You knew that Porsche 911s used to be coded 901, right?  Long before the iconic shape, style, handling, and race pedigree made the 911 a house hold name.  The 901s had quite a few VW 'Bug' and 356 features, such as gauges, thin (4.5 in.) wheels, lack of fender flaring, and rear view mirror mounted to the roof, among other small identifiers.

Well only a 'handful' of 901s were produced (some say that they were all pre-production, due to the model number designation dispute...all actual production models had the 911 designation), and the Porsche museum in Stuttgart didn't have one.   However, that is no longer the case, thanks to a series of fortunate events.

After a three year restoration by the museum, this legit 'barn find' is now returned to all its glory for everyone to see.

Some great pics and a short video in the link here

From this:

​To this:

See this to the left?  These ideas, along with all of the rest of the issues the world faces, should keep any one man busy for years.  There is no reason that the president of the United States should have time (or waste time) commenting on issues surrounding entertainment issues.  The Federal Government is supposed to exist to fight the wars, guard the countries borders, and keep us safe from foreign and domestic terror.  Doing anything other than that is a waste of time, taxes, and is a slap in the face to the millions of hard working men and women that struggle to pay the rent while working full time.  You think they care if some neanderthal that makes millions a year is happy or not?

Get with it Trump.  If you don't like what some mis-guided youths are doing, keep it to your self.  We all have an opinion,  The NFL is a private business and they can handle it, and will.

Get to lowering our taxes and reign in spending.  That's what matters.

Thanks

Once you get past all of these recent distractions about things, idea, people, and events that took place a few hundred years ago, quite a few things that affect the present time begin to stand out.   Things that have a direct impact on your day to day life, and take money out of your pocket, or worse.

As I'm sure most have seen or heard about by now, there are people in the streets arguing, fighting, and killing each other over long dead ideals.  This is what the mass media and Federal and Local governments want you to do.  These protests will solve nothing (the ideals have already been given up by most decades ago.....(things like slavery, naziism, segregation, etc)  These are all distractions, and an alarming number of people are falling for it.

But while bored and ignorant kids (age doesn't matter, there are plenty of 40-50 year olds with poorly developed reasoning skills...also known as kids) rally around some statue they are offended by this week, actual innocent people are being killed by known criminal invaders and the money you made at work today is being taken from you and used to support said criminals and their offspring.

Let's take this deadbeat scum bag for example.....Alejandro Ramirez-Jaramillo.....I thought about not typing his name here, he doesn't deserve to have a name, but knowing his name will allow you to further research.  He entered into this county illegally, and did he try to make this country a better place for all of us?  No, he took advantage of our overwhelming generosity and the Feds ignoring his presence, and then got drunk and drove, ran a stop sign, and killed Robin and Barbara Shellhammer, of Oregon, Ohio, and their daughter Whitney Meinke.    As we have seen, this country has enough problems without illegal aliens coming here and causing more problems.  Just think, if the people that we elected had done their jobs and enforced the law, three native born Americans, who worked and paid taxes, would still be alive.  The deceased could have easily been your mother or father, or you. It can't get much worse, but it does a little....we are now in charge of footing the bill for this piece of trash's prison bill for the next 21 years.    Hope you worked extra hard today, and hope a drunk criminal doesn't' run a stop sign on your way home.

Or this waste of space (and his baby momma), Yamir Cruz .  The title of the video and news articles try and imply that this 'man' was just here in the States minding his own business when the Feds came and knocked his door down and deported him.  You know, tug on the heart strings....THINK OF THE KIDS!  What a deliberately misleading title.  The video puts a slant on the blame...the government, the welfare system, the immigration system, anyone but the real problem.  Mr. Cruz snuck into the USA illegally, had four + one unwed children with a meth user, then they both wasted tax payer dollars by getting the cops called on them about domestic abuse.  Three times.  Finally, someone came to their senses and deported the man.  Problem solved?  Nope.  The deadbeat meth head mom doesn't want the kids.  Guess who now has to pay the bill to take care of them?  You should look in the mirror for that answer.  Who are we kidding....the mom, dad, and kids were already getting welfare assistance.  He then goes on to blame the system that legally took his children away 'because he didn't have papers'....but why didn't he bring his children back to Mexico with him, get a job and support them?  How is any of this yours or mine problem?  

The issue arises from the 'anchor baby' statute of the 14th amendment.  Like most of the Constitution and Bill or Rights, it was well intended in the beginning, but has been taken advantage of far too often.  Just because you are born in the United States, to foreign parents, should not automatically (or very easily) affirm your status as a citizen of the United States.  The spits in the face of the people that work, study, and move legally through the immigration system.

​Rep. G.K Butterfield of N.C. has advocated for illegals to not be deported under the Trump presidency. (in a pathetic and transparent effort to pander for votes), while seemingly forgetting that his boy Obama deported millions of illegal aliens.   I wonder if he will try and comfort the Shellhammer family?  He should focus on the people that got him elected and American citizens and work to make their lives better, not hold rallies for criminals.  As far as I'm concerned, he and his kind have blood on their hands.  At the very least, he should open his home to all the illegals that want to call N.C. home, he can pay to support them, as to not burden his constituents.  He, and others, have seem to confused 'immigration' with 'illegal' immigration, and are attacking anyone who speaks out against the illegal portion.  We are all the children of immigrants, no sane person is arguing that.

Yes, the immigration system is flawed, slow, and confusing, but it works, many people become US citizens every day.  There is no excuse for living in the United States illegally, and even worse, being a burden on the tax paying citizens.

We have control over this.  We just have to be louder than the distractions.

EDIT:  A bit more reading on the subject can be found here: 
Note the brain twisting response from NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio responding to a question from Jake Tapper in a recent interview concerning whether or not drunk driving is a legitimate reason to start the deportation process, 

TAPPER: But is grand larceny or drunk driving a very minor offense?
DE BLASIO: Drunk driving that does not lead to any other negative outcome, I could define as that.

Do we have to wait until someone is killed before anything is taken seriously?  

Most young men grew up wanting to fly, or at least go fast, in some fashion.  Astronaut, fighter pilot, racecar driver.  This was before their brains developed enough to understand that many people do it for the fame and/or women.  That doesn't matter.  Speed and pushing the limits is intoxicating, and to some, addictive, regardless of age.

Well Brian Shul is obviously one of these boys that grew up wanting to go fast.

He was a Vietnam fighter pilot that was shot down, badly burned, rescued, and went on to become one of the very few that got to pilot the world's fastest jet air craft, the SR-71 Blackbird.

The technology and brainpower that got the SR-71 in the air (in just 18 months, in the 1960s, mind you) is almost incomprehensible today, in the age of cost and time overruns, untested systems that have to be reworked, and billions of dollars wasted.

Brian now travels as a motivational guest speaker, and he has a lot to talk about, and show you.  He is also the author of 'Sled Driver', the most comprehensive photo record of this then Top Secret air craft and program.    Let him fill you in on the details.

Enjoy.

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Thanks to Grassroots Motorsports (a print and online magazine for cool and unique cars), we get to go on a rare tour of a Mazda museum of sorts.  This hallowed ground is not normally open to the public, and is also a working garage, where a lucky soul gets to maintain some of the rolling pieces of history for public events.   From the first show Miatas from 1989 (red, white and blue examples....that's right), a rotary powered mini-pickup, one off concepts, to LeMans monsters, there is something for everyone.  Some are in new condition, and some are straight from a barn find, but you can tell that the host of the tour, himself a Mazda engineer and racer, care deeply about each and every specimen.

Enjoy, and please visit Grassroots Motorsports for future 'inside baseball' information.

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  Mr. Julius Howell was born in 1847, and did us the favor of sticking around long enough to get his voice recorded.  He was 101 years old at the time of the recording, and seems to remember events from the Civil War as though they were yesterday.  

From seeing General Lee riding through the woods, getting attacked (and shot) by advancing Union troops, and waking up one morning to see the flag at half mast, and finding out that President Lincoln had been killed the previous night.  

What an amazing 15 minutes from this (former) living time capsule.  It's a shame that more veterans weren't tracked down and had their memories recorded so we could get a better understanding of the day to day life of someone in the late 1800s, and how the Civil War really affected those involved.  Regardless, this man's unique accent and speaking style gives us a rare glimpse of how the famous Generals and Leaders of the time, be it Lee, Jefferson, or Monroe,  may have sounded while conversing about battle tactics under a full moon and enjoying  a warm glass of rum or whiskey and a fine southern cigarette.  

A full day of this would not be enough.

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VCR, short for Video Cassette Recorder.  A device that put Blockbuster on the map.

A device that is ever so slowly receding from our vocabulary and out of our minds eye.  Could you even work one today?

They have their roots all they way back to the 1950s, and actually were able to produce HD quality images at the time of their demise when DVDs and HD televisions were beginning to become the new thing,

As you will see in this well thought out video, VCRs are quite complicated, and evolved through a number of iterations and updates thoughout their life.  This video does a very good job of explaining all of the technical bits without causing your eyes to glaze over.

And yes, be kind, please rewind.

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I'm guessing that is the predicament this guy found himself in.  There are hundreds of different styles of drills, grinders, sanders, cutters out there, but all use either compressed air or you have to plug them in.  Sure, there are battery powered tools, but they lack the punch this guy (man) wanted.

So with no air and no electricity, what do you do?   You strap a nitromethane engine to it, duh.

This video, by johnnyq90, takes us down the fascinating path of not only using the aforementioned nitromethane die grinder, but shows the steps in the creation of the little monster.  A lathe is his main too of choice, and he even shows us how the first few iterations failed.   Not all things happen by magic and on the first try like the TV and internet wants you to believe.   He (johnnyq90) has another, slightly longer, vid showing him strapping a nitromethane engine to a drill.  I haven't watched that one yet....so I will now.

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Hero.  A term that is used far too often for people that are no way deserving of the title.  This is not the case of Quentin C. Aanenson, a World War 2 fighter pilot and front line ground troop.  A tried and true leader of men, through conditions and perils that hardly anyone alive today can imagine.  A great that stands out from the 'Greatest Generation'.

He wanted to share his story, and I'm glad he did.   He wrote, produced, and narrated a film about his time fighting for the Allies.  This film was first shown in 1993, widely shown in 1994 on PBS, and I'm sad to say that I just learned of it.  Better late than never, so they say.

DVDs were available up until a few years ago, but we have not been able to track one down.  So here is the film, in 2 parts, graciously hosted by who we assume to be a 100% true and proud American.

Enjoy.  And never forget what was done for us.

PART 1


PART 2

We constantly hear about new car features and safety upgrades, about how those new features are supposed to help us avoid crashes and make the car safer when involved in a crash.  Some people strictly buy cars based on their safety features and crash test scores, so manufacturers put millions of dollars and thousands of engineering hours into making their cars just a bit more safe than the competition.  But what about larger vehicles that we share the road wtih?  Fire trucks, ambulances, 18 wheelers, etc.  Emergency vehicles are extra susceptible to crashes, as they often don't stop for red lights or stop signs when on the way to an emergency or to the hospital.  
Ambulances are an interesting study.  They are usually transporting a sick or injured individual along with EMTs performing critical care while in transit, and often, the ambulance itself is involved in a collision.  These EMTs are not always seated and belted in order to perform CPR or to bandage wounds, so they are at risk of becoming a projectile during a collision.

These sobering pictures (taken from http://breaking911.com/two-emts-dead-after-ambulance-crash-on-southern-state-parkway-in-ny/) from about a year ago show an ambulance that slammed head on into a stone and concrete wall.  The cab of the 1 ton van is almost completely flattened.    

Unfortunately, the driver of the ambulance and the patient being transported died on impact, but amazingly an EMT riding the in the back survived.   How in the world you say?  

Well, emergency vehicle manufacturers are taking vehicle integrity quite seriously. 

Check out this video from AEV emergency Vehicles.  They are building basically a highly engineered roll cage to attach to the van body.  The video also outlines some sobering facts if you have ever had to take a ride in teh back of an ambulance.  AEV claims to well exceed Federal regulations, and backs it up with a real world crash test.  Pretty cool to see a vehicle other than a sedan involved in a crash test:

Nothing is 100% safe, but its good to know that at least someone is taking he time and effort to build a quality product, which could mean the difference between life and death, when the situation is already critical.