A mishmash of curves and embellishments that should not be shared on one chassis. Steam-Punk can be described as historical future fantasy such as in the visions of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. This ever so ugly Morgan has it down, right down to it’s misguided interpetive brown leather seats.

enclavegrillTo understand what is wrong with General Motors, you have to imagine that you are not in Los Angeles, but instead on a street in Rome, Frankfurt or London. You look up and see the grille of a GM SUV coming at you. A big ugly unnecessary jukebox of a grille, stuck onto the front of a primitive oversized hunk of beige metal. To my eye, these vehicles look ridiculous and I would rather have witnessed their extinction than been a part of their bailout with my income tax. Car manufacturing is a competition, and these guys lost that competition. They should not still be here.

lincolnfrontFord got by without a bailout, but what are those big things stuck on the front ends of Mercurys and Fords and Lincolns? Who on Earth likes these grilles?

Design in modern cars treads a narrow ridge path with steep fall-offs on either side into ravines of bad taste. In these ravines, you will see Rolls Royces, Dodges, Fords, and countless other Marques. The traffic on the top will be quite light, even in rush hour.

The Good Quiz

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The Good Quiz: How good are you?

Answer the following questions with absolute honesty and tally your number of yes answers and no answers to see how good you are.

Question MarkDo you think that female humans are in any way inferior to male humans? Yes or No
Do you think that people who do not share your identical and exact religious views are inferior to you? Yes or No
Do you think that people of a certain ethnicity are in any way inferior to you and your own exact blend of ethnic backgrounds? Yes or No
Do you think that people who do not believe in God are in any way inferior to you or less good than you? Yes or No
Do you think that people who are attracted to their own gender are imperfect? Yes or No
Do you think that homosexual people are a potential dangerous threat to the safety and well-being of children? Yes or No
Do you think that female humans should be treated differently to male humans with regards to rights and freedoms?  Yes or No
Do you think that physically less able people are less important or of less value than the able? Yes or No
Do you think that “mentally unwell” people are less important than the “normal”? Yes or No
Do you think that people who have different moral standards with regards to sex and promiscuity are not as good as yourself? Yes or No
Do you think that gay people are not naturally so inclined? Yes or No
Do you think that governments and religions should prevent two people of the same gender from marrying each other? Yes or No
Do you think it is alright to put someone to death or imprison them for adultery or flirting? Yes or No
Do you think that the poor and/or homeless should be completely responsible for their current circumstances? Yes or No
Do you think that elderly people are less important or valuable than the young? Yes or No

    Answers:

    • If you answered with 15 NO answers, you are good.
    • If you answered with 14 or less NO answers, you are not good, and you should seriously consider being less horrible.

    Note, some contentious  issues, such as abortion, and euthanasia etc., have been deliberately omitted from the quiz, because everyone seems to think one camp is right and the other wrong, and few people ever change their mind. Among the truly objective, there may never be a general yes or no answer on such issues, but the truly objective are a rare minority.

    Turmeric kills cancer in Ireland

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    800px-false-startBy Jeffrey the Barak

    There is a racing flag that is green with a yellow chevron or V. It means false start. But green and yellow are very important colors when it comes to food. They are the colors of life.

    The color of death is not black, it is brown. Brown as in brown colored food that is not really very good for you. A healthy plate needs to have green and yellow on it.

    Most of us have heard about the advantages of eating food that looks green. Kale, broccoli, soy beans, spinach, all good for our health.

    But besides yellow peppers and a few squashes, what is the yellow we need to be consuming? Strictly speaking, the magic yellow is not a raw natural food, it is a processed spice, and it is called turmeric. It is used in yellow curries.

    turmericNutritionally we can all do just fine without ever encountering turmeric, and even a cancer victim does not need to eat turmeric. However, scientists have found that a chemical extracted from turmeric, called curcumin, kills cancer cells and then digests itself, vanishing without any side effects.

    Specifically, a team at the Cork Cancer Research Center in Ireland, led by Dr. Sharon McKenna have been able to positively show that oesophageal cancer cells (a.k.a. gullet cancer cells) are clearly destroyed by curcumin.

    It is not clear if frequently eating plenty of yellow curry laced with turmeric can cure oesophageal cancer on it’s own, but any excuse to eat this delicious yellow food as a preventative measure is welcome.

    Global warming is 51% cow farts

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    credit: unknown

    credit: unknown

    It’s not  your local coal power station, or your soot-spewing school bus. It’s not even the production of your mountain of plastic waste. No, global warming has been pushed over the edge of the point of no return by cow farts.

    Follow this link to Simply Sustainable’s excellent report on this realization. Time to invent a synthetic soy filet mignon!

    A new way to travel in a plane.

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    Photo credit: Wired.com

    Photo credit: Wired.com

    An idea that should have materialized decades ago.

    Wired Magazine’s Jason Paur added an article to the Wired Autopia Blog that highlights a design technology that is long overdue.

    How many of us have sat upright in a coach seat for twelve hours and dreamed of lying down to take the pressure off our backs? It turns out that not only could we all have a bed, but we could also check fewer bags. All it takes is a new way of thinking regarding passenger cabin design.

    The original article, complete with photos can be found at this link

    As you know, we do not normally link to outside articles here at the-vu, but this is important. The plane builders and airlines need to open their minds and get way from the rows of seats idea.

    How Art Almost Killed An Entire People

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    At times, we wander the galleries and see pieces of art that look as if they could hurt someone, or kill someone, but in a way this has actually happened.

    moI refer to a place commonly known as Easter Island. This is it’s modern name, given to the place by Christian explorers from Holland in 1722 when they happened to come across this land on their Easter Sunday.

    For most of history, This place had no name, and no inhabitants, but at sometime between 400 and 600 C.E. a human civilisation, the Polynesians, found it, and it became known as Rapa Nui.

    We know from the surviving Polynesian people here and across Oceana that for at least two thousand years, their relatively advanced society was capable of trans-oceanic explorations by canoe that no modern sailor in their right mind would dare attempt. By contrast, the people of the nations that would later become the world’s explorers, the Britons, the French, The Spanish, The Portuguese, The Dutch were by comparison, quite behind in terms of long-distance seafaring.

    Even the Mediterranean traders of the day would have been amazed at the voyages back and forth that the ancient Polynesians embarked upon.

    So art came to Rapa Nui with its first people. It is generally accepted that they came from either the Marquesas Islands or Mangareva, which like everywhere else, are very far indeed from Rapa Nui.

    The oral history tells us they brought plants, food animals and tools and their mission was colonization. The climate on Rapa Nui was certainly not the tropical paradise they were used to so they had a lot of adaptation to do in order to survive and thrive.

    Rapa Nui was covered in trees, palms and other types, and drinking water was naturally gathered in volcanic craters, despite the island’s absence of rivers or streams. The island also had obsidian, great for making cutting tools and weapons, and it had lot of special rock which we call lapilli tuff.

    Some say the islanders employed slash and burn techniques to clear land for farming, and others say, they used up all the wood in order to make and transport the huge stone statues that Rapa Nui is now famous for.

    With the forest cover gone, the rain and weather eroded the topsoil and famine ensued. But let’s take a step back and focus on the art.

    The art of Rapa Nui is divided between two periods. The Moai period and the Birdman period. On other islands in Polynesia, there were statues, (Moai), atop shrines, (Ahu). which were representations of chiefs (living and dead) and the gods in which they believed.

    Dead chiefs were sacred, and after their life passed, their representative Moa remained. Rapa Nui has around 900 such moai, either standing, toppled or partially completed, still in the quarry or partway to their final site. There are about 360 ahu. The moai did not look out to sea, as commonly assumed, but they faced away from the sea, towards the villages. Some completed and erected statues had white coral eyes and wore stone hats or top knots called pukao, carved from a rock that was more red (scoria).

    There is much debate as to exactly how the heavy statues were moved, assembled, erected etc. They are so heavy, that engineering on a grand scale was definitely needed, but the methods used have passed from memory.

    It seems clear that at some point, the statues were worshiped as gods, and were a means of control for the ruling society, called the “Long Ears”. Everyone else, lived as subjects of the ruling Long Ears. However they were not slaves, but simply lowly subjects of the rulers, who would eventually rebel aginst the Long Ears and topple the very statues that generations suffered to construct.

    It is said that so much wood was expended on the statue making that the islanders could no longer build canoes, so they became unable to travel to and from other parts of Polynesia. However, it is possible that the forests were burned to clear land, without any understanding of the long term environmental consequences. Without canoes, there was little opportunity to fish offshore, and without the lush vegetation, farming was all that was left.

    So in isolation, with the natural resources of the island being eroded, burned and used for making statues, the people sealed their fate. Numbering as high as seven thousand in it’s heyday, the society on Rapa Nui became unsustainable with the resources at hand, and they were unable to leave or go for help.

    Eventually, out of this declining situation, a powerful warrior class emerged, called Matato’a. And a change of power and leadership ensued. This also heralded the second art movement. All of the statues were toppled, some face up, some face down, and a new, even sillier religion began to dominate.

    This was the birdman cult, (Tangatamenu). Once a year on a small island off the coast of Rapa Nui, migrating birds laid eggs. It was a bountiful annual harvest. The young warriors would hold a swimming race across the rough, shark-infested straits between the main island and bird island. The first man back holding an intact egg became absolute ruler for exactly one year, until this was repeated.

    In the time after the upright moai, the art consisted of carvings and drawings on rock, depicting a bird-man character. Again the sheer quantity of this art in the virtual absence of all other, shows us that life at the time was all about the birdman. And a new monotheism emerged, coincidentally featuring a single, creator god, not the Jewish-Christian-Moslem one, but one with the name Makemake.

    If the Western sailing ships had never found Easter Island, the natives may or may not have survived to this day, but considering what the sailors did to them, it is amazing that any have survived. The so-called advanced civilizations from Europe murdered, enslaved, kidnapped and infected the people with diseases such as smallpox and syphilis, and those few who survived these horrors were later subjected to forced Christianization.

    As a result of the missionary subjugation, at this point there was no more art for a long time. The island was culturally dead until relatively recently when inhabitants of Polynesian decent began to nurture their cultural heritage, which amazingly still has much in common with other far way parts of Polynesia. And so through dance, costume, cuisine and the tatoo, the art of the island survives, but this time it won’t kill them, it may save them, from us.

    The path to our news

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    newsAs more and more newspapers disappear from the marketplace, more of us turn to the Internet to read our news.

    But although there are many sources to choose between, only a few actually gather the news, and these news organizations have to give it away and foot the bill.

    No longer can they rely on the business of printing, selling and distributing paper that sells for a quarter or a dollar, and no longer can they sell page after page of print ads to cover the rent, salaries and countless other expenses of news gathering.

    To illustrate this, let me use one of my own daily routines. I have in my Google home page, a ‘gadget” or columnar panel that highlights Current News. This is tier one.

    If I click on the header it takes me to current.com. This is tier two. Once here, I can select a news article or click on “more news” and then select an article. Let’s assume I do the latter and pick an article that is not in the top three. This is tier three.

    In “more news”, I select an interesting headline, click on it and arrive at tier four, an excerpt of the article, that includes a link to the original article which in this case resides on bbc.co.uk

    So I click through to here and arrive at the page on BBC, tier five, and see a television interview video and read the article, which was gathered in the UK by BBC staffers. None of my money went to the BBC, and I was five tiers away from the article.

    Along the way, I saw advertisements. There were none on Google, which is one of the many reasons why it is better than the mouse-over pop-up ridden and animated Yahoo!, There were none on Current, except for links to Current features, but then on the “more news” page I saw a small ad for Mini (the car). At the article level of current I saw one ad for AT&T, and then at the final BBC tier, there were no ads, except for BBC features links.

    So assuming I did not shop for AT&T service or BMW minis, I got my story for nothing.

    This is great for me, and I am not complaining, especially since my eyesight is not really up to reading a traditional newspaper anymore. But somewhere, someone has paid a lot of money to bring me the story, and eventually, we may end up with a news shortage, because no-one is paying the bill.

    Louis the Scooterer’s last ride

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    lou5d

    Louis the Scooterer 1935-2009

    Since 2004, Louis the Scooterer, Louis Scop, has contributed to the-vu, and his readers number in the thousands. Sadly, I have just learned from his daughter that Lou passed away on July 26th 2009, and was buried in the Netanya cemetery, Israel, on 31st July.

    Lou’s last input was a comment on June 15th, and his last email to me was on June 26th, in which he mentioned he had not been feeling good for several weeks, but would soon be writing another chapter. Some followers of Lou will no doubt learn of his passing with these words. I will be reading his writings again in order to celebrate his life, but of course he did more than he wrote about, and for a lot longer.

    My Summer 2009 Tech-Rant

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    rolhpd10

    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Time for a tech-rant. It’s been a while, but believe it or not people still ask me for my opinion, as if it really mattered.

    I have decided to base this rant on the technology that I personally own, which is a naturally narrow band of goods, since I am not rich, and I am also a bit of a minimalist at heart.

    As always, please note the date of this article, as tech articles do not stay fresh for very long, so it will soon stink even more than it does today, and believe me, it already stinks. It is 2009, July 20th.

    I have three computers in my arsenal these days, all of them are Apples. (No, I said arsenal, wise guy). First is my 24 inch Apple iMac. It is two and a half years old and still operates on Tiger. It will stay on Tiger until Snow Leopard comes out in a couple of months time.

    This was the big white beast that liberated me from the Windows experience. I had been wrestling with, maintaining, cleaning and generally nursing Windows since 3.0, so switching to Apple OSX in 2007 was a move that freed me from working for my computer. Now my computer works for me.

    I also have a white Macbook, also purchased in 2007, which rarely gets switched on, unless I go away from home. The main reason for this, is I am spoiled by the 24 inch screen environment, and I unfortunately do not have very good eyesight.

    Therefore my third Apple, a little white 16GB iPhone, is much more capable than it needs to be since trying to read a web page on it is torture for me, and unless it’s an emergency I don’t even try to do email on it.

    So as I sit with my three white Apples, I often consider the state of personal computing today. I think that folks with good eyesight who never edit a batch of 200 photos or edit a movie or, like me, work with a fifteen thousand row, twenty column spreadsheet all day, would be fine having a netbook instead of a home computer system, but, and it’s a big but (I prefer little butts), they would need to have readily available fast wireless Internet to make it bearable, and it could definitely not be a netbook that ran Windows. Using Windows to run a netbook is like towing a motorcycle with a water buffalo. Some of the Linux flavors are apparently very good on netbooks, but Windows itself needs more power than a netbook possesses simply to play politely with human beings. And I can definitely say from experience, no-one likes any computing device that seems to work slowly. That is worth repeating, no-one likes any computing device that seems to work slowly.

    Moving to the living room, we are still happy with our old 42 inch, room-heating, plasma TV that is on the wall with all the ugly wires hidden inside that wall and coming out of a socket lower down to fan out into a bunch of black room heaters.

    But what is really needed is some modern take on the consolidation of all the mess. The aforementioned room heaters are the sound amplifier, the DVR from the cable company, and two different DVD players, neither of which is currently connected because the cable company’s DVR does not like the HDMI cable so it had to borrow the composite cables. Honestly, the amount of vinyl-clad copper spaghetti and the basket of remote controls is a complete mess. Someone has to invent a simple connection and control system for home entertainment. I sometimes feel like I’m shoveling coal and filling a boiler on a steam engine just to watch TV. I have to manually change the aspect ratio from channel to channel and go through a multiple button sequence on more than one device to do anything more complicated than change the volume. No wonder so many people watch narrow pictures squashed into wide screens so everyone looks short and wide, it’s too much hassle to adjust anything.

    One piece of technology that is dear to my heart is my Keurig K-Cup coffee system. Anything else is so messy and uncivilized that I rank this device as one of the greatest technological feats since the rocket engine. Look elsewhere on the-vu for more about this charming lump of counter-top tech.

    And lastly a piece of technology that made something extremely huge into something tiny. My Roland Handsonic 10. This has replaced a van full of drums, cymbals, cases, microphones, stands, racks, and more, and it’s not much larger than a laptop computer. Oh yes, this too is white, exactly like my three Apples.

    Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu

    Discovering Single-Serve Coffee, Keurig versus Tassimo

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    sscompLet me start this tale with the bottom line, I prefer the Keurig. Okay, now that’s out of the way, I’ll take it from the top.

    I feel like I’m on vacation, making good coffee with a single push of a button, and letting the hard work of earlier times fade into memory.

    Until a month ago I was at the tail end of an obsession lasting for decades, the obsession of making espresso based drinks at home. Normally, I would be the only one drinking these concoctions, and yet, at the end I had an array of equipment worth $1,400 and still, I could produce a lousy drink if I wasn’t careful.

    So one day, while out of town, I drank a cup of regular joe, and it wasn’t half bad. In fact I liked it. Upon returning home and getting some fresh milk for my latte and going through the usual grinding, wiping, cleaning, tamping, more wiping, warming, wiping, pulling, wiping, steaming, wiping etc etc. a seed in my mind began to grow. Do I really need to spend all this time every day as a full time cleaner, just to drink a few cups of coffee?

    As I was cleaning the coffee ground stains out of my grout lines with bleach one day, I considered getting a coffee pot, or a French press, or a glass cone or some kind of system that would quickly and easily make a good cup of coffee, but I wanted more. I wanted to remove stale grounds and mess and even the challenge keeping milk fresh from the equation. Enter the concept of single serve coffee.

    Now years ago, during my espresso equipment escalation, I had a super automatic espresso machine, which in theory would make a drink with one button push. But behind that push was a lot of hidden cleaning work and I have to say the drinks were pretty awful. So it was with some skepticism that I first turned my attention to the Bosch Tassimo and the Keurig systems.

    Since the Tassimo offered the option of pseudo cappuccinos, lattes and espressos, I began with that system. I found it to be a brilliantly clever system, but the only drink varieties that were not pretty darned awful, were the brewed coffee varieties from venture partners Starbucks and Seattle’s Best. And even these were nothing to get excited about, despite their very high cost per cup. The milk drinks, lattes, macchiatos, cappuccinos etc., were practically undrinkable to me, mainly due to to the Ultra-Heat-Treated milk, as were the Gevalia brand T-Discs, which were almost as bad as instant coffee.

    Enter the Keurig B60. It had me at cup one. Paired with the Tully’s French and other bold blends, it was heaven in a mug right from the start. Similar as the systems may be in concept, the drink quality is very different. To put it simply, one system makes generally poor coffee and the other makes great coffee.

    Also, over the course of the experiment, I trained myself to enjoy dry-powder fat-free Coffee Mate creamer in place of milk, because milk is only fresh for a short while, and with the long shelf life of the T-Discs and K-Cups, the Coffee-Mate made a lot of sense. If I was to take a trip, not only would I miss my Keurig, I’d also be able to return home and immediately be able to have a fresh cup, without shopping for milk.

    As I said at the beginning, I chose the Keurig over the Tassimo. But nothing is perfect, so here are my four small criticisms of the Keurig B60.

    1. It is too tall to fit under my upper cabinets and be able to be opened to drop in a K-Cup. For this, I blame my kitchen design, not the Keurig.
    2. Compared to the Tassimo, it takes a couple of minutes to warm up and makes a sound like an electric tea kettle as it does so. The Tassimo was immediately ready as soon as the switch was flipped. However, I can program the Keurig to switch on shortly before I stumble downstairs in the morning, so I have a workaround for the slower morning start.
    3. The Keurig is also a bit noisier than the Tassimo, but still quieter than lots of things, including a grinder, a vibration pump espresso machine, a working steam wand etc . I would not call it a loud device by any standard.
    4. The water reservoir of the Keurig is a little tricky to hold onto with one hand when filling at the faucet, but then there is always a jug.

    Keurig is owned by Green Mountain Coffee, and the more I look at the way they do business, the more impressed I am. The only thing I am a little uncomfortable with, is the fact that they successfully sued Kraft, the maker of the Tassimo, for seventeen million dollars, for copyright infringement with regard to the similarity of the Tassimo T-Disc system to the Keurig K-Cup system. Apparently, the court thought Keurig were right about it, but then what came before both systems? The pod. Now what if Illy sues Keurig, saying the plastic K-Cup is similar to a paper pod? Having had a Tassimo and a Keurig, I think they are very different in how they do things and I am surprised that the law suit was successful. But I wasn’t in that courtroom so maybe there was evidence of direct infringement.

    Anyway, who cares about law when there’s good coffee around. And with the Keurig system, there is a lot of good coffee. Every K-Cup I have tried, is far better than even the best of the best T-Discs. And that is the bottom line. I think the Tassimo may even be a better machine than a Keurig in many ways, but if the drink is not fantastic, what’s the point? As long as you don’t use the silly travel mug button and bitterly over extract the dose of coffee in a K-Cup that was designed to make a smaller cup of coffee, you cannot go wrong with a Keurig.

    Time for a computing rant

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    I should begin by stating that today is April 8th, 2009. This is important whenever writing about technology, or as in this case, ranting about technology, because by the time you read this, things may well have changed.

    I am not a computer journalist, I don’t take advertising revenue from Microsoft or Apple or Norton, and I am no programmer. But I do use computers and I know what I like and do not like.

    So this rant is partly an observation, partly a wish list, and partly about 1973 Buick Electra converted to run on battery power. (More on that later).

    babbage_difference_engine_sRanting about computers, the big kind.

    I wrestled with Windows from early 3.0 until late in the XP era, before I became so busy with actual work that I decided it was high time to stop messing around with dialog boxes and virus scans and abandon Microsoft so I could get some bloody work done.

    My solution was to switch to Mac. Now I’m not one of these guys who says Apples are perfect and all other fruits are rubbish, because that is an exaggeration, but I will say that I no longer work for the computer. The computer now works for me.

    I remain open-minded about where computing may go in the future, but as people who have downgraded to “netbooks” will tell you, there is a future in online application use and assuming being connected continues to become more ubiquitous, that may be our direction.

    Ranting about computers, the small kind.

    I got into palm-top or handheld computing in the 1990s with a Palm III and dabbled in Windows tablets and then gave it all up when my eyesight deteriorated, only to jump back in when my wife bought me the first iPhone.

    I still find Internet use to be a pain in the eye on the iPhone, but I think that on one’s palm is the best place to work in many situations.

    But I always wanted to fill the gap between a notebook / laptop computer and a handheld device such as a smart phone. My first attempt at doing so was to buy an Acer tablet computer, but I found the operating system, the hardware and the screen to be very close to completely unusable. It was slow enough to make you scream, awkward to use, and hard to see in almost any light, but only for an hour then the batteries ran down.

    I held out hope for Palm’s “Folio Mobile Companion” invention in 2007 only to see them backtrack and cancel the release. And rumors continue to abound about Apple’s plans for something bigger than an iPhone and smaller than a Macbook, with an alternative operating system.

    And this is the key, and why the tablet failed for me, something roughly the same size and weight might succeed if it does not try to be a computer. That is: no Windows, no OS X, no full blown Linux, but something more like the iPhone operating system. We have to recognize that a small whatever-you-call-it is not a computer. This is why tablets were awful and also why these new “netbooks” don’t really work well with the Windows OS installed. They come with XP because it’s only about $25 now, but it’s not right for a little ten inch thing.

    People who run simple Linux shells to get them online to do stuff get much more satisfaction from their netbooks, without the squinting. It was the same when Palm had two versions of the Trio smart phone, one with Windows Mobile, the big seller, and one with the last version of the Palm OS. The Windows one was terrible because you really need a big screen to work well in Windows. The Palm OS one was less terrible. The little tiny keyboard was never as efficient as Graffiti, if you took the time to learn Graffiti.

    The iPhone reminded me that even someone with bad eyes and big fingers can still work in the hand if the OS and also the input method are clever enough, (they are). And as long as there’s an Internet connection, then there is room for a lightweight device that is larger than a pocketable mobile telephone.

    Another thing netbooks have done is throw the escalation of processing power and application complication into reverse. This has coincided with the end of the megapixel arms race in digital cameras, and the end of the economic boom, that never should have been a boom in the first place, due to it’s source in hype and debt.

    If applications can be usable over the wi-fi, then they will be better if they are less complicated, not more so, so this new small way of thinking can potentially move Microsoft’s fortunes into the hands of Google, Yahoo! etc. Anyone who develops good web-based applications.

    Revolutions still to come in display and input technology will add strength to this movement. The tortoise may beat the hare in computing.

    So about that electric Buick Electra, oh sorry, I’m out of time.

    Los Angeles, what are we standing on?

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Geologists would say that the Los Angeles Basin is like a huge bowl of sand

    The geologic center for the Los Angeles Basin is the place where the Los Angeles River and the river known as Rio Hondo merge in South Gate. At this central point, sand, silt, clay and other river sediments are the deepest. Actually in excess of 30,000 feet of sediment separate the surface here from the bedrock below. This is the height of the highest mountains in the Himalayas!

    Surrounding this enormous bowl of sand are mountains, namely the San Gabriel Mountains, the Santa Monica Mountains, the Santa Ana Mountains and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Just like today’s Santa Catalina Island, the P.V. peninsula was once an island offshore.

    Geology can only be studied on vast time scales. Today’s Los Angeles Basin was once underwater. Fifteen million years ago a shallow sea covered today’s L.A. The mountains surrounding it, which are still here, were slowly spiraling around the sea as the Pacific tectonic plate ground it’s way Northward past the North American plate.

    As the mountains slowly circled the sea, the Earth’s crust below twisted, stretched and cracked enough to allow molten lava to reach the surface. This newer crust began collapsing as it stretched thin, and eventually it formed a deep bowl of rock, above which sediments from not only the local rivers of the time, but also the sea itself, began to gradually give us our giant bowl of sand.

    Small microorganisms also poured in and as they lived, died and settled in vast numbers, they slowly began to change under pressure to become today’s oil and gas deposits.

    About 5 million years ago, the stretching of the crust stopped. As the bowl shrank, it continued to be filled with sediment and at the same same time, seismic activity started raising the level of the ground. The former ocean floor became the future backyards of the San Fernando Valley and Beverly Hills etc. As the sea floor became dry land, rivers such as today’s Los Angeles, Rio Honda, Ballona Creek, and countless others which are no longer visible from the city’s surface, meandered and flooded and cut and diverted and merged and separated over and over again.

    It is this sediment that we call our ground today. There are fossils of sea creatures in the soil of our backyards. There are winding boulevards built over old rivers and streams, and when the earthquakes come, the sandy bowl always throws us surprises, with one block shaking itself to pieces right beside another block that barely moves.

    It is this giant wobbly sandpit that contains our skyscraper foundations, our subways, and our utilities infrastructure. It is upon this sediment that we build our million dollar wood framed houses. In geologic time, it is but a moment since the first human set foot in the basin, and it will be just another moment before all traces of our stay here will have been buried or washed away.

    And eventually, the continental plate upon which we rest, will be subducted and recycled in the magma. And as if that wasn’t enough, the Sun will one day swell to take back the Earth, then long after that, will die itself and our atoms will potentially spark a new life somewhere else in the unimaginably long distant future.

    Jeffrey the Barak has lived in L.A. for more than twenty years. It has hardly moved during this time.

    The hazards of imagining countries

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Nomadic tribes move independently of each other and occasionally come together to interact through trade, war, sport, cultural exchange, intermarriage, murder etc.

    In the dense jungles of South America and Africa and Asia, the boundaries formed by geographical features such as ridges and valleys are all it takes to keep two nomadic cultures apart in language and traditions, until they either form non-nomadic civilizations or continue to roam independently of their neighbors. Then there is fate. One tribe may come into contact with, and survive contact with, outsiders and end up with new lifestyles and technology such as outboard motors and clothing, whereas their immediate neighbors may escape detection for decades afterwards.

    Tribes evolve into societies and eventually countries. We have seen it in today’s Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and surrounding areas and due to the fact that so many people have been exposed to the Old Testament of the Bible, and therefore have some awareness of nations and ethnic groups of the last two or three thousand years, it is easy to see how more modern politics and assumed differences can evolve into borders drawn on the map.

    If just one or two things had happened differently in history, the map of the Middle-East might be totally different, because in all that famous history, recorded in the world’s best selling loosely-historical book, there were only a few hundred or a couple of thousand people involved in most of those old conflicts.

    If you have a chance to find a map of the region that is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, a map made in the early or mid 19th century, you will see numerous regions defined by the make-up of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and their leaders of those days.

    Today in the United Nations, you will never see little signs naming Tribes of the Turkmens, Buhara, Pamir, Darwaz, Roshan, Shignan, Badakhshan, Kunduz, Khulm. Chitral, Maimana, Herat, Kafiristan, Dir, Kohistan, Svat, Buner, Shinaki, Punjab and more.

    But these were names of regions, if not countries, on the maps of the day. Most are now either part of Pakistan or Afghanistan. The people of these regions are not necessarily Afghanis or Pakistanis, but the modern map tells them that’s what they are.

    There are seven main ethnic groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and many more obscure groups, some extremely small and hardly known to this day.

    And a failure to understand who these people are, who they were, where they came from and where they live now, means that occupying armies really do not have any clear idea who they are defending or who they are trying to kill.

    Add the complication of different religions, most of which are opposing or slightly differing views from within the Islamic umbrella, and the complications deepen.

    Shift West a few miles and look at Iraq. Like Pakistan, it is a modern country created not very long ago by outsiders. (The British, if you want to name names). Until the start of the current war, it held it’s violence and hate simmering below the surface, united by the common fear of their evil national dictator. But how many of those who voted to approve the invasion of Iraq had even a glimmer of understanding about the basic differences between the various peoples in the region? How many even knew anything about Sunni’s Shi’ites and Kurds, as they stood on the floor of the House and painted a picture of Iraqis cheering for parading American liberators marching triumphantly into Baghdad a few weeks after the Air Force blew it to bits for the good of the people.

    Perhaps it is too late to swap the Iraq on the map for numerous ethnic regions, and too late to swap the Pakistan and Afghanistan of today into the little countries and regions that existed before. But on the other hand, perhaps these people can never be unified into countries. The very model of a country may not be applicable to people such as these. They remain tribal and separate, in culture and language.

    Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all examples of relatively new countries, each with their own set of problems. Without ever understanding much about the people within, outside military forces jump in to help, and end up killing or displacing thousands and thousands of people either directly or indirectly

    Surely a little research would be advisable?

    The 007 Standard

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    By Jeffrey the Barak.

    An appreciative look at the Seiko SKX007

    It is common for men who collect affordable watches to have between one and several Seiko SKX007 diver’s watches in their collection. It has become a standard classic watch against which others are measured. Perhaps only the Rolex Submariner shares this role in being such a universal standard to which other watches are compared.

    The 007 is a big watch, with a diameter of 42.5 mm excluding the crown. (The Rolex above has a case diameter of 40mm but the photos are not to scale). Even with the oversize trend bringing us wrist clocks of 50 mm and beyond, no one would ever say that 42.5 mm was not a big watch by any standard.

    The Seiko SKX007 uses the most common movement found in many different Seiko and Seiko 5 watches in this price range, the 7S26. It is a reasonably accurate automatic self-winder with quick set day and date and no hacking feature. But this article is not about the movement. There are already several online reviews to be found that take a more detailed and technical look at this icon. Rather I am writing about the SKX007 as the staple of any collection, and hopefully about it’s general style.

    Men’s watches today have settled into a few pigeonholes, with the largest category being that of the diver’s watch. Depth ratings vary but the 200 meter rating of the 007 places it in the most common group.

    Most owners of this widely owned watch would never be caught scuba diving to the rated limit of 200 meters below the surface of the sea, or even snorkeling at half a meter, or in some cases they would never be seen wet, but the solid, strong weight and feel of a diver and the undeniable usefulness of the time elapsed rotation bezel make the divers watch the ideal tool for life on dry land also. After all, you can time all your cooking and parking and then clean your watch with water.

    The 007 is a reasonably big, but not too big, plain vanilla, middle of the road diver that has evolved from older popular Seikos like the cushion cased 6309. It tells you the date and the day, although if it happens to be around midnight you never be too sure of the wheels have jumped to the next day or date yet, or you may see them not quite reaching the dial’s window. The time displayed is usually pretty close to accurate, or more often a tiny bit fast than a little slow. But this is no quartz and such things are to be expected from a real watchmaker’s movement.

    My first Seiko was a different diver. No date, no steel (well maybe inside the movement, but the case and bracelet were Titanium). That was an SKX403 and one day in 2003 a burglar dropped by the house and took it away.

    Not long after that day I was in downtown L.A. with a small clip of twenties and a shopping list that read “watch” Two watches caught my eye and made it to the short list that day. The SKX007 and the SKX781 Orange Monster. I bought the Monster and wore it for five years. But by the end of that five year Monster period, I was buying and selling other watches with enough frequency that I came to the realization that I was a flipping crazy collector.

    So after some delay, in 2008 I finally and belatedly got myself an SKX007. I chose a Jubilee bracelet as it’s mount because I liked the way the small shiny center links complimented the bezel grip. I really admired the watch and imagined it was all I needed. I considered making it my one and only. But for the 007, the timing was bad, because it came into my life during one of those mood swings that occasionally confounds collectors. I am constantly torn between wanting to own every watch I like, and being a one watch minimalist.

    Shortly after receiving my new 007 I also acquired my favorite watch, a Japan market Seiko Prospex SBCB009 Solar Titanium Scuba. Visually, a direct descendant of my SKX403 that was stolen in 2003. This watch sent me to eBay to sell everything else, including my 007 which was really in 99% new condition at the time. There was one thing about the 007 that I didn’t like. The minute hand. Something about that shiny edged arrow shape just bugged me and when it was time to cull, the 007 was gone, along with all my others save for the Solar.

    But over time as the collection started to pull itself back together after a brief one-watch Nirvana, I felt the need to consider another 007. At a Poor Man’s Watch Forum Get-Together (PMWG GTG) in Orange County California, I saw a few nicely modified watches based on either the 007 or the 6309 or 7002.

    By this time I had become an enthusiast of modified watches, and was enjoying a great SNK809 mod, so after much back and forth, I commissioned a 007 with a yellow dial. But I made an error of judgement with that one. The hands should have been blacker. Alas I could not easily see the time, mainly due to the wrong choice of hands, so within a few days, I had it for sale. Without pausing to breathe I then commissioned another one. This time with the standard, unmodified dial, but with a red plongeur hand set.

    The 007 is a very common platform for the watch modifiers. The widely used 7S26 movement will take a wide variety of modified dials and hands, and with replacement bezel inserts and various case finishes, you can have thousands of varieties of this watch, which comes only one way from the factory.

    Of course this means the modifiers have piles of 007 dials sitting around that have been removed from 007’s during the modification process. Having come across a picture of a 007 dial shoehorned into a non-diver, I unexpectedly realized something. The original dial is great! It does not have steel edged applied dot markers like the Seiko SKX031 (Submariner style), but rather just delicious blobs of luminous white on a flat black background. Paired with the cartoonish red and white of the custom plongeur hand set, this dial makes the 007 a visual riot of clear precise time comprehension. A blend of Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse and Jacques Cousteau.

    In fact I’ll say that the original hands of the 007 do not do it’s intensely dotty dial justice. The shiny edges of the original hands distract the eye from those crazy white dots floating on their sea of inky black.

    So my new 007 mod, a riotous conglomeration of brushed steel, matte black, luminous white, and red paint, would be quite at home in a cartoon and it is certainly at home on my wrist.

    I have experienced the oversize craze, enjoyed it and moved through it. I now know my ideal case diameter is somewhere around 39 mm, but for a good design exceptions are made. And it’s worth going back up to 42.5 mm again in order to enjoy the standard classic diver that is the 007.

    Jeffrey the Barak spends too much time thinking about watches and is the publisher of the-vu

    They are not cross dressers, they are sport enthusiasts.

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    For years I have noticed many young men walking around in brightly colored nylon mini dresses. I should explain that my eyesight is not great and that I have never watched any sport involving teams of men playing with balls.

    Well it turns out these are not dresses at all. They are vests, otherwise known as singlets or tank tops or A-Shirts, and they are derived from the uniforms worn by basketball players.

    What I was observing was these tank tops being worn by people of smaller size. In other words the shirts were far too big for them and worn over matching nylon shorts, also very baggy in design, to the extent you cannot easily see there are two legs, and they appear as pleated nylon skirts.

    The resulting appearance was therefore that of a man wearing a large, sleeveless, nylon, knee-length dress.

    So now I know why they don’t also wear makeup and high heels with their dresses. They have no idea they even look like men in dresses.

    (Photos blurred to simulate silly old fart’s eyesight)

    FootBikeUSA

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Racing scooters are still an extremely rare sight in the United States, and most lifelong cycling enthusiasts who see a Footbike or Kickbike on the road are seeing one for the first time.

    But in Europe, it is not too unusual to see dozens of scooters competing in a road race. Footbike USA is trying to introduce Americans to the same healthy pleasures.

    They are not the first to bring the world’s fastest human powered scooters to the USA, and we reviewed a Kickbike on the-vu years ago in the article “Human Powered Scooters”, but Footbike have the energy and drive to have a real shot at changing America’s choice on the bike paths around the country.

    The Footbike website at http://www.footbikeusa.com contains all the information you need to know about life without saddles and chains and pedals.

    But the Footbike is also being noticed by physical therapists such as Andrea Avruskin PT, DPT, ATC, LAT, (www.avruskinpt.com), who has written an extensive paper on the physical benefits of scootering.

    In her study she points out some of the adverse health effects of bicycle riding. Yes, bikes can be ridden safely and they are a more efficient mode of conveyance, but you can also hurt yourself by cycling the wrong way. Not to say you cannot hurt yourself on a Footbike. In fact I have experienced that myself after a careless and ill-planned ride in 2008.

    But the good therapist has some good points to make about the Footbike. She says “The Footbike™ is an excellent tool for rehabilitation, training and conditioning. It challenges lower body strength, power, endurance and balance, as well as trunk and upper body stability and endurance. It is suitable for non-athletic people and athletes who are healthy, recovering from injuries, or preventing injuries”.

    Ms Avruskin’s paper shows the results of studies on joint impact stress, range of joint motion, posture, and analysis of the standing and propelling legs. Personally I think that If I had learned of her study last year, I would not have sidelined myself last fall.

    But back to the Footbike. If you enjoy cycling, skating, skateboarding but feel like you have not really found what you are looking for, then take a clue from the Europeans and check out the world of scooters (http://FootBikeUSA.com). You won’t be sorry, and a Footbike will be an addition to your propulsion collection that will hook you for life.

    Time to get off the seat and stand up!

    Before you celebrate new year….

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    Just a reminder that even though we all love our hours, minutes, seconds, months, weeks and centuries, none of them are real.

    One year is real, but it does not necessarily start on January 1st. It’s just one whole orbit around the sun.

    One day is real, but it does not necessarily start at midnight.
    It’s just one revolution of the planet.

    Everything else is imagined, no matter how much time we spend measuring with our watches and calendars.

    So celebrate new year, but remember you could just as well do it on any other date, most appropriately on March 21st or September 21st at an equinox.

    The Methane Army is coming to get you.

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    By Major Pong

    People of Earth,

    We are The Methane Army. We are billions of molecules of stinky atmosphere warming gas and we are putting on our boots and getting ready to come through the door and whip your ass.

    Actually we’ve been doing this from time to time over millions of years, since well before you messy humans evolved. Oops, sorry to use the E word you religious numbskulls. Where was I? Oh yes,.. the Methane Cycle. No it’s it’s not my new mountain bike.

    You see we are trapped by cool temperatures in the soil beneath your wetlands, lakes and oceans. but as you pump more and more carbon dioxide into the air with your silly cars made by General Motors who are so stupid they cannot even line up a steering wheel with a driver’s seat, we see our opportunity to come out and play.

    As far as warming the planet is concerned, we are twenty four times times as effective as carbon dioxide. And it’s not the cows and sheep that you keep prisoner that will push us out the door, and push you over the edge, we are already here in the billions, waiting to bubble up and cook you ’til you dry up and disappear.

    Yes the atmosphere will kill a few of us, but there are enough of us to tip the balance, so unless you find a way to cool down Earth, and fast, we will be out and you will be gone.

    Before your industrial age, we were 7 parts per billion in the atmosphere, and now we are 1700 parts per billion, and rising. And we are much better than carbon dioxide at keeping in that people-cooking solar radiation and heating up the planet. Sure there is “OH”, not a magazine by Oprah, but a hydroxyl free radical that can destroy us in the atmosphere, but you know what, we are going to win.

    So enjoy it while you can humans. We’ve seen your kind come and go before, and before you know it, your crust will be recycled and all traces of you will be melted clean in the mantle.

    Major Pong is very tiny, so he enlisted the help of Jeffrey the Barak to write this fine article for the-vu.

    Green Cars at the 2008 Greater L.A. Auto Show

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Are any of these cars truly green?

    The Greater Los Angeles Auto-Show, Green Car Ride and Drive Event, November 20th 2008.

    Participating Vehicles

    • Audi A7 TDI (clean diesel)
    • BMW 335d (diesel)
    • Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell
    • Chrysler Aspen (hybrid)
    • Dodge Ram 3500 (biodiesel)
    • Ford Fusion Hybrid
    • Honda FCX Clarity (fuel cell)
    • Mercedes-Benz ML320 BlueTEC SUV (diesel)
    • Mercedes-Benz GL320 BlueTEC clean (diesel)
    • Mercury Mariner (hybrid)
    • Mini E (electric)
    • Mitsubishi i-MiEV (electric)
    • Nissan X-Trail FCV (fuel cel)
    • Saturn Vue 2 Mode Hybrid
    • Smart fortwo
    • Volvo C30
    • VW Jetta TDI (diesel)
    • VW Touareg TDI (diesel)

    I decided not to focus on any of the diesels and clean diesels, because it’s still diesel and it still stinks, even if you use much less these days and less smoke makes it out the end of the tailpipe.

    Bio diesel has such a large eco-footprint that it’s barely worth pursuing. It does not help the environment whatsoever with it’s current method of growth, harvesting and distribution.

    The hybrids use less fuel than similar non-hybrids, but the additional cost on the price tag requires a lot of high mileage driving to recover the cost, and you still need to burn gas in order to use them.

    Small and light cars such as the Smart Fortwo, and the four seater Volvo C30 are normal cars, they just save money and the environment by being small. They are not the giant enormous cars that most Americans are convinced they need to transport one little person two miles down the road.

    Fuel cell cars would be great if the hydrogen was not produced by dirty sources and delivered by dirty tanker trucks. But they are, so they are not so far in any position where they can be said to making the Earth any greener. It’s coal for goodness sake!

    So that just leave all-electric. Again, most electricity is generated by the burning of coal so it’s tempting to rule these out as well, but with more wind and solar power coming online, then electric cars get greener all the time. The batteries are not exactly eco-friendly when they reach their end, but electric cars are still undeniably cleaner than combustion vehicles.

    Mitsubishi and BMW have presented two real, in-production, practically non-prototype, definitely non-concept cars which are true all-electric cars.

    Mitsubishi has their i-MiEV, a small car with four doors and room for four inside, and BMW has an all-electric version of their very successful Mini, except this one is a two seater.

    The iMiEV has an onboard charger so you can plug into your normal home’s outlets, or into a quick charger, a few of which can be found in most cities. The car uses very efficient electric motor and high energy density lithium-ion batteries. It’s as simple as that and it’s ready to go, with more than enough range for most people who drive each day and return home each evening.

    The BMW mini with it’s single passenger seat is clearly a bit less practical, but nevertheless, it’s fabulous and more fun than most two-seaters that are stinking around wasting fuel for no good reason.

    These two very real cars are almost here now and setting the stage for our inevitable path to all-electric cars. All this other stuff, bio-diesel, clean diesel, normal diesel, hydrogen, gasoline hybrids, etc. is just a diversion. We have to head towards the electric light at the end of the smoky tunnel.

    Of course there are others. To name a few there are:
    Tesla Motors Electric Roadster (A Lotus Elan based two seater)
    BYD (China) E6 Electric Car
    Miles XS500 (retro-ugly small electric sedan)
    Subaru R1e
    Tango (George Clooney has one of these dragster-fast single-seaters that resemble giant work-boots)
    Wrightspeed X1 (insanely fast street legal electric racing car)

    So how do these two electric cars at the L.A. Auto Show event feel? How do they drive?

    The BMW Mini E

    The BMW Mini E has a very impressive driving range of “up to 150″ miles. It accelerates very quickly, going from 0 to 62 MPH in 8.5 seconds, and in such a way that gives you the kick right at zero, no delay as with combustion engined cars.

    The Mini’s top speed is 95 MPH and it;s lithium ion batteries can be recharged from any standard power outlet. However the specially installed wall box can fully recharge the car from dead to full in 2.5 hours.

    Releasing the “gas pedal”, which of course is no such thing, causes dynamic deceleration, meaning the slowing of the vehicle charges the batteries by using the motor as a generator.

    But here is the catch, at least for now. Much like the old GM EV1 immortalized in the film “Who killed the electric car”, the minis will initially only be available on a one year lease with an extension option, and in three of the fifty United States only.

    The driving experience in normal slow traffic conditions is much the same as that in the standard BMW mini, except you don’t hear an engine or an exhaust note or feel the rumble of a combustion engine. It is of course extremely quiet, the only obvious sound being that of suspension, wind, etc. The main difference in feel is when you take your right foot of the go pedal and sense the regenerative braking effect that helps give this car it’s impressive range.

    The biggest difference visually comes when you look over your shoulder. Instead of the familiar rear seat of the Mini and Mini Cooper, there is a black box between you and the trunk space. As I said earlier, this is a fun car to drive, and let’s not forget it’s main points, no engine, no exhaust, no gas tank, no emissions.

    The Mitsubishi i-MiEV

    A good looking small car with plenty of room for two in the back, but nevertheless unconventional looking, as it can be since there is no engine. The rear end does look a bit odd, but there’s no reason it should look like a car with an engine.

    There are about 30 or so of these running around Tokyo. But as the promotional video shows, at least one has been driven around in the Los Angeles area and it may well be the same on on the floor at the Auto Show today.

    Again this car rests it’s hopes on lithium ion batteries. They are clearly the most promising rechargeables on the automotive landscape this year, and the i MiEV has 22 of them at the bottom of the car.

    A good car to compare this to is the Mitsubishi i Turbo, which has a three-cylinder gasoline combustion engine. But the i MiEV’s direct-drive, no-tranmission electric motor will take it from 0-60 MPH in just under 9 seconds and the top speed is around 82 MPH.

    But there are two driving modes, Sport and Eco. The latter takes away the racy performance, but increases the range. Even in Eco mode, it’s not a slow car and it’s still faster than the tiny cars on the road. Mitsubishi say the range is “up to 100 miles”. It may or may not achievable, but considering that Chevrolet is asking for billions of taxpayer dollars to be so gracious as to give us an expensive Chevy Volt with a pathetic “up to 40 mile range”, I say hats off to our patriotic friends at Mitsubishi. They are America’s friends, not the lunatics and national saboteurs over at General Motors.

    However, with real-world range of around 60 miles, (using climate control and enjoying the occasional burst of gratifying speed), and a full recharge that takes 14 hours on a normal domestic outlet or about an hour on the wall mount, this car may not have enough energy capacity to be considered as your one and only daily driver. But it’s getting there and Mitsubishi have done a fine job using todays latest technology.

    The i MiEV is not exactly here yet. It may be generally available to anyone in Japan in about a year in late 2009.

    Is it time yet?

    The consumer looking for an electric car in 2008 and 2009 might be best advised to wait, and in the meantime, lighten up on that right foot and drive in such a way as to conserve fuel. Eventually, range will improve and more electricity will be coming from non-polluting sources such as wind, and less from coal. Then we will be able to watch as more and more cars go all-elecric.

    An inflatable, all-electric car?

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    I really really really want this to be real. Really.

    Inventor Bill Wright is about to present an “e-car” to congress that could turn the car world on it’s head. It has the unfortunate name of XP-Car, but we sincerely hope that it will not be anything like Windows XP.

    Details of the concept can be seen at the web site myxpcar.com, but here is a copy of their amazing summary of features:

    “Not just another electric car, a dramatic new type of ground transportation. Designed to beat all of the production models of GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Tesla, and all other traditionals. As a matter of fact, we have challenged all of them to a contest! In a head-to-head with EVERY regular and electric car in production, our technology is

    • More likely to save your life and protect you, and your family, from injury by a factor of ten over the competitors.
    • Able to look exactly like a “regular car”.. or not, depending on customer inclination.
    • Able to provide America, or any country, with 100% ENERGY INDEPENDENCE and JOBS!
    • Able to return investors money sooner because of a lower factory cost and a lower BOM, by many times, than our competitors.
    • Fueled, in part, by water and energy you can make at home.
    • Able to survive a 30 MPH crash without damage.
    • Faster per dollar.
    • Longer range by many times, (ie: it can drive across the U.S. without turning off the motor)
    • More durable. Even the most extreme body repair work, which it may never need, can be completed in under an hour.
    • Shippable to dealers on more types of carriers with more cars per crate than competitors.
    • Lower cost than any other electric car for the features.
    • More efficient.
    • Able to be supported by dealers with very simple repair and showroom facilities.
    • Faster and lower cost to road certify.
    • Able to be buiilt in lower cost factories with 70% less floorspace and manufacturing equipment which mean lower cost, higher quality cars for our customers.
    • Fueled by quick, hot-swap, cassettes.
    • Less toxic than the EMF battery/power system poisoning and/or gasoline carcinogens you may get from competing systems.
    • More sustainable.
    • Less taxing to the grid and able to operate entirely off the grid in one mode.
    • Easier to maintain by many times because of dramatically less parts to go wrong.
    • Less likely to have mechanical failures by many times because of dramatically less parts to go wrong.

    Sound wild? This is actually run-of-the mill technology that industry has used for over 20 years but that our competiitors have not been brave enough to use. We have deployed hundreds of millions of dollars of real world tested materials to bring you a green, sustainable, safe, ultimate transportation machine! Think this is vaporware? Put your-money-where-your-mouth-is and bet us $50,000.00 (Escrow account at Bank of America) on each merit you dispute. We will match you.”

    If that sounds amazing, here is their low-budget fantasy YouTube video for the concept:

    Should we pay to save our big three?

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    In the United States, not long after several “bailouts” of financial institutions, we are being warned and prepared for a similar round of bailouts, this time with the auto-industry as the beneficiary.

    • Do General Motors, Ford and Chrysler deserve to be saved by a government bailout?
    • What would be the consequences of letting them cease operations and closing their doors?
    • If the government offered to save them, but set terms dictating what they should and should not manufacture, is that too much government control for private industry, or does the government simply become the car maker

    These are difficult questions to answer with yes or no.

    It is all too easy for us to say “it serves them right” and pointing out that Toyotas have been chosen over Buicks because people think they are better, and it’s their own hard-earned money that Americans use to buy a car. But there are two sides to every coin. The number of businesses that depend on the big three to exist and prosper is considerable, and many American jobs are at stake, with not many vacancies at the factories that make so-called foreign cars on American soil.

    Is the tradition of mass producing cars in the U.S. too valuable to turn our back on? Should we let the market forces give the big three what they deserve for failing to successfully compete? Let’s look over the borders and see. Canada and Mexico do not make Canadian or Mexican cars, they only have foreign cars, and like the Americans between them, they have foreign car makers operating their manufacturing within the countries of Canada and Mexico. So Canada and Mexico do not have to worry about bailing anyone out, and they can get all the cars they want! Fords, Nissans, you name it! If our own big three go away, there will be no shortage of cars, trucks or buses to buy in the United States

    We all have our own experiences. I was always a lover of American iron and always bought American until it just became so obvious that they were simply inferior. Then for years I only experienced American cars if I rented them when traveling, and they were always beyond terrible and their designers always seemed to be having a cruel joke at my expense. But something happened. Around 2006, those Chevrolet rentals were no longer quite so terrible. Still not as good as Volkswagens or Hondas, but not quite so incredibly badly designed. So there is hope for GM, and Fords and Chryslers were always okay even at the worst of times. In other words, today’s American cars are not as terrible as we may imagine.

    We have to be careful to examine the arguments appropriately. We cannot just blame the U.S. auto makers for being stupid for promoting S.U.Vs, because we were never forced to buy these thinly disguised, dangerous and dirty, old-fashioned trucks, and the foreign car makers also offered S.U.Vs to be used on the streets in place of normal smaller cars. And there is no evidence that medium sized American cars use more fuel than the same size Japanese, Korean or German cars. And we cannot beat up the big three for their bad designs, because design is a matter of personal taste. Away from the coasts, in middle America, people think Saturns and Mercurys look just fine. They simply do not see the same questionable aesthetic features that Californians or New Yorkers might notice in the very same, named-for-the-planets, plastichrome-adorned American cars.

    If the argument is about pollution or using less gasoline, then we must remember that American cars are subject to the same laws, and are no dirtier and no more thirsty. Yes, some of the American hybrids use more fuel per mile than some non-hybrid imports with smaller engines and one battery, but at least they tried. If we want to legislate that car makers should only be selling clean and efficient vehicles, then the same laws will affect Pontiac and Audi and Kia alike.

    So where is this argument going? It’s hard to say, because I’m a rambling old fart. So let’s get back to the three original questions and my personal answers.

    Q: Do the big three deserve to be bailed out?

    A: Only if it would cost Americans more money to let them fail. If not, then no bailout, bye-bye..

    Q: What would be the consequences of letting them cease operations and closing their doors?

    A: We would have to buy “foreign” cars, but those foreign cars would likely be made in America by Americans, who were members of the American Trades Union, and the car’s badge may say Hyundai or Subaru.

    Q: If the government offered to save them, but set terms dictating what they should and should not manufacture, is that too much government control for private industry, or does the government simply become the car maker?

    A: It’s not the American way to tell someone what they can and cannot do in business. We lost AMC and many other car makers such as Studebaker, Kaiser etc., so why not these three?

    Conclusion. If Canada and Mexico can have all the cars they want but have no National brands, then so could we, and the big-three are asking for billions on top of the twenty-five billion dollars we have recently given them. It may be throwing money away to try to save them, and it may not make any difference, because they are not showing much promise of doing anything differently.

    A Stirling engine, not on April 1st

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Usually, when a Stirling engine makes the headlines, it’s April Fool’s Day. Not this time, although once again it is so far only talk and no engine.

    In 1816 Robert Stirling obtained a patent for his Stirling engine, which (very) basically uses the temperature difference outside and inside a closed cylinder to move the piston up and down and therefore act as an engine.

    Stirling engines have been successfully used for this and that since 1816, but with the fossil fuel problems of today, they are enjoying more consideration than usual.

    Enter one Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway. The Segway is quite remarkable, but due to the enormous anticipation that preceded it’s launch and the high price tag, it has always been widely regarded as a disappointing anticlimax, hardly worth adapting.

    But here comes Dean again, in November 2008, with a plan to put a Stirling engine in a car. This time, it will not be used to power the car, but instead it will be placed in the trunk to power auxiliaries such as heating, air-conditioning and electrical accessories on a battery-driven sub-compact that uses parts and tooling from the old Think car that was mothballed in 2000.

    Remember this is a Stirling engine, and it burns nothing and emits nothing.

    But since the Stirling can be used to help charge the batteries, then under the right circumstances, this car could conceivably be a free energy machine requiring just a small input of energy, such as from a temperature difference caused by sunshine, to get it started in the production of more energy.

    Dean Kamen himself is not touting the car as anything particularly amazing, but he cleverly states, “If we can demonstrate the utility of the Stirling engine by putting it in a car … it will leave me with an engine that I can use to supply electricity to the world.”

    I say forget the car, put a black water pipe on a sunny roof and add a Stirling engine to run a generator to power a home. Then your car can be any plug-in electric, and the source of the power will have been hours old, or day-old sunshine.

    Whatever happens, the Stirling engine might eventually have it’s long overdue day in the sun as an integral part of a pollution-free energy system.

    The Green Shave

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    How would you like to spread Napalm on your face while releasing questionable propellants into the ozone layer, and then put a stack of eternal plastic into a landfill?

    Doesn’t sound like something you’d want to do does it? And yet if you use aerosol shaving gel, it contains the very same naptha and palm oil as Napalm, that cruel and unusual weapon used in the flame throwers of wars past. This is palm oil that comes from plantations that are gobbling up the habitats of endangered orangutans.

    And this convenient chemical cocktail is being helped out of the pressurized, plastic lined can by a propellant gas, which in many countries still contains ozone-eating CFC compounds.

    The 2, 3, 4 or 5.5 tiny blades on your razor cartridge are surrounded by, and packed and wrapped in, ounces and ounces of disposable plastic also.

    Surely this is not necessary? Of course it’s not!

    Just ask your father or perhaps your grandfather. A good shaving brush and some shaving soap can give you a better lather than anything in an aerosol can, for a fraction of the price, and with zero waste. And used properly, a double-edged safety razor, made entirely of steel will give you a close enough shave without irritation or cuts, and that razor blade contains no plastic. It’s all steel. While most come in a plastic box complete with a disposal slot in the back, you can easily find them individually wrapped in paper and then packed into a paper box of 100. Zero plastic.

    So if you think you are going green but still use Edge gel and a Fusion razor, think again Mister. It’s time to get into responsible shaving, while saving the planet, and also saving my friends the orangutans, (who never shave).

    Jeffrey the Barak shaves….often and repeatedly.

    The least continental place

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Nake Island, Kiribati, is the closest point of land I could find after moving the Google Earth globe around to a spot that showed the least land. The only significant continental land visible at the edges of this hemisphere is in either North America or Eastern Australia, and New Zealand and Mexico are the only two very large countries which are entirely within this hemisphere.

    But this spot may not be the most oceanic. I may have missed the mark. Does anyone know the coordinates of the place in the Pacific ocean that is dead center of the most watery hemispherical view of Earth?

    If so, please comment on this article. I’d be most curious to know where the least continental place really is.

    Station Wagon is a dirty term.

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Above, a sensible medium sized station wagon...er...crossover.

    Once upon a time, car drivers who occasionally hauled around a lot of stuff and/or large objects from place to place, bought station wagons. In Europe these were called estate cars, and still are, but in the United States, they were called station wagons, presumably because they transferred goods to and from a railway station terminus.

    Basically a station wagon was the same as it’s passenger car cousin, except the trunk, rear deck, parcel shelf and back window were replaced with a compartment the height of the roof, and they had a tailgate of some kind (a rear door). The rear seats folded flat to provide the functionality of a small van, in a car’s body.

    During a temporary period of low fuel prices starting in the 1980′s, Americans reverted to their 1970′s habits and began to use vehicles that were larger than they needed to be. Many a ninety pound woman uses a five liter V8 powered four-wheel drive “sport utility vehicle” to drive a mile to the local Starbucks with no passengers or luggage.

    In fact, SUV’s became so ubiquitous in the USA that normal cars were considered dangerous and vulnerable to devastating impacts if involved in collisions with “normal” SUV’s.

    But underneath the wood veneer and leather seats, an SUV is just an unstable truck with similar build design to a car of eighty years ago.

    Eventually the American market opened it’s minds to the station wagon format again, except by now Station Wagon was a dirty term that would surely spell marketing death for the car makers.

    So they made up a new word, “Crossover” which presumably means a mixture of a normal car and a giant four-wheel drive sport utility vehicle. A Crossover has a car-style unibody construction and can have all the latest technology. Due to the better maneuverability, stability, controlability and crumple zones, the Crossover is as safe as a sedan and much less likely to become an out of control 3 ton missile rolling over and over and reducing the occupants’ spines to pulp in the process.

    A Crossover is….. a station wagon, except without the guy in the plaid jacket smoking a cigar.

    But to really understand the difference, there is a simple formula, and it is as follows:

    Crossover = sensible design.
    SUV = fucking stupid.

    Why you shouldn’t keep goldfish

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Oscar Night (the goldfish)

    I once worked as a “cubicle farmer”, in an office. To provide a soothing distraction, I raised a couple of batches of “Sea Monkeys” and at the peak of their success, I was able to project their shadows onto the wall and enjoy their company for a very brief time.

    Following that experience, I bought a single Comet Goldfish for a dollar and a simple plastic bowl. He (or she) was an exceptionally attractive goldfish with large spectacular fins and tail, and it was only a matter of time before escalation took place with progressively larger tanks and filters and other fishy friends for Oscar Night, as I called him.

    In the end, my office desk sported a 30 gallon aquarium with a large canister power filter system under the desk. Water changes and tank cleaning took up many hours and it was a lot of work, but I feel that Oscar Night made the years spent inside a cubicle for forty hours a week much more bearable, and he provided mood enhancing entertainment for dozens of fellow employees who passed by my partitioned universe.

    I like goldfish. They have faces, they have intelligence and they have personalities. Tropical fish, albeit sometimes quite beautiful, are wild, and they are the eat-or-be-eaten type of animal that you never really get to know as friends.

    A goldfish is a poor man’s koi.

    But knowing what I know today, I would not recommend keeping goldfish as pets unless you can promise that each fish will have twenty gallons of water, and that you can commit to keeping the tank clean, the water properly balanced and will be able to maintain a proper feeding, cleaning and water-changing schedule. Anything less can be cruel to a fish. And if you follow the recommend cruelty-free ratio of water to goldfish, then you will have a largely empty aquarium to look at. After all, if you add gravel, rocks, plants and decoration, then the thirty gallon tank may only have room for twenty five gallons of water. One large goldfish!

    A goldfish might survive for a long time in a bowl, if you change the water once a day or even twice a day when it grows, but after two years, that pet store goldfish will need a large body of seasoned water to swim around in while it survives on it’s way to becoming an old foot-long friend over the years. And since they are social animals, it is only reasonable to keep a minimum of two pets, so they can interact with each other and remain sane while you are away from the other side of the glass.

    That’s right, experts recommend a big, empty forty gallon tank with a large external filter, for a pair of humble goldfish. It is unlikely you will ever find any goldfish enjoying that kind of volume.

    If you start with a jar and you love the fish, you better have a plan to set up a large pond someday. That one dollar goldfish might cost you a couple of thousand dollars if he makes it through the years.

    Or you could plan on constraining the escalation, and stopping at the goldfish-bowl level, at the expense of the fish’s well-being and life-span. Perhaps if you rescued a doomed “feeder fish” you can justify that.

    Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu.

    The Ford Crown Victoria is a lousy taxi

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Having just returned from the airport by cab, I have been moved to rant about how ridiculous it is for Los Angeles taxi cabs to pick the American dinosaur Ford Crown Vic as a cab.

    It’s a large sedan, with a big engine, and many cab operators buy them as used vehicles from the police, so the Police Interceptor version is a veritable rocket ship dragster.

    But in taxi guise, the partition that keeps the driver safe from potentially violent rear-seat passengers also takes away the rear seat legroom.

    A Fiat Taxi in England

    A Fiat Taxi in England - small outside - roomy within.

    Tall people have no way to place their feet on the floor without twisting them to the side. Only two normal adults can comfortably stand a short ride on the hot vinyl seat in the back of a Crown Vic cab.

    The particular cab that we took from LAX also had a propane conversion. Nice for the environment you say? Well that propane tank has to go somewhere, so only one suitcase could fit inside the trunk, and our second bag had to go in the front seat beside the driver, obscuring his view of the right-side mirror.

    Our flight originated in the UK where all kinds of economical, sensible vehicles are used as working cabs. All of which are able to take four adults and their luggage, and none of which have any issues with steep hills, motorway speeds etc.

    The American taxi industry seems to have lost the plot. if you had to choose the worst possible passenger vehicle to use as a cab, it might very well be the exact one they have chosen.

    The Urban Tango Phenomenon Explained

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    An interview with Makela Brizuela, by Jeffrey the Barak.

    In 2006, a very different dance performance was first presented in Venice California. Entitled “URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace”, it was different in many ways and attracted the attention of many in the dance community.

    Directed and choreographed by Makela Brizuela, the cast consisted of amateur Tango dancers, not professional dancers, and most of the cast were students of Makela. But even more unusual was the theme.

    In a dance performance without spoken word, whether ballet or in this case, Argentine Tango, it takes a little more than the performance itself to explain what exactly is being conveyed by the dance. In 2006, the amateur performers seemed inspired by the passion of this event, and were heard enthusiastically explaining the concept and theme of the show to anyone who would listen.

    The concept was repeated and passed along, and in some cases the theme may have been, shall we say incorrectly described as third and fourth hand versions made it down the line of communication. But one thing was clear, something about this event really got everyone stirred up.

    With the reappearance of the show in February 2007, it is appropriate that the creator get a word in and talk a little about herself as well as Urban Tango…

    It is unusual to find a Tango instructor with a B.A., an M.A., or a PHD, but despite her chosen profession, Makela has one of each.

    J the B: How does someone with your academic qualifications choose the life of a Tango instructor?

    MB: I studied ballet since an early age, and danced my entire life. When I was 10-12 years old, I used to direct my little sister (she was 6 years younger than me), to create little plays for our family. Even though dance was a major part of my life, my parents thought that I also needed to stimulate my brain, and that is why I chose a career that was as close as art as possible: Literature. I went to the University of Buenos Aires where I finished my BA

    When I started to study Linguistics as a requirement, I got fascinated by the power of language in communication. At that time I realized, that I am the most passionate when I can make a difference in peoples lives by helping them out to communicate between each other. I finished my MA and PHD in General Linguistics at USC in 1999.

    J the B: How did you get local Tango dancers, and students of dance to cross the line into public performance?

    MB: When I started dancing tango in 1995, the power of language in communication made even more sense. I was for the first time able to connect to another human being at a total different level, feeling ecstasy without using words.

    Being an Academic and a Professor would not have given me the opportunity of touching the lives of people in the same way. When I teach Tango, I can see how human beings are transformed to the best that they can be. Tango takes them to a journey of interpretations of rejection, inadequacy, isolation; all these feelings are rooted in each individual’s past. Dancing Tango is so rewarding, that most of the people are willing to face those fears, and overcome them to enjoy the dance.

    J the B: In many of the descriptions of the theme of this performance, people are talking about the typical situation at a Milonga (Tango Dance) where the women have to wait for the man to ask them to dance, and of course it’s quite the same in the Ballroom community. How does Urban Tango address this?

    MB: Being a woman without a steady partner in this Tango Community had taught me lots of things. There were periods where I was thinking that there were ‘scarcity of men’, other periods where I thought that ‘men are all losers’, other periods where I thought that ‘the women are the problem’, and it was a very long journey, until I realized that the power of enjoying tango is within myself. When I go to a MILONGA (social event) it is up to me to enjoy it or to be miserable in it. So, in order to have a good time, I consciously either try to meet friends there, or I will try to have a goal (for instance learning by observing dancing), or I would go just to see people. Suddenly everything started to open up.

    When I started teaching I got lots of complaints from women that men are this or that, that they sit and wait forever at the Milonga, and that they do not enjoy tango, and I wanted to do something about it. That is how URBAN TANGO was born. I saw that I have a responsibility as a woman on my own, to allow other women to see that the experience of tango is totally up to them. It doesn’t matter if there are not enough men, or if some women are not nice to each other. It is up to us what we create in our community.

    As a result, we started to see great changes. The men in our show, are very supportive of us, and they understand that they are helping us to express a female point of view. We are very grateful to them, and they are the proof that there are AMAZING men in the tango community, we just need to let them show up like that. We also started creating strong bonds between women, that went through difficult process of healing, but that resulted in a safe community where dancing is enjoyed.

    Urban Tango shows the process that woman goes through when they chose Tango as their way of self-expression. First she goes to a Tango Class and feels the joy of it, she starts practice and to have fun with it, until she goes to a milonga and have a bad experience. That bad experience (for instance, sitting and waiting all night, or being hurt by a man, or falling in love with the wrong man, etc. etc.), does not allow her to enjoy the dance, so her first reaction is to be angry at women. That competition does not go anywhere, and then she starts to feel really sad. By supporting each other, and by allowing herself to experience that pain, very slowly she realizes that the power is in herself. From there on, she starts enjoying tango fully.

    J the B: How did you approach the students and local Tango dancers with the opportunity to perform publicly?

    MB: When I called my students with this opportunity I was surprised, because most of them told me that they would do the project just to work with me. I was blown away. They saw, even more clearly than me that I was aiming for a transformation of an entire community. I made sure that they understood that this project would allow them to see their dream come true, not only to enjoy the ecstasy of tango, but also to be able to share this with the women and men in the audience.

    URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace will again be performed in Venice, California, at the Electric Lodge, in February 2006.

    Makela’s website is: http://www.makelatango.com/

    Tickets for the show can be purchased here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/8979

    The Adventures of Rocky and Silvia

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    By Jeffrey the Barak

    Yes that’s right, I said Silvia not Bullwinkle. These are the names of two machines made by Italian manufacturer Rancilio. The Silvia is the industry standard, consumer espresso and cappuccino maker, and the Rocky is her trusty sidekick, a rough tough burr grinder.

    Both machines are well respected in the espresso fanatic community and the Silvia in particular, raises as much passion as other Italian icons, such as Lamborghini, Vespa, Ferrari, Sophia Loren, Moto Guzzi etc.

    I know all the Italians will be sighing over that last paragraph. Oh here we go again, they lament. But the comparisons are meant in a positive way as all are iconic, uncontested expressions of Italian artistry.

    All coffee heads know about Silvia. They refer to it as “her”. She is “Miss Silvia”. YouTube and Google Video have volumes of footage that people have uploaded, all for the love of Silvia. And there is no shortage of exasperated failed romantic partners for her either. People who could not get the relationship to work and ended up having Silvia leave them.

    The sheer volume of user tips, comments and other writings about Silvia and Rocky is huge. Just Google the names to find more than you can read. Users have even found ways to make it better. Google “cheating Miss Silvia” to find an elaborate ritual to speed up the warm up, or try “Silvia PID” to see how homegrown engineers have taken up where the Italian designers left off.

    Silvia is more than an espresso machine, it’s an institution, a rite of passage and a lifestyle, all in one heavy metal cube.

    My progression to this place where I feel compelled to write about a steel cube has been along a simple road.

    Basically, I like coffee. I like how it smells and tastes, I like discovering newer and higher plateaus of the coffee experience as life progresses.

    In my fifty years I’ve been into instant coffee, drip coffee, vending machine coffee, even coffee with milk and sugar, and as each better experience has come my way, I’ve come to realize how tasteless the previous level was.

    I’ve hung out for hours a day in cafes and owned an array of home coffee making setups. But here I am in the world of Silvia and Rocky. I have improved my techniques to a point where I’m starting to impress myself and I have a large section of my not so large kitchen set up with spotless, gleaming brushed stainless steel monsters at the ready for a session of grinding, tamping, heating, brewing, timing, steaming and of course lots of wiping, washing, cleaning, tidying, refilling, usually all for nothing more than an ounce or two of hot black water with thick brown crema on top.

    Why do all of this? It’s hard to say. Until a few days ago I was pushing one button on a Gaggia super automatic and getting what was arguably an acceptable espresso. But was it? No I don’t think so. There is not a super automatic that can deliver an espresso that makes you go “wow”. It’s a compromise. And is it really a drink with the push of a button? No, not if you take into account the inevitable eventual cleaning of the machine.

    No, the hard work involved in using and maintaining a semi-automatic espresso machine like the legendary Silvia is not wasted and it even becomes part of the ritual and experience to the extent that having a waiter or counter person hand you an espresso, cappuccino or latte in a public place just isn’t the same. That’s like enjoying a Ducati by having someone else ride it for you and watching it drive by.

    You need a heavy tamper, a damp and a dry microfiber towel, a supply of very recently roasted coffee beans, various containers, a knock box, maybe even a cordless vacuum for spilled grounds, a tap water filtration system for goodness sake. You need all kinds of things in fact, to the extent that your Silvia begins to look small in the array. And all for a tiny shot of liquid, or perhaps a silky microfoam topped mixture of espresso and milk with a neat brown rosetta pattern on top.

    And the fact that it is oh so easy to make a truly terrible espresso with the Silvia and Rocky makes it all the more rewarding when you do your homework and pull a great shot.

    Actually, making a decent cappuccino or latte is not that hard as the white stuff hides the shortcomings of the black stuff to a large extent, but when you finally get dialed in and pull an amazing shot of espresso and take that first sip, or pour an artistic latte, the effect of that tiny portion of strange wet food on the tongue is worth all the time, money, trouble, research and practice that went into making the moment happen.

    But we always want more. The Silvia is okay, and the ideal training device, but ultimately, why stop there? Why empty a drip tray when you can have one that drains? Why fill a water reservoir when you can have a machine plumbed in?

    In some ways the disadvantages of going up to a commercial machine make the Silvia a better choice. You can move it! It warms up faster (if you cheat it), and is there a justification for something grander when no one but you is being served? Probably not, but I have to say if there had been another few inches between my counter and my cabinets I would have had the Expobar Lever gleaming in the kitchen instead of my new Silvia. Maybe next time, after I have the entire kitchen remodeled. Now won’t that be an expensive shot of espresso?

    Setup includes:

    * Rancilio Silvia
    * Rancilio Rocky Grinder (Doserless)
    * Stainless frothing pitcher
    * Milk thermometer
    * Reg Barber heavy steel wood handled tamper with Rancilio logo
    * Shot glasses
    * Diver’s watch with a second hand and rotating bezel (to time the shots)
    * Rancilio two-drawer stainless steel base,
    * Knock box
    * Plumbed in water filter under kitchen sink
    * Stack of microfiber towels, for everything!
    * Espresso, cappuccino and latte cups and saucers
    * Large pitcher to refill water reservoir without having to extract it
    * Little brush to clear grounds from rim of the portafilter
    * Ornate chopstick to level the grounds without touching the coffee with finger
    * Large airtight jar to keep some air away from the freshly roasted beans
    * Much more stuff
    * A very understanding wife

    Jeffrey the Barak , loves good espresso, and has been said to obsess over it. He is also the publisher of the-vu.

    Becoming Un-Gorilla – Finding the best razor for body shaving

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    A hairy man’s transformation into a smooth modern man.
    By Jeffrey the Barak

    I was born in 1957, which means I was in my teens to thirties in an era when hairy men were considered normal and even sexy. But these are smooth times, and the social norm for attractiveness no longer includes a built in fur coat.

    The first time I did something about it, I made my chest hair shorter with clippers, and the resulting short sharp curly hair made my life a misery. I repeated the same mistake three times.

    On the third time, whilst pulling my tee-shirt out in agony, I ran for a waxing salon for some relief, and promptly experienced intensely painful chest waxing, then got infected. Folliculitis. More agony, which only cleared up with anti-biotics.

    Then I suffered through the regrowth and stayed hairy again, until one day I realized I was gray and hairy, and I felt too young to be the Old Silverback Gorilla.

    So began my commitment to staying shaved.

    First I tried electric hair clippers, but my short stubble is as thick as cable and I felt like a porcupine. So I tried a rotary (Philips-Norelco) shaver. It worked, for a day or two at a time, but it took a very long time to get the whole body to be hair-free, and the soft skin areas of the body were very sensitive to all that electric hacking.

    So then it was a (Braun) foil shaver. Those are quite good for facial beards, but next to useless on the body, as they pass right over softer longer hairs without cutting them at all.

    So into the shower I ventured and there I remain. Wet shaving a body is much faster and easier than using anything electric.

    My first razor for this almost daily job was the Schick (Wilkinson Sword) Quattro, and I have to say it did a good job. The best thing about a Quattro is it is almost completely impossible to nick the skin with it, no matter where you shave.

    The worst thing about the Quattro is that the big fat heavy handle won’t stay inside a Razorba, which is a long bent plastic handle designed to help you shave your back without help.

    So one day, a year into the era of the Gillette Fusion, I picked up a Gillette Mach 3. This is the most acclaimed razor ever, and still the market leader, despite Gillette’s attempts to evolve further, driven by their expired patent and the threat of generic blades taking over their market.

    Like the Quattro, the Mach 3 makes it very hard for one to draw blood. The cartridge itself keeps the lethal steel from digging in. Back in the Gillette G2/Sensor/Atra twin-blade days, the cartridge did not offer such protection and I remember those old Sensor Excels cut me just as easily as a twin edged safety razor (which I happily use from time to time on my face if I feel like a slow, careful, traditional shave that contributes no plastic to a landfill and requires no store clerk to unlock a security case to release the shoplifter’s favorite pricy booty).

    But the truth is obvious. The single, traditional, economical, environmentally friendly, razor blade does not and can not shave as closely or as safely as a complicated, expensive, plastic and steel, modern cartridge head from Gillette or Schick.

    The Mach 3 shaved my face slightly better then the Quattro, but it shaved my body many times better. I think the blades in the Quattro are too close together for effective body shaving, and the Mach 3 took away absolutely all the hair in one pass, whereas the Quattro always left something behind and got jammed up with stiff curly body hair that stayed between the blades even when rinsed under a large bath faucet.

    For this reason, I won’t even be trying the new Gillette Fusion, because that has five little blades that are so close together, it makes the Mach 3 look like Venetian blinds.

    And I also won’t be buying any vibrating razors, as a steady hand is the goal, and since Gillette is the same company as Duracell, and Schick is the same company as Energizer, it’s obviously just a way to sell batteries and more new razor handles. Gillette already got into legal trouble for false advertising claims regarding what a vibrating razor can actually do.

    Gillette says their Fusion razor was tested on 9,000 men, who compared it to the Mach 3 and the Schick Quattro. They apparently preferred Fusion by a 2-to-1 margin, but that was for beard and moustache hair, not chest and genital hair.

    But wait a minute. I have been overlooking the obvious. The Mach 3 is a facial razor, and I’m shaving my gorilla body. The ladies version is the Gillette Venus. The same three blades, but with more rubber fins to stretch the skin and set into a nice oval chassis, designed to protect those beautiful female legs.

    So time to hit the shower and pop one of my wife’s Gillette Venus cartridges onto my Mach 3 handle. (All Mach 3, Mach 3 Turbo, M3 Power, Venus and Vibrance cartridges etc. fit each other’s handles)

    So now it’s between Mach 3 and Venus. The ultimate anti-Gorilla test. Not a hair shall remain from sideburns to toes. (Yes it does include all those places, I said not a hair).

    My left side, including half a chest, a shoulder, half a back, an arm, a hand, half a tummy, a testicle, half a penis, a hip, one side of an anus, a leg and a foot will be the Venus test bed, and the right side gets the Mach 3 treatment.

    Now anyone who is awake should realize that all of the weak foams and toxic chemical gels that we are supposed to buy in aerosol cans are clearly terrible for shaving. And similarly, the so-called lubricating strips glued to all of these modern cartridge razors are an obvious scam as well.

    So I lather up (a section at a time) with a good shaving brush and some amber glycerin shave soap, and out come the razors.

    As with any shave, to avoid irritation, I do not repeatedly go over any area that I’ve already scraped the lather from. And I do not press the cartridge into the skin. Just a quick light shave once over everywhere in one direction.

    And the winner is: Mach 3

    Why? Well the Venus did seem better than the Mach 3 in concave areas such as armpits, belly button etc. but otherwise, the larger head was unwieldy, the rubber fins did not improve the shave and overall, the Venus side of the chest exhibited more post-shave redness than the Mach 3 side of the chest.

    So guys, if you are a Gorilla like me, and you want to pretend to be human like those male models, you know what to do. Here is a shopping list:

    • One Gillette Mach 3 or Venus razor and some genuine Mach 3 cartridges from a reputable source (fakes are common and are they are quite terrible).
    • A high quality cake of shaving soap.
    • The best shaving brush you can afford, (It will last as long as you live).
    • A shaving mug (the green Marvy rubber mug is safest for slippery hands and tiled floors, but any mug will do).
    • And a Razorba handle for your unreachable back areas. (surprised these never sold in the millions!).

    Then enjoy a smooth life and marvel at how quickly you can get dry after a shower, with only one towel!

    Disclosure: I’m not affiliated with Gillette or Razorba. I’m just a hairy bastard, er, I mean gorilla.

    Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu