Reading Si Graybeard's post.
We live in an age of wonders.
My late 1968 birthdate saved me. I was over two months premature.
The only way to save a baby who came out that early was to put them in an oxygen tent just a few months before the new procedures used on me were invented.
An ex-girlfriend of mine is blind from that oxygen tent and she's barely a year older.
My mother in law has a messed up leg from polio. That contributed to her fall last year and a shattered knee and shoulder we're still scheduling surgeries to fix.
That we can schedule surgeries to fix her shoulder and knee are part of this age of wonders.
100 years ago, if you were a woman it depended on where you lived whether you got to vote.
200 years ago, if you were a woman, it was unlikely you could own real property.
50 years ago a 436 horsepower car could be purchased. They still exist and we would not call them "driveable" today. Their brakes are very weak because the cam required with the displacement needed adds up to little or no vacuum to help the pedal. They use carburetors to mix the fuel with the air and get atrocious mileage. If you're foolish enough to run the air condition in temperatures that warrant using air conditioning when the traffic is stop and go, you'll overheat the engine. With depressing regularity you had to adjust the points on the mechanical distributor or your mechanical advance would stop working correctly.
Even if all this is working as designed, the way carbs mix the air and fuel caused the oil to be washed off the side of the cylinder walls and if an engine lived to see 50,000 miles it was a miracle.
Today, 436 horses runs in Florida with the AC at full blast, gets 20 miles per gallon with stop and go traffic, doesn't overheat and doesn't even need tuned for over 200k miles! You will have to replace the spark plugs at 100k or so...
That fuel wash-down thing I mentioned? That meant the piston rings needed to be looser in the bores, so there was a lot more blow-by from the power stroke and you needed to change the oil every 3,000 miles if driving in town, and 5,000 if doing nothing but highway miles.
Using full synthetic oils means you can go up to 15,000 miles between changes.
I like this age of wonder. I won't go back even to when I was born!
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Cars... Cars tell us so much.
ReplyDelete100 years ago, tires lasted in the hundreds to low thousands of miles.
50 years ago, tires lasted in the 10's of thousands of miles.
Today? If you're not a jerk, you can get up to 100 thousand miles or more (not really recommended, but you can.)
Engines? You used to have to swap out engines because they'd fail. Sure, you could work on them easier, but they'd fail easier. 45 years ago, Vega owners knew they'd get 30-50k max miles before their engines melted on them. Today? The body will rot around a still working engine, as long as you make sure the oil is topped off and the wiring still works.
As to health...
I said it today over at SIGs blog. Clean, safe water. One of the greatest achievements of modern society.
Just look at the great killers of all times. DDC. Dysentery, Diphtheria, Cholera. By themselves, they were responsible for so many deaths. Inoculated against them? You vastly improve your chance of dieing of old age issues.
Join the Services? First inoculations are for.. DDC. Going to a foreign post, either as a servicemember or as a dependent? First inoculations are for... DDC.
There's a great movie from 1940, "Dr. Erlich's Magic Bullet," about finding the cure for Dysentary. Kids these days don't understand.
I used to beat one Michele Evermore over the head about my making a larger positive contribution to society by being a draftsman for two water treatment equipment manufacturers than anything she'd done as a senate staffer or union lobbyist.
DeleteI stand behind that even though I haven't worked in water treatment for over 19 years while she has kept working for lobbying orgs.
Funny that. Yeah, as a staffer or lobbyist she's probably actually impeded the progress of civilization.
DeleteJust being a paper-pusher at a water plant is a greater contribution to society than most political jobs.
Water plant.. The local city officials wanted to put a homeless shelter next to one of the primary water treatment plants. Inside that giant circle that's around any map of a water plant. You know, the one that if you are inside of during a chlorine leak, you are dead. Admittedly, would have handled the homeless problem, but not in a good way.
Heh. Just remembered an old memory on how much 'better' past times were...
I gamed with a guy, back kin the early 80's, who so thought he would be better off in the Middle Ages. Let's see... 'Wiccan.' Asthmatic. Bad eyes. One leg injured in childbirth. Other injured in riding (motorcycle) accident.
I argued that if he managed to make it to be a practicing 'Wiccan' that that right there would have removed him from the cycle of life. But he wouldn't have made it, due to asthma, if the leg injury in childbirth didn't kill him. But, but, but...he would have been a lord and shite, amiright? And, yes, he was a big schmuck.
One of our gaming friends was doing the "imagine what what you'd be" in the Emberverse. FuzzyGeff shat in his punch-bowl with his reply of, "Dead."
DeleteFuzzyGeff's asthma would have left him dead untreated with the tech from that era.
The staffer/lobbyist in question is a way far hard core leftist. So by my estimation hasn't just impeded civilization, but actively worked to F us all. I'm not saying all people like that are bad people, just at least highly misguided. Often well meaning but either naive or deluded by socialist thinking. FWIW, I've been going through several sets of tires a year for as long as I've been driving. What is this mythical tires that can last 100k miles??? The Vega is a bad example since it was just an overly ambitious and unfortunately bad design. There were plenty of other engines made by GM in that era which would routinely last 100k+ miles, even given the oil of that time. The same engines with modern oil would probably last quite a bit longer, even though what Angus says about tolerances and the unburnt gas issues were definitely issues in those days. The Vega was plagued by an aluminum block with no steel sleeves and a piston with no rings. And then the bimetallic issues of a cast iron head. Combine that with the antifreeze of those days not being the best with aluminum, and it is no wonder they had problems. The same engines once refitted with steel sleeves and pistons with rings held up a lot better, but it was too little too late. And the Vega got renamed the Monza (with new front sheet metal) and got the "Iron Duke" and sometimes a V6 or even the (also not one of GM's better ideas) 4.3L V8.
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