Someone stole our Steve Pierce sign the other day. That really sucks. You may not agree with others politically, but stealing or vandalizing signs always sucks. There are many people with whom I disagree, but I will always defend their right to believe what they want. This sort of thing seems to happen regularly in elections and always sucks. I doubt if any of my readers did this, but if you did I ask you to stop and not do this in the future.
We posted the 10th edition of the MewzikCast tonight. Max has a new mike and it sounds much better. Go have a listen.
The US government has decreed that starting later this year all new passports issued shall be equipped with an RFID chip. The premise is that the information in the passport would be electronically stored on the RFID chip, thus making it more difficult to create bogus passports. There is some major flaws with this idea. An RFID chip can be read without actually making contact with it. That’s becasue the RF stands for radio frequency. Most of these chips are passive so they don’t require power, so they aren’t transmitting. But a reader with enough power can detect the data on the chip from a distance. So someone sitting in an airport with a reader could sniff the data from the passport of every traveler walking past them and they would never know it. This might not be such a problem if the data on the chips was at least encrypted. However, the standard for passport RFID chips doesn’t require encryption. That means everything stored on the chip is in plain text.
This week at the Black Hat computer security conference a German security consultant Lukas Grunwald, is demonstrating how an RFID passport can be cloned in a matter of minutes. He will show how an RFID passport can be read, the data extracted and copied to a new blank passport with relatively little effort or cost. The data can also be copied to a smart card like that used by many companies for security. So not only is the RFID passport not helpful it may actually be counter-productive to security. How much do you want to bet a friend of Shrub has a big investment in the RFID business? I would say it is a safe bet that friends of Bush will profit handsomely from this whole e-passport fiasco, while the taxpayers will pay handsomely.
The New York Times has satellite photos of Beirut on July 12 before the Israeli bombing started and on July 31. The pictures speak enough of the destruction.
So has anyone seen Who Wants to be a Super-Hero? This has got to be one of the lamest attempts at television programming ever. This piece of crud is on the SciFi Channel. The basic format is similar to other competitive reality shows like Top Chef or Project Runway. The difference is those shows take people trying to make it in a real profession, like cooking or fashion design. They are presented with challenges in their field, and each episode one is booted from the group. In this new show, the competitors are given challenges and one is booted each week. However each competitor on this show has created a Super-Hero character for themselves. They are given “superhero” challenges and the guy in charge is the legendary Stan Lee.
Stan Lee was the guiding light of Marvel Comics for decades and co-created characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Now he is seen giving the challenges to these wanna-be super heroes. These people look completely ridiculous in their costumes. I can’t even begin to imagine what would make someone so desperate to be on TV that they would take part in this travesty. I watched part of it with Max last week and not only did it look low budget and cheesy but it was boring and stupid. Will they please stop!
For the last couple of years, one of the bigger aftermarket trends in cars has been putting on over-sized wheels and tires.You’ve seen them, big suv’s with 20, 22, 24 inch and larger rims. Later people began putting them on cars too. Chrysler 300s and Dodge Magnums are prime candidates for the so-called “Dub” treatment. It was almost always newer cars, at least until recently. In the past year I have been seeing more and more old cars with ridiculous wheels. If you look around I’m sure you will see some of these things. Most newer vehicles have been designed to accommodate larger wheels like 16-18″ rims anyway, so the bigger wheels can usually fit into the wheels with relatively little modification. They usually do restrict the steering angle which increases the turning radius, but this seems to be a price people are willing to pay. However older cars were typically designed for only a 14-15″ wheel. This means that a 24″ wheel won’t fit in the wheel well, no how, no way. The cars I’m talking about hear are typically mid-70s to early 80s American cars especially mid-size gm coupes like Monte Carlos and Grand Prixs or sedans like the Chevy Caprice. So that means that in order to install such a large wheel on such a car the body must be raised up to provide sufficient clearance. So that means the car will need new springs and shocks to jack it up. Then the owner can mount 22’+ diameter rims and tires on this thing. If you have never shopped for such wheels and tires, keep in mind that a set of 4 wheels and tires of this size is going to cost at least a couple of thousand dollars.
So you mount a set of wheels and tires that are worth more than the car, and seriously degrade the handling and ride of the car at the same time. These big wheels and tires are much heavier than the stock sized wheels, usually 40-60 lbs more per wheel. The way a vehicle suspension works, the worst place to add weight is at the wheels. This adds what is known as unsprung mass. This adds inertia for to parts that are supposed to move up and down over bumps and potholes. And given the nature of most Michigan roads I would not want to risk really expensive wheels and tires on one big pothole. Also the increased ride height would result in some pretty scary cornering behavior. It’s just my opinion (and of course that is what is blog is ultimately about anyway) but I think these cars just look stupid, and the functionality is very definitely degraded.
I think not! One of the problems with nuclear power plants, is that they require some type medium to cool the reactor and keep the nuclear reaction under control. On the majority of reactors they use water flowing around the reactor to manage the temperature. Unfortunately water can only absorb a limited amount of heat energy. The amount of heat that can be absorbed is a function of the temperature difference between the water and the item to be cooled. The higher temperature, the less heat it can absorb at a given flow rate. Now that the heat transfer lesson is complete, here comes the problem. Nuclear plants are typically constructed near bodies of water like rivers and lakes. They draw in cold water, pass it around the reactor and eject the hot water.
Nuclear power has been proposed as a way to produce power without creating green house gases. The problem this week as Europe bakes in a heat wave similar to what we are seeing here, is that the temperature of rivers has risen so much that nuclear plants sitting on their banks can’t be cooled enough to operate. So as the demand for power for air conditioning reaches a peak, many of the power plants are shutting down because they can’t cool down enough to operate safely. So what do you do now? We need to use less energy!!
The voting for the second annual podcast awards is going on right now through August 11. Two podcasters from Michigan have been nominated for the awards which will be given out in September at the Podcast Expo in California. My friend Matt who does Digital Detroit Radio has been nominated in the Best Mobile Podcast category and Jasper of the Plan Nine Rock show has been nominated in the Best Podsafe Music Podcast category. I would really appreciate it if you could take a minute and swing by the site at PodcastAwards.com
and throw a vote each to Matt and Jasper. After you vote you need to enter a name and e-mail at the bottom of the form and then click on the confirmation message that will appear in your inbox to register the vote. You can vote once per day, it only takes a couple of minutes and it would be great if both Michigan podcasters could win their categories. Thanks a lot