Birth Year II — The British Saloons

Last week we looked at the sports cars that were buzzing around the city streets and country roads during 1954.  Now we’ll be featuring the saloon cars of that era. First, let’s look at some British cars that take my fancy for various reasons (it’s not  a comprehensive list):

Bentley Continental R Fastback

Rolls Royce Silver Dawn

Alvis TC 21/100

Daimler Conquest Series II

Sunbeam Talbot 90

Jensen 541S

But those are luxury  cars.  The commoners (hoi polloi) drove cars that were far more modest and prosaic:

Rover P4-110

Wolseley 4/44

Austin A40 Cambridge

Hillman Minx Mk VII

And if you were the lowest of the polloi, you drove things like this:

Morris Minor Series II (my Mum had one)

Austin A30

Other than the Bentley or the Jensen, I wouldn’t be caught dead in any of them.  That said, my grandfather drove an Austin A40 (in the early 1960s), my Mum drove a Morris Minor, and my buddy’s mother used to drive us to primary school in an Austin A30…

One of the downsides of being a British colony in the 1950s.

Next week, the Europeans.

Not Much Wrong

Apparently, a list of things a wife should follow has caused all sorts of trouble on FecesBook, with womyns going all crazy and outraged etc etc etc.

Speaking personally, I can’t find much wrong with it.  The advice is old-fashioned, to be sure, but I suspect that if you asked any man what he felt about the reverse  of the advice — e.g., how do you feel when your wife screams at you (#1) or belittles you in public (#2)?  And yes, I know that a lot of the advice could apply equally to men.  That’s not the topic under discussion, here.

Ladies?

Read more

Can’t See The Point

On some list of new carry handguns, I see this entry:

Now, I will admit to being Old & Slow-Witted, but as I see it, the only reason to choose the .380 Weenie is to have lotsa boolets to pump into someone — e.g. using a magazine holding 12+ rounds, or at least two 6-round magazines so that he gets the point, so to speak.

Shooting a marginal self-defense cartridge in a slow-to-reload six-shot revolver seems… well, silly.

And I like Charter Arms revolvers, by the way:  I carried a .44 Spec Bulldog (loaded with Winchester Silvertips) for years.  But this makes no sense to me at all.

Healing Powers

…because nothing says “Government Cares About You” more than a new tax:

Supermarkets are being urged to introduce a new 1p charge to use self-service machines as part of a plan to ‘heal divisions’ blamed on Brexit.
The proposal comes from a cross-party Parliamentary panel on social integration (APPG) which claims £30million could be raised by the scheme to help fund community projects to bring together people from different generations.
But retailers say it would penalise shoppers and effectively be a new tax to use the supermarket.

Read the whole thing to understand what’s going on here.

And do not think for a moment that this couldn’t happen Over Here, because if there’s one thing that’s common to all  governments it’s that when their money runs short, there is no limit to their creativity when it comes to generating new revenue streams.  Even something stupid like a soda tax.

Animals

And people ask me why I never go out without carrying a gun.  Here’s a little fun and games for you:

A mob of eight to 10 males wielding hammers descended upon bystanders at the East Bank Light Rail station on Friday night injuring several.

Just so everyone’s clear on this:  all ten* of the “males” were Somalis.  And it happened in Minneapolis, where carrying concealed handguns is not common.

Curious that this doesn’t seem to happen much in areas where a lot of people do  carry guns, e.g. in my neighborhood.

Wow.  Looks like Minnesota’s policy of allowing thousands of Muslim “migrants” from Africa to settle there is working out just as planned, huh?


*Ten?  Looks like I need to start loading the 1911 with these bad boys.  Good thing I have one or two on hand.

Glueball Wormening Warning #3,572

Apparently everyone who lives within fifty miles of a beach is soon going to be drowned because of rising sea levels caused by SUVs, the Koch brothers and plastic straws, etc.  At best, yer house is going to float away.

The oceans could swell nearly seven feet by the end of the century – destroying the homes of almost 200 million people, according to new research.
It would wipe out over a million square miles of farming and other food producing lands – having ‘profound consequences for humanity.’
This is over twice as much as previous ‘doomsday’ predictions – suggesting the world really is facing a global warming ‘apocalypse.’
The shock finding is based on a technique called structured expert judgment (SEJ) that pooled the knowledge of 22 climate change specialists.

…none of whom have any kind of agenda or may derive government funding to further their “research”, of course.  [/sarc]

As for “structured expert judgement”:  can anyone think of a better euphemism for average guesswork  than this one?

And here’s where the fun begins.  Apparently, SMOD is now a glacier:

Global sea levels could rise as much as 10ft (3 metres) if the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica collapses.
Sea level rises threaten cities from Shanghai to London, to low-lying swathes of Florida or Bangladesh, and to entire nations such as the Maldives.
In the UK, for instance, a rise of 6.7ft (2 metres) or more may cause areas such as Hull, Peterborough, Portsmouth and parts of east London and the Thames Estuary at risk of becoming submerged.
The collapse of the glacier, which could begin with decades, could also submerge major cities such as New York and Sydney.

So, SUVs etc. are going to cause the Thwaites Glacier to melt away and drown us all?  Before we all start to panic, exchange the old F-150 for a Prius and head for the Appalachians, let’s acknowledge that said glacier is melting — just not because of anything we’re doing.  According to the Oracle Watts:

The Thwaites Glacier has been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks as other groups of researchers found the glacier is on the way to collapse, but more data and computer modeling are needed to determine when the collapse will begin in earnest and at what rate the sea level will increase as it proceeds. The new observations by [University of Texas Institute of Geophysics] will greatly inform these ice sheet modeling efforts.
Using radar techniques to map how water flows under ice sheets, UTIG researchers were able to estimate ice melting rates and thus identify significant sources of geothermal heat under Thwaites Glacier. They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.
The geothermal heat contributed significantly to melting of the underside of the glacier, and it might be a key factor in allowing the ice sheet to slide, affecting the ice sheet’s stability and its contribution to future sea level rise. [my emphasis]
The cause of the variable distribution of heat beneath the glacier is thought to be the movement of magma and associated volcanic activity arising from the rifting of the Earth’s crust beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Put simply, for Men Of Simple Brain such as myself:  the Thwaites Glacier is melting, but there’s sweet fuck all anyone can do about it.  Unless swapping the F-150 for a Prius will prevent tectonic plate shift, that is.  (I’m going to shut up now before I give these climate loons any ideas.)

Frankly, any natural event which drowns all of NYFC, Lawn Guyland and Joizee City can’t be all  bad…