I’m generally with you on your love for timing chains vs belts, but it should be pointed out that when timing belts came out, they were an improvement over the timing chains of old. Those had a bad tendancy of jumping teeth on their sprockets, resulting in cetain calamities. So yes, at one time a timing belt was the…

Dear Kinja people. I tried to type this on my mobile, but all the words came out backwords. as in I type in WHILE and the screen was showing ELIHW. What is that all about?

While a coasting light seems pretty useless, it might be time to rethink the brake light. Currently it is activated by the brake pedal because originally it was the only practical way of doing things. Today, I would propose this.

Oh no, someone inconvinienced Doug! they need to be chopped up into little bitty pieces and burried alive!

Right, agree on all counts. In the market the Alpha is (most likely) going for, a hard to pronounce name is a benefit. Probably not much of a benefit, and if we’re wrong it’s not much of a hinderence either. Names just don’t matter that much. Reliability, economy, luxury, performance, cost, financing terms, prestige,…

Does anyone know what kind of endurance those small helicopter have? How many hours can they stay in the air? And for bonus points, how many hours can they stay in the air while carrying around a bambi bucket?

So imagine this, you come across your ideal car. Of course it is a brown wagon miata with a manual transmission and flat plane v12 engine pushing 650hp. It keeps your coffee warm, your soda cold, and does it’s best to convince your girl to give you a bj everytime you look sad. It’s $28k, brand new, with all the…

Yes. All 3 of us, typing from a bunker.

Dear Tom McParland: You’ve been hanging out with the marketing folks for too long. Whatever problems Alfa faces, the model name isn’t very high up on the list. If a car can offer performance and longevity at a desired price, it is likely to do well, even if it’s named the KA979 (just don’t name it imajerk or something…

Yes, but in 20 years cars are likely to be safer than they are now

Since the problem we are trying to solve is a speed differential, i.e. cars moving at different speeds on the same road, any sort of graduated plates/liscences seem like the wrong solution.

If you look at the cause of accidents nation wide, you’ll notice that something like 99% of them are due to “driver error” on the part of one, or both of the drivers. No matter how many dangerous cars you’ve heard of, mechanical failure is very rarely the cause of any accident (unless you listen to the guys who just…

Why with increased funding, they could ignore and misanylize 98% of complaints!

“The designers describe an aircraft capable of transonic flight, with a cruise speed of Mach .80 and a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. This would maximize flight efficiency and minimize specific fuel consumption while voiding the need for a vertical tail.”

Your seat belts are designed to handle the deceleration induced by hitting a brick wall, they will be just fine at the loads presented by this strange contraption. Whatever problems there are, this is not one of them.

The exact details of “how” are unimportant, because the sight will be quiet spectacular.

“have variable-pitch (i.e., the pilot has the ability to direct the fan’s thrust by rotating the fans around their long axis)“

I concede defeat. Although I admit that the security theater still does not appear to serve a useful purpose, your superior grammar skills have proved once and for all that I am not qualified to comment on the subject. Let’s break for lunch. Would you like some glue? I hear it’s delicious.

The question isn’t whether it yielded improvement, it’s whether the improvement was worth it’s direct and indirect costs. Which is to say, for the same money (both spent directly on TSA and lost productivity of the people we harrassed) was the TSA the best improvement possible?

That’s silly. Of course there are security concerns outside of 9/11, and there has been aviation security concerns about as long as there has been aviation. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m willing to bet the wright flyer was kept in a barn with a padlock on it.