tomo,
Yes, coasting, taking turns at max-G, tailgating trucks, were probably all in play. Still 43mpg with an ecu, belly-pan, water pump and radiator louvres is pretty impressive.

Enjoyed the aero work on the Subaru. Fuel measurement wasn't the best, but he scores well on energy and enthusiasm.

18 months in chokey for baring teeth. Constable Savage again? The NSW Treasurer had better keep away.

Couple of items from Jo Nova this morning. Mamot, model steam engine maker, closing. The fuel tablets they use have been deemed a terrorist threat, though I suspect the bigger problem is the loss of interest in their product. Bit late for them to diversify into smartphones. Anyhow, seems a pity.

Don't know who put this up, or where, but they got it right.

tomo,
Thanks for that link. A fun read. Trying to make an XJ-S fuel-efficient is a task for a loony, but he's my kind of loony. 43mpg is very impressive, but I wonder if that involved some rather antisocial driving.

My investigation of electric water pumps wasn't anything so exciting. A friend asked me to write some microcontroller firmware to control such a pump (and the fan). Interesting task, but it also made me think that one of my cars might benefit from it. When I looked into it, warmup time was going to be much longer. The pump mounts in the bottom radiator hose and has no thermostat or bypass plumbing. Manufacturer says to run without a thermostat. You have to do *some* circulation while cold, and everything goes through the radiator, so warmup is only complete when every last drop of coolant is up to temperature. It would be possible to plumb an external thermostat with bypass into the top hose, and a Y junction into the bottom hose, but it's pretty busy in there and I don't have the enthusiasm of the fellow with the Jag.

Has been fun thinking about it, and I'm looking forward to writing the firmware.

On Swiftian satire: as we've seen of various Monty Python gags and, more recently, Rowan Atkinson's observations, old satire has morphed into modern documentary. Swift's Modest Proposal may come true soon enough too.

I'll be sticking to baddies vs. baddies for the Ukraine conflict. A draw would be the ideal outcome, but a pyrrhic victory for Vlad over Vlod seems more likely; wouldn't upset me.

Listened to Brendan O'Neill's interview with Fiona McAnena on women in the Olympics and all the trans nonsense. I liked her simple formula that "trans" equates to "not": trans-woman == not woman. The rest of the talk was straightforward common sense.

I suppose it was fitting that shortly afterwards my playlist hit ABC Radio's Health Report where they had the once excellent Norman Swan doing a lot of word-mincing justifying not woman participation as women in the Olympics. Brilliant arguments along the lines of "testosterone is no advantage on the balance beam". What a load of woke crap it was!

A comment at Jo Nova's linked to this interview with Renaud Camus. I hope it wasn't a spoken interview, because the vocabulary is pretty unusual (don't know whether that is down to the original French or the translator). I found it worth reading twice -- a light read first time to get the gist, then paying closer attention.

I like his formulation of what the bureaucrats' objective as been: to make the hoi polloi completely interchangeable. As he put it (translated): undifferentiated human matter must be perfectly fluid. Also loved the title of one of Camus's books: The Second Career of Adolf Hitler. I'll take a guess: first as a dictator, now he has a permanent job as a bogeyman.

... where UO2 molecules ions aeroplane ...

Who knows with that judgement... maybe the judge *is* playing a part, but it's in real life. A key underpinning of Rumpole was that British justice was one of the dramatic arts.

With that fellow's ocean sieve, where UO2 molecules aeroplane their way into his clutches, I suppose you'd only need water circulation, not a lifting pump. Shouldn't require all that much energy. I had a recent epiphany along those lines when I was thinking of fitting an electric water pump to one of my cars. The more coolant it pumps out, the more readily coolant arrives at its inlet. Quite an easy job, which explains why the pump only draws around 3A.

One highlight in that interview with Lord King: he had a point about "net zero" that I hadn't heard elsewhere. The UK approach of pushing every company to get to net zero is stupid. It might be a national goal, but that shouldn't be taken down to the micro level. Some companies that could easily get to net negative will simply get to zero and polish their haloes, other companies don't have a chance of reaching zero.

Not that he was keen on net zero. He said the UK would be doing nothing more than setting an example. I think it'd most likely be this sort of example.

If true, the post by "pagliacci the hated" should be a damning indictment of the quality of Judges that have sat in judgement of those white people arrested for saying hurty words and rioting.

tomo,
I believe it would be better titled Summary *by* Policymakers, developed independently of (and probably prior to) the main report.

That judge surely must be fake news. It's really an actor doing a screen-test for an upcoming dystopian movie isn't it? Good enough to bag the role too, I should think.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about potholer54's "takedown" video was the times he mentioned robust science while showing a page of some paper covered with Greek symbols. Straight from the cargo cult.

Paul Homewood's article on BBC climate porkies was good fun. The one on potholes resonates well here. The local council has been making heavy use of "unprecedented" and "climate" in its excuses for the deplorable state of the roads. Obviously it's nothing to do with their repair methods (sprinkle on a bit of cold mix, some desultory tamping, and move on to the next divot — all good until the next shower).

I'd like to think the government's ID drive was bound to fail. It may, but quite a few people so love their smartphones, they're eager for any opportunity to use it as a talisman. In any case, none of the pubs I go to require any ID. Maybe that'll change first.

That uranium mining fellow was very animated, wasn't he! I think he fails Feynman's Razor — if you can't explain it in plain english to an intelligent adult, you don't understand it yourself — but not in the usual way. Most try to bamboozle you with strange vocabulary (e.g. Greek letters, see above), he does it with a squeaky voice and aeroplane imitations. Quite diverting.

.,
Jail for a bad haircut?

I listened to the audio of this interview of Kyle Wilson on Russia and Putin. Wilson is somewhat insufferable, and the interviewer more so, but I'd recommend it all the same. Skip the first 4 minutes of introductory blether. I particularly liked the Russian view of a safe border: the Russian border is only safe if there are Russians on both sides of it. Can't help but apply mathematical induction to that requirement...

Also listened to John Anderson interviewing Mervyn King on the shortcoming of economics. Some overlap with my recent complaints about CPI (overtechnical, and lost track of it's raison d'etre). Not as strongly recommended as the above, but there are worse ways to spend an hour or so.

Jail for this