Bouler added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...

I most appreciate the complements you extend to me on my knowledge
of cars and other things. However, there is likely far LESS here
than meets the eye, meaning that while I can speak reasonably
intelligently about all cars, not just Chrysler, I cannot speak to
specifics of even cars designed during my tenure at Chrysler. The
reason I can at least speak to most anything vehicular regardless
of company or national origin is that the basics of the vehicle
product development process from design (styling) to engineering to
testing to tooling to manufacturing and assembly is pretty much
universal throughout the world. What separates the better car
companies from the 2nd and 3rd tier crowd is how well they APPLY
basic principles and how much proprietary knowledge they can
accumulate and effectively implement to increase features, fuel
economy, safety, etc. while at the same time increasing quality,
reliability, and durability (those are 3 different things, ask if
interested) at the lowest possible cost.

I think carfactories can build cars that go on for many more years,
but at the same time the're digging their own grave.

At one time, at least from the 1950s to the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973,
the American car companies followed a philosophy called "planned
obsolecscence" where minor styling changes were made every year and
major styling changes were made every 2 or 3 years. The idea was to
make your 3 year-old buggy look like last week's lettuce to entice you
to buy a new one. So, quality was simply awful and problems never got
fixed, just replaced by new ones much the same way that software bugs
never get fixed anymore. The Japanese "invasion" in the 1980s taught us
very painfully two big things: quality IS very important and resale
value/overall mimimum cost/mile driven IS very important to owners.
These 2 things, the rapid rise of Federal emissions and safety
regulations and the outrageous costs of doing all those redesigns made
it impossible to continue. These days, cars pretty much look the same
for the 4, 5, 6, 7 years of their "platform", resale value is greatly
enhanced and the high development costs can be amortized over much more
sales volume.

This very same idea spread quickly to all the world's car makers, even
including your French-made Renault. French cars and maybe Italian city
cars were/are about the only brands WORSE than American cars of the
halcyon days so if Renault had not adopted a new philsophy based on the
world-class Japanese, it is highly unlikely your car would ever have
made it to 16+ years of driving without rusting away and the engine
falling on the ground. Of course, your countries very strong inspection
laws force you to do preventative maintenence on your car, at least for
safety and emissions parts.

OK, if these shows come on again, I'll try to snag them and perhaps
I can mail you a DVD of something you may not have seen in The
Netherlands.

That would be nice.

I have an MS Word list of my movies that I'll send to you, Bouler.
Except for the ones marked with $$$ meaning they're commercial tapes
and DVDs that most often cannot be copied, the rest I burned on my
Panasonic DVR. Besides things we've been talking about here, the
Titanic and the number of shows about that, I have many TV shows about
Iwo Jima where my father was, the so-called American Muscle Car series
on Speed Channel, THC's Modern Marvels series, and the like.

All of you lurkers, I'm not exactly in the DVD biz, so don't salivate
quite just yet. But, Bouler, if you see a few things that may interest
you, it is very inexpensive for me to copy some DVDs. In advance of
that, please privately send me your address and international phone
number. I'll send you mine if you don't mind figuring out how to make
an international number from our local standard.

Sorry, I did it again, damnit! GPA means Grade Point Average. We
use a 4.0 grading system in community colleges and universities
where 0.0 is an E or F, 0.5 is barely passing maybe with a D-, 2.0
is a C, 3.0 is a B and 4.0 is an A. My school, Oakland University,
used a 4.3 system where 4.3 was essentially an A+. I hope your
schools at least use a similar letter grading system.

Most schools use a decimal system from 1 till 10, of course 1 is not
very good and thats an understatement, but 10 is passing a test
without mistakes. Avrage 6 is suficcient to go to a higher class.

Hmmm. Not at all familiar with that, so I'm glad I expanded on our
system so you'd at least have a chance to understand ours. Thanks for
that.


To recap, American schools are basically organized this way: K-6
(Kindergarten through 6th grade) is called "elementary school,
grades 7 and 8 "middle school" and 9-12 "high school." Colleges and
universities are divided into "undergraduate" which means one
hasn't yet earned the most basic degree, a bachelor of science or
bachelor or arts, and "graduate" degrees which include a masters or
PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) and also MD (Medical Doctor), DDS
(Doctor of Dental Surgery), and LLD (Letter of Law Doctorate, I
think, i.e., an attorney.

Schoolsystem is very different in The Netherlands since I was young
and I can hardly explain the system now.
Basisschool (children from 4 till 12), kindegarten is included but
the name does not exist anymore.
They are talking in groups, grop 1 till group 8.
After that school is a very complex system I cannot explain anymore.
University is of course the highest grade.

This sounds similar to our idea, but I recall discussing some pretty
big differences between your boarding school and our combo of high
school and college so there's not all that much overlap, I don't think.

So, under my university's grading system, I graduated barely above
the minimum necessary, a 2.0, with what amounted to be a low C+.

My youngest daughter went always for the minimum because there were
much things nicer than school, she only worked hard when she decided
to become a maternity nurse (says my dictionary)
She looks like her father, till my 16th I did not study very hard.

I would have really wanted to do better but luckily for me back in
1969, the car companies were hiring any graduate engineers with a pulse
because of the total redesign of their entire car and truck lines due
to the 1968 MVSS (Motor Vehicle Safety Standards) that came out of the
NTHSA (Nationalal Traffic and Highway Safety Administration, I think)
and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) for emissions and toxic
substances regulations and the like. We were also burned with regs from
OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) for increasing
safety from injury and poisoning in our plants and offices.

Yeah, I worked my skinny ass off, Bouler! Here's what one of my
days was like: I'd get up early, eat a breakfast of oatmeal or
bacon and eggs, finish up any homework and commute to school Go to
school and study on campus until early afternoon, return home, eat
a fast dinner and go to work in a department store from 5-9 PM to
earn gas money and money to go on dates with girls. Then, study
until about midnight or when I fell asleep at the kitchen table. On
weekends, I'd date, have fun with my friends, go cruising to try to
pick up girls or maybe engage in drag racing at night while working
Saturday and Sunday 8 hours and studying in whatever time was left
besides sleeping.

Because I was studyïng in a boardingschool we studied 6 days of the
week and had specific studyhours and you did not get a chance to
miss them, the punishment was most of the time staying in school the
whole weekend. We had not much choice we simply had to.

Something that the United States has yet to learn is that the rest of
the world, but primarily the Asians, have as much education at the end
of what amounts to be our high school nearly as we have with a bachelor
degree from a university. These countries are literally eating our
lunch in engineering and software/computers as well because they have
50% or more technical education than we require. Worst of all, though,
American students are pretty damn lazy and do not comprehend that their
livelihood for 4 decades or more depends on a good an education as they
can possibly get, and not playing with sex and drugs.

No time to earn some money and not much time to have fun, exept when
you were doïng something cultural so me and my friends played in a
band, were singing in a lot of choirs, we did everything possible to
get out of the building to make fun and of course with girls.
Sometimes it was dangerous because you could be send home and never
graduate.
4 times I was very near but I came away with it.
I did not choose the school for earning a lot of money, I wanted to
educate children and pass my knowledge to them.
After all it was not payïng bad an we had lots of holidays;-)

I found that being forced by circumstances - my father was a "blue
collar" hourly paid auto worker - to work while in college and I found
that to be a very worthwhile endeavor, so we pretty much made our
daughter work for spending money also.

I don't know what the numbers were at my college as I didn't have
access to the number of applicants nor the number who failed to
make the cut on the 2-day testing gig, but I would suspect it was
similary to your experience. My engineering class itself was small,
maybe 40 or 50 (I've always wished that OU had a yearbook, but they
didn't) and I think they all managed to graduate. That I know of,
my ranking was 4th from the bottom, or maybe 5th, but no higher.
The class was divided along lines of intelligence and grades
informally. The smart guys studied together and refusted to help us
not so smart guys because they wanted us to get lousy grades so the
"curve", or statistical grading system to decide the numeric score
you're probably familiary with is helped by the number of people on
a test that score below the statistical median or mean and skew the
grade distribution to the low end making it easier to earn a 3.0 or
4.0.

We helped each other a lot, maybe because teaching each other is a
way of learning too.
I still heve many contacts from that time and we had several
reunions. Next year again a reunion because its than 45 years ago we
graduated.

Most people like his other quotes, basically "this is a .44 Magnum
and will blow you head clean off, now do you feel lucky? well, do
you, punk?" Yeah, that's OK, but I liked the other one because it
was useful in real-life and not just cop movies. It is interestint
that you are familiar with the Dirty Harry series. It was a money
maker but not an award-winning movie. I often use movies to
illustrate things to you and others and I wonder a lot if my
international friends know what the hell I'm talking about! grin

Guns in America and guns in The Netherlands is world of difference.
Not many people have guns here and its even forbidden exept for
policeman and guards.
I think there are to many guns in the states.

Over here, most Americans have an entirely incorrect understanding of
our 2nd Amendment. Here's what it says, and I'll explain why most
people think what they do:


"Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free
state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be
infringed."

People ONLY use the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" clause
and delete the rest. The root of this Amendment goes back to our
British Colonial period prior to 1776 and the later Revolutionary War
because the British would regularly confiscate all the farmer's muskets
anytime there was unrest. The modern version of a "militia" is what we
now call the National Guard which is a full military organization of
both the Army and Air Force under the command of a state governor. The
idea originally was for states to use a paramilitary organization for
the common good AND to defend against the possibility of a rogue
Federal goverenment trying to change the rules and establish tyranny.
Our Supreme Court heard arguments for a Washington D.C. handgun ban
last month that is its first 2nd Amendment case in 75 years.

In short, if one reads this Amendment and has ANY knowledge of why it
is there, they can easily see that it does NOT guarantee you the right
to own a rifle, shotgun, handgun, assault weapon, sub-machine gun or
anything. But, the threat IS real even today. In New Orleans,
Lousianna, the city hit the hardest by Hurrican Katrina in 2005, the
Mayor actually sent his police around and confiscated over 1,000 guns
presumeably to prevent deaths due to looting. I don't want to start
some gigantic flame war about guns, so I'll stop now.

--
HP, aka Jerry

"If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck"