I do think the honest, statesman-like politicans are getting a bum rap this year. The media seem to think that if they must criticize one dunderhead, they must do the same with all other politicians. There are some good ones out there. This is the most annoying political year ever.
Was Datsun ever a real word? Wasn't it just a made up name like Sony? I think Nissan figured they were far enough away form WWII's negative associations to use its real company name.
Subaru has never reverted to its real name.
As fr VCRs, aren't they Very Corrupt Republicans? And VD is no longer a venereal disease, it's Venal Democrats.
A fledgling Japanese automobile company asked a veteran German auto maker to suggest a name for its new car. "We need a name no later than tomorrow," said the Japanese official. "Dat soon?" replied the surprised German.
That's not how I first heard it, but it's close enough.
The company that created the DAT (or DAT Motor Vehicle), which is where the name "Datsun" came from, was Kwaishinsha Jidosha Kojo, founded in 1911 by M. Hashimoto. His dream was to make cars that were suited to Japan and, if possible, export them. In 1914, when he completed work on a small 2-cylinder 10-horsepower car, he borrowed the initial letters of the surnames of his three investors (K. Den, R. Aoyama, and M. Takeuchi) and gave the name "DAT" to his new car.
Later Kwaishinsha merged with the Jitsuyo Jidosha Co., Ltd. to form the Dat Jidosha Seizo Co. It went on to produce military vehicles, but in 1931 the company developed a new passenger car (500cc, 10ps), which embodied the DAT spirit. It was, however, more compact than the original DAT, so it was called DATSON - in the sense of "Son of DAT". In Japanese, though, son is the word for "loss" so instead it was changed to "SUN", which has brighter associations, when the car went on sale in March 193
Wikipedia has a longer version of the story, in case you're interested.
Cinerama. Not the modern update but the old three-screen version
I was in Watertown, NY, in the 50s and the local theater was showing It's A Mad, Mad World. I had missed it here, so I was glad to see it there. Imagine my displeasure to find they only had one screen, so the left and right images were missing, thus depriving viewers of much of the action.
Soda fountains
Rabbit ears and outside antennas (not to be confused with satellite dishes).
Again, I'm a luddite. I have an actual outside TV antenna. I don't have to pay some cable or satellite company a hundred bucks a month to broadcast forty-seven minutes of commercials per hour to me; I get them at their actual value.
We don't have an antenna anymore, but sometimes I would like to go back to the simpler times. If you do have a phone, wireless, cable problem, you must plan in at least 8 hours of talking with the cable company, finding what's wrong, reporting to them a series of numbers on the inner backside of some tiny box, taking a toothpick to reset something for them (only to have it break and then you're really stuck), etc., etc. It used to be they'd come out and give you a new phone, which I believe we rented from them. Done. Not anymore.
We use four main methods to distribute TV pictures in the UK.
1. Cable - I used this at my old house. 2. Satellite - I use this in my new place; there is no cable in this street yet. 3. Aerials (Americans call them antennae/antennas) - lots of people use this; the advantage is that the set-top box is a one-off expense, with no ongoing rental. Often the TV itself has the decoder incorporated in it these days. The main disadvantage is that the signal can be poor. 4. WiFi - suppliers like NetFlix and Amazon use this.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
We let the cattle fencing around the garden do double duty as a clothesline. It also works as a trellis for beans, kiwis, tomatoes, etc. Probably not up to snuff in the city, where one might run afoul of neighborhood associations.
Arnie mentioned aerials. In bygone times aerial was the common term in the USA. I wonder why we switched?
I don't have enough washing to use a clothesline; I have an indoor one, and I'll also hang drying clothes around the place after a wash. If I look outside my back door, though, I see five or six of my neighbours' lines; usually at least one is in use on any day.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If I look outside my back door, though, I see five or six of my neighbours' lines; usually at least one is in use on any day.
You don't have laundromats or home dryers?
Drive-through film kiosks
Drive-through car washes. The owner of one that closed several years ago said in one week he had eight complaints of massive physical damage to client cars, including one that supposedly occurred on a day the wash was closed for maintenance.
There are drive-through car washes here. Now the boom boxes are the whole **^&%$# car! Idiots drive down the street tearing the pavement from the street with their motorized noise generators.
Something that's disappearing rapidly in "righteous" Indiana is Planned Parenthood offices.
Mutts. It seems that dogs we used to call mongrels are now Labradoodles, or Goldiespaniels. This is probably so pet stores can charge more for tainted goods.
I think there is even a ChihuaStiff, the mating of a Chihuahua and a Mastiff. If you wonder how that happened, I'm told the other dogs put him up to it.
Yes to both (although many laundromats have closed because so many have their own machine). Lots of people prefer to dry their clothes "naturally", though.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I overheard two women, one with her entire arm covered with a hideous rendering. She said it had cost almost five thousand dollars, over a period of time. I suppose when she dies they'll amputate the limb, frame it and hang it in a wall.
I stumbled across an article about products successful companies tried out but which failed spectacularly. Among the items offered to the public: Bic pantyhose Harley -Davidson perfume. Love that carbon dioxide aroma. Anheuser Busch beer shampoo the Ralph Lauren tuxedo Clairol Touch of Yogurt shampoo. Apparently some people tried to eat it. Apple Computer casual clothes Gilbert Atomic Lab for kids who enjoy playing with actual radioactive isotopes Soda was a big non-seller, such as Coke Blak, a coffee-flavored concoction useful as an emetic. Coke also made OK soda, a non-starter And Life-Saver also invested in a short-lived beverage. And who can forget Crystal Pepsi?
But the worst idea was
Bacon in a toaster. Can you imagine the fat accunmulation at the bottom? The only thing more repulsive is one politica candidate.
So - I tried to find a little more about why the majority of cars in Europe has manual transmission, and this is what this site says. Does that sound right?
Editorial note: The article says "majority have," but shouldn't it be "majority has"?
Forget "majority"; "cars have", IMO, is correct. I don't know the reasn wy there are more stickshifts in Europe but expense might factor in. If learning to drive a manual is a requirement for licensing, then buying an automatic seems llogical. Also there is the idea a manual provides greater fuel economy in an area where prices are higher than in the US. I never asked when buying a car but I believe the difference in price between the two shifters is negligible, making th choice easier.
I've owned many Eurpoean cars, most of which had manual transmissions. Were I single I'd still have a manual transmission. It gives one's left foot something to do.
Fuel economy used to be very disparate between the two, but not so nowadays. Automatics are very efficient - perhaps just a few percent worse, if at all, than a skillfully driven manual.
Price is likely still a factor, since a manual transmission might have thirty moving parts as opposed to an automatic's many dozen mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical components.
Manuals are preferred by teenage boys because one can rev the engine, dump the clutch, and blast away spinning off several thousand miles worth of tire rubber in a screaming blue testosterone-fueled haze
The article said the price was something like $1,000 difference. I suppose that's significant, though the hassle would make it not worth it to me. I owned a shift car in SF - what a pain with all those hills!
I answered the earlier question but my answer seems to have gone missing. Let me do it again.
The main reason is that if you learn to drive in an automatic over here (and all over Europe) you cannot legally drive a manual vehicle without taking and passing your test again in a manual vehicle. So everybody learns in manual cars which allows you to drive either. And having learned in a manual there seems to be no reason to switch to an automatic and lose all those skills through lack of use.
And speaking just for myself, but it's probably common, I feel far more in control in a manual vehicle as the gear changes are in my hands and can be done when I think they should be done not when the car thinks they should be done. I suspect that most people here feel the same way.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
It's also just occurred to me that having learned in a manual there would be at least some period of adjustment as you relearned NOT to keep trying to change gear. Reluctance to do that might also be a factor.
Out of curiosity if you learn and take your driving test in an automatic in the US does your license allow you to drive manual vehicles?
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Out of curiosity if you learn and take your driving test in an automatic in the US does your license allow you to drive manual vehicles?
I'm not sure but I've never heard of anyone being disqualified for taking the test with an automatic, or is there anything on the license mentoning a prohibition.
Out of curiosity if you learn and take your driving test in an automatic in the US does your license allow you to drive manual vehicles?
I'm not sure but I've never heard of anyone being disqualified for taking the test with an automatic, or is there anything on the license mentoning a prohibition.
There certainly is on ours. The old paper license had a list of which categories of vehicles you could drive. If you passed in an automatic you are only permitted to drive automatics.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
And over here in China, as far as I can tell, the only thing that is required is a temperament that consists in equal parts of suicidal and homicidal tendencies.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Drive-ins: Remember the days when either you went or you took your kids in a car (often wearing their jammies) and headed for the drive-in or better yet, you went with your sweetie and saw little of the movie showing?
Flip open cell phones: I still have one but they are disappearing.
Poetry sections in book stores. I couldn't believe it when I went to a book store at a mall and asked where their poetry section was (I was looking for some Rumi as a gift) and was told they had no poetry section. What?
Road atlases: I loved using road atlases when I went on trips and looking for alternative routes for fun or to avoid traffic. Now, I don't drive and everyone uses GPS or Siri. Everything changes.
Rental video stores and departments: Do you remember when every corner practically had a video rental place and every grocery store/supermarket, too? The only thing I see now is Redbox with DVD's and games.
Public telephones: Who needs them when almost everyone carries a cell phone?
Card catalogs at libraries: Remember the old way we looked up books before computers?
Punctuation: I use it less and less and find as I do, I forget it more and more. Sorry, about that!
Notes on other comments. I loved Coke Blac and use to drink it at IUPUI. I didn't like Coke or coffee incidentally. Radar drank grape Nehi. Sounds good, doesn't it? Crystal Pepsi has been back on the shelf here and recently, Walmart is carrying Diet Pepsi with aspartame again. I consider tattoos also as self-mutilation and generally don't like them, but I recently saw a woman and hers were quite lovely on the whole, somewhat subdued and delicate for as extensive as it was. she said her husband did it.
Garter belts. Or can you still get them in naughty shops?
Suspenders. Pantographs. Drafting tables. Farms that let the livestock run free. Circus fat ladies. Sambo's restaurants. A&W restaurants. Howard Johnson's roadside centers. My thirty inch waist.
Bob asked this way up there, and Proof said he didn't think it mattered - but I can say for sure: You can drive whether you learned on a manual transmission or an automatic one. I don't understand why it would make a difference anyway. You'd just learn to do a manual transmission car, like you learn the difference between 2-wheel or 4-wheel drive. It's not THAT hard to drive a manual shift. Having driven one before, I'd catch on in 2 minutes, I am sure. Many of my friends who rent cars in Europe have never driven a manual before and learn it on the spot. Not that hard, just annoying. I also hated that the clutch goes out fairly often. My automatic transmission was good on my Honda Accord for 200,000 miles. Not that shabby.
For women, slips are a thing of the past. We used to have full slips and half slips and even what I used to call "sticky out slips."
How soon a clutch fails on a manual transmission depends on how and where it's driven. Teenagers and incompetent drivers can wreck one in a day; careful and/or long-distance drivers may never wear one out.
Chemistry sets. Crystal radio sets. Radio Shack. Tandy Leather Company. US-made shoes. UK-owned automobile companies. Radio mystery programs. Commercial-free public television.
Gilbert had to cease production after kids began combining substances to make highly dangerous compounds. I guess that possibility never occurred to them.
They also pulled their Atomic Energy Lab, which featured radioactive minerals. I don't think there were any atomic reactions or nuclear meltdowns (although several families vanished inti thin -- but noticably heated -- thin air).
