Mazda has announced the recall of more than 90,000 Mazda 3 sedans and hatchbacks in their home market and in the Chinese market. Vehicles produced between January 2006 and March 2009 may have an oil hose located too close to the radiator shroud: over time, the oil hose can wear through, creating potential leaks.
Vehicles in the North American market are not effected by this recall.
Source: Mazda Recall Issued On 90,000 Compacts in Asia
If you’ve got an Artists Series back on your Palm Pixi, chances are you got it because you liked how it looked (and maybe you liked that Touchstone capability as well). If you’re the type that wants to coordinate your entire phone (wardrobe coordination option, and not necessarily encouraged), Palm has an app for you. The free Artist Series Wallpaper app lets you slap a matching pixel version of what’s on the back of your Pixi. The app comes with one wallpaper for each of the five different Artist Series backs available. So if you feel like getting on with your design on, front and back, we suggest you get on with the downloading. Of course, there’s no reason you can’t go wacky and put one of these wallpapers on if you don’t have that Artist Series back – but that’s just crazy.
Thanks to jpgiv for the heads up!
The military consumes a lot of oil; precisely how much, not even they seem to know. But not only do they buy and consume lots of oil, but they ship it all over the world to whatever theater they need. It isn’t exactly efficient, and the Department of Defense knows it. They’ve been moving towards greener, less oily ideas of getting troops and equipment around, ideas that may one day filter down to the civilian population.
But while the Department of Defense may not know how much oil it uses, it has a good idea of when it will start running short of supplies. A recent report suggests that as soon as 2015 all the surplus oil production could be gone, and production could fall short on the order of 10 million barrels… per day
There are lots of arguments for, and against, peak oil, when it will happen, and just how bad it will be. But as a single entity, the US Military is the top consumer of energy in the world. The military pays as much as $400 a gallon for gas, when you figure in all the shipping, equipment, and personal required to get the fuel where it is destined to go. So when the military is predicting massive shortages just a few years out, we should all tune in and pay attention. (more…)
Get your foodie freak on this weekend in Atlanta. In addition to all the other doings around town, there are two very cool food events to consider:
[JURIST] US Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Glenn Fine and FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni testified Thursday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties regarding governmental abuse of National Security Letters (NSLs). Committee members were angered by the FBI’s use of “exigent letters,” which lack any statutory authority, as a means by which to circumvent proper NSL protocol. Their appearance follows the January release of a DOJ report that documented hundreds of instances of FBI officials employing the tactic to improperly gain access to personal records. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) condemned the practice, saying:
Today’s hearing showed that the FBI broke the law on telephone records privacy and the General Counsel’s Office, headed by Valerie Caproni, sanctioned it and must face consequences. I call upon FBI Director Mueller to take immediate action to punish those who violated the rules, including firing them from the agency. This must include the FBI Office of General Counsel, headed by Valerie Caproni, which the IG testified today had “approved continued use” of exigent letters and “provided legal advice that was inconsistent with” federal law.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expressed similar disappointment for what it called “blatant and systematic abuse,” and pushed for swift reform.Fine previously testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September that the FBI had significantly understated the number of NSL requests from 2003 to 2006. Fine noted that FBI officials had “devoted significant time, energy, and resources to correcting its errors,” but that it was “too early to definitively state whether the FBI’s efforts have eliminated the problems.” The FBI began the practice of allowing supervisors to authorize collection of phone records on the basis of emergency situations shortly after the Patriot Act was passed in October 2001. The collection of telephone records on the basis of non-existent emergencies is a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
“I’m starting to feel that people are saying I’m Lady Gaga and also that Jesse James woman (Michelle McGee). I’m starting to feel insulted, because I don’t want to look like either one of them….” Marilyn Manson, April 2010
Dando continuidade aos posts relacionados às gatas que chamam a atenção em eventos da indústria automobilística, dessa vez vamos mostrar as garotas que estiveram no Salão de Detroit 2010.
Ok, o evento aconteceu no começo do ano, mas relembrar é sempre bom. Afinal, não é só de carros bonitos que bons eventos são feitos, mas também de belas “booth babes”, não é mesmo? Sem mais demoras, confiram a seguir algumas das beldades que estavam na feira.
Imagens das Booth Babes do evento
Via | Carscoop
It seems that in the past few years four door coupes have been all the rage with European manufacturers. Porsche has the 2010 Panamera and Aston Martin is just released the amazingly beautiful 2011 Rapide. Audi is also reportedly working on a new coupe called the A7, which I am sure will be dead sexy. The car that really started this trend though has actually been around since 2004, in the form of the Mercedes Benz CLS. When released the CLS was actually met with mixed reviews from the styling police which is a shame because it really is a beautiful automobile. Its chopped windows and sloping roof line are elements that you either love or hate, there really is no in between.
So now the market is changing and competitors are releasing their own versions of the four door sports car. Not to be outdone though, the boys from Germany have taken their old car back to the drawing board for some major updates for the new 2011 Mercedes Benz CLS63 AMG. Spy shots of the new Benz have already been leaked onto the net and judging from the amount of body cladding shown in the photos, Mercedes really doesn’t want anyone to know what this thing will look like. Power will come from AMG’s twin-turbo 5.5-liter V-8 that puts out 571 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque. That’s a stump puller people. I for one am really looking forward to the final version of this car as I’m not only a fan of the original CLS, but of anything that totes around an AMG moniker.
In 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was walking across Waterloo Bridge in London when he felt a sharp stinging pain in his leg. A passer-by had jabbed him with the tip of an umbrella and, having apologised, the two parted ways. Three days later, Markov was dead. The umbrella had fired a small poisoned pellet into his leg, turning Markov into the most famous victim of one of the world’s deadliest poisons – ricin.
Ricin is a great example to cite to people who think that “natural” equates to “healthy”. It’s a protein that comes from the castor bean, which is easy to grow, used in a wide variety of products, and delivers large amounts of its lethal chemical payload. One milligram can be lethal, and there is no known antidote. All of these qualities make it a potential bioterror weapon, and they have galvanised the quest for an antidote. That quest has just taken a big step forward, for Bahne Stechmann at the Curie Institute has discovered the first small molecule that protects mice against ricin.
Stechmann’s drug, known as Retro-2, not only saves mice from death by ricin, it also defends them against a related class of poisons called Shiga-like toxins. These are produced by disease-causing strains of the gut bacterium Escherichia coli and while less toxic than ricin, they can also be fatal. So Stechmann’s new discovery is a two-for-one defensive deal.
Both ricin and Shiga-like toxins have similar structures. One half of each protein – the A subunit – does the killing. It irreversibly breaks ribosomes, the factories that cells use to produce new proteins. A single ricin protein can knock out 1,500 of these factories every minute and without the ability to create new proteins, our cells perish. But a weapon is useless if it can’t be fired in the right place.
Getting the A subunit into range of the ribosomes is the job of the other half of the protein – the B subunit. It’s a backstage pass that sticks to docking molecules on the surface of our cells and allows the entire protein to be smuggled inside. Once there, it gets shuttled from one structure to another until it reaches the endoplasmic reticulum, where ribosomes live. If you block this chain of transport, you neutralise ricin and Shiga-like toxins; after all, the proteins cannot destroy what they cannot reach. And that’s exactly what Stechmann’s team has managed to do.
Stechmann, working with a large team of French scientists, scoured a library of over 16,000 potential drugs for any candidates that could protect cells from ricin. Modern technology allowed him to simultaneously test all of these chemicals on ricin-treated cells. To see if they worked, Stechmann gave the cells a radioactive amino acid; those that managed to incorporate this gift into new proteins were clearly shrugging off ricin’s ribosome-killing efforts.
The result of this “high-throughput screening” is the beautiful image below. The green band at the bottom is a baseline of death – it represents the no-survivor aftermath when human cells meet ricin. The yellow band at the top consist of control cells that are all still alive – that’s what you’d ideally be aiming for in terms of an antidote. The red dots represent what happens when the cells were treated with each of the 16,000 drugs. The vast majority are hovering at the green level, because most of the chemicals didn’t work. But you can clearly see that at least six of the drugs had a positive effect – these red dots stand out from the crowd, flirting with survival.
Stechmann decided to pursue two of these molecular guardians, Retro-1 and Retro-2 – they had the winning combo of protection against ricin and few side effects of their own. And to top it all off, the compounds worked against Shiga-like toxins too. In laboratory cells, these drugs only partially protected against death by ricin but, surprisingly, Retro-2 actually did much better when it was actually tested in mice. Even when Stechmann used a dose of ricin that would normally kill 90% of mice within three weeks, small doses of Retro-2 managed to save half the animals and larger doses protected all of them.
Neither Retro-1 nor Retro-2 works by actually affecting the toxins themselves; instead, they just stop them from reaching their destination. By acting on the host rather than the invader, they could work against many other threats and it should be harder to evolve resistance against them. For now, it’s not clear how exactly the two drugs prevent ricin and Shiga-like toxins from reaching their killing grounds. This is the big question that needs to be answered; doing so will allow scientists to develop Retro-2 into an even more effective anti-ricin drug.
Reference: Cell http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2010.01.043
More on new drugs:
Forty-five percent of Americans think their taxes are “about right.” according to a new Gallup Poll. An even higher number 62% think that their level of income tax is “fair” according to a New York Times poll, also released today. The difference between 45% and 62% is large, and indicative of why policy makers shouldn’t try to divine marginal tax rates from polling data, exclusively.
It’s also interesting to see how falling negativity toward the federal income tax aligns with falling effective income tax rates. Compare the following two graphs, via Economix and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
1.
2.
Total tax rates (if you include income, capital gains, payroll,
corporate, excise) have declined for every income quintile, and
especially the top percentiles, in the last 30 years. It’s no wonder more Americans are feeling OK about their federal income tax burden. Forty-seven percent of US households now pay zero or (more likely) negative income tax. Same goes for fifty-five percent of elderly households, 54% of households with children, and 38% of married couples filing jointly.
There’s good reason to like your tax burden today, and good reason to believe you won’t have it this good for very long. The total federal tax burden on the country has hovered around 22% for the last 30 years. This year, it’s closer to 18%. President Obama’s 2012 tax plan would raise it to around 20%. Historically, that is low. Too low, in fact, if federal spending approaches a quarter of GDP in 2020.
I love turbochargers. While superchargers hold a special place in my heart, the efficiency and sheer amount of power a well-made turbocharger system can produce really tickles my fancy. That is one of the reasons I love Ford’s new line of EcoBoost turbocharged engines.
The Blue Oval announced on Tuesday that it would be adding the EcoBoost engine to four more vehicles in the near future, including the Edge, F-150, and yet-to-be-unveiled 2011 Explorer. It was also announced today that next generation EcoBoost engines would have an improved Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system to boost fuel efficiency.
Filed under: Motorsports, Videos, Motorcycle
Determination is been defined as to do or achieve something with a firmness of purpose. We can’t think of a more fitting description of Australian daredevil freestyle motocrosser Robbie Maddison’s high flying motorcycle stunts over the last few years.
This determination was fully exemplified last Thursday in Greece, as Maddo and his custom-built Honda CR 500 two-stroke (no, they are not dead yet) became the first man and motorcycle pair to cross the Corinth Canal… that is, in flight. Covering the gap required navigating a run that, to put it mildly, was less than Ideal. Maddison threaded his way by a pool, across a soccer field and past a chicken coop while traveling on surfaces ranging from concrete and wood to grass and eventually carpet on his way to just under 80 miles per hour before taking flight.
However, soaring 279 feet through the air was not Maddison’s longest leap. If you remember New Years Eve 2007, during the Red Bull “New Years, No Limits” series, Robbie flew 322 feet to set the Guinness Wold Record for distance jumped on a motorcycle. That being said, the Corinth Canal jump was more of a technical achievement that placed Maddison 311 feet in the air mid-flight.
Athletes like Maddison keep pushing the limits ever further with companies like Red Bull footing the bill to go bigger and badder year after year. We can’t help but wonder if those limits will be found, or if progression of equipment and stunts can go on at their current frenetic rate. Click past the break to watch the video and to hear what Maddison had to say about this latest stunt. Thanks for the tip Brandon!
[Source: ESPN]
Continue reading Video: Pushing the limits with Robbie Maddison, 311 feet above the Corinth Canal
Video: Pushing the limits with Robbie Maddison, 311 feet above the Corinth Canal originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Because technology is moving at the speed of light these days, the IT History Society has announced the availability of the first searchable international database of historical information technology. Personally I can’t even remember all the cell phones and laptops I have had over the last 13 years – let alone some of the biggest technological feats from the last 50 years. The database today consists of 233 international information technology historical and archival collections encompassing over 2.4 million documents that uses over 195 gigabytes of storage. The database in the near term is expected to nearly double over the next 5 years. With a partnership with Archive-IT of the Internet Archive, all of the 233 sites will be crawled and text indexed every 30 days for full keyword search ability. Like all societies they do need donations and or you can become a member, in any case I’m just glad that this information is being archived somewhere.
I love that the type in the box below is crooked.
According to this inflation calculator, $65 is about $1590 in 2009. So basically it’s an iMac.
The Light of Typewriting – Hartford Typewriters
The Acme of Perfection
Hartford Typewriters made with either single or double keyboard. Price $65.00. Catalogue on application.
HARTFORD TYPEWRITER CO., 478 Capitol Ave.. Hartford, Conn., U.S.A
Money Rides in Model Cars
For young people with imagination, here is an opportunity to design and build model autos. Awards wait for the best.
EACH year, $65,000 in cash and scholarships is awarded to youthful builders of model automobiles, by the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild.
The awards are made on the basis of two categories, design and craftsmanship. The contestant must design his own model, although he is supplied with instructions and worksheets in a kit supplied by the Guild to all interested persons.
If the contestant can’t draw, the design may be worked up. from clay. Since clay doesn’t stand up under shipping, however, the final model must be rendered in wood or plaster from the clay mock-up.
Models can be made from a variety of available woods such as balsa, cypress, white pine, basswood or soft mahogany, either in solid or laminated blocks. For those with experience in constructing model airplanes, automobiles can be built by making a framework and covering it with balsa sheets.
One of the most important aspects is that of finishing. The surface of the model must be perfectly prepared, as imperfections can’t be hidden by painting. First, wood and plaster models must have several coats of sealer, allowing a few days between applications. Final finish is applied, again sanding between coats. The last coat of finish is buffed, waxed and polished to a high gloss. All model cars are judged by an established point system based on a breakdown of craftsmanship and design. Designs are • evaluated on the basis of originality, artistic merit and practicability. Craftsmanship is judged on fidelity to scale, workmanship, painting and finishing. ?
According to Wolfram Alpha U.S. sugar consumption is currently about 152.8 lbs a year.
Everybody has a Sweet Tooth!
AND a GOOD THING it is, too. For sugar is an energy food, essential in every good daily diet. Normally, we Americans consume from fourteen to fifteen billion pound- of sugar yearly—about a hundred pounds per person—a fact that helps to make US an energetic and healthy people.
Heretofore, most sugar was produced and sold in crystalline form. This is the most convenient form for household use, but large industrial users, such as soft drink hot tiers, ice cream manufacturers, confectioners, canners, bakers and others must use it in liquid form. And the job of converting large quantities of crystalline sugar back into a liquid has always been expensive and troublesome.Now, however, a new refining technique developed by American Cyanamid Company promises to make clean, ready-to-use liquid sugar available to all who need it. This new process, based on the use of Cyanamid’s IONAC* Ion Exchange Resins, enable- small refineries and large users to produce liquid sugar economically, for the first time in history. Already small plants of this type have been set up in the Midwest, and more are under construction. Eventually the U. S. may have a whole network of these local liquid sugar plants! Here is one of the most important advances in hundreds of years of sugar refining —a development that will help to cut the cost and improve the production of many products containing sugar.
Here is another Cyanamid development that is contributing to “molding the future through chemistry.”
American Cyanamid company 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, NEW YORK 20, N. Y.
MOLDING THE FUTURE THROUGH CHEMISTRY
According to a Pentagon announcement, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has received and accepted the recommendations of a panel he put together after the November murders at Ft. Hood by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. In brief, they are:
(1) Expand the pilot program to fully deploy eGuardian as the DoD-wide force protection threat reporting system to handle suspicious incident activities. The eGuardian system, which is FBI-owned and maintained, will safeguard civil liberties, while enabling information sharing among Federal, State, local, and tribal law enforcement partners, including interagency fusion centers.
(2) Complete the deployment of the Law Enforcement Defense Data Exchange system (D-DEx) allowing all DoD law enforcement agencies to share criminal investigation as well as other law enforcement data as appropriate. D-DEx will be a consolidated database to enable organizations across the Department to query, retrieve, and post criminal investigation and law enforcement data in a single repository.
(3) Establish the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs as the DoD lead for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force program.
(4) Strengthen DoD’s antiterrorism training program by incorporating lessons learned from the Fort Hood incident, Department of Homeland Security best practices on workplace violence, and civilian law enforcement active shooter awareness training.
This won’t satisfy the likes of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who wanted Muslim soldiers singled out as extremist risk threats. “I believe in racial and ethnic profiling,” Inhofe confessed during a January hearing about the Fort Hood investigation.
OUR EXCITING NEW FIRE ENGINES!
Amazing super pumpers, aerial ladders, and telescoping “Snorkles” are aiding the fight against fire!
By Ross R. Olney
THE whining scream of a fire engine is one of the most chilling sounds on earth. Who hasn’t thrilled to the siren sound, looked up in dread as the engine raced past, and then perhaps started running to where black clouds of smoke billow up into the air, shot through with tongues of scarlet flame?
The sight and sounds of a fire crew going into combat never fail to draw and hold the spectator. Will the fire roar out of control? Will the firemen be able to smother the flames before too much damage is done? Are there humans trapped behind that cloud of smoke? Fires are one of the great dramas of modern life, played out by men in helmets and rubber coats, and we are usually the nervous, nail-biting audience.
In the majority of cases we know how this drama will end: the firemen will win their fight, the blaze will be brought under control before it engulfs a whole community. But sometimes the outcome is in doubt for hours, days, and—in the case of forest fires—for weeks. But now, with the help of new, exciting fire engines and firefighting equipment, firemen are going into the frontlines with a better than ever chance of defeating their enemy quickly and efficiently. And thanks particularly to new super pumpers and aerial ladder trucks, potential fire victims will be saved and more firemen will be spared. Here’s what can be done today: —Firemen can rise above the tallest fires on new platforms and either fight or direct the battle from overhead.
—They can shoot long extension ladders to upper stories of buildings to rescue trapped victims or deliver water.
—They can, with tremendous water pressure, actually blast entry holes in the sides of concrete buildings.
—Soon, with double 40-ft. monster trucks, they will fight fires 70 stories up, and they will do this from the ground! Still, they will have enough pressure to blast a hole in the high wall to get to the fire.
Can you recognize these new heavy fire fighters? Chances are you have one of them on the fire department in your own town.
Two designations cover most heavy fire trucks. The first, and presently most popular, is the “cab forward” model. As the term implies, the driver and crew are positioned forward with the engine nearer the mid-section of the unit. This model is preferred by many departments because of its visibility and stability. Remember, these trucks must go fast through close quarters.
Still preferred by many departments, particularly in smaller towns, is the older “engine forward” truck. Again as the name indicates, the crew is seated to the rear of the engine, with the power plant located forward under a long hood. An advantage here is the straightening of all drive shafts to pumps, power take-offs, etc.
Five major manufacturers build most of the huge fire trucks in use in the United States today.
*Crown Coach Corp., Los Angeles, Calif.
One of the biggest names in fire apparatus design and manufacture is Crown and the Crown “Firecoach.” This new Firecoach is available in a complete line of custom models, depending on the needs of the city, with optional cab designs, compartmentation and, a full range of pumping capacities from 500 to 2000 gallons per minute.
Crown fire trucks are built on a special Z-type frame for strength and endurance. They also feature an unusual removable front corner panel on their cab-forward models for ease of repair and inspection of electrical junctions, clutch, brake, steering gear and other parts above and below the front floor board.
In addition to varied capacity pumpers (with the Stang “Intelligiant” Deluge Gun), Crown manufactures aerial platform units using the well know Pittman “Snorkel.”
You can recognize Crown equipment as it thunders past by the vertically mounted twin headlights, the oversize red horizontal directional signals just beneath the windshield, and the distinctive Crown emblem. In the front, dead center, is a huge built-in chrome siren.
*Peter Pirsch & Sons Co., Kenosha, Wisc.
Aerial ladder trucks, the most dramatic and recognizable at a fire, are a specialty of Pirsch. In fact, these new units are known as “America’s Finest Aerial Ladder Trucks” by many firemen. Pirsch also manufactures a unit with the Pittman “Snorkel” aerial platform.
The Pirsch Intermediate Aerial Ladder Truck is a compact unit built with 65-ft., 75-ft., or 85-ft. Pirsch aluminum alloy extendible ladders. A companion unit, the Pirsch Quintuple Intermediate Aerial Ladder Truck carries the same hydraulically operated ladders, plus hose compartments for 2-1/2-in. fire hose, 100-gallon booster tank and equipment, and a two-stage series-parallel fire pump (500 to 1500 gpm). Booster pumps are also available with this unit. Easy to see why it’s called “a complete fire department on wheels.”
The Pirsch Junior Aerial Ladder is a smaller unit built especially for efficient operation in smaller towns and in residential areas of cities. Controlled electrically by one-man push buttons, the ladders on this unit extend to 50 and 55 ft.
That monster you see roaring off to a fire could very well be the Pirsch Senior Aerial Ladder Truck. This tractor-trailer unit can deliver water or rescue victims after extending its ladder to a remarkable 100 ft. from a special full hydraulic hoisting and operating control stand.
When travelling, the “Senior” has a tiller man at the rear. He steers the huge trailer through traffic and around tight turns.
Another center mounted, built-in siren (just below a Pirsch emblem) will identify this equipment. Units from all manufacturers will, of course, have a flashing or rotating red light atop the cab or windshield.
*Seagrave Fire Apparatus Division, Columbus, Ohio.
Offering one of the largest selections of new fire equipment is Seagrave, a name well known for fire trucks. They use not only their own 300-hp V-12 engine, but numerous 6- and 8-cylinder engines and diesels built by other manufacturers. Seagrave also builds most of their own chassis, with a solid Z-type frame. Amidships, and low in the frame to lower the center of gravity, is Seagrave’s famed “Heart of Gold” pump, the only solid bronze unit in the industry.
Engine forward and cab forward pumpers, chemical and foam units, ladder and aerial ladder trucks and a 90-ft. aerial platform unit all bear the Seagrave emblem for 1965. Their new tractor-trailer aerial ladder truck has the only completely enclosed tiller seat in the country.
A special new unit by Seagrave is the “Vigilante,” a standard pumping engine which is also an unlimited capacity foam unit. Perfect for fighting fires in petroleum plants, highway accidents, tank trucks and railroad cars and airplane crashes, a Vigilante truck has just gone on duty with NASA at the Manned Spacecraft Center.
Seagrave units have a center mounted siren just above a huge chromed hose connection. The name Seagrave also appears front and side. Another distinctive marking, a giant bell, is on the right front corner of the cab.
*American LaFrance, Elmira, N. Y.
Brand new at this famed fire equipment company is a towering water platform unit called the “Aero Chief.” Only recently put into production, this unit will extend to heights of 70, 80, or 90 feet, and will carry water through a 6-in. line to the firefighter on the platform. How much water? A big 2000 gpm can be pumped from the high 60×42-in. bucket.
The Aero-Chief has a nesting boom so that in its retracted position the overall height, unlike other such units, is only one inch over 9 feet. This was designed to enable the unit to pass under low bridges and tree limbs on the way to a fire.
How do you recognize this unit? By name, of course, and by the bell on the right front bumper. Also by the obvious 6-in. water pipe running up the right side of the boom to the basket, visible when the boom is folded for travelling or extended.
*Mack Trucks, Montvale, N. J.
The future of fire fighting equipment is embodied in new units from Mack. First, and presently in use, is the Mack Aerial Platform. This boom assembly consists of four sections, three of which telescope. On top of the boom is a 15-sq. ft. platform which is self-leveling and which can rise to 75 feet and pump 1000 gpm. Unique is a 60,000 BTU heater which blows hot air up through the inside of the boom to prevent ice accumulation in freezing weather. The boom is mounted on a standard Mack fire fighting truck.
Two men operate the Mack boom, the Pittman “Snorkel,” and other standard aerial platforms. The man on the platform controls, with one hand, the motion of the boom and bucket, while a man at ground level can over-ride the platform control in case of emergency.
And the future? Presently under construction at the Mack plant is the world’s most powerful fire fighting apparatus. Ordered by the fire department of New York City, these two tremendous units (called the Super Pumper and the Super Hose Tender) will cost a total of $875,000.
Each of these units will be 40 ft. long, 11 ft. high, 8 ft. wide. The pumper will be powered by a 2400-hp British Napier-Deltic diesel engine, an engine normally used to drive a 100-ton locomotive. Ready for fire fighting duty in 1965, the pumper will move 4400 gpm (half a tank car full every minute) 70 stories into the air . . . and will still have pressure enough to blast a hole through the side of the building! (See cover of this issue.) In fact, great care will be taken to clear firemen and onlookers from the area where the pumper is being used since the pressure developed by the powerful engine will be enough to tear a man apart!
When called, the super pumper and hose tender will proceed together until they reach an area several blocks from the fire. There, the pumper will stop and hook up to a major water supply hydrant, or a pond or river. The hose tender will move quickly on, laying hose as it goes. By the time the tender reaches the scene of action, firemen can drop off the now-empty hose carrying trailer, hook up to the water gun atop the tractor, and go to work.
The tender will carry 8000 ft. of 4-1/2-in. hose.
Water pumped horizontally from this amazingly powerful fire fighting unit will carry over 1200 ft. By connecting additional super pumpers and tenders together, there is no limit to the distance that can be covered between water source and fire.
But there will always be one problem. Fire! However, with these new, super-efficient fire fighting units, today’s firemen are defeating their enemy more easily.
You may or may not have noticed the series of posts below that went out in rapid succession.
They are slightly updated versions of the ‘way too early looks’ I wrote prior to spring practice.
Don’t worry, I am not being lazy, I just needed to transfer them over to the new site so that I can link to them in the “Football Analysis” section at the top of the site.
Like I mentioned, they are slightly updated, but I plan on doing a much more comprehensive second analysis once the spring game wraps up and the long and lonely summer begins.
Another update for each position will be posted during fall camp and then one more once the season starts (a total of 4 at each position).
Each new post will be linked to in the “Football Analysis” section at the top of the home page so that by the time the season rolls around, the progression of the team from spring practice to the fall to the season will be well documented… that’s the plan at least.
Remember that I wrote the original posts below prior to spring practice, and prior to the release of the official spring depth chart.
I left my original depth chart projections the same for fun, I was right sometimes and wrong most of the time.
Also, some of my depth chart projections didn’t transfer over, but that is alright now that the actual depth chart has been released.
That is all.
