Tata nano, Xquic, Paleo art

Tata nano 25kW 600kg
623 cc rear engine and rear wheel drive, and has a fuel economy of 4.55 L/100 km US$2300? falling as DEpression cuts material costs? Will it sell?

This is an approach to a rational vehicle. Still somewhat heavy. The worst feature is its top speed: 106kph ... this is inhumanely fast, and will still leave society anti-convivial
strong torque, meaning high acceleration, which will leave city streets suicidally dangerous.
So 25kW is too powerful for a human society.
I dont know why Fordism/GM settled for 1.5-2 Tons and 100-200kW and 120kph. 1960s... the images were often of larger...
Somehow the level of deaths at around 200/Million was deemed OK. You can build a car to go 170kph but that seems to be just above some "Natural" level of controllability, cost,consumption and casualties.
Thats "Natural" in quotes - actually a level determined by massive commercials, indeed an entire culture predicated on the car.
Recently we have seen wider roads, crush zones, seat belts, better brakes, air bags, and ABS, ETC etc which have brought the death rate below 100, which is now lower than other forms of suicide.
The last gasp of GM was to attempt to up the "Natural" limit to 3 Tons. This seems to have killed the company, and indeed possibly the entire Auto-Industrialised civilization.
So maybe we have found a gross upper limit to the "Natural".
I know that when I suggest 30kph to typical Western "drivers" they immediately scoff, a sort of rapid cough, a mixture of indignation and perhaps embarrassment. The attraction to 100kph is deep in the "drivers" psyche. Didnt "driver" start out as Yul Brynner driving slaves?

I suggest that something like an electric golf cart is more like the "Natural" size. These are commonly used by rich people to get around their estates, old people to get around gated retirement villages, and indeed by golfers to get around their toxic "fairways" of chemical induced faux Nature.



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Car ads still commonly feature a solo car in a Natural landscape. Sometimes it is a SUV actually driving down a stream-bed.
New Zealand has an odd population distribution. Mostly urban, scarcely a village to be seen, but exports are largely farm products, (after tourism, that is pre-2009 depression)
so 4wds, pickups and sheep-drenching chemicals are seen in TV ads.
Sneaking SUVs onto the eyeballs of urbanites may however have seen its last days.

NZ needs smart systems to get containers on and off trucks. Minimise truck use. Its well established that damage to road surface varies with the fourth power of axle weight. So essentially trucks do ALL the destruction of road surfaces.
One problem with container crane enthusiasm is that NZ way over-invested in wharf-side container cranes, so many ports have huge cranes idle. Need to model the rail-road interchange well.

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Xquic

This is the story of a maiden, the daughter of a lord named Cuchumaquic.
A maiden, then, daughter of a lord heard this story. The name of the father was Cuchumaquic and that of the maiden was Xquic. When she heard the story of the fruit of the tree which her father told, she was amazed to hear it.
"Why can I not go to see this tree which they tell about?" the girl exclaimed. "Surely the fruit of which I hear tell must be very good." Finally she went alone and arrived at the foot of the tree which was planted in Pucbal-Chah.
"Ah! " she exclaimed. "What fruit is this which this tree bears? Is it not wonderful to see how it is covered with fruit? Must I die, shall I be lost, if I pick one of this fruit?" said the maiden.
Then the skull which was among the branches of the tree spoke up and said: "What is it you wish? Those round objects which cover the branches of the trees are nothing but skulls." So spoke the head of Hun-Hunahpú turning to the maiden. "Do you, perchance, want them?" it added.
"Yes, I want them," the maiden answered.
"Very well," said the skull. "Stretch your right hand up
"Very well," said the maiden, and with her right hand reached toward the skull.
In that instant the skull let a few drops of spittle fall directly into the maiden's palm. She looked quickly and intently at the palm of her hand, but the spittle of the skull was not there.
"In my saliva and spittle I have given you my descendants," said the voice in the tree. "Now my head has nothing on it any more, it is nothing but a skull without flesh. So are the heads of the great princes, the flesh is all which gives them a handsome appearance

mayavase
river


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Paleo art
jconway
flickr
luisrey
skeletaldrawing
search4dinosaurs
oceansofkansas

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