and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Some arseburger commented today on various military robotics projects - you know, a lot of aliens and universal soldier type shit.. He's right, they are making amazing progress. He missed a link to Hong Kong's Robotcop III, though, a sweet thang that purports to teach kids how to fight crime (what?). A little too close to Robocop for comfort, if you ask me.. but maybe no one over in the 'Kong has seen Robocop? I dunno. I'm just thinking the whole thing is pretty sketch.

I'm all for technology.. really, I am. I work with computers. Technology is quite literally my livelyhood, so why would I want to see it go? It doesn't mean we should apply it to every single thing we know, though.

Like GPSs.. what the hell? Some things should be left natural - and getting lost and starving to death in the woods is one of them. How can you learn from your mistakes when everytime you make a mistake you just press a little button and get beamed back to your last checkpoint? It's like life is becoming a bad video game. You don't die.. you just restart the level. I got one word for that: Lamo.

If I don't have a very real chance of dying in the woods.. well then why the hell am I going in the woods at all? How visceral is camping if you're communicating with cellphones and spending your whole time hiking staring down at a 2 inch by 2 inch LCD screen with a map on it? How are you ever going to learn anything?

Improved Reliability

Reduced Cost

Extra Efficiency

Fuck all this brainwashing. You need less reliability, crap ass efficiency, and extreme cost. Nothing teaches you how to problem solve better than necessity (it is, afterall, the mother of all invention).. and being between a rock and a hard place spells N E C E S S I T Y like nobody's bidness.

Speaking of necessity, I believe I have a very real necessity to upgrade my motorcyle. It's an extra vehicle that I don't need, it's purely recreational, it's a waste of money.. you really can't get much closer to the basics of necessity than that. Anyhow, Performance carbs, I'm thinking. 41mm Keihin Flatsides that'll give the 'ol Ducati a kick in the pants and improve overall driveability. Used I can probably do it for $600. MmmMMmmm nothing like squandering cash on toys.

Or girls.

Wait. Same difference.

The girl, somehow, is like a boweevil in my brain. Boring away at my skull. You know those old fallen trees you find in the woods (you know, when you're not looking at your GPS) that have, when you peel the bark off, small squirrely little "rivulets" running around on the surface? That's pretty the result of bugs eating away at the fibers.. making little tracks between bark and tree.. that's what this girl is doing to my brain. The worst part is knowing she has no idea as to the severity of her effect on me.

Sonofa

I know neither of the two people who read this site cares a lick about keihin flatside carbs but bare with me here. The other day I was hanging out with a friend and who was talking about his current "project" of trying to enjoy watching Nascar.

"I just don't get it. I've been putting the races on the TV on Sunday's just to see what's up and nothing exciting happens. But I'm convinced I'm missing something because so many people like Nascar.. must be something to it"

This struck me as funny because I started thinking about everything I know about Nascar. I don't know a whole lot and it's not a sport I follow but I have a decent amount of information floating around in my head. Driver names. Rules. etc. It struck me that I have a really good range of information, in general, in my head. Jack of all trades, master of none sort of thing. I guess my point is that if I was reading someone's blog - say some socialite who normally talks about who the puked on at the bar the previous night - and I just happened on a discussion about flatside carbs and I didn't know what the hell they were - I would probably read the discussion and try to learn a little. You never know when it might come in handy.

That being said, consider yourself forewarned that technical mumbo-jumbo follows:

The motorcycle I ride is a 1998 Ducati 900CR. It's a 2-Valved 2-Cylinder - called an L-Twin because of the shape the two cylinders make. They are at a 90degree angle to eachother. You can see pretty animations of various twins here. The 900 denotes it's engine size - 904cc or .9 litres. For reference that is half the displacment of VW's 1.8L turbo that goes in their passats and golf cars..

Anyhow, these engines need gas. Gas can be delivered in two ways - the old way (carburetors) or the new way (fuel injection).

Electronic Fuel injection is controlled digitally by a computer chip based on various information at any given time - such as current RPMs.. all cars in the U.S. now have Fuel Injection - in fact, the last car to have a carb was the Subaru Justy in 1989 or 1990. FI gives far greater control over fuel flow and thus improves emmissions, fuel efficiency, and performance.

Carbs essentially control the flow and delivery of gas to the combustion chamber mechanically, using different sized needles that allow different amounts of gas out depending on the position of the throttle pistons. In general a carb has to account for 4 or 5 situations: Idle, where just enough fuel is delivered to the engine to maintain a low idle and not stall the engine. Normal operation, where just enough fuel is delivered for "cruising" (not accelerating, just maintaining speed). Acceleration, where more fuel is dumped into the engine when you first start accelerating in order to help spin the engine up to higher RPMs quicker. Operation under load when extra fuel is delivered when "under load" (like going up hills). And last but not least, the choke, which provides a bit more fuel at startup to help the engine warm up.

This particular bike is carberated, the last of a dying breed. The problem inherent in the system is that the carbs just aren't as fine-tunable as one would like. The bike coughs and stutters slightly around 3,000 RPMs and it doesn't have as smooth a horsepower curve as you accelerate through the RPMS. Nice big performance Flatside Carbs fix this. Why? Um, it's even more technical and I don't quite follow it myself. I just know it works.